Faith: A Strategic Factor In The First Crusade

Faith: A Strategic Factor in the First Crusade

Much has been written about the crusades, but very little about the crusaders themselves. What motivated those late eleventh century warriors? Was it greed? Was it honor? Was it religion? What was it that drove these men, women, and children to put their lives on pause and risk their very being for this campaign? Did the first crusade advance the cause of Christianity or were the temporal concerns of the day more the issue? This paper will explore how faith became the single most strategic factor in the annals of the first crusade.

To begin the discussion on what motivated the crusade and crusaders one must consider the history of Europe and the Middle East prior to the dawn of the twelfth century. Beginning in the mid to late first century a new religion that became known as Christianity arose out of Palestine and spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. By the end of the fourth century, the entire Roman Empire had officially adopted Christianity as the state religion as the result of peaceful missionary activities. Even Jerusalem, the former center of the Jewish faith, was predominately Christian as the Jews there had been dispersed by the pagan Roman rulers following the revolts of 66-70 and 132-135 AD.

It was during the seventh century that a new religious creed, Islam, burst on to the scene in Arabia. While Islam officially condemned the practice of forced conversions its religious leaders instructed the “faithful” that the world was to be under their political control. Therefore, Islam’s religious and political authority was spread through the use of the sword.

Carried out of Arabia by well equipped military forces, Islam quickly expanded through much of the Middle East. Byzantium and Persia, the area’s two major super-powers, were weak and exhausted from years of prolonged fighting with each other. While Persia was completely defeated and absorbed into the Islamic Empire areas occupied by the eastern Byzantine Empire resisted passionately but were also ultimately defeated in 636 which resulted in the capture and control of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 638. Throughout the rest of the seventh century Islamic armies continued to advance their way westward. For the next 300 years Muslims and Christians engaged in battle after battle including an unsuccessful siege by the Arabs on the empirical capital of Constantinople in 717-18.

Since the time of Constantine, Christians had made pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Even though Moslems had ruled the city of Jerusalem since 638 they were fairly tolerant of Christian interests in the city and allowed them to visit there. However, in the middle of the eleventh century the Arabs were removed as leaders of the Islamic religious and political regime and replaced by the Turks. In doing so, the Turks disrupted the socio-political structure in the Middle East and created considerable hardships for the western pilgrims. They robbed and murdered western Christian pilgrims destroying their churches and plundering cities and villages (Child, Kelly, Whitlock 13.) In the later half of the eleventh century, most pilgrimages to the Holy Land were made only in large, heavily armed bands or groups who, in retrospect, looked very much like crusade rehearsals.

In 1090, Count Robert of Flanders happened to travel through Constantinople on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On this occasion he was fortunate to engage an audience with Emperor Alexis. Upon his return to France, Robert had agreed to send a contingent of 500 knights to assist the Byzantines in their struggle against the Pechenegs who were threatening to breach the capital. This was very important to the Alexis as the Byzantine “treasury was short of money, and recruitment for the army and navy had seriously diminished” (Setton 125.) Alexis was ardent to engage western mercenaries in order to strengthen the eastern frontier. Never in his wildest dreams did Alexis envision that the West would launch anything to the scale that the first crusade brought to remove the Muslim infidel from the Christian Holy Land.

In 1095, Pope Urban II delivered an emotional appeal, at Clermont in central France, that was to launch the first crusade. Using colorful language to motivate and inspire his audience, the pope described how “the Turks, a Persian race have overrun the eastern Christians right up to the Mediterranean Sea. Occupying more and more of the land of the Christians on the borders of Romania [the Byzantine Empire], they have conquered them… slaughtering and capturing many, destroying churches and laying waste the Kingdom of God. So, if you leave them alone much longer they will further grind under their heel the faithful of God” (Pope Urban II.)

There is no doubt that the pope sought to play at the heart strings of his audience. In all actuality there were very few who were actually present during this historical speech (mostly priests and deacons and some lay people) and fewer yet who actually went on the crusade who could lay claim that they heard the pope’s call to arms (Bull). However, the pope’s message found its way to every nook and cranny in Europe. Mostly it was told again and again by laymen and preachers such as Peter the Hermit. Who could have foreseen the tens of thousands of people who would seek to converge upon the Holy Land in defense of their faith?

Alexis, although very grateful indeed, was greatly dismayed at the reaction that his request for assistance set in motion. “He had asked for mercenaries and auxiliaries to fight with the Byzantine armies. But what he provoked was a whole army, a succession of armies, almost a mass migration from West to East; and he could have hardly enjoyed discovering that four of the eight leaders