[Randall Moffett]

Some interesting points. I think the central question needing to be addresses is really if we have both good and bad examples of the nobility where some are good and others thugs is what are we really looking at. I suspect that just as now the two extremes make up a smaller part of the pie and that the followers are largely the ones swayed to either ends by these groups.

Kings and other nobles have accounts that show they can be both kind and cruel. Question is how often. I suspect most knights were not simple thugs. Especially as society grows and develops its norms and moral codes with ways to curtail violence- at least in theory.

Matt,

Do not want to divert this theme so let this be a one time drop. But answering your question maybe not what we think but after seeing the study from Harvard this gent refers to I have to say not all that far off from your 5% number.... in the wrong direction. Some interesting counter points to it but still an interesting video.

http://flowingdata.com/2013/04/16/wealth-distribution-in-america/


RPM

[Michael Parker]

There used to be a prevailing view that crusaders were motivated by plunder or acquisition of land in the East, or that families were motivated to send their second sons on crusade so their lands would not have to be subdivided, but this has been replaced with some degree of consensus that their religious motivation was most important. In his updated book The Crusades: A History, and in his essay Early Crusaders to the East and the Costs of Crusading, 1095-1130, Jonathan Riley Smith argues that given the enormous financial costs economic factors could not have motivated crusaders to take up the cross.

"The distance and consequent expenses may not have deterred the very poor, who expected nothing and could, perhaps, have believed that their situation could only improve, but for knights it was a different matter. They were expected to bring with them the equipment, horses, pack animals and servants to fulfill their function effectively...The factor by which a French knight would have had to multiply his income in budgeting for a campaign in the East can only be guessed at, but a factor of four or five would not be unreasonable. This makes the traditional picture of landless knights departing without a care in the world ridiculous. It is not surprising to find in monastic and cathedral cartularies examples of the steps crusaders and their families took to provide themselves with funds, but land prices were depressed by years of drought." Riley-Smith p 20

In other words, it would have cost land and money for the family, not saved it, to send a son to the East. They would not have sacrificed so much if their motivation was economic. Besides this, the crusaders had no idea that they were going to become lords of Eastern kingdoms because colonialism was not even in their plans. They had expected to join up with the Byzantine Emperor's army and return all captured lands to the Eastern Empire in return for monetary or other compensation, and that the Byzantine emperor would be leading them in battle along with his own troops. They wanted to go to the holy city more than anything because they considered the First Crusade to be just like any other pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and almost all of the knights with the possible exception of ambitious leaders such as Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemond of Taranto intended to go home afterwards. In fact, most crusaders went home with no land or money when the First Crusade was over. What can't be stressed enough is that the Crusader States sprang up not out of a plan, but by the original plan collapsing and the crusaders improvising. There was mutual misunderstanding between the Byzantines and the Crusaders about the plan the expedition would follow and what their obligations were to each other. In the siege and subsequent battle of Antioch in 1097-98, the crusaders felt that the Emperor had abandoned them to the Turks by failing to reinforce them, and that they were justified in taking Antioch for themselves instead of giving it back to the Emperor. The leaders divided the Holy Land among themselves as a result of falling out with the Byzantines and having no means of survival other than to dig in, stake their claim, and jealously guard it from all attackers.

I'm not saying that they didn't go crazy over plunder and seize anything they could out of greed, but the point is that most of the regular knights didn't make a calculated decision to invest in the crusade expecting a superior return. At the same time, "All the leaders, from great to small, had to live with the fact that their followers expected from them at least a subsistence level of provisioning. This alone would have accounted for an obsession with plunder." ibid, p 19

By and large, most of the rank-and-file knights of the first crusade did not get rich or acquire land nor did they originally expect to. They gained fame, certainly, as well as having performed penance for their sins, and those two things were largely what they were concerned about. They weren't necessarily motivated by papal indulgence either, that came into being in subsequent crusades. To them it was the arduous journey to Jerusalem that was meritorious, and they viewed it much like any other pilgrimage. It wasn't until after the fact that theologians came up with the idea that actually fighting could be considered penance, hence Bernard of Clairvaux and In Praise of the New Knighthood. In subsequent crusades there were fewer illusions about going to win land or get rich: there was always a distinction between the fresh-off-the-boat crusaders from France, Germany and England, and the permanent residents of the Crusader states which included the military orders and the local landlords. The way I figure it, the later had already taken all of the best land and kingdoms and were more concerned with taking back specific cities and defending what they already had, while the former were more eager to broaden and escalate the conflict. Each boatload of crusaders from the Second onward were mainly concerned with getting to see Jerusalem, fighting in some battles to earn their indulgence, hopefully reconquering some holy place that had been lost to Muslims, and going home rather than staying in that war zone a minute longer than they had to.

This at least is how I understand it. Perhaps one of the experts could weigh in on this question instead of me?

[Daniel Sullivan]

Not pointing fingers nor casting stones, just rambling thoughts.

By today's standards they certainly were! However, I find it difficult to judge or label people and/or situations that occurred centuries ago by applying our present set of "morals." Often think about how we will be judged a few centuries hence. Sweeping technology and its related benefits aside, in my opinion, we really haven't changed that much. A catch phrase that has become popular in the last few years is" follow the money", this just applies a tag to the most common thread in human history. The driver in all of this is one of our more endearing qualities or curses .... greed.

Food for thought; do the "good guys" always win? Considering that the majority of history was written by the victors, does lead me to "take history with a grain of salt" ......

