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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.
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