In the ancient kingdom of Tiryns, the mighty King Eurystheus, felt a little less mighty having his cousin and potential rival return wearing the Nemean Lion’s coat as a trophy. The hero had proved his reputation for unparalleled strength and valour, a situation Euystheus couldn’t allow to stand. So, Heracles was summoned to face another terrible and cunning foe – the Lernaean Hydra. Eurystheus, driven by both fear and envy of Heracles’ power, had devised this perilous quest as the second of his twelve labours.
The Lernaean Hydra was a creature of nightmarish proportions and origins. It was a serpent-like beast with multiple heads, each more venomous than the last. Heracles had heard tales of its dreadful appearance, with eyes that glowed like malevolent stars and breath that reeked of death itself. But this was no ordinary monster, for Hera, the queen of the gods and Heracles’ relentless adversary, had nurtured the Hydra solely to be the instrument of his demise. The offspring of Typhon and Echidna, it had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly.
Undeterred by the daunting task ahead, Heracles journeyed to the forbidding swamp near Lake Lerna, the wretched abode of the Hydra, reputedly to be an entrance to the Underworld and where the Danaïdes buried the heads of their bridegrooms. As he approached, the air grew thick with the noxious fumes emitted by the beast’s lair. To protect himself from the deadly gases, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth, his determination unwavering.
With an unwavering spirit and a heart fueled by divine vengeance, Heracles shot flaming arrows into the Hydra’s dark cave, located near the spring of Amymone. The fiery projectiles pierced the darkness and roused the chthonic creature from its slumber. The Hydra emerged, its serpentine heads hissing and snapping at the flames.
In his hand, Heracles gripped a harvesting sickle borrowed from his nephew, Iolaus, a trusted companion who had accompanied him on many adventures. With resolute determination, Heracles advanced upon the Hydra, determined to put an end to the menace it posed to the land.
The battle that ensued was nothing short of epic. Heracles swung the sickle with unparalleled skill, slicing through the Hydra’s necks one by one. But as each head fell, the Hydra’s malevolent nature was revealed. For with every decapitation, two new heads sprouted in its place, defying the hero’s efforts and expressing the hopelessness of the struggle.
Faced with this relentless regeneration, Heracles called upon his nephew Iolaus for aid. Inspired by Athena’s wisdom, Iolaus devised a cunning plan. He fetched a burning firebrand and, after each decapitation, seared the neck stumps to prevent further growth. The Hydra roared in agony as its heads were severed and cauterized, its poison-filled blood sizzling in the swamp.
Hera, seeing that Heracles was gaining the upper hand, could not bear the thought of her creation’s demise. She sent a colossal crab to distract the hero. However, Heracles, undeterred, crushed the crab under his mighty foot with a single, powerful stomp.
Finally, after a relentless and gruelling battle, Heracles managed to cut off the last head of the Hydra. With triumph coursing through his veins, he placed the still-living and writhing head under a massive rock, positioned carefully on the sacred path that connected Lerna and Elaius.
To ensure the Hydra’s venomous legacy lived on, Heracles dipped his arrows into its poisonous blood. Little did he know that this venom would come to play a significant role in his future endeavours. With the Hydra vanquished and his labour complete, Heracles returned to King Eurystheus, ready to face the next insurmountable challenge that fate and the gods would thrust upon him.
Why is Russell Crowe not in the upcoming Ridley Scott Gladiator movie? As Paramount and Scott Free prepare for the new venture into the world of ancient Rome once again, with a late 2024 release, it seems that they’ve settled on making this a sequel.
Maximus Decimus Meridius meets his end at the end of the original 2000 epic historical drama film after the general is betrayed by the new Emperor Commodus, has his family killed, and is forced into slavery. After serving in the gladiatorial arena, and getting his revenge on Commodus, Maximus succumbs to his wounds and dies a hero.
Obviously, Crowe can’t reprise his role in a sequel. It’s been twenty-three years and his age pretty much works against him as a leading protagonist. His career now is relegated to playing mentors, which he does quite well in ‘The Man of Steel’, villains, again not bad in ‘Unhinged’, and third-rate superheroes.
But for a movie like Gladiator, there does exist a unique chance for Crowe to shine, where his age can be an advantage and work for him to tell a new story with fresh themes and keep true to the same sword and sandal colosseum action of the original.
The story is there. It already exists. A prequel is a perfect vehicle for a return of Russell Crowe to the franchise.
Whatever the writers of the sequel come up with, having Lucius become a slave, or get involved with Roman Imperial intrigue and scandal, and politics, not too dissimilar to early drafts of the Gladiator screenplays, nothing would come close to the potential of answering that overriding question when watching the first film. Why is Maximus so good as soon as he hits the sand of the arena? Sure, he’s a seasoned warrior under the command of Marcus Aurelius, but how does he also know how to ‘work’ the crowd, collaborate with the other gladiators, and use the game to his political and strategic advantage?
He’s obviously done this before. Plus, the emperor Aurelius has a soft spot for him for a reason. When the Colosseum crowd fell silent and gasped when he revealed he was Maximus Decimus Meridius, they knew who he was, and not only as a renowned general who fought the Gauls but as someone who they’d seen or heard of fighting in the arena before.
The Spaniard
It begins off the coast of Mauretania Tingitana, where Fabius Decimus Hispanius is assisting in a sea raid against a rebel legion. After the battle in the port, Fabius uncovers a plot by Avidius Cassius to usurp the imperial throne but is blackmailed into turning a blind eye due to the gambling debts he’s accumulated.
Fabius returns home to Tarraco, Iberia where he is met by his oldest son and taken to his estate. He discovers his other two sons bullying the youngest of the boys, Maximus. Fabius scolds them and teases the “Runt’ before drinking himself into a stupor.
At Cassuis’s request, using forged documentation and false witnesses, the local praetor sends a force of Vigiles to repossess the estate. A scuffle with the boys turns violent and the three older boys are slaughtered and Fabius is beaten and arrested.
During his trial, Maximus attempts to enter the courthouse but is mocked and beaten away by the Vigiles. A known gambler, drunkard, and womanizer, Fabius is tried and convicted, with a lashing and exile from Tarraco as punishment. As for the estate, he needs to pay the debt if it is to be returned. When eventually released, he has no money to his name, only the mule and cart salvaged by Maximus. They travel from town to town begging and scamming for food and shelter.
On the outskirts of Narbo, the travelers are ambushed by bandits. Maximus rescues his father from the ex-soldiers turned robbers, proving his ability to fight. Fabius tells his son about his past as a warrior and impresses on Maximus that he too is a natural fighter.
At Massillia, the father forces Maximus to compete in the local gladiatorial games. He gambles on the outcome, successfully. When Maximus discovers this, Fabius promises him the money will be used to buy back their land.
From there they go on the professional circuit, Maximus disguised as a slave, and Fabius as his lanista. At one point, Fabius convinces Maximus to fight a bull, since they have a family history of breeding bulls. But instead of saving the winnings, Fabius gambles it away and when he loses, spends the rest on booze and prostitutes. Again, Maximus uncovers this which causes a rift between them.
At Pietas Julia, Maximus meets a girl from a rich family and opts to enter into fights at a private function. Fabius encounters Cassius, who is planning on assassinating him. After seeing his sorry and degenerate state, Cassius no longer fears Fabius as a threat, so he offers to buy out Maximus’ contract as a gladiator.
Once in Rome, Maximus meets Alexander, a fellow Gladiator indentured to Cassius’ Ianista, and a Christian. He helps Maximus prepare for the games. Fabius, having squandered his money, travels to Rome to watch his son fight, and to bet on it. Cassius, who thought that Fabius would have drunk himself to death by now, discovers him roaming the gambling quarter. Worried that the Emporer would learn of his plotting from Fabius, he again confronts him. Fabius wants his property back, but this is not possible anymore, it had been already sold off. As a counteroffer, he is offered to bet against his son since the game will be rigged against his son. Alexander was bribed to ensure Maximus loses in the arena.
In the final battle in front of the Emperor, Maximus is set up to go down badly. At first, Fabius refuses to watch the fight, but his emotions take the better of him. He approaches the Praetorian guard and informs them about the plot by Cassius.
When he sees his son get wounded and about to be slain, Fabius steps into the arena and fights on to the death, winning the favour of the crowd and of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who spares Maximus after being informed about the treachery and Fabius’ service.
The Prequel
That’s it.
As mentioned earlier, it has already been written, inferred directly from the original film. He’s called the Spaniard, he knows the fighting arena inside and out, doesn’t trust Christians so is still a pagan, and he’s close to Marcus Aurelius.
It is a story that follows similar beats to the first movie, but it also explores relationships between father and son, weakness and betrayal, and why Aurelius loves and trusts Maximus more than his son. It gives a seasoned and older actor like Crowe something to sink his teeth into, instead of trying to fake an Italian accent and fight evil demons in schlock horror jumps scare movies, maybe win him another award.
But he’ll need to get fit for this finale. It’s just one fight scene but it should be one hell of a gladiatorial duel.
A.D. 1096, Departure of the first rabble of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.
LITTLE more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the holy city. Mere charity may justify the belief that some even amongst these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise, is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance, Peter undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together.
At Cologne they parted company; and 15,000 under the penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onwards a host which swelled gradually on the march to about 40,000.
Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk
Another army or horde of perhaps 20,000 marched under the guidance of Emico count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of his motives. Behind these, came a rabble, it is said, of 200,000 men, women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde, no pretence was kept up of order or of decency.
Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands through which they marched, while 3,000 horsemen, headed by some counts and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to share their spoil.
Bloody persecutions of the Jews.
But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the descendants of those who had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and Treves, and of the great cities on the Rhine, ran red with the blood of their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming fires.
The Jews taken under the protection of the empire.
Thus auspiciously began the mighty enterprise on which pope Urban had insisted as the first duty of all Christians; and thus early did the result of his preaching tend to revive the waning power of the emperor, Henry IV., who interposed his authority to this merciless onslaught on a peaceable and useful class of his subjects. The Jews were taken under the protection of the empire, and for the time the change was a real relief. Their posterity found to their cost that their guardian might in his turn become their plunderer and tormentor.
March of Walter and his followers through Hungary and Bulgaria
A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and Constantinople; and across this dreary waste the followers of Walter the Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of the inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria, their misdeeds provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction, and none perhaps would have reached Constantinople, if the imperial commander at Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These succours involved some costs; and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men amongst the pilgrims, and especially of the women and children, who were seized to provide the necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Constantinople.
Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporus.
