| #### 3. . THE OFFENSIVE AGAINST ISLAM: SICILY, SPAIN, THE EAST. 106-1099 |

| #### #### The solemn imperial assent, given at Worms, to the principle that the Church is spiritually autonomous, marks the end of the hardy papal offensive on a usurpation consecrated by centuries. It is one of several signs that the Church, and the civilisation of which it is the main force, has left behind it for ever one very definite phase of growth. Another such contemporary sign is the new successful Catholic offensive against Islam, an offensive undertaken in Spain, and also in those Eastern lands whence Islam had first issued forth to destroy a whole Christian empire. The popes who, in the West, have successfully challenged the hold of the civil power over spiritual things are the popes who organise and promote the first crusade. #### The land where Our Lord was born and died had had a powerful attraction for the West from the time of the first Christian emperors. With Constantine's restoration of Jerusalem, with the discoveries of the holy places and of the true cross, Palestine became the goal of innumerable pious travellers. The pilgrimage was born; and a whole organisation of hospices and related services sprang up to meet its innumerable requirements. Nor did the later political chaos which wore down the empire in the West really lessen, either the attraction of the East, or the determination of thousands to make their way thither. Commercial relations between the East and the West went on uninterrupted; in every Western town of any importance " Syrian" merchants were to be found and Paris, even, at the end of the sixth century, had a Syrian for its bishop. #### When, half-way through the seventh century, the armies of the new Arab religion destroyed the Christian power in the East, the difficulties of the long voyage were of course greatly increased. Nevertheless the pilgrimages persisted, and the systematic almsgiving organised for their support since the time of St. Gregory the Great. With Charlemagne there came the first attempt to win for the pilgrims a defined measure of security, through diplomatic action at the court of the caliphs. Harun-al-Raschid, in 807, gave the emperor a kind of recognition as the protector of all these Latin Christians, and the churches and monasteries began to be restored. For the next two hundred years the pilgrims to Palestine enjoyed a kind of regulated security. Then came the half mad caliph, Hakim (1009-1020), who inaugurated a violent persecution of Jews and Christians alike, and destroyed the churches. The storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. Peace was restored, but under. an entirely new regime. The protector henceforward was the Roman Emperor at Constantinople. It was under Byzantine influences that the new restoration took place and that the Christian quarter of Jerusalem was now fortified. #### This change of protector was to be of immense importance in the near future, for it was barely made when, in 1054, the schism of Cerularius came to separate Constantinople from the West for ever. The pilgrimages, however, continued, organised henceforth on a scale that made them miniature invasions. In 1027, for example, a pilgrimage left Normandy that counted 700 members under the protection of the Duke. In 1035 the Duke himself led a great band. But the greatest of all was the pilgrimage of 1065, 12,000 strong, led by the Bishop of Bamberg -- a real military expedition which, more than once, had to fight for its life. Despite the new Greek prestige, the enthusiasm for these spiritual expeditions grew with every year, and the Latin churches and monasteries began to be rebuilt. #### Then, in the last half of this same eleventh century, a new virile force appeared, to dominate the Mohammedan world in the East and to threaten, not merely the security of the pilgrimages, but the existence of Eastern Christianity itself. This force was the empire of the Seljuk Turks. At first the auxiliaries, and then the masters, of the Caliphs of Baghdad they began, from 1064, to conquer Asia Minor and the islands in the Aegean Sea from the Roman Empire in the East, and to menace Constantinople itself. At the same time, they attacked the hold of the Fatimite Caliphs of Cairo on Syria, and in the very year of their great victory at Manizikert over the emperor, Romanus IV, (1071) they took Jerusalem from the Fatimites. Thereupon the chivalrous idea began to develop in the West of a holy war to recover the East from the Turks. #### To liberate Christians by force of arms -- for what other way was there? -- from the yoke of their Mohammedan conquerors had already, for some years, been an integral part of the papal programme of religious restoration. And the papal interest in this had naturally shown itself first of all where the Mohammedan conquests were nearest to the popes, in