Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

The city thus had two streams of pilgrims, one to the Holy Rock, the Mosque of Omar, and the other to the Holy Cave, the Sepulchre of Christ. Nicephorus being murdered, John Zimisces, his successor and murderer, followed up his victories. He easily gained possession of Damascus and Syria, and reduced to submission all the cities of Palestine. He did not, however, enter Jerusalem, to which he sent a garrison. Death[^[47]] interrupted his victorious career, and Islam once more began to recover its forces. The Fatemite Caliphs, who had succeeded in establishing themselves in Egypt, made themselves masters of Jerusalem, and though for a short time the Christians were treated rather as allies and friends than as a conquered people, the accession of Hakem was an event which renewed all former troubles with more than their former weight.

[47]. After having murdered Nicephorus, he was himself poisoned by Basil, his grand chamberlain, who succeeded him. In the Greek empire murder seems to have formed the strongest title to the crown.

He ordered that Jews should wear blue robes and Christians black, and in order to mark them yet more distinctively, that both should wear black turbans. Christians, moreover, were at first ordered to wear wooden stirrups, with crosses round their necks, while the Jews were compelled to carry round pieces of wood, to signify the head of the golden calf which they had worshipped in the desert. The destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by this madman has been already alluded to.[^[48]] For another account of the same transaction and of the causes which led to it we are indebted to Raoul the Bald (Glaber), who describes the excitement produced in Europe by this act. “In the year 1009,” he says, though his date appears to be wrong by one year, “the Church of the Sepulchre was entirely destroyed by order of the prince of Babylon.... The devil put it into the heads of the Jews to whisper calumnies about the servants of the true religion. There were a considerable number of Jews in Orleans, prouder, more envious, and more audacious than the rest of their nation. They suborned a vagabond monk named Robert, and sent him with secret letters, written in the Hebrew character, and for better preservation enclosed in a stick, to the prince of Babylon. Therein they told how, if the prince did not make haste to destroy the shrine at which the Christians worshipped, they would speedily take possession of his kingdom and deprive him of his honours. On reading the letter, the prince fell into fury, and sent to Jerusalem soldiers charged with the order to destroy the church from roof to foundation. This order was but too well executed; and his satellites even tried to break the interior of the Sacred Sepulchre with their iron hammers, but all their efforts were useless.... A short time after, it was known beyond a doubt that the calamity must be imputed to the Jews, and when their secret was divulged, all Christendom resolved with one accord to drive out the Jews from their territory to the very last. They became thus the object of universal execration. Some were driven out, some massacred by the sword, some thrown into the sea, or given up to different kinds of punishment. Others devoted themselves to voluntary deaths: so that, after the just vengeance executed upon them, very few could be seen in the Roman world.... These examples of justice were not calculated to inspire a feeling of security in the mind of Robert when he came back. He began by looking for his accomplices, of whom there were still a small number in Orleans; with them he lived familiarly. But he was denounced by a stranger, who had made the journey with him, and knew perfectly well the object of his mission. He is seized, scourged, and confesses his crime. The ministers of the king take him without the city, and there, in the sight of all the people, commit him to the flames. Nevertheless, the fugitive Jews began to reappear in the cities, and there is no doubt that, because some must always exist as a living testimony to their shame, and the crime by which they shed the blood of Christ, God permitted the animosity of the Christians to subside. However that may be by the divine will, Maria, mother of the Emir, prince of Babylon, a very Christian princess, ordered the church to be rebuilt with square and polished stones the same year.... And there might have been seen an innumerable crowd of Christians running in triumph to Jerusalem from all parts of the world, and contending with one another in their offerings for the restoration of the house of God.”

[48]. If there is any one fact in history which seems absolutely clear and certain, it is this, that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by command of Hakem. William of Tyre expressly describes the reconstruction of the church. Raoul, as shown above, tells how the news of the destruction was received. All the Arabic historians record the event.

It was an unlucky day for the Jews when Robert went on his embassy, whatever that was, to the East. But a renewal of the religious spirit in the West was always attended by a persecution of the Jews. No story was too incredible to be believed of them, no violence and cruelty too much for them. When the Crusades began, almost the first to suffer were the hapless Jews, and we know how miserable was their situation so long as the Crusading spirit lasted. Even when this was dying out, when the Christians and the Saracens were often firm friends, the Jews alone shared none of the benefits of toleration. To be a descendant of that race by whom Christ was crucified, was to be subjected to the very wantonness of cruelty and persecution.

One of the principal sights in Jerusalem then, as now, though the Latins have long since given it up, was the yearly appearance of the holy fire. Odolric was witness, not only of this, but of another and a more unusual miracle. For while the people were all waiting for the fire to appear, a Saracen began to chant in mockery the Kyrie Eleison, and snatching a taper from one of the pilgrims, he ran away with it. “But immediately,” says Raoul, “he was seized by the devil, and began to suffer unimaginable torments. The Christian who had been robbed regained his taper, and the Saracen died immediately after in the arms of his friends.” This example inspired a just terror into the hearts of the infidels, and was for the Christians a great subject of rejoicing. And at that very moment the holy fire burst out from one of the same lamps, and ran from one to the other. Bishop Odolric bought the lamp which was first lit for a pound of gold, and hung it up in his church at Orleans, “where it cured an infinite number of sick.”

