Robert Garland, Ph.D.

Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster

Professor of the Classics
Colgate University
Professor Robert Garland is the Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics at Colgate
University, where he served for 13 years as Chair of the Department of the Classics and was Director of the
Division of the Humanities. He received his B.A. in Classics from The University of Manchester in 1969,
where he graduated with first class honours. He obtained his M.A. in Classics from McMaster University in
1973 and his Ph.D. in Ancient History from University College London in 1981.
Professor Garland was the recipient of the George Grote Prize in Ancient History in 1982. He was a Fulbright
Scholar and Fellow at The Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC (1985–1986), and a visiting scholar
at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1990). He has taught at the University of Reading, the
University of London, Keele University, and the University of Maryland at College Park. He was also the
Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol (1995). In addition to his 25 years teaching
Classics at Colgate University, Professor Garland has taught English and Drama to secondary school students
and lectured at universities throughout Britain and at the British School at Athens.
Professor Garland’s research focuses on the social, religious, political, and cultural history of both Greece
and Rome. He has written 11 books and many articles in both academic and popular journals. His books
include The Greek Way of Death (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001; Japanese translation, 2008); The
Piraeus: From the Fifth to the First Century B.C. (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001); The Greek Way of
Life: From Conception to Old Age (Duckworth and Cornell, 1990); Introducing New Gods: The Politics of
Athenian Religion (Duckworth and Cornell, 1992); Religion and the Greeks (Bristol Classical Press, 1994);
The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (2nd ed., Bristol ii Classical
Press, 2010); Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks (2nd ed., Greenwood, 2008; Greek translation, 2001);
Surviving Greek Tragedy (Duckworth, 2004); Julius Caesar (Bristol Phoenix Press, 2004); Celebrity in
Antiquity: From Media Tarts to Tabloid Queens (Duckworth, 2006); and most recently, Hannibal (Duckworth,
2010). His expertise has been featured in The History Channel’s The True Story of Troy, and he has often
served as a consultant for educational film companies.

LECTURE 45: BEING A CRUSADER

The word “crusade” isn’t very popular in our pluralist society—and for good reason. But the
fact that the word has stayed in currency so long and that it evokes such powerful reactions,
among Christians and Muslims alike, demonstrates the continuing centrality of the concept to
this day. In this lecture, we will unpack the terms “crusade” and “crusader” and try to situate
them in their original cultural context.
The Launch of the First Crusade
• The Crusades were military expeditions authorized by the pope, whose purpose was to
“recover” the Holy Land and other territory controlled by Muslims. Pope Urban II launched
the First Crusade on November 27, 1095, from Clermont in France.

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• Thousands of men, women, and children camped out around the cathedral at Clermont in
anticipation of the pope’s announcement. Urban told the assembled crowd that the Muslims
(the Ottoman Turks) were advancing against Christians living in the Holy Land, mistreating
pilgrims, and desecrating the holy places in Jerusalem.
• The pope then called on all the Christians living in the West—irrespective of their station in
life—to take up arms against the Muslims in the name of God. Rather than killing human
beings, Christ’s warriors would be eradicating evil through the elimination of the infidels.
• In return for their service in the Crusade, Christians would be granted full remission for
their sins and guaranteed a place in Heaven. By fighting and killing the infidels, they would be
performing what the pope called “an act of love.” The Church would also protect the property
and families of those who went on crusade and freeze the interest repayments on their debts
for the duration of the campaign.
• The word “crusader” didn’t enter the English language until the 18th century. The term that
came to be used in the late 12th century—100 years after Clermont—was cruce signatus,
Latin for “signed with the cross.” Those who pledged to undertake the journey to Jerusalem
received a cross made of cloth to be sewed onto the clothing as a sign of dedication.
• Following Pope Urban’s initial appeal, the Church began holding rallies throughout
Christendom. These gatherings were carefully stage-managed to promote a sense of
collective identity—and collective outrage.
 The preacher in charge would hold up images depicting Muslims desecrating holy
places and might brandish a crucifix or a relic to inspire the crowd. Those in
attendance would be jostled forward to take the pledge and join the crusade.
 One of the most effective of these preachers was an itinerant French monk called
Peter the Hermit. Within three months The Peasants’ Crusade was launched by Peter
the Hermit in the wake of Pope Urban’s appeal; its soldiers—including women and
children—marched to the Holy Land some months before the main armies of the First
Crusade. Peter had mustered a large band of ordinary people, including women,
children, and adolescents, to form the Peasants’ Crusade.
 Peter’s army had fewer knights than later campaigns, was badly organized, and was
inadequately prepared, but its members slaughtered hundreds of Jews in Germany on
the way to the Holy Land. They eventually reached Constantinople, but when they
headed south toward western Turkey, most of them were either killed or sold into
slavery.
• Some months after the launch of the Peasants’ Crusade, six great armies led by princes
set out for the Holy Land—much better equipped, much better funded, and much better
organized.

