Class 17: The Crusades, Part II - Medieval Catholicism
Medieval Catholicism
Class 17: The Crusades, Part II
Understanding the Crusades
 
Anti-Catholics love to brandish their swords, of the Crusades and the Inquisition, in their war against the Church, frequently using the Crusades as a classic example of evil done by organized religion. Today, the typical man on the street whether in Chicago or Cairo, would agree that the Crusades were a treacherous, cynical, and unprovoked attack by Christian (i.e.: Catholic) zealots against a peaceful, prosperous, and progressive Muslim world.However, this was not always the common belief, either in Europe or in the Muslim world. 
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You would have been hard-pressed during the Middle Ages to find a single Christian in Europe who did not believe that the Crusades were an act of the highest moral good, and the Muslims of that time respected Crusader ideals and piety. European attitudes began to change with the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, who had already discarded the Catholic doctrines of papal authority and indulgences, saw the  Crusades as nothing more than the strategy of a power-hungry papacy, and argued that fighting the Muslims was to fight Christ himself, for Christ had sent the Turks to punish Christendom for its faithlessness. Luther changed his mind about the need to fight, when Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his armies began to invade Austria, but he did not retract his condemnation of the Crusades. For two centuries after the Reformation, Protestants continued to demonize the Crusades, while Catholics praised them. Muslims basically saw them as power struggles between ideologies, and were pleased for the most part with their share of the spoils of war; they did not view them as acts of aggression.
 
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The current view of the Crusades arose during the 18th century Enlightenment.  Most of the philosophes, like Voltaire, believed that medieval Christianity was a contemptible superstition, and that the Crusaders were simply barbarian fanatics motivated by greed, and lust. Since that time, this Enlightenment view of the Crusades has gone in and out of fashion. During the Romantic period and the early twentieth century, the Crusades were accepted positively as wars of noble endeavor.  After World War II, however, following the totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, historians found any war of ideology
offensive, and opinion turned once again against the Crusades.  Sir Steven Runciman wrote a three-volume work, A History of the Crusades (1951-54), summarizing the Crusades as morally repugnant acts of intolerance in the name of God, and portrayed the medieval men who took part in them as either evil,  greedy, or naively gullible.  His work was soon considered the erudite standard on the Crusades, and almost single-handedly, Runciman re-defined modern popular opinion of the Crusades.
 
Sir Steven Runciman - SR_obit_pic_220_175_80.jpg 
Since the 1970s, however, there has been increased scholarly interest in the Crusades, resulting in more understanding of these campaigns than ever before, and reversing many of the negative stigmas.   In spite of this, modern elites retain Runciman’s vision of the Crusades, so that modern popular books, movies, and documentaries on the Crusades still tend to follow his negative line of thought.  This claim was made
by Cambridge scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith, PhD, LittD, disgusted by the editing of an interview done by BBC which made him appear to support a view opposing that which he actually holds, and denying his own research!  I'd like you to meet Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, historian of the University of Cambridge, a wise and delightful scholar, and let him explain his views on the Crusades in the following short 5 minute video.  Professor Riley-Smith's books  are some of the best you can find on the Crusades.  An interesting aside is that Professor Riley-Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Grade I Knight of the Order of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, and a member of the Knights of Malta, founded as the Knights Hospitaller in 1099 in Jerusalem.  The Order of St John is Protestant, the Order of Malta is Catholic.  His work is well respected in the secular world, as well as in both Protestant and Catholic circles.
Crusades - Holy Wars?
And here are some thoughts from Real Crusades History:
The Crusades — Were They Christian Versions of Jihad?
The Crusader States
In the wake of the First Crusade, four Christian states were carved from the territory the crusaders had recovered: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, and the County of Tripoli. These states were all governed under a feudal system, and for the most part were models of Medieval administration.  To defend the new states, and the pilgrims that visited them, a new kind of religious order arose, orders of knighthood, such as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Knights Templar. These were groups of knights who took religious vows, accepting a religious rule, as any medieval monastic order, but they also upheld a code of chivalry, and vowed to protect holy places and the pilgrims that visited them.
  
