The Glory of the Crusades (17 page)

Authors: Steve Weidenkopf

Tags: #History, #Medieval, #Religion, #Christianity, #Catholic

BOOK: The Glory of the Crusades

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The bottom line was that King Louis VII and Conrad III found themselves in a dire predicament before the gates of Damascus. It was “a choice between a brave and dangerous assault . . . and an ordered withdrawal, [so] retreat may have appeared the sensible path. Only it was not the path of heroes; the miracle of Antioch in 1098 was not to be repeated.”
262
Had Damascus fallen into Crusader hands it would have meant the recovery of Edessa, the strengthening of the northern frontier, and the destruction of the possibility of Muslim unity in the Holy Land. The failure at Damascus was a lost opportunity that ultimately lost Outrémer.

The End of the Crusade

Conrad III left the Holy Land in September of 1148 after a very difficult year that left him with a severe wound and the loss of his army and a good portion of his wealth. He was the “leader of the largest army to set out in 1147, [and] Conrad lost most and gained least.”
263

One member of Conrad’s army did not forget his experience during the Second Crusade. The lessons learned in that expedition helped Frederick of Swabia, Conrad’s nephew and the future holy Roman emperor known as Frederick Barbarossa, plan and execute his journey during the Third Crusade.

King Louis VII stayed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem until Easter of 1149. He departed on contracted Sicilian ships, which were set upon by the Byzantine navy. The ship carrying Queen Eleanor was seized and detained for a time. The royal couple eventually made their way to Sicily where they traveled to the Italian mainland. They met with Pope Eugenius, who tried to mend their rapidly unraveling marriage but to no effect. Louis and his estranged queen finally arrived home in France in November.

Results of the Crusade

The Second Crusade not only failed to liberate Edessa (which had been the primary objective) and Damascus, but it produced several other negative effects. It was such a disaster that “it is no exaggeration to say that the crusader states would have fared better had the Crusade never been launched.”
264
The failure of the Byzantines to lend adequate support to the French and German armies and Manuel’s policy of benign neglect furthered the Western understanding that the Eastern Christians “were part of the problem rather than the solution” to the issues affecting Outrémer.
265
The military blunders by both the French and German armies on their marches through Anatolia and the bad decisions at Damascus weakened the aura of invincibility surrounding Crusade armies in the Holy Land. The Muslims were no longer afraid of Christian armies.

Perhaps the most deleterious effect of the failure of the Second Crusade was the lowering of morale and a general questioning of the Crusading movement. The First Crusade had been a miraculous success, so Second Crusade contemporaries expected the same. When failure was the result, questions were raised and answers posited in a negative way that affected Christendom’s view of its leaders and the Crusading movement as a whole. Eugenius III believed the failure of the Second Crusade was “the most severe injury of the Christian name that God’s Church has suffered in our time.”
266

Those who preached the Crusade and assisted with its prosecution were not immune to criticism. St. Bernard suffered such intense denunciation that he referred to that time in his life as the “season of disgrace.”
267
Responding to the personal reproaches, Bernard offered his own explanation as to why the Crusade failed—it was the benevolent and mysterious will of God:

How can human beings be so rash as to dare to pass judgment on something that they are not in the least able to understand? It might perhaps be a comfort for us to bear in mind the heavenly judgments that were made of old . . . For . . . it is true that the hearts of mortal men are made in this way: we forget when we need it what we know when we do not need it . . . The promises of God never prejudice the justice of God.
268

Other commentators leveled their ire at the Templars, accusing them of accepting Muslim bribes during the siege of Damascus.
269
Although it is human nature to imagine overly complicated explanations for life’s setbacks, the reality is that the answers are often very simple. The failure of the Second Crusade was neither Bernard’s fault nor the Templars’; the Byzantines are not to blame, either (even though they did not assist at the level hoped for by Louis and Conrad). The Second Crusade failed because it was a poorly funded enterprise led by over-optimistic leaders who committed too many military blunders.
270

The Death of the “Honey-Sweet” Preacher

Pope Eugenius III died in July of 1153 and, a month later, his trustworthy and loyal mentor and friend, Bernard of Clairvaux, followed him into eternal glory. Bernard was canonized twenty-one years after his death and officially declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830 by Pope Pius VIII. Despite the criticism of modern-day writers, St. Bernard’s preaching of the Second Crusade was not “sinful” behavior; rather, it was the work of a man totally dedicated to Christ, his Church, and his vicar on earth.
271
The pope had called the Crusade and authorized Bernard to spread its message and motivate warriors to undertake its burden. Bernard understood the need for the Second Crusade and he worked tirelessly to promote it. His mission was far from sinful; it was the work of holiness. “The Church has had great saints since, perhaps even greater, but none ever again whose life and universal impact quite matched that of Bernard of Clairvaux.”
272

201
An anonymous trouvère song used for recruitment during the Second Crusade, J. Bédier and P. Aubry, eds.,
Les Chansons de Croisade avec Leurs Melodies
, 1909, 8–11; trans. M. Routledge in Jonathan Phillips,
The Second Crusade—Extending the Frontiers of Christendom
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 283.

202
Divina dispensation II
in Phillips,
The Second Crusade
, 134.

203
Bernard of Clairvaux, “
Epistolae
,” in
Sancti Bernardi Opera
, 8 vols., eds. J. Leclercq and H. Rohais, (Rome, 1955–1977), no. 247, 140–141 in Phillips,
The Second Crusade
, 65.

204
Outrémer, meaning “overseas,” was the French term for the Crusader States.

205
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 201.

206
Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, 41.

207
John France,
Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades 1000
–
1300
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 214.

208
Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant” in Thomas F. Madden,
The Crusades—Essential Readings
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 250.

209
See Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 71.

210
Ibid.

211
R.C. Smail,
Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193
(Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 102.

212
Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The First Crusaders
, 161.

213
Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 104.

214
Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 80.

215
Desmond Seward,
The Monks of War—The Military Religious Orders
(New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 19.

216
Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 76.

217
Ibid.

218
Seward,
The Monks of War
, 35.

219
Terence Wise,
The Knights of Christ
(London: Osprey Publishing, 1984), 6.

220
Riley-Smith,
The Crusades
, 79.

221
Wise,
The
Knights of Christ
, 7.

222
Ibid.

223
Seward,
The Monks of War
, 35.

224
Miriam Rita Tessera, “The Papal Schism of 1130,” in
Crusades
, vol. 9 of The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010), 11.

225
Seward,
The Monks of War
, 17.

226
Wise,
The Knights of Christ
, 26.

227
Seward,
The Monks of War
, 35.

228
Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 104.

229
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 269.

230
Phillips,
The Second Crusade
, xviii.

231
Maalouf,
The Crusades through Arab Eyes
, 135.

232
Madden,
The New Concise History of the Crusades
, 51.

233
Quantum Praedecessores
, trans. L. & J.S.C. Riley-Smith,
The Crusades: Idea and Reality
, 1095–1274 (London: 1981), 57–59, in Phillips,
The
Second Crusade
, 282.