The Deeds of God through the Franks

G >> Guibert of Nogent >> The Deeds of God through the Franks

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As we were about to put an end to the body of the present history, we
discovered, with the aid of the author of the world, that a certain
Fulker, a priest of Chartres, who had for a long time been the
chaplain for Baldwin at Edessa, had spread word, in a manner
different from ours, about a few other things that were unknown to us,
and these were erroneous and in rough language. We decided to
include some, though certainly not all, of this material in these
pages. Since this same man produces swollen, foot-and-a-half-long
words,[255] and pours forth the blaring colors of vapid rhetorical
schemes, I prefer to snatch the bare limbs of the deeds themselves,
with whatever sack-cloth of eloquence I have, rather than cover them
with learned weavings. Unless I am in error, at the beginning of his
little work he says that some of those who set out on the journey to
Jerusalem arranged for boats and sailed across the sea that separates
Apulia and Epirus, and, whether because they committed themselves to
a sea that was unknown to them, or because the ships sank because
overloaded, it is reported that the ship carrying nearly 600 men was
dashed to pieces. After they were drowned in the roaring sea during
storm, and quickly washed up on shore by the force of the waves,
signs of the cross which they all wore on their cloaks, tunics, and
mantles were found on the skin of their shoulders. No one, that is,
of the faithful, doubted that the sacred stigma could have been
imprinted on their skin by God, to make their faith manifest, but the
man who wrote it, if he is still alive, had to think carefully about
whether it actually happened. For when the beginning of this journey
was announced everywhere among the Christian people, and it was
proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire in accordance with God's will,
men of the lowest social class, and even worthless women, laid claim
to this miracle in every way, in every part of their bodies. One man
scratched his cheeks, drew a cross with the flowing blood, and showed
it to everyone. Another showed the spot in his eye, by means of
which he had been blinded, as a sign that a heavenly announcement had
urged him to undertake the journey. Another, either by using the
juices of fresh fruits, or some other kind of dye, painted on some
little piece of his body the shape of a cross. As they used to paint
the area below the eyes with antimony, so they now painted themselves
green or red, so that, by means of this fraudulent and deceitful
exhibition, they might claim that God had showed himself in them.
The reader will remember the abbot of whom I spoke above, who cut his
forehead with iron, and who I said was made the bishop of Caesarea in
Palestine. I swear by God that I saw, when I was living in Beauvais,
in the middle of the day, clouds approach each other somewhat
obliquely, so that they scarcely seemed to form anything other then
the shape of a crane or a stork, when suddenly many voices from
everywhere in the city cried out that a cross had been sent to them
in the sky. What I am about to say is ridiculous, but has been
testified to by authors who are not ridiculous. A poor woman set out
on the journey, when a goose, filled with I do not know what
instructions, clearly exceeding the laws of her own dull nature,
followed her. Lo, rumor, flying on Pegasean wings, filled the
castles and cities with the news that even geese had been sent by God
to liberate Jerusalem. Not only did they deny that this wretched
woman was leading the goose, but they said that the goose led her.
At Cambrai they assert that, with people standing on all sides, the
woman walked through the middle of the church to the altar, and the
goose followed behind, in her footsteps, with no one urging it on.
Soon after, we have learned, the goose died in Lorraine; she
certainly would have gone more directly to Jerusalem if, the day
before she set out, she had made of herself a holiday meal for her
mistress. We have attached this incident to the true history so that
men may know that they have been warned against permitting Christian
seriousness to be trivialized by belief in vulgar fables.

Finally, the same author claims that God appeared to Pyrrus, the man
who betrayed Antioch, and commanded him in vision to betray the city.
This was easy to do for him who made himself audible to Cain and
Hagar, and made an angel visible to an ass. Certainly all those who
returned after the capture of the sacred city, and who sent to us
letters about the things that happened, particularly Anselm of
Ribemont, said no such thing. Anselm makes no mention of Pyrrus, but
reveals that it was betrayed by three men. According to the letter,
before the three leaders engaged in serious discussions about handing
over the city, they offered us a false peace, promising that they
would soon thereafter give up the city. The mutual confidence that
resulted was so great that they sometimes welcomed Franks within the
walls of the city, and their men often mingled with ours. But when
our army became less watchful and too comfortable, the Turks set
ambushes and killed some Franks, and themselves suffered losses.
There our men lost an excellent young man, who had been the constable
for the king of the Franks, and his name was Gualo.[256]