The Crusader States between 1st and 2nd Crusades
By MapMaster - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1622291
 
The relationship between these Crusader States, the Byzantine Empire, and the surrounding Muslim territories was complex.  For a time, the crusader states flourished, and expanded to include coastal cities that were not initially reclaimed. However, the States were vulnerable, being governed by Europeans who were far away from their support base, and surrounded by Muslim forces entirely in easy access of men and supplies.  In 1144, the northern state of Edessa was re-captured by Muslim forces.
 
The Second Crusade (1146-48)
 
In response to the fall of Edessa in 1144, Pope Eugenius III called for a new crusade.  Let's take a moment to meet Pope Eugenius.  Bernardo Pignatelli of Pisa, the Cistercian abbot of Tre Fontane was unanimously elected by the Sacred College of Cardinals to the throne of St Peter, on Feb. 15, 1145, at the site of St. Paul's martyrdom on the Appian Way.  He was enthroned as Eugene III at a time of great turmoil and rebellion in the City of Rome.  Residence in the city was impossible, and the pope and his cardinals fled to city of Viterbo, which had opened its gates to welcome him. Though unable to enter Rome due to the mob, he was assured by embassies from all the European states that he had the sympathy and homage of the entire Christian world.
 
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St. Bernard of Clairvaux (we'll meet him personally later) received the news of the elevation of Pignatelli with surprise and pleasure, as he had been a novice at Clairvaux.  St Bernard wrote his former novice a paternal letter, and later also composed a Handbook for Popes to aid his  admirable student.  Meanwhile in Rome, the palaces of the cardinals and any of the nobility who supported the pope were being razed to the ground;
churches and monasteries were pillaged; and St. Peter's was turned into an arsenal.  Pilgrims were plundered and maltreated.  Rome was out of control.
 
Pope Eugenius crossed the Alps into France, early in 1146.  Edessa had fallen to the Muslims 2 years earlier, and now the Christian principalities in Palestine and Syria were threatened. From France, the Pope addressed a stirring appeal to the nobility of Europe and commissioned St Bernard of Clairvaux to preach the Second Crusade across France and Germany.  The French King, Louis VII, and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, responded immediately, while the King of the Romans (Germany)  Conrad III, required more persuasion, but eventually agreed. The reigning Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I Comnenus claimed to favor the Crusade as well, but did not actually commit troops to the cause.  Within a couple of years two magnificent armies, commanded by the HRE and the King of France, would be on their way to Palestine.
 
St Bernard of Clairvaux by Georg Andreas Wasshuber
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Pope Eugenius spent three busy and fruitful years in France, teaching the Faith, correcting errors and abuses, and maintaining discipline.  He also entered into negotiations with the Orthodox East, hoping for reunion, and while in France, held several synods dealing with the conduct of the clergy.  The Pope’s prolonged stay in France was of great benefit to the French Church in many ways, and also enhanced the prestige of the papacy. He encouraged the new intellectual movement propelled by Peter Lombard, leading to the rise of the universities, and encouraged Gratian in compiling the  the Decretals (a code of Canon Law).
Vezelay - from which most of the members of the Third Crusade set out
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Initially, the Second Crusade did not generate the same kind of enthusiasm as the First had done.  Part of the reason for this was that Jerusalem itself was still in Christian hands (though one of the Crusader States, Edessa, had fallen). That attitude changed with the preaching of St. Bernard of   Clairvaux.  Soon, crusading fever swept across England, France, Germany, and the Low Countries, like wildfire.  Many great nobles and princes along with thousands of knights, flocked to “take the cross,” making a solemn vow that they would undertake the long and demanding pilgrimage to forcibly evict the Saracens (Muslims) from the holy city of Jerusalem.  Stories were rampant about the savage and sacrilegious nature of the Saracens; for example, they were accused of allowing their horses to defecate in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At one event, Bernard's preaching was so effective, it was reported that the supply of crosses prepared for those who volunteered to become Crusaders was exhausted.  Bernard ended up tearing his own outer garment into crosses as badges for the knights.  Sadly, passionate sermons preached to increase crusader zeal, occasionally led to  persecution of Jews as it had during the First Crusade, as some failed to distinguish between one non-believer in Christ and another.
Conrad III, King of the Romans, heard St Bernard preach the Second Crusade at Speyer, and he agreed to join Louis VII, King of France, with whom he had previously been at war, in the great pilgrimage expedition to the Holy Land.  (Point of interest: Conrad was the grandson of HRE Henry IV, who had knelt in the snow at Canossa, begging Pope Gregory VII for absolution.)  With him, he took his nephew Frederick Barbarossa (red beard).  The Second Crusade was the first of the crusades to be led by European kings. The armies of the two kings, Conrad and Louis VII of France, marched separately across Europe, and after crossing Byzantine territory into Anatolia, were each defeated separately by the Turks.  
Conrad III of Germany - from a medieval manuscript
Contemporary Christian sources from Medieval times, claim that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos hindered the crusaders' progress, especially in Anatolia, where he allegedly ordered Turks to attack them.  Such opposition as this from the Byzantines would ultimately have an effect on some of the decisions made during the Fourth Crusade, and though those decisions cannot be condoned, they become easier to understand in light of the lack of full support from the Byzantine emperor, at whose request the Crusaders were even in the eastern lands to begin with!  When they were unable to reach Edessa, the crusaders concentrated on taking Damascus, but turmoil and treachery among the forces forced them to retreat.  Only small remnants of the armies ever entered Jerusalem.
Manuel I Komnenos
 
