Backman Clifford R. The Worlds of Medieval Europe
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214 THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
charters of immunity, and conciliar decrees. Forgery had always been a ubiquitous
phenomenon of medieval life. Poets everywhere scribbled mediocre verses and
ascribed them to Virgil and Horace. Historians waged wars on their pages that
never occurred in life. Would-be philosophers and theologians wrote volumes of
nonsense and placed Cicero’s or St. Augustine’s names on the title page. The most
tireless forger of all, Ademar of Chabannes, even altered the Holy Gospels by
inserting the name of his favorite saint, the third-century St. Martial, into the text
as one of Christ’s original twelve apostles. Some scholars have estimated that as
much as fifteen percent of the writing that survives from the mid-ninth to the mid-
eleventh centuries is either completely or partially faked.
The explanation, however imperfect it may seem, is that medieval people felt
differently about the “truth” of a text than we do. We believe a document—a land
deed, for example—to be authentic if it is the actual, specific, physical record
produced by the appropriate juridical authority and bearing his or her signature
and seal. Its “truth,” in other words, is a function of its material existence. But in
the Middle Ages the “truth” of a document lay in its content rather than its mere
physical form. If what a document said was true, then the document was in fact
a true one. Consider a convent that has been sacked by a rogue army. As the abbey
went up in flames so too did the title-deeds of its landholdings, including (for
example) a charter from Charlemagne by which he granted the convent ownership
in perpetuity of a certain woodland. Charlemagne’s gift was the “true” event, not
the now-disappeared parchment record of it. Therefore the nuns who rebuilt their
abbey in the wake of the assault did not think they were in any sense “lying” by
producing an eleventh-century counterfeit which stated “I Charlemagne...grant”
the woodland to the abbey, or in signing it with Charlemagne’s supposed signa-
ture, or in putting a date of “November 807” on it even though it was perhaps
written in June 1034.
The reformers who produced the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals firmly believed that
the ancient popes they “copied” had either said what the bishops claimed they
had said, or that they would have said what the bishops claimed if only they had
had the opportunity. Therefore, there was no dishonesty even in inventing letters
for unknowns like Telesphorus I. The reformers’ ideas about forgery were certainly
self-serving, but it is important to recognize that they believed they were only re-
creating a parchment tradition to buttress a living ecclesiastical tradition that had
always been there in the first place. Whatever their origin, the Decretals certainly
proved to be a highly effective weapon. By the middle of the eleventh century,
the rural “core-bishops” had virtually disappeared from the scene and the urban-
based bishops had begun to found cathedral schools attached to their mother
churches that enhanced and accelerated the reform. Opposition remained, of
course. The roughly two dozen archbishops whose authority was cast aside by the
Decretals put up a particularly stubborn resistance. But the primacy given by the
Decretals to the papacy guaranteed their ultimate success. The very first pope to
be informed of the Decretals’ existence, Nicholas I (858–867), received them en-
thusiastically and made them the foundation of papal claims to independence from
the State and primacy over the entire Church. Every pope who followed him did
the same.
The papacy itself was the last part of the Church to be reformed. The avari-
cious aristocrats of Rome saw to that; after all, by controlling the papacy they
were controlling the single most important element of the city’s economic life, for
not only was the Holy See itself wealthy in terms of estates and tax revenues, but
it represented the chief tourist attraction of Christian pilgrims. What finally
THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH 215
brought about papal reform was a curious counterplay of headstrong personali-
ties. Whatever people thought about the papal office prior to the reform, most
Latin Christians still identified closely with the city of Rome as the symbolic cen-
ter of Christendom. Pilgrimages to Rome were wildly popular and so were such
songs as:
O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima,
Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea,
Albis et virginum liliis candida....
[Noble Rome! Mistress of the world!
Most excellent of all the cities of earth,
Glowing with the red of the martyr’s blood
And shining with the lily-whiteness of the virgins...]
