THE CRUSADES

From the time of Constantine, Christian's had travelled to Jerusalem, it was his mother Helena that believed that she had found the cross on which Jesus had died, this discovery had a profound impression upon the whole Christian world. By the year 333 the first "Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem" made its appearance, and at the end of the fourth century Jerome (St.) could write of Jerusalem, "From all the world people are flocking here."

Until the middle of the eleventh century the pilgrims visited the Holy Places, the Moslems allowed the Christians privileges, and control of the Christian churches, contententing themselves with exacting dues and selling dubious relics to the pilgrims, and this seemed to many Christians a terrible thing, but worse was to come, for in the year 1070 the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem, and Christians were no longer admitted to the Holy Places.

Christendom was profoundly shocked at the news, and preachers such as Peter the Hermit tried to stir men to make the effort to recover Jerusalem. The appeal met with a great response, from those Christians who felt it an insult and shame that the infidels should occupy those Holy Places where Christ lived and taught.

The First Crusade.

In the year 1095 Pope Urban II (1088 - 1099) called a Council at Clermont, and urged with all the authority at his command that every man should lay aside his worldly ambitions and "take the Cross" and join the Crusading army, promising indulgences to all those who should respond. Men from every country took the Cross, and what the Crusading host lacked in organization, experience and equipment, it more than made up for by its sincere enthusiasm. Several false starts were made, but at last the main body of Crusaders assembled near Byzantium, ready to launch the attack.

After a nine-months siege, Antioch fell in the summer of 1098, and the following year Jerusalem also fell to the Crusaders, who celebrated their capture by a bloody massacre of the inhabitants. Antioch had already been made a principality under a Norman ruler, now the new crusading "kingdom of Jerusalem" was formed and the valiant and saintly Godfrey of Bouillon chosen as its first sovereign. Godfrey. however, would not wear an earthly crown where Christ had worn a crown of thorns, and ruled Only as "Baron of the Holy Sepulchre " The following year his brother Baldwin I took the title of king, and reigned from 1100 - 1118.

The Second Crusade (1147 - 1149) failed.

The Third Crusade, 1188 - 1192

For neatly ninety years Jerusalem remained a Christian province, then in 1187 the news was brought to Europe by a black-sailed ship that the city had fallen to the Mohammedans under their leader Saladin (d.1193). A further appeal was made to Christendom. and again a great response was made and a great host collected. Yet this, the Third Crusade, lacked something of the spontaneous enthusiasm and ardour which had brought the early Crusaders success. Perhaps the crusading host included too many famous names - the kings of France and England, the Duke of Austria, the Count of Flanders, and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, to name the most distinguished.

Already the first and purest crusading impulse had spent itself, and petty quarreling and jealousy had taken the place of whole-hearted devotion to the cause of delivering the Holy City from infidel hands. The Fourth Crusade showed the movement at its worst. It was directed not against the Mohammedan conquerors of Palestine, but against the usurpers of power in the Byzantine Empire.

Originally it was intended for an attack from the sea upon Egypt as a preliminary to the Syrian campaign, but owing partly to the Venetians insistence upon full payment for their transport (the Venetians had built special transport ships and agreed upon a price which the Crusaders failed to pay), and partly to intrigues among the leaders, the Crusading host sailed to Byzantium instead. The city was captured after a short struggle, and then came months of looting and pillage and carnage, when the Crusaders behaved more like savage and rapacious animals than as soldiers of the Cross. A Latin Empire was founded under Baldwin, Count of Flanders, but this lasted only until 1261. The share of Venice in this crusade is symbolized by the four gilded bronze horses which still stand outside San Marco; part of the spoil which the Venetians brought back from Justinian's palace.

The Crusades of St. Louis.

After the sordid incompetence of the Fourth Crusade, and the quarrels and intrigues which followed it, it is something of a surprise to find a leader who can be compared only with Godfrey of Bouillon in his integrity and chivalrous behaviour in the most trying of circumstances. This was Louis IX, King of France from 1226 till his death at Tunis in 1270. His biographer, Joinville, says of him that "no layman in our time lived so holly all his days," and that he "so loved truth he would never consent to lie to the Saracens as to any covenant that he had made with them."

At first, St. Louis was successful, and captured Damietta (in Egypt) without striking a blow, but then misfortune overtook his host, and he and his whole army suffered capture (1249) and had to pay an enormous ransom. For a while St. Louis stayed in Palestine, but could do little. In 1270 he made a further effort, and landed in North Africa in an attempt to make an alliance with the Bey of Tunis, but fell ill and died. His last words were "Jerusalem, Jerusalem."

