The Knight, the Cross, and the Song. Stefan Vander Elst
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[GF 17: We besieged this city for seven weeks and three days, and many of our men suffered martyrdom there and gave up their blessed souls to God with joy and gladness, and many of the poor starved to death for the Name of Christ. All these entered Heaven in triumph, wearing the robe of martyrdom which they have received, saying with one voice, “Avenge, O Lord, our blood which was shed for thee.”]39
Bypassing the absolution of sin, the Christians’ suffering “in the Name of Christ” means that God will welcome them to heaven. Furthermore, their death serves as a call for God to avenge them upon the Muslims, as it was Charlemagne’s obligation to avenge Roland, Oliver, and the other douzepeers.
God’s obligation to the Christian, however, is not only one of spiritual salvation; importantly, he grants earthly riches as well. That service to the divine will yield possessions is highlighted on the first page of the Gesta: “Si quis animam suam saluam facere uellet, non dubitaret humiliter uiam incipere Domini, ac si denariorum ei deesset copia, diuina ei satis daret misericordia” [GF 1: “If any man wants to save his soul, let him have no hesitation in taking the way of the Lord in humility, and if he lacks money, the divine mercy will give him enough”]. God’s reward for services rendered is given in plunder and conquest. After God has helped the Crusaders overcome the enemy, the reward is there for the taking: “Superati sunt itaque, Deo annuente, in illo die inimici nostri. Satis uero recuperati sunt nostri de equis et de aliis multis quae erant illis ualde necessaria” [GF 37: “Thus, by God’s will, on that day our enemies were overcome. Our men captured plenty of horses and other things of which they were badly in need”]. This remarkable juxtaposition of holy war and earthly reward, of service to the divine and the expectation of profit, is best expressed in the words uttered by the Crusaders before the Battle of Dorylaeum: “Factus est itaque sermo secretus inter nos laudantes et consulentes atque dicentes: ‘Estote omnimodo unanimes in fide Christi et Sanctae Crucis uictoria, quia hodie omnes diuites si Deo placet effecti eritis’” [GF 19–20: “For our part we passed a secret message along our line, praising God and saying, ‘Stand fast all together, trusting in Christ and in the victory of the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty’”].40
At the heart of the Christian army therefore lie contracts of mutual obligation similar to those upon which the ethical universe of the chansons de geste rests. Such contracts exist between the Christians themselves—for example, between Bohemond and Alexius Comnenus, to whom “si ille fideliter teneret illud sacramentum, iste suum nunquam preteriret” [GF 12: “if Bohemond kept his oath faithfully he would never break his own”]. Failure to uphold one’s side of the bargain is met with extreme censure, and Alexius’s abandonment of the Crusaders at Antioch turns him, in the eyes of the Anonymous, into an “iniquus imperator” [GF 6: “that wretch of an emperor”] or “infelix imperator” [GF 10: “the wretched emperor”], while his general Tatikios No-Nose becomes “ille inimicus … in periurio manet et manebit” [GF 35: “that enemy of ours … he is a liar, and always will be”]. More important, however, is that this “sacramentum” exists between God and the Christians—they will fight his war for him, and suffer in the process; he will reward that suffering both on earth and in heaven. Crucially, even though the beginning of the work invokes the language of pilgrimage, the Gesta conceptualizes Crusade as service owed to the divine: the crucesignatus keeps his part of a bargain that casts God as both his spiritual and his secular overlord. The Crusader, on the one hand, is a Christian fighting a spiritual war for the supremacy of his faith over the unbeliever, and he is rewarded with paradise;41 on the other hand, he confronts his Lord’s earthly enemies, reconquers his earthly possessions, and finds a secular reward of plunder strewn across the battlefield. Essentially, the Crusader’s duty is to God: the secular lords of the First Crusade may spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Saracen, or abandon the army altogether, and the spiritual lords such as Adhemar of Le Puy may go the way of the flesh, but this obligation remains undiminished by the dissent, betrayal, or death of merely human powers.42
