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My paper was titled “Rape and the First Crusade.” It considers the oddity of the First Crusade as it related to the issue. While the wartime rape of captured women (and sometimes men) was common by all medieval armies, Christian or Islamic, the participants of the First Crusade generally seem to have avoided the practice. Indeed, the sources, whether friendly or hostile to the crusaders, seem to agree on the issue.
Yet in this case, the claim that the seizure of enemy women in combat for sexual purposes was rather typical of the Middle Ages is, essentially, correct. As many scholars have long argued, this was indeed a common practice among medieval armies, both Christian and Islamic. On the Islamic side, for example, perhaps the best known text revealing this reality for captured Christian women during the crusading era is found in Imad ad Din’s account of the aftermath of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem. Although undoubtedly engaging in some degree of hyperbole, Imad ad Din highlighted the triumph of Muslim warriors who, in his words, “deflowered,” “tamed,” and “stripped of their modesty” thousands of Christian women. Why was this an important topic for Imad ad Din to so gleefully highlight in the wake of the conquest? Because the mistreatment of the enemies’ women in such a way suggested both the totality of the conquest and the humiliation of their enemies.
The circumstances of the First Crusade (specifically, and not necessarily later crusades) provide some interesting insights into this clash of clerical expectations and military custom. It was then that, at least in theory, that clerical authorities had the opportunity to establish new rules for warfare due to their spiritual oversight of the expedition. Indeed, it was the Pope who called for the crusade and put it under the oversight of the Church, requiring participants to take pilgrimage vows (later known as crusading vows) demanding the monk like virtues of chastity and humility for the duration of the crusade.
The thinking behind requiring such vows, at least as espoused by clerical writers of the time, was that since this was a type of holy war, the warriors needed to be holy. The success of holy wars did not depend on the prowess of the fighters, but rather the good will of God, who enabled victory for those who were faithful to him. If such warriors claiming to represent God sinned during the course of the crusade, then they no longer represented him, and thus lost his favor and would surely lose on the battlefield as well (e.g. example of the events at Antioch).
Moreover, and in contrast, a few crusades historians have highlighted that the clerical Latin sources of the First Crusade do not claim the crusaders raped captive women. If so, this would represent a significant change from how medieval warfare was typically carried out. The crusaders were, after all, very successful militarily, conquering a number of cities and populations during the First Crusade. It would be odd if they avoided availing themselves of what they would have understood as the customary act of imposing themselves on captured women in the wake of a successful conquest.
Was this a case of the crusaders’ religious beliefs having a mitigating effect on one of the most brutal crimes associated with warfare, ancient, medieval, or modern? If so, based on current events, then this is certainly a topic worthy of study. From what I have seen most historians have only given this topic a few lines or paragraphs here and there, without a focused study on crusader attitudes toward rape.
First, let me begin by considering how some, specifically, crusades specialists have dealt with the issue of the crusaders possibly committing rape. Concerning the sources, Yvonne Friedman in her essay, Captivity and Ransom: The Experience of Women, very briefly addresses this topic and correctly notes that no Christian chronicler of the First Crusade would boast of the rape of women as Imad ad Din (mentioned earlier) did (pgs 127-128). To the contrary, she highlights the well known reference to Fulk (Fulcher) of Chartre, where after the successful battle of Antioch, he boasts not of how the crusaders raped captured women, but instead of how they did not rape captured women. Specifically, he notes how the crusaders did the captive Muslim women “no evil” and instead only drove lances into their bellies.
What about Muslim sources for the First Crusade? They said many negative things about the crusaders, describing them as everything from polytheists to barbarians. Rarely do they miss an opportunity to highlight the primitive and violent nature of the crusaders. The more substantive sources are from decades later, written around 1160 or later. Yet according to the Islamic history scholar Carole Hillenbrand, in some cases, later accounts may be based on earlier surviving contemporary sources such as Islamic poetry.
So what do these sources say about the first crusaders committing rape against Muslim women?
Nothing, really.
To the contrary, early Arab sources are surprisingly quiet on the issue of rape when they otherwise take every opportunity to highlight the violence and transgressions of the first crusaders. Now this could be because Arab writers did not want to highlight the subjugation of their women to the crusaders, which would be a source of shame to Muslim men. In this case they would not want to include such references as the dominance of enemy women was seen as a clear sign of conquest. Yet, whatever the reason, there is nothing in Islamic sources for the First Crusade that supports the idea that crusaders raped captive women.
But there are still third party accounts that we can consult- the Hebrew accounts of Jewish victims of the First Crusaders. Although Crusades historians have debated the degree (or the numbers) to which Jews suffered during the First Crusade, there is no debate that they suffered….and quite a bit too. Thus, it is not surprising that they would have a say in all of this through their surviving sources.
Thanks to the work of S.D. [Shelomo Dov] Goitein in the Cairo Geniza, the discovery of a few letters, two discovered in 1952 and one in 1975, have given us some insights into the crusaders’ actions during the massacre that took place after their conquest of Jerusalem. The letters reflect the awareness of the elders of Ascalon of the predicament of the Jerusalem Jews, who they had been in correspondence with in the immediate wake of the conquest. The most telling point of the letters, for our purpose here, is the claim by an elder of Ascalon reporting to other Jews on the situation in Jerusalem, who at one point notes, “We have not heard, thank God, the exalted, that the cursed ones known as Ashkenaz, violated or raped women as others do.” Let me highlight how the writer makes it a point to include this in his note, which suggests how unusual it was for the time, as the “cursed” crusaders do not act on this issue in the same way “as others do.”
So again, to recap, we have both friendly Christian AND hostile Jewish sources from the First Crusade that, nevertheless, explicitly deny crusaders raped women in cases where, according to the typically accepted customs of medieval siege warfare, they normally would. I should also note that we also have the silence of specifically lay Christian sources on the issue, as the Gesta Francorum (written by a knight) or surviving letters from other knights on the crusade never mention the occurrence of rape. Similarly, Muslim sources on the First Crusade are silent as well when they would seemingly otherwise never fail to highlight the barbarity of the crusaders.
https://apholt.com/2015/01/06/mediev...r-the-present/
Originally Posted by al-Bosni
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