Worshiping Christ in Frankish Cyprus

 During the last century, the assumption was that during the reign of the Lusignans the Latin elite oppressed and despised the Greek Orthodox majority. However, historians of the 21st century have uncovered a wealth of evidence that suggests rather than tensions or mere tolerance, the dominant feature of religious life in Frankish Cyprus was mutual respect and joint worship. 

The key to understanding the religious situation on Cyprus is to recognize that the Catholic Church in the 12th and 13th centuries did not view Greek Orthodoxy as either heretical or schismatic. Throughout the period of Frankish rule in Cyprus, a succession of popes confirmed that the differences between the churches were ones of "rites" (i.e. practice) rather than doctrine.   

The tensions that misled historians of the last century into hypothesizing hostility and oppression were -- on closer examination -- competition between the clergy of the respective churches, not tensions between the believers of either church. Rather than dogma and theology, the two issues that agitated the Latin Church were access to Greek Orthodox lands and other sources of income and the primacy of the pope. The resident Greek clergy, on the other hand, was primarily concerned about retaining control over the lives of their flock and autonomy from Rome. 

The Latin church hierarchy on Cyprus incessantly nagged the crown and Latin nobles for more land and more income sources not from greed alone. It was also a reflection of the fact that the Greek church had, contrary to popular assumptions, suffered very few expropriations in the course of the conquest.  Furthermore, the land that was taken away was never that on which churches or monasteries stood, but rather the productive estates that had generated income for those institutions. The beneficiary of those land-grabs, however, was not the Latin Church but rather secular lords during the first decade of Lusignan rule. 

The Greek Orthodox Church was undoubtedly impoverished by the exodus of wealthy Greek aristocrats who had been it's most lavish patrons. It lost some of its economic land-holdings as well, but it retained all its churches and the tithes of the Orthodox population. The Latin Church, in contrast, had a very small population of Latins which it could tithe and otherwise had to live from donations. Notably, the secular lords of Cyprus repeatedly backed the Orthodox Church in stopping the Latin Church from claiming the lands of the Greeks -- in large part to protect their own properties!

The other principal point of tension, the primacy of the pope, was superficially doctrinal, but in practice an issue of prestige. Initially, the Cypriot clergy steadfastly refused to take an oath of fealty to the pope in Rome. Eventually, after a series of negotiations, the Cypriot clergy opted to swear fealty in exchange for effective autonomy. Professor Schabel summarized the deal as follows: 

Greek Orthodoxy survived the Frankish period not so much because of a successful national struggle against complete absorption as because the Greeks always remained the majority and neither the Franks nor the Latin Church ever attempted any Latinization. The Latin Church required what it thought was the bare minimum from the Greek clergy -- nothing from the Greek laymen -- and the Greek clergy gave the Latin Church what it required, including by the end of the thirteeth century, an oath of obedience from the bishops and an end to active opposition concerning unleavened bread. Almost all other particulars of the Greek rite, what we now call Greek Orthodoxy, were allowed to remain the same. [Chris Schabel, "Religion" in Cyprus: Society and Culture 1191 - 1374, editor Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel, 201; italics addded by HPS]

The drawn-out struggle between the Latin and Greek clergies, however, had very little impact on daily life or popular attitudes. Only on three occasions in the history of Frankish rule on the island did the inter-clerical disputes rise to the level of popular unrest. Two of these instances, both from the fourteenth century, were riots "lasting only a matter of hours and directed successfully at the actions of a single outsider." [Schabel, 207] The other incident was far more serious and shocking. It entailed the burning at the stake of thirteen Orthodox monks in the mid-13th century.

The execution of thirteen Orthodox monks dates to either 1231 or 1232 -- in either case to a period of "chaos" when King Henry I was not yet of age. Indeed, King Henry was very probably not even present in his kingdom as from February until June 1232 he was in Syria with his regent and all his barons. Furthermore, the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia was also absent from the kingdom much of 1231 and early 1232. Most significantly, from May to mid-June, the Kingdom of Cyprus was occupied by the forces of the Imperial Marshal Riccardo Filangieri. 

