The Crusader States

by Malcolm Barber

  Nobody knows who drew up this list of canons, but the drafter(s) were willing both to absorb Byzantine legislation and, where the problems demanded it, to innovate. Between nine and eleven canons show Byzantine influence and four others are related to these, but other canons are adapted to specific circumstances and do not follow any model. Early examples of miniature painting in the kingdom of Jerusalem have similar links to Byzantine prototypes,71 underlining the problem of creating a distinctive cultural identity in the midst of a world so heavily moulded by its rich and complex past history.

  Evidently the participants in the council believed they were facing a major crisis. In the same year, in an effort to alleviate the food shortages caused by the destruction of the harvests, the king removed the tax on those bringing grain, barley or vegetables into Jerusalem, whether they were Christian or Muslim. Tolls on pilgrims were also abolished, evidently in the hope that their presence would provide an economic stimulus.72 Although it is not dated, it must have also been in 1120 that the patriarch and Gerard, prior of the Holy Sepulchre between c.1119 and c.1125, who had attended the council, wrote a joint letter to Diego Gelmírez, archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, which has evident links with both the council of Nablus and the crop failures.

  We beseech you to protect us with your prayers and temporal arms and to extinguish our hunger with your alms and those of the rest of the faithful, and your holy encouragement. This we write in no little sadness, for as a result of our sins, God has allowed us to be afflicted by more frequent plagues than usual. This is now the fourth year running that the sky has not produced rain and our land has not brought forth its usual crops. The little the earth does produce is consumed stalk and ear alike by the locust and innumerable grasshoppers. Why harp on the enemy invasions? We are surrounded by the Saracens on all sides.73

  If Diego could not come himself, they appealed to him to ‘send those forces you can’. In return, ‘we have decided to pray constantly for you and your church, while requesting you to do likewise’. Remission of sins was offered to those willing to undertake penance.74

  The patriarch and the prior do not explain why they wrote to the archbishop: he was no crusader and seems to have had little interest in the wars against the Moors, which were taking place well away from his Galician territories. Moreover, there was little chance that he would make a personal visit to Jerusalem, for he needed to remain in Galicia to protect his own position (epitomised by his often fractious relationship with Queen Urraca), as well as to pursue his ambitious building projects which continued throughout his episcopate. He was, however, a great man, whose reputation had been developing since he was elected to the bishopric of Santiago de Compostela in 1100. He presided over one of the most important pilgrimage centres in the Latin West and, after several attempts, in 1120, had convinced the papacy that his see should be elevated to metropolitan status, as were all others that held an apostolic body. His successes were in no small part the result of his influence in royal and papal circles, and it may be that news of this change of status was widely disseminated, perhaps prompting the letter from Jerusalem later in the same year as the council of Nablus.75 Nor were the patriarch and prior relying simply on reputation, for they were building directly on past contacts. The letter shows that the archbishop had been generous before, while very recently, in the summer of 1119, two of the canons of Compostela, Pedro Anáyez and Pedro Diáz, had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.76

  The letter had the required effect. At some point between 1123 and 1125, Diego held a council at Compostela, at which he promised support for the pilgrims going to Jerusalem and called for a new route to the Holy Sepulchre to be opened up through the Iberian peninsula.77 Warmund's successor as patriarch, Stephen of Chartres, in a letter of c.1129 thanked Diego for his support and generosity, and sent a representative, Aimery, a canon of the Holy Sepulchre, both to solicit donations and to accept properties already given. Aimery was also to organise the administration of the churches already made over to the Holy Sepulchre in Galicia.78 As Compostela was visited by pilgrims from all over the West, it was a likely place to obtain donations for the Holy Land.79

  These contacts created a mutually beneficial relationship, based not only upon respect for two of the great shrines of Christendom, but also upon self-interest. The chapters were united through their confraternities which established a fellowship of prayer, while at the same time both gained distinct advantages for their own churches. The Holy Sepulchre received grants and support from the West, while the status of Compostela was elevated by its acceptance as a sister church of one of the five great patriarchates. Moreover, the strengthening of the links between Jerusalem and Compostela was paralleled by those between Antioch and Toledo, their respective rivals.80 Warmund's letter served not only as a plea for help, but also to reinforce links with a key figure and a famous see that might offer further potential, and indeed presages the policy of seeking to build up networks in the West that came to characterise the leaders in Outremer in the twelfth century.

