ABSTRACT
While the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 to the forces of the First Crusade led to centuries of strained relations between the ‘West’ and the Islamic world, ironically, the effect of the crusade on the most important local Christian power, the Byzantine Empire, was disastrous. Disputes during the course of the 1096-9 expedition coloured Western attitudes against ‘New Rome’, entered into the consciousness of Latin Christendom and laid the basis for a direct assault on the empire – a Christian empire – by crusaders in 1204. Chapter 3 of this volume provides a detailed examination of the political, economic and military interaction between the crusades and the Byzantine Empire, but in this chapter the mentality of the first crusaders towards their co-religionists will be examined in detail. The devastating consequences of the enmity between the Latins and the Byzantines are well known, but the origin of this antagonism remains more obscure. Did the crusaders leave Western Europe hoping, as Urban II almost certainly did, to reconcile any religious grievances with the orthodox Christians and combat Islam as a unified Christianity? Or had they preconceived negative attitudes towards the Byzantines that were given flight when political circumstances brought conflict between them? Was Urban II’s conciliatory attitude towards the Eastern Christians echoed among the majority of the crusaders, or was it even understood? Did the events and outcome of the campaign of 1096-9 harden attitudes that had initially been positive?
