Judæ alter Machabæus
Spes patriæ, vigor ecclesiæ.
It was obviously not written by the Patriarch Dagobert.
So died the greatest of the Christian kings, the strongest as well as the wisest. His faults were those of the age; he was, however, before the age; not so cruel, not so ignorant, not so superstitious, not so bigoted. He was among the first to recognise the fact that a man may be an infidel and yet be worthy of friendship; he was also the first to resist the extravagant pretensions of the Church, and the greed of the Latin priests. He was, like his brother, the defender by oath of the Holy Sepulchre, but he would not consent to become a mere servant of the patriarch while he was styled the king of the country. We have stated above that his chief fault was an excessive love of women, and this he was wise enough to conceal. But the charge is brought forward by his priestly biographers, who, which is significant, do not advance against him a single definite case to support it. William of Tyre wanted something, perhaps, to allege against a man who dared beard a bishop at his own table, and swear at his gluttony and luxury. In any case he had very little leisure for indulgence in vice. He married three times, his first wife being an Englishwoman, who died on her way out. His second was the daughter of an Armenian prince, whom he divorced on the charge of adultery. Dagobert maintained that she was innocent, probably with a view to blacken the character of the king, but the divorced queen, going to Constantinople, justified by her conduct there the worst accusations that could be brought against her. The third time he married the widow of Roger, Count of Sicily, Adelaide by name. She brought whole shiploads of treasure with her; the marriage was celebrated with every demonstration of joy, and the new queen’s generosity caused rejoicing through all the land. But the year before he died, and three years after the marriage, Baldwin had an illness which led him to reflect on a marriage contracted while his divorced wife was still living, and he sent her back. It was an unlucky wedding for the country, because the Normans in Sicily could not forgive this treatment of one of their blood, and thus another powerful ally was lost to the kingdom. As for Adelaide, she returned to Sicily filled with shame and rage, and died the same year as her husband.
In that year, too, died Alexis Comnenus, Pascal, the pope, and Arnold, the patriarch. Foulcher of Chartres is careful to tell us that he saw himself that very year a red light in the heavens at dead of night. It certainly portended something, most probably something disastrous. “Quite uncertain as to what the event might prove, we left it in all humility, and unanimously, to the will of the Lord. Some of us, nevertheless, saw in the prodigy a presage of the deaths of those great persons who died that same year.” Which doubtless it was.
CHAPTER IX.
KING BALDWIN II. A.D. 1118-1181.
Veramente è costui nato all’impero
Si del regnar del commandar sa l’arti;
E non minor che duce è cavaliere.
As the soldiers bearing the body of King Baldwin entered the city at one gate, his cousin, Baldwin du Bourg, Count of Edessa, came in at another. He was in time to be present at the funeral. Immediately afterwards a council was held to determine on his successor. On the one hand, by the laws of succession, and in accordance with the king’s own request, Eustace, his brother, should have been the heir. But Eustace was in France. It would have been many months before he could be brought to Palestine, and the state of affairs brooked no delay. While the minds of the electing council were still uncertain what to do, Jocelyn stood up and spoke: “We have here,” he said, “the Count of Edessa, a just man, and one who fears God, the cousin of the late king, valiant in battle, and worthy of praise on all points; no country could furnish us a better king; it were better to choose him at once than wait for chances full of peril.”