Of such a rabble rout the Emperor Alexios needed not to be afraid. He had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks, and Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the arrival of their fellow crusaders; and consulting the safety of his people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporos, and pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest from the unbelievers.
Alexios wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian Sultan David, whose surname Kilidje Arslan marked him out as the Sword of the Lion.
Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan.
The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that their companions had carried the walls of Nice (Nikaia), and were revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe when the forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedition not less, it is said, than 300,000 human beings had already paid the penalty of their lives.
Still the first crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took part in it.
Rank and character of the leaders of the First Crusade.
The Western emperor, Henry IV., the representative of Charles the Great, was the enemy of the pope; Philip I. king of France had been excommunicated by Urban in the council of Clermont; the sovereigns of Denmark, Scotland, Sweden, and Poland were as yet scarcely brought within the community of European monarchs; the Spanish kings had their crusades ready made at home; and we have already seen that the English William II. was more intent on acquiring dukedoms than on running the risk of a blessed martyrdom at the gates of Jerusalem. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of the second order.
Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and Eustace.
Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and duke of Lothringen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV., the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might hope that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life, an influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than 80,000 infantry and 10,000 horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace count of Boulogne.
Hugh of Vermandois.
Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey’s colleagues was Hugh count of Vermandois, whose surname the Great has been ascribed by some to his birth as the brother of Philip I. the French king, by others merely to his stature, as ‘Hugh the long.’
Robert of Normandy.
With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The picture drawn of him is indeed not unlike that of the forefather of the Edomite tribes. Careless of the future, open in his friendship or his enmity, free from duplicity in himself and unsuspicious of treachery in others, charming others and injuring himself by his lighthearted cheerfulness and his lavish generosity, Robert was a man whom the total lack of the qualities which marked his iron-hearted father brought to a horrible captivity and death in the dungeons of Cardiff Castle.
Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres.
The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert count of Flanders, whom his followers lauded as the Sword and Lance of the Christians, and of Stephen count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, the possessor, if we choose to believe the tale, of 365 castles, and as rich in his eloquence as in his fortresses. The same arithmetic would have us think that the minor chiefs were more numerous than the champions whom Agamemnon led to the Trojan war; and the assertion is perhaps as much and as little to be credited as the catalogue of Greek warriors in the Iliad.
Adhemar bishop of Puy.
Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the southern bands, was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) bishop of Puy; a leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering soldiers under his banner.
Raymond of Toulouse.
A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare, and won for himself a mingled reputation for wisdom and haughtiness, obstinacy and greed.
Bohemond.
Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, whom we have seen fighting at Dyrrhachium and victorious at Larissa (p. 23), looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the Egean.
Nay, if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in part of enabling the pontiff to suppress all opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern emperor.
Tancred.
Far above his companion Bohemond, rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma the sister of Robert Guiscard; and his reputation comes not from his wealth or the greatness of his following, but from the qualities of mind and person which raised him indefinitely nearer than his fellows to the standard of the very gentle perfect knight’ of Chaucer. In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted marvellous strength and splendour.
Cause and effect of chivalry.
When in the council of Clermont pope Urban dwelt on the cowardice and ignoble fears of the Turks, he probably touched a chord which grated on the more generous and enthusiastic amongst his hearers, and was in fact speaking as a priest when with greater wisdom he should have used the language of a general. There can be little doubt that the finer spirits of the age were moved by the eager desire of rescuing a crowd of helpless Christians from conquerors whose might it was impossible for them to resist, and who were worthy antagonists even for the noblest knights of Latin and Teutonic Christendom. The rescue of this feeble multitude could be effected only at the cost of a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of houses and lands, of luxuries and pleasures: and the consciousness of large sacrifices, cheerfully made for the weak and suffering, is amongst the highest feelings which may be awakened in the human heart.
Thus in the most noble-minded and disinterested of the crusading champions there was distinctly a combination of two ideas, seemingly discordant, yet working together to produce one definite moral result. These were the indignation with which they regarded the tyranny exercised over the Christians of the East, and the involuntary respect and even admiration which they felt for the conquerors as the most redoubtable warriors of the age next to the foremost knights of Christendom. The former feeling would impel them to the most desperate efforts for the recovery of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre; the latter would place checks dimly recognised and not always heeded on the ferocious warfare with which they would without scruple seek to sweep away all meaner or more savage enemies.
So far as he was actuated by such motives, the crusader was cultivating in himself the germs of forbearance and toleration which must at once to whatever extent soften the horrors of war and which would in the end yield more solid and satisfying fruits. In this same direction the influence of the Church was felt with constantly increasing power. It had been her aim to curb, when she could not repress, the violence of her children, and to establish by a solemn sanction that Truce of God which prevented the practice of private war from becoming a burden too heavy for the earth to bear. But in the expedition for the delivery of the Holy Land war itself was sanctified; and the knight, initiated even in past years by rites, which, heathen in their origin, had been made sacred by the Church, was raised almost to the level of the priest and the monk.
Knighthood.
Henceforth the young aspirant for the knightly dignity and office was treated much as the catechumens had been treated in the first Christian centuries. He must enter on his work with clean thoughts and a pure conscience, and the spotless garment of the catechumen, purified by his long fast, was reproduced in the white robe which the young squire put on after cleansing his body in the bath, while the profession of baptism was repeated in the knightly vow which (after a special confession of sin followed by absolution) pledged the young man to deal justly, truly, and generously, defending the oppressed, succouring the needy and helpless, and everywhere showing himself the unsparing antagonist of all tyrants and evildoers.
In an especial degree he was to be the champion of women, the protector of children; and he rose from his knees before the assembled clergy, dubbed a knight by the sword of his godfather in the names of God, of our Lady, and of St. Michael, or St. George. The nearest to the heart of those who uttered this formula, as to that of the young knight, was the name of the Virgin Mother, whose image, it would seem, has fascinated multitudes without curing them of savage treachery and bloodthirsty ferocity. In feudal phrase she was his Lady (Notre Dame), as the crucified Jesus was his Lord (Notre Seigneur); and the adoring and humble love which he bore for her was held to sanctify and to be reflected in the devotion which he felt for every noble lady and more especially for the one favoured dame who became the idol of his heart, a star to be worshipped at a distance, if not a queen at whose feet he might throw himself in an ecstasy of passion.
This being whom he delighted to picture to himself as the peerless ideal of womanhood might be the wife of another man; and these extravagant fancies produced not unfrequently the most lamentable and ruinous results. But the knightly or chivalrous spirit, thus sometimes led astray, tended nevertheless to impose moral checks on rude and savage minds which had never felt them before; and the growth of this spirit was ensured chiefly by the crusades. The iniquities wrought by the soldiers of the Cross were fearful indeed; but the horrors of the warfare were in some small measure softened by the honour which the foremost warriors on both sides paid each to the bravery and good faith of the other; and this feeling expressed itself in a word which even now has by no means lost its meaning.
Courtesy.
The quality of courtesy so named displayed itself in the readiness to give place to another where strength and power might have refused all concessions. It was closely allied to the Christian qualities of meekness and mercy, and any approach to this heavenly temper was a gain indeed in a brutalised and ferocious age. The highest glory of the crusading knight was to be a mirror of courtesy: and this glory is especially associated with the name of Tancred.
Tancred lived, fought, and conquered: the Rinaldo whom Tasso paints in his epic poem on the deliverance of Jerusalem is a being of cloudland like the Greek Achilleus, the Trojan Hektor, and the Persian Rustam.
A. D. 1096. August. Departure of the army of the Crusaders under Godfrey.
The miserable remnant of 3,000 men who escaped from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian Sultan (p. 41), found a refuge in Byzantine territory about the time when the better-appointed armies of the crusaders were setting main off on their eastward journey. The most disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon who led them safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues.
Three weeks passed away in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian king demanded, as a hostage Baldwin the brother of the general: the demand was refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for a free passage and a free market; but although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The mischief might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly as a friendly escort but really as cautious warders, kept close to the crusading hosts.
Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois.
At length, they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey learnt that Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the Greek Hugh of emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights in golden armour, and who styled himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople.
With Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy; and the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal.
With little regard to order the chiefs determined to cross the sea as best they might. Hugh embarked at Bari; and if we may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the worshipper of her father Alexios, his fleet was broken by a tempest which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenos, the nephew of the emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good pleasure of Alexios should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw at once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders conducted with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completely won by the charm of manner which Alexios well knew how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he could to induce others to follow his example.
A.D. 1096. Christmas. Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of Constantinople.
From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexios, demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey resumed his march, treating the land through which he passed as an enemy’s country, until by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before the walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096.
The fears of Alexios were aroused by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they quickened into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their way under the command of Bohemond and Tancred.
Policy of the emperor Alexios.
Of Godfrey, beyond the fact of his mission as a crusader, he knew little or nothing: but in Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert into open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties urged through his envoys before Urban II. in the council of Piacenza; and his mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to their destination and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they might make in Syria.
Hugh was sent back to Godfrey’s camp; but the quarrel was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to restore friendship.
Compact between Alexios and the Crusaders
But it was of the first importance for Alexis that he should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round his capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexios pledged them his word that he would supply them with food and aid them in their eastward march, and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions.
On the other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the emperor as their liege lord only for the time during which they might remain within his borders, and undertook to restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from the empire. In order to secure this treaty Alexios had been compelled to go through the fatigue of interminable audiences with the Western warriors and to put up with not a little insolence. The effrontery of a crusader, who flinging himself on the imperial throne declared that he saw no reason for standing while one rustic remained seated, was denounced as intolerable rudeness even by his companions; but Robert count of Paris, if indeed it was he, closed a brief career not many weeks later, and is more conspicuous in modern romance than in the pages of mediæval historians.
Homage of the Crusaders to Alexios
The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within him when on reaching Constantinople he found that his colleagues, instead of remaining independent chiefs, had made themselves vassals of the Byzantine monarch. But Alexios was vigorously aided by Robert of Flanders whose friendly offices were the result of an alliance made with his father eight years before; and Bohemond soon saw that he must in appearance follow the example of his comrades, whatever course it might suit him to take hereafter. He became the guest of the emperor, listened with complacency to his flatteries, accepted a magnificent gift or bribe, and accompanied his submission with a request for the office of Grand Domestic, or general of the East.
The emperor put him off with the promise of an independent principality, and turned with more genuine warmth to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This disinterested crusader was anxious only to fulfil his vows; and Alexios felt that he was making no sacrifice and entering into no inconvenient engagements by adopting him as his son.
Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Constantinople.
