A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (41 page)

The Orthodox
Church

It was indeed the immigrants, come to fight for
the Cross and determined to brook no delay, whose crudity continually ruined
the policy of Outremer. They were particularly strong in the Church. Not one of
the Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem in the twelfth century was born in Palestine,
and of the great ecclesiastics only William, Archbishop of Tyre, to whom the
Patriarchate was refused. The influence of the Church was seldom in favour of
an understanding with the infidel; and it was even more disastrous in its
relations with the native Christians. The native Christians had great influence
at the Moslem courts. Many of the best-known Arabic writers and philosophers
and almost all the physicians were Christian. They could have formed a bridge
between the eastern and western worlds.

The Orthodox communities in Palestine had
accepted the Latin hierarchy because at the time of the conquest its own upper
clergy were all in exile. The Patriarch Daimbert had attempted to deprive their
clergy of their positions at the Holy Sepulchre, but strange events at the
ceremony of the Holy Fire in 1101 and the influence of the King had restored
Greek canons to the church and had allowed the celebration of the Orthodox rite
there. The Crown throughout was friendly to the Orthodox. Morphia, Baldwin II’s
queen and Melisende’s mother w
^a
s an Orthodox princess as were the
queens of Melisende’s two sons. The Abbot of St Sabas, the leading Orthodox
hierarch left in Palestine, was treated with honour by Baldwin I; and Melisende
gave lands to the abbey, which probably owed service to the Crown. The Emperor
Manuel was able to maintain a protective interest in the Orthodox, illustrated
by the repairs for which he was responsible in the two great Churches of the
Holy Sepulchre and the Nativity. The monastery of St Euthymius in the Judaean
wilderness was rebuilt and redecorated about the same time, perhaps with his
help. But there was no increase in cordiality between the Latin and Greek
clergy. The Russian pilgrim, Daniel, in 1104 was hospitably received in Latin
establishments; but the Greek pilgrim, Phocas, in 1184, though he visited Latin
establishments, had no liking for Latins, except for a Spanish hermit who had
at one time lived in Anatolia; and he relates with glee a miracle that
discomfited the Latin ecclesiastic whom he calls the ‘intruder’ Bishop of
Lydda. It is probable that the attempt of the Latin hierarchy to make the
Orthodox pay the
dime
, together with resentment that their rite was
seldom permitted in the great churches of their Faith, lessened the liking of
the Orthodox for Frankish rule, and made them ready, once Manuel’s protection
had ended, to accept and even to welcome Saladin’s reconquest. In Antioch the
presence of a powerful Greek community and political developments had caused an
open hostility between Greeks and Latins which seriously weakened the
principality.

The Luxury of
Outremer

In the kingdom itself the heretic sects were of
little importance outside of Jerusalem, where almost all of them kept
establishments at the Holy Sepulchre. Daimbert had tried to eject them too,
without success. The Crown protected their rights. Indeed, Queen Melisende gave
her personal support to the Jacobite Syrians when they had a lawsuit against a
Frankish knight. In the County of Tripoli the chief heretic Church was that of
the Maronites, the surviving adherents of Monothelete doctrine. With them the western
Church acted with rare tact and forbearance; and about 1180 they agreed to
admit the supremacy of the Roman See, provided that they might keep their
Syriac liturgy and customs; nor did they renounce their heretical doctrine of
Christ’s single will. The negotiations, of which too little is known, were ably
managed by the Patriarch Aimery of Antioch. The admission of this first Uniate
Church showed that the Papacy was ready to permit divergent usages and even
doubtful theology, provided that its ultimate authority was recognized.

In the principality of Antioch the separated
Armenian Church was powerful and was encouraged by the Princes, who found it a
useful counter against the Orthodox; and in Edessa the Armenians, though they
were distrusted by Baldwin I and Baldwin II, enjoyed the friendship of the
house of Courtenay. Many Armenian bishops came to recognize papal supremacy,
and some attended Synods of the Latin Church, forgiving in the Latin doctrines
what they thought unpardonable in the Greek. The Jacobite Syrians were at first
frankly hostile to the Crusaders and preferred Moslem rule. But, after the fall
of Edessa, they became reconciled to the Prince of Antioch, nominally because
of a miracle at the tomb of St Barsauma, but actually from a common fear and
hatred of Byzantium. The Jacobite Patriarch Michael, one of the great
historians of the time, was a friend of the Patriarch Aimery and paid a cordial
visit to Jerusalem. None of the other heretic churches was of importance in the
Frankish states.

