(E. Br.)
1Fulcher of Chartres, 1, i. For what follows, with regard to the Church’s conversion ofguerrainto the Holy War, cf. especially the passage—“Procedant contra infideles ad pugnam jam incipi dignam ... qui abusiveprivatum certamencontra fideles consuescebant distendere quondam.”2Tradition credits a pope still earlier than Gregory VII. with the idea of a crusade. Silvester II. is said to have preached a general expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem; and the same preaching is attributed to Sergius IV. in 1011. But the supposed letter of Silvester is a later forgery; and in 1000 the way of the Christian to Jerusalem was still free and open.3The comte de Riant impugned the authenticity of Alexius’ letter to the count of Flanders. It is very probable that the versions of this letter which we possess, and which are to be found only in later writings like Guibert de Nogent, are apocryphal; Alexius can hardly have held out the bait of the beauty of Greek women, or have written that he preferred to fall under the yoke of the Latins rather than that of the Turks. But it is also probable that these apocryphal versions are based on a genuine original.4Ekkehard,Chronica, p. 213.5TheChanson de Roland, which cannot be posterior to the First Crusade—for the poem never alludes to it—already contains the idea of the Holy War against Islam. The idea of the crusade had thus already ripened in French poetry, before Urban preached his sermon.6Book i. c. iii. (in Muratori,S.R.I., v. 550).7Ekkehard,Chronica, 214.8Later legend ascribed the origin of the First Crusade to the preaching of Peter the Hermit. The legend has been followed by modern historians; but in point of fact Peter is a figure of secondary importance.(SeePeter the Hermit.)9Godfrey’s army numbered some 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry (Röhricht,Erst. Kreuzz.61): Urban II. reckons Bohemund’s knights as 7000 in number (ibid.71, n. 7).10The Genoese had been invited by Urban II. in September 1096 “to go with their gallies to Eastern parts in order to set free the path to the Lord’s Sepulchre.”11Thus already on the First Crusade the path of negotiation is attempted simultaneously with the Holy War. On the Third Crusade, and above all on the Sixth, this path was still more seriously attempted. It is interesting, too, to notice the part which the laity already plays in directing the course of the Crusade. From the first the Crusade, however clerical in its conception, was largely secular in its conduct; and thus, somewhat paradoxically, a religious enterprise aided the growth of the secular motive, and contributed to the escape of the laity from that tendency towards a papal theocracy, which was evident in the pontificate of Gregory VII.12Before he left, Raymund had played in Jerusalem the same part of dog in the manger which he had also played at Antioch, and had given Godfrey considerable trouble. See the articles,Godfrey of BouillonandRaymund of Toulouse.13For an account of the kings of Jerusalem see the articles on the fiveBaldwins, on the twoAmalrics, onFulkandJohn of Brienneand on theLusignan(family).14The genuineness of the letter (on which, by the way, depends the story of Godfrey’s agreement with Dagobert) has been impeached by Prutz and Kugler, and doubted by Röhricht. It is accepted by von Sybel and Hagenmeyer.15Yet the north always continued to be more populous than the south; and the Latins maintained themselves in Antioch and Tripoli a century after the loss of Jerusalem. The land was richer in the north: it was protected by its connexion with Cyprus and Armenia: it was more remote from Egypt—the basis of Mahommedan power from the reign of Saladin onwards.16Pisa naturally connected itself with Antioch, because Antioch was hostile to Constantinople, and Pisa cherished the same hostility, since Alexius I. had in 1080 given preferential treatment to Venice, the enemy of Pisa.17This is the year in which the kingdom may be regarded as definitely founded. The period of conquest practically ends at this date, though isolated gains were afterwards made. The year 1110 is additionally important by reason of the accession of Maudud al Mosul, which marks the beginning of a Moslem reaction.18Ilghazi died in 1122. His successor was Balak, who ruled from 1122 to 1124, and succeeded in capturing in 1123 Baldwin II. of Jerusalem. The union of Mardin and Aleppo under the sway of these two amirs, connecting as it did Mesopotamia with Syria, marks an important stage in the revival of Mahommedan power (Stevenson,Crusades in the East, p. 109).19Maudud (the brother of the sultan Mahommed) may be regarded as the first to begin thejihad, or counter-crusade, and his attack expedition of 1113, which carried him so far into the heart of Palestine, may be considered as the first act of thejihad(Stevenson, op. cit. pp. 87, 96).20Aleppo had passed from the rule of Timurtash (son of Ilghazi and successor of Balak) into the possession of Aksunkur, 1125.21Stevenson, however, believes that Zengi wasnotanimated by the idea of recovering Jerusalem. He thinks that his principal aim was simply the formation of a compact Mahommedan state, which was, indeed, in the issue destined to be the instrument of thejihad, but was not so intended by Zengi (op. cit. pp. 123-124).22There are certain connexions and analogies between the kingdom of Sicily and that of Jerusalem during the twelfth century. In either case there is an importation of Western feudalism into a country originally possessed of Byzantine institutions, but affected by an Arabic occupation. The subject deserves investigation.23The holders of fiefs (sodeers) both held fiefs of land and received pay; the paid force ofsoudoyersonly received pay. An instance of the latter is furnished by John of Margat, a vassal of the seignory of Arsuf. He has 200 bezants along with a quantity of wheat, barley, lentils and oil; and in return he must march with four horses (Rey,Les Colonies franques en Syrie, p. 24).24For the history of the orders see the articles on theTemplars;St John of Jerusalem, Knights of;Knights, and theTeutonic Order. The Templars were founded about the year 1118 by a Burgundian knight, Hugh de Paganis; the Hospitallers sprang from a foundation in Jerusalem erected by merchants of Amalfi before the First Crusade, and were reorganized under Gerard le Puy, master until 1120. The Teutonic knights date from the Third Crusade.25As was noticed above, there were apparently separate assizes for the three principalities, in addition to the assizes of the kingdom. The assizes of Antioch have been discovered and published. The assizes of the kingdom itself are twofold—the assizes of the high court and the assizes of the court of burgesses. (1) The assizes of the high court are preserved for us in works by legists—John of Ibelin, Philip of Novara and Geoffrey of Tort—composed in the 13th century. We possess, in other words,law-books(like Bracton’s treatiseDe legibus), but notlaws—and law-books made after the loss of the kingdom to which the laws belonged. There are two vexed questions with regard to these law-books. (a) The first concerns the origin and character of the laws which the law-books profess to expound. According to the story of the legists who wrote these books—e.g.John of Ibelin—the laws of the kingdom were laid down by Godfrey, who is thus regarded as the greatνομοθέτηςof the kingdom. These laws (progressively modified, it is admitted) were kept in Jerusalem, under the name of “Letters of the Sepulchre,” until 1187. In that year they were lost; and the legists tell us that they are attempting to reconstructpar oir direthe gist of the lost archetype. The story of the legists is now generally rejected. Godfrey never legislated: the customs of the kingdom gradually grew, and were gradually defined, especially under kings like Baldwin III. and Amalric I. If there was thus only a customary and unwritten law (and William of Tyre definitely speaks of ajus consuetudinariumunder Baldwin III.,quo regnum regebatur), then the “Letters of the Sepulchre” are a myth—or