The Crusades: Introductions

What is the best modern introduction to the Crusades? The traditional answer would be Sir Steven Runciman’s three-volume A History of the Crusades. However, its arguments have been largely revised by recent scholarship, and its celebrated prose is perhaps beginning to show its age. Thankfully, a number of excellent histories of the Crusades have been published in recent years. All of them are completely abreast with modern scholarship, and all can justifiably lay claim to having taken up Runciman’s mantle.

The first is The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge. In this lengthily (it comes in at around 750 pages) but gripping book, Asbridge provides a grand narrative of the conflict between Crusaders and Muslims in the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291. But – crucially – he tells the story from both sides. For example, Part I: The Coming of the Crusades describes the origin of Crusading, the First Crusade and the foundation of the Crusader States from the viewpoint of Western Christendom. But Part II: The Response of Islam switches dramatically to an Islamic perspective and describes the rise of Zengi, Nur ad-Din and Saladin. The effect of this method is that Asbridge not only gives us a compelling account of the Crusades and Outremer; he also tells us how crusading was viewed by contemporary Muslims and how it affected religion and politics in the near East.     

The second is Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips. The work is, as Phillips states in the introduction, ‘aimed squarely at the general reader’. And this objective amply fulfilled: the book is extremely readable and assumes no prior knowledge on the reader’s part. Holy Warriors differs from The War for the Holy Land in several ways. First, it is more economic and comes in at around 400 pages. Second – and linked to the first – Phillips doesn’t provide us with a detailed, step-by-step history of the Crusades; rather, he focuses on the key events in the history of the movement and makes them understandable by centring his narrative on important (and often telling) individuals. For example, in Chapter 2 Phillips deals with the subject of the ‘relations between Muslims and Franks in the Levant [between] 1099-1187’ by giving the reader biographies of the Damascene legist Al-Sulami, the prolific writer Usma ibn Munqidh and the Spanish pilgrim Ibn Jubayr. Third, its geographical scope is broader: Phillips takes a ‘pluralist’ approach and looks at crusades in Spain, Southern France and Eastern Europe. Lastly, although Asbridge does touch upon the subject, Phillips closes his work with an in-depth account of how the idea of crusading has been utilised in the modern era – the discussion ranges from the damning critiques of Enlightenment thinkers such as Gibbon and Voltaire, to Giuseppe Mazzini’s use of crusading ideology as a means of drawing people to the Young Italy group, to the appropriation of crusading imagery by Arab Nationalists and Islamists, to George W. Bush’s infamous utterance on the south lawn of the White House.

The final book is God’s War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman. This is the longest work of them all: it comes in at 1023 pages, and the typeface isn’t doing the myopic reader any favours. But it is by no means prolix. On the contrary, the book is a dense and taut and brilliant overview of crusading between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the work is of interest to both the casual and the academic reader: Tyerman’s accounts of crusade recruitment and preaching are superb, and his discussion of the crusade of 1248-54 is the best known to me. Unlike Asbridge and to a lesser extent Phillips, Tyerman’s ‘perspective is Western European.’ But what the work lacks in perspective, it makes up for in detail and scope. We are treated to expansive discussions of the origins of the idea of crusading; the Albigensian Crusade; crusading in Spain; society in Outremer; crusading in the Baltic; the crusade against the Hussities, etc. In the preface Tyerman declares that ‘it would be folly…. to pretend to compete, to match, as it were, my clunking computer keyboard with [Runciman’s] pen… to pit one volume, however substantial, with the breadth, scope and elegance of his three.’ One is left thinking this may be undue modesty.    

     

It is impossible to recommend one of these books over the others. They are all excellent. But I hope my brief outline of their content will help readers choose which is most suited to them.

The Albigensian Crusade - An Unusually Violent Conflict?

Over the last few weeks I've been studying the works of medievalists who have looked at the comparative violence of religious warfare. There aren't, to my knowledge, many works on the subject. We have a few on the First Crusade. Jay Rubenstein proposed in Armies of Heaven that the First Crusade constituted a 'new form of warfare' since it exhibited a level of brutality unseen in other wars. And in a brilliant article on the sack of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders on 15 July 1099, Benjamin Kedar argued cogently that the atrocities which took place were extreme even by medieval standards. In addition, we have a two articles on the Albigensian Crusade, the war against the Cathars in Southern France in the early thirteenth century. The first is by Malcolm Barber, who argues that the war was exceptionally brutal. And the second is by Lawrence Marvin, who contends that the sack of Béziers on 12 July 1209 - one of the worst atrocities of the conflict - was not abnormally violent.

