Abstract

Popular and scholarly works about the Crusades often discuss the Roman Catholic Franks who conducted the Crusades and the Muslims who fought them, but often do not include anything about Christians who were living in the Levant when they occurred. The goal of this thesis is to investigate this overlooked aspect researching how the local Christians responded to the Crusades and what they thought of them and the Frankish Crusaders. Local Christian responses to the Crusades were found using existing secondary literature about the histories of Armenian and Syrian Christians. Opinions about the Crusades and the Crusaders discovered by examining local Christian chronicles, two of which were Armenian and one of which was Syrian. This research revealed that the Armenians were divided in their responses, with some of them supporting the Frankish Crusaders while others worked against them or had unfavorable opinions about them. The Syrians were generally cooperative with the Franks. All three of the chronicle writers that were looked at were at least initially supportive of the Crusading endeavor but had different opinions regarding the Crusaders. These views ranged from positive, to negative, to both.