ON A SABBATH DAY in the middle of the eleventh century, the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church was celebrating a solemn mass in the great basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, as three booted men entered the church and stomped down the center aisle to the high altar. The leader slammed a document down on the altar at which, without saying a word, they turned and marched out. The three men were cardinals, princes of the Church of Rome. The document was a decree of the Roman Pope Leo IX, which declared the excommunication of the emperor of Byzantium and all the patriarchs, priests and monks of the Orthodox Church, as well as all of the citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire. The choice was eternal damnation or submission to the overlordship of the Church of Rome.
It was just the latest antagonistic event in the unrelenting conflict between the Holy See and the Orthodox Church. Ever since the split of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the two centers of Rome and Constantinople had maintained an incessant hostility, both secular and religious. Each claimed to be the true inheritor of Caesar, and each claimed to be the One True Church, according to the will of God. The Eastern Church simply wanted to be left alone to worship God in its own way, but the Roman Church was more aggressive. The pope demanded that the whole world recognize his exclusive right to men’s minds as the viceroy of St. Peter and of Jesus Christ Himself. That primacy of the Roman Church was about to be more clearly defined by the Cluniac monk Hildebrand, who took the Throne of Peter as Pope Gregory VII. Gregory dramatized the fact that the bishop of Rome had a separate role above the bishops of the world by restricting the title of papa, or pope, to the bishop of Rome, forbidding the use of that title by anyone else on earth. He went further. Frequently, nobles paid homage to a bishop by kissing his foot. Now Gregory declared that henceforth only the foot of the pope would be kissed by princes, and not voluntarily as an act of respect, but as an enforceable canonical requirement.
As to the divine right of kings, its very divinity meant that it flowed from God to earthly rulers only through the medium of Christ’s vicar on earth. In Gregory’s view, it was in the power of the pope to bestow or remove that divine right. The pope, therefore, had the power to command citizens of any country to abandon their allegiance to any secular ruler and the power to depose any king or emperor. Reason said that this must be, because spiritual power came directly from God, while secular power was born in original sin.
As a monk, Gregory had taken a vow of celibacy, and he now not only repeated earlier decrees against clerical marriage, but reinforced them. At that time over 50 percent of the Catholic priests in Europe were married, so Gregory’s decrees were not well received, even by the bishops. In England, at the Council of Winchester in 1076, the assembled bishops approved the marriage of “residential” priests, those with village parishes or attached as chaplains in castles. In response to the reluctant attitude of the clergy, Gregory sent out legates to enforce his law. All married priests were to set aside their wives. If they did not, they were forbidden to exercise any priestly functions, and the laity were to shun their ministries.
As part of his program to gain ascendancy over the Eastern Christians, Gregory cultivated a friendly relationship with the emperor of Byzantium, Michael VII. The young emperor responded because he needed all the friends he could get. He had asserted his claim to the throne when his father-in-law, the emperor Romanus Diogenes, had been wounded in battle and taken prisoner by the encroaching Seljuk Turks. After his wounds were healed, the Turks set him free. Finding that he had been supplanted by his son-in-law Michael, Romanus tried to regain the throne, but now was taken prisoner by his own people. He was subjected to the standard method in Byzantium (and Venice) for rendering a deposed ruler ineffective without killing him: He was sentenced to be blinded. The executioners were so ferocious in putting out Romanus’s eyes, however, that he died a few days later. His friends and relatives were furious and immediately comprised a faction opposed to the young Michael VII, a faction that included the house of Comnenus, the former ruling family.
At the same time, the Eastern Empire lost its last possessions in Italy to the Normans under Robert Guiscard, perhaps inspired by their duke, who had conquered all England just seven years earlier. In 1073, the Turks erupted into Asia Minor, pushing back the Byzantine borders in the same year in which Guiscard and his Normans took Sicily. Pope Gregory encouraged the Normans in Italy because the lands they conquered immediately changed allegiance from the Orthodox Church to the Roman.
Losing lands to the east and to the west, Michael VII tried diplomacy to stabilize the situation. He proposed that the child daughter of Robert Guiscard be betrothed to his own infant son, the heir to the empire. Pope Gregory enthusiastically supported the proposed match, which would make a Roman Catholic the Empress of Byzantium.
