God's War: A New History of the Crusades (64 page)

Although Gerald omitted any details of the content of his or the archbishop’s sermons, as opposed to their delivery, something of their nature may be drawn from contemporary tracts, such as those by Peter of Blois and the papal legate Henry of Albano. Their form is suggested by Gerald’s description of his address at Haverfordwest, which employed repeated climaxes to stir his audience into successive waves of enthusiasm. A generation later, an English preaching manual, known as the
Ordinatio de predicatione Sancti Crucis in Angliae
(
The Ordinance for Preaching the Holy Cross in England
,
c.
1216), indicated how this effect was achieved. Exempla were used liberally to attract the audience’s
attention, sometimes through alarming moral stories, such as the nasty one used by Gerald of the mother who overlay and smothered her beloved little son as God’s punishment for trying to prevent her husband joining the crusade. Complex theology was conveyed through simple images, metaphors and references to familiar cults, such as that of the Virgin Mary, or even parallels with everyday life. In the
Ordinatio
the cross is portrayed as confirming salvation ‘as if by charter’, just like any ordinary land deal, except that the estate was ‘the inheritance of Christ’. Much of the material for sermons, as for propaganda pamphlets, comprised a series of meditations on the allegorical significance of Christ, the cross, the Crucifixion, the paradox of life though death, the snares of fleshly delight and the spiritual rewards of the
crucesignatus
. Unlike many later sermon collections, the English
Ordinatio
includes a model address, ‘the Call to Men to Take the Cross’, clearly designed for a lay audience: the punchlines of some of its
exempla
, drawn from edifying exploits of earlier crusaders, are in the French vernacular. The sermon is structured around a single, simple message, repeated in a variety of different ways and punctuated by variants on the traditional crusade refrain ‘Arise, therefore, take up my (sic) cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16:24) modified to fit the preceding
exemplum
. Thus, the dreadful pun of the Englishman Hugh of Beauchamp’s supposed last words on the field of Hattin, ‘Although my name is Beauchamp, I was never in
beau champ
(i.e. paradise) until today’, is followed by the preacher’s exhortation ‘Arise so that you may come to the
beau champ
.’
⁴²
Gerald of Wales’s Haverfordwest sermon probably employed very similar techniques. Each anecdote and refrain feeds a central message, the repetition of phrases, especially if accompanied by audience responses, inducing an almost trance-like enthusiasm in large congregations.

Another
crucesignatus
of 1188–9, the English royal official and chronicler Roger of Howden, who, unlike Gerald, actually went to the Holy Land, recorded exactly such a populist poetical sermon-lament devised by a cleric, Berthier of Orléans, who may possibly be identified with a clerk working at the French court in Philip II’s chancery. The verses confirm the ubiquity of the message being drummed into audiences across Christendom. Familiar themes are rehearsed: vengeance for the insult to Christ; an attack on soft-living; the loss of the True Cross, ‘the ark of the New Testament’; the obligation on believers to recover it; the association with the Eucharistic sacrifice; the debt laid up by the
Redeemer’s Crucifixion; the call to ‘take up your cross’. At each separate stage in the poem-sermon comes the refrain: ‘The wood of the cross, the banner of the chief, the army follows, which has never given way, but has gone before in the strength of the Holy Spirit.’
⁴³
The psychological impact of such relentless propaganda cannot be measured, but was widely felt. The same moral tone of shame, self-sacrifice and chivalry directed on the gaining of paradise, not earthly reward, suffuses a song composed in 1188 or 1189 by Conon of Béthune, an important Picard lord who fought on both the Third and Fourth Crusades.
⁴⁴
Otho of Trazegnies in Hainault, in making a pious donation to his local monastery prior to embarking for the east, declared his journey was ‘to avenge the insult to God’.
⁴⁵
However delivered, the message was received.