The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome the opposition of Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of Toulouse, who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade.
He should never make another journey, he said, and he was determined to be well prepared. Wishing to avoid, so far as he could, the lines of march chosen by the chiefs who had preceded him, he took the road through Lombardy. Thus far his march was easily accomplished: but things wore a different look when he reached the savage mountains and desolate valleys of Dalmatia and Slavonia. The people had driven their cattle (and their cattle formed practically their whole property) into inaccessible glens: and instead of plundering others the crusaders found themselves harassed and their stragglers cut off by thieves and murderers.
Raymond retaliated by cutting off the hands and noses of all who were taken prisoners and putting out their eyes; and the wrath of the natives was roused to desperate resistance. At Scodra he entered into some sort of agreement with the Servian chief Bodin; but the country could yield little for the support of this vast army, which was compelled to struggle onwards under dire difficulties. It is astonishing to hear that Raymond could still speak of himself as the leader of a hundred thousand warriors, when he refused flatly to do homage to the Greek emperor.
Refusal of Raymond to do homage.
The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the French king. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexios on equal terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat, which was never forgiven, that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found on the side of the emperor.
But Alexios soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, and winning the heart of the old warrior, although he failed to compel his obedience, he confessed to him his dislike of the rude and noisy habits of the Franks and his deep-seated fears of Bohemond. The admiration of Anna Comnena was as great as the esteem professed for him by her father. Raymond in her fervent language shone among the barbarians as the sun among the stars of heaven.
Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders.
While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of sending across the Bosporos the swarms which might soon become an army of devouring locusts round his own capital.
A.D. 1097. March.
It was easier to give them a welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the soil of Asia. It was well to place even a narrow strait of sea between himself and these dangerous friends, who had threatened him at first with all the horrors of savage war. The rumour had got abroad that Alexios meant to hem them in among marshes, and leave them there to starve; and an assault of the crusaders on the suburbs showed the emperor what he might expect, if these suspicions were not quieted.
Passage of the Crusaders across the Bosporos.
Probably he had not intended to entrap them to their death: but he had felt less scruple in submitting them to cheatings with debased coin and to extortions which carried with them no sense of novelty for his own people. Even these he found it politic to abandon, and so zealously did he employ an opposite method that for the time the crusaders seemed to have become his mercenaries.
Godfrey’s men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the Bosporos, than all the vessels which had transported them were brought back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of large gifts, Alexios in like manner freed the neighbourhood of his capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came, they were hurried across, and the emperor breathed more freely when, on the feast of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore.
Thorough antagonism between the Crusaders and the Greeks.
The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men, marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of life, in the first notions of civilisation, law, and duty.
For the Greeks feudalism was a thing of the remote past; in other words, was a thing unknown. To get at a state resembling that of Western Europe they would have had to go back for nearly twenty centuries – to the days of Solon and of the Thessalian and Theban nobility, who were among the most efficient allies of Xerxes.
For the crusading armies or rather for their chiefs (of the common herd there was no need to take any account), nothing was so hateful as a central authority which pressed on all orders in the state alike: nothing was so precious as local tyranny and the right of private war, which respected neither person nor property.
For the subjects of the Eastern empire the protection of person and property was everything, and in order to secure this they were willing to put up with a large amount of oppression and of corruption in their governors. In a sense not so high perhaps as that which the words bore in the days of Herodotos, law was still their king; and of public law the Latins could scarcely be said to have any conception.
Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy.
Nor must we forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from the Western clergy. The latter were now becoming well broken into the yoke of celibacy which had been finally thrust upon them by Peter Damiani and Hildebrand; for the former marriage was valid, if it preceded the reception of their orders. The Latin clergy had by this change been converted into a close order or caste, which looked up to the Roman pontiff as their head and hated the thought of allegiance to any temporal ruler.
This empire within an empire was an idea which had not dawned on the Greek or the Eastern mind; and the clergy of the West despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm. These, in their turn, shrank with horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their ferocity. Harmony between nations and races under such conditions is as hopeless as the voluntary mingling of oil and water; and the result of contact was an exasperation of the suspicion, jealousy, and hatred which the one side felt instinctively for the supposed treachery, lying, and violence of the other.
Numbers of the Crusaders.
Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the Hellespont and the Bosporos a host, we may well believe, more vast than that which Xerxes drove before him for the invasion of Europe, and leaving behind it in utter insignificance the scanty force with which Alexander attempted and achieved the conquest of Asia.
When tribes or a nation pour out their whole population, men, women, and children alike, there is practically no limit to the numbers which may be set in motion; nor is it any tax on our credulity to believe that a hundred thousand horsemen, fully armed in the light coats of mail worn during the first crusading age, were marshalled on the Bithynian plains, even if we put aside as an absurd exaggeration the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that the whole body of the crusaders amounted to not less than six hundred thousand.
June. Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia).
Their strength and valour were soon to be tested. They were now face to face with the Turks on whose cowardice Urban II. had enlarged with so much complacency before the council of Clermont. The Sultan David, or Kilidje Arslan (p. 41), placed his family and treasures in his capital city of Nice (Nikaia), and retreated with 50,000 horsemen to the mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of the Christians.
By these his city was formally invested; and for seven weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexios sent thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a double blockade, submitted to the emperor, who was in no way anxious to see the crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making ready for the last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the walls.
Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers, for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles: but Alexios, with gifts which added force to his words, professed that his only desire now, as it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they to go many stages before they found themselves again confronted with their adversary.
July 4. Battle of Dorylaion.
The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even those seemed likely to be borne down, they received timely succours from Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from bishop Adhemar of Puy and from Raymond count of Toulouse.
Still the Turks held out, and it seemed likely that they would long hold out, when the appearance of the last division of Raymond’s army filled them with the fear that a new host was upon them.
March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch.
The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile, the Latin hosts were sweeping onwards, passing Cogni (Ikonion, Iconium), Erekli (Herakleia), and the Pisidian Antioch. Their dangers were great; their sufferings terrible. The son of Kilidje Arslan had hurried on before them with ten thousand horsemen, and declared before the gates of each city that they came as conquerors, not as fugitives.
They had ravaged the lands as they came along; in the town they sacked the churches, plundered the houses, emptied the granaries; and the crusaders who followed them had to journey over a naked soil under the burning Phrygian sun. Hundreds died from the heat and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage horses which had perished.
Quarrel between Baldwin and Tancred at Tarsus
At length Tancred with his troop found himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the crusaders.
Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice of the people and his own promise to protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their humour, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tar sus was followed by an attempt at private war between Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred were overborne.
So early was the first harvest of murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the cross. It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main army again began its march, to undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and peril.
Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin.
A very small force would have sufficed to disorganise and rout them as they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, recovering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, suffering from wounds inflicted by a bear, have done much to help them. But for the present their enemies were dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened with eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the Greek or Armenian tyrant of Edessa.
As Alexios had done to his brother, so this chief welcomed Baldwin as his son; but Baldwin, having once entered into the city, cared nothing for the means which had brought him thither, and the death of his adoptive father was followed by the establishment at Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, or, as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor had some of the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterwards fell into Baldwin’s hands, and was put to death.
The goddess Hera, determined to destroy Heracles, had unleashed a monstrous lion she had raised and sent to terrorize the hills of Nemea. The offspring of Echidna and Typhon, and the brother of the dragon Ladon, this lion was officially trained and settled on Earth to be a menace to mankind. It had golden fur that was robust and impenetrable by human weapons, and sharper than mortal swords. This lion could destroy any strong armour making it invulnerable to attack and effectively unstoppable, a formidable opponent for anyone who dared to face it.
Heracles had faced another lion earlier in his life, killing the Lion of Cithaeron and taking its fur as a trophy, but Hera’s lion was a far more vicious monster. Setting up a fight with the Nemean lion by King Eurystheus as the first labour would be the best way to rid himself of Heracles and the threat to his reign he posed.
Herac took on the quest and headed for Nemea. He wandered the countryside until he came to the town of Cleonae. At the local tavern, Heracles met a youth who was excited to learn of his mission. He offered Heracles a tribute, that if Heracles slew the monster lion and returned alive within thirty days, the town would sacrifice a lion to Zeus, but if he did not return within that same amount of days or he got himself eaten by the lion, the boy would sacrifice himself to Zeus, purposely and selfishly placing an extra burden on Heracles, as a show of how desperate the villagers were in getting rid of this lion.
As Heracles trekked along the surrounding hills, he came across a shepherd, Molorchos. Molorchos recounted how he had recently lost his son to the lion. He too offered to sacrifice one of his rams to Zeus if Heracles returned alive with the dead carcass of the lion within thirty days. On the other hand, if he did not return at all, a ram would be sacrificed to the dead Heracles as a mourning offering. A much less selfish gesture, but Heracles shouldered that obligation as well.
While searching for the lion, Heracles prepared some arrows to use against it. On the tenth day, he had his first encounter with the lion, finding it resting on a giant outcrop overlooking the forest, glistening in the sun. He shot it with his arrows and discovered its golden fur was impenetrable, his arrows bouncing harmlessly off the creature’s thigh. After a day of stalking and hunting each other, Heracles discovered the lion’s lair and figured out how to use it as a trap. The cave had two entrances, one of which Heracles blocked. When the lion returned to his cave, Heracles went in after it. In the darkness and tight spaces, Heracles wrestled the beast and, with the help of an Earth-born Serpent, managed to stun the beast with his club, killing the disoriented lion by strangling it with his bare hands. Eager to help, and rub the victory in Hera’s face, Athena advised Heracles to use one of the lion’s own claws to skin the pelt.
Peter Paul Rubens
On the thirtieth day of the quest, Heracles returned to Tiryns carrying the carcass of the lion on his shoulders. King Eurystheus was astonished and frightened, expecting Heracles to be eaten alive, and fearing the man’s supernatural strength. This fear prompted Eurystheus to forbid Heracles from ever again entering the city. Any future interactions would be held outside the city gates.
Eurystheus didn’t waste time sending Heracles off to complete his next labour, deciding on a task with increasing danger, which was to destroy the Lernaean Hydra. Heracles wasted no time setting off on the quest, wearing the Nemean lion’s pelt as a shield, impervious to the elements and all but the most powerful weapons.
THE pope is the bishop of Rome, and the traditions of the papacy delight in recalling the humble origin of his vast monarchy, at once spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and secular. If the poor Galiæan fisherman ever entered the Eternal City, it was as a stranger who had come to be the guide and friend of a small knot of men who saw and hated and wished to keep themselves aloof from the abominable corruption of Roman society.
