Crusader Knights: Who They Were and What They Fought For

When Bohemond lay before Amalfi in 1096 and heard that a countless army of Franks was approaching, he had his most precious cloak brought and cut entirely into crosses. So the chronicler Peter Tudebode relates. The Norman prince became a crusader knight: a knight who had taken the cross. Drawing on the sources, this guide explains who the crusader knights were, what they vowed, why they wore the cross on their garments and what they fought for, with a section of its own on the German crusaders.

What is a crusader knight?

A crusader knight was a knight of the Middle Ages who had taken the cross: he solemnly vowed to God to journey to the Holy Land, received a cross for his garment and from then on counted as a crusader under the special protection of the Church.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the procedure thus: after the solemn vow each warrior received a cross from the hand of the Pope or his legates and was thenceforth regarded as a soldier of the Church. A knight was one who fought on horseback and in heavy armour. At the time of the Crusades he wore a coat of mail, and no knight was considered properly equipped without at least three horses: the charger for the attack, a palfrey for the road and a packhorse.

The word crusader is wider. According to Fulcher of Chartres, foot soldiers and people of every calling went along with the crusader knights. The crusader knights were the knights among them.

Who went to the Holy Land as crusader knights?

Princes and knights from France, Lorraine and Germany, from Flanders, Normandy, England and southern Italy went as crusader knights. Alongside them people of every estate took the cross, for Blessed Pope Urban II called rich and poor, horsemen and foot soldiers alike to the journey.

Fulcher of Chartres, who went himself, names the princes of the First Crusade: Hugh the Great, brother of the King of France, Duke Robert of Normandy, Count Stephen of Blois, Count Robert of Flanders, Godfrey of Bouillon, Count Raymond of Toulouse with Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, and Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard. They set out from March 1096, each as his means allowed.

Not everyone was allowed to go. According to Robert the Monk, Urban did not want the old, the weak and those unfit to bear arms. Priests needed the permission of their bishop, laymen the blessing of their priest, and the rich were to help the poorer. Fulcher also describes the farewells: the husband told his wife when he would return, and she sank to the ground lamenting, as if lifeless.

What did a crusader knight vow when taking the cross?

On taking the cross the crusader knight solemnly vowed to God to undertake and complete the journey to the Holy Sepulchre. He received a blessed cross, and for the duration of the journey the Church took him, his family and his property under her protection.

Robert the Monk records Urban’s words: whoever resolved upon this holy pilgrimage, made the promise to God and offered himself to Him as a living sacrifice, should wear the cross. In his crusade bull Pope Eugene III confirmed the rights of the crusaders: wife, children and goods stand under the protection of the Church; no lawsuit may be brought over their property until certain news of their return or their death has been received; and they pay no interest on old debts. Whoever broke the vow was, according to Guibert of Nogent, regarded as an outlaw until he repented and made good what he had promised.

The Pontificale Romanum, the book of episcopal rites, contains, for example in the 1859 edition, a special blessing of the cross for all who set out for the defence of the faith or the recovery of the Holy Land. The bishop blesses the cross, sprinkles it with holy water and lays it upon the kneeling man with these words:

Accipe signum crucis. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, in figuram crucis, passionis, et mortis Christi, ad tui corporis et animae defensionem; ut divinae bonitatis gratia post iter expletum, salvus et emendatus ad tuos valeas remeare. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Receive the sign of the cross, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, as a figure of the cross, the passion and the death of Christ, for the defence of thy body and soul, that by the grace of the divine goodness, thy journey accomplished, thou mayest return safe and amended to thine own. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Pontificale Romanum, De benedictione et impositione crucis proficiscentibus in subsidium et defensionem fidei christianae, seu recuperationem Terrae sanctae (1859 edition, p. 365), our translation from the Latin

Why did crusader knights wear a cross on their garments?

Crusader knights wore a cross on their garments to fulfil the word of the Lord: “Whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27, cf. Mt 10:38). According to Fulcher of Chartres, they sewed it onto the shoulders of their cloaks at the bidding of Pope Urban II.

Fulcher describes the crosses as an eyewitness: of silk, woven with gold, or of any fine cloth, sewn onto cloak, mantle or tunic. Robert the Monk hands down a second rule. On the way out the cross was worn on the forehead or the breast, on the way home between the shoulders. In this way the crusader fulfilled the Lord’s command twofold. The accounts therefore differ on this point. When St Bernard of Clairvaux preached at Vézelay in 1146, there were not enough crosses, and he had to give up parts of his habit for them.

The details come from Peter Tudebode for 1096, from Roger of Hoveden for 1188, from William of Tyre for the Templars and from the Catholic Encyclopedia for the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order. The colours of 1188 were fixed by the Kings of France and England when they took the cross from the hand of the Archbishop of Tyre near Gisors on 21 January 1188, so that each people could recognise its own. The Jerusalem cross, a large cross with four small ones in its angles, is today found on our patches with the Jerusalem cross.

What did the crusader knights fight for?

Following the call of Pope Urban II, the crusader knights fought for the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, for the oppressed Christians of the East and for the safety of pilgrims. The journey was also a penance: for whoever undertook it out of devotion alone, it took the place of all penance.

At Clermont Urban expressly addressed knights who had until then waged feuds against their own brethren. Whoever had hitherto served as a mercenary for a few coins should now obtain the eternal reward. In the same bull Eugene III admonished the crusaders not to take costly clothes, dogs and falcons with them, but to give their care to arms and horses.

“Nunc fiant Christi milites, qui dudum exstiterunt raptores.” Let those now become soldiers of Christ who until now were robbers.

Urban II at Clermont according to Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana I, 3 (our translation from the Latin)

Not all lived up to it. In 1096 disorderly bands murdered Jews in German towns; at the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 crusaders killed the inhabitants without regard to age or sex; and Pope Innocent III sharply rebuked the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Others became an example: King Louis IX of France led two crusades and died before Tunis on 25 August 1270. The Church venerates him as a saint, and the 1962 calendar keeps his feast on the day of his death. The collect of the feast addresses God, who brought St Louis “from an earthly kingdom to the glory of the heavenly kingdom”.

Who were the German crusaders?

Among the best-known German crusaders are Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and vassal of the German emperor, King Conrad III, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Emperor Frederick II. In 1190, moreover, the Teutonic Order grew out of a field hospital of German pilgrims before Acre.

Robert the Monk calls Godfrey a duke of the Germans and describes him as fair of face, tall, gentle in speech and so mild towards his people that he resembled a monk more than a knight. To pay for the journey he sold or pledged many of his estates. His story is told for young readers in the book Gottfried von Bouillon, der erste Kreuzritter (in German; “Godfrey of Bouillon, the First Crusader Knight”).

King Conrad III and his nephew Frederick, the later Emperor Barbarossa, took the cross from the hand of St Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146. Barbarossa took it a second time as emperor, at the Diet of Mainz on 27 March 1188. On 11 May 1189 he set out from Regensburg and drowned on 10 June 1190 in the river Saleph in Asia Minor. In 1190 pilgrims from Bremen and Lübeck put up a tent made of ships’ sails before Acre for their sick countrymen. From it grew the Teutonic Order, whose fourth Grand Master was Hermann von Salza.

Mentioned in this article Crusader wall print Knight Templar before the Jerusalem cross with the psalm verse Non nobis, Domine, matte A4 print, without frame. View the wall print You may also like Deus Vult Templar Rosary Hand-knotted from red 550 paracord, with 10 mm stainless steel beads and shield-shaped Our Father beads bearing the Jerusalem cross. View the rosary

Frequently asked questions about the crusader knights