ABSTRACT
Was there a crusade against the Byzantine Empire during the years 1105 to 1108, led by the Norman warlord Bohemond of Taranto (d. 1111), then prince of Antioch? According to the evaluation of many scholars, the answer is yes: there was a crusade against the Greek emperor Alexius I (d. 1118), an attack that was sanctioned by Pope Paschal II (d. 1118) and eagerly embraced by Frankish warriors who blamed Alexius for harassing Western pilgrims and betraying earlier waves of crusading armies.1 In his 1924 work on Bohemond, which is still cited as an authority on this subject, Ralph Yewdale writes that the assault on the Greek Empire was “a real Crusade: it had received the approval of the pope and was preached by a papal legate, and the usual crusading privileges were given to
1 Important works on this topic include Ferdinand Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d’Alexis Ier Comnène (1081-1118), Mémoires et documents publiés par la société de l’école des Chartes 4 (Paris, 1990), pp. 242-49; Ralph Yewdale, Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch (Princeton, 1924), pp. 106-34; Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1952-54), pp. 32-55; K.M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades: e First Hundred Years, ed. Marshall Baldwin, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 387-91; William Daly, “Christian Fraternity, the Crusaders, and the Security of Constantinople, 1097-1204: e Precarious Survival of an Ideal,” Medieval Studies 22 (1960), 43-91; J.G. Rowe, “Paschal II, Bohemond of Antioch and the Byzantine Empire,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49 (1966-67), 165-202; and William McQueen, “Relations between the Normans and Byzantium 1071-1112,” Byzantion 56 (1986), 427-76. See also Gerhard Rösch, “Der ‘Kreuzzug’ Bohemonds gegen Dyrrhacion 1107/1108 in der lateinischen Tradition des 12. Jahrhunderts,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 26 (1984), 181-90; and Luigi Russo, “Il
those who took the cross.” Yewdale adds that this was “the rst example of the use of the Crusade for political purposes; in this sense, it is a foreshadowing of the Fourth Crusade.”3 In his popular multi-volume history of the crusades, Steven Runciman agreed with these sentiments, writing that the expedition of 1107 was no less than “a turning-point in the history of the Crusades … e Crusade, with the pope at its head, was not a movement for the succor of Christendom, but a tool of unscrupulous western imperialism.”4 Other scholars, however, including William Daly, Marshal Baldwin, and J.G. Rowe have been more cautious. While not substantially challenging this view, they have raised questions about the precise status of the “crusade of 1107.” In particular, Baldwin and Rowe have suggested that Bohemond was responsible for hoodwinking Pope Paschal by getting him to support a new crusade to the Holy Land, which the ambitious Norman leader subsequently redirected against Byzantium.5
