Holy Land - Ep: 1 | Crusades | BBC Documentary

on a late November morning in the year 1095 this man pope urban ii delivered a sermon that would transform the history of europe his rousing words transfixed the crowds gathered here in the French town of Clermont and in the months that followed his message reverberated across the West the age of the Crusades had begun [Music] the Pope proclaimed a new holy war against Islam for control of the most hallowed site in the Christian cosmos the sacred city of Jerusalem Urban's call to arms initiated a struggle that would rage for two centuries one that fires the imagination and fuels debate even today the story of the Crusades is remembered as a tale of religious fanaticism and unspeakable violence of medieval knights and jihadi warriors of castles and kings of heroism betrayal and sacrifice but now fresh research and contemporary evidence from both the Christian and Islamic worlds sheds new light on how it was that these two great religions waged war in the name of God why hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims answered the call to crusade and jihad and who ultimately won the war for the Holy Land [Music] from the summer of 1096 between sixty and a hundred thousand Christians men women and children set out to walk some two and a half thousand miles across the face of the known world their goal Jerusalem not since the distant glories of ancient Rome had a force of this size been assembled rich and poor peasants and Knights these were the first Crusaders Christian soldiers who endured unimaginable suffering during an armed pilgrimage that lasted for three years so who were they and why did they fight [Music] when urban ii became pope christianity was in turmoil split between the greek church of the east and the latin west the papacy itself stood on the brink of overthrow embroiled in a long-standing feud with a german empire but urban had a plan determined to reassert papal Authority in the autumn of 1095 he came to france where he would launch a titanic armed pilgrimage known to history as the first crusade by November 1095 the Pope was ready to unveil his plan here in Clermont in central France he announced his intention to deliver a special sermon and on the 27th of November hundreds of people crowded into a field outside the town to hear him speak [Music] a grave report has come from the lands of Jerusalem that a foreign race a race absolutely alien to God has invaded the land of those Christians and has reduced the people with sword ray pine and fire urban speech was the moment of Genesis for the concept of a crusade it was primarily designed to meet the needs of the papacy and it contained a brilliantly conceived hook the coming expedition would target the greatest pilgrim destination in the Christian world the holy city of Jerusalem which lay in the hands of Islam but the Pope had a problem Jerusalem had fallen to Islam more than 400 years earlier so he could hardly claim this as a fresh crime to lend urgency to his call urban therefore turned to one of the most powerful and dangerous forces in human history the idea of other nests of an alien enemy guilty of ghastly crimes who must be repelled these men have destroyed the altars polluted by their foul practices they have circumsized the Christians either spreading the blood from the circumcisions on the altars or pouring it into the baptismal fonts and they cut open the navels of those whom they choose to torment with loathsome death drag them around and flog them before killing them as they lie prone on the ground with all their entrails out [Music] the Pope created an anti-islamic onslaught peppered with propaganda his graphic imagery bore little relation to the reality of Muslim rule in the Holy Land nor was Urban's call to arms directly inspired by any recent atrocity in the east nevertheless his attack ignited a fire of vengeful passion as news of the crusade resounded across Western Christendom [Music] the idea of the crusade was unleashed in a spiritual age an era which in many ways was wholly alien to our own today we might be acculturated to notions of tolerance skepticism and religious difference but a singular truth bound together almost every human being alive in 11th century Europe unconditional and total belief in Christianity the church taught that every human would face a moment of judgment a weighing of souls those found to be pure would be rewarded with everlasting paradise in heaven but if you were a sinner then you faced certain punishment an eternity of gruesome torment in hell [Music] this is the main tympanum of the cathedral it depicts the Last Judgement according to the Gospel of Matthew and it says that in the last day of the world Christ will come back in his glory and to send the good ones the elected ones to heaven and the bad one to hell and that was carved in the middle of the 12th century by a man called Jill Burgess and he signed up his name right below Christ's feet right in the middle of the main team Panama this magnificent sculpture cycle depicts the Last Judgement and it's the perfect evocation of the whole idea of agony and ecstasy in medieval Christianity at Christ's right hand we see salvation three children are being lifted to heaven by an angel and above