rather, if they ever existed, they existed not as a code of written law, but, perhaps, as a register of fiefs, like the SicilianDefetarii. Thus the story of the legists shrinks down to the regular myth of the primitive legislator, used to give an air of respectability to law-books, which really record an unwritten custom. The fact is that until the 13th century the Franks livedconsuetudinibus antiquis et jure non scripto. They preferred an unwritten law, as Prutz suggests, partly because it suited the barristers (who often belonged to the baronage, for the Frankish nobles were “great pleaders in court and out of court”), and partly because the high court was left unbound so long as there was no written code. In the 13th century it became necessary for the legists to codify, as it were, the unwritten law, because the upheavals of the times necessitated the fixing of some rules in writing, and especially because it was necessary to oppose a definite custom of the kingdom to Frederick II., who sought, as king of Jerusalem, to take advantage of the want of a written law, to substitute his own conceptions of law in the teeth of the high court. (b) The second difficulty concerns the text of the law-books themselves. The text of Ibelin became atextus receptus—but it also became overlaid by glosses, for it was used as authoritative in the kingdom of Cyprus after the loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and it needed expounding. Recensions and revisions were twice made, in 1368 and 1531; but how far the true Ibelin was recovered, and what additions or alterations were made at these two dates, we cannot tell. We can only say that we have the text of Ibelin which was used in Cyprus in the later middle ages. At the same time, if our text is thus late, it must be remembered that its content gives us the earliest and purest exposition of French feudalism, and describes for us the organization of a kingdom, where all rights and duties were connected with the fief, and the monarch was only a suzerain of feudatories. (2) The assizes of the court of burgesses became the basis of a treatise at an earlier date than the assizes of the high court. The date of the redaction (which was probably made by some learned burgess) may well have been the reign of Baldwin III., as Kugler suggests: he was the first native king, and a king learned in the law; but Beugnot would refer the assizes to the years immediately preceding Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem. These assizes do not, of course, appear in Ibelin, who was only concerned with the feudal law of the high court. They were used, like the assizes of the high court, in Cyprus; and, like the other assizes, they were made the subject of investigation in 1531, with the object of discovering a good text. The law which is expounded in these assizes is a mixture of Frankish law with the Graeco-Roman law of the Eastern empire which prevailed among the native population of Syria.In regard to both assizes, it is most important to bear in mind that we possess not laws, but law-books or custumals—records made by lawyers for their fellows of what they conceived to be the law, and supported by legal arguments and citations of cases. But, as Prutz remarks, Philip of Novaralehrt nicht die Wissenschaft des Rechts, sondern die des Unrechts: he does not explain the law so much as the ways of getting round it.26For instance, the abbey of Mount Sion had large possessions, not only in the Holy Land (at Ascalon, Jaffa, Acre, Tyre, Caesarea and Tarsus), but also in Sicily, Calabria, Lombardy, Spain and France (at Orleans, Bourges and Poitiers).27One must remember that these reinforcements would often consist of desperate characters. It was one of the misfortunes of Palestine that it served as a Botany Bay, to which the criminals of the West were transported for penance. The natives, already prone to the immorality which must infect a mixed population living under a hot sun, the immorality which still infects a place like Aden, were not improved by the addition of convicts.28The manorial system in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was a continuation of the village system as it had existed under the Arabs. In each village (casale)therusticiwere grouped in families (foci): the tenants paid from ¼ to1⁄3of the crop, besides a poll-tax and labour-dues. The villages were mostly inhabited by Syrians: it was rarely that Franks settled down as tillers of the soil. Prutz regards the manorial system as oppressive. Absentee landlords, he thinks, rack-rented the soil (p. 167), while the “inhuman severity” of their treatment of villeins led to a progressive decay of agriculture, destroyed the economic basis of the Latin kingdom, and led the natives to welcome the invasion of Saladin (pp. 327-331).The French writers Rey and Dodu are more kind to the Franks; and the testimony of contemporary Arabic writers, who seem favourably impressed by the treatment of their subjects by the Franks, bears out their view, while the tone of the assizes is admittedly favourable to the Syrians. One must not forget that there was a brisk native manufacture of carpets, pottery, ironwork, gold-work and soap; or that the Syrians of the towns had a definite legal position.29After 1143 one may therefore speak of the period of the Epigoni—the native Franks, ready to view the Moslems as joint occupants of Syria, and to imitate the dress and habits of their neighbours.30Doubt has been cast on the view that a troubled conscience drove Louis to take the cross; and his action has been ascribed to simple religious zeal (cf. Lavisse,Histoire de France, iii. 12).31We speak of First, Second and Third Crusades, but, more exactly, the Crusades were one continuous process. Scarcely a year passed in which new bands did not come to the Holy Land. We have already noticed the great if disastrous Crusade of 1100-1101, and the Venetian Crusade of 1123-1124; and we may also refer to the Crusade of Henry the Lion in 1172, and to that of Edward I. in 1271-1272—all famous Crusades, which are not reckoned in the usual numbering. Crusades appear to have been dignified by numbers when they followed some crushing disaster—the loss of Edessa in 1144, or the fall of Jerusalem in 1187—and were led by kings and emperors; or when, like the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, they achieved some conspicuous success or failure. But it is important to bear in mind the continuity of the Crusades—the constant flow of new forces eastward and back again westward; for this alone explains why the Crusades formed a great epoch in civilization, familiarizing, as they did, the West with the East.32This body of crusaders ultimately reached the Holy Land, where it joined Conrad (who had lost his own original forces), and helped in the fruitless siege of Damascus. The services which it rendered to Portugal were repeated by later crusaders. Crusaders from the Low Countries, England and the Scandinavian north took the coast route round western Europe; and it was natural that, landing for provisions and water, they should be asked, and should consent, to lend their aid to the natives against the Moors. Such aid is recorded to have been given on the Third and the Fifth Crusades.33Manuel was an ambitious sovereign, apparently aiming at a world-monarchy, such as was afterwards attempted from the other side by Henry VI. As Henry VI. had designs on Constantinople and the Eastern empire, so Manuel cherished the ambition of acquiring Italy and the Western empire, and he negotiated with Alexander III. to that end in 1167 and 1169: cf. the life of Alexander III. in Muratori,S. R. I.iii. 460.34The prize was won by Raynald of Chatillon (q.v.).35Nureddin, unlike his father, was definitely animated by a religious motive: he fought first and foremost against the Latins (and not, like his father, against Moslem states), and he did so as a matter of religious duty.36Henry II., as an Angevin, was the natural heir of the kingdom of Jerusalem on the extinction of the line descended from Fulk of Anjou. This explains