Speaker 1: Hey, folks, you're about to listen to episode two of
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Crusades The First Crusade, a series that
Speaker 1: Eleanor and I did with the fellows an American Prestige.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this and you're wondering what all
Speaker 1: that means, it probably means you didn't listen to episode
Speaker 1: one first, so you should go back and check that out,
Speaker 1: and then when you're done with that, come back and
Speaker 1: listen to this one, because this is episode two on Taranto. If,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you've already listened to and enjoyed
Speaker 1: episode one and I'm just in the way, if you
Speaker 1: continuing to listen, I'll step aside, enjoy and of course
Speaker 1: by the rest of the series for just eight dollars
Speaker 1: now at America Prestige Dot, supporting cast FM SLASH Welcome
Speaker 1: at Dash to Dash the Dash Crusades, Dash the Dash
Speaker 1: First Dash Crusade, And again it's in the show notes
Speaker 1: if you're interested, so just check it out.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: In the far southern heel of the Boot that is
Speaker 1: the Italian Peninsula, there's a coastal city known as Taranto,
Speaker 1: though it is less well known today, or maybe we
Speaker 1: all just get it easily confused with a large city
Speaker 1: in Canada. Taranto is an important commercial and military naval
Speaker 1: hub in Italy and the Mediterranean, and has been since
Speaker 1: the Classical era in the Middle Ages, though, beginning in
Speaker 1: ten ninety five CE, Taranto took on an even greater
Speaker 1: significance as it became the main disembarkation point for crusaders
Speaker 1: using the Southern Sea Route to get to Constantinople and
Speaker 1: the Holy Land. At first, you might think that this
Speaker 1: was simply due to its approximate location just south of Rome,
Speaker 1: the epicenter of the Western European crusade effort, and while
Speaker 1: that was likely a factor here, there was a much
Speaker 1: more proximate cause. When we get to Taranto. In our narrative,
Speaker 1: the city and much of southern Italy are ruled over
Speaker 1: by a Norman nobleman named Bohemond, the son of the
Speaker 1: infamous Norman lord Robert Guiscard. Wait, what the Normans ruled
Speaker 1: in Italy? Why would a bunch of frenchified former Vikings
Speaker 1: who resettled in north and central France and reconquered the
Speaker 1: British Isles also have claims in Italy? Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: The Normans had a fearsome reputation across Europe and the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and while they did definitely conquer, they were
Speaker 1: also occasionally invited in by local Christians to eject their
Speaker 1: despised rulers and take over. Such was the case when
Speaker 1: the peoples of southern Italy grew tired of their current
Speaker 1: rulers called in the Normans, who forcibly removed the Byzantine
Speaker 1: and Muslim contingents and turned the lands into yet another
Speaker 1: Norman French territory with all the so called feudal aspects
Speaker 1: that entailed. When the fresh crucdate came along Taranto's harbor capacity,
Speaker 1: and this French connection worked perfectly with the Pope's recruitment plans.
Speaker 1: Pope Urban, himself, a man of French extraction, wanted to
Speaker 1: rely upon wealthy lords of various French stripes, Normans, Angevin's
Speaker 1: provinceal etc. For leadership, draw from the mighty French warrior
Speaker 1: nobility to compose the core of the army, and bringing
Speaker 1: clergy located in French lands for preaching and guidance. Of course,
Speaker 1: Christians from all over Western and Central Europe had joined,
Speaker 1: But you would be forgiven if you took a high
Speaker 1: level glance at the First Crusade and decided it was
Speaker 1: a totally French or even a totally Norman affair. The
Speaker 1: Byzantine certainly did so. It was that in late ten
Speaker 1: ninety five and early ten ninety six, Bahamond, who would
Speaker 1: lead a Crusader army of his own, opened the ports
Speaker 1: of Taranto, giving over one hundred thousand crusaders a safe
Speaker 1: southern route by which they could travel to the east.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Crusades. Before we get into this episode,
Speaker 3: why don't we recap what we talked about last episode Gang,
Speaker 3: in particular Mansa Khurt, the Byzantine request for aid, and
Speaker 3: the Council of Claremont. In case people have forgotten, So
Speaker 3: eleanor Eric, where did we leave off?
Speaker 4: Who wants to go first?
Speaker 1: I think I think we left off we were we
Speaker 1: were at Claremont. We had talked about what the Pope preached,
Speaker 1: and I believe we were we were going to go
Speaker 1: from there and kind of and kind of spread out.
Speaker 1: I think we we covered the main points of his
Speaker 1: of his sermon at Claremont, But we do that, I
Speaker 1: don't think we.
Speaker 5: Yes, So I mean, well, where we've come so far
Speaker 5: is that the Byzantine Empire is in trouble. They lost
Speaker 5: the Battle of Manskirt in ten seventy one to the Seljuks.
Speaker 5: They appealed to the West for a This is in
Speaker 5: the context of the Great East West Schism. Alexios stamp
Speaker 5: or Alexios makes a pitch to the West to come
Speaker 5: help us bail us out here. It's not quite clear,
Speaker 5: and we'll talk more about this, I think when we
Speaker 5: get to the Byzantines. But it's not quite clear that
Speaker 5: he was anticipating what he got. But you know, he's
Speaker 5: asking for help.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: And Pope Urban the second at the council, Claremont makes
Speaker 5: his big spiel speech to the assembled that then gets
Speaker 5: carried out and we'll talk maybe a bit about the
Speaker 5: preaching in this episode, but gets carried out to everybody,
Speaker 5: go east and not just necessarily help the Byzantines, but
Speaker 5: let's go all the way to Jerusalem and liberate christ
Speaker 5: City from the Infidels. Does that about? Does that about
Speaker 5: cover it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think I think so.
Speaker 6: And I think that what you got here, and the
Speaker 6: thing that is important to keep in mind is, you know,
Speaker 6: at the Council of Claremont. There's this big impassion speech
Speaker 6: from the Pope. What exactly it says? We don't know, right,
Speaker 6: We're not exactly sure, and we've got some stories after
Speaker 6: the fact. But the Council of Claremont ends up kind
Speaker 6: of being like that infamous sex Pistols show in the
Speaker 6: Working Men's Club that like sixteen people went to, right.
Speaker 4: They all formed.
Speaker 1: The Wilt Chamberlain one hundred point game. Exactly million people
Speaker 1: said they were there for exactly they had like ten thousand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know what ends up happening.
Speaker 6: Is that every everyone who's there who can preach, goes
Speaker 6: out and does preach.
Speaker 4: And I mentioned.
Speaker 6: Preaching because in this context preaching is pretty.
Speaker 4: Much exactly the same thing as bands.
Speaker 6: Right, this is a form of mass communication in the
Speaker 6: Middle Ages. And it's really difficult to overstate how important
Speaker 6: preaching is because in the first place, it's a form
Speaker 6: of entertainment.
Speaker 4: People like it.
Speaker 6: You know, a hot date is to like take someone
Speaker 6: to a sermon on a Saturday night, and everyone thinks
Speaker 6: that that is really quite interesting. Indeed, the other thing
Speaker 6: that ends up happening with sermons is that they are
Speaker 6: often copied down and circulated. You know, we talked last
Speaker 6: time about how whatever speech or was given at Claire Bought.
Speaker 6: We're not exactly short, but we've got like twelve different
Speaker 6: options for what may have been sent there that starts
Speaker 6: circulating as well, and so those can go around and
Speaker 6: then anyone who reads them or can preach them again
Speaker 6: will give these sermons. And now those aren't written down
Speaker 6: years after the fact, so we're not exactly sure, but
Speaker 6: lots of people inside there may have then gone out
Speaker 6: and preached on their own right about the importance of
Speaker 6: going on crusade. So what you end up having is
Speaker 6: this ripple effect of people who will go talk about
Speaker 6: this and go give this message to various communities. And
Speaker 6: so you can reach thousands upon thousands of people with
Speaker 6: one sermon if you're good enough that you get them
Speaker 6: really really riled up. So this has the effect of
Speaker 6: being like a massive public broadcast. Even though there could
Speaker 6: have only been so many hundred people in the actual
Speaker 6: room at the time, they all went out and did
Speaker 6: exactly the same thing and start getting people hyped to
Speaker 6: go to Jerusalem.
Speaker 5: This is I think a point that you making your
Speaker 5: work eleanor a lot, and that maybe is lost on
Speaker 5: modern audiences, but this.
Speaker 4: Was like.
Speaker 5: Spectators smart, Like this is what you did, like for entertainment.
Speaker 5: You went out and listened to some firebrand preacher who
Speaker 5: would get you riled up to go commit some atrocity.
Speaker 5: Probably somewhere we can we'll talk about We're going to
Speaker 5: talk about the some of the worst atrocities in a
Speaker 5: future episode. But like, this is what you did. This
Speaker 5: is the thing that you did to be you know,
Speaker 5: to get entertainment. This is like, you know, mass culture
Speaker 5: in a way.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, absolutely, and I think that certainly we can
Speaker 6: see it become mass culture. You know, it kind of
Speaker 6: filters down from high culture if I think it's fair
Speaker 6: to call the Pope high culture, but he's not the
Speaker 6: one who's speaking to everyone, because up at the top.