Sicily and in Spain. The accident that the establishment of the Normans in the south of Italy coincided with a civil war in Sicily where three Mohammedan princes contended, made the Christian task here all the more easy. It was in 1060 that Robert Guiscard crossed the straits of Messina, and he fought the long war which followed as the sworn vassal of St. Peter, and under the banner blessed for him by Alexander II. #### In Spain -- where the Mohammedans were still, after three hundred and fifty years, masters from Gibraltar to within less than a hundred miles of the Pyrenees -- there were also, midway through this same century, serious feuds among the Mohammedan rulers; while in the little kingdom of Castile there appeared in 1072 a great leader in the king Alphonso VI (1072-1109). Eight years before his accession the neighbouring King of Aragon, Sancho I (1063-1094) had led an army into the valley of the Ebro and had taken Barbastro -- an expedition significant in two ways of what was soon to come, for the king had the assistance of many French knights, and their presence in his army was due in part to the pope. It was Alexander II who was the real inspirer of what was, in effect, the first of the crusades. Not only, as in Sicily, did this army fight in Spain against the Moors under the pope's banner, but, anticipating the great act of Urban II thirty years later, the pope raised the character of the military activity by granting to all those who fought what we should call a plenary indulgence. #### The expedition of 1063 ended, indeed, in failure. But Alexander II was preparing a renewal of it when, in 1173, he died. St. Gregory VII, who followed him, had been a main power in this as in Alexander's other policies. and for him too it remained one of the duties before the Holy See to provide for the liberation of Spain. But from now on and for some years, there were serious obstacles to check the good will of Gregory VII. The chief of these, of course, was the struggle with Henry IV of Germany that began Within three years of the pope's election and which, from thence on, more and more absorbed his whole attention. But there were serious difficulties also from within the little Christian kingdoms of the peninsula, Leon, Castile, Navarre, Aragon and the county of Barcelona. Here too there was urgent need of a religious reformation, and the Church suffered from the same trio of evils that tried it elsewhere: clerical ill-living, simony, the lay control of ecclesiastical appointments. To root out these abuses the popes employed in Spain the services they found useful in Italy and France -- local councils over which papal legates presided, and the subjection of the local episcopate to more or less permanent resident legates. And here they came into conflict not only with Alphonso VI of Castile [ ] but with the great ecclesiastical system of Cluny also, nowhere better organised, more fruitful in good results or more powerful than in these frontier territories. When the war of reconquest began again, in 1079, the papacy had no share in it, and none therefore in Alphonso's great feat, the capture of Toledo in 1085, which had a sensational effect throughout all Europe. #### After the spectacular capture of Toledo there was a strong Moorish reaction, and the early years of Urban II's pontificate are chiefly remarkable for the reconciliation which this Clunisian pope brought about between the Cluniacs in Spain and the papal legates. No pope could, through his antecedents, have been more interested personally in Spain than this one-time prior of Cluny and Urban has the great merit, too, that he brought to an end the animosity which had kept Castile and the papacy at arm's length for so many precious years. Finally, in the Spanish expeditions of 1089-1092, a great French soldier had emerged, Raymond, the Count of St. Gilles. #### The papacy had, then, already quite an amount of practical experience of the hazards and difficulties of war against Mohammedans -- as well as a conviction of its real importance for the future of religion -- and Urban II himself was peculiarly well-placed to appreciate new projects when, at the council of Piacenza in March, 1095, envoys came to him from the Byzantine emperor Alexis I, begging for aid against the new enemy, the Seljuk Turks. #### This was, of course, no appeal from a legendary land and a half-forgotten race. The papacy had never lost touch with Constantinople, despite the events of 1054; and to direct the Holy War to the East, as well as to the West, had very definitely been in the plans of St. Gregory VII at the outset of his reign. There was a friendly exchange of letters between this pope and the emperor Michael VII, in 1073, and a papal embassy was sent to Constantinople. In 1074 the pope made an attempt, which failed entirely, to organise an army for the defence of the