At the conclusion of the Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II preached the idea of crusade to the assembled populace. The purpose of a crusade would be to deliver the Holy City of Jerusalem from its Muslim "captors." Urban recruited a European force of armed pilgrims by offering them an astonishing reward, an indulgence, or absolution from sin, through the act of penitential combat.
S. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to his knights in this manner.
O mighty soldier, O man of war, you now have a cause for which you can fight without endangering your soul; a cause in which to win is glorious and for which to die is but gain. Or are you a shrewd businessman, a man quick to see the profits of this world? If you are, I can offer you a splendid bargain. Do not miss this opportunity. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins which you confess with a contrite heart. It does not cost you much to buy and if you wear it with humility you will find that it is worth the kingdom of heaven.
The notion of a Holy War was completely new to Christians in 1095, even though "just wars" had been tolerated by the Church since the days of St. Augustine. Urban's synthesis of the concepts of pilgrimage and "just war" created more than a successful military campaign; indeed, he established the doctrinal basis for an institution that would last for hundreds of years. (Some historians feel that the Crusades did not end until Malta, governed by the Hospital of St. John, fell to Napoleon in 1798.)
The success of the First Crusade (1096–99) grew out of the great importance of pilgrimage to Western Christians; as early as the fourth century, the devout had come from distant lands to visit the Holy Sepulchre. They travelled in poverty, in imitation of Christ.
Pilgrims were often drawn to saints' relics, which were believed to have healing properties. In later centuries, pilgrimages were undertaken for the expiation of sin. A suitable penance for a violent crime would be a journey of several years to a holy place. And members of the knightly class, even when they killed for a just cause, still had to atone for their sins, which they often did through pilgrimage.
While Jerusalem was the holiest of Christian pilgrimage sites, Rome and Santiago de Compostela were enormously popular by the tenth century. Pilgrimage routes became safer as they became more popular and profitable. Monastic orders encouraged pilgrimage and provided protected housing for travellers. Ease and safety of travel further increased in the eleventh century, when the Hungarians converted to Christianity, opening up land routes, and when the Byzantine Empire controlled the Eastern Mediterranean, making a sea voyage possible. Around the year 1000, mass pilgrimages became popular; in 1064–65 Bishop Gunther of Bamberg guided 7,000 travellers to Jerusalem.
By preaching the First Crusade as a pilgrimage, Urban II tapped a rich vein of popular sentiment. Response to his rhetoric was passionate and violent. To the consternation of the papacy, Peter the Hermit led a people's Crusade east from the Rhineland, slaughtering thousands of European Jews and causing grief and havoc until the action was dissipated (and killed off) at Constantinople. (The behavior of the knightly classes was only marginally less brutal than these common folk.) The Christian armies did succeed in recapturing Jerusalem (temporarily), by slaughtering most of its inhabitants.
The Second Crusade (1145–49) was a military disaster that cooled the Western warlords' enthusiasms for pillage and plunder for a generation. During the course of the first fifty years of holy fighting, the papal definition of its enemies broadened—a crusade could be preached at any non-Christians occupying lands thought to belong to Christians (as in Spain).
It took a military disaster of the first magnitude to reanimate interest in war in the Holy Land. This came in 1174, when Saladin took Damascus and then, in 1187, defeated Guy of Lusignan, taking Acre. Frederick I Barbarossa, Philip Augustus of France, and his enemy, Richard Lion heart of England, assembled armies that eventually regained most of the ground lost to Saladin. Richard, through great acts of physical courage and some tactical skill, recaptured Acre in 1191. By 1193, the Holy Land was again open to pilgrims.
Later, with the growth of Catharism, a Christian dualist "heresy" brought from the Balkans to the south of France, an Albigensian Crusade was waged (1209–29) against the descendants of Crusaders to the Holy Land. Subsequently, a series of political Crusades were launched against non-heretical political enemies, the Hohenstaufen, in southern Italy.
