11. THE FLOWERING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 1150

Disastrous Crusades to the Holy Land

Did religious fervor also inspire the crusades of the later twelfth century? Some Europeans thought so. The pope called the Third Crusade “an opportunity for repentance and doing good.” This crusade was indirectly a result of the fall of the Seljuk Empire at the hands of Nur al-Din and his successor Saladin (1138–1193), Sunni Muslims eager to impose their brand of Islam in the region. They took Syria and Egypt, and, in 1187, Saladin conquered Jerusalem.

The Third Crusade was an unsuccessful bid to retake the Holy City. The greatest rulers of Europe—Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), Philip II of France, Leopold of Austria, and Richard I of England—led it. But they spent most of their time quarreling with one another or harassing the Byzantines. After they went home, the crusader states remained a shadow of themselves—minus Jerusalem—until they were entirely snuffed out in 1291. Islamic hegemony over the Holy Land would remain a fact of life for centuries.

The hostilities that surfaced during the Third Crusade made it a dress rehearsal for the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). Hostility toward the Byzantines had begun long before the thirteenth century. Now it combined with Venetian opportunism. When the pope called the crusade, the Venetians fitted out a fine fleet of ships and galleys for the expedition. But when the crusaders arrived in Venice, there were far fewer fighters to pay for the transport than had been anticipated. To defray the costs of the ships and other expenses, the Venetians convinced the crusaders to do them some favors before taking off against the Muslims. First, they had the crusaders attack Zara, a Christian city in Dalmatia (today’s Croatia) that was Venice’s competitor in the Adriatic. Then they urged the army to attack Constantinople itself, where they hoped to gain commercial advantage over their rivals (Map 11.2).

Figure 11.4: MAP 11.2 Crusades and Anti-heretic Campaigns, 1150–1215

Figure 11.4: Europeans aggressively expanded their territory during the second half of the twelfth century. To the north, knights pushed into the Baltic Sea region. To the south, warriors pushed against the Muslims in al-Andalus and waged war against the Cathars in southern France. To the east, the new crusades were undertaken to shore up the tiny European outpost in the Holy Land. Although most of these aggressive activities had the establishment of Christianity as at least one motive, the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 had no such justification. It grew in part out of general European hostility toward Byzantium but mainly out of Venice’s commercial ambitions.

Convinced of the superiority of their brand of Christianity over that of the Byzantines, the crusaders killed many inhabitants of Constantinople and ransacked the city for treasure and relics. When one crusader discovered a cache of relics, a chronicler recalled, “he plunged both hands in and, girding up his loins, he filled the folds of his gown with the holy booty of the Church.” The pope decried the sack of Constantinople, but he also took advantage of it, ordering the crusaders to stay there for a year to consolidate their gains. Plans to go on to the Holy Land were never carried out. The crusade leaders chose one of themselves—Baldwin of Flanders—to be emperor, and he, the other princes, and the Venetians divided the conquered lands among themselves. (See “Document 11.3: A Byzantine View of the Fourth Crusade.”) Popes continued to call crusades to the Holy Land until the mid-fifteenth century, but the Fourth Crusade marked the last major mobilization of men and leaders for such an enterprise. Working against these expeditions were the new values of the late twelfth century, which placed a premium on the interior pilgrimage of the soul and valued rulers who stayed home and cared for their people.