Speaker 4: You've got the Pope, but then down a little bit
Speaker 4: closer to.
Speaker 6: The bottom, you got Peter the hermit, right, and that's
Speaker 6: when things start getting a little bit.
Speaker 5: Sais get off the rails.
Speaker 1: I would build on that. I can't find the quote
Speaker 1: right now, but there there was a very good quote
Speaker 1: about how once the Council, immediately after the Council of Claremont,
Speaker 1: like the words spread clear across Europe in like minutes,
Speaker 1: And I mean he's basically describing like how we would
Speaker 1: just like what would be just like a phone called us.
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, I just left the Council of Claremont
Speaker 1: the pope, so we should all go fight them, you know,
Speaker 1: we should all go liberate Jerusalem. And it was like
Speaker 1: all across It's spread across Europe like wildfire. So it's
Speaker 1: like they they did use them as this like uh
Speaker 1: as this form of entertainment and popular culture and mass culture,
Speaker 1: but this one specifically just rob people up to like
Speaker 1: a far greater extent than even the normal like firebrand
Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I found that interesting.
Speaker 6: That's an important point, Luke, And I think one of
Speaker 6: the things that is important to say is the majority
Speaker 6: of fire around preaching that we tend to see usually
Speaker 6: is kind of like a call in right where it's
Speaker 6: like we need to live our lives better, you know.
Speaker 6: In the context of what was going on in Europe
Speaker 6: at the time, there's rather a lot of hey, priests,
Speaker 6: stop having concupines, you know, Like that's the sort of
Speaker 6: firebrand preaching that you get, which is like will the
Speaker 6: clergy please stop shagging, or it'll be like live your
Speaker 6: life better, you know, treat your neighbors better, blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: You know things about your own personal sins that you
Speaker 6: need to go sort out. Right, This really works people
Speaker 6: up because not only does it work them up in
Speaker 6: the same into the same sort of spiritual feeding frenzy
Speaker 6: that we see elsewhere, but it points them at something right.
Speaker 6: It gives them an external enemy, which is completely unusual.
Speaker 4: At the time in terms of preaching.
Speaker 6: So that's kind of like really nice because you're used
Speaker 6: to getting told that you kind of suck in fire
Speaker 6: bread preaching, and you're being told that other people suck
Speaker 6: and given kind of like a free range to go
Speaker 6: attack them.
Speaker 4: So people do.
Speaker 6: Right. It's a kind of nice get out of jail
Speaker 6: free card.
Speaker 4: It is a really great.
Speaker 6: Way of, I don't know, get that out of town
Speaker 6: when you are maybe inserved right, like your lord can't
Speaker 6: make you stay on the farm that you're supposed to
Speaker 6: be working. If the Pope said you need to go
Speaker 6: to Jerusalem right now, like, so you've got a really
Speaker 6: great way to move around that ordinarily wouldn't be available
Speaker 6: to you. So people are hyped and yeah, I mean
Speaker 6: they're like, okay, quick, we got to go home and
Speaker 6: pack and like get on the road, and it happens
Speaker 6: very quickly.
Speaker 3: So who organizes this? So maybe we could talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about the response to the council and the
Speaker 3: importance of Jerusalem and the imagination, and who are the
Speaker 3: actual people who start organizing these crusades.
Speaker 5: And I think we want to focus for this episode.
Speaker 5: We're going to talk about the people's crusade and the
Speaker 5: mobs that form and do really terrible, unhinged things on
Speaker 5: the way to Constantinople before they get their come up.
Speaker 5: And so I would say, but we want to focus
Speaker 5: here on the main expedition, the Prince's expedition or the
Speaker 5: Lord's expedition. So yeah, who's preaching to the folks who
Speaker 5: wind up leading that part of the expedition and why?
Speaker 5: I guess one question I would have is why does
Speaker 5: it wind up being so French? I mean, it's really
Speaker 5: like you've got these cadres of lords. Some are from
Speaker 5: northern Francias, some are from eastern France. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: it's very much a French thing. Other than as Luke
Speaker 5: said his introduction, the Normans who are French, but they're
Speaker 5: in Italy for some right, you know, it's it's all cacca.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I think it's useful to to kind
Speaker 1: of break this down because the people who are the
Speaker 1: immediate efforts that Pope Urban the Second undertook after Claremont
Speaker 1: were sending out of letters, sending out of papal legates,
Speaker 1: sending out of of of diplomats in order to settle
Speaker 1: the violence that was happening in Europe and free this up.
Speaker 1: One of the big things that they did was he
Speaker 1: sent it may have been Bishop Adamar Lapoix up to
Speaker 1: Normandy to settle the feud between King William the Second
Speaker 1: of England, you know, William the Conqueror's younger son and
Speaker 1: Robert Kurtos, William the Conqueror's older son. And they negotiated
Speaker 1: a truce that freed up a lot of Normans and
Speaker 1: a lot of Normandy to go do this. And at
Speaker 1: the time, like the Normans were conquerors, they had made
Speaker 1: this huge imprint in France, but everywhere they went they
Speaker 1: were seen as like good Christian soldiers who could be
Speaker 1: relied on, and they were strong and tough and everything,
Speaker 1: and so they just got invited places to do stuff,
Speaker 1: and they were one of the most feared military forces
Speaker 1: on the continent at the time, so it kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense that Urban was like, I'm French, I know
Speaker 1: all these Normans. I have some power over them. Plus
Speaker 1: Bohemond down in Taranto is Norman, and you know we
Speaker 1: can use that. That is a jumping off point. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Eleanor did I cover all that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean absolutely. The thing about the Normans is
Speaker 6: there vikings with horses, right. I have also helpfully christianized,
Speaker 6: so we love that, right. But you know, it is
Speaker 6: one of these things where everyone agrees they're very good
Speaker 6: at warfare, and everyone agrees that it would be kind
Speaker 6: of great if they wouldn't be in your own backyard, right,
Speaker 6: So it would be super nice if they could go.
Speaker 4: Over there, right.
Speaker 6: And so there is a really direct way to get
Speaker 6: to them because the Pope himself is French and kind
Speaker 6: of understands what the dynamics are there. But also because
Speaker 6: the pope has come from the French milieu. You know,
Speaker 6: all his homies are like the French bishops, right, and
Speaker 6: those are some of the people who are preaching at
Speaker 6: a really high level. So you know, it's not just
Speaker 6: going to be the Pope himself. After the Council of Claremont.
Speaker 6: You know who attends councils Bishops, right, you know, high
Speaker 6: up abbots, people who are in really serious positions within
Speaker 6: the church. And so you go and have all of
Speaker 6: these bishops come to this thing in Claremont. And who's
Speaker 6: going to be in Claremont. Well French people, right. You know,
Speaker 6: You're not necessarily going to be coming up from Barcelona
Speaker 6: for this. You're not necessarily going to be saying, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm going to leave Mice to get over to Claremont
Speaker 6: because it takes forever.
Speaker 4: But you might come down from long you know, you
Speaker 4: might come up from Ram, well down from Ram, you know,
Speaker 4: places like this.
Speaker 6: So you're going to have all of these bishops who
Speaker 6: then go back to their constituencies in France and then
Speaker 6: they preach the same thing. So fundamentally there just is
Speaker 6: a little bit more of a French connection as it were.
Speaker 4: Way hey shout out, very good, very good.
Speaker 6: So you know, I'm not saying that it's only for
Speaker 6: French people. I'm just saying that there were a lot
Speaker 6: more French people there. And because of the way that
Speaker 6: sermons spread and propaganda works at the time. That just
Speaker 6: means you're going to be drawing from a very particular pool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also it has it would have had a
Speaker 1: limited spread into fully into Iberia at the time because
Speaker 1: of the Moors still being there in force, you know,
Speaker 1: so getting you know, going that direction was going to
Speaker 1: be difficult. So that basically leaves going east towards the Germans.
Speaker 1: They do. They obviously go up into England because again
Speaker 1: they're Normans, and they draw heavily from up there England
Speaker 1: and I believe a little of Scotland too. But after
Speaker 1: that you can either go east or you can go
Speaker 1: down into Italy, and they did. They they went down
Speaker 1: into Italy a good bit, especially to the southern part,
Speaker 1: where again the Normans were but yeah, you it's a
Speaker 1: lot of Normans and then a lot of provence Al
Speaker 1: because the province Al in southern France had been driven
Speaker 1: into a fir by having to fight the Infidel menace
Speaker 1: on the other side of the Pyrenees all the time,
Speaker 1: or looking out for them, whatever the case may have been.
Speaker 1: And you know, they were easy to stoke into a
Speaker 1: kind of paranoia about this and draw a lot so.
