of Jerusalem, which soon became the theatre of nations. In their
capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated the assurance
of their religion and property; but the articles were interpreted by a
master against whom it was dangerous to dispute; and in the four hundred
years of the reign of the caliphs, the political climate of Jerusalem
was exposed to the vicissitudes of storm and sunshine. By the increase
of proselytes and population, the Mahometans might excuse the usurpation
of three fourths of the city: but a peculiar quarter was resolved for
the patriarch with his clergy and people; a tribute of two pieces of
gold was the price of protection; and the sepulchre of Christ, with the
church of the Resurrection, was still left in the hands of his votaries.
Of these votaries, the most numerous and respectable portion were
strangers to Jerusalem: the pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been
stimulated, rather than suppressed, by the conquest of the Arabs; and
the enthusiasm which had always prompted these perilous journeys, was
nourished by the congenial passions of grief and indignation. A crowd of
pilgrims from the East and West continued to visit the holy sepulchre,
and the adjacent sanctuaries, more especially at the festival of Easter;
and the Greeks and Latins, the Nestorians and Jacobites, the Copts and
Abyssinians, the Armenians and Georgians, maintained the chapels, the
clergy, and the poor of their respective communions. The harmony of
prayer in so many various tongues, the worship of so many nations in
the common temple of their religion, might have afforded a spectacle
of edification and peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was
imbittered by hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering
Messiah, who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and
persecute their spiritual brethren. The preÎminence was asserted by
the spirit and numbers of the Franks; and the greatness of Charlemagne
protected both the Latin pilgrims and the Catholics of the East. The
poverty of Carthage, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, was relieved by the alms
of that pious emperor; and many monasteries of Palestine were founded
or restored by his liberal devotion. Harun Alrashid, the greatest of
the Abbassides, esteemed in his Christian brother a similar supremacy
of genius and power: their friendship was cemented by a frequent
intercourse of gifts and embassies; and the caliph, without resigning
the substantial dominion, presented the emperor with the keys of the
holy sepulchre, and perhaps of the city of Jerusalem. In the decline of
the Carlovingian monarchy, the republic of Amalphi promoted the interest
of trade and religion in the East. Her vessels transported the Latin
pilgrims to the coasts of Egypt and Palestine, and deserved, by their
useful imports, the favor and alliance of the Fatimite caliphs: an
annual fair was instituted on Mount Calvary: and the Italian merchants
founded the convent and hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the cradle of
the monastic and military order, which has since reigned in the isles of
Rhodes and of Malta. Had the Christian pilgrims been content to revere
the tomb of a prophet, the disciples of Mahomet, instead of blaming,
would have imitated, their piety: but these rigid _Unitarians_ were
scandalized by a worship which represents the birth, death, and
resurrection, of a God; the Catholic images were branded with the name
of idols; and the Moslems smiled with indignation at the miraculous
flame which was kindled on the eve of Easter in the holy sepulchre. This
pious fraud, first devised in the ninth century, was devoutly cherished
by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the clergy of
the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects, who impose on the credulous
spectators for their own benefit, and that of their tyrants. In
every age, a principle of toleration has been fortified by a sense of
interest: and the revenue of the prince and his emir was increased each
year, by the expense and tribute of so many thousand strangers.
The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the Abbassides to
the Fatimites was a benefit, rather than an injury, to the Holy Land.
A sovereign resident in Egypt was more sensible of the importance of
Christian trade; and the emirs of Palestine were less remote from the
justice and power of the throne. But the third of these Fatimite caliphs
was the famous Hakem, a frantic youth, who was delivered by his impiety
and despotism from the fear either of God or man; and whose reign was a
wild mixture of vice and folly. Regardless of the most ancient customs
of Egypt, he imposed on the women an absolute confinement; the restraint
excited the clamors of both sexes; their clamors provoked his fury;
a part of Old Cairo was delivered to the flames and the guards and
citizens were engaged many days in a bloody conflict. At first the
caliph declared himself a zealous Mussulman, the founder or benefactor
of moschs and colleges: twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran
were transcribed at his expense in letters of gold; and his edict
extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt. But his vanity was soon
flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion; he aspired above
the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible image of the Most
High God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at length manifest
in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the lord of the living and
the dead, every knee was bent in religious adoration: his mysteries were
performed on a mountain near Cairo: sixteen thousand converts had signed
his profession of faith; and at the present hour, a free and warlike
people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life and
divinity of a madman and tyrant. In his divine character, Hakem hated
the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his rivals; while some
remains of prejudice or prudence still pleaded in favor of the law of
Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine, his cruel and wanton persecution
made some martyrs and many apostles: the common rights and special
privileges of the sectaries were equally disregarded; and a general
interdict was laid on the devotion of strangers and natives. The temple
of the Christian world, the church of the Resurrection, was demolished
to its foundations; the luminous prodigy of Easter was interrupted, and
much profane labor was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock
which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this
sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted: but
instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they contented
themselves with burning, or banishing, the Jews, as the secret advisers
of the impious Barbarian. Yet the calamities of Jerusalem were in some
measure alleviated by the inconstancy or repentance of Hakem himself;
and the royal mandate was sealed for the restitution of the churches,
when the tyrant was assassinated by the emissaries of his sister. The
succeeding caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy: a free
toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the emperor of
Constantinople, the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins; and, after a
short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase of appetite to
the spiritual feast. In the sea-voyage of Palestine, the dangers were
frequent, and the opportunities rare: but the conversion of Hungary
opened a safe communication between Germany and Greece. The charity
of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted his
itinerant brethren; and from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen
hundred miles of a Christian empire. Among the Franks, the zeal of
pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times: and the roads
were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of every rank, who
professed their contempt of life, so soon as they should have kissed the
tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their
dominions; and the numbers of these pious caravans were a prelude to the
armies which marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross.
