Crusading and Masculinities 1138054674, 9781138054677

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Crusading and Masculinities

This volume presents the first substantial exploration of crusading and masculinity, focusing on the varied ways in which the symbiotic relationship between the two was made manifest in a range of medieval settings and sources, and to what ends. Ideas about masculinity formed an inherent part of the mindset of societies in which crusading happened, and of the conceptual framework informing both those who recorded the events and those who participated. Examination and interrogation of these ideas enables a better contextualised analysis of how those events were experienced, comprehended, and portrayed. The collection is structured around five themes: sources and models, contrasting masculinities, emasculation and transgression, masculinity and religiosity, and kingship and chivalry. By incorporating masculinity within their analysis of the crusades and of crusaders the contributors demonstrate how such approaches greatly enhance our understanding of crusading as an ideal, an institution, and an experience. Individual essays consider Western campaigns to the Middle East and Islamic responses; events and sources from the Iberian Peninsula and Prussia are also interrogated and re-examined, thus enabling cross-cultural comparison of the meanings attached to medieval manhood. The collection also highlights the value of employing gender as a vital means of assessing relationships between different groups of men, whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed in distinct ways. Natasha R. Hodgson is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict (CSRC) at Nottingham Trent. She wrote Women, Crusading and the Holy Land and is completing Gender and the Crusades for Palgrave Macmillan. She edits Routledge series’ Advances in Crusader Studies and Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History and co-edits the journal Nottingham Medieval Studies. Katherine J. Lewis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. She researches later medieval religious and cultural history. She has published on hagiography and saints’ cults (especially St  Katherine of Alexandria), on medieval women, and on masculinity, including Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England. Matthew M. Mesley is an Associate Lecturer at Bath Spa University and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield. He was formerly a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) postdoc at the University of Zurich. His chapter “Chivalry, Masculinity and Sexuality”, is published in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades.

Crusades – Subsidia Series Editor: Christoph T. Maier,

University of Zurich, for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East

This series of ‘Subsidia’ to the journal Crusades is designed to include publications deriving from the conferences held by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East along with other volumes associated with the society. The scope of the series parallels that of the journal itself: Crusades covers 700 years from the First Crusade (1095–1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts, and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East, and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics, and economic, social, political, and military history. Recent titles in the series: Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages Simon John and Nicholas Morton The Crusade in the Fifteenth Century Norman Housley The Fifth Crusade in Context E. J. Mylod, Guy Perry, Thomas W. Smith, and Jan Vandeburie The Templars and their Sources Karl Borchardt, Karoline Döring, Philippe Josserand, and Helen Nicholson Communicating the Middle Ages Iris Shagrir, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Michel Balard Crusading and Trading between West and East Sophia Menache, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Michel Balard Crusading and Masculinities Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Crusading and Masculinities Edited by Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hodgson, Natasha R., editor. | Lewis, Katherine J., 1969– editor. | Mesley, Matthew M., editor. Title: Crusading and masculinities / Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley [editors]. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Crusades - Subsidia | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018039402 | ISBN 9781138054677 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315166490 (e book) Subjects: LCSH: Crusades—Social aspects. | Masculinity—Europe— History—476-1492. | Masculinity—Islamic Empire. | Masculinity— Religious aspects—Christianity. | Masculinity—Religious aspects—Islam. | Sex role—Europe—History—476-1492. | Sex role—Islamic Empire. | Sex role—Religious aspects— Christianity. | Sex role—Religious aspects—Islam. | Chivalry—Europe—History—476-1492. | Chivalry— Islamic Empire. | Chivalry—Religious aspects— Christianity. | Chivalry—Religious aspects— Islam. | Civilization, Medieval. Classification: LCC D160 .C79 2019 | DDC 909.07—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039402 ISBN: 978-1-138-05467-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-16649-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgementsviii Contributors’ biographies ix

Crusading and masculinities: introduction

1

NATASHA R. HODGSON, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, AND MATTHEW M. MESLEY

Sources and models

19

  1 Propaganda and masculinity: gendering the crusades in thirteenth-century sermons

21

CHRISTOPH T. MAIER

  2 The valiant man and the vilain in the tradition of the Gesta Francorum: overeating, taunts, and Bohemond’s heroic status

36

SIMON THOMAS PARSONS

 3 Al-Afd· al b. Badr al-Jamālī, the vizierate and the Fatimid response to the First Crusade: masculinity in historical memory

53

MATHEW BARBER

  4 The adolescent and the crusader: journey and rebirth on the path to manhood in the thirteenth century

72

ANNE-LYDIE DUBOIS

Contrasting masculinities

87

  5 Masculine attributes of the other: the shared knightly model

89

YVONNE FRIEDMAN

vi  Contents   6 The true gentleman? Correct behaviour towards women according to Christian and Muslim writers: from the Third Crusade to Sultan Baybars

100

HELEN J. NICHOLSON

  7 Contrasting masculinities in the Baltic crusades: Teutonic Knights and secular crusaders at war and peace in late Medieval Prussia

113

ALAN V. MURRAY

  8 The presentation of crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas

129

JAMES DOHERTY

Emasculation and transgression

147

  9 Crusader masculinities in bodily crises: incapacity and the crusader leader, 1095–1274

149

JOANNA PHILLIPS

10 Emasculating the enemy: Wicher the Swabian’s fight with the Saracen giant

165

SUSAN B. EDGINGTON

11 Fighting women in the crusading period through Muslim eyes: transgressing expectations and facing realities?

183

NIALL CHRISTIE

Masculinity and religiosity

197

12 Leading the people “as duke, count, and father”: the masculinities of Abbot Martin of Pairis in Gunther of Pairis’ Hystoria Constantinopolitana

199

NATASHA R. HODGSON

13 Martyrdom as masculinity in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi

222

BETH C. SPACEY

14 Mediterranean masculinities? Reflections of Muslim and Christian manliness: in medieval Iberian crusade and jihad narratives LINDA G. JONES

237

Contents vii 15 A Jewish solution to the problem of excessive Christian virility in the war against Spanish Islam

256

ERIKA TRITLE

Chivalry and kingship

273

16 Performing Plantagenet kingship: crusading and masculinity in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora

275

MATTHEW M. MESLEY

17 Kingship on Crusade in the Chronicle and Poem of Alfonso XI of Castile

296

DAVID CANTOR-ECHOLS

18 . . . doo as this noble prynce Godeffroy of boloyne dyde: chivalry, masculinity, and crusading in late medieval England

311

KATHERINE J. LEWIS

19 “Lest his men mutter against him”: Chivalry and artifice in a Burgundian crusade chronicle

329

ROBERT B. DESJARDINS

Afterword

345

RUTH MAZO KARRAS

Index

356

Acknowledgements

This volume began as a symposium held at the University of Zurich in April 2016. The editors would like to thank the following for their generous financial support towards this event: the Swiss National Science Foundation, Zürcher Mediävistik, Zürcher Universitätsverein, the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, the Division of History at the University of Huddersfield, and the Department of History, Languages and Global Studies at Nottingham Trent University. The essays in this collection were all originally delivered at the symposium. We would like to thank the following who also spoke at the symposium: Anthony Bale, Matthew Bennett, Paul M. Cobb, Thomas Devaney, Michelle T. Hufschmid, Joanna Huntington, and Dion Smythe. Many thanks are also due to Christopher Bonfield for invaluable support in both the planning and running of the symposium. Also to Felix Rehschuh for his assistance at the symposium. Finally, many thanks to Mark McCabe for his help in preparing the final manuscript.

Contributors’ biographies

Mathew Barber is a PhD Candidate in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research concerns the Egyptian historiography of the Fatimids until the late Mamluk period (c. 1500). He is particularly interested in the development of textual traditions, the transmission of texts, their use by later historians, and what this might tell us about lost contemporary sources. More broadly he is concerned with the Fatimids’ role in the Mediterranean and their interaction with the Franks immediately prior to, and following the outbreak of, the First Crusade. David Cantor-Echols is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at The University of Chicago. His research focuses on the political, religious, and cultural history of late medieval Iberia, with special attention given to the role of the peninsula’s multi-faith environment in shaping its institutions and the discourses surrounding them. Niall Christie teaches the history of Europe and the Muslim world at Langara College in Vancouver, Canada. His research focuses on interactions between the Middle East and Europe in the Middle Ages, including the preaching of the Muslim  jihad  against the crusaders, Middle Eastern images of medieval Europe, and women and the crusades. He is the author of several articles and two books: The Book of the Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106): Text, Translation and Commentary  (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); and  Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East, 1095– 1382, from the Islamic Sources (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014). Robert B. Desjardins (PhD Alberta, 2010) is an independent scholar and graduate writing advisor at the University of Alberta. A member of a research team examining late medieval witch persecution in the Burgundian Low Countries, he is co-editor of The Arras Witch Treatises (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). His interest in the culture of Valois Burgundy also extends to its crusading discourse, as reflected in the chronicle of Waleran de Wavrin’s journey in the mid-1440s to the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The paper presented here contains elements of a larger study that he is currently developing.

x  Contributors’ biographies James Doherty is Teaching Fellow in Medieval History at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on lay initiative in the early crusading movement, lordship, and the commemoration of the crusades. At present, he is writing a monograph on the impact of the First Crusade on lordship, focusing in particular on the life of Count Hugh of Champagne. Anne-Lydie Dubois is a Research and Teaching Assistant in Medieval History at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently preparing her PhD thesis, under the supervision of Professor Franco Morenzoni, about masculinity in the thirteenth century, exploring the ways that Mendicant friars taught children, teenagers, and lay adults to behave as men. Her research interests and her teaching fields focus particularly on representations of manhood, education, apprehension of the body, and sexuality from a cultural history perspective. Susan B. Edgington is a teaching and research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She works on the First Crusade and the early history of the Latin settlement, and her definitive edition and translation of the Historia  of Albert of Aachen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) will soon be joined by a translation of Baldric of Bourgueil’s Historia (from Steven Biddlecombe’s edition). She was also co-editor, with Sarah Lambert, of Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001). She is currently working on a biography of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. Yvonne Friedman is professor of General History and Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her research foci include historical interreligious contacts and twelfth- and thirteenth-century Muslim-Crusader peace processes in the Levant. Her book Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill, 2002) treated medieval ransom in the Middle East and a volume of essays under her editorship, Religion and Peace: Historical Aspects, has recently been published (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). Other fields of interest include medieval anti-Semitism, women in a fighting society, medieval geography, and pilgrimage. Natasha R. Hodgson is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Nottingham Trent University. A crusade historian with a particular interest in gender and social history, she is the author of Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007) and is working on a forthcoming monograph Gender and the Crusades for Palgrave Macmillan. She produced a number of publications on crusading masculinity and identity, the most recent of which appeared in the journal History (2017) and focused on Arnulf of Chocques. She edits the Advances in Crusader Studies and Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History series for Routledge and co-edits the journal Nottingham Medieval Studies. Linda G. Jones is a Ramón y Cajal Research Professor in the Department of History at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona in Spain. She studies the religious cultures of Muslim Iberia and the Maghreb between the twelfth

Contributors’ biographies  xi century and the fifteenth. Her current research focuses on the cultural, social, and political aspects of medieval Islamic preaching; comparative studies of premodern Muslim and Christian homiletics; the role of religion in shaping gender identities; and representations of masculinity in Muslim and Christian religious, literary, chronicle, and prosopographic texts of Almohad, Nasrid, Marinid, Castilian, Catalan, and Aragonese origin. Her publications include  The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); “ ‘He Cried and Made Others Cry’: Crying as a Sign of Pietistic Authenticity or Deception in Islamic Preaching”, in Elina Gertsman ed.,  Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); and “Ambivalent Models of Manliness in Medieval Islamic Hagiography”, in Alexandra Cuffel et al. eds, Body Trouble: The Ambivalence of Sex, Gender, and Desire in Religious Discourse (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). Ruth Mazo Karras is the Lecky Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. She is the author of multiple books and articles in the area of medieval gender and sexuality, including From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity, Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Her current research concerns King David as a figure of masculinity in medieval Christian and Jewish culture, and a project on the history of medieval marriage. Katherine J. Lewis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. She researches later medieval religious and cultural history. She has published on hagiography and saints’ cults (especially St Katherine of Alexandria), on medieval women, and on masculinity, including Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). She is continuing to work on intersections between kingship, chivalry, and elite masculinity in the later Middle Ages as expressed in crusading narratives. Christoph T. Maier is Privatdozent in medieval history at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His main areas of research are the crusade and medieval saints’ cults. He has published two monographs and numerous articles on crusade sermons and preaching, crusade liturgy, gender aspects of the crusade and crusade historiography among other topics. He acts as series editor of Crusades Subsidia on behalf of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Matthew M. Mesley is an Associate Lecturer at Bath Spa University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield. Until 2016 he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Zurich. He has published on bishops and gender, miracles and Christian–Jewish relations. More recently he has worked on crusading masculinities, with one publication in Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, eds P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), and a forthcoming chapter in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed. Anthony Bale. Alan V. Murray  is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds and Editorial Director of the International Medieval Bibliography. He

xii  Contributors’ biographies has written numerous studies on the Latin states of Outremer, crusade and mission in the Baltic region, and historiography, logistics, and literature of the crusades. He is author of  The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History (Oxford: Prosopographica & Genealogica, 2000) and The Franks in Outremer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015) and editor of The Crusades: An Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2006). His most recent work is on the history of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia and the crusades against the Baltic pagans. Helen J. Nicholson is Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University, Wales (UK), and has published on the military religious orders, crusades, medieval warfare, women’s roles in these, and medieval “fictional” literature as a historical source. She is currently researching into the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ properties in England and Wales, and is writing a study of Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (d. 1190) for Routledge’s “Rulers of the Latin East” series. Simon Thomas Parsons is Teaching Fellow in Medieval History at King’s College London. He has written articles and book chapters on Anglo-Norman crusade participation and the Old French vernacular accounts of the First Crusade, and is preparing a monograph on the textual tradition of the early crusading movement. Joanna Phillips received her PhD from the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on health and the crusades, incorporating aspects of identity and patienthood; the use of chronicles in medical history; travel and logistics; and religious interpretations of health. She continues to work at the University of Leeds and is currently preparing future publications on the intersections of health and medieval warfare. Beth C. Spacey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, where she is conducting research into thirteenth-century crusade narratives. She received her PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2017 and has taught medieval history at the University of Birmingham and Trinity College Dublin. Her research and publications focus on the medieval historiography of the crusades, and she is currently working on a book examining the miraculous in the Latin narrative histories of the crusades of 1095 to 1204. Erika Tritle is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, having completed a PhD in History of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her work on the role of ideas about Judaism within Christian thought currently centres on ways in which Christians in fifteenth-century Spain debated the social, political, and theological status of converts from Judaism and their descendants, known as conversos or New Christians. Her findings underscore the important role that ideas about Jews and Judaism have played in the negotiation of religious and political community identities and in the development of Western ideas about gender and race.

Crusading and masculinities Introduction Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis, and Matthew M. Mesley

In the first decade of the twelfth century, medieval writers were presented with the challenge of recording and explaining a historic event of immense religious significance to their world-view: the capture of the Holy City of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders in 1099.1 As they sought to categorise and explain events, most agreed that divine providence was key, but they sought also to emphasise the outstanding credentials of the crusaders, both as a group and as individuals, who had enjoyed such extraordinary success in warfare. Although historians have subsequently debated the extent to which crusading was a defined and recognised concept before and during the twelfth century, the medieval texts convey a sense that something new and miraculous had occurred as a result of both human and divine agency.2 The early authors who sought to categorise the expedition to Jerusalem and its participants thus had a substantial role in shaping ideals of crusading and “ideal crusaders”, but those ideals continued to develop through the twelfth century and beyond as crusading expanded to new frontiers and was “rebranded” by each successive generation. Like those authors, modern historians of the crusades have been drawn to provide explanations and examine motivations for these events, evaluating in great depth the political, military, social and religious circumstances that attracted people to this new form of religious military activity. Thus far, however, gender has played a limited role in informing these debates. This collection presents the first substantial exploration of crusading and masculinity, focusing on the varied ways in which the symbiotic relationship between the two was made manifest in a range of medieval settings and sources, and to what ends. It includes contributions both from established scholars of the crusades and of medieval gender, and those earlier in their careers who have recently completed cutting-edge doctoral projects. The collection seeks to demonstrate that incorporating masculinity within analysis of the crusades and of crusaders is an essential approach that greatly enhances our understanding of crusading as an ideal, an institution, and an experience. Traditionally, crusading has been approached and interpreted as a male enterprise, but without attention to the gender identity of its participants. In more recent years, much research has shed light on the involvement of women, considering their vital roles in campaigning, colonisation, and even in warfare.3 This scholarship has provided an invaluable springboard for the analysis of gendered ideas and ideals upon the depiction and practice of crusading

2  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley more broadly.4 It has also highlighted the richness of the source materials written from a wide range of different religious and cultural outlooks, for attitudes towards gender and social manifestations of gender within medieval societies, and for cross-cultural comparisons.5 The use of gender as a tool for historical analysis has become commonplace in other areas of medieval history, and, of late, there has been a flourishing of research into medieval masculinities.6 This is particularly evident in work undertaken upon the medieval clergy, in terms of their specific roles, functions, and differences. Much has been written about how the requirement for celibacy from the twelfth century informed and contributed to a particular identity that distinguished the secular clergy from the laity. The use of the gendered language of warfare to express the superiority of clerical men and monks over laymen has been interpreted within different sources and contexts as demonstrative both of defensiveness and of self-confidence.7 The operation of gender within political rhetoric has also been explored for how it was used both to justify and undermine the rule and actions of individuals such as Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy and the English kings Richard II, Henry V, and Henry VI.8 Accordingly, studies of high-status laymen and kings have fruitfully drawn on R.W. Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity to gauge how meanings of manhood functioned as an essential part of the conceptualisation and successful exercise of lordship.9 The extent to which notions of chivalry were intertwined with masculine ideals has also begun to be explored.10 Despite the applicability of these issues and methodologies to an analysis of crusading materials, most scholarship on the crusades still tends not to incorporate a gendered approach. Conversely, those scholars working on medieval ideas of gender and masculinity have usually focused on non-crusading environments. This essay collection therefore explicitly addresses a substantial lacuna in research. Scholarship on warfare in later periods increasingly considers the experience and representation of war in terms of the gender identities both of men who fought, and those who did not.11 But the abundant variety of ideas about medieval manhood and masculinity that are ubiquitous throughout crusade sources remain largely untapped, with a few notable exceptions.12 Nor have these sources been much explored for what they can tell us about the extent to which such ideas influenced the conduct of men on crusade and were thus made socially manifest. Crusade narratives are an excellent source for unpicking the complex interactions between gender theory and gendered practices. A focus on issues of masculinity should not therefore be viewed as an intellectually retrograde step that serves merely to reinforce a traditional focus on powerful men. Using the crusades to explore socio-cultural perceptions and constructions of what it meant to be a man provides a vital means of understanding the basis and maintenance of medieval patriarchal social and political hierarchies more widely.13 It also reveals the role of gender as part of individual and collective senses of self and place in the world. Moreover, the crusades remain one of the best examples of a medieval propaganda machine in action, successfully motivating men from hugely diverse social

Introduction  3 and cultural backgrounds to participate over several generations. Ideas about masculinity formed an inherent part of the mindset of societies in which crusading happened, and of the conceptual framework informing both those who recorded the events and those who participated. These ideas need to be examined and interrogated if we are to approach a fully contextualised understanding both of what happened and how those events were experienced, comprehended, and portrayed. Crusading itself was an innovation in religious warfare, an experiment geared towards creating a new path to salvation for those men in society unable to embrace a religious life. While a clear definition of the term “crusade” continues to elude historians, its ongoing conceptual development formed an effective sounding board for ideas about masculinity from a range of secular and ecclesiastical perspectives and thus highlighted the very points of tension in society at which the deepest concerns about gender identities emerged. Following Joan Scott’s influential assertion that gender is a “primary way of signifying relationships of power”, the crusades offer abundant evidence for contemporary understandings of the mutually reinforcing interplay between authority, status, and gender.14 They also provide an ideal environment within which to assess relationships both between men and women, and between different groups of men whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed and defined in distinct ways. We can also apply such an analysis to the male (and occasionally female) authors who produced these narratives. In keeping with the didactic aspects of medieval historical writing, those authors who described crusades from a Latin Christian perspective were expressly committed to commenting on the manliness of its participants, successful and unsuccessful, in order to advise their audience on the correct behaviour and ensure the desired outcome of any future expeditions. Such depictions also informed the developing ethos of chivalry to play a role in defining and establishing influential normative versions of high-status masculinity in the later Middle Ages. Natasha R. Hodgson contends that: rather than trying to pin down one elusive ‘ideal’ of crusader masculinity, which after all changed over time as religious war developed, we need to move towards a model of scholarship which encompasses the wide range of masculine terminology employed in contemporary texts.15 Crusaders were not a simple hybrid of Western secular and religious ideals. They represented a spectrum of masculinities from different medieval societies: rich and poor, laymen and the religious, traders and settlers, fighters and pilgrims. These roles could change or develop in the course of an expedition as crusaders lost or gained wealth, clergy fought or knights joined military orders, and men were injured, killed or changed allegiance. Sometimes women caught in extremis, such as Margaret of Beverley, would take on masculine roles and characteristics in response to particular circumstances.16 Moreover, becoming a man was not simply a matter of attaining a particular age but was a social process, and for many men participation in warfare was a key benchmark serving both to confirm and assess adult manhood. By extension there was a contemporary tendency

4  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley to equate failure on the military stage with a failure of masculinity, both at the time and in more recent scholarship, too. The case of Stephen of Blois, who fled from the siege of Antioch in 1098 and was reputedly encouraged to redeem his honour and return to the Holy Land by his wife, is a well-known example.17 Secular masculinity was predicated not so much on the ability to dominate women, in a strictly patriarchal sense, but on the ability to dominate and govern other, subordinate, men. However, despite the premium placed on lineage, the valorisation of these qualities, involving personal strength, fortitude, and domination, meant that this form of masculinity could be adopted by men of ability not born to the role. So, the experience of crusading arguably offered them the opportunity to modify and enhance their standing as men, not just in political or social terms, but in specifically gendered terms, too. Even kings who returned from crusades that can only be considered unsuccessful, such as Louis VII and IX of France, seem to have returned to the West with their international reputations and manhood enhanced rather than damaged. Distinctions based on gender and sexual differences were used alongside other forms of identity, such as social status, race, class, and religion. An increasing amount of scholarship seeks to highlight the significance of cross-cultural contacts and non-Western perspectives.18 As this collection demonstrates, both Christian and Muslim authors used gendered comparisons to draw distinctions between the men who fought for their religion and those who were deemed to be their enemies. However, one obvious area that this essay collection does not fully explore is the relationship between Western and Eastern Christian perceptions of masculinity. This topic was represented at the Zürich conference, but the editors took the decision not to commission an additional piece, largely because some significant work on this area has already been undertaken, especially in relation to Western perceptions of Byzantium.19 Gendered language is so often overtly used in descriptions of Byzantine dress, culture, and behaviour that it has not gone unnoticed by some crusade scholars, but discussions of this have often been subsumed into wider analyses of cultural differences and identity rather than focusing specifically on gender.20 Furthermore, some of these issues are explored in relation to clerical masculinities in chapter 12. This collection presents analyses that take a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to a range of primary source materials. The contributors present careful interrogations of contemporary perceptions of the mutually reinforcing interplay between gender and other facets of identity and experience, such as status, age, religion, and ethnicity. Chronologically, the volume’s contents span the High to Late Middle Ages. Some of the contributors focus on the “classic” period of crusading – events and phenomena born of the various Western campaigns to the Middle East from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth century, and also on the Islamic responses to these. The accounts of authors from Christian traditions are considered, as well as texts by Muslim and Jewish writers. Narratives of these events and of heroic individuals such as Godfrey of Bouillon and Bohemond of Taranto, continued to be written, copied, and circulated in the later medieval period. Thus, other contributors consider the continuing power of crusading as an inspirational and aspirational ideal after 1291, exploring how it informed concepts and models of chivalry and kingship. Crusading, or at least an

Introduction  5 expressed commitment to crusading, clearly functioned as a benchmark of manliness into the sixteenth century. Moreover, warfare between Christian and Muslim forces that explicitly drew on ideologies of holy war/jihād was not confined to the Middle East. Crusader aggression extended to other ethnic and religious groups that diversified both Christian ideals of manhood and the portrayal of their enemies. Reflecting this, some of our contributors focus on events and sources from the Iberian Peninsula and Prussia, which allows for illuminating comparisons and contrasts with materials relating to the Middle East. By focusing on masculinities, this collection sheds new light on our understanding of crusading as both ethos and experience. Most of the contributors have not previously approached crusade sources in relation to issues of masculinity before. Thus, the collection also seeks to highlight the value of employing gender as a very fruitful means of assessing relationships between different groups of men, whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed in distinct ways. The essays that follow are divided into five thematic sections: Sources and Models; Contrasting Masculinities; Emasculation and Transgression; Masculinity and Religiosity; and Kingship and Chivalry. These themes highlight the wideranging scope and potential that an investigation of the crusades and masculinities offers in diverse chronological, geographical and cultural contexts. Following these sections, we conclude with an afterword by Ruth Mazo Karras. She identifies a number of thematic strands running throughout the collection, which collectively establish what she identifies as a taxonomy of masculinity. She highlights the usefulness of this taxonomy as a tool for historical enquiry and, in so doing, further emphasises the enormous potential that crusading sources of various kinds hold for scholars of medieval masculinity. We begin with Sources and Models. These provide an excellent introduction to crusading and masculinities, focusing on the construction of masculine ideals and identities and their representation in different types of sources: sermons designed to encourage support for and participation in thirteenth-century crusades; the influential Gesta Francorum chronicle and chansons de geste; Arabic court chronicles; and educational texts that drew on warrior metaphors in order to guide adolescent males to adulthood. In pinpointing a variety of textual traditions, rhetorical strategies, and moral instructions, they articulate the varied relationships these sources had with different models of masculinity. Between them the essays explore differing viewpoints as to how men were expected to behave, which in these sources involved the identification of characteristics and abilities deemed heroic and exemplary. They also examine the didactic and political uses to which masculinity could be put to suit the interests of particular authors and audiences within crusading contexts. This common approach also reveals areas of both similarity and contrast in understandings of what it meant to be a man, and the ways in which such definitions drew on other aspects of identity, especially occupations and activities relating to social status. Furthermore, each of these essays show that crusade contexts were never impermeable; instead, they were influenced by, and interacted with, broader social, cultural, and intellectual

6  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley developments. Indeed, perceptions of ideal masculinity were not divorced from, or shielded by cultural encounters and the impact of acculturation. Christoph T. Maier analyses thirteenth-century sermons that sought to engage potential crusaders by urging them to emulate heroic leaders of the past, especially those described in the Old Testament, such as Judas Maccabeus, Matthias, and Abraham. Their authors included well-known figures such as James of Vitry and Humbert of Romans, and the texts were intended to be used not only to compel men to take the crusader vow, but also to exhort them once the crusade was underway, just before battles, for example. The prescriptive quality of these sermons render them an excellent guide to the function of masculinity within the creation of a normative crusader identity. Maier sets out to challenge the contention that becoming a crusader entailed taking on a type of hybrid masculinity that drew both on ideals of secular knighthood and clerical vocation. Rather than creating a model for the would-be crusader that required them to modify or even eschew their existing masculine identity, Maier shows that the exemplary nature of Old Testament figures was expressed in terms of idealised versions of their social roles and cultural practices as husbands, fathers, and vassals. The process of becoming a crusader outlined by the sermons did not entail a rejection of a man’s existing values, or of his self. Instead, the validation of the holy warrior that the sermons present constituted the validation of a particular form of knightly masculinity. Anne-Lydie Dubois also takes these sermons as her main source, along with contemporary educational texts, pointing out that many examples of both types of source were composed by Mendicant authors. These educational texts, written, for example, by Vincent of Beauvais, were aimed at male adolescents and designed to guide them through the experience of maturation in order that they should arrive at ideal manhood: virilitas. Dubois explores the striking parallels that her sources evince between the adolescent striving to attain adult masculinity and the ideal crusader, pointing out that both the sermons and the educational treatises were primarily aimed at men of knightly status. Within these both preacher and educator are positioned as leading their addressees on a journey, in one case the journey to the Holy Land, in the other the journey to becoming a man. These journeys required superlative levels of moral and physical fortitude, and Dubois focuses on the significance of becoming a soldier of Christ to both. Being a soldier of Christ had obvious resonances for crusaders, who had taken an oath and also taken up arms to defend Christ’s church. But it was also a very useful model for training adolescents, because becoming a man necessitated triumphant combat against worldly and especially sexual temptations. Both crusaders and would-be men fought infernal foes. Thus, Dubois’s analysis demonstrates that while crusading was, for some, an actual experience, for others it was held up as a metaphor for the ideal behaviour to which they should aspire in order to achieve manhood. The essays by Simon Thomas Parsons and Mathew Barber both examine the narrative depiction of specific men. They consider how gender was used to praise and to criticise leaders, and also highlight the role of discourses of holy warfare within such assessments. Parsons presents a close examination of the depiction of

Introduction 7 Bohemond in the influential Gesta Francorum and related contemporary chronicles that draw closely on it. Traditionally, the Gesta Francorum has been viewed as a panegyric written by an admirer of Bohemond, who is thus the hero of the narrative. However, Parsons analyses the language of masculinity and social status used within the Gesta and related texts to argue that in fact Bohemond is depicted in rather more complex and often critical terms than this scholarly orthodoxy has allowed. Despite the premium that the texts place on military activity as a benchmark of high-status masculinity, Bohemond is rarely seen in battle. Having thus identified an equivocal view both of Bohemond and of masculine conduct more widely emerging from these texts, Parsons contextualises this by reference to contemporary vernacular chansons de geste, including the chansons of the Guillaume cycle, which depict the exploits of William of Orange. This approach demonstrates that, far from straightforwardly embodying the traits of ideal masculinity that are evoked within the Gesta, particularly self-control, Bohemond actually has far more in common with the carnivalesque vilain character type of the chansons. Parsons argues that this reflects a socio-cultural context in which models of masculinity were in flux and that the ways in which authors played with the normative constituent parts of such models expressed tensions revolving around their intersection with social status. Mathew Barber’s essay demonstrates that martial abilities were also crucial to the performance of a high-status masculine identity in Fatimid Egypt. He evaluates the career of Al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī a wazīr in Egypt at the time of the First Crusade, who led early campaigns against the Franks. Al-Afḍal has received rather less attention from scholars of Islamic perspectives on the crusades than the later leaders Zengī, Nūr al-Dīn, and Saladin. Barber contends that investigating the depiction of al-Afḍal and the representation of his masculinity in narrative sources furthers our understanding of Fatimid perspectives on the crusades and of the role of gender in Arabic writings on the crusades more broadly. Drawing on theoretical approaches that perceive an inherently precarious quality to masculinity, Barber compares accounts of al-Afḍal contained both in texts written by men who were his contemporaries and in those written later. The contemporary sources praise al-Afḍal’s military campaigns, including his response to the First Crusade, but do so by omitting his military failures. As the later accounts describe al-Afḍal as unmanly due to his capricious and emotional character, Barber posits that the contemporary authors’ emphasis on his martial abilities, which drew strongly on jihād ideology, was propagandist and promoted by al-Afḍal himself. This was intended to present him as virile and masterful and to counter claims that he did not possess the masculine character essential to rule over others. However, the version of himself that he sought to promote was not reflected in the later sources, and it is significant that at least one later commentator implicates al-Afḍal in the Fatimids’ loss of Jerusalem. This evidences a perception of the interrelationships between masculinity, warfare, and rulership. It also reminds us that an individual’s gender identity could be shaped and reshaped in historical narratives in ways that tell us not what that individual was “really” like, but instead reveal the preoccupations of the author.

8  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley Contrasting Masculinities explores the interactions between paradigms of manhood and chivalry, both within and between different medieval societies. Crusading was one of a number of arenas in which men could, and often were, differentiated. The chapters in this section analyse the function and representation of competing masculinities within literary and historical texts associated with the culture of crusading. This theme also resurfaces more broadly throughout the collection, for constructing or emphasising differences between men was itself a tool by which medieval authors could reify (or attempt to make dominant) particular notions of masculinity within the context of warfare and inter-religious dialogue. Both Yvonne Friedman and Helen J. Nicholson examine how cross-cultural contacts between Christians and Muslims influenced the ways in which writers of each faith characterised their adversaries during the crusades. What was admired or reviled in their opponents often revealed an author’s own ideas about appropriate masculine conduct and behaviour, as well as reflecting broader developments in cultural understandings of warfare. Indeed, Friedman suggests that the formation of chivalric ideology in the West was itself influenced by Muslim ideals of masculinity. The crusades may even have acted as a catalyst for acculturation. They certainly provided both Christians and Muslims with opportunities to reflect on how they characterised knightly or heroic behaviour. In this respect, shared values, and even some appreciation and acclaim, was conceivable. However, there were still penalties for miscegenation and intermarriage, and a need to claim moral and physical pre-eminence on both sides. Friedman demonstrates, for example, the Christian authors’ emphasis on lineage and hereditary superiority. Accordingly, Muslim heroes could be presented as having Christian ancestors, in order to maintain Frankish fantasies of dominance. The treatment of women, as Nicholson thoughtfully highlights, was also used by Christian and Muslim writers to make claims both about a ruler’s worthiness, and also more broadly about the primacy of one religion over another. Attitudes may be similar on occasion, for example, in relation to common approaches to the treatment of noble women. Yet writers still framed these male–female encounters in accordance with their own particular Christian or Muslim religious and social codes. Highlighting appropriate behaviour towards women who were associated with the enemy clearly did matter, yet, as Nicholson makes clear, it is important to distinguish the ideal from the norm. The final two contributors in this section consider crusader masculinities in texts written in areas of Europe that have often been neglected, in contrast to the volume of scholarship about crusading in the Middle East. Alan V. Murray brings attention to the Teutonic Order of Knights in late medieval Prussia and Lithuania, and suggests that their main objective was to convert Eastern Pagans to Christianity. In particular, he compares them with the secular Western crusaders. From the late thirteenth century these crusaders increasingly travelled to the Baltic in order to undertake a season of campaigning as guests of the Knights Brethren. For these noble and royal participants, crusading in Prussia was a socially exclusive endeavour that acted as a status symbol of both wealth and honour. In such an environment, Murray argues that a qualitative model of masculinity

Introduction  9 was characterised chiefly by two factors: the absence of women and conspicuous consumption. The former reaffirmed a particular homosocial environment of male bonding, and may have even encouraged a situational celibacy, at least outside of heteronormative codes. The latter is seen in the activities that were habitual – feasting, hunting, campaigning, and ceremonies  – that all required wealth and recognition of social status. This was in sharp contrast to the ideology of spiritual and physical self-sacrifice, and the monastic tenants of obedience, poverty, and chastity adopted by the Teutonic Knights. Nonetheless, Murray demonstrates that there were also tensions between crusaders of different nationalities, and that even the Knights Brethren were not adverse to recognising or even endorsing secular ideals of honour and valour. James Doherty analyses the depiction of crusading culture in Icelandic sagas. These highlight how Scandinavian involvement within the crusades was depicted in very different ways to the accounts produced in Western Europe by monastic and clerical authors of the First Crusade. Within the sagas expectations of masculinity were not constructed through the prism of religiosity. As such, there was no stress on chastity, atonement, or religious leadership; instead, prestige, gloryseeking, sex, and secular pursuits were highlighted as motives. A crusade leader’s success was judged on his ability to enhance his own honour and to provide for his followers. Yet Doherty shows that within Scandinavian culture crusading also acted to open up and centre debates (and arguments) about what was ideal masculinity. This created new possibilities for gendered insults and invective, particularly between those who had stayed at home and those who had ventured abroad. In the sagas we see not only a distinct form of secular masculinity on crusade that reflected the genre and audience of these texts; we also discern how, for Scandinavians, going on crusade encouraged a more visceral culture of boasting and judgement about male behaviour. The contributors to Emasculation and Transgression all explore the ways in which crusading contexts and narratives could be used to frame discussions and discourses surrounding bodily ambiguity and breaches of normative gender ideals and roles. Indeed, what was considered appropriate during warfare could be viewed as excessive or transgressive at home. Who a person was, and what he or she represented, could also, in certain circumstances, violate social or moral boundaries. In depicting those who failed to maintain contemporary masculine ideals, authors could allude to broader concerns or anxieties, even if they admired the same actions in different contexts. Such contradictions or inconsistencies suggest that alongside culturally sanctioned views, there were other less “official” or marginalised interpretations. As our contributors demonstrate, transgressive acts, or depictions of humiliation and failure, also spoke to the necessity of upholding specific identities, particularly when judging one’s enemies. In deciding what was acceptable, in identifying what should be restricted, and in articulating when feats or actions were either heroic or went beyond the pale, medieval authors highlight the tensions inherent in medieval notions of masculinity and gender, even as they represented and remembered individuals in ways that suited their motives and audience.

10  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley Joanna Phillips begins this section by examining the relationship between crusading leadership and bodily incapacity. She highlights how medieval understandings of corporeality and health often shaped the representation and interpretation of masculinity during crusade expeditions. As Phillips reminds us, the body, physiology, and sexual difference were viewed in the Middle Ages through a gendered prism. During the crusade, concerns about the health of men could also intersect with beliefs about social status, class, religiosity, and kingship. Indeed, with respect to the latter, Phillips uses the example of Jean of Joinville’s Vie de saint Louis as a springboard with which to analyse other narrative examples that articulate the relationship between leadership, corporeality, and masculinity. As she demonstrates, illness, bodily infirmity, or even wounds could compromise the reputation, authority, and masculine identity of crusade leaders, particularly if their health or sickness resulted in their failure to fulfil their responsibilities or obligations. Furthermore, a lack of vigour or strength may have (or may be viewed as having) serious repercussions in terms of maintaining control of an army, or in achieving success. Indeed, Phillips makes clear that such anxieties fed into how crusade leaders sought to embody or perform their roles, but would also influence how they came to be represented by particular authors of crusade narratives. In her essay, Susan B. Edgington introduces us to Wicher the Swabian and his fight to the death with a Saracen giant. The account, an original addition to a verse adaptation of Robert the Monk’s Historia Iherosolimitana, was written by the Bavarian Benedictine monk Metellus of Tegernsee, prior to the Second Crusade. In the text, Wicher’s epic duel against the anonymous giant is used by Metellus to amplify German participation in the First Crusade, and is, significantly, placed in the text prior to the battle and subsequent capture of Jerusalem in 1099. Wicher, who was a historical individual, is portrayed alongside Godfrey of Bouillon, who would become the crusading hero and masculine exemplar par excellence. Yet it is Wicher who is shown to flatter Godfrey into agreeing that he, the Swabian, rather than Godfrey himself, should undertake the duel. The competitiveness that is often identified as an underpinning feature of chivalric masculinity is thus here played out in terms of ethnic identity and national pride. The duel itself parallels and reflects many of the tropes that would become common in chansons de geste and later chivalric romances, most noticeably the almost grotesque hypermasculinity attributed to the Saracen giant. Significantly, it was not enough here for Wicher to defeat his foe; instead, he is described as inflicting a vulva-shaped wound on the giant’s thigh. As Edgington describes it, the enemy was thus “comically emasculated” for the text’s audience. In our final chapter of this section, Niall Christie investigates Muslim representations of women fighting. His analysis highlights how actions or roles deemed to be natural or “intuitive” were nonetheless constructed and supported through gendered rhetoric. Christie shows that, in certain contexts, the assumption that fighting was the exclusive domain of men was actually somewhat flexible. Examining depictions of women participating in combat also draws our attention to how, and in what circumstances, medieval male authors identified what was seen

Introduction  11 as a violation of gender roles or norms. If Frankish women were often used within these narratives for propagandistic purposes, for example, as a way of sullying the reputation or honour of Christian forces, Muslim women were generally shown to fight out of sheer necessity or in an auxiliary role. Christie demonstrates that there could be a disparity between the conventional views underpinning these narratives, and writers’ recognition of the circumstances that women faced during wars and conflict. Indeed, in certain narrative contexts, allowances were made for women’s participation in combat, and, even if temporary or situational, there was an appreciation of their roles. Christie also draws attention to the ways in which gender ideals can differ between sources that purport to be factual (historical narratives) and those that are fictional (folk or epic literature). In the latter, there are more examples of women warriors, and more opportunities for transgressing certain gender roles. This had to be balanced with the idea that these women still deferred to societal understandings of male authority and control. There was thus both admiration and anxiety about women transgressing gender norms, or acting like men. The innovation of crusading at the end of the eleventh century created an alliance between military and religious ideals that was wildly popular, but also contentious. It was subject to criticisms and constant reinterpretation to suit new situations, especially when military failure led to reflection on spiritual shortcomings. The Church was instrumental in defining, promoting, and regulating crusades, yet time and again they had to rely for the most part on secular warriors to carry out warfare according to religious principles with varying degrees of success. At a time when reformers were seeking to reify clerical masculine identities and separate clergy from the secular world, conversely crusading necessitated developing a close relationship with and even participating in that military activity with the warrior group. Disseminating these ideas successfully to target groups of suitable men was also key. The four contributions in Masculinity and Religiosity highlight the ways in which authors used idealised representations of men in order to deconstruct and interpret ideas about religious identity, holy war, and martyrdom. They consider, in different settings, how religiosity was informed by ideals of masculinity, but could also shape those ideals. Notions of selfabnegation, faithfulness, and piety were considered integral components of highstatus manhood in both Christian and Islamic narratives of holy warfare. Moreover, all four essays examine texts that emphasise the exemplary nature of certain individual men or groups of men, exploring notions of hypermasculinity. Clerical participation in crusades was problematic from the outset. Bishops and priests were needed to provide leadership, communication skills, minister to the army and regulate their behaviour, but this entailed working cheek by jowl with an army on the move, exposing them to worldly sin. Monks, who lived regulated lives in cloisters and took vows to remain there, were (officially at least) discouraged from participation in crusading until the end of the twelfth century. Natasha R. Hodgson explores how crusading and masculinity informed each other by investigating an example of monastic gender identity on crusade during the brief period under the pontificate of Innocent III when these restrictions were relaxed

12  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley and some monastic participation in crusades was deliberately sought. She focuses on the Hystoria Constantinopolitana of Gunther of Pairis, and its central figure, Abbot Martin of Pairis, who participated in the Fourth Crusade. In this complex and literary text, Gunther presented Martin as a masculine exemplar for imitation by an educated monastic audience not as a crusader but as a model abbot, and because he was judged worthy by God to steal and transport back to his community a substantial haul of relics from the sack of Constantinople. Hodgson shows that when set against the wider context of clerical masculinity on crusade, Martin’s experience provides a significant insight into the gendered conflicts inherent in the presence of clergy on these expeditions at the start of the thirteenth century. She establishes that crusaders did not fit neatly in to predefined masculine models: Gunther explored Martin’s various roles in religious and secular contexts: as a monk, a preacher, the leader of an army, a pastor, a thief, and above all, an abbot. Hodgson also engages with Gunther’s portrayal of Martin’s emotions and actions in gendered contexts, examining how he evaluated and rationalised a monk’s experiences outside the cloister during a controversial crusade against Christians that presented severe challenges to those tasked with defending it in writing. She argues that authors like Gunther did not simply replicate existing templates of secular and ecclesiastical manliness in depicting exemplary models. Captialising on the opportunity provided by the exceptional nature of crusading they adapted and interwove these selectively in order to explore and express contemporary tensions inherent in engaging with the world for those whose vocation usually required them to live away from it. In common with a number of other essays in the collection Beth C. Spacey highlights the signal role played by narratives of the First Crusade in creating models of masculine endeavour that provided a benchmark of manly excellence that subsequent crusaders were enjoined to match. Her particular focus are depictions of martyrdom – men who died fighting and were described as having attained heavenly glory as a result of this sacrifice. Spacey argues that it was essential for crusader martyrs to display holiness prior to death and a crucial means of achieving this was to describe them as the embodiment of masculine virtues. The death of Templar Jacquelin of Mailly in battle in 1187, and the posthumous treatment of his body, serves as an illuminating test case. Crucially, de Mailly’s death and its representation relates not only to the spiritual status of warriors in general, but to the validity of the Templar vocation more particularly. The influence of the contemporary reform movement that sought to delineate a masculine hierarchy in which men in religious orders were superior to laymen is clearly observable in the sources that Spacey analyses. This involved measuring men against men, a tactic that is also central to the sources at the heart of Linda G. Jones’s essay. She focuses on Christian and Islamic accounts of holy warfare produced in the Iberian Peninsula in the fourteenth century. While there was frequent conflict between the kings of Castile, the Marinid sultans and the Nasrid kings of Granada, there were also, on occasion, alliances between them, and individual rulers were often served by both Christian and Muslim individuals and forces. This interaction has profound

Introduction  13 implications for the ways in which the masculinity of religious others was perceived and represented on both sides. Illustration is provided by close reading of the depiction of the rulers Alfonso XI of Castile and Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb. Jones contends that focusing on piety has the merit of highlighting similarities in Muslim and Christian understanding of what constituted both hegemonic and subaltern masculine identities within this context. Importantly, Jones identifies the renunciation of autonomy as a means of confirming hegemonic masculinity, which bears close relation to Spacey’s discussion of the function of self-sacrifice as an aspect of a crusade martyr’s holy superiority. Jones’s essay shares with Erika Tritle’s not only a focus on the Iberian Peninsula but also an emphasis on the interactions of religion and gender with medieval perceptions of race in the context of ongoing warfare between Christians and Muslims. Tritle analyses the mid-fifteenth-century writings of bishop Alonso de Cartagena that exhorted Castile to complete its God-given mission to oust the Moors from Granada and unite Spain as a Christian country. Cartagena identified an exemplary model of knighthood, imbued with masculine ideals, as key to this enterprise. But he claimed that these manly qualities, if not kept in rational balance, tended to lead nobles to sinful excess. In offering tactics to redress this Cartagena used understandings of Judaism, femininity, and theology to problematise contemporary connections of both Spanishness and Christianity with a disproportionately warlike notion of masculinity. As other essays in this collection also highlight, performance is key to these articulations of the inter-relationship between masculinity and religiosity. The central aspects of a manly religious identity must be enacted and witnessed. Here religiosity is not a matter of internal conviction, it is a matter of conduct, framed by gendered expectations. Being a religious man is a means of making an impression of masculine superiority on enemies, rivals, subjects, or even on God himself, in order to achieve ends both spiritual and political. The final section, Chivalry and Kingship, explores how crusading masculinity was inflected by social status and political function, in combination with notions of chivalry as both code and practice. Focusing on sources and settings from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries it emphasises the continued currency of crusading within late medieval Christendom. The four essays share a common theme in highlighting the exemplary nature of History as a repository of good and bad examples from which readers were expected to take instruction. They also draw out the varied implications of following heroic crusading exemplars, both figuratively, in terms of adopting their manly attributes, but also literally, taking up arms against a non-Christian foe. As Matthew M. Mesley discusses, with reference to Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora, announcing the intention of going on crusade remained a powerful ideological tool, implying commitment to established ideals of Christian knighthood. For kings, such as Henry III of England, the expression of active interest in crusading and offering support for the recovery of the Holy Land continued to be a vital means of accentuating political and moral authority, as well as underlining their affinity with the manly ideals of a Christian warrior.

14  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley Katherine J. Lewis uses William Caxton’s Godeffroy of Boloyne, dedicated to Edward IV of England, to explore what were, by the late fifteenth century, the well-established definitional attributes common to masculinity, chivalry, and kingship. In considering the social and political implications of this conceptual nexus, what emerges clearly from all four essays is that crusading functioned as a recognisable shorthand for this formula of elite manhood. As both Mesley and Lewis discuss, this constitutes a recognisable brand of hegemonic masculinity, as conceived by Connell. Moreover, this identity, as all four essays discuss, was articulated in numerous crusading texts written for kings and other elite men. These were intended not only to give an account of past events, but to influence present circumstances via the inculcation of normative ideals. David Cantor-Echols explores these issues in relation to Alfonso XI of Castile, heir to his predecessors’ attempts to oust Muslim rulers from the southern Iberian Peninsula. Alfonso commissioned a number of narrative and poetic accounts both of his ancestors’ deeds, and of his own exploits as a warrior leader. These texts were a response not just to the conflict between Christianity and Islam, but also to more specific political circumstances. They speak to Alfonso’s experiences as a child king who needed to establish adult manhood with an explicitly martial tenor, in order to demonstrate his qualification to rule. Both Cantor-Echols and Lewis discuss the role of such narratives in the training and socialisation of young men. Lewis argues that in addition to reflecting the threat posed by the Ottomans to Western Europe in the later fifteenth century, Caxton’s account of Godfrey speaks to contemporary concerns about the state of English manhood in the wake of the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years’ War. His Godeffroy of Boloyne thus forms part of a wider syllabus designed to restore noble masculinity by placing a particular emphasis on the exemplary nature of Godfrey’s astonishing physical prowess. Lewis’s analysis therefore reveals, as does Mesley’s, the performative nature of the various elements that together constituted elite male identity. All four essays also consider what was perceived to be at stake in correct performance of these, not just in terms of personal standing and authority but, on occasion, national security. Nor were these ideals simply imposed on the men expected to follow them. Robert B. Desjardins reveals the extent to which discourses of both masculinity and chivalry were fundamental to elite male understandings of, and navigation through, their social and military careers. His focus is the Burgundian noble Waleran de Wavrin’s crusading activities in Eastern Europe, as recounted collaboratively in the later 1440s with his uncle, the chronicler Jean de Wavrin. This reminds us that texts outlining the hegemonic ideal were sometimes written by those who had direct experience of trying to follow it. Waleran de Wavrin’s determination to become a crusading hero illustrates very well crusading’s continuing attraction as a means of obtaining both renown and more material rewards, and the extent to which success was held to be predicated on the adoption of masculine virtues. De Wavrin’s failure to distinguish himself in this arena left him and his uncle attempting to fashion a heroic narrative silk purse out of a rather sorry experiential pig’s ear. Their efforts to do so testify to the potentially vulnerable nature of a high-status male identity that rested on crusading endeavour. But it also

Introduction  15 proves the extent to which embodying this identity continued to matter very much to men throughout the later Middle Ages, both as individuals, and collectively.

Notes 1 For example, the Gesta Francorum and histories by Guibert of Nogent, Baldric of Dol, Robert the Monk, Fulcher of Chartres, Peter Tudebode, Raymond of Aguilers, and Albert of Aachen were all in circulation during this period. 2 For an overview, see Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades, 1099–2010 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 3 See, for example, Gendering the Crusades, eds Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001); Christoph T. Maier, ‘Roles for Women in the Crusade Movement: A Survey’, Journal of Medieval History 30(1) (2004), 61–82. 4 Deborah Gerish, ‘Gender Theory’, in Helen Nicholson ed. Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 130–47; Natasha Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007). 5 For a recent collection of essays taking a cross-cultural approach to historical manifestations of masculinity: Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World, eds Almut Höfert, Matthew M. Mesley, and Serena Tolino (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018). 6 Some key works in this area: Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, eds Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York and London: Garland, 1997); Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999); Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, eds P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Cardiff and Toronto: Cardiff University Press, 2004); Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Derek G. Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2008); Rachel Stone, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 7 For example, Megan McLaughlin, Sex, Gender and Episcopal Authority in An Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011); Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 8 William M. Aird, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134) (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008); Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics, 1377–99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); see also Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst, ‘Kings and Favourites: Politics and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 43(3) (2017), 298– 319. For a recent collection that examines masculinity and politics from ancient Rome to the contemporary West, and includes essays on the Middle Ages, see The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe, Christopher Fletcher, Sean Brady, Rachel E. Moss and Lucy Riall. (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). 9 R.W. Connell, Masculinities, Second Edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005); R.W. Connell, and James Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society 19(6) (2005), 829–59.

16  Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley 10 For example, E. Amanda McVitty, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415’, Journal of Medieval History 40(4) (2014), 458–77; Michael Ovens, ‘Masculine Identity and the Rustics of Romance in Chrétien’s Erec and Yvain’, Viator 47(1) (2015), 45–66; Hélder Carvalhal and Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, ‘Knightly Masculinity, Court Games and Material Culture in LateMedieval Portugal: The Case of Contable Afonso (c. 1480–1504)’, Gender & History 28(2) (2016), 387–400. 11 For example, Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); Men, Masculinities and Male Culture in the Second World War, eds Linsey Robb and Juliette Pattinson (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). 12 Andrew Holt, ‘Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades’, in Thibodeaux ed. Negotiating Clerical Identities, 185–203; Matthew Bennett, ‘Military Masculinity in England and Northern France c. 1050–c.1215’, in Dawn M. Hadley ed. Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London: Longman, 1999), 71–88; Kirsten A. Fenton, ‘Gendering the First Crusade in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum’, and Simon Yarrow, ‘Prince Bohemond, Princess Melaz, and the Gendering of Religious Difference in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis’, both in Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A. Fenton eds, Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 125–39 and 140–57. See also Matthew M. Mesley, ‘Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade’, in Katherine J. Lewis and P.H. Cullum eds, Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), 94–111; Natasha R. Hodgson, ‘Honour, Shame and the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 39(2) (2013), 220–39; ‘Normans and Competing Masculinities on the First Crusade’, in Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldham eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), 195– 214; and Natasha R. Hodgson ‘Reputation, Authority, and Masculine Identities in the Political Culture of the First Crusaders: the Career of Arnulf of Chocques’, History 102 (2017), 889–913. 13 For the value of studying medieval masculinity as a means of unveiling and problematising patriarchal structures see Rachel E. Moss, Fatherhood and its Representations in Middle English Texts (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013). 14 Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 44. 15 Hodgson, ‘Normans and Competing Masculinities’, 212. 16 Thomas of Froidmont, ‘Hodoeporicon et pericula Margarite Iherosolimitane’, in Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ‘Peregrinatio Periculosa. Thomas von Friedmont über die Jerusalemfahrten seiner Schwester Margareta’, in Justus Stache, Wolfgang Maaz, and Fritz Wagner eds, Kontinuität und Wandel. Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire. Franco Munari zum 65. Geburtstag (Hildesheim: Weidman, 1986), 472–85. 17 Hodgson, Women Crusading and the Holy Land, 116. 18 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999); Niall Christie, Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East, 1095–1382, From the Islamic Sources (New York: Routledge, 2014); Alex Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions to the Franks in the Levant 1097–1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); Kristin Skottki, Christen, Muslime und der Erste Kreuzzug. Die Macht der Beschreibung in der mittelalterlichen und modernen Historiographie, Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship 7 (Münster: Waxmann, 2015); Paul M. Cobb, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 19 See, for example, Matthew Bennett, ‘Virile Latins, Effeminate Greeks and Strong Women: Gender Definitions on Crusade’, in Edgington and Lambert eds, Gendering the Crusades, 16–30. For an Armenian perspective, see Natasha R. Hodgson, ‘Conflict

Introduction  17 and Cohabitation: Marriage and Diplomacy between Latins and Cilician Armenians c. 1150–1254’, in Conor Kostick ed. The Crusades and the Near East: Cultural Histories (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 83–106. 20 For a useful overview, see Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). See also Léan Ní Chléirigh, ‘The Impact of the First Crusade on Western Opinion towards the Byzantine Empire: The Dei Gesta per Francos of Guibert of Nogent and the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres’, in Kostick ed., The Crusades and the Near East, 161–88.

Sources and models

1 Propaganda and masculinity Gendering the crusades in thirteenth-century sermons Christoph T. Maier

Introduction Crusading masculinities are a relatively new topic of research. Following in the footsteps of gender historians who have been exploring the female roles and contributions to crusading in the Middle Ages, casting male crusading in terms of modern gender theories comes almost naturally.1 Ever since medieval writers first told stories of crusading in the wake of the momentous events from 1095 to 1099, when religious warriors from Western Europe conquered Jerusalem and the Holy Land, men took centre stage as the principal characters of these stories. Crusading was a men’s world conceived of by men and recorded by men.2 Having switched focus from women to men, modern gender history mainly addresses two questions with regard to the medieval discourse concerning male crusading: what are particularly male traits and attitudes that medieval authors ascribed to crusading? And how do such crusading masculinities differ from masculinities attributed to men in other areas of medieval society? One of the most pronounced recent statements about crusading masculinities has come from Andrew Holt, who has claimed that crusading engendered a particular set of masculinities that cut across existing boundaries established by the interaction of secular and clerical male identities represented in texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.3 As a warrior the crusader was lodged in the secular world of power and warfare; as a servant of the Church the crusader answered to ecclesiastical precepts that at times contradicted his secular role and identity. Holt has suggested that male crusading was cast as a hybrid between secular and clerical identities, as crusaders from secular backgrounds were tied into structures governing clerical life: they took a religious vow, they performed a penitential exercise while on crusade and they were expected to practise sexual abstinence at specific moments of the crusade. Humility and chastity were the clerical attributes that crusaders were expected to adopt when becoming holy warriors. This, so Holt has argued, accounted for the emergence of a discourse in which crusaders were ascribed a hybrid form of masculinity. From the middle of the twelfth century this hybrid masculinity become institutionalised in the military orders, whose members were at the same time secular knights engaged in crusading and members of a monastic order living as clerics.

22  Maier Holt’s hypothesis is an attempt at establishing a comprehensive identity of male crusading from the vantage point of modern gender history. It is informed by research into the development of clerical masculinities in the wake of the Gregorian reform movement of the eleventh century, which is said to have caused a growing gulf between secular and clerical male gender roles. At the centre of this gulf lies the enforcement of clerical celibacy and sexual abstinence as one of the principal defining differences between secular and clerical masculinities.4 But can crusading masculinities really be described adequately as a product of intermingling strands of secular and clerical identities? Taking up religious vows, performing penance and practising temporary sexual abstinence were after all not a prerogative reserved to members of the clergy and were thus not necessarily signs of diverting from a secular masculine identity. Recently, Natasha Hodgson also pointed out that other factors such as age, social status, and origin were constituent elements of sometimes competing masculinities ascribed to crusaders.5 Holt’s perspective, it must be pointed out, is limited. The evidence he draws on are mainly twelfth-century chronicles of the First Crusade and the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. The question must, therefore, be asked whether Holt’s view of the crusader as a hybrid between secular knight and abstinent cleric is the only way of looking at crusading masculinities. When considering other sources and alternative chronological contexts crusading masculinities present themselves in different versions. Crusade sermons of the thirteenth century, for example, do not talk about male crusaders as adopting semi-clerical identities but on the contrary firmly lodge crusading masculinities within secular contexts drawing on habitual cultural values and practices of maleness.

Thirteenth-century crusade model sermons We know of about thirty sermon texts from the thirteenth century that concern propaganda for the crusade by well-known authors such as James of Vitry, Gilbert of Tournai, Humbert of Romans or Eudes of Châteauroux.6 Most of these are so-called model sermons, texts that were recorded for reading and instruction. They were meant to supply preachers with arguments and materials that would help them compose sermons preached in front of live audiences, mainly during campaigns for the recruitment of crusaders but also, for example, to people leaving home to join crusade armies and to crusaders during the journey or before and after battles. These model sermons vary greatly with respect to their style, their origin and the extent to which they were derived from live sermons that had actually been preached.7 Most crusade sermon texts extant today are didactic material rather than a historical record of sermons preached. These texts are prescriptive and normative and thus contain idealised models of crusading and idealised modes of masculinity in a thirteenth-century crusading context. The addressees or audiences of these texts are twofold. The primary audiences were crusade propaganda preachers, that is, male members of the clergy, who would use the texts as part of their training or when preparing propaganda sermons.8 The secondary audiences were those who listened to crusade sermons that

Propaganda and masculinity  23 were derived from the model texts. Who these latter people were is more difficult to define, since audiences of crusade propaganda sermons varied greatly. They included both men and women, often together but sometimes apart. However, by the thirteenth century recruiting crusaders meant targeting men first and foremost as there was a general tendency to streamline crusade armies by admitting only people who were used to warfare. Even if women were encouraged to take the cross, they were expected to redeem their vows by paying redemptions rather than join crusade armies.9 In any case, the intended or imaginary audiences addressed by the sermon writers tended to be exclusively male, since most of these texts were written as model sermons for recruiting crusaders who would be prepared to join a crusading army as actual fighters. Crusade model sermons, therefore, are primarily about men. To do full justice to model sermons, they have to be interpreted individually, as topics and argumentative strategies vary greatly from text to text. Each sermon produces particular focuses, which structure the conception and communication of crusader identities. Given constraints of space, it is not the purpose of this paper to offer full-scale interpretations of individual crusade sermons but to analyse select passages from these texts in order to explain the principal strategies that sermon authors used for constructing masculine identities: (i) citing Old Testament figures as models for crusaders; (ii) casting the crusader as God’s vassal and friend; (iii) and addressing the crusader in his female and family environments.

Old Testament figures as crusading role models Only occasionally Old Testament heroes are cited as generic models for crusaders in medieval sermons. One such incident comes from a sermon text by Cardinal Eudes of Châteauroux, one of the chief crusade propagandists of the midthirteenth century, who was also closely involved with King Louis IX’s first crusade in the 1240s. The text was derived from a sermon that the cardinal had once preached in the context of Louis’s brother Charles of Anjou’s Italian crusade in the 1260s.10 The text makes a general comparison between Charles and Joshua of the Old Testament, claiming that God was leading Charles in the conquest of the Muslim city of Lucera in Apulia just as he had led Joshua when he conquered Jericho.11 Lucera was a Muslim colony set up by Emperor Frederick II from the 1220s to the 1240s when he moved the Muslim population out of Sicily into the Apulian town.12 During Charles of Anjou’s conquest of Southern Italy, Lucera was the last Hohenstuafen stronghold, which was only defeated in 1269. In Eudes’s sermon there is no further characterisation of Charles or Joshua in this passage, so all the text suggests is that God ordered Charles to fight the Muslims of Lucera just as Joshua had fought the enemies of God in the Old Testament. Such direct parallelisms between Old Testament wars and contemporary crusading are, however, rare in crusade model sermons.13 In the normal run of things, the texts take individual verses from the Bible rather than entire passages and use them as an authority for only one element of a particular strand of thought or argument. References to Old Testament figures are

24  Maier thus used to supply models for particular aspects of crusader masculinity, chiefly among them mentions of soldierly qualities moulded on Old Testament examples. Crusaders were, for instance, encouraged to show leadership in battle following the examples of Judah and Judas Maccabeus,14 or were meant to be courageous and zealous in battle like Mattathias,15 Phineas, Judah, Ehud or Samson, who fought in the Old Testament wars of the people of Israel. As in this example by James of Vitry: Where is he who is eaten up with zeal for the house16 of the Lord, where are the sighs and anxieties of Mattathias, where the courage of the Maccabees, where the zeal and the dagger of Phineas, where is Ehud’s sharpened sword, where Shamgar’s ploughshare and the jawbone of a donkey in Samson’s hand, where is he who rises out of misfortune and catches the little foxes who demolish the Lords vines?17 Such appeals echo well-known strands of muscular masculinity that were traditionally tied to chivalric values and codes of conduct in war: bodily strength, courage in battle and zeal to fight for one’s convictions.18 In rare cases, the sermons explicitly designate such behaviour as masculine, when they directly call upon crusaders “to fight manfully”.19 But it is by no means only heroic battle behaviour that was thus attributed to crusaders. References to Old Testament discourse were also used to rouse potential recruits by appealing to their emotions. In both his extant crusade model sermons James of Vitry quotes Old Testament figures whose emotions were presented as exemplary to crusaders. The latter were encouraged to address experiences of individual emotional pain and told to let this pain be transformed into feelings of revenge when joining a crusade and thus follow the examples of Eli, Haggai and Uriah in their respective Old Testament stories: He who has a breast of iron and does not pine over the blame of his father is not worthy of pity, as we read about Eli the priest that, even though he was once bad, he fell from his seat and died from too much pain as soon as he heard that the ark of the Lord was captured. So what about those who hear that the Holy Land is overthrown by the enemies of Christ and are not moved by pain and do not appear to care, against whom the Lord says through Haggai: My house lies in ruin and each of you is busy with his own house? About Uriah we read that he did not want to enter his house and enjoy any pleasures while his brothers laboured in his army and the ark of the Lord was in tents.20 Elsewhere, potential crusaders were assured of the value of sustained suffering as an incentive for earning the immense rewards of crusading just as Jacob or Noah had done in Old Testament wars: This really ought to motivate you to take upon yourselves the service of God and the labours for Christ, just as a poor man who, doing manual work,

Propaganda and masculinity  25 earns only six pennies for his labour would, if he was promised one hundred marks for his day’s work, gladly and joyfully carry the weight and heat of the day, and he would not complain about the labour, even if he suffered cold or extreme heat while waiting for the great reward, so that, for the little bit of work, he who had always been in poverty and misery would become rich beyond measure and from then onwards be at rest with his pleasures. Whence we read about Jacob that he worked for seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him like a few days because of the greatness of his love. In the same way, the days of present tribulation are considered short and light compared to the infinite and unimaginable reward: All that we suffer in the present time is nothing in comparison with the future glory which will be disclosed to us. If Noah worked one hundred years to build the ark in order to escape death in this life, how much more ought you to work a few years in order to escape eternal death and to acquire everlasting life!21 Crusading was presented as an emotional engagement as much as a physical one and Old Testament examples quoted in crusade sermon texts advised preachers to address feelings of hardship and pain when talking about the crusades. Potential crusaders were thus encouraged to confront such emotions as part of the process of deciding to become crusaders. Old Testament examples not only suggested that such feelings were legitimate but also salvific because the pain and suffering that caused these feelings were the basis of the indulgence and the redemptive power of crusading. In a similar fashion, references to Old Testament passages were used to contextualise the crusader’s feelings on leaving home. Citing Abraham’s story, Eudes of Châteauroux, for example, acknowledged the emotional strain that crusaders experienced when leaving their families and loved ones: The Lord then said: Leave your country and your family, but he did not say: Come to the country that I shall show you. Then he told people to leave the world, but now tells them to come to the country which he will show them and, in fact, has already shown them. But someone might say: Why did the Lord lead Abraham out of his country? Could he not have blessed him in his own country? This is of course true, but the reason for this is hinted at when it says that he led them out of Ur of the Chaldees in order to go to the land of Canaan. Thus, if he wanted, God could give us his blessing and a plenary remission of sins in our own country, but he also wants you to leave your country in order to liberate you from the fire of demons, desire, indulging and envy.22 Gilbert of Tournai also echoed Abraham’s story as an example of the salvific value of crusaders leaving home: Just as small fish hide beneath rocks, so they escape the storm and are not swept away by the current, when dolphins are seen playing in the sea, which

26  Maier is a sign of an approaching storm, so crusaders are saved, so-to-speak hiding in a foreign and unknown land, whereas lovers of this world are swept away, while playing in the many eddies of worldly things, and die in their own country. In the same way, Abraham, to whom promises were made, left his own country and his people, Galatians 3: Promises were addressed to Abraham and his progeny, meaning to those who after his example leave their own country.23 And to quote one last example, Eudes of Châteauroux encouraged potential crusaders to leave their home blessed by God just as Jacob had blessed his son Naphtali: Genesis 49: Naphtali is a deer let loose, who speaks beautifully. With this Jacob blessed his son Naphtali; in the same way, the Lord today blesses those who, like spiritual deer, for his love leave behind their own haunts, that is the land where they were born and raised. In the time of love, deer leave behind their own resting places and their familiar woods, cross rivers and take themselves to unknown places. In the same way nowadays, those burning with the love of God leave behind their fatherland and hasten to cross not only rivers but even seas and travel to foreign lands.24 Here, too, Old Testament references were employed as authorities for explaining to potential crusaders that it was legitimate to confront the emotional dilemma of leaving home and family because they were following God’s call to the crusade and would be compensated for their suffering by spiritual rewards. The motive of the crusader leaving home will again play an important role later on in the discussions of the relationship between crusaders and women. The examples cited here show that crusade sermon authors used Old Testament authorities that echoed male crusaders’ experience and challenges in war. The Old Testament role models served to confirm men in their resolve and legitimised typically male modes of military behaviour that played an important role in the context of the crusade. The authors of crusade sermons were clearly building their argument on notions of masculinities valorised and enhanced by military skills and leadership and honed by the endurance of corporal hardship during military campaigns.25 However, the examples taken from the wars of the Old Testament did not only focus on physical strength and violent action but also included aspects of a male emotional landscape that engulfed the military activities. Men were encouraged to embrace and endure the emotional hardships of crusading caused by physical suffering and separation from families with a view to the spiritual rewards gained from the crusade.

The crusader as God’s vassal and friend The emphasis on the crusader’s emotional life was also an important element of the second strategy used in these texts for constituting masculine identity. Perhaps

Propaganda and masculinity  27 the most central theme in thirteenth-century crusade preaching texts was the relationship between crusader and God. This is not surprising since this relationship lay at the centre of the theology and the very idea of crusading. Being a religious warrior, the crusader served God as miles Christi, and in return for these services God rewarded the crusader with the gift of the plenary indulgence.26 There were a number of different ways in which the authors of the sermon texts characterised the relationship between God and crusader. One that touched on a particularly masculine mode of social relations was the portrayal of the crusader’s relationship with God in feudal terms, referring to a world of typically male social relations and power broking.27 God was portrayed as the crusader’s feudal lord, the crusader his vassal. The crusader helped God in recovering his hereditary lands and rights; God gave benefices and gifts to the crusader.28 Describing the crusader as God’s liegeman lent meaning to the idea of crusading by describing it in terms of known cultural practices: to follow God as one followed one’s feudal lord. The most poignant description of this relationship comes from one of Humbert of Romans’s model sermons: It must be noted that, as kings usually gather a large force in great matters of impending war and open their treasures to give large gifts, so in the matters of faith and that which pertains to it, which are the major matters within the church, the King of Glory gathers his faithful through his vicar on earth to fight against the infidels and their supporters and offers a very large gift of indulgences from his treasures to bestow on those who will fight.29 . . . So if people fight manfully to keep the faith to a worldly lord, from whom they only hold temporal things and for whom they often suffer much evil and from whom they expect little or no reward, how much more should they do this for the heavenly Lord, from whom they hold their body and soul and who has suffered so greatly for them and rewards those who fight for him so gloriously!30 In this passage Humbert explicitly ascribes this relationship to those who “fight manfully”, meaning like a man, thus giving it an openly masculine character. Casting the crusader as God’s liegeman was a way of explaining the spiritual value of penitential warfare by comparing the relationship between crusader and God to social relations and emotional experiences that potential crusaders were familiar with as members of a society governed among others by feudal relationships. Another aspect of the relationship between crusader and God, which was predicated on the roles of feudal lord and vassal, was mutual friendship and love. The concept of God’s love of humankind was the basis for the theology of the indulgence and this probably explains why this topic is the most persistent in all of the crusade sermon texts of the thirteenth century.31 Potential crusaders were made to believe that the experience of God’s love was the mechanism by which they obtained the indulgence. Gilbert of Tournai suggested that it was “Christ, who made a bellows from his skin, the wood of the cross and the nails, so that the fire

28  Maier of his charity would be lighted in our hearts”.32 In fact, the love between crusader and God was often described as a strong physical sensation: The Son of God came into the world not just so that people would love him, because they did this before the incarnation, but rather that they burn with his love and that this fire be ignited more fervently.. . . Thus the Lord himself, although he might have put many a favour and also all creatures into this fire, since offerings are the tinder of love, finally put himself into this fire and burned himself in this fire, so that he could make us burn with his love. He in fact gave himself. This thought ought to set on fire the whole human heart, as the Psalmist says: While I was musing, the fire burned. And as has been said, the clearest indication is that they who have taken the cross and follow him burn with this love.33 To illustrate the spiritual value of this relationship of friendship and love, the sermons repeatedly spoke of crusaders following Christ into battle and fighting alongside Christ.34 In an extreme expression of this concept, Gilbert of Tournai even suggested that, by doing so, crusaders imitated Christ’s act of redemption: May you have this cross of Christ in your heart and carry his stigmata on your body so that, offering the sacrifice of a burnt-offering inside, you may have his skin on the outside. He who claims to remain in Christ through internal love must walk as he walked by the open imitation of his deeds and passion.35 Even if imitatio Christi did not as such imply a male form of devotion, the crusade sermons clearly cast such behaviour as male because it was based on the idea of the crusader as soldier in an army. Love of God, so the sermons suggest, was to be the main motive for the crusader’s becoming a religious warrior, while God’s love for the crusader explained why it was possible to forgive all punishment for sins through the indulgence promised to the crusader. Again, the sermons focus on a combination of following social rules, taking on military obligations and embracing emotional impulses, which are merged in an attempt to propose an ideal vision of male crusading identity.

The crusader in his female and family environments Although women play no significant role in these sermon texts either as implied audience or as subjects of the principal arguments, references to women do occur. When talking about women, however, the authors usually address men.36 The most obvious examples are passages that describe the role of wives who tried to stop their husbands from going on crusade.37 James of Vitry quoted an exemplum about a wife locking up her husband during a crusade sermon so he would not take the cross: Once when I preached in some town, one man did not want to come to the sermon with the others since his wife objected. But he began to watch from a

Propaganda and masculinity  29 window in the loft out of curiosity and listen secretly to what I would say. . . . afraid of his spouse, who had locked the door so that he would not leave, he was watching from the window and jumped out into the crowds and was the first to come to the cross.38 Even though the wife was cast as an impediment to her husband’s spiritual welfare, James did not primarily address the failings of women. His primary point was about the husband’s cowardice, his unmanly behaviour in not standing up to his wife, and his initial refusal to make a stand as crusader in public, which he only subsequently made amends for: And since he showed a good example to others and many followed him, he is now enjoying all universal benefits. He who corrupts many by bad example must give back to God by good example what he took away from him; it is just that he who took advantage by pulling down many should redeem himself by edifying many.39 This passage suggests that crusade preachers acknowledged the emotional dilemmas that potential crusaders found themselves in as, on the one hand, family men, and on the other, religious warriors. The authors pointed out the merits to be gained by crusaders confronting and overcoming the emotional hardships in rejecting family duties, because in doing so they were serving God. To illustrate the resulting emotional dilemma, Gilbert of Tournai quoted an exemplum about a knight’s departure on crusade: Thus we read about a certain noble knight that, when he was about to go across the sea, he had his small sons, whom he loved very much, brought to him. And when he embraced them and looked at them for a long time, his servants said to him: Send those boys away and leave, because many people are waiting for you to take you away. He [told] them: I had my sons brought before me so that, by exciting my feelings towards them, I would leave them behind for Christ’s sake with greater anguish of the mind, so that I  would count for more with God. When one leaves one’s country, one’s belongings, parents, spouse and children are bands which hold one back.40 Gilbert did not really question the validity of the emotional attachment a crusader felt for his family. But he suggested that the crusader’s spiritual merit of going on crusade compensated for any emotional hardship involved in leaving home. The crusader’s devotion and love of God, so he argued, overrode whatever emotions the crusader felt for his children. The point Gilbert made here was about a hierarchy of love and allegiance within a constellation of competing masculine identities that male crusaders faced as family men and religious warriors. Here again, crusaders were encouraged to engage and deal with their emotional dilemmas by opting for a typically male mode of embracing the hardships and dangers of a military venture as a way of expressing their love of God.

