Of Crusaders and the West

On this day in 1095, Pope Urban II officially commenced the First Crusade by issuing his Edict to take back Jerusalem from the infidel. The eastern emperor had appealed to Urban II for help against the Turks, and although eastern Christians distrusted the French who made up the first crusaders, the emperor had no choice but to accept the help. Thus began Christian Europe’s first great expansion across the sea.
People have a tendency to assign moral values to historical events, and with the Crusades it’s almost always bad. And why not? When the first Crusaders entered Jerusalem they killed every Muslim - including women and children - and burned the Jews alive in synagogues, where they had fled for safety. When Raymond of Aguilers visited the Temple it’s reported that corpses and blood reached his knees. Some Crusaders, such as the Frankish army of the Second Crusade, even slaughtered fellow Christians. In their case, the Coptic Christians of the Nile. During the Fourth Crusade the Franks, joined by Venetians, sacked Constantinople, the seat of Eastern Christianity. They even put a French prostitute on the throne to entertain them. Of course the brunt was spared for Jews and Muslims who, as alluded to already, suffered horrible atrocities.
However, viewing the Crusaders in the context of their historical contemporaries creates a different landscape. As Urban II pointed out in drumming up support for the First Crusade, Syria, Egypt and North Africa were all Christian before savage attacks from raiding Muslim armies. And Palestine had seen its fair share of savage wars from Seljuks, the Fatimid dynasty and countless others. Thirty years before the First Crusade, a pilgrimage of 7,000 Germans set out for the Holy Land, but only 2,000 returned safely, thanks to the Fatimids. The Crusaders were not unique in their savagery, only in their organizational ability to get it done.
Middle Age warriors were, typically, brutal. But in them we can see a faint glimmer of our modern self awareness. Our understanding of society and the individual certainly has its roots in the Crusaders. Take these random lines from Sir Steven Runciman’s History of the Crusaders:

• “[Queen Melisande's] action was regarded as perfectly constitutional and was endorsed by the council.”

• “Trial by peers was an essential feature of Frankish custom.”
• “The King ranked with his tenant-in-chief as primus inter pares, their president but not their master.”

In the Crusaders we see a flickering, unmistakable light of the modern West. Godfrey of Bouillon was elected supreme ruler of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, but he declined the title of “king” because he would not wear a crown of gold were Christ had worn a crown of thorns. He was also sure to give the state a constitution.
My point is that the Crusaders were generally ignorant and cruel, but they also carried seeds of a powerful philosophy. This philosophy was not merely order, but also faith, homage, fealty, duty, rights, inheritances, and honor. The feudal society - so at odds with modern equality - can obscure the complex gems within it. The Fatimids and others had nothing like this to compare. Saladin was a rare exception to what were typically lawless despots. The Saracens had no real polity.
Looking back at the Crusades it is hard to recognize anything of ourselves in those warriors. Their scientific and religious understanding was limited and their loyalty sometimes fickle. The ancient Knights Templar would at times serve their own pockets instead of the church and pilgrims. But let us at least acknowledge they formed the seeds of modernity in the West.