Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States 9780521836388, 9781139016230

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L AT I N A N D G R E E K M ONAS TI C I S M I N T H E C R U SA D ER STATES Monasticism was the dominant form of religious life both in the medieval West and in the Byzantine world. Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States explores the parallel histories of monasticism in Western and Byzantine traditions in the Near East in the period c. 1050–1300. Bernard Hamilton and Andrew Jotischky follow the parallel histories of new Latin foundations alongside the survival and revival of Greek Orthodox monastic life under crusader rule. Examining the involvement of monasteries in the newly founded Crusader States, the institutional organisation of monasteries, the role of monastic life in shaping expressions of piety, and the literary and cultural products of monasteries, this meticulously researched survey will facilitate a new understanding of indigenous religious institutions and culture in the Crusader States.

bernar d hamilton (1932–2019) was Professor of Crusading History at the University of Nottingham. His numerous publications include The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (2000), Religion in the Medieval West (2nd ed., 2003) and The Christian World of the Middle Ages (2003).

a n d r e w j o t i s ch ky is Professor of Medieval History at Royal Holloway University of London. He is the author of Crusading and the Crusader States (2nd ed., 2017), The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages (2002), The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (1995) as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals.

LATIN AND GREEK MONASTICISM IN THE C R USADER S TATES BERNARD HAMILTO N University of Nottingham

ANDREW JOTISCHKY Royal Holloway, University of London

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521836388 DOI: 10.1017/9781139016230 © Andrew Jotischky and the Estate of Bernard Hamilton 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-521-83638-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Map Introduction

page vii viii xi xii 1

Part I: Latin Monasticism 1

The Latin Presence in the Levant before 1097

11

2

The Austin Canons

22

3

The Premonstratensian Canons

150

4

The Canons Regular of St Ruf, Avignon, in the County of Tripoli

160

5

Benedictine Monasteries

162

6

Benedictine Convents

220

7

Benedictine Monasteries in the Tradition of St Romuald and St Peter Damian

242

8

The Cistercians

247

9

The Carmelites

263

v

vi

Contents

10

The Franciscan Provincia Terrae Sanctae

272

11

The Dominican Provincia Terrae Sanctae

282

12

Antiochene Monasteries of Uncertain Rite

291

Part II: Greek Orthodox Monasticism 13

Orthodox Monasteries in the Crusader States: A Survey

297

14

Institutional Life in Greek Monasteries

348

15

Aspects of Spiritual Life in Greek Monasteries

403

16

Reading, Writing and Representation

460

Conclusion

507

Select Bibliography Index

514 543

Figures

1 The Tomb of Christ, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images 2 The church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem: exterior 3 The abbey of Mt Zion, Jerusalem 4 The Qubbat as-Saqra (Templum Domini), Jerusalem 5 St Samuel Montjoie 6 Crypt shrine of the Virgin Mary, Valley of Jehosaphat 7 Monastery of St Sabas, Judaean Desert 8 Monastery of the Temptation, Jericho 9 Monastery at al-Ba’ina, Galilee 10 Bread-making trough, St John Patmos 11 Monastery of Saidnaya, Syria

page 24 30 61 70 159 219 345 346 346 401 458

vii

Abbreviations

AA

Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. S. Edgington (Oxford, 2007) AA SS Acta Sanctorum, ed. Bollandist Fathers, 63 vols. (Antwerp, Paris, Rome, Brussels 1643–) Achéry L. de Achéry, ed., Spicilegium, sive collectio veterum aliquos scriptorum, 3 vols. (Paris, 1723) AOL Archives de l’Orient latin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1881–4) BB Le cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. G. Bresc-Bautier, DRHC XV (Paris, 1984) BBTT Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations BEFAR Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome BHCTH Bulletin historique et philologique du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques BHG Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca BMFD Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments, ed. J. Thomas and A. Hero, 5 vols. (Washington, DC, 2000) BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CGOH Cartulaire générale de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1300), ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906 CICO Fontes Pontificia Commissio ad Redigendum Codicem Iuris Canonici Orientalis, Fontes, ser. I and III CMH Cambridge Medieval History CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiae Latinae

viii

List of Abbreviations

DA DIP DOP DRHC EHR FC Gallia Christiana IHC Mansi MGH (SS) MSNAF OCP PEFQS PG PKHL

PL PO PPTS QF REB RHC RHC Arm RHC Occ RHC Or RHGF ROL

ix

Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione, ed. G. Pelliccia (1962–8), G. Rocca (1969–2003), 10 vols. (Rome, 1952–2003) Dumbarton Oaks Papers Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades, L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris English Historical Review Fulcher of Chartres, Gesta Francorum Iherusalem peregrinantium, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913) Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, 16 vols. (Paris, 1715–1865) Itinera Hierosolymitana Crucesignatorum, ed. S. de Sandoli, 4 vols. (Jerusalem, 1978–84) G. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 31 vols. (Florence and Venice, 1759–98, repr. Graz, 1960) Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Mémoires de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France Orientalia Christiana Periodica Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement Patrologia cursus completus. Series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 161 vols. (Paris, 1857–66) Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. R. Hiestand, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse, series 3, 136 (Göttingen, 1985) Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–64) Patrologia Orientalis, ed. R. Graffin, F. Nau and F. Graffin, 49 vols. (Paris, 1904–) Palestine Pilgrims Text Society Quellen und forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken Revue des Etudes byzantines Recueil des Historiens des Croisades RHC Historiens arméniens, 2 vols. (Paris, 1869–1906) RHC Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–95) RHC Historiens orientaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1872–1906) Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, 24 vols. (Paris, 1738) Revue de l’Orient latin

x

RQ RRH RS SCH Ughelli WT ZDPV

List of Abbreviations

Römisches Quartalschrift für Christliche Altertumskunde und Kirkengeschichte Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (MXCVII–MCCXCI), ed. R. Röhricht, 2 vols. (Innsbruck, 1893, 1904) Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores [Rolls Series] (London, 1858–97) Studies in Church History F. Ughelli, Italia sacra, 10 vols. (Venice, 1717–22) William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 63, 63A (Turnhout, 1986) Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins

Acknowledgements

A book of this length and complexity can only be written with the help of various institutions, and with the collegiality of other scholars and friends. We have benefited from the help of staff at many libraries, particularly the British Library, Institute of Historical Research and London Library. Special thanks are due to the Secretary-General of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Archbishop Aristarchos of Constantina, for making available for study the manuscripts of the Patriarchate Library. Many individuals have read and commented on portions of the work or contributed through wise and informed conversation. We have been especially grateful for the friendship and advice of Peter Edbury, John France, Daniel Galadza, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Jonathan Harris, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Jonathan Phillips, Denys Pringle, William Purkis, Chris Schabel and Iris Shagrir. Elizabeth Friend-Smith at Cambridge University Press has been a model of patience and understanding. I would like to thank Karen Anderson for her skill and thoroughness in the copy-editing process. I am very grateful to Sarah Hamilton for her invaluable help in the summer of 2019, without which this book could never have been published. My final scholarly debt must be to Bernard Hamilton, who was generous enough to invite me to write this book with him, and whose generosity, kindness and wisdom have been a source of inspiration for many years. Requiescat in pacem. Andrew Jotischky

xi

Map 1 Holy Land monasteries

0 Introduction

Monasticism in the Christian tradition was a product of the Eastern Roman Empire, particularly the provinces of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. Monks and monasteries already existed in Syria and the Holy Land before the end of the fourth century and, despite the profound changes associated with the Arab and Seljuq conquests of the seventh and eleventh centuries, some were still functioning by the time of the First Crusade at the end of the eleventh century. The most distinctive feature of monasticism in the Holy Land was its close relationship, both institutional and spiritual, with the shrines and Holy Places that also exercised a magnetic attraction to pilgrims from all over Christendom. As a result of this draw, monasticism in the Holy Land developed from the start an ‘international’ character, and foundations of varying types were established by people from different parts of the Roman world. Even before the Western conquests and settlement at the end of the eleventh century, Holy Land monasteries had been served by Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Persians, Egyptians and Franks. The arrival of the crusaders and the establishment of the Crusader States, however, caused the redrafting of the religious map of the Holy Land. Alongside monasteries of the Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian traditions, new Latin foundations sprang up. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in consequence, experienced a surge in new monastic vocations and a more intensive monastic presence in the region than at any point since before the Arab conquest. Although early Christian monasticism in Syria and the Holy Land has long been the subject of study, remarkably little attention has been paid to the phenomenon of monasticism in the region under crusader rule. This study, first conceived by Bernard Hamilton as a complement to his The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (1980), is an attempt to fill this gap by examining in as systematic a fashion as possible the foundations of the Latin Church alongside those of the Greek Orthodox, the dominant religious tradition of the indigenous Christian population. This study is concerned with monastic foundations of both Latin and Greek Orthodox traditions. It is divided into two separate halves, which are designed to be read either together or discretely. This principle of organisation has been determined as best reflecting the historical reality of monasticism in the region.1 Although there were undoubtedly points 1

The first part of the book, on Latin monasticism, is the work of Bernard Hamilton, while the second half has been written by Andrew Jotischky. Bernard Hamilton died in May 2019, when the book was largely complete but before it went to press. We have tried as far as possible to observe spelling conventions appropriate to the original source material, whether Latin or Greek, but in

1

2

Introduction

of contact between Latin and Orthodox communities, especially at the major feasts in Jerusalem, and although in some places, particularly in Jerusalem but also at some remote sites such as Mt Tabor, both Latin and Greek monasteries could be found in relatively close proximity to one another, on the whole the two traditions kept themselves apart. This was in part a function of the nature of monasticism itself, since most Latin and Greek monks took vows of enclosure, and monasteries were intended to have as little to do with the outside world as possible. It was also because, unlike in Sicily and southern Italy, the Latin ruling aristocracy in the Crusader East did not found or show an interest in Greek monasteries, which had long historical traditions and sources of patronage of their own. Early monasticism in the Holy Land developed its own distinctive forms. Partly as a result of the topography of the semi-desert, the ‘laura’ form of monastic life became characteristic of the region. A ‘laura’ consisted of a group of individual or shared cells associated with a church or oratory and other service buildings such as the bakery. Monks joined for communal liturgies on Sundays but spent most of their time alone or in pairs. The cells were often, as for example at the ‘Great Laura’ founded by Sabas in the Kidron valley at the end of the fifth century, cut out of rock-face and difficult of access.2 Besides these laurae, there were also cenobitic monasteries in which the communal life was emphasised. Both the governance and general tone of monastic life were set by the founders, who often appear in the sources as charismatic figures with inspirational qualities of leadership. Whether laurae or cenobitic monasteries, the communities founded by Sabas, Euthymios, Chariton and others were run along lines determined by the characters, ideological tendencies and will of the founders themselves.3 This could lead to tensions, such as those experienced by Sabas in the early sixth century when theological fault-lines in the Church came to be reflected among monastic communities. Sub-foundations by the same founder had the effect of spreading monastic life across the desert: in effect, filling regions inhabited only by wild beasts or demons with prayer and contemplation. The physical appearance of monasteries, with walls and towers, emphasised not only their vulnerability to predators but also their symbolic value as planters and defenders of Christianity in the wilderness. Conversion of native Beduin was a feature emphasised in the hagiographical literature of desert monasticism. Relationships between monasteries often took their tone from personal connections or friendships between founders, and this led in some instances to transfer of monks between different monasteries. Those new to monastic life could be trained in a cenobitic community before, if they made the grade, adopting a lauritic life; similarly, discipline could be exerted through expulsion or transfer. Many of these essential elements of ‘original’ monasticism in the Holy Land and Syria continued to be true of the pursuit of monastic life in the crusader period, especially in Greek Orthodox monasteries. But the Latins brought with them a different set of traditions, woven and developed in the very different conditions of the first millennium in the West. They also brought a monastic culture that was itself in flux. Unlike in the Byzantine world, Western

2 3

cases where terms or names are common across both source languages, we have observed the form commoner in English translations. J. Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism (Washington, DC, 1995), especially 51–168. J. Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine, 314–631 (Oxford, 1994).

Introduction

3

monasticism – particularly in the regions from which most of the crusaders and settlers came – was dominated by a single method of living and operating: the Rule of Benedict. However, the Western settlement of the Near East came at a time when this method was itself subject to interrogation and vigorous new study by monks and ecclesiastical leaders. A wide range of responses emerged to questions posed by reformers in the eleventh century about how best to live the monastic life. Many reformers thought that the answer lay in a closer adherence to the Rule of Benedict, but others developed new forms of living independent of the Rule. Most shades of reforming opinion, from the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule to individual eremitical communities, found expression in the creation of new foundations in the Holy Land alongside traditional Benedictine communities. In most of western Europe, cathedrals were staffed by communities of Canons Regular who followed the Rule of Augustine and, since many of the most important shrines in the Holy Land were housed in cathedrals, the Canons Regular were a very strong presence in the monastic life of the Crusader States. The nature of the evidence for writing about Latin and Greek monasticism in the Crusader States is very different. The first half of the book, which deals with Latin monasteries, is arranged in accordance with the Rules followed in monasteries. Separate chapters deal with the different foundations of the Augustinian Canons Regular; Premonstratensians; hermits; monasteries and convents for women following the Rule of Benedict; communities inspired by the eleventh-century Italian reform; and Cistercians. The mendicant orders in the Crusader States in the thirteenth century – the Carmelites, Franciscans and Dominicans – are then considered in turn. Finally, a separate chapter considers two Antiochene monasteries whose rite is uncertain. We do not discuss the churches of the military orders, a specific development of the crusader settlement, which have already been well described by others in their studies of the Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic orders and other minor orders such as that of St Thomas of Canterbury; nor the work of the minor orders which ran hospitals, such as St Ivo at Acre.4 The intention is to provide as full as possible a history of each of the monastic communities from an institutional perspective. Particular emphasis, as provided by the nature of the sources, is laid on the extent of monastic property ownership and the roles of the abbots and other members of the communities in the ecclesiastical and political life of the Crusader States. A word should also be said about gender. Some monasteries were founded for women by the Western settlers; indeed, some of the most significant monastic communities were women’s convents. The same was not true of Greek Orthodox monasticism in the regions covered by this book. Although monasteries for women are a feature of the cenobitic reform of eleventhand twelfth-century Byzantium, and although some convents for women functioned throughout the period in the Levant, most of the evidence concerns monks and their

4

M.-T. Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae Domus Militiae Templi Hierosolymitani Magistri. Untersuchungen der Geschichte des Tempelordens 1118/19–1314, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse, series 3, 86 (Göttingen, 1974); J. S. Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus 1050–1310 (London, 1967); Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070–1309 (London, 2012); M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, Studien zur Frühgeschichte des Deutschen Ordens, Kieler Historische Studien 21 (Stuttgart, 1974); N. Morton, The Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, 1190–1291 (Woodbridge, 2009); A. J. Forey, ‘The Order of Mountjoy’, Speculum 46 (1971), 250–66.

4

Introduction

communities. It remains, unfortunately, difficult to write comprehensively about women religious in the Crusader States. The types of evidence for Latin monasticism are varied, but fall mostly into two categories: charters and deeds recording the ownership of property and jurisdictional rights; and papal documents recording judgements or confirming rights and privileges. In addition, considerable evidence is provided by pilgrimage accounts and contemporary narrative chronicles dealing with specific crusades or the history of the Crusader States. Inevitably, there is considerable disparity in the availability and survival of sources. Some communities, principally the Holy Sepulchre5 and Our Lady of Josaphat, are well documented because their cartularies have been preserved. Material on the Mt Tabor monastery is found now in the archive of the Knights of St John in Malta; the Knights took over the house and its documents in the thirteenth century. Other foundations, however, are more randomly documented, and a particular problem is raised by the monasteries in the Principality of Antioch where the general level of documentation of any kind is sparse. For the thirteenth century, two bodies of material are particularly important as sources for monastic foundations: the papal registers and the archive of the Knights of St John. Written evidence can be supplemented for many foundations by archaeology. All of the monasteries and churches in the Kingdom of Jerusalem have been fully examined by Denys Pringle, and his archaeological corpus is cited extensively in the footnotes as the most authoritative guide to the building history and the evidence that it can supply.6 Similarly, much of the surviving ecclesiastical art from the crusader period has been studied by Jaroslav Folda and others. We have not attempted to duplicate evidence which they have already dealt with magisterially.7 The topographical coverage of this study is determined by the survival of source material. The majority of foundations were in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, though some lay in the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch. None were in the County of Edessa, so although this region lay under Latin domination for parts of the period, it is scarcely covered in this book. Cyprus, however, plays an important role. Some Orthodox monasteries, such as St Sabas, had landed interests on the island throughout the period, and monks and monasteries from the Holy Land and Syria were in close touch with Cypriot foundations. Latin monasteries, likewise, founded dependent communities in Cyprus after 1191. The history of daughter houses of communities on the Frankish mainland which were established in Cyprus has been considered here, but not new Latin foundations made in Cyprus under Frankish rule, because these have already been fully examined in studies by Nicholas Coureas.8 The evidence available for Orthodox monasticism is very different in nature. The second half of this book has, therefore, been written along quite different lines to the first half. Unlike the situation for Latin monasteries, it is impossible to identify or say very much 5

6 7

8

The term Anastasis is used to refer to the church built by Constantine in the fourth century and destroyed in 1009; subsequently it is referred to as the church of the Holy Sepulchre. D. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–2009). J. Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge, 1995), and Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge, 2005). N. Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312 (Aldershot, 1997), and The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1313–1378, Cyprus Research Centre Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus LXV (Nicosia, 2010); see also C. Schabel, ‘Religion’, in A. Nicolaou-Konnari and C. Schabel, eds., Cyprus: Society and Culture 1191–1374 (Leiden, 2005), 157–218.

Introduction

5

about the important personnel in the major monasteries, still less to reconstruct in anything other than the most anecdotal fashion landholding or property owned by the Orthodox monasteries. Whereas charter collections, chronicles and papal registers form the main sources of evidence for Latin monastic communities, they have very little to say about Orthodox monasteries except in cases where Latin ecclesiastical or legal governance touched on their activities. The main sources for Orthodox monasteries are pilgrimage accounts, both Latin and Orthodox, in which monasteries are described, the typika or founders’ Rules of new and revived monasteries, hagiographical literature, and the surviving body of manuscripts produced in the monasteries. The second half of the book is therefore organised in such a way as to utilise these sources to their best advantage, in four main chapters. Some important principles of selection in terms of coverage and chronological range have been observed. As should be apparent from what has already been noted above, the date 1095 is of less significance in writing about Orthodox monasticism than Latin, because it does not mark a new beginning in quite the same way. Indeed the 960s, which saw the period of renewed Byzantine control over northern Syria, and 1009, the date of the destruction of Constantine’s Anastasis Church by al-Hakim, or the incursion of the Seljuqs in the mid-eleventh century, mark more significant starting points for a study of Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land in the central Middle Ages. Without taking either of these as a single opening date, this book considers evidence from the eleventh century as part of the same phenomena being discussed as that from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Although Cyprus became part of the Crusader States only in 1191, it was a Byzantine province before that, and the relationship between Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land and Cyprus can be witnessed from at least as early as the late eleventh century. For this reason this study will consider Cypriot monasteries that pre-date 1191. The geographical scope of the second half of the book is even wider than this: one Orthodox monastery outside the Crusader States, St John on Patmos, has been included as evidence for the themes discussed in the book. This is because its founder, Christodoulos, not only learned his monastic profession in the Holy Land, but also consciously exported many of the principles for his foundation on Patmos from his experiences as a monk at St Sabas in the first half of the eleventh century. Likewise, where the histories of Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States intersect with or can best be explained in reference to careers or foundations outside that region, similar geographical liberties have been taken. It would not have been possible to organise the chapters on Orthodox monasticism so as to correspond with the first half of the book, because in the Orthodox tradition there were no divisions into different Rules or categories of Rules. For this reason, different organisational principles are followed. The first chapter in this section provides a survey of known Orthodox monasteries in existence in the Crusader States, including Cyprus, between c. 1050 and the early fourteenth century. The emphasis is on evidence for the circumstances of foundation, longevity and the sources of our knowledge. Subsequent chapters provide a thematic analysis of Orthodox monasticism in the Crusader States. The broad division of themes into the institutional workings, spirituality and textual activities of the monasteries offers a cross-section of Orthodox monastic life. The chapter on institutional life analyses

6

Introduction

the internal governance of monasteries, their running of property, provision of accommodation, diet and non-liturgical practices. The evidence is largely taken from the founders’ typika, supplemented in the case of some monasteries where such information is available by the observations of pilgrims or visitors.9 This, of necessity, means that the discussion is based on those monasteries for which typika survive. Unlike in the Western monastic tradition, Orthodox monasteries generally followed Rules drawn up by their founders and, although most founders drew on established traditions in composing typika, no two are quite alike: they differ in length, quantity and type of detail, and the degree of information regarding the circumstances of foundation. Since most typika were written for new foundations, the weight of evidence for this chapter comes from new monasteries with founders who paid particular attention to the details of institutional life, notably Nikon’s two monasteries in northern Syria, the Black Mountain and Roidion,10 the two Cypriot foundations of Makhairas and the Enkleistra,11 and Christodoulos’ monastery of St John on Patmos.12 In so far as founders’ typika also deal with liturgical life and practices, this body of material also provides some evidence for the character of spirituality of Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States. Fuller evidence, however, comes from hagiographical material and the writings of the monks themselves. The chapter on spiritual life examines the evidence for the development and nature of liturgical observances in monasteries in Jerusalem and their influence on other monasteries in the Crusader States. The relationship between liturgy and contemplation is also discussed, followed by sections on other themes in monastic spirituality: death and commemoration, demonic possession, labour and discipline, the relationship between cenobitic and solitary living, sexuality, and the miraculous. A final section discusses the place of the Holy Land itself in the characteristic spirituality of Orthodox monasticism in the eastern Mediterranean. The themes themselves arise from the textual evidence of founders’ legislation, biographical detail provided by founders or their biographers, and hagiographical and instructive literature deriving from the monasteries. The final chapter in this section of the book examines the textual evidence of the monasteries: the types of manuscript read, copied and authored in the monasteries, and the nature and extent of translation, compilation and original writing by Orthodox monks in the Crusader States. Such relationships between monasteries as can be discerned from codicological and textual study of the manuscripts, and the circumstances of manuscript production, are also discussed. Although much of the evidence used in this book comes from known and published sources, this information has never been assembled in one place before. There are some 9 10

11

12

BMFD; C. Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika: a comparative study’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 45 (1987), 77–138. Black Mountain: Regulations of Nikon of the Black Mountain, trans. R. Allison, BMFD No. 20, pp. 377–424; Roidion: Typikon of Nikon of the Black Mountain for the Monastery and Hospice of the Mother of God Tou Roidiou, trans. R. Allison, BMFD No. 21, pp. 424–59. Foundation Rules of Medieval Cypriot Monasteries: Makhairas and St Neophytos, trans. N. Coureas, Cyprus Research Centre Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus XLVI (Nicosia, 2003); Machairas: Rule of Neilos, Bishop of Tamasia, for the Monastery of the Mother of God of Machairas in Cyprus, trans. A. Bandy, BMFD No. 34, pp. 1107–75; Neophytos: Testamentary Rule of Neophytos for the Hermitage of the Holy Cross near Ktima in Cyprus, trans. C. Galatariotou, BMFD No. 45, pp. 1338–73. Christodoulos: Rule, Testament and Codicil of Christodoulos for the Monastery of St John the Theologian on Patmos, trans. P. Karlin-Hayter, BMFD No. 24, pp. 578–94, 594–601.

Introduction

7

excellent studies of individual monasteries, but no overall survey of the range of monastic houses, and no attempt has been made to consider Latin and Orthodox monasticism side by side.13 As far as possible we have tried to present a comprehensive study of monasticism, but it is in the nature of historical research that new material comes to light and new interpretations are developed. We hope that this book will serve to stimulate future research and to shape new considerations of religious life and culture in the medieval eastern Mediterranean.

13

H. E. Mayer, Bistümer, Klöster und Stifte im Königreich Jerusalem (Stuttgart, 1977).

Part I Latin Monasticism

1 The Latin Presence in the Levant before 1097

The Western Church and the Orthodox Hierarchy In the early Christian centuries the Latin Church of the West had formed part of a single communion with the Orthodox Churches of the East. The most important religious leaders in the lands which later came to form the Crusader States were the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem.1 Together with the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople and the pope of Rome they accepted the authority of the seven oecumenical councils.2 At Antioch in the sixth century two hierarchies developed, that of the Orthodox Church which was in communion with the Byzantine patriarchate of Constantinople, and that of the Syrian Orthodox Church, often called the Jacobite Church after its early leader, Jacob Baradaeus, which did not accept the Council of Chalcedon and was not in communion with the Byzantine Greeks.3 In Jerusalem the office of patriarch was not contested: the Orthodox Church there remained in communion with the Byzantine Church. The Orthodox patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem had canonical jurisdiction over Latin Christians who visited their lands or settled in them. There was no barrier to communication between the Eastern and Western Churches before the Arab conquest of Syria and Palestine in the seventh century. The Arab rulers granted religious toleration to all their Christian subjects, but the Orthodox in communion with the Church of the Byzantine Empire became known to the Arabs as Melkites, ‘the emperor’s men’. During the first century of Arab rule the caliphs did not allow the Melkite patriarchs to live in Antioch, because they regarded them as Byzantine agents. Those patriarchs nevertheless continued to be appointed, but lived in exile in Constantinople until 742 when Caliph Hisham allowed Stephen III to return to Antioch. No restrictions were placed on the rest of the Melkite hierarchy of Antioch, while the Melkite patriarchs of Jerusalem were allowed to live in the city throughout the years following the Arab conquest because the caliphs did not consider them a political threat.4 1

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The pre-eminence of Antioch in Christian Asia had been recognised by the Council of Nicaea in 325; Jerusalem had been given patriarchal status by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), Nicaea II (680). After 680 the Maronite patriarch, whose followers did not accept the authority of the Third Council of Constantinople, also claimed to be lawful patriarch of Antioch. In 836 the patriarch of Jerusalem convened a synod in Jerusalem, in which the patriarch of Antioch also participated, to discuss the question of iconoclasm (PG 95: 346–85).

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As a result of the Arab conquests, the Mediterranean became a frontier between the Arab Empire and the Christian states of eastern and western Europe. Warfare between the two polities was common, which made regular communication between the Western Church and the Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch difficult. At oecumenical councils papal legates were present, as were representatives of the four Eastern patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, but only two councils of that kind met between the rise of Islam and the First Crusade: the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–1 and the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. It is also possible that representatives of Pope Sergius III met with those of the three oriental patriarchs in Constantinople in 907 to consider the validity of Emperor Leo VI’s fourth marriage.5 Formal relations, when possible, were maintained on a more regular basis. The popes and the four Eastern patriarchs advised each other of their elections, by sending systatic letters to each of their colleagues. A letter of this kind announced the writer’s appointment and was accompanied by a profession of faith (normally consisting of a text of the Nicene Creed). The name of the new prelate was then inserted in the diptychs of the other four patriarchal sees.6 It was not always possible to follow this procedure because of the hazards of travel in the Mediterranean world. Communications between Rome and Constantinople always remained open, but at times the papacy could communicate with the Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem only by using the Byzantine patriarch as an intermediary. Communications between Rome and Antioch became easier after 969 when the city was conquered by the Byzantines. The patriarchs of Jerusalem found other means of communicating regularly with the West, which will be considered later in this chapter. Byzantine sources relate that the Church of Constantinople refused to accept the profession of faith contained in the systatic letter sent by Pope Sergius IV (1009–12) to Patriarch Sergius II because it contained the uncanonical addition of the filioque to the Nicene Creed.7 Constantinople’s lead seems to have been followed by the other Eastern patriarchs, for when Peter III became patriarch of Antioch in 1052 he sent news of his appointment to Pope Leo IX, asking him in return to send a profession of faith to Antioch, where the pope had not been commemorated in the diptychs for thirty years.8 This restoration of harmony did not last long, for in 1054 Cardinal Humbert, the legate of Leo IX, excommunicated Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Michael and his synod condemned this action, broke off relations with the Latin Church, and informed the three Eastern patriarchs about what had 5

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Leo appealed to the pope and the other patriarchs when the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas the Mystic, declined to sanction the marriage: Nicolai Epistolae, XXXII, PG 111: 200–1, 204–6, 212; F. Dvornik, Byzance et la Primauté romaine (Paris, 1964), 112. Diptychs were tablets placed on the altar listing the leaders of the Church throughout the world who should be commemorated in the liturgy. Nicetas of Nicaea, De schismate Grecorum: PG 120: 717–18; on the role of the filioque in the schism between Sergius II and Sergius IV, see A. E. Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford, 2010), 112–13; S. Runciman, The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Oxford, 1955), 33; Dvornik, Byzance et la Primauté romaine, 114–15; see however M. Jugie, Le schisme byzantin (Paris, 1941), 166–7, for a contrary view. Runciman, Eastern Schism, 63–4; see also Peter’s correspondence with Dominic, Patriarch of Venice (PG 120: 755–82), which prompted the intervention of Michael Cerularius.

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happened.9 Peter of Antioch’s reply to Michael shows that he did not attach great importance to this dispute: the Latins, he maintained, were our brothers, even if their rusticity, ignorance and attachment to their own way of thinking made them prone to error. Their very barbarism excused their want of precision in understanding correct teaching, which for this reason should not be enforced on them in the same way as on the Orthodox. Surely the most important point is that they hold the right faith concerning the mystery of the life-giving Trinity and the Incarnation.10 In the last resort, however, Peter of Antioch was a Byzantine citizen, and his brother-patriarch of Jerusalem, though living under Muslim rule, relied on imperial protection, and neither would act independently of the Byzantine patriarchate.The events of 1054 did not mark a significant break in relations between the Latin Church and the Orthodox Eastern Churches. The papacy had frequent diplomatic contacts with the Byzantine emperors over the next thirty-five years, and relations between the Churches remained much as they had been in the forty years before 1054: there was a formal schism, but it does not seem to have been taken very seriously by either side, or to have been expected to last.11 It was not until the reign of Urban II (1088–99) that this issue was addressed by the papacy. In 1089 the pope sent an embassy to Constantinople led by Roger, Cardinal Archbishop of Reggio, and the Greek abbot, Nicholas of Grottaferrata, asking for full religious communion to be restored between their two Churches. Patriarch Nicholas III (1084–1111) welcomed this initiative, but recommended that a synod attended by the pope should be held at Constantinople to discuss the differences between their two Churches before Urban’s name was inserted into the diptychs of the Byzantine Church. The correspondence breaks off at that point, so it is not known what further steps towards unity may have been taken, though the holding of a new synod was certainly not among them.12 Nevertheless, the correspondence makes clear that Urban II and Nicholas III regarded each other as members of a single Church, even though there were some points of doctrine and practice about which clarification was needed. These attitudes had not changed when the First Crusade reached the Levant in 1097. The Turks had conquered Antioch from the Byzantines in 1085, but had allowed a new patriarch appointed by Alexios I Komnenos to live in the city. He was John IV, formerly a monk of Oxeia, who took up office between 1088 and 1091.13 He was recognised as lawful canonical authority by Bishop Adhemar, Urban II’s legate, who restored him to power after the crusade captured Antioch in 1098 and accepted that he had authority over all the Latin as well as Orthodox clergy in his

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C. J. C. Will, ed., Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant (Leipzig, 1861), 150–1; J. Ryder, ‘Changing perspectives on 1054’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011), 20–37; T. Kolbaba, ‘1054 revisited: response to Ryder’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011), 38–44. See Michaelis Cerularii Patriarchae Epistolae, PG 120: 795–816, for Peter’s response to Cerularius; discussed by T. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins (Urbana, IL, 2000), 92–9. See n. 10; B. Whalen, ‘Rethinking the schism of 1054: authority, heresy, and the Latin rite’, Traditio 62 (2007), 1–24. On wider questions of authority between Rome and Constantinople, see M. Anastos, ‘Constantinople and Rome’, in S. Vryonis and N. Goodhue, eds., Aspects of the Mind of Byzantium: Political Theory, Theology and Ecclesiastical Relations with the See of Rome (Aldershot, 2001), 1–119. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Gregorian papacy, Byzantium and the First Crusade’, Byzantinische Forschungen 13 (1988), 145–69. P. Gautier, ‘Jean l’Oxite, patriarch d’Antioche. Notice biographique’, REB 22 (1964), 128–57.

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patriarchate.14 The Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem at that time was Symeon II (1092–9) who may have been the author of a treatise against the Latin use of unleavened bread in the eucharist,15 but in Western tradition he was portrayed as friendly to the Latins. According to Albert of Aachen, Symeon II had entrusted to Peter the Hermit, who had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the early 1090s, a letter for Urban II, appealing for help against the Artuqid Turks who ruled the city at that time. This story, which assigns a central role in the launching of the First Crusade to Peter the Hermit, is generally viewed with reserve by scholars, though it has been defended by Colin Morris and Ernest Blake.16 Certainly the persecution of the Christian population of Jerusalem about which the patriarch allegedly complained appears to have been genuine, because before the First Crusade reached Syria Symeon and his clergy had taken refuge in Byzantine Cyprus.17 Symeon is associated with the crusade leaders in two letters sent to the West: one in October 1097, urging those who had taken the Cross but not yet set out to do so immediately; the other in January 1098, sent in the name of Symeon and all the bishops, both Greek and Latin, to the faithful of the West, threatening those crusaders who had not fulfilled their vows with excommunication.18 Whether these letters are genuine or not, it seems very probable that during the siege of Antioch Bishop Adhemar would have made contact with Symeon in Cyprus, while according to the chronicler Bernold of St Blasien, he recognised Symeon as canonical patriarch of Jerusalem, and intended to restore him to his see.19 There is no evidence that Urban II was intending to replace the Orthodox hierarchy in Antioch and Jerusalem with Latins, although that is what happened after his death. Despite this, Pope Urban influenced the religious settlement in the Crusader States, in so far as the rulers followed precedents which he had established in the former Byzantine lands of southern Italy and Sicily when they had come under the rule of Catholic princes.20

Western Pilgrimage to and Knowledge of the Holy Land Jerusalem became a Christian pilgrimage centre after 325 when Constantine the Great endowed three shrine churches there: the Anastasis, which commemorated Christ’s death and Resurrection, the Holy Nativity at Bethlehem in honour of his birth, and the Eleona on the Mount of Olives which commemorated his teaching. Helena Augusta, Constantine’s mother, went to the Holy Land from Rome in 327. She was almost eighty years old, and 14

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Patriarcham . . . decenter in cathedra sua relocaverunt, et principem Antiochene ecclesie cum omni subiectione et religione prefecerunt: AA V, 1, p. 336. J. Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani im Palästina der Kreuzfahrerzeit. Beiträge und Quellen zur Geschichte des griechischorthodoxen Patriarchats von Jerusalem, Berliner Historische Studien, Ordensstudien XV (Berlin, 2001), 46–60; B. Leib, ‘Deux inédits byzantins sur les azymes au début du XIIe siècle’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 9 (1924), 85–107. AA I, 2–5, pp. 2–8; E. O. Blake and C. Morris, ‘A hermit goes to war: Peter and the origins of the First Crusade’, in W. J. Shiels, ed., Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition, SCH 22 (Oxford, 1985), 79–107; J. Flori, ‘Faut-il réhabiliter Pierre l’Ermite?’, Cahiers de civilisation médievale 38 (1995), 35–54. AA VI, 39, p. 452. H. Hagenmeyer, ed., Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1901), 141–2, 146–9. Bernoldi Chronicon, ed. G. Pertz, MGH (SS), V (Hanover, 1844), V, p. 466. G. A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge, 2007), 214–16, 494–512.

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although she had official duties to perform in Jerusalem, notably the overseeing of her son’s building programme and the arrangement of suitable endowments for the new churches, the primary purpose of her visit was religious. Constantine’s biographer, Eusebius, says that she wished to pray at those places where Christ’s feet had touched the ground.21 This motive remained constant among Western pilgrims. Writing almost 800 years later, the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum related how those who took the Cross in 1095–6 ‘all said that they wished to follow in the footsteps of Christ, by whom they had been redeemed from the pains of Hell’.22 Between the fourth and the seventh centuries large numbers of Western people went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and many of them stayed in the Levant to explore other biblical sites which extended from Sinai to Edessa. The only barrier was the frontier between the Roman and Persian Empires, which they seldom crossed. The Arab conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt in the seventh century did not put an end to Western pilgrimage. The Arab rulers had no ideological objection to this expression of Christian piety, but pilgrims did face considerable practical difficulties. The land routes from western Europe to the Levant became unusable because of the presence of hostile and largely pagan peoples in the Balkans. There was also almost constant warfare in eastern Anatolia between the Byzantines and the Arabs, which made it difficult to travel from Asia Minor into Syria. Moreover, there was an ongoing struggle between the Arab and Christian powers for control of the Mediterranean which made travel to the Levant by sea very dangerous. In addition, although the Arab authorities had no objection to Christian pilgrims in principle, they did require them to obtain official permits to travel in Islamic territory, and these were expensive.23 As a result of these difficulties the number of Western pilgrims who visited Jerusalem between c. 650 and c. 950 was substantially reduced. In the second half of the tenth century a change took place in the circumstances of travel from western Europe to the Near East. The conversion of the Bulgars in the late ninth century and of the Magyars about a century later made it possible to reach Constantinople from the west by land. It was also possible to cross the Adriatic from one of the ports of Apulia in southern Italy and to travel along the Via Egnatia to the Byzantine capital. In 961 the Byzantines recaptured Crete from the Arabs, and this was followed by their recovery of Cyprus, Cilicia and a substantial part of northern Syria, including Antioch, by 969, reinforced by further campaigns of Emperor Basil II in 999. In 1001 a treaty was made between Basil II and the Fatimid caliph by which the frontier between the two powers was fixed to the south of Latakia in Syria.24 It was then possible for Western pilgrims to travel from their homes to the Fatimid border without leaving Christian territory. Not only did the Jerusalem journey become less hazardous after c. 950, but more Western people wished to undertake it. There was an increase in penitential pilgrimage which was 21 22 23

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Eusebius, Vita Constantini, ed. F. Winkelmann (Berlin, 1875), III, 42, p. 101. Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, trans. R. Hill (London, 1962), I, i, p. 2. For a comparison of pre- and post-Arab conquest experiences, see O. Limor, ‘Pilgrims and authors: Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and Hugeburc’s Hodoeporicon sancti Willibaldi’, Revue Bénédictine 114 (2004), 253–75. Yahya ibn Sa‘id, Histoire de Yahya Ibn-Sa‘id d’Antioche, ed. I. Kratchkovski and A. Vasiliev, 3 vols., PO 23 (Paris, 1936), 458–9; on the wider strategic questions of conflict, see F. Wesam, ‘The Aleppo question: a Byzantine–Fatimid conflict of interests in northern Syria in the later tenth century AD’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 14 (1990), 44–60.

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enjoined by the monastic reformers at Cluny and elsewhere on some of their more violent noble penitents. Robert I of Normandy, for example, did penance by walking barefoot from Rouen to Jerusalem, though he died at Nicaea in 1035 on his return journey as a result of the rigours of this discipline.25 There was also an increase in devotion to the humanity of Christ among devout Western Christians, and this focused attention on the places where he had lived on earth. The biographer of St Altmann of Passau describes how the bishop ‘set forth to visit the earthly Jerusalem in which the Redeemer of mankind mercifully accomplished the work of our salvation’.26 The completion of the first Christian millennium also led to some apocalyptic speculation, although the importance of this should not be exaggerated. There was a quite widely held belief that the Second Coming of Christ would take place in a year when Good Friday fell on Lady Day, 25 March. Since it was generally believed that he would return to the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, the site of his Ascension, some people wished to be there to greet him. Thus in 1064 some 7,000 German pilgrims, led by four bishops, set out to keep Holy Week in Jerusalem in 1065 when Good Friday would fall on March 25.27 After 1071, when the Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantine field army at Manzikert, Turkish emirs occupied much of Anatolia and Syria and took Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1075. The breakdown in public order which ensued during these long wars made the pilgrim routes unsafe, and it was this, rather than any ideological antagonism on the part of the Turks, which caused a decline in the number of Western pilgrims visiting the Holy Land during the last quarter of the eleventh century. There was never a complete cessation: Robert I of Flanders, for example, went to Jerusalem in 1091.28 It is probably true that most educated Western clergy, although they did not go on pilgrimage to the Levant, were interested in the Holy Land because a topographical knowledge of it was needed to understand the texts of the Old and New Testaments. They could obtain some information from returning pilgrims, but they also had written sources to consult. The most detailed of these was St Jerome’s Liber Locorum, a Latin translation, with some editorial changes, of the Onomasticon written in Greek by Eusebius of Caesarea, between 315 and 325. This was, in effect, a gazetteer of the places mentioned in the Bible, but it was not complete and Eusebius was far more interested in the topography of the Old Testament than in that of the New. Jerome’s translation was not easy to use, because he preserved Eusebius’ arrangement of place-names under the letters of the Greek alphabet. This was confusing to a reader with no knowledge of Greek (which was true of most of Jerome’s readers in the early Middle Ages), for although the two alphabets were similar they were not identical, and the letters were not arranged in the same order. For example, Z (zeta) is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, and in Greek there are two forms of the letter E (epsilon and eta), though no distinction is made between them in Latin. Since this text 25

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Radulfus Glaber, Rodolfi Glabri Historiarum libri quinque, ed. J. France, in Radulfus Glabri Opera, ed. J. France, N. Bulst and P. Reynolds (Oxford, 1989), IV, 20, pp. 202–5. Vita Altmanni episcopi Pataviensis, ed. G. Pertz, MGH (SS), XII (Hanover, 1856), 230. M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, ‘The German empire and Palestine: German pilgrimages to Jerusalem between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries’, Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995), 321–41. On Western monastic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, see D. Callahan, ‘Jerusalem in the monastic imaginations of the early eleventh century’, Haskins Society Journal 6 (1995), 119–27. On the background and significance of Robert’s pilgrimage, see J. Shepard, ‘Cross-purposes: Alexius Comnenus and the First Crusade’, in J. Phillips, ed., The First Crusade: Origins and Impact (Manchester, 1996), 107–29.

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gave very little information about the New Testament, which was of considerable interest to Western medieval scholars, it was not widely used by them. The most popular work on the topography of the Holy Land read in the West in that period was Bede’s Libellus de locis sanctis, written in 702–3. Bede based his work on the De locis sanctis of Adomnán, Abbot of Iona, written in the late 680s. Adomnán claimed that his information was derived from Arculf, a bishop from Gaul, who had visited the Holy Land and returned home by way of Iona. As Thomas O’Loughlin has cogently argued, Arculf may have been a literary invention: certainly the information which Bede gives about his journey to Iona seems extremely implausible. O’Loughlin argues that Adomnán’s text, and therefore that of Bede, is a general account of what was known about the Holy Places at Iona and Jarrow in the late seventh century.29 Bede’s account was more widely read than Adomnán, probably because his Latin was more accessible. He describes the Holy Places of Jerusalem and its environs, including the church of the Holy Nativity at Bethlehem. He then writes of the shrines of Hebron to the south of Jerusalem, those at the southern end of the Jordan valley, and the Dead Sea, and goes on to describe the religious sites of Samaria, the Sea of Galilee and the nearby shrines, together with Nazareth, and Mt Tabor, scene of Christ’s Transfiguration. His work concludes with brief descriptions of Damascus, of Alexandria in Egypt, site of the burial of St Mark, and finally of Constantinople. Bede’s work was still being read at the time of the First Crusade, although it was becoming more and more out-of-date. Nevertheless, it was important because it kept awareness of the Holy Places alive in a wide range of Western clergy and through them of Western laity in the centuries following the Arab conquests.

Latin Foundations in the Holy Land Because the Western Church and the Orthodox Churches of the East formed part of a single communion in the early Middle Ages, there was no need to set up Latin churches in the Holy Land. Nevertheless, language was recognised as a problem, since the Orthodox in the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem had Greek liturgies. The Western pilgrim Egeria, who visited the Holy Places in 381–4, reports that in Jerusalem the Greek liturgy was normally simultaneously translated into Aramaic for the benefit of the local population, while extempore Latin translations were also made for the benefit of Western pilgrims.30 In the early centuries there were no special hostels in Jerusalem for Latin pilgrims. It was not until the late sixth century that a Roman abbot named Probus left money to endow a Latin hospice in the Holy City. This is known from a letter of Pope Gregory I (590–604) and Morris has rightly noted that although ‘it is often said that the pope himself was the founder of this hostel . . . in [his] letter [he] does not seem to be claiming responsibility for the undertaking’.31 This foundation is not mentioned in later sources and is generally 29

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T. O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the aftermath of the Arab conquest: the earliest Latin account’, in R. N. Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History, SCH 36 (Woodbridge, 2000), 78–89; T. O’Loughlin, ‘Adomnán and Arculf: the case of an expert witness’, Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1997), 127–46. Egeria, Egeria’s Travels, trans. J. Wilkinson (London, 1971), 146. Gregory I, Gregorii I papae Registrum Epistolarum, ed. L. M. Hartmann, 2 vols., MGH Epistolae II (repr. Berlin, 1957), Ep. XIII, 28, p. 393; C. Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West, from the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005), 47 n. 11.

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thought to have been destroyed by the Persians when they sacked Jerusalem as a reprisal for the revolt of 614. If this was so, then it had not been restored by 638 when the Arab conquest brought the Christian rebuilding programme to an abrupt halt. There was certainly an institutional Latin presence in Jerusalem in the early ninth century. Charlemagne received a request for alms from the patriarch of Jerusalem and in response sent envoys to draw up detailed estimates of the financial needs of the Christian communities there. On their return to the West they drew up three assessments which they presented to the emperor in 810: Breve Commemoratorii de illis casis Dei vel monasteriis qui sunt in sancta civitate Hierusalem vel in circuitu eius; memoria de illis monasteriis quae sunt in extremis Hierusalem in terra promissionis; and a document of which only a fragment remains, headed Dispensa patriarchae. These documents are preserved in a ninth-century scroll in the University of Basle, and have recently been edited and translated with a detailed commentary by Michael McCormick.32 Two Latin communities are identified in this source. The first is described as a convent of twenty-six women, ‘of whom seventeen nuns who serve at the Holy Sepulchre come from the Empire of Lord Charles’. McCormick notes that it is unclear whether this was a new foundation or one which had survived from late antiquity.33 Presumably the nuns sang the Divine Office in Latin in one of the chapels of the basilica. There was also a Latin monastery in Jerusalem: ‘in the monastery of St Peter and St Paul at Besanteo alongside the Mount of Olives [there are] thirty-five monks’. In 807 two monks, Egilbald and Felix, chosen by Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem, were members of the embassy sent to Charlemagne by Harun al-Rashid.34 This community almost certainly owed its foundation to Charlemagne, as is implied in the appeal which the brethren made to Pope Leo III in 809. In that year the community, or some members of it, had celebrated midnight Mass in the Latin rite at the church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, but John, an Orthodox monk from St Sabas, had tried forcibly to evict them from the basilica because they had included the filioque clause in the creed. As they told the pope, they sang the creed in the way in which they had heard it sung in the palace chapel at Aachen. The letter was signed by Dominic, presumably the abbot, Theodore, Arimond, Gregory, John, Leo ‘and all the community of the Mount of Olives’.35 In 826 Dominic, Abbot of the Mount of Olives, de partibus transmarinis attended the Synod of Ingelheim.36 It is possible that he had taken refuge in Europe after the destruction of his monastery during the civil wars which followed the death of Harun al-Rashid in 809. Certainly the community is mentioned in no later source. 32

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M. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land: Wealth, Personnel and Buildings of a Mediterranean Church between Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2011). McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 76–7, 206–7. Einhard, Vie de Charlemagne, ed. and trans. L. Halphen, 4th ed. (Paris, 1967), XVI, XXVII, pp. 46–8, 78; Annales Regni Francorum, ed. F. Kurze, MGH (SS), VI (Hanover, 1844), 108, 110. The monk from the Mount of Olives who formed part of the embassy sent to Charlemagne by Patriarch Zacharias in 799 might have been an Orthodox monk, not a member of the Latin community. D. Callahan, ‘The problem of the “filioque” and the letter from the pilgrim monks of the Mount of Olives to Pope Leo III and Charlemagne’, Revue Bénédictine 102 (1992), 131–3. Mansi XIV, p. 493.

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Later sources claim that Charlemagne also endowed a hospice in Jerusalem for Western pilgrims. It is possible that this was attached to the Latin convent which served the Holy Sepulchre. Bernard the Monk, who, with his companions, went on pilgrimage in the 860s, reported: [In Jerusalem] we stayed in the hospice of the most glorious emperor Charles. All those who come to Jerusalem for reasons of devotion and who speak the Roman language are given hospitality there. Beside it there is a church in honour of St Mary, and thanks to the emperor it has a splendid library and twelve mansions, with fields and vineyards and a garden in the valley of Jehosaphat. In front of this hospice is the forum.37

The hospice was presumably administered by the ‘Hospitallers’ mentioned in the Commemoratorium de casis Dei, and it was situated near the church of the Holy Sepulchre in approximately the same position as the later church of St Maria Latina.38 One consequence of the presence of Latin monks in Jerusalem was that the Orthodox patriarchs could use them as envoys to the papacy, and in this way they were able to establish regular links with the Western Church for the first time since the Arab conquest. In 881 Patriarch Elias III (878–907) sent the monks Rainard and Gispert to the West to seek alms for the churches of Jerusalem.39 A generation later Pope Benedict IV (900–3) licensed envoys sent by the same patriarch to solicit alms from western Europe in order to pay the ransoms of members of his curia held captive by the Muslim authorities.40 The importance of this development was twofold. First, a tradition of supporting the Holy Places with alms and sometimes with grants of property was established in the West almost 200 years before they passed under Latin rule. Secondly, Orthodox monks began to take part in these embassies, as well as Latin monks based in Jerusalem. Ralph Glaber records that, in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, ‘each year monks came to Rouen, even from the famous Mt Sinai in the East, and took back with them many presents of gold and silver for their communities’. He notes that Duke Richard II of Normandy (996–1026) was a particularly generous patron of the shrines in the Holy Land.41 In this way Western people, including many who did not go there on pilgrimage, had some contact with the Orthodox monasteries of the Holy Land, for a significant number of monks from the Near East did not merely visit but also settled in western Europe in the first half of the eleventh century.42 Notable among them was St Symeon of Trier, who played a major part in establishing the cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in the Western Church, and whose relics were taken back to the Holy Land by Godfrey of Bouillon when he went on the First Crusade.43 The community of St Mary’s at Jerusalem, who administered the Latin hospice, was still in existence in the late tenth century. In 993 the Marquis Hugh of Tuscany (post 961–1001) 37 38 41 42

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Bernard the Monk, in J. Wilkinson, trans., Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), ch. 10, 142. 39 40 Pringle, Churches no. 334, III, p. 236. RHGF vol. IX, 294. CICO Fontes I, p. 752. Radulfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, I, 21, p. 37. B. Hamilton and P. McNulty, ‘Orientale lumen et magistra latinitatis: Greek influences on Western monasticism, 900–1100’, in Le millénaire du Mont Athos, 963–1963. Etudes et mélanges (Chevetogne, 1963–4), I, 181–216. J. S. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), 30.

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and his wife Julitta gave estates at Aquapendente in southern Italy to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and ‘to the monks who are in Sta Maria Latina in Jerusalem, that they may receive the income which the Lord [Marquis] has given for the benefit of all the pilgrims who go to and return from the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord’. This property was to be administered by Warinus the abbot, and his kinsman Gi. Count Riant, who first drew attention to this document, argued that Warin was Guarinus, Abbot of Cuxa in the Pyrenees, and that Gi. was his cousin Gislebert, Count of Roussillon.44 Guarinus of Cuxa had certainly been to Jerusalem, and might therefore have been responsible for persuading Hugh to make this donation, but Riant’s suggestion remains conjectural. There seems no reason to doubt the validity of the document, even though it exists only in an eleventh-century copy and contains an error in dating, probably as a result of faulty transcription. Sta Maria Latina, which stood so near to the Holy Sepulchre, together with its conventual and hospice buildings, was almost certainly destroyed in 1009 when Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and of the other Christian churches in Jerusalem.45 The administrators of the Aquapendente benefaction seem to have diverted the funds to build a church in that estate dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre and to have transferred the endowment to it. For some years after 1009 there was no institutional Latin presence in Jerusalem, but at some time before his death in 1038 King Stephen I of Hungary endowed a hospice there for Hungarian pilgrims. It seems only to have had a brief existence, although it was refounded in the twelfth century. Its location is unknown.46 William of Tyre relates that in the reign of Caliph al-Mustansir (1036–94) the citizens of Amalfi built a monastery in Jerusalem which was known as ‘de Latina’. It stood within a stone’s throw of the Holy Sepulchre. The community then built a hospice for the use of Latin pilgrims, which had a chapel dedicated to St John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria (d. c. 616). A convent dedicated to St Mary Magdalene was also founded nearby.47 Jonathan Riley-Smith is probably correct in suggesting that the Amalfitan foundation occupied the site of the monastery and hospice of the same name, Sta Maria Latina, destroyed by Caliph Hakim, but no archaeological evidence supporting this view has yet been found.48 In the eleventh century the south Italian maritime city of Amalfi was ruled by patricians who were subjects of the Byzantine emperors. Caliph al-Mustansir gave permission to Emperor Michael IV (1034–41) to rebuild the church of the Anastasis at his own expense, and the historian John Skylitzes, writing soon after 1057, says that this work was completed before Michael’s death in 1041.49 The Amalfitans, who were Byzantine subjects and Latin-rite Christians, received permission from the same caliph to rebuild the Latin monastery and hospice in the city. It is not known precisely when 44

45 46

47 49

P. Riant, ‘La donation de Hugues, marquis de Toscane, au Saint-Sépulchre et les établissements latins de Jérusalem au Xe siècle’, Mémoires de l’Institut National de France: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 31.2 (1884), 151–95. Adhemar of Chabannes, Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain, CCCM 129 (Turnhout, 1999), III.47, 166–7. Vita S. Stephani regis Ungariae, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH (SS), XI (Hanover, 1854), 227–35; Pringle, Churches no. 361, III, pp. 380–1. 48 WT XVIII, 5, pp. 815–17. Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 34–5; Pringle, Churches no. 334, III, p. 236. R. Ousterhout, ‘Rebuilding the temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 48 (1989), 66–78.

The Latin Presence in the Levant before 1097

21

this happened, but it must have been while the city was still under Fatimid rule, before the Turkish general Atsiz bin Awaq seized control there in 1073. Although his Turkmen followers were not used to living alongside Christians and did not treat the Christians of Jerusalem well, Sta Maria Latina and the adjacent convent and hospice survived their rule and were still functioning when the First Crusade entered the city in 1099.

2 The Austin Canons

The Austin Canons of the Holy Sepulchre The church called by the Orthodox the Anastasis, or church of the Resurrection, and by the Latins the church of the Holy Sepulchre, was the most sacred shrine in the Christian world, venerated by members of all the Churches of East and West. The first church on that site had been built under the patronage of Emperor Constantine I (d. 337), and the design of that complex influenced all later developments there. The Christian community of Jerusalem in 325 had identified the traditional sites of Christ’s Crucifixion and burial: the first was a freestanding pinnacle of rock, believed to be Mt Calvary, the second a cave tomb in a nearby hillside, believed to be the site of Christ’s burial and Resurrection.1 Both sites were incorporated into Constantine’s shrine church. A basilica, known as the Martyrion, the church of Witness, was built to the east of Calvary. Contrary to normal custom, this was oriented from east to west, so that the altar was at the west rather than the east end. Doors at the west end of the side aisles opened into a rectangular courtyard, in the south-east corner of which was the free-standing rock of Calvary. On the west side of the courtyard was the cave tomb. Constantine’s masons cut the cave free from the hillside and enclosed the burial chamber in a rotunda with an entrance in the courtyard. This was the central shrine of the new complex. In the late fourth century an excavation in the crypt of the Martyrion revealed what was claimed to be the cross on which Christ had been crucified. This was later enclosed in a reliquary of gold and jewels and displayed on the summit of the rock of Calvary where it was venerated by pilgrims.2 As Martin Biddle has pointed out, there is no way of determining whether the church of the Holy Sepulchre really stands on the site of the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus. It is, indeed, difficult to envisage what evidence might be found to enable a secure identification of the site to be made, because neither the Jewish authorities nor the Roman procurators would have allowed an inscription to be placed there by the nascent Christian movement.3 All that can be asserted is that the site of the church is not incompatible with the accounts of Christ’s Passion in the Gospels. It is worth noting that all the evangelists state that Calvary was outside the walls of Jerusalem and that, as Kathleen Kenyon’s excavation showed, the site of the church of the Holy Sepulchre was indeed outside the walls in Jesus’ day, and the 1 2 3

The proximity of the two sites is attested in St John’s Gospel, 19: 41. J. W. Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, 1992). M. Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Stroud, 1999), 53–73.

22

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circuit of the walls was extended to include this site in the reign of Herod Agrippa (AD 40–4). The seeming conflict between the evidence of the Gospels and the site of the shrine was sometimes remarked upon by medieval pilgrims, but no Christian writer in the Middle Ages questioned the authenticity of the site.4 Constantine’s basilica was severely damaged on several occasions in the early Middle Ages, but it survived until 1009 when the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (996–1021) ordered all Christian churches and monasteries in his empire to be destroyed and gave special instructions that the church of the Holy Sepulchre should be totally demolished.5 Although attempts were made to carry out his command they were not entirely successful. The outer wall of the rotunda which Constantine had built round the cave tomb of Christ still survives to a height of ten metres, while the rock pinnacle of Calvary was not harmed at all. The cave tomb is now enclosed by a marble-clad edicule which was recently surveyed by Biddle. Although the church authorities have not yet given permission for the edicule to be dismantled so that an archaeological survey might be carried out on the site, Biddle made a photogrammetric survey of the edicule. This revealed that there are spaces between the inner and outer walls, large enough to contain parts of the original rock, and Biddle concluded: ‘the consideration of the evidence for the survival of the original rock-cut tombchamber found in 325–6 suggests that much of it still survives inside the edicule. In part it may even stand to the height of a man.’6 Al-Hakim’s successors did not share his hostility to Christianity and the Byzantine emperor Michael IV was allowed by Caliph al-Mustansir to rebuild the shrine. This work was carried out by Byzantine architects and craftsmen at imperial expense, and the historian John Skylitzes, writing soon after 1057, said that it had been completed before Michael IV’s death in 1041.7 No attempt was made to rebuild the Martyrion, the Constantinian basilica. Instead, the remains of the outer wall of Constantine’s rotunda, enclosing the shrine of Christ’s tomb, were incorporated in a huge new rotunda, which became the new Orthodox cathedral. It had a pillared gallery, and was surmounted by a wooden dome, which had a large circular hole in the centre, similar to that in the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, which symbolised the Resurrection of Christ. The remains of the cave tomb were enclosed in an edicule, clad in marble and surmounted by a silver-gilt dome, which stood in the centre of the new rotunda. At the east end of the rotunda was an apse, which formed the sanctuary of the cathedral. The Constantinian courtyard between the ruined Martyrion and the tomb shrine was reconstructed, and a range of chapels was built along its walls, the most important of which was the Calvary chapel, built round the pinnacle of rock in the southeast corner, which was thus enclosed for the first time. In addition a row of three chapels was built, attached to the south side of the cathedral: they occupied the western side of the parvis, or outer courtyard.8 4 5 6 7

8

K. M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem (London, 1974), 226–67. Yahya ibn Sa‘id, Histoire, 491–2; M. Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099, trans. E. Broido (Cambridge, 1992), 370–81. Biddle, Tomb of Christ, 109–37 (citation, 119). John Skylitzes, Synopsis Historiarum, Romanos III, ed. J. Thurn, Corpus Fontium Byzantinae 5, series Berolinensis (Berlin, 1973), c. 14, 377–8. C. Coüasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, trans. J.-P. B. Ross and C. Ross, Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1972 (London, 1974), 55–62, and Plate IX; Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, pp. 11–19.

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Figure 1 The Tomb of Christ, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images

This was the shrine which the Franks inherited when they captured Jerusalem in 1099. Unlike all the other shrine churches in the city, it was newly built, in good repair and furnished for Christian worship. The Orthodox patriarch, Symeon II, had taken refuge in Byzantine Cyprus together with his canons in order to escape from the Artuqid Turks who ruled Jerusalem from 1075 to 1098. This occurred at some time before the Franks captured Antioch. He did not accompany the crusade when it marched to Jerusalem in 1099, and Albert of Aachen reported that he had died in Cyprus at about the time that the city was captured.9 This is debatable: Johannes Pahlitzsch has drawn attention to the report in the first version of Fulcher of Chartres’ Chronicle that the Frankish leaders considered him the lawful patriarch while waiting for a ruling on this matter from the pope. When the legate Daibert of Pisa reached Jerusalem in December 1099 his decision to establish a Latin hierarchy there was accepted and he became the first Latin patriarch. Symeon therefore remained in Cyprus, where he died at some time before 1106–7, when a new Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, John VIII, is recorded.10 Between the capture of the city and Daibert’s arrival there, the crusade leaders entrusted the administration of the Church of Jerusalem to Arnulf of Chocques, the only surviving papal legate attached to the 9 10

AA VI, 39, p. 452. J. Pahlitzsch, ‘Symeon II und die Errichtung der Lateinischen Kirche von Jerusalem durch die Kreuzfahrer’, in K. Elm and C. D. Fonseca, eds., Militia Sancti Sepulcri: idea e istituzioni (Vatican City, 1998), 341–60.

The Austin Canons

25

First Crusade.11 Although he is sometimes referred to as patriarch, he was certainly not consecrated, but he nevertheless did exercise considerable power.12 The liturgical service of the Holy Sepulchre was considered a priority by Arnulf and Duke Godfrey, who had taken the title of Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre. Raymond of Aguilers, who was present in Jerusalem, reports that Arnulf sequestered the endowments of the clergy who served the church.13 Although the Greek canons had presumably accompanied Symeon II into exile in Cyprus, their duties would have been carried out by Syrian Orthodox priests, acting as their vicars. This income was used to endow a chapter of twenty secular Latin canons, whom Duke Godfrey is said to have appointed. They lived in houses near the shrine, and the duke had bells cast which were rung to summon them to sing the Divine Office.14 The decision to appoint a Latin patriarch in December 1099 completed the process whereby the administration of the Holy Sepulchre passed into Latin hands. No attempt seems to have been made to prevent either the Orthodox or members of the separated Eastern Churches from worshipping in the cathedral, but the performance of public cult there passed entirely into Latin hands. This monopoly did not last long. Large numbers of pilgrims from all over the Christian world went to Jerusalem each Eastertide, and for the Eastern Christians the climax of the Holy Week liturgy was the ceremony of the Holy Fire in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Some version of this ritual (in the Western Church the lighting of the Paschal candle) was observed throughout the Christian world to symbolise Christ’s Resurrection, but in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Resurrection was believed to have taken place, the candle was not lit with tinder and flint as it was elsewhere, but from a lamp hanging inside the shrine of the Sepulchre, which, it was believed, lighted spontaneously without human intervention, and which was popularly conceived as fire from Heaven.15 At the Easter Liturgy in 1101 the Holy Fire did not appear, and this caused great distress among the Eastern Christian pilgrims. The liturgy was suspended while the Orthodox joined with the Armenians and the Syrian Orthodox (the Jacobites) and processed through Jerusalem reciting liturgies to implore the divine pity. At the request of King Baldwin I the Orthodox were readmitted to officiate in the cathedral, the Holy Fire duly descended, and the Easter liturgy was completed.16 This would seem to have led to the permanent re-admission of the Orthodox clergy to the cathedral, where they were allowed publicly to sing the liturgy by arrangement with the Latins. When the Russian abbot Daniel kept Easter in Jerusalem later in Baldwin I’s reign (1100–18) he and the abbot of the Orthodox monastery of St Sabas were invited by the king 11

12

13

14 15

16

Anonymi Gesta Francorum, X, xxxix, p. 93; FC I, 30, s. 2, p. 308; Raymond of Aguilers, ‘A critical edition of the Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem’, ed. J. France (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1967), 358–9; J. Richard, ‘Quelques textes sur les premiers temps de l’Église latine de Jérusalem’, in Recueil de travaux offerts à M. Clovis Brunel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1955), II, 420–30. In 1112, when he was newly appointed as Latin patriarch, Arnulf dated a charter eo die quo consecratus fui: CGOH I, no. 25; K.P. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen von Jerusalem von der Eroberung der Heiligen Stadt durch die Kreuzfahrer 1099 bis zum Ende der Kreuzfahrerstaaten 1291 (Berlin, 2002), 104–10. clericos qui habebant altaria in ecclesia Dominici Sepulcri . . . privari beneficiis non desinebat: Raymond of Aguilers, ed. France, p. 359. AA VI, 40, p. 454. A. J. MacGregor, Fire and Light in the Western Triduum: Their Use at Tenebrae and the Paschal Vigil, Alcuin Club Collection 71 (Collegeville, MN, 1993). This event is described in a passage in the Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres, which Heinrich Hagenmeyer considered an interpolation because it is found in only one manuscript of Fulcher’s text; he therefore printed it as an appendix: FC, pp. 831–7.

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to form part of his entourage at the liturgy, and he records that ‘the Orthodox priests and monks, and all the clergy and hermits, began to sing vespers, while the Latins at the great altar began mumbling after their own fashion . . . Then suddenly the holy light shone in the holy tomb.’17 Members of the separated (non-Chalcedonian) Eastern Churches were, of course, free to visit the cathedral and to pray there, but it is unclear whether any of them had chapels there before the new Latin cathedral was built. The first known Latin dean of the Holy Sepulchre was Achard who in 1109 accompanied Arnulf of Chocques, who had been appointed archdeacon of Jerusalem, to Rome to present to Pope Paschal II King Baldwin’s request that Bethlehem should be raised to a bishopric.18 The mission was a success, and after his return to Jerusalem he was present when the king ratified a donation made by the bishop of Nazareth to the monastery of Our Lady of Josaphat. Also among the witnesses was Ansellus, precentor of the Holy Sepulchre.19 In 1108 he had sent a Holy Cross relic to the bishop of Paris and the dean of Notre Dame, recalling how he had been educated in their community until he was twenty-four, and had now been ordained priest and was a canon of the Holy Sepulchre.20 When Gibelin of Arles, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1108–12), died, Archdeacon Arnulf succeeded him. On the day of his enthronement, 20 June, he issued a privilege for the Hospital of St John, which was witnessed by Ansellus, the precentor of the Holy Sepulchre, Gerard the treasurer and nine other canons. The absence of the dean from this list suggests that Achard had died and that his successor had not yet been named.21 When Patriarch Gibelin was dying, he had expressed a wish that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre might eat communally in accordance with the custom of the cathedral churches of Lyons and Rheims, and he empowered the king as his executor to enforce this practice. That was probably the catalyst that led Arnulf when patriarch to reform the chapter. In 1114 he reported that in consultation with the king he had imposed the Rule of St Augustine on the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. He explained that this had been necessary because the secular canons had caused scandal by their worldliness. In future they would live in community, and those who would not accept the new Rule would be deprived of their benefices.22 Gerard, the treasurer, became the first prior. He was present at the Council of Nablus in 1120, and was named in a number of other documents in the next few years; his last appearance was in 1125 as a witness of Baldwin II’s confirmation of the treaty negotiated by Patriarch Warmund with the Venetians.23 17

18 19

20 21

22 23

Daniel the Abbot, The Life and Journey of Daniel, Abbot of the Russian Land, trans. W. F. Ryan, in J. Wilkinson, ed., with J. Hill and W. F. Ryan, Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser. 167 (London, 1988), 168–9. WT XI, 12, pp. 512–15. Ch. Kohler, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de la vallée de Josaphat en Terre Sainte (1108–1291). Analyses et extraits’, ROL 7 (1900), no. 2, pp. 113–14; H. E. Mayer, ed., Diplomata regum latinorum Hierosolimitanorum, 4 vols., MGH (Hanover, 2010), no. 34, I, pp. 153–4. Instrumenta Ecclesiae Parisiensis, no. LII, in Gallia Christiana, VII, cols. 44–5. CGOH I, no. 25. Ansellus, Gerard and two of the canons witnessed Baldwin I’s diploma for the Hospital, probably on the same day: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 52, I, pp. 177–9. BB no. 25, pp. 85–6. WT XII, 13, pp. 563–4; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 85, 86, I, pp. 225–33; H.-F. Delaborde, ed., Chartes de la Terre Sainte provenant de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de Josaphat, BEFAR 19 (Paris, 1880), no. 12, pp. 37–8; PKHL no. 21, pp. 127–8; G. L. F. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, eds., Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig mit besonderer Beziehung auf Byzanz und die Levante, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, section III, 12–14 (Vienna, 1856–7), I, nos. XL, XLI, pp. 79–94; WT XII, 25, p. 581; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 93, I, pp. 241–7.

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The secular canons were divided in their response to Arnulf’s reforms. When he was deposed by the papal legate, the bishop of Orange, in 1115, Canons Peter and William went to the curia at the request of King Baldwin I to appeal against the judgement and successfully negotiated Arnulf’s re-instatement.24 Not all the canons were amenable to living under a Rule, and when Arnulf’s successor, Patriarch Warmund, assumed office he found that the precentor and the succentor of the Holy Sepulchre, who were responsible for the conduct of the Divine Office by the Canons Regular, were still living in their own houses. He reported this to Pope Calixtus II, who in 1121 enjoined obedience to the Augustinian rule on the two dissenters.25 There was no further opposition to the Rule, and Ansellus, the precentor, continued to hold office for another twenty years.26 The adoption of the Augustinian Rule necessitated the building of a priory adjacent to the church, and this will be considered below as part of the redevelopment of the whole complex. The finances of the chapter also had to be reorganised. Individual canons no longer received prebends and private houses: instead, the chapter became the corporate holder of certain rights and endowments. Arnulf drew up a settlement which formed the basis of all later divisions of resources between the chapter and the patriarch. It enacted that the canons should receive half the offerings that pilgrims made to the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre, but as they were the custodians of the relic of the True Cross they should retain all the offerings that were made to it, though the patriarch should receive the offerings made on Good Friday, when he was celebrant of the liturgy, and those made to the Cross when it was taken to other parts of the kingdom. That happened most commonly when the Cross was sent by the canons to accompany the royal army into battle. Arnulf’s agreement also stipulated that the canons should receive the tithes of the city of Jerusalem and its environs, except for those from estates which the patriarch held. The canons also received half the landed endowment which Baldwin I had given to the patriarch in compensation when Bethlehem had been raised to a bishopric in 1109, together with the churches of St Peter at Jaffa and St Lazarus at Bethany with their appurtenances.27 This affluent community at the centre of the religious and political life of the kingdom attracted men of ability. Prior Gerard, who was last recorded in 1125, was succeeded by an Englishman, Prior William. William of Tyre described him as a man of good moral character, and in 1128 he was consecrated as the first Latin archbishop of Tyre.28 He was succeeded as prior by a Fleming, William of Mesen.29 Probably at his request, Pope Honorius II issued a detailed confirmation of the properties of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, which for the first time listed the extensive donations which they had received in western Europe. At Brindisi in Apulia they held the churches of the Holy Sepulchre and of St Lawrence. In Provence they owned a group of four churches in the diocese of Embrun, and in Languedoc they held churches and other properties in the dioceses of Maguelonne and Albi. They had endowments also in the diocese of Saintes in Aquitaine. In the Christian kingdoms of Spain they held churches and other properties in fourteen dioceses, extending 24 26

27 29

25 BB no. 91, pp. 206–8. PKHL no. 23, pp. 130–1. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 15–21; BB nos. 21, 22, 65, 102, pp. 77–80, 98–101, 220–2; Delaborde, ed., Chartes nos. 112, 117, pp. 37–8, 43–5; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7; CGOH I, no. 138. 28 BB no. 20, pp. 74–7; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 55, I, pp. 181–3. WT XIII, 23, pp. 615–16. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, 238–44.

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from Barcelona to Santiago in the north, and in the south of the Christian kingdoms to Avila and Segovia.30 In 1130 when Patriarch Stephen of Chartres died, Prior William II was chosen to succeed him.31 The new prior, Peter, held office for twenty-one years, and he and Patriarch William worked harmoniously together. In 1134 William gave the canons the charge of another shrine, that of Quarantena in the mountains to the west of the Jordan, above Jericho. This shrine of the Forty Days was the place where Jesus was believed to have spent his time in meditation, being tempted by the Devil, before he began his public ministry.32 The canons agreed to found a daughter house there, and nominated Canon Rainald as its prior. He would owe obedience to the prior of the Holy Sepulchre. This agreement was witnessed by the entire chapter, consisting of Prior Peter and twenty canons, all but one of whom were in Holy Orders: four were subdeacons, five were deacons, and the ten canons who took precedence of them at the head of the witness list must therefore have been priests. This is evidence of the importance in this community of eucharistic functions, in addition to the daily public recitation of the Divine Office.33 In 1138, at the request of King Fulk and Queen Melisende, the canons exchanged the shrine of Bethany and its estates with the crown in return for the lands of Thecua (Tekoah) in southern Judaea, a transaction which some years later led to the royal foundation of the convent of St Lazarus at Bethany.34 Prior Peter proved to be an excellent administrator. In 1140 he visited Antioch, and while there established what properties the Holy Sepulchre held there, some of which dated from before 1099 when the canons had been Orthodox. He brought a successful lawsuit against the abbot of St Paul’s Antioch for unlawfully holding a garden belonging to the Holy Sepulchre, and he obtained a charter confirming the property of his house from Prince Raymond of Poitiers.35 While he was staying there, Prior Peter leased two mills outside the Bridge Gate, which belonged to his community, stipulating that the new tenant should restore to working order one of them, which was in ruins.36 In 1140–1, probably as he was returning to Jerusalem, Peter also received confirmation of the property held by the Holy Sepulchre on Mt Pilgrim and its environs from Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, and the count also freed the canons from the payment of customs duties on goods they imported or exported through the port of Tripoli.37 Prior Peter was punctilious in obtaining papal confirmation of new endowments which his community received. In 1138 Innocent II issued a general confirmation of the rights and properties of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, which specified recently acquired possessions in the Kingdom of Sicily at Brindisi, Barletta, Troia and Benevento.38 In 1139 the pope was asked to issue a new confirmation, which included the recently acquired church of St Apollinare outside Bari.39 In a third confirmation of 1141 Innocent II confirmed more new properties acquired by the canons, including the churches of the Holy Sepulchre at Acre and of St Mary de Mimars, outside that city, together with the castle of Cerret in the northern 30 34 37

31 32 33 PKHL no. 28, pp. 134–7. WT XIII, 27, p. 622. Matthew 4: 1–11; Luke 4: 1–11. BB no. 21, pp. 77–8. 35 36 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21. BB nos. 76, 77, pp. 176–83. BB no. 78, pp. 183–5. 38 39 BB nos. 79, 81–2, pp. 185–7, 189–91. PKHL no. 37, pp. 147–9. PKHL no. 39, pp. 150–2.

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Sicilian diocese of Lipari.40 Innocent II died in September 1143 and Abbot Peter immediately requested a new confirmation from his successor, Celestine II. This was issued on 10 January 1144 and included the lucrative monopoly of the ovens of Jerusalem.41 In the same privilege the pope also confirmed to the canons the church of St George in the mountains at Tripoli, which Count Raymond I had given to them, but which Raymond II had refused to confirm,42 together with the church at Denkendorf in the diocese of Constance, the first endowment in the German lands of the Western Empire to be named in a papal confirmation for the Holy Sepulchre.43 Celestine III reigned for a mere six months, but once again, as soon as he learned of his death, Prior Peter sought a new confirmation of the rights and privileges of his canons from his successor, Lucius II, which was issued on 14 September 1144.44 Throughout Prior Peter’s reign, the subprior had also been called Peter, and in documents he was distinguished as Peter of Barcelona. He had been a canon of the Holy Sepulchre since 112045, and had been appointed subprior by Prior William.46 Peter the Prior and Peter the subprior appear together in a group of documents dated between 1132 and 1144.47 Then in a group of documents issued between 14 September 1144 and 7 May 1148 Prior Peter alone is mentioned, and there is no reference to Peter the subprior.48 It was Peter the Prior who had died, and Peter of Barcelona, the subprior, who had succeeded him. William of Tyre relates that in 1151 ‘Peter, prior of the Holy Sepulchre, born in northern Spain in the city of Barcelona’, was appointed archbishop of Tyre. This vacancy had been caused by the elevation in 1146 of Archbishop Fulcher of Tyre to be patriarch of Jerusalem. Queen Melisende nominated the Englishman Ralph as new archbishop, but the canons of Tyre successfully appealed against this choice to Pope Eugenius III.49 This dispute led to a vacancy which lasted for five years. During that time, Prior Peter of Barcelona continued the policy of his predecessor and obtained papal confirmation of the rights of his church. Eugenius III in that time issued two bulls in favour of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, one in 1146 confirming their property, the other in 1148 confirming their fiscal and judicial privileges.50 William of Tyre, relying on the evidence of canons of Tyre who had known him, describes Peter of Barcelona as ‘a nobleman by birth, but even more noble in character. His life and work deserve a longer and more detailed treatment.’51 Peter of Barcelona is first recorded as archbishop of Tyre in May 1151.52 He was immediately succeeded as prior of the Holy Sepulchre by Amalric of Nesle.53 Unlike his predecessors, he had not previously been a member of the cathedral chapter. Nesle, his birthplace, is near Noyon, north-east of Paris. He had come to the Latin Kingdom in the reign of King Fulk (1131–43) and had become chaplain to Queen Melisende. It is highly 40 41

42 45 47

48 49 51 52 53

PKHL no. 47, pp. 165–6. The twenty-five ovens owned by the canons are listed in BB no. 169, pp. 222–3. Only two ovens in the city remained in other hands: those of Sta Maria Latina and of the Hospital of St John. 43 44 BB nos. 79, 82, pp. 186, 191. PKHL no. 52, pp. 172–4. PKHL no. 55, pp. 177–8. 46 BB no. 27, pp. 88–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7. BB nos. 21, 22, 97, 102, pp. 77–80, 214–15, 220–2; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 210, I, pp. 390–3; J. Delaville Le Roulx, ed., Les archives, la bibliothèque et le trésor de l’Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem à Malte, BEFAR 32 (Paris, 1883), doc. 5, pp. 73–4. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 215, I, pp. 399–400; PKHL nos. 55, 62, 64, pp. 177–8, 190–3, 195–7; BB no. 24, pp. 183–5. 50 For an account of Ralph, later bishop of Bethlehem, pp. 98–102. PKHL nos. 62, 64, pp. 190–3, 195–7. WT XXVI, 17, pp. 738–9. A. de Marsy, ed., ‘Fragment d’un cartulaire de l’Ordre de Saint-Lazare en Terre Sainte’, AOL II (ii), no. 9, pp. 129–30. BB no. 69, pp. 166–7.

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Figure 2 The church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem: exterior

probable that he owed his appointment as prior to Melisende’s patronage, since in 1151 she was co-ruler with her son Baldwin III. William of Tyre, who knew Amalric well and disliked him, described him as ‘a man who had had a good education, but who was very stupid and of little use’.54 The new cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre had been consecrated in 1149 while Peter of Barcelona was prior55 and, although much work remained to be done on the site, the completion of the major part of the building project left the chapter with more money to spend in other ways. This became apparent in 1155 when Hugh of Ibelin, with the consent of the crown, sold three estates which formed part of his fief to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, iure perpetuo possidenda, for 7,000 bezants.56 Only the great religious houses of the kingdom were rich enough to make such purchases. William of Tyre was later told that, when Patriarch Fulcher died in November 1157, his successor was chosen, contrary to the provisions of canon law, by a group of aristocratic women, Queen Melisende, her sister Hodierna, Countess of Tripoli, and her stepdaughter, Sibyl, Countess of Flanders (the daughter of King Fulk by Eremburge, his first wife), who 54 55

56

WT XVIII, 20, p. 840. The pilgrim Theoderic, who visited Jerusalem in 1172, copied the opening lines of an inscription in gold letters above the arch of the Calvary chapel on the west side, which recorded the consecration of the new cathedral by Patriarch Fulcher in 1149: Theodericus, Peregrinatio, in Peregrinationes Tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theoderic, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 139 (Turnhout, 1994), p. 156; see also the less full copy made a few years earlier by the pilgrim John of Würzburg, Peregrinatio, ibid., p. 123. The inscription is discussed by Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, p. 68. BB no. 50, pp. 134–6; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 188, 281, I, pp. 371–3, II, p. 506.

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had accompanied her husband Thierry on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They chose Prior Amalric of Nesle, who was enthroned in late 1157 or early 1158.57 He was succeeded as prior of the Holy Sepulchre by the subprior Arnold/Arnaut, during whose brief reign the canons bought more land from crown vassals.58 Hugh of Ibelin was captured by Nur al-Din of Damascus at the battle of Jacob’s Ford in 1157, and in the following year he sold more of his estates to the canons of the Sepulchre for 3,000 bezants in order to pay his ransom.59 Prior Arnold took a proactive role in the administration of the village of Magna Mahumeria, which is an index of its financial importance to the canons.60 Amalric of Nesle does not seem to have sought a papal confirmation of the rights of the canons while he was prior; at any rate none survives from his time in office, but in 1159 Prior Arnold did so. The proctors of the Holy Sepulchre must have reached Rome in the pontificate of Hadrian IV, but he died on 1 September, soon after their arrival. In the subsequent papal election the cardinals were divided in their choice: on 7 September one group elected Alexander III, the candidate favoured by William I of Sicily, while another group simultaneously elected Victor IV, who was supported by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. It was not clear under the existing provisions of canon law which of them was the lawful pope. King Baldwin III of Jerusalem wished his clergy to remain neutral in this schism,61 and the proctors of the Holy Sepulchre might have been expected to consult him before recognising either candidate. In fact, they did not hesitate. Alexander had withdrawn to Terracina, and on 15 October he received the proctors and took the Holy Sepulchre under his protection, renewing the privileges of his predecessors, Honorius II, Innocent II, Celestine II, Lucius II and Eugenius III.62 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre must have been one of the first communities in the Latin Church to recognise Alexander as lawful pope, and the eminence of the foundation which they represented must certainly have encouraged him and his supporters. They may even have done so in opposition to wider opinion in the Church in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, since William of Tyre spoke warmly of his rival Victor, and suggests that he commanded widespread support among the clergy.63 During his long reign he remained sympathetic to the needs of the canons: thirteen items in his register relate to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The proctors’ lack of consultation with the crown did not prove contentious in the long term, because in the summer of 1160 Patriarch Amalric of Jerusalem and his clergy declared in favour of Alexander III, and the Church throughout the Crusader States thereafter remained loyal to him.64 Prior Arnold died before 4 March 1160, when his successor, Prior Nicholas, agreed to the lease of a house in Jaffa belonging to the community for an annual rent of 14 bezants.65 His appointment was uncontroversial, since he had previously been subprior of the house.66 In 1163 Alexander III confirmed the privileges of the canons granted by his predecessors. This is in the main a re-issue of Eugenius III’s bull of 1148, but it contains an additional section confirming the endowments held by the canons in the province of Tarragona, and defining 57 59 60 63 66

58 WT XVIII, 20, pp. 840–1; Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 291–5. BB nos. 114, 115, pp. 234–6. WT XVIII, 14, p. 831; BB no. 51, pp. 136–8; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 297, I, pp. 524–5. 61 62 BB nos. 121, 123, pp. 244–7, 249–50. WT XVIII, 29, pp. 852–4. PKHL no. 82, pp. 224–5. 64 65 WT XVIII, 8, 9, p. 820–1, 852–4. PKHL no. 83, pp. 225–6. BB no. 124, pp. 250–1. BB no. 123, pp. 249–50.

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the relations between their representatives in the province and the local hierarchy.67 In 1164 Alexander issued an additional confirmation of the canons’ property rights, which reproduced grants made by Calixtus II, Honorius II, Innocent II and Eugenius III, but also included some new Spanish endowments.68 These privileges were issued by Alexander while he was living in France, where he had taken refuge in 1162 after the Roman supporters of Victor IV had gained control of the city, but he returned there in November 1165 after Victor IV had died. On 14 March 1166 or 1167 he gave the canons of the Holy Sepulchre the church of St Egidio in Rome with its attached hospice, at which they or their proctors might stay when visiting the papal court.69 The possession of a base in Rome was a much sought-after privilege among the senior clergy of the Latin Church, and thus a sign of the esteem in which the pope held the Jerusalem chapter. Pope Celestine II had made a similar promise to the canons in 1144, but he did not specify which church he would give them, and because he died a few weeks later his pledge was not fulfilled.70 St Egidio was very conveniently situated in the Leonine City, just inside the Golden Gate and near St Peter’s. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre held it until 1300 when Pope Boniface VIII transferred it to the canons of St Peter’s basilica in Rome.71 Prior Nicholas died in 1166 and his successor, Prior Peter, was in office by the autumn of that year.72 Within a year he sent two canons to the papal court to make a formal complaint about Patriarch Amalric of Nesle. The prior alleged that the patriarch had interfered in the administration of the canons’ property; that he had appointed new canons motu proprio, without consulting the chapter; that he had given property belonging to the canons as prebends to his clients. The prior also complained that the patriarch did not respect the agreed division of the candles provided for the Holy Sepulchre between the canons and himself. Furthermore, he accused Amalric of abusing his right to receive offerings made to the Holy Cross relic when he carried it on campaign, by staying for long periods of time in cities on his itinerary, a practice which proved very lucrative. Pope Alexander censured all these practices as contrary to the agreements which had formerly been made between the patriarchs and the canons and which had been ratified by his predecessors. The patriarch’s right to receive offerings made to the Holy Cross when he accompanied it on campaign was limited by the pope to two days in any single place: offerings made after that time would belong to the canons.73 The allegations made against Amalric had presumably been true, for he did not contest the pope’s rulings but after they had been made known to him he confirmed all the traditional privileges of the canons, together with their property rights.74 In 1167–8 King Amalric and the patriarch undertook a reorganisation of the Church in the kingdom. Hebron was raised to a bishopric, and a new province was created in Transjordan under the archbishop of Petra, who fixed his see at Kerak of Moab.75 These lands had previously been under the direct jurisdiction of the patriarch. Amalric of Nesle 67 69 70 71

72 75

68 PKHL nos. 64 (Eugenius III), 87 (Alexander III), pp. 195–7, 234–6. PKHL no. 88, pp. 237–41. PKHL no. 90, pp. 176–7. The grant was made on 12 January 1144 and Celestine died on 8 March 1144: PKHL no. 54, pp. 176–7. Papsturkunden in Italien. Reiseberichtezur Italia Pontificia, ed. P. F. Kehr, 6 vols. (Berlin, 1906, repr. Vatican City, 1977), I, 153. 73 74 BB no. 139, pp. 271–2. PKHL nos. 92–3, pp. 246–9. BB no. 150, pp. 292–6. WT XX, 3, p. 914; on the date of the foundation of the archdiocese of Petra, see H. E. Mayer, Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal (Sōbak). Jordanien im 12. Jahrhundert, Abhandlungen des deutschen Palästinavereins 14 (Wiesbaden, 1990), 221–8.

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also wished to found a new bishopric at Jaffa, but this brought him into direct conflict with the canons of the Holy Sepulchre who in 1114 had been given the church of St Peter at Jaffa by Patriarch Arnulf as part of their endowments.76 That was the principal church in the city, and because of its importance the canons had appointed a dean to administer it.77 They therefore appealed to the pope about the diminution of their rights, because it was proposed that St Peter’s would become the new cathedral. Perhaps to deflect papal criticism, King Amalric gave the canons the church of St Nicholas outside the walls of Jaffa, to which the patriarch granted full parochial status.78 Subsequently the pope confirmed the right of the king and the patriarch to restore the bishopric of Jaffa, provided that the canons received adequate compensation for their loss of income and of jurisdiction.79 Clearly the suburban parish of St Nicholas was not comparable to the ecclesiastical control of the city of Jaffa which the canons had enjoyed when controlling St Peter’s, and that may explain why the king and the patriarch did not proceed with their plans for the new bishopric, since that promised to lead to prolonged litigation. Thus because they enjoyed the support of Pope Alexander, the canons retained the church of St Peter’s and the deanery of Jaffa as well as that of St Nicholas. Indeed, during that pontiff’s long reign their privileges had become virtually unassailable. In 1168 and 1170 Pope Alexander issued detailed confirmations of the rights and property holdings of the canons. In addition to their traditional share of the offerings made in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, together with the tithes of the city of Jerusalem and its environs granted to them by Arnulf when the community was first founded, the canons had also acquired many houses and shops inside the city, together with a church and cemetery outside the walls on the road to Bethlehem. They held the twenty-one casalia in the environs of Jerusalem given to the Holy Sepulchre by Duke Godfrey, and also the three new Frankish settlements which they had established on their lands there at Magna Mahumeria (now al-Bira), one of the villages given by Duke Godfrey, at Parva Mahomeria (Qubaiyba), and at Bethsur (Bayt Surik).80 The canons owned the priory of Quarantena in the mountains above Jericho, the lands of Thecua in southern Judaea, received from the crown in return for Bethany, and the estates which they had bought from the Orthodox abbot of St Sabas, and from Hugh of Ibelin and John Gothmann. In addition to their property at Jaffa, the canons owned lands at Arsuf, and estates and tithes in the environs of Ascalon, which they had received in return for their contribution to the siege of 1153. They held lands in the archdiocese of Caesarea, a house in the old city, together with a church and its tithes given by Archbishop Ernesius (1160–75). They had received an estate at Nablus from King Amalric and were in process of building a church there. At Tyre they owned the former Orthodox cathedral of St Mary’s, and property given by their former prior, Peter, after he had become archbishop, an office he held from 1151 to 1164. The canons owned property in the diocese of Acre and in the archdiocese of Nazareth, and had been granted fishing rights in the Sea of Galilee by Prince William of Bures. The pope also confirmed ‘whatever you own’ on Mt Pilgrim and elsewhere in the diocese of 76 78 80

77 BB no. 20, pp. 74–7; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 55, I, pp. 181–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 296, III, pp. 523–4. 79 BB no. 148, pp. 289–91; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 339, II, pp. 585–7. PKHL no. 101, pp. 260–1. R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998), 72–94.

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Tripoli, together with property in the city and principality of Antioch. ‘On this side of the sea’, that is in western Europe, the pope confirmed property in the Kingdom of Sicily, singling out the most important: the churches of the Holy Sepulchre and of St Lawrence at Brindisi, the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Barletta, the church of St Theodore at Benevento, and an unnamed church at Troia. He also issued a general confirmation of the canons’ property in Rome, Tuscany, northern Italy, the Kingdom of France, and in all the kingdoms and counties of Iberia. His second bull, issued in 1170, concludes the list of property with this provision: ‘We confirm to you half the possessions which are held in common between you [and the patriarch] in England, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Ruthenia, Avasgia (that is, Western Georgia), Hungary and the Empire of Constantinople.’81 Since 1156 it had been conceded that if the patriarch of Jerusalem was absent from the city, the prior of the Holy Sepulchre should deputise for him in liturgical ceremonies not only in the cathedral, but also in the station churches. An anomaly arose in the course of the twelfth century because the priors of the other houses of Austin canons in Jerusalem, those of Mt Zion, the Templum Domini and the Mount of Olives, were created abbots, but the prior of the Holy Sepulchre was not. When the canons of the Holy Sepulchre drew Alexander III’s attention to this, he replied to the prior: ‘My son, you and your successors as prior, shall be ranked after archbishops and bishops, but shall hold the first place among the abbots and priors of the Jerusalem patriarchate, both at meetings of the clergy and in liturgical celebrations.’82 Although they held extensive lands in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the ecclesiastical patronage of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre outside the diocese of Jerusalem was limited. They held the church of Bethel in the diocese of Lydda,83 two churches in the archdiocese of Caesarea,84 a church in the city of Acre, and one in a village three miles outside the walls,85 and the former Orthodox cathedral of Tyre.86 In 1171 Bishop Bernard of Lydda gave Prior Peter permission to build churches in five named villages in his diocese, which would have parochial status, and to appoint their incumbents, but there is no evidence that this grant was ever taken up.87 The limited amount of ecclesiastical patronage which the canons enjoyed probably reflects caution on the part of the bishops of the kingdom, who were reluctant to allow the canons to exercise authority in their dioceses, because they would almost certainly emerge the victors in any dispute which might arise since they had the support of the the pope, the patriarch and the king. The attitude of bishops in western Europe was quite different from the start: the detailed confirmation of the canons’ property issued by Honorius II in 1128 lists sixty-one churches and monasteries in Italy, France and Spain.88 Because of their great wealth the canons of the Holy Sepulchre owed service of 500 sergeants to the crown. This number was equalled only by the service owed by the patriarch 81 84 86 87

82 83 PKHL nos. 95, 102, pp. 250–5, 261–5. PKHL no. 118, pp. 292–3. BB nos. 52–3, pp. 139–42. 85 One in the Castrum Feniculi, the other at Haifa: PKHL nos. 28, 95, pp. 134–9, 250–5. BB no. 60, pp. 152–3. in civitate Tyro ecclesiam sancte Marie antique sedis, confirmed by Honorius II in 1128: PKHL no. 28, pp. 134–7. 88 BB no. 158, pp. 307–9. Reissued with some variations by Eugenius III in 1146: PKHL nos. 28, 62, pp. 134–7, 190–3.

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of Jerusalem, by the burgesses of Jerusalem, and by those of Acre, and it amounted to almost a tenth of the sergeant-service owed to the crown by the entire kingdom.89 In canon law the election of the patriarch of Jerusalem was vested in the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, although in practice, as was the case throughout most of the Latin Church at that time, the choice was made by the crown. The only election in the First Kingdom about which any detailed information is available relates to the vacancy caused by the death of Amalric of Nesle on 6 October 1180. Two slightly different accounts are given in the Chronicle attributed to Ernoul, and in the Estoire d’Eracles, the Old French continuation of the Chronicle of William of Tyre. Both sources agree that it was the custom of the canons to present two names to the king and to ask him to choose one of them. The Eracles text claimed that this practice was justified on scriptural grounds. The eleven Apostles, when they met in Jerusalem to choose a colleague to fill the place left vacant by Judas Iscariot, had put two names forward, and had asked the Holy Spirit to manifest his will by drawing lots,90 and the author commented: ‘Because of this some people would say that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre represent the Apostles and the king the lots.’ In 1180 Baldwin IV delegated the choice to his mother, Agnes of Courtenay, who chose Heraclius, Archbishop of Caesarea, in preference to the other candidate, William, Archbishop of Tyre. The authors of these sources do not attempt to disguise their hostility to Agnes and to Heraclius, but there is no reason to doubt that they accurately described the procedure followed at the patriarchal election.91 Thus, although the canons may have had some influence on the choice of candidates before 1187, the crown was the effective elector. Perhaps work on a great cathedral is never completed, but the rebuilding of the church of the Holy Sepulchre was sufficiently advanced by 1149 that Patriarch Fulcher was able to consecrate the new building on 15 July of that year, the fiftieth anniversary of the crusaders’ conquest of the city.92 The work seems to have been substantially completed by the time John of Würzburg arrived on pilgrimage in the 1160s and certainly by the time the pilgrim Theoderic went there in 1172.93 Denys Pringle has justly said of John’s and Theoderic’s accounts that ‘when taken together and combined with information from other sources (including later pilgrims) they provide a very full picture of how the church would have appeared’.94 Pringle has given a comprehensive and impressive description of the cathedral and its associated buildings erected by the Latins in the twelfth century, and it would be otiose to repeat this readily accessible information here.95 Studies of the sculptures, frescoes and mosaics with which the new cathedral was embellished have been published by Jaroslav Folda, to whose expert analysis I refer my readers.96 Nevertheless, a brief description of those shrines in the 89

90 91

92 94 96

John of Ibelin, Livre des assises, ed. P. W. Edbury, in Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 1997), 124–6. Acts 1: 15–26. Ernoul, La Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. L. de Mas Latrie, Société de l’Histoire de France 157 (Paris, 1871), 83–4; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. R. Morgan, DRHC XIV (Paris, 1982), c. 37, pp. 49–50; P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, ‘William of Tyre and the patriarchal election of 1180’, EHR 93 (1978), 1–25. 93 Pringle, Churches, III, 21, no. 283. Huygens in Peregrinationes Tres, ed. Huygens, pp. 27–8. 95 Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, p. 23. Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, pp. 6–72. Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 175–248. Readers should also use the index of this book to trace additional material on significant details of the art of the twelfth-century cathedral.

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cathedral which were the chief focus of devotion for pilgrims is needed here, in order to assess the religious impact of the rebuilding undertaken by the Latins. The planning of the new cathedral was imaginative, for it incorporated the three shrines – the rock of Calvary, the Holy Sepulchre and the St Helena chapel (which commemorated the finding of the True Cross) – in a single building. The Byzantine cathedral, the rotunda surrounding the Holy Sepulchre, was left unchanged, except that the apse was demolished and replaced by a triumphal arch which linked the rotunda to the new Latin cathedral built in Gothic style. The western wall of the rotunda, flanking the apse, was also demolished, so that the north and south aisles of the Latin cathedral led directly into the rotunda. The Latin cathedral was built in the former Byzantine courtyard to the west of the rotunda. The rock of Calvary stood at the eastern end of the new south aisle, and the chapel which surmounted it was accessible from the interior of the church. The other Byzantine chapels in the courtyard were demolished and replaced by chapels entered from the ambulatory which ran behind the chancel of the new cathedral. The ambulatory gave access by a wide staircase to the subterranean chapel of St Helena, and below that to the cave chapel of the Discovery of the Holy Cross. These chapels were situated beneath the site of the Constantinian Martyrion. It was not rebuilt, but the priory of the Austin canons was built on its ruined site, and their cloister was situated immediately to the east of the new cathedral chancel, above the St Helena chapel: a small cupola with windows was erected in the middle of the cloister garth which gave light to the underground chapels. The priory buildings extended along the north side of the new cathedral, and the patriarch’s palace was built adjacent to them in the land to the north of the rotunda. The central shrine in the new cathedral remained the Holy Sepulchre. The entrance to the edicule was directly aligned to the new Gothic high altar. Theoderic describes the Sepulchre shrine as a circular building, modified by a porch at the east end. This had three doors: the east door was for liturgical use only; pilgrims entered by the north door and left by the south door: the doors gave access to an ante-chapel. In the inner shrine, Christ’s burial place, there was space, Theoderic reported, for five men kneeling down to pray beside the Lord’s tomb.97 The Orthodox pilgrim, John Phocas, who visited Jerusalem in 1185, records that the marble slab over the Lord’s tomb had been covered with a sheet of pure gold by Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–80). The exterior of the edicule was clad in marble and decorated with eleven arches, each of which held a sanctuary lamp and was illuminated with a frescoed text. The structure was roofed with gilded copper tiles and crowned by a ciborium surmounted by a gilt cross, on which stood a gilded dove.98 Above the high altar of the new cathedral was an apse mosaic showing the Harrowing of Hell: Christ, who had overcome death on the cross, delivered the souls of Adam and Eve and of all the righteous dead from the power of evil. This mosaic showed him striding triumphantly into the heavens, holding Adam by the hand.99 97 98

99

Theodericus, c. 5, pp. 147–9. John Phocas, A General Description of the Settlements and Places Belonging to Syria and Phoenicia on the Way from Antioch to Jerusalem, and of the Holy Places of Jerusalem, trans. J. Wilkinson, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 324; PG 133: 944. Theodericus, c. 4, p. 151; Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, pp. 25–6.

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The shrine of Calvary stood at the east end of the south aisle of the new cathedral. In that aisle, near the foot of the rock of Calvary, were the tombs of the Latin kings. Two chapels had been built on the top of Calvary, and pilgrims reached them by a staircase in the cathedral forecourt. One chapel was dedicated to the Nailing of Christ on the Cross, the other to the Elevation of Christ on the Cross. Many Western pilgrims had brought wooden crosses with them on their journey and carried these up the stairs to the chapels. Theoderic reports that: ‘On the top [of Mt Calvary] the pilgrims are accustomed to place the crosses which they have carried with them from their home countries. We saw a huge number of them there. The guardians of Calvary burn them on Holy Saturday.’100 On leaving the chapel, the pilgrims descended by an internal staircase to the south aisle. In designing the new cathedral, thought had clearly been given to facilitating crowd movement. The veneration of the Holy Cross relic occupied a very important place in twelfthcentury pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Two chapels, entered from the north aisle of the cathedral, were dedicated to this cult. One contained a reliquary of the True Cross guarded by Orthodox clergy (sub Surianorum custodia), and in the other chapel the Latin Holy Cross relic was displayed in a casing of gold and silver, encrusted with jewels, which ‘when necessity demands, the Christians are accustomed to carry into battle against the heathen’.101 Theoderic noted that ‘in front of the main entrance to the choir is an altar of no mean size at which the Syrian [Orthodox] sing their office. They also have many other little altars [altariola] in the church granted to them for their sole use.’ He continues: ‘These are the confessions or sects which celebrate the Divine Liturgy in the church of Jerusalem: the Latins, the Syrian [Orthodox], the Armenians, the Greeks, the Jacobites and the Nubians . . . On feast days the Jacobites blow horns in the manner of the Jews.’102 It is not clear whether Theoderic is here referring to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, or whether this passage is a parenthetical comment about the variety of Christian traditions found in the city of Jerusalem. The latter seems more likely, since there is no evidence that the nonChalcedonian churches had altars inside the church of the Holy Sepulchre while it was under Latin rule. Theoderic reports that the Armenians held the chapel of St James, the most southerly of the three chapels which flanked the courtyard of the new cathedral on the west side.103 This prestigious location no doubt reflects the special position which the Armenian Church occupied in the esteem of the royal family, who were descended from Queen Morphia, the Armenian wife of Baldwin II.104 The three courtyard chapels of the Holy Sepulchre, which abutted on the Byzantine rotunda, had been part of the Byzantine cathedral complex, and Pringle has drawn attention to the fact that the Latins made few changes to them except in the case of the chapel of St John. This adjoined the cathedral and

100 102

103 104

101 Theodericus, c. 12, pp. 155–6. Theodericus, c. 9, p. 153. Theodericus, c. 8, pp. 151–2. Nubia was Christian in the twelfth century, but Theoderic probably uses the term to mean members of the Coptic Church of Egypt, of which the Nubian Churches formed part: D. A. Welsby, The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia: Pagans, Christians and Muslims on the Middle Nile (London, 2002). Theodericus, c. 13, p. 157. B. Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: the queens of Jerusalem, 1100–1190’, in D. Baker, ed., Medieval Women (Oxford, 1978), 143–74. The esteem in which the Armenians were held is evident in the Armenian Cathedral of St James in Jerusalem, built by Western masons and adjacent to the royal palace: Pringle, Churches no. 318, III, pp. 168–82.

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was incorporated into the campanile which the Latins built. This was topped with a spire, but was lowered to its present height in the eighteenth century.105 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre had a central role in the performance of the liturgy in crusader Jerusalem. The city was unique in the Christian world in that many events in the life of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles had taken place there, which increased the impact of their liturgical re-enactment. This had been true since the fourth century, but in the Crusader Kingdom the liturgy was celebrated in the Latin rite with which Western pilgrims were familiar, and this made a deep impression on the thousands of Western pilgrims who went there each year, and arguably influenced the growth of devotion to the humanity of Christ which is discernible in the Latin Church at that time.106 Throughout the Christian year the patriarch, as bishop of Jerusalem, celebrated the festal liturgy in the appropriate churches of the city. For example, on Ascension Day he said Mass in the church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, and this and the observance of other festivals will be noted as appropriate later in this book. He was accompanied on all these occasions by the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and if the patriarch was absent from the city on a feast-day the prior had the right to deputise for him.107 On Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Day, the liturgy was celebrated in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. On Good Friday morning, while it was still dark and the canons were singing lauds, the Latin Holy Cross relic was taken from its chapel to the Calvary chapel. Once lauds had ended, the patriarch and the canons removed their shoes and climbed the staircase in the south aisle to the rock of Calvary, in order to venerate the Cross at the very place where Christ was believed to have suffered, and they were followed by a long file of pilgrims, until, at about mid-day, it was time to celebrate the Good Friday liturgy of the Presanctified.108 At the liturgy of Holy Saturday the patriarch sat on his throne behind the high altar, while the canons sat in the choir, and the whole cathedral was packed with worshippers, who included pilgrims from the Christian Churches of East and West. The patriarch faced the entrance to the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre at the west end of the cathedral. A group of four pilgrims, chosen by the patriarch, preceded by a thurifer and by two acolytes carrying unlighted tapers, fetched the Holy Cross relic from its chapel and approached the edicule of the Holy Sepulchre. The clergy and all the congregation held unlighted candles and waited for the New Fire, the seemingly spontaneous lighting of one of the lamps at the tomb of Christ.109 When this happened, the cross-bearer entered the shrine and lit his own candle from it, and then walked the length of the cathedral to light the patriarch’s candle. The flame was passed to the candles held by the canons in the choir and then to the congregation filling the church, and was carried up into the clerestory galleries which also were packed with worshippers. Those present could then see, by the light of thousands of candles, the great apse mosaic of Christ striding into Heaven, holding Adam by the hand, while the first Mass of Easter was being sung.110 105 106 107 109

Pringle, Churches no. 283, III, p. 57. B. Hamilton, ‘The impact of crusader Jerusalem on Western Christendom’, Catholic Historical Review 80 (1994), 695–713. 108 See p. 414. Ch. Kohler, ‘Un rituel et un bréviaire du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem’, ROL 8 (1900–1), 412–13. 110 Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 415–16. Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 420–3.