In short, Cyprus was effectively without its legal rulers either secular or ecclesiastical for this critical period.  It appears that this fact was exploited by outsiders with no history of peaceful co-existence. At the urgings of a certain Dominican friar -- the Order of the Inquisition and possibly fresh from fighting the Alibigensians -- the Greek Orthodox monks were condemned to die a heretic's death. Yet, as the documents prove, they were not condemned because they used leavened bread, but rather "because for years they refused to stop calling the Latins heretics for using unleavened bread." Schabel suggests that despite knowing that the pope did not consider the use of leavened bread heretical, the Dominicans could "not tolerate the Greek accusation that they were heretics for their practice." (Schabel, 196). 

Sadly, these images of intolerance and violence, isolated and unrepresentative as they were, have dominated the popular image of the relationship between the churches on Cyprus. In fact, Frankish rule was characterized not only by tolerance but by patronage that fostered an expansion of Orthodox building. 

For example, the Frankish period saw a flourishing of Greek Orthodox monastic activity on the island. The number of monasteries on Cyprus more than doubled from 40 under Byzantine rule to over 100 by 1363. While a number of these monasteries were Latin (the Hospitallers, Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, Cistercians, and Augustinians all had three to four houses on Cyprus), Orthodox monasteries undoubtedly made up the vast majority of these religious houses. Furthermore, Orthodox parish churches, even in rural areas, also experienced an inflood of donations that enable renovations and redecoration. Far from languishing in oppression, the Orthodox church flourished under the Lusignans.

There were a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, the Lusignans viewed themselves as the kings of all Cypriots, not just the Latin Cypriots. The Lusignans and their (often Ibelin) wives regularly made generous donations to Greek Orthodox institutions. The nobility also made significant gifts to Greek Orthodox institutions, and there are recorded instances of Italian merchants doing the same. Indeed, by the fourteenth century at the latest, Latin prelates were complaining about "the noble and plebeian women" frequenting the churches of the Greeks, while their husbands "barons, knights, and burgesses" preferred to attend mass in private chapels. 

This situation arose primarily because of the large number of marriages between Latins and Greeks. With the Greek population so dominant, many immigrants found their wives among the local Greek population. The Italians, notoriously, left their wives at home, and one wonders how many took local "wives." Meanwhile, the rising Greek middle class that dominated the bureaucracy and increasingly merged into the gentry made good matches for younger daughters of poorer knights.

Another factor in the gradual slide toward Orthodoxy on the part of the Frankish population was the sheer lack of Latin parish churches. Even in Nicosia, the capital and heart of Frankish Cyprus, the Latin Cathedral was the only parish church. The suffragan bishops also had their cathedrals, but for Franks living outside the main cities, those living on their estates, there were no Latin churches at all. As a result, we have instances of Latin knights and ladies buried in Orthodox churches. The assumption must be that during their lives they also regularly attended mass at these churches, confessed their sins to the Orthodox priests, and possibly married and baptized children there as well. 

Even those Latins who remained true to their traditions gradually absorbed elements of Greek religious culture into their lives and churches. Cypriot saints such as Barnabas, Hilarion, and Epiphanios were worshiped in Latin as well as Orthodox churches. Latin patrons developed a taste for icons, particularly the vita icons that surrounded a portrait of the saint with scenes from his/her life. Frankish artisans became adept at producing icons. Indeed, icons have been found with labeling in the same hand in both Greek and Latin, suggesting that they hung in churches used by both Greek and Latin congregations.

In short, despite the bickering between the Latin and Greek clergy over hierarchy and income, for the average Cypriot whether Greek and Latin the shared belief in Christianity was paramount. Rather than hostility or tensions, the people of Cyprus worshiped Christ and his saints together evolving a distinctive form of almost ecumenical sacred architecture and other art forms. 