  Part of the crisis set out in the letter to Diego was caused by the internal state of the kingdom: ‘nobody dares venture a mile or even less from the walls of Jerusalem or the other places without an armed escort of knights and foot-soldiers.’ Both the accounts of individual pilgrims and descriptions in the chronicles of Fulcher of Chartres and Albert of Aachen stress the dangers of such travel, while the preamble to the canons at Nablus refers to the deaths of many pilgrims and citizens as a result of Saracen ambushes.81 These were the circumstances in which two French knights, themselves closely involved with the Holy Sepulchre, Hugh of Payns (in Champagne) and Godfrey of St Omer (in Picardy), together with a group of companions, either volunteered or were asked to provide some protection for pilgrims travelling up to Jerusalem from the port of Jaffa.

  Hugh and his companions were probably already living in the Muristan on Hospitaller property to the south of the church of the Holy Sepulchre; there they were following a structured life as some kind of lay associates of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.82 However, they lacked a focus for their piety and the plan to protect pilgrims provided them with one. William of Tyre dates this to 1118, although in this instance his chronology is not reliable, and the next year seems more likely. Perhaps the initiative was discussed at Nablus; in any case William of Tyre says that it was welcomed by both king and patriarch who, together with other nobles and prelates, endowed the group with benefices to provide food and clothing. The king gave them a temporary home in his residence on the Temple platform in the al-Aqsa mosque, believed by the Latins to have been the Temple of Solomon, and the canons of the Temple of the Lord (the Dome of the Rock) gave them a square near the al-Aqsa to celebrate their offices. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre granted them 150 besants annually for their sustenance and for defence.83 The knights followed a quasi-monastic regime, living in chastity, obedience and poverty ‘in the manner of regular canons’, evidently a reference to the reform of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre introduced by Patriarch Arnulf in 1114. The duty to protect pilgrims was enjoined on them by the patriarch and other bishops ‘for the remission of their sins’.84 At some point during the 1120s, when Baldwin II moved the royal residence next to the Tower of David on the west side of the city, they were able to take over the Temple of Solomon entirely, although it is unlikely that its condition had greatly improved since the early years of the century when Baldwin I, desperate for money, had sold the lead from the al-Aqsa roof.85

  Surprisingly, Fulcher of Chartres makes no mention of either the council of Nablus or the beginnings of the Templars. It is plausible that, if he was indeed a canon of the Holy Sepulchre, he saw no reason to distinguish the early Templars from his own community: in short, to him they were a militia of the Holy Sepulchre, little different from the knights who protected the patriarch when he carried the True Cross into battle.86 In any case it is unlikely he would have foreseen their later importance, for he died in 1127 or very soon after,
about two years before they received papal recognition as an order of the Church at the council of Troyes. It is more difficult to explain the omission of the council of Nablus. Neither the view that he did not want to record a royal defeat on the issue of tithes, nor the idea that his chronicle was designed to attract more settlers who would have been deterred by the image of depravity implied by some of the canons is really convincing.87 It is questionable whether the restoration of tithes should be seen as more than a regularisation of an existing situation, while the picture of life in the East that Fulcher conveys in some other parts of his work is far from idyllic.

  William of Tyre is more forthcoming in that he records the holding of the council and lists the major participants, but he does not incorporate the canons themselves. He may not have wished to undermine the image of a generation that he liked to use as a model to inspire what he regarded as his own inferior contemporaries: by contrast, he did include the text of the decree authorising the special tax of 1183, even though it was readily available elsewhere. However, the 1183 decree was far more relevant to his own time than a set of canons relating to sins committed over sixty years before. More likely, William disliked the content of the canons on legal grounds, especially the extraordinary canon 20, which allowed clerics to bear arms.88 Nevertheless, if the canons do have any grounding in reality, they present an unsavoury picture of life in Outremer, and it does appear that, for their own reasons, neither chronicler was anxious to be specific about the sins for which the Christians were being punished.

