§ 50. FIRST CRUSADE AND CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 245
that the bands which followed him were the dregs of France. Now it is difficult to understand how a monk, before unknown, who had never been in Jerusalem, and was not at the Council of Clermont, could at once work into his imagination such vivid pictures of the woe and wails of the Christians of the East as to attain a foremost pre-eminence as a preacher of the Crusade.
(6) Good reasons can be given for the omission of Peter's conduct prior to the Council of Clermont by the earliest writers. The Crusade was a holy and heroic movement. The writers were interested in magnifying the part taken by the chivalry of Europe. Some of them were with Peter in the camp, and they found him heady, fanatical, impracticable, and worse. He probably was spurned by the counts and princes. Many of the writers were chaplains of these chieftains, — Raymund, Baldwin, Tancred, Bohemund. The lawlessness of Peter's bands has been referred to. The defeat at Nicsea robbed Peter of all glory and position he might otherwise have had with the main army when it reached Asia.1 In Antioch he brought upon himself disgrace for attempting flight, being caught in the act by Tancred and Bohe mund. The Gesta gives a detailed account of this treachery, and Guibert2 compares his flight to an angel falling from heaven. It is probably with reference to it that Ekkehard says, " Many call him hypocrite." 3 Strange to say, Albert of Aachen and William of Tyre omit all reference to his treach erous flight,4 It is not improbable that, after the experiences they had of the Hermit in the camp, and the disregard and perhaps the contempt in which he was held by the princes, after his inglorious campaign to Constantinople and Nicaea, the early writers had not the heart to mention his services prior to the council. Far better for the glory of the cause that those experiences should pass into eternal forgetfulness.
Why should legend then come to be attached to his memory ? Why should not Adhemar have been chosen for the honor which was put upon this unknown monk who made so many mistakes and occupied so subordinate a position in the main crusading army ? Why stain the origin of so glorious a movement by making Peter with his infirmities and ignoble birth respon sible for the inception of the Crusade ? It would seem as if the theory were more probable that the things which led the great Crusaders to disparage, if not to ridicule, Peter induced the earlier writers to ignore his meritorious activity prior to the Council of Clermont. After the lapse of time, when the memory of his follies was not so fresh, the real services of Peter were again recognized. For these reasons the older portrait of Peter has been regarded as the true one in all its essential features.
1 Nach einer solchen Katastrophe war offenbar auch bei diesen alles Ansehen fur ihn dabei, Hagenmeyer, p. 204.
2 Ut stellce quoque juxta Apocalypsim de ccelo cadere viderentur, Petrus ille, etc.
3 Ekkehard XIII., Rec., V. 21, says that Peter's cohorts became the object of derision to the Turks as soon as they reached Asia Minor, cohortes . . . paganis fuerant jam ludibrio factce.
4 Hagenmeyer, pp. 220 sqq., 243, suggests that at the time of William's writing such things were no longer told.
246 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
§ 51. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1099-1187.
LITERATURE. — G. T. DE THAUMASSIERE : Assises et bons usages du royaume de Jerusalem, etc., Paris, 1690, 1712; Assises de Jerusalem, in Eecueil des Historiens des croisades, 2 vols., Paris, 1841-1843. — HODY: Godefroy de Bouillon et les rois Latins de Jerus., 2d ed., Paris, 1859. — ROHRICHT: Eegesta Hegni Hierosolymitani, Innsbruck, 1893; Gesch. des Konigreichs Jerus. 1100-1291, Innsbruck, 1898. — LANE-POOLE: Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerus., N.Y., 1898. The first biography of Saladin in English, written largely from the standpoint of the Arab historians. — C. R. CONDER : The Latin Kingd. of Jerus., London, 1899. — F. KL'IIN: Gesch. der ersten Patriarchen von Jerus., Leipzig, 1886. — FUNK: art. Jerusalem, Christl. Konigreich, in " Wetzer- Welte," VI. p. 133o sqq.
Eight days after the capture of the Holy City a permanent government was established, known as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfrey was elected king, but declined the title of royalty, unwilling to wear a crown of gold where the Saviour had worn a crown of thorns.1 He adopted the title Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. The kingdom from its birth was in need of help, and less than a year after the capture of the city the patriarch Dagobert made an appeal to the "rich" German nation for reinforcements.2 It had a perturbed existence of less than a century, and in that time witnessed a succession of nine sovereigns.
1 The official title of the kings was rex Latinorum in Hierusalem. In rejecting the crown, says William of Tyre, "Godfrey did so as a believing prince. He was the best of kings, the light and mirror of all others," lumen et speculum, IX. 9, Bee., I. 377. The clergy had dreamed of the complete subjection of the civil government of Jerusalem to the spiritual government under the patriarch. The first patriarch not only secured for his jurisdic tion one-fourth of Jerusalem and Jaffa, but the promise from Godfrey of the whole of both cities, provided Godfrey was successful in taking Cairo or some other large hostile city, or should die without male heirs. See Rohricht, Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzuges, p. 218.
2 See Dagobert's appeal in Hagenmeyer, Epistulce, 176 sq., 412 sqq. He speaks of " Jerusalem as the most excellent of all places for sanctity, " and says that " for this reason it was oppressed by the pagans and infidels." Fulcher, writing of the year 1100, declares that there were only three hundred knights and as many footmen left for the defence of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Ramleh. See quotation in Hagenmeyer, 415.