The First Crusade Read online

  Godfrey of Bouillon likewise sought to settle his affairs. He sold or mortgaged every scrap of disposable property he could muster to the bishops of Verdun and Liege, raising valuable cash for himself and his brother Baldwin of Boulogne, and ending bitter quarrels with both pontiffs. One document noted that the brothers had been 'seized by the hope of an eternal inheritance and by love, prepared to go to fight for God in Jerusalem and sold and relinquished all their possessions'. They certainly continued to enjoy familial support while on crusade, for in 1098 their mother, Countess Ida of Boulogne, endowed a local monastery Tor the safety of her sons, Godfrey and Baldwin, who have gone to Jerusalem'. Godfrey did, however, leave a door open for his return to the West, maintaining an option to redeem the mortgage on the castle of Bouillon and taking care to ask his overlord, Henry IV of Germany, for permission to leave for Jerusalem.

  When juxtaposed with this rich mosaic of evidence for pious motivation, the once-fashionable myth that the crusaders were self-serving, disinherited, land-hungry younger sons must be discarded. Crusading was indeed an activity that could bring spiritual and material rewards, but it was in the first instance both intimidating and extremely cosdy. Devotion inspired Europe to crusade, and on the road to Jerusalem the First Crusaders proved time and again that their most powerful weapon was a shared sense of purpose and an indestructible spiritual resolution.35

  PETER THE HERMIT AND THE 'PEOPLE'S CRUSADE'

  While the leaders, who needed to spend large sums of money for the great retinues, were preparing like careful administrators, the common people, poor in resources but copious in number, attached themselves to a certain Peter the Hermit, and they obeyed him as though he were the leader, as long as the matter remained within our own borders.36

  Thus did one contemporary describe the impact of the enigmatic demagogue Peter the Hermit, the most famous 'popular' preacher of the campaign to Jerusalem and figurehead of what has become known as the 'People's Crusade'. In line with the tenor of this extract, historians long thought that two distinct movements emerged in response to the crusading ideal: an official expedition, dominated by the lay aristocracy and inspired by the preaching of Urban and his clergy; and a swarming horde of ignorant peasants, goaded by the fiery sermons of largely unsanctioned charismatic preachers into a frenzied, uncontrollable mob.

  In reality, there was no clear-cut division between the forces, ideas and individuals that drove lordly knights and bedraggled paupers to embark on the crusade. Approved as well as unauthorised preachers spread the crusading message across Europe, their orations stirring both rich and poor to action, while Pope Urban's grand tour of France roused a broad cross-section of society. Nor was there necessarily a massive difference between the rituals engaged in by noble and by impoverished crusaders at the moment of taking the cross.37

  The problem is that, when dealing with what might be termed the popular preaching of the crusade and the response it engendered, we are forced to adopt the vocabulary of the ambiguous and indefinite. We know that the majority of crusaders came from the middle and lower classes, but, of these tens of thousands of men, women and children, virtually no direct evidence survives. As in so many ages of humanity, the voice of the masses remains unheard, its story untold. We know, too, that Pope Urban empowered a number of freelance preachers to disseminate his call to arms throughout the Latin West, but of their identities or the message they propagated only the barest hints remain.58

  Only Peter the Hermit, whose dynamic preaching was most likely not endorsed by the papacy, has found a place in the annals of history. Indeed, for centuries he was actually regarded as the man who originally conjured up the idea of crusading. Peter was unquestionably an exceptional individual, possessed of a singular talent for oration. Describing his career, one near-contemporary wrote:

  A certain priest, Peter by name, once a hermit, who was bom in the city of Amiens which is in the west of the kingdom of the Franks, was the first to urge steadfastness in this Journey [to Jerusalem] with all the inspiration he could. In Berry, a region of the aforesaid kingdom, he became a preacher of the utmost persuasiveness and oratory.39

