The First Crusade (1095-1099)

No other medieval expedition is as richly documented by its contemporaries as the First Crusade. The medievalist John France, in his reference military history^[10], stresses this fortunate paradox: for no other military event of the Middle Ages before the 13th century can Latin, Byzantine and Muslim eyewitnesses be cross-checked with such density on the same days.

Three Latin sources by direct witnesses dominate the historiography. The Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, written around 1100-1101 by an anonymous crusader of Bohemond's Norman contingent, sober and factual throughout, is the most precious narrative source^[11]. Raymond of Aguilers, chaplain to Count Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, testifies from the Provençal point of view and gives the most dramatic account of the discovery of the Holy Lance^[12]. Fulcher of Chartres, priest of Count Stephen of Blois's contingent and then of the future King Baldwin I, wrote from 1101 onwards and continued his Historia until 1127^[13].

Alongside them, three Latin accounts by informed non-witnesses complete the picture: Robert the Monk, prior of Senuc, who claims to have been at Clermont^[14]; Baudri of Dol, archbishop, likewise present at Clermont^[15]; Guibert of Nogent, Benedictine abbot, who wrote around 1109 on the basis of witnesses^[16]. Later but of major documentary importance, Albert of Aachen composed his voluminous Historia Ierosolimitana around 1119-1130 on the basis of witnesses returned home — his text preserves elements found nowhere else, notably on the People's Crusade and on the Rhineland massacres^[17].

On the Greek side, the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, eldest daughter of Emperor Alexios I, written around 1148, is the great Byzantine source^[18]. On the Muslim side, two Syrian chroniclers wrote a century apart: Ibn al-Qalanisi (around 1140) at Damascus^[19] and Ibn al-Athir (around 1230) at Mosul^[20]. On the Jewish side, finally, three Hebrew chronicles — Solomon bar Simson, Eliezer bar Nathan, the anonymous Mainz chronicle — preserve the memory of the Rhineland pogroms^[21].

This polyphony does not eliminate divergences; it makes them legible. Jonathan Riley-Smith, who renewed the whole field of crusade studies from 1986 onwards through the systematic study of crusaders' charters of donation and testaments, draws the method from it: cross-check the narrative chronicles, but also the diplomatic sources (charters, letters, bulls), in order to reconstruct not only the facts, but the real mentality of the participants^[22].

To understand the appeal of Clermont, two trajectories must be held together, converging in the early 1090s: the military collapse of Byzantium before the Seljuks and the transformation of the Latin Church under the effect of the Gregorian reform.

The Byzantine Empire under Seljuk pressure

On 26 August 1071, at Manzikert in eastern Armenia, the army of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was crushed by that of the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan^[23]. The emperor himself was captured — an event without precedent for seven centuries. Released shortly afterwards, he was overthrown at Constantinople, blinded, exiled, and died in 1072.

The territorial consequences were catastrophic. Within a decade, the Seljuks occupied almost the whole of Anatolia, the military, agricultural and fiscal heart of the Byzantine Empire. Around 1080, their kinsman Suleiman I founded at Nicaea — less than 200 kilometres from Constantinople — the Seljuk sultanate of Rum, which became a direct threat to the imperial capital. Antioch fell in 1084; the old Eastern Christian provinces, populated by Armenians, Jacobite Syriacs, Melkites and Maronites, passed under Turkish rule.

The emperor Alexios I Komnenos, raised to the throne in April 1081 after several years of civil war, inherited a mutilated Empire. He first stabilised the Danubian frontiers against the Pechenegs (decisive victory of Lebounion, 29 April 1091) before attempting to reconquer Anatolia. But he had neither men nor money. The solution he had been implementing since the early 1090s was the appeal to Latin mercenaries — first Normans from southern Italy, then Franks and Flemings.

Anna Komnene, a direct witness from the Palace of Blachernae, recounts the embassies sent to Rome:

"My father, seeing that things were going badly and that the Roman [Byzantine] armies would no longer suffice, dispatched letters to several places, and notably to the bishop of Rome, soliciting the aid of the nations of the West against the barbarians who were devastating the land." — Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book X, around 1148^[24]

The decisive embassy was sent to the Council of Piacenza held by Urban II from 1 to 7 March 1095. Before the assembled bishops, Alexios's envoys set out the plight of the Eastern Christians and asked for troops. The chronicler Bernold of Constance, a witness of the council, notes in his Chronicon: "The lord pope exhorted many, among so many other things, [...] to promise faithfully by oath that they would go to bring aid to the emperor against the pagans, to the extent possible"^[25]. Piacenza is therefore the founding moment of the crusade: seven months before Clermont, Urban II had already decided to act.

Pilgrimages and the Holy Places

During the three centuries separating the Arab conquest of Jerusalem (638) from the appeal of Clermont, pilgrimages remained possible to the Holy Land, but under varying conditions, depending on the local Muslim powers. Two episodes left a lasting mark on Latin memory.

First, in 1009, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by his troops. The sepulchral rotunda and the tomb of Christ were razed; the most important Christian sanctuary in the world was no more than a ruin. The chronicle of the Melkite patriarch of Antioch Yahya ibn Sa'id (died around 1066) gives the most detailed account of it^[26]. The sanctuary would be rebuilt by the Byzantines from 1048 onwards, under Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, but the event left its trace: it proved that no lasting protection of the Holy Places was guaranteed by Muslim power.

Then, from the 1070s onwards, the Sunni Seljuk Turks took control of Palestine from the Shiite Fatimids. The pilgrimage routes became dangerous; the Italian merchants (Venice, Pisa, Amalfi) who had long handled the logistics of pilgrimages testified to the growing instability. Several great collective pilgrimages of the years 1064-1065 (notably that of Gunther of Bamberg, known as the Magna Germanorum peregrinatio, led by 7,000 Germans) had already been ravaged by attacks in Palestine.

The Gregorian West

The appeal of Clermont belongs to the great Gregorian reform launched by Gregory VII (pope from 1073 to 1085). This reform had three main axes: liberation of the Church from lay princes (Investiture Controversy), reaffirmation of the papacy as supreme magisterium, and the channelling of knightly violence through the Truce of God and the Peace of God.

As early as 1074, Gregory VII had conceived a plan for an expedition to the East to relieve the threatened Christians and reconquer the Holy Sepulchre. A letter of 7 December 1074, addressed to Emperor Henry IV, already speaks of "fifty thousand men" ready to set out with him for the Holy Land^[27]. The plan came to nothing — the Investiture Controversy broke out the following year — but the idea was launched and would circulate for twenty years in the Roman curia. When Urban II ascended the pontifical throne in March 1088, he was the direct heir of this Gregorian intuition.

