Not that Italy had ceased to beckon. An imperial coronation by the Pope could not but strengthen his political position, just as it had strengthened Lothair's before him; and beyond Rome lay Palermo, an even more tempting objective. The thought of that Sicilian bandit, who had now for fifteen years claimed dominion over huge tracts of imperial territory despite repeated efforts to eject him, rankled as much as ever; and Conrad knew perfectly well that the ever-turbulent Welfs would never have been able to maintain their opposition but for the huge subsidies they were receiving from Roger's agents—a fact of which he was doubtless regularly reminded by the bitter little group of South Italian exiles hanging round his court, Robert of Capua, Count Roger of Ariano and Rainulf's brother Richard among them. He had never forgiven Pope Innocent for what he considered a craven betrayal at Mignano, nor St Bernard for having made his own peace with Sicily immediately afterwards; and ever since his accession he had been dreaming of a punitive expedition to the South. It would have to be larger than Lothair's, better organised and better equipped, with a naval force capable of pursuing the war beyond the Straits of Messina if necessary —something, in fact, conceived on a very much grander scale than anything he was capable of mounting by himself, even if his domestic difficulties enabled him to do so. Fortunately he had an ally ready to hand.
The Byzantine Empire also had claims on South Italy; indeed, there may have been old men alive in Bari who still dimly remembered those heroic days, nearly a lifetime ago, when in defiance of Robert Guiscard and the massed Norman army their fellow-citizens had held out for nearly three years in their Emperor's name. Ever since, the restoration of the Italian provinces had loomed large in Greek ambitions. We have seen how as early as 113 5 the Emperor John Comnenus had offered Lothair financial assistance against the King of Sicily; it seems likely that a considerable proportion of the expenses of the subsequent expedition was paid for in Byzantine gold. That expedition had failed; but John's determination held firm.
Since then the situation had worsened. When Roger's cousin Bohemund II of Antioch had been killed in 1130 he had left as his only child a two-year-old daughter, Constance; and Roger had laid claim to the throne as the senior surviving member of the House of Hauteville. Five years later he had tried to kidnap the little princess's husband-to-be, Raymond of Poitiers, as he passed through South Italy on his way to join his bride; Raymond had managed to escape only by disguising himself, first as a pilgrim and then as steward of a rich merchant. In 1138 the King had even gone so far as to arrest the Patriarch Radulph of Antioch on a journey to Rome. The Patriarch, whose persuasive charm of manner was in no way affected by a pronounced squint, was soon allowed to proceed; and on his return Roger had treated him very differently, giving him a royal welcome in Palermo and even providing him with an escort of Sicilian ships. Particularly in contrast to his outward journey, it all seemed a little overdone; if Roger really were plotting to seize the throne of Antioch the Patriarch would be a most valuable ally. John Comnenus, who had never trusted either of them, grew ever more suspicious.
During the next few years ambassadors shuttled backwards and forwards between Germany and Constantinople as the two Emperors began to make serious plans for an alliance against their common enemy. Then, in the spring of 1143, John went off on a hunting expedition in the mountains of Cilicia and accidentally scratched himself, between the fourth and little fingers of his right hand, with a poisoned arrow. At first he ignored the wound, but in the following days the infection spread up his whole arm until, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, it was swollen to the thickness of his thigh. His doctors advised amputation, but the Emperor had no faith in them and refused; and a week or so later he died of blood-poisoning. His youngest son Manuel who succeeded him was at first rather better-disposed towards the King of Sicily, and even toyed with the idea of a marriage alliance; but the negotiations came to nothing, relations between the two grew worse until they were finally broken off altogether, and the Sicilian envoys ended up in prison in Constantinople.
Not, perhaps, altogether without relief, Manuel turned back to the Western Empire. His father had for some time before his death been considering another imperial marriage—this time of Manuel himself, with Conrad's sister-in-law Bertha of Sulzbach—and in 1142 had actually had the proposed bride brought, on approval, to Constantinople. Manuel's initial reaction to this proposal had been lukewarm, and his first sight of the German princess had done little to inflame his ardour; soon, in any case, the minor upheavals that followed his succession and his brief flirtation with Sicily had caused the idea to be dropped. But at the end of 1144 he began to have second thoughts. Conrad for his part was positively enthusiastic. Such a marriage, he wrote, would be a pledge of 'a permanent alliance of constant friendship'; he himself would be a 'friend of the Emperor's friends and an enemy of his enemies'—he named no names, but Manuel would have no difficulty in filling in the blank— and, if there should ever be any slight to Manuel's honour, he would come in person to his assistance with all the massed strength of the German state behind him.
