The First Crusade of 1096 to1099 saw European Christians
waging a war against the Islamic population of the Middle-East. Pope Urban II’s
call to arms in 1095 proved to be effective in serving as the precursor to this
crusade, as it created an opportunity to reclaim Jerusalem from Moslem rule. It
was due to this that the First Crusade can be seen as a way to reflect the
moral, political, and ecclesiastical ambitions of Pope Urban II. This
extremely violent religious war was fought also in regards to the threats
placed on Christianity by the pagans and Islamic populations in the eighth and ninth
centuries.
Motivations for people entering into the First Crusade were
spurred on by Urban announcing that any Christian who goes to fight to reclaim the
‘Holy Land’ would be given certainty of entering into heaven. Other motivations
for entering into the crusade included how the act
of campaigning was a seen as a satisfactory penitential act that saw the remission of sins. Crusades also took part as a means of serving penance through going on a pilgrimage.
of campaigning was a seen as a satisfactory penitential act that saw the remission of sins. Crusades also took part as a means of serving penance through going on a pilgrimage.
Although Christians suffered many hardships during the
crusades, the end resulted in them capturing much of the territory; including
the ‘Holy Land.’
ALYCE
The Second Crusade
•
In
addition to Muslims in the East, also encompassed the Wendish Crusade against
pagans in Europe and Reconquista in Southern Spain against the Moors.
•
In
the East, German King Conrad III refuses to wait for French forces, and his
army is almost completely destroyed by the Turks at Dorylaeum.
•
Due
to lack a of ships, French King Louis VII forced to send the majority of his
army to Antioch on foot.
•
Land
forces massacred by Turks at Laodicea.
•
Due
to the substantial losses, the Crusade leaders opted to abandon the original
goal of recapturing Edessa.
•
Decision
made to attack Damascus because, despite being an ally of Jerusalem, Turkish
leader Nur ed-Din had married the daughter of its governor.
•
Siege
of Damascus ends in disaster after just four days when the Crusading army gives
up its strategic position.
MICHAEL
Third Crusade:
·
1189: May: Departure of Emperor Frederick for
holy land
August: Siege of Acre begins
October 1189: Richard is crowned
king
·
1190: June: Death of Emperor Frederick on
crusade
·
1191: June 1: Richard of England takes Cyprus
June: Phillip begins fresh siege
of Acre
June 8: Richard arrives at Acre
July 12: Acre Surrenders
August 20: Richard I orders the
execution of 2,700 Muslim prisoners
·
1192: September: Richard I captures Jaffa
September 2: Treaty of Jaffa
formally sworn between Richard I and Saladin
CASSY
The Fourth Crusade was by and large the biggest failure of
all the previous crusades. The crusaders travelled through Venice to get to
Egypt; but lacked the funds to get there. On November 24th 2012 after five days
of fighting, Crusaders captured the port of Zara, an opposing Merchant and
Christian city. The Venetians had once controlled Zara but lost it. They
offered passage to Egypt to the Crusaders in exchange for Zara. The Zara
conflict didn’t provide the Crusaders with the necessary funds, Venice again
used this as an excuse to exact vengeance against Constantinople for past
injustices. The crusading army also had an excuse to attack Constantinople;
they had greatly mistrusted Byzantines ‘fake’ Christianity over the past
century of Crusading.
Niketas Choniates had an interesting quote of the sack of
Constantinople, ‘With one consent all the most heinous sins and crimes were
committed by all with equal zeal…could those, who showed so great madness
against God himself, have spared the honourable matrons and maidens or the
virgins consecrated to God?’ The Unholy Crusade was named thus because of the
actions of the Crusaders against the Church, they had abandoned their
pilgrimage, pillaged the Byzantine Church, and killed thousands of Christians.
Interesting Notes:
The crusaders apparently regained Relics from Constantinople
including:
- · A trace of Blood of Jesus Christ
- · A piece of the Crucifix Cross
- · A not ‘inconsiderable’ piece of St. John [The Baptist] &
- · the arm of St. James, the apostle.
MATT
Blog Question: What was the overriding cause of people taking up the Cross? Did this reason change over the course of each crusade?
Blog Question: What was the overriding cause of people taking up the Cross? Did this reason change over the course of each crusade?
I think we accidently left the question out of the blog for this week, ooops! Here it is:
ReplyDeleteWhat was the overriding cause of people taking up the Cross? Did this reason change over the course of each crusade?
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ReplyDeleteThe term 'taking up the cross' is a generic term to mean bearing hardships in order to follow Christ. In those days, because of the various papal influences (such as Pope Urban II and Innocent III) as well as certain biased interpretations of scripture and the Church fathers, the most popular way to take up one's cross was to participate in the crusades. The underlying reason why the people readily took up their crosses this way was out of genuine love for God (as Riley-Smith argues, because there was no hard drawn ecclesiastic doctrine obligating people to):
ReplyDelete- loving others (such as fighting to help their fellow Christians being 'oppressed' by Muslims, particularly in the 1st crusades)
- Repaying debts of gratitude to God ("If God underwent death for man, ought man to question dying for God?" - Pope Innocent III)
- Obedience to God (Luke 14:27; Matthew 10:37; Matthew 19:29)
- To faithfully complete the 'test' that Christ has made (Pope Innocent III)
- To faithfully recover Christ's 'lost' heritages (land, wealth)
Basically, it was always ideoligised that violence could be justified out of love for God. Though their interpretation of the scriptures and Church fathers teachings may seem questionable to us nowadays, their values of 'taking up their cross' in bloody pursuits meant everything to them in a loving way (as Riley-Smith argues).