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The liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre has been preserved in a number of texts. These have been studied by Cristina Dondi, who has argued convincingly that the liturgy used by the canons took shape during the first generation of Latin settlement, tracing its constituent parts to various cathedrals in northern France. The chief architects of the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre were, she argues, Patriarch Arnulf, who introduced the liturgy of Bayeaux and Evreux to the canons; and Ansellus the cantor, who, having been trained in Paris at Notre Dame, brought to Jerusalem the liturgical traditions of the French capital. The liturgy of Chartres also influenced the rite of the Holy Sepulchre, and Dondi suggests that this was probably the work of Baldwin I’s chaplain, the historian Fulcher.111 Evidence for the intellectual importance of the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre is fragmentary. When Patriarch Evremar in 1102–3 regulated the payments to be made to the chapter of secular canons of the Holy Sepulchre, he appointed one of them (who is unnamed) as primicerius, hoc est magistrum scholasticum, which indicates that there was a school attached to the cathedral almost from the beginning.112 The wealth and prestige of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre ensured that men with administrative abilities were attracted to the community. Since they enjoyed the continual support of the papacy, the crown and, except under Amalric of Nesle, the patriarchate, the canons faced few serious problems in ensuring that their property rights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem were respected and that dues were paid to their representatives. In regard to the more distant properties they owned, the canons favoured the creation of subordinate priories to represent them. They only had one priory in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, that of Quarantena, situated in the hills above Jericho. It was believed to be the site where Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights and been tempted by the Devil before he began his public ministry.113 In 1116 the shrine was served by Constantius, who described himself as ‘servant of the holy Quarantena’ and by a group of his companions.114 They appear to have been hermits. Hermits were very common throughout the Latin Church in the twelfth century, in part as a consequence of the fact that, at a time of religious reform and the growth of popular piety, the monasteries were largely controlled and staffed by the aristocracy. Bishops everywhere tried to institutionalise these potentially anarchic eremitical groups, and this was probably what caused Patriarch William in 1134 to give Quarantena to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The first prior was called Reynald: he had the right to admit new canons to his community, but was himself subject to the prior of the Holy Sepulchre. It was enacted that all future priors of Quarantena should be chosen from the canons of the Jerusalem mother house.115 Although the hermits of Quarantena are not mentioned in this document, it would have been in keeping with the normal practice of most twelfth-century Benedictine monasteries if they had continued to live on the mountain under the supervision of the prior. The Austin canons of Quarantena led the most austere life of all the Latin communities serving the Holy Places in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem. Theoderic, who visited the 111

112 113

C. Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources, Bibliotheca Victorina XVI (Turnhout, 2004), 37–60. BB no. 19, pp. 72–4; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 23–4, I, pp. 128–30. 114 115 Matthew 4: 1–11; Mark 1: 11–13; Luke 4: 1–13. BB no. 94, pp. 211–12. BB no. 22, pp. 78–80.

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house in 1172, found it very difficult to scramble up almost a thousand feet of rock-face from the plain of Jericho to the priory and its chapels. He is the only source to mention that the Knights Templar kept supplies and weapons inside the walls of the priory and in the underground caves there.116 The Templars were responsible for patrolling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and the priory-fortress of Quarantena was a natural place to use as an arsenal and a look-out post, because it commanded views across the plain of Jericho to Transjordan.117 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre also had a priory in the County of Tripoli, which stood in the same relation to the mother house as that of Quarantena. Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, while besieging Tripoli in 1103–5, had given to John, a representative of the secular canons of the Holy Sepulchre, a former mosque on Mt Pilgrim above the city, and the church of St George ‘in the mountains’. He also promised that after the city had fallen he would give the canons the second-best church there and would endow prebends for thirteen canons. That promise was never honoured, nor did the canons request that it should be. The canons, nevertheless, speedily consolidated their possessions on Mt Pilgrim. On 22 August 1106 the former mosque was consecrated as the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and became the administrative centre for the possessions of the Jerusalem community in the County of Tripoli.118 In 1110 the canons of the Holy Sepulchre sent Brother Arnold to take charge of the church on Mt Pilgrim, and secured from Bertrand, the new count, the restoration of lands which he had sequestered.119 After the canons had adopted the Rule of St Augustine, they appointed one of their number prior of Mt Pilgrim.120 The priory flourished and by 1143 Prior Vulgrin had accumulated enough reserve income to buy houses in the city of Tripoli.121 In the Principality of Antioch where, in 1140, Prior Peter had established the rights of the Holy Sepulchre to property belonging to his church there in Byzantine times, he did not attempt to set up a priory. When drawing up a lease, he specified that dues should be paid ‘to our fellow canon and brother who will exercise authority there on our behalf’. This suggests that the canons did not derive enough revenues from their property in the principality to support a community. It is not clear whether the administrator whom Prior Peter appointed was one of the Jerusalem canons seconded to this duty, or whether he was a local cleric who was given the rank of honorary canon and deputised for the Jerusalem chapter.122 Measures similar to those used at Tripoli were introduced to administer some of the numerous Western endowments of the canons. By 1182, for example, a priory subject to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had been founded at Troia in Apulia.123 This system became fully developed in the thirteenth century and will be discussed in more detail later.124 Patriarch Amalric of Nesle died on 6 October 1180, and ten days later Heraclius, Archbishop of Caesarea, who had previously been archdeacon of Jerusalem, was chosen 116 117 118 120

121

Theodericus, c. 28, pp. 175–6. M. Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), 88–9. 119 BB no. 79, pp. 185–7. BB no. 86, pp. 197–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 44, I, pp. 169–70. The first evidence of this comes from 1139 when Canon Vulgrin of the Holy Sepulchre was prior of Mt Pilgrim: BB no. 80, pp. 188–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 142, I, p. 237. 122 123 124 BB no. 83, pp. 192–3. BB no. 78, pp. 183–5. BB no. 167, pp. 319–20. See pp. 44–5.

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to succeed him.125 Prior Peter of the Holy Sepulchre and Heraclius of Caesarea had been sent to the Third Lateran Council in 1179 as representatives of the Church of Jerusalem: their presence was particularly important because Patriarch Amalric did not attend.126 Apart from a disagreement about the appointment of a new dean of Jaffa, relations between the new patriarch and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre appear to have been harmonious, and certainly he and Prior Peter worked well together.127 When in 1181 Baldwin IV sent Heraclius as part of a delegation to Antioch, where civil war had broken out, in order to mediate peace, the patriarch chose Peter to accompany him, along with several other senior churchmen.128 Unlike earlier patriarchs, there is no record that Heraclius carried the Holy Cross relic on campaign when the king went to war. When in 1182 Saladin invaded and besieged Bethsan, and the king mustered the host against him, the Holy Cross was carried by Canon Baldwin, the treasurer of the Holy Sepulchre. The battle was fought in July in the intense heat of the Jordan valley and, although it was a significant Christian victory, Canon Baldwin died of sunstroke.129 This removed a cause of friction which had been present in Amalric of Nesle’s reign, because the canons received all the offerings made to the Holy Cross during the campaign. Between 1183 and 1186 Prior Peter had to organise four important state liturgical ceremonies in the cathedral. On 20 November 1183 Baldwin, the six-year-old nephew of Baldwin IV, was crowned there as co-king.130 Baldwin IV died in the spring of 1185 and his funeral mass took place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where he was buried with his predecessors at the foot of Calvary.131 In the summer of 1186 the child-king Baldwin V died. His funeral took place in the Holy Sepulchre, and he was the last Latin king to be buried there.132 Shortly after this an assembly was held in the cathedral to decide the succession. Those present, who did not represent the whole of the High Court, elected Baldwin IV’s elder sister, Sibyl, as queen, and she then chose her husband, Guy of Lusignan, to be co-ruler.133 There is conflicting evidence about the role of the canons of the Sepulchre at the battle of Hattin on 15 July 1187. The Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae is an excitatorium for the Third Crusade, but it corresponds very closely with the accounts of the conquest given

125 127

128 129

130 131

132

133

126 WT XXI, 9, XXII, 4, pp. 974, 1011–12. The reasons for Amalric’s failure to attend the council are not known. Rudolf Hiestand has drawn attention to a letter from Patriarch C. of Jerusalem to the pope, complaining that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre had appointed an unsuitable dean in nostra ecclesia and asking him not to ratify their choice. The only dean whom the canons had the right to appoint was the dean of Jaffa. Hiestand suggests that the patriarch’s initial may have been wrongly transcribed in the surviving copy of this document and that it may have been written by Patriarch H., that is Heraclius: PKHL no. 160, p. 337. WT XXII, 7, pp. 1015–17. WT XXII, 17, pp. 1030–2; B. Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2000), 174–8. WT XXII, 30, pp. 1057–9; Ernoul, Chronique, p. 104. He died before 16 May 1185: T. Vogtherr, ‘Die Regierungsdaten der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem’, ZDPV 110 (1994), 65–7; Hamilton, Leper King, 210 n. 83; Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 5, p. 21; Folda, ‘The Tomb of King Baldwin IV’ in his Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 461. R. Hiestand, ‘Chronologisches zur Geschichte der Königsreiches Jerusalem im 12. Jahrhundert: 2. Die Todesdaten Königs Balduins IV und Königs Balduins V’, DA 35 (1979), 542–55. His tomb was destroyed in the fire of 1808 and is known only from engravings: S. de Sandoli, ed., Corpus inscriptionum crucesignatorum Terrae Sanctae (Jerusalem, 1974), 61. Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, cc. 17, 18, pp. 30–4; B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Patriarch Eraclius’, in B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail, eds., Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom Presented to Joshua Prawer (Jerusalem, 1982), 195–8; G. Ligato, Sibilla regina crociata (Milan, 2005), 157–92.

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Islamic sources, and would seem to have incorporated the evidence of someone who was present in the Latin Kingdom in the months following Hattin but who later escaped to the West. According to this source, when the Frankish army was mustered, the Holy Cross relic was entrusted by Patriarch Heraclius to the bishops of Acre and Lydda. The bishop of Acre carried the Cross into battle but was mortally wounded, and handed it to the bishop of Lydda, who, together with the Cross, was taken prisoner by Saladin.134 The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi gives a slightly different account, which appears to have been provided by somebody present at the battle: ‘Even the life-giving wood of the Cross of Salvation was now captured by the enemy. And the bearers of the Cross fell with it, the Bishop of Acre and the precentor of the Lord’s Sepulchre: the first was killed and the other was captured.’135 Both sources agree that the bishop of Acre carried the Cross into battle and was killed. It seems likely that, as at the battle of Le Forbelet in 1182, a member of the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, at Hattin the precentor, accompanied the Cross on the campaign and took over as standard-bearer of the kingdom when the bishop was killed.136 The prior and the other canons remained in Jerusalem with Patriarch Heraclius. Saladin besieged the city from 20 September to 2 October, and in order to pay the garrison Heraclius allowed the silver ornaments to be stripped from the edicule of Christ’s tomb and to be processed to mint coinage.137 When the city surrendered, Saladin allowed the prior and canons to leave with the patriarch, and it is possible that they took refuge in Tripoli, where the Holy Sepulchre had a priory. What is certain is that in the summer of 1189 Patriarch Heraclius and Prior Peter, and perhaps other canons of the Sepulchre, joined Guy of Lusignan, whom Saladin had released from prison, at the siege of Acre, which lasted for two years. Heraclius and Prior Peter both died during the siege.138 When Acre fell to the Third Crusade in 1191 the canons were able to take possession of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in that city, which belonged to them, together with the land around it.139 They elected a new prior named Geoffrey.140 This was uncontroversial, but when they exercised their rights as electors of a new patriarch they encountered opposition from Count Henry of Champagne. He was the nephew of Richard I of England and on 5 May 1192 had married Isabella, younger daughter and only living descendant of King Amalric of Jerusalem (1163–74). Henry was never crowned king, because he hoped to recover Jerusalem and to be crowned there in the traditional way, but for all practical purposes he exercised royal power. One manuscript of the Eracles, the Codex Pluteus 61 10, 134

135

136

137

138 140

The Conquest of the Holy Land by Salah al-Din: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Anonymous Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, ed. and trans. K. Brewer and J. H. Kane (London, 2019) (hereafter Libellus de expugnatione), VIII, 136–7. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, I, 5, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS 38 (London, 1864–5), I, p. 15; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. H. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997), 33. On the Le Forbelet campaign the Holy Cross relic was carried by Canon Baldwin, treasurer of the Holy Sepulchre, accompanied by Canon Geoffrey of Novo Vico. Geoffrey was killed in the battle; Baldwin died of sunstroke: WT XXII, 17, p. 1032. L’Estoire d’Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer, RHC Occ II, XXIII, 46, pp. 70–1; C. J. Sabine, ‘Numismatic iconography of the Tower of David and the Holy Sepulchre: an emergency coinage struck during the siege of Jerusalem 1187’, Numismatic Chronicle ser. 7, 19 (1979), 122–32. 139 Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87. BB no. 60, pp. 152–3. His date of election is unknown. He is first mentioned in a bull of Celestine III dated 13 February 1196: PKHL no. 172, pp. 350–2.

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in the Laurentian Library at Florence, gives an account of the circumstances in which the new patriarch was chosen. The canons of the Sepulchre elected Monachus, who had been the chancellor of Patriarch Amalric of Nesle, and had then succeeded Heraclius as archbishop of Caesarea in 1180. He was by birth a Florentine, but had lived in the Latin East since 1171, and was a suitable candidate in terms both of seniority and of administrative experience.141 The canons did not consult Count Henry, who not only refused to ratify their choice, but also imprisoned the canons for disregarding the rights of the crown. Archbishop Joscius of Tyre acted as peacemaker: the canons were released, and Henry sought to conciliate Monachus by knighting his nephew Gratian and giving him a money fief of 500 bezants and an estate near Acre. The canons appealed to Celestine III, who approved their choice and sent Monachus a pallium.142 The first recorded act of Monachus as patriarch was at Acre on 19 October 1196, when Count Henry confirmed the privileges of the Pisans consilio M[onachi] Patriarchae.143 Klaus-Peter Kirstein argues that Monachus’ election was confirmed by Pope Celestine in 1194–5, and also examines the attempts made by later authors to fill the gap in the patriarchal lists between the death of Heraclius and Monachus’ appointment.144 Celestine III’s bull, Cum terra, que funiculus (which vested the election of all prelates in the churches of the East in the cathedral chapters alone and forbad lay intervention) may well, as the Florentine version of the Eracles claims, have been issued in response to the events surrounding Monachus’ appointment.145 In practice, control of church appointments in the thirteenth century passed to the papacy. Pringle has pointed out that the patriarchs of Jerusalem had a palace in Acre before 1187.146 This was very near the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which after 1191 became their pro-cathedral.147 But the patriarch and his canons did not control the city of Acre, which had its own bishop and chapter of canons, and its own cathedral, the church of the Holy Cross. Indeed, the immediate ecclesiastical superiors of the bishops of Acre were the archbishops of Tyre, rather than the patriarch. In 1196 Pope Celestine III confirmed the rights and privileges of the canons together with a general confirmation of their endowments.148 They had suffered severe losses in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as a result of Saladin’s conquests. They had lost the houses they owned in Jerusalem and their estates in the environs. Saladin had captured the priory of Quarantena and the lands of Thecua in southern Judaea. The canons lost property at Bethel, Nablus and Ascalon and throughout the Principality of Galilee. Moreover, they also lost the extensive tithes which they had been granted in those areas, of which those of the cities of Jerusalem and Jericho were particularly valuable. The tithes which they retained in the lands which remained under Frankish rule therefore became more important to them. Pope Celestine gave them his full support and exhorted the Knights Templar to honour the agreement which they had formerly made about paying the Holy Sepulchre tithes on some of their lands.149 The chief properties which remained in the hands of the canons consisted of the deanery of Jaffa, some estates in the archdiocese of Caesarea, the church of 141 143 145 146 149

142 Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, 362–71. Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 148, p. 161. 144 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 581, II, pp. 964–6. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 358–62, 371–5. PKHL no. 171, pp. 348–50; Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, p. 161. 147 148 Pringle, Churches no. 385, IV, p. 54. Pringle, Churches, IV, Map IV, pp. 16–17. PKHL no. 172, pp. 350–2. Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. R. Hiestand (Göttingen, 1984), no. 174, pp. 354–5.

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St Mary de Mimar outside Acre, and the church of St Mary at Tyre. The priory of the Holy Sepulchre at Tripoli with its endowments, and the properties owned by the Holy Sepulchre at Antioch, remained in Frankish hands and were still controlled by the canons. The overseas possessions of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre remained considerable, but even in cases where arrangements could be made to collect the dues from these scattered properties, there were often considerable difficulties about transmitting these responsions to the mother house at Acre. This problem was not satisfactorily resolved until later in the thirteenth century.150 Patriarch Monachus died between 30 May and 11 November 1202.151 The canons consulted King Aimery of Cyprus and Jerusalem (1197–1205) and the hierarchy of Jerusalem about the choice of his successor, and elected Soffredus, the cardinal of St Maria in Via Lata who was known to them because he had been sent as legate to the Crusader States by Innocent III in 1201 to settle the dispute about the Antiochene succession following the death in that year of Prince Bohemond III.152 Prior Geoffrey, with other members of the chapter, went to Rome to seek papal endorsement of their choice but, although Innocent III was willing to give it, Soffredus was reluctant to accept the honour.153 He had been appointed as one of the legates of the Fourth Crusade, and when that was diverted to Constantinople in 1203 Innocent III accepted the cardinal’s refusal of the Jerusalem nomination and looked for a new candidate. He chose Albert, the bishop of Vercelli since 1186, who had been professed as an Austin canon and trained in theology and canon law, and was an experienced diplomat. He was enthroned as patriarch of Jerusalem at some time between 17 July 1205 and 5 August 1206.154 It is not known when Prior Geoffrey died. A new prior, named Sancius, was in office by 1211, when Queen Maria (1205–12) and her husband John of Brienne (1210–25) confirmed the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in possession of a garden near Acre which they had bought, and freed them from payment of dues on crops grown there which were marketed in the city.155 The canons began to acquire endowments in the new territories in the Levant which had come under Latin rule. In 1210 King Hugh I of Cyprus gave them the estate of Lacridon in the diocese of Paphos, together with its workforce consisting of five serfs and their families.156 The canons made no attempt to increase their holdings on the island or to found a priory there.157 After 1204, the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were granted properties in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and they founded a priory in the capital to administer them. It did not prove possible for the prior of Constantinople to administer distant properties in Frankish Greece, and in c. 1212 Prior William of the Holy Sepulchre at Acre appointed one of his canons, known only by his initial N., to be prior of the church of St 150 152 153 154

155 156

157

151 See pp. 44–5. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 394–5. C. Cahen, La Syrie du nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté franque d’Antioche (Paris, 1940), 602–7. Innocent III, Die Register Innocenz III, gen. ed. O. Hageneder, 14 vols. (Vienna, 1964–2016), an. VI, nos. 129–30, pp. 214–21. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, 395–428; R. Hiestand and H. E. Mayer, ‘Die Nachfolge des Patriarchen Monachus von Jerusalem’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 74 (1974), 109–30. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 626, III, pp. 1017–19. BB no. 178, pp. 335–6. King Aimery had given Patriarch Monachus the estate of Pendache in Cyprus in 1201, but the canons do not appear to have had any share in this: ibid., no. 174, pp. 331–2. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 241.

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Demetrius at Thessalonika. He was made responsible for other properties which the Holy Sepulchre owned in the Kingdom of Thessalonika and elsewhere in the Latin Empire which were not under the control of the prior of Constantinople.158 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre continued to receive fresh endowments in western Europe. In 1210 King Frederick II of Sicily gave revenues at Piazza Armerina to Alexander, prior of the church of St Andrew in that town, which was a daughter house of the Holy Sepulchre.159 In 1212 Peter II of Aragon confirmed to Berengar, Prior of the Holy Sepulchre at Barcelona, the considerable endowments which his father, Alfonso II (d. 1196), had bequeathed to the Jerusalem house.160 In theory the canons of the Sepulchre living in exile in Acre should have been financially prosperous, but they complained to Innocent III that they were not receiving regular responsions from their Western priories. In June 1205 the pope ordered ‘all the procurators of houses and priories of the Holy Sepulchre’ to fulfil their obligations, but there is no evidence to show whether this instruction had any effect.161 In February 1215 Prior William of the Holy Sepulchre, together with the archbishop of Caesarea and the cantor of Acre were charged by Innocent III with making it publicly known that the marriage of Erard of Brienne and Philippa, the younger daughter of Isabella I of Jerusalem and Henry of Champagne, was invalid.162 This was a sensitive political issue. Erard of Brienne, John of Brienne’s cousin, when visiting Acre in 1213, had eloped with Philippa, who was the king’s ward, and married her clandestinely.163 On their return to France Erard claimed that his wife was the lawful heir to the County of Champagne, which was held at that time by Henry of Troyes’ nephew, Theobald IV. Theobald was still a minor and his mother, Countess Blanche, who was his guardian, appealed to the pope, claiming that because Erard and Philippa were related within the prohibited degrees their marriage was invalid. Innocent upheld that objection, because one of each of the couple’s greatgrandfathers were brothers.164 At about the same time, Prior William and his chapter had to consider the succession to the patriarchate. Albert of Vercelli had been assassinated on 14 September 1214 while leading the Holy Cross Day procession in Acre.165 The canons chose Ralph of Merencourt, Bishop of Sidon, and as he was John of Brienne’s chancellor they were almost certainly endorsing a royal nominee.166 Ralph, indeed, was the last patriarch of Jerusalem not to be a papal appointment. Ralph was part of the delegation from the Crusader States which attended the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome in November 1215, where he was invested as 158

159 162

163

164 165

166

BB nos. 181–2, pp. 239–40. These undated documents were probably drawn up in 1212 because on 26 May 1212 Innocent III ratified the agreement between the prior of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem and the archbishop of Thessalonika about the canonical status of the prior of St Demetrius appointed by the Jerusalem chapter: Innocent III, Regesta an. XV, no. 86, PL 216: 603–5. 160 161 BB no. 177, pp. 334–5. BB no. 180, pp. 337–8. BB no. 175, p. 332. Innocent III, Regesta an. XVII, Appendix, PL 216: 974. William is not named in this source, but is known to have been prior at that time (cf. E. Strehlke, Tabulae Ordinis Teutonici (Berlin, 1869), no. 48; reprinted with introduction by H. E. Mayer (Toronto, 1975)). Eracles XXXI, 8, p. 319; G. Perry, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople c. 1175–1237 (Cambridge, 2013), 81–3; G. Perry, ‘“Scandalia . . . tam in oriente quam in occidente”: the Briennes in East and West, 1213–1221’, Crusades 10 (2011), 63–78. Innocent III, Regesta an. XVI, no. 150, PL 216: 941. His assassin was a clerk who considered that he had been unjustly deprived of his office by the patriarch. See Annales de Terre Sainte, ed. R. Röhricht and G. Raynaud, AOL II (ii), 436; Chronique de Terre Sainte c. 71, in Les Gestes des Chiprois, Livre I. Chronique de Terre Sainte, 1132–1234, ed. G. Raynaud, Société de l’Orient Latin, sér. historiques, 5 (Geneva, 1887), 18. Perry, John of Brienne, 43, 72–4.

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patriarch of Jerusalem by the pope.167 The council introduced new marriage legislation, reducing the number of prohibited degrees of kinship.168 One consequence of this was that Erard of Brienne’s marriage to Philippa of Champagne was no longer considered invalid in canon law, and thus Prior William was relieved of the duty of having to denounce a marriage of a member of the royal family of Jerusalem. Philip Augustus imposed a temporary settlement on the dispute about the Champagne succession, ruling that the royal court could not pass judgement until Count Theobald IV came of age in 1222.169 On Ascension Day, 16 April 1218, when the fleet of the Fifth Crusade assembled in the harbour of Acre in preparation for its attack on Damietta, Patriarch Ralph blessed the participants with the Holy Cross, brought from the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Acre. Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, explained that ‘that cross was formerly cut from the part of the cross of the Lord which was long ago captured in battle by the Saracens’.170 Nothing else is known about the provenance of this Holy Cross relic. It was not used as a battle standard in the thirteenth-century kingdom, perhaps because it was not substantial enough. Patriarch Ralph took part in the crusade to Egypt, but there is no evidence that the canons accompanied him, though Prior William may have done so. In August 1220 Pope Honorius III (1216–27) issued two bulls for the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre, confirming their traditional privileges. This suggests that a new prior had been appointed, although, because the names of the recipients of these letters were not entered in the papal register, it is impossible to be certain.171 In October 1220 the senior clergy who remained in Acre sent an appeal to Philip Augustus for help against the sultan of Egypt’s brother, al-Muazzam, who was attacking them while the army of the kingdom was on campaign at Damietta, but the prior of the Holy Sepulchre was not a signatory. This suggests that he was in Egypt with the crusade. It is therefore possible that Prior William had gone to Egypt in 1218 and had died there, and that his successor had also joined the crusading forces there. Patriarch Ralph of Merencourt died in 1224.172 His successor, Gerold of Lausanne, Bishop of Valence, was chosen by the pope, almost certainly in consultation with Frederick II, who in 1225 married Isabella II, Queen of Jerusalem, the daughter of John of Brienne, and thus became king in his wife’s right.173 The role of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in this election was a formality.174 The new patriarch was a Benedictine, who had been abbot of Cluny before becoming bishop of Valence.175 He stayed in the West, intending to go to Acre with the new crusade which Frederick II was preparing, and appointed Peter, Prior of the Holy Sepulchre, as his vicar. In this capacity Peter set his seal to an agreement between the Cistercian convent of St Mary Magdalene Acre and Guarinus of Montagu, Master of the 167 168

169 170 171 172

173

174 175

Eracles XXXI, 8, p. 319. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, Concilium Lateranensis IV, Canon 50, ed. Istituto per le Scienze religiose (Bologna, 1973), 257–8. Innocent III, Regesta an. XVII, Appendix, nos. 4–6, PL 216: 975–7. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 171 (Turnhout, 2000), no. IV, 585. Honorius III, Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. P. Pressutti, 2 vols. (Rome, 1888–95), nos. 2626, 2640. On 15 December 1224 Honorius III referred to him as bone memorie: Honorius III, Regesta no. 5219; Annales de Terre Sainte, 438; Gestes des Chiprois, ed. Raynaud, c. 109, p. 30. Eracles XXXIII, 20, pp. 357–8; M. Pacifico, Federico II e Gerusalemme al tempo delle crociate. Relazioni tra cristianità e islam nello spazio euro-mediterraneo medievale 1215–1250 (Caltanissetta and Rome, 2012), 133–54. Gregory IX, Les registres de Grégoire IX, ed. L. Auvray, BEFAR ser. 2, 3 vols. (Paris, 1896–1955), no. 56. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5474.

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Hospital, on 24 December 1225.176 On 8 May 1227 he set his seal to the record of a gift made to the Master of the Hospital by William de Keviller as an act of thanksgiving for the Order’s attempt to negotiate his father’s release from Muslim captivity.177 Peter’s work as vicar came to an end in the autumn of 1227, when Patriarch Gerold reached the Holy Land with the vanguard of Frederick II’s crusade.178 Frederick II went on crusade while he was excommunicated. He reached Acre in September 1228 and on 24 February 1229 made a treaty with al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt, by which Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem together with other territories were restored to Frankish rule. It was agreed that the Temple platform in Jerusalem, the Haram alSharif, should remain in Muslim control as a place of Islamic worship.179 In theory this settlement should have been welcomed by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Their position in Acre was anomalous for, although they enjoyed prestige as the patriarch’s chapter and had ceremonial precedence over all the other religious communities in the city, they did not have a proper cathedral. The pro-cathedral was not large enough to host state ceremonies. When Henry of Troyes died in 1197, his funeral was held in the cathedral of the Holy Cross at Acre, where he was buried.180 In 1210 John of Brienne married Queen Maria of Jerusalem in Acre cathedral, and the couple were then crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of Tyre.181 In 1224 Queen Isabella II was crowned at Tyre and later married to Frederick II by proxy in Acre cathedral.182 The prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre were no doubt present on these state occasions, but they did not have the principal liturgical role. The restoration to them of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem might have been expected to solve that problem. Frederick took possession on 17 March 1229 and the next day ceremonially wore the imperial crown in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.183 The prior and canons were not present because the emperor had been excommunicated by Gregory IX, and Patriarch Gerold sent the archbishop of Caesarea to place the Holy City under an interdict in his name.184 In itself this was a temporary problem. Frederick returned to Sicily on 1 May 1229 and made peace with Gregory IX in 1230. His excommunication was formally lifted on 28 August, and there was no longer any ecclesiastical reason why the canons of the Holy Sepulchre should not return to Jerusalem.185 The situation in the Holy Land was complicated by the opposition of an important section of the nobility, led by John of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, to Frederick II’s rule. They found a constitutional reason for not co-operating with the viceroys whom the emperor appointed after his return to the West, because Queen Isabella had died in 1228, and in the view of the 176

177

178 179

180 183

184 185

CGOH I, no. 1828. Peter also vidimated a copy of the judgement given in 1221 by the legate Pelagius in a dispute between the bishop of Acre and the Hospital of St John: CGOH I, no. 1718. CGOH I, no. 1861. A copy of Peter’s seal was engraved by S. Paoli, Codice diplomatico del sacro militare ordine gerosolimitano, oggi di Malta, 2 vols. (Lucca, 1722–7), I, p. 114. Eracles XXXII, 23, p. 364. J. L. Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, 6 vols. (Paris, 1852–61), III, 86–99; Pacifico, Federico II, 233–55. The evidence about the agreement to restore Nazareth is discussed below, pp. 126–7. 181 182 Eracles XXVII, 4, p. 221. Eracles XXXI, 1, p. 311. Eracles XXXII, 20, pp. 357–8. The evidence is discussed by H. E. Mayer, ‘Das Pontifikale von Tyrus und die Krönung der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Forschung über Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik’, DOP 21 (1967), 200–10. Gregory IX, Registres no. 308. Pacifico, Federico II, 255–92; J. Phillips, Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades (New York, 2009), 231–7, a brief, perceptive study of the rhetoric and political realism of this instance of papal–imperial diplomacy.

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baronial party the king of Jerusalem was now her son, Conrad, and his father Frederick was only his guardian. Since Conrad had not come to take corporal possession of the kingdom within two years of his mother’s death, as the custom of the kingdom required, the High Court had the right to appoint regents to govern in his name. This led to a civil war – John of Ibelin and his supporters against the viceroys appointed by the emperor – and it was not until 1233 that a pragmatic division of territory was made: Frederick’s representatives held Tyre and Jerusalem, while the baronial opposition held Acre and the rest of the kingdom.186 This friction undoubtedly complicated the position of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, since Jerusalem was under imperial control, while most of their property in the kingdom was in the areas controlled by the baronial party. They were also, of course, bound by the decision of the patriarch, whose chapter they were. Gerold of Lausanne was summoned to Rome by Gregory IX in 1232, although he did not leave Acre until the following year, and he remained in the West until 1237.187 He never moved his residence to Jerusalem, but appointed the abbot of the Mount of Olives and the dean of Jaffa to be his vicars there. The only known copy of his letter of authorisation is undated, but it seems likely that it was written after Frederick II had been reconciled to the Church in 1230, so that there was no longer any reason in principle for the patriarch to boycott the city.188 Because he remained in Acre it was impossible for all the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to return to Jerusalem even had they wished to do so. In fact, apart from reasons of religious devotion, Jerusalem was not attractive to the Frankish population of the kingdom after 1229. In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, al-Muazzam, ruler of Damascus and Palestine, had dismantled the walls of the city so that it was no longer secure from marauders. Moreover, the treaty of 1229 had not restored any of the villages around Jerusalem to Frankish rule, and that would have created logistical problems for Latin religious communities had they wished to return there.189 The dean of Jaffa was appointed by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and was responsible as the patriarch’s vicar for the administration of the mother church in Jerusalem after 1230. Saladin had handed the cathedral over to the Orthodox in 1187, and no substantial changes had been made to its fabric. In 1192, at the request of Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, Saladin had granted permission for two Latin priests and two Latin deacons to minister in the cathedral to Western pilgrims. Their stipends were to be paid from the offerings made at the shrine.190 It is not known whether the Latins availed themselves regularly of this concession, but if they did the patriarch and his canons would have had the right to nominate the Latin chaplains. Although the history of Jerusalem after it had been restored to Frankish rule in 1229 is poorly documented, it is known that the church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored to the Latin rite. Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, written in 1231, reports that the Orthodox clergy had been given a chapel in the cathedral, while the Latins controlled the 186 187 189

190

J. Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (London, 1973), 185–228. 188 Gregory IX, Registres nos. 815, 3522. BB no. 184, pp. 341–2. Among the objections made by Patriarch Gerold to the Treaty of Jaffa was nulla sunt casalia restituta: Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, pp. 86–90. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, VI, 34, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, I, p. 424; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, pp. 378–9.

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rest of the building: ‘De l’autre part, à l’entrée du sepulchre si a xlii degrés iusque à la chapelle des grex: en laquele chapele soloit ester la sainte vraie Crois.’191 Presumably one of the patriarchal vicars celebrated the liturgy in the cathedral, assisted either by some of the canons who had returned from Acre or by vicars choral appointed by them. Some of the canons had certainly returned there by March 1238, when Gregory IX wrote to the patriarch to complain that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem claimed that the Holy Fire came down from Heaven at Easter, that Christ was contained in it (Christum inibi incarceratum), and that they charged a fixed price to pilgrims to show them the place where this phenomenon occurred. The pope required the patriarch to ensure that such abuses stopped immediately.192 Patriarch Gerold died in 1238–9.193 The prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre asked Gregory IX to appoint Jacques de Vitry, who had been bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1229, and had then been created cardinal bishop of Tusculum, to succeed him. This was a good choice because Jacques had an excellent knowledge of the Holy Land and had been involved in negotiations between Frederick II and Gregory IX since his return to Europe. He was therefore well qualified to heal the factions which divided the Crusader Kingdom. The pope did not accept this nomination, but on 14 May 1240 appointed Robert, Bishop of Nantes, as patriarch.194 Robert, who had formerly been an Apulian bishop, had been exiled by Frederick II because of his support for Gregory IX. The pope had then translated him to Nantes.195 The new patriarch did not go to the Holy Land until 1244, but appointed Peter of Sargines, Archbishop of Tyre, as his vicar.196 In the winter of 1239–40 an-Nasir Da’ud, Lord of Kerak, had seized Jerusalem. There had been no bloodshed, and he had given the Frankish garrison a safe conduct to retire to the coast. A few months later, Theobald of Navarre, who had gone on crusade, negotiated a truce with the sultan of Egypt, by which Jerusalem and other territories were to be restored to the Franks. He left for the West in the summer of 1240 and, by the time Richard of Cornwall reached Acre with a new crusade a few weeks later, Jerusalem was in Frankish control again and Frederick II’s lieutenant, Walter of Pennepié, was acting as governor there. Richard made a treaty with the sultan of Egypt by which the lands held by the Kingdom of Jerusalem west of the Jordan before 1187 were restored to Frankish rule, with the exception of the territories of Hebron and Nablus – though quite how much of these restored territories Frankish barons were able to take possession of is unclear.197

191

192 193

194 195 196 197

Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, in Itinéraires à Jérusalem et descriptions de la Terre Sainte rédigés en français aux XIe, XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. H. Michelant and G. Raynaud, Publications de la Société de l’Orient Latin, Série Géographique III, Itinéraires français (Geneva, 1882), vi, 94. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4181. Annales de Terre Sainte (p. 440) dates his death to 1238; Gregory IX wrote to Gerold in March 1239, but might not have known of his death if he had died in the last months of 1238: Gregory IX, Registres no. 4753; Alberic of Trois Fontaines dates Gerold’s death to 1239, Chronica a monacho novo monasterio Hoiensis interpolata, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, MGH (SS), XXIII (Hanover, 1874), 947; the Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre, reports, mistakenly, that the patriarch (unnamed) accompanied the army of Theobald of Navarre to Ascalon in the autumn of 1239: RHC Occ II, c. 22, p. 531. Jacques de Vitry had died on 1 May 1240, but Gregory had made his choice before that date: Gregory IX, Registres no. 5179. L. de Mas Latrie, ‘Les patriarches latins de Jérusalem’, ROL 1 (1893), 23. Tafel and Thomas, eds., Urkunden no. 299, II, p. 355; Annales de Terre Sainte, p. 441. S. Painter, ‘The crusades of Theobald of Navarre and Richard of Cornwall, 1239–1241’, in K. M. Setton, ed., History of the Crusades, II, The Later Crusades, 1189–1311 (Philadelphia, 1962), 463–86; Pacifico, Federico II, 363–98.

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Frederick II had been excommunicated again by Gregory IX in 1239, and in 1242 the baronial party in the Kingdom of Acre gained control of Tyre, the headquarters of Frederick’s bailli, Richard Filangieri, who retired to Sicily. Presumably Walter of Pennepié, who had few troops with him in Jerusalem, withdrew from the kingdom at about the same time. The baronial party accepted Queen Alice of Cyprus, the daughter of Queen Isabella I and Henry of Troyes, as regent for the absent king, Conrad, son of Frederick II and Isabella II.198 Thus when Robert of Nantes reached Acre in 1244 the kingdom was united under a titular head, who was in full communion with the pope. Robert seems to have intended to move the patriarchate back to Jerusalem, and the new pope, Innocent IV (1243–54), acting on his advice, sought to raise money to rebuild the city walls.199 It was logistically possible for the patriarch and his canons to return there, because Richard of Cornwall’s treaty had restored Judaea (with the exception of Hebron) to Frankish rule, so that the Holy Sepulchre had recovered its estates in the environs of Jerusalem. Robert of Nantes made a pilgrimage to the city soon after his arrival at Acre, but was unable to implement his plans any further.200 On 23 August 1244 an army of Khwarizmian mercenaries, on their way from north Syria to take service with the sultan of Egypt, turned aside and attacked Jerusalem. As the prelates of the Holy Land related in an appeal to the kings of France and England: ‘The Chorasmians [Khwarizmians], entering the church of the Holy Sepulchre, disembowelled the Christians who had taken refuge there and executed the priests who were saying Mass. Then they desecrated the shrines.’201 The Franks of Acre reacted by fielding the largest army which they had raised since Hattin and allying with the Ayyubid prince of Damascus against the sultan of Egypt and his Khwarizmian troops, but were decisively defeated outside Gaza on 18 October 1244.202 If any canons of the Holy Sepulchre were in Jerusalem in August 1244, they would have been killed, but the patriarch had not been there, nor had the prior and those brethren who had stayed in Acre. Prior Guiscard had only recently been appointed. In February 1244 Innocent IVordered the archbishop of Nazareth and the bishop of Tiberias to investigate the prior’s election, because the canons had elected him some three years or more before, but the patriarch had refused to confirm their choice. That reference must relate to Patriarch Gerold. The canons had then appealed to Rome, but no action had yet been taken. Innocent IV was having to deal with a backlog of appeals, of which this was one, made to the curia during the troubled final year of Gregory IX and the long interregnum which followed his death in 1241. Innocent ordered the judges delegate to confirm Prior Guiscard’s election if it had been canonical or, if it had not been, to quash it, in which case a new appointment would be made either by the pope himself or by the new patriarch.203 It is not clear what decision the judges reached. A prior was in office by November 1244 and was one of the signatories of an appeal for military aid sent from the Crusader States to the kings of France and 198

199 200

201 202

P. Jackson, ‘The end of Hohenstaufen rule in Syria’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 59 (1986), 20–36; D. Jacoby, ‘The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the collapse of Hohenstaufen power in the Levant’, DOP 40 (1986), 83–101. Innocent IV, Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. E. Berger, BEFAR, 4 vols. (Paris, 1884–1921), no. 53. Letter of the Master of the Hospital of St John in Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 57, 7 vols. (London 1872–83), IV, p. 308. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45; Eracles XXXIII, 54, pp. 428, 563–4. 203 Eracles XXXIII, 56, pp. 429–31, 564. Innocent IV, Registres no. 458.

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England. Matthew Paris, whose copy of this letter is the sole record, only gives the prior’s initial, ‘H. prior Dominici Sepulchri’, and there is no way of knowing whether this is a wrong transcription and relates to Prior Guiscard, or whether a new prior had been appointed.204 Similarly, it is not clear whether Prior A. who witnessed a transaction between the abbey of Sta Maria Latina and the Hospital of St John in 1248 was a different man from Matthew Paris’ Prior H., or whether his initial had been wrongly transcribed.205 Although Louis IX of France had taken the Cross soon after he received news of the sack of Jerusalem, Henry III of England had not responded to the appeal. It was, no doubt, in an attempt to engage his sympathy that the patriarch and bishops of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospital sent a Holy Blood relic to the devout king. It was escorted by Canon John of the Holy Sepulchre and by Monsignor Matthew, a confrater of the community. Henry III was delighted with it and gave it a place of honour in Westminster Abbey, which was being rebuilt under his patronage, but he did not take the Cross.206 Louis IX led a crusade to the Levant in 1248 and stayed there for six years but, although he gave stability to the government of Acre and strengthened its defences, he could not regain Jerusalem. In 1252, while he was in the kingdom, Innocent IV revived the see of Hebron, which had been vacant since 1187. The new bishop, Bartholomew of Fossa Nova, appealed to the pope for help to recover property belonging to his church, and Innocent appointed the bishops of Lydda and Bethlehem as judges delegate but, as they were serving with King Louis’ army, they nominated Matthew, Canon and Preceptor of the Holy Sepulchre, to conduct this investigation. He was a good choice, because as preceptor he administered the material possessions of his community, and he succeeded in mediating a settlement between Bishop Bartholomew and Poppo, Master of the Teutonic Order, about a group of houses which the bishop claimed and the Order held in the suburb of Montmusard at Acre. Matthew had good negotiating skills, and persuaded the Master not to claim exemption from his jurisdiction and lodge an appeal with the pope, which would be a lengthy and expensive exercise, but instead to pay a fixed rent to the bishop for these properties, which in the long term would save his Order money.207 Robert of Nantes died on 8 June 1254, a few weeks after Louis IX had returned to the West.208 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre requested the pope to translate Opizo dei Fieschi, Latin patriarch of Antioch since 1247, to the vacant see of Jerusalem. He was the nephew of Innocent IV, but the pope died on 7 December 1254 and his successor, Alexander IV, refused the canons’ nomination and appointed James Pantaleon, Bishop of Verdun. The latter was the son of poor parents, and one of the few men of low birth who was not a member of the mendicant orders to become a bishop in the thirteenth century.209 He nominated Archbishop Joscelin of Caesarea as his vicar, until he arrived at Acre in June 1256.210 Alexander IV had been told that the number of canons serving the Holy 204 206 208 209

210

205 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 337. CGOH I, nos. 2482, 2491. 207 F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward (Oxford, 1947), 571. Strehlke nos. 101, 102, 104, pp. 81–4. Eracles XXXIV, 2, p. 441; Annales de Terre Sainte, 446. Alexander IV, Les registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. C. Bourel de la Roncière, J. de Loye, P. de Ceival and A. Coulon, BEFAR, 2 vols. (Paris, 1902–31), no. 317; G. Sievert, ‘Das Vorleben des Papstes Urban IV’, RQ 10 (1896), 451–505. CGOH I, no. 2732; Eracles XXXIV, 3, p. 442; Annales de Terre Sainte, 445–7.

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Sepulchre at Acre was so few that they were unable to perform their liturgical functions adequately (ecclesia ipsa debitorum obsequia defraudetur). He therefore licensed the patriarch to appoint six additional canons if there were sufficient funds to support them.211 One of the canons, Hugh of Nissun, was an honorary papal chaplain and was appointed titular bishop of Sebastea by the pope. The see had been in Muslim control since 1187, and he was given a dispensation to retain his canonry in the Holy Sepulchre.212 In 1258 the Mongols under Hulegu Khan sacked Baghdad and planned to advance further west. Alexander IVappointed a legate a latere to prepare the Franks in Syria and Palestine to face this threat. This was Thomas de Lentino, Dominican prior of Naples, who had professed St Thomas Aquinas. The pope appointed him bishop of the vacant see of Bethlehem, and he was the first mendicant friar to hold episcopal office in the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem.213 This created a problem for James Pantaleon, since Thomas, as special representative of the pope, outranked him, even though he was one of his suffragan bishops. The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre comments that ‘because he, who should have been his subordinate, was appointed legate with powers over him [the patriarch] left Syria and went to the court of Rome’.214 He was still there when Alexander IV died on 25 May 1261, and at the subsequent conclave he was elected pope and took the name Urban IV.215 Because he had experience of conditions in the Latin East, his brief pontificate was of major importance to the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem and to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Urban did not immediately appoint a new patriarch of Jerusalem. In November 1262 he translated Bishop Florence of Acre to the archbishopric of Arles, and then on 9 December appointed Bishop William of Agen patriarch of Jerusalem and administrator of the see of Acre, stipulating that the two sees should continue to be held jointly until Jerusalem was recovered.216 This ensured that future patriarchs would have adequate revenues, and brought to an end the anomaly of the patriarch enjoying exempt status in the cathedral city of another bishop. Thomas of Lentino was recalled to Rome in September 1263, shortly before the new patriarch reached Acre.217 Pope Urban was also concerned about his former colleagues, the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. When the prior died on 23 May 1263 he appointed Canon Hugh of Nissun, Bishop of Sebastea, to succeed him, and allowed him to hold the titular bishopric in plurality.218 Urban IV recognised that there were so few canons serving the Holy Sepulchre in Acre because of a lack of money: for, although they held property all over Western Christendom, it was difficult to arrange the payment of dues to them. Successive priors had complained about this to the curia, but papal censures had not proved very 211 213

214

215 216 217 218

212 Alexander IV, Registres no. 1077. Alexander IV, Registres nos. 1151–3. Alexander IV, Registres no. 4699; Mas Latrie, ‘Patriarches latins’, 25; P. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow, 2005), 115–23. Eracles XXXIV, 4, pp. 445–6. His official reason for going to Rome was to defend the interests of the convent of Bethany; see p. 238. Cronaca del Templare de Tiro, Old French text with Italian translation, ed. L. Minervini (Naples, 2000), c. 76, p. 88. Urban IV, Les registres d’Urbain IV, ed. J. Guiraud, BEFAR, 4 vols. (Paris, 1901–29), no. 163. Cronaca del Templare de Tiro c. 84, pp. 90–2. Urban IV, Registres nos. 260, 264. His predecessor as prior, whose name is not known, is last mentioned in a document of 11 January 1261: Tafel and Thomas, eds., Urkunden no. 346, III, pp. 39–44.

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effective.219 Urban IV exempted ‘the priories, churches, houses, provostships [prepositurae] and all the places subject to the church of the Holy Sepulchre . . . both in the lands overseas and in Europe, and the people who serve them’ from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction except that of the prior of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, the patriarch of Jerusalem and the pope.220 As Kaspar Elm has shown, among the priories of the Holy Sepulchre in western Europe in the thirteenth century were those of Calatayud, Barcelona and Logroño in Spain, La Vinadiere in France, Warwick and Thetford in England, Denkendorf in Germany, Miechow in Poland, Zderas in Bohemia, Komloss in Hungary, Glogovnica in Croatia, Barletta in Apulia and the priory of St Luke at Perugia in Umbria.221 The priors or administrators of all these houses were henceforth appointed by and directly responsible to the prior of the Jerusalem house, and by this legislation Urban IV had in effect turned this loosely organised collection of priories into an exempt Order of the Catholic Church. The pope enforced this policy very strictly, as his letter of 12 January 1264 to the prior of the Holy Sepulchre at Aquapendente, a daughter house of the Jerusalem priory, makes plain.222 Moreover, he either appointed, or encouraged the prior of the Jerusalem house to appoint, visitors to oversee all the property of the Order in a defined area; for example, Adam, ‘prior of all houses and churches of the Holy Sepulchre in the Kingdom of Sicily’.223 The suppression of the see of Acre necessarily involved the dissolution of the chapter of secular canons, headed by a dean, who had administered the cathedral. On 17 January 1263, when Thomas of Bethlehem was presiding at a legatine inquiry into a dispute between the archbishop of Nazareth and the Order of the Hospital of St John, Robert of Saintonges, Dean of Acre, who was present, was described as ‘an official of the court of the lord legate’.224 He appears to have been given this position as compensation for the forthcoming loss of his deanship. The last record of him as dean dates from a month later, when he and Bishop Florence of Acre were present when another dispute was heard by the legate Thomas.225 The only reference to a canon of Acre after 12 February 1263 dates from 7 July 1264 when Urban IV requested Patriarch William of Jerusalem to arrange for James, a clerk in the papal chancery, to continue to receive payment for the prebend which he had formerly held in the church of Acre.226 Proper provision had clearly been made for the secular canons of Acre, but henceforth the new patriarch used the cathedral of the Holy Cross for liturgical celebrations, and it was served by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The only official of the cathedral of Acre who remained in post after 1264 and was not a canon of the Holy Sepulchre was the treasurer. The treasurer of the church of the Holy Cross Acre was twice appointed a judge delegate in Cyprus by Pope Nicholas III in 1278, and in 1286 Michael, the treasurer of the church of Acre, witnessed an agreement between the lord 219

220

221 222

223 226

E.g. Innocent IV had complained about this to the archbishop of Barcelona in 1250, while Alexander IV in an encyclical had deplored the general disregard of papal censures on this matter: PKHL nos. 193–4, pp. 386–8. Urban IV, Registres no. 257. Further privileges granted by Urban IV to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre: nos. 258, 259, 261, 252, 263. K. Elm, ‘Canonici regolari del Santo Sepolcro’, DIP 8 (1988), 934–8. Urban IV, Registres no. 2486; this church had been a Benedictine community, but with papal permission became a house of Austin canons on 23 May 1263: ibid., no. 251. 224 225 Urban IV, Registres no. 929. CGOH I, no. 3051. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 55, pp. 112–15. Urban IV, Registres no. 2640.

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of Gibelet and the Teutonic Order.227 This indicates that the finances of the diocese of Acre, though controlled by the patriarch, continued to be administered separately from those of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who appointed one of their number as preceptor to administer their property.228 Hugh of Nissun died in 1267, and in June 1268 Pope Clement IV waived his right of nomination and allowed the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre to elect a new prior.229 He was called Guy, and in 1269, together with several canons (who included William of Poitou, Peter of Gascony and Gerard), authenticated an arm of St Philip the Apostle which had been brought to Acre from Rhodes by John of Proveira, whose heirs wished to give it to the cathedral of Rheims. In this document Canon William of Poitou is described as ‘comandor au jor de nostre yglise a Acre’, which is a title normally used by heads of houses belonging to the military orders. In this source it appears to mean that he was in charge of the administration of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Acre, the former pro-cathedral of the patriarch.230 It is not known whether the canons continued to live in their old priory next to the pro-cathedral, but they may have done so, because the secular canons of Acre had not lived in community and there were no suitable buildings for them to live in near the cathedral of the Holy Cross. If they remained in their former priory this would have been inconvenient for singing the night office in the cathedral, but it would not have been an impossible requirement because the priory and the cathedral were quite near each other. The increased revenues which the canons received after 1263, both from the diocese of Acre and from the more effective administration of their Western dependencies, was needed because their possessions in the Levant were being eroded. Much of their property in the Latin Empire of Constantinople was lost between the Byzantine recovery of Thessalonika in 1224 and the restoration of Michael VIII in Constantinople in 1261.231 In the Crusader States, Sultan Baibars I (1260–77) captured the remaining Frankish strongholds in Galilee and between 1265 and 1268 seized the coastal cities of Jaffa, Arsuf, Caesarea and Haifa, and in 1268 he captured Antioch.232 The loss of the deanery of Jaffa was particularly damaging to the finances of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. After 1270 their properties in the Latin Kingdom were restricted to their holdings in Acre and its environs, their property in Tyre, and their priory on Mt Pilgrim at Tripoli. Consequently they must have been increasingly dependent on the payment of responsions from their Western priories. Pilgrims continued to visit the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Acre where they might obtain indulgences, one of seven years, another of four quarantaines (periods of forty days). At the cathedral of the Holy Cross indulgences might be gained of three years and forty 227

228 229 230

231 232

Nicholas III, Les registres de Nicolas III, ed. J. Gay and S. Vitte, BEFAR, 2 vols. (Paris, 1898–1930), nos. 107, 116; E. Rey, Recherches géographiques et historiques sur la domination des Latins en Orient (Paris, 1877), 56–9. In 1267 the post was held by canon Henry: CGOH I, no. 3283. Clement IV, Les registres de Clément IV, ed. E. Jordan, BEFAR (Paris, 1893–1904), no. 639, p. 226. L. Demaison, ‘Documents relatifs à une relique de saint Philippe, rapportée de Terre Sainte à Saint-Rémi de Reims’, AOL II (ii), 177–83. P. W. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500 (London, 1995), 35–84. P. Thoreau, The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, trans. P. M. Holt (London, 1992), 142–219.

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days. The offerings made by pilgrims in both churches benefited the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.233 So long as there was a Latin patriarch of Jerusalem the position of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre at Acre was secure. They sang the day and night offices in his cathedral, and the election of a new patriarch was still formally vested in them. Patriarch William of Agen died in April 1270, in the middle of the very long papal interregnum which followed the death of Clement IVon 29 November 1268.234 No new patriarch could be appointed until a new pope had been elected. On 1 September 1271 the cardinals finally elected Theobald Visconti, who was at that time in the Holy Land, where he had accompanied Lord Edward of England on crusade. Before he left for Rome, where he was enthroned in March 1272, he must have consulted the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the prelates in the kingdom about a new patriarch. He designated Thomas of Lentino, the former papal legate and bishop of Bethlehem, whom in 1267 Clement IV had translated to the archbishopric of Cosenza in the Kingdom of Sicily.235 This was a good choice: Thomas had first-hand knowledge of the Crusader Kingdom and while legate had proved himself to be an able administrator.236 When Thomas died in 1277 the canons nominated Archbishop Humbert of Naples as his successor, a choice which reflected the power of Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, in the eastern Mediterranean and, while they were waiting for the assent of Pope Nicholas III (1277–80), Archbishop Bonacursus of Tyre was appointed administrator of the patriarchal see.237 The pope wanted to appoint John of Vercelli, General of the Dominican Order, but he declined the honour, and in May 1279 Elias, Bishop of Périgord, was appointed.238 He held office for eight years and died while visiting the papal court in the winter of 1287–8.239 The first Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, was elected on 22 February 1288. He appointed his penitentiary, the Dominican Nicholas of Hanapes, to the vacant see of Jerusalem on 30 April 1288.240 This chronology implies that the pope did not allow the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to exercise their formal right of electing the patriarch in this case. At the end of the new patriarch’s first year in office, the Mamluks captured Tripoli on 26 April 1289, and the priory of the Holy Sepulchre on Mt Pilgrim came to an end.241 Acre fell to the Mamluks two years later. Patriarch Nicholas was drowned when he lost his footing while trying to board a Venetian ship in order to escape from the city.242 It is not known whether any of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre escaped from the sack of Acre, though if they did they would have made their way to one of the Western priories of their Order. After 1291 the headquarters of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre was established in the priory of St Luca at Perugia. The Jerusalem liturgy continued to be used there 233 234

235 238 239

240 241

242

Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, p. 235. William died on 11 April 1270 according to Annales de Terre Sainte, 454, and on 21 April 1270 according to Eracles XXXIV, 13, p. 458. 236 237 Clement IV, Registres no. 511. Eracles XXXIV, 25, p. 462. Eracles XXXIV, 33, p. 478. Nicholas III, Registres nos. 53, 309, 529, 567. E. Martène and U. Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris, 1717), I, pp. 1230–1; Nicholas IV, Les registres de Nicolas IV, ed. E. Langlois, BEFAR, 4 vols. (Paris, 1886–93), no. 85. Nicholas IV, Registres nos. 85–92. Stephen, the last known prior of Tripoli, was in office in 1283: L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols. (Paris, 1855–61), III, 667. Cronaca del Templare de Tiro, c. 267, p. 222.

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and the priors of the other houses of the Order throughout western Europe owed obedience to the archprior of Perugia. This organisation remained in existence throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, and in some places houses of the Order survived until the early nineteenth century.243

The Austin Canons of Mt Zion The church of St Mary of Mt Zion was one of the holiest places in medieval Jerusalem, for it stood on the site of what, from the late fifth century, was believed to be the house of St John the Evangelist, identified as the site where the eucharist had been instituted, and where the Holy Spirit had descended at Pentecost.244 It was also believed to have been the home of the Blessed Virgin Mary after the Crucifixion.245 This church was very badly damaged in the anti-Christian riots which broke out in Jerusalem in reaction to Nicephorus I Phocas’ conquest of Cyprus in 966, and it is not known whether it had been restored before Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the churches of Jerusalem in 1009.246 Until that time the church had stood within the walls of the city, but under Caliph az-Zahir (1021–36) the walls were rebuilt and the line of the new south wall was relocated further north, so that St Mary of Zion remained outside the city defences.247 The church was still in ruins when the First Crusade reached Jerusalem in 1099 and, when the senior clergy organised a procession for the crusaders round the walls of Jerusalem to implore divine aid, they completed the circuit with a station in the ruins of St Mary of Zion.248 The Franks were aware of the events associated with this shrine. The guide to the Holy Places incorporated in Bartolf of Nangis’ History of the First Crusade explains: In that place [St Mary of Zion] is the room where the disciples had their feet washed by their Lord . . . and [where] he held the supper with them, and imparted to them the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood. . . . this is furthermore the place where, after the Resurrection, he sent them the Holy Spirit. There it is said that the Mother of God passed away, which accounts for the name of the church. As one can see from the inside, it was splendidly built in ancient times, but it was destroyed by the treacherous Saracens.249

It might therefore have been expected that the restoration of this church and its liturgical service would have been a priority for the Franks after they had captured the city. Indeed, a bull attributed to Pope Alexander III, dated 19 March 1179, confirming the rights and properties of the abbey of Mt Zion claims that it was founded by Duke Godfrey of Bouillon. This text is known only in a vidimation of 1336, which Rudolf Hiestand in his edition of it rightly classified as a forgery. It is addressed to Abbot John, who is not otherwise known, while Abbot Reynald is securely attested as head of the community in 1179. The alleged copy of 1336 was made for Abbot Dominic of Mt Zion, living in exile at the abbey of 243 246 247 248 249

244 245 Elm, ‘Canonici regolari’, 934–8. Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 46–7. John 19: 27. Gil, History of Palestine, pp. 325–6. D. Bahat with C. T. Rubinstein, The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, trans. S. Ketko (New York, 1990), 81, 87–8. AA VI, 8, pp. 412–14. Guide in Gesta Francorum Expugnantium Iherusalem, ch. XXXIII, RHC Occ III, pp. 509–12; trans. Wilkinson in his Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 175.

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Catalanizetta in Sicily.250 The claim is made in the bull that Patriarch William I of Jerusalem (1130–45) had granted to the abbey of Mt Zion all the churches in Sicily, Apulia and Calabria belonging to the communities of St Mary of the Mount of Olives, St John of Sebaste, St Elias of Mt Tabor and St Abraham of Hebron.251 This is manifestly a fiction, but it is the reason for the forgery of this document: Abbot Dominic wished to make a claim to properties in the Kingdom of Sicily that had belonged to other religious communities in the Kingdom of Jerusalem which either no longer existed or which were no longer in a position to enforce their claims to them. The parts of the bull which relate to the possessions of the abbey of Mt Zion in the Latin East may well be genuine, and may have been copied from authentic documents in the archive of the abbey of Calatanizetta, or perhaps even from a genuine bull of confirmation issued by Alexander III. No purpose would have been served by laying false claim to lands in partibus infidelium, some of them since 1187. Moreover, some of the properties listed can be verified from independent sources as having belonged to the Mt Zion community in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, for the reasons given, the European properties claimed in the bull, particularly those in southern Italy, need to be considered critically. In the account which it gives of the abbey’s foundation, the forged bull claims that from the beginning the community had been exempt from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction except that of the pope, and that Urban II had granted this privilege. Since Urban died on 29 July 1099 before news of the fall of Jerusalem had reached him, he cannot have agreed to this exemption. Moreover, as Hiestand points out, St Mary of Zion does not figure among the exempt churches listed by the papal chamberlain Cencius in the Liber Censuum of the Roman Church in 1192.252 Nevertheless, the church of Mt Zion does appear to have been restored during Godfrey’s brief reign, because when Baldwin of Edessa came to take over the government of Jerusalem in the autumn of 1100, Patriarch Daibert (d. 1105), who had opposed his succession, sought refuge there.253 The Russian abbot Daniel, who visited Jerusalem later in Baldwin I’s reign, found that St Mary of Zion was a fully operative shrine church; behind the altar there was a room where Christ had washed his disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday, while from this chamber you must climb a stairway to the Upper Room: this is a chamber beautifully made, standing on pillars and with a roof, decorated with mosaic and beautifully paved, and with an altar . . . at the east end. And here was the room of John the Theologian in which Christ supped with his disciples.254

The alleged bull of Alexander III states that Duke Godfrey gave the clergy of St Mary of Zion control over the whole mount, and they may indeed have had this from the beginning: 250

251

252

253

PKHL no. 113, pp. 280–7; the text of the vidimation is published by E. Rey, ed., ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont Sion’, MSNAF ser. 8, 5 (1887), 37–53. unionemque ecclesiarum Ierosolimorum vobiscum factam, sancte Marie videlicet Montis Oliveti, sancti Iohannis de Sebastia, sancti Helye, et sancti Abraam, existencium in Sicilia, Apulia et Calabria cum bone memorie W[illelmo] quondam Ierosolimorum patriarcha consilio . . . absque pravitate facte sunt et hinc inde suscepte, ratas habemus: PKHL no. 113, p. 286. PKHL no. 113, p. 282; Le Liber Censuum de l’Eglise romaine, ed. L. Fabre and L. Duchesne, BEFAR, 3 vols. (Paris, 1889–1910), I, p. 238. 254 WT X, 7, p. 462; FC II, 3, s. 14, pp. 368–9. Daniel the Abbot, p. 141.

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certainly all later twelfth-century sources indicate that the canons administered that area.255 It seems probable that at first the church of Mt Zion, like the Templum Domini and the Holy Sepulchre, was administered by secular clergy. The first evidence for the presence of Austin canons there comes from 1112, when Prior Arnald of Mt Zion, together with Prior Aicard of the Templum Domini witnessed a charter of Baldwin I in favour of the Hospital of St John. The Austin canons had probably been introduced there, as at the Templum Domini, by Patriarch Gibelin.256 Nothing is known about Prior Arnald’s background, but he must have been appointed with the assent of Baldwin I. The alleged bull of Alexander III states that Baldwin I gave the canons of Mt Zion ‘that part of the city [angulum civitatis] which lies to the left and right of those who enter Jerusalem through the Zion gate’ and they do indeed seem to have held that area.257 The same bull records the gift made by Countess Adelaide and Count Roger of Sicily of the church of S. Spirito at Calatanizetta in the diocese of Agrigento, together with all its endowments in land, tenants and rights of pasture, and with all the tithes due to the parish. There is no reason to doubt the correctness of this claim, since it was to that place that the canons of Mt Zion retired after the fall of Acre in 1291. Countess Adelaide was married to Baldwin I from 1112 until 1117 when their marriage was dissolved, and her endowment almost certainly dates from that time, although she is not called queen of Jerusalem in the text because the curia did not consider her marriage to Baldwin valid.258 Prior Arnald was certainly a trusted member of Baldwin I’s court. In 1115 Pope Paschal II sent the bishop of Orange as his legate to Jerusalem to investigate charges brought against Patriarch Arnulf, one of which was that the king had forced the clergy to elect him. The legate found Arnulf guilty and deposed him, and Baldwin I sent a delegation to Rome to appeal against that decision. This consisted of Prior Arnald, the bishop of Bethlehem, the abbot of Our Lady of Josaphat and two canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Having answered the charges made against Arnulf and sworn under oath that no undue royal pressure had been exercised at his election, the delegates persuaded the pope to reinstate him as patriarch.259 Prior Arnald remained active in the affairs of the court and of the Latin Church during the reign of Baldwin II (1118–31). He was present at the Council of Nablus in 1120260 and witnessed the treaty with Venice negotiated by Patriarch Warmund in 1123 while Baldwin II was a prisoner of war, and he also witnessed the king’s ratification of an amended text of that treaty in 1125.261 Arnald supported Patriarch Warmund in successfully petitioning the king to abolish dues on the importation of flour, hay and vegetables into Jerusalem, because they were a burden to poor citizens and pilgrims.262 He witnessed charters issued by Baldwin II in favour of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the monks of Our Lady of Josaphat263 and also witnessed a privilege for Josaphat granted by the new patriarch, Stephen of Chartres (1128–30), as well as a gift to that community by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.264 He 255 258 259

260 261 262 264

256 257 PKHL no. 113, p. 284. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 52, I, pp. 177–9. PKHL no. 113, p. 284. PKHL no. 113, p. 285; Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: the queens of Jerusalem’, 145–7. PKHL no. 19, pp. 124–6; Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, 126–8; B. Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (London, 1980), 63–4. WT XII, 13, p. 563. Tafel and Thomas, eds., Urkunden no. 40, I, pp. 79–89; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 93, I, pp. 241–7. 263 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 105, 116, I, pp. 261–3, 276–80. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7.

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also witnessed a gift to the Holy Sepulchre made by the newly appointed Archbishop William I of Tyre (1127–45).265 At some time between 1130 and 1136 Patriarch William sanctioned the formation of a confraternity between the four communities of Austin canons in Jerusalem, those of the Holy Sepulchre, the Templum Domini, the Mount of Olives and Mt Zion. Its purpose was that all the communities should offer prayers, give alms and assist at the requiem Masses for any of their deceased members. Prior Arnald was a signatory to this agreement.266 Prior Arnald remained active in the reign of King Fulk, witnessing gifts made to the Holy Sepulchre by William of Bures, Prince of Galilee,267 and Roger, Bishop of Ramla,268 a grant by Patriarch William of tithes to the priory of Quarantena, and a deed of sale by Prior Peter of the Holy Sepulchre to enable the building of an Hungarian hospice in Jerusalem.269 In 1136 he was present in King Fulk’s entourage when he gave the castle of Bethgibelin near Ascalon to the Order of St John.270 At the beginning of 1138 he witnessed Patriarch William’s confirmation of the property and rights of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre,271 and on 5 February 1138 he witnessed the foundation charter issued by King Fulk and Queen Melisende for the convent of Bethany.272 This was his last recorded act, but it is not known when he died: his successor Enguerrand is not mentioned until January 1155. Arnald may therefore still have been alive in 1141 when Cardinal Alberic of Ostia convened a council in ‘holy Zion, the first church and the mother of [all] churches’, which was also attended by the Armenian Catholicos Gregory III.273 When Louis VII of France went on the Second Crusade in 1148 he wintered in the kingdom so that he could keep Holy Week in Jerusalem in 1149. Although little is known about his activities there, he was evidently favourably impressed by the canons of Mt Zion to whom, after his return to France, he gave the collegiate church of St Samson at Orléans.274 Prior Enguerrand is first attested in January 1155, when he witnessed a charter of Baldwin III in favour of Hugh of Ibelin, together with a confirmation of this grant by the king’s brother, Amalric.275 Later in that year he witnessed a deed of settlement mediated by the king between his mother, Queen Melisende, and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.276 Then in the late spring of 1156 he was present at the synod convoked by Patriarch Fulcher to censure the prior and canons of the Mount of Olives for their refusal to allow the prior of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Mass in their church on Ascension Day in place of the patriarch, who was in Rome.277 By 1158 Enguerrand had been succeeded by Prior Gunther, who witnessed a charter issued by the king’s brother, Amalric.278 Like both his predecessors, Prior Gunther was frequently in attendance at court. In July 1160 he witnessed Baldwin III’s adjudication of 265 267 270 272 273

274 275 277

266 BB no. 55, pp. 145–6; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 112, I, pp. 273–4. BB, Appendix 3, pp. 351–2. 268 269 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 128, I, pp. 296–8. BB no. 61, pp. 153–5. BB nos. 22, 101, pp. 78–80, 219–20. 271 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 135, I, pp. 310–14. BB no. 23, pp. 80–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21. WT XV, 18, p. 699; B. Hamilton, ‘The Armenian Church and the papacy at the time of the Crusades’, Eastern Churches Review 10 (1978), 65–6. Gallia Christiana, VIII, col. 1516, and Instrumenta, ibid., col. 312. 276 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 233, 282, I, pp. 427–31, II, pp. 507–11. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 237, I, pp. 435–7. 278 BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 298, II, pp. 525–8.

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a dispute between Queen Melisende and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and in November of that year he headed the witness list of a grant by Count Amalric to the Holy Sepulchre, made with the assent of Baldwin III.279 In 1161 he was present when an agreement was reached between the archbishop of Nazareth and the community of Our Lady of Josaphat in a dispute about tithes.280 But when he witnessed King Amalric’s diploma for the Templum Domini in April 1166 his status had changed, and he signed it as Gunther, Abbot of Mt Zion.281 John of Ibelin, citing a source of c. 1180, recorded that the abbot of Mt Zion had been one of six suffragans of the patriarch of Jerusalem who had the right to wear a mitre, a cross and a ring.282 The basilica of Zion, which the Franks had initially roofed with timber, was rebuilt during the twelfth century. Pringle, who has critically examined the sources, considers that although it is impossible to determine when this work was begun it had almost been completed when the pilgrim Theoderic visited the city in 1172.283 The new building was a stone-vaulted, romanesque shrine church, and he wrote of it: ‘Mt Zion . . . gives its name to the church of Our Lady St Mary, which is very strongly defended with walls, towers, and fortifications against enemy attack. In this church there are canons regular under a superior [prepositum] who serve God.’ The fortifications had not been mentioned by John of Würzburg, who had visited Jerusalem a few years before, and may have been commissioned by King Amalric. Theoderic described the principal shrines in the new church of Zion; to the left of the high altar was the chapel of the Dormition of the Virgin ‘clad with precious marble on the outside and decorated with mosaics on the inside’. To the right of the high altar a staircase led to the Cenaculum, the Upper Room, scene of the Last Supper and of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Below this chapel was a ‘lower room’, where Christ had washed his disciples’ feet and where, after the Resurrection, he had appeared to St Thomas. Theoderic concludes his account: ‘In front of the choir there is a certain column made of precious marble, which simple people are accustomed to circumambulate.’284 This seems to be a reference to the column which in the sixth century had been venerated as the site of the flagellation of Christ, a devotion which in Theoderic’s time was associated with a separate shrine.285 At the time of Theoderic’s visit the abbot of Mt Zion was Raynald. He is first recorded in 1169, when he headed a list of abbots who witnessed a diploma of Amalric of Nesle for the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.286 At about the same time he authenticated a selection of relics which he gave to Maurice, Lord of Craon.287 In 1176 he and his community gave land which they owned on Mt Zion to be made into a public pool where people might water their horses.288 During Baldwin IV’s reign (1174–85) Raynald became one of the most important churchmen in Jerusalem. He was present at court in 1178 and was the only member of the clergy who witnessed a charter issued by the king for Peter of Creseca.289 In the autumn of 279 281 283 285 287

288

280 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 258, 305, I, pp. 470–4, II, pp. 530–2. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 35, pp. 82–3. 282 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, p. 550. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 110. 284 Pringle, Churches no. 336, III, pp. 260–87. Theodericus, c. 22, pp. 168–9. 286 Pringle, Churches no. 336, III, pp. 261, 266. BB no. 150, pp. 292–6. A. de Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, 1050–1480. Etude historique accompagnée de cartulaire de Craon, 4 vols. (Paris, 1893), no. 139, I, pp. 101–2. 289 BB no. 161, p. 313. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 401, II, pp. 683–5.

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Figure 3 The abbey of Mt Zion, Jerusalem

that year Reynald was sent as one of the eight delegates who represented the Latin East at the Third Lateran Council: the other members of the delegation were two archbishops, four bishops and the prior of the Holy Sepulchre.290 Raynald was evidently considered a good diplomat, for after he returned to the Holy Land he was chosen by the king as a member of the embassy sent to Antioch in 1180 to try to negotiate a settlement in the civil war which had broken out there between Prince Bohemond III and some of his vassals. The group was led by Reynald of Châtillon, Prince Bohemond’s stepfather, and by the new patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius; besides Prior Raynald of Zion, the other members were the archbishop-elect of Caesarea, the bishop of Bethlehem, the prior of the Holy Sepulchre and the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospital. The mission succeeded in its aim.291 Among the canons of Mt Zion in Abbot Raynald’s reign was ‘the lord Stephen’, a kinsman of Prince Reynald of Châtillon.292 The community also numbered among its patrons the king’s sister, Sibyl, and her first husband, William of Monferrat. The alleged bull of Alexander III for the house records that they gave land at Jaffa to the canons. Like the other holdings in the Latin East listed in this text, there is no reason to suppose that this benefaction was invented by the fourteenth-century interpolator. The list of holdings is 290 292

291 WT XXI, 25, p. 996. WT XXII, 7, pp. 1015–16. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 41, pp. 88–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 534, II, p. 913.

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considerable; in addition to property in and around Jerusalem, the canons had received donations at Ascalon, Jaffa, Nablus, Caesarea, Sebaste, Tyre and Ligio in the kingdom of Jerusalem. They also held the churches of St Romanus and St Leonard at Acre, and the church of St Leonard at Tyre. The canons received rents from properties at Jubail in the County of Tripoli, and various holdings in the Principality of Antioch. For reasons discussed above, the record of properties said to have been held by the community in western Europe may not be accurate. The gift of the church of St Theodore at Synopolis by Robert Guiscard, who died in 1085 before the abbey of Mt Zion had been founded, certainly inspires little confidence.293 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the abbey was prosperous in the twelfth century. John of Ibelin, in his account of the military support owed to the crown in times of emergency by the religious institutions of the kingdom in c. 1180, stated that the abbey of Mt Zion owed the considerable service of 150 sergeants.294 Abbot Raynald was rich enough to be able to make additions to the abbey church. Hugh Plommer has argued that the Cenaculum was rebuilt in its present form in the last decade of crusader rule in Jerusalem, and his view has gained general acceptance.295 This is the only part of the twelfth-century church of Mt Zion to survive virtually unchanged to the present day, and is one of the most beautiful buildings remaining from Frankish Jerusalem. The early Gothic style of this chapel led some earlier scholars to assign it to the reoccupation of Jerusalem under Frederick II (1229–44), but there is no evidence that the canons returned to Jerusalem during those years.296 The style in which the Cenaculum is built is evidence of the way in which the senior Frankish clergy in twelfth-century Jerusalem patronised the most skilled and innovative architects and masons from Western Europe. As Folda has justly commented, the Cenaculum ‘shows that major architectural and artistic commissions continued into the last fateful days before Hattin in 1187’.297 Because of its association with central events in Christian history, the church of Mt Zion occupied an important place in the Jerusalem liturgy. The Ritual of the Holy Sepulchre describes the ceremonies of the Thursday of Holy Week in this way: After terce [has been sung at the church of the Holy Sepulchre] the great bell shall be rung to assemble the congregations of canons, monks, clergy and laity. When they have formed up in procession, they go to St Mary of Mt Zion, and the lord patriarch goes with them, with veiled crosses and covered gospel books, and with new containers filled with pure oil and wrapped in silk cloths.

On arrival at the abbey, the patriarch celebrated the very long liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, during which he consecrated the holy oils which would be used in his diocese for the baptismal ceremonies and for the anointing of the sick and dying during the coming year. Representatives of the religious communities in the city, and of churches which had cure of souls, were then given their share of this oil. Immediately after the end of Mass the office of vespers was sung, and then the clergy proceeded to the cloister to perform the Maundy – the Lord’s commandment – to wash the feet of the poor.298 293 295

296 297

294 PKHL no. 113, pp. 284–6. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. H. Plommer, ‘The Cenacle on Mount Sion’, in J. Folda, ed., Crusader Art in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1982), 139–66; J. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 469–71; Pringle, Churches no. 336, III, pp. 275–82, 285. Notably, C. Enlart, ‘La salle haute du Cénacle à Jérusalem’, Revue d’Histoire Franciscaine 1 (1924), 64–73. 298 Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 471. John 13: 14; Kohler, ‘Un rituel’.

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On the feast of Pentecost, the patriarch led the community of Jerusalem from the Holy Sepulchre to the church of Mt Zion, where the Holy Spirit, it was believed, had descended on the Apostles in tongues of fire, and there he celebrated the Mass of the feast.299 On 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the patriarch and canons of the Holy Sepulchre went in procession to Mt Zion and sang part of the Divine Office there, because it was believed that the Virgin had died there, in the house of St John. The patriarch and the canons then walked round the south and east walls of Jerusalem to the church of Our Lady of Josaphat where it was believed that Mary had been buried, and where, subsequently, she had been bodily assumed into Heaven.300 In the 1160s there was a chapel within the walled precinct of the canons of Mt Zion, which was identified by both John of Würzburg301 and Theoderic as being on the site of the praetorium of Pontius Pilate, the place where Jesus stood trial. Inside the chapel was part of the column of the Flagellation at which Christ had been scourged, and Theoderic adds: ‘There is a custom that pilgrims are scourged there, following His example.’ He also records that in front of the chapel there was a stone inscribed: ‘This place is called Lithostrotos and here the Lord was judged.’302 An Armenian chapel now stands on this site and Pringle has very fully examined the relation between it and the earlier crusader building.303 Abbot Gerald is last mentioned by name as witness to a mediation arranged by Patriarch Heraclius in a dispute about tithes between the communities of Our Lady of Josaphat and the Templum Domini in 1186.304 In the following year Saladin captured Jerusalem and the Latin clergy were expelled from the city. Reynald should probably be identified with the unnamed ‘abbas de Monte Syon’ who died in the camp of Guy of Lusignan during the siege of Acre in the winter of 1190–1.305 The abbey of Zion seems to have been given by Saladin to the Orthodox patriarchate. When Wilbrand of Oldenburg visited Jerusalem in 1212 he found on Mt Zion ‘a certain monastery, spacious and beautiful to behold, in which there also live Syrians paying tribute to the Saracens. They show to the pilgrims who come there the place where the Lord dined with His disciples, the table on which the same Jesus Christ bequeathed the mysteries of His body and blood, and the basin or bowl in which the Lord washed the feet of His disciples.’306 The church of Mt Zion occupied too central a place in the liturgy and devotional life of the Latin Church to be unrepresented in the exiled community of Acre after 1191. Evidence of the esteem in which the shrine was held in the thirteenth century is to be found in Jacques de Vitry, who in his Historia Orientalis prefaced his enthusiastic description of the Latin foundation with the words: Urbs autem fortitudinis nostre Syon, ‘Mt Zion is a source of our power.’ After rehearsing all its associations with Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary, he concludes: ‘This place is preeminent among all the holy places because of 299 302 303 305

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300 301 BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 430. John of Würzburg, p. 115. Theodericus, c. 25, p. 172; Pilatus . . . sedit pro tribunali in loco qui dicitur Lithostrotos: John 19: 13 (Vulgate). 304 Pringle, Churches no. 358, III, pp. 365–72. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 48, pp. 156–7. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS 51 (London, 1868–71), III, 87; Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., RS 49 (London, 1867), II, 147–8. Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey to Syria, Lesser Armenia, Cyprus and the Holy Land (1211–1212): A New Edition, ed. D. Pringle, Crusades 11 (2012), 135; Wilbrand of Oldenburg, Journey to the Holy Land (1211–1212), II, 9, trans. in D. Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291 (Farnham, 2012), 92.

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all these outstanding events, and is privileged to hold the greatest dignity among them’, a reference perhaps to its status before Constantine’s foundation of the Anastasis in the fourth century as the pre-eminent church of Jerusalem.307 In the confirmation of the property of the canons of Mt Zion in the bull attributed to Alexander III is listed: ‘in the territory of Acre the casale Miary, land, a vineyard, orchards and the churches of St Leonard and St Romanus, and houses with their appurtenances in the same city, and all the tithes [of these properties]’.308 The canons made their new headquarters in the church of St Leonard. Pringle has established that this was situated in the north-east quarter of the old city and that the church of St Romanus stood quite nearby.309 The new abbey of Zion is first attested in a document of 24 November 1218, in which Cardinal Pelagius, papal legate at the siege of Damietta, ordered Bishop Henry of Mantua, who was staying at Acre, together with Abbot Yvo of Mt Zion, to adjudicate a dispute between the Venetians and Archbishop Simon of Tyre about the church of St Mark’s at Tyre. On 4 December 1218 Peter, the parish priest of St Mark’s Tyre, in the presence of Bartholomew, the Venetian baiulo, the parish priest of St Mark’s Acre and three other Venetians confirmed that he had delivered the legate’s letter to Yvo, ‘the abbot of St Leonard of Mt Zion’. This meeting was held in the portico of the church of St Leonard at Acre.310 It is probable that the canons were already well established at St Leonard’s abbey before 1218. The foundation community there might have included survivors from the Jerusalem house, but was probably recruited from the priories of the house in western Europe. Abbot Yvo was one of the signatories of the letter sent by the senior clergy of Acre to Philip Augustus in October 1220 asking for his help against the attacks launched by al-Muazzam against the Frankish kingdom while its main army was accompanying the Fifth Crusade in Egypt. His seal, though badly damaged, is still attached to this appeal.311 At Damietta in May 1221 Cardinal Pelagius adjudicated a dispute between the bishop of Acre and the Master of the Hospital of St John. This is known only in a vidimation authenticated by, among others, the abbot of Mt Zion, which survives only in the text published by Sebastian Paoli in 1733.312 On 15 May 1222 Cardinal Pelagius was staying in Acre and presided at a court at which the archbishop of Tyre sold the casale Livadi to the archbishop of Nicosia, and the abbot of Mt Zion was one of the witnesses present.313 On 16 August 1222 Pope Honorius III commissioned the patriarch of Jerusalem, the abbot of Mt Zion and Symon, Canon of Lydda, to implement the provision which he had made for Mgr Everard of a prebend in the cathedral of Tripoli.314 Although the abbot is not named in the documents of 1221 and 1222 there is no reason to doubt that they relate to Abbot Yvo. 307 309 310 311

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308 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. I. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), LXI, 246–7. PKHL no. 113, p. 284. Pringle, Churches nos. 419, 442, IV, pp. 124–5, 158, and pp. 16–17 (Map of Acre). Rey, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont Sion’, 54–5. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, p. 215; G. Schlumberger, F. Chalandon and A. Blanchet, Sigillographie de l’Orient latin (Paris, 1943), 132. Paoli, Codice no. 108, I, pp. 114–15; CGOH I, no. 1718. Reinhold Röhricht dates the vidimation to 1221, but adduces no evidence to support this claim: RRH no. 945. St Sophia no. 44, in The Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Nicosia, ed. N. Coureas and C. Schabel (Nicosia, 1997), 140–1. Honorius III, Regesta nos. 4107 and cf. no. 4129 (of 9 October 1222).

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In 1229 Jerusalem was restored to Latin rule, but there is no evidence that the canons of Mt Zion returned there. In 1219 while the Fifth Crusade was in Egypt, the Ayyubid prince al-Muazzam slighted the walls of Jerusalem so that the city would be indefensible should the Franks recover it.315 It was probably at that time that the monastery and church of Mt Zion were badly damaged, although the twelfth-century Cenaculum was preserved. A pilgrim guide written in 1231 reports: ‘On the south side of the city of Jerusalem is Mt Zion. There was a great church there, which has been demolished . . . Above the great ruined church is the chapel of the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles.’316 The canons did not have the resources to rebuild the abbey and did not return there in the years 1229–44 when Jerusalem was again in Frankish control. Pilgrim accounts from that period do not mention a Syrian community in charge of the Cenaculum of Mt Zion, and it is possible that the canons appointed Latin chaplains to administer that shrine, but this is hypothetical. The Cenaculum later passed into the hands of the Franciscans, but only after the Latin political presence in the Holy Land had come to an end.317 In 1240 Abbot Gerard of Mt Zion and his chapter leased land in the territory of Acre to the Teutonic Order for an annual rent of 20 bezants.318 In April 1243 the canons of Mt Zion and the community of Our Lady of Josaphat reached a settlement by arbitration about the boundary of lands which they both held in the estate of Sardanas at Tyre. Abbot Gerard had recently died and his successor, T. electus, had not yet been confirmed in office, so Peter II, Archbishop of Tyre, was asked to authenticate the deed of settlement with his seal.319 On 25 November 1244, an appeal for help sent by the leaders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to the kings of France and England, informing them of the sack of Jerusalem by the Khwarizmians and the defeat of the confederate Frankish army near Gaza, was signed by R. Abbot of Mt Zion.320 Since the arbitration agreement of 1243 is preserved only in a copy made in the seventeenth century by Antonio Amico, while the 1244 letter of appeal is known only in the copy in the Chronicle of Matthew Paris, it is possible that in one of these documents the initial of the abbot of Mt Zion was wrongly transcribed and that both refer to the same man. By 7 August 1248 the abbot of Mt Zion was named Hugh. He witnessed a lease by Peregrine, Abbot of Sta Maria Latina, of various properties to John de Ronay, Grand Preceptor of the Hospital of St John.321 Rey, in the list of abbots of Mt Zion, named Thomas, who stayed at Orléans in 1254 and, with the agreement of the chapter of the priory of St Samson there, freed the serfs of their house.322 Since no prior of St Samson’s is mentioned, it seems likely that the office was vacant and that Abbot Thomas had gone there to supervise the appointment of a new holder. Nothing further is known of him, except that he had recently died when, on 5 May 1256, Abbot Garinus and the brethren of the Mt Tabor monastery wrote to Alexander IV accepting the transfer of all their property to the Order of 315 317 318 320 321

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316 Abu Shama, Book of the Two Gardens, in RHC Or IV, p. 173. Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, c. ix, p. 96. For the later history of the ruined abbey of Mt Zion, see Pringle, Churches no. 336, III, pp. 267–72. 319 Strehlke no. 86, pp. 86–7. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 76, pp. 179–80. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. This document is preserved in a vidimation authenticated by the archbishop of Nazareth and the bishop of Acre on 30 November 1248: CGOH I, no. 2482. Rey, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont Sion’, 33–4.

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the Hospital of St John. Their letter ends: ‘because we no longer have a seal of our own, we have asked Brother Terricus of the Church of Mt Zion and the Abbot of St Samuel’s Acre to validate [this letter] with their seals’.323 At that time Terricus appears to have been acting as administrator of his community pending the election of a new abbot. By 1 November 1257 he had become abbot and, with the assent of Patriarch James Pantaleon, he and his brethren leased in perpetuity to the Teutonic Order the houses, together with the open spaces and the buildings ‘which we own’, situated in front of the house of that Order, together with another small house in the city of Acre. The Order had the right to build on that property and in return agreed to pay an annual rent of 309 Saracen bezants. This transaction suggests that the canons of Mt Zion were becoming impoverished and were seeking to secure a regular income. This impression is strengthened by considering the privileges which the canons received from James Pantaleon after he had become Pope Urban IV (1261–4). On 22 December 1262 he freed the abbot and canons of Mt Zion from the burden of provisions: neither the mother house in Acre nor any of the houses subject to it should be required to make provision for anyone, unless ordered to do so by the patriarch of Jerusalem or by a papal legate a latere. The community was also freed from the payment of special levies unless specifically required to contribute by a legate a latere. Because he had been patriarch of Jerusalem, Urban IV was in a position to be aware of how slender the financial resources of this community were.324 The canons of Mt Zion still owned some rural properties in the Latin Kingdom, although because of Mamluk raids it may have been difficult to collect dues from them. On 23 February 1263, acting on the orders of the papal legate, Thomas, Bishop of Bethlehem, Albert, Prior of Sta Maria Latina, placed the abbot of Our Lady of Josaphat in corporal possession of tithes in the estates of Ligio and Tannoch. One of the witnesses to this settlement was John, the scribanus of the community of Mt Zion.325 A scribanus was a lay official who held land in tenure from a community and administered their other properties in that area.326 Rey, in his examination of the archives of Loiret, found a vidimation drawn up in 1334 of a charter issued at Orleans in June 1268 by James, the abbot of Mt Zion, in which he appointed Hugh as prior of St Samson’s Orléans.327 Abbot James is not mentioned in any other source, and it is not known whether he had any reason for visiting western Europe apart from the need to supervise the election of a new prior at St Samson’s, although it might be relevant to note that Louis IX of France had taken the Cross again in 1267 and was known to be preparing a new crusade. The canons of Mt Zion remained in Acre as long as the city stayed in Frankish hands. In the list of indulgences granted to pilgrims visiting Acre, dating from c. 1280, it is recorded that those praying at St Leonard’s church, the principal church of the canons, would receive an indulgence of one year and one hundred days, while those who prayed at the canons’ other church, St Romanus, would gain an indulgence of forty days.328 No doubt the 323 325 327

324 Paoli, Codice, no. 127, I, pp. 148–50. Urban IV, Registres nos. 173, 174. 326 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 80, pp. 188–90. Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 56–8. 328 Rey, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont Sion’, 56. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235.

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offerings made by pilgrims brought in some income, but in its final years the house of Mt Zion could no longer support a large community, and the shortage of brethren made it difficult to supervise the properties which the canons owned in western Europe. This is known from a group of documents issued in Acre by Abbot Adam of Mt Zion. Rey described, but did not transcribe, a vidimation dated August 1434 of a charter issued by Abbot Adam at his abbey of St Leonard’s Acre on 20 August 1281 in which he admonished the monks of St Samson to live in their priory, and appointed the prior of St Samson’s, Ralph Godart, as visitor of all the other priories of Mt Zion in France and Italy.329 This intervention presumably did not prove effective, for in March 1289, with the consent of his chapter, which consisted of a single canon, Ralph of Nazareth, canonico nostro in quo ius solum nostri capituli ad presens residet, Abbot Adam appointed Bishop Gerard of Valania as his vicar in the priory of St Samson at Orleans, with the right to exercise full spiritual and temporal powers there on his behalf. Throughout the thirteenth century the bishops of Valania had been members of the Order of St John.330 When in 1274–85 Burchard of Mt Zion wrote his Description of the Holy Land, he reported that the bishop of Valania was living in the Hospitaller castle of Margat.331 Bishop Gerard had presumably left the castle with the rest of the garrison when it surrendered to Sultan Kalavun and had gone to live in Acre.332 In return for his appointment to St Samson’s, he agreed to pay an annual fee of 120 livres of Paris to Adam and his community. The transaction was witnessed and sealed by Nicholas of Hanapes, the patriarch of Jerusalem.333 Abbot Adam wrote to inform the canons of St Samson about what he had done,334 and he later ordered them to draw up an inventory of the property of their house in duplicate, giving one copy to Bishop Gerard, and sending the other to himself.335 These documents bear the only well-preserved seals of the canons of Mt Zion. The abbot’s seal attached to documents I and II is inscribed: ADE ABBATIS MONT. SYON DNI [PAPAE CA]PELLANI; the seal of the chapter, attached to documents II and III is inscribed: SIGILLUM SPIRITUS SANCTI DE MONTE SYON and depicts the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The reverse is inscribed TRANSITUS DEI GENETRICIS, and depicts the death of the Virgin.336 The Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre reports that when the Mamluks broke into Acre in 1291: ‘they went straight past St Romanus and set fire to the great war-engine of the Pisans, and then turned right to reach the house of the Teutonic Knights, and they took St Leonard’s and killed whomever they found in their way’.337 The abbey of Mt Zion was re-established at Catalanizetta in Sicily, though whether any of the brethren there had escaped from the fall of Acre is not known. It was there on 12 July 1336 that Brother Dominic of Civitas Casrellana, humilis abbas sacrosancte et primitive matris ecclesie Sancte-Marie de Monte Syon in Jherusalem, supervised the vidimation of the forged bull of pope Alexander III.338 329 331

332 333 334 336 337

330 Rey, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont-Sion’, 36, 55–6. Hamilton, Latin Church, 215. Burchard of Mt Zion, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor, ed. J. C. M. Laurent (Leipzig, 1864), 30–1. A. J. Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London, 1999), 113–15. A. Bruel, ed., ‘Chartes d’Adam abbé de Notre-Dame du Mont Sion’, ROL 10 (1903–4), doc. I, 7–11. 335 Bruel, ed., ‘Chartes’ doc. III, 13–15. Bruel, ed., ‘Chartes’ doc. II, 11–13. Bruel, ed., ‘Chartes’ p. 13, n. 2, p. 15; Schlumberger, Chalandon and Blanchet, Sigillographie, 132. 338 Cronaca del Templare de Tiro c. 263, p. 218. Rey, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye du Mont Sion’, 37–8.

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The platform on which Herod’s Temple had stood was not touched by Hadrian when he redesigned Jerusalem: he ordered the site to be cleared and a temple in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus to be built there. When in the fourth century Jerusalem became a Christian city, no attempt was made to build a church on the Temple Mount. Pringle has suggested that this may have been because church leaders interpreted Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of the Temple as having long-term implications: that this site should not be a place of worship in the new dispensation.339 The temple of Jupiter was allowed to fall into ruins; when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem in 638 they made the Temple platform the centre of Islamic worship, and this caused no friction with the Christian community. By 691 work had certainly been started and perhaps completed on the shrine of the Dome of the Rock, an octagonal domed building which enclosed the rock at the northern end of the Temple platform. This building was decorated inside and outside with fine mosaics by craftsmen trained in the Byzantine tradition. The shrine came to be associated with the Night Journey of the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur’an relates that he had been carried in the spirit ‘from the sacred temple [of Mecca] to the temple that is more remote [al-aqsa] whose precinct we have blessed that we might show him of our signs’.340 There he had met with earlier prophets sent by God and had then been carried up from the Temple rock into the presence of God. This building was in good condition when the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, for although the dome had collapsed in 1016–17 it had been restored by Caliph az-Zahir in 1021–2.341 At the southern end of the Temple platform when the crusaders entered the city was the al-Aqsa mosque which had been a place of Muslim worship since the seventh century. It had frequently been extended and restored, most recently by Caliph az-Zahir in 1035. The crusaders put an end to Muslim worship in Jerusalem and found new uses for these buildings. Part of the al-Aqsa mosque was taken over as a palace in Baldwin I’s reign: he held his coronation banquet there in 1100, while the Dome of the Rock was converted into a church. While there was no tradition of Christian worship on the Temple Mount, it was a site with many associations in the New Testament narrative, as well, of course, as being the centre of Divine Worship in the Old Covenant. Tancred, who had seized the Dome of the Rock when the city was captured, had despoiled the shrine of its gold, silver and gems, but does not seem to have caused any structural damage to it.342 Fulcher of Chartres reports that the assembly of leaders, which on 22 July 1099 chose Godfrey of Bouillon as ruler, ‘placed canons in the Church of the Lord’s Sepulchre and in His Temple to serve Him’.343 William of Tyre ascribes this initiative to Godfrey himself, relating that, a few days after he took office, he gave the canons prebends and houses of a respectable size near the two churches.344 It was probably at this point that Tancred restored to the canons the value of the treasures which he had seized from the shrine.345 339 341 342 344 345

340 Matthew 24: 1–2; Luke 21: 20–4; Pringle, Churches no. 367, III, pp. 397–8. Qur’an, Sura XVII. K. A. C. Creswell, A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1958), 29–30. 343 FC I, 28, s. 2, pp. 302–3. FC I, 30, s. 2, p. 308. WT IX, 9, p. 431: [Tancredus] hoc restaurans eadem loco cuncta vel eis appretiata loco sancrosancto remisit. FC I, 38, s. 2, p. 303.

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This community consisted of secular canons, like those of the Holy Sepulchre: they did not live a communal life, but were jointly responsible for the performance of the liturgy in the Templum Domini and for the administration of the church and its property. Arnulf, who had initially been chosen as Latin patriarch of Jerusalem when the city was captured, was not confirmed in office by Daibert, the papal legate, when he reached the city in December 1099, and it would appear that he was then placed in charge of the canons of the Templum Domini. Albert of Aachen described him in July 1100 as praelatus Templi Domini, which would signify that he was head of the community.346 William of Tyre described Arnulf at the time of Godfrey’s death in 1100 as being archdeacon of Jerusalem and drawing his income from the Calvary Chapel (in the church of the Holy Sepulchre) and the Templum Domini.347 The secular canons of the Templum Domini were replaced by a community of Austin canons. When Gibelin of Arles died, shortly before 6 April 1112, he was succeeded by Archdeacon Arnulf, who was elected before 26 April. On the day of his consecration as patriarch, probably 20 June 1112, Arnulf issued a privilege to the Hospital of St John, which he freed from the payment of tithes on all the lands which it owned in his patriarchate. This act was witnessed by Achard, Prior of the Templum Domini, who also witnessed Baldwin I’s confirmation of this grant.348 The introduction of the Rule of St Augustine for the canons of the Templum Domini is likely to have been the work of Patriarch Gibelin, who was a patron of the Austin canons.349 Prior Achard came from Arrouaise in the diocese of Thérouanne, where he had lived as a hermit in the community of St Nicholas, which in 1097 was recognised by Bishop John as a house of Austin canons.350 In 1099 the bishop appointed Achard as archdeacon of Thérouanne.351 It is not known precisely when he went to Jerusalem, but by 1112 he had been appointed the first prior of the Templum Domini. Alan Murray has pointed out that this was almost certainly an example of royal patronage, since many of the higher Latin clergy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem at that time came, like Achard, from Baldwin I’s homeland – Flanders, Artois and Picardy.352 Achard wrote a poem about the Templum Domini, which he dedicated to Baldwin I: the initial letters of the first thirty lines form the acrostic: BALDWINO REGI PRIOR TEMPLI ACARDUS. Achard was not aware that the Dome of the Rock had been built by the Arabs: Templum autem quod a nobis in presenti cernitur . . . Quidam a Iustiniano, Romanorum principe, Factum putant, atque quidam hoc ascribunt Helene, Matri regis Constantini . . . 346 348

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351 352

347 AA VII, 30, p. 528. WT X, 7, p. 461. I accept the dates for the death of Gibelin and the election and consecration of Arnulf which have been convincingly determined by Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, 201, 114–16; Arnulf’s privilege: CGOH I, no. 25; Baldwin I’s confirmation: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 52, I, pp. 177–9. See p. 26. Versus de viris illustribus dioecesis Tarvanensis qui in sacra fuere expeditione: E. Martène and U. Durand, eds., Veterum scriptorum monumentorum amplissima collectio, 9 vols. (Paris, 1724–33), V, cols. 539–40; A. C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin Canons and Their Introduction into England (London, 1950), 86. Vita S. Iohannis Tarvanensis, ch. iv, n. 17, AA SS, Jan. II, p. 798. A. V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099–1125, Prosopographica et Genealogica (Oxford, 2000), 103.

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Figure 4 The Qubbat as-Saqra (Templum Domini), Jerusalem

Although the Muslims had not built the shrine, Achard concedes that they had maintained the fabric well, but it was proving difficult for his community to continue to do this, because the endowments which had belonged to the house before the Frankish conquest had since been sequestered by laymen, and he urged the king to restore them.353 It would appear from King Amalric’s confirmation of the possessions of the community, issued in 1166, that the income from the endowments held by the Dome of the Rock in Muslim times had been given by the crown to knights as money fiefs, but that, perhaps in response to Achard’s plea, part of these revenues was granted to the Austin canons by Baldwin I.354 In the early years of its foundation, the chief endowment of the Templum Domini was the gift of 1,000 bezants each year from the tithes of Transjordan, made by Patriarchs Gibelin and Arnulf and confirmed by King Baldwin I, and later by Patriarch William I. Until 1167 Transjordan had no bishop, but was directly under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the patriarch.355 The canons of the Templum Domini shared the Temple platform with King Baldwin I, who had set up his palace in part of the al-Aqsa mosque. In 1119 Baldwin II gave part of the 353 354

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‘Achard d’Arrouaise. Poème sur le Templum Domini’, ed. M. de Vogüé, AOL, I, pp. 562–79. Quotienscumque etiam vel ego vel quicumque rex Ierusalem suis militibus capitalem redditum dederit, ex dono Balduini primi regis Latinorum XXX bisancios habebitis: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, pp. 550–3. in Arabia in decimis terrarum atque proventuum mille bisancios singulis annis, quos Ierosolimani patriarche Gibelinus et Arnulfus cum assensu Balduini primi regis latinorum . . . Templo Domini concesserunt, quos postea dominus Willelmus patriarcha . . . confirmavit: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, p. 553.

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palace to Hugh of Payens and his followers, the founding members of the Knights Templar, and the canons reached an accommodation with them about the use of the Temple platform. This arrangement would appear to have worked amicably, since there is no record of any dispute about the demarcation of boundaries between the knights and the canons.356 Achard occupied an important place in the church of Jerusalem and at the court. He witnessed Baldwin I’s confirmation of the property of Our Lady of Josaphat in 1115 and Baldwin II’s confirmation of that privilege in 1120.357 In the same year he was part of a group of senior clergy who persuaded the king to abolish the levying of dues on grain, hay and vegetables brought into Jerusalem, a measure designed to help the poor, particularly poor pilgrims.358 He was also present in 1120 at the Council of Nablus, which drew up a code of canon law for the kingdom.359 He witnessed Patriarch Warmund’s Pact with Venice in 1123, and the more restrictive text of that agreement ratified by Baldwin II after his release from captivity in 1125.360 Achard witnessed a number of other important land grants, the last of which was the gift made on 1 November 1136 by Bishop Roger of Ramla to the Holy Sepulchre.361 It may have been while Achard was prior that Patriarch William I persuaded the Austin canons in Jerusalem – the communities of the Holy Sepulchre, Mt Zion, the Mount of Olives and the Templum Domini – to form a liturgical union. This provided that, when a member of one community died, the priors of the other three houses would attend his funeral together with two or more of their canons, and that every member of the association should keep the octave of such a death by offering prayers, Masses and good works on behalf of the deceased.362 By the winter of 1137–8 Achard had been succeeded by Prior Geoffrey, who witnessed a gift made by William of St Omer to the Knights Templar.363 Very soon after that the Templum Domini was raised to the status of an abbey. Between 1 January and 5 February 1138 Geoffrey was named on the witness list of a charter of Patriarch William I as abbas ecclesie Templi Domini.364 On 1 April 1141 the Templum Domini was solemnly dedicated by Alberic, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, who held a synod there. The dedication was an important ceremonial occasion, attended among others by Joscelin II, Count of Edessa.365 Unlike the Holy Sepulchre, which similarly was not dedicated until fifty years after the Latin conquest, the Templum Domini had not needed to be rebuilt, so it is difficult to understand why the dedication had been delayed for so long. At first the rock around which the shrine had been built was left exposed, and the canons placed an altar upon it.366 Fulcher of Chartres says that no changes were made to this arrangement until 1114,367 and 356 358 360

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362 363

364 366

367

357 WT XII, 7, p. 553. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 64, 85, I, pp. 195–8, 225–30. 359 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. WT XII, 13, p. 563. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 764: Warmund’s text (this is in the section of acts issued in the ruler’s name by regents), vol. III, pp. 1326–37; no. 93: Baldwin II’s text, vol. I, pp. 241–7. BB no. 61, pp. 153–4. The other documents which he witnessed are: BB nos. 22, 101, pp. 78–80, 219–20; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 112, 128, I, pp. 273–4, 296–8; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7. This agreement, preserved in two manuscripts of the Ritual of the Holy Sepulchre, is edited in BB, Appendix 3, pp. 350–1. A. d’Albon, ed., Cartulaire général du Temple (1119–1150), 2 vols. (Paris, 1913–22), no. cxli, vol. I, p. 99, dated between 1 September 1137 and 5 February 1138. 365 BB no. 23, pp. 80–3. WT XV, 18, p. 699. De situ urbis Jerusalem, ed. in M. de Vogüé, Les églises de la Terre Sainte (Paris, 1860), 412–14; English trans. in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 177. FC I, 26, s. 7, pp. 287–8.