About thirty years before the first crusade, the arch bishop of Mentz,
with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this
laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan; and the multitude of
their followers amounted to seven thousand persons. At Constantinople,
they were hospitably entertained by the emperor; but the ostentation
of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs: they drew their
swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained siege in the village
of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal protection of the
Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy,
but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native
land. Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion
of this pilgrimage: he observes that they sailed from Normandy, thirty
stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed the Alps,
twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet
at their back.
After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Fatimite caliphs
was invaded by the Turks. One of the lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz
the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army, and
reduced Damascus by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities
of the province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of
Persia; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to the banks
of the Nile: the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of
Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made
a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of Egypt. In
his retreat he indulged the license of slaughter and rapine: the judge
and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp; and their execution
was followed by the massacre of three thousand citizens. The cruelty or
the defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother
of Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers,
asserted the dominion of Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk
reigned about twenty years in Jerusalem; but the hereditary command
of the holy city and territory was intrusted or abandoned to the emir
Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children, after their
expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the borders of Armenia
and Assyria. The Oriental Christians and the Latin pilgrims deplored a
revolution, which, instead of the regular government and old alliance
of the caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the strangers
of the North. In his court and camp the great sultan had adopted in
some degree the arts and manners of Persia; but the body of the Turkish
nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes, still breathed the
fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem, the western countries
of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility; and the
shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a doubtful
frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow profits of
commercial and religious freedom. The pilgrims, who, through innumerable
perils, had reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private
rapine or public oppression, and often sunk under the pressure of famine
and disease, before they were permitted to salute the holy sepulchre.
A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted the Turkmans to
insult the clergy of every sect: the patriarch was dragged by the hair
along the pavement, and cast into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from
the sympathy of his flock; and the divine worship in the church of the
Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters.
The pathetic tale excited the millions of the West to march under
the standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how
trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared with the
single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently
endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the
more irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of
religious chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched of exquisite
feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part I.
Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.--Characters Of The
Latin Princes.--Their March To Constantinople.--Policy Of
The Greek Emperor Alexius.--Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And
Jerusalem, By The Franks.--Deliverance Of The Holy
Sepulchre.--Godfrey Of Bouillon, First King Of Jerusalem.--
Institutions Of The French Or Latin Kingdom.
About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the
holy sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter, a native
of Amiens, in the province of Picardy in France. His resentment and
sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the
Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and
earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the
Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness
of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit,
"the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient
to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with
epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari,
than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff. His stature
was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively;
and he possessed that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart
the persuasion of the soul. He was born of a gentleman's family, (for we
must now adopt a modern idiom,) and his military service was under the
neighboring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade. But he
soon relinquished the sword and the world; and if it be true, that his
wife, however noble, was aged and ugly, he might withdraw, with the less
reluctance, from her bed to a convent, and at length to a hermitage.
* In this austere solitude, his body was emaciated, his fancy was
inflamed; whatever he wished, he believed; whatever he believed, he
saw in dreams and revelations. From Jerusalem the pilgrim returned an
accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the popular madness of the
times, Pope Urban the Second received him as a prophet, applauded
his glorious design, promised to support it in a general council, and
encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land. Invigorated
by the approbation of the pontiff, his zealous missionary traversed.
with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and France. His diet was
abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received
with one hand, he distributed with the other: his head was bare, his
feet naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse garment; he bore
and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode was
sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of God. He
preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the
highways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and the
cottage; and the people (for all was people) was impetuously moved by
his call to repentance and arms. When he painted the sufferings of the
natives and pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was melted to compassion;
every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged the warriors of
the age to defend their brethren, and rescue their Savior: his
ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears, and
ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and
frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels of
paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. The most perfect orator
of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence; the rustic
enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and Christendom expected
with impatience the counsels and decrees of the supreme pontiff.
