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Buck, Andrew
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Magnetic confinement fusion researchFusion materials and technologiesNuclear reactor physics and engineeringThis is an Open Access document downloaded from ORCA, Cardiff University's institutional repository:https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/161228/ This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted to / accepted for publication. Citation for final published version: Buck, Andrew 2023. Crusade in crisis: the Siege and Battle of Antioch, 1097–98. The Historian 158 , pp. 56- 60. Publishers page: https://www.history.org.uk/publications/resource/1... Please note: Changes made as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing, formatting and page numbers may not be reflected in this version. For the definitive version of this publication, please refer to the published source. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite this paper. This version is being made available in accordance with publisher policies. See http://orca.cf.ac.uk/policies.html for usage policies. Copyright and moral rights for publications made available in ORCA are retained by the copyright holders.Crusade in Crisis: The Siege and Battle of Antioch, 1097/98Andrew D. BuckOn 28 June 1098, the forces of the First Crusade marched out from the great north Syrian city of Antioch to do battle with Karbugha, the Muslim ruler of Mosul. The odds were not in the favour: not only was the Muslim army vastly superior in size, but the crusaders had endured a gruelling eight-month siege in capturing Antioch, suffering death, disease, famine, and thirst, and were almost at breaking point. Defeat here would almost certainly have brought the entire venture to a close. And yet, the crusaders achieved a startling victory, one several contemporaries suggested had born witness to divine intervention on earth through the appearance of a saintly army of warriors who charged forth against the Muslim enemy. Even for those a little less willing to weave tales of heavenly hosts, the fact that the battle had gone the crusaders’ way was enough to prove God’s favour for the expedition. As a reward for their penitent suffering, endurance, and faith, God granted them glory and opened the way south towards Jerusalem, which would be taken a little over a year later. Put simply, Antioch was the crusade’s proving ground. 1Importantly, this was true not just for the crusaders themselves, but also for those who, across the twelfth century and beyond, repeatedly returned to the events of Antioch’s capture to craft stories for the peoples for whom crusading was significant. Indeed, Antioch often acts as the longest distinct set-piece in contemporary narratives of the crusade, as authors sought to use its lessons as salutary commentaries on ideas of faith, gender, community, warrior culture, 1 A wider discussion of this can be found in Andrew D. Buck, “‘Weighed by such a great calamity, they were cleansed for their sins’: Remembering the Siege and Capture of Antioch” in Remembering the Crusades in Medieval Texts and Songs, ed. Andrew D. Buck and Thomas W. Smith (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019), pp. 1–16.and inter-cultural contact. The siege was even immortalised in epic songs, most notably the Chanson d’Antioche, in which the events and its protagonists were cast in heroic and romantic roles, as well as in material cultures, such as coins, paintings, and stained-glass windows.Through these processes of storytelling, the siege and capture of Antioch became a central nexus point in shaping attitudes to holy war, as the core tenets of crusading were crafted, filtered, and transmitted to wider audiences. A deeper understanding of these events, and their presentation by medieval authors, thus has much to reveal about the crusade itself and the ways in which the movement which sprung from that initial venture intersected with medievalEuropean societies.So, what actually happened at Antioch? After arriving there in October 1097, the crusaders’ supplies quickly ran out, and as the harsh Syrian winter set in, and attacks by the city’s garrison intensified, conditions quickly deteriorated. Although the crusaders withstood these attacks, and also faced off Muslim relief efforts sent from Damascus (December 1097) and Aleppo (February 1098), their martial dominance did not extend far enough for major foraging expeditions to alleviate shortages. Death rates from famine and disease would have been high, and crusaders began to disperse and, eventually, to desert in large numbers. The situation only changed in spring 1098, as European ships began to arrive with fresh provisions and the garrison’s resolve began to weaken following the construction of makeshift fortresses by the city gates, one of which was given the moniker Malregard, or bad neighbour. However, the crusaders remained firmly outside of the city – an issue made all the more problematic when news began to arrive of Karbugha’s impending arrival. At this point, one of the crusade’s most important