What ethnic backgrounds did Crusaders come from? I know obviously there were lots of French and Germans of various kinds, but what else? Slavs? Did any Iberian crusaders make it to the holy land? I feel like I read about a Scandinavian crusader once but I'm not sure. Are there any documented accounts of particularly odd or unlikely groups producing crusaders, like Finns or Balts?
And what about the Crusader states? Did any of their subjects begin to develop their own group identity?
Going off of OP's post, I was wondering if the crusaders had any impacts on the admixture of the Levantine people.
Isaiah Brooks
Iberian crusaders were mostly concerned with the land they lived in but there would've been a lot of Italian crusaders, particularly from Southern Italy and Sicily
Ryder Mitchell
Mainly French lords ended up ruling the Holy Land, however at least in the first crusade the Crusaders themselves came from literally all over Christendom
Christopher Cook
Depends on the Crusade. In the first Crusade, they were mostly from France.
Godfrey of Bouillon was German and Bohemond was from Italy (but he was a Norman).
Adrian Perez
Italians too, there were even Sardinian crusaders
Andrew James
There was a large Hungarian army that fought in Syria during the 5th Crusade under the command of Andrew II, I assume there was a lot of various Slavs like the Croats in their ranks too.
Nathaniel Sanders
>I feel like I read about a Scandinavian crusader once but I'm not sure. Sigurd the Crusader
Mason Russell
They were all Franks according to the Saracens
Gavin White
?
Dominic Scott
No . They were always expelled or genocided by buttmad Saracens after capturing a city
Andrew Kelly
The Muslims referred to all crusaders as Franks, which is a good indicator that they were the bulk of the crusader forces or at least the first ones they encountered.
Easton Cooper
Though they were all known as "Franks" they came from all over Western Europe. The two main groups were Germans and French, but there were many Sicilian Normans, Venetians and some English (though the lines are blurred as to whether English knights of the period were actually English or French but I digress) etc.
Benjamin Rivera
i know there is a palestinian christian family named Sleibi which is the dialectal pronunciation of Arabic صليبي ṣalībī meaning "Crusader" (literally "of the cross", the same word that ISIS uses for Westerners). I don't know whether or not this hints at their ancestry at all but it's an interesting fact.
come to think of it, "Frank" is actually a pretty good general term that includes both French and Germans...
John Rivera
Pretty sure muslims encountered ALL The Crusaders, it's Not like The minorities went there for a pic nick
Julian Campbell
Maybe not by that point, but Franks has been used for centuries for all native Westerners.
Saliba / Sliwa is also a common name.
Ayden Taylor
As other have said, settlers in the Crusader states came from all over Western Europe, predominately France, various German principalities, and Italian city states, along with locals who either were Christian to begin with or converted over the years.
>Did any of their subjects begin to develop their own group identity?
No not really, it's important to state that during the late medieval ages, the idea of the nation-state hasn't really developed. Countries of the time were formed based of subject loyalty to a feudal lord. States such as France back then had a large mix of Occitans, Normans, Britons, and Flemish peoples, but were still subjects of the French king and loyal to him rather than the idea of a nation.
The Crusader states functioned as theocratic states rather than national, where people who believed in the Catholic faith formed the bedrock of identity rather than the ethnic makeup of French/German/Italians who lived there differentiating them.
Christian Wright
Slavs weren't even considered christians after the schism.
Not that they are in the modern world either.
Kayden James
>The minorities Mate, we're talking about the Levant. They weren't minorities there.
Carson Long
Do you realize how many centuries the Crusades were after the Schism?
Cameron Cooper
Triple retarded post.
1) Orthodox were definitely considered Christian, the Schism isn't even a single specific event, it took centuries for the two Churches to distance from each other and even then, there were numerous attempts are reconciliation 2) Do you know what the word "modern" even means? And certain Slavic states were more developed than certain West European states at various periods. 3) Croats, Slovenes, a lot of Bosnians and West Slavs were Catholics
Nolan Long
Godfrey was from modern Belgium and was closer to French than German
Christian Williams
There were catholic Slavs. Poland was full of them. They mostly killed Lithuanian nigger pagans though
Jackson Ortiz
>Godfrey of Bouillon was German
Nope he was French
Nice try tho, Hans
Jeremiah Thomas
A popular myth is France, but in reality most crusaders where from the HRE as it was the biggest and most populous country at the time of the crusades.
Ian Nelson
Flemish actually
Kevin Thomas
Lothringen was HRE and so was Gottfried. Go wewuz somehwere else Françoise!
Nathan Wilson
What language did he speak Adolph?
Brayden Nelson
Much of the HRE was not German. Places like Burgundy were far more French than German and places in the east were essentially Slavic, not to mention places that were clearly Italian.
Brayden Morales
Several. His native tongue likely was some lower Rhine Germanic dialect, just like his mother. Of course he must have also picked up some French from his serfs.
