Armies of Heaven

by Jay Rubenstein

  The prisoners stayed there throughout the night, but the next morning a few pilgrims, enraged at the sight of Muslims on what seemed to them a sacred Christian building, “attacked the Saracens, both men and women, cutting off their heads with drawn swords. Some of the Saracens threw themselves headlong from the Temple.” All of them died. Tancred had lost his prizes and was furious, both at his hostages’ deaths and at Raymond’s success in the same enterprise. Tancred demanded justice, presumably in the form of monetary compensation, and if not justice, revenge.4

  The dissensions created by this second, smaller massacre threatened to open new, unbridgeable rifts within the army. That is, until some of the “greater and wiser men” shared their counsel: Rather than allow the Franks to fail through “avarice or sloth or mercy,” they should kill all of the prisoners, regardless of whether they were being held for ransom or even if the ransom had already been paid.5

  And so on the third day of the conquest, the final stage of the Jerusalem massacre began. Albert of Aachen was the only writer to describe it. As with his account of the pogroms along the Rhine, he showed a startling degree of empathy for the victims: The Franks “were beheading or striking down with stones girls, women, noble ladies, even pregnant women, and very young children, paying attention to no one’s age. By contrast, girls, women, ladies, tormented by fear of imminent death, and horror-struck by the violent slaughter, were embracing the Christians in their midst even as they were raving and venting their rage on the throats of both sexes, in the hope of saving their lives. Some were wound about the Christians’ feet, begging them with piteous weeping and wailing for their lives and safety. When children five or three years old saw the cruel fate of their mothers and fathers, of one accord they intensified the weeping and wretched clamor. But they were making these signals for pity and mercy in vain. The Christians gave over their whole hearts to the slaughter, so that not a suckling little male child or female, not even an infant of one year would escape alive the hand of the murderer. The streets of the whole city of Jerusalem are reported to have been so strewn and covered with the dead bodies of men and women and the mangled limbs of infants, not only in the streets, houses, and palaces, but even in places of desert solitude numbers of slain were to be found.”6

  Just enough Saracens were spared so that the Franks might have slaves charged with removing the bodies. Rather than giving a formal burial, these few survivors piled their friends and family in heaps outside the gates. “They made mountains from the bodies. They were as big as houses.” Six months later at Christmas, the bodies were still there. Fulcher of Chartres, the historian who had settled at Edessa, traveled to Jerusalem as a pilgrim for the holiday, and he wrote, “Oh, how great was the stench at that time, both inside and outside the city walls, because of the Saracen corpses, still rotting there, killed when our comrades captured the city! It was so bad that we had to stop up our noses and mouths.”7

  The Election of a King

  During the same meeting when the princes decided to execute all of their prisoners, they also treated another vexed question: Who would rule Jerusalem? And how? On July 17, the day of the third massacre, they did little more than offer prayers and charity, hoping that God would show them the right answer. For the next five days, they argued among themselves, as the various pretenders to the throne made their cases, each trying to present himself as best suited for the job while maintaining due humility.

  The topic had been broached only once before, around July 1, when some of the army’s clerics had discussed the possibility of making a king. It would be no light undertaking. Kings were semidivine incarnations of secular authority, enforcers of God’s will in earthly affairs. The trappings of office dated back to the Old Testament, and all European kings to a degree would have seen themselves as partaking in a form of government created by David in Jerusalem. The Israelite kings were effectively the founding fathers of medieval Europe, their images celebrated in, among other places, the western façade of Notre-Dame, the royal cathedral in Paris. A king of Jerusalem—like a king of France, England, or Germany—would be David’s heir, too, only doubly so since he would actually sit in David’s city in a direct line of succession to his rule. [Plate 9] To restore a king in Jerusalem, like the crusade itself, was to tinker with the fundamental patterns of history, and not everyone was ready for that.

