Kerbogha in the open (June 28), but not before many of their number, including even Count Stephen of Blois, had deserted and fled.
With the discovery of the Lance, which became as it were a Provençal asset, Count Raymund assumes a new importance. Mingled with the religiosity of his nature there was much obstinacy and self-seeking; and when Kerbogha was finally repelled, he began to dispute the possession of Antioch with Bohemund, pleading in excuse his oath to Alexius. The struggle lasted for some months, and helped to delay the further progress of the crusaders. Raymund, indeed, left Antioch in November, and moved S.E. to Marra; but his men still held two positions in Antioch, from which they were not dislodged by Bohemund till January 1099. Expelled from Antioch, the obstinate Raymund endeavoured to recompense himself in the south (where indeed he subsequently created the county of Tripoli); and from February to May 1099 he occupied himself with the siege of Arca, to the N.E. of Tripoli. It was during the siege of Arca that Peter Bartholomew, to whom the vision of the Holy Lance had first appeared, was subjected, with no definite result, to the ordeal of fire—the hard-headed Normans doubting the genuine character of any Provençal vision, the more when, as in this case, it turned to the political advantage of the Provençals. The siege was long protracted; the mass of the pilgrims were anxious to proceed to Jerusalem, and, as the altered tone of the author of the Gesta sufficiently indicates, thoroughly weary of the obstinate political bickerings of Raymund and Bohemund. Here Godfrey of Bouillon finally came to the front, and placing himself at the head of the discontented pilgrims, he forced Raymund to accept the offers of the amir of Tripoli, to desist from the siege, and to march to Jerusalem (in the middle of May 1099). Bohemund remained in Antioch: the other leaders pressed forward, and following the coast route, arrived before Jerusalem in the beginning of June. After a little more than a month’s siege, the city was finally captured (July 15). The slaughter was terrible; the blood of the conquered ran down the streets, until men splashed in blood as they rode. At nightfall, “sobbing for excess of joy,” the crusaders came to the Sepulchre from their treading of the winepress, and put their blood-stained hands together in prayer. So, on that day of July, the First Crusade came to an end.
It remained to determine the future government of Jerusalem; and here the eternal problem of the relations of Church and State emerged. It might seem natural that the Holy City, conquered in a holy war by an army of which the pope had made a churchman, Bishop Adhemar, the leader, should be left to the government of the Church. But Adhemar had died in August 1098 (whence, in large part, the confusion and bickerings which followed in the end of 1098 and the beginning of 1099); nor were there any churchmen left of sufficient dignity or weight to secure the triumph of the ecclesiastical cause. In the meeting of the crusaders on the 22nd of July, some few voices were raised in support of the view that a “spiritual vicar” should first be chosen in the place of the late patriarch of Jerusalem (who had just died in Cyprus), before the election of any lay ruler was taken in hand. But the voices were not heard; and the princes proceeded at once to elect a lay ruler. Raymund of Provence refused to accept their nomination, nominally on the pious ground that he did not wish to reign where Christ had suffered on the cross; though one may suspect that the establishment of a principality in Tripoli—in which he had been interrupted by the pressure of the pilgrims—was still the first object of his ambition. The refusal of Raymund meant the choice of Godfrey of Bouillon, who had, as we have seen, become prominent since the siege of Arca; and Godfrey accordingly became—not king, but “advocate of the Holy Sepulchre,” while a few days afterwards Arnulf, the chaplain of Robert of Normandy, and one of the sceptics in the matter of the Holy Lance, became “vicar” of the vacant patriarchate. Godfrey’s first business was to repel an Egyptian attack, which he accomplished successfully at Ascalon, with the aid of the other crusaders (August 12). At the end of August the other crusaders returned,[1] and Godfrey was left with a small army of 2000 men, and the support of Tancred, now prince of Galilee, to rule in some four isolated districts—Jaffa, Jerusalem, Ramlah and Haifa. At the end of the year came Bohemund and Godfrey’s brother Baldwin (now count of Edessa) on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The result of Bohemund’s visit was new trouble for Godfrey. Bohemund procured the election of Dagobert, the archbishop of Pisa, to the vacant patriarchate, disliking Arnulf, and perhaps hoping to find in the new patriarch a political supporter. Bohemund and Godfrey together became Dagobert’s vassals; and in the spring Godfrey even seems to have entered into an agreement with the patriarch to cede Jerusalem and Jaffa into his hands, in the event of acquiring other lands or towns, especially Cairo, or dying without direct heirs. When Godfrey died in July 1100 (after successful forays against the Mahommedans which took him as far as Damascus), it might seem as if a theocracy were after all to be established in Jerusalem, in spite of the events of 1099.
4. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem under the First Three Kings,[2] 1100–1143.—The theocracy, however, was not destined to be established. Godfrey had died without direct heirs; but in far Edessa there was his brother Baldwin, ready to take his place. Dagobert had at first consented to the dying Godfrey’s wish that Baldwin should be his successor; but when Godfrey died he saw an opportunity too precious to be missed, and opposed Baldwin, counting on the support of Bohemund, to whom he sent an appeal for assistance.[3] But a party in Jerusalem, headed by the late “vicar” Arnulf, opposed itself to the hierarchical pretensions of Dagobert and the Norman influence by which they were backed; and this party, representing the Lotharingian laity, carried the day. Baldwin was summoned from Edessa; and when he arrived, towards the end of the year, he was crowned king by Dagobert himself. Thus was founded, on Christmas day 1100, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; and thus was the possibility of a theocracy finally annihilated. A feudal kingdom of Frankish seigneurs was to be planted on the soil of Palestine, instead of a dominium temporale of the patriarch like that of the pope in central Italy. Nor were any great difficulties with the Church to hamper the growth of this kingdom. For two years, indeed, a struggle raged between Baldwin I. and Dagobert: Baldwin accused the patriarch of treachery, and attempted to force him to contribute to the defence of the kingdom. But in 1102 the struggle ceased with the deposition of the patriarch and the victory of the king; and though it was renewed for a time by the patriarch Stephen in the reign of Baldwin II. (1128–1130), the new struggle was of short duration, and was soon ended by Stephen’s death.
The establishment of a kingdom in Jerusalem in 1100 was a blow, not only to the Church but to the Normans of Antioch. At the end of 1099 any contemporary observer must have believed that the capital of Latin Christianity in the East was destined to be Antioch. Antioch lay in one of the most fertile regions of the East; Bohemund was almost, if not quite, the greatest genius of his generation; and when he visited Jerusalem at the end of 1099, he led an army of 25,000 men—and those men, at any rate in large part, Normans. What could Godfrey avail against such a force? Yet the principality of Godfrey was destined to higher things than that of Bohemund. Jerusalem, like Rome, had the shadow of a mighty name to lend prestige to its ruler; and as residence in Rome was one great reason of the strength of the medieval papacy, so was
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ 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 Röhricht. It is accepted by von Sybel and Hagenmeyer.
