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Articles and Studies

Some Reflections on the Failure of the Second CrusadeFootnote

Graham A. LoudUniversity of Leeds
Pages 1-14 | Published online: 17 Feb 2023

  • Chronica Regia Coloniensis, ed. Georg Waitz (MGH SRG, Hanover, 1880), p. 83.
  • WT 17.9, pp. 770–71. One should, however, note the cautionary observations about this passage by Martin Hoch, “The Price of Failure: the Second Crusade as a Turning Point in the History of the Latin East,” in The Second Crusade. Scope and Consequences, ed. Jonathan Phillips and Martin Hoch (Manchester, 2001), pp. 184–85. For western reactions to the failure generally, Giles Constable, “The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries,” Traditio 9 (1953), 266–76, remains essential.
  • De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and trans. Virginia G. Berry (New York, 1948), pp. 42–43.
  • The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (London, 1956), p. 54.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 20–23.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 48–49; Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, ed. Bernhard von Simson (MGH SRG, Leipzig, 1912), I.47, pp. 66–67; Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, by John Kinnamos, trans. Charles M. Brand (New York, 1976), p. 63; O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit, 1984), pp. 37–38.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 124–25.
  • Die Urkunden Konrads III, ed. Friedrich Hausmann (MGH Diplomatum 9, Vienna, 1969), pp. 354–55 no. 195, at 354. Annales Magdeburgenses, MGH SS 16, p. 188.
  • John Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565–1204 (London, 1999), p.167.
  • Barbarossa’s army set off from the mouth of the Dardennelles on 29 March 1190, by 22 April “all the supplies of the army except bread had been eaten,” Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I., ed. Anton Chroust (MGH, SRG, n.s. 5, Berlin, 1928), pp. 72–74.
  • San Bernardo Opere, 6/2 (Milan, 1987), pp. 142, 434, nos. 267, 363.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 94–95.
  • Haldon, Warfare, State and Society, pp. 166–74.
  • Lamperti Monachi Hersfeldensis Opera, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH, SRG, Hanover, 1894), pp. 176–77. Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, p. 19. Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. Rosalind M. T. Hill (London, 1962), p. 23.
  • See Hans E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. John Gillingham (2nd ed., Oxford, 1988), pp. 93–99; Jean Richard, The Crusades c.1071–c.1291, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 156–60.
  • “Thus the Germans disturbed everything as they proceeded, and the Greeks therefore fled our peaceful king.” De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 44–45.
  • Jonathan Phillips, “Papacy, Empire and the Second Crusade,” in The Second Crusade. Scope and Consequences [above, note 2], pp. 15–31.
  • Ekkehard, Chronicon Universale, ad. an. 1124, MGH SS 6. 262: “An eclipse of the moon appeared on the Purification of St. Mary [2nd February]. Terrified by this, Conrad, the cousin of the emperor, undertook a change of his life (conversionem morum suum professus) and vowed that he would travel to Jerusalem to fight for Christ; through this he gained no little favour from everyone who had heard about this. Some people who had hitherto been given over to the study of wickedness promised to associate themselves with him in his following.”
  • Rudolf Hiestand, “Kingship and Crusade in Twelfth-Century Germany,” in England and Germany in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Karl J. Leyser, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath (Oxford, 1996), pp. 244–45, 263–64; Wolfgang Giese, “Das Gegenkönigtum des Staufers Konrad 1127–1135,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanische Abteilung 95 (1978), 202–20, at 203.
  • For the excommunication: Robert Somerville, “Pope Honorius II, Conrad of Hohenstaufen and Lothar III,” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 10 (1972), 341–46.
  • Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus, ed. Adolf Hofmeister (MGH SRG, Hanover, 1912), 7.33, pp. 363–65. Rudolf Hiestand, “The Papacy and the Second Crusade,” in The Second Crusade. Scope and Consequences, pp. 35–36.
  • S. Bernardi Vita Prima, 6.4, PL 185, cols. 381–83. Phillips, “Papacy, Empire and Second Crusade,” 27.
  • Vita Prima, 4.5, col. 338.
  • For example, Annales Palidenses, MGH SS 16.82; Chronica Regia Coloniensis, p. 83; Gesta Friderici, 1.40, p. 59. Note especially the Annales Magdaburgenses, MGH SS 16.188: “Huius expeditione auctor et instigator exstitit Bernhart Clarevellensis abbas, qui tunc miraculis coruscare ferebatur.”