Like the knights of the chansons, the Crusaders serve one divinity, who rewards them with heaven, and one monarch, who provides them with earthly goods: the Christian God is both of these in the Gesta. They serve him on battlefields that echo those of the jongleurs. Even though the Anonymous might often have found himself in the heat of battle, he nevertheless evokes the sights and sounds of warfare with a number of stock phrases, reminiscent of those of the chansons, rather than relying on his own experience: “Iunctis igitur prospere nostris, unus comminus percutiebat alium. Clamor uero resonabat ad celum. Omnes preliabantur insimul. Imbres telorum obnubilabant aerem” [GF 36: “Our army joined battle successfully and fought hand-to-hand; the din arose to heaven, for all were fighting at once and the storm of missiles darkened the sky”]; “Rumor quoque et clamor nostrorum et illorum resonabat ad caelum. Pluuiae telorum et sagittarum tegebant polum, et claritatem diei” [GF 41: “The din and the shouts of our men and the enemy echoed to heaven, and the shower of missiles and arrows covered the sky and hid the daylight”]. Upon these loud and dark places, where one can hear the Saracens “stridere et garrire ac clamare uehementissimo clamore” [GF 40: “gnash their teeth and gabble and howl with very loud cries”], knights roam looking for their prey. As Conor Kostick has pointed out, “The attention of the author of the Gesta Francorum was almost entirely fixed on the activities of those he terms seniores and milites.”43 This is especially so in describing battles: the Anonymous portrays the Crusade almost completely as a sequence of confrontations between mounted warriors, even when horses had become scarce and many knights were reduced to fighting on foot. At Antioch, when hunger and disease had already taken a dreadful toll, and “In tota namque hoste non ualebat aliquis inuenire mille milites, qui equos haberent optimos” [GF 34: “In the whole camp you could not find a thousand knights who had managed to keep their horses in really good condition”], the Christians counter the Turkish assaults with cavalry charge upon cavalry charge:
Fuit itaque ille, undique signo crucis munitus, qualiter leo perpessus famem per tres aut quatuor dies, qui exiens a suis cauernis, rugiens ac sitiens sanguinem pecudum sicut improuide ruit inter agmina gregum, dilanians oues fugientes huc et illuc; ita agebat iste inter agmina Turcorum. Tam uehementer instabat illis, ut linguae uexilli uolitarent super Turcorum capita.
[GF 37: So Bohemond, protected on all sides by the sign of the Cross, charged the Turkish forces, like a lion which has been starving for three or four days, which comes roaring out of its cave thirsting for the blood of cattle, and falls upon the flocks careless of its own safety, tearing the sheep as they flee hither and thither. His attack was so fierce that the points of his banner were flying right over the heads of the Turks.]
This relentless focus on chivalric combat continues throughout the work. Knights drive all before them: “Egregius itaque comes Flandrensis … occurrit illis una cum Boamundo. Irrueruntque nostri unanimiter super illos. Qui statim arripuerunt fugam, et festinanter uerterunt retro scapulas, ac mortui sunt ex illis plurimi” [GF 31: “But the noble count of Flanders … made straight for the enemy with Bohemond at his side, and our men charged them in one line. The enemy straightaway took to flight, turning tail in a hurry; many of them were killed”]. Even within the melee they are shown victorious in individual combat: “Paganorum uero gens uidens Christi milites, diuisit se; et fecerunt duo agmina. Nostri autem inuocato Christi nomine, tam acriter inuaserunt illos incredulos, ut quisque miles prosterneret suum” [GF 89: “When the pagans saw the Christian knights they split up into two bands, but our men called upon the Name of Christ and charged these misbelievers so fiercely that every knight overthrew his opponent”]. The Crusade is presented as fought above all by knights in the manner familiar to them; the achievements of nonaristocratic infantry is minimalized if not ignored, and we usually hear of them only when they perish.44 More than indicating the Anonymous’s social rank,45 the primacy of chivalric warfare in the Gesta shows him eager to present the Crusade from the very beginning of the movement as a uniquely chivalric affair. The Christians on their way to Jerusalem, at least the ones that matter, are knights, and they wage war against the Saracens in the fashion to which they are accustomed. By reducing the complex