THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY
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THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY |
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THE AGE
OF THE CRUSADES
BY
JAMES M. LUDLOW
INTRODUCTORY.
OUTLINE OF STUDY.
AFTER the
lapse of eight hundred years the story of the crusades still furnishes the most
fascinating, if not the most instructive, pages of Christian history. Romance
has entertained the generations from the days of the Italian Tasso to those of
Walter Scott with the rude yet chivalric characters of those mediaeval times. Ponderous
knights and dashing emirs, fair women and saintly apparitions, continue to move
over the mimic stage of the imagination. Poetry, in all the tongues of modern
Europe, draws its imagery from scenes that were enacted while these languages were
being formed from their classic or barbaric originals. The hymnology of the
church is enriched by the songs of those who caught their rhythm from the march
of the crusading host. Bernard of Clugny watched the salvation armies of the
olden time as they sauntered by his cloister window. Now catching their spirit,
and anon oppressed with their failure to express the truest prowess of the
believer's soul, he tried to lift men's faith to the Jerusalem above:
0 happy
band of pilgrims,
If onward
ye will tread I
With
Jesus as your fellow
To Jesus
as your head!
Thou hast
no shore, fair ocean;
Thou hast
no time, bright day;
Dear
fountain of refreshment
To
pilgrims on the way.
"Upon
the Rock of Ages
They
raise thy holy tower;
Thine is
the victor's laurel,
And thine
the golden dower.
Our
newest songs catch the very gleam of those battle days. For example:
Onward,
Christian soldiers,
Marching
as to war,
With the
cross of Jesus
Going on
before!
is not unlike
the chorus of a Latin hymn of Berthier of Orleans, which was sung under the
tent and on the field :
Lignum
crucis
Signum
ducis
Sequitur
exercitus;
Quod non
cessit
Sed praecessit
In vi
Sancti Spiritus."
The
student of human nature, also, will find here his most subtle and perplexing,
but at the same time his most suggestive, subjects. Never before or since was
there such exalted faith combined with such grotesque superstition, such
splendid self-sacrifice mingled with cruel and unrestrained selfishness, such
holy purpose with its wings entangled, torn, and besmeared in vicious
environments.
Problem
of the Crusades.
To the
historical scholar this period is unsurpassed in importance by any, if we
except the days of the birth of Christianity. The age of the crusades covers
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For two hundred years, to use the vigorous
language of the Greek-princess Anna Conmena, who witnessed the first crusade,
"Europe was loosened from its foundations and hurled against Asia".
As an Alpine glacier presses down into the valley, only to melt away at the
summer line, yet with renewed snows repeals the fatal experiment from year to
year, so seven times Western Christendom replenished its mighty armaments, to
see them destroyed at the border-land of Oriental conquest.
To define
the causes of these vast movements is a task which both tempts and tantalizes
the historian. It is surely unlearned to ascribe even the first crusade to the
sole influence of any man, though he were an Urban II and wielded the temporal
and spiritual authority of the Papacy in its most puissant days. It is puerile
to say, as Midland does, speaking of Peter the Hermit, "The glory of
delivering Jerusalem belongs to a single pilgrim, possessed of no other power
than the influence of his character and genius." It is equally uncritical,
if not blasphemous, to attribute these most unfortunate and ill-timed ventures
to the Almighty, as the same writer does in these words: "No power on earth could have produced such a great revolution. It only belonged to Him whose will gives birth to and disperses tempests to
throw all at once into human hearts that enthusiasm which silenced all other
passions and drew on the multitude as if by an invisible power."
