Hey, folks, you're about to listen to episode two of Welcome to the Crusades The First Crusade, a series that Eleanor and I did with the fellows an American Prestige. If you're listening to this and you're wondering what all that means, it probably means you didn't listen to episode one first, so you should go back and check that out, and then when you're done with that, come back and
listen to this one, because this is episode two on Taranto. If, on the other hand, you've already listened to and enjoyed episode one and I'm just in the way, if you continuing to listen, I'll step aside, enjoy and of course by the rest of the series for just eight dollars now at America Prestige Dot, supporting cast FM SLASH Welcome at Dash to Dash the Dash Crusades, Dash the Dash First Dash Crusade, And again it's in the show notes if you're interested, so just check it out.
Thanks a lot.
In the far southern heel of the Boot that is the Italian Peninsula, there's a coastal city known as Taranto, though it is less well known today, or maybe we all just get it easily confused with a large city
in Canada. Taranto is an important commercial and military naval hub in Italy and the Mediterranean, and has been since the Classical era in the Middle Ages, though, beginning in ten ninety five CE, Taranto took on an even greater significance as it became the main disembarkation point for crusaders using the Southern Sea Route to get to Constantinople and
the Holy Land. At first, you might think that this was simply due to its approximate location just south of Rome, the epicenter of the Western European crusade effort, and while that was likely a factor here, there was a much more proximate cause. When we get to Taranto. In our narrative, the city and much of southern Italy are ruled over by a Norman nobleman named Bohemond, the son of the infamous Norman lord Robert Guiscard. Wait, what the Normans ruled
in Italy? Why would a bunch of frenchified former Vikings who resettled in north and central France and reconquered the British Isles also have claims in Italy? Well, that's the thing. The Normans had a fearsome reputation across Europe and the Middle East, and while they did definitely conquer, they were also occasionally invited in by local Christians to eject their
despised rulers and take over. Such was the case when the peoples of southern Italy grew tired of their current rulers called in the Normans, who forcibly removed the Byzantine and Muslim contingents and turned the lands into yet another Norman French territory with all the so called feudal aspects that entailed. When the fresh crucdate came along Taranto's harbor capacity, and this French connection worked perfectly with the Pope's recruitment plans.
Pope Urban, himself, a man of French extraction, wanted to rely upon wealthy lords of various French stripes, Normans, Angevin's provinceal etc. For leadership, draw from the mighty French warrior nobility to compose the core of the army, and bringing clergy located in French lands for preaching and guidance. Of course, Christians from all over Western and Central Europe had joined, But you would be forgiven if you took a high level glance at the First Crusade and decided it was
a totally French or even a totally Norman affair. The Byzantine certainly did so. It was that in late ten ninety five and early ten ninety six, Bahamond, who would lead a Crusader army of his own, opened the ports of Taranto, giving over one hundred thousand crusaders a safe southern route by which they could travel to the east.
Welcome to the Crusades. Before we get into this episode, why don't we recap what we talked about last episode Gang, in particular Mansa Khurt, the Byzantine request for aid, and the Council of Claremont. In case people have forgotten, So eleanor Eric, where did we leave off?
Who wants to go first?
I think I think we left off we were we were at Claremont. We had talked about what the Pope preached, and I believe we were we were going to go from there and kind of and kind of spread out. I think we we covered the main points of his of his sermon at Claremont, But we do that, I don't think we.
Yes, So I mean, well, where we've come so far is that the Byzantine Empire is in trouble. They lost the Battle of Manskirt in ten seventy one to the Seljuks. They appealed to the West for a This is in the context of the Great East West Schism. Alexios stamp or Alexios makes a pitch to the West to come help us bail us out here. It's not quite clear, and we'll talk more about this, I think when we get to the Byzantines. But it's not quite clear that
he was anticipating what he got. But you know, he's asking for help.
Uh.
And Pope Urban the second at the council, Claremont makes his big spiel speech to the assembled that then gets carried out and we'll talk maybe a bit about the preaching in this episode, but gets carried out to everybody, go east and not just necessarily help the Byzantines, but let's go all the way to Jerusalem and liberate christ City from the Infidels. Does that about? Does that about cover it?
Yeah? I think I think so.
And I think that what you got here, and the thing that is important to keep in mind is, you know, at the Council of Claremont. There's this big impassion speech from the Pope. What exactly it says? We don't know, right, We're not exactly sure, and we've got some stories after the fact. But the Council of Claremont ends up kind of being like that infamous sex Pistols show in the Working Men's Club that like sixteen people went to, right.
They all formed.
The Wilt Chamberlain one hundred point game. Exactly million people said they were there for exactly they had like ten thousand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know what ends up happening.
Is that every everyone who's there who can preach, goes out and does preach.
And I mentioned.
Preaching because in this context preaching is pretty.
Much exactly the same thing as bands.
Right, this is a form of mass communication in the Middle Ages. And it's really difficult to overstate how important preaching is because in the first place, it's a form of entertainment.
People like it.
You know, a hot date is to like take someone to a sermon on a Saturday night, and everyone thinks that that is really quite interesting. Indeed, the other thing that ends up happening with sermons is that they are often copied down and circulated. You know, we talked last time about how whatever speech or was given at Claire Bought.
We're not exactly short, but we've got like twelve different options for what may have been sent there that starts circulating as well, and so those can go around and then anyone who reads them or can preach them again will give these sermons. And now those aren't written down years after the fact, so we're not exactly sure, but lots of people inside there may have then gone out and preached on their own right about the importance of
going on crusade. So what you end up having is this ripple effect of people who will go talk about this and go give this message to various communities. And so you can reach thousands upon thousands of people with one sermon if you're good enough that you get them really really riled up. So this has the effect of
being like a massive public broadcast. Even though there could have only been so many hundred people in the actual room at the time, they all went out and did exactly the same thing and start getting people hyped to go to Jerusalem.
This is I think a point that you making your work eleanor a lot, and that maybe is lost on modern audiences, but this.
Was like.
Spectators smart, Like this is what you did, like for entertainment. You went out and listened to some firebrand preacher who would get you riled up to go commit some atrocity. Probably somewhere we can we'll talk about We're going to talk about the some of the worst atrocities in a future episode. But like, this is what you did. This is the thing that you did to be you know, to get entertainment. This is like, you know, mass culture in a way.