But if Christianity itself, as we have seen, was, when it had once taken root in the West, modified by the popular feelings and old associations of the converts, the constitution of the church was in like manner insensibly modified by the political forms of the state with which it had at first to wage a terrible conflict.
Rome was not as other cities: and the bishop of Rome could not long remain like the presidents of other churches. He was dealing with the subjects, and he lived in the heart, of the empire. It was inevitable that the imperial tradition should fasten on the object of their worship; nor was it long before the exulting cry went up to heaven, Christ lives, Christ rules, Christ is emperor (Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat).
A.D. 587-604
As the vicars of this invisible emperor, the popes gradually acquired a power which overshadowed that of mightiest sovereigns. It was exercised with monastic austerity by Gregory the Great; it was wielded with the ability of a consummate general by Gregory VII Hildebrand.
A.D. 1073-1085.
The first Gregory was a monk, therefore also a Manichean; in other words, one who believed in the essential impurity of all matter; but this philosophy, if it had any attractions for Gregory VII, was wholly subordinate to the one absorbing passion of ecclesiastical dominion. His aim was to subdue the world by a spiritual army: but the issue of his conquest was not to be confined to spiritual influence. It was to give him power over kingdoms, dictation over princes, the command of their weapons and their wealth. It was to humble civil polity under priestly autocracy; it was to prove, what Hildebrand scrupled not to assert, that the civil rule was in itself the mere development and working of the evil principle. The foundations had long been laid; but Hildebrand left to his successors not much to do towards completing the fabric of papal empire. His predecessors had learnt to avail themselves dexterously of popular feeling or the ambition of princes, to direct wide-spread movements, if not to create them.
It was the papal sanction which had aided to depose the degenerate Merovingian; it was the papal chrism which had anointed the first Carolingian king. It was the diadem of the ancient Cæsars, bestowed by the hand of Leo III., which rested on the head of Charles the Great. It was Hildebrand himself who, by the hands of his instrument, Alexander II., had transferred the crown of England from the son of Godwine to William the Bastard of Normandy. It has been well remarked, that although the name had not yet been heard, yet in truth it was now that the first crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the liberties of England.
We may note further that the preacher was a pontiff who, when he found it convenient to thank the Sultan of Morocco for some indulgences granted to Christians in his territories, could assure that infidel ruler that both worshipped the same God and held the same faith, though their modes of worship and their expressions of devotion might be different.
Schemes and motives of Gregory VII
The popes had become capable of setting vast armies in motion, and of raising to a white heat the fire of a popular sentiment which had already been kindled. These two conditions were needed before the power of Europe could be precipitated on the infidel conquerors of Syria; and the inability of the pope’s to accomplish this end if they were not in accord with the prevalent feeling of the people is strikingly shown in the history of Gregory VII.
A. D. 1074. His circular letter to the faithful.
Eight years after he had helped to slay Harold at Hastings, Hildebrand addressed a letter to all who loved and cared to defend the Catholic faith, beseeching them to put aside all other tasks in favour of the great work of chasing the hordes of the Seljukian Turks beyond the bounds of the Eastern empire.
Constantinople, the new city of the Seven Hills, was even now threatened by these barbarians; nor could any say how soon the danger might not menace Rome itself. It could not be doubted that the faith, the energy, the warlike skill of Christendom would sweep away these undisciplined unbelievers; and the victory of the faithful would be followed by very solid gain to the popes. The price to be paid by the emperor for his deliverance from the Turks was his submission as a vassal to the see of Rome; in other words, the pope was to become absolute lorá both of East and West, and the claims of the Byzantine patriarch to a coordinate dignity with the successor of St. Peter should no longer be made with impunity. But although the scheme thus carefully drawn out was to promote the interests of a spiritual power, for the great mass of Latin Christians it was purely a political enterprise. The fears and die tresses of the Eastern emperor could excite no sympathy; the Cæsar of Constantinople was not a being who had exhibited the image of superhuman love or shed his blood for those who had taken delight in torturing him; and the excommunication which Hildebrand had imprudently hurled against the emperor Nicephorus (Nikephoros) III., had left behind it in the East a feeling not favourable to the designs of the Roman pontiff. The letter of Hildebrand appealed to no religious associations; it said nothing of abominations committed in the holy places, of terrible crimes wrought on the persons of faithful pilgrims; it was silent about the eternal reward which the bare act of pilgrimage would win for the believer. It was of little use to say in passing that more than 50,000 warriors longed to rise up under his guidance against the enemies of God and reach the sepulchre of their Lord. He had not struck the right chord, and Hildebrand failed to see the West gird itself for the great conflict with the enemies of the faith.
A.D. 1081. The Normans in Italy.
For a time he may have supposed that the great fire was already kindled, when with a fleet of 150 ships and an army of 30,000 men Robert Guiscard set sail from Brundusium (Brindisi). But the conqueror who had done so much in Italy was to do but little to the east of the Adriatic. While his army put forth its whole strength before the walls of Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), his fleet under the command of his son Bobemond was miserably defeated; and nothing but the wretched jealousy felt by the emperor Alexios for his general Paleologos saved the army of Guiscard from ruin and turned the threatened disaster into victory.
A.D. 1082.
When, being compelled to return to Italy, he left Bohemond to carry on his enterprise, the latter overran Epeiros and had well nigh succeeded in reducing the Thessalian Larissa, when he too was compelled to hasten to Italy for reinforcements both in men and money.
A. D. 1083
In his absence his deputy, Brienne, the constable of Apulia, was constrained to abandon the siege of Kastoria and to bind himself not to invade again the territories of the Byzantine emperor.
A.D. 1085.
Not many months later Robert Guiscard gathered an other armament for the conquest of the East. He raised the siege of Corfu (Korkyra), and had reached Cefalonia (Kephallenia), when his career was cut short by death and his scheme for the time seemed utterly brought to nought. The war which Hildebrand sought to stir up against the Mahometan powers was not less vigorously preached by his successor Victor III., who promised remission of sins to all who might engage in it; but his words called forth no bands of warriors for the recovery of Jerusalem
A.D. 1087.
The fleets of Genoa and Pisa swept the African coasts, and gained in the shape of booty a harvest which was to fall to the lot of few among the myriads who were soon to leave their homes for the Holy Land.
A.D. 1095
Ten years after the death of Hildebrand three or four thousand of the clergy and thirty thousand laymen were gathered to meet pope Urban II. at the council of Piacenza (Placentia). So vast a Council of throng could find standing ground in no Piacenza building, and the business of the council was transacted in the plain outside the city.
The envoys of the Eastern emperor, Alexios Comnenos, were there to plead his distresses and beseech the strenuous aid of the faithful. The policy of checking the progress of the Turks while they were still at a good distance from Italy may have influenced the more statesmanlike of their hearers; the more vehement and enthusiastic among them were moved to tears by the pathetic recital of the Byzantine ambassadors, and demanded loudly to be led against the enemy.
But Urban, with his heart more determinately set upon the enterprise than any man present, felt that the hour for the supreme decision had not yet come. He was in a country torn by intestine divisions, where his own claim to the papacy was disputed by an antipope whom with his adherents it was here his especial business to excommunicate. He had to deal with other matters also.
Some of the clergy still refused to abandon their wives; and the wife of the emperor Henry IV. was present to complain of treatment unimaginably monstrous, if her tale was true, on the part of her husband. Both emperor and clergy must be condemned, and brought into obedience; and Urban felt that after such business as this it would be well to reserve his eloquence for another scene. He therefore dismissed the envoys of Alexios with the assurance that when the hosts of Western Christendom advanced to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre they would not forget that they had work to do near Constantinople.
A.D. 799
From Piacenza Urban made his way across the Alps to the realm of the great Charles, whose intercourse with the ambassadors of the Caliph Harun-al Reschid may have laid the foundation for the myth, expanded into a systematic fiction in the lying Chronicle of Turpin, that he had himself smitten down the unbelievers under the shadow of the church of Constantine. On the northern side of the Alps, Urban could breathe more freely. The sentence of excommunication was impending, it is true, over Philip the First, who called himself or was called King of France; but the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, powerful though he might be within his own dominion of Paris and Orleans, was little more than nominal lord of the vast throng of feudal chiefs who lay beyond its borders.
A.D. 1995 The Council of Clermont
From his old home in the great monastery of Clugny, Urban set off in the autumn for Clermont in the territories of the Count of Auvergne. Before he could reach the city, thousands of tents were pitched without the walls for those who could find no shelter within them; and the eight days during which the council held its sessions were spent in regulating the enterprise about which the pope had spoken with so much reserve at Piacenza, and in prescribing the measures to be taken for the safety of those who might remain at home during the absence of their natural protectors.
Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem.
There was now no more need for hesitation. Popular feeling to the north of the Alps was far more deeply moved by the woes of the pilgrims and the conquests of the infidels than on the southern side of the great mountain barriers; and the wrath of the people had been fanned into an ungovernable flame by the preaching of the hermit Peter. This man, born at Amiens in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and laid aside the sword which he wielded in the service of the Counts of Boulogne, to follow the counsel of perfection in silence and solitude.
A.D. 1093
Like others, he felt himself drawn by an irresistible attraction to the Holy Land; but if his passionate yearnings were rewarded by the privilege of offering up his prayers before the tomb of the Redeemer, his very heart was stirred by the sight of things the mere recital of which had awakened his wrath at a distance. The Sanctuary was in the hands of the infidels; the patriarch was reduced practically to the state of a slave, and the pilgrim was happy who returned from the Holy City without undergoing humiliations and buffetings scarcely deserved by the worst of criminals.
The murder of many Christian men, the deadly wrongs done to many Christian women, called aloud for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow that, with the help of God, these things should cease. His conversations with the patriarch Simeon brought out only confessions of the incapacity of the Greek emperor and the weakness of his empire. The nations of the West shall take up arms in your cause,’ said the hermit; and with the patriarchal benediction Peter hastened to obtain for the mission which he now saw before him the sanction of the man who claimed to be at the head of Eastern and Western Christendom alike.
A.D. 1094 The mission and preaching of the hermit.
Before the Roman pontiff, Peter poured forth his story of the wrongs which called for immediate redress; but no eloquence was needed to stir the heart of Urban. The zeal of the pope was probably as sincere as that of any others who engaged in the enterprise; but it could not fail to derive strength from the consciousness that, whatever might be the result to the warriors of the cross, his own power would rest henceforth on more solid foundations. His blessing was therefore eagerly bestowed on the fervent enthusiast who undertook to go through the length and breadth of the land, stirring up the people to the great work for the love of God and of their own souls. His eloquence may have been as rude as it was ready; but its deficiencies were more than made up by the earnestness which gave even to the glance of his eye a force more powerful than speech.
