In a Fortress with the Crusaders

In February GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER made a private visit to the Holy Land. In the last in a series of six articles, he visits the Crusader city of Acre.

For salacious gossip of the kind that would make even our modern tabloid-readers blush, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was a good place to be.

To be sure, most of the Europeans who colonised the place were decent, God-fearing people whose purpose was to serve the Lord and the Church. So when some of them behaved badly, they would be held to account.

She (Melisende) was also a great supporter of the Catholic Church. In Bethany she founded a big convent and installed her sister as the abbess. Her father was so pious, he was said to have calluses on his knees from all the praying.

There was much piety, but also a lot of sleaze, powerplay and brutality. At the centre of much of it was the Fulk family of the House of Anjou. They provided a king, husband of the beautiful and allegedly not scrupulously chaste Queen Melisende.

King Fulk was a fairly decent man, but not all Fulks were of his character. Names like Black Fulk and Fulk the Deplorable don’t hint at sunny dispositions.

Melisende herself, daughter of King Baldwin II, was at the centre of much diplomatic intrigue, even involving the courts of Europe.

She was also a great supporter of the Catholic Church. In Bethany she founded a big convent and installed her sister as the abbess. Her father was so pious, he was said to have calluses on his knees from all the praying.

It was during Melisende’s reign, from 1131-53, that many Christian structures were built, including the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So the scandals of adultery, betrayal, greed and murder must not overshadow the genuine piety of many of the knights and soldiers who came from afar to the Holy Land. Graffiti on walls in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Acre and elsewhere, some bearing family heralds, testify to that.

The vows of chastity and obedience taken by the knights who joined the great orders showed devotion to Christ.

Not much is recorded about how the local Christians, most of them descendents of the first Christians more than a thousand years earlier, felt about the small but powerful group of Latin rulers. While the Crusader elites maintained European culture and spoke French, the indigenous Christians followed local traditions and spoke local languages. It seems the relationship was ambiguous.

Still, there was also some assimilation and inter-marriage — sometimes even between Latins and Muslims.

Crusaders and Islam

Outside Jerusalem, Muslims enjoyed relative freedom of religion, though they had been expelled from the Holy City, where the Dome of the Rock had been turned into a church and the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, for a time was used as a horse stable (Muslims had done likewise, and would do so again, with Christian churches, so the Crusaders were applying standard procedure).

The Crusader domain until the conquest by Saladin 1187 covered what we would now identify as Israel, the occupied West Bank, parts of western Jordan, and principalities in modern-day Lebanon, parts of north-western Syria and southern Turkey.

But Muslim rulers, including Saladin, also saw an upside to the Crusader presence in the region as it provided a gateway to lucrative trade with Europe, for which sophisticated systems were set up.

There were Muslim states around them, but these were fractured. Indeed, at times Christian knights would be fighting in alliances of convenience, or as mercenaries, with a Muslim army against another Muslim army, which in turn might also have Christian knights in their ranks. It was only when Nur ad-Din and his successor Saladin united these Muslims — by force or diplomacy — that the armies of Islam were ready to embark on their jihad of reconquest.

But Muslim rulers, including Saladin, also saw an upside to the Crusader presence in the region as it provided a gateway to lucrative trade with Europe, for which sophisticated systems were set up.

Before Saladin’s conquest, the two centres of Crusader rule were Jerusalem and the port city of Acre, both with populations of around 25000. Acre, named after the founder of the Knights Hospitallers, gets one mention in the Bible, as the town of Ptolemais which Paul and Luke visit in Acts 21:7.

The town’s history goes back to at least the Phoenicians, who called it Akko, the name locals use for the city even today. The Crusaders even reworked some remaining Phoenician structures, such as what probably was a lighthouse into a harbour watchtower, calling it the “Tower of Flies”.

For the Crusaders, Acre was the commercial hub. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, it also became the temporal capital and patriarchal seat. As a centre of import and export, it was a money-spinner. This single harbour, run by the Knights Templar, generated more revenue annually than the entire English crown together.

And the Templars knew how to handle money. They effectively invented modern banking by running 870 branches throughout Europe and the Levant where clients could pay funds into an account in one office and withdraw them from another. In an age of highway robbery, this ensured safer travels.

Before too long, the Templars offered loans—the interest of which were exempted from Church condemnation since it ostensibly went to godly purposes in the Holy Land.

Life with Crusaders

The remains of the Crusader compound in the citadel in Acre, now a splendid museum, provide a good idea of what life was like in the glory days of the Crusader era.

The compound was run by the Knights Hospitallers, the chivalric order that would morph into today’s Knights of Malta. At the centre of the Knights Hospitaller’s mission was to give health care to the people — regardless of religion — and to provide hospitality services for pilgrims, whose journey to the Holy Land was long and hazardous.

The crowning glory of the citadel is the refectory, or dining hall. With its mighty pillars, it was bombastic—quite in contrast to the humility with which the knights performed their service.

Everybody ate the same food and sat together in what was called, with no understatement, the “Magnificent Hall” — from the head of the order to the lowest-ranking soldier, as well as visitors such as pilgrims. In this egalitarian set-up, nobody was allowed, on pain of punishment, to leave until the last person had finished their meal.

In the distribution of food, priority was given to pilgrims and even hospital patients. Only once they were fed well could the brethren of the order receive whatever was left.

But not all of Acre was as selfless as the Knights Hospitallers. In fact, the city had a poor reputation for the population’s dissolute lifestyle, loose morals, mercantile venality, and a reluctance to commit resources and personnel for the defence of the holy shrines.

St Francis of Assisi, who passed through Acre during his journey to the Holy Land in 1219, must have been impressed by this show of humility and service.

These rules also applied to the Knights Hospitallers’ institutions in Jerusalem. Indeed, so good and so effective was their service that when the Crusaders were expelled from Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitallers were asked to stay on for a while.

But not all of Acre was as selfless as the Knights Hospitallers. In fact, the city had a poor reputation for the population’s dissolute lifestyle, loose morals, mercantile venality, and a reluctance to commit resources and personnel for the defence of the holy shrines.

Partly this may be explained by Acre as a melting-pot port city. Apart from the knights who had remained — most of the Crusaders went back to Europe after doing their part for the conquest — and monks who had come from the West, there were the local Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Samaritan communities.

On top of that, merchants from Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Marseilles had arrived, on the promise of various perks and tax-breaks. Each setting up their businesses in the quarters allocated to them. Add to that the transient populations — such as sailors or visiting traders — and you’d have a range of moral attitudes.

This diversity created rivalries that in 1256 broke out into a protracted war over control of land between the Genovese on the one side, and the Venetians and Pisans on the other. Since the war was ultimately about control of Acre, the chivalric orders were drawn into it: the Templars sided with merchants of Venice and Pisa (who won), and the Hospitallers with the Genovese.

A final peace wasn’t concluded until 1270, the year before the Venetian merchant-explorer Marco Polo set off from Acre for the Far East.

The Genovese got their quarter back only in 1288. They didn’t have long to enjoy it. On May 18, 1291 Acre fell to the Mamluks after a bloody seven-week siege. Acre’s pleas for help to Europe were ignored.

And with the fall of Acre, the final Crusader presence in the Holy Land was gone, never to return.

Previous articles in the series:

The Faith of Palestine’s Christians
To Stand Where Jesus Once Stood
Fixing up our Holiest Churches
Sites of Holy Week in Jerusalem
How the Crusaders Changed the World