Christian vs paynim: a crusade obsession?
For some reason, during my 15-year career as a historical novelist, I have written about the crusades an awful lot. My second Robin Hood book, Holy Warrior, followed the route of the Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lionheart, from England to the Holy Land. At the moment, I’m working part-time on a Robin Hood book about the horrific Albigensian Crusade, and my forthcoming Mongol series, which begins with Templar Traitor, deals with the Fifth Crusade and the murky politics around that murderous conflict.
Because of my long-term and continued engagement with these blood-soaked medieval religious wars, in all their various forms, it seems quite natural to me to look at the brutal military suppression of the pagan Saxons of north Germany by the devout Christian warlord Charlemagne (the background of my five Fire Born Viking novels) through the prism of a crusade. On the other hand, it is possible that I might be a weirdo who is tragically obsessed by these faith-based wars. Anyhoo, the following is a piece that I wrote for the excellent Historia magazine a few weeks ago to coincide with the publication of my Fire Born novel, Blood of the Bear. I doubt you’ll find the subject matter as fascinating as I do. But, whatever.
Christian versus pagan: was Charlemagne’s conquest of Old Saxony the first true crusade?
The First Crusade, historians claim, was launched by Pope Urban II in 1096, after the Pontiff preached several sermons exhorting the knights of Christendom to go to the Holy Land and attack the Muslims who then had possession of Jerusalem. His message was spiced up with tales of holy sites defiled by unbelievers and Christians being persecuted and tortured. Some 60,000 crusaders answered his call and the ensuing campaign was, from the point of view of Christendom, a success – Jerusalem was captured, amid appalling bloodshed and the slaughter of innocents, in 1099.
But this was far from the first time a military campaign had been launched by a Christian potentate to slaughter unbelievers and annex their territories. Charles, King of the Franks – known to history as Charlemagne – was determined to expand his empire and subjugate the fierce pagan tribespeople on his northern flank. These two neighbouring Germanic societies, the Franks and the Saxons, which were similar in culture and language, if not in faith, had squabbled and raided each other’s lands for decades but, in 772AD, after a Christian church at Deventer (now in the north-east Netherlands) was burned by Saxons and several monks were killed, Charlemagne used this attack on a holy site as an excuse to launch a full-scale invasion of Saxony.
The King of the Franks led his powerful army across the Rhine and deep into the thickly wooded interior of Saxony. He captured several fortresses and headed for the holiest pagan site in the Saxon heartland – Eresburg (now a sleepy suburb called Obermarsberg), the site of the ancient Irminsul, the World Tree of the pagans, which equates to the Yggdrasil of Norse mythology. Charlemagne captured Eresburg and burnt the Irminsul, which may have been either been a vast living tree or a hollow tree trunk set up for worship. Either way, this direct attack on their religion enraged the Saxons and sowed the seeds of several future rebellions. (This story is told in The Last Berserker, the first novel in my Fire Born series.)
It was a provocative act by Charlemagne. The historian Christopher Tyerman writes in God’s War: a New History of the Crusades (p37): “Charlemagne’s protracted conquest of the pagan Saxons . . . was placed in a Christian context: the pagan Saxons were ‘hostile to our religion’ and ‘felt no dishonour to violate and transgress the laws of God and man’ . . . The atmosphere of holy war was deliberately fostered.”
With Saxony apparently pacified, Charlemagne turned his attention to the rebellious Lombards of northern Italy, and while he was subduing them (and crowning himself King of Lombardy) the Saxons rose up against Frankish rule. They were led in their rebellion by a charismatic warrior known as Widukind, which means Child of the Woods, a kenning for wolf. (See my novel The Saxon Wolf – Fire Born 2).
Widukind, whose real name was probably Theodoric (see statue below), is a fascinating character. He was a Saxon aristocrat who used guerrilla tactics to attack the occupying Franks. He would use the thick forests of his homeland to hide his forces, emerging to strike and cause death and destruction in the Frankish fortified camps. One one occasion, his men successfully posed as their enemies to infiltrate a Frankish garrison and attack it from the inside in the middle of the night.
It was largely due to Widukind’s leadership that the resistance to Frankish/Christian rule continued for so long. It was not until 804 that Saxony could reasonable be considered conquered, and even then sporadic uprisings continued for another decade. However, Charlemagne’s legal suppression of their Germanic religion was a constant spur to action for Saxon patriots. A new set of laws concerning Saxony, decreed by Charlemagne in 782AD, known as the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, sparked a major rebellion that same summer. Under these laws, the punishment for avoiding baptism was death. The penalties for damaging a church, injuring a monk or priest, cremating the dead, worshiping idols, and even eating meat during Lent were also death. Charlemagne had, in effect, declared being a pagan a capital offence.
Saxony erupted in rebellion again the moment Charlemagne’s back was turned, with Widukind achieving his only notable victory in a set-piece battle against the more professional Frankish armies at the Battle of the Süntel Hills (as told in Blood of the Bear: Fire Born 5). But Saxon jubilation was to be short-lived. Charlemagne returned to Saxony with bloody vengeance in mind and, at Verden, a settlement near modern-day Bremen, in the autumn of 782AD, he ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxon warriors who had trustingly surrendered to him. While the number of Saxon victims of this massacre may have been exaggerated by the monks who recorded it – just think of the sanguinary logistics involved in chopping off several thousand prisoners’ heads – it is still remembered as one of the worst stains on Charlemagne’s honour.
It was, however, a successful tactic. Three years after the massacre, Widukind came in from the cold and surrendered to the Franks. He was baptised at Attigny (now in northeastern France) with Charlemagne standing as his godfather. The years of rebellion were (more or less) over and Saxony was part of the family of Christendom.
A poem called the Carmen de conversione Saxonum (the conversion of the Saxons) written by the Franks after one of Charlemagne’s victories says: “[Charlemagne] crushed down and subjected [the Saxons] to himself with a shimmering sword. He dragged the forest-worshipping legions into the Kingdom of Heaven . . . ”
So was the Saxon annexation by Charlemagne the first true crusade? Yes, it might be called a crusade, if we use the narrow definition of a religious war of conquest. But then, according to that metric, the conquests of the Islamic horsemen in North Africa and Spain in the 7th and 8th centuries would also count as crusades. So the answer is probably no, and for this reason: the Frankish soldiers who fought against Widukind and his ragtag guerrillas were not guaranteed a place in Heaven if they died in battle.
Pope Urban II, and subsequent popes who roused Christendom to war in the Holy Land, promised “indulgences” to any who fought – ie, a ticket to Salvation – and protection of their lands from rival barons and creditors, while they were on crusade. The participants “took the cross” in a ceremony to become crusaders, which gave them special status in the eyes of the Church. And while Charlemagne’s battles to turn “bad” Saxons into good Christians were undoubtedly approved of by the Church, there was no structure in place to sanctify the Franks’ blood-drenched activities.
In truth, the argument is moot because “crusade” is an artificial label applied long after the events. It has a broadly negative connotation in our society now, whereas a hundred years ago (in the West) it implied something wholly righteous. The word would, of course, have been quite meaningless to Charlemagne and Widukind. And, at the time of the First Crusade, and for centuries afterwards, the devout Christian knights who rode east to do battle with the paynim would have called their mission a pilgrimage.
Blood of the Bear (Fire Born 5), published by Canelo, is available as a paperback, eBook and audio book from Amazon