After this, a few spasmodic efforts were made, but all hope of a serious expedition died with St. Louis. In 1291, with the fall of Acre, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem came to an inglorious end.

The Results of the Crusades.

It is very difficult for posterity to appraise with any exactness the results of the Crusades. Even to the men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were many different interpretations of the Crusading impulse. Some joined the movement for righteousness sake, because they longed to extend God's kingdom upon earth; others hoped thereby to purchase salvation for their own souls, Some were penitents seeking to expiate mortal sin, some were high-spirited young men in search of adventure. Others again thought they discerned opportunities for seizing loot and treasure, or for opening up trade communications which might bring them profit. It has been pointed out that the Crusades ended, "not in the occupation of the East by the Christian West, but in the conquest of the West by the Mohammedan East." So far, the movement was a failure, but when we turn to the history of western civilization, and the development of commerce, we are on firmer ground. A very great impetus was given to trade, and new centres opened up in Syria and the Levant. Indirectly, the movement was responsible for the explorations through Asia undertaken by Carpini and the Polos and their successors. Genoa certainly owed her power and influence to the Crusades, and up to the War of Chioggia (1378 - 81) she was the rival even of Venice.

The art of war owed much to the experience gained by Crusaders. New ideas of fortification, engineering feats, the concoction and use of "Greek fire" - all these the Crusaders learned from their Mohammedan enemies. It is thought, too, that the general use of a "coat of arms" dates from this time, when a linen tunic might be worn over armour as some protection from the sun's rays, bearing some device to make recognition easy.

In France and England, during the twelfth century, taxes were instituted for the Crusades - if a man could not or would not take the Cross he must pay a tax to help the cause. The first tax had been imposed by Louis VII (1137 - 1180) in 1147, and imitated by Henry II of England (1154 - 1187) in 1166, and again in the celebrated "Saladin Tithe" of 1188. This is sometimes reckoned as the beginning of the modern system of taxation. The Crusades stimulated an interest in geography, in travel, and in the study of Eastern languages, the study so strongly urged by the great missionary and scholar, Raymond Lull (d. 1315). They offered, too, a new field for literature, for poems and "chansons." In lesser, yet in some ways equally important details, it should be remembered that they " familiarized Europe with new plants, new fruits, new manufactures, new colours, and new fashions in dress. Sugar and maize; lemons and melons; cotton, muslin and damask; lilac and purple (azure and gules are words derived from the Arabic); the use of powder and of glass mirrors, and even of the rosary its these things came to medieval Europe from the East and as a result of the Crusades." It is strange, too, to think that among various Arabic words adopted into our language, one which is constantly upon our lips to-day - the word "tariff " - is yet another witness to the influence of the Crusades.

The Military Orders.

When the main body of the Crusading host left Palestine after the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was necessary to leave behind a regular force to defend the new state, and also to protect pilgrims visiting the Holy Places. To meet this need, two military orders were founded, on the lines of the monastic orders in Europe. These were the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John, which had been founded in 1048 for the care and protection of pilgrims, and that of the Order of the Temple, founded in 1118.

Of these two Orders, that of the "Templars" became the larger and the more important; soon its membership increased from the original nine founders to a huge number. They began to acquire lands and riches in most countries of Europe, to work their estates and to build handsome churches, generally in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The round Temple church in London still stands as a witness to their influence and prosperity. As the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John developed wider interests, and as their task in preserving the Holy Land became increasingly difficult (and. finally, impossible) the knights began to lose sight of the original intentions of their founders, and to acquire Oriental habits which ill-became their ideal.

The Templars had taken the threefold monastic vow of chastity, obedience and poverty, but as time passed occasional abuses crept into the practice of the Order, enough to provide a pretext for their suppression. In France Philip IV (1285 - 1314), moved more by a desire for the Templars' wealth than by any genuine belief in the corruptness of the Order, ordered their examination in 1308. The trial lasted for years, and was conducted with the utmost unfairness and cruelty, torture being used to extract alleged "confessions." Many knights were burned at the stake, and last of all the Grand Master met the same fate in 1314, protesting the innocence of the Order with his dying breath.

The wealth of the Templars was supposed to be passed on to the knights Hospitallers, who justified their existence by defending the island of Rhodes as a Christian outpost, but there is reason to believe that most of it found a home in the royal treasury.

A third Order, the Teutonic Knights, had been founded in 1191 in imitation of the Knights of St. John. This Order was limited to men of German race, and in the year 1229 the Teutonic Knights transferred their activities to Prussia, where they allied with a similar Order, the Knights of the Sword, to overcome and convert the heathen Prussians; an enterprise in which they were strikingly successful.