The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

HERDER’S OPINION OF THE CRUSADES

It has been customary to ascribe so many beneficial effects to the Crusades, that, conformably to this opinion, our quarter of the globe must require a similar fever, to agitate and excite its forces, once in every five or six centuries; but a closer inspection will show that most of these effects proceeded not from the Crusades, at least not from them alone; and that among the various impulses Europe then received, they were at most accelerating shocks, acting upon the whole in collateral or oblique directions, with which the minds of Europeans might well have dispensed. Indeed it is a mere phantom of the brain to frame one prime source of events out of seven distinct expeditions, undertaken in a period of two centuries, by different nations, and from various motives, solely because they bore one common name.

Trade the Europeans had already opened with the Arabian states, before the Crusades: and they were at liberty to have profited by it, and extended it, in a far more honourable way than by predatory campaigns. By these, indeed, carriers, bankers, and purveyors were gainers: but all their gain accrued from the Christians, against whose property they were in fact the crusaders. What was torn from the Greek Empire was a disgraceful traders’ booty, serving, by extremely enfeebling this empire, to render Constantinople an easier prey at a future period to the Turkish hordes, who were continually pressing more closely upon it. The Venetian Lion of St. Mark prepared the way, by the Fourth Crusade, for the Turks to enter Europe and spread themselves so widely in it. The Genoese, it is true, assisted one branch of the Greek emperors to re-ascend the throne: but it was the throne of a weakened, broken empire, which fell an easy prey to the Turks; then both the Venetians and Genoese lost their best possessions, and finally almost all their trade, in the Mediterranean and Euxine seas.

Chivalry arose not from the Crusades, but the Crusades from chivalry: the flower of French and Norman knighthood appeared in Palestine in the first campaign. The Crusades, indeed, contributed rather to rob chivalry of its proper honours, and to convert real armed knights into mere armorial ones. For in Palestine many assumed the crested helmet, which in Europe they durst not have borne: they brought home with them armorial devices and nobility, which they transmitted to their families, and thus introduced a new class, the nobility of the herald’s office, and in time also nobility by letters patent. As the number of the ancient dynasties, the true equestrian nobility, lessened, these new men sought to obtain possessions and hereditary prerogatives, like them: they carefully enumerated their ancestors, acquired dignities and privileges, and in a few generations assumed the title of ancient nobility; though they had not the slightest pretensions to rank with those dynasties which were princes to them. Every man that bore arms in Palestine might become a knight: the first Crusades were years of general jubilee for Europe. These new nobles in right of military service were soon of great use to growing monarchy, which cunningly knew how to avail itself of them against such of the superior vassals as still remained. Thus passion balances passion, and one appearance counteracts another: and at length the nobility of the camp and the court totally obliterated the ancient chivalry.

The arts and sciences, too, were nowise promoted by the proper crusaders. The disorderly troops that first flocked to Palestine had not the least notion of them; and were not likely to acquire them in the suburbs of Constantinople, or from the Turks and mamelukes in Asia. In the succeeding campaigns we need not reflect on the short time the armies passed there, and the wretched circumstances under which this time was often spent merely on the confines of the country, to dissipate the splendid dream of great discoveries imported thence. The pendulum clock, which the emperor Frederick II received as a present from Kamil, did not introduce gnomonics into Europe; the Grecian palaces, which the crusaders admired in Constantinople, did not improve the style of European architecture. Some crusaders, particularly Frederick I and II, laboured to promote the progress of knowledge: but Frederick I did this ere he beheld Asia; and the short visit paid that country by Frederick II served only as a fresh stimulus to urge him forward in that course of government which he had long before chosen. Not one of the spiritual orders of knighthood introduced any new knowledge into Europe, or contributed to its cultivation.

All that can be said in favour of the Crusades, therefore, is confined to a few occasions, on which they co-operated with causes already existing, and involuntarily promoted them.

(1) As multitudes of wealthy vassals and knights repaired to the Holy Land in the first campaigns, and many of them never returned, their estates were of course sold or swallowed up by others. By this they profited who could, the liege lord, the church, the cities already established, each after his own manner: this promoted and accelerated the course of things, tending to confirm the regal power by the erection of a middle class, but was by no means its commencement.

(2) Men became acquainted with countries, people, religions, and constitutions of which they were before ignorant; their narrow sphere of vision was enlarged; they acquired new ideas, new impulses. Attention was drawn to things which would otherwise have been neglected; what had long existed in Europe was employed to better purpose; and as the world was found to be wider than had been supposed, curiosity was excited after a knowledge of its remotest parts. The mighty conquests made by Jenghiz Khan in the north and east of Asia attracted men’s eyes chiefly towards Tatary; whither Marco Polo the Venetian, Rubruquis (Guillaume de Rubrouck), the Frenchman, and John de Plano Carpino (Giovanni Piano Carpini), an Italian, travelled with very different views: the first, for the purpose of trade; the second, to satisfy royal curiosity; the third, sent by the pope, to make converts of the people. These travels, of course, have no connection with the Crusades, before and after which they were undertaken. The Levant itself is less known to us from these expeditions, than might have been expected: the accounts the Orientals give of it, even in the period when Syria swarmed with Christians, are still indispensable to us.