The historiography of the crusades has been a controversial topic since at least the Protestant Reformation. The term croisades was first used to refer to the entire period from the First Crusade until the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in French historiography of the 17th century.^[1] The 18th-century Enlightenment ideology as represented by Edward Gibbon and Voltaire held up the crusades as an example of medieval barbarism, while 19th-century Romantic nationalism tended to paint them in a heroic light, surrounding the crusades with an aura of romance and grandeur, of chivalry and courage.^[2] In the second half of the 20th century, western historiography again tended to be more critical of the crusades, following Steven Runciman (1951–4). Popular opinion, influenced by general trends of decolonisation and critical theory tended to portray the crusades with a sense of "western guilt".^[3] In early 21st literature, a "pluralist" view has become common which tends to generalize the concept of the crusades to include other medieval military campaigns authorized by the church, such as the Northern Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade or the Reconquista.^[4]

Medieval

The relevant medieval historiography of the period is collected in Recueil des historiens des croisades (RHC, 1841–1906). The RHC is divided into five series: 1. Lois ("Laws", i.e. the Assizes of Jerusalem), 2. Historiens occidentaux ("Western historians", i.e. texts in Latin and Old French), 3. Historiens orientaux ("Eastern historians", i.e. Arabic texts), 4.. Historiens grecs ("Greek historians") and 5. Historiens arméniens ("Armenian historians").

There are twelve surviving chronicles of the First Crusade:^[5]

1. Anonymous, Gesta Francorum
2. Anonymous, Historia belli sacri
3. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana
4. Baldric of Dol, Historia Hierosolymitana
5. Ekkehard of Aura, De oppressione liberatione ac restautatione Jerosolymitanae ecclesiae
6. Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana
7. Fulcher of Chartres, Gesta Francorum Hierusalem expugnantium (epitome of prev.)
8. Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos
9. Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere
10. Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi
11. Raymond of Aguilers and Pons of Balazun, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem
12. Robert the Monk, Historia Hierosolymitana

Originally, medieval understanding of the crusades was narrowly focussed on a limited set of interrelated texts, most notably Gesta Francorum which possibly dates from as early as 1099. The Gesta was reworked by Robert of Rheims who created a papalist, northern French template for later works. These all demonstrated a degree of martial advocacy that attributed both success and failure to God's will.^[6] This clerical view was soon challenged by vernacular adventure stories based on the work of Albert of Aachen. William of Tyre expanded on Albert's writing in his Historia. Completed by 1184, William's work describes the warrior state the Outremer had become through the tensions between divine providence and humankind.^[7] Medieval crusade historiography remained more interested in presenting moralistic lessons than information, extolling the crusades as a moral exemplar and a cultural norm.^[8]

Other important western histories include Gilo of Toucy, Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone, Walter the Chancellor and Benedetto Accolti the Elder.^{[citation needed]}

Greek Orthodox historians of the crusades include Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene, John Kinnamos, Niketas Choniates, Nicephorus Gregoras, George Acropolites. The Eastern Orthodox view of the Crusades is dominated by the sack of Constantinople and the establishment of the Frankokratia in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. While the First Crusade was declared upon the request of the Byzantine Emperor, and concluded in triumphal success, the Crusades as a whole resulted in the terminal decline of the Byzantine Empire. Although the Byzantine Emperors were restored in 1260, the empire could never fully recover until eventually, weakened by civil wars, it fell to the Ottomans in 1453.^{[citation needed]}

Armenian historians of the crusades include Matthew of Edessa (d. 1144), Nerses Shnorhali (d. 1173), Michael the Syrian (d. 1199), Kirakos Gandzaketsi (d. 1271), Nerses of Lambron (d. 1198), Sempad the Constable (d. 1276), Hayton of Corycus (fl. 1307).^{[citation needed]}

