The Crusades, Idea and Reality, 1095-1274

The Crusades, Idea and Reality, 1095-1274

Louise and Jonathan Riley-Smith

Edward Arnold, 1981, 191 pp.

The Crusades, Idea and Reality, is a collection of medieval sources illustrating aspects of the crusading movement in its classical phase, two-thirds of which have never before been translated into a modern language. (It is Part 4 of the Documents of Medieval History series.) In the brief foreword the authors point out that historians have been loath to take the rhetoric associated with crusading at its face-value, since our Christian society has rejected the idea that violence may be sanctioned for religious ends; but today we are confronted by an upsurge of militant liberation movements within the Church, so that we need to look again at the arguments used to justify violence by churchmen in the Middle Ages. The documents themselves are supplemented by a long and discursive introduction in which, as well as giving a blow-by-blow history of the crusades, the Riley-Smiths try to show that we should not dismiss theological and canonical judgements as mere 'superstructure', seeking the true explanation of the movement in such economic motives as the need for lebensraum, and that the crusaders were inspired by genuine piety.

There are of course many New Testament texts which seem to indicate that there are no circumstances in which a Christian should resort to violence; but Augustine in the fifth century had already appealed to Luke XIV 23 ('Compel them to come in') to justify the forcible conversion of heretics (and Charlemagne in the eighth had extended the invitation to the pagan Saxons). Violence can be justified if it is motivated by a virtuous intention – not anger, say, but love – and must be justified if it is commanded by God. The papal bulls, encyclicals, epistles and sermons, extracts from which are collected here, exhibit their dependence on this Augustinian mode of argument in their virtually formulaic construction: they all cite Luke XIV 23; the popes command crusades in the name of God; and they all observe that 'greater love hath no man...' (although it is not love for the infidel which is in question, but for the Christians who are tortured and enslaved by them). Canon law did not (one is relieved to discover) sanction the forcible conversion of pagans, and so, while the Riley-Smiths rightly emphasise that the anti-Cathar crusades were true crusades, they also contradict the view that scepticism with regard to the acceptability of crusades against pagans (whether the Muslims of the Holy Land or Spain or the Wends) was wide- spread. The reality corresponding to the lebensraum theme was perhaps this: Christendom was oppressed by marauding bands of knights; holy wars were thought to be occasions for acts meriting the remission of sins, and so making room for the ordo of milites in the economy of grace.

The documents are arranged analytically, under the main headings of 'the Preaching of the Crusades', 'the Appeal of the Crusades' and 'the Experience of the Crusades', to illustrate these themes. The Church was wary of appealing to feudal modes of thought, but contemporary vernacular poetry, as well as showing what a great and genuine sacrifice the crusaders felt they were making, reveals that they were inclined to think of themselves as Christ's vassals strictly obliged (in return for the benefit of existence itself) to assist Him in recovering His lost inheritance of Jerusalem. In spite of the atrocities they committed, they were burdened by a consciousness of sin, and saw their many reverses as evidence, not that the crusades were not pleasing to God, but that they had not merited his grace, imposing on themselves more and more extravagant penances and mortifications.

Keith McCullough teaches classics and wrote the songs for Lorca’s Yerma which was staged in London recently.