Speaker 3: I think that that leads to two questions, which is, one,
Speaker 3: what role did Jerusalem play in the medieval imagination? And
Speaker 3: then two, just going off what Luke just said, how
Speaker 3: do they actually recruit people to do this? I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure, as we like to say in history, there's
Speaker 3: both push and pull factors. But why don't we start
Speaker 3: with Jerusalem and the medieval imagination and then talk to
Speaker 3: this issue of actual recruitment to go on, which is
Speaker 3: it's a very difficult journey, you know, to get from
Speaker 3: Western Europe and Central Europe to the Holy Land during
Speaker 3: this time, it's risky, you could die, You're leaving your family,
Speaker 3: who knows what they're going to be up to when
Speaker 3: you have all these randy priests around and all of
Speaker 3: these various issues, which becomes actually, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: a medieval trope people returning from the Crusades and be.
Speaker 5: Like what the fuck?
Speaker 3: Which becomes like a gigantic trope actually in Western literature
Speaker 3: going up to today, you know, it's still it's still
Speaker 3: a thing. So Jerusalem, and then how did they actually recruit?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Jerusalem. It's really difficult to overstate how important Jerusalem.
Speaker 4: Is at the time.
Speaker 6: Because it is and I mean this quite literally the
Speaker 6: center of the world.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: All you have to do is look at map a
Speaker 6: mundi from the medieval period, which are maps of the world,
Speaker 6: and how they consider it, and the way that they
Speaker 6: draw maps of what they know of the world is
Speaker 6: Jerusalem is at the very middle of the world, and
Speaker 6: everything else that they know about Africa, Asia and Europe
Speaker 6: kind of spirals out from there.
Speaker 5: This is the old t O map, right, That's how
Speaker 5: we described it in grad school. I always wanted to
Speaker 5: find a good one and like hang it on my wall,
Speaker 5: but I've never.
Speaker 1: I'll send you one, I do. I know a couple
Speaker 1: of really cool looking winds are cool.
Speaker 3: Wilt Chamberlain body count to medievalist body count.
Speaker 5: Let's compare, like I mean, if people aren't familiar, it's
Speaker 5: like that there's a tea. There's the world is represented
Speaker 5: as this flat disc with Jerusalem kind of at the
Speaker 5: at the intersection of a tea that runs through the
Speaker 5: middle of it, and the Mediterranean Sea is the you know,
Speaker 5: upper the vertical column, and then across it's like the
Speaker 5: Nile River and the is it the Danube? I can't
Speaker 5: remember what the other river is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe, Yeah, I believe it's the Danube.
Speaker 5: So yeah, Jerusalem literally is the center of the world.
Speaker 6: Yeah and so, and also, all Christians want to go
Speaker 6: there someday. Right, it's not quite like what Mecca means
Speaker 6: to Muslims now, but it's not far off.
Speaker 3: You know, you get expiation, like if you go, is
Speaker 3: it an expiation of your sins?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so one hundred percent, Like you can go. And
Speaker 6: we've got to understand that pilgrimage in and of itself
Speaker 6: is a really big deal at the time, and the
Speaker 6: ultimate pilgrimage that all Christians would like to undertake someday
Speaker 6: is to Jerusalem. Now, it's probably not going to happen
Speaker 6: for any number of factors, you know, least of all
Speaker 6: being the length of time you need to be away
Speaker 6: in the expense of it. But you get to go there,
Speaker 6: and the idea is you can like visit the church
Speaker 6: as the Holy Sepulcher. You're going to walk in the
Speaker 6: footsteps of Jesus. You're going to the commune with your religion.
Speaker 6: And that's incredibly important to people. You know, everyone has
Speaker 6: kind of an imaginary Jerusalem in their heads at the time,
Speaker 6: to the point where people will conduct meditation services where
Speaker 6: they kind of pretend to walk around Jerusalem. You know,
Speaker 6: you tell lots of stories about Jerusalem. This is for
Speaker 6: them really the heart of what it means to be
Speaker 6: a Christian. And you know, we've got to understand that
Speaker 6: they don't see themselves as living in Europe. You know,
Speaker 6: now we talk about Europe, they'd say they live in Christendom, right,
Speaker 6: And they very much understand the heart of Christendom to
Speaker 6: be Jerusalem itself. So the fact that a bunch of
Speaker 6: Infidels has taken over is like it's like punching Mommy
Speaker 6: in the face, right, Like this is their imaginary mommy,
Speaker 6: and that is very upsetting to them because they all
Speaker 6: hope to go there someday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as for the preaching, to answer your second question, Dan,
Speaker 1: I think we need to remember that while there is
Speaker 1: a peasant's crusade and and a prince's crusade, a lot
Speaker 1: the vast majority that made up the armies of the
Speaker 1: prince's crusades were peasants, but they were like they were
Speaker 1: warrior peasants. They were people like that who have been
Speaker 1: brought in. So the preaching and the negotiations that went
Speaker 1: on with the nobles and the actual princes seemed to
Speaker 1: have differed greatly from like the preaching, because most of
Speaker 1: the warrior peasants, basically anyone below nobility, seems to have been,
Speaker 1: as much as we can know, fire with a zeal
Speaker 1: for reuniting Christendom, retaking Jerusalem, you know, et cetera. Maybe
Speaker 1: I might get some plunder along the way, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get remission of my sins. It's going to be good.
Speaker 1: But the negotiations that they were doing was say you're
Speaker 1: Robert of Flanders, Robert Curtoz Bohemond of Taranto. That was
Speaker 1: much more of a transactional thing. I don't necessary, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't. I don't think there's any evidence of
Speaker 1: specifically the church saying like, look, if you go over there,
Speaker 1: you can get a big land for yourself and it'll
Speaker 1: be great. But I think it was heavily implied, regardless
Speaker 1: if it was actually stated. And you know, the pope
Speaker 1: and the and the higher ups in the church seemed
Speaker 1: to understand this gradation, so to speak, because while I
Speaker 1: think maybe Hugh of Vendomois was the was one of
Speaker 1: the most zealous and pious, the rest of them seemed
Speaker 1: fairly crass in their motives, you know, so I think
Speaker 1: I think the papacy was aware of that, and that's
Speaker 1: how they approach that preaching.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Luke, And
Speaker 6: I think that it bears stating when we consider this
Speaker 6: as well of like, well, where do you recruit to
Speaker 6: the papacy from? Where do you recruit from bishops from?
Speaker 6: You know, like the people who become bishops, the people
Speaker 6: who become pope are not like farmers, right, you know,
Speaker 6: they're not the people who were peasants at one point
Speaker 6: in time. All of these guys have come from noble
Speaker 6: families or royal families, incredibly well connected families, and they
Speaker 6: know how to talk to other nobles, right. They understand
Speaker 6: what drives these people at a really base level because
Speaker 6: these are their families. So if you can't just rely
Speaker 6: on the religious nature to get people motivated, you know,
Speaker 6: a bishop is going to understand what it is that
Speaker 6: particular families are looking for, what particular families lack. They
Speaker 6: will have an intricate understanding of where people's position with
Speaker 6: their own lens lies.
Speaker 4: You know, are you already extended to the maximum? Probably?
Speaker 6: Right, Because we're supposed to be under like a Pax
Speaker 6: Christiania at this juncture in Europe, you're not supposed to
Speaker 6: be fighting your next door neighbor anymore. Right, Like everyone
Speaker 6: at this point in time has pretty much converted to Christianity,
Speaker 6: except for like Lithuania. Right, So if you want a
Speaker 6: just war where you can go take lens, you're going
Speaker 6: to have to look further afield.
Speaker 5: Baby.
Speaker 3: And I actually have a basic question that we haven't
Speaker 3: discussed yet, but what is I mean, it's going to
Speaker 3: be different in different areas, but what is the basic
Speaker 3: social structure of medieval society? And I'm sure it's different
Speaker 3: in France versus England versus Central Europe.
Speaker 4: But if we could, you.
Speaker 3: Know, do sort of a general you know, we're talking
Speaker 3: about warrior peasants. Where do they come from, who's training them?
Speaker 3: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, that's a good question. And as a general rule,
Speaker 6: the thing that doesn't really exist is kind of the
Speaker 6: way to think about it, which is, I don't know
Speaker 6: if you've ever seen those charts that show you a
Speaker 6: feudal pyramid, right, and that's not quite like the food pyramids.
Speaker 6: And again, you know, You've already hit the nail on
Speaker 6: the head here, Danny. It's like, it's not necessarily true
Speaker 6: in Finland in the same way that it's true in
Speaker 6: the Loire Valley. Right, all of these places are different
Speaker 6: and have a different social structure.
Speaker 4: But as a general rule.
Speaker 6: Of thumb, let's keep in mind that seventy percent of
Speaker 6: the population of Europe are peasants, which means that they
Speaker 6: are farmers.
Speaker 4: It doesn't necessarily mean that they're poor.
Speaker 6: We think about like fifty percent of those peasants are
Speaker 6: then poor, twenty five percent or about what we would
Speaker 6: call middle class, and twenty five percent or what we
Speaker 6: would call rich.
