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Authors: Jonathan Phillips
Tags: #Religion, #History
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BOOK: The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
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In the ambulatory of the crypt there survives an image of Lütold of Aarburg, the bishop of Basel who took part in the Fourth Crusade. Lütold’s head and feet have been uncovered from beneath later plasterwork and building modifications, although his body is destroyed. Remarkably this constitutes the only contemporary, or near-contemporary picture of a participant in the expedition, although it was as a distinguished bishop, rather than as a crusader, that he was memorialised. The north transept of St Mary’s contains one particularly vivid series of panels designed to show the sacrifice and suffering of St Vincent, an early Christian martyr. The panels depict his trial, his torture by beating, by fire, by incarceration and by drowning, and then his burial: a lesson in the sacrifice of a true Christian. For Martin’s potential crusade recruits, the ideas of suffering and death would have provided stark reminders of their possible fate, although the reassuring images of angels would have been a sign of heavenly reward to the faithful.
Medieval churches were often the focus of urban life. Today they are frequently quiet, ordered and austere places, but to envisage them in the Middle Ages we must imagine something quite different: places of noise, chaos and colour. Food-sellers, money-changers and other tradesmen milled around outside the building, hawking their wares and their skills to the curious, the needy and the unwary. Performers looked for a chance to draw in an audience for their songs, or to hear tales of heroism and the exotic. The sounds and smells of cooking, the cries of merchants and the shouts and cheers of people gathered around games of dice all formed part of the ambience. The crowds outside the cathedral buzzed with passing news as they swapped tales and related the latest gossip and intrigues. Such gatherings were by far the best source of news and information, and stories of a scandal or a disaster spread like wildfire. We should also imagine a real mix of languages: in the heart of Europe on such a pivotal communication route as the Rhine, French, German, Occitan (the language of southern France) and Latin would be common; and perhaps Danish, Spanish, English or Russian might be heard from the more adventurous travellers. The turmoil around the cathedral would spill inside, with pilgrims and visitors mixing with guides and local clerics. The sick, the crippled and the destitute would be there, begging for alms and support, and trying to scratch a living from the charity of others. Some churches had sloped floors so that the filth and rubbish produced by this mass of humanity could be washed out onto the street at the end of every day. At Basel the focus of this tumult was, of course, the launch of the crusade and the prospect brought great crowds to the cathedral.
For Abbot Martin this would be the biggest meeting of all on his preaching tour. We know little of his previous career, but this was probably the largest audience he had ever addressed; it must have been a daunting prospect. He bore the responsibility for accomplishing God’s work and for this reason—and with as stern a taskmaster as Pope Innocent III behind him—the pressure to succeed was tremendous. In planning his sermon Martin must have weighed up many different, and sometimes conflicting, considerations. The abbot had to ensure that his appeal was pitched at just the right level; his audience was a public gathering, not an assembly of educated churchmen or a small group of local lords whom he knew well from the day-to-day business of his monastery. There had to be clear messages running through his speech: he had to stress the urgent need for the crusade and the inestimable rewards for those taking the cross. Too much complex theology or a lack of clarity might take the sting from his words. Martin had to provoke a range of emotions: anger, sorrow, the desire for vengeance—feelings that would be born out of a wish to save the Holy Land from the infidel. There was also a need for a closer, more personal focus to the appeal: he had to prick an individual’s desire to atone for his sins, to avoid the torments of hell and to save his soul through a penitential journey (in other words, the crusade). He could light upon the more secular values of family honour, crusading traditions and a desire for worldly gain. In essence, of course, if someone took the cross they were making an enormous commitment and probably one of the most significant decisions of their lives. To travel almost 2,200 miles from Basel to the Holy Land, to risk illness and injury, to fight a fierce and successful enemy—not to mention bearing the huge expense of equipment, transport and food—was a profoundly serious undertaking. Martin was also urging people to part from their families, to leave wives and children without their protector and to hope they remained safe in the men’s absence.