These main reasons fluctuated over the course of the many crusades.
The causes of people taking up the Cross involved the motivations of two sets of people: the reasons for the Latin Church to want to send over fighters to the Holy Land, and the reasons of the laity for going to the Holy Land according to the wishes of the clergy. Certainly, the reasons of the clergy for wanting to go to the Holy Land changed over time. Steven Runciman made clear that the Pope's call for the first crusade was motivated by a genuinely benevolent desire of the Pope to aid the Byzantine Empire and improve relations between the Eastern and Western churches. However, as the lecture today made clear, the clergy's reasons for calling subsequent Crusades were related more closely to the desire to recapture land in the Middle East, particularly around Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the reasons for lay participation in the Crusades were more constant over time. The full remission of sins, the chance to display piety while remaining in the secular world, hatred against the Muslims in the Holy land (encouraged by the Church) and a deep conviction that the Holy Land was rightly Christian territory were all reasons that seemed to remain relevant throughout all the Crusades. However, as we saw in the lecture today, lay participation did fade in importance over time, while lay criticism of the crusade movement increased.
***Note that I'm assuming that by 'taking up the Cross' you mean literally the sewing of a cross on one's clothing and journeying to the Holy Land as urged by contemporary Popes.
People 'took up the cross' in the sense that they were following the Christ and suffering in the name of Christ. People 'took up the cross' and went on the crusades for religious salvation and with the goal to reclaim Jerusalem (the holy city) from Moslem rule. However as time went on taking up the cross and crusading became an excuse for military action. The fourth crusade is a perfect example of crusaders seeking wealth rather than religious salvation. Instead of reaching the holy city, they travelled from venice to Zara and finally Constantinople in an attempt to pay their depts. It was as the reason's for crusading became less religiously based that they started to lose the support of the people. The crusades also became more political, as the people involved in the fourth crusade were forgiven for their sins in constantinople for bringing home the wealth and religious relics of the city.
ReplyDeleteTo 'take up the cross' during the crusading period indicated that one was to follow Christ, that is, the supposed will of God in the name of Christ. Although of course in this sense, the will of God seemed to be the will of the papacy, kings and prominent Church figures like Bernard de Clairvaux and more subtly, as Riley-Smith emphasises the words of St. Augustine. This 'tak(ing) up of the cross' represented the optimal sign of love, as is explored by Riley-Smith, to God, ones neighbour, in particular: ones enemies. By going on the Crusade, one was appeasing God acting as 'soldiers of Christ' and also 'delivering' their neighbours in the East of the sins they have committed and the evil they have become by not following Christ, in the same way that the Crusaders love of their Eastern Christian Brothers spurred them to protect their 'kin' from Muslim threats. As Toby has addressed, the crusades were considered an opportunity to practice violence under the guise of a Christian moral journey, or pilgrimage, whether it be to gain access to and control of the Holy Land, put a stop to the heretic Cathars as well as stop the 'spread' of Islamism in Europe. These ideals in 'taking the cross' did change somewhat throughout the course of the Crusade period, but more on the scale of whether or not it was the actual will of God, or whether it was merely an excuse for political, religious or monetary gain. These issues can be seen in the storming of Constantinople and loot of the relics and wealth, the political issues between Crusade leaders, notably and perhaps unsurprisingly the French and the English as well as defeat and death of many people. Similarly, the Christian concept of loving ones neighbour appears to have become lost along the way, particularly in the cases where Saladin respected their surrender and treated them amicably, returned only with rage from Rome and when the Emperor of Germany organised a treaty with the Muslim leaders that allowed Jerusalem to be mostly the property of the Latin Church, met again with anger from Rome and the papacy. This preference to violence in the face of peaceful co-existence did not reflect the Christian hostility towards violence and the Church continued to exploit the reasons why crusading was necessary and what it 'meant', it is in this sense that a certain parallel can be drawn with the chivalrous aspects of courtly love and Arthurian influence: the need to 'rescue' and achieve piety through deeds of love for God.
ReplyDeleteInitially, the main reason for people taking up the cross was to express their love for God and Christ. Matthew's Gospel states "let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me..." so that is essentially what the crusaders were doing. In a way, they were showing their utter devotion to the Christian cause. Furthermore, Pope Urban believed that crusading brought about "fraternal aid" to Christians, and this fraternal aid/love was shown through violence. I also think crusading was simply a way of removing Muslim/pagan threats to Christianity. Over the course of each crusade, the motivations certainly did change because i think the crusades became more politicised. It seems that it started to become less about the Christian cause, and more about gaining new/lost territory. In addition, the crusades spread further than just Jerusalem, to places such as Spain and other areas of Europe. It is my belief that the second, third and fourth crusades, most of which were undoubtedly met with disaster in some format, were simply drawn from the success of the first crusade, and the belief that they would be an easy way of gaining new/lost territory.
ReplyDeleteWhile the reasons for which different crusaders took up this title vary, it seems that many were initially fuelled by a genuine belief in the religious value of their act. This value had positive implications both for the crusading individuals, whose sins might be remitted; and also, more broadly, for the Christian souls which were apparently saved. It is unclear when in the long string of crusades these motivations began to tend more towards material or territorial ones - or if they did, for that matter. However, the often extremely violent and cruel behaviour of crusaders at Constantinople or Albi, against apparent fellow Christians, might indicate an increasing willingness to do whatever was necessary not only for the religious values previously mentioned, but also possibly for material gain.
ReplyDelete