Cheers,
Dan

[Lin Robinson]

Gentlemen….

Please review what I wrote in my post. I did not say that this was the ONLY reason for the Crusades just that it was ONE of the reasons. What I wrote in the post was in the context of the questions asked initially – “Were Knights…gangsters.” There is, perhaps, nothing in the record to say that the Church was thinking about this as a reason for the Crusades but it was surely a byproduct of the effort. The common people clearly went on Crusades out of religious convictions as they had little hope, even in the Holy Land, of becoming wealthy. That many of those of the petty nobility who went on Crusades did so to obtain wealth as ONE of their motivations is clear from history. They became kings of Jerusalem and masters of great castles throughout the region when they could have conquered the Muslims then returned home, which they did not do. They stayed until the Latin Christians were finally ejected in the late 13th c. I find that telling.

Christopher did not mean they were literally gangsters; I think he just thought it to be a descriptive term.

As I said, this is just my opinion, based on what I have read and understood about the Crusades and the situation in Europe at the time.

[Daniel Wallace]

Very good points Micheal, from my readings the suggestion is that the oath to Alexis by the princes was a political move on his part. without the oath he would not allow them to cross into Asia minor. the Crusaders knowing this took the oath with fingers crossed behind their backs, they were basically forced to take the oath. the acceptation is Tancred weather it was by Bohemond 's slight of hand that helped him to cross without being caught in the oath or his own intent is hard to say. The 'Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Cean' indicates that he did not take the emperors oath because it contradicted the vow he made to take the crusade.

I'd like to discuss more about the crusade but i think we are getting away from the original question, but within discussing it, i think it also shed a little light on the people of the time period.


more often than not, history seems to highlight the exciting events much like the news. there are good things that happen everyday, but you don't hear about them, you hear about the shootings that occur within the day, who got robbed. and other parts just seem to be dropped off. you hear about the irrational actions of people more than the rational. as I have only read a part of the Chronicles for the first crusade, i can draw a conclusion that if you attempted to read into the people and try to understand them, they are not any different than you nor I. they just lived under a different set of laws at a different time.

[Robert B. Marks]

I don't know if we could really call knights "gangsters" - if you used a gangland model, they'd be the enforcers.

But, they were certainly a problem a lot of time. I have this recollection of Frances Gies writing in his book The Knight in History that knights raiding churches happened often enough that the Church began taking several steps to bond the knight to the church in the 10th and 11th centuries. And, interestingly enough, this had a lot to do with swords - the knight's sword would be blessed, it could contain holy relics, and the knight would receive it from a member of the clergy.

Is it any wonder that around this time swords inlaid with "INNOMINEDOMINI" ("In the name of God") start appearing?

To this day, I have this theory that the reason the sword hilt retained its cruciform shape for so long while the blade shape underwent consistent change was due to the sword serving as a military relic, or personal cross, for the knight. Once the sword became an infantry weapon as well, the religious significance was no longer as important, the religious inlays start to disappear, and the hilts become more complex.

At least, that's my theory...

[Matt Lentzner]

Part of the problem here is that we don't have agreed upon definition of what makes a gangster a gangster.

My definition is a gangster is just someone who provides government for criminals. If you were ran a gambling house how would you keep common thugs from ripping you off every day? You can't call the police since you're running an illegal enterprise. Well, you pay the local capo to "protect" you. It doesn't necessarily have to be an abusive relationship although I'm sure it often is.

If you can believe what is portrayed in gangster media like the Sopranos, you have a boss who has a certain territory. He divides that up among his lieutenants. In return they are expected to pay tribute to him and supply muscle when needed. That sounds a hell of a lot like Feudalism to me. IMO it's a gangster system - or more accurately the modern mob is an example of an older system of government.

We all know that there's a certain romance to being a gangster as well as a code of sorts. Just like knighthood. There are many example of gangsters who are seen in a positive light and are folk heroes.

[Jaroslav Kravcak]

I havent read much on theory of chivalric honour and code, but my general idea is most of the rules and set ideals would be aimed at how to protect their own masters interest and how to be most honourable and usefull henchman of his, not that much on how they should not harm the innocent, weak and poor, like is sometimes propagated. :-D Same for some other warrior classes like samurai.

So all in all, to me it looks like guidelines , set by more powerfull ones for their inferiors, so that they consider honourable to do any service to their lord, no matter how immoral would it be, plus some basic restrictions, maybe mainly not to make conflicts, where they are not needed immediately wrapped up as if there was some hero warrior class, allways fighting for good. I see clear paralel with all the action movie heroes vomited at us today, fictionary, or factual ones.

Id say the real, palpable point about knights, or other warrior classes, that could be admired is their fighting skill, with their ideals remaining ideals for the most part, but I dont feel like having known enough to be sure about it.

[Joel N]

After reading the first page I was going to chime in with much of the same stuff that Michael said about the Crusades. Good job beating me to it.
I think Matt is right to that we have to define what we mean by gangster. In my view there are certain parallels between the feudal system and gangster culture, and I recognize that each of them has been romanticized to an extent. And taking what I know of human nature, there have always been a mix of virtuous people, thugs, and those in between. It's hard to have a blanket statement like "Knights are gangsters" or "Knights are paragons of virtue" since there will always be people who fit a mold, and those who do not. So to answer the question, yes, some knights probably did behave like gangsters. Just not all of them.