For centuries, historians have debated the origins of the First Crusade, typically tracing it to 1095, when Emperor Alexios I Komnenos appealed to Pope Urban II for military aid against the Seljuks. But a newly published study suggests that the seeds of the Crusades may have been planted far earlier—more than thirty years before Urban’s famous call to arms.
In a paper published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association, historian Jonathan Harris of Royal Holloway, University of London, argues that an earlier Byzantine emperor, Constantine X Doukas, may have already been exploring the idea of calling on Western Christendom for help, and may even have invoked the liberation of Jerusalem decades before the First Crusade began.
A Forgotten Embassy
The story begins in 1062, when Constantine X—who ruled Byzantium from 1059 to 1067—supposedly sent envoys to Honorius II, a rival (and ultimately illegitimate) pope backed by the German court of Henry IV. The embassy is known only from a single source: Benzo of Alba, a bishop and supporter of Honorius II, who recorded the event in his Ad Henricum Imperatorem Libri VII.
According to Benzo, the Byzantine envoys arrived in Rome clad in magnificent purple and gold garments, carrying a letter from the emperor himself. The message, written in Latin, expressed friendship toward Henry IV and offered the emperor’s son as a hostage to seal an alliance. It also contained a puzzling reference to a campaign to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
This strange mixture of diplomacy, politics, and piety has long puzzled scholars. Many dismissed it as a fabrication—an invention by Benzo to promote his own political aims. As Harris explains, the letter “has usually been regarded as a fabrication designed to advance Benzo’s own agenda.”
Yet Harris urges a second look. Rather than a total forgery, he proposes that Benzo’s text may represent “his rendering of a genuine Byzantine letter, full of errors and misunderstandings, but retaining elements of the original.”
Byzantium’s Early Diplomatic Chess Game
Constantine X in the Barberini Psalter (Barb. gr. 372)
If Harris is right, the 1062 embassy reveals that Constantine X was playing a far more sophisticated diplomatic game than historians have recognized.
In the early 1060s, the Byzantine Empire faced mounting threats. The Normans were consolidating power in southern Italy, posing a danger to imperial possessions in the region. Meanwhile, the Seljuk Turks were advancing in the east, threatening Armenia and Asia Minor. Constantine X, Harris argues, sought to build an alliance that might address both problems—uniting Western Christians under papal leadership while defending imperial interests.
His outreach to Honorius II, the anti-pope supported by the German emperor’s regency, reflected this pragmatic approach. “It would seem that Constantine envisaged that Honorius would act as go-between in negotiations with the regency for Henry IV which could deploy much greater military muscle than the pope,” Harris writes. The emperor even sent holy relics and lavish gifts to Henry IV through Honorius.
Just eight years earlier, in 1054, the so-called Great Schism had formally split the Eastern and Western Churches. Relations were icy, and mutual excommunications still stood. Yet Constantine X appears to have been willing to set theological differences aside for practical reasons. Harris suggests that Constantine X may have reached out to the other papal claimant, Alexander II, simultaneously—a shrewd attempt to hedge his bets while reviving the old alliance against the Normans.
An Early Appeal for the Holy Sepulchre
Latin edition of the letter that Honorius II supposedly received from the Byzantine emperor – Ad Henricum Imperatorem. Libri VII, ed. K. Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 11 (Hannover, 1854), p. 617
The most startling element of Benzo’s account, however, lies in the letter’s closing lines, which outlines what the Byzantine emperor would want from Henry:
so that under your leadership there may be the means of going to the Sepulchre of the Lord and expunging the foulness of the Normans and the pagans. Thus, Christian liberty may flourish once more until the end of time.
The juxtaposition of Italy’s Normans with the distant Muslims of Jerusalem has long seemed nonsensical, which has often led fuel sceptics to view the document as a fraud. But Harris proposes that this passage may reflect genuine Byzantine language, blending two threats—the Norman conquest of southern Italy and the Turkish incursions in the east—into a single rhetorical appeal. For Constantine X, Jerusalem symbolised both faith and political leverage. The emperor, Harris notes, “may have been using western reverence for the Holy Sepulchre to bring in aid against new enemies in the east.”
In other words, Constantine was among the first Byzantine rulers to link the defence of the empire with the protection of the Holy Places—a theme that would later dominate Alexios I Komnenos’s appeal to Urban II in 1095.
The First Crusade Before the Crusade
Henry IV depicted in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 373, fol. 60r
Harris’s reconstruction suggests that the idea of a holy war for Jerusalem—or at least of using the city’s sanctity as a diplomatic incentive—did not originate with Pope Urban II but with Byzantium itself. “On that basis,” Harris concludes, “it will be suggested that Byzantine involvement in the genesis of the First Crusade may have begun over thirty years before it was launched.”
While Constantine X likely never imagined the mass movement that would later sweep across Europe, his embassy to Honorius II may represent the first faint stirrings of crusading thought: the fusion of politics, piety, and propaganda that would reshape the medieval world.
If Harris’s interpretation, which was first presented at a 2022 conference for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, gains traction, it could significantly alter our understanding of the Crusades’ origins. Rather than a Western invention sparked by papal rhetoric, the movement might be seen as an outgrowth of Byzantine diplomacy—a continuation of efforts begun in the mid-eleventh century to secure help from Latin Christendom against the empire’s enemies.
Far from the passive victim or reluctant instigator often portrayed in histories of the Crusades, Byzantium emerges here as a proactive power, skillfully navigating both spiritual and temporal politics. Constantine X’s embassy of 1062, even if partially obscured by Benzo’s distortions, reveals a world already inching toward the idea of a Christian military expedition to the East.
