A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (11 page)

The Difficulties
of the Pilgrims

It is remarkable that there were still
travellers, not only Moslems but also Christian pilgrims from the West. The
pilgrim traffic had never entirely ceased, but the journey was now very
difficult. In Jerusalem, till Ortoq’s death, the life of the Christians seems
to have been very little affected; and Palestine, except when Turks and
Egyptians were actually engaged in fighting there, was usually quiet. But
Anatolia could now be traversed only if the voyager took an armed escort; and
even so the way was full of danger, and wars or hostile authorities often held
him up. Syria was little better. Everywhere there were brigands on the roads;
and at each small town the local lord tried to levy a tax on passers-by. The
pilgrims that succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties returned to the West
weary and impoverished, with a dreadful tale to tell.

BOOK II

THE PREACHING OF THE CRUSADE

CHAPTER I

HOLY PEACE AND
HOLY WAR

‘
We looked
for peace
,
but no good came’
JEREMIAH VIII, 15

The Christian citizen has a fundamental problem
to face: is he entitled to fight for his country? His religion is a religion of
peace; and war means slaughter and destruction. The earlier Christian Fathers
had no doubts. To them a war was wholesale murder. But after the triumph of the
Cross, after the Empire had become Christendom, ought not its citizens to be
ready to take up arms for its welfare?

The eastern Church thought not. Its great
canonist, Saint Basil, while he realized that the soldier must obey orders, yet
maintained that anyone guilty of killing in war should refrain for three years
from taking communion as a sign of repentance. This counsel was too strict. The
Byzantine soldier was not in fact treated as a murderer. But his profession
brought him no glamour. Death in battle was not considered glorious, nor was
death in battle against the infidel considered martyrdom; the martyr died armed
only with his faith. To fight against the infidel was deplorable though it
might at times be unavoidable; to fight against fellow-Christians was doubly
bad. Indeed, Byzantine history was remarkably free of wars of aggression.
Justinian’s campaigns had been undertaken to liberate Romans from heretic
barbarian governors Basil II’s against the Bulgars to recover imperial
provinces and to remove a danger that menaced Constantinople. Peaceful methods
were always preferable, even if they involved tortuous diplomacy or the payment
of money. To western historians, accustomed to admire martial valour, the
actions of many Byzantine statesmen appear cowardly or sly; but the motive was
usually a genuine desire to avoid bloodshed. The princess Anna Comnena, one of
the most typical of Byzantines, makes it clear in her history that, deep as was
her interest in military questions and much as she appreciated her father’s
successes in battle, she considered war a shameful thing, a last resort when
all else had failed, indeed in itself a confession of failure.

The western point of view was less enlightened.
Saint Augustine himself had admitted that wars might be waged by the command of
God; and the military society that had emerged in the West out of the barbarian
invasions inevitably sought to justify its habitual pastime. The code of
chivalry that was developing, supported by popular epics, gave prestige to the
military hero; and the pacifist acquired a disrepute from which he has never
recovered. Against this sentiment the Church could do little. It sought,
rather, to direct bellicose energy into paths that would lead to its own
advantage. The holy war, that is to say, war in the interests of the Church,
became permissible, even desirable. Pope Leo IV, in the mid-ninth century,
declared that anyone dying in battle for the defence of the Church would
receive a heavenly reward. Pope John VIII, a few years later, ranked the
victims of a holy war as martyrs; if they died armed in battle their sins would
be remitted. But the soldier should be pure at heart. Nicholas I laid down that
men under the sentence of the Church for their sins should not bear arms,
except to fight against the infidel.

