Armies of Heaven (36 page)

Word of the sign spread throughout the city, and according to a later Italian writer, it left Bohemond badly shaken. He not only refused to accept Robert's cloak but, bothered by the candle's behavior, also handed over his own cloak and other gifts. In hindsight, the story seemed to portend the death of Bohemond's son, killed in 1130 while campaigning around Antioch. But the younger Bohemond had not been born in 1098. A more likely interpretation at the time would have been that Bohemond's own rule of Antioch would burn out as swiftly as had that candle. His glory was already fading.
⁴

The army had still other causes for melancholy. On August 1, 1098, Bishop Adhémar of le Puy fell ill and died. Albert of Aachen said that he was the first victim of a plague that ravaged the crusader camps for months, killing more than 100,000 men and women, although none of the
other writers, including the ones who would have lived through the crisis, mentioned any such epidemic. According to their telling, Adhémar simply passed away.

It may have been an ordinary death, but its effects were tremendous. If the Franks were the Chosen People wandering through the desert, Adhémar had been their Moses—a cleric as comfortable, if not more so, leading a battlefield charge as he was delivering a sermon. But his first eulogist, the author of
Deeds of the Franks
, chose not to emphasize his military achievements or even his role in the crusade. Rather, he described Adhémar as “sustainer of the poor, counselor to the rich,” and reported a sermon that the bishop had once delivered on the theme of charity: “None of you can be saved unless he honors and refreshes the poor, and you cannot be saved without them and they cannot live without you.” He had died on the feast day of St. Peter in Chains—a coincidence that seemed appropriate since Peter held the keys to heaven. “Upon his death, he found someone to absolve his sins; he deservingly met one who welcomed him into heaven.”
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Or maybe not. Shortly after Adhémar's death, St. Andrew again approached the discoverer of the Lance, Peter Bartholomew, accompanied now by Adhémar's shade. The dead bishop confessed to Peter that he had, for a time, gone to hell because of his initial doubts about the Holy Lance. “I was led into hell, and there punished most bitterly, and my head and face were burned, as you can see. My soul was there from the hour that it left my body, until my corpse was handed over to the dust.” God provided some protection from the flames, covering him with a special cloak that Adhémar had once given to a poor man, but it left his head unprotected. Whoever doubted the truth of the vision, Adhémar added, need simply look inside his tomb, for the hellfire had consumed a large part of his physical head, too. He had escaped only because his friends offered a candle for him and because before his death, in penance for his doubts, he had donated three
denarii
to the Holy Lance. Among all the soldiers, Adhémar singled out Bohemond as playing a key part in releasing him from hell. Think on the fires of the afterlife, Adhémar concluded. They are both heavy and horrifying. Yet no one should grieve at his death. Adhémar continued to live with the army, as did everyone who had died on crusade. “And I will appear to them and I will give them better counsel than ever I did before.”
⁶

Andrew spoke in the same vision and urged Count Raymond and Bohemond to settle their differences. Addressing Raymond directly, the apostle said, “Let there be concord, Count Raymond, between you and Bohemond, and let there be the love of God and of your neighbor. And if you two make peace, nothing can separate you.” Andrew did not want Raymond to hold Antioch at all. Rather, Raymond should consider all of the potential claimants to the city and give possession of it to the person with the truest faith, which could be judged by how generously he distributed charity to the poor. Given Bohemond's crucial role in helping to save Adhémar's soul, the giant was probably a strong candidate. And for a time, the chaplain Raymond concluded, everyone believed what Peter Bartholomew had said. But then they forgot his words, and some began to say that they should give the city to Alexius—an outcome that, in Raymond's eyes apparently, the very heavens would oppose.
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The crusade was thus on the verge of disintegrating over the questions of what to do with Antioch and whether to revive the alliance with Byzantium. Perhaps a living Adhémar could have crafted a compromise. In his absence, on September 11, 1098, the leaders wrote a letter about their difficulties to Pope Urban II. It is a remarkable document because it demonstrates both the army's turmoil and its optimism. “We have already subdued the Turks and the pagans,” the princes claimed. “But the heretics—Greek and Armenian, Syrian and Jacobite—we have not been able to conquer. We therefore entreat and enjoin you, our dearest father, that, as head and father, you come to this, the place of your father, Peter. For since you are St. Peter's vicar and sit in his cathedral and hold us as your obedient servants in all things needing rightly to be done, then by your authority and by our might you shall uproot and destroy every sort of heresy here.”

It is an ecstatic, almost apocalyptic vision—the entire world united under papal guidance and Latin Christianity. And the apocalypticism became more explicit in the conclusion: “Then you shall open for us the doors of each Jerusalem, and you will free the Lord's Sepulcher and make exalted the name of Christ above every name. If you come to us and complete with us the pilgrimage begun through you, the whole world will be obedient to you.” A thoroughly Christianized world with the doors of “each
Jerusalem” (two Jerusalems, the earthly one and the heavenly one) opening simultaneously—so closely in sync had the Franks' wars and the designs of God now become.
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By the time the princes sent this letter, their armies had largely dispersed. Leaders at all levels—princes and petty lords—were busily pursuing their own interests. One of the first to depart in search of fortune was a Provençal knight named Raymond Pilet, who led an expedition into the Jabal as-Summaq region in northern Syria. He briefly besieged a castle called Tel-Mannas before its occupants, Syrian Christians, welcomed him inside and accepted his lordship.

A week later Raymond Pilet, his men, and a few of his new Syrian followers attacked an unnamed “castle full of Saracens.” They seized the peasants who lived around it and forced them to accept baptism—a rare example of forced conversion on the crusade, or of any interest at all in conversion. The peasants who did not accept Christ, Raymond executed. From there he attempted an ambitious strike against the city of Ma‘arra, but that venture proved a little too ambitious.

