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Authors: Jonathan Riley-Smith

A History of the Crusades

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THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES

 

THE EDITOR

J
ONATHAN
R
ILEY
-S
MITH
is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge.

 
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES

EDITED BY

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

 

 

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford
OX
2 6
DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York

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Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

© Oxford University Press 1999

The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (makers)

The text of this volume first published 1995 in
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades
First issued as
The Oxford History of the Crusades
1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organisation. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

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and you must impose this same condition on any acquiror

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available

ISBN 0–19–285364–3

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by
Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey

Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd
Reading, Berkshire

PREFACE
 

The inclusion of the subject of the crusades in this series of Oxford histories and the fact that only one of the contributors is from outside Britain provide an opportunity to reflect upon the phenomenal rise in the number of British crusade scholars since the early 1950s, when there cannot have been more than half a dozen, only two of whom were historians, teaching in the universities. By 1990 twenty-nine history departments in British universities and colleges had members of the
Society for theStudy of the Crusades
on their staff. The subject’s strength in British academic circles probably owes most to a general public interest, a fascination with the Near East which has a long history, the reputation of St John Ambulance, which associates itself with the medieval Knights Hospitallers, and the continuing success of Sir Steven Runciman’s
A History of the Crusades
.

This volume reflects the recent developments in crusade historiography which are described in Chapter 1. It covers crusading in many different theatres of war. The concepts of apologists, propagandists, song-writers, and poets, and the perceptions and motives of the crusaders themselves are described, as are the emotional and intellectual reactions of the Muslims to Christian holy war. The institutional developments—legal, financial, and structural—which were necessary to the movement’s survival are analysed. Several chapters are devoted to the western settlements established in the eastern Mediterranean region in the wake of the crusades, to the remarkable art and architecture associated with them, and to the military orders. The subject of the later crusades, including the history of the military orders from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, is given the attention it deserves. And the first steps are taken on to a field that is as yet hardly explored, the survival of the ideas and images of crusading into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

 

Croxton, Cambridgeshire
April, 1994

CONTENTS
 

LIST OF PLATES

LIST OF MAPS

  
1.   The Crusading Movement and Historians

            
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

  
2.   Origins

            
MARCUS BULL

  
3.   The Crusading Movement, 1096–1274

            
SIMON LLOYD

  
4.   The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East, 1095–1300

            
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

  
5.   Songs

            
MICHAEL ROUTLEDGE

  
6.   The Latin East, 1098–1291

            
JONATHAN PHILLIPS

  
7.   Art in the Latin East, 1098–1291

            
JAROSLAV FOLDA

  
8.   Architecture in the Latin East, 1098–1571

            
DENYS PRINGLE

  
9.   The Military Orders, 1120–1312

            
ALAN FOREY

10.   Islam and the Crusades, 1096–1699

            
ROBERT IRWIN

11.   The Crusading Movement, 1274–1700

            
NORMAN HOUSLEY

12.   The Latin East, 1291–1669

            
PETER EDBURY

13.   The Military Orders, 1312–1798

            
ANTHONY LUTTRELL

14.   Images of the Crusades in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

            
ELIZABETH SIBERRY

15.   Revival and Survival

            
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

CHRONOLOGY

FURTHER READING

INDEX

LIST OF PLATES
 

1.
Knight in twelfth-century relief

Abbey of Notre-Dame-de-la-Règle, Limoges. Photothèque du Musée. Photo M. Marcheix

 

2.
Moissac, south-western France

© Jean Dieuzaide

 

3.
Drawing from the Luttrell Psalter

British Library [Add Ms 42130 fo. 82]

 

4.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem: twelfth-century ground plan

Österreichische Nationalbiblothek [NB 24376]

 

5.
Divine assistance

Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art

 

6.
Taking the cross

Bibliothèque Municipale de Besançon

 

7.
Cathedral of Jubayl

A. F. Kersting

 

8.
Castle of Segura de la Sierra, Andalusia

MAS, Barcelona

 

9.
Temple church in London

Pitkin Pictorials Ltd.

 

10.
Illustration from treatise on chess by Alfonso X of Castile

MAS, Barcelona

 

11.
Contemporary pen drawing of a Hussite wagon fortress

British Library [AC 801/9 TabIV]

 

12.
Battle of Lepanto, 1571

National Maritime Museum, London [BHC 0261]

 

13.
Fourteenth-century water mill, Danzig: elevation and plan

Niels von Holst, ‘Der Deutsche Ritterordern und Siene Bauten’, Gebr Mann Verlag, Berlin, 1981

 

14.
Ruins of castle and octagonal tower, Weissenstein

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg [152.496]

 

15.
Crusader’s vigil, Lessing

Städesches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, photo © Ursula Edelmann

 

16.
Teutonic knights

Ridderlijke Duitsche Orde, Balije van Utrecht, photo by S. J. Ramkers

 
LIST OF MAPS
 

Map 1.
Europe and the Near East before
c
. 1300

Map 2.
Europe and the Near East after
c
. 1300

Map 3.
The Latin East

Map 4.
The Aegean Region

Map 5.
The Baltic Region

Map 6.
Spain and North Africa

1
The Crusading Movement and Historians
 

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

 

In November 1095 a church council was meeting in Clermont under the chairmanship of Pope Urban II. On the 27th, with the council coming to an end, the churchmen, together with some lay people mostly from the countryside around, assembled in a field outside the town and the pope preached them a sermon in which he called on Frankish knights to vow to march to the East with the twin aims of freeing Christians from the yoke of Islamic rule and liberating the tomb of Christ, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Muslim control. As soon as he had finished Adhémar of Monteil, the bishop of Le Puy who was to be appointed Urban’s representative on the expedition, came forward and was the first to take the cross, while the crowd called out ‘God wills it!’ Although the eyewitness accounts of this assembly and the pope’s sermon were written later and were coloured by the triumph that was to follow, they give the impression of a piece of deliberate theatre—a daring one, given the risk involved in organizing an out-of-doors event at the start of winter—in which the actions of the leading players and the acclamation of the crowd had been worked out in advance.

The crusading movement had begun in the melodramatic fashion which was to be typical of it thereafter. Coming himself from the class he wished to arouse, the pope must have known how to play on the emotions of armsbearers. Now about 60 years old, he had embarked on a year-long journey through
southern and central France. The summoning of an expedition to the aid of the Byzantine empire had probably been in his mind for several years and it had been aired at a council held at Piacenza in March which had heard an appeal from the Byzantine (Greek) emperor Alexius for aid against the Turks, who for over two decades had been sweeping through Asia Minor and had almost reached the Bosphorus. Soon after Urban had entered French territory he must have discussed his plans with Adhémar of Le Puy and with Raymond of St Gilles, the count of Toulouse, whom he wanted as military leader. These meetings cannot have been confidential and there may have been some truth in a tradition in Burgundy that ‘the first vows to go on the way to Jerusalem’ were made at a council of thirty-six bishops which had met at Autun earlier in 1095. Another tradition was that the wandering evangelist Peter the Hermit was already proposing something similar to the crusade before it was preached at Clermont. Peter was congenitally boastful and the stories of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the appeal to him by the patriarch, his vision of Christ, and his interview with the pope in Italy at which he persuaded Urban to summon men to Jerusalem’s aid seem to have originated in Lorraine, not far from the abbey of Neumoustier where he lived once the crusade was over. But at the very least there must have been a lot of talk and some preliminary planning in advance of the pope’s arrival at Clermont.

BOOK: A History of the Crusades
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