The Source: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  “We’ll need six gold pieces to pay the merchants,” the red-faced bailiff estimated.

  “I should have watched my tongue,” Volkmar commented ruefully, and as he spoke he saw in the square near the gates a group of people obviously agitated by something that one of their members held, and he elbowed his way into the mob. “What’s this?” he demanded.

  “Klaus caught a hair from the priest’s donkey,” a woman explained, pointing with local pride to a man who stood with his hands cupped as if they contained gold.

  “Let me see,” Volkmar commanded, and the man moved forward and slowly opened his hands, disclosing one gray donkey’s hair. The count was about to sweep away the blasphemous relic, but he saw the joy it had brought Klaus and the admiration it elicited from the mob. Disturbed, he turned his back on the stupid peasants and their donkey’s hair.

  He walked to the southeastern corner of his city in search of someone with common sense with whom he could discuss the perplexing events of the morning, and he came at last to a fine house, cross-timbered in front and four stories high, nestled against the protecting wall of the city. “Anybody awake?” he shouted outside the front door, and in a moment a young girl, obviously pregnant and contented with that fact, threw open the heavily barred door and cried, “Count Volkmar! Come in. Father’s here.” She led the count through a hallway containing massive pieces of furniture and into an inner room where a remarkable man sat waiting in a long robe of Venetian material edged by a fur collar. He was in his mid-forties, a congenial, quick-eyed Jew with a black beard and a gold-embroidered cap, and the impression he created was one of unusual competence: in negotiation this one would be alert, in discussion judicious, and in physical crisis courageous. He nodded to Volkmar as the girl announced, “Father, it’s the count.”

  To this impressive room, lined with folios, Volkmar was no stranger. Often he had come here to borrow money, more often to discuss gossip or to pick up bits of political information, for the man in the gold cap could read and write and in his earlier years had traveled to many lands. “Hagarzi,” Volkmar said, speaking as friend to equal. “I need six pieces of gold until the crops are in.” To this proposal the moneylender nodded, as if that part of the visit concerned him little.

  “For that you could have sent your bailiff. What really brings you here?”

  “I need to know whether a rabble like the one that passed Gretz this morning has any chance of reaching Jerusalem?” The Jew made no reply, and Volkmar asked, “Did you see them?”

  “Of course,” Hagarzi said, implying that it was his business to see whatever passed Gretz at dawn. Then he added slowly, like a general reviewing his ancient battles, “I’ve never been all the way to Jerusalem. To Antioch, yes.”

  “You went to Constantinople?”

  “Several times. While the Hungarians and Bulgarians were still pagan I used to captain companies of traders on their way from Gretz to Constantinople, and we got there with only a few battles.” He leaned back and traced signs in the air, reconstructing the travel routes to the east. “It can be done. If you don’t arouse the Hungarians … or the Bulgarians.”

  “Then you think there’s a chance the foolish priest on the gray donkey may succeed?”

  “All the way to Jerusalem?” The cautious trader pondered this. “I saw no knights to protect them,” he said. “They carried few provisions.”

  “What road will they take?” Volkmar asked.

  “When we went,” the former captain replied, closing his eyes and holding his beard with both hands, “we followed the Danube to the point where the road turns north to Novgorod.” He began to reminisce about the vigorous days of his youth, when he had led his caravans to Smolensk, Kiev … “We traded with them all.”

  “Suppose the rabble reaches Constantinople,” Volkmar interrupted, and the trader opened his eyes. “Could they possibly continue to Jerusalem?”

  “They could start,” the moneylender replied. Obviously he did not care to discuss this aspect of the problem, so he launched a diversion: “I remember one year when we tried to go from Kiev to Constantinople …”

  “You don’t think they’ll reach Jerusalem?” the count persisted.

  “Volkmar,” Hagarzi said, laughing brusquely as he used the count’s familiar name, “this is a venture summoned by the Christian church. Would it be proper for a Jew to comment on its progress?”

  “You and I are the oldest of friends, Simon,” and he also used the familiar name.

