A History of the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

  7

  Art in the Latin East

  1098–1291

  JAROSLAV FOLDA

  WHEN the armies of the First Crusade took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, they succeeded wonderfully in fulfilling many of the main goals articulated by Pope Urban II in his famous speech at Clermont. Urban had vividly described the oppression of Christian churches in the East, and how the infidels had desecrated or destroyed Christian monuments. He had called on arms bearers to go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land and to liberate the Christian holy sites from the heathen.

  The artistic traditions which the participants in the First Crusade brought with them from Europe were varied, deriving from Lorraine, the Meuse Valley, Normandy, the Île de France, southern France and South Italy in the late eleventh century. The crusaders also carried certain portable art objects with them: essentials for a long expedition such as prayerbooks and liturgical vessels (chalices, portable altars, reliquaries, etc.); there were also painted standards, arms and armour, and, of course, coins, common currency from Valence and Lucca among other places. The remarkable fact is that, when these European crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, the art they sponsored there changed rapidly and dramatically from that associated with their homelands. The changes varied according to medium and project, and were apparently caused by the new context and environment and the special functions the art was called on to serve. There was also a rich and different multicultural socio-religious and artistic milieu: a bringing together of artists and patrons from diverse backgrounds; new media such as icon painting to deal with; new materials such as the local stone; and the local Christian, that is, Byzantine, Syrian, and Armenian artistic traditions and artists as well as Muslim monuments from which to learn. The new art of the Franks is sometimes called ‘Crusader Art’.

  It took several years for the settlers to consolidate their remarkable conquests of 1099. Fortifications and church buildings were needed everywhere, but very little figural art survives from the three northern settlements of Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli. Most of what we have is coinage: strongly Byzantine-influenced coin design at Antioch and Edessa, but designs firmly rooted in French (specifically Toulousain) numismatic tradition at Tripoli. It is in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, stretching from Beirut to Aqaba, that Frankish artistic activity can be observed most fully throughout the twelfth century.

  With the capture of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth in 1099, the crusaders re-established Christian control over the main holy sites of Christendom—the birthplace of Christ, the site of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, and the place of the Incarnation—setting the agenda for some of the most important art sponsored by the Franks in the twelfth century. Two of these sites also served important political roles. The church of the Nativity in Bethlehem served as the coronation church of the Latin kings in the first quarter of the century. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was the burial place of the Latin kings from 1100 to 1187 and it became the coronation church from 1131 onwards.

  Given the importance of the Holy Sepulchre, it is not surprising that artistic attention would be centred on this complex site from the very beginning. In 1100, when Godfrey of Bouillon died, his tomb was placed at the entrance to the chapel of Adam at the foot of Calvary, and this provided a precedent for every subsequent king before 1187. In 1114, following the momentous decision to install Augustinian canons at the Holy Sepulchre, a large cloistered residence was built for them to the east of the Byzantine triporticus, that is, the arcaded courtyard of the Byzantine church of the Holy Sepulchre rebuilt in the 1040s.

  At about the same time attention was concentrated on the aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre, a small free-standing building sheltering the tomb which stood within the Anastasis rotunda. The Russian pilgrim, Daniel of Chernigov, who visited the Holy Land in the years 1106 to 1108, mentioned a life-sized silver statue of Christ that was placed on top of the aedicule by the Franks. Daniel’s testimony is our only source for what must have been the first Latin effort to beautify the Sepulchre. In 1119, however, the aedicule was completely redecorated with marble sculpture and mosaics. The famous drawing by Bernhard von Breydenbach, circulated as a woodcut in the fifteenth century, and Jan van Scorel’s painted image from the 1520s give us some idea of the aedicule, but do not, unfortunately, record details of the programme of redecoration the Franks sponsored, which are known to us only by later pilgrims’ accounts. It is notable that all of the early work at the church of the Holy Sepulchre featured art rooted in western European traditions.

  While artistic activity was getting underway in Jerusalem sponsored by king and patriarch, in Bethlehem it was the pilgrims to the holy site who apparently commissioned devotional icons for the church of the Nativity. In the south aisle, an icon of the Virgin and Child Glykophilousa was painted directly on the fifth column. Along with prayers and labels, the date of 1130 can be read among its inscriptions, identifying this work as the earliest dated ‘crusader’ monumental painting extant. Here a Byzantine-trained western artist combines the Greek enthroned madonna type with Italian sensibilities for the human relationship between Mary and her son. Furthermore, a cave is indicated as the background in this work, which here at Bethlehem can only refer to the grotto of the Nativity beneath the crossing of the church. Thus for the first time, site-specific iconography is seen in a work for a pilgrim painted by an artist conversant with Byzantine, western, and local traditions.

  The 1130 fresco is an important example of the shift we see in crusader art with the second generation of settlers. Fulcher of Chartres had commented on the transformation of outlook in a famous passage written about the time the crusaders captured Tyre in July 1124: ‘For we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Reims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned any more.’

