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In 1088 Urban II became Pope. He gained enormous prestige for the papacy across Europe through his initiation of the first Crusade. Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) had been well served by the Anglo-Norman mercenaries he had hired, and he kept expecting further military aid from Rome that never came. So he renewed his efforts to find other military support in the west for his proposed campaign against the Seljuks. He may have sent letters to more than one military leader in Western Europe but we only hear of a letter to Count Robert of Flanders at this point. Robert had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem between the years of 1087 and 1091 and had passed through Constantinople. Alexius Comnenus did send letters in the hands of a deputation to the papacy in 1095.
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At the Synod of Piacenza (northern Italy) in April, 1095, Urban II renewed decrees against simony, and clerical marriage. The envoys from Alexius caught up with Urban II either during or immediately after the Synod. No record of any discussions survives and no hint of any decision or action survives.
Professor Deno J. Geanakoplos (in a graduate course in Byzantine History offered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the summer of 1966) suggested a hypothesis in his lecture regarding the origin of the idea of the crusade to Palestine. He reported that Peter Charanis of Rutgers University among others had argued that the idea originated in the discussion between Emperor Alexius' envoys and Pope Urban II at Piacenza. Geanakoplos' conjecture was that the envoys had mentioned the Christians' desire to recover from Seljuk control an area not far from Constantinople in northwest Asia Minor. This region which contained a large number of monasteries was popularly referred to in Constantinople as "the Holy Land". It contained hundreds of helpless monks many related to but isolated from their relatives in Constantinople. Alexius wanted to rescue the "Holy Land" region from the clutches of the Seljuks. Perhaps the Pope's interpreters were poor, or Urban was not paying close attention. However, the one thing the envoys said did seems to have sunk in--"the Holy Land". Yet the Pope seems to have gained no clear notion of where Alexius' "Holy Land" was located; so, he assumed it was a refernce to the well-known Holy places located in Palestine which also were assumed to be under Seljuk control.
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Later in November that year in east central France Urban II attended a Synod at Claremont where he excommunicated King Philip I of France for adultery--which was no surprise, and announced a crusade to free Palestine from the infidel--which was a surprise. The exact text of Urban II's speech at Claremont is not known. Reports of it that emerge long after the fact are not likely to have been based entirely on firsthand information. In any case, the holiness of Jerusalem was emphasized. The advance of the Seljuks who were harsher than their predecessors was alluded to. The reconquest of Jerusalem and surrounding holy sites was declared a religious task. An appeal was issued for everyone to abandon iniquitous combats and fight the war of righteousness. Whether Urban actually offered this military exercise as a supreme work of penance for past sins or some kind of indulgence can never be known.
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What is clear is that the majority of Europeans came to believe that participating in the crusade in some way liberated them from any further concern with penance. Some thought he promised that all sins would be forgiven to the participants, others thought he was offering what has come to be called a plenary indulgence. The so-called plenary indulgence, like the alms indulgence, seems to have begun in the eleventh century. Pope Alexander II offered indulgences to those who campaigned against the infidel in Spain in 1063, but apparently not to those Norman soldiers he blessed in their campaign against England in 1066. Then in 1095 Pope Urban II offered indulgences to those participating in the first crusade. Plenary indulgences differed from simple alms indulgences in several confusing ways. They were understood by the crusaders to guarantee that if they died while on the crusade their death would be like martyrdom. Moreover, if they returned alive they understood all penance for absolved sins would be remitted. Some leaped to the conclusion that the plenary indulgence, like martyrdom, also eliminated the fearsome post mortem ordeal of sanctification. And some may have assumed they didn't have to go to confessional to get those future sins forgiven. Traditionally since the second century terminal martyrdom was popularly understood as the one supreme satisfactio opera that guaranteed sainthood and direct entrance into heaven regardless of post baptismal sins. Some churchmen nevertheless expressed misgivings about such understandings insisting that Extreme Unction at the very least would be necessary.
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The response at the synod was enthusiastic and surprising. It probably astonished Urban II. The crowd shouted in unison--Deus vult!, "God wills it!" Large numbers of nobles "took the cross" and wore a red patch (perhaps in the shape of an X or T) on their breasts. (Later, as veterans, they moved the patch to their shoulder or their back.) Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, near Claremont, was named the papal legate to lead the warrior pilgrims, and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse was probably the Pope's pick as a military leader. Urban seems to have expected a single army to be mustered and depart from Le Puy in the spring of 1096; but the popular response was too enthusiastic.
