SOURCE: “The Further Development of the Popular Idea of Crusade” in The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, translated by Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart, Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 269–305.

[In the following essay, Erdmann analyzes the various elements—including religious and literary developments—that enabled the “general idea of crusade and war upon the heathen” to take the specific form of the Crusade to the Holy Land.]

Gregory VII's idea of a hierarchical crusade brought general discord rather than united action; alongside it the popular idea of crusade led a life of its own.¹

The socioeconomic conditions for the crusading movement were largely present in the second half of the eleventh century, as best illustrated by the fact that a free mercenary soldiery acquired increasing prominence at this time.² While mercenaries had been regularly used at Byzantium since late Antiquity, the West had rarely seen knights, or soldiers of lower rank, offering their services to lords outside the regular feudal relationship and in return for pay. From the middle of the eleventh century onward, however, the practice became common, an indication that a surplus of trained manpower was available. Mercenaries and crusaders obviously bear a close resemblance to one another, but they also offer a sharp contrast: cash payment for the former, and for the latter the church's call and the prospect of heavenly reward. As a result, it would be wrong to ascribe a mercenary character to all enterprises that went beyond local feudal combat.³ Rather, a characteristic of the age was that crusaders existed side by side with mercenaries. The crusader is a volunteer; and even though military terminology may equate him with a mercenary, he must be distinguished from the latter if the historical forces motivating him are to be understood. On the other hand, a complete contrast between mercenaries and crusading knights would be historically and psychologically false, for troops had already been recruited for both money and spiritual rewards. The Germans whom Leo IX had led on his crusade against the Normans had streamed to his banner in return for pay, as well as for the sake of indulgences.⁴ The skirmishes of the Roman schism of the 1060s were conducted largely as a holy war, but money payments played no slight role on both sides.⁵ In the plans for a Jerusalem crusade drafted by Benzo of Alba for Henry IV—we will hear of them again—the needed troops were to be recruited with Byzantine gold.⁶ Gregory VII, as we saw, relied as much on money payments as on crusading ideas to assemble armed forces. And even the warriors of the First Crusade, though certainly not mercenaries, did not wholly dispense with the prospect of earthly reward: the leaders of the crusade were to have great gifts from the Greek emperor, and the rank and file had the direct promise of pay.⁷ In short, the crusading idea did not eliminate natural self-interest;⁸ yet the fact that motives were mixed does not blot out the ideas of Christian knighthood and of crusade, and it in no way alters the autonomy of their development.

In our survey of this development up to the mid-eleventh century, we have encountered many individual incidents, but no system and no coherent plans for translating ideas into action. Conditions were basically the same in the second half of the century. The polemical literature, for all its divergences of opinion, discloses a gradual clarification of theoretical concepts and a certain agreement over fundamentals; but the authors who mention war only in passing express attitudes that are naive and generally confused. For example, a personage of the stature of Anselm of Canterbury still voiced a basic rejection of war, as being simply immoral.⁹ At the opposite pole, it could still happen that none other than bishops won ecclesiastical praise for their exploits against an enemy of the Empire,¹⁰ this at the very time when church doctrine took it for granted that bishops and abbots must not perform military service for the state.¹¹ Even the basic idea of Christian knighthood—namely, the consecration of the sword to ecclesiastical purposes—had by no means become the common property of all thinking men; and the contrast between secular and spiritual militia, though completely overcome by the popes and theoreticians, as we have seen, nevertheless retained its full primitive force in certain circles.¹² Now as before, different answers were given to the question whether a knight's piety should lie in good works alien to his military calling, or in military exploits performed for the church.¹³ Meanwhile, the idea of service by knights to the church was not narrowly confined to the papacy. Around the monastery of La Sauve near Bordeaux, under Abbot Gerard (1079-1095), a company of ten dynasts was formed who allowed their swords to be consecrated in the monastery church and committed themselves by oath to avenge violence against the monks, to defend monastic property, and to protect pilgrims coming there.¹⁴ This union recalls not only the Gregorian militia s. Petri, but also the beginnings of the Order of Templars; it represents a link between the old Peace of God unions and the later knighthood of the military orders. Such phenomena were isolated for the time being, since a variety of tendencies kept getting into one another's way; here as before we cannot hope to draw a complete picture. Nevertheless, we must elaborate upon a few aspects that were significant in future developments.

The first models in whose terms the religious idea of war was expressed were Old Testament figures, such as Joshua, Gideon, David, and Judas Maccabeus; throughout Christian history the military aspects of the Old Testament had a great impact. In the High Middle Ages, however, an even more important role was played by the saints to whom a special patronage of war and knights began to be ascribed. This was how the church's sanctification of the profession of arms was given its clearest expression. As was established before, the early medieval West knew nothing of such patronage.¹⁵ When tendencies of this kind appeared, they were first related to saints who in life had been soldiers themselves, such as Maurice and Sebastian. The Pontifical of Cologne (probably from the beginning of the eleventh century) contains an order of service for the consecration of knights where the merits of the holy martyrs and soldiers Maurice, Sebastian, and George are already referred to.¹⁶ Then Benzo of Alba, in relating the Roman schism (1062-1063), has St. Maurice make an appearance to fight for the cause of Cadalus.¹⁷ Along different lines, Bernold compares Count Frederick of Mömpelgard to St. Sebastian and strikingly alters the older concept of this saint in doing so, for while the Acts of Sebastian contrast the Christianity of the saint to his military profession, Bernold praises Count Frederic precisely because his military prowess turned him into a courageous warrior of Christ and champion of the church.¹⁸ The development of territorial patron saints was another element pointing in this direction. As early as the eleventh century, St. Denis was regarded as the patron saint of France;¹⁹ without ever turning into a soldier-saint, he acquired the role of a protector in war, particularly as a result of the part played by the banner of St. Denis in French wars.²⁰ To some extent, St. Maurice and his lance had a comparable role in eleventh-century Germany,²¹ and so did St. Martin and St. George in Hungary, though in a transitory way.²² St. James, “Santiago,” gained special importance as protector of Spain, where he would later be the patron of the greatest Spanish order of knighthood. Belief in the military efficacy of Santiago found its supreme expression in the legend of the battle with the Moors at Clavijo, where the saint was thought to have appeared on horseback, bearing a shining white flag to lead the Christians to victory.²³ The role of Santiago as patron of fighting knights is found fully developed only in the twelfth century; whether it antedates the First Crusade is not yet clear.²⁴

The holy patrons of the crusading era, however, owe their development principally to a foreign source, namely the dominant ideas of Eastern Christendom, which now acquired currency in the West. For a long time, the Eastern church had known saints who brought victory, such as Demetrius, Theodore, Sergius, and George.²⁵ No later than the tenth century, the soldier-saints were venerated in the Byzantine army and portrayed on war banners.²⁶ A series of portraits of these saints, mostly dressed as soldiers, has survived to this day; they principally depict George, Theodore (whom legend doubled and venerated as both Theodore the general and Theodore the recruit), and Demetrius, but also Procopius, Mercurius, Eustratius, and others.²⁷ These were explicitly Byzantine saints, who, except for George, were entirely unknown in the West or had only a local cult in Italy. As a result, the emergence of these same Greek saints as patrons of warfare in the West has considerable importance.²⁸ It is a process that may be satisfactorily traced in the liturgical acclamations of ecclesiastical and secular rulers, the so-called Laudes, most of which include a special appeal to a saint on behalf of the ruler and the army, or of the army alone.²⁹ No special patrons of war are indicated in the older Latin Laudes, of which the earliest dates from the eighth century; for the army, they simply mention saints whose cult could be regarded as popular.³⁰ The special soldier-saints who later appear are the Greek ones. Saints George, Theodore, and Mercurius are invoked on behalf of the ruler and army of the Christians in Laudes stemming from the kingdom of Burgundy,³¹ and the Laudes for the imperial coronation also call on Theodore and Mercurius as saints for the army.³² Since these acclamations are difficult to date, they do not definitely attest that the Greek soldiersaints were adopted in the West before the First Crusade.³³ Yet it is probable that they were, for in the crusade itself the heavenly assistance in battle of Sts. George, Theodore, Demetrius, and Mercurius was thought to have played a great role; the Latin accounts, which are numerous, introduce their names in so casual a way as to imply that their role as special patrons of war was familiar to Western readers.³⁴

Saint George assumed a special place among the warrior saints. Though he too was an Eastern, more precisely a Palestinian, saint, he had been widely venerated even in the West ever since the beginning of the Middle Ages, but not as a patron of war; rather, he was a martyr for the faith, the greatest and most wonderful among the Christian confessors, for he was supposed to have risen again after three fatal martyrdoms and to have brought about the most incredible miracles.³⁵ He is a soldier as his legend begins, but this fact played as insignificant a part in his early cult in the West as it did in the cases of Sebastian, Maurice, or Martin.³⁶ The Greek East treated him differently. There the great triumphant martyr was chief of the soldier-saints and was celebrated as early as in the seventh century as a champion of the Empire.³⁷ Even at that date a legend in Constantinople told of the protection given by St. George to a cavalryman at war.³⁸ In the next centuries, the Greeks further developed the military versions of the legend of St. George, even though the most famous of them, the story of his fight with the dragon, cannot be traced before the twelfth century.³⁹ Other Greek miracles of St. George survive in manuscripts of the eleventh century and probably originated in the ninth or tenth. Their repeated motif is miraculous help, especially against heathens; the saint appears mounted and in arms to rescue prisoners or to defend his icon against pagan destructiveness.⁴⁰ Under Constantine Monomachos (1043-1055), St. George was the special patron of the war of the Empire against heathens: a Byzantine banner of the time depicts St. George with the emperor beside him, as he pursues the barbarians on horseback;⁴¹ and a sermon on St. George, pronounced by John Euchaites, refers expressly to a victory over the wild Scyths, that is, the Petchenegs.⁴²