Oh yeah, absolutely, and I think that certainly we can see it become mass culture. You know, it kind of filters down from high culture if I think it's fair to call the Pope high culture, but he's not the one who's speaking to everyone, because up at the top.
You've got the Pope, but then down a little bit closer to.
The bottom, you got Peter the hermit, right, and that's when things start getting a little bit.
Sais get off the rails.
I would build on that. I can't find the quote right now, but there there was a very good quote about how once the Council, immediately after the Council of Claremont, like the words spread clear across Europe in like minutes, And I mean he's basically describing like how we would just like what would be just like a phone called us. You know, Hey, I just left the Council of Claremont the pope, so we should all go fight them, you know, we should all go liberate Jerusalem. And it was like
all across It's spread across Europe like wildfire. So it's like they they did use them as this like uh as this form of entertainment and popular culture and mass culture, but this one specifically just rob people up to like a far greater extent than even the normal like firebrand kind of stuff.
You know.
Yeah, so I found that interesting.
That's an important point, Luke, And I think one of the things that is important to say is the majority of fire around preaching that we tend to see usually is kind of like a call in right where it's like we need to live our lives better, you know.
In the context of what was going on in Europe at the time, there's rather a lot of hey, priests, stop having concupines, you know, Like that's the sort of firebrand preaching that you get, which is like will the clergy please stop shagging, or it'll be like live your life better, you know, treat your neighbors better, blah blah blah. You know things about your own personal sins that you
need to go sort out. Right, This really works people up because not only does it work them up in the same into the same sort of spiritual feeding frenzy that we see elsewhere, but it points them at something right. It gives them an external enemy, which is completely unusual.
At the time in terms of preaching.
So that's kind of like really nice because you're used to getting told that you kind of suck in fire bread preaching, and you're being told that other people suck and given kind of like a free range to go attack them.
So people do.
Right. It's a kind of nice get out of jail free card.
It is a really great.
Way of, I don't know, get that out of town when you are maybe inserved right, like your lord can't make you stay on the farm that you're supposed to be working. If the Pope said you need to go to Jerusalem right now, like, so you've got a really great way to move around that ordinarily wouldn't be available to you. So people are hyped and yeah, I mean they're like, okay, quick, we got to go home and pack and like get on the road, and it happens very quickly.
So who organizes this? So maybe we could talk a little bit about the response to the council and the importance of Jerusalem and the imagination, and who are the actual people who start organizing these crusades.
And I think we want to focus for this episode. We're going to talk about the people's crusade and the mobs that form and do really terrible, unhinged things on the way to Constantinople before they get their come up. And so I would say, but we want to focus here on the main expedition, the Prince's expedition or the Lord's expedition. So yeah, who's preaching to the folks who wind up leading that part of the expedition and why? I guess one question I would have is why does
it wind up being so French? I mean, it's really like you've got these cadres of lords. Some are from northern Francias, some are from eastern France. I mean, it's it's very much a French thing. Other than as Luke said his introduction, the Normans who are French, but they're in Italy for some right, you know, it's it's all cacca.
Yeah. I think I think it's useful to to kind of break this down because the people who are the immediate efforts that Pope Urban the Second undertook after Claremont were sending out of letters, sending out of papal legates, sending out of of of diplomats in order to settle the violence that was happening in Europe and free this up.
One of the big things that they did was he sent it may have been Bishop Adamar Lapoix up to Normandy to settle the feud between King William the Second of England, you know, William the Conqueror's younger son and Robert Kurtos, William the Conqueror's older son. And they negotiated a truce that freed up a lot of Normans and
a lot of Normandy to go do this. And at the time, like the Normans were conquerors, they had made this huge imprint in France, but everywhere they went they were seen as like good Christian soldiers who could be relied on, and they were strong and tough and everything, and so they just got invited places to do stuff, and they were one of the most feared military forces on the continent at the time, so it kind of makes sense that Urban was like, I'm French, I know
all these Normans. I have some power over them. Plus Bohemond down in Taranto is Norman, and you know we can use that. That is a jumping off point. And yeah, Eleanor did I cover all that?
Yeah, I mean absolutely. The thing about the Normans is there vikings with horses, right. I have also helpfully christianized, so we love that, right. But you know, it is one of these things where everyone agrees they're very good at warfare, and everyone agrees that it would be kind of great if they wouldn't be in your own backyard, right, So it would be super nice if they could go.
Over there, right.
And so there is a really direct way to get to them because the Pope himself is French and kind of understands what the dynamics are there. But also because the pope has come from the French milieu. You know, all his homies are like the French bishops, right, and those are some of the people who are preaching at a really high level. So you know, it's not just going to be the Pope himself. After the Council of Claremont.
You know who attends councils Bishops, right, you know, high up abbots, people who are in really serious positions within the church. And so you go and have all of these bishops come to this thing in Claremont. And who's going to be in Claremont. Well French people, right. You know, You're not necessarily going to be coming up from Barcelona for this. You're not necessarily going to be saying, oh yeah, yeah, I'm going to leave Mice to get over to Claremont because it takes forever.
But you might come down from long you know, you might come up from Ram, well down from Ram, you know, places like this.
So you're going to have all of these bishops who then go back to their constituencies in France and then they preach the same thing. So fundamentally there just is a little bit more of a French connection as it were.
Way hey shout out, very good, very good.
So you know, I'm not saying that it's only for French people. I'm just saying that there were a lot more French people there. And because of the way that sermons spread and propaganda works at the time. That just means you're going to be drawing from a very particular pool.
Yeah, and also it has it would have had a limited spread into fully into Iberia at the time because of the Moors still being there in force, you know, so getting you know, going that direction was going to be difficult. So that basically leaves going east towards the Germans. They do. They obviously go up into England because again they're Normans, and they draw heavily from up there England and I believe a little of Scotland too. But after that you can either go east or you can go
down into Italy, and they did. They they went down into Italy a good bit, especially to the southern part, where again the Normans were but yeah, you it's a lot of Normans and then a lot of provence Al because the province Al in southern France had been driven into a fir by having to fight the Infidel menace on the other side of the Pyrenees all the time, or looking out for them, whatever the case may have been.
And you know, they were easy to stoke into a kind of paranoia about this and draw a lot so.