  The chaplain Raymond of Aguilers was especially opposed. His millennial program had failed, and without Peter Bartholomew or an equally visionary prophet—Peter Desiderius does not seem to have captured the army’s imagination—he was not sure how to proceed. In fact, given the prophetic implications of crowning someone in Jerusalem, he earnestly believed that there shouldn’t be a king there at all. When the topic was first broached during the siege, he said, the bishops and clerics argued that “they ought not elect a king where the Lord had suffered and was crowned, that if the king were to say in his heart, ‘I sit on the throne of David and I hold his kingdom,’ his faith and virtue might decline from David’s. Perhaps the Lord would bring him to ruin and grow angry at the place and the people.” These clergymen preferred instead to have someone who “would be an ‘advocate,’ to guard the city and distribute the tributes and rents collected from the area to the city’s guardians.” Others simply wanted a king, and there could be no compromise between these groups, except to delay a decision.8

  When the topic came up again after Jerusalem fell, no one heeded Raymond’s arguments. There was a strong movement to create a king, though his duties were essentially the same as what the chaplain had envisioned for an advocate: “The princes came together to elect someone as king, who might take care for all, who might collect the tributes in the area, someone to whom the people might run and someone who would take care lest anyone’s land suffer destruction.” Some of the clergy spoke up against the procedure and demanded that the army follow the natural order of things—that is, elect a “spiritual vicar,” a patriarch, first, and then a king who might look after secular affairs. But most everyone rejected this idea, including many priests, and they pushed for an immediate royal election. How greatly had clerical authority diminished, the chaplain Raymond mused, since the death of Adhémar, that second Moses.

  Without dwelling on voting procedures, the leaders first offered the crown to Raymond of Saint-Gilles. It was a surprising choice. Even more surprising, Raymond refused. Perhaps he had found his chaplain’s arguments about the need for an advocate convincing. Maybe at this juncture his authority was so bound up with the Holy Lance and Peter Bartholomew’s millenarianism that he could not accept a crown—the new Jerusalem should be ruled by Christ and saintly judges, not by a man wearing a crown.

  More likely, Raymond was trying to emulate Godfrey’s July 15 public display of humility. By refusing a crown, he would show that he was, in fact, the only man worthy to wear one. Raymond of Aguilers said only that the count “felt horror at the name of kings in that city.” Another writer suggested that Raymond refused because he “was truly worn down with age and had only one eye.” Whatever his rationale, the barons and priests next turned to Godfrey, who on July 22, 1099, accepted.9

  What office he accepted on that day is somewhat unclear. According to historical tradition, he matched Raymond’s humility by refusing the title of king, preferring instead to call himself “Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher.” So venerable is this tale, still related earnestly by the Franciscans who today maintain Godfrey’s sword and spurs in Jerusalem, that it seems rude to question it. But the tradition is wrong.

  Raymond of Aguilers had originally proposed that Jerusalem should not have a king but an advocate. If Godfrey had accepted this title, surely Raymond would have trumpeted the decision? It would have been, for him, a rare victory. Instead, Raymond left the impression that Godfrey, unlike Count Raymond, felt no horror at the name of king and took upon himself all the burdens and privileges of monarchy. Even the writers who did not call Godfrey king, like Fulcher of Chartres or the author of Deed
s of the Franks, called him “prince” or, in Fulcher’s case, “prince of the kingdom.” Chroniclers writing in Europe in the early twelfth century, by and large, just called Godfrey “king.”10

  The best way to resolve these contradictory reports is to conclude that Godfrey compromised: He accepted the office of king but refused to wear a crown. “Never in the city of Jerusalem did he bear the crown of kings, out of reverence for Jesus Christ, the author of our salvation, who because of human mockery there wore a thorny crown.” “Though elected a king,” an epitaph from Godfrey’s tomb read, “he preferred not to be so titled, nor to be crowned, but rather to serve Christ.” He preferred not to wear a crown, and the evidence on this point suggests that he did not. He preferred not to be called king, but the evidence on this point is at best ambiguous. The one thing he absolutely did not call himself was “Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher.”11

