Walter the Chancellor's The Antiochene Wars

A Translation and Commentary

Susan B. Edgington, Thomas S. Asbridge

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138362185
• eBook ISBN: 9780429778346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

First published in 1999, this edition of Walter the Chancellor's account of the wars of the Antiochenes against the Muslims in the early twelfth century is a vivid first-hand account of a dramatic yet less well-known period in the history of the northern Crusader states, and an important balance to the more usual focus on Jerusalem. As a highly-placed Antiochene official, Walter was able to write the most authoritative account of the principality's fortunes and internal workings, and his book also sheds light on the relationship between Latin settlement in the Levant and contemporary Western perceptions of Islam and Eastern Christianity. Here it has for the first time been translated into English (from the Latin edition of H. Hagenmeyer). It is prefaced by a substantial introduction, discussing the author and his work in the context of the history and historiography of the Latin settlement, and is followed by a selection of comparative sources.

Walter the Chancellor's history will be of interest both to students of the Crusades and to a wider readership for its perspective on life in a medieval frontier society.

Walter the Chancellor’s The Antiochene Wars

The First War

Here Roger,¹ lord and general² of the Antiochenes was victor, as the author Walter³ shows.

Prologue

It is the reward for our labour and equally it is to our advantage to hear how, with what miracles, and by what favour God as judge exceeded our hopes by waging war on the Persians⁴ through the agency of Roger, prince⁵ of Antioch. For truly, when they have heard the power of miracles⁶ and the deeds of worthy men the wicked will more easily be brought low and the good will also be spurred on to do better. And so may I pray for His assistance, at whose prompting all good things are done, who granted to that same prince the inspiration of his advice and the force of his encouragement,⁷ with the help of which he succeeded in shattering the pride⁸ of the heathens and vanquishing their fierceness, and when I wished to put in writing the sequence of events and commend them to the memory of posterity, He also deigned to instil in me from heaven the power of writing and the means of expression, so that when men capable of reason and defenders of the true faith heard the truth, they would cling strongly to the power and service of their Creator, while their opponents, smitten by divine dread, both in the present and in the future, trusting not in God but in themselves, would expose their backs to God's arrows,⁹ and would not dare to return to the same task. Nevertheless, having looked into the necessary aspects of the battle, and having selected the material which is equal to my powers,¹⁰ it seems to me essential, before the account of the battle, first to outline the evils which happened earlier, so that by an examination of the previous reasons for the events which follow, our achievement may more easily be appreciated.¹¹

First, therefore, hordes of locusts, stirred up far and wide by way of a metaphor for the enemy, stole nearly all the things necessary to feed the farmers of Syria. Then they were dispersed partly by crawling along the ground, partly through the air, and they afflicted almost the whole region of the eastern Christians to the same devastating effect;¹² and although they knew that they deserved to be afflicted by such a vengeance, yet they not only did not look to appease God their creator, they clung to their past vices, indeed they even went beyond the bounds of shame,¹³ adding crime upon crime. For certain men who hated fasting and loved lavish banquets, slaves to gluttony for enticing foods, were eager to copy the life and life-style not of those who live well but of those who eat well. Some indeed were influenced to unchastity and frequented houses of ill-fame, they strove even to pollute the respect of the public audience with shameless words, sowing doubt, and they were reckoned rather disgusting or scandalous.

Moreover, some of those who had come by ill-gotten gains, having used up all their own wealth, ardently sought for vessels to be made, suitable for their voluptuous excesses, artfully engraved in the style of Solomon;¹⁴ and for their wives, so gossip has it, they paid craftsmen to have coverings carefully made in Arabian gold and a manifold variety of precious jewels for their shameful parts, not to clothe the appearance of their shame or to restrain the flame of lust, but so that that which was forbidden might inflame more hotly those people who did not desire legitimate pleasures. Since they were willing to excite their lust in this way, and set out to bedizen women and to exploit them, as we have indicated before, they added crime upon crime.¹⁵

For the women, to be sure, nothing was sacred, nothing serious in their pursuit of wickedness: for the silly women, having scorned their husbands' beds, served unchastity in the lewd brothel; they lay in wait day and night with special drinks on street corners and where three or four roads meet; they put themselves about in the streets and the squares, lascivious in the way they looked and walked, and they stood where they would catch the eye of passersby; they were available for a price whatever the weather and would lie down with anyone who wanted. Moreover, they scarcely allowed those who were unwilling, those whom they were unable to provoke to their own level of lewdness, to escape, even when they paid the asking price.¹⁶