Below I've written a review of the works of Barber and Marvin. I share some thoughts on their methodological approaches and put forward a case for whose is more convincing. 

For the uninitiated, the main sources for the Albigensian Crusade are:

• Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay - A polemicist and propagandist for Catholicism and the Albigensian Crusade
• William of Tudela - Author of the first half of the "Song of the Albigensian Crusade" and a partisan of the crusaders
• The Anonymous continuer of the "Song of the Albigensian Crusade" - he wrote the second half of the "Song" and was a fervent supporter of the southern cause against the northern "French" crusaders.
• William of Puylaurens - A fairly impartial, Catholic chronicler of the Albigensian Crusade and Languedoc in the thirteenth century.    

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Was the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1218) an unusually violent conflict? Before the twenty first century, this question was not much elaborated upon: most attempts at an answer comprised but a few paragraphs. Still, the historians who put forward arguments in this limited form can roughly be divided into two categories. First, there are those who argued that the Albigensian Crusade was extraordinarily violent. Second, there are those who argued that the crusade was brutal, but no more brutal than many other contemporary conflicts. Examples of the former are few, and they are far from explicit. In 1969 Austin P. Evans implied that the downfall of Lavaur on 3 May 1211 was more violent than other conflicts. He described Simon de Montfort’s treatment of the people of Lavaur as ‘harsh’ and referred to the ‘severity’ of their punishment – to judge the severity of a punishment one must assess its divergence from normal practice. In 1972 Walter L. Wakefield similarly implied that he thought the crusade was unusually violent when he subscribed to a grand declaration made by the nineteenth century historian Henry Charles Lea: ‘[the Albigensian Crusade suggests] all that man can inflict and man can suffer for the glory of God.’ Wakefield based his subscription on a cursory listing of massacres: ‘one hundred and forty [perfects] were burned at Minerve... three or four hundred after the fall of Lavaur, [etc]’. For the latter categorization the examples are more explicit and numerous. In 1942 Pierre Belperron argued that the Albigensian crusade was no more brutal or bitter than any other conquests of the kings of France and that it had been sentimentalised by certain persons for their own purposes. In 1969 Yves Dossat suggested that ‘perhaps [the brutality] was less striking to the men of the thirteenth century than to ourselves.’ More recently, Michael Costen has written that ‘the opening act of hostility in the Crusade [the sack of Béziers on 22 July 1209] signalled the brutality with which it was to be pursued… [but] massacres of civilians were not uncommon’.

To different extents, three problems pervade all these arguments. First, conclusions are sometimes based chiefly upon a few lapidary clichés, seemingly too good to resist: the murder of the dame of Lavaur, the blinding of two hundred people at Bram, the massacre at Béziers, etc. For example, Wakefield relies quite heavily on the Lavaur massacre to substantiate his argument. The result is that a few instances of violence seem to largely colour the impression of a protracted conflict. Second, on whichever side of the argument a scholar falls, there is never a detailed discussion on what contemporaries thought of these brutal acts. Each historian merely asserts or suggests that contemporaries either thought them extraordinary or normal acts of warfare: evidence is almost never given and when it is given it too problematic to be useful. Third, comparative controls are never employed and we therefore have nothing to measure, say, the numbers massacred at Béziers against.

In 2001 Malcolm Barber addressed the first two of these problems in his article The Albigensian Crusades: Wars Like Any Other? He argued against the bulk of previous scholarship: ‘the Albigensian crusades went far beyond the normal conventions of early thirteenth-century warfare’. This argument is essentially twofold. First, it is argued that ‘atrocities’ – for example, the mutilation of prisoners – were a frequent occurrence. Second, it is contended that contemporaries had a set of martial norms and that the atrocities transcended such norms. Both arguments are, for the most part, convincing. This primarily results from Barber’s methodology. Unlike the historians above, Barber buttresses his argument with close readings of, and careful comparisons between, the four chief primary sources concerned with the Albigensian Crusade: Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis; the Chanson, penned by William of Tudela and an anonymous continuer; and William of Puylauren’s Chronica. Thus, in support of the first sub-argument we are informed that Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay ‘incorporates fifteen incidents in his narrative which might be described as “atrocities”’. These claims are then compared with accounts in the other narratives and it is demonstrated that they ‘confirm the general circumstances described by Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay.’ Of course, all this is quite monotonous, but it is integral to the overarching argument; as Barber rightly states: ‘this litany of violence has not been presented gratuitously. It is necessary to provide perspective upon Belperron’s attempt to desentimentalize [sic] the conflict’. In other words, we are made to realise just how much violence Belperron was desentimentalizing.  