On the social plane, the West of the 1080s-1090s was experiencing a strong demographic surge, younger sons without inheritance, a numerous knighthood, and private violence which the bishops strove in vain to curb through peace oaths. The idea of channelling this violence towards a cause deemed legitimate — defence of the Eastern Christians, liberation of the Holy Sepulchre — was in the air well before Clermont.

From 18 to 28 November 1095, Urban II presided over a council at Clermont, in Auvergne. The assembly dealt first with internal matters of the Church: truce of God, excommunication of the King of France Philip I for adultery, struggle against simony and Nicolaitism. But on 27 November, in a field outside the town to accommodate a crowd too large to enter the cathedral, Urban II delivered a speech that changed the history of the Mediterranean.

The pope and his context

Odo of Châtillon, born around 1042 in Champagne, a former Cluniac monk who became cardinal-bishop of Ostia under Gregory VII, was elected pope on 12 March 1088 and took the name Urban II. He spent the first years of his pontificate rebuilding pontifical authority, shaken by the Investiture Controversy and by the antipope Clement III (Guibert of Ravenna), who occupied Rome with the support of Emperor Henry IV. Urban II could only enter Rome in 1093. In 1095, he travelled across France to consolidate the reform.

The French historian Alain Demurger presents Urban II as a pope above all diplomatic: after seven years spent avoiding head-on rupture with the emperor and patiently rebuilding a network of loyalties, the appeal of Clermont crowned a long calculation at once political and spiritual — and not an improvised coup^[28].

The course of the council

The Council of Clermont assembled some 300 French clerics, bishops and abbots, besides a considerable crowd of knights and peasants. The closed sessions addressed disciplinary canons: prohibition of trafficking in ecclesiastical offices (canon 1), penance of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem (canon 2), truce of God (canons 11-12), restitution of Church property, struggle against lay investiture. Thirty-two canons were adopted, whose critical text is established from the contemporary canonical collections^[29].

On 27 November 1095, the pope left the town to preach in the open air. No stenographic verbatim has come down to us. Four chroniclers wrote their version of the speech, several years after the events, each with his own audience and his own theology. The table below summarises their status.

The four versions differ on exact wording but converge on five points: (1) appeal to relieve the Eastern Christians; (2) Turkish threat to the Holy Places; (3) taking of the cross as an armed penitential pilgrimage; (4) remission of sins for those who set out out of pure devotion; (5) cry of acclamation "Deus vult" — "God wills it".

Four accounts, one same core

Fulcher of Chartres, the closest in time and the soberest, stresses the channelling of knightly violence:

"Let those who were once accustomed to quarrel wickedly in private wars against the faithful now fight against the infidels, and let them bring to a victorious end the war that should already have been begun. Let those who were robbers now become soldiers." — Urban II, version of Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, I, 3^[30]

Robert the Monk stages, at the heart of his account, the great popular cry said to have burst forth in the middle of the speech:

"A race wholly alien to God, a generation that has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of these Christians, has depopulated them by pillage and fire. [...] On whom then falls the task of avenging these wrongs and recovering this territory, if not on you, to whom God has given more than to any other people?" — Urban II, version of Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, around 1107^[31]

At the end of the speech, according to Robert, "all those present cried out with one voice: 'God wills it! God wills it!'" — "Deus vult! Deus vult!"^[32]. Urban II is said then to have ordered that this acclamation become the war cry of the crusaders, and to have invited each man to sew a cloth cross on his shoulder as the distinctive sign of the vow (hence the word crucesignati, "those marked with the cross", from which the word crusaders would come).

Baudri of Dol stresses the reparation owed to the oppressed Eastern Christians. Guibert of Nogent accentuates the providential dimension and reads the crusade as a sign of the last times. The French medievalist Jean Flori, in his major reference work La guerre sainte. La formation de l'idée de croisade dans l'Occident chrétien (Aubier, 2001), shows that these four accounts are rhetorical reconstructions, faithful in spirit but reworked by each author according to his audience and his theology^[33]. The true speech of Urban II is not preserved; but the core common to the four witnesses is solid.

The innovation: the crusade indulgence

The major theological innovation of Clermont is the crusade indulgence, recorded in canon 2 of the council:

"Whoever, out of devotion alone and not to gain honour or money, shall set out for Jerusalem in order to liberate the Church of God, that journey shall be counted to him for all penance." — Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont, 1095^[34]

This canon is precise. It does not say: "whoever kills a Muslim will go straight to heaven". It says: "whoever accomplishes, out of pure devotion, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to liberate the Church, shall see that journey counted for full penance". Three clarifications matter.

First, the condition is "out of devotion alone and not to gain honour or money". The indulgence does not cover those who set out for booty or glory. The criterion is interior.

Secondly, what is remitted are the temporal punishments for sins already committed and confessed — not future sins. The indulgence presupposes confession and repentance^[35]. Catholic doctrine, then as now, has never granted preventive absolution for future crimes.

Thirdly, the crusade indulgence is the adaptation of an already ancient institution: canonical penance commuted into pilgrimage. Since the 8th-9th centuries, the Church imposed on certain grave sinners long pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, Rome or Jerusalem, in place of or in addition to the tariffed penalties. Clermont applied this logic to an armed pilgrimage, because the road to Jerusalem had become militarily dangerous.

The historian Christopher Tyerman, professor at Oxford, stresses this centrality of penance: without it, the crusades become inexplicable — they are first a penitential act, whose military dimension is ordered to the liberation of the Holy Places^[36].

An itinerant preaching (1095-1096)

Urban II did not stop at Clermont. For ten months, from November 1095 to August 1096, he travelled through central and southern France preaching the crusade in person: Limoges (Christmas 1095), Angers (10 February 1096), Le Mans, Tours, Saintes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Nîmes (July 1096). He consecrated altars, distributed relics, preached in cathedrals^[37].

In parallel, other preachers carried the appeal: Peter the Hermit in the north (from Berry to Picardy, then towards Rhenish Germany), Robert of Arbrissel in the West, Gerald of Cahors, Hugh of Die. The movement quickly overflowed the framework envisaged by the pope: Clermont had aimed at the knighthood, but it was a whole people that set itself in motion.