Relevant eastern (Muslim) historiographies include works by Ali ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad (d. 1234), Abd al-Latif (d. 1231), Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217), Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282), Abu al-Feda (d. 1331).^{[citation needed]} Contemporary Muslim historiographers such as Ali ibn al-Athir refer to the Crusades as the "Frankish Wars" (حروب الفرنجة). The term used in modern Arabic, حملات صليبية ḥamalāt ṣalībiyya, lit. "campaigns of the cross" is a loan translation of the term crusade as used in Western historiography.^[9] Later Muslim historiography did not focus on the Crusades as a single or coherent event. One main reason for this is that the Crusades in retrospect figure as more of a marginal issue compared to the final collapse of the Caliphate under the Mongol invasions and the eventual replacement of Arab rule by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which suppressed Arab nationalism for the following seven centuries.^[10] The end of the "Islamic Golden Age" was thus only partially due to the Crusades, and more so to the Turkic and Mongol expansions. According to modern historians of Islamic history such as Murphy (1976) and Mansfield (2003), the collapse of the Caliphate led to the development of "intellectual barriers" and "isolationist policies" in the Muslim world.^[11]

Notable contemporary accounts by Jewish authors include the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle (c. 1140), the chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan (d. 1170), the Mainz Anonymous, and the works of Ephraim of Bonn (d. 1200).^{[citation needed]}

Reformation

Attitudes toward the crusades during the Reformation were shaped by confessional debates and the Ottoman expansion. Protestant martyrologist John Foxe in his History of the Turks (1566) blamed the sins of the Catholic Church for the failure of the crusades. He also condemned the use of crusades against those he considered had maintained the faith, such as the Albigensians and Waldensians. Lutheran scholar Matthew Dresser (1536–1607) extended this view. The crusaders were lauded for their faith but Urban II's motivation was seen as part of his conflict with Emperor Henry IV. On this view, the crusade was flawed, and the idea of restoring the physical Holy Places was "detestable superstition".^[12] French Catholic lawyer Étienne Pasquier (1529–1615) was one of the first to number the crusades; he suggested there were six. His work highlighted the failures of the crusades and the damage that religious conflict had inflicted on France and the church. It lists victims of papal aggression, sale of indulgences, church abuses, corruption, and conflicts at home.^[13]

Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment philosopher historians such as David Hume, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon used crusading as a conceptual tool to critique religion, civilisation and cultural mores. For them the positives effects of crusading, such as the increasing liberty that municipalities were able to purchase from feudal lords, were only by-products. This view was then criticised in the 19th century by crusade enthusiasts as being unnecessarily hostile to, and ignorant of, the crusades.^[14] Alternatively, Claude Fleury and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz proposed that the crusades were one stage in the improvement of European Civilisation; that paradigm was further developed by Rationalists.^[15] In France the idea that the crusades were an important part of national history and identity continued to evolve. In scholarly literature, the term "holy war" was replaced by the neutral German kreuzzug and French croisade.^[16] Gibbon followed Thomas Fuller in dismissing the concept that the crusades were a legitimate defence as they were disproportionate to the threat presented. Palestine was an objective, not because of reason but because of fanaticism and superstition.^[17] William Robertson expanded on Fleury in a new, empirical, objective approach placing crusading in a narrative of progress towards modernity. The cultural consequences of growth in trade, the rise of the Italian cities and progress are elaborated in his work. In this he influenced his student Walter Scott.^[18] Much of the popular understanding of the crusades derives from the 19th century novels of Scott and the French histories by Joseph François Michaud.^[19]

Influential historiographical works on the Crusades include:

• Voltaire, Histoire des Croisades (1750, 1751)
• Edward Gibbon (1776–1789), edited as The Crusades (1870);
• Charles Mills, History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land (1820);
• Joseph François Michaud, Histoire des Croisades (1811–1840)

The popular prevailing view in the nineteenth and early twentieth century originated in the writings of the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott and the French historian Joseph-Francois Michaud. Scott published four crusade based novels between 1819 and 1831. Influenced by the Enlightenment and the philosopher-historian William Robertson, Scott's view was the crusades were the incursions of glamorous but uneducated western Europeans into a superior civilization. Michaud published his influential Histoire des croisades between 1812 and 1822 depicting the crusades as glorious instruments of nationalism and proto-imperialism. These incompatible views agreed only on a crusade was defined by its opposition to Islam, but began to merge in the 1920s as crusading began to be interpreted in social and economic terms by Liberal economic historians within an imperialist context assuming that crusading was an early example of colonialism. So Scott's Enlightenment inferior culture attacking a more sophisticated culture mixed with Michaud's Romantic proto-colonialist conviction. By the 1950s this established a neo-imperialistic and materialistic orthodoxy that remains the popular perceptions.^[20]

Modern

Influential historiographical works on the Crusades include:

• René Grousset, L'Histoire des croisades et du royaume franc de Jérusalem, 3 vols. (1934–1936)
• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986).
• Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (1951-4);
• Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades (2006).

