The Knight, the Cross, and the Song. Stefan Vander Elst
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kings”])21 to put the great victory over the Turks into its proper historical and religious context. Concluding his narrative in book 9 of the Historia Iherosolimitana, Robert reiterates that the Frankish triumph he has just recounted was prefigured in divine revelation:
Cum autem ipsi Domino placuit, adduxit Francigenam gentem ab extremis terre, et per eam ab immundis gentilibus liberare voluit. Hoc a longe per Isaiam prophetam predixerat, cum ait: Adducam filios tuos de longe, argentum eorum et aurum eorum cum eis, in nomine Domini Dei tui, et sancto Israheli, quia glorificavit te. Edificabunt filii peregrinorum muros tuos, et reges eorum ministrabunt tibi. Hec et multa alia invenimus in propheticis libris, que congruunt huic liberationi facte etatibus nostris.
[HI 110; HFC 213–14: But when it so pleased God, he led the Frankish race from the ends of the earth with the intention that they should free [Jerusalem] from the filthy Gentiles. He had long ago foretold this through the prophet Isaiah when he said: “I shall bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of pilgrims shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee.” We have found this and many other things in the books of the prophets which fit exactly the context of the liberation of the city in our era.]
Far from being an isolated event in history, the Crusade fulfilled ancient portents and reiterated biblical history. The first lines of the quotation above, however, also indicate the implications of this: scriptural omens serve to show the hand of God active in the present. There is no accident, coincidence, or fortune of war in the Historia; rather, all occurrences show the will of God. At the very beginning of his work, Robert highlights that the Crusade armies set out for the East because God wanted them to. The remarkable enthusiasm that greeted Urban’s address at Clermont could only have been the work of God:
Et ut cunctis clarescat fidelibus quod hec via a Deo non ab homine sit constituta, sicut a multis postea comperimus, ipso die quo hec facta et dicta sunt, fama preconans tante constitutionis totum commovit orbem, ita ut etiam in maritimis Oceani insulis divulgatum esset, quod Iherosolimitanum iter in concilio sic stabilitum fuisset.
[HI 8; HFC 82: And, to make it quite clear to all believers that this pilgrimage had been set in train by God rather than men—as we have since established from many sources—on the very day these speeches and deeds took place, the news announcing such an undertaking set the whole world astir so that even in the islands of the sea it was common knowledge that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem had been launched at the Council.]
When the armies gather at Constantinople, Bohemond, who had earlier realized “omnia hec non tantum esse hominum” [HI 14; HFC 92: “that this could not be the work of men alone”], emphasizes that all are there as a result of divine agency: “O bellatores Dei et indeficientes peregrini sancti Sepulchri, quis ad hec peregrina loca vos adduxit, nisi ille qui filios Israel ex Egypto per mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transduxit?” [HI 19; HFC 98: “O soldiers of the Lord and tireless pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, who was it that led you to these foreign lands if not He who led the sons of Israel from Egypt dry-shod across the Red Sea?”]. Beyond the Bosporus, the Crusaders are wholly guided by and subject to divine will, and they suffer and triumph at God’s bidding. The will of God therefore forcefully made manifest that which had been long foretold.22
Beyond revealing divine agency on earth, Bohemond’s words also indicate that, to Robert the Monk, the Latin journey to and conquest of the Holy Land typologically constituted the Exodus of a new chosen people. References to the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are frequent throughout the Historia, drawing a strong parallel between the efforts of the Crusaders and those of the biblical people of Israel. For instance, after Urban’s speech, Adhemar of Le Puy “licet invitus, suscepit quasi alter Moyses ducatum ac regimen dominici populi” [HI 8; HFC 83: “agreed, albeit unwillingly, to lead and organise the people of God like a second Moses”]; he leads them to “terra … que lacte et melle fluit” [HI 6; HFC 81: “a land flowing with milk and honey”].23 On their difficult journey God assists the Crusaders in their hour of need, providing them at Antioch with food and drink captured from the Turks: “Sic quoque filiis Israel olim faciebat, cum per terram gentilium regum transire cupiebant, et illi publicum vie regie incessum eis denegabant” [HI 38; HFC 125: “Just so did He once act for the people of Israel when they wanted to cross the lands of pagan kings who refused to allow them to travel the main road”]. This parallel between the Crusaders and the biblical people of Israel is well understood by Kerbogha’s mother, Robert’s voice of typological insight, when speaking to her son:
Fili, Pharaonem regem Egypti quis submersit in mari Rubro cum omni exercitu suo? … Ipse idem Deus ostendit quanto amore diligat populum suum, quantaque tutela circumvallet eum, cum dicit: Ecce ego mittam angelum meum, qui precedat te, et custodiat semper. Observa et audi vocem meam, et inimicus ero inimicis tuis, et odientes te affligam, et precedet te angelus meus. Genti nostre iratus est Deus ille, quia nec audimus vocem eius, nec facimus voluntatem, et iccirco de remotis partibus occidentis excitavit in nos gentem suam, deditque ei universam terram hanc in possessionem.
