The Crusades and the Near East
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Although he had added considerably to his source, he was keen to emphasise the care he took: ‘any [information] which I added, I heard either from those who had seen, or I learned by myself ’.18 Still sensitive to criticism, he continued to defend himself, insisting that writers of saints’ lives had not always witnessed the events they recorded.19
The Dei Gesta of Guibert of Nogent is substantially longer than the Gesta Francorum – added length which is not merely the product of embellishment.
While he mentioned having consulted eyewitnesses, Guibert also had access to a number of written sources in addition to the Gesta Francorum. He received an early version of the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres and a letter apparently from Alexios, Emperor of Byzantium, to Robert I of Flanders in which the emperor described the devastation of Asia Minor by the Turkish advances and asked for military aid.20 Many of the additions were designed to address gaps in his source, the most striking example being his description of Clermont and the speech of Urban II, which were only briefly described in the Gesta Francorum.
Similarly, while the account of the anonymous source ends in 1099 after the Battle of Ascalon, Guibert’s Dei Gesta continued to include the death of Godfrey of Bouillon and the disastrous crusade of 1101.21 Guibert’s additions to his source were not just details missed by the Gesta Francorum, however: they included a long introduction discussing the situation in the Near East and his interpretation of how these conditions came about as well as theological and exegetical interpretations of the crusade’s outcome.
Clearly these additions are of interest here as they are aspects of the Dei Gesta for which Guibert can be held entirely responsible. It is in these additions too that much of Guibert’s attitude towards the Byzantines is in evidence. In Book I, where he detailed the situation in the East and the advances of the Turks, Guibert argued that the Byzantines were, to a large degree, to blame for the successes of the Turkish invasions. In his representation of the letter of Alexios Komnenos to Robert of Flanders, Guibert commented that the emperor was responsible for the situation that now engulfed him.
It is not enough to look only at the ‘original’ parts of the Dei Gesta. The Gesta 165
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Francorum could be hostile to the Byzantines and in his acceptance of the criticisms within his source, Guibert made them his own, in some cases exaggerating events to suit an anti-Byzantine agenda. The criticism of the Byzantines in the Gesta Francorum tended to be succinct denunciations of a particular action by Alexios or his officials, while Guibert asserted that, because of their ethnicity, the Byzantines were religiously and politically corrupt, inviting the Turkish invasions on themselves.
Guibert’s discussion of ethnicity had a classical origin, ascribing certain characteristics to individual ethnic groups. Above all, the Franks were to be praised and, in an aside, Guibert stated that it was to the Franks that the pope had looked in the first place to make the expedition to the Holy Land, arguing with a certain German cleric that the Germans ( Teutonici) had consistently disobeyed the Holy See and proved themselves to be militarily worthless on crusade.22 Bohemond of Taranto, the hero of the crusade, was a southern Italian Norman, but Guibert adopted him as a Frank, claiming the ancestry of the Italian Normans was French and also noting that Bohemond had married the daughter of the King of France, Constance.23 The military skill of the Turks was emphasised to demonstrate the prowess of the Franks in defeating them, and Guibert attacked those imagined voices who would deny the strength of the Turks as a foe: ‘but perhaps, someone or other suggests that they [the Turks] were a peasant band and common soldiers, refuse collected from every part’.24
The Greeks as an ethnic group displayed a number of negative characteristics, according to Guibert. When Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the King of France, was the first of the princes to arrive in Byzantine territories, Guibert claimed that he was particularly respected as royalty by the ‘Greeks, laziest of men’.25 When the Byzantine emperor demanded that the princes swear an oath of loyalty to him, the Gesta Francorum reported that they considered this to be unfair, while Guibert explained that to swear an oath to the ‘puny Greeks’ would have been shameful.26
The Byzantines were not just puny or lazy, the Eastern personality brought about by the climate had rendered them politically and religiously inconstant, and this had led to their downfall. Following Isidore of Seville, Guibert described the overriding characteristic of the Greeks as levitas (lightness): ‘Clearly these men, according to the purity of the air and skies to which they are born, are with a lightness of body [ levitas], and therefore of keen talent.’27 The Byzantines, however, had abused this keenness and they had used it to question the true faith with ‘many useless commentaries’.28 The negative definition of levitas is clearly in use by Guibert when he states that ‘Asiatic instability’ ( Asiaticam levitatem) led them to overthrow and elect leaders frequently, a trait particularly abhorrent to a Benedictine abbot.29 It was not just political authority that the Byzantines had rejected. Theologically, this levitas had rendered them unable to stay true to the correct teachings of the Church: ‘the faith of Easterners, however, as it consistently was staggering and inconstant and wandering with the grinding of new things – always derailing rules of true belief – defected from the authority of the ancient Fathers’.30
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Guibert attacked the Eastern Church for its use of the filioque clause in the Creed; its acceptance of married clergy; the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist; and its refusal to accept papal primacy over the Eastern patriarchs. These complaints were not peculiar to Guibert: they had been contested between the Churches for some time, most notably during the ‘schism’ of 1054. In his rendition of the speech of Urban at Clermont, Guibert presented the case for the primacy of Rome:
If among the churches distributed throughout the whole world, some
deserve reverence before others, on account of persons and on account of places – on account of persons, I say, because greater privileges are attributed to the sees of the Apostles, but in the case of places the same degree of dignity which is granted on account of persons, is also
attributed to royal cities such as the city of Constantinople – we owe the greatest reverence to that church from which we received the grace of redemption and the origin of all Christianity.31
Like most Western clerics, Guibert argued that Rome, as the see of St Peter, inherited authority over the Eastern patriarchates.
