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Thread: The Byzantine Background to the First Crusade

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    The Byzantine Background to the First Crusade

    @Peter1469 @RollingWave I plan on finishing this up tonight. I think it's a very interesting piece that explores the ties between eastern and western Christendom prior to the First Crusade. It's interesting to note that the Byzantines had, for example, employed Norman or 'Frankish' mercenaries for decades prior to Urban II's appeal to the west in 1096. Italian merchants from Amalfi and Venice were also quite familiar and in fact favored under Byzantine policy.

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    The chasm between Byzantine history and crusading history is unfortunate, because it is not as if they have nothing more to say to, or learn from, each other. This is very clear from a recent work which, encouragingly, goes some way towards closing the gap: a study of the defence of the Latin East in the twelfth century, which gives due credit to the part that Byzantium played in the survival of the crusader states.14 The investigation of the First Crusade can also benefit from a more integrated approach. There seems to be general agreement that Urban II would not have preached the crusade if Alexios I had not asked for help against the Turks. It is also fairly evident that when the second, and main, wave of the crusade left Constantinople for Asia Minor in the spring of 1097, it was an army under Byzantine imperial command. The nature of the imperial appeal, the pope’s attitude on receiving it, and the exact tenor of the negotiations between Alexios and the crusading leaders are crucial to any understanding of the event, and since they are still open to debate, they deserve to figure on the agenda of any centenary discussions. Crusading historians have long been concerned to distinguish the self-conception with which the crusaders set off from that which they acquired on the long march to Jerusalem, and from that which was projected on them retrospectively by chroniclers. If history is the study of origins as well as the study of outcomes, it is about initial expectations as well as the events which supersede them. And if expectations are the stuff of history as much as end results, it is important to consider relations between crusaders and Byzantines before they started to go wrong. This means, in particular, that it is important to look both critically and imaginatively at the evidence of the main Byzantine source, the Alexiad of Anna Comnena. This evidence is suspect in more ways than one. The author makes no secret of her bias in favour of her father and against the Latins. She was only a young girl at the time of the crusade, and she did not write about it until at least forty years later. Her perception of her father’s reign may also have been coloured by the frustration of her own ambition to succeed him as empress, or as the wife of his chosen successor. She wrote with the knowledge that the crusade had gone badly for Alexios, and that his son, John II, and grandson, Manuel I, were still having to cope with the consequences, in the form of the crusader states, including, most seriously, an independent Norman principality of Antioch. If, as is quite likely, she wrote her account of the First Crusade in or after 1146, she would have known that the unfinished business of the First Crusade had resulted in the calling of a Second Crusade which posed an equal or greater threat to the empire’s security.

    http://deremilitari.org/2013/06/the-...first-crusade/
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    Venice is, in its roots, a Byzantine successor state.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Newpublius View Post
    Venice is, in its roots, a Byzantine successor state.
    Byzantium had regained control of parts of Italy in the 6th Century. I never connected the two but that imperial vision was still alive just prior to the First Crusade.
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    It's imperial vision was alive during the entire Kommenos dynasty, the 3rd (and final effective) emperor of the line, Manuel (died 1180) attempted to reconquer both Egypt (in coordination with the Crusader States) and Southern Italy (taking advantage of a succession crisis of Norman Sicily) both looked like it could have succeeded, but ultimately didn't.

    It should be noted that the Crusader States were effectively the ERE's client state, Antioch especially acknowledged it in an official treaty.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RollingWave View Post
    It's imperial vision was alive during the entire Kommenos dynasty, the 3rd (and final effective) emperor of the line, Manuel (died 1180) attempted to reconquer both Egypt (in coordination with the Crusader States) and Southern Italy (taking advantage of a succession crisis of Norman Sicily) both looked like it could have succeeded, but ultimately didn't.

    It should be noted that the Crusader States were effectively the ERE's client state
    , Antioch especially acknowledged it in an official treaty.
    Not sure I'd go that far, Wave. The end result of the First Crusade was a string of more or less independent Latin states in Syria and thus a growing mistrust between east and west. Alexios in fact felt betrayed by Bohemond who took control of an independent Antioch in violation of an oath. That's one of the primary themes of the cite article (i.e. that the perception we have of Byzantine/Crusader antagonism date from the end of the crusade).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister D View Post
    Not sure I'd go that far, Wave. The end result of the First Crusade was a string of more or less independent Latin states in Syria and thus a growing mistrust between east and west. Alexios in fact felt betrayed by Bohemond who took control of an independent Antioch in violation of an oath. That's one of the primary themes of the cite article (i.e. that the perception we have of Byzantine/Crusader antagonism date from the end of the crusade).
    That was 1099, I'm talking more about 1137 to 1180

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_II_Komnenos#Diplomacy
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princip...zantine_Empire

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