30  Maier Crusade sermon authors also referred to other forms of male interaction with women in order to contextualise crusading. In the exemplum of the future crusader being locked up by his wife to stop him taking the cross, James of Vitry appealed to the husband’s public honour and duty. These virtues also played an important role elsewhere in connection with descriptions of male attitudes, or the way in which medieval society defined these, towards women in need or women in trouble.41 This was done in a direct way, for example, when Eudes of Châteauroux reminded potential crusaders of their duties to revenge women who had allegedly been abducted and sexually abused by Muslims.42 Here Eudes appealed to male honour based on a concept of a particularly masculine duty to defend and revenge women under their protection. Similar concepts of male moral obligation were also indirectly packaged in language imbued with female metaphors. In a sermon preached in the context of the Albigensian Crusade, Philipp the Chancellor cast the Church as a wailing woman in mourning over the defection of ‘her sons’, the heretics of Languedoc: Who can bear seeing with dry eyes Mother Church, the glorious spouse of Christ, in such pain? All her hair torn out, as one would commonly say, she scratches her cheeks with her nails; splattered with drops of blood, her clothes torn, her hands clenched, she goes into spasm.43 Eudes used such imagery in order to whip up potential crusaders’ emotions and appeal to their sense of male honour and duty as protectors of “mother” Church.44 Crusade model sermons thus exploit the relationships between men and women mainly by challenging potential crusaders to respond to received notions of male honour. They were invited to act and behave in accordance with modes of masculine duty and obligation vis-à-vis women that were demanded by the rules and conventions of the society they lived in. This included asserting themselves as husbands against their wives’ ruses, facing but also overcoming fatherly affection, and acting as protectors and avengers of female victims of violence.45 Underlying the expectations of how male crusaders were to react to the various kinds of confrontations with women was again an appeal to manage their competing masculine identities on an emotional level with a view of furthering crusading.

Summary The evidence of thirteenth-century crusade model sermons suggests that there were three main themes that played a role in constructing strands of masculinity related to crusading, each linked to rhetorical strategies that served different argumentative purposes. References to Old Testament figures and their stories were predominantly concerned with legitimising the concept of the religious warrior. Descriptions of the relationship between the crusader and God were meant to explain the spiritual value of crusading. Exploring the male crusader’s relationship with women chiefly served to tap into the psychology of motivation. But these three themes do not necessarily constitute a uniform vision of crusading

Propaganda and masculinity  31 masculinities. Model sermons are not systematic treatises of any one aspect of crusading or any other topic they contain. The very nature of these texts means that they unite a number of divergent voices and discourses. As concerns crusading masculinities, there are, however, a few common strands that filter through these texts. Crusaders were encouraged to emulate Old Testament heroes and transfer patterns of feudal relationships to their role as holy warriors in the service of God. They were also expected to obey the rules of standard male behaviour vis-à-vis women based on notions of male honour and obligation and their role as husbands and fathers. In addition, there was a clear emphasis on the emotional aspects that crusading involved for men. Even though crusading was a military project, it was also governed by feelings of loss, suffering and pain that were integral parts of the male crusading experience. Crusading men were encouraged to acknowledge and embrace these feelings and turn them into a motivational force for soldierly prowess, spiritual fervour and penitential sacrifice as the basis of their crusading engagement. The evidence of the crusade model sermons of the thirteenth century thus does not confirm Andrew Holt’s hypothesis of the creation of a new masculine identity for crusaders. There is no sense that crusaders were cast in a type of hybrid mould combining secular knighthood and clerical calling as may have been true for the members of the military orders. On the contrary, the sermons form an identity of the crusader couched within habitual social contexts and cultural practices. The texts expect male crusaders to conceive of crusading in terms of gendered identities that were derived from their experiences in battle, their relations with feudal lords and above all with the women of their families and family clans. Becoming a crusader did not suggest a diversion or rejection of known values, cultural practices or emotional registers. Crusaders were rather asked to conceive of crusading as fitting in with their experiences as members of secular society without having to give up or change their fundamentally secular masculine identities.46

Notes 1 For crusading femininities see Gendering the Crusades, eds Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001); Christoph T. Maier, “The Roles of Women in the Crusading Movement: A Survey”, Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004), 61–82; Deborah Gerish, “Gender Theory”, in Helen J. Nicholson ed., Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 130–47; Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative, Warfare in History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007); Kreuzzug und Gender, eds Ingrid Baumgärtner and Melanie Panse (= Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 21, 1) (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2016). 2 See Matthew Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, in P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis eds, Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 94–111, here 94–9. 3 Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades”, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priest, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203.

32  Maier 4 See, in particular, JoAnn McNamara, “The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150”, in Clare A. Lees ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–29. See also Ruth M. Karras, “Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt: Clerical Masculinity in Medieval Europe”, in Lisa H. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz eds, Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 52–67; Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, “Introduction: Rethinking the Medieval Clergy and Masculinity”, in Negotiating Clerical Identities, 1–15; Megan McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 5 Natasha Hodgson, “Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade”, in Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2015), 195–213. 6 Two sermons by James of Vitry, five by Eudes of Châteauroux, three by Gilbert of Tournai, four by Humbert of Romans and three by Bertrand de la Tour are published in Christoph T. Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Three more by Eudes of Châteauroux in Christoph T. Maier, “Crusade and Rhetoric against the Muslim Colony of Lucera: Eudes of Châteauroux’s Sermones de Rebellione Sarracenorum Lucherie in Apulia”, Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995), 343–85. Two sermon texts by Federico Visconti are edited in Les Sermons et la visite pastorale de Federico Visconti archevêque de Pise (1253–1277), eds Nicole Bériou et al. (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2001), 543–55. One sermon text each by John of Abbéville and Roger of Sailsbury are published in Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1991), 222–31. One other sermon text by Eudes of Châteauroux (’Sermo contra hereticos in Albigensibus partibus’) has not been published; see MS Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, 137, ff. 88vb–90rb and MS  Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, 203, ff. 294ra–295rb. Equally, there are five unpublished sermon texts by Philipp the Chancellor in MS Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, 132, ff. 243ra–244vb, 248va–252vb, 272rb–273vb and MS Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1099, ff. 15va–19vb, 110vb– 112va. For these unpublished texts see Nicole Bériou, “La prédication de croisade de Philippe le Chancelier et d’Eudes de Châteauroux en 1226”, in La prédication en Pays d’Oc (XIIe–début XVe siécle) (= Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 32) (Toulouse: Ed. Privat, 1997), 85–105 and Christoph T. Maier, “Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries”, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997), 628–57. 7 Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 17–31; David L. d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 8 Christoph T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades. Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 111–22. 9 Maier, “The Roles of Women”, 73–8. 10 Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo de rebellione Sarracenorum Lucherie”, in Maier, “Crusade and Rhetoric”, 379–82 (sermon 2). 11 Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo de rebellione Sarracenorum Lucherie”, in Maier, “Crusade and Rhetoric”, 379, ll. 1–23: “Josue vii: Hec dicit Dominus Deus Israel: Anathema in medio tui Israel est, non poteris stare coram hostibus tuis donec deleatur ex te, . . . Hec ystoria parabola est instantis temporis: Dominus dedit terram Apulie nostro Iosue, id est domine Karolo. In hac terra erat quasi altera Iherico, Lucheria, habitatio et refugium Sarracenorum, quibus erat munita et armata contra omnes Christianos non tam modo Apulie sed etiam tocius regni Sicilie, unde in quacumque parte regni aliqui repugnabant.” 12 See Julie Anne Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy. The Colony at Lucera (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003).

Propaganda and masculinity  33 13 See, however, Philip the Chancellor’s sermons from the Albigensian crusade of 1226, where he compared King Louis VIII to Joshua; see MS  Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, 132, ff. 243ra–244vb, 248va–252vb, 272rb–273vb and MS Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1099, ff. 15va–19vb, 110vb–112va. 14 Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo de invitatione ad crucem”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 146–8, paras 4–8. 15 For Mattathias see also Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo in conversione sancti Pauli et exhortatio ad assumendam crucem”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 140, para. 25. 16 Here and in the following quotations in italics are used for biblical citations. The references are given in the Latin text. 17 James of Vitry, “Sermo ad crucesignatos vel -signandos” (sermon 1), in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 94, para. 17: “Ubi igitur est quem comedit zelus domus Domini [Ps. lxviii, 10], ubi gemitus et anxietates Mathatie [cf. i Mcc. ii], ubi Machabeorum fortitudo [cf. i Mcc. iii], ubi zelus et pugio Phinees [cf. Nm. xxv], ubi gladius Aioth elimatus [cf. Idc. iii, 15–16], ubi vomer Sangar [cf. Idc. iii, 31], et maxilla asini in manu Samsonis [Idc. xv, 15], ubi est qui ascendat ex adverso [Ez. xiii, 5] et capiat vulpeculas demolientes vineas Domini [cf. Ct. ii, 15]?” 18 Birgit Studt, “Helden und Heilige: Männlichkeitsentwürfe im frühen und hohen Mittelalter”, Historische Zeitschrift 276 (2003), 1–36, here 14–23. 19 Gilbert of Tournai, “Ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos sermo primus”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 182, para. 12: “. . . ut viriliter dimicet Christianus . . .” Humbert of Romans, “De predicatione crucis in genere quocumque” (sermon 2), in ibid., 218, para. 7: “. . . sic pugnat viriliter . . .” 20 James of Vitry, “Sermo ad crucesignatos vel -signandos” (sermon 1), in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 92, para. 14: “Non enim dignus est misericordia qui pectus ferreum habet et de vituperio patris sui non dolet, cum etiam de Hely sacerdote licet alias malus esset legamus [cf. i Rg. iiii, 11–22] quod, statim cum audivit archam Domini captam esse, pre nimio dolore corruit de sella et expiravit. Quid igitur de illis qui audiunt Terram Sanctam ab inimicis Christi conculcari et nec dolore moventur nec curare videntur, contra quos Dominus per Aggeum [i, 9] ait: Domus mea deserta est et vos festinatis unusquisque in domum suam? De Uria etiam legimus [ii Rg. xi, 11] quod in domum suam intrare noluit nec vacare deliciis, quamdiu fratres sui in exercitu suo laborabant et archa Dei Israel esset in papilionibus.” 21 James of Vitry, “Sermo ad crucesignatos vel -signandos” (sermon 2), in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 114, paras 23–4: “Et hoc vos valde debet ad Dei servitium et ad labores pro Christo sustinendos animare, sicut pauper homo qui manibus operando non nisi sex denarios pro labore meretur, si ei centum marce pro dieta sua promitterentur, letus et cum gaudio portaret pondus diei et estus [Mt. xx, 12], nec pro labore murmuraret, licet frigus aut calorem maximum sustineret dum quantitatem premii attenderet, ut pro modico labore qui semper in paupertate et miseria fuit ultra modum dives fieret et de cetero in deliciis quiescere posset.”   “Unde de Iacob legimus, quod septem annis servivit pro Rahel et pre magnitudine amoris videbantur ei pauci dies [Gn. xxix, 20]. Ita dies presentis tribulationis breves et leves reputantur respectu interminabilis et inestimabilis premii: Non enim sunt condigne passiones huius temporis ad futuram gloriam que revelabitur in nobis [Rm. viii, 18]. Si Noe centum annis laboravit fabricando archam [cf. Gn. vi–viii], ut [f. 150va] evaderet mortem temporalem, quanto magis vos paucis annis laborare debetis, ut evadatis eternam mortem et acquiratis vitam sempiternam.” 22 Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo in conversione sancti Pauli et exhortatio ad assumendam crucem,” in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 136, para. 18: “Olim dicebat Dominus [Gen. xii, 1]: Egredere de terra et de cognatione tua, sed non dicebat: Veni in terram quam monstravero tibi. Olim hortabatur homines ut mundum relinquerent, sed modo hortatur ut veniant in terram quam ipse monstrabit eis et iam monstravit. Sed posset

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quis dicere: Ad quid eduxit Dominus Abraham de terra sua? Nonne in terra sua poterat ei benedicere? Certe ita, tamen causa innuitur cum dicitur quod eduxit eos de Ur Caldeorum, ut irent in terram Chanaam [cf. Gn. xi]. Sic Dominus si vellet, in patria nostra posset nobis benedictionem suam dare et plenariam peccatorum remissionem, sed ideo vult ut patriam vestram derelinquatis ut vos liberet de igne demonum, cupiditatis, luxurie, invidie.” Gilbert of Tournai, “Ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos sermo secundus,” in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 194, para. 3: “Sicut, quando videntur ludere delfines in mari signa sunt proxime tempestatis, sed parvi pisces sub petris absconduntur et tempestatem evadunt nec cum fluctibus iactantur, sic amatoribus mundi multis turbinibus rerum secularium iactatis et ludentibus et pereuntibus in terra propria, crucesignati salvantur et quasi absconduntur in terra aliena et ignota. Sicut Abraham, cui facte sunt promissiones, postquam de terra sua et cognatione sua exivit, Gal. iii [16]: Abrahe dicte sunt promissiones et semini eius, id est eis, qui de terra sua exeunt exemplo ipsius.” Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo de invitatione ad crucem”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 152, para. 1: “Gen. xlix [21]: Neptalim cervus emissus dans eloquia pulchritudinis. Sic benedixit Iacob filio suo Neptalim; sic et hodie benedicit Dominus illos, qui pro amore eius velut cervi spirituales lustra dimittunt propria, id est terram, in qua nati fuerunt et nutriti. Cervi enim tempore amoris propria cubilia et silvas sibi domesticas dimittunt, flumina transeunt et ad loca ignota se transferunt. Sic hiis temporibus amore Dei ardentes patriam derelinquunt et non tantum flumina transire immo maria festinant et adire barbaras regiones.” For connections between military leadership and notions of masculinity see, in particular, Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), esp. 103–35. Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 56–68. For the connections between chivalric culture and masculinities see Ruth M. Karras, From Boys to Men. Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 20–66. Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 56–9. Humbert of Romans, “De predicatione crucis in genere quocumque”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 216, para. 1: “Notandum, quod sicut reges in magnis negotiis guerrarum insurgentium solent congregare militiam magnam et aperire thesauros suos ad dandum larga donaria, ita Rex Glorie per vicarium suum in terris pro negotiis fidei et ei annexis, que sunt maiora negotia que possint esse in ecclesia, congregat fideles suos ad militandum contra infideles et eorum fautores et de thesauris suis profert largissima dona indulgentiarum ad elargiendum istis militaturis.” Ibid., 218–19, para. 7: “Si ergo homines propter fidelitatem servandam domino terreno, a quo non habent nisi temporalia et pro quo frequenter multa mala sustinent et a quo modicam vel nullam remunerationem expectant, sic pugnant viriliter, quanto magis debent hoc pro Domino celesti facere, a quo habent corpus et animam et qui tot pro eis passus est et tam gloriose remunerat pugnantes pro se!” Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 57–9. See also Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Crusading as an Act of Love”, History 65 (1980), 177–92. Gilbert of Tournai, “Ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos sermo secundus”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 196, para. 6: “. . . Christus, qui sufflatorium fecit ex pelle carnis sue et ligno crucis et clavis, ut ignem sue caritatis accenderet in cordibus nostris . . .” Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo in conversione sancti Pauli et exhortatio ad assumendam crucem”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 132, paras 8–9: “Ad hoc enim venit Filius Dei in mundum, ut homines non tantummodo eum diligerent, quia hoc ante incarnationem faciebant, immo potius ut amore eius arderent et ut iste ignis vehementius inflammaretur. . . . Sic ipse Dominus, etsi multa beneficia et etiam omnes creaturas posuisset in hunc ignem, donaria enim fomes sunt amoris, ad ultimum se posuit in hunc ignem et se ipsum hoc igne concremavit, ut nos ardere faceret amore suo. Se ipsum

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41 42 43

44 45 46

enim dedit. Hec enim recogitatio debet totum cor hominis inflammare, sicut dicit Ps. [xxxviii, 4]: In meditatione mea exardescet ignis. Et ut dictum est certissimum indicium est, quod illi amore eius ardeant qui assumpta cruce eum secuntur.” Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 59–61. Gilbert of Tournai, “Ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos sermo primus”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 184–5, para. 16: “Hanc crucem Christi in corde habeas et eius stigmata in corpore tuo feras, ut intus offerens victimam holocausti etiam foris habeas pellem eius. Debet enim qui se dicit per internam dilectionem in Christo manere per apertam operum et passionum eius imitationem sicut ille ambulavit et ipse ambulare.” See also Christoph T. Maier, “Gendermetaphorik in der Kreuzzugspropaganda des 13. Jahrhunderts”, in Kreuzzug und Gender, 1–14. Ibid., 3–4. James of Vitry, “Sermo ad crucesignatos vel –signandos” (sermon 2), in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 120, para. 37: “Nam et ego cum aliquando in quadam villa predicarem, quidam uxore sua dissuadente ad sermonem cum aliis noluit venire. Cepit tamen quasi ex curiositate de solario per fenestram inspicere et quid ego dicerem latenter auscultare. . . . timens uxorem que ostium clauserat et ne exgrederetur, observabat per fenestram, in turbam exilivit et ipse primus ad crucem venit.” Ibid.: “Et quia bonum aliis prebuit exemplum et multi secuti sunt eum, ipse particeps extitit meriti universorum. Qui enim malo exemplo multos corrumpit bono exemplo debet restituere Deo quod illi abstulit; iustum quidem est ut qui cum multorum destructione se prodidit cum multorum edificatione se redimat.” Gilbert of Tournai, “Ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos sermo tertius”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 202, para. 8: “Unde legimus de quodam nobili milite, quod iturus ultra mare fecit adduci ad se filios parvulos, quos valde diligebat. Et cum eos diu aspiciens amplecteretur, dixerunt ei famuli eius: Dimitte pueros istos et recedatis, quia multi vos expectant, ut vos deducant. Quibus ille: Ideo coram me filios meos adduci feci, ut excitato affectu ad eos cum maiori angustia mentis reliquam eos pro Christo et ita magis merear apud Deum. Profecto enim patria, propria, parentes, uxor et filii vincula sunt retinentia.” For a general discussion of male honour in relation with women see Karras, From Boys to Men, 41–57. Eudes of Châteuroux, “Sermo de rebellione Sarracenorum Lucherie”, in Maier, “Crusade and Rhetoric”, 380. Philipp the Chancellor, “Sermo scolaribus inter Epiphaniam et Purificationem tempore quo rex Ludovicus assumpsit crucem in Albigenses”, in MS Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, 132, ff. 248va–252vb, here f. 248 va–vb: ‘Quis sustinebit videre siccis oculis matrem ecclesiam, gloriosam sponsam Christi, in tanto dolore? Tota esse discapillata, ut dicatur vulgariter, unguibus dissecat genas, guttis cruoris respersa, scissis vestibus et manibus complosis cadit in pasmum?” See also Maier, “Gendermetaphorik”, 6–7. See also Maier “Gendermetaphorik”, 5–9. Generally, for the connections between crusading and revenge see Susanna A. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Many thanks to Cathy Aitken (Basel) and Katherine J. Lewis (Huddersfield) for proofreading and commenting on this paper.

2 The valiant man and the vilain in the tradition of the Gesta Francorum Overeating, taunts, and Bohemond’s heroic status Simon Thomas Parsons Kerbogha said to her: “My dear mother, tell me all the things which are unbelievable in my heart.” To which she said: “Yes, darling, I will happily do so, if I know what things you find hard to believe.” To which he said: “Are Bohemond and Tancred not the gods of the Franks, and do they not deliver them from their enemies? Do they not also eat, in one single meal, two thousand cows and four thousand pigs?”1

These words are taken from the anonymous Gesta Francorum, an elusively complex and mystifying text that rests at the heart of the modern historic and historiographical understanding of the First Crusade (1095–9). In this narrative, Kerbogha, Atabeg of Mosul, is the leader of a coalition of “pagans” approaching Christian-held Antioch, which has fallen into crusader hands only days before. He is visited by his mother, who seeks to dissuade him from fighting the Christians.2 Kerbogha’s mother first predicts the disinheritance of her son, the destruction of Kerbogha’s fortunes, and his subsequent death within a year. Her son, initially incredulous, demands his mother’s source of information; she subsequently reveals her knowledge of Christian and pagan prophecy, as well as prognostication through astrology and other auguries. It is at this stage that Kerbogha requests further information about two leaders of the crusade, Bohemond and his nephew Tancred, Southern-Italian Normans who were later prince of Antioch and prince of Galilee respectively. These two individuals are seemingly cast as the protectors of the crusaders, epic heroes, and figures of such imposing stature that they appear semi-divine. This contribution explores the conception of masculine heroic behaviour in the Gesta Francorum and its immediate tradition. In the example above, Bohemond’s and Tancred’s perceived prowess in battle is directly linked to a comic depiction of their outlandish appetite and monstrous potential for consumption. Drawing on a rich scholarship surrounding the excessive appetite of heroes, and relating Bohemond’s portrayal to the vilain figure of Old French literature, particularly the Guillaume cycle of chansons de geste, this intriguing episode is explored with relation to medieval vernacular literature. The Latin First Crusade texts did

The valiant man and the vilain  37 not exist in a vacuum, and it has long been acknowledged that elements of the Gesta tradition may have drawn on a wide range of popular literature, including the chansons de geste in an oral or written form for aesthetic, stylistic, or topical inspiration.3 Through this analysis, Bohemond’s status as the unproblematic “hero” of the Gesta is challenged.4 The current historiographical conception of the Gesta (or an associated text) being composed by a partisan of Bohemond is partly based on the understanding that these texts unanimously depict him in a positive light. I argue instead that he is often a figure who comes under quite intense criticism. This criticism is explicitly imbued with the language of masculinity and social status, where he falls short of expected models, or subverts them entirely. Low-born, quick to go back on his word, reluctant to enter battle, but at the same time a clear focal point of the crusade, Bohemond is a complex and liminal figure. This refocusing of the reputation of Bohemond has two major implications. First, demonstrating that the author was not solely a panegyrist for Bohemond moves us further away from a reductive view of the Gesta as propaganda. Second, it elucidates how the author of the Gesta, often criticised for simplicity, played with concepts of masculine behaviour, and provided a window into twelfth-century models of heroism, social fluidity, and the carnivalesque.5 * * * The collection of texts that I  refer to as the “Gesta Francorum tradition” undoubtedly represent the first coalescing of historical narrative surrounding the First Crusade, finding something like their current form in the first few years after the capture of Jerusalem.6 The composition of, and relationship between, these texts are still a matter of intense scholarly debate, which I can only touch on here briefly. This tradition can be defined as a collection of distinct narratives that share formal features, a broad story architecture, and some stylistic characteristics, but differ in ideological interpretation, sophistication, and literary presentation. The c. 1100 Gesta Francorum, and the contemporary Historia de Hieroslymitano Itinere of Peter Tudebode, are the two texts that are considered earliest, and share nearly all the same material and much of their phrasing, with many minor substitutions of words or clauses. The same is true of two less well-known texts: first, the HAI, which combines a text of the Gesta tradition with the Tancredus of Ralph of Caen, with unique additions;7 and a related account in the manuscript Cambridge, St Catharine’s College MS 3.8 The histories of Raymond of Aguilers (written c. 1101) and Fulcher of Chartres (c. 1100, revisions up to 1127) were both independently written by “eyewitnesses”, but share many features with the Gesta tradition.9 The story of the Gesta was utilised by three Benedictine writers in the early twelfth century (Robert the Monk, Baldric of Bourgueil, and Guibert of Nogent) to write their own histories, which they explicitly claimed to be improvements on the basic style of the “primitive” text.10 The original form of the Gesta, whatever it may have been, is conventionally considered to have been the creation of a Southern-Italian Norman, due to a close interest in participants from this region, and certain linguistic traits in

38  Parsons the extant texts.11 Furthermore, most have described the anonymous author as a vassal of Bohemond, but this is only on the shaky basis of using first-person plurals (“nos”, “nostri”) to reconstruct his presence on crusade and participation in knightly combat – the writer himself never gives any clue of his allegiance. Morris, among others, has shown that the use of first-person pronouns need only imply passive identification of a group spirit rather than providing an accurate location for the author at any given time – following this rationale would have the anonymous author in two places at once.12 Undeniably, the author of the Gesta takes a close interest in Bohemond’s actions, but, as I  demonstrate below, this is not always laudatory. The only other indication that the author may have been in Bohemond’s retinue is his use of the title “dominus”, “lord”, and the positive prenominal adjectives applied to his name, which I  argue below should not be considered as indicating partisanship. In short, although the author of the Gesta was probably Southern-Italian Norman, the dominant historiographical suggestion that he was Bohemond’s subject, or court historiographer, cannot be proven on internal or external evidence. Largely building upon a perceived sycophancy of the Gesta tradition towards its assumed hero, a subsequent stage of Bohemond’s involvement in the text has been proposed. That all the later accounts used a text in the Gesta tradition as source material has led some scholars to maintain that a member of Bohemond’s circle was involved in either the reworking or distribution (or both) of the narrative, as propaganda to favour Bohemond’s claim to Antioch and to support his anti-Byzantine ambitions in the first decade of the twelfth century. According to this theory’s proponents, this process was associated with Bohemond’s tour of France in 1105–6, where he married Constance of France and whipped up support for a new expedition against Byzantium in 1107–8.13 The primary evidence for this is either circumstantial or now discredited. Krey, in 1928, identified a particular passage of the Gesta where Emperor Alexios I Komnenos seemingly granted Antioch to Bohemond in exchange for homage as being an interpolation on Bohemond’s behalf on the occasion of his new crusade preparations. Notwithstanding the fact that Krey misinterpreted the supposed land grant as including Antioch when it clearly extended from beyond it (“ab Antiochia retro”), excluding the city, the passage has been shown to have stylistic continuity with the rest of the Gesta’s prose by Oehler.14 It is therefore unlikely to be a later insertion to retrospectively support Bohemond’s claim to Antioch, as Krey suggests. Beside Krey’s assertion, the remaining evidence for this theory is solely circumstantial: Bohemond was in France roughly at about the time the three Benedictines began their work, and was involved in a widely reported campaign of preaching for his new expedition. The resultant works all heightened the anti-Byzantine sentiment and largely maintained Bohemond’s dominant role, in some cases expanding it. But it is highly unlikely that literary works based on the Gesta, even if they were useful as propaganda, which is in serious doubt due to their equivocal treatment of their supposed patron, could have been produced quickly enough or have reached a wide enough audience to have aided recruitment.15 In recent years, several convincing approaches have challenged the “propaganda” line of thought,

The valiant man and the vilain  39 most notably Nicholas Paul’s thorough demonstration of both the unlikelihood of Bohemond utilising written texts and their efficacy for this purpose, and the field is now open to much more sophisticated analyses of Bohemond’s relationship to the Gesta tradition.16 The evidence I present in the current chapter contributes to the ongoing refutation of the idea that the Gesta is a panegyric, propagandistic production of Bohemond’s household. Recent scholarship has argued that the composition of these texts, and the development of the tradition that is under investigation here, took place in a time of flux for models of masculinity. The pressure of monastic, papal, episcopal and even seigneurial reform were causing ideas about the separation of, and interaction between, lay and clerical masculinities to coalesce and be defined more closely.17 In terms of relations with women, the use of violence, role within the family, and the importance of continence and asceticism, the behaviour of men was increasingly being codified and, conversely, challenged. Some features of contemporary discourse embody the contradictions lying at the heart of this codification: lay milites were often permitted to be impulsive, dynamic, and happy to use violence in the pursuit of moral ends, while clerical masculinity focused on ideas of restraint, discipline, and humility. But with the growth of lay piety, the boundaries were blurred. Although great masculine respect was attached to heroic, knightly behaviour, this needed to be paired with other virtues in order to exhibit moral and societal worth to peers.18 Crusading as a phenomenon participated in discussions of martial masculinity that were already being attached to spiritual, as well as physical, warfare.19 In the figure of the crusader, in theory, these different, even contradictory, models of secular and religious masculinity could be reconciled or contrasted.20 The writers of the period, then, may be expected to be particularly open to playing with these categorisations, of portraying figures whose actions embodied part, but not all, of the ideals that were prized within contemporary society. The crusade texts very frequently utilise the language of masculinity. Vir, viriliter, effeminacy: all find their place in the chronicles of the First Crusade.21 The Gesta Francorum, indeed, is so confident in its use of this language, that at one point it describes Bohemond simply as “vir Boamundus”, “Bohemond the man”.22 To avoid transposing modern conceptions of masculinity into the past, this study grounds itself in the consideration of behaviour that is explicitly and linguistically linked to maleness by the authors of the Gesta group of texts. I have drawn out a few examples where masculine language is associated with a particular course of action. At Dorylaeum, Bohemond delivers instruction to his men, asking that “omnes milites eant viriliter obviam illis”, “may all the knights go manfully against them”, while the foot soldiers should “prudenter”, “prudently” set up camp.23 Virility and “prudence” are here contrasted, with military aggressiveness equated with manly behaviour. In the same engagement, Bohemond sends a message to his fellow Christian leaders, taunting “si hodie luctari volunt, viriliter veniant”, “if they wish to fight today, let them come on like men”.24 Later, outside Antioch, Bohemond encourages one of his men, Robert FitzGerard, to charge into battle, with the words “vade quam citius potes,

40  Parsons ut vir fortis”, “go as quickly as you can, like a strong man”.25 In three separate instances, Bohemond’s direct reported speech equates exemplary masculinity with charging into battle. Yet we never see Bohemond act according to his advice. On occasion, he is described as hanging back from combat, refusing to fight from the front lines. Three examples illustrate this well: at Dorylaeum (the scene of his first two exhortations, above), in the Lake Battle outside Antioch (the site of his encouragement to Robert), and in the assault on Antioch’s walls where the betrayer of Antioch, Pirrus, is waiting. At Dorylaeum, Bohemond adopts a defensive stance until the other leaders arrive, and when they go on the offensive, they do so as a group, the enemy fleeing before combat can be joined. In Robert the Monk’s expansion to the Gesta, Bohemond and his men are only narrowly dissuaded from flight by Robert of Normandy’s rallying cry.26 In the Lake Battle of 9 February 1098, Bohemond is elected by the other leaders to command the forces of the Christians, where he promptly orders six squadrons to be drawn up, led by the captains of the crusaders. As they advance into battle, the Gesta reports, “Boamundus itaque paulatim gradiebatur retro cum sua acie”, “Bohemond advanced a little behind the others, with his squadron”.27 While this, following Hill’s translation, has been seen as Bohemond holding his men “in reserve”, no such intention is indicated in the Latin. When the battle turns against the other five squadrons, and they are nearly overwhelmed, Bohemond does not commit himself to the charge, instead encouraging his standard bearer, Robert FitzGerard, to go in his place. Hill’s translation is incorrect on this point, and has transmitted an inaccurate picture of Bohemond’s heroism into the secondary literature; she argues that it is Bohemond who charges into the fray.28 Examination of the Latin reveals that this cannot be the case. Bohemond ends his exhortation to Robert with the words “Vade in pace; Dominus sit tecum ubique”, “Go in peace; may the Lord be with you”. In the subsequent sentence “Fuit itaque ille [. . .] ruit”, “and thus he. . . charged”, the ille must refer to Robert and not Bohemond; Robert has just been specifically asked to depart, twice, by his lord. Robert’s charge turns the tide of the battle, but without Bohemond entering the fray.29 The Siège d’Antioche, a vernacular rendering of the narrative of the crusade from the late twelfth century that may have been drawing on early versions of the Gesta tradition, expanded Bohemond’s hanging back at the Lake Battle into a full-blown petulant reluctance on Bohemond’s part to fight (he is begged multiple times to enter the fray while he lazes around, disbelieving the proximity of defeat). This section culminates in Bohemond, relaxing in an olive grove, being directly challenged on his reluctance to charge with the words: “Malveis prince coard, ore est il esprové | qui vos de coardise et tut de vostre gré | laissiez destruire nostre crestienté”, “Cowardly and wicked prince, now it is proven: | you, out of your cowardice and all of your free will | are letting the Christian people fall into destruction”.30 This perspective does not mean that this reading is inherent in the earlier Gesta text, but either a twelfth-century reviser has understood this from the original story, or the Siège was drawing from a now-lost manifestation of the tradition, which painted Bohemond’s reluctance more explicitly as a form of neglect.

The valiant man and the vilain  41 But the most striking example where Bohemond is slow to act is the nocturnal commando assault on Antioch’s walls (2–3 June 1098), where the traitor Pirrus has lowered ladders according to a prior arrangement to allow the Christians in. Bohemond accompanies a select group of chosen soldiers, but orders them to go ahead (“ite . . . et ascendite”) without leading them. When the traitor Pirrus sees the Franks, he remarks on Bohemond’s surprising absence: “Ubi est acerrimus Boamundus? Ubi est ille invictus?”, “Where is the dazzling Bohemond? Where is the unconquered one?” A Lombard crusader then runs back to Bohemond and harangues him to join. “Quid hic stas, vir prudens? Quamobrem huc venisti?”, “Why are you standing here, O prudent man? Why did you even come here?”31 The criticism is deafening. In the midst of this, the language of masculinity, vir prudens, is again invoked, with a strong sense of irony.32 In the account of Robert the Monk, this account is lengthened, and the criticism made more explicit, with Pirrus crying out, “Quid facit ille piger? Quid tardat, quidve moratur?”, “What is that lazybones doing? What is he waiting for, why is he delaying?”33 Carol Sweetenham has argued that the metaphor that Robert employs here of the rising dawn is meant to invoke ideas of Bohemond as a lover, reluctant to leave his beloved until dawn, “putting pleasure before business”.34 Bohemond comes under criticism not just for his lack of martial involvement in the Gesta tradition, but also his attempts at diplomacy. Bohemond takes the lead in secret negotiations (April 1097) that see the crusader leaders humble themselves through the taking of an oath of fealty to the Byzantine emperor. The Gesta author writes: “Forsitan adhuc a nostris maioribus sepe delusi erimus?”, “perhaps we are always to be misled by our leaders?” and rhetorically asks why such “fortes . . . et duri milites”, “strong . . . and tough knights” should do such a thing. The answer, of course, is ascribed to necessity. But a few lines before, Bohemond is singled out as the recipient of a special land grant on the part of Emperor Alexios I. Here, he is introduced with the words “fortissimo viro”, “the strongest man” – the same adjective fortis being used to draw attention to the fact that Bohemond was at the head of this unwarranted parleying with the emperor.35 Again, the language of masculinity is utilised to contrast the epithets being used about Bohemond with his distinctly inappropriate actions. Bohemond’s loose attitude towards honesty and fidelity is evident throughout the Gesta tradition: he breaks his oath to Alexios, dissimulates to gain a favourable agreement at Antioch with his other leaders, breaks his word to the citizens of Ma’arrat, and fails to support the crusaders’ push southwards to Jerusalem.36 He is even involved in setting a fire within Antioch, to scare his fellow Christians into obedience, which destroys 2000 churches and homes.37 These examples are not explicitly linked to masculinity, so will not be expanded on here, but this consistency shows that a conception of Bohemond as an unproblematic positive figure is not tenable. The historiographical understanding of the Gesta as sycophantic towards Bohemond is based primarily in the use of prenominal adjectives.38 Praise of Bohemond is stratospheric at points. The other crusaders at one point address Bohemond: “Tu sapiens et prudens, tu magnus et magnificus, tu fortis et victor, tu bellorum arbiter et certaminum iudex . . .”, “You, wise and prudent; you, great

42  Parsons and magnificent; you, strong and victorious; you, judger of wars and decider of contests .  .  .”39 However, adjectives of praise are normally simply inserted before Bohemond’s name.40 The two most frequent are prudens and sapiens. Of the twenty-two adjectives applied to Bohemond during the Gesta’s narrative, five are prudens, and eight are sapiens, both normally paired with “vir”, “man”. Tudebode, the HAI, and the Peregrinatio Antiochie, when they add more adjectives to these two figures, predominately add more occurrences of these two words.41 Of the immediate tradition, only Tudebode ever applies either of these adjectives to any other figure: twice to Baldwin of Boulogne, once to Robert of Flanders.42 The use of the adjective “prudens” within the Gesta tradition demonstrates that it has clearly shifted away from its classical meaning: broadly, “prudent”, “wise”, “cautious”. The prime example of this is the adjective’s attribution to a man called “Hugo insanus”, “Hugo the insane”, defending a tower of Antioch, alone and rather impetuously: the Gesta writing “tam prudenter”, “so prudently”, while Tudebode uses instead “prudentissime”, “most prudently”.43 Tudebode includes a scene where the crusaders did not believe that the Turks were “prudentes” enough to dare to attack them at that stage.44 These passages simply do not make sense with the old range of meanings. Rather, sapiens and prudens are used in a generalised, formulaic sense, rather like their sage and preux, meaning wise and valiant respectively, in Old French literature.45 The very frequent pairing with the noun “vir”, “man” is strikingly reminiscent of vernacular formulations. If “prudens” is “preux”, “prudens vir” is surely “preudome”, an Old French portmanteau that expressed not only that an individual was personally valiant or honourable, but also implied a distinct social status.46 So why are Bohemond and, to a lesser extent, Tancred, described as prudens/sapiens (vir) when none of the other leaders are? The most likely reason is grounded in questions surrounding their social status. All the other leaders could have their name preceded by a title: dux (duke), comes (count), even episcopus (bishop) in the case of Adhémar of Le Puy. But in 1096–99, Bohemond held no such title, and the Gesta never describes him using one.47 Although Bohemond is often described in modern scholarship as “Prince of Taranto”, it is unlikely that this descriptor was used during his lifetime; although he held land in Apulia and occasionally in Calabria, this was as an untitled vassal to his brother, Roger Borsa.48 Tancred, too, was without formal position. Furthermore, that Bohemond is frequently called “dominus”, which Hill translates as “my lord” throughout her translation, does not imply a relationship of homage between the author and his assumed patron; it much more likely refers to the fact that Bohemond could not legitimately refer to himself as dux or comes, as the other leaders could.49 Prudens vir is used, then, as a generic term of respect, but one that highlights the non-titled social status of Bohemond and Tancred. Furthermore, as we have seen, it is often subverted and used ironically. Considering Bohemond as a complex figure exhibiting tensions surrounding social status and variant models of masculinity allows us to fruitfully return to the analysis of the anecdote with which I began this chapter.50 The imagined dialogue

The valiant man and the vilain  43 between Kerbogha and his mother cannot have been observed by the crusaders, and therefore must be seen as a purely invented episode. As such, without the author being restricted to representing the lived experience of the crusade, it provides clear insight into the authorial conception of both the groups of figures it represents: Kerbogha and his mother; Bohemond and Tancred. The story is probably comic in intention. On one level, it functions as a slanderous mocking of the gullibility and simple superstition of the pagans. Readers know that Bohemond and Tancred are not gods. Kerbogha’s uncertainty about their human nature positions him as a figure of ridicule.51 But a further level of meaning can be teased out of the portrayal of Bohemond and Tancred, whose ascribed superhuman appetite, implied giganticism, and martial ability relate to their reputation as figures who expose tensions about the characteristics Christian warriors should ideally possess. Bréhier considered that the passage might be one of Bohemond’s propagandistic emendations, but, if so, what model of heroism is being applied to its subject?52 The complex implications of this anecdote are amply demonstrated by how challenging it proved to subsequent writers when the Gesta’s material was reworked into other texts. With the exception of the HAI and the work of Tudebode, no crusade text maintains the anecdote in full. Baldric of Bourgueil simply omits this element of Kerbogha’s meeting with his mother, except for the variant “G” manuscript. This reads: For I think that they believe in or cherish no other God, except Bohemond and Tancred, who support them, who recently gave to them two thousand cows and four thousand pigs; which, as it was told to me, their poor people, one day, gulped down like wolves.53 Here, the aspertion of gullibility is cast from the pagans onto the Christians: Kerbogha believes that the common Christians view Tancred and Bohemond as gods. Similarly, Bohemond and Tancred are cast as the providers of food, rather than the consumers, and an identical sample of pigs and cows is consumed by poor crusaders rather then the two leaders. This renders the passage vastly more sensible, but maintains the association with monstrosity as the paupers “gulp like wolves”.54 Robert the Monk dispenses with the details of the feat, but Kerbogha still questions the presumed divine-status of three figures, here the vexillarius Hugh of Vermandois, Bohemond of Apulia, and Godfrey gladiator, asking “sunt ipsi dii eorum? Nonne sicut et nos aluntur temporali cibo?”, “Are they their gods? Do they not sustain themselves with mortal food like us?”55 Guibert of Nogent asks a similar question regarding the divinity of Bohemond and Tancred, but there is no mention of heroic overeating or consumption.56 The Antioche has some indication of Bohemond’s, Hugh’s and Godfrey’s presumed divine status, but no discussion of food.57 Whether this description was omitted in the adaptations because of a perceived discontinuity of tone, or because the portrayal of Bohemond and Tancred was seen as problematic, is difficult to determine.

44  Parsons The figure of the medieval epic hero was, conventionally, one that spurned food and corporeal needs in favour of extreme action and hardship. For a hero to assert through action the materiality of his corporeal form would be to engage in bathos and risk disrupting the seriousness of the high ideals represented.58 Despite this, there is a distinct subcategory of larger-than-life medieval heroes for whom appetite for food acts as a distinguishing feature, who lack social grace and act unpredictably, rooted in classical, even Indo-European myth structures.59 Textual play surrounding fasting/gluttony could present these figures as emblematic of the tensions between unrestrained violence and civilised restraint.60 It is exclusively men who hunger so profoundly, and who perform their voraciousness as part of the performance of their unrestrained masculinity. Medieval examples are manifold: one particularly intriguing occurrence is in the Old Irish Tale of Macc da Thó’s Pig (Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó), where a succession of warriors fight over the honour of carving an enormous, monstrous pig, garnished with forty cows. The winner, buoyed by his victory, consumes the pig in its entirety, leaving only the fore-trotters.61 Similarly, the The Last Battle of Mag Tuired (Cath Dédenach Maige Tuired) depicts the Dagda, a ribald outlandish figure who bears a mighty club, who is challenged to eat the largest bowl of porridge ever made, from a hole in the ground. This gargantuan slurry is seasoned with whole animals: pigs, sheep, and goats. The Dagda finishes the bowl, even going so far as to scrape the bottom of the pit with his finger before taking a nap.62 However, the chansons de geste, epic poems in Old French circulating around the turn of the twelfth century, provide the closest analogue of the portrayal of Bohemond in the Gesta tradition: the figure of the vilain, a character type associated with carnivalesque overturning of the social order and extravagant strength, stature, vivaciousness, and consumption.63 This is unsurprising, as the Gesta and associated texts drew heavily on the chansons de geste for stylistic and thematic inspiration. The chansons de geste as we have them were most likely textual manifestations of underlying oral tradition, and so features of later narratives could have been present in the oral chansons at the time of composition of the Gesta.64 The earliest examples of this character type are found in the Guillaume cycle, a collection of texts focusing on the struggles of William of Orange against Saracen, and Christian, enemies. Even respectable epic characters such as William himself could share traits with this class of undignified larger-than-life vilains, engaging in chaotic gluttony while retaining their heroic status.65 Gordon has suggested that gluttony in this context is an example of heroic exuberance and a comic subversion of a dominantly martial theme.66 Although it was certainly necessary for a knight who was to engage in warfare to be well-nourished and to show off his virility through conspicuous consumption, the figures of the Guillaume cycle go beyond normal human appetite.67 In the earliest chansons of this cycle, the Chanson de Guillaume (c. 1100), extreme appetite is manifested in an uncle and nephew pairing (like Bohemond and Tancred): the eponymous hero William and his nephew Gerard. In two separate scenes, they eat gluttonously, and, in each, overeating is linked with valour

The valiant man and the vilain  45 in battle and their ability to protect their people – a feature of the Kerbogha anecdote. In the first of these passages, the hero William is brought a feast by his pagan-convert wife, Guiborc: William ate the whole loaf of fine bread And afterwards the two baked round cakes; He ate a whole shoulder of pork And downed in two gulps a gallon of wine . . . Guiborc saw this and threw back her head in laughter: . . . Whoever eats a great loaf of fine bread like this And it doesn’t stop them eating two entire round loaves And a great shoulder of pork And then a great roast peacock, And downing a gallon of wine in two gulps, Will wage a hard war on his neighbours! He will never flee from the field of battle, Nor will his lineage be disgraced by he!68 In this description, direct parallels are drawn between this excessive personal hunger and alimentary indulgence of William with his martial ability. The same correlation is visible in the Gesta text where Bohemond’s and Tancred’s gluttony follows logically from their semi-divine status as protectors of the Christians on the battlefield. This observation is made by a Saracen in both texts, albeit converted in Guillaume. The consistency of this trope is echoed later regarding William’s nephew Gerard: Gerard ate the great boar’s shoulder, And in two draughts emptied the great gallon maser [of wine] . . . Guiborc saw this, and said to William: “By God, my good lord, this man is of your lineage! Whoever eats a great brawn of pork like that, And in two draughts can down a gallon of wine, Will wage a bitter war against his neighbour, And will never shamefully flee from the field!”69 In later versions of the Guillaume tradition, such as Aliscans (1185–1216), the unrivalled eating is transferred to the figure of Rainouart while William is exonerated from this problematic carnality.70 At one point, he swallows a hundred rissoles, two geese, and a barrel of wine in an attempt to get over his hangover.71 Rainouart is a kitchen assistant in the king’s household, purchased as a slave and onetime member of a royal lineage of Saracens. He is enormous, immensely strong, and carries a kind of improvised club known as a tinel.

46  Parsons Unlike William, Rainouart’s social status is forever in flux, and the subject of much of the narrative’s focus.72 His originally high birth is sullied through his low position at court, and engagement in manual labour, and then renegotiated towards respectability through his knighting at the end of the poem.73 Contrasting with the alimentary restraint of well-born heroes, Rainouart’s gluttony is explicitly described as an indication of his low birth. The oldest manuscript of Aliscans sees Christians censure the vilain Renouart: “Come Rainouars samble male racine | ja mangeroit .II. paons et .I. cinne”, “How Renouart looks as if he is of a bad lineage | he’d eat two peacocks and a swan!”74 The gluttony ascribed to Bohemond and Tancred could also function as acknowledgement of their low-born lineage, as descendants of the parvenu Robert Guiscard, who had left Normandy with relatively low social status to win his fortunes successfully in the Norman territories in Apulia and Calabria in the mid-eleventh century.75 That this shift in status was widely appreciated, and subsequently related to Bohemond’s status, is encapsulated in Guibert of Nogent’s comment that Bohemond “oblitterata vilitate parentum”, “having wiped out the worthlessness of his ancestors”, married Constance of France in 1106.76 Just like Bohemond in the Gesta tradition, slowness to act is a feature of Rainouart in Guillaume/Aliscans. On the morning of the climactic battle that is the focal point of Aliscans, Rainouart fails to get up with the other Christians, instead staying slumbering by the camp fire. Only when he is woken by the smoke from his burning tent does he rush to the battle, nearly missing the main event.77 Similarly, in the earlier Guillaume, Rainouart forgets his tinel, his only weapon, at camp, and has to run back for it, falling behind the Christian army.78 These delays can be usefully compared to Bohemond’s (above) reluctance at the Lake Battle and outside the walls of Antioch. Extreme appetite, then, is associated, in Old French literature, with low birth, a slowness to battle (but extreme competency when actually there), and giganticism. Although Bohemond’s stature is not commented upon in the Gesta tradition, it may well have been implicit in the minds of the audience. Bohemond’s giganticism was well known.79 Anna Komnēnḗ (c. 1140) described Bohemond: “His stature was such that he towered almost a full cubit over the tallest men . . . there was a hard, savage quality in his whole aspect, due, I suppose, to his great stature.”80 Bohemond’s imposing form is confirmed by Orderic Vitalis, while adding the detail that he was named after a giant, which his father had heard from a fabula.81 Bohemond was evidently seen as a hyper-virile, larger-than-life character – and in this regard, too, conformed to the model of the vilain.82 A close reading of the Gesta Francorum tradition, incorporating understanding of its context with regard to vernacular literature, indicates that scholarly conceptions of Bohemond’s straightforward heroism, based on the evident focus on him as a character, need to be adapted. The positive epithets, which have fuelled interpretations of Bohemond’s propagandistic involvement in the text, seem in part to be an attempt to give Bohemond a description commensurate with the titles of his noble comrades. Moreover, although the language of masculinity is clearly evoked (usually from Bohemond himself), he often fails to conform to the models

The valiant man and the vilain  47 he preaches. Slow or lazy with regards to joining battle, tricksy, endowed with the suggestion of obscene appetite, Bohemond departs from models of masculinity that see self-control and reliable conduct as virtues to be praised. Instead, particularly in the anecdote of Kerbogha’s conversation, but also more widely accross the tradition, the Gesta author implictly related Bohemond to the carnivalesque vilain, a figure who embodies the fluidity of medieval social categorisation and models of masculine heroism.

Notes 1 “Dixit illi Curbaram: ‘Mater karissima, dic michi omnia quae in corde meo sunt incredula.’ Quae ait: ‘Hoc karissime, libenter faciam, si sciero ea quae tibi sunt incognita.’ Cui ille dixit: ‘Non sunt igitur Boamundus et Tancredus Francorum dii, et non eos liberant de inimicis suis? Et quod ipsi manducant in uno quoque prandio duo milia vaccas et quator milia porcos?’ ” Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. Roger Mynors, trans. and introd. Rosalind Hill (London: Nelson, 1962), 55–6 (hereafter GF). A nearly identical section is found in Peter Tudebode’s Historia, a text with a complex relationship to the Gesta best described as variance: Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, eds John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Paris: Geuthner, 1977), 96 (hereafter PT). For the most recent thoughts on the relationship, see Marcus Bull, “The Relationship Between the Gesta Francorum and Peter Tudebode’s Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere: The Evidence of a Hitherto Unexamined Manuscript (St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, 3)”, Crusades 11 (2012), 1–17; Samu Niskanen, “The Origins of the Gesta Francorum and Two Related Texts: Their Textual and Literary Character”, Sacris Erudiri 51 (2012), 287–316. The Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum, a similarly variant alternate version, replaces the pigs with loaves of bread: Hystoria de via et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum (olim Tudebodus imitatus et continuatus): I Normanni d’Italia alla prima Crociata in una cronaca cassinese, ed. Edoardo D’Angelo (Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009), 74 (hereafter HAI). 2 For wider analysis of this scene, see Natasha R. Hodgson, “The Role of Kerbogha’s Mother in the Gesta Francorum and Selected Chronicles of the First Crusade”, in Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert eds Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), 163–76; Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 190–6. 3 Matthew Bennett, “First Crusaders’ Images of Muslims: The Influence of Vernacular Poetry?”, Forum for Modern Language Studies 22 (1986), 101–22; Colin Morris, “The Gesta Francorum as Narrative History”, Reading Medieval Studies 19 (1993), 55–71. 4 Recent expressions of Bohemond as the “hero” of the Gesta are found in Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (London: Bodley Head, 2012), 188; Jean Flori, Bohémond d’Antioche: Chevalier d’aventure (Paris: Payot, 2007), 13–14, 63; Jean Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la Première croisade (Geneva: Droz, 2010), 78; Stefan Vander Elst, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100–1400 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 28; Steven Biddlecombe, “Baldric of Bourgueil and the Flawed Hero”, in David Bates ed., Anglo-Norman Studies, 35: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2012 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 79–94 (83–84, and passim). The present chapter agrees with much of Biddlecombe’s careful analysis, but does not support the central premise that Bohemond’s shortcomings and deceptions would have been seen as uniformly positive elements of his “flawed hero” persona by a medieval audience, arguing instead that Bohemond is

48  Parsons presented as an equivocal figure who embodied elements of the heroic alongside the transgressive and comic. 5 For carnivalesque, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helen Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968), 369–436, and important modifications in Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 6–26. 6 The writings of Albert of Aachen were also early, and although his history shares some general textual architecture with the Gesta, it represents a relatively independent tradition: Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007); Susan B. Edgington, “Albert of Aachen Reappraised”, in Alan V. Murray ed., From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500. Selected Proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 10–13 July 1995 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 55–69. 7 HAI. 8 See Niskanen, “Origins”; Bull, “Relationship”. 9 Le “Liber” de Raymond d’Aguilers, eds John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Paris: Geuthner, 1969); Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg: Winter, 1913); Susan B. Edgington, “The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence”, in Jonathan Phillips ed., The First Crusade: Origins and Impact (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 55–78 (56–7). On the problematic nature of eyewitness, see most recently Marcus Bull, “The Eyewitness Accounts of the First Crusade as Political Scripts”, Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 23–38; Elizabeth Lapina, “ ‘Nec signis nec testis creditur . . . ’ : The Problem of Eyewitnesses in the Chronicles of the First Crusade”, Viator 38(1) (2007), 117–39; Simon John, “Historical Truth and the Miraculous Past: The Use of Oral Evidence in Twelfth-Century Latin Historical Writing on the First Crusade”, English Historical Review 130 (2015), 263–301. 10 Described as “theological refinement” by Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2009), 135–52. Editions of these texts are now: The ’Historia Iherosolimitana’ of Robert the Monk, eds D. Kempf and M. G. Bull (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013) (hereafter RM); Guibert of Nogent, “Dei gesta per Francos” et cinq autres textes, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996) (hereafter GN); Baldric of Bourgueil, The “Historia Ierosolimitana” of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014) (hereafter BB). 11 Evelyn Jamison, “Some Notes on the Anonymi Gesta Francorum, with Special Reference to the Norman Contingent from South Italy and Sicily in the First Crusade”, in Studies in French Language and Mediaeval Literature: Presented to Professor Mildred K. Pope by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939), 183–209; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Crusade and Narrative: Bohemond and the Gesta Francorum”, Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991), 207–16. 12 Morris, “The Gesta Francorum as Narrative History”, 67–8. 13 August C. Krey, “A  Neglected Passage in the Gesta and its Bearing on the Literature of the First Crusade”, in Louis J. Paetow ed., The Crusades and Other Historical Essays: Presented to Dana C. Munro by His Former Students (New York: Crofts, 1928), 57–78. Recent support for propagandistic reworking is found in Jean Flori, “De l’anonyme normand à Tudebode et aux Gesta Francorum: L’impact de la propagande de Bohémond sur la critique textuelle des sources de la Première croisade”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 102 (2007), 717–46; HAI, xliv–liii; Niskanen, 309–11; Vander Elst, The Knight, 50; Luigi Russo, “Il viaggio di Boemondo d’Altavilla in Francia (1106): Un riesame”, Archivio Storico Italiano 163 (2005), 3–42. Rubenstein has proposed a modified version of this argument, which argues that Bohemond’s circle,

The valiant man and the vilain  49

14 15 16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

and the papacy, appropriated an extant Gesta: Jay Rubenstein, “The Deeds of Bohemond: Reform, Propaganda, and the History of the First Crusade”, Viator 47(2) (2016), 113–36. GF, 12; Jamison, “Some Notes”, 194–5; Hans Oehler, “Studien zu den Gesta Francorum”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 6 (1970), 58–97 (74–5). RM, xxxiv–xxxv. Nicholas Paul, “A  Warlord’s Wisdom: Literacy and Propaganda at the Time of the First Crusade”, Speculum 85(3) (2010), 534–66; Marc Carrier, “Pour en finir avec le Gesta Francorum: Une réflexion historiographique sur l’état des rapports entre Grec et Latins au début de xiie siècle et sur l’apport nouveau d’Albert d’Aix”, Crusades 7 (2008), 13–34; Jay Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum, and who was Peter Tudebode?”, Revue Mabillon 16 (2005), 179–204 (185–7); Emily Albu, “Probing the Passions of a Norman on Crusade: The Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum”, in John Gillingham ed., Anglo-Norman Studies, 27: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2004 (Woodbridge: Boydell  & Brewer, 2005), 1–15; Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth, and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), 159, 179. Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades”, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks, and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150”, in Clare A. Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann McNamara eds, Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–30. Ruth Mazzo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 20–66, esp. 38; M. Bennett, “Military Masculinity in England and Northern France, c.1050–c.1225”, in D. M. Hadley ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe ed. Dawn M. Hadley (London: Longman, 1999), 71–88 (86–7). Ruth Mazzo Karras, “Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt: Clerical Masculinity in Medieval Europe”, in Lisa Bitel and Felice Lifshitz eds, Gender & Christianity in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 52–67. Matthew M. Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, in P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis eds, Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 94–111. Matthew Bennett, “Virile Latins, Effeminate Greeks, and Strong Women: Gender Definitions on Crusade”, in Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), 16–30. GF, 18; PT, 51; HAI, 30. GF, 19; PT, 52; HAI, 30. GF, 19; PT, 52; HAI, 31. GF, 36–7. Cf. PT, 72; HAI, 50–1. RM, 26. Discussed as a muted approach to Bohemond’s courage in William M. Aird, “ ‘Many others, whose names I do not know, fled with them’: Norman Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade”, in Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell  & Brewer, 2015), 13–30 (20–1). GF, 36; PT, 71; HAI, 50. For example, Wolf, “Crusade and Narrative”, 213. GF, 36–7; PT, 72; HAI, 31, 50–1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 77: Siège d’Antioche, 149–62, esp. 157. GF, 46; PT, 86; HAI, 65. Noted as criticism of Bohemond: Natasha R. Hodgson, “Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade”, in Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell &

50  Parsons

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47 48

49 50

Brewer, 2015), 195–214 (207); Albu, “Probing”, 11; Carrier “En finir”, 27–8. Bennett characterises this as evidence of Pirrus’s lack of Western Christian fortitudinous machismo: Bennett, “Virile Latins”, 18. Albu, “Probing”, 11. For irony: Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum”, 186. RM, 54. Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. Carol Sweetenham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 145 note 25. GF, 11–12; Albu, “Probing”, 11 note 28; Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum”, 186–7. Bohemond’s refusal to take up Pirrus’s offer to betray the city before he is guaranteed custody of the whole settlement is clearly disingenuous: Gesta Francorum, 44–5. For Ma’arrat in this context: Natasha Hodgson, “Reinventing Normans as Crusaders? Ralph of Caen’s Gesta Tancredi”, in C. P. Lewis ed., Anglo-Norman Studies, 30: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2007 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2008), 117–32 (121). GF, 61; PT, 102–3; HAI, 80. Causing Wolf, “Crusade and Narrative”, 214, to describe him as a “great motivator”. Albu, Normans in their Histories, 155–61. GF, 36; HAI, 50. Absent in PT, 71. For a quantitative analysis, see Flori, Chroniqueurs, 42–7. Bohemond as prudens: GF, 10, 14, 32, 35, 46; PT, 67, 86; HAI, 30. As sapiens: GF, 13, 18, 19, 20, 28, 32, 36, 61; PT, 43, 48, 53, 63. Tancred as prudens (never sapiens): GF, 18, 20; PT, 40, 41, 51, 53, 58, 59. Cambridge, St. Catharine’s College MS 3, Peregrinatio Antioche, 88r, 77v. PT, 33, 58, 66. GF, 61; PT, 102; HAI, 79. For another non-traditional usage, see HAI, 91. PT, 52–3; HAI, 31. Morris, “The Gesta Francorum as Narrative History”, 63; Ernest O. Blake and Colin Morris, “A Hermit Goes to War: Peter and the Origins of the First Crusade”, Studies in Church History 22 (1984), 79–107 (97 note 70); Bennett, “First Crusaders’ Images of Muslims”, 112. Jessie Crosland, “Prou, Preux, Preux Hom, Preud’Ome”, French Studies 1(2) (1947), 149–56; A. R. Boysen, Über den Begriff preu im Französischen (preux, prou, prouesse, prud’homme, prud’homie, prude, pruderie) (Münster: Lengericher, 1941). Flori lists “prudentissimus miles” among Bohemond’s epithets, but cites an example whereby the entire body of Christian knights are “prudentissimos milites”; he is not independently identified as such: GF, 32; Flori, Chroniqueurs, 44–5. A later copy of a 1093 charter calls him prince, but this is probably a subsequent emendation. Ralph Bailey Yewdale, Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1924), 25–33, esp. 29; Luigi Russo, Boemondo: Figlio del Guiscardo e principe di Antiochia (Avellino: Sellino, 2009), 50–1. This charter is the root of the arguments in Evelyn Jamison, “The Norman Administration of Apulia and Capua”, Papers of the British School at Rome 6(6) (1913), 211–481 (226); Thomas S. Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, 1098–1130 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000), 133. Whether Bohemond exercised the power of a prince in the region is contested, see Graham A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Harlow: Longman/Pearson, 2000), 257–9. The possessive determiner “my” is unjustified fiction on Hill’s part. GF, xii, xviii, and passim. Hill is supported by Flori, Chroniqueurs, 70. Occasionally, Hill includes the translation “my lord” when there is no “dominus” in the Latin: GF, 14. For the role of anecdote in crusading texts, see Carol Sweetenham, “What Really Happened to Eurvin de Créel’s Donkey? Anecdotes in Sources for the First Crusade”, in

The valiant man and the vilain  51

51

52 53

54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61

62 63 64

65 66

Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf eds, Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), 75–88. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, 193; Hodgson, “Role”, 170; Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum”, 198; Yuval Noah Harari, “Eyewitnessing in Accounts of the First Crusade: The Gesta Francorum and other Contemporary Narratives”, Crusades 3 (2004), 77–99 (90). Bréhier, Histoire anonyme, vi. “Puto enim nullum alium eos putare Deum nec colere, nisi Boamundum et Tancredum, qui eos pascunt, qui nuper eis dederunt II milia bovum et IIII milia porcorum; quos, ut relatum est mihi, pauperes eorum, una die, ut lupi devorarunt.” BB, 65 note i. Biddlecombe incorrectly records the number of pigs as “III milia” when the manuscript reads “.iiii. milia”: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS  Latin 5513, fol. 30r. Possibly an echo of the cannibalistic Tafurs who accompany the crusade in Guibert of Nogent and vernacular traditions: Alexander H. Krappe, “L’anthropophagie des Tafurs”, Neophilologus 15 (1930), 274–8; Lewis A. M. Sumberg, “The ‘Tafurs’ and the First Crusade”, Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959), 224–46; GN, 110; La chanson d’Antioche, ed. Suzanne Duparc-Quioc, 2 vols (Paris: Geuthner, 1977–8), i: Édition du texte après la version ancienne (1977), 568; La chanson de la Première croisade en ancien français d’aprés Baudri de Bourgueil: Édition et analyse lexicale, ed. Jennifer Gabel de Aguirre (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015), 302–4. The classed implications of the description of the Tafurs are explored in Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 2nd edn (London: Paladin, 1970), 42–9. RM, 62. GN, 212–15. Antioche, i, 341. Susan E. Farrier, “Hungry Heroes in Medieval Literature”, in Melitta Weiss Adamson ed., Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1995), 145– 59 (145); Henri Bergson, Le Rire, 8th edn (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993), 40. Compare the Iranian paladin Rostam with a healthy appetite in the medieval tradition of Persia: Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, ed. Azar Nafisi, trans. Dick Davis, 2nd edn (London: Penguin, 2016), 106–7. Sara Sturm-Maddox, “Food for Heroes: The Intertextual Legacy of the Conte del Graal”, in Norris J. Lacy ed., Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (New York: Garland, 1996), 117–31 (118). “The Tale of Macc Da Thó’s Pig”, in Jeffrey Gantz ed., Early Irish Myths and Sagas (London: Penguin, 1981), 179–87 (186); Scéla mucce Meic Dathó, ed. Rudolf Thurneysen (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1935). Perennial problems surround the dating of Old Irish literature. This story was first recorded in the mid-twelfth century in the Book of Leinster. Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired, ed. Elizabeth A. Gray (Naas: Irish Texts Society, 1982), 47. Eleventh- or twelfth-century in its current form – see p. 11. See footnote 4 above. Bennett, “First Crusaders’ Images”; Morris, “Narrative History” 61–2; Rubenstein, “What is the Gesta Francorum”, 197. Whether the chansons were a written or oral form at this stage is vexed, explored in Simon Thomas Parsons, “The Use of Chanson de geste Motifs in the Latin Texts of the First Crusade, c. 1095–1145” (unpublished doctoral thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016), 41–50. Farrier, “Hungry Heroes”. Sarah Gordon, Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007), 35–40.

52  Parsons 67 A detailed treatment of conspicuous alimentary consumption is found in Bennett, “Military Masculinity”, 81–2. 68 “Mangat Willame le pain a tamis Et en après les dous gasteals rostiz Trestuit mangat le grant braun porcin Et a dous traiz but un sester de vin ... Veist le Guiburc: crollad sun chef si rist ... “Qui mangue un grant pain a tamis Et pur ço ne laisse les dous gasteals rostiz Et tut mangue un grant braun porcin Et en aproef un grant poun rosti Et a dous traiz beit un sester de vin, Ben dure guere deit render a sun veisin! Ja trop vilment ne deit de champ fuir, Ne sun lignage par lui estre plus vil!” La Chanson de Guillaume (La Chançun de Willame), ed. and trans. Philip E. Bennett (London: Grant & Cutler, 2000), 102–3. 69 “Girard mangat le grant braun porcin, et a dous traiz ad voidé le mazelin. ... Veist le Guiburc, a Willame l”ad dit: “Par Deu, bel sire, cist est de vostre lin! Qui si mangue un grant braun porcin, Et a dous traiz beit un cester de vin, Ben dure guere deit rendre a sun veisin, Ne ja vilment ne deit de champ fuir!” Ibid., 85. 70 Farrier, “Hungry Heroes”, 147–53. 71 Aliscans: Chanson de geste, ed. F. Guessard and A. De Montaiglon (Paris: Franck, 1870), 108–12. 72 Jean-Pierre Martin, “Le personnage de Rainouart entre épopée et carnival”, in Michèle Gally ed., Comprendre et aimer la chanson de geste: À propos d’Aliscans, 2nd edn (Fontenay-St Cloud: E. N. S., 1994), 63–86. 73 More generally, see Peter Noble, “Attitudes to Social Class as Revealed by Some of the Older Chansons de geste”, Romania 94 (1973), 359–85. 74 Cited in Farrier, “Hungry Heroes”, 148. 75 Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, 2–4. 76 GN, 138; discussed in Conor Kostick, The Social Structure of the First Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 183–5. 77 Aliscans, ed. Claude Régnier, 2 vols (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1990), i, 185–6. 78 La Chanson de Guillaume, 161–4; Aliscans, i, 154–7. 79 Rubenstein, “Deeds of Bohemond”, 121. For the idea that the crusade imbued a “certain moral and spiritual giganticism”, see Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 36. 80 Anna Komnēnḗ, The Alexiad, trans. E. R. A. Sewter, introd. and notes Peter Frankopan, 2nd edn (London: Penguin, 2009), 383–4. 81 Orderic Vitalis, Historia æcclesiastica: The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969–80), vi: Books xi, xii and xiii (1978), 70. 82 Bennett, “Virile Latins”, 17–18.

3 Al-Afd· al b. Badr al-Jamālī, the vizierate and the Fatimid response to the First Crusade Masculinity in historical memory1 Mathew Barber When the crusaders invaded the Levant in 1097, the Fatimids were among the first Muslim polities to respond. A Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī movement, the Fatimids were ruled by an Imām-Caliph, who claimed to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad, through his daughter Fāṭima and his cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. The dynasty emerged in the late ninth century, and in about 909 established itself in North Africa, as a Caliphate opposed to both the Umayyads in al-Andalus and the Abbasids in Baghdad. Their capital moved to Egypt in 969, where they founded the palace city of Cairo. Cairo remained their centre of power until 1171, when Saladin destroyed the Caliphate and founded the Sunnī Ayyubid dynasty. The First Crusade (1097–9) and twelfth-century Crusader States posed a grave threat to Fatimid territories, especially in Syria, and they responded diplomatically and militarily. As Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “All too often . . . Fatimid activity in this period has been sadly neglected.”2 This chapter aims to further our understanding of the Fatimid perspective on the First Crusade, through a study of the career of the vizier al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī (r. 1094–1121) and the representation of his masculinity in the narrative sources. Al-Afḍal led and coordinated a number of early campaigns against the Franks, but our understanding of his career is relatively poor and complicated by the lack of contemporaneous Fatimid sources. The later sources, which are much more detailed, are often biased against the Fatimids.3 Comparison of these sources can, however, provide insight into al-Afḍal and perceptions of his masculinity. The contemporaneous sources focus on the vizier’s campaigns, presenting a positive military masculinity, while the later material highlights al-Afḍal’s behaviour at court, undermining his masculinity. It will be suggested that this reflects two historical narratives – one a laudatory account shaped by al-Afdal’s propaganda, and the other a critical account formed after his death.

Masculinity and the Arabic historiography There are still few detailed studies of masculinity in the medieval Islamic World, especially concerning Muslim rulers.4 Scholarship on the elite in the medieval Latin west has highlighted violent expressions of masculinity – for example, at

54  Barber war or on the hunt. There were, however, exceptions. Andrew Holt, for example, has shown that medieval clerics, who were not supposed to express their masculinity through the pursuit of violence or sex, were still able to present themselves as masculine figures.5 Another less-explored figure is the administrator. Islamic polities had need for extensive corps of these elites – governors, secretaries, accountants, and (crucially for this chapter) viziers, who could not perform their masculinity violently on the battlefield, as could a soldier or a commander of the armies. Literature, termed adab in Arabic, was written to educate (as well as entertain) such men on acceptable behaviour. As Leila Ahmed has observed, following the expansion of Islam (c. late seventh century), pre-existing Sassanian and Hellenic ideas were absorbed into Islamic conceptions of gender, and this helped shape adab. As Ahmed notes, Aristotelean views of gender were dominant in parts of the pre-Islamic middle east. Aristotle claimed that women were “more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and strike”; the rule of man was one of “the rational element over the passionate”.6 We find similar gender models in the adab of al-Jāḥiz, a ninth-century scholar well-versed in Arabic translations of Aristotle. He claimed, for example, “Jealousy . . . is a vain thing. It is, however, a common characteristic of women, by reason of their frailty.”7 Elsewhere, when chastising a (male) patron for his excessive anger, al-Jāḥiẓ wrote: “Anger is one of Satan’s characteristics, and passion shows itself in the guise of a woman.”8 In this case, Aristotelean notions of women as the more “passionate” and angry sex, are mixed with Islamic monotheistic ideas of the devil, as the source of human deviation, a temptation to which women are more subject. There are similar ideas in Mamluk texts (Egyptian texts written 1250–1517). As Huda Lutfi notes, Mamluk scholars viewed men as having a superior mind, and thought that women’s lack of emotional control made them a source of anarchy in the Islamic world.9 The anthropologist David Gilmore has stressed that masculinity: “is a precarious or artificial state”;10 that men can be stripped of their masculinity; and that it is something that men must overtly perform. Medieval historians similarly emphasise or question the masculinity of their subjects, praising a man by stressing his rational and martial qualities or undermining him by highlighting his jealousy, anger, or other “unmanly” behaviours. This dynamic will be explored through five sources. Two were written by contemporaries of al-Afḍal. The first, Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī (d. 1147), was al-Afḍal’s secretary. He owed his prominent position to al-Afḍal and wrote a biography of him in his book of the viziers, al-ishāra ilā man nāla al-wizāra.11 The second, Ibn al-Qulzumī (d. after 1127), was a Coptic Christian, who wrote a history of the Coptic church, preserved in a compilation misattributed to the tenth-century scholar Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ.12 The Coptic community enjoyed a privileged place in the Fatimid court, especially under the viziers Badr al-Jamālī (r. 1074–94) and al-Afḍal.13 For the later narrative sources, we will focus on three texts, composed by authors resident in Egypt, which together present a more critical outlook on al-Afḍal’s vizierate: Ibn Ẓāfir (d. 1216 or 1226), an Ayyubid administrator, and two Mamlūk scholars: al-Nuwayrī (d. 1333) and al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442). In addition, the chapter will refer to the work of a fourth

Masculinity in historical memory  55 Mamlūk scholar Ibn Muyassar (d. 1278), which is extant as a set of notes made by al-Maqrīzī during his research.