leaders, Count Stephen of Blois, son-in-law to William the Conqueror, decided to depart, no doubt thinking that all hope had been lost. He was wrong. Unbeknownst to him, another leader, the southern Italian Bohemond of Taranto, had been negotiating secretly the city’s betrayal with a tower guard named Firuz, who agreed to help the crusaders get inside in return for rich rewards. On the night of 3 June, a small band of crusaders approached the walls and soon made it onto the battlements, putting the defenders they found to the sword. They then opened up one of the city gates and spread through the streets. Antioch was soon theirs, although its citadel, which sat atop a mountain overlooking the city, held out. When Karbugha arrived the following day, the near triumph became disaster, as the crusaders were now trapped inside the city.Three weeks of intense suffering, again punctuated by famine, disease, warfare, and desertion – one contemporary chronicler, the French monk Baldric of Bourgueil, was so struck and appalled by those who let themselves down from the city walls and fled that he described them as ‘sneaky ropedancers’. It was at this point that a southern French priest by the name of Peter Bartholomew came before Count Raymond of Toulouse and the papal representative,Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, claiming to have experienced visions of Saint Andrew, who told him that a piece of the Holy Lance, the spear thrust into Christ’s body by the centurionLonginus, would be found in the great cathedral church of Saint Peter in Antioch. Though not all were taken in by this, a subsequent digging expedition unearthed a metal shard, which appears to have offered some comfort and inspiration to the crusaders, who now recognised the need to face Karbugha in open battle. After a few days of fasting and prayer, they marched out to face the Muslim leader, whose forces were thrown into disarray in the face of a fierce onslaught. Antioch was secured and with it came vast spoils and a belief that God was behind the crusade.In practical terms, victory was vital, for morale and for pushing on to Jerusalem. But, as already mentioned, the events came to take on deeper meaning in the processes of historical remembrance that sprung up in the wake of the crusade’s success and in the following decades.As scholars are increasingly recognising, the surviving sources for the crusades are more than just repositories of ‘fact’; they are also cultural artefacts – that is, they reflect, and were shaped by, the attitudes of those who produced them and those they were produced for. In other words, medieval writers, no less than modern ones, created histories that did more than simply tell the truth of what occurred. It is for this reason, therefore, that the extreme suffering reportedly experienced by the crusaders came to stand as the great test that God required before he allowed the recovery of Jerusalem. In probably our earliest Latin narrative, the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (The Deeds of the Franks and other Jerusalemites), whose anonymous author spent the months at Antioch within Bohemond of Taranto’s contingent, the crusaders were thus said to have experienced ‘many anxieties and extremities which I am unable to name for the name of Christ and to deliver the road to the Holy Sepulchre’ – a sentiment echoed across the sources, including Baldric of Bourgueil, who noted that the crusaders suffered ‘to deserve the right to see the sepulchre of their Lord God’. Fulcher of Chartres, a participant in the crusade albeit one not present at Antioch, even drew on the Bible for inspiration by commenting how ‘like gold thrice proved and purified seven times by fire, having been chosen by God … and weighed by such a great calamity, the [crusaders] were cleansed for their sins’ (which echoes 1 Peter 1.6–7 — [in] the trial of your faith (which is much more precious than gold, which is tried by fire) may be found … praise and glory and honour). Taking this even further, another contemporary author, Guibert of Nogent also emphasised endurance’s devotional importance, describing Antioch as a ‘pious siege’ and an act of ‘holy suffering’. Famine, he suggested, ‘refreshed the soul’s vigour’, while the crusaders ‘were driven by hope for something better to rely on God alone, the only true support in such tribulation … the more they watched their supplies diminish … the more they were taught to submit with appropriate humility to God’.While it would be wrong to suggest that we should doubt the reality of the suffering experienced by the crusaders, for it is quite evident that it was extreme, we should nevertheless be alive to the ways in which authors described these events after the fact to give them deeper meaning. Not only did authors attempt to create a sense of divine inevitability to Jerusalem’s capture following Antioch’s fall, but they also began to construct an idealised image of crusading behaviour through their commentaries on the form and purpose of suffering. In many ways, what we see here is one element in a wider trend in which authors likened crusading to the suffering of Christ upon the cross, even describing them as performing imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ. This served the dual function of explaining why God had supported the venture and set a standard that later crusaders would be expected to emulate.The crusaders’ worthiness was likewise demonstrated through accounts of their military prowess. The best example of this relates to Godfrey of Bouillon and his apparent bisection of a Muslim enemy. 