12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page i The Crusades and the Christian World of the East 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page ii THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras,Series Editor Edward Peters,Founding Editor A complete list ofbooks in the series is available from the publisher 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page iii The Crusades and the Christian World of the East Rough Tolerance Christopher MacEvitt University ofPennsylvania Press Philadelphia 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page v Contents Note on Transliteration and Names vii Map viii Introduction 1 The Twelfth-Century Middle East 3 Historiography ofthe Crusades 13 Rough Tolerance: A New Model ofReligious Interaction 21 1 Satan Unleashed:The Christian Levant in the Eleventh Century 27 A BriefHistory ofthe Christian East 29 Contact and Knowledge Between Eastern and Western Christians 43 2 Close Encounters ofthe Ambiguous Kind:When Crusaders and Locals Meet 50 Responses to the First Crusade 54 The Franks in Edessa 65 Armenian Resistance 71 3 Images ofAuthority in Edessa,1100–1150 74 Frankish Authority 75 Armenian Authority: A Response to the Franks 81 Edessa Under Joscelin I 92 Edessa and the Frankish East 97 4 Rough Tolerance and Ecclesiastical Ignorance 100 Local Christians from a Latin Perspective 102 Local Priests and Patriarchs in the Frankish Levant 106 Architecture and Liturgy 126 Pilgrimage 132 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page vi vi Contents 5 The Legal and Social Status ofLocal Inhabitants in the Frankish Levant 136 Historiography 136 The Peasantry 142 Local Rural Landowners and Administrators 149 6 The Price ofUnity:Ecumenical Negotiations and the End of Rough Tolerance 157 Manuel I Komnenos and the Mediterranean World 158 Ecumenical Dialogue with the Armenian Church 161 Jacobite Patriarch Michael and the Quest for Legitimacy 167 Cultural Consequences ofEcumenical Negotiation 171 Conclusion 177 Notes 181 Bibliography 229 Index 253 Acknowledgments 271 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page vii Note on Transliteration and Names The names of people and places mentioned in this book have been translated and transliterated into English in a variety of ways that are not always consistent.I have attempted to render personal names in a way that reflects most closely the sound in the original language,even when that name is being used in another language.I have thus referred to the Ayyubid sultan as Salah al-Din rather than Saladin.Many names of towns and geo- graphical features have different names in Armenian,Syriac,Arabic,Greek, Latin,Turkish,and Old French.I have generally used the name of the com- munity that was dominant in the period under discussion,with a few excep- tions for well-known places.Thus,I have consistently used Edessa for the sake of familiarity,when almost everyone in the twelfth century knew it by some variation of its ancient Syriac name, Urhay (Latin Rohas, Arabic al-Ruha, Turkish Urfa,Armenian Urha).Only a few classicizing Latin chroniclers used Edessa, but that has stuck. In transliterating Armenian into English, I have generally followed the system of transliteration of the Library of Congress.I have generally used the standard western calendar for dates, although the communities under discussion used a variety ofdifferent calendars. 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page viii The Frankish Levant,c.1130. 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page 1 Introduction A few months after the capture ofAntioch (3June 1098),the lead- ers ofthe First Crusade wrote a letter to Pope Urban II,on whose urging they had embarked on their long,strange journey across Europe and Byzantium. The rigors of nearly two years on the march, the exhausting eight-month siege ofAntioch,the euphoria ofits capture,the miraculous discovery ofthe relic ofthe Holy Lance,and the astonishing victory over yet another Turkish army had left the crusaders dazed and overwhelmed. The last straw came on 1 August with the death of Adhemar of LePuy, the papal representative accompanying the crusaders.His passing left the crusaders without a guiding and unifying voice. Confused and lacking direction, the crusaders hoped a letter to Urban might elicit further guidance.After summarizing the recent events of the crusade, the letter-writers urged that Urban himself come to Antioch, which was, as they noted, the first seat of St. Peter, and that the pope then lead the crusaders on to Jerusalem.Why? The crusaders confessed that they had found some challenges beyond their military skills:“we have subdued the Turks and the pagans,”they wrote to Urban,“but the heretics, Greeks and Armenians,Syrians and Jacobites,we have not been able to over- come (expugnare).”1 What the crusaders wanted to do to the “heretics” is unclear: kill them as they had the Turkish inhabitants of Antioch? Expel them from the lands the crusaders had conquered? Or perhaps the crusaders’ frustration arose because they did not know how to confront an issue as complex and unexpected as eastern Christianity. For the modern historian,the letter is a glimpse at a moment of possi- bility,as the army’s leaders gathered in Antioch on that late summer’s day to consider the direction oftheir journey.At Antioch,the crusaders stood at the edge of the Byzantine world,a world different from their own yet more fa- miliar than the great sweep of Islamic lands that lay open to the south and east ofthem.The letter from Antioch hints at their anxiety on leaving the fa-