Urban planning done right.
Chapter 1 The first crusade.
In 1096 the acting current Pope Urban the Second made a speech at in the French City of Clermont to a holy council and later to the general public calling for the start of a crusade or holy war and so was recruiting men of faith to join in his plight against two main opponents the pagans and the Muslims albeit the first conflict was mainly focused upon the latter and his speech at Clermont backs this notion up as he provides a more open public motivation for the call to the crusade citing that the soldiers should be ‘True Shepherds’ and that they should ‘guard on all sides the flock committed to you’[1] A main crux that comes from this speech also is that he provides further incentives towards those who would fight this just holy war by means of claiming that the war is sanctified and that those who take part in the conflict will have an ‘immediate remission of sins’[2] which in layman terms means they could carry out the conflict without fear of not having access to heaven as it is a war that God wills. Another Letter from Pope Urban II to Crusaders themselves shows his true public intentions again to challenge the Muslims in the Orient and the language he uses to his troops shows how much this mattered to him as he describes a ‘barbaric fury’ that has ‘deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient’[3] but most notably is what he mentions about getting reinforcements to the regions stating in his letter that ‘we visited the regions of Gaul and devoted ourselves larges to urging the princes of the land and their subjects to free the churches of the East’[4] this is rather crucial to his ulterior motivations which were to unite the European Christians and stop the wars between them and this was done and linked through a second motive which was the spread Christianity to the Byzantines who were an eastern orthodoxy and had a tough relationship with the other nations due to their different practices and so this union of European Christians would occur through Alexis I the Byzantine Emperor who wanted help due to the Turks advancing through Asia Minor and being within attacking distance of Constantinople[5]. Another key piece of evidence from his speech that he aimed for European unity noting that ‘Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians.’[6] He also made an appeal to those who would commit crimes ‘Robbers, now become knights’ and those who were landed by offering them to ‘rent their lands and collect money for their experience’[7] this sort of language is inspiring but also shows to an extent the desperation that he had to take back the ‘Holy Land’ by reaching out to those who would have had committed sins albeit he did offer penance for their actions.
Urban also had another interesting difference to future crusades with that being the lack of an attempt to use indulgences to gather troops although they still accepted those who fought for land or money but those who were purely fighting to ‘liberate their brothers’ and making the holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem once it had been liberated were offered penance as an alternative to money and honour that some crusaders fought for as a primary goal alongside the liberation of the Eastern Churches[8]. However, despite this attempt to gather knights and other ranked soldiers Urban had ‘lost control in the matter of personal’[9] in that in his forces many civilian men and women had taken up arms with the main focus being the urban and rural poor which the pope had preferred to of stayed at home away from the conflict[10] and would end up being poorly equipped and lead by the likes of Peter the Hermit whom was a priest and lead the ‘people’s crusades’[11].
On the whole the first crusade was led more or less by Pope
Urban’s desire for holy liberation and following the ideas of a sanctified and
just war while also keeping an eye on other related powerbases that the Christians
had lost to the Muslims with an example being in Spain where he requested that
the count of Barcelona keep his men behind in Spain to aid in the recapture of Iberia
stating that ‘it is no virtue to rescue Christians from Muslims in one place
only to expose them to tyranny and oppression of the Muslims in another’[12]
[1] Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, 1, pp. 382 f., trans in Oliver J. Thatcher, and Edgar Holmes McNeal, eds., A Source Book for Medieval History, (New York: Scribners, 1905), 513-17 sourcebook.
[2] Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos,
[3] August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, (Princeton: 1921), 42-43 Accessed through Medieval sourcebooks.
[4] August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants
[5] Riley-Smith, Jonathan Simon Christopher. The Crusades: A History. 2nd ed. London: Continuum, 2005. 1
[6] Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos,
[7] Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos,
[8] Riley-Smith, Jonathan Simon Christopher. The Crusades: A History. 2nd ed 12-13
[9] Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.34-35
[10] Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. 34
[11] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2018. Peter the Hermit. July 04. Accessed April 4, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-the-Hermit.
[12] Riley-Smith, Jonathan Simon Christopher. The Crusades: A History. 2nd ed. 8
Holy Gold, A religious dilemma 