Pilgrimage not with a Staff, but with a Lance: Hist ory of Crusades as Evaluated by Vasiliy Karlovich Nadler (1840 – 1894)

Abstract

The article reviews the contents of published special course “History of Crusader Age” by V.K.Nadler, Professor of Kharkov University. It is emphasized that this special course reflected the most advanced trends on this question in European medievistics. V.K.Nadler rejected obsolete concepts by F.Wilcken and J.Michaux who treated Crusades as purely religious enterprises and specified a whole set of Crusade-generating causes, including political and social-economic changes inside West European society. Among researchers of Crusades history V.K.Nadler deservedly marked out H.Sybel, his new treatments based on critical study of medieval annals. Some of these advanced treatments were adopted by V.K.Nadler. The main initiator of Crusades, according to V.K.Nadler, was not Peter of Amiens, but papacy, namely, Urbanus II. The researcher from Kharkov refuted the widespread opinion that the idea of Crusades in the form in which it was implemented was originated still by Gregory VII. V.K.Nadler marked out that already the crusade of 1101-1102 lacked the mystical ardor and godliness that distinguished First Crusade. The later, the more mundane trends dominated. Though Fourth (Sixth by V.K.Nadler) was arranged, as V.K.Nadler correctly specified, by efforts of famous Pope Innocent III, he treated this event as a reflection of secular trends. The researcher fairly explained devastation of Byzantium in 1204 not only by military power of Crusaders. He connected this to internal reasons as well: weakening of Byzantine supreme power, growing separatism of aristocracy, mass destruction of peasantry, impoverishment of people. The subsequent Crusades, as V.K.Nadler supposed, were doomed mostly due top politics of Papacy which turned them into an instrument against its enemies both in the East and in Europe. Presentation by V. K. Nadler of causes, progress and consequences of Crusades strongly loosened Europe-centered approach inherent in numerous foreign and Russian historians.