All Things Medieval

We’ve been talking about 11th century Europe in terms of its political strife and church reform movements at the top. To understand the next event in the new Crusade, we have to look at the vacuum left among the common people.

The recent Popes had been monks of the Cluniac variety, referring to the Benedictine monastery founded in 910 in Cluny, France. As yet, there were no other orders of monks; all Western monasteries followed the Order of St. Benedict, laid down in pre-medieval times. It stipulated what a monk could own, wear and eat; at what hours the monastic community must gather for prayer; and other aspects of life. Ordination as a monk meant giving up most rights to choice. The ideal was to leave the world, deny oneself, and center each day around prayer. Every monk who left the world and went into a cloister helped to save society by keeping a continual prayer rising to God.

Over time, Benedictine monasteries had grown somewhat slack. Property left in exchange for prayers for the dead made the monastery, if not the individual monk, rich. This land was often controlled by a secular ruler who became the de facto ruler of the monastery. Some monks took concubines and nobody did anything about it.

The monastery at Cluny was stricter; it returned to the original Rule of Benedict in the most literal sense. Most importantly, the Abbot at Cluny was responsible only to the Pope. The 11th century Cluniac monks who became Popes were fiercely opposed to any secular or state control over the church. But at the same time, they also upheld the ideal of holiness as withdrawal from the world and giving up sex. By the 11th century, many of them were agitating for all priests to conform to the Rule of Benedict; at that time some local priests were married.

The battle against state control and “the world” was the Big Question of the time, and little attention was given to what non-monks should be doing. Obviously, if everyone became a monk, society would come to an end. But the monastic ideal suggested that everyone else could go on living while the monasteries would be spiritual on their behalf. Ordinary people were to follow the Sacraments (baptism, Mass, confession, marriage if financially possible, last rites) and go about their business in a non-blasphemous way. While this was enough for most people, it left some feeling like there should be more. If they couldn’t go into monasteries, but wanted to be holier, what was left? Eventually, this vacuum contributed to the Cathar religious movement and then to the Protestant Reformation/Revolution. But for now, it just hung in the air, unstated.

I read somewhere recently that in order to get a bill passed into law, you have to use overkill and oversell. Not passing the bill has to be portrayed as the worst thing ever, while passing it would solve everything. That’s the process Pope Urban II embarked on. He needed to unite Europe, swaying the French and Norman kings to jettison their German-led loyalty to the other Pope. He needed to inspire the wealthy aristocrats to give large gifts and become leaders. He had to inspire them to leave their homes and go to likely deaths, as well, by entering a voluntary foreign war. In the Pope’s new sermon series, not going on this pilgrimage meant permitting unspeakable horrors, while going meant instant salvation and eternal glory.

The process of overkill and oversell worked too well. We’ve already seen how many of Europe’s second rank of royalty joined up; but the sermons preached in public reached other ears. Some of the listeners chose to boost the Pope’s signal by carrying the message of salvation by pilgrimage to everyone, not just to the royal courts. When the Byzantine Emperor sent his request for help to Pope Urban II, he lost control of the message as the Pope worked it into his own goals. Now, the Pope lost control of the message as the people of Europe took up a new cry: salvation by pilgrimage! God wills it!

Nobility on crusade, pt. 2

During the same period that Norman knights were conquering Sicily and parts of Italy, the Duke of Normandy conquered the island nation of England. The Anglo-Saxons continued to use the traditional Germanic war method of the shield wall, while the Norman lords had begun fight on horseback. It’s likely that Norman knights adopted horseback fighting after seeing their Saracen enemies in Spain, Italy and Sicily fight this way. Their ability to rain blows on the enemy from the height of a horse was a tactical advantage.

But at a key point in the Battle of Hastings, Duke William’s horse was killed by an arrow or spear. The Duke was left to fight on foot. One of the Duke’s liege lords, the Count of Boulogne, dismounted and gave his horse to the Duke, who continued to victory. The Count of Boulogne is also given credit for being one of those who eventually found and slew the English king. He was richly rewarded for his loyal service, although he stayed on the continent.