Everyone knows that “the knight St. George” played a similar role in the West during the crusades and long after, as a heavenly helper in war and a patron of the Christian knight. The role is clearly attested as early as the First Crusade. As mentioned before, he was supposed to have appeared to the crusaders as a helper in battle, in company with Demetrius, Theodore, and Mercurius. He figured especially as standard-bearer of the crusading host and was thought to have referred to himself as such in a vision to a crusader.⁴³ The special veneration that the crusaders had for him found expression in the foundation of a bishopric at Ramleh, where the saint was supposedly buried.⁴⁴ To what extent the West regarded George as a special saint for war prior to the First Crusade is a more difficult question to answer. The age has left us neither Western images of St. George as a warrior nor reports of something like a banner of St. George.⁴⁵ Even the stories of the apparition of soldier-saints in eleventh-century battles belong to a later time.⁴⁶ The earliest of them is the account of Geoffrey Malaterra that St. George participated in the battle against the Saracens at Cerami (1063);⁴⁷ but since Geoffrey did not write until after the First Crusade, his testimony cannot prove that this motif existed prior to the 1090s. Yet one legend does antedate the crusade. A collection of miracles relates that a sacristan of San Giorgio in Velabro, on the coast near Rome, was seized by Saracens and taken to Palermo, but St. George appeared on a white horse and brought him back.⁴⁸ The context of this story imposes a date earlier than the First Crusade; by the end of the century, the Saracens could no longer make piratical descents upon the Roman coast, for they had been completely driven out of the Tyrrhenian Sea (they lost Palermo in 1072). To be sure, George does not appear in this legend as a real patron of knights and helper in battle; he intervenes on horseback and acts as a protector against the heathen, in the earlier Byzantine manner. But his future role is at least prefigured, and the process of transfering the image of George the warrior from the Greeks to the Latins had begun.

How the journey was completed is not known; the Normans and other mercenaries who served with the Byzantine army come to mind, but establishing the precise source of this motif hardly matters to our study. What counts instead is that the West had become receptive to such notions, which could now take root; this is what demonstrates the popularity gradually acquired by the idea of holy war.

The origin of the cult of warrior saints has another highly important aspect, namely the interconnection of legends of saints and chivalric poetry. A whole series of legendary warriors of the past came to be revered simultaneously as epic heroes and as saints of the church.⁴⁹ From at least the beginning of the twelfth century, heroic tales passed into clerical literature by taking on an edifying form;⁵⁰ reciprocally, the knightly epics of the twelfth century assumed many clerical features.

This combination of military fame and sanctity originated in the days preceding the crusades. In many cases, the first connection was the story that the heroes were converted in later life and entered a monastery. This edifying theme was of course quite old, the more so since the story often rested on historical fact. But earlier monastic legends of this kind hardly celebrated the antecedent feats of arms of their heroes; rather, they stressed only the contrast between secular and spiritual “guise [habitus].” Such is the case, for example, of the oldest version of the conversion of William of Gellone, a count from the circle of Charlemagne who ended his life as a monk.⁵¹ Only later did the image change: legendary accounts of William's exploits in the Spanish campaign against the heathen began to be blended with the figure of the pious founder of monasteries. Thus the Vita s. Wilhelmi relates that William, before his monastic life, went forth into southern France as triumphator and standard-bearer of Christ to combat the Moslems, that he saved the people of God with his sword and enlarged the Christian imperium.⁵² Such a story casts the light of sanctity even on William's warlike exploits. To be sure, this Vita seems to date from the twelfth century (ca. 1122),⁵³ but other conversion stories of the same kind are older. The Conversio Othgerii militis was certainly written before 1084, perhaps even in the tenth century; its subject is Ogier, another warrior of the heroic age to whose name knightly legends were attached, and it narrates his conversion at the monastery of St. Faro with marked emphasis upon his fame in war.⁵⁴ In fact, an epitaph of Ogier and his companion Benedict, composed about the middle of the eleventh century, stresses that the two men ranked first in both armies, temporal and spiritual; they were brave men of the emperor and brave agents of God.⁵⁵ Such parallelism of military and monastic exploits strikingly expresses the harmonization of warlike and ecclesiastical themes. Equally instructive is a section of the chronicle of Novalese that stems from the first half of the eleventh century. In relating that Walter of Aquitaine, the well-known hero of Ekkehard's poem, later became a monk in Novalese, the chronicle uses the expression conversio militiae, that is to say, a transformation of secular knighthood into spiritual.⁵⁶ Added to this is a poem that again celebrates the “dual combat” of Walter in elevated words,⁵⁷ and reports feats of arms that Walter performed even as a monk. Once, on the advice of the abbot, he allowed some robbers to despoil him of his clothes, but when they tried to take his loincloth as well, he killed them all and returned with great booty, for which he was of course obliged to do penance.⁵⁸ Besides, he reportedly triumphed over invading heathens three times, drove off some riders of King Desiderius who were devastating the monastic lands, and was then so filled with the exaltation of victory that he cut down with his sword a marble column that is still displayed.⁵⁹ Nothing is more apparent here than the admixture to a monastic legend of elements better known from French chivalric poetry.⁶⁰ In this way monasteries began to lay claim to heroic figures and ascribed a more positive value to warlike exploits than they formerly had. The typical conversion story continued to retain something of the old contrast between secular and monastic warfare and included a criticism of the bloody profession of arms. But the idea came forth quite spontaneously that a holy life and heroic warfare belonged together, especially in regard to war against the heathen.

The works just discussed were confined to clerical circles. More important were the repercussions of such ideas on real knightly poetry. Various opinions have been expressed for and against the role of clerics in the emergence of knightly epics, but the Christian element in these poems is beyond dispute.⁶¹ Tenth-century poetry, such as the Waltharius of Ekkehard, lacked the theme of ecclesiastical war. The Waltharius definitely comes from a clerical hand; the poet blames greed as the cause of war, yet he knows no other ethos of war than the old Germanic one—the striving to measure one's own strength against that of the opponent, and the idea of revenge for the slain.⁶² The Old French Chanson de Guillaume, which dates from the close of the eleventh century, is already different.⁶³ The poet has the knight Vivien swear an oath never to retreat; Vivien prays before battle that God might help him fulfill this oath, indeed he even compares death in battle with the sacrificial death of Christ.⁶⁴ This is possible because the enemy is Moslem, and the religious contrast is vividly felt.⁶⁵ Nevertheless, religion remains a personal matter and not yet an autonomous motive for war.

The ethical motivation is more developed in the French Chanson de Roland, which belongs to the same epoch. That the poem exudes the crusading spirit has often been stressed, and only the question whether it should be set shortly before or shortly after the First Crusade is disputed;⁶⁶ some say that “the Chanson de Roland would be impossible without the First Crusade,” while others maintain that “the crusade would be incomprehensible without the Chanson de Roland.”⁶⁷ The poem assigns a dominant place to the idea of war upon heathens: battle is a judgment of God, the Christians are right, heathens wrong, and therefore Christians are victorious.⁶⁸ When Cordova falls to the emperor Charles, he causes all heathens who are not converted to Christianity to be killed. The emperor is in all respects the direct instrument of God, Who assists him with miracles and by His archangel delivers to him the commission to fight for the Christians. Yet only the ruler's person is portrayed in so starkly a Christian light.⁶⁹ The other warriors are handled differently: no trace is found of the specific ideal of Christian knighthood. Roland's exhortations before battle emphasize two ideas—feudal loyalty and fame in war.⁷⁰ He too has occasion to say that the heathens are in the wrong and the Christians right.⁷¹ These words in context are meant essentially as a promise of victory, but everyone shares the basic idea. When Archbishop Turpin calls on the combatants to fight for king and Christendom, the words he uses make the war exactly resemble a crusade: “Confess your sins, pray God for mercy: I shall absolve you, to heal your souls. When you die you will be holy martyrs and have your place in the highest paradise.” As the Franks thereupon cast themselves to the ground, the archbishop blesses them and prescribes sword thrusts as penance.⁷² The idea of a crusading indulgence, which we find here in a crudely popular form, allows us to specify that the Chanson cannot antedate the time of Alexander II.⁷³ The popular character of the poem may also explain why, in spite of this date, the personal knightly ideal of Roland is still old-fashioned.⁷⁴ Above all, we are shown the decisive importance that war against the heathen assumed both earlier and later, as the popular form of holy war.

An original expression of the popular idea of knighthood is found in a quite different place. Among the rare remnants of Italian literature, a verse appeal to war has come to light under the title of “Exhortation to the Magnates of the Empire.”⁷⁵ Written by an Italian partisan of the German king, it stems from the early years of Henry IV, probably from the days of the fighting over Cadalus in Rome (1062-1063).⁷⁶ The poet first appeals to the Romans, Italians, and Normans, calling on them to remain faithful to the young king, according to God's will and holy law, and to combat his enemies, especially “the duke” (Godfrey of Lorraine). Afterwards, however, those addressed are to fight against the Saracens and “Huns” (obviously the Hungarians or Balkan peoples) and to make Italy secure from heathens. In closing, the poet paints a coming utopia in which Rome will rule all peoples in union with Greece; Caesar, Augustus, and Charlemagne will rise again and renew the world according to the old laws, and simultaneously justice will reign under the keys of St. Peter. The prerequisite for all this is that those addressed should maintain fidelity and law; this is why the poem rings out in praise of “just service [militia aequa].” With knighthood thus subordinated to a higher idea, the poet proclaims a sort of holy war against the enemy of Rome as well as against heathens. He is far removed from hierarchical objectives. His originality lies rather in uninhibitedly mixing Christian themes with the idea of Eternal Rome. He is comparable in this to Benzo of Alba, with whose political standpoint he also agrees; possibly, Benzo himself is the poet. This particular formulation of the knightly ideal cannot have had much impact; yet the wide diffusion of the ideal itself is borne out when one finds it in so unexpected a combination of motifs.