  • Phillips, “Papacy, Empire and Second Crusade,” pp. 20–21.
  • John, 3.8
  • Mark, 13.36.
  • Die Urkunden Konrads III, pp. 332–33 no. 184.
  • Annales S. Benigni Divionensis, MGH SS 5.44.
  • Vita Prima, cols. 381–82.
  • Annales Palidenses, MGH SS 16.83.
  • WT 16.22, p. 747. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1952), p. 268.
  • Die Urkunden Konrads III, p. 355 no. 195.
  • WT 17.1, p. 760; Gesta Friderici, 1.62, p. 89. Robert of Capua was named by John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, pp. 58–59. The death of Adolf IV of Mons (Berge) at the siege of Damascus was recorded by the Chronica Regia Coloniensis, p. 84.
  • De Investigatione Antichristi, c. 59, ed. Ernst Sackur, MGH Libelli de Lite 3 (Hanover, 1897), 374–75.
  • Annales Palidenses, MGH SS 16.83; Die Urkunden Konrads III, pp. 354–55 no. 195.
  • Annales Herbipolenses, MGH SS 16.6.
  • WT 16.23, p. 749; trans. Emily Babcock and August Krey, 2 (New York, 1943) 172, who render this ‘nobles’.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 92–95; Annales Palidenses, Annales Magdeburgenses, MGH SS 16, pp. 83, 188.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 118–23; Louis VII to Abbot Suger (March/April 1148), RHGF 15.495–96. Cf. WT 16.25, pp. 750–52.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 128–29, 134–35.
  • WT 16.26, pp. 753–54.
  • Cf. the account of the siege of Nicaea by the Gesta Francorum, p. 17: “many of the poor starved to death for the Name of Christ”; and in 1190 when “some of the infantry among our men had eaten up all their supplies,” and “others among the infantry were so weakened that they lay down to await death,” Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I., pp. 77, 79.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 138–41; WT 17.1, pp. 760–61.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 96–97; Annales Herbipolenses, p. 6.
  • Rudolf Hiestand, “‘Kaiser’ Konrad III, der zweite Kreuzzug und ein verlorenes Diplom für den Berg Thabor,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 35 (1979), 94–96. Otto of Freising noted that: “as the knights arrived, he [Conrad] induced all that he could by [gifts of] money to remain,” Gesta Friderici, 1.62, p. 89.
  • RHGF 15.496 [see above, note 37], ibid., 501–502.
  • De Investigatione Antichristi, c. 59, MGH Libelli de Lite 3.376.
  • De Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum libellus, in Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 66 (London, 1875), p. 218.
  • WT 17.1, p. 761. Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 133, 195–99.
  • Claude Cahen, La Syrie du Nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté franque d’Antioche (Paris, 1940), p. 328. At the Battle of the Field of Blood in 1119 the Antiochene army was estimated at 700 knights and 3,000 infantry, Galterii Cancellarii Bella Antiochena, ed. Heinrich Hagenmayer (Innsbruck, 1896), 2.5, p. 88. But after that disaster, and with the losses of territory in the 1120s and 1130s, it is most unlikely that the principality could have raised as many troops by 1148.
  • The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, trans. Hamilton A. R. Gibb (London, 1932), p. 284.
  • Martin Hoch, “The Choice of Damascus as the Objective of the Second Crusade: a Re-evaluation,” in Autour, pp. 359–69; Hiestand, “‘Kaiser’ Konrad III, der zweite Kreuzzug und ein verlorenes Diplom,” pp. 91–92.
  • WT 16.27, p. 754. Here he may have been thinking not so much of a direct attack upon Aleppo as of re-establishing the chain of fortresses that the principality had possessed around that city before the disastrous defeat of 1119; for which Thomas S. Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch 1098–1130 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 59–62, 65–67.
  • WT 16.14–16, pp. 734–38. Runciman, History, 2.240; M. Hoch, Jerusalem, Damaskus und der zweite Kreuzzug. Konstitutionelle Krise und äußere Sicherheit des Kreuzfahrerkönigreiches Jerusalem A.D. 1126–1154 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), p. 106.
