Part 28

The _Third Crusade_ was narrated in the West from very different points of view by Anglo-Norman, French and German authorities. The primary Anglo-Norman authority is the _Carmen Ambrosii_, or, as it is called by M. Gaston Paris, _L'Estoire de la guerre sainte_. This is an octosyllabic poem in French verse, written by Ambroise, a Norman _trouvere_ who followed Richard I. to the Holy Land. The poem first came to be known by scholars about 1873, and has been edited by M. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1897). The _Itinerarium Peregrinorum_, a work in ornate Latin prose, is (except for the first book) a translation of the _Carmen_ masquerading under the guise of an independent work. There seems no doubt that it is a piece of plagiary, and that its writer, Richard, "canon of the Holy Trinity" in London, stands to the _Carmen_ as Tudebod to the _Gesta_, or Albert of Aix to his supposed original. The Third Crusade is also described from the English point of view by all contemporary writers of history in England, e.g. Ralph of Coggeshall, who used information gained from crusaders, and William of Newburgh, who had access to a work by Richard I.'s chaplain Anselm, which is now lost.[69] The French side is presented in Rigord's _Gesta Philippi Augusti_ and in the _Gesta_ (an abridgment and continuation of Rigord) and the _Philippeis_ of William the Breton. The two French writers represent Richard as a faithless vassal: in the German writers--Tagino, dean of Passau, who wrote a _Descriptio_ of Barbarossa's Crusade (1189-1190); and Ansbert, an Austrian clerk, who wrote _De expeditione Friderici Imperatoris_ (1187-1196)--Richard appears rather as a monster of pride and arrogance. From the Arabic point of view the life of Richard's rival, Saladin, is described by Beha-ud-din, a high official under Saladin, who writes a panegyric on his master, somewhat confused in chronology and partial in its sympathies, but nevertheless of great value. The various continuations of William of Tyre above mentioned represent the opinion of the native Franks (which is hostile to Richard I.); while in Nicetas, who wrote a history of the Eastern empire from 1118 to 1206, we have a Byzantine authority who, as Professor Bury remarks, "differs from Anna and Cinnamus in his tone towards the crusaders, to whom he is surprisingly fair."

For the _Fourth Crusade_ the primary authority is Villehardouin's _La Conquete de Constantinople_, an official apology for the diversion of the Crusade written by one of its leaders, and concealing the arcana under an appearance of frank naivete. His work is usefully supplemented by the narrative (_La Prise de Constantinople_) of Robert de Clary, a knight from Picardy, who presents the non-official view of the Crusade, as it appeared to an ordinary soldier. The [Greek: Chronikon ton en Rhomania] (composed in Greek verse some time after 1300, apparently by an author of mixed Frankish and Greek parentage, and translated into French at an early date under the title "The Book of the Conquest of Constantinople and the Empire of Rumania") narrates in a prologue the events of the Fourth (as indeed also of the First) Crusade. The _Chronicle of the Morea_ (as this work is generally called) is written from the Frankish point of view, in spite of its Greek verse; and the Byzantine point of view must be sought in Nicetas.[70]

The history of the later Crusades, from the Fifth to the Eighth, enters into the continuations of William of Tyre above mentioned; while the _Historia orientalis_ of Jacques de Vitry, who had taken part in the Fifth Crusade, and died in 1240, embraces the history of events till 1218 (the third book being a later addition). The _Secreta fidelium Crucis_ of Marino Sanudo, a history of the Crusades written by a Venetian noble between 1306 and 1321, is also of value, particularly for the Crusade of Frederick II. The minor authorities for the Fifth Crusade have been collected by Rohricht, in the publications of the Societe de l'Orient Latin for 1879 and 1882; the ten valuable letters of Oliver, bishop of Paderborn, and the _Historia Damiettina_, based on these letters, have also been edited by Rohricht in the _Westdeutsche Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kunst_ (1891). The Sixth Crusade, that of Frederick II., is described in the chronicle of Richard of San Germano, a notary of the emperor, and in other Western authorities, e.g. Roger of Wendover. For the Crusades of St Louis the chief authorities are Joinville's life of his master (whom he accompanied to Egypt on the Seventh Crusade), and de Nangis' _Gesta Ludovici regis_. Several works were written on the capture of Acre in 1291, especially the _Excidium urbis Acconensis_, a treatise which emerges to throw light, after many years of darkness, on the last hours of the kingdom. The Oriental point of view for the 13th century appears in Jelaleddin's history of the Ayyubite sultans of Egypt, written towards the end of the 13th century; in Maqrizi's history of Egypt, written in the middle of the 15th century; and in the compendium of the history of the human race by Abulfeda (+1332); while the omniscient Abulfaragius (whom Rey calls the Eastern St Thomas) wrote, in the latter half of the 13th century, a chronicle of universal history in Syriac, which he also issued, in an Arabic recension, as a _Compendious History of the Dynasties_.