Parker Rivera
>WEWUZ HRE N SHIEEET! Why is it so hard to understand that in the 11th century, there was not much of French Kingdom yet. That came later
Connor Hernandez
Fuck off LARPING fatburger
Juan Richardson
Nice argument there baguette nigger. Burgundy was part of the HRE for centuries, it didn't became French until the 16th century. Deal with it.
Nolan Brown
>French blood >Father from Boulogne, France and mother from Lorraine >Born in Boulogne, France >Spoke Old French >Literally the leader of the French(oil speakers) during the First Crusade
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Josiah Perry
depends on the crusade.
to enlighten the clueless OP: a crusade was an order put out by the papacy across all of christendom. during the crusades most of europe was part of christendom, and so the call went to all those under sway of the catholic church, so yes, you had crusaders from all over.
Grayson Reyes
next youre going to say charlemagne was french arent you
Chase Roberts
Except in all cultural aspects he was more French than the Normans or Bretons and certainly not German.
Dominic Bailey
Not him but Charlemagne's dynasties certainly had a greater impact and are closer to the French royalty than the Germans'.
Carter Lewis
>Boulogne Was Flanders at the time and part of the HRE. Checkmate Baguette
Josiah Reyes
the line that divided german and french speakers had already formed centuries before and basically never changed until the early modern period (and those weren't big changes).
>Nice argument there baguette nigger. Burgundy was part of the HRE for centuries wat. burgundy was split in half since the treaty of verdun in the 9th century and had been under the king of france or a cadet line since the 10th century.
Ethan Cox
the western part i mean
Ayden Powell
flanders had flemish and french speaking parts at that time. its borders resembled nothing like "flemish belgium" today
Anthony Reyes
And yet their ethnic makeup, customs, and language were French. That's like saying the Mongols who live in China's borders aren't Mongols.
Thomas Martinez
Yes, just that Boulogne exactly was in Flanders and so in the HRE and the language line changed there. And Burgundy was legal part of the HRE at the years of the first crusades. check the map again for references I know this is hard to stomach for chauvinist Frenchies, but believe it or not, during the early and high medieval, France was simply not that important, and by far not as big as today.
Benjamin Foster
source on that please, because the noble families of Flanders where of Rhine Germanic origins, spoke Germanic dialects and gave their children Germanic names like Gottfried.
Robert Stewart
Let's take a look at how looked Charlemagne and his sons to see if they were French or German :)
Boulogne was never a part of the HRE as for Flanders its nobility were French from Laon(See Baldwin I of Flanders)
Michael Ortiz
French wannabes to the core
Jordan Reyes
Primarily Franks, not even ''French'', at least the in first crusade.
The Antioch line was primarily Norman, the Tripoli line was Occitan.
There were some Bavarians, some Danes like this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweyn_the_Crusader if you say German you should say Saxon and there weren't that many actually. There were some South Germans, specifically the already mentioned Bavarians and the Swabians.
The House of William the Conqueror participated in the First Crusade as well, under his first born Robert. He wouldn't make it to the throne of England though.
Italians in terms of Pisan, Genoese and Venetians were active as merchants and transporters.
The Montferrat house, though Italian, probably spoke some Germanic dialect.
Cooper Torres
then why did you say burgundy? the low countries wasn't known as "burgundy" until after the valois dukes consolidated it and ruled the province of burgundy way further south at the same time.
>Boulogne exactly was in Flanders and so in the HRE and the language line changed there. Medieval Flanders had dutch speaking and french speaking parts. I can't find any maps to show the language divide at the time of the crusades but this is a map of the extent of old dutch, which seems to prove you right
Wyatt Thomas
Flanders was under the French crown though source of regular contests between HRE and France itself.
Thomas Smith
>this retard
Camden Sullivan
>Including this much WE
By the way, Laon where originate the founder of the House of Flanders isn't in this area
James Diaz
Most Slavs were Catholic back then. Russians weren't nearly as numerous as they are now.
Zachary Thompson
She's cute. Would bang
Anthony Green
Are you asking for crusader ethnicities? Or the ethnicities of crusader states.
Because a large number of people living in the crusader states were local boys: Arabs. Levantines, Greeks, Turkics, and whatnot.
Oliver Reyes
What you don't seem to understand is that being a part of a kingdom mean nothing
Blood and Language/Culture is more important when it comes to ethnicity
Landon Hughes
The less known, Baltic crusades were fought by many nations, among them Russians, Poles, Swedes, Danes, Saxons. And then there's one crusade that basically nobody knows about - the 14th century crusade against the old believers of Kobarid (modern Slovenia, at that point under the rule of the Patriarchs of Aquilea). In 1331, a crusader army marched from Čedad (Cividale) to cut down the holy tree of the old believers and covered a holy stream with rocks. Considering where they came from, I presume they were a mix of Friulians, Slovenes and Italians.
Gabriel Long
Any dialect of the vulgar latin that the subjects understood