Movements for
Peace

But, though the highest ecclesiastical
authorities thus did not condemn fighting, there were thinkers in the West whom
it shocked. The German Bruno of Querfurt, martyred by the heathen Prussians in
1009, had been outraged by the wars waged by the emperors of his time against
fellow-Christians, Otto II against the French king, and Henry II against the
Poles. A movement for peace had already been inaugurated in France. The Council
of Charroux, in 989, where the bishops of Aquitaine met to protect the immunity
of the clergy, suggested that the Church should guarantee that the poor might
live in peace. At the Council of Le Puy next year the suggestion was repeated
more firmly. Guy of Anjou, Bishop of Le Puy, declared that without peace no one
would behold the Lord, and therefore urged all men to become the sons of peace.
A few years later, William the Great, Duke of Guienne, carried the idea
further. At the Council of Poitiers, which he summoned in 1000, it was laid
down that disputes should no longer be decided by arms but by recourse to
justice, and that all who refused to conform to this rule should be
excommunicated. The Duke and his nobility solemnly subscribed to it; and Robert
the Pious, king of France, followed suit with a similar rule for his dominions.
The Church was still mainly concerned with the movement in order to preserve
its own property from the ravages and exactions of war; and a series of
councils were held to this end. At Verdun-sur-le-Doubs, in 1016, a formula was
evolved with which the nobility swore neither to impress clerics nor peasants
into their forces, nor to raid their crops, nor confiscate their beasts. The
oath was taken freely throughout France, while the assembled priests and
congregation shouted: ‘Peace, peace, peace.’

This success incited some enthusiastic bishops
to go further. In 1038 Aymon, Archbishop of Bourges, ordered every Christian of
more than fifteen years of age to declare himself an enemy of all that broke
the peace and ready if need be to take up arms against them. Leagues of Peace
were organized and were at first effective; but the second half of the
Archbishop’s command proved more attractive than the first. Castles belonging
to recalcitrant nobles were destroyed by troops of armed peasants led by the
clergy; and this improvised militia soon became so irresponsible and so
destructive that the authorities were obliged to suppress it. After a great
League of Peace had burnt down the village of Benecy, Count Odo of Deols routed
it on the banks of the Cher. We are told that no fewer than seven hundred
clerics perished in the battle.

Truce on Holy
Days

Meanwhile a more practical attempt to limit
warfare was being made. In 1027 Oliba, Bishop of Vich, held a synod at
Toulouges in Roussillon, which prohibited all warfare during the hours of the
Sabbath. This idea of a truce to cover holy days was enlarged when, under the
influence of the great abbot of Cluny, Odilo, the bishops of Provence, claiming
to speak in the name of the whole Church of Gaul, sent a letter in 1041 to the
Church of Italy, demanding that the Truce of God should be extended to include
Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Ascension Day. The Church of Aquitaine had
already followed the Provencal lead. But the duchy of Burgundy went further,
reserving for the Truce the whole week between Wednesday evening and Monday
morning, and adding the period from Advent to the first Sunday after Epiphany,
and Lent and Holy Week to the octave of Easter. In 1042 William the Conqueror,
legislating for Normandy, included as well the period from the Rogation days to
the octave of Pentecost. In 1050 a council at Toulouges recommended the further
inclusion of the three feast-days of the Virgin and the major saints’ days. By
the middle of the century the idea of the Truce of God seemed thus to be well
established; and the great Council of Narbonne, held in 1054, sought to
co-ordinate it with the idea of the Peace of God, protecting the goods of the
Church and of the poor from the effects of war. Both were to be obeyed under
the penalty of excommunication; and it was further laid down that no Christian
should slay another Christian, ‘for he that slays a Christian sheds the blood
of Christ’.

Movements for peace are seldom as impressive in
fact as in theory; and those of the eleventh century were no exception to the
rule. The princes that had most strongly advocated the Truce of God did not
abide by its provisions. It was on a Saturday that William the Conqueror fought
his fellow-Christian Harold at Hastings; and Anna Comnena was to note with
horror that while her Church tried honestly to avoid warfare on holy days the
western knights attacked Constantinople in Holy Week; while their armies were
full of armed and fighting priests. Nor, as the Popes themselves knew from
experience, was Church property ever immune from attacks by the laity. The
bellicosity of the West and its taste for military glory could not be so easily
quenched. It was wiser to revert to the older policy and to make use of this
energy by diverting it into warfare against the heathen.

To the countries of the West the Moslem menace
was far more frightening than it had been to Byzantines till the Turkish
invasions; and the Turks alarmed the Byzantines as barbarians rather than as
infidels. Since the Arab failure before Constantinople early in the eighth
century, war on the eastern frontier of Christendom had been endemic but never
serious enough to threaten the integrity of the Empire; and it never for long
interrupted commercial and intellectual exchanges. The Arab, almost as much as
the Byzantine, was an heir of Graeco-Roman civilization. His way of life was
not very different. A Byzantine felt far more at home at Cairo or Baghdad than
he would feel at Paris or Goslar, or even at Rome. Except in rare times of crisis
and reprisals the authorities in the Empire and the Caliphate agreed not to
force conversions on either side and to allow the free worship of the other
religion. Boastful Caliphs might speak slightingly of the Christian Emperors
and might at times exact tribute from them; but, as the late tenth century had
shown, the Byzantine was a formidable and well-organized foe.

