HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES A HOLY WAR

From the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, Christians from Western Europe were pitted in a series of Holy Wars against their Islamic, Pagan, and even other Christian neighbors. This course offers a multi-faceted overview of military, political, religious and cultural aspects of the Crusades, useful in several contexts.  

The story of the Crusades actually begins centuries before the First Crusade was launched in AD 1096. When the centre of the Roman Empire shifted East, to Constantinople, it began to grow a new culture which would become known as Byzantium. However, the Church had begun to develop with Rome as its centre, and the churches of the East turned to Constantinople rather than the developing Papacy in Rome. The first Popes were warlike and power-hungry, however, and they wanted the entire Christian world under their control. Then, during the latter half of the first millennium AD, the teachings of Islam began to spread throughout North Africa and Asia Minor at an alarming pace. The Popes of Rome, fearful that this new religion would displace them from their still-tenuous position, needed a way to suppress this new, peaceful religion coming out of the East.

FIRST CRUSADE

Pope Urban II (1088-1099) was responsible for assisting Emperor Alexus I (1081-1118) of Constantinople in launching the first crusade. He made one of the most influential speeches in the Middle Ages, calling on Christian princes in Europe to go on a crusade to rescue the Holy Land from the Turks. In the speech given at the Council of Clermont in France, on November 27, 1095, he combined the ideas of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels.

"Deus vult! (God wills it) became the battle cry of the Crusader.

"The day after Urban's speech, the Council formally granted all the privileges and protections Urban had promised. The red cross was taken as the official sign of the pilgrims, and Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy was chosen as papal legate and the spiritual leader of the expedition."

The First Crusade was the most successful from a military point of view. Accounts of this action are shocking. For example, historian Raymond of Agiles described the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099:

Some of our men cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the temple of Solomon, a place where religious services ware ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.

Some of the results of the first crusade were not expected. Alexus I thought that the Byzantine territories would be returned to him and the Eastern Empire, but instead the European conquerors established four independent Latin kingdoms. In addition, three military orders Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonic Knights came into power. The stated purpose of these orders was to protect pilgrims and holy sites.

Early in their occupation of Mideastern lands, crusaders founded military orders of knighthood. First, the Templars wearing red crosses on white, founded in 1191 to protect pilgrims. Soon after, The Hospitallers wearing white crosses on black, attached to the ancient Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Later, as a "break-away group" from The Hospittalers, was formed the Teutonic Knights wearing black crosses on white, with headquarters in Acre, port city of Haifa, now the Israeli Northern Capitol.

Teutonic Knights side with Hospitallers and barons in Acre against the Templars in 1209 which becomes the origin of long-standing opposition between the Templars and Teutonic Knights. In 1217 Frederick II Hohenstaufen granted the Teutonic Knights the same status as the Templars and Hospitallers in the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1220 Pope Honorius III gave privileges to the Teutonic Knights; as an order, they now were on the same level as the Templars and the Hospitallers. In 1226 the "Golden Bull of Rimini" from Frederick II for the Teutonic Knights giving them wide-ranging authority in the name of the empire in Prussia. In 1319 the Teutonic Knights' headquarters moved from Venice to Prussia. In 1410 Lithuanian-Polish forces defeated the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Tannenberg, Prussia, halting the Teutonic Knights’ eastward expansion along the Baltic and hastening their decline.

The Hospitallers later retreated from Islamic forces to Cyprus, Rhodes, various Italian towns, In 1530 Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) granted them perpetual fief of the Island of Malta for annual rent of a falcon. The Knights of Malta eventually surrendered to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in 1798 and disbanded.

THE HAUTEVILLE (ALTAVILLA) DYNASTY

FOUNDER OF ANTIOCH

 Bohemond I, also spelled Bohemund or Boamund, (c. 1058 – 3 March 1111), Prince of Taranto Prince of Antioch, was one of the leaders of the First Crusade as he led the whole Crusader army until the conquest of Antioch. 

Bohemond was born in San Marco Argentano, Calabria, as the eldest son of the NormanRobert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and his first wife Alberada of Buonalbergo. He was christened "Mark" at his baptism, but was nicknamed Bohemond (after the legendary giant Buamundus gigas), by his father due to his size as an infant. 

The Norman monarchy he founded in Antioch survived those in both England and Sicily.

Son of Robert who, encouraged by his dad, developed seriously wider geographic ambitions than Puglia, and had a go early on at subduing Greece on his way to doing the same to Constantinople.  However this failed and it was to be the 90s before the big fell Bohemond, at that stage attacking Amalfi with Uncle Roger met up with groups heading out for the First Crusade. 

Realizing the opportunities for personal power that the crusades presented, Bohemond raised his own army of South Italian Normans and joined in, ending up as Prince of Antioch in the late 1090s.  Antioch though was very much a B team place, and he never cracked the mainstream crusader power base centered on Jerusalem. 

ROGER I - COUNT OF SICILY (1031 -1072 - 1101)

Youngest son of Tancred, brother of Robert - Invested by brother Robert as Count of Sicily in 1072 though it took several more years for him to establish control of the whole island.  But by the time he did, Roger had a much tighter control over Sicily than his brother did over the stroppy Norman warlords in Southern Italy.  Roger had three wives and 16 legitimate children (mostly daughters), of whom his successor Roger II, born when his dad was 62, was number 15.

 NORMAN KINGS OF SICILY

HOHENSTAUFEN KINGDOM

The accession of Frederick, a child who would then become also the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1197, greatly affected the immediate future of Sicily. For a land so used to centralized royal authority, the king's young age caused a serious power vacuum. His uncle Philip of Swabia Markward von Anweiler, margrave of Ancona, regent in 1198. Meanwhile, Pope Innocent III had reasserted papal authority in Sicily, but recognized Frederick's rights. The pope was to see papal power decrease steadily over the next decade and was unsure about which side to back at many junctures moved to secure Frederick's inheritance by appointing.

FREDERICK II

“De arte venandi cum avibus”

Frederick II with a falcon, miniature from his treatise, De arte venandi cum avibus; in the Vatican Library (MS. Palat. Lat. 1071).

Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome

Frederick's  own work De arte venandi cum avibus, a standard work on falconry, based  on his own experimental research, is still admired tod

Frederick was born: December 26, 1194, Jesi, Ancona, Papal States. Frederick II of Swabia, 1194–1250, Holy Roman emperor (1220–50) and German king (1212–20), king of Sicily (1197–1250, and king of Jerusalem (1229–50), son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI and of Constance, heiress of Sicily. Frederick II was educated in Palermo and his magnificently hegemonic multi-shaped and eminent personality in the 13th century stood out, in the culture and troubled political life of the time. De Stefano, the historian, considers him bold, clever, medieval, modern; certainly he is the most dramatic personage of the 13th century. The Kingdom of SicilyPalermo its prestigious capital, became a hub of organization, science and the arts that was, for many years to illuminate the consciousness of the European peoples. This great king's death marked the beginning of the end of Swabian rule.  

Duke of Swabia (as Frederick VI, 1228–35). A Hohenstaufen and grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa, he pursued his dynasty’s imperial policies against the papacy and the Italian city states; and he also joined in the Sixth Crusade (1228–29), conquering several areas of the Holy Land and crowning himself king of Jerusalem (reigning 1229–43) and Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the World.) He died Dec. 13, 1250, Castel Fiorentino, Apulia, Kingdom of Sicily