Byzantine empire. In language characteristic of Gregory's generous spirit the religious case for the crusade is set out here once and for all, "These pagans have made a vigorous onslaught on the Christian empire; they have pillaged and laid waste the whole land with unheard of cruelties up to the very gates of Constantinople. They have occupied these countries with tyrannical violence and massacred thousands and thousands of Christians like beasts. If, therefore, we have any love for God, if we are truly Christian people, the unhappy fate of this great empire and the deaths of so many Christians must be for us all a great anxiety. Our Lord's own example, who redeemed us, and the duty of Christian charity, bid us not only to lament these misfortunes, but also, if it be necessary, to give ourselves in sacrifice for our brethren." [ ] #### To this appeal not a single prince made any reply, and very soon came the long war with the German king to absorb all the pope's attention. But what Gregory VII had failed to do in 1074, his disciple and alter ego Urban II did achieve twenty years later. #### Urban II's interest in Eastern affairs began in the first year of his reign, while the pope, still exiled from Rome, was busy in Sicily with the reorganisation of the Church in this newly-liberated land. He was, at this same time, in communication with the Byzantine emperor, tentatively suggesting a reconciliation between Rome and the Eastern Churches. It was from the pope that the first move had come; nothing less, indeed, than a complaint to the emperor that, without any synodal action to justify it, his name was no longer recited in the Holy Liturgy. From this unexpected, and somewhat embarrassing, communication, there rapidly developed, at Constantinople, an important controversy; and soon the whole case for and against the achievement of Cerularius was revived. The emperor, Alexis I, was favourable to a rapprochement with Rome; the bishops, generally, were against it. The emperor's reasons were political -- and so too were those of Urban II, anxious to ward off the menace of an understanding between Alexis, Henry IV and the anti-pope "Clement III". #### A council at Constantinople decided finally for the emperor's point of view. The pope's name was restored to the diptychs and he was invited to a council where the outstanding differences that kept East and West apart would be discussed. Our information about this episode goes no further, but relations between Urban II and Alexis I continued to be friendly, and it was wholly in keeping with this new spirit and with the events of the previous seven years that, in 1095, the emperor sent his appeal to the Council of Piacenza. [ ] #### In the months that intervened between that council and the one which followed at Clermont the pope had time to frame his policy, and to consult such experienced advisors as the Bishop of Le Puy and the Count of St. Gilles. When, in November, the council brought in to the ancient capital of Auvergne such an unprecedented host of lay enthusiasts, the pope was given the ideal setting for the publication of the new ideal. No doubt the circumstances fired him to make one of the great speeches of history. There were present at the council two hundred and sixty-four bishops, four hundred abbots, thousands of the lower clergy, and a vast multitude -- a hundred thousand it is said -- of nobles, knights and lesser folk. It was on November 27 that the pope made his famous speech. The text of it has not survived, but we know it was an appeal to the immense host before him to give themselves generously to deliver the Christians of the East from the new perils that beset them. The immediate result was an enthusiasm without limits and to the cry "God wills it" clerics, nobles, knights, and men of the people pressed forward to vow their lives, and to take as their badge that cross of red cloth from which came the name of Crusade. #### It remained for the pope to organise this unprecedented enthusiasm into a definite fighting machine. To all who took the cross -- that is to say, to those who vowed to go to the Holy Land and fight for the deliverance of the holy places -- the pope granted plenary indulgence; whatever penances lay on them for past sins were remitted. The vow, once taken, was irrevocable; excommunication fell upon those who broke it. During the crusader's absence his property was under the Church's special protection and precautions were taken to save the would-be crusader from vowing himself without due premeditation. Monks were not to go without their abbot's permission. The faithful were bidder to take the advice of their clergy before enrolling themselves Young people were forbidden to go at all, and so, too, were married women. The Bishop of Le Puy was named as the pope, legate to preside over the whole vast affair. Constantinople