Steven Runciman's three volume History of the Crusades (1951–54) marks a turn from the idealization of the Crusades as heroic enterprise in the 19th century to their denunciation as "a barbarian invasion", primarily of the Byzantine Empire, among a current of historiography of the second half of the 20th century.^[21] Peters (2011) says that Runciman's work "instantly became the most widely known and respected single-author survey of the subject in English."^[22] Madden (2005) stresses the impact of Runciman's style and viewpoint: as having "single-handedly crafted the current popular concept of the crusades" by painting the crusaders as "simpletons or barbarians". ^[23] An attempt at an updated account of the period was presented by Christopher Tyerman with his God's War: A New History of the Crusades (2006).^[24] Several modern crusade historians have praised Runciman's prose and ability to popularize the study of crusading, while nevertheless rejecting the soundness of his scholarship. ^[25]

Perhaps no historian has had as great of an impact on the modern study of the origins of the crusades and the motivations of the crusaders as the late Cambridge historian Jonathan Riley-Smith. In a 2017 survey of 33 modern historians on the "Most Important" books of the crusades, various works by Riley-Smith were cited more than any other historian. ^[26]

James Illston says "the field of medieval gender studies is a growing one, and nowhere is this expansion more evident than the recent increase in studies which address the roles of medieval women in times of war....this change in research has been invaluable." He provides a 20-page bibliography of dozens of recent scholarly books and articles, most of them connected to the crusades.^[27]

Apart from the technical scholarship, a plethora of popular treatments have appeared in the early 21st century. Thomas Madden has discussed modern misconceptions about the Crusades that appear in nonscholarly writings.^[28]

In Jewish historiography, the Crusades are mostly seen in the context of their being accompanied by the first displays of antisemitism in medieval Europe. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades.^[29]

In a 2001 article—The Historiography of the Crusades—Giles Constable attempted to categorise what is meant by Crusade into four areas of contemporary crusade study. His view was that Traditionalists such as Hans Eberhard Mayer are concerned with where the crusades were aimed, Pluralists such as Jonathan Riley-Smith concentrate on how the crusades were organised, Popularists including Paul Alphandery and Etienne Delaruelle focus on the popular groundswells of religious fervour, and Generalists, such as Ernst-Dieter Hehl focus on the phenomenon of Latin holy wars.^[30][31]

The historian Thomas F. Madden argues that modern tensions are the result of a constructed view of the crusades created by colonial powers in the 19th century and transmitted into Arab nationalism. For him the crusades are a medieval phenomenon in which the crusaders were engaged in a defensive war war on behalf of their co-religionists.^[32]

Popular reception

Middle Ages

The crusades and their leaders were romanticized in popular literature of the late medieval period; the Chanson d'Antioche was a chanson de geste dealing with the First Crusade, and the Song of Roland, dealing with the era of the similarly romanticized Charlemagne, was directly influenced by the experience of the crusades, going so far as to replace Charlemagne's historic Basque opponents with Muslims. A popular theme for troubadours was the knight winning the love of his lady by going on crusade in the east.^{[citation needed]}

In the 14th century, Godfrey of Bouillon was united with the Trojan War and the adventures of Alexander the Great against a backdrop for military and courtly heroics of the Nine Worthies who stood as popular secular culture heroes into the 16th century, when more critical literary tastes ran instead to Torquato Tasso and Rinaldo and Armida, Roger and Angelica. Later, the rise of a more authentic sense of history among literate people brought the Crusades into a new focus for the Romantic generation in the romances of Sir Walter Scott in the early 19th century. Crusading imagery could be found even in the Crimean War, in which the United Kingdom and France were allied with the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and in World War I, especially Allenby's capture of Jerusalem in 1917.^{[citation needed]}