Dwarfish in stature and mean in person, he was yet filled with a fire which would not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon his soul were those which would most surely stir the conscience and rouse the wrath of his hearers. His fiery appeals carried everything before them. Wherever he went, rich and poor, aged and young, the knight and the peasant, thronged round the emaciated stranger, who with his head and feet bare rode on his ass, carrying a huge crucifix.
That form, of which they beheld the bleeding sign, he had himself seen; nay, he had received from the Saviour a letter which had fallen down from heaven. He appealed to every feeling which may stir the heart of mankind generally, to every motive which should have especial power with all faithful Christians.
He called upon them for the deliverance of the land which was the cradle of their faith, for the punishment of the barbarian who had dared to defile it, for the rescue of the brethren who were the victims of his tyranny. The vehemence which choked his own utterance became contagious: his sobs and groans called forth the tears and cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his words, and who greedily devoured the harrowing accounts of the pilgrims whom Peter brought forward as witnesses to the truth of his picture.
Motives more earthly may have mingled with his austere call in the minds of some who heard him. Of these motives the hermit said nothing: but there is no doubt that he made his last and most constraining appeal to that notion of mechanical religion which the prophet Micah puts into the mouth of Balak the king of Moab. The consciences of some amongst his hearers might be weighed down by the burden of sins too grievous almost for forgiveness. He besought them to remember that such fears were altogether misplaced, if only they made up their minds to take part in the redemption of the Holy Land. If they chose to become the soldiers of the cross, their salvation was at once achieved.
There was no sin, however fearful, which would not be cancelled by the mere taking of the vow; no sinful habits which would not be condoned in those who might fall in battle with the unbelievers. The excitement of the moment, the frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind of the hermit, was by him communicated to his hearers, threw, we cannot doubt, a specious colouring over a degrading morality and a hopelessly corrupting religion; but as little can we doubt that the whole temper which stirred up and kept alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned atmosphere which could be cleared only by the storms and tempests of the Reformation.
Decrees of the Council of Clermont, prohibiting private wars, and confirming the Truce of God.
The preaching of the hermit predetermined the results of the Council of Clermont; but Urban and the throng of bishops and abbots who were gathered around him were well aware that something more was needed than the enlisting of an army of zealots for distant warfare. With our settled laws and orderly government it is almost impossible for us to realise the condition even of the most advanced states of Christian Europe in an age when the power of the king over his vassals meant simply that which the strength or the weakness of the vassals made it, and when the vassal, if he owed allegiance to his lord, was bound by no ties to his fellow vassals.
The system of feudalism could not fail to feed the worst passions of human nature; and the absence of an authority capable of constraining all alike involved for those who felt or fancied themselves aggrieved an irresistible temptation to take the law into their own hands. But the practice of private war thus set up would sooner or later assume the form of a trade, and in the words of William of Malmesbury things had now come to so wretched a pass that feudal chiefs would take each other captive on little or no pretence, and would set their prisoners free only on the payment of an enormous ransom. This military violence of the laity was accompanied by corruption on the part of the clergy, showing itself in a shameless traffic of benefices and dignities which, in brief phrase, fell to the lot of the highest bidder.
In such a condition of things to drain off to distant lands a large proportion of the men who at home might do something to check, if not to repress, the mischief, would be to leave those who remained behind defenceless. Decrees were therefore passed, condemning private wars, confirming the Truce of God which suspended all hostilities during four days of each week, and placing the women and the clergy under the protection of the Church, which in an especial manner was extended to merchants and husbandmen for three years.
Speech of Urban II. before the people.
When, the business of the council being ended, Urban ascended a lofty scaffold and began his address to the people, he spoke to hearers for whom arguments were no longer needed, but who were well pleased to hear from the chief of Christendom words which carried with them comfort and encouragement.
Three forms or versions of this speech have been preserved to us; one in the pages of William of Tyre, a second in those of William of Malmesbury, a third from a manuscript in the Vatican. It is possible that they may represent three different speeches: but the substance of all is the same, and we are left in no doubt of the general tenor of his words. With some inconsistency, he dwelt on the cowardice of the barbarians who had contrived to conquer Syria and whose tyranny called forth the appeal which he now made to them. The Turk, shrinking from close encounters, trusted to his bow and arrow; and the venom of his poisoned shaft, not the bra very of a valiant warrior, inflicted death on the man whom it struck.
Their fears, he added, were justified, for the blood which ran in the veins of men born in countries scorched with the heat of the sun was scanty in stream and poor in quality as compared with that which coursed through the bodies of men belonging to more temperate regions. In these temperate regions you were born,’ he pleaded, and you have therefore a title to victory which your enemies can never acquire. You have prudence, you have discipline, you have skill and valour, and you will go forth, through the gift of God and the privilege of St. Peter, absolved from all your sins.
The consciousness of this freedom shall soothe the toil of your journey, and death will bring to you the benefits of a blessed martyrdom. Sufferings and torments may perhaps await you. You may picture them to yourselves as the most exquisite tortures, and the picture may perhaps fall short of the agony which you may have to undergo; but your sufferings will redeem your souls at the expense of your bodies. Go then on your errand of love, of love for the Earthful who in the lands overcome by the infidel cannot defend themselves, of love which will put out of sight all the ties that bind you to the spots which you have called your homes. Your homes, in truth, they are not.
For the Christian all the world is exile, and all the world is at the same time his country. If you leave a rich patrimony bere, a better patrimony is promised to you in the Holy Land. They who die will enter the mansions of heaven, while the living shall behold the sepulchre of their Lord. Blessed are they who, taking this vow upon them, shall inherit such a recompense: happy they who are led to such a conflict, that they may share in such rewards.’
The Assent of the Multitude
It was no wonder that words thus striking chords of feeling already stretched to intensity should be interrupted with the passionate cry ‘It is the will of God! It is the will of God!’ which broke from the assembled multitude. “It is, in truth, his will, added the pontiff, and let these words be your war cry when you unsheath your swords against the Enemy. You are soldiers of the cross: wear, then, on your breasts or on your shoulders the blood-red sign of Him who died for the salvation of your souls. Wear it as a token that his help will never fail you: wear it as the pledge of a vow which can never be recalled.’
The Cross and the Vow of the Crusaders.
By these words, the war now proclaimed against the Turks received the name which has become a general title for all wars or hostile undertakings carried on in the name of religion. Thousands hastened at once to put on the badge and so to take their place among the ranks of the crusaders. The rival claims of the antipope withheld Urban himself from taking the pledge to which he was clamorously invited; and worldly prudence alone may have suggested the wisdom of standing aloof from a conflict in which disaster to a Roman pontiff would certainly be regarded as a visible sign of the divine displeasure.
Of the clergy, the first to assume the cross was Adhemar (Aymer), bishop of Puy, and as his reward he received the powers and dignity of papal legate. At the head of the laity Raymond, count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence, promised through his ambassadors to be ready by the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, next following the council, the day fixed for the departure of the crusading hosts for Constantinople.
Motives of the Crusaders.
Thus was the die cast for a venture which in the eye of a keen-sighted general or a far-seeing statesman should have boded little good, but which held out irresistible attractions for the great mass of the people,-attractions which continued to draw hundreds and thousands still to the unknown and mysterious East, when a long series of disasters had proved that the journey to Jerusalem was in all likelihood a journey to the grave.
For the really sincere and devout, whose lives had been passed without reproach and who could await the future with a clear conscience, there was the deep sense of binding duty, the yearning to be brought nearer whether on earth or in heaven to the Master whom they loved. For the feudal chieftain there was the fierce pastime of war which formed the main occupation and perhaps the only delight of his life, with the wild excitement produced by the thought that the indulgence of his passions had now become a solemn act of religion.
A.D. 1058-9.
There was also the prospect of vast and permanent conquest; and the duke or count who left a fair domain behind him might look forward to the chance of winning a realm as splendid as that which Robert Guiscard and his Normans had won in Apulia and Sicily. For the common herd and those whom gross living had rendered moral cowards, there was the offer of a method by which they might wipe away their guilt without changing their character and disposition. Not a few might be caught by the philosophy of the abbot Guibert, who boldly drew a parallel between the crusades and holy orders or monachism.
That height of perfection which ecclesiastics might reach in their own sphere was now attainable by laymen through an enterprise in which their usual license and habits of life would win them the favour of God not less than the most unsparing austerity of the monk or the priest. It was, in short, a new mode of salvation, and they who were hurrying along the broad road to destruction now found that the taking of a vow converted it into the narrow and rugged path to heaven. Nor was the number few of those for whom this convenient arrangement was combined with some solid temporal advantages.
The cross on the breast or shoulder set free from the clutches of his lord the burgher or the peasant attached to the soil, opened the prison doors for malefactors of every kind, released the debtor from the obligation of paying interest on his debts while he wore the sacred badge, and placed him beyond the reach of his creditors. Lastly, the episode of a crusade might be for the priest a pleasant interruption to the dull routine of parochial work, to the monk an agreeable change from the wearisome monotony of his conventual life.
Financial Effect of the Crusade.
The usurer and the creditor might fancy themselves to be somewhat harshly treated. Yet they were amongst the few to whom the crazy enterprise (crazy not from the impracticability of its objects, but from the way in which these were followed), brought a solid benefit.
The unthinking throng might rush off to Palestine without making the least preparation for their journey or their maintenance, in the blind faith that they would be fed and clothed like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the field. But for those who could judge more soberly, and for those who were not willing to forego their luxuries or their pleasures, there was the need of providing a store of the precious metals by means of which alone their wishes could be gratified.
The duke, who had to maintain a vast and brilliant retinue, was compelled to mortgage his dominions; and thus for the sum of ten thousand marks, wrung from the lower orders in the English state, William Rufus obtained from his brother Robert the government of his dukedom for five years, and took care that the prize so won should not slip again from his grasp. Nobles and knights, setting off on the crusade, all wished to sell land, all wished to buy arms and horses. The arms and horses therefore became ruinously dear, the lands ridiculously cheap. It is easy to see that the prudent trader, the cautious merchant, the landowner whose eye was fixed on the main chance, would stand at an enormous advantage.
Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope and the clergy.
