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PA ST AND PRESENT

An Introduction to the First Crusade

THE SUBJECT OF THE CRUSADES IS ONE THAT HAS FASCINATED VERY

many writers in the past, and still continues to attract apologistsof all persuasions, not only religious, but political, and social.Nevertheless the more that is written, the less there seems to be ofvalue to the scientific histor ian. It cann ot be denied that some of

the literature is very erudite, and that many of the authors havetried to look at things from a new po int of view. In sp ite of thisthe popular textbooks continue to serve up the same traditionalerrors, while learned works, besides suffering from weaknesses dueto the contemporary outlook on history, suffer also from certaininherent difficulties. T he Crusades belong to the history of bo thWest and East, and it is difficult for a historian to be an expert inbo th. Th is short article does not preten d to provide even a planfor a com prehensive study of the whole subject. All tha t I shallattempt will be to examine the particular question of the FirstCrusade, giving an outline of the progress recently made in research,and suggesting desirable lines of further study.

For nine and a half centuries, the textbooks have repeated, almostword for word, with mechanical regularity, that the cause, or atleast the immediate cause, of the Crusades was the Turkish conquestof the Near East, which they say constituted a very real threat toCh ristendom, that had to be coun tered by military action. Lookingat the Turks in the light of the later history of the Ottoman Empire,historians have supposed them to have been always an intolerantrace. As a first step this traditional view must be considerablymodified.

In 1095 many Christian peoples and the Holy Land itself hadalready been subject to the Moslems for four and a half centuries,and yet there had been no Crusade . Islam, in its attitude towardsunbelievers had from the first been faithful to two distinct principles,on the one hand that the believer was bound by his faith to the dutyof the jihad, the Holy War, whose aim was to bring the unbelieverinto political subjection to Islam, on the other hand that such sub-jection involved no forced conversion, and the unbeliever, oncerelegated to his inferior and subordinate position, enjoyed theprotection of the Moslem Law. Naturally ther e had been occasionaloutb ursts of fury. T he only serious one had been El-H akim 's

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE J

persecution at the beginning of the Xlth century, in Egypt and

Syria. Th is had made a deep impression in the West, because ofthe destruction of the Holy Sepulchre. News of this outrage wascarried home by returning pilgrims. But El-Hakim was mad,and the persecution was never resum ed after his dea th. In spiteof this there continued to be numerous conversions to Islam: thematerial and moral advantages of conforming to the religion of theruling power were obvious enough to account for them withoutthe need of any other pressure. Nevertheless in Palestine andSyria it is probable that Christians remained at the end of the Xlth

century as numerous as Moslems, and in some places, like theLebanon, much more numerous; their life was no different after theTurkish conquerors came from what it had been ever since theArab conquest in the Vllth century.

As for the jihad, long before the Turkish conquest it had lostthe character of a great offensive and a serious bid for conquestthat it had had in the first generations after the death of Mohammed.Since the VHIth century it had only existed as a series of almostroutine forays, becoming more and more infrequent, which werelaunched against the frontier territories of the enemy for the sake ofbooty , with no idea of conquest. Even in this form the Holy Warbecame fainter and fainter; it had real interest only for the soldierson the frontiers, and was a matter of complete indifference to theMoslem population in the heart of Islam. Indeed the frontiersmen,both on the Moslem and on the Infidel side, were often militarycolonists only loosely attached to their central governments, andbetween raids they fraternised with each other in complete indifferenceto frontiers and religious differences. Arm enia and Spain prov idedremarkable examples of such co-existence.

It is true that in the middle of the Xth century there was a revivalin the East of the idea of the Holy W ar. The initiative wasByzantine. Tak ing advantage of a tempora ry political break-downin the Moslem world, the Byzantine em perors had taken theoffensive to recover those parts of eastern Asia Minor and northernSyria which had been lost to the Moslems three centuries earlier.T he Ham danid dynasty of Aleppo, characteristically deserted by theother Moslem states, was left to face the attack alone. Th e founderof that dynasty, Saif ad-D aula, was supported by the Bedouins,professional marauders, and by the poets, who, imbued with theherioc spirit of ancient Arab poetry, were the creators or the voiceof public opinion. He had stubbornly resisted the invaders andsometimes counter-attacked, thereby restoring the tradition of the

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8 PA S T A N D P R E S E N T

jihad to a place of honour. Bu t this had been b ut a brief

conflagration. People had become used to Byzantine victories,and never was there more intrigue or fraternisation between Christiansand Moslems against other Christians and other Moslems than in theX lth century.

In only two areas did the spirit of thejihad survive, and there itwas directed against pagans, and not Christians: in the Sahara,amongst the groups of wild and fanatical warriors sheltered by theribat, Murdbittin (the Almoravides); and in central Asia, in the regionof the Syr-Daria, theghdzts, those volunteer champions of the Faith,

a sort of militant religious order who renewed against the Turksbeyond the frontiers the immemorial tradition of the conflict of thesedentary Iranians with the nom adic " Tu ran ian s." It was nochance co-incidence of time which was to give these men, of theWest and East alike, a new importance in this history of the Moslemworld.

In the X lth century the Moslem W est presented a picture of politicalanarchy, and, in the eyes of the teachers of the Law, the theologiansand the jurists, one of depravity and decay. They found it easy to

win over the wild fanatics to a programme of making a " cleansweep " of this co rruption : they appealed to the A lmoravides whoconquered a large pa rt of no rth Africa. In Spain they could nothave succeeded so easily had not circumstances been favourable,for Spanish society was more cultivated, and opposed to " barbarian "intervention. Th e favourable conditions were provided, involun-tarily, by the Christians. The war between the Christians in theNorth and the Moslems in the South of the Peninsula had beengoing on with alternating periods of vigour and relaxation for three

hundred years, but now, owing to the internal divisions in theircountry it was, as far as the Moslems were concerned, almost extinct.But among the Christians, because of the breakdown of Moslemunity , it had again resum ed its aggressive charac ter. M oreove r,and this is note-w orthy, for reasons which will be given later, thewar was no longer waged merely by the Christians of Spain, who hadformed the hab it of combining war w ith the needs of " peacefulco-existence," but also by ultramontane warriors, by Frenchmenwho were strangers to such needs , and who thought only of fighting

and pillaging under cover of religious duty. It was to save them -selves from this danger that the Spanish Moslems admitted theAlmoravides. Th us by the end of the X lth century Moslem Spainhad recovered its political unity at the price of submitting to theleadership ofa people animated by the spirit of war and intolerance.

