The Sword of the Lion

When the First Crusade approached the Holy Land, they were met by the Seljuk Sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan I. His first encounter with the Europeans came when the Peasants' Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit, overran the castle of Xerigordon at Nicaea. They did so because Arslan sent his spies to give them the impression that the castle was easy pickings. In fact, it was inconsequential to him, but a German contingent raced to take their prize. Once they were settled in it, Arslan sent a force to besiege it and starve them out, knowing that the place had few supplies. He offered a choice: renounce Christianity and become captives, or be put to death.

The tables turned on Arslan after this, because the easy victory led him to believe that all the Crusaders would be easily handled. Unfortunately for him, a far more organized and strategy-oriented army was headed his way. He decided to refocus his attention on his rivalry with the Danishmend Turks, ignoring the soon-to-arrive actual First Crusade. 

As a result, he was away from Nicaea when the Crusaders besieged it in May 1097. Returning to Nicaea, he was defeated by the Crusaders on 21 May. Nicaea was then held by the Byzantines, and Arslan's wife and family were taken captive. She was sent to Constantinople to be held for ransom, but was returned without ransom (for reasons which are a separate chapter of Arslan's story).

Kilij Arslan means "sword lion," and he had a reputation for being a great soldier and leader, but in this case he decided not to go it alone and to ally himself with his Danishmend rivals (as he would later to deal with the Crusade of 1101), attempting to ambush the Crusaders at the end of June near Dorylaeum. The defensive line created by the disciplined Europeans, however, proved too strong for the Turkish mounted archers. The Turkish camp was captured on 1 July by the arrival of Bohemond with reinforcements. According to the Gesta Francorum, the Europeans gained respect for Aslan's tactics and soldiers, claiming "had the Turks been Christian, they would be the finest of all races."

Realizing he could not stop the conquest of the Holy Land, Arslan decided to spend his time on hit-and-run attempts on the Europeans. He also destroyed crops and water supplies in their path, but could not stop them. His experience here is what made him take the approach of the Crusade of 1101 much more seriously, but in that case he was facing a less-organized group that was easier to defeat.

Why, however, was his wife returned from Constantinople without the ransom the Europeans demanded? There were Byzantines in the Crusade, so clearly the Byzantines were enemies of Arslan. Or were they? I'll explain in the next post.

Deeds of the Franks

Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (Latin: "Deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem"), also known simply as Gesta Francorum (you can figure it out), is an account of the First Crusade, from the viewpoint of an anonymous member of the group following Bohemund of Taranto who later joined Raymond of Toulouse. This account gives us many details not always available elsewhere.

As well as accounts of some specific sieges and battles, there are details of some of the more mundane trials and tribulations. One anecdote is about the arrival of the "People's Crusade" led by Peter the Hermit, who departed early with a band of common people and families:

The Emperor had ordered such a market as was in the city to be given to these people. And he said to them, "Do not cross the Strait until the chief host of the Chritians has come, for you are not so strong that you can do battle with the Turks." The Christians conducted themselves badly, inasmuch as they tore down and burned buildings of the city and carried off the lead with which the churches were constructed sold it to the Greeks. The Emperor was enraged thereat and ordered them to cross the Strait. After they bad crossed, they did not cease doing all manner of evil, burning and plundering houses and churches.

Ultimately, these pre-crusaders were destroyed by the Turks. Part of their problem was not being wealthy enough to provision themselves, and winding up in a land where they had no access to resources. Locals, knowing their great need, were quick to take economic advantage:

When the Armenians and Syrians, however, saw that our men were returning utterly empty-handed, they counselled together and went away through the mountains and places of which they had previous knowledge, making subtle inquiry and buying grain and other bodily sustenance. This they brought to the camp, in which hunger was great beyond measure, and they sold a single assload for eight perpre, which is worth one hundred and twenty solidi of denarii. There, indeed, many of our men died because they did not have the means wherewith to buy at such a dear price.

Crusading was not an easy undertaking. Strange lands, no support,y chain, constantly being attacked (or attacking); it is astounding that they managed to accomplish any of their goals.

It occurs to me that readers of this blog will have no modern point of reference for a solidi, so I think it's time to talk about money next.

Guibert of Nogent

Guibert of Nogent, a Benedictine  was not remarkable in his time, but his extensive writings and autobiography have more recently provided insight into daily life in the Middle Ages.

Born c.1055 to minor nobility, his was a breech birth. His family made an offering to the Virgin Mary the he would be dedicated to a religious life if he survived. Guibert's father (according to his autobiography) was violent man who died while Guibert was still young. Guibert believed his father would have broken the vow and would have tried to get Guibert to become a knight.

At the age of 12, after six years of a strict tutor for the boy, his mother retired to an abbey near saint-Germer-de-Fly. Soon after, Guibert entered the Order of Saint-Germer, studying classical works. The influence of Anselm of Bec inspired him to change his focus to theology.