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William of Tyre reports that subsequently ‘those who had charge of the building covered the rock with white marble and constructed an altar and choir upon it, where the clergy celebrate the Divine Office’.368 It is possible that this work was not completed until 1140. Pringle has suggested that the Latin texts inscribed in a frieze around the top of the external walls of the building, and inside upon the upper and lower cornices which were described by John of Würzburg and more fully by Theoderic, ‘may have been commissioned for the dedication of 1141’ because they invoke the memory of the dedication of Solomon’s Temple.369 Theoderic reports that the Templum Domini was dedicated to St Mary, which is probable, although this name is not used in any of the other records.370 Before c. 1150 a wrought-iron screen had been erected between the columns of the inner arcade, to separate the sanctuary from the lay worshippers.371 The Templum Domini was decorated by the canons during the twelfth century, but no detailed description of this work is given by any of the pilgrim sources, and no traces of this work have survived the Muslim restoration of the shrine inaugurated by Saladin in 1187.372 The abbey in which the canons lived stood on the Temple platform, immediately to the north of the Templum Domini. Although Western pilgrims describe the church, they say very little about the abbey, and the most vivid description is that of al-Idrisi, who was commissioned by Roger II of Sicily to write an account of the world, which was completed at about the time of the king’s death in 1154. It contains the following passage, which had been supplied by one of his informants, possibly a Sicilian pilgrim to the Holy Land: Opposite to the northern gate [of the Dome of the Rock] is a beautiful garden, planted with all sorts of trees, and round this garden is set a colonnade of marble of most wondrous workmanship. In the further part of this garden is a place of assembly, where the priests and deacons take their repasts.373

Abbot Geoffrey, like Prior Achard, occupied an important place in the royal court as well as in that of the patriarch. In 1138 he was among the witnesses of the foundation charter of the Convent of Bethany issued by King Fulk and Queen Melisende and also witnessed a gift by Fulk to the Holy Sepulchre.374 After Fulk’s death in 1143 he witnessed one charter issued jointly by Melisende and Baldwin III,375 three issued by Melisende alone376 and four issued by Baldwin III after he assumed sole rule in 1152.377 He also witnessed two charters issued by the king’s brother, Count Amalric,378 and a charter of Hugh of Ibelin.379 Geoffrey 368 369 370

371

372 373

374 376 377 378 379

WT VIII, 3, p. 387. John of Würzburg and Theodericus, pp. 94–5, 160–1; cf. 1 Kings, 8: 28–30; Pringle, Churches no. 367, III, pp. 405–6. hoc [Templum] quod nunc videtur ad honorem Domini nostri Iesu Christi eiusque pie genetricis ab Helena regina et eius filio imperatore Constantino constructum est: Theodericus, p. 164. It is first mentioned by an anonymous Icelandic pilgrim in c. 1150, trans. J. Hill, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 221; for details of the Icelandic text, see ibid., 354. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land 1098–1187, I, 551, nn. 21, 24. Idrisi, La géographie d’Edrisi, trans. P.-A. Jaubert, in Recueil de voyages et de mémoires publié par la Société Géographique, ser. III, vol. V (Paris, 1836–40), 343–4, trans. into English in G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (London, 1890), 33–4. 375 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 138, 139, I, pp. 315–23. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 216, I, pp. 402–4. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 177, 179, 188, I, pp. 355–7, 360–2, 371–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 210, 233, 237, 258, I, pp. 390–3, 427–31, 435–7, 470–4. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 282, 298, II, pp. 506–11, 525–8. BB no. 51, pp. 136–8; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 197, II, pp. 524–5.

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occupied a prominent place at the court of Patriarch William I,380 but did not retain this position in the reign of his successor Fulcher (1145–57). His only recorded appearance at Fulcher’s curia was at the synod of 1156, convoked by the patriarch to censure Abbot Aimery of the Mount of Olives.381 Geoffrey was unusual among the higher Latin clergy of Jerusalem because he could speak Greek, and because of this he was twice employed by the crown on delicate diplomatic missions. In 1142 the Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos, who was campaigning in northern Syria, sent envoys to King Fulk expressing a wish to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Fulk, who suspected that John also wanted to receive his homage and to make Jerusalem a client state of the Byzantine Empire, was not willing to co-operate. He therefore sent an embassy to the emperor which consisted of Bishop Anselm of Bethlehem, Rohard, the castellan of Jerusalem, and Abbot Geoffrey, ‘skilled in the Greek language’. They were charged to tell John that the Kingdom of Jerusalem could not supply provisions for a large army, but that the emperor would be welcome if he came with a bodyguard of ten soldiers. John Komnenos treated the envoys politely, but rejected these humiliating conditions as incompatible with his status. The matter was not pursued further, because John was killed in a hunting accident while wintering in Cilicia.382 In the winter of 1158–9, John’s son Manuel went to Syria with a large army. He received the homage of Prince Reynald of Antioch, and Baldwin III agreed to go to Antioch to meet the emperor, but he sent an advance delegation to negotiate protocol. This consisted of a nobleman, Joscelin Pesel, and Abbot Geoffrey of the Templum Domini, who was once again chosen because he could speak Greek. The outcome was satisfactory to both parties: Baldwin did homage to the emperor on Easter Day, and relations between him and Manuel remained cordial, for – although he had taken the Kingdom of Jerusalem under his protection – Manuel did not attempt in any way to restrict Baldwin III’s autonomy.383 While Geoffrey was abbot, Frederick de la Roche went to the Holy Land and joined the community of the Templum Domini in c. 1142. He was related to the counts of Namur and was a kinsman of Queen Melisende. At some time between 1148 and 1153 he was appointed bishop of Acre and in 1164 was translated to the archbishopric of Tyre, an office he held until his death in 1174. At his request, he was buried in the chapter-house of the Templum Domini, evidence of the esteem in which he held the community.384 His career is a further indication of the links between the canons of the Templum Domini, the court and the Latin hierarchy. In April 1166 King Amalric issued a diploma in favour of Abbot Hugh and the canons of the Templum Domini, confirming all the property which they held in his kingdom.385 Hugh had been prior of the house from at least 1156,386 and it seems probable that he had only recently been installed as successor to Abbot Geoffrey when this confirmation was granted. 380

381 383

384

385

CGOH I, no. 140; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 143, I, pp. 328–31; BB nos. 24, 107, pp. 83–5, 226–8; Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 23, pp. 55–6. 382 BB no. 54, pp. 143–5; see above, p. 73. WT XV, 21, 23, pp. 702–3, 705–6. WT XVIII, 24–5, pp. 846–9; R. J. Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204, trans. J. C. Morris, and J. E. Ridings (Oxford, 1993), 176–84. WT XXI, 4, p. 965; H. E. Mayer, ‘Frederick of Laroche, Bishop of Acre and Archbishop of Tyre’, Tel Aviv Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 22 (1993), 59–72. 386 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, pp. 550–3. BB no. 54, pp. 143–5; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 196, I, pp. 378–80.

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The canons had a good deal of property in the vicinity of Nablus, and this was a natural consequence of their status there, recorded by Jacques de Vitry: ‘The city of Nablus . . . has no bishop, but is directly subject to the abbot of the Templum Domini.’387 Patriarch Warmund (1118–28) had given the community 30 bezants annually from the royal tithe of Nablus, a grant which had been confirmed by his successors. The canons had also received the tithes from seven estates belonging to Viscount Ulrich of Nablus (c. 1115–52), together with that from most of the lands held by his son Baldwin, and also the tithes of the lands which Guy de Milly held at Nablus. Queen Melisende granted the canons all the tithes of vineyards in the neighbourhood of Nablus which were owned by Franks. When Ascalon was captured by the Franks in 1153 the Templum Domini received some lands both inside and outside the city, together with one of the mosques of the city. Queen Melisende had given the canons two estates outside Jerusalem, and Philip of Nablus had given them two villages near Hebron. In Transjordan they owned three estates at Montréal and property at Kerak, and Amalric confirmed the gift of 1,000 bezants each year from the tithes of Transjordan made by Patriarch Gibelin and his successors. They also owned an estate at Blanchegarde and some houses in Caesarea, and several houses at Acre, together with an estate outside the walls of the city which included the church of St Andrew.388 They had formerly owned the estate of Sesset in the environs of Acre, which King Amalric had exchanged for an annual payment of 60 bezants. The canons owned some property at Tyre, which included houses attached to the church of St Julian, and some other minor properties.389 They owned some land in the lordship of Ibelin as well as houses in the town of Ibelin given to them by its lord, Balian. Manasses the constable had given the community 100 bezants a year from the tolls collected at the Gate of David in Jerusalem. Amalric confirmed this donation, and also confirmed their possession in the environs of the city of ‘the house of St John in the mountains’. This was the church of Ain Karim, which stood, it was said, on the site of the house of Zacharias, the father of St John the Baptist. Pringle has suggested that the Templum Domini received this church because, as St Luke related, Zacharias had served in the Lord’s Temple.390 An important part of the canons’ income must have been derived from offerings made by pilgrims at the shrine church. The value of these is not known. The Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre reports that the Ayyubid sultan al-Adil (d. 1218) bequeathed to two of his sons ‘the whole income and all the offerings from the Temple and the Sepulchre of the Lord. This was reckoned at more than 30,000 Saracen bezants a year.’391 This statistic is not very helpful, because fewer Christian pilgrims would have visited the Holy Sepulchre when Jerusalem was in Muslim hands than in the years of Latin rule, while the offerings at the Temple, the Dome of the Rock, would have been made exclusively by Muslims, and thus provide no indication of the value of Christian offerings in the Templum Domini before 1187. 387

388 390 391

Neapolis . . . episcopo caret; pertinet autem immediate ad abbatem Dominici Templi: Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVIII, 236. 389 Pringle, Churches no. 394, IV, pp. 69–70. Pringle, Churches no. 463, IV, pp. 208–9. Luke 2: 5–25, 38–80; Pringle, Churches no. 7, I, pp. 30–8. Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre, RHC Occ II, 489–639; trans. by J. Shirley in Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre (Aldershot, 1999), ch. 15, 34.

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The aristocratic canons of the Templum Domini enjoyed great prestige in the Latin Kingdom and, as King Amalric’s diploma shows, were adequately endowed, but they were not a wealthy community. In the twelfth century the religious houses of the kingdom were required to contribute to the defence of the realm in times of emergency, and the assessment was based on their income. Yet, whereas the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were required to contribute 500 armed sergeants when requested, the canons of the Templum Domini were required to supply only 50 sergeants.392 Unlike the Holy Sepulchre, the Templum Domini is not known to have had many overseas possessions. Two Englishmen, the brothers Robert and Alued, presumably when on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, had given the church of St Mary’s Woodbridge in Suffolk to the Templum Domini, with the intention that a daughter house of Austin canons might be founded there. In fact, the canons in Jerusalem were unable to meet the terms of this benefaction, and Abbot Geoffrey conceded the patronage of the church and its clergy to the donors’ nephew Ernald. This marked the end of all links between the Woodbridge house and the Templum Domini. At about the same time, the house of Austin canons at North Ferriby in Yorkshire was affiliated to the Templum Domini, and that link proved more enduring.393 The Templum Domini also owned the church of St Mary Magdalene at Baroli in Apulia. It is not known in what circumstances the community acquired it, but it was in their possession by 1169 when Abbot Raymond confirmed that the rector of the church at Baroli was canonically subject to the archbishops of Trani.394 During Abbot Hugh’s brief reign, the Templum Domini continued to enjoy a position of high esteem in the Latin Kingdom. When a new archbishopric was founded in 1167 for Transjordan – a see known as Petra of the Desert, but which was located at Kerak – the first incumbent was Canon Guerricus of the Templum Domini.395 Consequently two of the four archbishoprics in the patriarchate of Jerusalem (Petra and Tyre) were held by former members of the community. In the spring of 1168 a distinguished exile went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. He was Stephen of Perche, cousin of the Dowager Queen, Margaret of Sicily, chancellor of the Sicilian Kingdom and archbishop-elect of Palermo, who had been driven from power by a palace revolution. He died soon after his arrival in the Crusader Kingdom and, as a mark of honour, was buried in the chapter-house of the Templum Domini.396 Before 2 March 1168 Abbot Hugh gave his consent to the foundation of a church at Nablus by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre on land given to them there by the king.397 Hugh was dead by 1169, when his successor, Abbot Raymond, was a witness to the confirmation of the property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre issued by Patriarch Amalric of Nesle.398 Apart from his agreement with the archbishop of Trani mentioned 392 393

394

395 396 397

John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, pp. 124–5. Geoffrey’s charter is known only in a seventeenth-century copy in the Ashmole papers in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, published by A. Linder, ‘An unpublished charter of Geoffrey, Abbot of the Templum Domini’, in Kedar, Mayer and Smail, eds., Outremer, 119–29; on North Ferriby, see ibid., p. 128 n. 44. A. di G. Prologo, ed., Le carte che si conservano nell’Archivio del Capitolo metropolitano della città di Trani dal IX secolo fino all’anno 1266 (Barletta, 1877), no. LX, pp. 132–3. WT XX, 3, p. 914; Mayer, Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal, pp. 281–5. WT XX, 3, p. 915; Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy, 266–8. 398 BB no. 147, pp. 288–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 319, 329, II, pp. 556–7, 569–71. BB, no. 150, pp. 292–6.

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above,399 his only other recorded act dates from 1169–79 when he issued a letter of authentication of the relics which he had given to Maurice, Lord of Craon, who was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. They consisted of relics of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, taken from the canons’ church, and also relics of the Holy Sepulchre and of Calvary presented to Maurice at Raymond’s request by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. This document bears his seal: the obverse shows the head of a mitred abbot, with the legend RAIMUNDUS ABBAS TEMPLI, while the reverse shows the Temple (the Dome of the Rock) and is inscribed SIGILLUM TEMPLI DEI.400 His successor, Abbot Roger, is first recorded in 1176 as a witness to a charter of Rainald, Abbot of Mt Zion. Unusually for an abbot of the Templum Domini, he is listed last among the clerical witnesses, and his name is followed by that of Rohard, the castellan of Jerusalem, who heads the list of lay witnesses.401 In 1180 Abbot Roger witnessed a gift by Balian of Ibelin, Lord of Nablus, and his wife Maria Komnena, to the Hospital of St John. He was the only clerical witness, and he described himself as Dominus Rogerius, filius Domini Roardi, abbas Templi.402 While his presence at this transaction is explicable, because he was the chief ecclesiastical authority in Nablus, the form of the his name in this document is very unusual, since senior clergy almost never used patronymics. It is clear evidence that he was the son of Rohard the castellan, who had died in 1179, and this may explain his position in the witness list of 1176.403 Rohard of Jaffa, the castellan of Jerusalem, had been a trusted adviser of King Amalric and had accompanied him on his visit to Constantinople in 1171.404 It seems safe to infer that the king had nominated Rohard’s son Roger to be abbot of the Templum Domini at some time between 1170 and 1174. When Amalric died in July 1174 Rohard was a strong supporter of the seneschal, Miles of Plancy, who became the effective head of government because the new king, Baldwin IV, was a minor. William of Tyre describes Rohard’s role in the new reign in enigmatic terms: In order . . . to lessen the envy of his fellows, Miles . . . suborned a certain man called Rohard, the castellan of the citadel of Jerusalem, a common soldier of little ability, and obeyed his [Rohard’s] orders as though he were set over him. In fact the reverse was true. For one man held the title which sounded good but conferred no power, while the other, using this pretence, dealt with the business of the kingdom as seemed good to himself.405

I have suggested elsewhere that Miles appointed Rohard the king’s personal guardian, which meant that he could restrict access to the young Baldwin IV and issue orders in his name. This is speculative, but what is certain is that after Miles of Plancy had been assassinated in the autumn of 1174 Rohard lost power. While remaining castellan of Jerusalem, he seems to have been distrusted by the nobility and to have had no influence in policy making either during the regency of Raymond of Tripoli (1174–6) or during the majority of Baldwin IV.406 This may explain why his son Roger, unlike all his predecessors 399 402 404

400 401 See p. 75. Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, no. 143, I, pp. 103–4. BB no. 161, p. 313. 403 CGOH I, no. 576. Rohard is last recorded in 1179: Delaville Le Roulx, ed., Les archives no. xlix, pp. 139–40. 405 406 WT XX, 22, p. 942. WT XXI, 4, pp. 964–5. Hamilton, Leper King, pp. 84–108.

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as abbot of the Templum Domini, did not occupy a prominent place in the affairs of the patriarchal or royal courts. Despite the lack of royal and ecclesiastical favour which Abbot Roger may have experienced, the place of the Templum Domini in the religious life of Jerusalem was too well established to be adversely affected. Work on the interior of the church was completed in 1172. This may be inferred from three inscriptions in the St Nicholas chapel, situated at the entrance to the choir, recorded by the pilgrim Theoderic. The first reads: Anno millesimo centesimo primo, indictione VIIIIa epacta XVIIIa (i.e. 1101); the second reads: Ab Antiochia capta anni LXIIII, Hierusalem LXIII (i.e. 1162); the third reads: Tripolis LXII, Beritus LXI, Ascalonis XVIII anni (i.e. 1172). Robert Huygens comments: ‘it is not clear what these three inscriptions mean. They may well give the dates of restorations’; and that seems the most plausible explanation.407 Theoderic visited Jerusalem in the reign of King Amalric, and as Huygens has pointed out his text indicates that he was there in a year when Easter fell late. Since he recorded an inscription dated 1172 he is likely to have visited the city in that year, when Easter fell on 16 April.408 John of Würzburg had gone on pilgrimage a few years earlier, in c. 1160–5, and remarked that the canons had placed a large golden cross on the summit of the Temple church. This was a cause of distress to the Muslims who had offered to pay a large sum of money to have it removed, for, as John explained, ‘although they do not believe in the Passion of Christ they reverence this Temple in which they pray to their Creator’.409 John of Würzburg and Theoderic make clear that the Templum Domini was venerated by pilgrims because of its New Testament associations. John records that one part of the church was a shrine to the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, a feast kept on 21 November but, although he records the inscription which commemorated this event, he does not locate this shrine precisely in the building.410 Theoderic records that on the east side of the sanctuary was the shrine of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, enclosed by a gated grille of wrought iron.411 The cave beneath the rock became the crypt of the church and was identified by John, or his guide, as the place where Jesus met with the woman taken in adultery.412 Pringle has carefully examined all the literary sources and the material evidence and has reconstructed the changes made to the interior and exterior of the Dome of the Rock by the canons of the Templum Domini, which transformed it into an octagonal shrine church.413 It played an important role in the liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem. Because it was the site of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, it was the station church for the feast of Candlemas on 2 February.414 It also had a focal role in the Palm Sunday liturgy which inaugurated the ceremonies of Holy Week. The patriarch, together with the canons of Mt Zion, those of the Mount of Olives and the community of Our Lady of Josaphat, assembled at Bethphage and 407

408 410

411 414

Theodericus, p. 161 (text); see the editor’s discussion of this passage in his Introduction, ibid., p. 26. The St Nicholas chapel probably dated from the reign of Prior Achard, who had formerly been a hermit and a canon at St Nicholas at Arrouaise. 409 Theodericus, pp. 28, 154 (reference to King Amalric). John of Würzburg, p. 94. John of Würzburg, p. 94; Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 253. The Presentation of the Virgin is narrated in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel, The Protoevangelium of James, ed. O. Cullmann, in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson, 2 vols. (London, 1965, repr. Louisville, 2005), I, pp. 421–37. 412 413 Theoderic, p. 162; Luke 2: 22–39. John of Würzburg, p. 91. Pringle, Churches no. 367, III, pp. 397–417. Luke 2: 22–39.

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at dawn, wearing white vestments, processed to the Mount of Olives and descended to the valley of Kidron, led by the patriarch carrying the reliquary of the True Cross. Meanwhile, the canons of the Templum Domini gathered near the garden of Gethsemani with the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, the community of Sta Maria Latina and the brethren of the Hospital of St John, the people of Jerusalem and the pilgrims in the city, and welcomed the patriarch’s procession. Both groups of clergy, followed by all the laity present, then entered the Temple precinct through the Golden Gate, and branches of palm and of olive were blessed and distributed to the congregation. Prayers were then said, before the different communities returned to their own churches to celebrate the Palm Sunday Mass.415 The Templum Domini also had a role in the coronation ceremonies of the kingdom. It became customary that the monarch should be crowned in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and then, wearing his crown, should go in procession to the Templum Domini. There, where the Christ Child had been presented, he presented his crown to God, and then made an offering to the canons and received his crown back. The king and his entourage then crossed the Temple platform to the former mosque of al-Aqsa, which had been the royal palace in the early years of the kingdom, but had since become the headquarters of the Knights Templar. There the coronation banquet was held.416 Because the canons owned most of the Temple platform, they were almost certainly responsible for the maintenance of a number of other shrines there. The Dome of the Chain, a small Muslim shrine to the east of the Dome of the Rock, was consecrated as a chapel of St James, believed to be one of the Christadelphoi, the brothers of Christ, and the first bishop of Jerusalem. He is said to have suffered martyrdom by being cast down from the wall of the Temple into the valley of Kidron,417 and, indeed, a chapel existed there in the twelfth century on the alleged site of his burial.418 John of Würzburg described the chapel of St James in what had been the Dome of the Chain in some detail.419 When Theoderic went on pilgrimage a few years later he was told that the disciples of James had carried his body up from the valley and buried it in that chapel, where his tomb was shown with the inscription above it: Dic, lapis et fossa: cuius sunt que tegis ossa? Sunt Jacobi iusti, iacet hic sub tegmine busti.420 This halting Leonine couplet was no doubt intended to put an end to any competition from the older chapel claiming to be that of St James’ burial in the Kidron valley.421 A building now known as the Qubbat al-Mi’rāj, the shrine of the Ascension of the Prophet, stands on the Temple platform near to the Dome of the Rock on the north-west side. Folda has shown that the main structure and ornament of this building date from the twelfth century and has suggested that it was the baptistery of the Templum Domini.422 It is mentioned in no pilgrimage source of the twelfth century, which implies that it was not 415

416

417 418 420 422

The tradition of the communal blessing of the palms at the cathedral church before celebrating the Mass of the day in the local churches of a city is preserved in the Roman Missal used until the Second Vatican Council: Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 412. The most detailed account of this ceremony is the description of the coronation of the child Baldwin Vas co-king in 1183, given by Ernoul, Chronique, X, pp. 117–19. Matthew 13: 55; Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, II, xxiii, trans. H. Lawlor and J. Oulton (London, 1927), p. 56. 419 Pringle, Churches no. 320, ‘Tomb Chapel of St James the Less’, III, pp. 185–9. John of Würzburg, p. 92. 421 John of Würzburg, p. 162. Pringle, Churches no. 319, III, pp. 182–5. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 253–74.

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a shrine chapel but, although Folda’s argument that it was built by the Latins is convincing, his identification of its use is not. There is no evidence that public baptisms in the Latin rite in the twelfth century took place anywhere except in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pringle’s suggestion that the building may have had an occasional liturgical use, for example for the blessing of branches of palm and of olive on Palm Sunday, is persuasive.423 On the east side of the Temple platform was a walled-up gateway dating from late Byzantine or early Muslim times. The Franks called it the Golden Gate, and it was opened twice a year for liturgical use. The first occasion was on Palm Sunday, as described above, to enable the faithful to re-enact Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem; the second on Holy Cross Day, 14 December, a feast instituted to commemorate the restoration of the Holy Cross relic to Jerusalem by Emperor Heraclius in 629 at the end of the Persian War. The Franks built a chapel inside the gate, and John of Würzburg describes it and also says that there was a cemetery around the gate.424 Roger of Howden reports that among those buried there were the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket: having been sent to the Latin East to do penance by Alexander III, they lived as hermits on the Black Mountain of Antioch, and when they died were brought to Jerusalem and buried ante ostium Templi.425 When the Franks took control of the Temple platform in 1099 they found one shrine there dedicated to the prophet Jesus and his mother Mary. The Muslim pilgrim Nasir-i Khusraw, who had visited Jerusalem in 1047, recorded: In the south corner of the east wall [of the Temple platform] is an underground mosque, to reach which you must descend many steps . . . It contains Jesus’ cradle, which is made of stone . . . On the east side is the mihrab of Mary, and another said to be that of Zacharias.426

This shrine was easily adapted to Christian use. When Saewulf went to Jerusalem in 1101–2 he was told by the Syrian Christians of Jerusalem that a small oratory to the east of the Temple of Solomon contained the cradle and the bath of Jesus Christ and the bed of his mother.427 By the time John of Würzburg arrived on pilgrimage some sixty years later, a new chapel had been built above the crypt. This was described as the house of Symeon the Just, and John was told that Mary had stayed there the night before she presented her son in the Temple.428 Theoderic gives information about the approach to this shrine which accords very closely with that of Nasir-i Khusraw. The pilgrim must go through a postern and down a narrow lane which runs between the eastern wall of the city and the garden of the Templars, and then climb down almost fifty steps to reach the house of Symeon.429 Pringle has argued that, despite its location, this chapel did not form part of the Templars’ compound, but was administered by the canons of the Templum Domini. This is persuasive: the chapel was already in existence when the Knights Templar were granted the al-Aqsa mosque as their headquarters, and it had close associations with the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which was commemorated in the Templum Domini. It seems likely that the 423 425 426

427 429

424 Pringle, Churches no. 367, III, pp. 413–14. John of Würzburg, pp. 95–6. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, II, p. 17. Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels, ed. and trans. W. M. Thackston, Bibliotheca Iranica, Intellectual Tradition Series 6 (Costa Mesa, CA, 2001), 33. I owe this citation to Denys Pringle, Churches no. 339, III, p. 311. 428 Saewulf, Peregrinatio, in Peregrinationes Tres, ed. Huygens, p. 68. John of Würzburg, pp. 135–6. Theodericus, p. 166.

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canons had been responsible for converting this Islamic shrine into a Christian chapel and that they retained control of it after they had ceded most of the southern area of the Temple platform to the Templars. When Saladin captured Jerusalem in October 1187, his chief religious concern was to restore the Temple area once more to Muslim worship. A mid-thirteenth century version of the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre relates that the sultan sent for his sister to join him in Jerusalem, and she brought with her twenty camel-loads of rosewater, with which Saladin caused the Temple to be washed down, ‘in the same way as that in which bishops reconcile churches which have been desecrated’.430 Although this may be a romantic reconstruction rather than a factual account, there is no doubt that Saladin initiated a process by which all traces of Christian occupation of the Haram al-Sharif were removed. This began with the dismantling and destruction of the great golden cross on the Templum Domini, which became once more the Dome of the Rock.431 Subsequently the marble floor of the church was removed and the canons’ choir dismantled so that rock might once more be exposed. The abbey buildings were completely demolished, the chapel in the Golden Gate was destroyed, and the gravestones at the Golden Gate cemetery were removed. The chapel of St James became a Muslim shrine again, as did the Qubbat al-Mirāj, which became the Dome of the Prophet’s Ascension. The house of Symeon the Just was stripped of its Christian fittings and reverted to its former Islamic status as a shrine of the prophet Jesus and of his mother Mary.432 Pringle concludes his study of the Templum Domini: The restoration work carried out by the Ayyubids after 1187 seems to have been so thorough that almost nothing remains in situ that can be attributed with certainty to the Franks. All trace of the conventual buildings which occupied the north-eastern part of the platform was also removed.433

The only important visible trace of Frankish occupation of the Dome of the Rock which remained was the wrought-iron sanctuary screen, which had separated the canons’ choir from the ambulatory. The Islamic authorities were impressed by the simplicity and beauty of this work, and it remained in the shrine until the mid-twentieth century.434 The canons of the Temple, like the other Latin clergy, were allowed to leave the city after it surrendered to Saladin. It is possible that they took refuge in Tyre, where they owned some property.435 The abbot, at least, joined the army of Guy of Lusignan at the siege of Acre in 1189–91, and died there.436 He is not named in the Chronicles which record this, but he may have been Abbot Roger. Certainly no new abbot of the Templum Domini is named in any source subsequent to Roger’s appointment by King Amalric. After Acre had been recaptured in 1191 the surviving canons established an abbey of the Templum Domini there, where they lived throughout the thirteenth century. They had 430 431

432 433 434 436

Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 62, p. 75. Rare and Excellent History of Saladin by Baha’ ad-Din Ibn Shaddad, trans. D. S. Richards, Crusade Texts in Translation 7 (Aldershot, 2001), LXXXII, p. 78. Pringle, Churches no. 293, Golden Gate, no. 319, Chapel of St James, Qubbat al-Mirāj, no. 367, III, pp. 106–7, 183–4, 413–14. Pringle, Churches, III, no. 367, p. 411. 435 Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 136–7, plates 6, 7 a–c. See p. 74. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87; Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 147.

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a variety of holdings in and near the city, which were confirmed by King Amalric in his diploma of 1166,437 and these presumably provided them either with the site, or with the revenue with which to acquire a new site on which to build their new abbey. The church of St Andrew in the environs of Acre, mentioned in the diploma, has not been located.438 More surprising is the fact that the location of the abbey of the Templum Domini in Acre is not known, although it was almost certainly inside the old city where the community’s property was located in the twelfth century.439 It seems likely that the abbey was small, because the Templum Domini lost a very high proportion of its endowments in 1187. The most important of these had been in Transjordan, the lordship of Nablus and that of Hebron, and in Ascalon and its environs, none of which remained in Frankish hands and most of which were not recovered at all during the thirteenth century. As has been noted, the community had few overseas possessions.440 Yet the Templum Domini was a prestigious foundation; it could not be allowed to collapse completely because it was assumed by the rulers of the Latin Kingdom in the thirteenth century that Jerusalem would be recovered and that when that happened the full liturgical life of the city would be restored. So new abbots of the Templum Domini continued to be appointed, but in the thirteenth century they and their community led a rather shadowy existence. In 1205 Peter, the abbot of the Templum Domini, acquired two properties in Cyprus from King Aimery of Lusignan: a chapel of St Mary and its adjoining land in Nicosia, and a village founded by Guy of Lusignan ‘near the river’ with ten carrucates of land. The king conceded that the grain from this estate might be exported without payment of dues ‘for the brethren who are in the land of Jerusalem’, that is, the canons of the Templum Domini in Acre. This property was not a free gift from the king, for Aimery concludes his diploma with the words: ‘I wish to make known that in respect of this gift I have received from you, lord abbot, a certain fine and very beautiful ruby, weighing two and a half bezants.’441 The ruby may have been part of a reliquary or of an altar cross which the canons had taken with them when they left Jerusalem. The finances of the canons may for a time have been relieved by the acquisition of property granted them in a share-out of the ecclesiastical spoils of Byzantium after the Fourth Crusade. On 22 January 1209 Innocent III confirmed the following properties to the abbot and canons of the Templum Domini: the church of St Nicholas de Varvar at Constantinople, the church of the Holy Trinity at Athens, the church of St Nicholas at Thebes, the church of St Nicholas in Negroponte and the church of St Mary de Clusura in the diocese of Fermopolis, together with all their endowments and a prebend in the cathedral of Athens.442 The community set up a priory in Athens to administer these scattered properties and send responsions to Acre. This is known because in 1217 Pope Honorius III appointed the prior of the Templum Domini in Athens, together with the abbot of Daphne and the dean 437

438 441 442

in Accon quoque domum, que fuit Guiberti de Portu, et duas domunculas iuxta domum Cholet sitas et domos, quas Adam Burdula de Templo Domini tenuerat, extra muros etiam Accon fundum, in quo ecclesia sancti Andree sita est, et terram adiacentem cum domibus in ea edificatis et edificandis, et a me meisque in regno successoribus singulis annis LX bisancios habendos pro commutatione casalis, quod dicitur Sesset, vobis concedo: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, pp. 550–3. 439 440 Pringle, Churches no. 394, IV, pp. 69–70. Pringle, Churches no. 452, IV, pp. 172–4. See p. 75. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 45, pp. 141–2. Innocent III, Register an. XI, no. 144, pp. 394–5.

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of Daulis as judges delegate to investigate complaints about the infringement of the rights of the Latin patriarch of Constantinople.443 Abbot Maurus of the Templum Domini made a profession of obedience to Ralph of Merencourt, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem (1215–24),444 and in 1220 was one of the signatories of the appeal made by the senior clergy of Acre to Philip Augustus for help against the attacks of Sultan al-Muazzam on the Franks in the Holy Land while the Fifth Crusade was in Egypt.445 One other record may relate to Abbot Maurus: at Acre on 15 May 1221, the unnamed abbot of the Templum Domini was one of the witnesses to the sale of the casale of Livadi in Cyprus to Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia by the archbishop of Tyre, in the presence of Cardinal Pelagius, the pope’s legate.446 In 1229 Frederick II negotiated the restoration of Jerusalem to Frankish rule by Sultan alKamil, but this did not benefit the canons of the Templum Domini because the Haram alSharif was entirely reserved for Muslim worship.447 The community seems to have been resigned to staying in Acre and endeavoured, with their slender resources, to consolidate their position there. By 1233 Maurus had been succeeded by Abbot Hugh, who on 30 September sold to Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia for 1,100 Saracen bezants the estate near Nicosia bought by his predecessor Abbot Peter in 1195. He did this in order to buy certain houses belonging to Constantine Brictius in the street of the Provençals in Acre, which suggests that the abbey of the Templum Domini may itself have been situated in or near that street. The transaction received the assent of Prior Nicholas, Canon John of Alvernia, and John and Bartholomew, described as laici conversi et fratres ipsius ecclesie. This implies that the community consisted only of the abbot, the prior and one canon. This transaction took place in the presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold of Lausanne (1225–39), who ratified it with his seal.448 In 1231 Abbot Hugh had been sent to Tripoli by Patriarch Gerold, acting as papal legate, with powers to absolve Prince Bohemond IVof Antioch (1201–33) of the excommunication which he had incurred. Albert of Rizzato, the Latin patriarch of Antioch (1227–46), had not been present on that occasion or represented there, even though Tripoli was in his patriarchate, and he challenged the validity of Hugh’s ministry. The matter was referred to Gregory IX, who found in favour of Abbot Hugh.449 443

444 446

447

448 449

Honorius III, Regesta no. 340; Bullarium Hellenicum: Pope Honorius III’s Letters to Frankish Greece and Constantinople (1216–1227), ed. C. Schabel and W. Duba (Turnhout, 2015), nos. 7–10, pp. 144–8; specific charges against the Orthodox patriarch were that he had excommunicated Geoffrey de Villehardouin and Otto de la Roche (no. 7) and that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Thebes (nos. 8–10). This is the only record of a prior of the Templum Domini in Athens: L. Santifaller, Beiträge zur Geschichte des lateinischen Patriarchats von Konstantinopel (1204–1261) und der venezianische Urkunde (Weimar, 1938), p. 188. 445 BB no. 183, p. 341. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 44, pp. 140–1; Maurus may also be the unnamed abbot of the Templum Domini who was one of the signatories of a vidimation of a settlement made at Damietta in May 1221 by Cardinal Pelagius in a dispute between the bishop of Acre and the Master of the Hospital of St John. This text exists only in the copy made by Paoli, Codice no. 108, I, pp. 114–15; CGOH I, no. 1718. The vidimation is undated: RRH no. 945, suggested that the vidimation dates from the same year as the original, but he gave no reason for this. imperator non occupabit attinget ne Geemelaza [the mosque of al-Aksa] quod Salomonis Templum est, nec Templum Domini vel quicquam eorum ambitu complexusque contentum: clause II of Frederick II’s treaty with the sultan, in Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, 88. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 43, pp. 138–40. Gregory IX, Registres no. 1223; cf. CGOH I, no. 2000 of 27 October 1231 which records Bohemond IV’s reconciliation to the Church.

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During the next few years Hugh took an active part in the public affairs of the Latin Church and Kingdom. On 23 August 1235 Pope Gregory IX instructed the abbots of the Templum Domini and of St Samuel’s at Acre to order the brethren of the Temple and of the Hospital in the Latin Kingdom to desist from the hostilities in which they were engaged and send procurators to Rome at the spring sailing in 1236 to submit their quarrel to papal arbitration. The abbots were to make a full report to the pope about this dispute and were empowered to excommunicate the disputants if they disregarded these orders.450 On 6 May 1236 Robert, Abbot of Sta Maria Latina, who transferred lands in the territory of Caesarea in perpetual lease to the Master of the Hospital of St John, had copies made of the deeds of transfer which he deposited with Hugh, Archbishop of Nazareth, and Abbot Hugh of the Templum Domini.451 In 1235 Abbot Hugh had been asked to witness an agreement between Abbot Robert of Sta Maria Latina and John Griffus and his wife, who wished to sell land which they leased from Latina to the Teutonic Order.452 In September 1236, Hugh, Abbot of the Templum Domini, was one of eight guarantors of a financial agreement between Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia and John, Lord of Caesarea, and John of Ibelin.453 Then on 6 October 1238 Hugh, Abbot of the Temple, was one of the signatories of a letter sent to Theobald of Navarre about his forthcoming crusade. It is, perhaps, an indication of Hugh’s status that he was the only abbot to sign this letter. The other signatories were Eustorgius, Archbishop of Nicosia, vicar of the patriarch of Jerusalem, Henry, Archbishop of Nazareth, the bishops of Acre and Lydda, the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospital, and four laymen: Count Walter of Brienne, Odo of Montbéliard, Constable of the Kingdom, Balian, Lord of Sidon, and John, Lord of Caesarea.454 In May 1244 the Knights Templar succeeded in making an agreement with the Ayyubid rulers of Damascus, Homs and Kerak, by which, among other provisions, the whole Temple platform was restored to Christian control. The Dome of the Rock was once again restored to Christian worship, but it would appear that the Templars administered it together with the rest of the Temple platform and that the canons of the Templum Domini did not return there.455 The Christian restoration was short-lived, for on 23 August 1244 Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarizmians, and the Franks who were in the city were slaughtered. When the Frankish rulers attempted to reverse this disaster, their confederate army was defeated by the sultan of Egypt and his Khwarizmian mercenaries near Gaza on 17 October 1244.456 This led to an appeal for help being sent in November 1244 by the surviving Frankish leaders to the clergy of France and England, which was signed among others by J. Abbot of the Templum Domini. This text is known through the copy made by Matthew Paris, who may have

450 453

454 455

456

451 452 Gregory IX, Registres nos. 2742, 2744. CGOH I, no. 2142. Strehlke no. 80, pp. 63–4. This text was published as an appendix to his calendar of the Cartulary of St Sophia, Nicosia by J. L. La Monte, ‘A register of the cartulary of the Cathedral of Santa Sophia of Nicosia’, Byzantion 5 (1929–30), 495–8. Martène and Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, I, cols. 1012–13. Ibn Wasil, who was present in Jerusalem, reports the performance of Christian cult in the Dome of the Rock: J. Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, 2 vols., trans. from the Hebrew by G. Nahon (Paris, 1969), II, 308–9; Frederick II reported that the Templars had occupied the Templum Domini: RRH no. 1115. Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, II, 308–13.

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mistranscribed the abbot’s initial, but it seems probable that Hugh had been succeeded by an otherwise unknown Abbot J.457 On 11 January 1261, the unnamed abbot of the Templum Domini was present in Acre at the court of Thomas of Bethlehem, the papal legate, when he received a delegation of the Venetians and Pisans in the city and informed them of an instruction received from Pope Alexander IV about the fortifications of Acre.458 On 14 March 1265 Symon, Abbot of the Templum Domini, was present in the patriarch’s house at Acre, where, together with Abbot James of Our Lady of Josaphat and the grand preceptor of the Teutonic Order, he witnessed an agreement mediated by the pope’s legate between the bishop of Hebron and Hugh Revel, Master of the Hospital of St John, about possession of an estate in the principality of Antioch.459 In June 1286 when King Henry II of Cyprus went to Acre to claim the crown of Jerusalem, he was refused entrance to the citadel by Odo of Poilechien, the representative of Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples (1285–1309) who also claimed the crown. Henry therefore lodged in the house of Philip of Montfort, Lord of Tyre, where he met with the Masters of the Temple, of the Hospital and of the Teutonic Order, representatives of the Dominican and Franciscan friars, the bishops of Hebron, Lydda and Famagusta, and Martin, Abbot of the Templum Domini. The clergy attempted to persuade the French garrison to evacuate the citadel and hand it over to King Henry, but peaceful negotiations did not achieve anything, and in the end the Masters of the three military orders had to threaten to use force in order to induce the French garrison to leave.460 Nothing further is known about the canons of the Templum Domini. Their abbey would have been attacked when the Mamluks entered Acre in 1291, but it is not known whether any of the canons survived. Pringle suggests that any who did may have taken refuge in the church of St Mary at Nicosia which they had held since 1195.461 There is no evidence, however, that the Austin canons of the Templum Domini retained an independent identity after 1291.

The Abbey of the Mount of Olives The armies of the First Crusade knew that the Mount of Olives was the site of Christ’s Ascension into Heaven.462 When on 8 July 1099 the participants walked barefoot in procession round the walls of Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives was an important station on their route: Peter the Hermit and Arnulf of Chocques, chaplain to Duke Robert of Normandy, preached to the troops there.463 Arnulf and other learned clergy on the crusade were no doubt aware from reading Bede’s De locis sanctis and other works about the sacred topography of Jerusalem that an imposing circular stone church had once stood on the site of the Ascension, but by 1099 it was in ruins.464 457

458 460 461 464

It is possible that Abbot J. was Canon John de Alvernia recorded in a document of 1233: see p. 82; Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. 459 Tafel and Thomas, eds., Urkunden, no. 346, III, pp. 41–2. CGOH I, no. 3120. Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 671–3; Cronaca del Templare di Tiro cc. 201–2, pp. 169–70. 462 463 Pringle, Churches no. 452, III, p. 174. Acts 1: 12. WT VIII, 11, pp. 400–1. Bede, Libellus de locis sanctis, ed. J. Fraipont, in Itineraria et alia geographica, ed. P. Geyer, CCSL 175 (Turnhout, 1965), 6, p. 417.

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When the pilgrim Saewulf went to Jerusalem three years later, he found that the site of the Ascension ‘is enclosed in a shrine, arranged with honour; an altar has been placed in the shrine over the sacred site, and the whole complex is surrounded by a wall’.465 The Russian abbot Daniel, who went on pilgrimage a few years later, found that the shrine had been more fully developed: The place of the Ascension of the Lord . . . is a little mound [on which] was a round stone above kneeheight. From this stone Christ our God ascended into heaven, and this place is built about with arches, and on top of these arches has been built a circular court all paved with marble slabs. And in the middle of this court there is a small round chapel without a roof or floor and in this chapel, beneath its open top, lies that holy stone [where the Lord stood]. And above this stone there is an altar made of marble slabs [on which] they now celebrate the liturgy. Beneath this holy table is a stone faced all round with marble slabs so that you can only see a little of its top which all the Christians kiss. It has two doors and one must climb up steps to the place of the Ascension, and there are twenty-two steps.466

Neither writer mentions how this shrine was served, but when Patriarch Arnulf was enthroned in April 1112 he issued a diploma in favour of the Hospital of St John which was witnessed by Fulcher, prior Montis Oliveti.467 It is known from other sources that this priory was a house of Austin canons,468 and the fact that he and Aichard, Prior of the Templum Domini, both appear together in this document for the first time suggests that the foundation of the Priory of the Mount of Olives as a house of Austin canons was also the work of Patriarch Gibelin.469 Prior Fulcher died before 1120. He was succeeded by Prior Lawrence, who, with the other priors of the Austin canons in the city, successfully petitioned Baldwin II to abolish dues on hay and vegetables brought into Jerusalem.470 Lawrence is not listed among the senior clergy present at the Council of Nablus later in 1120471 and took no active part in the administration of the kingdom. He died before 19 October 1129, when Prior Henry witnessed a confirmation issued by Patriarch Stephen for the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat.472 Henry and his canons joined the confraternity of Augustinian communities in Jerusalem formed by Patriarch William I between 1130 and 1136.473 William I was the first Latin patriarch to be an Austin canon. He had been a canon of the Holy Sepulchre since 1117 and was elected prior in 1128–30. He then succeeded Stephen of Chartres as patriarch.474 He was concerned to facilitate the construction of a new church of the Ascension, commensurate with its religious importance, and towards the end of his reign adjudicated in a dispute between the canons of the Mount of Olives and the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat about possession of ‘flat land with good soil, situated besde the church of the Mount of Olives’. The brethren of Josaphat ceded their claims to this land in perpetuity in favour of the canons in return for an annual payment of 7 gold pieces (bezants) on Holy Cross Day, and this enabled new building work on the church to begin.475 While William was still prior of the Holy Sepulchre, he had asked Prior Henry to witness a donation made by his canons 465 468 470 473 475

466 467 Saewulf, p. 70. Daniel the Abbot, p. 135. CGOH I, no. 25; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 51, I, pp. 176–7. 469 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVIII, 234. See p. 26. 471 472 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. WT XII, 13, p. 563. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7. 474 BB, Appendix 3, pp. 351–2. Hamilton, Latin Church, pp. 68–9. Two copies of this document survive: Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 23, pp. 55–6, and Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 24, p. 133.

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to Our Lady of Josaphat,476 and after William became patriarch he encouraged the priors of the Austin canons to attend his curia. Together with the Priors of the Templum Domini and of Mt Zion, Prior Henry witnessed a sale by Prior Peter of the Holy Sepulchre of land on which a Hungarian hospice might be built; a grant by the patriarch to the prior of Quarantena; a gift by Bishop Ralph of Ramla in favour of the Holy Sepulchre; and a confirmation by the patriarch of the property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.477 Prior Henry is not known to have had any contact with the court during the reign of King Fulk, but in 1144 he was one of the witnesses to the diploma issued by the young Baldwin III confirming the privilege granted by Fulk and Melisende to the Convent of Bethany.478 Prior Henry is last recorded on 14 August 1145 as a witness to the settlement mediated by Patriarch William between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mt Tabor monastery.479 The earliest mention of his successor, Prior Aimery, is found in an oblique reference in a charter of 18 August 1155, in which there is listed among the lay witnesses, W. nepos Aimerici prioris Montis Oliveti.480 The prior’s first personal appearance was more dramatic. In 1155 Patriarch Fulcher went to Rome to appeal to the pope for support in a dispute with the Order of St John.481 While he was still absent, on Ascension Day 24 May 1156, the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre went in procession, as was customary, to the Mount of Olives to celebrate the station Mass there, but Prior Aimery refused to admit them into the church, claiming that the right to officiate there on that day belonged to the patriarch alone. Consequently the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre had had to return to their own church to celebrate the liturgy, while Prior Aimery and his canons celebrated the station Mass in the church of the Mount of Olives and Aimery preached to the people who had assembled there. When Fulcher learned of this on his return from Rome a few weeks later, he treated the incident as a serious challenge to his authority and convoked a synod in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was attended by the archbishops of Tyre, Caesarea and Nazareth, the bishops of Bethlehem, Lydda, Sebaste, Acre, Tiberias, Banias, Sidon and Beirut, the abbots of the Templum Domini, Our Lady of Josaphat, Sta Maria Latina, St Samuel and St Habakkuk, together with the priors of Mt Zion, the Templum Domini and Sebaste. The synod found against Prior Aimery, and he and the canons of the Mount of Olives, of whom six were named – Guy, Bonicio, John Berruier, Durand, Odo and Zacharias – were required as a penance to walk barefoot from their priory to the Holy Sepulchre. Archbishop Peter of Tyre, Bishop Adam of Banias and Bishop Mainard of Beirut, who clearly considered this penalty excessive, joined Prior Aimery and his canons in performing this penance. The synod enacted that in future if the patriarch were absent on station days when the liturgy was said at the Templum Domini, Mt Zion, Our Lady of Josaphat and the Mount of Olives, the prior of the Holy Sepulchre should deputise for him.482 476 478 480 481

477 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 17, pp. 43–5. BB nos. 101, 22, 61, 23, pp. 219–20, 78–80, 153–5, 80–3. 479 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 210, I, pp. 390–3. BB no. 24, pp. 83–4. A deed of purchase by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre of property in Jerusalem: BB no. 116, pp. 236–7. 482 WT XVIII, 6–8, pp. 818–21. BB no. 54, pp. 142–5.

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Fulcher died in November 1157, and Prior Aimery appears to have been on good terms with his successor, Amalric of Nesle (1157/8–80).483 On 26 July 1160 Aimery was among a large group of churchmen who witnessed Baldwin III’s confirmation of the property of the Holy Sepulchre;484 on 30 November 1160 he and Prior Gunther of Mt Zion were the only senior clergy to witness a gift to the Holy Sepulchre by the king’s brother, Count Amalric.485 After Amalric became king in 1163, Prior Aimery sometimes attended his court. In 1166 he witnessed the king’s diploma for the canons of the Templum Domini.486 In 1168 he witnessed Amalric of Nesle’s confirmation of the gift of a church at Nablus to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, made in the presence of King Amalric, and a second grant made by the patriarch to the canons of the church of St Nicholas at Jaffa.487 Aimery died soon after this. When Patriarch Amalric issued a detailed confirmation of the rights and privileges of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in 1169, it was witnessed among others by Bernard prior Montis Oliveti.488 Two years later, Bernard described himself as sacrosancte ecclesie Ascensionis dominice . . . minister in a charter confirming an exchange of property between his community and the Hospital of St John.489 ‘Minister’ was a title sometimes used by bishops in the twelfth century as a sign of humility, but it was also sometimes used by abbots.490 The Mount of Olives certainly became an abbey before 1187, for John of Ibelin – who cites a description of the Kingdom dating from c. 1180 – names ‘l’abbe de Mont Olivete’, who had the right to wear a mitre, a cross and a ring, among the suffragans of the Latin patriarch. This promotion from a priory to an abbey probably took place in the reign of King Amalric, who was instrumental in augmenting the hierarchy of the Latin Church in his kingdom.491 The abbey must have had substantial endowments, because John of Ibelin records that it was required to supply the crown with the service of fifty sergeants in times of emergency.492 Yet very little is known about this property. A charter, known only through an entry in the calendar of documents of the Order of St John drawn up by Raybaud in the eighteenth century, is described as: ‘Donation de Guillaume, seigneur de Tibériade, au prieur et aux chanoines de l’église de l’Ascension du mont d’Olivet, d’un casal apellé Caffra, sans date’.493 The donor is almost certainly William of Bures, Lord of Tiberias and Prince of Galilee (1120–post 1147).494 In 1171 Abbot Bernard exchanged this estate with the Order of St John in return for a collection of houses and shops in Jerusalem which yielded an annual rent of 130 bezants. This was an important transaction, which was carried out in the presence of the patriarch and which had the royal assent. It was witnessed by the archbishop of Caesarea, Ralph, Bishop of Bethlehem, the chancellor of the kingdom, the bishops of Lydda and Acre, the 483 485 487 489 490 491 493 494

484 WT XVIII, 19, p. 838. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 258, I, pp. 470–4. 486 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 305, II, pp. 530–2. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 316, II, pp. 550–3. 488 BB no. 147, 148, pp. 288–91; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 329, 339, II, pp. 569–71, 585–7. BB no. 150, pp. 292–6. CGOH I, no. 422; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 348, II, pp. 606–8.The document is damaged and is datable on internal evidence. C. Dufresne Du Cange, Glossarium . . . mediae et infimae Latinitatis, 6 vols. (Paris, 1733–6), IV, p. 733. 492 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 110. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. J. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire de pièces de Terre Sainte de l’ordre de l’Hopital’, ROL 3 (1895), no. 58, p. 53. Murray, Crusader Kingdom, no. 135, p. 236. The donor might have been William II de Bures (d. c. 1158): M. Rheinheimer, Das Kreuzfahrerfürstentum Galiläa, Kieler Werkstücke, Reihe C.1 (Frankfurt, 1990), 266.

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archdeacon of Jerusalem and the patriarch’s chancellor, together with a distinguished group of laymen.495 Although the church of the Ascension was restored for liturgical use very soon after 1099, the building of a more elaborate shrine church was not completed until later in the twelfth century. The pilgrim Theoderic, writing in King Amalric’s reign, gives the fullest description of it: On account of the height of this hill, one climbs twenty steps to this church. In the middle of this church there is a certain round chapel, magnificently clad in Parian marble and with a ciborium, and with a high roof. In the centre there is a holy altar, beneath which may be seen that stone on which the Lord is said to have stood when ascending into Heaven. In that same church the canons sing the Divine Office. It is fortified with walls and with large towers and small turrets and is defended at night by guards against enemy attack.496

This account suggests that a small garrison was posted in the abbey complex. The church of the Ascension was the most isolated of the shrine churches outside the walls of Jerusalem and was vulnerable to attack. In 1152 a Turkish war band appeared on the Mount of Olives, but was driven off by Frankish troops from the city before it had caused any damage to the abbey.497 Modern surveys have shown that the twelfth-century church of the Ascension was an octagonal building constructed on the round platform of the former Byzantine church. It had a dome, but there was almost certainly a hole in the centre of the roof to symbolise the Ascension of Christ. Although the same geometric shape as the Templum Domini, which it faced on the other side of the valley of Jehosaphat, it was of course a much smaller structure. Friar Felix Fabri, who visited Jerusalem as a pilgrim in 1481 when the crusader church was still standing, wrote: In this holy place there stands a great round church, beautifully built in such sort that on the top it is not covered by a vault, but the vaulted roof has a wide opening purposely made in it, beneath which . . . stands the chapel of the Lord’s Ascension, even as doth the chapel of the Lord’s Sepulchre.498

The edicule, enshrining Christ’s footprint, which stood at the centre of the crusader church beneath the open dome, still exists, and the surviving capitals, dating from the mid-twelfth century, give some idea of the beauty of the crusader church. Modern excavations have revealed the foundations of part of the adjacent conventual buildings.499 There is no clear evidence that the canons of the Mount of Olives administered all the other nearby shrine churches. The cave church of St Pelagia was very near. Theoderic explained how, when leaving the west end of the church of the Ascension, ‘[there is found] a small dark church in an underground cave, which is approached by a flight of twenty-five steps, in which the body of St Pelagia is seen in a large sarcophagus. She ended her life in 495 497 498

499

496 CGOH I, no. 422; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 348, II, pp. 606–8. Theodericus, p. 174. WT XVII, 20, pp. 787–9. Les errances de Frère Félix, pèlerin en Terre Sainte, en Arabie et en Egypte, ed. J. Meyer and N. Chareyron, 4 vols. (Paris, 2014), III, pp. 304–7; English translation in The Book of Brother Felix Fabri, trans. A. Stewart, 2 vols., PPTS 8 (London 1893– 6), p. 485. Pringle, Churches no. 284, III, pp. 72–88; B. Kühnel, ‘Crusader sculpture at the Ascension Church of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives’, Gesta, 16 (1977), 41–50.

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that place as a recluse in the service of God.’500 Despite its contiguity to the Latin abbey, there is some evidence to suggest that this chapel remained in Orthodox hands in the twelfth century.501 The ‘Galilee’ church at the northern end of the Mount of Olives was also administered by the Orthodox in the twelfth century.502 Indeed, the Orthodox appear to have maintained a strong presence on the Mount of Olives during the time of Latin rule. When Abbot Daniel visited Jerusalem in Baldwin I’s reign he found a stylite living near the Cave of St Pelagia.503 Nevertheless, it is debatable whether the Orthodox abbey of St Mary near the church of the Ascension continued to exist at that time, for as Pringle comments: ‘No pilgrims, whether Latin or Orthodox, make any unambiguous reference to any church of St Mary [on the Mount of Olives] at the time of the Latin Kingdom.’504 The only other Latin church on the Mount of Olives in the twelfth century was the church of the Pater Noster. This was built on the site of the great Constantinian basilica of the Eleona, which had been constructed over a cave in which, it was alleged, Jesus had taught his disciples. A new, smaller church was built on this site in 1152 by two Scandinavian pilgrims, Sven Svenson, Bishop of Viborg, and his brother Eskil.505 An anonymous pilgrim guide of c. 1170 reports that this church was called the Pater Noster because ‘there Christ taught the Our Father. A stone is there placed under the altar, where he wrote with his own hand “Our Father” in Greek.’506 If authentic, this relic would have had a unique value, as the sole example of Christ’s writing, and also as evidence that he was literate in Greek. It was seen by Theoderic, who describes how the church marks the spot where the Saviour taught his disciples how to pray, ‘saying, “Our Father which art in Heaven”. He wrote this down for them in his own hand, and all this text is preserved beneath the altar, so that pilgrims may kiss it. From the middle of that church thirty steps lead down to the underground cave where the Lord it is said often stayed and taught his disciples.’507 Pringle has pointed out that this church was used during the Ascension Day liturgy as the point of assembly for processions which came from all over the city to keep the station. The Ritual of the Holy Sepulchre enacts that ‘at the Pater Noster all the clergy should robe in their festal vestments and, led by the patriarch and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, should process to the Church of the Ascension and walk round the outside of it singing “Hail festival day”’.508 Pringle suggest that this may indicate that the church of the Pater Noster was under the jurisdiction of the abbey of the Mount of Olives, and this suggestion is plausible.509 Because of its position, the abbey of the Mount of Olives was vulnerable to attack. The Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, which is a contemporary eyewitness account of events in the Latin Kingdom after the defeat at Hattin, relates that in 1187, as Saladin prepared to besiege Jerusalem, he first captured the shrines on the Mount of Olives.510 The canons would have had the opportunity to seek refuge within the city of Jerusalem before that happened, and they appear to have left for the coast after the city 500 503 505

506 507 510

501 502 Theodericus, p. 174. Pringle, Churches no. 351, III, pp. 342–6. Pringle, Churches no. 299, III, pp. 124–5. 504 Daniel the Abbot, p. 136. Pringle, Churches no. 341, III, p. 316. P. E. D. Riant, Expéditions et pèlerinages des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte au temps des croisades, 2 vols. (Paris, 1865–9), I, pp. 226–9. Second Guide, ed. and trans. J. Wilkinson, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 302, and, for details of the Latin text, 354. 508 509 Theodericus, p. 174. Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 426. Pringle, Churches no. 298, III, p. 119. Libellus de expugnatione, XXII, 196–7.

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surrendered. An unnamed abbot of the Mount of Olives died during the siege of Acre in 1191: this may have been Abbot Bernard or some unknown successor.511 The church of the Ascension was such an important shrine that the office of abbot could not be left vacant when the Latin Church established its hierarchy in exile in Acre after 1192. A new abbot was appointed during the reign of Pope Celestine III (1191–8). This is known from a letter of Innocent III dated between 20 September and 31 December 1198, about the dispute between the Church of Tripoli and the Order of St John over the church of Nephin and its estates. Innocent relates that Pope Celestine had found in favour of the Church of Tripoli and had appointed the abbot of the Mount of Olives and the archbishop of Nazareth to enforce this ruling. It seems likely that this commission had not been executed before the pope’s death on 8 January 1198, because Innocent upheld the judgement, but appointed the archbishop of Tyre and the bishop of Sidon as his delegates to enforce it.512 Although it is probable that this abbot of the Mount of Olives was living in Acre, Innocent’s letter does not specify this. In 1199 the still unnamed abbot was certainly in the Latin East, when he witnessed a gift of tithes to the abbot of Our Lady of Josaphat by the archbishop of Caesarea.513 The unnamed abbot should perhaps be identified with Abbot Gervase, who in Acre on 19 July 1204 witnessed the confirmation by two papal legates, Cardinal Soffredus of St Prassede and Cardinal Peter of S. Marcello of the will of Albert of Castelluell, a Spanish nobleman who had died in the Holy Land and bequeathed all his property to the Orders of the Temple and of the Hospital.514 During the next fifty-six years a succession of abbots of the Mount of Olives appear in records, carrying out important duties in the Latin Kingdom. Yet there is no record of any canons of their abbey after 1187, nor is there any mention of buildings in Acre belonging to the abbey in the thirteenth century. No mention is made of the abbey of the Mount of Olives either in lists of indulgences offered by the churches of Acre.515 This suggests that the abbot, who had high ecclesiastical status, was attached to the Latin patriarch’s household in Acre but had no lodgings or chapel of his own, and that the community of canons was not reconstituted at Acre. This was probably a consequence of the lack of endowments of the Jerusalem house remaining in Christian hands after 1192, but such a conclusion must remain tentative because nothing is known about the property of the abbey at that time. Abbot Gervase died before 1 October 1220, and was succeeded by an abbot known only by his initial, D., who on that day was one of the signatories of a letter from the senior clergy of Acre to Philip Augustus of France, requesting his help against the attacks of the Ayyubid prince al-Muazzam while the army of the kingdom was assisting the Fifth Crusade in Egypt. The only known example of the seal of the Mount of Olives is attached to this document. Gustave Schlumberger, who published it, described it as portraying ‘un abbé mitré, à micorps, bénissant de la main droite, et tenant de la main gauche une crosse, dont la volute est tournée vers la droite’. It is inscribed: + S. D. ABB. MONTIS OLIVETI.516 511 512 515 516

Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87; Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 147. 513 514 RRH no. 745, p. 198. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 58, pp. 167–8. CGOH I, no. 1197. Pringle, Churches no. 391, IV, pp. 61–2. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5; Schlumberger, Chalandon and Blanchet, Sigillographie, no. 141, p. 126.

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Abbot D. may also be attested in a copy of a document of May 1221. This is an account of a settlement mediated at Damietta by the papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius, in a dispute between the bishop of Acre and the Master of the Hospital of St John. This text is known only in a copy printed by Paoli in 1733, and that is a vidimation which is attested, among others, by an unnamed abbot of the Mount of Olives. The vidimation is not dated, and Reinhold Röhricht, when he calendared it, stated sine anno sed putamus eodem anno 1221. He gave no reason for this claim, and it seems most likely that the copy was made later in the thirteenth century.517 In 1226 Pope Honorius III charged the archbishops of Caesarea and Nicosia and the abbot of the Mount of Olives apud Accon commoranti, to announce to the faithful on feastdays that Bohemond of Antioch had been excommunicated and his principality placed under an interdict by the pope because he had attacked the knights of St John in Antioch and Tripoli.518 In 1229 Jerusalem was restored to Christian rule through the negotiations of Frederick II with Sultan al-Kamil. Patriarch Gerold of Lausanne was unable to take advantage of this settlement immediately because Gregory IX had excommunicated the emperor and Gerold was bound to observe this judgement. At some point after Frederick had been reconciled to the pope in 1230, and almost certainly before he went to the papal curia in 1233 where he remained for four years, the patriarch made provision for the ecclesiastical administration of Jerusalem. This undated document is preserved in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre: Gerold by Divine mercy humble Patriarch of Jerusalem and unworthy legate of the Apostolic See to all the clergy and people living in Jerusalem sends greetings in the Lord. We wish you all to know that we have appointed our beloved sons the Abbot of the Mount of Olives and the Dean of Jaffa to conduct business on our behalf in Jerusalem and to preserve our rights there. Whatever action they take jointly or singly will be ratified, and we request and command that you will receive them as you would ourselves. Given at Jaffa in on 1 January.519

The office of patriarchal vicar was a great honour, but it is not known whether it gave the abbot any material advantages. He may have been able to recover some of the houses and shops which the abbey had owned in the city before 1187, though there is no record of this,520 but there is no evidence that any attempt was made to restore the abbey itself. Wilbrand of Oldenburg, who had visited Jerusalem in 1212 while it was under Ayyubid occupation, reported that the ‘cloister’, that is the monastic buildings, had been destroyed and that the church of the Ascension had been turned into a mosque.521 The Franks of Jerusalem did not have the economic resources to rebuild the monastery, although no doubt they reordered the church as a Christian shrine and celebrated Mass there on the appropriate feast-days. The abbot of the Mount of Olives does not seem to have been in the city when Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarizmians in 1244, for B. Abbot of the Mount of Olives was one of the signatories of an appeal sent by the prelates of the Holy Land to the bishops of France 517 519 521

518 Paoli, Codice no. 108, I, pp. 114–15; RRH no. 945, p. 251. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5808. 520 BB no. 184, pp. 341–2. See pp. 85, 87–8. Wilbrand of Oldenburg, Journey to the Holy Land, II, 9, in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 91–2; Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 135.

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and England on 25 November 1244, informing them of the loss of Jerusalem and the subsequent defeat by the Ayyubids of the confederate Frankish army at Gaza.522 On 22 July 1246 Pope Innocent IV instructed the abbot of the Mount of Olives living in Acre, together with the abbot of Mt Tabor and the dean of Sidon to protect the newly appointed Archbishop Joscelin of Caesarea from being deprived of any of the emoluments he had previously held while he was a canon of Antioch.523 On 27 April 1260, Mgr Hugolinus, procurator of the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat, presented to the papal legate, Thomas, Bishop of Bethlehem, a letter from Pope Alexander IV (1254–61) appointing the legate, together with the abbots of the Mount of Olives and of St Samuel’s ‘living in Acre’ as adjudicators in the dispute about the tithes of the casale Anna.524 This is the last record of an abbot of the Mount of Olives. The office may have been perpetuated until 1291, but there is no proof that it was. The Dominican Burchard of Mt Zion, who visited Jerusalem between 1274 and 1285, reported that: [On the summit of the Mount of Olives] has been built a church on the place where the Lord ascended into heaven. The place itself is in the centre of the church; and above there is an opening, so that the way by which he ascended in the air is unobstructed. In truth, the stone on which He stood when He ascended and which bears His footprints was placed there as a memorial. The stone is placed so as to obstruct the east door, but without mortar; and anyone can easily insert a hand and touch the footprints, but without seeing them.525

It would appear from this that although the shrine was in Muslim hands Christians were allowed access to it. As noted by Felix Fabri, the church of the Ascension was still standing in the late fifteenth century,526 but it gradually collapsed through lack of regular maintenance. Nevertheless, the edicule built over the shrine by the Latins in the twelfth century has survived. It has been reroofed and is no longer open to the sky in the centre; the internal wall has been resurfaced, and a mihrab has been placed in the wall, but the footprint of Christ remains in the centre of what has become a Muslim shrine,527 for Muslims share with Christians a belief that Jesus, son of Mary, was bodily assumed into the Paradise of God.528

The Austin Canons of the Church of the Holy Nativity, Bethlehem Bethlehem was the first of the Holy Places associated with the life of Christ to come into Latin hands in the course of the First Crusade. As Duke Godfrey led the army towards Jerusalem, a deputation of Christians from Bethlehem came to his camp asking for protection. During the night of 6–7 June 1099 Prince Tancred and Baldwin of Le Bourg (the future King Baldwin II) with a force of one hundred knights, rode to Bethlehem where they were welcomed by the local population carrying banners and processional crosses. The Franks 522 524 525 527

523 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. Innocent IV, Registres no. 2027. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 52, pp. 107–9; on this dispute see p. 85. 526 Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 75. See Pringle, Churches, no. 284, III, p. 76. 528 For the later history of the church buildings, see Pringle, Churches no. 284, III, pp. 78–88. Qur’an, Sura 4, v. 156.

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prayed in the basilica of the Holy Nativity and then rejoined the main army which was besieging Jerusalem.529 Unlike all the other major Christian shrines in Palestine, the church of the Holy Nativity had not been damaged either by the Persians in 614 or during the centuries of Muslim rule. No attempt had been made to demolish it during the persecution by al-Hakim in 1009. The basilica, built in the reign of Justinian I (527–65) and probably under his patronage, was still standing in 1099 and is still there now. Pringle calls it ‘the only pre-Muslim church building to have survived intact in Palestine up to the present day’.530 Despite the veneration in which it was held throughout the Christian world, the Holy Nativity was only a priory church in Orthodox times.531 St Bononius is said to have established a Benedictine community there in 1016 to provide for the service of the shrine in the Latin rite, but there is no evidence that his foundation was still in existence in 1099.532 The Latin sources describe the clergy in charge of the Holy Nativity at the time of the First Crusade as Syrians, that is, members of the Orthodox Church who worshipped in Syriac. William of Tyre relates that Arnulf, Bishop of Martirano, in Calabria, who was present with the crusade, was appointed to take charge of the church at Bethlehem by his namesake Arnulf, the Latin patriarch-elect of Jerusalem. It seems possible that Prince Tancred, himself a south Italian Norman and the liberator of Bethlehem, nominated the bishop of Martirano to this benefice. Arnulf of Martirano’s tenure of Bethlehem was very brief. He was captured by a Muslim patrol on the eve of the battle of Ascalon (15 August 1099) and is mentioned in no later source.533 Baldwin I of Jerusalem was crowned king in the church of the Holy Nativity on Christmas Day 1100. The court would have attended Mass in that church on that day in any case, but Baldwin was probably influenced by the example of Charlemagne to arrange for his coronation to take place during the Christmas liturgy.534 Given the importance of the shrine of the Nativity, it is probable that Latin clergy were attached to the church, in which case they must have performed the coronation rite; indeed, it is possible that a house of Austin canons had already been established there.535 The first clear evidence for the existence of Austin canons at Bethlehem, however, comes from Tripoli. Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, from his camp on Mt Pilgrim from which he was conducting his long siege of Tripoli, gave a mosque and the church of St George, situated on that mountain, to the Holy Sepulchre, and among the witnesses of that act was Bernard, Prior of Bethlehem. The text of this document is preserved in a ratification issued by Raymond’s successor, Count William Jordan, on 22 August 1106, and this together with Raymond VI’s grant was confirmed by Raymond II of Tripoli (1137–52). Raymond VI’s grant is not dated, but must have been made between 1102 when he began to besiege Tripoli and his death on 28 February 1105.536 529 530 533 535

536

FC I, 25, ss. 14–16, pp. 278–80; H. Hagenmeyer, Chronologie de la première croisade (1094–1100) (Paris, 1902), 235–6. 531 532 Pringle, Churches no. 61, I, p. 138. WT XX, 3, p. 914. Vita S. Bononii, AA SS, Aug. VI, p. 127. 534 Anonymi Gesta Francorum, p. 94; WT IX, 1, p. 422. FC II, 6, pp. 384–5. Jacques de Vitry implies that the church had been served by Austin canons from the beginning of Latin rule: Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVII, 232. BB no. 79, pp. 185–7.

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In Orthodox times, Bethlehem had formed part of the diocese of Ascalon.That city remained in Muslim hands, and Baldwin I secured the appointment of a titular bishop, an office first held by Anschetinus, cantor of the canons of Bethlehem. This appointment must have been made before October 1102 when the ‘bishop of Bethlehem’ was among those present at a legatine council in Jerusalem presided over by Cardinal Robert of St Eusebius, at which Patriarch Daibert was deposed. Albert of Aachen who reports this must have been given the information by a source who did not understand the canonical position of Aschetinus, who held the see of Ascalon, but ruled it from Bethlehem.537 Baldwin I had an affection for the Holy Nativity, the church where he had been crowned, and sought permission from Paschal II to make it a cathedral. The pope delegated an inquiry into this matter to his legate, Gibelin of Arles, who reached the Latin Kingdom in 1108. After consulting with the king and the senior clergy, Gibelin recommended that the see of Ascalon should be transferred to Bethlehem. Aschetinus thus became bishop of Bethlehem, and Ascalon, still in Muslim hands, was made subject to his episcopal authority. Hans Mayer may be right in maintaining that the new see was created in 1108, although the arrangements about its endowments were not completed until 1109–10.538 Those endowments are listed in Baldwin I’s diploma for the church of Bethlehem, issued in 1109–10 and preserved by William of Tyre. The royal donations comprised the city of Bethlehem and the adjacent estate of Bethbezan, estates near Acre and Nablus and ‘in the territory of Ascalon’.539 The king’s example was followed by some of his subjects as recorded in a bull of confirmation issued by Pope Gregory IX in 1227: Pisellus, Viscount of Jerusalem, and his wife Gisela gave an estate situated between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to the church of the Nativity. Anselm de Parenti gave the canons further lands near Bethlehem with the king’s consent, while Ulrich, Viscount of Nablus, gave them an estate near Tiberias, and Ralph of La Fontanelle gave them an estate near Hebron which formed part of his fief.540 The gift of the tithes of the royal lands of Thecua in southern Judaea to Bethlehem almost certainly dates from before 1138 when Fulk and Melisende gave that property to the Holy Sepulchre.541 It seems likely that the tithes of Seir and Bethscuar were granted to Bethlehem at an early date before it was raised to a bishopric.542 The fortunes of the Austin canons of Bethlehem were inevitably very closely linked with the careers of their bishops. The priors of the community figure only infrequently in the records of the church. Bishop Aschetinus was an Austin canon, but many of his successors were not. Nevertheless, they were concerned to promote the interests of their community, who administered their cathedral. The bishop of Bethlehem was a suffragan of the patriarch of Jerusalem and, because Bethlehem was so near the Holy City, was effectively a member of the patriarch’s court, occupying a position not dissimilar to that of the cardinal-bishop of Ostia in the papal curia. Bishop Aschetinus witnessed a charter in 1115 in the presence of 537 538

539 540 542

AA IX, 16, p. 616. WT XI, 12, pp. 512–15; H. E. Mayer, ‘Die Gründung der Bistümer Askalon und Bethlehem’, in his Bistümer, 44–80; in 1109 Aschetinus witnessed a document as bishop, but without giving the name of his see: Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 2, pp. 113–14; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 34, I, pp. 153–4. WT XI, 12, p. 514; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 40, I, pp. 159–64. 541 Murray, Crusader Kingdom, nos. 8, 97, 102, 126, pp. 181, 220, 222, 231. See p. 231. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83.

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King Baldwin and Patriarch Arnulf.543 When Patriarch Arnulf was suspended from office pending a papal inquiry into charges made against him, Aschetinus was part of the delegation which Baldwin I sent to the curia to defend him, a mission which he carried out successfully.544 Baldwin II shared his predecessor’s affection for the church and its clergy; Fulcher of Chartres draws attention to his crown-wearing in the church on Christmas Day 1119.545 After his return to Jerusalem, Aschetinus witnessed a privilege of the new king in 1120, and in the same year was present at the Synod of Nablus.546 In May 1123 while Baldwin II was a prisoner of Emir Balak, Bishop Aschetinus carried the True Cross into battle in the army led by the regent, Eustace Garnier, against a Fatimid invading force.547 Later that year the bishop was one of the signatories of the treaty with Venice made by Patriarch Warmund and the senior clergy and nobility of the kingdom to secure the republic’s help in the capture of Tyre, and in 1125 he witnessed Baldwin II’s amended ratification of that treaty.548 This was Aschetinus’ last known act, and by March 1129 a new bishop, Ansellus, or Anselm, had been appointed. His previous career is not known, but he may have had links, as so many men appointed in Baldwin II’s reign had, with the French court and north-western France. He was in correspondence with Leo, the dean of Rheims (1142–6), who presented the church of Bethlehem with a psalter for use in the choir, and Anselm established a union of prayer between their two churches.549 Like Aschetinus, Anselm had very close links with the patriarchal curia and the king’s court. In March 1129 he was present in the royal palace at Acre to witness a confirmation by Baldwin II of a gift made by Baldwin I to the Holy Sepulchre.550 The court was at Acre to welcome Fulk V of Anjou, who was coming to the Holy Land to marry the king’s eldest daughter and designated heiress, Melisende, and Bishop Anselm was part of Baldwin II’s retinue. Later that year Anselm was again present in Acre, together with Canon Hugh of Bethlehem, where they witnessed the gift by Archbishop William I of Tyre of the church of St Mary at Tyre to the Holy Sepulchre, in the presence of King Baldwin, Count Fulk and the patriarch of Jerusalem, Stephen of Chartres.551 Anselm witnessed a grant made by the prior of the Holy Sepulchre in favour of Our Lady of Josaphat in the presence of the king and the patriarch in 1130 and in the same year was present at the palace in Jerusalem when Baldwin II issued a confirmation of the lands of Josaphat.552 Anselm remained in favour at court in King Fulk’s reign. In 1132 he witnessed a gift made by William of Bures, Prince of Galilee, to the Holy Sepulchre in the presence of the 543

544 545

546 547

548 549 551 552

H. E. Mayer, Die Kanzlei der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 2 vols., MGH Schriften 40 (Hanover, 1996), II, pp. 887–8; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 63, I, pp. 194–5. BB no. 91, pp. 204–8; Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 125–6. FC III, 7, p. 365. This occasion is unlikely to have been Baldwin II’s coronation itself, for according to Fulcher he had already been anointed as king at Easter: FC III, 1, pp. 615–16; it is more probable that the crown-wearing, customary for kings at major feasts, was timed to coincide with Baldwin I’s coronation in 1100 so as to emphasise the closeness of the succession. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3; WT XII, 13, p. 563. Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronographia, continuatio Anselmi Gemblacensis, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH (SS), VI (Hanover, 1844), 379. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 764 (Warmund’s Treaty), III, pp. 1326–37; no. 93 (Baldwin II’s ratification), I, pp. 241–7. 550 P. Riant, ‘Six lettres relatives aux croisades’, AOL I, no. 1, 385. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 105, I, pp. 261–3. BB no. 55, pp. 145–6; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 112, I, pp. 273–4. BB, Appendix I, no. 1, pp. 347–8; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 115, 116, I, pp. 275–80.

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king and of Patriarch William I.553 In 1135, when King Fulk went to organise the defences of Antioch, where he was regent for Princess Constance, he was accompanied by Bishop Anselm, A. his archdeacon, and Canon John of Bethlehem. On 2 August they witnessed a confirmation issued by the king for the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, of the lands held there by their church in Orthodox times.554 The presence of the archdeacon in Anselm’s suite suggests that he too was seeking to recover, or at least to safeguard, the property rights of the church of the Holy Nativity there. This is possible: Gregory IX’s confirmation of the possessions of the church of Bethlehem issued in 1227 records that it held three estates in the principality and some property in Antioch city, but it gives no information about when these endowments were acquired and, like those of the Holy Sepulchre, they may have dated from Orthodox times.555 Anselm returned to Jerusalem with the king and in 1136 witnessed Fulk’s confirmation of the gift to the Order of the Hospital of the castle of Bethgibelin by Hugh of St Abraham, and he also witnessed charters of Patriarch William.556 On 5 February 1138, together with his canons, Bernard and Arnulf, Anselm was present at the court at which Fulk and Melisende arranged with the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to exchange Bethany for the estate of Thecua.557 In 1140 Anselm formed part of the delegation of clergy from Jerusalem who attended the legatine council at Antioch at which the Latin patriarch of that city, Ralph of Domfront, was deposed.558 Two years later the Byzantine emperor, John II Komnenos, who was campaigning in north Syria, expressed a wish to visit Jerusalem. King Fulk, who feared that the emperor might force him to do homage, sent a mission led by Bishop Anselm, accompanied by Geoffrey, Abbot of the Templum Domini, and Rohard the Elder, castellan of Jerusalem, charging them with the delicate task of telling John II that he would be welcome if he came as a private pilgrim with an escort not exceeding ten armed men. Although John Komnenos was not pleased by this and refused to be publicly humiliated in this way, the diplomatic rebuff had no adverse consequences for the Latin Kingdom, because John II was killed in a hunting accident while wintering in Cilicia in 1143.559 Bishop Anselm is last mentioned in a document of 14 August 1145 in which he witnessed the settlement of a dispute about tithes mediated by Patriarch William between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the monks of Mt Tabor.560 Towards the end of Anselm’s reign the office of prior of Bethlehem had been held by Canon Alberic, who was described as magister, which implies that he had been educated in the Western schools. He is first mentioned in a document of 27 January 1139, in which Ardicius, Bishop of Savona in Liguria, gave the church of St Ambrose at Voragine to Anselm, Bishop of Bethlehem, and placed the prepositus Alberic in corporal possession of 553 555

556 557 558

559 560

554 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 128, I, pp. 296–8. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 130, I, pp. 300–2. In this bull, preserved in a vidimation of 1360, Gregory confirmed earlier papal privileges beginning with one issued by Paschal II but without giving details of what lands each pope had confirmed: PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 135, I, pp. 310–14; BB nos. 22–3, pp. 78–83. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21. WT XV, 16, p. 696; R. Hiestand, ‘Ein neuer Bericht über das Konzil von Antiochia 1140’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 20 (1988), 314–50; B. Hamilton, ‘Ralph of Domfront, Patriarch of Antioch (1135–1140)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 28 (1984), 1–21. WT XV, 21, pp. 702–3; M. Angold, The Byzantine Empire, 1025–1204: A Political History, 2nd ed. (London, 1997), 188–90. BB no. 24, pp. 83–5.

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it.561 Later that year Alberic returned to the Latin East and was present at Tripoli where he witnessed a gift of a priory on Mt Pilgrim to the Holy Sepulchre by Countess Cecilia and her son Raymond II.562 It is known that the church of Bethlehem later owned the church of St Mary on Mt Pilgrim, together with an estate there, and it is possible that it already possessed these endowments and that Alberic had come to inspect them and to arrange for the collection of dues.563 Indeed, the church of Bethlehem obtained a substantial amount of property in the first half of the twelfth century and considered it necessary to obtain confirmations from Popes Paschal II (1099–1118), Calixtus II (1119–24), Innocent II (1130–43) and Lucius II (1144–5). This is known from Gregory IX’s bull of 1227, which provides a very detailed list of the properties owned by Bethlehem, but gives almost no information about when they were acquired.564 The revenues from rents and the offerings of pilgrims which the church of Bethlehem must have received were spent in part on necessary building projects. When the pilgrim Saewulf visited Bethlehem in c. 1102 he reported that ‘nothing has been left habitable by the Saracens, but everything has been devastated . . . except the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary’.565 Abbot Daniel, who went there later in Baldwin I’s reign, found that the whole complex of the basilica had been fortified.566 In the years before the Knights Templar began patrolling the pilgrim routes and before the Fatimid garrison of Ascalon had been hemmed in by Frankish castles, Bethlehem was in danger from Muslim raiding parties. The new fortifications appear to have been strong. Pringle explains that ‘the principal entrance was through a gate-tower on the west, whose ruined remains were still standing in the late sixteenth century’. The Austin canons built a priory inside the walls, an area identified by Pringle as that ‘now occupied by the Franciscan convent and church of St Catherine’. This incorporates the Austin canons’ cloister, which was restored in 1947–8.567 By the spring of 1148 Bishop Anselm had been succeeded by Bishop Gerald who took part in the curia generalis held at Acre, at which the leading men of the kingdom and the leaders of the Second Crusade discussed their forthcoming campaign.568 In 1151 he was present at court, together with Canon Arnulf, a member of his chapter, and headed the witness list of a diploma of Queen Melisende.569 In 1153 Bishop Gerald was present with the royal army at the siege of Ascalon.570 After the city had fallen, Patriarch Fulcher consecrated the chief mosque as the cathedral of St Paul’s, and appointed Absalom, a canon of the Holy Sepulchre, as bishop.571 Bishop Gerald appealed to Pope Anastasius IV, claiming that this appointment was contrary to the ruling by Paschal II that Ascalon should be subject to the see of Bethlehem, and the pope found in his favour. The see of Ascalon was suppressed, and the cathedral and its endowments were awarded in perpetuity to the bishops of Bethlehem.572 Absalom remained a bishop without a see until his death at some time after 1169.573 561 562 563 566 569 572 573

P. Riant, Etudes sur l’histoire de l’église de Bethléem, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1889–96), doc. 1, I, pp. 131–3. BB no. 80, pp. 188–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 142, I, p. 327. 564 565 Gregory IX’s confirmation of 1227: PKHL no. 190, p. 380. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83. Saewulf, p. 71. 567 568 Daniel the Abbot, p. 144. Pringle, Churches no. 61, I, pp. 149–50, 153. WT XVII, 1, p. 761. 570 571 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 179, I, pp. 360–2. WT XVII, 21, p. 790. Eracles, XVII, 30, p. 812. WT XVII, 30, p. 804. BB no. 51, pp. 136–8; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 297, II, pp. 524–5; BB no. 150, pp. 292–6; H. E. Mayer, ‘Die zweite Gründung des Bistums Askalon und die Ausbildung der Doppelgrafschaft Jaffa-Askalon’, in his Bistümer, pp. 112–71.

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Bishop Gerald is not mentioned in any source after 1153. He was succeeded by Ralph I, a controversial figure in the Latin Kingdom. He was an Englishman, and Mayer has argued persuasively that he should be identified with Ralph who, from 1137 to 1141, was the chancellor of Matilda, the wife of King Stephen of England. He subsequently went to the Holy Land and at some time between 24 September 1143 and 1 February 1146 was appointed chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Queen Melisende.574 In January 1146 when Archbishop Fulcher of Tyre was elected patriarch of Jerusalem, Melisende and Baldwin III nominated Ralph as his successor in Tyre, but a group of clergy appealed to Eugenius III against this appointment. While the case was pending Ralph could not be consecrated, but he continued to style himself archbishop-elect and to enjoy the temporalities of the see of Tyre until 1150 when Eugenius III refused to ratify his appointment. Queen Melisende, perhaps, as Mayer suggests, acting under pressure from Patriarch Fulcher, dismissed Ralph as her chancellor,575 but one of the first acts of Baldwin III when he asserted his independence from his mother in 1152 was to appoint Ralph as chancellor again.576 When the bishopric of Bethlehem fell vacant through the death of Bishop Gerald, Baldwin III nominated Ralph as his successor. In a charter of 7 June 1156 Ralph styled himself bishop-elect of Bethlehem, and by 2 November he had been confirmed as bishop.577 William of Tyre suggests that Pope Hadrian IV (1154–9) was willing to ratify the king’s choice, because he, like Ralph, was an Englishman. William, who knew Ralph well, described him as ‘a very well educated but extremely worldly man. He was a goodlooking Englishman, who was well regarded by the king and queen and by the court.’578 The church of Bethlehem flourished under Ralph’s rule. At that time the chapter consisted of a prior and eleven canons. Between 1163 and 1168 a panel of eight arbitrators was appointed to mediate property disputes between the canons of Bethlehem and the abbey of Josaphat, and their recommendations were unanimously accepted by both communities in the presence of King Amalric.579 This was the only known dispute about property rights involving the church of Berthlehem during Ralph’s long reign, and suggests that litigants saw little point in challenging the canons of Bethlehem while their bishop was chancellor of the kingdom. For reasons which are unknown, Ralph unsuccessfully opposed the appointment of Amalric of Nesle as patriarch of Jerusalem in 1157.580 This might have created difficulties for him because he was the patriarch’s suffragan, but as chancellor he depended on royal rather than patriarchal patronage. When Amalric became king in 1163 he confirmed Ralph in office as his chancellor, and he shared with him a dislike of the patriarch Amalric who had led the baronial opposition to Amalric’s first wife, Agnes of Courtenay, and forced him to divorce her before he could be crowned.581 Not only was Ralph a good chancellor, but he

574 575 576 577 579

580

Mayer, Die Kanzlei, I, pp. 78–165. His last act as Melisende’s chancellor is dated July 1146: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 216, I, pp. 402–4. His first act as chancellor of Baldwin III is dated 20 April 1152: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 226, I, pp. 412–15. 578 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 241–2, I, pp. 443–9. WT XVI, 17, pp. 738–9. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 34, pp. 143–4; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 335, II, pp. 577–8. The prior of Bethlehem was not present on that occasion. A charter of 1163 in which David is named as prior of Bethlehem is a forgery: ed. Rey, Recherches géographiques et historiques, pp. 21–2. 581 WT XVIII, 20, p. 841. Hamilton, Leper King, 22–6.

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also supported the king in his military ventures. In 1167 he took part in Amalric’s Egyptian campaign and was seriously wounded.582 During Ralph’s episcopate the interior of the basilica of Bethlehem was lavishly redecorated. From 1130 onwards, paintings of Our Lady, to whom the cathedral was dedicated, and of the saints, had been executed on some of the pillars of the nave. Folda has argued convincingly that before c. 1160 ‘the column paintings were done sporadically . . . the images were essentially ex-votos . . . This situation seems to change dramatically in the 1160s, with the advent of a project to redecorate the church.’ An attempt was then made to integrate the new paintings with the new mosaic cycles. It is not possible to determine when the new column paintings were executed, except that the terminus ante quem was 1192.583 It is known from the description given by Abbot Daniel that there were some mosaics both in the basilica and in the cave shrine of the Nativity beneath the chancel in Baldwin I’s reign,584 but an inscription in both Latin and Greek records that the interior of the basilica was systematically redecorated in the reign of Bishop Ralph. The Latin inscription is in leonines; it begins: King Amalric, guardian of virtue, generous friend, comrade of honour and foe of impiety, avenger of wrong, was fifth on the throne and over the Greeks ruled Manuel, generous donor and devout emperor. Here lived as prelate and governor of the church the generous Ralph, worthy of the bishop’s throne. The hand of Ephraim . . .

The Latin inscription is damaged at that point, but the Greek inscription clarifies Ephraim’s role: ‘The present work was finished by the hand of Ephraim the monk, painter and mosaicist . . . in the year 6677, second indiction [i.e. AD 1169].’585 Although only part of the mosaic scheme survives now, it originally covered the walls of the whole basilica. The apse mosaic showed the Virgin and Child, and the chancel walls were covered with mosaics, while over the arch of the apse there was a representation of the Annunciation. The apse in the north transept appears to have contained an Anastasis, and that in the south transept a mosaic of the Nativity with the adoration of the Magi. On the south wall of the nave were panels representing the seven oecumenical councils, recognised by both the Latin and Orthodox Churches, while the north wall was decorated with panels showing six provincial councils. The seventh space on the north wall (between the third and fourth provincial councils) was occupied by a mosaic of the Holy Cross covered in jewels. Above the council panels were full-length mosaic angels, one between each pair of clerestory windows, while below the council panels were a series of forty-two mosaic busts of the ancestors of Christ. The West wall was occupied by a huge Tree of Jesse mosaic. In addition the grottoes beneath the basilica were decorated with mosaics, although now only that in the grotto of the Nativity remains.586 The inscription states that this work was completed in 1169. Folda has argued that it was carried out in two years following King Amalric’s marriage to Manuel’s great-niece Maria 582 583 584 585 586

WT XIX, 25, p. 899. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 91–7, 163–5, 283–5, 364–7, 578, n. 163. Daniel the Abbot, p. 143. I cite these texts mainly in Folda’s translation, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 347, 350. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 357–78.

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in 1167. The monk Ephraim, the designer of the mosaic programme, would seem to have had both Orthodox and Latin craftsmen working under him. It would appear that the earlier mosaics which Abbot Daniel had seen were incorporated in the new design. The work was a splendid testimony to the belief still shared by the Byzantines and Latins that they were part of a single Church, and the emperor, the king and the bishop all contributed to the embellishment of this shrine which they all venerated. Many of the inscriptions which form part of the mosaics were in Latin, but some were in Greek, and it is significant that the Greek inscription on the mosaic of the Council of Constantinople of 381 gives the text of the Nicene Creed in its Orthodox form, without the addition of the filioque clause which was universally used in the twelfth-century Western Church and had become the major source of doctrinal dispute between the Latin and Orthodox Churches.587 Bishop Ralph’s willingness to allow this potentially controversial text to be displayed centrally in his cathedral is an indication of his own tolerant attitude towards Orthodox Christianity. Folda is almost certainly right in interpreting the dedicatory inscription to mean that the expenses of decorating the basilica were shared between the emperor, the king and the bishop, though it seems probable that Manuel made the largest contribution. Nevertheless, John Phocas, the Greek pilgrim who visited Bethlehem in 1185, was probably exaggerating when he claimed that Manuel had borne all the costs and that ‘in gratitude for this generosity the Latin pastor intruded into that place at once set up the emperor’s portrait in several places, and even in the holy sanctuary above the cave’.588 These portraits were probably portable icons, either painted, or mosaics mounted in wooden frames. By the end of Bishop Ralph’s reign the basilica of Bethlehem must have looked rather like the cathedral of Monreale near Palermo, built for William II of Sicily (1166–89) still looks, with walls covered in mosaics in the Byzantine style.589 It must have been the most magnificent church in the Crusader States and was a memorial to Bishop Ralph for the chapter of Austin canons who sang the Divine Office there by day and night. The Latin bishops and canons of Bethlehem pursued a policy of relic collection for their cathedral. When the basilica first came into Latin hands the caves beneath it contained the shrine of the Holy Nativity, but also the bodies of the Holy Innocents and the tombs of St Jerome and of his aristocratic disciples St Paula and her daughter Eustochium.590 Bishop Anselm translated the body of St Joseph of Arimathea to Bethlehem, from its previous resting place at Rantis near Lydda. The author of the Descriptio Locorum circa Jerusalem adjacentium, composed in 1131–43, reports that this translation had taken place recently, and adds that the bishop had also taken the pliers with which St Joseph had removed the nails from the body of the crucified Jesus, together with one of those nails which had been buried with Joseph at Rantis.591 A work known as the Second Guide, dating from c. 1170, reports that the Church of Bethlehem possessed the hammer with which Christ was nailed to the cross. This would seem to have been acquired by Bishop Ralph.592 These relics 587

588 589 591

H. Stern, ‘Les representations des Conciles dans l’Eglise de la Nativité à Bethléem’, Byzantion 13 (1938), 421, 437; A. Jotischky, ‘Manuel Comnenus and the reunion of the Churches: the evidence of the conciliar mosaics in the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem’, Levant 26 (1994), 207–23. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 333; PG 133: 957. 590 O. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (New York, 1988), 417–42. Saewulf, p. 72. 592 IHC II, 106–8, reprints this text published by M. de Vogüé, Les églises de Terre Sainte. Second Guide, p. 241.

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increased the prestige of the basilica, and provided gifts which the bishops could make to distinguished pilgrims. Among them was Maurice, Lord of Craon, who went to Bethlehem in 1169 and was given the following relics, together with a letter of authentication by Bishop Ralph: ‘part of the nail from the Lord’s Cross; part of the hammer with which the most precious body of Christ was taken down from the cross by St Joseph; part of the birthplace of the Lord; part of His crib; some dust of [the body of] St John the Baptist and tiny fragments of his skull’.593 There is no other evidence that Bethlehem claimed to have relics of St John the Baptist, so Bishop Ralph may have obtained these from his colleague, the bishop of Sebaste. A late tradition attributes to the reign of Bishop Ralph the acquisition by the canons of Bethlehem of the church of Clamécy. In 1601 Charles, Duke of Nevers, in a letter to Pope Clement VIII claimed that the bishop of Bethlehem had come to France to take corporal possession of the church of Clamécy which Count William IV of Nevers had recently bequeathed to him.594 William IV of Nevers had gone to the Kingdom of Jerusalem to fulfil a crusading vow and had died there on 24 October 1168. He was buried in the basilica of Bethlehem.595 This contemporary evidence suggests that the later tradition that William IV had, on his deathbed, bequeathed the church of Clamécy to Bethlehem is correct. It is also likely that, as the family tradition claimed, Bishop Ralph travelled to France to secure this important donation. There is a period in 1169–70 when he might have been absent from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was in Acre on 16 September 1169, where he issued a diploma for King Amalric in favour of the Pisans.596 His next recorded act cannot be dated precisely, but at some time between 25 December 1169 and 23 September 1170 he was in Acre where he witnessed a privilege for Stephen, Abbot of Cluny.597 This does not preclude his visiting France during the autumn and winter of 1169–70, though that must have been a private visit, made in his capacity as bishop of Bethlehem, not as the king’s representative. In the autumn of 1169 an official embassy led by the archbishop of Tyre and the bishop of Banias was sent from Jerusalem to France. William of Tyre, who reports this, notes that Bishop John of Banias postquam in Franciam pervenit, statim apud Parisiis ultimum clausit diem.598 The Annals of Cambrai do not mention the bishop of Banias, but say that the archbishop of Tyre and the bishop of Bethlehem were present in France in 1169–70.599 Although Ralph of Bethlehem was not part of the official embassy from the Latin Kingdom, he was in France at that time. His presence is attested in Life of Thomas Becket by William FitzStephen, who records that in March 1170 the exiled archbishop attended a colloquy at Pontoise with representatives of Henry II, at which the archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Bethlehem were present.600 Ralph’s presence would have been valuable: he had a knowledge of 593 594 595

596 598 599 600

Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon no. 141, I, p. 103. M. de Marolles, Inventaire des titres de Nevers (Nevers, 1873), col. 561. His death is mentioned by William of Tyre: WT XX, 3, p. 915; the Obituarium Nivernense records more precisely: IX kal. nov., obiit Guillelmus Nivernensis comes, qui, in via Hierosolimitana defunctus, postquam apud Acconensem ecclesiam conditus fuit, in Bethleem translatus est; cited P. Riant, ‘Eclaircissements sur quelques points de l’histoire de l’église de BethléemAscalon’, ed. C. Kohler, ROL 1 (1893), 147–8. 597 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 343, II, pp. 596–9. RRH no. 476; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 344, II, pp. 599–601. WT XX, 12, p. 926. Lambert of Waterlos, Annales Cameracenses, ed. G. Pertz, MGH (SS), XVI (Hanover, 1859), 551. William FitzStephen, ‘Vita S. Thomae Cantuariensis archiepiscopi et martyris’, in J. C. Robertson, ed., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, RS 67, 7 vols. (London, 1875–85), III, 88.

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English law as former chancellor of Queen Matilda, and current experience of relations between the Church and the crown in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This is conclusive evidence that the Nevers tradition is true and that Ralph did visit France in 1169–70 to take corporal possession of the important bequest of Clamécy. On his return to the Latin Kingdom, Ralph continued to take an active part in military affairs. Clearly he had recovered from the wound he suffered in 1167. On 1 December 1170, when Saladin attacked the royal domain of Darum on the southern frontier, Ralph accompanied the king and his army, together with the patriarch, to repel this invasion.601 Then in the autumn of 1171 while Amalric was at Antioch, Nur ad-Din of Damascus laid siege to Kerak in Transjordan, but was driven off by a relief force led by Humphrey II of Toron, constable of the kingdom, accompanied by Bishop Ralph carrying the True Cross.602 Bishop Ralph issued three charters in his capacity as chancellor in the spring of 1174, the last on 18 April.603 He died in the summer of that year and was buried in the chapter-house of Bethlehem.604 King Amalric died on 11 July 1174 and before 13 December Raymond III of Tripoli, regent for the young king Baldwin IV, appointed William of Tyre as chancellor.605 The appointment of a new bishop of Bethlehem proved more contentious, and Bishop Albert was enthroned only towards the end of Baldwin IV’s second year (15 July 1175–14 July 1176). William of Tyre comments that this delay caused the church of Bethlehem much expense, presumably because the temporalities of the see were administered by the regent during the long vacancy.606 The new bishop, Albert – although, unlike Bishop Ralph, he did not hold a royal office – nevertheless played a prominent part in the public life of the kingdom. Amalric of Nesle, the patriarch of Jerusalem, remained as unpopular in Baldwin IV’s reign as he had been in that of Amalric and for the same reason, his role in the dissolution of Amalric’s marriage to Agnes of Courtenay. Because the young King Baldwin was unmarried, his mother Agnes became first lady at his court. As the patriarch was out of favour, the bishop of Bethlehem, who lived so near to Jerusalem, in practice took his place on public occasions. Thus when Saladin invaded the kingdom in 1177 Bishop Albert accompanied the young king Baldwin IVon campaign and carried the Holy Cross at the battle of Mont Gisard on 25 November. In 1178 Bishop Albert was one of the delegates from the patriarchate of Jerusalem who went to Rome to attend the Third Lateran Council of 1179.607 Amalric of Nesle died on 6 October 1180 and was succeeded by Heraclius, Archbishop of Caesarea, who was acceptable to the king and his mother, but Bishop Albert still retained his prominence in public life.608 He was part of the embassy led by the new patriarch which was sent by Baldwin IV to Antioch in 1180–1 to mediate peace between Prince Bohemond III and his rebel vassals who had the support of the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Aimery of Limoges. It is not known precisely when Bishop Albert died. William of Tyre, who is meticulous about recording the deaths of his fellow bishops, does not mention the death of Albert, 601 602

603 605 606

WT XX, 19, pp. 936–7. WT XX, 26, p. 950; for the date of this attack, see M. C. Lyons and P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War (Cambridge, 2001), 48. 604 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 359, 361, 362, II, pp. 624–9. WT XX, 30, pp. 955–6. WT XXI, 5, p. 967; P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988), 18 n. 19. 607 608 WT XX, 30, p. 956. WT XXI, 21, 25, pp. 990, 996. WT XXII, 4, pp. 1011–12.

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which implies that he was still alive in mid-1184 when William’s Chronicle comes to an end. His successor, Ralph II, is first recorded as present at the court of Guy of Lusignan on 21 October 1186.609 This suggests that it was Bishop Albert who obtained a confirmation of the lands of the church of Bethlehem from Pope Lucius III (6 September 1181–25 November 1185). This bull is known only because it is mentioned in the bull of confirmation of the lands of Bethlehem issued by Gregory IX in 1227.610 That bull, which is preserved a vidimus of 1360, gives a very full list of the properties of the church of Bethlehem recorded in the title deeds which were shown to officials at the curia in 1227, but does not always specify when they were acquired. In addition to the early gifts to the community mentioned above,611 the gift of an estate near Tiberias by Bernard Vaccarius, who flourished in the 1140s, is recorded, together with that of another estate given by his contemporary, Hugh, Lord of Hebron. The property at Ascalon listed in the bull, ‘a house with attached shops and a bath’ inside the city, together with an estate bequeathed by William Rufus, Viscount of Ascalon (c. 1160–78), can only have been acquired after the city fell to the Franks in 1153. Two other estates were given to Bethlehem by Geoffrey of Tours, who lived in the reign of King Amalric, and among other properties listed in the bull which Bethlehem is likely to have acquired before 1187 are ‘the houses and gardens in the city of Jerusalem’, a house in the city of Tiberias, and the nearby estate of Aim, since neither of those cities had returned to Frankish rule by 1227 when the bull was issued. Other properties might have been held by the church of Bethlehem before 1187 or been granted to it after 1192 since they were situated in areas over which the Franks had regained control. These included a house at Caesarea and the estate of Belvoir in that archdiocese; five estates in the diocese of Ramla; a church and houses at Jaffa; a house outside the north gate of Haifa, a house in Acre and another in Tyre. In the County of Tripoli Gregory IX confirmed the church and estate on Mt Pilgrim mentioned above612 and also the church of St Mary at Gibelet (Jubail). In the Principality of Antioch the pope confirmed Bethlehem in possession of three casalia and a vineyard in the diocese of Antioch and eight houses in the city. The bull also lists the endowments of Bethlehem in Italy but, except in the cases of St Ambrose at Voragine and St Martin’s della Vettola given by the archbishop of Pisa to Bishop Albert of Bethlehem,613 the date on which they were acquired is not known. The other Italian properties will therefore be discussed in the context of Frederick II’s reign when the bull was issued.614 It is not clear how the bishop of Bethlehem and his canons organised the collection of responsions from these Western dependencies. More is known about the administration of the hospitals which the church of Bethlehem owned in western Europe, and this will be discussed later in this section.615 In addition to its endowments, the church of Bethlehem, as one of the most important shrines in the Latin Kingdom, derived a considerable income from the offerings made by pilgrims and must have been one of the richest communities in the Crusader States. This is reflected in the list of military services owed to the crown in times of emergency by the churches of the kingdom, drawn up in the reign of Baldwin IV and preserved by John of 609 614

610 Ernoul, Chronique, p. 47. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83. 615 See p. 107. See p. 107.

611

See p. 94.

612

See p. 93.

613

Ughelli, III, p. 414.

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Ibelin, which records that the bishops of Bethlehem owed service of 200 sergeants.616 If the revenues were divided between the bishop and his chapter, the Austin canons of Bethlehem must have been very prosperous. Bishop Albert’s successor, Ralph II, is first recorded as present at the court of Guy of Lusignan which met at Acre on 21 October 1186. There he witnessed two diplomas issued by Guy in favour of the seneschal, Joscelin III of Courtenay, and a legal agreement about the future marriage of Joscelin’s two daughters to two of Guy’s brothers.617 It can plausibly be surmised that this Ralph was a Lusignan supporter or was at least, at a time when the kingdom was on the verge of civil war, prepared to be loyal to the king. Bethlehem remained in Frankish hands for almost two months after the battle of Hattin. It was not until mid-September 1187 that Saladin took possession of the town on his way to lay siege to Jerusalem.618 Bishop Ralph and his canons may already have taken refuge in Jerusalem and after the city surrendered they may have gone to Tyre: that is conjectural, but what is certain is that when Guy of Lusignan was released from captivity Ralph joined him in his camp outside Acre in 1190.619 At that time Queen Sibyl was still alive, but after her death on 25 July 1190 Ralph supported Conrad of Monferrat when he challenged Guy of Lusignan for the kingship. On 9 May 1191 Conrad, styling himself rex Jerosolimorum electus, confirmed the privileges of the Venetians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, stating that this was done ‘with the authority and agreement’ of, among others, Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, and Ralph, Bishop of Bethlehem.620 In August 1191 Ralph accompanied Richard I in his march from Acre to Jaffa. Since Richard was intending to attack Jerusalem, Ralph no doubt hoped that Bethlehem would be recovered and that he would be present to take possession of it. After Jaffa fell to the crusaders on 10 September, Ralph remained there with the Frankish garrison, and was still there on 28 July 1192 when Saladin made a surprise attack on the city for, although Richard had not attacked Jerusalem, he had captured Ascalon and begun to repair its fortifications, and that was part of the diocese of Bethlehem. Had Ascalon been retained Ralph could have used the principal church as his cathedral. The garrison of Jaffa opened negotiations with Saladin, offering to surrender the citadel in return for a safe-conduct, and their envoys were Bishop Ralph and the knight, Aubrey of Rheims. King Richard and the relief force arrived from Ascalon to raise the siege while those negotiations were still in progress. Saladin appears to have thought that the negotiators had acted in bad faith, and had been trying to delay the surrender of Jaffa until reinforcements arrived. He therefore refused to release either Bishop Ralph or the knight Aubrey, who both died in captivity.621 A new bishop of Bethlehem had been appointed by 5 August 1196 when Pope Celestine III charged him and the archbishop of Tyre to enforce the rights of the Republic of Venice in Tyre.622 On 2 January 1197 Celestine ratified the appointment of Alan, Chancellor to the king of Cyprus, as archbishop of Nicosia, and directed that he should be consecrated by the 616 618 619 620 621 622

617 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 473–5, II, pp. 796–803. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 272. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. G. Hewlett, 3 vols., RS 84 (London, 1886–9), I, 178. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 530, II, pp. 900–4. Eracles, pp. 194, 196; J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, 1999), pp. 178–81, 211–18. Acta pontificum romanorum inedita, ed. J. von Pflugck-Harttung, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1881–6), II, no. 457, p. 400.

