There is an essay in Setton, A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The first hundred years. With title "Western Europe on the eve of the Crusades". Here we will treat with the same historical event in different method.
The once luxuriant civilization of Rome had been swept away by the Northern invaders
as completely as a freshet despoils the fields when it not only destroys standing
vegetation, but carries with the debris the soil itself. The most primitive
arts, those associated with agriculture, were forgotten, and the rudiments of
modern industries were not thought of. Much of the once cultivated land had, as
has elsewhere been noted, reverted to native forest and marsh, and in places
was still being purchased by strangers on titles secured by occupancy and first
improvement, as now in the new territories of America. But even nature's pity for
man was outraged; the bounty she gave from half-tilled acres was despoiled by
men themselves, as hungry children snatch the morsels of charity from one
another's hands. What was hoarded for personal possession became the spoil of
petty robbers, and what was left by the neighborhood marauder was destroyed in
the incessant baronial strife. To these devouring forces must be added the
desolating wars between the papal and imperial powers, the conquest and
reconquest of Spain by Moors
and Christians, and the despoiling of Saxon England by the Normans. Throughout Europe,
fields, cottages, castles, oftentimes churches, were stripped by the vandalism
which had seemingly become a racial disposition. To this ordinary impoverished condition
was added the especial misery, about 1195, of several years' failure of crops.
Famine stalked through France
and middle Europe; villages were depopulated.
Cruel as they were, men grew weary of raiding one another's possessions when
there was nothing to bring back but wounds. Even hatred palled when unsupported
by envy and cupidity.
The crusades gave promise of opening a new world to greed.
The stories that were told of Eastern riches grew, as repeated from tongue to
tongue, until fable seemed poor in comparison with what was believed to be
fact. All the wealth of antiquity was presumed to be still stored in
treasure-vaults, which the magic key of the cross would unlock. The impoverished
baron might exchange his half-ruined castle for some splendid estate beyond the
iEgean, and the vulgar crowd, if they did not find Jerusalem paved with gold like the heavenly
city, would assuredly tread the veins of rich mines or rest among the flowers
of an earthly paradise. The Mohammedan's expectation of a sensual heaven after
death was matched by the Christian's anticipation of what awaited him while
still in life.
They who were uninfluenced by this prospect may have seized
the more warrantable hope of opening profitable traffic with the Orient. The
maritime cities of Italy had
for a long time harvested great gains in the eastern Mediterranean,
in spite of the Moslem interruptions of commerce. Would not a tide of wealth
pour westward if only the swords of the Christians could hew down its barriers
?
The church piously, but none the less shrewdly, stimulated
the sense of economy or greed by securing exemption from taxation to all who
should enlist, and putting a corresponding burden of excise upon those who
remained at home, whose estates were assessed to pay the expenses of the
absent. The householder who found it difficult to save his possessions while keeping
personal guard over them was assured that m all his family and effects would be
under the watchful protection of the church, with anathemas already forged
against any who should molest them. If one were without means he might borrow
to the limit of his zeal, with exemption from interest. It was understood that
the Jews were still under necessity of paying back the thirty pieces of silver
with which they had bought the Christians' Lord, the interest on which,
compounded through the centuries, was now equal in amount to all there might be
in the vaults of this accursed race.
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