[thunder]
[dramatic theme music]
[narrator] War, in the name of God.
The great world religions preach peace and mercy.
History, especially the history of the Middle Ages
proves that religion and violence are not contradictions.
Our belief in God often means believing in fighting on behalf of God...
and in being rewarded in paradise.
Islam means peace.
Christ teaches us to love our enemy.
But in their names, the world wages war.
[soft dramatic music]
Christianity, around the year 1100, is marked by a deep sense of piety
by the desire of both laity and clergy to lead a holy life...
and by the holy war against the heathen: the Crusades.
200 years, seven crusades of murder and conquest
in the name of the prince of peace.
The church creates an unholy mixture of faith and military service.
A problematic legacy that pursues our civilization to this day...
The Holy War.
[military band music]
It begins in the Old Testament, with the Ark of the Covenant.
The chest for the tablets with the 10 commandments has magic powers.
It makes the people of Israel invincible in war.
A treasure that the Crusaders are hunting for too.
During the Crusades, military religious orders are founded.
The Knights Templar, the Knights of Saint John...
and the Teutonic order.
The combination of monk and soldier
is one of the most bizarre inventions of the Middle Ages.
Religious orders at war against the heathen.
[music intensifies]
But what did this mixture of religion and violence, inexplicable to us today
mean to the people in the Middle Ages.
Talking about the Crusades...
the tendency is to see the violence in the name of Christianity
as a particularly serious crime.
However, one should remember that the Middle Ages
and particularly the high Middle Ages
were an age of violence.
So if you see the Crusades in this context
then they were perhaps just an extreme expression
of what was a mundane and daily feature of medieval life.
[narrator] And yet, even in the Middle Ages
there are some of the faithful who are appalled by the association of war
with the abused Son of God who preached love and peace.
The East Roman Christians in Byzantium
whose monks strive for the ideal of seclusion from the world
find the Holy Knights more than suspect.
[unsettling music]
But Byzantium is indirectly responsible for the Crusades.
The cause is cries for help from the Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land.
Islamic empires have become a deadly threat to Byzantium.
Muslim warriors are attacking the pilgrims.
The news reaching the Christians gets worse and worse.
The Byzantine patriarch, Alexios I, asks Pope Urban for help.
Urban sees the possibility of using campaign to remove the Schism
to reunite the Eastern Church and the Western Church.
Muslims are desecrating the holy places, it is said.
Pilgrims are being murdered.
Rumours spread like wildfire.
In the year 1095, at the council of Clermont
Pope Urban II makes a speech that will go down in history.
We know that in this appeal
many things that people felt moved by were probably addressed.
The rewards of heaven are promised.
There is the encouragement to act with knightly virtue.
The call to liberate the holy places in Jerusalem again
and to make them accessible to pilgrims.
All this is combined in these four reports.
And recently there has been speculation as to how the Pope invested his words
with the full range of symbolic capital.
He sighed, he wept, he obviously gave a rhetorically brilliant performance
which is why the reports say
that the whole mass of people cried out, "Deus lo vult - God wills it."
[narrator] In 1096, under the command of the monk, Peter the Hermit
Thirty thousand enthusiastic believers set out on the Paupers' Crusade.
Thirty thousand in need of food and drink.
Their journey is marked by pillage and plunder.
Only 3,000 return
after their expedition is annihilated by the Islamic Seljuks.
[music continues]
The same year seized the beginning of the First Crusade.
Many kings take part.
The Christians are under pressure to extend their empires.
Many structural changes in the high Middle Ages were responsible for the Crusades.
But at the same time, they were also involved in a major process...
of expansion on the part of Latin Christianity.
This expansion had progressed further since the early time of the conversion of the Teutons
particularly in the north
in 1066, I'm thinking of England and Denmark
It had come to a standstill.
Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia
had been integrated into Latin Christianity around the year 1000
and then during the 11th century.