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archbishop of Nazareth and the bishops of Bethlehem and Acre.623 On 5 March 1198 the bishop of Bethlehem was present at the headquarters of the Templars in Acre, when the Teutonic Knights were recognised as an independent order.624 The new bishop’s name is not given in any of these documents. Because the Third Crusade had failed to recover Bethlehem or to retain Ascalon, the church of Bethlehem lived in exile at Acre. The bishop and canons may have owned property there before 1192, for the confirmation issued by Gregory IX for their church in 1227 mentions ‘the house which you have at Acre, situated between the church of St Mary de Platea and the old palace’, though it gives no indication of when it had been acquired. At the very end of this bull the pope added: ‘We confirm the exchange which has reasonably been made between the churches of Bethlehem and Nazareth about a church in Acre, and We decree that this transaction should be deemed permanent.’625 This implies that the bishops of Bethlehem already owned a house in Acre which became their palace, and had acquired a pro-cathedral by exchanging property with the archbishops of Nazareth. The Pardouns de Acre, a list of indulgences which pilgrims might obtain by visiting the churches of the city, drawn up in c. 1280, lists ‘Bedlehem’ between the churches of the Holy Spirit and St Andrews, and as Pringle has noted, this indicates that the palace and pro-cathedral of Bethlehem were situated in the south-west of the city, near the headquarters of the Knights Templar.626 Bishop Peter of Bethlehem was among those present in 1202 when the Fourth Crusade attacked Zara. It is not known whether he was the bishop who had held office in Celestine III’s reign, or a subsequent appointment. He accompanied the crusade to Constantinople and was one of the electors of the first Latin emperor, Baldwin of Flanders.627 He was killed at the battle of Adrianople by the army of Tsar Kaloyan of Bulgaria in 1205.628 The church of Bethlehem profited from Bishop Peter’s crusading zeal, for among its possessions confirmed by Gregory IX was ‘in Constantinople the church of St Mary of Bethlehem, which is called de Ytria, together with all its other churches and property’.629 This was the church and monastery of the Panaghia Hodegetria, which had been built to house the icon of the Virgin and Child believed to have been painted by St Luke. This was one of the most revered icons in the city and the church and monastery which served it were very well endowed.630 In 1187 Saladin had restored the cathedral of Bethlehem to the Orthodox patriarchate, but in 1192, at the request of Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, he granted a concession: the Holy Nativity might be served by two Latin priests and two Latin deacons who would minister to Western pilgrims and be supported by the offerings which they made to the shrine.631 It is not known whether the canons of Bethlehem availed themselves of this concession. When the pilgrim Thietmar visited Bethlehem in 1217 he had to pay an entrance fee to the Muslim guardians of the cathedral, but the Orthodox clergy placed no restriction 623 626 627

628 629 631

624 625 PKHL no. 181, pp. 364–5. RRH no. 740. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235; Pringle, Churches no. 376, IV, 42–4. Alberic of Trois Fontaines, Chronica, MGH (SS), XXIII, pp. 880, 884; Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, MGH (SS), XVIII (Hanover, 1868), p. 229. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. E. Faral, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Paris, 1961), s. 361, II, p. 170. 630 PKHL no. 190, p. 380. R. Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London, 1997), 57–62. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, VI, 34, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, I, p. 438; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, pp. 377–8.

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on the way he performed his devotions. ‘I worshipped in the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary in labour brought forth the Child God’, he reports, but he made no mention of the presence of Latin clergy there.632 After the death of Bishop Peter at Adrianople in 1205 the see of Bethlehem was left vacant until 1211 when Bishop Reynier was appointed. He did not go to the Holy Land until 1218, when he accompanied members of the Fifth Crusade.633 In June 1218 he was one of a group of senior clergy, which included the Latin patriarch, Ralph of Merencourt, Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia and Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, who accompanied King John of Brienne to Damietta, and Honorius III recognised Reynier as one of the leaders of the crusade.634 By the autumn of 1220 Bishop Reynier had returned to Acre. Although the crusaders had succeeded in capturing Damietta in 1219, the presence of the main army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Egypt left the Franks of Palestine virtually defenceless when Sultan al-Kamil’s brother, al-Muazzam of Damascus, attacked their lands. This caused hardship to the religious communities at Acre, because their rural estates were raided, and Bishop Reynier was one of the signatories of an appeal sent by the leading churchmen of the kingdom to Philip Augustus of France on 1 October 1220, asking for his help and particularly for his financial help.635 Reynier did not return to Egypt, where the crusade ended in defeat in 1221, but stayed in Acre and was employed by Honorius III as a papal judge delegate in various disputes.636 By 1223 he had returned to Italy and was present at Voragine, where he tried unsuccessfully to defend the immunity of the church of St Ambrose, which belonged to Bethlehem, from the bishop of Savona’s claims to jurisdiction.637 Reynier stayed in Italy for the next four years. In 1225 Emperor Frederick II married Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem and was known to be preparing to go on crusade. Bishop Reynier may well have hoped that the church of Bethlehem would soon be recovered by the Latins, and he began to prepare for this contingency by obtaining legal privileges for his church from the pope. Honorius III issued a confirmation of the rights and privileges of Bethlehem, and in 1225 granted the bishop a statute of limitations, stating that as the church of Bethlehem had been in Muslim hands for thirty-nine years no lawsuit might be brought against its clergy relating to disputes from 1187 or earlier.638 About a month later, Honorius wrote to the doge of Venice, explaining that the bishop of Bethlehem was ‘upsetting Us by his continual complaints’ that the Venetians were wrongfully keeping the Hodegitria icon which belonged to the Church of Bethlehem, and urging the doge to restore it to that church.639 The Hodegetria Icon should indeed have been kept in the Hodegitria monastery at Constantinople which Bishop Peter had secured for Bethlehem in 1204. Nevertheless, in 1206 the first Latin patriarch of Constantinople, the Venetian Thomas Morosini, placed the icon in the church of the Pantocrator in the Venetian quarter of the city. As Bishop Peter had 632 633 634 636 638

639

Thietmar, Pilgrimage 1217–1218, 10, trans. in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 113–14. This is the view of Riant, Etudes sur l’histoire de l’église de Bethléem, I, 25. 635 Honorius III, Regesta no. 1580, dated 13 August 1218. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5 637 Honorius III, Regesta nos. 3203, 3213, 3689, 3750. Riant, Etudes sur l’église de Bethléem, nos. viii–x, I, pp. 135–9. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5461. Honorius III’s confirmation is known only because it is mentioned in Gregory IX’s bull for Bethlehem; see p. 107. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5584.

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been killed at Adrianople in 1205 there was no representative of the church of Bethlehem present in the city of sufficient seniority to dispute the patriarch’s high-handed action. The icon, portraying the Virgin ‘who shows the way to salvation’ by pointing to the Christ child in her arms, was held in great reverence both by Orthodox and Latins because it was attributed to St Luke. Devotees who visited the church where it was displayed naturally made offerings to it, and the Venetian seizure of this icon undoubtedly caused financial loss to the church of Bethlehem. It seems possible that Bishop Reynier, who was hoping to recover his cathedral, intended to take the icon to Bethlehem and display it there. Whatever his motives were, his petition was unsuccessful: the icon remained in the Venetian quarter of Constantinople throughout the years of Latin rule.640 In 1227 the vanguard of Frederick II’s army arrived in Acre, and this prompted Bishop Reynier to obtain a fresh confirmation of the lands of Bethlehem from the new Pope Gregory IX who had succeeded Honorius III on 21 March 1227. Gregory’s bull was issued on 21 August 1227 and, in addition to the list of properties owned by Bethlehem in the Crusader States discussed above,641 the pope also confirmed in detail the endowments which it had received in Italy.642 These were considerable, consisting of estates, churches and some hospitals situated in Liguria, Lombardy, Tuscany, the Papal States, Capua, Benevento, Salerno and the island of Sicily. It is not known how the bishop and canons in the Holy Land organised the payment of responsions by these Western dependencies. More is known about the administration of the hospitals which the church of Bethlehem owned in the West, which will be discussed later in this section.643 Bishop Reynier’s concern to secure the confirmation of properties belonging to his see proved justified when in 1229 Frederick II secured the restoration of Jerusalem and Bethlehem to Latin rule in a treaty negotiated with Sultan al-Kamil. According to the report which Patriarch Gerold of Jerusalem made to Pope Gregory IX about this settlement, one of the conditions imposed by the sultan was that Muslims should have free access to the church of the Holy Nativity. This is further evidence of the reverence in which the Islamic population held the prophet Jesus and his mother Mary.644 The cathedral had been well maintained by the Orthodox patriarchate since 1187, and, indeed, the Armenian Church had embellished it in 1227 with a pair of carved wooden doors at the west end of the nave.645 Unlike the Latin religious communities of Jerusalem, the canons of Bethlehem were not deterred from returning to their church for safety reasons, because the cathedral complex was fortified. It is not clear whether all the canons returned to Bethlehem in 1229, or whether some remained in the pro-cathedral at Acre. In 1233 Gregory IX appointed the bishop of Bethlehem, together with the bishop and archdeacon of Acre, as judges delegate in a dispute between the Latin patriarch of Antioch and the Cistercian abbot of Jubin. As was customary in the papal chancery at that time the names of the bishops were not recorded in the register.646 There is no evidence that Reynier had died by 1233 or that a successor to him had been appointed. His non-participation in 640

641 644 646

R. L. Wolff, ‘Footnote to an incident of the Latin occupation of Constantinople: the church and icon of the Hodegetria’, Traditio 6 (1948), 319–28; Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 143–44. Bullarium Hellenicum does not include this correspondence. 642 643 See p. 94. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83. See p. 107. 645 Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, 88. Pringle, Churches no. 61, I, p. 155. Gregory IX, Registres no. 1101.

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public life during the years after 1227 probably reflects the political situation in the Latin Kingdom, where the emperor’s baronial opponents, led by John of Ibelin, controlled the city of Acre and refused to accept the authority of the officials whom he appointed, while Jerusalem and Bethlehem remained obedient to Frederick’s lieutenants. Bishop Reynier, who had a pro-cathedral in Acre and a cathedral in Bethlehem, could not afford to side openly with either side during the civil war. Reynier had died by 17 April 1238, when Gregory IX wrote to the archbishop and archdeacon to Caesarea about a lawsuit over disputed property which had been initiated in the curia by the late bishop of Bethlehem against the Order of the Hospital. The pope ordered the recipients of his letter to ensure that the canons of Bethlehem appoint a procurator to represent them so that the case might be concluded.647 In 1238 the canons of Bethlehem elected the dean of Antioch as their new bishop. Patriarch Gerold of Jerusalem quashed this election and appointed a candidate of his own (referred to by the canons simply as ‘a certain man’). The canons then appealed to Gregory IX, claiming that their church was not subject to the patriarch, but to the Holy See alone, and the pope appointed three prelates from the patriarchate of Antioch – the archbishop of Mamistra, the abbot of Belmont and the archdeacon of Valania – to supervise the new election.648 Finally, John the Roman was appointed with the pope’s assent. He took the title of bishop-elect of Bethlehem, but was not consecrated. On 23 August 1244 Khwarizmian mercenaries in the service of the sultan of Egypt sacked Jerusalem, and the attempt by the Franks to reverse this loss led to their decisive defeat near Gaza on 18 October. Although Bethlehem had not directly suffered from the Khwarizmian attack, the bishop and his chapter could not remain living in the middle of Muslim territory after Jerusalem had returned to Ayyubid control, and they retired once again to the pro-cathedral in Acre. At some time before 1245 Pope Innocent IV appointed John the Roman to the vacant see of Paphos in Cyprus. The chapter of Bethlehem elected the pope’s nominee, Godfrey de Prefectis, as his successor, and Innocent confirmed him in office on 24 January 1245.649 Godfrey was a Roman nobleman, who had been groomed for a bishopric in the Crusader States, and had previously been the non-resident cantor of the cathedral of Tripoli.650 He was not consecrated immediately, but remained bishop-elect and was employed by Innocent IV as a diplomat in western Europe.651 Yet, although a career churchman, Godfrey was conventionally devout, and soon after his appointment requested the chapter of the Cistercian Order to allow all their priests to celebrate Masses for him when he died.652 Godfrey secured the appointment of his kinsman, Deodatus de Prefectis, as archdeacon of Bethlehem in 1246.653 The archdeacon was the bishop’s legal officer and his presence in the Latin Kingdom proved very necessary. He discovered when he reached Acre that John the Roman, while bishop-elect, had sold the property of the church on a large scale, while 647 648

649 651 652

653

Gregory IX, Registres no. 4291. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4699. The grounds on which such an exemption was claimed are unclear, though possibly they relate to the papal confirmation of Bethlehem’s episcopal status in 1153. 650 Innocent IV, Registres no. 956; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 63. Innocent IV, Registres no. 837. In 1247 he was sent as papal legate to Scotland: Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 602. J.-M. Canivez, ed., Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41), II, p. 304. Innocent IV, Registres no. 2039.

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some of the canons had pledged some of the relics of the Passion belonging to their church, the Nail and the Hammer, together with an arm of St Thomas the Apostle, as a security for a loan of 1,500 bezants. Innocent IV, when informed of this, ordered that all these properties and relics should be restored to the new bishop-elect, Godfrey. This ruling proved difficult to enforce because the buyers had acquired the lands of Bethlehem in good faith, and this led to prolonged litigation. John the Roman himself, now living in Paphos, proved evasive when the pope summoned him to appear before the Roman curia.654 When Louis IX of France went to Cyprus with a crusader army in 1248, the canons of Bethlehem hoped that their cathedral might be recovered once more. At their request Innocent IV licensed a general appeal to the faithful of England for alms to repair the walls of Bethlehem. This perhaps related to the fortified walls of the complex as well as the walls of the cathedral, all of which may have needed maintenance work.655 Bishop Godfrey went to the Holy Land while Louis IX was there: in 1253 he was present with the crusaders at Jaffa,656 and in 1254 Innocent IV commissioned him to enforce a judgement relating to the Teutonic Order.657 At that time Godfrey was still a bishop-elect, and it was only in September 1255 that Pope Alexander IV gave Godfrey permission to be consecrated bishop on one of the ember days in the following December.658 Godfrey died before 1259. His successor, Thomas Agni de Lentino, was the first Dominican to be appointed bishop in the patriarchate of Jerusalem. He had previously been the Dominican prior of Naples and had received the profession of St Thomas Aquinas.659 The pope appointed him legate a latere, which gave him authority over all the Latin bishops in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the patriarch, James Pantaleon.660 He reached Acre on 18 April 1259 and the Eracles comments that the patriarch, ‘scorning that he, who should have been his subordinate, came with legatine powers as his superior, [and] went from Syria to the court of Rome’. The patriarch never returned. He was still in Rome when Alexander IV died in 1261 and he was elected as his successor, taking the name of Urban IV.661 Bishop Thomas of Bethlehem was therefore in the unusual position of being effective head of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem from 1259 to 1263. This coincided with the advance of the Mongols into Syria, their defeat in 1260 by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in Galilee, and the subsequent occupation by the Mamluk sultan Baibars of inland Palestine and Syria up to the river Euphrates. Most of Thomas’ time was taken up in deliberating with the Frankish leaders about how to respond to these developments and, in his capacity as legate, in adjudicating ecclesiastical disputes.662 Although Thomas had been influential in persuading the High Court of Jerusalem to adopt a policy of benevolent neutrality towards Egypt in 1260, which helped the Egyptian army to defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut, he received no consideration from Sultan Baibars. Marino Sanudo reports that in 1263 the sultan destroyed the monasterium Bethlehemitanum, the house of the Austin canons at Bethlehem, although he did not damage the basilica, which was once again in 654 655 658 661

Innocent IV, Registres nos. 1066,1531, 2057, 1532; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 112–13. 656 657 Innocent IV, Registres no. 4044. Strehlke no. 102, pp. 81–2. Innocent IV, Registres no. 7344. 659 660 Alexander IV, Registres no. 756. Mas Latrie, ‘Patriarches latins’, 25. Annales de Terre Sainte, 449. 662 Eracles, XXXIV, 3–4, pp. 444–6. Hamilton, Latin Church, pp. 269–72.

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Orthodox hands.663 Although it is not known whether the canons were still maintaining Latin chaplains at Bethlehem to minister to Western pilgrims, the fact that Baibars found it necessary to expel all Latins from Bethlehem in 1266 suggests that they had been doing so.664 In 1263 Pope Urban IV appointed a new patriarch of Jerusalem, William II of Agen, and recalled Thomas of Bethlehem to Rome.665 While the curia was at Orvieto, Urban IV appointed him his vicar in the city of Rome and empowered him to organise the crusade against Manfred, King of Sicily.666 Thomas continued to be concerned about the well-being of the church of Bethlehem, and obtained a confirmation of its property from Urban IV.667 Urban IV died in 1264 and soon after his enthronement in February 1265, his successor, Clement IV, issued an important privilege for Bethlehem. This gave Bishop Thomas the right to exchange various properties belonging to his church ‘situated in remote parts from which the aforesaid church can scarcely derive any benefit or income’, for property belonging to another ecclesiastical body. This was a useful licence which enabled the church to increase its revenues from its European properties at a time when Mamluk encroachment was causing the loss of some of its remaining estates in the Crusader Kingdom.668 On 11 May 1266 Pope Clement issued a new confirmation of the rights and properties of Bethlehem. Although much of this merely repeated the text of Gregory IX’s confirmation of forty years earlier, it recorded the acquisition of new properties in Italy, at Urbino, Luni, Treviso and Turin. It also listed properties outside Italy, which Gregory IX’s bull had not done: the oratory of new Bethlehem in London, the church of St Germanus in the diocese of St Andrews in Scotland; three properties in the Spanish kingdoms, and endowments in the dioceses of Agen, Aix, Autun, Clermont and Embrun in central and southern France.669 In 1267 Clement IV translated Thomas of Lentino to the archbishopric of Cosenza in Calabria, perhaps in recognition of the part he had played in bringing Charles of Anjou to power as king of Sicily (1266–85). The pope appointed Gaillard d’Ossau as new bishop of Bethlehem. He was a south French Dominican, who had been prior of Tarascon and was currently papal penitentiary, and Clement consecrated him himself.670 In the winter of 1267–8 Bishop Gaillard was sent by the pope on a diplomatic mission to Lombardy.671 He is first attested as present in the Holy Land on 2 June 1271, when he was among a distinguished group of witnesses, which included Hugh III, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, and Bohemond VI of Antioch–Tripoli, who were present in the Hospitaller headquarters at Acre when the Master of the Order, Hugh Revel, handed over to Guy, Lord of Gibelet, a collection of forty-four charters which Guy’s father had deposited with the Order.672 In the following year Bishop Gaillard together with the archbishop of Nazareth and the bishop of Banias was entrusted by Pope Gregory X with the task of ordering Hugh 663

664 665 666 668 670 671

Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum Fidelium Crucis super Terram Sanctam recuperatione et conservatione, ed. J. Bongars in Gesta Dei per Francos (Hanover, 1611), reprinted with Foreword by J. Prawer (Jerusalem, 1972), III, xii, 6, p. 221. Pringle, Churches no. 61, I, p. 139. Cronaca del Templare di Tiro, p. 92; English trans. P. Crawford, The Templar of Tyre (New York, 2003), 320, p. 41. 667 Urban IV, Registres nos. 753, 778. Mentioned in Clement IV’s confirmation; see n. 674. 669 Clement IV, Registres no. 32. Riant, Etudes sur l’église de Bethléem, no. xii, I, 147–54. Clement IV, Registres no. 524. 672 Clement IV, Registres no. 1292; Martène and Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus, II, cols. 593–5. CGOH I, no. 3422.

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III of Cyprus, who claimed the throne of Jerusalem, to appear before the curia, either in person or through a procurator, to answer the rival claim of Mary of Antioch that the crown of Jerusalem rightly belonged to her.673 On 19 October 1277 Gaillard vidimated the copies of twenty-two documents belonging to the Teutonic Order.674 Sultan Baibars, who had wrecked the monastic buildings at Bethlehem, died on 20 June 1277. His successor made a truce with the Latin Kingdom because he needed time to consolidate his power in the Mamluk Empire. The patriarch of Jerusalem was Thomas de Lentino, who had been appointed by Gregory X in 1272, and, as a former bishop of Bethlehem, he may have been responsible for the provision in this treaty that Latin clergy should once more be allowed to minister in the church of the Holy Nativity.675 It is not known whether the Latin clergy at Bethlehem after 1277 were members of the cathedral chapter, or only chaplains appointed by them. In 1279 Bishop Gaillard died while visiting the curia, and Pope Nicholas III appointed Hugh, Bishop of Troia in the Kingdom of Sicily, to succeed him.676 He had gone to Acre by August 1283.677 In December 1284 Pope Martin IV (1281–5) issued a privilege for Hugh and the Austin canons of Bethlehem, confirming that the privileges and indulgences which their church had received from earlier popes remained in force even though some of them had seldom been exercised.678 The Dominican Burchard of Mt Zion visited Bethlehem sometime between 1274 and 1285. His description of the interior of the basilica, resplendent with mosaics and with a multi-coloured marble floor, suggests that it was much as the Franks had left it in 1187. He writes: ‘outside the north door of the church is the area of the monks’ cloister’. This must refer to the Orthodox clergy serving the shrine, but it suggests that they had repaired the damage caused to the monastic buildings by Baibars. Burchard commented on the reverence in which the Muslims held this church: ‘Indeed, the Saracens honour all the churches of the Blessed Virgin, but especially this one.’679 The Austin canons continued to live in the pro-cathedral at Acre, where pilgrims who had not received a papal dispensation allowing them to visit Bethlehem might nevertheless receive a seven-year indulgence by praying at that shrine.680 Bishop Hugh was concerned about the spiritual needs of his canons, and in 1284 arranged with the monastery of St George’s Venice that the two communities should form a spiritual communion and pray for each other’s needs.681 Hugh had returned to Italy by 13 April 1285, when he was commissioned by Pope Honorius IV (1285–7) to collect the tithes for the crusade against Peter III of Aragon in Ravenna and the March of Ancona, a task which occupied him until

673 674 675

676 677

678 680 681

Urban IV, Registres no. 103. Listed by Riant, ‘Éclaircissements’, 160; Schlumberger, Chalandon and Blanchet, Sigillograhie, p. 109. Riant, Etudes sur l’église de Bethléem, I, 69 n. 2; P. M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers (Leiden, 1995), 11–23, for general background. Nicholas III, Registres no. 575. He issued letters from Acre granting indulgences for the shrines of St Cunegonde at Graz and St Elizabeth at Marburg: Riant, ‘Éclaircissements’, 389 n. 2. 679 Riant, Etudes sur l’église de Bethléem, I, 154–5. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 78–9. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. This document is now in the Marciana Library at Venice and was cited by Riant, who took it as evidence that Hugh had returned to Italy by that time, which is possible, though not certain: Riant, ‘Éclaircissements’, 400.

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January 1286.682 He remained in western Europe in the employment of the curia until after the fall of Acre. The Austin canons of Bethlehem remained in their pro-cathedral at Acre, where in 1290 they received a copy of a letter sent by Pope Nicholas IV (1288–92) to members of all religious orders with houses in the Holy Land warning them that bogus brethren were collecting alms in western Europe for the defence of the Crusader Kingdom and were embezzling the proceeds. The pope wished all religious in the Holy Land to be aware of this so that they might take preventive action.683 It is not known whether any of the Austin canons of Bethlehem escaped from the sack of Acre in 1291. Certainly no attempt was made to reconstitute the chapter in any of the numerous properties which the church of Bethlehem owned in western Europe. When in 1347 Latin clergy were allowed once again to officiate in the church of the Holy Nativity, this service was undertaken by the Franciscans, not by Austin canons.684

The Brethren of Bethlehem Bishop Hugh of Bethlehem was still in western Europe when Acre fell in 1291, and he went to Nevers where he reached an agreement with Count Robert of Flanders, the guardian of the young Count Louis of Nevers. Hugh surrendered to the young count all the temporalities which the church of Bethlehem enjoyed in Nevers through the legacy of Count William IV in return for a fixed annual payment. The only part of William IV’s legacy which Bishop Hugh retained was the hospital at Clamécy and its adjacent lands.685 As bishop of Bethlehem, Hugh claimed that he was personally exempt from all ecclesiastical authority except that of the Holy See. and he claimed that this exemption extended to the hospital of Clamécy, though not to the other possessions of his see in western Europe. This claim was accepted by the bishops of Auxerre, in whose diocese Clamécy was situated, and by the archbishops of Sens to whose province it belonged. When Hugh died, some time after 1299, the Holy See appointed titular bishops of Bethlehem, who lived at Clamécy. Consequently the hospital chapel became the cathedral church of Our Lady of Bethlehem.686 The chapter of the new cathedral was composed of the brethren who served the adjacent hospital. This had been founded in 1147 and had been given to the church of Bethlehem as part of the donation of William IV of Nevers in 1168. From the beginning the hospital was served by a group of professed religious brethren, but by 1211 they had become known as ‘the brethren of Bethlehem who live in the “burgh” of Bethlehem at Clamécy’.687 This community developed into a religious order in the course of the thirteenth century, although the process by which this occurred is obscure. The church of Bethlehem had received other hospitals among its Western endowments: thirteen Italian hospitals are listed in Gregory IX’s confirmation of 1227.688 It would appear that the bishops of Bethlehem had placed 682 683 684

685 686 687 688

Honorius IV, Les registres d’Honorius IV, ed. M. Prou, BEFAR ser. 2 (Paris, 1888), nos. 12, 36, 60, 130, 180, 193, 266. Nicholas IV, Registres no. 2332. A. Jotischky, ‘The Franciscan Return to the Holy Land (1333) and Mt Sion: Pilgrimage and the Apostolic Mission’, in A. Boas (ed.) The Crusader World (London, 2016), 241–55. Riant, ‘Eclaircissements’, 406–7. Some information about the titular archbishops of Bethlehem is given by Riant, ‘Eclaircissements’, 475–97. J. Richard, ‘Hospitals and hospital congregations in the Latin Kingdom’, in Kedar, Mayer and Smail, eds., Outremer, pp. 93–4. PKHL no. 190, pp. 377–83.

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those hospitals in the charge of the Brethren of Bethlehem with their headquarters at Clamécy, for in 1225 Pope Honorius III wrote to Bishop Reynier about the brethren who lived in a number of houses belonging to the church of Bethlehem, situated in various Western dioceses. The pope stated that these brethren had recently ‘been seized by a spirit of rebellion and strongly scorn to obey those to whom they are bound, or to pay attention to them’, and he gave Bishop Reynier complete freedom in reforming or dissolving those communities as he thought fit.689 Although this attempt by the brethren to form themselves into an independent Hospitaller Order had been unsuccessful, it probably led Bishop Reynier to give them a Rule. Because the Fourth Lateran Council had forbidden the introduction of new monastic Rules, the Brethren of Bethlehem were placed under the Rule of St Augustine; unlike the Austin canons of Bethlehem, their work was not primarily liturgical, but was directed at the care of pilgrims and the nursing of the sick.690 A female branch of the Order was founded in 1231 to care for women pilgrims.691 The Brethren had a distinctive habit, described by Matthew Paris: ‘Their habit is like that of the Dominicans. Their cloaks are distinguished by a fivepointed red star placed in the middle of a sky-blue circle, which is on their chests, which was chosen because of the star which appeared at Bethlehem when the Lord was born.’692 By the time Matthew Paris wrote this in 1257 the Brethren had a house in London founded at the time of Bishop Godfrey de Prefectis’ visit on papal business in 1247.693 This hospital later became known as Bedlam. The Brethren founded a house in thirteenth-century Acre: Pringle has suggested that it was in the suburb of Montmusard. In 1266 Count Odo of Nevers made a bequest to the ‘meselles de Bethleem’ at Acre, the house of female lepers there.694 The Brethren played an important part in making people in western Europe aware of the needs of the church of Bethlehem. In 1245, for example, Innocent IV wrote an encyclical urging the faithful in Christ to respond generously to the requests for alms of the Brethren.695 Jean Richard has pointed out that the Brethren also extended their activities in the Latin East. The house in the city of Caesarea listed among the properties of Bethlehem in Gregory IX’s bull of 1227 had become a hospitale cum oratoriis by the time Clement IV issued his confirmation in 1266.696 When Bishop Hugh established his see at Clamécy after the fall of Acre, the hospital chapel which became his cathedral was already administered by the Brethren of Bethlehem. They may already have been responsible for collecting responsions from the other Western properties of Bethlehem, but after 1291 they took over the collection of dues from all the remaining properties of Bethlehem in western Europe. The bishops of Bethlehem and their chapter composed of Brother Hospitallers remained at Clamécy as an exempt jurisdiction until the diocese was abolished in 1790.

689 691 692 694

695

690 Honorius III, Regesta no. 5523. D. Knowles, ‘Betlemiti’, in DIP I, p. 420. J. Burgtorf, ‘Bethlehem’, in A. V. Murray, ed., The Crusades: An Encyclopaedia, 4 vols. (Oxford, 2006), I, 167. 693 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, V, p. 631. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 602. Pringle, Churches no. 377, IV, pp. 44–5. I owe to him the reference to Count Odo’s gift in A.-M. Chazaud, ‘Inventaire et comtes de la succession d’Eudes, comte de Nevers (Acre 1266)’, MSNAF, ser. 4, vol. 2 (1871), 275. 696 Innocent IV, Registres no. 980. Richard, ‘Hospitals’, 95.

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Latin Monasticism The Austin Canons of the Church of the Annunciation Nazareth

Nazareth was the most important Christian shrine in Galilee, for it was there that the Annunciation of Christ’s birth had been made by Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it was there that Jesus had grown up.697 A Byzantine church had been built on the supposed site of the Holy Family’s house in the sixth century, but it is doubtful whether it was more than a ruin at the time of the Latin conquest.698 Nevertheless, it is certain that the cave beneath that church, which was believed to be the site of the Annunciation and also of the house of St Joseph where the Holy Family had lived, was still accessible to pilgrims. Galilee was conquered by Tancred, nephew of Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch, and of Roger I, Count of Sicily. William of Tyre reports that Godfrey of Bouillon appointed Tancred lord of Tiberias and prince of Galilee, and that Tancred cared for the Holy Places of Tiberias, Nazareth and Mt Tabor, providing the furnishings for their churches and granting them generous endowments.699 The pilgrim Saewulf, who visited Nazareth in 1102–3, relates that the city was in ruins, but adds, ‘nevertheless, a monastery marks the very famous site of the Lord’s Annunciation. The very pure spring of water rises near the city and is still surrounded by marble slabs and columns on all sides.’700 Saewulf’s use of the term monastery might indicate that a community of Latin canons had been founded to serve the shrine, or it might simply indicate that the Latin clergy who served the shrine had adapted part of the old Orthodox monastery as their living quarters. The first secure evidence for the presence of a community of Latin canons there dates from 1109. In Orthodox times the ecclesiastical province of Galilee had been under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Scythopolis (Bethsan), but the bishop of Nazareth had been one of the twenty-five syncelloi, the suffragans directly subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem, a fact of which the Franks were aware.701 In the twelfth century Bethsan was almost totally deserted, and Paschal II in 1103 gave ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the province to the Latin abbot of Mt Tabor.702 Subsequently, the Franks established a bishopric at Nazareth. This was almost certainly the work of Patriarch Gibelin, and the first incumbent, Bishop Bernard, is mentioned in two documents of 1109, both of which relate to the gift by him of the church of St George near Tiberias to the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat, made in the presence of Baldwin I and his court. Among the witnesses to the second document is William ‘Prior Sancti Gabrielis’, which is the earliest evidence for a community of Austin canons at Nazareth.703 It is possible that the community was initially attached to the church of St Gabriel, built over the spring of Nazareth whose waters flow through a channel to supply the public fountain of the city. This church existed in 1109, for the Russian abbot Daniel, who visited Nazareth soon after the establishment of the Latin bishopric, records that the holy well is ‘a good bowshot from the town of Nazareth’, and that over it had been built ‘a church dedicated to St Gabriel, and it is round’.704 Pringle points out that the modern church of St Joseph, which stands just to the north of the medieval cathedral, ‘was built in 1911 697 701 702 703 704

698 699 Luke 1: 26–38; 2: 39, 51. Pringle, Churches no. 169, II, pp. 116–17. WT IX, 13, p 438. Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, pp. 339–40, 343. WT XXII, 17, pp. 1030–1; PKHL no. 5, pp. 92–9. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 2, 3, pp. 113–15; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 34, I, pp. 152–3. Daniel the Abbot, p. 164; see also the discussion in Pringle, Churches no. 170, II, pp. 141–4.

700

Saewulf, p. 74.

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directly on the foundations of a twelfth-century church’. That church is not described in any of the twelfth-century pilgrim sources, so its dedication is unknown. Pringle suggests that this, rather than the more distant church of the Holy Spring, might have been the Latin priory church of St Gabriel mentioned in the 1109 document. This suggestion is attractive. If, when the Austin canons were established at Nazareth, the new Latin cathedral was beginning to be rebuilt, this could have presented them with considerable practical difficulties for, whereas Mass could have been celebrated at the cave shrines in the crypt, the Divine Office, which was the responsibility of the canons, could not have been recited communally if there was no chapel of adequate size. The twelfth-century church which stood on the site of the modern church of St Joseph’s was a quite substantial structure: ‘a three-aisled basilica . . . internally it measured some 27 by 13.6 metres’. It could have served the canons as a chapel while the cathedral was being built and, as Pringle points out, after they were able to serve the cathedral directly, ‘their convent buildings would have been conveniently sited to allow them to serve both churches’.705 Abbot Daniel went to Nazareth from Mt Tabor. This was at a time before the Knights Templar had begun to patrol the main pilgrim routes, and he observes: ‘It is dangerous to travel that way in a small group; only with a large escort can you pass that way without fear.’ Daniel and his companions were well received and given hospitality by Bishop Bernard, whom he describes as ‘very rich’, though that may merely be a comment on the lack of asceticism in the household of Latin prelates which contrasted markedly with the life-style of Orthodox clergy. Like Saewulf, Daniel says that the basilica of the Annunciation had been laid waste by the Muslims, ‘but now the Franks have taken it and rebuilt it thoroughly’. He describes it as ‘a tall church’ but is more interested in the cave shrines in the crypt than in the new building: ‘as you enter this church on the left hand, there is, as it were, a cave, small but deep, before a small altar’. Two doors, one at the east end and the other at the west, gave entrance to this cave, which in both cases was approached by a flight of steps. The righthand door led to the house of Joseph, where Christ had lived as a child, the left-hand door to the tomb of St Joseph. Near to this was the site of the Annunciation, where ‘a small round marble altar has been erected . . . on a single small column, and at this altar the liturgy is celebrated’.706 Pringle considers that ‘the church repaired by Tancred, and seen by Saewulf and Daniel . . . was very much smaller than the vast basilica whose foundations the Franciscans uncovered in the 1890s’.707 Certainly the church of Nazareth became richer in the second quarter of the twelfth century and would have had the resources to undertake an extensive new building programme. Bishop Bernard was a foundation member of the confraternity which administered the hospital attached to Our Lady of Josaphat at Jerusalem, and as bishop he made generous donations to that foundation in 1115 and 1121. The second of those charters was witnessed by G[uglielmus], Prior of St Gabriel’s.708 In 1125 when Bishop Bernard freed the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem from payment of all tithes on properties which they owned in his diocese, a transaction which took place in the presence of Baldwin II and Patriarch 705 708

706 707 Pringle, Churches no. 173, II, pp. 147–50. Daniel the Abbot, pp. 163–4. Pringle, Churches no. 169, II, p. 139. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 19, pp. 47–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 50, I, pp. 175–6; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 7, p. 117; Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 9, pp. 35–6.

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Warmund, William witnessed as prior of St Mary’s Nazareth.709 By that time the Austin canons formed the chapter of the new cathedral, and their affiliation to St Gabriel’s is not mentioned in any later source. Bishop Bernard died before March 1129, and was succeeded by William, who should probably be identified with Prior William of St Gabriel’s, although in the absence of firm evidence this remains conjectural. When he is first recorded, in a group of documents dating from 1129, William is described as archbishop of Nazareth. This creation of a new metropolitan see in Galilee may have been the work either of Patriarch Warmund or of his successor, Stephen of Chartres.710 This was part of the reorganisation of the patriarchate of Jerusalem which the Latins undertook. Under their rule Nazareth, site of the most important shrine and pilgrimage centre in Galilee, replaced the deserted city of Bethsan, which had held place of honour in Orthodox times as the metropolitan see.711 As one of only three archbishops in the kingdom, William of Nazareth enjoyed considerable social prestige from the beginning of his reign. In March 1129 he was present at the court at Acre and witnessed a gift by King Baldwin II of an estate near Nablus to the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre.712 A few months later he was again present in Acre when, in the presence of Baldwin II, Count Fulk of Anjou and Patriarch Stephen, he witnessed the gift by Archbishop William I of Tyre of the church of St Mary at Tyre to the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier suggests that he was in Acre at that time because he was one of the notables whom Baldwin had invited to greet Fulk of Anjou when he arrived in the kingdom to marry Princess Melisende, the heir to the throne.713 In the same year, when William of Bures, Prince of Galilee, gave an estate to the Benedictines of Our Lady of Josaphat, his charter was dated by the reigns of Baldwin II and Patriarch Stephen, and the clause ‘William then being archbishop of Nazareth’ was added. It was unusual to use a bishop’s reign in the dating formulae of charters in the Latin Kingdom.714 Among the other witnesses to the donation made at Acre by the archbishop of Tyre was Adalelmus ecclesie Nazarene prior.715 He had previously been archdeacon of Nazareth, and in 1125 had, together with Prior William, witnessed a charter of Bishop Bernard.716 In the same year he had been appointed a papal judge delegate, together with the archbishop of Caesarea and the abbot of St Samuel’s Acre, to settle a dispute between Philip, cantor of Tripoli, and the Hospital of St John.717 The archbishop of Nazareth was unusual among the bishops of the Latin Kingdom in holding a fief from the crown. The only other bishop to enjoy this privilege was the bishop of Lydda. These two prelates were the only clergy with a right e titulo to sit in the High Court of Jerusalem when it dealt with feudal business.718 Although it is probable that Baldwin II granted this lordship to Archbishop William when he was first appointed, this is not certain. The information about the lordship of Nazareth is recorded by John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, 709 711 713 715 716 717

718

710 CGOH I, no. 71; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 95, I, pp. 249–50. Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 222–5. 712 WT XXII, 17, p. 1030. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 105, I, pp. 261–3. 714 BB no. 55, pp. 145–6; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 112, I, pp. 273–4. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 16, pp. 42–3. BB no. 55, pp. 145–6; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 112, I, pp. 273–4. CGOH I, no. 71; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 95, I, pp. 249–50. CGOH I, no. 72; Adalelmus is not named in this charter but is merely referred to as archdeacon of Nazareth, but as this document was drawn up in the same year as CGOH I, no. 71 it may safely be assumed that it relates to him. Although it is clear that other bishops witnessed acts dealing with such matters, e.g. RRH nos. 539, 653–5.

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in his Livre des Assises, a treatise written in the 1260s, but incorporating information about the administration of the Latin Kingdom dating from c. 1180. In that section of the work it is reported that the archbishop of Nazareth owed service of six knights to the crown, and had the right to ‘cort, coins et justise’: that is to say he had the right to convene and preside at a court which dealt with all business relating to his own vassals; he had his own seal to authenticate documents without needing royal ratification; and he had the right to dispense justice to his vassals, including the death penalty, with no right of appeal to the crown. The archbishop also had the right to hold a Burgess Court at Nazareth. This was presided over by a Frankish viscount appointed by the archbishop, who administered justice to all people living in the lordship except the archbishop’s vassals. This court had powers to impose sentences of life and death with no right of appeal.719 As Jonathan Riley-Smith pointed out: ‘These rights . . . made the lordships palatinates in which jurisdiction was concentrated in their lords’ hands rather than under royal officers.’720 The privileged status of their archbishop did not theoretically affect the status of the cathedral chapter of Nazareth, but in practice it considerably enhanced their prestige. In 1132 Archbishop William was present, together with King Fulk and Patriarch William I, to witness a gift made by William of Bures, Prince of Galilee, to the Holy Sepulchre.721 He died before 1138, for in that year two royal diplomas were witnessed by his successor, Robert, archbishop-elect of Nazareth.722 As befitted a royal vassal, he took an active role in the affairs of the kingdom. In 1140–1 he was at Tripoli, where he had perhaps gone to welcome the legate, Albert of Ostia, who was returning to Jerusalem with Patriarch William from the Council of Antioch, at which Ralph of Domfront had been deposed.723 He witnessed diplomas of Baldwin III and Queen Melisende,724 and of Patriarch William,725 and was one of the adjudicators in a dispute between the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre and the heir of a donor.726 He was also active as a royal vassal. He carried the True Cross on the campaign against Bosra in 1147, took part in the Council of Acre in 1148 which planned the attack on Damascus by the army of the Kingdom and the Second Crusade, and led his knights to the siege of Ascalon in 1153.727 In 1145 a new prior of Nazareth named Letard is first recorded.728 Archbishop Robert died soon after the fall of Ascalon in 1153, and his successor as archbishop, who was also called Letard, was among the witnesses to the confirmation by Baldwin III of the property of the Hospital of St John in his kingdom on 30 July 1154.729 The new archbishop should not be confused with his namesake Prior Letard, who remained in office. In 1156 Archbishop Letard witnessed a diploma of Baldwin III, confirming a grant by his brother, Amalric, which Letard had also witnessed, and attended the synod convoked by Patriarch Fulcher to censure the prior and canons of the Mount of Olives.730 William of Tyre, who refers to Archbishop Letard as Aitard, relates how he and Humphrey of Toron, the constable of the 719 721 723 724 725 727 729 730

720 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, chs. xii–xiii, pp. 155–6. Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 26. 722 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 128, I, pp. 296–8. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 138–9, I, pp. 315–23. BB nos. 81–2, pp. 189–91; WT XV, 15–18, pp. 695–9; Hiestand, ‘Ein neuer Bericht’. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 210, 214, 177, I, pp. 390–3, 396–9, 355–7. 726 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 143, I, pp. 328–33; BB no. 24, pp. 88–9. BB no. 67, pp. 163–4. 728 WT XVI, 11, XVII, 1, 21, pp. 730–1, 761, 790. BB no. 24, pp. 83–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 232, I, pp. 424–7. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 233, 282, I, pp. 427–31, II, pp. 507–11; BB no. 54, pp. 143–5.

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Kingdom, were sent to the court of Manuel I Komnenos to arrange a marriage alliance between the imperial family and Baldwin III. The mission was successful, and Humphrey escorted the emperor’s niece Theodora to be the king’s bride, while the body of Archbishop Letard, who had died at Constantinople, was brought back for burial in his cathedral.731 He was succeeded by Prior Letard, who became Archbishop Letard II. William of Tyre, who knew him, describes him as ‘a gentle man, of sociable and kindly disposition, who is still ruler of that church now [1181] having been bishop for twenty-three years’.732 Like his predecessor, Letard II occupied an important position at court. On 25 and 26 July 1160 he was in attendance on Baldwin III at Acre, accompanied by his chaplain, Ralph the Englishman.733 As the former prior of Nazareth, Letard was concerned to defend the rights of his canons. In 1161 Patriarch Amalric of Nesle, acting presumably at Letard’s request, convoked a synod attended by the archbishop of Caesarea, the bishops of Ramla, Sebaste, Acre, Tiberias and Banias, the abbot of Sta Maria Latina, and the priors of the Holy Sepulchre and Mt Zion. This assembly endorsed an agreement reached between the archbishop of Nazareth and his canons and the community of Our Lady of Josaphat about the church of Ligio and its tithes. This church had been given to Josaphat by Bishop Bernard of Nazareth.734 The synod confirmed in some detail the rights which the chapter of Nazareth had retained: each year on the feast of the Annunciation, the chaplains of Ligio shall swear canonical obedience to the archbishop and pay him four measures of candles. Moreover, the community of Josaphat shall provide hospitality to the canons of Nazareth on one day each year. ‘In the daytime’, the canons enacted, ‘we shall be given a full meal, and in the evening hay shall be provided for our horses, and straw pallets and candles for ourselves.’ This agreement was witnessed by Prior Stephen and eleven canons of Nazareth.735 Archbishop Letard retained his influential position in King Amalric’s reign, being present at court in January and April 1166 and in October 1168 and September 1169, when Amalric was planning the invasion of Egypt.736 In 1169 he also witnessed a confirmation by Patriarch Amalric of the property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.737 In 1170 there was a severe earthquake in Syria, which caused great damage in the northern states of Antioch and Tripoli and wrecked buildings as far south as Tyre.738 Although there is no evidence that it affected Nazareth, the archbishop and his canons claimed that the damage caused to the defence system of the kingdom had enabled Muslim troops to raid Christian territory, and that among the places they had attacked was ‘a large and densely inhabited estate belonging to the church of Nazareth’. Many of the peasants had been carried off as prisoners by the raiders, and consequently the church of Nazareth had suffered such a huge loss of revenue that the canons were experiencing difficulty in carrying out their liturgical duties. This complaint was addressed to Alexander III, who licensed the canons to send representatives to France to collect alms.739 There is no indication about where the estate was situated. Evidently the finances of the church recovered quite speedily, for in December 1174 a diploma of King Baldwin IV was issued by William ‘archdeacon of 731 733 735 736 738

732 WT XVIII, 16, 22, pp. 834, 842–3. WT XVIII, 22, p. 842. 734 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 255, 256, 258, I, pp. 465–9, 470–4. See p. 188. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 35, pp. 82–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 314, 316, 336, 342, II, pp. 548–50, 550–3, 578–82, 595–6. 739 WT XX, 18, pp. 934–6. PKHL no. 198, pp. 393–4.

737

BB no. 150, pp. 292–6.

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Tyre and of Nazareth and chancellor of the kingdom’.740 This was the historian William of Tyre’s first act as chancellor, and the two archdeaconries had been granted to him to ensure that his income was commensurate with the importance of his office. He had to surrender both of them in the summer of 1175 when he was appointed archbishop of Tyre.741 By October 1175 a new archdeacon of Nazareth, called Gerald, was in office.742 Unlike his predecessors, Archbishop Letard II involved his canons in the administration of his see. In 1174, in his capacity as metropolitan, he settled a dispute between his suffragan, Bishop Gerald of Tiberias, and Garinus, Abbot of Mt Tabor. The document concludes: ‘the prior and canons of this church [of Nazareth] were present as witnesses’, and then lists the new prior, Ernulf (Arnulf), and eleven canons, including Walter, described as capellanus.743 In the following year an agreement between the abbot of Mt Tabor and the prior of the Holy Sepulchre was witnessed by Archbishop Letard II, supported by Archdeacon Gerald of Nazareth, Gilbert, the archbishop’s chaplain, and four canons of Nazareth.744 In 1178, when Archbishop Letard and Bishop Joscius of Acre mediated a settlement in a dispute about tithes between the bishop of Tiberias and the abbey of Josaphat, Letard was accompanied by Canons Theobald and Durand, the treasurer of the community.745 In 1180 when he visited the Mt Tabor monastery to witness the settlement made between Hawisa, Lady of Palmaria, and the Tabor community, he was accompanied not only by his legal adviser, Archdeacon Gerald, but also by Gilbert, his chaplain, Magister Simon, his chancellor, and Canon John of Coris.746 Canon Theobald the treasurer had become prior by 1183. This is known from a letter which Pope Innocent III wrote to him in 1198, after he had become bishop of Acre, about a pastoral problem which had occurred fifteen years or more earlier ‘when you . . . were exercising pastoral care as prior of the Church of Nazareth’.747 Theobald remained prior of Nazareth until he was elected bishop of Acre on 17 August 1191.748 Archbishop Letard II, who is first mentioned as prior of Nazareth in 1145, must have been quite elderly by 1186, when Pope Urban III appointed him judge delegate to investigate complaints by the Republic of Genoa that the king of Jerusalem and the count of Tripoli had infringed its rights.749 On 17 October 1186 Letard was present at a mediation in a dispute between the Master of the Hospital, Roger des Moulins, and the bishop of Valania, conducted by the archbishop of Tyre and the bishop of Beirut as papal judges delegate.750 When Guy of Lusignan became king in the late summer of 1186, Raymond III of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee, refused to do homage to him.751 Archbishop Letard, whose fief was in central Galilee, remained loyal to Guy, and was present at the court in Acre on 740 742 744 745 747

748 750

751

741 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 381, II, pp. 655–7. Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian, 18–19. 743 BB no. 159, pp. 310–11; Paoli, Codice no. 204, I, p. 168. CGOH II, no. 16. This document exists in three copies: BB no. 159, pp. 310–11; Paoli, Codice nos. 168, 204, I, pp. 211, 246–7. 746 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 40, pp. 87–8. CGOH II, no. 19. Innocent III, Register an. I, no. 517. The bishop is not named in this letter, but Theobald held this office in 1192 (Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 488, II, pp. 832–5) and was still bishop in 1200 (CGOH I, no. 1113). 749 Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 189. CGOH I, nos. 793–4. This document is known only from the Raybaud Calendar of 1742. Although there is no reason to question the main content of this entry, many scholars have questioned the name William, given to the archbishop of Tyre. Possibly the copy of the document which Raybaud used did not name the archbishop, and he assumed that it referred to William: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 162, p. 69; R. Hiestand, ‘Zum Leben und zur Laufbahn Wilhelms von Tyrus’, DA 34 (1978), 345–80. Hamilton, Leper King, 222–3.

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21 October 1186, where he witnessed three diplomas issued by Guy, all of which related to the fiefs of Joscelin III of Courtenay.752 Letard’s support was important to Guy for, in addition to the knight service which he owed for his fief, he also was required to supply 150 sergeants to the crown in time of emergency.753 This heavy expense indicates that the church of Nazareth was prosperous in c. 1180 when the list used by John of Ibelin was drawn up. In addition to the feudal revenues of the archbishop as fiefholder, the church of Nazareth derived a considerable income from tithes, although that had been diminished in the course of the twelfth century by the creation of the see of Tiberias, the exempt status of the considerable property of the Mt Tabor monastery in the archdiocese, and the generosity of Bishop Bernard of Nazareth to the hospitals of Our Lady of Josaphat and St John of Jerusalem.754 Apart from the reference to the casale of Nazareth in the letter of Alexander III mentioned above,755 there is no record of the property owned by the church of Nazareth in the Crusader States, although thirteenth-century sources show that it owned a considerable number of estates in Galilee.756 There is some information about its property in western Europe. A group of charters relating to Nazareth have been preserved in the chapter archive of Barletta in Apulia. The earliest dates from May 1158 and records the gift of the church of St Quiricus ‘on the road which leads to Cannae, to Peter the priest and canon of the church of St Mary belonging to the archbishopric of Nazareth, who is the lawfully appointed administrator [obedientiarius] of that church in this region’.757 From a charter of 1175 it is known that the administrative centre of the Nazareth properties in Apulia was the priory church of St Mary of Nazareth outside the gate of Barletta, and that the prior of that house was ex officio a canon of the cathedral of Nazareth in Galilee.758 Four more charters from the years 1169–1204 show how the priors of St Mary’s Barletta consolidated their holdings: the fourth of them relates to the sale of land abutting the priory church, and the buyer stipulates that the church should not have windows made overlooking his land ‘which are wider than a handsbreadth’.759 A document of 1172 lists all the properties owned at that time by the priory of Nazareth, but it presents problems. It is correctly dated as the seventh year of William II of Sicily and the fifth indiction, but the prior’s title is suspicious: ‘I, Peter, Prior of the church of Nazareth and Vicar General of the Lord Combert, Archbishop of Nazareth, for all the churches [which he holds] in the Kingdom of Sicily’. No archbishop of Nazareth was called Combert, while the title of vicar general was not used in the twelfth century. It is possible that this is an interpolated copy of the original. It lists sixteen churches and also some estates in the area of Barletta, and is authenticated by the king’s justice at Barletta and two public notaries. If this list of properties is accurate, the Barletta priory must have been an important source of revenue for the archbishop and canons of Nazareth, but the reliability of this document is uncertain.760 752 754 757

758 759 760

753 Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 473–5, II, pp. 796–803. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. 755 756 See p. 192. See p. 118. See p. 128. F. Nitti di Vito, ed., Le pergamene di Barletta, Archivio Capitolare (897–1285), vol. VIII of Il Codice diplomatico Barese, 18 vols. (Bari, 1897–1950), doc. 85, pp. 123–4. Nitti di Vito, Le pergamene di Barletta, no. 125, VIII, p. 170. Nitti di Vito, Le pergamene di Barletta, nos. 110, 134, 164, 190, VIII, pp. 155–6, 178–9, 210, 244–5. S. Santeramo, ed., Codice diplomatico barlettano, 13 vols. (Barletta, 1924–94), doc. 5, I, pp. 18–20.

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A very important source of income for the church of Nazareth in the twelfth century must have been the offerings made by pilgrims, since it was one of the principal shrine churches in the Latin Kingdom. The wealth of the archbishop and his canons was clear from the size of the new cathedral which they built. This must have been completed by the summer of 1160, when a council was held at Nazareth to decide whether to recognise Alexander III as lawful pope. In September 1159, following the death of Hadrian IV, the college of cardinals had been divided about the succession and two candidates had been elected: Alexander III and Victor IV. The papal Election Decree of 1059 only provided for a unanimous election and was of no help to local churches in deciding which of the two candidates was lawful pope. Alexander III sent John, Cardinal Priest of Sts John and Paul, as his legate to the Crusader States in an attempt to enlist their support. A council attended by Patriarch Amalric of Jerusalem and the bishops of the kingdom, together with representatives from the patriarchate of Antioch, met at Nazareth in the presence of King Baldwin III and many of his vassals. This meeting must have been held in the cathedral, because no other building in the town would have been large enough to accommodate it, and the council would not have been convoked to Nazareth unless the building work on the cathedral had been completed. Against the wishes of the king, who wanted the Church in his kingdom to remain neutral and recognise neither candidate, the assembled bishops recognised Alexander III as pope.761 There are no satisfactory descriptions of the twelfth-century cathedral at Nazareth. Theoderic, who visited it in 1172, says that it is ‘a church worthy to be held in reverence, which is distinguished as the seat of a bishopric and is dedicated to Our Lady St Mary’, but his interest is focused entirely on the cave shrine, and this is typical of other pilgrim writers.762 The Orthodox pilgrim John Phocas, for example, who saw the church in 1185, commented that the former house of St Joseph had been ‘transformed into a most beautiful church, and there, on the left of the sanctuary, is a cave’; the rest of his description is concerned with the shrine in the crypt.763 The crusader cathedral was destroyed by Sultan Baibars in 1266. The Franciscans built a church over the cave-shrine in 1730, which was enlarged in 1871, but then razed in 1955 to make way for the construction of the present basilica. Pringle states that ‘to gain a more complete picture of the layout . . . of the twelfthcentury church, we must therefore rely on the drawings, photographs and observations of Prosper Viaud, Bellarmine Bagatti and others’ made before the new basilica was built. On the basis of that evidence he concludes: ‘The crusader Church of the Annunciation was, along with the cathedral of Tyre and the church of St Mary of Mt Zion, one of the largest churches of the Latin kingdom, measuring some 68 by 30 m overall.’764 Folda dates the rebuilding of the crusader cathedral in its final form to after 1170. I can see no strong argument for accepting that date because Theoderic, who visited Nazareth in 1172, makes no comment, as he surely would have done, about work in progress. Folda’s chief reason for favouring this date is his understanding that the cathedral was damaged in the earthquake of 1170, but there is no evidence that the effects of this were felt further south 761 763 764

WT XVIII, 29, pp. 852–4; Amalric of Nesle’s letter to Alexander III: PKHL no. 83, pp. 225–6. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 320; PG 133: 936. Pringle, Churches no. 169, II, pp. 116–40 (citation at p. 123).

762

Theodericus, p. 192.

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than Tyre, while the appeal launched by Alexander III for financial help for the canons makes no mention of damage to the church, only to their loss of income.765 Folda’s elucidation of the enigma of the Nazareth capitals is not in any way dependent on his dating of work on the new cathedral. In 1908–9, during excavations on the site of the cathedral complex, Viaud discovered five sculptured capitals, all in pristine condition, which suggested that though produced for the beautification of the cathedral they had never been put in place. The sculptures represented scenes from the lives of the Apostles Peter, James the Great, Matthew and Thomas. Stylistically they strongly resemble sculptures found in various French churches dating from the second and third quarters of the twelfth century. It is not known whether one or more sculptors from France was brought to the Holy Land to execute this work, or whether the capitals were produced by local artists trained in the Western tradition. Folda argues convincingly that the sculptures were intended to embellish the central shrine. Theoderic described the shrine in 1172: ‘From the left apse of this church a staircase with fifteen steps leads to an underground cave, where, towards the east, a small cross has been carved at the foot of a certain hollow altar, showing the place where the Annunciation of Christ was made by the Archangel Gabriel to Our Lady. To the left of that same altar – that is on the north side [of the cave], Joseph, her husband, the foster-father of the Saviour, rests in a tomb, above which an altar has been erected. But on the right-hand side, that is on the south side [of the cave], there is an arched structure with a small cross carved on top, in which place the holy mother of God came forth at her birth from the womb of her own mother.’766 John Phocas’ account agrees with that of Theoderic in placing the altar of the Annunciation in the centre of the cave shrine, but he associates the shrine on the right-hand side with ‘the place where the sovereign Mother of God used to sleep’, and the altar on the left-hand side with the dwelling place of Christ before he began his public ministry.767 Yet as Folda notes, although the two accounts differ in devotional content, they agree in describing the layout of the cave shrine. Moreover, ‘the organization of the holy sites inside the grotto as given by Theoderic is the same as that diagrammed by Quaresimus in 1639. We can therefore assume that by 1172 the internal arrangement of the grotto had been stabilized and that it underwent little alteration in the next five centuries.’768 There is general agreement among scholars that the Nazareth capitals had not been put in place at the time of Saladin’s conquest in 1187, and that they were buried to preserve them from being defaced by Muslims who had religious objections to the depiction of the human figure. There is no consensus about their intended function in the decoration of the basilica, but Folda’s detailed consideration of the problem is persuasive. He argues that they were intended to adorn an edicule built over the altar of the Annunciation, the summit of which would have risen into the north aisle of the cathedral.769 This explanation must remain conjectural, but what is significant is that work on the embellishment of the new cathedral under Archbishop Letard II was still in progress in 1187. 765 767 768 769

766 See p. 118; Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 414–15. Theodericus, pp. 192–3. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 320; PG 133: 936. J. Folda, The Nazareth Capitals and the Crusader Shrine of the Annunciation (London, 1986), 11. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 414–41.

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Something is known about the library of the Austin canons of Nazareth in the twelfth century because part of a catalogue relating to the house is preserved in a manuscript at Erfurt dating from c. 1200. James Beddie, who published this text, sounded a note of caution about it: ‘Neither the reference to Nazarene ecclesie, nor to the books in possession of the Bishop of Sidon, justify connecting the list certainly with Syria’, he wrote. This caution appears excessive: he does not make any suggestion about who might have taken the trouble to invent this list, or why they should have done so.770 According to the catalogue the library of Nazareth possessed the standard works which would be found in most good Western cathedral libraries in the twelfth century: biblical commentaries by St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Gregory the Great, a selection of works by St Augustine, St Gregory’s Pastoral Care and two books of his Dialogues, and St Isidore’s Etymologiae, a standard encyclopedia. There were also some contemporary theological works: for example, St Anselm’s Cur Deus homo?, and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The list of secular works in the library is incomplete, but includes copies of Horace, Statius, Persius, Sallust, Lucan, Juvenal and Prudentius, Cicero’s De Amicitia, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the Tristia and Ars Amatoria of Ovid. The catalogue gives evidence that the library was used by scholars from outside the community: a note reads ‘The bishop of Sidon has the copies of Augustine’s Retractions and of his Enchridion.’ The library was almost certainly used by Gerard of Nazareth, a hermit who later became a monk at Mt Tabor, and ended his life as bishop of Latakia (1139–61).771 Jean Richard has drawn attention to a letter which Letard II of Nazareth wrote to Archbishop Henry of Rheims in c. 1160, commending a priest called William, whom he had appointed to administer the property of the church of Nazareth in Henry’s province. Letard specifically asked Henry to secure the restoration of a house at Chappes belonging to his church. Richard has shown that this house was recovered by Nazareth and that it became the head of a group of four houses, all situated in Champagne near Laon. These houses were infirmaries, staffed by brethren who were under the authority of the head of the community of Chappes, who was appointed by the archbishop of Nazareth. Richard points out that these brethren were distinct from the canons of Nazareth, and concludes: ‘We think that these hospitaller brothers were originally entrusted with the administration of the hospital which must have existed beside the basilica of the Annunciation to shelter pilgrims and succour the poor.’ The church of Nazareth is not known to have derived any regular income from the foundations in Champagne, though they undoubtedly increased the prestige of the mother church in France.772 Richard’s conjecture that a hospital was attached to the cathedral of Nazareth may well be true, though it is not documented; however, the liberality of the first bishop of Nazareth, Bernard, towards the hospital attached to Our Lady of Josaphat and the hospital of St John of Jerusalem suggests that in his day there was no hospital at Nazareth. Under Frankish rule, Nazareth, which had been in ruins at the time of the conquest, became a prosperous town. The court stayed there in 1183 when Baldwin IV was planning the defence of Galilee against an invasion by Saladin. The city was unwalled, and its 770 771

J. S. Beddie, ‘Some notices of books in the East in the period of the Crusades’, Speculum 8 (1933), 240–2. 772 See p. 195. The letter is in RHGF, vol. XVI, no. 156, 192–3; Richard, ‘Hospitals’, 96–7.

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vulnerability was apparent during the subsequent campaign. Saladin invaded in midSeptember, but could make no permanent conquests because the army of the kingdom, mustered at La Tubanie, was undefeated. A raiding party from Saladin’s camp appeared on the hill above Nazareth and caused panic among the civilian population, who took refuge in the cathedral, but this proved to be a false alarm and the Muslim troops withdrew without causing any damage.773 In the spring of 1187 Saladin was once again mustering his forces to attack the kingdom, and had refused to renew the truce he had made with the Franks in 1186 when it expired on 5 April. The situation in the Latin Kingdom was very dangerous because Raymond III of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee, had refused to do homage to Guy of Lusignan; he had placed himself under Saladin’s protection and admitted Muslim troops into Tiberias to strengthen his garrison.774 Archbishop Letard remained loyal to the king, and his small lordship in Galilee was outside Raymond’s jurisdiction. The anonymous author of the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, which seems to be based on the account of an eyewitness, shows how important Letard’s role was in the events leading up to Hattin. He posted watchmen in the lordship of Nazareth to observe enemy troop movements, and before dawn on the morning of 1 May 1187 they reported to him that a large Muslim force had entered Galilee. The archbishop sent to inform the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospital of this, knowing that they were staying at the castle of La Fève, on their way to see Count Raymond in order to attempt to effect a reconciliation between him and the king. They hastily gathered such members of their Orders as they could, and were joined by the archbishop’s vassals, the royal garrison and also by the 150 sergeants of Nazareth which the archbishop was bound to provide to the crown in a time of emergency. The Christian army met the far larger invading force at the springs of Cresson, near Saffuriya, and was decisively defeated. The Muslim contingent withdrew across the Jordan, and the Christian dead were taken to Nazareth for burial. Among them was Roger des Moulins, Master of the Hospital. The Master of the Temple, Gerard of Ridefort, accompanied by Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, and Archbishop Letard, and joined by Balian of Ibelin, Lord of Nablus, then rode to Tiberias and urged Count Raymond to make peace with King Guy, which he did.775 It seems likely that very few of the knights and sergeants of Nazareth survived the battle of Cresson and took part in the battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 at which Saladin decisively defeated the army of the Latin Kingdom. After his victory, the sultan’s first concern was to capture Acre, which he did on 9 July, and his forces then spread out to subdue the rest of Frankish territory. The sultan’s lieutenant Keukburi captured Nazareth without a fight.776 The author of the Libellus reports that the population barricaded themselves in the cathedral, but that Saladin’s troops forced their way in and many Christians were killed; then the city 773 775

776

774 WT XXII, 26–7, pp. 1048–52. Hamilton, Leper King, 223–4. Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, cc. 24–8, pp. 37–43. This account, which was written later, is hostile to Gerard of Ridefort: it ignores the fact that the archbishop of Nazareth owed sergeant-service to the crown, and asserts that Gerard was responsible for urging the citizens of Nazareth to fight, and was therefore responsible also for their deaths; see now P. Edbury, ‘Gerard of Ridefort and the battle of Le Cresson (1 May 1187): the developing narrative tradition’, in H. J. Nicholson, ed., On the Margins of Crusading: The Military Orders, the Papacy and the Christian World (Farnham, 2012), 45–60. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 267–8.

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was sacked and the raiding party moved on. In September 1187, writing from Jerusalem, which had not yet fallen, Patriarch Heraclius informed Pope Urban III of the loss of Nazareth and of many other cities in the kingdom to Saladin.777 Archbishop Letard was not in Nazareth when the city was sacked. In the confusion following the battle of Hattin he had made his way to Tyre, which, under the leadership of Conrad of Montferrat, successfully resisted Saladin. In October 1187 Conrad issued three privileges confirming the rights of the commune of Pisa in the port of Tyre and in them he named Archbishop Letard as one of his counsellors.778 When Guy of Lusignan was set free in 1189 and decided to besiege Acre, Letard, who remained his loyal vassal, joined him there but, like so many other members of the Latin hierarchy, he died in the Frankish camp in the following year.779 Prior Theobald and the canons of Nazareth may have accompanied Archbishop Letard to Tyre and then to Acre. This is not recorded, but Prior Theobald was present with the Christian army when Acre fell to them on 17 August 1191 and was elected bishop of the city.780 Although the cathedral of Nazareth had been sacked, the fabric had not been substantially damaged. When Hubert Walter conducted negotiations with Saladin on behalf of Richard I of England in 1192, he requested that two Latin priests and two Latin deacons might be attached to Nazareth cathedral, which the sultan had restored to the Orthodox, to minister to Western pilgrims and to recite the Divine Office each day in the Latin rite, and his request was granted.781 A new archbishop of Nazareth was consecrated and is first mentioned in 1196 when he and the bishop of Bethlehem were commissioned by Pope Celestine III to ensure that the priest of the Venetian church of Tyre was allowed to exercise his full rights.782 The archbishop’s name is not given in this document, nor is it recorded in Innocent III’s Register for 8 February 1199 when the archbishop of Nazareth and the bishop of Valania were appointed papal judges delegate to investigate a dispute between the Templars and the Hospitallers.783 It is likely that this was Archbishop Albert of Nazareth, who on 21 September 1206 was among the witnesses at the court of Acre of the solemn betrothal of Queen Maria of Jerusalem to Peter II of Aragon, though it is possible that the two earlier documents might relate to an unnamed predecessor.784 By 1210 Albert had been succeeded by Archbishop Robert, who was present at the coronation of Queen Maria and John of Brienne at Tyre.785 In 1217 Robert took part in the council held outside Acre in the tent of King Andrew II of Hungary at which the initial campaigns of the Fifth Crusade were planned.786 777 778 779

780 781

782 784

Libellus de expugnatione, XVII, 170–1; PKHL no. 149, pp. 325–7. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 519, 521–2, II pp. 859–65, 869–77. Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 96, 147; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, pp. 22, 87; Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, I, 42, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, I, p. 93; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, p. 98. Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 189. Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. M. Ailes and M. Barber, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 2003), lines 12132–49, I, 196; Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, VI, 34, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, I, p. 424; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, pp. 378–9. 783 PKHL no. 175, pp. 355–7. Innocent III, Register an. I, no. 561, pp. 818–20. 785 786 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 645, III, pp. 1061–6. Eracles XXXI, 1, p. 311. Eracles XXXI, 10, p. 323.

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In the thirteenth century the archbishops of Nazareth lived in Acre. The curia domini archiepiscopi Nazareni is first incidentally mentioned in a charter of the Teutonic Order of October 1230, as part of a boundary definition of a property in Acre, though it seems likely that the house had been granted to the archbishop who was first appointed to succeed Letard II in the 1190s.787 There is no evidence that the full chapter of Austin canons of Nazareth was reconstituted at Acre: no new prior is mentioned for almost sixty years after Prior Theobald had become bishop of Acre in 1191.788 The reason for this was almost certainly financial: most of the lands of the community were situated in Galilee, and they had all come under Muslim control. The implementation of Saladin’s concession allowing Latin clergy to have an altar in Nazareth cathedral did not depend on the restoration of the chapter, since the archbishop could have appointed chaplains to carry out those duties. There is no evidence that this was done. Although the Ayyubid princes encouraged Christian pilgrimage, Western pilgrims were reluctant to travel in Muslim-held territory, and many of those who went to the Holy Land in the thirteenth century confined their devotions to visiting shrines such as Tortosa and Mt Carmel which remained in Frankish hands. This caution was exacerbated by the papal ruling which enacted that pilgrims were forbidden to enter Muslim territory unless they had first obtained a papal dispensation. This was an early example of an economic sanctions policy, since pilgrims generated income for Muslim rulers in whose lands they travelled.789 The German pilgrim Thietmar, who did visit Nazareth during a truce in 1217, makes no mention of the presence of Latin clergy there, but says only that he had passed through the city of Nazareth in Galilee, ‘where the Annunciation of the Lord was made and where the Lord was brought up and spent His boyhood’.790 By 1 September 1220, Archbishop Robert had been succeeded by Archbishop Hugh, one of the signatories to an appeal by the senior clergy of the Latin Kingdom to Philip Augustus for help against al-Muazzam of Damascus, while the Fifth Crusade was in Egypt.791 Hugh was an influential figure in the Kingdom of Acre. In March 1224 Honorius III appointed him, together with the patriarch of Jerusalem, the archbishop of Tyre and the bishop of Acre, to arrange the wedding by proxy of Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem to Emperor Frederick II before she set sail for Italy to join her husband.792 In 1228 when Frederick and his crusader army reached Acre, Archbishop Hugh, as a crown vassal, was one of the leaders who assembled there to welcome him.793 By the terms of the Treaty of Jaffa, which Frederick II agreed with Sultan al-Kamil in February 1229, Jerusalem and some other territories were restored to the Franks. According to Western sources these included Nazareth, although this is not named in the Muslim sources.794 Even if the Western accounts are correct, it would have been difficult for the Franks to settle again in the unwalled town of Nazareth, isolated in the 787 788 790 792 794

Strehlke no. 73, pp. 57–8; the location of the palace in Acre is discussed by Pringle, Churches no. 427, IV, pp. 137–9. 789 See p. 119. D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London, 1999), 86–7, 104–5. 791 Thietmar, Pilgrimage, in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 96. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5. 793 Honorius III, Regesta no. 483. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. Hewlett, II, 351. In copies of a letter sent by Hermann of Salza, Master of the Teutonic Order, to Gregory IX, and of a letter sent by Frederick II to his vassals in the empire: Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, 90–9. The Arabic version of the treaty has not been preserved. The Arabic and Western evidence is examined in Pacifico, Federico II, 242–4.

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middle of Muslim territory. Archbishop Hugh certainly made no attempt to return there. During the next eight years Archbishop Hugh took an active part in the secular and ecclesiastical affairs of the Latin East. He witnessed some important public transactions795 and was one of the prelates who in 1232 mediated peace between Henry I of Cyprus and his barons and the Latin Church of Cyprus about the payment of tithes.796 In 1236, together with the bishop of Acre, he was empowered by Gregory IX to mediate peace between the commune of Acre and Frederick II’s representative in the Latin Kingdom, and in April 1237 Gregory IX ordered Archbishop Hugh, the bishop-elect of Sidon and the archdeacon of Sidon to scrutinise the validity of the marriage between King Hethum of Cilicia and his wife, Isabel.797 Hugh may not have been able to discharge that commission, as he died later in 1237. His last known act was to sign a letter on 7 October 1237 to Theobald, King of Navarre, about practical arrangements for his forthcoming crusade.798 Hugh’s death was followed by a seven-year interregnum. His successor, Archbishop Henry, was consecrated by Pope Innocent IVon 3 February 1244.799 The see of Tiberias, the only suffragan of Nazareth, had been revived in 1241 after a vacancy of almost forty years. This was a consequence of Theobald of Navarre’s crusade. In May 1240 the sultan of Damascus had surrendered much of Galilee including Tiberias, together with the castles of Belfort and Safad, to the Franks.800 But Frankish political control of this area was initially rather tenuous, and one of the first acts of Archbishop Henry on arrival in the East was to sign an appeal for military aid to the kings of France and England on 25 November 1244. This described how an army of Khwarizmian mercenaries on their way from northern Iraq to take service with the sultan of Egypt had sacked Tiberias, and then had gone south to sack Jerusalem, bringing fifteen years of Frankish rule there to an end.801 This appeal led Louis IX of France to take the Cross, and although he was defeated when he invaded Egypt in 1249–50 his decision to stay in the Holy Land with his army for a further four years had a decisive influence on Archbishop Henry’s policies. While he was staying at Acre, probably in 1251, the king went to Nazareth on the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March, and Odo of Tusculum, the papal legate attached to his crusade, sang Mass at the high altar of the cathedral.802 This no doubt acted as a stimulus to Archbishop Henry to restore the liturgical service at Nazareth. In 1251 he drew up a new Rule for the prior and canons. In his preface he described how, in the sixty-four years which 795

796 797 798

799 800

801 802

A grant by Bohemond IV of Antioch to the Master of the Hospital in 1231: CGOH I, no. 2001; the settlement of a dispute between the Templars and the Hospitallers in 1235: CGOH I, no. 2117, and Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 789, III, pp. 1373–4; an agreement between Sta Maria Latina and the Teutonic Order in 1235: Strehlke no. 80, pp. 63–4; a lease of property by the abbot of Sta Maria Latina to the Hospital of St John in 1236: CGOH I, no. 2142. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 87, pp. 226–9. Gregory IX, Registres nos. 2968, 3597. Hugh’s death is recorded in 1237 in Annales de Terre Sainte, 439. The letter to Theobald of Navarre is in Martène and Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, I, cols. 1012–13, and is dated nonas Octobris. RRH no. 1083 calendared it under 1238, but if the Annales dated Hugh’s death correctly the letter should be assigned to 1237. Innocent IV, Registres no. 459. Hamilton, Latin Church, 262; Painter, ‘The Crusades of Theobald of Navarre and Richard of Cornwall’, 478–81. Innocent IV commissioned Archbishop Henry and the bishop of Tiberias to oversee the appointment of a new prior of the Holy Sepulchre in 1244: Innocent IV, Registres no. 458. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. Geoffrey of Beaulieu, The Pilgrimage of Louis IX from Acre to Nazareth (March 1251), trans. in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 187.

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had elapsed since Saladin’s conquest, the church of Nazareth had suffered severe spiritual as well as temporal damage, either because the canons had neglected their duties, or because there had been no canons in office (ob negligentiam et etiam defectum canonicorum). He added that ‘rarely or never could a suitable canon be found who was willing to devote his life to God in that place [Nazareth]’. The new constitution had been drawn up with the agreement of William the archdeacon, Prior Peter, Canons Nicholas, Geoffrey and Andrew the Spaniard, priests, and Canon Sancius, who was unable to write his name.803 This constitution provided that the church of Nazareth should be served by a prior and six canons living in community under the Rule of St Augustine. The archdeacon of Nazareth, ‘as is known to have been the ancient custom of this church’, should be a secular priest or deacon and live in a separate house. Regular sources of income were assigned to the canons, which included the estate of Ayloth. The constitution concludes on a note of cautious realism: in time of war, or if Muslim attacks made it impossible to collect dues, the prior alone should remain in the Holy Land with the archbishop, while the rest of the canons should be sent overseas to administer the priories and churches belonging to Nazareth there. The constitution was ratified by Innocent IV in January 1252.804 No doubt the fact that, as a result of Louis IX’s presence, Archbishop Henry was able to receive rents again from the estates of his church in Galilee made it possible for him to institute proceedings to recover the Italian property of Nazareth. At some time between 1204, when Prior William was in charge of St Mary of Nazareth at Barletta, and 1252, the archbishop of Trani had transferred the priory to the prior of St Nicholas at Bari.805 Since no complaint was made about this by the archbishop of Nazareth, it is possible that the transfer was made during the long interregnum following the death of Archbishop Hugh in 1237. On 7 May 1252 Brother Adam, representing the church of St Mary of Nazareth de Ultramare, appeared at Barletta before the king’s justice, Sebastian, and laid claim to the priory of St Mary of Nazareth in that city, then held by the prior of St Nicholas of Bari. The inquiry lasted for several months but judgement was finally given in favour of Adam, who was placed in corporal possession of the Barletta priory, though the church of Nazareth had to pay a hefty indemnity both to the prior of Bari and to the archbishop of Trani for the expenses they had incurred in administering this property. Prior Adam continued to press for the restoration of other properties belonging to the church of Nazareth in Apulia.806 Before he left the Holy Land Louis IX arranged a truce with an-Nasir of Damascus, guaranteeing that the status quo of Frankish territory should be maintained for two years, six months and forty days; this truce was subsequently extended by the Frankish government in Acre. This enabled Archbishop Henry and his canons to retain control over all their lands in 803

804 805

806

Sancius, in place of a signature, stated: rogo pro me subscribi huic, cum scribere non possim. Andreas is identified in this document only by his initial; his full name is known from a charter of 1255, in Rey, Recherches géographiques et historiques, 36–8. Innocent IV, Registres no. 5538. Nitti di Vito, Le pergamene di Barletta, no. 190, VIII, pp. 244–5 (anno 1204). On 2 February 1231 Gregory IX ordered the archbishops of Bari and Trani and the prior of St Mary of Nazareth in the archdiocese of Trani to examine complaints made about the bishop of Potenza, but it is not clear from this document whether the Barletta community at that time was still a dependency of the priory of Nazareth in the Holy Land, or whether it had already become subject to St Nicholas of Bari: Gregory IX, Registres no. 601. Nitti di Vito, Le pergamene di Barletta, nos. 267, 269, 270, 273, 279–80, VIII, pp. 337–8, 342–4, 346–7, 359–61.

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Galilee, and in July 1255 they leased four estates, one of which was the New Testament village of Cana, to William of Chastelneuf, Master of the Hospital. In return the Hospitallers agreed to pay a rent of 1,300 Saracen bezants a year for the first three years and thereafter, when the lands had been restored to full productivity, 2,300 bezants a year. The lease was witnessed by three canons, John of Brabant, Peter and Mark. John of Brabant describes himself as ‘bailli de Nazareth’, signifying that he had been responsible for administering these properties.807 In October 1255 the archbishop and chapter of Nazareth gave land at Saffuriya to Madius de Marino, a Genoese merchant from Acre, in recognition of services he had performed for them. These are not specified, but may have related to the transmission of responsions from their Apulian properties. Three canons witnessed this transaction: Peter the Spaniard, and the priests Hilary and Andrew the Spaniard.808 In March 1256 Pope Alexander IV gave permission to the archbishop of Nazareth, and by implication also his chapter, to live in Acre, ‘where you have a church, houses and property’ because the Muslims had once again taken possession of Nazareth.809 Since there is no evidence that Nazareth had come under Islamic rule again, it would appear that Archbishop Henry had sought permission to return to Acre when the truce arranged by Louis IX expired, in case it was not renewed. This papal letter is the first evidence that the canons of Nazareth had a church in Acre distinct from the archbishop’s palace there. Alexander IV does not name this church, but in a bull of Pope Clement IV of 1267 it is called St Mary of the Knights.810 Pringle has argued that this was almost certainly the church which had formerly belonged to the Military Order of St Thomas of Canterbury, which had presumably been sold to the archbishop of Nazareth at some time before 1256. The canons needed a church and living quarters in Acre as a possible place of refuge after Archbishop Henry had reconstituted the chapter. St Mary of the Knights was situated very near the archbishop of Nazareth’s palace.811 In 1258 a Mongol army led by Hulegu Khan sacked Baghdad and prepared to move towards the west. One consequence of the political uncertainty which this news produced was that the Muslim tenants of the archbishops of Nazareth became unruly. In October 1259, Archbishop Henry, when renegotiating the terms of the lease of the four estates in Galilee to the Hospitallers, admitted: ‘it is obvious to everybody that . . . the church of Nazareth cannot maintain control over and defend its estates . . . both because of Saracen raids, but also because of the serious unrest which is continually present among the Muslim peasants on [those] estates’.812 The archbishop and the canons leased a further nineteen estates to the Hospitallers for an annual rent of 14,000 bezants. This presumably represented most of their remaining endowments in Galilee.813 On 1 March 1260 a Mongol army moved west and conquered Damascus. The Frankish leaders in Acre, directed by the papal legate Thomas of Lentino, sent an appeal to Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence and brother of Louis IX of France, asking for help, and Archbishop Henry was one of the signatories.814 On 3 September the Mongol army in 807 809 811 814

808 CGOH II, no. 2748, pp. 787–9. Rey, Recherches géographiques et historiques, 36–8. 810 Alexander IV, Registres no. 1300. Clement IV, Registres no. 511, pp. 562–4. 812 813 Pringle, Churches no. 426, IV, pp. 136–7. CGOH I, no. 2934. CGOH I, no. 2936. J. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Lettre des chrétiens de Terre-Sainte à Charles d’Anjou (20 avril 1260)’, ROL 2 (1894), 211–15.

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Syria, led by Kitbuqa, was defeated by the Egyptian Mamluks at Ain Jalut near Bethsan. The Mongols were driven back beyond the Euphrates, and the new Mamluk sultan Baibars appointed a governor in Aleppo to oversee his new Syrian lands. Although the opposing armies had moved freely through Galilee, no damage had been caused to Nazareth. The Franks at Acre had taken no part in the fighting, but had allowed the Mamluk forces free passage through their territory, thus aiding their victory at Ain Jalut, so there seemed no reason for them to fear that the Mamluks would be hostile. Indeed, in 1261 Baibars renewed the treaty with the Frankish government at Acre, which they had previously negotiated with an-Nasir of Damascus, by which the territorial status quo of the Frankish territories was guaranteed.815 Archbishop Henry continued to defend the property rights of his community. In 1262 the papal legate Thomas was asked to adjudicate in a dispute between the church of Nazareth and the abbey of Josaphat about the ownership of the tithes of the estates of Ligio and Tannoch.816 In January 1263 Henry and his canons reached a settlement with the Hospitallers about the ownership of the casale Robert. The Church of Nazareth surrendered its claims in return for a curia in Acre, an initial payment of 4,000 gold bezants and an annual payment thereafter of 400 gold bezants.817 In 1255 the Hospitallers had taken over the Mt Tabor monastery, and on 8 February 1263 Archbishop Henry exempted that house completely from his episcopal jurisdiction, in recognition of the fact that the Hospitaller garrison there was protecting Nazareth.818 A few weeks later Sultan Baibars took an army from Egypt to the Holy Land and, claiming that the Franks had broken their treaty with him, invaded Galilee. He ordered the cathedral of Nazareth to be razed to the ground, describing it as ‘the most famous of [the Frankish] holy places, where, in their view, the Christian religion had its origin’. Baibars’ forces then advanced on Mt Tabor, which the Hospitallers abandoned without a fight.819 Although the attack was unexpected, there is no report that any of the canons were in Nazareth when it happened. Prior Peter of Nazareth died at about this time, and Canon Sancius was elected in his place. He was the member of the chapter who in 1252 had been unable to write his name. Presumably this was no longer true in 1263, since by that time he had been ordained priest; nevertheless, Pope Urban IV refused to ratify his nomination and appointed instead his own candidate, an Austin canon named Guy de Paladru.820 The pope, who before his election had been patriarch of Jerusalem, presumably knew Canon Sancius and considered him unsuited to high office: instead, he appointed him prior of St Mary of Nazareth at Barletta.821 The loss by the Franks of much of Galilee caused a sharp decline in the revenues of the church of Nazareth, because the property leases which Archbishop Henry had made in favour of the Hospitallers contained a clause stipulating that annual payments would be made only if the lands remained in Christian hands. After 1263 the archbishop lived in his 815 817 819 821

816 Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 142–8. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 79, pp. 187–8; Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 55, pp. 112–15. 818 Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ nos. 324, 330, pp. 97–8; CGOH I, no. 3051. See pp. 204–5; CGOH I, no. 3054. 820 Ibn Wasil, cited by Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 147 n. 26. Urban IV, Registres no. 1508. Urban IV, Registres no. 2477.

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palace at Acre and the canons a short distance away at St Mary of the Knights, and they quarrelled about the distribution of income from their remaining properties. The dispute was referred to Rome, and the new pope, Clement IV, gave judgement in 1267. This seems to have been based on a copy of the constitution of the Nazareth chapter, antedating that drawn up by Archbishop Henry and no longer extant. The pope enacted that there should be twelve canons of Nazareth (the number which there had been in the twelfth century), including the prior, but not counting ‘the brothers, both clerks and laymen, who take no part in the work of the chapter’. The twelve should include those canons who served the church of St Mary of the Knights in Acre. That church and its appurtenances should belong to the canons alone, except that offerings made there should be shared between them and the bishop of Acre. The archbishop of Nazareth should have full control over the houses which he owned in the city of Acre, but the income from all other properties in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond the seas should be divided equally between the archbishop and the canons.822 Archbishop Henry died in 1268823 and was succeeded by Guy de Paladru, the prior appointed by Urban IV, who was himself succeeded by Prior William. On 11 March 1271 Archbishop Guy, Prior William and Canons Amadeus and Robert met with Hugh Revel, the Master of the Hospital, in the presence of the Master of the Temple and the Marshal of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and agreed to annul the settlement mediated between their communities by Thomas of Lentino, the papal legate, about the casale Robert, an estate near Saffuriya in Galilee.824 In October 1272 Pope Gregory IX entrusted Archbishop Guy, together with the bishops of Bethlehem and Banias, with ensuring that Hugh III of Cyprus, who claimed the throne of Jerusalem, was represented at the curia when the pope heard the petition of Lady Mary of Antioch, who was contesting his claim.825 On 14 June 1288 Pope Nicholas IV appointed a Templar, William of St John, as archbishop of Nazareth in place of Archbishop Guy, who had died. The pope had to intervene, because the three remaining canons of Nazareth, Robert (who had held office since at least 1271), Lawrence and Hubert were unable to agree about the choice of a successor. William of St John was already resident in Acre, and Pope Nicholas sent him a pallium and ordered the bishops of Tortosa, Gibelet and Sidon to consecrate him.826 Although Baibars had destroyed the cathedral of Nazareth, the shrines in the crypt had not been vandalised, which is an indication of the respect shown by the Muslim authorities to the prophet Jesus and to Mary, his mother. In April 1272 Hugh III of Cyprus, who was titular king of Jerusalem, agreed a truce of ten years and ten months with the sultan of Egypt, which made it possible for Latin pilgrims to visit Nazareth again.827 Lord Edward of England – who was at that time present in the Holy Land as a crusader – may, Maurice Powicke suggested, ‘have taken the opportunity to visit Nazareth’.828 The Dominican Burchard of Mt Zion, who wrote between 1274 and 1285, certainly went there. ‘I have said many Masses in that place’, he reports, ‘[including one] on the feast of the Holy 822 824

825 827

823 Clement IV, Registres no. 511, pp. 162–4. Eracles XXXIV, 11, p. 457. CGOH I, no. 3414 (the original settlement is in CGOH I, no. 3051). The Raybaud Inventory calendars another copy of this text, which it ascribes wrongly to Archbishop Henry of Nazareth: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 352, p. 102. For the location of this estate, see Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 18–21. 826 Urban IV, Registres no. 103, p. 36. Nicholas IV, Registres, nos. 165, 175–7. 828 Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum, III, xii, 11, p. 244. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, II, 602–3.

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Annunciation . . . There are three altars in the chapel, and it is cut in stone from the rock.’829 Another Dominican, Riccoldo of Monte Croce, who made the pilgrimage in 1288–9, gives a fuller description: [At Nazareth we] found the great church almost completely destroyed . . . except the single chamber where Our Lady received the Annunciation . . . There is there an altar to the Lord in the place where Our Lady was praying when the angel Gabriel was sent to her, and an altar of the angel Gabriel, where Gabriel stood . . . We celebrated Mass on both altars and preached the word of God.830

This chapel must have been maintained, and was presumably administered by the canons of Nazareth so that it was ready for the use of visiting Latin clergy. Provision had been made for this in the treaty negotiated between the Frankish rulers of Acre, Sidon and Athlit and Sultan Qalawun in 1283: ‘Concerning the church of Nazareth, it is agreed that four houses should be safely held there for the use of clergy and pilgrims.’831 Many Latin pilgrims did not visit Nazareth, which was under Muslim rule, but relied on the spiritual privileges offered by the canons’ church in Acre. The guide drawn up in c. 1280, Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, lists ‘Nostre Dame de Chevalers’, where an indulgence of five years was offered to pilgrims who prayed there.832 Archbishop William died at Acre on 3 July 1290: part of his tombstone has been found there. His successor, Archbishop Peter, though appointed before the fall of Acre in 1291, may not have visited the city. If he did so he succeeded in escaping when it was sacked in 1291, and he retired to Padua where he died in 1326–9.833 Any of the Austin canons of Nazareth who escaped from Acre, or were absent from it during the siege, went to live in their priory at Barletta in Apulia. In the seventeenth century the crypt shrine of Nazareth passed into the hands of the Franciscans of the Custodia Terrae Sancte, who still administer the church of the Annunciation at Nazareth.834

The Austin Canons of St Abraham’s at Hebron Among the witnesses to the charter which Patriarch Arnulf issued on the day of his enthronement in 1112 in favour of the Hospital of St John was Rainier, Prior of St Abraham.835 That was the name frequently given to Hebron, the city where the Cave of Macphelah was situated, which was the traditional place of burial of Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of their wives Sarah, Rebekah and Leah.836 This became an important Jewish shrine; in late antiquity it also became a focus of Christian pilgrimage. Bede reported that there was a walled enclosure at Hebron containing the tombs of the three patriarchs, which were of white stone and looked like chapels, the tombs of their wives, which were less ornate, and a seventh tomb, 829 830

831 833

834 836

Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 47. Riccold de Monte Croce [Riccoldo of Monte Croce], Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et en Proche Orient et Lettres, ed. R. Kappler (Paris, 1997), 46–7. 832 RRH no. 1450. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. J. Prawer, ‘A crusader tomb of 1290 from Acre and the last archbishops of Nazareth’, Israel Exploration Journal 24 (1974), 241–51; there is a photograph of William’s tombstone in Pringle, Churches no. 427, IV, p. 138. 835 The history of the shrine after 1291 is discussed by Pringle, Churches no. 169, II, pp. 121–3. CGOH I, no. 25. Genesis 23; 25: 8–9; 35: 27–9; 49: 29–33; 50: 12–13.

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less well fashioned, which was that of Adam.837 Muslims also venerate Abraham, both as a prophet and as the father of Ishmael, the founder of the Arab race, and by the tenth century the shrine of Hebron had been converted into a mosque. A prayer hall had been built across the walled precinct, which contained the tombs of Isaac and Rebekah, but the other tombs remained in the surrounding courtyard. The Muslims identified the seventh tomb as that of Jacob’s son Joseph.838 The Franks captured Hebron in 1099, and in March 1100 Godfrey of Bouillon appointed Gerard of Avesnes as its lord.839 The Franks also took over the mosque, but when Saewulf visited it in 1102–3 few changes seem to have been made. His account is very dependent on that of Bede.840 Although Western theologians saw in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac a type, or symbol, of the sacrificial death of Christ, a parallel alluded to in the canon of the Roman Mass, there was no cult of him or of the other Old Testament patriarchs in the Western Church. The situation in the Eastern Orthodox Churches was very different. When the Russian abbot Daniel went to Jerusalem later in Baldwin I’s reign, he was determined to visit Hebron, despite the dangers posed to travellers by raiding parties from Muslim-held Ascalon. First, he wished to see the oak of Mamre near Hebron where it was believed that Abraham had entertained three angels. Writing in the Orthodox tradition, Daniel describes how ‘under this oak came the Holy Trinity to the patriarch Abraham and dined with him there’. This incident has indeed been an important motif in Russian religious iconography.841 Daniel then went on to Hebron, where he found the site much as it had been in Muslim times, though it would seem to have been taken over for the purposes of Christian worship, since he comments that ‘this place is now called St Abraham’.842 It is not known when the community of Austin canons first took charge of this shrine. They had been established before Patriarch Gibelin died in 1112, and they may have been introduced at Hebron by him. Prior Rainier of St Abraham was in Jerusalem on 20 June 1112 and witnessed Baldwin I’s diploma confirming the property of the Hospital of St John. Rainier is named last among the clergy on the witness list, which suggests that he had not been appointed very long before.843 He was still prior in 1119–20, when his community became well known because of a remarkable discovery. The canons had turned the Muslim prayer hall into a church. One day, when one of them was praying there alone he felt a strong draught of air surge up from between two of the paving stones. Rightly supposing that this indicated that there was a vault beneath the church, he reported this to his superiors and set in train a complex sequence of excavations. Odo the dean and Canon Arnulf took the lead in this work. First, the paving stones had to be cut away to provide access to the vault, and then Brother Arnulf, holding a lantern, was lowered on a rope and found himself standing in a stone-walled chamber which had no visible exit. He was sceptical about this apparently enclosed space, and sounded the walls 837 838

839 841

842

Bede, De locis sanctis, 8, pp. 266–7. See the (translated) account of Nasir-i Khusraw who visited Hebron in 1047 in Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 310–15; Pringle, Churches no. 100, I, pp. 223–9. 840 Murray, Crusader Kingdom, 199. Saewulf, p. 73. Genesis 18: 1–16; Daniel the Abbot, p. 146. Arguably the greatest artistic expression of this theme is the Rublev Trinity, now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. 843 Daniel the Abbot, p. 147. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 52, I, pp. 177–9.

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with a hammer until he found a slab of stone which produced a hollow sound. A team of canons then made the descent and helped him remove this slab, behind which was a long, narrow passage, the end of which was blocked and had to be unsealed. Beyond it lay a circular stone-walled room, big enough to hold about thirty people, which was completely empty. Further investigation revealed a slab in the floor which gave entrance to a complex of caves below. This site appeared to contain nothing but earth, but when that was dug over bones were found, which the canons attributed to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They attributed the many additional bones to unknown Israelites from the Old Testament era. The alleged bones of the patriarchs were taken to the upper church, where they were washed in wine; then on 6 October 1119 they were carried in procession and solemnly displayed for the veneration of pilgrims who had been drawn there by rumours of the excavations. This investigation is described in an anonymous work, the Tractatus de inventione sanctorum patriarcharum, written in c. 1136 by an Austin canon who had heard the story from the two main excavators, Odo and Arnulf. Pringle has commented that ‘the authenticity of this account is supported not only by evidence from other sources, but also from what we know of the layout of the caves themselves’. The discovery of the relics meant that the tombs of the patriarchs in the church and courtyard were in fact only cenotaphs, not burial places, but they were preserved and continued to serve as focuses of religious devotion.844 The excavations undertaken by the canons of Hebron were unique in the Crusader Kingdom. They were inspired by the belief that the shrine had been built over the Cave of Macphelah, and it was that holy site which the brethren wanted to be able to show to pilgrims. In order to show it to the best advantage, they built a new basilica to replace the converted prayer hall. Pringle has argued convincingly that the new church was built after the discovery of the caves, but is inclined to the view, on stylistic grounds, that it was begun very soon after that excavation. In the new church, an ornamental baldacchino was built at the east end of the south aisle, on the spot where the entrance to the excavations had been found. A flight of sixteen steps led down to the first chamber, from which the stone passage led to the round chamber above the cave. In that chamber two stelae have been found, which must date from the twelfth century, engraved in Latin characters with the names Abraham and Jacob. The cenotaphs of the patriarchs were incorporated in the new church; those of Abraham and Sarah at the entrance, those of Isaac and Rebekah in the body of the church, and the others in the precinct.845 By 1136 Prior Rainier had been succeeded by Prior Guido, who witnessed King Fulk’s confirmation of the gift by Hugh of St Abraham of the castle of Bethgibelin to the Order of St John. Guido had a personal interest in this transaction, because the castle shielded Hebron and its district from attacks by the garrison of Ascalon, which was still in Fatimid control.846 844

845 846

De inventione et translatione patriarcharum, ed. P. Riant, RHC Occ V, pp. 302–14. A second version of this text, written a century later, is preserved in a manuscript at Avranches: Ch. Kohler, ‘Un nouveau récit de l’Invention des Patriarches Abraham, Isaac et Jacob à Hebron’, ROL 4 (1896), 477–502. See Pringle, Churches no. 100, I, pp. 223–39 (citation, p. 226). See the plan in Pringle, Churches no. 100, I, p. 231. Mayer, Dipolomata no. 135, I, pp. 310–14. In the same year Guido also witnessed a gift by Bishop Roger of Ramla to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre: BB no. 61, pp. 153–8.

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In 1140 Canon Godfrey of St Abraham at Hebron was in Antioch, where he witnessed a confirmation by Prince Raymond of Poitiers and Constance, his wife, of property in the city belonging to the Holy Sepulchre. He also witnessed the settlement of a dispute between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the monks of St Paul’s Antioch.847 The canons of St Abraham owned the estate of Naharia in the Principality of Antioch. It is not known when they acquired it, or who gave it to them, but it seems probable that the endowment had been made shortly before 1140 and that Canon Godfrey had been sent to Antioch to take possession of it in the name of his community. The canons of St Abraham’s must have had adequate revenue to carry through their building programme. It is unlikely that this could have been financed solely by the offerings of pilgrims visiting the shrine, but the evidence about their endowments is sparse. By 1155 Prior Guido had been succeeded by Prior Roger. Ascalon had been captured by the Franks in 1153, and Hebron was therefore secure from random raids. Prior Roger was a member of the circle of Amalric, first count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the brother of Baldwin III. On 14 January 1155 Roger was in attendance at the royal court in Acre, where he witnessed Baldwin III’s confirmation of the sale of land by Hugh of Ibelin to the Chapter of the Holy Sepulchre and the confirmation of that sale by Hugh’s overlord, Count Amalric.848 Later that year when Count Amalric confirmed a gift by Philip of Nablus and his family to the Order of St Lazarus; Roger, Prior of St Abraham, headed the witness list, taking precedence over Andrew of Montbar, Master of the Temple.849 On 18 February 1163 Count Amalric was crowned king in succession to his brother, Baldwin III. A few days later Prior Adam of St Abraham, who had succeeded Prior Roger, was in Acre with eleven of his canons: Guiscard, Mgr Hugo, John the Lombard, Nicholas, Odo of Golgotha, Pagan, Peter the Deacon, Peter of the Auvergne, Robert, Stephen and Vivian. In the presence of the patriarch, Amalric of Nesle, they drew up an agreement about the administration of their property in Antioch, consisting of two houses in the city and the estate of Naharia on the road from the city to the Orontes Bridge. Peter Gaye, a burgess of Antioch, had become a confrater of St Abraham’s priory, and had given the canons 150 bezants. He was present in Acre, and the prior and canons appointed him their procurator in Antioch, with the right to administer all their property there and to receive their rents in return for an annual payment of 30 bezants. This payment was to be made at Acre each Eastertide to a representative of the canons of Hebron.850 This settlement did not prove stable, because when Peter Gaye died in or shortly before 1166, his property was disputed between his heirs and his creditors.851 It was not until 1177 that Prince Bohemond III resolved the dispute between Peter Gaye’s family and the Order of St John: among the properties in contention was the estate of Naharia, belonging to the canons of Hebron. This, together with other properties, was confirmed to the Order in this settlement in return for the payment by them of 1,000 Antiochene bezants to Peter Gaye’s heirs. Presumably the Order was responsible thereafter for the annual payments to the canons, and it would seem to have

847 849 851

848 BB nos. 76–7, pp. 176–83. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 233, I, pp. 427–31; no. 282, II, pp. 507–11. 850 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 285, II, pp. 514–16. Delaville Le Roulx, ed., Les archives no. xix, pp. 97–9. CGOH I, no. 367.

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honoured that commitment: certainly no complaint is known to have been made by the canons that the Order had failed to do so.852 During Lent 1168 Hebron, which had previously been under the direct jurisdiction of the patriarch of Jerusalem, was made a bishopric, and Reynald, nephew of the previous patriarch Fulcher, was consecrated its first bishop. The priory church became a cathedral, and the Austin canons formed the new chapter. William of Tyre pointed out that this was an innovation, not the revival of an ancient see, because in Orthodox times Hebron had only been a priory.853 One of the first Western pilgrims to visit the new cathedral was that inveterate relic hunter, Maurice of Craon, who in 1169 was given relics of the three patriarchs, authenticated by Bishop Reynald and his chapter.854 Bishop Reynald rapidly took his place in the public life of the kingdom, witnessing the settlement of a dispute about tithes mediated by Patriarch Amalric between Bernard, Bishop of Lydda, and the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1174 witnessing King Amalric’s confirmation of the gift by Walter of Beirut, Lord of Blanchegarde, to the Order of St John of the money fief which he held from the crown in the port of Acre.855 The canons of St Abraham seem to have been reasonably prosperous in the second half of the twelfth century. According to the list preserved by John of Ibelin, the bishop of Hebron in Baldwin IV’s reign was required to supply fifty sergeants to the crown in time of emergency.856 The priory came under the military protection of Reynald of Châtillon in 1176, when Baldwin IV approved his marriage to the heiress of Transjordan and also gave him the lordship of Hebron.857 Reynald kept Hebron safe from the growing power of Saladin, and the cathedral of St Abraham became a flourishing centre of pilgrimage. Henry the Liberal, Count of Champagne and brother-in-law of Louis VII of France, visited the shrine in 1179–80 and gave the community an endowment of 60 pounds a year together with a house in the city of Troyes.858 Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the kingdom during Amalric’s reign, gives a vivid description of how, on payment of a fee, Jewish pilgrims were allowed to visit the Cave of Macphelah by candlelight.859 John Phocas, an Orthodox pilgrim who went to the Holy Land in 1185, speaks of ‘the double tomb of Abraham in Hebron, and the Oak of Mamre at which the Patriarch Abraham entertained the All-Holy Trinity’.860 Pringle has established that there is only one reference to a church at Mamre between 1099 and 1187 while the site was under Frankish rule. The anonymous source known as the Second Guide, dating from c. 1170, which exists in a single manuscript in Vienna, records: ‘Going to Saint Abraham in Hebron [from Bethlehem] you first find the Root of Mamre. There is now a church there in honour of the Holy Trinity.’861 In his very thorough consideration about the archaeological evidence for the shrines related to the Oak of Mamre, Pringle concludes that, ‘The precise site of the medieval church of the Holy 852 853

854 855 856 858 859 860

Delaville Le Roulx, ed., Les archives no. xlii, pp. 130–1. WT XX, 3, p. 914; Mayer has argued that the foundation of the archbishopric of Petra and the diocese of Hebron assigned by William of Tyre to 1168 in fact took place in 1167: Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal, pp. 281–3. Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, I, p. 102. BB no. 158, pp. 307–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 359, II, pp. 624–6. 857 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 128. Hamilton, Leper King, 117. H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, III, 1152–1181 (Paris, 1861), no. 314, p. 381. Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. M. N. Adler (London, 1907), 25. 861 John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 334; PG 133: 959. Second Guide, p. 242.