In the meantime, it appeared that Michael VII was totally ineffective at staving off the erosion of the Eastern Empire, and in 1078 a provincial governor named Nicephorus rose in revolt. Michael didn’t even put up a fight. Instead, he retired to a monastery, putting aside his wife to do so. A practical lady, and one of the most beautiful in the land, she offered her hand to the new emperor, which he accepted. Furious at these developments, Pope Gregory’s wedding gift to the new emperor was a decree of excommunication. Within months another revolt was launched, this time by a Byzantine army general who had made a deal with the Turkish sultan Suleiman. The general failed to take Constantinople, but the arrangement had permitted Suleiman to walk right into Bithynia and take the sacred Christian city of Nicaea, which he made his new capital, less than a hundred miles from Constantinople.
With events apparently moving inexorably toward the eclipse of Byzantium, fierce quarrels erupted between the emperor Nicephorus and the Comneni faction. Finally, the old royal family made its move, declared Nicephorus deposed, and proclaimed Alexius Comnenus the new emperor. Pope Gregory excommunicated him, too.
Back home, Gregory had problems of his own. He was not satisfied with the order of things, in which the German Holy Roman Emperor reigned supreme in the temporal world, with the pope supreme only in the spiritual. With his power derived directly from God, surely the pope alone should be supreme, with all other mortals on levels beneath him. One custom that stood in the way of his supremacy was that of lay “investiture.” This was the right of kings, princes, and other noblemen to appoint bishops and abbots, who commanded the large religious landholdings in their domains, which in any given area might range from 20 to 40 percent of the land surface. Such appointees owed fealty to the lay rulers who had favored them with their benefices, although “favored with” often meant “sold,” as religious appointments became an important source of income for local rulers.
Gregory determined to stop the sale of benefices, a practice called “simony” after Simon Magus, the first recorded purchaser of a spiritual office. The pope decided that henceforth all appointments would be made by the Holy See and not by any layman, no matter how highly placed. This would be a great blow to the secular princes and would mean that the fortunate cleric would owe fealty not to his lay lord, but to the pope alone. The pope introduced his new decree to the world in a council of bishops in 1074. The temporal world was rocked by this new assertion of papal power and the loss of income it would bring. In 1075, Gregory was kidnapped from the altar at the Basilica of St. Mary Major and taken to a house in the suburbs, where he was beaten and insulted until rescued by citizens of Rome the next morning.
Unshaken in his convictions, the pope called another council in 1076. He pronounced the ban on lay investiture in stronger terms, making it clear that not even the Holy Roman Emperor himself could name so much as a subdeacon in his own territories. With this declaration, Gregory was claiming direct and autocratic control by the pope of about one-third of all of Christian Europe. The Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, was just twenty years old, but had no intention of giving up one particle of his traditional rights and privileges. He ignored the papal decrees. Gregory wrote to Henry, demanding a notarized written confession of his sins against the Church. Henry’s response was to call a council of his own at Worms, at which Gregory was declared to be deposed. Gregory’s reaction was to excommunicate Henry and his followers. He declared that Henry was now without power and should be rendered allegiance by no man in any matter of any kind, thus effectively turning the German emperor into a nonperson, with no temporal or spiritual existence.
Henry had underestimated the spiritual power, which he realized as his bishops and nobles began to desert him. Finally, his own people gave him an ultimatum: Have the ban of excommunication removed before February 2, 1077, or be abandoned by all his subjects. Gregory announced that he was coming to Germany to establish order, and Henry immediately headed south to intercept him. Their paths crossed near Mantua, where Gregory was lodged in the castle of Canossa. On January 25, Henry climbed up to the castle in the biting cold, dressed in sackcloth, with his feet bare, as a true penitent. He pleaded for the pope to receive him, but he had to be taught a lesson first. Gregory kept him shivering in the freezing courtyard for three days and three nights, then finally admitted him to the papal presence.
Henry was forgiven and the bans against him lifted, in exchange for his public promise to obey the pope in all things. Then the pope demonstrated for all that he had acted only in accordance with God’s will. Taking a piece of consecrated bread from the altar, he called upon God to make the bread stick in his throat and choke him to death if he was guilty of any wrongdoing. He swallowed the bread with ease, and the assembly went wild with cheers and shouts. They had actually witnessed with their own eyes that God had given His approval to this blessed pope’s actions.
The pope, however, had done a little underestimating of his own. He may have thought Henry spent all those hours in the freezing courtyard with his mind full of repentance and contrition, but it appears that what Henry’s mind was really full of was all-out revenge. It was not long in coming.