Fulcher denies the discovery of the Lord's Lance, claiming that the
man who discovered it was exposed as false, and punished by death in
the trial by fire which he undertook. Not only do recent testimonies
contradict him on this event, but the most pious ancient writers
stipulate that long ago, when they visited the Holy Places, before
the Turks invaded the kingdoms of the East and of Syria, they used to
worship and kiss this same lance in that city. Will the cleverness
of the priest Fulcher, who, while our men were suffering from
starvation at Antioch, was feasting at ease in Edessa, prevail over
the inspired work of the wise men who died at the time that it was
found? Baldwin, who ruled this Edessa after the previous Baldwin, in
his letter to Archbishop Manassa said that it was found by means of
the revelation of Saint Andrew, and that it instilled bravery and
faithful confidence in our men to battle the attacking Turks. Was
the worthy bishop of Puy so foolish as to have carried a lance of
questionable authenticity with such reverence when he went out to
fight Kherboga? A certain memorable event occurred there: when
Kherboga ordered the grass to be burned, the bishop saw that the
dense smoke was pouring into the faces and eyes of the Franks as they
rushed into battle, and he held the holy Lance in front of him, while,
with his pious right hand, he made the image of the cross in the
face of the rising smoke, tearfully imploring the aid of all-powerful
Jesus; then, swifter than speech, his piety sent the round mass of
foul smoke right back at those who had sent it. In addition, to
speak about the death of the man who found the Lance, who is said to
have died few days after undergoing the trial by fire, I shall say
how he died, although no one is certain whether he was harmed by the
flames, if they tell me why he who had received the gift of tongues
according to Gregory destroyed his limbs with his own teeth.

Furthermore, if I am not mistaken, he adds that, while they were
maintaining the siege of Antioch, a brilliant red light, like a fire,
shone in the night above the army, and it also unmistakably took the
form of a cross. Some of the wise men there related the fire to
future battles, and said that the appearance of a cross was a sign of
certain salvation and victory to come. We do not call this an error,
for many witnesses confirm this testimony. About this, I say, leaky
Parmeno should be able to keep silent.[257] Something like this
occurred at the beginning of the journey, which I happened to pass
over earlier[258] when I spoke of the movements of the eclipses and
shooting stars which were seen. One day during the summer, towards
evening, such a great fire appeared in the Northern sky that many
people rushed from their homes to find out who was the enemy
destroying their lands with such flames. All these events we firmly
believe to have been portents of the wars which were to come. And
now, having put aside the things that we thought might be treated
separately, let us return to the order of the narrative.

No one can express how courageously Jerusalem was defended by its
inhabitants during the siege. You would have seen how they had
learned to hurl stones at the ballistic machines, how to cover their
walls with timber and mats, and how to hurl what they called Greek
fire at the machines, since they knew that the greatest difficulty
for the besiegers was the lack of material. But the Franks, known
for their cleverness, quenched the raging fire by sprinkling vinegar
on it; in addition, they struck with sharp scythes anything found
hanging over the walls. The Saracens added iron hooks to their long
spears, with which they struck our men who, dressed in cuirasses,
were fighting from the tops of machines; drawing their swords, our
men made sticks out of their spears. But what best showed the
vehement commitment of the Saracens was the fact that when one of
them was struck by one of our men, the shield of the man who had been
struck was snatched up, quicker than speech, by another man, who took
up the place from which the first had fallen, so that none of our men
could have known that his blows had wounded any of them.

