The Shield and The Sword

by Ernle Bradford

  On the morning of June 7th, 1099, the army reached the summit of a hill (Montjoie or Mount Joy as pilgrims had earlier named it), and saw Jerusalem spread out before them. In view of what happened later it is worth quoting William of Tyre’s description of their reaction:

  When they heard the name Jerusalem called out, they began to weep and fell on their knees, giving thanks to Our Lord with many sighs for the great love which He had shown them in allowing them to reach the goal of their pilgrimage, the Holy City which He had loved so much that He wished there to save the world. It was deeply moving to see the tears and hear the loud sobs of these good people. They ran forward until they had a clear view of all the towers and walls of the city. Then they raised their hands in prayer to Heaven and, taking off their shoes, bowed to the ground and kissed the earth.

  Jerusalem was one of the strongest fortified cities in the world. Ever since its capture by the Romans in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian it had been the keypoint to the whole area and the walls had been added to constantly over the centuries, first by its Byzantine and later by its Moslem rulers. The siege of Jerusalem lasted for a little over a month. That it did not take longer was largely due to the fact that the crusaders were inspired by the vision of a priest, in which he assured them he had been told that if only they would all fast and walk barefoot round the walls the city would fall to them. (On a more practical basis the arrival of a number of Christian ships at Jaffa had recently provided them with the sailors and technicians, the wood and materials, with which to construct siege engines.) They had been disheartened and suffered heavily from the heat under the scorching July sun, but now the army’s morale once again revived. On July 15th the walls were finally breached and the Christians swept into the citadel and home of their Faith.

  The capture of Jerusalem, like that of Antioch before it, was marked by scenes of such blood-lust and cruelty that it is hard to believe these feudal lords and their followers had the slightest conception of that faith in whose name they had undertaken their expedition. The cross of the Prince of Peace was on their surcoats but in their hands was the hammer of Thor. The governor of the city and his personal bodyguard were allowed to leave—but only in return for a vast ransom. The rest of the Moslems, men, women and children, were butchered in their thousands. Mosques were pillaged and the Dome of the Rock was sacked and plundered. Even some Moslems who had paid a large ransom and taken refuge in the mosque of al-Aqsa (above which waved a banner to show that they were to be spared) were slaughtered to a man. The city ran with blood. The Jewish community fared no better than the Moslem. When they too took refuge in their main synagogue the building was set on fire about them. The crusaders had burst into the city at noon. By nightfall, ‘sobbing for excess of joy’, they fell on their knees in the Church of the Sepulchre, bowing their heads over their blood-stained hands.

  The massacre after the fall of Jerusalem appalled even some of the crusaders. Its effect upon the Moslem world was traumatic. Whenever, in the centuries that followed, attempts were made by Latin rulers to come to some accommodation with the Moslems the memory of that day rose up and prevented it. The East had seen the furor Normannorum, the rage of the Norsemen (from which the Christian Church itself had once prayed to be spared). The Moslem world would never forget it, and would become equally fanatical in its determination to expel these Christians from the lands that they had seized.

  The intolerance of the western Europeans in religious matters was far in excess of anything known in the East. For centuries the Byzantines had traded with their religious enemy, and it was only the onslaught of the Turks upon their empire that had prompted them to call for western help. In Constantinople itself there was even a Moslem quarter and a mosque—something that provoked the contempt and anger of the crusaders. The Moslems, for their part, had usually shown a reasonable degree of religious tolerance in the territories under their control. They had permitted Christians to visit the shrines of their faith and, as has been seen, had allowed a large colony of Jews to settle in Jerusalem. The governor of the city, who had waited throughout the months while the crusaders made their way through Asia Minor and Syria—knowing full well that Jerusalem was their target—had made no move against the pilgrims and other Christians within his city walls. Even when the army had moved down from Montjoie and encamped against Jerusalem he took no violent action against them. The Christians were merely expelled, and allowed to go and join their co-religionists. Among those who probably left Jerusalem before the siege began was a certain Brother Gerard.

  Chapter 2

  THE ORDER OF ST JOHN

  Brother Gerard was the head of a hospice for pilgrims which had been established in Jerusalem about 1080. It was certainly in existence at the time that the First Crusade reached the city. It was not a hospital in the modern sense, although no doubt it had facilities for treating the sick. A hospice was essentially a place for rest for pilgrims, where they could sleep and get food. The one in Jerusalem seems to have been founded by merchants from Amalfi, that important Italian shipping centre which provided many pilgrims with their means of transport to the Holy Land. Then, as now, a traveller had to pay for his passage in advance. (The term ‘passage money’ was to acquire considerable importance in the later history of the Order of St John.) The hospice seems to have been dedicated to this saint, although exactly which of the Johns is open to debate. Later it was always assumed that the patron saint of the Order was John the Baptist.

