Craft Of Histoy Analysis

Craft of Histoy

Over the course of the last sixty years, The Crusades have been a topic of passionate scholarly debate and investigation. Often considered to be one of the most unique movements in human history, The Crusades have been marveled by historians and readers alike. While scholarly enthusiasm for The Crusades was certainly not deficient throughout the latter half of the 20th century, interest in The Crusades has increased considerably within the last decade following the September 11th attacks in 2001. Post 9/11, thousands of scholarly articles and books probing and challenging the scholarship of The Crusades have been issued. For example, historical author Karen Armstrong, re-issues her book Holy War whenever a potential conflict
in the Middle East is reported. After the 9/11 attacks, Armstrong re-issued her book with a new introduction within months of the attack.1 Parallel to fields of study that involve war and religion, interest in The Crusades increases largely at the start of religious conflicts. Recently, the scholarship on the crusades has changed dramatically as historians have begun to challenge the ideas presented by the seminal monograph in the field written by Steven Runciman in 1951: A History of the Crusades. Runciman’s monograph is arguably the most widely acclaimed and well known work on The Crusades; naturally, the monograph is cited universally in the footnotes of modern monographs on the subject and is used as a bench-mark of comparison for other works on The Crusades. A History of the Crusades presents the predictable view point of The Crusades: a vicious series of wars orchestrated by restless land-hungry crusaders against a peaceful and thriving Muslim society. Within the monograph, Runciman traces the complete history of The Crusades while focusing on its conflicts and antecedents. In contrast to recent scholarly works on The Crusades, Runciman views the crusaders with much skepticism. A History of the Crusade shies away from a romantic portrayal Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont and the recapturing of Jerusalem that authors on the subject adopted prior to the issuance of the monograph. Several decades later during the height of the United States’ involvement in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, interest in the Crusade spiked as new scholars began to challenge the ideas presented by the classic works of the past. In 1986, acclaimed crusade historian Johnathan Riley-Smith released a monograph entitled: The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. Building off the works of his influential predecessors (Carl Erdmann specifically), Riley-Smith’s monograph focuses on the evolution of the idea of the crusade that was formally presented by Pope Urban II in 1095. He traces the idea of the crusade from Pope Urban to the personal accounts of the crusaders at the war’s conclusion. The influence Riley-Smith and Runciman’s seminal monographs was certainly apparent in the series of monographs released by crusade historians following the 9/11 attacks. Among the excess of works analyzing The Crusades released during the 21st century was The First Crusade: A New History, a monograph issued in 2004 by Thomas Asbridge. Asbridge’s monograph challenges many of the claims presented by his predecessors and is representative of the new research available to historians recently. He denies that the crusaders themselves were highly influenced by colonialism and refutes that The Crusade army was not as factitious as it was portrayed by past historians. To enforce his claims, Asbridge uses a wide variety of sources including paintings, photographs, and maps that reflect the modern characteristic of his writing style. The progression of thought on The Crusades reflects the exposure to new research for historians over time and the pertinent events that influenced the writing of each monograph respectively. In reference to the first published volume of A History of the Crusades (1951), Runciman described his attitude towards writing as, “one pen against the massed typewriters of the United States.” 2 Considering this sentiment, one could expect vivid storytelling and narrative from Runciman throughout his most acclaimed work: A History of the Crusades. In the 1950s, Runciman’s exceptional synthesis of narrative and centuries of Crusade history enthralled readers and succeeded tremendously at presenting an accessible history of The Crusades to a popular audience. The popular appeal of the book undoubtedly helped the book to flourish in the mainstream literary world; its accessibility played a role in the acceptance of Runciman’s skeptical and overtly negative portrayal of the Crusaders within the text in the 1950s. In regards to the scholarship of The Crusades, the opinions of historians vary the most within the perception of the general social status of the Crusaders. Opinions also sharply contrast within the perception of the Crusaders’ motivations to migrate east and participate in The Crusades. Runciman describes in the second book of the monograph that one of the primary motivations for The Crusaders was the possession of potentially conquered land in the east.3 Runciman argues that The Crusaders might, “take possession of the lands that they reconquered,” and receive “spiritual benefits,” for their service. Runciman notes he is uncertain of the exact benefits that The Crusaders would receive: modern historians such as Thomas Asbridge and Christopher Tyerman have written extensively on the topic and (the authors of