2 The genesis of this tale can be found in the text of the southern French crusade participant, Raymond of Aguilers, and his account of an episode when the crusaders, led by Godfrey, fought back against an attack on their camp made by Antioch’s garrison near to a bridge that crossed the Orontes River before the city walls. According to Raymond, during this battle Godfrey ‘distinguished himself greatly … he prevented the enemies from reaching the bridge and divided them in half as they climbed the stairs’. An impressive feat, but nothing particularly special. Within a decade, though, this story had evolved dramatically into a single duel between Godfrey and a Muslim warrior. Guibert of Nogent thus said that Godfrey had struck the guts of his foe ‘so forcefully with his sword that the trunk of his body fell to the earth, while the legs remained seated as the horse moved on’. More theatrical still, Robert the Monk, a Benedictine monk writing from Reims in France, had Godfrey ‘ablaze with furious anger’, noting that ‘he raised his sword and plunged it into the left side of his shoulder-blades 2 Simon John, “‘Claruit Ibi Multum’: The Development of the Epic Tradtion of Godrey of Bouillon and the Bisected Muslim”, in Literature of the Crusades, ed. Simon T. Parsons and Linda M. Paterson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), pp. 7–24.with such force that it split the chest down the middle, slashed through the spine and vital organs and, slippery with blood, came out unbroken above the right leg’.It may seem odd, perhaps even jarring, to see such Tarantino-esque images of glorified violence in the writings of a monk, but this is an instructive example of how stories might develop over time, as well as the role that the events at Antioch played in constructing idealised imagery. 3 Following the crusade, acts of martial bisection emerged as something of a literary trope in epic poetry; a set piece which would knowingly mark that warrior’s special skill.Moreover, when in the later Middle Ages there were created the so-called Nine Worthies (those being nine great warriors from biblical through to classical and contemporary times who were seen to embody elements of the chivalric ideal), Godfrey was there alongside such luminaries as Charlemagne, King David, and Alexander the Great. But why did authors do this? Most obviously, in the wake of the crusaders’ successful capture of Jerusalem in July 1099, it wasGodfrey who became the Holy City’s first Latin Christian ruler. By imputing him with such an act of prowess, then, especially in the cauldron of Antioch, the crusade’s great test, authors likeGuibert and Robert created narratives that predetermined Godfrey’s worthiness to rule inJerusalem by emphasising his singular skill as a warrior and as a champion against Islam.Not everything was positive, though. Indeed, contemporary authors faced the problem of detailing the actions of deserters in quite imaginative ways. As noted, Baldric described them as ‘sneaky ropedancers’, while another French author, Gilo of Paris, likened those crusaders who fled back to Europe to a dog that returns to its own vomit. Yet, such was the recognition of the shame that resulted from such acts of cowardice, several authors, while noting desertion, refused to name some or all of the guilty, for it was not considered fair to their 3 On Robert’s approach to violence, see Thomas Asbridge, “An Experiment in Extremity: The Portrayal of Violence in Robert the Monk’s Narrative of the First Crusade”, History: Journal of the Historical Association 105/368 (2020), pp. 719–50.descendants. Others simply lied. In the Chanson d’Antioche, the crusade leader Hugh of Vermandois, who was brother to King Philip I of France and left the venture in the immediate aftermath of the victory over Karbugha, does not return home; instead, he appears ironically giving a speech on the dishonour that those who had fled had earned for themselves.Also interesting are the narratives which surrounded elements of suffering that impinged upon social mores and markers of identity. Significant here is the issue of proper burial. Death in medieval Europe followed important rituals, especially for social elites.Through acts of commemoration in the form of prayers for the dead and liturgical processions, medieval Latin Christians engaged with their forebears in active and frequent ways. For this, though, there was a need for proper burial rites to be followed. This was difficult to achieve on crusade. Many died on the road, in siege camps, or in vast numbers on the battlefield. While some efforts at burial would have been attempted, the