The Crusades were religious, military, political, and commercial expeditions against both rival religions and rival Christian groups. They helped European society define itself and they laid the groundwork for end of feudalism. The relationship between Christianity and Islam was permanently altered and the Crusades continue through this day to influence how Islam sees the West.

Baldwin I of Edessa

Article from the 1911 Encyclopedia

By Melissa Snell, About.com

BALDWIN I., prince of Edessa (1098-1100), and first king of Jerusalem (1100-1118), was the brother of Godfrey of Bouillon. He was originally a clerk in orders, and held several prebends; but in 1096 he joined the first crusade, and accompanied his brother Godfrey as far as Heraclea in Asia Minor. When Tancred left the main body of the crusaders at Heraclea, and marched into Cilicia, Baldwin followed, partly in jealousy, partly from the same political motives which animated Tancred. He wrested Tarsus from Tancred's grip (September 1097), and left there a garrison of his own. After rejoining the main army at Marash, he received an invitation from an Armenian named Pakrad, and moved eastwards towards the Euphrates, where he occupied Tell-bashir. Another invitation followed from Thoros of Edessa; and to Edessa Baldwin came, first as protector, and then, when Thoros was assassinated, as his successor (March 1098). For two years he ruled in Edessa (1098-1100), marrying an Armenian wife, and acting generally as the intermediary between the crusaders and the Armenians. During these two years he was successful in maintaining his ground, both against the Mahommedan powers by which he was surrounded, and from which he won Samosata and Seruj (Sarorgia), and against a conspiracy of his own subjects in 1098. At the end of 1099 he visited Jerusalem along with Bohemund I.; but he returned to Edessa in January 1100. On the death of Godfrey he was summoned by a party in Jerusalem to succeed to his brother.

A lay reaction against the theocratic pretensions of Dagobert, who was counting on Norman support, was responsible for the summons; and in the strength of that reaction Baldwin was able to become the first king of Jerusalem. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1100, by the patriarch himself; but the struggle of church and state was not yet over, and in the spring of 1101 Baldwin had Dagobert suspended by a papal legate, while later in the year the two disagreed on the question of the contribution to be made by the patriarch towards the defence of the Holy Land. The struggle ended in the deposition of Dagobert and the triumph of Baldwin (1102).

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As Baldwin had secured the supremacy of the lay power in Jerusalem, so he extended into a compact kingdom the poor and straggling territories to which he had succeeded. This he did by an alliance with the Italian trading towns, especially Genoa, which supplied in return for the concession of a quarter in the conquered towns, the instruments and the skill for a war of sieges, in which the coast towns of Palestine were successively reduced. Arsuf and Caesarea were captured in 1101; Acre in 1104; Beirut and Sidon in 1110 (the latter with the aid of the Venetians and Norwegians). Meanwhile Baldwin repelled in successive years the attacks of the Egyptians (1102, 1103, 1105), and in the latter years of his reign (1115-1118) he even pushed southward at the expense of Egypt, penetrating as far as the Red Sea, and planting an outpost at Monreal. In the north he had to compose the dissensions of the Christian princes in Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa (1109-1110), and to help them to maintain their ground against the Mahommedan princes of N.E. Syria, especially Maudud and Aksunk-ur, amirs of Mosul. In this way Baldwin was able to make himself into practical suzerain of the three Christian principalities of the north, though the suzerainty was, and always continued to be, somewhat nominal. In 1118 he died, after an expedition to Egypt, during which he captured Farama, and, as old Fuller says, " caught many fish, and his death in eating them." Baldwin was one of the "adventurer princes" of the first crusade, and as such he stands alongside of Bohemund, Tancred and Raymund. On the whole he was the most successful of his class. By his defence of the lay power against a nascent theocracy, and by his alliance with the Italian towns, he was the real founder of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Events worked for him: he might never have come to the throne, unless Bohemund had fallen into the hands of Danishmend; and the dissensions among the Mahommedans alone made possible the subsequent consolidation of his kingdom. But he had virtu as well as fortuna; and on his tombstone it was written that he was " a second Judas Maccabaeus, whom Kedar and Egypt, Dan and Damascus dreaded." As king, he still retained something of the clerk in the habit of his dress; but he was at the same time a warrior so impetuous, as to be sometimes foolhardy, and his policy was on the whole anti-clerical. He may be accused of greed: his life was not chaste; and the two defects met in his rejection of his Armenian wife and his marriage to the rich Sicilian widow Adelaide (1113). But "on the holiest soil of history, he gave his people a fatherland"; and Fulcher of Chartres, his chaplain, who paints at the beginning of Baldwin's reign the terrors of the lonely band of Christians in the midst of their foes, can celebrate at the end the formation of a new nation in the East (qui fuimus occidentales, nunc facti sumus orientales) - an achievement which, so far as it was the work of any one man, was the work of Baldwin I.

