Page 280 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

military arms and religious fervor. A self-appointed leader, Peter the Hermit, who preached of his visions of the Holy City of Jerusalem, convinced a large mob, most of them poor and many of them peasants, to undertake a crusade to the East. One person who encountered Peter described him in these words: “Outdoors he wore a woolen tunic, which revealed his ankles, and above it a hood; he wore a cloak to cover his upper body, a bit of his arms, but his feet were bare. He drank wine and ate fish, but scarcely ever ate bread. This man, partly because of his reputation, partly because of his preaching, [assembled] a very large army.”10
This so-called Peasants’ Crusade or Crusade of the Poor comprised a ragtag rabble that moved through the Balkans, terrorizing natives and looting for their food and supplies. Their misplaced religious enthusi- asm led to another tragic byproduct as well, the perse- cution of the Jews, long depicted by the church as the murderers of Christ. As a contemporary chronicler described it, “They persecuted the hated race of the Jews wherever they were found.” Two bands of peasant Crusaders, led by Peter the Hermit, managed to reach Constantinople. Emperor Alexius wisely shipped them over to Asia Minor, where the Turks massacred the undisciplined and poorly armed mob.
THE FIRST CRUSADE Pope Urban II did not share the wishful thinking of the peasant crusaders but was more inclined to trust knights who had been well trained in the art of war. The warriors of western Europe, particu- larly France, formed the first “official” crusading armies. The knights who made up this first crusading host were motivated by religious fervor, but there were other attractions as well. Some sought adventure and welcomed a legitimate opportunity to pursue their fa- vorite pastime—fighting. Others saw an opportunity to gain territory, riches, status, possibly a title, and even salvation—had the pope not offered a full remission of sins for those who participated in these “armed pilgrimages”? From the perspective of the pope and European monarchs, the Crusades offered a way to rid Europe of contentious young nobles who disturbed the peace and wasted lives and energy fighting each other. The Catholic Church had tried earlier to limit the ongoing bloodletting, but without a great deal of success. And merchants in many Italian cities relished the prospect of new trading opportunities in Muslim lands.
In the First Crusade, launched in 1096, three organ- ized bands of noble warriors, most of them French, made their way to the East (see Map 10.5). This first crusading army probably numbered several thousand
The First Crusade: The Capture of Jerusalem. Recruited from the noble class of western Europe, the first crusading army captured Jerusalem in 1099. Shown here in a fifteenth-century manuscript illustration is a fanciful re- creation of the looting of Jerusalem after its capture
by the Christian Crusaders.
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The Rise of Kingdoms and the Growth of Church Power
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