II. The documents bearing on the history of the Crusades and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem are various. Under the head of charters come the _Regesta regni Hierosolymitani_, published by Rohricht, Innsbruck, 1893 (with an Additamentum in 1904); the _Cartulaire generale des Hospitaliers_, by Delaville Leroulx (Paris, 1894 onwards); and the _Cartulaire de l'eglise du St Sepulcre_, by de Roziere (Paris, 1849). Under the head of laws come the assizes of the Kingdom, edited by Beugnot in the _Recueil des historiens des croisades_; and the assizes of Antioch, printed at Venice in 1876. G. Schlumberger has written on the coins and seals of the Latin East in various publications; while Rey has written an _Etude sur les monuments de l'architecture militaire_ (Paris, 1871). The genealogy of the Levant is given in _Le Livre des lignages d'outre-mer_ (published along with the assizes).

BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--The best modern account of the original authorities for the Crusades is that of A. Molinier, _Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, vols. ii. and iii. W. Wattenbach's _Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen_ gives an account of Albert of Aix (vol. ii., ed. 1894, pp. 170-180) and of Ekkehard of Aura (ibid. pp. 189-198). Von Sybel's _Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges_ contains a full study of the authorities for the First Crusade; while the prefaces to Hagenmeyer's editions of the _Gesta_ and of Ekkehard are also valuable. Gaston Dodu, in the work mentioned below, begins by a brief account of the original authorities, which is chiefly of value so far as it deals with William of Tyre and the history of the assizes; and H. Prutz has also a short account of some of the historians of the Crusades (_Kulturgeschichte_, pp. 453-469). Finally reference may be made to the works of Kugler and Klimke above mentioned, and to J. F. Michaud's _Bibliographie des croisades_ (Paris, 1822).

_Modern Writers._--The various works of R. Rohricht present the soundest, if not the brightest, account of the Crusades. There is a _Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs_ (Innsbruck, 1901), a _Geschichte des Konigreichs Jerusalem_ (ibid. 1898) and a _Geschichte der Kreuzzuge in Umris_ (ibid. 1898). For the First Crusade von Sybel's work and Chalandon's _Alexis I^er Comnene_ may also be mentioned; for the Fourth A. Luchaire's volume on _Innocent III: La Question d'Orient_; while for the whole of the Crusades Norden's _Papstum und Byzanz_ is of value. B. Kugler's _Geschichte der Kreuzzuge_ (in Oncken's series) still remains a suggestive and valuable work; and L. Brehier's _L'Eglise et l'orient au moyen age_ (Paris, 1907) contains not only an up-to-date account of the Crusades, but also a full and useful bibliography, which should be consulted for fuller information. On points of chronology, and on the relations between the crusaders and their Mahommedan neighbours, W. B. Stevenson's _The Crusaders in the East_ (Cambridge, 1907) is very valuable. On the constitutional and social history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem Dodu's _Histoire des institutions du royaume latin de Jerusalem_ is very useful; E. G. Rey's _Les Colonies franques en Syrie_ contains many interesting details; and Prutz's _Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzuge_ contains both an account of the Latin East and an attempt to sketch the effects of the Crusades on the progress of civilization. The works of Gmelin and J. Delaville-Leroulx on the Templars and Hospitallers respectively are worth consulting; while for Eastern affairs the English reader may be referred to G. Lestrange's _Palestine under the Moslem_, and to Stanley Lane-Poole's _Life of Saladin_ and his _Mahommedan Dynasties_ (the latter a valuable work of reference). (E. Br.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Fulcher of Chartres, 1, i. For what follows, with regard to the Church's conversion of _guerra_ into the Holy War, cf. especially the passage--"Procedant contra infideles ad pugnam jam incipi dignam ... qui abusive _privatum certamen_ contra fideles consuescebant distendere quondam."