Therefore, what happened to the Holy See mattered powerfully. And by the mid-
dle of the eleventh century reformist pressures began to focus. In 1044 the reigning
pontiff Benedict IX (1032–1044) decided, for whatever reason, to resign from the
office. Could such a thing be done? Benedict, in any case, offered the position for
sale to Sylvester III, who died very shortly thereafter and forced Benedict back
into the job. Undeterred, Benedict tried again and sold the post to Gregory VI
(1045–1046), an earnest reformer despite his own simony. But several months into
Gregory’s pontificate, Benedict decided that he wanted to be pope again, and so
he declared Gregory a corrupt usurper and announced that he was, after all, still
the sole legitimate pope. This was too much for most Christians, and the German
emperor Henry III massed his imperial army and marched on Italy and summoned
a Church council at the city of Sutri, just north of Rome, in 1046. Henry’s council
declared both Benedict and Gregory deposed and installed another pro-reform
candidate as Clement II (1046–1047). Clement was not a popular figure, however,
and died a sudden death. Henry tried again and installed Damasus II (1048), who
died even quicker. Finally deciding that enough was enough, Henry appointed his
own cousin, Bishop Bruno of Toul, who took the name of Leo IX (1049–1054) and
wisely surrounded himself with a large corps of imperial bodyguards.
Leo IX is generally regarded as the first “reformed” pope. He certainly was a
charismatic and talented figure. Leo recognized two things from the very start:
first, that the papacy could not be properly reformed so long as it remained mired
in Roman factional politics; and second, that the papacy needed to be seen by the
faithful in order to secure the gains of the reform. Consequently, he avoided Rome
as much as possible, although he made sure to sprinkle enough bribes around the
city in order to buy support from the local magnates in his absence, and then he
went on the road with his entire curial retinue, traveling all across the Continent.
The importance of these journeys should be noted. Leo IX was virtually the first
pope to be seen in the flesh by any Christians beyond those relative few who
made the pilgrimage to Rome. What a marvelous climax to the populist-driven
reform movement, actually to set eyes upon the now-reformed head of the Church!
Leo put on quite a show wherever he went. His entry into any given city was
preceded by days, if not weeks or months, of advance notice. The gathered crowds
ultimately saw a spectacle beyond their imagining: a parade of chanting clergy,
colorful banners, trumpets and drums, relics and holy objects carried in triumph,
a cavalcade of armed and mailed knights, and then finally, in triumph, the robed
and tiared Holy Father on a brilliant golden throne carried on the shoulders of a
216 THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
crowd of papal servants. For the tens of thousands who saw him, this was the
glorious culmination of four generations of reforming efforts. Leo’s journeys were
more than an itinerant propaganda campaign; they were a triumphal celebration.
Everywhere he went, Leo staged large-scale Masses, pronounced Peace and
Truce decrees, and offered all the faithful the opportunity to air grievances about
their local churches and ecclesiastical leaders. All clergy tainted to any degree with
simony, he declared, could remain in office if they publicly confessed their faults
and swore to dedicate themselves to the reformed Church. These acts of contrition
and forgiveness were performed in front of the crowds, which served two pur-
poses: first, the people themselves got to hear the confessions of their clergy, and
second, the pope got the pleasure of having the faithful see the priests, bishops,
and archbishops kneeling before Leo himself in order to be reconciled to the
Church and restored in office. The papacy, in other words, used the reform-
celebration itself as a means for establishing papal authority over the episcopacy.
Henceforth, everyone understood that the bishops served as the legitimate leaders
of the Church because the Holy Father himself had publicly bestowed their office
upon them. The papacy now stood at the head of a new hierarchy and determined
its legitimacy. The boldness of Leo’s move surprised many bishops who had long
championed the reform and the ideas contained in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,
but who casually ignored the Decretals’ assertions about papal power; until Leo,
the pope, after all, was some figurehead in Rome whom hardly anyone ever saw.
The case of the archbishop of Reims is instructive. He was a pro-reform cleric who
eagerly welcomed Leo to his city precisely because he wanted to complain to the
pope that he had had to pay too much for his archbishopric and was not being
given a free hand to enjoy all the revenues due to him from his office. Could Leo
do anything to help? Yes, said Leo; then he sacked him on the spot.
T
HE
P
APAL
R
EVOLUTION
Leo IX’s pontificate marked a turning point for the Church. He was not around
long enough to finish rooting out corruption, but he certainly brought the reform
into its final phase. He drove simoniacs from office, helped to end the practice of
clerical marriage, and improved priestly training and education. His last signifi-
cant achievement was the creation of the College of Cardinals. Recognizing that
the Church was intellectually ill-equipped to deal with all the issues confronting
it, Leo decided to create a special body of advisors to the papacy—theologians,
lawyers, philosophers, historians, scientists, and diplomats who could lend expert
counsel. These figures, handpicked by the pope (as they still are today), became
the College of Cardinals. They figured prominently in the effort to resolve many
of the long-pressing doctrinal issues that had never been wholly settled within the
Church. For example, whereas everyone agreed that simony was evil, did that
necessarily mean that the sacraments performed by clergy tainted with simony
were invalid? The cardinals produced “position papers” on a variety of responses
to the problem, laying out all the arguments they could muster; the Holy See then
used these in order to come to its ultimate conclusion.