The second sub-argument is largely convincing too. Barber anchors his discussion in relevant contemporary scholarship; namely, the research of John Gillingham and Matthew Strickland. Both historians essentially argue thus: in the martial world of the Anglo-Norman and French aristocracies certain constraints operated – an emphasis on honour, the compassionate treatment of defeated high status opponents, etc – which had the effect of mitigating extremes of brutality. Working within this context, Barber provides ample evidence demonstrating that contemporaries believed in these constraints and felt unease about atrocities because they transgressed them. There is a rider here: evidence is only cited from Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay and William of Tudela; the anonymous continuer and William of Puylaurens are ignored. But the argument remains persuasive. A typical example of Barber’s cogency is his discussion on how Peter documented the mutilation of the garrison at Bram in March 1210. It is pointed out that ‘the very fact that Peter... felt it necessary to follow his account of the mutilation… with a peroration on Montfort’s qualities is indicative, since he clearly did not think that this was “normal” behaviour’. One can not help but agree. Here is Peter’s account:

The count had this punishment carried out, not because such mutilation gave him any pleasure but because his opponents had been the first to indulge in such atrocities… The count never took delight in the cruelty or in the torture of his enemies. He was the kindest of men...

           

This is followed by a list of seven similarly latent, indicative exhibitions of unease within the Historia. However, Barber rightly opines that the accounts of violence provided by William of Tudela are of greater use to the historian: ‘[William] has a concept of honourable behaviour in which he clearly expects to carry resonance with his intended audience’ - thus we assume his potential noble audience shared his views. This is a reasonable assumption: Michael Routledge has highlighted how songs both informed and reflected baronial opinion. Barber then lists several instances of William bemoaning the transgression of martial norms. The latter’s account of the execution of Aimery of Montréal is typical: ‘“Never so far as I know has so great a lord been hanged in all Christendom, nor with so many knights at his side.”’ Taking into account our sources’ attestations of violence and their reactions, Barber fairly persuasively concludes thus: ‘it can be seen that the Albigensian crusades went beyond the normal conventions of early thirteenth-century warfare’.

However, the paper is not perfect and the conclusion needs qualifying. First and foremost, the geographical scope of the article is limited. Barber only considers Albigensian violence relative to martial norms in England and northern and southern France; that is, largely within the geographical area delimited and studied by Gillingham and Strickland. Comparative controls from other Western European conflicts are not implemented. This is a significant fault. Previous arguments against Barber’s position, such as that espoused by Costen, were predicated on the idea that similar acts of brutality were committed frequently throughout Western Europe. An adequate rejoinder to these contentions is not offered. Indeed, rather the opposite: it is openly admitted that even within France and England conventions were ‘in no way… invariably applied’. What is more, recent scholarship has strongly argued that some of Barber’s martial norms were often transgressed in other parts of Western Europe. For example, it has be shown that during sieges the Hohenstaufen Emperors often committed acts of brutality similar to what happened at, say, Bram and Béziers. Put simply, Barber does not show that Albigensian violence ‘went beyond the normal conventions of early thirteenth-century warfare’; rather, he shows that it transcended conventions practiced in England and France. Second, little, if any, credence is given to the possibility that our sources exaggerated violence. William of Tudela’s assertion that at Lavaur ‘there was so great a killing that… it will be talked of until the end of the world’, for example, is taken prima facie as evidence of unusual violence. Yet recent historiography indicates that such fulminations were probably hyperbolic. In 2003 Daniel Baraz argued that what happened during the crusade itself was not necessarily worse that what occurred in other eras or places; rather, people had grown more sensitive to atrocity and described events hyperbolically. And in 2009 Lawrence W. Marvin suggested that Occitan commentators portrayed the conflict as extraordinary because such a war was unprecedented in the recent history of Occitania. All in all, it may well be these shortcomings which led Marvin to recently assert against Barber’s conclusion: ‘on a medieval scale of brutality the Occitan War does not stand out as particularly barbarous compared to warfare elsewhere in Western Europe of the time’.