a set of beautifully carved elongated angels lifts the saved up to paradise on the other side at Christ's left hand we see those less fortunate those who have sinned and will face an eternity of torment in hell there is a man bearing a bag probably a bag of money meaning he is a miser or a moneylender he's among the Damned and next to him is a woman with a pair of snakes gnawing on her bare breasts showing that she was lusty or lewd and perhaps most evocatively of all a man with a look of fear and agony on his face as a pair of giant demonic hands reached down to strangle him and pull him through the gates of hell this is the tableau of horror laid out before us this is what gizzle Burt wanted his audience to understand the consequences of sin in the medieval world primed to seek Redemption Western Christians were thus enthralled when urban the second announced his expedition to the Holy Land the price would be huge the faithful would have to give up everything to participate in a terrifying near suicidal journey into the unknown but in return the Pope seemed to be promising a guarantee of eternal salvation tens of thousands of ordinary Christians responded to the Pope's brilliantly conceived campaign but Urban's target audience was the aristocracy of Western Europe a violent warrior class fighting for survival in a world of bloodthirsty lawlessness these warlords would become the crusades leaders Christian Knights for whom the Pope's call to arms solved a very particular dilemma the Pope knew only too well the anxiety of Christian warriors trapped in a worldly profession imbued with violence yet taught by the church that bloodshed was sinful the real genius of Urban's crusading ideal is that it solved this dilemma reconciling faith and violence urban spoke of a new sacred struggle in which fighting would not simply be permitted but actively encouraged and even rewarded the day after Pope Urban sermon at Claremont count Raymond of Toulouse the most powerful secular Lord in southern France became the first nobleman to commit to the crusade determined to prepare his soul for the grueling expedition ahead raymond then came here to this Cathedral in lop we the count made a large donation to secure the favourable intercession of the Virgin Mary and according to one Chronicle requested that so long as I live a candle should burn for me incessantly day and night upon the altar before the revered image of the mother of God for noblemen like Raymond and the retinues of Knights and infantry that came with them the crusade offered the promise of eternal salvation and in return their personal fortunes would bankroll the sacred expedition Raymond of Toulouse became the Crusades elder statesman but he was just one of scores of rich and powerful noblemen for whom the combined allure of military conquest and religious Redemption proved irresistible there was God free of will apply a snuke whose lands extended from northeastern France to the Low Countries and Germany despite a long-standing feud with the papacy Godfrey was so enthralled by the crusading message that he joined the expedition to Jerusalem there was the southern Italian Norman boa Monde of Toronto a guileful military genius perhaps the greatest general of his age and there was Stephen of du'a from northern France William the Conqueror's son-in-law Stephen left his wife adalah to rule in his stead and later wrote her a series of extraordinary letters describing his adventures in the east in fighting against these enemies of God and of our own we have by God's grace endured many sufferings and innumerable evils up to the present time Stephens words survived as a direct I witness account of the crusade but there were many other contemporaries who also sought to chronicle this remarkable expedition [Music] miss manuscript is a French copy of the East WA - Tamara William of time it's illuminated and is one of our most popular manuscript for the history of Crusaders this is an illustrated copy produced in 1289 of the most famous chronicle of the crusades written by William of Tyre a Christian historian working in the Holy Land in the 12th century this beautiful manuscript depicts many of the key episodes of the Christians exploits in the east including the moment that the first Crusaders set out from Europe of this dignified procession belies the ramshackle reality of the First Crusade for most people embarking on the crusade was a colossal leap of faith this would be a journey to an alien and unknown world attempted with little or no planning and no accurate Maps this was an extraordinary mass migration undertaken by over 60,000 people the first to depart for small groups of peasants and some nights to Paul to pay for ships their only option was to walk dragging their few belongings behind on carts living hand-to-mouth off the land as they marched east this rabble of Christian fanatics became embroiled in a series of murderous attacks on the Jews of Europe the main contingents of Knights soon followed but it was only in the first months of 1097 almost a year after the first pilgrims set out that the First Crusade finally United at Constantinople capital of the Byzantine Empire for most Crusaders this was the end of the world as they knew it the mighty metropolis ten times