Assessments of the effects of Crusading on Western and Islamic cultures are a study in themselves. Recent Western scholars have found the ideologies and behaviors of medieval Crusaders to be so repellent that they were unable to "comprehend that it [the Christian ideology of positive violence] could have had a convincing appeal."
Steven Runciman judged the Crusades in this way:
The triumphs of the Crusade were the triumphs of faith. But faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing . . . In the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident out of which our civilization has grown, the Crusades were a tragic and destructive episode . . . There was so much courage and so little honour, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Most modern writers feel that very little significant intellectual or cultural interchange took place between East and West as a direct result of the Crusades. Rather, they suggest, Arabic learning was absorbed through Spain, where, the reconquista no withstanding, artists and intellectuals could take advantage of peaceful periods of fruitful communication.
The Westerners most affected by the East were those who lived there after the First Crusade and established a Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. These settlers quickly adapted local modes of art and architecture to their own needs. What is less easy to identify is what Crusaders brought back to Europe with them. Did the Crusading ethic cause them to be impervious to Byzantine or Islamic civilization?
As recently as the 1930s, music historians, notably Henry Farmer, were committed to the idea that troubadour poetry and music were derived from Arab forms. The great age of troubadour art coincided with the second through fourth Crusades, and a fair number of Provençal and Northern European poets went on Crusades as a result of their knightly status and resultant feudal obligations. The concept of fin amours (courtly love) did not seem to exist before the Crusades, and some special genres, such as the cantiga di amigo or the zajal, do seem to be directly descended from Arabic and Hebrew forms current in Moslem Spain in the eleventh through twelfth centuries.
Furthermore, a good many musical instruments in use in Europe in the Middle Ages are derived from Arab ancestors, notably trumpets, certain percussion instruments, the form of psaltery known as the Kanum, the lute, and rebec. Again, Spain may have been the port of entry into the West for all these instruments.
One famous copy of the Cantigas de Santa Maria contains illustrations that are a multiculturalist's dream—musicians clad in a variety of national costumes playing a plethora of instruments, with every sign of great enjoyment.
Those historians who are opposed to the theory of Islamic influence argue for a shared, older Mediterranean musical culture or for a proven relationship between chant composition and the music of the troubadours.
A vast body of poetry commemorating the crusading experience was produced throughout the course of the Middle Ages, including epics, chansons de geste, propaganda songs, laments for the dead, love songs, and satires. With the possible exception of the epic, all genres were intended for musical performance by their creators or by professional minstrels, but only a fraction of the known texts have retained their melodies.
The Crusades did not inspire any unique poetic or music forms; rather, Crusading sentiments were expressed through conventionalized forms suitable to any number of topics. For instance, the planctus, or planh is a lament, usually (but not always) for the dead, that was a fully developed poetic type by the ninth century. The two laments included on this program—both wonderful pieces of music—demonstrate the wide variety of expression possible to medieval artists operating within the limits of highly formalized structures.
The Latin planctus "Iherusalem, Iherusalem" commemorates the death by accident of Henry II, Count of Champagne, who died at Acre in 1197. Henry was one of the most powerful barons in France and an ally of Richard Lionheart. After Conrad of Montserrat was murdered by Assassins (perhaps at Richard's instigation), Richard had Henry married to Conrad's widow, Isabella, heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in 1192. Although he was never crowned, Henry was effectively the king of Jerusalem until his death, caused by a fall from a tower window during an inspection of his troops. Henry's mother was Marie de Champagne (related to both Richard and Philip Augustus), a powerful noblewoman who died in 1198.
The planctus is very learned and witty, and bristling with every sort of rhetorical figure, made moving by the sounds of the words and the great beauty of the melody. While the verse is strophic, the melody is through-composed and even appears to indulge in word painting, especially in the melismas on the name of Mary (verse 2) and the word "works," which ends the composition. "Iherusalem" must have been written by a clerkly intellectual schooled in Paris, the center for this kind of writing.
