In 1152, just a few short years after the disappointments of the Second Crusade, Louis VII’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, pushed for the annulment of their marriage–their union had produced two daughters, but no sons, and Eleanor derided Louis’ desultory sexual appetite, likening him to a monk. Eight weeks later, she was wed to the more vigorous Count Henry of Anjou, a man twelve years her junior, who had already added the duchy of Normandy to his dominions. By 1154, he had ascended to the throne of England to become King Henry II, and together the pair created a new, sprawling Angevin ‘Empire’, uniting England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine. Controlling most of modern-day France, their wealth and power far outstripped those of the French king, even though, nominally at least, they were still subjects of the Capetian monarch for their continental territories. Under the circumstances, it was all but inevitable that the Angevin and Capetian houses would become entrenched opponents. And throughout the mid-to late twelfth century, the festering antipathy and resentment between these two dynasties severely curtailed western participation in the war for the Holy Land. Locked into this struggle, Henry II of England proved unwilling or unable to honour repeated promises to go on crusade, usually providing financial support to Outremer by way of recompense.³

Only the truly epochal events of 1187 broke this deadlock, prompting real engagement. Old quarrels were not forgotten–indeed, Angevin–Capetian enmity had a profound effect upon the course of the Third Crusade. But the dreadful news from the Near East caused such uproar that the rulers of Latin Christendom not only heeded the call to arms; this time, they made good on their promises and actually went to war.

A cause for weeping

Upon his death on 20 October 1187, Pope Urban III was replaced by Gregory VIII, and by the end of the month a new papal encyclical–Audita Tremendi–had been issued, proclaiming the Third Crusade. As usual, care was taken to establish a justification for the holy war. The disaster at Hattin was described as ‘a great cause for mourning [for] the whole Christian people’ Outremer, it was said, had suffered a ‘severe and terrible judgement’ and the Muslim ‘infidels’ were depicted as ‘savage barbarians thirsting after Christian blood and [profaning] the Holy Places’. The encyclical concluded that any sane man ‘who does not weep at such a cause for weeping’ must surely have lost his faith and his humanity.

Two new themes were sewn into this familiar, if particularly impassioned, exhortation. For the first time, evil was personified. Earlier calls to arms had projected Muslims as sadistic but faceless opponents. Now, Saladin was named specifically as the enemy and likened to the Devil. This move bespoke both greater familiarity with Islam and the mammoth scale of the blow struck by the sultan’s ‘crimes’. Audita Tremendi also set out to explain why God had allowed his people to ‘be confounded by such great horror’. The answer was that the Latins had been ‘smitten by the divine hand’ as punishment for their sins. Franks living in the Levant were identified as the prime transgressors, having failed to show penitence after the fall of Edessa, but Christians living in Europe were also guilty. ‘All of us [should] amend our sins…and turn to the Lord our God with penance and works of piety’, the encyclical declared, ‘[and only] then turn our attention to the treachery and malice of the enemy.’ In line with this theme of contrition, crusaders were encouraged to enlist not ‘for money or worldly glory, but according to the will of God’, travelling in simple clothing, with no ‘dogs or birds’, ready to do penance rather than ‘to effect empty pomp’.

Audita Tremendi referred to the ‘misfortunes…recently fallen upon Jerusalem and the Holy Land’, but perhaps because news of Saladin’s actual conquest of the Holy City had yet to reach the West, special emphasis was placed upon the physical loss at Hattin of the True Cross–the relic of Christ’s cross. From this point forward, the recovery of the revered totem of the faith became one of the crusade’s primary objectives.

In common with earlier crusading encyclicals, the closing sections of the 1187 proclamation detailed the spiritual and temporal rewards on offer to participants. They were assured full remission of all confessed sins, and those who died on campaign were promised ‘eternal life’. For the duration of the expedition, they would enjoy immunity from legal prosecution and interest on debts, and their goods and families would be under the protection of the Church.⁴

Spreading the word

The unprecedented scale and significance of the disasters endured by the Franks in 1187 all but ensured a massive response in the West. Even in its barest form, the news carried to Europe by Joscius of Tyre had the power to terrify and inspire–indeed, before meeting the pope, the archbishop first made landfall in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and immediately convinced its ruler William II to send a fleet of ships to defend Outremer.

Nonetheless, Audita Tremendi set the tone for much of the preaching of the Third Crusade. In fact, the whole process of disseminating the crusading message was increasingly subject to centralised ecclesiastical and secular control, and the methods used to encourage recruitment ever more refined and sophisticated. The pope appointed two papal legates–Joscius of Tyre and Cardinal Henry of Albano, former abbot of Clairvaux–to orchestrate the call to the cross in France and Germany respectively. Large-scale recruitment rallies were also timed to coincide with major Christian festivals, with assemblies during Christmas 1187 at Strasbourg and Easter 1188 at Mainz and Paris, when crowds were already gathered and primed for a devotional message.

Preaching within the Angevin lands of England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine was planned carefully at conferences at Le Mans in January 1188 and Geddington, in Northamptonshire, on 11 February. At the latter meeting Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, another former Cistercian abbot, took the cross himself and thereafter led the recruitment drive. He carried out an extensive tour of Wales, spreading the word, while also reinforcing Angevin authority over this semi-independent area, and ended up enlisting three thousand Welshmen ‘skilled in the use of arrows and lances’.⁵

From this point forward, the act of crusading seems to have attained a more distinct identity, although it is not clear whether this was a response to centralised control or simply a by-product of gradual recognition and definition over time. Whereas previously crusaders had been variously dubbed pilgrims, travellers or soldiers of Christ, now, for the first time, documents began to describe them as crucesignatus (one signed by the cross)–the word that ultimately led to the terms ‘crusader’ and ‘crusade’.

The Third Crusade was also publicised and popularised within secular society. In the course of the twelfth century, troubadours (court singers who often were themselves nobles) came to play increasingly important roles in aristocratic circles, and notions of courtly life and chivalry began to develop, particularly in regions such as south-western France. Forty years earlier, the first traces of courtly commentary about the Second Crusade had been apparent. Now, after 1187, troubadour songs about the coming holy war poured out, drawing upon, and in places extending, the message inherent in Audita Tremendi.

Conon de Béthune, a knight from Picardy who joined the Third Crusade, composed one such Old French verse between 1188 and 1189. Here, familiar themes were echoed–lamentation at the capture of the True Cross and the observation that ‘every man ought to be downcast and sorrowful’. But elsewhere, new emphasis was placed upon the notions of shame and obligation. Conon wrote: ‘Now we will see who will be truly brave…[and] if we permit our mortal enemies to stay [in the Holy Land] our lives will be shameful for evermore’, adding that any who are ‘healthy, young and rich cannot remain behind without suffering shame’. The Holy Land was also portrayed as God’s imperilled patrimony (or lordship). This implied that, in the same way a vassal was obliged to protect his lord’s land and property, Christians, as God’s servants, should now rush to defend his sacred territory.⁶