The Templars (7 page)
Authors: Michael Haag
With Byzantium suddenly reduced to hardly more than its capital, Constantinople, and the adjacent regions, in 1074 the Byzantine emperor Michael VII appealed to Pope Gregory VII for help, his desperation all the more evident in his willingness to overlook the Great Schism of 1054, which was the culmination of centuries of often violent doctrinal differences between the Latin and Orthodox Churches. Despite the schism, the appeal fell on ready ears, for already in 1063 the Papacy had given its blessing to a crusade against the Muslims in Spain and it might
have done the same now. But this was not the moment when Gregory could call upon the secular powers of Europe to head eastwards on a crusade, as he was embroiled in the Investiture Controversy with many of those same secular authorities over whether it was they or the Church who had the right to appoint high church officials and thereby control the great wealth and powers such officials could command.
Meanwhile the Seljuks tightened their grip on Syria and Palestine. In 1076 they took Damascus from the Fatimids, and when the Fatimids briefly regained Jerusalem that year, the Seljuks recaptured the city after a siege of several months and massacred the entire Muslim population, about three thousand, as well as a large number of Jews who had supported the Fatimids, though the Christians were spared.
Throughout these convulsive events the pilgrim traffic had never entirely ceased, but the journey was now far more difficult than it had been before. Not only was there fighting between Turks and Egyptians in Palestine and Syria, but Asia Minor, which had offered secure passage when it was in the hands of the Byzantine Empire, could no longer be traversed without an armed escort owing to marauding Turkish tribesmen, and even then it was not safe. Everywhere throughout Anatolia and the Middle East there were brigands on the roads, and at every small town along the way the local petty headman tried to extort money from passers-by. The pilgrims who succeeded in overcoming all these harassments and dangers returned impoverished and weary to the West with tales to tell of the appalling conditions in the East.
The Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus began the fightback against the Seljuks, reclaiming territory along the Black Sea and round the shores of the Sea of Marmara during the 1080s. But in order to press harder against the Turks he sought mercenaries from the West, and in March 1095 he sent an appeal to Pope Urban II. In response Alexius got something wholly unexpected and astonishing. Alexius’ daughter, the historian Anna Comnena, described how a multitude from the West approached Constantinople in 1096 on their way to the East: ‘They assembled from all parts, one after another, with arms and horses and all the other equipment for war. Full of enthusiasm and ardour they thronged every highway, and with these warriors came a
host of civilians, outnumbering the sand of the seashore or the stars of heaven, carrying palms and bearing crosses on their shoulders. There were women and children, too, who had left their own countries. Like tributaries joining a river from all directions they streamed towards us in full force.’
The Council of Clermont in central France was convened by Pope Urban II during the second half of November 1095. It was largely concerned with the Truce of God, the device by which the Church had for half a century been trying to limit feudal warfare, which was having a devastating effect upon the land. Population growth, shortage of land and petty civil wars had contributed to a feeling of insecurity and desperation at all levels of society. There had been floods and plague in 1094, followed by drought and famine in 1095. A shower of meteorites in April 1095 presaged a great movement of peoples, it was said, and lent an apocalyptic note to the social and economic problems.
Meanwhile Pope Urban had been formulating a policy in response to the appeal from the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Urban’s aim was to provide the Byzantine Empire with the reinforcements it needed in order to drive the Seljuk Turks from Asia Minor, for he hoped that in return the Orthodox Church would acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and that the unity of Christendom would be restored. He was also concerned to give the aggressive nobility, especially that of his native France, an alternative outlet for their martial energies. The Papacy had gained strength through the Investiture Controversy, and not only had it established its authority over Church appointments, but in marshalling public opinion it had also intensified popular piety, so it seemed a propitious moment to inaugurate a new era of religious energy in the West and also to win the prize of Jerusalem. Urban let it be known that in response to the appeal from Eastern Christendom for help, he would make a speech on the penultimate day of the council, Tuesday 27 November. He expected that in addition to churchmen his audience would comprise members of the French nobility, for he envisioned the expedition to the East as an armed pilgrimage of knights.
Three hundred clerics had been attending the council within the cathedral at Clermont, but the crowds, both clerical and lay, that assembled on that Tuesday were huge, and so the Papal throne was set up on a platform in an open field outside the eastern gate of the city, and there, when the multitudes were gathered, Urban rose to address them. The reports of four contemporary chroniclers survive, but all were written years later, were coloured by subsequent events, and differ greatly from one another, so that we can have only a very approximate idea of what Urban actually said.
He began, it seems, by telling his listeners that the Seljuks were advancing into the heart of Christian lands, maltreating the population and desecrating their shrines and churches. The Emperor of Byzantium had called for help, and it was the duty of the West to respond. But he spoke not only about recovering Byzantine territory. He emphasised the special holiness of Jerusalem and told how pilgrims had suffered on their journeys there. Then he made his great appeal. Let the West go to the rescue of the East. The nobility should stop fighting one another and
instead fight a righteous war. For those who died in battle there would be remission of sins. Let this armed pilgrimage (the word ‘crusade’ did not come into use until the thirteenth century when the Crusades were over) set out in the summer, at the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August, after the harvest had been gathered; and the armies should assemble at Constantinople.
Cries of
Deus le volt!