I think that that leads to two questions, which is, one, what role did Jerusalem play in the medieval imagination? And then two, just going off what Luke just said, how do they actually recruit people to do this? I mean, I'm sure, as we like to say in history, there's
both push and pull factors. But why don't we start with Jerusalem and the medieval imagination and then talk to this issue of actual recruitment to go on, which is it's a very difficult journey, you know, to get from Western Europe and Central Europe to the Holy Land during this time, it's risky, you could die, You're leaving your family, who knows what they're going to be up to when you have all these randy priests around and all of
these various issues, which becomes actually, correct me if I'm wrong, a medieval trope people returning from the Crusades and be.
Like what the fuck?
Which becomes like a gigantic trope actually in Western literature going up to today, you know, it's still it's still a thing. So Jerusalem, and then how did they actually recruit?
Yeah, so Jerusalem. It's really difficult to overstate how important Jerusalem.
Is at the time.
Because it is and I mean this quite literally the center of the world.
Right.
All you have to do is look at map a mundi from the medieval period, which are maps of the world, and how they consider it, and the way that they draw maps of what they know of the world is Jerusalem is at the very middle of the world, and everything else that they know about Africa, Asia and Europe kind of spirals out from there.
This is the old t O map, right, That's how we described it in grad school. I always wanted to find a good one and like hang it on my wall, but I've never.
I'll send you one, I do. I know a couple of really cool looking winds are cool.
Wilt Chamberlain body count to medievalist body count.
Let's compare, like I mean, if people aren't familiar, it's like that there's a tea. There's the world is represented as this flat disc with Jerusalem kind of at the at the intersection of a tea that runs through the middle of it, and the Mediterranean Sea is the you know, upper the vertical column, and then across it's like the Nile River and the is it the Danube? I can't remember what the other river is.
Yeah, I believe, Yeah, I believe it's the Danube.
So yeah, Jerusalem literally is the center of the world.
Yeah and so, and also, all Christians want to go there someday. Right, it's not quite like what Mecca means to Muslims now, but it's not far off.
You know, you get expiation, like if you go, is it an expiation of your sins?
Yeah, so one hundred percent, Like you can go. And we've got to understand that pilgrimage in and of itself is a really big deal at the time, and the ultimate pilgrimage that all Christians would like to undertake someday is to Jerusalem. Now, it's probably not going to happen for any number of factors, you know, least of all being the length of time you need to be away in the expense of it. But you get to go there, and the idea is you can like visit the church
as the Holy Sepulcher. You're going to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. You're going to the commune with your religion. And that's incredibly important to people. You know, everyone has kind of an imaginary Jerusalem in their heads at the time, to the point where people will conduct meditation services where they kind of pretend to walk around Jerusalem. You know, you tell lots of stories about Jerusalem. This is for them really the heart of what it means to be
a Christian. And you know, we've got to understand that they don't see themselves as living in Europe. You know, now we talk about Europe, they'd say they live in Christendom, right, And they very much understand the heart of Christendom to be Jerusalem itself. So the fact that a bunch of Infidels has taken over is like it's like punching Mommy in the face, right, Like this is their imaginary mommy, and that is very upsetting to them because they all hope to go there someday.
Yeah, and as for the preaching, to answer your second question, Dan, I think we need to remember that while there is a peasant's crusade and and a prince's crusade, a lot the vast majority that made up the armies of the prince's crusades were peasants, but they were like they were warrior peasants. They were people like that who have been
brought in. So the preaching and the negotiations that went on with the nobles and the actual princes seemed to have differed greatly from like the preaching, because most of the warrior peasants, basically anyone below nobility, seems to have been, as much as we can know, fire with a zeal for reuniting Christendom, retaking Jerusalem, you know, et cetera. Maybe I might get some plunder along the way, but I'm gonna get remission of my sins. It's going to be good.
But the negotiations that they were doing was say you're Robert of Flanders, Robert Curtoz Bohemond of Taranto. That was much more of a transactional thing. I don't necessary, I mean I don't. I don't think there's any evidence of specifically the church saying like, look, if you go over there, you can get a big land for yourself and it'll be great. But I think it was heavily implied, regardless
if it was actually stated. And you know, the pope and the and the higher ups in the church seemed to understand this gradation, so to speak, because while I think maybe Hugh of Vendomois was the was one of the most zealous and pious, the rest of them seemed fairly crass in their motives, you know, so I think I think the papacy was aware of that, and that's how they approach that preaching.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Luke, And I think that it bears stating when we consider this as well of like, well, where do you recruit to the papacy from? Where do you recruit from bishops from? You know, like the people who become bishops, the people who become pope are not like farmers, right, you know, they're not the people who were peasants at one point in time. All of these guys have come from noble families or royal families, incredibly well connected families, and they
know how to talk to other nobles, right. They understand what drives these people at a really base level because these are their families. So if you can't just rely on the religious nature to get people motivated, you know, a bishop is going to understand what it is that particular families are looking for, what particular families lack. They will have an intricate understanding of where people's position with their own lens lies.
You know, are you already extended to the maximum? Probably?
Right, Because we're supposed to be under like a Pax Christiania at this juncture in Europe, you're not supposed to be fighting your next door neighbor anymore. Right, Like everyone at this point in time has pretty much converted to Christianity, except for like Lithuania. Right, So if you want a just war where you can go take lens, you're going to have to look further afield.
Baby.
And I actually have a basic question that we haven't discussed yet, but what is I mean, it's going to be different in different areas, but what is the basic social structure of medieval society? And I'm sure it's different in France versus England versus Central Europe.
But if we could, you.
Know, do sort of a general you know, we're talking about warrior peasants. Where do they come from, who's training them? Et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, okay, that's a good question. And as a general rule, the thing that doesn't really exist is kind of the way to think about it, which is, I don't know if you've ever seen those charts that show you a feudal pyramid, right, and that's not quite like the food pyramids. And again, you know, You've already hit the nail on the head here, Danny. It's like, it's not necessarily true in Finland in the same way that it's true in
the Loire Valley. Right, all of these places are different and have a different social structure.
But as a general rule.
Of thumb, let's keep in mind that seventy percent of the population of Europe are peasants, which means that they are farmers.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're poor.
We think about like fifty percent of those peasants are then poor, twenty five percent or about what we would call middle class, and twenty five percent or what we would call rich.
Actually, is it subsistence farming or they're doing like you know what I'm asking.
