Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity

5. Commemorating the Fall of Jerusalem: Remembering the First Crusade in Text, Liturgy, and Image

125 chapter five Commemorating the Fall of Jerusalem Remembering the First Crusade in Text, Liturgy, and Image jaroslav folda The earliest illustrated texts of William of Tyre’s History of Outremer, executed between 1244 and 1291, provide important evidence of the renewed interest in and awareness of the events surrounding the First Crusaders in the Holy Land.∞ This discussion will focus on the story of the First Crusade as presented in the first eight books— corresponding to the first eight miniatures—of various manuscripts of the History. The questions I propose to ask concern the broader crusading context in which continuations were given to these manuscripts and their cycles of illustrations were done. First of all, what was the situation when the first continuations to William’s History were written, circa 1232, and the first illustrations were made, after 1244? With that in mind, why was it that the first illustrated History of Outremer manuscripts were produced from just after 1244 and the following years up to 1291? Then, in these early illustrated manuscripts, how was the story of the First Crusade presented in their imagery between 1244 and 1291? And finally, what happened to this imagery after 1291? To assess these issues, I begin by investigating how the fall of Jerusalem was commemorated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, starting with the triumph of the First Crusade. After the conquest of Jerusalem by the First Crusade in 1099, the crusaders in the Latin Kingdom early on added a new festival day to the ecclesiastical calendar. On the ides of July, that is, 15 July, we find a commemoration in the earliest missals from the scriptorium of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (missals dating in the 1130s and 1140s), which reads as follows: ‘‘Festivitas Hierusalem quando capta fuit a Christianis.’’≤ Accordingly, in the 1130s, the conquest of the city was marked by a 126 sites and structures special liturgical celebration in Jerusalem. Joshua Prawer has described the progress of the solemn procession based on the Barletta rituale: Led by the patriarch very early in the morning, this [procession] passed from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Templum Domini, the Mosque of Omar. Here a halt was made and prayers recited at the southern entrance, in that part of the Temple esplanade which faces the Mosque of al-Aqsa. From here, the procession wound its way across the esplanade to the burial place beyond the walls of those who fell in the conquest. Crossing the street of Josaphat it then proceeded to the northern part of the city walls. Here, not far from its north-eastern angle, a cross marked the spot where the knights of Godefroy [de Bouillon ] first penetrated the city. At this place a sermon was pronounced by the patriarch to the assembled clergy and populace, and thanksgiving prayers commemorated the establishment of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.≥ Thus the liturgical observance of the glorious conquest of the city in 1099 had relatively quickly taken its place with the other main festivals with major processions in Jerusalem, namely, those on Palm Sunday, at Easter, on Ascension Day, on Pentecost, and on the Assumption of the Holy Virgin. Therefore a triumphant victory in recent memory was elevated to the same status as the holiest events of the Gospels for the crusaders in the holy city of Jerusalem. We can probably assume that the ecclesiastical commemoration of the capture of Jerusalem began immediately, possibly in 1101, following the untimely death of Godefroy de Bouillon on 18 July 1100. We do not know the exact date when the liturgical procession began to develop out of the spontaneous visitations of the Christian people of the city to the sites related to the conquest. As we have seen, they went to three places: first, the site where the crusaders first breached the walls and entered the city in July 1099; second, the place of the symbolic capture of the primary Muslim monument in the city, which the crusaders called the Templum Domini; and third, the cemetery of the fallen crusaders outside the city walls on the eastern side of the city. It is likely that just as the American Memorial Day commemoration emerged as a national day (Decoration Day) on 30 May 1868, a day to visit the cemeteries of fallen American soldiers in the Civil War, the crusader observance began with people visit- Commemorating the Fall of...