–God wills it!–interrupted Pope Urban’s speech and filled the air again when it was over. Adhemar, the bishop of Le Puy, immediately knelt before the throne and begged permission to join the holy expedition. This apparently spontaneous gesture was probably prearranged, as Urban had stayed at Le Puy in August. Yet the enthusiasm was greater than Urban had expected. Knights and peasants, rich and poor, pressed forward to follow the bishop’s example. Many burst into tears and many were seized with convulsive trembling. Everyone who listened was swept with emotions of overwhelming power.
Spinning the Pope’s Speech
Four contemporary chroniclers–Fulcher of Chartres, Baldric of Dol, Robert the Monk and Guibert de Nogent–wrote accounts of the First Crusade which contained versions of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont. None set down their accounts of what the Pope said until years after the event, nor did any pretend to standards of accurate and objective history; rather each used the Pope’s speech to put forward a point of view reflecting the different ways people looked at the crusade.
The earliest account was by Fulcher of Chartres. He was the only chronicler to actually take part in the crusade and wrote about it immediately afterwards, in 1100–01. His account gives the impression that he was at Clermont. Fulcher presents the Pope as a pragmatic strategist who speaks of the Arabs and the Turks as a threat not only to the East but ultimately to the West: ‘If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impunity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them.’
Baldric of Dol wrote his account soon after the First Crusade, but he was not a participant, though he does give the impression that he was at Clermont. In this version, references to the Old and New Testaments underline the Pope’s call for a holy war of liberation, with Jerusalem itself as the very image of heaven: ‘Let us bewail the most monstrous devastation of the Holy Land! This land we have deservedly called holy in which there is not even a footstep that the body or spirit of the Saviour did not render glorious and blessed which embraced the holy presence of the mother of God, and the meetings of the apostles, and drank up the blood of the martyrs shed there. How blessed are the stones which crowned you Stephen, the first martyr! How happy, O John the Baptist, the waters of the Jordan which served you in baptising the Saviour! The children of Israel, who were led out of Egypt; they have driven out the Jebusites and other inhabitants and have themselves inhabited earthly Jerusalem, the image of celestial Jerusalem. You should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens.’
Robert the Monk was not on the First Crusade, and though he is the one chronicler to explicitly claim that he was at Clermont, that is questionable. Certainly he was slow to produce his account, completing it only in 1106, eleven years after Pope Urban’s speech, which Robert presents in the most lurid terms. Although Urban certainly spoke of the persecution of Christians in the East, the inflammatory atrocities of which Robert accuses the Muslims are not recorded in other versions of the speech:
‘They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.’
Guibert de Nogent, who was neither at Clermont nor went on the crusade, finished his account in 1108. His tone is apocalyptic, and he has Pope Urban playing to the popular medieval drama of the Antichrist and the Last Days. ‘With the end of the world already near, it is first
necessary, according to the prophecy, that the Christian sway be renewed in those regions either through you, or others, whom it shall please God to send before the coming of Antichrist, so that the head of all evil, who is to occupy there the throne of the kingdom, shall find some support of the faith to fight against him.’
Strategic war, holy war, hysterical war, or the war of the Last Days according to one or another of the chroniclers. But it is most unlikely that Pope Urban would have seen the issue in apocalyptic terms, nor is it likely that he would have stooped to lurid rabble rousing. He never intended to whip up a mass movement of peasants and exhort them to march eastwards. His chosen instrument was the knighthood, and it was to them that he offered his rewards, remission of sins for death in battle and the unstated prospect of carving out estates for themselves in the reconquered Holy Land, just as had been happening in Spain.
Perhaps the best indication of what Urban said that late November day in a field outside Clermont comes in the form of a sober letter of instruction written a month later, at Christmas 1095, by the Pope himself to the gathering knights. ‘Your brotherhood, we believe, has long since learned from many accounts that a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the East. More than this, blasphemous to say, it has even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by his passion and resurrection. Grieving with pious concern at this calamity, we visited the regions of France and devoted ourselves largely to urging the princes of the land and their subjects to free the churches of the East. We solemnly enjoined upon them at the council of Clermont such an undertaking, as a preparation for the remission of all their sins.’
Pope Urban named Adhemar, the bishop of Le Puy, as his representative on the expedition and its spiritual leader. He had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem nine years before. Following Adhemar’s example, everyone joining the expedition had a cross of red material sewn onto the corner of his coat, symbolising that like Jesus they too carried a cross. Clerics and monks were not to take the cross without the permission of their
bishop or abbot. The elderly and infirm were discouraged, the newly married should have the permission of their wives, and no one should go without consulting his spiritual advisor. Otherwise anyone taking the cross was vowing to complete the journey to Jerusalem, and if he failed to set out or turned back too soon he would be punished with excommunication.
The first great secular lord to join the expedition was Count Raymond of Toulouse, who led the knights of Provence, and soon others joined. Robert, the duke of Normandy, who was the son of William the Conqueror, led the knights of northern France; Bohemond, prince of Taranto, led the Norman knights of southern Italy, among them his nephew Tancred; and Godfrey of Bouillon led the knights of Lorraine. Subject in theory to Adhemar, who represented the Pope, these barons became the secular leaders of the campaign, and together with their followers, family and friends, they brought to the expedition many of the most enterprising, experienced and formidable fighting men of Europe.
But Urban had launched a movement greater than he knew, and in the belief that the apocalypse was at hand thousands of peasants, artisans and other ordinary people, often very poor, took the cross for the eastward march to liberate the Holy Land. Yet of all those who set out–the rich, the poor, the humble and the noble–only one in twenty would live to see Jerusalem.
