Jonathan Riley-Smith

The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews

Between December 1095 and July 1096 there took place the first pogrom in western European History, a series of events so distressing to the Jewish people that rumours of them reached the Near East in advance of the First Crusade, inspiring the communities there with messianic fervour, while dirges in honour of the martyrs are recited in the synagogues to this day. The first outbreaks seem to have occurred in France soon after the preaching of the crusade and the first evidence of them is a letter written by the French communities to their Rhineland counterparts, warning them of the impending threat. It is possible that persecution was widespread in France, even though the details of it are lost, apart from a reference to an anti-Jewish riot which broke out among men gathering to take the cross in Rouen. Much more evidence is available about events in the Rhineland. On 3 May 1096 the storm broke over the community at Speyer, where a crusading army of Rhinelanders and Swabians under Count Emich of Leiningen had gathered.

A Just Cause

By the middle of the thirteenth century Christian writers were generally in agreement that the just cause for a war must be defensive and their views prevail today. It is just to defend one’s country, laws and traditional way of life, just to try to recover property unlawfully taken by another, perhaps even just to enforce by physical means a properly delivered judicial sentence. It is not just to wage a war of aggrandisement or of conversion. This principle, we shall see, applied to the crusade no less than to any war, but in the first century of the movement, when the just cause was still a subject of discussion, other justifications for crusading were being put forward. St Augustine’s definition of just violence, that it avenged injuries, presupposed a much less passive attitude on the part of the just than was later to be acceptable, especially in the notion of vengeance, which haunted canon lawyers until c. 1200, after which it seems gradually to have been dropped, and in a wide interpretation of the injuries to be avenged, which could include any violation of righteousness, God’s laws or Christian doctrine. As late as the middle of the thirteenth century Hostiensis seems to have believed that Christendom had an intrinsic right to extend its sovereignty over all those who did not recognise the rule of the Roman Church or Roman Empire.

Religion and the Laity

Since the Carolingian age Catholic Christianity had spread from its heartland in the British Isles, France, the empire, Italy and northern Spain, to become the official religion of Bohemia, Poland and Hungary. A uniform though sparse church organisation existed throughout this huge area. The Christian west was divided into dioceses, though they varied considerably in size; but the provision of parishes was very uneven. All towns had at least one church while some had more than a hundred, but even in parts of the west which had been Christian for centuries many rural areas, were still served by the clergy of a central minster. The growth of parishes increased the possibility of conflict between clergy and laity. The cost of maintaining churches and priests was largely met from tithes, theoretically levied on all sources of income, but normally on the principal grain crops, but tithes were frequently impropriated by lay patrons, and this was a source of litigation.

The Rural Economy and Demographic Growth

For a deeper understanding of the interlocking phenomena of the years between 1050 and 1190, one would obviously need to turn ones attention to the towns, to long-distance exchanges, to the various social strata, and to both their spiritual and their economic interrelations. This chapter focuses on the dramatic increase in population and then unprecedented surge in agricultural production. South and north, Atlantic littoral and central Europe offer many contrasts in rhythm, in scale or even in the underlying causes determining the development of particular systems for the cultivation of the soil. Cereals may well be the main feature of the rural economy in regions characterised by a sedentary mode of existence and yet by no means all the soil in Europe was given over to the production of grain. Demographic increase, and the development of pack-animals, whether saddled or yoked, exerted considerable pressure upon natural resources.

Towns and the Growth of Trade

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, most of Europe was distinctly backward and peripheral by comparison with areas south of the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, which were highly commercialised and urbanised and under Muslim control. There were two distinctive core areas for urban growth: northern Italy and the territories bordering the southern part of the North Sea and the English Channel and extending up the Rhine. The most fundamental stimulus to urban and commercial growth was that of rural development and population increase. The interaction between local resources and lordship shaped patterns of urban growth, especially for small towns. Some of the largest and most populous cities owed their standing to their handling of a transit trade and to their role as centres for collecting and redistributing goods. The rapid growth of towns promoted commercial solutions to the basic problems of supply, and this in turn encouraged specialised agriculture.