When the city was fortunately captured, Bohemund, who had won the
right to rule, by means of the hunger, cold, and loss of blood
suffered by the Franks, preferred to remain there, rather to go on to
trouble about liberating the tomb of Jesus Christ. And while he was
inappropriately fighting to win a house and small tower, he lost the
fruit and joy of all of his previous labor. What good would it have
done him to run, when he was unwilling to understand in which
direction to go? However, since he had until this time performed so
well for the army of the Lord, both in arms and in counsel, it is not
inappropriate to weave a few words into the text at this point, to
indicate how it came about that he went. When he sent a messenger to
Baldwin at Edessa, asking him also to come with him to look at the
tomb of the Savior, Baldwin held back from rushing off to besiege the
city, not because he was greedy, but because he had to look after his
own city. The city was filled with Christians, and often endured the
attacks of the surrounding Gentiles. After the man had promised to
go on the journey, both men gathered large numbers of knights and
foot-soldiers, since they feared not only those, but nearly everyone
in the surrounding territory, and they set off for Jerusalem. After
they had pitched their tents together, and nearly 20,000 men had
assembled, a terrible lack of food began to assail them, so that they
had nothing to put on their bread, and no bread on which to put
anything. The supplies of the provinces, drained by the constant,
various sieges, and the extended and lengthy expeditions that had
passed through them, were in no way sufficient to maintain so many
animals and men. Therefore the multitude, driven by the wretched
lack of food, again resorted to their earlier strategy of eating the
flesh of asses and horses, and they not desist from this practice
until they reached the longed-for city of Tiberias, famous for having
fed 5000 men under the Lord's guidance. There for a little while
their mad hunger was relieved by a plentiful supply of food, and then
they went on at last to Jerusalem, where they found a huge number of
stinking bodies, hacked to pieces, so that they could not breathe
without the stench penetrating their noses and mouths. They were
welcomed joyfully by king Godfrey, and they remained there because
Christmas was approaching. They celebrated Christmas at Bethlehem,
as the judgement of reason would dictate, not only because they had
come together there with a mutual purpose, but also because of the
unexpected victory granted in their own time, which aroused
unbelievable celebration among the Franks. After they left, each for
his own territory, Bohemund was attacked by a large Turkish force as
he was entering a certain city, and led away as a captive to a
distant region of Persia. When news of this event reached the
illustrious Tancred, he hurried as quickly as he could to occupy
Antioch, and to fortify Laodicia, since both were under Bohemund's
control. Robert, the count of Normandy, held Laodicea first, but
when the city's inhabitants could no longer bear the taxes levied by
this prodigal man, they drove the guards from the citadel, freed
themselves from his authority, and, out of hatred for him, abjured
the use of the coinage of Rouen. After some years in prison,
Bohemund's release was finally obtained by a treaty and a ransom.

Since much has been said earlier, my praise of Godfrey's great
knightly prowess can be brought to a conclusion by using the words of
the Baldwin whom I just mentioned, the son of count Hugo of
Rethel[259] When king Baldwin came to the throne he was put in charge
of Edessa, but, alas, a band of Turks attacked him[260] and he was
imprisoned by the pagans, and if he is alive, he is still there.
This is what he said, although clothed in my words, about Godfrey:
"It happened on the holiday of Saint-Denis. The king was returning
from a city called Morocoria, and 120 Turks lay in ambush, while he
was accompanied by only twenty knights. Fearlessly we awaited their
attack, gripping our arms, while they, because they had attacked
suddenly, thought that we would flee because we were so few. But we,
made more audacious by the aid we had continually experienced from
God, upon whom we relied spiritually, attacked the barbarians, and
wreaked such havoc upon them, that we killed eighty men and captured
ninety horses." Then he remembered, with a mocking smile, those who
had fled from Antioch, and those who, after they had carried out
their mission in Constantinople, had put off returning, and, to
inspire the Franks who had remained in France, he added the following
about his own fortune: "We have a vast fortune, and, not counting the
treasures that belong to others, ten castles that belong to me alone,
and an abbey pay me annually total of 1500 marks. And if God favors
my taking Aleppo, I shall soon have 100 castles under my command. Do
not believe those who have retreated, claiming that we grow weary
with hunger, but rather trust in my words."

When this king left his noble life for a more blessed future life,
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, mindful of his temperance and mildness,
and afraid of losing his nobility of lineage, sent ambassadors to his
brother, the duke of Edessa, to take control of the kingdom. He
lived in splendor in his realm; whenever he went out he had a gold
shield carried before him, which bore the image of an eagle, in the
Greek manner. Like the pagans, he went about in a toga, let his
beard grow, accepted bows from his worshippers, and ate on rugs laid
on the ground. If he entered one of his towns or cities, two knights
blew two trumpets before his chariot. Baldwin then yielded to the
ambassadors and set off for Jerusalem. But when the neighboring
pagans heard what he proposed to do, and saw him depart, they
embarked in their ships, with a favoring wind, although in vain,
since the duke was hurrying along the sandy banks of the sea,
accompanied by a small group of men, while they rowed furiously,
their prows plowing the waves, striving to intercept him, hurrying to
bring their ship to the shore. But the duke, with all of his mortal
strength gone,[261] in his great anguish called upon the Most High,
promising that he would always obey Him and that he would rule the
kingdom in accordance with Christian faith. And lo, the ships which
had been moving as though they had wings now stood still as though
stuck in mud, and the more each man struggled to sweep the sea with
his oars, the more the hope was ridiculed by the steady backward
movement of their boats. Thus the efforts of the unjust were
confounded, and the duke remained deservedly free, seeing in this
auspicious event a sign that heaven favored his assuming the purple.
I have omitted mentioning the fact that Daimbert, the bishop of Pisa,
had already set out for Jerusalem, together with group of his people,
accompanied by the bishop of Apulia, by Bohemund, and by this very
Duke.