In the south and south-west, the Muslims in south Italy in the Iberian peninsula
were pushed back so that the Latin Christianity expanded there too.
[narrator] A first crusade is a European enterprise.
From France Normandy, Flanders and Lorraine
a stream of knights make their way to Palestine to free the Holy Lands.
It would take three years and many battles until they stand before Jerusalem.
[soft dramatic music]
They lay siege to the Holy City for five weeks.
Then the attack begins.
Victory is followed by a massacre of 65,000 Jews and Muslims.
Women and children that one can only describe as a frenzy of bloodlust.
A terrible victory.
The Holy Land belongs to the Christians for the time being.
[suspenseful music]
Europe around the year 1100
is undergoing profound changes.
It is not just contact with foreign cultures.
The population, just like the economy, is growing at a great pace.
Trade becomes more important.
Over-population becomes a problem.
[music continues]
Who rules over all these people? Monarchs and the Church are locked in power struggles.
Everywhere there is change and expansion.
The Crusades are part of this.
The Crusades are not a clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam.
Christianity is divided: Rome and Byzantium.
In early Middle Ages, the Byzantine empire, the first Christian empire
was 20 times wealthier than Rome.
but weakened by constant wars,
exhausted by a vast administrative apparatus,
it's power is now slowly draining away.
Byzantium, with its capital Constantinople
has called on the Crusaders for assistance...
but it mistrusts them...
justifiably as would soon be seen.
Hitherto, the Byzantine Church has dominated Christian theology...
but that too will change.
[soft dramatic music]
The Crusaders hire ships to take them to the Holy Land.
An excellent business that makes many Italian cities rich.
The Crusaders are becoming the economic factor of the Mediterranean region.
Taking part in the crusade, represented the value of six-years labour.
There has to be a powerful motive
to enjoy the hardships and the risk of death.
[dramatic music]
The Church has promised the Crusaders,
"He who falls in battle against the heathen will be a martyr."
In the Middle Ages, the fear of Hell is great...
the hope of reaching the kingdom of Heaven small.
Almost everyone believes they are threatened by eternal damnation.
The question is why the opportunity to become a martyr
was so important to people in the Middle Ages.
Not everyone wanted it perhaps.
But the chance of becoming one was extremely important.
You only have to think of the Chapter 20 of the Apocalypse, the book of revelations
where it is prophesized that
martyrs will immediately enjoy eternal life at the heavenly altar.
While others will have to wait their allotted time
before they even have a chance to tasting the joys of heaven.
[narrator] The greatest propagandist of the Crusades
is Bernard de Clairvaux.
On the one hand, a devout mystic.
On the other hand, he even promises thieves and murderers eternal life
if they joined the crusade and killed heathens.
His greatest hour comes in the year 1144.
The Emir of Mosul conquers Edessa
a Christian principality since the First Crusade.
[anticipatory music]
In sermons of fire and brimstone
Bernard calls for the Second Crusade.
with resounding success.
But it ends in military disaster.
Then, in 1187, catastrophe.
The Battle of Hattin, a whole Crusader army, is annihilated.
The legendary Salah ad-Din defeats the Christians.
Jerusalem falls.
Doubting voices are heard.
Is Bernard a false prophet?
Why does God want this humiliating defeat?
But enthusiasm for the Crusades does not weaken.
Many later actions only add up to an inglorious chapter in the history of the West.
Now the so-called Fourth Crusade is particularly interesting as it heads not for the Holy Land
but for Constantinople
into the Byzantine empire from 1202 to 1204.
Venice had provided a fleet in Byzantium to transport the Crusaders
and intended to secure financial support there for the crusade.
Once in Byzantium, however, the whole enterprise gets bogged down.
Next, Constantinople is stormed and taken.
A bloody massacre ensues
and the result is a Latin empire that lasts for about 60 years.
[narrator] The Crusaders remain for about a century in their territories
along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
[dramatic music]
War in the name of God.
