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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
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.
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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
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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).
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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.
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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
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37 Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols (Harvard, MA, 1967), 1, p. 152.
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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
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56 Ibid., pp. 107-9.
57 Davis, Ralph, The Normans and their Myth (London, 1976). p. 124.Google Scholar
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59 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, History, 65 (1980), pp. 177–85.Google Scholar
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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
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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
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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.