Well before the barons' departure, popular bands set out on the road. The official date of the great departure fixed at Clermont — 15 August 1096, feast of the Assumption — was not kept by the first contingents. From March-April 1096 onwards, peasants, poor artisans, wandering monks and a few knights of low rank set out by the roads of Lorraine, the Rhineland and Hungary, in the direction of Constantinople.

Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans-Avoir

The most famous preacher of this movement is Peter the Hermit, also called Peter of Amiens (around 1050 - 1115). Short, thin, dressed in a coarse tunic, mounted on a donkey, he preached from autumn 1095 onwards in northern France and the Rhineland. Late tradition would make him the direct inspirer of Urban II's appeal — a pilgrim returned from a journey to Jerusalem who supposedly convinced the pope — but Jean Flori showed that this legend is a construction of later chroniclers^[38]. Peter the Hermit is a second-rank preacher who became a popular leader by his own charisma, not an ambassador of Alexios Komnenos.

Around Easter 1096, several columns set themselves in motion. Walter Sans-Avoir (Walterus Sine Habere), a French knight, set out with a small contingent ahead and reached Constantinople on 20 July 1096. Peter the Hermit followed, arriving at Constantinople on 1 August with a host of 20,000 to 30,000 people (Asbridge's cautious estimate^[39]) — men, women, children, old people, with no serious logistics.

The Rhineland anti-Jewish pogroms (April-May 1096)

On the road, several uncontrolled bands committed in April-May 1096 anti-Jewish massacres in the Jewish communities of the Rhineland. These are documented crimes, against which the local bishops protected and rescued the Jews (Speyer, Mainz, Cologne — see below).

Three main episodes stand out:

• Worms (18-25 May 1096): the Jewish community was attacked by the bands of Count Emich of Leiningen. About 800 dead. The local bishops intervened, but the survivors were massacred in the episcopal palace itself^[40].
• Mainz (27 May 1096): Archbishop Ruthard opened his palace to the Jews and tried to protect them. His guard was overwhelmed. More than 1,000 dead; numerous collective suicides of Jewish families to avoid forced baptism. The Hebrew chronicle of Solomon bar Simson gives the most poignant account of it^[41].
• Cologne (30 May - 1 June 1096): Archbishop Hermann III hid the Jews in neighbouring villages. The bands found them and massacred about 800.

This violence was no part of the pontifical programme. No crusade bull mentions the Jews as a target. Several Rhenish bishops — Ruthard of Mainz, Hermann III of Cologne, John I of Speyer^[42] — defended the Jews at the risk of their authority. Pope Callixtus II would reiterate the protection of the Jews through the bull Sicut Iudaeis non around 1120, regularly renewed by his successors down to Nicholas V (1447) — proof of a constant doctrine of protection against forced conversion^[43].

The medievalist Robert Chazan stresses what makes the massacres of 1096 historically decisive: they took place despite ecclesiastical authority, and not thanks to it — bishops and urban clergy took the side of the Jews, while the massacres were the work of marginal bands^[44].

The disaster of Civetot (21 October 1096)

Arrived at Constantinople on 1 August 1096, the People's Crusade quickly proved unmanageable. Peter the Hermit tried to impose discipline; he failed. Alexios I Komnenos, embarrassed by this unruly horde, had them transported from 6 August onwards onto the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. The camp at Civetot (Kibotos), near Nicomedia, became a launching pad for disorderly raids against Turkish villages.

On 21 October 1096, ignoring the counsels of Peter the Hermit (then at Constantinople negotiating subsidies), a group of about 20,000 people — knights, peasants, women and children — set out towards Nicaea. Six kilometres from Civetot, in the forest, they fell into a Seljuk ambush prepared by the troops of Kilij Arslan I. According to Anna Komnene and Albert of Aachen, the massacre was total: only a few thousand men managed to fall back on a seaside fort where the Byzantine fleet came to rescue them^[45]. The People's Crusade was wiped out; Peter the Hermit, miraculously spared because he was not with his troops that day, would join the great army of the barons.

The disaster of Civetot made Kilij Arslan say, according to Albert of Aachen, that the Franks were a negligible threat — an assessment that would cost him very dearly the following year.

While the People's Crusade was wearing itself out, the great princes of the West were seriously preparing their departure. Four great baronial armies set out from summer 1096 onwards, each by a distinct route. No European king took part: neither Emperor Henry IV (in the midst of his quarrel with the pope), nor King Philip I of France (excommunicated), nor King William II Rufus of England (scarcely pious), nor the kings of Spain (occupied with the Reconquista). It was the dukes, counts and great lords who led.

Godfrey of Bouillon

Godfrey of Bouillon (around 1060-1100), Duke of Lower Lorraine, was the eldest son of Eustace II of Boulogne. His mother, Ida of Lorraine (around 1040-1113), celebrated for her piety, is venerated as blessed (feast on 13 April)^[46]. Deeply religious, Godfrey mortgaged his fief of Bouillon to the bishopric of Liège to finance his departure — a gesture typical of the first crusaders and one which contradicts the Marxist thesis of the crusade as an economic enterprise. Riley-Smith demonstrated, through the systematic study of charters, that most of the first crusaders lost money by setting out^[47].

Godfrey set out in August 1096 with his brother Eustace III of Boulogne, his younger brother Baldwin of Boulogne (the future Baldwin I of Jerusalem), and Baldwin of Bourcq (the future Baldwin II of Jerusalem). His route passed through southern Germany, Hungary (where he skilfully negotiated passage with King Coloman), Belgrade, and the Roman via militaris across the Balkans. Arrival at Constantinople: 23 December 1096.

Hugh of Vermandois and Robert of Normandy

Hugh of Vermandois (1057-1101), younger brother of King Philip I of France, led a small contingent of Capetian aristocracy. He set out via southern Italy, was shipwrecked on the Epirote coast, and was intercepted by the Byzantines who escorted him to Constantinople, where he arrived in November 1096. His presence was more symbolic than military.

Robert II of Normandy (around 1051-1134), known as Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror, mortgaged the Duchy of Normandy to his brother William II Rufus, King of England, for the sum of 10,000 marks of silver — about a quarter of the English crown's annual revenue^[48]. He set out with his cousin Robert II of Flanders and his brother-in-law Stephen II of Blois (husband of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror). Wintering in Italy; crossing into Epirus in April 1097; arrival at Constantinople in May 1097.

