XVI. The Crusades, Their Origin And Their Success

From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation remained very much the same. The Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, continued in possession of Jerusalem; and the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two periods their condition was temporarily better. At the commencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with the greatness of his mind and of his power. "It was not only in his own land and his own kingdom," says Eginhard, "that he scattered those gratuitous largesses which the Greeks call alms; but beyond the seas, in Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage, wherever he knew that there were Christians living in poverty, he had compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them money." In one of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph: "Alms to be sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God." "If Charlemagne was so careful to seek the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above all in order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help and relief. . . . He kept up so close a friendship with Haroun-al- Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accordingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with presents, to visit the sacred tomb of our divine Saviour, and the site of the resurrection, presented themselves before him, and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun did not content himself with entertaining Charles's request; he wished, besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places hallowed by the certification of our redemption," and he sent him, with the most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. At the end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a deputation which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, "and we have placed," he says himself, "garrisons in all the district lately subjected to our rule." These were but strokes of foreign intervention, giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminution of their miseries. However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages multiplied, and were often accomplished without obstacle. It was from France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims went, and some of them wrote, or caused to be written, an account of their trip,—amongst others the Italian Saint Valentine, the English Saint Willibald, and the French Bishop Saint Arculf, who had as companion a Burgundian hermit named Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zealous apostle of the Crusade three centuries later. The most curious of these narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard, a pilgrim of about the year 870. "There is at Jerusalem," says he, "a hospice where admittance is given to all who come to visit the place for devotion's sake, and who speak the Roman tongue; a church, dedicated to St. Mary, is hard by the hospice, and possesseth a very noble library, which it oweth to the zeal of the Emperor Charles the Great." This pious establishment had attached to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the valley of Jehosaphat.

But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Christians thus going to satisfy in the East their pious and inquisitive zeal, the Mussulmans, equally ardent as believers and as warriors, carried Westward their creed and their arms, established themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very heart of France, and brought on, between Islamism and Christianity, that grand struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Poitiers, the victory for the Cross. It was really a definitive victory, and yet it did not end the struggle; the Mussulmans remained masters in Spain, and continued to infest Southern France, Italy, and Sicily, preserving even, at certain points, posts which they used as starting-points for distant ravages. Far then from calming down and resulting in pacific relations, the hostility between the two races became more and more active and determined; everywhere they opposed, fought, and oppressed one another, inflamed one against the other by the double feelings of faith and ambition, hatred and fear. To this general state of affairs came to be added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil. Hakem, khalif of Egypt from 996 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem, with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross five pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or asses; and, without assigning any motive for his acts, he confiscated their goods and carried off their children. It was told to him one day that, when the Christians assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the priests of the church rubbed balsam-oil upon the iron chain which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the fire stole down to the wick of the lamp and lighted it; then they shouted with admiration, as if fire from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified their faith. Hakem ordered the instant demolition of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it was accordingly demolished. Another time a dead dog had been laid at the door of a mosque; and the multitude accused the Christians of this insult. Hakem ordered them all to be put to death. The soldiers were preparing to execute the order when a young Christian said to his friends, "It were too grievous that the whole Church should perish; it were better that one should die for all; only promise to bless my memory year by year." He proclaimed himself alone to blame for the insult, and was accordingly alone put to death. It is from this story of the historian William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his Jerusalem Delivered, has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example, and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece. "All the deeds of Hakem were without motive," says the Arab historian Makrisi, "and the dreams suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable interpretation."

Contents