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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
From the time of the proclamation of the First Crusade in 1095 to at least the first decade of the twelfth century, there was an apparently universal understanding amongst the people of Christendom that those who joined the pilgrimage-in-arms that set out to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land should be regarded as imitators of Christ. This was remarkable, for the imitation of Christ was understood by contemporaries to be the paramount ideal of spiritual perfection and, before 1095, only attainable by a total withdrawal from the world and a commitment to a monastic way of life. Yet with Pope Urban II’s Clermont sermon, the spirituality that was previously the preserve of those milites Christi who fought spiritual battles in the cloister was now also available to those who fought for Christ in the world. As the biographer of one prominent first crusader famously put it, before the proclamation of the crusade, his subject was ‘uncertain whether to follow in the footsteps of the Gospel or the world. But after the call to arms in the service of Christ, the twofold reason for fighting inflamed him beyond belief.’
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for supporting the research that led to this paper.
1 For the purposes of this paper, my analysis of the sources for the First Crusade does not go further than the first generation of histories, most of which were written before 1110.
2 On the idea otimitatio Christi, see in particular Tinsley, Ernest J., The Imitation of God in Christ: an Essay on the Biblical Basis of Christian Spirituality (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Constable, Giles, ‘The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ’, in idem, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1995), 143–248.Google Scholar
3 For the preaching of the First Crusade, see especially Cowdrey, H. E. J., ‘Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade’, History 55 (1970), 177–88 Google Scholar, repr. in idem, Popes, Monks and Crusaders (London, 1984), XVI Google Scholar; Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), 13–30 Google Scholar; Cole, Penny J., The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 1–36.Google Scholar
4 Ralph of Caen, ‘Gesta Tancredi’, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 5 vols (Paris, 1844–95) [hereafter: RHC Oc.], 3: 587–716, 606.
5 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (London, 1962), 1. On the authorship of this text, see Morris, Colin, ‘The Gesta Francorum as Narrative History’, Reading Medieval Studies 19 (1993), 55—71.Google Scholar
6 Robert of Rheims, ‘Historia Iherosolimitana’, RHC Oc., 3: 717–882, 729–30; Baldric of Bourgueil, ‘Historia Jerosolimitana’, RHC Oc., 4: 1–111, 16.
7 See Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), 62–3.Google Scholar
8 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1901), 164.
9 See Constable, Giles, ‘Jerusalem and the Sign of the Cross (with particular reference to the cross of pilgrimage and crusading in the twelfth century)’, in Levine, Lee I., ed., Jerusalem: its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York, 1999), 371–81.Google Scholar
10 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), 331–2; translation from Frances Rita Ryan, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem (1095–1127) (Knoxville, TN, 1969), 131–2.
11 For Jerusalem pilgrimage before the First Crusade, see Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 23–39.
12 Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens, CChr.CM 127a(1996), 136.
13 See Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Death on the First Crusade’, in Loades, David W., ed., The End of Strife (Edinburgh, 1984), 14–31 Google Scholar; Cowdrey, H. E.J., ‘Martyrdom and the First Crusade’, in Edbury, Peter W., ed., Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R. C. Smail (Cardiff, 1985), 46–56 Google Scholar; Shepkaru, Shmuel, ‘To Die for God: Martyrs’ Heaven in Hebrew and Latin Crusade Narratives’, Speculum 77 (2002), 311–41.Google Scholar
14 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, 148.
15 Le ‘Liber’ de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. John H. and Laurita L. Hill (Paris, 1969), 113–14.
16 See Constable, Giles, ‘The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries’, Traditio 9 (1953), 213–79.Google Scholar
17 See especially Leclercq, Jean, ‘L’Encyclique de S. Bernard en faveur de la croisade’, Revue Bénédictine 81 (1971), 282–308, and 82 (1972), 312 Google Scholar; Leclercq, Jean, ‘Pour l’Histoire de l’encyclique de S. Bernard sur la croisade’, Etudes de civilisation médiévale, IXe-XIIe siècles: Mélanges Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers, 1974), 479–90.Google Scholar
18 Eugenius, III, ‘Quantum praedecessores’, ed. Rassow, Paul, ‘Der Text der Kreuzzugsbulle Eugens III. vom. 1. Marz 1146’, Neues Archiv 45 (1924), 300–5 Google Scholar. Note that the text used here is the version of 1 March 1146, which contained minor changes to the version of December 1145.
19 Ibid., 303.
20 Bernard of Clairvaux, , ‘Epistolae’, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Leclercq, Jean, Rochais, Henri and Talbot, C. H., 8 vols (Rome, 1957–77)Google Scholar, esp. Ep. 363 (to the Archbishops of Eastern France and Bavaria), 8: 311–17, and Ep. 458 (to Duke Wladislaus and the people of Bohemia), 8: 434–7.
21 Ibid., 315.
22 See, for example, Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Crusades: a History, 2nd edition (London, 2005), 121–2.Google Scholar
23 In this respect, I disagree with Cole, Preaching of the Crusades, 59–60, who argued that, for Bernard, crusading was associated with ‘suffering and self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ’, and Katzir, Yael, ‘The Second Crusade and the Redefinition of Ecclesia, Christianitas and Papal Coercive Power’, in Gervers, Michael, ed., The Second Crusade and the Cistercians (New York, 1992), 9 Google Scholar, who argued that crusaders ‘undertook the obligation to imitate Christ’ in response to Bernard’s preaching.
24 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. and trans. Virginia G. Berry (New York, 1948), 6–7.
25 Ibid., 118–19.
26 Pellegrin, Elisabeth, ‘Membra disiecta Floriacensia’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 117 (1959), 5–56, 22.Google Scholar
27 De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. and trans. Charles Wendell David, with a foreword and bibliography by Jonathan Phillips (New York, 2001), 70–3.
28 The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 1: 328.
29 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, 8: 314.
30 Morris, Colin, ‘Propaganda for War: the Dissemination of the Crusading Ideal in the Twelfth Century’, in Sheils, W.J., ed., The Church and War, SCH 20 (Oxford, 1983), 79–101, 84 Google Scholar, argued that ‘Urban… must be credited with the invention of one of the most successful instances of the “logo” in history’.
31 See above, n. 14.
32 See, for example, Historia Compostellana, ed. Emma Falque Rey, CChr.CM 70 (1988), 379.
33 See also Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 124, 133–4.
34 See, for example, his description of the crusader who chose to fulfil his vow by joining the Cistercian order: ‘Epistolae’, 8: 437.
35 Bernard’s attitude towards crusading monks is also revealing: see ‘Epistolae’, 8: 511–12. See also Jotischky, Andrew, The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (University Park, PA, 1995), 1–16.Google Scholar
36 Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta, 87.
37 Leclercq, Jean, Vandenbroucke, François and Bouyer, Louis, The Spirituality of the Middle Ages (London, 1968), 130 Google Scholar, suggested that ‘The same spirit lay behind this new kind of peregrinano … as that which had brought about the monastic crisis and the advent of the wandering hermits’. See also Constable, Giles, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar, passim.
38 For the First Crusade as ‘a military monastery on the move’, see Riley-Smith, First Crusade, 2, 26–7, 113–14, 118–19, 150–2, 154–5.
39 Die ursprüngliche Templerregel, ed. G. Schnürer (Freiburg, 1903), 136. Citation from Ps. 116:13.
40 Papsturkunden für Templer una Johanniter, ed. Rudolf Hiestand, 2 vols (Göttingen, 1972–84), 1: 215.
41 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae’, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, 3: 214.
42 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, 8: 315, 436.