Nonetheless, the taking of the cross and the reception of a series of blessings in preparation for eventual departure emerged in the period 1100-1300. Taking the cross could come years before setting out to fight, and circumstances might conspire to prevent individual crusaders or groups from ever fulfilling their vows. Marisa Galvez, looking at the contemporary romance literature, has written perceptively about how unrepentance was ‘an idiom in dialogue with the immediate cultural climate of penance and confession’, implying that crusaders had a heightened sense of the corruption that threatened them if their sins went unatoned.
#MEDIEVAL ILLUMINATIONS ONE HANDED SWORD CODE#
None of this is to say that observers and participants were without doubts about the confessional and therefore transformative culture of ‘crusading ethics’, as the historian Jonathan Riley-Smith dubbed the moral code they so carefully articulated. Unlike some aged or ill pilgrims, who chose to travel to Jerusalem to die, few crusaders deliberately sought out death, but they did wish to be prepared in the eyes of God if it came. These gestures also served as elements in the warriors’ purification. These gestures confirmed the potential crusaders’ willingness to go to war, leave their comforts behind and forsake their kinfolk and friends, as well as their hope of returning alive and well. Lastly, they proclaimed aloud, ‘having called together the neighbours’, the wills they had drafted, which specified, in the event of death, arrangements for their heirs and an array of bequests, particularly charity for the poor, sick and other deserving categories of people. Potential crusaders also made sure that their weapons received appropriate blessings. They were to receive the sacrament of confession and to put themselves under the safeguard of a saint or saints to protect them. Far better documented are the rituals accompanying the men’s vows. Women could take the crusader vow, but they typically fulfilled it, in lieu of physical participation, by redemption – monetary contributions in support of the expeditions – though scholars know precious little about the rituals accompanying their gifts. His biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea, claimed that Constantine had looked into the heavens before his decisive victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge ( 28 October 312), which guaranteed the commander’s political ascendancy, and saw a shining cross accompanied by words, which Latin sources, incorporating versions of the story, rendered as ‘ In hoc signo vinces’, ‘In this sign you will conquer.’ Crusaders, men signed with the cross, crucesignati, drew courage from their trust in God’s aid. The symbol evoked the 4th-century Roman ruler and first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great. Their acceptance of the cross also testified to their recognition of its spiritual power and their own sanctification. In public view, and drawing on far older precedents, they voluntarily accepted a cloth cross, which they wore to publicise their vow to fight the armed enemies of the Christian faithful. This essay addresses the roles that they played in making themselves and their weapons worthy of engaging in holy war, and explores the curious relationship between mercy and their weapons, in particular the dagger.Ĭrusaders, a term derived from crux, the Latin word for cross, were men who ‘took the cross’ or, rather, received the sign of the cross. As warriors, the crusaders prepared themselves in carefully orchestrated and choreographed ways before departing Europe and going into battle. The Christian soldiers who fought in these expeditions were both pilgrims and warriors. In time, military campaigns against dissenting Christians and enemies of the political aspirations of the Church in Europe also received papal validation as ‘crusades’, which is to say, as just and holy wars. Christians took up arms with similar justifications elsewhere as well, such as Iberia and the eastern Baltic region. In fact, this situation was what prompted the First Crusade, whose recovery of Jerusalem and establishment of new Christian polities, the Crusader States, made it the most successful of all these wars. Furthermore, they resented the fact that more recently Islamicised Turkic peoples continued to press militarily on the remaining independent realms in the eastern Mediterranean, in particular, the Byzantine Empire, a situation that reached crisis proportions in the late 11th century. The spiritual leaders of the Catholic population, from the popes on down, regarded these expeditions as just and holy wars, in part because they considered the earlier Muslim conquests as unjust incursions into and occupation of Christian lands. From 1096 until 1271, Christians from western Europe waged eight major wars and many smaller military operations in the Near East and North Africa that scholars now call the crusades.
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