Stephen of Blois is a precious witness: he wrote to his wife Adela dated letters which are among the rare personal testimonies of the crusade preserved^[49]. His later desertion before Antioch (June 1098) would constitute the great moral scandal of the crusade.

Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles and Adhemar of Le Puy

Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles (around 1041-1105), Count of Toulouse and Marquis of Provence, was the eldest of the crusading leaders — he was nearly 55 in 1096, an advanced age for the time, and blind in one eye from an old wound. Rich, pious, ambitious, he had had part of the sanctuary of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard built, where Urban II came to preach in July 1096. The first of the great princes to take the cross, he enjoyed considerable moral authority over the expedition — but he was not designated by the pope as leader of the armies: the only formal pontifical mandate was that of the legate Adhemar of Monteil, Bishop of Le Puy (around 1045-1098).

Adhemar of Le Puy is the decisive moral figure of the crusade. A former knight turned bishop in 1077, he was appointed pontifical legate at Clermont itself — it was he who is said to have asked the pope first, at the end of the speech of 27 November, to receive the cross personally. He accompanied Raymond IV's Provençal contingent, but he exercised his spiritual authority over all the Latin armies. His death in August 1098 would be one of the great dramas of the crusade; as long as he lived, the leaders knew how to remain united.

The Provençal contingent set out on 15 October 1096, crossed northern Italy, Slovenia and Dalmatia (where the winter crossing proved gruelling), Durazzo and Thessalonica. Arrival at Constantinople: 27 April 1097.

Bohemond and Tancred

Bohemond of Taranto (around 1054-1111), eldest son of Robert Guiscard, Norman leader of southern Italy, is the most ambiguous of the crusading leaders. He had fought Alexios I in the Balkans between 1081 and 1085 — his father Robert Guiscard dreamed of taking Constantinople. When Bohemond learned, in July 1096, of the passage through Bari of Hugh of Vermandois on his way to the crusade, he took the cross and embarked with his nephew Tancred of Hauteville (around 1075-1112). He led a small, highly professional Italo-Norman contingent (about 4,000 men). Crossing of the Adriatic in October-November 1096; arrival at Constantinople: 9 April 1097.

Bohemond was militarily the most experienced of all the crusading leaders; politically, he was the most dangerous adventurer for Alexios I. The whole sequel of the crusade would be marked by his personal rivalry with Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles and by his own policy towards Byzantium.

The successive arrival of the four baronial armies at Constantinople, between late 1096 and April 1097, placed Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in a delicate position. He had asked for Latin mercenaries placed under his command; he saw arriving, in waves, tens of thousands of fighters led by proud princes who intended to obey no one — and among whom figured his former mortal enemy, Bohemond.

The Byzantine welcome

Anna Komnene, who was a dozen years old in 1096, describes in the Alexiad the anguish mingled with fascination provoked by the arrival of the Franks. The contingents were lodged outside the walls, in successive camps; the leaders were received with ceremony at the imperial palace. Anna describes Bohemond with an almost loving precision — he was tall, fair-haired, with "something seductive in his appearance, which was however spoiled by the terror he inspired"^[50].

Alexios manoeuvred skilfully. He offered sumptuous presents to the Latin leaders, supplied them with provisions, granted them advances in gold — but in return he demanded a personal oath of loyalty.

The oath of loyalty

The oath which each crusading leader swore to Alexios I between December 1096 and April 1097 is one of the most debated diplomatic acts of the whole crusade. Its exact wording is not preserved; the Latin and Greek chroniclers give divergent versions of it. The oath comprised two undertakings:

1. To restore to the Byzantine Empire all formerly Byzantine cities (before Manzikert 1071) which the crusaders would retake — foremost among which Antioch and Nicaea.
2. To recognise Alexios as suzerain of the crusading conquests.

Godfrey of Bouillon first refused, resisted a whole month, then yielded after a Byzantine blockade of his camp and swore the oath on 20 January 1097. Raymond IV, more pious, durably refused the formula of personal vassalage, but consented to respect the emperor's property. Bohemond, by contrast, swore the oath immediately and ostentatiously — which worried Raymond, for Bohemond was Alexios's traditional enemy and his apparent zeal concealed a calculation.

The historian Steven Runciman saw in the question of the oath "the root of all the later difficulties between Byzantium and the Latins, down to the sack of 1204"^[51]. But his reading, classic in 1951, is nuanced today: Thomas Asbridge and Jonathan Harris show that Alexios kept his undertakings to the extent of his means, and that the ruptures came from isolated episodes, above all the Byzantine withdrawal at Philomelion in June 1098 and Bohemond's unilateral seizure of Antioch^[52].

Latin distrust

Beneath the palace courtesies, distrust set in. The Latins despised the Greeks as effeminate, double-dealing, more diplomatic than warlike; the Greeks saw the Latins as barbarians, brutal, mannerless, and dangerously numerous. When the last contingent (Robert of Normandy's) had crossed to the Asian shore in May 1097, Alexios breathed again. He would send only a token detachment, under General Tatikios, to accompany the crusading army as far as Antioch.

Once across on the Asian shore, the crusading armies joined forces and marched towards their first objective: Nicaea, capital of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum, 90 kilometres south-east of Constantinople. Combined numbers estimated: about 60,000 people, of whom 30,000 to 40,000 fighters (5,000 to 7,000 heavy cavalry, the rest infantry), plus a mass of non-combatants (clerics, women, servants, merchants)^[53].

The siege of Nicaea (14 May - 19 June 1097)

Nicaea was protected by a double ring of walls some five kilometres long, pierced with a hundred towers (114 towers recorded)^[54], and bordered to the west by Lake İznik. Sultan Kilij Arslan I was absent — away in central Anatolia fighting the Danishmendids, he had underestimated the Frankish threat after the disaster of Civetot. His family and his treasure were in the city.

On 14 May 1097, the crusaders invested the walls on three sides. On 16 May, Kilij Arslan attempted a breakthrough to relieve his capital; he was repelled. The crusaders built on the spot throwing machines — stone-throwers and mangonels — as well as mobile towers. But they could not invest the lakeside — through which the Turks supplied the city by night. Alexios I then sent a Byzantine detachment and had galleys transported overland onto the lake, which closed off supply on 17 June.

On 19 June 1097, the garrison secretly opened the gates to the Byzantine general Manuel Boutoumites rather than to the Latins. It was a political masterstroke by Alexios I: he recovered Nicaea intact, saved the inhabitants from sack (and thus gained a diplomatic instrument for his future relations with the Turks), and frustrated the Latins. The Latin chroniclers, Raymond of Aguilers foremost, kept a lasting grudge over it^[55].