The vizier of the pen and sword In medieval Islamic governance, the vizier was an official, second in line to the Caliph and head of his administrative apparatus. This understanding of the office is seen in the translation of the Arabic consonantal root for wazīr w-z-r, “to bear a burden” – the individual who bears the ruler’s burdens. The vizierate first appeared under the Abbasids, a custom that they probably inherited from pre-Islamic Sassanian tradition (the word wazīr may also have been adopted from Pahlavi, and later given its new Arabic meaning.)14 The office was subsequently adopted by a number of other Islamic dynasties. The Fatimids did not initially employ viziers,15 but this changed after their conquest of Egypt, where they adopted it from local practice, as was necessary to manage the territory and maximise on tax revenues.16 Concerning elite masculinity in Islam, Nicola Clarke notes that “manhood is a public status that must be performed in certain social contexts and which requires recognition from other men”.17 In the case of the vizierate, there appear to be two “social contexts”, which map neatly onto the expected masculine roles discussed above: the military sphere, where violent elements of masculinity could be expressed, and the court, where a man would be expected to show his “rational” qualities and control of his emotions. The following section will discuss the Fatimid viziers’ perceived role in both of these spheres. In most cases, viziers played an administrative role. For the Fatimids, another individual, the amīr al-juyūsh (commander of the armies), was associated with the military sphere; it was he who led major Fatimid offensives and campaigns. The vizier was largely confined to the court sphere, where the issuing of propaganda, management of capital and manpower were his only link to the military sphere. In 1074 this was reoriented, at least in an official sense. In response to a period of civil conflict (that almost brought an end to the dynasty), the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir invited al-Afḍal’s father Badr al-Jamālī (a prominent Syrian general) to invade Egypt and reinstate order. After he had secured Egypt for the Caliph, he was given the offices of both amīr al-juyūsh and vizier. Upon his death he passed these titles onto his son al-Afḍal. For the first time in Fatimid history the two offices were combined under one individual. Since the Ayyubid period (post-1171), historians (both medieval and modern) have emphasised the addition of this military component to the vizierate after 1074. Fatimid viziers are often classified as wazīr al-qalam (vizier of the pen) or wazīr alsayf (vizier of the sword), and historians claim that after Badr these two functions became combined. The Ayyubid secretary, Ibn Ẓāfir, wrote, for example: ‘amīr al-juyūsh [Badr al-Jamālī] was appointed as vizier of sword and pen [istawazara wizārat sayf wa qalam] in addition to chief qāḍī and head of the dāʿīs [missionaries]’.18 Ibn Khallikān, Ibn Muyassar and al-Nuwayrī all use the same expression to describe Badr: “vizier of the sword and pen”. Only the latter historian suggests that this should be applied to al-Afḍal.19 Yet modern historians such as Farhad

56  Barber Daftary and Yacoov Lev have asserted that this terminology should be applied to the vizierates of Badr and al-Afḍal.20 Moreover, in her detailed study of the Fatimid vizierate, Leila al-Imad has applied different terminology with a similar meaning: wizārat al-tanf īdh (non-executive vizier) and wizārat al-tafwīd (executive vizier). The latter type of vizier had more power to govern without the Caliph, and power over both military and civilian affairs. Al-Imad asserts that the wizārat al-tafwīd should be read as an equivalent of the “vizier of the sword and pen”.21 We should, however, take care when applying this terminology to the Fatimids. Michael Brett and Paul Walker avoid the above language, only briefly referring to men of the “pen” and “sword”,22 and this better reflects the ambiguity of the Fatimid sources. These terms appear to belong to the period after Fatimid rule, while Leila al-Imad’s terminology is taken from al-Mawardī, who was a scholar from Baghdad and who probably reflects Abbasid practice. The available Fatimid sources never delineate military and civilian viziers. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, for example, in his history of the Fatimid viziers, not once refers to viziers of the sword or pen. If we then look to Fatimid practice, we see that while Badr and al-Afḍal did campaign, they also sent others into the field on their behalf. In doing so they behaved much like earlier Fatimid viziers. Badr stopped leading his troops into battle in ah 482/1089–90 ce, and before this date he had on occasion “dispatched” rather than led armies.23 Meanwhile, we find no reference to military campaigning on the part of al-Afḍal before his assumption of the vizierate. Even after his appointment, he more frequently directed armies rather than led them, as in his response to the defection of Riḍwān b. Tutush in Aleppo in ah 490/1097 ce: “the amīr al-juyūsh al-Afḍal assigned [nadaba] an army”.24 There are three known cases where al-Afḍal led armies himself. The first was against Nizār in Alexandria in ah 488/1095 ce;25 the second was his recapture of Jerusalem from the Artuqids in ah 491/1098 ce;26 and the third was against the crusaders in the vicinity of the ʿAsqalān about a year later.27 The sources that mention these events agree that al-Afḍal led these campaigns personally, until his defeat in the third, after which he retired from campaigning. Documents and inscriptions suggest that al-Afḍal had prominence in the court and proximity to the Caliph long before he had assumed the vizierate. Although our narrative sources are silent on the matter, it would appear al-Afḍal moved to Cairo at about the time his father, Badr, assumed power (1074). Al-Afḍal is first mentioned in connection with the court in Shawwāl 472/ March–April 1080 ce (he would have been about 14 at the time), when, according to a letter sent to Yemen, al-Afḍal was bestowed with elaborate titles, including “sincere friend of the Caliph [s·ifwat amīr al-muʾminīn]”, and given a formal reception by the Caliph.28 Then in ah 478/1086 ce al-Afḍal’s brother led a rebellion and fell from favour;29 Badr subsequently made al-Afḍal his substitute and heir apparent.30 This is indicated in a letter sent in that year, which contains the first instance of the title by which he is later known: al-Afḍal (the most excellent). He was titled in full: “the illustrious al-Afḍal, sword of the Imām, glory of Islam, most noble of the human race, support of the faith, friend of the Caliph [khalīl amīr al-muʾminīn]”.31 His secretary Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī lists these same titles,32 and an inscription in the Ibn

Masculinity in historical memory  57 Tulūn mosque in Cairo confirms that these titles were proclaimed publicly during the reign of al-Mustanṣir.33 A  letter sent the following year further emphasised al-Afḍal’s authority in the Fatimid court. This letter asked the Fatimids’ representative in Yemen to give al-Afḍal’s name alongside that of Badr and the Caliph in the official sermon.34 In any Islamic context, the mention of an individual’s name in the sermon denoted authority, and we should not understate the symbolic value of al-Afḍal’s name being mentioned alongside the Caliph’s.35 As such, nearly a decade before he became vizier, al-Afḍal had a prominent role at court, and had gained experience in this sphere. Even if contemporaneous sources did not clearly distinguish between military and civilian viziers, their use of the title of amīr al-juyūsh (commander of the armies) denotes a military duty. Bearing such an office had been no challenge for Badr, as an experienced Fatimid general with a proven military track record. However, al-Afḍal had inherited the office from his father, with little real military experience. He spent his formative years in the Fatimid court, and we must assume that it was in this sphere where his talents lay. This is seen in the way that medieval historians discuss al-Afḍal’s career, outlined in the following three sections. The first section concerns the court sphere, for which the later sources cite examples of al-Afḍal’s jealousy and anger. The second then concerns the military sphere, where the contemporaneous sources discuss al-Afḍal’s military campaigns in laudatory terms. The third section will suggest that this contemporary trend was shaped by al-Afḍal’s dissemination of propaganda. Thus, al-Afḍal used his court experience to produce propaganda that redressed his apparent deficiencies and inexperience in the military sphere.

Al-Afd· al and the Fatimid Court

As we noted above, al-Afḍal spent his formative years in the court and in close proximity to the Caliph. There he would be expected to behave rationally, in control of his emotions. Al-Jāḥiẓ stresses that an excess of jealousy or anger were both traits attributable to women. It is on these grounds, jealousy and anger, that the later sources criticise al-Afḍal’s behaviour in court. In doing so they subtly emasculate him. Three areas in particular illustrate this: al-Afḍal’s treatment of concubines, his treatment of prisoners, and his involvement in the Nizārī schism. The first two will be discussed briefly, followed by more detailed treatment of the third. In Arabic chronicle histories, it is common for the author to provide after the death of an important individual a series of anecdotes and stories from the person’s life, which can sometimes reflect on their negative or positive character traits. Ibn Muyassar and al-Maqrīzī transmit two such anecdotes about al-Afḍal. The first anecdote highlights al-Afḍal’s excessively jealous nature. Ibn Muyassar provides the more detailed account – which appears to be copied, with slight abridgement, by al-Maqrīzī: He was strongly jealous of his women. There are anecdotes [akhbār] about this, one of them is: That he appeared one day on the roof terrace of his house

58  Barber [sath·a dārihi], and he saw one of his slave girls looking towards the road [presumably towards other men]. So he ordered for her to be beheaded. When her head was brought before him, he said: [a eulogy for the slave girl].36 The above story also fits well into the Aristotelian mould, where a good man is expected to be in control of his emotions, not subject to fits of jealousy. As Cortese and Calderini have asserted: “[it] reveal[s] a man guided by emotion rather than reason. In other words, more a fool than a leader!”37 Moreover, the phrase “there are anecdotes about this” stresses that this was not an isolated case. Al-Afḍal’s emotional weakness is further underlined in the case of his excessive anger. This is seen in the second anecdote: If he was angry with anyone, he detained them. So when he died one hundred thousand people were released from his prison. It was as though when he arrested someone, he forgot about them and did not think to release them.38 Here al-Afḍal’s anger is explicitly linked to his unjust treatment of prisoners. This is further emphasised by the large number – 100,000 men(!), which suggests that he would frequently detain people because of his ire. That al-Afḍal quickly forgot about these men further underlines how his anger against them was temporary; the assumption is that he was subject to fits of rage. On the one hand, this serves to undermine al-Afḍal’s abilities as a ruler; his behaviour is that of an unjust sovereign. On the other, however, the focus on anger undermines his court-based masculinity, as an excess of anger was seen as irrational and a feminine quality. The later sources also blame another instance of poor governance on al-Afḍal’s anger, the Nizārī schism. The Nizārī schism is a name given to a split in the Ismāʿīlī community that occurred at the start of al-Afḍal’s reign, and it is worth providing a brief outline of the crisis. In Ismāʿīlī tradition (that is, the Shīʿī tradition to which the Fatimids belong and that shaped their laws) the ruling Imām-Caliph selected his successor before his death, a process termed nas·s· (appointment or designation). As the Imām-Caliph was unique in his God-given ability to interpret God’s law for believers, only he could designate a successor who would take on the role of interpreting God’s law after him.39 This meant the succession was of theological significance for the Ismāʿīlīs. Any dispute over the succession threatened to split the community. In the case of al-Mustanṣir’s successor such a dispute did occur. When the Caliph al-Mustanṣir died in 1094, his eldest son Nizār claimed that he had been designated, but the youngest son Aḥmad was appointed Caliph instead and titled al-Mustaʿlī. Nizār protested, fled to Alexandria and started a rebellion. This led to a major split in Ismāʿīlism, later known as the Nizārī schism.40 Contemporaneous sources focus on the legitimacy of al-Mustaʿlī’s succession. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, who lived through these events, does not describe how the succession was decided, but he clearly accepts Aḥmad’s appointment: The Imām al-Mustanṣir b-illah died [intaqala] on the evening of ʿĪd al-Ghadīr41 in the aforementioned year [487/29 December 1094 ce], may God

Masculinity in historical memory  59 sanctify his soul. The Imām al-Mustaʿlī, may God bless him, was acknowledged [as Caliph]. His pledge of allegiance [bayʿatuhu] was on the day that his [al-Mustaʿlī’s] grandfather the messenger of God, peace be upon him, appointed [nas·s·a] his [al-Mustaʿili’s] father42 [that is, ʿAlī], peace be upon him, to the imāmate.43 It is worth noting here that Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī has stressed the symbolic significance of al-Mustaʿlī’s appointment on ʿĪd al-Ghadīr. He thus reminds his readers of the importance of appointment (nas·s·) in the institution of the imāmate, which enabled the Imāms to trace their ancestry to their “grandfather” the Prophet Muḥammad. This implicitly underlines al-Mustaʿlī’s rightful claim to the Caliphate. Al-Afḍal is given a more prominent role by Ibn al-Qulzumī, who likewise agrees that al-Mustaʿlī’s succession was valid: During his illness, he [al-Mustanṣir] had entrusted to his sister, the noble lady, and the lord the illustrious al-Afḍal on that night, that his young son Abū al-Qāsim Aḥmad should sit [on the throne] in the kingdom in his stead.44 Therefore, for Ibn al-Qulzumī, al-Afḍal is one of two witnesses to the Caliph’s last-minute appointment of Aḥmad, but he does not intervene in the succession. In the later sources, it is suggested that al-Afḍal manipulated the succession for his own political ends. Many of these sources suggest that Nizār had promised the vizierate to a man named Maḥmūd b. Maṣāl al-Lukkī;45 for them, al-Afḍal had a vested political interest in the outcome of the succession. Ibn Ẓāfir, writing about a century after Ibn al-Qulzūmī, states: In the days [of al-Mustaʿlī] his brother Nizār fled to Alexandria and the reason for that was: this Nizār was the eldest of his father’s sons, and he wanted the throne [al-julūs] after his father. It was said that he had an injunction [addressed] to him [al-was·iyya ilayhi] from him [his father] [detailing] that.46 This is the first time that a source suggests that al-Mustanṣir had appointed Nizār rather than Aḥmad. Ibn Ẓāfir also suggests that elites had influenced the succession, although al-Afḍal’s role is marginal: [Nizār] wanted to dismiss al-Afḍal from his vizierate and appoint Ibn Maṣāl al-Lukkī. The Egyptians [al-mis·riyyūn] said: this Caliph is old. Ibn Maṣāl is likewise, and he does not behave in the proper manner. They agreed upon the appointment of al-Mustaʿlī and the continuation of al-Afḍal [as vizier].47 Thus, in Ibn Ẓāfir’s account the role of the “Egyptians” (and we should probably assume that he means elites here) is stressed. Al-Afḍal is identified as having a vested interest in the succession, but his role is not discussed. Ibn Muyassar, al-Nuwayrī, and al-Maqrīzī transmit a similar narrative to Ibn al-Qulzumī.48 All, however, omit Ibn al-Qulzumī’s crucial first line that details

60  Barber al-Mustanṣir’s death-bed appointment of Aḥmad. In doing so, unlike all contemporaneous sources, they leave the validity of al-Mustaʿlī’s appointment in some doubt. The three scholars then add a second anecdote implicating al-Afḍal in the manipulation of the succession – this appears to be a development of Ibn Ẓāfir’s narrative. Al-Maqrīzī provides the most complete account: When al-Mustanṣir had decided upon the appointment of Nizār, al-Afḍal met with the military amīrs [al-umarāʾ al-juyūshiyya]. He made them fear Nizār and warned them of his appointment. He advised them to appoint his brother Aḥmad. For he was young, they [would] not fear him and [would] feel safe with him.49 Ibn Muyassar provides a passage that is almost identical to al-Maqrīzī’s. On the whole, Ibn Muyassar’s variant is shorter but it adds some material. Moreover, both he and al-Nuwayrī overlook the military nature of the gathering, and suggest that civilian elites were also in attendance. Ibn Muyassar notes that al-Afḍal “gathered the amīrs and the elite [khawās· s·]”.50 Al-Nuwayrī’s text (although it has fewer linguistic similarities) also uses the phrase “amīrs and elites”.51 Despite these small differences, in all of these texts there is a clear departure from the position of Ibn Ẓāfir. Here al-Afḍal is accused of coaxing the elites into accepting his candidate. Thus far it could be argued that the accusations made in the later sources were attacks on al-Afḍal’s abilities as a ruler, suggesting that he was led by political self-interest to override the Caliph’s designation. However, from Ibn Muyassar onwards the texts also claim that it was al-Afḍal’s hatred of Nizār that led him to manipulate the succession. Al-Nuwayrī provides little detail: “Al-Afḍal amīr al-juyūsh prevented that [the appointment of Nizār] because of his hatred of him”,52 while Ibn Muyassar and al-Maqrīzī cite an anecdote. They both claim that when one day al-Afḍal rode through one of the palace gates, Nizār shouted insults at him. As a result of interactions such as this, the authors claim, the two men became bitter enemies. By introducing this anecdote with the phrase “[One] of which . . .” [minhā], al-Maqrīzī further implies that this was not an isolated case, but one of a number of tense exchanges.53 Al-Maqrīzī adds that al-Afḍal acted on his hatred towards Nizār even before the succession crisis: [al-Afḍal] obstructed Nizār in his affairs during the life of his father [al-Mustanṣir]. He [al-Afḍal] rejected his intercessions and lessened his importance. He did not promote [yarfaʿa raʾsan] any of his [Nizār’s] ghilmān [servants] or retinue.54 The implication here is, therefore, that al-Afḍal’s decisions in government were shaped by his hatred of Nizār, including the appointment of officials. These later sources certainly make al-Afḍal out to be a tyrant and a poor ruler, but the addition of the word “anger” to these anecdotes makes clear that this in part stemmed from a fault in his character. Combined with the accusation that he exhibited excessive

Masculinity in historical memory  61 jealousy, we are presented with two character faults here that are associated with unmanly or womanly behaviour. As such, in the later sources, and only the later sources, al-Afḍal is attacked not only for his tyrannical behaviour at court, but also his unmanliness.

Al-Afd· al as a vizier of the sword

There are two areas where the contemporaneous sources highlight al-Afḍal’s military exploits: his suppression of Nizār’s rebellion and, most crucially for the theme of this volume, his response to the First Crusade. In both cases these early sources emphasise al-Afḍal’s successes and ignore his failures. To begin with Nizār’s rebellion: after the appointment of al-Mustaʿlī, Nizār fled to Alexandria and gathered support, an event that Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī terms the “Alexandrian calamity”. While Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, ignores the court-intrigue surrounding Nizār’s dismissal (as was noted above), he does narrate al-Afḍal’s suppression of the rebellion. He gives two accounts. The first is under the reign of al-Mustanṣir and focuses on the rebellion and al-Afḍal’s capture of Nizār, emphasising his merciful treatment of Nizār: He [al-Afḍal] returned to his house until the Alexandrian calamity occurred after al-Mustanṣir’s death. Al-Afḍal was compelled to confront it. He had him [Nizār] brought to him and arrested him. He spared his life [lit. his soul] and [left] his possessions. That remained until he died in detention.55 The second is under the reign of al-Mustaʿlī, and deals more generally with his response to the rebellion. In this case, al-Afḍal’s military successes are of primary importance to the narrative: At that moment, the Alexandrian calamity occurred, and the rebellions [al-fitan] and wars increased. This continued for a number of months. He [al-Afḍal] did the great things for which he is famous. After that he trod all of the provinces [aʿmāl] underfoot.56 Al-Afḍal’s military endeavours are further stressed by Ibn al-Qulzumī: When the lord al-Afḍal learned of this [Nizār’s rebellion], he assembled the troops and the soldiers and he went to Alexandria. He besieged it [the city], waged war against it, and he endeavoured [jāhada] to fight those who [were] in it by himself and [with] his money. He met with great difficulties and severe hardships in this. He took out from his treasury much money, garments, robes of honour, many weapons and a [large] amount of [military] equipment.57 Ibn al-Qulzumī then adds that before long the rebels ran out of supplies and surrendered. Aftakīn and Nizār were taken into custody, and “al-Afḍal . . . treated both of them harshly until they both died”.58 Although al-Afḍal appears less merciful in this account, his military exploits are again emphasised. Most importantly,

62  Barber he underlines how al-Afḍal undertook the campaign “by himself” [bi-nafsihi], rather than simply coordinating a response from the court. Variants of the above narrative are also given by later sources, but two critical anecdotes are added. The first concerns Nizār’s death. Most early sources stress that Nizār died in captivity, but they do not comment on how. The later sources, by comparison, claim that Nizār was placed between two walls until he died.59 (This anecdote is unclear, but it may mean that Nizār was enwalled by al-Afḍal – a truly horrific death.)60 Al-Maqrīzī copies this same report alongside another that claims that Nizār died in Alexandria, but stresses that the first interpretation is more accurate.61 The second anecdote concerns the Alexandrians’ initial defeat of al-Afḍal. When al-Afḍal first led an army against Nizār, the Alexandrians met his troops in the field and defeated them; al-Afḍal retreated to Cairo. Ibn Ẓāfir is the first scholar to describe these events, which are then related in more detail by Ibn Muyassar, al-Nuwayrī, and al-Maqrīzī. The latter three further stress that the defeat was a great setback for al-Afḍal, which had enabled Nizār’s supporters to plunder the Egyptian coast.62 The two anecdotes undermine al-Afḍal in both spheres. His unjust treatment of Nizār highlights his failings at court; meanwhile his initial defeat by Nizār’s supporters emphasises his military failings. In both cases key aspects of his masculinity are undermined: rational behaviour at court and military performance on the battlefield. Nizār’s rebellion was eventually supressed, but the First Crusade posed a far more serious military challenge for al-Afḍal and his response to it was disastrous. Although he had managed to seize Jerusalem from the Artuqid Turks immediately prior to the Franks’ arrival in 1098, the city was quickly lost to the crusaders. Al-Afḍal’s army was then defeated outside Asqalān in about 1099, after which al-Afḍal never again led an army into the field. Ibn Ẓāfir directly blames al-Afḍal for the Muslim defeat: Those there [in Jerusalem] did not have strength against the Franks. If it had been left in the hands of the Artuqids, it would have been better for the Muslims.63 He, moreover, stresses al-Afḍal’s general disinterest in the campaign. After the defeat outside Asqalān: Al-Afḍal returned to Egypt and he gave up all hope on the coast [of the Levant] remaining in the hands of the Muslims. He did not raid them personally after this.64 This polemical tone is rarer in the later sources. However, none of the later sources praise al-Afḍal’s fight against the crusaders, and all agree that he never returned to the field after the events outside Asqalān. Contemporaneous sources overlook the crusaders’ defeat of al-Afḍal, and claim that the campaigns in the Levant occupied him for the remainder of his career (even if he did not personally lead the armies). Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī writes: [al-Afḍal] went to the Levant [al-Shām], conquered Jerusalem and encountered the Franks. He personally and his sons fought them [jāhadahum]; every

Masculinity in historical memory  63 year he sent armies against them by land and by sea. He continued to do this until the Imām al-Mustaʿili’s death [1101 – two years after al-Afḍal’s defeat at Asqalān].65 Al-Mustaʿili was succeeded by al-Āmir; Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī continues: Al-Afḍal still strove to fight the Franks [yajtahidu f ī jihād al-faranj] for some twenty years, until he was assassinated at the end of Ramadan [in the] year five hundred and fifteen [November–December 1121].66 In both of these accounts, there is an implicit assumption that al-Afḍal did not personally fight in the later campaigns. In the first instance, it is noted that he led the initial campaigns along with his sons. But it is also stated here that he “sent armies”, implying that after the initial campaigns he was involved in coordinating attacks. In the second example, there is no explicit assertion that he personally led campaigns. In both cases, however, al-Afḍal is concerned with the fight against the Franks for long after the defeat at Asqalān; it is a cause that occupies him until his death. Ibn al-Qulzumī’s narrative of the First Crusade begins with an overview of the entrance of the Franks and Byzantines67 into the Levant, and their capture of Antioch, followed by Jerusalem,68 before stating: They gained possession, afterwards, of all the fortresses of the Levant [al-Shām], except Tyre [Ṣūr] and Asqalān, and these two fortresses remain in the hands of the wālīs, [part of the text is potentially missing here] over the lord, the illustrious al-Afḍal. They [the crusaders] besieged them [the fortresses] a number of times. The lord, the illustrious al-Afḍal, went out to them, he fought [jāhada], he did his utmost, and he expended money.69 Ibn al-Qulzumī is also unclear about al-Afḍal’s personal role in the fight against the crusaders. But the phrase “went forth against them” (kharaja ilayhim) implies that he did indeed fight the Franks himself. As with Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, Ibn al-Qulzumī’s chronicle ignores al-Afḍal’s later battles against the crusaders, including the defeat at Asqalān – that is, until the crusader attack on al-Faramā, c. 1118, where he again stresses al-Afḍal’s role, discussed further below. Here al-Afḍal’s commitment to the campaign is further emphasised by the claim that al-Afḍal expended money on the venture, perhaps also a positive reflection on his masculinity. The impression in the contemporaneous sources is, therefore, that al-Afḍal, whether he led the campaigns personally or not, was invested in the fight against the Franks and a capable military leader.

Reconciling the two perspectives: al-Afd· al’s use of jihād as propaganda We thus have two contrasting images of al-Afḍal’s masculinity. On the one hand, the emasculating anecdotes associated with his behaviour at court, which must

64  Barber have their origins in earlier oral or textual traditions. On the other, the emphasis on al-Afḍal’s military capabilities (his violent masculinity) found in the contemporaneous sources. These contrasting images were an outcome of al-Afḍal’s use of propaganda. Hillenbrand, paraphrasing Köhler, argues that in the later crusading period there was a ‘ “cynical’ use of jihad propaganda for the legitimation of usurped personal and family power on the part of Zengī, Nūr al-Dīn and Saladin”.70 Al-Afḍal used propaganda in much the same way. According to the later sources, al-Afḍal had a reputation for emotional and erratic behaviour at court. Al-Afḍal thus used propaganda to disseminate a virile, martial masculinity to a court-based audience. This is echoed in the consistent language used by contemporaries to describe his military policy, both against Nizār and the crusaders. It is well known that the Fatimids circulated letters known as sijills throughout their domains, which served as propaganda.71 Two such letters, sent to Yemen, describe al-Afḍal’s suppression of Nizār’s rebellion in Alexandria. Both were sent in Ṣafar 489/January–February 1096 ce, the first by the Caliph al-Mustaʿlī (letter 43) and the second by al-Mustaʿlī’s mother (letter 35).72 The latter serves two functions. First and foremost, it announces al-Mustaʿlī’s appointment and extols his rightful claim to the imāmate. This was critical for convincing the Yemeni Ismāʿīlīs to remain loyal to the new appointee, rather than joining Nizār’s rebellion as other Ismāʿīlī communities did. Second, it details al-Afḍal’s victory against Nizār’s rebellion and his capture of the rebels. This served the function of praising al-Afḍal’s military credentials. Perhaps most interestingly, letter 43, sent by the Caliph himself, does not detail his right to the imāmate. Instead, it provides an even longer and more detailed account of al-Afḍal’s fight against Nizār. These letters, therefore, suggest that al-Afḍal issued propaganda that emphasised his military efforts. This martial propaganda reached its height in response to the First Crusade, where it took on a distinctive language. In the contemporaneous narrative sources, the consonantal root j-h-d (the root from which jihād is derived) is frequently used to describe al-Afḍal’s campaigns. In his first reference to the First Crusade, Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī states that al-Afḍal and his sons fought jāhada. In his second, we find the phrase yajtahidu f ī jihād al-faranj; here the consonantal root is used in two different forms for emphasis. Finally, Ibn al-Qulzumī writes that al-Afḍal fought jāhada. This phenomenon is not unique to the Egyptian tradition. The Syrian Ibn al-Qalānisī (d. 1160) wrote: “al-Afḍal set out from Egypt with large armies to fight them [li-jihādihim]”.73 Language such as this is dropped from later source traditions. There is only one use of the consonantal root in the later sources, in reference to the Franks rather than the Muslims: al-Maqrīzī states that in ah 503/1109 ce ships arrived in the port of Tyre, carrying Franks wanting to “visit Jerusalem and fight the Muslims [jihād f ī-l-Muslimīn]”.74 The use of this term to describe al-Afḍal’s fight against the crusaders is, therefore, a unique feature of the contemporaneous sources. Al-Afḍal’s propaganda appears to have employed similar language. As there are no extant letters for the period of the First Crusade, we must rely on the al-Afdaliyyāt. This is a collection of treatises (rasāʾil sg. risāla) praising al-Afḍal,

·

Masculinity in historical memory  65 collected by his secretary Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī. Rasāʾil, which contain valuable examples of the kinds of propaganda and panegyric issued by al-Afḍal’s secretaries, rarely refer to events directly, but they might be issued in response to events that were deemed important. Occasionally, the editor of the collection (in this case one presumes Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī) added titles that indicated the event that prompted the risāla’s composition. One risāla carries the following title: That which was written concerning the event [lit. undertaking] in al-Faramā for the decision to order jihād, and organise it, and the action that was brought about to ruin the enemy and destroy them.75 Here we find a clear statement that the term jihād was used in propaganda issued in response to a specific event that occurred in al-Faramā. The contents of the Risāla are little help for understanding the event itself, but narrative sources shed some light. Near to the end of al-Afḍal’s vizierate, the Franks raided the Egyptian town of al-Faramā. This was the Franks’ deepest incursion into Egyptian territory and it clearly made an impact on the populace. Ibn al-Qulzumī was the first to document the attack, dating it to 1118: Baldwin, the leader of the Franks, arrived with a great army at al-Faramā. He pillaged it and he burned it, and he determined upon a sudden attack against Cairo [Mis·r]. Then he fell ill, and on the third day his sickness became serious. He ordered his companions to carry him and to return to the Levant [al-Shām]. Then they carried him and returned, and when they reached al-ʿArīsh, he died there. They cut open his belly and they salted him, as he had commanded them. And they returned with him to Jerusalem. When news of their arrival at al-Faramā reached the noble lord al-Afḍal, he raised a great army [against] them. When Baldwin, their leader, died, and they returned, the army pursued them to the Levant and returned.76 This narrative is repeated, with the same outline of events, by Ibn Ẓāfir, al-Nuwayrī, and al-Maqrīzī (who gives a similar account in two places, under different years).77 In each of these five variations there are very few textual similarities, but the later sources add to the narrative. Ibn Ẓāfir and al-Maqrīzī both describe how Baldwin had killed an invalid (rajul muqʿad) and his daughter, and add that the mosques and gates of the city were burned (this set of anecdotes is the same between the two accounts and al-Maqrīzī might have copied verbatim from Ibn Ẓāfir here).78 Al-Nuwayrī also noted the burning of mosques, but in different words. Between these accounts, there is no clear agreement on the dating of the event. Ibn Ẓāfir claims ah 514/1120–1 ce, al-Nuwayrī ah 510/1116–7 ce, and al-Maqrīzī both ah 509/1115–6 and ah 511/1117 ce. All nonetheless appear to agree that it was at the end of al-Afḍal’s career. The lack of agreement both in language and dating, despite the same basic narrative, suggest that these stories had circulated widely, but probably only in an oral tradition during its early stages. Such a circulation would imply that the event

66  Barber had a devastating impact on the Egyptian population, which reflected poorly on al-Afḍal’s military abilities. The propaganda value of this event can be seen, by comparing Ibn al-Qulzumī with the later sources. Only al-Maqrīzī describes how the Egyptian armies pursued the Franks as far as Syria, and this is only in one of his variants. Here al-Maqrīzī overlooks al-Afḍal’s role and does not even mention the Fatimids, stating: “The raiding Muslim armies invaded the country of the enemy.”79 This is in marked contrast to Ibn al-Qulzumī, who clearly states that al-Afḍal prepared the armies to invade Syria. He did not lead the armies personally, but is clearly responsible for coordinating them. This explains the risāla and propaganda scheme of which it was part. Here we have clear evidence that al-Afḍal used a language of jihād to demonstrate that he was personally tackling the crusaders. This is paralleled in the central role given to al-Afḍal in the contemporaneous sources.

Conclusions Al-Afḍal’s military propaganda in response to the First Crusade was used to disseminate the image of a virile, martial masculinity. With his father Badr’s accession to the vizierate the demands placed on the vizier had subtly transformed. His executive power was increased and the office of amīr al-juyūsh (commander of the armies) had become subsumed into the vizierate. With this came the expectation of active participation in military combat. However, al-Afḍal appeared to be most active and experienced in the environment of the Fatimid court and less present in the battlefield. It is in this context that we should understand attacks on al-Afḍal’s masculinity in the later sources. Given the wide circulation of negative anecdotes in the later sources, we might suppose that they are derived from contemporaneous oral or textual traditions. In the case of the attack on al-Faramā, this certainly appears to be the case. By contrast, in the contemporaneous sources, emphasis is placed on al-Afḍal’s martial masculinity. He is shown to be a strong and capable military leader, and this reflects al-Afḍal’s propaganda. Through the use of military rhetoric in his propaganda, al-Afḍal was able to meet the new demands of the vizierate and assert his legitimacy while largely remaining resident at the Fatimid court. We might even speculate that he needed to perform this masculinity to counter criticisms of his courtly lifestyle. From the contemporaneous sources, it would appear that al-Afḍal’s martial propaganda reached its apogee in response to the First Crusade. Although this rhetoric is quite clearly a feature of the campaign against Alexandria, it appears as a clear and consistent language after the crusaders’ arrival. His propaganda in this theatre was so pronounced that it even reached the Syrian Ibn al-Qalānisī. It must be stressed, however, that this was simply a performance of martial masculinity, designed to reinforce al-Afḍal’s legitimacy. After his death, the language of jihād largely disappears from narratives of his campaigns; it is a contemporaneous phenomenon. It would appear, therefore, that al-Afḍal’s propaganda attempted to emphasise his martial masculinity, but that this failed to achieve a long-term influence over the historical narrative.

Masculinity in historical memory  67 As such, this chapter has also provided a wider illustration for how masculinity can be used in the study of Arabic narrative sources for the crusades. Masculinity is one of the lenses through which these sources critique or praise their subjects. They should be read, therefore, in the context of middle-eastern and Islamic concepts of Masculinity. Through this approach, we can begin to understand how an individual’s masculinity could be shaped or contested in historical memory. Such a study is not only warranted in the case of al-Afḍal, but also other leaders and periods (we could question, for example, why Saladin’s martial image survives, where al-Afḍal’s does not). By recognising that masculinity is a component of historical memory and narrative, we can learn much about the sources, their authors’ use of source material, and their representations of crusader protagonists.

Notes 1 Many thanks to Songül Mecit, Andrew Marsham, Jaakko Hämeen-Antilla, Carole Hillenbrand and Matthew Mesley for their help and indispensable advice on this project as it developed, and for looking over several drafts of this chapter. 2 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 43. 3 Scholars have often noted these source problems: Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32, 42–3; Hillenbrand, “The First Crusade: The Muslim Perspective”, in Jonathan Phillips ed., The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 134; Hillenbrand, “Sources in Arabic”, in Mary Whitby ed., Byzantines and Crusaders in non-Greek sources 1025–1204 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 290–1; Niall Christie, Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East 1095–1382, from the Islamic Sources (London: Routledge, 2014), 20–1. 4 Two notable exceptions are: Nicola Clarke, “Heirs and Spares: Elite Fathers and Their Sons in the Literary Sources of Umayyad Iberia”, al-Masāq 28(1) (2016), 67–83; and Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42(1) (1999), 47–93. The masculinity of eunuchs in the Islamic world has also been studied recently in: Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World eds Almut Höfert, Matthew M. Mesley and Serena Tolino (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). See in particular: Serena Tolino’s chapter: “Eunuchs in the Fatimid Empire Ambiguities, Gender and Sacredness”, although she argues that following Badr al-Jamālī’s rise to power eunuchs diminished in importance (p. 258). Women have been studied in more detail; see, for example: Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1991); Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini, Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). 5 Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades”, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203. 6 Ahmed, Women, 29. 7 Al-Jāhiz, The Epistle on Singing-Girls of Jāhiz, ed. and trans. A. F. L. Beeston (Guildford: Aris & Phillips, 1980), 22, Arabic: 10. 8 Charles Pellat, The Life and Works of Jahiz: Translations of Selected Texts, trans. D. M. Hawke (London: Routledge, 1969), 207; Arabic: al-Jāḥiẓ, Majmūʿ rasāʾil alJāh.iz. , ed. Muḥammad Tāha al-Ḥājirī (Beirut: Dār al-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya, 1982), 79.

68  Barber 9 Huda Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth Century Cairene Women: Female Anarchy Versus Male Sharbi Order in Muslim Prescriptive Treatises”, in Keddie, Women in Middle Eastern History, 101–3. 10 David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 11. 11 Gamal el-Din el-Shayyal, “Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, http://reference works.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaediaofislam2/ibnalsayrafiSIM_3363?s. num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaediaofislam-2&s.q=ibn+al-sayrafi, accessed 10 April 2017. 12 Mark N. Swanson, “Ibn al-Qulzumī”, in Christian–Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/christianmuslimrelationsi/ibnal qulzumiCOM_25070?s.num=0&s.q=ibn+alQulzumi, accessed 10 April 2017; on the chronicle’s attribution, see: Luke Yarbrough, “History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria”, in Encyclopaedia of the Medieval Chronicle, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com. ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/entries/encyclopediaofthemedievalchronicle/historyofthepatriarch sofalexandriaSIM_02300?s.num=0&s.q=the+history+of+the+patriarchs. accessed 28 July 2017. 13 Michael Brett, “Al-Karāza Al-Marqusīya. The Coptic Church in the Fatimid Empire”, in Urbain Vermeulen and J. van Steenbergen eds, Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras IV: Proceedings of the 9th and 10th Colloquium Organised at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in May 2000 and May 2001 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 33–60. 14 On the origin of the office see: Dominique Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside de 749 à 936 (132 à 324 de l’Hégire) (Damas: Institut français de Damas, 1959), I: 40–60 (Chapter II). 15 Paul Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and its Sources (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 32. 16 Walker and Brett argue that the administrative complexities of Egypt forced the Fatimids to begin using the Abbasid office of vizier: Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire, 45; Michael Brett, The Fatimid Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 89–90. 17 Citing Bullough’s and Holt’s work on the Latin world, Clarke, “Heirs and Spares”, 71. 18 ʿAlī Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār al-duwal al-munqatiʿa: dirāsa taḥlīliyya li-l-qism al-khass bi-lFāṭimiyyīn, ed. André Ferré (Cairo: al-Maʿhad al-ʿIlmī al-Faransī li-l-āthār al-sharqiyya, 1972), 81. 19 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-awbāʾ abnāʾ al-zamān, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), II: 449; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā min Akhbār miṣr, ed. Ayman Fuʿād Sayyid (Cairo: Dār al-kutub wa al-wathāʾiq al-qawmiyya al-ʾidāra al-markaziyya li-l-marākiz al-ʾilmiyya, 2014), 70; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab f  ī funūn al-adab, eds Muḥammad Muḥammad Amīn and Muḥammad Ḥilmī Muḥammad Aḥmad (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1992), XXVIII: 232–3. 20 Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 204, 223; Yaacov Lev, State and Society in Fatimid Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 46–8. 21 Leila S. Al-Imad, “The Fatimid Vizierate, 969–1172” (PhD diss, New York University, 1986), 46–9. 22 Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire; Brett, Fatimid Empire. 23 For example, in the years ah 470/1077–8 ce and ah 472/1079–80 ce: al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafā bi-akhbār al-ʾimmah al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ, eds Jamāl al-Dīn Shayyāl and Muḥammad Ḥilmī Muḥammad Aḥmad (Cairo: al-majlis al-aʿlī li-l-shuʾūn al-islāmiyya, 2008), II: 319 and 320. 24 Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 80. 25 Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 84; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 77–8; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 245–6; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 2010, III: 14.

Masculinity in historical memory  69 26 Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 82; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 82; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 246–7; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 22. 27 Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 82; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 83–4; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 258; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 24. 28 ʿAbd al-Munʾim Mājid, al-Sijillāt al-Mustanṣiriyya: sijillāt wa-tawqīʿāt wa-kutub li-mawlānā al-imām al-Mustanṣir bi-Allāh (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1954), 195 (Letter 59); see also the short summary in: Hussain al-Hamdani, “The Letters of Al-Mustansir bi’llah”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 7(2) (1934), 323; the importance of this letter has been noted in Máté Horváth, “The Sijill documents as sources for Fatimid history during Badr al-Jamālī’s Vizierate (466/1074–487/1094)”, in Jaakko Hämeen-Antilla, Petteri Koskikallio, and Ilkka Lindstedt eds, Contacts and Interaction Proceedings of the 27th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants Helsinki 2014 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 193. 29 Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 57–8; al-Maqrizi appears to copy from Ibn Muyassar, with some linguistic variation: al-maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 2008, II: 321; Ibn al-Qulzumī also noted the rebellion. Although here the exact date is unclear, it would seem that it occurred before 1086. The narrative and language here is very different and it is unlikely that Ibn Muyassar has used this as his source: Sawīrus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church: Known as the History of the Holy Church, eds and trans Aziz Suryal Atiya, Yassa ʿAbd al-Maṣīḥ, O. H. E. Khs-Burmester, and Antoine Khater (Cairo: L’institut Français d’archaeologie orientale, 1968), II, part III: 341–2. 30 Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 58; copied in: al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 2008, II: 321. 31 Mājid, al-Sijillāt, 95 (letter 27); Hamdani, “Letters”, 316. 32 Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, “Al-ishāra ilā man nāla al-wizāra, de Amīn al-Dīn Tāj al-Riyyāsa Abī al-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Munjib b. Sulaymān connu sous le nom d’Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī al-Miṣrī”, ed. Abdullah Mukhlis, Bulletin de l’institut Français d’archéologie orientale 25 (1925), 56; according to the letters, once al-Afḍal became vizier his titles changed a third time to a form that more closely resembled his father’s; see, for example, letter 43: Mājid, al-Sijillāt, 147. An inscription from the Caliphate of al-Mustaʿlī, however, agrees with Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī’s choice of titles: Et. Combe, J. Sauvaget and G. Wiet, Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe (Cairo: l’institut Français d’archéologie orientale, 1937), VIII: 36–7. (With thanks to Carole Hillenbrand for directing me to these inscriptions.) 33 Combe et al., d’épigraphie, 4–5. 34 Mājid, Sijillāt, 65; Hamdani, “Letters”, 314; see also: Horváth, “Sijill”, 194. 35 For the political importance of the sermon (khuṭba), see: Paul Walker, Orations of the Fatimid Caliphs: Festival Sermons of the Ismaili Imams: An Edition of the Arabic Texts and English Translation of Fatimid Khuṭbas (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 8–10. 36 Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 107; al-maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 73; paraphrased in: Cortese and Calderini, Women, 77. 37 Cortese and Calderini, Women, 77. 38 Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 103; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 71. 39 Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, 252. 40 The schism and the sources surrounding it are discussed in Fyzee’s English introduction to: Asaf Fyzee, al-Hidāyat al-āmiriyya, Being an Epistle of the Tenth Fatimid Caliph al-Āmir bi-aḥkām allāh (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 1–16; see also: Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs, 261–2; Lev, State and Society, 48–9. 41 For Shīʿīs, the festival of ʿĪd al-Ghadīr commemorates Muḥammad’s designation of ʿAlī as his successor, which is the event used to justify their claim to an imāmate. 42 The use of the terms “grandfather” and “father” embed the succession in an Ismāʿīlī framework. The Fatimid Caliphs believed themselves to be descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fāṭima and his cousin ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. In Ismāʿīlī texts, therefore, we should take the “father of the imām” to refer to ʿAlī and the “grandfather of the

70  Barber

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

imām” to refer to the Prophet Muḥammad. For the use of “grandfather” and “father” in Fatimid sermons see: Walker, Orations, 64–5. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, “al-ishāra”, 54. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Patriarchs, II Part III: 389, Arabic: 244 (all following translations of this text are mine, made with reference to the English translation). Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 83; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 75; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 244; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 12. Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 83. Ibid. Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 74, 75; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 243–4, 245; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 11, 12. al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 12. Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 74–5. al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 244. Ibid. Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 75; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 12. al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 12. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, “al-ishāra”, 54. Ibid., 53. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Patriarchs, II, part III: 392, Arabic, 245. Ibid., 393, Arabic, 246. Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 78; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 246. As far as I am aware, enwalling is a punishment quite alien to Islamic textual traditions. That this punishment was strange for even medieval Arabs is seen in al-Maqrīzī’s transmission, where he amends the anecdote to read that a wall was built upon Nizār. al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 14. Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 84; Ibn Muyassar, al-Muntaqā, 77; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 245; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 14. Ibn Ẓāfir, Akhbār, 82. Ibid. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, “al-ishāra”, 53. Ibid., 52–3. Ibn al-Qulzūmī mistakenly considers the First Crusade to be a collaborative effort with the Byzantines. Konrad Hirschler sees this as a feature of the Egyptian tradition; see: Konrad Hirschler, “The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative”, Crusades 13 (2014), 48–54. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Patriarchs, II Part III: 398–9, Arabic, 249. Ibid., 399, Arabic 249. Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 249. Brett shows this for al-Yāzūrī’s reign: Michael Brett, “Fatimid Historiography: A Case Study – the Quarrel with the Zirids, 1048–58”, in D. O. Morgan ed., Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1982), 47–59; Stern and Halm note the Fatimids’ frequent correspondence with their subject dynasties: S. M. Stern, “Cairo as the Centre of the Ismāʿīlī Movement”, in Stern, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1983), 249; Heinz Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 15–16. Mājid, al-Sijillāt, 109–18, 135–52; Hamdani, “The Letters”, 318, 320. Ibn al-Qalānisī, History of Damascus 363–555 a.h., ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1908), 132. (With thanks to Niall Christie for bringing this to my attention.) al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 45. Ibn al-Ṣayraf ī, Kitāb al-Afḍaliyyāt, eds Walīd Qaṣṣāb and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Māniʿ (Damascus: Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya, 1982), 245.

Masculinity in historical memory  71 76 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Patriarchs, III Part I: 35, Arabic 62. 77 Ibn Zāfir, Akhbār, 90; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, XXVIII: 277–8; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 53, 56. 78 al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, III: 56. 79 Ibid., III: 53.

4 The adolescent and the crusader Journey and rebirth on the path to manhood in the thirteenth century Anne-Lydie Dubois Male adolescence is a crucial period of life for the development of the man-to-be and, as a cultural and social construction, for the medieval history of masculinity. There are many links between the ideal teenager and the ideal crusader that can be scrutinised by comparing educational treatises to ad status sermons. The ad status is a special category of sermons aimed at specific social groups in terms of age, social position, and gender. This article will explore the three main ad status collections of the thirteenth century and focus on educational texts of the second half of this same century, most of them written by Mendicant authors or those close to them.1 The themes of the right path, spiritual progression, and conversion to a Christian life constituted the essence of exhortations intended for crusaders and for male adolescents. They shaped two models of masculinity. The inner progression on the path of Christ and the spiritual journey were part of the crusade symbolism and strongly echoed the transformation of the teenager into an accomplished man. Indeed, the achievement of virilitas as a perfect state of life was the purpose of educational texts for boys and thus a fundamental aspect of the construction of manhood. Invested with great hopes and at the same time subject to a profound fear of disorder, male adolescence crystallised the attention of educators in thirteenthcentury treatises in particular.2 In medieval times, adolescentia was often considered as part of youth depending on scholars’ chosen schemes. As several historians have shown, it existed as a separate concept and was defined in medieval thought – the term adolescens in Latin appears often in educational texts – although it did not have the same connotations as it does in the twenty-first century.3 The number of years corresponding to adolescence varies but it was a long duration compared to our contemporary concept. It could last until the age of 30. In the scheme of the six ages elaborated by St Augustine and later by Isidore of Seville, adolescentia is defined as from 14 to 28 years old. Some authors examined in this article, such as Vincent of Beauvais and most probably Giles of Rome, also used this six ages scheme. The teenage years were the period during which the distinction between genders was expressed most strongly and when gender roles were shaped within society and in the family.4 In medieval thought, this liminal moment of life was conducive to passions – to sensual pleasures and to sins, especially lust. However,

13th century: adolescent and crusader  73 the teenage years were also the very moment when individuals could be most easily corrected because of their malleable nature, according to educational concepts of the thirteenth century that always think of the human as being capable of improvement.5 By using moral precepts, these texts sought to transform the teenager into a man and direct him on his long journey of enhancement. The idea of spiritual progression as a way of improving to reach perfection also appears very strongly in the ad status sermons intended for crusaders.6 These sermons reveal the ideal milites Christi and exhort the male crusaders – either potential ones or those already committed – to fight for the army of Christ across the sea.7 This article will analyse the arguments and ideas brought forth by these two kinds of texts to show how they shared a common construct of ideal manhood and encouraged young men to behave in a certain way.

Right path and virtuous ascent Thirteenth-century crusade sermons paid particular attention to the right path to be followed as a central theme to lead the “soldiers of the Crucified”8 to the Holy Land. In fact, from the very beginning, the taking of the cross was inextricably associated with pilgrimage, defined as a ritual of penance and associated with a redemptive walk.9 Among numerous examples, in a crusade sermon of Humbert of Romans, the word “peregrinatio” was employed to express this progression to a sacred place, except that the spiritual journey of the crusader was far superior. In the words of the same Dominican, it was a “pilgrimage of outstanding excellence”,10 far more virtuous and holy because it was undertaken in the name of Christ. The “excellence” of this journey depended on the fact that crusaders put themselves at risk of dying on many occasions, when other pilgrims had a great deal of effort to expend but were almost certain to come back home safe.11 The extreme nature of the imitation of Christ until death made crusading the ultimate redemptive walk. From this perspective, according to Gilbert of Tournai, the cross itself epitomised the right path to gain access to salvation. Like a “sign of direction”, it had the same usefulness as an indicator at a crossroads that led the walkers to heaven.12 As the rightful road to salvation, it made “devout crusaders and martyrs”.13 The expression of via sancta, borrowed from Isaiah 35: 8, was used by Humbert of Romans to express that this path was strictly reserved for purest persons, namely the ones who would endure the suffering and persevere on this way of purification.14 The idea of the right path utterly pervades the discourse to teenagers in educational treatises as well as in sermons ad pueros et adolescentes. There are numerous places where this metaphor was used to symbolise the need for the teenager to choose as soon as possible the right path as the Christian way of life. Proverbs 22: 6 was often mentioned to express the importance of this choice and the usefulness of the educational task: “Train up an adolescent in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”15 Without the vigorous hands of those who were in charge of his education, the teenager would most surely end up on the path of vices. His very nature would lead him to do wrong and evil, as

74  Dubois several passages from the educational treatises assert, especially in three Dominican texts. William of Tournai expressed it by saying: “Every moment during adolescence is disposed to evil.”16 At the same time, William Perault and Vincent of Beauvais, in a special chapter dedicated to teenagers, quoted Genesis 8: 21: “For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth (adolescentia).”17 As Giles of Rome explained, the young, particularly after 14, were much more lascivious than at every other age. They pursued their passions because of a lack of reason but also because of their natural heat that invaded their body, inciting them to sensual pleasures.18 In the moral and religious discourse intended for lay teenagers, Mendicant friars strongly underlined the awakening of sexual desire and its great dangers. Fiona Harris Stoertz highlights the importance of the image of the adolescent consumed by lust that is emphasised in French and English texts from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.19 Educational treatises of the thirteenth century were full of reflections about this subject. This was one of the main themes on which the educators concentrate advice and warnings for teenagers. The carnal urge was described as an intense fire that burns the senses, which were wide open doors to all vices. The passage describing the 16-year-old St Augustine in the Confessions, where he was in the grip of the “mists and bubblings” of a pubescent body and thoroughly burned by carnal desires, was of course oft-quoted, for instance, in the educational treatise of Vincent of Beauvais.20 I will now call to mind my over-passed impurities, and the fleshly corruptions of my soul . . . For I even burnt in my youth heretofore to take my fill of hell; and I dared even to grow wild again, with these various loves beneath the shade: my beauty withered away, and I even stank in thine eyes: pleasing myself all this while, and desirous to content the eyes of mortals. And what was it that I delighted in, but to love and to be beloved? But love kept not that moderation of one mind’s loving another mind, as the lightsome bounder of true friendship, but out of that puddly concupiscence of my flesh, certain mists and bubblings of youth fumed up . . . But I was too hot upon it (wretch that I was) pursuing still the violent course of mine own stream.21 Discipline was therefore extremely necessary at this stage, to restrain vices.22 The teacher had to work hard on the teenager, imprinting good morals on him as he would a “seal on wax” to pull him from the bad road and to remove the sins from his soul or to prevent them from developing. This metaphor, very often used in educational texts, described the teenager as still being malleable and capable of being led, corrected, and thus educated.23 The choice in this moment of life, which was embodied by a crossroads made of two paths, the virtuous one and the licentious one, coloured the future man’s life in a way that was almost irreversible. The teenager’s choice was therefore absolutely crucial. Pursuing the same idea, the image of the preacher as a guide who invites young men to follow the example of Christ is clearly stated in the second sermon to crusaders from the ad status collection of James of Vitry. A passage reveals clear

13th century: adolescent and crusader  75 similarities between the work of the teacher and the task of the preacher. Indeed, the verb educere is used to describe the role of the latter. He has to remove “the people that are blind”,24 namely the sinners, from the darkness that is the wrong path and educate them by his example and his word.25 Like a seal imprinted on others, the task of the preacher is to be an example for sinners. On this occasion, he is compared to Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life by saying: “Lazarus, come out!” By his word and example a preacher must lead sinners away from a bad way of life as the adder [is led] from its cave . . . People believe a messenger who is educated, that is who has knowledge of the scriptures, and has a seal, that is the impression of a saintly way of life, with which he can instruct others . . . But a good preacher leads the people that [are] blind out by word and example, calling after the example of Christ: Lazarus, come out!26 The crusade preacher, after the example of Christ, is therefore the one who brings sinners back to Christian life by making them take the cross and become soldiers of Christ. The sinner’s rebirth also evokes the teenager’s revival, as we will explore further. In this context of enhancement inspired by imitation, James of Vitry and Gilbert of Tournai express the idea of a virtuous ascent in their crusade sermons. Both use Revelation 7: “I saw another angel rising from the sunrise, carrying the sign of the living God” as the principal theme to one of their sermons.27 In the first sermon of James of Vitry, Christ is this angel, God’s messenger lighting up the world.28 He is an example that leads men to become virtuous and better but he also symbolises the triumph of God over the devil: I saw an angel rising from the sunrise etc. This angel is Christ, the messenger of his Father’s will, who is said to rise as he makes his people rise from virtue to virtue by making them better and better. He rises from the sunrise as he slowly enlightens the world through his preachers, just as the sun slowly rises until the height of the day; he also rises from the sunrise, that is from the Father, triumphing over the devil.29 This theme also appears prominently in the first sermon to crusaders of Gilbert of Tournai. The sermon describes a spiritual journey, an internal ascent that involves following Christ’s behaviour and enables men to become perfect. The future crusader should behave like this angel that rises from the sunrise, searching for enhancement, rising in merit and bringing light as a guide for the Christ’s army as these two passages show: He [the angel of Revelation 7] is also described by the practice of virtues since it says: Rising from the sunrise. This angel is accomplished in virtues, so that, rising in merit, we may advance from virtue to virtue, “until the God of gods may be seen in Zion” . . . From the sunrise; just as the sun, rising in the east, grows slowly brighter until the middle of the day, so he passed to

76  Dubois perfection by the merits of virtues, Isaiah 41: He raised up the just person from the east [and] called him to follow him.30 Spiritually, we are angels in terms of the purity of conduct, rising through the zeal of perfection, signed with the symbol and the sign of the Lord’s passion. This is the sign which Christ had to sign his soldiers; he wanted to be signed first, so that he could precede all others with the banner of the cross.31 This internal ascent allowed the soul to rise to perfection by being a soldier of Christ and finally reaching Heaven after death on the battlefield. This improvement of the self as a spiritual journey also pervaded educational texts and sermons intended for teenagers. Indeed, the preacher’s mission imitated that of the teacher himself. However, although the teacher or parents had to act upon the teenager to make him choose the right path, the teenager himself had to draw on his inner powers to be able to raise himself to God.32

Fighting against the flesh The idea of fighting for God in a chivalrous way can be found in educational treatises as well as in sermons intended for crusaders. Dominican and Franciscan authors insisted on being able to restrain strong ardours during the burning time of adolescentia. The ability to repress these urges was depicted in most of the scholarly texts as being the main quality of male adulthood, of the perfect masculinity that begins at about the age of 35. As Thomas of Cantimpré asserted in his Liber de natura rerum, the quality of a man in mid-life was to be tempered and able to master his own sexual drive.33 This was very important for the definition of manhood in thirteenth-century educational texts. John of Wales, in the Communiloquium, wrote that being a male was above all not being a feminine man.34 Softness (mollitia) was closely associated either with females or with the kind of man that failed in virility. Indeed adolescence, when the male’s body and soul had not yet reached their perfect state of development, was often qualified as being feminine and lascivious in educational treatises. Wantonness, the inability to master one’s own sexual urges, represented the failure of an unachieved man, who was not strong enough or male enough. Moreover, according to Giles of Rome, the great quality of male adulthood, inspired by Aristotle, was to be “manly tempered and tempered with maleness”.35 Borrowing from natural philosophy, he stated that midway and temperance were always better than the extremes. There are many other examples of this as a quality of male adulthood. Self-control was therefore established as an essential component of masculinity as it was constructed and conceived by Mendicant authors. Educational treatises and sermons to teenagers encouraged the adolescent to fight against the devil and foremost against himself to control his senses and become a male adult. This struggle was often compared to spiritual combat and depicted in a chivalrous manner. Although the theme of spiritual combat for chastity as part

13th century: adolescent and crusader 77 of masculine identity is not new as it appeared frequently in monastic literature, in educational treatises it was specifically intended for male lay teenagers and was not expressed with the same symbolism in passages dedicated to the education of girls.36 This spiritual fight was part of the construction and attainment of male identity for the teenager. In the second sermon ad adolescentes et pueros of his ad status collection, Gilbert of Tournai exhorted the young man to combat manfully (viriliter dimicare) against lustful temptation.37 Vincent of Beauvais, in the chapter on the discipline of the male teenager, stated that to be able to fight in “the war that breaks out in teenage years”, the young man had to put on the “armour of God” and use “spiritual weapons” to vanquish.38 This “armour of God”, inspired by Ephesians 6: 11–18, was composed of a set of virtues symbolised by different component parts: the girdle of chastity, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of good example, the shield of faith, the helmet of hope, and the sword of spiritual prayer.39 Later in this text, Vincent of Beauvais carried on with the metaphor of the spiritual warrior. He insisted on the need to defeat the devil during adolescentia and, while quoting John, clearly evoked a combat in which the teenager had the capacity to triumph over the devil.40 This chapter in Vincent of Beauvais’s treatise used examples of very strong and courageous adolescents from 2 Maccabees 7 where seven brothers were tortured to death by King Antiochus. This passage depicts male adolescents as able to endure physical pain in God’s name and to go beyond their own bodies. One of the tortured sons endured the suffering with remarkable bravery and the king marvelled at his courage in the quoted passage. Surprisingly, this set male teenagers up as examples of resistance and courage, qualities that, according to Beauvais, are hardly found in older people. This passage therefore makes adolescents worthy of admiration.41 This is one of the rare places in the treatise of Vincent of Beauvais where he shows a very positive image of young men.42 Chiefly, this example drawn from Maccabees 7 depicts adolescents able to suffer as martyrs and, to this extent, these ideal adolescents evoke the ideal crusaders. Indeed, authors of ad status sermons regarded crusaders as martyrs. Gilbert of Tournai, among others, vigorously asserted that crusaders are “true martyrs” (martyres veri).43 Indeed, the ideals of the martyr and the soldier interconnect very closely in crusade discourse, an association that echoes the models of teenagers mentioned previously. The exhortation to fight against the enemies of the faith and against the devil is also frequently mentioned in crusade sermons. Gilbert of Tournai used the exact same expression in his second sermon to adolescents, urging them to fight manfully (viriliter dimicare) and to incite the Christians to combat for God in his sermon to crusaders.44 Moreover, the idea of wrestling with the flesh also appears in model sermons, revealing an ideal of ascetic behaviour for crusaders.45 Gilbert of Tournai particularly encouraged crusaders to imitate Christ by giving up the flesh that prevents the soul from elevating to God. He urged them to vanquish the devil, the world, and carnal feelings. In this sermon, the cross becomes a sign of the victory of the crusader over himself, over his own flesh.46 Furthermore, the cross was depicted as a protective sign, an armour that defends the crusaders from their enemies. The example of St Martin of Tours saying, “I will go

78  Dubois towards the troops of the enemies, safely protected not by a shield or a helmet but by the sign of the cross” is also evoked.47 Thus, the cross called to mind the “armour of God” and the spiritual weapons that teenagers must wear according to Vincent of Beauvais. In the sermon of Gilbert of Tournai, the victorious crusaders armed with the cross were also compared to martyrs portrayed as dressed in white with palms in their hands.48 The example of Christ, as the martyr that suffers to save all Christians, resists suffering and overtakes death, also obviously lies underneath the models of extremely strong adolescents highlighted by Vincent of Beauvais’ treatise. Although crusade sermons exhorted their audiences to follow Christ more explicitly, some passages dedicated to resurrections and rebirths of adolescents reinforced this model for young men in educational texts as well.

The adolescent’s death and rebirth In the first sermon to crusaders from his ad status collection, Eudes of Châteauroux refers to the conversion of St Paul as a strong invitation to crusade by leaving worldly possessions.49 This act of renunciation, as a way to imitate Christ and express a deep love for God, makes one worthy of redemption and salvation50. It is an act of devotion and penance, as brought to light in numerous ad status sermons to crusaders of the thirteenth century.51 Moreover, this renunciation also described the preaching mission of the Mendicant orders on the path of Christ and the apostles as well as their spiritual aims. Not surprisingly, this ideal strongly pervaded the educational instructions delivered to boys and teenagers in Mendicant treatises. The transformation of the teenager into a complete Christian man not only related to a physical change, or to being able to master these physical changes, it was above all an internal spiritual metamorphosis. St Paul, as an important male model of conversion, was also referred to in educational treatises. Indeed, the conversion of St Paul was presented as a spiritual resurrection and closed the chapter on the instruction of adolescents in Vincent of Beauvais’s treatise.52 But before speaking about it, Vincent of Beauvais as well as William Perault in their educational texts quoted two male adolescent resurrections or spiritual rebirths from the Bible. First, they evoked the prodigal son in Luke 15, about whom his father declared: “This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”53 Second, the resurrection of the widow’s son of Nain in Luke 7 who was raised up by Jesus was mentioned.54 Jesus’s words, “Adolescens, tibi dico, surge!”, became an exhortation to all male teenagers to abandon the soul’s sickness that is sin, to fight against it and to follow Him.55 William of Perault called to mind the resurrection of Lazarus that also appeared in the second sermon to crusaders of James of Vitry, to encourage every adolescent to resurrect to a Christian way of living. Finally, St Paul’s resurrection was mentioned in the Vincent of Beauvais treatise after what the Dominican called his “spiritual death”. Indeed, according to this author, Paul was dead as he participated in the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7 during his adolescence. Vincent of Beauvais closely connected this “spiritual death” of St Paul to a next episode of resurrection that appears after his conversion, in Acts

13th century: adolescent and crusader  79 20. A young man called Eutychus56 fell asleep while listening to Paul’s sermon and, as the text says, he “fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead”.57 However, Paul asserted that life was still in him. After that, the Biblical text mentioned that he was found alive, but Vincent of Beauvais stated that Paul “raise[s] an adolescent from the dead”, explaining that Paul acted to give Eutychus his life back. This fact does not appear explicitly in the Vulgate58 and is therefore an interpretation by Vincent of Beauvais.59 The Dominican highlighted that Paul was dead during his adolescentia, evolving on the wrong path in sin, which is compared to a “soul sickness”. According to Vincent of Beauvais, given that Paul was resurrected by his conversion after the stoning of Stephen, he deserved to resurrect this adolescent. It seems relevant to note that the symbolism inherent in these passages associates being lost with being asleep and being spiritually dead, as was clearly stated in the tale of the prodigal son.

Conclusions Navigating through the ad status sermons and educational treatises, some of the many links that connect two ideal masculinities  – the crusader and the future man – become apparent. An exhortation to follow Christ as the perfect male model strongly pervaded these texts, inviting the reader or the listener to abandon the flesh, bodily pleasure, and carnal feelings to elevate himself to spiritual concerns and reach God through the mind. The fight against the devil was at the core of these discourses. Both sermons to crusaders and educational treatises depicted a journey, in a physical respect for the men that took the cross, but also in a spiritual manner, as an inner progression for crusaders and for male adolescents. These educational texts urged the teenager to engage in a vigorous fight against the devil but first of all against himself to master his impulses as a man. This journey was a fundamental aspect of the construction of masculinity. To win their spiritual combat, the adolescents had to call on their inner and deeper forces to go beyond their body and beyond suffering. Likewise, the crusaders were exhorted to fight efficiently against the enemies of the faith but also spiritually against the infernal enemies in ad status sermons. First, by taking the cross, the crusaders become victorious over themselves, over their bodily feelings. The cross, as much as the preacher’s sermon, took them away from the devil. Like the teenagers, the future crusaders had to be led and educated. The exhortation to overstep one’s body and to follow Christ on the right path was pushed to its limits with the invitation to overtake death through the variety of examples of spiritual resurrections. Both the future crusaders and the teenagers were sinners before having reached the right path, namely the taking of the cross for the crusaders and the achievement of manhood for teenagers. Both of them were to be rescued from sin by the preacher or the teacher. Moreover, both these tasks were closely associated with the example of Christ, the capacity to lead sinners by words and behaviour. In ad status sermons, the redeeming progression of the crusade became a virtuous ascent to God. There, the shining example of Christ guided crusaders to a virtuous ascent in merit, starkly contrasting

80  Dubois with the darkness of the sins. The crusaders were encouraged to follow His cross as a “sign of direction” that led to good and to elevate themselves to Heaven. The resurrection of Lazarus mentioned in the sermon of James of Vitry underlines that the preacher’s task was to bring the sinner to a spiritual rebirth by the taking of the cross. In educational treatises, the teacher role contributed to leading the teenager, as a sinner, onto the right path, to be reborn to a Christian life and become a man. However, it appears that the teenager had chiefly to be able to resurrect himself. Indeed, the foremost aim of education was to make the young man able to govern himself.60 In the symbolism of revival, which appears strongly in the treatises of Vincent of Beauvais and William Perault in particular, the teenager was between life and death. At the same time, he was often asleep and then awake, as if brought back to life. It seems that these rebirths epitomised an inner awakening of the self, as though the male teenager was still asleep within. This process symbolised a rebirth to Christian life but also a transformation into an accomplished man. It was an invitation for educators to bring the lustful teenager to spiritually resurrect himself. Nevertheless, these texts also portray adolescents possessing real inner strengths and extremely courageous minds. The ideal young man had the capacity to change himself from the inside and, through the metamorphosis of education, to be reborn into a man. There is no means to know if the ideal manhood shaped by these two kinds of literature effectively reached the young men at whom they were aimed. The educational treatises studied in this article were written by Mendicant friars explicitly for young princes and more widely for young men of the nobility. The ad status sermons were part of the great pastoral reform movement in which Mendicant friars were involved and that played an important role in the propagating of crusades.61 These collections were conceived as written models that could serve others for the preaching of the Cross.62 Although these collections had widely circulated and thus certainly greatly contributed to crusade propaganda, it remains uncertain whether they were actually used to some extent before an audience. Even if the material from ad status collections was in any manner conceived to be adapted to specific circumstances of a crusade in oral communication, it remained the “product . . . of scholarly work”.63 However, according to their effective purposes, these sermons expressed ideas that were thought to be the most efficient to convince men to take the Cross and to speak personally to crusaders. It is not surprising then that the sermons brought to the forth the image of the warrior to persuade young noble men to reach the Holy Land, since they would be fighting enemies there, or to encourage them in the battlefield given that the clergy often preached sermons during the crusade.64 Since most authors of these texts, educational treatises, and ad status sermons were Mendicant friars from the same cultural and intellectual circle related to the university and to great convents in Paris, it is therefore not surprising that they shared common ideas along with moral and spiritual values. This study highlights that the vocabulary and the images used in ad status sermons are the same expressed in educational treatises that explicitly mentioned male adolescents and

13th century: adolescent and crusader  81 young men of the nobility. Therefore, it seems most probable that the crusade ad status sermons were intended for young men from the nobility in particular or at least that the same arguments and ideal manhood aimed towards young noble men in educational treatises were used to address male crusaders.65 The image of the warrior and the knight, in a spiritual way, belongs to either text as a crucial component. The aim of this study was to analyse the ideas about masculinity from a cultural history perspective. I have not set out to verify whether the exhortations designed for young men impacted on their lives to any real extent. This would be impossible to know. However, it has been demonstrated that a complex ideal manhood was constructed though these two kinds of texts and that they commonly used arguments to exhort young men from the nobility to act as men in a manner in which these authors conceived it. In this broad construction of manhood, adolescentia seems to endorse the most vivid images of masculinity and to be a crucial moment of life to adopt or not the male ideal behaviour.

Notes 1 The crusade model sermons used in this article have been edited and translated in Christoph Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 81–229. They were written at different times during the thirteenth century; see biographies of individual authors at 8–12. 2 Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Introduction”, in Giovanni Levi and JeanClaude Schmitt eds, Histoire des jeunes en Occident, vol. 1, De l’antiquité à l’époque moderne (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 7–19 at 12. 3 See Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “Âges de la vie”, in Jacques Le  Goff and JeanClaude Schmitt eds, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident médiéval (Paris:  Fayard, 1999), 8–19; Barbara Hanawalt, “Historical Descriptions and Prescriptions for Adolescence”, Journal of Family History 17(4) (1992), 341–51; Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men. Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Konrad Eisenbichler ed., The Premodern Teenager. Youth in Society 1150–1650 (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002); James Schultz, “Medieval Adolescence: The Claims of History and the Silence of German Narrative”, Speculum 66(3) (1991), 519–39. Male adolescentia is more fully explored in my PhD dissertation in progress that encompasses a wider study of masculinity in the Mendicant friars’ texts of the thirteenth century (provisional title: Construire la masculinité au XIIIe siècle: culture, morale et éducation, under the supervision of Prof. Franco Morenzoni at the University of Geneva). 4 Levi and Schmitt “Introduction”, 14. See also Didier Lett, “Le corps de la jeune fille. Regards sur l’adolescente aux XIIe–XIVe siècles”, Clio. Histoire, femmes et société 4 (1996), 51–73. 5 Michael Goodich, From Birth to Old Age. The Human Life Cycle in Medieval Thought 1250–1350 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989), 107. 6 Christoph Maier, Preaching the Crusades. Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Maier, Crusade Propaganda. 7 Jean Flori, La guerre sainte. La formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris: Aubier, 2001), 217 et seq. 8 The expression “milites Crucifixi” is used in the sermon of Humbert of Romans, “De predicatione crucis in genere quocumque”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 216–17.

82  Dubois 9 Paul Alphandéry and Alphonse Dupront, La chrétienté et l’idée de croisade (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 10. In Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade in 1095, the crusade was conceived as a penitential pilgrimage with privileges according to Flori, La guerre sainte, 14. 10 Humbert of Romans, “Ad peregrinos crucesignatos”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 212–13. About this expression of Humbert of Romans, see Penny Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1991), 175. 11 Humbert of Romans, “Ad peregrinos”, 212–13. 12 Gilbert of Tournai, “First sermon ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 180–1. 13 “Crux autem citissime facit crucesignatos devotos, immo martires veros, pro causa Christi de terra ad celum evolare”, ibid. 14 Humbert of Romans, “Ad peregrinos”, 212. Although the entire verse was not quoted in the sermon, its end was certainly on the minds of the listeners or the readers. 15 “Adolescens juxta viam suam; etiam cum senuerit, non recedet ab ea.” For example, it appears in Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione filiorum nobilium, ed. Arpad Steiner (Cambridge: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1938), 140 but also in the sermons of James of Vitry, “Ad pueros et adolescentes”, in Jean-Baptist Pitra ed., Analecta novissima spicilegii solesmensis. Altera continuatio, 2 vols (Tusculana: Frascati, 1888), 2: 439 and in the sermon of Humbert of Romans, “Ad pueros”, in M. de la Bigne ed., De eruditione religiosorum praedicatorum, vol. 25 of Bibliotheca maxima veterum patrum (Lyon: Anisson, 1677), 8. 16 “Omnis etas ab adolescentia in malum prona est.” William of Tournai, De instructione puerorum, ed. James Corbett (Notre Dame: The Mediaeval Institute University of Notre Dame, 1955), 15. 17 William Perault, De eruditione principum, in Thomas Aquinas, Opuscules, 7 vols, trans Jean Fournet, Mathurin Bandel, and Jean Védrine (Paris: L. Vivès, 1857), 4: 360 and Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 134. The link between youth and evil in clerical literature intended for noble men, although based on a text from 1514, is explored by Fiona Dunlop, “Making Youth Holy: Holiness and Masculinity in The interlude of Youth”, in P. H. Cullum and Katherine Lewis eds, Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 192–205. 18 In the chapter dedicated to education of sons: “[I]n iuvenili aetate maxime sunt homines lascivi et passionum inscutores: ergo tunc maxime est subveniendum, ut per monitiones debitas et per correctiones convenientes retrahantur a lasciviis.” Giles of Rome, De regimine principum (Rome: H. Samaritanius, 1607), 302. This sentence is inspired by the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Also, among other examples: “Nam cum iuvenes sint percalidi, et corpore calefacto fiat venereorum appetitus, naturalis dispositio corporis incitat iuvenes ad concupiscentias venereorum [. . .] Iuvenes ergo, quia sunt inexperti, et non vigent intellectu et prudentia, magis reguntur passione quam ratione, quare ut plurimum sunt passionum insecutores.” Giles of Rome, De regimine principum, 192–3. Moreover, for some authors, the verb adolere (“to burn” in Latin) as the etymological root of the word adolescens seems to give credence to the idea that a consuming heat of lust is inscribed in the essence of the teenager’s nature. Goodich, From Birth, 121. This link is not explicitly established in the sources I have used for this article, but the idea is implicit in the texts. 19 Fiona Harris Stoertz, “Sex and the Medieval Adolescent”, in Eisenbichler, Premodern Teenager, 226–43. 20 The fire of the teenager’s desire for women is linked to the fire of Hell where the teenager will be led after death if he follows his urges. This idea is stated in Gilbert of Tournai, “Second sermon ad pueros et adolescentes”, in Marjorie Burghart, “Remploi textuel, invention et art de la mémoire: les Sermones ad status du Franciscain Guibert de Tournai (†1284)” (PhD dissertation, 2 vols, University of Lyon 2, 2013), 2: 718.