Yeah, well, some of them are, like, especially towards the lower socioeconomic end of things, but some farmers are really rich, right, Like, if you've got a lot of land, you can actually be doing quite well for yourself. And it depends on what you're cropping, you know, Like you're going to have a better time if you're making high quality olive oil than if you're just selling soul all the time, right, you know, so it depends on where you are and
what you're selling. But basically, fifty percent of the peasants are poor, twenty five percent are rich, twenty five percent are doing okay, right, and so that's most people, and we need to understand that the great majority of them are unfree, right, they are inserved. So there's about ten percent of those of the population who are free peasants, and they tend to be wealthy as well, because if you have managed to amass enough land, you probably bought
your way to freedom. Inserved here doesn't mean you know, chattel slavery. It doesn't mean that your lord can pick you up and like separate you from your family and move you to another place. But it means that you are very much seen as a part of the landscape. You are like a feature of the countryside, and you can't move down the road without permission from your lord.
You can't get married without permission from your lord. Now, your lord is probably going to grant you permission to get married, but it is kind of insulting that you've got to go to your literal fucking landlord to be like, hey, can I get married?
Right?
Like it's not great, but landlords can be anyone landlords can be an actual lord, like a noble person, or they could be a monastery, you know, they can be a nunnery, it could be you know, a church.
It just it just depends on who has land.
So over the insertived people you have the lords, and as a general rule of thumb, it's kind of like local nobility and local nobility. Again, that's a real mixed bag. Like you can be a knight and be pretty poor. Indeed, you know, if you are overseeing a bunch of dirt farmers and that's who you collect taxes off of, then you're not in great shape. Or you can be incredibly
and unimaginably wealthy. Right if you are, for example, one of the king's younger brothers and you own cussi, you know, or something like that, then.
Like you're rolling in it.
Right then over those people in theory, you've got the king and he then takes taxes off of you. Now in the Holy Roman Empire, of course, at this point in time, you've got an emperor who's like doing that over dukes and like huge swathes of land and also sometimes archbishops and people like that. So it gets much more complex. In the Holy Roman empire, So people don't like thinking about it, but that is kind of generally how society shakes out. And then kind of alongside.
Of that, which is one question eleanor before we go in, what is the authority based on the ability to muster military people? Like, how does the king or a lord defend themselves or basically assert their authority because this is still a very obviously protean period where things are where things are moving around, emerging from you know, the post Charlemagne eighth ninth, tenth centuries, So what is the authority actually based on here?
So yeah, basically one of the reasons why in theory you are noble and you're allowed to have all this land is in theory, then the king can say to.
You, all right, lads, we're going to war.
Muster up right, so in and then you call in basically all the knights and basically any able body man who can hold a pointy stick, and then you can point them in the direction of wherever it is you want to go. Now, king is going to have his own men at arms as well, you know, like in the king's castle there are going to be people who are trained marshally.
He's going to have his own lands.
In the Holy Roman Empire, we refer to lands that the emperor himself holds as his house mocked. So there's this idea that you you can call troops from your own lands as well your house mocked, and then you can kind of point them in the direction that they need.
To house mocked as a house power.
Is that literally right?
Yeah?
Yeah, it's like it's not more complex than that.
So h and then and then you from there extrapolate because say you are I don't know the Etonians, then your lands are in a particular place, but you have the ability to call up the Swanians, right, you know, and you can say all right, you as well, right, and that kind of gets rolled into it. But it's kind of understood that you are under the king or the emperor, So it is kind of like a game of telephone in terms of who gets called up and why.
And peasants may be militarily trained, it really depends on where you are. Oftentimes they are limited in terms of the weapons they are allowed to train with. So for example, peasants aren't allowed to use swords, but they can use spears, they can use pikes, and they can use.
At this point in time crossbows.
We haven't come up with a long bow yet, so and this can be also a big deal for people of the kind of middle classes who live in cities. They oftentimes have crossbow guilds and like they will have their own crossbow tournaments and they'll hang out and practice with their crossbows. So if you get called up to go to war, or you decide that you wish to go to war, you can like get out your crossbow and prove that you are a very fancy land and lad.
Indeed right, But the people.
On horses with swords are all knights, which means that they are members of the noble class because sword ownership is pretty tightly controlled.
I would also just add to that the concept of since we're talking about the Normans, the concept of feudalism as it is understood now, it was far to the way that we understand it now. Is like, as Eleanor said, this like top down pyramid thing. But Europe did not have the bureaucratic states at any level to enforce something that complicated and that structured. Now, it's true the Carolingians did like a version of that, and then the Normans picked up upon it, and that's where we kind of
get the ideas for feudalism. But even at this point, it wasn't that structured, and it wasn't the military hierarchy was not that set and ordered in that way as it's presented and people think about now, which is why uh most medievalists now prefer the term uh manorialism to describe the whole social, military, and religious milieu of the Middle Ages.
Thank you, Luke.
Hey, that's the first time I've ever actually gotten to do it. I'm pretty excited. I've never got to do that before. I'm pretty excited.
Breaking new ground. There we go. I think there's there's one question I have, and I want to talk about a couple of the more prominent Crusade leaders of the Crusade.
But when you compare the First Crusade to let's say, the Third Crusade, let's skip over the Second Crusade, and we're not going to talk about the Third Crusade in this series, but but you compare the two, like, the starkest difference to me is the Third Crusade is led by the King of England, the King of France, the Holy Roman Emperor until he drowns in a river like these, it's the it's the top of the heap. It's like the top of the European heap. Go on this crusade,
whereas this first crusade, it's a bunch of counts. There isn't even really a clear leader because they're all at this sort of same sub monarchical level. Is that a function of the church, the bishops sort of as you alluded to earlier, Elean or the bishop sort of preaching to their own level, which was at this kind of level of the nobility. Is it because kings sort of looked at this new fangled idea about going on crusade and said, I don't know, Or is it? Is it
because the church? There's a I mean, there's an argument to be made if you're in the church, you don't want to recruit kings, right because that's destabilizing. You take the king away and send him on crusade and the whole society could fall apart while he's gone. So what what basically, why do we get this collection of lords or counts rather than any you know, full on monarchs on this expedition.
Well, you kind of hit the nail on the head there already there.
It's like we got to understand too, like what what time are we talking about? Tell you who is not going on crusade is the English king who literally just took over this joint, right, you know, and things are way way too shaky to be leaving England at this point in time because you have a really hostile populace who are like, who the hell are these French guys?