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Trinity may never be known.’862 The church was in the diocese of Hebron: whether it was administered by the Austin canons, or, indeed, whether it was of the Latin rite, is not known either. Hebron was captured by a detachment of Saladin’s forces in September 1187.863 The bishop had certainly sought refuge elsewhere during the two months that had elapsed since the battle of Hattin, and the prior and chapter had probably accompanied him, although this is not documented. The bishop was at liberty in 1189 and joined Guy of Lusignan in his camp outside Acre, where he died in the winter of 1190.864 It is probable, though not certain, that this was Bishop Reynald, since William of Tyre, who frequently recorded the deaths of members of the hierarchy, does not mention a vacancy in the see of Hebron, though one might have occurred in the years 1185–7, after his Chronicle had ended. The new Muslim authorities stripped the cathedral of Hebron of its Christian ornaments, and it became a mosque again, but it remained a shrine to the three patriarchs, because this was a devotion which Christians and Muslims shared.865 Hebron and its diocese were not restored to the Franks by the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192, and a new bishop was not appointed for almost sixty years. There is evidence to suggest that the priory of Austin Canons relocated in Acre after 1191, but this is found in litigation about the property of the church of Hebron, dating from after the restoration of the bishopric in 1249. On 17 March in that year Pope Innocent IV had appointed a Cistercian, Bartholomew of Fossanova, to the vacant see, no doubt hoping that Hebron would be among the territories recovered by the Crusade of Louis IX which was then in progress,866 but because Hebron remained in Muslim hands Bishop Bartholomew had to live in Acre. A document of 1273 records a transaction which took place ‘in Acre in the bishop’s house in a certain room in which the bishop of Hebron was living’.867 The bishop’s house was situated in an area described in a document of 1253 as the territorium ecclesie Ebronensis.868 As Pringle has shown, this area was in the suburb of Montmusard, near the sea, outside the gate of St Michael.869 A lost document of 1265, calendared in the Raybaud Inventory of Hospitaller documents, drawn up in 1722–45, concerns houses built on the land ‘given to the church of Hebron by the kings of Jerusalem at Montmusard at Acre’. Pringle has pointed out that it is unlikely that this property was given before 1187, because Montmusard was developed as a suburb of Acre only in the early thirteenth century, and he suggests that after 1191 there might have been ‘an unrecorded bishop or surviving members of the chapter to whom such a grant could have been made’.870 There is no evidence that the see was filled between 1191 and 1249, but it is quite possible that during those years surviving members of the Hebron priory were given land by the crown on which to build a new monastery, and that part of this became the bishop of Hebron’s palace after 1249. Bishop Bartholomew sought to recover property which was still in Frankish control and which had once belonged to his see, and appealed to Innocent IV for help. He was able to 862 863 865 867 870

Pringle, Churches no. 192, ‘Rumaida, Tall ar-, Church of the Holy Trinity’, II, pp. 201–4 (quotation p. 204). 864 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 272. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87. 866 On the later history of the building, see Pringle, Churches no. 100, I, pp. 228–9. Innocent IV, Registres no. 4422. 868 869 CGOH I, no. 3574. Strehlke no. 104, pp. 82–4. Pringle, Churches no. 383, IV, p. 52. Strehlke no. 104, pp. 82–4; Pringle, Churches no. 383, IV, p. 51.

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produce documentary evidence to title in these endowments, which suggests that the priory of St Abraham had continued to exist as a community after 1187 and had preserved its archive. On 11 January 1253 Innocent IV commissioned the bishop of Lydda and the bishop-elect of Bethlehem to aid the bishop of Hebron to recover his property but, because they were serving with Louis IX’s army when the order reached them, they delegated this task to Canon Matthew, preceptor of the Holy Sepulchre.871 In September 1253 Canon Matthew investigated the claim of the bishop and chapter of Hebron that Poppo, Master of the Teutonic Order, held a number of houses in the ‘Hebron quarter’ of Montmusard which belonged to the community. The lawsuit was almost a caricature of such actions. Bishop Bartholomew demanded the restitution of the houses, the payment of 3,000 bezants in arrears of rent for the past twenty years, and the payment of his legal costs. Master Poppo pleaded the privilege of exemption from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction except that of the pope which his Order enjoyed, but agreed to make an ex gratia payment of 7 bezants each year on the feast of the Assumption to the church of Hebron for the lease of these houses. Bishop Bartholomew accepted this settlement, and the case was never reopened.872 He subsequently was on good terms with the Teutonic Knights. In 1254 he authenticated the copy of a privilege given to the Order by Frederick II, and in the same year he was appointed a judge delegate together with the bishop-elect of Bethlehem to settle a dispute between the Teutonic Order and a Cypriot nobleman.873 By 1263 Bartholomew had been succeeded as bishop of Hebron by Peter, who, together with Adam, Archdeacon of Acre, was entrusted by Pope Urban IV in January of that year with the administration of the temporalities of the sees of Jerusalem and Acre until a new patriarch of Jerusalem reached the Crusader Kingdom. As Urban IV had himself been patriarch of Jerusalem before his election as pope in 1261, his choice of administrators was an informed one, and was a necessary consequence of his decision that the bishopric of Acre should be held in plurality by the Latin patriarch until the Holy City was recovered. Bishop Peter and Archdeacon Adam discharged this function until the new patriarch, William II of Agen, reached Syria later in 1263.874 Having been administrator of the two sees, Bishop Peter was in a strong position to enlist the help of the new patriarch in the recovery of other properties belonging to his see. In March 1265 William II of Agen, acting in his capacity as papal legate, gave judgement in the dispute between the church of Hebron and the Order of the Hospital of St John about the estate of Naharia, which that Order had held as tenants since 1177. The Order had made no payments to the church of Hebron for many years, but Hugh Revel, Master of the Hospital, agreed henceforth to pay 70 bezants to the bishop of Hebron each year, for so long as the estate remained cultivated.875 Patriarch William II also arranged a settlement between the church of Hebron and the Hospitallers about certain houses in Montmusard which they had leased from the canons.876 871 873 875 876

872 Strehlke nos. 101–2, pp. 81–2. Strehlke no. 104 pp. 82–4. 874 Innocent IV, Registres no. 7344; see RRH no. 1012 for the original privilege. Urban IV, Registres nos. 189–91. CGOH I, no. 3120; confirmed by Clement IV in 1266: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 339, p. 100. This matter is known only from an entry in Raybaud’s calendar, which gives no details: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 335, p. 99.

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On 3 March 1266 Bishop Peter witnessed the settlement between Ralph of Beirut, Lord of Blanchegarde, and Aimery Barlais, made in the presence of the patriarch and members of the High Court of Jerusalem.877 He died soon afterwards, and in June 1267 Clement IV authorised Patriarch William II to appoint his successor. He chose a Dominican, Brother Geoffrey.878 Antioch was captured by Sultan Baibars in 1268, and the rents of the bishop of Hebron’s estate at Naharia could no longer be collected. The property owned by the church of Hebron in Montmusard then became its chief source of revenue, and this led to litigation about the payment of dues, sometimes very small, by tenants.879 The bishop and chapter of Hebron survived, though in straitened circumstances. On 27 June 1286 Bishop Geoffrey was present in a house at Acre which had once belonged to John of Montfort, Lord of Tyre, in which the young King Henry II of Jerusalem and Cyprus was lodging. The king issued a formal statement that he would not try to expel the French garrison from the castle of Acre if King Philip IV of France would confirm that he wished them to remain there. Bishop Geoffrey headed the clergy in the list of witnesses to this declaration, taking precedence over Geoffrey, Bishop of Lydda, Matthew, Bishop of Famagusta, the Masters of the Templars and of the Teutonic Order, and the representative of the Master of the Hospitallers, the abbot of the Templum Domini and the representatives of the Dominican and Franciscan friars.880 This is the last recorded mention of Bishop Geoffrey. There is no evidence to suggest that any members of the chapter of Hebron survived the sack of Acre in 1291.

The Austin Canons of St John the Baptist, Sebaste Sebaste, the Greek name by which the biblical city of Samaria was known in the Middle Ages, was believed from the fourth century to be the burial place of St John the Baptist. It became an important centre of Christian pilgrimage, because Jesus had said of his kinsman: ‘Among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist.’881 The prophets Elisha and Obadiah were also said to be buried at Sebaste.882 The bodies of these three holy men had been burnt in the reign of Julian the Apostate, but their ashes had been recovered and a cathedral had been built in the fifth century to house their shrine. Although the cathedral fell into ruin in the early years of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), the shrine of St John the Baptist was preserved as a crypt chapel.883 The Russian abbot Daniel was the first pilgrim to mention Sebaste after the Latin conquest. He went there in Baldwin I’s reign and records: ‘The tomb of John the Precursor is here and there is a fine church dedicated to him, and there is a very rich Frankish monastery.’884 This was the first mention of the house of Austin canons who administered the shrine until 1187. It is not known who was responsible for this foundation:

877 879 881 882

883

878 CGOH I, no. 3213. Clement IV, Registres no. 460; Eracles, XXXIV, xi, p. 457. 880 CGOH I, nos. 3514, 3515; Strehlke no. 126, pp. 116–18. Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 671–3. Luke 7: 28. Pringle points out that a confusion had occurred at this shrine between the prophet Obadiah and Obadiah the major-domo of King Ahab, described as a righteous man in I Kings 18: 3–4: Pringle, Churches no. 225, II, p. 283. 884 McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 214–15. Daniel the Abbot, p. 156.

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one possibility is Warner, Count of Grez, a kinsman of Godfrey of Bouillon, who was the dominant Frankish landholder in the region during Godfrey’s brief reign.885 In c. 1129 Sebaste was made a bishopric. This would seem to have been the work of the new patriarch, Stephen of Chartres, who was Baldwin II’s kinsman. The first evidence for the new see comes from March 1129, when Bishop Baldwin of Sebaste, in the presence of the patriarch, witnessed the gift by the king of an estate near Nablus to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.886 In Orthodox times Sebaste had been one of the twenty-seven suffragan sees of Caesarea.887 It was the only one that the Franks revived, which is an indication of the importance which they attached to the cult of St John the Baptist. Pope Innocent II took the community and its possessions under his protection.888 At that time the cathedral was simply the former chapel of the Austin canons, and the crypt shrine of the Baptist which they served was a separate building. In c. 1140–3 Usamah Ibn Munqidh of Shaizar visited the shrine chapel to pay his respects to St John the Baptist, whom Muslims also revere. He then went into the cathedral and found the canons singing the Divine Office: Inside there were about ten old men, their bare heads as white as combed cotton. They were facing the east and wore [embroidered] on their breasts staves ending in crossbars turned up like the rear of a saddle . . . They gave hospitality to those who needed it. The sight of their piety touched my heart.

This passage comes from the Kitab al-asa (The Book about Sticks), an anthology that Robert Irwin has rightly signalled as a source of historical materials to which ‘historians have still not paid sufficient attention’.889 Bishop Baldwin of Sebaste died before 1138. On 5 February of that year his successor, Bishop Rainier, together with Canon Peter of Sebaste, were present at the court of Fulk and Melisende and witnessed the exchange of Bethany for estates at Thecua by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, which prepared the way for the foundation of the convent of Bethany. In 1144 Bishop Rainier witnessed Baldwin III’s confirmation of his father’s diploma for the sisters of Bethany, and in 1145 was a witness to the settlement of a dispute between the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mt Tabor monastery mediated by Patriarch William I.890 In that same year Bishop Rainier found a silver casket reputed to contain the relics of John the Baptist and the prophets Elisha and Obadiah. It would appear that since the Austin canons had administered the shrine no relics had been on display, and the shrine was venerated simply because it marked the place of the prophets’ burial. Patriarch William wrote an encyclical letter to the Western Church, describing this new discovery and urging the faithful to contribute towards the building of a new cathedral at Sebaste on a scale worthy of enshrining the relics of these patrons.891 The news of this discovery soon spread throughout the Latin Church: Nicholas of Thvera in Iceland, who arrived on pilgrimage 885 887 888 889

890 891

886 Murray, Crusader Kingdom, 234–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 105, I, pp. 261–3. Descriptio parrochiae Ierusalem, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, p. 324. This is known from Alexander III’s privilege for the church: PKHL no. 117, pp. 290–2. Kitab al-asa, 528–9, trans. in F. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), 83–4; R. Irwin, ‘Usamah Ibn Munqidh’, in Murray, ed., The Crusades: An Encyclopaedia, IV, p. 1219. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 138, 210, I, pp. 315–21, 390–3; BB no. 24, pp. 83–5. A. Le Roux de Lincey, and A. Bruel, ‘Notice historique et critique sur Dom Jacques de Breul, prieur de Saint-Germain-des-Près’, Bibliothèque de l’École de Chartes 29 (1868), 492–3; RRH no. 235.

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soon afterwards, speaks of ‘Iohannis-Kastali, which was formerly called Samaria, where the holy relic of John the Baptist was found’.892 Bishop Rainier continued to take a leading part in the ecclesiastical life of the Crusader Kingdom. In 1155 he was one of the witnesses of a confirmation by Queen Melisende of the sale by Hugh of Ibelin of estates to the Holy Sepulchre.893 Later that year he was one of the seven prelates who accompanied Patriarch Fulcher to Rome to support him in his complaint to Hadrian IV about the high-handed conduct of the Hospitallers of St John.894 When he returned to Jerusalem in 1156 he was a member of the synod convoked by the patriarch to censure the canons of the Mount of Olives, an assembly at which Radulphus, the prior of Sebaste, was also present.895 After the new patriarch, Amalric of Nesle, took office in 1157, Rainier remained prominent. In 1161 he was present when the patriarch negotiated a settlement between the archbishop of Nazareth and the abbot of Our Lady of Josaphat.896 Prior Radulph also carried out public duties: when King Amalric held court at Ascalon in 1164, he witnessed a confirmation of the property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.897 As Bishop Rainier grew old, Prior Radulphus acted as his de facto coadjutor. Bishop Rainier headed the witness list of a deed of sale by Hugh of Caesarea to the Holy Sepulchre in 1166 and was accompanied by Radulphus, described as prepositus. This is an unusual title, which implies that he was administering the temporalities of the see.898 In 1168 when the patriarch confirmed the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre in possession of the church which they had built at Nablus, King Amalric headed the witness list, and Bishop Rainier and Prior Radulph were among the clergy present. Both of them also witnessed the patriarch’s confirmation to the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre of the church of St Nicholas outside Jaffa, a transaction which may have taken place on the same day.899 At some time between 1169 and Easter 1170 Bishop Rainier and Prior Radulphus authenticated relics of St John the Baptist which they had given to Maurice of Craon.900 Radulph succeeded Rainier as bishop, probably soon after that. One of his first acts was to send some of his canons to the West, carrying relics of St John the Baptist and of the prophets Elisha and Obadiah, together with a letter from himself, in which he explained that work on the new cathedral of Sebaste, inaugurated by his predecessor, had been suspended for lack of funding, and added that Patriarch Amalric of Jerusalem had offered spiritual privileges to benefactors who contributed to the building fund.901 The bishop’s letter is undated, but the role of William, Archbishop of Sens, as benefactor in response to this appeal shows that it must have been sent before 1176, when he was translated to Rheims. An important study of the French benefactors of Sebaste has been made by Nurith KenaanKedar.902 Radulph had certainly become bishop by 17 October 1175, when he and Prior 892

893 896 898 900 901

902

Nicholas’ visit is often dated to c. 1140, but this passage indicates that it took place after 1145: Nikulás the Abbot, trans. J. Hill, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 216. 894 895 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 188, I, pp. 371–3. WT XVIII, 6, p. 818. BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. 897 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 35, pp. 82–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 310, II, pp. 536–41. 899 BB no. 139, pp. 271–2. BB nos. 147–8, pp. 288–91; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 319, 339, II, pp. 556–7, 585–7. Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, no. 142, I, p. 103. G. Estournet, ‘Les origines historiques de Nemours et sa charte de franchises (1170)’, Annales de la Société historique et archéologique du Gâtinais, 39 (1930), doc. 6, 242–4. N. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘The cathedral of Sebaste: its Western donors and models’, in B. Z. Kedar, ed., The Horns of Hattin (Jerusalem, 1987), 99–120.

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John of Sebaste witnessed the confirmation by the abbot of Mt Tabor of the parish church of St Giles to the prior of the Holy Sepulchre.903 In the autumn of 1178 Bishop Radulph went to Rome as part of the delegation from the Crusader States to the Third Lateran Council, which met in March 1179. While he was there he obtained a confirmation from Alexander III of the west European possessions of the church of Sebaste.904 This is an index of the success of his appeal, and as Kenaan-Kedar has shown, the principal donors were closely related to each other. King Louis VII on 28 August 1170, in response to ‘the brethren sent to him’, gave an annual donation of 20 pounds a year from the dues of the township of Castrum Nantonis, which Kenaan-Kedar has identified as Château Landon.905 On 24 December 1170 Archbishop William of Sens, on the king’s orders, gave the canons of Sebaste the churches of Nemours and Ormesson, and Louis specified that two canons of Sebaste should be permanently attached to the church of Nemours.906 One of Archbishop William’s sisters was Duchess Elizabeth, whose second husband, William, Lord of Montmirail, had died while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land in 1168–9 and had been buried at Sebaste.907 She gave the canons an annual payment of 10 pounds in the money of Anjou. Alexander III confirmed all these endowments to the church of Sebaste.908 When Henry the Liberal, brother of Queen Adela and Count of Champagne, visited the Holy Land in 1179–80 he also gave the church of Sebaste 10 pounds a year payable from the dues of the fairs at Provins.909 Because of Louis VII’s instruction that two canons of Sebaste should live permanently at Nemours, the cathedral had representatives in France who could administer these scattered endowments and ensure that their mother church received the revenues from them. As a result of these acts of generosity, Sebaste became a rich church. John of Ibelin records that in Baldwin IV’s reign it owed service of 100 sergeants to the crown in times of emergency.910 Work on the new cathedral, suspended under Bishop Rainier, was resumed. The canons ‘rebuilt the cathedral on its Byzantine foundations, enclosing within it the underground tomb [shrine]’.911 The canons’ chapel, which had been built before 1145, was subsumed in the new building. Melchior de Vogüé, who visited Sebaste in the 1850s, described the ruins as ‘the best preserved Frankish cathedral in the Crusader States, except for the Holy Sepulchre’.912 But as Pringle explains, the construction of a new mosque on part of the site in 1892, and the destruction which this involved of part of the Latin cathedral, including the apse, has made it impossible to determine whether the canons completed work on the building before they were forced to abandon it in 1187. Pringle further notes that: ‘to the south of the church, remains of structures and cisterns have been noted among the modern village houses, 903 904 905 906

907

908 910 912

BB, no. 159, pp. 310–11; the copy of this charter held by Mt Tabor is edited by Paoli, Codice no. 204, I, pp. 246–7. WT XXI, 25, p. 996; PKHL no. 117, pp. 290–2. Instrumenta no. 58, in Gallia Christiana, XII, cols. 50–1; Kenaan-Kedar, ‘Cathedral of Sebaste’, 102. Estournet, ‘Les origines historiques’, 244–6. Alexander III states that Archbishop William also gave the canons the church of Treuzy. Elizabeth’s title of ‘duchess’ came from her first husband, Roger, Duke of Apulia (d. 1149), eldest son of Roger II of Sicily. Her second husband’s burial in Sebaste is attested in Alexander III’s bull. 909 PKHL no. 117, pp. 290–2. D’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, III, no. 315, p. 381. 911 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. Pringle, Churches no. 225, II, p. 296. De Vogüé, Les églises de la Terre Sainte, 358–62.

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but have yet to be adequately planned. It seems likely that this was the location of the canons’ cloister, and probably also of the bishop’s house.’913 There is no mention by William of Tyre, who made a practice of recording episcopal appointments, that a new bishop of Sebaste had been appointed before 1184, so it might be surmised that Bishop Radulphus was still in office then. In that year, Saladin once again attacked the castle of Kerak of Moab in Transjordan and, when Baldwin IV relieved the siege, the sultan withdrew to Damascus by way of Nablus, knowing that there would be no adequate garrison there, because most of the armed men had marched with the host to Kerak. Sebaste was vulnerable to this invasion. It had no defences and was sparsely inhabited. Theoderic, who had visited it in 1172, wrote: that ‘its great ruins give it the appearance of a city, and it remains eminent in the fertility of its fields and vineyards and in all the fruits of the earth’.914 King Baldwin wrote to Patriarch Heraclius, who was in the West on a mission, describing how the bishop of Sebaste had asked Saladin for a truce, and how his city had been granted immunity in return for the release of eighty Muslim prisoners of war.915 These negotiations were no doubt helped by the reverence in which Muslims held St John the Baptist and their reluctance to sack his shrine. In the later twelfth century the Byzantine pilgrim John Phocas went to the Holy Land and visited Sebaste. He supposed that the crypt chapel was the site of John the Baptist’s beheading: The prison is underground and there are twenty steps leading down to it. At the centre of it there is an altar containing the spot where [St John] was beheaded . . . Above . . . is a church in which lie two coffins carved in white marble. The one on the right contains the dust of the body of the venerable Forerunner after it was burnt, and the other the body of the Prophet Elisha.916

John is the only pilgrim to comment on the incorporation of the crypt in the new cathedral, which may imply that that was a recent architectural development. At dawn on 1 May 1187, Balian of Ibelin, who was a member of a delegation sent by the High Court to negotiate peace between Raymond III of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee and King Guy of Lusignan, went to Sebaste. He had spent the night in his palace at Nablus while the rest of the delegation had gone on ahead. His squire Ernoul, who wrote his account some years later, remembered how he and his master had set out while it was still dark. When they came to Sebaste, Balian remembered that it was the feast of Sts Philip and James, and wished to hear Mass. He therefore roused the bishop and, Ernoul reports, ‘sat and talked to him until daybreak. Then the bishop ordered his chaplain to vest himself and sing the Mass.’917 On 6 July Saladin defeated the main Frankish field army at Hattin, and his forces swiftly occupied most of the kingdom. The sultan’s nephew, Husam al-Din Muhammad, occupied Sebaste.918 The Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae, which is based on an account by 913 915 916 917

918

914 Pringle, Churches no. 225, II, pp. 283–97 (citation at p. 295). Theodericus, p. 188. Ralph de Diceto, Ymagines Historiarum, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 68, 2 vols. (London, 1876), II, p. 28. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 322; PG 133: 940. Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 27, p. 40. On the possible dating of Ernoul’s account, see P. Edbury, ‘Thoros of Armenia and the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in S. John and N. Morton, eds., Crusading and Crusading Warfare in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of John France (Aldershot, 2014), 183. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 268.

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a Frank who was present in the Holy Land at that time, reported that the bishop had still been in his cathedral when Husam and his forces arrived, and that they stripped and flogged him until he surrendered the treasures of the church to them. If this story is true, then the treasure would have been the accumulated wealth of pilgrim offerings. The bishop was then released and made his way perhaps to Jerusalem.919 At some time between 5 and 20 September Patriarch Heraclius, who was in Jerusalem (which Saladin had not yet attacked), notified Pope Urban III of among other things the loss of Sebaste.920 It is not known whether any of the canons of Sebaste lived through the troubled years after 1187. Two of them would have been in France at the priory of Nemours throughout that time in accordance with the terms of Louis VII’s endowment, and it is possible that any survivors from the Holy Land community joined them there. In December 1188 Pope Clement III wrote to Dilectis filiis canonicis de Nemos et fratribus Sebastiensis ecclesie and extended papal protection to the community.921 The bishop of Sebaste is not listed among the prelates who died in Guy of Lusignan’s camp during the siege of Acre in 1189–90922 and, since there is no evidence in the papal registers about the appointment of a new bishop of Sebaste after 1187, it may be inferred that the bishop survived until the arrival of the Third Crusade. In 1974 Rudolph Hiestand and Hans Mayer published a collection of sources about the appointment of a successor to Patriarch Monachus, who died in 1202, which showed that a prominent part was taken in the process by the bishop of Sebaste.923 It seems unlikely, though not completely impossible, that this could still have been Bishop Radulph, who had first been recorded as prior of Sebaste in 1156 and, indeed, it seems equally unlikely that a man of his age could have survived the flogging administered on Husam al-Din’s orders in 1187. This suggests that a new bishop had been appointed between 1185, when William of Tyre’s Chronicle ends, and the fall of the kingdom in 1187. He is not mentioned in any source after 1202, and no new bishop of Sebaste is known to have been appointed for the next fifty years. Pringle has pointed out that there is no reference in any source to a residence in thirteenth-century Acre for the bishop and canons of Sebaste, which seems conclusive evidence that they did not return to the Holy Land after 1187.924 Sebaste was never recovered by the Franks but, when Louis IX of France stayed in the Holy Land from 1250 to 1254 after the failure of his attack on Egypt, Pope Innocent IV seems to have supposed that he might succeed in securing lost territory. In February 1253 he wrote to Patriarch Robert of Jerusalem nominating Brother Hugh de Nissun to the vacant see of Sebaste.925 Hugh was a kinsman of William of Sonnac, Grand Master of the Templars, who – together with Louis IX’s brother, Robert of Artois – had been killed in the attack on Mansurah in Egypt in February 1250.926 Hugh of Nissun’s description as ‘brother’ indicates that he belonged to a religious order, though it is not known which one. He was in deacon’s orders at the time of his appointment as bishop, and it is possible that he was a Templar chaplain. Louis IX did not recover Sebaste, and consequently Hugh of Nissun was left without resources. Innocent IV’s successor, Alexander IV, appointed Hugh 919 922 924

920 921 Libellus de expugnatione, XVIII, 174–5. PKHL no. 149, pp. 324–7. PKHL no. 156, p. 334. 923 Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87. Hiestand and Mayer, ‘Die Nachfolge’, 128–30. 925 926 Pringle, Churches, IV, p. 164. Innocent IV, Registres nos. 6350, 6490. Barber, The New Knighthood, 148–52.

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an honorary papal chaplain, which would have carried some minor stipend, and the pope ordered his legate in the Holy Land, Odo, Bishop of Tusculum, to consecrate Hugh and to induct him in the see of Sebaste but, because that see remained in partibus infidelium, Alexander allowed Hugh to be appointed a canon of the Holy Sepulchre. This provided him with a residence and an income.927 The patriarch of Jerusalem at that time was James Pantaleon, who in 1261 was elected Pope Urban IV. On 11 June 1263, as part of his reorganisation of the Church in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, he took the unusual step of appointing Hugh of Nissun prior of the Holy Sepulchre and allowing him to hold that office jointly with the bishopric of Sebaste.928 The new patriarch, William II of Agen (1262–70), made no difficulty about this: he had no doubt discussed Hugh of Nissun’s appointment with the pope before he left the West. In 1264 Hugh was charged with overseeing the induction of a canon of Beirut provided by Urban IV.929 He died before 22 June 1268, when Clement IV gave leave to the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre to elect a new prior.930 No new bishop of Sebaste was appointed. The Austin canons of Sebaste survived after 1187 only as members of the community of Nemours who administered the French endowments of the cathedral of Sebaste. The shrine of St John the Baptist in the crypt chapel of the cathedral of Sebaste which they had served was preserved by the Muslim rulers, and Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit it. Burchard of Mt Zion, who went there between 1274 and 1285, wrote: The city of Sebaste, which was formerly called Samaria . . . has not a single house but it has two churches, built indeed in honour of St John the Baptist. The Saracens, however, have made a mosque for themselves out of one of them, which was the principal one and the cathedral, and more particularly out of the tomb of the same St John the Baptist, which was made of marble . . . In it the saint had been buried between Elisha and Obadiah. The Saracens honour St John greatly, after Christ and the Blessed Virgin, and think highly of him.931

The Abbey of the Austin Canons of St George’s Antioch The author of the Gesta Francorum reports that in the spring of 1098, when the First Crusade was besieging Antioch: ‘By this time all the paths were shut and blocked against the Turks, except for that by the river, where there was a castle and also a monastery.’932 This entrance in the south-west corner of Antioch, from which a road led to Latakia, became known to the Franks as St George’s Gate. Prince Tancred garrisoned the ‘castle’, a small fortress outside the wall, and the Frankish blockade of the city was completed. The monastery referred to in this passage would seem to have been that of St George, situated inside the walls near the gate which came to bear its name. William of Tyre, when writing about this siege, says ‘this is the western gate, which is now called the Gate of St George because the basilica of that same martyr stands nearby’.933 Hugh Kennedy is almost 927 929 931

932

928 Alexander IV, Registres nos. 1151–3, all issued in February 1256. Urban IV, Registres no. 264. 930 Urban IV, Registres no. 1983. Clement IV, Registres no. 639. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 53. For the later history of the cathedral buildings at Sebaste, see Pringle, Churches no. 225, II, pp. 287–97. 933 Anonymi Gesta Francorum, VIII, xix, p. 43. WT IV, 13, p. 251.

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certainly correct in arguing that this was an Orthodox foundation, dating from the second period of Byzantine occupation from 969 to 1084.934 The Orthodox Church venerated Sts George, Demetrius and Mercurius as the three military patrons, but St George was not venerated in the Western Church before the First Crusade. He soon acquired Frankish devotees after he was reported to have led a contingent of the heavenly host to support the crusaders in their battle against Karbuqa of Mosul, fought outside the walls of Antioch on 28 June 1098.935 It is not known whether there was an Orthodox community serving St George’s when the Franks took the city. If the church had been damaged during the siege, the Frankish rulers restored it. Walter the Chancellor records that, before setting out to campaign against the emir Bursuq in 1115, Prince Roger of Antioch prayed ‘in the churches of the blessed intercessor, St Mary the Virgin, Sts Peter and Paul, St George, and very many others’.936 This suggests that the church at that time was administered by Latin clergy like the other named churches listed, but this evidence is not conclusive. Secure evidence for a Latin presence there is found in 1140. In the spring of that year Prior Peter of the Holy Sepulchre visited Antioch to enforce the claims of his house to property in the principality which had belonged to the Holy Sepulchre in Orthodox times and to arrange for its administration. As part of this estate management, he granted two mills on the Orontes in perpetual tenure to three Syrian tenants. This act was witnessed by Abbot Ansgerius of St George’s, together with Benedict the cantor and Canons Guy and Sylvester. Another witness, Joscerand the chaplain, may also have been attached to St George’s.937 From this it is clear that the house was served by a community of Austin canons. The fact that their head was an abbot and not a prior suggests that the house had been established for quite a long time. In March 1160, Hugh of Corbeil arranged that a substantial consignment of wine from his estates should be given each year to the brothers of St Lazarus at Jerusalem, a military order which cared for lepers. The chief witness to this act was Liutprand (Leothbrandus), Abbot of St George’s.938 The members of the Corbeil family were important in Antioch: Roger of Corbeil was duke of Antioch in September 1180, when he witnessed a donation by Bohemond III to Petro Ferrando, Master of the Order of St James of the Sword.939 This fragmentary evidence suggests that there was a link between the Corbeil family and St George’s, and it is possible that they were its chief patrons. The abbey survived into the thirteenth century. In 1254 the Latin patriarch Opizo dei Fieschi, who had been on a visit to Italy, returned to Antioch accompanied by the Franciscan, Augustine of Nottingham, who was a papal chaplain. Innocent IV had given Opizo a faculty to appoint Augustine bishop of Latakia, because that see had been vacant for 934 935 936 937 938

939

H. Kennedy, ‘Antioch from Byzantium to Islam and back again’, in J. Rich, ed., The City in Late Antiquity (London, 1992), 189. Anonymi Gesta Francorum, IX, xxviii, p. 69. Walter the Chancellor, The Antiochene Wars, trans. T. Asbridge and S. B. Edgington (Aldershot, 1999), I, 2, p. 86. BB no. 78, pp. 183–5. De Marsy, ed., ‘Fragment d’un cartulaire’, 137–8. De Marsy wrongly identified this abbey with St George de Jubino in the Black Mountain of Antioch; see pp. 242–3. H. E. Mayer, ed., ‘Urkunden der Fürsten von Antiochia’, in Mayer, Varia Antiochena. Studien zum Kreuzfahrerfürstentum Antiocha im 12. und frühen 13. Jahrhundert (Hanover, 1993), no. 3, pp. 114–17.

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so long that the appointment of a new incumbent had devolved to the pope.940 This was a titular appointment, because the city and diocese of Latakia had been in Muslim hands since 1188, and Innocent IV therefore empowered Opizo to grant the office of abbot of St George’s Antioch, ordinis Sancti Augustini, to Bishop Augustine, so that he should have an adequate income. The pope explained that a new abbot was needed because the previous abbot, Bartholomew, had been removed from office, though he did not relate why that had been found necessary. Innocent specified that this arrangement would end if Latakia were to be restored to Christian control, and added that whereas he had formerly granted the right to institute an abbot of St George’s to the Master of the Schools of Antioch, that concession was revoked. When the abbacy next fell vacant it should enjoy freedom from external jurisdiction, except that of the patriarch.941 In 1260 Latakia was recovered by Prince Bohemond VI in the aftermath of the invasion of Syria by the Mongol Il-Khan Hulegu, to whom the young prince of Antioch had done homage.942 It is not known whether Bishop Augustine was still alive then or, if he was, whether the conditions imposed on him to surrender the abbacy of St George’s were honoured. During Opizo’s reign the community of St George’s enjoyed a privileged position in the religious life of the Latin Church. The festival calendar drawn up for Opizo lists the feast of St George on 23 April as a festum capporum, a feast-day on which copes should be worn during the liturgy. This was an unusual distinction, shared only by the feasts of St Mark the Evangelist, Sts Philip and James the Apostles, and St Evodius, bishop and martyr.943 In 1268 Antioch was captured and sacked by the army of Sultan Baibars. There is no evidence that any of the canons of St George survived this onslaught.

The Austin Canonesses of St Mary and All Saints Acre This community is recorded in the Livre of John of Ibelin in which he describes the ecclesiastical organisation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in c. 1180. Among the suffragans of the bishop of Lydda he lists ‘l’abbeece des .iii. ombres’.944 In 1237 Pope Gregory IX issued a privilege for the prioress and sororibus penitentibus inclusis (‘the enclosed penitent sisters’) of St Mary and All Saints at Acre, who lived under the Rule of St Augustine. Among the properties belonging to this community which he confirms is monasterium . . . Sancte Marie Trium Umbrarum, situm in episcopatu Liddensi, prope civitatem Ramatensem . . . in quo vestri conventus ord[inis] debet esse (‘the monastery . . . of St Mary of Trium Umbrarum, situated in the diocese of Lydda, near the city of Ramla . . . in which the convent of your Order ought to be living’).945 From this it would appear that the community had gone to live in Acre after 1191, but in the twelfth century had been living in the open country near Ramla, though the exact site of their house

940

941 943

944

Innocent IV, Registres no. 7399; W. R. Thomson, Friars in the Cathedral: The First Franciscan Bishops, 1226–1261 (Toronto, 1975), 202–3. 942 Innocent IV, Registres no. 7397. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 117, 122. V. Saxer, ‘Le calendrier de l’Église latine d’Antioche à l’usage du patriarche Opizo Ier Fieschi (1254–1255)’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 26 (1972), 115. 945 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. viii, p. 113. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4013.

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is not known.946 Although this area was in Frankish control again after 1204, the sisters, so far as is known, did not return there. Pringle has identified a passage in the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which sheds some light on the name of this house: ‘Outside [Ramla] to the south, is the church of Our Lady, where Our Lord showed Himself to her in three clouds, betokening the Trinity.’947 These three clouds are the tres umbrae from which the convent took its name. The term comes from the Vulgate translation of St Luke’s account of the Annunciation, in which the Archangel Gabriel says to Mary: virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi (‘the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee’).948 The name ‘Three Clouds’ would seem to have been commemorating a theological truth, not an event in time, the role of all Three Persons of the Trinity in the Incarnation of Christ. This was a matter of speculation in the Middle Ages, sometimes reflected in the art of the period.949 Mandeville gives the only explanation of this unusual dedication of the church near Ramla, but that is not evidence that the building was still in existence when he wrote his account, probably in the 1360s. The extent of his own travels has been contested, but he certainly used a variety of earlier sources, and this information came from one of them, though it has not yet been identified. It is possible that the church derived its name from a fresco of the Annunciation in the apse, but that is conjectural. From Gregory IX’s letter of 1237 it would appear that the convent had been founded at some time before 1187 to care for prostitutes who wished to enter the religious life. The nuns moved to Acre after 1191 when the city returned to Frankish control, perhaps at the suggestion of their visitor, the bishop of Lydda, who set up his pro-cathedral there.950 In the thirteenth century the convent acquired property in Apulia. In 1231 Archbishop Andrew of Acerenza gave the sisters the church of St Maria Nova at Matera because of the poverty of their Order which he feared might hamper their work. In 1237 Gregory IX confirmed this grant and had a copy of Archbishop Andrew’s grant transcribed in his register.951 In 1232 Gregory IX took the house at Acre and its Italian possessions under the protection of the Holy See, specifying the church at Matera and also the church of St Maria at Bagnola.952 On 30 December 1237 he issued a detailed confirmation of the property of the Acre house. In Apulia, in addition to the churches at Bagnolo and Matera, the sisters also owned the church of the Holy Trinity at Brindisi, and the pope added that in all these three places convents of the Order had been established. In the Crusader States, in addition to the monastery of Our Lady Trium Umbrarum near Ramla, the nuns possessed a house in the suburb of Jaffa, houses at Sidon given by Garnier l’Aleman, and a house in Nicosia given by Balian, Lord of Sidon. Queen Alice of Cyprus had given the sisters an estate at Paphos, where, with the permission of the bishop, the community had started to build a church dedicated to St Mary of Egypt. Gregory IX gave details of the revenues in money and kind provided by the lands at Paphos, and confirmed and augmented by Queen Alice’s son Henry I: 20 measures of 946 947

948 950

Pringle, Churches no. 215, II, p. 258. Pringle, Churches no. 215, II, p. 258; The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C. W. R. D. Moseley (London, 2005), 101; M. Letts, Sir John Mandeville: The Man and His Book (London, 1949), 132, on Mandeville’s use of the terms ‘ombre’, ‘enombre’. 949 Luke I: 35. A. B. Jameson, Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts, 2nd ed. (London, 1857), 274–5. 951 952 Pringle, Churches no. 405, IV, pp. 77–8. Gregory IX, Registres nos. 4007–8. Ughelli, VII, pp. 38–9.

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wheat, 266 measures of wine, 266 cheeses, 76 measures of legumes, 19 measures of rice, 95 containers of oil, 38 measures of sugar, 12 bundles of candles and 208 saddle-loads of wood, together with an annual payment of 1,092 white bezants from the revenues of the city of Paphos.953 As Nicholas Coureas has justly commented: ‘The [pope’s] letter illustrates the economic importance of Cypriot properties to [religious] houses in Latin Syria.’954 To this point the sources give a picture of a prosperous and expanding small Order with powerful ecclesiastical and aristocratic patrons. But a further letter written by Gregory IX in January 1239 suggests that all was not well. It is an encyclical to the Catholic hierarchy of Apulia, asking them to solicit alms for the sisters of the Order of St Mary and All Saints living in the newly founded Italian convents because of their great poverty.955 Nothing further is known about this house in Acre and its daughter priories, which suggests that it may have been over-ambitious and have tried to expand without having adequate resources or, perhaps, competent administrators. It may have been absorbed by another Order later in the thirteenth century, but that is conjectural. The location of the mother house in Acre is not known.956

953

954

Bullarium Cyprium, ed. C. Schabel, 3 vols., Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus 64 (Nicosia, 2010–12), d-29, pp. 325–8, re-edited from Ughelli, VII, pp. 39–42, according to which Queen Alice had also given the sisters houses in the city of Tripoli, which is plausible, because she had been married to Prince Bohemond (later Bohemond V of Antioch–Tripoli) from c. 1224–5 to 1229. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4013, appears to be an inaccurate version. Ughelli also records a minor donation of property in the city of Gravina in southern Italy made by Sister Alamanna, a member of the Order. 955 956 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 242. Ughelli, VII, p. 39. Pringle, Churches no. 422, IV, p. 130.

3 The Premonstratensian Canons

The community of Prémontré was founded in the diocese of Soissons in 1120 by St Norbert. It consisted of forty clerks who took monastic vows and adopted the Rule of St Augustine. Other foundations were made at Floreffe, Laon and Cuissy, and in 1126 Honorius II recognised these houses as a distinct order, ‘the Canons Regular of St Augustine, living in accordance with the way of life of the church of Prémontré’. St Norbert was made archbishop of Magdeburg, and the prior of Prémontré, Hugues de Fosses, succeeded him as abbot. He gave the Order its organisation and its distinctive interpretation of the Rule, and drew up a Liber Ordinarius to ensure that all the houses used a uniform liturgy. Each community of the Order was independent and was ruled by an abbot; the houses were organised by region, and annual assemblies of abbots were held to direct the Order’s affairs. Like the Austin canons, the Premonstratensians had a dual vocation: in part they were a contemplative order, whose life centred round the Divine Office, but they also accepted pastoral responsibilities and, when they undertook care of laypeople, were particularly concerned with preaching to them. This was an important ministry because in the twelfth century the number of secular priests who were trained and licensed to preach was few. When Hugues de Fosses died in 1164 the Order comprised more than one hundred abbeys and had a presence in the Crusader Kingdom.1

The Abbey of St Samuel’s Mountjoie There is a tradition in the Order that at the Council of Rheims in 1131, at which both St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Norbert were present, Innocent II requested that Amalric, a canon of Floreffe, should be sent to the Holy Land to preach both to Christians and to pagans (i.e. Muslims). He set out with some companions, and with the support of the patriarch of Jetrusalem, founded the Abbey of St Habakkuk. W. M. Grauwen has shown that there is no contemporary evidence to support this tradition.2 Nevertheless, the tradition is correct in asserting that St Bernard had a significant role in the establishment of the Premonstratensians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Writing to Abbot Hugues of 1 2

J.-B. Valvekens and F. Petit, ‘Premonstratensi’, in DIP VII (Rome, 1983), 720–45. Monasticon Praemonstratense, ed. N. Backmund, 3 vols. (Straubing, 1945–56), I, pt II, p. 498; W. M. Grauwen, Norbertus, aartsbisschop van Maagdenburg (1126–1134) (Brussels, 1978), 481–2. I owe this reference to B. Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches towards the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), 134 n. 127.

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151

Prémontré, Bernard says: ‘King Baldwin of Jerusalem, while he was still alive, gave us the site of St Samuel’s, together with a thousand gold pieces, with which [a monastery] might be built; by our gift you have that site and the gold pieces.’3 This letter is not dated, but must have been written after Baldwin II’s death in 1131. The king had been a patron of the Knights Templar, who enjoyed the enthusiastic support of St Bernard, and this explains Baldwin’s desire to endow a Cistercian community, but St Bernard never agreed to his Order’s making foundations in the Crusader States.4 The abbot of Prémontré accepted St Bernard’s offer and sent brethren to set up the abbey of St Samuel. This change in the terms of Baldwin II’s grant would have needed royal assent, but there appears to have been no difficulty in obtaining this, and the new foundation was established in the reign of King Fulk (1131–43). This is known from the diploma issued by Baldwin V on 30 December 1185, confirming the lands and privileges of St Samuel’s abbey. Baldwin V begins by confirming the gift of Baldwin II, ‘my great-great grandfather, the second Latin King of Jerusalem’, which had included the hill of Mountjoie on which the abbey was built, together with freedom from the payment of all dues throughout the kingdom on the buying and selling of ‘those things which are useful and necessary to the monastery’. King Fulk had given the estates of Margara at Nablus and that of Betania at the foot of Mountjoie to the abbey, which implies that the Premonstratensians established themselves at Mountjoie before his death in 1143. Queen Melisende gave the canons the church of St John the Evangelist at Nablus, which had formerly been a mosque. She also gave them the estate of Bethala together with four gastine, but Baldwin IV allowed the transfer of this property to the Knights Templar in return for the payment of 40 bezants a year to the canons. King Baldwin III had given the community an endowment of 200 bezants a year payable from the market dues of Acre, and he and his brother Amalric had given them houses in Ascalon when the city was captured in 1153. After he became king in 1163, Amalric had confirmed lands in and near Blanchegarde which the canons had bought from local landowners, and he had also given the community the chapel of St Longinus in Jerusalem and 100 bezants to maintain a chaplain to serve it. Barisan of Ibelin and his wife Helvis had given lands in their lordship of Ibelin to the canons, and Odo of St Amand, Master of the Temple, had granted them 10 bezants from the money fief which he held in the market of Acre. The community also owned houses in Jerusalem and was sufficiently affluent to buy land near Jaffa and to consolidate their holdings at Blanchegarde. Baldwin V also confirmed the gift of land at Blanchegarde made by Peter, who came from that township, when he was received as a brother by the community.5 Baldwin V was only able to ratify property which the canons held in his kingdom, and they might have held endowments elsewhere. Nevertheless, the community was obviously prosperous, having spare income which could be invested in buying land and houses. The abbey of St Samuel’s was built on the hill of Nabi Samwil, which the Franks called Mountjoie, because this was the point at which travellers from the coast first had sight of the 3

4 5

Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae, no. 253, in S. Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, H. Rochais and C. H. Talbot, 8 vols. (Rome 1957–77), VIII, p. 150; English translation in The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. B. S. James (London, 1953). See p. 247. H. E. Mayer, ‘Sankt Samuel auf dem Freudenberge und sein besitz nach einem unbekannten Diplom König Balduins V’, QF 44 (1964), 35–71; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 453, II, pp. 773–6.

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Holy City. From the fifth century onwards it was believed to be the burial place of the prophet Samuel, the shrine was served by an Orthodox monastery, and Emperor Justinian fortified the settlement.6 When the Franks conquered Jerusalem in 1099 those fortifications were still standing. The shrine of St Samuel, situated in a cave beneath the monastery church, was undisturbed, although it is not known whether any of the late antique church and monastery was still standing. A clause in Baldwin V’s diploma for St Samuel’s suggests that the Orthodox monastery had existed in living memory in 1099: ‘the area of land which is beside the road which runs between Magna Mahumeria and Jerusalem, at the point where it passes close to Mountjoie, which is known to have belonged to the said church of St Samuel since Saracen times’.7 This claim was presumably based on the evidence of witnesses who had lived in Jerusalem before the Latin conquest. The Russian abbot Daniel, who visited the Kingdom in Baldwin I’s reign, noted: ‘there is a great mountain near Jerusalem as you go from Jaffa and its name is Armathem. And on that mountain of Armathem there is the tomb of the holy prophet Samuel and of his father Elkanah and of Mary the Egyptian, and the place is surrounded by a wall.’8 The first contemporary evidence for the presence of the Premonstratensians on Mountjoie comes from 1156: R. Abbot of St Samuel’s was present at the synod convoked by Patriarch Fulcher to censure the canons of the Mount of Olives.9 The first evidence that the abbey church had been built comes from 1158, when Guibert Papasio, a burgess of Magna Mahumeria, exchanged a vineyard situated ‘next to the church of Mountjoie, adjoining the cemetery of the same church’, for another held by the prior of the Holy Sepulchre.10 The pilgrim Theoderic, who went to Jerusalem in King Amalric’s reign, identified Mountjoie with Shiloh, the place where Samuel had served the Ark of the Covenant: ‘Samuel the prophet was buried in Shiloh, but now the first name has been changed and the same place is called St Samuel’s. There is a monastic community there who are known as the Grey Monks [Grisi].’11 The foundations of the church of St Samuel were revealed in 1912 when the Muslim authorities cleared the site to build a new mosque over the crypt shrine. Frs Savignac and Abel, who inspected the site, described the Premonstratensian church as shaped like a Latin cross with an apse. It was 36 metres long and 7.7 metres wide, and the crypt was entered from an annexe to the north aisle, which also had an external door, so that pilgrims visiting the shrine did not need to enter the church.12 The abbot of St Samuel’s was directly under the authority of the patriarch of Jerusalem. John of Ibelin, citing a source of c. 1180, reports that the abbot had the right to carry a crozier, but might not wear a mitre or an (episcopal) ring.13 Very little is known about the twelfth-century abbots. In addition to the Abbot R., mentioned in a document of 1156 as 6 7

8

9 12

13

Procopius, The Buildings, ed. H. B. Dewing and G. Downey (Cambridge, MA, 1940), IX, 5, 15. campumque terrae, qui est iuxta viam quae ducit de Maior Mahomeria in Jerusalem prope Montem Gaudii, quem toties ducta ecclesia S. Samuelis a tempore Sarracenorum tenuisse dignoscitur. Armathem appears to have been an attempt to render the name Ramah, Samuel’s burial place (1 Samuel 25: 1): Daniel the Abbot, p. 126. 10 11 BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. BB no. 121, p. 245. 1 Samuel 1: 3; Theodericus, p. 185. Pringle, Churches no. 159, II, pp. 85–94, discusses the architectural evidence fully; R. Savignac and F. M. Abel, ‘Neby Samouil’, Revue Biblique n.s. 9 (1912), 267–79. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 110.

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noted above, the only certain reference is the entry in the Obituary of Prémontré dating from before 1175 of the death on 24 March of Theoderic, abbot of St Samuel’s transmarine ecclesie. The year of his death is not recorded. The commemoration in the same source on 25 August of Hugh, abbot transmarine ecclesie, may relate either to St Samuel or to the other Premonstratensian community in the Crusader Kingdom, that of St Habakkuk.14 The source used by the author of the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae reports that, soon after the battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187, Saladin’s brother al-Adil led a force from Egypt into the south of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He laid siege to Mirabel (now MagdalYaba) and, when the garrison surrendered in return for a safe-conduct, al-Adil behaved honourably and provided the garrison and the inhabitants with ‘an escort of 400 well-armed Turks, so that they should not be killed on their journey by other Turks. They led [the refugees] safely to the monastery of St Samuel, which is on Mt Shiloh, two miles from Jerusalem . . . But [the Turks] were attacked and put to flight by Templars and by men from Jerusalem, and many of them were wounded.’ From this it would appear that the canons were able to stay at St Samuel’s for some weeks after the defeat of Hattin. When Saladin finally marched on Jerusalem in September 1187, he took Mountjoie and its monastery. It is possible, but not certain, that the canons had taken refuge by that time in the chapel of St Longinus which they owned in Jerusalem. Any of those who had done so were presumably allowed to leave the city with the other Western clergy when it surrendered to Saladin on 3 October.15

The Abbey of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk A second Premonstratensian house was founded in the Crusader Kingdom during the twelfth century, dedicated to Sts Joseph and Habakkuk. At some time after 1143 St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Queen Melisende of Jerusalem commending a group of Premonstratensian canons to her: ‘Unless I am mistaken, you will find them prudent men and of a fervent spirit, patient in troubles and powerful in word and deed . . . Receive Christ in them, for he is the cause of their pilgrimage.’16 It is possible that these men formed the foundation community of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk, though that is not certain. It used to be claimed that Henry Sdyck, Bishop of Olmütz in Bohemia, had made his profession to Abbot Amalric of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk while he was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land in 1137–8, but P. C. Boeren has shown that ‘aucun document vient à l’appui de cette pieuse tradition’. He produces evidence that Henry was in fact professed as an Austin canon by the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem while on pilgrimage.17 The earliest evidence for the existence of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk comes from 1153, but shows that it was already well established by that time. William of Tyre reports that when Bishop Bernard of Sidon died in 1153 he was succeeded by ‘Amalric . . . Abbot of the canons regular of the 14 15 16

17

R. Van Waefelgem, ed., L’obituaire de l’abbaye de Prémontré (Louvain, 1913), 28, 71. Libellus de expugnatione, XXII, 193–5. The exact location of St Longinus is not known: Pringle, Churches no. 329, III, p. 217. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae no. 355, in S. Bernardi Opera, VIII, p. 150; cited in the translation of B. Scott James, The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux (London, 1953), no. 275, p. 348. Rorgo Fretellus de Nazareth et sa description de la Terre Sainte. Histoire et edition du texte, ed. P. C. Boeren (Amsterdam, 1980), p. xv.

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Premonstratensian Order in the house which is called St Habakkuk or St Joseph who was known as St Joseph of Arimathea. Amalric was not learned, but was a godfearing man of outstanding integrity.’18 Amalric’s successor as abbot was called Herbert, and was present at the synod of 1156 convoked by Patriarch Fulcher to censure the canons of the Mount of Olives, when he was described as the Abbot of St Habakkuk.19 In 1160 Herbert, who described himself as the abbot of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk, exchanged with Hugh of Ibelin, Lord of Ramla, the gift of land at Bethel (now Baitin), which had been made to the community by Hugh’s father, Barisan, for part of the hill below the castle of Mirabel and some ploughlands there. Hugh gave the land at Bethel to the Holy Sepulchre, and the canons of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk likewise gave the tower and church which they had built at Bethel to the Holy Sepulchre. The fact that they had built this church may be an indication that in their early years the Premonstratensians had taken their commitment to pastoral work very seriously. The transaction was made with universo tam clericorum quam laicorum Deo inibi famulante conventu of the abbey, twenty-three of whom, representing the professed brethren, witnessed the document.20 The community had a double dedication because it was in charge of two separate shrines. St Jerome, in his translation of Eusebius’ Onomasticon, had identified Arimathea, the home of Jesus’ disciple Joseph, with ‘Armathen Sofrim . . . in the region of Thannica near Diospolis [Lydda]’.21 In the twelfth century this site was known as Rantis. The pilgrim guide called the Descriptio Locorum, drawn up in the reign of King Fulk, noted that the body of St Joseph of Arimathea had recently been translated to Bethlehem, together with some relics of the Passion, found beside it.22 There appears to have been a Byzantine church on this site, which the Premonstratensians presumably restored or rebuilt, but the surviving archaeological evidence is very slight.23 The abbey church of St Habakkuk was at Kafr Jinnis, which the Franks called Cancie, or Cantie, some ten kilometres from Rantis. The site has not yet been fully excavated, although there are the remains of a ruined tower dating from the crusader period.24 It is not known whether there was a chapel there before the Premonstratensian settlement, or why they decided to develop that shrine. Habakkuk, although a minor prophet, was well known to the clergy because the oracular poem with which his book ends formed the canticle sung in the office of lauds on Fridays.25 Yet he was more widely known as the agent of a comic miracle, related in the Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel, which was the text used in the Latin Vulgate. When Daniel had been imprisoned in the lions’ den by the king of Babylon, the author relates: Now there was in Jewry a prophet called Habakkuk, who had made pottage and had broken bread in a bowl, and was going into a field for to bring it to the reapers. But the angel of the Lord said unto 18

19 21

22 25

WT XVII, 26, p. 797; T. Eck, Die Kreuzfahrerbistümer Beirut und Sidon im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert auf prosopographischer Grundlage (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 135–42. 20 BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. BB no. 52, pp. 139–40; Pringle, Churches no. 36, I, pp. 104–5. Eusebius, Palestine in the Fourth Century: The Onomasticon by Eusebius of Caesarea, trans. G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville (Jerusalem, 2003), 21; John 19: 38–40. 23 24 Text in IHC II, 106–8. Pringle, Churches no. 190, II, pp. 199–200. Pringle, Churches no. 127, I, pp. 283–6. Habakkuk 3: 2–19.

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Habakkuk: ‘Go, carry the dinner that thou hast to Babylon unto Daniel who is in the lions’ den.’ And Habakkuk said: ‘Lord, I never saw Babylon, nor do I know where the den is.’ Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown, and bare him by the hair of his head, and through the vehemence of his spirit set him in Babylon over the den. And Habakkuk cried, ‘O Daniel, Daniel, take the dinner which God hath sent thee’ . . . So Daniel arose and did eat; and the angel of the Lord set Habakkuk in his own place again immediately.26

In the early twelfth century the Russian pilgrim, Abbot Daniel, had located this event near Thecua in southern Judaea, where the minor prophets, including Habakkuk, were reputed to be buried.27 Yet when Theoderic went on pilgrimage in c. 1170, he reported that near Jaffa ‘is Arimathia from which came Joseph a noble Decurion who buried Christ. There too is the field in the land of Judah from which the prophet Habakkuk was seized by an angel.’28 John of Ibelin, in his account of the organisation of the Latin Church in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in c. 1180, named among the suffragans of the bishops of Lydda: ‘l’abbé de saint Joseph d’Arimatie qui est ores appelés de Rantis; l’abbé de sant Abacu de Cancie’.29 This statement, that there were two abbeys, not two churches administered by a single community, is corroborated by the letter of Gervase, Abbot of Prémontré, to Emperor Frederick II.30 This shows that the Premonstratensian canons had succeeded in recruiting enough brethren and attracting enough endowments to found a new abbey before 1187. It is almost a certainty that both the abbey of St Habakkuk and the shrine of St Joseph at Rantis were captured by al-Adil when he advanced from Egypt in July 1187 and seized Jaffa and Mirabel, though it is possible that the canons had by then retreated to St Samuel’s at Mountjoie which was still in Frankish hands and that all the Premonstratensian survivors left Jerusalem together under safe-conduct when Saladin captured the city in October 1187.31

The Abbey of St Samuel’s Acre In his diploma of 1185, Baldwin V had confirmed to the canons of St Samuel’s ‘a house in Acre which a man called Homo Dei gave to the said church, together with a tower on the wall which is next to that house in Acre, and one property [camera] which the brethren . . . bought from Peter Filot’.32 This property became the base for the Order in the kingdom after 1191. The abbey of St Samuel which they founded there stood by the city wall on the west side of the royal castle.33 Abbot Gervase of Prémontré wrote to John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, in 1211 and again in 1215–16 asking him to care for the needs of the brethren of St Samuel’s, living in the city of Acre.34 In 1217, as preparations were being finalised for the Fifth Crusade, Gervase wrote to Ralph of Merencourt, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, commending to him Abbot Helinus of Floreffe who was coming to the Levant, but also 26

27 30 32 34

This translation is from the King James Bible where it is found in the Apocryphal Book, The History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon: 32–7, 39. In the Vulgate text this forms part of the Book of Daniel, 14: 32–6, 38. 28 29 Daniel the Abbot, p. 149. Theodericus, p. 182. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. viii, p. 113. 31 See Hugo, Sacrae antiquitatis, I, 38–9, no. 38, 117, no. 130. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, p. 268. 33 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 453, II, p. 775. Pringle, Churches no. 443, IV, pp. 158–60. C.-L. Hugo, ed., Sacrae Antiquitatis Monumenta Historica, Dogmatica, Diplomatica ([Stivagii], 1725), nos. 37, 95, I, pp. 37–8, 102–4.

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asking that if the Holy Land were recovered by the crusade, he would ensure that the possessions of St Samuel’s and Sts Joseph and Habakkuk were restored to the Premonstratensians.35 Although the Fifth Crusade did not recover any territory, Gervase remained hopeful that this might be achieved by Emperor Frederick II after he had become king of Jerusalem and was planning to lead a new crusade there. The abbot of Prémontré sent a letter to Frederick while he was still in Sicily, by the hand of Brother Giles, whom Gervase describes as the emperor’s chaplain, and whom he had appointed to be abbot of St Samuel’s Acre. In this letter, Gervase asked Frederick, as he had previously asked Patriarch Ralph, to restore to Abbot Giles the former properties of the Premonstratensian Order in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem if those lands were recovered. He stated clearly that his Order had had two foundations there, St Samuel’s and St Habakkuk, which had been destroyed ‘when the heathen came into the Lord’s inheritance’.36 Although Frederick recovered Jerusalem in 1229, it is not clear whether Mountjoie was restored to Frankish rule then, but it was certainly part of the territory granted to the Franks by the terms of the treaty which Richard of Cornwall negotiated with the sultan of Egypt in 1241.37 But there is no evidence that the community of St Samuel’s Acre attempted to return to the church of St Longinus in Jerusalem after 1229 or to Mountjoie after 1241, and in 1244 Jerusalem and its environs passed from Frankish control permanently as a result of the Khwarizmian sack. The church of St Joseph of Arimathea at Rantis remained in Muslim hands throughout the thirteenth century, but the abbey church of St Habakkuk at Kafr–Jinnis certainly returned to Frankish rule in 1204 under the terms of the treaty made by King Aimery with Sultan al-Adil, whereby the whole area of Ramla and Lydda was restored to the Christians.38 Abbot Gervase of Prémontré stated unequivocally in his letter to Frederick II that St Habakkuk had been destroyed in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin, and no attempt is known to have been made by the canons after 1204 to restore the abbey and return there. Nevertheless, the abbey chapel, or some part of it, did survive. A pilgrim text of c. 1268 reports that some distance outside the walls of Jaffa, on the way towards Ramla, there is ‘une chapelle de Seint Abacuc, mult seinte, mes mult anciene’.39 Similarly the author of the Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre of c. 1280, mentions that twelve leagues from Jaffa there is a chapel ‘où seint Abakuk soleit meindre’.40 The Premonstratensians had been responsible for introducing the cult of St Habakkuk there in the twelfth century, and the community of St Samuel’s in Acre almost certainly remained responsible for the service and upkeep of this shrine chapel in the thirteenth. Because of the way in which their property had been distributed in the twelfth century the canons would have enjoyed a reduced but adequate income during their years at Acre. They would have retained their property in the city, including the payment of 200 bezants a year from the market dues and their freedom from the payment of dues on the import and export of necessities in all the ports of the kingdom. In addition, they could draw revenues from 35 37 39 40

36 RRH no. 906. Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, 479–80. 38 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 138–45. Pringle, Churches no. 190, II, pp. 199–200. Les Chemins et les Pelerinages de la Terre Sainte, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, MS B, i, p. 192. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 229.

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their estates outside Jaffa and from the land at Mirabel which had been given to St Habakkuk’s by Hugh of Ibelin.41 The abbot of St Samuel’s Acre was well regarded by Pope Gregory IX, who used him as an agent on various occasions. In 1235 the abbot was asked to ensure that the bishop of Acre and the Plebanus of the Venetians send procurators to Rome to settle a dispute about the parochial status of the Venetian church in Acre. On that occasion, the pope designated the abbot as belonging to the diocese of Jerusalem, evidence that the house in Acre was exempt from the bishop of the city and directly subject to the Latin patriarch.42 In 1238 the abbot of St Samuel’s was appointed with the patriarch of Jerusalem and the archbishop of Tyre to supervise the settlement arranged between the Order of the Hospital and the bishop of Acre.43 Work of this kind may perhaps indicate that the pope believed the abbot to be a competent administrator, but another group of commissions implies that Gregory had also received good reports of the abbot’s integrity. In March 1238 the abbot of St Samuel’s, together with the prior of St Giles at Acre and the bishop of Tortosa, was instructed to investigate the standard of observance in the three Benedictine abbeys of Sta Maria Latina, Mt Tabor and Our Lady of Josaphat. In all three cases the pope reported that it had come to his attention that the abbots of these communities, ‘setting aside the observance of their Rules, have each made severe inroads into the endowments of his monastery by living in luxury and succumbing to the desires of the flesh’. The delegates were to carry out an inquiry into these charges and to introduce reforms to the conduct of the head and members of these institutions.44 A similar investigation was to be mounted by them into the conduct of the Austin canons of Bethlehem who, in addition to their other shortcomings, ‘had received and sheltered a certain heretic in their community’.45 The abbot to whom the pope addressed these duties is not named in the papal registers, but in 1240 the office was held by Abbot John, who witnessed a lease granted to the Teutonic Knights by the abbot of Mt Zion.46 In 1244 Abbot John was one of the signatories of an appeal to Henry III of England and Louis IX of France for military aid, made necessary by the Khwarizmian sack of Jerusalem and the subsequent defeat of the confederate crusader army at Le Forbelet.47 This letter proved an important catalyst in stimulating Louis IX to take the Cross. In February 1251 Abbot John and the Cistercian abbot of Belmont were appointed judges delegate by Innocent IV in a dispute between the Order of the Hospital and the bishop of Tortosa.48 Alexander IV made Abbot John and the bishop of Tiberias responsible for overseeing the transfer of the property of the convent of Bethany to the Hospitallers, a commission which Urban IV revoked in 1261.49 In 1260 Alexander IV associated Abbot John and the abbot of the Mount of Olives with his legate, Thomas, Bishop of Bethlehem, to settle a dispute about the payment of tithes on the casale Anna.50 At about the same time Abbot John, together with the archbishops of Caesarea and Nazareth, acted as judges delegate in a dispute about tithes between the Master of the Hospital and the cantor of 41 44 47 49

42 43 See p. 153. Gregory IX, Registres nos. 2742, 2744. Gregory IX, Registres nos. 4387, 4388. 45 46 Gregory IX, Registres nos. 4140, 4141, 4142. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4152. Strehlke no. 86, pp. 68–9. 48 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 337. Innocent IV, Registres no. 5129. 50 CGOH I, nos. 2925, 2927; Urban IV, Registres no. 15. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 52, pp. 107–9.

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the church of Tripoli.51 John was also sometimes required to vidimate copies of legal documents.52 In April 1254 three monks of Mt Tabor wrote to thank Alexander IV for relieving them of the burden of caring for their monastery, which was threatened by the Saracens, by giving it to the Order of St John. They concluded by explaining that, as they no longer had a seal of their own, they had asked Abbot Terricus of Mt Zion and Abbot John of St Samuel’s to authenticate the letter with their own seals.53 Abbot John’s seal is described in the transcription of a document of 1259 to which it is attached: In . . . circonferentia . . . erat . . . tales litere: ‘S. Abbatis et ecclesie S. Samuelis d. Monte Gaudii’, from which it would appear that the twelfth-century seal of the abbey continued to be used in the abbey at Acre.54 In February 1263 a notarial record about how the abbot of Josaphat had been placed in corporal possession of the tithes of certain estates was witnessed by fratre Ioanne Sancti Samuelis ordinis Premonstratensium.55 If this record relates to Abbot John and not one of his brethren, it was his last known act. The Necrology of Prémontré records his death on 27 December, but gives no year.56 Although later abbots are not recorded as taking any part in public affairs, the community survived. Pilgrims who visited the abbey of St Samuel’s in Acre were eligible for an indulgence of one year and forty days.57 The last record of the brethren is found in a document of 20 March 1279. Canons Stephen of Burgundy and Stephen of Germany, described as apud Accon in domo Sancti Samuelis, vidimated the copy of an agreement made in 1258 between the archbishop of Tyre and the Venetian Republic.58 It is not known whether the brethren were still living in Acre in 1291 and, if they were, whether any of them escaped from the sack. If there were any survivors they might have sought refuge in the Premonstratensian abbey of Bellapais in Cyprus. This foundation had no direct links with St Samuel’s Acre. Unlike some of the religious communities in the Crusader States, which founded priories in Cyprus in the thirteenth century as an insurance against a possible recurrence of the events of 1187, the Premonstratensians had no need to take precautions of that kind. As members of a religious order they were assured of a place in another house in western Europe if they were forced to leave the Holy Land.

The Abbey of Bellapais The original community of Bellapais,59 built near Episkopia in the Keryneian mountains, had been Austin canons, who in the reign of Archbishop Thierry of Nicosia (1206–11) had adopted the Premonstratensian Rule. This is known from a letter written by Gregory IX in 1232, in which he states that the community had lived in the house since the reign of King Aimery of Lusignan (d. 1205).60 Nothing more is known about the origins of the house, 51 52 53 56 58

59 60

This charter incorporates a copy of a document of 1125: CGOH I, no. 72. Abbot John vidimated a charter of Julian, Lord of Sidon: CGOH I, no. 2688 (vidimation Archives de l’Ordre de Malte, 5, no. 40). 54 55 Paoli, Codice no. 127, I, pp. 148–50. CGOH I, no. 2925. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 80, pp. 188–90. 57 Van Waefelgen, ed., Obituaire, 108. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, ‘Die italienischen Kirchen im Heiligen Land (1098–1291)’, Studi Veneziani, n.s. 8 (1987), 94–100, Appendix no. 7. I am indebted for information about this abbey to Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 200–4. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 36, pp. 124–6.

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Figure 5 St Samuel Montjoie

which is recorded in a letter of Pope Honorius III in 1224.61 Bellapais flourished in the thirteenth century, acquiring chapels at Paphos and Nicosia and attracting distinguished vocations: Hugh of Fagiano, for example, was professed there in 1248 and became archbishop of Nicosia in 1251. Later in the century the community developed close ties with the royal family of Cilicia. After his abdication, King Hethum I was professed there in 1270 and died there a year later; Hethum II joined the community briefly, when he was excluded from power in 1293–4; and in 1305 Hethum, Lord of Corycus, a nephew of Hethum I, became a canon there. He did not remain there for long, but went to France, where he presented Pope Clement V with a copy of his history written in French, La flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient.62

61

Honorius III, Regesta no. 5156.

62

Hayton, La flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient, in RHC Arm II, pp. 113–523.

4 The Canons Regular of St Ruf, Avignon, in the County of Tripoli

The church of St Ruf at Avignon was placed in the hands of Canons Regular in 1039.1 Although its early history is not well documented, it had adopted the Rule of St Augustine by the reign of Urban II.2 By c. 1100 the abbot of St Ruf had become head of a congregation, consisting of all the daughter houses founded by his community.3 The foundations of Canons Regular of St Ruf made in the Crusader States were communities of Austin canons, but are considered separately from the other houses in the Latin East which lived under that Rule because they were unique in forming part of a pre-existing Western congregation and in being subordinate to the abbot of St Ruf at Avignon. No other house of Austin canons in the Latin East was subordinate to a Western abbot. Raymond IV, Count of St Gilles, and founder of the County of Tripoli, was naturally concerned that some of the religious houses of his homeland should benefit from the conquests he had made in Syria. In 1103 he made a gift to St Victor of Marseilles of property in the city of Jubail, which was at that time still in Muslim hands. The city was not captured by the Franks until after Raymond’s death in 1105, and the provisions of his grant to St Victor were never implemented.4 Count Raymond’s benefaction to St Ruf at Avignon proved more effective. Jean Richard first drew attention to this grant,5 and the evidence was later systematically examined by Rudolf Hiestand.6 The original deed of gift has not survived, but is known from the confirmation issued by Pope Paschal II in 1114 to the community of St Ruf at Avignon, which details possessionem quam Raimundus nobilis memorie comes vobis in Tripolitani regione concessit cum ecclesia Sancti Rufi quam in eadem possessione construxit.7 As Hiestand points out, this church must have been in the environs of Tripoli, not inside the walls, for Tripoli did not fall to the Franks until 1109, four years after Raymond’s death. By the time Pope Calixtus II had issued a confirmation of their 1 2 3

4

5

6

7

Codex Diplomaticus Ordinis Sancti Rufi, ed. U. Chevalier (Valence, 1891), 1–4. Dickinson, Origins of the Austin Canons, 55. Dickinson, Origins of the Austin Canons, 83; for a brief general account of how the Congregation was governed, see J. Becquet, ‘Canonici regolari di San Rufo’, in DIP II, cols. 123–4. C. de Vic, Histoire générale de Languedoc, 16 vols. (repr. Osnabrück, 1973), V, no. 414, pp. 779–81. Raymond granted medietatem civitatis que vocatur Gibellet . . . et omnium ad eam mari et terra pertinencium, videlicet in ecclesiis, villis, castellis, casalibus, terris cultis et incultis, in portu ac naufragiis, sive in cunctis ubique pertinentiis. J. Richard, ‘Le chartrier de Sainte-Marie-Latine et l’établissement de Raymond de Saint-Gilles à Mont-Pèlerin’, in Mélanges d’histoire du moyen âge, dédiés à la mémoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1951), 608 n. 4. R. Hiestand, ‘Saint-Ruf d’Avignon, Raymond de Saint-Gilles et l’église latine du comté de Tripoli’, Annales du Midi 98 (1986), 327–36. PKHL no. 18, pp. 123–4.

160

The Canons Regular of St Ruf, Avignon, in the County of Tripoli

161

property for the canons of St Ruf at Avignon in 1123, the community at Tripoli had gained fresh endowments: ecclesiam sancti Iacobi de Tripoli cum suffraganeis, ecclesiam de Artucia et molendina iuxta ipsam ecclesiam sancti Ruffi, necnon et molendina apud Surgenterem et apud Castrum novum.8 As Hiestand points out, the church of St James in the city of Tripoli had become the principal house of the canons by that time, and the original foundation of St Ruf in the environs had been made subordinate to it. He identifies Artucia with the ancient city of Orthosias to the north of Tripoli, and thinks it probable that the canons had been granted a church there also.9 In 1154 Anastasius IV confirmed among the possessions of St Ruf at Avignon: ecclesiam sancti Iacobi et sancti Ruffi subtus civitatem Tripolitanam sitam et cum ecclesia de Artucia et cum honore et possessionibus ad eandem ecclesiam pertinentibus.10 The mills mentioned in Calixtus II’s bull are probably included in the general term possessionibus in the 1154 confirmation. The term honor used of Atucia by Pope Anastasius may, as Hiestand suggests, imply that the canons held the fief of Artucia but, as he points out, that is by no means certain.11 In 1186 Pope Urban III in his bull for St Ruf at Avignon records among its possessions: ecclesiam sancti Iacobi, sancti Ruffi sub civitate Tripolitana cum ecclesia de Somna.12 Because the evidence is so fragmentary, there is no information about why the canons of St Ruf no longer owned property at Artucia, or when they had acquired the church of Somna.13 This is the last record of the presence of the canons of St Ruf Avignon in the County of Tripoli. Hiestand has found a reference to the church of St James in Tripoli in a document of 1214, at which time it belonged to the Benedictine community of Mt Tabor, though there is no way of determining whether this was the former church of the canons of St Ruf or another church in Tripoli with the same dedication.14 The reasons for the collapse of the communities of the Canons Regular of St Ruf in the County of Tripoli are not known. The city and much of the County of Tripoli suffered little damage from the northern campaign of Saladin in 1187–8 after his victory at Hattin, so it seems likely that some quite different cause was responsible for the decline, but the total lack of documentation makes it impossible to determine what that was.

8 12 13 14

9 10 11 PKHL no. 24, p. 131. Hiestand, ‘Saint-Ruf’, 332–3. PKHL no. 71, p. 209. Hiestand, ‘Saint-Ruf’, 334. PKHL no. 144, p. 320. Hiestand, ‘Saint Ruf’, 334, suggests possible locations in the County of Tripoli for Somna, but its exact location is uncertain. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 208, p. 77; Hiestand, ‘Saint Ruf’, 335.

5 Benedictine Monasteries

The Benedictine Monastery of Sta Maria Latina/St Mary of the Latins The Benedictine monastery of Sta Maria Latina, the adjacent hospital of St John the Almsgiver and the Benedictine convent of St Mary Magdalene were the only Latin Christian institutions in Jerusalem before the First Crusade.1 Albert of Aix reports that when the crusaders captured the city in 1099 the buildings in this complex were undamaged because the community had paid dues to the Muslim rulers.2 Godfrey of Bouillon confirmed the property and privileges of the abbey3 but, if William of Tyre is correct, the community had no endowments of any kind before the Latin conquest: ‘This revered institution . . . had neither revenues nor endowments, but the people of Amalfi . . . made a collection each year, which those of them who were going to Jerusalem presented to the abbot . . . from which [fund] he provided food and clothing for the brothers and sisters, and the remainder of the money was used to care for the pilgrims who came to the hospital.’4 At some time during Baldwin I’s reign the convent of St Mary Magdalene became independent of Latina and came to be known as Ste Marie la Grande.5 The hospital attached to Sta Maria Latina also became an independent institution under its Master, Blessed Gerald, who had held office since before the First Crusade. This change had occurred before 1113 when Paschal II issued the bull Pie postulatio voluntatis, which Jonathan RileySmith has described as ‘the foundation charter of the new Order of the Hospitallers of St John’.6 The convent and the hospital would seem to have become independent before 19 June 1112, when Paschal II issued a bull in favour of the abbot and brethren of Sta Maria Latina. Although in the introductory section he speaks of ‘that monastery which in the time of the Turks and Saracens was a hospice for Latins and Italians and was chiefly sustained by their offerings’, he does not mention either the convent of nuns or the hospital in his description of the current abbot’s powers and duties. Paschal took the monastery under his protection and specified that the abbot, having been freely elected by the community, should be ordained by the patriarch of Jerusalem ‘if he shall find it difficult to come in person to the Apostolic See in Rome’. He further enjoined that: ‘The old order of monastic custom and discipline should be preserved in your monastery, which it is known 1 3

4

2 See below, pp. 220–5. AA VI, 25, p. 434. This is known from the diploma of Baldwin III calendared in the Inventory of Jean Raybaud (1741–2): Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 17, 234, I, pp. 119, 431–2. 5 6 WT XVIII, 5, p. 817. See p. 220. Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 42–3.

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that you have adopted from the community of Monte Cassino’, and added, ‘You shall observe the chant for the psalms, in the form in which they are sung in the Roman Church.’7 At their enthronement the abbots of Latina took an oath of fealty to the Latin patriarch.8 They occupied an important place in the Latin hierarchy: they were entitled to wear a mitre and a ring and to carry a crozier, and were numbered among the patriarch’s suffragans.9 Consequently they were from the beginning involved in public business. The abbot of Latina was present at the legatine synod of Jerusalem, convoked by Cardinal Robert in 1102, at which Patriarch Daibert was put on trial and deposed.10 After 1099 the community soon began to acquire property in the Latin East. Peter Olivarus, who may have been a monk of Latina, visited Count Raymond IV of Toulouse when he was at Tortosa in 1102, presumably seeking alms for his house, which the count promised to give. Raymond redeemed that promise in the following year when, at his headquarters outside Tripoli, he gave to Brother Stephen, the representative of Latina, land, together with permission to build a church dedicated to St Mary in the township of the newly built castle of Mt Pèlerin, and added that when that church was consecrated the community would also receive a nearby estate ‘situated above the bridge’. Before his death in 1105 the count also gave Latina a sugar-mill: this is known from a document of 1116 issued by Raymond’s grandson, Count Pons of Tripoli (1112–37), in which he confirmed Raymond’s gift, and also leased the mill from Abbot Raymond of Latina for 20 bezants a year.11 By 1120 Abbot Raymond of Latina had been succeeded by Abbot Richard, who witnessed Baldwin II’s charter freeing the inhabitants of Jerusalem and visiting pilgrims from the payment of tolls when bringing hay, corn and vegetables into the city, a concession which he may, with his co-witnesses, the other abbots and priors of the city, have persuaded the king to grant.12 In 1126, while Richard was abbot, Count Roger II of Sicily gave to Sta Maria Latina the priory of St Philip’s at Agira in the diocese of Catania, which in time became the chief administrative centre of the Jerusalem community in western Europe.13 The abbots of Latina were regularly in attendance at the court of the patriarch and of the king. Abbot Richard witnessed a settlement imposed by Patriarch Stephen on the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the monks of Josaphat in a dispute about tithes in 1130, and in the same year was a witness to Baldwin II’s confirmation of the property of the abbey of Josaphat in his kingdom.14 His successor, Abbot Soibrand, witnessed Patriarch William’s privilege for the priory of Quarantena in 1136, and the same patriarch’s confirmation of the rights and property of the Holy Sepulchre in 1137.15 In 1144 he was present at the court at which Baldwin III confirmed the exchange licensed by his father, King Fulk, in 1138 of the estates of Bethany belonging to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre for lands at Thecua.16 7 8

9 11

12 13 14

15

PKHL no. 12, pp. 112–16. The text of the oath administered to Abbot Peregrinus in the thirteenth century is preserved in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre: BB no. 185, pp. 342–3. 10 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 110. AA IX, 16–17, pp. 656–7. In the document the mill is described as a bafumeria: Jean Richard argues that in this context the word cannot refer to a mosque and must mean a sugar-mill: Richard, ‘Le chartrier de Sainte-Marie-Latine’, 609–11. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. W. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden aus Unteritalien’, QF 35 (1955), no. 5, pp. 65–6. Both documents are dated 1130, indiction VIII, but the second does not give the name of the abbot of Latina: Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 17, pp. 43–5; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 116, I, pp. 276–80. 16 BB nos. 22, 23, pp. 78–83. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 210, I, pp. 390–3.

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Later in Baldwin III’s reign the new abbot Amitius, or Aemilius, of Latina witnessed the confirmations by the king and by his brother, Count Amalric, of the sale to the Holy Sepulchre by Hugh of Ibelin in 1155 of his estate of Vuetmoamel.17 In 1156 he attended the synod convened by Patriarch Fulcher at which Prior Amalric of the Mount of Olives was censured.18 The first full description of the property of the house is contained in the confirmation issued by Pope Hadrian IV in 1158, by which time its endowments were considerable. In Jerusalem the abbey owned shops near the church, a ‘palatium’ and a group of houses near St Stephen’s Gate. Outside the city they owned a hospice on the Nablus road, a number of orchards and vineyards, and the casale of Belfacir, together with half a casale at Bethlehem. Count Amalric had given them an estate in the lordship of Blanchegarde; they owned land near Lydda, and the church of Sta Maria Latina at Jaffa, together with other property there. The first two lords of Caesarea, Eustace Grenier (d. 1123) and his son Walter (d. 1149), had been buried in Sta Maria Latina, and the community had received from them a tower and an estate near Caesarea and land at Cacho in that lordship.19 The abbey received 100 bezants a year from an unspecified donor at Nablus, and owned two estates in the region of Sidon, houses and land at Le Grand Gerin to the east of Caesarea, houses and land in the settlement of Arabia in Galilee, together with a church and its endowments at Beirut, the most northerly city in the kingdom. In the County of Tripoli, in addition to the church and lands on Mt Pèlerin given by Raymond IV, Latina had acquired a church at Gibelet (Jubail). In the Principality of Antioch the abbey owned a priory in Antioch city, two estates in its environs, both of which possessed mills, the church of St John in Scie, the casale of Faxias to the north of Latakia,20 the church of Sta Maria Latina (which had parochial rights) and the church of St Nicholas in the city of Latakia, an estate at Valcorentin (unidentified), and monthly payments of 40 solidi from the tolls of Emme (Imm) to the east of Harim. Pope Hadrian also confirmed the lands of Latina in the Kingdom of Sicily where, in addition to the priory of St Philip’s Agira, they had received the churches of St Peter at Vacaria, St Philip at Capitio, St Peter at Rasacamara and St Nicholas at Sacco, together with their endowments, the estate of San Calogeri and the tithes of Scapelli. In Calabria the community had been given the church of St Peter at Tachena, the church of St Elias, whose location is not specified, and the church of St Lawrence iuxta Licium. This may have been a gift of Richard the Seneschal, a kinsman of Roger II, who had given the castle of Licio to the Mt Tabor monastery.21 The list of Latina’s Sicilian properties ends with the abbey of St Sepulchre, Aquapendente.22 The land on which this abbey had been built had been given in the tenth century by Hugh, Marquis of Tuscany, to the Holy Sepulchre and ‘the monks who are in Sta Maria Latina in Jerusalem’, that is, the community who preceded the Amalfitan foundation. This gift seems to have lapsed after that house was destroyed by Caliph alHakim in 1009.23 It is not known when the monks of the new monastery of Sta Maria Latina succeeded in gaining control of the Aquapendente house. 17 19

20 21

18 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 233, I, pp. 427–31; no. 282, II, pp. 507–11. BB no. 54, pp. 143–5. Paoli, Codice no. 162, I, pp. 205–6; J. L. La Monte, ‘The lords of Caesarea in the period of the Crusades’, Speculum 22 (1947), 145–61. Identified as Paioria Fasri by R. Dussaud, Topographie historique de la Syrie antique et médiévale (Paris, 1927), 418. 22 23 See PKHL no. 79, pp. 218–22. See pp. 20–1.

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The abbey of Latina owned the tithes in the majority of the properties listed in Hadrian IV’s bull, and the abbots had representatives in many of the regions in which their endowments were situated who could collect those tithes and the other dues and arrange for the payment of responsions to the Jerusalem house. The most important dependencies of Latina were the church on Mt Pèlerin at Tripoli, the priory at Antioch, St Philip’s Agira in Sicily, and the abbey of Aquapendente in Calabria. By Baldwin III’s reign, Latina had a substantial income, although it was not one of the richest communities in the Crusader Kingdom. John of Ibelin records that in c. 1180 the abbey owed the crown the service of fifty sergeants in times of emergency, which suggests that their income was comparable to that of the abbeys of the Templum Domini and of Mt Zion, which had similar military obligations.24 The monks of Latina were rich enough to rebuild their church. No remains of the eleventh-century church built by the Amalfitans have yet been found, and Denys Pringle has considered the possible reasons for this. Quite substantial remains of the twelfth-century church survived before the site was cleared between 1893 and 1898 to make way for the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. The remains had been described by some Western travellers, and some photographs of them exist. Pringle has considered this evidence, in conjunction with more recent archaeological surveys carried out at the site, and concludes that the new church of Latina ‘was probably constructed like St Anne’s [Jerusalem] in the period between c. 1130 and 1140’. The cloister, which was rather small in comparison to the church, and which may have formed part of the Amalfitan abbey of the eleventh century, adjoined the new church on the south side and was at the centre of a complex of monastic buildings. Parts of this cloister can still be seen incorporated in the cloister which adjoins the present Lutheran church.25 In the archway of the main entrance to the Lutheran church is some of the sculpture which adorned the great north entrance to the church of Latina. This includes a zodiacal frieze, representing the twelve months of the year, depicting the agricultural labour appropriate to each month. Jaroslav Folda assigns this work to the 1140s or early 1150s.26 The abbey of Latina differed from most of the other monasteries founded in the Crusader States in that it was not built to serve a shrine. This could have made it difficult for the community to attract pilgrims and their offerings, which formed an important part of the income of the other religious houses of Jerusalem. The brethren of Latina dealt with this problem by advancing a claim linking their church to the Passion of Christ. The earliest pilgrim guide written after the capture of the city by the Franks in 1099 records: ‘Near the right side of the Holy Sepulchre is the Latin monastery of St Mary the Virgin [built] where her house was. The Virgin Mother and her sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene, stood weeping at the spot where the altar stands in the monastery, when the Lord was crucified. They were there when Jesus said to his Mother, “Woman, behold thy son”, and to His disciple, “Behold thy mother.”’27 The pilgrim guide written in c. 1109, which is appended to the history of the crusade by Bartolf of Nangis, describes how, on the 24 26

25 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. Pringle, Churches no. 334, III, pp. 236–52. 27 Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 276–8. Anonymi Gesta Francorum, p. 99.

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site of the abbey of Latina, ‘the Virgin is said to have wept there and torn her hair when she saw her only son being nailed to the gibbet’.28 By c. 1160 the community was claiming that Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene had also torn out their hair on the site of their altar at the Crucifixion.29 The abbey of Latina could thus credibly claim to have a supply of Holy Hair relics to give to favoured pilgrims. They also acquired the head of St Philip the Apostle: this is first mentioned by John of Würzburg in c. 1160.30 The relic collection continued to grow. When the pilgrim Theoderic visited the church in 1172 he reported: ‘some of our Lady’s hairs are still preserved today in that church in a glass phial. In the same church there is also kept the head of St Philip in an ornate gold reliquary, together with the arm of St Simon the Apostle and the arm of Bishop St Cyprian.’31 Folda has pointed out that gold reliquaries of this kind were almost certainly made in Jerusalem by local craftsmen.32 The abbots of Latina continued to take some part in the public life of the church in the second half of the twelfth century. By July 1160 the office was held by Abbot Rainald, who had previously been prior of the house,33 who was present at the royal court of Acre when Baldwin III issued a diploma for the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.34 In the following year he witnessed an agreement between the abbot of Josaphat and the archbishop of Nazareth about the tithes of Ligio.35 His successor, Abbot Guido, was present at the curia of Amalric of Nesle in 1169 and witnessed that patriarch’s confirmation of the rights and privileges of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.36 In 1176 Abbot Richard of Latina was among the witnesses of the gift by Abbot Reynald of Mt Zion of land for constructing a new pool to augment the public water supply.37 In 1173 Abbot Richard had obtained a confirmation of his community’s legal and property rights from Alexander III. This was chiefly a reissue of the bull of Hadrian IV, but it listed one additional property, which was to have an important place in the future history of the community: ‘the church of St Mary at Acre, together with three orchards and two ploughlands and their tithes and houses, which Oddobrand Pinch gave to Latina’.38 Inevitably Latina became involved in litigation about property rights. In March 1162 the Master of the Hospital of St John and Abbot Rainald of Latina reached an amicable agreement about the boundaries of their estates on Mt Pèlerin at Tripoli.39 Rainald, or perhaps his successor Guido, refused to abide by the decision reached by Patriarch Fulcher in a dispute between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the community of Latina about the tithe of the casale of Montoble. The patriarch had found in favour of the Holy Sepulchre, and Abbot Aemilius of Latina had agreed to this judgement. But Abbot Rainald or Abbot Guido appealed to Rome against this decision, and Alexander III appointed Bishop William 28

29 31 33 35

36 37 38

Bartolf of Nangis, Gesta Francorum Expugnantium Iherusalem, trans. J. Wilkinson, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, xxxii, 173. 30 Seventh Guide, trans. and ed. J. Wilkinson, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 233. John of Würzburg, p. 132. 32 Theodericus, p. 158. Folda, Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 582 n. 255. 34 Prior in 1158: BB no. 51, pp. 136–8. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 258, I, pp. 470–4. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 35, pp. 82–3. For fuller discussion of the case of the Ligio tithes, see A. Jotischky, ‘Eugenius III and the Church in the Crusader States’, in I. Fonnesberg-Schmidt and A. Jotischky, eds., Pope Eugenius III (1145–1153): The First Cistercian Pope (Amsterdam, 2018), 348–55. BB no. 150, pp. 292–6. In this document Abbot Richard’s name has been wrongly transcribed as Ribaldus: BB no. 161, p. 313. 39 PKHL nos. 106, 120, pp. 271–3, 294. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 74, p. 55.

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of Acre judge delegate to hear the dispute. He upheld Fulcher’s ruling, and this may be an indication that the abbey of Latina was not powerful enough to successfully challenge the patriarch and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.40 Latina benefited from the patronage of Queen Margaret of Sicily, regent for the young King William II, and her chancellor and chief adviser, Stephen of La Perche, archbishopelect of Palermo. In March 1168 the queen confirmed endowments in Calabria given to Latina by Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) and confirmed by his son, Roger Borsa (d. 1111), consisting of the churches of St Peter at Vacara and St Nicholas at Lampada, with their appurtenances. Queen Margaret freed the tenants of those churches from paying taxes to the royal officials in Calabria for pasturing their livestock or for selling their produce at market.41 The prior of St Philip’s Agira was presumably responsible for collecting the dues from the properties of Latina throughout the Sicilian kingdom and sending the responsions to the mother house in Jerusalem. Queen Margaret freed those goods from the payment of all dues in the port of Messina, and specified the contents of the annual shipment: 200 flitches of bacon, 100 barrels of wine, 100 garments made from lambs’ fleeces, 4,000 rabbit skins, 30 ox hides, 700 cheeses, 500 ceramic dishes, 4 measures of rope, 200 bolts of linen cloth and the same amount of woollen cloth ‘for the use of the brethren of that church’.42 Consignments of this kind must have made an important contribution to the feeding and clothing of the community and their dependants throughout the year, and any surplus could have been sold. The priory of St Philip’s Agira continued to prosper after William II came of age in 1172. In 1174 Geoffrey Francigena, Lord of San Filipi, gave the church of St John to Prior Facundinus of Agira and his brethren. This gift was made at the request of the new archbishop of Palermo, the Englishman Walter II.43 In 1183 King William appointed two justices to investigate the complaint made by Prior Facundinus that the men of Caltagirone had occupied land given to the house by the king’s grandfather Roger II (1130–54).44 In c. 1180 the author of the Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane noted: ‘In the church of Latina there are an abbot and a community of black monks. The abbot is mitred and assists the patriarch in his ministry.’45 When Saladin captured the city seven years later, the community went into exile and the abbey of Latina appears to have been turned into a madrasa.46 One enigmatic piece of evidence survives relating to Latina in the aftermath of the battle of Hattin. Raybaud’s inventory of 1742 calendars a bull issued by Pope Clement III on 11 October 1189, addressed to the bishop of Valania, in which the pope directs him to examine the lease of the estates of Montdidier, Turriclea ‘and others’ by the abbot and community of Latina to the Hospital of Acre, to determine whether this transaction had caused great harm to the Order of the Hospital of St John. The two estates named were in the lordship of Caesarea and certainly belonged to the Hospitallers in the thirteenth century. In 40 42 43 44 45 46

41 PKHL no. 96, pp. 255–6. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 8, pp. 71–2. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 7, pp. 70–1. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 15, pp. 81–2. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 6, pp. 67–70. Ed. B. Z. Kedar, in J. France, and W. G. Zajac, eds., The Crusades and Their Sources (Aldershot, 1998), 126. Pringle, Churches no. 334, III, pp. 238–9.

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1189 this lordship was controlled by Saladin, and there was no prospect that a successful judicial inquiry about those estates could be carried out. Presumably the complaint had been made to Rome by the Order before the defeat of Hattin, but was not heard until 1189, and Clement was proceeding on the hypothesis, which turned out to be correct, that this territory would be recovered by the Third Crusade, which was then assembling.47 The Sicilian properties of Latina were unaffected by the loss of Jerusalem. The senior representative of the abbey there was Facundinus, who at least since 1174 had been prior of St Philip’s Agira.48 In 1192 Archbishop Richard of Messina (1183–95) sought to limit the ceremonial privileges of the clergy serving the church of Sta Maria Latina situated outside the walls of his cathedral city. This church belonged to the Jerusalem abbey of Latina, and its rights were successfully defended by Prior Facundinus, who produced evidence that they had been granted by Archbishop Richard’s predecessor, Nicholas, and had been confirmed by Pope Alexander III. In this document Facundinus is styled the prior of Sta Maria de Latina. The use of this title suggests that the survivors of the Jerusalem community had taken refuge at St Philip’s in 1187, and that this had become known as the abbey of Sta Maria Latina in exile. In 1192 the office of abbot was vacant, and Facundinus was recognised as prior of both St Philip’s and of the abbey of Latina itself.49 By the time Emperor Henry VI seized power in Sicily, Facundinus had been elected abbot of Sta Maria Latina. On 30 December 1194, five weeks after he had gained control of Palermo, Henry VI issued a diploma in favour of ‘our liegeman Facundus, Abbot of the Church of Sta Maria Latina, which was the first church of the Latins in Jerusalem’. The abbot had lost no time in seeking confirmation of his community’s rights and properties from the new ruler, and he received favourable treatment. Henry confirmed the properties of the house in his kingdom: St Philip’s Agira, together with six churches and five estates in the island of Sicily, three churches in Apulia and one in Calabria. All these lands and the peasants who worked them would continue to be directly subject to the crown, as they had been in the days of the Norman kings. Henry VI gave permission for the rebuilding, where necessary, of properties that had been damaged in wars since the death of King William II in 1189. He also granted the abbot the right to export each year 200 duty-free mule-loads of wheat from the ports of Catania, Messina and Syracuse ‘to be sent to the land of Jerusalem for the use of the brethren of the church of Sta Maria Latina’. This provision implies that some of the brethren had returned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem by this time.50 In parenthesis it should be noted that the abbot is sometimes called Facundus and sometimes Facundinus in Henry VI’s diplomas. In 1197 Henry VI issued two further diplomas for Abbot Facundinus. The first is a confirmation of the abbey’s possession of the monastery of St Sepulchre at Aquapendente, which had not been listed in the diploma of 1194. The emperor had since been shown the title deeds, held by Latina, showing that they had received the house from Hugh, Marquis of Tuscany, and that the gift had been confirmed by Emperor Henry III and his wife Agnes (1039–56) and by their son Henry IV (1056–1106), who was reigning when 47 48 49 50

Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 173, p. 71; Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, Map 2, 482. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’, pp. 67–70, 81–2. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 3, pp. 60–1. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 9, pp. 73–4.

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the Amalfitans built the church of Sta Maria Latina in Jerusalem.51 In August 1197 Henry VI gave permission to Facundinus to export 200 mule-loads of wine each year duty-free from his Sicilian dependencies for the use of the brethren of Latina in the Holy Land.52 Henry VI gave the community two churches at Haseldorf and Oerner in Saxony, where they had never previously possessed property. These were confirmed to the abbey, together with St Sepolcro Aquapendente by Celestine III in March 1197.53 When they returned to the Holy Land after 1191 the community of Latina lived in Acre, where they had owned the church of St Mary since before 1173. This became the church of the new abbey. Its precise location is not known, but Pringle has argued convincingly that it was to the south of the Genoese quarter, perhaps on the northern edge of the Pisan quarter of Acre.54 In October 1200 a meeting between Bishop Theobald of Acre and representatives of the Pisan community to determine the extent of the rights of the Pisan church of St Peter, was held ‘in the palatio of Sta Maria Latina’, which probably means the abbot’s lodgings.55 The monks of Latina also owned a garden in Acre, mentioned in a document of 1221.56 Some of the twelfth-century endowments of the abbey of Latina remained in Christian hands in the Kingdom of Acre: those at Jaffa, some of those in the lordship of Caesarea, and those at Sidon and Beirut in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the County of Tripoli, the community’s properties at Gibelet (after 1197) and on Mt Pèlerin remained in Frankish hands, while in the Principality of Antioch, although the property of Latina at Latakia passed into Muslim hands, the abbey’s holdings in Antioch city were unaffected. Prior Balian of Latina at Antioch in 1213 agreed, at the request of Prior Adam and the community of Our Lady of Josaphat, to administer their property in the principality.57 Yet though the monks of Latina may have received some income from their remaining possessions in the Crusader States, the responsions they received from their Sicilian properties were their most important source of revenue. Abbot Facundinus was, properly, concerned to receive confirmation of his rights in the kingdom. The young king Frederick II issued a privilege for Latina in the early years of his personal rule.58 In 1220 Abbot Facundinus was one of the signatories of the appeal sent by the Frankish clergy at Acre to Philip Augustus asking for his protection against al-Muazzam of Damascus, while the Fifth Crusade was in Egypt.59 In the autumn of 1223 he received a confirmation of Henry VI’s detailed privilege of 1194 from Frederick II, who was then also Holy Roman Emperor.60 Facundinus, who had first appeared in the records in 1174 as prior of St Philip’s Agira, must have been quite old by that time. He died in 1224 and was succeeded by Abbot Pagan, who immediately sent Brother Simon to Palermo to inform 51 52 54 55

56 58

59 60

Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 10, pp. 74–5. 53 Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 11, pp. 75–6. PKHL no. 184, pp. 369–70. Pringle, Churches no. 428, IV, pp. 139–40, and map, p. 16. G. Müller, ed., Documenti sulle relazione delle città toscana coll’Oriente e coi Turchi fino all’anno 1531, Documenti degli archivi toscani 3 (Florence, 1879), no. 52, pp. 82–3. 57 CGOH I, no. 1718. See pp. 184–5. The document, dating from 1209–12, is in a poor state of preservation: Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 14, pp. 80–1. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 12, pp. 77–8.

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Frederick II of his succession and to ask him to confirm the privileges of the monastery in the Sicilian Kingdom.61 There is no evidence that the monks of Latina returned to Jerusalem after the city was restored to Christian rule by the Treaty of Jaffa between Frederick II and al-Kamil in 1229. Abbot Robert, Pagan’s successor, was still living in Acre in 1235 when he sanctioned the sale of land by one of his tenants to the Teutonic Order.62 In 1236 the Order of the Hospital reopened the dispute about two casalia in the lordship of Caesarea which they had leased from Latina before 1187. They had subsequently been leased by Latina to the Knights Templar, and the patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold of Lausanne, had to adjudicate the issue. He ruled that the lands should be restored to the Hospitallers as tenants of Latina, and authenticated copies of the settlement were deposited by both parties with the archbishop of Nazareth and the abbot of the Templum Domini to preclude further litigation.63 It is not known whether Robert was still abbot in 1138 when Pope Gregory IX ordered the abbot of St Samuel’s and the prior of St Giles at Acre to investigate allegations that the abbot of Latina was neglecting his canonical duties and wasting the resources of his house in a life of luxury and debauchery.64 By 1239 a new abbot named Guiscard was in charge of Latina and negotiated the lease of a vineyard to the Teutonic Order.65 To judge from his name, he was a south Italian. In c. 1240, at the request of the abbot of Josaphat, he authenticated a copy of the confirmation of the rights and property of that house made in 1129 by Patriarch Stephen.66 His successor was Abbot Peregrine, and the oath which he took to Patriarch Robert of Nantes (1240–54) when he was admitted to office is recorded in one manuscript of the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre: the oath was administered by Bishop Arnold of Lydda, the patriarch’s vicar, who succeeded Ralph II of Lydda, killed at the battle of Gaza in October 1244.67 This indicates that Peregrine was enthroned between that date and August 1248, when he ratified a lease to John de Ronay, Vice-Master of the Hospital, of the estates of Montdidier, Turris Rubea and all the land in the area of Caco which Latina owned, in return for an annual rent of 800 Saracen bezants. This comprised all the lands of the community in the lordship of Caesarea. The charter was witnessed by four monks of Latina: Brothers John, Henry, Bernard and Walter.68 In 1254 Pope Innocent IV commissioned the abbot of Latina to make provision for the papal candidate Elias Bequot of a canonry in the cathedral of Lydda when one fell vacant.69 Meanwhile the priory of Latina at Antioch remained active. In August 1254 the archbishop of Mamistra heard a case brought by Prior Albert of Latina, in his capacity as procurator for Our Lady of Josaphat in Antioch, against John Carbon, who had failed to pay dues on property which he held from Josaphat. The archbishop gave judgement in Prior Albert’s favour.70 Albert later became the prior of the abbey of Josaphat at Acre. When Thomas of Caesarea gave his house at Tyre to the abbey of Josaphat in 1262 in the presence of Thomas, Bishop of Bethlehem, the pope’s legate, the witnesses were headed by the prior 61 63 65 68 70

62 Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Normannenurkunden’ no. 13, p. 79. Strehlke no. 80, pp. 63–4. 64 Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 247, pp. 83–4; CGOH I, no. 2142. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4140. 66 67 Strehlke no. 88, p. 70. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7. Eracles XXXIII, 57, p. 430. 69 This charter exists in two copies: CGOH I, nos. 2482, 2491. Innocent IV, Registres no. 7744. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 73, pp. 181–2.

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of the monastery of Latina. As he is not named, this might have been either Albert or his predecessor.71 But there is no doubt that Albert had become prior of Acre by February 1263 when Thomas of Bethlehem empowered him to place the abbot of Josaphat in corporal possession of the tithes of Ligio and Tannoch. Albert discharged this duty with Mgr Hugolinus acting as procurator for Abbot Peter of Josaphat. The charter attesting this bears Albert’s seal (described by Charles Kohler), which is inscribed: S. prioris et conventus de Latina.72 Prior Albert returned to Antioch in 1264, possibly because he was a key witness in a dispute over the ownership of land at Antioch between Abbot James of Josaphat and Phemia, Abbess of St Lazarus at Antioch, a case which was heard by Archdeacon Bartholomew, vicar of the Latin patriarch Opizo.73 The priory of Latina at Antioch came to an end when Baibars sacked the city in 1268. The abbey of Latina at Acre continued to function. In 1267 Abbot Henry renewed the agreement between his community and the Master of the Hospital, Hugh Revel, about the lease of estates from the abbey in the lordship of Caesarea.74 Pilgrims continued to visit the abbey church: the Pelerinages et Pardouns de Acre of c. 1280 record that a year’s indulgence might be gained by praying at ‘La Latyne’.75 The last abbot of the house, who is not named, was charged in June 1288 and February 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV to arrange provision to benefices for papal candidates. In both cases he was associated with the abbot of St Geneviève at Paris and the archpriest of the church of Colle at Volterrano, which suggests that he was making a prolonged stay in western Europe, where he may have been trying to enlist help for the Holy Land.76 It is not known whether the abbot had returned to Acre before the city fell to the Mamluks in May 1291. Any brethren of Latina who escaped the sack are likely to have ended up in the priory of St Philip’s at Agira in Sicily. In March 1304 Pope Benedict XI issued a bull in which he offered the protection of the Holy See to ‘the monastery of Sta Maria Latina at Jerusalem, which is known to belong in law to the patrimony of St Peter and of Ourselves and to no one else’, and he listed some of the chief properties formerly owned by the community in the Crusader States.77 At that time it was clearly still thought possible that the Kingdom of Jerusalem might in the near future be recovered by a new crusade. Although that did not happen, the Sicilian community continued to regard itself as the abbey of Latina in exile. In 1363 Pope Urban V described their house as the monasterium sancti Philippi de Agirone, alias sancte Marie Latine in Jerusalem nuncupatum.78

The Benedictine Abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat In late antiquity the valley of the Kidron, on the east side of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, became known as the valley of Jehosaphat, the place where the prophet Joel had proclaimed that the Last Judgement would be held. In the Vulgate text this name was translated as the 71 73 75 76 78

72 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 54, pp. 110–12. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 80, pp. 188–90. 74 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–18. CGOH I, no. 3283. Pelerinages et Pardouns de Acre, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, ch. ii, p. 235. 77 Nicholas IV, Registres nos. 217–18, pp. 2091–2. PKHL no. 195, pp. 388–90. Urban V, Les registres d’Urbain V, ed. M. Dubrulle (Paris, 1926), no. 135, cited by Richard, ‘Le chartrier de Sainte-MarieLatine’, 605 n. 1.

