Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade, 1096–1099

Previous surveys of medieval thinking with regard to courage and cowardice have concluded that the greatest opprobrium was reserved for those knights who turned and fled from battle. A close examination of the many sources for the First Crusade, however, indicates that such battlefield behaviour was far less of an issue than that of desertion from the campaign. There is no comparison between the anger and violent expression of dismay directed towards those who abandoned the crusade and that levelled at those who fled from fighting. What this suggests is that the all-or-nothing nature of the enterprise, once it was far from Christian territories, combined with a theology that equated leaving the army with the violation of a pilgrim’s oath, altered the participant’s concept of cowardice. Leaving the crusade was the highest form of cowardice and all other displays of fear were relatively excusable.