military resourcefulness or technological supremacy. There was minimal use of siege engines or artillery, surprisingly, in view of their use at Nicaea and later sieges at Ma ‘arrat al-Nu ‘man (December 1098), Arqah (March–May 1099) and Jerusalem. By contrast, at Antioch the Christians appeared reactive, often, as in confronting relief expeditions, dangerously so. While, at least after the foraging battle of December 1097, excelling in set-piece battles, there was no evident superiority in western tactics or equipment. The impression left by their siege of Antioch is of a frustrated bankruptcy of ideas to resolve the struggle, more effort being expended simply in keeping the army intact. Yet the solid bravery as well as occasional gaudy heroism suggests the crusaders’ continued belief in their cause. They celebrated their dead as martyrs, in Stephen of Blois’s words in March 1098, whose souls were borne to the joys of paradise.30 Conviction alone was insufficient; fear, hunger, military incompetence or realism provoked despair and desertion, witness Count Stephen himself. Without idealism, the whole enterprise would have foundered long since.
The rapid collapse of Antioch once its defences had been breached showed that the defenders had become as weakened as their attackers. When the slaughtering had ceased, the new rulers of Antioch faced a grim prospect. The Muslim garrison still held the citadel above the city; there was little food and fewer horses. Before supplies could be collected from elsewhere, just a day after the capture, the vanguard of Kergogha’s army arrived on the plain to the north of the city, having swept aside the Christian forward defences. By 7 June the city was invested; over the following week, all remaining Christian outposts beyond the city were overrun and a Muslim camp established close to the citadel to coordinate attacks from that sector. Heavy fighting all day around the citadel on 10 June caused another collapse in morale; that night panic spread among the crusaders, many fleeing the city using rope ladders to earn western opprobrium as
From this extreme crisis emerged the visionary politics that characterized the rest of the campaign until Jerusalem was won. According to the story generally accepted by immediate eyewitnesses, on the very night of the panic and desertion, a Provencal priest, Stephen of Valence, beside himself with terror at what seemed to him the imminent fall of the city, while praying in the church of the Virgin Mary experienced a vision of Christ, the cross, Mary and St Peter (traditionally the first bishop of Antioch and the city’s patron saint). Christ assured Stephen that the beleaguered Christians would receive His aid in five days provided they demonstrated their faith through prayers, ceremonies and penitence for their sinfulness. After initial scepticism, insisting that Stephen swore to the truth of his statement on the Gospels, Adhemar of Le Puy exploited the vision by instituting more morale-stiffening religious ceremonies and persuading the princes to renew their oaths to stay with the expedition. More dramatically, in an almost simultaneous report, a poor Provencal pilgrim, Peter Bartholomew, claimed to have received over the previous months a number of visions of St Andrew (in the Gospels the brother of St Peter) in which the saint had urged penitence on the crusaders and, as a sign of God’s favour, had indicated where the Holy Lance that had pierced the side of Christ on the cross was buried in the cathedral of St Peter. Peter’s story conveniently matched Stephen’s by its promise of a sign of divine aid in five days. Adhemar and many others thought Peter a fraud, yet desperation and the advocacy of Raymond of Toulouse persuaded them to verify the story. On 14 June Peter and twelve others dug around in the floor of the cathedral until, as evening fell, Peter himself discovered what he and his fellow diggers took to be the point of the Lance sticking out of the ground at the bottom of the excavations. The discovery transformed the army’s mood from terrified inertia to awed encouragement, allowing the leaders to organize a military breakout with some prospect of success, further celestial sightings accompanying the preparations for battle hardly coincidentally containing saintly instructions to further penance and military discipline.32
The objective reality of these visions or the authenticity of the Holy Lance are immaterial. The visions fitted contemporary models of such encounters, the visual iconography of the celestial messengers borrowing from contemporary art. A scrap of metal found beneath an old, much-renovated church after a day’s digging does not stretch credibility or credulity. What mattered in June 1098 was the crusaders’ belief. Although at first Bishop Adhemar and, later, others, particularly among the followers and propagandists of Bohemund, regarded Peter Bartholomew as a charlatan, not least perhaps because they may have seen a ‘Holy Lance’ on display in Constantinople, the visions provided the leadership with a precise plan to salvage the crusade. The link with reviving morale and military purpose is clear. One eyewitness suggested that Peter Bartholomew was only believed once the connection between the Lance and the defeat of Kerbogha had been made explicit; all associated the Lance with the subsequent success in battle. The visions fitted into the wider use of religious theatre and public ceremonial of penance to reinvigorate the army. An Armenian observer, writing within eighteenth months of the events, recorded the fervent prayers of the Christians in the cathedral of St Peter, designed to stiffen resolve, without mentioning the Lance.33