And the defeats: punishment, say the preachers
for the many sins of the Crusaders.
Sins such as gambling...
theft and lust.
And remarkably, there must also be penitence for the killing.
Although it is a Holy War.
Jerusalem has been lost.
But the Crusaders still have their castles and territories.
For the nobility, was the prospect of new kingdoms
not the most tempting feature of the Crusades.
The many power struggles among the Muslims help the Crusaders
to secure the borders of their principalities.
Numerous castles serve this purpose.
The orders of knights, however, are reluctant to acknowledge a superior command.
They wish to act independently as if these new rulers didn't exist.
Indeed, there isn't a great deal of unity among the Christian empires.
The Normans of Antioch are in conflict with the Byzantines...
and some of the Crusader states also fight against each other, sooner or later.
[dramatic music]
A confused situation, especially within the principalities.
At this time, the Crusaders have new problems to deal with in their territories.
They have created a new society, of course, consisting of Muslims
Jews and new Christians from the Latin world
but also including, for example,
members of other Christian faiths of the East.
Such as Nestorians, Monophysites and others.
You had, if you like, together all these different religions and cultures under one roof.
I suppose you could even call it the foundation of something like a multicultural society.
[narrator] An optimistic description but not necessarily wrong.
As an occupying power, the Crusaders, like the Muslims, were quite bearable.
"Business as usual" is perhaps an accurate description of the mood in the Crusader states.
The Arabs have to pay taxes...
but they are not persecuted for their faith.
In many areas, especially technology, medicine, and crafts...
the Muslims are far more advanced than the Crusaders.
The Christians learn more from the Muslims...
than vice-versa.
[serene music]
And cultural superiority also informs the way the Muslims see the Crusaders.
Basically, the Muslims had a feeling of religious superiority.
They were of the opinion that the Christian knights had a religion
that was simply inferior to Islam.
So we find Usama ibn Munqidh
beginning his chapter on Frankish customs.
by comparing the Franks to animals
in that they possess animal virtues such as bravery.
He respected their bravery
but held them to be culturally inferior
because they did not possess the same medical skills or techniques.
And finally, very important, they had no sense of honour or shame.
Above all, and this was something that really struck the Muslims,
the Christian knights were very liberal with their wives.
So it was noticed that a Christian knight was standing on the street with his wife
and along came another Frank and spoke to the wife
without the husband intervening.
[soft music]
[narrator] The Crusader states are dependent on supplies transported by ship.
The brisk trade over the Mediterranean
is managed principally by the Italian city states
of Genoa and Venice.
The Crusades make them fabulously wealthy.
The Crusades are the basis for their later ascendancy.
[suspenseful music]
The Middle Ages is a period of conflict between Church and secular power.
A time of violence and strife.
The Crusades transfer the disputes of the European empires
to a new venue: the Holy Land.
Unity among the Christians is weak.
Their quarrels with each other are awful.
After the second Crusade, Jerusalem, the goal of all the crusades
will only twice be made accessible to pilgrims.
Thanks to the treaties...
which Richard the Lionheart and Fredrick II negotiate with the Muslims.
[dramatic music]
The Coats of Arms of the two princes are amazingly similar
although they are not related.
Richard's life is an example of the constant quarrelling among the Christians.
Richard the Lionheart, the legendary English King, lives in France.
He's only spent only six months of his life in England.
His mother, Eleanor, later queen of France and England
takes part in a crusade.
His father and siblings become enemies.
All his life, Richard is entangled in court intrigues, both actively and passively.
[music continues]
His probably most important opponent, Philip II of France
as also his ally in the Third Crusade
until he quarrels with Richard and returns home to wage war on England.
But first, they advance together into the Holy Land and fight for their common cause.
They conquer Jaffa and Cyprus, the most important base of retreat for all later Crusaders.
Richard never reaches Jerusalem.
He's weakened by domestic intrigue.