  Despite the absence of a crown and the ambiguous title, Godfrey’s office seemed no less splendid or royal. If anything, it was imperial. As a descendant of Charlemagne, he could make a plausible case to have fulfilled the rumors that had circulated through Lotharingia in 1096 that the first Holy Roman Emperor had returned from the grave and would liberate Jerusalem. More importantly, he could also make a case that he was fulfilling the predictions about the Last World Emperor, the “King of the Greeks and Romans.” As Charlemagne’s descendant, he could be king of the Romans. As Alexius’s adopted son, he could be king of the Greeks. It might seem a dubious claim, but Godfrey’s brother Baldwin had used a similar adoption ceremony to make himself prince of Edessa. In this light, Alexius’s words to Godfrey at the time of the supposed ceremony would have seemed portentous: “I am accepting you as my adopted son, and everything that I possess I place in your power, so that through you my empire and my land shall be safe and free from the forces here now and from those still to come.”12

  It was a title confirmed by visions, many of them related around the time of Godfrey’s election. The first one had occurred ten years before the march to Jerusalem when a knight named Hecelo, after spending a day hunting with Godfrey, dreamed that he saw the duke standing atop Mount Sinai, a new Moses to the Christian people. Mount Sinai was the place where God had handed down the law to Moses and with it the authority to govern, as the Children of Israel wandered through the deserts, searching, like the Franks, for the Promised Land. In the dream two unnamed men in ecclesiastical garb rushed forward, hailing Godfrey as the “duke and guide for his Christian people,” praying that he might find blessing and grace in the eyes of God, just as Moses had done. Of all the princes to liberate Jerusalem, Albert of Aachen explained, Godfrey was the only one to do so in the spirit of Moses, “preordained by God as spiritual leader of Israel.” Albert did not point out the obvious difference between Godfrey and Moses: that the duke actually did complete his journey and took his people to the Promised Land.13

  In another precrusade vision, one of Godfrey’s servants, Stabelo, dreamed of a golden ladder stretching from earth to heaven. Godfrey attempted to climb the ladder with another servant named Rothard, who carried a lamp in his hand. Halfway up the ladder, Rothard’s lamp went dark. At the same moment, the rung under his foot broke, causing him to retreat down the ladder in fear—unable to arrive safely with the duke at “the heavenly gate” and thus reach “the throne of heaven.” Stabelo then climbed the ladder himself, and he and Godfrey together entered “the court of heaven.” Rothard was a deserter, as Albert of Aachen explained, but Stabelo completed the pilgrimage (and remained a political player in Jerusalem for many years). The ladder was made of gold to signify free will and a pure heart. It reached heaven to demonstrate that Godfrey’s entire mind was focused on the city of Jerusalem, “which is the gate to the heavenly homeland.” Earthly and heavenly Jerusalems once more melded together, and our dream interpreter, Albert, did not even mention the obvious royal symbolism here: a heavenly court and a heavenly throne welcoming Godfrey, the new king.14

  Finally, seven months after the Lotharingians had departed for the East, a cleric named Giselbert, from Aachen, learned in a vision that Godfrey would be “head of all and prince of Jerusalem, foreknown and established by God.” Giselbert saw the duke seated upon the sun, surrounded by innumerable birds. Many of the birds suddenly took flight, for a time obscuring both Godfrey and the light of day. The sun, Albert explained, symbolized Jerusalem, which “surpasses all the cities in the world because of its name and sanctity, just as the sun by its brightness surpasses all the stars of heaven.” To sit upon the sun was to sit “on the throne of the kingdom of Jerusalem.” The birds symbolized the army, some of whom stayed in the Holy Land out of love for their leader, many of whom returned home upon his death. The choreography of the scene seems deliberately reminiscent of Revelation 19, where an angel standing upon the sun commands the birds of the air to feast upon the kings of the earth.15 [Plate 5]