And the French guys are like, shut up, I rule, you don't make me come hairy the North all right, like you know, like so we've got a lot of problems within.
Their own countries at the time.
Similarly, you know, the King of France, he's not too short, like I mean, he's got enough problems with Normans already, right, you know, he's not going to be walking out of town anyway. The only Roman Empire is on the outs with the church, you know, the let us not forget the walk to Canosa and things like this.
So it's like he's not going anywhere.
Because he if he does, risks putting his newly formed empire on the rock, right, you know, because everybody always scheme in in the Holy Roman Empire. So you're you're not going to do that, right. The people who go are people who stand to gain something, who can leave their lands. You know, it's a stable enough situation. You know, maybe dad stays home and the eldest son goes, or maybe dad stays home and the third son goes, right, you know, and.
That is kind of much more the thing.
By the time we get to the second Crusades and the third Crusades, you start getting kings who are involved because they've grown up their whole life hearing about crusade. They've grown up their whole life understanding that this is something that they can undertake that might be interesting. And they've grown up their whole life with the pope going, hey, crusade, crusade, tonight, King crusade, you know, and so it just kind of
changes things. And also it changes by dint of being something that is possible in the imagination to be associated with good kingship. Right, so you know, you wouldn't start shit while your king is away, because that would that would call.
You into question.
But you know, even when we see like Richard the Lionheart go on crusade, it's like he leaves his mom at home with like a bunch of nobles, and so he's like got a steady hand on the tiller. He knows that he can go because he has a solid bunch of people who are controlling England that he can trust.
And if you don't have that, you don't go. Simple as that.
Yeah, and I think, just real quick, this belies the point that one of the big things that the Pope really wanted was peace and continuity in the leadership of Europe and pull and and this was a method to pull away some of the other aspects and give them
another way to vent off their violence somewhere else. And so it represents how this was kind of a plan that Urban had and how he wanted to make this up versus when the Second and Third Crusades and after that come along, it becomes culturally almost like a culturally
ingrained institution to a degree. And by then it becomes something where like if your kingdom is decently stable, then you should go like, hello, go The popes were like, go, go go, you know, because we need actual leadership out there. And you know, at this point that wasn't what they were looking for yet.
So before we get into time out, the Normans, which will do on the bulk of the episode, the time we have left to talk about the conquest of Sicily, etc. There are a couple of people who are involved in the expedition that I wanted you guys to sort of describe to people, at least initially, because they reflect I think, aspects of the crusade, and a couple of them are among this group of counts who respond to the crusade. The two that I really wanted to talk about were
Raimon of Toulouse, who I love. He's like the hapless character this crusade because he's a little bit older than the rest of the counts. He sort of assumes that that's going to give him some kind of prominence among them, that he's like the natural leader, and yet at every turn the rest of these guys pretty much tell him to fuck off and they do their own thing. So
I love him as a character. If we could talk a little bit about where he comes from, and then of course we have to introduce Godfrey of Boullion, who you know, if there was a like life magazine special on the Crusades that was published in the Middle Ages would be on the cover of it. He was the crusader. He was the first ruler of Jerusalem after the conquest, was so pious that he refused to call himself king.
But let's talk about these two guys, and then I also want to talk a little bit about the church relationship with the expedition too.
This is like a guy.
I love this guy, right, because the thing that's important about Raymond of Toulouse is this is a genuine we got we got ourselves a genuine religious dude hanging out here.
You know, there's there's rather a lot of backing.
And forth and doing and frog you can do about who wanted to do what and why and like what are what? What does it all mean with crusaders? And are they here for religious reasons or is it for financial gain? And you know, like I can't see into everybody's hearts, but I want to tell you my boy Raymond, he's in it for jeebus. That's why he's on here. He bro he's the Count of Toulouse. Do you know
how rich he is? He has so much money and he could just sit around being a fancy lad in his several many fine castles, and he's like, no, this one, this one is for my boy. Jac I'm going out to Jerusalem. We are going to kind of take it. But he is a really interesting character because he's so rich and powerful that he's like, yeah, guys, I'm the natural leader of this right everybody but he loves Raymond, right, and everyone is like no, dude, like get out, get
out of here, boo, you know. And so he kind of goes along expecting that there's going to be a certain amount of seniority and that he's going to receive a certain amount of deference. And you also see him pull kind of like wild stuff as well, because when the majority of the crusaders arrive in Constantinople, the majority of the crusaders swear an oath of fealty to Emperor Alexios, right,
which was smart of Alexios. He's like, yeah, because you're gonna give me the land, right, And Raymond is like, absolutely not a homeboy, I'm not doing that. And he has staid swears an oath of a friendship to the Emperor Alexios, which is incredibly canny, right, because I do think he's there for religious reasons, but it also means that he's like, yeah, honey, I'm keeping whatever it is I get over here, and that's like it's such rich.
You'd behavior right, like You've got this incredible parcel of land in France and you're still like, yeah, no, homeboy, I'm I in Tripoli. That's what's happening over here right now. So he's this great character because he gets so butt hurt that other people don't take him seriously because of how religious he is, and he thinks that there should be some kind of natural deference to him, and so I just love him as a character because you know, he was the worst. You know, I have, like all
the crusaders to dine with. He's at the bottom of my list.
Just insufferable. He must have been insufferable.
Yeah.
He apparently had quite a death wish to die over there, which like is attested to in like some of the accounts from the time, because he like would just tell people like I'm ready to die here for God, and they were like, all right, man, is that your first choice? What if we win and got Jerusalem back for God? What about that? And He's like, I get fine, you know, I mean I guess if I have to, you know, it's like all right, man, uh cool.
Yeah, yeah, like zero chill a terrible hang.
Nobody likes this guy, and so as a result, I'm obsessed with this guy because I like it when people are fucking weirdos, and he is one. You know, he's weird by crusader standards, which is saying something.
He's the one that had the miracle vision, that discovered the apparent holy lance, that that allowed them to win the Siege of Ante. Like, he's that that the the providence of which was so suspected, was doubted by other crusaders at the time they had a trial about it.
Anyway, what you're too weird for the other crusaders, that makes you fucking weird.
I'm just saying. I'm just saying.
So yeah, let's let's move from from Raymond now on too Godfrey, who's a much more I don't know what you want to call him, serious figure in a sense, I guess the golden crusader, you know, golden archetype of the crusader.
