The Christian army is marching toward the object of desire, Jerusalem. They arrive there when the sun is high in the sky, and the splendid sight appears in front of their eyes:
A soldier kneels in front of the splendid sight of Jerusalem. By Sebastien Leclerc (1637-1714). © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014
behold! afar Jerusalem gleams, discreet;
behold! Jerusalem is glimpsed, is seen;
behold! from all one great salute rings out:
‘Jerusalem!’ a thousand voices shout.
(Canto Three, st.3)
The effect the sight of the holy city has on the Crusaders is more complex than mere satisfaction at having arrived at the threshold of the final stage in their plan:
The immense delight that this first glimpse imparts
now sweetens every breast, but soon gives way
to deep contrition, and in all their hearts
stirs awe mingled with reverence, till they
scarce dare to lift their eyes by fits and starts
toward that city where Christ chose to live,
where He died and was buried, and where He
rose from the dead in glorious majesty.’ (st.5)
Their delight is mingled with awe and wonder: after all, this is not just any coveted city, but the place which lies at the heart of their faith. They react to it in a way rather difficult for a modern person to understand, at least in the context of religious experience:
Half-stifled words, unspoken vows, and heaves
of broken sobs and sudden tear-choked sighs
from a people that at once exults and grieves
all through the air make a deep murmur rise….
Barefooted each man treads the hard wayside
(the chiefs by their example more the rest),
silk trim or golden each man casts aside,
plucks from his head his plume or glorious crest,
while from his heart he tears the cloak of pride,
eyes hot with tears, devotion in his breast.
As though his way were barred unless he weeps,
each man his self-accusing counsel keeps. (st. 6 & 8)
One of the hardest thing for a writer of historical fiction, particularly when it is set in such distant times, is to empathise with and hence portray convincingly the very different mentality of the people back then. The passion and devotion with which the Crusaders threw themselves into their enterprise and the flame which moved them from within are incomprehensible and alien for most of us. In Justin Cartwright’s fascinating novel, Lion Heart (Bloomsbury, 2013) the protagonist Richard Cathar [1] wonders:
What is it that inspired such devotion? What was it that caused Richard the Lionheart to take the cross and sail for Acre? Why was Robert the Bruce so passionate that his heart should be taken to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after his death? His last testament read: I will that as soone as I am trespassed out of this worlde that ye take my harte out of my body and embawme it and present my harte to the Holy Sepulchre where Our Lord laye, seying my body can not come there. In fact his heart – embalmed – only got as far as Moorish Granada, where Sir James Douglas, the Black Douglas, bearing the heart, was killed. The heart was returned to Scotland.
Richard Cathar then goes on to make a glib statement about religion, which doesn’t even begin to justify such a passion (read the novel if you want to find out more). Greed, imperialism, and a love of adventure might account for the Crusades, but what could explain the last wish and testament of a man who had nothing more to gain on that score?
Cartwright’s novel, like many recent historical novels, is written on two temporal planes, the present, with all its packed action in the Middle East – the very place of the Crusades – and the twelfth century. Perhaps this is the most honest way to write a historical novel about the Crusades today, when author and audience are so far removed from their world that one foot must be firmly kept in ours. Torquato Tasso, on the other hand, still belonged to that era and ambience in which the sight of a holy relic, image, or city brought hardened soldiers to ecstatic joy and tearful contrition, and so he could be eloquent and persuasive about it.
[1] I know, I know …
First Crusade Fictions 