Back in Germany, Henry got rid of the disloyal around him, strengthened his army, then invaded Italy and laid siege to Rome. Gregory fled to Hadrian’s Mausoleum, a massive circular structure that had been reworked into the papal fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo. Eventually, Gregory was rescued by the Normans under Robert Guiscard, who also took advantage of the expedition to burn and pillage the Holy City. The Normans took Gregory south to Salerno, where he lived in exile until his death in 1085.
Off in Constantinople, the emperor Alexius, still stinging under the ban of excommunication laid upon him by Gregory VII, received the news of the conflicts with great interest. He arranged an alliance with Henry IV, contributing funds to help his campaign against the pope, and closed all of the Roman churches in the Eastern Empire. Gregory’s rescue and protection by the same hated Normans who had robbed Byzantium of its Italian possessions simply added to the pope’s image as the arch enemy of the Orthodox Church.
Henry had a council appoint a pope of his choosing, Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna, who was installed in Rome as Clement III. Upon Gregory’s death in exile, with the anti-pope Guibert in Rome, the cardinals still loyal to the Church elected the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino as Pope Victor III. A frail man, Victor had no chance to accomplish anything before his death less than two years later. It was not until March 1088 that the cardinals could agree upon the next pope. He was Odo de Lagery, the shrewd cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who took the papal name of Urban II.
The new pope could see nothing about him but political and spiritual desecration. The strongest ruler in western Christendom was not only the strongest temporal enemy of the Roman Church, but was in league with the emperor of Byzantium, the strongest spiritual enemy of the Roman Church. The anti-pope Guibert sat on the Throne of Peter. The revenues of the Church had dropped to almost nothing. It was a situation calculated to plunge any ordinary man into despair, but Urban II was no ordinary man and no ordinary pope. Although fixed and determined in his purpose, he did not seek to achieve it with the arrogance of a Gregory VII. He was persuasive, conciliatory, courteous, and compromising. In that day and age, gentleness and courtesy put other men off their guard. Urban gradually earned the support of more and more of the independent princes. Spain was all for him. The clergy in France gradually came under his complete control. He encouraged Henry IV’s son Conrad in his complaints, to the point that he revolted against his father.
In 1089, Urban lifted the ban of excommunication that Gregory had placed on the Emperor Alexius, which elicited a friendly response from that monarch. By 1093 Urban was able to return to Rome to take up residence in the Lateran Palace. He had avoided repeating Gregory’s aggressive claims for superiority over all temporal rulers. As a result, even though the princes of Europe were still constantly in conflict with one another, the papacy had survived and now enjoyed a position of respect. Urban II had a view of the posture and supremacy of the Roman Church that was just as strong as Gregory’s, but his approach was different. He was biding his time, waiting for the right event. His opportunity came from the east, in the form of a letter from the emperor Alexius.
The emperor needed help. Although the Byzantine Empire was still wealthy, it just did not have the population base to supply the troops required to protect the Balkans, the Danube territories, and Asia Minor, much less the capital itself, so Alexius had to rely on mercenaries. He had recruited nomadic tribesmen from the steppes, Norman adventurers, even Anglo-Saxon refugees from the conquest of England. The Normans had turned against him and Alexius desperately needed experienced fighting men. With nowhere else to turn, he appealed to the pope in the name of their common Christianity. In his correspondence Alexius recited a litany of Turkish atrocities: Christian boys were crudely circumcised, then held so that their blood would fall into the baptismal font; women and girls were abused like animals; Turkish soldiers committed the sin of sodomy on captured Christian men of every rank “and, O misery, something that has never been seen or heard of before, on bishops.” Early in the year 1095 the pope called for the first formal council of his reign, to be convened in March at Piacenza. There Urban permitted the envoys from the emperor Alexius to present their plea for soldiers to take up the Christian cause in Asia Minor, but there was little enthusiasm for the prospect within the council.