Speaker 3: Actually, is it subsistence farming or they're doing like you
Speaker 3: know what I'm asking.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, some of them are, like, especially towards the
Speaker 6: lower socioeconomic end of things, but some farmers are really rich, right, Like,
Speaker 6: if you've got a lot of land, you can actually
Speaker 6: be doing quite well for yourself. And it depends on
Speaker 6: what you're cropping, you know, Like you're going to have
Speaker 6: a better time if you're making high quality olive oil
Speaker 6: than if you're just selling soul all the time, right,
Speaker 6: you know, so it depends on where you are and
Speaker 6: what you're selling. But basically, fifty percent of the peasants
Speaker 6: are poor, twenty five percent are rich, twenty five percent
Speaker 6: are doing okay, right, and so that's most people, and
Speaker 6: we need to understand that the great majority of them
Speaker 6: are unfree, right, they are inserved. So there's about ten
Speaker 6: percent of those of the population who are free peasants,
Speaker 6: and they tend to be wealthy as well, because if
Speaker 6: you have managed to amass enough land, you probably bought
Speaker 6: your way to freedom. Inserved here doesn't mean you know,
Speaker 6: chattel slavery. It doesn't mean that your lord can pick
Speaker 6: you up and like separate you from your family and
Speaker 6: move you to another place. But it means that you
Speaker 6: are very much seen as a part of the landscape.
Speaker 6: You are like a feature of the countryside, and you
Speaker 6: can't move down the road without permission from your lord.
Speaker 6: You can't get married without permission from your lord. Now,
Speaker 6: your lord is probably going to grant you permission to
Speaker 6: get married, but it is kind of insulting that you've
Speaker 6: got to go to your literal fucking landlord to be like, hey,
Speaker 6: can I get married?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: Like it's not great, but landlords can be anyone landlords
Speaker 6: can be an actual lord, like a noble person, or
Speaker 6: they could be a monastery, you know, they can be
Speaker 6: a nunnery, it could be you know, a church.
Speaker 4: It just it just depends on who has land.
Speaker 6: So over the insertived people you have the lords, and
Speaker 6: as a general rule of thumb, it's kind of like
Speaker 6: local nobility and local nobility. Again, that's a real mixed bag.
Speaker 6: Like you can be a knight and be pretty poor. Indeed,
Speaker 6: you know, if you are overseeing a bunch of dirt
Speaker 6: farmers and that's who you collect taxes off of, then
Speaker 6: you're not in great shape. Or you can be incredibly
Speaker 6: and unimaginably wealthy. Right if you are, for example, one
Speaker 6: of the king's younger brothers and you own cussi, you know,
Speaker 6: or something like that, then.
Speaker 4: Like you're rolling in it.
Speaker 6: Right then over those people in theory, you've got the
Speaker 6: king and he then takes taxes off of you. Now
Speaker 6: in the Holy Roman Empire, of course, at this point
Speaker 6: in time, you've got an emperor who's like doing that
Speaker 6: over dukes and like huge swathes of land and also
Speaker 6: sometimes archbishops and people like that. So it gets much
Speaker 6: more complex. In the Holy Roman empire, So people don't
Speaker 6: like thinking about it, but that is kind of generally
Speaker 6: how society shakes out. And then kind of alongside.
Speaker 3: Of that, which is one question eleanor before we go in,
Speaker 3: what is the authority based on the ability to muster
Speaker 3: military people? Like, how does the king or a lord
Speaker 3: defend themselves or basically assert their authority because this is
Speaker 3: still a very obviously protean period where things are where
Speaker 3: things are moving around, emerging from you know, the post
Speaker 3: Charlemagne eighth ninth, tenth centuries, So what is the authority
Speaker 3: actually based on here?
Speaker 6: So yeah, basically one of the reasons why in theory
Speaker 6: you are noble and you're allowed to have all this
Speaker 6: land is in theory, then the king can say to.
Speaker 4: You, all right, lads, we're going to war.
Speaker 6: Muster up right, so in and then you call in
Speaker 6: basically all the knights and basically any able body man
Speaker 6: who can hold a pointy stick, and then you can
Speaker 6: point them in the direction of wherever it is you
Speaker 6: want to go. Now, king is going to have his
Speaker 6: own men at arms as well, you know, like in
Speaker 6: the king's castle there are going to be people who
Speaker 6: are trained marshally.
Speaker 4: He's going to have his own lands.
Speaker 6: In the Holy Roman Empire, we refer to lands that
Speaker 6: the emperor himself holds as his house mocked. So there's
Speaker 6: this idea that you you can call troops from your
Speaker 6: own lands as well your house mocked, and then you
Speaker 6: can kind of point them in the direction that they need.
Speaker 5: To house mocked as a house power.
Speaker 4: Is that literally right?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it's not more complex than that.
Speaker 6: So h and then and then you from there extrapolate
Speaker 6: because say you are I don't know the Etonians, then
Speaker 6: your lands are in a particular place, but you have
Speaker 6: the ability to call up the Swanians, right, you know,
Speaker 6: and you can say all right, you as well, right,
Speaker 6: and that kind of gets rolled into it. But it's
Speaker 6: kind of understood that you are under the king or
Speaker 6: the emperor, So it is kind of like a game
Speaker 6: of telephone in terms of who gets called up and why.
Speaker 6: And peasants may be militarily trained, it really depends on
Speaker 6: where you are. Oftentimes they are limited in terms of
Speaker 6: the weapons they are allowed to train with. So for example,
Speaker 6: peasants aren't allowed to use swords, but they can use spears,
Speaker 6: they can use pikes, and they can use.
Speaker 4: At this point in time crossbows.
Speaker 6: We haven't come up with a long bow yet, so
Speaker 6: and this can be also a big deal for people
Speaker 6: of the kind of middle classes who live in cities.
Speaker 6: They oftentimes have crossbow guilds and like they will have
Speaker 6: their own crossbow tournaments and they'll hang out and practice
Speaker 6: with their crossbows. So if you get called up to
Speaker 6: go to war, or you decide that you wish to
Speaker 6: go to war, you can like get out your crossbow
Speaker 6: and prove that you are a very fancy land and lad.
Speaker 4: Indeed right, But the people.
Speaker 6: On horses with swords are all knights, which means that
Speaker 6: they are members of the noble class because sword ownership
Speaker 6: is pretty tightly controlled.
Speaker 1: I would also just add to that the concept of
Speaker 1: since we're talking about the Normans, the concept of feudalism
Speaker 1: as it is understood now, it was far to the
Speaker 1: way that we understand it now. Is like, as Eleanor said,
Speaker 1: this like top down pyramid thing. But Europe did not
Speaker 1: have the bureaucratic states at any level to enforce something
Speaker 1: that complicated and that structured. Now, it's true the Carolingians
Speaker 1: did like a version of that, and then the Normans
Speaker 1: picked up upon it, and that's where we kind of
Speaker 1: get the ideas for feudalism. But even at this point,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that structured, and it wasn't the military hierarchy
Speaker 1: was not that set and ordered in that way as
Speaker 1: it's presented and people think about now, which is why
Speaker 1: uh most medievalists now prefer the term uh manorialism to
Speaker 1: describe the whole social, military, and religious milieu of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Luke.
Speaker 1: Hey, that's the first time I've ever actually gotten to
Speaker 1: do it. I'm pretty excited. I've never got to do
Speaker 1: that before. I'm pretty excited.
Speaker 5: Breaking new ground. There we go. I think there's there's
Speaker 5: one question I have, and I want to talk about
Speaker 5: a couple of the more prominent Crusade leaders of the Crusade.
Speaker 5: But when you compare the First Crusade to let's say,
Speaker 5: the Third Crusade, let's skip over the Second Crusade, and
Speaker 5: we're not going to talk about the Third Crusade in
Speaker 5: this series, but but you compare the two, like, the
Speaker 5: starkest difference to me is the Third Crusade is led
Speaker 5: by the King of England, the King of France, the
Speaker 5: Holy Roman Emperor until he drowns in a river like these,
Speaker 5: it's the it's the top of the heap. It's like
Speaker 5: the top of the European heap. Go on this crusade,
Speaker 5: whereas this first crusade, it's a bunch of counts. There
Speaker 5: isn't even really a clear leader because they're all at
Speaker 5: this sort of same sub monarchical level. Is that a
Speaker 5: function of the church, the bishops sort of as you
Speaker 5: alluded to earlier, Elean or the bishop sort of preaching
Speaker 5: to their own level, which was at this kind of
Speaker 5: level of the nobility. Is it because kings sort of
Speaker 5: looked at this new fangled idea about going on crusade
Speaker 5: and said, I don't know, Or is it? Is it
Speaker 5: because the church? There's a I mean, there's an argument
Speaker 5: to be made if you're in the church, you don't
Speaker 5: want to recruit kings, right because that's destabilizing. You take
Speaker 5: the king away and send him on crusade and the
Speaker 5: whole society could fall apart while he's gone. So what
Speaker 5: what basically, why do we get this collection of lords
Speaker 5: or counts rather than any you know, full on monarchs
Speaker 5: on this expedition.
Speaker 4: Well, you kind of hit the nail on the head
Speaker 4: there already there.
Speaker 6: It's like we got to understand too, like what what
Speaker 6: time are we talking about? Tell you who is not
Speaker 6: going on crusade is the English king who literally just
Speaker 6: took over this joint, right, you know, and things are
Speaker 6: way way too shaky to be leaving England at this
Speaker 6: point in time because you have a really hostile populace
Speaker 6: who are like, who the hell are these French guys?