13th century: adolescent and crusader  83 21 Augustine, Confessions, trans. William Watts, 2 vols (London: W. Heinemann, 1912), 1: 65–9: “Recordari volo transactas foeditates meas, et carnales corruptiones animae meae . . . Exarsi enim aliquando satiari inferis in adulescentia, et silvescere ausus sum variis et umbrosis amoribus, et contabuit species mea et conputrui coram oculis tuis placens mihi et placere cupiens oculis hominum. Et quid erat, quod me delectabat, nisi amare et amari ? sed non tenebatur modus ab animo usque ad animum, quatenus est luminosus limes amicitiae, sed exhalabantur nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis et scatebra pubertatis . . . Sed efferbui ergo miser, sequens impetum fluxus mei.” This extract is part of a longer quotation that appears in Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 134. 22 “Cum autem annis puerilibus decursis ad etatem pervenerint adolescencie, tunc eciam plurimis eorum propter etatis pronitatem ad malum valde necessarium est frenum discipline.” Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 134. 23 Goodich, From Birth, 107. For this metaphor being very common in educational texts, see Goodich, From Birth, 66 and Philip Grace, Affectionate Authorities. Fathers and Fatherly Roles in Late Medieval Basel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 116–19. A father is often mentioned as a possible important educator in educational texts, but this aspect of the discussion goes beyond the scope of the present article. 24 Isa. 43: 8, quoted in James of Vitry, “Second sermon ad crusesignatos et crucesignandos”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 100–1. 25 James of Vitry, “Second sermon ad crusesignatos”, 100–3. 26 Ibid. Emphases are words from the Bible quoted as they appear in the translation from the edition. 27 Gilbert of Tournai, “First sermon ad crusesignatos”, 176–7 and James of Vitry, “First Sermon ad crusesignatos et crucesignandos”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 82–3. 28 For an analysis of the structure and the content, see James of Vitry, “First Sermon ad crusesignatos”, 35–7. 29 James of Vitry, “First sermon ad crusesignatos”, 86–7. 30 Gilbert of Tournai, “First sermon ad crucesignatos”, 178–9. 31 Ibid. 32 As Giles of Rome asserts, the main goal of the educational programme is to instruct the teenagers so that they can restrain themselves from sexual impulses: “Secundo rectificandus est, ne venerea illicita prosequantur. Iuvenes a decimoquarto anno ultra non solum inducendi sunt, ut sint abstinentes et sobrii quantum ad cibum et potum, sed etiam ut sint continentes et pudici quantum ad actus venereos: quia ex tunc (ut dicebatur) ardentius ad venerea incitantur. Inducendi ergo sunt in aetate illa, ut vel omnino contineant, velu usu propriae coniugis sint contenti.” Giles of Rome, De regimine, 337. 33 Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, ed. Helmut Boese (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1973), 81. This encyclopaedia was written in two versions. The first was completed circa 1228 and the second, longer one, in about 1244. Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu, “Le statut de l’auctor dans l’Ordre des Prêcheurs d’après les recueils d’exempla (XIIIe–XIVe)”, in L’ordre des Prêcheurs et son histoire en France méridionale (Toulouse: Privat, 2001), 270. 34 John of Wales, Communiloquium (in Summa de regimine vitae humanae) (Venice: Georgio Arrivabene, 1496), fol. 88v. 35 “[S]unt viriles cum temperantia et temperati cum virilitate”. Giles of Rome, De regimine, 201–2. 36 Jacqueline Murray, “Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monsatic Identity”, in Cullum and Lewis, Holiness and Masculinity, 24–42; John Arnold, “The Labour of Continence: Masculinity and Clerical Virginity”, in Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih eds, Medieval Virginities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 102–18; Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio,

84  Dubois

37

38

39 40

41 42

43

44 45

Histoire des péchés capitaux au Moyen Âge (Paris: Aubier, 2002), 241–50 and for the transmission of models of sexual behaviour to the laity  by clerics, see Ruth Mazo Karras, “Two Models, Two Standards: Moral Teaching and Sexual Mores”, in Barbara Hanawalt and David Wallace eds, Bodies and Disciplines. Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 123–38. Not surprisingly, educational treatises written by religious men championed the ideal of ascetic and monastic life, although adapted to a lay audience. “De peccati declinatione patet. Solum enim peccatum erubescere est bonam et ordinatam uerecundiam habere. Et illa uerecundia est laudabilis que oritur ex peccati odio, non que oritur ex fame detrimento, et maxime que oritur ex actu libidinoso contra quem uerecundia docet preliari continue, et dimicare uiriliter et discrete. Ps.[143, 1]: Benedictus Dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad prelium et digitos meos ad bellum etc.” Gilbert of Tournai, “Second sermon ad adolescentes et pueros”, in Burghart, Remploi textuel, 720. “Quarto eciam notandum est ibi, quod in adolescencia bello ingruente necesse est omnino uincere aut vinci. Ideo adolescentem oportet armis spiritualibus accingi, de quibus dicitur ad ephesios vi: ‘Induite uos armaturam dei, ut possitis stare aduersus insidias dyaboli.’ Hec armatura, que tangitur ibi, est cingulum castitatis, lorica iusticie, calciamentum boni exempli, scutum fidei, galea spei et gladius oracionis spiritualis, qui est uerbum dei.” Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 137–8. Here the fight is for the love of God, contrary to the chivalric biographies that highlighted the need for the knight to fight for courtly love, as analysed by Ruth Mazo Karras “Young Knights under the Feminine Gaze”, in Eisenbichler, Premodern Teenager, 189–205 at 193. In both cases, the combatants participate to prove their masculinity. The list is longer in Vincent of Beauvais’ version than in Ephesians. “In hiis ergo vincere poterit, ut ei merito et illud dici possit I Johanne 11 [I John 2, 13]: ‘Scribo uobis, adolescentes, quoniam vicistis malignum,’ vel illud quod postea sequitur: [I John 2, 14] ‘Scribo uobis, iuuenes, quia fortes estis et uerbum manet et vicistis malignum.’ ” Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138. “Huiusmodi fortitudo uix et raro inuenitur in senibus, a quibus tamen exemplum dari deberet adolescentibus.” Ibid. “Fortes utique fuerunt illi adolescentes, sc. machabei, quando non solum hostes sed eciam semetipsos uicerunt, ut legitur II machabeorum vii [10–12]: ‘Horum enim unus linguam postulatus ad cruciatum cito protulit et manus constanter extendit atque fiducialiter ait: “E celo ista possideo, sed propter dei leges hec ipsa despicio, quoniam ab ipso ea me recepturum spero.” unde rex et qui cum ipso erant, mirabantur adolescentis animum, quod tamquam nichil duceret cruciatum.’ ” Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138. Gilbert of Tournai, “First sermon ad crucesignatos”, 180 and 188. For the emergence of martyrdom in the ideology of crusades, see the works of Jean Flori and Jonathan Riley-Smith. The two historians disagree about the time when this idea appeared. See, for example, Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London: Athlone Press, 1986), 114–19; The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 72–3; “Death on the First Crusade”, in David Loades ed., The End of Strife (Edinburgh: Clark, 1984), 14–31; Jean Flori, “Mort et martyre des guerriers vers 1100. L’exemple de la première croisade”, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 34 (1991), 121–39; La guerre sainte, 334–43. “[U]t viriliter dimicet Christianus et, si usque ad sanguinem sustineat, in vulnera sui regis aspicat et confidat”. Gilbert of Tournai, “First sermon ad crucesignatos”, 182. Alphandéry and Dupront underline the importance of the individual asceticism that emerges in the sermons of James of Vitry. See Alphandéry and Dupront, La chrétienté, 418. This ideal also seems to appear in other crusade sermons of the thirteenth century. The exhortation to abandon the world and follow Christ had already been expressed,

13th century: adolescent and crusader  85

46

47 48

49

50

51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59

for example, in the papal bull of Innocent III Quia major in 1213 with reference to Matt.  16:24 (see the bull Quia major in Jean Richard, ed., L’esprit de la croisade (Paris: Cerf, 1996), 85) and earlier, for example, in Urban II’s speech during the First Crusade in the version of Robert the Monk and in the Gesta Version (see Dana C. Munro, “Urban and the Crusaders”, in Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, 2 vols (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895), 1: 5–8 and August Krey, The First Crusade. The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921), 28–30. I would like to thank Mathieu Caesar and Natasha Hodgson who brought these sources to my attention. “Est enim crux signum victorie. Per hoc enim signum homo vincit seipsum et omnem carnalem affectum, diabolum et mundum.” Gilbert of Tournai, “Third sermon ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 200. Eudes of Châteauroux also encourages giving up the world, following the example of St Paul, see infra. Gilbert of Tournai, “Third sermon ad crucesignatos”, 200–1. “Propter hoc Apoc. vii [9] dicitur de electis crucesignatis quod ipsi sunt in conspectu agni, amiciti stolis albis et palme in manibus eorum.” Gilbert of Tournai, “Third sermon ad crucesignatos”, 200–1. Humbert of Romans cites Macc. 7 and uses the example of the courageous martyred son, likewise Vincent of Beauvais. Humbert of Romans, “De predicatione crucis”, 218. Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo in conversione sancti Pauli et exhortatio ad assumendam crucem”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 128 et seq. This sermon could as well be intended for the feast day of St Paul as for crusade – as has highlighted Christoph Maier. Therefore, even if the idea of the crusade is implicitly mentioned and some expressions clearly relate to it (to leave possessions for the sake of Christ and to go across the sea), the link between the conversion of St  Paul and the crusade is not explicitly stated even if it could easily be made. See Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 39. Eudes of Châteauroux, “Sermo in conversion”, in Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 131–2. The idea of a burning love deeply pervades this sermon, but contrary to educational treatises where consuming love describes the earthly urges of the male adolescent, this love is extremely positive as it is turned towards God. It enables the adolescent to leave the world for Him. The theme of the crusade as a devotional and penitential act is most frequently touched upon in crusade model sermons of thirteenth century, especially in the ad status collections of James of Vitry, Gilbert of Tournai and Eudes of Châteauroux. See Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 68. Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138 and William Perault, De eruditione, 448. Lk. 15: 24 is quoted in Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138. In the Vulgate, the expression “an adolescentior filius” is used. Vincent of Beauvais uses the expression “suscitatus est a domino”. Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138. William Perault does mention it explicitly in the chapter dedicated to adolescents, however Vincent of Beauvais does not, but we can strongly suppose that the sentence resonated in the mind of the listeners. The word adolescens appears in the Vulgate to describe Eutychus. Ac. 20: 9–12. Vulgate, Ac.  20: 10–12  : “ad quem cum descendisset Paulus, incubuit super eum : et complexus dixit : Nolite turbari, anima enim ipsius in ipso est. Ascendens autem, frangensque panem, et gustans, satisque allocutus usque in lucem, sic profectus est. Adduxerunt autem puerum viventem, et consolati sunt non minime.” “Paulus quoque in adolescencia spiritualiter mortuus fuit, cum in necem stephani consensit, ut legitur in actibus VII. At postmodum resipiscens ad uocem domini resurrexit ita, ut et ipse adolescentem suscitare meruerit, ut legitur ibidem XX.” Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 138.

86  Dubois 60 As Giles of Rome asserts, when men reach their perfection, they have to direct and govern themselves. Giles of Rome, De regimine, 337. 61 Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 7. For the pastoral reform movement and the involvement of Mendicant friars, see Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 3–8; Maier, Preaching the Crusades; Nicole Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la parole: la prédication à Paris au XIIIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1998); David d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars. Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Franco Morenzoni, Des écoles aux paroisses: Thomas de Chobham et la promotion de la prédication au début du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1995). 62 Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 3. 63 Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 29–31. “All the sermon models of James of Vitry and Gilbert of Tournai were designated for the preaching ad crucesignatos et crucesignandos, meaning for recruiting crusaders as well as for preaching to those who had already taken the cross.” Maier,  Crusade Propaganda, 30. The diffusion of the collections ad status varies, depending on the authors. The sermons of Gilbert of Tournai, and of James of Vitry to a lesser extent, seem to have circulated widely according to the number of manuscripts remaining, see Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 13–14. 64 Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 3. 65 For the complex links between knighthood, nobility, and crusaders, see, for example: Natasha Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007), 50–1; Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) and Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996).

Contrasting masculinities

5 Masculine attributes of the other The shared knightly model Yvonne Friedman

The crusades can be characterised as a masculine phenomenon and movement, an expedition whose propaganda targeted men, its events recorded by men for a male readership. This masculine outlook formed a perceptual prism through which the religious enemy was evaluated. This article focuses on the crusader and Muslim definition of the masculine ideal and its application to their antagonists. Overall, for the crusaders and the Franks in the Latin East, the Muslim enemy or neighbour was the ultimate “Other”. For their part, Muslim jihad fighters viewed their Christian enemies similarly.1 The majority of the insults applied to the other side fit the setting of holy war: infidel, blasphemer, enemy of the true God, accursed by Allah, among others. Although not necessarily gender specific, both societies usually aimed these verbal attacks at their male enemies. Nonetheless, descriptions of the warriors on both sides share, and even overlap, in their understanding of ideal masculinity. Briefly, these ideals included courage, physical strength, military prowess, willpower, physical beauty, and piety. Even in an early period, before inter-cultural contacts could have fuelled a process of acculturation, we find the chronicles grudgingly admitting that the enemy forces had bold, effective warriors, and sometimes even admirable knights. Note, for example, the Gesta Francorum’s admiring description of the Turkish enemy’s masculinity, despite the outstanding flaw of his not being Christian: Who will ever be wise or learned enough to dare to describe the prudence, prowess, and courage of the Turks? . . . If only they had stood firm in the faith of Christ and holy Christendom, and had been willing to accept One God in Three Persons, and had believed rightly and faithfully that the Son of God was born of a virgin mother, that he suffered and rose from the dead and ascended in the sight of his disciples into Heaven, and sent them in full measure the comfort of the Holy Ghost and that he reigns in Heaven and earth, you could not find stronger or braver or more skillful soldiers.2 William of Tyre, writing about the first encounters between the rivals with more than eighty years hindsight, provides a similar description of the enemy: We shall often have occasion to say a great deal about the Turks in this work, to tell of their prowess (viriliter) against our people and also to relate the

90  Friedman splendid deeds of valor which we in turn, frequently wrought against them. Since even to the present day they persist in ruthlessly attacking us, it does not seem inconsistent with the present work to insert some account of the rise and early history of this race and to tell of their progress toward that stage of excellence which, according to accounts, they have for many years maintained.3 I will return to William’s use of the adverb viriliter. Although Saladin’s chronicler and mouthpiece, Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddad, applies the epithet “accursed one” to Richard the Lionheart, he also describes him as “brave, valiant and expert in battle”,4 a warrior who puts Saladin’s emirs to shame. Ibn Shaddad similarly designates Conrad of Monferrat, ruler of Tyre, “the accursed one”, but nonetheless describes him as “a great and politic man, mighty in valour for his religion, and very severe”.5 These mutual descriptions serve to introduce how these warring cultures framed the warriors of the other side. This consideration raises a number of questions. Did each side project its image of masculinity on the opponent? Or, should we ascribe the similar features of masculine chivalry to their social structure, namely, that as societies built for war they bestowed high status on knights? Further, what was the impact of the cross-cultural contact on the chivalric code? Finally, did the opposing sides uphold the same image of the masculine ideal? Although the answers to these questions have relevance for all medieval arenas of inter-religious warfare, the discussion here is restricted to the crusades as a junction that provides a snapshot of the encounter between rival civilisations and religions. Jean Flori has shown that chivalrous ideas were in the process of unfolding in the twelfth century but were not yet defined at the time of the First Crusade.6 I  propose that, in part, the development in the West from a knightly model of prowess and ability to bear hardship into one that included more courteous, “chivalric” behaviour may have been influenced by eastern Muslim ideals. This ideal is reflected in Ibn Shaddad’s depiction of Saladin as “a paragon of chivalry (‫)ةؤورم‬, generous, extremely modest and [who] had a welcoming face for any guests that arrived . . . He received graciously anyone who came to him on a mission, even if he were an infidel.”7 This description not only underscores Saladin’s military prowess and chivalry, but notes additional moral qualities such as generosity and hospitality, even towards infidels.8 According to David Ayalon, the Muslim definition of the faris – the Arabic horseman – also comprehended “high moral character”.9 Ibn Shaddad also remarks Saladin’s “endurance and zeal for heavenly credit”.10 This emphasis on the knight’s moral character in Muslim society pre-dates the crusades.11 However, as seen above, the religious element is already present in the description by the Gesta Francorum. Its long, intricate list of religious tenets is perceived as a requisite for a “strong, brave and skillful soldier”.12 Not only were the attributes of masculinity gender based, they were also grounded in the social hierarchy.13 The attitude exhibited by the chroniclers towards the infantry or simple peasant differs from that awarded a man who had ascended the social ladder in his capacity as a mounted warrior. The lower strata of society were supposed to work and pay for the knight’s upkeep; in return he

The shared knightly model  91 was to protect their lives and security. The noble leaders on both sides of the religious divide demonstrated a shared contempt for the rank and file of the army. Initially, chivalry was defined as “hegemonic masculinity” – that is, a small minority whose martial skills justified their status and role in society. It is their ability, and willingness, to fight that creates their high social standing. As crusaders and mujahedin alike go to war in the name of God, this makes their prowess both divinely ordained and exercised. Keen’s definition of chivalry as “an ethos in which martial, aristocratic and Christian elements were fused together” reflects this conception.14 Earlier I  noted courage and physical strength, honour, willpower, piety, and physical beauty as knightly attributes. The courage and strength that comprise physical ability were cardinal traits of the knight. They included the ability and willpower to endure physical suffering. The passive strength to endure hardship, which could also be a sort of imitatio Christi – to suffer for Him – was emphasised in crusader propaganda.15 But the warrior poet Usāma ibn Munqidh also showed respect for the Frankish knight’s endurance, claiming, however, that the Frankish knight’s virtues16 resemble beastly attributes, because the Franks lack honour or propriety.17 Yet he still admiringly describes the feats of a Frankish knight who singlehandedly fought Mawdud of Damascus’s army even after being wounded.18 Active strength was extolled as the ability to cleave an animal or man with one slash of the sword; such stories were recounted with admiration on both sides. Thus, Godfrey of Bouillon, who was apparently not among the most prominent leaders of the First Crusade, was described admiringly after his election as advocatus Sancti Sepulchri and effective ruler of the nascent crusader state. His virtuous résumé included singlehanded combat with a bear and the ability to cleave an opponent with his sword. The fact that he was rather clumsily wounded in the duel with the bear was later glossed over,19 and he remained a fortis athlete et vir consiliorum – “a brave champion and man of wisdom”. The main point being that his strength and courage made him masculine.20 A no less important chivalric attribute was honour. As a fundamental concept in the chivalric code, honour meant that a man was defined by the opinion of his peers. Knights risked their lives in battle so that they would not be thought of as disloyal or unfaithful cowards, in short, not masculine.21 Jean of Joinville describes the battle of Mansura (8 February 1250): Erard de Siverey said to me: “My lord, if you think that neither I  nor my heirs will incur reproach for it, I will go and fetch you help from the Comte d’Anjou, whom I see in the fields over there.” I said to him: “My dear man, it seems to me you would win great honour for yourself if you went for help to save our lives; your own, by the way is also in great danger.”22 Thus, honour drove the noble knight, who was mortally wounded, to continue fighting to the death. Usāma ibn Munqidh provides a similar description of Faris who continued fighting in spite of being “covered with wounds”.23 Usāma tells the

92  Friedman story of Bohemond’s son, who took the shields from two cowardly Frankish horsemen, pulled down their tents, and exclaimed: “One Muslim horseman chases away two Frankish knights! You aren’t men – you’re women!”24 Honour is not just a person’s value in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. The claim to excellence is, however, relative. It is always implicitly the claim to excel over others.25 The notion of honour could also prompt valiant gestures based on admiration of the rival. Thus, Ambroise describes Saphadin (al-Adil, Saladin’s brother) as saving Richard in the middle of a battle by offering him two horses, as if it were a tournament and not a battle: Then there came spurring up . . . a single Saracen. It was the noble Saphadin . . . a man of valiant deeds, kindness and generosity . . . he came galloping up with two Arab horses which he sent to the king of England, beseeching him . . . because of his valiant deeds, which he, Saphadin knew, that he would mount one [of the horses] on condition that, if God brought him out of this safe and sound . . . then Richard would ensure that he received some reward.26 Masculinity also presupposes physical beauty, especially on the Christian side. William of Tyre, who can be termed a royal chronicler, paused to dwell on the physical attributes of each new Frankish king introduced into the narrative: Godfrey: He was tall of stature, not extremely so, but still taller than the average man. He was strong beyond compare, with solidly built limbs and stalwart chest. His features were pleasing, his hair and beard of a medium blond.27 Baldwin I: He is said to have been very tall and much larger than his brother, so that, as is written concerning Saul “he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upwards.” He was of rather light complexion, with dark-brown hair and beard. His nose was aquiline and his upper lip somewhat prominent. The lower jaw slightly receded, although not so much that it could be considered a defect. He was dignified in carriage and serious in dress and speech.28 Baldwin II: The king is said to have been tall of stature, of striking appearance and agreeable features. His thin, blond hair was streaked with white. His beard, though thin, reached to his breast; his complexion was vivid and ruddy for his time of life.29 Fulk: This Fulk was a ruddy man, like David, whom the Lord found after His own heart . . . He was an experienced warrior full of patience and wisdom in military affairs. He was of medium height and was already well advanced in age.30 The only monarch devoid of any physical description is Queen Melisende. She has no body or face.31 Although William of Tyre saw her as a legitimate, successful ruler, obviously she could not uphold a masculine ideal.

The shared knightly model  93 In his eulogies, Ibn al-Athir also describes the physical attributes of two of his heroes, Zengī and Nūr al-Dīn “Zengī was a handsome man, of a swarthy complexion and with pleasant eyes. His hair had turned grey.”32 “Nūr al-Dīn was swarthy and tall in stature. He had no beard, except for on his chin, and he had a wide forehead. He was a handsome man with charming eyes.”33 We find Muslim awareness of the Frankish ideal of good-looking warriors in Usāma’s account. Usāma explains Fulk’s surprise that the rumours about Usāma being a great knight were true: “You see if the knight is tall and thin, they find him more impressive.”34 Evidently, Usāma did not fit this ideal. When the courageous horseman Hasanoun was sent to Tancred of Antioch as a diplomatic messenger, Usāma says that he was a thin, good-looking man and the Frankish knights inspected his gear and horsemanship and were amazed at his physique and youthfulness.35 A wounded Joinville pauses in the middle of a fierce battle to describe his hero, Louis IX: “Never have I seen a finer or a more handsome knight! He seemed to tower head and shoulders above all his people; on his head was a gilded helmet, and a sword of German steel was in his hand.”36 His beloved king was not only an ideal knight, but a handsome, masculine warrior at the same time. Ugliness is used to denigrate the enemy. Witness Ambroise’s description of the opponent at Acre (March 1190): “hideous black people, against God and against nature . . . never did God make more ugly creatures”.37 The Damascene preacher and chronicler Sibt ibn Al-Jauzi noted his surprise that the great emperor Frederick II was bald, ruddy, and shortsighted. “Had he been a slave he would not have been worth two hundred dirham.”38 That such a great emperor was not handsome seemed strange to the Muslim chronicler. But the negative remark was also sparked by Frederick’s joking about his own religion, because the Sibt expected his opponent to honour his own religion; he notes, “his Christianity was simply a game to him”.39 Although the ideal was not necessarily that of classical beauty, being handsome was a significant aspect of medieval masculinity. A comparison of the medieval ideal to modern advertising is instructive. The Marlboro Man, a cowboy on his horse smoking a cigarette, is a paragon of masculinity. Many of his attributes are in fact similar to those of the medieval horseman: he is ruddy, strong, and obviously male. Presumably, the message to the consumer is that if one smokes the same cigarette he will acquire the same aura of masculinity.40 (The fact that the actor in question in fact died of cancer is of course not mentioned.)41 Richard the Lionheart’s seal, in itself a form of advertising its owner to the public, also shows him riding a horse, but highlights his sword and military attributes.42 But in an illustration from Matthew Paris, Richard is depicted in the conventional manner as a donor of a church, but there he defends the church with his raised sword, making Christianity part of his knighthood.43 According to the crusader chroniclers the crusade was a battle between heroic men. William of Tyre uses the word viriliter – which connotes manliness, valour, vigour, and prowess – eighty-one times in his chronicle, mainly with respect to the fighting crusaders, whether as individuals or as a group. On nine occasions,

94  Friedman he applies the word to the enemy who fought in a manly fashion. Thus, for example: Zengī was a shrewd (sagacissimus) and experienced man of war. He at once perceived the situation [Monferrand, 1137] and realized that the advantage was with him. Aglow with fervor, he summoned his men and, himself foremost among his thousands, roused their courage by his words and challenged them to follow his example. Fighting viriliter [valiantly], he fell upon the Christian center and incited his men to our destruction.44 To explain this masculine superiority, crusader legends propose a common ancestry and underscore the motif of “good breeding”. Ida of Austria, widow of Leopold III, set out with Duke Welf of Bavaria on the ill-fated crusade of 1101 and disappeared in battle. Ekkehard of Aura states that Ida was killed, but legend had it that she was carried off by a Saracen and thus became the ancestor of Zengī;45 therefore, Zengī, the archenemy of the Franks in the first half of the twelfth century, owed his prowess to Western descent. Similarly, Christian lineage was ascribed to Saladin in the story of the Princess de Ponthieu to explain how a Muslim could be such a valiant warrior. Fuelling the underlying crusader assumption was the notion that the Muslims believed in Christian masculine superiority and attributed it to their hereditary superiority. The writer of the Gesta Francorum writes: “Indeed, the Turks say that they are from Frankish descent and that no men except the Franks and themselves are naturally born to be knights.”46 The logical outcome of this view of masculine superiority was the belief that the enemy wanted to mate with the Frankish captives as a means of breeding better warriors. Raymond of Aguilers ascribes this motive to the Saracens in August 1099: However, news came that the king of Babylon had arrived in Ascalon with a large force of pagans with the purpose of storming Jerusalem, killing all of the Franks twenty years of age and above, and capturing the rest along with their women. He would, so rumor held, mate the young Frankish males with women of his race and the Frankish women with young males of his land and thereby breed a warrior race (gens) from Frankish stock.47 Even if we do not translate gens as “race”, the text attests to a Frankish selfimage of superiority, of genetic prowess that survives even when the battle has been lost. In Les Chétifs, the old mother of Corbaran wants to entice the captive Richard Chaumont to breed warriors (presumably ones superior to her son Corbaran).48 Nor did the legendary need to breed Muslim progeny of Christian warriors stop with the living. According to the Itinerarium Peregrinorum, one of Saladin’s soldiers cut off the genitals of the Templar martyr Jacquelin of Mailly, who fought bravely at the Battle of the Springs of Cresson, 1 May 1187: “He cut off the man’s genitals, and kept them safely for begetting children so that even when dead the

The shared knightly model  95 man’s members – if such a thing were possible – would produce an heir with courage as great as his.”49 Whereas Muslim literature fantasised about beautiful captive women, Christian legends portray the enemy mainly as in pursuit of their precious genes, one way or another. The fear that the Muslims sought crusader males in order to emulate their masculine superiority may explain the harsh legislation against sexual relations with Muslims at the Council of Nablus 1120, which seems to evince an obsessive fear of too close relations between the enemies.50 The legislation against homosexuality might also demonstrate Christian fears that the Muslims coveted their men. By the mid-twelfth to the early-thirteenth century, both Christian and Muslim sources emphasise shared chivalric ideals, as embodied, for example, in the mutual respect between the heroes Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The most famous example is the story of how Humphrey of Toron knighted Saladin mentioned in the Itinerarium peregrinorum,51 and later repeated in the Ordene de chevalerie.52 Although of doubtful historicity, the shared ideals could make such a story plausible, notwithstanding the religious nature of the knighting ceremony.53 However, Ibn Shaddad wrote that Richard made friends with, and had knighted, some of Saladin’s mamluks.54 According to Ambroise, Saladin responded courteously to Richard’s threat to return on another crusade, saying: by his faith and by the God whom he supported, that he so valued his valour (pröesce), his great-heartedness and his skill (son grant cuer e sa vistece), that if his land were taken in any way during his lifetime . . . Richard would be the prince whom he would be most willing to have take it from him by force.55 Another aspect of the chivalric ideal in Saladin and Richard’s day (the late twelfth century), included masculine care for weak women, especially mothers. William of Tyre tells a story about Baldwin I saving an Arab chieftain’s wife during a military raid. When he heard that she was in childbirth he had a bed prepared for her, left her food, a maid, and two camels and even gave her his mantle.56 This was written in the 1180s, whereas Fulcher of Chartres, King Baldwin’s chaplain and chronicler who wrote more than fifty years earlier, knows nothing of this incident, even though he was with the king at that time. Whether the story was a later invention and never happened, or Fulcher did not deem it important enough to recount, it may show a shift in the social ideals between the times of the two chroniclers and a difference in the ideals of masculinity. Saladin’s propagandist Beha a-Din Ibn Shaddad wrote at the end of the twelfth century about how his hero took pity on a mother from the enemy camp. When she crossed the lines to plead for her small child who had been captured, Saladin paid the ransom for the child and returned it to its mother. In both cases we find a victorious king who can afford to show mercy, and a chronicler who finds it a commendable deed. But muruwwa, having pity on the weak, showing restraint, was part of the Muslim ideal of chivalrous behaviour for centuries before the crusaders

96  Friedman arrived in the East. Perhaps the twelfth-century shift in the Western ideal of masculinity, as inhering mainly in the attributes of a strong fighting warrior, to the late medieval ideal of more chivalrous, civilised behaviour that included regard for the weak and needy and saving damsels in need, was influenced by the encounter with Muslim ideals of chivalry. In writing their histories of their heroes, both Ibn Shaddad and Joinville open their books with a non-chronological chapter that spells out the moral and chivalrous character of their protagonists – Saladin and Louis IX respectively – providing supporting anecdotes. I do not claim that the gruesome details of babies being dashed to death during the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 were unhistorical, but perhaps a century later those stories would neither have been told with pride nor considered masculine, brave behaviour. The chroniclers felt a need to explain why Richard killed 2700 defenceless captives outside Acre in 1191.57 A  comparison of the reactions on both sides to the crusaders’ savage behaviour in Jerusalem in 1099 and Saladin’s much publicised merciful behaviour when he conquered Jerusalem in 1187 demonstrates a shift in ideals. This consideration has raised a number of questions but also points the way to some understanding of knightly masculinity. I  think that we can ascribe the similar features of masculine chivalry in both societies to their structure as societies built for war that bestowed high status on knights. Moreover, I suggest that cross-cultural contact influenced the European chivalric code, especially in the moral sphere, even though further evidence is needed to back this claim. It is, however, consistent with what I  demonstrated for captivity and ransom in the Latin East.58 Finally, I am intrigued by the question of to what extent the opposing sides demonstrate equal respect for knights and chivalry and can truly be said to uphold the same image of the masculine ideal. Whereas chroniclers on both sides of the religious divide stressed their admiration for the enemy’s masculine traits as embodied in strength and virility, at the same time they also clearly admired the moral and religious sincerity of their antagonists, even in what they saw as a war between true believers and infidels.

Notes 1 For the different definitions of the religious other, see Kristin Skottki, “The Other at Home? On the Entanglement of Medievalism, Orientalism and Occidentalism in Modern Crusade Historiography”, European Receptions of the Crusades in the Nineteenth Century. Franco-German Perspectives International Workshop – Research Group “Myths of the Crusades”, Eckert.Dossiers 4 (2011), http://repository.gei. de/bitstream/handle/11428/129/ED_2011_04_08_Skottki_The_Other_at_Home. pdf?sequence=11&isAllowed=y. 2 “Quis unquam tam sapiens aut doctus audebit describere prudentiam militiamque et fortitudinem Turcorum? . . . Certe si in fide Christi et Christianitate sancta semper firmi fuissent, et unum Deum in trinitate confiteri uoluissent Deique Filium natum de Virgine matre, passum, et resurrexisse a mortuis et in caelum ascendisse suis cernentibus discipulis, consolationemque Sancti Spiritus perfecte misisse et eum in caelo et in terra regnantem recta mente et fide credidissent, ipsis potentiores uel fortiores uel bellorum ingeniosissimos nullus inuenire potuisset.” Gesta Francorum et aliorum

The shared knightly model  97

3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Hierosolimitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (London: Thomas Nelson, 1962), 21. (English translation slightly revised.) “Et quoniam de gente Turcorum frequenter nobis in opere presenti erunt dicenda quamplura, que ipsi contra nostros nostrique adversus eos viriliter magnificeque sepius gesserunt – et adhuc proterve nimis in nostrorum impugnatione perseverant – non videtur alienum a nostro proposito de ortu et prima origine gentis huius et processu ad hunc excellentie gradum, in quo iam multis annis stetisse leguntur, aliquid presenti interserere narrationi” (emphasis mine]). Willelmi Tyrensis archiepisopi, Chronicon, ed. Robert H. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 63 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986) [hereafter WT], 1.7.1, p. 114. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin trans. Donald S. Richards (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 34. Ibid., 91. Jean Flori, L’Essor de la chevalerie XIe – XIIe siècles (Geneva: Droz, 1986), 9–42; and David Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France 900–1300 (Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2005), 1–28. Richards, Saladin, 35. For a comparison of Western chivalry and the Eastern Arabic futawwa, see Mohsen Zakeri, “Muslim ‘Chivalry’ at the Time of the Crusaders: The Case of Usamah B. Munqidh”, in Walter Beltz ed., Die Folgen der Kreuzzüge für die orientalische Religionsmeinschaften, Haesche Beitrage zur Orientwissenschaft 22 (Halle: Martin Luther Universitat, 1996), 29–50. David Ayalon, “Furusiyya”, EI2, 2: 954–5. Richards, Saladin, 31. Ayalon, “Furusiyya”, 2: 954. Gesta Francorum, 21. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage: The Reconstruction of the Gender System, 1050–1150”, in Clare A. Lees ed. Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–29. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 16. For example, Urban II’s speech according to Baldric of Deuil’s version: “Pulchrum sit vobis mori in illa civitate pro Christo, in qua Christus pro vobis mortuus est.” Baldricus episcopus Dolensis, Historia Jerosolimitana, Receuil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux, vol. 4 (Paris, 1866), 15 and Robert the Monk’s version. See Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, trans. Carol Sweetenham Crusade Texts in Translation 11 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 79–82. Georg Strack (“The Sermon of Urban II in Clermont and the Tradition of Papal Oratory”, Medieval Sermon Studies 56 (2012), 30–45) claims that Robert’s version should be seen as a battle speech rather than a sermon. Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusade, trans. Paul M. Cobb (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 144. Ibid., 148. Ibid., 81. WT 3.18, pp. 219–20. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007), 3.4, pp. 142–4. Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society ed. Jean George Peristiany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), Introduction, 9. Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis ed. and trans. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Dunod, 1995), 226, translated by M. R. B. Shaw as Chronicles of the Crusades (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 221. Usama ibn Munqidh, trans. Cobb, 109. Ibid., 76.

98  Friedman 25 Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status”, in Peristiany ed., Honour and Shame, 21–77. 26 The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte eds and trans. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 2: 184. 27 WT 9.5, p. 427: “Fuit autem et corpore procerus, ita ut et maximis minor et mediocribus maior haberetur, robustus sine exemplo, membris solidioribus, torace virile, facie venusta, capillo et barba flavus mediocriter.” It should be noted, however, that before that description William wrote a whole chapter about Godfrey’s noble origins (essential for the head of a new dynasty) and piety. 28 WT 10.2, p. 454: “Dicitur autem fuisse corpore valde procerus et fratre multo maior, ita ut, sicut de Saul dicitur, altior esset universo populo ab humero supra; capillum et barbam fuscus, carne tamen mediocriter niveus, naso aquilo et prominente pusillum, labro superiore cum subiecto dentium ordine aliquantulum depresso, non tamen eatenus quod usque ad vicium ei posset imputari. Gravis in incessu, habitu et verbo serius.” 29 WT 12.4, pp. 550–1: “Dicitur autem fuisse forma conspicuus, corpore procerus, facie venusta, capillo raro, flavo, canis mixto, barbam habens raram sed tamen usque in pectus demissam, colore vivido et quantum etas illa patiebatur roseo.” 30 WT 14.1, p. 631: “Erat autem idem Fulco vir rufus, sed instar David, quem invenit dominus iuxta cor suum .  .  . rei militaris experientissimus et in bellicis sudoribus patiens et providus plurimum; statura mediocri, sed iam grandevus.” 31 We can surmise that she was slender, as William writes about her son that he was not small like his mother (WT 16.1, p. 715): “nec fratris more pinguor nec matris exemplo dici posset macilentus.” 32 Ibn al-Athir, al Kamil fi’l-tarikh. The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period, trans. Donald S. Richards (Aldershot: Ashgate), Part 1, The Year 541, p. 382. 33 Ibn al-Athir, Part 2, The Year 569, p. 222. Francesco Gabrieli (Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. from Italian by E. J. Costello [London: Routledge, 1957], 70) translates “a tall, swarthy man with a beard but no moustache, a fine forehead and a pleasant appearance enhanced by beautiful, melting eyes”. The ideals of beauty were clearly different in each civilization. 34 Usama ibn Munqidh, trans. Cobb, 77. 35 Ibid. 36 Shaw, Chronicles of the Crusades, 222. 37 Ailes and Barber, History of the Holy War, 79. Cf. line 7705, p. 136 where he calls the Muslims: “that ugly, brown race”. 38 Sibt ibn al-Jauzi, Mir’at az-zaman fi Ta’rikh al A’yan, ed. J. R. Jewett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), 434; translated by Francesco Gabrieli in Arab Historians of the Crusades (London: Routledge, 1969), p. 275. 39 Ibid. 40 Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia, eds Michael S. Kimmel and Amy Aronson (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2003), 499–500. 41 “Former Marlboro Man, 72, becomes FIFTH Actor from Iconic Cigarette Ads to Die of Lung Disease”, Daily Mail Online, 27 January 2014, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article2546554/ExMarlboroMandiessmokingrelatedrespiratoryfailure.html. 42 For a cast of Richard’s seal, see the British Museum Collection online: www.british museum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=434 75&partId=1&material=18008&sortBy=imageName&page=1. 43 As depicted in Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, MS British Library, Royal MS 14C, fol. 9r, www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_14_c_vii_f009r. 44 WT 14.25, p. 664: “Quod videns Sanguinus, sicut erat vir sagacissimus et rei militaris multam habens experientiam videns meliorem se habere calculum, animo fervens suos convocans et inter milia suorum primus verbo suos erigens, provocans exemplo,

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45 46

47

48

49

50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

in medias nostrorum irruit acies et viriliter dimicans ad nostrorum stragem animat et agmina nostra prima in fugam conversa prosternit.” Historia Welforum Weingartensis, MGH SS 21,462: “et impurissimo sibi matrimonia copulavit ex eaque Sanguinem illum sceleratissimum, ut aiunt, progenuit.” Cited from Edgington, Albert of Aachen, 630–1 n. 67. Hill ed. and trans., Gesta Francorum, 21: “Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione, et quia nullus homo naturalter debet esse miles nisi Franci et illi” (English translation slightly revised). Le “Liber” de Raymond d’Aguilers, eds John Hugh Hill and Laurita Hill, Document relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 9 (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1969), 21. “Nunciatum est nobis quod rex Babyloniorum Ascalonam venisset . . . et, ut nobis relatum est quod Iherusalem expugnare venerat, et occidere Francos omnes a viginti annis et supra, et captivare reliquos cum mulieribus, daturus viros mulieribus de sua gente, et juvenibus mulieres, ut Babyloniorum domini deinceps bellicosas familias haberent de genere Francorum.” Historia qui ceperunt Iherusalem, trans John Hugh Hill and Laurita Hill (Philadelphia: American Historical Society, 1968), 132. Li mere Corbaran le prist a embracier; En se canbre le maine, se il velt dosnoier U parler a pucele, bien s’i puet aaisier, Car la vielle en vausist avoir .I. iretier. Mais Ricars nel fesist. Les Chétifs, ed. Geoffrey M. Myers, The Old French Crusade Cycle 5 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), lines 646–50. “Fuere, ut dicebatur, nonnulli qui corpus viri jam examinum pulverem superjecto consparserunt, et ipsum pulverem suis imponentes verticibus, virtutem ex contactu habuisse credebant. Quidam vero, ut fama ferebat, ardentius caeteris movebatur, et abscissis viri genitalibus, ea tanquam in usu gignendi reservare disposuit, ut vel mortua membra, si fieri posset, virtutis tantae suscitarent haeredem.” Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 38,1 (London: Longman, 1864), 1.2, p. 8; trans. Helen J. Nicolson, Chronicle of the Third Crusade, Crusade Texts in Translation 3 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 26. Benjamin Z. Kedar, “On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120”, Speculum 74 (1999), 310–35. “Processu temporis, cum jam aetas robustior officium militare deposceret, ad Enfridum de Turone, illustrem Palaestinae principem, paludandus accessit, et Francorum ritu cingulum militiae ab ipso suscepit.” Itinerarium peregrinorum, 1.3, p. 9. The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation, ed. and trans. Richard W. Kauper and Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 24, 169. Jean Flori, “Chevalerie et liturgie. Remise des armes et vocabulaire chevaleresque dans les sources liturgiques du IXe au XIVe siècle”, Le Moyen Age 2 (1978), 247–78; 3–4 (1978), 409–42 claims that the religious connotations of the adoubement are later and that the early medieval ceremony just conferred arms. Richards, Saladin, 223. Ailes and Barber, History of the Holy War, 11768–97, p. 187. WT 10.11, pp. 464–5. Ailes and Barber, History of the Holy War, 5493–500, 5540–3; Itinerarium peregrinorum, 4.2; Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 90–2. Friedman, Encounter between Enemies, 65–72; 93–9.

6 The true gentleman? Correct behaviour towards women according to Christian and Muslim writers From the Third Crusade to Sultan Baybars Helen J. Nicholson Many essays in this volume have demonstrated that perceptions about the treatment of women could have considerable impact on masculine reputations. Clearly the true gentleman, that most honourable manifestation of masculinity, should treat women correctly. Yet what is “correct behaviour”? It is not necessarily normal behaviour. As Yvonne Friedman has shown, in the context of the crusades, normal behaviour towards women of any religious belief was to take them prisoner.1 Sometimes they were taken captive after a defeat; sometimes they were the deliberate goal of a slave-hunting raid. A woman who was taken prisoner during these campaigns faced at the very least hard labour: as was the experience of Margaret of Beverley, taken captive after Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187.2 Margaret was saved when a Christian from Tyre paid her ransom, and her brother’s account of her tribulations does not state that she suffered the sexual abuse that, as Friedman explains, “was considered the norm”.3 Margaret, her brother tells us, was protected by speaking the name of Saint Mary. Yet although captive women could expect to be abused, their contemporaries acknowledged that the norm was not the ideal. This article will consider how various Muslim and Christian commentators of the second half of the twelfth century and of the thirteenth century depicted “correct” behaviour. Christian writers on the crusades depicted the most appropriate means of dealing with non-Christian women as killing them. Friedman has argued that during the First Crusade the crusaders slaughtered women and children but frowned on rape: citing Fulcher of Chartres’s description of crusaders spearing women in the stomachs with their (iron) lances, and letters in the Cairo Geniza that confirm that the crusaders burned the Jews in a synagogue but did not rape Jewish women.4 Noblewomen might expect different treatment. Writing long after the First Crusade, Archbishop William of Tyre included in his history of the kingdom of Jerusalem an account of King Baldwin I’s kindness to the heavily pregnant wife of a Muslim satrap. According to William, during a raid into Transjordan early in 1101 the king attacked a Muslim encampment and carried off uxores et liberos (women and children) as captives, but he left the pregnant noblewoman with a

Behaviour towards women  101 fine bed, food, water, a maid, and two female camels to provide milk, and covered her with his own cloak. The story concluded with the amazed gratitude of the woman’s husband, who initially believed that he had lost his wife.5 Baldwin’s humanitatem is depicted as being exceptional, far beyond what any nobleman might expect from his enemy; but Baldwin accorded his generosity only to the satrap’s wife. The other women and children received the normal treatment. This story reflected the respectful and kind behaviour expected of noble Christian men towards women by the period that Archbishop William was writing, as depicted in the work of Chrétien de Troyes (died circa 1191). It was repeated approximately half a century later by the Old French Translator of William of Tyre, writing probably between 1219 and 1223.6 But these were events of long ago and outside the immediate context of a crusade. During a crusade any male association with women was open to accusation of immorality or religious pollution, and when a crusade failed religious pollution was an obvious focus for blame.7 As the Third Crusade ended in stalemate, the Christian leaders involved were liable to criticism over their relations with women. According to the Old French Continuator of William of Tyre, when Sultan Saladin attacked Tiberias at the start of July 1187 Lady Eschiva of Tiberias sent a message to King Guy of Jerusalem asking him to come and aid her against Saladin’s forces: then the knights in the army cried out: “Alons rescore les dames et les damoiseles de Thabarie” (“Let’s go and rescue the ladies and damsels of Tiberias”) – words more appropriate to knights in a chivalric romance than a holy war.8 Writing in the late 1240s, more than fifty years after events, the Continuator deliberately depicted King Guy’s army as poorly led and misadvised, and the introduction of this motivation from worldly chivalry would have fitted this image of inadequacy.9 The compiler of the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre and the author of the chronicle attributed to Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer of Corbie (compiled in France in the early 1230s) depicted King Guy’s army as actually cursed by a woman. These accounts explain that while the army was on its way to raise Saladin’s siege of Tiberias the serjanz de l’ost captured an old Saracen woman. When they tortured her to find out what she had been doing, she claimed to be a sorceress who had been hired by Saladin to curse the army. They threw her on to a fire; when she leapt out of the fire, one of the serjanz cut her head in two with une hache danoise, a Danish axe, then they threw her back on the flames.10 Burning to death was the traditional method of dealing with a sorcerer.11 On the other hand, Muslim writers depicted devout Islamic leaders as treating certain women with mercy, rather than killing them. Muslim commentators on the events of this period regarded the European Christians as careless in guarding the virtue of their womenfolk, and depicted this carelessness as important evidence for their barbarity.12 Readers may already be familiar with Usāma ibn Munqidh’s humorous descriptions of how a European Christian in Palestine would leave his wife alone in the street, talking with another man, or allow a male barber to shave his wife, and would not be excessively distressed to find a strange man in his wife’s bed. 13 Saladin’s secretary ‘Imād al-Dīn used the women in his history to illustrate the triumph of Islam: laying particular stress on the sufferings

102  Nicholson of Christian women during the Holy War, implying that the sufferings of these women showed the utter failure of Christianity. The degradation and dishonour of the Christian women who fell victim to the victorious Muslims represented the destruction and dishonour of Christianity. In ‘Imād al-Dīn’s work, noblewomen, young girls, nuns, and prostitutes were captured, enslaved, raped, forced into marriage, separated from their husbands, and given as gifts to their captors.14 Even Christian castles became women who would fall before Saladin’s forces. The Hospitallers’ castle of Kaukab/Belvoir was “an inviolable woman, a maid who could not be asked for in marriage”; the captured castle of ash-Shughr was “a virgin fortress taken by force”.15 Playing on the fact that the Arabic word for “city” is female, Saladin going to besiege the city of Jerusalem was going to ask Allah for the hand of “this violated city” in marriage, for which he and his forces had prepared a gift of their own blood, like a wedding gift; going to besiege the Templars’ fortress of Baghras he was like a lover going to beg for a woman to yield to him.16 In all of these depictions, the normal depiction of women involved in the hostilities was as spoils of war. Yet on a few occasions ‘Imād al-Dīn depicted Saladin as merciful and generous towards women. He gave a detailed description of Stephanie of Milly, daughter of Philip of Milly lord of Kerak, and her daughter-in-law Isabel, daughter of King Amalric of Jerusalem, pleading with Saladin for the release of Stephanie’s son Humfrey (“Hanfarî”) IV of Toron in exchange for the surrender of their castles.17 Lady Stephanie was described humbling herself before Saladin with dust on her cheeks, uncovering the face that was normally veiled, exhausted and desperately concerned for the fate of her beloved son Humfrey, whom ‘Imād al-Dīn described as “un morceau de son cœur” (a morsel of her heart), and her extravagant grief (which modern readers may interpret as formalised weeping), shedding the pearls of her tears and shaking in her sorrow.18 With her, wrote ‘Imād al-Dīn, was her daughter-in-law, the king’s daughter Isabel; “one would have called her one of the daughters of heaven: her face, brilliant with whiteness appeared to be of the morning; in the night of her deep black hair; she shone from her height”. He depicted her burning to recover her husband, “seeking in him the remedy of her passion, like a sun hidden until now but all brilliant at its rising”, but also weeping, proud and humbling herself, tearing her cheeks in her grief.19 He also mentioned that the queen (Sybil of Jerusalem) came before Saladin with them, asking for her husband the king and again weeping, submissive and humbling herself.20 Sultan Saladin’s response to the ladies Stephanie and Isabel was “to show himself very generous, accede to their desire, shower them with favours”, remit the ransom due and give them magnificent presents. The condition for Humfrey of Toron’s release was that the Lady of Kerak must surrender the castles of Kerak and Shaubak/Montréal to Saladin. When she agreed to these terms, Humfrey was brought from Damascus, and some emirs went with “cette femme vertueuse et intelligente” (“this virtuous and intelligent woman”) to take possession of the “captive fortresses”. However, Lady Stephanie’s people refused to give up the fortresses, accusing her of being in alliance with Islam, and refused to listen to her commands. She

Behaviour towards women  103 returned in failure to Saladin, fearful that he would return her son to captivity. Saladin reassured her that her son would be well looked after, and she set off for Tyre, commending her captive son to the Sultan.21 ‘Imād al-Dīn’s message was that Sultan Saladin kept his faith with women, even when their own subjects defied them. According to ‘Imād al-Dīn, Saladin acted as a generous and honourable victor in his treatment of Stephanie of Milly and Isabel of Jerusalem, the more so because Stephanie’s most recent husband, Renaut of Châtillon, had particularly insulted Saladin.22 The author of the Continuation of William of Tyre, writing more than fifty years later in the late 1240s, repeated a similar but more general story in the context of Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem. Here the wives and daughters of the knights who had died or were captured at Hattin on 4 July  1187 had fled to Jerusalem. When Saladin captured the city, they appealed to him to have mercy on them for God’s sake, because their husbands and fathers were in prison, and they had lost their land – and they asked him for aid. “When Saladin saw them crying he had great pity on them.” He released the men who were still alive and gave generous gifts to those whose menfolk were dead “to some more and to others less, according to who they were. Then the women praised God and the world for the good and honour that Saladin had done them.”23 More contemporary Christian accounts of the Third Crusade did not support this story. Instead Ambroise, in the Estoire de la guerre sainte, and Richard of Templo, in the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, gave King Richard of England credit for giving gifts to the exiled and disinherited noblewomen of the crusader states who had taken refuge on Sicily.24 ‘Imād al-Dīn did not mention Stephanie of Milly again in his narrative, but Isabel of Jerusalem appeared twice more in the context of Christian mistreatment of women, or at least failure to acknowledge the rights of the child in the woman’s womb. The first occasion was after the death of Isabel’s elder half-sister Sybil, when Isabel was the only surviving heir to the kingdom. ‘Imād al-Dīn describes how the Marquis of Montferrat “arracha cette reine à son mari” – tore this queen from her husband – and married her himself. “It was said that she was pregnant and that she had not emerged from the net of pregnancy, but the sacred character of a womb in labour hardly concerned them.”25 None of the Christian sources mentioned this pregnancy and no birth was later recorded; yet it is interesting that ‘Imād al-Dīn spoke up for the rights of the woman, or at least of her womb. The occasion is after the assassination of the Marquis, Confad of Monferrat. When the Marquis was laid low and precipitated into hell, the king of England exercised power at Tyre; he charged Count Henry [of Champagne] with the task of governing the city and entrusted his affairs to him. The following night, the latter penetrated the home of the princess, the Marquis’s widow, claiming that he was the most worthy to marry her; she was pregnant but that did not prevent the marriage – which was even more vile than concubinage. I said to one of their messengers: “Then to whom will the child be

104  Nicholson attributed?” He replied: “It’s the princess’s child.” See the licentiousness of this band of miscreants!26 In this instance ‘Imād al-Dīn was repelled by the casual attitude of the Frankish messenger who assumed that as the child’s birthright was transmitted through its mother, the identity of the father was immaterial. The picture he paints is open to question: Ambroise and Richard of Templo depicted Count Henry II of Champagne as hesitating before marrying Isabel after the Marquis’ murder.27 Yet the point on which ‘Imād al-Dīn laid greatest stress is clear: a widow should not be forced to remarry when she is still pregnant by her late husband. The European Christians did not respect the rights of the pregnant woman and the unborn child, and this demonstrated their godlessness. Some Western writers held a different view of Isabel of Jerusalem’s divorce to that of ‘Imād al-Dīn. The author of the contemporary account of the Third Crusade known as IP 1 criticised Isabel (whom he called Elizabeth) for abandoning her husband to marry the Marquis of Montferrat. He depicted her as weak and easily persuaded to abandon her legal husband to marry the Marquis. However, her husband was also to blame: IP 1 accused him of being effeminate.28 Isabel’s husband Humfrey IV of Toron was lord of Kerak and Montréal through his mother Stephanie de Milly. The Qadi Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddad described Humfrey as a man of high rank in the kingdom of Jerusalem, “a lord and son of a lord”, who acted as an interpreter between the sultan and the Christians: “a handsome youth, although he was clean-shaven as is their fashion”.29 The implication was that he was not quite a man: he was only a youth, without yet having the beard of manhood. The author of IP 1 described him as “more like a woman than a man: he had a gentle manner and a stammer” (vir femine quam viro proprior, gestu mollis, sermone fractus), and stated that he wanted to claim the kingdom for himself through his wife, only to have his wife and the kingdom taken from him and given to the Marquis.30 “Ernoul-Bernard” and the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, which may preserve the opinion of a part of the Palestinian Frankish nobility, depicted Humfrey as idle and a coward because in 1186 he had submitted to Queen Sybil rather than complying with the wishes of Baldwin of Ramla (of Ibelin) and Count Raymond III of Tripoli, who wished to make him king.31 In the context of the divorce, “Ernoul-Bernard” depicted the Marquis Conrad telling the bishop of Beauvais “que Hainfrois estoit si mauvais qu’il ne poroit le tiere tenir” (literally, that Humfrey was so useless that he could not hold the land), while the Continuator of William of Tyre stated that he “estoit failli de cuer et noreture de feme” – had a cowardly heart and was trained like a woman.32 Ernoul-Bernard depicted the bishop talking Humfrey into giving up his wife.33 In the Continuation, the Marquis’s supporters challenged Humfrey to a duel to prove that the marriage was against the will of both Isabel herself and King Baldwin IV, but he was too cowardly to fight; then those who had been bribed by the Marquis persuaded him to give up his wife by telling him that he could not govern the kingdom, as it would be too much trouble and hard work for him; and he believed them and let his wife

Behaviour towards women  105 go.34 But Isabel was in love with Humfrey and was only persuaded to leave him after much bullying by her ambitious mother.35 In fact, when a papal legate made enquiries in 1213, witnesses of the divorce gave evidence to show that Humfrey loved his wife and had had no intention of giving her up, but did not have the authority to stand against the nobles in the army who wanted to ensure the Marquis’s ongoing aid for the campaign.36 Yet it was not enough to be fluent in Arabic and French, noble-born and gentle; a man also had to stand up for his own interests and defend his right to his woman, and Humfrey failed to do this. Although ‘Imād al-Dīn depicted Saladin as a merciful and generous victor in his treatment of the Lady of Kerak and her daughter-in-law, he brushed over his treatment of Queen Sybil, stating only: “pour la reine, il la traita selon son rang, la réunit à son époux” (“as for the queen, he dealt with her according to her rank, he reunited her with her husband”).37 The Christian commentators did not support this statement, stating that Saladin broke his word to release the king.38 After Saladin captured King Guy at Hattin on 4 July 1187, Queen Sybil and their daughters went to her city of Ascalon, which Sybil defended against Saladin, only surrendering on condition that Saladin release Guy – which he then failed to do.39 Saladin captured most of the remaining towns of the kingdom, and then besieged Jerusalem; Sybil commanded the defence of the city with Patriarch Eraclius of Jerusalem and Balian of Ibelin.40 When the city had been surrendered Sybil set off for the city of Antioch by way of Nablūs, where Saladin allowed her to see Guy (with more weeping) but did not release him.41 Guy was at last released in spring or early summer 1188.42 In short, Saladin did not keep his word to the Queen to release King Guy in 1187. ‘Imād al-Dīn could have justified this on the basis that it was not in his interests to do so: the merciful and generous victor could be merciful and generous only if he did not undermine his own position. In fact, Saladin was criticised by the commentator Ibn al-Athir for allowing the defeated Christians to depart and carry on the war from elsewhere, rather than killing them or keeping them captive. Describing how Saladin was unable to take Tyre, Ibn al-Athir commented: “No one was to blame for this but Saladin, for he was the person who sent the Frankish troops there and supplied it with manpower and resources from the populations of Acre, Ascalon, Jerusalem and elsewhere, as we have previously told.”43 Perhaps ‘Imād al-Dīn’s lengthy account of Saladin’s treatment of the Lady of Kerak and her daughter-in-law was to defend Saladin’s actions as much as to praise him.44 Queen Sybil also suffered less-than-generous treatment from a Christian military leader. She had apparently intended to embark for Europe in October/November 1187, but could not get a ship; the author of IP 1 stated that Marquis Conrad of Montferrat, who had taken over the defence of the port of Tyre, had her ship carried away to Tyre.45 This was just the first of the occasions when this author criticised the Marquis for his treatment of women, the next being when after Queen Sybil’s death he decided to steal Humfrey’s wife and marry her himself. IP 1 comments that he was industrious and was full of clever arguments (comparing him to the classical villains Sinon, Ulysses, and Mithridates); he was subdolus

106  Nicholson (cunning), and he bribed the nobles and clergy to support him.46 Ambroise and Richard de of Templo also pointed out that he already had two wives living, one in Montferrat (who is mentioned in Boccaccio’s Decameron) and one in Constantinople (Theodora Angela, sister of the emperor Isaac Angelus).47 We have already seen that ‘Imād al-Dīn also condemned his actions.48 The Marquis’s treatment of Isabel of Jerusalem only confirmed to both Christian and Muslim that he was a treacherous enemy. Another villain whose villainy was represented through his treatment of women was Isaac Ducas Comnenus, self-proclaimed emperor of Cyprus. Roger of Howden, Ambroise, Richard of Templo, Ernoul-Bernard and the Continuators of William of Tyre depicted Richard the Lionheart’s conquest of Cyprus as justified self-defence: in particular, the Emperor had attempted to capture the ship that was carrying Richard’s sister Joanna, dowager queen of Sicily, and his brideto-be Berengaria of Navarre.49 In contrast, according to these writers, when the crusaders captured the Emperor’s daughter, Richard entrusted her to his queen to be cared for and educated.50 Again, the victor showed generosity to the conquered. Saladin was not the only powerful Muslim ruler of this period who was depicted demonstrating his worthiness as a ruler through his protection of noblewomen of a different religion. Sultan Baybars’ (d. 1277) treatment of Isabel of Ibelin provides another example. Isabel of Ibelin, great-granddaughter of John the old lord of Ibelin, inherited Beirut in 1264.51 On 9 May 1269 Isabel and Sultan Baybars concluded a ten-year treaty that guaranteed the security of those trading between their territories. The treaty calls Isabel (in Peter M. Holt’s English translation) “the exalted, virtuous and glorious Lady [blank], the daughter of [blank], the Lady of Beirut and all its mountains and lowlands”,52 acknowledging her authority and explaining its basis and extent. Holt points out that although (unlike other treaties Baybars made) Isabel did not have to cede her control of Beirut to Baybars: “Baybars regarded the treaty as giving him a kind of protectorate over Beirut.” A few years later, in 1273, Isabel’s second husband, Hamo l’Estrange (“the Stranger” or “the Foreigner”), died overseas. As Isabel was a leading noble and landowner in the kingdom, King Hugh III of Cyprus and Jerusalem had her taken to Cyprus to arrange a new marriage for her. Baybars immediately protested to the king. According to Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, Baybars wrote: There is a truce between myself and this Lady. Her husband travelled only after committing her to my Majesty: and it was her custom, if she travelled, to commit her land to me. On this occasion she has sent me no ambassador. She must be produced, and my ambassador must go and have sight of her; otherwise I have the best right to her country.53 Hugh’s counter-argument was that a truce he had made with Baybars in 1272 also covered Beirut, but he was unable to counter Baybars’ claim to a protectorate over Isabel. He had to release Isabel, who returned to her city and held it until her death circa 1282, when her sister Eschiva succeeded her.54

Behaviour towards women  107 Obviously Baybars was taking every opportunity to expand his authority, but he was also intervening to protect the lady from an over-zealous lord. In this he was fulfilling the role of the good lord who should protect women no matter what their religion. Of course, King Hugh III could have argued that he was also protecting Isabel by trying to ensure a good husband for her; but Baybars pre-empted this by depicting himself as the good lord and Hugh as the oppressor. As noted above, non-noble women seldom benefited from these ideals of correct treatment. However, both ‘Imād al-Dīn and Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddad repeated the heart-warming tale from May 1191 of the Christian mother whose three-month-old un-weaned baby girl was stolen from her at night by Muslim thieves and restored to her by Saladin.55 However, on his second telling of the story Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddad explains that the thieves had initially offered the baby to Saladin. Clearly, he had refused it, as by the time the mother arrived to beg him to return her baby she had been sold in the market. Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddad states that Saladin’s action in returning the baby to her mother (with weeping) showed the sultan’s gentleness, generosity, mercy, and compassion. But Friedman has pointed out that “Muslim law stipulated that captive children should not normally be taken from their mothers when dividing the spoils of war”.56 Saladin’s action was correct, but it was within what would be expected of a good Muslim ruler. The examples discussed so far suggest that Muslim commentators regarded correct treatment of women as a measure of their religion’s superiority over Christianity. ‘Imād al-Dīn indicated that whereas Saladin treated noblewomen correctly, the Christians did not. Likewise, Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir depicted Baybars acting in defence of the widowed noblewoman, in contrast to the Christian king who wanted to force her into marriage. In the Turkish Dânişmendnâme, written in the mid-thirteenth century, Christian noblewomen convert to Islam and marry Muslim warriors, because (they state) only Muslims know how to treat women correctly.57 But medieval Christian writers depicted the same situation in reverse. In the fourteenth-century French verse epic Florent et Octavien, in a discussion between two “Saracen” (in this context, Muslim) women, the Saracen princess Marsebille states that a Christian knight would be a fool to become a Saracen because Saracens do not value women. In evidence of this, she states that sultans and kings have at least ten wives, ignore their wives when their wives are pregnant, and think women are no more valuable than sheep. In contrast: But when a Christian man takes a wife, there is only one bed for them for all the days of their lives; not even a king, prince or marquis can take more than one wife. (lines 3657–61) Marsebille vows that she would be happy to adopt a religion like this.58 This view was paralleled in other medieval French fictional texts. The message is perhaps stated most clearly in the prose romance Perceforest, whose date is disputed: one of its modern editors judged that it was written in the 1340s. Here a

108  Nicholson noble knight declares that God had laid down that males should honour females, and that in failing to do so knights sin against God: We, who have or ought to have reason and sense, have abused, usurped and taken from ladies and young women their rights that the God of Nature [that is, God – Perceforest is set in the pre-Christian era] had given them, for most of us delight in raping them and taking what no man should have if it does not please them that they should take it when they want it, and in so doing we trespass against the God of Nature. For this reason God has punished us, for we have dishonoured what we ought to have honoured, as all do except us. So I advise that we should first repent of our misdeeds and make amends to our God.59 He argues that in failing to honour women, he and his comrades have put themselves outside civilised society, and in order to re-join it they must improve their treatment of women. But did this apply to all women? In the mid-fifteenth century Antoine de la Salle’s novel about the career of the young nobleman Jehan de Saintré – who would eventually go on crusade in Prussia – depicted Jehan’s lady mentor “La Dame” advising him not to haunt “foles femmes”, her translation of the Latin word “mulier”; yet he should honour his lady.60 She does not give a social distinction, stating, “toutes sont dames en amours”, but we could read this as implying that noblewomen should be regarded with more respect than common women.

Conclusion Overall, both Muslim and Christian writers in this period believed that treatment of women was an important measure of a leader’s moral worth, and both emphasised that their own religion was superior over others because their leading men treated women correctly while their opponents did not. Saladin was singled out for his merciful and generous treatment of women when he was in a position of strength and could have crushed them. Likewise, Baybars was depicted as the protector of a noblewoman against her overbearing overlord. Christian writers, anxious to avoid accusations that their heroes were led astray by women, made less of merciful treatment of women, but emphasised bad treatment: so the Marquis of Montferrat and Isaac Comnenus came in for particular criticism. That said, the true gentleman was expected to protect his own interests: so Saladin was not blamed by Muslim commentators for delaying the release of King Guy, while Humfrey of Toron was blamed by Christian writers for failing to hold on to his wife. These values applied primarily to noblewomen, although writers of both religions also gave an occasional example of non-noble women benefiting from them. Although these depictions were fictionalised to a greater or lesser extent, they act as a signpost of cultural expectation and approval or condemnation.

Behaviour towards women  109

Notes 1 Yvonne Friedman, “Captivity and Ransom: The Experience of Women”, in Susan Edgington and Sarah Lambert eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), 121–39; Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Capitivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 162–86. 2 Paul Gerhard Schmidt, “ ‘Peregrinatio periculosa.’ Thomas von Froidmont über die Jerusalem-Fahrten seiner Schwester Margareta”, in Ulrich Justus Stache, Wolfgang Maaz and Fritz Wagner eds, Kontinuität und Wandel: Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire. Franco Munari zum 65. Geburtstag (Hildesheim: Weidemann, 1986), 461–85. 3 Friedman, “Captivity and Ransom”, 126. 4 Friedman, “Captivity and Ransom”, 127–8; also discussed in Philippe Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom and Terror: Christianity, Violence and the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 266–7. 5 William, Archbishop of Tyre: Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum continuatio medieaualis 63, 63ª (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 1: 464–5, book 10, chapter  10 (11); Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi, “Historia”, in l’Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres ed., Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, vol.  1, part 1 (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1844), 414–15; Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 170. 6 Old French translation of William of Tyre in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols, ed. l’Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1844–95) vol. 1, part 1 (1844), 414–15; Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs: texte français du XIIIe siècle, revu et annote,, 2 vols, ed. Paulin Paris (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1879–80), 345–6; Philip Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 7: Handyside suggests that the translation was made in response to the Fifth Crusade. 7 For a recent discussion of the attitudes towards women on crusade and review of past scholarship see Alan V. Murray, “Sex, Death and the Problem of Single Women in the Armies of the First Crusade”, in Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys eds, Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor (Farnham: Ashgate, V), 255–70. 8 “L’estoire Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer”, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux (1859), 2: 1–481, 50, book 24, chapter 33; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. Margaret Ruth Morgan (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1982), 45, chapter  32. Peter Edbury has pointed out how far the Old French continuations resemble a chivalric romance: “Conrad of Montferrat v. Saladin: The Siege of Tyre (Nov–Dec 1187)”, paper presented at a symposium on Saladin and the Third Crusade, Institute of Historical Research, London, 4 March 2015. 9 For the date of the so-called “Colbert-Fontainebleau” recension of the Continuations see Peter Edbury, “Ernoul, Eracles, and the Beginnings of Frankish Rule in Cyprus, 1191–1232”, in Sabine Rogge and Michael Grünbart eds, Medieval Cyprus: A Place of Cultural Encounter (Münster: Waxmann, 2015), 29–51, at 34–5. 10 Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, 163–4 (for date, see Edbury, “Ernoul, Eracles”, 31); “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 53–5, book 24, chapter 36; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 47–8, chapter 35. 11 For this as the usual punishment for witches see Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, revised edition (London: Pimlico, 1993), 164. 12 Helen Nicholson, “Women on the Third Crusade”, Journal of Medieval History 23(4) (1997), 335–49. Some of the material that follows has also been discussed in my article “ ‘La Damoisele del chastel’: Women’s Role in the Defence and Functioning of

110  Nicholson

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Castles in Medieval Writing from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries”, in Micaela Sinibaldi, Kevin J. Lewis, Balázs Major, and Jennifer A. Thompson eds, Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant. The Archaeology and History of the Latin East (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016), 387–401. On this subject see also Matthew Bennett, “Virile Latins, Effeminate Greeks and Strong Women: Gender Definitions on Crusade?” in Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), 16–30 (at 24); Michael R. Evans, “ ‘Unfit to Bear Arms’: The Gendering of Arms and Armour in Accounts of Women on Crusade”, in Edgington and Lambert ed., Gendering, 45–58 Usāma ibn Munqidh, in An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh, trans. P. K. Hitti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929), 164–5. ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahāmi, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, trans. H. Massé, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 10 (Paris, 1972), 34, 50, 202, 258 (“the Franks tried to rescue them but in vain”), 286 (“the sultan gave them to those who captured them”). I have used Henri Massé’s French translation of this text; the English translations of the French are my own. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 81, 135. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 94, 143. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 105–7; for his rendering of Humfrey’s name, see 27. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 105. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 105–6. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 106. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 106–7. By breaking peace treaties and violating his word, so that Saladin had killed him with his own hand: ‘Imād al-Dīn, 27–8. “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 98–9, book 24, chapter  63; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 72, ch. 58. The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s “Estoire de la Guerre sainte”, 2 vols, ed. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber, trans. Marianne Ailes (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003), lines 1068–71; L’Estoire de la Guerre sainte, ed. Catherine CroizyNaquet, Les classiques français du Moyen Âge, 174 (Paris: Champion, 2014), lines 1071–4 (p.  361); ltinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 38.1 (London, 1864), book 2, chapter  23, 171–2; translation in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, translated Helen Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 170. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 304. ‘Imād al-Dīn, 377. ltinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 343; Ambroise’s “Estoire de la Guerre sainte”, eds Ailes and Barber, lines 8913–28; L’Estoire de la Guerre sainte, ed. Croizy-Naquet, lines 8935–50 (p. 614). Das Itinerarium peregrinorum: eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, ed. Hans Eberhard Mayer, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae historica, 18 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1962), 352–3. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawadir al-Sultāniyya wa’l-Mahāsin al-Yūsufiyya by Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 173, 179, 194, 196, 198, 231; quotations at 173, 194. Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 352–3; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 120, book 1, chapter 63. Chronique d’Ernoul, 134–6, 267; “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 30–1, book 24, chapters 18–19; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 33–4, chapters 18–19; The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation, ed. and trans. Peter W. Edbury (Aldershot: Scolar, 1998), 27.

Behaviour towards women  111 32 “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 153, book 25, chapter 11; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 106, ch. 104; Conquest of Jerusalem, 96. 33 Chronique d’Ernoul, 267. 34 “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 153, book 25, chapter 11; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 106, ch. 104; Conquest of Jerusalem, 96. 35 “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 151–4, book 25, chapters  11–12; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 105–7, chapters 104–6; Conquest of Jerusalem, 95–7. 36 Conquest of Jerusalem, 172–4. 37 ‘Imād al-Dīn, 106. 38 For what follows, see Helen J. Nicholson, “ ‘La roine preude femme et bonne dame’: Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (1186–1190) in History and Legend, 1186–1300”, The Haskins Society Journal 15 (2004), 110–24. 39 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series 66 (London: Longman, 1875), 22. 40 Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd edn, trans. John Gillingham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 135; Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 264. 41 Das Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 266; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 23, book 1, chapter 10. 42 Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 268–9; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 25–6, book 1, chapter 11. 43 The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh, part 2: The years 541–589/1146–1193: The Age of Nur al-Din and Saladin, trans. D. S. Richards (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), 337. 44 Ibn al-Athir included summaries of Imad al-Dīn’s accounts of Saladin’s generosity to Queen Sybil and to the Lady of Kerak, and added a brief note of his release of a Greek royal lady who had been living in Jerusalem as a nun: The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, part 2, 333. 45 Das Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 266; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 23, book 1, chapter 10. 46 Ambroise’s “Estoire de la Guerre sainte”, ed. Ailes and Barber, lines 4124–30; L’Estoire de la Guerre sainte, ed. Croizy-Naquet, lines 4130–6 (p. 457); Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. Mayer, 352–3; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 119–20, book 1, chapter 63; Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 121–3 and notes. 47 Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 122, book 1, chapter 63; Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 124–5 and note 264; Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 2nd edn, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), first day, fifth story: 48–51. 48 ‘Imād al-Dīn, 304. 49 Roger of Howden, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, published as: Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis: the Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I, A.D. 1169–1192; known commonly under the name of Benedict of Peterborough, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 49 (London: Longman, 1867), 2:162–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 51, (London: Longman, 1870), 3: 105– 12; Ambroise’s “Estoire de la Guerre sainte”, eds Ailes and Barber, lines 1346–51, 1420–46; L’estoire de la Guerre sainte, ed. Croizy-Naquet, lines 1349–54, 1424–48; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 182–8, book 2, chapters 28–31; Chronique d’Ernoul, 270–2; “L’estoire Eracles empereur”, 159–61, book 25, chapters 17–18; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 112–15, sections 111–12; Edbury, “Ernoul, Eracles”, 39–40. 50 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 3: 110–11, 228; Ambroise’s “Estoire de la Guerre sainte”, lines 1972–9, 2001–3, 2086–9; L’estoire de la Guerre sainte, ed. CroizyNaquet, lines 1977–82, 2004–6, 2088–92; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, 202, 204, book 2, chapters 39, 40; Chronicle of the Third Crusade, book 2, chapters 39, 41, 193–4, and 381 note 104.