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Vallis Josaphat, and that form was used in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.79 The shrine containing the tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary was located at the northern end of the valley of Josaphat. A church existed there from the late fourth century. It was destroyed by the Persians in 614, but was rebuilt soon after, probably by Patriarch Modestus of Jerusalem (d. 630). The earliest full description of the new church dates from the 680s and is incorporated in the De locis sanctis of Adomnán, where it is attributed to the Frankish pilgrim Arculf:80 The church of St Mary in the valley of Josaphat . . . is . . . built at two levels . . . [In the lower church] at the east end there is an altar on the right of which is the empty rock tomb in which for a time Mary remained entombed. How, or when, or by whom, her holy body was carried from this tomb, or where it awaits resurrection, no one can be sure.81

As this passage shows, the tradition of the Assumption of the Virgin was not known at that time in northern Europe, though it was well established in the Orthodox Churches of the East. The liturgical observance of this feast on 15 August appears to have been introduced in the Roman church by Pope Theodore (642–9), a practice which was generally adopted throughout the Western Church by the end of the eighth century.82 The standard account of this event in sacred history, accepted by the Churches of East and West in the central Middle Ages, was that the Virgin had died in Jerusalem at the age of seventy, been buried in the valley of Josaphat, and then, after resting in the tomb for forty days, had been bodily assumed into Heaven.83 Writing in 985, the Arab scholar and pilgrim al-Muqadassi related that ‘the church which covers the sepulchre of Mary’ stood in the valley of Josaphat.84 This almost certainly refers to the lower church, because the upper church was in ruins by the mid-tenth century.85 The lower church containing the Marian shrine would seem to have survived the destruction ordered by Caliph al-Hakim in 100986 and was still there when the First Crusade reached Jerusalem. The pilgrim guide attached to the Gesta Francorum, dating from c. 1101, states that ‘between the Lord’s Temple and the Mount of Olives is the valley of Josaphat where the Virgin Mary was buried by the disciples’.87 William of Tyre reports that Duke Godfrey confided the sanctuary to a group of monks of strict observance, who had accompanied him from Lorraine: He had brought with him when he came on pilgrimage some well-trained monks from the monasteries [plural], devout men, distinguished by their holy way of life, who throughout the journey recited for him the day and night offices in a canonical form. After he had gained control of the kingdom, he established them in the valley of Josaphat and freely gave them large endowments.88

Guibert of Nogent tells of an abbot who, at the time the First Crusade was preached, cut a cross in his forehead and pretended that it had been incised by God. In that way he raised 79 81

82 83

84 87

80 congregabo omnes gentes et deducam eas in vallem Josaphat: Joel 3: 2. Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, pp. 287–8. Adomnán, De locis sanctis, I, xii, 1–4, ed. L. Bieler, in Itineraria et alia geographica, pp. 195–6; Eng. translation in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 99. For full discussion of this source, see T. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007). H. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols. (London, 1963–5), I, 133–8, 142, 153–9. For the development and observance of this tradition, see M. Jugie, La mort et l’assomption de la Sainte Vierge. Etude historicodoctrinale, Studi e Testi 144 (Rome, 1944). 85 86 Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 219. Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, p. 288. See pp. 20–1. 88 Anonymi Gesta Francorum, p. 99. WT IX, 9, p. 431.

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money from the credulous to finance his journey. He had accompanied Godfrey and, according to Guibert, had subsequently become the first abbot of Our Lady of Josaphat and later archbishop of Caesarea.89 Archbishop Baldwin of Caesarea had certainly come to the Levant with Duke Godfrey, though whether he had obtained money under false pretences, as Guibert claims, cannot be independently verified.90 Baldwin I nominated him archbishop when he captured Caesarea in 1101, but there is no suggestion in any other source that he had been abbot of Josaphat.91 Indeed, when Baldwin I issued a confirmation of the property of the hospital attached to Josaphat in 1115 he described the Hospitaller Ascelin as ‘governing the aforesaid hospital under the rule of Hugh, the first abbot in the valley of Josaphat’.92 He would scarcely have described Hugh in this way had Baldwin been abbot before the king appointed him to Caesarea, and it would appear that Guibert was misinformed about this. Alan Murray has suggested that the monks who accompanied Godfrey had been chiefly drawn from the abbey of Saint-Hubert-en-Ardenne, of which he was advocate, and the abbey of St Lawrence at Liège.93 Abbot Hugh was presumably chosen from among them. When the pilgrim Saewulf visited Jerusalem in 1102–3 he reported that: ‘[Mary’s] tomb is revered by the faithful with the greatest honour . . . There monks serve our Lord Jesus Christ and his Mother day and night.’94 The abbey of Josaphat came to occupy a central place in the itinerary of twelfth-century Western pilgrims. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was very strong in the twelfthcentury Western Church, and Josaphat was her chief shrine in Jerusalem. Ralph of Caen, the chaplain of Prince Tancred, shared this Marian spirituality and described the shrine of Josaphat thus: Ibi Dei aulae aula, coeli regina sepulcrum (There is the courtyard of the court of God: the tomb of the Queen of Heaven).95 In addition, the community had charge of the nearby garden of Gethsemani, which occupied a central place in the narratives of Christ’s Passion. All pilgrims who went to Jerusalem would visit these important sites, and most of them would make offerings there, while the tomb of Our Lady was the principal Marian shrine in Jerusalem and attracted the beneficence of devout laypeople. Initially the monks of Josaphat faced considerable expenses: they needed to build a monastery, and there were no pre-existing buildings they could use. They needed to embellish the shrine church, and also to build chapels to commemorate the sites of Christ’s suffering in the Garden of Gethsemani. They needed to make provision for the needs of the large number of pilgrims who visited the shrine, and finally they needed to fortify the complex of sites in their charge from attacks by marauding Saracens. Abbot Hugh was present at the legatine synod in Jerusalem in 1102 at which Patriarch Daibert was deposed.96 Shortly after this, in 1103–5, Hugh launched an appeal for funds: ‘the place where the tomb of the glorious Virgin is situated has been so wantonly laid waste and ruined by the heathen, that it is clear that the brethren in that place have nowhere to live where they may serve God and His Mother in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict’. Hugh promised that two Masses would be said at the shrine every week for living and dead 89 91 94 96

90 Guibert of Nogent, Historia quae dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos, RHC Occ IV, pp. 182–3. WT X, 15, p. 472. 92 93 FC II, 10, pp. 405–6. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 38, I, pp. 187–9. Murray, Crusader Kingdom, 50–1. 95 Saewulf, p. 69. Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, ed. E. D’Angelo, CCCM 231 (Turnhout, 2011), CCCXLIII, p. 97. AA IX, 16, p. 656.

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benefactors. His appeal was addressed to ‘bishops, archbishops and all the faithful in Christ’ and survives in three copies made in Sicily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although these texts show evidence of later interpolations, the main content of the appeal seems genuine.97 There is no reason to suppose that Abbot Hugh, who came from Lotharingia, directed his appeal chiefly to Norman south Italy: the only surviving copies of his letter are to be found there, because in the late thirteenth century the brethren took their archive to their priory of Sta Maria Maddalena at Messina, where it remained until 1879, when it was transferred to the state archive of Palermo.98 In 1112 Patriarch Arnulf gave the tithes of various estates in his diocese to Abbot Hugh, to aid in the rebuilding programme at Josaphat,99 and in the following year Pope Paschal II placed the community under the protection of the Holy See and issued a general confirmation of their property. This included the right to receive the religious tax paid by nonChristian peasants (that is, Muslims or Jews) working on the monastery estates, which would normally have been paid to the crown. The community of Josaphat also received the right to grant burial in their church to anyone who desired it, provided that the beneficiary had not died excommunicate. That was a financially advantageous concession which attracted benefactors who wished to be buried in this holy site.100 In 1115 Baldwin I issued a diploma in favour of Abbot Hugh confirming the property of Josaphat in his kingdom. The brethren had received jurisdiction over the whole of the valley of Josaphat up to and including the Pool of Siloam, and they also owned houses and gardens inside Jerusalem. Baldwin himself had given them the estate of Aschar near Nablus in 1108.101 Among the other important donations listed were that of Lambert, a vassal of Joscelin of Courtenay, Prince of Tiberias, who had given them the estate of Soesme in Galilee, while Joscelin himself had given them another estate there named Casrielme. They had received lands and vineyards in the environs of Jerusalem from Barisan of Jaffa, the constable of the Kingdom, from Guy of Milly and from Ralph Aliensis. Eustace Grenier, Lord of Sidon, had given the monks a house in Sidon and an estate near the city, together with a house in Caesarea and an estate in that fief. Bishop Roger of Ramla gave them the lands of Sephoria, together with a former mosque and a house inside that fortified township and Prince Tancred gave them an estate called Galgala on the slopes of Mt Carmel, a square in Haifa (Caiphas), and the church which had been built there, together with the other houses and an oven, a mill and other lands outside the town walls.102 The monks of Josaphat also received endowments in the Principality of Antioch. At some time before 1114 Guy Capriol gave them the estate of St Paul at Mamistra in Cilicia, and conceded to their tenants there the right to take 200 pounds of fish each year from the adjacent coast, together with 100 containers of salt, each holding about 4 pints.103 In 1114 Prince Roger of Antioch confirmed this and other gifts made to Our Lady of Josaphat by his vassals. This included four estates and the grant by Robert of St Lot of 400 pounds of fish each year. Roger also confirmed the estate at Jabala given by Prince Tancred’s widow, 97 99 101 103

98 Hiestand classified it as fälschung (?): PKHL III, no. 6, pp. 99–102. Kohler, ‘Chartes’, p. 109. 100 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 1, pp. 21–2; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 53, I, pp. 179–80. PKHL III, no. 14, pp. 117–19. 102 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 32, I, pp. 149–51. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 64, I, pp. 195–8. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 4, pp. 115–16.

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Cecilia of France, in almsgiving for the repose of her husband’s soul. Roger himself gave the monks 500 eels each year, together with a house in Antioch where the brethren might stay when they visited the city.104 It is possible that the annual donations of fish were sold in Antioch and the profits given to the monastery, but more likely that they were salted and sent by sea to Jaffa to sustain the brethren and their dependants during Lent. At the same time, the community was accumulating endowments in western Europe. On 3 January 1113, Paschal II confirmed to Abbot Hugh the lands granted to his community in Norman south Italy. The list was headed by the church of St Mary Magdalene at Messina, the gift of Count Roger II of Sicily, which had been newly built for the monks of Josaphat and consecrated by Bishop Geoffrey of Messina, who had freed it from the payment of all dues to the Ordinary. The community also owned the church of St Anna de Galath in the same diocese. Roger Borsa, Duke of Apulia, and his son William had given to Josaphat the church of St Mary in the diocese of Rossano. In the diocese of Cassano the community had been given the churches of St Lawrence, St Mary de Capharo and St Theodore. In the diocese of Anglona they held the church of St Basil, the gift of Alberada, first wife of Robert Guiscard and mother of Bohemond I of Antioch. Bohemond’s own wife, Constance of France, gave Josaphat the church of St Perpetua at Taranto, while his infant son, Bohemond II (born in 1110), had given to the monks of Josaphat ‘a ship with two fishermen, to operate off the coast of Taranto’, without having to pay dues on their catch.105 All these donors were members by blood or marriage of the house of Hauteville which had strong links with the Crusader States. In 1113 Bohemond II was hereditary prince of Antioch, while Count Roger II’s mother, Adelaide, had in 1112 married Baldwin I of Jerusalem, with a clause in her marriage contract that he son Roger would succeed to the throne of Jerusalem when his stepfather died.106 One of Abbot Hugh’s first concerns was to use some of the income which these endowments generated to build a hospice for pilgrims. This was constructed during the patriarchate of Gibelin of Arles and stood next to the shrine church. Its declared purpose was to provide a place in which weary poor people and pilgrims might find sustenance and shelter, and in which the sick might be cared for. The community of Josaphat devoted a tenth of its income to funding this institution, which had its own chapel, dedicated to St Saviour. Abbot Hugh also founded a confraternity to assist the brethren in their work. This is known from the confirmation of the Confraternity statutes issued by Patriarch William I, which itself is preserved only in a vidimation drawn up by Prior Facundus of Sta Maria Latina. The vidimation colophon is not dated, but the only prior of Latina whose name approximates to this is Facundinus, Prior of the Latina house at Agira in the Kingdom of Sicily, who is recorded in documents between 1174 and 1192.107 It is possible therefore that this copy was made in Italy after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. The document lists the foundation members of the Confraternity, who include King Baldwin I, Bishop Bernard of Nazareth, William of Burès, Guy de Milly, Joscelin of Courtenay, Prince of Tiberias and Balian of Jaffa, the constable. As Hans Mayer has pointed out, not all these benefactors would have been 104 107

105 106 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 4, pp. 26–7. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 3, pp. 24–6. WT XI, 21, p. 526. Holtzmann, ‘Papst-, Kaiser- und Norrnannenurkunden’ nos. 3, 6, 15, pp. 60–1, 67–70, 81–2.

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present in the kingdom during the patriarchate of Gibelin of Arles, and some of the names must have been added later. The statutes enact that each member should subscribe 13 bezants a year to the hospice’s work, and that on all feasts of the Apostles each of them should provide food for thirteen poor men. The members also agreed that after their deaths their heirs should give alms to provide for the care of a stipulated number of poor men.108 Despite the problems about the membership list, there is no reason to doubt that Abbot Hugh founded the hospice in the reign of Patriarch Gibelin, or that Baldwin I was a patron of the Confraternity from the start. The hospice was administered by a rector who was subject to the abbot.109 In 1116 Abbot Hugh was a member of a delegation sent by King Baldwin I to Rome, asking Paschal II to reinstate Arnulf as patriarch of Jerusalem after he had been suspended from office by the pope’s legate, the bishop of Orange, on the grounds that he had been uncanonically elected, and because of irregularities in his birth and conduct. The delegates succeeded in their mission, and Arnulf was reinstated.110 This embassy was Hugh’s last recorded act, though he may have lived until 1119. Baldwin I died on 7 April 1118 and was succeeded by Baldwin II, formerly count of Edessa. On 16 January 1120 the new king convened the Council of Nablus at which Gilduin, abbot-elect of Our Lady of Josaphat, was present.111 On 31 January 1120 Baldwin confirmed the rights and property of the abbey of Josaphat. His diploma was addressed to the abbot-elect, Gilduin, whom Baldwin described as ‘my kinsman’.112 In the spring of that year he witnessed a royal privilege as abbot, which indicates that confirmation of his appointment had by then been received from Pope Calixtus II. Papal confirmation was needed because Paschal II had taken the community under the direct protection of the Holy See.113 Gilduin was the son of Hugh I of Le Puiset, but his mother was Alice of Monthléry, the sister of Melisende, the wife of Hugh I of Rethel and mother of Baldwin II of Jerusalem.114 Gilduin was a Benedictine monk, who had been prior of the Cluniac house of Lurcy-le-Bourg before he went to Jerusalem in 1119.115 Although Baldwin II was distantly related to Baldwin I, he had few links with the Lotharingians who had held office under his predecessors, and was anxious to establish members of his own kin in positions of authority.116 His cousin Gilduin was eminently suited to become abbot of the powerful monastery of Josaphat, and became a royal adviser. In 1120 he accompanied the king on a visit to Edessa, where the Latin archbishop gave him a relic of St Stephen to be sent to the abbot of Cluny.117 The Frankish high nobility, many of whom were related to Gilduin, gave generously to his abbey. His brother Hugh of Le Puiset, Count of Jaffa, made an extensive donation of land 108 109 110 111 113 115 116

117

Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 19, pp. 47–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 50, I, pp. 175–6. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 58, I, pp. 187–9. PKHL III, no. 19, pp. 124–6; Kirstein, Die lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 125–8. 112 WT XII, 13, p. 563; cf. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 84, I, pp. 222–4. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 85, I, pp. 225–30. 114 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 86, I, pp. 230–3. Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 168–88, Genealogical Table B. Murray, Crusader Kingdom, 129. Baldwin I was the son of Eustace II of Boulogne and grandson of Eustace I. Baldwin II was a great-grandson of Eustace I: his father was Hugh I of Rethel, son of Baldwin, Count of Rethel, and Ida, the sister of Eustace II of Boulogne. Tractatus de reliquiis S. Stephani Cluniacum delatis, RHC Occ V, 317–20; Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 175–6.

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in 1123,118 and in 1127 assented to the gift of an estate to the house by his vassal, the knight Balian.119 Gilduin’s cousin, Joscelin I of Courtenay, Count of Edessa, gave land in western Edessa in 1126.120 Baldwin II’s sister, Cecilia, Lady of Tarsus, gave the house three casalia near Mamistra in Cilicia.121 William of Bures, who became prince of Galilee in 1119, was also a cousin of Gilduin and a generous benefactor of his community, and he also placed the hospice of St Julian which he had founded at Tiberias under the authority of the hospice of Josaphat,122 while Bishop Bernard of Nazareth further endowed the Josaphat hospice during Gilduin’s abbacy.123 In addition to lands, the abbey of Josaphat also acquired a substantial amount of tithes. Those which they held in the lands directly subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem were listed and confirmed by Patriarch Warmund in 1123, and that list was updated and confirmed by his successor Stephen of Chartres in 1129.124 Stephen had been abbot of St John de valle at Chartres, and was a kinsman of Baldwin II and perhaps of Gilduin also.125 It may have been at his suggestion that a further gift of tithe was made to Josaphat in 1130 by the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre.126 Baldwin II not only confirmed the rights of Josaphat, but was also a patron of the community, giving them an estate near Nablus in 1122.127 When Baldwin II’s wife Morphia died on 1 October 1127 or 1128, she was buried in the church of Our Lady of Josaphat, and in the spring of 1129 Baldwin gave the community the estate of Bestella in the territory of Tyre for the repose of her soul.128 Morphia was the first queen to die in the Latin Kingdom: Baldwin I’s Armenian queen, Arda, had gone to live in Constantinople after her husband repudiated her, while his next wife, Adelaide of Sicily, had returned to Palermo when her marriage was annulled in 1117.129 Queen Morphia created a precedent that in the Crusader Kingdom queens were buried in the church of Our Lady of Josaphat, while kings were buried in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Warner, Count of Grez, a kinsman of Godfrey of Bouillon, had been buried in the church of Josaphat in July 1100,130 but Morphia’s decision to be buried there was more important to the prestige and future prosperity of the abbey, since it was an implicit guarantee that the community would enjoy the patronage of future rulers who were descended from her. Baldwin I’s wife Adelaide had also had a devotion to Our Lady of Josaphat and vowed that she would build a church in her honour if she were granted a safe return voyage to Sicily in 1117. That church of St Mary at Galath was not completed until 1124, but it was then given to Abbot Gilduin in accordance with the wishes of Adelaide who had died in 1118.131 118 119 121 122 123 124 125 127 128

129 131

Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 9, p. 119; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 92, I, pp. 239–41. 120 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 1103, I, pp. 257–9. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 11, pp. 121–2. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 13, p. 123. Delaborde, ed., Chartes nos. 10, 16, pp. 36–7, 42–3; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 96, I, pp. 250–2. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 9, pp. 35–6. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 12, pp. 37–8; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 17, pp. 125–7. 126 WT XIII, 25, p. 619; Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, p. 184. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 17, pp. 43–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 90, I, pp. 237–8. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 109, I, pp. 268–9. Morphia’s death is commemorated on 1 October in the calendar of the Queen Melisende Psalter: H. Buchthal, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (with liturgical and palaeographical chapters by F. Wormald) (Oxford, 1957), 124–6. At the request of Patriarch Stephen of Chartres (enthroned between 27 July and 19 October 1128), King Baldwin also remitted dues payable by pilgrims on goods brought by them into the port of Acre, and this he did for the repose of the soul of Queen Morphia: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 108, I, pp. 266–7. 130 Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: the queens of Jerusalem’. AA VII, 21, p. 516. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 13, pp. 38–40.

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In 1130 Baldwin II issued a detailed confirmation of all the property held by Abbot Gilduin and his community in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.132 Gilduin is named in no later source. He died before 1135 when his successor, Abbot Robert, is first mentioned. Robert was not an important public figure: he is named in only three documents, in all of which he appears as a witness to transactions involving the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.133 At the court held on 5 February 1138, when King Fulk and Queen Melisende made what proved to be preliminary arrangements for the foundation of the convent of Bethany, the abbey of Josaphat was represented by Prior Gerald.134 The absence of an abbot of the house on such an important occasion suggests that Robert had recently died. By September 1138 his successor, Abbot Guy, had been appointed; he was to hold office for twenty years.135 Although the abbey of Josaphat lost some endowments when eastern Edessa was captured by Zengi of Mosul in 1144, and when western Edessa was dismembered by the neighbouring Muslim powers in 1151, the loss of income was not significant.136 In any case it was offset by fresh endowments in the Principality of Antioch, where in 1134 Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Morphia, gave the abbey land at Jabala, while in 1138 William of Haronia in Cilicia gave the house the estate called Julian.137 At about the same time the south Italian endowments of Josaphat were augmented by the grant of lands in the diocese of Mazzara and by an important gift of tithes in the archdiocese of Cosenza.138 Abbot Guy was very punctilious about protecting the rights of his community. In 1140 Pope Innocent II issued a confirmation of the property held by the abbey of Josaphat in the Kingdom of Sicily, and a separate confirmation of tithes and properties elsewhere to which the community’s title had been disputed (a privilege which he reissued two years later).139 Evidently that papal ruling proved difficult to enforce, for Eugenius III (1145–53) reissued it in stronger terms in 1145 and again in 1151.140 In 1151 Eugenius also confirmed that the abbey was under papal protection, and ratified the rights and privileges which it had received from Paschal II in 1113.141 In 1154, at Abbot Guy’s request, Anastasius IV (1153–4) confirmed the property of Josaphat in the Crusader States,142 while on 1 March 1155 the recently elected Hadrian IV renewed Anastasius IV’s privilege, and also confirmed once again the diploma about disputed properties first issued by Innocent II.143 Guy was also concerned to receive confirmation of the abbey’s rights from secular rulers. At Easter 1152, when Baldwin III asserted his independence from his mother as co-ruler and divided the kingdom with her, Guy rapidly obtained a diploma from him confirming the privileges of Josaphat.144 By Guy’s reign the abbey had established a second priory in the kingdom of Sicily. This was at Rossano in Calabria, and the prior was responsible for the administration of the endowments of Josaphat in the mainland provinces. In 1144 Prior John of Aurisaurea, acting as the representative of Abbot Guy, attended the court of Roger II at 132 134 136 137 139

140 143

133 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 116, I, pp. 276–80. BB nos. 101 (of 1135), 22 (of 1136), 23 (of 1137), pp. 219–20, 78–83. 135 See pp. 231–2; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 22, pp. 130–2. On Kyaria in western Edessa and tithes in the archdiocese of Hierapolis, see Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 11, 19, pp. 121–2, 129. 138 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 20, 21, pp. 129–30. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 22, 23, pp. 130–2. The properties in dispute were the church of Ligio and the tithes of Tanis in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the churches of St Mary and of St Mary Magdalene at Paterno in the Kingdom of Sicily: PKHL III, nos. 44, 45, 48, pp. 156–60, 166–7. 141 142 PKHL nos. 59, 66, pp. 181–2, 199–201. PKHL no. 65, pp. 197–9. PKHL no. 70, pp. 205–8. 144 PKHL nos. 72, 73, pp. 209–14. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 226, I, pp. 412–15.

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Messina and presented for inspection the title deeds to all the properties of the abbey of Josaphat in his kingdom: these were listed in the two diplomas of confirmation which Roger issued.145 Abbot Guy died before 1158 and was succeeded by Abbot William.146 In 1159 Queen Melisende gave the community the casale of Cafracos, which was near the estate of Aschar which they already held, requesting that a priest should be appointed to celebrate regular Masses for her and her kin at the tomb of the Virgin.147 The queen had a long illness and died on 11 September 1162. She was buried in a specially constructed chapel on the right-hand side of the great staircase which led down to the shrine church. This chapel was protected by an iron-work screen and contained an altar at which Mass was said daily for the repose of her soul.148 Josaphat was also a popular burial place for other members of the royal kin. Melisende’s niece, Princess Constance of Antioch, who died some time between 1163 and 1176, was buried there, as was her son Reynald, the child of her marriage to Reynald of Châtillon, and, in 1178, her daughter Philippa, the wife of Humphrey II of Toron.149 The prestige of the abbey increased as a result of these burials, as did its endowments. Alexander III, in recognition of the support which Abbot William had given him during the schism of 1159–77, conferred on him the privilege of wearing a mitre and a ring and of vesting in a dalmatic when he celebrated Mass, which were the ceremonial privileges of a bishop.150 Later in his reign Alexander gave the abbots of Josaphat the additional ceremonial privilege of wearing liturgical gloves and sandals at Mass on Easter Day, Christmas Day and all the feasts of Our Lady.151 When Abbot William died in c. 1168, the extensive building programme undertaken by successive abbots had almost been completed. Pringle has examined the literary and archaeological evidence about this very thoroughly, and what follows is a summary of his conclusions.152 The crypt church which the crusaders had taken over in 1099 was cruciform in shape. The shrine of the Virgin there is best described by the Russian abbot Daniel among the twelfth-century pilgrim narratives: The tomb of the Holy Mother of God is in a valley, in a small cave cut from the rock, with small doors, so that a man may only enter by stooping, and on the floor of the cave opposite the doors is cut a shelf into the rock, and on this shelf was laid the sacred body of Our . . . Lady . . . and thence it was carried up uncorrupted to Heaven.153

The tomb of Mary was therefore very like that of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a cave tomb, which had been cut from the surrounding rock, and around which a basilica had been built (or, in the case of Josaphat, excavated). The Latins extended the main axis of the crypt church towards the east, and built a monumental staircase which led from the south aisle to ground level, where a substantial entrance porch was built to give access to it, which is still standing. Two chapels were built at the sides of the great staircase: that on the right contained the tomb of Queen Melisende, while that on the left may have housed the tomb of 145

146 148 151

In the surviving copy of the first document Abbot Guy’s name, Guido, has been wrongly transcribed as Hugo: Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 25, 26, pp. 133–7. 147 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 32, pp. 78–9. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 194, 248, I, pp. 375–7, 455–7. 149 150 WT XVIII, 32, p. 1858. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 44, pp. 151–3. PKHL no. 86, pp. 232–3. 152 153 PKHL no. 100, pp. 259–60. Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, pp. 287–306. Daniel the Abbot, p. 134.

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her mother, Queen Morphia. One of the first concerns of the Benedictines of Josaphat had been to beautify the edicule surrounding Mary’s tomb; and when Abbot Daniel visited it in Baldwin I’s reign he found that it had been clad with marble.154 By the time John of Würzburg visited the church in the 1160s the edicule had been embellished further: ‘[Our Lady’s] tomb, even though her body is not there, is outstanding both because of its marble panelling and because of the structure, designed like a ciborium made of silver and gold, which surmounts it.’155 Both John and the pilgrim Theoderic, who went to Jerusalem in 1172, give details of the frescoes and accompanying texts with which the crypt church had been decorated. Many of them had been taken from the liturgy of the feast of the Assumption; for example, the ceiling of the tomb chapel was inscribed: Maria virgo assumpta est ad aethereum thalamum, the second antiphon of lauds on that feast.156 The crypt church was the centre of pilgrim devotion, but the community built a new upper church. Pringle notes that: ‘Maps dating from c. 1150–80 suggest that . . . [it] was rebuilt as a Romanesque basilica, orientated east–west, with an eastern apse and twin towers at the west end.’157 Pilgrim accounts do not mention this church and Pringle suggests, surely correctly, that this is because they did not visit it. It was the monastery chapel; it had no physical connection with the crypt, but was canonically part of the monastic enclosure from which visitors were excluded. Pilgrims did visit the two chapels of Gethsemani, which the monks of Josaphat had built and administered. An oratory had been built on the site commemorating Christ’s Agony in the Garden by c. 1101 when Saewulf visited Jerusalem.158 John of Würzburg reports that this church had been recently rebuilt when he went there in Amalric’s reign. It was dedicated to the Saviour, St Salvator, and appears to have been used as a chapel by the Hospital of Josaphat, or at least by the staff attached to it.159 There was also a cave chapel commemorating the Sleep of the Apostles: the place where Peter, James and John were unable to stay awake and keep vigil with Christ on the eve of his Crucifixion.160 This chapel had existed at the time of Saewulf’s visit, but during the rebuilding work an entry to it was made in the new entrance portico. John of Würzburg describes how ‘on the right side of the entrance [to the shrine church] is a chapel with a cave in which the grieving disciples remained sleeping, while the Lord departed from them three times and returned as often’.161 The monastery was built to the west of the shrine church, and the hospice was built very near the church. By c. 1170 the monastic complex was defended by a wall, which had probably been there for much longer, but which had not been remarked upon by earlier pilgrim guides.162 The wealth of the abbey continued to grow. In 1168 King Amalric promised the new abbot, Peter, that he would give the house an annual payment of 1,500 bezants from the revenues of Egypt, which he was intending to conquer.163 The failure of that campaign meant that the money was never received. In 1179 Count Henry I of Champagne, brother-in154 157 159 160 161 163

155 156 Daniel the Abbot, p. 134. John of Würzburg, p. 128. John of Würzburg, p. 129. 158 Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, p. 290. Saewulf, p. 69. John of Würzburg, pp. 114–15; Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, pp. 358–65. Matthew 26: 36–46; Mark 14: 32–42; Luke 23: 39–46. 162 Saewulf and John of Würzburg, pp. 69, 114; Pringle, Churches no. 292, III, pp. 98–103. Second Guide, p. 241. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 342, II, pp. 595–6.

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law of Louis VII of France, visited Josaphat as part of his Holy Land pilgrimage and gave the brethren 10 livres a year payable on his rents in Champagne.164 In 1180, Reynald of Châtillon, Lord of Transjordan, and his wife Stephanie gave land to the abbey in return for a daily Mass to be said by one of the priest brethren, for the maintenance of a lamp at the shrine of the Virgin to burn there by day and by night, and for a votive candle to be lit each day at matins, Mass and vespers, for the donors and for the souls of their deceased kin. Prince Reynald’s first wife, Constance of Antioch, and their son Reynald were buried in the shrine church.165 By the 1150s the community had become rich enough to buy lands from impoverished laymen. In 1158 the knight Ralph, a vassal of Hugh of Ibelin, sold part of his fief to Josaphat, with Hugh’s consent, in order to pay his ransom to Nur ad-Din.166 In 1185 the young king Baldwin V gave his formal assent to the sale of land at Nablus by the rais Guy to the monks of Josaphat for 4,050 bezants.167 It is a further index of its wealth that John of Ibelin, drawing on a source dating from c. 1180, reports that the abbey was required to supply 150 sergeants to the crown in time of emergency.168 The community of Josaphat took their spiritual responsibilities seriously, and considered the singing of the Divine Office and intercession for its benefactors as their primary duty. When, at some time between 1163 and 1168, King Amalric presided at the settlement of a dispute between Abbot William of Josaphat and the bishop of Bethlehem, the assent of all the brethren of the abbey was needed, and the signatories to the agreement were Prior Gilbert, Bernard the subprior, five priest brethren, two deacons, four subdeacons ‘and some others’.169 This number of ordained brethren would have enabled the daily liturgy in the house to be celebrated with full solemnity, and also for seven or eight private Masses to be said each day for benefactors. The abbey played an important part in the public liturgy of the church of Jerusalem. On the night before Palm Sunday, the abbot of Josaphat and his community walked to the village of Bethany, to the east of the Mount of Olives, where they met with the canons of Mt Zion and those of the Mount of Olives and were joined by the patriarch of Jerusalem. All these clergy put on festal vestments and at daybreak formed a procession, headed by the patriarch carrying the Holy Cross relic, and walked in procession down the Mount of Olives singing the antiphons and psalms appointed for the feast, re-enacting the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week. On 15 August, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, the religious communities of Jerusalem, wearing festal vestments, went in procession to the abbey of Josaphat, where the day Office was sung in the shrine church, followed by High Mass.170 Despite their wealth and prestige, the monks of Josaphat rarely left their monastery to attend the royal court or the patriarch’s curia. Almost all references to them come from documents relating to the affairs of their house. In contrast to many of the other religious in 164 165 166 168 170

Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 42, pp. 149–50. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 41, pp. 88–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 534, II, p. 913. 167 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 32, pp. 78–9. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 451, II, pp. 769–71. 169 John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125. Mayer, Die Kanzlei, II, no. 5, pp. 893–5. Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 412, 430.

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the Latin Kingdom, they very seldom appear as witnesses to other transactions. This is an indication that the Rule of St Benedict was strictly observed in the house. Abbot John, the last abbot to rule in Jerusalem, was enthroned in c. 1177.171 During his reign a priory of Aschar is first mentioned, which had presumably been established to have oversight of the considerable holdings of the community in the region of Nablus and perhaps also in Galilee.172 This may reflect the fact that the fief of Nablus was no longer directly controlled by the crown. On King Amalric’s death in 1174 it had been granted to his widow, Maria Komnena, who in 1177 married Balian of Ibelin. As lord of Nablus he proved a less accommodating neighbour to the community of Josaphat than the crown had been, perhaps because – since Nablus was Maria’s dower and would revert to the crown on her death – neither was permitted to alienate any of its property. In 1185 a boundary commission was set up by Balian and Abbot John to determine the limits of the abbey’s lands at Nablus, and crosses were erected as boundary marks.173 Abbot John died soon after this, and no successor had been appointed in 1186 when Patriarch Heraclius acted as mediator in a dispute about tithes between the abbey of Josaphat and the canons of the Templum Domini. Josaphat was represented by Prior Peter, who ratified the agreement.174 In 1187, when a dispute developed about property boundaries between the abbey and Viscount Amalric of Nablus, the monks were represented by Prior Peter and by Prior Bernard of Aschar.175 The delay in the appointment of a new abbot may have been caused by the civil war which broke out in the kingdom in September 1186 following the death of Baldwin V, when Raymond of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee, refused to do homage to King Guy of Lusignan. The fortified complex of Our Lady of Josaphat was captured by Saladin when he besieged Jerusalem in September 1187.176 There is no evidence that the brethren were harmed. They presumably had taken refuge in the city as the sultan’s army approached and left with the other Latin clergy when it surrendered on 2 October. The monks of Josaphat retired to their priories in the Kingdom of Sicily. This is known from a gift made to Abbot Amatus of Josaphat in 1200 by Bishop Nicholas of Mileto who gave the church of St Lawrence in his diocese to the monks of Josaphat because they had been driven from Jerusalem and forced to take refuge in the West, while their mother house had been razed to the ground by the heathen.177 In fact the damage to the church of Josaphat was more limited than this description suggests. An Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, drawn up in c. 1231, relates: ‘In the valley of Josaphat there was an abbey of black monks and . . . a church of Our Lady St Mary. In that church was the tomb where she was buried, and it is still there. After the Saracens had captured the city they demolished the abbey, but they did not destroy the church.’178 Muslims revered Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and after 1187 alHarawi incorporated this passage in his treatise, The Places of Pilgrimage: ‘Ali of Herat writes: “The tomb of Maryam is in the Wadi Jahannum, You descend by thirty-six steps . . . The building . . . was originally a church, but is now a masshad, or oratory, dedicated to 171

172 174 176 178

Abbot Peter was still alive in 1176: BB no. 161, p. 313. Abbot John is first recorded in 1178: Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 40, pp. 87–8. 173 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 43, pp. 150–1. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 46, pp. 154–5. 175 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 448, pp. 156–7. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 49, pp. 157–8. 177 Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 24. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 60, pp. 168–70. La citez de Iherusalem, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raybaud, xxiv, pp. 50–1.

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Abraham the Friend of God, peace be on him.”’179 Yet, although Muslims prayed at the shrine after 1187, Christians were not excluded and, indeed, appear to have retained the charge of the sanctuary where Mary’s tomb was situated. Wilbrand of Oldenburg, who made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1211–12, reported that the shrine was then administered by Syrian Orthodox clergy.180 The community of Josaphat stayed in southern Italy until after the Treaty of Jaffa had been negotiated between Richard I and Saladin in 1192, recognising the new frontiers of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The possessions of Josaphat in southern Italy were already well organised. In 1172 Gerald, the prior of St Vincent in Calabria, was described as ‘Master Prior of all the houses of Our Lady of Josaphat in the Kingdom of Sicily’. In that year he complained to King William II that royal officials were disregarding the privileged status of the abbey’s lands and tenants in his kingdom, and obtained redress.181 The archive of the Sicilian properties of Josaphat was kept at St Vincente, and in 1185 two brethren went to William II’s court to explain that many of the documents had been damaged in an earthquake, among them a privilege of Roger II exempting the monks of Josaphat from payment of dues on exports in the port of Messina. This related chiefly to responsions sent by the Sicilian priories to the mother house in Jerusalem. William II, having obtained ratification from his port officials that this claim was accurate, renewed the privilege, and in January 1188 extended it. This no doubt reflected his hope that the new crusade, in which he was intending to take part, would recover Jerusalem. At the same time, William issued a detailed confirmation of all the property held by the monks of Josaphat in his kingdom.182 William II died childless in November 1189, and the succession was disputed between his cousin, Tancred of Lecce, and William’s aunt Constance, wife of Henry of Hohenstaufen, who became the Western emperor Henry VI in 1190. After Tancred’s death in 1194 – and perhaps because his period of rule was in any case considered invalid by Henry and Constance – Abbot Amatus of Josaphat sought Henry’s confirmation of the rights and privileges of his community in the Kingdom of Sicily. The emperor reissued William II’s general privilege of 1188, adding details of property acquired since that time, and also renewed the commercial privileges of the house. In 1196 his wife Constance, who was queen-regnant of Sicily, confirmed the grants to the house which her husband had made.183 Amatus was the first abbot of Josaphat to hold office since the death of Abbot John in 1185–6, and his appointment indicated that the community had returned to the Holy Land. Their new home was in Acre, where before 1187 they had owned two houses and a church, and where they had been freed from the payment of all port dues and from the payment of tolls at the city gates since the reign of Baldwin III.184 This property, situated in the northwest corner of the city, near the Templar castle, was the site of the new abbey.185 Some brethren may have been sent from Sicily to take possession of the property after Acre was 179 180 182 184 185

The main text was written in 1173: Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 210. 181 Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 135. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 38, pp. 146–7. 183 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 47, 50, 51, pp. 155–6, 158–62. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 52, 54, 55, pp. 162–6. Known from the confirmations of Anastasius IV in 1154 and Hadrian IV in 1155: PKHL III, nos. 70, 72, pp. 205–1. Pringle, Churches no. 432, IV, pp. 144–7.

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recaptured by the Third Crusade in 1191, Amatus was appointed abbot at some time between then and his first recorded appearance in 1195.186 Although Josaphat still held some lands in the new Latin Kingdom, it was far less affluent than it had been before 1187. The royal family continued to view the house with benevolence, but its own resources were limited. In 1198 Queen Isabel I and her husband, King Aimery of Cyprus, gave Josaphat a mill, worked by horses, at Acre, which would have been of practical help in the daily life of the community.187 In 1199 Peter, Archbishop of Caesarea, made a gift to the house of the tithes of the estate of Taranta.188 But new gifts were few, and some of the property held by Josaphat before 1187 which remained in Frankish control was difficult to administer. This was particularly true of the lands in Antioch and Cilicia which could only be reached by sea. This, no doubt, was what led Abbot Amatus to lease an estate in the valley of Russol in the Amanus mountains, for the rent of 8 bezants a year, to Gilbert Eral, Grand Master of the Temple, who was interested in it because it was near his castle of La Roche de Roussel, which Saladin had failed to capture.189 Like other senior clergy in the Crusader Kingdom, Abbot Amatus sought for his community some share of the spoils of Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade had captured the city in 1204. The Latin patriarch of Constantinople, Thomas Morosini, gave Josaphat the church of St Mary de Taranito.190 Boniface of Montferrat, King of Thessalonika, who had close links with the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and was the uncle of Queen Maria (1205/6–12), the daughter of Isabella I and Conrad of Montferrat, gave the brethren of Josaphat the church of the Philanthropos at Thessalonika.191 The abbey of Josaphat had some endowments in the city of Antioch, but had no representative there to administer them. In 1207 Amatus sent Prior John and Brother John from Acre to Antioch to make new arrangements about this property. They appointed John the deacon, a clerk of the Latin patriarch, Peter of Angoulême, to be the representative of Josaphat in the city. In return he was made a confrater of their house and was given a small property next to the Hospital of Antioch, on condition that he repaired the oratory of Our Lady there and restored a derelict house on the site, so that they might be used by the brethren of Josaphat when they visited the city. Abbot Amatus ratified this agreement, and the charter was witnessed by four members of the Acre community, Brothers Adam, Peter, John and Julian.192 This arrangement did not work out well. John the deacon leased the property to a Syrian Orthodox priest named Karmari Ibn Abraqili, who failed to restore the oratory. In 1213 Prior Adam, who had succeeded Arnold as prior in the mother house at Acre, went to Antioch to sort matters out. He replaced the inefficient John the deacon as the abbey’s representative with Balian, the prior of Sta Maria Latina at Antioch.193 Under his direction, John the deacon gave up all claims to the oratory of St Mary, which remained in 186

187 189

190 192

The agreement that Amatus made with the Benedictine abbey of St Paul’s at Antioch to provide mutual aid in time of need is discussed below, p. 217. 188 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 610, III, pp. 986–8. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 58, pp. 167–8. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 56, p. 166; J. Riley-Smith, ‘The Templars and the Teutonic Knights in Cilician Armenia’, in T. S. R. Boase, ed., The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia (Edinburgh, 1978), 97–8. 191 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 45, pp. 94–5. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 61, 63, pp. 171–2. 193 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 64, pp. 172–3. See p. 169.

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the tenure of the priest Karmari (al-Mawdud), but Prior Balian made a lay member of the patriarch’s household, the knight Simon, responsible for enforcing the conditions of tenure: that the priest should restore the oratory and the house, and should pay Simon as representative of Josaphat an annual rent of 2 dinars.194 The concern shown by Abbot Amatus to acquire new property in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and to secure the comparatively small endowments of his house in north Syria almost certainly reflects a difficulty that he was experiencing in receiving responsions from his community’s extensive properties in the Kingdom of Sicily after the death of Empress Constance in 1198. During the minority of her son Frederick II (born 1194) and the early years of his personal rule, central government in the kingdom was weakened by prolonged outbreaks of civil war. The economic prosperity of Josaphat was adversely affected by the loss of royal patronage in the Crusader Kingdom after the death of Isabella I in 1205. The monarchy had little spare money, and the only dealings that King John of Brienne had with Josaphat occurred in 1212, when he placed a compulsory purchase order on land belonging to the house near the Sidon gate at Tyre. In return, Prior Adam of Josaphat was granted an annual rent of 30 bezants, payable from the dues of the fish market at Tyre.195 Abbot Amatus had been among the prelates who attested the betrothal of Queen Maria to King Peter II of Aragon in 1206.196 He ratified the arrangements made about the abbey’s property in Antioch by Prior Adam in May 1207,197 but he is mentioned in no later source, and, as has been noted, Prior Adam represented the abbey in the next few years. Yet no new abbot was appointed, which suggests that Amatus may have still been alive, but may have been too old or too ill to undertake public duties. His successor, Abbot Ralph, is first recorded in 1220 as one of the signatories of an appeal made by the prelates of Acre to Philip Augustus for protection against al-Muazzam of Damascus at a time when the main army of the kingdom was in Egypt, taking part in the Fifth Crusade.198 In December 1220 Frederick II, having been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Honorius III, returned to Sicily and began to restore public order. One of his first acts was to issue the Assizes of Capua, clause XV of which stipulated that all religious houses that wanted him to confirm their rights and privileges must first submit detailed written evidence to crown officials. Abbot Ralph sent Brother Henry, armed with the relevant documents, to Catania, where on 11 June 1221 the emperor confirmed all the property rights and commercial privileges of the abbey in his kingdom.199 This enabled the abbey to obtain redress for the infringement of the rights of some of its priories in the Sicilian Kingdom.200 In 1238 Pope Gregory IX censured the community of Josaphat, together with the other Benedictine houses in the Latin Kingdom, because the brethren were accused of being lax in their observance of the Benedictine Rule, and guilty of worldliness and self-indulgence. The 194

195 198 200

This charter was drawn up in Arabic and refers to Prior Balian as Bayan: N. Jamil and J. Johns, ‘An original Arabic document from Crusader Antioch (1213 AD)’, in C. F. Robinson, ed., Texts, Documents and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D. S. Richards (Leiden, 2003), 157–90. 196 197 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 630, III, pp. 1026–9. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 645, III, pp. 1061–6. See p. 196. 199 Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 65, pp. 173–4. Property in Mileto (1221), in Policorio (1227) and at S. Vicenzo in the diocese of Cosenza (1235): Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 66–8, pp. 174–7.

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bishop of Tortosa, the prior of St Giles at Acre and the abbot of the Premonstratensian canons of St Samuel’s at Acre were appointed to investigate these charges.201 Although nothing further is heard of this complaint, it may reflect the consequence which greater affluence had on the community after their income and supplies of goods from their Sicilian estates had been restored. In 1229 Emperor Frederick negotiated the restoration of Jerusalem to the Franks. Although the whole community of Josaphat did not return there, they did found a priory there. The monastery of Josaphat in the Kidron valley had been destroyed, but the monks owned ‘houses and gardens within the walls of Jerusalem’.202 It is probable that this property was adapted for use as a priory, and that the brethren there conducted services in the shrine church outside the walls, which had not been damaged. The evidence for this development is slight, but in 1241, when Abbot Gerald of Josaphat leased a property in the suburb of Montmusard at Acre, the charter was witnessed by William, ‘the prior of our house’, and by Peter, ‘prior in Jerusalem’, together with four other monks.203 If the brethren of the priory were still in Jerusalem when the Khwarizmian mercenaries sacked the city on 23 August 1244, they would almost certainly have been massacred. Abbot Gerald of Josaphat accompanied the large Frankish army which fought against the Khwarizmians outside Gaza and was heavily defeated by them on 17 October 1244. The patriarch of Jerusalem, Robert of Nantes, together with his senior clergy, sent an account of this disaster to the prelates of France and England, in which he reported that: ‘Concerning the Archbishop of Tyre, the Bishop of St George [Lydda], the Abbot of St Mary of Josaphat, the Master of the Temple and the Preceptor of St Mary of the Germans . . . it is a matter of doubt whether they have died in this battle, or whether they are held in captivity.’204 It was not unprecedented for a Benedictine abbot to be present at a battle in the Latin Kingdom, but the usual reason for this would have been that he had led a military contingent there, though he would not have taken any part in the fighting himself. It is known that Josaphat owed military service to the crown in the late twelfth century, but there is no information about any similar obligations in the thirteenth century.205 Although not as wealthy as it had been in the twelfth century, Josaphat was becoming more prosperous by the 1240s. Pope Innocent IV requested the brethren to contribute towards the papal subsidy being collected by the patriarch of Jerusalem in 1243.206 It is therefore possible that the abbey was required to raise a force of sergeants for the Gaza campaign because of the state of emergency which faced the kingdom as a consequence of the loss of Jerusalem. Abbot Gerald’s death must have been confirmed before 1248, when he had been succeeded by Abbot Henry, who may have been the brother who in 1221 had represented the community at the court of Frederick II.207 His reign was brief, and by 1254 he had been succeeded by Abbot Peter, who was a good administrator, concerned to establish and enforce the rights of the monastery. He obtained confirmations of the abbey’s rights, privileges and properties from Pope Alexander IV, which were the first detailed papal confirmations to be granted to the house for a hundred 201 203 206

202 Gregory IX, Registres no. 4140. Pope Hadrian IV’s bull of confirmation: PKHL no. 52, p. 211. 204 205 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 69, pp. 177–8. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 342. See p. 182, n. 174. 207 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 72, pp. 180–1. CGOH I, no. 2482.

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years.208 In 1256 Pope Alexander charged Abbot Peter and the archbishop of Tyre to ensure that proper provision was made for the Benedictines of Mt Tabor, whose house he had granted to the Knights of St John. Almost certainly the Abbey of Josaphat would have been required to accommodate some of the brethren of Tabor. The pope also charged Abbot Peter with the oversight of the transfer of the property of Mt Tabor to the Hospitallers.209 In 1258 Abbot Peter carried out a visitation of the priories of Josaphat in the Kingdom of Sicily,210 and in the following year he visited Rome to ask the pope to settle a dispute between Josaphat and the dean of Jaffa about the assignment of tithes. Alexander appointed judges delegate to investigate that issue.211 Abbot Peter appointed Prior William to be procurator-general of the abbey in Acre while he was away in the West. In March 1260 William reached an agreement with Archbishop Giles of Tyre about the property of Josaphat in his archdiocese. The community owned two estates near Tyre and the church of St Andrew in the city, which they had held for more than a century.212 Prior William agreed that the abbey would pay 70 bezants a year in lieu of tithes for their estates near Tyre and that in return the archbishop would grant them the square in which St Andrew’s church was situated.213 Because of its location, the abbey of Josaphat at Acre suffered damage during the War of St Sabas, fought by the Venetians against the Genoese and their allies, the Pisans, in the city between 1256 and 1258. In 1259 Pope Alexander appointed Thomas of Lentino bishop of Bethlehem and gave him legatine powers, partly to enable him to settle this civil war.214 Abbot Peter of Josaphat was still in the Roman curia at that time and therefore in a position to complain to the pope about the losses suffered by his monastery, which Alexander addressed and required his legate to enforce. On 27 April 1260 Alexander ordered the Venetians and the Pisans of Acre to pay compensation to the abbey.215 On the same day Alexander instructed the legate to investigate a complaint brought by the abbey of Josaphat about payment of tithes on various holdings in the casale Anna.216 Overall, the community of Josaphat had reason to feel grateful to Alexander IV for the consistent support he had given them, and perhaps in recognition of this they paid the arrears of the tax owed by their house to the papal treasury in return for the papal protection which they enjoyed. The sum of 5 gold ounces, one for each year of Alexander’s reign, was paid by them to Mgr Cosmas, the pope’s collector in Acre, on 19 September 1260.217 James Pantaleon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, had gone to the curia in 1259, and while there complained that the abbey of Josaphat claimed that it was directly subject to the pope and therefore exempt from his jurisdiction. On 23 May 1260 Pope Alexander replied that he was unaware that such a privilege had ever been granted to Josaphat, but that if it had been he was revoking

208 209 210 212 213

214 217

Delaborde, ed., Chartes nos. 48 (21 December 1254), 49 (30 January 1255), 50 (4 March 1255), pp. 99–106. Alexander IV, Registres nos. 311, 314; Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 309, p. 94. 211 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 74, p. 182. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 75–6, pp. 182–3. It is listed in Anastasius IV’s bull of confirmation of 1154: PKHL III, no. 70, p. 206. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 78, pp. 185–7. On the church of St Andrew of Josaphat at Tyre, see Pringle, Churches no. 458, IV, pp. 205–6. 215 216 See pp. 109–11. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 51, pp. 106–7. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 52, pp. 107–9. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 77, pp. 183–5.

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it.218 When Alexander IV died on 27 May 1261, James Pantaleon succeeded him as Pope Urban IV. Abbot Peter’s zeal for the rights, particularly the financial rights, of his community proved effective. His abbey had become solvent, and in 1261 when a nearby house in Acre came on the market as part of an executor’s sale, the community bought it for 450 bezants.219 After his return to Acre, Peter continued to defend the rights of Josaphat. Since 1240, when the sultan of Damascus had returned much of Galilee to the Franks, it had been possible for landowners to claim estates there which they had held before 1187. Nevertheless, Frankish control of the area was difficult to enforce. In 1261 Sultan Baibars of Egypt, having extended his rule over much of Palestine and Syria as a result of his victory over the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260, made peace with the government of Acre and recognised their control over those parts of Galilee that they had held before the Mongol invasion of 1259.220 The abbey of Josaphat held the estates of Ligio and Tannoch near Tiberias, and their recovery led to the reopening of a long-term dispute with the archbishop of Nazareth about the ownership of the tithes of those lands. The two parties agreed to accept mediation by Thomas of Bethlehem, the papal legate, and in February 1263 he found in favour of the monks of Josaphat because they had produced documentary evidence to support their claims.221 This decision was ratified by Urban IV in November 1263, but his ruling no longer had any relevance because much of Galilee had been annexed by Baibars in the summer of 1263.222 Urban IV’s ratification was addressed to the prior of Josaphat, because Abbot Peter had died earlier in the year, and the pope delegated the appointment of his successor to the new patriarch, William II of Agen, who promoted Prior James.223 The longstanding arrangement by which the prior of Sta Maria Latina at Antioch represented the interests of Josaphat in the city continued to work well. Prior Albert of Latina was present at a court in Antioch in August 1264, at which Bartholomew, the vicar of the absent Latin patriarch Opizo, mediated a settlement in a property dispute between the abbey of Josaphat and the abbey of St Lazarus at Antioch (a daughter house of the Abbey of Bethany). Abbot James of Josaphat was represented by the monks Nicholas and Durand.224 In 1266 Clement IV (1265–8) received a complaint, presumably from Abbot James, that property belonging to his abbey in the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been stolen, and he ordered Patriarch William II to excommunicate those responsible.225 Clement’s successor, Gregory X (1271–6), who had been staying in the Holy Land before his election, had firsthand knowledge of the religious communities there and of their needs. On 5 December 1274 he issued the most wide-ranging confirmation of its rights and privileges which the abbey of Josaphat had ever received, in which he confirmed all the bulls of previous popes, and all the diplomas issued by the kings of Sicily until the deposition of Frederick II by the Council of 218 220 221 222 224

219 Alexander IV, Registres no. 3123. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 53, pp. 109–10. See the fuller discussion of this in relation to the church of Nazareth above, p. 130. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 55, pp. 112–15; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ nos. 79, 80, pp. 187–90. 223 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 56, pp. 143–6. Urban IV, Registres nos. 222–3. 225 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–19. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 58, p. 119; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 82, p. 191.

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Lyons in 1245.226 By 1278 a new abbot of Josaphat, Guy, had been appointed.227 In 1279 Pope Nicholas III, presumably responding to a request from Guy, ruled that all privileges granted to the abbey in the past should continue to stand, including those that the community had not used. There is no indication in the sources about Guy’s reason for making this unusual request.228 During the second half of the thirteenth century the property of Josaphat was gradually eroded, despite the efforts of its abbots to defend their rights. In 1261 the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople, which brought to an end any income which Josaphat may have been receiving from St Mary de Taranito. In 1268 Antioch and its surrounding lands were seized by Baibars, and in April 1289 the city and County of Tripoli were captured by the Mamluks. The endowments of Josaphat in the parts of the Crusader States which remained in Frankish hands were very few and, although the abbey in Acre was privileged to grant an indulgence of four years and forty days to pilgrims who prayed in its chapel, it is unlikely that their offerings amounted to more than a fraction of the income which the community needed.229 Because of this, Josaphat became almost completely dependent on the responsions sent by its priories in the Kingdom of Sicily. These were well organised by a Master Prior, who acted as vice-gerent for the abbot of Josaphat, but the system was disrupted by the war that broke out in 1282 between Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily, and Peter III of Aragon, who claimed to be the lawful heir of Frederick II. The war continued after Charles’ death in 1285 and was still in progress in 1289 when Abbot William of Josaphat received permission from the Latin patriarch, Nicholas of Hanapes (1288–91), to carry out a visitation of the Sicilian priories, because, since the outbreak of the war, responsions had not been paid regularly, or in some cases at all, to the mother house in Acre.230 William was still in the West on 10 September 1290, when he witnessed an exchange of land between Prior Nicholas of Messina, ‘prior of all the churches belonging to the monastery of St Mary in the valley of Josaphat throughout the Kingdom of Sicily’, and Theodore, the protopapa of the Greek clergy of Messina.231 On 4 March 1292 Abbot William held a chapter-general for the priories of Josaphat in the Kingdom of Sicily ‘in our house of St Mary Magdalene at Messina, where, after the laying waste of the Holy Land, we have established the headquarters of our Order [religionis] and where we live in community’. In this document William reports that he and the brethren from the mother house of Acre had gone to Messina after the loss of the Holy Land. This implies that William had returned to Acre in the autumn of 1290 and had brought his community back to Sicily when the city was captured by the Mamluks on 18 May 1291. There is no way of determining whether they left at some early stage during the siege, or whether they escaped by sea when the city fell. They would have had a ship of their own in the harbour because of the commercial privileges granted them by both the kings of Jerusalem and the kings of Sicily. The chapter-general of 1292 was attended by representatives of the priories of Josaphat in the island of Sicily and the province of Calabria. At that time that area was controlled by 226 229 231

227 228 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 83, p. 192. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 84, pp. 192–3. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 85, p. 193. 230 Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 59, pp. 120–1. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 87, pp. 194–5.

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the crown of Aragon, while Apulia and the other mainland provinces were ruled from Naples by the Angevins. Because of the war no representatives attended from the Angevin lands. Abbot William was concerned to restore discipline in the priories of his Order: he enacted that in future no monk should travel more than a mile from his community without permission from his superior. The record concludes: ‘we have had two identical documents drawn up . . . one to be kept in our house in Sicily, the other for our brethren in the Terra di Lavoro and Apulia [the regions under Angevin rule]’.232 The abbot and brethren of Our Lady of Josaphat, and their successors, together with the archive they had brought with them from Acre, remained in the house at Messina until 1879. Although the community had not been able to return to the shrine church in the valley of Josaphat after 1244, the Muslim authorities made few difficulties about Latin Christians worshipping there. When the Dominican friar, Riccoldo of Monte Croce, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1288, he reported: ‘From there we went into the very beautiful tomb of the Virgin, which the Saracens guard with many lights and great reverence, and there we rested, singing, celebrating, preaching and giving communion to the people.’233 Christians were almost always allowed access to the shrine, and since 1757 it has been shared between the Orthodox and the Armenians.234 Although Saladin destroyed the upper church and the monastery buildings, the Gothic porch and the great ceremonial staircase leading to the shrine church remain a memorial to the custody of this shrine by the Benedictines in the Latin Kingdom.

The Benedictine Abbey of Mt Tabor Mt Tabor was traditionally identified as the site of Christ’s Transfiguration, an event recorded in all the synoptic Gospels. Jesus took his disciples, Peter, James and John, to the top of a mountain in the region of Galilee and showed himself to them in the full glory of his divinity. Moses the lawgiver and Elias (Elijah) the prophet appeared and spoke with him there. None of the evangelists names the mountain, but Matthew and Mark describe it as ‘a high mountain apart’. It was this which led to the identification of the place with Mt Tabor, which stands free of any other hills in western Galilee.235 A church was built on Tabor, perhaps as early as the reign of Constantine I. Because the evangelists report that St Peter said to Christ at the Transfiguration: ‘Let us make three tabernacles [skenas: sheltered places], one for thee [Christ], one for Moses and one for Elias’, pilgrims expected to find three churches on the site. Bede’s widely read pilgrim guide, for example, states that on Tabor ‘there is a large monastery . . . which has three churches in accordance with the words of Peter’. Bede had not visited the Holy Land, though he based his account on the reports of pilgrims who had, but St Willibald, who went to Galilee in 724, during Bede’s lifetime, found that the monastery there had only one church, dedicated to Christ, 232 234 235

233 Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 88, pp. 195–6. Riccoldo de Monte Croce, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, 64. For an account of the history of this church after 1291, see Pringle, Churches no. 337, III, pp. 293–5. Matthew 17: 1–13; Mark 9: 2–13, Luke 9: 28–36.

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Moses and Elias.236 John Wilkinson considered it likely that the three churches mentioned by some early medieval pilgrims in fact formed part of a single church, in which the high altar was dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ, while there were separate chapels dedicated to Moses and Elias, and Pringle agrees that the archaeological evidence supports this interpretation.237 The Byzantine emperor, John I Tzimisces, visited Mt Tabor during his victorious campaign in Syria–Palestine in 976, as recorded in his letter to the Armenian prince Ashot III: ‘We also went to Mount Tabor and climbed to that place where Christ our God was transfigured.’ He made his headquarters there for a while, presumably in the monastery: ‘While we remained in that place, people came to us from Ramla and Jerusalem . . . they asked that a commander be appointed over them and became tributary to us.’238 When Godfrey of Bouillon became ruler of Jerusalem, he appointed Tancred prince of Galilee. Tancred had conquered that province immediately after the fall of Jerusalem in July 1099 and, as William of Tyre reported with approval, was a great benefactor of the Church there: ‘he was at great pains to found the diocesan churches there and he endowed them generously with lands and also provided them with church furnishings. Although these sacred places have lost no small part of those endowments through the sharp practice and illwill of later princes, yet even now they live on what is left to them of his [Tancred’s] gifts, and pray for the soul of him who showed his great love for the churches of God by his generosity.’239 Tancred’s generosity was particularly directed towards Mt Tabor, where he established a Benedictine community led by Abbot Gerald. The pilgrim Saewulf who visited Tabor in 1102–3 described what he expected to find there from the gospel narrative: ‘Three monasteries were built on the summit here in ancient times and are still there: one in honour of Our Lord Jesus Christ, another in honour of Moses, a third, slightly further away, in honour of Elias.’240 The Russian abbot Daniel, who went there a few years later, gives a clearer description: There is a fine church here dedicated to the Transfiguration, and another dedicated to the holy prophets Moses and Elias is to the north of the Transfiguration. The place of the Holy Transfiguration is surrounded by a stone wall with iron gates: here there used to be an [Orthodox] bishopric, and now there is a Latin monastery.

Daniel reports that the Latin community were on good terms with Orthodox pilgrims: They treated us with great honour in the monastery of the Transfiguration. We dined there, and having had a good rest, we . . . entered the church of the Holy Transfiguration and worshipped [there] . . . and receiving the blessing of the abbot and all the brethren . . . we went round all the holy places on that holy mountain.241

236

237 238

239

Bede, De locis sanctis, 16, pp. 276–7; Hodoeporicon sancti Willibaldi, XIII, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 260. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusade, 173; Pringle, Churches no. 155, II, p. 79. Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the Crusades, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, trans. A. E. Dostourian (Lanham, MD, 1993), I, 19, p. 30. 240 241 WT IX, 13, p. 438. Saewulf, p. 74. Daniel the Abbot, pp. 161–2.

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Pringle has argued convincingly that the Latin community took over the Orthodox monastery in 1099 and that the Orthodox then built a new church ‘a little way off’ dedicated to St Elias, and that this had happened by the time of Saewulf’s visit. He argues that the modern abbey of St Elias, which dates from the nineteenth century, incorporates medieval masonry which was part of the twelfth-century Orthodox church of St Elias.242 In 1101 Tancred, with the assent of Patriarch Daibert and of King Baldwin I, conveyed to Abbot Gerald the properties that had formerly belonged to the Greek community of Tabor. The prince explained that in some cases he had granted the tithes of estates to his knights ‘on account of the dangers which threatened the region and the poverty of the knights who defended it’. The list of properties was impressive, but the available revenues provided by them were more restricted: the tithes of two estates were held by knights, eleven estates had been devastated by warfare and were still uncultivated, while four estates to the east of the Jordan were still in Muslim hands.243 In 1103 Pope Paschal II took the abbey of Mt Tabor and its possessions under papal protection, but stipulated that ‘the tithe of those estates belonging to the monastery, which are now held by Christian knights, shall be used to supply the monks with the necessities of life’. Forty-four estates are listed, with a high concentration in Galilee and the Terre de Suète, but there were also some in the territories of Tyre, Acre, Saphet and Banias.244 Paschal’s bull is addressed to venerabili fratri Giraldo Montis Tabor archiepiscopo, and the pope recognises Gerald’s authority over the whole of Galilee and Tiberias, and bestows a pallium on him, with detailed instructions about the liturgical occasions on which he may wear it.245 By addressing Gerald as archbishop, not archbishop-elect, the pope makes clear that he was already in bishop’s orders. His consecrator is likely to have been Patriarch Daibert, who was on very friendly terms with Tancred, founder of the monastery, and the sacrament would in that case have been conferred before Daibert’s first deposition in the winter of 1101–2. It is possible that the abbot of Mt Tabor should be identified with Bishop Gerard, who is said to have carried the Holy Cross at the battle of Ramla on 7 September 1101.246 He may also perhaps be identified with Archbishop Gerard who, together with the bishop of Barzenona, was sent as ambassador to Emperor Alexios in 1102 by Baldwin I to confirm the treaty of friendship between the two powers, and who took with him two tame lions, sent by the king as a gift to the emperor.247 The combination of the offices of abbot and archbishop was unusual, and the uncertainty of chroniclers about which title to use when writing about Gerald reflects this. Gerald and the Benedictines who formed the foundation community of Mt Tabor probably came from southern Italy like their patron Tancred, though this is not certain. Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny (1122–56), in a letter to the brethren of Mt Tabor, wrote ‘all or many of you come from the West and have gone to live in Outremer’.248 Although his 242 244

245 246

247 248

243 Pringle, Churches no. 157, II, pp. 81–3. CGOH II, p. 897, no. 1; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 220, I, pp. 124–5. Jonathan Riley-Smith has identified many of these places, which later passed into the hands of the Knights of St John: Knights of St John, Gazetteer and Maps, 479–507, and the inset map on 414. PKHL III, no. 5, pp. 92–9; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 25, I, p. 130. AA VII, 66, p. 578. Fulcher of Chartres, describing the same battle, says that ‘a certain abbot, chosen by the king, carried the Lord’s Cross in the sight of all’: FC II, 11, p. 411. AA VIII, 47, p. 636. omnes aut multi vestrorum de cismarinis partibus ad transmarinis migraverunt: G. Constable (ed.), Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2 vols (Cambridge MA, 1967), II, 214–17.

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predecessor, Abbot Pons, had visited Tabor after his deposition in 1122, Peter knew very little about the foundation.249 He described how: ‘a certain brother, who claimed to be a member of your community, coming to the regions of France and Spain dressed as a pilgrim . . . stayed with us on his journey and cheered us greatly by telling us about your way of life, your good order, and the careful way in which you observe your religious obligations, about all of which until now we had known nothing’. He continued, ‘in recent times you have been united to our body by your careful observance of the Cluniac Order’.250 Dom Jean Mabillon took this to mean that the Abbey of Mt Tabor was affiliated to the Cluniac Order, and this view has been widely shared, in recent times notably by Giles Constable.251 Yet, although there is no doubt that the monks of Mt Tabor observed the Benedictine Rule in accordance with the Customary of Cluny, there is no evidence that the house was part of the Cluniac Order. There were other monasteries in western Europe which followed the same course, of which the imperial abbey of Farfa in the Papal States was perhaps the most eminent.252 The Mt Tabor community, in accordance with the Benedictine tradition, valued learning. One work from their library which has survived is a manuscript of Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, which was written there. That work is the sixth book of Cicero’s De re publica and consists of a visionary dream of the cosmos experienced by Scipio Africanus. Macrobius, trained in the neo-Platonist tradition, and writing in c. AD 400, transmitted to the medieval Latin West in his commentary important elements of classical Greek scientific thought, such as the estimate by Eratosthenes that the circumference of the earth was 252,000 stadia.253 The community of Tabor clearly thought that this was the kind of text which should be available in their library to enable them to observe the obligations of their Rule and to undertake lectio divina, the informed study of divine revelation. In 1106 Baldwin I issued a diploma confirming the lands of the brethren of Mt Tabor. Thirty-four estates are listed, and the king adds ‘there are many others whose names we do not know’, a reference, no doubt, to the endowments of the house in areas still under Muslim control.254 Baldwin specified that estates which were held by knights should remain in their hands for life, but should revert to the abbey when they died. This was a sensible rule, which prevented litigation in the short term, though in the long term it sometimes proved difficult to enforce. No abbot is named in this diploma, and it is not known whether Gerald was still alive at the time.255 In c. 1109 the church of Nazareth was raised to a bishopric, and it became necessary to define the relationship between the new bishop and the abbot-archbishop of Tabor.256 249

250

251

252 253

254

255

Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 5 vols., Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1990), XII, 30, vol. IV, p. 424. sed insuper Cluniacensis Ordinis sollicita observatione vos corpori nostro unitos esse moderno tempore: Peter the Venerable, The Letters, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1967), I, no. 80, pp. 214–17. J. Mabillon, Annales ordinis Sancti Benedicti, 6 vols. (Lucca, 1739–45), LXXII, V, p. 591; Peter the Venerable, Letters, ed. Constable, II, pp. 291–2. H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), 248–9. This figure can be converted into metric measurements which agree closely with modern calculations of the earth’s circumference, though some scholars compute the length of a stadium differently and produce a somewhat lower figure: Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig, 1963), I, 20, 20, vol. II, p. 82. This accounts for the discrepancy in the number of estates belonging to Tabor detailed in this charter and those listed in Paschal II’s bull of 1103. 256 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 31, I, pp. 146–9. See p. 116.

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Patriarch Gibelin of Arles gave a ruling on this matter in 1111 in his capacity as papal legate. In this document he did not use his title of patriarch at all. He enacted that the abbot and community of Tabor should be directly subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem, who alone should have the right to ordain members of the community, or consecrate any part of the monastery church or chapels. The bishop of Nazareth should have ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Galilee and should consecrate the Holy Oils for the use of Tabor. Nevertheless, the abbey of Tabor should possess a third of the tithes of Tiberias and its dependencies forever.257 In effect this marked the end of the abbots’ powers as archbishops of Galilee, and the title was never used by Gerald’s successors. But when later popes issued confirmations of the abbey’s privileges, these invariably included the status of the abbot as a metropolitan archbishop with the right to wear a pallium. Although after 1111 this honour no longer had a jurisdictional application, it did confer immunity on the abbots of Tabor from any ecclesiastical power save that of the Holy See.258 Since the fifth century Mt Tabor had been identified in the Coptic Church of Egypt as the place where Abraham met with Melchizedek, King of Salem, ‘priest of the most high God’, who ‘brought forth bread and wine’ and gave Abraham his blessing.259 This tradition spread among the Eastern Churches in the centuries before the First Crusade, and when Abbot Daniel visited Tabor in Baldwin I’s reign he found ‘a cave like a small cellar cut in the rock, and there was a little window at the top . . . and towards the east there had been built an altar. The cave has small doors and you descend into it by steps from the west . . . Holy Melchizedek comes often to celebrate the liturgy in the holy cave. And all the believers who live on this holy mountain come here, and they have told me the truth of this.’260 When John Phocas went on pilgrimage to Tabor in 1185, he too visited the Cave of Melchizedek: ‘In it are pierced many caves, which have upper and lower chambers, and remarkable lodgings and cells, serving as dwellings for ascetics. Near this cave is a temple at the very spot where Melchizedek met Abraham returning from the battle.’261 Pringle, who has examined the archaeological and literary evidence, has concluded that the present cave church of St Melchizedek on Tabor, which dates from the nineteenth century, is on the site of the cave described by twelfth-century pilgrims.262 Although there was no cult of Melchizedek in the Western Church before the twelfth century, he was a familiar figure to Western clergy because reference is made to him in the canon of the Mass of the Roman rite as prefiguring the eucharistic sacrifice.263 The Melchizedek chapel appears to have been shared by the Orthodox and Latin monks of Tabor but, as John Phocas’ account shows, it became a centre of interest for the hermits on the mountain. During the twelfth century, Latin hermits were attracted to Mt Tabor. There was nothing unusual about this, since hermits were to be found living near many of the 257 258 259

260 262 263

PKHL III, no. 11, pp. 109–11; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 46, I, pp. 171–2. E.g. Eugenius III’s bull of 1146: PKHL III, no. 62, pp. 190–3. Genesis 14: 18–20. This tradition had weight because it was attributed to St Athanasius of Alexandria: Pringle, Churches no. 158, II, p. 83. 261 Daniel the Abbot, p. 161. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 321; PG 133: 937. Pringle, Churches no. 158, II, pp. 83–5. The priest prays that God will accept the consecrated elements sicuti accepta habere dignatus es . . . quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech . . .

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abbeys of western Europe at that time.264 Much of what is known about the hermits of Tabor comes from Gerard of Nazareth’s De conversatione virorum Dei in Terra Sancta morantium, written in c. 1140. The complete text has been lost, but substantial extracts from it have been identified in the Centuriators of Magdeburg by Benjamin Kedar, and edited by him. Andrew Jotischky discovered an earlier set of citations from the work of Gerard in a manuscript of John Bale’s Chronica, a biographical history of the Carmelite Order, dating from 1527–33, with amendments added until 1540, which he examined in detail in his study of the eremitical tradition in the Crusader States.265 This was an important discovery, because it proved that the Centuriators had represented their source accurately. Kedar has shown convincingly that the information about the hermits drawn from Gerard of Nazareth is effectively identical in both Bale and the Centuriators.266 Gerard, who had lived as a hermit at Nazareth, had good information about Mt Tabor. He had discovered that there had been at least one Latin hermit on the mountain before Tancred founded the monastery. John of Lucca, who later became a monk at Our Lady of Carraria,267 had gone to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, and had gone to meditate in the forest on the slopes of Tabor. There he met a gaunt, wild-looking man who told him that he was a Christian and had come to live there in solitude at the time when the Franks conquered Antioch (i.e. 1098). He was not aware that they had subsequently conquered the Holy Land and when told of this by John of Lucca, threw up his hands and praised God, but he refused the offer of food and clothing which John made, and withdrew once again into solitude.268 Gerard himself had met a monk ‘who lived in concealment in a cave on the north side of Mt Tabor, and only ate bread and water and uncooked fruit and herbs, and who recited the entire psalter each day’, like the recluses at Fonte Avellana trained by St Peter Damian (d. 1072).269 Gerard also knew another hermit who had begun by living in a cave on the mountain, but was tempted by a good-looking Saracen girl, who came to visit him there and, in order to subdue his sexual urges, had retreated deep into the forest on the mountain where he lived an austere life of fasting and manual labour.270 The church authorities often expressed concern about solitaries who did not live under a Rule: Patriarch Aimery of Antioch, later in the twelfth century, appointed a minister to supervise the hermits of the Black Mountain.271 It is 264

265

266

267 268

269

270 271

H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 (New York, 1984); T. Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200 (Oxford, 2011), examines this theme in its European context. B. Z. Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, a neglected twelfth-century writer in the Latin East: a contribution to the intellectual history of the Crusader States’, DOP 37 (1983), 55–77; A. Jotischky, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, John Bale and the origins of the Carmelite Order’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995), 214–36; A. Jotischky, The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (University Park, PA, 1995). B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Latin hermits of the Frankish Levant revisited’, in M. Montesano, ed., ‘Come l’orco della fiaba’. Studi per Franco Cardini (Florence, 2010), 185–202. See pp. 245–6. Gerard of Nazareth, ‘De conversatione virorum Dei in Terra Sancta morantium’, in M. Flacius Illyricus, ed., Ecclesiastica historia . . . Duodecima Centuria, 7 vols. (Basel, 1562–70) (hereafter cited as Centuria), XII, 10; edited in Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 74–5. Centuria, XII, 6, col. 987, in Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 72; Peter Damian, Vitae S. Rodolphi et S. Dominici Loricati, PL 144: 1017–19, ch. x. Centuria, XII, 10, cols. 1603–4, in Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 71. Centuria, XII, col.1373, in Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, pp. 74–5.

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possible that one of the abbots of Tabor attempted to impose a more ordered life on the hermits of the mountain. This would explain the situation which John Phocas reported, of the hermits living together in cells adjacent to the cave chapel of St Melchizedek.272 Abbot Daniel had complained that access to the monasteries on Mt Tabor was difficult: ‘The mountain is all rock and to climb it . . . is very difficult and tedious: you have to climb in zig-zags and the way is very hard. If you climbed briskly from the third to the ninth hour, you would scarcely be able to reach the top of the holy mountain.’273 This did not make it immune from enemy attack. Troops fighting in Palestine and Syria were trained in hill warfare. In May 1113, Mawdud of Mosul invaded Galilee and besieged, but failed to take, Tiberias. He did occupy Mt Tabor and briefly made it his headquarters. Some members of the community were said by later sources to have been killed on that occasion, and were commemorated as martyrs in the necrologies of some French Benedictine houses.274 This may be an authentic memory, but it is worth noting that Albert of Aix says nothing about the murder of the brethren in his account, while Fulcher of Chartres, who was present in the kingdom at the time, says nothing about the attack on Tabor in his account of Mawdud’s Galilee campaign.275 In addition to any loss of life they may have incurred, the community undoubtedly suffered loss of revenue from their estates in Galilee as a result of the invasion, and very probably also a loss of labour to work their lands. This mattered because the abbey had almost certainly been sacked, and repairs and replacements of church furnishings would have been expensive. Two brethren, Martin and Rainald, were therefore sent by Abbot Raymond of Tabor to southern Italy to appeal for funds. This was the homeland of their founder, Prince Tancred, who had died childless in 1112, and probably also the homeland of some of the community. The monks found a benefactor in Richard the Seneschal, Lord of Mottola and Castellanata, who was a first cousin of Tancred, being the son of Robert Guiscard’s elder brother, Count Drogo (d. 1051), and who was well known for his generosity to the Church.276 Among Abbot Raymond’s list of desiderata was a house which could be used as an administrative centre by Tabor’s representatives for its south Italian properties. In June 1115, Richard gave the community the castle of Licia and the hill on which it stood in the diocese of Umbriatico in Calabria. In a codicil to this deed of gift, he added a vineyard and the rights of the brethren or their agents to fish in the Gulf of Taranto.277 The abbots of Tabor took little part in the routine public life of the kingdom, though they did appear at assemblies on important occasions. Abbot Peter was present at the Council of Nablus, convened by Baldwin II in 1120,278 and in 1138 his successor, Abbot William, was among the witnesses to the exchange of Bethany for the lands of Thecua made by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre with King Fulk.279 Mt Tabor continued to receive fresh donations. At an early date the monks had received vineyards situated at the foot of Mt Pilgrim outside Tripoli: these are mentioned in a charter of Count Pons, drawn up between 1116 and 1137.280 In 1139 Count Raymond II of Tripoli 272 274 275 276 279

273 John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 321; PG 133: 937. Daniel the Abbot, p. 161. AA SS, May I, 4, col. 437. AA XII, 9, 11, pp. 836–40; FC II, 49, pp. 565–9; WT XI, 19, pp. 523–5, also has nothing to say about an attack on Tabor. 277 278 Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy, 243, 322. CGOH II, 899, no. V. WT XII, 13, p. 563. 280 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21. Richard, ‘Le chartrier de Sainte-Marie-Latine’, 612, no. 3.

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and his wife Hodierna gave the community the casale of Bethsanum in return for the maintenance of a sanctuary lamp in the shrine of the Transfiguration at Tabor to commemorate their dead kin.281 In 1146 the count and his wife gave Abbot Pons of Tabor houses in the city of Tripoli, and freed the community from the payment of tolls and port dues throughout the county, particularly those arising from the sale of oil.282 Raymond II’s mother, Cecilia of France, had been married to Prince Tancred before, as a widow, she married Raymond’s father, Count Pons, and this may have influenced the young count’s patronage of Tabor. The abbey also acquired more property overseas. In 1147 Count Robert of Ascoli in the Papal States confirmed to Prior Hubert of Tabor the gift of the ford over the river Tronto made by his father, Count Atto (which presumably included the right to levy tolls), together with other nearby property. He made it a condition that the brethren of Tabor should found a monastery dedicated to San Salvator at Colondello, together with a bridge over the river for the use of pilgrims.283 This is a further instance of the way in which communities in the Holy Land during the twelfth century helped to provide hospitality and to facilitate the travel of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. The abbey of Tabor probably owned other properties in Italy but, because their archive is only preserved in the documents which they handed over to the Knights of St John in 1256, no record of them survives. The chief revenues of the abbey derived from its estates in Galilee and, since the principality was relatively free from Muslim raiding parties between 1113 and 1154, when Nur ad-Din of Aleppo annexed Damascus, the community became prosperous. One index of its wealth was that by c. 1180 the abbey was required to supply 100 sergeants to the crown in time of emergency.284 Another was that by about the middle of the century the brethren had rebuilt the abbey church. Although there is no description of the new basilica in contemporary sources, Pringle has reconstructed its appearance from archaeological evidence and from the reports of later visitors. The foundations of the Byzantine church were incorporated in the new building. The crypt of this new church was thirty-one metres long, and was entered from the courtyard to the west of the church by a flight of twelve steps. The entrance was flanked by two bell-towers, each of which was entered by a door opening on the outer courtyard, and each of which contained a small chapel with an eastern apse. It is known from fourteenth-century pilgrim accounts that the apse mosaic in the upper church showed the Transfiguration, and some tesserae from it have been found in the excavations. Pringle maintains that the threefold cult of Christ, Moses and Elias was preserved in the new church: the shrine of the Transfiguration was in the apse of the crypt, and this theme was replicated in the sanctuary mosaic of the upper church, while the chapels in the two bell-towers were dedicated to Moses and Elias. The nature of the site dictated the layout of the monastic buildings, which was unusual. Pringle describes it:

281 282 283

CGOH II, p. 901, no. vii. Paoli, Codice no. 193, I, p. 238; a vidimation of this charter is in de Vic, Histoire générale de Languedoc, V, p. 1057. 284 CGOH II, p. 903, no. x. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. xv, p. 125.

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Before the church lay an open courtyard . . . Long ranges of buildings of at least two storeys flanked it to the north and south . . . It appears that there was no enclosed monastic cloister, and that pilgrims and lay-folk visiting the church would have been obliged to have passed through the monastery to reach it . . . It seems possible that [the distinction between the enclosed area reserved for monks and that open to laypeople] was made by placing the enclosed quarters on the first floor of the buildings [which provided the only access into the upper church].285

The extent of Tabor’s endowments almost inevitably led to litigation. In 1144–5 Pope Lucius II gave judgement in a dispute about tithes between the abbot of Tabor and the bishop of Tiberias.286 In 1145 Patriarch William presided over a synod at which, inter alia, judgement was given in a dispute between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the monks of Mt Tabor about tithes payable at Ligio. It was decided that Tabor should keep the church of St Gilles there and provide clergy to serve it, and also keep the three vineyards which it owned there, but that the tithes of two estates belonging to St Gilles should be divided between the monks of Tabor and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.287 Such judgements did not always bring disputes to an end. In June 1174, thirty years after Lucius II’s ruling, Archbishop Lethard of Nazareth had to negotiate a new agreement between Abbot Garin of Tabor and Bishop Gerald of Tiberias about the distribution of tithes.288 In the ongoing dispute about the tithes of Ligio, Abbot Garin showed a flair for estate management. He explained that the administration of a property so distant from Tabor – Ligio was situated to the south of Nablus – involved his community in considerable expense. He therefore sold the church of St Gilles together with the rights of Tabor to receive tithes at Ligio to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre for a payment of 2,000 bezants and an annual peppercorn rent of three measures of incense and one of candle wax on the patronal feast of the abbey. This prescinded the possibility of further expensive litigation. The document was witnessed by Lancelinus, Prior of Tabor, and eleven monks, probably representing all the professed brethren present in the house at that time.289 Because Tabor was an exempt monastery, directly subject to the pope, important prelates were sometimes involved by the abbots in routine administration. For example, in 1152, the papal legate Guido, Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, ratified the gift by Abbot Pons of two estates to Hugh of Bethsan, a confrater of the house, and to his heirs. The abbey remained the ground landlord of these properties and further stipulated that Hugh and his successors should be buried in the abbey church.290 It often proved difficult to administer distant properties. In 1163 Abbot Bernard of Tabor leased all the property which his community owned in and outside the city of Tripoli to Peter of Nivennes and his brother. The lease was to run for twenty-five years and the tenants were required to make a downpayment of 900 bezants, and an annual payment of 100 bezants, which would be waived if the properties were damaged by enemy action. This agreement was ratified by Count Raymond III of Tripoli, whose father had given the monks of Tabor much of this property, and the transaction was ratified by Prior Garinus of Tabor with 285 286 287 289

Pringle, Churches no. 155, II, pp. 63–80 (quotation at p. 76). PKHL III, no. 57, pp. 179–80. This papal judgement is known from CGOH II, p. 906, no. xvi, of 1174. 288 BB no. 24, pp. 83–5. CGOH II, p. 906, no. xvi. 290 Paoli, Codice nos. 168, 204, I, pp. 211, 246–7; BB no. 159, pp. 310–11. PKHL III, no. 68, pp. 202–3.

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fourteen monks and sixteen lay brethren of that house. Among the latter was – presumably – a converted Muslim, Peter baptizatus. This is the only recorded instance of the conversion of a Muslim tenant of Mt Tabor. The lay brethren, like those attached to other religious houses in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, appear to have been responsible for the administration of the abbey’s properties.291 The abbots of Tabor were careful to secure papal confirmations of the rights and properties of their house. These were normally based on the privilege issued by Paschal II in 1103, but with the list of properties updated.292 In 1161 Alexander III extended the privileges of the community, not merely confirming its exemption from the payment of tithes, and the right to freely elect its abbot, but also allowing anyone who so wished to be buried in the abbey church.293 In 1169 Abbot Bernard of Mt Tabor was appointed bishop of Lydda when Bishop Rainier died.294 He was the first Benedictine to be made a bishop in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the first abbot of Tabor since Abbot Gerald to take an active part in public life. He held his new office for twenty-one years and proved a capable administrator. When Patriarch Heraclius went on a diplomatic mission to the West in 1184 he appointed Bernard his vicar in Jerusalem, an office which he discharged effectively. When Saladin attacked Kerak in 1184, Bishop Bernard recruited volunteers from among the knights who had come on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to boost the relief army which King Baldwin sent to raise the siege.295 Bishop Bernard died during the siege of Acre in 1190.296 Bernard was succeeded as abbot of Tabor by Garinus, who had been prior since 1163.297 When Garinus died in c. 1180 he was succeeded by John, who had been prior of the Cluniac house of Palmaria in Galilee. Soon after his enthronement, Avisa, Lady of Palmaria, came to the chapter-house at Mt Tabor to transfer the property of the priory in Palmaria to the Tabor community. She also requested that the monks should appoint a bailli to administer justice in the town of Palmaria. The archbishop of Nazareth was present at this meeting, because Palmaria was in his archdiocese, and so also was Bishop Bernard of Lydda, whose advice as a former abbot of Tabor may have been sought by Abbot John.298 In 1181 King Baldwin IV gave the community of Tabor a shop in Acre, in compensation for the one which they had owned which had been demolished when a postern in the city wall was rebuilt.299 The brethren continued to receive fresh donations. In the same year Raymond III of Tripoli gave them two gardens at the foot of Mt Pilgrim in return for their singing daily Masses for the repose of the soul of Alice, a lady-in-waiting to his wife, Eschiva, Princess of Galilee. In 1183, Prince Bohemond III of Antioch, in return for the community’s prayers for his parents, Raymond of Poitiers and Princess Constance, gave permission to the abbot’s agents to take 1,000 eels each year from the lake of Antioch.300

291 292 293 294 295 296 298 300

CGOH II, p. 904, no. xiii. It is possible, though less likely, that Peter was a baptised Jew. Eugenius III in 1146, Alexander III in 1174–8: PKHL III, nos. 61, 123, pp. 187–90, 296–7. This bull is known only through a group of later calendrical descriptions:PKHL III, no. 84, pp. 227–31. WT XX, 12, p. 925. A. Bertrand de Broussillon, ‘La charte d’André de Vitré et le siège de Karak en 1184’, BHCTH (1899), 47–53. 297 Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, p. 87. CGOH II, pp. 904–5, nos. xiii–xiv. 299 CGOH II, p. 908, no. xix. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 423, II, pp. 719–20. A vidimation of 1262 made on behalf of the Knights of St John, who clearly valued this concession: CGOH II, p. 911, no. xxiii.

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Since his community was not large enough to consume that quantity of fish, the abbot sold half his rights to the Master of the Hospital for 130 bezants.301 In 1183 Abbot John and some of his monks had gone to Antioch and stayed in the Benedictine monastery of St Paul’s there. He and Abbot Falco of St Paul’s entered into a charitable alliance of a kind which was quite common between monastic communities, agreeing that they would offer hospitality to each other’s brethren and pray for each other’s dead. The agreement also contained this clause: ‘If, which God forbid, it should happen that the land of Antioch should fall into the hands of the Turks, or if they should be driven out by the prince, the church of Mt Tabor shall receive all the monks of St Paul’s as though they were their own sons and brothers and shall provide them with all they need for as long as it shall please the brethren of St Paul’s to stay with them.’302 No reciprocal agreement was made, and the arrangement seems to have been made with the recent violent disagreement between Prince Bohemond III and Patriarch Aimery of Limoges in mind, rather than through fear of any imminent Muslim attack. The dispute had led to a civil war and the patriarch of Jerusalem, together with members of the High Court, had had to mediate peace.303 Abbot John and his colleagues had been at Antioch in May 1183,304 but had returned to Tabor before September when Saladin invaded Galilee. During that campaign a contingent of his army attacked Mt Tabor. They sacked the Greek monastery of St Elias, but could not gain access to the Latin monastery, which had been fortified by a perimeter wall strengthened by towers. Not only were the monks and their household servants present, but many of the local villagers had sought refuge there, and with their help the attack was beaten off. This was only a minor raid: Tabor was not one of Saladin’s main objectives. The army of the kingdom was mustered at the springs of La Tubanie but refused to give battle, and in the end Saladin was forced to withdraw. He returned to Damascus on 14 October. Nevertheless, the raid on Mt Tabor, the first for seventy years, was disturbing to the Frankish leaders.305 When John Phocas visited Mt Tabor he found that the situation there had returned to normal: On its summit are two monasteries, in which Christians propitiate God in different languages, but with a single intent. At the place where the saving Transfiguration of Christ occurred, there is a company of Latin monks. And on the left, the Nazirites, belonging to us, are sanctified and sanctify that holy place.306

According to the anonymous eyewitness whose evidence is used in the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae, after Saladin had moved his army into Galilee on 29 June 1187, a party of his men attacked and sacked Mt Tabor.307 No garrison was placed there by the Muslims and, since this happened before the battle of Hattin on 4 July, any of the monks of Tabor who escaped from the raiding party would have been able to take refuge elsewhere in the kingdom, but they would not have been able to return, for after his victory 301

302 305 306

This is known only from Raybaud’s Inventory of 1742, where the abbot’s name has been wrongly calendared as Bernard: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 138, pp. 65–6. 303 304 CGOH II, p. 910, no. xxii. WT XXII, 6–7, pp. 1013–17. CGOH II, p. 911, no. xxiii. WT XXII, 27, p. 1052; Hamilton, Leper King, 188–92. 307 John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 320–1; PG 133: 937. Libellus de expugnatione, VIII, 136–7.

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at Hattin on 4 July one of Saladin’s first concerns was to secure control of the region between Tiberias and Acre, which included Mt Tabor.308 There is no record of the Tabor community for almost twenty years after Hattin. It seems reasonable to infer that after 1191 the surviving monks made their headquarters in Acre where they already owned property.309 In 1206, John of Ibelin, bailli of the kingdom for the young Queen Maria, confirmed the sale by John Le Tor of his house in Acre to the Teutonic Knights, a property bounded on the east by houses belonging to Mt Tabor.310 In 1220 King John of Brienne confirmed the sale to the Teutonic Knights of another house in Acre, bounded on the west side by a close of houses (clausuram domorum) belonging to the abbot of Mt Tabor.311 This and other similar references in thirteenth-century documents have enabled Pringle to locate the abbey of Mt Tabor in Acre near the Gate of Geoffrey Le Tor on the east wall of the city, near the sea of the Outer Anchorage.312 In March 1205 Pope Innocent III nominated the abbot of Mt Tabor, together with the Cistercian abbot of Lucedio and the count of Fornivall, to mediate peace between Leo II of Cilicia and Bohemond IV of Antioch in the dispute over the Antiochene succession.313 In the same year many representatives of the Latin Church in the Crusader States went to Constantinople seeking some share in the spoils of the Byzantine Empire in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Among them were Prior Jordan and Brother Geoffrey of Mt Tabor. Peter of S. Marcello, papal legate in the Latin Empire, wrote to inform the abbot of Tabor that he had placed his representatives in corporal possession of the monastery of St Maria de Coste, on condition that the Greek monks ‘who are now living in that church should not be expelled until the Holy See issues a different ruling about the Greek clergy’.314 This gift did not enable any of the brethren of Tabor to settle in the Latin Empire, although the house may have received revenues from the endowments of the Greek monastery if those estates were situated in an area under Latin political control. Mt Tabor abbey must have suffered a severe decline in revenue in the thirteenth century. Its chief sources of income, the estates which it owned in Galilee, were in Muslim control and, although the monks received revenues from properties which they held in Acre, Tripoli and Antioch, and perhaps also from the two properties which they are known to have held in Italy, their total income would have been slender, even if it had been possible to collect all these dues on a regular basis. This might not have been easy in the early thirteenth century when the Frankish lands of Acre, Tripoli and Antioch were separated from each other by stretches of Muslim territory and when secure communication between them was possible only by sea. The community therefore had to obtain the best financial returns possible from the properties in Acre over which they had secure control. In March 1214 the abbot of Tabor gave permission to Michael de Porta to build supports for his house into the church of St James, ‘which is a dependency of the abbey’. In return Peter paid the community an annual rent of 2 gold bezants.315 Little is known about St James Acre: it is not known whether it was 308 311 313 315

309 310 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 268. See p. 199. Strehlke no. 41, pp. 33–4. 312 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 639, III, pp. 1041–52. Pringle, Churches no. 392, IV, pp. 62–3. 314 Innocent III, Register an. VIII, no. 1, pp. 3–6. CGOH II, p. 912, no. xxiv. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 208, p. 77.

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the chapel of the brethren of Tabor or, indeed, whether it was near their abbey.316 Because of the heavy concentration of religious institutions, branches of secular government, the fondaci of Western merchants and the headquarters of the military orders, land in thirteenthcentury Acre, particularly in the old city, was at a premium and could command high prices. In 1214 Abbot John of Tabor granted to the scribe Beleais, who was a confrater of his community, a piece of land near the abbey for a downpayment of 20 Saracen bezants and an annual rent of 2 bezants. The transaction was witnessed by three monks of Tabor, Gandulf, Fulco and Roger.317 In 1211 Saladin’s brother, Sultan al-Adil, began fortifying Mt Tabor, a project which was completed by 1215.318 The pilgrim Thietmar, who passed by the foot of Tabor on his way to Nazareth in 1217 during a time of truce, wrote: ‘This mountain is extremely high. On its summit has been built a church, where there was a noble abbey of the black order, but now the Saracens have occupied it and fortified it strongly by a wall, with towers standing forward on it.’319 Those fortifications were formidable: the wall, James Powell reports, had 77 towers and the fortress had a garrison of 2,000 men. When the vanguard of the Fifth Crusade, led by King Andrew II of Hungary, reached Acre later in 1217 after the truce had expired, a joint attack on Mt Tabor was made by them and by the forces of the kingdom led by John of Brienne. The initial assault was unsuccessful, and the crusaders did not attempt to mount a siege but withdrew again to Acre.320 Arguably this raid was not without advantage to the Franks in the long term. Al-Adil went to Damascus when the Crusade vanguard reached Acre. He was not expecting the Franks to attack Egypt, and when they did so in May 1218 he sent most of the troops who had accompanied him to Syria back to Egypt to assist his son al-Kamil in the defence of the delta. This made it unviable to keep a large garrison on Mt Tabor, but once those troops had been withdrawn the fortress became vulnerable to Frankish attack. Al-Adil therefore ordered his son al-Muazzam to dismantle the fortifications in 1218, so that the Franks, were they to recapture it, could not use Tabor as a base from which to conquer Galilee and threaten Damascus.321 The basilica of the Transfiguration does not seem to have been seriously damaged while this work was in progress, which perhaps reflects the honour in which Islam held all the holy men commemorated there: Jesus son of Mary, Moses and Elias, all of whom were counted among the righteous.322 Mt Tabor was not among the places restored to the Franks by the Treaty of Jaffa of 1229 between Frederick II and Sultan al-Kamil. Nevertheless, it is possible that during the ten years’ truce which followed, members of the community were allowed access to the church by the Muslim authorities. Both Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem and Les sains pelerinages que l’on doit requerre en la Terre Sainte, dating from c. 1231, report the 316 317 318 319 320 321

322

Pringle examines the fragmentary evidence about this church: Churches no. 409, IV, pp. 81–2. J. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Quatre pièces relatives à l’Ordre Teutonique en Orient’, AOL, 2 (2) (1884), no. 1, pp. 165–6. R. S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260 (Albany, 1977), pp. 136–7. Thietmar, Pilgrimage, in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 97. J. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), 130–2. H. A. R. Gibb, ‘The Aiyubids’, in R. L. Wolff and H. W. Hazard, eds., History of the Crusades, vol. II, The Later Crusades (Madison, 1969), 698. The Arab geographer Yaqut, writing c. 1225, cited by Pringle, Churches no. 155, II, pp. 67–8; Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 434–5; Qur’an, Sura V.

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existence of a Latin monastery of ‘black monks’ on Mt Tabor.323 It is possible that these works were simply reproducing information from twelfth-century guidebooks. Certainly there is no evidence in contemporary Latin records for a return of the Benedictines to Tabor, but they may have arranged for Masses to be celebrated in the church there for the benefit of pilgrims. The abbots of Tabor took a more active part in public life in the thirteenth century than they had previously done. In 1216 Pope Honorius III ordered the abbot of Tabor, together with the patriarch of Jerusalem and the archbishop of Caesarea, to place the archbishop of Tyre in corporal possession of the church of St Mark in that city, in accordance with a ruling made by Innocent III.324 In 1220 Abbot Andrew of Tabor was one of the senior clergy who signed the appeal sent by the prelates of the Holy Land to Philip Augustus to ask for his protection against attacks on the kingdom by al-Muazzam of Damascus while the army of Jerusalem was serving with the Fifth Crusade in Egypt.325 In September 1233 Abbot P. of Tabor was present at the patriarch’s curia in Acre where he witnessed a sale of property by the abbot of Mt Zion to the Teutonic Knights.326 In March 1238 Pope Gregory IX ordered the bishop of Tortosa, the abbot of St Samuel’s Acre and the prior of St Giles Acre to investigate rumours which had reached him that the abbot of Mt Tabor had set aside the observance of the Benedictine Rule, abandoned himself to the pleasures of the flesh and made serious inroads into the assets of the house. It is not known what the panel of inquiry’s findings were.327 All these records indicate that the abbot and most of his community were living in Acre and had not returned to Mt Tabor. In 1241 Sultan as-Salih Ayyub did restore Mt Tabor to the Franks, together with a large part of Galilee which included many of the estates of the abbey. The community was then able to appoint lay stewards to administer those lands and to collect their dues.328 If some, or most, of the brethren did return to Tabor at that time, they were not able to stay there for long. In the summer of 1244 an army of Khwarizmian mercenaries swept through Galilee and sacked Tiberias on their way to Egypt. It is likely that any Benedictines living on Mt Tabor retired to Acre at that point. The Khwarizmians sacked Jerusalem in August 1244, and on 17 October a combined force of Khwarizmians and Egyptian troops defeated the largest army which the Franks had put into the field since the battle of Hattin at La Forbie, near Gaza. The prelates of the Holy Land who were living in Acre, and who included Abbot P. of Tabor, sent a desperate appeal to the kings of France and England for help. Among other things the writers complained that the Muslims had taken over all the land between Acre and the regions of Nazareth and Saphet, had appointed administrators in the villages and estates which belonged to the Christians, and were collecting the dues which the peasantry had formerly paid to their Christian lords. This territory, of course, included Mt Tabor and most of its estates. Bishop Galerand of Beirut set out by sea on the first Sunday of 323

324

325 326 327

Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, xviii; Les sains pelerinages por aler en Iherusalem, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, iii, pp. 101, 104(1) [sic]. Honorius III, Regesta no. 16; P.-V. Claverie, ed., Honorius III et l’Orient (1216–1227). Etude et publication de sources inédites des Archives vaticanes (ASV), The Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2013), no. 2, pp. 284–5. Delaborde, ed., Chartes, Appendix, pp. 123–5. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 43, pp. 138–40. 328 Gregory IX, Registres no. 4141. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, p. 142.

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Advent to deliver this letter, accompanied by a Dominican, Brother Arnulf, and had a difficult journey because of the winter storms.329 In fact the prelates were painting a blacker picture of the situation in Galilee than the facts warranted, for it was not until 1247 that Sultan as-Salih Ayyub brought his full army to Palestine and took Tiberias, the castle of Belvoir and Mt Tabor from the Franks.330 Despite the failure of his attack on Egypt, Louis IX of France and part of his army stayed in the Holy Land from 1250 to 1254, and with his help the Franks recovered a substantial part of Galilee. Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Louis’ Dominican confessor, relates that on 24 March 1251 the king, wearing sackcloth, left Saffuriya where he had spent the night, and went first to Cana and then to Mt Tabor before going to Nazareth where on Lady Day, 25 March, he heard Mass in the cathedral sung by Odo of Tusculum, the papal legate. Godfrey does not report that the king attended any liturgical celebration while visiting the shrine on Mt Tabor, which implies that the Benedictines had not returned there.331 The collection of rents from the estates of Mt Tabor in Galilee must have been very uncertain during those years, and the community no doubt welcomed the gift which García Alvarez, Lord of Haifa, and his wife Helvis made to them in 1250 of land on Mt Carmel, which was securely in Frankish control.332 The abbots of Tabor, living in Acre, continued to be used by the papacy in public business. In 1246 Innocent IV entrusted the abbots of Tabor and the Mount of Olives, together with the dean of Sidon, with ensuring that the archbishopelect of Caesarea continued to receive the income of a prebend in Antioch cathedral to which he had been provided.333 Then in 1253 the same pope, when taking John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, under his protection, appointed the abbot of Tabor and the bishop of Paphos as conservators of this privilege.334 On 10 March 1255 the abbot of Tabor was present at the trial in Acre of the clerk Signoreto, who was charged with falsifying papal letters of provision.335 This was one of his last official appearances, for on 1 April 1255 Pope Alexander IV transferred the abbey of Mt Tabor and all its possessions to the Order of the Knights of St John. This decision appears to be connected with the peace which the government of Jerusalem concluded in that year with the sultans of Damascus and Egypt, in which Frankish control of Mt Tabor and other parts of Galilee was conceded for, although this allowed the monks to return to Tabor, they lacked the resources to defend it.336 Alexander IV explained his decision in those terms: the monastery of Mt Tabor had been destroyed by the enemies of Christ, and there was no possibility that the abbot and his brethren could restore it. But unless it was garrisoned the Saracens might refortify Tabor, which was a natural stronghold, and use it as a base to attack the Christians.337 Alexander appointed the archbishop of Tyre and the abbot of Josaphat to supervise the transfer of the property of Tabor to the Knights of St John.338 329 331 332 334 335 336

337

330 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 20. Geoffrey of Beaulieu, The Pilgrimage of Louis IX, in Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 187. 333 J. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Chartes de Terre Sainte’, no. 5, ROL 9 (1905–8), 189–91. Innocent IV, Registres no. 2027. Bullarium Cyprium, e-70–2, e-74, pp. 413–15, 416–17. The implication is that the abbot of Mt Tabor was resident in Jaffa. RRH no. 1226. This is the view of Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, II, p. 452. The bull was almost certainly issued before news of the ratification of the treaty was known in Rome, but it seems probable that the Hospitallers had informed the pope about the negotiations and that the bull was issued so that action might be taken rapidly if they were successful. 338 Alexander IV, Registres no. 311. Alexander IV, Registres no. 344.

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The monks of Tabor appealed against the decision but without success. The Knights of St John inherited all the estates belonging to the community which were still in Christian hands, together with all the ecclesiastical privileges enjoyed by the abbots of Tabor.339 Between 30 June and 2 July 1256, Joscelin de Tornell took corporal possession of all the accessible estates of Tabor in Galilee on behalf of the Master of the Hospitallers.340 In June 1256 the archbishop of Tyre ordered the treasurer of Tripoli to put the Hospitallers in possession of the property of the abbey of Tabor in that county.341 The Hospitallers also obtained possession of the abbey of Tabor at Acre: when the canons of Mt Zion sold some houses at Acre to the Teutonic Order in 1257 the boundary of the property was defined in this way, ‘on the east side is the king’s highway and the houses belonging to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, which used to belong to Mt Tabor’.342 In his bull of April 1255 Alexander IV had instructed the archbishop of Tyre and the abbot of Josaphat that the abbot and brethren of Tabor should receive adequate living allowances unless they were admitted to another religious house.343 In 1256 three former monks of Tabor, Brothers Garinus, Michael and Peter, wrote to tell the pope how delighted they were that he had given their abbey to the Knights of St John. Their reasons for this were altruistic: ‘because of our weakness and powerlessness Mt Tabor was completely derelict and . . . Christian worship was not performed there’. By way of contrast, the Master and brethren of the Hospital of St John had placed an armed garrison there and had begun regularly to celebrate the Divine Office there, so that pilgrims were able to make their devotions in safety. The three brothers of Tabor affirmed that the Hospitallers had discharged all the debts of their community and, in accordance with the pope’s wishes, had ensured that ‘our abbot and ourselves’ were provided with adequate food and clothing. The real purpose of this document is set out in the following clause: ‘We promise that we will never in future take action against this donation [of our abbey to the Hospitallers] or support others who wish to do so.’ The letter concludes: ‘because we do not have a seal of our own, we have asked Brother Terricus, Abbot of the Church of Mt Zion, and Brother John, Abbot of the Premonstratensian house of St Samuel, to ratify this document with their own seals.’344 Once the community had renounced the right to challenge the dissolution of their abbey and the transfer of its property, no one else could mount such a challenge on their behalf with any degree of credibility. The breaking of the abbey’s seal and the dispersal of its members among the other Benedictine houses of Acre marked the melancholy end of the abbey of Mt Tabor which, at the height of its power in the twelfth century, had been the only monastery in the Crusader States to have anything approaching the palatinate jurisdiction enjoyed by some bishops and abbots in western Europe. The Hospitallers did not remain at Mt Tabor for long. When Sultan Baibars invaded Galilee in the spring of 1263 and advanced on Tabor, the garrison withdrew without a fight. 339

340 344

Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 414–17. Alexander IV reissued the privilege of Paschal II for Tabor of 1103 in favour of the Knights: PKHL III, no. 8, pp. 92–9. 341 342 343 CGOH I, no. 2747. CGOH I, no. 2739. Strehlke no. 113, pp. 95–6. Alexander IV, Registres no. 311. Paoli, Codice no. 127, pp. 148–50.

