For decades various historians, especially those of Marxist orientation, have insisted on presenting the Crusades as the fruit exclusively of material factors.
Only greed and the desire to obtain lands, they claim, would have moved the crusaders to leave western Europe and set out for the Holy Land; but, despite how deeply rooted this idea is, were the Crusades the fruit of a simple material interest? Marxist historiography, and that which, without being Marxist, is heavily influenced by its assumptions, has insisted for decades on the merely material character of the Crusades. According, for example, to Mikhail Zaborov’s History of the Crusades, the crusaders went to the Near East only because they wanted to obtain economic benefits which, fundamentally, would be translated into possession of lands and an increase in material well-being. In other words, the crusade was no more than a violent emigration driven by merely pecuniary causes. The spiritual element simply provided the cover, quite ridiculous moreover, for such an adventure of looting and pillage.
Zaborov’s point of view, so often repeated afterward, was especially attractive insofar as it allowed one to discredit an enterprise of avowedly spiritual character and, at the same time, to offer an example of how this kind of phenomenon could be explained by appealing solely to economistic arguments. However, like so many explanations of this kind, despite how handy and instrumental its formulation may be, it does not withstand even a minimally solid analysis of the documentation available to us. In the first place, what emerges from the sources of the time is that going on crusade did not imply an economic incentive, but rather an enormous monetary sacrifice that could only be undertaken by someone convinced that the reward would be more solid than a piece of land or a bag of coins. In this regard the documents could not be clearer. A German knight who was summoned to serve the emperor in those years, in a place as nearby as Germany, spent, on travel and equipment alone, the equivalent of two years of his income. For a Frenchman, traveling to the Holy Land involved expenses that could amount to five times his annual income. Therefore, as a first step, they had to go heavily into debt in order to join the crusade. In quite a few cases they even lost everything they had in order to take part in the undertaking.
It is no less curious that Henry IV of Germany, in a letter, referred to Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne, both leaders of the First Crusade, as persons who, “caught up by the hope of an eternal inheritance and by love, prepared to go and fight for God in Jerusalem and sold and left all their possessions.” Their case, of course, was not exceptional. In fact, the Pope and the bishops gathered at the Council of Clermont drew up legislation imposing the penalty of excommunication on those who took advantage of these circumstances to strip crusader knights of their properties by means of usurious interest or heavy mortgages. The list of knights who went extraordinarily into debt in order to go, for example, on the First Crusade is enormous and shows that this was the general trend.
Nor was ecclesial support lacking in economic terms. For example, the bishop of Liège obtained funds to help the ruined Godfrey of Bouillon by stripping the reliquaries of his cathedral and removing the jewels from the churches of his diocese. Perhaps all this could be interpreted as a risky investment — and how risky! — that would be compensated by the lands the crusaders conquered in the East. However, that analysis also does not withstand confrontation with the documents. It is true that during the First Crusade a remarkably small number of knights chose to remain in the lands taken from the Muslims. Nevertheless, apart from these exceptions, the overwhelming majority of the crusaders returned to Europe. After, in the course of the First Crusade, the capture of Jerusalem and the victory over an Egyptian army (on August 12, 1099), practically all returned to their homes without goods and with debts, but apparently with a deep sense of pride in the feat they had accomplished. In fact, to defend the Holy Places it became necessary to organize the existence of military orders, first the Knights Hospitaller and later the Templars. The economic situation in the subsequent crusades was no better.
Once again the spiritual factor proved decisive and, precisely in order to pay the enormous expenses of an enterprise that fell upon the pilgrims — for that is how its participants were regarded, since the term crusaders is later — monarchs resorted to special taxes or to loans granted to the crown. Time after time, the possibility of remaining in the Holy Land, if anyone even considered it, proved impossible; but this did not discourage later participants over no less than two centuries. Certainly, we cannot have an excessively idealized image of the Crusades, nor can we deny that their model of spirituality often chills our contemporary sensibility more than it inspires enthusiasm. Despite everything, there is one fact that cannot be denied, not least because it is corroborated by thousands of documents.
Regardless of the greater or lesser human and spiritual stature of the participants, their impulse was fundamentally spiritual. Moved by the desire to guarantee pilgrims free access to the Holy Places and to gain heaven, they abandoned everything they had and launched themselves into an adventure in which not a few not only ruined themselves but even met death — an example, incidentally, that did not dissuade others from following it over the course of two centuries. It was not, therefore, a material movement disguised as spirituality, but a colossal impulse with spiritual roots which, despite its enormous defects, had no hesitation in facing considerable material risks and losses.
Author: César Vidal
Source: Conoze.com