This poem, as well as the hagiography and chansons de geste previously discussed, repeatedly feature war against the heathen. No additional proof is needed that war of this kind had the most important role in the popular sphere of the crusading idea. Equally characteristic are the reproaches that Lampert causes the rebellious Saxons to address to Henry IV: the king is blamed for being a heathen [barbarus] by persecuting the church and by permitting even the pagan Slavs to fall upon the Christian Saxons.⁷⁷ Although the idea of a chivalric crusade against heathens remained problematic until mid-century, it was then adopted by the reform papacy and, under its aegis, attained an initial peak in the early 1060s. The Curia then gave less encouragement to this tendency and preferred crusade within the church. But even in the age of Gregory VII the popular idea of crusade against heathens did not cease to play a role in battles on the frontiers of Christianity.

The most significant event of this kind was the crusade of Barbastro (1064),⁷⁸ prolonged in the next decades by a series of similar undertakings.⁷⁹ The Spanish campaign that Ebolus of Roucy began in agreement with Gregory VII has previously been mentioned.⁸⁰ The same pontificate witnessed the undertakings of Hugh I of Burgundy and William VI of Aquitaine in support of the king of Aragon. Additional bands of crusaders, especially from France, took part in the battle of Zallaca or Sagrajos against the Almoravids (1086). The severe defeat suffered there by the Christians brought new stimulus to the idea of a Spanish crusade. Alfonso VI of Castile sent to France for renewed support and was supposed to have threatened that, unless he received help, he would make an alliance with the Moslems and give up the Christian faith.⁸¹ In the next year, substantial contingents of knights reached Spain from various parts of France under high-placed leadership. No lasting results were achieved on this occasion, but the bare fact that many French knights participated in the Spanish war against the Moors was very important, the more so as smaller groups of Frenchmen took part in the Spanish fighting both in 1086 and in the years to follow. These knights continued to attribute to the Moorish war the crusading character it had had in the Barbastro campaign. Before setting forth, Ebolus of Roucy promised his conquests to the pope. Hugh of Burgundy later proved his affection for the church by laying down his dukedom and entering the monastery of Cluny. William of Aquitaine is the man who placed himself at the disposal of Gregory VII in 1074 for the Eastern campaign; he was regarded as one of Gregory's most devoted adherents. As for the campaign of 1087, one of its leaders was the French knight Raimond of Saint-Gilles, who became famous ten years later in the First Crusade. Contemporaries were well aware that the great Eastern crusade was intimately related to the earlier Spanish wars;⁸² Urban I! himself, as we shall later see, regarded the Moorish wars as a parallel undertaking to the First Crusade. The Spanish war was where the knighthood of France had manifested its crusading sentiments. This fact clearly explains why Gregory VII failed to obtain troops for papal war. Military forces were overabundant, and there was no lack of willingness for a pious crusade; but the special direction in which Gregory wished to drive chivalric combat found no response.

These observations apply only to the French who went to Spain, not to the Spaniards themselves. At mid-century, a new era of Christian opposition to Islamic rule opened in Spain, independently of the French crusaders; but the ensuing wars had a character of their own. As a rule, the Christian kings warred also with one another; the same was true of the Moorish kings, and in the crisscross of alliances, Moslems and Christians would often happen to fight shoulder to shoulder on both sides. Even at the battle of Graus (1063), which occasioned the Barbastro campaign and where a Moslem fanatic killed Ramiro I of Aragon, the Castilians were allied to the Moorish king of Saragossa.⁸³ King Alfonso VI of Castile, who had made many Moorish districts pay him tribute, styled himself “emperor of both religions” in Arabic diplomas.⁸⁴ By clearly invoking Christian solidarity in his call for French help, Alfonso showed that the renewal of holy war by the Almoravids somewhat affected him; but the rumor that he took this occasion to threaten conversion to Islam suggests that he was scarcely regarded as a trustworthy champion of Christianity. The celebrated hero of Spain, the “Cid” Rodrigo Diaz, is a typical figure of this age. Many of his feats of arms were carried out on the Moorish side. The author of the Latin poem singing Rodrigo's deeds while he was still alive does not distinguish between his victories over Christians and over Moors; both are celebrated as gifts of God.⁸⁵ After taking Valencia, Rodrigo treated Christians and Moors as equals, and only the intransigent ways of the Almoravids gradually led him to a less tolerant attitude.⁸⁶ The Spanish rulers were always aware of religious differences,⁸⁷ but they did not yet treat their wars as crusades.

“Crusade” is even less appropriate as a term for the relations with pagans in Germany in the closing decades of the eleventh century. For one thing, the monarchy under Henry IV was far too embroiled in internal quarrels to be able to conduct wars against the pagan northeast; for another, the idea of a specifically knightly crusade came to Germany only later. France was far in advance in this field, as shown by the overwhelmingly negative response of the Germans to the First Crusade; Ekkehard of Aura tells us that, at first, the crusaders marching through Germany were ridiculed as fools.⁸⁸ Never before had there been so evident a difference in the collective conduct of the German and French peoples. To some extent, the difference may be traced to national character; the more emotional Romance peoples are more quickly influenced by inflammatory words than the Germans.⁸⁹ Perhaps one may detect even then the special form of German piety, which is inclined to set less value, from a religious standpoint, upon such “works” as pilgrimages and wars on pagans. This at least is suggested by the words that the Bamberg scholasticus Meinhard addressed to Gunther, his bishop, when the latter wished to depart for Jerusalem in 1063. Meinhard dismissed the earthly Jerusalem as “the domain where Herod murdered his father, the province where Pilate murdered God, and the homeland of Judas the traitor”; and far from praising pilgrimage itself as a pious work, he called for it to be used as the occasion for a renewal of spiritual life.⁹⁰ Just as it was Germany where the late medieval misuse of indulgences encountered opposition, so it may be that the earlier proclamation of a crusading indulgence found comparatively little German response. Besides, there was the reticent attitude adopted toward holy war. Although the imperial publicists left their views largely unvoiced, the crux of their teaching was that war and warriors had their own honor and their own ethics and that, on the other hand, religion was desecrated by the use of secular force. Both war and religion, therefore, offered arguments for the rejection of religious war. There may already have been something typically German to this attitude. Later on, admittedly, the idea of crusade won through in Germany, but it always remained problematic and called little blessing upon itself. Yet considerations of the kind we have just offered hardly acted in isolation. It must never be forgotten that the discrepancies in German and French development had particular historical causes, the principal among them being constitutional conditions and the history of church reform.⁹¹ Moreover, as the contemporary Ekkehard of Aura rightly saw, there was the ecclesiastical schism of the Investiture Contest. This made many Germans question the authority of the pope who proclaimed the crusade, and it also compromised the idea of holy war, which had lost popularity by having been turned against the German king. That the crusading idea was a piece of church reform conceived by Romance peoples had in itself some effect in determining the attitude of Germany; an even greater deterrent was that this idea, as refashioned by Gregory VII, especially damaged the Germans. The deadlock broke only because the success of the First Crusade caused Gregory's plans to be forgotten.

France was not unique, though, in its early acceptance of the idea of crusade: Italy was equally precocious. The crusading aspect given by the Normans to their Sicilian conquests has previously been mentioned.⁹² The Pisans briefly participated in this by launching an attack on the harbor of Palermo in 1063.⁹³ Besides, the Pisans periodically continued the maritime war against the Moslems that they had begun in the first half of the century.⁹⁴ With the Genoese, they entered the Spanish war in 1092, by joining Alfonso VI of Castile in a combined attack on Valencia; they then turned on Tortosa, but without success, since they arrived too late for the attack originally planned.⁹⁵ Their greatest feat in this period was the raid on Africa that they undertook in 1087, with the Genoese, Romans, and Amalfitans.⁹⁶ A relationship between this venture and the Spanish war is possible, for it took place simultaneously with the attempted counterattack against the advance of the African Almoravids upon the Iberian peninsula. In any case, the raid on Africa was conducted entirely as a crusade. Pope Victor III bestowed the banner of St. Peter upon the campaigners and granted them an indulgence.⁹⁷ After the Pisans had won and captured the city of Mahdia, they spent all their booty to adorn their cathedral and to build a church of St. Sixtus, on whose feast the main battle was won.⁹⁸ A rhythmical poem written in Pisa soon afterwards describes the war in lively colors.⁹⁹ The whole enterprise is depicted as a battle of Christ against the enemies of God; the reason for war is to liberate many Christian prisoners; during the battle Michael blows his trumpet, as in his fight with the dragon, and Peter appears with cross and sword; the warriors confess and take communion before the battle; a slain count is celebrated as a martyr; numerous Old Testament allusions are made, to Gideon and Judas Maccabeus, the capture of Jericho, David and Goliath, the slaughter of the hosts of Sennacherib by the angel, and the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. Secular ideas also appear in comparisons with the wars of Rome with Carthage and in expressions of a new Pisan patriotism. A particularly interesting passage tells us that the defeated emir had to swear to hold the land from then on as a fief of St. Peter and to pay tribute to Rome.¹⁰⁰ No doubt this was a consequence of the Gregorian conception of the rights of St. Peter. But it would be false to consider the entire campaign from this standpoint, and to classify it as a “hierarchical” crusade; the subordination to St. Peter was a spur-of-the-moment decision, not originally intended.¹⁰¹ Far from being papal, the Pisan poem is surely the clearest evidence we have for the popular idea of crusade as it then existed; hardly anything dating even from the days of the first Eastern crusade can equal it. One need only set the poem alongside Bonizo's set of commandments in order to obtain a true measure of its distance from the ecclesiastico-political idea of knighthood.

The East and its wars had a place apart. Long before the crusades, the Byzantine emperor had had Westerners fighting in his army against Arabs and Turks. Around 1040 Harald Hardrada, the later Norwegian king, achieved fame there,¹⁰² and in the following decades the Normans were especially numerous in the fighting against the Turks, led by famed condottieri like Hervé, Robert Crispin, and Ursel of Bailleul.¹⁰³ Toward the end of the century, Germans regularly appeared alongside the Normans as auxiliaries of the Byzantines.¹⁰⁴ These mercenary bands should not be regarded as crusaders bent on war against the heathen.¹⁰⁵ Whenever they found more favorable conditions, they abandoned their employer and fought the Christian Byzantines as zealously as did the Turks, with whom they even entered into repeated alliances. Nevertheless, the connection between these wars and the later crusades is clear. The crusading plan of Gregory VII implied no more in practice than that auxiliaries would be supplied to the Byzantine emperor for his war against the Turks; and the efforts of Emperor Alexius to acquire Western mercenaries gave the direct impetus for the First Crusade.

