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The Echo of Clermont: 1095–1141 the History of Polish Connections with the Crusading Movement Should Begin with the Event Whic

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CHAPTER ONE THE ECHO OF CLERMONT: 1095–1141 The history of Polish connections with the crusading movement should begin with the event which, in the eyes of both medieval contemporaries and modern historians, initiated the period of the Crusades. On the 27 November 1095, after the conclusion of proceedings on the penultimate day of the French bishops’ synod at Clermont, Pope Urban II delivered a public appeal to fight in the defence of Christians in the east and of the holy places of Palestine. The enthusiastic reaction of the audience led to the beginning of the general mobilisation of forces that before long swept large areas of western Europe. Within a few months, the slogans of an armed pilgrimage with the aim of liberating Jerusalem from the hands of the unbelievers became—whatever had been the real plans and intent of the Pope—the main motivation behind a massive popular movement, over which the initiators of the movement rapidly lost control.1 The dynamic character of the first years of the movement makes it impossible unequivocally to define its extent.2 There are reasons to believe that the appeal in Clermont was basically directed towards the French knights,3 though on the other hand it was most probably dominated by 1 On the synod in Clermont and the speech of Urban II, see U. Schwerin, “Die Aufrufe der Päpste zur Befreiung des Heiligen Landes von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang Innozenz IV: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der kurialen Kreuzzugs Propaganda und der päpstlichen Epistolographie”, Historische Studien 301 (1937), 70–3; F. Duncalf, “The Councils of Piacenza and Clermont”, in HC, 1, The First Hundred Years, ed. M. W. Baldwin (Madison, WI, 1969), pp. 220ff.; H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade”, History 55 (1970), 177–88; C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade (Princeton, NJ, 1977), pp. 306ff.; H. E. Mayer, The Crusades (Oxford 1988), pp. 8ff.; J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), pp. 13ff.; idem, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge 1997), pp. 60–6; S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 1, The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 106ff.; P. J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 1ff.; M. Bull, “Origins”, in OIHC, pp. 13ff.; Trupinda, Ideologia krucjatowa, pp. 49–52. 2 See F. Duncalf, “The First Crusade: Clermont to Constantinopole”, in HC, 1, pp. 253ff.; Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, pp. 25, 31ff. 3 Ibid., p. 25. The speech of Urban II is preserved in four basic versions: those of the monk Robert—in 1095 Abbot of Saint-Rémy; of Guibert of Nogent—from 1104 Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy; of Baldryk, Abbot of Bourgueil; and of Fulcher of Chartres, a partici- pant in the First Crusade. There are varying opinions among scholars concerning the rela- tive value, as evidence, of these accounts; see Duncalf, The Councils, p. 239; Riley-Smith, 16 chapter one an overarching rhetoric calling for the solidarity of all Christians.4 Grabski has drawn attention to one of the later versions of the Pope’s speech, according to which Urban II—seeking to emphasise the extent of the Turkish threat addressed his words also to the peoples on the ‘peripher- ies’ of Christian Europe: the Germans, Poles, Czechs and Hungarians.5 This version, attributable to the 15th-century chronicle of the German human- ist Johannes Naukler,6 cannot of course be regarded as having the value of an account contemporary with the First Crusade, but it does provoke a question: could the activities of the organisers of the First Crusade have in some way included the state of the Piast rulers of Poland? It is a fact that the preserved traces of the action directed by Urban II are limited basically to France, Flanders and northern Italy, and pos- sibly also Normandy and England.7 On the other hand we also possess many indicators to the effect that the ideals of the expedition to the Holy Land spread well beyond the limits of the area affected by the offi- cial papal campaign. Undoubtedly, alongside the ‘authorised’ preachers of the Crusade, other preachers played a significant role—for example Peter the Hermit, who (despite the Pope’s intentions) turned primarily to The First Crusade, pp. 135–6; Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades, pp. 9ff.; English transla- tions of all four versions are to be found in Riley-Smith, J. and L. Riley-Smith (eds.), The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (hereafter CIR), Documents of Medieval History, 4 (London 1981), pp. 41–53. 4 See Duncalf, The Councils, p. 242; L. Koczy, “Narody w pierwszej wyprawie krzyżowej”, Teki Historyczne, 11 (1960–61), pp. 59ff.; Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades, pp. 11–14. 5 Grabski, Polska wobec idei, p. 39; idem, Polska w opiniach, p. 260; Ossowska, “The Polish Contribution”, p. 167; see B. Urbani II pontificis Romani epistolae, diplomata, ermones, PL, 151 (Paris 1853), col. 581. Recently Kowalska, (“Papieskie apele do Polski”, p. 129), stated with reference to the work of Grabski that: “At the synod in Clermont, Urban II in his speech (27.11.1095) calling for a fight against the Saracens, also turned to the Poles.” However, there are no grounds in the contemporary records to support such a view. 6 Chronica d. Iohannis Naucleri praepositi tubigensis, succinctim compraehendentia res memorabiles seculorum omnium ac gentium, ab initio Mundi usque ad annum Christi nati M. CCCCC, Coloniae MD LXXiX, 2, p. 787; see PL, 151, col. 561–2. On the chronicle of Johan Naukler, see for example E. Joachim, Johannes Nauclerus und seine Chronik (Göttingen 1874); D. König, Zur Quellenkritik des Nauclerus, FDG, 18 (Göttingen 1878), pp. 49–88; H. Müller, Nicht Melanchton, sondern Nikolaus Basellius Urheber der Interpolationen in der Chronographie des Nauklerus, FDG, 23 (Göttingen 1883), pp. 595–600; O. Lorenz, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter seit der Mitte des Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts, 1 (Berlin 1886), pp. 43, 54–55, 67, 75. 7 There are four preserved copies of Urban II’s document on the organisation of the First Crusade, sent to the faithful in Flanders and Bologna, to clerics in Vallombrossa and to the counts of Besalú, Roussillon, Empúries and Cerdanya, and to their knights (CIR, pp. 37–40); see Duncalf, The First Crusade, p. 255; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 1, pp. 107ff.; Ch. Tyreman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, IL, and London 1988), pp. 15ff.; Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p. 75. .
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