Since these people did not lament the evil deeds they had done and they did lamentable deeds willingly and openly, the originator of supreme justice allowed them to be afflicted with signs, prodigies, plagues, trouble and even enemy peoples for the duration of many years, not to destroy them but to save them.¹⁷ For while the Greeks ruled they were persuaded to be enslaved to their empire.¹⁸ When those same people had been driven forth from Asia they had yielded to the dominion of the ruling Persians; eventually, God willing, they succumbed to the irresistible power of the Gauls.¹⁹ When their behaviour was set right neither by the Persians nor the Gauls, the aforesaid Syrians and their rulers²⁰ suffered so great a destruction and ruin from the earthquake²¹ which befell them as no previous history has ever told.²²

I.1 The great earthquake in Antioch and its effect on the inhabitants.²³

Therefore in the 1115th year from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the eve of the feast of St Andrew the apostle²⁴ and in the silence at the dead of night,²⁵ when human frailty²⁶ was accustomed more suitably and more sweetly to sleep, there was an immense and terrible earthquake in Antioch and its region. And as a matter of fact, in that same unexpected earthquake men were horribly knocked around, and they felt, saw, heard the collapse of walls, towers and different buildings deeply threatening themselves and others; some thought to escape the collapse by running away, some to slide down from the walls, certain men gave themselves up and threw themselves down from high houses. More, indeed, were caught piecemeal in their sleep by the collapse, in such a way that even if a part of the wall remained intact, they were nowhere to be seen. Others, indeed, were terrified; they abandoned their homes, scorned their wealth, left everything, and behaved as if demented in the streets and squares of the town. They stretched their hands towards the heavens because of their manifold fear and powerlessness, and cried tearfully without ceasing in different languages: 'Spare us, Lord, spare your people!'²⁷

When morning came, and the vast scale of the wretched disaster was clear beneath the ruin both of men and of other things, everyone of one accord Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians,²⁸ strangers and pilgrims - claimed the earthquake had happened because of their own sins.²⁹ At once they took advantage of good advice and had recourse to the very church of St Peter the apostle,³⁰ seeking the protection of his eternal patronage. And so that that very same saint whom they had failed to appreciate when things were going well, in bad times they recognized as omnipotent and merciful, his utter goodness performing with justice, and those same men confessed that they had grievously sinned and, renouncing their past and present pleasures to Lord Bernard, the first Latin patriarch,³¹ they promised most devoutly to mend their ways, and by his faith, merits and prayers, with his own clergy and the rest of the faithful very humbly entreating God, so we truly believe, the Lord took pity on the rest of his Antiochene people.

When the divine office had been celebrated, a sermon delivered and some instructions imposed as to how they should behave or what they ought to do, just as they were thinking nothing very serious had happened, they were suddenly frightened by terrible news. For certain people who had escaped by God's favour in the town of Marash³² testified that that same town had been entirely destroyed with its lord³³ and bishop,³⁴ also the clergy and all the people.³⁵ And not long afterwards testimony from the town of Mamistra,³⁶ previously ruined with its citizens and the greater part of the town on the feast of St Brice,³⁷ increased their fear. What of al-Atharib?³⁸ What of the other Antiochene lands? A comparable torment was imagined happening in quite disparate places. Therefore fear was mingled with terror and thus redoubled for the wretched masses, because they absolutely did not know where they should stay or where they should flee. For each day, the earthquake threatened for hopeless hours; and for this reason they said this to one another: 'Oh the wretched necessity of being born, the miserable need to die, our hard necessity to live!' Although these people knew that the power of God could nowhere and never be escaped, yet they decided it was easier to cohabit with the animals outside than to live inside in constant fear of the impending collapse of the buildings. For this reason they adopted tents for homes in the streets, in the squares, in gardens, in thickets, with other dwellings abandoned. More, indeed, left the towns and took their huts from place to place, staying on the plains.

And yet the patriarch, most experienced of all men of the place and time,³⁹ drawing discursively on the necessary divisions of philosophical teaching, pacified the hearts of the desolate people, who were now almost despairing of life, by means of the encouraging sweetness of holy preaching. And then finally he proclaimed a three-day fast for all the people,⁴⁰ with sighing and in a spirit of contrition, adding also that they should avoid evil works and pay attention to all good things. What, therefore, of the result? The people who had been brought back into the Lord's service were described in this manner: they flee feasting; they abhor drunkenness; they shim the baths;⁴¹ they curse immorality; having laid aside everything, even care of the body, they have changed their style of dress into sackcloth and ashes;⁴² they roam from street to street, from church to church, first the men, then the women, with bare feet, with loosened hair, beating their breasts, copiously watering their faces with tears; from day to day⁴³ with all their heart they repeat litanies to God; even by ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• CRUSADE TEXTS IN TRANSLATION
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Map
• Introduction
• Walter the Chancellor's The Antiochene Wars
• Bibliography
• Index