Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:21:50.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideas of Crusade and Holy War in De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi (The Conquest of Lisbon)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jonathan Phillips
Jonathan Phillips*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Second Crusade (1145-9) was, for the most part, a failure. One of its few successes was the capture of the Muslim-held city of Lisbon by contingents of Anglo-Normans, Flemings, and northern Rhinelanders travelling via the Iberian peninsula en route to the Holy Land. At its full extent the Second Crusade consisted of campaigns in the Levant, the Baltic, and the east coast of Spain, as well as the Lisbon expedition. By far the largest forces went to the Holy Land but, following a calamitous crossing of Asia Minor, the combined armies of the kings of France and Germany, along with the troops of the Latin settlers, retreated from the walls of Damascus after only five days. Because the crusade to the Levant had been preached so successfully by Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, this dismal outcome attracted bitter criticism from contemporaries. The defeat was ascribed to the treachery of (variously) the Greeks, the Templars, the count of Flanders, and the Latin settlers, or the incompetence of King Louis VII of France and the papal legates. Some commentators believed the crusade to have been the work of the devil. Bernard himself argued that it was the judgement of God that had caused the expedition to fail. Other writers blamed the participants’ motives, most relevantly here the contemporary historian, Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon. He wrote:

In the same year [1148] the armies of the emperor of Germany and the French king, which marched out with great pride under illustrious commanders, came to nothing because God despised them…. Meanwhile, a naval force that was made up of ordinary, rather than powerful, men, and was not supported by any great leader, except Almighty God, prospered a great deal better because they set out in humility. Truly ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’. For the armies of the French king and the emperor had been more splendid and larger than that which earlier had conquered Jerusalem, and yet were crushed by very much smaller forces and were destroyed like a spider’s web. But no host had been able to withstand the poor men of whom I spoke above, and the large forces who attacked them were reduced to weakness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 36: The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History , 2000 , pp. 123 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Constable, Giles, ‘The Second Crusade as seen by contemporaries’, Traditio, 9 (1953), pp. 266–76.Google Scholar

2 Henry, , Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and tr. Greenway, Diana (Oxford, 1996), pp. 752–3 Google Scholar. The theme of pride was also noted by other writers, see Constable, ‘Second Crusade’, p. 274.

3 Otto of Freising, Cesta Frederici imperatoris, ed. B. de Simpson (Hanover, 1912), p. 65.

4 Kugler, Bernhard, Studien zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzuges (Stuttgart, 1866).Google Scholar

5 De expugnatione Lyxbonensi - the Conquest of Lisbon, ed. Charles Wendell David (New York, 1936) [hereafter DeL].

6 Kedar, Benjamin, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, NJ, 1984)Google Scholar; Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Kirche und Krieg im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu kanonischem Recht und politischer Wirklichkeil (Stuttgart, 1980).

7 Constable, ‘Second Crusade’, p. 221; DeL, pp. 40, 45.

8 Livermore, Harold, ‘The “Conquest of Lisbon” and its author’, Portuguese Studies, 6 (1990), pp. 1-16.Google Scholar

9 DeL, pp. 125-31, 147-59, 155, 171; Livermore, The “Conquest of Lisbon”’, pp. 3-7.

10 On Raol’s association with Hervey see David, Charles Wendell, The authorship of the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi’, Speculum, 7 (1932), pp. 52–7.Google Scholar

11 Livermore, The “Conquest of Lisbon’”, p. 3; DeL, pp. 34-40.

12 For example, see Hehl, Kirche und Krieg, pp. 138-40.

13 DeL, p. 104. Hervey himself may have read (or heard) the finished text and the marginalia may have pre-empted his objections to its veracity.

14 Edgington, Susan B., ‘The Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade’, HR, 69 (1996), pp. 336–9.Google Scholar

15 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem - The Journey of Louis VII to the East, ed. and tr. Virginia Berry (New York, 1948), pp. 3-5, 29-31.

16 Phillips, Jonathan, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119-87 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 100–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Mortimer, Richard, ‘The family of Rannulf de Glanville’, BIHR, 54 (1981), pp. 1–10 Google Scholar; Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095-1588 (Chicago, 1988), p. 35.Google Scholar

18 DeL, p. 123.

19 Phillips, Jonathan, ‘Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the Low Countries and the Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade’, JEH, 48 (1997), pp. 485–97.Google Scholar

20 DeL, pp. 69, 85, 99, 157.

21 Ibid., pp. 85, 97-115.

22 Ibid., p. 71; Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais, 8 vols (Rome, 1955-77). 8. p. 314.

23 DeL, p. 71; Bernard, Opera, 8, p. 314; Nicholas of Clairvaux, in S. Bernardi abbatis primi Clarse-Vallensis, Opera omnia, I, PL 182, col. 671.

