Were the Crusades an offensive or defensive war?

 “The crusades were in every way a defensive war.  They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”  This statement, made by Thomas Madden, is only partially true in explaining what caused the Crusades.  In addition to being a reaction to Muslim conquests in the Christian world, the Crusades were also the result of growing social concerns within Latin Christian society and the revolutionary idea of penitential warfare; these three factors combined to make the Crusades both a defensive and offensive war.

The first aspect of the Crusades was that the campaigns were the Christian reaction to Muslim conquest of Christian lands, primarily in the East. According to Matthew of Edessa, “they [the Turks] came and entered Armenia in the province of Vaspurakan [which, at its greatest extent, stretched from Lake Van to Lake Urmia] and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful”. (1)  This reaction was spawned by two factors: calls for aid by Emperor Alexius I, Pope Gregory VII, and Pope Urban II as well as the “sense of place” belief that created the need for Christians to retain sites and relics of Christianity.

The calls for aid from Emperor Alexius I, Pope Gregory VII, and Pope Urban II tried to inspire faithful Christian soldiers to fight for the Greek Christians in the Byzantine Empire by evoking a sense of fraternal love between the two sects of Christianity. “The example of our Redeemer and the bond of fraternal love demand that we should lay down our lives to liberate them.” (2)  The bonds of fraternal love were one example of the theme of crusading as an act of love. This bond demanded that Latin Christians come to the aid of their Greek Christian “brothers” and thus aid in liberating them from pagan rule, which was often depicted in contemporary accounts as being tyrannical in its laws and treatment of Christian subjects. Examples of the cruelty exhibited by the Muslims on Christians can be found in Emperor Alexius I’s letter to Count Robert of Flanders: “they circumcise the boys and youths… violently drag them around in the church, compelling them to blaspheme the name of the Holy Trinity…. Noble matrons and their daughters…they [the Muslims], one after another like animals, defile in adultery.” (3)  In response to this cruelty, most letters calling for aid not only depict examples but also ask rhetorical questions, such as “Who has not compassion? Who is not horrified?”,(4) in order to evoke an emotional and military response from the reader.

These calls for aid were supplemented by the Christian belief in a “sense of place,” which dictated that the tangible aspects of Christianity – such as the site of Jerusalem or a relic of a saint – were to be retained in Christian possession because it provided Christians with a strong connection to the divine. This sense of place permeated all levels of Christian society, and it is best evidenced “at the thousands of saints’ shrines which were dotted across Western Christendom: there Christianity, made anthropomorphic and accessible, could be seen, smelt, heard, and touched.”(5) By extending this idea to include Christ, Christians came to believe that pilgrimage to the significant places in Christ’s life, such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem, was one of the highest meritorious religious experiences that could be obtained on Earth.(6) Thus, many of the calls for aid attempted to evoke a pressing need to liberate holy places that had been taken by the Muslim conquests, such as in Urban II’s call for a crusade: “This royal city is now held captive by her enemies, and made pagan by those who know not God. She asks and longs to be liberated and does not cease to beg you to come to her aid.”(7) In these two ways, the Muslim conquests inspired calls for aid in the Christian world that evoked the theme of fraternal love for the Greek Christian “brothers” and touched on the profound sense of place felt by Medieval Christians in order to inspire the gathering of Christian troops to liberate the lands taken during the Muslim conquests, which causes the Crusades to be viewed as a defensive war.

Although the response to Muslim attacks on Christian lands inspired the Latin Church to actively call for aid to the Greek Christians, the attacks themselves were not enough to inspire Latin laymen to join in battle for brothers that they had never met. Instead, it was the social conditions of the time which made it possible for the Latin Church to recruit the vast numbers it needed to successfully campaign in the East. This second factor in the Crusades related to two main aspects of medieval Western society: the feudal system and the pervading violence in society.