Campaigning in the East could easily be combined with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Harald Hardrada was thought to have gone there during his Byzantine years, and others later did the same. Robert the Frisian, count of Flanders, was in Byzantium in 1089, returning from Jerusalem, when the emperor Alexius talked him into supplying an auxiliary contingent for the war on the Turks.¹⁰⁶ Circumstances like these are most clearly documented by a letter of Anselm of Canterbury, then still abbot of Bec (1079-1093), to a knight named William.¹⁰⁷ William wished to go far away to help his brother fighting in Byzantium, but Anselm tried to dissuade him: “Renounce the earthly Jerusalem and the treasures of Constantinople and Babylon which must be seized with bloodstained hands. …” The knight's intention must have been to fight in Byzantine and Arab lands and to visit Jerusalem at the same time. Passing from such plans to the decision to conquer Jerusalem itself was no longer a great step!

In the knight's case, the coincidence of campaigning with pilgrimage was external, based on geographical reasons alone. But there were many parallel cases. The idea of a Western expedition to Jerusalem was not unheard of in the eleventh century. Gerbert had expressed it, as we saw, but set it aside as impossible; after the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher, Sergius issued a regular call to crusade, though disapproving voices were heard even then. Gregory VII then made passing reference to Jerusalem in connection with the plan of a crusade in Asia Minor.¹⁰⁸ Bold as it was, the idea was not featured only in papal policy; we find it also in the emperor legends.

By the eleventh century, Charlemagne had assumed the role of the ideal emperor of the past, to whom poetry ascribed everything that seemed grandiose and worth striving for.¹⁰⁹ He was specially famed as the great champion of Christianity, not only in his own country but far afield. “The pious Charles, who, for fatherland and church, did not fear death, journeyed round the whole world and combated the enemies of God; and when he could not subdue with the words of Christ, he conquered with the sword,” so wrote the priest Jocundus of Maastricht.¹¹⁰ The authentic historical tradition contained reports that Charles sent embassies to Jerusalem and received them from there, that he made gifts to the Holy Sepulcher, and that he exercised protection over the holy places. Later times, in their exaggerated perspective, turned these facts into the belief that the emperor “had extended the empire as far as Jerusalem.”¹¹¹ In relating that the patriarch of Jerusalem came in embassy to Charles, the Annals of Altaich attribute to him the intention of opening the city to the emperor “for the liberation of the Christian people”—and in so doing the Annals adopt almost the very words that would form Urban II's principal slogan in the call to crusade.¹¹² A parallel branch of the legend changed the embassy Charles sent to Jerusalem into a journey personally made by the emperor. The story appears as early as in the tenth-century Chronicle of Benedict of St. Andrea; according to it, Charles took a large following of Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, etc. with him to Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Constantinople, gave gifts to churches, and brought back relics, not as a conqueror, of course, but in friendly agreement with the caliph Haroun.¹¹³ These various legendary themes presumably coalesced and resulted in the conception of a crusade of Charlemagne. We in fact have an extensive Latin account along these lines that scholars generally date to before the First Crusade.¹¹⁴ As the story goes, the patriarch of Jerusalem was expelled by the heathens and begged the help of the emperor Charles in a letter specially stressing the defilement of the Holy Sepulcher; on this report, the Frankish warriors themselves pressed for a campaign, and Charles assembled a great army for a war upon the heathen, journeyed with it via Constantinople to Jerusalem, and after driving out the infidels, reinstated the Patriarch and the Christians; the Greek emperor wished to reward Charles with treasures, but he refused, accepting only relics, which he brought to Aachen.

Fantasies of this kind were not limited to the great emperor of the past, but were also predicted of the emperor of the future.¹¹⁵ The Sibylline oracles, which had long been in circulation, predicted that the last emperor before the end of the world would conquer and convert the heathen, again unite the two halves of the empire, and finally go to Jerusalem, where he would lay down his crown and place the empire in the hands of God; after this the rule of antichrist would begin. In the original version of this prophecy, the journey to Jerusalem did not have the form of a crusade, but the story came to be altered in this sense. Two statements by the Italian bishop Benzo of Alba apply these predictions to Henry IV and expect him to undertake the journey to Jerusalem, not, however, to lay down the crown, but on the contrary to win it. In view of the imminent end of the world, the emperor was to restore Christian liberty after conquering his enemies and the pagans with his army; he would visit the Holy Sepulcher, which would then stand in the glory prophesied by Isaiah.¹¹⁶ This is a regular plan for crusade, whose special importance consists in translating eschatological speculation into real policy. Benzo simultaneously combines his idea with the legend of Charlemagne: the banner that the patriarch of Jerusalem had sent to Charles prefigured Henry IV, who would be the standardbearer of the Christian religion in the planned crusade.¹¹⁷

What influence such stories and prophecies actually had is difficult to assess. We would hardly go wrong in assigning to them a comparatively marginal role in the First Crusade. Wholly disregarding them, however, would be a mistake, for we know that, when the crusade took place, many contemporaries looked upon it in the light of the imperial legend. The wars of Charlemagne against the heathens were cited as a model; the tale was told that the roads over which one journeyed to Constantinople had first been made by Charles for his army; some even believed that Charles himself rose again for the crusade.¹¹⁸ A way was found to relate the capture of Jerusalem to the prophecy about the Jerusalem journey of the final emperor by altering the wording of the prophetic text and allowing the journey to be completed by the “kingdom” and the “people,” in place of the emperor.¹¹⁹ The bridges leading from these speculations to the idea of crusade were in fact crossed, and some spokesmen flatly connected the campaign to Jerusalem with the imminent end of the world.¹²⁰

Though strange at first glance, such views may be explained by the unique position held by the city of Jerusalem in medieval thinking. The eleventh century must not be thought to have been gripped by enthusiasm for the “Holy Land”—a term that had not yet been coined.¹²¹ Although Palestine was called the “land of promise [terra repromissionis],” this phrase related only to the ancient Israelites, not to the Christians, and was therefore of limited use; it was the crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem that turned Palestine into a holy land of the Christians. Aside from “holy places [loca sancta]”—a general concept without geographical localization¹²²—only a Holy City [civitas sancta] had been known prior to the crusade. Jerusalem, however, obtained its special significance not just from Christ's suffering and His tomb, but also from the mystical conception of the heavenly Jerusalem that dominated Christian literature on the basis of Paul and the Apocalypse.¹²³ These sources cast a shimmer of unreality upon the earthly Jerusalem and elevated it from the everyday world. Prophecies and legends about it could therefore have an effective influence that would have been inconceivable in regard to other localities.

In sum, several different elements prepared the ground that allowed the general idea of crusade and of war upon the heathen to assume the special form of a Jerusalem crusade. A few authors had in fact anticipated this very concept. We have yet to see what influence was exercised upon the Jerusalem crusade by the long-standing pilgrimages. It is well established that pilgrimages to Jerusalem had been popular long before the crusades and had attained great size in the eleventh century.¹²⁴ Neither does it need to be proved that these peaceful pilgrimages had at least a superficial relation to the crusades to Jerusalem. Sergius IV's call to a crusade was specifically connected with pilgrimages, and some versions of the emperor legend, as we saw, set the conquest of Jerusalem and the subjugation of the infidels in combination with a visit to the Holy Sepulcher and the acquisition of relics. Yet pilgrimage differed considerably from a crusade, especially in its rule that the pilgrim must be unarmed. What this meant in practice is best learned by examining the largest of the eleventh-century pilgrimages, the one of 1064 that some modern authors have regarded as a transitional step to the crusades, in which as many as 7,000 or even 12,000 pilgrims accompanied the archbishop of Mainz and the bishops of Bamberg, Regensburg, and Utrecht to Jerusalem.¹²⁵ The rule of being without weapons was scrupulously observed even in this passage.¹²⁶ When the pilgrims were attacked by robbers in Palestine, some refused for religious reasons to protect themselves from being robbed and maltreated.¹²⁷ The others resisted as best they could; but nearly all the chroniclers felt obliged to defend them against the reproach that they should not have fought at all.¹²⁸ Characteristically, the pilgrims had to be finally rescued from these robbers by none other than the Moslem authorities; for, as the Annals of Altaich specify, they feared that the stream of pilgrims would cease in the future, causing them to suffer a noticeable loss of revenue as a result.¹²⁹ This single episode illustrates the wide gap that then existed between pilgrimage and holy war.