  The hospice came under Benedictine rule and was administered by Benedictines from Amalfi. It is very likely that Gerard himself was an Italian from this gracious little city, which had at one time during the ninth century shared with Venice and Gaeta all the Italian trade with the East. The development of the compass is said to have reached Europe through Amalfi. Its naval code, the Tavolo Amalfitano, was recognised throughout the Mediterranean until the late sixteenth century. The merchants who set up the hospice in Jerusalem were not being entirely philanthropic. There were practical reasons why shipowners and traders dealing with the East should want to have a rest house in Jerusalem. Not only did they have their own merchants and agents going there, but quite a large part of their business was the transport of pilgrims. Life was rough and tough in those days and travellers could expect little or nothing in the way of comfort whether afloat or ashore. At the same time a ‘shipping line’ that could, as it were, offer its own insurance in the form of guaranteed lodgings, and even medical treatment, was certain to prove attractive.

  Legend has it—and it is possibly no more than legend—that Brother Gerard was not expelled from Jerusalem along with the other pilgrims, but that he stayed there throughout the siege and helped the crusaders by supplying them with bread. As Riley-Smith writes:

  …the city under siege was the scene of his performance of the miracle required by his hagiographers. It was said that, together with the other inhabitants, he was ordered to help defend Jerusalem. He knew that the crusaders outside the walls were hungry, and so each day he took small loaves up onto the parapet and hurled these at the Franks instead of stones. He was seen by the Arab guards who arrested him and took him before the governor. But when the loaves were produced in evidence of his crime, they had turned into stones and he was released.

  Forgetting the matter of the bread into stones, it seems somewhat unlikely that a friar who ran a hospice for Christian pilgrims was allowed to remain in the city during the siege. On the other hand our authorities for this period unanimously declare that this was so, and that Gerard was of the greatest assistance to the besieging army. The only logical explanation would be that—hospitals being rare enough at the time—the city’s governor allowed him to remain so that he and his assistants could look after any of the garrison or citizens who were injured during the fighting. One thing is certain; after the capture of Jerusalem by the army of the First Crusade, the fortunes of the small foundation over which Gerard presided were made.

  It is quite clear that the found
ation administered by Gerard was of the greatest value to the army and the pilgrims who now thronged Jerusalem. The Hospital inevitably expanded, and in those days when dying men made lavish gifts to the Church, and when men who survived also paid their dues, it was inevitable that the Hospital should benefit.

  Evidence that it enjoyed great favour is shown by the fact that Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first ruler of Latin Jerusalem, made the Hospital a gift of some land. His example was to be followed over the years by many others who wished to record their thanks for the services of Gerard and his helpers.

  Godfrey of Bouillon had refused to be called King of Jerusalem on the ground that no man should be called a king in the city where Christ had died on the cross. His successor, Baldwin of Boulogne, did not take such a pious view of things and had himself crowned, thus creating the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. He too took the Hospital under his care and protection, and after a victory over an Egyptian army presented the Hospital with a tenth of all the booty. He thus established a precedent which was to make the Hospital one of the richest Orders in the world. His example was soon followed by many rich ecclesiastics in the East, who gave it a tithe of their revenues.

  The saintliness of Brother Gerard has often been stressed by historians of the Order that he founded, and there is no doubt that he was indeed a good and noble man. He was also eminently practical—as have been many saints—and an excellent organiser. Before he died in 1120 he had so firmly laid the foundations of the Order that it has endured into the twentieth century. It was recognised as an independent Order by the papacy seven years before his death, by which time it had become the owner of large properties in France, Italy and Spain. With these extensive possessions the Hospital began to establish daughter-houses in Europe along the pilgrimage routes. Out of the small seed of the original hospice in Jerusalem there developed a giant oak with branches extending into all Christian countries (for the daughter-houses in their turn received tithes and donations which enabled them to establish yet further hospitals). All the main ports of embarkation for pilgrims were soon equipped with a Hospital operated by the Order of St John; Marseilles, Bari, and Messina, to name but a few.

  The Order that Gerard founded anticipated by many centuries all subsequent organisations devoted to the care of the poor and the sick throughout the world. In his ideals he echoed the Founder of Christianity. Members of the Order were enjoined to consider the poor as ‘our lords, whose servants we acknowledge ourselves to be.’ They were also to dress as humbly as did the poor. The nobility of Gerard’s aims and life would be hard to equal at any time, but in the twelfth century, when the western world was based on the feudal concept of lord and serf, they were exceptional. His epitaph is hardly an exaggeration: ‘Here lies Gerard, the most humble man in the East and the servant of the poor. He was hospitable to all strangers, a gentle man with a courageous heart. One can judge within these walls just how good he was. Provident and active in every kind of way, he stretched out his arms to many lands in order to obtain whatever was needed to feed his people.’

  He was succeeded by an almost equally remarkable man, Raymond de Puy. The latter built upon Gerard’s foundations, but in doing so changed the direction of the Order so that for centuries to come its hospitaller side—although always strong and important—became overshadowed. While the original members of the Order of St John had been concerned only with the Hospital, the feeding of the poor and treatment of the sick, a new branch was to be grafted on to it which would be mainly concerned with the protection of pilgrims on the route from the sea to Jerusalem. The military protection of pilgrims might seem little more than a logical extension of the Order’s principal rule—to look after the poor—but it was to evolve into a militant Christianity designed to fight Moslems wherever they might be found. The establishment of the military Orders in the East was in itself an inevitable outcome of the sack of Jerusalem, which had inspired a fanatical hatred of Christians throughout the Moslem world. One good deed may sometimes lead to another, but it is certain that an evil one will almost inevitably breed its fellow.