112  Nicholson 51 Peter Malcolm Holt, “The Treaty of Al-Ẓahir Baybars with the Lady Isabel of Beirut: 667/1269”, in his Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290: Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 42–7. 52 Holt, “The Treaty of Al-Ẓahir Baybars”, 44. 53 Holt, “The Treaty of Al-Ẓahir Baybars”, 44, citing Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥim ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders, 2 vols, eds Ursula Lyons, Malcolm C. Lyons, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: Heffer, 1971), 2: 164, section 209. 54 Holt, “The treaty of Al-Ẓahir Baybars”, 43–4. 55 ‘Imād al-Dīn, 294–5; The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, 37, 147–8. 56 Friedman, “Captivity and Ransom”, 129. 57 Tivadar Palágyi, “Regards croisés sur l’épopée française et le destân turc”, Crusades 2 (2003), 41–54 (at 45 and 47). 58 “Mais quant ung crestïen a une femme pris | Et sont par marïage ensemble consortis | Tous les jours de leur vie n’y est pour eulx q’un lis; | Et sy n’y a ne roy ne prince ne marchis | qui en peust avoir q’une en marïage pris”: Florent et Octavien: chanson de geste du XIVe siècle, 2 vols, ed. Noëlle Laborderie, Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen Âge, 17 (Paris: Champion, 1991), 1: 122, lines 3657–61: quoted in Helen Nicholson, “Love in a Hot Climate: Gender Relations in Florent et Octavien”, in Sarah Lambert and Helen J. Nicholson eds, Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 21–36, at 24. 59 “Nous, qui avions ou devions avoir sens et raison, avons exurpé et tollu aux dames et aux demoiselles et abusé contre la franchise que le Dieu de Nature leur avoit donnee, car le plus de nous se delectent en elles efforcer et tollir ce que homme ne doibt avoir s’il ne leur plaist que quant ilz le peuent avoir de gré, et en ce mesfaisons nous contre le Dieu de Nature. Et pour ceste raison pour certain nous a Dieu grevez, car nous avons deshonnouré ce que nous devions avoir honnouré ainsi que tous font fors nous. Sy nous repentirons premiers par mon conseil de noz mesfaiz et l’amenderons a nostre Dieu.” Le Roman de Perceforest, première partie, ed. Jane Taylor, Textes Littéraires Français 279 (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 401, lines 11983–94. 60 Antoine de la Salle, Jehan de Saintré, eds Jean Misrahi and Charles A. Knudson, Textes Littéraires français (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 26–9.

7 Contrasting masculinities in the Baltic crusades Teutonic Knights and secular crusaders at war and peace in late medieval Prussia Alan V. Murray Introduction A crusade was regarded by the church as a form of pilgrimage, and thus – at least for the first century or so of the movement – expeditions directed to the Holy Land included not only men who had enlisted with the aim of fighting, but often clerics and other non-combatant men, as well as women and children. The most important element was recruited from the warrior classes of Western Europe: princes, lords, and knights, the latter serving either on their own initiative or in the retinues of greater men. In their lives outwith crusading, such men’s masculinity typically found expression in long established behaviours and activities: the protection of family, vassals, and other dependants; the defence and acquisition of property; the accumulation of social capital through advantageous marriages, largesse, and display; and the impregnation of women and the production of heirs. The exercise of violence was a concomitant tool of many of these activities, and one of the main intentions of Pope Urban II when he inaugurated the crusades at the council of Clermont in 1095 was to channel the destructive violence of the knights away from Christian society and direct it against the enemies of Christendom; the greatest appeal of crusading for the warrior classes was that it allowed them to engage in one of the prime expressions of their identity while still enabling them to gain spiritual reward in the service of the Church. Similarly, the support of indigent crusaders and the hegemonic acquisition of new followers by leaders was fundamental to the dynamic of crusade armies.1 However, other expressions of warrior masculinity could not simply be transferred to a crusade environment. While courage was seen as an ideal virtue, writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III insisted that other typical traits of noble and knightly behaviour and lifestyle were to be avoided. Crusaders were expected to show contrition and humility and dress modestly. Bernard argued that ostentatious displays of clothing, hairstyles, and finery were inappropriate to the masculine virtues he expected of crusaders.2 In the course of the twelfth century crusaders were increasingly expected to show sexual restraint or even chastity. A common complaint in accounts of the First Crusade by chroniclers (who were clearly reflecting the thinking of the clerical leadership) was of sexual excess

114  Murray which, it was thought, had brought divine disfavour on the enterprise, and at various points disciplinary measures were promulgated with the aim of reducing sexual immorality.3 Whether married couples actually abstained from sexual activity for the duration of their vows is, of course, debateable, but the important thing is that for the majority of men from the warrior classes, the question did not arise. Among the princes, barons, and knights, few men were accompanied by either wives or daughters. Among these social groups, wives often had the key function of looking after the family lands and rights while their husbands were absent, while unmarried daughters were simply too precious a social resource to be put at risk on a lengthy journey to the East.4 In the First Crusade most of the high-status women present were the wives of lords who intended to remain in the East and found principalities of their own, such as Elvira, wife of Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Godevere of Tosny, wife of Baldwin of Boulogne.5 There were of course other prominent women in later crusades, but they were rare. Some seem to have been moved by piety, like Sibylla of Anjou, who accompanied her husband Thierry, count of Flanders, but in 1159 decided against returning with him to the West and entered the convent of Bethany.6 However, the negative stories about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who accompanied her husband Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade, are undoubtedly a reflection of clerical disapproval of the presence of women in crusade armies.7 For the majority of the warrior classes who went unaccompanied by wives, the expectations of chaste behaviour were probably no great hardship since they could resume conjugal relations on their return, while those who had departed without having been married might well return with their prospects for an advantageous marriage enhanced. The problematic nature of the presence of women on crusades was reflected in measures taken to reduce their number during both Third and Fourth Crusades.8 Such prohibitions were concerned as much with practical as moral issues, and were intended to reduce numbers of non-combatants who might produce a drain on resources. From 1189–90 almost all expeditions to the East travelled by ship, and the costs of passage were simply too high to give space to anyone but fighting men, squires, artisans, and clerics. The change to naval transport meant that women could be physically prevented from joining an expedition, and from this time the only women who accompanied crusades were those of high status, such as consorts of leaders and their female companions, or specialists such as laundresses. Those forms of crusading that were directed against target areas outside the Holy Land, that is, in the campaigns in Iberia, in the Baltic region, and in the Balkans and Turkey, were exclusively male activities. It is one of these areas, late medieval Prussia, which forms the subject of this essay.

Crusading in Prussia and Lithuania The Teutonic Order developed from a field hospital founded by German crusaders at the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade. By 1199 this organisation had been transformed into a military religious order on the model of the Templars.

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  115 While the order’s main focus in the thirteenth century remained the defence of the Holy Land, it gradually spread its activities to other parts of the periphery of Christendom. In 1225–6 it was invited by Conrad, duke of Mazovia, to assist in the defence of Christian Poland against attacks from the heathen Prussians, and proceeded to occupy the area known in German as the Kulmerland (around mod. Chełmno, Poland). By 1260 the order had conquered all of the territory inhabited by the Prussian tribes, most of which had at least in name accepted Christianity along with the rule of the order. After the loss of Acre to the Mamlūks in 1291 the order had transferred its headquarters to Venice, but in 1309 the grand master, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, moved his residence to the castle of Marienburg (mod. Malbork, Poland), which became the capital of the “order state” (Ordensstaat) in Prussia. The establishment of a sovereign territory on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea brought the order considerable security and freedom of action; it occurred soon after Philip IV of France had begun the process which led to the destruction of the Order of the Temple, and the Teutonic brethren must have been aware of the vulnerability of the Templars in France and elsewhere. The move to Prussia also signalled the importance of the order’s continuing struggle against the heathen. From the 1280s its main military efforts were directed against a new enemy, the duchy of Lithuania, with the aim of bringing about the conversion of its pagan population to Christianity.9 During the conquest of Prussia the Teutonic Order was often assisted by crusaders from Germany and other parts of Western Christendom, but with the establishment of the order state as a base, and the provision of secure land and sea routes, there was a huge increase in the number of crusaders who came to join in the campaigns launched into Lithuanian territory, known in Middle High German (MHG) as reysen. At the time of its greatest strength, the Teutonic Order in Prussia could muster between 800 and 1000 knight brethren, and although it could draw on sergeants as well as secular vassals and hired troops, many of its forces had to be retained to garrison its many fortresses.10 The assistance of the crusaders (known as “guests”), well versed in warfare and providing their own horses, equipment, and service personnel, thus represented a considerable augmentation of the military forces available to be deployed against Lithuania. This was probably the most socially exclusive form of crusading of any time, in all senses of the word. The guests were almost entirely drawn from the ranks of the nobility and knights, together with their military retainers and servants. They included a few members of the burgess class, but we find none of the independent, popular elements that characterised the early crusades to the Holy Land. Almost all of the non-noble participants were bound by service and hierarchy to the noble crusaders. Most importantly, neither guests nor their retainers seem to have included any women whatsoever. Given that the campaigns in which they took part were organised and directed by a military religious order whose members were sworn to celibacy, the reysen against Lithuania were thus the most masculine environment of any of the known examples of crusading, in that it drew on two social groups, from which – the one by constitution and the other by temporary circumstance – women were excluded. In what follows I will

116  Murray attempt to establish contrasting models which set out the main characteristics of the masculinity of each group.

Monastic knighthood: the Teutonic Order As the Teutonic Order was founded on the model of the Templars, much of its ethos derived from the Templar Rule, as well as from the treatise written in support of the Templars by Bernard of Clairvaux, De laude novae militae (In Praise of the New Knighthood). The central pillars of the order’s ideology were the three vows taken by new knight brethren, namely poverty, chastity, and obedience.11 These vows were of course common to most monastic organisations, but the requirements of a military order whose main task was to fight against powerful heathen opponents went far beyond this. Unlike purely monastic orders, its members were obliged to endure suffering, violence, and, if necessary, death at the hands of its enemies. These dangers probably applied more to the conquest of Prussia in the thirteenth century than to any other front and any other period in the order’s history. Today we may be impressed by the vast brick and stone fortress at Marienburg, but in the conquest period the typical duty of a knight brother was to serve in the garrison of an isolated timber fort, supported by only a handful of his fellows, sergeants, and serving brethren, and outnumbered by Prussian converts whose loyalty was often suspect. The first extended expression of its ideology must, however, be sought in historical works produced within the order in Prussia itself. The first of these was the Chronica Terrae Prussiae written by Peter of Dusburg, a priest of the order, in 1324/30 on the orders of the grand master Werner von Orseln.12 Dusburg sets out the qualities required by brethren of the order in a chapter of his history entitled “Of Carnal and Spiritual Arms” (De armis carnalibus et spiritualibus). He gives an allegorical reading of different arms: the shield (scutum), sword (gladius), lance (lancea), buckler (clipeus), hauberk (lorica), bow and quiver (arcus et pharetra), arrow (sagitta), slingshot (funda), staff (baculum), and helmet (galea), each of which is associated with a virtue or quality expected from a member of the order.13 This is done in an allegorical sense, in which Dusburg draws on biblical examples (primarily from the Old Testament). Thus, the staff carried by the young David into battle against the Philistines is identified with the Holy Cross, and the five stones he carried to use in his slingshot are identified with the five wounds of Christ. Dusburg’s work was written with a didactic purpose, but it is debateable how much of the fairly complex Bible exegesis would have been accessible to the fighting monks and sergeants to whom such passages were evidently directed; most of the knight brethren and all of the sergeants would have been illiterate and few would have known any Latin beyond short prayers and stock phrases.14 This was the reason why, within a decade or so, the next grand master, Luder von Braunschweig, ordered a translation into Middle High German verse to be made by another of the order’s priests, Nicolaus von Jeroschin. The verse chronicle was still the main vehicle for the writing of history in the German-speaking countries, and the use of the vernacular was not only more accessible to those who did not

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  117 know Latin, but also facilitated readings of the text to make it accessible to those who did the actual fighting. It is thus evident that it was in the German translation that the history and the religious precepts which accompanied it were made known within the order, and for this reason it is Jeroschin’s history which is primarily discussed in what follows.15 Jeroschin gives a similar discussion to Dusburg, in which he introduces “a new form of warfare” fought against the Devil, and instituted by Moses, Judas Maccabaeus, and the early martyrs. It is new because it is fought not only with physical, but with spiritual weapons.16 Its second key component is gedult, that is, endurance, or the need to suffer for the faith.17 Jeroschin goes on to explain the symbolism of the actual weapons and armour used by the brethren of the order, in which each is linked with an equivalent spiritual value:18

Physical weapons

Spiritual weapons

the buckler (pukulêr) the sword (swert) the spear (sper) the shield (schilt) the hauberk (halsberc) the bow (bogin) the quiver (kochir) the arrow (stral)

faith (geloubin) good deeds (gûte tât) good intentions (vorsatz) God’s word (gotis wort) righteousness (gerechtikeit) obedience (gehôrsam) poverty (armût) chastity (kûscheit)

Figure 1 Symbolism of physical and spiritual weapons according to Nicolaus von Jeroschin.

In this scheme we see the three monastic precepts of obedience, poverty, and chastity incorporated along with other Christian virtues, as well as the word of God in a central position. This ideological framework for life within the Order was not merely theoretical, since it was buttressed throughout the works of both Dusburg and Jeroschin by numerous anecdotes reflecting conventual life, which directly relate to the three vows or to the other qualities praised by them. Before joining the order, Bertold Brühaven (later commander at Königsberg) thought that “poverty and obedience were tolerable, but chastity terrified him”. So for a year he slept every night naked alongside a “gentle, well-brought up young girl whose beauty was unequalled in the region” as a way of testing his ability to remain chaste.19 Hermann von Lichtenburg “disciplined his body day and night with many chastisements” and “wore armour instead of a shirt against his skin”, so that on campaign his body was covered in sores as if he had been torn by thorns. His confessor admonished him but he refused to remove the armour. However, the same night the Virgin Mary appeared to him and with a single touch healed all of his wounds.20 Brother Ulrich, a Bavarian, was so reckless in battle that the grand master feared for his life; Ulrich’s explanation was that it was only through such recklessness that he could hope to receive five wounds like those suffered by Christ.21 Such examples could be multiplied. Clearly, they are meant to have a homiletic and

118  Murray improving character, and there are many admonitory anecdotes of brethren who failed to live up to the order’s strictures, ranging from profane language and gluttony to more serious crimes. Werner von Orseln, who commissioned Dusburg’s history, was murdered by some of his brethren who resented his measures against indiscipline. Nevertheless, such anecdotes still show how many knight brethren attempted to fulfil the order’s precepts or even to go further than what had been surely expected. We can rearrange these virtues to show what was envisaged as making up the new form of warfare which was the raison d’être of the order: New Warfare (MHG nûwer strît) = spiritual weapons (geistlîche wâpene) and patient endurance (gedult) Virtues faith good deeds good intentions righteousness

Vows God’s word

obedience poverty chastity

Figure 2 Scheme of qualities expected of Teutonic Knights according to Nicolaus von Jeroschin.

One could elaborate this model by drawing on additional evidence such as devotional literature and practices. The Virgin Mary occupied the supreme position in the religious ideology of the order, but we also find evidence for the veneration of a wide range of biblical exemplars and saints: Judas Maccabaeus, Judith, George, Barbara, Katherine of Alexandria, Margaret of Antioch, Elizabeth of Thuringia, and Dorothea of Montau. It is notable that many of these saints were female, and Helen Nicholson has suggested that they embodied the female virtues of humility, patience, and long suffering, which correspond to the idea of gedult, itself a key component of Jeroschin’s scheme of new warfare.22

Secular chivalry: Western crusaders According to the magisterial work of Werner Paravicini, the lay crusaders who travelled to Prussia comprised many hundreds of men from the nobilities of almost every part of Western Christendom: Germany, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, France, Italy, and the Iberian kingdoms. A few names of the most prominent known participants can give a sense of the attraction of these campaigns (with dates of their reysen in parentheses): Ottokar II, king of Bohemia (1255–6 and 1267–8); Otto III, margrave of Brandenburg (1266–7); John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia (1328–9, 1337, and 1344–5); Charles of Luxembourg, later king of Bohemia (1337, 1341, and 1344–5); William, count of Holland (1336–7, 1343–4, and 1344–5); Peter, duke of Bourbon (1344–5); Gaston III Phoebus, count of Foix (1357–8); Jean Le Meingre, known as Boucicaut (1384–5 and 1390–1); John I, duke of Lorraine (1377–8); the knight Geoffrey of Charny (1391); Albrecht III,

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  119 duke of Austria (1377); Henry, duke of Lancaster (1351–2); Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (1365–6); Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (1409); Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland (1390–1); Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Gloucester (1391); and Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby and later king of England as Henry IV (1390–1 and 1392). To these we could add numerous members of the upper- and middle-ranking nobility of Germany, France, England, and the Low Countries. The popularity of crusading to Prussia can be seen from the number of those who made repeat journeys, but even these examples were surpassed by enthusiasts such as William VI, duke of Jülich, and his son William I, duke of Gelre, who went to Prussia no less than seven times each. Thus, in most years of the period concerned, the armies of the Teutonic Order were reinforced by several hundred knights, who with their military retinues added some thousands of fighting men to the forces available for campaigning.23 Crusaders in the wars against Lithuania were often envisaged as possessing the same attributes of crusading as those who went to the Holy Land. Thus, they were originally often described as “pilgrims” (Latin peregrini, MHG pilgerîne), a terminology which was well established for crusaders to the Holy Land. Certainly, many of them took vows to fight against the heathen. It has been argued that the Teutonic Order had the right to issue indulgences on the basis of perpetual privileges granted by the popes in the thirteenth century, but the evidence for the receipt of these is extremely thin. It would seem that most spiritual privileges were obtained by individual crusaders through correspondence with the pope, rather than as a response to preaching campaigns proclaiming specific indulgences.24 In fact, for most of the fourteenth century the fame and the appeal of the reysen were so great that it was often unnecessary for the wider church to undertake preaching campaigns to support them, although on occasion the order itself made several specific appeals for assistance. It is noticeable that from the time of the Fourth Crusade, lay crusaders were increasingly influenced by secular values, such as honour and shame, as can be seen in the narratives of Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari.25 To judge from the descriptions of crusades to Prussia which may be obtained from narratives, accounts, and other sources, by the fourteenth century secular motives and activities seem to have become far more prominent than religious ones. This different motivation may be reflected in a change of nomenclature, by which the crusaders, originally considered as pilgrims, came to be known as “guests” (Lat. hospites, MHG geste).26 One such worldly motivation was the love of women. Most of the men who went on crusade to Prussia were either married or expected to marry according to their rank at some future point in their lives. Yet one of the features that made these wars different from earlier campaigns to the Levant was that they were allmale affairs; we can find no evidence of any women having accompanied them. It is difficult to know why this was so. Women would have been in no greater danger in Prussia than they would have been in the Levant. However, the campaigns against Lithuania, which involved traversing wilderness areas, often in snowy or frozen conditions, presumably did not appeal to women of the noble classes, and having them billeted in Prussian towns while their menfolk were in the field

120  Murray would have been unacceptable on grounds of propriety. This did not mean that the crusaders banished all thought of women while they were away; indeed, there is considerable evidence that they were heavily influenced by notions of the service of ladies which was part of the general cult of chivalry at the time. Thus, the herald and poet Peter Suchenwirt describes the appearance of those who set off with his lord Albrecht III, duke of Austria, in 1377: Caps with ostrich feathers were born by many a proud warrior who had joined the company for the sake of pleasure, in the hope of joy and the ardour of love; as signs of favour they had been given gold, silver and jewels; on their bonnets they bore shining pearls large and small, and garlands and jewels all shone in the sun.27 This description is doubly significant. It identifies secular love as a motive, in contrast to the pure love of Christ and the Virgin which had characterised earlier crusading (and which still formed a principal component of the ideology of the Teutonic Order); its admiring description of ostentatious finery also contrasts with the earlier stress on spiritual rather than material matters.28 There may be some poetic exaggeration here, but the emphasis on wealth undoubtedly reflects the reality of the crusades to Prussia. These were the most socially exclusive forms of crusading, but some of the most expensive. Such expeditions could only be undertaken by those who were independently wealthy, whose lords were prepared to support them, or who were prepared to contract substantial debts. Crusaders travelled with extensive retinues, including serving knights, squires, and soldiers, as well as an extensive range of support personnel: clerks, heralds, musicians, huntsmen, cooks, grooms, and valets. Costs usually involved the purchase or hire of warhorses, palfreys, and packhorses, as well as weapons and armour, and board and lodgings en route and in Prussia itself. Some guests joined the so-called sommer-reyse (summer campaign) fought in August and September, but the majority travelled out in November to join the winterreyse (winter campaign), which began in February. Crusaders wanted to gain renown in the eyes of their fellows through deeds of valour. Poems and narratives record individuals who were distinguished by being the first to breach the gates or mount the walls of Lithuanian fortresses.29 However, actual campaigns filled up only part of the time spent in Prussia, and crusaders had to keep themselves and their retinues at Königsberg for several weeks or months before or after the actual periods spent on campaign. These stays naturally involved costs for lodging, food, and drink, and servants hired locally. Some of the most complete accounts which have survived are those relating to expeditions made by Henry, earl of Derby, in 1390–1 and 1392–3. While in Prussia Henry’s treasurer and his clerks purchased a huge range of commodities on an almost weekly basis: pork, beef, mutton, and bacon; chickens, capons, pigeons, mallards (usually by the dozen); diverse fresh, smoked and salted fish including pike, salmon, eels, sturgeon, codling, and lampreys; cows to provide milk; beer and mead (by the barrel), wine (by the gallon); white bread, eggs, flour, herbs, salt

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  121 (by the barrel), vinegar, pepper, mustard, saffron, ginger, verjuice and oil; linseed, grease, alum and resin; candles, glasses, tents, firewood, horse fodder, hay; stirrups, horseshoes, harnesses; pitch, tar, linen, barrels, and huge quantities of cloth. In addition, there were payments to diverse local artisans, craftsmen and notaries for organising and carrying out the delivery of many of these commodities and the transport of food and equipment by cart and ship, as well as for such diverse tasks as the cleaning of latrines, the construction of cages for hawks and animals, the painting of heraldic devices, and the hiring of Prussian women to look after captive Lithuanian children.30 What made the season especially expensive, however, were the extraordinary expenses incurred in hospitality and entertainment, which was evidently expected of all crusaders of a certain standing. Not all crusaders were as wealthy as Henry of Derby, but many of the lesser nobility and knights could expect to enjoy hospitality and largesse at the expense of the greater men. To maintain honour and status, members of the upper and middle nobility gave several banquets to which they invited not only their own retinues, but guests from among the other crusaders. These events were characterised by competitive extravagance, with the serving of a great deal of meat and fish cooked with spices, alongside expensive, imported wines, and the performance of music and other entertainment either provided by the lord’s own musicians or those hired locally. One can also deduce some cruder entertainments from entries in accounts – thus one of the counts of Holland paid a gulden to a servant named Brabander, whose unique selling point was that he would allow anyone willing to pay for the pleasure to bash him on the head as often as he wanted to.31 Thus, crusaders hardly seem to have suffered privation while in Prussia; indeed, given the opportunities to avail themselves of hospitality, many may well have lived more luxuriously than on their estates at home. Most of the formalised feasting involved male company only, and contact between crusaders and local women of an appropriate social class seems to have been non-existent. The guests may have availed themselves of prostitutes, but evidence for this is sparse.32 The paucity of references to women in the accounts of feasts and other entertainments suggests that the majority of guests restrained any sexual desires for the duration of their stays and compensated for the lack of female company with the physical activities of campaigning and hunting, and by indulging in other all-male activities involving ceremonial feasting and drinking, or, to use a modern term, male bonding. The many feasts held over a period of weeks and months were intended to strengthen comradeship and solidarity, particularly across national and linguistic boundaries. We can find reflexes of such ties years later beyond Prussia. Thus, Jean Froissart tells of how at the siege of Caen in 1346, two French knights, Raoul of Brienne, count of Guînes, and Jean of Melun, lord of Tancarville, were about to be killed by English bowmen, but were able to surrender to the one-eyed Sir Thomas Holand, whom they recognised as having fought alongside them in Granada and Prussia. Froissart gives other similar examples, and these undoubtedly reflect the reality of a shared chivalric culture which was deepened in the course of both recreation and war.33

122  Murray In addition to the regular feasts, considerable sums were expended on goods and services which might not seem to have been strictly necessary to the pursuit of warfare against the heathen. These included the purchase of fowls to feed hawks, the painting of coats of arms on parchments to be hung outside knights’ lodgings, the painting of full-length frescoes in the cathedral of Königsberg, and the engraving of plate with guests’ coats of arms for presentation as gifts to the order’s officers.34 These expenses point to some of the other recreational activities available, such as hunting, gambling, and visiting the Marienburg castle, where the guests were received by the officers of the order. Many of the aspirations evident in all of these activities can be summed up in a single quality which was the great aristocratic secular virtue of the later Middle Ages: honour. Honour was a personal quality which could derive from ancestry and standing, but equally could be augmented or diminished by the personal actions of an individual as well as by others’ opinion and treatment of him. Largesse and conspicuous extravagance, as well as comradeship and valour, were all qualities which could maintain one’s honour. A qualitative model of crusader masculinity among the guests can thus be posited as follows: Christian (secular) chivalry Honour Comradeship largesse feasting Table of Honour class solidarity recording of deeds (heralds)

Valour campaigning hunting

Piety attendance at mass visits to shrines

Figure 3  Scheme of qualities demonstrated by Western crusaders.

The absence of women and the conspicuous consumption which characterised the campaigns in Prussia both constituted major differences from the crusades to the Holy Land. In this scheme the extravagance which was poured into feasting and entertainment was one of the principal means by which comradeship was reinforced and deeds of valour were commemorated, in a way that redounded to the reputation of the host and those who had been honoured by him through his hospitality.

Contrasting models of masculinity It may be instructive to compare the scheme of virtues propounded by Dusburg and Jeroschin with those which can be extrapolated from the conduct of the guests: Teutonic Knights

Crusaders

endurance and suffering poverty

comfort and recreation largesse (hospitality and gift-giving) love service individual honour

chastity obedience and humility Figure 4  Contrasting models of masculinity.

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  123 One could argue that both groups valued comradeship, although this operated quite differently in each case. The brethren were bound to assist one another as members of a vowed corporation from the point that they joined the order. For the guests, comradeship had to be established by means of a series of elaborate rituals in order to prevent national enmities or social distinctions hampering a united Christian struggle against the heathen enemy. Completely lacking on the crusader side is the notion of endurance and suffering for the sake of Christ, which is evident in Jeroschin’s thinking but is also present in many of the accounts of the twelfth-century crusades to the Holy Land, for example, in the many cases of privation and illness during the crossing of Anatolia during the First and Second Crusades. For the guests, the campaigns against the Lithuanians were largely riskfree, and, as we have seen, were accompanied by almost all the comforts of home, with the notable exception of female company; by contrast, in respect of suffering and endurance, the life of the order’s knight brethren was thus closer to that of twelfth-century crusaders than that of their contemporary secular guests. Above all, all of the elements of crusading for the guests were underpinned by extravagance and conspicuous consumption, even in the field, in contrast to the sworn poverty of the order’s brethren. One aspect common to both groups was the absence of women, which, however, may have reinforced other secular characteristics. One could mention the religious qualities of faith, good intentions, good works, and righteousness on the side of the brethren, but there is actually little to place against these on the part of the guests. Unlike the Holy Land, Prussia was not a pilgrimage centre, with only a few sites that functioned as the foci of devotional activities. The guests in Prussia showed a fairly conventional piety, with visits to Königsberg cathedral and a few other shrine churches and, of course, attendance at mass; yet there were none of the elaborate religious rituals of the Holy Land that were influenced by a sense of proximity to the sites of biblical events, or the emotional responses brought forth at occasions such as the first sight of Jerusalem from Mountjoy, or the collection of palm branches from the Jordan Valley. Devotional activities were far outweighed by purely secular activities. The main saint revered by the crusaders in Prussia was George, the patron of knighthood. Yet, because he was so popular there were sometimes disputes among different national groups as to which was to have the honour of carrying St George’s banner, as in 1364 when German crusaders insisted that the English should not be allowed to bear it.35 The crusaders had little curiosity about the actual beliefs of their Lithuanian enemies, whom they identified as “Saracens”, even after the grand duke of Lithuania officially accepted Christianity in 1386. This equation of course flew in the face of what was by now known of the Islamic faith among Christians, but it provided a means for crusaders in Prussia to think of themselves as taking part in a worldwide struggle against the Saracens who occupied the Holy Land, Africa, and elsewhere.36 Occasionally captives, especially children, were brought to the West to be raised as Christians, but the majority of captive Lithuanians seem to have been sold as slaves. The campaigns in winter and summer were the occasions on which there was greatest contact between knight brethren and guests, but here the crusaders were

124  Murray obliged to accept the military leadership and discipline of the marshal. It is unclear how much social intercourse there was here. The main point of contact outside warfare was the peculiar institution known as the Table of Honour (Ger. Ehrentisch), a prestigious banquet given once per season by the order. It was an all-male gathering, restricted to the order’s high officers and about a dozen of the most distinguished crusaders, selected according to the testimony of the heralds present in Prussia. This distinction was not based on any activities in the current campaigns, but on the reputation of crusaders before their arrival in Prussia; this arrangement may well have been to discourage individual acts of valour which might have hampered discipline on campaign. Thus one knight was selected because he had ridden all the way to Palestine to visit the Holy Sepulchre and was famed for additional deeds of valour. The knight judged to be the most distinguished was placed first at the board and was presented with a badge bearing the motto “honour conquers all”, in golden letters.37 This institution was thus a considerable concession to ideas of honour, especially individual valour, and one might argue, vanity, which went against the entire religious ethos of the order. One wonders whether this was why it was only attended by picked officers, even though notions of honour might have demanded the widest audience possible for the award of such distinctions. It should also be noted that it was one of very few forms of material hospitality provided by the order for its guests. While honour was one of the principal oils which enabled noble society to function, it was also a fragile quality, which could be harmed or shattered by existing enmities, insults and perceived slights. Such rancour could only have been reinforced by the presence of all-male military retinues of different nationalities, who were present on numerous social occasions in which reputations needed to be maintained, but which also involved the consumption of large amounts of alcohol. On one occasion English knights vandalised some of the wall-paintings of other knights in Königsberg cathedral, but other incidents were far more serious. In 1391 the Scottish knight Sir William Douglas, lord of Nithsdale, entered a church in Königsberg during mass and was recognised by the celebrant – presumably a priest of the Teutonic Order – as a Scot who supported the Avignon papacy, in contrast to the order and other nationalities which held to the Roman obedience. Douglas was obliged to leave the church. He blamed an Englishman, Lord Clifford, whom he confronted after the service, and in a resulting brawl Douglas and two other Scots were killed. The conflict escalated into an armed confrontation between Englishmen, Germans, and Bohemians on the one hand and Scots and French on the other.38 The ill-feeling and the danger of violence were so great that it led to the cancellation of the Table of Honour. A ceremony was eventually held in enemy territory during the following campaign – possibly to reduce the chances of violence between crusaders – but it must have been a poor substitute for the normal format of what was usually the peak of the entire season. The stress on the worldly value of honour is something that is strange to find being upheld by a religious order, and indeed it was criticised by contemporaries. In 1415 the Polish enemies of the order brought a dossier of ninety-nine charges against it, in a diplomatic action at the Curia. One of the charges identifies the

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  125 Table of Honour as having been devised by “the vanity of the knight brethren” (per dictorum fratrum vanitatem adinvente). After giving a fairly precise description of the ceremony, the indictment goes on to criticise it as an institution which served only to dupe and impoverish crusaders from the West: Knights of diverse standing from all parts of the Christian world, of whom some, as it is said, having sold their own possessions or burdened themselves with debt, came in search of this special honour in great numbers to Prussia and to the said brethren to engage in war, where, while awaiting the reysen among the brethren for one or more months, spent great amounts of money. Thus the said brethren, by their craft and cunning, extract from them gold and silver under the pretence of honesty, that is through intermediary persons for food in exchange for money. This was and is a public and notorious truth.39 The Polish criticism accused the Teutonic Order of cupidity and vanity, an argument that was designed to appeal to the Curia, but the crusaders were hardly innocent dupes. However, it does make the point effectively of how far this supposedly religious war was driven by secular motives.

Conclusions In examining the crusades launched from Prussia against the heathen Lithuanians it is by no means straightforward to separate characteristics of masculinity from more general characteristics of monastic or chivalric culture. Yet crusading involved two essentially all-male social groups, whose activity was characterised by celibacy, in the one case permanent, in the other temporary. The knight brethren of the Teutonic Order lived as celibates as part of their vows, and they and their priests were constantly alert to the temptations of the flesh, as is shown by many anecdotes related by Dusburg and Jeroschin. The lay crusaders belonged to classes whose members were expected to marry, produce heirs, and be sexually active. The temporary chastity that they accepted while on crusade in Prussia had a different quality to that which was enjoined on earlier crusaders to the Holy Land, especially as they did not rein in other activities such as celebration and consumption. Rather, it would seem that they were willing to accept a period of enforced celibacy in order to enjoy other aspects of masculinity such as the opportunity to fight, to gain honour, and indulge in male bonding. Apart from these two forms of more or less voluntary celibacy, the two groups had little in common, and each was obliged to make certain compromises in order to achieve common objectives. The crusaders largely agreed to forego the chance of deeds of individual valour in order for campaigns to function effectively. The order tried to meet the aspirations and sensibilities of its guests by providing an infrastructure and ceremonies which accommodated their notions of honour. The extent to which either group benefited might well be questioned. The order gained a regular supply of heavy cavalry which could be deployed to raid its borderlands, and in doing so probably secured the defence of Prussia by keeping Lithuania on

126  Murray the defensive for more than a century; the order also made a considerable profit through the provision of goods and services, and the conspicuous consumption of the guests provided a regular boost to the economy of the Prussian towns. For the crusaders, the Prussian expeditions were undoubtedly popular, as shown by the number of repeated journeys. But they were a huge expense. Booty in the form of captives and livestock can hardly have compensated for the vast outlay involved in equipping expeditions, travelling to Prussia, and, above all, in indulging in the round of extravagance that was expected of crusaders during their stay. Crusading in Prussia was a relatively risk-free form of military tourism distinguished by little other than conventional piety, which contrasted with the relatively austere conventual life of the knight brethren. The crusades to Prussia so appealed to the senses of honour and chivalry of the secular nobility that they drew off manpower and financial resources that might have been more effectively deployed against the advance of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans.

Notes 1 See, for example: Alan V. Murray, “The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1096–1099: Structure and Dynamics of a Contingent on the First Crusade”, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 70 (1992), 301–29 [reprinted in Medieval Warfare, 1000–1300, ed. John France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 423–52]. 2 Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades”, in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203 (here 188–93). 3 Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest”, 193–7; James A. Brundage, “Prostitution, Miscegenation and Sexual Purity in the First Crusade”, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and presented to R. C. Smail, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), 57–65. For criticism of the idea that prostitutes and brothels featured in the First Crusade, see Alan V. Murray, “Sex, Death and the Problem of Single Women”, in Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor, eds. Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 255–70. 4 Thérèse De Hemptinne, “Les épouses de croisés et pèlerins flamands aux XIe et XII siècles: L’example des comtesses de Flandre Clémence et Sibylle”, in Autour de la Première Croisade, ed. Michel Balard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996), 83–95. 5 Other exceptions in the First Crusade were Hawida, wife of the lord Dudo of Consla-Grandeville, and the anonymous wife of the knight Folbert of Bouillon. See Alan V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099–1125 (Oxford: Prosopographica & Genealogica, 2000), 191–2, 195–6. 6 Bodo Hechelhammer, “Die Kreuzfahrerin: Sibylle von Anjou, Gräfin von Flandern (*1110, †1165)”, in Kein Krieg ist heilig: Die Kreuzzüge, ed. Hans-Jürgen Kotzur (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2004), 229–33. 7 Bernard Hamilton, “Eleanor of Castile and the Crusading Movement”, Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995), 92–103; Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 21–8. 8 Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 45–6.

Baltic crusades: Contrasting masculinities  127 9 Klaus Militzer, “From the Holy Land to Prussia: The Teutonic Knights between Emperors and Popes and their Policies until 1309”, in Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in Medieval Europe, ed. Jürgen Sarnowsky (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 71–81; László Pósán, “Prussian Missions and the Invitation of the Teutonic Order into Kulmerland”, in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, eds. Zsolt Hunyadi and József Laszlovszky (Budapest: Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2001), 429–48; Hartmut Boockmann, Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte, 4th edn (Munich: Beck, 1994); Reinhard Wenskus, “Das Ordensland Preußen als Territorialstaat des 14. Jahrhunderts”, in Der deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Patze (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1970), 347–82; William Urban, The Teutonic Knights: A Military History (London: Greenhill Books, 2003). 10 The most comprehensive investigation of crusaders to Prussia is Werner Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels, 2 vols (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989– 95). Additional volumes comprising source documents have been promised. For the numbers of knight brethren in the Teutonic Order, see William Urban, The Samogitian Crusade (Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1989), 17. 11 Die Statuten des Deutschen Ordens nach den ältesten Handschriften, ed. Max Perlbach (Halle an der Saale: Niemeyer, 1890), 29–31. 12 Petrus de Dusburgk, Chronica Terrae Prussiae, eds. Jarosław Wenta and Sławomir Wyszomirski, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s. 13 (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 2007) [henceforth cited as Dusburg]. 13 Dusburg, 34–45. 14 Jarosław Wenta, “Der Deutschordenspriester Peter von Dusburg und sein Bemühen um die geistige Bildung der Laienbrüder”, in Selbstbild and Selbstverständnis der geistlichen Ritterorden, eds. Roman Czaja and Jürgen Sarnowsky (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 2005),115–26. It is of course possible that the many biblical quotations given by Dusburg in this and similar passages served as the basic material for the order’s priests to give sermons in the vernacular, as argued in Alan V. Murray, “The Devil among the Teutonic Knights: Temptations, Miracles and Spiritual Armour in the Chronicles of Peter von Dusburg and Nicolaus von Jeroschin”, in W służbie zabytków, eds. Janusz Hochleitner and Karol Polejowski (Malbork: Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku, 2017), 129–37. 15 Di Kronike von Pruzinlant des Nicolaus von Jeroschin, ed. Ernst Strehlke (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1861) [henceforth cited as Jeroschin]. An English translation of this work is available as: The Chronicle of Prussia by Nicolaus von Jeroschin: A History of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, 1190–1331, trans. Mary Fischer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Translations given in this essay, however, are by the present author. 16 Jeroschin, lines 2174–82: an ire strîte ist geleit, / sundir ouch mit undirscheit / in strîte nûwe forme treit, / want nicht alleine mit lîblichin, / sunder ouch mit den geistlîchin / wâpenen wirt ubirwundin / der vîent in manchin stundin, alsô daz gebete ist. 17 Jeroschin, lines 2130–273, especially 2236–9: Noch ist ein andir nûwekeit / zu strîtene und vorgeleit / kein der alle sterke vûlt / und dî is genant gedult. 18 Jeroschin, lines 2274–3392. 19 Jeroschin, lines 19018–103. 20 Jeroschin, lines 13181–228. Another brother, Engelkin, used up four rusty hauberks in the course of a life of self-discipline: Jeroschin, lines 14071–14092. 21 Jeroschin, lines 17215–56. 22 Helen J. Nicholson, “Saints Venerated in the Military Orders”, in Selbstbild and Selbstverständnis der geistlichen Ritterorden, 91–113. 23 Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 45–90. 24 Axel Ehlers, “The Crusade of the Teutonic Knights against Lithuania Reconsidered”, in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, 1150–1500, ed. Alan V. Murray (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 21–44.

128  Murray 25 Natasha Hodgson, “Honour, Shame and the Fourth Crusade”, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 220–39. 26 A philological investigation of the term “guests” in connection with the crusades to Prussia remains a desideratum. 27 Peter Suchenwirt, “Von Herzog Albrechts Ritterschaft”, in Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum: Die Geschichtsquellen der preußischen Vorzeit, eds. Theodor Hirsch, Max Töppen and Ernst Strehlke, 5 vols (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1861–74), 2, lines 246–55: schapel und strauzzenfedern / fürt dâ manig stolzer helt, / der sich zu liebe hêt geselt / durch vreuden trôst, durch minne prûnst: / dem was geschancht in lieber gunst / golt, silber, edelstain; / perlein grôz unde chlain / sach man auf hauben liechtgevar, / chrenz und chlainât offenwar, / daz er gab gegen der sune glast. [my translation, AVM] 28 For a more detailed treatment of such secular motivations, see Stefan Vander Elst, “Chivalry, Crusade, and Romance on the Baltic Frontier”, Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011), 287–328. 29 Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 2, 161–2. 30 Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry Earl of Derby (afterwards King Henry IV) in the Years 1390–1 and 1392–3, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Westminster: Camden Society, 1894); F. R. H. Du Boulay, “Henry of Derby’s Expeditions to Prussia 1390–1 and 1392”, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, eds. F. R. H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron (London: Athlone Press, 1971), 153–72. 31 Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 294. 32 The discussion of women at Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 309–10. 33 Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 310–11. 34 Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land, esp. pp. 38–49 and 67–9. 35 Wigand von Marburg, “Reimchronik”, ed. Thomas Hirsch, in Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, 2, 429–662 (here 544). 36 Alan V. Murray, “The Saracens of the Baltic: Pagan and Christian Lithuanians in the Perception of English and French Crusaders to Late Medieval Prussia”, Journal of Baltic Studies 41 (2010), 413–29. 37 Albert S. Cook, “Beginning the Board in Prussia”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 14 (1915), 375–88; Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 316–29. 38 Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen, vol. 1, 315–16. 39 Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, 3, 619, cited in Cook, “Beginning the Board”, 377 n. 3: Quoque ideo ad consequendum specialiter hunc honorem, in magna multitudine diversi status milicia de diversis mundi partibus Christianis, de quibus quando quandoque aliqui, ut a nonnulis asseritur, venditis domi possessionibus propriis, et quandoque in pecuniis obligatis, ad Prussiam et ad dictos fratres pro milicia confluebant, ubi et apud quos fratres quandoque per mensem et per menses exspectando dictas resas, et suas pecunias apud eos expendendo, magnos pecuniarum thesauros ibidem dimittebant. Sicque dicti fratres, hac ipsorum calida astucia et calidate astuta, aurum et argentum taliter ab eis extrahebant, plerumque eciam sub velamine honestatis, videlicet per personas intermedias eisdem pro pecuniis victualia ministrando. [my translation, A.V.M.]

8 The presentation of crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas James Doherty

The mannjafnaðr, often translated into English as “man-comparison”, is a literary motif commonly found within the surviving corpus of Old Norse literature. In essence, it is a verbal duel in which participants attempt to demonstrate superiority over an opponent by citing examples of their own accomplishments, often in public, and frequently while consuming considerable quantities of ale. Predictably, the boasts regularly mutate into insults over the course of the contest, sometimes with fatal consequences.1 One of the best-known examples of such a man-comparison is reported to have taken place between the co-rulers of Norway, Kings Sigurd (d. 1130) and Eystein (d. 1123), during which the two brothers compared their successes as monarchs. Each man had much to support his own case for pre-eminence. Physicality and intelligence featured among a range of contested issues. Eventually, though, Sigurd turned to his famous venture of 1107–11, in which he had visited royal courts across Christendom, aided King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in the capture of the city of Sidon, and returned to Norway carrying a splinter of the True Cross. In Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (written c. 1230), in which this scene is recounted, Sigurd declares to Eystein, It is people’s opinion that the expedition abroad which I undertook has been a rather chieftainly one. Meanwhile you stayed at home as though you were the daughter of your father.2 Eystein had been instrumental in fostering Norway’s development during his brother’s absence, and had been expecting Sigurd to dwell on his crusading credentials.3 He replies, I would not have started this controversy if I did not have an answer to that. It seemed to me rather that I dowered you as though you were my sister before you were ready to go on that expedition.4 With Eystein’s retort, what at first appears in this contest to be evidence of an association between crusader kingship and Norse concepts of hegemonic masculinity becomes rather more complex.5 Sigurd accuses Eystein of being unmanly, indeed identifies him as essentially effeminate, because he did not go on crusade.

130  Doherty But Eystein turns the tables on Sigurd, accusing him of lacking the resources of an effective, and therefore manly, leader and crusader.6 Without Eystein’s largesse, Sigurd would not have been able to go on crusade at all; thus, he claims that Sigurd is the effeminate one. For some, this episode has been viewed as evidence of a wider dialogue in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries regarding the merits of ageing Viking ideals, in which prestige was hard-won through martial accomplishments abroad, against an emerging and more stable court culture.7 For others, Sigurd and Eystein embody two essential aspects of good kingship – the glory-hungry warrior ethos aligned with wisdom and stability.8 Most recently, it has been argued that in this mancomparison we see a debate about the merits of crusaders when measured against those who stayed at home, and that ultimately crusading is judged to be of lesser importance.9 The centrality of notions of masculinity in the exchange between the two has been noted.10 The significance of this has not previously been examined in detail, but the way in which the incident is interwoven into the account of King Sigurd’s independent crusade reveals contested visions of what constituted appropriate masculine behaviour with regard to crusading. Furthermore, it demonstrates that literature such as the sagas acted as a forum for dialogue on these divergent views about what made a man. In this chapter, I examine the actions of crusaders as depicted in three sagas – Morkinskinna (c. 1220), Heimskringla (c. 1230), and Orkneyinga saga (c. 1200).11 Both Morkinskinna and Heimskringla, which are vernacular histories of the Norwegian kings, devote significant space to King Sigurd’s independent crusading venture of 1107–11. Complementing these works, Orkneyinga saga, essentially a history of the rulers and notable figures of the Orkneys, narrates the expedition of Earl Rognvald, which took place in the early years of the 1150s.12 While the authors of Morkinskinna and Orkneyinga saga are unknown, Heimskringla was the work of Snorri Sturluson: an Icelandic author of considerable standing.13 To analyse the representation of both lay and ecclesiastical behaviour on crusade, I  examine the expectations placed on crusaders at various stages of an expedition – origins, journey, and the crusader’s challenge to the non-crusader. In adopting this approach, I am consciously following a structure used by other historians who have explored the crusade sections of sagas. It allows for comprehensive treatment of the theme of this volume. While there are certainly some parallels between the presentation of both lay and clerical crusader masculinities in the sagas when contrasted to depictions found in many of the Latin crusade narratives, there are notable differences, especially concerning expectations about composure and spiritual leadership. As a field of enquiry, crusader studies has traditionally been reluctant to embrace conceptual tools and theoretical paradigms wholeheartedly, but over the past two decades several important works have ensured the successful integration of gender theory into crusade historiography.14 One product of this success has been an increased awareness of the ways in which masculine identities were represented in crusade narratives.15 Foremost among the common traits of successful male aristocrats on crusade, as Natasha R. Hodgson has noted, were largesse, faithful

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  131 service to God, and physical prowess.16 Andrew Holt argues that in addition to the expectations of chivalric masculinity, laymen on crusade were often depicted with the qualities of moral churchmen, such as self-restraint, and mastery of urges.17 As Matthew Mesley has demonstrated, ecclesiastical crusaders had a separate set of benchmarks and expectations. While it was not unusual for them to be involved in combat in some form, albeit often in an advisory role, they were first and foremost paternal figures and moral guardians of the crusading host.18 To date, studies of crusader masculinities have mostly focused on Latin texts. Old Norse sagas have not, to my knowledge, been the subject of study in relation to this issue. Unlike crusade texts, sagas have been scrutinised through a gendered lens for decades, and masculinity has come increasingly to the fore.19 However, it is difficult to point to a typified, hegemonic masculinity presented in this literature.20 Even within individual texts, it is sometimes unclear who is exhibiting masculine traits. In his 2007 exploration of masculinity and politics in Njáls saga, for example, Ármann Jakobsson commented that “it is difficult to find a man whose manhood is not vulnerable” and that the “least masculine of men may be the most powerful”.21 Carol Clover has observed that the sagas depict a society in which the levels of power in social relationships defined gender status.22 Following Clover, Dawn M. Hadley and Jenny M. Moore have argued that power – whether held by a male or female – was associated with masculinity, while powerlessness was depicted as a feminine trait. As Hadley and Moore have put it, through “behaviour, wealth, prestige, marital status or force of personality a person could acquire and maintain power, which was apt to be described in masculine terms”.23 It should be noted that Orkneyinga saga does in fact list nine specific traits that Earl Rognvald revered in himself, presumably suggesting that they were revered in men more generally. Ability with board games featured alongside a memory for runes, interest in letters, skill in crafts, a talent for skiing, shooting, and rowing well, as well as harp-playing and verse making.24 Moreover, the mannjafnaðr in both Heimskringla and Morkinskinna, which can be viewed as a “king’s mirror”, lists the qualities that are compared by Sigurd and Eystein.25 For example, ability at physical activities like wrestling and shooting are discussed alongside knowledge of law. However, at no point during the debate is it made clear which specific virtues are valued over others. Indeed, as noted above, one function of the sagas was as a forum for discourse on contrasting views about what did and did not constitute masculine behaviour and qualities. Where crusaders appear within this corpus of literature, therefore, we are presented with rich materials for an exploration of crusader masculinities, as we shall see. Prior to moving on to the main focus of this investigation, it is worth briefly examining the Scandinavian contribution to the crusading movement and the value of the sagas as a source for the study of the crusades.

Crusaders, sagas, and skalds According to the chronicler Albert of Aachen, Scandinavians were among the earliest crusaders. In Book One of his Historia Ierosolimitana (likely written in

132  Doherty the first decade of the twelfth century), Albert listed warriors from the kingdom of the Danes alongside Franks, Lotharingians, Germans, and English in the diverse armies of the First Crusade.26 During the years following the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, several high-ranking pilgrims from northern Christendom travelled to the East. Of these, King Sigurd of Norway is perhaps the best known, but he was far from the only one. Charles the Good, son of the murdered King Cnut IV of Denmark, embarked on a military endeavour after being girded with the belt of knighthood shortly after 1099.27 At about the same time, his uncle, King Erik of Denmark, set out on a pilgrimage accompanied by his wife and a considerable retinue of knights and soldiers.28 Further contingents of Norsemen can be found amid the forces of the Second, Third, and Fifth Crusades.29 Numerous other individuals travelled east in the years between the “numbered” expeditions, such as Earl Rognvald of Orkney (1151–3).30 In spite of their persistent involvement in the crusading movement, Scandinavians rarely featured prominently in the best-known crusade narratives. Considering the geographical origins of most crusade chronicles – predominantly Western rather than Northern Europe  – the absence of leading protagonists from Scandinavia in crusading texts is not surprising. More difficult to explain is the lack of prominence given to crusading or pilgrimage in the sagas that recounted the deeds of people from the North Sea World.31 Most sagas describing events of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries do not mention crusading or pilgrimage at all, but even those that do devote only limited attention to a Jerusalem venture. Where a venture to the Holy Land does feature, a visit to the holy sites and combat in the East invariably take a back seat to the journey itself. When crusading appears in the sagas, particular emphasis is placed on the honour accrued through visiting foreign courts in as much splendour as possible, especially when in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.32 In light of the limited attention devoted to crusaders within these texts, then, it might legitimately be asked what the sagas can tell us about the more focused topic of crusader masculinities. Moreover, the texts used in this investigation are all thought to have taken their recognisable shape in the first half of the thirteenth century.33 Thus, some may caution that analysis of these texts will reveal the attitudes of Icelandic authors writing in the early decades of the 1200s, rather than telling us how the crusaders themselves understood the relationship between crusading and masculinity. However, many of the sagas, including those discussed here, contain important skaldic poetry, much of which is widely considered to be near contemporary to the events described.34 These verses are often attributed to specific poets, and Snorri Sturluson, author of the Heimskringla, put considerable weight on the authenticity of the verses when making an argument for the legitimacy of his own work.35 In spite of the fact that most examples are only preserved in manuscripts that date to no earlier than the thirteenth century, many scholars are in agreement with Diana Whaley that skaldic verse “was usually composed soon after the event and often . . . by participants and eye-witnesses”. She goes on to note, “the verses take us closer to the events than any prose narrative can”.36 Further, it is likely that saga writers were able to draw on collections of verses, although the means by which such collations were preserved remains a matter of uncertainty.37

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  133 One pertinent example demonstrates the way in which stanzas typically feature in sagas. Having described Earl Rognvald of Orkney’s journey to the River Jordan, the author of Orkneyinga saga inserted poetry attributed to Rognvald himself: After that they went back to Jerusalem and the Earl made this verse as they were approaching the city: A cross on this bard’s breast, on his back a palm-branch: peacefully we pace the hillside. That summer, the Earl and his men set out from the Holy Land, intending to travel to Constantinople, and in the autumn they reached a town called Imbolum, where they stayed for quite some time.38 In the midst of the prose text, then, the author of the saga integrates a verse attributed to a participant in the expedition, in this case the leader of the venture. In fact, the verses of Earl Rognvald have been extensively studied. Judith Jesch and Paul Bibire have argued that Rognvald’s compositions were preserved in their original form.39 If correct, what we have in this literature is evidence of how a crusader wished to be presented. As Erin Michelle Goeres has demonstrated, Rognvald is presented as fashioning his own identity in Orkneyinga saga.40 Therefore, where we can identify expectations of masculinity in his crusade poetry, they are Rognvald’s own. Of course, his verses were subject to the regulations and expectations of all skaldic poetry, but the sagas present us with a rare opportunity to examine the thought-world of a twelfth-century crusader as well as thirteenth-century saga writers. They can provide deep insights into attitudes towards crusading and masculinity prevalent among medieval Scandinavians.

Initiating crusading expeditions Descriptions of the initiation stage of a voyage are often short and lacking in detail. When discussing the expedition of a man named Sigurd the Fake-Deacon, for instance, the author of Orkneyinga saga noted simply that after he had spent “some time in Scotland he travelled on to the Holy Land”. The same author was a little more descriptive when detailing the pilgrimage of Earl Hakon of Orkney, generally dated to the 1120s. We are told that “Hakon set out on a long journey overseas and travelled south to Rome. His pilgrimage took him beyond to Jerusalem, where he visited the holy places and bathed in the River Jordan as is the custom of palmers.”41 The initiation stage of the crusades of Sigurd and Rognvald are, however, unusually well covered in the texts under investigation here. In Heimskringla’s account of Sigurd’s journey and Orkneyinga saga’s description of Rognvald’s venture, it is the leader who initiates the expedition after social

134  Doherty pressure from other men, indicating that honour  – a benchmark of medieval masculinity – was at the forefront of the crusader’s mind.42 Rognvald, we are told, agreed to lead an expedition to the Holy Land after a conversation with Eindridi the Young, who had recently returned from Constantinople. Eindridi in fact challenges Rognvald, by commenting on the fact that the earl seemed more interested in listening to the stories of others rather than leading a venture himself. After a crowd of men voiced their agreement with Eindridi and confirmed to Rognvald that a journey in foreign lands would win him great honour, he agreed to lead the expedition. There were, however, two stipulations. Rognvald ordered that only he would have a ship with more than thirty oars, and only he would have one that was ornamented.43 In the saga, it is stated that this decision was made so that no man would be envious of another’s vessel; however, these are clearly the symbols of leadership in Rognvald’s homosocial environment. They are visual indications – size and impact – of his superiority. The other captains within the fleet are expected to be less ostentatious and sail a smaller vessel. The description of the origins of Sigurd’s journey in Heimskringla is similar in significant ways to Rognvald’s. After the return of an expedition from the East at about the time of the Crusade of 1101, Sigurd’s men urged the kings to initiate another venture so that they could earn honour in Jerusalem and Constantinople. It was agreed that Sigurd would lead it while Eystein ruled at home.44 The version of events in Morkinskinna puts greater weight on Sigurd’s initiative. It is reported that he was eager to set out to Jerusalem, and did so at great expense, to earn God’s mercy as well as build his reputation. The poetry of Thorarin Stutfeld, written contemporary to Sigurd’s voyage and included in the Heimskringla, also indicated a religious element.45 But Snorri Sturluson’s representation of the journey’s initiation is undeniably worldly in nature. We once again see the critical factor of social pressure at work; however, Sigurd is presented more overtly than Rognvald as a provider figure eager to offer his men opportunities to win honour abroad. This, of course, is a form of largesse, another benchmark of chivalric masculinity.46 From these descriptions, several important factors emerge with regard to expectations of crusaders at the outset of an expedition. While religious elements could factor in the motivation to take part in a crusading venture – something discernible from both thirteenth-century saga prose and poetry written contemporary to the events described – the primary motivating factor was honour.47 In Orkneyinga saga, this appears to be the sole reason. Furthermore, the male leader is expected to adopt visual symbols of his superiority, winning honour in doing so, while his captains should be below him but equals among themselves. The crusading host as presented in the sagas is, then, hierarchical in nature but only in so much as there is a leader acting as the primary provider. From the outset, it is intended to be a relatively levelled society under the one secular male. Notably, Rognvald invites Bishop William of Orkney (d. 1168) to join him.48 But the bishop’s function, as stated at the outset, is as an interpreter as he had studied in Paris.49 In the descriptions of the early stages of crusading ventures in the three sagas that form the focus of this study, there is an expectation that the leader will equip his men

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  135 and provide opportunities for enhancing honour. This does not entirely negate a spiritual element, but even in Morkinskinna, which has the strongest spiritual focus of the three texts, the worldly concerns take centre stage. In one respect, then, notions of masculinity at the initiation stage of a crusade in the sagas are aligned with the presentation of hegemonic masculinity in texts produced across Europe (not just those focused on crusading), with their emphasis on leadership and largesse. Like their Scandinavian contemporaries, counts, dukes, and kings are provider figures in the Latin narratives of the crusades, and a range of historical records indicate that it was true.50 There is, however, a great chasm between the sagas and the monastic chronicles over the issue of motivation. The glory-hungry man, eager to win worldly renown and provide his own followers with opportunities to win honour replaces the monk-like, penitent man of the Latin texts, who is, like the first crusader Tancred, motivated by an anxiety about contradicting the teachings of Christ and fights for the good of his soul.51 This divergent image is also discernible in the next stage of the journey.

Behaviour on the journey It has already been demonstrated that the sagas present crusaders with far more worldly concerns than their contemporaries in the monastic accounts, but the sections dealing with the voyage itself are sometimes entirely at odds with the expectations of manhood and masculine behaviour in crusade chronicles produced by churchmen further south. A focus on the better-known crusade narratives reveals an emphasis on self-control and moral discipline. Furthermore, the Latin sources suggest that crusade leaders, especially clerics, took actions to encourage good behaviour, and while members of the crusading army may not have always lived up to these expectations, morality and discipline were benchmarks of the masculine crusader.52 The journey section of crusade narratives in the sagas, though, indicates an entirely different model of expectation. In fact, in Orkneyinga saga, the men revel in promiscuous behaviour and drink excessive amounts of alcohol, much to the amusement of the author. Moreover, it is absolutely clear that part of the reason Rognvald felt so motivated to complete his pilgrimage was to impress a noble lady; at least, that is how he presented the matter. This contrasts strikingly to the vision of masculinity promoted in monastic chronicles of the crusade. In the earlier stages of Rognvald’s venture, the men are reported to have spent time at the court of Narbonne, where they met Viscountess Ermengarde. She appears to have made a considerable impression on them, and many of the men in Rognvald’s contingent composed verses dedicated to her. According to the saga, Rognvald sat her on his knee and composed the following verse, I’ll swear, clever sweetheart, you’re a slender delight to grasp and to’cuddle, my golden-locked girl. Ravenous the hawk, crimson

136  Doherty -clawed, flesh-crammed – but now, heavily hangs the silken hair.53 The saga then goes on to report that the people of the locale tried to convince the earl to settle in the area and marry the viscountess; however, he pressed onwards. Her memory lingered, though. Some of Rognvald’s own compositions in the rest of the saga indicate that after meeting Ermengarde, he wished to present his desire to prove himself worthy of her as a strong motivating factor in his crusade for the rest of the journey. On one occasion, he composes a verse in which he makes this explicit: In the Earl’s ear the words of Ermingerd will echo, enjoining us to journey by water to Jordan. But when the sea-riders race back from the river, as we navigate northward we’ll call at Narbonne.54 For Ruth Mazo Karras, such verses are aimed at other men, rather than the noble lady whom the poets admire.55 Indeed, the viscountess does appear to act as the focus of a competition as Sigurd and two of his men compose verses for one another about her. The poetry of a warrior named Armod is particularly revealing for what it discloses about the expectations of crusader masculinity in the sagas: I fear my fate turns my face from Ermingerd; many a man would match her if he might. Her brow’s such a beauty – I’d bed her gladly, even once would be worth it, a wish come true.56 Armod openly lusts after Ermengarde. His mind is on sex and her beauty, not penance and winning salvation. For a Benedictine monk writing in the aftermath of the First Crusade, Armod would have served as a warning of moral corruption. His was exactly the sort of behaviour that would have incurred God’s wrath in the form of military defeat.57 In Orkneyinga saga, however, Armod is present in victories. In fact, it seems that all the men in Sigurd’s fleet are expected to openly lust after Ermengarde. It is not a sign of deficiency in manly virtues. Equally jarring for those familiar with the monastic crusade chronicles are episodes in which the Scandinavians drink excessively – moments that are sometimes

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  137 presented as a matter of delight to their companions. After falling off a pier while extremely inebriated, one of Rognvald’s captains, a man named Erling Wry-Neck, landed in the mud below. It is reported that he did not understand the local shout of “midway”, which appears to have been a warning to indicate a need to be cautious when passing others, and he then tumbled into the dirt. Having been told of the incident the next morning, Rognvald composed a verse, A filthy misfortune befell my friend Erling mucked up with mud for not shouting “Midway.” The King’s own kinsman wasn’t covered in glory, ditched at Imbolum and dripping with dirt.58 Again, this runs counter to the familiar expectations of crusading men, who were meant to master their appetites, not give in to them. In Orkneyinga saga, they revel in them while on crusade. As noted above, Bishop William I of Orkney was present on Rognvald’s journey, and we are told that the earl was eager to recruit him for the expedition for his skills as an interpreter.59 It may be expected, though, that Bishop William would have made some attempt to maintain moral discipline during the venture. As demonstrated by Matthew M. Mesley in a persuasive study of the presentation of Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy’s actions during the First Crusade, it was not uncommon for bishops to act as paternal and pastoral figures on a crusade, and while they could be part of the action, episcopal crusaders exerted control over spiritual matters. In addition to tending to the army like his flock, Adhémar was responsible for ensuring that crusaders maintained discipline and self-control.60 If Bishop William did perform a similar role during Rognvald’s crusade, this is not described in the surviving sources. He was, however, heavily involved in the fighting. He captained one of Rognvald’s fifteen ships, and was consulted by the earl on military tactics during preparations for an attack on a dromond (a large vessel).61 Indeed, the bishop was instrumental in the naval engagement. Realising that the initial attack was failing, Bishop William withdrew alongside another ship and gathered archers onto the decks. With this bombardment of arrows weakening the dromond’s defences, Rognvald and his men launched an attack by hacking through the hull of the ship with axes. The assault was a success, and while William is not described in the hand-to-hand combat, he played a pivotal role in the outcome of the battle. More surprising than his engagement in warfare, Bishop William did not take the lead in spiritual matters. According to the saga, it is Rognvald who declared that a fiftieth of all captured loot would be donated to the poor. No prayers are offered and there is no preaching recorded.62 The attitude towards loot is also notable. In the accounts of both Rognvald’s and Sigurd’s journeys, the crusaders capture vast quantities of plunder during their expeditions.

138  Doherty No commentary is offered to explain this act or justify it. There is an assumption evident in the text that crusaders would accumulate wealth as well as honour on their journey. In Orkneyinga saga, Bishop William does nothing to attempt to curb this impulse. Unlike Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, as depicted in chronicles of the First Crusade, the bishop of the sagas is not a spiritual guide. Without apology or acknowledgement that there is anything amiss, then, Earl Rognvald’s crusade is presented in Orkneyinga saga as strikingly different to the majority of Latin crusade narratives, most commonly written by clerics. Rognvald wins worldly renown, manhandles a noble lady, plunders treasure (as did King Sigurd), and his retinue drinks excessively. Spirituality is pushed into the background, and where it does appear, Rognvald takes responsibility. The role of the bishop is to translate for the contingent and to fight alongside Rognvald. The presentation of the bishop’s role has far more in common with the warriors than it does that of Adhémar of Le Puy in the Latin chronicles of the First Crusade. Judging by the representation of Bishop William in Orkneyinga saga, the expectations of clerical masculinity in the sagas are markedly different to those found in the monastic chronicles; not because ecclesiastical men fight, but because they do not act as the conscience of the retinue.

The challenge As was noted at the outset of this chapter, the gendered insults proffered by Sigurd and Eystein indicate that by the thirteenth century, if not earlier, crusading was intertwined with notions of masculinity in Scandinavia. Sigurd’s challenge to Eystein – that he had stayed at home like his father’s daughter – is not entirely without parallel in well-known crusade texts. As Sarah Lambert has noted, the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi includes the information that at the time of the Third Crusade, “a great many men sent each other wool and distaff, hinting that if anyone failed to join this military undertaking, they were fit only for women’s work”.63 This is a rare example, though. In other literature that sought to compare crusaders and non-crusaders, such as Rutebeuf’s Desputizons dou croisié et dou decroizié of about 1260, the masculinity of neither disputant is called into question. Rather, it is the non-crusader’s idleness that is measured against the cost of the crusader’s cause to those at home. Rutebeuf’s poem is far more characteristic of such comparisons.64 Perhaps more striking than Sigurd’s insult aimed at his brother is Eystein’s response, in which he, a non-crusader, undermines a crusader with an attack on his masculinity. Noticeably, though, it is not Sigurd’s crusading that is seen as effete, but his inability to provide fully for his retinue. As noted above, the crusade leader was expected to provide for his men, and Eystein attacks Sigurd’s ability to do so. Thus, he claims that Sigurd is unmanly for failing to fulfil the role of provider adequately, not for being a crusader. It is also important to contextualise these insults by reference to traditions in Icelandic literature, in which gendered insults were common and had a long heritage by the time that Snorri Sturluson was writing. Nið, for example, were

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  139 frequently used sexualised insults in man-comparisons.65 While nið were particularly potent insults constructed to emasculate a man, such as the well-known example from Njáls saga in which the character Flosi is accused of being used like a woman by a troll,66 less stinging comparisons to what was considered typically female behaviour are common. Indeed, when writing of Njáls saga, Ármann Jakobsson has argued that the demands of masculinity found in the work render nobody  – not even its hero  – immune from suspicions of a lack of manliness. Jakobsson suggests that the demands of masculinity have been intentionally exaggerated to the point of meaninglessness in order to satirise the convention.67 While not all will agree with Jakobsson on this point, his conclusion is indicative of the extent to which gendered insults proliferate throughout Norse literature. Above all else, though, what comes through most prominently in the mancomparison between Sigurd and Eystein is the centrality of challenges in the presentation of crusader masculinity. Turning to Morkinskinna’s version of their drink-fuelled debate, Sigurd boasts, I travelled to the River Jordan by way of Apulia, and I saw no trace of you there. I was victorious in eight battles, and you fought in none of them. I went to the Lord’s Sepulchre and I did not see you there. I entered the river after the example of our Lord and swam across, without finding you there. I tied a knot for you that still awaits you. I took the town of Sidon with the king of Jerusalem and we had no benefit from your support or counsel.68 This knot-tying ritual is also described in the poetry included in Orkneyinga saga. Having arrived in the Holy Land, Rognvald and his men journey around the holy sites and then make their way to the Jordan. As King Sigurd claimed to have done, they then swam across the river and tied knots to mark their presence. Three skaldic verses are included in the saga text at this point. All three involve comparison and an element of challenge. Rognvald himself says, that no “lay-abed” would journey to the Jordan as he had.69 The earl is then joined by his companion, Sigmund. I’ll tie this link for the lumpish laggard who clings to his comfort while kinsmen take risks.70 The episode is brought to an end when Earl Rognvald composes his second verse on this matter. In the thicket we bind a bow for such bastards – dog-tired I dragged myself here – on St Lawrence’s day.71

140  Doherty Swimming in the Jordan was an established ritual intended to enhance status. When tying a knot for those back home, the crusader presented himself as both pious and vigorous when compared to other men. As Philip Booth notes, the Jordan was acknowledged as the furthest limit of Latin territory during the first century of Christian rule. Swimming across the river meant entering dangerous lands. This of course enhanced a crusader’s reputation for bravery.72 It is worth noting that Harald Hardrada travelled to the Jordan in the 1040s while he was a leading figure in the Varangian Guard.73 Noticeably, there is no mention of crossing the river. The future king of Norway does not tie a knot as a challenge for potential pilgrims back home. As far as I  am aware, all evidence of this practice comes from tales set after 1099. The performance of tying a knot, then, was specific to the masculinity of Norse pilgrims in the crusading era. Yet with respect to Sigurd’s claim that tying the knot proves he is manlier than Eystein, Eystein is once again able to better his brother. After providing a long list of all that he achieved in Norway during Sigurd’s absence, it is Eystein who brings the contest to an end by stating, As for your boast of good deeds when you visited the Lord’s Sepulchre, I think that my merit was no less when I established a monastery and a church together with it. And with respect to the knot that you tied for me, it seems to me that I could have tied you such a knot that you would never have been king of Norway again.74 At the heart of crusader masculinity in the sagas, it seems, was the notion of the challenge. Rognvald’s verses composed at the Jordan indicate that a desire to win prestige and be acknowledged as more active and vigorous than other men was a genuine motivation to crusade for Scandinavians. As noted above, skaldic verses are widely thought to have been composed by those they are attributed to in the sagas. If correct, Rognvald’s challenge poetry at the Jordan offers us an insight into the way the crusaders themselves wished to present their masculinity and how they expected audiences to understand it. Furthermore, Eystein’s counter Sigurd is evidence of how non-crusaders could counter claims of inferiority due to their lack of crusading credentials.

Conclusion The presentation of crusader masculinities in the three sagas examined here differs significantly to the better-known Latin chronicles, and this variance is especially marked in two ways. First, the description of Bishop William of Orkney’s actions during Rognvald’s venture lacks any aspect of spiritual leadership. He had far more in common with other captains in Rognvald’s fleet than his episcopal counterparts in monastic chronicles. Second, the lay crusaders are presented as lacking in personal discipline and are driven by glory, and these issues are entirely unproblematic for saga writers and skaldic poets. Women distract the men, some drink to excess, and, perhaps most strikingly, they appear to be driven overtly and

Crusader masculinities in Old Norse sagas  141 unashamedly by a desire for worldly renown. Indeed, worldly honour is depicted as the primary motivating factor. They are not expected to renounce such things until after the venture; rather, they revel in behaviour that would have been presented as abhorrent in monastic texts. In no way can the expeditions of Rognvald or Sigurd, as depicted in the sagas, truly be said to resemble a military monastery on the move.75 As for the leaders themselves, they were expected to create opportunities for their men to gain honour and to provide the resources needed to do so. If a leader failed in this task, he left himself open to challenges to his masculinity. It is likely that this was particularly pronounced in Scandinavia, where there was a long tradition of gendered insults in literature. However, non-crusaders could suffer the same fate. The challenge to stay-at-homes was central to depictions of crusader masculinity, especially for leaders. Both in saga prose and skaldic verse, we have been left with evidence of the primary way in which crusader identity could be performed – through challenging other men to travel in the footsteps of those who had gone before. By tying a knot on the far bank of the Jordan and either composing verses to record the occasion or boasting about the event at a later date, crusaders contrasted themselves favourably to other men.76 This challenge was at the heart of crusader masculinity in the sagas. As a final point, it is worth stressing that textual evidence does indeed point to the conclusion that former crusaders and pilgrims made a great deal of their journeys abroad. In Morkinskinna, we are told that several of the stay-at-homes were tired of Sigurd’s crusaders walking around in precious garments – presumably a reference to materials they had brought back from the East – and overtly displaying an attitude of superiority.77 While it is not possible to know whether or not the mannjafnaðr reported between Sigurd and Eystein resembles a real contest, the accounts in both Heimskringla and Morkinskinna disclose a great deal. They indicate that by the early thirteenth century, if not much earlier, there were disgruntled men in Scandinavia enduring the boasts of crusaders who had ventured overseas and were able to perform their masculinity at home by reference to crusading. Furthermore, the preservation of Rognvald’s twelfth-century poetry in Orkneyinga saga reveals that boasting rights appear to have been the primary motivation for many Scandinavian crusaders from at least the mid-twelfth century, and most likely from the origins of the movement. Crusading and masculinity were intertwined from the very moment that crusading infiltrated Scandinavian culture. It was not, therefore, a wholesale adoption of the theologically refined Benedictine model of crusader masculinity like we find in the early Latin narratives of the First Crusade.78 Rather, crusade ideology and practices were moulded to suit Scandinavian norms of behaviour.79 Gendered insults, traditional in Icelandic literature, made their way into crusading texts; men were expected to lust after women, even while on crusade; and theological complications with plundering loot while on crusade were not addressed. Studies of crusader masculinity have tended to concentrate on Latin texts written, by and large, in a monastic environment. By contrast, the sagas are the product of a society that revered lay poets and their skills of composition. If it is true that Rognvald’s poetry is indeed his own,

142  Doherty and that the authors of Heimskingla and Morkinskinna drew on skaldic poets present on Sigurd’s journey, we have in the sagas evidence of how crusaders themselves wished to present their masculinity.

