Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [223]
18. The history of this document is checkered. Carl Erdmann considered that it was contemporary with the destruction wrought by Al-Hakim. Later scholars, like Gieysztor, suggested that it was confected by the monks of Moissac at the time that Urban II was promoting the First Crusade. However, more recently Schaller has reinterpreted the whole issue and considers it authentic. Regardless of its date, it indicates the horror with which the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre was greeted. See Erdmann, Origin, pp. 113–17; A. Gieysztor, “The Genesis of the Crusades: The Encyclical of Sergius IV (1009–1012),” Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1948), pp. 3–23, and 6 (1950), pp. 3–34; H. M. Schaller, “Zur Kreuzzugsenzyklika Papst Sergius IV,” in H. Mordek (ed.), Papsttum, Kirche und Recht im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Horst Fuhrmann zum 65 Geburtstag, Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1991, pp. 135–53.
19. Marshall W. Baldwin, A History of the Crusades: The First Hundred Years, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958, pp. 76–7.
20. See Gil, History, p. 487.
21. “The centrality of the bare scriptural word in liturgy, catechism and sermon receded before the elaboration of the church liturgical tradition. Thus the Word was available to the rank and file mainly through the evolved forms of the liturgy, biblical storytelling, or biblically inspired art, and much less, if at all, through substantial reading, recitation and study of the holy words themselves.” See Graham, Beyond, p. 120.
22. The only parable that lacks a sense of precise topography is where Jesus was tempted by the devil.
23. I am grateful to the Reverend David Batson for explaining the issue of relics to me.
24. See Cohn, Pursuit, pp. 64–5.
25. This is taken from the account of Urban’s Clermont speech by Robert the Monk from a work called the Historia Hierosolymitana. He was present at Clermont, but the text was written much later. I have used the online version, www.norton.com/nael/nto/middle/crusade/clermontfrm.htm.
26. Robert the Monk claimed to have been present on the day although he composed his version about a quarter of a century after Clermont, and with the Gesta Francorum (The Deeds of the Franks, written about 1100, an account of the First Crusade) before him. But the details unconsciously reveal Urban’s rhetorical skill and are thus convincing. See August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1921, pp. 33–6.
27. “This, made of any kind of cloth, he ordered to be sewn upon the shirts, cloaks, and byrra of those who were about to go.” See ibid., pp. 36–40.
28. According to Robert the Monk, when Urban heard his call to arms greeted with cries of “God wills it, it is the will of God,” he “gave thanks to God and commanding silence with his hand, said, ‘Unless God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry; since although the cry issued from many mouths, yet the origin of the cry is as one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted it in your breast, has drawn it forth from you. Let that then be your war cry in combat because it is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” ’ ”
29. Curiously, the anthropologist Roy Wagner, who coined the phrase “symbols that stand for themselves,” bypassed the cross when searching for the core symbol of the West. In fact it meets his needs much better than the Eucharist, which he selected. See Wagner, Symbols.
30. Cited by Dana C. Munro, Urban and the Crusaders: Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. 1:2, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1895, p. 20.
31. They had conjured up the image of an infidel enemy who had to be defeated and destroyed whatever the cost. The first to suffer from this effusion