kind of markers that would allow sites of internment to become places of visitation would not have been plausible. Many crusaders died many thousands of miles from home in ways and places that prevented their relatives back in Europe from properly commemorating them. Given quite how much ink was expended on telling Antioch’s story, it is thus quite surprising that there is almost no coverage of burial.There are rare exceptions. The crusader and author, Peter Tudebode, described the internment of his own brother, while the German author Albert of Aachen mentioned the funeral of the heroic crusader, Roger of Barneville, held at the Cathedral of Saint Peter. Yet, there is no sense in the Latin texts of the common burial plot which seemingly emerged at Jerusalem, nor a comparative liturgical commemoration to that which remembered those who fell taking the Holy City, marked every 15 July. 4 In fact, the only source to describe what happened to all of 4 Simon John, “‘Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem’: Remembering and Reconstructing the First Crusade in the Holy City, 1099–1187”, Journal of Medieval History 42 (2015), pp. 409–31.the bodies at Antioch is the Chanson d’Antioche, which noted, almost offhandedly, that they were brought inside and buried in a proper Christian way when the city was taken.What this perhaps reflects is the extent to which some of the realities of Antioch’s capture created social traumas for those back in Europe. Authorial responses to this, created by chroniclers who would have experienced first-hand the responses to news that loved ones had died abroad without proper burial, initially warranted silence. The earliest crusade writers simply could not find a way to comment upon the transgression of burial practices. It was only at the end of the twelfth century, with the creation of popular crusade songs, that some comment was made. In this context, the Chanson Antioche could be viewed as the point when the divergent social memory of the crusaders’ capture of Antioch moved to a more consistent, collective memory. This follows a process outlined by the memory scholar Geoffrey Cubitt, who has noted that responses to trauma initially lead to ‘radical discontinuities’ in storytelling born from the unique and specific concerns of myriad smaller group identities, but that over time a collective memorialisation emerges characterised by distinct ideological fictions. 5Putting it more simply, by the end of the twelfth century, the story of the crusade had evolved from a competing mass of divergent narratives that spoke to the anxieties and identities of specific groups, be they personal, national, or familial, into one where the formalisation of a heroic ideal helped to alleviate tensions over past events in pursuit of better promoting crusade participation. By consequence, the fiction of proper burial was created.We certainly know that there was concern that the story of Antioch was told in a certain way. Writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, the chronicler Lambert of Ardres complained that his patron’s crusader ancestor, Arnold of Guines had not appeared in the Chanson d’Antioche because Arnold had refused to pay its composer the fee demanded for 5 For this, see Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).inclusion (a pair of scarlet leggings). Accordingly, Lambert penned his own narrative of Antioch’s capture, one that emphasised Arnold’s courage and stoic suffering.What is clear, then, is that the story of the siege and capture of Antioch, as well as the story of the story, can tell us a great deal about the crusades. As the First Crusade’s proving ground, where contemporaries believed that God had tested his forces to ensure their worthiness to recover Jerusalem, early authors couched the events of October 1097 to June 1098 as punctuated by Christ-like suffering, as well as epic acts of martial heroism. This duality, of near-monastic asceticism and religious endurance mixed with great warrior skill and a willingness to commit stark acts of violence in the name of God, is the primary image of the crusader, and Antioch’s story proved the perfect canvass for medieval authors to paint onto when looking to construct this. In doing so, they moved away from what actually happened and instead shaped events according to literary, religious, and social conventions. Other elements challenged this process, like desertion and the lack of proper burial, for they situatedAntioch not only as a place of victory, but also as a site of social and personal trauma. These elements of the story thus warranted suppression. Antioch was therefore not only the proving ground of the crusade in a real, lived sense; where the people who fought on the venture achieved a victory that opened the way to Jerusalem. It was also, just as importantly, the proving ground of the idea of crusade and of the historiographical frameworks that governed how the stories of crusading exploits were to be told.
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PublishedSep 1, 2023
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