  We might add to this list of stories a series of miracles associated with Ida of Boulogne, Godfrey’s mother. She developed a reputation during her life for sanctity, based in large part on the achievements of her sons in the Holy Land. In one of her biographies we read that she, too, had a dream of the sun. It appeared to descend from heaven to settle in her lap: a sign of the auspicious lives prepared for her children, including Godfrey, “predestined to be the first King of Jerusalem by a new dispensation.” Revelation 12:5 speaks of a woman clothed in the sun and about to give birth to a child who is to rule the nations of God. [Plate 10] In an imaginative variation on this story, Ida, while pregnant with Godfrey, saw herself standing inside the Holy Sepulcher. She noticed a crucifix suspended from the ceiling, and she wished to abase herself before it. Instead of receiving her worship, however, the image of Christ came to life and lowered itself to pay homage to her womb since the child therein would liberate the city where He had died.16

  Godfrey may not have a worn a crown, but he was still a figure of royal and imperial dignity—just what Jerusalem needed as it prepared for the next confrontation with the minions of Antichrist and perhaps with Antichrist himself.

  The Millenarian Strikes Back

  Soon after the election, Godfrey demanded that Raymond turn over the Tower of David. Raymond, naturally, refused. He explained that he and his men intended to stay in the region until Easter 1100 and needed a suitable place to live. His feud with Bohemond over Antioch seemed destined to replay itself in Jerusalem. This time, however, he was to be even less successful in staking out a position in the city.

  Godfrey was a more formidable adversary than Bohemond. He was also more popular. The two Roberts sided with him, and several of Raymond’s own men, who wished to return to Occitania as soon as possible, secretly opposed the count. Under pressure, Raymond agreed to give over the tower to his new right-hand man, Bishop Peter of Albara, in anticipation of a trial. Peter, however, handed it directly to Godfrey, claiming later that he had been threatened with violence if he did not do so and hinting as well that Raymond’s own men had been the ones who had threatened him. His honor lost, Raymond and his entourage left the city. As the chaplain Raymond bleakly summed up the affair, “And so the feuds multiplied.”17

  Once a likely candidate for kingship, now unwelcome in Jerusalem, Raymond had only one stratagem left. He and his few remaining men one last time paid homage to their fallen prophet. For Peter Bartholomew had given the count one set of instructions he had yet to fulfill. When Peter had first approached him and Bishop Adhémar with news of the Holy Lance, he had described how they ought to behave at the end of the crusade. From Jerusalem Raymond was to go to Jericho. There he would cross the Jordan, but he must do so in a boat and not on foot. On the other side, he would clothe himself in a shirt and a pair of linen breeches and allow himself to be sprinkled with water from the river. Once his clothes had dried, he would set them aside, thenceforth to be preserved with the Holy Lance.18

  When Raymond arrived at Jericho, his retinue could not find a boat. He therefore ordered them to
build one from tree branches so that he might cross the river while staying dry. The chaplain Raymond exhorted everyone to pray for the lives of the count and of the other princes. Raymond of Saint-Gilles then stepped forward, wearing only a shirt and a new pair of breeches as ordered, and Raymond of Aguilers baptized him at the same place and in the same fashion as John the Baptist had baptized Christ. But the chaplain’s patience was wearing thin: “Why the man of God would have ordered these things, I still don’t know.” When they returned to Jerusalem in early August, they would learn that Arnulf of Choques, chaplain to Robert of Normandy, Peter Bartholomew’s prosecutor, and chief of the doubters of the Holy Lance, had been elected patriarch of Jerusalem.19

  Two months later, perhaps still puzzling over the judgments of God and wondering just what that last bit of pantomime at the Jordan had meant, the two Raymonds, count and chaplain, were staying in Latakia, a Syrian port city under the control of Byzantium. There they had met a man named Daimbert, Archbishop of Pisa, now acting as papal legate, sent from Rome to fill the void left by Adhémar’s death. Daimbert was delighted to encounter veterans of the crusade. They could help him compose a letter to send to the new pope, Paschal II, to update him on the situation in Jerusalem. Based on the letter’s style and content, Raymond of Aguilers appears to have written the entire document in Daimbert’s name, and with a few strokes of the pen, he managed to reshape the history of the end of the crusade. He did it not so much with the letter’s content but with its salutation, signed on behalf of Archbishop Daimbert, Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Godfrey, now styled “Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher.”