The western Christian could not share the
Byzantine’s tolerance and sense of security. He was proud to be a Christian,
and, as he thought, the heir of Rome; yet he was uneasily aware that in most
respects Moslem civilization was higher than his own. Moslem power dominated
the western Mediterranean from Catalonia to Tunis. Moslem pirates preyed upon
his shipping. Rome had been sacked by the Moslems. They had built robber
castles in Italy and in Provence. From their strongholds in Spain it seemed
that they might again emerge to cross the frontiers and pour over the Pyrenees
into France. Western Christendom had no organization that could have met such
an attack. Individual heroes, from the days of Charles Martel onwards, had
defeated Saracen raids; and the Carolingian empire for a time provided the
necessary bulwark. In 915 Pope John X had co-operated with the court of
Constantinople in forming a league of Christian princes to drive the Moslems
from their castle on the Garigliano. In 941 the Byzantines joined Hugh of
Provence in an attack on their castle at Frejus. This was unsuccessful, owing
to Hugh’s last-minute tergiversation; but in 972 a league of Provencal and
Italian princes completed the work. But such leagues were local, sporadic and
ephemeral. There was need of greater co-ordination and a more concentrated
effort. And nowhere was the need better realized than in Rome, ever mindful of
the sack of St Peter's church in 846.

In the tenth century the Moslems of Spain
represented a very real threat to Christendom. The ground previously gained by
the Christians was lost. In the middle of the century the great Caliph, Abd
ar-Rahman III, was unquestioned master of the peninsula. His death in 961
brought some relief, as his successor, Hakam II, was pacific and was troubled
by wars with the Fatimids and with the Idrisids of Morocco. But after Hakam's
death in 976 the scene was dominated by a warlike vizier, Mahomet ibn Abi Amir,
surnamed al-Mansur, the Victorious, and known to the Spaniards as Almanzor. The
leading Christian power in Spain was the kingdom of Leon. It bore the brunt of
Almanzor's attacks. In 981 he took Zamora, in the south of the kingdom. In 996
he sacked Leon itself and next year burnt the city of St James at Compostella,
which ranked third as a place of pilgrimage after Jerusalem and Rome. He was
careful, however, to respect the shrine itself. Already in 986 he had captured
Barcelona. It seemed that he would soon be crossing the Pyrenees, when in 1002 he
died. After his death the Moslem power began to decline. Pirates from Africa
were able to sack Antibes in 1003, Pisa in 1005 and again in 1016, and Narbonne
in 1020. But organized Moslem aggression had ended for the moment. It was time
for a counter-attack.

The counter-attack was planned by Sancho III,
called the Great, king of Navarre. In 1014 he attempted to organize a league of
Christian princes to fight the infidel. His colleagues in Leon and Castile were
willing to help; and he found an eager ally in Sancho-William, Duke of Gascony.
But King Robert of France gave no answer to his appeal. Nothing concrete was
achieved; but meanwhile Sancho had secured the interest of a far more valuable
ally. The tremendous organization of Cluny, under two great abbots whose rule
extended for 115 years, Odilo, who succeeded in 994 and died in 1048, and Hugh,
who followed him and lived till 1109, began to pay special attention to Spanish
affairs. Cluny was always concerned with the welfare of pilgrims and was glad
to have some say in managing the pilgrim route to Compostella, and to help in
the whole safeguarding of Spanish Christendom. It was probably Cluniac
influence that brought Roger of Tosni from Normandy, though his own Norman
adventurousness may have helped, to the aid of the Countess Erselinde of
Barcelona in 1018, when the Moslems threatened her. Under Sancho and his successors
the Cluniac hold on the Spanish Church was strengthened, carrying it into the
fore of the reform movement. The Papacy could not therefore fail to view with
especial approval any attempt to enlarge the boundaries of Christendom in
Spain. Cluniac and Papal blessing accompanied Sancho-William of Gascony when he
joined with Sancho of Navarre in an attack on the Emir of Saragossa and
encouraged Raymond-Berengar I of Barcelona as he pushed the Moslems southward.