Several questions come to mind nevertheless: Is it accidental that this largest pilgrimage took place in the very year when the idea of crusade against the heathen is found to have had its first surge, and particularly that it was contemporaneous with the first large crusade of the French knights in Spain? Is it also an accident that, three decades earlier, Radulf Glaber attests both to the attainment of high tide by the Peace of God movement and to the special prominence acquired by enthusiasm for the journey of Palestine?¹³⁰ Is it without significance that Erlembald of Milan, the first sainted knight of the West, had just returned from Jerusalem when the pope designated him as the champion of church reform?¹³¹ Are deeper reasons irrelevant to the statement of Amatus of Monte Cassino that the first Normans—those who freed Salerno from the Moslems, whom he calls disinterested crusaders—reached Italy on the way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem?¹³²

That these phenomena were interrelated seems to be beyond doubt.¹³³ To be sure, either pilgrimage or crusade could satisfy the desire to travel and could result from the need to abandon difficult circumstances at home; yet only a few of the coincidences listed above may be explained in this way. It is more appropriate to say that pilgrimage and crusade were equivalent ways of expressing the lay piety that characterized the knighthood of that period. Both pilgrimage and crusade show that the ecclesiastical ideal of life had spread beyond clerics and monks and had strongly affected the lay world; both had a special impact upon knights, by withdrawing them from everyday, secular fighting and subordinating their activity to a spiritual idea. Pilgrimages were therefore encouraged by the same Cluniac reformers who also promoted the Peace of God; Odilo of Cluny often helped travelers to Jerusalem, and Richard of St. Vannes personally accompanied 700 pilgrims on a journey to Palestine.¹³⁴ The view that long pilgrimages were unfitting and even detrimental to monks did not apply to laymen. It is no coincidence that several laymen who adhered to the reform movement, namely, the future abbot Poppo of Stablo and Count Frederick of Verdun, had previously been pilgrims to Jerusalem. Although Radulf Glaber, the Cluniac monk who relates their pilgrimage, sees in it an omen of antichrist coming from the East to lead even the elect into temptation, he nevertheless praises the pious zeal of the faithful, whom God will reward.¹³⁵

From the standpoint of the ethic of knighthood, a pilgrimage was far less attractive than a crusade. It meant suspending one's martial profession, since the pilgrim stopped being a warrior for the duration of his travels. In its early development, the popular form of the idea of crusade did not at all coincide with the idea of a pilgrimage: its focus was war upon heathens. Pope Urban II was the first to unite pilgrimage and crusade in a synthesis—a synthesis that simultaneously renounced the application of the idea of crusade to hierarchical ends. His pontificate resolved the tensions and concentrated the forces that, for all their parallelism and contacts, had never before found a common resting place.¹³⁶

Notes

1. The distinction between hierarchical and popular crusade stems from Ranke, Weltgeschichte, VIII, 71. It was adopted by O. Volk, Kreuzzugsidee, who also provides several useful comments.

2. The following is according to Schmitthenner, Söldnertum, whose survey must be corrected in details, since it is not based on first-hand study of the sources. Certain important sources may be added: the word soldarius in Hugh of Flavigny, MGH SS. 8.342, and in a letter from Lobbes, MGH SS. 21.313; the Germans (nemitzoi) among the Byzantine mercenaries in a diploma of Alexius in 1088 (Dölger, Regesten, 1150, cf. C. Neumann, “Völkernamen,” p. 374); Benzo of Alba's project of replacing the feudal levy by an army of mercenaries, with the help of an imperial tax, on which, H. Lehmgrübner, Benzo von Alba, pp. 122-25.

3. As does Schmitthenner, Söldnertum, p. 44 (Sardinian war of Benedict VIII); p. 51 (the latter's supposed mercenary treaty with the Normans); p. 55 (“afterwards, Rome often needed the support of Norman mercenaries,” notably William of Montreuil); p. 56 (Eastern plan of Gregory VII); p. 25 (Beatrice and Mathilda of Tuscany); p. 20 (Gregory's request to the bishop of Trent); p. 68 (battle of Pleichfeld). In none of these cases do we have evidence that the relationship involved payment.

4. Hermann of Reichenau a. 1053, MGH SS. 5.132, see above, p. 122.

5. Above, pp. 130 and 152; Schmitthenner, pp. 52ff.

6. Benzo of Alba, II, 12 (MGH SS. 11.617). Cf. Erdmann, “Endkaiserglaube,” pp. 403ff, and below, p. 299.

7. See R. Röhricht, Geschichte, pp. 65, 69, 81 n. 3, 88, 157f, 164.

   [Erdmann's allusion to “an intermingling of motives” is, of course, correct, but his statement that “the rank and file had the direct promise of pay” seems too broad. The problem is obscure—as is also the question of numbers—and the reference to Röhricht does not fully answer the question. It is true that the leaders received gifts from the emperor, and in view of his request for aid, and presumed arrangements with the pope, probably expected recompense. But the emperor provided markets and, therefore, expected the crusaders to meet their own expenses en route. The leaders raised funds in various ways and doubtless equipped and paid foot-soldiers, but precisely what was expected of or provided for vassals, knights, etc. is not clear. Papal guarantees of freedom from debt and protection of property were presumably directed at less wealthy participants. Reports of prospective crusaders mortgaging their property, including followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, would seem to indicate need for personal financing. Moreover, Raimond of Toulouse's willingness to provide for poorer crusaders was certainly not pay in the ordinary sense of the word. On this, F. Duncalf, in History of the Crusades, ed. Setton, I, ch. VIII; S. Runciman, History, I, 121ff, and Appendix II; the comments of Bréhier in his review of Erdmann, p. 674. In addition, it is known that the journey was undertaken by a large number of noncombatants, for whom the pope apparently expected the leaders and knights to provide: W. Porges, “Non-combatants,” pp. 1-23.]

8. Yet the idea was also voiced that true fighting for God was devalued by the acceptance of earthly reward; see the so-called Descriptio in G. Rauschen, Legende, p. 110.

9. Anselm of Canterbury, Ep. II, 19 (MPL 158.1168: iniquitas est cruenta bellorum confusio, etc.) See also Anselm's words to Diego of Compostela, Ep. IV, 19 (MPL 159.212).

10. The naive mixture of heterogeneous trains of thought in Rupert of Deutz, Chronicon s. Laurentii, c. 29, MGH SS. 8.272, is particularly interesting. See also Laurentius of Liège, MGH SS. 10.494-95.

11. Swabian Annalist a. 1077, MGH SS. 5.301. The old prohibition of armed service by clerics was renewed by the synod of Tours in 1060: MPL 142.1412, can. 7.

12. In addition to Anselm's letter (above, n. 9), see, for example, Sigebert, Vita Wicberti, c. 2 and 3 (MGH SS. 8.509, and above, p. 201).

13. A unique mixture of both points of view occurs in a biography of 1058, Bouchard le Vénérable, ed. de la Roncière, pp. 5, 6, 9, 26.

14. Cirot de la Ville, Historie, I, 297ff, 497f.

15. Above, p. 14, cf. p. 91.

16. See Exkurs I, sect. 6 [of the German edition]: A. Franz, Benediktionen, II, 297.

17. Benzo of Alba, II, 18 (MGH SS. 11.620f); see above, p. 130. The apostle Peter and Carpophorus appeared along with Maurice.

18. Bernold, a. 1102, MGH SS. 5.454; above, p. 14.

19. Lot, “Études,” p. 340, maintains that these conceptions go back to the ninth century. But no more may be said with regard to the earlier period than that Denis was one of the greater saints of Gaul. Lot's direct evidence dates only from the twelfth century, though it testifies to a long-standing custom. The eleventh century provides the two reports of the translation of relics to Regensburg, the earlier (1049) in MGH SS. 30.823ff, the later one (prior to 1064, S. Rietschel, “Alter,” pp. 641ff) in SS. 11.351ff.

    [On the cult of St. Denis, B. Kötting, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche; E. H. Kantorowicz, Laudes, pp. 46, 116 n. 16, 117. The iconographical aspects of the cult are discussed in L. Réau, Iconographie, III, 374ff.]

20. See Erdmann, Kaiserfahne, pp. 892ff.

21. Cf. Hofmeister, Heilige Lanze, and Erdmann, “Heidenkrieg,” pp. 135f n. 1. In Regensburg texts of the eleventh century (Arnold of St. Emmeram, MGH SS. 4.551; on the translation reports, above, n. 19), St. Emmeram plays the role of a military patron of the territory.

    [On St. Maurice and the Holy Lance in Germany, Schramm, “Heilige Lanze,” pp. 511ff. On the gift of the lance and the banner of St. Maurice to King Athelstan by Duke Hugh, L. H. Loomis, “Holy Relics,” pp. 427-56.]

22. Vita Stephani, c. 6 and 8 (MGH SS. 11.232, 233); see also Meinhard of Bamberg in Erdmann, “Briefe,” p. 406.

23. Cf. A. López Ferriero, Historia, II, 73ff, who still defends the authenticity of the Clavijo document.

    [On the origin of the cult of St. James at Compostela, see now José Guerra, “Notas,” pp. 417-74, 559-90. There is also a brief summary with bibliography in V. and H. Hell, Great Pilgrimage. See also Sir Thomas Kendrick, St. James, ch. I, II.]

24. The history of the military cult of St. James is still a profitable field of research. Church historians of Spain (such as V. de la Fuente, Historia, III, 130ff, 230, 291ff, 458ff), as well as the richly documented but uncritical work of López Ferriero, may be taken as points of departure.

25. Above, p. 6.

26. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis, I, 481, on the banners of the martyres stratelatai; Codinus. De officiis, pp. 47f.

    [See Bréhier, Institutions, p. 378.]

27. H. Delehaye, Légendes grecques, pp. 3ff; also C. Neumann, Weltstellung, pp. 36f.

28. It is interesting that Bernard of Angers (second half of the eleventh century) cites the killing of Julian the Apostate by St. Mercurius as illustrating a warlike deed by a saint (Liber mirac. s. Fidis, I, 26, ed. Bouillet, p. 68); but this is apparently book learning out of John of Damascus: Delehaye, Légendes grecques, pp. 98f.

29. Cf. A. Prost, “Caractère,” pp. 167ff; K. Heldmann, Kaisertum, pp. 284ff; H. Leclercq, “Laudes Gallicanae,” pp. 1898ff; Schramm, “Ordines,” pp. 313f.

    [On the laudes, Kantorowicz, Laudes, who (p. 29 n. 48) maintains that Erdmann has suggested a rather late date for the reception of the Greek military saints. There are references to Theodore as early as the ninth century (pp. 105ff), and Michael, Maurice, Sebastian, and George were invoked by the Normans in the eleventh century (p. 167 n. 2). See also Réau, Iconographie, III, passim. On the Michael cult, above, Introduction, supplement to n. 46. For a survey of Eastern influences in the West, including the saints, G. Schreiber, “Christlicher Orient.”]