The feudal system of vassalage in medieval Western society created the concept of love for one’s lord or king among vassals, and this concept was expanded in crusading times to relate the relationship of a vassal with a lord to the relationship of a layperson with Christ. A vassal was a person granted the use of land, in return for taking an oath of loyalty that usually required military service to a lord.(8) This relationship was expanded to the crusaders, who viewed Christ as a king or lord who had lost his inheritance (Jerusalem) because of the Muslim attacks,(9) and thus “It was the duty of Christ’s subjects to fight for the recovery or in the defence of Christ’s heritage as they would for the domains of their own lords”.(10) By using the analogy of Christ as king and lord and interjecting language which emphasized the debt a Christian owed to Christ, the Latin Church was able to connect with every level of society. A contemporary example of the use of this analogy is found in the writing of Pope Innocent III:

And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with his precious blood, who conceded to you the kingdom, who enables you to live and move and gave you all the good things you have… condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and, as it were, the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help him?(11)

Through this use of language, the Latin Church was able to inspire people from all levels of Western feudal society to respond to the call for a crusade and take up arms in defense of their king of kings. However, the success of this analogy depended upon the magnitude of violence already prevalent in Western society.

Western Christians during the crusades “lived in a society where violence was endemic and in itself unremarkable”.(12) Violence was a daily occurrence, as evidenced by the Declaration of the Truce of God and the numerous vendettas between families. The Declaration of the Truce of God was one attempt of the Church during the eleventh century to restrain violence and warfare. This truce was declared in order to establish “on certain days at least, the peace which, because of our sins, we could not make enduring.”(13) This Truce set aside certain days of the year, feast days of saints, and other religious holidays as days during which Christians could enjoy some level of peace. The Truce itself dictated that on those specified days “no one may commit murder, arson, robbery, or assault”(14); in addition, no one was allowed to carry arms on certain religious holidays and on other days only under the agreement that weapons were to be used only in self-defense.

These restrictions were accompanied by various penalties for violations, which depended upon a person’s social standing and ranged from a lord being expelled from the territory to a slave being beheaded. This Truce sought to end the violence in Western Christian society, and this violence was often caused by violent vendettas. These vendettas were blood-feuds whereby one party (often a family unit) perceived “itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another” and thus ensued a long-running retaliation cycle between the two parties that could last for generations.(15) These vendettas, although opposed by the Church, were often used in the preaching of the crusades to attract knights by evoking the image of the crusades as vengeance upon the infidels who had oppressed the Greek Christian brothers and seized Christ’s patrimony.(16)

The use of this imagery made the crusade a “blood-feud waged against those who had harmed members of Christ’s family.”(17) Thus, the Church’s use of the analogy of Christ as lord and the violent nature of society to attract members of all social classes to participate in the Crusades was successful in creating a defensive nature in the Crusades, but it still lacked a unifying sense of reward that allowed crusaders to gain something in return for their service.

[1] “Matthew of Edessa on the Seljuk Conquests” in S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, ed., The Crusades: A Reader (Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), 31.

[2] Paul Halsall Mar, ed., Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory VII: Call for a “Crusade”, 1074http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/g7-cde1078.html (accessed 6 September 2007).

[3] Andrew Holt, ed., Letter of Alexius to Count Robert of Flanders http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/letterofalexius.html (accessed 28 August 2007).

[4] Holt, Alexius.

[5] Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 26.

[6] Riley-Smith, Oxford, 27.

[7] Robert the Monk, “Urban II’s Call for a Crusade” in S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, ed., The Crusades: A Reader (Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), 41-42.

(8) Lexico Publishing Group, LLC, ed., “Dictionary.com” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vassal (accessed 10 October 2007).

(9) Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusading as an Act of Love (University of London, 10 May 1979), 36.

(10) Riley-Smith, Act of Love, 36.

(11) Riley-Smith, Act of Love, 37.

(12) Riley-Smith, Oxford, 15.

(13) “Declaration of the Truce of God” in S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, ed., The Crusades: A Reader (Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), 28.

(14) “Declaration”, 29.

(15) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., ed., “Feud – Wikipedia” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta (accessed 10 October 2007).

(16) Riley-Smith, Act of Love, 49.

(17) Riley-Smith, Act of Love, 49.