For Urban II, however, the opportunity was just too great to be dismissed. As a plan formed in his mind, the plight of the Eastern Empire seemed almost like a gift from God. In one plan lay so many benefits. He envisioned a Holy War, a war in the service of God. The Christians would take possession of the Holy Land which had been wrenched from Byzantium by the fanatical followers of Muhammad, and restore it to Christian control, or better still, to Roman control. A common goal that put European Christians all on the same side would curtail their never-ending fights among themselves. Land would be available for the younger sons of the nobility, for now that laws of primogeniture were taking hold, all but the eldest sons were landless and turning into adventurers and near-bandits. The Church would have to play the lead role because men of many nations would be involved, and as a result all would recognize the leadership and primacy of Holy Mother Church. And surely the rescue of the Holy Places, as well as the protection of the Eastern Empire and of the Eastern Church, could be met with no level of Byzantine gratitude less than their acknowledgment of the total supremacy of the Roman pontiff who had effected it all.
That summer Urban traveled across France, testing the temperament of nobles and clerics, assessing the measures to be taken, formulating his plan. He sent letters to bishops throughout the principalities of France and neighboring countries, directing them to come to Clermont for a great council. About three hundred clerics answered the call to the Council of Clermont, which began on November 18, 1095. Allowing plenty of time for stragglers to arrive, it was proclaimed that all should attend a public session on Tuesday, November 27, at which time the pope would make a momentous announcement.
The crowd that assembled for the great event was so large that the cathedral could not hold them all, so the session was moved to a field outside the city. A high platform was built to raise the papal throne above the crowd.
There was no underlying anger against the Muslims, about whom almost nothing was known in Europe, except on the Iberian Peninsula. (As an example of just how little was known, the Greek emperor had described atrocities by tribes of nomadic Turks on the Syrian border, tribes the Greeks called Sarakenos. The word became Saracenus in Church Latin, and was misunderstood as a reference to all followers of Muhammad. In every subsequent papal bull and encyclical, the mistake lived on as the entire Muslim population of Turks, Arabs, Persians and Egyptians was referred to as the “Saracens”. On the other side, some Muslims would decide that all Crusaders were French, and all Latin Christians would be referred to as the “Franj.”) Christians in the Holy Land were permitted to practice their religion, and there was no barrier to pilgrims visiting the Holy Places. They had to pay a toll to enter Jerusalem, but they also had to pay a toll to pass through the gates of London or Paris. As for the “Saracen” rulers of Palestine, they had no problem with the presence of either Orthodox or Latin Christians in their territory, whether as pilgrims or as permanent residents. The Benedictine Rule prevailed among Roman clerics in Palestine, and was followed by a small order that was permitted to maintain a hostel or “hospital” for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem. It had been founded about twenty years earlier, in 1075, by citizens of the Italian city of Amalfi. The order was dedicated to St. John the Compassionate, sometimes called St. John the Alms-giver, a seventh-century Patriarch of Alexandria known for his pious works of charity.
With such religious tolerance on the part of the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem, and with access to the Holy Places for Christian pilgrims, it was going to take some skillful effort on the part of the pope to stir up the people of Europe to the point that they would leave their homes to risk their lives in a foreign land.
Urban II was up to the task, and as he rose to address the crowd he employed all of the propaganda techniques the job required. He inspired hatred for the Muslims by allegations of horrible physical atrocities worked upon helpless Christians. He appealed to his listeners’ quest for glory by comparing the proposed conflict with the victories of Charlemagne over the pagans. He held out the promise of land, catering to the frustrations of the noninheriting younger sons of the nobility: “Wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. That land which the scripture says ‘floweth with milk and honey.’ ” He held out the ultimate reward, an eternity in paradise, by declaring that all who died in this Holy Crusade would receive instant absolution and the total remission of sins. As Urban completed his inflammatory oration there were cries of “Deus lo volt!” (“God wills it!”). The entire audience took up the chant, and it became the battle cry of the First Crusade. Adhemar de Monteil, Bishop of le Puy, was the first to kneel before the papal throne to plead for permission to go with the host to the Holy Land.
Urban was pleased with the enthusiasm let loose by his call for a Holy War, but now needed to give it substance. He reassembled his bishops, and regulations were adopted. Any man who took the vow to join the Crusade must fulfill that vow or risk excommunication. Any man who went on the Crusade, but returned home before its mission was accomplished, would be excommunicated. Every man who took the vow was to wear a cross made of red cloth sewn to his surcoat as a public declaration of his vow. Those who feared for their possessions while away on Crusade could leave them for safekeeping with their local bishops, who would be held responsible for their safe and complete return. Those not physically fit were to be discouraged from participation.