For more on the disputes between the Cypriot clergy and the pope as well as the evolution of unique art forms see: Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel and Chris Schabel (eds). Cyprus: Society and Culture 1191 - 1374 (London: Brill, 2005).

My most recent novels set in medieval Cyprus reflect this overall atmosphere of inter-faith cooperation punctuated by moments of tensions:

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her current series describes the civil war in Outremer between Emperor Frederick andthe barons led by John d'Ibelin the Lord of Beirut. Dr. Schrader is also working on a non-fiction book describing the crusader kingdoms. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Jews in the Crusader States

Everyone has heard how the crusaders slaughtered all the inhabitants of the Jerusalem when they captured the city by storm on July 15, 1099. Among the dead were allegedly the entire Jewish population of Jerusalem at the time.  We also know that long before the first crusaders reached Jerusalem, in 1096, Jewish communities in the Rhineland were attacked and massacred mercilessly, and that all subsequent crusades were likewise accompanied by greater or lesser outbreaks of violence against Jews in Western Europe. It may therefore come as a surprise that Jews in the crusader states themselves suffered no persecution. On the contrary, by the end of the 13^th century, the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem had become home to a flourishing community of Jews and a major center of Talmudic studies.

How was this possible and how did it come about?

Although Robert Chazan[i] traces the roots of anti-Semitism to the start of the 11^th century, when the Jews were complicit in the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher by the Fatimid caliph in 1009, there is strong evidence that the crusades intensified anti-Semitic feelings among large portions of the population of Western Europe. Daniel P. Franke[ii] rightly points out that the Popes ― right into the 15^th century ― maintained a policy of tolerance, quoting from a papal bull in 1120, which states:

We decree that no Christian shall use violence to force [Jews] into baptism while they are unwilling and refuse… Moreover…no Christian shall presume to wound their persons, or kill them, or rob them of their money… Furthermore, while they celebrate their festivals, no one shall disturb them in any way.[iii]

Yet the very fact that 23 popes of the 12th to 15^th centuries felt compelled to re-issue this directive underlines the fact that violence against the Jews continued across Western Europe. Certainly the attacks on Jews by the first crusaders spread from Speyer to Worms, Mainz, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, and Prague.  Some historians argue they were not confined to the German-speaking world, but also spread to France. Certainly, England saw a terrible outbreak of violent anti-Semitism in association with Richard I’s coronation in 1190. King (Saint) Louis IX went so far as to elevate Jewish persecution to state policy, although there were less spontaneous acts of violence against them than elsewhere in Europe. So why not in the Holy Land itself?

The initial contact between crusaders and Jews had been bitter. The Jews actively supported the Muslim defenders of Jerusalem, Haifa, and other cities of the Holy Land. When these cities fell to assault, the Jews were massacred along with the Muslim defenders; when the cities agreed to terms, they were allowed to withdraw with their portable goods and chattels. Within ten years, most Jews, who were predominantly urban-dwellers, had been driven out of the territories held by the crusaders. In Jerusalem itself, a ban prohibited Jews from ever re-settling in the Holy City.

Yet there is ample evidence of the fact that the Jews remained or returned to other cities ― or never left at all. Records show there were large Jewish communities in Tyre and Acre, smaller communities in Ascalon and elsewhere.  Furthermore, there were two dozen villages occupied entirely by Jews in Galilee, between Tiberias and Nablus.

Even more astonishing and significant: the First Crusade sparked a Jewish messianic movement.  According to Prawer, “in some communities the Jews sold their property and waited for the Messiah who would bring them to Jerusalem.” [iv] Certainly, the establishment of the crusader states and regular trade and pilgrimage traffic between the Holy Land and Western Europe allowed European Jews to undertake the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and other sacred places in the Holy Land.  The pilgrim traffic to the crusader states included a significant portion of Jews ― and like their Christian counterparts, many of these chose to stay in the Holy Land after they arrived.

