God's War: A New History of the Crusades

agreement to the Saladin Tithe from the large assembly of clerics, nobles and knights at Paris in March 1188, was forced to cancel the grant the following year and even apologize for having introduced it in the first place.⁵³ Some tax collection did occur. The count of Nevers, the king’s cousin, imposed a levy of 12d a house in his lands, but this may not have been part of the Saladin Tithe. It was a fixed-sum, not fixed-rate, tax, was imposed only after negotiation with the local clergy and nobility and made no mention of exemption for crucesignati.⁵⁴ Here, as in most places, the material pressures to take the cross operated in line with lordship, kinship and community. Although the surviving evidence overwhelmingly derives from the propertied classes, those lower down the economic and social scale were unlikely to be able to fund themselves. One English crusader assumed that those who set out shared their tears with ‘their household servants (familiaribus), relatives and friends’.⁵⁵ The provisions of Gregory VIII’s bull, the Saladin Tithe and the French debt and mortgage ordinance of March 1188 assumed that crusaders, typically ‘clerks, knights and sergeants (servientes)’, had property to dispose of, otherwise the details about raising money would be redundant. Under the Saladin Tithe, crusaders were to receive the tithe receipts from ‘their lands and their men’.⁵⁶ Frederick Barbarossa’s insistence on his followers being of a certain material sufficiency suggests the same. Not only did the poor not take the cross, lacking the economic or legal freedom to do so, many who did were prevented from departing by subsequent poverty. An inquiry into the non-fulfilment of crusade vows conducted in Lincolnshire in England a decade after the Third Crusade found that for twenty out of twenty-nine named crucesignati the cause of default was poverty.⁵⁷ So, whether or not tax avoidance was available, the reality of crusade recruitment rested on the ability to pay or be paid for, from monarchs down to prosperous peasant farmers and urban and rural artisans.

This failed to do much to inhibit the scale of recruitment. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean observers noted the extraordinary response. ‘Enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage was such that already [1188] it was not a question of who had received the cross but of who had not yet done so.’⁵⁸ Recruiting fanned out from the great assemblies at Gisors, Mainz and Paris early in 1188, mainly propelled by the lords and their retinues, with the active encouragement of secular clergy and monasteries which, as on earlier crusades, supplied important financial resources in the way of cash in return for gifts and mortgages of property. While preaching provided the focus, in towns, cities and the courts of nobles, rumour and word of mouth created a public mood, the Dauphinois crusader’s ‘great movement’ (‘magna mota’).⁵⁹ Peer group pressure and the fear of shame inevitably acted as effective recruiting officers. Poets cast those who failed to answer the call as ‘recreants and cowards’. Chroniclers, perhaps in similarly imaginative vein, noted that waverers received ‘wool and distaff’ as a hint that any who remained ‘were only fit for women’s work’.⁶⁰ Wives and mothers added their voices to the chorus, perhaps the most persuasive of all. As a sign of commitment, some recruits wore hair shirts (often, like Abbot Samson of Bury, making sure that everybody around them knew), abstained from meat and followed the simple dress code laid down by the sumptuary laws instituted by Gregory VIII’s bull and repeated in sermons and local legislation during the following three years. While reflecting an element of theatrical showing-off, such sartorial demonstrations helped create and sustain the atmosphere of engagement.