Another issue was the celibacy of the clergy. Was lifelong chastity a funda-
mental requirement or merely an ideal encouraged for all those who were inter-
ested in it? Ever since its inception, the Catholic Church had been filled with well-
meaning male and female clerics who believed that celibacy was not a specific
requirement; at various times in the past married clergy—that is, clergy who were
either legally and fully married or who lived in common-law marriages with con-
THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH 217
cubines—may have been in the majority. But others argued from the start that
only those willing to vow themselves to the celibate life were fully qualified for
the priesthood. As the reform movement reached its culmination, this issue too
had to be resolved. Surrounded by the cardinals, the papacy began establishing
itself as the decision-making center of the Church on all doctrinal issues.
In 1059 a synod at Rome made two decisions that started to turn the reform
movement into a revolution. The pope at the time was Nicholas II (1059–1061).
Under his leadership the council condemned the practice of lay investiture—that
is, the tradition by which secular rulers installed all clergy in their offices. The
ritual by which a lay prince “invested” a priest or bishop with the insignia of his
office suggested that the ecclesiastical authority was subordinate to the secular,
and therefore the practice now stood condemned. The synod next promulgated
the Papal Election Decree (1059), which asserted that henceforth and for all eternity
the only way for any individual to become the legitimate pontiff of the Holy
Catholic Church was to be freely elected to the position by the College of
Cardinals. This decree removed the Holy See from the clutches of the Roman
magnates, but it also declared the papacy’s independence from the imperial power.
Emperors had dominated the Church ever since Constantine, the synod declared,
and in so doing planted the seed of corruption that took seven centuries to root
out. Only by assuring the Church’s full liberty from state-manipulation could the
purity of the great reform be maintained.
These actions directly challenged state authority, especially that of the Ger-
mans who held the imperial title. Each side prepared for the inevitable clash by
courting intellectual, diplomatic, and military support. The reformist emperor
Henry III had died in 1056; his infant son Henry IV (1056–1106) inherited the
imperial title but could do no more than watch his authority be undermined until
he reached adulthood. The Church swung into action by allying itself with Robert
Guiscard, the leader of the Normans in southern Italy, and trying to win support
among the secular German princes who were always interested in policies that
would weaken the emperor. The papal alliance strengthened the position of the
Norman rulers who were in the process of subduing the southern regions, and by
this alliance the Holy See hoped to reign in these rowdy upstarts, but relations
only worsened between Rome and the Byzantine Empire whose forces the Nor-
mans were removing.
Matters came to a head during the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073–1085),
which coincided with Henry IV’s reaching adulthood and taking over control of
the government. Both were headstrong men to whom the notion of compromise
was anathema. Henry was kept busy for two years putting down rebellions by
various princes, during which time he and Gregory maintained cordial though
tenuous relations. But Henry deeply resented the papacy’s actions during his mi-
nority of pressing for more radical reform of the churches and encouraging the
princes to undermine imperial power, while Gregory feared that it was only a
matter of time before Henry would attempt to attack the crowning achievements
of the reform by contesting papal independence from the emperor. In 1075 Henry
finished dealing with his rebels and prepared to confront Rome, and Gregory
responded with a preemptive strike that surprised everyone, including the most
ardent pro-reform enthusiasts. Gregory penned a declaration called the Dictatus
Papae (“Dictates of the Pope”) in that year. This was a list of twenty-seven single-
sentence statements about papal power. For example:
The pope alone has the power to instate and depose bishops.
The pope alone may use the imperial insignia.
218 THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
All secular princes are to kiss the pope’s foot alone.
The pope’s name alone shall be spoken in all churches.
The pope has the power to depose emperors.
The pope himself may be judged by no man.
The pope may release subjects from their vows of fealty to men who are
unjust.