Speaker 6: And the French guys are like, shut up, I rule,
Speaker 6: you don't make me come hairy the North all right,
Speaker 6: like you know, like so we've got a lot of
Speaker 6: problems within.
Speaker 4: Their own countries at the time.
Speaker 6: Similarly, you know, the King of France, he's not too short,
Speaker 6: like I mean, he's got enough problems with Normans already, right,
Speaker 6: you know, he's not going to be walking out of
Speaker 6: town anyway. The only Roman Empire is on the outs
Speaker 6: with the church, you know, the let us not forget
Speaker 6: the walk to Canosa and things like this.
Speaker 4: So it's like he's not going anywhere.
Speaker 6: Because he if he does, risks putting his newly formed
Speaker 6: empire on the rock, right, you know, because everybody always
Speaker 6: scheme in in the Holy Roman Empire. So you're you're
Speaker 6: not going to do that, right. The people who go
Speaker 6: are people who stand to gain something, who can leave
Speaker 6: their lands. You know, it's a stable enough situation. You know,
Speaker 6: maybe dad stays home and the eldest son goes, or
Speaker 6: maybe dad stays home and the third son goes, right,
Speaker 6: you know, and.
Speaker 4: That is kind of much more the thing.
Speaker 6: By the time we get to the second Crusades and
Speaker 6: the third Crusades, you start getting kings who are involved
Speaker 6: because they've grown up their whole life hearing about crusade.
Speaker 6: They've grown up their whole life understanding that this is
Speaker 6: something that they can undertake that might be interesting. And
Speaker 6: they've grown up their whole life with the pope going, hey, crusade, crusade, tonight,
Speaker 6: King crusade, you know, and so it just kind of
Speaker 6: changes things. And also it changes by dint of being
Speaker 6: something that is possible in the imagination to be associated
Speaker 6: with good kingship. Right, so you know, you wouldn't start
Speaker 6: shit while your king is away, because that would that
Speaker 6: would call.
Speaker 4: You into question.
Speaker 6: But you know, even when we see like Richard the
Speaker 6: Lionheart go on crusade, it's like he leaves his mom
Speaker 6: at home with like a bunch of nobles, and so
Speaker 6: he's like got a steady hand on the tiller. He
Speaker 6: knows that he can go because he has a solid
Speaker 6: bunch of people who are controlling England that he can trust.
Speaker 4: And if you don't have that, you don't go. Simple
Speaker 4: as that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think, just real quick, this belies the
Speaker 1: point that one of the big things that the Pope
Speaker 1: really wanted was peace and continuity in the leadership of
Speaker 1: Europe and pull and and this was a method to
Speaker 1: pull away some of the other aspects and give them
Speaker 1: another way to vent off their violence somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: so it represents how this was kind of a plan
Speaker 1: that Urban had and how he wanted to make this
Speaker 1: up versus when the Second and Third Crusades and after
Speaker 1: that come along, it becomes culturally almost like a culturally
Speaker 1: ingrained institution to a degree. And by then it becomes
Speaker 1: something where like if your kingdom is decently stable, then
Speaker 1: you should go like, hello, go The popes were like, go,
Speaker 1: go go, you know, because we need actual leadership out there.
Speaker 1: And you know, at this point that wasn't what they
Speaker 1: were looking for yet.
Speaker 5: So before we get into time out, the Normans, which
Speaker 5: will do on the bulk of the episode, the time
Speaker 5: we have left to talk about the conquest of Sicily, etc.
Speaker 5: There are a couple of people who are involved in
Speaker 5: the expedition that I wanted you guys to sort of
Speaker 5: describe to people, at least initially, because they reflect I think,
Speaker 5: aspects of the crusade, and a couple of them are
Speaker 5: among this group of counts who respond to the crusade.
Speaker 5: The two that I really wanted to talk about were
Speaker 5: Raimon of Toulouse, who I love. He's like the hapless
Speaker 5: character this crusade because he's a little bit older than
Speaker 5: the rest of the counts. He sort of assumes that
Speaker 5: that's going to give him some kind of prominence among them,
Speaker 5: that he's like the natural leader, and yet at every
Speaker 5: turn the rest of these guys pretty much tell him
Speaker 5: to fuck off and they do their own thing. So
Speaker 5: I love him as a character. If we could talk
Speaker 5: a little bit about where he comes from, and then
Speaker 5: of course we have to introduce Godfrey of Boullion, who
Speaker 5: you know, if there was a like life magazine special
Speaker 5: on the Crusades that was published in the Middle Ages
Speaker 5: would be on the cover of it. He was the crusader.
Speaker 5: He was the first ruler of Jerusalem after the conquest,
Speaker 5: was so pious that he refused to call himself king.
Speaker 5: But let's talk about these two guys, and then I
Speaker 5: also want to talk a little bit about the church
Speaker 5: relationship with the expedition too.
Speaker 4: This is like a guy.
Speaker 6: I love this guy, right, because the thing that's important
Speaker 6: about Raymond of Toulouse is this is a genuine we
Speaker 6: got we got ourselves a genuine religious dude hanging out here.
Speaker 4: You know, there's there's rather a lot of backing.
Speaker 6: And forth and doing and frog you can do about
Speaker 6: who wanted to do what and why and like what
Speaker 6: are what? What does it all mean with crusaders? And
Speaker 6: are they here for religious reasons or is it for
Speaker 6: financial gain? And you know, like I can't see into
Speaker 6: everybody's hearts, but I want to tell you my boy Raymond,
Speaker 6: he's in it for jeebus. That's why he's on here.
Speaker 6: He bro he's the Count of Toulouse. Do you know
Speaker 6: how rich he is? He has so much money and
Speaker 6: he could just sit around being a fancy lad in
Speaker 6: his several many fine castles, and he's like, no, this one,
Speaker 6: this one is for my boy. Jac I'm going out
Speaker 6: to Jerusalem. We are going to kind of take it.
Speaker 6: But he is a really interesting character because he's so
Speaker 6: rich and powerful that he's like, yeah, guys, I'm the
Speaker 6: natural leader of this right everybody but he loves Raymond, right,
Speaker 6: and everyone is like no, dude, like get out, get
Speaker 6: out of here, boo, you know. And so he kind
Speaker 6: of goes along expecting that there's going to be a
Speaker 6: certain amount of seniority and that he's going to receive
Speaker 6: a certain amount of deference. And you also see him
Speaker 6: pull kind of like wild stuff as well, because when
Speaker 6: the majority of the crusaders arrive in Constantinople, the majority
Speaker 6: of the crusaders swear an oath of fealty to Emperor Alexios, right,
Speaker 6: which was smart of Alexios. He's like, yeah, because you're
Speaker 6: gonna give me the land, right, And Raymond is like,
Speaker 6: absolutely not a homeboy, I'm not doing that. And he
Speaker 6: has staid swears an oath of a friendship to the
Speaker 6: Emperor Alexios, which is incredibly canny, right, because I do
Speaker 6: think he's there for religious reasons, but it also means
Speaker 6: that he's like, yeah, honey, I'm keeping whatever it is
Speaker 6: I get over here, and that's like it's such rich.
Speaker 6: You'd behavior right, like You've got this incredible parcel of
Speaker 6: land in France and you're still like, yeah, no, homeboy,
Speaker 6: I'm I in Tripoli. That's what's happening over here right now.
Speaker 6: So he's this great character because he gets so butt
Speaker 6: hurt that other people don't take him seriously because of
Speaker 6: how religious he is, and he thinks that there should
Speaker 6: be some kind of natural deference to him, and so
Speaker 6: I just love him as a character because you know,
Speaker 6: he was the worst. You know, I have, like all
Speaker 6: the crusaders to dine with. He's at the bottom of
Speaker 6: my list.
Speaker 5: Just insufferable. He must have been insufferable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He apparently had quite a death wish to die over there,
Speaker 1: which like is attested to in like some of the
Speaker 1: accounts from the time, because he like would just tell
Speaker 1: people like I'm ready to die here for God, and
Speaker 1: they were like, all right, man, is that your first choice?
Speaker 1: What if we win and got Jerusalem back for God?
Speaker 1: What about that? And He's like, I get fine, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess if I have to, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like all right, man, uh cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like zero chill a terrible hang.
Speaker 6: Nobody likes this guy, and so as a result, I'm
Speaker 6: obsessed with this guy because I like it when people
Speaker 6: are fucking weirdos, and he is one. You know, he's
Speaker 6: weird by crusader standards, which is saying something.
Speaker 1: He's the one that had the miracle vision, that discovered
Speaker 1: the apparent holy lance, that that allowed them to win
Speaker 1: the Siege of Ante. Like, he's that that the the
Speaker 1: providence of which was so suspected, was doubted by other
Speaker 1: crusaders at the time they had a trial about it.
Speaker 6: Anyway, what you're too weird for the other crusaders, that
Speaker 6: makes you fucking weird.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying. I'm just saying.