The First Crusade: A New History and Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades respectively) now have a clearer understanding of the promised benefits. Here, Runciman describes a situation parallel to that of nineteenth century colonialism. Judging from the opinion of modern historians, Thomas F. Madden for example, the validity of Runciman’s claim is still under dispute.4 The acquisition of land in the east may not have been an accurate motivation for medieval crusaders: the claim reflects the lack of research on the status of The Crusaders at the time of the monograph’s issuance. In the same chapter as the aforementioned argument, Runciman makes another claim that has been disputed recently by modern historians. He argues at the time of Pope Urban II’s call for The Crusade, Western Christendom housed an excess of trained, restless warriors that sought to seek territory in the Middle East to occupy themselves. To end and prevent further quarrels amongst themselves, able-bodied Christian knights and soldiers were, “encouraged by the authorities of the Church to leave their petty quarrels,” and travel to the, “frontiers of Christendom to fight against the infidels.”5 Generally, A History of the Crusades portrays crusaders as land-seeking Christians searching for an opportunity to fight in the name of Christianity. Runciman cites flood, pestilence, drought, and famine as motivations for emigration in the form of The Crusades.6 It is unlikely that crusaders would have left their homes in the west for monetary purposes nor for coloniastic-desires due to the relatively high cost of crusading. Runciman does not take in account the costly nature of crusading, again, his sentiment reflects the absence of new research in the 1950s. Runciman’s skeptical view of The Crusaders and the church at the time of The Crusade is manifest in his description of Pope Urban II’s call to action at the Council of Clermont. Over the course of history, historians have written lengthily on Urban’s intentions at Clermont. Throughout the monograph, Runciman refers to the Council of Clermont as Urban’s “scheme”.7 At Clermont, Urban gave an impassioned sermon that called for a military response to the Byzantine Empire’s request for aid. Although an exact copy of Urban’s speech at Clermont in 1095 does not exist, it is commonly known that he presented the idea of a crusade as a Christian duty, a pious act that could constitute a repentance of prior sins. In his description of Urban’s speech, Runciman explains that the Byzantine Empire was not in as great of need as Urban had preached. While Urban preached about the ailing condition of the Christians in the East, the Byzantine Empire was not at a significant risk. By 1096, the country was experiencing a repose.8 Runciman succinctly discredits the notion that the Byzantine Empire was threatened and exposes it as a pretense:
“The appeal to Christian duty made a stronger argument. It was not the moment for an exact appraisal of Byzantine achievements and intentions. But let the bishops return to their homes believing that the safety of Christendom still was threatened, and they would be eager to send members of their flock eastward to fight in the Christian Army.” 9
In the 1950s, Runciman’s discussion of Urban’s questionable and morally ambiguous actions and intentions at the Council of Clermont was likely a startling discovery for most readers of history. There were not many books prior to A History of the Crusade that dared to portray Pope Urban II and the crusaders as a whole in a negative light. For the monograph, Runciman researched a substantial amount of Middle Eastern sources which undoubtedly influenced the scope of his writing. The wide variety of sources found in the bibliography reflect the non-traditional point of view utilized by Runciman within his delineation of The Crusades. While some details of Runciman’s monograph have been challenged recently by modern historians, his portrayal of Pope Urban II as the clear majority of his arguments remain accepted. The enduring quality of A History of the Crusade speaks volumes about the monograph’s importance to the study of The Crusades. In the 1980s, interest in the crusade spiked as the United States found itself amidst a major nuclear crisis with the Soviet Union. Crusade historians hurried to release and re-issue their works (historians responded similarly to the 9/11 attacks) as the United States was experiencing its greatest threat to peace since the Second World War. Johnathan Riley-Smith, one of the most widely acclaimed crusade historians, worked hastily to join the trend. Riley-Smith released nine full length books on the crusades throughout the 1980s to 1990s, one of which included the 1986 monograph The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. The monograph has been deemed a classic in the field: its notability mirrors that of Steven Runciman’s A History of the Crusade. In contrast to the popular opinion of The Crusades and other books of the like at the time of the monograph’s issuance, Riley-Smith focuses on the evolution of the crusading idea throughout the entirety of The First Crusade. Riley-Smith admits in his introduction that many crusade historians (he uses Carl Erdmann for example) concentrate too much on, “the background to the crusade, not the crusade itself,” and as a result, “the course of the subsequent discussion of the sources for it and the spate of commentaries that followed it have been neglected.”10 With strong conviction to construct a complete history of The First Crusade