298 Crusades Lecture 14 March 21

Question 1

Numerous calls for crusade before the launching of the second crusade.

Therefore, not inevitable that we’d have another large-scale armed journey to the Holy Land

Answer 1

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Question 2

Fall of Edessa

24-26 December 1144
Turkish atabeg Zengi, ruler of Mosul and Aleppo

Answer 2

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Question 3

Result of an opportunistic attack when the count of Edessa, Joscelin II, was away

Answer 3

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Question 4

For Zengi, helps him consolidate the north-western frontier

Answer 4

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Question 5

Zengi’s main target was Damascus

He captured Edessa beause of immediate local circumstances

Year before: deaths of King Fulk of Jerusalem and the Byzantine Emperor John II

Hostility between Count Joscelin of Edessa and Raymond of Poitiers (prince of Antioch)

Thus, reduced chance of Christian counter-attack

Answer 5

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Question 6

14 September 1146 Zengi murdered while in a drunken stupor by one of his slaves

His empire ruptured immediately

Answer 6

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Question 7

Franks try to take advantage of the situation by reoccupying Edessa in November 1146

Utterly failed
Massacre of the Armenian Christians

Answer 7

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Question 8

Zengi’s reputation after fall of Edessa had started to become one of a holy warrior. Zengi apologists.

Lent religious ideology to the military power of a leader feared by his followers almost as much as by his foes

Answer 8

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Question 9

Zengi reputidely a sadistic monster

Sight of whom makes men drop dead of fright

Crucified his own troops for marching out of line

Answer 9

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Question 10

Public expressions of Muslim idealism reflected growing Muslim awareness of the Frankish threat

Frontier warfare, justified by ideas of jihad, provided useful employment for Zengi’s nomadic Turcoman levis

Answer 10

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Question 11

The blueprint for this combination of ideology and action had existed for more than a generation.

1105, at great mosque in Damascus, legal scholar al-Sulami gave public readings in which he urged moral reform within Islam as necessary preparation for a military reconquest

Answer 11

.For Europe, the message was clear:

Islam on the March

All of Outremer in danger

Question 12

al-Sulami adopted a broad vision

placed Frankish invasion in context of 11th c. Christian advances in Sicily and Spain

blamed Muslim failure to resist on disunity

Answer 12

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Question 13

His wasn’t the only call for pan-Islamic solidarity

Around same time, in Almoravid Spain, Yusuf Ibn Tashfin launched an armada of 70 ships to liberate Jerusalem

Floundered in Mediterranean storms

Answer 13

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Question 14

The message of political unity and spiritual purity translated into a political program

Matter of convenience as much as Faith by rulers eager to carve out empires in the ruins of Seljuk control by Syria

Answer 14

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Question 15

Reality of Muslim revival lay in greater political stability and direction of resources

Academics and religious leaders provided a respectable ideology for the Zengids and their successors

Answer 15

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Question 16

Events, not ideas, served as the most effective recruiting officer for the jihad

Answer 16

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Question 17

For Europe, the message was clear:

Islam on the March

All of Outremer in danger

Answer 17

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Question 18

But as the news first filtered into Europe in 1145, didn’t arouse much alarm

Answer 18

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Question 19

In part, this was because of the complicated situation in Italy

Answer 19

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Question 20

Roger II, king of Sicily, preparing to find a way to attack the Byzantines.

Pope, HRE, Venetians, and Byzantium allied against him.

Answer 20

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Question 21

The call for aid to Edessa risked stepping on Byzantine toes.

Byzantium had a truce with the Turks by this time.

Answer 21

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Question 22

So when Pope Eugenius III made the decision to call the crusade, he couched it in terms of aid for the eastern church

Could mean the Greeks as well as the Crusader States

Answer 22

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Question 23

Eugenius’s call would become template for all later crusading bulls

Backward looking document

But in one respect it differed: directed at a monarch: Louis VII, king of France

Answer 23

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Question 24

Louis VII was receptive to the idea of a crusade

He was a young king and eager to prove himself apart from his tutors and councellors

Answer 24

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Question 25

He was 25 at the time and impulsive

In a feud with the count of Champagne, he burned down the chruch at Vitry in 1143, with hundreds of people allegedly inside.