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AN INTR OD UC TION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE 9

A similar development had taken place in the East. Th ere too

the state of the Moslem world, divided politically, socially andreligiously, seemed a scandal to the leaders of orthodoxy. Th eytherefore looked for an instrument which would restore order totheir own advantage. Th ey found it in the Tu rks. By that timethe Tu rks had been effectively converted to Islam. Being recentconverts, zealous and strait-laced, they were easily persuaded of thenecessity for energetic action. The ir chiefs, often skilled militaryleaders, found here just what they wanted. T heghdzis no longeropposed the Turk s, who were now M oslems. On the contrary the

Turks now became the best recruits of theghdzis. Having beenconverted to Islam as it was on the frontiers of central Asia, they hadadopted the Islam of theghdzts which so well suited their way of lifeand their custom ary liking for raids . Th ey now had only to divertthese raids against their kinsfolk to the North who were still pagan.In the outcome almost all Moslem Asia was conquered by the Turksto the benefit of the ruling Seljukid family. Moreover the Tu rkswho carried out this conquest were nomads, Turcomans as they werecalled, inspired with the zeal of theghdzts and impatient to transfertheir activities to all the new frontiers where they had been installedby the creation of the Seljuk empire.

From the point of view of the relations between Moslems andChristians, with which we are here concerned, the effect of thiswas two-fold. The fate of the C hristians who lived inside theSeljuk empire was unaffected. The Seljukids, heirs of orthodoxMoslem tradition, applied to their non-Moslem subjects the legalprotec tion afforded by Islam. The Christians outside the Moslemworld were subjected to a renewal of the Holy War of early Islamichistory. T he result was a new surge of Moslem expansion whichtook advantage of the dissensions among the Byzantines, and robbedthem of almost all Asia M inor — virtually half of their emp ire. Th isconquest was made almost against the will of the Seljukids who weremuch more concerned with the struggle against the heresies withinthe Moslem world than with the subjection of infidels outside it.They had simply given their head to the Turcomans who wouldotherwise have been a source of trouble and disquiet. Used to awandering Ufe, impatient of all the restrictions of the centralgovernment and of the rights of private property, still half savage andaccustomed to pillage and blood-shed, the Turcomans were difficultsubjects for any master to contro l. T o incorporate them in AsiaMinor as part of the Seljuk empire would have been a difficult task,for there was no established Seljuk administration there and the

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1 0 PAST AND PRESENT

Turks were as yet incapable of instituting one; to do so would have

meant a definitive breach with the Byzantine empire, which to someextent the Seljukids preferred to have available in order at need touse its good offices against Turcom ans themselves. The y thereforeleft the Turks to do as they liked in Asia Minor and Byzantium wasimp otent to hold them . The re ensured a period of cruelty, sufferingand destruction . T h e vital dateis the Byzantine disaster at Manzikert(1071), where the emperor was taken prisoner.

Undoubtedly for the Byzantine empire this was territoriallydisastrous and the occasion of terrible suffering for the Christiansof Asia Minor. Only two reservations must be m ade: first, theravages of the Turcomans had been almost as devastating in all theMoslem countries which had resisted them; secondly, while thestate of war long continued on the whole periphery of westernAsia Minor, elsewhere, once the wave of devastation had passed,life was reorganised and we are presented with quite a differentpicture.

It must be remembered that in the Near East there was not onebut several Christian com munities. W ithin the Byzantine Em pirethe official Church comprised the vast majority of believers, subjectto the patriarchate of Constantinople; there were also Christiansof the Greek rite, bu t for the m ost part A rab speaking, in Eg ypt,Syria and Armenia, who were subject to the patriarchates of Antioch,Jerusalem and Alexand ria. But there were other Churches, longseparated from Constantinople and Rome: the Maronites of theLebanon, separated more de facto than de jure, the Jacobite Mono-physites in Syria, Mesopotamia, and the upper Euphrates, theCoptic Monophysites in Egypt, the Nestorians in Mesopotamia,Persia and central Asia, and finally the Armenians, who had theirown national Ch urch . All these were Churches of com munitieswhich for centuries had been in opposition to the Greek Church,less by reason of doctrinal differences, however important suchdifferences were for the theologians, than by reason of the m utu aljealousies between their independent hierarchies, their establishedpro perty rights, and above all of their racial differences. The y hadearlier welcomed the Arab conquest as a deliverance from thedom ineering and mischief-making Greek Church. T he non -Gre ekChristians of eastern Asia Minor had found almost insupportablethe restoration of Byzantine authority. T he Greek Church in the

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE I I

Xth and Xlth centuries had not learnt by experience to be more

tolerant than it had been before the Arab conquest. Thereforewhatever they had suffered from the Turcoman invaders the localchurches were convinced that what the Greeks suffered was welldeserved, and there were even some exceptional cases of nativeChristians who lent a hand to the Turcomans against the Greeks.

More generally, there is no doubt that in the period immediatelyfollowing th e T urk ish occupation the native non- Greek Christianshad recovered at the expense of the Greeks the equivalent of whatthe mom entary devastation of the Turcom ans had cost them . No tonly were they free of the religious and fiscal oppression of B yzantium,but also, because the Turcomans had no idea of administration, theywere left alone to run their own-inte rnal affairs. It is also probablethat, on a more purely ecclesiastical level, they inherited churcheswhich either they had taken from the Greeks or which the G reeks hadaban doned, as we know happened at Antioch. The Armeniansbenefited less than the Monophysites, for among the Armeniansthere remained a party allied to the Greeks, and even among theenemies of the Greeks there were some warrior lords who endeavouredto carve out for themselves principalities beneath the heights of theTau rus. But for the Monophysites, who had long lost all politicalambition and all attachm ent to any foreign pow er whatever thebenefit was unqualified.

For the Greeks the Turkish conquests were clearly a catastrophe.Yet its magnitude must not be exaggerated. It is true that die Greekprelates were suspect in the eyes of the Turks of complicity withByzantium. Nevertheless there was no systematic opposition totheir continued residence in the country. Sulaiman ibn K utlumush(Qutalm ish), the conqueror of Asia M inor and Antioch, allowedthe Greek patriarch to continue to reside in that city and did noteven stop him from making visits to Constan tinople . Sulaiman,Moslem as he was, affected to consider himself the lieutenant of theBasileus. Many Greek bishops, like many of their flocks, fled fromAsia Minor, but more often because of the material difficulties ofexistence or the diminution in the number of believers than inconsequence of any proscription . Some prelates stayed, and in anycase, on the lower level, the monks and the priests remained, andthe Greek communion, shrunken it is true, did not disappear.Gradually the Moslem state in Asia Minor organised itself and thesituation of Christians of all rites was much as it was in other Moslemlands.

In order thoroughly to understand the situation in Palestine it is

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12 PAST AND PRESENT

necessary to bear in mind some facts and dates which even the experts

have not always appreciated . Firs t it must be remem bered tha tlong before the arrival of the Turks the Bedouins had kept Palestinein a state of semi-anarchy and insecurity which the Fatimid govern-ment had been unable to bring to an end. W ith the Fatimids, whorepresented in the Moslem world the Ismailian heresy which theSeljuks were pledged to extirpate, the Byzantine Empire maintaineddiplomatic relations, and thus they had been able to help theChristians, particularly those of the Greek rite, to rebuild the ruinsleft by El-H akim 's persecution. In 1071 Palestine was conqueredby a Tu rcom an chief named Atsiz, who was acting on his own accountand not for the Seljukids. In 1079 it was incorporated in the Seljukdominions, forming together with central Syria the appanage ofPrince Tutush; he in his turn in 1086 granted it as a fief to anotherTurcoman chief, Artuk, who had been long in the Seljukid service;finally, in 1098, the Fatimids recovered Palestine from Artuk's heirsafter his death.