that would benefit from the mistakes of historians in the past, Riley-Smith wrote a highly influential monograph that presented informed analyses and a unique assessment of The First Crusade. In his discussion of Pope Urban II’s idea of crusading: a crusade concept that yields polarizing opinions among historians, Riley-Smith boldly claims that Urban’s idea was not as unique as it was portrayed by his predecessors. He argues that, “Urban’s original message was conventional in the sense that it was not unlike many put forward by Church reformers at the time.11 To justify this claim, Riley-Smith examined the ideas of medieval Church reformers with the context of The First Crusade in mind, using primary sources similar to the sources cited by Carl Erdmann. Considering the positive response from the laity, the Church’s desire to control Jerusalem, and the circumstance that popular opinion was beginning to side with Urban, Riley-Smith asserts that The Crusade was a relatively conventional concept.12 Following this argument, he introduces another new impression that challenged the commonly accepted perception of the crusading idea: “The concepts to which Urban gave impression, moreover, were transformed by the dreadful experiences of the army on the march and the euphoria that followed the liberation of Jerusalem into a new association of ideas, crude and semi-popular, which found its way into the narrative accounts of eyewitnesses.”13 Here, Riley-Smith argues that the concepts of The Crusade were influenced by the circumstances of The Crusade itself and were not entirely the projection of Urban’s ideas. Logically, this argument varies considerably from the arguments employed by the preceding classic crusade historians, Steven Runciman and Carl Erdmann for example (both failed to integrate the change of the crusading idea to the same extent as Riley-Smith). With exposure to a wider range of research: a variety of European chronicles and charter collections, Riley-Smith synthesized a history of The Crusade that elucidated new information on the subject to a popular audience while subsequently influencing the scholarship on The Crusades. Medieval history scholar Thomas Asbridge released his most acclaimed work The First Crusade: A New History in 2004; the monograph was among the new wave of histories written on the crusade post 9/11.
Thomas Asbridge like other notable historians such as Christopher Tyerman and Johnathan Phillips (two other crusade historians who released books around the same time as Asbridge), sought to bring decades of recent scholarship and research to a popular audience.14 While Asbridge was critical of Pope Urban II and the agenda of The Crusaders, his analysis of The Crusade was not as pessimistic as many of the influential works of the past had been. Throughout the monograph, Asbridge shares new research and insight into The Crusades while simultaneously describing the points at which scholarly debates exist within the history. The First Crusade: A New History focuses heavily on the analysis of Pope Urban II, an integral character in the story of The Crusade. In his discussion of Pope Urban II’s intentions at the Council of Clermont, Asbridge argues that the call for a crusade was proactive rather than reactive: a relatively uncommon opinion within popular histories of The Crusade.15 Asbridge denies the existence of a critical schism between Islam and Christendom: an apparent pretense to the First Crusade: “The image of Muslims as brutal oppressors conjured by Pope Urban was pure propaganda- if anything, Islam had proved over the preceding centuries to be more tolerant of other religions than Catholic Christendom.”16 In acute contrast to the notion that The Crusades were launched in defense to the expansion of Islam in the east: an opinion held by leading crusade historian Thomas F. Madden,17 Asbridge notes that, “The reality was that, when Pope Urban proclaimed the first crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christendom had coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity.”18 In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, a period of intense cultural change; this
considerate sentiment towards Muslim society was to be expected. Unlike histories of the past that fixed the blame for the atrocities committed during The Crusades away from the crusaders themselves, recent scholarship relies more on definitive research than biased speculation. In his discourse on the origins of The Crusades, Asbridge illustrates the post 9/11 scholarship that suggests that the motivations for the crusaders might have been virtuous. He cites piety, Christian duty, and devotion as motivations.19 To readers, Asbridge’s portrayal of the crusaders makes them seem to be justifiable for their actions: a portrayal that has not been universally accepted by all scholars. In her joint review of Thomas Asbridge’s The First Crusade: A New History and Christopher Tyerman’s Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades, New Yorker reviewer Joan Acocella remarks that, “The insistence on the Crusaders’ sense of religious duty, as opposed to bloodlust and greed, comes across as a justification,” she then acknowledges, “There is a curious amorality here. It may be endemic to military history…Still it is strange.”20 Asbridge’s claim is not putative however, it has a basis in new research. In the first chapter of his monograph, Asbridge defends Pope Urban II by stating, “The crusade was not launched as an evangelical enterprise to bring about the conversion of Muslims, forced or