the size of any city in Western Europe and it was the center of the Greek Church in the east the greatest Christian superpower of the medieval age constantinople boasted an unrivaled collection of sacred relics it had the crown-of-thorns locks of hair from the Virgin Mary at least two heads of John the Baptist and the bones of virtually all the apostles and it had this San Sophia medieval Christendom most spectacular Church I arrived at Constantinople with great joy by the grace of God the emperor verily received me with dignity and honour and with the greatest affection as if I were his own son [Music] the Crusaders had arrived at the gateway to the Orient the frontier with Islam the Byzantine Emperor had for some time been appealing to the West for help in defending Christendom 's eastern border with the aid of his troops the Crusaders targeted Nicaea an Islamic foothold in Western Asia Minor after a month-long siege the city was conquered the holy war had begun but there was no immediate response to this audacious invasion the Crusaders had inadvertently chosen the perfect moment to strike the Muslim world was in a state of disarray riven by religious and ethnic divisions as yet Islam could not draw upon the same profound sense of shared purpose that United the Crusaders the dream that drove these Christians on towards their sacred objective I tell you my beloved wrote Stephen of Blois to his wife back in France in five weeks we will reach Jerusalem because of its vast size the crusade couldn't realistically move forward as a single force a column of 60,000 people might take an entire day just to pass a single point and foraging for food and supplies as they went they might scour the surrounding landscape like a plague of locusts instead the Crusaders decided to divide their armies into led by a beaumond of Toronto the first contingent set off with a plan to regroup after four days here at an abandoned Byzantine military camp 100 miles southeast of Nicaea but the holy army never made its rendezvous as the Crusaders marched across the plains of Asia Minor they were ambushed by a ferocious band of nomadic warriors their first terrifying taste of Turkish horsemen in full flight one Christian eyewitness caught in the thick of the fighting wrote the Turks were howling like wolves they began shooting a cloud of arrows we were all stunned by this because for all of us this form of me affair was unknown [Music] ranged against a seemingly endless multitude of Turks the Christians were thrown into disarray instead of chaotic retreat beaumond managed to establish a defensive formation but isolated and exposed the Crusaders faced disaster huddled together like sheep in a fold we were trembling and frightened surrounded on all sides by enemies so that we couldn't turn in any direction one Crusader later recalled another account described how the Turks burst into the camp striking with arrows loosed from their horn bows killing men women and children indiscriminately and sparing no one on grounds of age stunned and terrified by this hideous killing girls who were delicate and nobly born were rushing to get themselves dressed up and offering themselves to the Turks so that at least appeased by their beauty they may offer their prisoners some pity the Crusaders were absolutely terrified by what they encountered at door Alam they'd come across an alien enemy something they'd never encountered before and what's really extraordinary is that they didn't give up instead they managed to regroup reorder their lines and hold their position for five hours until crusading reinforcements arrived [Music] empowered by their faith the Western invaders seemed invincible in contrast Islam's defense lay in the hands of a disparate array of squabbling warlords but the Crusaders faced a different kind of enemy as they marched across Asia Minor enduring the blistering heat of the summer months plagued by starvation and thirst for the first time a lack of water became a real issue the death rates skyrocketed and what's really extraordinary about this period is that the eyewitness testimony suggests that the Crusaders were as much if not more concerned about the deaths of animals as they were about those men and women who died through first it's always been thought that the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land with their cavalry intact the truth is that crossing Asia Minor almost all of these Western horses died by the time they reached the Holy Land many Crusaders were forced to ride on donkeys with their feet dragging in the dirt others were astride oxen so this idea of an invincible military force is an illusion Christian numbers were severely depleted by an epic journey that concluded with a terrifying traverse of the Taurus Mountains by the time the First Crusade reached northern Syria in the autumn of 1097 only around half of those who had left Europe a year earlier survived the crossing of Asia Minor had been an extraordinary feat in itself but now standing at the gateway to the Holy Land the Crusaders faced a gargantuan task that eclipsed everything that had gone before the conquest of one of the great cities of the Orient Antioch this was a crucial staging post as the crusade now looked south to Jerusalem itself