The Crusades were a series of wars fought by European
Christians between 1095 and 1291 to recover
the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, from the followers
of Islam, known as Muslims. In the first century
A.D., Christianity spread through the Roman
Empire, including the Middle Eastern lands of
Palestine, Syria, and Jerusalem. By the end of the
fourth century, the Romans’ vast empire was officially
Christian. It remained so until the seventh
century, when the religion of Islam rose out of Arabia.
While Islam officially condemned the use of
force as a means of conversion, states often found
the use of force necessary. Arab armies of Muslims
began conquering the Middle East, beginning with
Persia (now Iraq) and Byzantium. By A.D. 638, the
city of Jerusalem, considered by Christians the holiest
of cities, was under Muslim control.
Though the Holy Land was under Islamic rule,
Christians who came to worship at the holy places
were, for the most part, tolerated. One exception
was “Mad” Caliph Hakim (996–1021), who destroyed
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jesus’
tomb, and persecuted both Christians and Jews.
After his death, relations between Muslims and
other religious groups became more and more
strained. In the middle of the 11th century, the
Arabs were displaced as leaders of Islam by the
Turks, who disapproved of Christian pilgrims.
When Byzantine emperor Alexius I found his empire
overrun by the Seljuk Turks, he appealed to the
West for help. In 1095, Pope Urban II, speaking at
the Council of Clermont, urged all of Christendom
to go to war to end Muslim rule of the Holy Land.
The result of Urban’s speech was the first Crusade
(1095–99). Combatants called themselves
“crusaders” because they took as their emblem the
Christian cross. The crusaders reached Jerusalem in
the summer of 1099, took it back from the Muslims,
and established four Latin states in the Middle
East: Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, and the Kingdom of
Jerusalem.
The second Crusade (1147–49) transpired after
the Turks took Edessa. This attempt by the Christian
soldiers to regain the country ended in failure,
and by 1187 most of the four Latin states set up
during the first Crusade had again fallen back
under Muslim control.
In 1187 the Kurdish Muslim military leader
Salah ad-Din Yusuf (1138–93), or Saladin as he
was known in the West, captured Jerusalem. Pope
Gregory VIII called on Christians to embark upon
a third Crusade (1189–92). For the next 100 years,
crusades continued to be fought by Christians
hoping to overturn Muslim rule over the Holy
Land. The ninth and final crusade (1271–72) was
led by Prince Edward of England, later Edward I.
Edward landed in Acre, near Jerusalem, but retired
after negotiating a truce. In 1289 Tripoli fell to the
Muslims, and in 1291, Acre, the last Christian
stronghold, followed. Conflicts between the Eastern
and Western cultures did not end at that point,
but after the loss of Acre, crusades were discussed
but not launched.
The causes for the Crusades are deep and varied,
and their consequences infinitely complex.Author
Jean Richard, as translated by Jean Birrell,
suggests that the “crusade poses a problem that is
still present in the human consciousness, that of
the legitimacy of war.” Divine law for the Christians
demanded the preservation of human life, but
the business of government often required defense
or aggression. The code of CHIVALRY in Western Europe
evolved as a way to reconcile Christian virtues
with life in violent times. Richard speculates that
“when the barbarian monarchies settled in the old
Roman Empire, warlike societies replaced a civil
society, and this led to an exaltation of war.” Literature
of the Charlemagne cycle depicted the emperor’s
battles against the “Saracens” of Italy and
Spain as a holy war, particularly in the SONG OF
ROLAND. The concept of the “just war” evolved as
Western Europe after Charlemagne found itself besieged
on virtually all sides: Scandinavian tribes attacked
from the north,Hungarian cavalry invaded
from the east, and Saracen (the medieval Christian
appellation for adherents of the Islamic faith)
armies waged war from the south. The papacy felt
that the defense of the “patrimony of St. Peter” was
imperative, and the Crusades, as they developed,
had dual aims: to defend Christian lands against
Turkish invasion, and to secure Christian possession
of the ancient Holy Land, where Christ had
lived and died.
Contemporary accounts reveal that, from the
start, the questions surrounding the Crusades have
received different answers at the hands of different
authors. Several writers of the early 12th century
preserve Pope Urban II’s speech at the Council of
Clermont, among them Baldric, archbishop of
Dol, and Robert and Monk, who wrote History of
Jerusalem. The eyewitness accounts of the First
Crusade such as The Deeds of the Franks (ca.