All were to be prepared to leave the following summer by August 15, the Feast of the Assumption, when the southern harvests would be in and available to supply the armies. The various military factions could take different routes to the east, but they were to gather at Constantinople to launch their common campaign.
Above all, the Crusade would need a leader, and since all the world must know and recognize that this was to be an army of God controlled by His Holy Church, that leader must be a religious leader, responsible only to the pope. The papal choice was Bishop Adhemar of le Puy (his being the first to kneel before the pope at Clermont was probably arranged in advance).
Urban II was French, and most of the leaders who answered his call were of the French nobility, although the Germans and the Normans of southern Italy were well represented. Genoa agreed to help with men and shipping. Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, sold and mortgaged his lands to finance a fighting force that he would command. Count Raymond of Toulouse assembled a force at his own expense. Robert Guiscard’s son, Prince Bohemond of Taranto, declared for the cross, as did Duke Robert of Normandy, Count Robert of Flanders, and Hugh of Vermandois, the brother of the king of France. Success appeared to be assured. The emperor Alexius had asked for some help: He was about to be swamped.
In Constantinople, the news that the request for a few thousand mercenaries was being answered by the approach of whole armies, including about fifteen thousand knights, was met with alarm. Somehow they must be contained and directed right through the empire across to Asia Minor. If they weren’t fed, they would forage and take what they wanted. Food stores were assembled and rushed to points the Crusaders were expected to pass. Those measures undoubtedly helped, but there was no effective way to contain entire armies on the move who practiced their skills in pillage and rape on the citizens of the empire. As the Christian armies gathered outside Constantinople, they were constantly reminded by the Greeks of the rich lands and the fabulous treasures that awaited them across the Bosphorus, as an incentive for them to move on.
Finally, the Crusaders were ferried across the straits and moved overland to their first bittersweet victory. After laying siege to the ancient city of Nicaea and fighting off counterattacks on their rear by the Turkish cavalry, they had the city at the point of surrender. It was a shock to awake one morning to find the banner of the emperor of Byzantium flying over the walls. The commander had surrendered to Alexius during the night, preferring the diplomacy-oriented Byzantines to the ferocious army of Latin Christians. The Crusaders were deprived of the loot, the captives, and the ransoms they had expected. Feelings against the eastern emperor were high. Alexius soothed the Latin leaders with lavish gifts, but stirred them up again when he demanded an oath of allegiance to himself as the price of his ongoing cooperation. The emperor especially wanted returned to him the great walled city of Antioch, which the Crusaders would have to take to clear their path to Jerusalem. Some were reluctant, some were angry, but the emperor’s supplies were vital, and his armies would be the only protection at their backs. If the war turned against them, Alexius controlled the escape routes, whether by land or sea. Finally, the absence of alternatives made the decision for them, and they agreed to swear fealty to the emperor. For Alexius, the oaths would be binding forever. For the Latin Crusaders, their oaths were good for as long as it took to get out of the trap they were in.
Bishop Adhemar constantly reminded them that they had not yet achieved their sworn objectives, and at last a portion of the crusading army turned south toward Jerusalem under the leadership of the bishop, with the military command entrusted to Raymond of Toulouse. Others, led by Godfrey de Bouillon and Prince Bohemond, soon followed. They were attacked and harassed along the way, but managed to arrive in time to participate in the siege of Antioch.
The Muslim ruler of Antioch had not interfered in any way with those of his subjects who preferred to practice their faith in Orthodox Christianity. They had been allowed to operate their churches unmolested, under their own resident patriarch. Now, with the approach of the Crusader army, things changed. The patriarch was thrown into a dungeon, and the Christian leaders were ejected from the city. The great Orthodox Cathedral of St. Peter was closed to Christians and converted into use as a stable for the Muslim cavalry that was called in to help defend the city.
The Crusaders were awestruck at their first view of Antioch, a walled and heavily fortified metropolis a mile wide and three miles long. Doubtful of their ability to take the city by storm, they settled down for a long siege. They camped before Antioch for months, suffering from severe shortages of food and water, while the Turks taunted them from time to time by hanging the patriarch over the walls in a cage. The Crusaders sat before those walls from October until June, but it was not force of arms alone that achieved the final victory. Word had come to Bohemond weeks before that an officer in the Turkish army, an Armenian Christian named Firuz, who had been converted to Islam, was prepared to sell out the city of Antioch for a price. He had been disciplined by a Turkish superior and wanted revenge. Negotiations went on until Bohemond almost lost interest, but then word arrived that the traitor would turn over the city the very next night, when he was to be in command of two adjoining towers. He was even prepared to hand over his son as a hostage to guarantee his performance. Apparently Firuz had finally made up his mind to move upon discovering that his wife was cuckolding him with a Turkish officer.
