Above all else, one fundamental question underpins any attempt to judge Saladin’s life and career: did he champion the cause of jihad, conquer and defend Jerusalem in pursuit of his own glory and gain, or in the wider interests of Islam? In the end, perhaps even the sultan himself remained unsure of the answer.

Richard the Lionheart’s later career

Even as the Ayyubid sultan passed away, his nemesis Richard the Lionheart was facing a new struggle. Narrowly avoiding disaster when his ship was wrecked by a storm near Venice, the king continued his homeward journey overland. Travelling in disguise to evade his European enemies, he was captured nonetheless in Vienna by his old rival from the siege of Acre, Duke Leopold of Austria–apparently Richard’s attempt to pass himself off as a lowly cook failed because he forgot to take off a fabulously bejewelled ring.

Confined in a lofty castle overlooking the Danube, the Lionheart was held prisoner for more than a year, causing political scandal throughout the West, and was released in February 1194 only after protracted negotiation and the payment of a massive ransom. By the late thirteenth century, however, a more romantic tale was circulating, in which the king’s faithful minstrel, Blondel, doggedly searched across Europe for his supposedly ‘missing’ master, pausing at the foot of countless castles to sing a song that he and Richard had written together. The king did compose at least two doleful laments while in captivity (both of which survive to this day), but the story of Blondel is pure fiction–one more layer of myth in the legend of the Lionheart.

Despite all his fears, and prolonged absence, Richard returned to find that the Angevin realm remained his to rule–the king’s loyal supporters had thwarted John’s attempts at rebellion. Philip Augustus, however, had been able to take some advantage–seizing a number of castles along the border with Normandy–and Richard dedicated much of the next five years to campaigning against the Capetians. Embroiled in the affairs of Europe, he never returned to the Holy Land. At the end of the twelfth century the Lionheart’s penchant for front-line combat finally caught up with him. While besieging the small castle of Chalus in southern France, he was struck in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt and badly injured. The wound turned gangrenous, and Richard died on 6 April 1199, at the age of forty-one. His body was buried at Fontevraud, beside his father Henry II, while his heart was interred at Rouen.¹⁰⁵

Contemporaries remembered the Lionheart as a peerless warrior and superlative crusader: the king who brought the mighty Saladin to his knees. To a large extent, Richard can be credited with saving Outremer. Valorous and wily, adept in battle, he proved himself equal to the challenge of confronting the Ayyubid sultan. But for all his achievements in the holy war, the Angevin king always struggled to reconcile his various duties and obligations–torn between the need to defend his western realm and the desire to forge a legend in Palestine. Crucially, he also failed to understand the distinct nature and challenge of crusader warfare, and thus was unable to lead the Third Crusade to victory.

IV

THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

19

REJUVENATION

In the wake of the Third Crusade, anxious questions about the value and efficacy of Christian holy war began to surface in the West. The ‘horrors’ of 1187–the Frankish defeat at Hattin and the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem–had prompted Europe to launch history’s largest and best-organised expedition to the East. Latin Christendom’s greatest kings had led tens of thousands of crusaders to battle. And yet, the Holy City remained in the hands of Islam, as did that most treasured of Christ’s relics, the True Cross. Given the physical, emotional and financial sacrifices made between 1188 and 1192, and the shocking failure, nonetheless, to achieve overall victory, it was inevitable that western Christendom would be moved to think again about crusading–looking inwards, to reconsider and reshape the idea and practice of fighting in the name of God.

TRANSFORMATION IN THE LATIN WEST

Fundamental shifts within Latin Europe also helped to kindle this ‘reformation’ in Christian holy war. Crusading had originally been born and fashioned in the world of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. But by 1200, many essential features of western society were in flux: accelerating urbanisation was altering population patterns, stimulating social mobility and the empowerment of a merchant class, and centralised monarchical authority was strengthening in regions like France. More significant still were the associated changes in Europe’s intellectual and spiritual landscape. From the start, crusade enthusiasm had been underpinned by the fact that almost all Latins felt an overwhelming need to seek redemption for their sins. But in the course of the twelfth century, attitudes towards penitential and devotional practice evolved, and new ideas about what a ‘good Christian life’ might actually entail began to percolate through the West.

One gradual change saw an increased emphasis on interior forms of spirituality, over external manifestations of piety. For the first time in the Middle Ages, what one truly thought, felt and believed was becoming as, or even more, important than what one said and did in public. In a parallel and related development, Man’s relationship with God and Christ came to be seen in more personal and direct, ‘internalised’ terms. These notions possessed the potential to overturn the established frameworks of medieval religion. A salvific ritual like physical pilgrimage–one of the bedrocks of crusading–made far less sense, for example, if what truly mattered was heartfelt contrition. And if, as many theologians had begun to suggest, God’s grace was omnipresent in everyone and everything, then why was it necessary to travel across half the Earth to seek His forgiveness at a site like Jerusalem? It would be many years before the full transformative force of this ideological revolution was felt in western Christendom, but early signs of influence were evident during the thirteenth century.

Latin Christianity also faced more immediate and urgent challenges around 1200. The first was heresy. Europe had once been a stronghold of religious orthodoxy and conformity, but over the last hundred years the West had experienced an outbreak of ‘heretical’ beliefs and movements of almost epidemic proportions. This ranged from the relatively innocuous rabble-rousing ravings of unordained demagogues to the inculcation of elaborately conceived, full-blown alternative faiths–like that of the dualistic Cathars, who believed in two Gods, one good, the other evil, and denied that Christ had ever lived in corporeal human form (and thus rejected the primary Latin tenets of Crucifixion, Redemption and Resurrection). Alongside those condemned as heretics by the Roman Church were others who strayed desperately close to the line, but nevertheless managed to garner papal approval. These included the Mendicant Friars–Franciscans and Dominicans–who advocated simple poverty and dedicated themselves to bringing God’s word to the people with new vigour and clarity. The Church soon sought to harness the Friars’ oratorical dynamism, not least to invigorate crusade preaching. But the Mendicants’ evangelical enthusiasm also had the power to affect the objectives of a holy war; to weave a strand of conversion into the familiar background of conquest and defence.¹