Missing the Apocalypse in Preaching the Crusades

Chapter 7 Missing the Apocalypse in Preaching the Crusades

Charles W. Connell

Among the reports of the speech of Pope Urban ii at Clermont in 1095 calling for the implementation of an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that of Guibert of Nogent (c. 1055–1124) gave special attention to the need for Christian war- riors to establish Christian kings in the East in order to fulfill the prophecy that foretold their destruction as the Antichrist occupied the Holy Land.1 In Guibert’s account the prophecy indicates that:

…it is clear that Antichrist is to do battle not with the Jews, not with the Gentiles, but, according to the etymology of his name, he will attack Christians … And according to the same prophet, he will first kill three kings of Egypt, Africa, and Ethiopia, without doubt for their Christian faith. This could not be done unless Christianity was established where now is paganism.2

As Penny Cole noted in her study of the preaching of the crusades, the various chroniclers of the First Crusade attempted to establish a broader context for

1 Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, rhc. occ. 4:117–263, here 138H to 139C. For an overview on the role of the Antichrist in Christian history, see Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York, 2000). On the apocalyptic tra- dition in the Middle Ages, idem, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, 1998); Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1992); Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 2009). For a collection of studies arguing for an intense apocalyptic interest around the year 1000, see Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, and David C. Van Meter, eds., The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectations and Social Change, 950–1050 (Oxford, 2003). For an opposing point of view, see Sylvain Gouguenheim, Les fausses terreurs de l’an mil et la paix de Dieu: Attente de la fin des temps ou approfondissement de la foi? (Paris, 1999); Jean Flori, La guerre sainte: La formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris, 2001), 62–63; and, Flori, La fin du monde au Moyen Age: terreur ou esperance? (Paris, 2008). 2 Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, trans. August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Ac- counts of Eyewitnesses and Participants (Princeton, NJ, 1921), 42–43. Guibert based his account on the only apocalyptic text of the Old Testament in the Book of Daniel. The parallel with Daniel in the New Testament is the Book of Revelations (or Apocalypse) of John.

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Urban’s sermon and “undertook to endow it with the dignity and high-minded qualities appropriate to the movement it inspired.”3 But Guibert was the only one to place Urban’s words in the apocalyptic mode.4 Modern scholars are not in agreement as to the impact of eschatological prophecy on the crusades. Benjamin Kedar, in his study of the historiography of the massacre of the non-Christian inhabitants as the crusaders entered Jerusalem in 1099, pointed out that modern scholars have focused on trying to discern the “totality” of its impact. In so doing they have noted that Raymond of St Gilles, as he entered, is credited with the statement that the crusaders in Solomon’s Temple rode in blood “usque ad frenos equorum” which is based on Apocalypse 14:20, but not so directly quoted at the time by Raymond.5 In 2009 Robert Chazan was among the more recent to note the ongoing debate over various aspects of millenarian expectations of the era and their impact on the crusade.6 In 2004, Al Andrea mentioned the speech of Urban as reported by Guibert, but focused on the attention that Pope Innocent iii gave to the apocalypse in his calling of crusades to the Holy Land. After the failure of the Fourth Crusade to reach Jerusalem, Innocent referenced the Apocalypse of John in Quia maior as he called for the Fifth.7 Despite the absence of any actual direct recording of Urban’s speech calling for the First Crusade, Jay Rubenstein has suggested that Guibert believed that Urban would have mentioned the apocalypse and so reported his speech in that manner.8 Thus, since 1995, when Chris- toph Maier provided a brief overview of the various ways in which apocalyptic prophecies may have influenced crusade propaganda over time, uncertainty remains.9

3 Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA 1991), 32. 4 Dana C. Munro, “The Speech of Urban ii at Clermont, 1095,” American Historical Review 11 (1906): 240–241, was the first modern crusade historian to point this out. More recently, Whalen, Dominion of God, 53, notes the reference to Daniel in Baudri of Dol’s account of the speech. 5 Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 3 (2004): 65. 6 Robert Chazan, “‘Let Not a Remnant or a Residue Escape:’ Millenarian Enthusiasm in the First Crusade,” Speculum 84 (2009): 289–313. 7 Alfred J. Andrea, “Innocent iii, the Fourth Crusade, and the Coming Apocalypse,” The Medi- eval Crusade, ed. Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge, UK, 2004), 97–106. 8 Jay Rubenstein, “How, or How Much, to Reevaluate Peter the Hermit,” The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge, UK, 2004), 53–71. 9 Christoph T. Maier, “Crusade and Rhetoric against the Muslim Colony of Lucera,” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995): 343–385.