And so the arrangements were made. Bertha, who had been living for the past four years in forgotten obscurity, now re-emerged into public view, shed her barbarous Frankish name for the more euphonious Greek one of Irene, and in January 1146 duly married the Emperor. He should have made her a splendid husband. Young, gifted, famous for his dark good looks, he possessed a gaiety and charm that came as a refreshing contrast after the high-principled austerity of his father. Whether he was in his palace of
Blachernae or one of the hunting-lodges in which he spent so much of his time, any excuse was good enough for a celebration; while the visit of foreign rulers—particularly from the West—was always a signal for prolonged and elaborate festivities. Unlike most of the older generation of Byzantines he had spent his life in constant contact with the Franks of Outremer, and he genuinely admired western institutions. He introduced knightly tournaments to Constantinople and, being a superb horseman, took part in them himself —an activity that must have shocked many of his more old-fashioned subjects. But there was nothing shallow about him. When he was on campaign all his apparent frivolity fell away and he proved himself a brilliant soldier, tireless and determined. 'In war,' wrote Gibbon, 'he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he appeared incapable of war.' A skilful diplomat, he also had the imagination and sureness of touch of a born statesman. And yet, through it all, he remained the typical Byzantine intellectual who liked nothing better than to immerse himself for hours in theological arguments of the most speculative kind; and his skill as a physician was, as we shall see, soon to be attested by Conrad of Hohenstaufen himself.
But he never liked Bertha much. As the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates explains,
His wife, a princess from Germany, was less concerned with the embellishment of her body than with that of her spirit; rejecting powder and paint, and leaving to vain women all those adornments which are owed to artifice, she sought only that solid beauty which proceeds from the splendour of virtue. This was the reason why the Emperor, who was of extreme youth, had little inclination for her and did not maintain towards her that fidelity which was her due; although he bestowed great honours upon her, a most exalted throne, a numerous retinue and all else that makes for magnificence and induces the respect and veneration of the people. He also entertained a criminal relationship with his niece, which has left a shameful stain upon his reputation.1
It was not in vain that King Roger had built up, over the years, the formidable network of foreign observers and agents that had made him easily the best-informed ruler in the western world. From
1 History of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, I, ii.
Germany and Constantinople—and, in all probability, from several other places as well—he had been kept constantly posted of all these developments as they occurred; and he had followed them with growing concern. He had had difficulties enough with old Lothair; this time there would be two enemies
instead of one, both famous for their skill and courage in battle and both at the height of their powers. Conrad was fifty-three—only two years older than himself— and Manuel not yet out of his twenties. There would also be the Byzantine navy to contend with, and a possible direct attack on Sicily itself. In such an eventuality, could he trust his Greek subjects to stay loyal?
Roger had long been conscious of just such a danger. To avert it he had for years been sending his massive subsidies to the Welfs in Germany, knowing that to keep Conrad fully occupied at home was the best way of discouraging him from any military adventures abroad; and it was with a similar object in view that he had proposed a marriage alliance with Byzantium. Both plans had failed. He had no more diplomatic weapons in his armoury with which he could hope to deflect the two determined Emperors from their intentions. War seemed certain; victory, to say the least, improbable.
He could not know, at the dawn of the year 1146, that he had already been saved twelve months before—saved, paradoxically, by a disaster to Christendom, and one that would soon bring a second, yet greater one in its wake. The first of these twin disasters was the fall of Edessa. The other was to be the Second Crusade.
7
THE SECOND CRUSADE
Now there was in Sicily, among the Muslims of the country, a most learned and wealthy man. The King had much regard for him and showed him great deference, placing him above the priests and monks of his court, so that the Christians of the country accused him of being himself also, in his heart of hearts, a Muslim. One day, when the King was sitting in a belvedere looking out over the sea, a pinnace was seen approaching. Those in the vessel brought news that the Sicilian troops had penetrated into Muslim lands, where they had found much booty and killed several men—in a word, that they had gained great successes. At that moment this Muslim was sitting by the King, and seemed to be asleep; the King said 'Ho, thou! Hast thou not heard what tidings have just been told?' The Muslim replied 'No'. The King repeated, they have told us such and such: 'where was then Mahomet, while these countries and their inhabitants were suffering such treatment?' The Muslim replied, 'He had left them, to be present at the conquest of Edessa. The Faithful have just taken that city.' At these words the Franks who were present began to laugh; but the King said: 'Do not laugh; for, as God is my witness, this man never lies.'
Ibn Al-Athir
In the first years of the Christian era, King Abgar V of Edessa was stricken with leprosy. Having heard reports of recent miraculous occurrences in Palestine, he wrote a letter to Jesus Christ, asking him to come to Edessa to cure him. Jesus declined, but promised to send one of his disciples to heal the King and preach the Gospel to his subjects. With this reply, according to some authorities, he enclosed a portrait of himself, miraculously imprinted on canvas. Later, as good as his word, he arranged with St Thomas to send Thaddeus, one of the Seventy, who accomplished both parts of his mission to the satisfaction of all concerned.
So runs the legend, as told by Eusebius and others; and, as proof of its veracity, the Saviour's letter, written by his own hand in Syriac on parchment, was long exposed to public veneration in the cathedral of Edessa.1 We know now that Christianity did not in fact reach the city before the end of the second century; but by the middle of the twelfth Edessa could boast other, better authenticated claims to sanctity. It was the site of the earliest recorded Christian church building; it witnessed the first translation into a foreign language— Syriac again—of the Greek New Testament; and one of its later kings, Abgar IX, was, so far as history can tell, the first royal monarch ever to receive Christian baptism.