  At first glance he must have looked like a vagabond, such was his penchant for extreme austerity and his disregard for physical cleanliness. One man who met Peter sought to describe his curious nature, recalling that:

  outdoors he wore a woollen tunic, which revealed his ankles, and above it a hood; he wore a cloak to cover his upper body, and a bit of his arms, but his feet were bare. He drank wine and ate fish, but scarcely ever ate bread. This man, partly because of his reputation, partly because of his preaching, [assembled] a very large army.40

  Another near-contemporary noted that 'he was small in stature and his outward form was contemptible, but greater valour ruled in his slight frame. For he was sharp witted, his glance was bright and captivating, and he spoke with ease and eloquence.41 Today, Peter's evident asceticism, repellent appearance and unusual eating habits might lead him to be shunned by society. To an eleventh-century audience, his peculiar habits simply indicated an unearthly piety, imitating the life of Christ's apostles, and served to amplify the magnetic impact of his sermons. As a youth he may have undergone some form of scholastic education, he undoubtedly spent some years as a recluse, but by 1095 he had already developed a burgeoning reputation as an itinerant preacher, advocating devotional poverty and a return to simple Christian virtues. One eyewitness recalled:

  We saw him wander through cities and towns, spreading his teaching, surrounded by so many people, given so many gifts, and acclaimed for such great piety, that I don't ever remember anyone equally honoured... whatever he did or said seemed like something almost divine. Even the hairs of his mule were torn out as though they were relics... a novelty loved by the common people.42

  Even before the crusade was conceived, Peter's astounding gift for public speaking enabled him to incite a passionate, even hysterical response in his listeners. In this he was not unique: medieval society seems to have been particularly prone to demagogic influence, and within a few decades charismatic heretics were enthralling western audiences, the followers of one being so mesmerised that they ended up drinking his bathwater as a holy elixir.43

  Until the mid-nineteenth century, historians believed that Peter had played a central role in the genesis of the First Crusade. This tradition, now widely discounted, depended on a story circulated in the West in the first decades of the twelfth century. This maintained that Peter had, even before the council of Clermont, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Upon visiting Jerusalem, he supposedly witnessed first-hand the ritual abuse of indigenous Christians under Islamic rule, and in an audience with the city's senior churchman, the patriarch, heard tales of unbearable suffering. Distraught, the hermit sought solace in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where, so the story goes, "since he was exhausted by-prayers and vigils, he was overtaken by sleep. And the majesty of the Lord Jesus was shown to him in a vision. In this moment of revelation, Peter was promised that he would receive from the patriarch letters of our mission with the seal of the Holy Cross, and you will hasten as quickly as possible your journey to the land of your people, you will disclose the malicious acts and injustices inflicted on our people and holy place, and stir the hearts of the faithful to the cleansing of the holy places in Jerusalem'. Having fulfilled this prophecy, the hermit returned to Europe, gained an audience with the pope and persuaded Urban that he should launch a crusading appeal.44 There may be some credence to the idea that Peter bore a letter allegedly lending divine sanction to the expedition to the Holy Land, because another chronicle described the hermit 'carrying round a letter which he claimed to have fallen from heaven, stating that all Christendom from all parts of the world must migrate in arms to Jerusalem [and] drive out the pagans'.45 But there is no evidence to suggest that Peter did visit the Levant prior to November 1095, nor is it possible to confirm that he ever met or was sanctioned by Pope Urban.

  The hermit was, nonethe
less, already preaching the crusade with zealous enthusiasm by the end of 1095. In the months that followed, his ministry spread from Berry through northern France and into Germany, and wherever he spoke the fires of crusading fervour ignited. Peter had already proved that he could work wonders with the message of ascetic piety, but once he began to exhort the merits of a devotional pilgrimage to recapture Jerusalem the effect was almost miraculous. Unfortunately no record of his sermons survives, so we cannot know whether he distorted Pope Urban's vision of the crusade, nor can we reconstruct the spiritual benefits he promised to participants. But the impact of his preaching is clear. One near-contemporary noted that his words attracted the clergy, the lay aristocracy and 'all the common people, as many sinful as pious men, adulterers, murderers, thieves, perjurers, robbers . . . every sort of people of the Christian faith, indeed even the female sex. A Greek observer who lived through the crusade recalled that, 'as if he had sounded a divine voice in the hearts of all, Peter the Hermit inspired the Franks from everywhere to gather together with their weapons, horses and other military equipment'.46