Indeed, it was Marvin who in 2006 moved the debate on violence forward in an article entitled The Massacre at Béziers July 22, 1209: A Revisionist Look. He argued the following: ‘what happened at Béziers did not stand out beyond the pale for proper behavior [sic] in war in the Middle Ages… war without quarter happened all the time.’ This proposition is diametrically opposed to the views of Barber on the massacre, who takes the accounts of William of Tudela and Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay as evidence attesting the abnormal nature of the slaughter. But Marvin’s argument is more persuasive. The reason for this is twofold. First, comparative controls are drawn from across Western Europe. Marvin rightly states that ‘examples of [similar acts of violence] from… the rest of Europe are rife’ and numerous examples are given, notably several from within northern France. The following is somewhat representative: it is pointed out that ‘Aragonese and Navarese routiers’, in actions akin to routiers in early thirteenth-century Languedoc, committed brutal acts against ‘churches, monasteries, and non-combatants’. The effect of the employment of these comparisons is that Marvin emancipates his argument a restricted geographical outlook and bases his discussion within a geographically and chronologically varied backdrop. The result? He convincingly demonstrates that the massacre at Béziers was not exceptionally violent within a Western European context.

Second, Marvin unearths discrepancies between commentators’ accounts of the massacre and what really happened. Indeed, he does this brilliantly. The methodology is apposite: an expansive series of comparative controls which circumvent the distortive accounts provided by our sources. The main comparative control is the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This is reliable. As Marvin correctly notes, ‘Rwanda stands out as a particularly low-tech genocide… the manner of killing was often no more sophisticated than what happened at Béziers in 1209’. The comparative process is well exhibited by the discussion on Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s claim that 7,000 died in the church of La Madeleine:

[According to the Human Rights Watch,] in Rwanda… The assailants physically could not kill more than a few hundred people a day with non-gunpowder weapons... this suggests is that in Béziers… the physical ability of the crusaders who participated was not high enough to kill as many people as the legates or chroniclers have stated.

This comparative control is further buttressed by simple but persuasive mathematics. Marvin states that, if this many people were to be murdered in one afternoon, ‘there would have to be 291 killed an hour; or about five every minute, or one every 12 seconds, for 24 hours straight.’ Marvin also tentatively rejects the argument that fire may have raised the death toll drastically. It is noted how many of the largest conflagrations in history have killed surprisingly few people; to give but one example: ‘in the 1666 London fire, which happened in a city of 500-600,000, perhaps 100 lost their lives.’ The conclusions that result from this methodology are startling. ‘Perhaps 700 instead of 7,000 people died in La Madeleine… The body count reported by the legates may have been more like 2,000 instead of 20,000’. Thus there is a significant discrepancy between what our sources claim and the likely reality. Our sources make the massacre appear far worse than it actually was, lending further support to Marvin’s conclusion that the massacre was not extraordinary.

Where does this leave us? Marvin has convincingly dispelled a minor part of Barber’s argument; namely, the latter’s claim that the massacre at Béziers was exceptionally violent. And this was achieved through comparing the massacre with other violence in Western Europe and demonstrating that our sources are hyperbolic – the two major shortcomings of Barber’s article. But, of course, this does not invalidate Barber’s whole argument; simply because the massacre at Béziers was unexceptional does not mean the conflict as a whole was unexceptional. Yet Marvin’s paper does point the way forward. Indeed, it raises the following corollary questions. First, were other massacres and acts of brutality committed throughout the crusade, when placed within a wider western European context, as unexceptional as the Béziers massacre? Second, to what extent is the discrepancy between commentators’ accounts of the massacre at Béziers and actual proceedings to be found in their accounts of other events? Until a study is written which attempts to answer such questions, historians will no doubt continue to echo Barber’s conclusions; as, for example, Norman Housley recently did in Fighting for the Cross:

The Albigensian Crusade… was waged with great savagery… Some of the worst massacres in crusading history were committed in southern France.

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Hi, my name's Daniel. 

I've made this blog to post about all things medieval. I first got into the Middle Ages during the final two years of my BA History, when I took courses on Medieval Medicine and the Albigensian Crusade. But the interest continued after I graduated: I kept coming back to the subject, reading books on the Crusades, the Cathars and Medieval England. In 2013 I read for an MA in Crusader Studies. And in Autumn 2015 I am going to begin a PhD on the impact of the Crusades on England. 

I'd like this space to be an area where I can keep sharing my thoughts on the Middle Ages. I'll try and update it fairly frequently and hopefully it will become an interesting place to visit.