Notes My thanks to Katherine J. Lewis, Natasha R. Hodgson, and Matthew M. Mesley for their encouragement and guidance in bringing this paper to fruition. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present an early version of this chapter at their Crusading Masculinities Conference in Zürich. I am most grateful to the organisers and the Royal Historical Society for providing the funding that enabled me to take part. I would also like to thank Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, whose observations saved me from making more than one error. 1 William I. Miller, “Why is Your Axe Bloody?”: A Reading of Njáls Saga (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 74–5; Antje G. Frotscher, “Old Irish Curad-Mír and Old Norse Mannjafnaðr: Two Forms of Literary Man-Comparison in Early Medieval Literature”, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 33 (2002), 19–36, at 19–25. 2 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway, trans. Lee M. Hollander (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964) [hereafter Heim. 1], 703; published in the original language as Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Vol. 3, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 1951) [hereafter Heim. 2], 261: “Þat hefir verit mál manna, at ferð sú, er ek fór ór landi, væri heldr hǫfðinglig, en þú sazt heima meðan sem dóttir fǫður þíns.” 3 Theodoricus monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, in Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, ed. Gustav Storm (Oslo: Trykt hos A. W. Brøgger, 1880), 64. See also Marianne E. Kalinke, “ ‘Sigurðar Saga Jórsalafara’: The Fictionalization of Fact in ‘Morkinskinna’ ”, Scandinavian Studies 56(2) (1984), 152–67, at 154 and 159. As he does not appear to have been reacting to any known papally authorised call to arms, some will be uneasy with labelling Sigurd’s expedition a crusade; however, the independent expeditions of those individuals who fought in the East in the years between the “numbered” crusades are now being more closely scrutinised and examined as part of the wider crusading movement. See, for instance, Nicholas L. Paul, “In Search of the Marshal’s Lost Crusade: The Persistence of Memory, the Problems of History and the Painful Birth of Crusading Romance”, Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 1–19; James Doherty, “Count Hugh of Troyes and the Prestige of Jerusalem”, History: The Journal of the Historical Association 102(353) (2017), 874–88. 4 Heim. 1, 703–4; Heim. 2, 261: “Nú greiptu á kýlinu. Eigi mynda ek þessa rœðu vekja, ef ek kynna hér engu svara. Nærr þótti mér hinu, at ek gerða þik heiman sem systur mína, áðr þú yrðir búinn til ferðar.” 5 Although focused on a later period, for the relationship between effective kingship and the expectations of hegemonic masculinity, see Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (New York: Routledge, 2013). 6 Leila K. Norako, “Crusading Gone Global? The Icelandic Magnussona Saga’s Visions of the World and Home”, Literature Compass 11(7) (2014), 423–34, at 428. 7 Lars Lönnroth, “En kunglig kontrovers”, in Den dubbla scenen: Muntlig diktning från Eddan til ABBA (Stockholm: Prisma, 1978), 53–80. Citation from Kalinke, “ ‘Sigurðar Saga Jórsalafara’ ”, 164. 8 Kalinke, “ ‘Sigurðar Saga Jórsalafara’ ”, 164. 9 Norako, “Crusading Gone Global?”, 430. Such criticisms of crusading are similar to those of Marsilius of Padua, who argued that those who spent their time and wealth improving the quality of life for others in their homeland merited the forgiveness of God many times more than crusaders and pilgrims. Marsilius of Padua, Oeuvres

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mineures: Defensor minor, De translatione imperii, eds Colette Jeudy and Jeannine Quillet (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1979), Chap. 7: 4; translated as Marsiglio of Padua, Defensor minor, ed. and trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Chap. 7: 4, 21–2. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Roach for drawing my attention to this passage. Norako, “Crusading Gone Global?”, 428. Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings, 1030–1157, ed. and trans. T. M. Andersson (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000) [hereafter Mor. 1]. All translations of Morkinskinna are from this edition. All quotations from the Old Norse are from Morkinskinna, Vol.  2, eds Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 2011)) [hereafter Mor. 2]. For Heimskringla see n. 2. Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, trans Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (London: Penguin, 1981) [henceforth OS 1], 164–82. The Old Norse edition is Orkneyinga Saga, ed. Finnbogi Guðmundsson (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 1965) [hereafter OS 2]. This is not, therefore, a comprehensive investigation of all saga materials; rather, my intention is to highlight important elements of crusader masculinities as depicted in three of the better known and more easily available texts. Sverre Bagge, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Among the numerous excellent starting points, see Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Cardiff Press, 2001); Deborah Gerish, “Gender Theory”, in Helen J. Nicholson ed., Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 130–47; Natasha Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007). Natasha R. Hodgson, “Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade”, in Kathryn Hurlock  and Paul Oldfield eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2015), 195–213. Natasha R. Hodgson, “Reputation, Authority, and Masculine Identities in the Political Culture of the First Crusaders”, History: The Journal of the Historical Association 102(353) (2017), 889–913. Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades”, in Jennifer B. Thibodeaux ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203. Matthew Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, in P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis eds, Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), 94–111, at 110–11. Preben M. Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society (Odense: Odense University Press, 1983). For a recent overview of the historiography, see Lisa Wotherspoon, “ ‘Let Each Man Show his Manhood’: Masculinity and Status in Medieval Norse and Irish Sagas” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2014), 1–11. Gareth Lloyd Evans’ groundbreaking study in this area is forthcoming, Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ármann Jakobsson, “Masculinity and Politics in Njáls Saga”, Viator 38 (2007), 191– 215, at 193 and 215. Carol Clover, “Regardless of Sex: Men, Women and Power in Early Northern Europe”, Speculum 68 (1993), 363–87. Dawn M. Hadley and Jenny M. Moore, “ ‘Death Makes the Man’? Burial Rite and the Construction of Masculinities in the Early Middle Ages”, in Dawn M. Hadley ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 21–38, at 33–5.

144  Doherty 24 OS 1, 108; OS 2, 130. 25 Ármann Jakobsson, “Image is Everything: The Morkinskinna Account of King Sigurðr of Norway’s Journey to the Holy Land”, Parergon 30(1) (2013), 121–40, at 140. 26 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 8–9; Janus Møller Jensen, “Denmark and the First Crusades: The Impact of Crusade Ideology in Denmark in the First Half of the Twelfth Century”, Revue d’histoire Nordique 4 (2007), 82–100, at 84. 27 Walter of Thérouanne, Vita Karoli comitis Flandriae, ed., R. Köpke, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 12 (Hanover, 1856), 540; Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandriarum, in Jeff Rider ed., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 131 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1994), 31. 28 Knytlinga Saga: The History of the Kings of Denmark, trans Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (Odense: Odense University Press, 1986), 119–23. 29 Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 228–43; Pål Berg Svenungsen, “Norway and the Fifth Crusade: The Crusade Movement on the Outskirts of Europe”, in E. J. Mylod et al. eds, The Fifth Crusade: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 218–30, at 219–20. This chapter also offers an overview of Norwegian involvement in the crusades. 30 OS 1, 164–82; OS 2, 208–37. 31 Norako, “Crusading Gone Global?”, 430. 32 Joyce Hill, “Pilgrimage and Prestige in the Icelandic Sagas”, Saga Book 23 (1993), 433–53; Ármann Jakobsson, “Image is Everything: The Morkinskinna Account of King Sigurðr of Norway’s Journey to the Holy Land”, Parergon 30(1) (2013), 121–40, at 123–5; Norako, “Crusading Gone Global?”, 426–7; Arnved Nedkvitne, “Why Did Medieval Norsemen Go on Crusades?”, in Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen and Kurt Villads Jensen with Janne Malkki and Katja Ritari eds, Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005), 37–50, at 46–7. While Paul Riant produced an extensive study of Scandinavian crusaders, he mined details to use as fact rather than exploring the presentation of crusading: Paul D. E. Riant, Expéditions et pélegrinages des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte au temps des croisades (Paris: Lainé and Havard, 1865). 33 Mor. 1, 66; OS 1, 10. 34 Nedkvitne, “Why Did Medieval Norsemen Go on Crusades?”, 39; Judith Jesch, “Christian Vikings: Norsemen in Western Europe in the 12th Century”, in Pierre Bauduin and Aleksandr E. Musin eds, Vers l’Orient et vers l’Occident: regards croisés sur les dynamiques et les transferts culturels des Vikings à la Rous ancienne (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2014), 55–60. 35 Judith Jesch, “Poetry in the Viking Age”, in Stefan Brink and Neil Price eds, The Viking World (New York: Routledge, 2008), 291–8, at 295–6. See also, Gabriel Turville-Petre, Haraldr the Hard-Ruler and his Poets (London: H. K. Lewis & Co., 1966). For discussion of the function of the verses and their relationship to the prose see Guðrún Nordal, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Heather O’Donoghue, Skaldic Verse and the Poetic of Saga Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 36 Diana Whaley, Heimskringla: An Introduction (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1991), 121–3. 37 Paul Bibire, “The Poetry of Earl Rognvald’s Court”, in Barbara E. Crawford ed., St Magnus Cathedral and Orkney’s Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), 208–40, at 211. 38 OS 1, 179; OS 2, 233: “Síðan fóru þeir aptr til Jórsalaborgar, ok er þeir kómu útan at borginni, þá kvað jarlinn: Kross hangir þul þessum,/þjóst  skyli lægt, fyr brjósti,/

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

flykkisk fram á brekkur/ferð, en palmr meðal herða./ Þeir Rǫgnvaldr  jarl fóru um sumarit af Jórsalalandi ok ætluðu norðr til Miklagarðs ok kómu um haustit til þess staðar, er heitir Imbólum.” Judith Jesch, “Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney, a Poet of the Viking Diaspora”, Journal of the North Atlantic 4 (2013), 154–60; Bibire, “The Poetry of Earl Rognvald’s Court”, 208–11. See also Carl Phelpstead, Holy Vikings: Saints’ Lives in the Old Icelandic Kings’ Sagas (Tempe: ACMRS, 2007), 103–4. Erin Michelle Goeres, “Medieval Self-Fashioning: Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson and Orkneyinga Saga”, Scandinavica 54(2) (2015): 6–39. For an alternative view, see Peter Foote, “Wrecks and Rhymes”, in Micahel Barnes, Hans Bekker-Nielsen, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber eds, Aurvandilstá: Norse Studies (Odense: Odense University Press, 1984), 222–35, at 223. OS 1, 97 and 99; OS 2, 113 and 117. Natasha Hodgson, “Honour, Shame and the Fourth Crusade”, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 22–39. OS 1, 156; OS 2, 194. Mor. 1, 313; Mor. 2, 71–2; Heim. 1, 689; Heim. 2, 239. Heim. 1, 689; Heim. 2, 239. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, 120–3. Carl Phelpstead has made a similar point in his Holy Vikings, 104–7. Barbara E. Crawford, “Bishops of Orkney in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Bibliography and Biographical List”, The Innes Review 47(1) (1996), 1–13, at 5 and 9–10. OS 1, 161; OS 2, 204. Fred A. Cazel, “Financing the Crusades”, in Harry W. Hazard and Norman P. Zacour eds, A History of the Crusades, Vol. 6 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 116–49, at 122. Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, in Edoardo d’Angelo ed., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 231 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 7. See n. 18. OS 1, 166; OS 2, 210: “Víst ’r at frá berr flestu/Fróða meldrs at góðu/vel skúfaðra vífa/ vǫxtr þinn, konan svinna./Skorð lætr hár á herðar/haukvallar sér falla, átgjǫrnum rauðk erni/ilka, gult sem silki.” Paul Bibire has commented on the influenmce of “courtly love” and suggested that Rognvald’s verses constitute “a case-study in cultural links” (Bibire, “The Poetry of Earl Rǫgnvaldr’s Court”, 219). For analysis of this verse, see Jesch, “Christian Vikings”, 59. OS 1, 166; OS 2, 211: “Orð skal Ermingerðar/ítr drengr muna lengi;/brúðr vill rǫkk, at ríðim/Ránheim til Jórðánar./En er aptr fara runnar/unnviggs of haf sunnan,/rístum, heim at hausti,/hvalfrón til Nerbónar.” Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 20–67. OS 1, 166–7; OS 2, 212: “Ek mun Ermingerði,/nema ǫnnur skǫp verði,/margr elr sorg of svinna,/síðan aldri finna./Værak sæll, ef ek svæfa,/sýn væri þat gæfa,/brúðr hefr allfagrt enni,/eina nótt hjá henni.” Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, 129–33. OS 1, 180; OS 2, 234: “Vill eigi vinr minn kalla,/varð allr í drit falla,/nær var í því œrin/ógæfa, miðhæfi./Lítt hykk, at þá þœtti/þengils mágr, er rengðisk,/leirr fellr grár af gauri,/góligr, í Imbólum.” On the location of Imbolum, see OS 1, 249. OS 1, 161; OS 2, 204. Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, 94–111. OS 1, 165 and 173–5; OS 2, 208 and 223–5. OS 1, 174; OS 2, 224 Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, in William Stubbs ed., Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, RS 38, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1864–5), I, 33.

146  Doherty

64

65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79

This reference was noted in Sarah Lambert, “Crusading or Spinning”, in Gendering the Crusades, 3. Rutebeuf, Oeuvres complètes de Rutebeuf, 2 vols eds Edmond Faral and Julia Bastin (Paris: Picard, 1959–60), I, 470–8 no. 26; Norman Daniel, “Crusade Propaganda”, in Kenneth Setton, Harry W. Hazard and Norman P. Zacour eds, The Crusades, 2nd edn (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969–89), VI, 39–97, at 82–3. My thanks to Dr Marianne Ailes for discussing this important example with me. Kari E. Gade, “Homosexuality and Rape of Males in Old Norse Law and Literature”, Scandinavian Studies 58(2) (1986), 124–41, at 133. David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 207–8. Jakobsson, “Masculinity and Politics in Njáls Saga”, 209–10. Mor. 1, 346; Mor. 2, 133: “Sigurðr konungr mælti: Fór ek til Jórdánar, ok kom ek við Púl, ok sá ek þik eigi þar. Vann ek átta orrostur, ok vartu í øngarri. Fór ek til grafar Dróttins, ok sá ek þik eigi þar. Fór ek í ána, þá leið er Drottinn fór, ok svam ek yfir, ok sá ek þik eigi þar. Ok knýtta ek þér knút, ok bíðr þín þar. Þá vann ek borgina Sídon með Jórsalakonungi, ok hǫfðum vér eigi þinn styrk eða ráð til.” OS 1, 179; OS 2, 231–2. OS 1, 179; OS 2, 232: “Knút munk þembiþrjóti,/þeim er nú sitr heima,/satt ’r, at heldr hǫfum hættan/hans kind, í dag binda.” OS 1, 179; OS 2, 232: “Knút ríðum vér kauða,/kemk móðr í stað góðan,/þann í þykkum runni/þessa Lafranzmessu.” Philip Booth, “Bathing in the Boundaries of the Holy Land: Christianities at the Jordan through the Eyes of Pilgrims, c. 1099–1291” (forthcoming). Heim. 1, 586–7; Heim. 2, 83–4. Mor. 1, 347; Mor. 2, 134: “En þar sem þú hrósaðir góðgørningum þínum er þú sóttir grǫf Dróttins þá ætla ek mér eigi skulu minna vega er ek lét setja hreinlífismannalíf ok staðinn þar með. En þat er þú reitt knútinn þá sýnisk mér at mátt hefði svá verða at ek ríða þér þann knút er þú værir aldregi síðan konungr at Nóregi.” Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London: Continuum, 2003), 2. This point has also been raised in Nedkvitne, “Why Did Medieval Norsemen Go on Crusades?”, 46. Mor. 1, 346; Mor. 2, 131. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 135–52. For an example of such redirection to suit a Norse audience, see Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse: The Movement of Texts in England, France and Scandinavia (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), 62.

Emasculation and transgression

9 Crusader masculinities in bodily crises Incapacity and the crusader leader, 1095–12741 Joanna Phillips Spring 1250 was the nadir of Louis IX’s first crusade.2 Aged in his middle years, the French king had taken the cross in 1244 upon recovery from a serious illness and, following extensive preparations, had embarked with a large host from his port of Aigues-Mortes on the Mediterranean coast of France in the summer of 1248. After over-wintering in Cyprus, the crusaders departed for their target of Egypt in the late spring of 1249, and, upon arrival, quickly captured the coastal city of Damietta that had been won and lost by the Fifth Crusaders some thirty years previously. During the winter, the crusaders made their way south, following the River Nile. They reached the city of Mansurah and fought the armies of its Ayyubid defenders there in February 1250. Although the crusaders were victorious, it was a hard-won victory, and their military advancement stalled. Deprivation and suffering struck the camp, according to Jean of Joinville, a close associate of the king who recorded the events of the crusade in his Vie de saint Louis. There was a shortage of food supplies, and a deadly sickness named the maladie de l’ost arose due to “the noxiousness of that country, in which no drop of water ever rains”, and the fact that the crusaders had, during the season of Lent, eaten fish from the river that had been feeding upon the bodies of those who had died in the battle of Mansurah.3 Seeing the afflictions of his followers, and with little hope of progress, in April 1250 Louis ordered retreat north to Damietta, which was at that point still in Christian hands. The king himself was stricken with bodily failure, a victim of the maladie de l’ost, and also suffering from a very strong flux (menoison moult fort) that manifested in diarrhoea so severe that his breeches had to be cut off; his infirmity was so great that he fainted several times on the night of the retreat.4 Urged to escape quickly by travelling downriver in a galley, but concerned above all for those of his people for whom there was no place on the ships, Louis insisted that “please God, he would never abandon his people”.5 Unfortunately for Louis, his noble followers and advisors (including Joinville himself) felt no such compunction and took ship, leaving the king “not one of all his knights and all his sergeants”, save for one of his closest companions, Geoffrey of Sergines; the pair attached themselves to the company led by Walter of Châtillon.6 With the king mounted on a rouncy, an ordinary riding horse (un petit rouncin) – albeit one accoutred with a silk cloth – and unable to defend himself due to his physical

150  Phillips weakness, Geoffrey protected Louis “just as a good servant protects his lord’s cup from flies”.7 On their arrival at a village, with the king unable to travel further, he was taken into a house and “laid, as if he were quite dead, in the lap of a bourjoise from Paris”.8 Political failure followed: on the cusp of concluding a truce with the Saracens, confusion among the crusaders meant that some of them started to surrender and were taken captive, leading to the collapse of the truce. Louis himself was taken prisoner, and the expedition ended ignominiously.9 Joinville’s account of these events contains a good deal of commentary on Louis’s kingship and corporeality. A brief introduction to the text is necessary to contextualise his layered presentation of the incapacitated king.10 Joinville’s Vie de saint Louis was composed early in the fourteenth century, commissioned by Jeanne of Navarre, wife to Louis’s grandson Philip IV, and dedicated to her son, later King Louis X. By that time, Louis IX had become Saint Louis, canonised in 1297, but it is likely that the section of the Vie that describes the crusade of 1248–54 was written at a somewhat earlier date (perhaps the 1270s–1280s), and framed by opening and closing sections when Joinville came to compile the whole text in response to Jeanne’s commission.11 While the frame is overtly hagiographical in tone, the crusading section of the Vie has a different focus, giving us many details about Joinville’s own experiences and treating Louis as a rather more fallible character.12 Indeed, it has been suggested that Joinville’s attitude to the king in this section can be read as ambivalent, with flashes of overt criticism, which is unusual in the genre of royal biography.13 In this instance, Joinville’s presentation of Louis begins on a highly negative tone, with a critique that hinges on the king’s physical condition to comment on his leadership, kingliness, and nobility. The foulness of Louis’s illness contaminates the image of the pure and saintly king that was to be his lasting reputation.14 In Joinville’s presentation, Louis is seen to have lost control of his bodily integrity at the same time as losing control of the military situation, an impression reinforced by the fact that the king was abandoned by all but one of his closest followers. That he was then unable to defend himself and needed protection further emphasises his incapacity and feebleness, even if his high social status is preserved in the simile that Geoffrey rendered service to him like a good servant at his lord’s table. However, Louis’s situation on a pack horse compromises his nobility; the note that the rouncin was equipped with a silk cloth was perhaps an attempt to befit it for its royal rider, but there is tension in this detail nevertheless. Upon arrival at the village, the imagery of Joinville’s narrative becomes increasingly complex. The detail that Louis was laid in the arms of a woman may be a Christo-mimetic vignette of a pietà scene.15 Note, furthermore, how Joinville had shown that Louis, like Christ, was prepared to sacrifice himself for his people by refusing to take ship to Damietta and thus secure his own safety.16 But, in the maternal aspect of this scene, Joinville may be infantilising Louis, which calls the effectiveness of the king’s leadership into question. The identity of the woman is curious and adds a new layer to our reading. Christopher Tyerman has hypothesised that she may have been Hersende, the female physician who attended Louis on his crusade, but if she was then Joinville seems to have chosen to occlude her

Incapacity and the crusader leader  151 occupational identity and focus on her femininity and inferior social status as a bourjoise, one of the mercantile and artisanal classes.17 Her bodily superiority to the king can thus be read as pejorative of Louis’s infirmity, her status rising as his falls with his incapacity. Christo-mimesis aside, the juxtaposition of noble man – leader and king – incapacitated and in the care of a lower-class but bodily-intact woman signals that Joinville may be making an incisive comment on Louis’s masculine identity; the king, who ought to embody power and authority, is instead humbled and compromised, failed by his body and therefore unable to fulfil his ordained role of king and crusader leader. It is the premise of the present discussion that corporeality and incapacity, as exhibited in the vignette just explored, are intertwined with understandings of masculinity in the medieval period, and contribute to a reading of (in this case) crusader masculinities through the prism of health.18 Especial resonance can be found in the explicitly gendered way that health was understood in the pre-modern past, as discussed further below. The particular focus here is an in-depth examination of the subject of the male crusader leader compromised by bodily infirmity, considering how health and corporeality intersect with the experience and interpretation of masculinity during crusader expeditions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Such a specific focus is justified by an appreciation that male crusaders, on the whole, deviated from the norms and ideals of contemporary masculinity. For instance, Natasha R. Hodgson has demonstrated how far crusaders were unable to fulfil the model of masculine identity as that of protector, procreator, and provider: crusading men were dislocated from their dependants, sworn to celibacy, and had diverted their resources to the crusade.19 Even when problematised thus, there is nuance: given that Louis IX’s wife Marguerite of Provence gave birth three times while on crusade, it seems that the couple were not keeping any vow of celibacy.20 Hodgson proposes that there is no one ideal form of masculinity to be found in the context of the crusades and that a “subtle and nuanced approach” must be taken to identify the varying models of masculinity that are exhibited in the contemporary sources.21 Clearly, the complexity of the masculinities manifest in the crusader context is best revealed through specific investigations of different aspects of the same, as this whole collection demonstrates. This will be achieved in the present chapter by, first, an investigation of what it meant to be a male crusader leader, how these attributes were conceived of as embodied in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and, additionally, how far maleness and health were understood as related in this period. The discussion will then consider how crusader leaders found their position threatened by the experience of ill-health or bodily incapacity. In particular, the chronicles of the crusades will be examined as indicative of what expectations were held of men in such situations and thus how far a man might succeed or fail in the role of sick leader. It will be seen that the experience of incapacity was a pressure point for crusading leaders in which their authority, masculinity, and reputation could be threatened or exalted. Crusader leadership was overwhelmingly male.22 The position of crusader leader – here referring to those secular men who led substantial crusader contingents – carried specific expectations of the men who fulfilled it, expectations

152  Phillips that formulated a particular interpretation of masculinity.23 To be a crusader leader was to inhabit a role predicated on capacity and physical ability. Marcus Bull has suggested that crusading stripped back the functions of leadership from a complex interchange of relationships, fealty, and custom, centred on the infrastructure of power such as castles and family monasteries, to a pure ability to “feed and protect desperate people in relentlessly tough conditions”.24 In the straitened circumstances of a crusading expedition, when the participants suffered hardship and deprivation, the traditional bonds of society could become more flexible. Alan V. Murray has shown that during the journey across Anatolia in 1097, and at the siege of Antioch in 1097–8, knights who were reduced in material worth by loss of their horses and equipment (and who experienced, concomitantly, a reduction in their knightly status), might be taken into service by leaders who could provide for them.25 Therefore, the physical incapacitation of the leader himself could have far-reaching consequences for those who followed him, and in this we must confront the paradoxical ambiguity of the sick leader. Since the term describes someone who leads, when a man who led a crusader contingent – with all the responsibilities, obligations, and expectations thus implied – was unable to fulfil his function because of sickness or incapacity, was he still to be thought of as a leader, and did his followers still treat him as one when he was compromised by bodily failure? To use the experience of corporeality and incapacity as a lens for the study of crusading masculinities is particularly apposite since health and the body were understood through an explicitly gendered framework in the Middle Ages.26 This was the system of humouralism, inherited from Ancient Greece, wherein health was thought to be governed by the balance of certain substances within the body, known as the four humours: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm.27 Balance of the humours represented good health, while imbalance was understood to be the root cause of disease and illness. The health of each individual person was thought to be governed by their own particular balance of the humours, their “constitution”, but certain factors – including age, geographical origin, and, significantly for this investigation, sex – were thought to predispose one towards a certain constitution. Men were held to be more inclined to an excess of blood; this sanguinity meant that they were constitutionally “hot” and “wet”, while women were thought to tend towards the phlegmatic, “cold” and “wet” in constitution, meaning that men and women were thought to experience good and bad health differently. Thus, the health of men in the Middle Ages represents a discrete area of investigation.28 Approaching crusading masculinities from the perspective of health and infirmity also strongly relates to the concept that certain societal roles have been correlated, throughout history, with particular expressions of gender, a point already mentioned.29 Crusader leadership, which was a largely male role, was also for the most part a preserve of the nobility.30 This, too, has repercussions for the experience and expression of masculinity and bodily health found therein.31 In the Middle Ages status was considered to be embodied, and the noble body was thought to be constitutionally distinct: refined and delicate, susceptible to health conditions

Incapacity and the crusader leader  153 that the less noble, rustic body would have shrugged off.32 One manifestation of this was that nobility were thought to require better quality food; the coarser food that was fitting and healthful for the lower orders was seen as bad for the health of those of higher social status.33 Consider in this light the concern that the chronicler Guibert of Nogent showed for the noble crusaders at the siege of Jerusalem, in 1099: How many throats and gullets of noble men were eaten away by the roughness of this bread; how we suppose their delicate stomachs were tortured by the acridity of the putrid liquid! Good God, we think of their suffering there, when they were mindful of their former standing in their homeland [. . . ] This is my thought, only this, never have such princes existed, who in expectation only of a spiritual benefit, exposed their own bodies to such suffering.34 By “putrid liquid” Guibert refers to the water carried six miles in untanned hides to quench the thirst of the besiegers – particularly foul, in Guibert’s opinion, to the “delicate stomachs” of the nobility. His objection towards the bread that the crusaders ate is firmly rooted in his perception of the refined noble constitution. Guibert tells us that the bread in question was made from barley, a traditionally low-status food.35 While this passage has been interpreted as demonstrating Guibert’s contempt of the poor, it seems instead that he displays a contemporary sensitivity to the physiological distinctness of the noble body.36 In this interpretation, Guibert’s concern would be not simply that the food was much lower quality than noble crusaders would have been used to consuming, but that in eating it their health was at particular risk. Moreover, he describes this experience as specific to the noble men, viri nobiles and principes, and so posits their suffering as greater than that of the rank-and-file crusaders who are assumed implicitly to be better suited to such conditions and victuals. Similar concern for the distinct experience of suffering noble men is found in the Itinerarium peregrinorum, which specified how “those who had once been delicately nourished, noblemen and the sons of potentates” ate grass (herba) wherever they found it growing at the siege of Acre of 1189–91.37 Elsewhere, Ralph of Caen emphasised how, “accustomed to good things, those nobles, the illustrious offspring of dukes, counts and kings” experienced particular torment when the First Crusaders were besieged in Antioch in 1098, fearful of hunger and short of water.38 Significantly, in these two examples the suffering men are described as young, emphasising their vulnerability by implying that they had not reached the peak of their military and masculine capabilities. Their bodies are doubly exposed to hardship through their nobility and their immaturity. Specific strands of the relationship between body, masculinity, and status can be perceived in portrayals of crusading kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although these issues have a much longer history. Royal health has been the object of study for David Green and Paul Kershaw, focusing respectively on Edward the Black Prince, and Alfred the Great.39 Their work emphasises how the textual representations of the suffering body of a king or prince can be read for comments

154  Phillips on that king’s performance of kingship, particularly predicated on humility and spirituality. Such issues have been seen above, in the extended discussion of Louis IX’s bodily crisis where, while his leadership of the French crusaders was compromised by his incapacity, the Christo-mimesis of the episode prompts awareness of his kingship: the French king aligned to the King of Kings. This takes on especial significance in a French context thanks to the Capetian programme of sacral monarchy (of which Louis was an early proponent, and to which his grandson Philip IV, in whose reign Joinville’s Vie was composed, was strongly committed) although in Louis’s sickness the concept of the king as healer – a central idea of Capetian sacral monarch – is inverted, for the king himself requires healing.40 There are additional ramifications to the ill-heath of a crusading king. While he was (like all crusaders) theoretically prepared to lose his life in the expedition, in his royal position the crusading king bore responsibility for the welfare of his realm as well as for the crusaders who followed him, and so his death or incapacity would have far-reaching consequences. In sickness, the tension between the competing roles of crusader and king was palpable, as Otto of St Blasien expressed after his king, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, drowned in the River Salef in Asia Minor in 1190, while travelling to the crusader siege of Acre with a German contingent of the Third Crusade. The Germans continued under Barbarossa’s son, Frederick, duke of Swabia, but in Antioch they were riven with disease and many of the crusaders died. The remainder limped on to Acre where the younger Frederick also died. Of the epidemic in Antioch, Otto lamented: “with the head having been cut off in the death of the emperor, pestilence ran riot through the whole body”.41 Here, Otto makes explicit use of the metaphor of the body politic to explain how serious the loss of the emperor had been to the German expedition.42 However, his use of the metaphor is a variant of its more usual application to describe the royal realm; instead Otto describes the crusading host, with the emperor at its head, just as Barbarossa headed his kingdom. Otto then relates the concept to the physical reality of the crusaders: having lost their “head” in their leader, the “body” was made vulnerable to the dangers of physical illness. In using the metaphor of the body politic, Otto unites Barbarossa-themonarch and Barbarossa-the-crusader as inhabiting one failed body, and emphasises how his leadership and kingship were both compromised. If the suffering king – like Alfred the Great, the Black Prince, or Louis IX – could be read as a paradigm of humble religiosity, the sick crusader king faced the same expectations of capacity and leadership to which non-royal crusader leaders were subject, causing his dual identities of crusader and king to be opposed. We have now established how masculinity and the noble (sometimes kingly) male body were intrinsically related in medieval medical thinking. How, then, did crusader leaders, embodying masculinity and nobility, experience incapacity, and how was the execution of male leadership affected when the leader was afflicted by bodily failure? Furthermore, we ought to ask how the experience of incapacity by crusader leaders was represented by others: since the evidence for this study is drawn from chronicles written in every case by an observer of the man in question, rather than by the leader himself, their modes

Incapacity and the crusader leader  155 of description and interpretation are key to helping us understand the performance of male crusader leadership in physical adversity.43 On this point, we should note that the authors of chronicles of the crusades were mostly from a clerical background (Joinville, a secular lord, is a notable exception). The picture of secular masculinity preserved in the chronicle record is therefore painted with a clerical brush, and this imparts certain emphases and preoccupations to the image of the crusader leader thus described. For example, monastic chroniclers particularly concerned with the spirituality of the crusading endeavour may be inclined to foreground the righteousness of the bodily suffering endured by their subjects, as we have already seen with Guibert of Nogent. The chronicler’s interpretation of the experience and performance of incapacitated crusader leaders must be given full weight, and while a cleric’s interpretation of the ideals of manliness may differ from those of a secular man, this adds nuance to our investigation. The incapacity of a leader through illness or wounding was certainly seen to affect his ability to fulfil his function. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, one of the primary leaders of the First Crusade, was ill during the siege of Antioch, 1097–8, and his reduced strength caused some of his Provençal followers to disassociate themselves from him.44 Eager to resist accusations of “idleness and greed”, Raymond took control of a fortification that the crusaders had built in order to prove his strength, and refused to give up its command despite his ailing health.45 Similarly, when Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lotharingia and later the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, was wounded in a fight with a bear in Asia Minor in 1097, his incapacity caused almost 15,000 of his followers to abandon him “because he could not provide for himself or for any others”, according to Guibert of Nogent.46 Variants of this story are also told by Albert of Aachen, the Charleville Poet (in Gilo of Paris’s poetic account of the First Crusade), William of Malmesbury (where the animal is a lion), and William of Tyre.47 The alternative readings contain different comments – both laudatory and critical – on Godfrey’s leadership, which have been discussed elsewhere, but a consideration of the features relating to his capacity, masculinity, and leadership is appropriate here.48 Under what circumstances did Godfrey encounter the beast? Albert, Guibert, and William of Tyre all say that he was hunting, an activity befitting his noble station. In Albert’s text, the context is of great hardship and the implication is that the nobles were hunting to supplement the crusaders’ food supplies. William of Tyre says that they hunted “to forget their sorrows”, suggesting that the excursion was entertainment, but Guibert’s tone is critical: he says that the nobles had relaxed their caution, suggesting a frivolous dereliction of duty and a failure of responsible leadership. In all variants, Godfrey came to the aid of someone below his station who had been attacked by the animal, but the identity of this victim differs, each permutation highlighting a different aspect of Godfrey’s status. The victim for Albert and William of Tyre was a pilgrim, showing Godfrey’s religious identity as a crusader and defender of the faith(ful). Guibert, William of Malmesbury, and the Charleville Poet say it was one of Godfrey’s fighting men, highlighting the duke’s military leadership; for the Charleville Poet, the victim is

156  Phillips a foot-soldier, pedes, which by comparison emphasises Godfrey’s higher social status further still. How was Godfrey wounded? The different accounts supply varying commentaries on Godfrey’s fighting ability. The Charleville Poet and William of Tyre both say that the wound was inflicted by the animal, while William of Malmesbury says that Godfrey was wounded by his weapon that had become lodged in the animal’s side. Guibert also says that Godfrey was wounded by his own weapon, but only once the animal was dead; during the fight, the animal had almost bested him by inflicting a serious bite on his hip. Albert of Aachen’s version, where the duke entangles his legs with his own sword during the fight, questions Godfrey’s martial ability even further. Moreover, in Albert’s version Godfrey was unable to finish the beast off by himself and had to be assisted by another crusader, Husechin, who rushed to his side.49 Finally, in a point that has the most significance for Godfrey’s masculine identity as a noble crusader leader, the authors comment on how his injury affected his ability to lead. Guibert stressed his inability to maintain control over his men and showed Godfrey to be aware of the effect that his incapacity had on his followers: “too late, the duke now regretted his solitude [in engaging the beast alone], for harm came to pass for his own followers and the entire sacred army”.50 However, while Albert admits that the duke’s contingent was slowed by his incapacity, the Charleville Poet was impressed by the fact that Godfrey apparently exercised command from a litter. These different representations of Godfrey’s injurious encounter and his response to his incapacity beg the question of what expectations were had of a male leader who experienced bodily failure. The Charleville Poet’s description of Godfrey exercising the functions of leadership while incapacitated is paralleled by the later portrayal of King Richard I of England at the siege of Acre in 1191 when, crippled by illness, the king had himself carried to the walls in a litter so that he could shoot at the defenders of the city with a crossbow.51 Indeed, according to Ambroise and the Itinerarium, Richard apparently suffered more from awareness of his incapacity than from his illness, tormented by the fact that he could see the enemy attack his people but could not contribute fully to their defence.52 The positive descriptions of Richard’s response to his illness may be contrasted with the less flattering portrayal of his cousin Philip II, King of France, who returned home soon after the conclusion of the siege because of his poor health.53 Philip’s retreat attracted severe criticism from Ambroise, who cast doubt on the French king’s claim to be ill: He was going back because of his illness, so the king said, whatever is said about him, but there is no witness that illness gives a dispensation from going with the army of the Almighty King, who directs the path of all kings.54 Castigation such as this, foregrounding both the king’s health and his royal status, indicates that certain expectations were held of crusader leaders in health and sickness, including that they should prioritise dedication to the crusade above their good health.55 Ambroise targets Philip’s kingly status: while returning to his

Incapacity and the crusader leader  157 kingdom rather than risk his health further could have been interpreted as prudent behaviour, Ambroise claims that in retreating (and for what he clearly suspected was a spurious reason) Philip had placed his own physical condition above the fortunes of the expedition and in doing so betrayed his devotion to God. These actions showed Philip to be a poor leader and king who overstepped his proper position in the hierarchy of man and the divine. But commitment to the crusade at all costs, even unto death, was untenable for crusader leaders such as kings and princes who had responsibilities to people and land back home; the crusade was only expected to be a temporary interruption from their life course and certainly one from which they intended to return. Prince Edward of England, later Edward I, felt the need to pre-empt possible criticism and safeguard his reputation in case he should be forced to break his vow, decreeing before his departure in 1272 that he would return from the East before his vow was fulfilled if he became seriously ill.56 Indeed, Philip was not the only leader to attract censure for retreating when ill. Consider the Itinerarium’s judgement on Ludwig III, Landgrave of Thuringia, when he too left the siege of Acre on account of illness: The landgrave had been made unwell and on this pretext he deserted the camp to return to his own country. While he had performed many illustrious feats to much acclaim, the brilliance of his glorious feats was spoiled by the disgrace of his return.57 In this case, the language is subtle: the author acknowledges that the landgrave was ill, but the use of “pretext” (praetextus) to describe his decision to return home carries shades of suspicion. There is, moreover, clear criticism that Ludwig had fallen short of expectations by allowing his health to take precedence over his commitment to the holy endeavour of the crusade.58 An alternative reading of the landgrave’s fate is found in the Chronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, the chronicle of the monastery where Ludwig’s family sepulchre was located. Here Ludwig’s illness and death is carefully described, but the exact location is kept vague, with the chronicler saying that it happened in “the lands over the sea” (in transmarinis partibus) and that, following the treatment of the body with mos teutonicos, wherein the bones were separated from the flesh in order to allow burial of the parts likely to decay most quickly and the transportation of the bones to a different place of interment, Ludwig’s internal organs were buried in Cyprus.59 While “the lands over the sea” is a phrase that was often used as a descriptor for Palestine, it lacks specificity, and avoids claiming that the landgrave died actively engaged in the siege of Acre. Perhaps the sympathetic chronicler was trying to save his champion the shame of retreat from the crusade. An intriguing development to the problem of retreat caused by infirmity is found in the case of Count Hugh of Vermandois, who left the First Crusade at Antioch in 1098. According to Albert of Aachen and Baldric of Bourgeuil, he had been sent on an embassy to Emperor Alexios Komnenos, a responsibility that showed him to be one of the premier crusader leaders.60 William of Malmesbury, with perhaps a hint of scepticism, said that his departure was due to the “alleged

158  Phillips unremitting contortion of his bowels”.61 Ralph of Caen, however, adds a new dimension: he said that Hugh had received a wound to the thigh that caused him to retreat to Tarsus for treatment.62 Two things about this interpretation encourage us to take a closer look at what, on first glance, looks like simple inconsistency between the accounts of chroniclers who relied on second-hand information to compile their texts. First, the location of Hugh’s wound is reminiscent of two other occasions when crusader leaders who received thigh wounds found their commitment to the crusade and their role as leader jeopardised. Bohemond, the leader of the Italo-Norman contingent of the First Crusade, was compromised by a thigh wound during the siege of Antioch in 1098, so much so that his martial prowess was affected. As his followers “saw their leader’s spirits fall” (uidere ducis procumbere mentem), many of them abandoned the fight, according to Gilo of Paris.63 Furthermore, all the accounts of Godfrey of Bouillon’s fight with the wild beast described above agree that the wound that apparently so badly affected his ability to lead was to his thigh. Such specificity about the location of a wound is unusual in the corpus of crusader chronicles and encourages closer attention. Second, from ancient times thigh wounds held a special literary significance, wherein a wounded thigh signified physical, spiritual, or political impotence in a man, and a concomitant loss of heroic status and authority – resonances that continued into the medieval period.64 Perhaps the best-known medieval incidence of this motif is Chrétien de Troyes’s Fisher King, whose physical incapacity, caused by his wounded groin, was simultaneously the cause of, and reflected in, his impotent and wasted kingdom. Although Chrétien’s Perceval was not written until the 1180s, post-dating the records of Hugh’s, Godfrey’s, and Bohemond’s wounds by at least half a century, there may be a complex relationship between the historical and the literary via crusading at play here: it was suggested by Helen Adolf, and supported by Helen Nicholson, that Chrétien’s Fisher King was an analogue of Baldwin IV, the incapacitated king of Jerusalem.65 Chrétien was possibly harking back to the literary tradition, also transmitted through crusading narratives, of the thigh wound as an unmanning and enfeebling injury to incapacitate his Fisher King. Interpretations of the Fisher King’s impotence changed as time went on: in the Arthurian literature of the central to later Middle Ages, thigh wounds, or genital wounding, have been interpreted as evidence of spiritual purity and therefore fitness to keep the grail, but the meaning in the earlier period seems much less complimentary.66 There is clearly an issue of compromised masculinity and leadership here: we have already noted how both Bohemond and Godfrey found their ability to lead affected by their wounds, and in Bohemond’s case the peril to his masculinity is made even more explicit by Gilo, who says the wound was to his “manly thigh” (uirile femur).67 In Hugh’s case, the shades of doubt cast on the truth of his claim to be ill by William of Malmesbury when correlated with Ralph of Caen’s account indicate that his “thigh wound” may be a cipher for Ralph to signify his shame, feebleness, and emasculation in leaving the crusade. The bodily integrity of the male crusader leader was key to his performance in that role and it is suggested here that the masculine ideals expected of crusading leaders can be discerned in the performance of leadership during bodily crisis. For

Incapacity and the crusader leader  159 a man whose noble status was thought to be embodied and whose role as military leader was predicated on maleness and bodily capacity, incapacity represented a threat not only to the execution of his role as leader, but also his reputation and masculine identity. The sick leader might be abandoned by his followers, but in sickness the leader who refused to let his condition incapacitate him could be exalted. The risks of failing to exercise firm and effective leadership were intensified in the military and religious context of the crusades, since in failing to perform as crusader leader, the man in question could be accused of lack of commitment to the holy expedition. This could take the form of an explicit charge that the leader had gone against the will of God in allowing his bodily condition to affect his participation in the crusade. Through such charges, the chronicler assumes an important role in the construction of the male crusader leader’s reputation through the contemporary histories of the crusades. In this the presentation of an incapacitated crusader leader sits somewhere between the intersection of literature and history, wherein the trope of a thigh wound, as sustained by three notable crusader leaders, can be interpreted as a cipher for inadequate and unmanly performance in the religious war. If such presentations represent the interpretations and opinions of the chronicler rather than the suffering man himself, this underlines the point that the reputation of a leader could be affected by his response to incapacity. Exploring the execution of crusader campaigns through the prism of health and gender reveals that the body of that leader was both his own and that of the crusading host. The picture painted by the detailed case studies offered here shows clearly that the specificity of the crusading context made the experience of bodily incapacity a point of crisis for a male leader, one wherein the fate of his expedition and his reputation hung in the balance.

Notes 1 The research for this article was made possible by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Block Grant Partnership, Award Reference 1229073. My thanks to Alexandra Bamji, Sunny Harrison, Laura King, Claire Martin, Jessica Meyer, Iona McCleery, Alan V. Murray, James Titterton, and Vanessa Wright for their suggestions. Translations from Latin are the author’s own; reference is given to published translations for works in Old French. 2 The following narrative is based on: Jean of Joinville, Vie de saint Louis, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Dunod, 1995), 142–54; translated by Caroline Smith in Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008), 217–22. References are to the numbered section of the text, which is the same in both editions, while the page numbers given in brackets are to Smith’s translation, for the convenience of the reader. On Louis’s assumption of the cross and his preparations for the crusade, William C. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 3 “pour l’enfermeté du païs, la ou il ne pleut nulle foiz goute d’yaue”: Joinville, sec. 291 (trans., 218). 4 Ibid., sec. 306 (trans., 221). 5 “Dieu plest, il ne leroit ja son peuple”: ibid., sec. 306 (trans., 221). 6 “li demoura de touz chevaliers ne de touz serjans”: ibid., sec. 309 (trans., 222). Geoffrey of Sergines had fought in the king’s entourage at Damietta and vehemently opposed

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7 8 9 10

11

12 13

14 15

16 17

the proposal to offer the king as a hostage during the aborted negotiations of surrender described above: ibid., secs 173, 302 (trans., 188, 220). He later acted as a member of Louis’s council during the king’s sojourn in Acre: ibid., sec. 438 (trans., 253). See also: Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 77–80; Jean Richard, Saint Louis: Crusader King of France, ed. Simon Lloyd, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; first published as Saint Louis: roi d’une France féodale (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 148–9. Walter of Châtillon had proved himself in the battle of Mansurah, but was not part of Louis’s inner circle: Joinville, secs 243, 256–7, 268 (trans., 206, 210, 213). “comme le bon vallet deffent le hanap son seigneur des mouches”: ibid., sec. 309 (trans., 222). “le coucherent ou giron d’une bourjoise de Paris, aussi comme tout mort”: ibid., sec. 310 (trans., 222). Louis was later freed thanks to the negotiation of a treaty, the surrender of Damietta, and the payment of a hefty ransom: ibid., secs 340–2, 380–8 (trans., 229–30, 239–41). For varying introduction and analyses: Daisy Delogu, Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign: The Rise of the French Vernacular Royal Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 22–57; M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 181–96; Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis, trans. Gareth Evan Collard (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009; first published Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 376–98; Caroline Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 47–74. While Monfrin suggests that the whole text was composed from 1305 to 1309, Gaposchkin and Smith prefer the two-stage composition proposed by Gaston Paris in 1894: Monfrin, “Introduction”, in Jacques Monfrin ed., Vie de saint Louis, (Paris: Dunod, 1995), lxvi–lxxvi; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 182–5; Smith, Age of Joinville, 48–58. Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 182, 187. Afrodesia E. McCannon, “Two Capetian Queens as the Foreground for an Aristocrat’s Anxiety in the Vie de saint Louis”, in Kathleen Nolan ed., Capetian Women (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 163–76. On the more positive portrayals usually to be found in vernacular royal biographies: Delogu, Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign, 16–17. In discussing the negative features of Joinville’s portrayal of Louis IX, we should acknowledge the debate that hinges on how far Joinville’s criticism informs whether the Vie ought to be read as hagiography or biography. Delogu argues that Joinville’s negative descriptions of the king, taken by some as evidence that the text cannot be hagiographical in nature, enshrine the king as an exemplar to which the audience can aspire: ibid., 41–2. Joinville’s description of Louis’s bodily crisis has not been fully analysed as a critique of the king until now. On the physical and moral contamination of excrement, Martha Bayless, Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: The Devil in the Latrine (New York: Routledge, 2012). The figural group of the pietà in art is traced to the early fourteenth century, and is closely related to the developing religious culture of affective piety of the thirteenth century onwards. See Joanna E. Ziegler, Sculpture of Compassion: The Pietà and the Beguines in the Southern Low Countries c. 1300–c. 1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). In written sources it is detectable from at least the eleventh century: William H. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 199. An action that Joinville described as a demonstration of exemplary kingship in the prologue of the Vie: sec. 10 (trans., 142–3); Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 194–5. Christopher J. Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (London: Allen Lane, 2015), 167, 252. On Hersende, Piers D. Mitchell,

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18

19

20 21 22

23

24 25

26 27

Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19. This idea has influenced historians of other historical periods; for example, Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion, 1996). The point is not to enforce the sex/gender dichotomy – that male bodies must accordingly have masculine experiences – but rather to consider the relationship between the two: R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender and Society 19 (2005), 837, 851–2. Natasha R. Hodgson, “Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade”, in Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), 201–2. The principles are David D. Gilmore’s, from his sociological work Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 222–3, and were applied to the Middle Ages by Vern L. Bullough in “On Being a Male in the Middle Ages”, in Clare A. Lees ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 34. However, studies of medieval masculinities have in fact shown as much deviation from this model as adherence to it. See, inter alia, Jacqueline Murray ed. Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (New York: Garland, 1999); Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, eds P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013). To Jean Tristram in 1250, to Peter in 1251, and to Blanche in 1253: Joinville, secs 196, 254, 294 (trans., 244, 272–3, 293). Hodgson, “Competing Masculinities”, 212. As ever, when such bald statements are made, exceptions can be found. Notably, Marguerite of Provence oversaw the defence of Damietta after Louis IX was taken into captivity, but her case is the exception rather than the rule: Joinville, sec. 399–400 (trans., 244). That certain roles fostered specific forms of masculinity underpins Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (London: Routledge, 2013). Because of this rationale, clerical leaders are excluded from the current investigation, being subject to different expectations of masculinity than secular leaders. On the interactions of clerical leadership and masculinity during crusading expeditions, Matthew M. Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, in Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, 94–111. Marcus Bull, “The Eyewitness Accounts of the First Crusade as Political Scripts”, Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 29. Alan V. Murray, “The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1096–1099: Structure and Dynamics of a Contingent on the First Crusade”, in John France ed., Medieval Warfare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006; first published in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 70 (1992), 301–29), 325. Jonathan Riley-Smith also pointed out that ties of lordship could fluctuate during a crusade expedition: The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 87. Explored at length in Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also Bullough, “Being a Male”, 31–3. For further details, including the origin of the theory of the four humours, and its transmission in the medieval west: Vivian Nutton, “Humoralism”, in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter eds, Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1993), 281–91; Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine:

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28

29 30

31

32

33

34

35 36

An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 104–6. One that, thus far, has received relatively little attention. Highly significant is: David Green, “Masculinity and Medicine: Thomas Walsingham and the Death of the Black Prince”, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 34–51 (and see n. 39, below). Particularly relevant to this study, but less overtly gendered in analysis is: Thomas G. Wagner and Piers D. Mitchell, “The Illnesses of King Richard and King Philippe on the Third Crusade: An Understanding of Arnaldia and Leonardie”, Crusades 10 (2011), 23–44. The interactions between humouralism and masculinity have been studied for a later period by: Jennifer Jordan, ‘ “That ere with Age, his strength is utterly decay’d”: Understanding the Male Body in Early Modern Manhood”, in Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan eds, Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 27–48. See n. 23, above. Kirsten Fenton stresses the importance of the intersection between noble masculinity and crusading in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum but the same interplay can be observed in the works of other authors: Kirsten A. Fenton, “Gendering the First Crusade in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum”, in Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A. Fenton eds, Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 129. Once again, exceptions can be found: neither Walter Sansavoir nor Peter the Hermit, leaders of the so-called “People’s Crusade” of 1096, had exalted backgrounds, even though Walter’s surname is now thought to be toponymic, rather than a reference to his pecuniary fortunes or social position: Murray, “Godfrey of Bouillon”, 445. Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard recently suggested that future studies on the history of masculinity ought to be sensitive to the significance of social status for male identities, and Deborah Gerish has suggested that nuanced consideration of the interaction of masculinity, social status, and crusading is an as-yet-untapped seam of research: Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard, “What Have Historians Done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500–1950”, Journal of British Studies 44 (2005), 276–7; Deborah Gerish, “Gender Theory”, in Helen J. Nicholson ed., Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 139. On nobility as embodied, Danielle Westerhof, Death and the Noble Body in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008). See also Fiona Whelan, The Making of Manners and Morals in Twelfth-Century England: The Book of the Civilised Man (New York: Routledge, 2017), 113–81, for how elite status was considered to be performed and safeguarded though behaviour, bodily moderation, and diet. Iona McCleery, “Getting Enough to Eat: Famine as a Neglected Medieval Health Issue”, in Barbara S. Bowers and Linda M. Keyser eds, The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Medicine (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016), 130–1; Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 227–9. “Quanta tot virorum nobilium fauces et guttura cibarii panis illius rodebantur aspredine, quanta delicatos eorum stomachos prutidorum laticum putamus tortos acredine! Bona deus, quid patientiarum inibi fuisse pensamus, ubi non immemores erant quique habitae quondam in patria dignitatis [. . .] Haec mea est sententia, haec unica, numquam a seculorum tales exstitisse principiis, qui pro sola expectatione emolumenti spiritualis tot corpora sua exsposuere suppliciis”: Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, in Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis 127A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 274–5. Ibid., 274; Adamson, Food, 1–4. For the former opinion, Robert Levine, “Introduction”, in The Deeds of God through the Franks: A Translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 9.

Incapacity and the crusader leader  163 37 “hi qui nutribantur olim deliciose, viri nobiles et filii potentum”: Richard de Templo, Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I: Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs, vol. 2, Rolls Series 38 (London: Longman, 1864–5), 127. 38 “assueta bonis tam nobilis illa, tam preclara ducum, comitum regumque propago”: Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, ed. Edoardo D’Angelo, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis 231 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 71. 39 Green, “Masculinity and Medicine”; Paul Kershaw, “Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred”, Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001), 201–24. 40 On sacral monarchy as pertaining to the cult of St Louis, Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 5–12, 100–24. On the king as healer, an especially French expression of sacral monarchy, Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973; reprinted Oxford: Routledge, 2015). 41 “pestilencia desecto capite in morte augusti per totum corpus grassatur”: Otto of St Blasien, Ottonis de Sancto Blasio chronica, ed. Adolfus Hofmeister, MGH SS rer. Germ. 47 (Hannover: Hahn, 1912), 52. 42 The key work on the concept of the king’s two bodies, physical and political, is Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957; reprinted 1997). On the issue of how far the (in)capacity of a king through sickness affected the “health” of his nation, Wendy J. Turner, “A Cure for the King Means the Health of the Country: The Mental and Physical Health of Henry VI”, in Wendy J. Turner ed., Madness in Medieval Law and Custom, Later Medieval Europe 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 176–95. 43 Although note the debates on such an approach articulated by John Tosh in “The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept?”, in John H. Arnold and Sean Brady eds, What is Masculinity?: Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 17–34. In study of medieval masculinities, a focus on representation rather than primary experience is unavoidable, due to the nature of the sources available, but such an approach is not undertaken unthinkingly. 44 Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, in RHC Occ., vol. 3 (1866) (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1844–95), 250. 45 “desidia et avaritia”: ibid.; on his refusal to give up the fortification: ibid., 262. 46 “quia nec sibi ulli providere poterat”: Guibert of Nogent, 286–7. The full story is told at 285–7. 47 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 142–4; Gilo of Paris, The Historia vie Hierosolimitane of Gilo of Paris, and a Second, Anonymous Author, ed. and trans. C. W. Grocock and Elizabeth Siberry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), ll. 365–95; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 658; William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, vol. 1, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis 63 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1986), 219–20. 48 Natasha Hodgson, “Lions, Tigers, and Bears: Encounters with Wild Animals and Bestial Imagery in the Context of Crusading to the Latin East”, Viator 44 (2013), 83–93; Joanna Phillips, “William of Malmesbury: Medical Historian of the Crusades”, in Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Winkler, and Emily Dolmans eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), 129–38 (esp. 135–6). 49 Husechin is otherwise unknown and may be presumed to be non-noble. That Godfrey required the assistance of a probable commoner further undermines his status. 50 “Solitudinum suarum penituit tunc sero ducem, dum per id appendicis sibi exercitus et totius sacrae militiae detrimenta contingunt”: Guibert of Nogent, 286.

164  Phillips 51 Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. and trans. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber, vol. 1 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), ll. 4921–36 (trans. Ailes, vol. 2, 100); Itinerarium peregrinorum, 224–5. 52 Ambroise, ll. 4,795–802 (trans. Ailes, 99); Itinerarium peregrinorum, 220. 53 Wagner and Mitchell, “Arnaldia and Leonardie”, 41–2. See also Catherine Hanley, War and Combat, 1150–1270: The Evidence from Old French Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 76–9, and John Hosler, The Siege of Acre, 1189–1191: Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Battle that Decided the Third Crusade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 140–1. 54 “Il s’en vint pas sa maladie, / Li reis ço dist – que que l’en die – / Mais nus n’ad de ço testimoine / Que maladie en seit essoigne / D’aler en l’ost le rei demaine / Qui toz les reis conduit e maine”: Ambroise, ll. 5,250–5 (trans. Ailes, 105). 55 Wagner and Mitchell, “Arnaldia and Leonardie”, 43. 56 Arnold Fitz-Thedmar, De antiquis legibus liber, ed. Thomas Stapleton, Camden old ser. 34 (London: Offices of the Society, 1846), 131. 57 “Landegravus enim valetudinarius effectus, repatriandi praetextu castra deseruit: qui cum multa clarius et ad omnium favorem egisset, illustrem factorum gloriam turpi reditu deformavit”: Itinerarium peregrinorum, 94. 58 We do not know whether the author of the Itinerarium knew that Ludwig had died on the return journey, as Roger of Howden did nor whether knowledge of this fact would have changed the author’s opinion: Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi: The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I A.D. 1169–1192, ed. William Stubbs, vol.  2, Rolls Series 49 (London: Longman, 1867), 148; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, vol. 3 (1870), Rolls Series 51 (London: Longman, 1868–71), 88. 59 O. Holder-Egger ed. Chronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, MGH SS, 30.1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1896), 546. On mos teutonicos, Westerhof, Death and the Noble Body, 79. 60 Albert of Aachen, 340–2; Baldric of Bourgueil, The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 84. 61 “causatus continuam uiscerum tortionem”: William of Malmesbury, 638. 62 Ralph of Caen, 90. 63 The quotation is from Gilo of Paris, ll. 181–2. See also Robert the Monk, The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, eds Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 57. 64 In the crusader context, see the editors’ note to Gilo of Paris, 172, n. 2. More broadly, Debbie Felton, “The Motif of the ‘Mutilated Hero’ in Herodotus”, Phoenix 68 (2014), 48; William Sayers, “An Archaic Tale-Type Determinant of Chrétien’s Fisher King and Grail”, Arthuriana 22 (2012), 85–101. In the medieval period, the association is due to the use, from late Antiquity, of femur, “thigh”, as a synonym for penis: Lynda L. Coon, “Gender and the Body”, in Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith eds, Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100, vol. 3 (2008), Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006–9), 435. 65 Helen Adolf, “A Historical Background for Chrétien’s Perceval”, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (PMLA) 58 (1943), 605–7; Helen J. Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150–1500, History of Warfare 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 117, 131. 66 Jed Chandler, “Eunuchs of the Grail”, in Larissa Tracy ed., Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013), 229–54; Kenneth Hodges, “Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur”, Studies in Philology 106 (2009), 14–31. 67 Gilo of Paris, l. 182.

10 Emasculating the enemy Wicher the Swabian’s fight with the Saracen giant Susan B. Edgington

This dramatic episode, Wicher the Swabian’s fight with the giant Saracen, occurs rather unexpectedly towards the end of what had, up to that point, been an unadventurous versification by Metellus of Tegernsee of Robert the Monk’s Historia of the First Crusade. The coarse, not to say scatological, humour of the inserted passage raises several questions about the poet’s intentions and the poem’s audience, chief among them whether it had a more serious purpose than mere entertainment. I shall argue that the emasculation of the giant that is the culmination of the tale should be read symbolically, but it is necessary to provide some context and scene-setting first.

Author and work Metellus of Tegernsee was a Bavarian and a Benedictine monk who wrote two works: the Quirinalia, a collection of poems relating to St Quirinus, patron of the monastery of Tegernsee where he was a monk, and this epic poem – 4845 hexameter lines – on the First Crusade called Expeditio Ierosolimitana. The Expeditio Ierosolimitana is extant in the same single manuscript as the Quirinalia and was written between 1146 and 1165.1 The dating, like the author’s name, depends entirely on internal evidence, but the terminus post quem of 1146 appears certain and it means that the poem, which may have been started in the atmosphere of enthusiasm surrounding recruitment to the Second Crusade, is unlikely to have reached the episode under discussion, which occurs in book 6 of the epic, before news of the crusade’s disastrous outcomes were known to the author.2 If a later date for Metellus’s starting the Expeditio is more likely, then this is consistent with the conjecture of Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull, the most recent editors of Robert the Monk’s Historia Iherosolimitana, that the failure of the Second Crusade “encouraged an interest in the First Crusade as an exemplar of what could be achieved”.3 In other words, German participation in the Second Crusade inspired an interest in the part they played in the First Crusade, which Germans believed (or wanted to believe) had been much more heroic and successful. Nevertheless, it has to be said that Robert’s work made no mention of general German participation; the writer only referred in passing to Peter the Hermit’s followers as including “his own men

166  Edgington and a great tribe of Swabians”.4 In fact, far from seeing any encouragement for imperial ambitions, Kempf and Bull perceived the Historia as “work[ing] particularly hard to cast the crusade as a demonstration and reinforcement of the prestige of the Capetian monarchy”, with “an emphasis on the expedition as a specifically French achievement”.5 In spite of this they identified eight twelfth-century manuscripts that can be said with certainty to have originated in southern German monasteries, including Tegernsee.6 Robert the Monk’s Historia was by far the most copied and most widely disseminated narrative account of the First Crusade; its penetration into southern Germany was almost certainly due to Otto of Freising, half-brother of Emperor Conrad III, enthusiast for the Second Crusade, and former Cistercian monk.7 Metellus, whose Quirinalia as well as his crusade epic demonstrated his close interest in local and regional affairs, had great difficulty in finding material in Robert the Monk that could be used to celebrate the role of the different German nations, or more specifically the Swabians, in the First Crusade. He was able to seize on Robert’s reference to Godfrey as “dux Teutonicus” and to stress the crusaders’ descent from Charlemagne.8 Metellus also described how: “Flying rumour had set the whole wide world in motion; Flanders, the Normans, the Swabians along with the French: as whatever people has its ancestral homes nearby seeks out the Greek realm by land and sea from all sides.”9 But his finest inventive and descriptive powers were reserved for Wicher the Swabian’s fight with a Saracen giant, an incident that he did not find in Robert the Monk and is to all appearances Metellus’s own fiction, although it incorporates recognisable elements from folk tales and legend. The most obvious source of inspiration is the widely reported fight between Godfrey of Bouillon and a giant Turk on a bridge outside Antioch, reported by Robert the Monk as culminating in Godfrey’s cutting the pagan giant in half.10 There is an exploit described by Arnold of Lübeck in his Chronicon Slavorum that may be a distorted echo of the same story.11 However, Arnold’s incident took place outside Nicaea. The duke of Nicaea proposed single combat to the Christians outside the walls, using a German prisoner as an intermediary. Godfrey nominated a servant of his called Helias, who was exceptionally big and good looking, and sent him to sort out the rules of engagement with the duke. Impressed by the appearance of Helias, and realising that his own champion would be beaten, the Turkish duke offered the emissary half his lands and his daughter in marriage if he would convert and fight for him. Helias agreed rather easily. In due course the date and time of the combat were announced and Godfrey, who was still wondering what had happened to Helias, needed a new champion because – as Arnold erroneously explained  – he was old and a hunchback (confusing him with his uncle who had died in 1076). Many volunteered and Godfrey’s nephew Drogo was chosen to go, identified as David to the Turks’ Goliath. In a charming detail, Helias’s bride, the duke of Nicaea’s daughter, had sewn a lot of little bells into his horse’s bridle to frighten Drogo’s horse but Godfrey had foreseen this and stopped Drogo’s horse’s ears with wool and pitch. After a close-fought duel the victorious Drogo, with his opponent on the ground, asked him who he was. When Helias

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  167 revealed his identity, Drogo gave him the chance to reconvert to Christianity and even held out the promise of half his lands (two towns of his four) and marriage to his sister. Remarkably, perhaps, Helias the Apostate refused to apostasise again and was duly beheaded. Arnold’s duel has certain resemblances to Metellus’s, but whether this was the result of both authors incorporating some legend of the First Crusade that was in circulation in Germany, or whether both of them were influenced by certain chansons de geste that will be discussed later, is not known. What does seem clear, however, is that stories of single combat with giants were popular across Europe in the middle of the twelfth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth told of King Arthur fighting “a huge giant” and referred to a previous duel with a giant called Retho.12 The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle described the hero Roland’s fight against the giant Ferragus.13 Neither writer was likely to be aware of the other or of Metellus, since the three were writing at approximately the same time but were geographically far apart. A comparable episode that occurs in only one manuscript of the Old French poem Les Chétifs seems designed to appeal to the same appetite for giant stories but not to have been influenced by the Latin writers.14 Also writing in the vernacular, Chrétien de Troyes (1130–91) opposed his hero Yvain to the giant Harpin.15 The inclusion of an apocryphal giant story in the Expeditio is therefore not hard to understand. What marks out Metellus’s story is its deliberate subversion of the heroic tradition of such tales, which is the more marked because of the high-flown epic verse form, diction, and range of images he employed. The duel occupies exactly 100 lines of Metellus’s poem and it is written in leonines, with each hexameter line having an internal rhyme consisting of at least two syllables before the caesura and at its end.16 The leonine verse form, which was becoming outmoded by Metellus’s time, made enormous demands on the poet’s ingenuity, since he set himself to obey the classical imperatives of metre as well as the medieval rules of rhyme.

The location The alleged duel, or monomachia, took place outside the walls of Jerusalem. Historically, this was not a likely location, but there were surely artistic reasons for locating the fight here rather than outside Antioch, like Godfrey’s encounter with a Turkish giant, or outside Nicaea, like the episode reported by Arnold of Lübeck. Most importantly, the duel was relocated chronologically, introducing Wicher the Swabian on the eve of the capture of Jerusalem, in which (according to Robert the Monk) he was to play an important part. The location was also chosen, surely, as a burlesque parallel to the mortal combat of Hector and Achilles outside Troy, on the one hand underlining the crusade as being in the epic tradition of the Trojan Wars and on the other enhancing the duel’s comic potential. In the twelfth century the Iliad was a constant motif and reference point for writers of both prose and verse, and it was especially employed to draw parallels with the crusade.17 Oddly, since Metellus should have been aware of the lack of water of any kind in the Judaean desert around Jerusalem, the fight was played out on an island (lines 268–9). This, however, was another epic convention: discussing trial by battle,

168  Edgington Robert Bartlett referred to the use of an island as a “clearly delineated spot” for judicial combat.18 The use of an island demarcated the duelling ground clearly and ensured that the two hostile audiences were separated from each other by the river.

The characters Godfrey of Bouillon was a historical and heroic figure, well known especially to a twelfth-century audience. Both wealthy and pious, as all the sources agree, he led one of the forces that broke into Jerusalem in 1099 and shortly afterwards became ruler of the kingdom and commanded the crusaders’ forces at the battle of Ascalon. A little less than a year later he died, but his reputation continued to grow until he became a mythic figure, especially in the Old French epic cycles. As Carol Sweetenham has pointed out, Robert the Monk’s “portrayal represents an early stage in that sanctification”.19 It was therefore very suitable for Metellus’s further exaggeration of Godfrey’s role in the expedition, for he was able to refer to Godfrey as “dux Teutonicorum” and “dux Teutonicus”.20 He described Godfrey in heroic terms, stressing that he followed (literally) in the footsteps of his ancestor Charlemagne, who according to contemporary legend had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wicher the Swabian was also a historical figure. Albert of Aachen attested the presence of “Wicherus Alemannus” in Godfrey’s army at the sieges of Arsuf in the autumn of 1099 and Haifa in July 1100.21 On the latter occasion Albert said that he was “praiseworthy for his sword blow and slicing of a mailed Turk”, which may preserve the germ of a legend that Metellus developed.22 At the time of Godfrey’s death Wicher was one of the close circle who sent for Baldwin as his successor, in line with Godfrey’s wishes.23 When Wicher died in August 1101, Albert recorded another heroic deed: In the same year Wicher the Swabian, who had been taken ill with a severe fever a short while before this battle, died in the month of August and was buried in the town of Jaffa. This man would have been a great support to the king with the sword he had used to cut the Turk in half through hauberk and clothing on the bridge at Antioch, had he not prematurely ended his life. This splendid knight, protected by a shield, one day attacked a great and horrible lion, which used often to devour men and cattle next to the mountains, in the region of Jaffa, just as it was wanting to pounce on a grazing horse. As it came to meet him face to face, with a nimble leap and a bound he struck the lion a blow from his very sharp sword, so hard that its skull was split in two, and he left the cruel and fearless animal dead on the plains.24 There is no evidence or reasonable suggestion that Metellus read or knew of Albert’s work, which was disseminated mainly in the Rhineland. Wicher’s fame outside Swabia is corroborated by a reference in Robert the Monk’s Historia, where he was depicted as following Lethold of Tournai into Jerusalem, and therefore as the second person into the holy city, entering Jerusalem even before

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  169 Godfrey himself. At this point Robert described “Guicherius” as “the one who knocked flat and killed a lion with his bare hands”.25 A little later Robert referred to Wicher as the one “who had cut the lion in half”.26 Robert shared the reference to Wicher the lion-killer with Gilo of Paris. 27 There has been some debate as to whether one of them copied the other or they shared a source. Gilo’s editors argued that the two writers used a common source, now lost; Carol Sweetenham, after a detailed comparison of the two works, was reluctant to posit another “lost source”; Marcus Bull argued that the resemblances as well as certain differences could be explained by Gilo’s selective usage of Robert’s Historia.28 Intriguingly, a variant manuscript of Baldric of Dol includes references to Wicher as one of Duke Godfrey’s knights and Baldric portrayed him transecting a Turk at Antioch; leaping on horseback into the river and amputating the arms of two Turks, also at Antioch; and (at some length) killing a lion outside Jubail in 1099.29 As the manuscript concerned is thought to have originated in Touraine, it provides more evidence of a body of legend growing up around Wicher in the twelfth century, even outside Germany.30 Later references to Wicher by John of Würzburg, Alberic of Troisfontaines (where he was “interfector leonis”) and in the Chanson d’Antioche, although demonstrating the endurance of legends, are likely to have drawn on one or other of the near-contemporary sources.31 Lastly, Wicher is customarily identified as a ministerialis of Fulda, but his status, so far as I can establish, is based solely on the reference in Metellus. He probably came from Fulda, although it is always possible he was called Fuldensem to fit the metre and to rhyme with the terminal ensem (line 236). More importantly, Wicher called himself a “a poor minister of Fulda, in service to your peers”, and (leaving aside the humility topos) a minister could be any sort of servant of state or church or indeed of a person, perhaps his squire (262). There is, however, independent testimony that Wicher was Swabian, for Albert’s Alemannus is Metellus’s Suevus (234).

The Saracen giant Marianne Ailes has sought to distinguish between “Giants and Outsize Warriors”, and this raises the question: just how big was the Saracen giant?32 Notably Wicher’s opponent was not compared to Goliath, which seems the obvious biblical simile. This may have been because that comparison had already been used by Robert the Monk to describe the Turk whom Godfrey sliced in two, and Godfrey’s victim was merely “unusually heavily built and of greater strength like another Goliath”.33 Goliath of Gath was certainly big – the Vulgate Bible said six cubits and a span (nearly three metres) though the Septuagint said only four cubits and a span (just over two metres) – but he was not actually called a giant in the Old Testament.34 Isidore of Seville, whose Etymologies were commonly to be found in monastic libraries, defined giants as “exceedingly large and strong men”, but how far they deviated from the Aristotelian mean was not specified.35 Metellus used a variety of ways to indicate the protagonist’s exceptional size. First, he deployed classical references to giants: the first was a comparison with

170  Edgington “Tityus, brought down by a wound” (line 248). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poet’s most likely source, Tityus “was stretched out across nine acres” in Hades: clearly a towering giant.36 When the Saracen rode out for the fight, he was called Antaeus, the name of the giant defeated by Hercules in a wrestling match so probably closer to human scale (271).37 Then he was Polyphemus, who succumbed to Ulysses, a human of normal size who used guile to outwit him (281).38 Then the giant was Typhoeus, a monstrous figure brought down by Jupiter himself (288).39 Finally, dying, he was Ixion, another sinner who fell foul of the king of the gods (313).40 We may infer from the classical sources a range of sizes, and the “giants” also differed as to just how monstrous they were in appearance: Typhoeus was usually depicted at the hideous and deformed end of the spectrum; Antaeus was usually portrayed as exceptionally big and strong, but recognisably a man. Significantly, though, all the classical giants were, in one way or another, guilty of monstrous acts. Importantly, and irrespective of their degrees of monstrosity, all of them were defeated by gods or heroes and they were killed or – worse – punished by an eternity of torture in Hades. For a conventionally educated medieval audience, therefore, the use of the giants’ names one after another acted proleptically: listeners could confidently anticipate a favourable outcome with the villain overcome and punished. Thus, by making the Saracen giant anonymous Metellus facilitated a series of metamorphoses whereby the giant took on different mythical guises. His anonymity also dehumanised him, unlike the named Saracen giants who figured large in some of the rather later chansons de geste, and who engaged in lengthy and relatively amicable discussions with their Christian opponents and might be converted, as in Fierabras.41 The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle’s Ferragus had the strength of forty men and was twelve cubits high (five and a half metres).42 He and Roland fought to a standstill, but lengthy discussions failed to convert the pagan and he was killed. It is very likely that parallels with the chansons de geste were entirely deliberate, as discussed below, and therefore it is significant that conversion to Christianity had no part in the encounter. The passage under discussion is liberally sprinkled with adjectives depicting size, weight, and ferocity. The giant had huge limbs and performed great deeds (line 246). He was fierce, ruthless, and bold (234, 273). He was also called a barbarian and a half-monster (302, 307). More oblique references imply he was as lofty as the stars (232) and that his spear was long enough to record a dozen names upon (276). The poet also made much of the contrast between the giant and Wicher, most clearly in the nicely balanced line (293): “Impediit gravitas hunc, expediit levitas hunc” (“his heaviness hinders the one; his lightness gives advantage to the other”). He contrasted the fighters’ horses, too: the giant’s sonipes, literally a noisy-footed steed, with the parvus equus of Wicher (284–6). The cumulative effect of the poet’s diction is an impressive sense of the giant’s size and power, but his actual height is a matter of speculation. If the question is approached, as it were, from another direction – that is, where on the giant’s body Wicher was able to reach with his sword  – then the giant was probably visualised as about twice Wicher’s height. Finally, the giant was the archetype

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  171 of masculinity. Ailes observed, “Female giants are quite rare.”43 Giants generally had the stereotypically male attributes writ large: size (obviously), strength, ferocity, and arrogance: they were, in short, hyper-masculine. Arrogance, in particular, was identified as an attribute of giants in medieval bestiaries, for example: “Giants are big beyond the measure of men and they maintain the image of pride, as men who want to be seen as more than they are.”44 The humbling of the mighty was a recurrent trope in Christianity; a duel offered an opportunity to play it out very obviously and publicly.45 The greater the disparity between the antagonists, the more striking the victory of the humble Christian over the proud pagan. Thus Metellus’s mighty Saracen giant was pitted against the patently unheroic Wicher.