But what is his His thing's kind of more mysterious because whereas the others, like they either have pious or very worldly reasons for going on the crusade, they they you know, they're driven by the spirit or by you know, lust for wealth and power, whatever it may be. But Godfrey just seems more like he was just kind of there. And as the troops passed by, he was like, oh,
what are you guys going to do? You and they were like, you know, crusade and he was like okay, and then you know, they kind of he kind of after that, he was like, Okay, yeah, I guess I'll I'll go and I'll mortgage Lorraine and Verdune and you know, Bouyon to pay the way, which is something that a lot of a lot of the nobles had to do. They had to mortgage their lands, you know, to get
the cash to do it. And he just like he he gets this army and he has the most trouble getting there because he takes the northern route through through the Balkans to get there through Hungary, and it is just a disaster because they had been wrecked by the people's crusades earlier, and so Godfrey gets hung up. He has to like give part of his entourage and family as collaterals to make sure that they'll like pass through
Hungary safely. And he's just this guy, like he's almost like the I wasn't even supposed to be here today, guy, but like, how are you that? And you also lead an army of like twenty or so thousand, Like you mortgage all your lands and lead an army of twenty or so thousand people, but you're also like put upon, like woe is me? They called me in at the last minute. Like he's yeah, he's a weird They're all weird, but he's definitely a weird one.
Yeah, I think that.
Also.
The thing with Godfrey is he's kind of who you assume goes on Crusade, right because he was sort of like a second son. He didn't have the same kind of lands and inheritances as his older brother.
He ends up getting lands as a.
Result of his uncle dying childless, and his uncle's like, yeah, here you go. You can kind of have this slice of land in what is now Belgium, which is a really tricky one because you're sort of in between France and the Holy Roman Empire, so you've got to get really good at negotiations, and like sometimes the Emperor Henry
is like, yeah, sucks to be you, buddy. I'm like given that land to my son, you know, so you know, he's got a real reason to go on crusade, to do this mortgaging because he doesn't have much of acclaim as he would maybe like to have to lands, and so he's kind of like about.
To risk it all for the land.
So you know when people say, oh, yeah, those sorts of people who go on crusade are second sons and third sons, it's like, yeah, that's that's your boy, Godfrey. You know, he's exactly who you are imagining is gonna risk their life and die in a desert in theory, right, it's someone who's.
A striver, right, I mean, he's a striver. So before we finish on the Normans, which I want to talk about the conquest of Sicily and you know how that sort of presages was to come here, But I also wanted to talk about the relationship between the church and
the army once the army goes on campaign. And this is probably best exemplified in the person of Adam Ar of Lepuis, the bishop who becomes the papal legate on the excursion, you know, and is not a guy who's like, you know, being carried on a litter and saying mass. I mean, he leads troops in battle, Like he's very much, you know, part of the expedition. What's the relationship like here, Like,
what is Adamar's role vis a vis the counts? It always it struck me as he's an instrument of control in some respects, Like there's this idea that you know, you're being forgiven your sins to go on campaign. You'll be forgiven if you get to Jerusalem. If you die, you'll obviously go straight to heaven, and you know you've
got all these wonderful things waiting for you. But also like you're going to have to stay on some kind of straight and narrow path while you're on campaign, and this guy's coming along to make sure that you do that. He'll be there to do confession or whatever, to forgive the obvious sins that you're to be committing while you're on crusade. It seems like, you know, just a way to maintain some hand on the tiller and not have this thing go off completely off the rails. But you know, what,
what do we know about him? And then the role that he's supposed to play.
Yeah, I mean you're kind of bang on here, Derek. Basically you send Adamar over to make sure that the church still has some idea of what's going on. And he's exactly who you think Urban the Second would send on crusade because he's a very, very fancy French lad.
Right.
So he's the Bishop of pu in Valet, and that is a pretty sweet deal. He comes from a very wealthy family, the Counts of Valentina, and he is one of like the big I love Gregorian Reform hell yah Gregorian Reform guys.
Right.
So he's also actually present at the Council of Claremont because of who he is, a very fancy French lad bishop, right. So he is who you imagine a bishop to be, right, he's kind of like godfree but in bishop form. And he's exactly who Urban would want being there. Because the worry for the church is if you leave a bunch of second sons on supervised how you go over there, they're gonna forget all about the religious part of the mission, right.
Are they just.
Going to get caught up in the warfare aspect. Will they be dazzled by the delights of the East and give into a hedonism which is a kind of a concern for the church at the time, Or are they going to stay on the straight and narrow, and so you absolutely send over somebody to keep an eye on these guys.
And that's who Adamar is is.
He is like the pope's babysitter of all the military guys.
He's the he's the he's the field trip chaperone. One thing about Adamar is that he was I mean, he was obviously deeply religious, but he also understood the game that was being played in what was going on. He as I mentioned earlier, the discovery of the supposed Holy Lance, he was extremely skeptical of it, didn't believe that it was real, but he was he was so committed to the crusade effort, and he realized that the troops believed
it real. So he kept his skepticism solely confined to like very high level meetings of like the very top echelon and the rest of it. He allowed the belief to go on because you know it it raised morale
and it spurred the men on. And you know, I also think it's a good point to say that a couple of things I've read the other clergy who were there, may they would some of them fell by the wayside, of course, but they did, especially around Antioch, make efforts to be like, look, no more visiting sex workers, no more extreme gambling, no more, you know, all of the vices that come along with with an army. No more of that. That's why we're losing. That's why it's not working.
And that was also driven on behind them by the poorer people and the camp followers who were attached to the prince's crusade. So like there was this like feedback where not only did Adamar like try to keep everything in line, but all the other clergy were there were like taking like advice from the lower the lower people around them and being like, look, you guys have to stop sitting you nobles with all your money. This is
you know. So they were there, as Elinor said, to like reinforce and give it structure, but also to be like, here's this. You guys have had too much care. Here's the stick.
You know. So I think for the rest of the time we have, let's talk about the Normans. I know, Eleanor you mentioned at the beginning of this that you wanted to spend some time help, you know, kind of talking about who the Normans were, especially you know, as they had arrived in southern Italy and Sicily by this point and their importance to the crusade. Obviously we're going to talk I think in a couple of episodes about Bella mout of Toronto. Luke alluded to him in the introduction.