Boulogne-sur-Mer is on the coast of the English Channel, across from Dover. It is an important fishing town, but it also controls access to crossing the Channel. It was just part of Flanders until the 11th century’s sudden rise in Norman power, when it was elevated to its own County. The Counts of Boulogne were in the second rank of aristocracy just below royalty.

Eustace II married the daughter of the Duke of Lorraine, a province on the French-German border. They may have been the richest family in Western Europe at the time. Countess Ida endowed several monasteries as well as the Cathedral of Notre Dame de la Mer in Boulogne.

Eustace and Ida had three sons: Eustace, Godfrey, and Baldwin. It seems to have been a close and happy family; Ida is remembered as breast-feeding her own babies, so they were likely to have grown up together as well, not farmed out to separate nannies. Eustace inherited his father’s County as the IIIrd of that name, but Godfrey and Baldwin were at first landless.

Then Ida’s brother died childless and left Lower Lorraine to Godfrey. Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, refused to give all of the land to Godfrey. He let him have the city of Bouillon and demanded that Godfrey fight in his wars to prove loyalty for the rest. So Godfrey fought for Henry IV in Italy, helping to capture Rome and depose the Pope. Eventually Henry IV rewarded him with most of Lorraine, but Godfrey became known in history by the town of Bouillon: Godfrey of Bouillon.

All three brothers took part in the First Crusade. There is no greater sign of wealth than for all three heirs of a family to go on Crusade. A commander was more important in the Crusade as he brought more fighting men. It meant equipping their own personal troops, made of minor knights from around Flanders and Lorraine. Eustace, Godfrey and Baldwin were all commanders.

Eustace’s daughter married a Norman, son of the Count of Blois, who was born in France but went to England with Duke William. The younger Count of Blois was also a grandson of William the Conqueror and became King for a short time, so Eustace’s daughter was briefly a Queen.

Godfrey and Baldwin both became Kings of Jerusalem. When the Crusaders needed to establish governance in the territory they won, monarchy was their only model and they had to choose someone among themselves. Godfrey and Baldwin were not brothers of Kings, but they were independently wealthy and had gained status during the fighting. So in time, the Boulogne family became ancestors of all of the colorful, eccentric, short-lived Crusader-Jerusalem “royalty.”

Pope Urban II appointed a bishop, Adhemar of Monteil, Bishop of Le Puy, as his official legate, or representative on the official mission. Adhemar had been to the Holy Land before, and recently; he knew what Seljuk Muslim Palestine was like. He led the official First Crusade made up of well-armed and disciplined noblemen. He was himself the younger son of a Frankish noble family, so his training and manners fit well with his role of diplomacy among counts and kings.

The choice to follow Adhemar on what was officially billed as a “pilgrimage” was also a test of loyalty to Pope Urban II. Anyone could travel to the Holy Land, but only those approved by Urban were official crusaders with the promise of absolved sin. The King of Germany, Holy Roman Emperor, was not going to bow the knee to Urban in order to go along. He still stubbornly recognized only his own appointed Pope Clement III. His distant cousin, King Philip of France, also chose not to go. He was under ban of excommunication concerning his second wife, who was actively bearing him children while he was in his 50s. In order to make peace with the Pope, he had to divorce her, so he chose to stay home. William II, King of England, was not free to go, although an active King of England participated in a later crusade.

The next rank of royalty made up most of the First Crusade. Philip’s younger brother Hugh Count of Vermandois was one of the leaders. Hugh was not a skilled warrior, and like Philip he was getting on in years and had gained weight. But he had what mattered most: a large feudal estate that could afford the cost and manpower of raising a private army. The current Duke Robert of Normandy was younger brother to the King of England. He was another middle-aged knight, no longer at the top of his form, but with plenty of feudal ties to exploit and money to spend. But both Normandy and France had previously endorsed the anti-Pope, Clement III. In order to bask in the glow of holy war, they had to change their alliance, abandoning the King of Germany to his private pout.

