Comparison And Contrast Essay: The First Crusade

The First Crusade was a call initiated by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont for aid requested by the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios Komnenos, to be sent to the Byzantine Empire, which had been under an attack from the Seljuk Turks, an Islamic Asiatic Steppe group. The First Crusade was perceived to be necessary to save Jerusalem, the Holy Land, from the Turkish and Muslim nonbelievers that had been inhabiting the city and slaughtering Christians. While the First Crusade was a mission to save Jerusalem, it held different meanings for each participant who were also driven by different motivations such as religious and monetary, but despite these differences each believed they were doing right by God.

A strong motivator to accept the task

of the First Crusade was the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The destruction of the church occurred 86 years prior to Pope Urban II’s calling for the first crusade and occurred when the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of this church, which caused an uprising from Christians that lead to a massive slaughter of Jewish people in and around Jerusalem. This event was significant because the outcome was an increase in hatred for and suspicion of Jews among the Christian community. Those negative views on nonbelievers would have been in the forefront of the crusaders minds’ when they were called to go forth and kill those threatening Christians. This hatred for those of another faith illustrated the strong belief of Christians and their desire to be good and upstanding, a trait drawn on by Pope Urban II who granted that “All who die on the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins.” This promise of a holy death and successful after life in the eyes of God was a big motivation, especially criminals and commoners, that pushed many into going on the First Crusade. The Christians came into the Crusade with the perception that nonbelievers were deserving of death when deemed acceptable by a religious authority, because that type of action had already been taken in decades previous and had left an impression with Christians. For those with that mindset who were offered salvation by the Pope, going out on the Crusade was an obvious choice. The absolvent of their sins motivated participating crusaders.
With the present hatred from Christians for those attacking their fellow Christians in Jerusalem, came the justification as to why killing was the answer. Rhetoric was put forth that those nonbelievers, the Jewish in particular, were sent by the devil to poison the faith of Christians for which they had to die. To those that participated in the First Crusade, they were “servants of God, … all who are willing to defend the Christian faith.” Killing in defense of the Christian faith was seen as the right thing to do, thus the offerings of salvation and reward for those crusading. Those in the armies, both formal and peasant, were no longer individuals acting of their own accord, but instead they were a religious army, carrying out the actions God would want them to take. French abbot, Guibert of Nogent, stated that “the army ran amok, and the entire city was looted…was right and proper for the army of God…They approached the sepulcher of the Lord and thanked Him, for…he had performed such great deeds with them as his instruments.” Acting as God’s army was justification for all actions taken along the path of the First Crusade. The participator’s actions were no longer their own actions but instead those of God, thus excusing them from being fallacious and illegal. In the minds of the peasants, the Peasant’s Crusade fit the qualifications for what God deemed necessary in the war for Jerusalem.
The Peasant’s Crusade is the prime example for how sincerely people believed that the Crusade was necessary to save Christianity.

Peasants from kingdoms across Europe, primarily France and England, took up arms and proceeded on a Crusade of their own that occurred simultaneously with the First Crusade. Along their intended march to Jerusalem to deliver the aid requested by Pope Urban II, many Jewish people scattered throughout cities along the way were slaughtered mercilessly. Those that had formed this informal Crusade band were not part of a formal army nor were they acting upon any official orders but their own. This Crusade was formed and enacted because those within fully believed slaughtering Jewish people was demanded of them by God. A chaplain servicing a crusader count wrote of the slaughter of Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem “was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.” A man of religious authority produced rhetoric affirming that the slaughter of Muslims and Jews was just because God deemed it so. The chaplain wholly believed in the Crusade and praised those performing the killings, which enabled those killings to have confidence in their

actions.
For the majority of those participating, the First Crusade and the Peasant’s Crusade were people’s way of carrying out the wishes of God to save Jerusalem from the nonbelievers, but some saw the Crusade as their military duty and some went along for the monetary reward. For one man in particular, Tancred who was the nephew of a general, and he struggled with the Crusade until the Pope called for armies to go forth and then “his skill as a soldier turned to the service of Christ, the twofold reason for fighting enthused the man greater than you could believe.” Tancred was able to morph his passion with the army with what he felt religiously obligated to do for God and use that to be his reason for crusading. Military men sought honor through their wars, and Tancred struggled to justify going on the First Crusade without any proper orders until the call came. Tancred was now able to seek honor through the Crusade, and that became his reasoning for joining the crusades.
For those within the military and the Peasant’s Crusade, looting cities and robbing people was a strong draw to the crusades.

A passage from the Hebrew Chronicle recounted an attack on Jews in Mainz, Germany, where Jewish women would throw coins and silver to buy themselves time to kill their children which prevented forced conversion of their children to Christianity. This recounting was significant in that it showed many on the First Crusade were motivated first by money, because they allowed themselves to be distracted by coins from what should have been the main goal of killing inhabitants not of Christian faith. Money as a motivator was not reserved for commoners and knights on the crusades, but it also applied to religious authority, like Bishop Rothard of Cologne. In the account of Albert of Aachen, Bishop Rothard took a large sum of money from Jewish people in exchange for protection that he never carried through with. This retelling was significant because it showed money was a huge motivator for many people’s actions. To further demonstrate the motivation of money, some in Tancred’s army spared Jewish people who paid enough, and later still killed those people. This mercilessness was still religiously driven but underlying was the desire for money, which crusaders got through bribes and

robbery.
Christians that participated in the First Crusade and those that later recounted the crusade perceived the mass killings of Jewish and Muslim people to be necessary and just because their most holy authority, God, requested his followers to perform the actions they did. The primary motivation for the crusade was not only religious but also monetary because commoners were drawn to the fact that they could be both absolved of all their sins and steal a lot of money. The violence, to those in the crusades, was rational because their religious authorities called for it. People during that time wholly believed what they were doing was right and that was shown in the texts produced afterward.