That said, it must be recognized that the impression of, in Arnold of Lubeck’s words, ‘rich and poor as one’ demonstrating a universal adherence to the crusade may mislead.⁶¹ Many who took the cross in 1188 out of sudden emotion or careful calculation abandoned their vows ‘having saluted Jerusalem from afar’, as one English monk acidly observed.⁶² Many others did not take the cross at all, including William Marshal, who famously made a whole career out of the pursuit of courtliness and chivalry. He preferred to remain at home with his new, rich wife and a job in Richard I’s regency government. In mitigation, he had only recently returned from two years in Outremer (1184–6). However, his failure to sign up in 1188–9, when he was close to Henry II, points to the exercise of common sense in response to the crusade. Especially in the entourage of monarchs, such a defining commitment was not undertaken indiscriminately. Life and politics in western Europe were not suspended. In Germany and Italy, Barbarossa’s son and viceroy, Henry VI, vigorously pursued his claim, through his wife, to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, while his opponents, led by adherents of the exiled duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion, encouraged revolt. In France and England, despite crusade preparations beginning in the first months of 1188, deteriorating relations between Philip II and Henry II increasingly took precedence in 1188–9. This culminated in a damaging war over the succession to Angevin lands between Henry and his son Richard of Poitou, vigorously supported by Philip II. All three were crucesignati. Once Richard departed on crusade in 1190, his brother John schemed to control the government, which was being run by bureaucrats, many of whom had taken the cross in 1188 only to be released by the pope in 1189 on account of their important civil office.⁶³ The king’s crusade failed to prevent a sharp tussle for power that led to the overthrow of Richard’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, in 1191. Although the personal involvement of ruling monarchs drew with them much of their ruling elites and many of their officials, many remained. Central and local administration continued. The bulk of the lay and clerical populations stayed put. The crusade was profoundly interesting for some; a matter of indifference to others. Not all contemporary chroniclers appeared obsessed with it. In England, monastic writers such as Gervase, sacrist of Christ Church Canterbury, or Jocelyn of Brakelond at Bury St Edmund’s, only recorded concern with the crusade when it impinged on their religious houses. Gervase was, in retrospect at least, positively hostile, blaming Archbishop Baldwin, a particular bete noire, for the onerous Saladin Tithe and portraying his Welsh tour as a jaunt devised to avoid facing messy litigation with the Canterbury monks. Gervase gave events in the east in 1190–92 short shrift and, with hindsight, described the whole venture as ‘unfortunate’.⁶⁴ Commitment to the crusade was frequently proportionate rather than consuming.

Recruitment for the Third Crusade was distinguished by the leadership of monarchs and their ability to secure their nobilities behind the enterprise to a degree surpassing even the Second Crusade. Secular governmental power in each kingdom – royal, comital and urban – reinforced or subsumed the ecclesiastical mechanisms for recruitment, most notably in the Angevin lands, especially in England. There, from an early stage, the relatively centralized royal administration took over all aspects of crusade planning and operation. The commitment of monarchs, while facilitating recruitment and material provision, extended the notion and traditions of good lordship to the enterprise, a visible expression of the moral dimension of rule that lay at the heart of consensual authority. Lacking coercive force, twelfth-century kings relied on their subjects’ acceptance of the mutual benefits of their rule. Leadership of such an unequivocally praiseworthy and virtuous cause as the crusade enormously enhanced the scope for kings to display the transcendent aspects of their position and, thereby, demand the respect and support of their subjects. Practical limits remained. Frederick Barbarossa could use the crusade to demonstrate his pre-eminence in German politics and impose a national peace on political factions, represented by the negotiated exile of the dissident Henry the Lion. However, in return he was expected to subsidize his own crusade himself. Similarly, Philip II of France could command the almost universal support of the church and the regional counts of France in 1188 for the crusade as such, but he could not impose the Saladin Tithe. Suspicion of novel fiscal exactions proved stronger than political trust. An essential ingredient in establishing moral leadership was the public, personal obligation created by taking the cross. That was why the ceremonies at Gisors and Mainz were so important. They bound the royal crucesignati to the crusade in a contract with church and people that only action could fulfil or papal absolution untie. Henry II of England well understood the implications of such a commitment, which was one reason he had avoided it for twenty-five years.

The tangible result of royal participation was early demonstrated in Sicily. To William II’s rapid action in sending a fleet to the Holy Land in 1188 some attributed the survival of the remaining Christian outposts. Yet despite his display of formal grief and mourning on hearing of the catastrophe of Hattin, William did not take the cross. Although he may have discussed a joint enterprise with his brother-in-law Henry II, William seemed not to have organized his nobility for the crusade. By his death, in November 1189, no firm undertakings had been reached by the king or his nobles. In the ensuing power struggle, his eventual successor, his dwarfish illegitimate cousin Tancred of Lecce, recalled the Sicilian fleet from the Levant. The only residual Sicilian involvement in the crusade lay in William’s lavish, if perhaps fanciful, bequest to Henry II of grain, wine, money, gold plate and a hundred galleys equipped for two years. This may have represented what William imagined he would contribute to the crusade. In the event his legacy provided a source of conflict and an opportunity for extortion for Richard I when he arrived in Sicily in the autumn of 1190.⁶⁵ The contrast between the Sicilian experience and that of Henry II’s Angevin lands was sharp. Even if dissipated in the succession war of 1188–9, by the time of his own death in July 1189, Henry’s preparations had raised men and money. Perhaps more importantly, they had committed large