This put him at odds with not just the church generally, but Bernard of Clairvaux

Louis may have toyed with the idea of a penitential pilgrimage

Answer 25

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Question 26

News from Edessa may have focused his intentions and probably that Eugenius was aware of this when he issued the encyclical

Answer 26

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Question 27

While the Second Crusade would, ultimately, be a huge failure, it did prove advantageous to the French monarchy

Answer 27

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Question 28

The expedition was royal. “Royal army.”

Louis the first west Frankish king to lead a foreign conquest for 3 centuries

He made lasting relationships on crusade that he made use of later during his reign

Answer 28

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Question 29

Immediate payoffs: royal census in preparation for the royal levy

Not popular, but was precedent of king’s power to tax beyond his own tenants

New assertion of and recognition of royal authority

Answer 29

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Question 30

But much of this was all still in the future in 1145

Bourges meeting on the crusade with proclamation of bull reached no conclusion

Eugenius had not gone on a speaking tour

Answer 30

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Question 31

So they appealed to Bernard of Clairvaux

Answer 31

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Question 32

Most famous speaking moment was at Vezelay in northern Burgundy. 31 March 1146. Easter Day.

No record of what he said

Preached outside, crowds were so big

Answer 32

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Question 33

What we know:

emotional account of Holy Land and direct offer of salvation
Repetitive logic in the appeal

Problem of Jerusalem, though

Answer 33

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Question 34

Jerusalem in Christian hands.

So Bernard played on the fact that there had now been two generations that had grown up iwth the stories and heroes of the 1st Crusade

Greatest Generation

Answer 34

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Question 35

Bernard used this

Crusaders still pilgrims, but reason for action now was that God calling faithful to restore Edessa to Christian control

Opportunity a rare and precious gift to this generation

God giving an avenue of salvation

Answer 35

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Question 36

Naturally, like before, the crowds and fervor drummed up hardly spontaneous. Carefully staged. (though VIP platform partially collapsed)

Conrad’s taking the cross also likely staged

Answer 36

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Question 37

Bernard went on an extensive preaching tour

Answer 37

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Question 38

Most significant number of recruits came from Germany

This was problematic for pope, who didn’t want HRE involved due to the business with Roger of Sicily

Answer 38

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Question 39

Historians differ on how Germans became involved

Some argue that it was due to Ranulf taking up the message and Bernard having to chase after him

Others that Bernard was enthused about the crusade and intentionally preached to Germans and would have done so with or without Radulf

Answer 39

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Question 40

But he did seem to be on the trail of Radulf in the winter of 1146/47 as he went through Germany

Answer 40

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Question 41

Radulf a Cistercian preaching without authorization in the Rhineland

Answer 41

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Question 42

Anti-Semitism not unlike what we saw with the People’s Crusade

Attacks on Jews

Not just because of his preaching, but definitely inflamed by it

Answer 42

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Question 43

Bernard condemned the Jewish persecutions

Adhered to the living witnesses theory of why Jews should be allowed to live

Answer 43

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Question 44

Unlike in 1096, however, there was more protection for the Jews this time round. Scale never got as big as before.

Answer 44

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Question 45

Still horrible
Forced baptisms
Murders and mutilations

Answer 45

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Question 46

Germans stirred up for Crusade

Bernard brought them fully into the enterprise

Answer 46

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Question 47

Conrad took the cross. Dramatic moment

As was the moment when he bodily carried the slight Bernard out of an adoring mob in March 1147 by picking him up

Royalty saving the Church

Answer 47

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Question 48

Like Louis, Conrad was making claims to expanded authority

Temporarily unifying the constantly bickering princes

Answer 48

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Question 49

Second Crusade notable for another reason: Presence of Women

Eleanor of Aquitaine and her household ladies

Counts of Flanders and Toulouse travelled with their wives

Answer 49

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Question 50

The forces of this crusade, though nominally under the banner of the kings, was quite different from the first crusade

Then, bonds of loyalty to sworn liege-lords predominated

Answer 50

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Question 51

Now, lots of the crusaders lived outside the ties of noble clientage

Result of urbanization and growth of corporate identity

Crusaders organized themselves with sworn agreements due to the absence of other political bonds

Answer 51

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