  The patrons who stimulated this transformation in the arts after 1131 were the patriarchs of Jerusalem, King Fulk, and especially Queen Melisende, the first rulers to be crowned in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Fulk was a great castle builder. His armies carried the ensign of the kingdom, a reliquary of the True Cross, on all their major expeditions. So important had relics become that an important centre for goldsmiths’ work had grown up in Jerusalem just south of the Holy Sepulchre to produce the characteristic double-armed cross reliquaries for pilgrim patrons. The handsome True Cross reliquary now in Barletta was probably made in Jerusalem about 1138.

  King Fulk’s most important commission was, however, the Psalter of Melisende. No expense was spared on this manuscript. At least seven persons collaborated on the production of this luxury manuscript by early 1135. A team of four illustrators (including Basilius, a Byzantine-trained ‘crusader’ artist who signed the Deësis image) combined with a northern French scribe for the calendar and text of the Latin psalter, a ‘crusader’ ivory carver for the book covers, and a ‘crusader’ embroiderer for the silk spine of the book embroidered with silver thread. The decoration of the book reflects crusader taste that Byzantine was synonymous with aristocratic style in artistic terms, and it reflects Melisende’s Orthodox religious sensibilities. This manuscript is the most important extant work from the scriptorium of the Holy Sepulchre in the twelfth century and, along with the 1130 icon in Bethlehem, it represents a new phase of crusader art in which East and West are distinctively integrated.

  Queen Melisende was a figure of extraordinary importance in the Latin kingdom from 1131 to 1161: she was the daughter of King Baldwin II, the wife of King Fulk, and the mother of two kings, Baldwin III and Amalric; as has already been pointed out in Chapter 6, she was a powerful force in politics and the arts, at least until 1152, when Baldwin III took control. Melisende, as the daughter of a Frankish father and an Armenian mother, was the embodiment of the new eastern perspective seen in the arts of this flo
urishing period. The 1140s were an especially remarkable time for her patronage and crusader art in general.

  William of Tyre, the famous historian of the Latin East, writing in the 1180s, tells us that Melisende commissioned the building of the convent of St Lazarus at Bethany at the site of Lazarus’s Tomb for her younger sister Yvette. Melisende must have had a significant hand in numerous other major works: one of her earliest projects may have been the rebuilding of the convent of St Anne while Yvette lived there, that is prior to 1144. In 1141 the Dome of the Rock was consecrated as the church of the Templum Domini and Melisende may have helped sponsor an entire new programme of mosaic decoration along with a splendid iron-work grille around the rock inside. In the early 1140s, the royal residence was moved from the Templum Salomonis to the south side of the citadel, an undertaking in which she obviously must have been heavily involved.

  The most outstanding project of the 1140s was, of course, the rebuilding of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Chroniclers say remarkably little about the church—pilgrimage church, patriarchal cathedral, and state church of the Latin kingdom— but it was dedicated on 15 July 1149, fifty years after the crusader conquest of Jerusalem, and shortly after the leaders of the ill-fated Second Crusade had returned home to Europe.

  The plan to rebuild the Byzantine church had apparently evolved in the early 1130s after the coronation ceremonies were moved from Bethlehem to Jerusalem; the main work was carried out in the 1140s. The programme was impressive; as we will see in Chapter 8 the holy sites were reorganized within the context of a unified architectural complex anchored by the aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre, the hill of Calvary, and the Prison of Christ. For this purpose a western pilgrimage-road church plan for the crossing, choir, and ambulatory with radiating chapels was introduced to integrate the pre-existing rotunda into a single building with two domes, a bell tower, and a magnificent new southern main entrance. Major decorative programmes of figural and non-figural capitals were introduced on the interior and exterior. The entire interior of the church and the Calvary chapels were given a vast programme of mosaics of which only one image of Christ survives; the Anastasis mosaic in the eastern apse now lost is at least reflected in the design of the seal of Patriarch Amalric of Nesle (1157–80). The south transept façade was resplendent with mosaic imagery of the Noli Me Tangere and handsome carved lintels, the latter deriving from Italian sources. Over the left door, a series of scenes illustrated the life of Christ as related to holy sites located in and around Jerusalem. Over the right door, a vine-scroll lintel evoked the arbor vitae under what may have been an image of the Crucifixion in the tympanum above. Overall the architectural and decorative programme of the Holy Sepulchre was rich and varied, a magnificent statement of the amalgamation of East and West in this unique crusader project. As the culmination of a long undertaking to decorate this most important holy site—a project probably not fully finished until well into the 1150s—the crusader church of the Holy Sepulchre set a high standard for schemes at Bethlehem and Nazareth yet to come.

  Whatever Melisende’s role in the rebuilding of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, she abruptly dropped out of public prominence following Baldwin III’s forceful accession to power in 1152. The only subsequent project with which she can be associated is her handsome tomb, located in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, just inside the entrance of the Tomb of the Virgin. That she was a remarkable woman is reflected in the eulogistic verbal portrait accorded her by William of Tyre.