The Franks’ Moslem subjects accepted their
masters calmly and admitted the justice of their administration; but they would
obviously be unreliable if things went badly for the Christians. The Jews, with
good reason, preferred the rule of the Arabs, who always treated them honestly
and kindly, if with a certain contempt.

To the contemporary western pilgrim Outremer
was shocking because of its luxury and licence. To the modem historian it is
rather the intolerance and dishonourable barbarity of the Crusaders that is to
be regretted. Yet both aspects can be explained by the atmosphere that reigned
there. Life amongst the Frankish colonists was uneasy and precarious. They were
in a land where intrigue and murder flourished and enemies lay in wait across
the near-by frontiers. No one knew when he might not receive a knife-thrust
from a devotee of the Assassins or poison from one of his servants. Mysterious
diseases of which they knew little were rife. Even with the help of local
doctors, no Frank lived for long in the East. Women were more fortunate than
men. They avoided the risks of battle and, owing to better medical knowledge,
childbirth was less dangerous there than in the West. But infant mortality was
high, especially among the boys. Fief after fief fell into the hands of an
heiress, whose inheritance might lure gallant adventurers from the West; but
too often great estates lacked a lord at the hour of crisis, and every marriage
was a matter of dispute and of plotting. Marriages were often sterile. Many of
the toughest warriors failed to father a child. Intermarriage between the few
noble families increased personal rivalries. Fiefs were joined and divided with
little regard to geographical convenience. There were perpetual quarrels
between the next-of-kin.

The social structure that the Franks brought
from the West demanded a steady hereditary succession and a maintenance of
man-power. The physical decline of the human element was full of danger. Fear
made them brutal and treacherous, and uncertainty encouraged their love of
frivolous gaiety. As their tenure weakened, their feats and tournaments grew
more lavish. Visitors and natives alike were horrified by the extravagance and
the immorality that they saw all around them, and the worst offender was the
Patriarch Heraclius. But a wise visitor would understand that beneath the
splendid surface all was not well. The King, for all his silk and gold, often
lacked the money to pay his soldiers. The proud Templar, counting his money
bags, might at any moment be summoned to battles more cruel than any that the
West had known. Revellers like the wedding guests at Kerak in 1183 might rise
from the table to hear the mangonels of the infidel pounding against the castle
walls. The gay, gallant trappings of life in Outremer hung thinly over anxiety,
uncertainty and fear; and an onlooker might well wonder whether even under the
best of rulers the adventure could endure for long.

CHAPTER II

THE RISE OF NUR
ED-DIN

‘He went forth
conquering
,
and to conquer.’
REVELATION VI, 2

Raymond of Antioch had been right to urge the
leaders of the Second Crusade to march against Aleppo. His failure to persuade
them cost him his life. The chief enemy of Christendom was Nur ed-Din; and in
1147 a great army could have crushed him. He was master of Aleppo and Edessa;
but Unur of Damascus and the petty independent emirs of the Orontes valley
would not have come to his rescue; nor could he have counted on help from his
brother Saif ed-Din at Mosul, who had troubles of his own in Iraq. But the folly
of the Crusaders drove Unur into alliance with him for as long as the danger
lasted; and the chance given him of intervention in the affairs of Tripoli
allowed him to strengthen his hold on central Syria.