voluntary, but to protect and recover Christian territory.”21 While most historians are quick to besmirch Urban and the intentions of The Crusade in general, Asbridge recognizes and develops a point of view that conflicts with the preceding scholarship on The Crusade. His writing may not add tremendously to the public’s knowledge of The Crusade, but the contrasting depictions he exhibits within the monograph allow for the extension of new research and interest into unfamiliar components of The Crusade. Asbridge’s history indicates a shift of opinion in the academy of crusade historians: away from the hive mentality of opinion produced by the most popular monographs in the field. To supplement his comprehensive descriptions of landscapes, fortifications, and battles, Asbridge employs a variety of visual aids: an aspect of The First Crusade: A New History that is uncommon to other monographs of its kind. Throughout the monograph, there are maps, paintings, as well as photographs that enhance the reader’s understanding of The Crusades. In some cases, Asbridge utilizes the visual aids in tandem with new research to justify his claims. Divergent to popular opinion, Asbridge argues that the internal structure of The Crusades was not as fractitious as it was portrayed to be by most historians; in consideration of recent newfound information about the leadership, weapons used by the soldiers, and conditions of the crusading armies.22 In the conclusion of his monograph, Asbridge comments on the success of the crusaders by stating that, “The expedition was not quite the ramshackle venture we once imagined.”23 He additionally comments, “its communal approach to leadership actually worked,” and that it “functioned with remarkable efficiency,” despite dire military threats and internal difficulties.24 Naturally, Asbridge’s exposure to a greater volume of information and opinion than his predecessors allows him to make knowledgeable claims about The Crusades and construct a more informed monograph than those in the past. With new research and the classics of former times in mind, Asbridge is capable of shifting the tide of scholarship and adding to the public knowledge of The Crusades. The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks marked a period of intense change for the scholarship of The Crusades. In contrary to what one might expect, The Crusades scholarly progression was hardly linear. Due to the inherent qualities of the story of The First Crusade, public interest in The Crusade only increased due to circumstance: The Cold War and the 9/11 attacks for example. Throughout the decades between the major events that influenced public interest in The Crusades, only a marginal amount of works reached the general audience leaving authors on the subject with little desire to release their books.25 As a result of this circumstance, the scholarship on The Crusades has been influenced tremendously by a small number of classic monographs. Thomas Albridge’s The First Crusade: A New History sought to correct the scholarship on The Crusades that had experienced little change within the general population since Thomas Runciman’s A History of the Crusades. While Riley-Smith attempted to refine and construct an innovative argument on the subject based on the work of his predecessors, Asbridge produced a contemporary monograph that differed from the classics of the past due to his acquaintance with new research. The monographs of Asbridge and Runciman differ tremendously in regards to their depictions of the crusaders’ social statuses. Runciman and Riley-Smith adopt the conventional sentiment towards the social statuses of the crusaders. In A History of the Crusades, Runciman argues that the crusaders were generally highly trained warriors seeking territory and treasure in the east.26 He also cites the restlessness of the Christian warriors as a motivation for crusading. In The First Crusade: A New History, Asbridge argues on the contrary. Asbridge notes that the crusaders were predominately wealthy, pious, and socially high ranking men.27 Due to the high cost of crusading, Asbridge argues that the crusaders could not have been poor and were likely not looking to permanently emigrate east. Due to the scarcity of loot and the abundance of crusaders, seldom were The Crusades profitable.28 In consideration of the time period in which each of the monographs was released, Asbridge’s work is at a significant advantage due to the advances in research and technology. The First Crusade: A New History advanced the public’s understanding of The Crusade by presenting a work that is both considerate of recent research and accessible to a popular audience. In contrast to other fields of study, The Crusades has proven recently to be influenced less by popular opinion and more by the passing of time itself. If the trend continues, more evidence-based works on The Crusades will surface within popular literature and opinionated works of narrative will slowly cease to have an impact on the public’s knowledge of The Crusade.

Works Cited
Acocella, Joann. "Holy Smoke." The New Yorker. N.p., 13 Dec. 2004. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Asbridge, Thomas S. The First Crusade: A New History. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
Madden, Thomas F. "First Things." Crusaders and Historians (2005): n. pag. Web.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan Simon Christopher. The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1986. Print.
Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1951. Print.