The Byzantine Perspective of the First Crusade: A Reexamination of Alleged Treachery and Betrayal

The Byzantine Perspective of the First Crusade: A Reexamination of Alleged Treachery and Betrayal

Nelson, Laura M. (west Virginia Unicersity)

M.A. Thesis, Medieval Art, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University (2007)

Abstract

Scholars have generally ignored the Crusades from the Byzantine perspective with the majority of scholarship focusing on the Western, and more recently, Arabic viewpoints. Western sources from the period such as the of Chartres typically portray Alexius I, the Byzantine emperor during the First Crusade, as anti-Western. It is this study’s position that Alexius’s actions derived from a need to protect his people and empire rather than a desire to see the crusaders’ mission fail. By studying the Byzantine perspective, we gain a fuller understanding of the First Crusade and the Crusades as a whole begin to become more comprehensible. Gesta Francorum and the account of Fulcher.

The world’s newest monotheistic religion, Islam, had existed for only four centuries, yet was the biggest threat to Christianity since the polytheistic rulers of the Roman Empire by the end of the eleventh century. Islam, founded by a trader named Mohammed in 622, spread from its homeland in Arabia to the west across northern Africa and, in less than a century, had made its way into Christian Spain. Muslim warriors traveled north as well and conquered the Levant, the area at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea where the Holy Land is located, and its surrounding areas, threatening the Christian Byzantine Empire.