The First Crusade

Cutthroats and bandits joined princes and pilgrims on the great march to the Holy Land. They thought they were going to be saved...

This is Who made our minds?, my Thursday essay probing the greatest, cruellest and most beautiful minds of the past 5,000 years, inspired by my book, The Soul: A History of the Human Mind (Penguin 2024). Join the journey!

Next Thursday: Poor Jerusalem

‘WHAT SIGHS, what weeping, what lamentation among friends when husband left wife so dear to him, his children, his possessions however great, his father, mother, brother and other relatives. But however many tears those remaining shed for departing friends and in their presence, none flinched from going.’

Peter the Hermit leading the ‘People’s Crusade’. Miniature from the Egerton Manuscript, 14th century (public domain)

Thus Fulcher of Chartres, chaplain to Count Stephen of Blois, captured the moment the Christian knights left their families and set off on the First Crusade, to war and probable death.

None knew how long they would be gone, or to where they were going, or through what horrors the journey might take them.

In their minds they were marching as if to the edge of the world, a place unimaginably remote, peopled by tribes of ferocious heathens living in waterless deserts.

They knew only that they were leaving to confront the dreaded Saracens, the armies of Islam, who had usurped Christ’s kingdom on Earth.

Prayers warmed the family’s parting moment, Fulcher writes:

‘Then husband told wife the time he expected to return, assuring her that if by God’s grace he survived he would come back home to her. He commended her to the Lord, kissed her lingeringly, and promised her as she wept that he would return. She, though, fearing that she would never see him again, could not stand but swooned to the ground, mourning her loved one, whom she was losing in this life as if he were already dead.’

—

Pope Urban II’s sermon at Clermont on 27 November 1095 had generated more soldiers for Christ than anyone thought possible.

Tens of thousands farewelled their loved ones. Gangs of volunteers, as if rallying to a popular war, rushed into the churches to join the army of the Lord.

The idea of an armed Christian pilgrimage had an ‘electrifying appeal to eleventh-century men’, the historian Carl Erdmann explained.

Salvation was not the only incentive; there were lucrative financial prizes on offer: booty, treasure and, later, tax exemptions.

The crusaders came from all backgrounds, but the first to sign up were the titled noblemen, giving the first march its name, the Princes’ Crusade. (Historians numbered the crusades long after they took place.)

Knights, monks, commoners and farmers of Frankish, Gothic and British origin followed, gathering in the cathedrals and churches to receive their priests’ blessing before embarking on the great penitential quest to reclaim for Christendom the sacred city of Jerusalem, 450 years after the Muslims had seized it.

Before they set off, the members of ‘God’s militia’ (as one sceptic called them) knelt before the prelate to ‘take the cross’. Packed congregations witnessed this sacred transaction between men and God, which had no precedent in Christendom.

For the remission of his sins and the salvation of his soul, the Christian soldier swore in God’s name to reconquer the holiest sites of Christendom, and to give his life, if need be, to defend the faith.

—

The meaning of Jesus’ words, as recorded by the apostle Matthew, were clear to all: ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’

In Luke’s telling, Christ said: ‘And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be My disciple.’

Numberless parishioners who witnessed this solemn transaction chanted the Latin phrase, ‘Deus vult’: ‘God wills it’.

The gravity of the moment, the sincerity of their pledge and the magnitude of their mission persuaded everybody present that they were witnessing the enactment of a divinely ordained event.

In a few months or years – who knew? – those same words, ‘Deus vult’, would fly from the crusaders’ lips as they rushed at the fortifications of Jerusalem.

—

Had the pope overstretched his authority, some wondered? He had arrogated to himself the power to redeem the souls of those who died on the battlefield.

Yet surely the gift of salvation lay with God, not man?

The Christian soldier was in no mood to challenge the new papal doctrine. He felt genuinely blessed: ‘If I win Jerusalem and live,’ ran his thoughts, ‘I’ll return a hero and go straight to Heaven when I die. If I’m killed in battle, my soul will ascend to Heaven, from where I fell. I cannot lose.’

That was the same pre-battle calculation made by the Muslim warriors he was setting off to destroy. The splendid promise of that spiritual pact explained why tens of thousands assembled to take the cross with all their heart and soul.

