Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

“Jerusalem,” says Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais in the thirteenth century, and one of the most eloquent historians of the Crusades, “Jerusalem is the city of cities, the saint of saints, the queen of nations, and the princess of provinces. She is situated in the centre of the world, in the middle of the earth, so that all men may turn their steps towards her; she is the patrimony of the patriarchs, the muse of the prophets, the mistress of the apostles, the cradle of our salvation, the home of our Lord, and the mother of the faith, as Rome is the mother of the faithful. She is chosen and hallowed by the Almighty, who placed his feet upon her, honoured by the angels, and visited by all the nations of the earth.” A poet of the same period declares, in a burst of fervent inspiration: “She attracts the faithful as the magnet attracts the steel, as the sheep attracts the lamb with the milk of its teats, as the sea attracts the river to which it has given birth.”

Under the influence of this belief it is easy to understand the powerful interest which, in the eyes of the whole Christian world, was attached to a corner of the globe so marked with the impress of the Almighty, and the object of so much veneration.

Since the conversion of Constantine I., which so gloriously signalized the triumph of the cross, and while the ostentatious but feeble successors of that great emperor were preparing the decline of the empire of Byzantium, Jerusalem had frequently been forced to submit to infidel profanations, and the Western Christians, in their visits to the holy places, had, in consequence, many times encountered painful and almost insurmountable obstacles.

In the seventh century, the conquest of Palestine by the Arabs or Saracens, attracted by fanaticism to the banner of Mahomet’s immediate successors, had occasioned the most painful, if not the first of these terrible trials to Christendom. Already pilgrims, on their return from the Holy Land, had related to the dismayed West the sacrileges of which they had been the witnesses, and the annoyances of which they themselves had been the victims. Their dismal recitals represented the Christian population of Judea as reduced to a species of slavery, groaning under heavy tribute, clad in a degrading livery, forbidden to use the language of their conquerors, banished from their temples, now transformed into mosques, and obliged to conceal every external emblem of their religion, which they were no longer allowed publicly to practise.

But a gentler rule succeeded these hardships, thanks to the internal dissensions of the Mussulmans, who, in the midst of their fratricidal struggles, forgot to persecute the Christians; thanks also to the policy of the famous Haroun-al-Raschid and his children, who, being constantly at war with the emperors of Constantinople, dreaded lest the Eastern Christians should summon the Western to their assistance, and, consequently, were always showering on the latter every possible mark of deference, of kindness, and of consideration.

Later, when the empire of Haroun-al-Raschid had fallen into decay, one of Constantine’s successors, John I., surnamed Zimisces (970), attempted to accomplish the freedom of the Holy Land, and had nearly succeeded, when death struck down the leader of the Christian army in a battle with the Arabs, and with him was destroyed the last hope of the faithful, who soon found themselves delivered over to the horrors of a terrible persecution. “It is impossible to put on record all the evils they suffered,” says William of Tyre, in his great history of the holy war.

Fig. 97.—Façade of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, founded in 326 by the Emperor Constantine, and restored by the Crusaders in 1099 (present condition, from a Photograph).

Towards the close of the tenth century, a false interpretation of a passage in the Gospels, according to which the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ in Judea had been fixed for the year one thousand, had struck all Christendom with stupor and affright. “The end of the world being at hand,” were the opening words of all deeds and contracts; and the vanities of the world being forgotten in the near approach of the “supreme and inevitable catastrophe,” every one was anxious to start for the Holy Land, in the hope of being present at the coming of the Saviour, and of finding there pardon for their sins, a peaceful death, and the salvation of his soul. The immense crowd of pilgrims, according to another historian of the Crusades, Glaber the monk, was far greater than religious devotion alone could possibly account for. The first to come were the poor and the working classes, and then counts, barons, and princes, who no longer attached any value to the possessions of this world. And further, as if the miraculous influence of this grand religious manifestation had inspired the infidels themselves with admiration and awe, the cruelties and the persecutions inflicted upon the Christians in Palestine suddenly ceased. When the dreaded epoch had passed away, and no perceptible disturbance had occurred in the laws of the universe, when each successive day had lessened the fears and increased the courage of the Western Church, the Holy Land remained open to pilgrims, who came in swarms to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for having a second time saved the world.

But all this was merely a kind of tacit truce granted to the children of Christ by the unbelievers, who had sworn to destroy the religion of the cross, and to establish in its place the creed of Mohamet. The East, moreover, was about to change masters. The Turks, an Asiatic nomadic people, sprung from the countries beyond the Oxus, had conquered Persia, and had thence borne their triumphant arms towards Syria and the banks of the Nile. This rapid conquest included Judea, and was signalized by horrible excesses. No quarter was given either to the followers of Moses, to those of Jesus, or to the disciples of the Prophet. The same blow fell upon the Jewish synagogues, the Mussulman mosques, and the Catholic churches. Jerusalem was steeped in blood. Deprived of their property, groaning under a bitter and humiliating yoke, says a contemporary historian, the Christians suffered as they had never suffered before.