True to his word, Firuz saw to it that the Crusaders were permitted to put ladders to a tower window. Sixty knights made the climb, then moved along the wall to take the second tower. Ladders were placed on the wall between the towers and enough Crusaders entered the city to take and open two separate gates. The Crusader army, waiting in the dark, swarmed into the city. Eight months of frustration were unleashed in the slaughter of civilians as well as soldiers, with no consideration for sex or age. The Christians in the city joined in the butchery. It took a long time to kill them all, but by nightfall of the next day every Turk in Antioch was dead. As the leader who had engineered the victory, Bohemond successfully asserted his right to rule the captured city, over the objections of Count Raymond of Toulouse.
When the army had turned south to Antioch, one Crusader had decided to leave the group to pursue his own hopes for land and treasure. Had he stayed at home, history would probably never have heard of Baldwin, the youngest brother of Godfrey of Bouillon. Godfrey was duke of Lower Lorraine and his brother Eustace was Count of Boulogne, but there were no lands for young Baldwin. He wouldn’t need them, because his family had decided that Baldwin would be trained for the Church. After some years of study, however, he abandoned that life and chose to live the life of a knight at the court of Godfrey, with no one realizing the ambition that burned inside him. He took the Crusader’s vow with Godfrey because there were no other prospects ahead of him, but now the Crusade opened new opportunities, which he was quick to seize. He was very mindful of Urban II’s admonition that the Crusaders should take for themselves those lands that scripture said “floweth with milk and honey.”
Baldwin could see no material benefit to himself in marching south to be a minor factor in the siege of Antioch, so he decided to head east toward the Euphrates River, on an expedition of adventure. He had no large following in the Christian armies, but was able to enlist about a hundred loot-hungry armored knights to accompany him.
As he traveled east toward Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Baldwin was not entering Muslim lands, but those of the Armenians of the Separated Church, long dominated by the Orthodox Byzantines, whom the Armenians regarded as heretics. Three Christian cultures were about to clash, but at first the Armenians regarded the approaching Roman Catholic knights as their long-sought liberators. The population cheered them as they passed through, and some Armenian troops joined Baldwin on his march. Prince Thoros of Edessa, a principality to the east of the Euphrates, was burdened by the constant threat of Turkish strongholds to the north and east, and he got a message to Baldwin urging him to come all the way through to Edessa.
By winter, Baldwin had reached the Euphrates River, having captured two Turkish fortresses along the way. Short of trusted men of his own, he gave command of the captured bases to Armenian nobles, thereby enhancing his growing reputation as the liberator of the Armenians.
Thoros was now in a state of panic. Word had reached him that Kerboga, the vicious emir of Mosul, was assembling an army that he would lead to the relief of Antioch. Edessa was directly in his path, and the Armenians on both sides of the river could look forward to wholesale massacre. Messengers from Thoros had miscalculated. He thought of Baldwin as a mercenary whose services were for hire, but Baldwin, with dreams of a kingdom of his own, wanted much more than pay. Finally, an embassy arrived from Thoros with a proposal that could make that fantasy a reality. In exchange for his help, Thoros would legally adopt Baldwin, who would then be his only son and heir. Further, they would immediately begin to rule jointly. For Thoros, half a country was better than none.
Baldwin accepted the offer and set off to Edessa, accompanied by eight knights. Arriving on February 6, 1098, while the siege of Antioch was still bogged down and the threat of a relieving force under Kerboga lay heavy in the air, Baldwin was greeted by Prince Thoros and the Christian Armenian population as their savior. Thoros acted quickly to keep his part of the bargain with a public ceremony of adoption. There was nothing Christian about the proceedings, as the participants acted out an ancient pagan allegorical ritual of birth. Thoros and Baldwin, stripped to the waist, were clothed in one double-size garment. After rubbing their naked chests together, Baldwin came out of the garment, to symbolize his coming out of the body of Thoros. After going through exactly the same ceremony with the princess, he emerged as their legal son and heir.
