ABSTRACT
Contemporaries generally viewed the Second Crusade to the East as a failure and modern historiography has not substantially altered that assessment. 1 The venture, initiated in response to Zengi’s capture of Edessa on 24 December 1144, by Eugenius Ill’s crusading bull Quantum Predecessores of 1 December 1145, and preached by Bernard of Clairvaux, met with one setback after another. In 1147, the army of King Conrad III of Germany was depleted when hit by a flood near Constantinople, before being decimated, succumbing to a trap laid by the Turks. Already having faced a less than warm reception from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus, the army of King Louis VII of France, after some initial success, was routed by the Turks in the Cadmus Mountains in January 1148. In July 1148, the remnants of the Christian armies failed dismally in their attempt to capture Damascus by siege. 2 In a second theatre of war, a crusade against the pagans of the Baltic in 1147, hampered by the distrust between the Danish and Saxon forces, achieved so little that it too must be counted a failure. 3 These events, most notably the Damascus debacle, not only let loose many accusations of treachery and bad faith, but also placed the very concept of crusading in question. While St Bernard sought to find reason for the defeat in the sins of the crusaders, 4 it was the papacy (and the pope, who had originally envisaged a campaign to recover 30Edessa), rather than the Cistercian order, which experienced most damage from the fall-out. The amount of business brought to the Curia dropped astonishingly in the years 1149–50; fewer petitioners were coming to Rome, and the reputation of the papacy was significantly diminished. 5
