Crusades by Regine Pernoud

Crusades

An overview of the book, specifically its focus on the bloody aftermath of the Fourth Crusade to take Jerusalem, as chronicled and assembled by Regine Pernoud in pages 201-216 of his text

The text The Crusades by Regine Pernoud presents, in its overview of the events, two contemporary chronicled versions of the pivotal events that took place in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade to take Jerusalem by the Christian world. The first such a chronicle is by Geoffrey Villehardouin. The second is by one Robert of Clari. Villehardouin's chronicle is perhaps the most famous contemporary, observed account of this long and bloody Fourth Crusade. Ultimately, the crusade ended in such terrible pillage of the siege of Jerusalem that even the Pope himself condemned its aftermath. Villehardouin went as a Christian, but also as a historian. Robert of Clary is mentioned by Villehardouin as one of the participants involved in the military action, although his words are also preserved by history to a lesser extent, and in lesser number than Villehardouin.

Both men wrote as eyewitnesses to the account of the crusades, as involved adherents to the cause of the Church, as well as to Christ's mission to take back the Holy City of Jerusalem for the Christian world. However, Geoffrey Villehardouin wrote, even in his own self-perception, as kind of an historian as well as a crusader, ostensibly from the very beginning of the crusade. Of course, historians of the period were not bound to the same obligations of objective observance to report merely what they saw, as historians of the present are today. Moreover, Villehardouin wrote quite explicitly as an ideological Christian and begin with a very positive view of the mission of the crusade. But in deference to some terms of Villehardouin's "credentials" of objectivity he still wrote as an observer rather than purely as a bloodthirsty and involved participant.

Robert of Clari, in contrast, wrote as an involved soldier and thus as a kind of religious and political participant crucially involved with the construction of the siege from a political and a military perspective from the crusade's beginning stages. He was thus much less apt to view the siege in terms of gray. He wished to defend his own actions, the results of what he saw transpire, and to defend and explain, if not excuse the actions of his own men. Both men were 'Latin' or Roman Catholic in their nationality and religious affiliation, but had subtle differences of perspective in terms of what they believed the purpose of the crusades were and how they believed one should embark upon observing them as a historian, a fighter, and a religious adherent of Christ and the Pope. Clari speaks as a Christian individual, Villehardouin as a larger and an explaining, though still ideological voice, of a Christian historian.

According to Villehardouin, the Fourth Crusade for Jerusalem became diverted from its true and holy Christian purpose of freeing the city, only to become an assault on Constantinople. At first the historian advocated the Latin capture of Constantinople, as is evidenced by his praise of the Pope in his writings. Because the city was not only holy, however, but also the richest, architecturally and artistically, and the most beautiful, as well as the most venerated city in the Christian world sphere, Jerusalem presented other opportunities to those who wished to overtake its walls. In other words, the city afforded unparalleled opportunities for plunder and rapine, of which its Christian conquerors took full advantage.

Their military leaders permitted these actions as a kind of reward to the Crusaders. The leaders, thus according to Villehardouin, were primarily to blame, given they allowed the other Crusaders ample opportunity to indulge in their basest instincts, rather than providing Christian guidance and focusing the mission upon its true purpose. The ordinary Crusaders, their energy having been so frustrated and bottled up for so long, after their long military pilgrimage to the city, were permitted by their leaders as a kind of a reward for their success to indulge themselves in rape of infidel women, the pillage of non-Christian sites of worship and veneration, and to engage in an overall program of destruction for self-centered enrichment.

Villehardouin, during the siege of the city, the historian reports, saw more houses burned than stood in three of the largest cities of France that he had seen while he was back in his home country. Later, even the Pope condemned the actions of the crusaders, in no small part because many Christians were also killed in the frenzy that ensued, and many Christian women of good reputation and even holy virtue were taken advantage of sexually.