The Dagger and the Cross
Page 45
“That will be as God wills,” she said.
She closed her eyes, opened them on plain earth and simple sunlight. The world went on, unheeding of one lone woman, and the lover she had never truly had, and the child they had shared for a little while.
There were six who were all her own, waiting for her, and the baby would be hungry. She straightened her back and set her chin. The Crusade would come when it came. It would find her ready for it.
They linked arms, she and her mother. Their eyes met briefly. Understanding; agreeing. Arm in arm, proper in their dignity, they walked up from the quay.
Author’s Note
The Horns of Hattin
The battle of the Horns of Hattin and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem seem made to order for the novelist. King Guy of Jerusalem was much as I have shown him: a handsome man, a passable knight, and an inept ruler. He seems to have been constitutionally incapable of making a decision, unless it was the wrong one. He was badly overmatched by his adversary, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub or, as the Franks called him, Saladin.
For the events surrounding the battle, as well as for the battle itself, I am indebted as always to M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson’s Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge, 1982). I have taken certain details of the battle, including the standard of Taqi al-Din, from Ian Heath, Armies and Enemies of the Crusades 1096-1291 (Worthing, UK, 1978). This book, along with relevant volumes in the Osprey Men-at-Arms Series (particularly #75, Armies of the Crusades, and #171, Saladin and the Saracens), is invaluable for the novelist as well as the wargamer.
The battle of Hattin broke the back of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Jerusalem itself fell at the end of September, 1187; on 2 October the surrender was concluded.
By that time envoys had been sent to the West to preach the new Crusade, led by, among others, Archbishop William of Tyre. They were answered by Henry II of England and then, after his death, by his son and successor, Richard I, as well as Philip of France and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany. This, the Third Crusade, plagued by internal dissension, problems of transport and supply, and such distractions and disasters as Richard’s conquest of Cyprus and Barbarossa’s death on the march, failed of its end. Richard, deserted by his allies, won back Acre but not Jerusalem. The city remained in Muslim hands for almost eight centuries, until it was taken by British troops in World War I.
The Crusader kingdom limped along for another century, until its last outpost, the city of Acre, fell in 1291 to the armies of Islam. Guy de Lusignan continued to call himself King of Jerusalem, to which, in 1192 and until his death in 1194, he added the kingship of Cyprus. Conrad of Montferrat, who managed to hold Tyre against Saladin, laid claim briefly to Guy’s crown; he was murdered by Assassins in 1192, allegedly with the collusion of Richard of England.
I have taken some liberties with the personality and history of Guy’s elder brother, Amalric (Aymeric). He was in fact Constable of the kingdom, named to that position by the leper-King Baldwin IV; it was he who arranged the wedding of his brother to the Princess Sybilla. He himself had married a great lady of the kingdom, Eschiva d’Ibelin; much later, in 1197, he would take a second wife, Isabel de Courtenay, whose kinswoman, Agnes, was the mother of Baldwin IV. In the end he fulfilled his royal ambition, inheriting from his brother the title of King of Cyprus and, in 1197, that of King of Jerusalem. From his capital of Acre he undertook by various stratagems to incite a fourth Crusade.
The Fourth Crusade itself, by a concatenation of circumstances to which only history can be subject—in fiction they would seem preposterous—ended in the conquest not of Jerusalem but of Constantinople. Amalric, who took no part in the actual, abortive Crusade, died in 1205. The line of Lusignan continued to claim the kingship of Jerusalem until the final fall of Acre.
Medieval Marriage Law and Disparitas Cultus
The law of the Church in the twelfth century expressly and repeatedly forbade the marriage of a Christian and an infidel. For a concise historical and canonical summary, see Francis J. Schenk, The Matrimonial Impediments of Mixed Religion and Disparity of Cult (Washington, DC, 1924). The condemnation and threat of excommunication which Prince Aidan and his lady receive in Chapter 8 is, if anything, mild in its phrasing. That such a marriage was not regarded as completely unthinkable, however, is reflected in the proposal of Richard of England that his sister Joanna be married to Saladin’s brother. If the proposal had gone so far as to be acted upon, it would certainly have required a dispensation from the pope. Equally certainly, only a king, and a strong and determined one at that, could have hoped to gain so extreme a concession.
The phenomenon of a forged dispensation is considerably less unlikely. Forgery in fact was a high medieval art, often for exalted ends—a notable example is that of the so-called “Donation of Constantine,” which served as support for numerous abrogations of temporal power by the papacy.
I am indebted to Sandra Miesel for an introduction to the intricacies of medieval marriage law, as well as for the detail which signals the forgery, namely, the suspension of the papal seal or bulla (hence the later application of the term “bull” to all such papal documents) by a cord of either silk or hemp, depending on the import of the document. See under “Bulls” in the Catholic Encyclopedia; see also “Bulla” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. Both are invaluable sources for details ecclesiastical and, often, historical.
A final note for the meticulous: Pope Urban III (who died in October 1187) was not in fact in Rome when my fictional king would have been suing for the dispensation. He spent his papacy in Verona, judging the political climate in Rome too hostile for safety. The five popes to whom the petition was presented would be Popes Alexander III (1159-81), Lucius III (1181-85), and Urban III, and Barbarossa’s antipopes Callistus (III) and Innocent (III). Aidan, as a thoroughly medieval prince, would of course have undertaken to cover all eventualities—and all possible claimants to the papacy.
Copyright & Credits
The Dagger and the Cross
A Novel of the Crusades
Judith Tarr
Book View Café
August 2011
Copyright © 1991, 2011 Judith Tarr
ISBN: 978 1 61138 073 6
Cover design by Pati Nagle
First published by Doubleday Foundation
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