The Crusades were more than just a holy war: They had a strange side.
From a divine goose to a mythical king holding the keys to the Garden of Paradise,
these are some bizarre facts about the Crusades.
It's safe to say that most medieval Europeans who went on a crusade to
the Holy Land did so at the urging of a powerful, and often charismatic individual.
It could be a local lord, a religious leader, or even an especially fervent neighbor.
But, as the religious intensity of the Crusades built, more and more people felt that it was their
Christian duty to "free" the region. Either that, or take part in some adventuring and
plundering opportunities. And, the growing tide of interested folks, combined with
a near-mystical mission, eventually produced some pretty weird leaders, including a goose.
The 1096 People's Crusade was an unofficial one that wasn't, technically, sanctioned by the pope.
Yet, plenty of regular folks took part, with some even following a holy goose.
In one version of the tale, a poor woman is trailed by one of her geese. Through a series of
misunderstandings, people began to believe that the divinely inspired goose was leading them.
Chroniclers jumped on the chance to paint the human followers as fools. Who tries to follow
barnyard fowl all the way to Jerusalem, anyway? By most medieval understandings, animals didn't have
a soul and so couldn't begin to understand the Divine. The people's near-worship of the animal,
which included even allowing it to enter a church, was also deemed blasphemous.
Saladin is easily one of the most famous and complicated figures of the Crusades.
Saladin was a Kurdish leader born around A.D. 1137. He would lead Muslim forces against the
Christian crusaders and go on to be a powerful leader in the region afterward. He was also
known for being a skilled negotiator and, occasionally, a merciful opponent.
While besieging the crusader stronghold of Kerak in 1183, Saladin reportedly ordered
his army to avoid striking a particular area of the castle. That's where the future Queen
Sibylla of Jerusalem's younger half-sister, Isabella, was supposedly having her wedding night.
Sounds pretty chivalrous, but there may have been a more canny reason for Saladin to leave
those crazy newlyweds alone. "The Leper King and His Heirs" suggests that Saladin
wouldn't want to harm two important captives. It didn't matter, anyway,
as Sibylla's forces successfully defended Kerak, and Saladin was forced to retreat.
One of the first major victories of the First Crusade was the siege of Antioch.
The "siege" began in 1097 but it was actually a series of attacks meant to overtake the city.
However, as soon as they secured Antioch, the crusaders had to face renewed attacks
from Muslim forces. It was in the midst of this tense time that a miracle happened.
Or did it?
Perhaps the strangest part of the siege was a man named Peter Bartholomew. He was a French
man who appears to have been a relatively low-ranking peasant. Bartholomew claimed
that St. Andrew appeared to him and pointed him toward the location of the Holy Lance. Said lance
was believed to be a spear that was used by Roman soldiers to pierce Jesus' side at the Crucifixion.
While many were skeptical, Bartholomew managed to get enough support to excavate
inside a cathedral where, wouldn't you know it, he found the lance. It
may have only looked like an eroded chunk of metal, but for many, it was good enough.
The crusaders rallied around this holy symbol and kept fighting. Peter later agreed to prove
himself through a trial by fire, whereupon he was badly burned. He died soon thereafter.
Throughout history, astronomical phenomena like comets and meteors have been interpreted
as omens by the anxious people watching below. For the Christians and Muslims of the Crusades,
astronomical phenomena were interpreted as good or bad omens. It seems that few
people were willing to accept the signs in the sky as scientific phenomena only.
"A blessing. A blessing from the Lord.”
“God be praised."
The 11th-century members of the People's Crusade seemed especially primed to interpret
meteors and comets as favorable omens. The appearances of meteors, auroras, a comet, and
at least one lunar eclipse were all seen as signs of God's divine thumbs-up to the whole venture.
But, it could have just been a tactic by the church to keep everyone in line. It certainly
got tied into the First Crusade when a meteor shower was spotted on April 3,
1095. This sighting pushed Pope Urban II to declare a holy war. Perhaps part of
the motivation was to score as many religious points as possible before the apocalypse came.
The motivation for going on a crusade could get pretty complicated. Quite a few people
went for religious reasons, perhaps wanting to wash away their sins in one grand gesture.
Others were more in it for the adventure and financial gain from plundering foreign lands.
And, for many, those motivations got all mixed up and produced some very strange situations indeed.
According to "The Dream and the Tomb," the Tafurs were a group of crusaders who took strict vows
of poverty. They wore rough clothing, discarded many of their weapons, and ate grass and roots.
Of the arms that they did wield, most of them were improvised farm
tools or mock-ups of the real deal used by less fanatical crusaders.
The Tafurs vocally disavowed the creature comforts enjoyed by the other people around
them. They wanted to portray themselves as, quote, "the poor people of Christ."
The Tafurs also had a reputation for ruthless war-making and plundering,
to the point where they even creeped out other crusaders. They threw themselves, wholeheartedly,
into battle and caused devastation to people and settlements they found along the way.
The Tafurs became most notorious for their reported acts of cannibalism during the siege of
Antioch. Chroniclers maintained that they were among the first to consume fallen comrades and
enemies alike. However, if conditions really were that bad, it's unlikely they acted alone.
One chronicler wrote that crusaders even resorted to consuming the remains of enemies.