Speaker 5: So yeah, let's let's move from from Raymond now on
Speaker 5: too Godfrey, who's a much more I don't know what
Speaker 5: you want to call him, serious figure in a sense,
Speaker 5: I guess the golden crusader, you know, golden archetype of
Speaker 5: the crusader.
Speaker 1: But what is his His thing's kind of more mysterious
Speaker 1: because whereas the others, like they either have pious or
Speaker 1: very worldly reasons for going on the crusade, they they
Speaker 1: you know, they're driven by the spirit or by you know,
Speaker 1: lust for wealth and power, whatever it may be. But
Speaker 1: Godfrey just seems more like he was just kind of there.
Speaker 1: And as the troops passed by, he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you guys going to do? You and they
Speaker 1: were like, you know, crusade and he was like okay,
Speaker 1: and then you know, they kind of he kind of
Speaker 1: after that, he was like, Okay, yeah, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: I'll go and I'll mortgage Lorraine and Verdune and you know,
Speaker 1: Bouyon to pay the way, which is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the nobles had to do.
Speaker 1: They had to mortgage their lands, you know, to get
Speaker 1: the cash to do it. And he just like he
Speaker 1: he gets this army and he has the most trouble
Speaker 1: getting there because he takes the northern route through through
Speaker 1: the Balkans to get there through Hungary, and it is
Speaker 1: just a disaster because they had been wrecked by the
Speaker 1: people's crusades earlier, and so Godfrey gets hung up. He
Speaker 1: has to like give part of his entourage and family
Speaker 1: as collaterals to make sure that they'll like pass through
Speaker 1: Hungary safely. And he's just this guy, like he's almost
Speaker 1: like the I wasn't even supposed to be here today, guy,
Speaker 1: but like, how are you that? And you also lead
Speaker 1: an army of like twenty or so thousand, Like you
Speaker 1: mortgage all your lands and lead an army of twenty
Speaker 1: or so thousand people, but you're also like put upon,
Speaker 1: like woe is me? They called me in at the
Speaker 1: last minute. Like he's yeah, he's a weird They're all weird,
Speaker 1: but he's definitely a weird one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 5: Also.
Speaker 6: The thing with Godfrey is he's kind of who you
Speaker 6: assume goes on Crusade, right because he was sort of
Speaker 6: like a second son. He didn't have the same kind
Speaker 6: of lands and inheritances as his older brother.
Speaker 4: He ends up getting lands as a.
Speaker 6: Result of his uncle dying childless, and his uncle's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: here you go. You can kind of have this slice
Speaker 6: of land in what is now Belgium, which is a
Speaker 6: really tricky one because you're sort of in between France
Speaker 6: and the Holy Roman Empire, so you've got to get
Speaker 6: really good at negotiations, and like sometimes the Emperor Henry
Speaker 6: is like, yeah, sucks to be you, buddy. I'm like
Speaker 6: given that land to my son, you know, so you know,
Speaker 6: he's got a real reason to go on crusade, to
Speaker 6: do this mortgaging because he doesn't have much of acclaim
Speaker 6: as he would maybe like to have to lands, and
Speaker 6: so he's kind of like about.
Speaker 4: To risk it all for the land.
Speaker 6: So you know when people say, oh, yeah, those sorts
Speaker 6: of people who go on crusade are second sons and
Speaker 6: third sons, it's like, yeah, that's that's your boy, Godfrey.
Speaker 6: You know, he's exactly who you are imagining is gonna
Speaker 6: risk their life and die in a desert in theory, right,
Speaker 6: it's someone who's.
Speaker 5: A striver, right, I mean, he's a striver. So before
Speaker 5: we finish on the Normans, which I want to talk
Speaker 5: about the conquest of Sicily and you know how that
Speaker 5: sort of presages was to come here, But I also
Speaker 5: wanted to talk about the relationship between the church and
Speaker 5: the army once the army goes on campaign. And this
Speaker 5: is probably best exemplified in the person of Adam Ar
Speaker 5: of Lepuis, the bishop who becomes the papal legate on
Speaker 5: the excursion, you know, and is not a guy who's like,
Speaker 5: you know, being carried on a litter and saying mass.
Speaker 5: I mean, he leads troops in battle, Like he's very much,
Speaker 5: you know, part of the expedition. What's the relationship like here, Like,
Speaker 5: what is Adamar's role vis a vis the counts? It
Speaker 5: always it struck me as he's an instrument of control
Speaker 5: in some respects, Like there's this idea that you know,
Speaker 5: you're being forgiven your sins to go on campaign. You'll
Speaker 5: be forgiven if you get to Jerusalem. If you die,
Speaker 5: you'll obviously go straight to heaven, and you know you've
Speaker 5: got all these wonderful things waiting for you. But also
Speaker 5: like you're going to have to stay on some kind
Speaker 5: of straight and narrow path while you're on campaign, and
Speaker 5: this guy's coming along to make sure that you do that.
Speaker 5: He'll be there to do confession or whatever, to forgive
Speaker 5: the obvious sins that you're to be committing while you're
Speaker 5: on crusade. It seems like, you know, just a way
Speaker 5: to maintain some hand on the tiller and not have
Speaker 5: this thing go off completely off the rails. But you know, what,
Speaker 5: what do we know about him? And then the role
Speaker 5: that he's supposed to play.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean you're kind of bang on here, Derek.
Speaker 6: Basically you send Adamar over to make sure that the
Speaker 6: church still has some idea of what's going on. And
Speaker 6: he's exactly who you think Urban the Second would send
Speaker 6: on crusade because he's a very, very fancy French lad.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So he's the Bishop of pu in Valet, and that
Speaker 6: is a pretty sweet deal. He comes from a very
Speaker 6: wealthy family, the Counts of Valentina, and he is one
Speaker 6: of like the big I love Gregorian Reform hell yah
Speaker 6: Gregorian Reform guys.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So he's also actually present at the Council of Claremont
Speaker 6: because of who he is, a very fancy French lad bishop, right.
Speaker 6: So he is who you imagine a bishop to be, right,
Speaker 6: he's kind of like godfree but in bishop form. And
Speaker 6: he's exactly who Urban would want being there. Because the
Speaker 6: worry for the church is if you leave a bunch
Speaker 6: of second sons on supervised how you go over there,
Speaker 6: they're gonna forget all about the religious part of the mission, right.
Speaker 4: Are they just.
Speaker 6: Going to get caught up in the warfare aspect. Will
Speaker 6: they be dazzled by the delights of the East and
Speaker 6: give into a hedonism which is a kind of a
Speaker 6: concern for the church at the time, Or are they
Speaker 6: going to stay on the straight and narrow, and so
Speaker 6: you absolutely send over somebody to keep an eye on
Speaker 6: these guys.
Speaker 4: And that's who Adamar is is.
Speaker 6: He is like the pope's babysitter of all the military guys.
Speaker 1: He's the he's the he's the field trip chaperone. One
Speaker 1: thing about Adamar is that he was I mean, he
Speaker 1: was obviously deeply religious, but he also understood the game
Speaker 1: that was being played in what was going on. He
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, the discovery of the supposed Holy Lance,
Speaker 1: he was extremely skeptical of it, didn't believe that it
Speaker 1: was real, but he was he was so committed to
Speaker 1: the crusade effort, and he realized that the troops believed
Speaker 1: it real. So he kept his skepticism solely confined to
Speaker 1: like very high level meetings of like the very top
Speaker 1: echelon and the rest of it. He allowed the belief
Speaker 1: to go on because you know it it raised morale
Speaker 1: and it spurred the men on. And you know, I
Speaker 1: also think it's a good point to say that a
Speaker 1: couple of things I've read the other clergy who were there,
Speaker 1: may they would some of them fell by the wayside,
Speaker 1: of course, but they did, especially around Antioch, make efforts
Speaker 1: to be like, look, no more visiting sex workers, no
Speaker 1: more extreme gambling, no more, you know, all of the
Speaker 1: vices that come along with with an army. No more
Speaker 1: of that. That's why we're losing. That's why it's not working.
Speaker 1: And that was also driven on behind them by the
Speaker 1: poorer people and the camp followers who were attached to
Speaker 1: the prince's crusade. So like there was this like feedback
Speaker 1: where not only did Adamar like try to keep everything
Speaker 1: in line, but all the other clergy were there were
Speaker 1: like taking like advice from the lower the lower people
Speaker 1: around them and being like, look, you guys have to
Speaker 1: stop sitting you nobles with all your money. This is
Speaker 1: you know. So they were there, as Elinor said, to
Speaker 1: like reinforce and give it structure, but also to be like,
Speaker 1: here's this. You guys have had too much care. Here's
Speaker 1: the stick.
Speaker 5: You know. So I think for the rest of the
Speaker 5: time we have, let's talk about the Normans. I know,
Speaker 5: Eleanor you mentioned at the beginning of this that you
Speaker 5: wanted to spend some time help, you know, kind of
Speaker 5: talking about who the Normans were, especially you know, as
Speaker 5: they had arrived in southern Italy and Sicily by this
Speaker 5: point and their importance to the crusade. Obviously we're going
Speaker 5: to talk I think in a couple of episodes about
Speaker 5: Bella mout of Toronto. Luke alluded to him in the introduction.