RECRUITMENT AND FINANCE

Recruitment and finance formed part of a single process of converting enthusiasm into action. The assemblies at Geddington in February and Paris in March 1188 discussed arrangements for taking the cross and the administration of the Saladin Tithe together. The source of funding influenced the construction of the armies. In Germany, Frederick tried to insist that each crusader should pay his own way, placing the emphasis for organizing recruitment and recruits firmly in the hands of local magnates and urban communities beyond the king’s own extensive military entourage, for which he paid out of his own resources, possibly supplemented by a tax on Jews and a form of hearth tax levied on royal lands.
⁴⁶
However, the bulk of his huge force, which some estimated at 20,000 knights and 80,000 infantry, was not raised or funded directly by the crown, perhaps a factor in its disintegration when Frederick himself died before the Holy Land was reached. Similarly, the failure of Philip II of France to collect the Saladin Tithe and his limited authority outside his own royal lands restricted his personal contingent to the 2,000 knights and squires for whom he negotiated a transport contract with Genoa in 1190. The rest of the large French contribution came from provincial nobles and other lords. By contrast, Richard I’s access to large sums from the Saladin Tithe and his own fundraising ploys in 1189–90 allowed him to command a royal army numbering perhaps 6,000, while subsidizing a fleet of over 100 ships that may have carried
almost 9,000 soldiers and sailors, some of whom, at least, were in the king’s direct pay, ‘retained’, as one of Richard’s officials later put it.
⁴⁷
Just as an English expatriate in France, Ralph Niger, noted the difference in the nature and level of fundraising between the German and western monarchs, so a German observer paid tribute to the lavish scale of the English king’s preparations and finances.
⁴⁸
The ability before and during any crusade campaign to convert what in theory constituted a volunteer army into a paid or retained force added enormously to its cohesion and the authority of the paymaster. Philip II increased his hold over the disparate French contingents at Messina at Christmas 1190 when he provided large subsidies to the duke of Burgundy (1,000 marks) and the count of Nevers (600 marks). On arrival in the Holy Land in 1191 Richard I and Philip II competed in offering wages to unattached troops, Richard’s deeper pockets winning the day. This secured Richard’s dominance of the ensuing Palestine campaign, for which he financially bailed out the count of Champagne and slipped 5,000 marks to the commander of the remaining French troops, Duke Hugh of Burgundy.
⁴⁹

The Saladin Tithe exerted another direct impact on patterns of recruitment. As the tax was designed to aid
crucesignati
, they were exempt. Hearing this, claimed Roger of Howden, himself a
crucesignatus
, ‘all the rich men of his (Henry II’s) lands, both clergy and laity, rushed in crowds to take the cross’.
⁵⁰
In addition to the now customary crusader privileges, they could expect not just the tax exemption but also the proceeds from their non-crusading vassals and tenants. These could be lucrative and consequently could become subject to legal dispute. An East Anglian
crucesignatus
, Robert of Cokefield, unsuccessfully tried to appropriate the tithe from two manors he held as a life tenant from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The abbot may have been especially alert to the legal niceties as he had been refused permission to take the cross in February 1188 by Henry II despite appearing before the king brandishing a cloth cross, needle and thread.
⁵¹
For the non-crusader, the Saladin Tithe was bitterly resented, partly because of its unprecedented rate of 10 per cent on movables (i.e. surplus income after essentials had been paid for). Partly, too, because it fell equally on church as on lay lands, challenging vociferous ecclesiastical sensitivities over immunities and separation from the secular state. Given the lack of immediate moves to set off for the east, some taxpayers suspected the eagerness of the habitually rapacious Angevin government to collect the tax; it was no
coincidence that the Saladin Tithe provided a model for subsequent lucrative extraordinary taxes. Collectors’ misappropriation and individual peculation left a sour taste.
⁵²

In most regions of Europe, no such direct incentive existed. Even in France, Philip II, despite gaining agreement to the Saladin Tithe from the large assembly of clerics, nobles and knights at Paris in March 1188, was forced to cancel the grant the following year and even apologize for having introduced it in the first place.
⁵³
Some tax collection did occur. The count of Nevers, the king’s cousin, imposed a levy of 12d a house in his lands, but this may not have been part of the Saladin Tithe. It was a fixed-sum, not fixed-rate, tax, was imposed only after negotiation with the local clergy and nobility and made no mention of exemption for
crucesignati
.
⁵⁴
Here, as in most places, the material pressures to take the cross operated in line with lordship, kinship and community. Although the surviving evidence overwhelmingly derives from the propertied classes, those lower down the economic and social scale were unlikely to be able to fund themselves. One English crusader assumed that those who set out shared their tears with ‘their household servants (
familiaribus
), relatives and friends’.
⁵⁵
The provisions of Gregory VIII’s bull, the Saladin Tithe and the French debt and mortgage ordinance of March 1188 assumed that crusaders, typically ‘clerks, knights and sergeants (
servientes
)’, had property to dispose of, otherwise the details about raising money would be redundant. Under the Saladin Tithe, crusaders were to receive the tithe receipts from ‘their lands and their men’.
⁵⁶
Frederick Barbarossa’s insistence on his followers being of a certain material sufficiency suggests the same. Not only did the poor not take the cross, lacking the economic or legal freedom to do so, many who did were prevented from departing by subsequent poverty. An inquiry into the non-fulfilment of crusade vows conducted in Lincolnshire in England a decade after the Third Crusade found that for twenty out of twenty-nine named
crucesignati
the cause of default was poverty.
⁵⁷
So, whether or not tax avoidance was available, the reality of crusade recruitment rested on the ability to pay or be paid for, from monarchs down to prosperous peasant farmers and urban and rural artisans.