The fight Prologue and preliminaries The lines begin with the giant’s appearance. Strikingly, he was depicted not as one of his gigantic classical predecessors, but as Hector, the hero of Troy. As observed above, it was not unusual among Latin authors to compare the First Crusade with the Trojan War. Metellus therefore was encouraging his audience to envisage Jerusalem besieged by the crusaders as a new Troy beleaguered by the Greeks. The introduction to Swabian Wicher is somewhat paradoxical: he appears to be fierce and ruthless in one line and lacking in power and strength in the next (lines 231–6). There is also a prospective summary of the coming duel: the medieval reader apparently did not feel that his enjoyment was impaired by knowing the outcome, but rather relished the anticipation (237–42). A formulaic fight The description of the fight itself follows a pattern close to depictions of one-toone combat in other sources including Latin narrative texts and Old French chansons de geste.46 Simon Parsons, building on previous scholarship, has proposed that vernacular texts commonly follow a structure:47 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The taunt Spurring on the steed Description of arms or armour The blow landing on the victim The shattering and smashing of equipment The path of the weapon as it cuts through the flesh The bisection of the opponent The falling or tumbling of the dead onto the grass

Obviously, not all accounts included all the elements, and Wicher’s fight with the giant diverged significantly at the end, but a point-by-point examination of it will

172  Edgington reveal how the poet, as with his classical allusions, could rely on and exploit his audience’s expectations. The challenge itself was not explicit: the giant had only to appear and, in another neat simile emphasising his size, those watching him trembled like terrified dormice (line 249). However, the Germans were keen to oppose him (243–4) and Duke Godfrey stepped up to fight the duel (252). Wicher then intervened and demanded a private conversation with Godfrey (254–65). Their discussion consisted of Wicher flattering Godfrey as indispensable to the survival of the crusading army, and claiming that no one would mourn him, Wicher, if he died. This is the standard humility topos, and as yet it is not clear to the reader whether the humility was real or – as would be more usual – false modesty. The next line (260) suggests real humility because  – allegedly – the duke had no prior knowledge of Wicher. If this could be relied upon as evidence, it would argue against high status for the minister. Reverting to a point made earlier, Wicher may have been a ministerialis in the German sense of an official functionary; however, it is a word that will never be found in a hexameter poem because it simply cannot be made to scan.48 Alternatively, as some sort of servant or attendant he may have had no public profile within the crusading armies. At the point when the giant and Wicher squared up to each other we can begin to apply the eight-point formula.49 First, the taunt that “draws attention to the wretched nature of the opponent”: “ ‘Do you seek to bite me, flea?’ ” (line 274; note again the reference to size difference). The giant then brandished his lance inscribed with his previous victims, challenging Wicher to have them read to him. Second, the “spurring on of the steed”: this is not explicit in the poem, but both steeds are described at some length, again drawing attention to difference in size; the one was a thundering charger; the other was nimble but fearless, more like a polo pony (284–8). The description of arms or armour (phase three) is usually concentrated “between the initial introduction of the combat and the landing of the blow” and so it is here, although there are also scattered references. We know that Wicher was fighting with weapons borrowed from Duke Godfrey, including “a very good buckler” (267), while the giant had a long, iron-tipped lance. After both combatants had been unhorsed we learn that Wicher carried a third dagger and his shield had a heavy boss (296–7); the giant had a broadsword (spata) and a round shield (clipeus). They also still had lances or spears (302–3). Only after the giant was killed is it revealed that he was wearing a helmet, too (319). Next (fourth and sixth in the formula), the “blow landing on the victim” and “the path of the weapon as it cuts through the flesh”. There is a strong indication that each antagonist was endeavouring to do more (or less) than kill his opponent, for the giant was trying to deliver a blow to Wicher “between his legs” (inter crura) piercing “through his hauberk” (per loricam, lines 300–2). Wicher managed to avoid this and to stave off the attack long enough to shed the breastplate he had borrowed from the duke, and this enabled him to twist and turn and to get behind the exhausted giant where he inflicted a wound on his opponent’s buttock (306–7). The key line is 309, which begins with the wound resembling a “cushioned marriage bed” (pulvinar sociale) and then further qualifies it as femorale,

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  173 which could simply mean on his thigh, but as femoralia is a synonym for feminalia, a rather rare word for the female pudenda, the combination justifies interpreting the wound as a woman’s vulva. It was rare in the chansons de geste for a wound to be delivered anywhere below the breastbone, although in the Latin Pseudo-Turpin, Roland had similar difficulties with the giant Ferragus and after much ducking and diving he stabbed him in the navel.50 Yvain, “the Knight of the Lion”, was aided by the lion, who tore a large piece out of the giant’s buttock.51 A  historical case (without a giant) was reported by Galbert of Bruges (†1134). After the murder of Charles the Good (1127), one of the conspirators, Guy, was challenged to a judicial duel at Ypres by Herman “Ferreus”. Herman was cast to the ground, but he was only feigning defeat and he destroyed Guy by grabbing his testicles and overthrowing him. Interestingly, this was not seen as a devious or shameful tactic, presumably because Guy was accused as a traitor and was therefore deserving of his fate. He was hanged post-mortem alongside his coconspirator, the provost Erembald.52 There is a brief indication of the fifth stage in the formula, “the shattering and smashing of equipment” in the shape of “broken sword hilt” in Wicher’s hand (fracto capulo, line 312), but the focus of the lines following the inflicted blow is the further humiliation and ridicule of the wounded giant: the grotesque size and weight of the excised flesh and the farting noise it made as it came away from the body (310–11). The giant meanwhile was protesting both that he was a dead man and that he was not giving up yet, so Wicher inflicted a wound on his foot that – rather surprisingly and ignominiously – brought the giant down, and then Wicher decapitated him (313–17). The application of the formula ends with the “falling of the dead” (phase 8) and the only stage in it absent from Wicher’s fight is “bisection of opponent” (phase 7); this was not always present in the chansons, nor perhaps was it likely for Wicher and the giant (not that verisimilitude is a factor elsewhere in the account), although cutting with a sword through the giant’s clothes and massive flesh might demand as much strength as cutting a normal mortal in half. Overall, the parallels between combats described in the chansons de geste and the duel between Wicher and the giant are striking and convincing: Metellus was playing with his audience’s expectations of such fights and subverting them for his own purposes. To complete the story: the giant’s head was appropriated by Wicher, and we find out for the first time that the Saracen was no grotesque figure but noble and well groomed, providing a very worthwhile trophy (317–21).53 Wicher was celebrated in song and became a leader among men (322–8). The excursus ends with a reference to a procession around the walls of Jerusalem. Metellus then returned to Robert the Monk’s narrative, although Robert allowed credit to Raymond of Saint-Gilles for his siege tower while Metellus omitted the towers entirely and gave the impression that Godfrey and his followers leapt onto the walls in superhuman fashion: The knight Letold was making light of the weight of battle and leapt swiftly onto the wall that would return to the Christians,

174  Edgington and Wicher, no less than him in his jump, more brave in deed, followed; the duke happily helped them, and so did all the company.54 A few lines later Letold was forgotten by the poet and Godfrey and Wicher were depicted side by side, mowing down the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and Metellus apostrophised: “Here your courage, Duke, your strength, Wicher.”55 Wicher had gone from obscurity to become the duke’s right-hand man.

Conclusions Metellus was one of several writers in or from southern German territory who set out to enhance the part played by their compatriots in the First Crusade. He did this in general terms by increasing the references to Germans in the crusading armies and more particularly by emphasising Godfrey’s German credentials (which were ambiguous at best). But for a writer on this particular mission, Wicher proposed himself as an ideal candidate for a heroic role because he was a Swabian and because there was already a body of legend around his exploits circulating quite widely in Europe. So Wicher’s role was magnified as part of Metellus’s aim of retrieving (or improving) the reputation of the German participants in the crusade. But why did he insert this particular, fictional episode? Its positioning is important: the duel interrupted the action on the very eve of the capture of Jerusalem, thereby increasing the sense of anticipation for an audience who knew the overarching narrative but not this tale. It provided a backstory for Wicher who, according to Metellus (borrowing in this respect from Robert the Monk), was to figure heroically in the capture of the Holy City. It was also a parody of the epic duel, supplying comic relief in the midst of rising tension. The episode achieved its humorous effect mainly by the juxtaposition of high-flown classical imagery with scatological action. What sort of audience Metellus envisaged for his poem is difficult to conjecture and impossible to establish, given that only one manuscript survives and that it did not travel very far from Tegernsee. In respect of its likely audience the most puzzling aspect of the 100-line episode is the sexual content. This is not confined to the wound that the giant hoped to inflict on Wicher and the one that Wicher succeeded in inflicting on the giant. The first and last classical giants referenced, Tityus and Ixion, were both punished eternally for sexual transgressions, the rape of Leto and the attempted rape of Juno respectively. It is in its sexual aspect that the giant’s wound represents the most significant departure from the heroic paradigm of mortal combat. The hero of a chanson de geste would deliver the fatal blow: “most commonly the enemy is transfixed on a lance, particularly through the spine”.56 Then “often detailed, visceral descriptions outline how the blow navigates its way through major organs or bones”.57 By contrast, the giant’s wound was ridiculous and humiliating, especially its comparison with a woman’s vulva. Literal castration would have been a more heroic outcome; the giant had been comically emasculated. To us, this apocryphal episode is intriguing because it appears to have drawn on local legend, classical literature, and chansons de geste to achieve humorous

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  175 effect. But it is arguable that its insertion in Metellus’s crusade epic provided a great deal more than comic relief. The giant was surely intended to represent the overwhelming might of the Saracen host pitted against the puny forces of the Christians. The outcome of the duel was not just defeat, but humiliation and destruction. The incident should therefore be read as a hundred-line epitome of the First Crusade rewritten as a German, or more specifically a Swabian, victory.

Notes 1 MS Admont, Stiftsbibliothek, 267. Metellus von Tegernsee, Expeditio Ierosolimitana, ed. Peter Christian Jacobsen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters 6 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1982), xvii–xviii. See also Jacobsen, “Die Admonter Versifikation der Kreuzzugsgeschichte Roberts von St-Remi”, in Alf Önnerfors, Johannes Rathofer, and Fritz Wagner eds, Literatur und Sprache im Europäischen Mittelalter: Festschrift für Karl Langosch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftiche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 142–72. 2 For the Bavarian response to preaching the crusade, see Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale, 2007), 102, 128–9. 3 Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, eds Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), xliv. [Hereafter RM.] 4 RM, “cum suis et magna gente Alemannorum”, 9. 5 RM, xlii, xlv. 6 RM, xliii–xliv. 7 RM, xlv. 8 Lines 64–7: “Stirps o magnifici Karoli, proles Ludewici | Qui vi bellorum paganos perdomuerunt | Ecclesiamque per hoc sublimiter excoluerunt | imperii ditione, sacra vel religione.” (“O race of splendid Charles, offspring of Louis, who subjugated the pagans by force of war and through this they raised on high the Church by imperial decree, or by holy reverence.”) 9 Lines 139–42: “Fama volans omnem late commoverat orbem; | Flandria, Normanni, cum Francigenas Alamanni: | Ut patrie sedes gens quęque tenet propiores, | Per mare vel siccum regnum petit undique Grecum.” 10 RM, 99. 11 Arnold of Lübeck, Chronicon Slavorum 1.10–11, ed. J. M. Lappenberg. MGH SRG 14 (Hanover, 1868), 25–30. Arnold died somewhere between 1212 and 1214 so was writing one or two generations later than Metellus and more than a century after the crusade. 12 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum, ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 224–9. 13 Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi ou Chronique du Pseudo-Turpin, ed. C. Meredith Jones (Paris: Droz, 1936), 146–62; Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin, trans. Kevin R. Poole (New York: Italica Press, 2014), 40–8. 14 Les Chétifs, ed. Geoffrey M. Myers. The Old French Crusade Cycle 5 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), Appendix 7, 103–13. 15 Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, lines 3856–4249, ed. Wendelin Foerster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1942), 106–17. 16 Lines 231–330. 17 Susan B. Edgington, “Echoes of the Iliad: the Trojan War in Latin Epics of the First Crusade”, in Léan Ní Chléirigh and Natasha Hodgson eds, Sources for the Crusades: Textual Tradition and Literary Influences (forthcoming).

176  Edgington 18 Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 110. 19 Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherolsolimitana, trans. Carol Sweetenham, Crusade Texts in Translation 11 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 20. 20 RM, 9. 21 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 486–7, 518–19. [Hereafter AA.] 22 AA, 518–19: “in ictu gladii et Turci loricati sectione laudabilis.” 23 AA, 528–9, 538–9. 24 AA, 584–5. 25 RM, 98; trans. Sweetenham, 200–1. 26 RM, 99; trans. Sweetenham, 201. For Wicher and the lion, see Natasha Hodgson, “Lions, Tigers, and Bears: Encounters with Wild Animals and Bestial Imagery in the Context of Crusading to the Latin East”, Viator 44 (2013), 65–93, at 82–3. 27 Gilo of Paris, Historia Vie Hierosolimitane, ed. and trans. C. W. Grocock and J. E. Siberry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 246. “Illum qui nimia secuit uirtute leonem │ Guicherius sequitur.” (NB secuit was mistranslated in the edition.) 28 Gilo of Paris, ed. and trans. Grocock and Siberry, intro., lviii–lxii; RM, trans. Carol Sweetenham, intro., 29–35; Marcus Bull, “Robert the Monk and his Source(s)”, in Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf eds, Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 127–39. 29 Baldric of Dol, Historia Jerosolimitana, RHC Occ 4:47, 50, 92 (notes recording readings of MS G). 30 Paris, BNFr, MS Latin 5513. See The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge, 2014), lxxxiii–lxxxv. 31 John of Würzburg, Descriptio locorum terre sancte, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Peregrinationes tres: Saewulf; John of Würzburg, Theodericus. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 139 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), 125; Alberic of Troisfontaines, Chronica, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst. MGH SS 23, 811; Chanson d’Antioche, ed. Suzanne Duparc-Quioc. Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 11 (Paris: Geuthner, 1976), passim. See also Alan V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History 1099–1125, Occasional Publications of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research 4 (Oxford, 2000), 235–6. 32 Marianne Ailes, “Giants and Outsize Warriors: Difference and Assimilation in the geste du roi”, in M. J. Ailes, A. E. Cobby and Peter S. Noble eds, The Chanson de geste and its Reception: Essays Presented to Philip E. Bennett by Members of the Société Rencesvals (Edinburgh: Société Rencesvals British Branch, 2012), 1–18. 33 RM, 44: “mole corporis prestantior, et viribus, ut alter Golias, robustior.” 34 1 Sam. 17. 35 Isidore of Seville, 11.3.14: “Gigantes, id est nimium grandes et fortes viros.” Quoted in John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 124. For deviation from the Aristotelian mean see Friedman, 112–14. 36 Ovid, Met., 4.457–8: “nouemque | iugeribus distractus erat”; see also Jenny March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology (London: Cassell, 1998), 386. 37 March, Dictionary, 51. 38 March, Dictionary, 328–9. 39 March, Dictionary, 394–5. 40 March, Dictionary, 222. 41 Fierabras: chanson de geste du XXIIe siècle, ed. Marc Le Person (Paris: Champion, 2003). 42 Pseudo-Turpin, ed. Meredith Jones, 146; trans. Poole, 48. 43 Ailes, “Giants”, 11.

Wicher the Swabian and the Saracen giant  177 44 Bodleian Library, MS Douce 88 II, fol. 69vo; quoted in Friedman, Monstrous Races, 124, n. 58: “Gigantes sunt ultra humanum modum grandes quorum figuram superbi tenent qui super volunt videri quam sunt.” 45 For example, the Magnificat, Luke 1: 46–55. 46 “Fighting by Numbers: The Epic Combat in the Latin Texts of the First Crusade”, lecture given at the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading, 28 January 2016. I thank Simon Parsons, too, for a copy of “The use of Chanson de geste motifs in the Latin texts of the First Crusade, c. 1095–1145”, unpublished PhD thesis, RHUL, 2015. 47 Parsons, “Chanson de geste motifs”, 130–2, acknowledging the work especially of Genette Ashby-Beach,  The Song of Roland: A Generative Study of the Formulaic Language in the Single Combat (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985) and of Jean Rychner, La Chanson de geste: Essai sur l’art épique des jongleurs, Société des publications romanes et françaises 53 (Geneva: Droz, 1955). 48 For ministeriales, see Horst Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050– 1200, trans. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 36–7. 49 Parsons, “Chanson de geste motifs”, 129–35. 50 Pseudo-Turpin, trans. Poole, 48. Thanks are due again to Simon Parsons for these observations. 51 Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, line 4225, ed. Foerster, 116: “Une grant piece de la hanche.” 52 Galbertus Brugensis, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandiarum, [58], ed. Jeff Rider. CCCM 131 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), 109–10. 53 If there were other evidence of Metellus’s being acquainted with Albert of Aachen then a reference to the decapitation of Yaghi-Siyhan outside Antioch might be suspected: AA 3.26, 286–7. 54 Lines 335–9: “Miles Letoldus pugne levigans sibi pondus | Insiliit murum cito christicolis rediturum, | Nec minor hunc saltu Wikerus, forcior actu | Consequitur; dux letus eos omnis quoque cetus | Adiuvat.” Cf. RM, 96–9. 55 Line 344: “Hic tua, dux, virtus, tua vis, Wikere.” The mowing image is in Metellus. 56 Parsons, “Chanson de geste motifs”, 131. 57 Ibid.

Urbis dilector nec abest, si credimus, Hector Adversis castris; sed adest rutilantior astris, Corpore ferrato celer ex adamante creato, Sevus uti Suevus Wicherus in arma severus; Sive probes Francum, quia nullo robore mancum, Utpote Fuldensem, qui divicias habet ensem. Dicitur hic autem pugna stravisse gigantem Barbaricas virtute ducis terras adeunte, Adversa tunc gente duali Marte petente Vires nostrorum percontari vel eorum, Unius ut nece magna sui redimens sibi dampna Pars victrix iret, quo vellet, victa rediret. Fervebat multus rapienda laude tumultus Teutonico nostris comotus in agmine castris; Quisque sue fortis memorat preconia sortis. Grandibus hic factis, hic menbris fidere vastis Incipit; hic animis, hic palmam vendicat armis. Non norunt, quantus Ticius sit vulnere stratus. Stantis agunt vires, ut eum paveant quasi glires, Dum tandem cernunt, solo quem nomine spernunt. Hinc se dux alacer monomachię dat et acer. Poscit herum faciles aures sibi cedere miles, Quem ducendo seorsum taliter audit adorsum: “Cum tu tocius sis milicię caput huius,

[De Wikero, qualiter gigantem occiderit et prior hac pugna cum duce fuerit]

Appendix

231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254

And Hector, lover of the city, is not absent, if we believe it, from the enemy camp; but here he is, more glowing than the stars, swift with his body clad in armour forged from steel, fierce as Swabian Wicher, ruthless in battle; or take the Frank, since he is powerless and has no strength inasmuch as he is from Fulda and his wealth is a sword. However, he is said to have brought down the giant in battle when the duke’s army arrived in barbarian lands, and the enemy race was making for them in two-fold battle to test our forces or theirs, so that, with a great slaughter of one side redeeming its losses, the winning side might go wherever it wanted, and the defeated fall back. Much enthusiasm seethed for seizing glory, stirred up in the Teutonic ranks in our camp; each recites proclamations of his own luck and lot. [The giant] undertakes to trust in his great deeds, in his huge limbs; [Wicher] claims the palm with souls, with arms. They do not know how great was Tityus, spread out with his wound. The strength of the man standing makes them terrified of him, like dormice; when they finally see him they despise him only in name. From our side the duke offers himself, keen and eager for a duel. The knight [Wicher] asks his lord to give him a ready hearing, and, leading him apart from the rest, [Godfrey] hears him speak thus: “Since you are the head of all this army,

Wicher’s fight with a Saracen giant (part 6, 231–330)

271 272 273 274 275. 276 277 278 279 280

Spectandus populo venit prior Antheus illo. Posterius nostrate viro circum penetrante Pertonat ingenti clamore ferox venienti: “Tune pulex mordere, cibum me quiris habere?” Cuspidis ex hasta ferrum mox sustulit alta, Quo bis sex scripti sunt mole pares sibi victi. “Hec tibi posce legi prius,” inquit, “quanta peregi, Ut nosces equum te Martem perdere mecum.” “Pugno Deo mortalis ego, tu me furialis Spernis,” ait; “viget ille.” Duellum cepit herile

255

256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270

Iusticium ne triste Dei populus gerat iste Et cuncti procul hac nos dispergamur et illac. Me pugnare iubeto, fleat quo nemo perempto. [V]incam seu vincar: tibi gloria semper erit par; Casus enim michimet, sociis victoria cedet.” Dux “Quis” ad hec ait “es, qui tanta viriliter audes?” “Fuldanus pauper paribus famulando minister Huc veni,” dixit; “michi finis, det Deus, hic sit.” “Grates” inquit “habe” dux, “pugnaturque vade, Stemma tui generis qui, nil pudibunde, fateris.” His dictis illum mittens ad grande duellum Optima cum parma dux sibi contulit arma. Insula cuiusdam fluvii, bene nota quibusdam, Area pugnantum fuit et ripe speculantum. Francus adest citra cuneus, sed barbarus ultra;

Tam dubię cladi noli, princeps bone, tradi,

good prince, do not get drawn in and risk so great a disaster,

lest God’s people should have to hear that sad outcome and all of us be scattered far and wide. Command me to fight, for no one will mourn if I die. I shall conquer or be conquered: your glory will always be the same; For what brings death to me will be victory to my comrades.” The duke said to this: “Who are you, who bravely dare so much?” “I came here as a poor servant of Fulda, in service to your peers,” he said. “May God grant that this be my end.” “Thank you,” said the duke, and “Go and fight; you have no reason to blush when you speak of your family tree.” Sending him with these words to the great duel, the duke gave him weapons of his own with a very good buckler. An island in a certain river, well known to some of them, was the site for the fighting, and the banks for watching. The Frankish battalion was on the near bank, but the barbarians on the far one; first Antaeus came to be seen by that people. Next, with a loud shout that could be heard all around our side, the cruel [giant] thundered to our man as he approached: “Do you seek to bite me, flea? Do you want to make a meal of me?” Next he held aloft the iron tip from his long lance on which were written a dozen peers defeated by him en masse. “Ask for these to be read to you first,” he said, “how many I killed, so that you know you will lose a fair fight with me.” “I, a mortal, fight for God: you are mad to despise me,” he said. “He is strong.” The duel began tentatively:

298 299 300 301

Difficilis verti sine dampni vulnere certi. Inde resultantem nec sub plaga remorantem Inter crura data per loricam tenet hasta

the broadsword first thrust at it; his round shield becomes useless to the enemy, difficult to turn without a surely damaging wound. As he springs back in consequence and does not stay to suffer a blow delivered through his hauberk between his legs, the barbarian catches him

287 288 289 290 291 292

Cerata faleras deluserat aure sonoras, Per quas grandineus crepitabat ubique Typheus. A nostro pugili trusum primo latus illi Nec motum prorsus; vindictam Turcus adorsus Huius equum cedit; pedibus celer ille resedit. Certat uterque pedes, nec pugna datur neque cedes: Impediit gravitas hunc, expediit levitas hunc. Nunc retro, nunc ante gradu palans properante, Dum ferit, oblique recteve salit resilitque. Tectum lorica ducis armat tercia sica. Primam nempe spatam gravis umbo momordit adactam Annisu forti; clipeus fit inutilis hosti,

his heaviness hinders the one; his lightness gives advantage to the other. Now straying back, now forward with hasty step, as he fights he jumps forward and back, straight and aslant. A third dagger arms him, protected by the duke’s hauberk. Indeed the heavy boss on his shield holds with a strong bite

283 284 285 286

Pompa splendorem faciebat, mole pavorem. Stare piger sonipes, flecti durus, pede prepes Respondit grandi sessori corpore grandi. Contra parvus equus pugnantis flexibus ęquus

293 294 295 296 297

282

on the one side a knight both slight and swift, on the other the knight Polyphemus; with many people making a noise in the golden circuit around the duelling ground; the show brought brilliance, the danger engendered fear. The one steed, reluctant to stand still, hard to turn, fleet of foot, answered to its great rider with his great body. Against them the warrior’s small horse, advantageous for swerves and turns, with wax-stopped ear had scoffed at the noisy fighting grounds across which hail-stoning Typhoeus was clattering all around. The giant’s horse’s flank was first to be thrust by our fighter and it could not move at all; the Turk in revenge set about cutting down his opponent’s horse; he swiftly regained his feet. Both fight on foot; neither battle is given nor slaughter:

281

Hinc eques et brevis et celer, hinc Poliphemus equester Multis in gyro faleris resonantibus auro;

302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322

Barbarus; affixum terrę telum stetit ipsum. Solvit et abiecit, quę longa moram sibi fecit,

Thoracem ducis iste; loco celer abripuit se.

Iam levior saltu facilique meando rotatu Exhaustum fugiens hac frustrabatur et illac. Semiferi tergo semel impiger irruit ergo; Ultus equi noxam rapit alto vulnere coxam.

Pulvinar sociale reliquit ibi femorale; Uni sat portanda viro caro secta nefanda Inmensi de parti culi cadit ense crepante Inque manu fracto capulo sollerter adacto.

Occisum penitus se congemit Yxion ictus; Quem persistentem nec adhuc cessisse fatentem Artifici rursus conamine miles adorsus Fronte pedis mutilavit et isto vulnere stravit.

Prostrato caput aufert atque sodalibus affert Premia victoris, sed et emolumenta laboris: Crinis enim cultus, galeę decus, ipseque vultus Clara gygantei dabat ornamenta trophei, Aurum sexcentis preciandum rite talentis. Ipse triumphantem dux suscipiens et ovantem

with his lance; his own spear stood planted in the ground. He released it and hurled it from him, and its length created a delay for him; he snatched off the duke’s breastplate; he took himself off fast from the place. Now, being nimbler at jumping and turning around with ease, he was fleeing here and there and eluding the exhausted giant. And so he energetically attacked the half-monster’s back once; in revenge for the injury to his horse he sliced his buttock with a deep wound. He left there a cushioned cavity like [a woman’s vulva]. The abominable flesh cut away was the size that one man could carry and it fell to the sword from his massive behind with a farting noise, the wound skilfully inflicted, with the broken sword hilt [left] in [Wicher’s] hand. The stricken Ixion groaned loudly that he was entirely killed, and when he persisted and was still saying that he had not yielded the knight started once again with cunning effort and he mutilated him on the front of his foot and brought him down with this wound. He removed his head from the fallen giant and took it to his comrades as the victor’s spoils, but also as the profits of his labour: for his hair was well groomed, adorned with a helmet, and his very appearance offered clearly the trappings of a giant trophy, to be valued duly at 600 golden talents. The duke received the victorious [Wicher] and arranged

Metellus von Tegernsee: Expeditio Ierosolimitana. Erstausgabe von Peter Christian Jacobsen. Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters, Band 6. Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann Verlag 1982. © Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Fecit concinnum modulis predulcibus ymnum Ad laudem facti recinendum posteritati. Hic igitur talis prior in nostratibus alis Obsidione calente, sed hoste valenter agente Anterior turri stetit, in fastigia muri Densatas angens iaculorum nube phalanges. Cętera procedens plebs circa menia credens Orat prelata cruce pontifices comitata.

323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 Translation © Susan B. Edgington

a hymn of praise with very sweet measures to re-echo the praise of his deed to posterity. Therefore, as the siege remained active but the enemy fought vigorously he was so much the leader among the ranks of our men that he stood before the tower, on top of the wall warding off the attacks of missiles that were concentrated in a cloud. The remaining believers process around the ramparts, and pray with the cross carried before, accompanying the bishops.

11 Fighting women in the crusading period through Muslim eyes Transgressing expectations and facing realities? Niall Christie1 Introduction Chapter banning women from the fighting: Abu Muhammad ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Kattani . . . reported to us, saying [that. . .] ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr2 said: “. . . It was written that killing and fighting are imposed on us, and upon chaste women is imposed the management of the household.” . . . In the saying of ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, “it was written that killing and fighting are imposed on us,” is proof of the fact that fighting was made a duty of men.3

With this account from the early days of the Muslim community, the Damascene jurisprudent ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) offers his expectations of the role that women are expected to play, or rather, not to play, in the military jihad. AlSulami was preaching in the Mosque of Bayt Lihya in the suburbs of Damascus in 1105, calling his Muslim brethren to the jihad against the Franks, who had recently invaded parts of Syria and the Holy Land, had set up states based in the cities of Antioch, Edessa, and Jerusalem, and were at that time expanding their holdings in the area. He was exhorting the political authorities of the day to respond to the crusaders’ attack by setting aside their differences, putting an end to their conflicts and uniting to drive the enemy out of the region.4 Although the political authorities were expected to take the lead in this effort, it was the responsibility of all Muslims to ensure that it successfully took place, provided that they were free, adult, male, and sane.5 Free, adult, male, and sane: these requirements are mentioned repeatedly in al-Sulami’s work, and it is clear that he did not expect various groups, including women, to take part in the enterprise. As is evident from the quotation that opened this discussion, he devotes a full chapter of his work to specifically prohibiting them from taking part in the jihad. Admittedly, it is a short chapter; of the manuscript that remains (the remaining manuscript is fragmentary), it occupies less than one out of 170 pages. Al-Sulami, on the basis of one hadith,6 bans women from taking part in combat against the enemy.7 The only other point at which al-Sulami devotes any attention to the question of whether or not women should fight appears earlier in his work in his retelling of a hadith reported by the Prophet’s wife, ‘A’isha: “I [‘A’isha] said, ‘O Messenger of God, is the jihad obligatory

184  Christie for women?’ He said, ‘Jihad does not merely comprise fighting; it also comprises the hajj and ‘umra.’ ”8 The hajj and the ‘umra are, respectively, the greater and lesser pilgrimages to Mecca, so what the Prophet means here is that women are not expected to fight, but should fulfil their obligation to strive for the faith through pilgrimage instead. This rather back-handed prohibition of women’s participation in combat is the only other point at which al-Sulami directly addresses the topic; clearly he did not feel that it was one that required extensive analysis or argumentation. Al-Sulami was certainly not proposing anything new or out of the ordinary in his chapter banning women from fighting. The prevention of women from taking part in combat was a standard part of jihad doctrine, although in certain cases they were allowed to be in the vicinity of battles to act as nurses, cooks, water bearers, and laundresses.9 Thus, it would seem likely that al-Sulami did not feel that he needed to devote more of his treatise to this issue because he was not suggesting anything particularly radical. In addition, al-Sulami’s target audience did not include women; he was aiming to persuade those who could respond to his call to take action against the Franks, in other words, the politico-military (and male) elite of his society, rather than to educate those who could not. Yet how far was al-Sulami’s legal position an accurate reflection of the views of his fellow Muslims? Was fighting really such a firmly gendered concept, in the medieval Muslim view, that it would be unthinkable for women to engage in it? To what extent did women on both sides of the battle lines actually fight? These questions are difficult to answer, for the information contained in the sources on this topic is extremely sparse. Medieval Islamic society was intensely patriarchal; the majority of the sources for the crusading period were written by men for the eyes of men, and they concern themselves for the most part with the activities of men. However, in the sources we gain occasional glimpses of women taking part in combat. These reveal an apparent disparity between official views of the roles that women were meant to play and the realities at that time, including divergent views of whether combat activities performed by women should be praised or censured. In this article we will explore this disparity, in order to attempt to find an answer to the questions that we have outlined, starting with Frankish women in the Muslim historical sources, and then going on to look at Muslim women in the same, before finally approaching the question through a different lens, that of folk literature.

Frankish women in the historical sources Several Muslim sources have been used by scholars examining the crusades from the Western point of view to assess whether or not women actually fought in them.10 By far the best-known of these are the three most prominent sources for the life of Saladin (d. 1193): the two biographers Baha’ al-Din ibn Shaddad (d. 1234) and ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (d. 1201), and the Mosuli chronicler ‘Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir (d. 1233). They record a number of cases of Frankish women fighting, and the mere fact that they record these indicates that they clearly regarded them as worthy of note. However, in terms of how such activities were viewed,

Fighting women in the crusading period  185 one instance described by Baha’ al-Din is particularly telling. In his account of the Frankish siege of Acre, which lasted from August 1188 to July 1191, Baha’ al-Din records the words of a Muslim veteran, who described one of the Frankish attackers in these terms: Within their rampart was a woman dressed in a green cloak, who kept shooting at us with a wooden bow until she had wounded several of us. Having overpowered and killed her, we took her bow and carried it to the sultan, who was greatly surprised.11 Naturally, such stories must be treated with some caution. It is not possible to be certain of exactly why Saladin was surprised. One might suggest that he was merely surprised that it had taken his soldiers so long to deal with one pesky archer, rather than being particularly amazed at the archer’s sex. In addition, the authors of these texts were well aware of the propagandistic impact of their works, and it is likely that in some cases stories such as these were fabricated or embroidered to emphasise the otherness and barbarity of the Muslims’ enemies. However, the account in question also appears in the work of ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, which makes it less likely to be a fabrication.12 ‘Imad al-Din himself seems at times to be rather obsessed with the activities of Frankish women. In his description of the events at Acre, he claims that 300 Frankish women arrived from Europe in order to support the crusaders sexually, describing their activities in extensive and pornographic detail. Rather more pertinently to the current discussion, he also describes the involvement of Frankish women in combat in the following terms: Among the Franks were women knights, with armour and helmets, dressed like men, who distinguished themselves in the thick of battle and did acts of intelligent men while being gentlewomen. They considered these all to be acts of worship, and they believed that they would gain happiness through them and made them their customary practice. Praise be to the One who led them astray and made them slip off the path of restraint! . . . They wore no clothing except a loose-fitting garment, and they were not known [to be women] until they were stripped of their arms and undressed. A number of them were found out and sold [as slaves], and as for the old women, the town centres were full of them!13 ‘Imad al-Din’s account, coming on the heels of his clearly propagandistic description of the 300 crusading prostitutes, obviously cannot be taken at face value, but it does tell us a lot about his views on the appropriate conduct of women and men. From his description, it is “intelligent men” who fight on the battlefield, and not women, who should practice “restraint”. He adopts a rather patronising attitude; these are “gentlewomen” who in their religious zeal have developed what he sees as erroneous understandings of appropriate gender roles, but his reference to them having slipped off the path of restraint implies accident, rather than

186  Christie deliberate violation of gender norms; the mention of God here is not intended to imply that He made this happen deliberately, but rather merely acknowledges that He makes everything happen. Thus, ‘Imad al-Din does not even credit the women with the intelligence to venture knowingly into classically masculine activities. Nor does he seem to think much of their fighting ability, given his emphasis on how many wound up being captured and sold as slaves. The theme of women fighting in battle and only being recognised as women once their armour has been removed is one that appears periodically in the Muslim sources. With regard to another non-Muslim woman, Ibn al-Athir describes the Mongol conquest of Maragha in Azerbayjan in March 1221, a conquest that, incidentally, he ascribes to the fact that its ruler was a woman. Ibn al-Athir recounts on the authority of an anonymous witness that one of the Mongol conquerors was a woman who entered a house and killed several of the people within. However, she then put down her arms and armour, at which point it became apparent that she was a woman, and one of the men whom she had taken prisoner killed her.14 It is, of course, interesting that her prisoner clearly felt more confident about killing her when it was revealed that she was a woman, which again reinforces the impression that the common view was that women cannot fight and are easily overcome.

Muslim women in the historical sources Muslim women fighters are harder to find than their Frankish counterparts. The most useful source in this regard is the Kitab al-I‘tibar, the purported memoirs of the Bedouin amir, Usama ibn Munqidh (d. 1188). As a number of scholars have shown, Usama’s work should not be read uncritically; rather than being a simple set of memoirs, the work was intended as a lesson in good conduct for the reader, as a result of which it shows literary skill and a didactic style that are inconsistent with its surface presentation as the musings of an ageing amir.15 Despite this it contains a great deal of useful information, much of which pertains to the topic of women in combat, but we are reminded that, as with all historical sources, we should not assume that we are being told the unvarnished truth. In Usama’s work we see several instances of both Frankish and in particular Muslim women becoming involved in combat, either directly or indirectly, some of which he claims to have witnessed himself. Usama spent ten years at the Fatimid court in Egypt, from 1144 to 1154. During this period there were several political upheavals in the country. In particular, in the wake of the assassination of the Fatimid caliph, al-Zafir (r. 1149–54) in 1154, the caliph’s vizier, ‘Abbas, had several other members of the royal family put to death. He then installed the deceased caliph’s infant son, al-Fa’iz (r. 1154–60), as the new caliph, with himself as the regent. This provoked a revolt of the army in Cairo, which sealed itself inside the city, closing the city gates. Usama fought in the part of ‘Abbas’ forces that was required to retake the city, and he states that the combat between us and them took place in the streets and alleyways: their cavalry would fight us in the high-street, their infantry peppering us with

Fighting women in the crusading period  187 arrows and stones from the roof-tops. Women and children threw stones at us from windows.16 Thus, we see women and children fighting alongside the male members of their family. Usama also cites other examples of women in combat. He describes an attack made by Isma‘ilis on his home town of Shayzar in 1109, during which one of the defenders of the city was an old woman named Funun, who veiled herself and rushed into battle, sword in hand.17 It is important to note the way that Funun is presented here; before going out to fight, she veils herself, thus preserving her modesty, even though one might argue that a veil would make it less easy to fight. Either Funun valued modesty over practicality, or Usama is keen to present her as doing so, thus reinforcing the idea of her having done her best to stay within gender norms despite the dire circumstance, and hence depicting her actions as being praiseworthy. During the same conflict, another of the female inhabitants of the castle donned armour, although it is not clear whether or not she actually intended to fight in its defence. A cousin of Usama’s called Shabib had decided to flee the castle, convinced that it would be taken. Then he was confronted by a figure in armour and helmet, with a sword and shield, and felt that death was upon him. However, the figure was revealed to be his aunt, who berated him for his cowardice and shamed him into going out to fight. It is striking that again we are told that the armour hid the fact that Shabib’s aunt was a woman, and he assumed that he was faced with a male warrior.18 In two other instances Usama describes women fighting in battle, including the wife of a Frankish pilgrim, who wounded a Muslim amir with a wooden jar, and a Shayzari woman named Nadra who captured three Frankish pilgrims who had invaded Shayzar as part of a group of seven or eight hundred, although she did not kill them herself.19 It is probably reasonable to say that in all the cases cited so far the women who took part in combat could see themselves as doing so because of dire need. The wives of the Cairene soldiers were helping their menfolk resist what they probably saw as an unjust ruler; Funun, Shabib’s aunt, and Nadra were working for the defence of their home city; and the wife of the Frankish pilgrim was defending herself against an aggressor. Helen Nicholson has argued that it was not unheard of for women to fight in battles if their family interests were threatened and if their husbands (if they were still alive) gave their permission. Such cases could include, but were not limited to, cases of emergency,20 of which it would seem that we are being presented with several instances here. However, not all cases of women fighting can be so easily written off as responses of this kind. Usama describes two examples of women who seem to have taken an aggressive rather than defensive role in combat. He describes one instance of a Muslim woman who recruited a relative to help her kill her husband: ‘Ali ‘Abd ibn Abi al-Rayda’ passed into the service of Theophilos the Frank, lord of Kafartab. He used to go out on raids with the Franks against the

188  Christie Muslims and plunder them. He did as much harm to the Muslims as he could, seizing their wealth and shedding their blood, to the point of making the roads unsafe for travellers. He had a wife at Kafartab, in the hands of the Franks, who objected to what he did and tried to forbid him from doing so, but he didn’t stop. In the end, she sent for a relative of hers from some village – her brother, I think – to come to her and hid him in the house until nightfall. Then they ganged up on her husband ‘Ali and killed him and ran off with all his belongings. In the morning she was with us in Shayzar. She said, “On behalf of the Muslims, I was angry because of what this infidel was doing to them.” Thus, she gave the people a respite from that devil. We took special consideration for her, given what she did. She stayed with us and was treated with great generosity and respect.21 Admittedly, here we are seeing something more akin to murder than full-blown combat, but it is clear that the woman’s violent efforts on the behalf of her fellow Muslims gained the approval of the inhabitants of Shayzar, something that forms a contrast to the “official” view of women and fighting stated in the legal literature. The second mention of an aggressive woman is tantalisingly brief; Usama describes a Frankish judicial trial in which ordeal by water was inflicted on the accused. The accused was being tried for aiding his mother in the killing of Frankish pilgrims, but we are not given any more details about this, apart from the fact that the woman in question had been married to a Frank and had murdered her husband first, before embarking on her campaign against other Franks.22 We might be tempted to speculate that it was ill-treatment by her husband that led the mother to pursue a vendetta against other Franks, but that would be nothing more than pure conjecture. The anecdote itself is more concerned with showing the barbarity of Frankish judicial procedures. It is worth noting that even in both of the cases that we have just mentioned, the women in question were still taking action within the domestic sphere, even if they were not doing so in obviously emergency situations. Usama does not give accounts of women joining armies or taking part in what we might call traditionally male military action.23 In addition to his accounts of women fighting, Usama does also include a number of accounts of them being involved in combat in supporting roles, including supplying water to troops and spreading misinformation among enemies, but by now we are moving away from women being directly active as warriors.24 However, it is striking that, in each case, Usama presents us with Muslim women who involve themselves in combat, but do so in ways that are more subtle than outright fighting, thus working within their assigned gender roles to have an impact on the conflicts taking place around them. So with Usama we have seen a number of instances where women’s participation in fighting was appreciated, especially at times when there was dire need, or an enemy of the Muslims had to be disposed of. Yet, at the same time, from the rest of his work it is clear that Usama still felt that under normal circumstances fighting was an essentially male pursuit. He devotes a major portion of his work to

Fighting women in the crusading period  189 describing combat activities, including impressive sword blows and spear thrusts, and in the great majority of cases the blows are struck by Muslim or Frankish (male) warriors.25 However, perhaps as a reflection of his Bedouin background, Usama seems to have been more accepting of the fact that at times practicalities had to trump the usual expectations, even though he still seems to have seen fighting as being, under normal circumstances, the province of men. Of course, Usama was not alone in this view. One case where this seems to have had a particular impact is discernible in what happened in Egypt after the Mamluk takeover of 1250. Having murdered the Ayyubid sultan Turanshah (r. 1249–50), the Mamluks elected the widow of the previous Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Ayyub (r. 1240–9), whose name was Shajar al-Durr, to be the new sultan, or rather, sultana, one of the first cases in history of a woman taking control of a Muslim state. However, her reign was short. The news of her accession was greeted with rebellions in Syria, and so the Mamluks decided that they needed a warrior, that is, a man, at the helm. Shajar al-Durr was forced to abdicate less than three months after she had been elevated to the throne.26 From the image that we get of her in the sources, Shajar al-Durr was no pushover; she was a formidable woman who had her second husband, the Mamluk sultan Aybak (r. 1250 and 1254–7), murdered by bath slaves when she heard that he was planning on marrying another woman who would replace her as his chief wife.27 Yet this strength of will was not sufficient to enable her to hold on to power when military conflict threatened; the over-riding assumption that men fight and women do not was enough to see her deposed.

Fighting women in folk literature Let us now move away from works that are, or at least purport to be, factual records and devote some attention to fiction, looking at the presentation of fighting women in Muslim folk literature. This includes both epic cycles and folktales, and is both a frustrating and valuable genre to work with. It is frustrating because such works are almost impossible to date, unless they specifically reference events in history, and, even then, this gives us a date for only the first version of any given story. However, these works are also invaluable because such tales circulated among both the elite and non-elite classes of Muslim society, and they give us insight into what Remke Kruk describes as “the perceptions, anxieties and desires of men”; these were, after all, works that were primarily transmitted through public retelling to male audiences.28 As a result, we can learn much from them about prevalent attitudes towards the idea of women fighting as held by men from all levels of society, going beyond the educated classes whose opinions tend to dominate the more explicitly historical sources. The most widely studied works in this genre are of course the collection of tales known as the Arabian Nights,29 but perhaps even more important is the sira (epic) literature, which has also for the most part received far less attention, with the exception of some pioneering work carried out by Kruk, including in particular her recent book, The Warrior Queens of Islam.30 We will be drawing examples from both types of literature for the following discussion.

190  Christie To start with an epic: the earliest reference we have to Sirat Dhat al-Himma (the Epic of Dhat al-Himma) is the twelfth century,31 which is of course important to scholars of the crusades, and as we will see is significant. The epic is set against the backdrop of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphates in the eighth and ninth centuries, and tells the story of the adventures of the Bedouin Dhat al-Himma, described as “the mother of the warriors of the faith and the defender of the religion of Muhammad”.32 When not involved in the wars between her tribe, the Banu Kilab, and their rivals, the Banu Sulaym, she takes part in wars against the Byzantines and their allies. As part of this, she opposes and defeats a great Frankish army that has come through Constantinople to Syria, herself killing its leader, the Frankish King Malis ibn Bulus (Paul). Dhat al-Himma herself is later praised as the saviour of Jerusalem from the infidels. As Carole Hillenbrand has noted, the analogy with the First Crusade is clear,33 and this certainly makes it tempting to see the twelfth-century crusades as the catalyst for the creation of this work. In any case, what is striking is that Dhat al-Himma is celebrated as a powerful warrior who fights in defence of the faith. Nor is she the only warrior woman in the text. This sira, and the sira literature as a whole, is positively riddled with warrior women who fight in both non-Muslim and Muslim forces, overcoming both male and female opponents. Kruk has noted that in the Bedouin epics marriage and child-bearing do not limit the ability of these women to continue fighting, whereas in epics with a more “urban” origin women’s participation in combat tends to be played down or discouraged.34 One is tempted to see here a tendency within the genre that parallels the contrast of the attitudes of the urban-based al-Sulami and the Bedouin Usama ibn Munqidh. Yet even in more “urban” folk literature we have examples of warrior women who are celebrated for their martial prowess. One of the most pertinent examples comes from the Arabian Nights tale of Nur al-Din and Miriam the Sash-Maker.35 The tale focuses on the adventures of the two figures named in the title, for whom the path of true love definitely does not run smooth. Nur al-Din is a Muslim merchant’s son who one day buys a Frankish slave girl named Miriam. However, Miriam is no ordinary slave; she is the daughter of the King of Ifranja, who had been captured by Muslim pirates and during her captivity converted to Islam. The two fall in love and have a series of adventures and travels; these include two periods of captivity in the land of the Franks, but they eventually escape back to Muslim lands once more, marry, and live the rest of their lives happily together. What is striking about Nur al-Din and Miriam, though, is that their gender roles are clearly reversed. Miriam is a skilled and energetic warrior, while Nur al-Din is anything but. At one point in the tale the couple are fleeing Ifranja, with Miriam’s father, three brothers, and their army in hot pursuit. Eventually, the lovers are brought to bay, and Miriam asks Nur al-Din if he is ready to fight. He indicates that he has no stomach for it, and adds the following in verse: Miriam spare me painful rebuke, And do not seek my death and lengthy suffering. How can I ever be a warrior,

Fighting women in the crusading period  191 I whom [sic] am frightened by a croaking crow? The mere sight of a mouse fills me with fear, And terror makes me soil my clothes. I only like to thrust in privacy, When the vagina knows the penis’ might. This is the soundest counsel and all else, Apart from that, must be considered wrong. In response to this, Miriam just laughs and comments, “Stay where you are, master, and I shall protect you from them, even if there are as many of them as there are grains of sand.” She then rides out to fight, killing each of her brothers in single combat, at which point her father and his army flee.36 Miriam is clearly celebrated for her prowess as a warrior, which is contrasted with Nur al-Din’s cowardice and lack of ability. Yet one thing that is striking about Miriam’s relationship with Nur al-Din is the fact that even though he is a somewhat useless individual, she never truly challenges his position as the authority figure in their relationship. The female warrior accepting the authority of her male partner is a common theme in the Arabian Nights, with one particularly notable exception: in the story of Prince Bahram and the Princess al-Datma, we are told of a princess named al-Datma who insists that she will only marry the man who can defeat her in single combat. One of the challengers is a Persian prince named Bahram, whom she defeats, branding him on the forehead as she does all her prospective suitors. However, Prince Bahram is not to be put off so easily. He disguises himself as a senile old man and presents himself in a garden where the princess and her slave girls walk regularly, sitting under a tree with jewellery in front of him. When he is asked what he wants, he explains that he wants to marry one of the women, give her the jewellery, as well as a kiss, and then divorce her. Al-Datma marries him to one of her slave girls, and he does indeed do this. This happens again on the following day, and al-Datma becomes jealous of the riches that her slave girls are being given. So, on the third day, she disguises herself as a slave girl and presents herself to the old man for marriage, at which point he seizes and deflowers her, revealing his true identity as Prince Bahram. Al-Datma decides that now her only option is to go with the prince back to his own country, where the couple are formally married and live the rest of their lives together, after a suitable reconciliation between the two royal families.37 This tale may be the key to understanding the presentation of warrior women in the “urban” folk literature. It would seem to suggest that in the urban society of the time warrior women were an acceptable concept in the minds of the storytellers and their listeners, provided that they accepted male authority. If they did not, then it was appropriate that they be forcibly brought under male control, even if the men adopted dishonest means in order to achieve this. In this way we see some limits on what was considered to be acceptable behaviour by fictional women characters, and the consequences for characters who transgressed these limits.38

192  Christie It is of course worth bearing in mind that the fighting women in the folk literature that we have been discussing here are fictional, products of fantasy that allow the male listeners to safely explore anxieties about socially gendered roles and the male–female power balance in society, including images of the strong, dominant woman who might on the one hand be a challenge for a man, or on the other might be the protector of a man who would allow him to step outside of his socially assigned male role.39 The extent to which such fictional images were seen by the audience as meant to be reflected in real life, however, remains an open question, although given the fate of al-Datma, one might be tempted to speculate that even the idea of women fighting in real life made many living at the time uncomfortable.

Conclusion There are evident inconsistencies in the way that women’s involvement in combat is presented in the medieval Muslim sources for the crusades. In the context of this volume, it is worth pointing out that in the descriptions that we have, the women in question continue on the whole to demonstrate feminine attributes, and remain unmistakably women, rather than being regarded as somehow having become “male”; even when their gender is initially disguised, as we have seen with Shabib’s aunt or the Mongol woman-warrior at Maragha, when that disguise is cast aside the essentially feminine nature of the women in question is immediately apparent and taken for granted, along with the traditional assumptions of how such a woman should be treated. Thus, there remains no doubt that in the examples that we have studied in this article the authors are presenting these women as taking on traditionally masculine roles while remaining essentially feminine. The reactions of the society in which these women moved seem to have been mixed. At the “official” level, the level of sultans and ‘ulama’, women were seen as prohibited from fighting, being expected to leave such activities to the men and only fulfil roles that would keep them out of harm’s way. Thus, incidents of women fighting were regarded as surprising or reprehensible, a transgression by women into a masculine role for which they were not considered suitable. However, combat activity by women seems to have been approved of and appreciated by those who found it useful or inspiring, be it the members of the Fatimid army, the Bedouin inhabitants of Shayzar, or (within limits) the people who heard and enjoyed the Muslim folk literature. In this way we see a tension between theoretical and practical views that bears further investigation. It is worth noting that combat was not the only context in which Muslim women occasionally took on masculine roles, or at least exerted an influence that might be seen as going beyond the usual limits of their sex. We have already referred above to Shajar al-Durr, who reigned briefly as sultana of Egypt in 1250. When the Mamluks placed Shajar al-Durr on the throne, many objected to her accession purely on the basis of her gender; indeed, the caliph of Baghdad, al-Musta‘sim (r. 1242–58), sent a message stating, “If you are left with no man fit to rule but this woman, then it is our obligation to send you one of ours to take the sultanate.”40

Fighting women in the crusading period  193 This hostility certainly contributed to the brevity of her reign. However, other women did more successfully assert their influence, either formally or informally, in the traditionally male realm of politics; for example, Usama ibn Munqidh tells us both of his grandmother helping him to navigate the family politics of Shayzar, and of the daughters of the Fatimid caliph al-Hafiz (r. 1131–49), who successfully manipulated the succession to the vizierate during the rebellion that followed the assassination of the caliph al-Zafir (r. 1149–54) in 1154.41 Thus, we see women involved in a traditionally male sphere both within and outside the domestic setting. Returning specifically to women in combat: in September of 2014, Major Mariam al-Mansouri of the United Arab Emirates Air Force led her squadron of F-16 jets in their first attack on positions held by the so-called Islamic State in Syria. When the news came out, many on Twitter described her as “the woman of the day” and used the hashtag “ladyliberty” to express their respect for her. The Five on Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle triumphantly declared, “Hey, ISIS, you were bombed by a woman,” adding, “Very exciting, a woman doing this . . . I hope that hurt extra bad because in some Arab countries women can’t even drive. I wish it was an American pilot. I’ll take a woman doing this any day to them.” Not surprisingly, Islamist sympathisers described al-Mansouri’s actions as “criminal”, but she also became the butt of jokes made by two of Guilfoyle’s co-presenters, Greg Gutfeld and Eric Bolling; Gutfeld quipped, “The problem is after she bombed it she couldn’t park it,” while Bolling asked, “Would that be considered boobs on the ground or no?”42 January 2016 was also the first time that women in the US armed forces were not subject to gender-based restrictions on military service.43 It would seem that, for some, both within and outside the Muslim world, the same mixture of admiration of and anxiety about the idea of women warriors that is apparent in the sources from the crusading period continues to persist in the modern day.

Notes 1 The author would like to thank the organisers of the International Workshop on Crusading Masculinities held in March/April 2016 at the University of Zürich, especially Natasha Hodgson, Matthew Mesley, and Katherine Lewis, for giving him the opportunity to present the paper that formed the basis of this article. He would also like to thank all the conference participants for their helpful comments and suggestions. 2 ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr was a relative of the Prophet Muhammad. He is best known for leading a rebellion against the Umayyads, even claiming the title of caliph from 681 until his death at the hands of Umayyad forces in 692. 3 ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, Kitab al-jihad, unpublished manuscript, Asad Library, Damascus (no cataloguing information available, formerly MS Zahiriyya, 3796 [fols. 172–237] and 4511 [fols. 1–20]), fol. 210a; Niall Christie, The Book of the Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106): Text, Translation and Commentary (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 109–10 and 273–4. 4 Sulami, Jihad, fols. 177b and 189b; Christie, Book of the Jihad, 48, 72, 211 and 234–5. 5 Sulami, Jihad, fols. 175a and 188a; Christie, Book of the Jihad, 43, 70, 207 and 232. 6 Hadith are accounts of the sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions, used alongside the Qur’an to develop Islamic teachings.

194  Christie 7 Sulami, Jihad, fol. 210a; Christie, Book of the Jihad, 109–10 and 273–4. 8 Sulami, Jihad, fol. 188a; Christie, Book of the Jihad, 70 and 233. 9 Alfred Morabia, Le gihâd dans l’Islam médiévale: le “combat sacré” des origines au XIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993), 218. 10 See, for example, Helen Nicholson, “Women on the Third Crusade”, Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 335–49; and Christoph T. Maier, “The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement: A Survey”, Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004), 61–82. 11 Baha’ al-Din ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, trans. D. S. Richards, Crusade Texts in Translation 7 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 158. See also Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Orientaux (Farnborough: Gregg Press Ltd, 1967), 3:232. 12 On this topic, see, in particular, Nicholson, “Women on the Third Crusade”, 340–2. 13 ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Al-fath al-qussi fi’l-fath al-qudsi, ed. Muhammad M. Subh (Cairo: al-Dar al-Qawmiyya li’l-Tiba‘a wa’l-Nashr, 1965), 347–9. 14 ‘Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh: Part 3: The Years 589–629/1193–1231: The Ayyubids after Saladin and the Mongol Menace, trans. D. S. Richards, Crusade Texts in Translation 17 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 216–17; and ‘Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir, Al-kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, ed. Carl J. Tornberg (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1966), 12:377–8. 15 See, for example, Robert Irwin, “Usamah ibn Munqidh: An Arab-Syrian Gentleman at the Time of the Crusades Reconsidered”, in John France and William G. Zajac eds, The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 72–5; and Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, trans. Paul M. Cobb, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Books, 2008), xxx, xxxiv–xxxviii. 16 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 31; and Usama ibn Munqidh, Usamah’s Memoirs Entitled Kitab al-I‘tibar, ed. P. K. Hitti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930; Beirut: United Publishers, 1981), 27. 17 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 137; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 160. 18 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 136; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 158–9. 19 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 142; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 165–6. 20 Nicholson, “Women on the Third Crusade”, 343–9. 21 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 140–1; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 163–4. 22 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 152; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 179. 23 The author is indebted to Natasha Hodgson for her comments on this topic. 24 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 26, 83–5, 134, 171; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 22, 92–4, 157, 203. 25 Usama, Book of Contemplation, 45–180; and Usama, Usamah’s Memoirs, 36–166. 26 P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517, A History of the Near East (London: Longman, 1986), 83–4; and Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 26. 27 Holt, Age of the Crusades, 85; Irwin, Middle East in the Middle Ages, 29. 28 Remke Kruk, The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature (London: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd, 2014), 225. Here Kruk is referring specifically to the epic literature, but the same may be said of the folktales. 29 For a comprehensive bibliography of work conducted on the Arabian Nights, see Ulrich Marzolph, “The Arabian Nights Bibliography”, http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~enzmaer/ arabiannightsenglelektr.html, accessed 26 January 2017. 30 In addition to the above, see also Remke Kruk, “Back to the Boudoir: Arabic Versions of the Sirat al-Amir Hamza, Warrior Princesses, and the Sira’s Literary Unity”, in Ludo Jongen and Sjaak Onderdelinden eds, “Der muoz mir süezer worte jehen”: liber amicorum für Norbert Voorwinden, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik 48 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 129–48; and “The Bold and the Beautiful. Women

Fighting women in the crusading period  195

31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43

and Fitna in the Sirat Dhat al-Himma: The Story of Nura”, in Gavin R. G. Hambly ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, Piety (New York: St.  Martin’s Press, 1998), 99–116. See also Malcolm Cameron Lyons, The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling, University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 49 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1:109–18. Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 39; the author who refers to this sira died in 1174. Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 265. Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 39; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 265–6. Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 224. The Arabian Nights: Tales of the 1001 Nights, trans. Malcolm Cameron Lyons, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 3:341–428. Arabian Nights, 3:419–22. For more on women who convert to Islam, then betray and kill their families for the sake of the faith, see Niall Christie, “Noble Betrayers of their Faith, Families and Folk: Some Non-Muslim Women in Mediaeval Arabic Popular Literature”, Folklore 123 (2012), 84–98. Arabian Nights, 2:589–92. The author is grateful to Mathew Barber for raising this question. On this topic see Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 225. Amalia Levanoni, “Shajar al-Durr: A Case of Female Sultanate in Medieval Islam”, World History Connected 7 (2010), http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/7.1/ levanoni.html, accessed 10 May 2017. See Niall Christie, “Just a Bunch of Dirty Stories? Women in the ‘Memoirs’ of Usamah ibn Munqidh”, in Rosamund Allen ed., Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 75–6, 81. “Islamic State Crisis: UAE Female Pilot in Air Strikes”, BBC News, http://www. bbc.com/news/worldmiddleeast29367214, accessed 4 February 2016; and “US News Hosts Aim Sexist Jokes at First Female UAE Pilot”, BBC Newsbeat, http://www.bbc. co.uk/newsbeat/article/29377606/usnewshostsaimsexistjokesatfirstfemaleuaepilot, accessed 4 February 2016. “All Combat Jobs Open to Women in the Military”, Military Times, http://www.military times.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/12/03/cartertellingmilitaryopenallcombatjobswomen/76720656/, accessed 15 March 2016.

Masculinity and religiosity

12 Leading the people “as duke, count, and father” The masculinities of Abbot Martin of Pairis in Gunther of Pairis’ Hystoria Constantinopolitana Natasha R. Hodgson The popes of the later eleventh century, key architects of the movement which became known as crusading, were strongly influenced by monastic principles. These helped to shape their new vision of the Church. Successive pontiffs strove to redesign the masculine identities of secular clerics – priests and bishops – along monastic lines, emphasising strictures in dress, activities, associations, and sexual behaviours.1 However, their reforms were not solely directed at the clergy; they ultimately sought to improve Christian society as a whole. Crusading, which offered salvific rewards to secular society through the medium of armed pilgrimage, formed a part of that process. As Guibert of Nogent asserted, this was a new route to salvation for those who were not clergy: [S]o that without having chosen from the very beginning, as has become customary, life in the monastery or some kind of religious profession, they were compelled to leave the world, although still subject to their traditional freedom of practice and habits, [and] to a certain extent they sought the grace of God by their own deeds.2 As many chroniclers attested, however, crusading stimulated an enthusiastic response from a range of men (and women) including secular and religious clergy. It was recognised that priests were needed to minister to the army on this religious endeavour but, from the time of the First Crusade, monks were discouraged from taking the cross. Travel outside the monastery was problematic as it contravened the core Benedictine principle of stabilitas, which required monks to remain within their communities.3 As the crusade movement progressed, however, the increasing involvement of monks in preaching, financing, and organising expeditions meant that the presence of some monastic participants on crusade was gradually accepted and, by the end of the twelfth century, even deliberately sought. Historians have approached the relationship between crusade and monasticism in a variety of ways. In the early seventies Brundage explored canonical perspectives on the crusading monk, establishing the juridical permissions for their participation.4 Riley-Smith famously ascribed monastic values to the crusade army as whole, calling it “a military monastery on the move”. This notion was also explored

200  Hodgson by Brundage.5 Considerable historical attention has focused on the Second Crusade and the pivotal role played by St Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians in preaching and promoting the crusade movement during the mid-twelfth century.6 Purkis argued convincingly for contemporaries viewing the crusade as spiritually equivalent to monasticism and established specific connections between Cistercian and crusader spirituality in the period up to 1187.7 St. Bernard also supported the newly created military orders, monastic institutions with a primary duty to engage in holy warfare.8 In the 1980s, Schmugge outlined the patterns of Cistercian participation in the crusade movement, which he viewed as central to the whole structure and organisation of papal crusading policy in the twelfth century.9 Kienzle has established changing Cistercian attitudes towards and strategies for preaching crusades. She highlighted their significant involvement in counteracting heresy in southern France into the thirteenth century.10 From a crusader studies perspective, however, masculinity has not yet played a significant role in evaluating perceptions of monks on crusade. Conversely, works that engage with gender and medieval monasticism have tended to focus on life within the cloister, the regulation of monastic life and bodies, and the struggle to maintain chastity rather than examining opportunities for the expression of gendered identity in external activities.11 This essay seeks to develop new perspectives on the relationship between monasticism and crusading by exploring ideas about gender, authority, and legitimacy in a text which catalogues the experiences of a Cistercian abbot outside his community on the Fourth Crusade, the Hystoria Constantinopolitana.12 For the majority of this period, monastic participation in crusading was officially limited to preaching and financing except where special permissions were granted. However, both Kienzle and Brundage pinpoint a change in attitudes towards the turn of the twelfth century. Brundage associated this with the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216), and Kienzle extended the timescale to 1229.13 After this key period, Cistercians continued to be involved in crusading, but preaching, recruitment, and participation began to fall more naturally to the Franciscans and Dominicans, whose mendicant role arguably rendered them more suitable for the negotium Christi. This article focuses specifically on the Fourth Crusade, an event at the crux of this shift in perceptions.14 During a controversial expedition that ended in the sack of the Christian City of Constantinople in 1204, the elite leaders, the rank and file, the papal architect Innocent III, and the religious and secular clergy who preached and accompanied the expedition all came into conflict with one another. Different sets of expectations about what constituted proper crusading behaviour caused internal discord, and as military targets shifted, perceptions about enemies also had to be realigned. Such tensions compelled those who recorded the Fourth Crusade to reflect on the nature of medieval masculinity from a variety of perspectives as they strove to come to terms with an astonishing chain of events, whether they saw the outcome as resulting from human decisions, divine intervention, or a combination of both.15 Within the substantial body of scholarly attention that the Hystoria Constantinopolitana has received, the wide range of masculine values and identities employed by the author, Gunther of Pairis, especially in relation to his main character, Abbot Martin, have yet to be examined. This essay highlights core themes relating to both secular

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  201 and eccesiastial masculinities as they appear in the text, setting them in the context of contemporary attitudes towards both crusade and monasticism. It seeks not only to gain a deeper understanding of how contemporary monastic gender identities were constructed in relation to the crusade movement, but also to demonstrate how crusading as a literary topos had the potential to inform and develop those identities.

Context: the source and its author The Hystoria Constantinopolitana was largely complete by 1205, and its author, Gunther (ca. 1150–1210?), probably hailed from near Basel. Much of the available information about him is compiled from the other works with which he is associated.16 One of these, the Solimarius, was dedicated to Conrad, son of Frederick Barbarossa, whom the author claimed was a pupil, creating a possible link to the imperial court. He is therefore thought to have been a secular priest or teacher before becoming a monk. He joined the Cistercian abbey at Pairis, in the Alsace region of north-east France at the very beginning of the thirteenth century, perhaps because he had failed to attract continuing patronage at court.17 When the abbot of Gunther’s community, Martin, commissioned a history to celebrate the events of the Fourth Crusade and his personal role in transmitting a number of relics from the captured city of Constantinople to Pairis, he chose Gunther, who was clearly a man of considerable literary skill, to compose it. Gunther’s account takes us through Abbot Martin’s crusade experience in a sequence of narrative stages. He described Martin’s crusade sermon at Basel Münster in May 1200 in detail, ending with his pledge to take the cross.18 After a brief preaching tour, we are told that Martin went to Cîteaux to seek the blessing of the order for his pilgrimage.19 He then travelled with the crusaders through Italy to Verona and on to Venice. The organisers of the crusade had wildly overestimated the number of crusaders mustering there and were unable to pay for the ships and supplies they had commissioned. Ultimately, the Venetians agreed to join the crusade, but to recoup some of their financial losses they controversially directed the crusaders to attack their enemies in the Christian city of Zara on the nearby Dalmatian coast. Despite voicing misgivings, Martin continued with the German cohort to Zara at the behest of papal legate Peter Capuano.20 After the attack, Martin went with the negotiators sent by the army to Rome to beg forgiveness from the pope.21 Ordered to continue with the crusade to the East, Martin abandoned the German cohort who went on to Constantinople, setting sail for Acre. In the Holy Land he encountered a terrible sickness that swept through the crusading community, and ministered to those on their deathbeds.22 He then rejoined the main army at Constantinople, purportedly to seek aid for the Holy Land after a peace treaty between Aimery of Lusignan and the sultan of Egypt was broken. He arrived in November 1203 in time for the attack on the city in April 1204. However, he played a limited role in these events and disappeared entirely from Gunther’s account of the capture of the city.23 After the crusaders had successfully achieved their end, Gunther moved on to describing Martin’s theft of an impressive haul of relics from the abbey church of Christ Pantokrator.24 Concealing his holy booty, Martin travelled

202  Hodgson first to Acre again where he updated the Germans with news from Constantinople, and then he set sail for home. En route both Martin and the priest with whom he shared quarters (Aegidius) experienced visions about the relics he carried, and faced perils over land and sea.25 Finally, the abbot returned triumphant, distributing some relics in Basel before heading back to Pairis with the major part of his haul. The relics he stole are listed by Gunther in chapter 24, and included objects relating to the Passion, the Apostles, and martyrs as well as a significant number of saints.26 The Hystoria’s importance as a Fourth Crusade narrative has been underestimated in the past because it ignored or misrepresented some of the key events highlighted by the lay eyewitness accounts of Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari.27 It was also treated with suspicion because of its high literary style (prosimetry) and its glorification of Abbot Martin’s role on the crusade, both of which distorted the historical content. The definitive critical edition produced by Orth and a scholarly analysis and English translation provided by Andrea in the last twenty-five years have done much to re-establish its historical and literary significance.28 The Hystoria utilised a highly symbolic format. The main body was constructed about twenty-four paired chapters, each comprising prose and poetry that reflected on matching themes as highlighted by Andrea.29 It was also a deeply philosophical work that drew on the influences of St Augustine, Paulus Orosius, and Boethius. Gunther interpreted all events as an expression of divine will, while simultaneously upholding the free will of individuals. He highlighted their human frailty and ignorance of their roles within the divine plan, exhibiting “the highest ideals of twelfth-century Christian Humanism”.30 The Hystoria was also a translatio: a text which catalogues a transfer of relics from one place to another, establishing their provenance and pedigree.31 Both Perry and Swietek, however, have highlighted unique features of the Hystoria that set it apart from other texts in that genre. For Perry, the actual relic theft played a rather minor role compared to the focus on martial events, while Swietek argued that the overarching literary purpose controlled the content.32 Gunther’s text had several aims: to defend the Fourth Crusade (and his abbot’s decision to take part); to justify the translation of the relics and reaffirm God’s support of this endeavour; and to present this in a literary format that would invite wider contemplation of God’s intervention in human affairs. Sweitek judged the Hystoria “an intriguing and sophisticated text of quite limited value to historical researchers”.33 This may be true for those historians seeking to establish a narrative consensus on the course of the crusade, but for the historian of crusading ideals, and of gender, it is a rich source that has not yet been mined to its full capacity.34 For example, the Hystoria’s significance in providing early documentation of crusade preaching through its depiction of Abbot Martin’s sermon at Basel has recently been underlined by Cole and Maier.35 Gunther expressly stated that his “little book (paginule)” was intended for reflection, probably by an elite audience of fellow monks. He charged those who read it to “bring sagacity and diligence of mind to the things treated herein, which are meant to be minutely examined”.36 As a result, this carefully crafted work also presents a highly intellectual interpretation of crusade and its significance within the masculine confines of the monastery in the early thirteenth century. Gunther’s focus on a particular hero, the man commissioning his work, was not unusual. However, he had his work cut out for him when elevating Martin, who had a less than pristine record as an abbot, to an exemplary model worthy of receiving

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  203 relics, as well as justifying his participation in the crusade.37 Most narratives relating to the crusades were influenced by combinations of patronage, geographical proximity, and ecclesiastical affiliation that resulted in certain individuals receiving “heroic” treatment – for example, Godfrey of Bouillon in Albert of Aachen’s Historia Ierosolimitana.38 Those who idealised secular crusaders often employed traditional hallmarks for valorising contemporary noble masculinity such as military prowess and feats of physical strength on the battlefield. These were not usually deemed appropriate for clerical role models. Other characteristics associated with contemporary hegemonic masculinity could be converted to portray an ecclesiastical figure with greater ease – for example, dominating other men through leadership (this could be exemplary, political, judicial, or military), care for dependants (usually expressed through pastoral duties and patriarchal roles), and largesse (especially in the form of collecting alms and the distribution of charity).39 Bravery was also employed as a motif both on and off the battlefield, although clerical valour might be recast in a noncombatant form, and demonstrated by taking risks with personal safety despite a lack of arms or facing down an opponent verbally. Thus on crusade, as in wider medieval society, clerical masculinity was clearly connected to secular constructs of power and authority, but as Thibodeaux asserts, “clerical identity was a gender of multiplicity . . . vigorously negotiated and contested,” which allowed for a great deal of fluidity in the appropriation of different masculine characteristics for specific groups.40 For example, monks, with the exception of military orders, were traditionally seen as fighting spiritual battles within the cloister which required them to renounce the physical battlefield. Even before the crusades began, martial masculinity had been appropriated into cloistered contexts as the noble classes upon whom monks relied for patronage and recruitment increasingly identified with knightly values. As Allen Smith has asserted, the monastic ordo and emerging warrior classes were “bound together by complex ties of interdependence, complimentarity and opposition”, and thus there was a great deal of cross-pollination in the language of ideals between the two groups.41 Even so, we should not expect that the shared experience of crusade created a new and definable type of masculine identity for all men on crusade as Holt proposes. While clerical commentators may have attempted to elevate the masculine superiority of certain ‘heroic’ crusaders by highlighting religious characteristics, as Maier points out, crusading built on patterns of secular male piety which long pre-dated the crusades.42 Similarly, clerics who adopted warlike traits met with varying responses, as this was construed by some as taking a step down in the masculine hierarchy. This was even more the case for monks, whose claims to virility rested on their mastery of natural inclinations towards lust and violence through abstinence. Abbot Martin’s character as presented by Gunther of Pairis was composed of diverse roles with seemingly contradictory elements. He featured variously as an impassioned preacher, the spiritual and temporal leader of an army, an envoy and a diplomat, a physician, a confessor, an executor, a thief, a visionary, and, above all, the father-figure of a spiritual community that he enriched immeasurably by the relics he brought back from Constantinople. Emotionally, Martin was portrayed as experiencing doubt and fear as well as demonstrating humility, faith, and devotion. Key themes relating to medieval masculinity such as sex and violence, leadership, patronage, fear, and cunning all appear to a varying degree. Gunther’s

204  Hodgson portrayal of Martin thus provides a kaleidoscopic insight to contemporary masculine values, set within the inherent tensions posed by an expedition that challenged all previous crusading experiences.

