The New Life Cycle

Joining the crusader army provided an opportunity for rebirth and the idea of this appeared in the early stages of the instigation of the Second Crusade. In his account, Odo of Deuil wrote that Pope Eugene III agreed to King Louis VII’s request to support an armed pilgrimage. This support included the promise to erase the sins of any Christian man who participated in the Second Crusade. This promise was corroborated by Otto of Freising and by Osbernus, who quoted a bishop giving a sermon to crusaders in the city of Porto before the first attack on Lisbon: “ dear sons, reborn of a new baptism of repentance, you have put on Christ once more, you have received again the garment of innocence to keep it stainless.” These second crusaders who heard this speech were on their way to battle and were aware of the danger awaiting them. The bishop’s declaration, supported by the pope, was a promise that crusaders would enter the afterlife sinless. The Church used the afterlife to abate fear of death in an attempt to create fearless soldiers.

“Greatly to be lamented is the fate of these active youths who, midway in their course, encountered winged death instead of the enemy.” Odo of Deuil here described the battle between the Saxons and a Turkish army that lasted several days until the Turks defeated the Saxons. In a different battle, Odo of Deuil linked youth to bravery: “Then, taking the bows in hand, the seasoned youths began to leap down from the wall, so that they might either protect their own lives and those of their comrades or sell their lives dearly.” In these examples, Odo of Deuil underscores the theme of martyrdom and bravery of youth in battle. The writer highlighs the young age of these soldiers to praise the sacrifice they made by dying at a young age. The young age of the soldiers appeals to the emotions of the reader and to an extent excuses the defeat in battle.

Young men who did not die in battle were referenced the purpose of recruiting and glorifying crusaders. In Osbernus’ account, he described a sermon given by a local bishop to crusaders. Here, this bishop told a story about a young man who was sad to sell all of his belongings. The bishop then addressed the crowd: “How many are there among you here who are richer in possessions than this young man! How many who are higher in the rank of honor! … Yet it is a fact that they have exchanged all their honors and dignities for a blessed pilgrimage …”. Here rather that praising the sacrifice of young men, youth serves to elevate the great sacrifice of older crusaders that gave up established and honorable lives for the crusade. In his account, Odo of Deuil wrote that many crusaders converted to Islam due to the kind treatment they received from Turkish soldiers, as opposed to the Byzantines: “avoiding the fellow-believers [Byzantine] who were so cruel to them, the Franks went safely among the unbelievers who had compassion on them; and, we have heard, more than three thousand young men went with the Turks when they departed.” The writer described these crusaders as young in order to rationalize their grave sin and differentiate them from older knights and nobles. This assertion is supported by Osbernus, who describes youth as a stage inferior to knighthood.

The culture of brotherhood in relation to crusaders appeared before the instigation of the Second Crusade. The influential Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux depicts the Knights Templar as bonded in “brotherly love.” At the beginning of the Second Crusade, the idea of brotherhood took the form of a bond between second crusaders and Christian populations. Otto of Freising quoted a letter by Bernard of Clairvaux, who Pope Eugene III had sent to call the crusaders in order to free Christian populations under Muslim rule: “rescue out of their hands the many thousands of captives, our brothers.” Later in the crusade, preachers promoted values of brotherhood in battles. In The Conquest of Lisbon, Osbernus discussed a long sermon delivered by a priest referring to second crusaders as brothers multiple times.

Crusading brotherhood consisted of a shared religion and collective memories, and this idea of brotherhood was one of the most crucial elements in the story of the Second Crusade. The second crusaders who set out from western Europe all acted under the banner of the Catholic Church. These soldiers perceived themselves as originating from the same race, despite coming from different countries across all of western Europe. Moreover, the soldiers and commanders of the Second Crusade grew up hearing the same stories and legacies of the First Crusade. These elements culminated in the distinctive phenomenon of crusading brotherhood and enabled the execution of such a complex international initiative. By joining the Second Crusade, soldiers were told that they could become brothers, even if they were not part of the Latin Church. The constant use of the idea of brotherhood gave soldiers and recruits a sense of belonging, responsibility for one another, and purpose for fighting.

Manhood played a vital part in the story of the Second Crusade. In the account of Otto of Freising, it is apparent that Church officials often depicted second crusaders as “brave men.” In Bernard of Clairvaux's Second Crusade instigation letter, he associates being a crusader with manhood: “The more mighty and the noble, gird themselves manfully and strive thus to oppose the multitudes of the infidels.” It is without a doubt that this Church-directed narrative affected Otto of Freising’s portrayal of second crusaders as courageous men. In a candid instance, he mentioned the purpose of this rhetoric: “To extol the famous deeds of valiant men in order to incite the hearts of mankind to virtue.”

While second crusaders were portrayed as men, European men who did not join the Second Crusade were denied both their masculinity and also basic human features in western European primary sources. When Crusade chronicles allude to non-western Europeans, they often avoid attaching manhood or any life stage specifics. In the account of Odo of Deuil, the writer depicted orthodox Christian men becoming women: “And then the Greeks degenerated entirely into women; putting aside all manly vigor, both of words and of spirit, they lightly swore whatever they thought would please us, but they neither kept faith with us nor maintained respect for themselves.” It is in the account of Otto of Freising that we find perhaps the most explicit example of the dehumanization of non-Franks. This comes up in the writer’s description of the geography of Hungary, which was part of the second crusaders’ route: “They are barbarous and ferocious in their habits and language…I will not say men, but caricatures of men.” Otto of Freising also denied manhood to other non-crusader Europeans, and his description of Hungarians illuminated this as a deliberate method for dehumanization.

When describing Muslim soldiers, writers of the Second Crusade do not deny their enemies manhood the same way they do to non-crusader Europeans. In the writings of Osbernus, the writer quotes a sermon of a bishop to second crusaders in the battle of Lisbon, depicting Muslim warriors as men multiple times: “And he who puts wicked men to death is a servant of the Lord.” In this sermon, the bishop referred indirectly to Muslims as men, albeit wicked men. In a meeting between a Muslim delegation from the city of Lisbon and second crusaders, Osbernus portrayed some of the Muslim delegation as wise elders. In a more exceptional example, the writer compared second crusaders to their Muslim enemies during the battle of Lisbon: “almost all our men had gathered from the ships and were already so mixed up with the enemy in the city that they could hardly be recognized except by the difference in their weapons.” Osbernus was not the only writer who depicts his enemy differently when describing battle-related stories. Odo of Deuil associated Turkish soldiers with manhood several times, such as when discussing rumors about battles between German crusading forces and Turkish armies: “they [the Byzantine Empire] said that the Turks had assembled a huge army and that the Germans had killed 14,000 of these men without experiencing any loss.” The Muslim forces who the crusaders encountered were not a potential recruiting pool for the Church, and emphasizing them as men equal to crusaders serves to glorify the crusaders in triumph and minimize shame in defeat. Even the Muslim enemies were portrayed with more dignity than Europeans that did not join the Second Crusade, this served the purpose of glorifying those that did join and salvaging the one success of the second crusade, which is recruitment.