Against these negative factors, Martin could set a number of hugely attractive incentives. His prime card was to play upon the essential religiosity of the time: the deep-rooted devotion that permeated Christian Europe in this period and which had been the dominant motive for crusaders since the start of the movement in 1095. Furthermore, because there had been several crusades by 1200, a tradition of crusading had grown up in many families and areas, and this was something else for the abbot to exploit. Such traditions created a sense of expectation and honour that each generation would play its part in the fight for the Holy Land. Martin could also hold out the prospect of material advantage. To some churchmen the idea of profiting from a religious war seemed incongruous, but the papacy had recognised the reality of the situation and reconciled itself to the practice of crusading. At the very least, booty was required to cover the costs of the campaign and there was also a need to pay the wages of knights, squires and other soldiers. There was sound canon law (a mixture of biblical precedent and the decisions of previous popes) to support the payment of adequate wages in Christian warfare. Excess was to be frowned upon, however—if an army took too much booty it would commit the sin of greed, thereby incurring God’s disfavour and leading the expedition to fail.
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As Abbot Martin pondered the exact words to use, he most probably consulted, or remembered, examples of earlier crusade preaching. In the international hierarchy of Cistercian abbeys, the house of Pairis was connected to the house of Morimond—the intellectual centre of the order—and Martin may have turned there for information. Its library held histories of the First Crusade, as well as letters and texts written by other Cistercians such as Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). Bernard, who was later canonised, had been one of the most powerful crusade preachers of the twelfth century and was known as ‘the mellifluous doctor’ on account of his honeyed words. Quite wisely, Martin seems to have borrowed some of these ideas and images. Bernard himself preached for the Second Crusade at Basel on 6 December 1146.
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What little information we have about Abbot Martin’s personality suggests that he was well equipped to deliver the sermon. Although our evidence comes solely from Gunther, his fellow-Cistercian, and could be open to charges of bias and exaggeration, it appears that the abbot was an engaging and gregarious man. He was described as being cheerful, humble (always an appropriate attribute for a good churchman) and popular. He was praised for his maturity, his gentleness amongst his monks, yet he also carried genuine authority with lay people of all ranks and was, according to Gunther, ‘regarded by both clerics and laity as lovable and easy to deal with’. As the abbot started his preaching tour, some monks were concerned that his constitution—probably weakened by years of ascetic practices such as fasting and vigils—would not withstand the rigours of a recruitment campaign. Decades earlier, St Bernard had performed such debilitating devotional routines that his digestive system was all but destroyed and he was sick so frequently that he needed a special hole in the ground next to his pew in the church to vomit into. Martin was a rather more robust individual, however, and he seems to have been galvanised by his task; with ‘energetic self-confidence’ he set about his work.
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News of the sermon was trailed well in advance to attract the maximum audience. While many of Martin’s listeners came from the city itself, others would have journeyed specially to hear him. In late April and early May, Basel must have seemed to possess a magnetic attraction. The roads became markedly busier as potential crusaders, traders and those who were simply curious to listen were pulled towards the cathedral. People would have travelled together in carts, bartered, begged and bought food; they must have felt a shared bond of brotherhood and adventure as they moved into the city. The visitors had much to discuss. They exchanged news of the situation in the Holy Land and of the legendary ferocity of their Muslim enemies; they debated the choice of route to the East; they discussed possible arrangements for lands and families and the problem of raising money. Some may have been on pilgrimage or earlier crusades to the East, and their anecdotes and experiences were doubtless relayed and generously embellished. The exploits of crusading heroes would also have been talked of. Since the time of the First Crusade, the events of that divinely blessed expedition had been told and retold, with its leaders’ deeds and reputations glossed and amplified. The troubadour songs of the chivalric courts, epic stories (the
chansons de geste)
and the monastic chroniclers of the age all recalled the deeds of their predecessors.
chansons de geste)
and the monastic chroniclers of the age all recalled the deeds of their predecessors.
Finally, on 3 May 1200, the great day arrived and large numbers were said to be ‘hungrily’ waiting for the preacher to begin. The altar in Basel cathedral stands on a raised area above the crypt, placing Martin a few feet above his audience and giving him a good platform from which to address the church. When the abbot stood up to deliver his sermon the seething crowd in front of him fell silent. Martin felt huge anticipation, ’his whole being afire with celestial devotion’, and as the moment of his oration approached, he offered up a silent prayer. Fortified by divine inspiration, the abbot prepared to speak. To a modern reader many of the words and images he used appear highly exaggerated; equally the powerful reaction of the audience strikes us as unnatural. Today, displays of open emotion by a public figure tend to arouse special comment. In medieval times, crying, close physical contact and prostrating oneself on the ground in an act of devotion were not so unusual. They might be noted by observers, but were not regarded as extraordinary. We should recall the scale of the commitment that the abbot was seeking. To persuade people that the huge sacrifices of a crusader were worthwhile would require the performance of a lifetime.
