by Tuvia Fogel
That afternoon, Brother Illuminato found Master Ezekiel and reported on the father’s condition. The rabbi rushed over to the bishop’s tent. He went in, greeted Jacques, and knelt beside Francesco.
“What’s come over you, Brother Francesco? You know how much God loves joy better than anyone I’ve met! What shook your confidence in his Good News, my brother?”
On hearing the rabbi’s voice, Francesco raised his head. “Oh, Master Ezekiel!” he sobbed. “Good News? I only see bad news everywhere. For whom did God create his blessed Eternity? Who will adore him when the earth is empty of souls and hell brims with the damned? Can you tell me that?”
“What chased every shred of hope from your heart?”
“I had a . . . a vision, Master Ezekiel,” stammered Francesco. “The worst in my life. You know Pelagius is going to attack the sultan tomorrow . . . well, two days ago I saw the outcome. They must not fight tomorrow! It was terrible . . . there were bloated bodies everywhere.” He burst out in tears again.
Since refusing Yehezkel’s suggestion a week earlier, Pelagius had yielded to an ill-advised plan to attack the sultan. Realizing that the growing complaints could turn into open rebellion, he’d given in to Frankish and German nobles, defying the Italians, and divided the army into three units: one to guard the camp, one to man the ships, and a third, the largest, to march on al-Kamil’s camp at Färiskür.
Yehezkel stepped aside with Brother Illuminato and whispered to him, “If he tells the leaders of his premonition, they’ll lock him up to protect the morale of the troops. If he really wants to save knights and soldiers from the death he has seen, he’ll have to warn them himself!”
Brother Illuminato reflected and then knelt beside Francesco and said, “Father, don’t give too much importance to the judgment of men. It wouldn’t be the first time they call you crazy, would it? Do what your conscience tells you, and fear God, rather than men!”
Francesco gazed at his unassuming young brother, and in an instant, before their eyes, horror before a prophetic vision turned into something between missionary zeal and the rush for water when a house is on fire. Francesco jumped up, wiped the tears off with his sleeve, and planted a kiss on Brother Illuminato’s tonsure. Then he bowed his head to Yehezkel and the bishop and rushed out of the tent.
Running alone through the camp, he found an open space amid the chaotic preparations for the next day’s battle and called out for the men to stop and listen. Maybe it was the work he’d done in the month he’d been there, or maybe it was the need for saintly words before facing death, but many stopped, and more ran over from other quarters, shouting, “Francesco! It’s Francesco!”
When the rest of the company caught up with him, Francesco was declaring feverishly, “Don’t fight tomorrow! There are auspicious days and inauspicious days! You cannot oppose God’s will! Obstinacy brings disaster! By counting only on your own forces, you forfeit heavenly help! If you seek victory, you must only do battle when the attack is divinely ordained!”
The mostly Italian soldiers started to heap scorn on the jinxing friar. They knew that marching orders had already been given—so most of them, as kindly as they could, urged him to shut up.
Francesco knew a knight’s faith, knew they were gifting their lives to their Supreme Lord, and became desperate. If he couldn’t convince them, he must try to frighten them. “Listen, brothers! I had a revelation of the defeat that awaits our forces if we fight tomorrow! This will cost the lives of thousands! I beg you, speak to your leaders, ask them to delay the attack, if only by a day!”
Overwhelmed by his vision of death, Francesco began weeping again. The soldiers, torn between pity and embarrassment, walked away. Undeterred, the friar ran to another point in the camp, an increasingly worried company on his heels, and began to shout his warning again.
Before long Yehezkel and Galatea concluded that if they didn’t get Jacques to stop him, soon the cardinal would. At dusk, the bishop’s personal guard gently but firmly accompanied Francesco to Jacques’s tent. The bishop begged him to stay in his tent for the night. Francesco reluctantly obeyed. The company sat on the ground around him in a corner of the tent, hoping to distract him from despair.