  • WT 16.4, p. 720. Hiestand, “‘Kaiser’ Konrad III, der zweite Kreuzzug und ein verlorenes Diplom,” pp. 88–89.
  • Lamperti Monachi Hersfeldensis Opera, p. 79.
  • For this last, La Historia o Liber de Regno Sicilie di Ugo Falcando, ed. Giovanni Battista Siragusa (Fonti per la storia d’Italia, Rome, 1897), p. 118. In three of the four cases, a queen/empress was accused of having a sexual relationship with a political ally to whom she was distantly related; Agnes with a bishop who was a trusted adviser.
  • De Investigatione Antichristi, p. 376; Historia Pontificalis, pp. 52–53; WT 16.27, p. 755; trans. Babcock and Krey, 2.180, who were convinced that adultery had taken place. But William was probably writing this in the 1170s. While there are indications that the marriage was not particularly happy, it was Eleanor’s failure to produce a male heir that ultimately forced Louis to repudiate her, see Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest. The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 189–98.
  • Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land. Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119–1187 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 92–96.
  • Aryeh Graboïs, “The Crusade of King Louis VII: a Reconsideration”, in CS, pp. 94–104.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 8–9, 16–17.
  • Ibid., pp. 12–13.
  • De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. and trans. Charles W. David (New York, 1936), pp. 70–71, 108–109.
  • RHGF 15.488 (soon after 4 October 1147); De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 36–39, 70–71.
  • De Investigatione Antichristi, pp. 375–76; Annales Herbipolenses, MGH SS 16.3; Annales Magdeburgenses, ibid., 188.
  • Annales Palidenses, MGH SS 16.83; WT 16.28, p. 756. Cf. Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, pp. 71–72: Conrad “performed appropriate rites at the life-giving tomb of Christ.”
  • O City of Byzantium, p. 36: “they declared and affirmed by oath that Jerusalem was [the] motive for their expedition. Later events proved their declaration was not false”; cf. also p. 43.
  • The Damascus Chronicle, p. 282.
  • William of Tyre considered the Principality of Antioch to be fifteen days’ march from Jerusalem. This was surely an underestimate, unless he was referring to the southern border of the principality, WT 17.16, p. 782.
  • Alan V. Murray, “Baldwin II and his Nobles: Baronial Factionalism and Dissent in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1118–1134,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 38 (1994), 60–85.
  • WT 16.29, p. 757.
  • WT 17.15, p. 780.
  • Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, 1.62, p. 89.
  • Hans E. Mayer, “Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 26 (1972), 127–28; Hoch, “The Choice of Damascus,” p. 366.
  • For this attack, WT 13.18, pp. 609–10.
  • De Profectione Ludovici, pp. 34–35, 46–49, 102–103. Hiestand, “‘Kaiser’ Konrad III, der zweite Kreuzzug und ein verlorenes Diplom,” pp. 113–19; Jonathan Phillips, “Odo of Deuil’s De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem as a Source for the Second Crusade,” in The Experience of Crusading. 1 Western Approaches, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 94–95.
  • As perceptively noted by Hoch, Jerusalem, Damaskus und der zweite Kreuzzug, p. 120.
  • Mayer, The Crusades, p. 103.
  • The principal evidence to suggest that they had not is a letter from Pope Adrian IV to Louis VII, dated February 1159, in which he claimed that Louis and Conrad had undertaken the road to Jerusalem, inconsulto populo terre, PL 188, cols. 1615–17 no. 241, at 1616, discussed by Constable, “The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries,” p. 275. However, cf. Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, pp. 80–81.
  • As Hoch (“The choice of Damascus,” p. 366) notes, Ascalon had been largely neutralized by the chain of fortresses constructed by King Fulk c.1136–42. But in addition (a) Damascus was a larger city, and thus if hostile, potentially a much greater threat, (b) it was a wealthy city, and its conquest would give the Franks full control over the fertile area east of the Jordan and the Golan heights, (c) given its appearance in the Acts of the Apostles (especially chapter 9, the conversion of St Paul), if not in the Gospels, it had greater religious significance than Ascalon.
  • The Damascus Chronicle, pp. 286–87. Cf. here Alan J. Forey, “The Failure of the Siege of Damascus in 1148,” Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984), 13–23, for a more extended analysis.

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