30. Let me cite the following texts of laudes, each with the saints invoked for the army: (1) from 783-92 (Einhard, ed. Holder-Egger, Appendix, p. 47): Remigius (Rémi, the patron of Rheims); (2) from 796-800 (Liber pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, II, 37): Hilary, Martin, Maurice, Denys, Crispin and Crispinian, Gereon (the patrons of Poitiers, Tours, St. Maurice, St. Denis, Soissons, and Cologne); (3) from 824-27 (C. Höffler, Päpste, I, 286, right-hand column): Andrew (the apostle); (4) from 858-67 (Prost, “Caractère,” p. 176): Hilary, Martin, Maurice, Denys, Alban, Crispin, and Crispinian, Gereon (see no. 2; Alban was venerated at Mainz); (5) from about 880 (Prost, p. 238): Hilary, Martin, Maurice, Denys, Gereon (as no. 2); (6) from 1000-1002 (Prost, p. 181): Sylvester, Gregory, Leo, Ambrose (patrons of Rome and Milan); (7) eleventh century (Höffler, I, 287, left-hand column): John, Philip, Denys, Maurice, Hilary, Martin, Perpetuus, Paulinus (see no. 2; Perpetuus was venerated at Utrecht, Paulinus is surely the saint of Trier, while John and Philip are apostles). In nos. 1, 2, 4, and 5, the invocation is on behalf of the ruler and army of the Franks, in no. 3 only for the army of the Franks, in nos. 6 and 7 for the ruler and army of the Christians.

    [J. R. in review of Erdmann, pp. 253-54, indicates that St. Mauritius does not refer here to the monastery of that name in Switzerland. Schramm, “Salische Kaiserordo,” p. 400, mentions St. Maurice and the lance.]

31. Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. Laus (and Prost, “Caractère,” p. 179), after a MS of the church of Arles. The edition of Du Cange by the Benedictines of St. Maur adds that similes litaniae occur in a codex of St. Martial at Limoges (now Paris, Bibl. nat., MS lat. 1240, fol. 65-65^v). According to Prost, pp. 177f., the Limoges text is unpublished, but it is also cited by Martène and dates from 923-36. Prost draws the incorrect conclusion that the Arles text belonged to about the same time as that of Limoges; the provenance of the MS and the saints' names (for the bishop: Ferreolus, Antidius, and Desideratus—all three from Besançon; for the king: Maurice, Sigismund, and Victor—the first two generally Burgundian, the third from Marseilles or Solothurn) render probable an origin in the united Burgundian kingdom, thus after 933; but a terminus ante quem cannot be supplied on this basis, since the Burgundian kingdom continued to exist after its union with the Empire.

    [Also Kantorowicz, Laudes, p. 243 n. 31, mentioning the important relation between the Besançon MS and Arles.]

32. Ordo of the Codex Gemundensis (12th cent.?), MGH Leg. 2.78f (also in MS Vatican., lat. 7114, 13th-14th cent., E. Eichmann, Quellensammlung, I, 60); Exercitui Francorum, Romanorum et Teutonicorum vitam et victoriam … sancte Theodore. (Eichmann dates this text from the ninth century; see also Eichmann, “Ordines,” p. 11; but it must be considerably later). The laudes of the Ordo Cencius II (Schramm, “Ordines,” p. 384) align all the saints invoked; but since the army is in last place in the invocations, and since Mercurius is the last of the saints invoked, there is no doubt that he is named in relation to the army.

33. This is also clearly apparent in Orderic Vitalis, VI, 2, ed. Le Prevost, III, 4, where the Greeks Demetrius, George, Theodore, and Eustace are named alongside the Westerners Sebastian and Maurice as ancient models for knights.

    [See above, supplement to n. 29.]

34. See the sources in Röhricht, Geschichte, pp. 93 n. 1, 127 n. 1, 143f n. 5, 149 n. 4. Maurice and Blasius also appear but rather seldom.

35. Bibliography in K. Künstle, Ikonographie der Heilingen, pp. 263ff.

36. It suffices to mention the ninth-century German Georgslied: Ehrismann, Literatur, I, 212ff. The sermon on St. George by Peter Damiani (MPL 144.567ff) celebrates only the martyr and stresses the distinction between his former soldiering and his later christiana militia, i.e., martyrdom.

37. Arkadios of Cyprus in K. Krumbacher, Georg, p. 79: tes basileias o promakos; cf. pp. 206f.

38. Arculfus, III, 4, in T. Tobler and A. Molinier, Itinera, pp. 195ff.

39. J. B. Aufhauser, Drachenwunder, pp. 237ff. Add to this two further translations of the Greek dragon-miracle in twelfth-century manuscripts, published in John the Monk, ed. M. Huber, Sammlung, pp. 124ff. The editor conjectures (p. xxxi) that the translation stems from John the Monk. In this case, they would belong to the eleventh century; cf. Hofmeister, “Übersetzer,” pp. 225ff. But I find no basis for this attribution.

40. Aufhauser, pp. 2ff, 28.

41. Psellos, MPG 122.531.

42. Krumbacher, p. 213.

43. Raymond of Aguilers, c. 32 (RHC, Occ., III, 290). There might be an echo here of the common Byzantine designation of George as tropaiophoros.

44. Röhricht, Geschichte, p. 182.

45. The earlier Vita Stephani (probably from the end of the eleventh century) has the king of Hungary win a victory “with the protection of the sign of the most glorious cross, the supporting merits of the ever virgin Mary, Mother of God, under the banner of Bishop Martin, dear to God, and of the holy martyr, George [protegente gloriosissimae crucis signaculo, patrocinantibus Dei genetricis ac perpetuae virginis Mariae meritis, sub vexillo Deo dilecti pontificis Martini sanctique martyris Georgii]” (MGH SS. 11.232); but this appears to be meant metaphorically; see above, n. 22.

    [But see the remarks of Kantorowicz (cited above, supplement to n. 29) on earlier liturgical evidence.]

46. H. Günter, Legendenstudien, pp. 109f, sets the earliest appearance of St. George in the Slavic battle of 1004; but this comes from Adalbert's Life of Henry II, c. 4 (MGH SS. 4.793), a twelfth-century work. Much later still is the legend of the appearance of St. George at the battle of Alcoraz (1096; cf. Boissonnade, Roland, p. 37, Menéndez-Pidal, España, II, 563); it first occurs in the fourteenth-century Chronica Pinnatensis (Historia de Aragon, ed. Embun, p. 59), cf. Zurita, Annales, I, 32. (The statement that St. Victorian appeared at the same time stems from a gross misinterpretation of the words of Rodrigo of Toledo, VI, 1, in Hispaniae Illustratae, ed. Schott, II, 94.)

47. Geoffrey Malaterra, II, 33, ed. Pontieri, p. 44; cf. above, pp. 134-36.

48. Aufhauser, Drachenwunder, pp. 178f; A. Poncelet, “Catalogus hagiog. Rom.,” p. 59. Both authors date the oldest manuscript containing this story (Rome, Lateran A 79) to the eleventh-twelfth century.

49. Bédier, Légendes, IV, 403-33; and Roland commentée, pp. 9f, 12ff.

50. E.g., the Vita nobilissimi comitis Girardi de Rosselon, ed. P. Meyer, Romania 7 (1878), 178ff. For the date, see most recently Lot, “Études,” pp. 259f. It suffices, for further illustration, to mention Pseudo-Turpin; Bédier, Légendes, III, 42ff.

51. Ardo, Vita Benedicti Anianensis, c. 30 (MGH SS. 15.211-13).

52. Vita s. Wilhelmi, c. 5 and 7 (AA. SS. May, VI, 802). Otherwise, however, this Life holds fast to the contrast of militia Dei with militia saecularis.

53. Cf. Bédier, Légendes, I, 118.

    [Around 1125, according to Riquer, Chansons, p. 138.]

54. J. Mabillon, Acta sanctorum ordinis s. Benedicti, saec. IV, I, 662-64; also Bédier, Légendes, II, 305ff.

55. Mabillon, p. 664: Ite pares animae per quaelibet agmina primae, Fortes Caesarei, fortia membra Dei, Fortes athletae, per saecula cuncta valete. On the date Bédier, Légendes, II, 307.

56. Chronicon Novalic., II, 12 (Monumenta Novalic., II, 156).

57. Ibid., II, 7, p. 135.

58. Ibid., II, 11, pp. 153ff.

59. Ibid., pp. 155f.

60. See P. Rajna, “Contributi,” pp. 36ff; Bédier, Légendes, II, 160ff.

61. According to Bédier (Légendes and Roland commentée), the chansons de geste owe their origins in the eleventh century to the cooperation of monks and jongleurs. But this theory has been sharply contested by the work of Lot, “Études”; R. Fawtier, Roland, and A. Pauphilet, “Roland.”

    [For more recent discussions of the entire problem, see Riquer, Chansons; I. Siciliano, Chansons, ch. x; R. Menéndez-Pidal, Roland, tr. Cluzel. For the connection with crusade origins, see also A. Waas, Kreuzzüge, I, 41ff.]

62. See particularly the words of Hagen in Ekkehard, Waltharius, vv. 1276-78, ed. K. Strecker, p. 66.

    [On the date, see P. Salmon, Literature, I, 25, 197-98.]

63. See now Lot, “Études,” pp. 449ff.

64. Chançun de Guillelme, vv. 802-26.

65. See vv. 1198ff, where the wounded knight Guischart speaks of going to Cordova and giving up Christianity, but is fiercely scolded by William on this account.

66. See the recent works cited above, n. 61; add Boissonnade, Roland, W. Tavernier, Vorgeschichte, and E. Faral, Roland. Bédier, Boissonnade, Tavernier, and Faral set the Chanson after the First Crusade, Lot and Fawtier before it. I incline to the latter view.