After he accepted the kingdom, it is said that his first expeditions
were undertaken against the Arabs. When he reached the slopes of
Mount Sinai, he found a barbaric group of people, who resembled the
Ethiopeans. He spared their lives because of their untamed behavior
and ugliness. There, in the church which is called Saint Aaron,
where God had given his oracles to our fathers, he prayed, and the
army drank from the fountain of refutation, where, because Moses had
drawn a distinction with his lips, and did not sanctify the Lord in
the presence of the sons of Israel,[262] the Lord kept him from the
promised land. Here the opinion of my priest has faltered, for it is
is known that not Sinai, but the mountain Or, which forms the border
of the ancient city of Petra in Arabia, was the place where Aaron
lost his life, and water emerged from the depths of the rock which he
struck.

In that holy city of Jerusalem, an ancient miracle renewed itself,
and I call it ancient because the Latin world does not know when it
begun. Our conjecture is that it began when, after the city had
begun to be trampled by pagans, before our times, the Lord granted it
both to those who lived there, and to those who happened to be there
at that time. Every year, on the Sabbath of Easter, the lamp of the
Lord's tomb seemed to be kindled by divine power; it was the custom
in that city that the pagans went through everyone's house,
extinguishing every fire, leaving only ashes in the hearths; the
pagans made such a search, because they thought that the miracle was
the product of the fraud, and not of the faith of the faithful. When
Vulcan had been turned out by this means from the city, at the hour
at which our religion's law has determined that the Catholic people
are to be present at the service of the solemn resurrection and
baptism, you would have seen pagans moving throughout the basilica
with their swords drawn, threatening to kill our people. You would
also have seen those natives who worshipped our faith entrusting
their profound grief to God, both those whose prayers had drawn them
from the furthest reaches of the world, and those who had come
because of the miracle, all to pray singlemindedly for the gift of
light. Nor was there any unsuitable delay, but the passionate
request was granted swiftly. I have heard from some old men who went
there that the papyrus or wick (I don't know which of them was used)
was once removed by a pagan's trick, and the metal remained empty,
but, by means of a miracle from heaven, when light shone from the
metal, he who wanted to defraud the heavenly powers learned that
natural forces fight even against their own natures for their God.

In the year that Baldwin accepted the sceptre from his predecessor,
it is said that the miracle was obtained with such difficulty that
night was almost upon them before their prayers and tears were
answered. The priest mentioned above delivered a sermon to the
people, asking for sinners to confess; the king and the priest urged
them to make peace among themselves, and they promised to remedy
whatever was contrary to faith and to virtue. Meanwhile, because of
the urgency of the matter, so many hideous crimes were confessed that
day, that if penitence did not follow, it would have seemed correct
for the sacred light to have been removed without delay; however,
soon after the reproof, the lamp was lit. The next year, when the
time came for the celestial flame to make the tomb glorious, all men
lifted up their prayers from deep within. Greeks and Syrians,
Armenians and Latins, each in his own language, called upon God and
his saints. The king, the leaders, and the people, with penance and
grief in their hearts, marched behind the priests; all men were
racked with pain, because, since the day that the city was won by the
Christians, things had happened there that they had never heard of
happening under the pagans. Fulker of Charters, however, taking with
him the chaplain of the patriarch Daimbert, went to the Mount of
Olives, where the lamp of God used to appear when it did not come to
Jerusalem. When they returned, bringing nothing to please the ears
of the expectant Church, many sermons were delivered to the people,
which gave no solace to those who were suffering, but rather cause
for anguish. That day, when the miracle did not happen, everyone
returned home; there was a double night, with bitter sadness
tormenting their breasts. The next day they decided to make a
procession, with appropriate mourning, to the Temple of the Lord.
They went, without the joy of Easter, dressed no differently from the
day before, when suddenly, behind them, the keepers of the temple
proclaimed that the lamp of the sacred monument was lit. Why do I
delay? On that day such grace shone, augmented abundantly by the
delay, that the brilliance of God illuminated, although not
simulataneously, but sequentially, approximately fifty lamps. Not
only during the sacred mysteries, but even when the king, after
services were over, ate in the palace, messengers came frequently to
summon him to leave the table to see the lights newly lit. One
cannot describe how much grief was changed to relief when, on that
day, he agreed to what he never had consented to before, to be
crowned king in that city, in the house of the Lord, in
acknowledgement of the Lord's gift.