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The first groups were already moving before a month had passed after Claremont. While Urban spent the next 6 months preaching the crusade in France south of the Loire River, other popular preachers were even more successful. Peter the Hermit of Amiens and Walter the Penniless, among others, stirred the masses. Edward Gibbon described the response of the lower classes in these florid terms: "a herd of two hundred thousand,
the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal license of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness." (quoted from the above link to Gibbon's text)
They ranged across Europe and the Balkans killing Jews, begging, stealing and burning, living off the land like parasites. Set upon the desire to do battle for God against the devil Mohammed, and possessed of a vivid popular delusion that they would irreversibly insure the salvation of their immortal souls by stepping foot on Zion, they arrived at Constantinople and pillaged the suburbs. Alexius hardly knew what to do with the countless thousands of unarmed, untrained, undisciplined rabble. Eventually under the pressure of this cloud of locusts devouring his land and his peoples' wealth he succumbed to the one demand they could agree upon and shipped them across to coasts of Asia Minor knowing full well the futility and certain result of their action. Almost immediately they were set upon by the Seljuks and annihilated. A few of them may have survived a while as slaves. So far as we know, none got to Zion.
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Meanwhile, as the summer of 1096 came four contingents of warriors prepared to leave Europe and rendezvous at Constantinople. Raymond IV of Toulouse, and Bishop Adhemar led the warriors from southern France across northern Italy and through the Balkans. Those from northern France were lead by Hugh of Vermandois (brother of the Capetian king), Robert, Count of Flanders, Steven-Henry, Count of Blois, and Robert, Duke of Normandy. Troops from the Rhineland region were led by the brothers Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin, both of whom were strong supporters of Emperor Henry IV and suspicious of papal interests. Their contingent went through Hungary. Finally, from south Italy the leaders of the Italo-Norman contingent were Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew, Tancred. These latter sailed to Dyrrachium and moved overland to Constantinople. By late spring of 1097 all these contingents arrived in Constantinople. Emperor Alexius was very apprehensive. Before moving farther Alexius insisted that all the recognized leaders take an oath of fidelity to him in the western manner. He overcame their stubborn resistance by coercion and bribery. They were forced to promise that any provinces of the Roman empire which they reclaimed from the Seljuks or other Muslims must be surrendered to the Emperor--a point of disagreement developed over this later when the crusaders refused to release territories in Syria and Palestine. The crusaders understood him to mean the provinces of Asia Minor only.
The people at Constantinople were impressed with the crusaders whom they called "Franks". Yet they saw them as conceited and undisciplined barbarians whose bad manners and immodesty were only exceeded by their ignorance. Nothing about the Franks could be admired but their bravery--that was astounding. One thing even the military specialists in Alexius' court had never seen before was a weapon as deadly as the awesome crossbow.
The crusaders were very impressed by the wealth and the luxuries of everyday life enjoyed by the people of Constantinople. As for the people, the crusaders considered them effeminate. As for the church, they understood it to be schismatic. And as for the emperor, a puny little man, full of deceit he was not at all worthy to be a warrior let alone a king.
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Victorious over the Seljuks at Nicaea, June 19, 1097, the Latin crusaders grumbled, snarled and sulked when the Emperor refused to allow them to sack the city which was full of Christians. The Seljuk counterattack was defeated at Dorylaeum in July. On the march across Asia Minor they endured almost perpetual famine and thirst; it was a long time before crusaders learned that they had to carry water with them if they expected to drink every time they became thirsty!
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They captured the outer city of Antioch in Syria without capturing the walled citadel in the center. An epidemic of dysentery broke out among the crusaders as the siege of the well-defended citadel progressed. Another Seljuk army encircled the outer city and the crusaders suffered real starvation; nevertheless, by June of 1098 they emerged victorious over all. Bohemond of Taranto laid claim to Antioch as his kingdom to rule. Earlier, in March, Baldwin of Boulogne had taken the title Count and assumed the rule of Edessa, a city-state in north Syria.
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The crusaders had the most incredible good luck of arriving in Syria and Palestine when the two major Muslim powers were at war with each other. The Seljuks and other Turkic tribes had taken Baghdad and advanced from there westward into Syria. The Fatamid Caliphs of Egypt were pushing northeastward through Palestine and Syria. Palestine and south Syria was the battleground. The Seljuks had captured Jerusalem in 1070. Then the Fatamids conquered Jerusalem, Acre and Tyre in 1089, but apparently lost control again to the Turkic warlords. The Fatamids again expelled the Turks from Jerusalem early in 1099 and left only a small detachment of Fatamid troops there to maintain order among the population made up largely of Christians. When the crusaders advanced toward the south the majority of the Fatamid garrison at Jerusalem pulled back to strengthen the defense of the Egyptian frontier. Consequently, when the crusaders arrived on July 15, 1099, there was little organized resistance to the uncontrollable battle frenzy as the crusaders proceeded to massacre the unarmed inhabitants of the helpless city. Alleged eyewitness reports the next day told of pools of blood in the streets up to the horses' knees.
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Such auspicious beginnings would take more than luck to maintain. Hundreds of crusaders touched base on Zion and headed for home, leaving about 300 warriors for the defense of the city of Jerusalem. Pope Urban II and his successor, Paschal II, continued to urge Europeans to take up the cross and to threaten those who would desert with excommunication. The Genoese fleet assisted the crusaders in taking Caesarea in 1101 demanding 1/3 of the spoils and establishing a market there. By 1101 a large contingent of new crusaders departed from Europe only to meet deadly resistance of the Seljuks in Asia Minor. Only a pitiful few reached Jerusalem. A group of Norwegians under King Sigurd arrived in Syria in c. 1109 and helped the Franks conquer Sidon, Beirut and Tripoli along the coast between Antioch and Jerusalem, but the crusaders never captured the inland cities such as Hamma, Homs and Damascus. It was 1124 before the crusaders could take Tyre with the assistance of the Venetian fleet.
