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Political and Military Background

Paul Crawford

To begin to answer the question, "What were the Crusades?" one must first consider the
history of Europe and the Middle East in the millenium before 1095.

Beginning in the first century A.D., the religion known as Christianity arose in Palestine and
spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. By the end of the fourth century, the Roman
Empire had become officially and primarily Christian, as a result of peaceful missionary
activity from within society (later church, or canon, law in fact forbade forced conversions).
Jerusalem, Palestine and Syria, all within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, became
predominantly Christian (the Jewish population of Jerusalem had been largely dispersed by
pagan Roman authorities following the Jewish anti-Roman revolts of A.D. 66-70 and 132-
135, and few Jews remained in the area).

In the seventh century A.D., the religion known as Islam arose in the Arabian peninsula. Like
Christianity, Islam officially condemned forced conversions. But unlike Christianity, Islam
instructed its followers to ensure that the world was under the political control of the Faithful.
Hence Islam's political domination could be, and was, spread by the sword.

Carried on the backs of Arab cavalry, Islam burst out of Arabia and quickly took control of
the Middle East. Byzantium and Persia, the two powers in the area, were exhausted by
prolonged conflict with each other. Persia was completely defeated and absorbed into the
Islamic world. The Middle Eastern armies of the Christian Byzantine Empire were defeated
and annihilated in 636, and Jerusalem fell in 638. Through the rest of the seventh century,
Arab armies advanced inexorably northwards and westwards.

By the early eighth century Arab forces had reached the Straits of Gibraltar, and in 711 they
crossed into European Spain and shattered the armies of the Christian Visigoths. By 712 they
had reached the center of the Iberian Peninsula, and by the 730s they were raiding deep into
the heart of France, where Charles Martel met and defeated their most ambitious raid near
Tours around 732. This was to prove their high water mark in the West.

For the next 300 years Christians and Muslims engaged in a protracted struggle, including the
siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in 717-18, and the seizure of Sicily and other
Mediterranean islands in the ninth century by the Muslims. In the tenth century the
Byzantines made some limited gains along the periphery of the now-shrunken Empire, but did
not retake Jerusalem.

In the middle of the eleventh century the Arabs were displaced as leaders of Islam by the
Turks, who converted to Islam even as they conquered the Arabs. The Turks disrupted the
area's political and social structures and created considerable hardships for Western pilgrims.
Up till now most Arab rulers of the area had been fairly tolerant of Christian interest in the
Holy Places (one notable exception was the "Mad" Caliph Hakim at the beginning of the
eleventh century, who destroyed churches and persecuted Jews and Christians). By the second
half of the eleventh century, most pilgrims were going to the Holy Land only in large, armed
bands, groups who look in retrospect very like crusade rehearsals.

The Turks also posed a new threat to the Byzantines. In 1071 the Turks met and crushed the
Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert, near Armenia. As a result the entire heartland of
the Empire, in Asia Minor, lay open and defenseless, and the Turks soon established
themselves as far west as Nicaea, just across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. In the same
year the Normans in southern Italy, led by Robert Guiscard, defeated the Byzantines at Bari
and drove them off the Italian mainland.

The Imperial Byzantine crown was briefly contested following Manzikert and Bari; the
successful claimant was Alexius Comnenus, a capable soldier and a clever diplomat.
Perceiving that the Empire was deprived of its primary recruiting grounds and breadbasket, he
sent out desperate calls for help to the West, particularly to the pope. Gregory VII briefly
considered leading an expedition eastwards himself in support of the Byzantines. However, he
was too preoccupied both by the Investiture Controversy with the Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV, and by the growth of Norman power under Robert Guiscard in southern Italy, to
respond in any meaningful way.

Alexius continued to appeal to the West, however, and in the spring of 1095 Pope Urban II
allowed Byzantine delegates to address the Council of Piacenza, and he gave his sanction to
those nobles who were inclined to respond. He then proceeded into France, attending to
various church business. By November he was in Clermont, and it was here that he gave a
speech which caught the imagination of the West.

It is hard to know exactly what Urban had in mind when he called for expeditions to the East.
We have various texts of his speech; none agree exactly, but it seems unlikely that Urban
envisaged waves of Frankish peasants travelling to Jerusalem. Alexius had called for large
contingents of mercenaries, particularly Normans, to come and take service in the Byzantine
Army. Urban probably had something a little more elaborate than that in mind--among other
things, he probably hoped that an expedition to the East, carried out under papal leadership
and comprised of noblemen from across western Europe, would boost his position in the
ongoing Investiture Controversy with the Holy Roman Empire.