  Not long after the grant to the Templars, Baldwin invited the Cistercians to establish themselves at Nabi Samwil, a hill situated 5 miles to the north-west of Jerusalem, which was known to the Latins as Mountjoy. Jews, Christians and Muslims all honoured the Prophet Samuel and, since the sixth century, it had been believed that his tomb was here. Pilgrims coming from Jaffa expected to have their first sight of Jerusalem from this spot, and it is probable that this was one of the routes patrolled by the first Templars, a circumstance that may have encouraged Baldwin to make the offer to the Cistercians in the first place.

  There was a Greek monastery situated there before the era of the crusaders, and it still existed in the time of Abbot Daniel's visit between 1106 and 1108.89 However, Baldwin II, evidently aware of the impact of the Cistercian reform in the West, clearly wanted to encourage them to establish a monastery in the kingdom, for there still existed many holy sites without Latin communities.90 In fact, Bernard of Clairvaux was not enthusiastic, apparently believing that military insecurity and the climate made it undesirable. He later wrote that he had given the site, together with Baldwin's grant of 1,000 gold pieces, to the Premonstratensians.91 St Bernard remained consistent, for there were no Cistercian houses in the crusader states until after his death in 1153. Even then, in contrast to their phenomenal expansion in the West, they had a very small presence, most notably in 1157 at Belmont to the south-east of Tripoli on land taken from the count's demesne, and in 1169 in a daughter house known as St John in the Woods, at ‘Ain Karim, 5 miles south-west of Jerusalem.92

  The Premonstratensians, however, readily took up the offer, building a church and an abbey there on land given by the king, and expanding their holdings around Jerusalem, Nablus and the ports of Jaffa and Ascalon.93 They never achieved the influence of the Augustinians in the crusader states but, like them, they were the product of a wider canonical reform and, in 1121, had similarly adopted the Rule of St Augustine. Their founder, Norbert of Xanten, had a strong belief in a communal way of life based on ascetic principles, combined with a desire to convert this into practical action through missionary work.94 Although this missionary calling became very evident in the Slav lands of eastern Europe, there is no sign of any attempt to convert Muslims, even though this may have been an intention of Pope Innocent II.95

  As the case of Nabi Samwil shows, prestigious sites in Jerusalem attracted funds and pilgrims, but it was more difficult for the guardians of other shrines that, in a different environment, would nevertheless have been very famous. Samuel's tomb was at least in relatively close proximity to the holy city, but Hebron was 20 miles to the south in the hills of Judaea, and, therefore, despite the antiquity of the site, which contained the mausolea of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives, found itself low in the hierarchy compared to the chapters at the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple of the Lord. However, Hebron was of evident strategic and economic importance and the rulers of Jerusalem maintained direct control over it through the appointment of a series of castellans, while in early 1100, Godfrey of Bouillon had established a community of canons there under a prior called Rainier, the members of which were probably drawn from the ranks of the crusaders. Like the other canons, they probably adopted the Augustinian Rule in 1114.96

  One hot June afternoon in 1119 or 1120, the canons’ discovery of a chamber beneath the Haram al-Khalil, which contained the bones of about thirty people, therefore held out the promise that they had found the actual remains of the patriarchs. Almost at once they were identified as such and, on 6 October, were raised and presented in the church above. The canons believed in the discovery based on their reading of Genesis, and their uncritical acceptance of the find reflected their conviction that this was part of a divine plan, which had prevented the bones being carried away to Constantinople by the emissaries of Emperor Theodosius II in the early fifth century.

