Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (review)

After winning numerous prestigious fellowships including the MacArthur Fellowship, Jay Rubenstein produced an unexpected book: Armies of Heaven and the Quest of Apocalypse. As the title suggests, Rubenstein explores the connection between the actions and campaigns of the First Crusade and the apocalyptic understanding of these events. To understand the relationship between the two, Rubenstein focuses on a series of chronicles that have been traditionally ignored by First Crusade scholars. These historians have tended to concentrate on the texts written during the crusade or its immediate aftermath, especially the Gesta Francorum. While Rubenstein uses these narratives to construct an account of the campaigns, he explores the texts composed after 1107 to understand how medieval people viewed this momentous event. Rubenstein argues that those who participated in the crusade and those who wrote about it afterwards saw the campaigns as part of God’s plan to bring participants closer to both heaven and hell. As the warriors and pilgrims progressed on the First Crusade, they moved further and further from earthly reality and into salvation history. The book is organized chronologically around the events of the crusade, beginning with journeys to Jerusalem prior to 1095 and ending with the final fight against the Egyptians at Ascalon in 1099.

Rubenstein sees two distinct beginnings to the First Crusade. In the German-speaking world, Peter the Hermit, an ascetic and pilgrim to Jerusalem, preached about his travails of visiting Jerusalem under pagan control. He further claimed to have a charter from heaven that ordered Jerusalem to be taken from the hands of the gentiles and warned of the approach of the Last Days. Rubenstein reevaluates and prioritizes Peter the Hermit’s contributions in calling for the crusade and during the campaigns. For many contemporaries, Rubenstein argues, this was the start of the First Crusade rather than Pope Urban II’s sermon at the Council of Clermont. Urban’s preaching relied less on apocalyptic ideas than Peter and instead described the campaign as a heroic battle drawing on images from the chansons de geste. After his sermon at Clermont, the pope lost control over his plan of the crusade, and more apocalyptic ideas were mixed in with his message. The two distinct calls for holy war led to two different crusading movements divided by geography and leadership. Peter the Hermit was far more successful in recruiting followers, less reliant on princes, and more violent in his message. Contemplation of the city of Jerusalem and the life of Jesus quickly turned to concerns about punishing those responsible for Jesus’s suffering. The pogroms against Jews in the Germanic world were primarily about the destruction of Judaism and secondarily about the extracting of financial resources. Rubenstein also reminds his readers that the first battles in the crusade were against Catholics in Eastern Europe in order to gain access to foodstuffs and markets.

For Rubenstein, the siege and capture of the city of Antioch represents the most important turning point in the First Crusade. It was not only the crusaders’ first major victory, but it was the battle that turned the First Crusade into holy war. Central to this transformation was the increased violence that Europeans unleashed against the people of Antioch and their supporters outside of the city walls. The crusaders tied the severed heads of Turks to their horses, and inside the city of Antioch, they slaughtered everyone regardless of age, gender, or religion. Rubenstein argues that this violence was not learned in the small wars of eleventh-century Europe but rather in Deuteronomy 20. By destroying the city and its people, the Europeans were taking up a biblical precedent that transformed them into the Children of Israel. The second phase of the battle also took on biblical overtones. The hunger after the siege and the price gouging were understood to be the same as the siege of Samaria. The discovery of the lance that pierced the side of Christ seemed proof that Saint Andrew and...