But if these were gainers, the gains of the pope and the sacerdotal army of which he was the chief were greater still. If the proclamation of the crusader rendered all private warfare a treason against Christendom, if it set free even the noble from the power of the overlord, and made the latter incapable of summoning his vassal to his standard, if the crusader, as the soldier of the Church, was released from every other obligation, these tremendous changes had been wrought wholly by the power of the pope and his hierarchy.
Dispensing Power of the Pope.
In placing the dominions of all crusading princes under the protection of the Church, the council of Clermont may have provided for those chiefs a most inadequate defence; but it placed the pope on a height above all earthly princes, and the power which withheld the arm of the creditor from falling upon his debtor became a vast dispensing authority, the possession of which would have delighted the heart and realised the highest longings of Hildebrand. Urban did not go to Palestine: but even there he was present in the person of his legate Adhemar, and thus claimed the guidance of a war sanctified by his blessing and undertaken in the cause of the Church.
The vows of the crusader were taken, again, by many who had no present intention of fulfilling them. Sickness, or misfortune, or qualms of conscience might lead them to assume the fatal sign; but from that moment until they set off on their journey they put themselves in the power of the pope, who sometimes used with cruel effect the hold thus obtained over emperors and kings.
Tendency of the Crusades to break up the Feudal System.
Kings, it is true, reaped no small benefit from the impulse which drove their vassals to the Holy Sepulchre; and the absorption of the smaller into larger fiefs, and of these again into royal domain, tended to that extension of the sovereign power which ultimately broke up the feudal system. But these results were far distant; the immediate harvest was gathered by the pope.
Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy
Thus far he had appeared by his representatives in general or local councils; by these he had interfered in the settlement of disputes, through these he had negotiated with princes. But the preaching of the crusades furnished a reason or a pretext for sending his legates into every land. Their primary business was to stir up the hearts of the faithful or to keep them up to fever heat: but scarcely less important was the task of collecting money for the support of the crusading armies.
On the clergy, whether secular or regular, and on the monastic orders, the pope had a claim which they dared not to call into question, and the subsidies exacted or enjoined for this purpose were paid with a real or a feigned cheerfulness.
To the laity the prayer for voluntary alms assumed practically the form of a demand. Refusal would imply lukewarmness in the faith, if not positive heresy; and the imputation could not be incurred without peril of temporal and even of eternal ruin. Both for the clergy and the laity the charge for a special and temporary purpose became a permanent tax, the proceeds of which the pope might expend on any objects, and in the theory of the time he could spend them on none which were not good.
Alienation and pledging mortgagees of lands
But for the impost thus laid upon them the clergy had a compensation which by the nature of the case could not be enjoyed by the laity. If a bishop put on the cross he might lay a burden on his estates, but he could not alienate them, as his right over them ceased with his death; but in point of fact it was chiefly the prelates and the monastic houses that became guardians or mortgaging of lands belonging to men who had betaken themselves to the Holy Land.
The Jews, who amassed immense profits on their loans to needy crusaders, had nothing to do with the cultivation of the soil, and in most countries could not be owners of it. But the Church was everywhere ready with its protection and its money; nor were there wanting enthusiasts who, as they fixed the blood-red cross on their garment, gave up all their lands and worldly goods to the spiritual body whose prayers they regarded as a more than sufficient recompense.
Even they who left the Church merely the guardian of their estates in their absence might die in the East; and if they died without heirs the guardians became absolute owners. If they came back, toil and disappointment had often so worn them down that they took refuge in a cloister and handed over to the fraternity whatever of their property might still remain to them.
The vast gains thus accruing were all over and beyond the accumulations amassed from the bequests of ordinary or extraordinary penitents on their death-beds or the gifts of enthusiastic devotees during their lifetime; and all the land so gained to the Church was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the sovereign who professed to rule the country, and thus formed a kingdom within a kingdom, the spiritual domain threatening constantly to absorb that of the secular monarch.
A collision, followed by violent and iniquitous spoliation, became inevitable; and when the time was come the great fabric of ecclesiastical wealth was plundered and demolished.
The Crusades not National Enterprises.
In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom thus stood committed, the several nations or countries of Europe took very unequal parts; or, rather, no nation, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact we have the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent or average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings.
For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of individual adventurers who either went without making any provision for their journey or provided for their own needs and those of their followers from their own resources.
The number of these adventurers was naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from which they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope went far towards chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the sunny southern lands.
The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahomedan dominion which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea.
A.D. 1085. Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II
About ten years before the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled by Alfonso king of Gallicia: the Kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither and thither through the countries of northern Europe, the Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar.
By the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative coldness: the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelf of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example.
In England the English were too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in strengthening their position, and the king, William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom.
All myths and legends are connected to reality in some way, rooted in truth primarily as a storytelling technique employed by ancient and modern societies in an attempt to understand the universe around them, and to explain and justify things like morality, virtues, suffering, death, love, and war.
From King Perseus of Argos to Achilles, the king of the Myrmidons, politics and religion played a prominent role in mythmaking, legitimizing a leader’s claim to the throne. Whether it be asserting divine birth heritage or having heroic deeds attributed to them, a powerful ruling family can use this type of demigod hero narrative to secure their authority.
THE Crusades were a series of popular wars, waged by men who wore on their garments the badge of the Cross as a pledge binding them to rescue the Holy Land, and the Sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of the unbeliever.
A.D 1095, November
The dream of such an enterprise had long floated before the minds of keen-sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts: it was realised for the first time when, after listening to the burning eloquence of Urban II. at the council of Clermont, the assembled multitude with one voice welcomed the sacred war as the will of God.
If we regard this undertaking as the simple expression of popular feeling stirred to its inmost depths, we may ascribe to the struggle to which they thus committed themselves a character wholly unlike that of any ear her wars waged in Christendom, or by the powers of Christendom against enemies who lay beyond its pale. Statesmen (whether popes, kings, or dukes) might have availed themselves eagerly of the overwhelming impulse imparted by the preaching of Peter the Hermit to passions long pent up; but no authority of pope, emperor, or king, could suffice of itself to open the floodgates for the waters which might sweep away the infidel.
A.D 1066
In this sense only were men stirred, whether at the council of Piacenza in 1094 or in that of Clermont, to a strife of a wholly new kind. If Urban II. gave his blessing to the missionaries who were to convert the Saracens at the point of the sword, the papal benediction had been given nearly thirty years before at the instigation of Hildebrand to the expedition by which the Norman William hoped to crush the free English people and usurp the throne of the king whom they had chosen.
Distinction between the Crusades and other wars of the Middle Ages
But the movement of the Norman duke against England was merely the work of a sovereign well awake of his own interest and confident in the methods by which he chose to promote it. Under the sacred standard sent to him by Pope Alexander II. he gathered, indeed, a motley host of adventurers; but the enthusiasm by which these may have fancied themselves to be animated had reference chiefly perhaps to the broad acres to which they looked forward as their recompense. The great gulf which separated such an undertaking from the crusade of the hermit Peter lay in the conviction, deep even to fanaticism, that the wearers of the Cross had before them an enterprise in which failure, disaster, and death were not less blessed, not less objects of envy and longing than the most brilliant conquests and the most splendid triumphs.
They were hastening to the land where their Divine Master had descended from his throne in heaven to take on Himself the form of man- where for years the everlasting Son of the Almighty Father had patiently toiled, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, and raising the dead, until at length He carried his own Cross up the height of Calvary, and having offered up bis perfect sacrifice, put off the garments of his humiliation when the earthquake shattered the prison-house of his sepulchre.
For them the whole land had been rendered holy by the tread of his sacred feet: and the pilgrim who had traced the scenes of his life from his cradle at Bethlehem to the spot of his ascent from Olivet, might sing the Nune dimittis, as having with his own eyes seen the divine salvation.
Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian traditions.
Thus the crusade preached by Peter the Hermit, and solemnly sanctioned by Pope Urban, was rendered possible by the combination of papal authority with an irresistible popular conviction. That papal authority was the necessary result of the old imperial tradition of Rome; the popular conviction was the growth of a tendency which had characterised every religion professed by Aryan or Semitic nations; and both these causes were wholly unconnected with the teaching of Christ and of his disciples, as it is set before us in the New Testament.
Far from ascribing special sanctity to any one spot over another, the emphatic declaration that the hour was come in which men should worship the Father not merely in Jerusalem or on the Samaritan mountain, proclaimed a gospel which taught that al] men in all places are alike near to God in whom they live, move, and have their being.
If we turn to the narrative which relates the Acts of the Apostles, we shall find not a sign of the feeling which regards Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, or the banks of the Jordan, as places which of themselves should awaken any enthusiastic or passionate feeling.
The thoughts of the disciples, if we confine ourselves to this record, were absorbed with more immediate and momentous concerns, Before their generation should pass away, the Son of Man would return to judgement, and the dead should be summoned from their graves to his awful tribunal. Hence any vehement longing for one spot of earth over another was wretchedly out of place for those who held that the time was short and that it behoved those who had wives to be as though they had none, those that bought as though they possessed not, and those that wept and rejoiced as though they wept and rejoiced not.
Nay, more, with a feeling almost approaching to impatience, the great apostle of the Gentiles could put aside the yearnings of a weaker sentiment and declare that although he had known Christ in the flesh, yet henceforth he would so know Him no more,
The Christianity of St. Paul
The image, therefore, of the great founder of Christianity was for him purely spiritual. In the letters which he wrote to the churches formed by his converts, there is not a sign that the thought or the sight of Bethlehem or Nazareth would awaken in him any deeper feeling than places wholly destitute of historical associations. If he speaks of Jerusalem, he never implies that it had for him any special sanctity. His mission was to preach a faith altogether independent of time and place, and not only not needing but even rejecting the sensuous aid afforded by visible memorials of the Master whom he loved.
The Christianity of the Roman Empire.
Such was the Christianity of St. Paul, and with such weapons, it went forth to assail and throw down the strongholds of heathenism. Three centuries later we behold Christianity as dominant as the religion of the Roman Empire, but in its outward aspect and in its practical working it has undergone a vast and significant change. It cannot be supposed that this change was wrought at once by the mere fact of its recognition by the temporal power. The endless debates, which fill the history of early Christianity, on the relations of the Persons of the Trinity and on the mystery of the Incarnation, may to some degree have helped to fix the minds of men on the land where the Saviour had lived, and on the several scenes of his ministry; but this alone would never have sufficed to work the revolution which Christianity has manifestly undergone, even before we reach the age of Constantine.