They were encouraged to do so not merely by the proximity to their holy sites, but by the prevailing atmosphere of tolerance in the crusader states ― in sharp contrast to the situation “at home” in Western Europe. Precisely because the Frankish elite was a minority in the crusader states, they were dependent upon the cooperation and contribution of a variety of native inhabitants. The majority of these were other kinds of Christians ― Melkites, Maronites and Jacobites, Armenian, Abyssinians and Copts ― but there was also a large Muslim population. People in the Holy Land had to learn to deal with all of them; Jews were just one more “flavor” in the mix.

This social tolerance was underpinned by the laws of the crusader states that did not discriminate against Jews either. Rather, Jews were treated the same way as Muslims and non-Latin Christians in that they were allowed to retain their own laws and customs, living according to their own traditions and celebrating their festivals and rites without interference. In consequence, there were rabbinical courts in both Acre and Tyre (and possibly Tiberias), and Palestine in the crusader period was one of only three centers in the world for Talmudic Study.

Furthermore, the Jews continued to pursue respected professions such as medicine, and took part in commercial activities. There is no evidence that they were required to wear distinctive clothing or live in segregated communities, although it is almost certain that, like the remaining Muslim population, they were subject to additional taxes.

In addition, there was still a large Samaritan population. (Note: Samaritans accept only the first five books of the Hebrew bible as divinely inspired.) Although many Samaritans had been driven into exile across the Middle East, the center of Samaritan worship and scholarship was located in Nablus, and this was where the largest Samaritan population was concentrated in the crusader era. The Samaritans appear to have flourished under crusader rule and a large number of Torah scrolls produced by Samaritans have survived, suggesting a flourishing of activities rather than the reverse.

To be sure, the Jews welcomed Saladin’s victories because he allowed Jews to re-settle in Jerusalem, but within a few decades the situation there had become too precarious. In 1229, the Sultan al-Kamil handed Jerusalem back to Fredrick II Hohenstaufen for ten years, and the Emperor immediately re-imposed the anti-Jewish ban. The Turkoman invasion of 1244 resulted in the sack of Jerusalem, and the Mongol raids of the 1260s made life in and around Jerusalem dangerous. Yet tellingly, the Jews moved not further east to Damascus and Aleppo, but rather preferred to live in the remaining crusader cities, notably Tyre and Acre.

As a result, from the second quarter of the 13^th century until its fall, Acre became a vibrant Jewish center, a “cross-section of the different communities of the Diaspora. The leading elements were Jews from Spain and from northern and southern France, in addition to eastern Jews, whether Palestinian-born or from neighboring Moslem, countries…Here a Talmudic academy continued the tradition of the French Tosafists, whereas rabbi Salomon Petit expounded the Kabbala and Spanish Jews continued their own tradition.”[v]

Tragically, despite Islam’s vaunted “tolerance” for Judiasm, this Jewish center and the entire Jewish community that fed and surrounded it were exterminated mercilessly by al-Ashraf Khalil when he captured Acre in 1291.

 Daily life, including tolerance for Jews, is depicted as accurately as possible in my award-winning novels set in Outremer:

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[i] Chazan, Robert. “1007-1012: Initial Crisis for Northern European Jewry,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 38/39. 1970-1971, p. 101.

[ii] Franke, Daniel P.. “The Crusades and Medieval anti-Semitism: Cause or Consequence” in Seven Myths of the Crusades. Editors Andrea, Alfred J. and Andrew Holt. Hackett, 2015

[iii] Franke, p. 61

[iv] Prawer, Joshua. “Social Classes in the Crusader States: the ‘Minorities” in A History of the Crusades Volume 5: The Impact of the Crusade on the Near East. Editors Hazard, Harry M. and Norman P. Zacour. University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, p. 97.

[v] Prawer, p. 101.

The “Other Christians”: Orthodox Christianity in the Crusader Kingdoms

In my last entry I argued that, on the whole, Muslims were not worse off under the crusaders, so why should the Christians, that the crusaders had come to deliver from oppression, have fared worse?