Very interesting guy, especially in terms of his interactions with Alexios, and there's still debate I think about what actually went on there and what the two of them discussed in terms of future arrangements. But even more basic than that, to take a step back, like when the Normans, who were the Normans, who were the Normans specifically you know, who arrived in southern Italy and what happens in Sicily as they conquer this the island and from the Muslims.
What is that sort of how does that campaign sort of lead us into or kind of play play into the notion of crusading.
Yeah.
So the thing that we got to understand about Normans is there a relatively new invention at this point inside we've only just come up with the concept of Normans in the eleventh century. They basically were a type of Viking who was granted permission to stay in the region and became a bit frenchified.
Right.
So traditionally when you would go viking, a big place that you're going to want to hit is like the Send Valleys, right, because that's a real good river.
You could sail several boats down, and they've got tons of money.
So you just understand if you live in the End region that like vikings are going to show up every minute of the year, right, Like, but I mean I say every minute of the year. They're going to come in the spring, and they're going to come in the audit.
And then one year the Vikings go might just stay here, yeah, you know, and they end up like kind of conquering a bunch of the lands around them, and they end up making a deal with the French crown, and the French crown says, okay, look, here's the thing that we
could do. If you want to go ahead and attack my enemies who are over in basically like out near the kind of tip of France, who haven't been subjugated to me, then I will allow you to stay in this parcel of land like around basically around like lambs and places like that, and you can then be vassals of mine. They say, yeah, okay, great, watch me go subjugate the Bartons and they are given this land and babing badam boom, they christianize and they start staying around there.
But they're still weird, okay. They speak their own kind of hybridized French that has a lot of loanwords from Scandinavian languages. They do things like take French wives, but then really they're concubine will also be like a Norman or a Viking, and then that's the one that they actually have children with, and you know, they just do weird stuff, right because they aren't they aren't French, right,
they are this other thing. And indeed the our word Norman and the area Normand comes from Normani, which means Northmen. So it's like these are the Vikings who are around the place. And indeed, like to this day, I have it on good authority from French people that they're like, hey, yeah, no, they're this other thing. Like interestingly, like the French history curriculum doesn't teach a lot about the Normans because they're like, nope, those aren't our.
Guys, right, So you know, you don't you don't look at.
Them directly on because they're not French, right there, are this other thing, and it's this thing that makes people uncomfortable because they get their land by conquering and attacking, and you spend a lot of time kind of trying
to keep them on side. So sometimes they're in France, sometimes they're taking over England, and sometimes they're taking over the Kingdom of Sicily, you know, like as one does, right, because they have this really great military advantage in that they're very good with boats, and they learn how to use horses while they were in France, and this is and this sucks for everybody else because they're like, ah, God, damn it, the Vikings have horses now, and it's like
it's not it's not great when the Navy suddenly has tanks, right, Like that's that's a terrible thing for them, right. So yeah, they basically kind of like end up in Southern Italy in the first instance as mercenaries, right because although like they are a bunch of weird guys, everybody knows they're good fighters. So you could always kind of scoop some Norman's up if you want to do things, and basically
the Byzantines would hire them. You know, the Byzantines have a very long history of hiring in vikings, and they're like, oh, these ones are even better.
They're Christian, great, brilliant.
And you know, we got to keep in mind that a lot of southern Italy and a lot of Sicily was initially Greek, and they were very much connected with Constantinople. You know, there's no concept of Italy at the time. And so yeah, if you go to Sicily even today, you got a lot of places with Greek place names
and that kind of thing. Right, So they get called in by the Lombards, they get called in by the Byzantines, and they are doing some work down in like the toe and the heel of the boot of Italy and indeed in Sicily itself, because Sicily is real close to Africa, you know, and as a result, Africans do be going up there.
Right. So Sicily has been has been.
Conquered, uh, and it has been conquered by Muslims. Okay, you know it's it ain't that far from Carthage, baby, And the Byzantines do not care for this, so they say, hey, can we I'm gonna get some Norsemen in and we're gonna we're gonna deal with this and that begins happening in the tenth century, but by the time we were in the eleventh century, you know, we've really got some Normans around the shop in Sicily, and hilariously, you know,
in a precursor of things to come, the businessings are like, yeah, get in here, guys, we need some helper retaking Sicily, and the Normans are like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll take you said take Sicily, right, Yeah, I heard yeah, right, And.
So basically they end up. You know, it's a it's a long thing.
It doesn't happen overnight, but they manage to slowly kind of take the tow and the and the heel of the boot. They end up taking over the Emirate of Sicily and creating their own state down in southern Italy, much to the chagrin of the Byzantines. Were like, hey, we paid you for that.
Well, I mean, it doesn't take them. You have to give them some credit. I mean, it takes them like thirty years, I think, to conquer Sicily, which seems like a long time, except it took the Muslims like one hundred and fifty years to finally get the Byzantines off the island like they came in in the eight twenties, after you know, Euphemius knocked up that nun and decided it would be just a rebel rather than like face it.
That was the that's the legend, right that he like got non pregnant and decided in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. But it took them a long time to finally get rid of the last business remen It took them about fifty years I think to take Syracuse, and then you know, a couple of decades beyond that to finally take the last major city. But it was all the way into the nine sixties before they took they removed the last present Byzantine presence on
the islands. It took a very long time to achieve this, and the Normans are relatively and part of it is, I think the degeneration of the Muslim presence, which we will talk about more next time. But you know, at that point, by the time you get from eight twenty, you start out with like the appointed governors by the Abasid Caliphate or going in as part of the you know,
sort of imperial conquest. By the time you get to like nine sixty you're on too, like the this the group that took over from the like your three groups in and they like deteriorated to the point where Sicily
is sort of on its own now. It doesn't really have any connection to anything on the mainland, so it all kind of starts to fall apart and break up, which I guess makes it a little bit easier for the Normans than it was for the for the Arabs, but it's it's, uh, you know, I give them, I give them credit for being efficient about it, frankly in contrast.
Yeah, and they do a good job of kind of identifying weak points, you know, and they go for the big cities first, as like, look, get Palermo, right, you want it, you want that, and then you want Syracusa, and then it's like, you know, eventually you only have people over in like Marsala, right.
And then you kind of like squeak that up and.