It is probable that the wiping out of Byzantine influence benefitedthe non-G reek Christians at Jerusalem as elsewhere. Atsiz had tonominate a Christian, a Jacobite, as governor of the Holy City, forany Moslem he might have appointed would have been suspect ofFatimid sympathies. In 1076 the Turcom an ruler put down arevolt of the Moslems in the City with much bloodshed, whilethe Christians, who since the repair of the ramparts in the middleof the Xlth century had been segregated in a special quarter, wereunh arm ed. Even the Greek Patriarch, Symeon, was allowed to livein the City. The anonymous autho r of theHistory of the {Coptic)Patriarchs of Alexandria praises Atsiz, which is the more remarkablebecause some years later the same author was to complain of theintolerance of the Crusaders. It was true (he admits) that theTurcomans denied the miracle of the Sacred Fire which at Easterevery year came down to light a candle in the Church of the HolySepulchre, but then in the year when the Franks came, the miraclenever took place at all. Artuk (perhaps) shocked the Christians tothe soul by shooting an arrow into the roof of the Holy Sepulchre,but that was merely the traditional Turkish way of signifying thatthey had taken possession, and not a gesture of religious intolerance.

In all the lands incorporated in the Seljukid Empire, including,after the fall of Atsiz, Palestine, the situation of the Christians wasperfectly normal. Th ere was perhaps a greater reluctance than un derprevious rdgimes to employ non-Moslems as high officials, but thatdid not affect the ordinary people and there was nothing systematicabout it. Everybody, Moslems included, complained of the ravages

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AN INTR ODU CTIO N TO THE FIRST CRUSADE 1 3

of the Turcom ans . T he new Em pire was quickly organised. A

chorus of praise for the great Seljukid sultan Malik Shah (1073-92)was voiced alike by Moslems and by Christians who had no axes togrind. His reign symbolised the return of order, security and equaljustice for all. It may be tha t the A rmenian literary style of aM atthew of Edessa, a Sarcavag or a Stephen Orppelian is inflatedby rhetoric; but the same impression is given by the more measuredprose of the Chronicles of the Jacobite Michael the Syrian and theNestorian Amr bar Sliba. It is tru e tha t the death (in 1092) ofMalik Shah marked the beginning ofa period of dissensions, but they

injured the people no more than the similar quarrels which hadfilled earlier Moslem history, and in any case they were not anti-Christian in character. It is well known that the Turk s imprisonedthe patriarch John of Antioch in 1097, but the Christians, reinforcedby the Byzantines, were the n under the walls of the city. Similarly,when the Crusaders were approaching Jerusalem the Egyptians droveseveral Christian dignitaries into exile, among them Symeon, whowent to Cyprus: but in neither case can this be regarded as more thana measure of elementary prudence.

It is an established fact that the non-Greek Christians sent noappeal to the W est, not even to the Papacy. T he exchange of lettersbetween Gregory VII and an Armenian Catholicus (patriarch)reveals nothing of that sort. Even though the Orientals had met aconsiderable number of Norman mercenaries, it was difficult for themto envisage the dispatch to the East of a real western army, even hadthey wished for it. Th ere is nothing to indicate that they had beencomplaining of their fate any more than usual or had expressed anybu t the traditional desire for deliverance. It is true that the Westhad seen Palestinian monks asking alms on behalf of their Church,seeking to arouse the pity of the faithful, but that was nothing new;it had long been a practice, more common immediately after thedestruction of the Holy Sepulchre. Th ere are no gounds for thinkingthat the Turkish conquest had increased the number of suchmendicants or accentuated the pathetic force of their appeal. It isnoteworthy that when later oriental writers tried to explain thegenesis of the Crusades they never spoke of any sufferings of theEastern Christians . Ibn al-Ath ir cites the aggressive policy of theNormans of Italy; another Moslem al-Azimi, and a Christian,Michael the Syrian, who was particularly sensitive to the concept ofChristian fraternity, only adduce the stories of western pilgrims whichobviously derive from Westerners already established in the East.

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14 PAST AND PRESENT

But what truth is there in these stories of the molestation

of pilgrims ? The pilgrims had the choice of two routes from theWest to Palestine; some crossed the European continent, theByzantine empire and Asia Minor; certainly for these the persistenceof Turcoman disorder in Asia Minor was as good as a denial ofpassage. But that did not mean a denial of the possibility ofpilgrimage altogether; it was possible to travel by sea, either fromConstan tinople or from Italy . Th is second rou te was the one whichItalian merchants had been following for generations. It wasunaffected by the Tu rkish conquest, which had not reached all the

Syrian por ts . Even those which were afFected, like Antioch, werestill as much visited by the Venetians and others as before, andthe Venetians were luke-warm supporters of the Crusade. Nothingthen preven ted the pilgrims going to Palestine by sea. It may bethat for two or three years the Turcoman disorders had interferedwith Palestine also; but we also know that two pilgrimages had beendisturbed by the Bedouins in 1055 and 1064, that is before thecoming of the Turks; and by about 1080 there was certainly greatersecurity than there had been for a long time . T he disappearance

of the semi-protectorate of Byzantium over Jerusalem may haveactually worked in favour of the Latin clergy: at least that is what apassage in Nicon of the Black Mountain implies, if its dating is to berelied on. T he Amalfitans had two hospices in Jerusa lem, which mayindeed be older than the Turk ish conquest, but which certainlycontinued to function after it. The truth is tha t pilgrimages con-tinued as before. It is true that there were none as imp ortant as thatof 1064; it was learnt by experience that a troop of that size excitedthe covetousness of the Bedouins. But we know of many cases of

pilgrims reaching Turkish Jerusalem as their fathers had reachedArab Jerusalem.

They had grievances, it is true, but it must be repeated that mostof them are known to us only from writings subsequen t to the Crusade,and that such grievances are adduced as a justification after the fact.Even if we accept them as true , they must be adm itted to be merelylaughable. Often they come down to mere acts of petty spite , suchas are always provoked by the close proximity of two hostile religiouscommunities (Moslems relieving themselves in churches, and soforth); sometimes they merely reveal that the pilgrims had no con-ception of the problems of a developed adm inistration . It wasnatural that they should have found it hard, after a costly journey, tohave to pay a fee to enter the Holy City, but they had had to pay forthe right to cross Byzantine territory; and it is very difficult to regard

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AN INTRO D U C T IO N TO THE F IRST CRUSADE 15

this as a mark of intolerance. Even the most galling experience

known to us, that of the pilgrims who for lack of money were unableto enter the Holy Places, belongs to the period of the pilgrimage ofFulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, some sixty years before the appearanceof the Turks in this area.