Map of the Second Crusade - http://juthcrusades.wikispaces.com/Maps+of+the+crusades
 The story of the Second Crusade is usually told as that of a failed Crusade.  However, there were also successes.  The main Christian success story of the Second Crusade was that of a combined force of 13,000 Flemish, Frisian, Norman, English, Scottish, and German crusaders, who in 1147, while traveling by ship from England to the Holy Land, stopped and aided the Portuguese army in the capture of Lisbon, expelling its Moorish occupants as part of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula.
 
The Siege of Lisbon by D. Afonso Henriques - the Muslim surrender - by Joaquim Rodrigues Braga 
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The overall failure of the Second Crusade was seriously discouraging for the West, and convinced many in Europe that the Byzantine Empire was actually an obstacle to such a venture (more about that in the story of the 4th Crusade).  The failure of the Crusade  significantly boosted morale for the Muslim forces, after partially redeeming the defeats they had suffered in the First Crusade.  The position of the Crusader States was weakened, and in the coming years, they found themselves completely encircled.  Though for a time there was a truce with the Muslim commander, Saladin, the truce was broken in 1187, when during a crisis over succession in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Muslim caravan was attacked, and Saladin responded by declaring a jihad. The Latin forces suffered a humiliating defeat at the Horns of Hattin (a geological formation resembling two horns on the crest of a ridge), and Saladin subsequently took Tiberias and the port city of Acre before turning to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem fell on October 2, and by 1189, few cities in the crusader states were still under Christian control.  The fall of the Crusader States and especially of Jerusalem would be the cause of the Third Crusade.
Overview of the Second Crusade
Other Second Crusade videos from Real Crusades History:
 
The Third Crusade (1188-92)
 
The story is told that Pope Urban III collapsed and died in October 1187 when he heard the news that the Jerusalem had fallen to the Muslims, but his short-lived successor, Gregory VIII, and then Clement III, called for a new crusade to reclaim the Holy land for Christianity.  Unfortunately, the untimely deaths of the kings who initially committed to lead the Crusade, cast a shadow over the entire venture which was never entirely relieved. 
 
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William II of Sicily (Norman) was the first king to respond, sending a fleet East in 1189, but he died late in the year.  Henry II of England also agreed to participate, and raised an enormous amount of funds for the cause through his so-called Saladin tax, but died the same year. The German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of 25 had accompanied his uncle Conrad III on the Second Crusade. After Conrad's death, he had assumed the title and status of the Holy Roman Emperor, which had more or less lain dormant since the days of Henry IV and Henry V.  He had also renewed the old struggle between Pope and Emperor till it was strained to the breaking point while Alexander III was Pope, and also with Urban III.  
  
Henry II of England
Below: Frederick Barbarossa
submits to the authority of Pope Alexander III after his defeat at the Battle of Legnano (fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, by Spinelli Aretino
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Eventually, following a disastrous defeat in Italy, when one of his allies did not come to his aid, Frederick was forced to humble himself and negotiate a truce with the Papacy. (Although he did manage to marry his son Henry (VI) to Constance of Sicily against Pope Urban III's objections, and the son of that marriage, Frederick II, would become a serious thorn in the flesh for the Papacy).   But for now, having reconciled with the Church, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to  participate in the Third Crusade, and leading a large army, defeated a Seljuk force in Anatolia in May 1190.  The following month, however, while the now elderly Emperor was crossing a river on a scouting expedition, his horse slipped, throwing him against the rocks.  He drowned trying to swim out of the river.  The death of their emperor, meant that most of the dispirited German army departed for Europe at this point, in view of the upcoming Imperial Election.  Only about 5,000 remaining German knights under Leopold V, Duke of Austria, pushed on to the Holy Land.
 