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Baibars ordered the destruction of the church and the Latin monastery, so that all that remained from the time of Western occupation were the ruined apse above the crypt of the basilica which contained the shrine of the Transfiguration.345 Although the abbey of Tabor came to an end in 1255, it permanently influenced the devotional life of the Western Church in one way. The Transfiguration of Christ is recorded in the Gospels, but it was not commemorated in the Latin liturgy before the First Crusade, although it was already well established as a feast in the Eastern Orthodox Churches by that time. The Benedictines of Mt Tabor kept this, their patronal feast, on 6 August, the same day as the Greeks, and this observance was adopted by the Austin canons of the Holy Sepulchre. In one manuscript of John of Würzburg’s account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in c. 1161 the writer notes: ‘In Jerusalem the feast [of the Transfiguration] is celebrated annually on the day of St Sixtus [6 August] and it is a great feast among the Syrians.’346 This feast was not observed throughout the Latin Church in the Kingdom, for in the calendar of Queen Melisende’s Psalter, dating from c. 1150, the entry for 6 August reads: S. Sixti pape. Felicissimi et Agapiti.347 But as Cristina Dondi has shown, some of the calendars of liturgical manuscripts from the Holy Sepulchre list the Transfiguration on 6 August.348 From the Western dependencies of the Holy Sepulchre it gradually spread in western Europe, but the feast was only made universal in 1457 by Pope Calixtus III. He issued this instruction as an act of thanksgiving because news of the lifting of the Ottoman siege of Belgrade in 1456 by the efforts of St John of Capistrano had reached Rome on 6 August 1456.349

The Abbey of Palmaria The early history of this community is described in Gerard of Nazareth’s Vita Abbatis Eliae, which Kedar identified in the Centuriators of Magdeburg and which he edited. The article which he wrote about this abbey is of fundamental importance in interpreting the fragmentary evidence relating to it.350 Elias had been a teacher of grammar in the province of Narbonne in southern France; he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On the way there he stayed in ‘a certain monastery of hermits’, where he was trained in the eremitical life and ordained as a priest. It is not known which community this was, but if it was in Lombardy or Tuscany it was probably a house with affiliations to the Camaldolese Order founded by St Romuald (d. 1027), such as Fonte Avellana, of which St Peter Damian had been prior, in which the Benedictine Rule was observed as training for the eremitical life.351 In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries in western Europe there was a strong movement to 345 346 347 348 349

350

351

Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 147; Pringle, Churches no. 155, II, pp. 68, 70–80. John of Würzburg, p. 81. The Syrians are the Orthodox Christians who worshipped in Arabic, not Greek. Buchthal, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 124–6. Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, 255–302. ‘The Transfiguration’, in F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1997), 1636–7. Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth’ (the text of the Vita Abbatis Eliae is on p. 75); B. Z. Kedar, ‘Palmarée abbaye clunisienne du XIIe siècle en Galilée’, Revue Bénédictine 93 (1983), 260–9. Peter Damian, Vita beati Romualdi, ed. G. Tabacco, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 94 (Rome, 1957); B. Hamilton, ‘S. Pierre Damien et les mouvements monastiques de son temps’, Studi Gregoriani 10 (1975), 175–202.

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encourage the formation of communities of hermits who lived under an abbot and observed a common Rule. The Orders of Fontevrault, Savigny, Tiron and Grandmont are all examples of this, as is the Carthusian Order, which proved to be the most enduring of them all. In that regard Elias of Narbonne was typical of one important form of monastic spirituality in the contemporary Western Church.352 Elias went to Jerusalem in the reign of King Fulk and initially formed a community of hermits who lived in a cave outside the city. In the Latin East, as in western Europe, at that time the church authorities viewed with concern such religious groups which evaded hierarchical control. Patriarch William I persuaded Elias and his companions to ‘join the congregation’ of the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat. This did not mean that the hermits became Benedictine monks, but that they lived under the authority of the abbot of Josaphat, who monitored their way of life. Gerard of Nazareth next relates how Elias was called to leave Josaphat ‘and was appointed abbot of a certain monastery called Palmaria, not far from Tiberias, and was ordained as abbot by the Archbishop of Nazareth’. This information makes it possible to locate the monastery securely in Galilee. As Joshua Prawer commented when discussing this house before the text of Gerard of Nazareth had been identified, Palmaria, ‘the Palm Grove’, was a quite common name in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem, and like other previous scholars he was misled by a document of 1170 to suppose that the abbey was situated near Haifa.353 But in the light of the work of Gerard of Nazareth, Pringle agrees with Kedar that Palmaria was located near the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and argues that it was to the north of Magdala.354 In a letter to Pope Alexander III about Palmaria, King Amalric of Jerusalem identified the founder of the abbey as Gormund, abbatie illius advocatus, patronus et fundator.355 Gormund is first recorded in 1132 as a witness to a gift by William de Bures, Prince of Galilee, to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The witness list is headed by Patriarch William I and King Fulk, and Gormund is listed among the witnesses ‘from Tiberias and its region’.356 Gormond is subsequently recorded in twenty-five documents between 30 July 1154 and 18 August 1174: in these he frequently describes himself as Gormond of Tiberias, and when witnessing the charter of Baldwin III for Philip of Nablus in 1161 he identifies himself more specifically as Gormundus Tiberiadensis, qui dominus est de Bezans [Bethsan].357 Gormund had founded Palmaria before 5 February 1138, when Helias abbas Palmarie witnessed King Fulk’s exchange of Thecua for Bethany with the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.358 Kedar has suggested very plausibly that the community of Palmaria was 352

353 354 356 357

358

Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism; C. A. Hutchison, The Hermit Monks of Grandmont (Kalamazoo, MI, 1989); J. M. B. Porter, ‘Compelle intrare: monastic reform movements in twelfth-century north-western Europe’, unpub. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1997. J. Prawer, ‘Colonization activities in the Latin Kingdom’, in his Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980), 136–40. 355 Pringle, Churches no. 176, II, pp. 153–6. PKHL no. 108, pp. 274–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 128, I, pp. 296–8. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 263, I, pp. 479–86; J. L. La Monte and N. Downs, ‘The lords of Bethsan in the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus’, Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1950), 57–75. The other documents in which Gormund appears are: CGOH I, nos. 219, 225, 288, 398; BB nos. 136, 138, pp. 267–8, 270–1; Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 244, 248, 254, I, pp. 450–2, 455–7, 462–4, 486–9; nos. 310–14, 333, 336, 341, 362, 364, III, pp. 536–50, 573–5, 578–82, 591–5, 628–9, 632–5. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21.

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recruited from the hermits mentioned by Jacques de Vitry in his account of the early years of the Latin Kingdom: ‘Some, inspired by religious zeal, chose to live in a deserted spot in the wild lands bordering the Sea of Galilee, where the Lord used to address the crowds.’359 Elias seems to have accepted the office of abbot under obedience, but he was not happy with it. Gerard of Nazareth reports that Queen Melisende gave him leave to return to Jerusalem, where he lived as a hermit for some years until the archbishop of Nazareth forced him to return to Palmaria. Gerard of Nazareth had been introduced to Abbot Elias by Abbot Geoffrey of Mt Tabor, who was Elias’ friend,360 and he gives a vivid picture of the abbot of Palmaria based on personal knowledge. He never ate meat, eggs or cheese, or drank wine, though he did eat fish; most of the time he subsisted on a diet of almost raw vegetables (legumina semicruda) which he ate without bread. He kept his sleeping time to a minimum, flagellated himself regularly, and valued the grace of tears. He took lectio divina, the study of sacred texts, very seriously, and drew the attention of his brethren to problems of interpretation on which he encouraged them to meditate. In this he was living in the spiritual tradition of St Peter Damian, the cardinal-hermit of Fonte Avellana, in which he may have been trained.361 Elias had great respect for the Cistercian Order and would have liked to affiliate Palmaria to it. He sent one of his monks to France to try to effect this link, though nothing came of this, probably because St Bernard refused to allow a daughter house to be founded in the Crusader States.362 Undeterred by this, Elias tried to impose his own reforms in his community, using the Cistercians as a model. He was particularly anxious that his brethren should wear Cistercian cowls, but they flatly refused to do so, for – as Gerard of Nazareth remarked – their abbey was situated in the Jordan valley and was extraordinarily hot for much of the year. Elias was appalled by the fact that his monks valued physical comfort more than ascetic rigour, and sought to resign his office, but Patriarch William and Archbishop Robert of Nazareth refused to allow him to do so. Towards the end of 1140 he became ill, and some of his former brethren from Jerusalem came to visit him. They were present when he died and assisted at his funeral. There does not seem to have been any difficulty in recruiting hermit monks at Palmaria, but it proved less easy to find an abbot who combined asceticism with a capacity for estate management. Such men existed – St Hugh of Cluny (1049–1109) had been one of them – but they were rare. Abbot Elias had not been one of them. Gerard of Nazareth reports that he refused to accept money which was offered to him (pecuniam oblatam respuit).363 His successors also lacked administrative skills. King Amalric, writing to Alexander III in 1171–4, reported that the previous abbot, who was dead, had so mismanaged the property of Palmaria that it had been left without resources, while the present abbot was not sufficiently concerned about retaining the endowments of the community.364 The king was well informed about the affairs of the abbey, because Gormond of Bethsan, its founder, had become one of his trusted advisers. When Amalric made a state visit to Constantinople in

359 361 364

Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LIII, 222; Kedar, ‘Palmarée’, 262. 362 J. Leclercq, St Pierre Damien, ermite et homme d’Église (Rome, 1960). See p. 247. PKHL no. 108, pp. 274–5.

360

See above, p. 195. Vita Abbatis Eliae, p. 75.

363

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1171 to seek an alliance with Emperor Manuel I, Gormond was a member of his entourage.365 An unexpected solution was found to the problem of Palmaria. In c. 1170 Theobald of Vermandois, prior of the Cluniac house of Crépy-en-Valois, went to Jerusalem on a diplomatic mission from Stephen, Abbot of Cluny, and Louis VII of France.366 Abbot Stephen wished to found a daughter house of Cluny in the Crusader Kingdom for, although the abbey of Mt Tabor observed the customary of Cluny, there was no community of the Cluniac family in the Holy Land. Patriarch Amalric of Nesle convened a synod at Acre to consider this request. King Amalric was present, together with the archbishops of Caesarea and Nazareth and the bishops of Acre, Bethlehem, Lydda, Tiberias and Hebron, and Bishop William of Acre offered to allow a Cluniac monastery to be built in his diocese.367 Theobald must have had a separate meeting with the king to discuss secular business, because he was also accredited as Louis VII’s envoy, and it was probably on that occasion that Amalric raised the possibility of giving Palmaria to Cluny. The king could only have made this suggestion if he had already discussed the matter with Gormund of Bethsan and received his approval. It must have seemed an ideal solution to Gormund, because the Cluniacs were noted for their strict observance of the Benedictine Rule and also for their skills in estate management. The Order also had a strong central administration, which enabled it to monitor the work of priors and, when necessary, to discipline them. Before a final decision could be reached, Prior Theobald had to make a report to Abbot Stephen of Cluny, and the Order, not unnaturally, found the king’s offer of an existing abbey more attractive than the bishop of Acre’s offer of outline planning permission for a new foundation. Bishop William’s offer was entirely theoretical: no site had been chosen for a priory and no patron had offered to endow one, whereas the abbey of Palmaria already existed, and all that was needed was a change of leadership. Abbot Stephen informed the pope of his decision, and in 1171 Alexander III wrote to the archbishop of Nazareth and to the bishops of Bethlehem, Acre and Lydda, informing them of King Amalric’s willingness to allow Palmaria to be incorporated in the Cluniac Order.368 He must also have written to Amalric about this, although the text of his letter has not survived, for the king wrote back, by implication asking the pope to expedite the change. He requested Alexander to send ‘a suitable abbot or prior, with three or four monks approved by the church of Cluny, to the church of Palmaria, together with your letters of authorisation . . . so that the endowments which have been assigned in perpetuity to the service of God do not get taken over for secular use, because of a lack of [church] administrators’.369 It is known from a document of 1180 that the king’s request was fulfilled. In that year Ahuhisa, who described herself as Lady of Palmaria, went to the Mt Tabor monastery and reached an agreement with Abbot John about the rights of his monastery in her lordship. Archbishop Lethard of Nazareth was present, as was Bishop Bernard of Lydda, who had previously been abbot of Tabor.370 Ahuhisa recognised the rights of the abbey to the houses which had belonged to Brother Pelagius at Palmaria, together with ‘a certain new house 365 367

WT XX, 22, p. 942. RRH no. 476, p. 125.

366 368

The details of Stephen’s career and mission are discussed by Kedar, ‘Palmarée’, 264–5. 369 370 PKHL no. 104, pp. 267–9. PKHL no. 108, pp. 274–5. See pp. 198–9.

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which you [Abbot John] caused to be built there when you were prior there’, together with all the land which lay between those properties and the gate of Cayre. In addition the abbey would hold an oven in the town, which was reserved to members of their familia, together with the land which Brother Pelagius owned outside the town. Ahuhisa also recognised the free status of the burgesses of Palmaria, and agreed that members of the abbey’s familia living there should not be subject to the burgess court, but be under the authority of a bailiff appointed by the abbey. The abbey’s copy of this settlement has been preserved in the archive of the Knights of St John, and is witnessed by Gerald, Archdeacon of Nazareth, and the archbishop of Nazareth’s chaplain, together with his chancellor and another member of his household, and also by a group of clergy who had accompanied the bishop of Lydda; the lay witnesses consisted of seven knights and thirteen Turcopoles representing the Lady Ahuhisa.371 Although the interpretation of this document is open to dispute, it is significant that no mention is made in it of a current abbey at Palmaria.372 The township is divided between the burgesses who are under the authority of the Lady of Palmaria and those who form part of the household of the abbey of Tabor and are subject in law to a bailli appointed by the abbot. The property is divided in the same way. It is not known who Brother Pelagius was, except that he was a monk: he may have been the locum tenens of the abbey of Palmaria before the arrival of Prior John sent by Cluny to take charge of the community. This document is the earliest record of John as abbot of Mt Tabor: his predecessor, Abbot Garinus, is last mentioned in a charter of 1175.373 One way in which this document may be interpreted is as follows. In accordance with the wishes of King Amalric, Pope Alexander and Gormond of Bethsan, the abbey of Palmaria had been incorporated in the Order of Cluny which had appointed John as its prior. It would have been very difficult to impose the Cluniac observance, with its great emphasis on the full communal, liturgical celebration of the Divine Office, on brethren who expected to spend most of their time in their cells in private prayer and study. It would not have been surprising if the hermit monks had withdrawn to other communities, or joined other groups of hermits, such as that attached to the Mt Tabor monastery, rather than learn to live such a different kind of religious life. This might explain why John had had a house built: if the situation had developed in which he no longer had a community to lead, a prior’s lodging would have been more suitable accommodation. When Abbot Garinus of Mt Tabor died, it would appear that Prior John had been elected to succeed him. This would have needed papal approval, and so also would the transfer of the property of Palmaria to the monks of Tabor. The 1180 document appears to be a legal recognition of that transfer by all the interested parties: the Lady of Palmaria and the burgess court of the township, the community of Tabor and the monastic tenants of Palmaria who had become part of the familia of that abbey, and the archbishop of Nazareth, in whose province Palmaria was situated. If this interpretation of the evidence is valid, this proved to be a short-lived solution. In 1187 Saladin occupied Palmaria, together with the rest of Galilee, and, although the land may have returned to Frankish control in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Cluniac 371

CGOH II, p. 908, no. 19.

372

Pringle, Churches no. 176, II, p. 154.

373

See p. 199.

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priory of Palmaria was never re-established. Because the precise site of Palmaria has not been determined there is as yet no archaeological evidence to help in the interpretation of the meagre documentary evidence about this community.

The Priory of St Katherine de Campo Belli at Mont Gisard On 25 November 1177 the sixteen-year-old Baldwin IV of Jerusalem led a small army to victory at the hill of Mont Gisard, or Tell Jazer, near Ibelin, where he routed the main army of Egypt commanded by Saladin, which was marching on Jerusalem. Although Baldwin was the formal commander, military decisions were made on this occasion by Prince Reynald of Châtillon. Nevertheless, the king’s presence on the battlefield was remarkable because he was already suffering from lepromatous leprosy, which was to kill him eight years later.374 Saladin was forced to retreat to Cairo with the remnants of his army, and he recognised the severity of his defeat. Abu Shama reports that the sultan later told Ibn Shaddad that: ‘Although it was so great a disaster, God, blessed be His name, made it good in the end by the great victory at Hattin’, though, as Abu Shama wryly noted, ten years separated the two battles.375 The young King Baldwin did not doubt who was responsible for his success. William of Tyre reports that ‘the king, having distributed the booty in accordance with the laws of warfare, hastened to Jerusalem to offer his thanksgiving to the Lord, for the benefits which had been granted to him’.376 The battle had been fought on the feast of St Katherine of Alexandria, whose body rested in a sarcophagus in the church of the monastery of Mt Sinai, and whose cult was well established in the West before the First Crusade. The monastery of Sinai, founded in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian, was originally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but by the twelfth century St Katherine had displaced her as principal patron of the house. Some Franks from the Kingdom of Jerusalem went on pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine in the Mt Sinai monastery.377 It may be inferred that Baldwin IVendowed a priory near the site of the battle as an act of thanksgiving. Mont Gisard was in the lordship of Ramla,378 and John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, in his description of the Kingdom of Jerusalem before the battle of Hattin, lists ‘le prior de Sainte Caterine de Mont Gisart’ among the suffragan abbots and priors of the bishops of Ramla.379 It is not certain whether this foundation was a Benedictine community or a house of Austin canons though, since it was not situated in a town and did not serve a shrine, it is more likely that it was a Benedictine priory. It was only briefly in Frankish hands. It would have been taken by Saladin in late August or September of 1187 when he systematically reduced the remaining Frankish strongholds in southern Judaea, in preparation for laying siege to Jerusalem.380 374 377

378 380

375 376 Hamilton, Leper King, 132–6. Abu Shama, Book of the Two Gardens, p. 189. WT XXI, 23, p. 994. See pp. 319–21, and C. Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe (Aldershot, 2007). In 1169 Philip of Nablus, Master of the Templars, authenticated a relic of St Katherine which he had obtained when he was lord of Transjordan, before 1166, when visiting the Sinai monastery as a pilgrim: Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon no. 138, I, p. 101. 379 Ernoul, Chronique, pp. 43–4. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. viii, p. 113. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 271–3.

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By that time the community had left the house and taken ship to the Kingdom of Sicily. In September 1187 Peter, prior sancte Caterine de Campo Belli Ierosolimitanus, was at Trani in Apulia. It would not have been difficult for him and his brethren to get there. The port of Ascalon, for example, remained in Frankish hands with open access by land until Saladin laid siege to it on 23 August 1187. The province of Trani already had links with the Holy Land through the priory of Nazareth at Barletta,381 and in 1187 Archbishop Bertrand of Trani would seem to have provided accommodation for the community of St Katherine’s. Prior Peter swore canonical obedience to him.382 The community did not return to Mont Gisard after the peace of 1192, since the lordship of Ramla remained in Muslim-held territory until 1240. The exact site of their priory there has not yet been identified,383 but at some point in the early thirteenth century the community did return to the Holy Land and settled in Acre. The first evidence for this comes from October 1232 when an unnamed prior of St Katherine’s was among the witnesses of an agreement drawn up at Acre between Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia and representatives of King Henry I of Cyprus about the receipt of tithes.384 The community lived in a suburb of Montmusard, where a street was named after them.385 In 1237 Gregory IX, in his confirmation of the property of the Trinitarian Order at Acre, described houses situated ‘beyond the church of St Katherine de Campo Belli’.386 Two years later Prior Guido of St Katherine’s witnessed a grant by Gerard, Abbot of Zion, to the Teutonic Order.387 In 1264 Saliba, a burgess of Acre, in his will bequeathed 2 bezants to the hospitali S. Kateline.388 This is the only occasion on which a hospital was associated with the community, and it is impossible to determine whether this was a late development or not. Pilgrims who visited the church of St Katherine in the later thirteenth century were eligible to receive an indulgence of four years and four quarantaines.389 The Priory of St Katherine’s does not appear to have been well endowed in the thirteenth century, and it may have owed its survival chiefly to the fact that it was a royal foundation, which may have afforded it some income and legal protection. The community did not survive the fall of Acre in 1291.

The Benedictine Abbey of St Paul’s Antioch When the First Crusade reached Antioch in October 1097, Bohemond and the south Italian forces camped outside the eastern gate, from which the main road led to the Iron Bridge over the Orontes. The Franks called this the Gate of St Paul, because just inside the walls there was an Orthodox monastery and church of that name. In 943 the Arab scholar Masudi wrote: ‘There is at Antakiyyah the church of Paul . . . it stands adjoining the city gate called Bab alFaris.’390 This is the earliest mention of the church which, although inside the walls, was 381 384 385 386 389 390

382 383 See pp. 120, 128. Prologo, Le carte, no. lxxviii, pp. 165–6. Pringle, Churches no. 122, I, pp. 273–4. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 87, pp. 226–9. Strehlke no. 104, pp. 82–4, dated 26 September 1253; Pringle, Churches no. 399, IV, p. 73. 387 388 Gregory IX, Registres no. 4104. Strehlke no. 86, pp. 68–9. CGOH I, no. 3105. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 238. Al Masudi, Meadows of Gold, II, 407, trans. G. Le Strange in Palestine under the Moslems, 368.

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remote from the main population centre of the medieval city.391 After the city came under Latin rule the Orthodox monks were replaced by a Latin community. This is unlikely to have happened before the summer of 1100 when the Orthodox patriarch, John IV of Oxeia, was expelled by Bohemond and withdrew to Constantinople, for when the city was captured in 1098 the pope’s legate, Bishop Adhemar, had reinstated John as patriarch and recognised that he had canonical authority over all Orthodox and Latin clergy.392 The first Latin patriarch, Bernard of Valence (1100–35), came from Provence and had been chaplain to Bishop Adhemar.393 It is therefore possible that the Benedictines of St Paul’s were invited by him from southern France, but it is equally possible that they came from southern Italy at the request of Bohemond I or his nephew Tancred. The Latin community had been installed by 1108, when T. the abbot of St Paul’s, together with the archbishops of Tarsus and Mamistra, witnessed Tancred’s grant of privileges to the Pisans in return for their help in blockading Byzantine-held Latakia.394 In times of crisis the brethren of St Paul’s were expected to share in the defence of the city. When Prince Roger and a large number of his vassals were killed at the Field of Blood in 1119, Patriarch Bernard took charge of the defence of Antioch. He refused to allow the non-Latin population to be armed for fear that they might make common cause with the enemy. Walter the Chancellor reports: ‘he deemed that where the entire city was weakest, there his own tents should be placed . . . and that every single tower . . . should be garrisoned at once by monks and clerics mixed with laymen’.395 The only community of Latin monks in the city at that time were the Benedictines of St Paul’s, and the patriarch seems to have envisaged their military role primarily as that of being officers in charge of the levies of Latin townsmen. The monks, although not necessarily trained in arms themselves before their profession, would almost certainly have been members of noble families, familiar with the practice of warfare from childhood. In fact, their military skills were not put to the test, because the Muslim commander Il-Ghazi concentrated his efforts in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the relief army led by Baldwin II of Jerusalem from reaching the city.396 The brethren of St Paul’s continued to play a proactive role in the secular life of the city. When Prince Bohemond II was killed in a Danishmendid ambush in 1130, his widow Alice attempted to exercise the regency on behalf of their infant daughter, Constance. When Baldwin II learned of the prince’s death he took an army to the north to defend the principality and was joined by his cousin, Count Joscelin I of Edessa, but although Alice was Baldwin’s daughter she closed the gates of Antioch and refused to admit him. Opposition to Alice within the city was led by William of Aversa and by Peter Latinator, a monk of St Paul’s. They established communications with the armies outside the city, and Baldwin’s son-in-law, Fulk of Anjou, was secretly admitted to Antioch by the Bridge Gate, while the monks of St Paul’s opened the St Paul’s Gate to Joscelin I and the men from Edessa. King Baldwin was then able to enter Antioch and, after some delay, Alice made her submission to him. William of Aversa was a member of the Norman aristocracy of southern 391 394 395 396

392 393 Kennedy, ‘Antioch’, 186 (map), 189, 191–2. AA V, 1, p. 338. Hamilton, Latin Church, 21–2. M. Carli, ed., Carte dell’Archivio Capitolare di Pisa, 4 vols. (Rome, 1969–77), I, pp. 80–3. Walter the Chancellor, The Antiochene Wars, II, 8, p. 139. Walter the Chancellor, The Antiochene Wars, II, 9, pp. 140–4.

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Italy, related to the counts of Capua, and he may have come to Antioch in the entourage of Bohemond II in 1126, and was a natural leader of the baronial party. But it was unusual in the Crusader States for a monk like Peter Latinator to take so active a role in secular politics. To judge from his cognomen, ‘the Translator’, he was one of a group of Western scholars who helped to make Antioch an important intellectual centre in the early twelfth century.397 He was almost certainly of noble birth, and he may have been drawn into this intrigue by family ties. Certainly his help was of crucial importance to the success of the dissidents, because he was able to persuade his community to open the St Paul’s Gate and admit a substantial part of the besieging army. William of Tyre found no difficulty in understanding the motives of the two leaders: they were ‘godfearing men who scorned the wanton behaviour of a deranged woman’. But he was not an eyewitness, or even an adult contemporary of these events, and his is not an informed opinion. It seems likely that William of Aversa and Peter Latinator were concerned about leaving the government in the hands of a young woman who had no military experience at a time when Antioch faced serious threats from neighbouring Muslim powers.398 The monks of St Paul’s were also involved in the administration of the patriarchate of Antioch. When William of Haronia gave land in his lordship to the abbey of Josaphat in 1135, the archbishop of Mamistra was present because this land was in his archdiocese, but among the witnesses was Hugh of Blois, S. Pauli Antiochiae monachus.399 In 1139 Prince Raymond of Antioch went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he received complaints from Patriarch William and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre about the violation of their property rights in his principality. He therefore invited them to send representatives to Antioch, promising that justice would be done. A delegation led by Prior Peter and the provost Wulgrin of the Holy Sepulchre appeared before the prince on 1 February 1140. Their arrival came at a difficult point in Church–state relations in Antioch: Prince Raymond had quarrelled with the Latin patriarch, Ralph of Domfront, and was awaiting the arrival of a papal legate who would resolve the dispute. Pope Innocent II had not suspended the patriarch from office, but Raymond had placed him under house arrest in his palace.400 The dispute was therefore heard by the prince’s court at which some senior clergy were present. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre raised no objection to this tribunal. They complained that the abbey of St Paul’s was wrongfully holding a garden in Antioch which belonged to the Holy Sepulchre. They produced a charter recording an agreement between the two communities by which St Paul’s had given the disputed garden to the Jerusalem canons in exchange for ‘the house of Stephen, the treasurer of the church of St Paul’, which implies that that house had formerly belonged to the Holy Sepulchre. This agreement had been reached in the reign of Prince Bohemond II (1126–30) and had been ratified by Patriarch Bernard of Valence. Prior Peter claimed that the community of St Paul’s had failed to honour this agreement. The fact that the treasurer of St Paul’s lived in a separate house and not in community suggests that he was a layman, or a secular clerk, employed by the abbey to handle their finances because none of the brethren had the requisite administrative skills. 397

398

R. Hiestand, ‘Un centre intellectuel en Syrie du Nord ? Notes sur la personnalité d’Aimery d’Antioche, Albert de Tarse et Rorgo Fretellus’, Le Moyen Age 100 (1994), 7–36. 399 400 WT XIII, 27, pp. 623–5. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 21, p. 130. Hamilton, ‘Ralph of Domfront’.

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Abbot Robert of St Paul’s and his monks refused to attend Prince Raymond’s court when the case was heard, because ‘the discussion of this matter was in no way subject to the scrutiny of a secular court, but judgement belonged to the lord patriarch of the Church of Antioch alone’. On receiving this reply, Raymond deferred hearing the case and issued a second summons to the monks of St Paul’s to attend his court on 30 March. When they gave the same answer, he again prorogued the court and issued a third summons to attend on 13 April. Because they had failed to respond to his third summons, on 19 April the prince gave judgement in favour of the Holy Sepulchre, although no representatives of St Paul’s were present. On the same day, he and his wife Constance issued a confirmation of all the property held by the Holy Sepulchre in their principality.401 There is no evidence that the Benedictines of St Paul’s ever subsequently challenged this decision. One reason for this may have been that among the clergy present at the court who supported Prince Raymond in his judgement was Aimery of Limoges, Dean of Antioch, who succeeded Ralph of Domfront after he had been deposed by a legatine council, and who reigned until c. 1196.402 The Benedictines of St Paul’s would have taken over the endowments of their Orthodox predecessors in territory which had come under Frankish control, and these may have been substantial. St Paul’s was one of the chief churches in Antioch, which was the capital of the Byzantine Duchy of Antioch from 969 to 1084. That province extended from the Amanus mountains to the coast south of Latakia, and was bounded on the east by the river Orontes, and all that territory was under Frankish rule in the twelfth century. Certainly the community of St Paul’s was not impoverished: it was rich enough to give the Order of the Hospital of St John an estate near Latakia in 1169, albeit with the provision that, if the Franks conquered Aleppo, the Order would restore this estate to St Paul’s.403 The site of the abbey has not been excavated. E. Rey, when he visited Antioch in 1859, noted: ‘De l’abbaye de S. Paul, près de la porte de ce nom, à l’est de la ville, il restait une baie de tiers-point et des débris d’arcs ogives.’404 This is a description of a Gothic ruin, not of a Byzantine church, and is evidence that the Benedictine community had rebuilt their chapel, probably in the twelfth century, no doubt partly to facilitate the performance of the Latin liturgy. The only contemporary description of the church is that found on the seal of Abbot Sergius. His dates are not known, but although he has an Orthodox name he was head of the Benedictine abbey, for his seal is inscribed S[igillum] Sergii abbatis S. Pauli Antiocheni. The reverse shows a bust of St Paul, holding the volume of his Epistles, and below him is the abbey church, ‘figurée par une voûte à triple abside, avec deux transepts dont les tours sont surmontés de croix. Sous la triple abside, l’abbé nu-tête au milieu de ses moines.’405 Their capacity to rebuild the chapel in Western style is firm evidence of the economic prosperity of this community. 401 402

403

404

405

BB nos. 76–7, pp. 176–83. B. Hamilton, ‘Aimery of Limoges, Patriarch of Antioch’, in E. R. Elder, ed., The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Essays in Honour of Jean Leclercq (Kalamazoo, MI, 1995), 269–90. CGOH I, no. 397. We also know the names of an Abbot Peter and a Prior Leo from a charter of 1168 of Bohemond III: CGOH I, no. 1, p. 271. E. G. Rey, Etude sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire des Croisés en Syrie et dans l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1871), 183–210, cited in C. Enlart, Les monuments des Croisés dans le royaume de Jérusalem. Architecture religieuse et civile (Paris, 1925), II, p. 40. Schlumberger, Chalandon and Blanchet, Sigillographie, no. 161, p. 134.

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Antioch was not part of the normal itinerary of Western pilgrims to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The church of St Paul did contain an important shrine which was venerated by visitors to the city: a crypt chapel, where, it was said, St Paul had written his Epistles.406 It was decorated with mosaics, part of which were still visible when Richard Pococke visited the city in the eighteenth century.407 During the middle years of the twelfth century the princes of Antioch lost a great deal of land to the east of the Orontes and in the northern part of their state to Muslim opponents, particularly to Prince Nur ad-Din of Damascus (1146–74). This inevitably led to quarrels with the Latin patriarch about the lands and treasures which the Church held, but which the princes needed to maintain their defences. A major conflict developed in 1180. Prince Bohemond III divorced his Byzantine wife, Theodora, and married Sibyl, the daughter of one of his vassals, without obtaining an annulment of his previous marriage. This acted as a catalyst which provoked an open conflict between Church and state. Patriarch Aimery of Limoges excommunicated Bohemond, who used this as a pretext to seize some of the treasures and endowments of the churches and to threaten violence to his opponents. A civil war developed, which culminated in an attack by Bohemond on the patriarch in his castle of Cursat, while the opposition was led by Reynald le Mazoir, who sheltered persecuted clergy in his great fortress of Margat (al-Marqab). Peace was re-established by the mediation of an embassy from Jerusalem, led by Patriarch Heraclius and the prince’s stepfather, Reynald of Châtillon. After lengthy consultations it was agreed that Bohemond would restore church property which he had confiscated, but that he would remain excommunicated until he put away his new wife.408 It seems clear that the monks of St Paul’s were among the supporters of the patriarch who were driven from their abbey, and probably forced to take refuge at Margat, from the penultimate clause of the agreement which they reached in 1183 with the Benedictines of Mt Tabor: If, which God forbid, it should come to pass that the land of Antioch should be surrendered to the Turks, or if they should be evicted by the prince, the church of Mt Tabor shall receive all the monks of St Paul’s as it would its own sons and brothers, and should provide them with all the necessities of life for as long as the aforesaid brethren of St Paul’s wish to remain with them.409

In February 1186 Abbot Falco of St Paul’s witnessed the sale by Bertrand le Mazoir, who had succeeded his father Reynald, of his fief of Margat to the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. The transaction was witnessed by representatives of the Hospital and knights from the fief of Margat, together with the bishop of Valania in whose diocese the fief was situated. Abbot Falco was the only independent witness and this suggests that he had a special attachment to the Le Mazoir family, probably because they had sheltered his community during the recent civil war. It may be significant that, when Bohemond III gave his assent to the sale on the same day, Falco was not asked to witness his diploma.410 406 407

408 409 410

Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 123. R. Pococke, A Description of the East and of Some Other Countries, vol II, pt I, Observations on the Holy Land, Syria, Mesopotamia, Cyprus and Candia (London, 1745), 192. WT XXII, 6–7, pp. 1013–17. Italics mine: CGOH II, p. 910, no. 22. For a fuller discussion of this agreement, see pp. 204–5. CGOH I, no. 783; Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 68–9.

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In the summer of 1188 Saladin campaigned in north Syria. Although he captured the ports of Jabala and Latakia, he was unable to take Antioch and withdrew to Aleppo in the autumn. He did not return, and at the peace which he concluded with Richard I of England in 1192 Saladin recognised the independence of the parts of the Principality of Antioch which he had not subdued. Nevertheless, the territory of the prince of Antioch had been greatly diminished. The environs of Antioch city and the lands to the east as far as the head of the Orontes valley and to the west as far as the Mediterranean coast, as well as the lands to the north, extending to the eastern frontier of Cilician Armenia in the Amanus mountains, remained in Frankish control, as did the Hospitaller castle of Margat and the adjacent town of Valania on the border of the County of Tripoli to the south, although they were separated from the rest of the principality by the Muslim-held coastal region of Latakia and Jabala.411 Although the abbey of St Paul’s had suffered no damage during Saladin’s campaign, the income of the community must have been considerably diminished because so little of the principality in which their endowments were situated remained in Christian hands. Certainly they felt insecure, and in 1197 the new abbot Bernard made a pact of mutual help and support with Abbot Amatus of Our Lady of Josaphat. The provisions of this agreement are the same as those made with the abbey of Mt Tabor by Abbot Falco in 1183. The reason for changing from an alliance with Mt Tabor to one with Josaphat may only be conjectured. It is true that the monks of Tabor in 1197 were living in Acre in a much smaller house than their former abbey and had therefore fewer facilities with which to offer hospitality to refugee monks from Antioch, but the community of Josaphat was likewise living in Acre in straitened circumstances. The date of the new agreement may be significant, for Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, was intending to lead a new crusade to the Levant in the following year. The abbey of Josaphat had priories in the Sicilian Kingdom and enjoyed royal patronage there, and no doubt Abbot Bernard of St Paul’s hoped that his community also would benefit from Henry VI’s protection under the terms of the new agreement with Josaphat.412 Henry VI’s death in December 1197 led to the abandonment of the projected crusade, and no attempt was subsequently made to implement the provisions in the agreement that Josaphat should give shelter to the community of St Paul’s should they be driven from their abbey. In the first quarter of the thirteenth century Antioch was disturbed by the long quarrel about the succession following the death of Bohemond III in 1201. The contenders were Raymond-Roupen, the infant son of Bohemond III’s deceased elder son, Raymond, and Bohemond III’s younger son, Bohemond IV.413 Civil war broke out in the city and while it was in progress a dispute took place between the Latin patriarch, Peter of Angoulême (1196–1208), and the abbot of St Paul’s. This is only known about because of a passing reference in a letter written in 1205 by Innocent III to his legate in Syria, Peter of S. Marcello: ‘Regarding those things which you report you have done about the case of the patriarch of Antioch and the abbot of St Paul’s, We have now ruled that they should be ignored, because We do not wish to seem greatly to exaggerate the importance of either of 411 412

A. D. Buck, The Principality of Antioch and Its Frontiers in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2017), 55–60. 413 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 44, pp. 92–4. Cahen, La Syrie du nord, 598–608.

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these [litigants].’414 This dispute would have ended in 1208 when the patriarch was imprisoned and starved to death by Bohemond IV. His successor, Peter of Ivrea (1209–17), was a Cistercian, whom Innocent III himself appointed. After a while peace was restored in the city and Bohemond IV was recognised as prince. He lived at Tripoli and appointed his son Raymond as his viceroy in Antioch.415 When the abbot of St Paul’s died in c. 1212, a complaint was brought by the community about the way in which the election of his successor had been conducted. Innocent wrote to Bohemond IV about this, condemning the custom whereby when a vacancy occurred in the office of abbot the brethren of St Paul’s presented a list of three names to the count, of which he chose one. Innocent III found this instance of lay intervention in the choice of an abbot deeply offensive and likened Bohemond to King Uzziah of Judah, who had exercised the priestly office and been struck by leprosy.416 The prince, in fact, was simply continuing to use a variant of the procedure for the election of prelates which had been standard practice in the Crusader States in the twelfth century. Innocent also wrote to the patriarch and cathedral chapter of Antioch condemning the practice whereby, when an abbot of St Paul’s was confirmed in office, he was required to pay the patriarch and canons 300 bezants.417 There is no parallel instance known of this practice elsewhere in the Crusader States, and it may reflect the loss of revenue which the patriarchs of Antioch had suffered from c. 1149 onwards. In 1222 Pope Honorius III empowered the patriarch and the cantor of Antioch, together with the abbot of St Paul’s, to provide a canonry in the cathedral church of Nicosia for Adam, a poor clerk.418 As Nicholas Coureas has noted, this high-ranking group of papal delegates was needed to carry out this minor piece of administration because Honorius had been trying to appoint Adam to a canonry at Nicosia since 1218, without success. Coureas suggests that the opposition to the pope’s wishes may reflect the unwillingness of the aristocratic chapter to admit a poor man as a colleague.419 Three years later, Pope Honorius granted a special privilege to the abbey of St Paul’s exempting the community from making any provision in future for the support of secular clerks at the pope’s request. This is probably an indication of the poverty of the house: the long War of the Antiochene Succession had almost certainly caused problems about collecting dues from the estates and other endowments which were still in the community’s possession.420 Nevertheless, St Paul’s remained an important shrine church. The Coptic or Jacobite compilers of the History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Some Neighbouring Countries, which dates from the early thirteenth century, wrote: ‘In Antioch in[side] the city walls above the Persian Gate . . . is a church dedicated to Paul the Apostle. This city will not be conquered as long as this church is flourishing and the prayers and the holy Mass are continually being celebrated in it.’421 On 18 May 1268 Antioch was captured and sacked by Baibars, and St Paul’s abbey came to an abrupt end. 414 416 417 418 419 421

415 Innocent III, Register an. VIII, no. 127, p. 233. Hamilton, Latin Church, 217–20. II Chronicles 26: 16–21; Innocent III, Regesta XV, no. CCXIX, PL 216: 747. Innocent III, Regesta an. XV, no. CCVII, PL 216: 735–6. Honorius III, Regesta no. 3754; Bullarium Cyprium, c-43, pp. 235–6. 420 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 77. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5753. C. Ten Hacken, ‘The description of Antioch in Abu al-Makarim’s History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and of Some Neighbouring Countries XI (26)’, in K. Ciggaar and M. Metcalf, eds., East and West in the Medieval Eastern

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Figure 6 Crypt shrine of the Virgin Mary, Valley of Jehosaphat

Coureas has argued convincingly that survivors from the St Paul’s community took refuge in Cyprus. In 1254 the office of prior of the Benedictine monastery of the Holy Cross in the diocese of Limassol was held by Brother Henry, a former monk of St Paul’s Antioch. The abbot of St Paul’s had requested the pope to order Henry to return to his community, but Innocent IV would not agree to this, because the monastery of the Cross had formerly been the Orthodox monastery of Stavrovouni, and when it became a Benedictine house Henry had been transferred there as prior at the request of the bishop of Limassol.422 So a personal link existed between the two communities before 1268 and it is likely that when Antioch fell some survivors of the St Paul’s community took refuge in the Cypriot house. Coureas argues that this explains the otherwise mysterious letter of Pope Nicholas IV sent to the archdeacon of Famagusta in 1291, ordering him to appoint a new abbot to the monastery of St Paul’s Antioch because the office had been left vacant for so long that the appointment had reverted to the Holy See.423 Coureas comments: ‘The reference to a monastery on Cyprus being named after St Paul at Antioch can be explained by the fact that Benedictine monks of the original house in Syria, who were transferred to Cyprus, added the name to that of the Holy Cross.’424

422 423

Mediterranean: Antioch from the Byzantine Reconquest until the End of the Crusader Principality. Acta of the Congress held at Hernen Castle in May 2003 (Leuven, 2006), 200. Innocent IV, Registres no. 8001; Bullarium Cyprium, e-95, pp. 443–4; also v-19, v-45, v-58, v-59, pp. 367, 379, 382, 382. 424 Nicholas IV, Registres no. 5765. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 187–8.

6 Benedictine Convents

The Benedictine Convent of Great St Mary’s, Jerusalem William of Tyre relates that, after the monastery of Sta Maria Latina had been founded in Jerusalem by the Amalfitans at some time before 1073, the same patrons also built nearby a chapel and convent dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, and that ‘a certain number of sisters were placed there to help women visitors’. In 1099 when the First Crusade captured the city, the abbess was a Roman noblewomen called Agnes who lived for some years after this.1 The monastery, the hospital which it administered, and the convent were all situated close to each other and stood just to the south of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the Latin Kingdom this convent was never called St Mary Magdalene’s, but was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This change occurred very soon after the crusader conquest. When the pilgrim Saewulf visited Jerusalem in 1102 he noted that next to the church of Sta Maria Latina ‘is another church of St Mary, which is called Little [parva], where there is a community of nuns who serve her [the Virgin] and her son very devoutly’.2 Although it is sometimes assumed that this community had, at its foundation, been subject to the abbot of Sta Maria Latina, that is a matter of inference. It was certainly an independent institution in the reign of Baldwin I and perhaps had always been so. Its early history is not well documented. In a list of property leases belonging to the Hospital of St John drawn up in c. 1170 is recorded one held by the abbess of St Mary’s Pitittae (la petite) for a storeroom (volta) in the street of the Parmentaria beneath the house of Robert Galatina.3 Robert Galatina died before 1136, which suggests that this lease was made between 1113, when the Hospital became independent of Sta Maria Latina, and 1136.4 In 1157 Queen Melisende presided over a complicated transfer of rights of tithe, which benefited her sister Yveta, Abbess of Bethany. Raymond of Le Puy, Master of the Order of St John, surrendered all claims to receive tithes in Bethany in return for the grant of a vineyard outside the north wall of Jerusalem. The tithes of this property belonged to the convents of St Anne’s and of Great St Mary’s (S. Maria Grandis) at Jerusalem, and they surrendered their rights to the Order, but received no compensation. Their reward was the goodwill of the queen mother. St Mary the Great was represented on this occasion by the Lady Avis, their abbess, and by sisters Odolina, Solis and Gudulena.5 1 5

2 3 WT XVIII, 5, pp. 814–17. Saewulf, p. 67. RRH no. 483. CGOH I, no. 250; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 193, I, pp. 374–5.

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BB no. 103, pp. 222–3.

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Denys Pringle suggests persuasively that Little St Mary’s had become Great St Mary’s by 1157 as a result of the rebuilding of the convent chapel. The plan of that church is known from excavations made in 1900–1 when the site was being cleared to build a new market. A substantial number of carved capitals from the chapel were also found. Pringle suggests that the chapel of Great St Mary’s was rebuilt at about the same time as that of the neighbouring monastery of Sta Maria Latina, ‘probably in the 1130s–1140s’, but ‘it was more finely built and more richly decorated’. The epithet of ‘Great’ suggest that the new chapel impressed the public more than the new chapel of Sta Maria Latina.6 Clearly, the convent had rich patrons in the second quarter of the twelfth century. When Maurice of Craon went to Jerusalem in 1169–70 he received a relic of the True Cross from Abbess Stephania, who described herself in her certificate of authentication as ‘the humble servant of the church of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, which is commonly called the Great’, and her seal, appended to the document, shows her holding a crozier in one hand and a book in the other.7 Stephania was the daughter of Count Joscelin I of Courtenay, Count of Edessa (1118–31), and the niece of Roger of the Principate, Regent of Antioch (d. 1119). It is probable that the Courtenays endowed this convent when she made her profession there, which she might have done in the lifetime of her father. William of Tyre consulted her when he was writing his Chronicle, asking her to explain how her niece, Agnes of Courtenay, had been related within the prohibited degrees to King Amalric, a fact which had led the High Court to demand the annulment of their marriage. William described the abbess as ‘a woman religious who was noble by birth and also by character. She was very old, but she had a good memory.’8 In June 1174, a few weeks before his death, King Amalric issued a privilege for the convent of Great St Mary’s and the nearby hospital of St John. He gave them a lane, which ran from the street of Palms on the south side of the Holy Sepulchre, between the convent and the hospital. The convent received the northern half of the lane, with permission to build houses there, though severe restrictions were placed on their height. The southern half of the lane was granted to the hospital. Abbess Stephania witnessed this privilege, as did Sisters Richeldis of Jerusalem (the daughter of Milo the clerk), Mahaldis of Nablus, Mahaldis of Ramla, Amelot and ‘many others’ whose names are not given. The right to build houses so near to the Holy Sepulchre, whose cellars might be leased as storerooms or shops, was a potential source of considerable profit for the community.9 In the reign of Amalric’s son Baldwin IV, Abbess Stephania had even more influence at court. Her nephew, Joscelin III of Courtenay, was seneschal of the kingdom, and her niece Agnes was the king’s mother and, because he was unmarried, effectively the queen of Jerusalem. The abbess wished to consolidate the possessions of her community and met with full co-operation in doing so. St Mary’s had some rights in the estate of Gemerosa near Hebron which belonged to the abbey of Josaphat, while Josaphat had rights in the estate of Trakemia near Hebron, which was owned by St Mary’s. The rights of both communities were rationalised without further litigation, in the presence of Abbess Stephania and Abbot 6 7

8

Pringle, Churches no. 335, III, pp. 253–61, gives a plan of the chapel and photographs of the capitals. Stephania ecclesiae sanctae Dei genetricis Mariae quae vulgo dicitur magna, humilis ministra: Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon no. 144, I, p. 104. 9 WT XIX, 4, p. 869. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 363, II, pp. 629–32.

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John of Josaphat, at a court at which Prince Reynald of Châtillon, Lord of Montréal and Hebron, presided. On his orders, John Barzela, the castellan of Hebron, supervised the redistribution of land in person. On this occasion Stephania was not accompanied by sisters, but by two lay brothers, frater Gervasius and frater Stephanus curator ovium, and also by George, the notary of the abbess (notarius abbatissae). This indicates that the convent was employing lay brothers to administer its property: Brother Stephen presumably had oversight of all the community’s flocks. Their presence suggests that St Mary’s owned a considerable amount of property, though no complete record of it has survived. This document is not dated, but cannot be earlier than 1178, when John became abbot of Josaphat.10 Great St Mary’s was under the ecclesiastical authority of the patriarch of Jerusalem.11 Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre (1216–28), in his account of twelfth-century Jerusalem, praises the sisters highly for their holiness of life: The abbey of St Mary of the nuns in Jerusalem, whose abbess and sisters wore black habits and lived under the Rule of St Benedict, was reputed to be a fragrant centre of piety and chastity, whose sisters were devout in their service of God, strict in their religious observance, honourable in their way of life, and they never abstained from works of charity because of difficult circumstances or lack of resources.12

Great St Mary’s was not a shrine church: pilgrims visited it because it was near the Holy Sepulchre, not in order to venerate a sacred site. John of Würzburg, who went there soon after 1160, was at a loss for anything of consequence to say about this abbey: ‘Next to the same church of St John [i.e. the Hospital of St John] there is a convent built in honour of St Mary, which almost abuts on the buildings of that church, and it is called Great St Mary’s.’13 But the community found ways of integrating the site of their church into the gospel narrative of Christ’s Passion. This had happened by the time Stephania of Courtenay was abbess, and she may have been responsible for introducing this story. The pilgrim Theoderic, who visited Jerusalem in c. 1172, described the abbey as: the church of St Mary, in which nuns, who live in obedience to an abbess, daily sing the divine praises. It is said that this place is dedicated to St Mary because, while our Saviour was being wickedly dragged along to his Passion, she was, it is said on his orders, placed in a certain upper room which was then situated there at that time in that same place.14

The abbess who succeeded Stephania claimed that her church had relics of the hair of the Blessed Virgin. This is known from a letter about the authentication of relics which had been brought back from the Holy Land by Guy of Blond (Guido de Biavone), a monk of Grandmont. Guy claimed that the original letters of authentication which he had been given had been stolen from him in Cyprus on his return journey to France, though the relics had remained in his possession. Guy’s letter is not dated, though it is clear from his description of the shrines that he visited that he was in Jerusalem before 1187. He describes the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem at the time of his pilgrimage as a man qui mihi domesticus 10 12

11 See p. 182; Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 45, pp. 153–4. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 110. 13 14 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVIII, 236. John of Würzburg, p. 132. Theodericus, p. 158.

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erat, which would mean ‘someone from my own region’. Blond, Guy’s place of birth, is in the department of Haute-Vienne, and the only twelfth-century patriarch who came from that general area of France was Heraclius (1180–91), a native of Gévaudan in the Auvergne.15 Charles Kohler, who published this letter, thought that it must date from earlier in the twelfth century because Guy claimed that he had been given a relic of St Stephen by the countess of Rohais (Edessa), which had fallen to Zengi in 1144. But the title of count of Edessa continued to be used by Joscelin III of Courtenay, and the countess of Rohais in the years 1180–7 was his wife, Agnes de Milly.16 Guy kept Easter in Jerusalem and states that on the night of Maundy Thursday the abbess of Sta Maria Latina, acting at the request of the patriarch, ‘gave me some of the hairs of St Mary the Mother of the Lord’. This is obviously a confused reference to Great St Mary’s, since the convent stood next door to the abbey of Latina. Guy does not name the abbess, but says that de nostris partibus originem duxit (‘she came from our region’). This cannot refer to Stephania of Courtenay, who had been born in Edessa, and is evidence that she died at some time between 1180 and 1187. Her successor, the unnamed abbess from south-central France, may have been nominated by Patriarch Heraclius.17 After Jerusalem surrendered to Saladin in 1187, the community of Great St Mary’s took refuge in Tyre. This is an inference from the fact that in thirteenth-century sources the community is often called the Sisters of St Mary of Tyre, although they were no longer living there. At some time between 1198 and 1203 Queen Isabella II gave them a house in Acre, which Innocent III confirmed in a bull of 14 August 1203 addressed to the abbess and nuns of Great St Mary’s Jerusalem (abbatisse ac monialibus Sancte Marie Maioris de Jerusalem). The pope specially endorsed the building of a chapel for the abbey in Acre, on which work had recently begun, sponsored by the cardinal legate Soffredus.18 The only evidence for the location of the abbey is found in the list of indulgences dating from the second half of the thirteenth century for pilgrims visiting Acre. The church of Our Lady of Tyre is listed between Our Lady of the Knights (the chapel of the Austin canons of Nazareth) and the cathedral of the Holy Cross.19 The sisters of Great St Mary’s all moved to Acre and did not maintain a priory at Tyre after 1203, probably because they were too few in number to do so. Pringle has drawn attention to the matrix of a seal belonging to the abbess of St Mary at Tyre, but that presumably dates from the years between 1187 and 1203 when the community lived there.20 The community continued to own property at Tyre. A list of the Genoese possessions in the city, drawn up in 1250 on the orders of the consuls of the republic in Syria, mentions ‘an uncultivated garden with a broken-down wall, bounded on the east and the north by the land of the king and that of the sisters of St Mary’.21 In 1271 John of Montfort, Lord of Tyre, issued a confirmation of the property held by the Knights of St John in his lordship, and described the boundaries of one of their possessions as ‘the land 15 17 18 19 20

21

16 Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 339, p. 51. Hamilton, Leper King, p. 106 and n. 129. Ch. Kohler, ‘Documents inédits concernant l’Orient latin et les Croisades’, ROL 7 (1900), no. 1, 1–9. Innocent III, Register, an. VI, no. 135, p. 225; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 565, II, pp. 924–5. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235; Pringle, Churches, IV, map, p. 16. Pringle, Churches no. 431, IV, pp. 142–4 (at p. 143), citing C. de Briailles, ‘Matrices de sceaux francs’, Bulletin de Musée de Beyrouth 9 (1949–50), 103–4, no. VII. Ch. C. Desimoni, ‘Quatre titres des Génois à Acre et Tyr’, AOL II (ii), no. III, p. 224.

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of the sisters of Our Lady of Tyre, which adjoins my land, which is known as dou Fier’.22 The location of the house in which the sisters had lived in Tyre before 1203 is not known.23 When Saladin visited Jerusalem after agreeing the Treaty of Jaffa with Richard I in 1192, he ordered that the empty buildings of Great St Mary’s should be used as a hospital, a project he entrusted to his secretary and biographer, Baha al-Din.24 When Jerusalem returned to Latin hands in 1229 there is some evidence that at least part of the community of Great St Mary’s went to live there. A pilgrim guide to the Holy Land written in c. 1231 states: ‘Facing the Holy Sepulchre, across the street from the south entrance, is the Hospital of St John and next door to that are the Sisters of Tyre [les nonnains de Sur].’25 If this text were simply repeating information given by a twelfth-century guide, the sisters would have been called the nuns of Great St Mary’s: the name Sisters of Tyre dates from after 1187, and unless some of them had returned to the Jerusalem house by 1231 this reference would be difficult to explain. The inventory of charters relating to Syria drawn up by Jean Raybaud, secretary of the Grand Priory of St Gilles of the Order of St John from 1722 to 1745, includes the following entry dated 16 August 1233: ‘A lease granted by Mabel, Abbess of Great St Mary’s in Jerusalem [Notre Dame Majeure en Hierusalem], to Pons de Cisternaty and Raymonde his wife of a house in the patriarch’s quarter, for an annual rent of 3 bezants.’ This suggests that the abbess was living in Jerusalem with some of her community and trying to recover and administer the property which had formerly belonged to her house, though Pringle is inclined to treat this piece of evidence with more caution, arguing that it does not necessarily mean that the community had returned to the city, since they might simply have been employing agents to enforce their property rights there.26 If all the sisters had been in Jerusalem at the time of the Khwarizmian sack of 1244 they would almost certainly have been killed or enslaved, but some had remained in the house at Acre which became their headquarters once more after that time. They owned some property in the city as well as the site of their abbey. Before 1244 the Teutonic Knights bought a curia from the Sisters of Tyre. This was situated next door to the Order’s infirmary, and they paid 1,000 bezants for it. The term curia should perhaps be translated as ‘palace’: certainly it was an administrative centre of some kind.27 In a document of 1269 another property belonging to the Sisters of Tyre was mentioned when defining the boundaries of a site acquired by the Knights of St John.28 The Sisters had also received some endowments in Cyprus. In 1247 a garden at Nicosia belonging to Our Lady of Tyre is mentioned in a boundary definition in a charter of John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa.29 At some point in the thirteenth century, perhaps after the loss of Jerusalem in 1244, the community of Acre founded a priory at Nicosia, and this became the main house of the Sisters after the fall of Acre in 1291.30 A document of 1300 seems to suggest that the community at Nicosia was in a severe state of decline: Bernard Faxit, 22 24

25 26 28 30

23 CGOH I, no. 3408. Pringle, Churches no. 470, IV, p. 217. Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, 236; D. S. Richards, ‘Saladin’s hospital in Jerusalem: its foundation and some later archival material’, in K. Athamina and R. Heacock, eds., The Frankish Wars and Their Influence on Palestine (Jerusalem, 1994), 70–83. Les sains Pelerinages, xi, p. 104[5]. 27 Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 243, p. 83; Pringle, Churches no. 335, III, p. 255. Strehlke no. 128, p. 126. 29 CGOH I, no. 3334. Cartulary of the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 49, pp. 147–8. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 189.

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a merchant of Narbonne residing in Famagusta, bequeathed 10 bezants ‘to the two Ladies of Tyre’ at Nicosia, for their prayers and for singing Masses on his behalf.31 This suggests that none of the sisters had escaped from the siege of Acre in 1291, and that nine years later the members of the Nicosia house were failing to attract fresh vocations. This decline, however, was halted by the profession in the early fourteenth century of a number of distinguished women, among them Margaret of Lusignan (d. 1308), sister of King Hugh III of Cyprus, and Euphemia, sister of King Hethum II (d. 1307) of Cilicia and widow of Julian, Lord of Sidon. Their presence inevitably guaranteed royal patronage: when the abbey was damaged by an earthquake in 1303 King Henry II paid for it to be rebuilt.32 Henry’s support turned out to be a mixed blessing, for after his deposition the rebuilding work stopped when the subsidies ran out. Moreover, according to Francesco Amadi, the abbess at the time of Henry’s deposition, Margaret of Ibelin, incurred the wrath of his usurping brother Amaury for having prayers said for King Henry, and after Amaury’s murder the convent became a place of refuge for the wives of those of Henry’s supporters who had left Nicosia. The murderer of Amaury was reportedly seen in the convent, and in consequence a mob broke in and threatened to assault the nuns and to set fire to the convent. An entry was forced, and the personal property of some nuns, most of whom were noblewomen or the daughters of knights or burgesses, was stolen. The abbess appealed to the papal legate and denied that the nuns were harbouring the murderer, and the legate agreed to send a body of men to protect them.33 The possibility that the community of Great St Mary’s was connected in some way to the abbey of St Mary in Jerusalem, sive de virginibus, in Venice is discussed with great caution by Pringle. The evidence for such a link is certainly not at all clear.34

The Benedictine Convent of St Anne’s Jerusalem Among the shrines which the crusaders found in ruins when they entered Jerusalem in 1099 was the church of the Sheep Pool to the north of the Temple Mount. This had been built on the site of Bethesda, where Jesus had healed a paralytic man.35 From the seventh century this site was also associated with the house of St Joachim and St Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was identified with a cave complex in the precinct of the church. The church itself was largely destroyed as part of the anti-Christian purge ordered by Caliph al-Hakim in 1009, but the cave shrines were not damaged then.36 The standard account of the childhood of Mary was found in the Book of James, also known as the Protevangelium, a Greek text which dates from c. AD 150 to 200. It is a work of hagiography, designed to fill in the gaps left by the New Testament account of the life of the Holy Family. The author clearly knew very little about either Jewish religion or social life in Palestine at the time of Jesus, but the theology of the book is orthodox and it was influential in 31

32

33 36

V. Polonio, ed., Notai genovesi in Oltremare . . . Lamberto di Sambucato, Collana storico di fonti e studi 31 (Genoa, 1982), no. 145, p. 163: Item, dominabus illis duabus de Tiro Nicosie, pro pietancia et Missis canendis, bis. X. Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambouli, ed. R. de Mas Latrie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1891), 349–50, for the earthquake during the abbacy of Beatrice of Picquigny; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 189–90. 34 35 Chroniques d’Amadi, 349–51. Pringle, Churches no. 431, IV, p. 142. John 5: 2–8. Pringle, Churches no. 366, III, pp. 389–97; Bahat with Rubinstein, ‘The Siloam Church’, in their Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 72–3; Pringle, Churches no. 305, III, pp. 142–56; P. Deschamps, Terre Sainte romane (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1964), ‘L’église de Sainte Anne de Jérusalem’, 163–221.

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the Eastern Orthodox Churches in the early Middle Ages. Yet, though Latin translations of it were made, it did not meet with the approval of the Western Church authorities in the precrusading period. St Jerome had been hostile to the apocryphal Infancy Gospels, of which the Book of James was the most important, and this literature had been condemned by Popes Damasus and Innocent I. This censure was not completely effective, and the apocryphal legends about the Holy Family influenced religious iconography and devotional stories in the West even before the First Crusade, but they found no place in the Western liturgy.37 The site of the house of St Joachim and St Anne in Jerusalem was in conformity with the topographical details given in the Book of James, and the Orthodox Churches kept the feast of the Virgin’s parents on 9 September. The Western Church in the central Middle Ages had a great devotion to Mary, and it was natural that the Franks should wish to restore the shrine of her birthplace when they captured Jerusalem. The dedication of the restored shrine to St Anne is likely to reflect the retention of its Orthodox name, for St Anne was not widely venerated in western Europe at that time, although a few churches were dedicated to her. Indeed, her feast on 26 July was not observed by the whole Latin Church until 1382. Mary’s father, St Joachim, received no liturgical recognition in the Western Church at all before the fifteenth century, and was not given a secure place in the Western calendar until Paul V fixed his feast on the Sunday after the Assumption of the Virgin in 1621.38 The scanty evidence suggests that initially the Franks allowed the Orthodox community to rebuild the chapel and care for this shrine. The new church had been built by the time that Saewulf visited Jerusalem in 1102–3. He reports that ‘on the north side a path runs from the Temple of the Lord to the church of St Anne, mother of St Mary, [the place] where she lived with her husband. It was there that she bore her most beloved daughter Mary, who brought salvation to all the people [salvatricem omnium fidelium]. It is near the Sheep-pool.’ Saewulf appears to have had an Orthodox Christian guide to that part of the city, perhaps one of the clergy attached to the church of St Anne, for he commented that the Golden Gate of the Temple was the place where ‘Joachim, the father of St Mary, on the orders of the angel of the Lord, ran to meet his wife Anna’, which alludes to another episode in the Book of James.39 Saewulf does not record who administered the church of St Anne’s, but William of Tyre states that during Baldwin I’s reign it was served by a convent. At some time between 1103 and 1108 the king repudiated his Armenian wife, whom he had married while count of Edessa. She is commonly called Arda, although her name is given in no contemporary source. Baldwin gave no public reason for his unilateral divorce, and rumours abounded. Guibert of Nogent (d. c. 1125) told a lurid story about how the queen had been raped by pirates while travelling by sea from Antioch to join her husband.40 William of Tyre had heard two explanations: either the king wished to make a more politically advantageous marriage or the queen had been unfaithful. The marriage was not formally annulled, but the queen was forced against her will to take the veil at St Anne’s. William describes the 37 38

39

The Protoevangelium of James, ed. Hennecke and Schneemelcher. A. Butler, The Lives of the Saints, ed. H. Thurston, 12 vols. (London, 1926–38),VII, pp. 366–8 (St Anne), VIII, pp. 186–8 (St Joachim). 40 Saewulf, pp. 68–9. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, VII, 48, RHC Occ IV, p. 259.

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convent as situated near the Pool of Bethesda, ‘where the crypt is shown in which according to ancient tradition Joachim and Anne had their house in which the Ever-Virgin [Mary] was said to have been born. Three or four women of lowly birth were living there [pauperes muliercule] and because he had placed his wife there, King Baldwin increased the endowments and possessions [of the house].’ Arda stayed there for some time and then asked the king’s permission to visit her family in Constantinople, in order to raise funds for the community. Baldwin agreed to this, but when she reached the Byzantine capital she abandoned her enforced religious profession and led a worldly life. She was still alive in 1117 when Baldwin I, under pressure from Pope Paschal II, sought a reconciliation with her, but she never returned to Jerusalem.41 It is usually assumed that the convent of St Anne’s was a Latin house when Queen Arda entered it, as it certainly was later, but William of Tyre’s description of the pauperes muliercule who then formed the community is puzzling in a Latin context. By the early twelfth century women of low social status, unable to provide dowries, were never professed in the Benedictine convents of western Europe. At the time of the First Crusade, Robert of Arbrissel encountered strong opposition when he tried to recruit women of that kind to the religious life, and it was this which led him to found the Order of Fontevrault under a different Rule.42 On the other hand, there were many small communities of nuns drawn from the peasantry in the Orthodox world, and a group of this kind would fit William of Tyre’s description. Queen Arda herself was an Armenian of Orthodox rite, and an Orthodox convent would have been a more natural community for her to join than a Latin one.43 This is necessarily a matter of speculation. What is beyond doubt is that the house later became a Latin-rite community living under the Benedictine Rule. Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, describing the religious life of the Latin Kingdom during the twelfth century, wrote: ‘The Abbey of St Anne, the mother of the Lord’s mother . . . which is situated next to the Pool of Bethesda, where the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have been born, belongs to the same Order [of St Benedict as the Convent of Bethany] and consists of an abbess and nuns who wear black habits.’44 The community was directly subject to the Latin patriarch in his capacity as Ordinary of the diocese of Jerusalem.45 It is worth noting that, although the convent preserved its dedication to St Anne, the cult of that saint was not adopted by the Latin Church of Jerusalem as a whole: Cristina Dondi, in her examination of the calendars found in the liturgical books used by the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, records that the earliest inclusion of the feast of St Anne on 26 July is found in a Carmelite Breviary made in Cyprus between 1308 and 1315.46 The endowments which Baldwin I had given to the house no doubt helped in the recruitment of a conventional group of nuns drawn from the Frankish nobility. There is no list of the royal gifts, but they may have included stations in the market of Jerusalem,

41

42 43 44 46

WT XI, 1, 29, pp. 495–6, 542; Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: the queens of Jerusalem’; Murray, Crusader Kingdom, 182. J. Dalarun, L’impossible sainteté. La vie retrouvée de Robert d’Arbrissel (Paris, 1985). R. Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium 843–1118 (Cambridge, 1995). 45 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVIII, 236. John of Ibelin, Livre, ed. Edbury, ch. ii, p. 154. Dondi, Liturgy, 235–43, 300–1. The Breviary is Bibliothèque de l’Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille MS, p. 12.

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where the words Sancta Anna may still be read, inscribed below the arches of the suq to the south of Sta Maria Latina.47 The good fortune of the community must have seemed assured when Yveta, the youngest daughter of Baldwin II, was professed there. She had been born after her father became king in 1118 and may have entered the house during his lifetime, perhaps as a child oblate.48 The convent almost certainly received fresh endowments from the crown at this point. But Yveta’s sister Melisende, who, together with her husband Fulk of Anjou, succeeded Baldwin I in 1131, had more ambitious plans for her. William of Tyre reports that Melisende considered it ‘unseemly that the daughter of a king should be subject to some other mother in the cloister, just like one of the common people’. She and King Fulk therefore founded the convent of Bethany with the express intention of making Yveta the abbess when she was old enough. The project was initiated in 1138, although it was some years before the new buildings were habitable.49 Thus for the second time, St Anne’s lost the close links which for a short while it had developed with the royal family. Nevertheless, the convent did benefit materially from royal patronage. One sign of this was that the church of St Anne’s was rebuilt. Pringle has concluded that ‘it may have taken most of the first half of the twelfth century to achieve [its final] state’, and that may well reflect the fitful nature of royal patronage. The new church was built over the shrine cavecomplex, as Pringle has explained: ‘Two rock-cut caves, formerly cisterns, are located directly below the church’s central apse, and are linked to a system of vaulted crypts below the nave and the south aisle . . . The general form of the crypt relates to an arrangement dating from before the twelfth century, which the medieval builders carefully re-arranged and systematized.’50 The church had been completed by c. 1161 when John of Würzburg went on pilgrimage, and he gives a description of part of the interior decoration, which has not survived: Opposite the courtyard of the Temple, on the north side of the way to the gate that leads to the Valley of Josaphat, a great church has been built in honour of St Anne, in which is depicted how by divine dispensation and revelation the Blessed Virgin Mary would be conceived of her and Joachim, as is described more fully in the Life of St Anne. Her feast is celebrated there with great solemnity on the same day as that of St James the Great [i.e. 25 July], and I was present on that occasion.51

Theoderic, who went on pilgrimage a few years later, noted that St Anne’s tomb was in the crypt of the church and was approached by a flight of some twenty steps.52 There is no contemporary account of the convent buildings, but they survived with little alteration until the early eighteenth century, when they were seen by Eleazer Horn:

47 48 49 51

52

Pringle, Churches no. 305, III, p. 154. WT XII, 4, p. 551. In medieval canon law women came of age at twelve, when they might marry or take solemn vows. 50 WT XV, 26, pp. 709–10; see pp. 231–2. Pringle, Churches no. 305, III, pp. 142–57. John of Würzburg, p. 136. There is no reason to doubt John’s evidence, but it is surprising that the patronal feast of the church should be observed on a different major feast-day. When the feast of St Anne entered the universal calendar of the Latin Church, it was fixed on 26 July. Theodericus, pp. 172–3.

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A small cloister of [the] nuns with a [little] garden, two cisterns, and a dormitory with fourteen cells, besides one affording a passage, and that in the tower, and other workshops and stores . . . One ascends to the dormitory by twenty-three steps and thence by . . . [sic] steps to the tower.53

The convent also had charge of the ruined church of the Sheep Pool, and built a chapel there which was seen by Theoderic: ‘Anyone who walks north [from St Anne’s] will find in a deep valley beside a certain stony hillside, which is cluttered with some old ruins, the Sheep Pool, which has five porticos, as is written in the Gospel, and in the last of these an altar has been built.’54 Pringle has summarised the archaeological evidence relating to this site: ‘The twelfth-century monument therefore consisted of a chapel built over a vaulted crypt or undercroft of Byzantine date, which was in turn built over a cistern occupying the south-east corner of the northern pool of Bethesda.’55 This quite extensive building programme suggests that the abbey had substantial endowments, but no general confirmation of its property has survived, and the evidence relating to its holdings is fragmentary. In addition to the market franchises mentioned above, the convent owned a vineyard outside Jerusalem adjacent to that of Bethany, part of the tithes of which it surrendered to the Hospital of St John in 1157 at the request of Queen Melisende.56 In 1174 Abbess Sibyl sought to consolidate the abbey’s property by exchanging some of its vineyards with those of the Hospital of St John.57 At some time between 1177 and 1187 she leased an estate called Adria to Roger des Moulins, Grand Master of the Hospital, for an annual rent of 25 bezants.58 In 1182 King Baldwin IV confirmed the sale of the estate of Galilea in the lordship of Caesarea by Walter of Caesarea to Roger des Moulins: this estate was bounded to the north by an estate of St Anne’s.59 In the long term the abbey’s most important acquisition was the church of St Anne’s in Acre, which is first mentioned in 1168 in a privilege for Pisa granted by King Amalric.60 When John Phocas visited Jerusalem in 1185 he called the abbey church ‘the church of Sts Joachim and Anna’ in accordance with Orthodox tradition, a usage which the Latins never adopted.61 There are two indications that the community of St Anne’s was able to leave Jerusalem peacefully in 1187 when the city surrendered to Saladin. The first is that when Guy of Lusignan issued a confirmation of Pisan property in Acre during the Frankish siege of the city in 1189 he was careful to include a clause ‘saving the rights of the church of St Anne’, which was in the Pisan quarter. He evidently expected the nuns to return there when the city was recaptured, and after 1191 they did so.62 The second piece of evidence is that the Riccardiani Psalter was copied at Acre in 1223–5 for Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem from a manuscript produced for the convent of St Anne’s in Jerusalem, which shows that the nuns were able to take some of their liturgical books with them from Jerusalem 53 56 57

58 60 62

54 55 Cited by Pringle, Churches no. 305, III, p. 144. Theodericus, pp. 173. Pringle, Churches no. 366, III, p. 392. See pp. 232–3. This is known only from Raybaud’s calendar entry, which gives no information about the location of these properties: Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 106, p. 59. 59 Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 161, p. 69. Mayer, ed., Diplomata nos. 433, 435, II, pp. 738–9, 740–2. 61 Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 327, II, pp. 564–8. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 325; PG 133: 944. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 476, II, pp. 804–8.

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and to keep them securely until they established themselves in Acre.63 In the years between 1187 and 1191 they had probably sought refuge in either Tyre or Tripoli. Saladin turned the church and convent of St Anne’s Jerusalem into a Shafi’ite madrasa.64 There is no indication that the community in Acre returned there after Jerusalem was restored to Frankish control by Frederick II in 1229, nor did they appoint administrators there to recover their property in the city. The community must have suffered a severe reduction in income in the thirteenth century. Although the abbey church of St Anne’s in Acre was able to offer an indulgence of five years to pilgrims, this was not comparable as an incentive to being able to visit the site of the Virgin’s Nativity which the Jerusalem house had enjoyed.65 The chief landed endowment which the sisters retained was the estate of St Anna in the lordship of Caesarea: in 1256 the abbess of St Anne’s and the Master of the Hospital of St John agreed to accept arbitration about the boundaries between that estate and the estate called Galilea which the Hospital owned.66 The abbess, whose name is not known, was proactive in defending the patrimony of her community: in 1257 she obtained from Pope Alexander IV a privilege in which he renounced his rights to make provisions at the expense of her convent.67 Careful management of resources enabled the nuns to remain in Acre for as long as the city stayed in Frankish hands. The Templar of Tyre, when writing about the fall of Acre in 1291, describes how: towards the Pisan quarter there was another tower, and near this tower, above the street of St Anne, there was a most noble palace, which belonged to the Master [of the Temple]. Opposite this, the house of the nuns of St Anne had a high tower in which there were bells, and there was a most noble and tall church.68

Some sisters escaped from the sack of Acre and took refuge in Cyprus. The community might have founded a daughter house at Nicosia before 1291, but there is no evidence to support this. The community who lived in the convent of St Anne of Jerusalem in Nicosia in the fourteenth century regarded themselves as the successors of the convent of St Anne’s Jerusalem, and in 1321 or a little earlier the sisters were excommunicated by the archbishop of Nicosia for refusing to allow him to carry out a visitation of their house, claiming that they were directly subject to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. Pope John XXII on appeal quashed the excommunication and confirmed Sister Elisia as new abbess of the house. One of the representatives of the community who had gone with the delegation to the papal court at Avignon was Sister Domenica of Acre, who may have been a survivor of the Acre convent. The community was listed by the papal collectors of triennial tenths in Cyprus in their accounts drawn up between 1362 and 1365, which showed the nuns to be very impoverished. The convent became extinct some years later.69 63

64 66 68 69

Biblioteca Riccardiana Florence, MS 323; Dondi, Liturgy, 212–15; my thanks to Denys Pringle for calling my attention to this reference. 65 Pringle, Churches no. 305, III, p. 143. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. 67 Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 301, p. 93. Alexander IV, Registres no. 2187. Crawford, The Templar of Tyre, s. 501, p. 114; Cronaca del Templare di Tiro, pp. 221–2. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1313–1378, 396–7.

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The Convent of Bethany The village of Bethany, which lies some two miles east of Jerusalem, is the last settlement on the edge of the Judaean desert on the road which runs down to Jericho and the Jordan valley. The Gospels record that Jesus’ friends, Mary and Martha, lived there, and it was there that Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the dead.70 Bethany was a centre of pilgrimage from the fourth century. A basilica was built there, and the tomb of Lazarus was located in a crypt chapel, with an entrance in the courtyard of the basilica.71 The basilica, probably dating from the sixth century, had escaped any major damage during the pogrom of Caliph al-Hakim, and was still in use when the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099. Saewulf visited in 1102–3 and reported that ‘the church of St Lazarus is there, in which his tomb may be seen and those of many bishops of Jerusalem’.72 The anonymous author of a guide dating from 1102–6 had an idiosyncratic understanding of the importance of the raising of Lazarus: ‘[Bethany] is the village of Mary and Martha, and there is still to be seen the grave of Lazarus, whom the Lord raised wonderfully so that he could be a bishop in the island of Cyprus.’73 Abbot Daniel, who arrived in Bethany a few years later, gave a more detailed description: ‘As you enter . . . this little town, on your right is a cave in which is the tomb of Lazarus . . . And in the middle of the town is a great and high church richly decorated with paintings. And from this church to the tomb of Lazarus is twelve fathoms.’74 In 1114 Patriarch Arnulf gave the church of St Lazarus with all its appurtenances to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and at the same time Baldwin I gave the canons the four estates between which the village of Bethany and its environs were divided.75 These properties were confirmed to the canons by Pope Calixtus II in 1121, by Pope Honorius II in 1128 and by Patriarch William I of Jerusalem early in 1138.76 Nothing is known about the way in which the canons provided for the religious service of this shrine: there is no evidence that they established a community to serve it, and they may simply have appointed chaplains to say Mass there. On 5 February 1138 King Fulk and Queen Melisende presided in Jerusalem at a distinguished assembly of prelates and barons at which Patriarch William and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre agreed to exchange the church of St Lazarus and the four estates of Bethany for the estate of Thecua, some nine kilometres south of Bethlehem, together with a large tract of land extending from Thecua to the Dead Sea. They were granted the right to collect bitumen and salt from that sea and were also given jurisdiction over Beduin living on those lands. King Fulk gave as the reason for this exchange that the church of St Lazarus ‘might perform the Divine service more devoutly than before through [the presence of] a religious community of monks or of nuns’ (ecclesia illa religioso conventui monachorum seu sanctimonialium devotius quam antea deserviret). When that community was established it would remain under the canonical authority of the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.77 This implies that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre had not made provision 70 73 74 75 76 77

71 72 Luke 10: 38–42; John, 11: 1–46. Pringle, Churches nos. 59, 60, I, pp. 122–3, 125–9. Saewulf, p. 72. This guide is in the episcopal archive of Trier, ed. and trans. J. Wilkinson, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 118. Daniel the Abbot, p. 133. BB no. 20, pp. 74–7; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 56, I, pp. 183–5; see also nos. 54, 55, pp. 181–3. PKHL III, nos. 21, 28, pp. 127–8, 134–7; BB no. 23, pp. 80–3. Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 138, I, pp. 315–21; Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 136–7.

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for the regular recitation of the Divine Office at the shrine. Although this diploma is often considered to be a preliminary blueprint for the foundation of the convent of Bethany, it does not appear to have been so. The stated intention of founding a monastery or a convent there suggests that at this stage Fulk and Melisende had open minds (or, at least, that they were divided in mind) about the precise nature of the foundation they were intending to make. All that can be said with certainty is that they envisaged founding a Benedictine community at Bethany. No advance seems to have been made on this project for some years. On 10 January 1144 Pope Celestine II wrote to the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre confirming the exchange of Bethany for Thecua. He claimed that he was responding to the request of Fulk and Melisende who wish ‘to establish monks or nuns’ (monastice religionis viros aut mulieres) in the church of St Lazarus at Bethany.78 Although the pope did not know it when he wrote, King Fulk had died in a hunting accident on 13 November 1143, and power was effectively in the hands of Queen Melisende, co-ruler with her son, Baldwin III, who was a minor.79 At some time between mid-April and September 1144 Baldwin III issued a confirmation of the exchange of Bethany for Thecua. This diploma was issued in favour of Abbess Matilda and her nuns who lived under a Rule in the church of St Lazarus at Bethany which, the king stated, had been given the status of an abbey by the late Pope Celestine II (d. 8 March 1144).80 William of Tyre explained that Melisende had founded this convent for her younger sister Yveta, who had been professed as a nun at St Anne’s. The queen had a strong tower built at Bethany as a place of refuge for the sisters in case of enemy attack, and she lavishly endowed the community, giving them among other properties the city of Jericho. She furnished the church with gold and silver plate, studded with jewels, and gave sets of silk vestments for the use of the priests and deacons who officiated there. William of Tyre, who was only a boy at the time, would not have been aware of the uncertainty which had existed about whether this should be a community of monks or of nuns. What is noteworthy is that, although he included his narrative of the foundation in Book XV of his Chronicle, which deals with the reign of King Fulk, he does not mention the king at all in his account. Yveta was considered too young to become abbess when the convent was founded, and Melisende appointed ‘a respected woman of advanced years, experienced in the religious life’, to head the new community. William of Tyre does not name her, but described her as matrona, which implies that she had been professed as a widow. She was Matilda, named by Baldwin III in his diploma as first abbess of the house.81 She died at some time before 1157, for in that year Yveta, who is sometimes called Judith in the sources, is recorded as abbess. In the presence of Queen Melisende, Raymond of Le Puy, Master of the Hospital, surrendered his right to collect tithes from some of the estates of Bethany belonging to the convent, in return for the gift of a vineyard outside Jerusalem on the Nablus road. Queen Melisende had arranged that the convents of Great St Mary’s and of St Anne’s Jerusalem should surrender to the Hospital of St John their right to receive tithes 78 81

PKHL III, no. 53, pp. 174–5. WT XV, 26, pp. 709–10.

79

WT XV, 27, p. 711.

80

Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 210, I, pp. 390–3.

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from this property. The charter was witnessed by four members of the Bethany community: Odolinda the prioress, Alamendina the cantatrix (or precentor) and Sisters Helena and Agnes.82 In the same year the community admitted a distinguished new member, Sibyl, Countess of Flanders, who was the daughter of King Fulk of Jerusalem by his first wife, Eremburge, and therefore half-sister to Queen Melisende. She had accompanied her husband, Count Thierry (d. 1168), who was fulfilling a private crusade vow, to the Latin Kingdom, where she decided, despite his protests, to take the veil at Bethany and leave him to return to the West alone. Although Patriarch Fulcher at first refused to sanction Sibyl’s profession because she did not have her husband’s consent, which was essential in canon law, Queen Meliende and Baldwin III persuaded Thierry to withdraw his objections, which he did, though with reluctance.83 In 1159 Melisende became gravely ill and her nursing was supervised by her sisters, Hodierna, Countess of Tripoli, and Yveta, Abbess of Bethany, and it seems likely that she spent her final years in that convent.84 She died in September 1161 and was buried, as her mother had been, in a chapel in the shrine church of Our Lady of Josaphat.85 Hodierna, Countess of Tripoli, died before 1164,86 and Sibyl of Flanders died in the convent of Bethany in 1165.87 Abbess Yveta of Bethany then became the senior surviving member of the royal family. When her nephew Amalric I had become king in 1163 and had been forced by the High Court to divorce his wife, Agnes of Courtenay, he placed his and Agnes’ daughter Sibyl in the care of Yveta and sent her to live in the convent of Bethany. It was not intended that Sibyl should become a nun, but that she should be Yveta’s ward until she married.88 When Amalric died unexpectedly in July 1174 he was succeeded by his thirteen-year-old son, Baldwin IV, and Sibyl became the heir apparent to the throne. This placed Yveta,89 as her guardian, in a potential position of considerable power, which ended only when Sibyl left Bethany to marry William of Montferrat in 1176. When Yveta had entered the community, Queen Melisende presented the convent with ‘chalices, books and other furnishings appropriate to religious observances’.90 This may have been occasioned by the consecration of the new church of St Lazarus. The old church of St Lazarus, described by Abbot Daniel, was restored, and its timber roof was replaced by stone vaulting. It was rededicated to Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha.91 The Western Church identified Mary of Bethany with St Mary Magdalene, unlike the Orthodox, who considered that they were two separate people.92 Mary Magdalene had been associated with this church before the restoration: Saewulf was shown the place beneath the altar ‘where Mary Magdalene washed the feet of the Lord Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair’.93 82 84 86

87 89 92

93

83 CGOH I, no. 250; Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 193, I, pp. 374–5. Ernoul, Chronique, pp. 20–2. 85 WT XVIII, 27, pp. 850–1. WT XVIII, 32, p. 858. When her son Raymond III was taken prisoner by Nur ad-Din in August 1164 Hodierna was no longer alive to act as regent of Tripoli, a position she had held during his minority, and the regency was exercised by King Amalric of Jerusalem whom Raymond described as his closest kinsman: WT XIX, 9, pp. 874–5; XXI, 3, pp. 963–4. 88 Continuator of Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronographia, ed. Bethmann, p. 415. WT XXI, 2, p. 962. 90 91 WT XXI, 12, pp. 977–8. WT XV, 26, p. 710. Pringle, Churches nos. 59–60, I, pp. 125–8, 135. A. Jotischky, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Latin relations with the Greek Orthodox in the crusader East in the twelfth century’, Levant 29 (1997), 217–26. Saewulf, p. 72.

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The new church of St Lazarus was built over the saint’s shrine. Pringle has explained that ‘because the church was built on a site which sloped downwards from west to east, the east end had to be supported on three barrel vaults, corresponding in width to the span of the nave and the aisles’. The central barrel vault in the twelfth century opened off the courtyard between the old and new churches, and provided the only access to the tomb shrine.94 Theoderic, who visited Bethany in c. 1170, described it as a naturally well-defended site strengthened by fortifications and explained that there were two churches in the complex: ‘One is [dedicated to] St Lazarus, whose body the Lord raised from the dead four days after his burial and who ruled over the church of Jerusalem for fifteen years; the other splendid church [is dedicated] to the honour of his sisters Mary and Martha.’95 Pringle points out that the best description of the lower shrine church of St Lazarus is that given by Niccolò da Poggibonsi who visited Bethany in c. 1350: beyond that courtyard [there is] a chapel, and within there is the tomb where Christ raised Lazarus . . . Going inside the door, to the right there is an altar, and there is the tomb of St Lazarus. The tomb is covered by a large stone; at the head, towards the door, the stone has a hole into which people insert their arms out of devotion.96

Except for pilgrim descriptions, the buildings of the twelfth-century convent of Bethany are known chiefly from the excavations which the Franciscans of the Custodia Terrae Sanctae carried out in 1949–53, although they were not allowed access to some parts of the medieval site.97 The present Franciscan church was built on the site of the old precrusader church of St Lazarus. The only surviving part of the new church built by Queen Melisende is the vault of the crypt. This is now the mosque of Bethany, but the shrine of Lazarus is accessible from an entrance in the street outside the mosque, fashioned in the sixteenth century. The remains of the tower which Melisende built outside the convent precinct as a place of refuge for the community while the site was still unfortified may still be seen. The new double church incorporated the shrine of St Lazarus in the crypt, but above it was the new church, and this was the convent chapel in which the sisters sang the Divine Office. There is no clear information about the use which was made of the old church, now dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and St Martha, but Pringle has suggested that it remained, as it had always been, the church in which pilgrims might perform their devotions and hear Mass. They could then enter the shrine church of St Lazarus across the courtyard in the crypt of the new church, but they did not visit the new church itself, which by implication was within the convent cloister and not open to the public.98 Hans Mayer has argued that there were two churches at Bethany in the twelfth century because it was a double community like Fontevrault, with a congregation of monks and another of nuns living in seclusion from each other under the rule of an abbess.99 He interprets the references to the establishment of a monastery or a convent at Bethany in Fulk 94 96

97 98 99

95 Pringle, Churches nos. 59–60, I, pp. 129–30. Theodericus, pp. 174–5. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare (1346–1350), ed. and trans. B. Bagatti, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio maior, 2 (i) (Jerusalem, 1945), 81. I cite Denys Pringle’s translation, Churches nos. 59–60, I, pp. 124–5. S. J. Saller, Excavations at Bethany, 1949–1953, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 12 (Jerusalem, 1957). Pringle, Churches nos. 59–60, I, pp. 122–37. H. E. Mayer, ‘Die Gründung des Doppelklosters St Lazarus in Bethanien’, in his Bistümer, 372–402.

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and Melisende’s diploma of 1138 and the bull of Celestine II of 1144 as envisaging the foundation of a community of that kind from the start.100 The only concrete evidence for the presence of monks at Bethany is found in a charter of 1180. In 1178 Abbess Eva, who had recently succeeded Yveta, confirmed an agreement that had been made by Yveta and Abbot John of Our Lady of Josaphat, about the exchange of lands which the two communities held in the estates of Aschar and Balatha near Nablus. This document was witnessed by Prioress Odolina who had held that office since 1157, and the precentrix Alexandrina (who is identifiable with the precentrix Alamandrina also recorded in the 1157 charter),101 together with Sisters Melisende, Osanna and Ermengarde.102 In 1180 this agreement was confirmed once more in a charter which gave more information about the properties concerned. It was drawn up by Richard, the abbess’ chancellor, and witnessed by Odolina the prioress, Alamandrina the precentrix, Heloise the cellarer and Sisters Melisende de Roseio, Agnes of Tripoli and Mary of Jerusalem. The list of witnesses concludes: Galterius de Maomeria; de fratribus autem: frater Petrus, Sancti Lazari preceptor; F. Palacius et F. Gilabertus.103 Whereas Walter of the Mosque would appear to be a Frankish burgess of Bethany, Peter the Preceptor, or manager of the temporalities, of St Lazarus and his companions Brothers Palacius and Gilbert, appear to have been attached to the abbey. Their function appears to have been to administer the properties of the community while owing canonical obedience to the abbess. There is no evidence to determine whether such brothers had formed part of the community from the start, or whether they had been introduced only after the growth of endowments had made such an arrangement necessary. Whether this development was modelled on that of Fontevrault is not known, although it may have been, because the convent of Bethany certainly was in contact with that community. This is not surprising, because Fontevrault enjoyed the patronage of the counts of Anjou and the Angevin kings of England, who were cousins of the royal house of Jerusalem. Abbess Yveta of Bethany sent relics to Fontevrault contained in a casket inscribed: Judith [Yveta] abbess of St Lazarus of Bethany, daughter of King Baldwin, placed these precious relics in this sacred vessel and sent them to the holy convent of Fontevrault . . . asking that, in return for this gift, they will inscribe the anniversary of her death when they learn of it in their martyrology, and will also likewise observe the anniversaries of her parents’ deaths in their public worship.

The community respected her request, noting in the martyrology on 6 September 1178: The venerable Lady Judith, Abbess of St Lazarus, who showed great love to our church and sent us a most precious vessel, containing the glorious wood of the Holy Cross and other holy relics, departed this life [on this day].104

The convent of Bethany came to play a central part in the Holy Week liturgy of the church of Jerusalem. The Ritual of the Holy Sepulchre enacts that on Palm Sunday: The Lord Patriarch, accompanied by the Treasurer of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre carrying the wood of the lifegiving Cross, together with the Priors of Mt Zion and of the Mount of Olives and the 100 104

101 102 103 See pp. 230–1. See p. 178. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 41, pp. 148–9. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 43, pp. 150–1. The Latin texts from which these translations have been made are in H. E. Mayer, ‘Fontevrault und Bethanien. Kirchliches Leben in Anjou und Jerusalem im 12. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 102 (1991), 35.

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Abbot of St Mary of Josaphat and their communities, after matins have been said, and before sunrise, shall go to Bethany where the Lord raised Lazarus from the dead. There the patriarch and those who are with him, having said a prayer and having put on solemn vestments, shall return to Jerusalem, following in the Lord’s footsteps, with the patriarch carrying the Cross of the Lord in his own hands, while he and all the other clergy shall sing hymns and antiphons suitable for this solemn feast-day.105

Although the convent of Bethany was clearly well endowed, no detailed list of its property has survived. On 31 December 1177 Baldwin IV issued a diploma confirming to Abbess Yveta/Judith all the donations which had been made to the convent since the time of King Fulk, but unfortunately this text is known only from an entry in Raybaud’s catalogue and no specific information is given.106 From the documents about the exchange of property near Nablus with the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat in 1178 and 1180 cited above, it is known that the convent of Bethany possessed the estate of Balatha.107 This was the site of the church of Jacob’s Well, commemorating the place where Jesus had talked with the woman of Samaria.108 The Byzantine church which had stood there was in ruins by the time of the Frankish conquest, and the existence of a new church is first securely attested by the pilgrim Theoderic who visited Nablus in c. 1170, who reports: ‘The well, upon which the Lord sat, is about half a mile from the city, and is situated in front of the altar of a church which had been built round it, in which nuns serve God.’109 This church was a priory of the convent of Bethany, but their tenure of it was brief. Nablus was occupied by Saladin’s forces after the battle of Hattin in 1187 and never returned to Frankish rule.110 It is clear from thirteenth-century sources that the sisters of Bethany had priories in other parts of the Crusader States, but it is not known whether they had been founded before 1187.111 In King Amalric’s reign the community certainly owned property in the city of Jerusalem. In a charter of 1175, recording the exchange of property in Jerusalem between Patriarch Amalric and the Master of the Hospital of St John, ‘the house of the abbess of St Lazarus’ is mentioned, situated in the street which runs down from the Gate of David.112 In 1184 Abbess Melisende of Bethany granted to the Hospital of Jerusalem other houses in that street, which had once belonged to Suibert of Arras, in return for exemption from the payment of tithes to the Hospital on certain unspecified properties.113 The Chronicle of Ernoul contains a description of Jerusalem before 1187, which refers to the church of St John the Evangelist, adding ‘and it had a large adjoining property [manoir]. This belonged to the nuns of the Convent of Bethany and they took refuge there when there was a war with the Saracens.’114 Pringle has located this church in a street just west of the Temple platform.115 It is highly likely that the sisters of Bethany retired to the manoir of St John when the news reached them of the defeat at Hattin on 15 July 1187. They had plenty of time to do so 105 106

107 110

111 114

Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 412. Although Raybaud dated this document 31 December 1178 this should read 1177 because Abbess Yveta had died in September 1178: Mayer, ed., Diplomata no. 400, II, pp. 682–3. 108 109 See p. 178. John 4: 4–42. Theodericus, p. 187. A full account of the earlier history of this shrine and of the archaeology of the site is given by Pringle, Churches no. 108, I, pp. 258–64. 112 113 See p. 237. CGOH I, no. 483. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 154, p. 68. 115 [Ernoul], in La citez de Iherusalem, xxi, p. 48. Pringle, Churches no. 324, III, pp. 207–8.

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because Saladin did not move against Jerusalem until mid-September.116 The Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, which seems to have been based on the account of an eyewitness of the events of 1187, reports that while assembling his forces to besiege Jerusalem, Saladin captured Bethany and destroyed the convent.117 It is clear from later pilgrim accounts that the old church of Bethany, the church of Sts Martha and Mary Magdalene, was left standing, and that the shrine of St Lazarus, the lower part of the new church, was not harmed, but the new upper church, the nuns’ church of St Lazarus, was destroyed.118 There is one piece of evidence which suggests that, after Jerusalem surrendered to Saladin in October 1187, the Sisters of Bethany sought refuge in Tyre. David Jacoby has drawn attention to the fact that in 1192 Conrad of Montferrat sent a reliquary cross which had belonged to St Lazarus of Bethany to the Republic of Genoa in thanks for its support of his claims to the throne of Jerusalem.119 Conrad had taken charge of the defence of Tyre in 1187, and if the sisters did take refuge there they may have given him this relic as an act of thanks for his protection. The convent of Bethany certainly owned property in Tyre in the thirteenth century, which they may have acquired when they stayed there, though they did not have a priory in the city.120 After 1192 the community of Bethany established itself in Acre, where it remained until 1291. The church of St Lazarus of Bethany in that city was situated to the north-east of the church of the Holy Sepulchre.121 Bethany was almost certainly not included in the territory restored to the Franks by Sultan al-Kamil in 1229, and even if it had been it would not have been a safe place for a community of women religious to live, since the fortifications, as well as the convent buildings, had been severely damaged. Yet, although the community never recovered many of the important endowments they had lost in 1187, such as Jericho, they were by no means destitute. They owned, for example, a property in Acre near the sea, consisting of a vineyard, an orchard, some cultivated land, a tower and a group of houses, which they leased to the Trinitarian Order for an annual rate of 12 bezants.122 They also owned land near Mons Suspensorum on the road from Acre to Safad.123 This information comes from casual references made in boundary definitions relating to property belonging to other communities. The real wealth of the sisters of Bethany was considerable: this is known because, as the lands of the kingdom remaining in Frankish control began to shrink after Louis IX of France returned to the West in 1254, the convent attracted predators. In February 1256 Pope Alexander IV reported that the Master and brethren of the Hospital of Jerusalem had informed him that the community of St Lazarus of Bethany was in a state of decline, and he therefore transferred all their property to the Order of the Hospital which was in need of more resources to carry out its duties in defence of the 116 118

119

120 122

117 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 267–73. Libellus de expugnatione, XXII, 194–6. Wilbrand of Oldenburg says that there were two churches at Bethany when he visited in 1211, but Pringle argues that he is describing the old church and the shrine of Lazarus, the lower part of the new church. See Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 136; Pringle, Churches nos. 59–60, I, p. 124. For the later history of this complex, see Pringle, Churches nos. 59–60, I, pp. 124–37. D. Jacoby, ‘Pilgrimage in crusader Acre’, in Y. Hen, ed., De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder (Turnhout, 2001), 114. 121 Pringle, Churches no. 465, IV, p. 210. Pringle, Churches no. 417, IV, pp. 120–1. 123 Gregory IX, Registres no. 4014. Strehlke no. 86, pp. 68–9.

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Crusader States. The pope appointed the bishop of Tiberias and the abbot of St Samuel’s Acre to enforce this decree, stipulating that the Hospitallers should make provision for the abbess of Bethany and the remaining sisters during their lifetimes, but that when they died their house at Acre should be given to Hospitaller nuns. The pope’s letter is preserved in a copy sent by the papal delegates to the prior of St Lawrence of Genoa at Tyre, appointing him to act on their behalf there. The prior therefore gave the preceptor of the Hospital of Tyre corporal possession of the house near the aqueduct which the sisters of Bethany owned there, and all their other possessions in the archdiocese.124 The papal delegates also mandated the cantor of Valania to transfer the property of St Lazarus of Bethany in the dioceses of Tripoli, Tortosa, Gibelet and Valania to the Hospitallers, and a record has survived of how this ruling was enforced in the city and diocese of Tripoli.125 Then, on 29 August 1259 Sister Philippa, the prioress of St Lazarus of Bethany, certified that the Grand Master of the Hospital had confirmed that she should hold that office for the rest of her life, but that she should give him canonical obedience.126 The suppression of her convent as an independent institution was unwelcome not only to the abbess of Bethany, but it was also opposed by Patriarch James Pantaleon of Jerusalem. During the thirteenth century, the convent of Bethany, although located in Acre, had remained directly under his jurisdiction, not that of the bishop of Acre. So, later in 1259 when the abbess went to Rome to appeal against the pope’s decision, the patriarch accompanied her to protest about it in his own right.127 The outcome must have appeared to the sisters of Bethany like a direct answer to prayer. Pope Alexander heard the case, and the patriarch argued that the Hospitallers had given him misleading advice, since far from being in decline ‘the abbess and convent maintained fifty or more professed nuns’. Before judgement could be given, Alexander IV died, on 27 May 1261, and on 29 August the cardinals chose Patriarch James as his successor. He took the name of Urban IV, and less than a fortnight after his enthronement revoked the grant of Alexander and ordered the Hospitallers to restore all the property which it had sequestered from the convent of Bethany.128 This ruling was implemented, and in January 1262, at the request of the abbess of Bethany, the pope exempted the priory of Bethany at Tripoli from the jurisdiction of the local bishop and placed it directly under the authority of the patriarch of Jerusalem, even though the diocese of Tripoli was in the patriarchate of Antioch.129 A year later Urban extended this privilege of exemption to all the priories of Bethany throughout the Latin East including the house founded in Nicosia.130 The abbess of Bethany had, in effect, become the head of a small religious order under the authority of the patriarch of Jerusalem.131 That Order suffered no further disturbance. Pilgrims who prayed in the chapel of the mother house in Acre received the spiritual privilege of eight years and four quarantaines in indulgences, one of the most generous of the Pardons of Acre.132 Bethany also had a daughter house at Antioch where in August 1264 Archdeacon Bartholomew, Vicar124 127 130 132

125 126 CGOH I, no. 2925. CGOH I, no. 2927. Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 317, p. 96. 128 129 Annales de Terre Sainte, 449. Urban IV, Registres no. 15. Urban IV, Registres no. 44. 131 Urban IV, Registres nos. 210–11. Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 402–3. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235.

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General of the Latin patriarch Opizo dei Fieschi, heard a dispute about possession of land outside the city between Phemia, Abbess of St Lazarus at Antioch, and Abbot James of Our Lady of Josaphat, which was decided in favour of St Lazarus.133 That community came to an end when Antioch fell in 1268. Any sisters who survived the fall of the city might have returned to the mother house in Acre, or might have taken refuge in the priory of Nicosia; the same is true of any surviving members of the priory of Bethany at Tripoli after that city fell to the Mamluks in 1289. When Acre fell in 1291 any survivors would have sought refuge in Cyprus. As Nicholas Coureas has pointed out, in the Chronicle of Amadi the house of the sisters in Nicosia is referred to as an abbey, which, he suggests, ‘would indicate that the mother community had moved to Cyprus in the latter part of the thirteenth century, possibly after the fall of Acre in 1291’.134 Although the house survived for at least another 170 years it did not prosper. This is known from the assessment made by the papal collectors in Cyprus for the period 1362–5. The payment of triennial tithes by the abbey of St Lazarus at Nicosia was fixed at 39 bezants. As Jean Richard points out, this indicated that the house was poor.135 This marks the last appearance of the Sisters of Bethany in the records.

The Benedictine Convent of St Crux de Carpita, Antioch On 6 March 1257 Pope Alexander IV wrote to ‘the prioress and convent of the monastery of St Crux de Carpita at Antioch, of the Order of St Benedict’. He recalled that ‘from their foundation they had been influenced by the brethren of the Franciscan Order because of the devotion they had for St Francis and St Anthony and also for St Clare’, and he granted the privilege of 100 days’ indulgence to all penitents who, having been absolved, prayed in the convent chapel during the octaves of the feasts of those three saints.136 The sisters had presumably come to Antioch under the auspices of the Franciscans who had had houses in the city and on the Black Mountain since Benedict of Arezzo was minister of the Custodia Terrae Sanctae.137 Pringle has suggested that the name de Carpita was a Latinisation of the Old French carpitre, meaning a covering, and was a reference to the nuns’ habits.138 Their dress was unusual: it was made of green cloth with narrow sleeves, and they did not wear veils or even have flowing capes which would cover their heads. By 1266 they had a priory of some kind at Acre: Pringle has drawn attention to the bequest made in that year by the count of Nevers ‘à ceus de la Carpitre’. This house is not mentioned in any later source.139 Antioch fell to Baibars in 1268, and the next record of the Carpitanae sisters comes from Cyprus in 1302. In that year the Genoese Ansaldo de Sexto, living in Famagusta, 133 135

136 137

138 139

134 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–19. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, pp. 188–9 and n. 10. J. Richard, ‘La levée des décimes sur l’église de Chypre. Documents comptables de 1363–1371’, Epeteris 25 (1999), 12; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1313–1378, 396. Alexander IV, Registres no. 1777. He was appointed in 1221: G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Francescano (Florence, 1906–27), IV, pp. 99, 129–49 (for his later career). Pringle, Churches no. 378, IV, p. 45. Pringle, Churches no. 378, IV, p. 45, citing Chazaud, ‘Inventaire et comptes de la succession d’Eudes’, 99.