To even
approximate an understanding of this subject, one must first become familiar
with the great racial movements which culminated in that age; must be able to
estimate the tendencies of society at a time when it knew not the forces which
were struggling within itself; must penetrate the policies of statesmen and
ecclesiastics who veiled their ambition under the self-delusion that they were
serving God or their fellow-men; and, besides all this, he must gauge the
passions and habits of common people, their ignorance and superstition, if not
the true heavenly ardor which led them to offer themselves as fuel for the most
stupendous human sacrifice the world has known. Were one thus equipped with
information, one's philosophical judgment might still be baffled with the
inquiry, What was the chief cause of the crusades? An observation of Dean
Milman is especially applicable to this subject: "When all the motives
which stir the human mind and heart, the most impulsive passion and the
profoundest policy, conspire together, it is impossible to discover which is
the dominant influence in guiding to a certain course of action." The
mighty tide of events we are to consider was not unlike a vast river which
sweeps through many lands and has many tributary streams, some of whose sources
are hidden in the depth of the unexplored wilderness.
Our
preliminary study will therefore be wisely limited to an inquiry into the
conditions of life and thought in the eleventh century which facilitated or
prompted the great movement.
These
Conditions were Prominently :
1. The intellectual and moral state of society in
the eleventh century, especially its
rudeness and warlike spirit.
2.The
institution of chivalry, the awakening of better ideals of heroism.
3. The
feudal system, which provided for the easy mobilization of men in war or
adventure.
4. The
impoverished condition of Europe, which forced enterprise to seek its reward in
foreign countries.
5. The
papal policy to consolidate and universalize the ecclesiastical empire.
6. The
menace of Mohammedanism under the Saracenic and Turkish powers.
7. The
prevailing superstition, which credited to pilgrimage the virtues of piety,
and substituted exploits in the Holy Land for the plainer duties of holy life.
THE STORY OF THE CRUSADES. IX.—The Story of the Crusades.—The Summons—Peter the Hermit—Pope Urban— Popular Excitement. THE FIRST CRUSADE. X.—The Crusade of the Crowd. XI.—The Crusade's Chieftains : Godfrey, Raymond, Bohemond, Tancred, Hugh, Robert of Normandy. XII.—The Fall of Nicaea. XIII.—Battle of Dorylaeum. XIV.—Before Antioch. XV.—The Fall of Antioch. XVI.—The Holy Lance. XVII.—On to Jerusalem. XVIII.—The Capture of Jerusalem. XIX.—Godfrey, First Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. XX.—Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem. XXI.—King Baldwin II. King Foulque. King Baldwin III. Rise of Nourredin. XXII.—Military Orders. Hospitallers.Templars, Teutonic Knights. XXIII.—Europe between the First and Second Crusades. THE SECOND CRUSADE XXIV.—Bernard. Conrad III. Louis VII. Suger. Siege of Damascus XXV.—Rise of Saladin. King Guy. Queen Sibylla. XXVI.—Battle of Tiberias. Fall of Jerusalem. XXVII.—Europe between the Second and Third Crusades. The Waldenses. THE THIRD CRUSADE. XXVIII.—William of Tyre. Barbarossa. XXIX.—Siege of Acre. XXX.—The Coming of Philip Augustus and Richard. Fall of Acre. XXXI. —Palestine after the Third Crusade. Henry VI. Siege of Thoron. THE FOURTH CRUSADE. XXXII.— History and Condition of Constantinople. XXXIII.—The Summons. Contract with Venice. Philip of Swabia. XXXIV.—The Plot for the Diversion of the Crusade. Capture of Zara. XXXV.—On to Constantinople. Capture of Galata. XXXVL—Constantinople Secured to Isaac and Young Alexius. Usurpation of Mourtzouphlos. XXXVII.—Capture of Constantinople XXXVIII. —Founding the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople. XXXIX.—Between the Fourth and Fifth Crusades. Condition of East and West. The Children's Crusade. THE FIFTH CRUSADE. XL.—Disaster of Marietta. THE SIXTH CRUSADE. XLI.—Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX. XLII.—Between the Sixth and Seventh Crusades. The Tartars. The Carismian Invasion. THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. XLIII.—St. Louis. THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. XLIV.—Death of St. Louis. Fall of Acre. RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES. XLV.—Results of the Crusades. Unity of Europe. Liberal Thought. The Turkish Power.
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