was appointed as the rendezvous; the feast of the Assumption 1096 as the time. Letters were sent to all the bishops of Christendom to enlist their help, a succession of councils was held throughout France and Italy, and finally preachers were appointed to stir up enthusiasm and enlist recruits even in the smallest towns and most remote villages. Never had Europe known, in any cause such a vast campaign of propaganda. [ ] #### The preaching of the crusade produced a result wholly un expected by Urban II. In the pope's mind, the movement he had called into being was to be transformed into a disciplined military expedition led by the nobles of Christendom. [ ] But long before this organised force was ready, enormous hordes of simple peasants, raised to a pitch of extraordinary fervour by the extravagance of wandering preachers, confounding often enough the heavenly Jerusalem with that the pope designed to free, victim of all manner of apocalyptic fantasies, set out for the East. Poor men, weary of the endless oppression of their masters, broken by the strain of bad harvests, driven desperate by the hopelessness of a hard life, they readily listened to what seemed the offer of an easy way to the millennium, and, a vast, unorganised rabble, with their wives, children, and old people, all their movables stowed on the farm waggon, their oxen shod and harnessed to it, by thousands and by tens of thousands, they slowly made their way through southern Germany and Hungary. Necessity made them lawless; they pillaged and looted as they went. A misguided piety led them, more than once, to wholesale slaughter of such Jews as they encountered. Long before they reached the Byzantine frontier their acts of brigandage had roused whole populations against them. The march through Hungary was a series of massacres and fights. In Constantinople itself, what of the horde survived gave itself to plunder, even stripping the churches of their lead. When, finally, they crossed the Bosphorus into infidel territory the Turks speedily made an end of the most of them. It was a very small band indeed that survived with Peter the Hermit to welcome, at Constantinople, the arrival of the real official crusaders six months later. #### The military expedition was made up of four great divisions-Lorrainers, Germans, and northern French under Godfrey of Bouillon; Normans and other Frenchmen from the north under Robert of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son. Provencaux under Raymond of Provence (whom the legate accompanied); and the Normans of southern Italy under the command of Robert Guiscard's eldest son, Bohemond. After varying adventures and disasters, the last of these armies arrived before Constantinople in May, 1097 -- nine months later than the appointed date. All was now ready for the Christian attempt to roll back Islam after its four hundred years, occupation of Christian lands. #### It must be borne in mind that the condition of the Mohammedan world in 1096 was eminently favourable to the crusaders. Asia Minor, and Syria, too, were but recent conquests of the Turks. The populations were hostile to them, and the immediate military problem was that of disposing of the occasional Turkish garrisons scattered among their new, still hostile subjects. Moreover, since 1092, the Seljuks had lost their military unity. Where, until then, one powerful figure had dominated their world, four of his generals now disputed the succession. Asia Minor and Syria were each of them practically independent states. Syria especially, torn by a civil war between rival emirs, was in poor condition to resist the new invasion. The Mohammedan State in Egypt, by no means resigned to its defeat by the Turks twenty years earlier, was making from the south efforts to regain its ancient hold; and the very year that saw the crusade victorious at Antioch also saw the Turks defeated by the Egyptians at Jerusalem which, in 1098, reverted to Egypt after twenty-seven years. #### Given competent leadership, it could only be a matter of time before the enormous crusading army defeated the weakened force of Islam. But to defeat the Mohammedans, it was already beginning to be apparent, was only half the problem. How much of the piety that had sent the crusaders into battle would remain to inspire their handling of the fruits of victory? The motives of Urban II and of the thousands who, at his appeal, took the cross were nothing but religious. So far the crusade was a gigantic, universal act of faith. Around this core of spirituality elements of more mixed quality soon gathered. There were merchants of one kind or another to whom the huge expedition offered undreamed-of opportunities of sudden commercial expansion; there were the adventurers and speculators whom every age has known and knows; and there were the ambitions and rival interests of the different