    [The controversy over all aspects of the Song of Roland still continues, but it seems now generally agreed that it was composed by a cleric in the form preserved in MS Bodleian Library, Digby 23, or at least in a form closely resembling this, in the latter decades of the eleventh century (according to most scholars), and certainly before 1124. See the literature cited above, supplement to n. 61, and also L. H. Loomis, “Relic,” pp. 241-60; D. C. Douglas, “Song of Roland,” pp. 99-116. A great deal of the modern discussion concerns the provenance of the complete text of the Bodleian MS. There seems to be general agreement that much of what was later included circulated in various forms before the First Crusade and reflects the eleventh-century holy war ethos.]

67. Cf. G. Paris, review of Marignan, p. 410.

68. Cf. A. M. Weiss, “Entwicklung,” pp. 114ff (esp. 116f), also for what follows.

69. Cf. Pauphilet, “Roland,” pp. 184ff.

70. Chanson de Roland, vv. 1008-16, 1053-58, 1113-23, 1456-66.

71. Ibid., v. 1015.

72. Ibid., vv. 1126-38; cf. vv. 1515-23 (1472-80).

73. Tavernier, Vorgeschichte, pp. 84-88, 98-100, claims that this and similar ideas would have been impossible before the First Crusade. This view is based in inadequate knowledge of the facts and is refuted throughout the present book.

    [Two questions are raised by Erdmann's statement here: (1) what elements of the Chanson antedated the final version, and (2) the much-disputed question of the authenticity and/or meaning of Alexander's letter. See above, ch. IV, supplement to n. 72.]

74. See also Luchaire, Premiers Capétiens, p. 392.

75. Exhortatio ad proceres regni, ed. E. Dümmler, NA 1 (1876), 177. Cf. Schramm, Renovatio, I, 257; Menéndez-Pidal, España, I, 247. In vv. 5f (Subdite Nortmanni iam colla ferocia regi, Imperio adsocii bella parate duci), Nortmanni is not genitive singular but vocative plural; it parallels the Romani and Itali in the previous verses. For, to begin with, colla is plural; second, the expression imperio adsocii fits only the Normans, not the previously mentioned Romans and Italians; third, the further encouragements to war against the Saracens are evidently addressed to the Normans in particular.—After my book was in press, Mr. G. Radke (a doctoral candidate) drew my attention to certain points that invalidate the above argument and make it likely that the poet addresses only Romans and Italians and names the Normans as the first enemies to be combated. If so, there is in fact an astonishing similarity to Benzo of Alba's first plan of crusade, also drawn up in 1063 (Erdmann, “Endkaiserglaube,” pp. 403f, and below, p. 299), whose expectation is that Henry IV will first triumph over the Normans and heathens and then undertake an eschatological journey to Jerusalem in company with the Byzantine emperor. I have left my statements in the text unchanged, on the understanding that Mr. Radke will publish his findings.

76. What makes this date likely is the appeal to war against the dux, which can only mean Godfrey of Lorraine, as well as the allusion to an alliance with the Greeks (v. 13: Grecia iuncta aderit).

77. Lampert a. 1073, 1076, ed. Holder-Egger, pp. 152, 277f. Cf. also Otloh, Libellus, c. 1 (MPL 146.246).

78. Above, pp. 136-40.

79. On what follows, Boissonnade, Roland, pp. 28ff, whose discussion can only be partially substantiated; also Menéndez-Pidal, España, pp. 370 n. 2, 563 n. 3, 679ff.

80. Above, pp. 155-56.

81. Fragmentum historiae Francorum, in RHF, XII, 2; Hugh of Fleury, MGH SS. 9·390.

    [Dufourneaux, français, p. 141. On the reasons for the double designation of the battle, see Valdeavellano, Historia, pp. 831-32 and n. 1.]

82. See the spurious letter of Alexius in Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 133: “just as in the past year they freed for a time Galicia and the other Western kingdoms from the yoke of the pagans, so now, for the salvation of their souls, they attempt to free the kingdom of the Greeks [sicut Galiciam et cetera Occidentalium regna anno praeterito a iugo paganorum aliquantulum liberaverunt, ita et nunc ob salutem animarum suarum regnum Graecorum liberare temptent].” Further, the statements about William Carpentarius in the Gesta Francorum, c. 15, para. 2, ed. Hagenmeyer, p. 260 (ed. Bréhier, p. 78).

83. Menéndez-Pidal, España, I, 143ff; Boissonnade, “Cluny,” pp. 266f.

84. Menéndez-Pidal, España, I, 347.

    [Valdeavellano, Historia, pp. 833-34.]

85. Carmen, v. 90; Menéndez-Pidal, España, II, 892: “that God permitted him to vanquish [quod Deus illi vincere permisit].”

86. Menéndez-Pidal, España, II, 559.

    [On Alfonso and the Cid, Valdeavellano, Historia, pp. 834-57. On the poem, see now C. Smith, Poema, esp. pp. xiii-xciii.]

87. For Rodrigo Diaz, see his charter for the bishop of Valencia, in Menéndez-Pidal, España, II, 877: “(God) roused up Rodrigo Campeador as the avenger of the disgrace of his servants and the defender of the Christian religion [(Deus) Rudericum Campidoctorem obprobrii servorum suorum suscitavit ultorem et Christianae religionis propugnatorem].” Similar expressions are found in the report of the consecration of Barcelona cathedral in 1058, in J. Mas, Notes, I, 192ff, e.g., on Raymond Berengar: “He was made the defender and the rampart of the Christian people [factus est propugnator et murus christiani populi]”; or on the institution of the feast of the holy Cross so that Christ, “as He did to King Constantine, might give us victory over the barbarians by the triumph of the cross [sicut regi Constantino, sic nobis de barbaris per crucis triumphum det victoriam].” Yet the same report quite calmly mentions charters of the Moorish rulers Mogehid and Ali subordinating the churches of Mallorca, Denia, and Orihuela to the bishopric of Barcelona.

88. MGH SS. 6.214, also Ekkehard, Hierosolymita, c. 9, pp. 109ff.

89. There is no need to refute the statements of Reynaud, Origines, I, 516, who offers as cause the “utilitarian realism” of the Germans.

90. Letter of Meinhard in Erdmann, “Briefe,” p. 415. On earlier comments against overvaluing pilgrimages, Röhricht, Pilgerfahrten, pp. 327f.

91. Above, pp. 93-94.

92. Above, pp. 134-36.

93. Heinemann, Geschichte, I, 210f.

94. See above, p. 111.

95. Menéndez-Pidal, España, I, 441, 444f; II, 792, 795.

96. See now Hofmeister, “Übersetzer,” pp. 269f.

    [See also H. C. Kreuger, “Italian Cities,” I, 52-53; Villey, Croisade, p. 61.]

97. Chronicle of Monte Cassino, III, 71 (MGH SS. 7·751). See below, pp. 306-7.

    [Brundage, Canon Law, p. 28, and others question the crusade character of Victor III's summons.]

98. Annales Pisani a. 1088, ed. Gentile, p. 7.

99. Printed in W. Schneider, Rythmen, pp. 34ff, and elsewhere. I have not been able to see the new edition, with commentary by Biagi (1930) referred to in the Annales Pisani, ed. Gentile, p. 7 n. 1. H. Naumann, “Heide,” p. 86, suggests that the poet “converts a presumably mercantile affair into a crusade.” But the Chronicle of Monte Cassino proves that the “conversion” into a crusade does not stem from the poet but was envisaged from the start by the leaders of the enterprise.

100. Verse 60 (Schneider, Rythmen, p. 40): “He swears that the Iand belongs to St. Peter without question, And he now holds it of him without deception; Whence he will always send tributes and payments to Rome, He now commissions insignia of pure gold and silver [Terram iurat sancti Petri esse sine dubio, Et ab eo tenet eam iam absque colludio; Unde semper mittet Roman tributa et praemia, Auri puri et argenti nunc mandat insignia],” confirmed by Bernold a. 1088, MGH SS. 5·447: “they made the African king … tributary to the apostolic see [Affricanum regem … apostolicae sedi tributarium fecerunt].”

101. After capturing Mahdia, the Pisans realized that they could not retain permanent control of it. Geoffrey Malaterra, IV, 3, ed. Pontieri, pp. 86f, reports that they offered the city to Count Roger of Sicily, who refused it. Only then did they decide to leave Mahdia in the emir's possession and to impose upon him for the future (in addition to an immediate payment to the Pisans) only a tribute to Rome—without expecting that it would ever be paid.

102. See G. Schlumberger, Épopée, III, 228ff, 248; also Riant, Expéditions, pp. 123f.

103. Schlumberger, “Deux chefs,” pp. 289ff; F. Brandileone, “Primi Normanni,” pp. 227ff; also F. Hirsch, “Amatus,” pp. 232ff, and C. Neumann, Weltstellung, pp. 115ff.

     [J. Hussey in CMH, IV (2d ed.), pt. I, 197, 210. On Amatus's chronicle, W. Smidt, “Amatus,” pp. 173-231.]

104. Charter of Alexius (1088): Dölger, Regesten, 1150; see also the reports about Robert the Frisian (below, n. 106).

105. Even Amatus of Monte Cassino does not give this aura to the deeds of Robert Crispin and Ursel of Bailleul in the East (Aimé, Ystoire, I, 8-15, ed. Delarc, pp. 13-18), whereas just before and just after he celebrates as crusades the fighting of the Normans in Spain and southern Italy.

106. Anna Comnena, Alexiad, VII, 6, and below, p. 322, Lampert a. 1071, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 122, claims that, long before, Robert made yet another Eastern journey, mingling among Jerusalem pilgrims in order to reach the Norman auxiliary corps in Constantinople (on this, C. Verlinden, “Lambert,” pp. 97ff).

     [On Robert the Frisian, F. L. Ganshof, “Robert,” pp. 57-74.]

107. Anselm, II, Ep. 19 (MPL 158.1167ff). As far as I know this significant letter has not been noticed hitherto.

108. Above, pp. 113-16, 168-69.

109. On the following, Hoffmann, Karl, pp. 97ff.

     [On the Charlemagne legends, R. Folz, Souvenir, pp. 134ff. The impact of these legends on popular attitudes regarding Jerusalem and the crusade is emphasized by Alphandéry, Chrétienté, 1, 50ff.]