  The transition of the Servants of the Poor into the Soldiers of Christ really began in the early twelfth century. In 1136 the Hospitallers were given the important castle of Bethgeblin in the south of Palestine to hold against the Moslems, who had control of the port of Ascalon. This in itself is evidence enough that the military arm of the Order had already come into being—for who would give a fort to a company of Hospitallers? It is clear that Raymond de Puy had already applied to the Pope for the right to develop a military arm of the Order, and that permission had been granted for him to do so. The establishment of the Knights Templar, a purely military Order designed to fight against the enemies of the Faith, had already set a precedent.

  The Templars, or ‘The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’, were the brainchild of a French knight who had seen the necessity of a special fighting body to protect the pilgrims in the Holy Land. Much that was later to be adopted by the Order of St John may have stemmed from the Templars; for instance the institution of a ‘Grand Master’ as head of the Order, whereas among the Hospitallers their head had previously only been known as ‘the Administrator’. Thus on to a hospital tending for the poor and the sick was grafted the whole fiery body of medieval chivalry and feudalism.

  Politically, these Latin knights and barons now busy establishing themselves as eastern rulers from Antioch to Jerusalem brought no more than the same simple conceptions of justice, law and order, as obtained in their own northern lands. At the same time the military Orders, that of the Templars, of St John, and a little later of the Teutonic Knights (who started as a Hospitaller Order but soon became only military) developed a style of discipline coupled with their medieval notions of chivalry that was something new. The Templars bore on their surcoats the red cross on a white ground which had originally been adopted for the soldiers of the First Crusade; the Knights of St John a white cross on a red ground—‘The white Cross of Peace on the blood-red field of War’; and the Teutonic Order a black cross on a white field. All co-religionists, all defenders of the Holy Places and of the pilgrims, they were often at loggerheads with one another. The dissensions between those hot-blooded nobles, only too conscious of their birth, their quarterings, and their battle honours (as well as the different ‘clubs’ to which they belonged), was not to be conducive to a sensible and united policy towards the affairs of the East.

  Outremer (Overseas) as the Latin colonies were called was always destined to be a failure. Dependent on a long line of communications across the Mediterranean from Europe, and established in shifting pockets of territory that were almost constantly harassed by an enemy who had the hinterland to himself, it is surprising that Outremer held out as long as it did. This, despite their constant dissensions, must be held to the credit of the crusaders and their fighting qualities. At the same time, man being man the world over, it was also to some extent largely the internal quarrels of the various Moslem states that prevented a concerted drive to get rid of the Christians. Whenever a Moslem leader of any real calibre emerged and united his co-religionists, the Europeans were almost invariably destined for disaster.

  At this stage in their history the rules of the Order of St John seem to have been fairly simple. Their first duty was the care of the poor. This in its turn meant the necessary collection of alms and of their tithes, whether in the Levant or in Europe. The brothers who worked in the Hospital were both priests and laymen. In the early stages there seems to have been little distinction between fighting laymen and those who merely served in the Hospital. All, however, took strict vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the rules of the Order. It was not until after the middle of the twelfth century that there began to appear a stronger military aspect to the Knights. By this time they already had command of several castles in Syria including the famous Krak des Chevaliers which they were to turn into the most formidable fortress in the East—so much so that a
Moslem was to liken it to ‘a bone stuck in the throat of the Saracens’.

  It is probable that these castles were largely manned by hired mercenaries, for the militant arm had not yet sufficiently developed for them to have been held entirely by the Order. Most of the castles were the gift of Count Raymond of Tripoli, who was anxious to have the powerful Hospitallers as his allies against the constant enemy incursions into his territory. He was also well aware that the Order had ample funds with which to maintain and improve them. By 1168 it is clear that the military side of the Order had developed considerably: we find it sending 500 knights together with a suitable number of mercenary troops as its contribution to a crusading venture into Egypt.

  By the time that Raymond de Puy died the future development of the Order had been clearly established. Despite the admonishments of more than one Pope—that the Hospitallers should confine the military side of their activities as much as possible and stick to their original Rule as laid down by Brother Gerard—the Knights Militant had arrived upon the scene.

  Chapter 3

  CRUSADERS IN THE EAST

  The Europeans who ruled in the eastern states such as Jerusalem and Antioch, and smaller principalities like Tripoli, never numbered more than a few thousand. Even with the addition of their men-at-arms, the poorer Latin settlers, the merchants, priests and others, they were little more than handful, holding on to their lands by castles and the sword—and also by judicious treaties with local Moslem rulers. Being so few it was hardly surprising that it was they who were influenced by their neighbours and their surroundings, rather than the reverse. Many centuries before, although they had come in far greater numbers, the Greeks who had spread over the same area after the campaigns of Alexander the Great had become largely orientalised. If the Greeks with their superior culture had been so transmuted it was natural enough that these comparatively simple and unsophisticated Latin nobles would soon become imbued with the light and the colour, the luxury and the languor of the East.