(18) Riley-Smith, Oxford, 78.

(19) Riley-Smith, Oxford, 31.

(20) Riley-Smith, Oxford, 33.

(21) Fulcher of Chartres, “Urban II’s Call for a Crusade” in S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, ed., The Crusades: A Reader (Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), 40.

(22) Baldric of Dol, “Urban II’s Call for a Crusade” in S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, ed., The Crusades: A Reader (Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), 44.

(23) Riley-Smith, Oxford, 8.

The reward given to crusaders was born from the final aspect of the Crusades: the idea of penitential warfare. This idea had evolved during the late eleventh century in a dialogue between Pope Gregory VII and Mathilda of Tuscany’s circle of reform theorists, and this idea was matured and made justifiable by Pope Urban II’s association of warfare with the pilgrimages to Jerusalem.(18) Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and other holy sites had been undertaken by Christians for centuries prior to the crusades as a means of penance because the pilgrimage usually involved leaving behind worldly possessions (land, weapons, titles) and traveling for months or years to the holy site of choice. Thus, since pilgrimage itself was often such a costly and time-consuming effort, “Urban II conceived [the crusade] as an act so expensive, long, and emotionally and physically arduous that it amounted to a ‘satisfactory’ penance capable of undoing all the sins which intending crusaders had confessed.”(19)

This idea appealed to Latin Christians in all levels of society, especially to the knightly elite, for two reasons. First, it appealed to the preconditioned reactions to sin engrained in Christian culture; these reactions meant that sin and its consequences were taken seriously and, because of the pervading violence in society, a lifetime could be spent doing penance so as to secure entrance into Heaven after death. Second, it appealed to those who, because of worldly concerns or status as a knight (which dictated a violent lifestyle), had found it impossible to perform all the penances required by their sins. When the idea of penitential warfare arose, it provided the key to obtaining salvation.

The crusades presented a spiritually effective activity that allowed the laity and warrior elite “to deserve salvation without abandoning its accustomed dress and by channeling its instincts in directions which accommodated its ingrained social conditioning.”(20) Thus, warrior elites could continue fighting wars and the laity – especially lords and kings who held substantial property and wealth – could embark on the crusade in order to rescue their Christian brothers and obtain, as Pope Urban II dictated in his Call for a Crusade, “immediate remission of sins”(21) without sacrificing a lifetime of work and wealth.

In addition, the crusaders were offered the incentive of material gain by the obtaining of relics, which echoed the theme of a sense of place, and by the acquiring of the enemy’s treasures, which included financial wealth, property, and slaves. Thus by spiritual and material gain, the crusaders could wage an offensive crusade and, in the words of Pope Urban II, “make spoil of their [the enemy’s] treasures and return victorious to your own; or empurpled with our own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory.”(22)

Through the analysis of these three factors, it is possible to see the Crusades as both an offensive and defensive war.  In a sense, the Crusades “had technically to be defensive – Christians could not fight wars of conversion.”(23)  Thus, it is possible to mistakenly interpret that the Crusades were simply a reaction to Muslim conquests in the East and the threat of further Muslim conquests into the West, supported by the incorporation of feudal terminology to relate the crusades to the feudal system of vassalage and the violent vendettas prevalent in Western society.  However, these two factors alone could not have inspired the vast numbers of recruits that participated in the various Crusades.  The key to the Crusades was the emergence and development of the notion of penitential warfare, which penetrated to the deepest levels of Christian belief in offering Christians of all social standings a way to gain complete remission of sins and guarantee acceptance into Heaven after death.  This goal of acceptance into Heaven was one of the most pervasive goals in Christian society and, without the offering of penance in exchange for service in the Crusades, it would likely have been improbable that the Latin Church would have been able to recruit the manpower necessary to embark on and succeed in the Crusades, especially the liberation of Jerusalem in the First Crusade.  This aspect of penitential warfare was not defensive in nature, and thus the Crusades must be viewed as defensive against Muslim conquests as well as offensive against further Muslim conquests and the need to obtain complete remission of sins without entirely forsaking everyday life.