  “They won’t get there,” the banker said. “When I was last in the east the Turks were becoming very strong. I wanted to revisit Antioch. Goods from Cyprus and Egypt. Impossible.” Quickly he added, “However, if I’d had a thousand well-armed men … knights … like you.”

  Volkmar did not want Hagarzi to think that he was contemplating any crusade to Jerusalem, so he changed the discussion abruptly: “Which Pope will prevail?”

  Again the Jew closed his eyes. “Only a close friend would deem it proper,” he reflected, “to ask a Jew’s opinion on that problem.”

  “Only an old friend would know that you’ve been trading with Rome and probably have the answer.”

  “From what the merchants in Rome tell us, our German emperor has backed the wrong man. His German Pope Clement is not going to gain acceptance. The French Pope Urban will.”

  This was not what Volkmar had wanted to hear. For some time he had assumed that his emperor would get his headstrong way and that of the two contenders Pope Clement would be declared the rightful pontiff; but Volkmar had much respect for the opinions of the well-informed Jew and had rarely found him to be in error, and what Hagarzi was saying disturbed him.

  “How can the French Pope win,” he argued, “if England, Germany and much of Italy are against him and if our Pope Clement holds Rome?”

  “This idea of a crusade, which Pope Urban proposed …”

  “You saw the mob, Hagarzi. What could it accomplish?”

  “That mob, nothing. But my news from Normandy and Toulouse is quite different. Real leaders are sewing the cross to their tunics.”

  Before the men could discuss the matter Hagarzi looked to his door, where his daughter appeared with a salver of spiced drinks and German cakes. Volkmar pointed to her belly and asked, “When?”

  “In four weeks.”

  “Am I supposed to give the little wretch a present?”

  “As always,” Hagarzi laughed, and the men drank their wine of friendship.

  In those years the Jews in cities like Gretz lived pretty much as they wished. Fanatic Christians sometimes howled against the commingling of Jew and Catholic, but no restrictive measures had yet been promulgated, so that a distinguished banker like Hagarzi could be accepted as one of the city’s important citizens. His sturdy house had become a center of city life to which many Germans like Count Volkmar came not only to borrow, but also to talk.

  They came to borrow because of contrasting interpretations which had been placed by Christianity and Judaism upon two critical verses from the Old Testament. Catholics held that the stern commandment in Exodus meant exactly what it said: “If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” This was interpreted as meaning that no Christian—on pain of excommunication or death—was allowed to let money at interest, and this ruling came at the precise time when trade was beginning to be international and when borrowing substantial sums to finance such trade was essential. What to do? It was then discovered that Jews, looking not to Exodus but to Deuteronomy, took their instructions from Moses, who had commanded them: “Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury.” So at the instigation of the Christians a curious agreement had been worked out: Christians would rule the world, but Jews would finance it—so to them was handed responsibility for all banking transactions, and it becam
e customary for even cardinals and bishops to borrow openly from Jews at commonly understood rates of interest, while foreign traders had to do so in order to stay in business. In this manner Jews like Simon Hagarzi of Gretz prospered, but it was ironic that many did so against their own better judgment. Hagarzi, for example, sprang from a family which had wandered into Germany from Babylonia, settling themselves along the Rhine centuries before the present Germans had straggled down from the north. Like his predecessors in the little Palestinian town of Makor, Simon Hagarzi had begun life as a groats maker and he would have been happy to remain so; but in pursuit of grain he had come to know many distant cities, so that he was logically pushed into the business of banking. Now his transformation was complete; what Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines had been unable to accomplish—taking Jews from the land and making merchants of them—Europe had achieved. Jews were now the money-manipulators, and without their services the new Europe could not have matured.

  But even if Hagarzi had not controlled the credit of Gretz, Germans would still have come to talk with him, for in an age when few could read and when news traveled slowly, Hagarzi was perhaps the best-informed man in the city. Yet he was humble in his knowledge, and if he knew much of the Talmud by heart, he kept it to himself and his family, for he knew that the Christians had their own Book, and he never intruded his religion upon them. Even so, he was known to Christian and Jew alike throughout the city as a man who united in his person not only sagacity but also a radiant personal charity which had confirmed him in the title God’s Man, a name by which the men of his family had been known through many generations in Makor and Babylonia; even devout Christians found spiritual profit in knowing this particular Jew.