[2] Tradition credits a pope still earlier than Gregory VII. with the idea of a crusade. Silvester II. is said to have preached a general expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem; and the same preaching is attributed to Sergius IV. in 1011. But the supposed letter of Silvester is a later forgery; and in 1000 the way of the Christian to Jerusalem was still free and open.

[3] The comte de Riant impugned the authenticity of Alexius' letter to the count of Flanders. It is very probable that the versions of this letter which we possess, and which are to be found only in later writings like Guibert de Nogent, are apocryphal; Alexius can hardly have held out the bait of the beauty of Greek women, or have written that he preferred to fall under the yoke of the Latins rather than that of the Turks. But it is also probable that these apocryphal versions are based on a genuine original.

[4] Ekkehard, _Chronica_, p. 213.

[5] The _Chanson de Roland_, which cannot be posterior to the First Crusade--for the poem never alludes to it--already contains the idea of the Holy War against Islam. The idea of the crusade had thus already ripened in French poetry, before Urban preached his sermon.

[6] Book i. c. iii. (in Muratori, _S.R.I._, v. 550).

[7] Ekkehard, _Chronica_, 214.

[8] Later legend ascribed the origin of the First Crusade to the preaching of Peter the Hermit. The legend has been followed by modern historians; but in point of fact Peter is a figure of secondary importance.(See PETER THE HERMIT.)

[9] Godfrey's army numbered some 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry (Rohricht, _Erst. Kreuzz._ 61): Urban II. reckons Bohemund's knights as 7000 in number (_ibid._ 71, n. 7).

[10] The Genoese had been invited by Urban II. in September 1096 "to go with their gallies to Eastern parts in order to set free the path to the Lord's Sepulchre."

[11] Thus already on the First Crusade the path of negotiation is attempted simultaneously with the Holy War. On the Third Crusade, and above all on the Sixth, this path was still more seriously attempted. It is interesting, too, to notice the part which the laity already plays in directing the course of the Crusade. From the first the Crusade, however clerical in its conception, was largely secular in its conduct; and thus, somewhat paradoxically, a religious enterprise aided the growth of the secular motive, and contributed to the escape of the laity from that tendency towards a papal theocracy, which was evident in the pontificate of Gregory VII.

[12] Before he left, Raymund had played in Jerusalem the same part of dog in the manger which he had also played at Antioch, and had given Godfrey considerable trouble. See the articles, GODFREY OF BOUILLON and RAYMUND OF TOULOUSE.

[13] For an account of the kings of Jerusalem see the articles on the five BALDWINS, on the two AMALRICS, on FULK and JOHN OF BRIENNE and on the LUSIGNAN (family).

[14] The genuineness of the letter (on which, by the way, depends the story of Godfrey's agreement with Dagobert) has been impeached by Prutz and Kugler, and doubted by Rohricht. It is accepted by von Sybel and Hagenmeyer.

[15] Yet the north always continued to be more populous than the south; and the Latins maintained themselves in Antioch and Tripoli a century after the loss of Jerusalem. The land was richer in the north: it was protected by its connexion with Cyprus and Armenia: it was more remote from Egypt--the basis of Mahommedan power from the reign of Saladin onwards.

[16] Pisa naturally connected itself with Antioch, because Antioch was hostile to Constantinople, and Pisa cherished the same hostility, since Alexius I. had in 1080 given preferential treatment to Venice, the enemy of Pisa.

[17] This is the year in which the kingdom may be regarded as definitely founded. The period of conquest practically ends at this date, though isolated gains were afterwards made. The year 1110 is additionally important by reason of the accession of Maudud al Mosul, which marks the beginning of a Moslem reaction.