The battle of Dorylaeum (1 July 1097)

On 26 June 1097, the crusaders set out again in two columns, a day's march apart, across the Anatolian plateau. On the morning of 1 July, near Dorylaeum (present-day Eskişehir), the vanguard of Bohemond was attacked by the concentrated forces of Kilij Arslan, allied with the Danishmendids — about 10,000 Turkish horsemen, whose tactic of harassment with the bow on light cavalry decimated the surprised crusading army.

For six hours, Bohemond's contingent resisted on foot, in a defensive circle, around the wagons and the non-combatants. Around noon, the second column arrived: Godfrey, Raymond, Adhemar of Le Puy. The Latin counter-attack turned the battle. The rearguard, led by Bishops Adhemar of Le Puy and Godfrey, took the Turks from behind.

The Gesta Francorum reports:

"The Turks feared our mailed horsemen terribly. [...] They did not know whether we were men or demons. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever, took pity on us and gave us the victory." — Gesta Francorum, book III, ch. 9, around 1100^[56]

Turkish losses: about 3,000. Crusader losses: 4,000 according to the Latin figures, probably a few hundred in reality. Above all, Kilij Arslan's army was disorganised; he could no longer oppose the crusading advance head-on. The road to Cilicia was open.

The Anatolian ordeal (July-October 1097)

The three following months were a nightmarish march across the Anatolian plateau in high summer. Kilij Arslan applied the tactic of scorched earth: burnt fields, poisoned wells, evacuated villages. The crusaders advanced in crushing heat, with no supplies. Horses died by the hundred; knights walked on foot, sometimes carried on goats or oxen. Albert of Aachen reports that "most of the great lords went on foot, carrying their arms"^[57].

At Iconium (Konya), Kilij Arslan's capital, abandoned by the Turks, the crusaders at last found supplies and water. At Heraclea (Ereğli), they repelled the Danishmendids one last time in September. Then the leaders separated. Baldwin of Boulogne and Tancred set out towards Cilicia to open a secondary theatre (Tarsus, Adana, Mamistra); Baldwin would then continue eastwards to Edessa, where he imposed himself as regent of the Armenian prince Thoros in March 1098, then as Count of Edessa after the latter's assassination — thus founding the first Latin state in the East.

The bulk of the army descended through the Cilician Gates, crossed the Taurus, and arrived on 21 October 1097 before Antioch.

Antioch-on-the-Orontes was, in 1097, one of the largest cities of the Mediterranean world: estimated population 40,000-60,000 inhabitants, a long wall of about 12 kilometres built by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, some 400 towers, and a citadel on Mount Silpius 500 metres above the lower town. Retaken by the Byzantines in 969 then conquered by the Seljuks in 1084, it had been defended since 1086 by the governor Yaghi-Siyan.

The strategic lock

Antioch was the lock of the whole road to Jerusalem: no way to advance further south without neutralising this stronghold, whose garrison could cut off any retreat. The crusaders understood this; they could not bypass it.

On 21 October 1097, the crusaders established their camps facing the northern and western gates. They could not encircle the city completely — their numbers (about 30,000 fighters after the Anatolian losses) were insufficient for a circuit of about 12 km. They established three fortified camps: Bohemond's camp facing St Paul's Gate, Raymond's facing the Dog's Gate, Godfrey's facing the Bridge Gate.

Famine and desertions

The winter of 1097-1098 was terrible. Torrential rains from November; frosts from December to February; insufficient supplies; the food to be found ran out. Famine began around Christmas. Raymond of Aguilers describes soaring prices, horses wasting away for lack of fodder, and multiplying desertions^[58].

Horses died in masses; the number of horsemen fell from about 5,000 in October 1097 to fewer than 1,000 in June 1098^[59]. Soldiers ate dog, cat, rat; some crusaders ate corpses found, killed their own pack animals. Desertions multiplied — including among the leaders.

On 20 January 1098, Peter the Hermit himself, in despair, tried to leave the camp with William the Carpenter, Viscount of Melun. Tancred caught up with them; they were brought back under escort. Peter suffered a public humiliation but was not excluded.

The Byzantine general Tatikios, on the pretext of going to fetch reinforcements, left the camp for good in February 1098 and returned to Constantinople. His desertion would later serve Bohemond as an argument: if Byzantium abandoned them, the oath of loyalty lapsed.

The treachery of Firuz (3 June 1098)

On 9 February 1098, Bohemond repelled a Seljuk relief army from Ridwan of Aleppo at the ford of the Orontes. On 4 March, Raymond Pilet and the neighbouring port of Saint-Simeon (Suwaydiyya) fell into crusader hands thanks to Genoese ships, which at last allowed seaborne supply. But the announced arrival of an immense Seljuk army under Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul (in May 1098) threatened to catch the crusaders in a pincer.

Bohemond then played his masterstroke. Since February, he had maintained secret contacts with Firuz, an Armenian Christian turned Muslim renegade, commander of three towers on the south-west wall. Bohemond proposed to the other leaders a bargain: Antioch for him if it were taken by his means. Raymond IV refused — the oath to Alexios required restitution to Byzantium — but the other leaders yielded.

In the night of 2 to 3 June 1098, sixty crusaders led by Bohemond climbed the Tower of the Two Sisters, opened by Firuz. They opened the Bridge Gate. At dawn, the crusaders poured into the city. Yaghi-Siyan fled; he would be killed a few hours later by Armenian peasants who recognised him. The lower town fell within hours; the citadel on Mount Silpius, by contrast, remained in the hands of the Turkish garrison commanded by Yaghi-Siyan's son.

Barely masters of the lower town, the crusaders found themselves besieged in their turn. On 5 June 1098, Kerbogha's army arrived before Antioch. Numbers estimated: 35,000 to 75,000 men according to the sources — doubtless 35,000 to 50,000 in reality, against 20,000 surviving crusaders of whom fewer than 1,000 horsemen^[60]. The balance of forces seemed overwhelming.

The Muslim vice

Kerbogha established himself on the plateau to the north and invested the fortified bridge. He made contact with the garrison of the citadel, still Turkish, which came down at times towards the lower town to harass the crusaders. Bohemond had to build an inner wall to isolate Mount Silpius from the rest of Antioch. Famine resumed; this time aggravated by the loss of seaborne supply.