Gaulcem Faidit's planh is written in Provençal and is a musical monument to Richard Lionheart. Richard, perhaps the greatest Western hero of the Crusades, died in 1199 in France from an infected arrow wound that he received in a local skirmish with insurgent subjects. Where grief is generalized in "Iherusalem," it is personalized in"Fortz chausa es." The poet is a direct participant in the process of lamentation, rather than a chronicler. Events are described literally in "Fortz chausa es"; they are described metaphorically in "Iherusalem."
Interestingly, the relationship of melody to text is much more casual in the troubadour song than in the Latin song. One modern editor has remarked that the Faidit melody, with its simple, stepwise decorations, has an ad hoc, or improvised quality. Three surviving versions of the music differ significantly in many details. Furthermore, "Fortz chausa es" is strophic, but not through-composed; that is, the performer sings the same music for every stanza of poetry.
Finally, "Fortz chausa es" brings us to a first-hand confrontation with the ethos of the knightly class: Richard was valued for his physical courage, his largesse, and his love of display. He was an avid participant in tournaments and gave lavish gifts. He was also one of the worst kings to be endured by the English, in dramatic contrast to his father, Henry II Plantagenet. But a devotion to governance and bureaucratic reform was not part of the chivalric ideal; hence, Henry was not nearly as popular as Richard among their contemporaries.
Beyond the loss of an epitome of knighthood lay a fear of the disappearence of the knightly class and of war itself. Faidit's older contemporary, Bertran de Born, wrote with some truth that war gave the knightly class a reason for existence; with its absence, their civilization would wither away. Without just causes and warlords, there would be no support for the industry of chivalry, as it were, and all those who were dependent on it (including poets) would be without occupation. And of course, the Holy Sepulchre would be lost
Chivalric poets often expressed contempt for the emerging urban, mercantile classes, newly rich and a threat to the old rural feudal order. A real fear for the loss of this old way may be an undercurrent in "Fortz chausa es."
Some scholars have suggested that troubadour and trouvère poets did more than simply describe a courtly ideal; they helped to create it. Many of these artists belonged to the knightly class and were themselves Crusaders. Through their poetry they developed attitudes and modes of being that influenced our culture up until the First World War. Industrialized warfare and the wide dissemination of psychoanalysis finally dismantled the old edifices of chivalry and courtly love.
The art and culture that grew up around pilgrimage was considerably more inclusive of all elements of medieval society. Pilgrimage itself was an act of abnegation: the journeyer forsook all the trappings of his or her class to become a poor wanderer, in imitation of Christ or the desert saints. That at least was the theory. Chaucer, of course, brilliantly documented the reality. Pilgrim art included guide-books, hymns, and other kinds of songs to be sung by those on their way to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago, or Canterbury.
Much of this material is at its most effective when performed chorally and is not included in this performance. However, another very rich source of pilgrim lore is the Cantigas de Santa Maria, compiled at the court of Alfonso X ("The Wise") of Castille and Leon at the end of the thirteenth century. The Cantigas comprise over three hundred songs in praise of the Virgin Mary. Every tenth song is a loór, or prayer to the Virgin; the others are stories of the miraculous intervention of the Virgin into the lives of all kinds of men and women.
The stories are very much like fables or diversions intended to teach through amusing example. At the core of the collection are the Hundred Miracles of the Virgin, assembled by Gautioer de Coinci in the twelfth century. Cantiga 26 is derived from this older collection, that is, from the period of peak pilgrimage activity. While it concerns a very flawed character who is misled by the Devil into a profanation of the act of penance, Cantiga 8 celebrates the strength of a faithful pilgrim artist and the validity of individual expressions of piety.
—Mary Springfels
Anonymous 4. Music from the Codex Calixtinus. harmonia mundi usa.
Azina, Ann. The Unicorn. Erato.
Ensemble Alcatraz. Visions and Miracles. Elektra-Nonesuch.
