Jonathan Riley-Smith obituary | History books

July 2022 · 5 minute read
Obituary

Jonathan Riley-Smith obituary

Scholar of the Crusades whose books promoted the public’s interest in his subject

From the start of the new century, the Crusades have gained more intense contemporary resonance than for many centuries past. Jonathan Riley-Smith, who has died aged 78, was the subject’s pre-eminent scholar, his research focusing on the beliefs that suddenly, at the end of the 11th century, prompted armies of westerners to attempt to conquer the Holy Land, and to pull off against apparently insurmountable odds what was seen as a miracle: a divine intervention in the affairs of the world comparable to the incarnation of Christ.

What motivated thousands of well-heeled French, English, German and Italian laymen to walk away from their daily existences and risk everything, including life itself, at the other end of the known world? How did the papacy justify such a radical – indeed, subversive – innovation in terms of Christian theology? How was this extraordinary concatenation of ideas and events moulded into an institutional structure to sustain the territorial consequences of this transformation in geopolitics? How was it then deployed to legitimise Christian violence elsewhere?

Jonathan Riley-Smith was a founder member, and later president, of the Society for the History of the Crusades and the Latin East

Some German and French historians had addressed some of these questions, but Riley-Smith answered them with an unprecedented clarity and directness, founded on a far wider and more systematic reading of theology and canon law as well as of narrative sources and documents. His primary interest was always what people thought, whether the inchoate spiritual fervour of illiterate lay Crusaders, or the elaborate theological and legal contortions of popes and their advisers, or popularised versions of the latter, devised by Crusade preachers, which so successfully aroused the former. His devout Catholic faith gave him a clear insight into the mentality, but did not in any sense make him an apologist.

For the first time in the middle ages, fighting – that quintessential lay aristocratic activity – ceased to be a sinful necessity in a fallen world, and became instead an expression of devoted and meritorious service to Christ as lord. It was an entrance ticket to heaven, issued by the pope on Christ’s behalf.

Crusading became a manifestation of lay piety, of Christian love, as the territory sanctified by Christ’s terrestrial presence – Christ’s very patrimony – was retaken from the infidel and defended in his name. The traditional metaphor of the monk as soldier fighting in Christ’s cause through prayer was actualised.

In my favourite Riley-Smith book – The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986) – he showed how the diffuse elements in the original proclamation of an armed pilgrimage by Pope Urban II in 1095 were fused and transformed in the aftermath of the taking of Jerusalem in 1099 by the historians who wrote accounts of the triumph of a lay monastery on the march. It was this interpretation that was adopted by subsequent popes. The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (1997) meticulously tracked down every identifiable participant, and sought to reconstruct his likely motives.

Riley-Smith’s arguments had already been sketched out over a much longer timescale in his trenchant What Were the Crusades? (1977; 4th edition 2009), and in a seminal essay with the characteristically provocative title Crusading As an Act of Love (1980). The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c.1050-1310 (1967; 2nd edition 2012) dealt with the subject of his doctoral research, the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, one of the orders of soldier monks that crusading engendered. The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277 (1973; 2nd edition 2002) showed how the system of western feudal law was imported into the newly established kingdom of Jerusalem by the settler nobility.

There were many more books on the same and similar themes, which tapped into the wider public interest that Riley-Smith had been a leading light in promoting. This August he launched a massive internet calendar of the charters and other legal documents of the Latin East.

A founder member, and later president, of the Society for the History of the Crusades and the Latin East, he became familiar on television and radio. As director of studies in history at Queens’ College, Cambridge (1972-78), he inspired some of us to become medievalists. From being professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London (1978-94) he returned to Cambridge as professor of ecclesiastical history, at Emmanuel College (1994-2005).

Born in Harrogate, he was the son of William Riley-Smith and his wife, Elspeth (nee Craik Henderson). The Riley-Smith family had prospered from its involvement in the Yorkshire firm of John Smith’s Brewery. From Eton College, Jonathan went to Trinity College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he spent a lot of time at the racecourse at Newmarket, but less conventionally acquired for himself a copy of the massive 19th-century French edition of the crusading chroniclers. He had found his vocation.

After graduating in 1960, he embarked on research. At the time, Sir Steven Runciman’s three-volume history of the Crusades, 1951-54, was the latest word, at least in Anglophone scholarship. Riley-Smith developed an approach that surpassed its mellifluous narrative, by focusing on what legitimated Crusades and motivated Crusaders. His first lecturing post was at the University of St Andrews (1964-72).

As a companion, he was enthusiastic, forceful, funny, direct, sympathetic, perceptive, old-fashioned (he was forever enveloped in a miasma of pipe smoke, and latterly snuff) and courageous. He evinced a boundless generosity of spirit.

In 1968 he married Louise Field, a portrait painter. She survives him, as do their children, Toby, Tammy and Polly.

Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, historian, born 27 June 1938; died 13 September 2016

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