The First Crusade

Below, please find the second essay I have ever written for college. This is a treatise on the First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, by Jonathan Riley-Smith. I'm hoping for at least an A...!

Perhaps of all the wars that have been fought throughout the centuries, none have sparked more debate, ignited more controversies, and have continued to influence cultures throughout the entire world to this day than the Crusades. For the purposes of this paper, however, what shall be discussed is the First Crusade which began in 1066 and ended in 1099, as covered by Jonathan Riley-Smith in his book The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading.

As a former Marine and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, what interests the author of this essay is not the bloody battles, or the logistical concerns of the Crusaders, nor their tactics or their organization. Instead, what interests the author is the mental state of the Crusader. What brought them to the point of being willing to engage in a long, protracted campaign through harsh deserts and violent battles? Why were they so willing to fight the infidel? How was Pope Urban II able to raise such a large army so relatively quickly? According to Jonathan Riley-Smith, one must fully understand the political and spiritual mindset of the Frenchman during the century preceding the First Crusade.

Politically, much of France was in a state of near-anarchy following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. Charles the Bald (843-877) assumed the westernmost kingdom, which also adopted the Romance language that eventually became French. This kingdom would eventually become the well from which the Church drew upon for the first Crusaders.
During the next two centuries, the Frankish kingdom would be beset by numerous invaders. The Muslims made incursions into Southern France, while the Magyars made forays into Eastern France. Perhaps the most fierce of all the invaders that beset France, however, were the Vikings. All of these battles whet the appetite of the Frankish knight for combat, and began to build among the Franks a martial attitude and society, centered around the castellan and the knight.

By the time these invasions began to trickle off, France had a widespread culture that was centered around violence. With no new expansionary wars to fight and no forthcoming invasions to ward off, Riley-Smith purports that the Frankish warriors turned inward, fighting amongst themselves. A large part of this was due to their appetite for destruction, to be sure. Another factor that contributed to their behavior was their keen desire for plundering and looting, and their desire to maintain their standards of living. So from their strongholds the castellans sent their knights out on numerous forays and raids in order to support their way of life and to sate their appetite for warfare.

A contributing factor to all this violence was the lack of a strong central government. The seat of France had very limited power. According to Riley-Smith, the king of France could only truly control only a small amount of territory around his seat of power; the rest of his country was rapidly descending into anarchy.

An indicator of this was that the term "Dominus", or "Lord", which had previously only been used in reference to God or the King, was soon being used in reference to the local garrison commanders (the castellans), who exacted taxes on their peasantry and upon any passerby who ventured into or through their territories. These castellans, who were Dukes, Earls, and Counts who were descended from the Carolingian officials, ignored the king to the point that they were refusing royal summons. These castellans were, in fact, the only authority that many men knew or respected. In effect, France was breaking up into a myriad of small, self-governed territories, with a powerless king presiding over all of them; or, perhaps, pretending to preside over these upstart castellans.

Besides attacking their neighboring peasantry and castellans, the knights also attacked clergymen, churches, and other religious institutions. Under this sort of anarchic society, the Church could not flourish. Whereby the king of France was powerless to affect this political state, the Church had the backbone and the clout to make this change a reality. Using the name of God as their authority and the presence of "piles of relics", the Church enacted the "Peace of God", which in effect was a sort of peace treaty between the Roman Catholic Church and the marauding knight. This peace called down the wrath of God Himself upon any knight or soldier who dared to break this peace. Using the Knight's sense of nobility and honor, the Church tried to coerce the knights to swear oaths to respect the Peace of God.

Despite the harsh words reserved for knights and soldiery in general, the Church was quietly building its own army, preparing to protect their own in the event that the Peace of God did not work out in the way that they had planned. The peace did hold, however, and soon the Church began a widespread building project that rivaled the ancient Roman building program. Soon, there was a church in nearly every village, and these churches were the basis for a widespread evangelism that brought many people into the Church; this sudden influx of people into the flock would soon be called upon to fight the infidel.

Meanwhile, the papacy began to introduce the idea that fighting for the Church was something to be desired and, in fact, was sanctioned by God. Pope Leo IX (1049-1054) was one of the first popes to begin developing this idea. After gaining the papacy, he raised a small military to put down his opponents. During this time he offered the remission of penance and the absolution of sins for serving in the papal army. At the same time he also began to nurture the idea of martyrdom, an idea which would help galvanize the Crusaders fifty years later.
Pope Nicholas II also used this Papal army to defend his papacy as well, and Pope Nicholas II was also the first Pope to grant the indulgence for war. Additionally he also gave the first banner to his military as a mark of Papal approval for military campaigns.

In truth it was Pope Gregory VII who was the impetus behind the idea of a "holy war." His unflinching commitment to Church reform and the Investment Conflict rapidly led to open conflict. Primarily, he used scholars and other supporters to begin researching whether or not God approved warfare; as his desire was to build an army to defend the Church it should come as no surprise that he found the evidence he was looking for, namely through the efforts of Anselm of Lucca. Anselm compiled the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo into a compendium that stated, uncompromisingly, that God not only approved of warfare, but at times commanded warfare.

Using this new-found spiritual authorization, the Church began a massive reformation of the Frankish knights and their castellans. Drawing from Anselm's compendium and from Old Testament scriptures, the Church began to pitch the idea of a "holy knight", urging them to follow the example of David and other warriors from scripture. Nearly twenty years before the First Crusade, the Pope and the Church began to exhort the people and use references such as the "knighthood of Christ", the "knights of Christ", or "knights of God" who fought in wars to defend the righteous and righteousness.

The third and final factor which helped to seed the ground for Crusaders were the chansons de gestem, which was intended for popular consumption and reflected popular tastes and ideals. The three features of the chansons that influenced the people were the role of Charlemagne as a good and great emperor who ruled over a golden age, a concern for war and the martial virtues of braver, fidelity, and honor combined with the love for traveling in knight errantry, and finally, the theme of Christian heroism in a battle for the faith against the infidel.

Thus, when Pope Urban II began to preach the Crusade in late 1095, he found that the seeds had been sewn amongst the Franks, and that the fields were ripe for the plucking. The combination of a culture that was centered around violence and had been indoctrinated into the ideas of martyrdom and a holy knighthood, all paved the way for providing soldiers for the First Crusade. Pope Urban II only had to reap the benefits of the labor of the Church reformers which had preceded him by nearly five decades.