To sum up: The Turkish invasion of Asia Minor was a disasterfor Byzantine Cliristendom, with some compensations for non-GreekChristians; to the Christians of the Moslem countries and of Palestinein particular it brought temporary sufferings which they shared withtheir Moslem neighbours: as these territories became incorporated

in the Seljuk empire, the Christian inhabitants found themselves in asituation very like that which they had always known under Islam.The pilgrims had been annoyed at having to abandon one traditionalroute, but had not been prevented from using another instead, andwere no less welcome in Jerusalem than before.

This then is the problem: why was it that when the real dangerwas to Byzantium, that the Crusade came to be directed to the rescueof the Holy Sepulchre which was not in danager? It is clearly acase of the substitution of mo tive. T he danger which the C rusadesought to avert was not the real danger.

Naturally in the mind of the average Crusader there was notsubstitution but confusion. M onophysites and Greeks, Asia M inorand Palestine, el-Hikim and Malik Shah, all that for him mergedinto a vague picture of the East confused by the dazzling light of theCross. He envisaged churches laid waste and pilgrims m olested,as he was told by the propagand ists. M uch m ore often it was a ma tterof abstract Christian feeling and of the humiliation he felt at thedom ination of Islam in the places where the Saviour had lived. Buteven if this confusion made the substitution of motives pqssible, it isnot of itself sufficient to explain how that substitution came about.So there is a second problem: the western world revised everythingit had ever known about Islam; that which before had merelynourished a passive sense of grievance now became the motive foraction; that which hitherto had been borne with equan imity was nowfelt to be intolerable. The explanation of this pheno menon can besought in two directions: in Byzantine propaganda or in the situationin the West.

There was at least one mediaeval author who saw the problemof subs titution. P. Charanis has recently drawn attention to apassage in a Byzantine chronicler of the early X l l l t h century which

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seems to indicate that it was Alexius Com nenus himselfwho, knowing

that it was vain to seek reinforcements from the West merely to saveByzantium, made the central theme of his propaganda the rescueof the H oly Places. Indeed this them e had already on occasionbeen sufficiently useful to Byzantium itself for there to be no needfor its invention n ow ; it had been used when John Tzimisces in975 led an exped ition u p to the very walls of the Holy City. But thathad been an exceptional episode. Byzantine policy had been muchmore directed to the stabilisation of the frontiers of Asia Minor thanto an eccentric thrust towards Jerusalem, neither is there any reason

to think that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, having already seenthe reincorporation of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the Empire,was insistent on the acquisition of that of Jerusalem also. T heByzantine emperors had concerned themselves, without undue haste,in the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, but it cannot be said thatJerusalem occupied in the mind of eastern Christendom, Greek ornon-Greek, the same place as in that of the West in the Xllthcentury; the Greeks did make pilgrimages but, except for those fromthe neighbouring provinces, not in any great num bers. In any case

as far as the present problem is concerned it does not seem that theevidence of the Byzantine chronicler should be given much weight.It is more than a century later than the events with which it dealsand is chiefly interesting as indicating awareness of the problem in themind of an author known to be otherwise concerned to discover abasis for France-Byzantine collaboration; but in the last analysisthe Crusade was organised by the Pope, and who will believe thatthe Pope confounded Jerusalem and the Byzantine Empire? Ifhe did in fact connect them, whether it was suggested to him or not,

it was because it seemed good to him to do so, and the reason for itcan only be sought in his own policy and in the situation in the W est.

Even so it does not of course follow that there are any grounds forunder-estimating the effect of the appeals of Byzantium for help.Th ere is no doubt that such appeals were made. But to understandthem there is som ething else to bear in mind. Since 1054 there hadbeen an open schism between the Churches of Constantinople andRome, a fact which clearly compromised their relations on thepolitical level also. Recent research however has made possiblea less radical interpretation of the Schism than that which was longaccepted. On the one hand what happened in 1054 was much morethe declaration of a separation which had long existed in fact than anew phenomenon: at the most it was a reaction against the tentativerapprochement which had been provoked by the danger which the

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AN INTROD UCTION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE 1 7

Norman expansion in southern Italy in the middle of the Xlth

century presented to Constantinople and Rome alike. On the otherhand, this Schism, which we to-day know has widened and endured,was not felt except by some extremists to be irremediable; it wasnot the first, and it did not, like heresy proper, destroy the feeling ofbelonging to the universal Ch urch , which though torn by dissensions,and with rival hierarchies, yet remained one and the same. Finallyeven if the will to schism may have been strong in the Patriarchateof Constantinople, it was weaker at Antioch, which stood to gainmuch less than Constantinople, and it was even weaker at Jerusalem,

where the Patriarch, beyond the Byzantine frontier, had daily to rubshou lders with Christians of all rites, Latins included. In suchcircumstances the negotiations for military aid to Byzantium throughPapal mediation took the form on both sides of a spiritual-temporalbargain: in Byzantium the Emperors, anxious to obtain politicalhelp had to take into consideration the Pope's opinion, and allowedthe hope to be aroused that re-union would follow military aid;Rome may have been inclined to make the willingness of the Greeksto accept religious union the price of persuading the western princes

to come to the aid of Byzantium.In Byzantium for fifteen years the Turks had been regarded only

as pillagers, insufferable it is true, but not a serious danger to thepolitical integrity of the em pire. For reasons of internal politicsthe recruiting of the indigenous population had been in part replacedby the enrolm ent of foreign mercenaries, especially Norm ans. Butit had not seemed necessary to make any further effort before thetim e of Rom anus IV Diogenes (1068-1071). H e alone, and in vain,had tried to make peace with the Normans in Italy in order to befree to act against the Tur ks . After the disaster of M anzikert hissuccessor, Michael VII, at the price of the total renunciation ofItaly, secured not only peace bu t an alliance (1074). In the m eantim ehe had also tried a rapprochement with the Pope, but the effort waswrecked on the religious obstacle, and, it seems, was only activelypursued in Byzantium in so far as the Emperor despaired of obtainingan alliance with the Normans, which would have been far moreimmediately useful. Gregory V II , however, who had just becomePope, had , as we shall see, taken the question of rescuing the ByzantineEmpire very much to heart, and had already taken steps in the Westwith that end in view.

There was another question which occupied the first place in theattention of the Ch urch . Th ough for more than a century it hadmaintained a sort of modus vivendi with the western Empire, now,

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18 PAST AND PRESENT

as a result of the movement for reform, the Church was emanci-

pating itself from the Empire, and was rapidly entering into openconflict with it. In order to be able eventually to resist an attackby the Emperor the Papacy had since 1059 had to envisage a reversalof alliances. It had opened negotiations with the No rm ans , wholike their northern kin, were inclined to seek the collaboration of theclergy in political matters.

The se negotiations had resulted in an alliance. As the conflictwith the Empire was more or less fended off during the minorityof the emperor Henry IV and as the Normans found it irksome togive up their predatory habits, this alliance became somewhattenuou s un der Alexander II . But from 1076 there was a completerupture and soon bitter war between the Papacy and the Empire.Robert Guiscard, the principal leader of the Normans, had become apowerful prince. T he alliance was confirmed and Gregory V II washardly in a position to argue about term s. In Byzantium Michael V IIhad been overthrown (1078), and Robert, as usual, was eager toget possession of the G reek shores of the S traits of O tranto . Warbroke out between him and Byzantium and Robert obtained thepapal blessing for his expedition as the price of his helping the Popeagainst H enry IV . Th is meant the renun ciation of any policy ofChristian fraternity with the East.