Morale collapsed. Several great lords tried or managed to flee. Stephen II of Blois, one of the most powerful barons of the army^[61], went up to the monastery of Saint-Simeon on 2 June (the eve of the capture) on the pretext of illness; when he learned of Kerbogha's arrival, he deserted with his contingent. His retreat towards Constantinople would prove decisive: meeting Alexios I at Philomelion in June 1098, he convinced the emperor that the crusaders were lost. Alexios gave up joining them and turned back with his army. This decision would later be Bohemond's key argument for refusing to restore Antioch to Byzantium: the emperor had broken his word by abandoning his allied army to its fate.

The vision and the Holy Lance

In this desperate situation, inside Antioch, an event overturned the army. A poor Provençal named Peter Bartholomew recounted having received, since November 1097, several visions of Saint Andrew. In the last, towards the end of May 1098, the apostle supposedly revealed to him that the Holy Lance — the one which pierced Christ's side on the cross according to John 19:34 — lay buried under the pavement of the basilica of St Peter at Antioch.

Peter, illiterate, first recounted his vision to Raymond IV, through his chaplain Raymond of Aguilers (our principal witness). Adhemar of Le Puy remained sceptical. On 14 June 1098, twelve men — including Peter Bartholomew, Raymond IV, Raymond of Aguilers and William, Bishop of Orange — dug at the indicated spot in the basilica. All day, they found nothing. Towards evening, Peter Bartholomew himself entered the hole and, according to Raymond of Aguilers, drew from the bowels of the earth an iron lance-head.

Raymond of Aguilers, an eyewitness, writes:

"When therefore we had long dug in vain, and some were beginning to despair, the boy who was in the pit — that is Peter himself — began to cry out with joy. He had seen the point of the Lance. He leapt, dressed in his shirt only, into the pit, and he drew from the earth the Holy Lance with a devotion full of tears. And all of us who were present, we kissed it weeping, and we were filled with immense joy." — Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ch. 11, around 1100^[62]

The historical authenticity of the relic was contested immediately by some crusaders (notably in Bohemond's Norman contingent, which had no interest in seeing Raymond's influence grow through a marvel). Adhemar of Le Puy remained reserved. Peter Bartholomew himself submitted, on 8 April 1099 (Good Friday, before Arqa), to an ordeal by fire: he crossed a blaze to defend the truthfulness of his vision, emerged gravely burned and died of his wounds on 20 April^[63].

Without deciding on the material object, contemporary historians are unanimous on its psychological effect: the discovery of 14 June 1098 restored a supernatural morale to an army ready to surrender. Thomas Asbridge sees in it one of the decisive springs of the victory of 28 June: authentic or not, the Lance, that day, saved the crusade^[64].

The battle of 28 June 1098

Three days of fasting and processions preceded the assault. On the morning of 28 June 1098, the crusaders opened the gates of Antioch and marched out in battle order. According to Raymond of Aguilers, they were divided into six corps: Hugh of Vermandois and Robert of Normandy opened; Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert of Flanders marched together; Tancred and the two Eustaces third; Adhemar of Le Puy carried the Holy Lance in the fourth; Raymond IV, ill, remained in the city to watch the citadel; Bohemond commanded the reserve.

Kerbogha, certain of his victory, accepted the offer of an honourable duel transmitted by Peter the Hermit (turned unofficial negotiator). When he saw the crusading army deployed in the plain, despite his numerical superiority, he did not charge immediately. He let them manoeuvre. Part of his contingents (Soqman, Janah ad-Dawla) withdrew without fighting — a classic manifestation of the internal divisions of the Seljuk coalition which Albert of Aachen describes at length. The Gesta Francorum recounts that the crusaders saw three knights in white armour come down from the hills to fight at their side — whom the anonymous author identifies as Saints George, Mercurius and Demetrius^[65]. Reported as a fact by the witness, it gave the decisive impetus.

The battle turned within hours to the Latins' advantage. Kerbogha fled; the Muslim camp was plundered; the citadel surrendered; Antioch was definitively Christian. The news, which would reach Rome in November 1098, transformed the perception of the crusade into an incontestable marvel.

The year following the battle of Antioch was, paradoxically, the slowest of the whole crusade. Seven months elapsed between the victory of 28 June 1098 and the effective resumption of the march to Jerusalem in March 1099.

The death of Adhemar (1 August 1098)

An epidemic — probably typhus — broke out at Antioch in July. It decimated the army and carried off the legate Adhemar of Le Puy on 1 August 1098. His death was a moral catastrophe. As long as he lived, he had known how to hold the heterogeneous leaders together. Without him, their rivalries exploded^[66].

The Bohemond / Raymond dispute

The great question was: Antioch for whom? Bohemond, who had made the capture possible through his secret diplomacy, demanded the principality for himself. Raymond IV, whose conscience was bound by the oath to Alexios, refused — Antioch must return to Byzantium. The two camps almost came to bloodshed. For months, the leaders sent ambassadors and letters in all directions; they bargained; while the ordinary soldiers demanded that they at last march on Jerusalem.

Ma'arrat al-Nu'man was taken on 11-12 December 1098, and its fall was accompanied by an attested massacre with episodes of cannibalism on dead Muslims, duly reported by the Latin chroniclers themselves — proof by absurdity of their documentary honesty^[67]. Then, under pressure from his own troops who threatened to continue without him to Jerusalem, Raymond IV had the walls of the city dismantled on 5 January 1099 and, on 13 January, set out from Ma'arra southwards barefoot, dressed as a simple pilgrim. Bohemond remained at Antioch.

But the march was slow. During these lost months, the Fatimids of Cairo, profiting from the Seljuk collapse in Syria, retook Jerusalem from the Turks (August 1098). When the crusaders arrived there, it would no longer be the expected Turkish garrison; it would be well-organised Fatimid troops, under the governor Iftikhar al-Dawla.

On 7 June 1099, the crusading army arrived before Jerusalem. Of the 60,000 to 100,000 who had set out three years earlier, about 12,000 to 15,000 remained — 11,000 to 12,000 infantry, 1,200 to 1,300 cavalry, plus a few thousand non-combatants^[68]. A melted-away army, but battle-hardened, electrified by the nearness of its goal.

The arrival

After nearly three years on the march, the crusaders at last beheld the Holy City^[69].

The city was defended by a Fatimid garrison of about 3,000 to 4,500 men, including 400 elite Egyptian cavalry from Cairo. Iftikhar al-Dawla had had the water sources around the city drained, the wells poisoned, and the Eastern Christians (Melkite Orthodox) driven out beyond the walls lest they serve as a fifth column^[70].