  Within six months of Clermont, Peter had moved thousands to take the cross. Many were desperately poor peasants, but there were also nobles among his followers, including the French knight Walter Sansavoir. While the pope and his clergy extolled the virtues of the crusade, urging judicious preparation and broadcasting 15 August 1096 as the expedition's official departure date, Peter the Hermit, alongside other charismatics (similar to him but unrecorded), roused the faithful to more urgent and ecstatic action. A breakaway group under Walter Sansavoir set off on 21 May, and in the weeks and months that followed more than 15,000 men, women and children left their homes for the East. It was this largely uncontrollable, ramshackle horde that would act as the vanguard of Pope Urban's grand expedition, a first wave of crusaders that did not conform to his orderly plans and threatened to derail the entire campaign even before it had properly begun.

  3

  THE JOURNEY TO BYZANTIUM

  As the fire of crusading enthusiasm spread across Europe in 1096, tens of thousands of Latin Christians prepared to leave their homes and take up the long road to Jerusalem. The first crusaders began setting off from France and Germany in late spring, small bands of peasants and a few knights, often inspired by popular preachers like Peter the Hermit, that gradually coalesced into a number of larger, loosely formed contingents. This initial wave of pilgrims' has come to be known as the People's Crusade.

  Few among them could have truly understood the sheer, daunting scale of the journey on which they had embarked. Driven by a surge of spontaneous enthusiasm, most set out with little forethought or preparation. Jerusalem, their goal, lay thousands of kilometres away, across harsh terrain, much of it held by enemy forces. Lacking the financial resources even to consider taking ship over the Mediterranean, they had but one option - to walk the entire way. It was an extraordinarily foolhardy undertaking that would see many of them dead or destitute before they had even left the West.

  There was one obvious route to follow in the initial stages, the ancient pilgrim road to Asia Minor that ran along the River Danube into the recently converted kingdom of Hungary. But while still in their homelands many of these 'poor' crusaders became embroiled in one of the blackest, most bloodthirsty episodes in all medieval history. Revealing the full power of the crusading message to inspire horrific violence and incite profound racial hatred, these 'soldiers of Christ' turned their weapons against an 'enemy' near at hand - the Jews of Europe. This flood of anti-Semitism spread like a contagion from the crusaders to the local Christians of central and eastern Europe. Together they conspired to perpetrate a series of murderous attacks upon the Jews, a people who had for generations lived in peace among them, in what has been called 'the first holocaust'.1

  The pogroms began as early as December 1095 with anti-Semitic riots in Rouen, and by early 1096 anxious French Jews were warning their German brethren to be wary of these new crusaders. Just a few months later, between May and July 1096, the Rhineland Jews fell victim to sadistic persecution as a tide of anti-Jewish sentiment swept eastwards through Germany and beyond. Beginning in Speyer, incidents soon followed at Trier, Metz, Regensburg and Cologne, among other cities, with perhaps the most infamous and disturbing attacks taking place at Worms and Mainz. Historians long believed that these atrocities were the work of uncontrolled peasant mobs, a vile distortion of the crusading ideal at the hands of the undisciplined, illiterate masses.2

