Zimisces resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon religion and the empire. On all sides preparations were set on foot for a fresh war against the Saracens. The nations of the West were no strangers to this enterprise, which preceded, by more than a year, the first of the Crusades. After having defeated the Mussulmans on the banks of the Tigris, and forced the caliph of Baghdad to pay a tribute, Zimisces penetrated, almost without resistance, into Judea, took possession of Cæsarea, of Ptolemais, of Tiberias, Nazareth, and several other cities of the Holy Land.
After this first campaign, the Holy Land appeared to be on the eve of being delivered entirely from the yoke of the infidels, when the emperor died poisoned. His death at once put a stop to the execution of an enterprise of which he was the soul and the leader. The Christian nations had scarcely time to rejoice at the delivery of Jerusalem, when they learned that the Holy City had again fallen into the hands of the Fatimite caliphs, who, after the death of Zimisces, had invaded Syria and Palestine. Hakim, the third of the Fatimite caliphs, signalised his reign by all the excesses of fanaticism and outrage. Unfixed in his own projects, and wavering between two religions, he by turns protected and persecuted Christianity.
The inconstancy of Hakim, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor, guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians. In the eleventh century the Latin church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain. There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Even the weak and timid sex was not deterred by the perils of a long voyage.[b]
CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS
[1000-1050 A.D.]
Though pilgrimages were generally considered acts of virtue, yet some of the leaders of the church accounted them useless and criminal. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, in the fourth century, dissuades his flock from these journeys. They were not conscientious obligations, he said, for in the description of persons whom Christ had promised to acknowledge in the next world the name of pilgrim could not be found. A migratory life was dangerous to virtue, particularly to the modesty of women.
The necessity of making a pilgrimage to Rome and other places was often urged by ladies, who did not wish to be mewed in the solitary gloom of a cloister, “chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.” In the ninth century, a foreign bishop wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, requesting, in very earnest terms, that English women of every rank and degree might be prohibited from pilgrimising to Rome. Their gallantries were notorious over all the continent. “Perpaucæ enim sunt civitates in Longobardia, vel in Francia, aut in Gallia, in qua non sit adultera vel meretrix generis Anglorum: quod scandalum est, et turpitudo totius ecclesiæ.” Muratori, Antiquitates Italiæ Med. Ævi, Dissert. 58, vol. V., p. 58. “There are few cities in Lombardy, in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not an English adultress or harlot, to the scandal and disgrace of the whole church.” Morality did not improve as the world grew older. The prioress in Chaucer, demure as she is, wears a bracelet on which was inscribed the sentence, “Amor vincit omnia.” The gallant monk, in the same pilgrimage, ties his hood with a true-lover’s knot.
Horror at spectacles of vice would diminish with familiarity, and the moral principle would gradually be destroyed. Malice, idolatry, poisoning, and bloodshed disgraced Jerusalem itself; and so dreadfully polluted was the city that, if any man wished to have a more than ordinary spiritual communication with Christ, he had better quit his earthly tabernacle at once than endeavour to enjoy it in places originally sacred, but which had been since defiled. Some years after the time of Gregory, a similar description of the depravity at Jerusalem was given by St. Jerome, and the Latin father commends a monk who, though a resident in Palestine, had but on one occasion travelled to the city. The opinions of these two venerable spiritual guides could not stem the torrent of popular religion. The coffers of the church were enriched by the sale of relics, and the dominion of the clergy became powerful in proportion to the growth of religious abuses and corruptions. Pilgrims from India, Ethiopia, Britannia, and Hibernia went to Jerusalem; and the tomb of Christ resounded with hymns in various languages. Bishops and teachers would have thought it a disgrace to their piety and learning if they had not adored their Saviour on the very spot where his cross had first shed the light of his Gospel.
A Pilgrim and Shrine