Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantium and the Crusades

The First Crusade and Byzantium 

Page 13

The general situation before the First Crusade was entirely different from the situation before the Second. These fifty-one years, 1096-1147, were one of the most important epochs in history. In the course of these years the economic, religious, and whole cultural aspect of Europe changed radically; a new world was opened to western Europe. The subsequent crusades did not add very much to the achievements of this period; they only continued the processes developed in these fifty-one years. And it is strange to recall that an Italian historian names the first crusades sterile insanities (sterili insanie).

The First Crusade presents the first organized offensive of the Christian world against the infidels, and this offensive was not limited to central Europe, Italy, and Byzantium. It began in the southwestern corner of Europe, in Spain, and ended in the boundless steppes of Russia.

As to Spain, Pope Urban II, in his letter of 1089 to the Spanish counts, bishops, vice comites and other nobles and powerful men, authorized them to stay in their own land instead of going to Jerusalem and to tax their energy for the restoration of Christian churches destroyed by the Moors. This was the right flank of the crusading movement against the infidels.

In the northeast, Russia desperately defended itself against the barbarian hordes of the Polovtzi (Cumans), who appeared in the southern steppes about the middle of the eleventh century, laid waste the country, and destroyed trade by occupying all the routes leading east and south from Russia. The Russian historian, Kluchevsky, wrote: This struggle between the Russians and Polovtzi a struggle lasting for well-nigh two centuries was not without its place in European history at large; for while the West was engaged in crusades against the forces of Asia and the Orient, and a similar movement was in progress in the Iberian peninsula against the Moors, Rus (Russia) was holding the left flank of Europe. Yet this historical service cost her dear, since not only did it dislodge her from her old settlements on the Dnieper, but it caused the whole trend of her life to become altered. In this way Russia participated in the general western European crusading movement; defending herself, she at the same time defended Europe against the barbarous infidels. Had the Russians thought of taking the cross, said Leib, they should have been told that their first duty was to serve Christianity by defending their own land, as the Popes wrote to the Spaniards.

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