the part played by Richard I. in deciding the question of the succession during the Third Crusade.37The taxation levied in the West was also attempted in the East, and in 1183 a universal tax was levied in the kingdom of Jerusalem, at the rate of 1% on movables and 2% on rents and revenues. Cf. Dr A. Cartellieri,Philipp II. August, ii. pp. 3-18 and p. 85.38Stevenson argues (op. cit. p. 240) that this truce was already practically dissolved before Raynald struck, and that Raynald’s “action may reasonably be viewed as the practical outcome of the feeling of a party.”39The “economic” motive for taking the cross was strengthened by the papal regulations in favour of debtors who joined the Crusade. Thousands must have joined the Third Crusade in order to escape paying either their taxes or the interest on their debts; and the atmosphere of the gold-digger’s camp (or of the cave of Adullam) must have begun more than ever to characterize the crusading armies.40The Crusades in their course established a number of new states or kingdoms. The First Crusade established the kingdom of Jerusalem (1100); the Third, the kingdom of Cyprus (1195); the Fourth, the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204); while the long Crusade of the Teutonic knights on the coast of the Baltic led to the rise of a new state east of the Vistula. The kingdom of Lesser Armenia, established in 1195, may also be regarded as a result of the Crusades. The history of the kingdom of Jerusalem is part of the history of the Crusades: the history of the other kingdoms or states touches the history of the Crusades less vitally. But the history of Cyprus is particularly important—and for two reasons. In the first place, Cyprus was a natural and excellent basis of operations; it sent provisions to the crusaders in 1191, and again at the siege of Damietta in 1219, while its advantages as a strategic basis were proved by the exploits of Peter of Cyprus in the 14th century. In the second place, as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem fell, its institutions and assizes were transplanted bodily to Cyprus, where they survived until the island was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. But the monarchy was stronger in Cyprus than in Jerusalem: the fiefs were distributed by the monarch, and were smaller in extent; while the feudatories had neither the collective powers of the haute cour of Jerusalem, nor the individual privileges (such as jurisdiction over the bourgeoisie), which had been enjoyed by the feudatories of the old kingdom. Till 1489 the kingdom of Cyprus survived as an independent monarchy, and its capital, Famagusta, was an important centre of trade after the loss of the coast-towns in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1489 it was acquired by Venice, which claimed the island on the death of the last king, having adopted his widow (a Venetian lady named Catarina Cornaro) as a daughter of the republic. On the history of Cyprus, see Stubbs,Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, 156-208. The history of the kingdom of Armenia is closely connected with that of Cyprus. The Armenians in the south-east of Asia Minor borrowed feudal institutions from the Franks and the feudal vocabulary itself. The kingdom was involved in a struggle with Antioch in the early part of the 13th century. Later, it allied itself with the Mongols and fought against the Mamelukes, to whom, however, it finally succumbed in 1375.41The kingdom of Jerusalem is thus from 1192 to its final fall a strip of coast, to which it is the object of kings and crusaders to annex Jerusalem and a line of communication connecting it with the coast. This was practically the aim of Richard I.’s negotiations; and this was what Frederick II. for a time secured.42M. Luchaire, in the volume of his biography of Innocent III. calledLa Question d’Orient, shows how, in spite of the pope, the Fourth Crusade was in its very beginnings a lay enterprise. The crusading barons of France chose their own leader, and determined their own route, without consulting Innocent.43As a matter of fact, there is some doubt whether Alexius arrived in Germany before the spring of 1202. But there seems to be little doubt of Philip’s complicity in the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople (cf. M. Luchaire,La Question d’Orient, pp. 84-86).44It is true that in 1208 Venice received commercial concessions from the court of Cairo. But thisex post factoargument is the sole proof of this view; and it is quite insufficient to prove the accusation. Venice isnotthe primary agent in the deflection of the Fourth Crusade.45Already under Innocent III. the benefits of the Crusade were promised to those who went to the assistance of the Latin empire of the East.46In 1208 Innocent excommunicated Raymund VI. of Toulouse on account of the murder of a papal legate who was attempting to suppress Manichaeism, and offered all Catholics the right to occupy and guard his territories. Thus was begun the First Crusade against heresy. Raymund at once submitted to the pope, but the Crusade continued none the less, because, as Luchaire says, “the baronage of the north and centre of France had finished their preparations,” and were resolved to annex the rich lands of the south. In this way land-hunger exploited the Albigensian, as political and commercial motives had helped to exploit the Fourth Crusade; and in the former, as in the latter, Innocent had reluctantly to consent to the results of the secular motives which had infected a spiritual enterprise. The Albigensian Crusades, however, belong to French history; and it can only be noted here that their ultimate result was the absorption of the fertile lands, and the extinction of the peculiar civilization, of southern France by the northern monarchy. (See the articleAlbigenses.)47A canon of the third Lateran council (1179) forbade traffic with the Saracens in munitions of war; and this canon had been renewed by Innocent in the beginning of his pontificate.48He had promised the pope, at his coronation in 1220, to begin his Crusade in August 1221. But he declared himself exhausted by the expenses of his coronation; and Honorius III. consented to defer his Crusade until March 1222. The letter of the pope informing Pelagius of this delay is dated the 20th of June: it would probably reach his handsafterhis departure from Damietta; and thus the Cardinal gave the signal for the march, when, as he thought, the emperor’s coming was imminent.49Joinville, ch. x.50John of Brienne had only ruled in right of his wife Mary. On her death (1212) John might be regarded as only ruling “by the courtesy of the kingdom” until her daughter Isabella was married, when the husband would succeed. That, at any rate, was the view Frederick II. took.51Amalric I. of Cyprus had done homage to Henry VI., from whom he had received the title of king (1195).52It may be argued that the Crusade against a revolted Christian like Frederick II. was not misplaced, and that the pope had a true sense of religious values when he attacked Frederick. The answer is partly that men like St Louisdidthink that the Crusade was misplaced, and partly that Frederick was really attackednotas a revolted Christian, but as the would-be unifier of Italy, the enemy of the states of the church.53The following table of the Ayyubite rulers serves to illustrate the text:—54Though Europe indulged in dreams of Mongol aid, the eventual results of the extension of the Mongol Empire were prejudicial to the Latin East. The sultans of Egypt were stirred to fresh activity by the attacks of the Mongols; and as Syria became the battleground of the two, the Latin principalities of Syria were fated to fall as the prize of victory to one or other of the combatants.55Of the four Latin principalities of the East, Edessa was the first to fall, being extinguished between 1144 and 1150. Antioch fell in 1268; Tripoli in 1289; and the kingdom itself may be said to end with the capture of Acre, 1291.56Michael Palaeologus had actually appealed to Louis IX. against