1100–01), written by an anonymous crusader who
followed Bohemund of Antioch, reveal the complex
maze of motivations and consequences of
events. Fulcher of Chartres, who was also close to
the action, began his chronicle in 1101, which is
commonly held to be the most reliable of contemporary
sources for the First Crusade. Raymond of
Aguilers, Odo of Deuil, and Oliver of Paderborn
were also clerics in close association with leaders of
various crusades.
The Fourth Crusade was memorably observed
and chronicled by Geoffroi de VILLEHARDOUIN,
whose account is remembered and read as much
for its historical value as for its lively prose. Villehardouin
(ca. 1160–1213) deals with the facts of
the Crusade rather than its deeper historical implications,
and while he writes from a strong belief in
the rightness of his cause, his narrative makes clear
the internal opposition and debate among the crusaders.
Robert of Clari, a knight who fought under
Pierre of Amiens, also wrote of the Fourth Crusade
in his Conquest of Constantinople (ca. 1216),
though his account has been overshadowed in
popularity by Villehardouin’s.
Jean de Joinville (1224–1317) completed his
Chronicle in 1309, describing his activities on crusade
under Louis IV. Translator Frank Marzials observes
that while Villehardouin writes “soberly,
with an eye on important events . . . Joinville writes
as an old man looking lovingly, lingeringly, at the
past—garrulous, discursive, glad of a listener.”
Joinville’s account shows keenly the conviction and
idealism that motivated the men and women who
gave up their familiar lives to go on a holy crusade.
The above chronicles were written by either
combatants or clerics who had a stake in the success
of the Christian armies. A thorough evaluation
of the Crusades requires looking at the
viewpoint of the other side. Fortunately, accounts
of contemporary Arab historians and studies of
the Crusades’ effect on the Eastern states are becoming
increasingly available to English audiences.
In the West, literature following the Crusades
tended to glorify the accomplishments and valorize
the heroes. The French chansons de geste (literally,
“songs of adventure”) frequently
embellished actual events with legendary material,
as in the Song of Antioch by Richard the Pilgrim
or the anonymous Song of Jerusalem. These
verse narratives preceded other chivalric romances
like Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, which
portrays Godfrey of Bouillon as an EPIC hero. Likewise,
Western historians up until the Enlightenment
tended to exalt heroism and faith. However,
Denis Diderot, and Jean d’Alembert, authors of the
massive Encyclopedia, described the Crusades as “a
time of the deepest darkness and of the greatest
folly.” Voltaire, too, referred to the Crusades as
“that epidemic fury . . . marked by every cruelty,
every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of
which human nature is capable.”
The Crusades have been viewed, positively, as
bringing the West in contact with the East and revealing
a whole new continent, Asia, which could
then be explored (as Marco POLO proceeded to do).
But they have also been blamed for deepening
gulfs between Christians and Muslims. Some histories
have argued that these wars were no less
bloody than any other wars in human history; others
see them as a tragic and destructive episode,
“nothing more,” as Steven Runciman writes in his
History of the Crusades, “than a long act of intolerance
in the name of God.”
English Versions of Crusade Chronicles
Allen, S. J. and Emilie Amt, eds. Crusades: A Reader.
Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.
Clari, Robert de. The Conquest of Constantinople.
Translated by Edgar Holmes McNeal. Medieval
Academy Reprints for Teaching, 36. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1996.
Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Arab Historians of the Crusades.
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984.
Villehardouin, Geoffrey de and Jean de Joinville.
Chronicles of the Crusades. Translated by Margaret
R. Shaw. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Works about the Crusades
Maalouf,Amin. The Crusades through Arab Eyes. New
York: Schocken Books, 1989.
Madden, Thomas F. A Concise History of the Crusades.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing,
1999.
Peters, Edward M., ed. The First Crusade. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Richard, Jean. The Crusades, c.1071–c.1291. Translated
by Jean Birrell. Cambridge,U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Vallejo,Yli Remo. The Crusades. Edited by Thor Johnson.
Great Falls, Va.: AeroArt International, Inc.,
2002.