This failed to do much to inhibit the scale of recruitment. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean observers noted the extraordinary response. ‘Enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage was such that already [1188] it was not a question of who had received the cross but of who had not yet
done so.’
⁵⁸
Recruiting fanned out from the great assemblies at Gisors, Mainz and Paris early in 1188, mainly propelled by the lords and their retinues, with the active encouragement of secular clergy and monasteries which, as on earlier crusades, supplied important financial resources in the way of cash in return for gifts and mortgages of property. While preaching provided the focus, in towns, cities and the courts of nobles, rumour and word of mouth created a public mood, the Dauphinois crusader’s ‘great movement’ (‘magna mota’).
⁵⁹
Peer group pressure and the fear of shame inevitably acted as effective recruiting officers. Poets cast those who failed to answer the call as ‘recreants and cowards’. Chroniclers, perhaps in similarly imaginative vein, noted that waverers received ‘wool and distaff’ as a hint that any who remained ‘were only fit for women’s work’.
⁶⁰
Wives and mothers added their voices to the chorus, perhaps the most persuasive of all. As a sign of commitment, some recruits wore hair shirts (often, like Abbot Samson of Bury, making sure that everybody around them knew), abstained from meat and followed the simple dress code laid down by the sumptuary laws instituted by Gregory VIII’s bull and repeated in sermons and local legislation during the following three years. While reflecting an element of theatrical showing-off, such sartorial demonstrations helped create and sustain the atmosphere of engagement.

That said, it must be recognized that the impression of, in Arnold of Lübeck’s words, ‘rich and poor as one’ demonstrating a universal adherence to the crusade may mislead.
⁶¹
Many who took the cross in 1188 out of sudden emotion or careful calculation abandoned their vows ‘having saluted Jerusalem from afar’, as one English monk acidly observed.
⁶²
Many others did not take the cross at all, including William Marshal, who famously made a whole career out of the pursuit of courtliness and chivalry. He preferred to remain at home with his new, rich wife and a job in Richard I’s regency government. In mitigation, he had only recently returned from two years in Outremer (1184–6). However, his failure to sign up in 1188–9, when he was close to Henry II, points to the exercise of common sense in response to the crusade. Especially in the entourage of monarchs, such a defining commitment was not undertaken indiscriminately. Life and politics in western Europe were not suspended. In Germany and Italy, Barbarossa’s son and viceroy, Henry VI, vigorously pursued his claim, through his wife, to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, while his opponents, led by adherents of the exiled
duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion, encouraged revolt. In France and England, despite crusade preparations beginning in the first months of 1188, deteriorating relations between Philip II and Henry II increasingly took precedence in 1188–9. This culminated in a damaging war over the succession to Angevin lands between Henry and his son Richard of Poitou, vigorously supported by Philip II. All three were
crucesignati
. Once Richard departed on crusade in 1190, his brother John schemed to control the government, which was being run by bureaucrats, many of whom had taken the cross in 1188 only to be released by the pope in 1189 on account of their important civil office.
⁶³
The king’s crusade failed to prevent a sharp tussle for power that led to the overthrow of Richard’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, in 1191. Although the personal involvement of ruling monarchs drew with them much of their ruling elites and many of their officials, many remained. Central and local administration continued. The bulk of the lay and clerical populations stayed put. The crusade was profoundly interesting for some; a matter of indifference to others. Not all contemporary chroniclers appeared obsessed with it. In England, monastic writers such as Gervase, sacrist of Christ Church Canterbury, or Jocelyn of Brakelond at Bury St Edmund’s, only recorded concern with the crusade when it impinged on their religious houses. Gervase was, in retrospect at least, positively hostile, blaming Archbishop Baldwin, a particular
bête noire
, for the onerous Saladin Tithe and portraying his Welsh tour as a jaunt devised to avoid facing messy litigation with the Canterbury monks. Gervase gave events in the east in 1190–92 short shrift and, with hindsight, described the whole venture as ‘unfortunate’.
⁶⁴
Commitment to the crusade was frequently proportionate rather than consuming.