No one knows for certain what Gregory intended by the Dictates: Were they
a dogmatic assertion, or a sort of ecclesiastical “wish list”? Were they an outline
for a book that he planned to write? Were they a collection of random thoughts?
All that we know is that the Dictates triggered an angry reaction from Henry,
who viewed them as an unprecedented open attack on imperial rights. (The other
monarchs in Europe did not like the Dictates either, but they were generally willing
to stand by and let Henry lead the fight against them.) Letters passed back and
forth between emperor and pope, and the vitriol of their language increased with
every exchange. Finally, by the end of 1076 both the emperor and the pope had
declared each other excommunicated and deposed from office. Rejoicing in
Henry’s apparent deposition, the German nobles rose up against him once again
and this time they were joined by a number of the empire’s important ecclesiastical
vassals as well. Henry temporarily defused the situation in 1077 by making a
pilgrimage to Canossa, in northern Italy, where Gregory was staying. Dressed in
penitential rags, Henry stood barefooted for three days outside Gregory’s palace
window begging forgiveness for his sins and pleading to be restored to the Church.
It was a personal humiliation—people came from miles around to watch—but it
was politically quite clever. Gregory, as a priest, could not refuse to forgive a
penitent sinner, and Henry knew that Gregory’s forgiveness of him would of ne-
cessity put an end to the rebellions against him, since rebels against a good son
of the Church would themselves become the Church’s enemies. Gregory was fu-
rious at having been caught unawares, but all he could do about it, since there
were so many witnesses to Henry’s abasement, was to enjoy the spectacle for a
few days before granting absolution.
The war of words continued for several more years, and finally in 1081 Henry
decided to put an end to the struggle by invading Italy. As the German army
entered Rome, Gregory took refuge in his fortress at Castel Sant’Angelo, which
Henry soon surrounded. The pope was effectively imprisoned. But Gregory had
sent word to his Norman ally Robert Guiscard of Henry’s approach, and Robert
came hurrying to the rescue.
4
Henry’s forces wanted nothing to do with the Nor-
mans and fled north to Tuscany. For two years an unsteady peace existed, as the
German imperials cut down pro-papal communes in the north of Italy and the
Normans routed rebels in the south and prepared to resume their march on Con-
stantinople, while Gregory stayed cowering in Castel Sant’Angelo. But in 1084
Henry pounced on Rome again. Robert rode northward in a fury, only to find that
Henry had once again vanished. Guiscard then indulged himself by letting his
soldiers sack the Eternal City. They pillaged Rome as it had never been pillaged
before, and when the smoke finally cleared and the Normans marched southward,
a chastened Gregory VII had to go with them under protective custody from the
4. When the pope’s messengers went in search of Robert, they found that he had headed eastward,
having decided to conquer the Byzantine Empire. He had, in fact, actually made it halfway to Constan-
tinople and had already defeated the main imperial army when the pope’s plea reached him. Confident
that he could always come back to Constantinople after taking care of Henry, he gave up the mission
and headed back to Italy.
THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH 219
Roman mobs who demanded the pope’s head. He soon caught sick and died at
Salerno in 1085.
This was the dramatic climax of the investiture struggle but not its end. So
long as Henry IV lived, there were no signs of compromise coming from Germany,
although the first popes after Gregory VII were careful not to aggravate relations
by pressing too hard on papal claims.
5
The Holy See shifted its focus from debates
with secular authorities to efforts to secure papal supremacy over the Church itself.
The key issue here was to assert papal jurisdiction over the episcopacies, since the
Church was now one in which the bishops were the leading figures. Monastic life
continued to thrive and attracted thousands of new recruits, but it was clear by
the end of the eleventh century that the true centers of Christian life had shifted
to the cities and that bishops had replaced abbots as the dominant figures in
shaping Christian devotional and institutional life. In fact, it is worth noting that
there were more assertions in the Dictatus Papae about papal authority vis-a`-vis
bishops than there were assertions about the pope’s power over the emperor. Ur-
ban II (1088–1099) devoted himself to completing the work of reform by traveling
widely, holding councils and public ceremonies a` la Leo IX, championing—and
gaining popular support for—the notion of the Holy See’s supremacy as foremost
of the bishops. Urban was less charismatic than Leo, but he helped finalize the
reform movement and establish beyond a doubt that after nearly eleven hundred
years the Roman pontiff finally stood at the head of a united Church.