—

The parting ceremony had theological and practical meanings: the sacred vow distinguished a man as a ‘crucesignatus’, a holy warrior, and no mere pilgrim, mercenary or knight for hire.

He literally received the cross, or the ‘stamp of Heaven’, in the form of a large red crucifix sewn onto the white tunic that covered his breastplate. This was novel: never had a group of lay soldiers worn an emblem of faith on their clothing.

After the crusader had donned his uniform, the priest blessed his sword, his stave and purse.

The newly minted soldier of Christ was ready to march.

—

This river of noblemen and knights flowed east, joining throngs of warrior-monks, pilgrims, peasants and barefoot medicants known as the ‘People’s Crusade’ led by a French priest called Peter the Hermit.

It quickly became clear that this great enterprise would require the commitment of all of Western Europe.

Those who were unable to join the march were harried to help pay for it, in the form of taxes.

Payment in part would shorten a taxpayer’s journey through Purgatory, the people were told, while payment in full would accelerate his or her ascent to Heaven.

Buying the purification of one’s soul was an attractive investment, because most people accepted that their souls after death were probably bound for Purgatory, a transit point for those who were neither saints nor irredeemably wicked.

Purgatory was seen as a universal cleansing station of everyman and everywoman, where God purified the soul in readiness for Heaven (or not, as the case might be).

Pope Gregory I had instituted this sweeping change in Catholic doctrine. The crusader’s tax offered believers a chance to shorten and make less painful the travails of Purgatory.

—

Rome seized on this fresh opportunity to squeeze money from the people.

The Vatican attached a pecuniary value to penance in general: cash, jewels, crops or livestock.

The penitent soul would receive a certificate, or papal ‘indulgence’, certifying the acquisition of redemption in the afterlife.

Pope Urban had set out the terms and conditions of this deal at Clermont. There, however, he had promised only the remission of temporal punishments for sins, not the full forgiveness of sins.

‘But the world took no account of this distinction,’ wrote Erdmann. None of the contemporary reports reproduced the official terminology. ‘What predominated instead was the general belief that the crusade procured forgiveness of sins and the soul’s salvation.’

A triple victory, then – forgiveness, redemption and salvation – if you died fighting God’s wars.

Any who died on the crusade, of course, would be considered a martyr and assured entry to paradise.

To worship in the place where Christ had stood, to ‘walk where He had walked’, to die fighting for Christ – now that was a manly kind of martyrdom!

—

Strictly speaking, most crusaders were not worthy of paradise. Many were criminals, robbers, mercenaries and debauchees who were suddenly told that their souls merited a place in heaven if they took the cross.

Pope Urban made this explicit:

‘Now will those who were once robbers become soldiers of Christ; those who once fought brothers and relatives will justly fight barbarians; those who once were mercenaries for a few farthings will obtain eternal reward; those who once strove to damage their life and soul will do battle for a double honour.’

Here was a lifeline for the reprobates, thugs and men of violence.

A band of criminals in Usk, in Wales – ‘robbers, highwaymen and murderers’ – took the cross and were instantly absolved of their crimes.

Baldric of Dol, a French abbot, rammed the point home to a mob of cutthroats: only violence in Christ’s name was holy; any other form was a moral disgrace.

‘You are proud; you tear your brothers to pieces and fight among yourselves,’ he told them. ‘If you wish to save your souls, either abandon the profession of arms or go boldly forth as Christi milites [soldiers of Christ] and hasten to the defense of the Eastern church.’

—

Some who made a living from violence were susceptible to their consciences. Fulk III, count of Anjou, would seek remission for his bloody rampages through the Loire Valley, around 1000, by going on three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, ‘driven by fear of hell’.

He later founded a monastery near Loches where his monks were encouraged to pray ‘day and night for the redemption of his soul’.

Few cared for ecclesiastical quibbles over whether a murderer might become a martyr.

Ivo of Chartres, a bishop, cheerfully gleaned from the letters of popes Leo IV and John VIII that the heavenly kingdom awaited all those who died in battle against the Saracens.

And all of Christendom sang the crusaders’ song of the time:

‘Whoever proceeds thither,

And should die there,

He will receive the bounties of heaven

And live with the saints.’