Speaker 5: Very interesting guy, especially in terms of his interactions with Alexios,
Speaker 5: and there's still debate I think about what actually went
Speaker 5: on there and what the two of them discussed in
Speaker 5: terms of future arrangements. But even more basic than that,
Speaker 5: to take a step back, like when the Normans, who
Speaker 5: were the Normans, who were the Normans specifically you know,
Speaker 5: who arrived in southern Italy and what happens in Sicily
Speaker 5: as they conquer this the island and from the Muslims.
Speaker 5: What is that sort of how does that campaign sort
Speaker 5: of lead us into or kind of play play into
Speaker 5: the notion of crusading.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the thing that we got to understand about Normans
Speaker 6: is there a relatively new invention at this point inside
Speaker 6: we've only just come up with the concept of Normans
Speaker 6: in the eleventh century. They basically were a type of
Speaker 6: Viking who was granted permission to stay in the region
Speaker 6: and became a bit frenchified.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So traditionally when you would go viking, a big place
Speaker 6: that you're going to want to hit is like the
Speaker 6: Send Valleys, right, because that's a real good river.
Speaker 4: You could sail several boats down, and they've got tons
Speaker 4: of money.
Speaker 6: So you just understand if you live in the End
Speaker 6: region that like vikings are going to show up every
Speaker 6: minute of the year, right, Like, but I mean I
Speaker 6: say every minute of the year. They're going to come
Speaker 6: in the spring, and they're going to come in the audit.
Speaker 6: And then one year the Vikings go might just stay here, yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, and they end up like kind of conquering
Speaker 6: a bunch of the lands around them, and they end
Speaker 6: up making a deal with the French crown, and the
Speaker 6: French crown says, okay, look, here's the thing that we
Speaker 6: could do. If you want to go ahead and attack
Speaker 6: my enemies who are over in basically like out near
Speaker 6: the kind of tip of France, who haven't been subjugated
Speaker 6: to me, then I will allow you to stay in
Speaker 6: this parcel of land like around basically around like lambs
Speaker 6: and places like that, and you can then be vassals
Speaker 6: of mine. They say, yeah, okay, great, watch me go
Speaker 6: subjugate the Bartons and they are given this land and
Speaker 6: babing badam boom, they christianize and they start staying around there.
Speaker 6: But they're still weird, okay. They speak their own kind
Speaker 6: of hybridized French that has a lot of loanwords from
Speaker 6: Scandinavian languages. They do things like take French wives, but
Speaker 6: then really they're concubine will also be like a Norman
Speaker 6: or a Viking, and then that's the one that they
Speaker 6: actually have children with, and you know, they just do
Speaker 6: weird stuff, right because they aren't they aren't French, right,
Speaker 6: they are this other thing. And indeed the our word
Speaker 6: Norman and the area Normand comes from Normani, which means Northmen.
Speaker 6: So it's like these are the Vikings who are around
Speaker 6: the place. And indeed, like to this day, I have
Speaker 6: it on good authority from French people that they're like, hey, yeah, no,
Speaker 6: they're this other thing. Like interestingly, like the French history
Speaker 6: curriculum doesn't teach a lot about the Normans because they're like, nope,
Speaker 6: those aren't our.
Speaker 4: Guys, right, So you know, you don't you don't look at.
Speaker 6: Them directly on because they're not French, right there, are
Speaker 6: this other thing, and it's this thing that makes people
Speaker 6: uncomfortable because they get their land by conquering and attacking,
Speaker 6: and you spend a lot of time kind of trying
Speaker 6: to keep them on side. So sometimes they're in France,
Speaker 6: sometimes they're taking over England, and sometimes they're taking over
Speaker 6: the Kingdom of Sicily, you know, like as one does, right,
Speaker 6: because they have this really great military advantage in that
Speaker 6: they're very good with boats, and they learn how to
Speaker 6: use horses while they were in France, and this is
Speaker 6: and this sucks for everybody else because they're like, ah, God,
Speaker 6: damn it, the Vikings have horses now, and it's like
Speaker 6: it's not it's not great when the Navy suddenly has tanks, right,
Speaker 6: Like that's that's a terrible thing for them, right. So yeah,
Speaker 6: they basically kind of like end up in Southern Italy
Speaker 6: in the first instance as mercenaries, right because although like
Speaker 6: they are a bunch of weird guys, everybody knows they're
Speaker 6: good fighters. So you could always kind of scoop some
Speaker 6: Norman's up if you want to do things, and basically
Speaker 6: the Byzantines would hire them. You know, the Byzantines have
Speaker 6: a very long history of hiring in vikings, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 6: these ones are even better.
Speaker 4: They're Christian, great, brilliant.
Speaker 6: And you know, we got to keep in mind that
Speaker 6: a lot of southern Italy and a lot of Sicily
Speaker 6: was initially Greek, and they were very much connected with Constantinople.
Speaker 6: You know, there's no concept of Italy at the time.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, if you go to Sicily even today,
Speaker 6: you got a lot of places with Greek place names
Speaker 6: and that kind of thing. Right, So they get called
Speaker 6: in by the Lombards, they get called in by the Byzantines,
Speaker 6: and they are doing some work down in like the
Speaker 6: toe and the heel of the boot of Italy and
Speaker 6: indeed in Sicily itself, because Sicily is real close to Africa,
Speaker 6: you know, and as a result, Africans do be going
Speaker 6: up there.
Speaker 4: Right. So Sicily has been has been.
Speaker 6: Conquered, uh, and it has been conquered by Muslims. Okay,
Speaker 6: you know it's it ain't that far from Carthage, baby,
Speaker 6: And the Byzantines do not care for this, so they say, hey,
Speaker 6: can we I'm gonna get some Norsemen in and we're
Speaker 6: gonna we're gonna deal with this and that begins happening
Speaker 6: in the tenth century, but by the time we were
Speaker 6: in the eleventh century, you know, we've really got some
Speaker 6: Normans around the shop in Sicily, and hilariously, you know,
Speaker 6: in a precursor of things to come, the businessings are like, yeah,
Speaker 6: get in here, guys, we need some helper retaking Sicily,
Speaker 6: and the Normans are like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll
Speaker 6: take you said take Sicily, right, Yeah, I heard yeah, right, And.
Speaker 4: So basically they end up. You know, it's a it's
Speaker 4: a long thing.
Speaker 6: It doesn't happen overnight, but they manage to slowly kind
Speaker 6: of take the tow and the and the heel of
Speaker 6: the boot. They end up taking over the Emirate of
Speaker 6: Sicily and creating their own state down in southern Italy,
Speaker 6: much to the chagrin of the Byzantines. Were like, hey,
Speaker 6: we paid you for that.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, it doesn't take them. You have to
Speaker 5: give them some credit. I mean, it takes them like
Speaker 5: thirty years, I think, to conquer Sicily, which seems like
Speaker 5: a long time, except it took the Muslims like one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty years to finally get the Byzantines off
Speaker 5: the island like they came in in the eight twenties,
Speaker 5: after you know, Euphemius knocked up that nun and decided
Speaker 5: it would be just a rebel rather than like face it.
Speaker 5: That was the that's the legend, right that he like
Speaker 5: got non pregnant and decided in for a penny, in
Speaker 5: for a pound, I guess. But it took them a
Speaker 5: long time to finally get rid of the last business
Speaker 5: remen It took them about fifty years I think to
Speaker 5: take Syracuse, and then you know, a couple of decades
Speaker 5: beyond that to finally take the last major city. But
Speaker 5: it was all the way into the nine sixties before
Speaker 5: they took they removed the last present Byzantine presence on
Speaker 5: the islands. It took a very long time to achieve this,
Speaker 5: and the Normans are relatively and part of it is,
Speaker 5: I think the degeneration of the Muslim presence, which we
Speaker 5: will talk about more next time. But you know, at
Speaker 5: that point, by the time you get from eight twenty,
Speaker 5: you start out with like the appointed governors by the
Speaker 5: Abasid Caliphate or going in as part of the you know,
Speaker 5: sort of imperial conquest. By the time you get to
Speaker 5: like nine sixty you're on too, like the this the
Speaker 5: group that took over from the like your three groups
Speaker 5: in and they like deteriorated to the point where Sicily
Speaker 5: is sort of on its own now. It doesn't really
Speaker 5: have any connection to anything on the mainland, so it
Speaker 5: all kind of starts to fall apart and break up,
Speaker 5: which I guess makes it a little bit easier for
Speaker 5: the Normans than it was for the for the Arabs,
Speaker 5: but it's it's, uh, you know, I give them, I
Speaker 5: give them credit for being efficient about it, frankly in contrast.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they do a good job of kind of
Speaker 6: identifying weak points, you know, and they go for the
Speaker 6: big cities first, as like, look, get Palermo, right, you
Speaker 6: want it, you want that, and then you want Syracusa,
Speaker 6: and then it's like, you know, eventually you only have
Speaker 6: people over in like Marsala, right.
Speaker 4: And then you kind of like squeak that up and.
