Pope Gregory VII and his failed Crusade

It’s always assumed that Pope Urban II was the first pontiff to call for a crusade – as he did in 1095 at a church council in Clermont. But there had been a previous attempt to kick start the crusades, twenty years earlier, that never got off the ground. Why did nobody listen to Pope Gregory VII in 1074? And what would have happened if the crusades had got going two decades before?

The events that compelled Gregory to demand a crusade were the same that motivated Urban: the invasion of the Byzantine Empire by the Seljuk Turks. The Byzantines were the Greek speaking continuation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. They would never have recognised the term “Byzantine” (invented by later historians), seeing themselves as Romans – even in the 11th century, six hundred years after the western Roman Empire had collapsed.

They were a Christian empire following the eastern orthodox rite and not recognising the pope as supreme head of the church. In fact, in 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople (the Byzantine capital), and the pope, had excommunicated each other in what was termed the ‘great schism’. Yet there was always a hope in the east and west that the two Christian churches would come back together, despite their differences.

Constantinople was the greatest city in Christendom, defended by the Theodosian walls that dated back to the fifth century CE. They had never been breached by any enemy. But by 1074, the empire’s territories in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) had been overrun by a new Muslim invading force: the Seljuk Turks. This was the news that Gregory received – and that motivated him to call for a new kind of war.

Gregory had heard that “a pagan race had overcome the Christians and with horrible cruelty had devastated everything almost to the walls of Constantinople, and were now governing the conquered lands with tyrannical violence, and that they had slain many thousands of Christians as if they were but sheep”.

“If we love God and wish to be recognized as Christians, we should be filled with grief at the misfortune of this great empire and the murder of so many Christians. But simply to grieve is not our whole duty. The example of our Redeemer and the bond of fraternal love demand that we should lay down our lives to liberate them.”

Urban’s speech in 1095 mentioned alleged atrocities committed by the Seljuks against Byzantine Christians. Gregory was hearing the same thing in 1074. This was just three years after the Byzantine army had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Seljuks in the Battle of Manzikert. Gregory promised assistance to the Christians in the east as soon as possible.

Know, therefore, that we are trusting in the mercy of God and in the power of his might and that we are striving in all possible ways and making preparations to render aid to the Christian empire as quickly as possible.

But this crusade never happened. Gregory spent his papacy strengthening the power of the popes over western monarchs – a policy that would be referred to as the Gregorian Reforms. Many kings, princes, and nobles baulked at this extension of Rome’s authority over them, which would become a hallmark of the Middle Ages. During the Investiture Controversy, Gregory was embroiled in a row with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, and other secular rulers, over who had the power to select and appoint bishops and abbots.

Gregory’s single-minded focus on ensuring that Catholic Europe respected the power of the pope above all kings and princes meant that he didn’t have the time or energy to organise the first crusade. The idea was put on the back burner, only to be revived by Urban II in 1095. But Gregory’s comments are a clear indication that the idea of a crusade was already gestating in the 1070s as the Byzantines faced a very threat to their existence.

FIND OUT MORE: Pope Urban II – architect of the crusades

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