  As always, when Count Volkmar left Hagarzi he had his money, which he handed over to his bailiff. He then walked disconsolately to his castle and slowly climbed the stairs to where his wife sat at breakfast with the children, but he had not had time to tell her of Hagarzi’s prediction about the competing Popes when a servant ran in to inform him that strangers were riding down the road from Cologne. The family went onto the battlements, from which they saw a cloud of dust sweeping energetically toward the city. “It must be half a dozen horsemen,” Volkmar estimated, and as he studied the approaching cyclone he craned his neck forward to see who might be causing it.

  At last, as the men drew close to the wall, he discerned that the foremost rider was dressed in a light suit of mail, his helmet and shield at his side. Over the metal suit he wore a long tunic of white upon which had been stitched a large cross in blue. Then the man’s head became discernible, a handsome, commanding blond head with clean-shaven chin and blue eyes.

  “It’s Gunter!” Matwilda cried happily as she ran down to greet her brother.

  When the seven knights from Cologne were seated in the hall, with Gunter clanking his metaled feet, the exciting news was broken. “We’ve taken the cross,” the young German announced. “Within the month we’ll march to Jerusalem. When we leave we’ll have fifteen thousand men with us, and you’re going along.”

  “Me!” Volkmar ejaculated.

  “You! And Conrad of Mainz and Henry of Worms. Everyone.”

  “I do not follow the commands of a False Pope,” Volkmar protested.

  “To hell with the Pope!” Gunter shouted. “Clement, Urban? Who gives a damn? Brother, in the Holy Land there are kingdoms to be won, and no quarrel about Popes must separate us from such booty.”

  The knights who had ridden forth with Gunter on his conscripting tour nodded, and one asked Matwilda, “Wouldn’t you like to be Queen of Antioch or Princess of Jerusalem?”

  “I’d like to see Gunter with such lands,” she replied, for she knew how strenuously her younger brother wanted a fief of his own.

  “But I’m quite content here in Gretz,” Volkmar insisted.

  “Don’t you want to go crusading?” his brother-in-law shouted. “Everyone else in the Rhineland does.” He dashed to the platform overlooking the public square and bellowed, “You down there? How many of you want to march to Jerusalem and rescue it from the heathen?”

  A shout welled up and echoed through the castle. One man cried, “Klaus has a hair from the donkey of Peter the Hermit.”

  At mention of the little priest’s name Gunter scowled, then yelled to the crowd, “In one week all able-bodied men who want to march with me to Jerusalem …” Now the shouting grew frenzied and the blond knight waved his arms, but when he returned to the table he slumped noisily into his chair and muttered, “That damned monk. He hasn’t a chance of getting to Jerusalem.”

  “You think not?” Volkmar asked.

  “You saw him. Were there ten men in his twenty thousand capable of fighting? Peasants, old women.” The young man rose and stamped about the room, his mailed feet clanging on the stones. “Volkmar, to recapture Jerusalem for Jesus Christ we need soldiers, men trained to war. The Turks are terrible fighters …”

  “And you are determined to go against them?” Matwilda asked.

  Gunter leaped across the room and knelt beside her. “Sister! Some fighting man who leaves Europe this month is going to be crowned King of Jerusalem. Half a dozen others are going to hack out great marches for themselves. I intend to be one of those men.” Then, somewhat ashamed of his personal outburst, he pointed to one of his companions, adding, “And Gottfried here will gain another.” Volkmar and his wife looked at Gottfried, a chinless fool. The knight grinned and nodded. He, too, intended to win a barony in the Holy Land.