Mosaics in the Church of the Nativity commissioned by Baldwin III and clearly showing Byzantine workmanship

Again, let’s go back to basics. The First Crusade was as response to a plea by the Byzantine Emperor — or, if one follows the medieval Chronicler William of Tyre, an appeal made Peter the Hermit from Amiens who had personally visited Jerusalem.  Either way, the appeal to Western Christendom was that Christians (please note: Orthodox Christians) were being oppressed in the very city where Christ had been crucified. Rodney Stark provides an excellent catalogue of various atrocities committed against Christians in the years leading up to the First Crusade (Stark, pp 78-98).  The atrocities included the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher along with some 30,000 other churches that were either pillaged or burned.  Aside from these periodic acts of violence that left Christians in a permanent state of insecurity, the Muslim regimes (even the more tolerant and benign rulers) persistently punished conversion to Christianity with death, prohibited the establishment/construction of new churches, prohibited the saying of Christian service and prayers out-loud — even in one’s home, prohibited Christians from bearing arms and even riding horse and — most important if one is an adherent of Machiavelli — taxed Christians at a significantly higher rate than Muslims.

Ruined Byzantine Church in Ascalon

For Orthodox Christians to be “worse off” under the crusader regimes, they would have had to suffer greater indignities than those listed above. They did not. They were freed of the extra tax, allowed to own horses, bear arms, build their own churches and monasteries — and they did! — and they practiced their religion openly and without fear. Not once during crusader rule were Orthodox Christians subject to massacres or the plundering of their homes by the ruling Franks.  I have yet to see even one concrete example of one way in which the Orthodox Christians in Outremer were “better off” under the Muslims.

Jotischky notes that “Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic and Ehtiopian monasteries all flourished under Frankish rule.” (Jotischky, p. 126.) According to Hamilton “...other eastern-rite Churches were granted virtual autonomy by the Franks under their respective religious leaders…and were not made subject to the Catholic hierarchy.” (Hamilton, p. 50.) The only point of friction between Frank and other Christians resulted from the fact that the crusaders viewed the Greek Orthodox Church as part of the Catholic Church. While this was clearly advantageous for ordinary Greek Orthodox citizens, who then enjoyed all the same privileges as the ruling elite, it was a problem for the Greek Orthodox clergy because it effectively put them under the rule of the Pope -- something they did not accept.  Furthermore, if the two churches were one, there could only be one bishop per see, and naturally the Pope preferred to appoint Latin churchmen to such positions.

There was, therefore, considerable outrage among the Greek Orthodox hierarchy against the “loss” of episcopal sees, income, privilege and power, but as Jotischky points out: “…the replacement of Greeks with Latins probably made little difference to many parochial clergy in the patriarchate of Jerusalem, because the Orthodox bishops had tended to be Greeks appointed from Constantinople, whereas the Orthodox clergy and laity were Arabic-speaking.” Furthermore, the Franks allowed the Orthodox priests to minister to their flocks just as they had done before the First Crusade. Orthodox services continued as before using leavened bread, and Orthodox priests could marry as before.

The fact that a Jacobite (Syrian) Christian on Saladin’s staff (Joseph Batit) sought to convince the Syrian Christians in Jerusalem to surrender the city to Saladin during the siege of September 1187 does not prove that relations between the Franks/Latins and the Jacobites/Syrians were — as some would suggest — consistently bad. All it shows is that by September 30, 1187, after ten days of siege and the collapse of a portion of the wall, nerves in the Christian camp were (understandably) cracking. Yes, some Syrian Christians undoubtedly did, at that point, want to save their lives (and those of their wives and children) making them willing to negotiate with Saladin. The same day the leader of the Latin Christians, Balian d’Ibelin, did the same thing. Across the Kingdom of Jerusalem, citizens made the same decision out of sheer necessity, not because they had for a hundred years been unhappy living under the crusaders or because they had forgotten the oppression they has suffered under the Muslims in the past.