110. Translatio s. Servatii (1080s), MGH SS. 12.96. See also Miracula s. Genulphi (mid-eleventh century), MGH SS. 15.1206.

111. Annales Elnonenses (to 1061) a. 771, MGH SS. 5.18.

112. Annales Altahenses a. 800 (this part was written ca. 1032 or earlier), ed. ab Oefele, p. 4. The same theme is further elaborated in the Northumbrian annals reconstructed on the basis of Simeon of Durham, MGH SS. 13.156. What we have here and in the Annals of Altaich are merely late embroiderings upon the report of the Frankish Royal Annals; R. Pauli, “Karl,” pp. 164, 165f.

113. MGH SS. 3.710f (also Chronicon di Benedetto, ed. Zuchetti, pp. 112ff). The later poem in Old French about Charles's journey is along the same lines.

114. The so-called Descriptio, printed in Rauschen, Legende, pp. 103ff; cf. the same author's “Untersuchungen,” pp. 257ff and Hoffmann, Karl, pp. 112ff (to whose bibliography add Riant, “Inventaire,” pp. 9ff). Hoffmann's idea that this journey was peaceful is contradicted by the text of the Descriptio, in which the statement (p. 119 line 4) that Charles rode a white mule refers only to the closing stages of the journey, when the emperor brings back relics from Constantinople (p. 118 line 3). I am not quite sure, however, that the Descriptio dates from before the First Crusade; also worth mentioning is the thesis of Bédier, Légendes, IV, 125ff, 139, who suggests the years 1110-24.

     [On the Descriptio, Folz, Souvenir, pp. 138, 178ff.]

115. For the following, Erdmann, “Endkaiserglaube,” pp. 384ff.

     [On the Sibylline oracles, Folz, Souvenir, pp. 138ff; R. Konrad, “Jerusalem,” pp. 537ff; S. Mähl, “Jerusalem,” pp. 22 ff.]

116. Benzo of Alba, I, 15 and II, 12 (MGH SS. 11.605, 617); also Erdmann, “Endkaiserglaube,” pp. 403ff.

117. Benzo of Alba, I, 17, p. 606.

118. Robert the Monk, I, 1 and 5 (RHC, Occ., III, 727 and 732); Gesta Francorum, c. 2, para. 1, ed. Hagenmeyer, p. 109 (ed. Bréhier, p. 4); Ekkehard, Chronicon, MGH SS. 6.215; also Ekkehard, Hierosolymita, c. 11, para. 2, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 120f.

119. On the alteration of the interpolation in Adso, see Erdmann, “Endkaiserglaube,” p. 412. There (p. 411) I dated the original text of this interpolation to before the First Crusade, but since this continues to be uncertain (ibid., p. 412 n. 69), I shall not develop the point further.

     [Folz, Souvenir, pp. 139ff, suggests a somewhat different interpretation, and notes that two new elements were superimposed on the original legend of the last emperor: (1) Benzo's idea of conquest and a new crown to be assumed in Jerusalem, and (2) the interpolation into the Adso text of an unknown conqueror, sometime before 1098, but perhaps reflecting the time of preparation for the crusade. See also Alphandéry, Chrétienté, I, 23-24; Konrad, “Jerusalem,” p. 537; Mähl, “Jerusalem,” p. 23; A. H. Bredero, “Jérusalem,” pp. 23-24.]

120. Ekkehard, Chronicon, MGH SS. 6.212 (Ekkehard, Hierosolymita, c. 2, para. 1, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 55f); Guibert of Nogent, II, (RHC, Occ., IV, 138f). See also the reference to the Sibylline prophecies in the Gesta Francorum, c. 22, para. 8, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 327f (ed. Bréhier, p. 122).

121. I have looked in vain for the concept Terra Sancta in the eleventh-century sources. In Tobler-Molinier, Itinera, I find it only in Theodosius, Terra Sancta; but its occurrences are confined to the superscript (p. 63) which is a later trimming, and to ch. 40, which was added after the crusade had begun. The expression is also absent from the crusade letters and the earliest historians (Gesta Francorum and Raymond of Aguilers), but after 1100 it appears in many crusade historians (Fulcher, Ekkehard, Guibert, Baldric, etc.).

122. Bede, for example, includes Alexandria and Constantinople among the loca sancta (Itinera, ed. Geyer, pp. 301ff). Besides, the same term was also applied to all consecrated places, i.e., churches, as, for example, in Fulcher, I, 1, para. 2, ed. Hagenmeyer, p. 121.

123. Ekkehard, Hierosolymita, c. 34, para. 3, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 301ff. Cf. Röhricht, Pilgerfahrten, p. 376 n. 76. Benzo of Alba, who recommended a Jerusalem crusade, also spoke similarly about the heavenly Jerusalem (v, 6, MGH SS. 6.652: Hierosolimam petamus).

     [The medieval eschatological fascination of Jerusalem is emphasized in most modern analyses of the popular religious ethos of the eleventh century. See, e.g., the works of Alphandéry, Konrad, Mähl, and Bredero, cited above, supplement to n. 119. The role of Jerusalem in the First Crusade is especially significant, and some have felt, e.g. Mayer, Crusades, p. 12, that Alphandéry exaggerates the eschatological influence. But even he recognized that the question remains to what extent the emphasis on Jerusalem occurs in works written before the crusade.]

124. Still valuable, though containing some errors, is Röhricht, Pilgerfahrten, pp. 323ff; also Reynaud, Origines, I, 86, and Bréhier, Église, pp. 42ff.

     [The relation between the Jerusalem pilgrimage and the First Crusade has long been debated, and many scholars feel that Erdmann in emphasizing holy war as the root of the crusade movement underplayed the impact of pilgrimage (see below, ch. x, supplement to n. 109; Appendix, supplement to n. 2; above, Translator's Foreword). For a summary of the Jerusalem pilgrimage, Runciman, History, I, ch. III, and in History of the Crusades, ed. Setton, I, 68-78; Alphandéry, Chrétienté, ch. I; Ebersolt, Orient et Occident, ch. VIII; E.-R. Labande, “Recherches,” pp. 165, 339-47.]

125. On this pilgrimage, see now E. Joranson, “German Pilgrimage,” pp. 3ff. New information on the preparation for the journey is provided by two letters of Meinhard of Bamberg, nos. 23 and 25, in Erdmann, “Briefe,” pp. 345, 414, 418.

126. Joranson, “German Pilgrimage,” pp. 14f., 22, 40.

127. Lampert a. 1065, ed. Holder-Egger, p. 94: “Many Christians thought it irreligious to protect themselves with the fist and to defend their safety, which they had vowed to God when setting forth abroad, with earthly weapons [Plerique christianorum religiosum putantes manu sibi auxilium ferre et salutem suam, quam peregre proficiscentes Deo devoverant, armis corporalibus tueri].” Cf. Joranson, p. 21.

     [The meaning of religiosum putantes in the quotation is highly problematic. The excessively free translation given above—“thought it irreligious”—reflects Erdmann's apparent understanding of the passage and conforms to the currently authoritative German translation, “hielten es für nicht vereinbar mit ihrem Glauben” (Adolf Schmidt, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, ed. R. Buchner, XIII, Berlin, 1957, p. 97). A much more probable interpretation has been suggested to me by Mr. F. A. Mantello, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto: Lampert meant religiosum putantes ironically; the sense of the passage is, then, that many Christian pilgrims were foolish enough to “think it religious” to take up weapons in their own defense, and the appropriate retribution followed. Owing to the absence of any negation (even in the critical apparatus), Mr. Mantello's reading alone is faithful to the Latin and altogether preferable to the alternative. (W. G.)]

128. Joranson, p. 41.

129. Annales Altahenses a. 1065, ed. ab Oefele, p. 68.

130. Radulf Glaber, IV, 5 and 6, ed. Prou, pp. 103ff.

131. Above, p. 141.

132. Above, p. 109.

133. But A. Hatem, Poèmes, pp. 47ff and 58ff, goes too far. He finds connections between the Norman wars in Sicily and the pilgrimage to Mount Gargano (on the Adriatic coast; besides almost a half century passed between the pilgrimage described by William of Apulia and the Norman attack on Sicily), as well as between the Spanish crusades and the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (in the far northwest of Spain; and he cannot adduce the slightest eleventh-century evidence for this pilgrimage). The thesis that the Cluniacs encouraged pilgrimages in order to bring about holy war is nebulous. To construct deliberate intentions out of what are merely significant correlations is an historical oversimplification.

     [It now seems generally agreed that pilgrimage to Compostela was common in the eleventh century, especially during the second half. All this prompted the building of the new basilica. See the literature cited above, supplement to n. 23, and Kendrick's Introduction (p. 17) to the work of V. and H. Hell; Labande, “Recherches,” p. 167. On Cluny and the Jerusalem pilgrimage, Cowdrey, Cluniacs, pp. 182-83.]

134. J.-H. Pignot, Histoire, II, 158f; E. Sackur, Cluniacenser, II, 231ff, also for what follows.

     [On St. Odilo, Dom Hourlier, Odilon de Cluny, and his remarks in the discussion following Delaruelle, “Idée,” pp. 439-40.]

135. Radulf Glaber, III, 6, ed. Prou, p. 109.

136. I was able to see E. Heisig, “Geschichtsmetaphysik,” pp. 1-87, only after my book was printed. Heisig's discussion frequently touches upon the topics treated here, and he finds notable connections between eschatological conceptions and the idea of war against heathens—findings that accord well with those of the present chapter. Equally commendable is his reference (pp. 13ff) to the Spaniards Eulogius and Alvaro in the ninth century; but their role must be considered in the context of the total development, without making them the basis for ascribing a general primacy to Spain in the development of the idea of crusade. With regard to Cluny, Heisig endorses the doctrines rejected above, pp. 68-71 and below, p. 307 n. 4; he also amplifies them by confusing Hugh Candidus with Abbot Hugh of Cluny (p. 28).