News of what Francesco was preaching on the eve of a battle reached Pelagius, and an hour later Oliver of Cologne was asking to speak with Jacques. Oliver was a lanky fifty-year-old cleric, only slightly less opinionated than his master. He asked to speak with the Italian friar, more out of curiosity at the words of ill omen than anything else, but when he saw the Jew and the abbess sitting among the friars, he became cagey. “I hear you object to the day our cardinal has chosen for the attack,” he said to Francesco, “but not, surely, to the fact that the Army of Christ is going into battle against the infidels!”
“As I already told the cardinal, Master Oliver, I believe in preaching to the infidels, rather than killing them,” said Francesco in a quiet voice.
“I believe in that, too, Francino,” said Jacques, “I tried to preach to some in Acre. The problem is that Mohammedans’ faith is so fierce that preaching Christ to them is an infallible way to win martyrdom. It has become like those Roman aqueducts that suicides seek out to jump from.”
Oliver bluntly pursued the friar. “Cardinal Pelagius believes you’re such a case, Brother Francesco. Tell me, what did the soldiers say when you told them not to fight tomorrow, eh?”
Francesco answered, “A famous Roman, I forget which one, once said, ‘Dulce bellum inexpertis.’”*44
“Wrong again, friar! War is to men what motherhood is to women!”
Galatea spoke for the first time, something the German preacher hadn’t expected. “Oh no, Master Oliver, men love war because it allows them to look serious,” she said drily. “They love it because it’s the one thing that stops women laughing at them.”
Francesco chuckled openly. Oliver looked startled to see Yehezkel and Jacques joining in.
The bishop turned to Yehezkel. “Rabbi, you can speak freely in this tent. Please tell us what Jewish wisdom teaches on the question of martyrdom—or, as I believe you call it, Sanctifying the Name.”
“I’m not sure the answer will be to your liking, Your Excellency . . .”
“Give it to us anyway, mon brave Rabbin, and leave it to us to decide,” said the bishop sternly.
“Well, when an Almohadi tyrant was forcing Jews in Fez to accept Islam some fifty years ago, Moshe ben Maimon the Egyptian, light of Judaism and my first teacher, may his memory be a blessing, ruled that Mohammedans are ‘believers in the one and only God, who accept many precepts of the Torah and recoil from worshipping images. A Jew should not give up his life so as not to accept Mohammed. He should instead keep the Torah in secret.’”
Oliver said coldly, “I admire your tact in choosing the example, Master Ezekiel, but your teacher’s words imply that if the alternative were Christian baptism, then a Jew should hurry out of this vale of tears and collect his reward for his fidelity to Yhavhè. Is that not so?”
Yehezkel lowered his head. Francesco, Jacques, and Galatea were listening intently. “In effect, too many things in the Christian faith coincide with what we call ‘idolatry,’ sir. If, in order to stay alive, a Jew must bow before images of men and women, drink blood and affirm the existence of a Triple Divinity, it would be better for him to proclaim the Sanctity of God’s Name.”
His voice was trembling, but he had not raised it. He continued before the speechless Christians. “But I’m a medicus who believes in a merciful God, one who never demands of humans to sacrifice their lives. Never, for any reason. Our Father Abraham taught us that. Therefore I don’t condemn those who are converted by force, only those who freely abjure their faith.”
A silence followed these blasphemous words. Galatea thought he may have called her a pagan, but at least he had the guts to do the same to three famous and powerful Christians.
“Are we going to listen to this obstinate Jew deny and insult revealed Truth?” hissed O
liver.
Francesco found a dig at the German’s pompous indignation too hard to resist. “My brothers,” he said, “have you noticed how martyrs, for us, are those who go out to convert the heathen, while he speaks of the martyrdom of the converted?”
“That is the natural order of things, my good friar,” said Oliver.
“No, Oliver,” said Jacques. “Francesco, in his ‘divine folly,’ put his finger on something that betrays the decay in our faith. It’s been almost a thousand years since Christians were martyred not while preaching their faith to others, but for refusing to abandon theirs.”