The chief ruler of southern Italy, a Norman named Bohemund, was one of the Pope’s newer allies. He was the son of Robert Guiscard, the fiercest Norman brigand to invade Sicily and Italy. Robert conquered most of southern Italy, styling himself Count of Apulia and leaving his son as Prince of Taranto. Robert and Bohemund were both involved in the Norman attempt to help a Byzantine prince regain the throne, so they had previously traveled and fought in what’s now Croatia and Serbia. They were enemies of the reigning Byzantine Emperor, but alliances could shift very quickly and easily sometimes. Bohemund was all in favor of boosting Pope Urban’s power base and converting his part of Italy to Roman Catholicism; “saving” the Byzantine Emperor was the new way of fighting against him, that’s all.

Raymond IV Count of Toulouse joined the princes. Toulouse was an independent County for much of the medieval period, often allied against France. Three more Counts joined, bringing in the wealth of Flanders, Blois and Boulogne.

The Count of Boulogne rode with his brothers, and together they became the most famous personalities of the First Crusade. They’re worth looking at on their own, partly because they tell us a lot about the state of governance around 1100, and partly because of their later fame.

There was a second reason for Pope Urban II to announce a new military adventure. We’ve seen the first reason: he was in a high-stakes battle against the kings of France and Germany to retain Europe’s allegiance, as they supported an alternative Pope. If the Church had to accept the alternative Pope, it meant the Church was not a higher authority.

But the second reason was that Europe’s homelands had too many trained fighting men. Popes had tried to introduce the idea of “the peace of God,” a vow to maintain domestic peace in a region. Economically, though, it went against the grain. Inheritance of a landed estate by only the eldest son left many younger sons without independence. When too many of them hung around home, they often rebelled against the family head to take the estate. When too many of them built up in a force around some Count or Baron, they had a great incentive to attack a neighboring lord and redistribute those estates to themselves. When they were attached to no household or lord at all, they tended to stake out a bridge and force people to pay tolls. (The origin of those medieval stories in which a knight won’t let people pass.)

At Clermont, Pope Urban II made a long speech that first recounted all of the Cluniac reforms to separate Church and State. Then he addressed the peacekeeping problem Europe had. Travelers weren’t safe, alliances were constantly threatened, he scolded. What a waste of energy! Instead, he pointed them to a new foreign adventure.

The Pope had no funds to outfit an army to help Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He had, instead, the power to grant forgiveness of sin and to mesmerize his audience with a vision. The barons and kings of Europe, he said, should stop using their money to buy and sell church influence. Use it to equip knights!

The Pope’s speech was written down in four separate accounts at various times. It was the most famous speech in Europe for centuries. The accounts differ a little, but they all agree that he vividly described the plight of pilgrims who were constantly held hostage for fees, buying themselves out of possible slavery. He described how the Turks despised Christianity and had plundered the churches. He quoted the Bible extensively, fitting his audience into the role of “God’s people” while the Turks were “Gentiles.” His speech wasn’t anti-Jew per se, but he certainly failed to take the Jewish point of view into account. It’s perhaps one time when the phrase “cultural appropriation” has a point.

The Pope had already appointed a Papal Legate (lawyer/agent) to command the army. He gave the knights one year to set their affairs in order and assemble in August 1096. He offered them unconditional forgiveness for going, but severe condemnation if they turned back. He declared spiritual condemnation for anyone who messed with the property or families of a pilgrim knight.

In one swoop, Pope Urban II established his authority, took a step toward Church reunification, dazzled medieval minds with visions of angels and miracles, drained Europe of surplus men and money, and tempted French and German knights to stop supporting their kings (who were *not* invited). It worked; the audience took up a cry of “Deus vult!” and began making pilgrim vows on the spot.

His speech began with strong statements of Cluniac reform: against the influence of money in the church, against state control, against worldly bishops appointed by kings. Then he moved to what we’d call the “money quote,” pulled out in large type to catch the eye:

“Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God.

