Fat cats of the crusades

Dan Jones introduces the men who returned from holy war with their pockets full as well as their souls saved

Waging holy war in the Middle Ages could be a lucrative business. Dan Jones tells the story of the crusaders who returned from the front line with their souls cleansed – and their pockets full

On the morning of 1 July 1097, tens of thousands of Christian pilgrim soldiers of the First Crusade scrambled to make a desperate stand against a horde of advancing Turkish horsemen.

The crusaders were only a few days into a three-month march through 800 miles of hostile terrain when the Turks took them by surprise, attacking early in the morning while the crusaders were still in camp, near an old Roman settlement in Anatolia called Dorylaeum. One eyewitness to the battle, a French priest called Fulcher of Chartres, recalled the terror he felt when the Turks descended, as he and his companions “huddled together like sheep in a fold, trembling and frightened”. The fighting raged for six hours until eventually – miraculously – it became clear that the Turks did not have the numbers to prevail.

The Christian cavalry, commanded by a wily Norman nobleman called Bohemond of Taranto, held the tormentors at bay for long enough to allow reinforcements to arrive from several miles away. These fresh troops forced the Turks into a disorderly retreat, which soon became a rout. After it was finished, the crusaders buried their dead and gave thanks for their victory.

The battle of Dorylaeum was remembered for years afterwards as a demonstration of God’s approval for crusading and an example of the first crusaders’ extraordinary resilience and motivation. It was also remembered as a day that had proven unexpectedly lucrative. One writer recorded the slogan shouted from man to man on the front line at Dorylaeum: “Stand fast all together,” they had yelled as the Turks swooped, “trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty!”

This had proved prophetic. For not only did the crusaders record an inspirational military victory; they also gleefully looted the camp of the Turkish leader, Qilij Arslan, and enriched themselves by plundering the bodies of the 3,000 enemy soldiers who had been killed. They had trusted in Christ and, just as promised, gained much booty. Their pithy, two-pronged war cry captured the two great preoccupations of the crusader age: faith and gold.

Most historians date the crusades from the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1095 to the fall of the last Islamic strongholds in al-Andalus (southern Spain) in 1492. They were a series of interconnected Christian ‘holy wars’ fought against a wide variety of foes.

The First Crusade was called to aid Greek Christians of the Byzantine empire in their wars against the Turks of Anatolia, and subsequently to seize Jerusalem from its rule by Fatimid Shia caliphs based in Cairo. But over the generations many more crusades were raised – against Arabs, Turks and Kurds, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Berbers from north Africa, pagans in Latvia, Cathars in southern France, Mongols in eastern Europe. War was also waged on a hotchpotch of other real and perceived enemies of Christ – including both Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperors and several Christian kings.

The purpose of all these crusades was ostensibly twofold. Popes authorised warfare in Christ’s name because they thought it was their duty to protect Christian people and lands from non-believers. Ordinary medieval people took crusade vows, sewed distinctive cloth crosses to their garments and joined crusader armies because they were promised that in doing so they would earn forgiveness for their earthly sins, thereby easing their passage into heaven.

These two aims were repeated throughout the history of crusading. When Urban II launched the First Crusade, chroniclers recalled that he spoke of avenging insults to “the sanctuary of God” (ie Jerusalem) by declaring “wars which contain the glorious reward of martyrdom”. The great Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux helped preach the Second Crusade, which began in 1147, calling upon the knights of western Europe to join “a battle [where] you may fight without danger, where it is glory to conquer and gain to die”. When Pope Gregory VIII preached the Third Crusade in 1187, after Jerusalem had fallen to the sultan Saladin, he asked

The victors’ two-pronged war cry captured the two great preoccupations of the crusader age: faith and gold