But in 1085 both Guiscard and Gregory died, and Gregory'ssuccessor Victor II I soon after. Am ong the divided Norm ans itwas Guiscard's brother Roger, who had already won Sicily from theM oslems, who became suprem e. H e had no interest in the waragainst Byzantium which might cost him the valuable help of thenum erou s Greeks of Sicily and Calabria in his struggle with theM oslems. In Constantinople Alexius I Com nenu s, who had oustedMichael V II 's successor [N icephorus I I I B otaniates, 1078-81], wasabove all concerned with the needs of the struggle against the Turksof Asia Minor and against their kindred the Pechenegs, who weremen acing Bulgaria. Finally, the new pope , U rba n I I , was adiplomatist who had no desire to see Byzan tium helping Hen ry IVor the antipope whom Henry had set up, or to risk such an allianceof the two Em perors becoming the prelude to a union of the Churchesagainst the Papacy. T he negotiations, protracted throu ghout theyear 1089, had no definite result. Bu t it is clear that they did createa new climate of opinion and that in the course of the ensuing yearsthe quarrel was allowed to die down, that anything which mightrevive it was carefully avoided, and it was doubtless hoped thatprogressive collaboration on other levels would lead gradually to the

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AN INTR OD UC TION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE IO

revival of Union. The Pope raised for Alexius a small reinforce-

ment against the Pechenegs, while perhaps the detente also helpedthe Byzantine Emperor to recruit others, particularly from Robertcount of Flanders whom Alexius had known since Robe rt's pilgrimageto Jerusalem. It is certain that when the Crusade began theCrusaders, in the first stages, did not treat the Greeks as religiousenemies.

Did Alexius ask for the Crusade? No, if it is meant that Alexiusasked for the organisation of the expedition in the form which itactually assumed. But tha t at Piacenza, where at the beginning of1095 tie Pope held a Council, the Byzantine ambassadors asked forhelp for their master and that the Pope spoke to the assembly in thatsense cannot to-day be doub ted, much as the matter has beencontested.

Yet that is not the essential question, for the Crusade was properlyspeaking something quite other than the recruitment of soldiersfor Byzantium by Papal mediation. And therefore it is in the Westthat we must end our search.

We must deal first with the Pope, because it was to him and not tothe Emperor that the appeal was made. I will not dwell upon thefact which has been so well brought out oflate by different mediaeval-ists that the Church, having for centuries left the temporal sword tothe Empire, and been content to confine itself to encouraging thosewars which were fought for the defence or expansion of Christendom,had come eventually to believe that when the temporal power wasdeficient, even more when it was hostile, it was the right or even theduty of the Church to conduct such warsitself. Nor do I wish todwell on the birth of the associated idea, already explicit in the mindof Gregory VII and natural to clerics recruited largely from theseigneurial class, that service in arms might also be service to theChurch, and that the pernicious warlike activity in which so manyfeudal lords engaged and which the Truce and the Peace of God hadtried to restrain even if they could not end it, might at least be divertedto war for the Fa ith. All this was alien to Byzantine mentality.Because the Byzantines had often been at war with their Moslemneighbours and because the Cross and the prelates had taken part inthose campaigns, they have been regarded as pre-C rusades . Wemust beware of confused thinking. Tha t the Byzantine people hadregarded some of these wars as holy wars is true, but the Byzantine

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Church had always refused to consider that participation in such

wars could be of itselfa Christian virtue which could win for soldiersa diminution of their penalties before the tribunal of divine judge-m ent. T he western Church was now proclaiming tha t with certainreservations the war for the Faith could earn partial or completeabsolution from sin. It was therefore only in the West tha t theconcept of the Holy War fully developed.

Both the idea and the practice of the Holy War developed underthe aegis of the Papacy. Tho ug h the facts are well know n I believethat it may be opportune to sketch some of the outlines a little moreprecisely tha n has usually been done. Fo r, among othe r things, it isimportant to emphasise that the initiative in the Holy War againstthe Moslems was taken before Manzikert anda fortiori before theadven t of the Almoravides. In earlier centuries it was the M oslemoffensive which had forced the Christians in Spain or the Papacy inItaly to take up arms, and had thus led the Papacy to deviate from itsoriginal doc trine. But it is to be noted that just at this mom ent, inthe Xlth century, the Moslem danger, far from having increased, hadvanished. In Spain, N or th Africa and Sicily the Moslem states werebreaking up. Their perpetual internal quarrels led to theirrenoun cing all external aggression. In Spain in particular, para-doxical as it may seem to day, there was a temper of collaborationbetween rival faiths such as the Midd le Ages rarely witnessed. Neverhad Christians in the western Moslem lands had so little cause forcom plaint. In one place only had the situation deteriorated. T heMoslems of North Africa, ruined by the invasion of the HillaliArabs, and driven back into the seaports, were no longer able todevote themselves to the commerce which had been the source oftheir wealth. They had therefore emb arked on tha t " Barbary "piracy which was to continue off and on until the beginning of theX lX th century . But it does not seem as if it was against theseparticular Moslems that Rom e wished to take action. It may bethat the expeditions which the Pisans and Genoese made in 1088against Al-Mahdya, the principal port of Tunis, had the blessingof Pope Victor III (but it is only his official biographer who says so);they certainly had no more substantial help from him . Gregory V IIconducted a correspondence with a prince of Bougie, into whichthere may have entered the idea of an understanding wliich wouldart as a counter-poise to the hostility of his rival of Tunis, but thecorrespondence was chiefly concerned with the local Christians underthe protection of the Moslem prince, and, doubtless more covertly,with the affairs of the Roman merchants who lent their financial

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AN INTRO DU CTION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE 2 1

backing to the Holy See. T he first great effort of the Papacy against

the Moslems was not in this direction, and here too the Normansmay have been the cause. Roger of Sicily, having defeated th ereinforcements sent to the Moslems of Sicily by the prince of theTunisian dynasty of Banu Tamim, made peace with him, and ensuredtha t he would not give further support to his co-religionists. Rogerhad no intention of breaking that peace, and refused the Pisans'offer to hand over El-Mahdya to him; a little later, when he hadcompleted the conquest of Sicily, he seized Malta, but the island,it appears, was not then part of the dominions of the Banu Tamim.Thereafter Moslem soldiers served in Roger's armies, and madepossible his success against the rival Christian powers in Italy.