While Guibert accepted the view of many in the West, including Anselm of Canterbury, that the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist did not upset its validity, he would not accept either the use of the filioque clause in the Eastern Creed or the acceptance of married clergy. In the second half of the eleventh century, the reform papacy had campaigned against clerical marriage with renewed vigour. Guibert, as a monk, was unsurprisingly supportive of this policy and attacked the Eastern Church, stating that ‘no one is made a priest unless he has first chosen marriage’.32 This, he claimed, was due to their misunderstanding of Paul’s first letter to Timothy, which stated that priests should be ‘the husband of one wife’. Guibert’s response was in line with that of the reform papacy: ‘that this is said not of him who takes and has possession [of a wife], but of him who had and sent away her whom he had and possessed, is confirmed most constantly by the authority of the Western Church’.33
Although the Eastern Church accepted the legitimacy of clerical marriage, the letter of Paul to Timothy was not cited as the basis for this. It was in fact used by those in the West who opposed clerical celibacy, particularly in the letter Pseudo-Udalrici Epistola de Continentia Clericorum, which was condemned by the papacy in 1079.34 This letter seemed to have influenced a number of German and French commentaries and it is possible that Guibert, knowing that the Eastern Church approved of clerical marriage, assumed that the
Pauline letter formed the basis of this approval just as it was used to support clerical marriage in the West.35
Since the Western Church added the filioque clause to the Nicene Creed during the third Council at Toledo in AD 589, the Eastern and Western Churches both argued that the other’s creed upset the nature of the Trinity. The addition of the clause in the West had formed part of the Church’s attempt to combat Arianism.
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According to Guibert, the Eastern Creed led to an inequality within the Trinity:
‘they have added this pinnacle to their damnation, they consider God to limp, having inflicted upon him an inequality of his own nature’.36
This inequality implied by the Eastern Creed led the Eastern Christians into the Arian heresy, according to Guibert: ‘what are they about to say of the Holy Spirit, who contend with a profane mind that he is less than the Father and the Son, following the remnants of the Arian heresy’.37 From this accusation of heresy, Guibert proceeded to declare that heresy was an Eastern habit and he listed the heresies which had come from the East: ‘from Alexandria, Arius, from Persia, Mani emerged . . . What should I say of Eunomius, Eutychians Nestorians?’.38
According to Guibert, with the exception of Pelagius, the West had never produced a heresy: ‘if the catalogues of all the heresies are read, if the books of the ancients written against heretics are examined, I will be amazed if, besides Africa and the East there are discerned scarcely any [heresies] from the Latin world’.39
The Turkish encroachments into Byzantine territories and the persecution of the Eastern Christians were, according to Guibert, a direct result of their religious failings:
But while God places a stumbling block before those who sin voluntarily, their land vomited forth its own inhabitants, first they became deprived of true faith and deservedly, then, by all rights, they were deprived of all their earthly possessions. Since they deviate from faith in the Trinity, so that hitherto they who are in filth become filthier, gradually they have come to the final degradation of having taken paganism upon themselves as the punishment for the sin proceeding from this, they have lost the soil of their native land to invading foreigners, or if it happens that any one of them remains there the natives have subjected themselves to the payment of tribute to foreigners.40
Contemporaries saw the success of the crusade as the result of God’s divine favour.
This divine benevolence is one of the central themes in the Dei Gesta and on a number of occasions Guibert highlighted the seemingly insurmountable obstacles which the crusade had overcome in order to demonstrate how divine will had brought about its success. Conversely, divine displeasure could bring tragic consequences. The lapses of the Eastern Christians, according to Guibert, were directly responsible for their suffering at the hands of invaders. In order to demonstrate that the Turkish invasions were punishment of the Eastern Christians in particular, Guibert stated that Western settlers in the Near East were flourishing.41
In particular, Guibert criticised Alexios Komnenos for failing to defend his empire and for betraying the crusade. As we saw, the papal response to Alexios’
request for aid far outweighed that which he had envisaged. The crusade presence in Asia Minor disrupted the typically Byzantine tactics of diplomacy and tactical 168
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warfare that the emperor had been employing, albeit with limited success, against the Muslim powers. The crusaders were not interested in diplomatic contact with
‘pagans’ and, from the outset, they had no intention of remaining in Asia Minor.
