Epic Battles Of The First Crusade | Parable

War in the name of God. The great world religions preach peace and mercy. History, especially the history of the Middle Ages, proves that religion and violence are not contradictions. A belief in God often means believing in fighting on behalf of God, and in being rewarded in paradise. Islam means peace. Christ teaches us to love our enemy. But in their names, the world wages war. Christianity, around the year 1100, is marked by a deep sense of piety, by the desire of both laity and clergy to lead a holy life. And by the holy war against the heathen, the Crusades. Two hundred years, seven Crusades, of murder and conquest in the name of the Prince of Peace. The Church creates an unholy mixture of faith and military service, a problematic legacy that pursues our civilization to this day, the holy war. It begins in the Old Testament, with the Ark of the Covenant. The chest for the tablets with the Ten Commandments has magic powers. It makes the people of Israel invincible in war, a treasure that the Crusaders are hunting for too. During the Crusades, military religious orders are founded. The Knights Templar, the Knights of St. John, and the Teutonic Order. The combination of monk and soldier is one of the most bizarre inventions of the Middle Ages. Religious orders at war against the heathen. But what did this mixture of religion and violence, inexplicable to us today, mean to people in the Middle Ages? Talking about the Crusades, the tendency is to see the violence in the name of Christianity as a particularly serious crime. However, one should remember that the Middle Ages, and particularly the High Middle Ages, were an age of violence. So if you see the Crusades in this context, then they were perhaps just an extreme expression of what was a mundane and daily feature of medieval life. And yet, even in the Middle Ages, there are some of the faithful who are appalled by the association of war with the abused Son of God who preached love and peace. The East Roman Christians in Byzantium, whose monks strive for the ideal of seclusion from the world, find the Holy Knights more than suspect. But Byzantium is indirectly responsible for the Crusades. The cause is cries for help from Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. The Islamic empires have become a deadly threat to Byzantium. Muslim warriors are attacking the pilgrims. The news reaching the Christians gets worse and worse. The Byzantine patriarch, Alexios I, asks Pope Orban for help. Orban sees the possibility of using a campaign to remove the schism, to reunite the Eastern Church and the Western Church. Muslims are desecrating the holy places, it is said. Pilgrims are being murdered. Rumors spread like wildfire. In the year 1095 at the Council of Clermont, Pope Orban II makes a speech that will go down in history. We know that in this appeal, many of the things that people felt moved by were probably addressed. The rewards of heaven are promised. There is the encouragement to act with knightly virtue. The call to liberate the holy places in Jerusalem again and to make them accessible to pilgrims. All this is combined in these four reports. And recently there has been speculation as to how the Pope invested his words with a full range of symbolic capital. He sighed. He wept. He obviously gave a rhetorically brilliant performance, which is why the reports say that the whole mass of people cried out, Deus lovult, God wills it. In 1096, under the command of the monk Peter the Hermit, 30,000 enthusiastic believers set out on the Porpoise Crusade. 30,000 in need of food and drink. Their journey is marked by pillage and plunder. Only 3,000 return after their expedition is annihilated by the Islamic Seljuks. The same year sees the beginning of the First Crusade. Many kings take part. The Christians are under pressure to extend their empires. Many structural changes in the High Middle Ages were responsible for the Crusades. But at the same time, they were also involved in a major process of expansion on the part of Latin Christianity. This expansion had progressed further since the early time of the conversion of the Teutons, particularly in the north. In 1066, I'm thinking of England and Denmark. It had come to a standstill. Poland, Hungary and Bohemia had been integrated into Latin Christianity around the year 1000, and then during the 11th century. In the south and southwest, the Muslims in South Italy and the Iberian Peninsula were pushed back so that Latin Christianity expanded there too. The First Crusade is a European enterprise. From France, Normandy, Flanders and Lorraine, a stream of knights make their way to Palestine to free the Holy Lands. It will take three years and many battles until they stand before Jerusalem. They lay siege to the Holy City for five weeks. Then the attack begins. Victory is followed by a massacre of 65,000 Jews and Muslims, women and children that one can only describe as a frenzy of bloodlust. A terrible victory. The Holy Land belongs to the Christians for the time being. Europe around the year 1100 is undergoing profound changes. It is not just contact with foreign cultures. The population, just like the economy, is growing at a great pace. Trade becomes more important. Overpopulation becomes a problem. Who rules over all these people? Monarchs and the Church are locked in power struggles. Everywhere there is change and expansion. The Crusades are part of this. The Crusades are not a clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam. Christianity is divided, Rome and Byzantium. In the early Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire, the first Christian empire, was 20 times wealthier than Rome, but weakened by constant wars, exhausted by a vast administrative apparatus, its power is