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Why did Pope Urban II launch the First Crusade in 1095?

When Pope Urban II addressed a crowd outside the city of Clermont in France in November
1095, announcing that Christians living in the East were suffering truly terrible atrocities at
the hands of the Muslim masters and asking those listening for assistance, he had three
possible motives; to help Christians living in the East, although we know they were accepted
by Muslims with respect, as he said (this was most likely purely propaganda to inspire a
response from the Christian population of Europe). He may also have been responding to
the call for military help from Alexius, the Byzantine emperor. His final possible motive was
that he wanted to strengthen the Papacy’s influence over all Christians and Europe in
general. I would personally argue that the two causes for his appeal at Clermont were that
he may have felt obliged to help Eastern Christians fend off attacks from the Muslim Seljuk
Turks in Byzantium but also and most importantly he wanted to strengthen the Papacy’s
influence.

In his speech, Urban II said that Christians were being persecuted for their faith by the
Muslims ruling the regions they lived in. This image, however, of the Muslim leaders was
completely false as they were in many ways much more tolerant and respectful towards
members of other faiths than the Catholic Church itself. Since the fall of Jerusalem to the
Muslims in 638 A.D, there had been very little for the Christians to complain about. There
were of course certain periods in which the Christians were treated more harshly than
others; during the reign of the mad Caliph Hakim in the Fatimid Dynasty, which, apart from
the anomaly of the rule of Hakim, was a very good time for Christian and Muslim co-
existence, (1004-1014 A.D) he decided to persecute the local Christian population, partially
destroying the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and forcing many to convert to Islam. Following
this he decided he was the incarnation of god and decided to persecute the Muslims instead;
he was overthrown soon after. Apart from this instance Christians fared relatively well in the
East under Muslim rule and faced no major hardship, and nothing compared to the atrocities
that Pope Urban II described in his poorly sourced speech: the Muslim faith acknowledged
and respected both Judaism and Christianity, including some of the teachings in their own.
Unlike the Byzantine Empire, which tried to force Orthodox Christianity on its citizens. The
Christians were known as “People of the Book” and as the “protected people” and were
allowed to worship and possess citizenship if they were compliant to a set of rules
determined by the Muslim Leaders. Another reason that Pope Urban II said that inspired him
to appeal to the Catholics of Europe was that he wanted to see the Holy Land return to its
rightful owners; however, the Holy Land had been in the hands of Muslims since 638 A.D,
and prior to the speech there had been no uproar after it had been lost, suggesting that it
was not the real reason for the speech.

It is possible that he was replying to an appeal for military aid made my Alexius Comnenus in
March of the same year, thus explaining the timing of the speech and appeal made at
Clermont. Before Urban, Gregory VII had made an appeal to the people to aid the Christians
from Byzantium, however this was unsuccessful. The Byzantine Empire had had problems
with the Seljuk Turks since they left Turkestan in search of more fertile land to the south.
After many years the Byzantine forces and the Seljuk Turks met at Manzikert in 1071; it was
a disaster for the Byzantines, as their mercenary force was annihilated and the Turks were
able to greatly increase their grip on Asia Minor. By 1080 nearly all of Asia Minor was held
by Turks, now led by Arslan’s heir, Malik Shah. The great Byzantine city of Antioch fell in
1084 and it seemed that the Byzantine Empire was in a crisis. However, following the death
of Malik Shah in 1092, the Seljuk Turk Empire was split in a power struggle between his
sons, Muhammed and Barkyaruk, meaning that Alexius felt it was a perfect time to take
advantage of this weakness and recover lands lost since from Byzantium since the Battle of
Manzikert in 1071. This thus seems a plausible reason to launch a crusade, to possibly help
fellow Christians and maybe strengthen the bond between the Byzantine Empire and the
Papacy, as before they had had disagreements on the nature of Christianity and had even
been involved in conflict (Bohemund and the Normans). However Pope Urban did not
mention the appeal from the Byzantine Emperor in his speech. There are two possible
reasons for this; he had no intention of giving aid to the Byzantine Empire or he didn’t want
to mention the Byzantines with whom Western Christians had an enmity with, as they
disagreed about some of the details of Christianity. I personally believe he wanted to aid
Byzantium and didn’t mention it so as to make sure that Christians from the West were not
put off joining in the Holy War due to their dislike of the Christians in Constantinople.

However I feel that Urban II’s real motive was his desire to increase Papal power and
influence as the key concerns of an 11th century Pope, as well as representing the Catholic
Church, were to gain a greater role in the affairs of the world. This would’ve been true
especially for Urban after the Pope before him had been so unsuccessful in some ways.
When Urban was elected as Pope in March of 1088, the Papacy was far from infallible or
unassailable; Far from being recognised as the leader of the Christian faith on Earth, the
Pope struggled to organise the affairs of central Italy, let alone all of Western Christendom.
Bishops in France, England, Germany, Spain and even Northern Italy had no expectation or
reliance on guidance from the Pope as they felt rewarded by having independent self-
determination. These Bishops were often unresponsive, even resistant to the idea of
centralisation or conformity. Kings in Europe were also often unhelpful, as they too felt that
they were part of a long lineage of men chosen by God to choose their particular area. This
combined with the fact that virtually all Bishops wielded political authority themselves, having
land, wealth and in some cases military forces of their own, meant that the Latin Church was
in disarray and the limited efforts to control it were being offered by the Kings, not the
Papacy. Following the Investiture Crisis, Urban also had to contend with Clement III, Henry
IV’s own Pope. He also only recovered possession of the Lateran Palace in Rome in 1094
through bribery, and even then his hold over the city was precarious. During his reign from
1073-1085 Pope Gregory VII tried and failed to increase Papal power overall; as Pope he
was chief architect of the “Reform Movement”, which looked both towards Papal
empowerment and clerical purification. As he struggled to unify and cleanse Latin
Christendom under the banner of Rome the campaign, he decided to attack what he
believed to be the root cause of the Church’s problems, the laity. These were all people
involved in religion who were not members of the clergy, even if it included the current Holy
Roman Emperor, Henry IV. In 1075 Gregory banned Henry IV, a King who could trace his
lineage to office back to Charlemagne and beyond, from interfering with Church affairs.
When Henry resisted, Gregory excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor, the most
powerful Latin Christian alive, in 1076. At first it seemed that this huge gamble that Gregory
had taken was paying off as it initially prompted Henry to be more penitent, but Gregory
soon became too confident, enraging his enemies and alienating his supporters with his
radical vision of spiritual reform and his intensely autocratic notion of Papal authority. This
included experimenting with having a Papal army, the “Militia sancti petri”, and crucially
helped develop the idea of Holy War. However after he had outstretched his power, Henry
created an anti-Pope in the form of Clement III, who was declared Pope and moved into
Rome. This attack came to be known as the Investiture Crisis.

Following Gregory’s disaster I would argue that the crusade was a perfect opportunity to
regain Papal power; firstly it would show huge influence to be able to get such a huge
amount of people to fight for your cause. Secondly it could’ve been an opportunity to unite
Eastern and Western Christians, thus ending the Great Schism. Finally and most importantly
if he could be seen to have regained the Holy Land and the key cities such as Jerusalem, it
would greatly increase the Pope’s power and influence upon fellow Latin Christians.
Therefore i would argue that it was his desire to increase Papal power that most influenced
Pope Urban II when he made his speech.

Tom Gibbons

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