Zengids, Ayyubids and Seljuqs

For thirty years by 1063, Nizam al-Mulk devoted every effort to shaping the jerry-built Seljuqid political enterprise into a centralized absolutist monarchy. The decadence of Seljuqid power in western Iran after the death of Masud coincided with the collapse of Seljuqid rule in the East. In 1078 Malikshahs brother Tutush conquered Syria, but from the outset the latters ambitions were not easy to restrain. The occupation of Damascus reunified Syria for the first time since the death of Tutush, and the way in which unity was achieved ensured that Nur al-Din could exploit the citys military and fiscal resources with no fear of rebellion. In the eyes of Nur al-Din and Saladin, the Isma ʾilis interpretation of Islam espoused by the Fatimids was flagrantly heretical. The Ayyubids had had their eye on Mesopotamia and Mosul since Saladins time, and in any case it made sense to pre-empt any efforts at a Zengid revanche in Mesopotamia and north Syria.

The Byzantine Empire, 1118–1204

Under John II and Manuel I Byzantium remained a wealthy and expansionist power, maintaining the internal structures and external initiatives which were necessary to sustain a traditional imperial identity in a changing Mediterranean world of crusaders, Turks and Italian merchants. The revival of imperial interest in the crusader states had permanent consequences in that it led to a renewal of Byzantine links with Western Europe. Yet the period following Manuels death and the overthrow of the regency government of Alexios II saw reversion to something like the isolationism of John IIs early years. The Byzantine state was one of the most centralized in the medieval world, and never more so than in the period 1081-1180, when the loss of central and eastern Anatolia forced the empires military elite, as well as its bureaucratic elite, to identify with the capital as never before. Under the successors of Manuel I, the Comnenian system, centred on Constantinople, was programmed for self-destruction.

(b): Norman Sicily in the twelfth century

The settlement and, eventually, conquest of southern Italy by the Normans during the eleventh century had greatly altered both its society and its political structures, above all by the conquest of Muslim Sicily. Both in the duchy of Apulia and the principality of Capua the rulers effective command became confined to part only of his nominal dominions. Dukes Roger Borsa and William lost control of the coastal regions of Apulia, and found it increasingly difficult to exercise authority in inland Apulia and northern Calabria. The growing instability in southern Italy can be graphically illustrated by the problems of the Benevento region in the second decade of the twelfth century. The Pope Honorius II was the unifying force behind the south Italian coalition against Roger II in 1127-28. His involvement stemmed in part from the increasing intervention of the papacy in south Italian affairs, especially after the conclusion of peace with the western empire in 1122.

The Crusades, 1095–1198

The proclamation of the First Crusade at Clermont by Pope Urban II on 27 November 1095 was marked by the flamboyance which was a feature of his year-long journey through France. The goal of Jerusalem made the First Crusade a pilgrimage. In synthesising the traditions of war and pilgrimage Urban gave the idea of penitential warfare, which had emerged in embryo in the past decade or so, substance by linking it to the most charismatic penance then known, pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Many of the earliest crusaders lived within reach of the stages on the popes itinerary through France, but many more did not, and it is not clear how the news of his message spread in a form that was sufficiently appealing to encourage men to join up. The Spanish crusade was discussed at a council at Compostela in January 1125, presided over by Archbishop Diego Gelmirez, who issued a call to arms.

Muslim Spain and Portugal: Al-Andalus and its Neighbours

The frontiers of al-Andalus were free from major outside threats: to the north the Christian kingdoms and counties had been repeatedly raided and their armed forces worsted in battle, culminating in the humiliating sack of Santiago de Compostela in 999. The removal of the Fatimids from Tunisia to Egypt in 969 meant that there was no threat to al-Andalus from the Muslim east. With the collapse of the caliphate, al-Andalus broke up into a number of different states, each with its own court and capital. By 1083, the Almoravids had reached the Straits of Gibraltar and were in undisputed control of Morocco. By 1148, only Granada and the Balearic islands remained under Almoravid control: Granada fell to the Almohads in 1155, but the Balearic islands remained in the hands of the Almoravid Banu Ghaniya and the base for repeated raids on Almohad North Africa.