  The story was written up in two treatises – one soon after 1130, the other at sometime between 1168 and 1187 – but it was not received with enthusiasm either by the patriarch or the castellan. Warmund did not want the presence of the relics to be used to promote the claim of Hebron to become a bishopric, while Baldwin, the castellan, had, it was said, hoped to find treasure rather than bones. The patriarch had a point, since Hebron had not been an Orthodox diocese in the way that, with the exception of Bethlehem, all the other sees in the kingdom had been.97 Nevertheless, the discovery had its effects, for there was a considerable increase in pilgrimage traffic, including Jews and Muslims (which in itself provided an extra source of income, since they could usually only obtain access by bribery) as well as Christians. As a result the canons were able to convert the mosque, itself based on a Byzantine building, into a three-aisled basilica, which, in turn, had an impact on the wider recognition of the church at Hebron, with the founding of a prayer fellowship and the acquisition of many more properties.98 Ultimately, in 1168, Hebron was raised to a bishopric, partly because of its increased ecclesiastical and strategic importance, and partly because of, as William of Tyre says, ‘her connection with those servants of God, whose memory is ever blessed, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’.99

  King Baldwin, however, had scant time to attend to the ecclesiastical affairs of the kingdom. Il-Ghazi, dependent on his Turcoman troops, could not afford to remain immobile for long and, in June 1120, messengers arrived in Jerusalem to inform the king that he had once again crossed the Euphrates and was threatening Antiochene territory.100 As regent, Baldwin was obliged to muster forces to help and, indeed, it was strategically unwise to allow Antioch to become too weak, given the Turkish threat from Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul.101 This, nevertheless, created what Fulcher of Chartres calls two parties (bipertita), a situation that manifested itself in the form of opposition to the removal of the True Cross from the kingdom. For some, this was a cover to avoid campaigning in the north, while for others, like Fulcher of Chartres, it was a genuinely emotive issue.102 Royal vassals were obliged to serve for a year at the maximum but, in the end, Il-Ghazi agreed to a truce, which enabled the Jerusalem forces to return by October.103

  Even so, it was an indication of the cracks beneath the surface of Baldwin's rule, for there appears to have been a growing resentment among the Jerusalem nobility at the need to protect the increasingly vulnerable principality of Antioch. Between June 1119 and December 1126, Baldwin spent less than 40 per cent of his time in the kingdom of Jerusalem, either because he was preoccupied with Antiochene affairs,
or because he was imprisoned. In the last months of 1122, between August and December, he even took his chancellor, Pagan, with him to Antioch, depriving the kingdom of it chancellery and obliging those needing a diploma from the king to travel to the north.104 The removal of both the True Cross and the royal seal must have strengthened opposition to the king's frequent absences and may be the reason why Baldwin did not repeat the experiment of taking the chancellor away from the kingdom.

  Fulcher of Chartres was among the sceptics: when Tyre fell in 1124, he commented sourly that the people of Antioch had failed them, ‘for they offered no help to us nor wished to be present for this work’.105 Viewed from William of Tyre's longer perspective, Baldwin's solicitude for Antioch was a matter for praise, as he might have been expected to favour the kingdom which, unlike the principality, he could hand on to his successors. For William, indeed, it seemed that he actually showed greater care for the affairs of Antioch, but this was hardly likely to go down well with the baronage of Jerusalem.106

  Baldwin's recalcitrant vassals had some justification for their attitude. Fighting in the north was indeed a dangerous activity. On 13 September 1122, Joscelin of Courtenay, count of Edessa, and his kinsman Galeran of Le Puiset, lord of Bira, were ambushed and captured by Nur al-Daulak Balak, Il-Ghazi's nephew, near Saruj to the south-west of Edessa. More than 100 of their men were killed.107 Matthew of Edessa criticises the Franks as ‘mindless and foolhardy’ to attempt an attack across marshy ground.108 The next spring Balak achieved an even greater coup when, on 18 April, he surprised Baldwin at Shenchrig, west of Gargar, and took him prisoner as well. Joscelin refused to surrender the city of Edessa in exchange for his freedom, and all three leaders were incarcerated in Balak's castle at Kharput. As it was about 110 miles north of Edessa, it was very remote from any of the Frankish centres of power and rescue was therefore extraordinarily difficult.109 To some extent this was cause and effect, for Baldwin had been campaigning in the region of Gargar in the Artuqid stronghold of Diyr Bakr in an effort to gain the release of Joscelin and Galeran.