The first major literary work of his was the Dei gesta per Francos ("God's deeds through the Franks"). It is a more polished version of the anonymous Gesta Francorum. His additions give us more information about the reaction to the Crusade in France.

His autobiography is also patterned after another work, the Confessions of St. Augustine. It is a lengthy work dealing with his youth and upbringing and his life in a monastery. There are references that give us insight into daily life, such as when he denigrates someone for their manner of dress:

But because there are no good things, that do not at times give occasion to some wickedness, when he was one day in a village engaged on some business or other, behold there stood before him a man in a scarlet cloak and silken hose that had the soles cut away in a damnable fashion, with hair effeminately parted in front and sweeping the tops of his shoulders looking more like a lover than a traveller.

Guibert's criticisms tell us something about attitude toward certain fashions. 

He had a skeptical view on saints:

I have indeed seen, and blush to relate, how a common boy, nearly related to a certain most renowned abbot, and squire (it was said) to some knight, died in a village hard by Beauvais .on Good Friday, two days before Easter. Then, for the sake of that sacred day whereon he had died, men began to impute a gratuitous sanctity to the dead boy. When this had been rumoured among the country-folk, all agape for something new, then forthwith oblations and waxen tapers were brought to his tomb by the villagers of all that country round. What need of more words? A monument was built over him, the pot was hedged in with a stone building, and from the very confines of Brittany there came great companies of country-folk, though without admixture of the higher sort. That most wise abbot with his religious monks, seeing this, and being enticed by the multitude of gifts that were brought, suffered the fabrication of false miracles. [Treatise on Relics]

...and on saints' relics:

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, eagerly desired the body of St Exuperius, his predecessor, who was honoured with special worship in the town of Corbeil. He paid, therefore, the sum of one hundred pounds to the sacristan of the church which possessed these relics that he might take them for himself. But the sacristan cunningly dug up the bones of a peasant named Exuperius and brought them to the Bishop. The Bishop, not content with assertion, exacted from him an oath that these bones brought were those of Saint Exuperius. "I swear," replied the man, "that these are the bones of Exuperius: as to his sanctity I cannot swear, since many earn the title of saints are far indeed from holiness." [Treatise on Relics]

He died in 1124.

Speaking of deeds of the Franks, there should be some interesting items to glean from the aforementioned Gesta Francorum. Stay tuned.

Other Accounts of Clermont

How do we know what happened hundreds of years ago? Sometimes we have an archaeological finds that are subject to interpretation. Sometimes we have direct records, like coroner reports or exchequer accounts that we assume are straightforward. Sometimes we have histories written by contemporaries, or eyewitnesses, but even those we have to look at with a critical eye. Did the author have an agenda? Did the author have an accurate memory of the event? Did the author know how to interpret events?

For example: what did Urban actually say at Clermont on 27 November 1095 to announce the (First) Crusade? Six accounts have survived.

First, we have a letter Urban himself sent to Flanders. He says "a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient" (because he has had a request from the emperor in Constantinople for help with the Turks) and makes a passing reference to Jerusalem by saying the barbarism has "even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by His passion and resurrection." Interestingly, there is no indication that this Crusade has as its main purpose taking over Jerusalem from non-Christians.

There is also the Gesta Francorum ("Deeds of the Franks"), an anonymous history written only a few years after 1095, that simply says Urban called upon people to "take up the way of the Lord" and be prepared to suffer in the undertaking. This account suggests that Urban was calling on the Franks specifically for this task, and caused the Franks to sew crosses onto the right shoulders of their garments to indicate their willingness.

Two eyewitness accounts exist. Fulcher of Chartres was a chaplain whose detailed account of the Council of Clermont (in the week preceding the announcement) gives an account in which he claims to record only things that he saw with his own eyes. He is the best (we think) account of what Urban actually said.

Robert the Monk is the other account. Robert says he was an eyewitness to Urban's speech, and he may have been: Robert has been identified as a former abbot of Saint-Remi who lived from c.1055 - 1122. Writing more than ten years after the speech, he embellishes it (compared to Fulcher's version) and makes it more dramatic. It is Robert who claims that the crowds as one shouted Deus vult ("God wills it!") at the conclusion of the announcement.

Two more accounts that do not claim to have been present exist. Guibert, the abbot of Nogent, adds his own emphasis on returning Jerusalem to Christian possession to fulfill prophecies about the Apocalypse. Baldric, the archbishop of Dol, seems to re-write the account from the Gesta Francorum and emphasize the Crusade as an appeal to chivalry. Part of Urban's focus during the Council was to reign in violence caused by Christian knights in the West.

We take what we can get from the historical record and hope we can assemble the jigsaw puzzle of historical events.

Tomorrow I'll tell you a little more about Guibert of Nogent and his very "modern" skepticism about something that scholarship definitely agrees with, no matter what people in the Middle Ages believed.