Charles of Anjou, who in 1270 had actively begun preparations for the attack on Constantinople.57The dream of a Crusade to Jerusalem survived de Mézières; a society which read “romaunts” of the Crusades, could not but dream the dream. Henry V., whose father had fought with the Teutonic knights on the Baltic, dreamed of a voyage to Jerusalem.58The union of 1274, conceded by the Palaeologi at the council of Lyons in order to defeat the plans of Charles of Anjou, had only been temporary.59Bréhier,L’Église el l’Orient, p. 347.60Cambridge Modern History, i. 11. It is perhaps worth remarking that something of the old crusading spirit seems still to linger in the movement of Russia towards Constantinople.61While from this point of view the Crusades appear as a failure, it must not be forgotten that elsewhere than in the East Crusades did attain some success. A Crusade won for Christianity the coast of the eastern Baltic (seeTeutonic Order); and the centuries of the Spanish Crusade ended in the conquest of the whole of Spain for Christianity.62Authors like Heeren (Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge) and Michaud (in the last volume of hisHistoire des croisades) fall into the error of assigning all things to the Crusades. Even Prutz, in hisKulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge, over-estimates the influence of the Crusades as a chapter in the history of civilization. He depreciates unduly the Western civilization of the early middle ages, and exalts the civilization of the Arabs; and starting from these two premises, he concludes that modern civilization is the offspring of the Crusades, which first brought East and West together.63It is difficult to decide how far Arabic models influenced ecclesiastical architecture in the West as a result of the Crusades. Greater freedom of moulding and the use of trefoil and cinquefoil may be, but need not be, explained in this way. The pointed arch owes nothing to the Arabs; it is already used in England in early Norman work. Generally, one may say that Western architecture is independent of the East.64His somewhat legendary treatise,De liberatione civitatum Orientis, was only composed about 1155.65There is also anInventaire critiqueof these letters by the comte de Riant (Paris, 1880).66Von Sybel’s view must be modified by that of Kugler, to which a scholar like Hagenmeyer has to some extent given his adhesion (cf. his edition of theGesta, pp. 62-68). Hagenmeyer inclines to believe in an original author, distinct from Albert the copyist; and he thinks that this original author (whether or no he was present during the Crusade) used theGestaand also Fulcher, though he had probably also “eigene Notizen und Aufzeichnungen.”67See Pigonneau,Le Cycle de la croisade, &c. (Paris, 1877); and Hagenmeyer,Peter der Eremite(Leipzig, 1879).68On the bibliography of the Second Crusade see Kugler,Studien zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzüges(Stuttgart, 1866).69Of these writers see Archer’sCrusade of Richard I., Appendix (in Nutt’s series of Histories from Contemporary Writers).70The bibliography of the Fourth Crusade is discussed in Klimke,Die Quellen zur Geschichte des vierten Kreuzzüges(Breslau, 1875).
1Fulcher of Chartres, 1, i. For what follows, with regard to the Church’s conversion ofguerrainto the Holy War, cf. especially the passage—“Procedant contra infideles ad pugnam jam incipi dignam ... qui abusiveprivatum certamencontra fideles consuescebant distendere quondam.”
2Tradition credits a pope still earlier than Gregory VII. with the idea of a crusade. Silvester II. is said to have preached a general expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem; and the same preaching is attributed to Sergius IV. in 1011. But the supposed letter of Silvester is a later forgery; and in 1000 the way of the Christian to Jerusalem was still free and open.
3The comte de Riant impugned the authenticity of Alexius’ letter to the count of Flanders. It is very probable that the versions of this letter which we possess, and which are to be found only in later writings like Guibert de Nogent, are apocryphal; Alexius can hardly have held out the bait of the beauty of Greek women, or have written that he preferred to fall under the yoke of the Latins rather than that of the Turks. But it is also probable that these apocryphal versions are based on a genuine original.
4Ekkehard,Chronica, p. 213.
5TheChanson de Roland, which cannot be posterior to the First Crusade—for the poem never alludes to it—already contains the idea of the Holy War against Islam. The idea of the crusade had thus already ripened in French poetry, before Urban preached his sermon.
6Book i. c. iii. (in Muratori,S.R.I., v. 550).
7Ekkehard,Chronica, 214.
8Later legend ascribed the origin of the First Crusade to the preaching of Peter the Hermit. The legend has been followed by modern historians; but in point of fact Peter is a figure of secondary importance.(SeePeter the Hermit.)
9Godfrey’s army numbered some 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry (Röhricht,Erst. Kreuzz.61): Urban II. reckons Bohemund’s knights as 7000 in number (ibid.71, n. 7).
10The Genoese had been invited by Urban II. in September 1096 “to go with their gallies to Eastern parts in order to set free the path to the Lord’s Sepulchre.”
11Thus already on the First Crusade the path of negotiation is attempted simultaneously with the Holy War. On the Third Crusade, and above all on the Sixth, this path was still more seriously attempted. It is interesting, too, to notice the part which the laity already plays in directing the course of the Crusade. From the first the Crusade, however clerical in its conception, was largely secular in its conduct; and thus, somewhat paradoxically, a religious enterprise aided the growth of the secular motive, and contributed to the escape of the laity from that tendency towards a papal theocracy, which was evident in the pontificate of Gregory VII.
12Before he left, Raymund had played in Jerusalem the same part of dog in the manger which he had also played at Antioch, and had given Godfrey considerable trouble. See the articles,Godfrey of BouillonandRaymund of Toulouse.
13For an account of the kings of Jerusalem see the articles on the fiveBaldwins, on the twoAmalrics, onFulkandJohn of Brienneand on theLusignan(family).
14The genuineness of the letter (on which, by the way, depends the story of Godfrey’s agreement with Dagobert) has been impeached by Prutz and Kugler, and doubted by Röhricht. It is accepted by von Sybel and Hagenmeyer.
15Yet the north always continued to be more populous than the south; and the Latins maintained themselves in Antioch and Tripoli a century after the loss of Jerusalem. The land was richer in the north: it was protected by its connexion with Cyprus and Armenia: it was more remote from Egypt—the basis of Mahommedan power from the reign of Saladin onwards.
16Pisa naturally connected itself with Antioch, because Antioch was hostile to Constantinople, and Pisa cherished the same hostility, since Alexius I. had in 1080 given preferential treatment to Venice, the enemy of Pisa.
17This is the year in which the kingdom may be regarded as definitely founded. The period of conquest practically ends at this date, though isolated gains were afterwards made. The year 1110 is additionally important by reason of the accession of Maudud al Mosul, which marks the beginning of a Moslem reaction.
18Ilghazi died in 1122. His successor was Balak, who ruled from 1122 to 1124, and succeeded in capturing in 1123 Baldwin II. of Jerusalem. The union of Mardin and Aleppo under the sway of these two amirs, connecting as it did Mesopotamia with Syria, marks an important stage in the revival of Mahommedan power (Stevenson,Crusades in the East, p. 109).
19Maudud (the brother of the sultan Mahommed) may be regarded as the first to begin thejihad, or counter-crusade, and his attack expedition of 1113, which carried him so far into the heart of Palestine, may be considered as the first act of thejihad(Stevenson, op. cit. pp. 87, 96).