perhaps less than a month's march away but Antioch lay under the rule of Muslim Turks shielded by two great mountains and a ring of awesome battlements that made this one of the most strongly fortified cities in the medieval world this is antiox last surviving gate part of a series of formidable defenses that made an immediate attack impossible the city was garrisoned by around 5,000 Turks enough to mount a defense but not sufficient to confront the Crusaders in open battle the result an appalling stalemate that would test the Christians faith to the limit from the autumn of 1097 the Crusaders committed themselves to the grinding reality of a medieval encirclement siege a devastating war of attrition that would last for eight months that winter would prove to be a living hell for the Crusaders camped outside Antioch facing illness disease and starvation the height of the Crusaders suffering came in January 1098 hundreds perhaps thousands lost their lives not to the edge of a sword but to illness and malnourishment according to one account food became so scarce that the poor were forced to eat dogs and rats the skin of beasts and even seeds of grain found in manure many Christians began to question why God had abandoned the crusade his sacred venture and when it seemed that things couldn't get any worse the Muslim world finally appeared to unite [Music] just as the advent of spring began to shift the balance of the siege in the Crusaders favored a dread Laden rumor began to circulate scouts from the Christian camp reported that they had seen a Muslim army swarming over mountain paths like the sands of the sea curb Agha of Mosul a fearsome Iraqi general and some forty thousand Syrian and Mesopotamian troops were on the way and now they were less than one week away from Antioch this huge relief force mobilized in response to desperate appeals for support from antiox Muslim leaders outnumbered the Crusaders by two to one stranded outside the city the Christian army would surely be crushed against antiox walls facing the very real threat of panic and mass desertion the Crusades leaders convened an emergency council and boa monde the military genius who had taken command at Doral ayyam stepped forward Boehm and argued that whoever could orchestrate antiox fall should be given legal rights to the city and it was only after the bargain had been sealed that the wily boa monde showed his hand Vermont had made contact with a renegade inside Antioch an Armenian Christian tower commander named fiddles who was willing to betray the city [Music] just a few days after the Crusaders emergency council a small group of Berman's men stole up to an isolated section of the city's southeastern walls their furrows lowered a ladder [Music] we know from eyewitness testimony that these men were absolutely terrified most of them expecting to be killed as soon as they reached the top but as it turned out they were able to dispatch the guards of the three surrounding towers in complete silence and then a small gate was opened below the calm night air was suddenly shattered as shrill bugles sounded to signal a wave of secondary attacks on other parts of the city and the Christians began screaming out their battle cry God wills it God wills it the Muslim garrison was thrown into a state of utter confusion and soon antiox remaining gates were thrown open and the Crusaders poured in in the half light of dawn a chaotic slaughter began as the Crusaders unleashed eight months of pent-up anger and aggression having spent eight months battling to gain entry to Antioch the Crusaders now found themselves ensnared in a bizarre predicament the very next day cabacas great army began to arrive the first Crusaders were now trapped inside Antioch the besiegers had become the besieged car buggers ferocious army formed a cordon around Antioch trapped inside a city already bereft of supplies the Christians now face the greatest test of their faith food very quickly ran short and starvation became endemic it was said that the poor were forced to eat the leather of their own shoes while others drank the blood of the few remaining horses to sustain themselves many Crusaders now deserted lowering ropes from the walls and escaping under cover of darkness these rope danglers as they came to be known included many well-known Knights the Crusaders had reached their lowest point weakened by hunger utterly terrified of the enemy outside baying for their blood it seemed that the First Crusade was about to end in disaster [Music] surely only a miracle could save the Christians now [Music] [Music] in mid-june 1098 a southern French peasant named Peter Bartholomew came forward announcing that he had experienced a series of visions in these st. Andrew had revealed to him the resting place of the holy Lance the very spear that had pierced the side of Christ on the cross Peter Bartholomew led a group of Crusaders to the Basilica of st. Peter's in Antioch and began digging one member of this party Raymond of agir described the scene we had been digging until evening when some of us began to give up hope of unearthing the Lance but Peter Bartholomew seeing the exhaustion of our workers stripped off his outer garments and clad only in a shirt and barefooted dropped into the hole he then