At the start of his sermon Martin employed a truly striking device. He suggested that the words were not his own, but that Christ was speaking through him. ‘Heed my word to you, my lords and brothers; heed my word to you! Indeed, not my word, but Christ’s. Christ himself is the author of this sermon; I am his fragile instrument. Today Christ addresses you in his words through my mouth. It is he who grieves before you over his wounds: Immediately, therefore, his sermon was imbued with a divine authority and a spiritual presence. From the outset the audience was pressed to respond as the Lord wished.
Very quickly the abbot came to the heart of his message: ‘Christ has been expelled from his holy place—his seat of power. He has been exiled from that city which he consecrated to himself with his own blood. Oh, the pain!’ Images of the loss of Jerusalem and the spilling of blood (Christ’s blood, shed on behalf of mankind) were expertly coupled with Martin’s exclamation of hurt. With the claim that, through him, Christ addressed the congregation, the abbot had created a sense that Christ himself—there in Basel cathedral—cried out in agony. In other words, Martin had brought Christ’s suffering and loss directly to his listeners.
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The abbot developed the idea of the injury suffered by Christ through the Christians’ expulsion from Jerusalem. He also outlined the life of Christ, the resurrection and His work with the apostles. He emphasised that Christ Himself had instituted the sacrament of the holy body and blood (the Eucharist), something that was familiar to all present through regular religious observance. After this succinct overview, inexorably tying Christ’s presence on earth and His gifts to mankind to the loss of the physical Jerusalem, Martin brought his audience starkly back to the present: ‘this land is now dominated by the barbarism of a heathen people. Oh the misery, the sorrow, the utter calamity! The Holy Land ... has been given over to the hands of the impious. Its churches have been destroyed, its shrine [the Holy Sepulchre] polluted, its royal throne and dignity transferred to the gentiles: The image of the heathen polluting and defiling the Holy Land dated back to the time of the First Crusade and was a well-used message in crusading sermons. Clearly this would provoke a sense of outrage in the audience: an unclean and ungodly race was occupying Christ’s lands. Connecting the damage to the churches of the Holy Land—buildings that some in the audience may have visited on pilgrimage themselves—he again returned the focus to the present.
Alongside the destruction of churches, the abbot mentioned the loss of the True Cross: ‘That most sacred and venerable Cross of wood, which was drenched with the blood of Christ, is locked and hidden away by persons to whom the word of the Cross is foolishness, so that no Christian might know what was done with it or where to look for it.’
The True Cross was probably the most important single relic of the age and was believed to be part of the cross upon which Christ was crucified. Because His body was assumed into heaven, there were no bones left as relics, and items closely associated with Christ’s presence on earth were, therefore, highly prized. The True Cross, as the object upon which Christ had suffered for all mankind, was obviously a relic imbued with enormous spiritual significance. It had been found in Jerusalem in the fourth century by Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and the feast-day to commemorate that event was 3 May.
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Martin had, therefore, cleverly tied Christ’s suffering, this important historical event and the feast-day to his own crusade preaching. The relic itself had been split into two pieces: one part was sent to Constantinople, the other one remained in Jerusalem. The piece at Jerusalem was removed by the Persians, but was rediscovered by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in the seventh century. Following the Arab invasions later that century it was divided again and a large section was found by the crusaders soon after the capture of the holy city in 1099. The complicated history of the relic, or indeed its authenticity, is in many ways irrelevant, because the crusaders believed absolutely in its veracity.
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Martin had, therefore, cleverly tied Christ’s suffering, this important historical event and the feast-day to his own crusade preaching. The relic itself had been split into two pieces: one part was sent to Constantinople, the other one remained in Jerusalem. The piece at Jerusalem was removed by the Persians, but was rediscovered by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in the seventh century. Following the Arab invasions later that century it was divided again and a large section was found by the crusaders soon after the capture of the holy city in 1099. The complicated history of the relic, or indeed its authenticity, is in many ways irrelevant, because the crusaders believed absolutely in its veracity.
BOOK: The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
10.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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