LITERATURE. - The Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher, who had accompanied Baldwin as chaplain to Edessa, and had lived in Jerusalem during his reign, is the primary authority for Baldwin's career. There is a monograph on Baldwin by Wolff (Konig Baldwin I. von Jerusalem), and his reign is sketched in R. Rohricht's Geschichte des Konigreichs Jerusalem (Innsbruck, 1898) C. i.-iv. (E. BR.)

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Dark Legacy

By Melissa Snell, About.com

The Byzantine Empire was in trouble.

For decades the Turks, fierce nomadic warriors recently converted to Islam, had been conquering outer areas of the empire and subjecting these lands to their own rule. Recently, they'd captured the holy city of Jerusalem, and, before they understood how Christian pilgrims to the city could help their economy, they mistreated Christians and Arabs alike. Furthermore, they established their capital a mere 100 miles from Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium. If Byzantine civilization was to survive, the Turks must be stopped.

Emperor Alexius Comnenus¹ knew he did not have the means to stop these invaders on his own. Because Byzantium had been a center of Christian freedom and learning, he felt confident in asking the Pope for assistance. In 1095 AD he sent a letter to Pope Urban II², asking him to send armed forces to Eastern Rome to help drive out the Turks. The forces Alexius more than likely had in mind were mercenaries, paid professional soldiers whose skill and experience would be more efficient in defending Byzantine lands than that of peasant armies. The emperor did not realize that Urban had an altogether different agenda.

The Papacy in Europe³ had acquired considerable power over the preceding decades. Churches and priests that had been under the authority of various secular lords had been brought together under the influence of Pope Gregory VII⁴. Now the Church was a controlling force in Europe in religious matters and even some secular ones, and it was Pope Urban II who succeeded Gregory (after the brief pontificate of Victor III⁵) and continued his work. Although it is impossible to say exactly what Urban had in mind when he received the emperor's letter, his subsequent actions were most revealing.

At the Council of Clermont in November of 1095, Urban made a speech that literally changed the course of history. In it, he stated that the Turks had not only invaded Christian lands but had visited unspeakable atrocities on Christians (of which, according to Robert the Monk's account⁶, he spoke in great detail). This was a great exaggeration, but it was just the beginning.

Urban went on to admonish those assembled for heinous sins against their brother Christians. He spoke of how Christian knights battled other Christian knights, wounding, maiming and killing each other and thus imperiling their immortal souls. If they were to continue to call themselves knights, they should stop killing each other and rush to the Holy Land.

"You should shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens."

(from Robert the Monk's account of Urban's speech)

Urban promised complete remission of sins for anyone killed in the Holy Land or even anyone who died on the way to the Holy Land in this righteous crusade.

One might argue that those who have studied the teachings of Jesus Christ would be shocked at the suggestion of killing anyone in Christ's name. But it is important to remember that the only people who were generally able to study scripture were priests and members of cloistered religious orders. Few knights and fewer peasants could read at all, and those who could rarely if ever had access to a copy of the gospel. A man's priest was his connection to God; the Pope was sure to know God's wishes better than anyone. Who were they to argue with such an important man of religion?

Furthermore, the theory of a "Just War" had been under serious consideration ever since Christianity had become the favored religion of the Roman Empire. St. Augustine of Hippo⁷, the most influential Christian thinker of Late Antiquity, had discussed the matter in his City of God (Book XIX⁸). Pacifisim, a guiding principle of Christianity, was very well and good in the personal life of the individual; but when it came to sovereign nations and defense of the weak, someone had to take up the sword.

In addition, Urban had been correct when he'd decried the violence going on in Europe at that time. Knights killed each other nearly every day, usually in practice tournaments but occasionally in deadly battle. The knight, it could prudently be said, lived to fight. And now the Pope himself offered all knights a chance to pursue the sport they loved most in the name of Christ.

Urban's speech set in action a deadly chain of events that would continue for several hundred years, the repercussions of which are still felt today. Not only was the First Crusade⁹ followed by seven other formally numbered crusades (or six, depending on what source you consult) and many other forays, but the entire relationship between Europe and the eastern lands was irreparably altered. Crusaders did not limit their violence to Turks, nor did they readily distinguish among any groups not obviously Christian. Constantinople itself, at that time still a Christian city, was attacked by members of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, thanks to ambitious Venetian merchants.