Except that, these remains had been thrown into a swamp weeks before.
Soon enough, the creepy reputation of these particular crusaders began
to spread beyond the walls of Antioch. When Muslim commanders asked the crusader
commanders to reign in the Tafurs, many had to admit they couldn't actually control them.
Godfrey of Bouillon is a bit of a legend. Given that medieval
chroniclers like to play fast and loose with the truth on occasion,
it's no wonder that the real man is tied up with some wild stories. And we really do mean wild.
Godfrey was said to be an incredibly strong noble knight and crusader. He would have had
to be as such, if you believe Albert of Aachen's tale of Godfrey and the bear. As the story goes:
Godfrey was out and about when he encountered a peasant who was being attacked by a bear.
Godfrey, sword at the ready, galloped in to help but was soon torn from his own horse by
the bear. Things looked pretty bad, but with his own verve and the help of a fellow knight,
Godfrey was able to defeat the bear. Though pretty badly wounded, he managed to survive.
While some may be skeptical as to whether or not Godfrey actually went head to head with a bear,
we do know that he went on to rule Jerusalem for a single year,
dying in A.D 1100. His younger brother, Baldwin, later became the first king of Jerusalem.
The First Crusades of the 11th century were the most "successful," at least from the
European Christian perspective. Crusaders had captured the holy city of Jerusalem,
but it's hard to stop a holy war once it gets rolling. In the end, there were about eight
different extended campaigns in addition to various other battles and ventures.
During the Third Crusade, 67-year-old Emperor Frederick Barbarossa is said to have drowned
in Turkey. Some of his heartbroken followers attempted to preserve his body in vinegar,
effectively trying to pickle the deceased emperor. But, it didn't work out and so
Barbarossa's remains were eventually interred in different cathedrals along the way back home.
Perhaps one of the most pathetic episodes of the entire Crusades is the spectacle of the Children's
Crusade. Actually, there were two simultaneous crusades of young people led by two charismatic
and, for our times at least, underaged boys. One was led by a highly religious
12-year-old named Stephen and, for the other group, another boy named Nicholas.
Some accounts say that these two adolescents drew thousands to their cause,
though there's no clear way to verify those numbers. But, it does appear that,
by the time the groups made it to Italy and France, the whole movement had disintegrated.
Stephen's venture fell apart once the French king told everyone to go home. Meanwhile,
Nicholas had apparently claimed that the sea between Europe and the Middle East would part,
Moses-style, and allow the group to simply walk to Jerusalem. When the Mediterranean
didn't cooperate, his crusade fizzled, too. Ultimately, the Children's Crusade was never
officially recognized by the Church, and was eventually dismissed as a kind of mass hysteria.
One poet claimed that King Richard had "thirteen shippes lade with hives of bees," which he later
used to defeat Muslim forces. During the siege of Acre, a city in what's now modern Israel,
he deployed these bees to such great effect that the Saracens retreated.
The poem was written about two centuries after the events
described supposedly happened so there's a good chance it was not a historic fact.
But, it illustrates the way wild stories could be used to boost various causes during the Crusades.
King Richard was the legendary "Lionheart" who did indeed join the Third Crusade in 1190.
Being a near-mythical monarch by the time the poem was written, perhaps his cunning use of bees to
defeat long-term enemies such as the Saracens was more about pumping up England's image.
By the 13th century, it seemed clear that Christian crusaders were steadily losing ground.
Perhaps that's why crusaders were increasingly interested in a non-Muslim conqueror known to
many as Genghis Khan. Eventually, Khan became a powerful potential ally who stood to knock down
the Muslim powers and maybe even help open the way for a Christian Jerusalem again.
It's not quite as far-fetched an idea as you might think, because the Mongols were fairly
accepting of most religions. Some Mongols even began adopting Christian practices,
though it's not clear how much European leaders would have known about this.
Still, even the political tidal wave of the Mongol Empire was bound to end sometime. And,
it all came crashing down in 1260, when the Mamluk realm held back the Mongols in
Palestine. The descendants of Genghis Khan would go no further. This crushed any hopes
of a Mongol-European alliance that could have turned the Crusades in the Europeans' favor.
Sometimes, the crusaders' desire for a powerful foreign ally was so strong that people just
collectively invented one. That's more or less the story of Prester John, a fabled king who
was not only incredibly rich and influential but definitely wanted to help the Christian cause.
The basics of the myth set out Prester John as both a king and Christian holy man.
He supposedly owned faraway lands somewhere in Ethiopia or possibly in Asia. These were fabled
to be full of wonders and riches, including vast gold deposits and the Fountain of Youth.
Some writings even claimed that his kingdom included no less than the Garden of Paradise,
Eden, the original heaven on Earth from which Adam and Eve were evicted long ago.
And, if only he could make contact with the crusaders,
he would totally help them take back the Holy Land from non-Christians.
Only, no one ever found Prester John. Sure, there were plenty of letters and chronicles
claiming to outline his kingdom and way of life, but no one was able to say that they had actually
met with the ruler. And, as the centuries rolled on and Europeans began to visit Africa and Asia,
it soon became clear that Prester John was either very good at hiding or had never existed at all.
"Now you listen here. He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy! Now Go away!"
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