The siege towers

On 13 June, a first spontaneous assault failed. The crusaders lacked the equipment. They were short of wood (the region has few trees), water and food. The situation was critical. On 17 June, the arrival of Genoese and English ships at Jaffa brought the timber needed to build siege towers. Several Genoese carpenters, including Guglielmo Embriaco (known as Testa di Maglio), proved decisive.

For three weeks, the crusaders built two great mobile towers (one commanded by Godfrey in the north, the other by Raymond in the south) as well as a battering ram.

The procession of 8 July

On 8 July 1099, the whole army, priests at its head, walked barefoot around the walls of Jerusalem in solemn procession, after the manner of Joshua around Jericho, singing the Magnificat and carrying relics. This procession, recounted by all the Latin sources, is a religious act of the first importance. It expresses the theological conviction of the crusaders: the capture of Jerusalem was not first a military act, it was a liturgical act^[71].

"We went up onto the Mount of Olives, fasting, and we prayed to God, going around the city with a procession of priests and clerics preceding us. The Saracens, standing on the walls, insulted us and insulted the cross." — Gesta Francorum, book X, ch. 38, around 1100^[72]

The assault of 15 July

On the morning of 14 July, the two siege towers were brought up to the walls in two distinct sectors. The fighting lasted all day on the 14th and into the morning of the 15th. Around noon on 15 July 1099, in Godfrey of Bouillon's sector in the north, Letholdus of Tournai and his brother Gilbert were the first to scale the wall. Godfrey followed immediately. St Stephen's Gate opened. In the south, Raymond's wall held out longer, but the Fatimid garrison, caught in a pincer, abandoned the position and took refuge in the Tower of David.

Iftikhar al-Dawla negotiated his surrender with his life spared: he was escorted out of the city with his personal guard towards Ascalon — the only significant Muslim group spared on 15 July 1099.

What happened next in Jerusalem between 15 July at noon and 17 July is the most apologetically charged episode of the whole crusade. Honest Catholic apologetics does not deny; it distinguishes.

The Latin sources

Three Latin chroniclers testify to the massacre.

The Gesta Francorum (anonymous of the Norman contingent, eyewitness):

"Our men pursued and massacred the Saracens as far as the Temple of Solomon, where the carnage was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles." — Gesta Francorum, book X, ch. 38, around 1100^[73]

Raymond of Aguilers, chaplain to Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles:

"If I tell the truth, it will exceed your capacity to believe. Let it suffice to say that in the Temple and in the portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and up to the bridles of their horses." — Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ch. 38, around 1100^[74]

Fulcher of Chartres mentions "10,000 dead" in the Temple, in a typically medieval rhetorical formula (round figures, symbolic value).

These accounts spare no one: neither Muslim men nor women nor children. Part of the Jewish community of Jerusalem perished in the burning of the main synagogue, where they had taken refuge according to Ibn al-Qalanisi^[75].

The Muslim sources and the Cairo Geniza

The 12th- and 13th-century Muslim sources give very high figures. Ibn al-Athir, writing around 1230 at Mosul, speaks of 70,000 dead in the sanctuary of the Rock alone^[76]. This figure is today considered greatly exaggerated by all historians: the total population of Jerusalem at that date is estimated at 20,000-30,000 inhabitants at most, counting the refugees streaming in from the countryside.

A document of great importance, brought to light by the historian Benjamin Z. Kedar on the basis of the Cairo Geniza (repository of Jewish documents found in the Ben Ezra synagogue), provides an almost contemporary testimony: a letter written at Ashkelon (Ascalon) in the year following the capture, in which the elders of the community describe the fall of the city and the ransom of captives. Kedar stresses its interest: it confirms the violence, while documenting the redemption of captives — a more nuanced picture than that of the Muslim chroniclers, written a century later^[77].

What do modern historians say?

Current estimates converge on 3,000 to 10,000 dead, out of a residual population assessed at 15,000-30,000. Conor Kostick, in The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099 (Continuum, 2009), shows that the medieval figures are rhetorical, designed to amplify the religious meaning of the victory or to mobilise Muslim indignation, and must never be read as modern censuses^[78].

Jonathan Riley-Smith stresses a fact often forgotten: the massacres of towns taken by assault were the norm of medieval law of war, shared by Christians, Muslims and Byzantines. After Hattin (4 July 1187), Saladin himself had the captured Templars and Hospitallers executed; the capture of Edessa by Zengi (24 December 1144) was accompanied by massacres and deportations. The massacre of Jerusalem was neither unique nor typically Christian: it was typically medieval.

That does not morally justify the crime. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man himself, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation" (CCC § 2314, text online on vatican.va)^[79]. But the honest defence of the Church does not consist in denying the blood shed; it consists in placing it within the logic of a medieval war in which Christians, Muslims and Jews shared the same cruel practices. And John Paul II, at the Jubilee of the year 2000, publicly asked pardon for the faults committed by sons of the Church in this order of acts^[80].

Honest assessment

A solid Catholic position holds four points together:

1. The massacre is documented and proven. Catholic apologetics does not deny it.
2. The medieval figures are rhetorical. The modern estimate is of the order of a few thousand dead, not 70,000.
3. The sack of a town taken by assault was the medieval norm. That does not exonerate the crusaders, but it removes the "Christians, for their part, were particularly barbarous" argument.
4. The Gospel does not sanctify the massacre. The Church, from Augustine onwards, demands right intention of combatants; and John Paul II in 2000 asked pardon, in the name of the Church, for the faults committed by her sons in this order of acts.

On 22 July 1099, the crusading leaders assembled in the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre to elect a head of the new kingdom. Raymond IV refused — out of humility or calculation. Godfrey of Bouillon accepted, but refused the title of king — "he would not wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns", in the formula transmitted by William of Tyre^[81]. He took the title of advocatus Sancti Sepulchri — "Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre", that is, the legal and military defender of the sanctuary.

Barely elected, Godfrey had to face a Fatimid counter-offensive. The vizier of Cairo, al-Afdal Shahanshah, who had been unable to come in time to defend Jerusalem, landed at Ascalon with a great army — 20,000 to 50,000 men according to the sources. Godfrey rallied his leaders: Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders, Tancred, Eustace of Boulogne. Raymond IV was summoned and agreed to march. The crusading army mobilised about 10,000 men, including 1,200 horsemen.