Map of the Third Crusade - http://juthcrusades.wikispaces.com/Maps+of+the+crusades
The two kings who in the end actually led the Crusade were the calculating Philip II Augustus of France, and the valiant and colorful Richard I Lion-Heart of England, the son and successor of Henry II.  Henry II of England had possessions in France and Normandy of his own (remember that the English kings are still Norman descendants at this point), as well as through his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. (As an interesting aside, Eleanor, who had gone on the Second Crusade, had previously been married to Louis VII, king of France, but following the doomed Second Crusade went through a divorce.  It was styled as an annulment due to consanguinity, because Eleanor and Louis were related in the 4th degree.  However, she almost immediately married Henry II of England, and they were related in the 3rd degree!)
Left: Philip II Augustus - France
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En route to the Holy Land, Richard I stopped on the island of Cyprus, where he was attacked by the Byzantine prince Isaac Comnenus. Earlier, a ship carrying Richard's fiancee and his sister, had been shipwrecked on the island, and the two women were taken prisoner by Isaac Comnenus.  This Isaac was the son of former Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus, and the brother of the currently reigning Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I Comnenus (who had hindered the armies of the West in Asia Minor during the Second Crusade).  Isaac had come to power in Cyprus through deception and forgery, and proved to be an irascible tyrant, accused of extreme cruelty, raping women and defiling virgins, and plundering the possessions of the Cypriots. He was a notoriously angry man and hated by his subjects, but had managed to stay in power through strategic alliances with William II of Sicily and the Muslim sultan, Saladin.  
Richard the Lionheart by Merry-Joseph Blondel 
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However, Isaac more than met his match in King Richard I, who defeated the prince and took control of the island before sailing for the port city of Acre.  Cyprus would later prove to be an extremely important and strategic possession of the West for centuries to come.  Acre was under attack at the time by the crusader forces under Phillip II of France, who were besieging the city.  In turn there was a second Muslim army besieging the besiegers, and Phillip's knights were caught between the walls of Acre and the 2nd Muslim army.  Reinforced by the arriving troops of Richard I,  the Crusaders were victorious, and the Muslims defeated.  Philip II then considered his crusader vow fulfilled, and along with the successor of  Frederick Barbarossa, left the Holy Land in August 1191 for France.  
King Richard wanted to press forward to Jerusalem, and did succeed in reclaiming several cities, including Jaffa, but ultimately was unable to reach the Holy City. Overall, the relations between Richard I and Saladin were unusually cordial, and the two men had considerable respect for one another.  Saladin agreed to an exchange of prisoners and the return of the relic of the True Cross, but this arrangement fell apart when Richard disagreed with the selection of returning prisoners, and eventually ordered the execution of his Muslim captives and their families, in order to move on to Jerusalem unencumbered.  Eventually, however, on September 2,1192, King Richard I and Saladin finalized a 5-year peace treaty that allowed for Muslim control of Jerusalem but gave unarmed Christian pilgrims and merchants visitation rights to the city. Richard left the Holy Land on October 2, 1192. The Third Crusade succeeded in maintaining Christian holdings in the Holy Land, though reduced to a small kingdom composed largely of port cities along the Syrian coast, and the island of Cyprus, but the failure to recapture Jerusalem ultimately led to the calling of the Fourth Crusade.
 