princes and states to whom the actual conduct of operations was necessarily entrusted. Three princes especially, even before the expedition crossed into Asia, had already made their plans. Bohemond aimed at a kingdom with Antioch for its centre. Baldwin of Flanders -- brother to Godfrey of Bouillon-who detested Bohemond, would check him and establish a rival state at Edessa. Raymond of Provence, equally suspicious of Bohemond, would counteract his influence by his principality of Tripoli. The Italian merchant states, Genoa, Pisa and Venice, supplying much of the shipping and serving the armies with trading supplies, also looked to their compensating profits, to concessions and trading privileges in the new states. The conduct of the crusade must, in the nature of things, be entrusted to these states and princelings. The possibility, if not the certainty, was already present that they would use the great opportunity, and all that the faith of thousands had to offer, for their own personal aggrandisement, Christians still being not wholly Christian in their detachment. #### And already, too, another cloud darkened the prospects of the future -- the attitude towards the crusade of the emperor at Constantinople. It is true that, more than once, he had made appeals for help-to the West. But that help, for all that it had now arrived, had not come in the way he had planned. He had looked for reinforcements, to be at his orders, in the re- conquest of the lost provinces. What had happened was the arrival of huge independent armies capable of conquering not only the Turks but also, perhaps, what the Turks had left unconquered of the imperial domain. The emperor's plans and the aim of the crusade -- to say nothing of the personal ambitions of the different princes -- were at variance. There could never be anything but mutual suspicion and continual conflict, the emperor striving always by diplomatic shifts to neutralise the crusaders' superior force, and the exasperation of the crusaders steadily growing though a hundred years until, finally, they made themselves masters of Constantinople too. #### In May, 1097, the Catholic army crossed into Asia, and after a fortnight's siege the first of the Turkish strongholds fell to it -- Nicea. A fortnight later, at Dorylaeum, they routed the field army of the local sultan. The way through Asia Minor now lay open to them, and by October they were before the walls of Antioch. It was eight months before they reduced the city, and scarcely had they done so, slaughtering the garrison, when the victors were themselves besieged by a relieving Turkish army. They were utterly unprepared. In a few days plague and famine carried off a hundred thousand of their men. Many of the leaders made their way out of the apparently doomed city, and then the miraculous discovery of the Holy Lance that had pierced the side of Our Lord, revived the crusaders' confidence. Heartened by what all took as an evident sign of divine guidance, a bold sally planned by Bohemond put the besiegers to flight (June 28, 1098). #### Nothing remained but to march on Jerusalem. It was, however, a good nine months before that march began, and the main cause of the delay was the quarrel between Bohemond and Raymond of Provence over the possession of Antioch. The legate, who might have been allowed to settle the matter, had died. Raymond, seeing the prize escape, began the first treacherous negotiations with the Byzantines, preferring to see them masters rather than his rival. Finally Bohemond was left in possession and in April, 1099, the crusade -- its rank and file weary of the costly sacrifice to the vanity of its leaders -- set out on the last stage of the journey. #### Negotiations had been opened, a year before this, with the Egyptians, and it had been agreed that the crusaders were to have Jerusalem. But since that promise the Egyptians had themselves regained it (August, 1098) and when on June 6, 1099, after three years of marching and fighting, the Catholic army came before the Holy City there lay before it yet another siege. It was a siege of short duration. After another, alleged, vision in which the deceased legate appeared to one of the Provencal army, and after a great penitential procession, when the army, barefoot, made the circuit of the walls, while the enemy jeered and derided from the battlements, the assault was begun (July 14). The next day the crusaders were in, the defence forced at various points. It was the signal for one of the most frightful massacres of history. The victors killed all they met, soldiers and inhabitants, men, women and children, and their horses splashed through streets that ran in blood. After four hundred and sixty years of Mohammedan rule Jerusalem was once more in Christian hands. Urban II died just a fortnight later, before he had learnt of this final triumph. ####  |