UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST:
History, Religion, and the Clash of Cultures
400 pages
Copyright © 2007 by Beechmont Crest Publishing
First edition, 2007
0-9748330-6-1
C H A P T E R 3:
Understanding the Crusades
Massacre in the Rhineland
The mingling of religious and military objectives had its first tragic consequences in the Rhineland. There was a large Jewish population in this area, concentrated in the towns of Worms, Mainz, and Speyer. The Crusaders fell upon the Rhineland Jews, massacring victims of both genders and all ages. They desecrated Jewish cemeteries and burned synagogues.
There was no external impetus for the violence; Jews and Christians had enjoyed harmonious relations in the Rhineland. However, the Crusaders’ reasoned that if their mission was to destroy the “enemies of God”---then why not start with the European Jews whose hands were stained with the blood of the Messiah?
Up to this point, anti-Semitic violence had occurred only sporadically in Western Europe. According to official Church doctrine, the Jews were a separate people who were forever tainted by their involvement in the murder of Christ. But the Church also held that Jewish life and property were to be respected. (In fact, several Church officials sheltered Jewish townspeople from the marauding Crusaders.) This was the first widespread anti-Jewish pogrom in Western Europe. The Crusaders’ activities set a precedent that would reach its horrifying climax in the death camps of Nazi Germany.
The Crusaders arrive in Constantinople
In the early spring of 1097, the Crusader forces began to arrive in Constantinople. This army of mostly Franks made a less than favorable impression on the Byzantine emperor and his subjects. The Byzantines regarded themselves as a refined, literate people who had inherited the cultural legacy of classical Greek civilization. They regarded the unhygienic, sword-wielding Franks as barbarians.The Crusaders’ mingling of faith and warfare appalled the Byzantines, who believed that Christianity had no place on the battlefield. Emperor Alexius’s adult daughter expressed horror when she observed a priest practicing his combat skills with a sword in hand.
The Crusaders also took a dim view of the Byzantines. They regarded Alexius as too timid in his dealings with the Turks. And they were not blind to the opulence of Constantinople---at a time when most of Western Europe was still backward. Jealousies and barely constrained hostilities rolled through the Crusader ranks. The Franks had endured months of hardship on the road to come to the aid of their wealthy, Greek-speaking fellow Christians, who obviously disdained them.
Nevertheless, the Byzantines and the Crusaders now faced a common foe. This compelled both sides to endure the more annoying aspects of the other. The Byzantines were eager to see the Crusaders put a dent in the Turkish war machine. The Franks, for their part, were anxious to engage the as yet unseen Muslim enemy in battle.
In May 1097, the Muslim stronghold of Nicea became the Crusaders’ first target. Nicea had not always been a Muslim city. It had originally been a Roman settlement, and later became part of Byzantium. In 325, Nicea was the site of an important meeting of the early Christian church—the Council of Nicea. In 1078, it fell to the Seljuk Turks. When the Crusaders arrived in Asia Minor, Nicea had been in Muslim hands for less than twenty years.
Using intelligence gathered by the Byzantines, the Crusaders arranged to attack the city when its Turkish sultan, Kilijarsalan, was away with most of his army. A small Muslim garrison remained in the city; and they were quickly overwhelmed by the Crusaders. Despite their predicament, however, the Turks refused to surrender to the Frankish Crusaders. Instead they stalled until a surrender to Alexius could be arranged. Alexius treated the Turkish captives graciously, going so far as to house them in imperial barracks until their ransom money arrived. This incensed the Crusaders, who had other ideas about how the enemies of God should be handled.
The Crusaders next turned their attention to Antioch. Antioch was another early Christian city that had been overrun by Muslim forces. Antioch, along with Rome, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, was one of the four administrative centers of the Roman Christian church. It was in Antioch that the term “Christian” had first been applied to the followers of Jesus. The first bishop of Antioch had been none other than St. Peter himself.
Unlike Nicea, Antioch was well defended. The Crusaders arrived in October 1097, just as winter was approaching. Winter is a bad time to begin a siege; and this point was a basic principle of medieval warfare. Nevertheless, the Crusaders decided to dig in. More than 50,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilian pilgrims encamped outside Antioch. They quickly depleted the food supplies that were available in the surrounding countryside. Widespread hunger and disease followed.
On December 30, there was a powerful earthquake, which many of the Crusaders interpreted as a sign from God. Around the same time, one of the Crusaders—a servant named Peter Bartholomew---had a prophetic vision. He dreamt of the old cathedral of St. Peter within the gates of Antioch. He saw Crusaders enter the church after the liberation of Antioch and dig up the floor of the building. The Crusaders then retrieved a lance from beneath the cathedral’s foundation. Peter Bartholomew determined that this was the lance that a Roman soldier had used to pierce the side of Jesus on Good Friday.
In the temporal realm, however, the situation continued to look dire for the Crusaders. The months dragged on without any real advances against the Muslim defenders of the city. To make matters worse, the Crusaders learned that ad-Daula Kerbuqa, the Turkish emir of Mosul, was organizing an alliance of Muslim emirs to join the battle. This raised the prospect of the starving Crusaders being slaughtered in the field outside the gates of the city.
Then in June 1098, the long-awaited breakthrough finally arrived. A local Christian, who was serving as a captain in the Muslim army, decided to betray the Turks. He contacted the Crusaders and arranged for them to enter through an unguarded section of Antioch’s defensive barricades.
When the Crusaders entered the city, they slaughtered the residents and pillaged homes indiscriminately. Although Antioch’s large Christian population was not deliberately targeted, they too fell victim to the Crusaders’ blind assault on the populace. Contemporary accounts describe widespread destruction and bloodshed inside Antioch, with bodies strewn about the streets.
The forces of the alliance assembled by ad-Daul Kerbuqa arrived only days later. The Crusaders looked out and saw a sea of Turkish swords and lances outside the city. For a while, they seriously considered either flight or surrender. Then, in desperation, they appointed a crew of men to act on the vision of Peter Bartholomew. The men dug up the floor of St. Peter’s cathedral. At length they retrieved a piece of metal that looked reasonably similar to a lance. But the Crusaders’ leadership wasn’t about to wait for expert opinions. This, they decided, was the holy lance that Peter Bartholomew had seen in his dream.
The discovery of the lance energized the Crusaders. They poured out of the city and fell upon the Turkish forces, bearing the lance as a sacred relic. Some Crusaders later claimed to have seen Christian saints on the battlefield; and a number of them swore that no man fighting in the vicinity of the lance was felled by Turkish weapons.
The ferocity of the Crusaders made an impact on the Turks. Kerbuqa’s alliance soon began to disintegrate. The emirs who suffered the heaviest casualties early in the fight cut their losses and withdrew from the battlefield. Then other Muslim commanders withdrew as more Frankish forces bore down on them. The Crusaders were ultimately victorious. The Turkish army dispersed, leaving the Crusaders in possession of the city.
The Crusaders were of course elated. But the liberation of Antioch---while significant----was only a stepping stone. They could not rest until Jerusalem was also liberated. After posting a small garrison of soldiers to dissuade the Turks from further aggressions, the main body of the Crusader force headed south, toward Jerusalem.
Copyright 2005 Beechmont Crest Publishing