begged us to pray to God to return his Lance and give strength and victory to his people finally the Lord showed us his Lance and I kissed its teeth as it barely protruded from the ground what great joy and exultation filled the city [Music] what Peter Bartholomew supposedly found was probably no more than a small shard of metal but the idea that God might manifest his will on earth through such sacred objects was part and parcel of medieval Christianity and the ravings of a religious fanatic and the discovery of such a significant relic had the potential to reignite the Crusaders belief in their holy mission most accounts indicate that the discovery of the holy Lance had an electrifying effect on the Crusaders state of mind even though they were exhausted starving and facing insurmountable odds this seemingly irrefutable demonstration of divine support fired the Christians to take up arms and confront Co baaga head-on on that day they scored a miraculous victory driving cabacas horde from the field Antioch was theirs and the cult of the holy lance was born the cults with the power to shape the future of the crusade [Music] it's long been believed that the discovery of the holy lance provided an electrifying boost to crusader morale sending the christian sprinting out of antioch to confront gababa and his mighty army here in venice in a small island monastery is the oldest surviving copy of a chronicle written by matthew of Edessa an armenian historian who lived during the time of the first crusade poised between the Western Christian and Muslim perspectives Matthew's account offers a more neutral version of events and it suggests a surprising new interpretation of the story of the holy Lance in a unique passage Matthew describes in detail what actually happened in Antioch in June 1098 this is the part versus the erotic Queen had earlier Hutson the Franks became threatened with a famine because provisions in the city had long become exhausted more and more hard-pressed they resolved to obtain from Kabara a promise of amnesty on condition that they deliver the city into his hands and return to their own country this is an astonishing passage revealing that far from sprinting out of Antioch to confront their enemy the Crusaders were ready to give in and go home they decided to do this negotiation with him because they hadn't even know food and the army was a few for this they wanted to do this negotiation with him and to have his assurance that they could turn to their home in in Europe for so long the crusaders reaction to the discovery of the holy lance has been held up as proof of their blind piety but if they did try to negotiate a surrender then that presents a very different image one of medieval warriors wracked by fear and doubt Matthew's Chronicle is so important because it gives a more human more nuanced image of these Crusaders kabocha dismissed the Crusaders terms of surrender leaving the Christians with a hopeless choice to die within the city from starvation or to die fighting in the end the Crusaders did undoubtedly make an extraordinarily brave decision to confront cabacas horn head-on but they seemed to have done so not in a state of ecstatic religious fervor but in utter desperation expecting to die the Christians fought with a primal sense of desperation ironically facing certain death with nothing to lose they won defeating an enemy that turned out to be anything but invincible far from being a United Army cabacas force was actually a loose and fragile coalition of rival warlords each suspicious that Kibaki himself was hoping to use the Crusader invasion as a pretext to seize Antioch as his own that was why the Muslim army shattered so readily when struck by the Christians charge for most Crusaders the seemingly miraculous victory over Kaaba was proof of the power of the holy lance and the relics most ardent advocate Raymond of Toulouse now asserted moral leadership over the expedition but in the months that followed some of the Crusades leaders became increasingly greedy for power and plunder boa Monde remained to rule Antioch and instead of driving on to Jerusalem the expedition's holy goal Raymond insisted on pursuing further conquests in Syria and Lebanon you for many Christians these delays were unforgivable some even began to question the authenticity of the holy lance and the integrity of the increasingly delusional fanatic who had found it facing a barrage of criticism Peter Bartholomew actually begged to undergo a potentially lethal trial by ordeal to prove his innocence and the authenticity of the holy lance on the 10th of April 1099 outside the city of ARCA in Lebanon the peasant visionary began to prepare for a dramatic trial the outcome of which would determine the fate of the First Crusade Peter spent the next four days fasting to purify his soul and then on Good Friday olive branches were stacked into two pyres four feet in height and 13 feet in length with the two pious satellite wearing a simple tunic and bearing the relic of the holy Lance Peter Bartholomew willingly walked into the heart of the inferno [Music] some of Peter Bartholomew's supporters later wrote that he emerged miraculously from the flames unscathed and it was only later that a frenzied crowd mobbed him and broke