[18] Ilghazi died in 1122. His successor was Balak, who ruled from 1122 to 1124, and succeeded in capturing in 1123 Baldwin II. of Jerusalem. The union of Mardin and Aleppo under the sway of these two amirs, connecting as it did Mesopotamia with Syria, marks an important stage in the revival of Mahommedan power (Stevenson, _Crusades in the East_, p. 109).

[19] Maudud (the brother of the sultan Mahommed) may be regarded as the first to begin the _jihad_, or counter-crusade, and his attack expedition of 1113, which carried him so far into the heart of Palestine, may be considered as the first act of the _jihad_ (Stevenson, op. cit. pp. 87, 96).

[20] Aleppo had passed from the rule of Timurtash (son of Ilghazi and successor of Balak) into the possession of Aksunkur, 1125.

[21] Stevenson, however, believes that Zengi was _not_ animated by the idea of recovering Jerusalem. He thinks that his principal aim was simply the formation of a compact Mahommedan state, which was, indeed, in the issue destined to be the instrument of the _jihad_, but was not so intended by Zengi (op. cit. pp. 123-124).

[22] There are certain connexions and analogies between the kingdom of Sicily and that of Jerusalem during the twelfth century. In either case there is an importation of Western feudalism into a country originally possessed of Byzantine institutions, but affected by an Arabic occupation. The subject deserves investigation.

[23] The holders of fiefs (_sodeers_) both held fiefs of land and received pay; the paid force of _soudoyers_ only received pay. An instance of the latter is furnished by John of Margat, a vassal of the seignory of Arsuf. He has 200 bezants along with a quantity of wheat, barley, lentils and oil; and in return he must march with four horses (Rey, _Les Colonies franques en Syrie_, p. 24).

[24] For the history of the orders see the articles on the TEMPLARS; ST JOHN OF JERUSALEM, KNIGHTS OF; KNIGHTS, and the TEUTONIC ORDER. The Templars were founded about the year 1118 by a Burgundian knight, Hugh de Paganis; the Hospitallers sprang from a foundation in Jerusalem erected by merchants of Amalfi before the First Crusade, and were reorganized under Gerard le Puy, master until 1120. The Teutonic knights date from the Third Crusade.