When dealing with the crusaders, therefore, Alexios was conscious that their presence was only temporary and that diplomatic relations with the Muslim powers would have to be resumed once the crusade had left Anatolia. Added to this was his concern that the leaders of the crusade would attempt to establish themselves in the Near East permanently; presumably he was particularly anxious in this regard about the ambitions of Bohemond, whom he had previously encountered on the battlefield. Alexios’ twin concerns were therefore to maintain wherever possible good relations with the local Muslim powers and to ensure that the leaders of the crusade would not establish themselves in lands claimed by Byzantium. In his pursuit of these aims, he alienated the crusaders and most of their chroniclers.
Alexios’ first concern upon hearing of the approach of the crusade armies was to ensure their peaceful passage through the empire beyond Constantinople and to ensure the loyalty of the leaders. Initially his worst fears were confirmed with the arrival of Peter the Hermit and his followers. This group contained the largest proportion on non-combatants and Peter was often unable to keep good order.
Alexios had recommended that they remain in the outskirts of the city until one of the other armies arrived but they soon became restless and disturbed the public order. This prompted the emperor to transport them across the Bosphorus to Asia Minor, where he advised them to remain in Byzantine territory. This advice was ignored and groups of foraging crusaders penetrated further into Asia Minor, where they were heavily defeated by the local Turkish forces. Any who escaped were transported back to Constantinople to await the other armies. Both the Gesta Francorum and Guibert reported that Alexios was pleased to hear of the Latin losses.42
The next leader to arrive in Byzantine territories was Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the King of France. Hugh had been shipwrecked crossing the Adriatic and when he arrived in Byzantine territory, the local governor, Alexios’ nephew, transported him to Constantinople. Hugh then swore an oath of loyalty to the emperor and undertook to return to the empire any lands reconquered from the Turks that had formerly been imperial possessions. This oath was unpopular with many of the crusaders and Guibert accused the emperor of taking advantage of Hugh’s lack of military strength to force him to take it. This was the first example, according to Guibert, of the means that the emperor would employ to extract the oath from the crusaders: ‘thus the plight of this most famous man caused a weakening of the courage of the great leaders who came after him, for the cleverness of the treacherous prince compelled the others, either by force, or in fraud, or by imprecations, to do what he had done’.43
When the other princes arrived at Constantinople, they were reluctant to take the oath. Raymond of Toulouse, in particular, declared that he had not come on crusade to serve any lord other than God. For the author of the Gesta Francorum, 169
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hostile to Alexios, the swearing of an oath to him was unfair: ‘certainly, this is unworthy of us, and it seems to us by no means just to swear an oath to him’.44
For Guibert, the thought of the Latins swearing an oath to the Greeks in particular was the issue: ‘and certainly, they said, “if no fear of the future weighed upon us, only that we had been compelled to swear by the puny Greeks, laziest of all people, would be, perpetually shameful to us; clearly they would say that we, with little hesitation, willing or unwilling, had submitted to their authority”’.45
For many of the crusaders, the crusade had been instigated for the defence of the Eastern Christians. The skirmishes with the Byzantine forces during their journey to Constantinople and the emperor’s demand for an oath of loyalty fell far short of the welcome that they envisaged as a liberating army and many questioned the loyalties of the empire. For Guibert, the behaviour of the emperor placed in doubt the sincerity of his request for aid in the first place and from this point on in the Dei Gesta per Francos the emperor becomes an opponent of the crusade: ‘the perfidious Alexis, who formerly had been thought eager for help against the Turks, gnashed his teeth in the bitterness of his anger and pondered on a means to bring about the total destruction of the large army that was, as he thought, threatening to him’.46
The hostility of the emperor towards the Latins was such that he was depicted as having aided the Turks against the crusade. After the s
uccessful siege of Nicaea, Alexios granted the Turkish leaders of the city, safe passage to Constantinople with their families and belongings. The crusaders were not permitted to enter the city to loot it, instead the emperor gave the leaders of the crusade gifts and rewards and distributed alms to the poor. The Gesta Francorum, attacking the emperor as
‘full false and with unjust thoughts’, claimed that the emperor hoped to use the Turks as allies against the crusade at a later stage, an accusation which Guibert adopted enthusiastically.47
When Stephen, count of Blois, having left the crusade during the siege of Antioch, met the emperor at Philomelium, the Gesta Francorum reported that he exaggerated the danger to the crusade, thus deterring the emperor from joining the siege. Stephen had retired from the crusade due to illness. The anonymous claimed that Stephen’s illness was feigned and that in his efforts to justify his departure, he overstated the danger to the crusaders.48 Guibert, however, reorganised the material to state that it was Alexios who exaggerated the situation to his followers in order to avoid having to help the crusaders. The emperor was reported as being pleased:
‘because those whom he hated no less than the Turks had perished’.49
According to Guibert, the emperor directly betrayed the crusade of 1101 to the Turks. Part of this crusade was all but defeated by the Turks attempting to follow the route taken by the First Crusade. According to Guibert, when William IX of Aquitaine left Constantinople, the emperor sent word to the Turks announcing the arrival of the crusade, leading to its destruction.