The decades prior to the First Crusade had witnessed the emergence of a heightened sense of Christian solidarity, of a shared Christian history and destiny that united east and west. This was largely the result of increased movement of people and ideas across Europe, but it was also deliberately cultivated by Byzantine propaganda.
There had of course always been interaction between east and west, but with the Byzantine Empire eager to attract western knights to Constantinople, this exchange had become increasingly institutionalised in the eleventh century. There was even a recruitment bureau in London where those seeking fame and fortune had their appetites whetted, with Byzantine officials assuring those who wanted to venture east that they would be well looked after in Constantinople.1 A range of interpreters were kept on hand in the imperial capital to greet those who had come to serve the emperor.2
It seems that at times, it was a struggle in the west to stop adventurous young men from leaving home. A letter written in the late eleventh century by Anselm, abbot of the influential monastery of Bec in Normandy and later archbishop of Canterbury, to a young Norman knight named William indicates that it was common knowledge that tempting rewards were on offer in Byzantium. Do not be taken in by lucrative promises, advised Anselm; follow instead the true destiny and design that God had in mind for you and become a monk. Perhaps William followed this advice; but it is likely that he did not: as the same letter reveals, his brother had already gone to Constantinople and William would be following in his footsteps.3
This steady flow of knights was widely welcomed in Byzantium, even before Alexios took the throne. Unlike the Byzantine imperial armies which remained largely an infantry force, western warfare had evolved a strong emphasis on cavalry. Technological advances in western armour meant that the knight, mounted on a heavy charger, was formidable on the battlefield. Tactical developments reinforced this advantage: the western cavalry were at their most effective when holding a battle line, both when advancing and in defence.4 Their discipline made them redoubtable in the face of fast-moving enemies like the Pechenegs and the Turks, whose aim in battle was to split the enemy and then pick off elements that had been separated from the main force.
But not everyone in Constantinople was happy about the arrival of these ambitious outsiders from the west. The resentment towards Hervé Frangopoulos (literally, ‘son of a Frank’), who proved extremely successful in thwarting Turkish raids in Asia Minor in the 1050s and was rewarded by the emperor with generous land grants and a highranking title, was so strong that he ended up at the bottom of the Mediterranean with a stone around his neck.5 Robert Crispin was another westerner whose accomplishments stoked envy among the Byzantine aristocracy: he met his end not on the battlefield fighting the Turks, but after taking poison administered by jealous rivals in Constantinople. That, at least, was the rumour that swirled around Europe at the time.6
As the situation in Asia Minor deteriorated towards the end of the eleventh century, Alexios began to look more keenly for help from outside the empire. Contemporaries from all over Europe started to note increasingly anxious calls for assistance emanating from Constantinople in the 1090s. Ekkehard of Aura recorded that embassies and letters ‘seen even by ourselves’ were sent out by Alexios to recruit help in the face of serious trouble in ‘Cappadocia and throughout Romania and Syria’.7 According to another well-informed chronicler: ‘At last an emperor in Constantinople, named Alexius, was trembling at the constant incursions of the heathens and at the diminishment of his kingdom in great part, and he sent envoys to France with letters to stir up the princes so that they would come to the aid of ... imperilled Greece.’8
Correspondence of this kind was also received by Robert, Count of Flanders. Every day and without interruption, came reports from the emperor, countless Christians were being killed; boys and old men, nobles and peasants, clergymen and monks were suffering the terrible sin of sodomy at the hands of the Turks; others were being forcibly circumcised, while aristocratic ladies and their daughters were being raped with impunity. The most holy empire of the Greek Christians, stated Alexios, was being oppressed from all sides by pagans.9
These shocking tales of Turkish violence and Christian suffering provoked outrage in the west. In the early 1090s, when Nikomedia came under attack, Alexios’ appeals became more urgent. The emperor ‘sent envoys everywhere with letters, heavy with lamentation and full of weeping, begging with tears for the aid of the entire Christian people’ to appeal for help against the barbarians who were desecrating baptismal fonts and razing churches to the ground. As we have seen, a western force was raised as a result by Robert of Flanders, finally enabling the recovery of the town and of the land as far as the Arm of St George, extending into the Gulf of Nikomedia.10
News of the empire’s collapse spread across Europe, brought by embassies made up of ‘holy men’.11 According to one chronicler it became widely known that Christians in the east, ‘that is to say the Greeks and Armenians’, were facing ‘extensive and terrible persecution at the hands of the Turks throughout Cappadocia, Romania [Byzantium] and Syria’.12 Other reports were more specific: the Turks had ‘invaded Palestine, Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre and captured Armenia, Syria and the part of Greece that extends almost to the sea which is called the Arm of St George’, wrote one contemporary.13 It was also known in the west that the landed gentry had suffered greatly from the loss of their estates.14
Up-to-date and extremely accurate information about the plight of Byzantium had spread so extensively that when Urban II stood before the assembled crowd at Clermont in the winter of 1095, he hardly needed to introduce the subject. ‘You must hasten to carry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East’, reported one version of the speech, ‘who need your help for which they have often entreated. For the Turks, a Persian people, have attacked them, as many of you already know, and have advanced as far into Roman territory as that part of the Mediterranean which is called the Arm of St George. They have seized more and more of the lands of the Christians, have already defeated them seven times in as many battles, killed or captured many people, have destroyed churches, and have devastated the kingdom of God.’15 The widespread knowledge of the downturn in the east owed much to the letters that Alexios had sent out and the efforts that he had made to solicit support for his empire in the 1090s.
Information did not just arrive in the west through official lines of communication. Some of the news from Asia Minor was brought back by travellers and pilgrims who had journeyed to Constantinople or Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century. Men like Robert of Flanders saw for themselves the position Byzantium was in when he travelled home from the Holy Land in 1089. William of Apulia, writing in southern Italy at the end of the eleventh century, had also heard of the attacks on churches and of the persecution of the Christians but believed that the crisis was the result of the Byzantine emperor having become too close to the Turks, hoping to use them to bolster his own position.16 Given Alexios’ alliances with Sulayman and especially Malik-Shah, there was substance to such views. Yet the assessment that the emperor was to blame for the dire situation shows that the flow of news from the east could not be exclusively controlled by the imperial court.
However, despite visitors to Constantinople and the Holy Land bringing home with them their own stories, the consistency of their reports shows how efficiently, on the whole, information was being managed from the centre. Their content, tone and message were near identicaclass="underline" churches in the east were being destroyed; Christians, especially the clergy, were subject to terrible persecution; Asia Minor had collapsed, with the Turks reaching as far as the Arm of St George; military assistance was urgently required in Byzantium. The narrative was so universal because so much of the information was emanating from the emperor.