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Warriors in a Just War
• In the eyes of the Crusaders, their cause was a just war because they were reclaiming land
that long ago belonged to the Christians. But Pope Urban wasn’t the first to come up with the
notion of a just war or to promote an ideology of defensiveness. The Romans had done so
2,000 years earlier.
• It was the knights who would determine the outcome of the Crusade, but the majority of
the Crusaders belonged to the other side of history. There were perhaps as many as 100,000
of them, not including the noncombatants. These Crusaders were uneducated and
inexperienced in war but caught up in the grip of an ideal.
• The common soldiers armed themselves with bows and arrows, sticks, or clubs. They
expected the campaign to be over within a few weeks, but as they marched toward the Holy
Land, it became clear that war would not be as effortless as they had thought. As their fellow
soldiers became sick or were wounded or killed, some began to question the point of the
expedition.
• The biggest challenge to the faith of the Crusaders came in 1098 during the siege of the
Muslim-occupied city of Antioch. The Crusaders, facing starvation, were on the verge of giving
up when reinforcements arrived and they somehow managed to capture the city. Two days
later, however, they found themselves under siege from a Muslim army.
 At that point, a French priest named Peter Bartholomew announced that he had had a
vision revealing the whereabouts of one of the holiest relics in Christendom—the spear
that pierced Christ’s side at the crucifixion.
 Peter began digging under the floor of one of the churches in Antioch and, eventually,
produced a rusty piece of iron and declared it to be the holy spear.
 Not everyone was convinced, but news of the find spread through the army and re-
inspired the soldiers. They emerged from the city to do battle against the Muslims, and
against all odds, they won.
The Saracens
• Saracen was the name given to all Muslims and Arabs, the originally nomadic people who
inhabited the deserts of Syria and Arabia. They, too, were fighting for a cause. Jerusalem is
the second holiest place for Muslims after Mecca, because it contains the site where the
Prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven—the Temple Mount.
• The Saracens, like the Crusader knights, fought on horseback. Some of them wore padded
armor; others, chain mail; and still others, plate armor. They fought with round shields,
curved scimitars, and composite bows.

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 TAKING JERUSALEM
• In July 1099, four years after Urban’s appeal, the Crusaders captured
Jerusalem. They desecrated the Temple Mount, slaughtering all the Muslims
who had taken refuge there—men, women, and children.
• They then turned their venom on the Jews living in Jerusalem, charging
them with aiding and abetting the Muslims and burning them alive in the
synagogue to which they had fled for safety. The Crusaders also killed all the
Christians living in Jerusalem, claiming that they, too, had aided and abetted
the Muslims.
• At the end of the bloodbath, when they had “purified” Jerusalem, the
Crusaders held a solemn service in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to give
thanks to God for their victory.
• About the capture of Jerusalem, British historian Steven Runciman observed, “It was this
bloodthirsty proof of Christian fanaticism that re-created the fanaticism of Islam.” In other
words, each fed upon the other. In today’s world, jihadists are offered unconditional
admission to paradise for dying in the cause of Islam, in much the same way that the pope
promised the Crusaders that they would be spared eternal damnation if they risked their lives
for Christianity.
The Aftermath of the First Crusade
• After the capture of Jerusalem, most of the Crusaders returned home, but some remained
in the East. They built magnificent castles to solidify their power and to protect pilgrims
visiting the Holy Land. Eventually, four Christian (or “Frankish”) states were established in
the eastern Mediterranean: at Jerusalem, Antioch (including parts of Turkey and Syria),
Edessa (part of Turkey), and Tripoli (in Lebanon).
• Jerusalem remained under Crusader control for less than a century. In 1187, it fell to
Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. Despite being a thorn in the side of the Crusaders,
Saladin won the deep respect of his adversary, Richard the Lionheart, and is celebrated for
his chivalrous conduct in Christian chronicles of the time.
• Christian influence in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean lasted barely a century after
the loss of Jerusalem. The end of Frankish rule was marked by the fall of the Crusader city at
Acre on the coast of Israel to the Mamlūks of Egypt in 1291.
• The Fourth Crusade had its roots in a schism that occurred between the Roman Catholic
Church in the West and the Orthodox churches in the East in 1054.
 The schism was the result of differences of opinion regarding doctrine, religious
observance, and the authority of the pope.

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  The split was exacerbated in 1096 when armies of Crusaders began passing through
the Byzantine Empire on their way to the Holy Land, leaving a trail of havoc behind
them.
 In 1204, these tensions finally erupted when a Crusader army, assisted by a Venetian
fleet, attacked and looted Constantinople itself, the greatest city in the Christian world.
• Who footed the bill for the Crusades? The Church, the wealthy, and of course, ordinary
people. To finance the Third Crusade in 1189, the English king Henry II imposed an income
tax—the first such tax to be levied anywhere in Europe.
• The Crusaders fought for their beliefs and their ways of life against ways of believing and
living that seemed alien and threatening to them. They did their duty in the hope of saving
Christianity and their own souls. To justify the slaughter, they were forced to demonize
another living culture and its people, and in the process, they dropped a stone into the well of
history, whose ripples continue to this day.
 People on both sides were infused with a virulent fear of “the other,” a fear that we’ve
encountered already in our course. Among Greeks of the Classical era, it took the form
of fear of the barbarian—the perennial divide between East and West that was
implanted in the Western mindset. The barbarian in the eyes of the Greeks was the
same as the infidel in the eyes of the Christians.
 Fear of the other is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Indeed, it may have its
roots in the encounter between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and we may never be
able to escape it.

cruce signatus: Literally “signed with the cross,” the term used to identify someone who
had signed up to go on a crusade.
Peter the Hermit (c. 1050–1115): French monk whose preaching generated considerable
support for the First Crusade.
Saladin (1138–1193): A Kurdish Muslim who fought against the Crusaders in the Holy Land.
After capturing Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, he freed most of those held prisoner
and permitted the Jews to resettle in the city.
Urban II (c. 1042–1099): The pope who initiated the First Crusade by his address at the
Council of Clermont in 1095. Urban died two weeks after the Crusaders had captured
Jerusalem, before receiving news of the victory.ing
Important Term
Names to Know

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