Scene from the film "The Kingdom of Heaven"
in which Balin d'Ibelin negotiates the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin

On the contrary, not only were Orthodox Christians significantly better off under the crusader states than they had been before, they were active and often ardent supporters of the crusader states.  A significant portion of the Armies of Outremer were composed of native Christians who fought as “Turcopoles” — light cavalry (clearly a great privilege compared to being prohibited from bearing arms or riding horses under Muslim rulers). We also know that senior Orthodox clergy supported the Third Crusade, which they would not have done if they had thought their co-religionists were better off under Saladin.

The crusader states were states with a predominantly Christian population in which practitioners of the various Christian traditions lived harmoniously side-by-side without oppressing their Muslim or Jewish neighbors. In short, the crusader states were an early example — not of intolerance and bigotry as so often portrayed — but of tolerance and “multi-culturalism.”

In my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin I endeavor to portray the relations between the various Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem accurately.

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Learn more about crusader society at: Balian d'Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Demography of the Crusader Kingdoms

 There are two popular misconceptions about the demography of the crusader kingdoms prevalent today:

1.  That the crusaders were a tiny Christian elite ruling over predominantly Muslim populations.

2.  That, although there were “other Christians” living in the crusader states, these other Christians had been “better off” under the Muslims and were not particularly loyal.

It is time we stopped perpetuating these myths. Today I will address the first, and in my next entry I will address the second issue.

Going back to the basics, we should not, in an excess of political correctness, forget that Christ was born in Bethlehem in what was to become the Kingdom of Jerusalem, that he lived and worked in Nazareth (in the Kingdom of Jerusalem), and that he was crucified in Jerusalem. Christ did not a dream about going to heaven from Jerusalem; his death in the city is historical fact. 

In short, Jesus, son of Joseph, actually lived, worked, preached and converted many to his new religion during his own lifetime in what came to be called the “Holy Land” and was later the heart of the crusader kingdoms. Furthermore, St. Paul established the first Christian community in Antioch in roughly 50 AD. In short, the territories conquered by the crusaders encompassed the very oldest Christian territory on earth. There were Christians in these lands for almost 600 years before Mohammed was even born.

Furthermore, the territories that later formed the crusader states, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had all been part of the Roman Empire and officially Christianized in the 4^th century AD. From being a minority religion, Christianity became the state and majority religion in 325 under the reign of Emperor Constantine, who rebuilt Jerusalem between 325 and 330.

The territories that later became the crusader kingdoms remained Christian until they were conquered by Muslim invaders almost exactly 300 years later. Although Muslim rule was not broken for another three hundred years (in the case of Antioch) and four hundred twenty years in the case of Tripoli and Jerusalem, “Muslim” rule was not a block of continuous lordship but, rather, three distinct epochs. The Arab-dominated, Sunni elite which had conquered Syria and Palestine in the 7^th century was defeated and driven out of the Levant in the tenth century by the Shiia Fatimid dynasty, which had taken control of Egypt in 905. At the same time, the Byzantine Empire struck back and reconquered Antioch. Then in 1040 the Seljuk Turks, recent converts to Islam, started expanding eastward, and reached Jerusalem, driving out the Fatimids.

Even more important, the fact that the territory had been conquered and was ruled by Muslim elites, is not the same thing as mass conversion of the population. There are to this day significant Christian and Jewish populations in countries such as Egypt and Syria that have been continuously Muslim for 1400 years. Professor Rodney Stark notes: “It was a very long time before the conquered areas were truly Muslim in anything but name. The reality was that very small Muslim elites long ruled over non-Muslim (mostly Christian) populations in the conquered areas.” (God’s Battalions, Harper Collin, 2009, p. 29.) Andrew Jotischky sites research that “argues for a much more even proportion of indigenous Christians to Muslims than most historians have previously allowed — perhaps even a 1:1 ratio.” (Crusading and the Crusader States, Pearson Longman, 2004, p. 132)

In short, the crusaders conquered territories in which roughly half the population was still Christian. They then opened these territories to settlers from the West — and the settlers came.  Bernard Hamilton estimates that as many as 140,000 “Franks” (i.e. Western Christians following the Latin rites) had immigrated to the Kingdom of Jerusalem by the second half of the 12^th century (The Leper King, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 47). According to Professor Hamilton, the total population of the Kingdom was roughly 600,000 at this time. Thus, Christians (230,000 native Orthodox Christians plus 140,000 Latin Christian settlers) would have made up roughly 60% of the population of the crusader states.