The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the
design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of his zeal and ambition
still breathes in his epistles: from either side of the Alps, fifty
thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter; and his
successor reveals his intention of marching at their head against the
impious sectaries of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of executing,
though not in person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for Urban the
Second, the most faithful of his disciples. He undertook the conquest of
the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was possessed and fortified
by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended with Urban for the name
and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to unite the powers of the
West, at a time when the princes were separated from the church, and the
people from their princes, by the excommunication which himself and his
predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France.
Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which
he had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage.
Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures, the
prerogative of confirming his bishops by the delivery of the ring and
crosier. But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy by the arms of
the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the long quarrel had been
recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad and the shame of
his wife, who, in the synods of Constance and Placentia, confessed
the manifold prostitutions to which she had been exposed by a husband
regardless of her honor and his own. So popular was the cause of Urban,
so weighty was his influence, that the council which he summoned
at Placentia was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France,
Burgandy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty
thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as the
most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude,
the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The
ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to
plead the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople,
which was divided only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the
common enemies of the Christian name. In their suppliant address they
flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once to
their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the Barbarians on the
confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe.
At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren,
the assembly burst into tears; the most eager champions declared their
readiness to march; and the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the
assurance of a speedy and powerful succor. The relief of Constantinople
was included in the larger and most distant project of the deliverance
of Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a
second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in
the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the flame
of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers still
proud of the preÎminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their
hero Charlemagne, who, in the popular romance of Turpin, had achieved
the conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity
might influence the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of France,
a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended the
throne of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and province;
nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to revisit, in
a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of our youth.
It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in
the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas
against the king; but our surprise will vanish so soon as we form a just
estimate of a king of France of the eleventh century. Philip the First
was the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race,
who, in the decline of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal title to
his patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow compass,
he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest of France,
Hugh and his first descendants were no more than the feudal lords of
about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and hereditary power, who
disdained the control of laws and legal assemblies, and whose disregard
of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior
vassals. At Clermont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne, the
pope might brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council
which he convened in that city was not less numerous or respectable
than the synod of Placentia. Besides his court and council of Roman
cardinals, he was supported by thirteen archbishops and two hundred and
twenty-five bishops: the number of mitred prelates was computed at four
hundred; and the fathers of the church were blessed by the saints and
enlightened by the doctors of the age. From the adjacent kingdoms, a
martial train of lords and knights of power and renown attended the
council, in high expectation of its resolves; and such was the ardor of
zeal and curiosity, that the city was filled, and many thousands, in
the month of November, erected their tents or huts in the open field.
A session of eight days produced some useful or edifying canons for
the reformation of manners; a severe censure was pronounced against the
license of private war; the Truce of God was confirmed, a suspension of
hostilities during four days of the week; women and priests were placed
under the safeguard of the church; and a protection of three years
was extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of
military rapine. But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot
suddenly transform the temper of the times; and the benevolent efforts
of Urban deserve the less praise, since he labored to appease some
domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of war from the
Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the synod of Placentia, the rumor of
his great design had gone forth among the nations: the clergy on
their return had preached in every diocese the merit and glory of
the deliverance of the Holy Land; and when the pope ascended a lofty
scaffold in the market-place of Clermont, his eloquence was addressed
to a well-prepared and impatient audience. His topics were obvious,
his exhortation was vehement, his success inevitable. The orator was
interrupted by the shout of thousands, who with one voice, and in their
rustic idiom, exclaimed aloud, "God wills it, God wills it." "It is
indeed the will of God," replied the pope; "and let this memorable word,
the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be forever adopted as your
cry of battle, to animate the devotion and courage of the champions of
Christ. His cross is the symbol of your salvation; wear it, a red, a
bloody cross, as an external mark, on your breasts or shoulders, as
a pledge of your sacred and irrevocable engagement." The proposal
was joyfully accepted; great numbers, both of the clergy and laity,
impressed on their garments the sign of the cross, and solicited the
pope to march at their head. This dangerous honor was declined by the
more prudent successor of Gregory, who alleged the schism of the church,
and the duties of his pastoral office, recommending to the faithful,
who were disqualified by sex or profession, by age or infirmity, to
aid, with their prayers and alms, the personal service of their robust
brethren. The name and powers of his legate he devolved on Adhemar
bishop of Puy, the first who had received the cross at his hands. The
foremost of the temporal chiefs was Raymond count of Thoulouse, whose
ambassadors in the council excused the absence, and pledged the honor,
of their master. After the confession and absolution of their sins, the
champions of the cross were dismissed with a superfluous admonition to
invite their countrymen and friends; and their departure for the Holy
Land was fixed to the festival of the Assumption, the fifteenth of
August, of the ensuing year.