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This hardly sounds like a Christian speaking. But Balian was also a crafty politician and probably hoped that such a threat would move Saladin to offer the crusaders more acceptable terms, as he in fact did. Saladin was less liberal than the movie makes him out to be—he demanded that each man, woman, and child in Jerusalem pay a ransom for his or her freedom, and consequently thousands of poor Christians faced the grim prospect of slavery. In an effort to avert this catastrophe, Balian paid out of his own purse Saladin's price for many who could not afford it.

Balian's story is in many ways a case study of crusader motives. As Bruce Shelley asked in his article in Christian History Issue 40, why did Christians go on crusade? Kingdom of Heaven would appear to suggest that crusaders went for land, wealth, and power even as they claimed to fight for the good of Christendom and the spread of Christianity. There may indeed be some truth to this claim, though as historian Thomas Madden points out, "the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder."

The Balian of history suggests a more complicated picture, however. Here was a man well versed in the ways of war, and his possessions and livelihood were at stake in the conflict. Yet as the story from Estoire d' Eracles demonstrates, he placed great importance on the things of God, even to the detriment of the conflict at hand. And as the events following the fall of Jerusalem reveal, Balian at great personal sacrifice showered compassion on fellow Christians in dire need. Indeed, this kind of empathy is exactly what drove many crusaders to come to the Holy Land—it was in part the plea of the Byzantine emperor Alexios to Pope Urban II for help against belligerent Muslim Turks in 1095 that prompted the pope to call for the Crusades. In more than one way, the life of Balian helps us see the crusaders for what many of them they were—men of piety who felt the call of God on their lives even as they went to war.

Kingdom of Heaven has some serious problems—none the least Scott's portrayal of Balian. But if Scott provokes Christians to take a closer look at the men and women of faith in medieval Europe, he's done the public a service. Now I'm just waiting for a scholar to write the definitive biography of Balian of Ibelin.

For further reading:

Marshall Baldwin, ed, A History of the Crusades, Volume 1:The First 100 Years (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1969)

Francesco Gabrieli, ed. Arab Historians of the Crusades, (Univ of California Press, 1969). Baha ad-Din tells the story of Saladin conquering Jerusalem .

Regine Pernoud, The Crusades (Putnam, 1963). Pay special attention to the accounts of the fall of Jerusalem by Ibn al-Athir and Ambroise.

Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades: A Short History (Yale Univ. Press, 1987)

Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades: The feudal nobility and the kingdom of Jerusalem (Archon Books, 1973)

Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East: 1100-1187 (Cambridge, 1968)

Steven Gertz is assistant editor for Christian History & Biography. More Christian history, including a list of events that occurred this week in the church's past, is available at ChristianHistory.net. Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine are also available.

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May (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49