The status of Baldwin as co-ruler gave the Armenian population the courage to do something they had previously discussed only in whispers. They hated Thoros, not only for his greed, which manifested itself in high taxation, but because he had left their Separated Armenian Church to join the despised Greek Orthodox Church, in order to curry favor with the emperor of Byzantium. They rose in revolt, confident that they would have a better ruler in Baldwin. Thoros turned to his co-ruler for protection, but Baldwin, who probably knew about the revolt in advance, advised him to surrender to the people. Deserted by his palace guards, Thoros attempted to escape through a window, only to be beaten and slashed to death by the angry mob waiting below, who enthusiastically confirmed Baldwin as their sole ruler. To consolidate that position, Baldwin used the treasure of Edessa to attract support for his new kingdom, and a number of crusading knights, on their way to support the siege of Antioch, turned aside for the more immediate benefits of Baldwin’s generosity.
This influx of Frankish knights, who were given positions of authority and gifts of Armenian lands, incited some Armenian nobles to attempt a second revolt, this time against Baldwin the upstart. Unfortunately for them, the plot was revealed before it could erupt, and Baldwin reacted swiftly and brutally. The two ringleaders were seized and blinded. Other leaders of the group were sentenced to have their noses or feet cut off. The wealthy nobles involved were permitted to buy their way out of blindness or mutilation with the payment of exorbitant fines. That money rebuilt Baldwin’s treasury but shattered the power of the nobles, who were reduced to near-poverty.
Now firmly in control, Baldwin styled himself as count of Edessa, establishing the first of the four great Latin Christian principalities that would make up the kingdom of Jerusalem. He had quickly reached what even he might have thought of as the zenith of power, but there was greater glory in store. With his daring and ruthless determination, perhaps it was inevitable that Baldwin would later take his place in the royal succession as a future king of Jerusalem.
Although Jerusalem was only ten days’ march away, the Crusaders in Antioch settled down for a full year, perhaps because an epidemic, which now appears to have been typhoid, took the life of the papal legate, Bishop Adhemar of le Puy. The leadership was left to the competing secular lords, without the papal voice that had held them together in common cause. Bishop Adhemar had been a diplomat, working to hold disputes between temporal leaders to a minimum and treating the Orthodox clergy with respect and generosity, resembling his lord the pope in his ability to handle men who didn’t want to be handled. From now on, it would be rough-and-tumble.
A diplomat would have been useful in dealing with the envoys that came to the Crusaders from the Shiite rulers of Egypt. The Egyptians had taken Jerusalem from the Sunni Turks just a few months earlier, while the Turks were occupied with fending off the Crusader invasion. They suggested to the Christian leaders that since the Turks were their common enemy, they should work together. The government at Cairo would welcome and guarantee the safety of all Christian pilgrims to the Holy Places. Their overtures were rejected. The Crusaders demanded nothing less than total conquest, and made ready to move on Jerusalem fully fifteen months after their arrival before the walls of Antioch. Turks or Egyptians, it made no difference to the crusading leaders. All Muslims were infidels, and all infidels were the enemies of Christ and his Church.
The Crusaders marched south, but without Prince Bohemond, who was determined to keep and build his new principality of Antioch. They took a number of towns and villages as they proceeded, but the most excitement was generated by their occupation of the almost totally Christian town of Bethlehem. Having actually rescued the birthplace of the Savior, the invaders were imbued with a new wave of religious fervor. A message arrived from the emperor Alexius, offering to join them for the assault on Jersualem if they would wait for his arrival. If anything, that message spurred the Crusaders to greater speed, and at last, on June 7, 1099, they found themselves before the walls of Jerusalem.
Upon the approach of the Crusaders, the Egyptian governor of Jerusalem had destroyed or poisoned the water wells around the city and had driven away the flocks surplus to his own needs. All of the Christians in the city were told to leave, not as an act of mercy, but to place the additional burden of their needs for food and water on the invaders. One of the ejected Christians was Gerard, master of the Amalfi hostel in the city, who immediately approached the Christian leaders to share all he knew of the layout and the defenses of Jerusalem. His intelligence was most welcome.
The siege of Jerusalem lasted for about six miserable weeks. No one had warned the Crusaders about the heat, particularly unbearable to men who had to wear clothing under armor, with no shade to keep the sun from beating down on that armor all day long. No one had told these men, used to the heavily forested areas of Europe, that there was no timber around Jerusalem for the construction of siege engines. The material had to be brought from the coast or from the forests of Samaria, requiring as many as sixty Muslim prisoners to carry a single beam. They had not expected to travel a twelve mile round trip for water for themselves and their animals.