[HI 62; HFC 155: Who, my son, sank Pharaoh, King of Egypt, into the Red Sea with his whole army? … The same God shows how much he loves his people and how assiduously he surrounds them with his protection when he says: Behold, I send an angel before thee, [who will precede thee and guard thee always. Observe and listen to my voice,] then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine angel shall go before thee. That is the God who is angry with our race because we have not listened to his words or done his will; that is why he has stirred up his people against us from the far-flung lands of the West, and has given all of this land into their possession.]24
On their march to Jerusalem, the Crusaders are therefore God’s chosen people, their progress paved with lines from scripture, their conquest of Jerusalem certain. Against them stand those who, in the words of Kerbogha’s mother, have turned away from the word of God, an enemy defined as much through God’s disfavor as the Franks are by his favor—truly “filii diaboli” [HI 43; HFC 130: “the sons of the Devil”]. Their defeat is inevitable, and each Christian victory, every blow against the Saracen, confirms the Franks as the new Israel: “Dux et protector fuisti in misericordia populo tuo quem redemisti. Nunc, Domine, cognoscimus, quia portas nos in fortitudine tua, ad habitaculum sanctum tuum” [HI 28; HFC 112: “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Now we realise, God, that Thou art guiding us in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation”].25
Over the course of this impressive expansion of the theological context of the Crusade, it is remarkable that Robert the Monk also subtly alters or reduces the rudimentary theological underpinnings of the Crusade in the Gesta, especially with regard to the role of suffering. The Anonymous considered the suffering of the Crusaders on the journey to Jerusalem as a double form of repayment. On the one hand, the Christians of the Gesta suffered to fulfill their side of an agreement of mutual obligation with God, in which they repaid him for earthly and heavenly rewards with blood, sweat, and tears. On the other hand, there is also in the Gesta a second notion that sees suffering as penitential, as repayment for sins committed. We therefore have the description of the siege of Nicaea, where “ex pauperrima gente multi mortui sunt fame pro Christi nomine” [GF 17: “many of the poor starved to death for the Name of Christ”], alongside that of the siege of Antioch, where “Hanc paupertatem et miseriam pro nostris delictis concessit nos habere Deus. In tota namque hoste non ualebat aliquis inuenire mille milites, qui equos haberent optimos” [GF 34: “God granted that we should suffer this poverty and wretchedness because of our sins. In the whole camp you could not find a thousand knights who had managed to keep their horses in really good condition”]. The Anonymous therefore combines lay devotion with traditional penance; throughout, he maintains an approach to suffering that considers it essentially redemptory, the payment of a debt owed for the beneficia one has received or the maleficia one has committed. Insofar as Christian suffering repays a debt owed, it is imitatio Christi; this the Anonymous intimates when, at the beginning of his work,