HAVOC 135traded with peasants who had a surplus of something else. As the goods
they had access to grew more various and more abundant, they were able
to borrow some time from the backbreaking business of sheer subsistence
to make handcrafted items to trade, whatever they were good at. Certain
crossroads turned into more or less permanent market sites, which then
developed into towns. Towns began to attract people who could work full
time making things to sell for cash. Cash allowed some people to spend all
their time going from market to market, just buying and selling. Money
came back into use in Europe, and as money proliferated, the wealthiest
Europeans acquired the means to travel.
And where did they travel? Well, this being a world steeped in religion
and religious superstition, they went to shrines in search of miracles. If
they had limited means, they visited local shrines, but if they could afford
better, they went to the great shrines in the Holy Lands. This was a long
and dangerous journey for western Europeans, and without a universal
currency the only way to pay for it was with gold or silver, which made
such travelers prime targets for bandits; so pilgrims often formed groups,
hired bodyguards, and organized communal expeditions to Palestine.
There, they visited the places where Christ and his disciples had walked
and worked and lived and died. They begged forgiveness of the Lord, got
a leg up in the quest for heaven, bought charms to treat their physical ills,
purchased some of the marvelous items to be had in the bazaars of the east,
acquired relics and souvenirs for their relatives, and headed home to con-
template their life's greatest adventure.
Then the Seljuk Turks wrested control of Palestine away from the tol-
erant Fatimids and the indolent Abbasids. As new converts, these Turks
tended toward zealotry. They weren't zealous about sobriety, modesty,
charity, and the like, but they ceded second place to none when it came to
expressing chauvinistic disdain toward followers of other religions, espe-
cially those from faraway and more-primitive lands.
Christian pilgrims began to find themselves treated rather shabbily in the
Holy Lands. It wasn't that they were beaten, tortured, or killed-nothing
like that. It was more that they were subjected to constant little humilia-
tions and harassments designed to make them feel second-class. They
found themselves at the end of every line. They needed special permission
to get into their own shrines. Every little thing cost money; shopkeepers