  The unsettling reality is that, although peasants did make up a large proportion of the People's expedition, most contingents in this first wave of the crusade were actually led, and quite efficiently controlled, by knights, many of them powerful Latin aristocrats. Indeed, a Jewish eyewitness recorded that his people had been abused by 'both princes and common folk [who] placed an evil sign upon their garments, a cross, and helmets on their heads'.3 One of the largest groups gathered at Mainz in late May: Germans led by the powerful noble Emicho, count of Leiningen; Swabians under Count Hartmann of Dillingen; and a well-equipped and well-organised army of crusaders from France, England, Flanders and Lotharingia, including the notable lords Drogo of Nesle and William the Carpenter. Certainly no rabble, this contingent, thousands strong, was a potent military force. Even princes from the main, second wave of the crusade may have been guilty of anti-Semitic tendencies, as Godfrey of Bouillon is reported to have extorted 500 silver pieces from the Jews of Mainz and Cologne in return for promises of protection that he failed to fulfil.4

  The pogroms of 1096 were not simply random, rogue incidents, nor were they necessarily misrepresentative of the ideals that drove many First Crusaders. But why did an expedition preached as a war of reconquest against Islam result in the murder of Jews? Even Latin contemporaries were unsure, one noting:

  I know not whether by a judgement of the Lord, or by some error of mind, they rose in a spirit of cruelty against the Jewish people scattered throughout these cities and slaughtered them without mercy ... asserting it to be the beginning of their expedition to Jerusalem and their duty against the enemies of the Christian faith.5

  Two forces seem to have been at work, stimulated by the crusading message that Urban had shaped. Characterising Muslims, the expedition's projected enemies, as a sub-human species, the pope harnessed society's inclination to define itself in contrast to an alien 'other'. But tapping into this innate well-pool of discrimination and prejudice was akin to opening Pandora's Box. A potentially uncontrollable torrent of racial and religious intolerance was unleashed.

  The First Crusade was also styled, perhaps most forcefully by popular preaching, as a war of retribution to avenge the injuries supposedly meted out against Christendom by Islam. This message, itself a ghastly distortion of reality, was ripe for further manipulation. The dreadful power of these twin impulses was underscored by a. Jewish near-contemporary. Recreating a discussion of ideology among a group of crusaders, he imagined them proclaiming:

  Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed [Jesus Christ] and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance upon them. Let us wipe them out as a nation. Israel's name will be mentioned no more. Or else let them be like us and acknowledge [Christ].6

  Cloaked in an aura of divine sanction, these Latins gave free rein to long-simmering animosity, subjecting the followers of Judaism to a ruthless programme of violence, extortion and forced conversion. Wherever they went, the crusaders' blind hatred, greed and bloodlust infected local Christian townspeople, turning them against their Jewish neighbours. In all this, the German Church maintained a disapproving but largely ineffectual stance. Its bishops knew full well that Rome did not advocate the victimisation of Jews and that canon law explicitly prohibited forced conversion. Some, like the bishop of Speyer, duly worked to protect imperilled Jewish citizens, offering them shelter and support. Yet others looked on unmoved or, wo
rse still, collaborated in the attacks.7

  Of all the crusaders implicated in this inexcusable episode, none eclipsed the notoriety of Emicho of Leiningen, the self-styled champion of this holocaust. Decades later one Jewish observer recalled how:

  Count Emicho, the persecutor of all Jews, may his bones be ground up between iron millstones... became head of the bands and concocted the story that an emissary of [Christ had] given him a sign in the flesh indicating that, when he would reach Byzantium, [Christ would] crown him with a royal diadem.8

  His crimes and those of his followers were recorded with distressing clarity by both Jewish and Christian contemporaries. Today their words afford us a tangible and disquieting sense of the shock, fear and horror associated with these incidents. Most powerful is the Hebrew chronicle written soon after 1096 by an anonymous Jew based in Mainz, many of the details of which are confirmed by the early-twelfth-century Rhineland Christian historian Albert of Aachen.9

  Having been largely thwarted at Speyer by the efforts of its bishop, Emicho's band descended upon the city of Worms on 18 May 1096. According to the Mainz Chronicle, they soon hit upon a devious scheme to incite the local populace to carnage:

  They took a 'trampled corpse' of theirs, which had been buried thirty days previously, and carried it through the city, saying, 'Behold what the Jews have done to our comrade. They took a gentile and boiled him in water. They then poured the water into our wells in order to kill us.10