Then the Franks, who had redeemed the city with their blood, eager to
see their parents, sons, and wives, and perhaps confident in their
number and bravery, decided to return to their own sweet home by the
same land route they had taken when they came. Although they thought
that they would be able to pass freely through the land surrounding
Nicea, which they had seized earlier, the Turks, who had been placed
there by the emperor once the city had been turned over to him to
impede the Franks when the occasion arose, put up strenuous
resistance to them. Unless I am mistaken, my priest[263] says that
they cut to pieces 100,000 men, but I fear that the man is wrong in
offering such a number, because it is the case that he is eager to
offer such guesses elsewhere. For example, he dares to estimate that
those who set out for Jerusalem numbered 6,000,000.[264] I would be
surprised if all the land this side of the Alps, indeed if all the
kingdoms of the West, could supply so many men, since we know for a
fact that at the first battle before the walls of Nicea scarcely 100,
000 fully-equipped knights are reported to have been present. And if
he was concerned with including all those who had gone on the journey,
but who died, on land and on the sea, of sickness or hunger, in the
various regions through which they passed, they still would not
amount to such a great number of men. After the Franks, then, had
suffered hideous carnage, most of those who had survived returned to
Jerusalem, having lost what they owned. The generous king genuinely
commiserated with them, gave them many gifts, and persuaded them to
return to their homeland by sea.

But the prince of Babylon, less concerned with the loss of Jerusalem
than with the proximity of the Frankish settlement, set out to launch
a heavy offensive against the new king, often striving to attack the
port city of Acre. Count Robert of Normandy had besieged Acre when
the army of the Lord was advancing to besiege Jerusalem, but duke
Godfrey had brought him away, in expectation of a more successful
undertaking. The Babylonian then gathered a vast army and challenged
the Christian king to battle. He gathered his small band, to whom
the Lord said, "Fear not,"[265] and, setting his troops in order as
well as he could, he attacked the impious ones. Killing them swiftly,
like brute beasts, he scattered them, like a hurricane driving dust.
A second time he sent his 9000 knights forward, supported by 20,000
Ethiopean common foot-soldiers. The pious king assembled against him
scarcely 1000 knights and foot-soldiers, forming seven battalions out
of them, and he sent them with great confidence directly at the
thickest ranks of the enemy. When the prince saw far off a pagan
knight, he rushed at him with such force that he drove his spear,
together with its standard, into the man's breast, and when he pulled
the spear from the wound, the standard remained in the man's breast.
Frightened by the courage of the prince and his men, the enemy
retreated at first, but their courage returned, because of the
strength of their numbers, and they united to attack our men,
compelling them to think of fleeing. They said that this misfortune
had happened to them because, in their foolishness, they had not
brought the cross of the Lord to this battle. They said that, guided
by a Syrian or some Armenian, they found this cross, which, like the
Lance, had lain buried somewhere. They drew a lesson from this
incident, which was more blemish of a victory in the process of being
won than defeat, and when the army of the Babylonian prince, as
strong as the previous one, came forward to fight for the third time,
the splendid king, together with what forces he could gather,
deriving his confidence from God, went up against them. After he had
drawn up his troops as well as he could, the clash of men was so
great that, although the armies were unequal, both sides suffered
severe losses, as 6000 pagan soldiers, and 100 Christians, lay dead.
And because they had no prideful concern for banners with eagles and
dragons, they raised aloft the sign of the humiliating Crucifixion,
the Cross, and as praiseworthy conquerors drove their enemies to
flight.

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