20Aleppo had passed from the rule of Timurtash (son of Ilghazi and successor of Balak) into the possession of Aksunkur, 1125.
21Stevenson, however, believes that Zengi wasnotanimated by the idea of recovering Jerusalem. He thinks that his principal aim was simply the formation of a compact Mahommedan state, which was, indeed, in the issue destined to be the instrument of thejihad, but was not so intended by Zengi (op. cit. pp. 123-124).
22There are certain connexions and analogies between the kingdom of Sicily and that of Jerusalem during the twelfth century. In either case there is an importation of Western feudalism into a country originally possessed of Byzantine institutions, but affected by an Arabic occupation. The subject deserves investigation.
23The holders of fiefs (sodeers) both held fiefs of land and received pay; the paid force ofsoudoyersonly received pay. An instance of the latter is furnished by John of Margat, a vassal of the seignory of Arsuf. He has 200 bezants along with a quantity of wheat, barley, lentils and oil; and in return he must march with four horses (Rey,Les Colonies franques en Syrie, p. 24).
24For the history of the orders see the articles on theTemplars;St John of Jerusalem, Knights of;Knights, and theTeutonic Order. The Templars were founded about the year 1118 by a Burgundian knight, Hugh de Paganis; the Hospitallers sprang from a foundation in Jerusalem erected by merchants of Amalfi before the First Crusade, and were reorganized under Gerard le Puy, master until 1120. The Teutonic knights date from the Third Crusade.
25As was noticed above, there were apparently separate assizes for the three principalities, in addition to the assizes of the kingdom. The assizes of Antioch have been discovered and published. The assizes of the kingdom itself are twofold—the assizes of the high court and the assizes of the court of burgesses. (1) The assizes of the high court are preserved for us in works by legists—John of Ibelin, Philip of Novara and Geoffrey of Tort—composed in the 13th century. We possess, in other words,law-books(like Bracton’s treatiseDe legibus), but notlaws—and law-books made after the loss of the kingdom to which the laws belonged. There are two vexed questions with regard to these law-books. (a) The first concerns the origin and character of the laws which the law-books profess to expound. According to the story of the legists who wrote these books—e.g.John of Ibelin—the laws of the kingdom were laid down by Godfrey, who is thus regarded as the greatνομοθέτηςof the kingdom. These laws (progressively modified, it is admitted) were kept in Jerusalem, under the name of “Letters of the Sepulchre,” until 1187. In that year they were lost; and the legists tell us that they are attempting to reconstructpar oir direthe gist of the lost archetype. The story of the legists is now generally rejected. Godfrey never legislated: the customs of the kingdom gradually grew, and were gradually defined, especially under kings like Baldwin III. and Amalric I. If there was thus only a customary and unwritten law (and William of Tyre definitely speaks of ajus consuetudinariumunder Baldwin III.,quo regnum regebatur), then the “Letters of the Sepulchre” are a myth—or rather, if they ever existed, they existed not as a code of written law, but, perhaps, as a register of fiefs, like the SicilianDefetarii. Thus the story of the legists shrinks down to the regular myth of the primitive legislator, used to give an air of respectability to law-books, which really record an unwritten custom. The fact is that until the 13th century the Franks livedconsuetudinibus antiquis et jure non scripto. They preferred an unwritten law, as Prutz suggests, partly because it suited the barristers (who often belonged to the baronage, for the Frankish nobles were “great pleaders in court and out of court”), and partly because the high court was left unbound so long as there was no written code. In the 13th century it became necessary for the legists to codify, as it were, the unwritten law, because the upheavals of the times necessitated the fixing of some rules in writing, and especially because it was necessary to oppose a definite custom of the kingdom to Frederick II., who sought, as king of Jerusalem, to take advantage of the want of a written law, to substitute his own conceptions of law in the teeth of the high court. (b) The second difficulty concerns the text of the law-books themselves. The text of Ibelin became atextus receptus—but it also became overlaid by glosses, for it was used as authoritative in the kingdom of Cyprus after the loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and it needed expounding. Recensions and revisions were twice made, in 1368 and 1531; but how far the true Ibelin was recovered, and what additions or alterations were made at these two dates, we cannot tell. We can only say that we have the text of Ibelin which was used in Cyprus in the later middle ages. At the same time, if our text is thus late, it must be remembered that its content gives us the earliest and purest exposition of French feudalism, and describes for us the organization of a kingdom, where all rights and duties were connected with the fief, and the monarch was only a suzerain of feudatories. (2) The assizes of the court of burgesses became the basis of a treatise at an earlier date than the assizes of the high court. The date of the redaction (which was probably made by some learned burgess) may well have been the reign of Baldwin III., as Kugler suggests: he was the first native king, and a king learned in the law; but Beugnot would refer the assizes to the years immediately preceding Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem. These assizes do not, of course, appear in Ibelin, who was only concerned with the feudal law of the high court. They were used, like the assizes of the high court, in Cyprus; and, like the other assizes, they were made the subject of investigation in 1531, with the object of discovering a good text. The law which is expounded in these assizes is a mixture of Frankish law with the Graeco-Roman law of the Eastern empire which prevailed among the native population of Syria.
In regard to both assizes, it is most important to bear in mind that we possess not laws, but law-books or custumals—records made by lawyers for their fellows of what they conceived to be the law, and supported by legal arguments and citations of cases. But, as Prutz remarks, Philip of Novaralehrt nicht die Wissenschaft des Rechts, sondern die des Unrechts: he does not explain the law so much as the ways of getting round it.
26For instance, the abbey of Mount Sion had large possessions, not only in the Holy Land (at Ascalon, Jaffa, Acre, Tyre, Caesarea and Tarsus), but also in Sicily, Calabria, Lombardy, Spain and France (at Orleans, Bourges and Poitiers).
27One must remember that these reinforcements would often consist of desperate characters. It was one of the misfortunes of Palestine that it served as a Botany Bay, to which the criminals of the West were transported for penance. The natives, already prone to the immorality which must infect a mixed population living under a hot sun, the immorality which still infects a place like Aden, were not improved by the addition of convicts.
28The manorial system in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was a continuation of the village system as it had existed under the Arabs. In each village (casale)therusticiwere grouped in families (foci): the tenants paid from ¼ to1⁄3of the crop, besides a poll-tax and labour-dues. The villages were mostly inhabited by Syrians: it was rarely that Franks settled down as tillers of the soil. Prutz regards the manorial system as oppressive. Absentee landlords, he thinks, rack-rented the soil (p. 167), while the “inhuman severity” of their treatment of villeins led to a progressive decay of agriculture, destroyed the economic basis of the Latin kingdom, and led the natives to welcome the invasion of Saladin (pp. 327-331).
The French writers Rey and Dodu are more kind to the Franks; and the testimony of contemporary Arabic writers, who seem favourably impressed by the treatment of their subjects by the Franks, bears out their view, while the tone of the assizes is admittedly favourable to the Syrians. One must not forget that there was a brisk native manufacture of carpets, pottery, ironwork, gold-work and soap; or that the Syrians of the towns had a definite legal position.