One can easily understand the growth of stories, such as that of the stricken Saracen. An age like the tenth was little disposed to question the truth of a miracle which proved their faith. Nor was it likely to set against the one Saracen who died in torture after insulting the Cross the tens of thousands who insulted it with impunity. The series of miracles related by Raoul and others are told in perfect good faith, and believed by those to whom they were related as simply as they were believed by those who told them. And we can very well understand how they helped, in a time when hardly any other thing would have so helped, to maintain the faith of a people, coarse, rough, unlettered, and imaginative.

The destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the stories spread abroad about the miraculous preservation of the cave, and its rebuilding in 1010, all served to increase the ardour of pilgrims. And there had been another cause already mentioned. Throughout western Christendom a whisper ran that the end of the world was approaching. A thousand years had nearly elapsed since the Church of Christ was founded. The second advent of the founder was to happen when this period was accomplished: the advent was to take place in Palestine; happy those who could be present to welcome their Lord. Therefore, of all conditions and ranks in life, from the lowest to the highest, an innumerable multitude of pilgrims thronged to Jerusalem. And so deep was the feeling that the end of all things was at hand, that legal documents were drawn up beginning with the words, “Appropinquante etenim mundi termino et ruinis crebrescentibus jam certa signa manifestantur, pertimescens tremendi judicii diem.” Among the best known pilgrims of the last century before the Crusades is Fulke the Black, Count of Anjou. He was accused, and justly, of numerous acts of violence. But he had also violated the sanctity of a church, and for this pardon was difficult to obtain. Troubled with phantoms which appeared to him by night, the offspring of his own disordered conscience, Fulke resolved to expiate his sins by a pilgrimage. After being nearly shipwrecked on his voyage to Syria—the tempest appeared to him a special mark of God’s displeasure—he arrived safely in Jerusalem, and caused himself to be scourged through the streets, crying aloud, “Lord, have mercy on a faithless and perjured Christian; on a sinner wandering far from his own country.” By a pious fraud he obtained admission to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: and we are told that, while praying at the tomb, the stone miraculously became soft to his teeth, and he bit off a portion of it and brought it triumphantly away. Returned to his own country, Fulke built a church at Loches in imitation of that at Jerusalem. Tormented still by his conscience, he went a second time as a pilgrim to Palestine, and returning safely again, he occupied himself for many years in building monasteries and churches. But he could not rest in quiet, and resolved for the good of his soul to make a third pilgrimage. This he did, but died on his way home at Metz. A very different pilgrim was Raymond of Plaisance. Born of poor parents, and himself apprenticed to a shoemaker, Raymond’s mind was distracted from the earliest age by the desire to see Palestine. He disguised his anxiety for a time, but it became too strong for him, and he fell ill and confessed his thoughts to his mother. She, a widow, resolved to accompany him, and they set off together. They arrived safely at Jerusalem, and wept before the sepulchre, conceiving, we are told, a lively desire to end their days there and then. This was not to be, however. They went on to Bethlehem, thence to Jerusalem again, and thence homewards. On board the ship Raymond was seized with an illness, and the sailors wanted to throw him overboard, thinking, according to the usual sailors’ superstition, that a sick man would bring disaster. His mother, however, dissuaded them, and he quickly recovered. But the mother died herself shortly after landing in Italy, and Raymond went on alone. He was met at Plaisance by a procession of clergy and choristers, and led to the cathedral, where he deposited his palm branch, sign of successful pilgrimage, and then returned to his shoemaking, married, and lived to a good old age—doubtless telling over and over again the stories of his travels.

And now began those vast pilgrimages when thousands went together, “the armies of the Lord,” the real precursors of the Crusades. Robert of Normandy (A.D. 1034), like Fulke the Black, anxious to wipe out his sins, went accompanied by a great number of barons and knights, all barefooted, all clothed with the penitential sackcloth, all bearing the staff and purse. They went by Constantinople and through Asia Minor. There Robert was seized with an illness, and being unable to walk, was borne in a litter by Saracens. “Tell my people,” said the duke, “that you have seen me borne to Paradise by devils;” a speech which shows how far toleration had spread in those days. Robert found a large number of pilgrims outside the city unable to pay the entrance money. He paid for all, and after signalizing himself by numerous acts of charity he returned, dying on the way in Bithynia, regretting only that he had not died sooner, at the sacred shrine itself.

To die there, indeed, was, as we have seen in the case of Raymond, a common prayer. The form of words is preserved: “Thou who hast died for us, and art buried in this sacred place, take pity on our misery, and withdraw us from this vale of tears.” And the Christians preserved the story of one Lethbald, whose prayer was actually answered, for he died suddenly in the sight of his companions, after crying out three times aloud, “Glory to thee, O God!”