The victory won over heathenism, if not merely nominal, was at best partial. The religion of the empire knew nothing of the One Eternal God, who demands from all men a spontaneous submission to his righteous law, and bids them find their highest good in his divine love. That religion rested on the might of the Capitoline Jupiter and the visible majesty of the Emperor; but the real influences which were at work from the first to modify the Christianity of St. Paul lay in the lower strata of society, in the modes of thought and feeling prevalent among the masses who furnished the converts of the first two or three centuries. In these converts we cannot doubt that there was wrought a real change,—a change manifests chiefly in the conviction that the divine law is binding on all, and that the state of things in the Roman world was unspeakably shameful.
In the Jesus whom Paul preached, they beheld the righteous teacher who condemned the iniquities of godless rulers and a corrupt people, the avenger of their unjust deeds, the loving Redeemer in whose arms the weary and heavy-laden might find rest, the awful Judge who should be seen at the end of the world on his great white throne, with all the kindreds of mankind awaiting their doom before Him. The personal human love thus kindled in them turned only into a different channel thoughts and feelings which it would need centuries to root out,
Localism of heathen religions.
These thoughts and feelings had been fed by that tendency to localise incidents in the supposed history of gods or heroes which is the most prominent characteristic of all heathen religions; and of the vast crowd of these heathen religions or superstitions, there was if we may trust the statements of Roman writers, scarcely one which had not its adherents and votaries at Rome.
Here were gathered the priests and worshippers of the Egyptian Isis, the virgin mother of Osiris, the god who rose again after his crucifixion to gladden the earth with his splendour; here might be seen the adorers of the Persian sun-god Mithras, born at the winter solstice, and growing in strength until he wins his victory over the powers of darkness after the vernal equinox.
But this idea of the death and resurrection of the lord of light was no new importation brought in by the theology of Egypt or Persia. The story of the Egyptian Osiris was repeated in the Greek stories of Sarpedon and Memnon, of Tithonos and Asklepios (Aesculapius), of the Teutonic Baldur and Woden (Odin). The birthplace of these deities, the scenes associated with their traditional exploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating legends, and not a few attracting to themselves vast gatherings of pilgrims.
Influence of these local religions on Christianity.
It was not wonderful therefore that the worshippers of these or other like gods should, on professing the faith of Christ, carry with them all that they could retain of their old belief without utterly contradicting the new; that his nativity should be celebrated at the time when the sun begins to rise in the heavens, and his resurrection when the victory of light over darkness is achieved in the spring,
The worshipper of the Egyptian Amoun, the ram, carried his old associations with him when he became a follower of the Lamb of God; and the burst of light which heralded the return of the Maiden to the Mourning Mother in the Greek mysteries of Eleusis was reproduced in the miracle still repeated year by year by the patriarch of Jerusalem when he announces the descent of the sacred fire in the sepulchre of Christ.
Growth of local association in Palestine.
Thus for the Christians of the third century, if not of the second, Judea or Palestine became a holy land; and with the growth of devotion to the human person of Christ grew the feeling of reverence for every place which He had visited and every memorial which He had left behind Him. The impulse once given soon became irresistible. Every incident of the gospel narratives was associated with some particular spot, and the certainty of the verification was never questioned by the thousands who felt that the sight of these places brought them nearer to heaven and was in itself a purification of their souls.
They could follow the Redeemer from the cave in which He was born and where the Wise Men of the East laid before Him their royal offerings, to the mount from which He uttered his blessings on the pure, the merciful, and the peacemakers, and thence to the other mount on which He offered his perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
The spots associated with his passion, his burial, his resurrection, called forth emotions of passionate veneration which were intensified by the alleged discovery of the cross on which He had suffered, together with the two crosses on which the thieves had been condemned to die.
If the presence of the tablet containing the title inscribed by Pontius Pilate still left it uncertain to which of the crosses that tablet belonged, and to which therefore the homage of the faithful should be paid, all doubt was removed when a woman at the point of death on whom the touch of two of these crosses had no effect was restored to strength and youth by the touch of the third.
Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine
The splendid churches raised by the devout zeal of Constantine and his mother Helena over the cave at Bethlehem and the sepulchre at Jerusalem became for the Christians that which the Temple had been to the Jew, or the sacred stone at Mecca and the tomb of the prophet at Medina became afterwards for the followers of Islam, nor can we be surprised if the emperor whose previous life had been marked by special devotion to the Greek and Roman sun-god transferred the characteristics of Apollon (Apollo) to the meek and merciful Jesus whose teaching to the last he utterly misapprehended.
The purpose which drew to Palestine the long lines of pilgrims, which each year increased in numbers, was not the mere aimless love of wandering which is supposed to furnish the motive for Tartar pilgrimages in our own as in former ages, The Aryan, so far as we know, was never a nomadic race; but we can understand the eagerness even of a stationary population to undertake a long and dangerous journey, if the mere making of it should insure the remission of their sins.
Nothing less than this was the pilgrim led to expect, who had traversed land and sea to bathe in the Jordan and offer up his prayers at the birthplace and tomb of his Master. A few men, of keener discernment and wider culture, might see the mischiefs lurking in this belief, and protest against the superstition.
Augustine, the great doctor whose ‘Confessions’ have made his name familiar to thousands who know nothing of his life or teaching, might bid Christians remember that righteousness was not to be sought in the East nor mercy in the West, and that voyages are useless to carry us to Him with whom g hearty faith makes us immediately present. In these protests he might be upheld by men like Gregory of Nyssa and Jerome; but Jerome, while he dwelt on the uselessness of pilgrimage and the absurdity of supposing chat prayers offered in one place could be more acceptable than the same prayers offered in another, took up his abode in a cave at Bethlehem, and there discoursed to Roman ladies, who had crossed the sea to listen to his splendid eloquence.
Heaven, he insisted, was as accessible from Britain as from Palestine: but his actions contradicted his words, and his example exercised a more potent influence than his precept.
Gradual decay of spiritual religion.
The purely spiritual faith on which Jerome laid stress was as much beyond the spirit of the age as the moral feelings of a later age were behind those of the woman who in the crusade of St. Louis was seen carrying in her right hand a porringer of fire, and in her left a bottle of water. With the fire she wished, as Joinville tells us, to burn paradise, with the water to drown hell, so that none might do good for the reward of the one, nor avoid evil from fear of the other since every good ought to be done from the perfect and sincere love which man owes to his Creator, who is the supreme good. Such a tone of thought was in ludicrous discord with the temper which brought Jerome himself to Bethlehem, and which soon began to fill the land with those who had nothing of Jerome’s culture and the sobriety which in whatever degree must spring from it.
Encouragement given to pilgrimages.
The contagion spread. From almost every country of Europe, wanderers took their way to Palestine, under the conviction that the shirt which they wore when they entered the holy city would, if laid by to be used as their winding sheet, convey them (like the carpet of Solomon in the Arabian tale) at once to heaven, An enterprise so laudable roused the sympathy and quickened the charity of the faithful. The pilgrim seldom lacked food and shelter, and houses of repose or entertainment were raised for his comfort on the stages of his journey as well as in the city which was the goal of his pilgrimage.
Here he was welcomed in the costly house which had been raised for his reception by the munificence of Pope Gregory the Great. If he died during his absence, his kinsfolk envied rather than bewailed his lot; if he returned, he had their reverence as one who had washed away his sins, and still more perhaps as one who had brought away in his wallet relics of value so vast and of virtue so great that the touch of them made the journey to Palestine almost a superfluous ceremony.
Trade in relics.
Wherever these pilgrims went, these fragments of the true cross might be found; and the happy faith of those who gave in exchange for them more than their weight in gold never stopped to think that the barren log which was supposed to have produced them must have spread abroad its branches wider than the most magnificent cedar in Libanus.
Nor probably even in the earliest ages, was the traffic consequent on these pilgrimages confined to holy things.
Stimulus given by pilgrimages to commerce with the East.
The Ease was not only the cradle of Christianity, but a land rich in spices and silks, in gold and jewels: and the keen-sighted merchant, looking to solid profits on earth, followed closely on the steps of the devotee who sought his reward in heaven.
The long struggle between Rome and Persia.
The first interruption to the peaceful and prosperous fortunes of pilgrims and merchants was caused by one of the periodical ebbs and flows which for nearly seven hundred years had marked the struggle between the powers of Persia and of Rome. The kings of the restored Persian kingdom had striven to avenge on the West the wrongs committed by Alexander the Great, if not those even of earlier invaders; and the enterprise which Khosru Nushirvan had taken in hand was carried on forty years later by his grandson Khosru (Chosroes) II.
Capture of Jerusalem by the Persian king, Khosru II.
Almost at the outset of his irresistible course, Jerusalem fell, nor was it the fault of the Persians that the great churches of Helena and Constantine were not destroyed utterly by fire.
Ninety thousand Christians, it is said, were put to death: but, according to the feeling of the age, a greater loss was sustained in the carrying off of the true cross into Persia.
Sassanid King Khosrau II being vanquished by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, from a plaque on a 12th-century French cross. This is only allegorical, as Khosrau II never actually submitted in person to Heraclius.
Persian invasion of Egypt.
From Palestine, the wave of Persian conquest spread southward into Egypt, and the greatness of Khosru seemed to be unbounded when from an unknown citizen of Mecca he received the bidding to acknowledge the unity of the Godhead and to own Mahomet as the prophet of God.
The Persian king tore the letter to pieces, and the man of Mecca, whose successors were to carry the crescent to Jerusalem and Damascus, to the banks of the Nile and the mountains of Spain, warned him that his kingdom should be treated as he had treated his letter.
Campaigns of the Emperor Heraclius
For the present, the signs of this catastrophe were not to be seen. The Roman emperor was compelled to sign an ignominious peace and to pay a yearly tribute to the sovereign of Persia. But Heraclius (Herakleios) woke suddenly from the sluggishness which marked the earlier years of his reign.
A.D. 622 – 625
The Persians were defeated among the defiles of Mount Taurus, and the destruction of the birthplace of Zoroaster offered some compensation for the mischief done to the churches of Helena and Constantine.
A.D. 627 Battle of Nineveh
Two years later the Roman emperor carried his arms into the heart of the enemy’s land; and during the battle of Nineveh, in which he won a splendid victory, he slew with his own hands the Persian general Rhazates. Khosru fled across the Tigris; but he could not escape from the plots of his son, and his death in a dungeon ended the glories of the Sassanid dynasty, under whom the Persian power had, in the third century of our era, revived from the death-sleep into which it had sunk after the conquests of Alexander.
A.D. 628 Restoration of the true cross by the Persians
With Siroes, the son and murderer of Khosru, the Roman emperor concluded a peace which not merely delivered all his subjects from captivity, but repaired the loss which the church of the Holy Sepulchre had sustained by the theft of the true Restoration cross. The great object of pilgrimage was thus restored to Jerusalem, and thither Heraclius (Herakleios) during the following year betook himself to pay his vows of thanksgiving.
