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Booklet 2: Crusader Motivation - Coggle Diagram
Booklet 2: Crusader Motivation
Economic Reasons
Harvests had been poor in northern France in that year, so perhaps many thought that they had little to lose and everything to gain by going to the Holy City of Jerusalem
Merchants from Italy and pilgrims who had travelled to the Holy Land told stories of riches of the East
Considering the poverty, bad harvest and drought, both rich and poor alike were attracted to crusade to gain land, titles and riches from the east
Philips: 'The inducement of land and profit was even held out in one account of Urban's speech and this principle must have inspired some crusaders - the determination of Bohemond of Taranto to set up the Principality of Antioch is the most obvious example of this.'
Scott: 'Floods and pestilence in 1094 had been followed by drought and a famine in 1095...apocalyptic teaching added to the economic inducement...in the East too lay Byzantium, that great wealth and population made the largest towns of the West seem overgrown villages....God would reward his servants on earth as He would surely do in heaven.'
Social Reasons
The Feudal System: 60,000 - 100,000 set off; 200 of which were Lords; 6,000 - 10,000 were knights; perhaps 22,000 were well-equipped foot-soldiers who could provide their own weapons; and 22,000 poorer foot-soldiers who were provided with basic weaponry
The remaining tens of thousands were non-combatants; priests, women and children
Chansons de geste were narrated poems that told of legends of the exploits of famous knights; they express the chivalrous ideal of how a knight should behave
Many knights aspired to this knightly ethos
The Songs of Roland were composed at the end of the 11th Century and tell stories of revenge and slaughtering the infidel; expressing the duties of a knight: to protect family, land and religion by killing the enemy
Considering the over population, both rich and poor were attracted to crusade to gain land, titles and riches from the east
Primogeniture: joining the crusade could solve the problems caused by their disinheritance
Duby: '...suggested that the practice of inheritance of family land by the eldest son led to disenfranchisement of younger sons by denying them a landed base, and thus made the prospect of military adventure in the East more appealing'
Asbridge: '....the intricate web of family ties and feudal obligation bound social groups in a common cause. In effect the pope set off a chain reaction....epicentre of an expanding wave of recruitment.'
Runciman: 'The widespread adoption of primogeniture as the principle of succession to feudal fiefs had meant that the prospects of younger sons were not good....could only escape through becoming churchmen or successful rebellion against their own kin'
Religious Reasons
Knight's dilemma: Knights were Christian soldiers who were taught that killing was a sin; if they died in battle they died with their sins unforgiven
They were extremely concerned about the salvation of their souls and yet their was not really a big part for them to play in the church
Robert of Rheims records Urban as telling them to 'take this road for the remission of your sins, assured of the unfailing glory of the kingdom of heaven'; solving the Knight's problem
Urban's speech stressed the importance to Christians of Jerusalem, the place were Christ had died and rose again; the papal reform movement had increased religiosity in the West
In one account, by Robert of Rheims, the pope calls Jerusalem the 'navel of the world', the very place of connection between God and man, as the umbilical cord connects his child to the mother
In all medieval maps, Jerusalem is shown as being in the physical centre of the world; it was a place of pilgrimage, where the Christian could go to do penance for their sins
In the indulgence, Urban promised that responding to the call to rescue Jerusalem would be effective as a penance for sin thus delivering the Crusader straight to heaven
Riley-Smith: 'Jerusalem was the inspiration and objection of the First Crusade...piety was therefore a major motivating force among the upper classes of crusaders....the Christian warrior embodied a contradiction in terms and at Clermont, Urban offered to resolve the conflict'
Madden: 'The culture of nobility in the eleventh century was one of public displays of piety....motivated by every pious and selfish desire, yet it could not have come into being without pious idealism that led men to risk all to liberate the lands of Christ'
Papal and Popular Preaching
After Clermont, popular preachers took up the message and spread it to all kinds and classes of people in northern France e.g. Peter the Hermit
It is thought that the pope intended to limit the call to knights only but he had little control over these popular preachers, whose preaching we know little about except that it was extremely effective