It was, however, on the Sicilian front that the Holy See made itsfirst official intervention , and in significant circum stances. In1059, during the period of the Papal- Norman entente, the Normanleaders did homage to the Pope, and among the territories whichthey then obtained the right to conquer, besides those they had takenfrom Byzantium, was Moslem Sicily; later Roger was to receivethe extraordinary privilege of being legate of the Pope in the island,a function normally reserved for clerics. But in the first instancetwo essential features of the new papal policy appeared. On theone hand the Papacy was approving, even waging (in a strictly legalsense, for th e Norm ans had become its vassals), an offensive waragainst Islam (or, if you like, a counter offensive to arrest the Moslemoffensive); on the other hand the Papacy began to set up in oppositionto the Empire from which it was emancipatingitself, a series oftemporal suzerainties, which, vague though they may have been instrict feudal law, signified none the less an attempt to dispose ofresources which had hitherto been at the disposal of the Empire.Moreover the Norman conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy meantthe restoration of the Latin church in lands where it had beenweakened not only by the M oslems bu t by the Byzantines. It istrue that the Pope and the Normans together pursued a tolerantpolicy towards the Greek hierarchy of southern Italy, for they did notlook upon t he m as accomplices of the P atriarchate of C onstantinople;their aim, which was partly achieved, was to bring them into directobedience to Rome by granting them a measure of disciplinary andliturgical autonomy.

In Spain one can see these different trends at work. In thebeginning the intervention of the lords of the northern Pyreneeswas not the work of the Papacy. T he princes of northern Spainwere anxious to take advantage of the weakening of Spanish Islam

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by expansion at its expense, and welcomed the neighbouring French

lords as useful m ilitary allies. On the othe r hand the task of restoringChristianity in Spain was in large measure conducted under theinfluence of Cluny. It can hardly be doubted tha t it was due toCluny that the chief part in the French participation in the Spanishwars was played by the Burgundians, who had no natural intereststhe re. W hat has wrongly been called the Barbas tro Crusade (1063)was solely due to this situation.

But if the intervention of Alexander II, to whom traditionalhistoriography has been wont to ascribe the Barbastro expedition, isto be more probably connected with certain new projects he made atthe very end of his pontificate, yet there is no longer any doubt aboutthat intervention, and the slight advancement of its date does notalter its essential character any more than that of Gregory VII'spolicy which was its continuation. T he influence of Cluny on thepopes it produced goes without saying. T he men whom the Holy Seeencouraged to go to Spain were to some extent connected with theNo rmans of Italy. But that does not seem to be the essence of thematter. At the beginning of this article I pointed out that theFrench brought to the Spanish war a spirit of ignorant brutalitywhich was alien to the S paniards . At the same time the Holy Seewas pursuing in Spain, as in Southern Italy, a policy of religiousre-integ ration. It claimed tha t Rom e had a special right to tempora lsuzerainty over lands reconquered from the infidel. Th e Chu rch inSpain had derived from its historical isolation a near autonomy anci arite of its own, which seemed dangerous from th e point of view ofreform itself, as much as from the Roman point of view that reformshould be directed by the Pope. Th ere developed a policy, at firstCluniac, but afterwards going beyond the plans of Cluny, whereSpa in was regarded as a private preserve. T he R oman Pontiffwas to take into his own hands the Church of Spain, and to useFrench military intervention to strike a bargain in the same way aswas done with the Greeks. Anothe r reason for his taking this linewas that non-Spanish influence would obviously be stronger in fiefsheld by French lords, as it was in those held by the Normans inItaly.

Among the Spanish princes themselves there were two tendencies:Aragon, which, owing to its geographical position was more open tounifying influences, entered, like the Normans, into vassalage to theHoly See. In Castile on the contrary the Roman claims were theoccasion of a conflict which may have begun by causing Alexander IIto abando n his m ilitary p roject. W hatever the reason, this was

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST CRUSADE 2 3

not carried ou t. It is no t clear whether official Rom an support was

given to the French contingents which took part in the ensuingexpeditions, both before and after the Almoravid invasion, andespecially the great coalition of 1187 which followed that invasion.In any case the hero who is most honoured in Spanish nationaltradition was neither French nor Roman, but the Cid, and hedistinguished himself not only in conflict with the Moslems but alsoon occasion with Christians in Valencia, which he conquered; he wasjust as popular with his Moslem subjects as with his fellow believers.But the French both at Barbastro and at Tudela (1087) had broken

their word and had slaughtered all the male Moslems before takingpossession of their wom en. It was Urban I I , a better diplomatthan Gregory V II , who was ultimately able to secure the reconciliationof the Spanish Church by means of certain disciplinary concessions.And, whatever was the exact role he played in these expeditions, it iscertain tha t at the least he encouraged them as soon as they had begun.

But he looked for support not to the Burgundians, but to theMediterranean powers. Rome had indeed never neglected toestablish its influence whenever the opportunity occurred over the

most distant monarchies, such as that of the Norman William theConqueror in England . But it seems that the Papacy was above allconcerned to surround itself with a ring of vassal Mediterraneanstates, or allies, capable of helping it alike against the GermanEmperor, Islam and even Byzantium if Byzantium should everreverse its policy. In these plans the Abbey of St. Victor ofMarseilles appears as the rival of Cluny. T he co unt of Provence(1081), the viscount of Melgeuil-Montpellier (1085), the count ofBarcelona during the pontificate of Urban II, all became papal

vassals, Like Mathilda Countess of Tuscany who bequeathed herestates to the Holy See; Gregory gave the royal crown to Zvonimirprince of the Croats. The Papacy maintained excellent relationswith Raymond of St. Gilles, who added successively the counties ofToulouse (1088) and Provence (1094) to his Languedoc inheritance(1066). Raymond was in 1087 one of the chiefs of the an ti-M oslemcoalition against Spain and several of his vassals were to take partin the operations of the following years, those which Urban IIencouraged after his accession. W hat is rem arkab le is tha t these

operations were directed not against the Almoravidcs but againsttie still independent Moslems of northern Spain, who were perhapsconsidered to be their allies, but the attacks certainly induced thenorthe rn M oslems to subm it to the Almoravides. T he result wasthat Spain at the beginning of the Xllth century had nothing but

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24 PAST AND PRESENT

Holy War against Holy War with the result that in the middle of the

century the new dynasty of the Almohades embarked on a policyof intolerance towards the non-Moslems of their dominions quitecontrary to the traditions of their predecessors.