now slowly draining away. Byzantium, with its capital Constantinople, has called on the Crusaders for assistance, but it mistrusts them, justifiably, as will soon be seen. Hitherto, the Byzantine Church has dominated Christian theology, but that too will change. The Crusaders hire ships to take them to the Holy Land, an excellent business that makes many Italian cities rich. The Crusaders are becoming the economic factor of the Mediterranean region. Taking part in the Crusade represented the value of six years' labor. There has to be a powerful motive to endure the hardships and the risk of death. The Church has promised the Crusaders, he who falls in battle against the heathen will be a martyr. In the Middle Ages, the fear of hell is great, the hope of reaching the Kingdom of Heaven, small. Almost everyone believes they are threatened by eternal damnation. The question is why the opportunity to become a martyr was so important to people in the Middle Ages. Not everyone wanted it perhaps, but the chance of becoming one was extremely important. You only have to think of chapter 20 of the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelations, where it is prophesied that martyrs will immediately enjoy eternal life at the heavenly altar, while others will have to wait their allotted time before they even have a chance of tasting the joys of Heaven. The greatest propagandist of the Crusades is Bernard de Clairvaux. On the one hand, a devout mystic, on the other hand, he even promises thieves and murderers eternal life if they join the Crusade and kill heathens. His greatest hour comes in the year 1144. The Emir of Mosul conquers Edessa, a Christian principality since the First Crusade. In sermons of fire and brimstone, Bernard calls for the Second Crusade with resounding success. But it ends in military disaster. Then, in 1187, catastrophe. The Battle of Hattin. A whole Crusader army is annihilated. The legendary Saladin defeats the Christians. Jerusalem falls. Doubting voices are heard. But is Bernard a false prophet? Why does God want this humiliating defeat? But enthusiasm for the Crusades does not weaken. Many later actions only add up to an inglorious chapter in the history of the West. Now, the so-called Fourth Crusade is particularly interesting because it heads not for the Holy Land but for Constantinople, into the Byzantine Empire from 1202 to 1204. Venice had provided a fleet in Byzantium to transport the Crusaders and intended to secure financial support there for the Crusade. Once in Byzantium, however, the whole enterprise gets bogged down. Next, Constantinople is stormed and taken. A bloody massacre ensues. And the result is a Latin Empire that lasts for about 60 years. The Crusaders remain for about a century in their territories along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. War in the name of God. And the defeats? Punishment, say the preachers, for the many sins of the Crusaders. Sins such as gambling, theft, and lust. And remarkably, there must also be penitence for the killing, although it is a holy war. Jerusalem has been lost, but the Crusaders still have their castles and territories. For the nobility, was the prospect of new kingdoms not the most tempting feature of the Crusades? The many power struggles among the Muslims help the Crusaders to secure the borders of their principalities. Numerous castles serve this purpose. The orders of knights, however, are reluctant to acknowledge a superior command. They wish to act independently, as if these new rulers didn't exist. Indeed, there isn't a great deal of unity anyway among the Christian empires. The Normans of Antioch are in conflict with the Byzantines, and some of the Crusader states also fight against each other, sooner or later. A confused situation, especially within the principalities. At this time, the Crusaders had new problems to deal with in their territories. They had created a new society, of course, consisting of Muslims, Jews, a new Christian from the Latin world, but also including, for example, members of other Christian faiths of the East, such as Nestorians, one of Hizzites and others. You had, if you like, to gather together all these different religions and cultures under one roof. I suppose you could even call it the foundation of something like a multicultural society. An optimistic description, but not necessarily wrong. As an occupying power, the Crusaders, like the Muslims, were quite bearable. Business as usual is perhaps an accurate description of the mood in the Crusader states. The Arabs have to pay taxes, but they are not persecuted for their faith. In many areas, especially technology, medicine and crafts, the Muslims are far more advanced than the Crusaders. The Christians learn more from the Muslims than vice versa. And cultural superiority also informs the way the Muslims see the Crusaders. Basically, the Muslims had a feeling of religious superiority. They were of the opinion that the Christian knights had a religion that was simply inferior to Islam. So we find Usama ibn Munkiz beginning his chapter on Frankish customs by comparing the Franks to animals, in that they possess animal virtues, such as bravery. He respected their bravery, but held them to be culturally inferior because they did not possess the same medical skills or techniques. And finally, very important, they had no sense of honour or shame. Above all, and this was something that really struck the Muslims, the Christian knights were very liberal with their wives. So it was noticed that a Christian knight was standing on the street with his wife, and along came another Frank and spoke to the wife without the husband intervening. The Crusaders' states are dependent on supplies transported by ship. The brisk trade over the Mediterranean is managed principally