But he negotiates with Salah ad-Din
the legendary commander and victor of Hattin.
The result is a treaty which gives him Tyre and Jaffa
and pilgrims' access to Jerusalem.
On his return journey, Richard falls victim to a plot.
He's made prisoner and taken to Germany to Henry VI
but Henry allies himself to Richard and frees him in exchange for a ransom.
Change of scene: Fredrick II, known as the wonder of the world
is raised at the court of the Norman king Roger on Sicily.
Sicily was once occupied by Muslims.
The young Frederick comes into contact with the superior Islamic culture.
A formative experience.
The Castel del Monte, a symbol of Frederick's thirst for for knowledge.
From here, he corresponds with Islamic scholars.
For many of his contemporaries, Frederick's admiration goes too far.
His Castel is octagonal, like the imperial crown
or like the Muslim Dome of the Rock.
From the Arabs, he learns falconry
and writes scholarly treatise about the birds which is unrivalled for centuries.
Under his rule, Muslims live in peace on Sicily.
They have their own part of town.
Even his bodyguards are Islamic.
Very clever. Their lives depend on him.
Frederick has taken a vow to lead a crusade.
But he doesn't go. The Pope excommunicates him.
In 1228, the Crusade takes place despite the excommunication.
There are battles.
But above all, there are negotiations.
And a treaty with the Sultan al-Malik.
Frederick II's treaty is more remarkable than Richard the Lionheart.
Firstly, because it's valid for the next 10 years.
And especially because the treaty is agreed without
any accompanying military action.
Frederick II was hardly a military commander in the Holy Land
but rather and primarily a negotiator.
[narrator] After his death, it is even rumoured that Frederick was in secret a Muslim.
That is nonsense but he admires Arab culture
and orders himself buried in an oriental robe.
[dramatic music]
It is indisputable that the Arabs at that time
were more advanced in all matters of science
than their European contemporaries.
But how do the Muslim peoples react to the Crusaders who invade their land?
[dramatic music intensifies]
The foreign knights arrive mainly by sea.
The Christian soldiers have a reputation for bravery.
They are specialists in siege technology.
But militarily this is nothing new for the Arabs
Who favour sudden attacks, raids.
Like pirates, a constant plague at the time...
the Crusaders are just one more enemy among many.
And like pirates, they only appear along the coast.
The difference is that after attacking
the Crusaders do not disappear again but remain as invaders.
Even so, they are not perceived as a threat to Islam.
The standards of hygiene and medical care among the Crusaders
both amazes and horrifies the Muslims.
Whether Crusader or Arab
short-term power strategies provide fertile ground
for intrigue and shifting alliances
which often transcends religious boundaries
not symmetric clash of civilizations
as a skirmish of warlords.
For the Arabs, the foreign soldiers come from the mysterious, dark and cold land
where terrible monsters dwell.
The more distant the Crusaders' homeland, the more terrible the monsters.
[unsettling music]
Muslims call all knights, Franks
no matter where actually they come from.
And yet there is an astonishing cultural bridge...
the ideal of knighthood, courage and honor.
Even the European tradition of the Troubadours' singing of courtly love
is probably a borrowing from Arab culture.
The chivalric ideal is certainly something which links the two cultures.
In Europe as well at this time
there was a notion of an ideal of knighthood
which was interreligious
above religions.
Consider, for instance, the epic poems of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Parzival and Willehalm which basically developed the ideal of knighthood
as a link between religious faiths.
A brotherhood which goes beyond beyond religion
so that a knight could have a Muslim brother,
a heathen brother,
all sharing the same ideal of courage.
That's the idea of the knights on their quest for the Holy Grail.
[narrator] The community of noble knights
and their quest for truth
as a bridge between mortal enemies, religious warriors.
In Europe, Salah ad-Din is still admired for his chivalry.
And the history of Muslims and Christians still hides many common features...
waiting to be discovered.
[ending theme music]