Speaker 6: They're like, oh, well, go for the south fields later.
Speaker 6: It's fine, you know, you want the forts, you control
Speaker 6: the ports first and then and then you kind of
Speaker 6: branch out from there. And I mean, I think that
Speaker 6: this is an important point because we have a tendency
Speaker 6: in our kind of nationalized twenty first century world to
Speaker 6: take seriously Victorian ideas about nationalism and like, what historically
Speaker 6: is a homeland and like, you know, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 6: there's no such thing is an Italian, right, Like Italians
Speaker 6: are made up, you know, Germans are made up.
Speaker 4: I will, this is not a real thing.
Speaker 6: And when you look at the history of Italy and
Speaker 6: the history of southern Italy in particular, like, baby, these
Speaker 6: people were Greek, you.
Speaker 4: Really liked, what do you mean Italian? You know?
Speaker 6: And then and then you've got a lot of Muslims
Speaker 6: around the shop. And even when the Normans take over,
Speaker 6: it's a pretty mixed society. One of my favorite ever
Speaker 6: Emperors of Frederick the Second pretty famously has rather a
Speaker 6: lot of Muslims.
Speaker 4: Around the shop.
Speaker 6: So even when the Normans do take over, they kind
Speaker 6: of maintain it as a mixed society, which I think.
Speaker 4: Also helps with the conquest efforts.
Speaker 6: They're like, I mean, I'm not going to kick you out.
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna be like the ruler here. Don't worry
Speaker 6: about it. Don't worry about it, you know. So you
Speaker 6: have a lot of Normans down in Sicily, and again
Speaker 6: you're also facing this problem when Normans is like, cool,
Speaker 6: so we took this over.
Speaker 4: Now we're here, and then what.
Speaker 5: Do you next?
Speaker 4: What do you attack next?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: Because what are you gonna do with all these guys
Speaker 6: who have horses and ships and want to go stick
Speaker 6: people with pointy things? You know, you got to point
Speaker 6: them somewhere, right, And it's a Norman problem.
Speaker 1: That So yeah, and the big the big Norman here
Speaker 1: at least in the run up to our story, to
Speaker 1: our narrative is Robert Guiscard, who he was one of
Speaker 1: the ones who came over in that initial ban in
Speaker 1: the ten sixties and they were going to take over
Speaker 1: southern Italy and this involved fighting, as Eleanor said, whatever
Speaker 1: locals they needed to the Muslims and the Byzantines. And
Speaker 1: this starts a long contentious relationship that Guiscard has with
Speaker 1: Constantinople because and it's a very on again, off again
Speaker 1: thing because like he for most of his life, he
Speaker 1: is just going to get the better of the Byzantines,
Speaker 1: like across the board, and he's going to essentially own
Speaker 1: them so hard that following Mansukurt around Manzuicurt, they they
Speaker 1: uh the Emperor Romana's Diogenes who Diogenes who was who
Speaker 1: was captured and later died captured at Mansakurt later died.
Speaker 1: He proposed marriage the marriage of his son to the
Speaker 1: daughter of Robert Griscard, and Uh Guiscard UH said no thanks.
Speaker 1: And that was when he sees the remaining uh Byzantine
Speaker 1: lands in Italy. And UH after Manzicurt Uh the the
Speaker 1: Duca emperor who came next, Michael the seventh UH renewed
Speaker 1: the talks. He he said, I'll give up the claims
Speaker 1: to Italy. It's fine, you got us, you beat us, whatever,
Speaker 1: And Uh he wanted an alliance with the Griscard. He
Speaker 1: wanted his brother Constantine to marry one of Guiscard's daughters.
Speaker 1: I think it's the same one who they keep trying
Speaker 1: to marry off to various Greeks. And we Scarred again
Speaker 1: turns this down, but he doesn't. He doesn't do anything
Speaker 1: just yet. And at the time Michael the seventh was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, fine, I'm going to reach back out
Speaker 1: to the pope. He reaches out to Gregory the seventh
Speaker 1: about papering over the East West Schism and seeing what
Speaker 1: they can do. But then he said the second, a
Speaker 1: second letter to Guiscard and he's like, look, I'll marry
Speaker 1: my son to your daughter. I'll give you all these
Speaker 1: titles and lands that you can give to your Norman buddies.
Speaker 1: You can have some land over here. It'll be fine.
Speaker 1: And goose Card's like, you know what, this will work.
Speaker 1: This is fine and it's great. And they break off
Speaker 1: relations with the Pope and greg Gregory's pissed and he
Speaker 1: writes all these letters about how they're never going to
Speaker 1: be able to reconcile. But the thing about it is
Speaker 1: that Wiscard never made good on any of that.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And so when the business teens were trying to fight
Speaker 1: the the Turks, the Seljouks, he was like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm good. And then Michael the seventh was overthrown in
Speaker 1: a coup and Griiscard uses this as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: invade the Balkans. He's going to take the Balkans back
Speaker 1: from it was controlled by the Byzantines.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: He does this, but in this is where he ran
Speaker 1: out of steam because he got to the Balkans and
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to make a ton of headway and
Speaker 1: then he died there And this is also funny because
Speaker 1: Guiscar was so convinced he was going to take the
Speaker 1: Balkans and just run roughshot over over the Byzantines that
Speaker 1: he changed his will to leave all of his new
Speaker 1: yet to be conquered lands in the Balkans to his
Speaker 1: eldest son, Bohamon of Taranto. And so when Guiscard died
Speaker 1: with nothing in the Balkans, Bohemon had nothing because that
Speaker 1: was his inheritance, and he had to go back and
Speaker 1: fight his own brother in order to take Taranto in
Speaker 1: the south of Italy. It's great, they like, Wiscard is
Speaker 1: this guy who is just like like, yeah, I'll come
Speaker 1: fight the Turks. So he doesn't really do it, and
Speaker 1: then gets to the Balkans and get this.
Speaker 4: And dies, he just dies.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 6: Look, scammers exist in the Middle Ages, that's all.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying. That's all. I'm like. It's not
Speaker 4: a new thing there there, you know, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And this is so bad that when Bohemon brings his
Speaker 1: army over Alexios the First sent his brother John Comnenos
Speaker 1: to Durrachium with a full army to make sure they
Speaker 1: that the son didn't try to avenge the father and.
Speaker 4: Take back So good. It's so good, you know.
Speaker 5: This is I think this is a good place to
Speaker 5: end it. It sort of sets us up on what's
Speaker 5: to come. Like the scenes of shall we say, the
Speaker 5: Crusaders and the Byzantines not getting along very well are
Speaker 5: or sort of embedded in the Norman relationship with Constantinople.
Speaker 5: It also, I think you can draw a sort of
Speaker 5: theme across a lot of this period of like rulers
Speaker 5: who are in trouble asking outside actors to sort of
Speaker 5: come in and do them a solid and being screwed over,
Speaker 5: Like the Muslim conquest of Spain starts that way, the
Speaker 5: Muslim conquest of Sicily starts that way. We've got the
Speaker 5: Normans the Byzantines inviting the Normans to come in and
Speaker 5: help them out in southern Italy and oops, that doesn't
Speaker 5: work out. And what are the Crusades if not a
Speaker 5: giant climactic example of a ruler in trouble saying hey,
Speaker 5: could you do me a solid? And it is screwed
Speaker 5: over ultimately in the process by the people who come
Speaker 5: to help him. Like it is absolutely a theme that
Speaker 5: I think sets up the Crusades as a project, not
Speaker 5: necessarily the first Crusade, although there's a little bit of
Speaker 5: screw and it goes on there. But you know, once
Speaker 5: we get to like, the fourth Crusade really really turn
Speaker 5: out not to work out in the byzantines favor, So
Speaker 5: I think that's a good place to leave it. We're
Speaker 5: gonna take a little bit of a detour next time
Speaker 5: to talk about where things stand in the Islamic world.
Speaker 5: We're going to talk about the Fontamids. We haven't really
Speaker 5: talked about them yet, but they will be important when
Speaker 5: we get to Jerusalem. We're going to talk about the Seljuks,
Speaker 5: who we've referred to several times already in terms of
Speaker 5: the Battle of Manzikert, but we'll talk about talk about
Speaker 5: things from their perspective a little bit next time, and
Speaker 5: then the episode after that we will finally get to
Speaker 5: the other major player here, the Byzantines in Constantinople, and
Speaker 5: what it is they were actually looking for versus what
Speaker 5: they got. So until then, thank you guys for being
Speaker 5: on again, and we look forward to the next episode,
Speaker 5: and thanks for everybody for listening. Danny's not here at
Speaker 5: the end of things. So I'll have to use his tagline,
Speaker 5: Please keep on rocking in the free world, I guess.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Crusades. The First Crusade is co hosted
Speaker 1: by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige
Speaker 1: podcast and doctor Eleanor Yannica and Luke Waters of the
Speaker 1: We're Not So Different Podcast. Music by Jake Aaron, cover
Speaker 1: art by James Montalbano. The show is co edited and
Speaker 1: co produced by Jake Aaron and Luke Waters. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for listening, Scotch