Paul Crawford

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Additional Background

Paul Crawford

From this account it might appear that the beginning of the Crusades was a purely military
and political affair. This was not the case, however. There were many other elements which
laid the groundwork for the phenomenon of crusading, which involved the participation of
Christians in organized warfare on behalf of their religion and their God.

In the beginning Christianity had an ambivalent attitude towards warfare. Pacifism was never
the official position of the Church; although there was always a pacifist faction within
Christianity, some of the first Christian converts were soldiers and apparently remained at

their jobs after their conversion (see Acts 10). After the Roman government became officially
Christian, however, Christian officials needed guidelines for the use of violence. In response
to this need the doctrine of Just War was evolved. It assumed that violence was evil, but
acknowledged that passivity in the face of others' violence might be a greater evil.
Consequently three main conditions were laid down; if these conditions were meet,Christian
people could engage in warfare without fear of damnation. The war must have a Just Cause, it
must be waged under Due Authority, and the Christian combatants must have Right
Intentions.

The theological structure of Just War is complicated, but in brief, it meant that the war must
be waged either to avoid a likely injury or to rectify a past injury; it must be waged under the
direction and at the call of a supreme governmental authority; and that the violence employed
might not be excessive (i.e., only that degree of violence which was absolutely necessary
might be imposed).

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, a number of churchmen (primarily monks) became
concerned about the moral and organizational state of the Church. They formed a movement,
sometimes known as the Cluniac Reform movement, which eventually took control of the
papacy and brought sweeping change to Western Christianity.

One of these changes involved an adjustment to the Just War doctrine. Church and state were
closely intertwined in this period, and some thinkers concluded that this meant that Christ's
Will for mankind, embodied in the Church, could also be advanced by the political structures
of Christian peoples. They also theorized that violence might not simply be the lesser of two
evils (as the doctrine of Just War stipulated); violence, they said, was morally neutral, and
those who used violence to advance Christ's kingdom might be doing positive good. The
doctrine is known as Holy War.

Another change involved the noble warrior classes of the West. Fighting men had defended
Christian civilization against successive waves of barbarian assaults in the second half of the
first millennium, but by the eleventh century the barbarians (including Vikings, Magyars, and
others) were either tamed or destroyed. Only the Muslims, or "Saracens," were left. In areas
which were far from the Muslim frontier, these noble warriors turned their energies on each
other or worse, on the non-combatants around them. This endemic violence in society plainly
contradicted Christian teaching and deeply troubled thougp׾Palestine and the Heavenly
Jerusalem. Bad as it might be for unbelievers to hold the earthly city, it would be much worse
for them to rule the heavenly one.

Socio-economic factors contributed to the formation of the Crusades as well. In the second
half of the first millennium West Europeans adopted a number of agricultural innovations,
including the heavy plow and the horse collar. It seems likely that these innovations increased
food production, which in turn increased population, making manpower for expeditions
available (and possibly creating pressure on existing resources which led men to begin
looking for external adventures, according to some historians). In addition, the rise of a class
of lesser nobles who collected and disposed of local production with relative efficiency may
have contributed, by focussing resources in the hands of the very people who could most
profitably assist the crusades.

Some scholars used to make much of the idea that crusaders gained great wealth from the
Crusades, and that most crusaders were motivated by greed and a hunger for power. The

primary sources do not bear this out, as crusading seems to have been a hard, lonely,
expensive, dangerous proposition. Few if any serious students of the Crusades accept this
explanation today.

It also used to be fashionable to portray the crusaders as musclebound, dull-witted warriors
led by fanatical clerics, out to slaughter anything which crossed their path. While such
individuals certainly participated in the crusades (and have been present in every age of
history), the primary sources do not support this view either. It took considerable erudition
and careful thought to formulate the doctrines which supported the crusades, and it took great
skill to shepherd large numbers of men and women across strange and hostile territory. This
view, too, is now mostly discredited.

There are other factors which laid the groundwork for the Crusades, but those described here
were some of the most important ones.

One should keep in mind that the Crusades were an immensely complex phenomenon, spread
across many lands and centuries. Many motivations for crusading existed, and many probably
coexisted within the minds of individual crusaders.

Introduction

Military and Political Background

The First Crusade

Crusades and the Counter-Crusades

The Later Crusades

Additional Background

Crusading Vows & Privileges

Legacy

Paul Crawford

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contents,including the header and this copyright notice, remain intact.

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