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1099. JUNE. OUTSIDE THE GATES OF JERUSALEM . . .

The outline of the city shimmered and refracted in the searing heat of the summer sun. Soldiers openly wept at the sight of this divine apparition, the mirage now only too real. And although they had fared better than the poorly organized People’s Crusade, only about twelve thousand of the original thirty-four thousand Crusaders reached their intended destination.¹

The terrain surrounding the hilltop city was arid from the relentless heat. Men were thirsty and hungry and insufficient in number to lay siege. All-out assault was the only choice.

Five weeks later the city walls remained resilient and impervious to all attacks. Better news arrived on June 17 when ships from Genoa anchored at Jaffa to provide the leaders of the armies with skilled engineers and, critically, with the expertise to built siege engines made from timber cannibalized from their own vessels.² The sultry air made haste impossible, until news of impending Arab reinforcements marching from Egypt motivated the Crusaders to act. With one final effort they hurled every projectile at the city walls from the north and south until the stones protecting Jerusalem finally relented. The prize was theirs.

Crusaders upon first sighting Jerusalem.

The conduct of the victors over the vanquished very much depended on who was in charge of which army, and atrocities, as in any war, became standard practice, “the juxtaposition of extreme violence and anguished faith.”³ The air of disgust from some Crusaders was impaled on the odor of depravity of the rest, but the same was true of the Arabs, who massacred all the captives they had held prisoner inside a mosque.

A week after the adrenalin of war subsided, a council was held in the refreshing interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on July 22, the feast day of Mary Magdalene, to deliberate on the election of a king for Jerusalem. Of all the leaders whose names were volunteered, one stood above the others by seniority alone: Comte Raimond de Toulouse, highly admired as a fighter and the first to volunteer for the Crusade back on that fateful November day in Clermont. But in the end the votes were awarded to the one man who had not sought any. By his own deeds Godefroi de Bouillon had proven himself to be valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest. His own servants, in private counsel, testified to his “possession of the virtues which are put in practice without any show.” His ideals for the common man impressed even the Arab sheiks, who marveled at the modesty of the Flemish prince, for when they came to make offerings to Godefroi they were surprised by a royal tent bereft of silk and its king content with squatting on a bail of straw. Made aware of their comments, Godefroi elucidated that “man must remember that he is only dust and will return to dust.”⁴

Godefroi had marched all the way to the Holy City on one principle: to liberate the Holy Sepulcher. Personal gain had not been his motivation. When presented with the title king of Jerusalem he politely refused to be crowned, accepting instead the alternative title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri (defender of the Holy Sepulcher) and adopting the informal term princeps (first citizen). As he would later state, “I will never wear a crown of gold in the place where the Savior of the world was crowned with thorns.”⁵

Urban II, whose words had set these events in motion, for better or worse, would never learn of the developments taking place in Jerusalem, for he died barely two weeks after the siege ended and before news of it reached his ear.

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Godefroi de Bouillon made his way through the southern Gate of Sion and beyond the walls of Jerusalem, to a trail leading up a short incline to a limestone hill where, according to tradition, the Virgin Mary passed into eternity and her son performed the Last Supper. On this sacred space Godefroi observed the shell of a church, the Hagia Sion, the Byzantine Basilica of the Assumption. The dilapidated building was hardly fit for habitation, let alone a king, and its position beyond the protective walls of the city would make it hard to defend, if and when the Arab armies returned. Nevertheless, Godefroi took up residence. But he was not to live there alone, for he was promptly joined by a chapter of Augustinian canons,⁶ along with a religious icon in his own right, Peter the Hermit.⁷

It turns out that, far from being some moribund evangelist, Peter was regarded with great esteem, because shortly after the capture of Jerusalem the Crusaders embarked on another military campaign and left the monk temporarily in charge of the entire city. Peter the Hermit eventually returned to France to become prior of a church of the Holy Sepulcher, which he founded before entering into retirement near Huy, where he also founded a monastery.⁸ His contemporaries were not ungrateful, nor did they forget his contribution to the purer ideals of Christianity.

The faithful, dwellers at Jerusalem, who, four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter there, recognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the patriarch had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the West, bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all humility. They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first voyage; and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with effectual power of speech and with strength to rouse up nations and kings to bear so many and such long toils for love of the name of Christ. Both in private and in public all the faithful at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to Peter the Hermit the highest honors, and attributed to him alone, after God, their happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under which they had been for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy city recovering her ancient freedom.⁹

Godefroi de Bouillon.

Curiously, also taking up residence with Peter, Godefroi de Bouillon, and the canons in the tumbledown basilica was a further group of monks from Orval under the direction of an abbot.¹⁰ Somehow Godefroi’s odd choice of home on Mount Sion, along with Peter and the monks from Orval, had all the appearances of a premeditated agreement.