Leaving the cloister: sex, violence, and masculinity Crusading occurred at a time when Western monasticism was undergoing a “crisis” and new reform movements were blossoming. The Cistercians were founded in 1098, three scant years after Urban II’s call for the First Crusade.43 Their criticisms of established monks such as the Cluniacs for leaving the cloister formed a key part of the reform debate.44 The vow of stabilitas was treated with such importance that even pilgrimage was viewed with concern by some ecclesiastical authors.45 Pope Urban II accordingly prevented both secular and religious clergy from taking the cross (without permission) in his letter to the people of Bologna of September 1096, and threatened to excommunicate members of the congregation of Vallombrosa who were planning to join with their abbot on the First Crusade.46 At about the time of the Second Crusade, Gratian’s Decretum and Peter the Venerable’s letters upheld the view that monks had no authority to take a crusade vow without the permission of an abbot.47 St Bernard of Clairvaux was adamant that it was the duty of a monk to remain cloistered and not to participate under threat of excommunication, despite his own role in preaching the Second Crusade.48 However, a number of chronicles and letters testify to the fact that monks did take part in crusades, and not always with the requisite permissions. Some of these accounts were even written by crusader monks, for example, Ekkehard, who took part in the 1101 crusade and later became abbot of Aura, or Odo of Deuil, who was acting on behalf of his abbot, Suger of Saint Denis, on the Second Crusade.49 For the Cistercian Order in particular, a turning point in attitudes to military activity seems to have been reached with the rise to prominence of Henry of Marcy, who became abbot of Clairvaux in 1176. He took a militant stance in combatting heresy and was known to have organised and led troops against the forces of Roger II of Carcassone at Lavaur. He had an integral role at the Third Lateran Council, where he was named cardinal-bishop of Albano, and was instrumental to the preaching and organisation of the Third Crusade, dying in 1189.50 Henry, however, was an exceptional figure, a high-profile cardinal-bishop with legatine powers. A few key figures with positions of secular responsibility who had previously been Cistercian monks – Baldwin of Forde, archbishop of Canterbury, for example – went on the Third Crusade. Others still had ties to their communities such as Abbot Simon of Loos, who took part without permission, and was later punished by the general chapter for contravening his vows.51 Pope Innocent III took matters a step further when he allowed the man charged with coordinating the preaching of the Fourth Crusade, Fulk of Neuilly, to recruit preachers from the Benedictines, Cistercians, and canons regular in a letter of November 1198.52 The Cistercians, however, were initially reluctant to contribute, perhaps because Fulk was not one of their own.53 Ralph, the Cistercian abbot of Coggeshall, told how Fulk’s original plea for support at the General Chapter on 14 September 1198 failed because his audience did not wish to desert their own sheep in order to preach to strangers.54 Cole argued that, as a result, the initial group of preachers Fulk assembled, while earnest, did not

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  205 attract the right “sort” of crusaders – they were too busy pursuing their own reform priorities.55 Fulk was more successful at recruiting Cistercians when he returned to the General Chapter in 1201, and it seems that, this time, there was an explicit desire for abbots not just to preach but to accompany the army. Boniface of Monferrat was present and petitioned for a local Cistercian abbot to accompany his pilgrimage (Abbot Peter of Locedio). The abbots of Cercanceaux, Loos, Perseigne, and Vauxde-Cernay were also ordered by the pope to take part.56 Ralph argued that such great need demanded many men “of proven religion” to “comfort the faint of heart, instruct the ignorant, and urge on the upright to the Lord’s battle, assisting them in all matters that endanger souls”. They desperately needed “the help and advice of righteous men”.57 Evidently, concerns about monks participating in crusades could be waived, if they had the right qualities. Crucially, the majority of these sanctioned participants were abbots and therefore used to leading, motivating, and chastising men when necessary. The “special relationship” previously established between the Cistercians and the crusade movement also helped.58 These developments met with some criticism, however, and a number of Cistercian abbots were still attempting to restrict their monks from crusading activity even at the 1203 General Chapter, not long before Gunther wrote the Hystoria Hierosolymitana.59 Sexuality and violence both formed major elements of the debate on whether monks should participate in crusading, in line with those gendered aspects of contemporary secular masculinity that monks were supposed to reject.60 While violence was an inherent part of the crusade for secular participants, even having redemptive qualities, they were still expected to restrain their sexual behaviour at risk of earning God’s displeasure. Thus, illicit sexual activity by any crusaders was frowned upon, but on occasion sources highlighted specific examples of clerical transgression. During the First Crusade a cleric and a woman were caught in adultery at the siege of Antioch. They were stripped naked and publicly beaten through the camp with whips. Guibert of Nogent was keen to identify the transgressor as “a certain monk belonging to a religious community very well known to all, who had departed in flight from the confines of his monastery and undertook the journey to Jerusalem moved not by piety, but by a whim”.61 The connections he drew between leaving the confines of the monastery illicitly and falling into sexual sin were echoed by Bernold of St Blasien writing about the People’s Crusade in 1096: For they had in their company many apostates, who having thrown off monastic vestments proposed to fight with them. But they did not shrink from having countless women with them, who had nefariously exchanged their conventional clothes for manly ones, with whom they fornicated. For Bernold, this offended God in a like manner to the sins of the people of Israel, and resulted in the failure of the People’s Crusade after much hardship, danger, and death.62 When it came to Abbot Martin, Gunther of Pairis seemed at first glance to avoid the whole issue of male sexuality. At this time, abstinence was seen as a marker of religious masculinity, and even drew comment in relation to secular crusaders.63 Gunther highlighted other worldly temptations such as wealth and office, but

206  Hodgson evidently wished to portray Martin as untroubled by the desire to commit sexual sin. The only overt reference to chastity appeared in the context of the crusade army, when Martin enjoined his newly recruited crusaders to remain chaste and pure (caste et innocue) in the period between taking the cross and the start of the expedition, because Christ loved purity.64 Martin was also described as keeping himself saintly and pure (sancte et innocue) amidst warlike men, and like a pure man without sin (quasi vir sine crimine purus) though such terminology was not explicitly linked to sex.65 Gunther’s avoidance of the topic clearly aligned with the ultimate goal of his text – to present the Fourth Crusade and subsequent translation of the relics from Constantinople to Pairis through Abbot Martin as divinely inspired events – in the course of which there was no place for contemplating sex, although as we shall see, he was not above using sexual imagery to establish a gendered masculine hierarchy. The issue of clerical violence has attracted considerable attention in the context of the crusades. We know that some clergy took part in the fighting, for example, the priest Raol on the Second Crusade; Aleaumes, brother of Robert of Clari on the Fourth; and John of Voisey, a priest of John of Joinville on St Louis’ first crusading expedition.66 All were presented favourably for their military efforts, although Raol was writing about himself, and the others were recorded by lay authors who were measuring them against secular standards of masculinity. Other ecclesiastical authors made it clear that clerics were not there to fight. According to Ralph of Caen, Arnulf of Chocques, when recounting a number of different battles on the First Crusade, defended his worth as a non-combatant by citing his roles in encouraging the troops, as an emissary and a decision-maker, although he was still reputedly disparaged by First Crusade leader Tancred as a coward.67 When Odo of Deuil described the fateful battle of Mount Cadmos (6 January 1148) during the Second Crusade, he wrote that “I, who as a monk could only call upon the Lord and summon others to battle, was sent to the camp”.68 Gunther’s Abbot Martin fit the non-combatant model of a crusading cleric to an extent. Although described as serving in the army and able to ride a lively horse, he was clearly established as more of a monk than a soldier, and he was never involved in the fighting narrative. At the sack of Constantinople, Gunther was explicit that Martin separated himself from the worldly activities of the rest of the army to engage in his relic theft.69 He did threaten violence against an old Greek priest at Constantinople who was guarding the relics he wished to steal, but Gunther stressed that this was an empty threat. Martin only made a pretence of great anger, and though he spoke in a foreign language, he inspired sufficient fear with his voice alone that the priest handed over the loot.70 The priest then identified Martin as a cleric by his face and dress, and gave him the relics “thinking it more tolerable that a man of religion violate the holy relics in awe and reverence, rather than that worldly men should pollute them, possibly with bloodstained hands”.71 Perhaps most interesting in this context was Gunther’s use of the verb contrecto, which has implicit sexual overtones, to describe the act of “violation” incurred by taking the relics. Andrea noted the deliberate use of this loaded term, which he saw as enhancing the wider ironic humour of the passage. At the root of this humour was the deliberate use of gender to effeminize the Greek priest both through his fearful response and the act of handing over the relics to Martin. After the initial

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  207 encounter, we are told that the Greek priest, having identified Martin’s character as kind and generous, became a subordinate and “clung to him in quite a friendly manner”.72 Gunther went on to use sexualised imagery in Martin’s handling and disposal of the relics – having arrived “girded for action (strennue succinctus)” he was described as thrusting his hands in “greedily” (cupide) to complete the theft.73 Within the passage, Gunther thus enhanced Martin’s manly qualities not only in terms of his dominance of the Greek priest, but also imitated secular measures of masculinity to demonstrate Martin’s legitimate spiritual superiority in comparison to the “worldly men” whose touch would pollute the holy objects. At several points in the text, Martin’s concerns about violence towards Christians were also raised. When Peter Capuano agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Venice, Martin was horrified at the prospect of the army shedding Christian blood.74 According to Gunther, part of the leadership burden placed on Martin by the legate was to restrain the crusaders from violent acts against Christians. It is precisely for these reasons that Gunther strove to minimise the crusaders’ impact on the Christian held city of Zara. This attack was an “odious and personally detestable business”, which was achieved largely by a show of force and “without slaughter or bloodshed”.75 A similar approach was taken to Constantinople in Chapter 17 where Gunther’s poem enjoining the crusaders to break in to the city of Constantinople was couched in terms of a benevolent chastisement. He urged them to imagine Christ as the King of Peace leading the way, riding an ass: Break in! Rout menaces; crush cowards; press on more bravely; Shout in thundering voice; brandish iron but spare the blood. Instill terror, but remember they are brothers Whom you overwhelm.76 It is telling that Gunther also avoided explicit reference to atrocities perpetrated by crusaders in his portrayal of the siege of Constantinople even though Greek, and some Latin sources, affirmed that these took place. He has been accused of a somewhat naïve approach to military affairs for his description of the crusaders’ “bloodless” capture of Zara and Constantinople, when even Innocent III’s letter to Peter Capuano in July 1205 clearly detailed the murder and rapine the crusaders had perpetrated at the latter. Andrea suggests that Gunther shared “the ingenuousness of those who have never seen the brutality that battle arouses” and accordingly glorified crusader violence in an unrealistic manner.77 That said, Gunther’s text as a whole was far from “bloodless” and often referred to violence both real and imagined. His eminent satisfaction at the brutal end that came to the Byzantine emperor Alexius V (Murzuphlus) who was blinded and thrown to his death from the column of Theodosius, underlined his appreciation for violence carried out in appropriate circumstances, especially to a man he considered criminal and treacherous. He devoted two whole poetic sections to the theme, one of which used repetition and metre to underline the vehemence of his sentiment: Now come on blind man, fly. You deserve to die by fire, fuel for sizzling flame.

208  Hodgson By the indisputable law of the court you deserve to die by fire. And you deserve to be broken on the wheel or have your skin stripped From your whole body, and you deserve the wheel (Or torn limb from limb by beasts). Would that you were either cast into the sea Or sawn into pieces (or torn limb from limb by beasts). You deserve to die and to see, in shame and misery Your limbs hacked off. You deserve to die.78 Chapter 20 is paired with chapter 4 where Martin first takes on his leadership role, gets permission from Cîteaux, and sets off with the army of Christ, making a direct contrast between the qualities of the two men and the legitimation of their authority, which Andrea has highlighted as a central theme of the work.79 Martin’s sermon to the crusaders at the cathedral at Basel also demonstrated, according to Cole, Gunther’s clear understanding of secular martial values, attitudes to violence, and the desire for material reward on a scale unprecedented in previous sources for preaching, although these are admittedly limited.80 Gunther therefore cannot be accused of ignorance when it came to worldly masculine perceptions of sex and violence. He employed these themes partially and selectively in order to preserve the images he wished to reflect of his main hero, the Fourth Crusaders, and the acts that they carried out: acts that were, in Gunther’s view, divinely ordained.

Leadership and patronage In the hegemonic construction of masculinity leadership roles and activities are essential markers of manhood in the gender hierarchy in order to justify the basis for one man’s authority over another.81 The masculine characteristics of secular and spiritual leaders in medieval society were therefore amplified. Leaders were expected to demonstrate superior qualities to their subordinates but still acted as hegemonic role models even if the majority of those qualities were unachievable to most men. To assess the masculine qualities of Martin’s leadership a number of factors need to be addressed: his actual position in the crusade hierarchy, and the criteria by which Gunther of Pairis sought to establish his credentials for leadership, including his character and actions. Gunther clearly exaggerated Martin’s influence at a variety of stages. He was not one of the Cistercian abbots ordered by Pope Innocent III to take part according to the general chapter, yet Gunther claimed that Martin “simultaneously led the people [of Basel] as duke (dux), count (comes) and father (pater) . . . by order of the supreme pontiff”.82 When Martin accompanied the host to Verona he described how people were astonished, “because a man in a religious habit and of totally spiritual life was leading a host of armed soldiers and giving himself so energetically to the duty of so great a task”.83 However, it is possible that Martin was following an established tradition of ecclesiastical crusade leadership in the region.84 More problematic is Gunther’s claim that after the attack on Zara, Martin took on leadership of the whole German contingent at the command of

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  209 papal legate Peter Capuano.85 Andrea’s scholarship has done much to establish the limits of Martin’s actual authority in these instances. He also views Martin’s auxiliary roles as messenger and envoy as self-appointed rather than a measure of standing, and even questions the veracity of the permission he received from Cîteaux to go on crusade.86 If Martin was not a designated crusade leader, however, what benefits did this deliberate elevation of his importance bring to Gunther’s wider scheme of the Hystoria beyond simple flattery of his abbot? Legitimisation of the crusade, of Martin’s decision to join it, and of the relics themselves were clearly key factors. In some respects, however, Gunther sought to relieve Martin from the burdens of responsibility which came with that leadership. The crusade was a divinely ordained expedition, and Martin was a participant, if unknowing, in a wider divine plan. As well as being a leader, he was also a subordinate with a clear place in the established hierarchy, subject to the commands of his superiors: the papal legate, Peter Capuano, and the pope, Innocent III. Martin was portrayed as obediently following their wishes even though, on several occasions, he expressed a desire to return home to the “solitary quiet of claustral life”.87 He was therefore cast as a reluctant leader. Martin sought to be relieved of his vow first when the decision was taken to attack Zara, and then again when he joined the envoys sent to the pope. Both requests were denied, which ultimately set him on the path to the recovery of the relics.88 Martin’s requests to return home, combined with his abandonment of the German contingent to travel on to Acre, might have met with accusations of cowardice and poor leadership. However, Gunther explained that Martin was acting out of obedience to his superiors, and continued to honour his crusade vow and his commitment to the Germans, some of whom were already in Acre. This suggests that he saw little contradiction between the actions Martin carried out and his role as a crusade leader.89 On the contrary, humility and reluctance to lead were often seen as a sign of masculine character and suitability for command in both secular and ecclesiastical contexts.90 Gunther also stressed that Martin’s likeable character, kindness, cheerful demeanour, and generosity made him a natural leader, inspiring a number of men to follow or support him during the course of the crusade.91 While Gunther emphasised the monastic elements of Martin’s character, his position as an abbot was also central to the construction of his suitability for leadership. As many of his contemporaries ended up taking positions in the secular church as bishops, Gunther was at pains to express Martin’s comparative lack of desire for worldly goods and secular office. Many clerics who took part in the Third Crusade (some of whom commanded troops or even fought), such as Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, Henry of Horburg, bishop of Basel, and Gerard, archbishop of Ravenna, had come from Cistercian backgrounds but had subsequently taken secular office.92 Of Martin’s contemporaries, several Cistercian abbots accepted a secular role, such as Fourth Crusader Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay who became bishop of Carcassone in 1212. Gunther clearly wanted to distinguish Martin from those abbots with worldly ambitions. We first see Martin turning down an offer of a bishopric from crusade leader Boniface of Monferrat after the sack of Constantinople. Gunther asserted that Martin wished to adhere to

210  Hodgson his vows and return to his brothers in the monastery as “a humble and ordinary person (privatus et humilis)”.93 Gunther paid more substantial attention to the offers made to Martin by a certain Werner in return for dedicating the relics he had stolen to the Holy Land.94 This offer comprises roughly half of chapter 22, and Werner was described as an honourable man of noble blood, “noted for his manly excellence (virtute conspicuus)”.95 We are told that he enjoyed a loving and respectful relationship with the abbot with whom he had been acquainted for some time, and offered him a bishopric, an abbacy over three luxurious monasteries (for which Gunther provided lavish descriptions), and, finally, a cash sum to leave the relics behind. Martin once again demonstrated humility and also superior moral fibre by refusing to accept these gifts, reiterating that he wished only to return to his monastery with the relics.96 On both occasions Martin showed dedication to his monastic principles, but arguably also demonstrated leadership, as it was his commitment to the community under his care and its enrichment that motivated him to reject such offers. This was one of the features that made him worthy of emulation. One of Gunther’s poems enjoined the abbot on his return to: Be a tutor to the brethren, as a model of goodness, as the tinder Of fraternal peace, as the light and beam of a lamp.97 Gunther also capitalised on the combination of martial and monastic elements of Martin’s leadership of the crusade by employing an extensive hagiographic comparison to the soldier-saint Martin of Tours. He was a fourth-century soldier who shunned his military activities and became first a monk, then bishop of Tours, although he continued to live a monastic existence. He was a hugely popular and influential saint throughout the medieval period, and particularly connected to monasticism and martial activity.98 To begin, Gunther revealed that Abbot Martin was named after Martin of Tours, and told how people who saw him leading the crusaders commented on his resemblance to the saint.99 Gunther pointed out three chief similarities. He claimed that, like Martin of Tours who kept himself so pure while “in armed military service” (armatam sequens miliciam) that “he was regarded not so much as a soldier but as a monk” (non tam miles quam monachus puteretur), so Abbot Martin, a “true monk” (verus monachus) and “father of monks” (pater monachorum), even while leading the army, upheld his monastic rigour in the midst of “warlike men” (belligeros homines).100 Gunther made clear that he retained his monastic dress, thus he was physically distinguished from the warriors. The second connection was patronage: Gunther likened the legend of Martin of Tours sharing his only cloak with a pauper to Abbot Martin’s distribution of patronage on the Fourth Crusade.101 The third parallel rested on their monastic calling. Just as Martin of Tours continued with his monastic commitment to poverty when brought forth from the monastery to become a bishop, so Martin, called forth from the cloister to become a crusader, refused worldly rewards out of love for the Order and his monastery.102

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  211 Gunther’s purpose here was clear  – to present Abbot Martin as an exemplar of ecclesiastical masculine virtues by comparing him to a saintly model, clearly distinguishing him from the rest of the warlike host and preserving his character from any charge of impropriety in order to make him a suitable vessel for the translation of the relics. His humility, charity, and commitment to the monastic life are praised, but his position as “father of monks” also highlights his elevated significance as an abbot and therefore an example to his community. This form of masculinity was clearly superior to the secular notions of “warlike” men, yet Gunther also drew heavily from these in praising his hero. In the poem accompanying the prose section, Gunther admitted that Abbot Martin was probably the lesser of the two Martins, but asserted that both were equally loved by God and achieved great things. He stated that after Abbot Martin’s death his reputation and honour – both secular measures of masculinity – would grow exponentially. The fame of virtuous men (honestorum . . . fama virorum) grows beyond death, Even as due honour (honos) already befalls all good men; This man also, when his bodily life is over, Will grow full of endless personal honour (plenus honore suo).103 Patronage was another central theme associated with leadership and dominance over subordinates. Lords on crusade were expected to help finance less wellequipped crusaders in times of hardship, or when a wealth of booty came into their midst. When Abbot Martin was caring for the sick struck down by a pestilence at Acre, he heard their confessions, and actively encouraged them to give up their worldly wealth in order to ensure their salvation. Gunther was emphatic that Martin was not tempted by worldly riches himself but was motivated by redeploying them for the crusader cause. Certainly Martin seems to have been very free with the belongings he garnered and managed to redistribute them swiftly, using cash to purchase weapons that brave but poverty-stricken crusaders had pawned. Gunther sought to impress his audience by providing an exact amount for Martin’s expenditure within three days totalling 190 marks.104 The clergy had enjoyed an integral role in co-ordinating the finances of crusade armies from the time of the First Crusade, when alms were collected from captured booty and redistributed among the needy by preachers such as Peter the Hermit and Arnulf of Chocques.105 Gunther presented Martin’s redistribution of dead crusaders’ wealth and belongings as further evidence of his commitment to the crusader cause and his exemplary leadership. The other major form of Martin’s patronage, of course, was the distribution of the relics he stole. On his return from the crusade he returned to the church of the Blessed Virgin at Basel where he had preached the crusade, donating a magnificent altar-cloth and bestowing personal gifts on the bishop and others in the city. The majority of relics that he brought back, however, were intended for Pairis, where Martin’s return was celebrated with great pomp. He was met by a delegation from the monastery “who came to meet him respectfully, as was his due”, and together with a number of important people from the city they escorted him and

212  Hodgson his “triumphant spoils of holy plunder . . . to be sure in great style but with the great humility of piety”.106 Throughout the Hystoria, Gunther strove to balance his view of the dual nature of Abbot Martin’s leadership on crusade, drawing from secular and ecclesiastic examples where appropriate, and using comparisons with other men and relationships within a hierarchy to underline what he saw as Abbot Martin’s most significant leadership role: his abbacy at Pairis.

Fear Throughout Gunther’s text, Martin is credited with experiencing a range of emotions: weeping after preaching the cross, showing empathy for the plaguestricken crusaders at Acre, and demonstrating kindness and love to participants and comrades. By far the most prominent, however, is fear: an emotion that at first glance does not sit so well with heroic masculine ideals on crusade. Although Andrea describes Gunther’s text as a “demi-epic” with Abbot Martin as hero, he asserts that there are few occasions when he is described as anything approaching “brave”.107 Noble concurs that “despite Gunther’s best attempts to portray his acts as high-minded, Martin was clearly trying to save his own skin and escape from the rigors of the crusade most of the time”.108 Although described as setting off on the holy journey with “happy countenance and fearless mind”, the difficulties encountered by the crusaders soon created doubt and uncertainty.109 When faced with difficult decisions such as whether to attack Zara, Martin was described as “totally terror-stricken” (totus in se exhorruit).110 As a leader, however, Martin’s fear was not just for himself – it extended to those under his care, as he feared that they might engage in an illegitimate slaughter. Gunther made it clear that other crusaders, too, turned away from mustering at Venice because they were “frightened to the point of terror” (horrore perterriti) at such a perpetration.111 When discussing the capture of Constantinople at the end of the work Gunther emphasised the fear felt by crusaders as a whole, and asserted that disguising and overcoming this fear was a worthy and manly pursuit.112 The Greeks conversely were unable to master their terror, whether of the Latins themselves or their crossbows, and were therefore rendered less masculine, hiding shamefully.113 Furthermore, in his pastoral role as a spiritual leader, Martin was able to provide comfort and demonstrate the power of faith in confronting fear. When ministering to the crusaders at Acre, he was likened to a father, a servant, and a brother as he manfully (viriliter) exhorted the healthy to have faith and not to give in to terror of sickness.114 Fear therefore performed an important function in relation to the overriding theme of humility that permeated Gunther’s text. Martin was cast as a reluctant crusade leader constantly seeking release from his vow, not because of a lack of bravery or masculinity, but because of important moral concerns about the direction of the crusade, and because he ultimately wished to return to a superior calling – the contemplative life. The very hardship, fear, and suffering he encountered during the crusade was part of the penitential process that made him worthy to receive the relics that God entrusted to him. The faith that he demonstrated allowed him to transcend his own fear and alleviate the fear of others, enhancing

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  213 his masculine qualities. Such accounts performed two functions – to underline the serious moral fibre of the abbot, and also to highlight the role of faith in ultimately providing a resolution to his doubts and dilemmas. The final context in which fear dominated Gunther’s narrative was Abbot Martin’s journey home with his stolen bounty. Here he was described as not fearing the sea, but as facing a “holy fear” (sancto . . . timore) of losing the relics entrusted to him. He was reassured once again, however, by hope and faith that God had chosen him for this task: “With so many strong men (multos fortes) about,” Gunther argues, “why would He give sacred tokens of victory/To an unwarlike man (imbelli . . . viro), if they are to be immediately snatched away?”115 Martin was presented as mortal, fearful, and clearly not a warrior, yet with the special protection of God, made manifest through the relics entrusted to him, he was empowered to travel safely through pirate-infested waters and mountains thick with bandits – indeed, the latter were miraculously terror-stricken at the very sight of the relics.116 Martin was gifted with a vision demonstrating his safe passage home, but this did not alleviate his fears; rather it gave him the courage to continue on his journey despite them.117 Gunther’s portrayal of Martin’s fear had a precedent in the wider context of crusaders and their emotions. In recent years historians have developed more critical approaches to emotions and emotion words in historical texts, focusing less on their use as a measure of real feeling, and more on their significance as a culturally constructed phenomenon, especially in connection with other medieval discourses on the body and mind, vices and virtues, and gender and class.118 In the context of warfare, such words have particular resonance in constructing the image of the enemy, validating the use of violence and measuring performance, often in gendered terms.119 Recent work by Spencer on First Crusade narratives highlights how “the vocabulary of fear and fearlessness appears in the texts as evidence of crusader spirituality” from the outset.120 Recognition of the presence of fear among crusaders was not an admission of cowardice and by extension a lessening of masculine quality, but an acknowledgement of human reaction to a dire situation subsequently resolved and triumphed over only by faith in God. As a cleric, Martin’s role as a non-combatant served only to enhance that fear, and by extension his masculinity in overcoming it. The fear the we are told he experienced was part and parcel of the task of translating the relics entrusted to him, and Gunther asserted that Martin was pleased to lay down his burden, and his fear, on his return from crusade.121

Cunning Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of Abbot Martin’s character is his explicit portrayal as a thief, or “holy robber” (predo sanctus).122 Historians such as Geary and most recently Perry have undertaken in-depth examinations of the justification of relic theft, setting it firmly in a religious context as furta sacra – a removal of relics that was perceived to be legitimised by the tacit approval of the saint who allowed the translation to take place.123 Yet theft required both intelligence and

214  Hodgson a capacity for deception. Intellect was often seen as key to establishing clerical masculinity, which usually came attached to perceptions about the literacy, education, and knowledge displayed by an individual. Cunning was treated as a comparatively base form of intelligence and was often viewed with suspicion. This is exemplified in the treatment of the controversial first Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Arnulf of Chocques in First Crusade histories. His learning and knowledge were undisputed, yet while those in favour of him spoke of his learning, eloquence, and persuasiveness over other men, to his detractors he was cunning, manipulative, and self-serving.124 However, secular models of masculinity occasionally championed cunning and guile to an extent, as seen in the enduring popularity of the anti-hero Reynard the Fox, or in the context of the Hunt.125 Both contemporary fables and classical works prized the ability to deceive as a characteristic that could sometimes be seen as superior to brute force as a masculine trait, if it achieved a desired end. Gunther of Pairis made a point of comparing the achievements of the Fourth Crusaders to the Greeks at Troy, boasting that the former achieved much more with fewer men and in a shorter time than the latter.126 Interestingly, he was also critical of the ostensible casus belli for the Trojan war, the theft of Helen from her husband Menelaus by the Trojan prince, Paris. He saw this adulterous act as an unworthy reason for making war. Although he made no explicit comparison between Abbot Martin and the cunning hero who conceived of the Trojan Horse, Ulysses, Gunther applauded the guile that Martin employed to win his desired prize of relics. We are told that Martin thought carefully about a suitable “target” and, once there, bluffed that he was prepared to do harm to the old man holding the relics in safekeeping in order to persuade him to hand over the treasures. Here we can draw an interesting parallel with a recently discovered translatio narrative from the Fourth Crusade. The Translatio Symonensis provides a very similar example, describing the translation of the body of St Simon the prophet to the Rialto in Venice. In it, seven Venetian thieves carefully planned the theft of the relic to take place on Palm Sunday, designating some as lookout while three others were to carry out the theft. Those inside the church, however, experienced doubts when breaking into the tomb and returned to the door, only to be chastised by their confederates, “Where is your courage? Are you men? Go, in the name of God and complete your work.”127 Clearly a successful holy theft required a degree of manly courage. It also involved subterfuge, and therefore a masking or pretence of emotion. Masking feelings of fear was certainly an important element of Gunther’s portrayal of masculinity, and his portrayal of the crusaders’ successful capture of Constantinople and Zara rested on their ability to act bravely and frighten the enemy into submission. Martin was also described as masking the depth of his emotion when faced with the hardships endured by the dying at Acre.128 In order to successfully steal the relics, Martin had to pretend a range of emotions: first, anger at the Greek priest, then later he had to feign a happy and unconcerned disposition when questioned about whether he was carrying loot.129 Martin had a legitimate reason for being afraid in such circumstances. Breaking into churches or monasteries, or molesting priests was expressly forbidden in the March Pact drawn up before the capture of Constantinople. In order to avoid having

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  215 to hand the relics over to the general hoard of booty amassed for division between the crusaders, he had to conceal them on his own person and keep them secret for several weeks. The penalty for holding back booty was hanging. The majority of crusaders were probably more interested in the rich reliquaries housing the bones of saints than their contents, but the consequences could have been severe for Martin if discovered.130 Martin kept his secret and was also sufficiently cunning to avoid handing over the relics to those such as his friend Werner who desired to use them for their own purposes. God’s protection of the relics from subsequent theft therefore, in Gunther’s view, provided tangible proof that Martin’s illegal actions were sanctioned by a higher authority, and demonstrated God’s ultimate approbation of Martin’s deceit.

Conclusion The Fourth Crusade, an expedition initially intended to support the Holy Land, but that resulted in the translation of important relics from the city of Constantinople to the monastery where Gunther resided at Pairis, presented this skilled author with a perfect opportunity to elaborate on the themes which underpinned his world-view: to explore the vagaries of the Wheel of Fortune and demonstrate faith in God’s divine plan. His vision incorporated a hierarchical conception of masculinities that strove both to present Abbot Martin as a superior exemplar drawing deliberately from secular and clerical hegemonic constructs of masculinity to explore the experience of an abbot on crusade. The select themes considered in this essay highlight the danger of setting rigid benchmarks when examining crusader masculinities – trying to “shoehorn” exemplars into hybrid or binary models whether lay versus clerical, secular versus religious clergy, or even human versus saint. Gunther’s text showed heightened awareness of the interplay and connections between different role models, drawing from clerical, religious, secular, and hagiographic imagery to present a complex and multi-faceted masculine exemplar. Gunther’s use of sexual and violent language in a crusading context reinforces the findings of Allen-Smith in relation to contemporary monastic hagiography, in that these perceived masculine qualities were not expelled from the cloister but reintegrated and adapted to monastic culture.131 Martin’s position as a monk on crusade, at a time when attitudes towards monastic participation were under extreme scrutiny, provides a unique insight into the contemporary debates about contravening the vow of stabilitas and legitimising crusading activity. His presentation as an abbot explores questions about the nature of secular and religious leadership, and patterns the successful exercise of power over men both inside and outside the cloister. The use of emotion and emotion words in the text serve not just to explain Martin’s actions and reactions, but also to provide models for appropriate masculine behaviour based on the key component of faith. Gunther also drew from alternate models of masculinity such as the anti-hero or thief, echoing trends in other furta sacra narratives. In Gunther’s view, Abbot Martin did not take the cross with the expectation of enhancing his masculinity in secular terms, instead the crusade offered him an opportunity to test his monastic identity against a framework of new challenges, and underlined the strength of his monastic vocation. This allowed him to incorporate Martin’s crusading experiences outside the cloister into

216  Hodgson pathways for his audience to contemplate: how to negotiate encounters with other men through times of hardship, how to demonstrate appropriate behaviour, when to act independently and when to obey, and how to relate to and engage with alternate masculinities. Crusade literature was uniquely placed to allow authors such as Gunther to explore the different components of medieval masculinities, especially when intended for an audience who contemplated Abbot Martin’s crusade journey from a cloistered perspective. Gunther’s text allowed them to experience the range of challenges to masculine identity, illustrated by the problems and fears faced by Martin as he negotiated a delicate path out in the secular world at the heart of a military enterprise. There was no indication that ordinary monks should risk contravening the vow of stabilitas and seek to emulate Martin by engaging in crusading themselves. Instead, Martin’s journey was legitimised by being placed firmly within a framework of exceptional circumstances which resulted in the translation of relics to Pairis. Gunther reinforced this by underlining Martin’s vocation and authority as an abbot, through assertions that he acted on the instructions of his superiors, and by describing the special qualities and characteristics that set Martin apart from other men. Gender was central to this latter element of the narrative, and to the arguments Gunther developed to ward off potential critics of Martin’s participation in the crusade. In this matter, Martin was the chosen instrument of God’s will and the diverse masculine qualities which made him suitable for this purpose also rendered him, in Gunther’s view, an exemplary Cistercian abbot, devoted first and foremost to his religious community. The very relics that Martin had gone to such trouble to secure and the text which Gunther wrote to accompany them, thus served as a dual reminder to the monks of Pairis and a wider monastic audience to reflect on God’s intervention in human affairs, and their own roles as men within the divine plan.

Notes 1 For a recent and comprehensive overview, see Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, “Introduction: Rethinking the Medieval Clergy and Masculinity”, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 1–15. 2 “ut nec funditus, electa, uti fieri assolet, monastica conversatione seu religiosa qualibet professione, seculum relinquere cogerentur, sed sub consueta licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio dei aliquatenus gratiam consequerentur.” Guibert of Nogent, Dei Gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. Robert B.C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 87; henceforth GN. 3 See Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World A.D. 300–800 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005) for the impact of the Benedictine rule on monastic travel. 4 James A. Brundage, “A Transformed Angel: The Problem of the Crusading Monk”, in Studies in Medieval Cistercian History Presented to Jeremiah F. Sullivan (Cistercian Studies Series, 13) (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 55–62. 5 Jonathan Riley Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2009), 2; James A. Brundage, “Crusades, Clerics and Violence: Reflections on a Canonical Theme”, in Norman Housley, Marcus Bull, Peter W. Edbury and Jonathan Phillips eds, The Experience of Crusading, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 1, Western Approaches, 147–56.

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  217 6 See, for example, The Second Crusade and the Cistercians ed. Michael Gervers (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992) and Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 7 William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007); see especially 12–29. 8 Such communities had bespoke relationships to the crusade movement and developed their own masculine traits. They fall outside the scope of the current article, but see Emmanuel Buttigieg, Nobility, Faith and Masculinity: The Hospitaller Knights of Malta, c. 1580–1700 (London: Continuum, 2011), and Beth Spacey’s article on Jacquelin of Mailly in this collection for perspectives on their masculinity. 9 He drew parallels with the Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ludwig Schmugge, “Zisterzienser, Kreuzzug und Heidenkrieg”, in Kaspar Elm et al. eds, Die Zisterzienser. Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit (Schriften des Rheinischen Museumsamts 10) (Cologne; Rheinland Verlag, 1980), 57–68. 10 Beverley Mayne Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001). 11 See, for example, Jaqueline Murray, “Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity”, in Katherine Lewis and Patricia H. Cullum eds, Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 24–42; and Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and monastic practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Such works follow on from a strong tradition of focusing on gendered space in female monastic history. For a revisionist perspective see Erin Jordan, “Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainault” Speculum, 87 (2012), 62-94. 12 Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana ed. Peter Orth (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1994); henceforth HC Orth. See also The Capture of Constantinople: The Hystoria Constantinopolitana of Gunther of Pairis, trans. Alfred J. Andrea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); henceforth HC Andrea. 13 See Brundage “The problem”, 55–62 and Kienzle, Cistercians, 217. 14 For introductory overviews see Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (London: Pimlico, 2005) and Donald Queller and Thomas Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). 15 See, for example, Natasha Hodgson, “Honour, Shame and the Fourth Crusade”, Journal of Medieval History 39 (2013), 220–39. 16 These include a fragment of a poem based on Robert the Monk’s First Crusade history (the Solimarius); the Ligurinus – a further poetic reworking of a section of The Deeds of the Emperor Frederick I by Otto of Friesing and his continuator Rahewin; and De Oratione ieiunio et eleemosyna, a treatise on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Gunther was identified as the author by Albert Pannenbourg, Der Verfasser des Ligurinus: Studien zu den Schriften des Magister Gunther (Göttingen: Robert Peppmüller,1883), although his ideas were not universally accepted. Andrea accepts that Gunther was the author of all these works, while Orth is more cautious about textual comparisons between the Hystoria, Solimarius and Ligurinus. HC Andrea, 1–13; HC Orth, 1–65. 17 HC Andrea, 5–6 and 134 n. 13; Francis R. Sweitek, “Gunther of Pairis and the Historia Constantinopolitana”, Speculum 53 (1978), 49–79 at 58. 18 HC Orth, 111–15, ch. 3. 19 HC Orth, 116, ch. 4. 20 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6. 21 HC Orth, 125, ch. 7. 22 HC Orth, 133–4, ch. 10. 23 Martin is absent from chapters 11–18 of the Hystoria. 24 HC Orth, 158–61, ch. 19. 25 HC Orth 166–74, chs 21–3.

218  Hodgson 26 HC Orth 175–9, ch. 24. 27 For a historiographical discussion of Gunther’s value as a text prior to 1978 and details of these “major errors of fact” see Sweitek, “Gunther”, 50–6. See also Geoffrey of Villehardouin, La Conquête de Constantinople, 2 vols, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 1938); henceforth Villehardouin. Robert de Clari La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. Peter Noble (Edinburgh: Société Rencesvales British Branch, 2005); henceforth RC. 28 See n. 13 above. 29 For a description of these pairings, see HC Andrea, 46–56. A subsequent twenty-fifth chapter was added by Gunther or another author at a later date. 30 HC Andrea, 56. 31 Riant categorised this text as a translatio in Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitana, 2 vols, ed. Paul Riant (Geneva and Paris, 1877–8), 1:57–126. Most recently David M. Perry has included it in his analysis of translatio narratives of the Fourth Crusade Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015). For relic theft across Europe see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 32 Perry, Sacred Plunder, 109; Swietek “Gunther”, 66. 33 Sweitek “Gunther”, 63–6, 79. 34 Andrea recommends “continued, careful study by historians, especially those concerned with medieval mentalities”. HC Andrea, 60. 35 Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1991), 92–7. Christoph Maier, “Kirche, Kreuz und Ritual: Eine Kreuzzugspredigt in Basel im Jahr 1200”, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 55 (1999), 95–116. 36 HC Orth, 107; ch. 1; trans. HC Andrea, 66. 37 Martin received penalties for luxurious living, flouting food restrictions and keeping peacocks in the cloister at Pairis. Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, 8 vols, ed. Joseph Canivez (Louvain: Beaureax de la Revue, 1933), vol. 1, 333. See HC Andrea, 18. 38 Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007), xxxi–ii. 39 Comparable examples might include Adhémar of Le Puy on the First Crusade, or the near contemporary Deeds of the Bishop of Halberstadt, which championed the activities of the role of Conrad of Krosigk, bishop of Halberstadt from 1202 to 1208, on the Fourth Crusade, although it should be noted that both had secular ecclesiastical roles. Mesley has highlighted how the image of Adhémar of Le Puy was manipulated in First Crusade texts to offer a model of masculine ecclesiastical leadership for a predominantly clerical audience. Matthew M. Mesley, “Episcopal Authority and Gender in the Narratives of the First Crusade”, in P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis eds, Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 94–111. Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Ludwig Weiland, MGH SS 23:73–123. See also the introduction to this volume pp. 2–4. 40 Thibodeaux, “Introduction”, 3. 41 For example, see Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Monastic Culture (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011) and Katherine Allen Smith, “Spiritual Warriors in Citadels of Faith: Martial Rhetoric and Monastic Masculinity in the Long Twelfth Century” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 86–110. 42 Andrew Holt, ‘Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades’, in Thibodeaux ed. Negotiating Clerical Identities, 185–203. See also Maier’s essay in the current collection, 21–35.

Masculinities of Abbot Martin  219 43 See, for example, Norman F. Cantor, “The Crisis of Western Monasticism 1050–1130”, American Historical Review 66 (1960–1), 47–67; J. van Engen “The ‘Crisis of Coenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictinism in the Years 1050–1150”, Speculum 61 (1986), 269–304. 44 Schmugge, “Zisterzienzer”, 56. 45 See Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 12–29. 46 Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck: Wagner’schen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1901), 137–8, no. 3; Urban II, “Letter to the Congregation at Vallembrosa”, in “Papsturkunden in Florenz”, W. Wiederhold ed., Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Götingen Phil.-hist Kl. (1901), pp. 313–14, no. 6. 47 Brundage, “A Transformed Angel”, 56 n. 4 and 57. 48 Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols, eds J. Leclercq, H.-M. Rochais, and C. H. Talbot (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77), vol. 8, 511–12, no. 544. In letter 256 he advised Eugenius III against leading an expedition himself. Idem, 163 no. 256. 49 Ekkehard of Aura, “Hierosolymita, de oppressione, liberatione et restauratione Jerosolymitanae ecclesiae”, RHC Occ. vol.  5, 11–40, henceforth EA; Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York, 1948), henceforth OD. Odo of Deuil also acted in a secular capacity as chaplain to Louis VII of France, however. See also Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 12–13 for further examples of early monastic participation. 50 Yves Congar “Henri de Marcy abbé de Clairvaux, cardinal évèveque d’Albano et légat pontificale”, Analecta Anselmiana 43 (1959), 1–90. 51 Schmugge, “Zisterzienzer”, 63. 52 Othmar Hageneder et. al., Die Register Innocenz’ III, vol. 1 Pontifikatsjahr 1198/99 (Graz: Herman Böhlhaus Nachf., 1964), 597 no. 398. 53 Kienzle, Cistercians, 135. 54 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 66 (London, 1875), 1–208 at 82–8. Henceforth RC. 55 Cole, Preaching, 88. 56 HC Andrea, 22. “Ad mandatum Summi Pontificis” in Twelfth Century Statues of the Cistercian General Chapter, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell (Brecht: Cîteaux: Commentarii Cisterciensis, 2002), 493 no. 35. See also Alfred J. Andrea, “Adam of Perseigne and the Fourth Crusade”, Cîteaux 36 (1985), 21–37. 57 RC 129–30; trans. Andrea, Contemporary Sources, 281. 58 See Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, especially 86–116. 59 Statuta Capitulorum, ed. Canivez, 1:294. See also HC Andrea, 25. 60 Murray, “Masculinizing Religious Life”, 24–42. 61 AA, 288–9; “quondam predicatissimi omnium cenobii monachum, qui monasterii sui claustra fugaciter excesserat et Iherosolimitanam expeditionem non pietate sed levitate provocatus inierat. . .” GN, 196. 62 “Nam et plures apostatas in comitatu suo habuerunt, qui abiecto religionis habitu cum illis militare proposuerunt. Sed et innumerabiles feminas secum habere non timuerunt, quae naturalem habitum in virilem nefarie mutaverunt, cum quibus fornicati sunt . . . ” Bernold of St. Blasien, Chronicon, in Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von Konstanz, ed. I. S. Robinson MGH SS Rer. Germ. N. S. 14 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2003), 383–540 at 527–9. 63 For example, Baldwin IX of Flanders was praised for his continence while waiting for his wife to join the crusade. Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), ch. 597; henceforth NC. 64 HC Orth, 115–16; ch. 4. 65 HC Orth, 118, ch. 5; HC Orth, 132–3, ch. 9. 66 Harold Livermore, “The Conquest of Lisbon and its Author”, Portuguese Studies 6 (1990), 1–16 at 4; RC ch. 98; John of Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. Natalis de Wailly (Paris: L’Institute de France, 1874), 142 chs 258–9.

220  Hodgson 67 Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, ed. Eduardo D’Angelo (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 112–16. 68 OD, 116–17. 69 HC Orth 118, ch. 5;117, ch. 4; 158–9, ch. 19. 70 HC Orth, 159, ch. 19 71 HC Orth, 160, ch. 19; trans. HC Andrea, 111. 72 HC Orth, 160, ch. 19. 73 HC Orth, 160, ch. 19; trans. HC Andrea, 111. 74 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6; trans. HC Andrea, 78–9. 75 HC Orth, “re odiosa et sibi ipsis detestabili”; “sine cede et sanguine”, 125, ch. 7; trans. HC Andrea, 80. 76 HC Orth, 155, ch. 17; trans. HC Andrea, 105–6. 77 HC Andrea, 6. See NC, chs. 583–95 and Innocent III’s letter to Cardinal Peter Capuano of 12 July 1205; Die Register Innocenz’ III vol. 8 Pontifikatsjahr 1205/06, eds Othmar Hageneder and Andrea Sommerlechner (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002), Reg. 8.127. 78 The poems are in chapters 13 and 20. HC Orth, 165, ch. 20; trans. HC Andrea, 116 Andrea also points out the similarity of metre between poems 20 and 7. The latter is in praise of Innocent III, inviting another deliberate contrast. HC Andrea, 44–5. 79 HC Andrea, 49–50. 80 Cole, Preaching, 95–6. 81 See the introduction to this volume p. 2 and R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender and Society 19 (2005), 829–59. 82 HC Orth 115, ch 3: trans. Andrea, 72. 83 HC Orth, 118, ch 5; trans. HC Andrea, 74. 84 Martin may have been fulfilling the vow of Lüthold I von Rötelen, bishop of Basel. In addition, Bishop Ortlieb of Basel reputedly led a contingent on the Second Crusade. Another bishop of Basel, Henry of Horburg, died of disease on the Third Crusade. HC Andrea, 151 n. 43; HC Orth, 173; ch. 23. 85 HC Orth, 122–3, ch. 6. 86 HC Andrea, 24–6. 87 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6; trans. HC Andrea, 78–9. 88 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6. 89 HC Orth, 131, ch. 9 and see p. 212 and nn. 107–8. 90 For example, see Björn Weiler, “The Rex Renitens and the Medieval Idea of Kingship ca. 900–1200”, Viator 31 (2000), 1–42. 91 He is described as being loved and respected variously by his brethren; the people of Basel; the Germans in Acre; the Germans in Constantinople; a Greek priest; a Bohemian cleric (Aegidius); and a German noble called Werner. 92 See HC Andrea, 34. 93 HC Orth, 163 ch. 20; Andrea here has “a humble person without rank” but I have suggested the above translation to clarify that Martin was not considering giving up his abbacy. See HC Andrea, 114. 94 HC Orth 168–9, ch. 22. 95 HC Orth 168, ch. 22; trans. HC Andrea, 119. 96 HC Orth 168–9, ch. 22. 97 HC Orth, 174 ch. 23; trans. HC Andrea, 125. 98 Sherry L. Reames, “Saint Martin of Tours in the Legenda Aurea and Before”, Viator 12 (1981), 143–6; J. Leclercq, “S. Martin dans l’hagiographie monastique du moyen âge”, Studia Anselmiana 46 (Rome 1961), 175–87. 99 HC Orth, 118, ch 5; trans. HC Andrea, 74. 100 HC Orth, 118, ch. 5; trans. HC Andrea 75. 101 See pp. 211–12. 102 HC Orth, 119, ch. 5.



Masculinities of Abbot Martin  221 103 104 105 106 107 108

HC Orth, 120, ch. 5; trans. HC Andrea, 76. HC Orth, 132, ch. 9. GN, 121; Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, 93. HC Orth, ch. 23; trans. Andrea, 124. HC Andrea, 15. Peter Noble, “1204 the Crusade without Epic Heroes”, in Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby and Jane E. Everson eds, Epic and Crusade: Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Société Rencesvales British Branch held at Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge, 27–28 March 2004 (Edinburgh: Société Rencesvales British Branch, 2006), 89–104, at 97. 109 HC Orth, 116. ch. 4; trans. HC Andrea, 73. 110 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6; trans. HC Andrea, 78. 111 HC Orth, 123, ch. 6; trans. HC Andrea, 78. 112 HC Orth 148–9, ch. 14. 113 HC Orth 148, ch. 14. 114 HC Orth, 132–3, ch. 9. 115 HC Orth, 167, ch. 21; trans. HC Andrea, 118. 116 HC Orth, 172–3. 117 HC Orth, 170–2 ch. 22. 118 For example, William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A framework for the History of the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Barbara Rosenwien, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (New York: Cornell University Press, 2006). 119 See, for example, Emotions and War: Medieval to Romantic Literature, eds Stephanie Downs, Andrew Lynch, and Katrina O’Loughlin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 120 Stephen J. Spencer, “The emotional rhetoric of spirituality in the narratives of the First Crusade”, Nottingham Medieval Studies 58 (2014), 57–86. 121 HC Orth, 175, ch. 23. 122 HC Orth, 160, ch. 19. 123 See n. 31. 124 Natasha Hodgson, “Reputation, Authority and Masculine Identities in the Political Culture of the First Crusaders: The Career of Arnulf of Chocques”, History 102 (2017), 889–913. 125 See Dorothy Yamamoto, The Fox: Laying Bare Deceit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For gendered perspectives see Harriet Spiegel, “The Male Animal in the fables of Marie de France” and Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Men’s Games, King’s Deer: Poaching in Medieval England” in “Of Good and Ill Repute”: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England, ed. Harriet Spiegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 142–57. 126 See Susan Edgington, “Echoes of the Iliad”, in Dr. Léan Ní Chléirigh and Dr. Natasha R. Hodgson eds, Sources for the Crusades: Textual Traditions and Literary Influences (Routledge, forthcoming) 127 Paolo Chiesa, “Ladri di reliquie a Costantinopoli durante la quarta crociata: La traslazione a Venezia del corpo di Simeone profeta”, Studi Medievali 36 (1995), 431–59. For an analysis and translation see David M. Perry “The Translatio Symonensis and the Seven Thieves: A Venetian Fourth Crusade Furta Sacra Narrative and the Looting of Constantinople”, in Thomas F. Madden ed., The Fourth Crusade: Event, Aftermath and Perceptions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 89–112. 128 HC Orth, 132, ch. 9. 129 HC Orth, 159–60, ch. 19. 130 See Phillips, Fourth Crusade, 238–41. 131 Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture, 197–200.

13 Martyrdom as masculinity in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi Beth C. Spacey

The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (IP2), a composite Latin history of the Third Crusade (1189–92) compiled from 1217 to 1222, opens with an account of Saladin’s advance into Syria in 1187 derived from one of its source texts: IP1.1 Saladin, the renowned Ayyubid sultan of Syria and Egypt (1174–93), is introduced as an instrument of divine wrath, the “rod of His fury [Isaiah 10:5]” (virgam furoris), unleashed upon the Latin Christians of the Holy Land as punishment for their sins. The first to be punished in IP1, and by extension in IP2, are Templar and Hospitaller knights, members of two military orders established for the defence of Christians in the nascent Latin states of the early twelfth-century Levant. They were defeated at the hands of a Muslim force led by Saladin’s son, al-Afdal, at the battle of the Spring of Cresson on 1 May  1187. Yet the death of one particular Templar knight occupies more than half of IP1’s treatment of the battle. The Templars and Hospitallers were outnumbered, and so many of them were killed or captured that eventually a Templar knight named Jacquelin de Mailly was left to fight his enemy alone: “He bore all of the force of battle alone and shone out as a glorious champion for the law of his God . . . when he saw many thousands running towards him from all directions he strengthened his resolve and courageously undertook the battle, one man against all”.2 His display of courage was such that even his enemy pleaded with him to surrender, but he was “not afraid to die for Christ”.3 Eventually, “crushed rather than conquered . . . he sank to the ground and joyfully passed to heaven with the martyr’s crown, triumphant”.4 Jacquelin’s death was not a cause for sorrow, however: “Death is sweet when the victor lies encircled by the impious people he has slain with his victorious right hand”.5 This is only the first part of IP1’s detailed account of the martyrdom of Jacquelin de Mailly, to which this chapter will return in due course. The story of Jacquelin’s martyrdom can be seen to belong to a broader tradition of employing various motifs in order to lend credibility to martyrdom accounts in crusade narratives. This in turn mirrors the literary devices used in hagiographical texts of the same period; demonstrating an individual’s virtue in life was of crucial importance to proving their sanctity in death. This chapter will begin by exploring precedents for such character portraits in martyrdom accounts of First Crusade (1096–9) narratives, and establishing the tradition for one particular component

Martyrdom as masculinity  223 of this: representations of pious masculinities. It will be demonstrated that the masculinities born of the early crusading movement and its associated institutions were conceptually linked with the spiritual and physical prowess of the warrior martyr, and that martyrdom itself can be seen to be understood as the ultimate realisation of that masculinity. Having situated these pious masculinities in relation to perceptions of Templar martyrdom, the chapter will return to Jacquelin to examine the role that masculine expectations play in the martyrdom stories of IP1 and IP2. It will be argued that authors were capable of drawing upon discourses of anticipated masculine qualities specific to the athleta Christi of the late eleventh century to the early thirteenth, and that an individual’s fulfilment of that masculinity could be employed as a heuristic device in support of the reality of their martyrdom.6

The origins of crusade martyrdom On 25 February  1099 a northern French castellan named Anselm II of Ribemont was killed during the First Crusade’s abortive siege of Arqa (February– May 1099). His death is discussed at length in the crusade narratives of Raymond of Aguilers, chaplain during the crusade to one of its leaders, Raymond IV of Toulouse, and Ralph of Caen, a non-participant priest and post-crusade resident in the Latin East.7 According to Ralph, Anselm was a brave man and a “noble hero, whose great name was fashioned by his honesty, by his family, by his virtues, and by Ribemont, his inheritance, which was very well known for its breeding of outstanding knights”.8 Indeed, both accounts portray Anselm’s character as the ideal synthesis of martial prowess and personal piety. Their narratives dwell on his conscientious pursuit of spiritual well-being by describing the events surrounding his death in detail. The evening before his death, Anselm had received a vision of an erstwhile comrade, Engelrand of Saint Pol, who had died several months earlier at the siege of Ma’arrat-an-Nu’mān.9 Engelrand informed Anselm that those who end their life in the service of Christ never die, and that on the following day Anselm would himself be shown to the “beautiful house” (pulchram domum) where Engelrand now resided.10 The next morning, Anselm duly sought the advice of a priest, who recommended that he confess, receive the Eucharist, and, according to Ralph, process around the city walls. It was while carrying out these instructions, however, that Anselm was struck by a falling stone, which “strewed his brains”, and so “his spirit rose up to its promised blissfulness”.11 In both narratives, Anselm’s vision and subsequent death first served as proof of the doctrine underpinning crusader martyrdom, and, second, provided an exemplar of the spiritual state and military proficiency required. While the story of Anselm may represent an unusually detailed example, the martyrdom of crusaders is a recurring theme in First Crusade narratives, both in specific terms, as when an individual is named, and in the form of more general references to martyred groups of crusaders. Consequently, much scholarship has sought to trace the influence of the First Crusade on understandings of martyrdom in the central Middle Ages.12 There is some consensus that the First Crusade,

224  Spacey as an armed pilgrimage in perceived defence of the patrimony of Christ, strengthened the link between meritorious violence and spiritual reward. The association between pious violence and spiritual reward is certainly visible in Ralph and Raymond’s portrayal of Anselm’s martyrdom. As Colin Morris has shown, an important development that appears to have been brought about by the First Crusade was that death in battle against the unbeliever could not only merit heavenly reward, as before, but the title of martyr.13 Consequently, combative, aggressive martyrdom gained doctrinal purchase in the intellectual landscape of Western Europe in the wake of the First Crusade. Yet important questions about the spiritual merit of physical combat continued to be voiced throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.14 The papacy was reticent in the acknowledgement of martyr cults, and canonists viewed crusader martyrdom as problematic.15 What if a crusader sought martyrdom with too great an enthusiasm? What if a crusader died of disease? Even when accepted in principle, the difficulties inherent in determining whether an individual had truly achieved martyrdom resulted in a multiplicity of understandings of martyrdom and how it was to be obtained. The important interior, spiritual prerequisites for martyrdom at the moment of death were invisible to the onlooker; a martyr’s death was only one, more visible, indicator. Further, the anticipated ascension of the successfully martyred soul was typically imperceptible to the human eye, and therefore often required corroboration via other indicators or proofs, usually in the form of signs.16 Such proofs are also incorporated into representations of martyrdom in text, where they function as heuristic devices employed in the support of an individual’s attainment of the crown of martyrdom. For example, visions could function as “insurance” of martyrdom in First Crusade narratives, of which the accounts of Anselm’s death are evidence.17 Such visions, as moments in which the fog of mundanity clears to reveal a martyred comrade, function as proof not only that the individual in question had achieved martyrdom, but that the doctrine of martyrdom was itself founded in truth. Yet not all of those who were martyred in the perceived defence of Christ’s patrimony, either on crusade or as an inhabitant of the Latin states of the Near East, could return in a vision to prove themselves. Rather, such visionary insurance was only one of many narrative devices used to assuage the anticipated qualms of an audience. It is often the case, for example, that accounts of martyrdom are accompanied by a character portrait of varying length. Ralph and Raymond discussed Anselm’s nobility, bravery, and piety at some length, for example. These descriptions demonstrate the individual’s spiritual merit in life and, by extension, the likelihood that their spiritual state at the moment of death met the prerequisite conditions for martyrdom. Such character portraits reveal much about what was considered appropriate proof of martyrdom, both for crusaders and, as in the examples analysed in particular detail below, for late-twelfth-century members of the Order of the Temple. It is instances of the employment of one of these proofs, namely the demonstration that an individual had successfully embodied key ingredients of a pious masculinity, that will form the primary focus of the remainder of this study. Having discussed precedents for the representation of crusader martyrdom, and

Martyrdom as masculinity  225 the broader context behind these, it is now necessary to situate this in relation to the role of pious masculinities in the representation of Templar martyrdom.

Crusader piety and abstinent masculinities The impact of eleventh-century reform movements on the religious life, the advent of the crusades, and, of particular importance to the remainder of this study, the formation of the military orders, had forced certain innovations upon Latin Christian perceptions of masculinity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.18 For monks and reform-minded secular clergy, abstinence in the name of God came to represent a superior form of manhood to sexual prowess. Lust was something to be transcended, and the ability to overcome physical desire became its own signifier of masculinity.19 In a monastic context, lust was the foe to be overcome on the spiritual battlefield. As “temporary religious, professed into what looked to them like a military monastery on the move”, crusaders like Anselm were expected – by their monastic contemporaries at least – to be champions of both the spiritual and temporal battlefields.20 The variety of roles occupied by crusade participants necessitated a multiplicity of anticipated masculine performances, and it is ingredients of these crusading masculinities that are employed as heuristic devices in descriptions of crusader martyrdom.21 As we have seen, Raymond and Ralph included Anselm’s diligent pursuit of confession and penance in their account of his martyrdom. In a vision of St Ambrose, described in Albert of Aachen’s early twelfth-century crusade narrative, the Historia Ierosolimitana, the spiritual underpinnings of the First Crusade are defended and linked to martyrdom. The saint is thus alleged to have reassured a doubtful priest that those who die on the expedition, having abstained from “avarice, theft, adultery and fornication”, would be counted among the martyrs in heaven.22 According to Albert, the success of the crusading endeavour, and the attainment of martyrdom, required the avoidance of a core performative aspect of secular, medieval masculinities: sex. While the ability to exercise violence remained, this could only be done for what were deemed to be the right reasons. To Albert, good crusaders made good martyrs, and both were required to practice an abstinent masculinity.23 The germ of Templar masculinities can be identified in such representations of violent-yet-abstinent crusader masculinities. Professed members of the Order of the Temple (formed in Jerusalem in c.1119 for the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land) were required by the Primitive Rule of the Order to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.24 Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), writing in support of the “new knighthood” in c.1130, stated that faith was the armour of the Templar’s soul, just as steel was the armour of his body.25 This was an explicit fusion of aspects of secular knighthood with monastic masculine ideals. Malcolm Barber has attributed the concept of the Templars, as monks engaged in the legitimate use of violence, to “the same climate of opinion” as that which made the crusades possible.26 Indeed, the development of the latter provided the necessary conditions for the evolution of the former; so many of the conceptual

226  Spacey developments necessary for the realisation of Templar masculinities were engendered by the First Crusade (including the strengthening of the link between warfare and martyrdom). While Albert of Aachen might have expected crusaders to be sexually temperate (particularly given their status as pilgrims), this abstention was necessarily more transient than the more permanent vows required of those who became professed knights of the Temple.27 The innovative fusion of monastic life and military prowess represented by the formation of this Order in the early twelfth century necessitated the pursuit of spiritual and physical warfare in such a way that Templar knights could engage with multiple discourses on what it was to be masculine.28 Girded by his observation of the Rule, it was anticipated that the Templar knight would exist in a near-constant state of spiritual preparedness for martyrdom. One might expect, therefore, that accounts of the martyrdom of Templar knights during the latter half of the twelfth century would be more confident in their claims than accounts of crusading martyrdom from the same period. However, an account of the Third Crusade, the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (or IP2), contains several detailed defences of Templar martyrs that employ the same heuristic techniques as exemplars originating from beyond the Order. One such example relates to the description in IP2 of a famine, experienced by the crusaders during the siege of the coastal city of Acre over the winter of 1190/1, which is largely drawn from Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte and is used to augment Book One of the text.29 The text describes the acute hunger suffered by the crusaders at Acre in great detail, acknowledging that circumstances led many to commit deeds worthy of criticism.30 Into this, however, IP2 inserts an original passage that problematises the merit of non-combative death:31 On the basis of the evidence worthy of being recounted it is possible to judge the great extent of the famine, and see that for those who sustained it patiently in the flesh it could be reckoned as a form of martyrdom. But perhaps a murmur of doubt stands in the way of their receiving the grace of merits; for many unworthy deeds were committed under the pressure of necessity.32 Here, the link between the spiritual condition of the individual and the likelihood that their death was indeed martyrdom is made explicit. It is an intriguing addition to Ambroise’s material, but not uncharacteristic of the rest of the text. Indeed, earlier in IP2, during a description of the arrival of crusader reinforcements at Acre, the audience is reassured that they were truly “martyrs and confessors” (martires et confessores).33 This is an unusual distinction and in fact likely reflects the only such example of the use of “confessor” in Latin crusade narratives written from the late twelfth century to the mid-thirteenth.34 When interpreted in light of the account of the famine discussed above, however, it becomes clear that this comment is indicative of a broader concern surrounding the spiritual merit of suffering outside of combat. This is a concern that Miikka Tamminen has identified in James of Vitry’s (c.1160–1240) treatment of the Fifth Crusade (1213–21); while discussing the spiritual merit of non-combative death on crusade at great

Martyrdom as masculinity  227 length, at no point does he refer to those who died of disease on the banks of the Nile during the winter of 1218/19 as martyrs.35 That the author of IP2 was not alone in his concerns about the technicalities of martyrdom in the first half of the thirteenth century is also reflected in the comprehensive employment of heuristic techniques during his more detailed martyrdom descriptions.

The martyrdom of Jacquelin de Mailly Returning to the beginning of this chapter, the first part of the account of Jacquelin’s death reads as an ideal martyrdom and ultimate demonstration of masculine prowess. Jacquelin, in an echo of the early Christian athleta Christi, is described as an athleta gloriosus for the law of his God. Helen Nicholson has demonstrated how such terminology – particularly relating to martyrs as athletes rejoicing in death – “are the terms we should expect to find in any description of martyrs from the military religious orders”.36 As if to make the link between Jacquelin and the early Christian military martyrs clearer, IP1 notes that the victors believed that they had killed St George: “because it so happened that the warrior had been riding a white horse and had white armour and weapons”.37 By the time that IP1 was being written, the association between crusading and mysterious saintly knights, and often specifically of St George, had an established tradition.38 Undoubtedly, this use of the motif represents another means of portraying Jacquelin in as positive a light as possible. Given the immediate context of the passage, it is likely that this story functioned to ridicule Jacquelin’s enemy for so fundamentally misinterpreting the technicalities of saintly intercession, while simultaneously strengthening Jacquelin’s prestige by relating alleged Muslim conflation of the fearsome knight with the symbolic warrior saint. IP1 then goes on to describe how Jacquelin’s body was treated by the attendant crowd. These people are not explicitly identified, and opinions differ over their intended identity. Matthew Bennett has argued that they were Muslims.39 In contrast, Nicholson implies that they were Christians, and uses the passage to suggest that Jacquelin’s body “attracted some local devotion, but no lasting cult”.40 According to IP1, the throng sprinkled dust taken from the trampled battlefield over Jacquelin’s body before rubbing it into their own heads and faces, “believing that they would draw courage from the contact”.41 This motif is evocative of classical demonstrations of grief, whereby a person might rub ash and dust about their head and face, as is described in the Iliad when Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus.42 A  more immediate resemblance, and probably that which most clearly aligns with Nicholson’s interpretation of the story, can be seen in the use of contact – or secondary – relics in the Christian tradition.43 Dust collected from the tombs of the saints is one of the earliest recorded forms of contact relic.44 Examples roughly contemporary to IP1’s incorporation into IP2 include Gerald of Wales’s description of a woman whose sight was restored following the application to her eyes and mouth of turf on which the crusade preacher Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury had stood.45 Dust taken from the tomb of Gil de Santarem, who died in 1269, is believed to have been carried in a small pouch by a Templar

228  Spacey brother, Laurentius, at Tomar in Portugal, and to have twice healed a man through its application.46 It does not necessarily follow, however, that this passage of IP1 is a reflection of popular Christian devotion to Templar martyrs in the Latin East.47 When viewed in relation to the rest of the passage, it is more likely that this crowd was intended to be comprised of Jacquelin’s victorious enemy, and that this anecdote functions both to undermine the enemy onlookers and to bolster the portrayal of Jacquelin as a martyr. Whatever their identity, the effect is achieved regardless; desperate attempts to increase their implicitly inferior masculine prowess through the evocation of Jacquelin’s virtutem, transform the episode into a pantomime of devotion to relics. Yet the crowd’s zeal was not restricted to this act. “Rumour has it,” so IP1 notes in a passage that brings concepts of masculinity to the forefront of this martyrdom episode, that one person was moved with more fervour than the rest. He cut off the man’s genitals, and kept them safely for begetting children, so that even when dead the man’s members – if such a thing were possible – would produce an heir with courage as great as his.48 It is unlikely that this post-mortem castration is representative of common practice.49 Regardless of whether the episode reflects an oral tradition surrounding the death of Jacquelin, the story as it is presented here does serve to convey several points about the sanctity of the Templar knight. In a general sense, this anecdote is similarly evocative of the practice of devotion to saints’ relics. In a bodily relic – a fragment of the corporal whole – the spiritual potency of the whole is present in its entirety, pars pro toto. Jacquelin’s spiritual potency is derived from his status as a martyr, a spiritual power resident, in this instance, within the corporal site of his sexual potency. According to IP1’s author, however, it was this latter potency that the individual who mutilated the Templar’s body sought to wield. The author’s criticism of this act is multi-faceted and most obviously voiced in his identification of its impracticability – “if such a thing were possible”. Whatever the author’s understanding of the physiology of sex, the insinuation that an individual could so misunderstand the process functions as derogatory of the mutilator.50 However, this passage engages with concepts of masculinity at a more complex level. The allusion to the conception of an heir of similar courage speaks to the belief that a man’s maleness was manifest in the sex of his offspring, as discussed by Vern Bullough. The assumption that such a child would be not only of the same sex, but have the same characteristics as Jacquelin, would imply the dominance of the Templar knight’s superior masculine qualities.51 The suggestion that the fervent onlooker believed that he required Jacquelin’s genitals for the creation of courageous, masculine offspring implied an awareness of his own impotence. The literal emasculation of Jacquelin’s body therefore results in the effective emasculation of his mutilator. Jacquelin’s masculine reputation remains intact. Elsewhere in IP2, however, the mutilation of male genitalia undoubtedly serves to derogate the victim through

Martyrdom as masculinity  229 emasculation. For example, during the account of the siege of Acre, an emir has his genitals, and other “respectable” parts of his body, burned by the Greek fire that he had intended to use to burn down a siege engine.52 Likewise, a Turk who was allegedly preparing to urinate on the cross received a crossbow bolt to his exposed groin. “And, thus, as he died, he perceived the futility of attempting anything against God.”53 The derogatory aspect of these anecdotes functions at the expense of the individual who is physically emasculated. He is the target of individuals in possession of implicitly superior masculine attributes. However, in the instance concerning Jacquelin, the physical emasculator is the one who is mocked by the narrator. This difference in function is not surprising. Unlike Jacquelin, the men whose genitals were mutilated at Acre were not Christian. Also, these latter anecdotes are the product of different written and oral traditions, as they are believed to have been inserted into Book One of the Itinerarium by Richard de Templo, who had himself augmented versions taken from Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte.54 Further, and as already discussed, Jacquelin would not – at least in theory – have exercised the sexual prowess sought by his enemies: integral to Jacquelin’s status as a Templar knight would have been his vow of chastity.55 Rather than serve to emasculate Jacquelin, his castration only emphasises his superior, abstinent masculinity. Regardless of whether this anecdote was a fabrication, it undoubtedly functions within the text as a means by which to reinforce the character of Jacquelin, and in turn to bolster his claim to martyrdom; his courage was so great that even in death he might maintain a potency – ultimately superfluous in life – considered superior to that of his enemies even by those enemies themselves (or to and by his fellow Christians, depending on how one identifies the crowd). The ability of this anecdote to perform this range of functions stems from the cultural currency of discourses on pious and lay masculinities that focus upon the Templar transcendence of sexual and reproductive potency. In other words, the joke would be lost on an audience unfamiliar with the pious masculinities expected of Templar knights.

Templar martyrdom in the Itinerarium The Itinerarium details two further Templar martyrdoms, although neither is as detailed nor as unusual as the account of the death of Jacquelin. The first concerns the outcome of the Battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 (IP1), while the second occurs during an encounter on 4 October 1189 (IP2). Saladin had ordered the execution of the Templars following his victory at Hattin, allegedly because “he knew that they surpassed all others in battle”.56 As in the story of Jacquelin’s posthumous mutilation, the victorious enemy is portrayed as aware of the Templar’s superior military prowess. A certain Templar knight named Nicholas desired to be the first to be executed, “which was an honour he very much strove for”.57 In this instance, a form of visionary insurance bolsters the alleged martyrdom of these Templars, as IP1 records that “a ray of celestial light shone down clearly on the bodies of the holy martyrs during the three following nights, while they were still lying unburied”.58 This light implies the presence of divine grace: the deceased had achieved

230  Spacey the spiritual state required for martyrdom. The same motif can be seen in Alberic of Trois-Fontaines’s Chronica, in which Alberic describes how Baldwin of Flanders, emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, was executed by the selftitled emperor of Bulgaria, Kalojan, in c.1205. One night, Baldwin’s body was found illuminated by mysterious lights.59 Both uses of the motif serve to highlight the divine grace the deceased earned in life. The second of the further examples contained in IP2 has a more complex textual tradition, as it can also be found in Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte.60 Further, a key section of it only appears in one manuscript of IP2. This passage describes the death of Gerard de Ridefort – the Templar Grand Master since late 1184 – during the siege of Acre on 4 October 1189. Again, the martyred Templar only succumbs in the face of impossible odds: “Happy man! The Lord conferred such great glory on him, giving him the laurel wreath which he had earned in so many battles and making him a fellow of the college of martyrs.”61 His martyrdom is asserted, and in support of this the author engages with those recognisable themes of joy in defeat and military superiority. The sentence, appended to the end of this passage and occurring in only one manuscript version of IP2 (but also found in Ambroise), echoes an aspect of Jacquelin’s martyrdom. Gerard is urged by his companions to flee the encounter. He responds: “Never! It would be shame and scandal for the Templars. I would be said to have saved my life by running away and leaving my fellow-knights to be slaughtered.”62 The exact relationship between this manuscript and Ambroise’s Estoire remains unclear. Nonetheless, the copyist who produced the manuscript in question considered that a fuller representation of Gerard’s martyrdom required engagement with the theme of choosing death when implored by others to retreat.63 Nicholson has suggested that these two anecdotes, along with Jacquelin’s martyrdom, originated with the Templars.64 Further, in a recent article that surveys representations of the martyrdom of members of the military orders over a broader chronological period, Nicholson also argues that these accounts represent attempts to restore faith in the military orders in Western Europe, and to generate support for future crusading endeavours.65 There was certainly a need for this; the association between the Templars and defeat at Hattin had been damaging, as demonstrated by the condemnations of the sinfulness of the inhabitants of the Latin East in Audita tremendi.66 Given the association between sinfulness and defeat in the explanatory frameworks employed in relation to crusading and the Holy Land in this period, attempts to redress this by arguing that protagonists had in fact obtained one of the highest levels of sanctity appears particularly pertinent.67 It may well be, therefore, that the employment of heuristic devices in these instances are indicative not only of continued doctrinal confusion concerning militant martyrdom, but of a broader ambivalence on the part of Western Europeans regarding the sanctity and efficacy of the Templars. Templar martyrdom was intended to be restorative of the Order’s image, while the detail employed in the representation of these martyrdoms – of which masculinity is a part – is proof of the need for that restoration.

Martyrdom as masculinity  231 The account of Gerard’s later martyrdom can be seen in relation to such ambivalent attitudes, given his involvement in the instigation of the disastrous defeats at both Cresson and Hattin, where the other Templar martyrdoms of the Itinerarium take place.68 Regardless of what these two episodes imply about contemporary attitudes towards the vicissitudes of martyrdom or criticism of the military orders, they both tap into the centrality of masculine performance to the achievement of martyrdom. The Templars at Hattin are portrayed as militarily superior and eager to sacrifice themselves for Christ. Gerard had similarly earned his status as martyr through his military prowess in battle. All are joyous in defeat.

Conclusion Close examination of examples contained in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi has revealed the role of masculine performance within representations of Templar martyrdom. It has been shown that this device represents one method by which an author might strengthen an individual’s claim to the crown of martyrdom, whether in response to doctrinal uncertainty or ambivalence towards the martyred individual or their affiliated institutions. For this technique to work, the masculinities described would need to resonate with broader gender expectations, and particularly those of the text’s intended audience. In the case of IP1 and IP2, Templar masculinity was conceptually derived from the abstinent masculinities of the monastic life, and later, of the abstinent-yet-violent idealised crusader of First Crusade narratives. While the Latin Christian contemporaries of the crusading movement in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries might conceptualise the ideal miles Christi as a warrior martyr, the spiritual and physical prowess anticipated of both simultaneously informed and was formed by notions of masculinity. Beyond functioning as a heuristic device in the portrayal of martyrdom, masculinity can also be seen to play a role in the representation of Templar exemplars, and in the refutation of ambivalence towards the order. That masculinity plays a part in all of these rhetorical considerations highlights its importance not only to the society of which these texts were a product, but to scholarship that examines the dynamic between narrative and medieval culture more broadly.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose support has enabled me to conduct my doctoral research, of which this article is a product. I am also grateful to Andrew Buck, Susan Edgington, William Purkis, and the volume editors for their generous advice regarding earlier versions of this paper.   A nomenclature proposed by Hans Eberhard Mayer and continued by Helen Nicholson in her English translation. See Das Itinerarium Peregrinorum: Eine Zeitgenössische Englische Chronik zum Dritten Kreuzzug in Ursprünglicher Gestatt, ed. Hans Eberhard Mayer (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1962), and The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 1997). English translations used in this chapter are Nicholson’s. IP2, attributed to Richard de Templo, is a composite text comprising several previously independent narratives of the Holy Land on the eve

232  Spacey

2

3 4

5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12

of and during the early years of the Third Crusade. One of its constituent parts, now commonly identified as “Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1” (or IP1), was combined with a version of Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, and several other texts, to create a larger Third Crusade history; IP2. For a detailed consideration of IP2 and its constituent parts, see Nicholson, The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 1–17. Itinerarium Peregrinorum, 248: “belli