The Knight, the Cross, and the Song. Stefan Vander Elst
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after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me’”].
Robert’s approach to suffering and to its purpose within the Crusade is strikingly different. At the most basic level, it is remarkable that Robert limits his descriptions of suffering. Where its source expands upon the anguish of the Crusaders, the Historia sometimes remains silent,26 and more often minimizes the distress of those involved.27 In the rare occurrences in which his work offers a roughly equivalent description of Christian suffering, Robert is careful not to interpret suffering as penance. In the passage corresponding to the Anonymous’s description of the siege of Antioch above, Robert argues that famine and the lack of horses were rather meant to help the Crusaders on their way than to punish them for the sins they had committed:
Ne illi insolescerent tot victoriis bellorum, opprimebat eos gravi inedia ieiuniorum. In toto namque exercitu mille equi inveniri non poterant ad pugnandum idonei, ut per hoc innotesceret quod in fortitudine equi non haberent fiduciam, sed in se, per quem et quomodo volebat et quando volebat superabant.
[HI 41; HFC 128: It was to ensure that they did not get complacent from so many victories that he made them suffer serious pangs of hunger. In the whole army it was impossible to find 1,000 horses in a condition to fight, and by this God wanted to make them realise that they should trust not in their horses but in Him through Whom they were victorious how and when He wanted.]28
Suffering is to a large extent admonitory in Robert’s work, the divine way of showing displeasure with a current course of action as opposed to rectifying past trespasses. This is reiterated in one of the very few passages in which Robert is more expansive in conveying the teleology of suffering than his source had been. At Antioch, God explains, through the mouth of Stephen Valence, the suffering the Crusaders have undergone as follows:
Nonne tibi videtur quod bene adiuverim eos huc usque, quia illis et Niceam tradidi civitatem, et omnia que eis supervenere bella vincere feci? In obsidione Antiochie eorum miserie condolui; nunc vero ad extremum civitatis ingressum tribui. Omnes tribulationes et impedimenta que passi sunt ideo evenire permisi, quoniam multa nefanda operati sunt cum Christianis mulieribus et paganis, que valde displicent in oculis meis.
[HI 67; HFC 161: Is it not obvious to you that I have been helping them all along? I gave them the city of Nicaea and helped them win every battle there was. I looked with pity on their sufferings at the siege of Antioch; eventually I granted them entrance to the city. I allowed them to suffer all these tribulations and difficulties because they have committed many sins with Christian women—and pagan women—which found grave displeasure in my eyes.]29
Suffering therefore does not have the same meaning in the Historia as it does in the Gesta. In the Anonymous’s work, suffering is understood in a fashion that effectively looks backward—it serves to repay a debt to God, resulting either from the Crusader’s past behavior or from God’s agency on his behalf. It is redemptory at the level of the individual—each after all will carry his own cross. In the Historia suffering, much reduced, looks forward resolutely. It does not redeem but admonishes, serves not as penance for the individual but as an indication for the Crusader army to correct its behavior as it continues toward Jerusalem.30
Robert therefore moves away from the narrative arc that the Anonymous had included in his work, which led through penitential suffering toward redemption and salvation with the conquest of Jerusalem. Robert’s Crusaders thunder on to their unavoidable, divinely ordained destiny, occasionally reminded not to indulge in problematic behavior by the pangs of hunger or the dearth of horses. To a certain degree Robert therefore also moves away from the Anonymous’s rudimentary approach to the Crusade as imitatio Christi.31 It is noteworthy that in a work so earnestly concerned with finding scriptural parallels Robert should choose to minimize the elementary typological parallel his source had identified. This process of negotiation, foregrounding some parallels while letting others fade into the distance, shows Robert’s very different conceptualization of the Crusade. As a cleric confronted by successful but violent Christian expansion into the East, he chose to find precedents not in the New Testament but in the Old, not with the meritorious suffering on Calvary but with the travails and territorial appropriations of the biblical people of Israel.32
Robert’s work therefore emphasizes that the Crusade is the long-foretold work of God and that the Franks are his chosen people and instruments of agency—after all, “quis regum aut principum posset subigere tot civitates et castella, natura, arte, seu humano ingenio premunita, nisi Francorum beata gens, cuius est Dominus Deus eius, populus quem elegit in hereditatem sibi?” [HI 4; HFC 77: “what king or prince could subjugate so many towns and castles, fortified by nature, design or human ingenuity, if not the blessed nation of the Franks whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance?”].33 The Crusade of the Historia is not as much a story of Christ-like suffering as it is one of the fulfillment of destiny, less a pilgrimage for the redemption of individual sin than a campaign of acquisition of what God had decided should belong to the Franks. It is here that the effect (and the purpose) of Robert’s interpretation of the Crusade becomes clear. The justification of Frankish conquest is the fact that they are singled out by God to do his will, and the proof that they are so singled out is conquest. Accordingly, conquest becomes its own justification. On a practical level, this divine mandate confers upon the Franks an a priori license to attack and conquer anyone with the full knowledge that they are doing the Lord’s bidding.
MACCABEES OF THE WEST
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