—

Biblical ‘evidence’ was invoked to reinforce the point. The Bible is replete with violence committed in God’s name and on his orders. The Old Testament is awash with gore.

The medieval church validated numerous tales of God deriving satisfaction from the bloody deeds of the Israelites.

Here he was, commanding Moses to raise an army to slaughter the idolaters of the Golden Calf; elsewhere he ordered Saul to exterminate the Amalekite ‘men, women, infant and suckling’.

And there were direct calls in the New Testament to take up arms for Christ. What other interpretation had this passage in the Book of Revelation?

‘Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war . . . He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.’

—

The church’s busy propagandists were not above distorting the words of Christ to promote the Crusades.

They even rewrote Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy’ was corrupted to read, ‘Blessed are those who have kind and generous feelings within a hero’s chest: the powerful Holy Lord will be kind and generous to them’.

Poets resurrected the horror of the Muslim conquests. La Chanson de Roland (‘The Song of Roland’), written around 1100, reminded people of the long wars against the Saracens in the seventh century: even 400 years later, those wounds had not healed.

‘Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit,’ ran one line: ‘Pagans are wrong and Christians are right.’

And there were incentives to join the Crusade that had nothing to do with salvation: booty, riches and women. Even the seizure of spoils had the imprimatur of God.

At the Battle of Dorylaeum in July 1097, for example, an eyewitness cried out: ‘Today, please God, you will all gain much booty.’

That echoed the sermons of Pope Urban, who reassured the crusaders that the spoils of war were a gift from Heaven.

‘Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre,’ an abbot called Robert of Reims (or Robert the Monk, c. 1055–1122) would write around 1107, ‘rescue that land from a dreadful race and rule over it yourselves, for that land that, as scripture says, floweth with milk and honey was given by God as a possession to the children of Israel.’

Next Thursday, 24th July 2025: Poor Jerusalem

Selected sources and further reading:

Anonymous (1997) La Chanson de Roland, Paris: Livre de Poche.

Anonymous and Hill, R. (transl.) (1967) Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, (Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem), Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Cassidy-Welch, M. (ed.) (2017) Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, London: Routledge.

Chevedden, P.E. (2011) ‘The View of the Crusades from Rome and Damascus: The Geo-Strategic and Historical Perspectives of Pope Urban II and Ali ibn T ̣ahir al-Sulami’, Oriens, 39(2), pp. 257–329.

Cole, P.J. (1991) The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270, Boston: The Medieval Academy of America.

Dreves, G.M. (2014) Analecta hymnica medii aevi, Norderstedt, Germany: Book on Demand.

Erdmann, C. with Baldwin, M.W. and Goffart, W. (transls.) (1977) The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fulcher of Chartres with Ryan, F.R. (transl.) and Fink H.S. (ed.) (1972) A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095–1127, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Gabriele, M. (December 2012) ‘The Last Carolingian Exegete: Pope Urban II, the Weight of Tradition, and Christian Reconquest’, Church History, 81(4), pp. 796–814.

Gaposchkin, C. (January 2013) ‘From Pilgrimage to Crusade: The Liturgy of Departure, 1095–1300’, Speculum, 88(1), pp. 44–91.

Gerald of Wales and Thorpe, L. (transl.) (1978) The Journey through Wales and the Description of Wales, London: Penguin Classics.

Glaber, R. with France, J., Bulst, N. and Reynolds, P. (transls.) (1990) The Five Books of the Histories and the Life of St. William, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Knobler, A. (April 2006) ‘Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48(2), pp. 293–325.

Papal Encyclicals: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/.

Powell, J.M. (November 1995) ‘Rereading the Crusades: An Introduction’, The International History Review, 17(4), pp. 663–9.

Riley-Smith, J. (2005) The Crusades: A History, New Haven CT: Yale University Press.

Schama, S. (2013) The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE – 1492), London: The Bodley Head.

Temmerman, J, (ed.) (2021) Religious Radicalism: Demarcations and Challenges, Brussels: ASP.

The Bible (New King James Version), Matthew 16:24; Luke 14:27; 1 Samuel 15:3; Revelation 19:11–13.

Tyerman, C. (2006) God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, London: Penguin Books.