Hesperion XX. Alfonso X: Cantigas de Santa Maria. Astree.
Lamandrier, Esther. Cantigas de Santa Maria. Astree.
Music of the Crusades. Argo ZRG 637.
Newberry Consort. Wanderers' Voices. harmonia mundi usa.
New London Consort. Llibre Vermell. L'oiseau Lyre.
Sequentia. Cantigas de Santa Maria. Deutsche harmonia mundi.
———. The Music of Las Huelgas. Deutsche harmonia mundi.
———. Philip the Chancellor. Deutsche harmonia mundi.
———. Sons of Thunder. Deutsche harmonia mundi.
Sinfonye. Bella Donna. Hyperion.
Studio for Early Music. Carmina Burana. Teldek, Das Alte Werk.
———. Troubadours, Trouvères, Minstrels. Teldek, Das Alte Werk.
Bloch, R. Howard, ed. Medievalism and the Modern Temper. Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1996.
Camille, Michael. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1989.
Cantor, Norman F. Inventing the Middle Ages. Robert Morrow, 1991.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Harper, 1953.
Duby, Georges. The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, foreword by Thomas N. Bisson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1980.
Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage. Trans. and annotated by George E. Gingras. New York, Newman Press, 1970.
Erdmann, Carl. The Origin of the Idea of Crusade. Trans. from the German by Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart. Princeton, N.J., Princeton Univ. Pr., 1977.
Fossier, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages. Trans. by Janet Sondheimer. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1986–.
Frese, Dolores Warwick. An Ars Legendi for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Reconstructive Reading. Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Pr., 1991.
Hell, Vera, and Hellmut Hell. The Great Pilgrimage of the Middle Ages: The Road to St. James of Compostela. Trans. by Alisa Jaffa. London, Barrie & Rockliff, 1966.
Hoppin, Richard. Medieval Music. W. W. Norton & Co., 1978.
Keen, Maurice Hugh. Chivalry. New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr., 1984.
Kibler, William W., ed. Medieval France: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Pub., 1995.
Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1990.
Labarge, Margaret Wade. Medieval Travellers. New York, Norton, 1983.
Lawrence, T. E. Crusader Castles. London: M. Haag, 1986.
Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. Trans. by Jon Rothschild. New York: Schocken Books, 1985.
Madaule, Jacques. The Albigensian Crusade. Fordham Univ. Pr., 1967.
Mayer. H. E. The Crusades. Trans. by John Gillingham. 2d ed. Oxford Univ. Pr., 1988.
Page, Christopher. The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life & Ideas in France, 1100–1300. Univ. of Calif. Pr., 1990.
Pernoud, Regine. The Crusaders. Trans.by Enid Grant. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963.
Peters, Edward, ed. Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198–1229; Sources in Translation. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1971.
Poly, Jean-Pierre, and Eric Bournazel. The Feudal Transformation: 900–1200. Trans. by Caroline Higgitt. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991.
Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1994.
Riley-Smith. The Crusades: A Short History. New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr., 1987.
———, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. Oxford Univ. Pr., 1995
Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades. New York: Harper & Row, 1964–.
Scaglione, Aldo D. Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry and Courtesy From Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1991.
Setton, Kenneth Meyer. A History of the Crusades. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1969–1989.
Siberry, Elizabeth. Criticism of Crusading: 1095–1274. Oxford: Clarendon Pr.; New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1985.
Southern, R. W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Penguin Books, 1973.
Strayer, Joseph R., ed. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner.
Stevens, John. Words and Music in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1986.
Sumption, Jonathan. Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion. London: Faber & Faber, 1975.
Theodericus of Warzburg. Guide to the Holy Land. Trans. by Aubrey Steward. 2d ed. New York: Italica Pr., 1986.
Trotter, D. A. Medieval French Literature and the Crusades, 1100–1300. Geneve: Librairie Droz, 1988.
Tyerman, Christopher. England and the Crusades, 1095–1588. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1988.
These expanded notes are made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
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