In Spain, the popular reputation of the Crusades is outshone by the particularly Spanish history of the Reconquista. El Cid is the central figure.^{[citation needed]} In a broader sense, crusade was used, in a rhetorical and metaphorical sense, to identify as righteous any war that was given a religious or moral justification.^{[citation needed]}

Linder (2001) examines 15th-century Catholic Church liturgy designed to generate support for the war effort against the Turks and to legitimize its aims. Two types of Missae Contra Turcos were used: masses converted to this function through the addition of appropriate three core prayers and complete dedicated masses. The most popular example of the first type was the triple prayer set originally established by Clement V as a Holy Land crusade liturgy and subsequently mobilized against the Turks. The second type is represented by nine different mass formularies that were introduced after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.^{[citation needed]} Most surviving liturgies are of German or French provenance, indicating extensive use not only among the front-line populations but also in areas far removed from any threat. The liturgy displays its intense crisis rhetoric. Its predominant stance of vulnerability and defensiveness entailed aggressive mobilization and the conceptualization of the Turk as the actual, specific manifestation of the generic infidel, the competing religious Other; and the remarkable continuity - in form and in content - that linked this liturgy with its parent liturgies (mainly those of the campaigns against the pagans and the Holy Land Crusades) further accentuated these traits. The communicative function and value of this liturgy is highlighted by the concentration of the direct, unmediated communicative elements in that part of the mass that was the most accessible to the laity.^[33]

Romanticism

In the 19th century, romantic writers like novelist Sir Walter Scott created heroic images of the crusaders. The romantics and conservative adherents of the European anciens régimes appropriated crusading imagery for their own 19th-century political goals, downplaying religion to fit within a modern, secular context and presenting crusades as a counterpoint to liberal ideas of nationalism.^[34]

The Salle des Croisades in the north wing of the Palace of Versailles opened in 1843, commissioned by king Louis-Philippe, at a time when France was seized with enthusiasm with its historical past, and especially the period of the Crusades. The rooms are filled with over 120 paintings related to the Crusades.^[35]

Knobler (2006) examines the use of the crusades as a national symbol from the 19th century to the 1910s in France, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, Ethiopia, Britain, Russia, and Bulgaria. The Enlightenment and its secular ideological successors held the crusades as an example of medieval barbarity. Enlightenment thinkers like historian-philosophers Voltaire and David Hume denounced the crusades, as did the historian of Byzantium Edward Gibbon, who wrote:

The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause…. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends…. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion…. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country.^[36]

Contemporary

The term "crusade" has been debated in the context of contemporary Jihadism and the US 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[37]

Knobler (2006) explores three primary themes: memory of the crusades as it relates to debates over the generation and use of national symbols; the crusader as a romantic hero; and the Muslim recollection of the crusades as a shameful blot on the past of Christian nations. The crusades appealed to many Europeans because they reflected a morally unambiguous time, sparked romanticized images of warfare in a time of imperialist expansion, and provided heroic templates for modern "crusading" imperialist heroes.^[38]

Islamic world

There was little interest in the crusades in Islamic culture prior to the 20th century. Carole Hillenbrand has argued that Arab historians have often taken a Western viewpoint because they have historically been opposed to Turkish control of their homelands. ^[39] Phillips (2005) summarizes the general indifference by stating that "most Muslims" see the Crusades as "just another invasion among many in their history".^[40] The veneration of Saladin as chivalrous opponent of the Crusaders likewise finds no reflection in Islamic tradition before the visit of German Emperor Wilhelm II to Saladin's tomb in 1898.^[41] The visit, coupled with anti-imperialist sentiments, led nationalist Arabs to reinvent the image of Saladin and portray him as a hero of the struggle against the West. The image of Saladin they used was the romantic one created by Walter Scott and other Europeans in the West at the time. It replaced Saladin's reputation as a figure who had been largely forgotten in the Muslim world, eclipsed by more successful figures such as Baybars of Egypt.^[42] Modern Arab states have sought to commemorate Saladin through various measures, often based on the image created of him in the 19th-century west.^[43]

