Culture at home, not on the battlefield
The crusades were fought far from most Europeans, but they were talked about, sung about and paid for at home. This gave them a large place in the culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This article looks at stories, art, objects and ideas. It also asks the harder question of how much learning actually passed from the Islamic world to Europe because of the crusades, and the answer is: less than is often claimed.
Songs, chronicles and epic
The First Crusade produced a stream of writing. Chroniclers, some of them participants, wrote accounts that mixed fact with religious interpretation, and these shaped how the story was remembered. Later, verse and prose told of heroic deeds in the East, and French epic poems known as chansons de geste often included wars between Christians and Muslims, drawing on the atmosphere of crusading even when set in earlier times.
Songs were also written to encourage people to take the cross. Some poets in the tradition of troubadour poetry wrote crusade songs that mixed religious calls with themes of love and parting, such as a knight’s sorrow at leaving a lady. These show how crusading could blend with the courtly culture of the nobility.
Images of the enemy
Medieval writers often portrayed Muslims through stereotypes. Epics sometimes depicted them as pagan idol-worshippers, which was inaccurate, and reflected ignorance rather than careful observation. Alongside this there were moments of admiration, such as in the reputation of Saladin among Western writers, who sometimes praised him as a model of chivalry despite his being an opponent. Such contrasts show that the same culture could hold hostile and respectful images at once.
Art and buildings
Artists took up crusading themes in manuscripts, stained glass and carvings. Scenes of battle, of the capture of Jerusalem, and of knights with crosses appeared in churches and in the illuminated manuscripts of chronicles. The cross became an emblem of devotion, and many knights chose crusading imagery for their own seals and arms, which fed into the rise of heraldry. Some round or polygonal churches in Europe echoed the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the Templars in particular built round churches in several places. How far these buildings were consciously modeled on the Jerusalem original, as opposed to a general fashion, varies from case to case.
Relics
One of the clearest cultural effects was the movement of relics. Crusaders and pilgrims brought objects and remains from the East, and Western churches claimed pieces of the True Cross, thorns, bones and cloth. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 released a large number of Byzantine relics into the West, and one famous case was the relics of the Passion acquired by King Louis IX of France in the thirteenth century, for which the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris was built. This was a place of Gothic architecture at its finest, designed in part as a grand reliquary. Not every relic was authentic, and holy relics were sometimes challenged even at the time, but they were highly valued.
Learning: a cautious view
It is often said that crusaders brought back Eastern science, medicine and mathematics. The evidence is thin. The main routes of transmission were Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, where translators worked on Arabic texts in cities that had been Muslim or had mixed populations. The spread of Arabic numerals, Arabic medical texts and Greek philosophy in Arabic translation mostly came through these routes, and through the House of Wisdom tradition of translation before that. The crusader states did produce some contacts, and a few individuals, such as physicians and interpreters, worked across cultures. But a general picture of crusaders as importers of learning should be treated with caution.
Objects and tastes
Goods from the East, such as silk, glass, spices and dyes, were highly valued in Europe, and trade expanded during the period. Some of the taste for Eastern luxury can be linked to crusader contacts, though trade was already active. Words also traveled. Several terms that entered European languages around this time have Arabic or Persian roots, though they arrived by various routes.
Crusading as a cultural habit
By the later Middle Ages, crusading was part of the nobility’s outlook. Knightly orders were founded with crusading goals, and traveling to fight pagans or Muslims was seen as an honorable path for a young nobleman. Tales of crusading heroes were well-known, and the idea shaped ideals of knighthood. The cultural effect was lasting, and it persisted well after real prospects of recapturing Jerusalem had faded.