Chroniclers state that the Crusader army in front of Jerusalem numbered about twelve hundred knights and twelve thousand foot soldiers. At just two meals per day, the army would have required food for over twenty-six thousand meals every single day, not counting the needs of the civilian Christians dependent upon them. Then, after six weeks of agonizing physical discomforts, multiplied by severe deficiencies in food and water, word came from Cairo that the Egyptians were marshalling a large force to relieve the city. A feeling of despair and panic ran through the Christian army.
As if in answer to their prayers, a priest in the Christian camp reported that he had had a vision. The good bishop Adhemar of le Puy had appeared to him and given him the conditions under which the Crusaders would be granted the victory. First, they were to put aside all sinning, all selfish ambitions, and all quarrels among themselves. Next, they were to fast and pray for three days. On the third day they were to process in humility with bare feet around the walls of God’s holy city. With all of these conditions met, God would grant them the victory within nine days. The vision was accepted as valid, and the leaders ordered the entire army to comply. After two days of fasting, they shed their footwear and began the two mile walk around the city. Up on the walls, the Egyptian defenders looked down on the barefoot Crusaders with shouted taunts and laughter, urinating on crosses held up in view of the penitent marchers.
Fortunately, the prophecy was helped along by a surge of activity to complete three siege towers. To roll them up to the walls at the selected positions, it was first necessary to fill in portions of the great ditch or dry moat in front of the wall. This was done, but at great cost; a constant barrage of stones and unquenchable Greek fire was rained down on the Christians by the defenders on the wall. By the evening of July 13 the army was ready and began to roll the giant siege towers into position. Raymond of Toulouse positioned his tower at the wall first, but could not get his men across the bridge from the tower to the wall. Godfrey de Bouillon had his tower against the north wall by morning and dropped the bridge to the top of the wall. Hand to hand combat went on for hours, but by noon Godfrey had men on the city wall. Other men beat their way over the bridge to support them, and soon Godfrey commanded enough of the wall to permit the safe use of scaling ladders to bring more and more men to him. When he had a large enough party, he sent them to open the Gate of the Column (the Damascus Gate near Solomon’s Quarries), and the main Crusader force poured into the city. Jerusalem had been taken on the ninth day, as the prophecy had promised.
Seized by a frenzy of vengeful blood lust after weeks of suffering outside the walls, the victorious Crusaders cut their way through the streets, breaking open houses, shops, and mosques and butchering every man, woman, and child they could find.
One of the reports to the pope read, “If you would hear how we treated our enemies at Jerusalem, know that in the portico of Solomon and in the Temple our men rode through the unclean blood of the Saracens, which came up to the knees of their horses.”
Word spread that the local Muslims sometimes swallowed their gold as the surest way to hide it, and thereafter disemboweling became a common practice in the search for plunder.
Hoping to avoid the maniacal slaughter, the Jews crowded into their principal synagogue to give notice that they were not Muslims. The Crusaders burned down the synagogue, killing them all. The priest Raymond of Aguilers, in writing about the mutilated corpses that covered the Temple area, quoted Psalm 118: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
The one merciful gesture in the insane bloodbath came from Raymond of Toulouse, after his men had encircled the citadel of the city known as the Tower of David. The Egyptian emir in charge offered to surrender if Raymond would guarantee a safe conduct out of Jerusalem for himself and his troops. Raymond agreed and walked the extra mile, providing an armed escort all the way back to the safety of the coastal city of Ascalon for the defeated defenders of the Tower. They did not forget that a man could stake his life on the personal honor of Raymond of Toulouse.
An interesting aftermath of the First Crusade lay in the treatment of the little order that had run the Amalfi hostelry for pilgrims. In gratitude for their information and assistance, and in the flush of victory, they were rewarded with gifts of treasure and grants of land. They were able to expand their operations under the enthusiastic sponsorship of the new Christian rulers. By about 1130, their new prior, a French nobleman, would decide that they should do more than just provide lodging and care for pilgrims. They would accept knights into their order and have a military arm that would fight for the Holy Land, calling themselves the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the “Hospitallers.” But that was all in the future. The immediate need was for the leading Crusaders to pick a ruler for the newly conquered Christian kingdom.