29After 1143 one may therefore speak of the period of the Epigoni—the native Franks, ready to view the Moslems as joint occupants of Syria, and to imitate the dress and habits of their neighbours.
30Doubt has been cast on the view that a troubled conscience drove Louis to take the cross; and his action has been ascribed to simple religious zeal (cf. Lavisse,Histoire de France, iii. 12).
31We speak of First, Second and Third Crusades, but, more exactly, the Crusades were one continuous process. Scarcely a year passed in which new bands did not come to the Holy Land. We have already noticed the great if disastrous Crusade of 1100-1101, and the Venetian Crusade of 1123-1124; and we may also refer to the Crusade of Henry the Lion in 1172, and to that of Edward I. in 1271-1272—all famous Crusades, which are not reckoned in the usual numbering. Crusades appear to have been dignified by numbers when they followed some crushing disaster—the loss of Edessa in 1144, or the fall of Jerusalem in 1187—and were led by kings and emperors; or when, like the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, they achieved some conspicuous success or failure. But it is important to bear in mind the continuity of the Crusades—the constant flow of new forces eastward and back again westward; for this alone explains why the Crusades formed a great epoch in civilization, familiarizing, as they did, the West with the East.
32This body of crusaders ultimately reached the Holy Land, where it joined Conrad (who had lost his own original forces), and helped in the fruitless siege of Damascus. The services which it rendered to Portugal were repeated by later crusaders. Crusaders from the Low Countries, England and the Scandinavian north took the coast route round western Europe; and it was natural that, landing for provisions and water, they should be asked, and should consent, to lend their aid to the natives against the Moors. Such aid is recorded to have been given on the Third and the Fifth Crusades.
33Manuel was an ambitious sovereign, apparently aiming at a world-monarchy, such as was afterwards attempted from the other side by Henry VI. As Henry VI. had designs on Constantinople and the Eastern empire, so Manuel cherished the ambition of acquiring Italy and the Western empire, and he negotiated with Alexander III. to that end in 1167 and 1169: cf. the life of Alexander III. in Muratori,S. R. I.iii. 460.
34The prize was won by Raynald of Chatillon (q.v.).
35Nureddin, unlike his father, was definitely animated by a religious motive: he fought first and foremost against the Latins (and not, like his father, against Moslem states), and he did so as a matter of religious duty.
36Henry II., as an Angevin, was the natural heir of the kingdom of Jerusalem on the extinction of the line descended from Fulk of Anjou. This explains the part played by Richard I. in deciding the question of the succession during the Third Crusade.
37The taxation levied in the West was also attempted in the East, and in 1183 a universal tax was levied in the kingdom of Jerusalem, at the rate of 1% on movables and 2% on rents and revenues. Cf. Dr A. Cartellieri,Philipp II. August, ii. pp. 3-18 and p. 85.
38Stevenson argues (op. cit. p. 240) that this truce was already practically dissolved before Raynald struck, and that Raynald’s “action may reasonably be viewed as the practical outcome of the feeling of a party.”
39The “economic” motive for taking the cross was strengthened by the papal regulations in favour of debtors who joined the Crusade. Thousands must have joined the Third Crusade in order to escape paying either their taxes or the interest on their debts; and the atmosphere of the gold-digger’s camp (or of the cave of Adullam) must have begun more than ever to characterize the crusading armies.
40The Crusades in their course established a number of new states or kingdoms. The First Crusade established the kingdom of Jerusalem (1100); the Third, the kingdom of Cyprus (1195); the Fourth, the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204); while the long Crusade of the Teutonic knights on the coast of the Baltic led to the rise of a new state east of the Vistula. The kingdom of Lesser Armenia, established in 1195, may also be regarded as a result of the Crusades. The history of the kingdom of Jerusalem is part of the history of the Crusades: the history of the other kingdoms or states touches the history of the Crusades less vitally. But the history of Cyprus is particularly important—and for two reasons. In the first place, Cyprus was a natural and excellent basis of operations; it sent provisions to the crusaders in 1191, and again at the siege of Damietta in 1219, while its advantages as a strategic basis were proved by the exploits of Peter of Cyprus in the 14th century. In the second place, as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem fell, its institutions and assizes were transplanted bodily to Cyprus, where they survived until the island was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. But the monarchy was stronger in Cyprus than in Jerusalem: the fiefs were distributed by the monarch, and were smaller in extent; while the feudatories had neither the collective powers of the haute cour of Jerusalem, nor the individual privileges (such as jurisdiction over the bourgeoisie), which had been enjoyed by the feudatories of the old kingdom. Till 1489 the kingdom of Cyprus survived as an independent monarchy, and its capital, Famagusta, was an important centre of trade after the loss of the coast-towns in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1489 it was acquired by Venice, which claimed the island on the death of the last king, having adopted his widow (a Venetian lady named Catarina Cornaro) as a daughter of the republic. On the history of Cyprus, see Stubbs,Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, 156-208. The history of the kingdom of Armenia is closely connected with that of Cyprus. The Armenians in the south-east of Asia Minor borrowed feudal institutions from the Franks and the feudal vocabulary itself. The kingdom was involved in a struggle with Antioch in the early part of the 13th century. Later, it allied itself with the Mongols and fought against the Mamelukes, to whom, however, it finally succumbed in 1375.
41The kingdom of Jerusalem is thus from 1192 to its final fall a strip of coast, to which it is the object of kings and crusaders to annex Jerusalem and a line of communication connecting it with the coast. This was practically the aim of Richard I.’s negotiations; and this was what Frederick II. for a time secured.
42M. Luchaire, in the volume of his biography of Innocent III. calledLa Question d’Orient, shows how, in spite of the pope, the Fourth Crusade was in its very beginnings a lay enterprise. The crusading barons of France chose their own leader, and determined their own route, without consulting Innocent.
43As a matter of fact, there is some doubt whether Alexius arrived in Germany before the spring of 1202. But there seems to be little doubt of Philip’s complicity in the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople (cf. M. Luchaire,La Question d’Orient, pp. 84-86).
44It is true that in 1208 Venice received commercial concessions from the court of Cairo. But thisex post factoargument is the sole proof of this view; and it is quite insufficient to prove the accusation. Venice isnotthe primary agent in the deflection of the Fourth Crusade.
45Already under Innocent III. the benefits of the Crusade were promised to those who went to the assistance of the Latin empire of the East.
46In 1208 Innocent excommunicated Raymund VI. of Toulouse on account of the murder of a papal legate who was attempting to suppress Manichaeism, and offered all Catholics the right to occupy and guard his territories. Thus was begun the First Crusade against heresy. Raymund at once submitted to the pope, but the Crusade continued none the less, because, as Luchaire says, “the baronage of the north and centre of France had finished their preparations,” and were resolved to annex the rich lands of the south. In this way land-hunger exploited the Albigensian, as political and commercial motives had helped to exploit the Fourth Crusade; and in the former, as in the latter, Innocent had reluctantly to consent to the results of the secular motives which had infected a spiritual enterprise. The Albigensian Crusades, however, belong to French history; and it can only be noted here that their ultimate result was the absorption of the fertile lands, and the extinction of the peculiar civilization, of southern France by the northern monarchy. (See the articleAlbigenses.)