Though it has long been realised that Urban IPs eastern projectswere linked with his western projects in that they were both an ti-Moslem w ars, and in that the same men who had gained experience inSpain were those whom he was to send to Palestine, less attentionhas perhaps been paid to the fact that the Spanish policy of the HolySee may provide an explanation of its eastern policy in respect of theCrusade . It can be taken as established by recent research that thePope dispatched the Crusade with a mission to collaborate sincerelywith Alexius Comnenus; the Legate Adh6mar of Monteil andRaymond of Toulouse, whom Urban intended to lead the Crusade,loyally attem pted to carry out their mission in contrast to the deviationsof the other Crusaders. But this thesis has been presented in tooone-sided a manner. It can hardly be denied that what Alexiusoriginally hoped for was an energetic reinforcement of the same sortas that which had long been provided by the mercenary troops whomByzantium had hired to serve exclusively Byzantine purposes .It is also undeniable that he ought to have foreseen, as the shape ofthe enterprise became visible, that the Pope's scheme of aid wasgoing to be more independent: it is true that he both wanted toimpose and succeeded in imposing on the majority of the Crusadingleaders an oath of homage which bound them to keep for themselvesno territory which they might conquer which had once been part ofthe ancient territories of Byzantium, but there was no question ofpreventing them from making conquests in Syria or Palestine, whereperhaps he thoug ht of accompanying them. It was obvious that inso far as the Crusade was the Pope's affair the re could be no questionof dem anding homage from the Pope or his legate, and in view of this,even though none of the chroniclers of the Crusades understoodthe point, it is perfectly understandable that Raymond of Toulouseshould have refused to do hom age, if in fact he was ever asked to do so .If then it can be readily admitted that Urban wanted to succour theByzantine Empire without any mental reservations, it is neverthelesstrue that he had also a program me of his own. Th is program me canonly be known by inference for no text which expounds it has beenpreserved and there is no reason for thinking that such a text ever

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existed. It can however hardly be denied tha t the program meincluded the establishment in Syria of a Latin or semi-Latin power,abou t whose form we cannot be precise. Such a state would ofcourse be dependent upon the Holy See in certain respects, and evenif there remained Greek clerics in Syria, as in Southern Italy, or asthere remained Spanish clerics in Spain, there would be a new pre-dom inance of the Holy See. Th is w ould be done with the goodwillof restored Byzantium, if the campaign should have been broughtto a successful conclusion, but it would underline the fact that for aweakened Byzantium was being substituted in whole or in pan astrengthened Holy See. Th at would inevitably run counter to thethe influence of Constantinople over the eastern Christians, thoseof the Greek rite and others, who would be brought to form a newsphere of Latin influence; in place of the semi-solidarity of the foureastern patriarchates there would follow the isolation of thepatriarchate of Con stantinople, mu ch reduced in prestige. T he planenvisaged extending to Palestine what had been begun in Sicilyand Spain and raising the prestige of the Papacy by completing thechain of its advanced posts. Tha t the prog ramme was never realisedin fact is no argument against the hypothesis that such had beenthe Pope's intention.

This then was his conception of the Crusade when Urban preachedat Clerm ont. As in Italy and as in Spa in, it was no longer a timeof great Moslem aggression. T he Turk ish danger, recent as it was,had m uch decreased since the death of Malik Shah in 1092. Hisheirs were qua rrelling. In Asia M ino r, Alexius's intrigues werewell able to keep the remaining independent Turcoman chiefs atloggerheads. Th ere was good hope that their territories might bere-absorbed in the Emp ire, as had happened so often before. W henat Piacenza Alexius asked for succour it was not an appeal of urgencyor despair. It was rather a plea born of hope for help in a reconques twhich had become possible. Th ere is no reason to think that U rbandid not know it, or that such an appeal was not for him an encourage -ment to action. T hat action he entrusted to his old and faithful allyRaymond of Toulouse, enriched by his experience in Spain, and tohis Legate Adhdm ar, Raymo nd's friend. Dou btless he did not seemuch further ahead.

It was at this point that there occurred the intervention of thethird party which metamorphosed the Crusade, making it totally

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unlike what it had been hitherto and giving to it that character which

it has ever since had for posterity, a " mass " movem ent. T ru e ,Urban II had foreseen that Raymond's forces would be joined byreinforcements from neighbouring lands; the Pope had himselfpreached the Crusade in west-central France and had caused it tobe preached elsewhere. Events outran him. We have hardly any-thing which he wrote about the Crusade; but his letter to Bolognaindicates that in 1096 he was already seeking to dam a flood which,if it were left unchecked would be prejudicial to orde r and thenecessary control of the Crusade by the clergy. Forces which he

had not foreseen had been let loose and were to make of the Crusadesomething very different from what he had wished.

What were these forces? Gallons of ink have been poured outin discussing whether the Crusade at this stage was more or lessreligious or self seeking. According to their own preconceptionsmen have seen in it clear evidence either of pure religious faith or ofou trigh t seigneurial or mercantile greed. Such a presentation of theproblem is absolutely false, because it was not the joining of theCrusade by groups or individuals who saw in it an opportunityfor seeking their own advantage that made it different from what itoriginally was. Spiritual enthus iasm and material greed were notopposed to each other within the consciences of the Crusaders (norin those of the revolutionaries of 1789), and the real problem is notto weigh the one against the other, but to try to understand how farone was supported by the other, and how far each explains the other.Naturally their relationship was not everywhere the same, and cantherefore lead us to no general conclusion.

Much has been said about mercantile greed, for the profits whichthe Italian merchants made out of the Crusade are well known.But what the merchants at once realised when the expedition wassuggested was its risks, including the risk of losing the commercialpositions they had won in Moslem lands before the Crusade . It istrue that Amain, which was perhaps the best established of all in theeastern trade, being in a state of revolt against the Norrnans was in ahelpless position, but the other Italian maritime cities were verycareful to have nothing to do with the enterprise until its success waspractically assured, and then they tried to secure their share in theprofits. As for Venice, what was essential to her was the Byzantinemarket, and for her there was no question of taking part in anyexpedition except in alliance with the Byzantine fleet until thecrusaders had passed beyond the boundaries claimed by Byzantium.For Pisa the main concern was not to distract forces more usefully

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occupied in the struggle with the Moslem pirates in the west. Only

the Genoese came immediately to the help of the crusaders in theEast, but, it will be noticed, only as individuals; Genoa itself inter-vened no earlier than the other cities. Altogether, apart from thespecial case of the Norman Bohemond in South Italy, there was nowidespread recruitment of crusaders in Italy before 1100 and theAfter-Crusade. Nor was the Pope, preoccupied as he was with thestruggle with the Em pire, likely to have encouraged it. T heCrusade was created pre-eminently in lands where the idea of com-mercial profit could not have arisen. The profit motive thereforedoes not come into consideration.

The Crusade was born on French soil, and when its first phaseof the papal initiative had passed, its adherents came rather from thenorth than from the south, where, until the After-Crusade, Raymondstood alone. But even in France what strikes one imm ediately is thedivision of the Crusaders into two groups. It has always been realisedthat the Barons' Crusade was preceded by the People's Crusade,but the social implications of this fact have not always been sufficientlystressed. Already in Spain in 1087 men of the people had foughtside by side with the barons and in any case a feudal lord was alwaysattend ed by a train of men-at-arm s. What was new in 1093, andwhat was never repeated in later Crusades, was that the People'sCrusade was distinct from the Barons' Crusade . In other words ittook place as if the feudal class structure of French society in theX lt h century did not exist. If it was not a revolt, it was at least asplit. Th is v/as the age of the peace movem ents, and of nascenturban autonomy, both consciously anti-seigneurial phenomena.

To a certain extent there was yet another split, for lords andcomm ons found themselves on the same side in opposition to theprelates. It is true that the Crusade had its priests, men of thepeop le, and no one has ever denied the great credit due to the Pope andhis Legate. But there were no episcopal troops in this holy war.This was the age when the people supported reform of the Churchagainst the bishops, who were often temporal lords rather thanpastors; as for the great barons, it was not their way to leave theconduct of wars to others.