After 1128 the Turkish ruler of Mosul named Zengi began to harass the remnants of the crusaders left from the First Crusade, first taking Aleppo and then Edessa from them. The Byzantine Emperor John Comnenus finally forced the Norman crusaders claiming Antioch to accept his authority in 1138 for fear of Zengi. In 1139 the Muslim governor of Damascus made an alliance with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem against Zengi, their common enemy.
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The Second Crusade was authorized by Pope Eugenius II in 1145 and formed under the encouragement and active impetus of Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. The Capetian, Louis VII, King of France and the German King Conrad III led separate detachments. They arrived in Constantinople in 1147. Conrad III pressed directly into the Seljuk territory and was badly defeated. The survivors joined with Louis VII and attempted unsuccessfully to get by the Suljuks by staying next to the coast. Those that got to Palestine attacked Damascus, primarily because they could not accept a Muslim area as an ally, but succeeded only in weakening Damascus. Zengi's successor, Nur ad-Din promptly took Damascus in 1153.
The Fatamids of Egypt under the leadership of Saladin who was vizier for the Fatamid Caliph were the next problem for the crusaders. After taking Damascus in 1175, Saladin ambushed and captured the greater part of the crusaders in Palestine forcing Jerusalem to surrender in 1187. The next year when Saladin released King Guy of Jerusalem the latter promptly undertook to reclaim his kingdom from Saladin beginning with the siege of Acre with the help of the Pisan fleet. Meanwhile, in 1187 Pope Gregory VIII called for a new crusade, known as the Third Crusade.
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Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa organized one of the largest crusading armies ever to cross the Balkans and Asia Minor. In 1190 the 68-year-old ruler drowned crossing a river in Cilicia. Those who persisted on their way eventually reached Acre to help in the siege there by 1190. Also in 1190 Kings Philip II of France and Richard I of England sailed by way of Sicily and Cyprus--which Richard conquered and turned over the Guy, the King of Jerusalem--before going on to Acre, arriving just prior to its fall. Richard also attempted to make truce with Saladin that permitted pilgrims access to the holy places. Between 1195 and 1198 Henry VI, king of Germany and Sicily, send a force under the Archbishop of Mainz almost as large as that of his father Frederick I Barbarossa. Most of the Germans turned around immediately and came back when they discovered that Acre had already fallen to the crusaders in 1191. Pope Celestine III in 1197 encouraged the French knights that wanted to participate to crusade rather against the Muslims in Spain than in the Middle East.
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After getting a very poor response on his first call for a crusade in 1198, in 1199 Innocent III authorized the first ever crusade tax on the church in order to launch the Fourth Crusade. It departed from Venice in 1202, but defied the Pope's orders by stopping along the Adriatic coast to capture the city of Zara for Venice. After wintering at Zara, the fleet carrying the crusaders was diverted again to Constantinople to assist in the restoration of an ousted emperor. The result was the nine-month siege of Constantinople that ended in the crusaders capturing and sacking the city and establishing the Latin Empire at Constantinople. It was the behavior of the crusaders on the Fourth Crusade that embittered the Greek Christians against the Christians of Western Europe, sealing the long-term destiny of the schism of 1054.
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Pope Innocent III launched the first of several political crusades in 1199 against a rebellious warlord in southern Italy. The twenty-year Albigensian Crusade directed against the heretics in southern France was launched in 1209. The legend of the so-called Children's Crusade points to some possible bases in fact during the summer of 1212. Innocent III announced plans for the Fifth Crusade in 1213. A multinational army led by King Andrew of Hungary and King Leopold of Austria did occupy Damietta in Egypt from November 1219 to August 1221. The crusade of Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen is the Sixth Crusade. It was officially launched in 1220, but Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick in 1227 because he hadn't left Europe yet. Even so, Frederick II was able to regain control over Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth in 1229 by means of a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt establishing a ten year truce. A new crusade was launched in 1239 anticipating the end of the ten-year truce with the Sultan. Jerusalem was lost except for a concession allowing the Christians to control the Temple area. In 1244 Jerusalem was lost for good.
Papal efforts continued to stimulate enough interest launch still another crusade. The Council at Lyons in 1274 under the presidency of Pope Gregory X ordered that all ecclesiastical incomes be tithed for the next six years in order to finance the defense of the Holy Land, but no military action was ever taken. The remaining footholds in the Near East were lost over the next fifty years with Acre, Sidon, Beirut, and the last two crusader castles all falling in 1291. It should be noted that while the political power of the Christians was expelled, the financial activity of Christian merchants remained undisturbed.
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