While Stephen of Valence provided the leaders with an opportunity to impose strict discipline dressed as instructions from Christ, their heavenly commander, the poor layman Peter Bartholomew, fitted less easily into this hierarchical order. Even so, Raymond of Aguilers, guardian of the Holy Lance after its removal from the cathedral, implied Peter’s association with Count Raymond’s entourage and, cynics noted, his political interests. Evidently no protege of Adhemar of Le Puy, Peter may have attached himself to the newly arrived William bishop of Orange, who helped dig up the Lance or perhaps one of Count Raymond’s vassals, Peter Raymond of Hautpol, mentioned as someone to whom Peter should report St Andrew’s instructions.34 Peter claimed to have been as far as Edessa and Cyprus in search of supplies for the crusade, pointing to aristocratic employment or contacts. He knew sections of the Latin liturgy by heart, so much, indeed, that he was able to forget some and still be able to display a degree of knowledge impressive in a supposedly humble peasant; some later chroniclers thought him a clerk. Although apparently universally accepted in the summer of 1098, Peter’s visions later appeared partisan, directed at elevating Raymond of Toulouse to leadership and forcing the princes to abandon their newly won possessions in northern Syria in favour of the march to Jerusalem. However, Peter Bartholomew was not necessarily a Provencal stooge. Although ultimately emerging as the champion of the popular demand for the invasion of Palestine, for months after June 1098 Raymond of Toulouse was as reluctant to cede position in Syria as Bohemund; during this period Peter’s repeated heavenly messages voiced the wishes of those unable to benefit from the profits of Syrian lordship, those, by virtue of the Christian success, denied local forage, plunder and booty. Only when Raymond decided to place himself at the head of the popular party at Ma ‘arrat al-Nu ‘man in January 1099 did Peter’s visions directly serve the count’s purposes, to his cost. At the siege of Arqah (February–May 1099), factional in-fighting, allied to doubts harboured even by supporters such as Raymond of Aguilers, forced a crisis of confidence. The theatricality of the visions was challenged by an equally potent set of judicial rituals devised to determine whether Peter was inspired or a fraud. A protracted trial instigated by Arnulf of Choques, Robert of Normandy’s chaplain, culminated on Good Friday 1099, 8 April, in an ordeal by fire. Although Peter satisfied his supporters by emerging alive from a corridor of flames, thirteen feet long, four foot high and only one foot wide, he succumbed to his injuries a few days later.35
Visions and miracles articulated the aspirations of the mass of soldiers and pilgrims who, without prospect of lasting profit from conquest, concentrated on fulfilling their vows at Jerusalem. They also mirrored the changing military and political choices facing the princes. Peter Bartholomew’s equivocal fate did not mean the end of the dialogue between the terrestrial and the heavenly followers of Christ. Further visions of Stephen of Valence and another Provencal priest, Peter Desiderius, confirmed the centrality of relics, liturgy and penance in fixing the cohesion of the army of God on its march to Jerusalem, now transmitted through the politically safer medium of clergy rather than an uncomfortably radical layman. One strand of visionary politics in the final stages of the march elevated the Provencal cult of the lost leader, Adhemar of Le Puy, who had died, possibly of typhoid, at Antioch on 1 August 1098, part of an intense response to the deaths of comrades, many of whom soon reappeared to their friends in visions and dreams, witnesses to continued support from the other world. The presence in the army of Bishop Adhemar’s cross and cloak provided unassailable relics of unity and leadership; the dead bishop’s words inspired the troops at Jerusalem; his presence, some reported, assisted the final assault.36 During the siege of Jerusalem, another vision of Peter Desiderius, in which Adhemar urged a penitential procession around the walls of the city, legitimized a religious framework for persuading the army to attempt the final assault. At least it did so in retrospect. While the general accretion of miracle stories, relics and religious ceremonies from the sieges of Antioch onwards is undeniable, the neatness of the visionary prophecies and saintly interventions, their