Even if the Muslim population was a minority — not the overwhelming majority so often assumed in popular literature and film — it was still a sizable minority and would have posed a serious threat to fragile crusader rule if that population had been rebellious. Far from being rebellious, Muslim visitors such as Ibn Jubair, who visited the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1183 from Grenada, noted that the Muslim serfs he saw in Galilee “seemed more prosperous and content than those living under Islamic rule outside the Kingdom of Jerusalem.” (Jotischky, p. 129)  This was because, as Hamilton puts it, “once their rule had been established the Franks proved remarkably tolerant in their treatment of non-Christian subjects.” He notes that “the Franks allowed complete religious freedom to all their subjects.” (Hamilton, p. 49.) 

While Hamilton stresses that Jewish synagogues and rabbinic schools existed in many of their towns, contemporary Muslim sources noted with surprise that mosques were allowed to function in the crusader states (albeit not in Jerusalem itself) and Muslim subjects were even allowed to participate in the haj. This was because, as Jotischky notes, “the First Crusade was a war of liberation and conquest; it was not a war for the extermination or conversion of Muslims.”  Far from being forced to convert, the Muslim villagers were run by a council of elders who in turn appointed  a “rayse” to represent the community to the Christian lord, while all spiritual and social matters were regulated by the imams in the community in accordance with Sharia law! (Jonathan Riley-Smith, Atlas of the Crusades, Swanston Publishing Ltd, 1191, p. 16 among others.)

In my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin I endeavor to portray the relations between Christians and Muslims in the Kingdom of Jerusalem accurately.

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Read more about crusader society at Balian d'Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Myths about the Crusader States 4:

Christian Rulers were Bigoted and Intolerant

  

Most popular literature about the crusader states alleges that the Latin rulers were “less tolerant” of religious diversity than their Muslim predecessors. It is hard to trace the origins of this myth – other than in an excess of political correctness in today’s world.

It is true that in the four centuries of Muslim rule in the Holy Land preceeding the crusades some Muslim rulers were content to live-and-let-live, but -- as my last entry stressed -- there were also periods of extreme repression.  Furthermore, at all times Christians (and other non-Muslims) were taxed extra and treated as second-class citizens, certainly they had no right to positions of power and influence.

This is the standard against which the Christian leaders should be judged.  If used it is quickly clear that the Christians were not more oppressive than their Muslims predecessors.  To be sure Muslims and Jews were subject to special taxes -- as had been the case under Muslim rulers for non-Muslims.  As under the Muslims, all people were allowed to practice their own religion. However, under the Muslims the penalty for trying to preach or convert a Muslim to Christianity was death – as it is to this day in many Muslim countries. (A woman was only recently condemned to death in Sudan, for example, for claiming to be a Christian and marrying a Christian man.) I have never read or heard about a similar law punishing the preaching of Islam with death in the crusader kingdoms.

It is true that the crusaders took the Holy Land by force – as had their Muslim predecessors.  It is also true that while the Muslims allowed Christians to live in Jerusalem, the crusaders prohibited Muslims from living there.  Nevertheless, they did not tear down the Dome of the Rock or destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, as the Caliph al-Hakim had leveled the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  The crusaders simply converted these buildings to Christian or secular purposes.

Islam's most sacred shrine in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock, was not destroyed;

it was converted into a Church instead.