47A canon of the third Lateran council (1179) forbade traffic with the Saracens in munitions of war; and this canon had been renewed by Innocent in the beginning of his pontificate.
48He had promised the pope, at his coronation in 1220, to begin his Crusade in August 1221. But he declared himself exhausted by the expenses of his coronation; and Honorius III. consented to defer his Crusade until March 1222. The letter of the pope informing Pelagius of this delay is dated the 20th of June: it would probably reach his handsafterhis departure from Damietta; and thus the Cardinal gave the signal for the march, when, as he thought, the emperor’s coming was imminent.
49Joinville, ch. x.
50John of Brienne had only ruled in right of his wife Mary. On her death (1212) John might be regarded as only ruling “by the courtesy of the kingdom” until her daughter Isabella was married, when the husband would succeed. That, at any rate, was the view Frederick II. took.
51Amalric I. of Cyprus had done homage to Henry VI., from whom he had received the title of king (1195).
52It may be argued that the Crusade against a revolted Christian like Frederick II. was not misplaced, and that the pope had a true sense of religious values when he attacked Frederick. The answer is partly that men like St Louisdidthink that the Crusade was misplaced, and partly that Frederick was really attackednotas a revolted Christian, but as the would-be unifier of Italy, the enemy of the states of the church.
53The following table of the Ayyubite rulers serves to illustrate the text:—
54Though Europe indulged in dreams of Mongol aid, the eventual results of the extension of the Mongol Empire were prejudicial to the Latin East. The sultans of Egypt were stirred to fresh activity by the attacks of the Mongols; and as Syria became the battleground of the two, the Latin principalities of Syria were fated to fall as the prize of victory to one or other of the combatants.
55Of the four Latin principalities of the East, Edessa was the first to fall, being extinguished between 1144 and 1150. Antioch fell in 1268; Tripoli in 1289; and the kingdom itself may be said to end with the capture of Acre, 1291.
56Michael Palaeologus had actually appealed to Louis IX. against Charles of Anjou, who in 1270 had actively begun preparations for the attack on Constantinople.
57The dream of a Crusade to Jerusalem survived de Mézières; a society which read “romaunts” of the Crusades, could not but dream the dream. Henry V., whose father had fought with the Teutonic knights on the Baltic, dreamed of a voyage to Jerusalem.
58The union of 1274, conceded by the Palaeologi at the council of Lyons in order to defeat the plans of Charles of Anjou, had only been temporary.
59Bréhier,L’Église el l’Orient, p. 347.
60Cambridge Modern History, i. 11. It is perhaps worth remarking that something of the old crusading spirit seems still to linger in the movement of Russia towards Constantinople.
61While from this point of view the Crusades appear as a failure, it must not be forgotten that elsewhere than in the East Crusades did attain some success. A Crusade won for Christianity the coast of the eastern Baltic (seeTeutonic Order); and the centuries of the Spanish Crusade ended in the conquest of the whole of Spain for Christianity.
62Authors like Heeren (Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge) and Michaud (in the last volume of hisHistoire des croisades) fall into the error of assigning all things to the Crusades. Even Prutz, in hisKulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge, over-estimates the influence of the Crusades as a chapter in the history of civilization. He depreciates unduly the Western civilization of the early middle ages, and exalts the civilization of the Arabs; and starting from these two premises, he concludes that modern civilization is the offspring of the Crusades, which first brought East and West together.
63It is difficult to decide how far Arabic models influenced ecclesiastical architecture in the West as a result of the Crusades. Greater freedom of moulding and the use of trefoil and cinquefoil may be, but need not be, explained in this way. The pointed arch owes nothing to the Arabs; it is already used in England in early Norman work. Generally, one may say that Western architecture is independent of the East.
64His somewhat legendary treatise,De liberatione civitatum Orientis, was only composed about 1155.
65There is also anInventaire critiqueof these letters by the comte de Riant (Paris, 1880).
66Von Sybel’s view must be modified by that of Kugler, to which a scholar like Hagenmeyer has to some extent given his adhesion (cf. his edition of theGesta, pp. 62-68). Hagenmeyer inclines to believe in an original author, distinct from Albert the copyist; and he thinks that this original author (whether or no he was present during the Crusade) used theGestaand also Fulcher, though he had probably also “eigene Notizen und Aufzeichnungen.”
67See Pigonneau,Le Cycle de la croisade, &c. (Paris, 1877); and Hagenmeyer,Peter der Eremite(Leipzig, 1879).
68On the bibliography of the Second Crusade see Kugler,Studien zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzüges(Stuttgart, 1866).
69Of these writers see Archer’sCrusade of Richard I., Appendix (in Nutt’s series of Histories from Contemporary Writers).
70The bibliography of the Fourth Crusade is discussed in Klimke,Die Quellen zur Geschichte des vierten Kreuzzüges(Breslau, 1875).
CRUSENSTOLPE, MAGNUS JAKOB(1795-1865), Swedish historian, early became famous both as a political and a historical writer. His first important work was aHistory of the Early Years of the Life of King Gustavus IV. Adolphus, which was followed by a series of monographs and by some politico-historical novels, of whichThe House of Holstein-Gottorp in Swedenis considered the best. He obtained a great influence over King Charles XIV. (Bernadotte), who during the years 1830-1833 gave him his fullest confidence, and sanctioned the official character of Crusenstolpe’s newspaperFäderneslandet. In the last-mentioned year, however, the historian suddenly became the king’s bitterest enemy, and used his acrid pen on all occasions in attacking him. In 1838 he was condemned, for one of these angry utterances, to be imprisoned three years in the castle of Waxholm. He continued his literary labours until his death in 1865. Few Swedish writers have wielded so pure and so incisive a style as Crusenstolpe, but his historical work is vitiated by political and personal bias.