C
HRISTENDOM AND THE
E
AST
Urban II was also the pope who began the crusades, the first major effort of the
reformed Church to flex its muscles. The crusades were a series of campaigns led
by the papacy to regain the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, which had been
under Islamic rule since 639. What distinguished these campaigns from earlier
wars was their unique status as the only wars officially sanctioned by the Christian
Church. To participate in the crusaders’ fight against Islam was not only justified
by the Church but was considered a positive spiritual endeavor. In short, this sort
of armed struggle actually pleased God, and those who, with penitent hearts and
devout motives, gave their lives to the struggle received a plenary indulgence from
the Church—that is, their sins were forgiven and they were granted admission to
heaven. The roots of the crusades are long and tangled.
Let’s begin with the speech delivered by Urban II at the Council of Clermont
on 27 November 1095, the speech that triggered the movement. The text, consid-
erably reworked, was preserved by a chronicler named Robert the Monk.
O you Frankish people, people from across the mountains, people especially
chosen and beloved by God—as is shown clearly by so many of your deeds—
and set apart from all other nations by the condition of your country, by your
Catholic faith, and by the favor of the Holy Church! To you our discourse is
addressed, and for you our exhortation is intended. We wish you to know
5. The investiture struggle was ended in 1122 when the emperor Henry V (1106–1125), the son of
Henry IV, reached a compromise with Pope Calixtus II (1119–1124). The settlement, known as the Con-
cordat of Worms (the German city where the accord was finalized), allowed ecclesiastical appointment
to be made by the Church alone but gave secular princes the right to participate by “investing” appoint-
ees with the lands and appurtenances that accompanied the position. The delicate issue of papal su-
premacy versus imperial supremacy was sidestepped. It would flare up you anew in later centuries.
220 THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
what a grievous cause has led us to your country; what grave peril—one that
threatens you and all the faithful—has led to our being gathered here.
From the limits of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale
has spread and has time and again been brought to our ears: namely, that a
race from the kingdom of the Persians—an accursed race, a race utterly alien-
ated from God, a nation which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted
its spirit to God—has invaded the lands of the Christians of the Holy Land
and has massacred them by sword, pillage, and fire. They have led some of
them into their own country as slaves, and have murdered others by the
cruelest tortures. They have destroyed outright many of God’s churches and
have appropriated others for their own religion. They have shattered altars,
after first defiling them with their uncleanness. With force they circumcise the
Christians, and the blood of these circumcisions they spread upon the altars
or pour into the vases of the baptismal fonts. When they decide to torture
people to death, they puncture their navels, pull out one of their intestines,
and bind it to a stake; then they beat and flog their victims around the stake
until the viscera gush forth and the wretches collapse dead to the ground.
Others they bind to posts and riddle with arrows. They stretch out the necks
of others and hack through them with a single blow of their swords. What
shall I say of the despicable rape of the women? No, no—to speak of it would
be worse than to remain silent.
The kingdom of the Greeks lies dismembered by these people, and so much
of its land has been lost that one could not traverse it all in two months’ solid
marching. To whom, then, has the duty of avenging these evils and recovering
this land fallen, if not to you? You, upon whom God has bestowed more
outstanding glory in arms, more greatness in courage, more vitality and
strength than anyone else, all in order that you might bring down the brutes
who resist you.
So let the deeds of your ancestors inspire you and incite your minds to
acts of courage: the glory and greatness of King Charles the Great [Charle-
magne], and of his son Louis, and of all your other kings who have van-
quished the realms of the pagans, and have extended in those lands the reach
of the Holy Church. Let the Holy Sepulcher of the Lord Our Savior, which is
now in the hands of unclean nations, especially incite you, along with the
holy places which are being humiliated and polluted by their filthiness. O
most valiant soldiers, descendants of invincible ancestors all, do not fail us!
Bear in mind always the valor of your fathers!
But if your love of your children, parents, and wives should get in the way,
remember what the Lord says in the Gospel: “No one who prefers father or
mother to me is worthy of me; no one who prefers son or daughter to me is
worthy of me; anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps
is not worthy of me.” And also: “All those who have forsaken their houses,
brethren, sisters, fathers, mothers, wives, children, and lands for my sake shall
receive a hundred-fold and shall inherit everlasting life.” Therefore don’t let
your possessions detain you, nor worry about your mundane affairs; for this
land that you inhabit, enclosed as it is on all sides by the seas and surrounded
by the mountain peaks, is too small for your vast population; neither does it
abound in wealth; and it produces barely enough food for those who live
here.