Ma‘arra, modern-day Ma‘arrat al-Numan, was a compact, well-fortified, and densely populated city beyond the reach of a small-time warlord like Raymond Pilet. The Turks engaged his men before the city gates, and the fight quickly turned into a rout. By the end of the day, Raymond and his Syrian and Provençal followers were fleeing back to the castle, once full of Saracens, that they had recently conquered. By the time they reached it, the few survivors in his army were almost dying of thirst. There undoubtedly were dozens of other minor lords like Raymond engaged in similar small-scale adventures at the same time with similarly mixed results, but their stories have been lost.
⁹

As for the princes, Bohemond spent much of August in Cilicia (the territory promised to him by Tetigus in February, though presumably with different circumstances in mind). Godfrey went to Edessa and became embroiled in its regional politics. For what seems to have been the first time in the crusade, he and his men fought on behalf of one Turkish amir, Omar of Azaz, against another, Ridwan of Aleppo. Raymond of Saint-Gilles,
who had been plundering the Syrian countryside to relieve the poor pilgrims, joined Godfrey in the campaign. To convince a few of the increasingly radical Provençal soldiers to follow him into this battle, Raymond apparently put out the word that a few Turks in Azaz had been spotted making the sign of the cross while fighting against the Turks of Aleppo—secret Christians perhaps? Together, Raymond and Godfrey succeeded in driving Ridwan from Azaz. Godfrey also established a treaty of friendship with Omar, gained some small amount of treasure, and even got a lesson in carrier pigeon technology. Like the truce at Antioch, this was a surprising interlude, suggesting, as it did, that given a slightly different vision, the business of holy war might have gone in a radically different direction.
¹⁰

Many other soldiers would have accompanied Godfrey to Edessa, either fighting alongside him for the sake of Omar's independence or living in Edessa and working as mercenaries for Baldwin. Indeed, so many Franks came to Edessa that Baldwin's subjects feared he was turning their city into a European outpost, and some of them began plotting a coup d'état. It was probably inevitable. They would overthrow Baldwin just as he had replaced T‘oros. One of the conspirators, however, lost his nerve and revealed the plans to Baldwin, who showed no hesitation. He learned the names of all the potential traitors, called together his most trusted bodyguards, and ordered them to arrest everyone involved. The more prominent among the prisoners, he ransomed. As for the others, he cut off their noses, hands, feet, tongues, lips, and testicles in various combinations. “From that day on Duke Baldwin became feared in the city of Edessa, and his name spread to the farthest reaches of his land.”
¹¹

Clearly, the crusade had become aimless. Not everyone was happy following Baldwin and Godfrey's lead, playing Middle Eastern politics. They had an obvious goal, but none of the leaders wished to pursue it. St. Andrew, for one, was furious. The next time he spoke to Peter Bartholomew, around October 10, accompanied this time by Christ and an unnamed bearded man, he rebuked the visionary on many counts. First, there was the shoddy treatment his relics had received at Antioch. Peter had apparently discovered a few of Andrew's bone fragments (where and when we don't know) and set them aside in “an unworthy place.” What were these bones? “When unbelievers threw me off of a mountain top,” Andrew explained, “two of my fingers
were broken. After my death, this man”—apparently the bearded stranger—“kept them and took them to Antioch. But then you, when you found them, allowed one of them to be stolen, the other to be treated poorly.” Andrew waved a spectral hand in Peter's face. Two fingers were missing.

But the apostle was mainly angry at Raymond of Saint-Gilles. The count had received a special gift from God—the Holy Lance—yet he continued to sin grievously. To lend power to the warning, Peter reminded the count how he had five days earlier left in his chapel a large candle that should have shone for three days but had burned out almost immediately. The night before, by contrast, Raymond had donated a much smaller candle, but it continued to burn. What did this mean? Andrew didn't explain, but as when Bohemond chopped the candle in two, it betokened nothing good.

When told of the vision, Count Raymond denied any wrongdoing, but Peter whispered into his ear a secret sin (apparently related to him by Andrew) for which the count had not done penance. And at last he confessed his guilt, and Peter directed him both to perform penance and to expel his wicked advisors—presumably the men who were encouraging him to postpone the march to Jerusalem. “The Lord commands you not to delay any longer, since if Jerusalem is not captured, you will receive no help.”
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It was an awkward position for Raymond. His hopes to seize control of the crusade had begun to depend more and more on his possession of the Holy Lance and his relationship to its eccentric prophet. But now the prophet was turning against him and trying to take control of military de-cisionmaking. Raymond couldn't take Jerusalem by himself. He would have to wait for at least three more weeks, until November 1, when the other princes were ready to depart. And he still had not given up hope of wresting control of Antioch from Bohemond. So under pressure from Peter Bartholomew and St. Andrew, Raymond settled on a middle course. He would lead his army in a generally southerly direction, following in the footsteps of Raymond Pilet, toward the Jabal as-Summaq plateau. Such a course might generously be seen as a first step toward Jerusalem. It could also be, as Count Raymond claimed, an attempt to find yet more supplies for the poor. And from Count Raymond's perspective, it was a way to continue exerting pressure on Bohemond by seizing control of territory that might otherwise pertain to Antioch.
¹³

 

His first target was Albara, a once-prosperous trading city that had steadily decayed until by the eleventh century it was a small town inhabited by Turks and dwarfed by Roman ruins. Raymond's goal for Albara was, quite literally, colonial. He wanted to eradicate the Saracens and, according toone writer, fill the city with new landholders, or
colonis
.