The siege of Jerusalem lasted for a little over a month. That it did not take longer was largely due to the fact that the crusaders were inspired by the vision of a priest, in which he assured them he had been told that if only they would all fast and walk barefoot round the walls the city would fall to them. (On a more practical basis the arrival of a number of Christian ships at Jaffa had recently provided them with the sailors and technicians, the wood and materials, with which to construct siege engines.) They had been disheartened and suffered heavily from the heat under the scorching July sun, but now the army’s morale once again revived. On July 15th the walls were finally breached and the Christians swept into the citadel and home of their Faith.

The capture of Jerusalem, like that of Antioch before it, was marked by scenes of such blood-lust and cruelty that it is hard to believe these feudal lords and their followers had the slightest conception of that faith in whose name they had undertaken their expedition. The cross of the Prince of Peace was on their surcoats but in their hands was the hammer of Thor. The governor of the city and his personal bodyguard were allowed to leave—but only in return for a vast ransom. The rest of the Moslems, men, women and children, were butchered in their thousands. Mosques were pillaged and the Dome of the Rock was sacked and plundered. Even some Moslems who had paid a large ransom and taken refuge in the mosque of al-Aqsa (above which waved a banner to show that they were to be spared) were slaughtered to a man. The city ran with blood. The Jewish community fared no better than the Moslem. When they too took refuge in their main synagogue the building was set on fire about them. The crusaders had burst into the city at noon. By nightfall, ‘sobbing for excess of joy’, they fell on their knees in the Church of the Sepulchre, bowing their heads over their blood-stained hands.

The massacre after the fall of Jerusalem appalled even some of the crusaders. Its effect upon the Moslem world was traumatic. Whenever, in the centuries that followed, attempts were made by Latin rulers to come to some accommodation with the Moslems the memory of that day rose up and prevented it. The East had seen the furor Normannorum, the rage of the Norsemen (from which the Christian Church itself had once prayed to be spared). The Moslem world would never forget it, and would become equally fanatical in its determination to expel these Christians from the lands that they had seized.

The intolerance of the western Europeans in religious matters was far in excess of anything known in the East. For centuries the Byzantines had traded with their religious enemy, and it was only the onslaught of the Turks upon their empire that had prompted them to call for western help. In Constantinople itself there was even a Moslem quarter and a mosque—something that provoked the contempt and anger of the crusaders. The Moslems, for their part, had usually shown a reasonable degree of religious tolerance in the territories under their control. They had permitted Christians to visit the shrines of their faith and, as has been seen, had allowed a large colony of Jews to settle in Jerusalem. The governor of the city, who had waited throughout the months while the crusaders made their way through Asia Minor and Syria—knowing full well that Jerusalem was their target—had made no move against the pilgrims and other Christians within his city walls. Even when the army had moved down from Montjoie and encamped against Jerusalem he took no violent action against them. The Christians were merely expelled, and allowed to go and join their co-religionists. Among those who probably left Jerusalem before the siege began was a certain Brother Gerard.

 

 

 

Chapter 2

THE ORDER OF ST JOHN

 

Brother Gerard was the head of a hospice for pilgrims which had been established in Jerusalem about 1080. It was certainly in existence at the time that the First Crusade reached the city. It was not a hospital in the modern sense, although no doubt it had facilities for treating the sick. A hospice was essentially a place for rest for pilgrims, where they could sleep and get food. The one in Jerusalem seems to have been founded by merchants from Amalfi, that important Italian shipping centre which provided many pilgrims with their means of transport to the Holy Land.