by the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice. The Crusades make them fabulously wealthy. The Crusades are the basis for their later ascendancy. The Middle Ages is a period of conflict between church and secular power, a time of violence and strife. The Crusades transfer the disputes of the European empires to a new venue, the Holy Land. Unity among the Christians is weak, their quarrels with each other powerful. After the Second Crusade, Jerusalem, the goal of all the Crusades, will only twice be made accessible to pilgrims, thanks to treaties which Richard the Lionheart and Frederick II negotiate with the Muslims. The coats of arms of the two princes are amazingly similar, although they are not related. Richard's life is an example of the constant quarrelling among the Christians. Richard the Lionheart, the legendary English king, lives in France. He has only spent six months of his life in England. His mother Eleanor, later Queen of France and England, takes part in a crusade. His father and siblings become enemies. All his life Richard is entangled in court intrigues, both actively and passively. His probably most important opponent, Philip II of France, is also his ally in the Third Crusade, until he quarrels with Richard and returns home to wage war on England. But first they advance together into the Holy Land and fight for their common cause. They conquer Jaffa and Cyprus, the most important base of retreat for all later Crusaders. Richard never reaches Jerusalem. He is weakened by domestic intrigue. But he negotiates with Saladin, the legendary commander and victor of Hattin. The result is a treaty which gives him Tyre and Jaffa, and pilgrims access to Jerusalem. On his return journey, Richard falls victim to a plot. He is made prisoner and taken to Germany to Henry VI, but Henry allies himself to Richard and frees him in exchange for a ransom. Change of scene. Frederick II, known as the Wonder of the World, is raised at the court of the Norman King Roger on Sicily. Sicily was once occupied by Muslims. The young Frederick comes into contact with a superior Islamic culture, a formative experience. The Castel del Monte, a symbol of Frederick's thirst for knowledge. From here he corresponds with Islamic scholars. For many of his contemporaries, Frederick's admiration goes too far. His castel is octagonal, like the imperial crown, or like the Muslim dome of a rock. From the Arabs he learns falconry and writes a scholarly treatise about the birds, which is unrivaled for centuries. Under his rule, Muslims live in peace on Sicily. They have their own part of town. Even his bodyguards are Islamic. Very clever. Their lives depend on him. Frederick has taken a vow to lead a crusade, but he doesn't go. The Pope excommunicates him. In 1228, the crusade takes place, despite the excommunication. There are battles. But above all, there are negotiations and a treaty with the Sultan al-Malik. Frederick II's treaty is more remarkable than Richard the Lionheart's. Firstly, because it's valid for the next ten years, and especially, of course, because the treaty is agreed without any accompanying military action. So Frederick II was hardly a military commander in the Holy Land, but rather, and primarily, a negotiator. After his death, it is even rumoured that Frederick was, in secret, a Muslim. That is nonsense. But he admires Arab culture and orders himself buried in an oriental robe. It is indisputable that the Arabs of that time were more advanced in all matters of science than their European contemporaries. But how do the Muslim peoples react to the crusaders who invade their land? The foreign knights arrive mainly by sea. The Christian soldiers have a reputation for bravery. They are specialists in siege technology. But militarily, this is nothing new for the Arabs, who favour sudden attacks, raids. Like pirates, a constant plague at the time, the crusaders are just one more enemy among many. And, like pirates, they only appear along the coast. The difference is that after attacking, the crusaders do not disappear again, but remain as invaders. Even so, they are not perceived as a threat to Islam. The standards of hygiene and medical care among the crusaders both amazes and horrifies the Muslims. Whether crusader or Arab, short-term power strategies provide fertile ground for intrigue and shifting alliances which often transcend religious boundaries, not so much a clash of civilizations as a skirmish of warlords. For the Arabs, the foreign soldiers come from a mysterious, dark and cold land where terrible monsters dwell. The more distant the crusaders' homeland, the more terrible the monsters. Muslims call all knights Franks, no matter where they actually come from. And yet there is an astonishing cultural bridge, the ideal of knighthood, courage and honour. Even the European tradition of Troubadour's singing of courtly love is probably a borrowing from Arab culture. The chivalric ideal is certainly something which linked the two cultures. In Europe as well, at this time, there was the notion of an ideal of knighthood which was inter-religious, above religion. Consider, for instance, the epic poems of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parsifal and Wilhelm, which basically developed the ideal of knighthood as a link between religious faiths. A brotherhood which goes beyond religion, so that a knight could have a Muslim brother, a heathen brother, all sharing the same ideal of courage. That's the idea of the knights on their quest for the Holy Grail. The community of noble knights and their quest for truth as a bridge between mortal enemies, religious warriors? In Europe, Saladin is still admired for his chivalry. And the history of Muslims and Christians still hides many common features waiting to be discovered.