“A thousand years,” said Oliver, “which proved Christ is the only Truth, Jacques, so how could anyone be forced to abjure him? Surely you don’t think this a mere battle between men, with no role for God?” He turned to Yehezkel with a haughty smile. “On one hand I pity your blindness, my poor rabbi.” The smile veered to a sneer. “On the other, I resent the impunity an eternal curse bestows on your stiff-necked race. If a Christian pronounced words less offensive than yours, we’d send him to Europe on the spot, into the arms of Brother Domingo, to be tried for blasphemy, heresy, and I know not what else. Wouldn’t we, my good bishop?” His Teutonic laugh echoed through the tent.
“I met your Domingo once,” said Yehezkel matter-of-factly. “Almost exactly ten years ago, when he wasn’t yet the pope’s favorite monk.”
Mocking Domingo in such company was a boyish mistake. Luckily, Jacques noted how generous the rabbi was with his opinions and swiftly changed the subject, before a good medicus would be lost to the cause for slandering Domingo of Guzman. “I presume, Master Ezekiel, that the Jews in Fez wanted to know if they should follow the example of their brethren along the Rhine, seventy-five years earlier, many of whom took their own lives not to be baptized by the mobs headed to Jerusalem. Is that not so, Rabbi?”
With about the same restraint of a moth diving into a torch, Yehezkel answered, “Yes, Your Excellency, and wasn’t it that Sanctification of the Name by hundreds of Jews that sparked Christian jealousy and provoked the recent thirst for martyrdom among you?”
Another silence followed. Again Francesco broke it, but this time his tone was tinged with outrage at the rabbi’s provocation. “Do you really think Christianity lacks martyrs to prove the purity of its faith, Master Ezekiel? Are you implying that anyone in this tent would hesitate to give his life in testimony of Jesus Christ?”
“No, Brother Francesco, I know your faith is as strong as ours. What I meant was that what befell the Jews of Germany a century ago was like a taunt, like daring Christians to show the same steadfastness.”
Francesco’s outrage turned to puzzled curiosity, but Oliver’s grew to red heat.
“Tell me something, Rabbi,” Oliver hissed, “and this is pure reason now, which I’m told Jews love. Before the evidence of Christianity’s success, before the powerless wandering of the Jews in these ten centuries, shouldn’t you be asking yourselves some questions? Saint Augustine said that your curse will last until the return of your Victim. So tell me, how do you explain having become like Cain?”
Yehezkel found the comparison deeply offensive, which was the German’s intent. “We know the meaning of our exile, Master Oliver,” he said, “and faithfully wait for the Messiah to deliver us from it. We pray for a more concrete redemption than anything Jesus ever offered. Christianity never taught anything but resignation. It is a religion of night, and death, a moon shining on the tombs of the ancient peoples that Rome destroyed. Its mission is a kind of Judaism for pagans and will finish on the day Israel, the Sun, wakes up to new life . . .” Yehezkel was panting. His whole life since leaving Egypt was in his next reckless words. He had no choice but to finish what he’d begun.
“You torture us, you burn us alive, and then run into your churches to be moved to tears singing the psalms you stole from us! How could the usurper of a revelation not yearn for the death of its legitimate owners? Were it not for the promise the God of Israel made to us, you would have slain every one of us long ago. I’ll tell you what, Master Oliver: you go your idolatrous way and we’ll go our way, and when Judgment Day comes, which we both believe in, God will be obliged, by his own promise, to reveal which one of us was right!”
Oliver’s face was flushed, and if he’d had a weapon, he would have drawn it. “Watch your tongue, Jew, or we’ll make do with less famous physicians!” Then he repressed his anger and laughed. “Ha! To me, it rather looks like you’re the one, not Brother Francesco, seeking martyrdom in Damietta, so you can enter Jewish legends as Rabbi Ezekiel the Egyptian, the only Jew to forfeit his life while saving those of wounded Milites Christi! Ha, ha!”
Yehezkel stood straighter, as if ready to forfeit his life for the God of Israel there and then. Jacques wondered why this wise and well-read Jew was so intent on provoking the German cleric. He decided the night before a battle was no time for such confrontations. His bishopry in Acre taught him to mediate, when necessary, between the faiths.