That is why you murder and devour one another; why you wage war on
each other; and why you so often destroy each other. Therefore let your hatred
go; let your quarrels end; let your wars cease; and put all your conflicts and
arguments aside. Enter the road to the Holy Sepulcher. Win back the Holy
THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH 221
Land from the wicked, and place it under your own dominion—for that land
which, as the Scriptures say, “flows with milk and honey,” was given by God
Himself into the hands of the children of Israel.
Jerusalem is the center of the world. The land is fruitful beyond all others,
like a paradise of delights. This land Our Redeemer has ennobled by His
advent, beautified by His presence, consecrated by His suffering, redeemed
by His death, and glorified by His burial. This royal city, we repeat, located
at the center of the world, is held captive by His enemies and is being sub-
jected to the worship of heathens who do not know God. She [Jerusalem]
therefore desires and cries out for her liberty, and never ceases to implore you
to come to her assistance. She asks this aid of you especially, since, as we
have already said, God has bestowed upon you, above all other nations, great
glory in arms. Accordingly, you should undertake this journey for the remis-
sion of your sins, and with the assurance of the eternal glory of the Kingdom
of Heaven.
This is not exactly what Urban said, but it is probably not far off. More importantly,
it reflects a number of the concerns and prejudices common to the European world
in the crusading age.
The speech’s horrific description of Muslim persecution of Christians, we
know, is grossly overdone, yet it is true that Muslim treatment of subject-Christians
and of Christian pilgrims en route to holy sites stiffened and coarsened consid-
erably over the eleventh century, and that religious violence became far more
pronounced. For the most part this violence was popular in nature—that is, it was
something that happened at street-level rather than being an organized policy of
the Islamic states. In Muslim Spain, as we have seen, the attacks of local warlords
like al-Mansur on Christian sites like Barcelona (985) and Santiago de Compostela
(997) signaled a change in religious relations. In Egypt the Fatimid caliph ’al-
Hakim (996–1021), whose hatred of Christianity and Judaism was intense, perse-
cuted members of each faith with a heavy hand, and in 1009 sent an army to
Jerusalem itself where they slaughtered the city’s non-Muslim inhabitants and
destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church built on what Christians
believe to be the very spot of Christ’s resurrection.
6
The Almohads of North Africa
also repressed Christians and Jews brutally by liberally ordering imprisonments,
maimings, and executions. But these official persecutions were not the norm. As
the majority of the Islamic worlds’ subjects became devout Muslims, it was per-
haps inevitable that Muslim society developed practices that in effect segregated
and marginalized the non-Muslim minority and paved the way for local repression
and popular violence. But whatever its origins, popular hostility towards Chris-
tians became overt and commonplace over the eleventh century, leading western
European Christians to conclude that some sort of rescue operation was justified.
Urban’s speech also highlights the need for Christendom’s elites to seek pen-
ance for their own predations on the poor. This call is an echo of the Peace of God
and Truce of God demonstrations and of the Church’s implied right to distinguish
between justified and unjustified warfare. (Urban in fact concluded his speech by
placing the entire kingdom of France under the Peace of God.) Only by turning
their warlike instincts to a valid end, the Church maintained, could the knights of
Europe attain forgiveness for their crimes. As an added enticement, the speech
points out the relative poverty of northern Europe and the legendary riches of the
6. ’al-Hakim followed up on this in 1012 by ordering the demolition of every Christian church in his
caliphate.
222 THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
eastern Mediterranean, which presumably would belong to the victors once they
had vanquished the Muslim enemy.
It is worth emphasizing that this crusade-launching speech, while certainly
anti-Muslim in its message, is not anti-Arab. The only ethnic group Urban men-
tions specifically is “a race from the kingdom of the Persians”—a reference to the
Turks and the Saljuq (or Seljuk) Turks in particular. These were another nomadic
people who emerged from the central Asiatic steppe in the tenth and eleventh
centuries. The majority of Turks migrated south toward Baghdad where, once they
embraced Islam, they were welcomed by the Persian-dominated ’Abbasid court
as a counterbalance against growing anti-Persian sentiment in the Arab-dominated
states further to the west. The unruly warlike Saljuq segment of the Turkish mass
headed west toward Constantinople, however, where they sought to establish
themselves as an independent state. These Saljuqs came to adhere to Sunni Islam,
but their entry into the Levant further upset an already complicated ethnic, reli-
gious, and political situation. They scored a number of victories against the Byz-
antines in eastern Anatolia and in 1071 demolished the main Byzantine army in
battle at Manzikert. Their leaders took the title of sultan (“power-wielder”) and
did not hesitate to use force to crush the Greek and Syrian Christians now under
their dominion into obedience, although their anti-Christian violence probably had
more to do with political expediency than religious antagonism.