They're like, oh, well, go for the south fields later. It's fine, you know, you want the forts, you control the ports first and then and then you kind of
branch out from there. And I mean, I think that this is an important point because we have a tendency in our kind of nationalized twenty first century world to take seriously Victorian ideas about nationalism and like, what historically is a homeland and like, you know, I'm sorry, but there's no such thing is an Italian, right, Like Italians are made up, you know, Germans are made up.
I will, this is not a real thing.
And when you look at the history of Italy and the history of southern Italy in particular, like, baby, these people were Greek, you.
Really liked, what do you mean Italian? You know?
And then and then you've got a lot of Muslims around the shop. And even when the Normans take over, it's a pretty mixed society. One of my favorite ever Emperors of Frederick the Second pretty famously has rather a lot of Muslims.
Around the shop.
So even when the Normans do take over, they kind of maintain it as a mixed society, which I think.
Also helps with the conquest efforts.
They're like, I mean, I'm not going to kick you out. I'm just gonna be like the ruler here. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, you know. So you have a lot of Normans down in Sicily, and again you're also facing this problem when Normans is like, cool, so we took this over.
Now we're here, and then what.
Do you next?
What do you attack next?
Right?
Because what are you gonna do with all these guys who have horses and ships and want to go stick people with pointy things? You know, you got to point them somewhere, right, And it's a Norman problem.
That So yeah, and the big the big Norman here at least in the run up to our story, to our narrative is Robert Guiscard, who he was one of the ones who came over in that initial ban in the ten sixties and they were going to take over southern Italy and this involved fighting, as Eleanor said, whatever
locals they needed to the Muslims and the Byzantines. And this starts a long contentious relationship that Guiscard has with Constantinople because and it's a very on again, off again thing because like he for most of his life, he is just going to get the better of the Byzantines, like across the board, and he's going to essentially own them so hard that following Mansukurt around Manzuicurt, they they uh the Emperor Romana's Diogenes who Diogenes who was who
was captured and later died captured at Mansakurt later died. He proposed marriage the marriage of his son to the daughter of Robert Griscard, and Uh Guiscard UH said no thanks. And that was when he sees the remaining uh Byzantine lands in Italy. And UH after Manzicurt Uh the the Duca emperor who came next, Michael the seventh UH renewed the talks. He he said, I'll give up the claims to Italy. It's fine, you got us, you beat us, whatever,
And Uh he wanted an alliance with the Griscard. He wanted his brother Constantine to marry one of Guiscard's daughters. I think it's the same one who they keep trying to marry off to various Greeks. And we Scarred again turns this down, but he doesn't. He doesn't do anything just yet. And at the time Michael the seventh was like, you know what, fine, I'm going to reach back out to the pope. He reaches out to Gregory the seventh about papering over the East West Schism and seeing what
they can do. But then he said the second, a second letter to Guiscard and he's like, look, I'll marry my son to your daughter. I'll give you all these titles and lands that you can give to your Norman buddies. You can have some land over here. It'll be fine. And goose Card's like, you know what, this will work. This is fine and it's great. And they break off relations with the Pope and greg Gregory's pissed and he writes all these letters about how they're never going to
be able to reconcile. But the thing about it is that Wiscard never made good on any of that.
Uh.
And so when the business teens were trying to fight the the Turks, the Seljouks, he was like, yeah, I know, I'm good. And then Michael the seventh was overthrown in a coup and Griiscard uses this as an opportunity to invade the Balkans. He's going to take the Balkans back from it was controlled by the Byzantines.
Uh.
He does this, but in this is where he ran out of steam because he got to the Balkans and he wasn't able to make a ton of headway and then he died there And this is also funny because Guiscar was so convinced he was going to take the Balkans and just run roughshot over over the Byzantines that he changed his will to leave all of his new yet to be conquered lands in the Balkans to his
eldest son, Bohamon of Taranto. And so when Guiscard died with nothing in the Balkans, Bohemon had nothing because that was his inheritance, and he had to go back and fight his own brother in order to take Taranto in the south of Italy. It's great, they like, Wiscard is this guy who is just like like, yeah, I'll come fight the Turks. So he doesn't really do it, and then gets to the Balkans and get this.
And dies, he just dies.
It's great.
Look, scammers exist in the Middle Ages, that's all.
That's all I'm saying. That's all. I'm like. It's not a new thing there there, you know, yeah, for sure.
And this is so bad that when Bohemon brings his army over Alexios the First sent his brother John Comnenos to Durrachium with a full army to make sure they that the son didn't try to avenge the father and.
Take back So good. It's so good, you know.
This is I think this is a good place to end it. It sort of sets us up on what's to come. Like the scenes of shall we say, the Crusaders and the Byzantines not getting along very well are or sort of embedded in the Norman relationship with Constantinople.
It also, I think you can draw a sort of theme across a lot of this period of like rulers who are in trouble asking outside actors to sort of come in and do them a solid and being screwed over, Like the Muslim conquest of Spain starts that way, the Muslim conquest of Sicily starts that way. We've got the Normans the Byzantines inviting the Normans to come in and help them out in southern Italy and oops, that doesn't
work out. And what are the Crusades if not a giant climactic example of a ruler in trouble saying hey, could you do me a solid? And it is screwed over ultimately in the process by the people who come to help him. Like it is absolutely a theme that I think sets up the Crusades as a project, not necessarily the first Crusade, although there's a little bit of
screw and it goes on there. But you know, once we get to like, the fourth Crusade really really turn out not to work out in the byzantines favor, So I think that's a good place to leave it. We're gonna take a little bit of a detour next time to talk about where things stand in the Islamic world. We're going to talk about the Fontamids. We haven't really talked about them yet, but they will be important when
we get to Jerusalem. We're going to talk about the Seljuks, who we've referred to several times already in terms of the Battle of Manzikert, but we'll talk about talk about things from their perspective a little bit next time, and then the episode after that we will finally get to the other major player here, the Byzantines in Constantinople, and what it is they were actually looking for versus what
they got. So until then, thank you guys for being on again, and we look forward to the next episode, and thanks for everybody for listening. Danny's not here at the end of things. So I'll have to use his tagline, Please keep on rocking in the free world, I guess.
Welcome to the Crusades. The First Crusade is co hosted by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast and doctor Eleanor Yannica and Luke Waters of the We're Not So Different Podcast. Music by Jake Aaron, cover art by James Montalbano. The show is co edited and co produced by Jake Aaron and Luke Waters. Thank you very much for listening, Scotch