Holy Warriors (15 page)

Even these actions were not necessarily sufficient. If a woman took on male attributes too fully, then she could be criticized. At one point in the struggle for power in England, Melisende’s contemporary, Matilda, began to behave in a masculine way, only to be condemned by hostile writers for being unfeminine and having “every trace of a woman’s gentleness removed.”
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A balance was needed: if women could overcome the demands of their bodies and show careful and strong political judgment, contemporaries felt it might be possible for them to rule successfully.

Yet the picture was more complicated still and power could take myriad other forms. There were many different ways, both public and private, for women to exert a profound impact on government, the household, and cultural and religious life. It was in the household that a woman had the greatest opportunity to direct her husband, her children, and her family. Medieval writers understood—and in the case of some churchmen, feared—the influence that could be gained through “the embraces of love” as one author rather coyly expressed it. After Count Stephen of Blois deserted from the First Crusade, his wife, Adela, frequently encouraged him to return “between conjugal caresses”: a positive use of the bedchamber. On the other hand, some writers believed that the presence of women at court caused a loss of knightly virility and counseled against it.
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From Fulk’s death in 1143 Melisende ruled Jerusalem, first in her own right, then gradually giving more of a role to her son Baldwin III. She dealt adroitly with the fall of Edessa in 1144 and met the crowned heads of France and Germany as they came to the Holy Land in the Second Crusade in 1148 (see Chapter Four). She skillfully maintained this balancing act until 1151–52 when Baldwin began to demand to rule alone. A civil war broke out and Melisende was compelled to back down, although she maintained a position of great honor and influence until her declining years. It seems likely that she suffered some form of wasting illness and she also showed the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease, being described as “somewhat impaired in memory.”
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She died in September 1161 with her two surviving sisters at her bedside, the family ties between this generation of the royal family holding close until the end. She was buried in the Church of the Virgin Mary in the Valley of Jehoshaphat just outside the walls of Jerusalem where the site of her tomb remains visible today.
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A conventional contemporary assessment of Melisende would have depicted her as an ambitious, greedy woman who lusted after power for herself, who seduced men to achieve her own ends, and lacked the strength to govern properly. In fact, such were her political skills and so great was the force of her personality that the majority of writers (even though they were mainly churchmen) viewed her positively—even allowing for their inbuilt
bias against the “evils” of women. William of Tyre described her as “a woman of unusual wisdom and discretion,” who had set out to “emulate the magnificence of the greatest and noblest of princes and to show herself in no ways inferior to them.” She had succeeded and proven to be “an equal to her ancestors”: men such as Godfrey of Bouillon and King Baldwin I, the heroes of the First Crusade.
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For a medieval queen to be placed in such exalted company shows what a remarkable individual she was.

THE “BLESSED GENERATION”

A
bbot (later Saint) Bernard of Clairvaux can justifiably lay claim to being the most influential churchman in western Europe during the twelfth century. Father figure to kings, princes, and popes, he acted as the self-appointed moral compass of the age. Bernard was responsible for the extraordinary rise of the Cistercian monks, he was a leading advocate of the Knights Templar, and, in conjunction with Pope Eugenius III, he led the preaching of the Second Crusade. It was Bernard who convinced the knights of Christendom that they were a “blessed generation,” especially favored by God with an opportunity to defeat the Muslims. Inspired by the abbot’s preaching, huge armies marched to the Holy Land in 1147–48, but after a mere four days outside the walls of Damascus the crusaders were forced into a humiliating retreat: a catastrophic blow to Christian morale in both Europe and the Holy Land.
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The Second Crusade was triggered by the loss of Edessa in northeastern Syria in late 1144. Its conqueror, Zengi of Aleppo and Mosul, was an intelligent and ruthless individual, widely regarded as the most fearsome warrior of the period. The early stages of his career demonstrated the same self-serving tendencies displayed by many other Syrian warlords at the time; in fact, Zengi seemed to care little about his opponents’ faith and he treated all
his enemies with the same extraordinary levels of brutality—hardly material for a hero of the jihad. In 1139, for example, he promised the Muslims of Baalbek safe conduct if they surrendered, only to torture and crucify them after they submitted. He maintained a terrifying level of discipline throughout his army. Ibn al-Adim wrote: “when he rode the troops used to walk behind him as if they were between two threads out of fear that they would trample on the crops. . . . If anyone transgressed, he was crucified. Zengi used to say: ‘It does not happen that there is more than one tyrant (meaning himself) at one time.’” He was no less cruel to those in his entourage—emirs who displeased him were killed or banished and their sons castrated. One of his wives was divorced during a bout of drunkenness: Zengi sent her to the stables where he ordered the grooms to gang-rape her while he looked on.
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In late 1144 Zengi turned his attention to the Frankish city of Edessa and when he learned Count Joscelin was absent, Zengi saw a chance to pounce. He rushed his forces to the area and laid siege to the city. Edessa was a site with formidable defensive fortifications so to gain entry Zengi decided to construct a complex series of tunnels. By late December his laborers had burrowed deep under one of the walls. They packed the passage with flammable material and set the wooden supports ablaze: as smoke billowed from the tunnel entrance the passageway collapsed. The walls above began to crack and then to tumble; once the dust had drifted away it was clear that the Muslim sappers had torn a deep gash in the Christians’ defensive cordon. The Franks tried desperately to stave off the Muslim assault but to no avail, and Zengi’s men began to slaughter the citizens and seize precious relics. The “Elegy for the Fall of Edessa,” written by a local Armenian Christian within two years of the siege, evoked a harrowing scene:

This thunderous strike against the principal city of one of the Latin States fulfilled the hopes of jihad propagandists—at last the counter-crusade was underway. News of these events was greeted with horror and
fear in Antioch and Jerusalem; relief armies were sent north but could do little. The gravity of the situation prompted an appeal to western Europe and the response to this has become known as the Second Crusade. A series of small expeditions to the Holy Land had taken place in 1107–8, 1120–24, and 1128–29 and historians generally regard these as crusades because there is evidence (sometimes hazy, admittedly) of a call for help, a papal response, and ceremonies to take the cross.
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By virtue of its massive scale, however, the Second Crusade was markedly different from these lesser campaigns and, as the preaching effort gathered pace, it evolved into a bold and radical attempt to extend the frontiers of Christendom in three different directions: the Holy Land, the Baltic, and the Iberian Peninsula.

In the spring of 1145 messengers from the Frankish East told of the fall of Edessa: their targets were Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and King Conrad III of Germany. By December, Eugenius and Louis both expressed their desire for a new crusade. Eugenius published what is the earliest surviving papal bull to call for a crusade (the texts of Pope Urban II’s appeals are not extant); it is known by its opening words
Quantum praedecessores
(How greatly our predecessors), a magisterial statement that became the benchmark for such appeals for decades to come. Carefully researched and skillfully crafted so as to convey its message to maximum effect, in essence
Quantum praedecessores
was a rousing challenge to the present generation to live up to the achievements of their illustrious forefathers on the First Crusade—a theme that played a central role in the attraction of the new expedition.
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In the five decades since the capture of Jerusalem the deeds of these men had been revered, repeated, and embellished to become enshrined as a true manifestation of divine will and earthly heroism. The First Crusaders had accomplished something of incomparable pride to all Catholics and this, coupled with the polyglot nature of the force, meant that chroniclers across Christendom recorded their triumph. No previous event had provoked such an efflorescence of historical writing; within years of the fall of Jerusalem several narratives had memorialized the deeds of the holy warriors,
a trend that continued for decades afterward. William of Malmesbury, an Anglo-Norman author who composed
The Deeds of the Kings of England
in the 1120s, conveys the feeling well:

Given limited levels of literacy, verse accounts of the crusade must have done much to sustain the legacy of 1099 as well. Written forms of the
Chanson d’Antioche
and the
Chanson de Jerusalem
survive, but these works were intended primarily for public performance: it takes little effort to imagine a group of knights gathered in a torchlit hall to listen to the valiant feats of Godfrey and Bohemond in the Holy Land. Other epics such as the famous
Song of Roland
(set in the eighth century and featuring the wars of Charlemagne, the greatest Christian emperor of all), were composed almost immediately after the First Crusade and also reflected a theme of holy war. Yet it was not just in writing and performance that the First Crusade was remembered. Churches and monasteries were decorated with images that suggested the struggle between Christianity and its enemies, while numerous round churches, meant to represent the Holy Sepulchre itself, were constructed across the Latin West; for example, in Cambridge, Northampton, San Stefano in Bologna, and Asti in Piedmont. In other words, the memory of the First Crusade percolated deep into the physical, political, and spiritual culture of western Europe.

Pope Eugenius repeatedly cast his own actions as following in the footsteps of “Pope Urban, our blessed predecessor.” Again and again he urged knights not to let slip the legacy of their fathers: “It will be seen as a great
token of nobility and uprightness if those things acquired by the efforts of your fathers are vigorously defended by you, their good sons. But if, God forbid, it comes to pass differently, then the bravery of the fathers will have proved diminished in the sons.”
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Naturally, the pope also set out the spiritual rewards for the participants: the remission of all confessed sins and an assurance that those who died en route would be treated as martyrs.

King Louis tried to launch the crusade at his Christmas court at Bourges, and while his nobles were moved by the plight of Edessa they postponed a formal commitment until an assembly at Vézelay, in northern Burgundy, in March 1146. In part, their reticence was colored by the wait for
Quantum praedecessores
to arrive from the papal court: the need for formal authorization to begin the crusade was essential. Louis’s desire to take part in person was also a cause for concern. We must remember that no monarch was on the First Crusade and although King Sigurd of Norway (the
Sigurd Jorsalfar
of Edvard Grieg’s eponymous suite of 1892) went to the Holy Land in 1109–10 and various Spanish rulers had fought in the reconquest, Louis was the first major crowned head to aspire to such a commitment in the Levant. The fact that, to date, he had been a mediocre monarch did not help either. The king had managed to antagonize his most powerful noble, the count of Champagne, and had also alienated many churchmen; the burning of a church at Vitry with 1,300 people inside being a particularly ghastly episode. By 1145, peace was restored and this, in conjunction with the king’s need to make good his sins, could help to explain why he was so keen to travel to the Holy Land. Another worry for the French court was the succession. In 1137 Louis had married Eleanor, the beautiful and strong-willed heiress to the duchy of Aquitaine, but by the time of the crusade they had only one child—an infant daughter. An ongoing civil war in England was a stark reminder of the perils of a disputed succession; a son was vital. One way around the problem was for the queen herself to go on the crusade. She came from a family of crusaders—her father, William IX (a famous troubadour), had taken part in the 1101 crusade and her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, was the prince of Antioch. Some writers suggest that Abbot Bernard told Eleanor that if she went to Jerusalem, she would be rewarded with a son. As we shall see, however, while the crusade made a significant impact on the royal marriage it was not in the positive way originally envisaged.