These were highly emotive, popular demonstrations, in which bishops paraded the relics
of local saints, led prayers for peace, and condemned Europe’s warrior caste for its
senseless shedding of Christian blood. Among some segments of the Frankish populace,
these emotions were inspired by a belief in approaching Armageddon, although the extent
to which apocalyptic convictions played a role is still disputed. Proclamations from Peace
councils announced the inviolability from harassment of the Christian populace—
especially of widows and children, the clergy, and those undertaking pilgrimage to holy
sites—on penalty of excommunication. Having outlawed violence against particular
persons considered holy, the councils soon took the next step and established the Truce of
God, which condemned warfare on holy days as well. The Peace and Truce of God were
essential precursors to the crusade phenomenon, since they established the precedent of
the church being the arbiter of legitimate warfare.
The rapidly progressing Gregorian reform movement likewise influenced crusade
ideology. Reforms like outlawing simony, demanding a celibate clergy, and condemning
lay investiture increased popular support for the institutional church that had long been
on the wane. The Papal Election Decree of 1059 finally secured the independence of the
Holy See from imperial control and gave it the opportunity to exert its new-found
strength by promoting a European-wide movement to complete the reformation of the
Christian world by ensuring, by force if necessary, Christians’ right to undertake
unmolested pilgrimages to the site of Christ’s birth, miraculous works, and death.
Pilgrimage, and the cult of the saints to which it was linked, was a particularly popular
devotional exercise among the peoples of the feudal north. Whether as voluntary
exercises or as required penitential works, these arduous and dangerous journeys to holy
sites figured large in Europe’s spiritual life, and pilgrimage routes to popular sites like
Canterbury, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, or Jerusalem itself often were filled with
hundreds, if not thousands, of the devout. Reports of Muslim harassment of pilgrims en
route to the Holy Land, and of the Egyptian caliph ‘al-Hakim’s 1009 slaughter of the
Christian populace of Jerusalem and destruction of the Holy Sepulcher, struck European
minds with horror. These reports were grossly exaggerated, but a certain amount of anti-
Christian violence did occur with some frequency, usually by Arab or Turkish brigands
acting independently rather than by state forces themselves. To defend the holy pilgrims
as well as the Holy Land itself, the church considered it well within its rights to summon
the military caste of Latin Christendom to lead a divinely sanctioned war to liberate
Palestine, rescue the Christian populace held in what was believed to be servitude, and
guarantee the safety of pilgrimage routes.
The First Crusade (1095–99) was the only complete success. Pope Urban II at the
Council of Clermont (November 27, 1095) called specifically upon the people of France
to “enter the road to the Holy Sepulcher and win back the Holy Land from the wicked
race” of the Turks. The main army, trailing a rag-tag group of peasants led by the zealot
Peter the Hermit, set off by land for Constantinople, from which, urged on by their
nervous Byzantine hosts, they moved southward across Anatolia. Amid extraordinary
hardship, they liberated city after city (the battle for Tripoli being the most difficult)
before finally entering Jerusalem in July 1099. In their zeal, the crusaders sacked the city
brutally, killing Jews and Muslims alike. When the fighting ceased, the army organized
the resettlement of the Holy Land into four major Christian states: the principalities of
Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem.
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