In more recent times, again, the County of Edessa was the first to be established of all the crusader states of the Levant. It dated from the year 1098 when Baldwin of Boulogne had left the main army of the First Crusade and struck off to the east to found a principality of his own on the banks of the Euphrates. He had not stayed there long; two years later he had succeeded his brother as King of Jerusalem— where, for a short and painful period towards the end of his life, he was destined to become Roger of Sicily's stepfather.2 But Edessa had continued as a semi-independent state—under the theoretical suzerainty of Jerusalem—until, after a twenty-five-day siege, it fell, on Christmas Eve 1144, to an Arab army under Imad ed-Din Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul.
The news of its fall horrified all Christendom. To the peoples of western Europe, who had seen the initial successes of the First Crusade as an obvious sign of divine favour, it called in question all their comfortably-held opinions. After less than half a century Cross had once again given way to Crescent. How had it happened? Was it not a manifestation of the wrath of God? Travellers to the east had for some time been returning with reports of a widespread degeneracy among the Franks of Outremer. Could it be that they were no longer deemed worthy to guard the Holy Places against the Infidel under the banner of their Redeemer?
Among the Crusaders themselves, long familiarity with these
1 Subsequently this letter was to find its way to Constantinople, where it disappeared during the revolution of 1185. See ch. XVIII.
2 The Normans in the South, pp. 286-9.
shrines had made possible a more rational approach. To them Edessa had been a vital buffer state, protecting the principalities of Antioch and Tripoli—and through them the Kingdom of Jerusalem itself— from the Danishmends, the Ortoqids and the other warlike Turkish tribes to the north. Luckily these tribes had always been divided against each other, as had the Arab tribes across the eastern mountains ; but Zengi, an ambitious politician as well as a brilliant general, was already beginning to unite them behind him and dreaming only of the day when, as the acknowledged champion of Islam, he would deliver Asia once and for all from the Christian invader.
Whatever the Franks may have thought about their spiritual worth, their military weakness was beyond dispute. The first great wave of crusading enthusiasm, culminating in the jubilant capture of Jerusalem in 1099, was now spent. Immigration from the west had slowed to a trickle; of the pilgrims, many still arrived unarmed according to the ancient tradition, and even for those who came prepared to wield a sword a single summer campaign usually proved more than enough. The only permanent standing army—if such it could be called—was formed by the two military orders of the Hospitallers and the Templars; but they alone could not hope to hold out against a concerted offensive under Zengi. Reinforcements were desperately needed; the Pope must declare a Crusade.
Although Edessa had fallen nearly eight weeks before the death of Pope Lucius, his successor Eugenius III had already been over six months on the throne before he received official notification of the disaster. The special embassy that brought it—together with an urgent appeal for help—found him at Viterbo.1 Eugenius's pontificate had not had an auspicious beginning. His election, held in safe Frangipani territory immediately on the death of the unfortunate Lucius, had been smooth enough; but when he had tried to proceed from the Lateran to St Peter's for his consecration the commune
1 The embassy was led by Hugh, Bishop of Jabala in Syria. According to the historian Otto of Freising who was with the Pope at the time, Hugh also told of a certain John, 'a king and priest who dwells beyond Persia and Armenia in the uttermost east and, with all his people, is a Christian'. A direct descendant of the Magi, he ruled with an emerald sceptre. Thus the legendary Prester John makes his first entrance into recorded history.
had barred his way, and three days later he had fled the city.
The speed of his flight surprised no one; indeed, the only surprising thing about Eugenius was that he should have been elected in the first place. An ex-monk of Clairvaux and disciple of St Bernard, he was a simple character, gentle and retiring—not at all, men thought, the material of which Popes were made. Even Bernard himself, when he heard the news of the election, did not take it well. One might have expected him to be gratified at the raising of the first Cistercian to the Throne of St Peter; instead, obviously nettled at the elevation
of one of his 'children' over his head, he made no secret of his disapproval. In a letter addressed collectively to the entire papal Curia, he wrote:
May God forgive you what you have done! . . . You have made the last first, and lo! his last state is more dangerous than the first. . . . What reason or counsel, when the Supreme Pontiff was dead, made you rush upon a mere rustic, lay hands on him in his refuge, wrest from his hands the axe, pick or hoe, and lift him to a throne ?1
To Eugenius he was equally outspoken:
Thus does the finger of God raise up the poor out of the dust and lift up the beggar from the dunghill, that he may sit with princes and inherit the throne of glory.2
It seems an unfortunate choice of metaphor, and it says much for the new Pope's gentleness and patience that he showed no resentment. But Bernard was after all his spiritual father, and besides, Eugenius was no Urban II; he had neither the drive nor the personality to launch a Crusade single-handed. In any case events in Rome made it impossible for him to cross the Alps and, as he put it, to sound the heavenly trumpet of the Gospel in France. In the months to come he was to need his old master as badly as he had ever needed him in his life.
The Kingdom in the Sun Page 14