Raymond was further justified in refusing to
join the Crusade. Neither he nor Joscelin of Edessa could afford to leave their
lands exposed to Nur ed-Din. Even while the Crusaders were before Damascus
troops from Aleppo raided Christian territory. Under a flag of truce Count
Joscelin went himself to Nur ed-Din’s camp to beg for clemency. All that he
obtained was a temporary respite. Meanwhile, the Sultan of Konya, Mas’ud, at
peace with Byzantium, took advantage of the discomfiture of the Franks to
attack Marash. Raymond prepared to meet him; so Mas’ud sent to ask Nur ed-Din
to make a diversion. His request was granted; but Raymond with the alliance of
a Kurdish chief of the Assassins, Ali ibn Wafa, who hated Nur ed-Din far more
than the Christians, surprised Nur ed-Din in November 1148 as he swept through the
villages in the plain of the Aswad at Famiya, on the road from Antioch to
Marash. Nur ed-Din’s two chief lieutenants, the Kurd Shirkuh and the Aleppan
notable Ibn ed-Daya, had quarrelled. The former refused to take part in the
battle; and the whole Moslem army was forced into a hasty and ignominious
retreat. Next spring Nur ed-Din invaded the country again and defeated Raymond
at Baghras, close to the former battlefield. He then turned south to besiege
the fortress of Inab, one of the few strongholds left to the Christians east of
the Orontes. Raymond with a small army and a few Assassin allies under Ali ibn
Wafa hurried to its rescue; and Nur ed-Din, misinformed of the strength of his
force, retreated. In fact the Moslem army of six thousand horse outnumbered the
Frankish of four thousand horse and one thousand infantrymen. Against Ali’s
advice Raymond then decided to reinforce the garrison of Inab. But Nur ed-Din
was now aware of Raymond’s weakness. On 28 June 1149 the Christian army
encamped in a hollow by the Fountain of Murad, in the plain between Inab and
the marsh of Ghab. During the night Nur ed-Din’s troops crept up and surrounded
them. Next morning Raymond realized that his only chance was to charge his way
out. But the terrain was against him. A wind rose and blew dust in the eyes of
his knights as they pressed their horses up the slope. In a few hours his army
was annihilated. Amongst the dead were Reynald of Marash and the Assassin
leader Ali. Raymond himself perished by the hand of Shirkuh, who thus regained
his master’s favour lost at Famiya. The Prince’s skull, set in a silver case,
was sent by Nur ed-Din as a gift to his spiritual master, the Caliph of
Baghdad.

1150: The
Capture of Count Joscelin

Joscelin of Edessa, enjoying an uneasy truce
with the Moslems, had refused to work in with his old rival, Raymond. His turn came
next. Nur ed-Din passed on through Antiochene territory completing his hold on
the middle Orontes by the capture of Arzghan and Tel-Kashfahan, then
overpowering the garrisons of Artah and Harenc farther north and turning west
to appear before the walls of Antioch itself and raid as far as Saint Symeon.
Joscelin made no attempt to rescue his fellow-Franks but marched on
Marash in the hope of taking over the inheritance of Reynald, who was his
son-in-law. He entered the city but retired when the Sultan Mas’ud approached.
The garrison that he left behind surrendered to the Seldjuks on the promise
that Christian lives should be spared; but as they and the clergy were taking
the road to Antioch they were massacred one and all. Mas’ud pursued Joscelin to
the neighbourhood of Turbessel. But Christian reinforcements were approaching;
while Nur ed-Din had no wish to see Joscelin, who was still his client, lose
his lands to the Seldjuks. Mas’ud found it politic to retire. Next, the
Ortoqids of the Jezireh, limited on the south by Nur ed-Din and his brothers,
sought to expand along the Euphrates at the expense of the Armenians of Gargar,
who had been tributaries to Reynald. Joscelin dissipated his energies in vainly
sending help to Basil of Gargar. The Ortoqid Kara Arslan took over the whole
district of Gargar and Kharpurt, to the delight of the Jacobite Christians to
whom his rule was infinitely preferable to that of Reynald with his strong
pro-Armenian and anti-Jacobite sentiments. In the winter of 1149 Nur ed-Din
broke with Joscelin. His first attacks were unsuccessful; but in April 1150, as
Joscelin was riding to Antioch to consult with the government there, he was
separated from his escort and fell into the hands of some Turcoman freebooters.
They were ready to release him for a heavy ransom; but Nur ed-Din heard of his
capture and sent a squadron of cavalry to take him from his captors. He was
blinded and imprisoned at Aleppo. There he died, nine years later, in 1159.

Thus, by the summer of 1150, both the
Principality of Antioch and the remains of the County of Edessa had lost their
lords. But Nur ed-Din did not venture to go farther. When news reached Antioch
of the death of Prince Raymond, the Patriarch Aimery put the city into a state
of defence and sent urgently south to ask King Baldwin to come to its rescue.
He then obtained a short truce from Nur ed-Din by promising to surrender
Antioch if Baldwin did not arrive. The arrangement suited Nur ed-Din, who was
shy of attempting the siege of the city and who meanwhile was able to capture
Apamea, the last Antiochene fortress in the Orontes valley. King Baldwin
hastened north with a small company, mostly composed of Knights Templar. His appearance
induced Nur ed-Din to accept a more lasting truce, and it served to help to
keep Mas’ud from attacking Turbessel. But though Antioch was saved, the
Principality was now reduced to the plain of Antioch itself and the coast from
Alexandretta to Lattakieh.