Was Urban attempting to establish a Christian empire in the east? If so, it is doubtful he could have envisioned the extremes to which the Crusaders would go or the historical impact his ambitions eventually had. He never even saw the final results of the First Crusade; by the time news of the capture of Jerusalem reached the west, Pope Urban II was dead.

Guide's Note: This feature was originally posted in October of 1997, and was updated in November of 2006.

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Crusades: Siege of Jerusalem

By Kennedy Hickman, About.com

Conflict:

The Siege of Jerusalem was part of the Crusades in the Holy Land.

Dates:

Balian's defense of the city lasted from September 18 to October 2, 1187.

Commanders:

Jerusalem

·         Balian of Ibelin

·         Heraclius of Jerusalem

Ayyubids

·         Saladin¹

Siege of Jerusalem Summary:

In the wake of his victory at the Battle of Hattin in July 1187, Saladin conducted a successful campaign in the Christian territories of the Holy Land. Among those Christian nobles who managed to escape from Hattin was Balian of Ibelin who first fled to Tyre. A short time later, Balian approached Saladin to ask permission to pass through the lines to retrieve his wife, Maria Comnena, and their family from Jerusalem. Saladin granted this request in exchange for an oath that Balian would not take up arms against him and would only remain in the city for one day.

Traveling to Jerusalem, Balian was immediately summoned by Queen Sibylla and Patriarch Heraclius and asked to lead the defense of the city. Concerned about his oath to Saladin, he was ultimately convinced by Patriarch Heraclius who offered to absolve him of his responsibilities to the Muslim leader. To alert Saladin to his change of heart, Balian dispatched a deputation of burgesses to Ascalon. Arriving, they were asked to open negotiations for the surrender of the city. Refusing, they told Saladin of Balian's choice and departed.

Though angered by Balian's choice, Saladin did allow Maria and the family safe passage to travel to Tripoli. Within Jerusalem, Balian faced a bleak situation. In addition to laying in food, stores, and money, he created sixty new knights to reinforce its weak defenses. On September 20, 1187, Saladin arrived outside of the city with his army. Not wishing further bloodshed, Saladin immediately opened negotiations for a peaceful surrender. With Eastern Orthodox clergyman Yusuf Batit serving as a go-between, these talks proved fruitless.

With the talks ended, Saladin commenced a siege of the city. His initial attacks focused on the Tower of David and the Damascus Gate. Assaulting the walls over several days with a variety of siege engines, his men were repeatedly beaten back by Balian's forces. After six days of failed attacks, Saladin shifted his focus to a stretch of the city's wall near the Mount of Olives. This area lacked a gate and prevented Balian's men from sortieing against the attackers. For three days the wall was relentless pounded by mangonels and catapults. On September 29, it was mined and a section collapsed.

Attacking into the breach Saladin's men met fierce resistance from the Christian defenders. While Balian was able to prevent the Muslims from entering the city, he lacked the manpower to drive them from the breach. Seeing that the situation was hopeless, Balian rode out with an embassy to meet with Saladin. Talking with his adversary, Balian stated that he was willing to accept the negotiated surrender that Saladin had initially offered. Saladin refused as his men were in the middle of an assault. When this attack was repulsed, Saladin relented and agreed to a peaceful transition of power in the city.

Aftermath:

With the fighting concluded, the two leaders began haggling over details such as ransoms. After extended discussions, Saladin stated that the ransom for Jerusalem's citizens would be set at ten bezants for men, five for women, and one for children. Those that could not pay would be sold into slavery. Lacking money, Balian argued that this rate was too high. Saladin then offered a rate of 100,000 bezants for the entire population. Negotiations continued and finally Saladin agreed to ransom 7,000 people for 30,000 bezants.

On October 2, 1187, Balian presented Saladin with the keys to the Tower of David completing the surrender. In an act of mercy Saladin and many of his commanders freed many of those destined for slavery. Balian and the other Christian nobles ransomed several others from their personal funds. The defeated Christians left the city in three columns, with the first two led by the Knights Templars and Hospitallers and the third by Balian and Patriarch Heraclius. Balian ultimately rejoined his family in Tripoli.

Taking control of the city, Saladin elected to permit the Christians to retain control of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and allowed Christian pilgrimages. Unaware of the city's fall, Pope Gregory VIII issued a call for the Third Crusade on October 29. The focus of this crusade soon became the recapture of the city. Getting underway in 1189, this effort was led by King Richard of England, Philip II of France, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa².

Selected Sources

·         Medieval Sourcebook: Fall of Jerusalem to Saladin³

·         Jerusalem in the Crusades⁴

·         Overview of the Crusades⁵

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