A.D. 629. Pilgrimage of Heraclius to Jerusalem
With the pageant which marked this ceremony, the splendour of his reign was closed. Before his death, the followers of Mahomet had deprived him of the provinces which he had wrested from the Persians.
A.D. 637. Conquest of Palestine by Omar.
Eight years only had passed after the visit of Heraclius (Herakleios) to Jerusalem, when the armies which had already seized Damascus advanced to the siege of the Holy City. A blockade of four months convinced the patriarch Sophronios that there was no hope of withstanding the force of Islam: but he demanded the presence of the caliph himself at the ratification of the treaty which was to secure a second sacred capital to the disciples of the Prophet.
After some debate his request was granted; and Omar, who on the death of Abubekr had been chosen as the vicegerent of Mahomed, set out from Medina on a camel, which carried for him his leathern water-bottle, his bags of corn and dates, and his wooden dish.
Terms of the treaty made by Omar with the Christians and Jerusalem.
The terms imposed by the caliph sufficiently marked the subjection of the Christians, but they imposed no severe hardships and perhaps showed a large toleration. The Christians were to build no new churches, and they were to admit Mahomedans into those which they already had, whether by day or by night. The cross was no longer to be seen on the exterior of their buildings or to be paraded in the streets. The church bells should be tolled only, not rung. The use of saddles and of weapons was altogether interdicted, and the Christians, distinguished from their conquerors by their attire, were to show their respect for the latter by rising up to them if they were sitting. On these conditions, the Christians were not only to be safe in their persons and fortunes but undisturbed in the exercise of their religion and in the use of their churches.
Omar and the patriarch Sophronios.
For the observance of this last stipulation, the rugged and uncouth conqueror showed a greater care than the patriarch who regarded his presence in the church of the Resurrection as the abomination of desolation in the holy place.
The hour of prayer came, and Omar asked Sophronios where he might offer his devotion ‘Here,’ answered the patriarch; but Omar positively refused, and repeated his refusal when he was led away into the church of Constantine. At last, he knelt down on the steps outside that church and afterwards told the patriarch that had he worshipped within the building, the document securing its use to the Christians would have been worthless.
His words were verified by the zeal of his followers, who insisted on inclosing within a mosque the steps on which he had prayed: but the mosque which bears Omar’s name rose over the great sacrificial altar of the temple, which passed for Jacob’s stone.
Effects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
This second conquest may have again checked the rush of pilgrims to the Holy Land; but the difficulties which it placed in their way only added to the glory and the benefits of the enterprise: and, after all, the victory of Omar did little more than share the holy city between two races each of which acknowledged its sanctity and reverenced the relics of the righteous men whose bodies reposed beneath its sacred soil. Nor had the Christians any stronger ground of complaint than that the Saviour whom they worshipped was regarded by their conquerors as a prophet if not equal, only inferior, to the founder of Islam.
Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage.
Nearly four centuries had passed away after the submission of Sophronios to Omar; and during this long series of generations the West had without let or hindrance sent forth its troops of pilgrims, in whose train merchants may have found sources of profit for more worldly callings.
If the palmy days during which the wanderers might regard themselves as practically lords of the land through which they travelled had passed away, they underwent at the worst nothing which could greatly excite their anger or rouse the indignation of Christendom.
A.D. 1010. Ravages of the Egyptian Caliph Hakem in Jerusalem.
Nor was this state of things materially changed by the furious onslaught of Hakem the mad Fatimite caliph of Egypt, when spurred on by a bigotry unknown to his predecessors, he resolved to destroy the Christian sanctuary in Jerusalem.
The rule of these earlier sovereigns of Egypt had been more beneficial to the Christians than that of the Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad. But Hakem cared nothing for the worldly interests of his kingdom or of the profits to be derived from trade with the unbeliever, and his soldiers were busied on the dignified task of demolishing the church of the Resurrection, and attempts to destroy with their hammers the very cave in which, as it was supposed, the body of the Saviour had been laid, In this task they had but a very partial success, and to Hakem probably the suspension for a single year of the descent of the sacred fire scarcely outweighed the risks of a combined attack from the maritime powers of Christendom.
Persecution of Jews in Europe.
For the present no such alliance was threatened; but a cruel persecution of the Jews in many Christian cities was a symptom of the temper which was placing a great gulf between men who professed nevertheless to worship the same Almighty Father.
Tax levied on pilgrims to enter the gates of Jerusalem.
After this violent but transient storm, the condition of the pilgrims became much what it had been before, except that a toll was now levied on each pilgrim before he was suffered to enter the gates of Jerusalem; but this impost may have been rather welcomed than resented by the Christians, as it gave to the richer among them an opportunity of discharging it for their poorer brethren, and so of securing for themselves a higher degree of merit. The world, too, seemed to have taken a new lease of existence, and everything appeared to promise a long continuance of comparative peace.
A.D. 1000 Expectations of the end of the world.
Ten years before, all Christendom was fluttering with the expectation of immediate judgement. At the close of the millennium, which came to an end with the year 1000, a belief almost universal looked forward to the summons which would call the dead from their graves and cut short the course of a weary and sin-laden world. But the tale of years had been completed, the sun continued to rise and set as it had risen and set before, and the flood of pilgrims soon began to stream towards the East in greater volume than ever.
Men of all ranks and classes left their homes to offer up their prayers at the tomb of Christ; bishops abandoned their dioceses, princes their dominions, to visit the scenes where the Redeemer had suffered and where He had achieved his triumph. More numerous, more earnest, more than all, were the Franks or the Frenchmen, whose name became henceforth in the East the common designation of all Europeans.
For the weak and the inexperienced, for the women and the youths, who pledged themselves to the enterprise, there might be special and grave dangers; nor were the strongest assured against serious, if not fatal, disasters. With thirty horsemen fully equipped, Ingulf, a secretary of William the Conqueror, set out on his journey to the Holy Land. Of these twenty returned on foot, with no other possessions than their wallet and their staff. But their losses had been caused probably by no human enemies, and the men who had died could claim the credit of martyrdom only in the sense in which it is accorded to the Holy Innocents massacred by the decree of Herod.
A.D. 997 Conversion of Hungary under King Stephen.
On the whole, the difficulties of the enterprise were as much smoothed down as in a rude and ill-governed age they could well be. The conversion of Hungary opened a safe highway across the heart of Europe, and the pilgrims had a defender, as well as a friend, in St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom.
But a change far greater than that which had been wrought by Omar was to be effected by a power which had been working its way from the distant East and menacing the existence of the empire itself.
Advance of the Seljuk Turks.
From the deserts of central Asia, the Seljukian Turks had advanced westwards, overrunning the kingdoms of the Persian empire, and subjugating Asia Minor, the inheritance of the Caesars of Rome.
A.D, 1092. Division of the Seljukian empire.
In this task, they received no slight help from the neutrality of a great part of the Christian population, in whom financial exactions and ecclesiastical tyranny had awakened feelings of strong discontent, if not of burning indignation. The rulers of Byzantium had, indeed, done all that they could to make the way smooth for the invaders. The accumulation of land in the hands of a few owners had dangerously diminished the number of inhabitants; nor was it long before the Turks were in a majority throughout Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Galatia, and were enabled successfully to resist the crusading hosts in countries which they had conquered but as yesterday.
A.D. 325
The Seljukian sovereigns who had advanced thus far on the road to Constantinople chose as their abode the city of Nice (Nikaia, Nicsea) in which the first general council of Christendom had defined the Catholic faith on the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity.
Here these fierce invaders proclaimed the mission of Mahomet as the prophet of God and issued the decrees which assigned Christian churches to profanation or destruction, and Christian youths and maidens to a disgraceful and shameful slavery.
Appeal of the Greek Emperor Alexios to Western Christendom.
Mountains visible from the dome of Sancta Sophia were already within the borders of Turkish territory. The danger seemed imminent, and Alexios, the Emperor of the East, invoked the aid of Latin Christendom: but the fire was not yet kindled, and for the time his appeal was made in vain.
A.D. 1076 Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem.
No long time, however, had passed before the Seljukian Toucush was master of Jerusalem; and the Christians learnt to their cost that servitude to the fierce wanderers from the northern deserts was very different from submission to the rugged and uncultured Omar.
Increased burdens and the Christian
The lawful toll levied on the pilgrims gave way before a system of extortion and violent robbery carried out in every part of the land, and the mere journey to Jerusalem involved dangers from which the bravest might well shrink. Insults to the persons of the pilgrim were accompanied by insults, harder to be borne, offered to the holy places and to those who ministered in them The sacred offices were savagely interrupted, and the patriarch, dragged by his hair along the pavement, was thrown into a dungeon, pending the payment of an exorbitant ransom.
Decline of commerce with the East.
For the pilgrims themselves, there might be dangers as they made their way through Europe: but these were increased tenfold on the eastern side of the Hellespont. Thus far they had journeyed in comparative security, and the merchants who sought to combine profit with devotion added to that security by their numbers and their prudence.
The Easter fair of Jerusalem had drawn to the ports of Palestine the fleets of Genoa and Pisa and had sufficiently rewarded the munificence of the merchants of Amalfi, the founders of the hospital of St. John. But commerce has no liking for perils of flood and field: and with the risk of disaster these fleets disappeared and the caravans were confined to those for whom the sanctuary of Jerusalem was a goal to be reached at all costs.
Oppression of the Christians of Palestine.
These went forth still by hundreds; they returned by tens or units to recount the miseries and wanton cruelties which they had undergone and to draw fearful pictures of the savage tyranny exercised over the Christians of Jerusalem and of the East generally. The church of Christ was in the iron grasp of the infidel, and the blood of his martyrs cried aloud for vengeance.
General indignation felt in Western Christendom.
Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom a fierce indignation felt was stirring the hearts of men, and the pent-up waters needed only guidance to rush forth as a flood over the lands defiled by the unbeliever, But unless the enterprise was to run to waste in random efforts, it must have the solemn sanction of religion.
The people might be ready, but popular fury acting by itself will soon spend its strength like the hurrying tempest, Princes might be willing for a time to abandon their dominions, but the pressure of difficulties abroad and at home would soon make them grow weary of the task.
Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct this feeling.
There must be a constraining power; to keep them to their vows by sanctions which stretched beyond the present life to the life after death; and these sanctions could come only from him who held the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whose seat was the feeling rock of Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