We will pick up the story of the 4th Crusade in the next lesson, but first we must explore some of the myths and misconceptions about the Crusades.  Videos pertaining to the Third Crusade and other topics of interest related to the Crusades are below and at the bottom of the page.
Videos From Real Crusades History:
Concise Overview of the Third Crusade
Myths and Misconceptions about the Crusades
Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. 
We saw in the animated map of jihad over the centuries, that there were many, many wars of aggression by the Muslims, the majority of them fought in lands that were initially Christian.  It was centuries before the Christian world mounted a concerted effort to respond to that aggression, and no Christian army ever initiated a war of aggression on Muslim lands where there had not been a prior Christian society.  So the Muslims were not peaceful prior to the Crusades, and even they did not see the Crusades, at the time, as an act of unprovoked aggression by Christian forces.  Medieval Christians believed the First Crusade to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Eastern Christians from their Muslim conquerors. The Crusades were from the beginning a response to Muslim aggression, and in light of the few Crusades, relative to the enormity of jihad, the wonder is that the Crusades were so long in coming.  Watch the animated map of the Crusades below and note just how few battles there were in the entire scope of the Crusades.
Animated timeline of the battles of the Crusades
Myth 2:  There were Crusades waged against the Jews
No pope ever called a Crusade against Jews. Indeed, Pope Urban II and his successors strongly condemned any violence against Jews. Many local bishops and other clergy, as well as laity, attempted to defend the Jews, although they met with limited success when emotions were running high among theperpetrators.  Did Catholics commit these crimes against Jews?  Actually, yes.  Pretty much everyone was Catholic at the time, and there were definitely some bad apples in the Catholic barrel.  
 
 
Periodically, throughout the medieval period, there had been outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Europe, and these had to be addressed repeatedly by the Papacy and/or the bishops.  Jews were often perceived as much an enemy as Muslims, since they were believed by some to be responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, and they were more immediately accessible than the distant Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel thousands of miles to fight non-believers when there were non-believers practically next door.  Even the leader of the First Crusader army in Germany, Godrey of Boullion, swore, " to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood, and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name 'Jew.' "  Godfrey later stated he never really intended to kill Jews and did not commit any crimes against them, however, HRE Henry IV was concerned enough to issue an order of prohibition, and Godfrey was known to accept a large bribe from the Jews of Mainz.  
 
Were there Catholics who persecuted Jews in the excitement over Crusading?  Yes.
Did the Catholic Papacy and hierarchy call for a Crusade against the Jews?  No.
Did the Catholic Papacy and hierarchy repeatedly denounce and attempt to control such persecution? Yes.
Did Catholics bishops and laity risk their lives to hide Jews and protect them from violence?  Yes.
Did Catholic rulers condemn and prohibit persecution of Jews?  Repeatedly.
Did the Church encourage persecution of the Jews?  NEVER. 
 
This is the important take-home message to retain.  While there were some Catholics guilty of crimes against Jews, there was never a Crusade against Jews that was instigated by the Church or by her hierarchy ( although there were a couple of misguided, renegade priests).  Indeed, it was just the opposite, with many more Catholics, laity, bishops, and popes who aggressively tried to control such behavior, sometimes to the risk of their own lives and property.  Such misfires of the crusading movement were an unfortunate byproduct of Crusade enthusiasm, but they were never the purpose of the Crusades. As a  modern analogy, during the Second World War some American soldiers committed crimes while overseas, and they were arrested and punished for those crimes. However, it would be ridiculous to say that the purpose of the World War was to commit crimes, or that America committed the crimes.  No, it would be much more accurate to say that some renegade members of society in both the case of WWII and in that of the Crusades, who committed crimes.
Myth 3: When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, every man, woman, and child in the city was slaughtered until the streets ran ankle (knee) deep with blood.  
http://www.agiasofia.com/greek/baldwin_edessa_1098.jpg
This myth is used to demonstrate the evil nature of the Crusades.  While it is true that many people in Jerusalem were killed after the Crusader capture of the city, this should be understood in historical context.  In all pre-modern European and Asian civilizations, a city that resisted capture in a siege, and was later taken by force, belonged to the conquering army, all buildings and goods, and people as well. Every city or fortress had to weigh carefully whether it could successfully hold out in a siege, and it was wise to negotiate terms of surrender if the chances of success were slim. 
 
In 1099, the defenders of Jerusalem resisted right to the end. They trusted that the formidable walls of the city would repel the Crusaders until relief troops from Egypt could arrive. But they were wrong, and when the city fell,  it was justifiably put to the sack, both from the view of the Muslims and the individual crusaders as well.  (Although many of the leaders and especially those like Bishop Ahdmar attempted to teach the crusaders a more Christian view of siege.)  It is true that many were killed, but many more were ransomed or released. By modern standards it may seem brutal, but this was the accepted moral standard of the time, and a medieval warrior could certainly point out that many more innocent men, women, and children are killed in modern warfare during bombing, than could possibly be killed by the sword in a couple of days. Of note, Muslim cities which surrendered to the Crusaders were left unmolested, the people retained their property, and were allowed to worship freely.  
 