  Then Gunter’s wild ambition again surged to the fore and he cried, “One month from today, on May 24, we shall march forth from Gretz, fifteen thousand, twenty. And you shall be with us.” He kissed his sister good-bye and swept down the castle stairs, eager to spread the word of his crusade to the other Rhenish cities. At the gate he saw Klaus still clutching his donkey hair, and he shouted, “Can you get a horse, man?”

  “Yes,” Klaus called back.

  “Then ride with us,” Gunter cried. “I need a servant who is lucky.” And when the seven knights rode off to the south Klaus of Gretz rode with them.

  When they were gone, and the excitement had subsided, Wenzel of Trier came quietly to his lord and said, “It is my opinion, sir, that you should take the cross.”

  “Why?” Volkmar asked in deep seriousness.

  “Because it is the will of God,” Wenzel replied.

  “Those are the words of the False Pope’s man,” Volkmar countered.

  “In this great matter, believe me, Volkmar, there is no false Pope, there is no true. There is only the call of God. The holy city, the land of our Lord Jesus Christ, is held by the infidel and we are summoned to redeem it.”

  Count Volkmar leaned back, disturbed. “You speak as if you …”

  “One month from today,” the hard-eyed priest announced, “I shall ride with the others.”

  “But why?” Volkmar pressed. “You have a chapel here. We need you.”

  “And we need you in Jerusalem.”

  For a week Count Volkmar pondered the invitation that Gunter had so forcefully laid before him, and each day Wenzel of Trier, his stern face staring out from beneath the gray hair he wore in bangs, added his priestly pressure; a spiritual movement without comparison was under way and any man of courage who missed it would be forever ashamed. Wenzel never spoke of kingdoms or principalities; in his heart was the call of God and he did not want his master to ignore that call.

  On the succeeding Saturday, Count Volkmar, who could neither read nor write, summoned Wenzel to draft a cautious letter of inquiry to the German emperor, asking whether a Rhenish knight could properly respond to the crusading summons of the False Pope, who also happened to be French; and this was a more delicate question than it might have seemed, since the French Pope had recently excommunicated the German emperor and there was personal bitterness between them, and while Volkmar waited for a reply he went to discuss the matter with Hagarzi, God’s Man, and the Je
w listened as the big, awkward count explained his dilemma: “I want to serve God, but I do not want to anger my emperor. How can a German emperor give permission to his knights to follow the orders of a French Pope, who isn’t even legal?”

  The moneylender laughed, and grasping the edges of his robe with both hands, said: “Count Volkmar, if you’ve decided to go on the Crusade …”

  “I have no intention of going,” the count protested.

  Ignoring the disclaimer Hagarzi continued, “Be guided by the story of one of our great rabbis, Akiba. The question arose of blowing the ram’s horn in a new city, because Jerusalem, which alone had the right to sound such a horn, had been destroyed by the Romans. What to do? Akiba and his liberals argued, ‘Let us sound the horn here and establish a new Jerusalem.’ But the conservatives countered, ‘Only in Jerusalem may the horn be sounded. And Jerusalem is no more.’ So Akiba made this proposal: ‘The hour is upon us. Let us blow the horn now and resume the argument later.’ So they blew the horn. Then came the conservatives to argue, but Akiba pointed out, ‘What’s to discuss? The horn has been blown. A precedent has been set. In the future we must like good Jews observe that precedent.’ ”

  The two men laughed, and Hagarzi said, “Believe me, Volkmar. Don’t wait for the emperor’s reply. Decide now what must be done, then do it.”

  “Even though I may infuriate my own emperor?”

  “Governments are made to be infuriated,” the Jew replied, but in spite of this daring advice Volkmar decided to wait.

  Before a reply could reach Gretz, Gunter and his six knights rode back from their foray up the Rhine, and the party had grown to fourteen enthusiasts, including an attractive girl whom Gunter had acquired in Speyer. At the castle of Gretz he indicated that from now on the girl would be sleeping with him, in one of Matwilda’s rooms, and his sister was outraged, but Gunter ignored her.

  “Wherever we rode,” he cried in flushed excitement, “men of great reputation signified that they would join us at the end of the month. Volkmar, you’ve got to come.”