massacred, and the region as a whole was divided into
the County of Tripoli and three kingdoms organized on
the feudal model: Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch. All
four were papal fiefs that provided new lands for ambi-
tious knights and churchmen. In reality they were frag-
ile enclaves surrounded by a population that despised
the Christians as barbarians. To protect them, fortifica-
tions based upon the more sophisticated engineering
techniques of the Muslims were constructed and two
military orders were established—the Knights of the
Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (1113) and the
Knights Templars (1119). Religious orders of fighting
men, sworn to celibacy and dedicated to the protection
of the holy places, the Knights were a model for later
orders that sought to expand the frontiers of Christen-
dom in Spain and Germany.
In spite of these efforts, Edessa fell in 1144, and a
Second Crusade was launched in retaliation. It accom-
plished little. In 1187 Jerusalem was taken by the Kur-
dish general Saladin (c. 1137–93). The Third Crusade
(1189–92) was a fiasco. The emperor Frederick Bar-
barossa (c. 1123–90) drowned in a stream, weighed
down by his body armor. Richard I Lion-Heart, king of
England, quarreled with Philip Augustus, who aban-
doned the siege of Jerusalem and returned to confiscate
Richard’s fiefs in France. Richard, trying to return
home, was captured and held for ransom by the em-
peror Henry VI.
Subsequent crusades were even less edifying. The
Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) foundered when the cru-
saders failed to provide for the cost of their passage in
Venetian ships. The Venetians demanded that they
seize Zara in payment and then inveigled them into at-
tacking Constantinople. Constantinople fell in July- The Venetians eventually abandoned their con-
quest after extorting more favorable trade privileges
from the Greeks in return for the city. In 1228 the em-
peror Frederick II was excommunicated for abandoning
the Sixth Crusade, ostensibly because of seasickness.
He acquired Jerusalem by negotiation in the following
year. The pope, who thought that he should have taken
the city by force, was not pleased. The Muslims recov-
ered it in 1244. Two more crusades by St. Louis IX of
France accomplished nothing, and by 1291 the last
Christian strongholds in the Levant had fallen to the
Muslims (see map 9.2).
The Impact of the Crusades upon Europe
The first attempt at European expansion had mixed re-
sults. Only in Spain and Portugal was new territory
added to Christendom, but a precedent was set for the
more sustained efforts of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. In the meantime, the effort to convert non-
Christian populations by the sword—a notion hardly
envisioned by the fathers of the church—poisoned re-
lations with the Islamic world and probably strength-
ened the forces of intolerance and rigidity within Islam.
European Jews suffered as well. The militant attitude
deliberately fostered by a reformed papacy led to perse-166Chapter 9
DOCUMENT 9.4
The Privileges of the Crusaders
These privileges, granted to prospective crusaders by Pope Eu-
genius III in 1146, demonstrate some of the spiritual and ma-
terial advantages that induced men to go to the Holy Land.Moreover, by the authority vested by God in us,
we who with paternal care provide for your safety
and the needs of the church, have promised and
granted to those who from a spirit of devotion
have decided to enter upon and accomplish such a
holy and necessary undertaking and task, that re-
mission of sins which our predecessor Pope Urban
instituted. We have also commanded that their
wives and children, their property and possessions,
shall be under the protection of the holy church,
of ourselves, of the archbishops, bishops and other
prelates of the church of God. Moreover, we or-
dain by our apostolic authority that until their re-
turn or death is full proven, no law suit shall be
instituted hereafter in regard to any property of
which they were in peaceful possession when they
took the cross.
Those who with pure hearts enter upon such a
sacred journey and who are in debt shall pay no
interest. And if they or others for them are bound
by oath or promise to pay interest, we free them
by our apostolic authority. And after they have
sought aid of their relatives or lords of whom they
hold their fiefs, and the latter are unable or unwill-
ing to advance them money, we allow them freely
to mortgage their lands and other possessions to
churches, ecclesiastics, or other Christians, and
their lords shall have no redress.
Otto of Freising. Gesta Federici,I, 35. Pennsylvania Translations
and Reprints,p. 13, trans. Edward P. Cheyney. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1897.