[25] As was noticed above, there were apparently separate assizes for the three principalities, in addition to the assizes of the kingdom. The assizes of Antioch have been discovered and published. The assizes of the kingdom itself are twofold--the assizes of the high court and the assizes of the court of burgesses. (1) The assizes of the high court are preserved for us in works by legists--John of Ibelin, Philip of Novara and Geoffrey of Tort--composed in the 13th century. We possess, in other words, _law-books_ (like Bracton's treatise _De legibus_), but not _laws_--and law-books made after the loss of the kingdom to which the laws belonged. There are two vexed questions with regard to these law-books. (a) The first concerns the origin and character of the laws which the law-books profess to expound. According to the story of the legists who wrote these books--e.g. John of Ibelin--the laws of the kingdom were laid down by Godfrey, who is thus regarded as the great [Greek: nomothetes] of the kingdom. These laws (progressively modified, it is admitted) were kept in Jerusalem, under the name of "Letters of the Sepulchre," until 1187. In that year they were lost; and the legists tell us that they are attempting to reconstruct _par oir dire_ the gist of the lost archetype. The story of the legists is now generally rejected. Godfrey never legislated: the customs of the kingdom gradually grew, and were gradually defined, especially under kings like Baldwin III. and Amalric I. If there was thus only a customary and unwritten law (and William of Tyre definitely speaks of a _jus consuetudinarium_ under Baldwin III., _quo regnum regebatur_), then the "Letters of the Sepulchre" are a myth--or rather, if they ever existed, they existed not as a code of written law, but, perhaps, as a register of fiefs, like the Sicilian _Defetarii_. Thus the story of the legists shrinks down to the regular myth of the primitive legislator, used to give an air of respectability to law-books, which really record an unwritten custom. The fact is that until the 13th century the Franks lived _consuetudinibus antiquis et jure non scripto_. They preferred an unwritten law, as Prutz suggests, partly because it suited the barristers (who often belonged to the baronage, for the Frankish nobles were "great pleaders in court and out of court"), and partly because the high court was left unbound so long as there was no written code. In the 13th century it became necessary for the legists to codify, as it were, the unwritten law, because the upheavals of the times necessitated the fixing of some rules in writing, and especially because it was necessary to oppose a definite custom of the kingdom to Frederick II., who sought, as king of Jerusalem, to take advantage of the want of a written law, to substitute his own conceptions of law in the teeth of the high court. (b) The second difficulty concerns the text of the law-books themselves. The text of Ibelin became a _textus receptus_--but it also became overlaid by glosses, for it was used as authoritative in the kingdom of Cyprus after the loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and it needed expounding. Recensions and revisions were twice made, in 1368 and 1531; but how far the true Ibelin was recovered, and what additions or alterations were made at these two dates, we cannot tell. We can only say that we have the text of Ibelin which was used in Cyprus in the later middle ages. At the same time, if our text is thus late, it must be remembered that its content gives us the earliest and purest exposition of French feudalism, and describes for us the organization of a kingdom, where all rights and duties were connected with the fief, and the monarch was only a suzerain of feudatories. (2) The assizes of the court of burgesses became the basis of a treatise at an earlier date than the assizes of the high court. The date of the redaction (which was probably made by some learned burgess) may well have been the reign of Baldwin III., as Kugler suggests: he was the first native king, and a king learned in the law; but Beugnot would refer the assizes to the years immediately preceding Saladin's capture of Jerusalem. These assizes do not, of course, appear in Ibelin, who was only concerned with the feudal law of the high court. They were used, like the assizes of the high court, in Cyprus; and, like the other assizes, they were made the subject of investigation in 1531, with the object of discovering a good text. The law which is expounded in these assizes is a mixture of Frankish law with the Graeco-Roman law of the Eastern empire which prevailed among the native population of Syria.

In regard to both assizes, it is most important to bear in mind that we possess not laws, but law-books or custumals--records made by lawyers for their fellows of what they conceived to be the law, and supported by legal arguments and citations of cases. But, as Prutz remarks, Philip of Novara _lehrt nicht die Wissenschaft des Rechts, sondern die des Unrechts_: he does not explain the law so much as the ways of getting round it.

[26] For instance, the abbey of Mount Sion had large possessions, not only in the Holy Land (at Ascalon, Jaffa, Acre, Tyre, Caesarea and Tarsus), but also in Sicily, Calabria, Lombardy, Spain and France (at Orleans, Bourges and Poitiers).

[27] One must remember that these reinforcements would often consist of desperate characters. It was one of the misfortunes of Palestine that it served as a Botany Bay, to which the criminals of the West were transported for penance. The natives, already prone to the immorality which must infect a mixed population living under a hot sun, the immorality which still infects a place like Aden, were not improved by the addition of convicts.

[28] The manorial system in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was a continuation of the village system as it had existed under the Arabs. In each village (_casale)_ the _rustici_ were grouped in families (_foci_): the tenants paid from 1/4 to 1\3 of the crop, besides a poll-tax and labour-dues. The villages were mostly inhabited by Syrians: it was rarely that Franks settled down as tillers of the soil. Prutz regards the manorial system as oppressive. Absentee landlords, he thinks, rack-rented the soil (p. 167), while the "inhuman severity" of their treatment of villeins led to a progressive decay of agriculture, destroyed the economic basis of the Latin kingdom, and led the natives to welcome the invasion of Saladin (pp. 327-331).

The French writers Rey and Dodu are more kind to the Franks; and the testimony of contemporary Arabic writers, who seem favourably impressed by the treatment of their subjects by the Franks, bears out their view, while the tone of the assizes is admittedly favourable to the Syrians. One must not forget that there was a brisk native manufacture of carpets, pottery, ironwork, gold-work and soap; or that the Syrians of the towns had a definite legal position.

[29] After 1143 one may therefore speak of the period of the Epigoni--the native Franks, ready to view the Moslems as joint occupants of Syria, and to imitate the dress and habits of their neighbours.