Renewed interest in the period is comparatively recent, arising in the context of modern Jihadist propaganda calling for war on the Western "crusaders".^[44] Notably, a fatwa signed by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1998 called for jihad against "the crusader-Zionist alliance" (referring to the United States and Israel).^[45] By 2008, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World claimed that "many Muslims consider the Crusades to be a symbol of Western hostility toward Islam".^{[failed verification][46]} The term ṣalībiyyūn "crusader", a 19th-century loan translation from Western historiography, is now in common use as a pejorative; Salafi preacher Wagdy Ghoneim has used it interchangeably with naṣārā and masīḥiyyīn as a term for Christians in general.^[47]

References

Bibliography

• Tyerman, Christopher (2011). The Debate on the Crusades, 1099–2010. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7320-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

general treatments

• Edward Gibbon The Crusades (ed. 1869/70).
• Charles Mills, History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land (1820).
• Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (1951-4).
• Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades (2006).
• Lock, Peter, ed. The Routledge Companion to the Crusades (2009).
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan (1977). What Were the Crusades?. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Murray, A.V. (ed.), The Crusades. An Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (2006).

surveys and bibliographies

• Boas, Adrian (ed.), The Crusader World (Routledge, 2015).
• Constable, Giles. "The Historiography of the Crusades" in Angeliki E. Laiou, ed. The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (2001); major overview of scholarship;online^{[permanent dead link]}
• Mayer, H.E., Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (2nd ed. 1965).
• Siberry, Elizabeth. New Crusaders: Images of the Crusaders in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (2000)
• Tyerman, Christopher. The Debate on the Crusades, 1099-2010 (Issues in Historiography) (2011) online review.

topical

• Althoff, Gerd; Fried, Johannes; Geary, Patrick J. Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography (2002).
• Andrea, Alfred J. and Andrew Holt, eds. Seven Myths of the Crusades (Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett, 2015).
• Bull, Marcus, and Damien Kempf, eds. Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014) 174pp
• Chevedden, Paul E. "The Islamic View and the Christian View of the Crusades: A New Synthesis," History (2008) 93# 310, pp 181–200.
• Constable, Giles (2008). Crusaders and crusading in the Twelfth century. Ashgate. p. 3ff. ISBN 9780754665236.
• Edgington, Susan B. and Sarah Lambert, eds., Gendering the Crusades (2002)
• Ellenblum, Ronnie. Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 304pp
• Harris, Jonathan. Byzantium and the Crusades (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014).
• Hillenbrand, Carole, ed. The crusades: Islamic perspectives (Psychology Press, 2000).
• Housley, Norman. Contesting the Crusades (Blackwell, 2006)
• Madden, Thomas F. ed. The Crusades: The Essential Readings (2002) ISBN 0631230238
• Mallett, Alex. Mediaeval Muslim Historians and the Franks in the Levant (Brill, 2014).
• Munro, Dana Carleton. "War and History,' American Historical Review 32:2 (January 1927): 219–31. online edition
• Nelson, Laura M. The Byzantine Perspective of the First Crusade: A Reexamination of Alleged Treachery and Betrayal (ProQuest, 2007).
• Paul, Nicholas and Suzanne Yeager, eds. Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity (2012) excerpt and text search
• Parsons, Simon Thomas and Paterson, Linda M., eds., Literature of the Crusades (Boydell & Brewer, 2018)
• Paterson, Linda. 'Singing the Crusades. French and Occitan Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336'. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018.
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan (2009). What Were the Crusades?. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-22069-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rudyard, Susan J. ed. The Medieval Crusade (Boydell & Brewer, 2004) 177pp
• Stark, Rodney, God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades, HarperOne (2010).
• von Güttner-Sporzyński. Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100-1230 (Brepols, 2014)
• von Güttner-Sporzyński. Recent Issues in Polish Historiography of the Crusades in The Military Orders, Volume 4: On Land and by Sea edited by Judi Upton-Ward (Ashgate, 2008) on Academia.edu on ResearchGate

primary sources

• Recueil des historiens des croisades (ed. 1841–1906)

External Links

Andrew Holt, Ph.D. Historians Rank the "Most Important" Books on the Crusades