“For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them.

“On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.”

He promised instant forgiveness of sin to anyone who died in the attempt to fulfill his request. Pope Urban II may not have known just what a tidal wave he was triggering, but he had a Bishop already appointed as spiritual military commander. He set a starting date for August, 1096.

Before the First Crusade to the Holy Land, the idea of religious war was tried out in Spain.

The Christian kingdoms in the north were, from west to east (left to right): Galicia with two Atlantic borders; Castile and Leon, lined up along the northern Atlantic coast; Navarre and Aragon, along the foothills of the Pyrenees (Aragon was landlocked). Their ruling families were so frequently engaged in fraternal wars that they really needed no outside enemies. Marriages and deaths were constantly uniting and dividing portions of the kingdoms; it’s hard to find a year when no Christian kings were at war with each other.

In 1064, only Aragon was ruled independently; its king, Sancho, accepted the Pope’s offer to send an international contingent of knights to help take back a city on Aragon’s border. The Duke of Aquitaine and some of the Normans who had been invading Italy joined him to besiege and conquer Barbastro. It appears that city was truly sacked in a way that local Muslim and Christian armies did not normally do. Instead of backing off and organizing tribute, the Norman and French knights set about executing, raping, enslaving and burning. Only a year later, the Muslims had recaptured the town; but the siege of Barbastro seems to have been a psychological turning point.

Historians now dispute just how directly the Pope offered his assisance in this first proto-Crusade, but there’s no doubt that the next Pope proclaimed automatic forgiveness of sin to any knights who went to Spain. Pope Gregory VII (who was often at war with the King of Germany) clearly saw the danger of relying too much on the Franks, whether French or German. He was trying to strengthen new ties to support Rome. The Kings of Aragon and Leon vied for who could promise the Pope better support and more loyalty to his reforms. If either of them emerged as a strong Rome supporter, the Pope would be safer.

King Alfonso of Leon-Castile led the next major invasion (apparently without international guests) against the Muslims. The taifa of Toledo was already paying him tribute, and it was not actually hostile to him personally, since he had lived there for a short time to be safe from a losing battle against his brother, the King of Navarre. But after he had consolidated power, he occupied Toledo in 1085 and made it his new capital city, as it had once been the capital of the Visigoths. He quickly appointed one of the Pope’s close associates (a Frenchman, not a Castilian) as Archbishop of Toledo and decreed that churches there must follow the current rites of Rome, not their traditional ones.

The loss of Toledo was a huge blow to the allied Muslim taifas. The emirs of Seville, Toledo, Valencia and Granada faced a problem: would Spain have another international invasion? The emirs could be friendly with Spanish kings; the Emir of Zaragoza apparently stalled one crusade attempt in 1073 by allying with the King of Navarre against the King of Aragon. Nor were these emirs recent immigrants; by 1050 they shared more culture with any other Spanish city than with far-off Muslim places like Egypt. But the nature of territorial war in Spain seemed to be changing. The emirs couldn’t afford to allow Spain to become a bloody international battleground while they used only local forces. They would have to call on international Muslims.

It was a bitter decision because the closest Muslims were Berbers, and importing Berbers had always been a huge mistake. The emirs were aware that mercenaries might take over; but the Emir of Seville is supposed to have said, “it’s better to drive camels in Africa than to herd pigs in Seville.” If he was going to lose power, he would rather be overthrown by Muslims than by savage Normans.

They sent a request to Marrakech, the capital of the Almoravid dynasty. The Almoravids arrived quickly, wearing Tuareg blue veils as a uniform. In 1086, the emirs of several cities and the Almoravids met Alfonso’s army at Badajoz, on the border of modern Portugal. The Arabs later nicknamed the field of battle “al-Zalaka” which means “slippery,” because the ground became so bloody. Alfonso survived but with immense losses; he withdrew to Toledo and did not invade Muslim territory again.