What was the state of mind of barons and people? rWhat drewthem to take part in such an unheard-of enterprise? Partly theByzantine appea l. Partly because, if the situation of the pilgrimsand of the Christians in Palestine had not changed very much, therehad been in the Xlth century an increase in the number of pilgrims,made possible by improved commercial relations, and by the con-version of the Hungarians, which allowed them the use of the Danube

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route. In consequence every incident, every repo rt of the troublesof the Christians in the East, which hitherto had affected few, nowreached a wider public. It is not the worsening of the situation inthe East, it is the greater interest of the West in the East which is tosome extent the explanation of the Crusade.

But above all it is clear that all this would have meant nothing hadnot so many people in the West been materially and morally disposedto attem pt the great and wonderful adventure. The re is no needhere to go over again what has been told a thousand times of theardent but crude and militant faith and the social unrest at all levelsin France at the end of the X lth cen tury. T he comm on peoplewith nothing to leave behind and ready to depart at once, the Lordswho, having to settle their affairs, were slower but no less determined;the People went in search of immediate material and spiritual profit,hoping to return if it pleased God, the Lords to spend the rest oftheir lives in the Holy War and to establish themselves in new andmarvellous lands where they would reap the reward of their serviceto God first in this world and then in the next: it was only saints whobelieved tha t their bliss would not begin here below . . . What isimportan t is not to examine this faith, evident even amongst themost worldly, who were, spasmodically, the more avid of redemptionbecause they knew themselves to be worldly, but to discover why thisfaith induced them to go crusading. Some respectable text booksin their chapter on the Crusades tell us that the Crusad ing spiritdeclined after the First Crusade because faithitself declined: but intheir chapters on art and on the monastic life one learns that it was thesame faith which in the X H It h cen tury inspired th e Gothic cathedrals,and produced a St. Francis or an Aqu inas. We have therefore toexplain not a decline of faith, but a change in its outward manifest-ation. While in the X lth century men were ready to wander farafield in search of the chance of a better life, which for the first timethey had begun confusedly to believe possible, in the event they cameup against too many obstacles and difficulties. In the X H It hcentury the same faith received as its due cathedrals raised by towns-people who had made good their right to a good life at home.

These are some brief suggestions which there is not room to

develop in this article. Th ey indicate that one ough t to study theCrusade as a social pheno menon . None of the elements of whichit was made up was peculiar to it. Like all great historical movementsit bears certain family resemblances to others, for instance to thegreat migrations in antiquity and sometimes in modern times whichwere unde rtaken in response to a divine call. W hat makes it unique

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is the combination of very diverse elements, which, came together,

changed, and fused in to a new pattern. Such a study will bring outwhat was original in the movement, not by virtue of some chanceinherent quality, but because it was a unique combination of factorswhich together produced a result difiFerent in kind from anyth ing tha tthey could have achieved separately.

To sum up: the internal development of the Moslem worldin the Xlth century provoked in the East a resumption of thereligious offensive of Islam in a new form to the detriment ofByzantine Christendom, but without affecting Christians in theold Moslem conquests or western pilgrims in Palestine. But theByzantine defeat and internal developments in the West led thewestern world to ascribe to their grievances an importance whichthey had not had before in western eyes. It was in the West tha tthere was first conceived, with no new provocation from Islam,the policy of a Holy War against it, in part the result of papal action.The Papacy saw in the Crusade a means of working for the re-unionof Christendom under its own leadership, one of the objectives of theReform Movement as the Papacy conceived it, and a necessity if thePapacy was to continue to resist the Em pire. T he combinationof these various constituent factors explains how it was that anexpedition was launched against Jerusalem, where local circumstancesno more justified it at that particular moment than at any earliert ime.

Strasbourg. Claude Cohen.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

The questions dealt with are too general for it to be possible to give detailedreferences. Th ese can easily be found in the classical treatises covering thevarious branches of general history. The fullest are to be found in Glotz,Histmre Gtntrale t. II , and in Fliche and M artin,Histoire de VEglise, t . VIII,1944. I shall therefore only indicate here some of the more recent and rarerpub lications. First, for the whole situation in the East, the bibliographicalreferences will be found in my article: " En quoi la Conquete turque appelaitelle la Croisade ?"{Bulletin de la Faculti des Lettres de I'Uniyersiti de Strasbourg,Novembre 1950) of which the first part of this article is to some extent areproduc tion. For the latter part of this article see:—

for Spa in :M. Defourneaux, Les Franfau en Espagne auxXIe elXIIe siicles,Paris 1949

(with bibliography).P. David, " Gregoire V II , Cluny et Alphonse V I," inEludes historiques

sur la Galice et le Portugal, Paris-Lisbon ne, 1947, pp . 341-439.R. Menendez Pidal,La EspaAa del Cid, fourth edition, Madrid, 1947.

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30 PAST AND PRESENT

for Sicily :Amari, Storia da Musulmam di Sicilia, second edition, a cura di Nallino

etc., vol. Il l , Catania 1937.

for North Africa :Georges Marcais: La Berbirie et I'Orient au Moyen-Age, Paris 1946.Ch. A. Julien: Histoire de I'Afriquc du Nord, second edition revised and

corrected by A. Le Tourneau, Paris 1951.C. Courtois, " Gregoire VII et l'Afrique du Nord," Revue Historique 1945.R. S. Lopez, " Le Facteur economique dans la Politique africaine des Papes,"

ibid. 1947.

for Byzantium :Stephen Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. I, Cambridge 1951.Jugie, Le Schisme byzantin, Paris 1945.Every, The Byzantine Patriarchate, London 1947.Grumel, " Jerusalem entre Rome et Byzance," Echos d'Orient, 1939.Charanis, " Byzantium, the West and the origin of the First Crusade,"

Byzantton 1949.A. Krey, " Urban's Crusade, success or failure ?" American Historical

Review 1946-47.E. Joranson, " The spurious letter of Alexis to the count of Flanders ,"

ibid. 1948-49.Hill , " Raymond of St. Gilles in the Pope's plan of Greek-Frankish Friend-

ship," Speculum 1951.B. Leib, Rome, Kiev et Byzance, Paris 1924.

W. Holtzmann, " Srudien zur Orientpolitik der Reformpapsttum,"Historische Vierteljahrtschaft 1924.

idem, " Die Unionsverhandlungen . . . , " Byzantinische Zeitschrift 1929.

for Rome and the West :C. Erdmann, Die Entstehung der Kreuzzugsgedanke, Stuttgart, 1925.P. Rousset, Let Origines et les caracteres de la lire Croisade, Neuchatel, 1945.Y. Lefebre, Pierre 1'Ermite et la Croisade, Amiens 1945.Delaruelle, " Essai sur la formation de l'idee de Croisade," Bulletin de

Litltrature ecclisiatique 1941-45; 1953-4.

This list does not claim to be exhaustive.

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an introduction to the first crusade, cahen

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