  Baldwin III began his reign by introducing a new royal coinage identified with an image of the Tower of David, that is the citadel of Jerusalem where he had wrested power away from his mother. He followed this with a great military victory in 1153, the conquest of Ascalon, which had remained in Fatimid hands since 1099. Meanwhile both the military orders of the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers were beginning to take a major role in the defence of the Latin East. During this period of relative prosperity and stability, churches in honour of St John the Baptist were erected at Ramla, Gaza, and Sabastiya. The cathedral at Sabastiya, which contained the tomb of St John, was the first major Latin church in the East to receive a programme of historiated capitals on its façade, in a manner similar to many French churches: this church is unusual because of its direct architectural ties to the cathedral of Sens. In fact most Latin churches were built in a distinctively Levantine–Romanesque style, with broad pointed arches, flat roofs, and often a dome over the crossing.

  Baldwin III was not known for his artistic patronage, but his younger brother, Amalric, was. Shortly after his accession to power in 1163, Amalric sought to forge a new alliance with the Byzantines against the Fatimids in Egypt. With this end in mind, he introduced a new coin type which emphasized the Byzantine Anastasis rotunda in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, ordered that his regalia be designed along Byzantine lines, and married a Byzantine princess, Maria, in 1167. His most important artistic commission was also an important act of political statecraft and ecclesiastical diplomacy. Between 1167 and 1169 Amalric joined Emperor Manuel Comnenus and Bishop Ralph of Bethlehem in sponsoring a complete redecoration of the church of the Nativity.

  The unique programme of mosaics and fresco painting carried out at Bethlehem was a joint project in which Orthodox and crusader traditions were brought together in terms of patrons, artists, and goals, with fruitful artistic results. A bilingual inscription in Latin and Greek on the south wall of the bema (sanctuary) of the church, now very fragmentary, recorded the commission. The Latin praised King Amalric as a ‘generous friend, comrade of honour, and foe of impiety’, Emperor Manuel as ‘generous donor and pious ruler’, and Ralph as ‘generous… worthy of the bishop’s throne’. The Greek version referred to the three donors and identified Ephraim as the mosaicist who finished this task in the year 1169.

  The programme was enormous, on a scale with the interior of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Mosaics of the Virgin and Child, feast scenes of the life of Christ, and the Nativity—all strongly Byzantine in style and iconography—were located in the apse, transepts, and grotto respectively. Down the nave there were images of the Seven Oecumenical Councils of the Church (south wall) and six provincial councils (north wall). Between the clerestory windows, striding angels progressed towards the apse; below the councils there were bust-length portraits of the ancestors of Christ. On the interior west wall there was a large image of the Tree of Jesse. On the columns of the nave below, additional devotional icons of eastern and western saints were added in fresco to complement the images previously painted.

  This project was a milestone in crusader artistic development because many artists from a variety of backgrounds took part. Basilius, mosaicist of the angels in the nave, was Syrian Orthodox. A Venetian artist named Zan, that is John, appears to have worked in the south transept. Ephraim, a Greek Orthodox monk and mosaicist, seems to have overseen the work. Thus, for a major programme of monumental painting at one of the holiest sites in Christendom, we find a multicultural team of artists working together under joint Frankish– Byzantine sponsorship. The integration of eastern and western elements of style and iconography by a number of artists from different traditions is therefore quite reminiscent of the Melisende Psalter, but occurs here on a much larger scale. Here the heavily Byzantine-influenced medium of mosaics and the Greek of most council texts combine with Syrian Orthodox content in the council texts, and strong crusader elements—such as the Tree of Jesse, the use of bilingual inscriptions, Latin for the text in the image of the Seventh Oecumenical Council, and the very idea of an inscription to identify patrons and artists— to produce a remarkably rich, harmoniously integrated, and high quality result.

  The work at Bethlehem apparently inspired a variety of other decorative programmes in fresco painting—at Abu Ghosh, at the Damascus Gate chapel, at Bethany, even at Crac des Chevaliers far to the north—but none in mosaics. It is, therefore, surprising to find that the most important subsequent artistic projects in the Latin kingd
om were carried out in sculpture during the last years before the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. The Hospitallers decorated the chapel of their castle at Belvoir with handsome figural sculpture in the early 1170s and the Templars sponsored a large and important workshop in the Temple area in Jerusalem in the 1170s and 1180s to decorate their conventual buildings in and around the Templum Salomonis. The most important endeavour in the 1170s, however, was the project sponsored by the archbishop of Nazareth to rebuild and decorate the church of the Annunciation over the holy site of the House of the Virgin, where the Incarnation had taken place.

  The church of the Annunciation was the only Latin church to receive a full programme of portal sculpture in the manner of French twelfth-century examples: a tympanum with an enthroned image of Christ Incarnate with angels, voussoirs (arch-stones) with signs of the zodiac, and statues on either side of the doorway of apostles and prophets. The most creative sculptural programme was reserved for the interior, however, where the aedicule over the grotto of the Annunciation was given a series of remarkable polygonal capitals. These capitals represented narrative incidents from the lives of the apostles who had founded this church at Nazareth, according to tradition, in honour of the Virgin Mary. Moreover, larger rectangular capitals appeared on the piers of the church immediately surrounding the shrine monument. Very likely these sculptors were ‘crusaders’, that is, Frankish settlers born in the Latin East, trained in their craft by French masters, working in a dynamic fluid style in the local stone under the influence of indigenous Christian traditions as well as of Muslim architectural sculpture.