Meanwhile, the Almoravids began overthrowing the same emirs who had invited them. The emirs had become too complacent about religion, too willing to ally with Christians, and too much like city-dwellers who loved luxury, safety, and high taxes. The Emir of Seville was taken captive by Berbers in 1091, the same year that Turks came very close to the gates of Constantinople. He died imprisoned in Morocco in 1095, the same year that the Pope called for the First Crusade to help Constantinople.

In one of the curious twists of history, the Muslim daughter-in-law of the Emir of Seville ended up taking refuge with King Alfonso in Toledo, and she probably became his 3rd wife. Alfonso maintained Toledo’s scholarly library and began a program of translating its works into Castilian (his spoken language) and Latin. He continued to strike Arabic-letter coins. At this point, the Mozarab culture could hardly distinguish between native ideas/images and Arabic ones.

We traced earlier how the rise of the Pope’s power was always tied into the military support of Charlemagne’s family. After the land of the Franks broke up for the last time in an inheritance distribution, separate branches of the family ruled in Paris and Aachen. The King of the Germans was by far stronger during the 10th and 11th centuries. Most of the German kings were also separately crowned as King of Italy in Pavia.

The north of Italy was still called Lombardy; Pavia was its capital and they still had their historical “Iron Crown” that was used in each coronation ritual. Any King of Germany and Italy also controlled Rome. Being crowned Holy Roman Emperor was a separate deal; it doesn’t seem to have come automatically but had to be negotiated with the Pope in each generation.

In the years leading up to the First Crusade, the balance of power between King and Pope became a crisis. The key problem was that the church drew its financial support from land ownership; a bishop was not only a “Prince of the Church” but also the secular ruler of fairly extensive lands. Remember that government was managed by means of the pyramid of feudalism; each manor was part of a larger unit, and each of these part of a larger region, all under the king. The Church didn’t rule any particular region, but they owned patches of land all through every county and dukedom. Bishops were technically independent, but in fact they were woven all into the governance of a kingdom.

If the King could appoint bishops in his territory, he could make sure that they were agreeable to his rule. It was easiest to appoint younger sons of the local ruling family as bishops. They were already part of society and its structure of loyalty. It was easiest of all if the King/Emperor could appointed the Pope, too, and several of them did, including the Empress who was regent for her son, the future Henry IV.

The Popes began to see the danger of leaning too much on the Franks. If the Pope was entirely dependent on the kings of France and Germany, the Church would cease to have any real meaning. A new Benedictine monastic movement in Cluny, France insisted that the Church must be separate and higher, to honor God.

In the middle of the 11th century, the Pope’s legal adviser and ambassador, Hildebrand, steered Rome through several smaller crises in which the city had elected a different pope from the one appointed by the German Empress. In 1073, during the previous pope’s funeral rites, the people of Rome formed a mob and demanded that Hildebrand himself should become Pope to fight for Roman independence. Hildebrand wasn’t even a priest, but at popular request he was quickly ordained priest, bishop and Pope. Right around this same time, Henry IV became an adult and took power in his own name as King of the Germans.

The new Pope Gregory VII opposed the German King in every way possible. As his most lasting reform, he set up a separate governance structure, the Roman Curia, to elect popes and appoint bishops. It’s hard for us to understand, from our viewpoint, just how important this was in Europe’s history. We associate the Curia with everything old-fashioned, hidden and authoritarian. But in its creation, it was an institution to maintain distance between church and state. It was part of the long European conflict that finally gave us our modern theory of private religion. The young Henry IV knew exactly what was at stake and opposed everything Gregory VII did.

During Henry IV’s 50 year reign, he deposed the Pope *twice* (appointing his own counter Pope) and was excommunicated (twice). The first time, he was still in his early 20s and found a way to turn his excommunication to strategic advantage. He begged the Pope for forgiveness by standing barefoot for 3 days in the snow, outside the castle where the Pope was staying. It was great religious theater, but it also gave him a reason to keep his army stationed nearby. (His later capture of Rome could only be reversed by the Pope’s allies fighting pitched battles.)