24 DeL, pp. 71-3.

25 Guibert may be Raol’s most likely source here. His description of the Scots as ‘barbarians’ (DeL, p. 107) is very like Guibert’s; such an attitude is not found in Robert or Ralph’s work. Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CChr.CM, 127A (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 132, 156.

26 Bec, Pierre, La Lyrique française au moyen âge (Xlle-Xllle siècles), 2 vols (Paris, 1977-8), 2, p. 86 Google Scholar (tr. Dr Michael Routledge, Royal Holloway, University of London).

27 Bernard, Opera, 8, p. 435.

28 DeL, p. 73.

29 Ibid., pp. 73-9, 107, 121, 147.

30 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 1095-1127, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 196, 433, 438-9. 454.

31 Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, OMT, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969-80), 3, p. 183.

32 DeL, p. 77.

33 Ibid., p. 79.

34 Ibid., p. 71.

35 See the sections in Louise, and Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095-1274 (London, 1981), pp. 42–53.Google Scholar

36 DeL, p. 79.

37 Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols (Harvard, MA, 1967), 1, p. 152.

38 Bull, Marcus, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c. 970-c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 81-6, 96-7, 107–14 Google Scholar; Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, 2 vols (London and Washington, DC, 1990), 1, p. 192.

39 DeL, p. 61.

40 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), p. 147.Google Scholar

41 DeL, p. 185.

42 Hehl, Kirche und Krieg, pp. 138-9, 259-61.

43 DeL, p. 79.

44 Ibid., p. 81. See also Russell, Frederick, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 60–6.Google Scholar

45 DeL, pp. 81-3.

46 Bernard, Opera, 8, pp. 314-15.

47 DeL, p. 83.

48 Ibid., pp. 83-5.

49 Ibid., pp. 99-101.

50 Ibid., p. 101.

51 Russell, Just War, p. 71.

52 C. 23 q. 1 cc.2, 4-6: CIC, 1, cols 891-3.

53 DeL, p. 57.

54 Eugenius, III, ‘Der Text der Kreuzzugsbulle Eugens III’, ed. Rassow, Peter, Neues Archiv der Gesellschafl für altere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 45 (1924), pp. 302–5.Google Scholar

55 DeL, p. 104.

56 Ibid., pp. 107-9.

57 Davis, Ralph, The Normans and their Myth (London, 1976). p. 124.Google Scholar

58 DeL, p. 109.

59 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, History, 65 (1980), pp. 177–85.Google Scholar

60 Eugenius III, ‘Der Kreuzzugsbulle’, p. 303.

61 DeL, pp. 103, 109-11.

62 DeL, p. 113.

63 Ibid., pp. 115-19.

64 Ibid., pp. 71, 137.

65 Ibid., p. 121.

66 Ibid., pp. 77, 169.

67 Ibid., pp. 73-7 (Bishop of Oporto), 105-9 (Hervey), 121-3 (the Muslim elder).

68 Ibid., p. 123.

69 Ibid., pp. 123-5.

70 Ibid., p. 131.

71 Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 89 n.130, 85-96.

72 DeL, p. 1 s 1.

73 DeL, pp. 153, 155. In De consideration ad Eugenium papam, his treatise written after the failure of the Second Crusade, St Bernard noted the persistence of the Israelites, indicating that their determination meant that their efforts were rewarded: Bernard, Opera, 3, pp. 412-13.

74 DeL, p. 155; C. 23 q. 3 c.6 (CIC, 1, col. 897).

75 DeL, p. 157.

76 Murray, Alan, ‘“Mighty against the enemies of Christ”: The relic of the True Cross in the armies of the kingdom of Jerusalem’, in France, John and Zajac, William, eds, The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 217–38.Google Scholar

77 Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, p. 179.

78 DeL, p. 157; Bernard, Opera, 8, p. 315.

79 DeL, pp. 167-77.

80 Ibid., p. 183.

81 C. 23 q. 1 c.4: CIC, 1, cols 892-3.

82 DeL, p. 185.

83 Ibid., p. 119.

84 Bernard, Opera, 8, p. 433. A similar phrase is repeated in the same letter to emphasise the abbot’s commands.

85 Odo of Deuil, De profectione, p. 71.

86 Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 45-7.

87 O’Callaghan, Joseph, ‘The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in Powell, J. M., ed., Muslims under Latin Rule 1100-1300 (Princeton, NJ, 1990), p. 45.Google Scholar

88 Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, pp. 177-92.

89 DeL, pp. 109, 185.

90 Peter the Lombard, Sententiae, PL 192/ii, col. 818.

91 Augustine, Enchiridion, PL 40, col. 266.

92 DeL, p. 121.

93 Ibid., p. 99.

94 Ibid., p. 159.

95 Ibid., p. 133.