CRUSIUS, CHRISTIAN AUGUST(1715-1775), German philosopher and theologian, was born on the 10th of January 1715 at Lenau near Merseburg in Saxony. He was educated at Leipzig, and became professor of theology there in 1750, and principal of the university in 1773. He died on the 18th of October 1775. Crusius first came into notice as an opponent of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff from the standpoint of religious orthodoxy. He attacked it mainly on the score of the moral evils that must flow from any system of determinism, and exerted himself in particular to vindicate the freedom of the will. The most important works of this period of his life areEntwurf der nothwendigen Vernunftwahrheiten(1745), andWeg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen Erkenntniss(1747). Though diffusely written, and neither brilliant nor profound, Crusius’ philosophical books had a great but short-lived popularity. His criticism of Wolff, which is generally based on sound sense, had much influence upon Kant at the time when his system was forming; and his ethical doctrines are mentioned with respect in theKritik of Practical Reason. Crusius’s later life was devoted to theology. In this capacity his sincere piety and amiable character gained him great influence, and he led the party in the university which became known as the “Crusianer” as opposed to the “Ernestianer,” the followers of J. A. Ernesti. The two professors adopted opposite methods of exegesis. Ernesti wished to subject the Scripture to the same laws of exposition as are applied to other ancient books; Crusius held firmly to orthodox ecclesiastical tradition. Crusius’s chief theological works areHypomnemata ad theologiam propheticam(1764-1778), andKurzer Entwurf der Moraltheologie(1772-1773). He sets his face against innovation in such matters as the accepted authorship of canonical writings, verbal inspiration, and the treatment of persons and events in the Old Testament as types of the New. His views, unscholarly and uncritical as they seem to us now, have had influence on later evangelical students of the Old Testament, such as E. W. Hengstenberg and F. Delitzsch.
There is a full notice of Crusius in Ersch and Gruber’sAllgemeine Encyclopädie. Consult also J. E. Erdmann’sHistory of Philosophy; A. Marquardt,Kant und Crusius; and art. in Herzog-Hauck,Realencyklopädie(1898).
There is a full notice of Crusius in Ersch and Gruber’sAllgemeine Encyclopädie. Consult also J. E. Erdmann’sHistory of Philosophy; A. Marquardt,Kant und Crusius; and art. in Herzog-Hauck,Realencyklopädie(1898).
(H. St.)
CRUSTACEA,a very large division of the animal kingdom, comprising the familiar crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimps and prawns, the sandhoppers and woodlice, the strangely modified barnacles and the minute water-fleas. Besides these the group also includes a multitude of related forms which, from theiraquatic habits and generally inconspicuous size, and from the fact that they are commonly neither edible nor noxious, are little known except to naturalists and are undistinguished by any popular names. Collectively, they are ranked as one of the classes forming the sub-phylumArthropoda, and their distinguishing characters are discussed under that heading. It will be sufficient here to define them as Arthropoda for the most part of aquatic habits, having typically two pairs of antenniform appendages in front of the mouth and at least three pairs of post-oral limbs acting as jaws.
As a matter of fact, however, the range of structural variation within the group is so wide, and the modifications due to parasitism and other causes are so profound, that it is almost impossible to frame a definition which shall be applicable to all the members of the class. In certain parasites, for instance, the adults have lost every trace not only of Crustacean but even of Arthropodous structure, and the only clue to their zoological position is that afforded by the study of their development. In point of size also the Crustacea vary within very wide limits. Certain water-fleas (Cladocera) fall short of one-hundredth of an inch in total length; the giant Japanese crab (Macrocheira) can span over 10 ft. between its outstretched claws.
The habits of the Crustacea are no less diversified than their structure. Most of them inhabit the sea, but representatives of all the chief groups are found in fresh water (though the Cirripedia have hardly gained a footing there), and this is the chief home of the primitive Phyllopoda. A terrestrial habitat is less common, but the widely-distributed land Isopoda or woodlice and the land-crabs of tropical regions have solved the problem of adaptation to a subaërial life.
Swimming is perhaps the commonest mode of locomotion, but numerous forms have taken to creeping or walking, and the robber-crab (Birgus latro) of the Indo-Pacific islands even climbs palm-trees. None has the power of flight, though certain pelagic Copepoda are said to leap from the surface of the sea like flying-fish. Apart from the numerous parasitic forms, the only Crustacea which have adopted a strictly sedentary habit of life are the Cirripedia, and here, as elsewhere, profound modifications of structure have resulted, leading ultimately to a partial assumption of the radial type of symmetry which is so often associated with a sedentary life.
Many, perhaps the majority, of the Crustacea are omnivorous or carrion-feeders, but many are actively predatory in their habits, and are provided with more or less complex and efficient instruments for capturing their prey, and there are also many plant-eaters. Besides the sedentary Cirripedia, numbers of the smaller forms, especially among the Entomostraca, subsist on floating particles of organic matter swept within reach of the jaws by the movements of the other limbs.
Symbiotic association with other animals, in varying degrees of interdependence, is frequent. Sometimes the one partner affords the other merely a convenient means of transport, as in the case of the barnacles which grow on, or of the gulf-weed crab which clings to, the carapace of marine turtles. From this we may pass through various grades of “commensalism,” like that of the hermit-crab with its protective anemones, to the cases of actual parasitism. The parasitic habit is most common among the Copepoda and Isopoda, where it leads to complex modifications of structure and life-history. Perhaps the most complete degeneration is found in the Rhizocephala, which are parasitic on other Crustacea. In these the adult consists of a simple saccular body containing the reproductive organs and attached by root-like filaments which ramify throughout the body of the host and serve for the absorption of nourishment (fig. 1).
Many of the larger species of Crustacea are used as food by man, the most valuable being the lobster, which is caught in large quantities on both sides of the North Atlantic. Perhaps the most important of all Crustacea, however, with respect to the part which they play in the economy of nature, are the minute pelagic Copepoda, of which incalculable myriads form an important constituent of the “plankton” in all the seas of the globe. It is on the plankton that a great part of the higher animal life of the sea ultimately depends for food. The Copepoda live upon the diatoms and other important microscopic vegetable life at the surface of the sea, and in their turn serve as food for fishes and other larger forms and thus, indirectly, for man himself.
Historical Sketch.—In common with most branches of natural history, the science of Carcinology may be traced back to its beginnings in the writings of Aristotle. It received additions of varying importance at the hands of medieval and later naturalists, and first began to assume systematic form under the influence of Linnaeus. The application of the morphological method to the Crustacea may perhaps be dated from the work of J. C. Fabricius towards the end of the 18th century.
In the first quarter of the 19th century important advances in classification were made by P. A. Latreille, W. E. Leach and others, and J. Vaughan Thompson demonstrated the existence of metamorphosis in the development of the higher Crustacea. A new epoch may be said to begin with H. Milne-Edwards’ classicalHistoire naturelle des crustacés(1834-1840). It is noteworthy that even at this late date the Cirripedia (Thyrostraca) were still excluded from the Crustacea, though Darwin’s Monograph (1851-1854) was soon to make them known with a wealth of anatomical and systematic detail such as was available, at that time, for few other groups of Crustacea. About the same period three authors call for special mention, W. de Haan, J. D. Dana and H. Kröyer. The new impulse given to biological research by the publication of theOrigin of Speciesbore fruit in Fritz Müller’sFür Darwin, in which an attempt was made to reconstruct the phylogenetic history of the class. The same line of work was followed in the long series of important memoirs from the pen of K. F. W. Claus, and noteworthy contributions were made, among many others, by A. Dohrn, Ray Lankester and Huxley. In more recent years the long and constantly increasing list of writers on Crustacea contains no name more honoured than that of the veteran G. O. Sars of Christiania.
Morphology.