the bones of his body but his opponents recorded that he was mortally wounded by the burns one thing is certain the man who had found the holy lance at Antioch died within 12 days of his ordeal the spell of the Holy Dance was broken and with it the reputation of Raymond of Toulouse it was Godfrey of Weill who emerged as the Crusades new leader as after more than ten months of delay the Christians advanced with almost breakneck speed any thoughts of further conquests in Lebanon and Palestine were abandoned in just three weeks later on Tuesday the 6th of June in the year 1099 after three years and more than 2,000 miles the first crusade finally arrived at the spiritual center of the Christian cosmos [Music] around ninety percent of those who had set out from Western Europe have been lost along the way neither to death or desertion for those few who had managed to make it this far the site of Jerusalem must have been incredibly moving not just because the journey to get here had been so long and arduous but because this place was the most sacred Christian site on earth this was where Christ had undergone his passion his life his death and most importantly of all his resurrection many Crusaders believed if they could conquer this city it would become one with the heavenly Jerusalem a glorious Christian paradise Jerusalem's walls and the Muslim garrison within made it an even bigger obstacle than Antioch [Music] but for the Crusaders having come so far defeat here was simply unthinkable after a frantic six-week siege Godfrey of beyond made the decisive breakthrough breaching the city's inner defenses [Music] on the 15th of July 1099 the first Crusaders finally achieved their long cherished dream the liberation of Jerusalem surging through these streets in bloodthirsty ravening packs they overran the holy city fueled by over three years of unimaginable strife privation and yearning they unleashed a rampaging torrent of barbaric and indiscriminate slaughter one Crusader joyfully reported with the fall of Jerusalem one could see many marvelous works some pagans were mercifully beheaded others pierced by arrows plunged from towers yet others tortured for a long time were burnt to death in searing flames piles of heads hands and feet littered the streets and even the soldiers carrying out the killing could hardly bear the stench rising from the blood lapping of their ankles Jews as well as Muslims were butchered this was holy war in all its horror [Music] many Muslims fled to Jerusalem's most hallowed ground revered in Islam as the site of Muhammad's ascent to heaven but the Christian warriors went after them cutting them down as far as the famous axor mosque where there was such a massacre that the Crusaders were wading through their enemy's blood [Music] the massacre that took place on the streets of Jerusalem was not simply a feral outpouring of pent-up rage it was a calculated campaign of killing that lasted at least two days it left this city awash with blood and strewn with corpses in a moment that perfectly encapsulated the Crusades extraordinary fusion of violence and faith at sunset on the 15th of July 1099 the Crusaders still covered in their enemy's blood gathered here in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre believed to be the site of Christ's death and resurrection to give thanks to their God for us today the idea that the first Crusaders could present themselves as faithful Christians even as they carried out acts of butchery might seem abhorrent almost incomprehensible but to understand the first Crusaders we must see the world as they saw it to appreciate that they had a distinctly medieval conception of religion [Music] all the best contemporary evidence suggests that they are dn't Lee believed in what they were doing that for them killing for Christ was itself an act of devotion an expression of faith that would open the gates of heaven [Music] four years after pope urban ii delivered his dramatic call to arms the first Crusaders had achieved their goal Jerusalem was now undeniably in the hands of Western Christians the success of the first crusade stunned Christian Europe it became the most widely recorded event of the Middle Ages contemporary saw Jerusalem's seemingly miraculous conquest as immutable proof that their God did indeed want them to embrace the ideal of holy war this single moment of Christian triumph would fuel enthusiasm for the Crusades for centuries to come but in the decades and centuries that followed Islam came to regard the sack of Jerusalem as the central act of Crusader barbarity and defilement the Middle East was now locked into a bitter struggle that would rage for two hundred years a conflict in which Muslims would embrace the cause of jihad uniting in pursuit of vengeance and the Holy Lands reconquest [Music]

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Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, the crusades documentary, the crusades explained, the crusades history channel, the crusades movie, crusades bbc documentary part 1, crusades bbc documentary, crusades - episode 1 - bbc documentary, crusades, the crusades, crusades documentary

Id: vOyswuA8wEs

Length: 47min 53sec (2873 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 18 2018