Jonathan Harris’ article, ‘Byzantium and the Crusades: Constantine X’s Embassy to Honorius II in 1062,” is published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association. Click here to read it.
For centuries, historians have debated the origins of the First Crusade, typically tracing it to 1095, when Emperor Alexios I Komnenos appealed to Pope Urban II for military aid against the Seljuks. But a newly published study suggests that the seeds of the Crusades may have been planted far earlier—more than thirty years before Urban’s famous call to arms.
In a paper published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association, historian Jonathan Harris of Royal Holloway, University of London, argues that an earlier Byzantine emperor, Constantine X Doukas, may have already been exploring the idea of calling on Western Christendom for help, and may even have invoked the liberation of Jerusalem decades before the First Crusade began.
A Forgotten Embassy
The story begins in 1062, when Constantine X—who ruled Byzantium from 1059 to 1067—supposedly sent envoys to Honorius II, a rival (and ultimately illegitimate) pope backed by the German court of Henry IV. The embassy is known only from a single source: Benzo of Alba, a bishop and supporter of Honorius II, who recorded the event in his Ad Henricum Imperatorem Libri VII.
According to Benzo, the Byzantine envoys arrived in Rome clad in magnificent purple and gold garments, carrying a letter from the emperor himself. The message, written in Latin, expressed friendship toward Henry IV and offered the emperor’s son as a hostage to seal an alliance. It also contained a puzzling reference to a campaign to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
This strange mixture of diplomacy, politics, and piety has long puzzled scholars. Many dismissed it as a fabrication—an invention by Benzo to promote his own political aims. As Harris explains, the letter “has usually been regarded as a fabrication designed to advance Benzo’s own agenda.”
Yet Harris urges a second look. Rather than a total forgery, he proposes that Benzo’s text may represent “his rendering of a genuine Byzantine letter, full of errors and misunderstandings, but retaining elements of the original.”
Byzantium’s Early Diplomatic Chess Game
If Harris is right, the 1062 embassy reveals that Constantine X was playing a far more sophisticated diplomatic game than historians have recognized.
In the early 1060s, the Byzantine Empire faced mounting threats. The Normans were consolidating power in southern Italy, posing a danger to imperial possessions in the region. Meanwhile, the Seljuk Turks were advancing in the east, threatening Armenia and Asia Minor. Constantine X, Harris argues, sought to build an alliance that might address both problems—uniting Western Christians under papal leadership while defending imperial interests.
His outreach to Honorius II, the anti-pope supported by the German emperor’s regency, reflected this pragmatic approach. “It would seem that Constantine envisaged that Honorius would act as go-between in negotiations with the regency for Henry IV which could deploy much greater military muscle than the pope,” Harris writes. The emperor even sent holy relics and lavish gifts to Henry IV through Honorius.
Just eight years earlier, in 1054, the so-called Great Schism had formally split the Eastern and Western Churches. Relations were icy, and mutual excommunications still stood. Yet Constantine X appears to have been willing to set theological differences aside for practical reasons. Harris suggests that Constantine X may have reached out to the other papal claimant, Alexander II, simultaneously—a shrewd attempt to hedge his bets while reviving the old alliance against the Normans.
An Early Appeal for the Holy Sepulchre
The most startling element of Benzo’s account, however, lies in the letter’s closing lines, which outlines what the Byzantine emperor would want from Henry:
so that under your leadership there may be the means of going to the Sepulchre of the Lord and expunging the foulness of the Normans and the pagans. Thus, Christian liberty may flourish once more until the end of time.
The juxtaposition of Italy’s Normans with the distant Muslims of Jerusalem has long seemed nonsensical, which has often led fuel sceptics to view the document as a fraud. But Harris proposes that this passage may reflect genuine Byzantine language, blending two threats—the Norman conquest of southern Italy and the Turkish incursions in the east—into a single rhetorical appeal. For Constantine X, Jerusalem symbolised both faith and political leverage. The emperor, Harris notes, “may have been using western reverence for the Holy Sepulchre to bring in aid against new enemies in the east.”
In other words, Constantine was among the first Byzantine rulers to link the defence of the empire with the protection of the Holy Places—a theme that would later dominate Alexios I Komnenos’s appeal to Urban II in 1095.
The First Crusade Before the Crusade
Harris’s reconstruction suggests that the idea of a holy war for Jerusalem—or at least of using the city’s sanctity as a diplomatic incentive—did not originate with Pope Urban II but with Byzantium itself. “On that basis,” Harris concludes, “it will be suggested that Byzantine involvement in the genesis of the First Crusade may have begun over thirty years before it was launched.”
While Constantine X likely never imagined the mass movement that would later sweep across Europe, his embassy to Honorius II may represent the first faint stirrings of crusading thought: the fusion of politics, piety, and propaganda that would reshape the medieval world.
If Harris’s interpretation, which was first presented at a 2022 conference for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, gains traction, it could significantly alter our understanding of the Crusades’ origins. Rather than a Western invention sparked by papal rhetoric, the movement might be seen as an outgrowth of Byzantine diplomacy—a continuation of efforts begun in the mid-eleventh century to secure help from Latin Christendom against the empire’s enemies.
Far from the passive victim or reluctant instigator often portrayed in histories of the Crusades, Byzantium emerges here as a proactive power, skillfully navigating both spiritual and temporal politics. Constantine X’s embassy of 1062, even if partially obscured by Benzo’s distortions, reveals a world already inching toward the idea of a Christian military expedition to the East.
Jonathan Harris’ article, ‘Byzantium and the Crusades: Constantine X’s Embassy to Honorius II in 1062,” is published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association. Click here to read it.
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