On 12 August 1099, at dawn, the crusaders surprised the Fatimid army still taking up position on the beach at Ascalon, 80 kilometres south-west of Jerusalem. The Latin attack was devastating. Al-Afdal himself fled; his banner was taken by the crusaders and later laid in the Holy Sepulchre. The battle definitively consolidated the nascent Kingdom of Jerusalem.

"And our Lord Jesus Christ, who on that day delivered the city of His resurrection to His knights, also in a few short hours gave victory to His people over the innumerable army of the Saracens." — Gesta Francorum, book X, ch. 39, around 1100^[82]

After Ascalon, most crusaders considered their vow fulfilled and returned home. Raymond IV refused to submit to Godfrey, set out northwards, and would later attempt to found the County of Tripoli (siege of the city from 1102, capture in 1109). Bohemond remained at Antioch. Tancred established himself in Galilee. Godfrey, for his part, died on 18 July 1100, a year after the capture — worn out, doubtless by an infectious disease. His brother Baldwin succeeded him, and this time accepted the royal crown (Christmas 1100, at Bethlehem): it was officially the beginning of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The First Crusade founded four Latin states which would survive — according to the case — between 50 and 192 years:

• County of Edessa (1098-1144), founded by Baldwin of Boulogne in March 1098. Capital Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey). The first to fall, retaken by Zengi on 24 December 1144. Its fall triggered the Second Crusade.
• Principality of Antioch (1098-1268), founded by Bohemond in June 1098. Capital Antioch. Fell to the Mamluk sultan Baybars in May 1268.
• Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291), founded by Godfrey of Bouillon on 22 July 1099. Capital Jerusalem (1099-1187, then 1229-1244), then Acre. Disappeared with the fall of Acre on 18 May 1291.
• County of Tripoli (1109-1289; siege from 1102), founded by Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles then his son Bertrand, who took the city on 12 July 1109. Capital Tripoli. Fell in April 1289 to Qalawun.

These states were not settlement colonies in the modern sense. The Franks never represented more than 15-20% of the population. The rest was made up of Eastern Christians (Orthodox, Jacobites, Melkites, Maronites, Armenians), Muslims (Sunnis, Shiites, Ismailis, Druze), Jews and Samaritans. Latin society in the East was multi-religious, plurilingual, and defensive: it did not project, it defended itself.

Why it succeeded militarily

No comparable medieval campaign succeeded under such conditions. Several factors converged:

1. The political fragmentation of the Muslim world at the turn of the 11th-12th century. Seljuks in civil war since 1092; Shiite Fatimids of Cairo in conflict with the Sunni Abbasids of Baghdad; Syrian Atabegs (Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul) divided among themselves. The coalitions of Kerbogha (Antioch 1098) then of al-Afdal (Ascalon 1099) failed to hold together.
2. The technical superiority of Frankish mailed cavalry in pitched engagements.
3. The moral discipline imposed by Adhemar of Le Puy as long as he lived, and the religious conviction of the participants, which enabled them to endure famine, marching and disease without giving up.
4. Objective luck: the opportune death of several adversaries (Yaghi-Siyan, Sultan Berkyaruq absorbed in his civil wars), the lightning victory of Ascalon, and so on.

Contemporaries, for their part, unanimously interpreted it as a divine marvel. Gesta Dei per Francos, "the deeds of God accomplished through the Franks", is Guibert of Nogent's title — and it is in this perspective that the whole crusading historiography of the first generation must be heard.

Why it marked memory

The First Crusade fixed for centuries the ideal image of the crusader: armed pilgrim, marked with the cross, setting out out of pure devotion. All later crusades would take it as a reference model — including in their failures. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching the Second Crusade at Vézelay on 31 March 1146, explicitly invoked the example of 1099; Innocent III, launching the Fourth in 1198, appealed to the heroes of the first.

But the First Crusade also left its mark through its shadows: Rhineland pogroms, the Ma'arra massacre with its scenes of cannibalism, the Jerusalem massacre, the lasting quarrel with Byzantium. These shadows would be amplified by the following crusades — notably the Fourth in 1204 — to the point that, by the end of the 13th century, the word "crusade" began to carry a moral ambivalence of which the Church herself took note.

The pardon of John Paul II

On 12 March 2000, the first Sunday of Lent, in St Peter's Basilica, Saint John Paul II celebrated the Day of Pardon of the Great Jubilee. Seven requests for pardon were pronounced by five cardinals and two bishops, under the pope's presidency. The second, pronounced by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, concerned "sins committed in the service of truth" — "even men of the Church, in the name of faith and morals, have at times used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth"^[83].

A year later, at Athens, Archbishop Christodoulos listed before the pope the historic Orthodox grievances — including the sack of Constantinople of 1204 (not the work of the First Crusade, but closing the dossier of the crusades in modern pontifical consciousness). John Paul II replied, on 4 May 2001, with a general request for pardon explicitly naming the sack: "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us the forgiveness we beg of him" (translation of the official English text), before adding: "I am thinking of the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople" ^[84]. This double gesture — the St Peter's liturgy and the Athens reply — henceforth accompanies any honest Catholic approach to the crusades. Holding together the reality of the Turkish threat to Byzantium, the authentic penitential piety of the crusaders, the Catholic doctrine of just war, and the blood unduly shed, the Rhineland pogroms, the Jerusalem massacre, the sack of Constantinople — that is the attitude befitting a cultivated 21st-century Catholic.

For the details of the just-war doctrine (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bernard of Clairvaux), the constant condemnation of forced conversion, the refutation of the ten great modern objections and the implications of the Jubilee of the year 2000, see the hub article The Crusades (1095-1291).

• The Crusades (1095-1291) — the hub article covering the eight crusades, the just-war doctrine, the ten objections and John Paul II's pardon.
• How to answer the crusades objection? — short apologetic answer, question-and-answer format.
• The Templar crisis — the trial and suppression of the Order of the Temple, a direct legacy of the Latin states in the East.
• Islam — religious, doctrinal and historical context of the Muslim world against which the crusade unfolded.
• The Gregorian reform — the great movement of ecclesial reform of which the crusade is one of the extensions.
• History argues in favour of Catholicism — the continuity of the Church through the centuries.
• First Lateran Council (1123) — first ecumenical council of the West, contemporary with the consolidation of the Latin states.
• The fall of Constantinople — the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, a distant consequence of the fractures aggravated by the crusades.