The First Crusadeand the idea of crusading
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loginThe prevailing view of the origins and early history of crusad-ing thought owes most to Carl Erdmann's Die Entstehung desKreuzzugsge dan kens. Although published fifty years ago, theinfluence of this brilliant book is now stronger than ever, for therecent appearance of an English edition has made its message avail-able to a wider public.1 Most studies of the subject in the pasthalf-century have drawn on it or have reached similar conclusions toit, although naturally some of them have differed from it on pointsof detail,2 and now Ernst-Dieter Hehl has modelled himself onErdmann in writing a clever and learned exposition of the Church'sattitude to war in the period following the First Crusade.3 There is, infact, general agreement that the crusade was the climacteric of amovement in which the eleventh-century Church reformers, lockedin conflict with ecclesiastical and secular opponents, turned to theknights of the Christian West for assistance. Pope Urban H's messageto the faithful in 1095, in which he summoned them to fight in aid ofthe eastern Christians, is believed to have been a synthesis of ideasand practices already in existence—holy war, pilgrimage, the indulg-ence - although it was not fully understood by those who respondedto it, many of whom were anyway motivated by a desire for materialgain. But it is supposed that crusading theory did not reach maturityuntil the 1140s. By then the traditions had been reinforced by thework of apologists like Pope Innocent II, St Bernard of Clairvauxand, above all, the great canonist Gratian, who, drawing on elementsalready present in crusade propaganda, had demonstrated defini-tively that the Church, and especially the popes, could authorize holywar on God's behalf.