The Byzantine Empire stood in dire need of assistance after Manzikert and
appealed to the Latin west, where the battlefront against Islam was moving for-
ward. After all, the Reconquista in Spain had been underway since the 1030s; the
Normans had wrested southern Italy and Sicily from the Muslims in the 1060s
and 1070s; and the Pisans, Genoese, and Catalans had begun to seize control of
the Balearic islands, Sardinia, and Corsica by the 1080s. These Mediterranean pow-
ers, coupled with the emerging military might of feudal Europe, seemed increas-
ingly capable of turning the tide.
The Byzantines consequently appealed to the papacy to rescue eastern Chris-
tendom. They offered a tempting reward: the possible reunion of the Latin and
Greek Churches. These churches had drifted far apart over the centuries. They
spoke different languages, used different liturgies, and had different organization
and relations with the State. There were also a number of overt theological differ-
ences, but these were relatively minor and did not necessarily stand in the way
of maintaining the belief in, and hope for, a single Christian faith. But the two
churches had split definitively in 1054 when reformers from Rome badly mishan-
dled negotiations in Constantinople over the issue of papal supremacy that was
then reaching its climax in the west. Angry anathemas were hurled back and forth,
and decrees soon went out announcing the permanent rift between the two
churches. That is why the possibility of reuniting them, after the Byzantine em-
peror Alexius IV appealed for papal aid in 1095, proved irresistible.
The First Crusade (1095–1099) was the only fully successful one. A group of
roughly thirty thousand knights, joined by perhaps as many attendants, servants,
and hangers-on, formed the main army. They marched across central and eastern
Europe and gradually convened at Constantinople, where a horrified Alexius IV
cried out that he had only asked for some military aid, not another barbarian
invasion. He had good reason to be frightened, for the crusaders had been pre-
ceded only a few months earlier by a ragtag mass of peasants led by an apocalyptic
preacher named Peter the Hermit; these too were reported to have numbered as
many as fifty thousand. Known as the Peasants’ Crusade, this group was in thrall
to the bizarre Peter, a popular preacher from central France who fancied himself
223
0
200 Miles
0
200 Kms.
N
ATLANTIC OCEAN
North Sea
Baltic Sea
Adriatic Sea
Black Sea
Tyrrhenian Sea
Ae gean
Sea
M
E
D
I
T
E
R
R
A
N
E
A
N
S
E
A
E. McC. 2002
KINGDOM
of
FRANCE
KINGDOM
of
HUNGARY
KINGDOM
of
POLAND
HOLY
ROMAN
EMPIRE
SELJUK TURKS
SERBIA
KINGDOM
of
ENGLAND
PRUSSIA
BULGARIA
NORMAN
SICILY
Antioch
Tripoli
Damascus
Edessa
Jerusalem
Beirut
Acre
Jaffa
First Crusade
Second Crusade
Third Crusade
Fourth Crusade
First Crusade of Louis IX
Second Crusade of Louis IX
CRUSADE ROUTES
Boundary of
Western States
Byzantine Empire
Crusader States
Metz
Regensburg
Vienna
Vezelay
Lyon
Marseille
Milan
Genoa
Rome
Bari
Messina
Durazzo
Budapest
Belgrade
Zara
Constantinople
Adrianople
Smyrna
Candia
Limasol
Damietta
Iconium
Dorylaeum
Heraclea
Brindisi
Lisbon
Tunis
Aigues-
Mortes
Venice
Turin
Duchy of
Edessa
Antioch
Tripoli
Damascus
Edessa
Principality
of Antioch
County
of
Tripoli
Latin Kindom
of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
The
Crusader
States
MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
EGYPT
SELJUK
SULTANATE
SULTANATE
of
RUM
Cyprus
N
0
100 Miles
0
100 Kms.
The crusades