Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: the Call from the East (Bodley Head, London, 2012).
According to this superb new book an ‘inconvenient truth’ was ignored by an influential body of Twelfth-Century authors writing the history of the First Crusade in both Western Europe and in the newly-Latinized East. Those in the West shaped and controlled the narrative in order to make the words and influence of Pope Urban II appear to be the central motivating force that powered the expedition. While those writing in the East sought to explain how Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli and Antioch had come to be ruled by Western knights, and to justify that outcome in terms of the moral right and military strength of Christian knighthood, supported by the hand of God.
The inconvenient truth is that the expedition to Jerusalem, during which around 100,000 Western Christians came thousands of miles east to help their Eastern Christian brethren, was the result of a direct appeal for that help from the emperor of Constantinople, Alexios I Komnenos. The eloquence of Urban was one of the ways in which that appeal was mediated in the west in the mid-1090’s, but was in effect merely the culmination of a long campaign of communication and diplomacy by Alexios that had been going on for at least ten years. While the personal bravery of those who went on the First Crusade is almost never questioned, the material aid, strategic advice and diplomatic assistance given to the expedition by the Byzantines is almost always disregarded. Instead the Byzantine emperor is depicted as being very much against the crusade, plotting to do down the crusaders and take credit for the work they do.
In this book Peter Frankopan does not just redress this unbalanced reporting, he places the Byzantine emperor at the centre of a diplomatic and political project designed to bring westerners eastwards in large numbers, to provide for them on their arrival and to use them as a means of protecting the Byzantine empire from enemies who threatened it from every side. Using Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic primary sources that have been ignored or misinterpreted in modern historiography, he reveals much that is new about the pre-history of the First Crusade and the role of the Emperor. He also uses western sources in new and subtle ways to prove his thesis.
The speech by Urban II at Clermont for example is almost always perceived as ‘zero hour’ for the First Crusade, it is ‘the starting gun’ or ‘the launch pad’, and Urban is ‘the man who unleashed the First Crusade’. But the speech begins with an acknowledgement that events in the East were already widely known, the version by Baldric of Bourgueil states:
We have heard, most beloved brethren, and you have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow – how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, the limbs of Christ are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East.
The use of the past tense is a clear indicator that the story of what was happening in the East was already known in the West; Urban was simply be recounting what everyone already knew. One of Frankopan’s brilliant questions is – How did they already know?
He argues convincingly that the Emperor Alexios was the source of these stories, that he sent letters, and envoys west to tell of the devastation caused by the Turks and the atrocities they committed against the Byzantines. A letter sent by Alexios to Robert Count of Flanders around 1091 is a telling piece of evidence for the dissemination of this information by Alexios. The letter outlines the desecration of the holy places, as well as accounts of the ferocity of Turkish attacks on Eastern Christians. It has been dismissed as a forgery in the past, designed to rally support against Byzantium in the early twelfth-century. But Frankopan, by outlining the situation of the Byzantine empire at the time that the letter was written makes it very clear that it tallies both with historical reality in the east in the early 1090’s described in Eastern sources and tellingly with the descriptions given of that situation in the west by men such as Pope Urban II. Furthermore, he points out that it would make perfect sense for the Emperor to appeal to the Count of Flanders, because he already had a relationship with Robert, who had sent 500 knights east to aid Alexios shortly before the letter was written.
A final argument against the letter’s authenticity, is the ‘western’ style in which it is written. For Frankopan this does not undermine its legitimacy, instead it strengthens it. Given the sophistication of the Byzantine court and the many westerners living in Constantinople it would be unreasonable for the Emperor not to address his western ally in Latin, and to use language, including diplomatic and political phrasing, that would be clearly understood in a western context. Alexios was asking for help, and would understand the need to speak in a language that would be clearly understood by the recipients of his appeal.
In this book Peter Frankopan outlines the difficulties facing Alexios, bringing a clarity and understanding to the complexity of events, and the timing of his appeals that is informative and admirable. Alexios was a soldier and a negotiator, he fought battles, but he also did deals. He made arrangements with Muslim leaders like Sulayman, to rule eastern cities on his behalf, and he negotiated peace treaties with powerful men like the Seljuk Sultan Malik-Shah. By these means the emperor stabilised situations and maintained the empire in the first ten years of his reign. He faced internal threats, firstly from the senior families of the empire who united to rebel against him, and then from within his own imperial family. He faced external threats from both aggressive nomads attacking in the Balkans, and uncontrolled Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. But he balanced things brilliantly, stitching together a network of deals and arrangements. But the deaths of both Sulayman in 1085 and Malik-shah in 1092, and the advent of an ‘anti-Byzantine’ ruler in Baghdad, the sultan Barkyaruk, led to an unravelling. Probably reaching a nadir in early 1095 when Kilij-Arslan, a son of Sulayman, arrived at Nicaea, the city his family had held on behalf of the emperor for many years, a city close to the imperial capital and hugely significant in the history of the Christian church, and declared that he now held it on behalf of the sultan of Baghdad.
In response to this ongoing spiral of disintegration Alexios sent more letters and more envoys west. This is acknowledged in western sources such as Ekkehard of Aura who recorded that in the 1090’s embassies and letters, ‘seen by ourselves’ were sent out by Alexios; while the chronicler Gilbert of Mons reports that ‘he (Alexios) sent envoys to France with letters to stir up the princes so that they would come to the aid of imperrilled Greece.’ So, when Pope Urban II stood up to give his sermon at Clermont he barely needed to introduce the subject, for the field had already been prepared and the crop sown for him through the labours of Alexios and his envoys. Far from being the ‘starting pistol’ the speech at Clermont simply confirmed what informed people across Western Europe already knew, and confirmed it in language and phrases that they had already heard.
I have tried in this review to convey some of the more significant and substantial arguments put forward by Peter Frankopan. This means that I have had to leave out so much that is great scholarly work, that is innovative and profound, that is subtle and intelligent. I think this book will change the way the history of the First Crusade is taught, and that it deserves to be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about understanding the origins and outcomes of the most miraculous and original event of the middle ages.
© Steven Biddlecombe
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