God's War: A New History of the Crusades

Visions and miracles articulated the aspirations of the mass of soldiers and pilgrims who, without prospect of lasting profit from conquest, concentrated on fulfilling their vows at Jerusalem. They also mirrored the changing military and political choices facing the princes. Peter Bartholomew’s equivocal fate did not mean the end of the dialogue between the terrestrial and the heavenly followers of Christ. Further visions of Stephen of Valence and another Provençal priest, Peter Desiderius, confirmed the centrality of relics, liturgy and penance in fixing the cohesion of the army of God on its march to Jerusalem, now transmitted through the politically safer medium of clergy rather than an uncomfortably radical layman. One strand of visionary politics in the final stages of the march elevated the Provençal cult of the lost leader, Adhemar of Le Puy, who had died, possibly of typhoid, at Antioch on 1 August 1098, part of an intense response to the deaths of comrades, many of whom soon reappeared to their friends in visions and dreams, witnesses to continued support from the other world. The presence in the army of Bishop Adhemar’s cross and cloak provided unassailable relics of unity and leadership; the dead bishop’s words inspired the troops at Jerusalem; his presence, some reported, assisted the final assault.³⁶ During the siege of Jerusalem, another vision of Peter Desiderius, in which Adhemar urged a penitential procession around the walls of the city, legitimized a religious framework for persuading the army to attempt the final assault. At least it did so in retrospect. While the general accretion of miracle stories, relics and religious ceremonies from the sieges of Antioch onwards is undeniable, the neatness of the visionary prophecies and saintly interventions, their correlation with political and factional conflicts, the orderly narrative of celestial advice and the precise association of relics to visions in some accounts suggest crafting at the study desk as much as experience over the camp fire. Yet the importance of the miraculous and the holy, witnessed by participants’ letters, lay in the power of the perceived transcendent to transform events.

Whatever later doubts and manipulation, the discovery of the Holy Lance and the injection of religious ceremony into the political discourse of the army contributed to the startling victory achieved over Kerbogha’s much greater forces by the Christian breakout of Antioch on the morning of 28 June 1098. This was Bohemund of Taranto’s finest hour. The day before, Peter the Hermit and an interpreter, Herluin, probably an Arabic-speaking Italian-Norman, had visited Kerbogha’s camp, a gesture of defiance as much as an attempt to negotiate or spy. Next day, under Bohemund’s direction, the Christian army, employing flexible, close-ordered, well-disciplined and tightly coordinated columns, first engaged, then threw back, outflanked and finally routed the forward divisions of the Muslim army before Kerbogha’s main force became involved. Much of the fighting was between infantry, at close quarters, as the Christians lacked horses. Despite greatly outnumbering the Christians, Kerbogha’s coalition disintegrated once the forward positions had been destroyed. Kerbogha fled ignominiously, leaving his camp, its prisoners, women, non-combatants, footsoldiers and booty open to the victors’ pleasure. The spoils were impressive: tents, camp equipment, livestock, beasts of burden, horses, camels, gold and silver, considerable supplies of food and drink. All Muslims found were killed. Unlike their co-religionists in Antioch three weeks earlier, the women were not raped; instead ‘the Franks… drove lances into their bellies’.³⁷ Such unrestrained lethal warfare, characteristic of earlier medieval western conflicts against Vikings, Slavs or Magyars, had largely been replaced in the west by limited aristocratic internecine skirmishing. Its return in the aftermath of the battle of Antioch marked exultant, exhilarated release from weeks of terror.