At the fall of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the Christian leaders attempted to hold the soldiers back, but failed, leading to widespread killing of the inhabitants during the sack of the city .  A similar situation happened during the Third Crusade, when Saladin was unable to restrain his troops, and there was widespread slaughter by Muslims at Jaffa (Joppa).  One last point — think about the amount of blood that would have been required, in a big city like Jerusalem, for a 3 inch depth (ankle-deep) to have filed the streets.  There simply were not enough people living in the entire region, much less in the city alone, for this to have occurred.  This is simply an example of a literary convention known as hyperbole, but it has been repeated so often that people often take it as fact.  
Crusaders at Jerusalem
http://www.agiasofia.com/greek/croisade_first_jerusalem.jpg
Myth 4: The Crusaders were mainly interested in capturing loot and acquiring land. Their piety was really just a convenient cover-up for their greed. 
The reality was, that Crusading was very expensive.  We think today of governments paying the expenses and wages of soldiers, but in Medieval times, the nobility had to pay their own way, as well as that of their knights.  Let's look for example at Godfrey of Boullion, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who was a very pious man.  He still had a serious streak of wild barbarian Teutonic blood, but he was also a devout Christian, and loved the Lord.  (All the inconsistencies in how to behave as a Christian noble were not yet well worked out in the Europe of the 11th century, although through the course of the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Code of Chivalry was defined, and came to govern the thought, expectations, and conduct of at least the upper classes.)  Godfrey took out loans on most of his lands, or sold them to the bishop of Liège and the bishop of Verdun, and with this money he gathered thousands of knights to fight in the Holy Land.  He was serious about fighting this battle for the Lord, and he left for the Holy Land, knowing full well he might never return.  
One of the by-products of the Crusades was the Code of Chivalry.  There was a growing awareness that a Christian should be expected to adhere to an ethical standard in spite of the grim reality of war.  The Code of Chivalry was one of the glories of the Medieval period, as it codified Christian conduct that would guide, first the upper classes, and finally the ethical standard of all Christendom.
It was once thought that a rising European population led to a crisis of too many noble "second sons," trained in chivalric warfare but without feudal lands to inherit, so that the Crusades served as a safety valve, sending these belligerent men away from Europe to carve out kingdoms for themselves at the expense of innocent Muslims. However, modern scholarship, aided by computer databases, has shown that actually, it was the "first sons" of Europe that answered the call of the popes in all of the Crusades, those who were willing to put their own lands and inheritances at risk.  (Today political elites are all too willing to put the resources of others at risk through taxation, but rarely are they willing to place their own holdings at stake!)  Crusading was enormously expensive. Nobles had to sell or mortgage their lands to gather the necessary funds. And time and again, most of them showed that they had no interest in an overseas kingdom. Not unlike a modern soldier, the medieval Crusader was proud to do his duty, but eager to return home. Even after the spectacular success of the First Crusade, with Jerusalem and much of the Holy Land under Crusader control, virtually all of the Crusaders went home. Only a tiny handful remained behind to consolidate and govern the newly won territories. Booty was also scarce. In fact, although there were Crusaders who no doubt dreamed of vast wealth in opulent Eastern cities, virtually none of them ever even recouped their expenses. But money and land were not the reasons that they went on Crusade in the first place. They went to atone for their sins, and to cooperate in their salvation by doing good works in a faraway land, that had been consecrated by the associations with the life of Our Lord.
 
The financial risk become more serious as the years of the Crusades  went forward. For example, the King of France, Louis IX’s seventh Crusade, in the middle of the thirteenth century, cost more than six times the annual revenue of the French crown.  In short, the money flow was primarily West to East, not East to West. For many, the Crusades led to bankruptcy rather than wealth, one of the reasons why abuse of indulgences eventually occurred. The Crusades might be criticized for various reasons, but to say that those who “took up the cross” were greedy opportunists is quite simply an "indulgence" of a different kind, one in revisionist history.