It is also true that Latin clergy was given control of the most sacred places and put into the positions of greatest ecclesiastical power, such as the patriarchies in Jerusalem and Antioch. Whether the Abbaids, the Fatamids, or the Seljuks were in control, however, they too put their own men into positions of power; Sunnis do not tolerate Shiia religious leaders in their mosques and madrassas and vice versa. Conquerors always take the best spoils for themselves.

The fact that hardly any city resisted Saladin’s conquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the Battle of Hattin is often taken as evidence that he non-Latin population in the kingdom preferred Muslim rule. This is hardly a sustainable argument since the reality was that the kingdom was simply not defensible after the losses sustained at Hattin.  Under the circumstances, the civilian population was eager to avoid the destruction and retribution that the rules of war designated for cities that resisted and were taken by storm.  The civilian population preferred to trust to Saladin’s reputation for clemency.  The situation might have looked very different if the notoriously brutal Zengi had been mopping up – or Baibars or one of the other equally merciless Mamluke sultans had been the opponent in 1187.

Rather, those who assert the “preference” of the subject peoples of the crusader states for Muslim over Latin rule ought to ask why there were no revolts against the Latin leaders? Why was there no “Intifada” against the Christian kings?  How could the tiny Latin Christian elite rule for nearly two hundred years, if their subjects were secret allies of their enemies? Why weren’t Christian towns betrayed to the Muslims each time a Muslim army appeared – and not just after the devastation of Hattin but during Saladin's invasions in 1177, 1179, 1181, 1182, and 1183. 

It is safe to say the loyalty of the various non-Latin elements in the crusader states varied across regions and time.  Initially, the Armenians appear to have been very enthusiastic about crusader rule after decades under the Turks.  Later, they became disillusioned, at least in Eddessa, probably due to misrule and greed on the part of the Latin rulers. In Antioch, the Armenians appear to have been considerably more loyal. Yet in both states, the continued presence of an independent Armenian kingdom undoubtedly undermined loyalty to the Latin elite by keeping alive hopes of reincorporation in a greater Armenian state.

In the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Armenians played a much less significant role and the other religious groups were fragmented, so that no one group was in a position to seriously challenge Latin leadership.  Furthermore, a Muslim traveler from Spain lamented the passivity of the Muslims under Christian rule.  In his religious zeal, he may have forgotten or discounted the fact that even the majority of Muslims in the Holy Land were not ethnically Arab or Turkish.  They viewed the Latin rulers as just one more alien invasion in a millennia long history of such invasions.  They had indeed become passive, accepting and accommodating of each change of regime. Furthermore, there was a significant amount of intermarriage between males from Western Europe and females native to the Holy Land.  This tended to reinforce tolerance on the part of both rulers and ruled.

Last but not least, the prominent role played by sergeants in the armies of the Holy Land suggests that the crusader states commanded considerable loyalty among the native, middle-class population.  Some historians speculate that sergeants were drawn from the large population of “half-breed” youth, who – they postulate – did not qualify for knighthood because of native blood. The theory is not convincing, because knighthood could be bestowed on anyone, even full-blooded Arabs, Turks or Kurds. A more logical explanation is that the conditions of fighting in the Holy Land, particularly the fact that the Turks could muster armies with tens of thousands of light horse, made it necessary to have more mounted fighting men than the knightly class could support.  The development of light cavalry on the Christian side was a response to the overwhelming number of cavalry on the Muslim side.

Because horses were expensive, however, these sergeants had to be recruited from among the social classes with comparatively high incomes, albeit not rich enough to afford the armor, arms and training of knights.  The fact that secular leaders of the crusader kingdoms and the militant orders could recruit such men in such numbers (there was an almost two to one ratio of sergeants to knights at most of the Templar and Hospitaller castles) makes it very clear that the “middle classes” in the crusader states -- whether half-breeds or non-Latin Christians –- stood firmly behind the Christian regime. 

That hardly seems reasonable if the Christian rulers were as “intolerant” as many modern books portray them.