“Oliver, I beg you, don’t let the quarrel escalate,” he said, “for the sake of the quiet contemplation that should precede a battle on behalf of the Lord. Master Ezekiel’s claim that we ‘stole’ King David’s psalms from the Jews pains me, so in all humility, I suggest we all sing the verse about the ‘tents of the righteous’ before we part, Jew and Christians together, in a gesture of reconciliation.”
“On one condition!” spat Oliver. “That the Jew sing the psalm in Latin, like we will. The new owners of those songs, the Verus Israel, now sing them in Latin—and so will the rabbi!”
Yehezkel examined the challenge from a halachic point of view. “First,” he thought, “my faith is not in danger. Second, the psalm in Latin is a meaningless tongue twister. And third, if I refuse to sing it in Latin, the goy will put me in irons and send me to Italy.”
He nodded to Jacques, without looking at the German. At a signal from the bishop, everyone in the tent, except Aillil, intoned the fifteenth verse of Psalm 118:
“Vox iubilationis et salutis in tabernaculis iustorum.”*45
Francesco wept openly as he sang of the joy in the tent. His brothers, who knew how unfailing his premonitions were, had to make an effort not to weep with him over the coming defeat.
The auspicious singing done, Oliver took his leave with a foolishly premature statement, “Why is this the tent of the righteous? Because there can be no doubt that God is on our side!”
Jacques smiled. “Most important is not that God be on our side, Oliver, but that we make sure to be on His . . .”
Yehezkel decided to stay after Oliver left the tent, so he could thank the bishop. “I’m grateful for your indulgence, Your Excellency. I don’t know what came over me. I dare not think what my words would have caused, had Oliver’s master been present.”
Jacques laughed. “Yes, that would have been worth watching! Still, I think Pelagius would have been less angry with a Jew calling him a pagan than with a Christian preacher predicting defeat in his personal war against the sultan!” he said, darting a glance at Francesco.
Then Galatea kissed his ring, Yehezkel and Aillil bowed their heads, and the three left the tent.
Later that night, King John of Jerusalem toured the camp, as was the custom on the eve of battle.
Every tent had a bivouac burning before it, and the sudden flicker of flames revealed faces straining to see the king: wizened old veterans, bearded knights, pimply adolescents—all shining with the joy of a long-awaited feast. His guard sounded their trumpets when he entered a section of the camp, and soldiers came running to hear and see the only king to have so far graced that war with his presence.
John of Brienne, a brave and generous king, was sixty-four that summer, his long white beard like that of a saintly hermit. He seemed to be everywhere that night and spoke with everyone who addressed him, in the accessible tones of one of their comrades. Everywhere he went he repeated his plea that every cross wearer do his duty in the morning, not for the
love of their king, but for the love of God.
The soldiers didn’t know it, but King John was ill. The cause of his sickness wasn’t known, but on the 31st of July he’d been under the walls and been hit by Greek fire. His guard put the flames out right away, but a combination of age and the effects of the burns weakened the old warrior. Pages ran into his tent all day bringing hot stones, hot wine, bits of wood to clean his teeth. He kept his strength by drinking the blood of birds, he only accepted the blood of hawks and buzzards, so the birds had to be brought from Acre and their throats slit in the camp.
In those days, the king was the one force capable of uniting riotous barons and being a model for his people. He was the only one who would never lie to them, the only one they could always trust. If a king betrayed his soldiers, as Philip of France had done by leaving Acre before Coeur de Lion, the sky was sure to fall on their heads. English knights had mercilessly mocked the Franks: “Where is your King, then?”
Outside Damietta, John was admired for his courage, while absent kings were slandered, whether for departing early, like Andrew II of Hungary, or for not showing up at all, like young Henry III of England or Emperor Frederick II. King John spoke with feeling. “Now is the time to prove that Christ is the True God and Mahomet a piece of rotting straw! Through your efforts, Jerusalem shall be retaken and the infidels chased from the Holy Land once and for all! And what of your comrades, your friends who died in this year-long siege? Must not their blood be avenged? Let no one in the future dare suggest that we didn’t repay that debt of honor! For every Christian who died in this cursed, soggy land, we shall send tens—nay, hundreds of infidels to hell!”