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bequeathed 3 bezants to the Carpitanae nuns.140 The community do not seem to have gone directly to Cyprus after Antioch fell in 1268. The Chronicle of Amadi relates that in 1308 the Carpitanae sisters of Antioch changed their name to the Sisters of Our Lady of Tortosa. This source explains that they did this because their superior, Eschiva of Bouillon, had brought the icon of Our Lady from Tortosa to Cyprus.141 This text survives in only one manuscript, dating from the sixteenth century, and takes its name from the first owner, Francesco Amadi. It is written in Italian and is a translation from French of an anonymous compilation of sources about the history of Cyprus to 1445. The source for the years 1306–10 is considered the work of a contemporary who was extremely well informed.142 His note about the Carpitanae Sisters implies that after the fall of Antioch they had first taken refuge in Tortosa. It is difficult to explain otherwise how they had come to have custody of the icon of Our Lady of Tortosa, or why they changed the name of their convent in her honour. It would have been a logical step for the sisters to move to Tortosa when Baibars threatened Antioch. The diocese of Tortosa was part of the Latin patriarchate of Antioch and the bishop at that time was William, a Franciscan appointed by Pope Urban IV in 1263.143 It seems probable that Bishop William made provision for housing the Carpitanae nuns who were so closely linked in spiritual aims to his own Order. Tortosa was an important centre of pilgrimage at that time. Its cathedral, built by the Franks in the thirteenth century, is one of the best-preserved churches in the Crusader States. It was reputed to stand on the site of a church consecrated by St Peter himself in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it claimed to possess a portrait of the Virgin painted by St Luke, which had hung in that church.144 This cathedral was in the city of Tortosa, which was held by the Knights Templar. They had constructed an impressive castle there, which surrendered to the Mamluks only on 3 August 1291, more than two months after the fall of Acre.145 During that interval the Carpitanae Sisters would have been able to leave for Cyprus, taking with them the icon of Our Lady painted by St Luke. In 1307 the Armenian lord Hayton (Hethum) of Corycus, who had become a Premonstratensian canon at Bellapais, went to the West to consult Pope Clement V.146 Among other things, he complained about the immodest dress of the Carpitanae Sisters, and the pope presumably shared his opinion, because he ordered the sisters in future to wear black hoods and black veils, which in practice meant that thereafter their dress was very like that of other Benedictine nuns. The pope addressed his letter to ‘the prioress and convent of St Maria de Tortosa of the Order of St Benedict in the diocese of Nicosia’.147 This corroborates the statement in the Chronicle of Amadi that the sisters changed the name of their community at this time. The site of their convent in Nicosia has been discussed by Brunehilde Imhaus.148 As the guardians of a thaumaturgic image of the Virgin, and as a living link with the shrine of Our 140 142 143 144 146 148

141 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 228. Chroniques d’Amadi, I, p. 292. P. W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991), 125. Urban IV, Registres no. 219; Hamilton, Latin Church, 236–7. 145 Deschamps, Terre Sainte romane, pp. 231–6, plates 84–99. H. Kennedy, Crusader Castles (Cambridge, 1994), 132–8. 147 Bullarium Cyprium, q-21–4, pp. 331–5. Bullarium Cyprium, q- 23, pp. 333–4. B. Imhaus, ‘Un monastère féminin de Nicosie. Notre-Dame de Tortose’, in M. Balard, B. Z. Kedar and J. Riley-Smith, eds., Dei gesta per francos. Etudes dédiées à Jean Richard (Aldershot, 2001), 389–401.

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Lady of Tortosa, which the Muslims had turned into a mosque, the sisters flourished and became an established part of the Latin Church in fourteenth-century Cyprus and, indeed, survived into the fifteenth century.149 There was also a convent of Our Lady of Tortosa in Famagusta in the fourteenth century, although it is not clear from the surviving records what its relationship was to the convent at Nicosia.150

149 150

For the later history of the community, see Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1313–1378, 392–6, 398. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1313–1378, 396.

7 Benedictine Monasteries in the Tradition of St Romuald and St Peter Damian

The Priory of St George de Jubino Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin sources refer to the Black Mountain, the Montana Nigra, of Antioch, when describing the Amanus mountains, which stretch from the southern shore of the Gulf of Alexandretta northwards to Marash, where they meet the Anti-Taurus range. This area contained many Eastern-rite monasteries and hermitages at the time of the First Crusade, and it attracted Western recluses as well in the course of the twelfth century. The monastery of St George de Jubino was a product of this phenomenon. The early history of this community is known from the De conversatione virorum Dei in Terra Sancta morantibus by Gerard of Nazareth, Bishop of Latakia (1139–61). This work is known only in the fragments preserved in later writers, notably the Centuriators of Magdeburg. Gerard relates that a Latin community was established at Jubin by Bernard of Blois, whom he describes as ‘a good speaker, consumed by a zeal for righteousness’. He was accompanied by a number of companions, including Robert of Jerusalem, whom he appointed prior of the house.1 The foundation was made before 1118, since Gerard states that Hugh, a knight from beyond the Alps who had gone to the Holy Land, was professed there in the reign of Baldwin I of Jerusalem.2 The location of Jubin in the Amanus range is not known, and the dedication of the house is not given in any twelfth-century source, but after the brethren had become affiliated to the Cistercian Order the Chapter-General of Cîteaux in 1225 referred to the house as St George de Jubino.3 Although the cult of St George was introduced in western Europe by the crusades and became popular there, it was in origin a Byzantine devotion. This suggests that the monastery of Jubin had been an Orthodox foundation which was transferred to Latin control in the early twelfth century. It may have been abandoned by its Orthodox community at the time of the Latin conquest. There is no suggestion that there were any Orthodox monks remaining there when it was given to Bernard of Blois by Bernard of Valence, the Latin patriarch of Antioch. It seems likely that the Latin community of Jubin adopted the Benedictine Rule, although this is not specified in the sources, and that they interpreted it in the very austere way 1

2

Centuria, XII, 10, col. 1605; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, pp. 72–3. This text is cited in the edition of Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth’. To assist the reader, references to citations are given first to the text in the Centuriators, followed by a page reference to Kedar’s edition. This is the method which Kedar himself has adopted. The text and its tradition are discussed above, p. 195. 3 Centuria, XII, 10, col. 1606; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. See pp. 254–6.

242

Benedictine Monasteries, Sts Romuald and Peter Damian

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introduced by St Romuald of Ravenna, who considered that the aim of the Rule was to train brethren for the eremitical life. This ideal in varying forms influenced the growth of other monastic reform movements in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.4 At Jubin each monk had a cell of his own, as part of the initial training as a solitary. Like Romuald, Bernard wanted his brethren to be ‘rational hermits’, a phrase invented by St Bruno of Querfurt (d. 1009) to describe those who lived in community under a Rule but trained for the solitary life.5 Bernard of Blois imposed a strict dietary regime: his monks abstained not only from meat, but also from milk and eggs, and on three days each week fasted on bread and water. For the rest of the time they were allowed to eat vegetables cooked in oil, but they rarely ate fish and very seldom drank wine.6 Bernard of Blois shared with many monastic reformers a hostility to wealth, because endowments involved the community in administration and conflicted with the ideals of reformers to distance their communities from secular society. Bernard stipulated that if any patron offered the monks money they should not accept more than 3 bezants.7 Prior Robert’s failure to observe this rule strictly enough led to a schism in the community. Gerard of Nazareth’s account of this was used in two ways by the Centuriators: once in a passage in which the Centuriators criticised monastic life, the other in a straightforward citation of Gerard’s text. There is no contradiction between these two passages about the cause of the schism: that Prior Robert failed to observe the rule about communal poverty. Gerard emphasises that this did not happen on a daily basis, but that nevertheless Robert did accept everything which was offered to the community, which ranged from money to cooked pastry and sweet wine. Bernard of Blois led a group of the brethren to form a new community in the monastery of Machanath.8 Bernard of Blois had a close relationship with Baldwin, Count of Edessa (1100–18), who became King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. The origins of this friendship are not known: while Count of Edessa, Baldwin may have been a benefactor of Jubin, but there is no evidence of this, and it seems more probable that the two men had known each other before Bernard of Blois was professed as a monk. Garard of Nazareth records that Bernard ‘openly accused the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, of certain scandalous vices, and many people praised him for doing so’.9 In 1123, when Baldwin was held captive at Kharput by Balak, the Artuqid ruler of Aleppo, Bernard of Blois went to visit him and, while there, preached the Christian faith to Balak and his court. This showed great courage and is also evidence of the tolerance which some Muslim rulers extended to Christian holy men.10 From the surviving fragments of Gerard of Nazareth’s account, it is clear that under Bernard of Blois’ guidance Jubin succeeded in its aim of training hermits. The monk Ursus, for example, was appointed sacristan of the house, but then left to live as a solitary on the 4 5

6 7 8

9 10

H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism (New York, 1984). [Romualdum] patrem rationabilium heremitarum, qui cum lege vivunt: Brunonis Vita Quinque Fratrum, ii, ed. R. Kade, MGH (SS), XV (Hanover, 1888), p. 718. Centuria, XII, 6, col. 979; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria, XX, 10, col. 1605; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, pp. 72–3. The two versions of the schism are found in Centuria, XII, 8, col. 1230, XII, 10, cols. 1605–6; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1606; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria XII, 6, col. 910; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73.

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Black Mountain. Later he returned to Jubin, where Bernard of Blois appointed him provost, that is, placed him in charge of the temporal administration of the community.11 Gerard also tells the story of the Burgundian knight Valéry, who went to the Holy Land on pilgrimage and became a monk at Jubin. He was presumably professed under Prior Robert, because Gerard reports that he did not find the life of the house sufficiently austere, and therefore withdrew to a harsh and distant place to live as a hermit. He stayed there for twelve years, but he remained a member of Jubin, and on two or three occasions a priest went from Jubin to celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments to him. His life as a hermit came to an end when two Armenian shepherds, who believed that he had hidden wealth, attacked and wounded him. This led him to return to Jubin, where he died two months later.12 At some time in the twelfth century, but before 1160, the priory of Jubin was raised to the status of an abbey, but nothing is known about the circumstances which led to this.13 It was unaffected by the attack of Saladin on Frankish north Syria in 1188, and in 1214 was affiliated to the Cistercian Order. Peter II of Ivrea, Latin Patriarch of Antioch, explained that: the reverend abbot of Jubin, W., with certain of his brethren, and with the agreement of almost all of them, came to us, asking humbly and devoutly that we would sanction the abbey of Jubin, which greatly lacked the discipline which an Order would provide, to be spiritually reformed by the aforesaid [Cistercian] Order.

This request was granted, and on 21 September 1214 St George of Jubin was officially incorporated in the Cistercian Order.14 The later history of this monastery is discussed below.15

The Monastery of Machanath When Bernard of Blois left St George of Jubin because of the relaxation of observance there, Gerard of Nazareth relates that ‘he, together with certain others, were absolved from obedience to the Prior [of Jubin], and with the assent of Bernard, Patriarch of Antioch, he entered the monastery of Machanath on that same mountain, and on the order of a certain papal legate he was made prior of that house’.16 In the alternative account of the schism at Jubin given by the Centuriators, Machanath is described as a propinquum monasterium, but that is almost certainly an editorial gloss. The Centuriators seem to have supposed that the Montana Nigra of Antioch was a single mountain, not a mountain range.17 The location of Machanath is not known, nor is its dedication. Among the brethren of Jubin who accompanied Bernard was the knight Hugh, one of the earliest members of the Jubin community. He remained true to the austere ideals of Bernard 11 12 13 14

15 17

Centuria XII, 10, col. 1607, Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1607, Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. An Abbot Leuthbrand of St George’s Jubin appears in a charter of 1160: Kohler, ‘Fragment’, 137–8. Copies of these documents were transcribed in the Register of Gregory IX: Gregory IX, Registres nos. 3466–9; see also A. Manrique, ed., Cisterciensium seu verius ecclesiasticorum annalium a condito Cistercio, 4 vols. (Lyons, 1642–59), IV, 37–8; J. Richard, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Jubin et le prieuré Saint-Blaise de Nicosie’, Epeteris 3 (1969–70), 63–74, repr. in his Orient et Occident au Moyen Age (London, 1976), xix. 16 See pp. 254–6. Centuria, XII, 10, col,. 1606, Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria XII, 8, col. 1230; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73.

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of Blois, and during his last illness refused to accept the general dispensation which allowed sick brethren to eat meat. Gerard of Nazareth also signalled the mortified life of the monk Walter of Machanath, who walked barefoot in all weathers, slept in a hair-shirt, and frequently fasted all day, kept vigil all night and flagellated himself.18 As prior, Bernard of Blois set a good example to the brethren of corporal penance by lashing himself each day with a knotted flail. In this he was following the example of St Romuald’s disciple, St Dominic Loricatus, whose asceticism was praised by St Peter Damian.19 Bernard died while performing proskynesis (cum aliquando in genua provolutus oraret), an Orthodox form of prayer which he had adopted. Bernard’s successor as prior was called Porphyry, and he too practised extreme corporal mortification.20 His name suggests that he was a Greek or Syrian Orthodox Christian: St Porphyry had been a fifth-century bishop of Gaza and was not venerated in the Western Church. In the twelfth century the Orthodox were in full communion with the Western Church and, in the view of the Latin hierarchy, were subject to the Latin patriarchs of Antioch. It is possible that Machanath had been an active Orthodox community when Bernard of Blois had been appointed prior, and that for a time it became a mixed community of Latin and Orthodox observance. Prior Porphyry’s successor, Prior Hugh, was – to judge from his name – a Latin. He too preserved the austere standards of the house by observing a total fast on three days of the week during Lent.21 Gerard of Nazareth provides no indication of the date of Hugh’s reign, though it must have begun before c. 1161 when Gerard himself died. There is no further record of this community, which suggests that it was short-lived, but it is impossible to be certain of this because the records of the Latin patriarchate of Antioch in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are so sparse.

The Abbey of Our Lady of Carraria Gerard of Nazareth records a third monastery of austere observance and of the Latin rite in the Black Mountain of Antioch, that of Carraria. Sigerius abbas Carrariae fuit, he reports.22 Gerard knew another member of the community, John of Lucca, who had first been a hermit on Mt Tabor but had then become a monk at Carraria.23 The only datable reference Gerard gives about this community relates to the hermit Ralph. He had gone as a layman on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but on his homeward journey had been captured by pirates who seized all his property. He therefore returned to the Holy Land and worked as a shepherd, and after a time he took service in the monastery of Carraria (monasterio Carrariensi se mancipavit). Then after a while he went to live as a hermit in the wilderness. This happened in the lifetime of Bernard of Blois, who became his spiritual director. When the emperor of Constantinople besieged Antioch, Ralph sought refuge in Tripoli, where he died and was 18 19 20 21 22 23

Centuria XII, 10, col. 1606; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. Peter Damian, Vitae S. Rodolphi et S. Dominici Loricati. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1606; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 73. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1606; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1607; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 72. Centuria XII, 10, cols. 1607–8; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, pp. 74–5.

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buried in 1142. The reference probably relates to the campaign of John II Komnenos in 1137–8, when he restored Armenian Cilicia to Byzantine rule before going on to lay siege to Antioch.24 This expedition no doubt led to troop movements and military foraging parties in the Amanus mountains, which were not compatible with the contemplative life.25 In the later part of his work, Gerard reports that in the reign of Emperor Manuel Ralph’s tomb in Tripoli became a centre of worship.26 In 1183 Robert, the abbot of Our Lady of Carraria, sold land to the commander of the Knights Hospitaller at Antioch. This document is known only from an entry in the calendar of Raybaud of 1742 in which the monastery is described as ‘Nostre Dame de la Carrière’. It would have been unusual for a twelfth-century charter from the Crusader States to have been written in the vernacular, and the French form of the abbey’s name given there is almost certainly the way in which the calendarist rendered the Latin name in the original.27 There is no later information about this house.

24 25 26 27

Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States 1096–1204, 109–34. Centuria XII, 10, col. 1608; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. Centuria XII, 13, col. 1753; Kedar, ed., ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, p. 74. CGOH I, no. 651; Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 151, p. 68.

8 The Cistercians

Although King Baldwin II offered St Bernard of Clairvaux the shrine of St Samuel at Mountjoie together with substantial endowments as a site for a Cistercian monastery, Bernard declined the offer and arranged for the property to be transferred to the Praemonstratensian canons.1 Throughout his life he refused to sanction a Cistercian foundation in the Crusader States, alleging, according to his biographer, the danger of pagan attacks and ‘the inclemency of the weather’.2 Since the early Cistercians normally preferred to live in rural areas, Bernard’s first objection was a serious one: it would be difficult to pursue the contemplative life in a region where brigandage was rife and warfare frequent. Nevertheless, the rest of his Order does not seem to have shared the abbot of Clairvaux’s reservations.

Communities of Men The Abbey of Belmont In 1157, four years after St Bernard’s death, the Cistercians founded the abbey of Belmont in the County of Tripoli.3 It was built in the demesne land of Count Raymond III (1152–87),4 but it seems probable that his mother, Hodierna (the daughter of Baldwin II of Jerusalem who had favoured the Order), was at least in part responsible for inviting the Cistercians to settle there. The Order chose a site which was quite near Tripoli, but not easily accessible. René Dussaud wrote of it in 1927: ‘Quoique voisine de Tripoli, cette région hors des routes, est mal connue.’5 Belmont was a daughter house of Morimond near Langres, the fourth daughter house of Cîteaux, founded in 1115.6 Although a frater Willelmus de Belmont witnessed a charter of Baldwin of Ibelin, Lord of Mirabel, on 16 August 1162, Charles Kohler, who edited it, is almost certainly correct in identifying this man with the Hospitaller Willelmus de Bellomonte, a member of the preceptory of Jerusalem mentioned in a charter of 1157.7 The names of the foundation community of Belmont Abbey are not known. La Chronique de Terre Sainte, 1132–1224 records in 1169: ‘en cel an fu fait l’abaïe de 1 3 4 5 7

2 See pp. 150–1. Geoffrey of Auxerre, Vita s. Bernardi, III, 22, PL 185: 316. L. Janauschek, Origines Cisterciensium (Vienna, 1877), no. CCCLIV, I, p. 139. J. Richard, Le comté de Tripoli sous la dynastie toulousaine, 1102–1187 (New York, 1980), Maps VI, VII. 6 Dussaud, Topographie historique de la Syrie, p. 86 and Map V. Janauschek no. CCCLIV, I, p. 139. Kohler, ‘Chartes’ no. 32, p. 142; CGOH I, no. 249.

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Valmont’, which indicates that the monastery buildings had been completed and the chapel consecrated by that time.8 In that same year Belmont founded a daughter house in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, St John in nemore.9 This is a sign that the community was flourishing and had attracted enough vocations to serve a new house. Leopold Janauschek noted that between 1186 and 1189 Belmont founded a second daughter house, St Trinitas de Rephech. Lynn White Jr rightly identified this house with the Holy Trinity at Refesio in Sicily, and suggested, on the sole basis of the foundation date, that it had been established by monks from Belmont who had fled there after Saladin’s victory at Hattin in 1187. Graham Loud has shown that St Trinitas had been founded as a Benedictine house in c. 1170, but became affiliated to the Cistercian Order in c. 1188–9. This is consonant with White’s suggestion that Cistercians from the Crusader States took refuge in Sicily in 1187, but does not support his view that they founded a new house there. Rather, it would seem, they were given asylum by the monks of St Trinitas, and their influence prompted that community to seek admission to the Cistercian Order a year or two later.10 It seems likely that those refugee monks came from Belmont’s daughter house, St John in nemore, outside Jerusalem. There is no evidence that the abbey of Belmont was affected by Saladin’s operations after Hattin. The County of Tripoli suffered the least damage of all the Crusader States from Saladin’s attacks. In the summer of 1188 he took his main army up the Beka’a valley, through the Gap of Homs towards Tripoli, but he failed to capture any of the fortresses there, and moved north against the Principality of Antioch, where he met with more success. He never resumed his attack on the County of Tripoli because the Frankish siege of Acre began in August 1189 and was followed by the arrival in the Levant of the various armies of the Third Crusade.11 Most of the County of Tripoli remained in Frankish hands after peace had been made with Saladin in 1192. The abbey of Belmont had suffered no damage, and it is likely that the community had remained there throughout the invasion, though they may have taken refuge in Tripoli when Saladin attacked the county. They were certainly living in Belmont again after 1192. Over the next twenty years, Belmont was the only Cistercian house in the Crusader States. This may explain why in 1207 the pope’s legate, Peter of S. Marcello, required the prior of Belmont to go to Antioch to assist Mgr Milo to place his candidate, Mgr John, in corporal possession of the office of archdeacon of that city. This was a difficult journey at that time, because the land route passed through territory held by the Ayyubids, so it was necessary to take ship from Tripoli to the port of St Symeon. Nevertheless, it was considered necessary to have a senior Cistercian official present on that occasion, because Mgr John had been received into the Cistercian Order at S. Spirito Palermo some years earlier, although there was some uncertainty about whether he had been professed.12 There is some evidence that the abbot of Belmont had oversight of a community of Cistercian nuns, the abbey of St Mary Magdalene, at Acre, and he also became involved in litigation about the convent with the same dedication which the nuns of Acre had founded at 8 10

11

9 Gestes des Chiprois, ed. Raynaud, 7. Janauschek no.CDV, I, p. 158. Janauschek no. CCCLXXXII, I, p. 188; L. White Jr., Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily (Cambridge, 1938), 171–7; Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy, 533. 12 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 286–308. Innocent III, Register an. X, no. CLXXXVI, pp. 312–18.

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Nicosia.13 Belmont Abbey itself wished to found a daughter house in Cyprus and in 1224 acquired land at Pyrgos in the diocese of Limassol, but their title to it was disputed by William Rivet, a nobleman who claimed that he held the land in fief from Queen Alice.14 The dispute continued for many years, partly because it was difficult to enforce a judgement after civil war broke out in the kingdom in 1230, as Gregory IX complained when he sought to effect closure in 1233.15 It was only in 1237, after the dispute had been settled in favour of the Cistercians, that the Chapter-General of the Order gave permission to the community of Belmont to build a daughter house at Pyrgos.16 When the see of Bethlehem fell vacant in c. 1237 the canons elected the dean of Antioch as their new bishop, but their choice was quashed by the patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold of Lausanne. The canons claimed that Bethlehem was exempt from the patriarch’s jurisdiction and directly subject to the pope, and appealed to Gregory IX. In 1238 he appointed three judges delegate to deal with the matter: the archbishop of Mamistra, the archdeacon of Valania and the abbot of Belmont, all of whom were from the patriarchate of Antioch.17 Until that time it had been unusual for Cistercian abbots in the Crusader States to be involved in routine ecclesiastical administration, but thereafter this became more common. In 1241 Patriarch Albert of Antioch, acting in his capacity as papal legate, settled a longrunning dispute between Prince Bohemond V of Antioch–Tripoli and the Order of the Hospital about the lordship of Maraclea, and this judgement was witnessed by all the important lay and ecclesiastical leaders of the County of Tripoli. Belmont was represented by Dom Thomas, who may have been the abbot, although that is not specified, and by the cellarer, Dom Lantier.18 In 1246 Innocent IV ordered the abbot of Belmont to supervise the induction of the pope’s nominee, Deodatus de Prefectis, as archdeacon of Bethlehem.19 Then in February 1251 Pope Innocent required the abbots of Belmont and of St Samuel’s Acre, together with the cantor of Beirut, to take a statement from the Vice-Master of the Hospital about a dispute between his Order and the bishop of Tortosa. This case had reached the curia, but the procurator of the Hospital had died before the process had been completed.20 A month later Innocent appointed the abbot of Belmont and the patriarch of Jerusalem as conservators of the pope’s appointment of his chaplain Philip as cantor of Tripoli.21 In 1260 the abbot of Belmont and Brother Stephen from that house were present in Acre and witnessed two documents issued by Pope Alexander IV’s legate, Thomas, Bishop of Bethlehem, in favour of the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat. In the first document the abbot is described as venerabili patri domino . . . [sic] olim episcopo Beritensi, abate Bellimontis. Although Cistercians were sometimes appointed to bishoprics in the Crusader States, this is the only example of a bishop there being professed as a Cistercian.22 The increased involvement of the Cistercians in the ecclesiastical administration of the Crusader States was not without problems. The Chapter-General of the Order at its meeting in 1253 received a request from the abbot of Belmont that his community might observe the year’s mind of Prince Bohemond V of Antioch–Tripoli (d. 1252) with full liturgical 13 16 18 20

14 15 See pp. 259–60. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5108. Gregory IX, Registres no. 1084. 17 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, p. 173; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 40–1. Gregory IX, Registres no. 4099. 19 CGOH I, no. 2280; Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 452–3. Innocent IV, Registres no. 2039. 21 22 Innocent IV, Registres no. 5129. Innocent IV, Registres no. 5178. Delaborde, ed., Chartes nos. 51–2, pp. 106–9.

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honours, and permission was granted. But the chapter also noted that serious complaints had been placed on the agenda about the conduct of monks of the Order who had been seconded to the households of bishops in Syria and Cyprus. The abbots of Belmont and Beaulieu were empowered to investigate these charges and discipline the offenders, and if necessary to order them to rejoin their communities.23 James Pantaleon, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1255–61), clearly thought well of the Cistercians and in 1263, after he had become Pope Urban IV, freed the abbeys of Belmont and St Sergius at Gibelet from the payment of all tolls and port dues on imported and exported goods belonging to them or to their tenants.24 The Cistercian Chapter-General of 1269 received news that Belmont had been destroyed by the Saracens.25 This proved to be unfounded, but in 1271 Sultan Baibars launched the first serious attack on the County of Tripoli since Saladin’s campaign of 1188. On 25 April 1271 the Knights of St John surrendered their great fortress of Crac des Chevaliers, which guarded the approach to the coast through the Gap of Homs. The community of Belmont took refuge in Tripoli, and their abbot wrote to Simon, Cardinal of St Cecilia, papal legate to the Holy Land: ‘We are living in the city of Tripoli and do not dare to return to our abbey.’26 Baibars advanced on Tripoli, but before he could mount a siege news reached him that Lord Edward of England had arrived at Acre with an army, and the sultan therefore negotiated a ten-year truce with Bohemond VI and withdrew from the county.27 The Cistercians returned to Belmont and continued to be involved in the public affairs of the County of Tripoli. On 18 February 1283 the abbot, Dom Peter l’Aleman, and his companion Dom Simon were present at the castle of Nephin as witnesses to a declaration drawn up by a notary that Guy, Lord of Gibelet, had unsuccessfully conspired with the Knights Templar to seize the city of Tripoli from Prince Bohemond VII.28 On 26 April 1289 Sultan Qalavun captured Tripoli and sacked it. It is not known whether the brethren of Belmont were present during the siege, or whether they had previously taken refuge in Cyprus. Any survivors were not able to return to Belmont, but perhaps because the abbey was situated in a remote part of the county, the sultan’s troops did not attempt to damage the monastery or to adapt the church to use as a mosque. The church dated from the twelfth century, but a campanile had been added in the mid-thirteenth century. The sultan gave the church and monastery to an Orthodox community, and consequently the fabric of the church has been well preserved.29 When Henry Maundrel, the Anglican chaplain of the Levant Company at Aleppo, visited Jerusalem in 1697, he stayed with the English consul in Tripoli and records that on 12 March: 23 25 26

27 29

24 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, p. 394 (items 12 and 26). Urban IV, Registres nos. 453–4. Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, p. 76. His letter is cited in an encyclical which Cardinal Simon wrote to the Western Church about the exploits of Baibars: RRH no. 1383, p. 360. 28 Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 204–6. Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 662–8. C. Enlart, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Belmont en Syrie’, Syria 4 (1923), 1–23; D. Pringle, ‘Cistercian houses in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in M. Gervers, ed., The Second Crusade and the Cistercians (New York, 1992), 193.

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In the afternoon we went to visit Bell-mount, a convent of Greeks, about two hours to the southward of Tripoli. It was founded by one of the Earls of Tripoli, and stands upon a very high rocky mountain, looking over the sea: a place of very difficult access, though made as accessible as it was capable by the labour of the poor monks. It was our fortune to arrive there just as they were going to their evening service. The chapel is large but obscure . . . The monks of this convent were, as I remember, forty in all.30

It is remarkable that the medieval French name of the house was still being used 400 years after the Cistercians had left, and that the context of its foundation in the ‘earldom’ of Tripoli was also known to the author. The Abbey of Salvatio In 1161 the abbey of Mortimond founded a second daughter house in the Crusader States, the abbey of Salvatio.31 Its location has never been determined with certainty, though the evidence about it implies that it was in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Denys Pringle considers that there is a high probability that Salvatio should be identified with the ruins of a crusader monastery at ‘Allar as-Sufla: ‘It seems clear that the complex of buildings represents some kind of monastic establishment of the twelfth century, comprising domestic accommodation . . . a chapel and vaulted stone buildings.’32 That site is about fifteen kilometres west of Bethlehem. It is likely that the crown was the patron of this foundation, and gave the Cistercians the land on which to build, together with some endowments. Baldwin III was king in 1161, but it seems likely that negotiations with the Order were initiated by his mother, Queen Melisende, who retained considerable influence in decisions about ecclesiastical policy, and who had been in regular correspondence with St Bernard.33 Bernard’s biographer Geoffrey, in his account of the miracles of the saint, relates that King Amalric of Jerusalem had told Abbot Richer of Salvatio that he had had a vision of St Bernard while he was campaigning in Egypt. This would seem to relate to the campaign of 1167, for Geoffrey says that the king was travelling ‘towards the banks of the Nile, which, flowing from the fountain of Paradise, waters the desert regions of Egypt’. Amalric vowed to the saint that if he came back alive from this campaign he would give his personal Holy Cross relic to Clairvaux. Geoffrey said that he had been told this anecdote by Abbot Richer himself, when he had visited France, probably to attend a Chapter-General of the Order. He describes Richer as ‘a man with a good reputation, of upright life untouched by any suspicion of lying or of any other vices’.34 It would appear that Amalric kept his vow. In the mid-seventeenth century Manrique found this entry in a list of reliquaries belonging to Clairvaux: ‘The cross which Amalric, King of Jerusalem, sent to Clairvaux in response to a miracle, many years after the death of St Bernard, having been exhorted by him in a dream as is fully explained in the accompanying notice [in tractatu de eodem].’35 30 31 33

34 35

H. Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697 (Oxford, 1703), 35–7. 32 Janauschek no. CCCLIV, I, p. 139. Pringle, Churches no. 9, I, pp. 47–51. H.-E. Mayer, ‘Studies in the history of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem’, DOP 26 (1972), 172–82; Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae nos. 354–5, in S. Bernardi Opera, VIII, pp. 297–9. Vita s. Bernardi Claravallensis abbatis, auctore Gaufrido monacho, AA SS, Aug. IV, p. 327. Manrique, ed., Cisterciensium seu verius ecclesiasticorum annalium a condito Cistercio, VI, 9, II, p. 548.

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In 1186, during the succession dispute which followed the death of Baldwin V, the supporters of Raymond of Tripoli who had gathered at Nablus sent two knights and two Cistercian abbots to negotiate with Princess Sibyl and her supporters. These must have been the abbots of Salvatio and of St John in nemore because these were the only two Cistercian houses in the kingdom.36 It is not known whether in the aftermath of Hattin the brethren of Salvatio sought refuge in Jerusalem and were allowed to leave with the other religious when Saladin conquered the city in October 1187, or whether they went to Jaffa and took ship to Sicily. There is no record of their being killed, but they never returned to ‘Allar as-Sufla, and the abandoned buildings there gradually fell into ruin.

The Abbey of St John in nemore In 1169, the year in which their abbey church was consecrated, the Cistercians of Belmont founded the daughter house of St John in nemore.37 Pringle has very convincingly argued that the location of this abbey, which had not previously been determined, was at Ain Karim, a village to the west of Jerusalem. The patron of this foundation is likely to have been King Amalric, in whose reign it was founded and who had a devotion to the Cistercians and their founder. There are two churches at Ain Karim associated with St John the Baptist. One, which claims to be the birthplace of the Forerunner, belonged in the twelfth century to the Austin canons of the Templum Domini, who would have made provision for its service.38 The second church, now called the church of the Visitation, was built around a cave in the rocks, situated across the valley from the first church: this was said to be the place where St Elizabeth had sheltered her son to escape the massacre of the Innocents.39 Abbot Daniel, who visited Ain Karim in the reign of Baldwin I, found the cave shrine, which contained a spring, and two churches, one on the same level as the cave, which gave access to the shrine, and another which had been built above the shrine. He notes: ‘This mountain is very great and has much forest on it.’40 The site was excavated between 1938 and 1946 as a preliminary to building a new Franciscan church there. Pringle has analysed the archaeological evidence and the documentary evidence about this site and has concluded: There can be no doubt that the double church and associated buildings belong to a monastic establishment of the twelfth century, the likeliest identification of which is with the Cistercian Abbey of St John in the Woods established in 1169. Some indirect support for this identification is also provided by the general similarity of the upper church with that of the mother house of Belmont in Lebanon . . . and with that of ‘Allar as-Sufla, tentatively identified as the Cistercian Abbey of Salvatio.

He suggests that the building visited by Abbot Daniel was an earlier Byzantine complex which the crusader church replaced.41 36 38 41

37 Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, ed. Morgan, c. 17, p. 31. Janauschek no. CCCV, I, 158. 39 40 Pringle, Churches no. 7, I, 30–8; see above, p. 74. Matthew 2: 16–17. Daniel the Abbot, p. 151. Pringle, Churches no. 8, I, pp. 38–47 (quotation p. 46).

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This foundation was short-lived. As noted above the abbot of St John in nemore, together with the abbot of Salvatio, acted as a mediator in the succession dispute of 1186.42 In 1187 Ain Karim would have been occupied by Saladin’s forces at about the same time as Bethlehem, that is, during the first half of September. Thus the brethren would have had almost two months after news reached them of the defeat of Hattin in which to decide what to do. It would appear that ultimately they made their way to the Kingdom of Sicily and were offered asylum by the Benedictines of the Holy Trinity at Refesio. This would explain why, when that community decided to become affiliated to the Cistercian Order, it was considered to be a daughter house of Belmont.43 Although the Cistercians did not return to Ain Karim, the shrine in the cave continued to be visited by Christian pilgrims, and in 1679 passed into the control of the Latin Church once more when it was acquired by the Franciscans of the Custodia Terrae Sanctae who still hold it.44

The Abbey of St George of Jubin During the War of the Antiochene Succession, which broke out after the death of Bohemond III in 1201 and lasted for more than twenty years, one victim was the Latin patriarch, Peter of Angoulême, who died a prisoner of Bohemond IV in the citadel of Antioch in 1208.45 Pope Innocent III, who relied heavily on the Cistercians in implementing his programme of church reform, appointed Peter, Bishop of Ivrea, as the new patriarch. Before he became a bishop Peter had been a member of the Cistercian abbey of La Ferté, and retained a strong desire to live the ascetic life. He later explained that when the Holy See strictly ordered us to take up the burden of ruling the holy Church of Antioch . . . we talked with the pope informally about one matter, namely, that as we were growing old, it grieved us to be separated in distant lands from the society of the Cistercian Order in which we had lived since boyhood, and we ended up by asking that if any abbey in the Black Mountain wished to be incorporated in the Cistercian Order we should be empowered to grant their request with [the pope’s] consent and authority.46

Patriarch Peter claimed that the abbot of Jubin had asked that his community might be admitted to the Cistercian Order because it lacked discipline, which membership of the Order would provide (multum egebat Ordinis disciplina). The request for affiliation was discussed at the Chapter-General of the Order in 1213 but, because an objection was raised by the abbot of Morimond, the matter was referred to the abbot of Cîteaux. The nature of the objection is not recorded, but it probably stemmed from the fact that Peter of Ivrea wished to associate Jubin with his own former community of La Ferté, whereas all the previous foundations in the Crusader States had been part of the family of Morimund.47 The abbot of Cîteaux, it would seem, ruled in Peter of Ivrea’s favour, and the Chapter in 1214 granted permission to incorporate Jubin in the Order as 42 44 45

43 See p. 242. Janauschek no. CCCCLXXXII, I, p. 188. For details of the history of this site after 1187, see Pringle, Churches no. 8, I, pp. 39–40. 46 47 Hamilton, Latin Church, pp. 218–19. Gregory IX, Registres, no. 3468. Canivez, ed., Statuta, I, no. 56, p. 415.

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a daughter house of La Ferté.48 On 22 September 1214 Patriarch Peter was present at the monastery of Jubin when the abbot and community were received into the Cistercian Order by ‘Cistercian brethren who had been specially sent there by the Chapter General’.49 The dedication is rarely given in official documents, but from a ruling of the ChapterGeneral of the Cistercian Order of 1225 it is known to have been St George. Permission was given to the community of St George de Jubino to observe the feast of St George each year and also to observe with full liturgical honours the year’s mind of their founder, Peter of Ivrea, who had died in 1217.50 The existence of a second community in the Crusader States proved to be an administrative advantage to the Order. In 1219 the Chapter-General legislated that the abbeys of Belmont and Jubin should carry out a mutual visitation at the appropriate times ‘because otherwise they cannot be visited at all’.51 Problems of distance also made it necessary to relax the rules about attendance at the Chapter-General. In 1216 Belmont and Jubin were required to send representatives only every five years; in 1225 their attendance was reduced to every six years, and finally in 1232 the obligation was fixed at once in every seven years.52 At the 1232 Chapter-General a cryptic resolution was passed: ‘Concerning the matter of Jubin, let an appeal be made to the lord pope and to the patriarch of Antioch.’53 In 1233 in response to this referral, Gregory IX appointed the bishops of Bethlehem and Acre and the archdeacon of Acre to investigate the dispute between the abbey of Jubin and Albert de Rizzato, Patriarch of Antioch. In his letter, Gregory explained the problem: the abbot of Jubin had refused to take an oath of obedience to the patriarch or to pay tithes on certain properties, and the patriarch had ordered the archbishop of Tarsus to excommunicate the monks of Jubin, even though they had appealed to the Holy See, claiming that their house enjoyed papal protection and that only the pope might excommunicate the brethren.54 The chief finding of this inquiry was that the copy of Peter of Ivrea’s deed of gift to Jubin held in the patriarchal archive of Antioch stated that tithes were payable on some of the endowments, whereas the copy of this document held by the abbot of Jubin stated that no tithes were payable on any of these endowments. This led the patriarch to allege that the community had forged their copy of this charter, and Pope Gregory ordered the bishop and archdeacon of Acre and the bishop of Sidon to investigate this charge.55 The case finally came before the curia in 1237 and was heard by Thomas, cardinal of St Sabina, who found in favour of the patriarch and had two copies made of the privilege of Peter of Ivrea from the text in the patriarchal archives. He authenticated those copies, and they were deposited in the archives of the two litigants to give closure to the dispute.56 During this lengthy dispute the office of abbot of Jubin fell vacant and a serious quarrel developed between the prior and the subprior of the house. The monks and lay brethren took 48 49

50 52 53 56

Janauschek no. DLXIV, I, p. 217. The text of Peter of Ivrea’s letter was copied in a letter from Pope Gregory IX to Patriarch Albert of Antioch: Gregory IX, Registres no. 3468; see also Richard, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Jubin’, 65–7. For the earlier history of this house, see pp. 242–4. 51 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1225, n. 62, p. 47. Canivez, ed., Statuta, I, an. 1219, c. 37, p. 510. Canivez, ed., Statuta, I, an. 1216, c. 49, p. 459; II, an. 1225, c. 62, an. 1232, c. 18, pp. 47, 103. 54 55 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1232, c. 32, p. 106. Gregory IX, Registres no. 1011. Gregory IX, Registres no. 1887. Gregory IX, Registres nos. 3466–9; Richard, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Jubin’, 67 n. 18.

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sides and the dispute escalated when the prior introduced armed men into the house and forcibly expelled some forty of his opponents and forbad them to seek refuge in any of the granges of the house. When news of this reached the Chapter-General in 1237, they sent the abbot of La Ferté to Rome seeking permission to settle the dispute internally. Although the pope, who knew about this scandal, had already appointed the archbishop of Apamea and Canon Henry of Antioch as judges delegate to investigate its cause, he was persuaded by the abbot of La Ferté and by the new abbot of Jubin, whom the abbot of La Ferté had appointed, to allow the Cistercian Order to take the necessary disciplinary measures. Gregory wrote to his legate, the archbishop of Nazareth, and to the archdeacon of Acre explaining his decision, and ordering them to suspend the judicial inquiry which he had previously set up.57 When the pope’s decision was reported to the Chapter-General in 1238, the abbot of La Ferté was sent to Syria to ensure that the settlement between the abbey and the patriarch of Antioch was honoured, and the Chapter further decreed that in future Jubin should be a daughter house of Locedio, which was itself a daughter house of La Ferté.58 The reason for this is not known, but the measures taken by the new abbot of Jubin and the abbot of La Ferté as visitor seem to have been effective. The Jubin community was reunified and there is no evidence of any further disturbance. In 1247 Pope Innocent IV appointed as new patriarch of Antioch Opizo dei Fieschi who, like himself, was Genoese. The patriarchate of Antioch had been greatly impoverished through loss of territory in the thirteenth century. For this reason in 1254 Innocent ordered the abbot of Jubin to reserve to the pope the next suitable bishopric which fell vacant in Syria or Cyprus, so that its revenues might be granted to Patriarch Opizo.59 This directive was implemented in the next pontificate: in 1256 when the bishop of Limassol was translated to the see of Vicenza, Opizo was made administrator of the vacant see by the pope.60 Limassol was not a rich diocese, and Alexander also commissioned the abbot of Jubin to arrange for the payment of a tithe of their income for three years by all Latin clergy in the patriarchate, including those in the Kingdom of Cyprus, with the exception of the Cistercians and the Templars and Hospitallers. This money was to be used for strengthening the defences of the patriarch’s castle of Cursat.61 Patriarch Opizo went to Italy in 1264 and was still there in 1268 when the Mamluk sultan Baibars launched a major attack on Antioch.62 The city was captured on 19 May, and the Templars, who were the chief defenders of the Amanus mountains, subsequently evacuated their castles at Gaston, Port Bonnel and La Roche de Roissel without a fight.63 This left the Black Mountain almost entirely in the hands of the Mamluks, but the Cistercians do not appear to have suffered any violence. Initially they probably crossed the frontier into Cilician Armenia and from there took ship to Cyprus. In 1269 the Cistercian abbot of Beaulieu in that island reported to the Chapter-General that he had received into his house the monks of Jubin whose abbey had been destroyed by the Saracens.64 Two years later the Chapter-General gave permission to the abbot and brethren of Jubin to live in any of the 57 59 62 64

58 Gregory IX, Registres no. 4020. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1238, n. 49, pp. 194–5. 60 61 Innocent IV, Registres no. 7873. Alexander IV, Registres nos. 1175–6. Alexander IV, Registres no. 1087. 63 Hamilton, Latin Church, 235–7. Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 190–2. Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1269, c. 40, p. 76. Canivez is correct in considering that the name ‘Iubilei’ in the text as the name of the abbey is a corrupt reading of ‘Jubino’. On Beaulieu, see pp. 258–9.

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granges which they owned in Cyprus until some other monastery was provided for them.65 Jean Richard has argued that the grange in which they settled was that of St Blaise at Nicosia, which in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century documents is called the prioratus . . . qui est membrum dicti monasterii de Jubino et ad ipsum monasterium spectat et pertinet.66 The abbot who had ruled the community before 1268 was still alive in 1282, when the ChapterGeneral enacted that: ‘The abbot of Jubin who has not attended a Chapter for fifteen years is deposed with immediate effect.’67 Janauschek argued that in the late thirteenth century the community was given shelter by the Cistercian abbey of St Maria de Zerbino at Genoa, a daughter house of Locedio, founded in c. 1136.68 This may reflect the fact that Patriarch Opizo of Antioch was appointed administrator of the archdiocese of Genoa in 1288 by Nicholas IV, a post which he held until his death in 1292.69 He was therefore in a position to make provision for the monks of Jubin living in exile like himself. The settlement of the community at Genoa was considered by the Chapter-General in 1294: ‘Concerning the affairs of the abbey of Jubin, the full power of the Order is granted to the Lord Abbot of La Ferté that he or his agent should take what action may seem necessary to accomplish this business.’70 The move, as Richard has argued, had been completed by 1297 when the Chapter-General noted that ‘the request of the Abbot of Jubin that he might be dispensed from receiving guests for three years is granted’.71 The abbey continued to maintain its priory at St Blaise Nicosia during the fourteenth century, and that prior also administered property in Crete which had been given to the abbey. In 1400 the mother house at Genoa recalled its representatives from Cyprus and delegated the management of its affairs there to lay procurators, who were Genoese living in Cyprus. With the permission of Pope Urban VI in 1401, the procurators sold the Cretan estates of Jubin to the duke of Crete for 1,000 ducats.72 The abbey of Jubin thereafter became a dependency of the abbey of St Maria de Zerbino.73

The Abbey of St Sergius, Gibelet (Jubail) Much of what is known about this community comes from a group of documents preserved in copies made for the mother house of La Ferté in 1279.74 The first, dated September 1231, is a letter from Bishop Vassal of Gibelet to the abbot of La Ferté, in which he relates that he has already started to build the abbey of St Sergius, and that he wishes to affiliate it to the Cistercian Order, but that the existing Cistercian houses in the Crusader States did not have enough brethren to staff a new foundation. He had discussed this problem with Brothers Andrew and Giles from La Ferté, who had come to Syria to carry out a visitation, probably of Jubin which was a daughter of La Ferté. Brother Giles had carried out an inspection of the site of St Sergius and also of the endowments which Bishop Vassal proposed to give to it: 65 67 69 71 73 74

66 Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1271, c. 64, p. 102. Richard, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Jubin’, 72–4. 68 Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1282, c. 46, p. 226. Janauschek no. DLXIV, I, p. 217. 70 Nicholas IV, Registres no. 142; Hamilton, Latin Church, 241. Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1294, c. 38, III, p. 273. 72 Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1297, c. 39, III, p. 275. Richard, ‘L’abbaye cistercienne de Jubin’, 72–4. Janauschek no. DLXIV, I, p. 217. Now in the departmental archive of Sâone et Loire, ed. E. Petit, ‘Chartes de l’abbaye cistercienne de Saint-Serge de Giblet en Syrie’, MSNAF, 5th ser. 8 (1887), 23–30.

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a house in Gibelet, and two estates, a garden, a vineyard and an olive grove in the environs.75 The offer was accepted, and in June 1233 Bishop Vassal and his chapter formally gave the abbey of St Sergius to La Ferté, specifying that the endowments of the house were free from the payment of tithes, although the abbot would owe canonical obedience to the bishop.76 The choice of St Sergius as patron of this house is unusual because he was not venerated in the Latin Church, but it seems likely that Bishop Vassal incorporated a former Orthodox church to be the chapel of the new abbey, which took its name. In 1238 the Chapter-General ordered the abbot of St Sergius to carry out inspections on behalf of the Order of sites in Cyprus where it was proposed to make new foundations, and also to settle a dispute involving the abbey of Belmont.77 At the same Chapter the abbots of Jubin and Belmont were authorised to supervise the removal of the community of St Sergius to a more suitable site (locus competentior) if one could be found.78 The abbey had been built in the hills above Gibelet ‘between the churches of St Andrew and St Blaise’. The Chapter did not specify in what ways this location was unsuitable, and no further action was taken about it. In September 1238, Guy I of Embriaco, Lord of Gibelet, issued a charter for Abbot Peter of St Sergius confirming the property of the house. The abbey owned the estates of Soram, Arsexta and Effdar, which was situated on the coast and worked by three serfs. In addition they owned a gastina and a deserted village, enjoyed free use of the lord’s mills and received an annual gift of sugar cane. In December 1241 Guy added a codicil to this grant, giving the abbey an olive grove ‘in the plain of Gibelet above the church of St Theodore’. This gift was made to John, the new abbot. It is possible that Guy made this bequest when he was dying: he had been lord since 1186 and this is his last known act.79 St Sergius was a fairly poor community and its endowments cannot have supported many monks. In 1243 and again in 1244 the Chapter-General instructed the abbot of St Sergius to inspect the site to which it was proposed to transfer the Cypriot abbey of Beaulieu.80 In 1253 Pope Urban IV freed the abbey of St Sergius from the payment of all port dues and tolls on all their goods entering or leaving the Crusader States.81 When the Mamluks captured the city and County of Tripoli in 1289, Robert Irwin notes that ‘the Sultan Qalāwūn gave the son of his old ally Guy Embriaco the town of Jubayl [Gibelet] to hold in iqtā’.82 The monks of St Sergius need not therefore have moved at that point, except perhaps to live inside the city walls, but the ChapterGeneral of 1290 made a ruling which suggests that the community had in fact taken refuge in Cyprus: It is enjoined upon the abbots of La Ferté and Morimond that they make provision about appointing an abbot for those of their daughter houses in Cyprus and Syria which have been almost overthrown and

75 77 79 80 81 82

76 Petit, ‘Chartes’ doc. 1, pp. 23–5. Petit, ‘Chartes’ doc. 2, pp. 25–6. 78 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1238, cc. 21, 41, 57, pp. 189, 193, 196. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1238, c. 36, p. 192. Petit, ‘Chartes’ doc. 3, 26–30; E. Rey, ‘Les seigneurs de Giblet’, ROL 3 (1895), 402–3. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1243, c. 22, an. 1244, c. 50, pp. 263, 284. Urban IV, Registres no. 453; he also gave similar privileges to the Cistercians of Belmont and Beaulieu. R. Irwin, ‘Iqtā and the end of the Crusader States’, in P. M. Holt, ed., The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades (London, 1992), 69.

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deprived of resources: the goods of those houses shall in no way be alienated without the special licence and consent of those abbots.83

Belmont was the daughter of Morimond, but the only mainland house affiliated to La Ferté after 1268, when the community of Jubin moved to the grange of St Blaise in Cyprus, was St Sergius. This enactment therefore implies that the community of St Sergius had fled to Cyprus in 1289. They are not known to have had any holdings there, and it would have been difficult for the sister house of Jubin to accommodate them in its straitened circumstances. This would explain the concern of the Chapter-General. St Sergius did not survive as a separate institution: its brethren, who were probably not numerous, must have been admitted to other houses of the Order in Cyprus or in western Europe.

The Abbey of Beaulieu in Cyprus The Cypriot Cistercian abbey of Beaulieu was a daughter house of Belmont. Before 1224 Belmont had acquired land at Pyrgos in the diocese of Limassol, but the community’s title to it was challenged by William Rivet, an influential nobleman, who claimed that he held it in fief from Queen Alice. The Cistercians appealed to Rome, and Honorius III found in their favour in 1224.84 William Rivet, and after his death in 1230 his heirs, refused to abide by this judgement, and the civil war in Cyprus between the Ibelins and the representatives of Frederick II, which broke out in 1229, made fresh papal intervention impractical, as Gregory IX recognised when he reiterated Honorius III’s ruling in 1233.85 In 1237 the Chapter-General granted the petition of the abbot of Belmont to found a daughter house at Pyrgos and ordered the abbot of Jubin to supervise this work and to ensure that the conventions of the Order were observed, but matters did not go smoothly, possibly because of fresh difficulties made by the Rivet family. In 1238 the Chapter-General renewed its permission for the new foundation to be built and appointed the abbots of Jubin, Belmont and St Sergius Gibelet as co-supervisors of the project.86 At the end of this long period of litigation, it is something of an anticlimax to discover that, after the abbey had been established there, Pyrgos did not prove to be a suitable site after all. In 1243 the Chapter-General enacted that ‘the inspection of the place to which the abbot of Belmont wishes to transfer the Abbey of Cyprus is delegated to the abbots of Jubin and of St Sergius’, but it would seem that they failed to validate the proposed new location, and the injunction had to be renewed at the Chapter-General of 1244.87 In 1251 the Cistercians bought a property just outside the walls of Nicosia belonging to the Franciscans. The community of Pyrgos moved there, and it became the abbey of Beaulieu.88 Nevertheless, it was contrary to the Cistercian way of life to live in a city. The Order considered that its vocation was to live in remote places, but Cardinal Odo of Châteauroux, the papal legate accompanying the Crusade of Louis IX of France, dispensed 83 85 87 88

84 Canivez, ed., Statuta, III, an. 1290, c. 16, p. 248. Honorius III, Regesta no. 5108. 86 Gregory IX, Registres no. 1984. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1237, c. 25, an. 1238, c. 21, pp. 173, 189. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1243, c. 22, an. 1244, c. 50, pp. 263, 284. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 206.

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the community of Beaulieu from that requirement.89 The Chapter-General had no option but to accept this ruling, but did so reluctantly, recording at its meeting in 1253 that ‘the removal of the abbey of Beaulieu to a site beside the city of Nicosia, although carried out without the permission of the Chapter-General, is approved’.90 The abbey of Beaulieu also faced a legal challenge. Archbishop Hugh of Nicosia complained to the pope that, in accordance with the rules of the Franciscan Order, the vacated building should have been given to him as Ordinary, and Innocent IV in 1254 ordered the bishop of Tripoli and the archdeacon of Acre to hold a judicial inquiry into the legality of the sale to the Cistercians.91 In 1256 Pope Alexander IV found in favour of the monks of Beaulieu because, for various unspecified reasons, Pyrgos had not been a suitable location, whereas the house in Nicosia was ‘better suited to the contemplative life’.92 Although at first sight this appears to be a paradoxical judgement, Nicholas Coureas has explained that it was well founded. The Cistercian Order, he points out, relied heavily on the recruitment of lay brethren to help in the development of the remote places in which Cistercian foundations were made, but such recruitment was out of the question in Cyprus where the peasantry were all of the Orthodox rite, albeit in communion with the Holy See. Consequently, if the brethren had remained at Pyrgos and had had to work their estates without the help of lay brothers, they could not have spent the time in reciting the Divine Office and in contemplative prayer which their Rule required. If they lived near Nicosia, which had a large and socially diverse Latin-rite community from which lay brethren might be drawn, that problem would be soluble.93 The community flourished at its new site. In 1263 Pope Urban IV freed the monks of Beaulieu from the payment of all tolls and customs dues on the import and export of its goods and produce.94 The abbey remained prosperous during the fourteenth century, and the Cistercians remained there until 1469 when Pope Paul II gave the house in commendam to the bishop of Limassol. The Cistercians left Cyprus at that point, and the observant Franciscans became responsible for the conduct of divine worship in the chapel of Beaulieu.95 The abbey buildings were demolished by the Venetians in 1567 when they were strengthening the defences of Nicosia.96

Communities of Women St Mary Magdalene, Acre There is no evidence that there were communities of Cistercian nuns in the Crusader States during the twelfth century, but before 1222 the convent of St Mary Magdalene had been founded in Acre. This house was a daughter of Belmont, and in 1222 Abbess Maria reached an agreement with Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia that a daughter house of the Acre 89 90 91 92 94 95 96

His letter was transcribed in a bull of Alexander IV: Alexander IV, Registres no. 1242. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1253, c. 34, p. 397. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom Nicosia, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 68, pp. 174–5. 93 Alexander IV, Registres no. 1242. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 197–8. Urban IV, Registres no. 455. J. Richard, ‘The Cistercians in Cyprus’, in Gervers, ed., Second Crusade and the Cistercians, 202–4. The location of the abbey is discussed by C. Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, trans. and ed. D. Hunt (London, 1987), 321–3; Richard, ‘Cistercians in Cyprus’, 204–5; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 198–9.

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convent might be founded in that city. It was agreed that the first abbess should be chosen from among the Acre community, but that her successors should be elected by their own community, provided that the prioress, or some other senior member of the mother house, was present to supervise the proceedings. The new foundation, also dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, recognised the authority of the archbishop of Nicosia as Ordinary, and his rights were set out in detail.97 It is known from a letter written by Honorius III in 1223 that the abbess of St Mary Magdalene at Acre had made an arrangement with her colleague, the abbess of St Mary de Parcheio, a Cistercian convent at Constantinople, about the appointment of a joint visitor. This was not acceptable to the Order, and the abbot of Cîteaux complained to the pope, who upheld the objection and ratified the Order’s choice of the abbot of St Angelus in Constantinople as visitor of Parcheio.98 Papal intervention was necessary in this instance because in 1221 Abbess Beatrice of Parcheio had placed her community under the direct protection of the Holy See, and Honorius III had exempted the house from the jurisdiction of the Latin patriarch of Constantinople.99 In 1225 Abbess Maria leased a square and some houses in the suburb of Montmusard at Acre from the Master of the Hospitallers, Guarin of Montague, who drafted a very tight contract: the convent should pay an annual rent of 25 Saracen bezants ‘whether these houses have been left in their present state, or whether they have been demolished, either by [the convent], or because of age, or because of flooding, or because of an earthquake . . . and whether the buildings have been altered, or rebuilt, or destroyed or adapted, [the Order of the Hospital] will not be involved in any expense’. The document was sealed by Peter, Prior of the Holy Sepulchre, Vicar of the Latin Patriarch, and by the Chapter of the Church of Acre. It has been preserved only in the transcription made in the eighteenth century by Sebastian Paoli, who asserts that the original document bore the convent’s seal as well, which he reproduced. It shows St Mary Magdalene, but is inscribed Mulier[um] penitentiu[m] Accon[ensium].100 This is a seal of a house of Convertites, not of a Cistercian community. Abbess Maria would have had no need to borrow a seal from the Convertites of Acre, because she had her own,101 and the most plausible explanation of this matter is that the seal reproduced by Paoli had become detached from its charter and Paoli matched it wrongly with the Cistercian document. St Mary Magdalene Acre had a second daughter house at Tripoli. For reasons which are not known, a dispute developed between the abbot of Belmont and the abbot of Cîteaux about the filiation of the Acre convent, and this was reported in 1238 to the Chapter-General, which ordered the abbots of Jubin and St Sergius to investigate the matter. In 1239, having received their report, the Chapter-General found in Cîteaux’s favour and enacted that the 97

98 99 100

101

L. de Mas Latrie, ed., Documents nouveaux servant de preuves à l’histoire de l’île de Chypre. Sous la règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1882), 343–4. Honorius III, Regesta no. 4487. Santifaller, Beiträge zur Geschichte des lateinischen Patriarchat von Konstantinopel, 192 n. 41. Paoli, Codice no. 213, I, p. 254, plate vii, no. 69; CGOH I, no. 1828; Schlumberger, Chalandon and Blanchet, Sigillographie, no. 139, p. 125. Document 53 of the Cartulary of St Sophia at Nicosia concludes with the statement of Abbess Maria of St Mary Magdalene Acre: Et nos sigillum nostrum eidem scripto apposuimus (Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, p. 169). Pringle discusses the precise location of the convent: Churches no. 434, IV, pp. 147–8.

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Acre community and its daughter houses at Tripoli and Nicosia were henceforth to be treated as daughters of Cîteaux.102 The foundation of two daughter houses shows that the Acre convent had no problem recruiting novices. In 1264 Saliba, a burgess of the city, bequeathed 2 bezants to the sisters.103 A few years later the Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre recorded that pilgrims who visited the church of St Mary Magdalene would receive the considerable indulgence of eleven years.104 There is no evidence to suggest that the community ceased to exist before 1291. Any nuns who succeeded in escaping then from the Mamluk siege presumably took refuge in their daughter house at Nicosia.

The Convent of St Mary Magdalene at Tripoli There is very little information about this community, which was a daughter house of St Mary Magdalene’s Acre and from 1239 affiliated directly to Cîteaux. A miracle attributed to St Dominic describes how he healed a sister of this community who suffered great pain from a disease in her leg and foot. The report was examined and confirmed by Brother Yves, the Dominican Prior Provincial of the Holy Land at the time of Louis IX’s Crusade.105 If the convent was still in existence when the Mamluks sacked the city in 1289, any nuns who succeeded in escaping would most likely have taken refuge in their sister house at Nicosia.

The Convents of St Mary Magdalene and of St Theodore at Nicosia St Mary Magdalene’s Nicosia was a daughter of St Mary Magdalene’s Acre and, like its mother house, was affiliated directly to Cîteaux from 1239.106 It survived into the fourteenth century but was a very poor community. Richard has drawn attention to the papal collectors’ accounts of 1357 for the Cistercian houses of Cyprus: whereas the abbey of Beaulieu paid 325 bezants in tenths, St Mary Magdalene paid only 15 bezants.107 Perhaps the chief reason why this house had attracted few endowments was that a second Cistercian convent had been founded in Nicosia. In 1237 the Chapter-General received a request from Pope Gregory IX that the convent that ‘the countess of Cyprus’ was intending to build should be incorporated in the Cistercian Order. The Chapter agreed to this and decided that the new house also should be a special daughter of Cîteaux.108 Richard has identified the countess as Alice of Montbéliard, the widow of Philip of Ibelin, who had been regent of Cyprus during the later years of Henry I’s minority. The Lignages d’Outremer record that Alice and Philip of Ibelin had two children, John and Marie ‘qui fu nonain et fu pour lui estoree l’abeie de Saint Theodre a Nicossie’.109 Negotiations between Abbot Boniface of Cîteaux and Archbishop Eustorgius of Nicosia about their respective rights over this 102 104 105 107 109

103 Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, an. 1238, c. 57, an. 1239, c. 57, pp. 196. 214. CGOH I, no. 3105. Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 235. 106 Jordan of Saxony, Liber Vitas fratrum, pt. II, ch. 35, cited in AA SS, Aug. I, cols. 620–1. See pp. 259–61. 108 Richard, ‘Cistercians in Cyprus’, 203 and n. 29. Canivez, ed., Statuta, an. 1237, c. 15, p. 171. Richard, ‘Cistercians in Cyprus’, 201; Lignages d’Outremer, ed. M.-A. Nielen (Paris, 2003), ch. cccxxxvii, p. 180.

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new foundation were completed in 1244.110 It is not known why St Theodore was chosen as patron of this house. The community prospered, and in the papal collector’s account of 1357 was recorded as paying 50 bezants in tenths, more than three times the amount paid by St Mary Magdalene’s.111 The size of the community of St Mary Magdalene may have been boosted by an influx of refugee nuns in 1289 from its sister house in Tripoli and in 1291 from its mother house in Acre, but it could not compete with St Theodore in attracting endowments because it lacked the patronage of founders’ kin drawn from the high nobility of the kingdom. St Mary Magdalene is not recorded after 1365, but the convent of St Theodore survived for at least another century.112

110 111

Cartulary of the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom of Nicosia, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 64, p. 170. 112 Richard, ‘Cistercians in Cyprus’, 203 and n. 29. It is last mentioned in 1469: Richard, ‘Cistercians in Cyprus’, 204.

9 The Carmelites

With the exception of the military orders, the only religious order to have been founded in the Crusader States was the friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mt Carmel. The emergence of this Order of friars in the early thirteenth century, however, was preceded by a long history of religious settlement on the mountain dating back to Old Testament times. The mountain range of Carmel was known as a pagan centre of worship, and it was on the south-eastern peak that, in the Old Testament tradition, Elijah slaughtered the priests of Baal and established worship of the one God (1 Kings 18: 20–46). An affiliation with Baal seems to have taken on Hellenistic tones, and in the first century AD Emperor Vespasian sacrificed on the mountain to Jupiter Carmel.1 The association with Elijah, however, was not forgotten, and early Christian pilgrims associated the mountain with the activities of the prophet. In the Byzantine period, three monasteries were founded on the Carmel range: St Margaret on the north-west promontory, overlooking the Bay of Haifa; St Elias, based around a cave in the northern cliffs long associated with the prophet; and, a few miles south of this in the wadi ‘ain as-siah (nahal siah), a community dedicated to Elisha, where the springs were associated with Elijah.2 There is no evidence for the survival of these communities after the sixth century, however, nor, indeed, for any further monastic settlement on Mt Carmel until the later twelfth century. The Russian pilgrim Abbot Daniel, however, clearly knew the tradition associated with the cave, for he worshipped there in 1106–7 with other pilgrims. A papal bull of 1179 suggests that a monastery dedicated to St Elias had existed recently enough for churches belonging to it to be transferred to other ownership in the patriarchate of William I. There is no indication, however, that this reference was to the Byzantine monastery of St Elias on Mt Carmel, for of course there were other dedications to that prophet in the patriarchate of Jerusalem. By the time of the papal bull, some kind of community had once again occupied the Cave of Elijah, as reported by Benjamin of Tudela (1169–71). This community was more fully described by John Phocas, who visited it in 1185, and found a Calabrian monk, presumably Orthodox, living there with about ten other monks.3 Phocas took a particular interest in the restoration of 1 2 3

Tacitus, Historiae, II, 78; Suetonius, De vita Caesarum, VIII, 5. Anon Placentinus, Itinerarium, ed. P. Geyer, in Itineraria et alia geographica, III, p. 130. Italo-Greek eremitical monks had long-standing connections with the Holy Land, as seen for example in the life of Elias of Enna (823–903), who became a monk in Jerusalem and subsequently spent three years on Mt Sinai: Vita di Sant’Elia il Giovane, ed. G. Rossi-Taibi (Palermo, 1962). Likewise, one of the founding figures of the Calabrian monastery of St Elias, Carbone, the hermit Luke of Armentum, had been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the tenth century, and his successor as abbot,

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ruined monastic sites by new generations of monks, and St Elias appears to fall into this category. The Calabrian, according to Phocas, had initially lived in the ruins of the Byzantine monastery as a solitary, in consequence of a vision he had been granted of the prophet Elijah. Subsequently, he had built a small tower and a church for what was evidently intended as a permanent community.4 The Calabrian venture probably did not outlive Saladin’s invasion, in which the whole region was conquered. However, the restoration of Acre and Haifa to the kingdom of Jerusalem by the Third Crusade enabled the renewal of monastic communities on Carmel.5 By 1211–12 at the latest, and perhaps earlier, the Cave of Elijah was once again functioning, though now as a Latin rather than an Orthodox site.6 At around the same time, however, a community of hermits emerged at the wadi ‘ain as-siah, four miles to the south of the promontory where the cave was located. This settlement is attested in the primitive Rule of the community that was to become the Carmelite hermits. The Rule, in the form of a letter of instruction written for the group by Albert of Vercelli, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was addressed simply to ‘B., and the other hermits living under his obedience by the spring on Mount Carmel’.7 A putative third monastic community is suggested by a passage in Gunther of Pairis’ Hystoria Constantinopolitana, which mentions three distinct monasteries, oversight of which is offered by the lord of Haifa to Abbot Martin of Pairis during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land following the fall of Constantinople.8 Although it is unclear where the third community might have been, and it may therefore represent an error on Gunther’s part, it may also be the case that the Rule provided by Albert was designed precisely to bring together under a single head disparate groups of hermits who had settled in different parts of the Carmel range. This would certainly conform with earlier practice in the Crusader States, notably the attempt by Aimery, Patriarch of Antioch, to ensure that all hermits on the Black Mountain lived under some form of legislation. The presence of individual solitaries in Galilee is well attested in the mid-twelfth century, and it may be that Carmel, after the disruptions of the 1180s, provided something of a safe haven for such people. The role of Albert of Vercelli is highly significant. A member of Innocent III’s ‘inner circle’ of advisers, Albert was hand-picked by the pope to serve as patriarch of Jerusalem in 1205. As with the appointment of Peter of Ivrea to the patriarchate of Antioch, Albert’s appointment marks an increasing interest in the affairs of the Church in the Crusader States on the part of the papacy.9 Innocent’s own career before becoming pope indicates a concern

4

5 6 7

8 9

Luke II, would resign his office in 1059 in order to undertake the same: G. Robinson, The History and Cartulary of the Greek Monastery of St Elias and St Anastasius of Carbone, Orientalia Christiana 15 (Rome, 1929), pp. 166–70, no. 56. The Life of Sabas of Collesano (Sabas the Younger), another important Italo-Greek eremitical founder of the ninth century, was written by Orestes, patriarch of Jerusalem: G. da Costa-Louillet, ‘Saints de Sicile et d’Italie méridionale aux VIII, IX et X siècles’, Byzantion 29–30 (1959–60), 130–42. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 335–6; PG 133: 961. For fuller discussion, see Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 119–38. Was this Calabrian a monk of St Elias, Carbone, which might explain his devotion to the prophet? Libellus de expugnatione, XIX, pp. 178–80. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, III, pp. 119, 185. Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 21; Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 139–41. La règle de l’Ordre de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie du Mont Carmel, ed. and trans. M. Battmann (Paris, 1982), 16; The Rule of St Albert, ed. and trans. B. Edwards (Aylesford, 1973), 78–9. The oldest edition of the Rule is contained in the confirmation by Innocent IV of 1247: M. H. Laurent, ed., ‘La lettre Quae honorem conditoris’, Ephemerides Carmeliticae 2 (1946), 10–16. Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, PL 212: 250. B. Bolton, ‘“Serpent in the Dust, Sparrow on the Housetop”: Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Circle of Innocent III’, in Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History, 154–80.

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for pastoral legislation for groups of laypeople, notably the Humilati of Milan, with whom Albert had also become involved as bishop of Vercelli. B. and his fellow hermits on Mt Carmel certainly included some laypeople, since illiteracy and ignorance of the canonical hours are assumed in the Rule on the part of some. The presence of an oratory on the site, still clear among the ruins at the wadi ‘ain as-siah as well as in the Rule itself, indicates, however, that there must have been a priestly component as well. Aside from the oratory, the monastery was organised around rock-cut cells on the flat ground around the spring.10 The preface to the Rule places the initiative in soliciting governance on the part of the community itself. The Rule cannot be dated any more securely than to Albert’s term of office as patriarch (1205–14), but if Gunther’s evidence of monastic communities already in existence on Mt Carmel in 1205 is taken seriously, then the hermits may already have been at the wadi for a few years before Albert’s arrival. Perhaps B. or his predecessor had exercised leadership over a group purely by oral direction, as was often the case in eleventh- and twelfth-century reform communities in the West. The sixteen clauses of the Rule establish the hermits as a penitential community living in poverty in the wilderness, and in renunciation of all property. They are to be assigned to a specific cell, which must remain theirs unless changed by the prior. Offices are to be said daily in the oratory by those who know them; the illiterate were to say twenty-five paternosters at daily matins, or fifty on Sundays and feast-days, and seven at all the other hours until vespers, when they said fifteen. A weekly chapter was to be held by the prior for the correction of faults. The hermits were to eat in a common refectory, while a passage from Scripture was read aloud. No meat was to be eaten, and the hermits were expected to undertake some kind of manual labour, which may have included growing food. Begging alms, however, was foreseen as a possibility in times of scarcity. The community was to fast daily except for Sundays between the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) and Easter. All necessary goods were to be held in common; this included the animals – asses or mules – permitted for transport or work. Silence was to be kept between compline and prime. Authority lay with the prior, who was responsible for the spiritual health of the community, and the hermits were to maintain obedience to him; however, the prior was in the first place to be elected by the community from one of their number.11 The Rule, coupled with the surviving archaeological remains at the wadi ‘ain as-siah, presents a picture of a small penitential community living in extreme but not unusual conditions of renunciation: a community typical of many reforming houses founded in the West in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. The separation of hermits into cells may recall the Carthusian style of eremitical monasticism; alternatively, it may echo the circumstances of the Frankish monks who resettled the early Byzantine monastery of Souka at Jebel Quruntul in the 1120s.12 The influence of local laura monasticism, at least in shaping the physical presence of the ‘ain as siah community, cannot be discounted. At any rate, there were also numerous examples of monastic communities operating in such ways in southern Italy, a point worth emphasising 10 11

12

For full discussion of the archaeological remains, see Pringle, Churches no. 213, II, pp. 249–57. Rule of St Albert, 78–93. For full discussion, see C. Ciconetti, La regola del Carmelo. Origine, natura, significato, Textus et studia Carmelitana (Rome, 1973), 50–107. BB nos. 21–22, p. 94.

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because of the Calabrian origins of the group occupying Mt Carmel a generation before Albert’s Rule. Moreover, these were not limited to Orthodox communities. Three important Latin founders in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries established eremitical communities along similar lines, with monks occupying individual cells, in southern Italy: John of Matera, William of Vercelli, founder of Montevergine, and Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusians.13 The Rule of Albert was confirmed by a papal bull of 1226, which refers to the community as ‘the hermits of Mt Carmel’ and provides the first independent testimony to Albert’s authorship of the Rule. Gregory IX, likewise, confirmed the Rule in 1229, but with modifications permitting ownership of property.14 A few years later, in c.1231, the French pilgrimage guide, Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, describes both the Greek monastery of St Margaret on the northern promontory overlooking the bay and ‘the delightful place where the Latin hermits live who are called brothers of Mt Carmel’.15 Until c. 1238, the hermits seem to have lived much as Albert of Vercelli had found them. In that year, however, the first step was taken towards the development of the community on Mt Carmel into a religious order, when a temporary exodus to Cyprus took place on the grounds of the dangers posed to Carmel.16 There is in fact no evidence of any particular threat to Mt Carmel before the 1240s, when the situation clearly worsened after the defeat of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at La Forbie (1244). The bull of Innocent IV, Paganorum incursus (1245), was a direct response to the collapse of security in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; in fact, the Carmelites had already begun to found outposts in England in 1242, and further settlement in France, Sicily and Provence followed in the same decade.17 The changes necessary to the Rule in order to permit this were approved in Innocent IV’s bull Quae honorem conditoris (1247), according to which the hermits might settle anywhere where they were given accommodation, though still without the privilege of owning property. In this respect, they therefore had the same status as the Friars Minor and Order of Preachers, and in the second half of the thirteenth century, as their foundations expanded throughout the West, they adopted similar organisational traits. This was, indeed, the likeliest outcome given that the pope had commissioned two Dominican friars, Hugh of St Cher and William of Tortosa, to draft the modifications to the Rule.18 13

14

15

16 17

18

John of Matera’s Life is in AA SS, Jun. V, pp. 36–50; William of Vercelli is in AA SS, Jun. V, pp. 36–48; see also now P. Oldfield, Sanctity and Pilgrimage in Medieval Southern Italy (Cambridge, 2014), 85–90, and for Bruno, A. Peters-Custot, Bruno en Calabre. Histoire d’une fondation monastique dans l’Italie normande, Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome 489 (Rome, 2014). Bullarium Carmelitanum, ed. E. Monsignanus and I. Ximinez, 4 vols. (Rome, 1715–68), I, p. 1. The earliest known version of Gregory IX’s bull is in B. Cattaneis, ed., Speculum ordinis fratrum Carmelitarum noviter impressum (Venice, 1507), 31–2. Michelant and Raynaud, eds., Itinéraires, pp. 89–90. The anonymous guide known as Les sains pelerinages que l’on doit requerre en la Terre Sainte, p. 104, says very much the same. For English translations of these and other thirteenth-century pilgrimage guides, see Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, I, xxx, 123, ed. B. Beller (Douai, 1624), I, xxx, 123, pp. 1274–5. A. Staring, ed., ‘Four bulls of Innocent IV: a critical edition’, Carmelus 27 (1980), 281–2. For brief accounts of the expansion into the West, see A. T. Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002), 13–25; F. Andrews, The Other Friars: Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack and Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), 22–36. For England in particular, see K. J. Egan, ‘Medieval Carmelite Houses, England and Wales’, Carmelus 16 (1969), 142–226, and Egan, ‘An Essay Toward a Historiography of the Origins of the Carmelite Province in England’, Carmelus 19 (1972), 67–100, both reprinted in P. Fitzgerald-Lombard, ed., Carmel in Britain: Studies on the Early History of the Carmelite Order, Vol. I, People and Places (Rome, 1992), 1–85, 86–119. Laurent, ed., ‘La lettre Quae honorem conditoris’; Ciconetti, La regola, 200–43; Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 144–6.

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Although the most spectacular effect of the changes of 1247 was the further expansion and recruitment of Carmelites in the West, the hermits’ continued presence in the Crusader States should not be overlooked. The ruins still visible at wadi ‘ain as-siah date from a campaign of rebuilding in the 1260s, for the support of which Urban IV granted an indulgence.19 Comparison of the rebuilt ‘heremitarium’, as it is called in a map of c. 1235, with the Rule of Albert does not suggest that character of the community based on Mt Carmel had altered significantly. A German pilgrim of the 1260s, indeed, still referred to the penitential nature of the foundation, recalling the terminology of the primitive Rule.20 Yet the results of the rebuilding included the enlargement of the original church, whose dimensions were 10.85 by 6.35 metres, by a further 12.5 metres to the east, thus almost doubling it in size. The extended church was also revaulted at this stage. This suggests a substantial increase in the community at ‘ain as-siah, although unfortunately the evidence of the associated monastic buildings, ranged to the west of the church, is inconclusive. Besides a two-storey cave with connecting stair that resembles closely the laura cells of the wadi Kidron at St Sabas, there was also a group of buildings around a cloister, which to judge from analysis of surviving ruins resembled a small monastic complex with an undercroft, an upper room that may have been a refectory, reredorter and other buildings that may have comprised kitchen and bakery.21 In 1265 the successful campaign of Baibars against the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which captured Caesarea and cut the kingdom in two, resulted in the dispersal of the hermits from their original location, and a bull of Clement IV reflects the drama of their situation by appealing to bishops throughout the West to welcome Carmelite refugees.22 By 1268, however, Mt Carmel had been restored to the kingdom and, given its proximity to Acre and the recent outlay of expenditure on the new building, it is likely that hermits once again resorted to the wadi ‘ain as-siah.The Carmelites also founded houses elsewhere in the Crusader States: probably a sign both of the changing orientation of the Order in the West and of the insecurity of remote sites outside fortified towns. The locations of only a few of these can be known with certainty. By 1261, and possibly earlier, they had a house at Acre. The kinds of difficulties encountered between urban friars and the local church hierarchy throughout Christendom are recorded in a bull of Alexander IV permitting the construction of a church with belfry and cemetery in the town.23 Objections from the bishop, who saw the potential loss of revenue and authority as a result of the establishment of a church that could perform parochial functions such as burials, were predictable, and indeed the situation in Acre mirrors that in which the Carmelites found themselves in Western towns at the same time.24 The house at Acre, which was located in the suburb of Montmusard, received bequests of property and money from local inhabitants in the 1260s, and also from the count of Nevers in 1266, while he was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. It presumably continued in existence until 1291, though the last mention dates from 1273. There was also a house at Tyre in the 1260s, though its location is unknown.25 19 20

21 24

Bullarium Carmelitanum, I, 28. Philip of Savona, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, ed. W. A. Neumann, Österreicher Vierteljahresschrift für Katholische Theologie 2 (1872), LXXXVI, 76–7. 22 23 Pringle, Churches no. 213, II, pp. 252–6. Bullarium Carmelitanum, I, p. 32. Bullarium Carmelitanum, I, 31. 25 Jotischky, Carmelites and Antiquity, 18–25. Bullarium Carmelitanum, I, 21.

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The existence of others, including in Cyprus, may be assumed from a bull of Alexander IV (1261), granting an indulgence of a year and eighty days to pilgrims who visited any Carmelite house in the Holy Land or Cyprus.26 The fourteenth-century pilgrim Ludolph of Sudheim (1336–41), correctly identifying the Carmelite friars of the West in his day with the hermits of Mt Carmel, thought that before 1291 there had been fifteen Carmelite houses throughout the East, but unfortunately he does not list these.27 The only clue towards such a list, indeed, occurs in two Carmelite manuscripts of 1387 and 1393.28 In both manuscripts the lists are appended to the ordinal of the German Carmelite Sibert de Beka, which was adopted by the Chapter-General of the Order in 1312. The list was known in the midfourteenth century by William of Coventry, who drew on it in his fanciful histories of the Order, and in the 1390s by Philip Ribot, the Catalan Carmelite who produced a fully developed legendary history of the Order.29 The list is headed Domus qui errant in Terra Sancta ante eius captionem, but after the first three it is difficult to know how seriously to regard it. The houses listed are as follows: Mt Carmel, Acre, Tyre, domus in heremo, Jerusalem, Nasyn, domus belli loci iuxta fontem ortorum, Tripoli, [Damascus], Antioch, the Black Mountain, Cyprus, Fortanie in heremo, Iconium, domus Deo dantes, [Nicosia], Lumason (=Limassol), Paphos, [Famagusta].30 Some of these are more plausible than others. Before 1268, when it fell to the Mamluks, Antioch was an obvious place for an order of increasingly urban friars to found a house; the same is true of Tripoli before 1289. The Cypriot part of the list can be attested up to a point from other sources of evidence: Carmelite houses are known in Nicosia and Famagusta. Moreover, ‘Fortanie’, though the location has yet to be determined, is given, in anagrammatic form as Enatrof, as the location where, in retirement, the prior-general of the Order, Nicholas Gallicus, wrote his poem Ignea sagitta in 1270, and it may have been the site of the first Carmelite refuge in Cyprus after the flight of 1238.31 The poem itself is a diatribe against the mendicant tendencies in the Order and a celebration of contemplative spirituality based in ‘the desert’, so it is likely that Fortanie was an early rural site, established before Quae honorem conditoris. Other place-names in Cyprus, notably Karmi, to the west of St Hilarion, near Kyrenia, and Karmiotissa, near Limassol, likewise suggest Carmelite settlement.32 Aside from Fortanie, the earliest attestation to a Carmelite house in Cyprus comes from 1300, when a Narbonnese merchant left a bequest to the Carmelites of Nicosia.33 It is likely, of course, that the house was fairly well established by this time.

26 27 28

29

30 31

32 33

Bullarium Carmelitanum, I, 21; Bullarium Cyprium, f-36, p. 516. Ludolph of Sudheim, De itinere Terrae Sancte, ed. G. A. Neumann, AOL II, 341. Siena, Bibl comm. Degli Intronati, MS G.IX 45, f. 72r; Rome, Bib Vat MS lat 3991, f. 87v. John Bale reproduced the same list in his notebook: Oxford Bodley MS 73, f. 178r. ‘William of Coventry’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29485?docPos=2; on Ribot, see Jotischky, Carmelites and Antiquity, 136–50. Names in parentheses are omitted from the earliest, Siena manuscript. A. Staring, ed., ‘Nicolae prioris generalis Ignea Sagitta’, Carmelus 9 (1962), 237–307; Staring, ed., Medieval Carmelite Heritage: Early Reflections on the Nature of the Order, Textus et studia Carmelitana 16 (Rome, 1989), 262–6; for discussion on Ignea sagitta, see Jotischky, Carmelites and Antiquity, 79–105, R. Copsey, ‘The Ignea sagitta and Its Readership’, Carmelus 46 (1999), 164–73. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 215. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 217; C. Desimoni, ed., ‘Actes passés à Famagouste de 1299 à 1301 par devant le notaire genois Lamberto di Sambuceto’, ROL I (1893), 327–32.

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The house in Famagusta was founded after 1311, when Clement V gave permission to found a house there.34 Some of the locations in the list of houses, notably Iconium and Damascus, where there were never Latin presences, can be rejected as fourteenth-century inventions, while ‘Nasyn’ is unclear, and those described by circumlocutions (e.g. domus in heremo) sound like memories transmitted orally from one generation to another. Jerusalem and the Black Mountain pose different puzzles. It is possible that the Carmelites might – as the Dominicans appear to have done – have established a presence in Jerusalem in the period when it was returned to Frankish hands between 1229 and before its fall to the Turks in 1244. Indeed, later medieval Carmelite legend, in seeking putative early Christian ancestry for the Order, included the idea that the Carmelites had a convent at the domus Annae, the house of the mother of the Blessed Virgin, which of course became a Benedictine nunnery at the beginning of the twelfth century.35 However, there is no evidence to support this contention, and it is particularly unlikely given that the terms of the treaty of 1229 did not permit new churches to be built in the city. The Black Mountain is more plausible given the history of the area as a centre for monasticism, and without doubt the Carmelites could have found a location there with similar characteristics as those to be found on Mt Carmel but, again, firm evidence is lacking. Perhaps, as Adrian Staring suggested, this is in fact a reference to a group of hermits known as the Fratres Heremitae Sancti Joannis Baptistae, who have been identified as a community that adopted the Rule of Benedict in 1235 and by 1269 had resettled in Avignon.36 It was precisely the reputation of the Black Mountain for austere monastic practices that made it seem attractive to later Carmelite writers. There is no evidence, moreover, for Carmelite houses in Paphos or Limassol. Clearly, however, local traditions had been established by the sixteenth century that represented the Carmelites as the first Latin religious order to have been founded on Cyprus after the conquest of 1191.37 This must have derived from the Carmelites themselves, and probably from William of Coventry (fl. 1340/60) specifically. In his Chronica brevis, William claimed that hermits from Mt Carmel first went to Cyprus as refugees from Saladin’s invasion of 1187, and that they were gathered into two new foundations by Richard I in 1191, at Limassol and Fortanie.38 In a different work, De duplici fuga, William expands on this theme, pointing out that the original hermitage on Mt Carmel was repopulated by the Cypriot refugees.39 This chronology makes sense, of course, only if one accepts fourteenth-century Carmelite historical traditions about the founding of the Order. It has always been the case that we know more about what later Carmelites thought of the origins of their Order, or how they wanted it to be seen, than we do about the verifiable history of the hermits in the Crusader States. Curiously, given the prominence of 34

35 36 37 38 39

Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 218; Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis fratrum beate virgine Mariae de monte Carmelo, ed. G. Wessels (Rome, 1912), I, pp. 65, 434; Bullarium Cyprium, q-80, pp. 402–3. Jotischky, Carmelites and Antiquity, 226–7. Staring, ed., Medieval Carmelite Heritage, 262; R. W. Emery, The Friars in Medieval France (New York, 1962), 119. Étienne de Lusignan, Chorograffia et breve historia universalle dell’isola de Cipro (Bologna, 1573), f. 32v. William of Coventry, Chronica brevis, in Staring, ed., Medieval Carmelite Heritage, 274–5. William of Coventry, De duplici fuga, in Staring, ed., Medieval Carmelite Heritage, 279–81.

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associations with Elijah in the pilgrimage tradition, the hermits did not immediately exploit these connections. As we have seen, their initial designation in the eyes of the church hierarchy was simply as hermits living a penitential life. By the 1240s, they had taken on Marian associations, and Innocent IV addressed them as ‘hermits of the Blessed Virgin’. This Marian appellation was to remain crucial to the Order throughout, but in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and once the Order was well established in the West, Elijah also began to feature in Carmelite self-projection. The creation and development of the supposed Elianic foundation legend, and its subsequent ramifications, are some of the most distinctive features of the Carmelite Order in the Middle Ages and beyond. One consequence of the attempt to present themselves as heirs in an unbroken line of spiritual descent from Elijah, Elisha and the ‘sons of the prophets’ was the insistence that Carmelites had always been a feature of the religious landscape of the Holy Land. This meant that, even after 1291, the Holy Land – albeit a stylised version of its history – was a constant presence in the consciousness of one of the major mendicant orders in the West. The Carmelite priorgeneral of the province of the Holy Land had, indeed, signalled the Order’s desire to remain permanently there in letters to the West written in 1282.40 In 1294, only three years after the fall of Acre and the end of the Latin presence on the mainland, the prior-general of the Order instructed all books and documents that Carmelite friars had taken with them when they fled the Holy Land to be collected in a central place so that they could be easily restored there when the transfer of property took place after a successful crusade.41 Consciousness of the heritage of Mt Carmel also meant that some of the more recent history of the Church in the Crusader States was rewritten for the purposes of Carmelite history. It is in this light that we should see William of Coventry’s crediting of the Carmelites with planting the Latin Church in Cyprus in 1191. Similarly, in William’s version of events, it was Carmelites, and more especially the spring of Elijah on Mt Carmel, that saved Acre during a siege by the Turks.42 Neither scenario fits in with any known episode in the history of the Crusader States. A more plausible story, recorded in the sixteenth century but probably dating from much earlier in Carmelite circles, is that Pope Gregory X’s attempt to launch a crusade in the 1270s was the result of a visit to Mt Carmel when he was accompanying Lord Edward’s crusade in 1270 as archdeacon of Liège; this, however, cannot be substantiated.43 Even more fanciful is the legend of the Carmelite hermit St Angelo, ostensibly a contemporary of Francis and Dominic, whose story as told in a fifteenth-century version required the suspension of any historically reliable knowledge of the genuine situation in the Holy Land under crusader rule.44 40

41 42

43 44

R. Copsey, ‘Two letters written from the Holy Land in support of the Carmelite Order’, in Copsey, ed., Carmel in Britain: Studies on the Early History of the Carmelite Order, Vol. III, The Hermits from Mount Carmel (Faversham, 2004), 29–50. E. Friedman, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel: A Study in Carmelite Origins (Rome, 1979), 187–8. On William’s writing about Mt Carmel, see A. Jotischky, ‘Crusading and crusaders in medieval Carmelite texts: William of Coventry and the Holy Land’, in J. Röhrkasten and C. Zermatten, eds., Historiography and Identity: Responses to Medieval Carmelite Culture, Vita Regularis – Ordnungen und Deutungen Religiosen Lebens I (Dresden, 2016), 79–90. The story is recorded in a manuscript notebook belonging to John Bale, Bodley MS 73, f. 61v. L. Saggi, S. Angelo di Sicilia. Studio sulla vita, devozione, folklore, Textus et studia historica Carmelitana 6 (Rome, 1962); A. Jotischky, ‘Carmelites and crusading in the later Middle Ages’, in P. D. Clarke and C. Methuen, eds., The Church on Its Past, Studies in Church History 49 (Woodbridge, 2013), 110–20.

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The Carmelite legendary should not obscure the real epilogue to the Order’s contribution to the history of crusading and the Crusader States. It was a Provençal Carmelite, Peter Thomas, who as papal legate in the East (1359) and titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople (1364), was instrumental in encouraging and preaching the crusade of 1365, in which Peter I of Cyprus temporarily seized Alexandria.45 Carmelite friars made pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though the evidence does not suggest that these were frequent, and, according to local tradition, a Flemish Carmelite was martyred while preaching to the Turks in 1462, though we do not know where.46 In fact, the most profound Carmelite contribution to the history of crusading was probably made in the Baltic region, when the English Carmelite theologian Thomas Netter was part of an embassy attempting to mediate between the Teutonic Knights and King Władysław of Poland in 1419. If Netter’s involvement tells us nothing about the Holy Land, it does at least show that Carmelite scholars continued to be preoccupied with questions about the legitimacy and the limits of holy war.47

45

46

47

N. Coureas, ‘Phillipe de Mézières’ portrait of Peter Thomas as a preacher’, Carmelus 57 (2010), 63–80; R. BlumenfeldKosinski, ‘Phillipe de Mézières’ Life of Saint Pierre de Thomas at the crossroads of late medieval hagiography and crusading ideology’, Viator 40 (2009), 223–48. See Calendar of Close Rolls: Edward II 1307–1327, 4 vols. (London, 1900–8), I, (1307–1313), p. 542, for the pilgrimage of the Carmelite friar John de Boukhill in 1312; E. Friedman, ‘Nicola Calciuri, O.Carm (d.1466), a genuine witness to the Carmelite monastery in the wadi ʾAin as-Siah?’ Carmelus 32 (1985), 60–73; Oxford Bodley MS 73, f. 16v. J. Röhrkasten, ‘Thomas Netter: Carmelite and diplomat’, in J. Bergström-Allen and R. Copsey, eds., Thomas Netter of Walden: Carmel in Britain, Studies on the Early History of the Carmelite Order 4 (Rome, 2009), 113–36.

10 The Franciscan Provincia Terrae Sanctae

At the chapter held at Portiuncula, Assisi, in 1217 the Franciscan Order set up its first provinces, one of which was the Provincia Terrae Sanctae. At the head of each province was a provincial minister, whose duties were defined in the Rule of 1223: ‘[he] examined postulants and received them into the Order, made arrangements for the disposition of their goods, issued licences to preachers, gave spiritual direction to the friars, and meted out punishment to those who broke the rule’.1 Brother Elias was the first Provincial Minister of the Holy Land, and possibly went there in 1218. John Moorman considers that he benefited from the pilgrimage to Jerusalem made in 1215 by Brother Giles, who ‘must have gathered round him a number of disciples’ who formed the nucleus of the new province of which Elias took charge, but that is conjectural.2 In 1219 St Francis himself went to the Levant. He joined the army of the Fifth Crusade which was besieging Damietta, and showed courage in seeking an audience with Sultan alKamil, who – according to the Bishop of Acre, Jacques de Vitry, who was present in the crusading camp – ‘privately asked Francis to pray to the Lord for him, so that he might be inspired by God to adhere to that religion which was most pleasing to God’.3 That, of course, was a polite way of indicating that the audience was at an end. Francis stayed with the crusade until Damietta fell on 5 November 1219 and then retired to Acre, where he spent the winter. Although he had been unable to convert the sultan, he was successful in recruiting members of the secular clergy to his Order. Writing to friends in the West in the spring of 1220, Jacques de Vitry complained that Rainier, parish priest of St Michael’s Acre,4 Colin the Englishman, clericus noster, and Lord Matthew, ‘whom I had left in charge of the Holy Cross’, that is of Acre cathedral, had all joined the Franciscan Order, and that he had had difficulty in dissuading the cantor of Acre and others from following their example.5 Jacques viewed the Franciscan Order with hostility: ‘Indeed, this form of monasticism seems very dangerous to Us’ (Hec tamen religio valde periculosa nobis videtur). He was bothered by the seemingly indiscriminate acceptance of new 1 2 3

4 5

J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), 62. Moorman, History, 227. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. Huygens, no. VI, pp. 620–1. Huygens dates this letter to the spring of 1220: ibid., p. 536. See also J. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian–Muslim Encounter (Oxford, 2009). Pringle, Churches no. 438, IV, pp. 149–50. Matthew was a canon of Acre; the dean, Constantine de Duacho, had accompanied James to Damietta: Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. Huygens, no. IV, p. 593.

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brethren in the Order and by the lack of training they received.6 His opinion was significant, because he was bishop of Acre (where the Franciscans had their headquarters) and because – having been directly appointed by Innocent III – his views were taken seriously by his fellow bishops. This may help to explain the lack of enthusiasm which the Franciscans inspired in the Crusader States. Fr Roncaglia has drawn attention to the paucity of evidence about the Provincia Terrae Sanctae in the thirteenth century which contrasts so markedly with the abundance of evidence about the Franciscans in the rest of the Latin Church at that time.7 When St Francis returned to Italy in 1220, he took Brother Elias with him.8 Although Girolamo Golubovich claimed that Luke of Apulia was appointed to succeed him as Provincial Minister, Martiniano Roncaglia points out that there is no contemporary evidence for this appointment, which is mentioned only in later sources.9 Brother Elias’ successor was Benedict of Arezzo, who reached Syria in 1221 and whose later career in the Order is described in detail by Golubovich.10 The convent of the Franciscans in Acre, which was the headquarters of the province, stood near the eastern wall of the suburb of Montmusard.11 In 1230 Pope Gregory IX issued an instruction to the Latin patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch forbidding them to place any obstacle in the way of lay patrons who wished to build chapels for the use of the Franciscans, provided that such projects had the approval of the Provincial Minister, but also specifying that the Franciscans should not be allowed to receive tithes or any other kind of income from endowments.12 It should have been considered an advantage by the Latin hierarchy that the Franciscans, who at that time were still adhering to their founder’s ideal of poverty, were not competing with them for endowments. The pope’s intervention may have been prompted by the restoration of the Holy Places to Latin rule in 1229 as a result of Frederick II’s treaty with al-Kamil. As a new order, the Franciscans could not claim back any houses which had formerly belonged to them in these cities as most of the older monastic communities could, and relied on the munificence of patrons to build new convents. There is no evidence that they were able to establish houses at Bethlehem or Nazareth at this time,13 but their presence in Jerusalem is not in doubt. Riccoldo of Monte Croce, a Dominican missionary, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in c. 1288 and, when describing the Way of the Cross from the palace of Pilate to Calvary, remarks, after identifying the place where Simon of Cyrene was ordered to help Christ carry the Cross: ‘Near there is the place which belonged to the Friars Minor’ (Ibi iuxta est locus qui fuit fratrum Minorum).14 This must represent a true tradition. Riccoldo, who was not a Franciscan, had no reason to invent this information, and it can only relate to the years 1229–44 when Jerusalem was under Latin rule. Denys Pringle has examined this evidence and shown the location of this 6 7 9 11 12 13

Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. Huygens, no. VI, pp. 620–3. 8 M. Roncaglia, I francescani in Oriente durante le Crociate (Cairo, 1954), 33. Moorman, History, 97. 10 Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, 66–7; Roncaglia, I Francescani in Oriente, 33. Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, 29–49. Pringle, Churches no. 381, IV, pp. 48–50, and Map, pp. 16–17. Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. J. H. Sbaralea, 4 vols. (Rome, 1759–68), I, p. 8; Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, p. 160, s. 41. 14 Roncaglia, I Francescani in Oriente, 45–6. Riccoldo of Monte Croce, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, 66.

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house on his map of crusader Jerusalem.15 It seems safe to assume that any members of the community who were present in 1244 were killed when the Khwarizmians sacked the city. When Louis IX of France went on crusade in 1248–54, he spent a year at Jaffa with his army (May 1252–June 1253). During that time he built a convent there for the Franciscans. This was clearly a substantial foundation: there were ten altars in the chapel, and the king gave altar plate and vestments for their service. He also made a gift of liturgical books, together with books to be used by the brethren for study. This is known from the Life of St Louis written in 1302–3 by William of St Pathus. He had not taken part in the crusade, but had received this information from Louis’ widow, Queen Margaret, whose confessor he had become in 1277.16 Roncaglia suggested that the gift of books might imply that Louis intended the convent of Jaffa to be a house of study.17 This important foundation was shortlived, for Jaffa was captured by the Mamluk sultan Baibars in 1268, and the Franciscan presence there came to an end.18 Two other Franciscan houses were founded in the Kingdom of Acre. The convent in Sidon is known only through a reference in a charter of Julian II, Lord of Sidon, who on 21 March 1253 gave Pierre d’Avalon a square in the city, extending on the south side towards ‘la maison des frères menors’.19 The house of the Order in Tyre is better documented, although the evidence is slender. On 1 March 1255 Pope Alexander IV appointed the minister of the Franciscans at Tyre, the Master of the Schools of Antioch and the chancellor of Tripoli to investigate the legitimacy of Raymond, Lord of Seslemende, nephew and potential heir of Thomas, the constable of Tripoli.20 Then in 1256 Alexander IVoffered indulgences to people who prayed in the Franciscan churches of Acre and Tyre on the feasts of St Francis, St Clare and St Anthony of Padua.21 The fact that Gregory IX in 1230 wrote to the patriarch of Antioch as well as to the patriarch of Jerusalem about facilitating the building of Franciscan priories is certainly evidence that Franciscans were present in the northern patriarchate. Although it has been generally assumed that the first priory of the Order there was in Antioch city, the evidence for this is largely inferential; there is no surviving documentation relating to this community.22 A Franciscan house was established at Tripoli before 1241. On 18 November of that year the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Albert of Rizzato, presided at a court in the bishop’s palace, at which he mediated a settlement of a dispute between Prince Bohemond V and the Master of the Hospital, and among the witnesses were two Franciscans, Brothers Gautier and Paschal.23 The Franciscan province of the Holy Land included the Kingdom of Cyprus. The exact date of the first settlement of Franciscans there is not known, but Nicholas Coureas has drawn attention to the fact that in 1231 Eschiva of Montbéliard, wishing to evade capture by 15 16 17 19 21 22 23

Pringle, Churches no. 290 and Map 2, III, pp. 97, 478. William of St Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. H.-F. Delaborde (Paris, 1899), 46–7. 18 Roncaglia, I Francescani in Oriente, 44–5. Pringle, Churches no. 1125, I, p. 271. 20 Strehlke no. 103, p. 82; Pringle, Churches no. 243, II, p. 328. Alexander IV, Registres no. 316. Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, p. 234, no. 64; Pringle, Churches no. 456, IV, p. 205. Even the sceptical Roncaglia accepts that there was a convent in Antioch: I Francescani in Oriente, 53–4. CGOH I, no. 2280.

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the forces of Frederick II who had invaded the island, disguised herself as a Franciscan friar. Coureas points out that this stratagem would not have succeeded if Franciscans had not already been established and familiar figures in the island.24 Their principal house was at Beaulieu near Nicosia, which they sold to the Cistercians in 1251 in order to move into the new house which they had built inside the city.25 This led to litigation between the Franciscans and the archbishop of Nicosia, who claimed that canon law required that the brethren should have given Beaulieu to him, not sold it at a profit. In January 1254 Pope Innocent IV appointed the bishop of Tripoli and the archdeacon of Acre as judges delegate to investigate this complaint.26 When Louis IX went on crusade in 1248 he spent the winter in Cyprus, where he was joined by the Franciscan William of Rubruck. William had been born in Flanders, but, as is clear from his own narrative, was already living in the Levant as a member of the Provincia Terrae Sanctae. Peter Jackson and David Morgan in their edition of William’s work are inclined to think that Paul Pelliot may have been correct in suggesting that before he joined Louis’ entourage William had been lector in the Franciscan convent of Nicosia.27 Between 1253 and 1255 William undertook a mission to the Mongol Empire, which had the full support of Louis IX, though William was not given diplomatic status as a royal envoy, but described himself simply as a Christian friar. This journey must have been undertaken with the permission of Thomas, the Provincial Minister of the Holy Land.28 On his return William went to Cyprus to report to the minister, who was about to visit the mainland communities and who took William with him. They first went to Antioch, ‘which is in a gravely weakened condition’, William noted, and then went to Tripoli, where the provincial chapter met on 15 August 1255. No doubt the Provincial Minister wanted William to make a report to the assembly about his visit to the Mongol court. William asked permission to go to France to present his report to King Louis, but this was refused and he was appointed lector in the convent of Acre.29 During the thirteenth century the provinces of the Order were divided into Custodies, and sources from the second half of that century show that there were three Custodies in the province of Terra Sancta. Roncaglia has suggested that these Custodies were coterminous with the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Latin patriarchate of Antioch and the Kingdom of Cyprus, and that their respective headquarters were situated in Acre, Antioch (until 1268, and thereafter Tripoli) and Nicosia.30 Houses of Poor Clares, the Second Order of the Franciscans, which provided for nuns to live in strict enclosure, were founded at Acre, Tripoli and Antioch. In 1257 a convent of Benedictine nuns at Antioch obtained permission to become a house of Poor Clares.31 Very 24 25 27

28

29 31

Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 205; Philip of Novara, Mémoires, ed. Ch. Kohler (Paris, 1913), 68. 26 See pp. 258–9. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 68, pp. 174–5. William of Rubruck, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, trans. P. Jackson, with intro., notes and appendices by P. Jackson with D. Morgan, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser. 173 (London, 1990), 39–42; P. Pelliot, Recherches sur les Chrétiens d’Asie centrale et de l’extrême Orient, with additional notes by J. Dauvillier (Paris, 1973), 233. William of Rubruck, Mission, 175 n. 3. While William was absent, Innocent IV ordered Thomas and a Dominican colleague to supervise the election of a Greek archbishop in Cyprus: Innocent IV, Acta Innocentii papae IV (1243–1254), ed. T. Haluščinski and M. M. Wojnar, CICO Fontes IV (I) (Rome, 1962), pp. 169–70; Innocent IV, Registres no. 7332. 30 William of Rubruck, Mission, 274–8. Roncaglia, I Francescani in Oriente, 36. Bullarium Franciscanum, II, p. 202.

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little is known about these communities, apart from the later hagiographical accounts describing the martyrdom of these sisters.32 A house of Poor Clares was also founded at Nicosia before 1291: in March of that year Pope Nicholas IV granted an indulgence to those who prayed in the chapel of this house on the feasts of St Francis, St Clare, St Anthony of Padua and the Blessed Virgin Mary.33 The Poor Clares flourished in the peaceful conditions of Cyprus. Between 1295 and 1298 a second community was established at La Cava near Nicosia, and before 1340 a third house was founded at Famagusta.34 After 1250 the Franciscans of Acre became slightly more involved in public administration than they had previously been, and this may reflect the way in which the Order was becoming assimilated to the church establishment throughout Latin Christendom. In 1255 the clerk Signoretto was put on trial for presenting letters, which it was alleged that he had forged, to the treasurer of Acre. The trial was conducted by the archbishop of Tyre, but among those whom he consulted was the Minister Ordinis Minorum.35 This would seem to relate to the Provincial Minister of Terra Sancta, who probably had his headquarters at Acre as did the Custos of the Custodia of Jerusalem. In 1257 when John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, gave estates to the Master of the Hospital, the Custos of the Franciscans of Acre was appointed guarantor to ensure that the provisions of this conveyance were observed.36 The Franciscans of Acre received bequests from laypeople in the 1260s, which is a mark of the esteem in which they were held, since they had no parochial rights.37 Alexander IV encouraged the faithful to visit the Franciscan church at Acre by granting indulgences to those who did so on the feasts of St Francis, St Clare and St Anthony of Padua.38 The Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, drawn up a few years later, stated that 300 days’ indulgence was available to anyone who prayed in the Franciscan church on any day.39 The Franciscans sometimes undertook pastoral work in other parts of the Latin Kingdom. When the fortress of Saphet in Upper Galilee was captured by the Mamluks in 1266, two Franciscans, James of Puy and Jeremiah, were executed, together with the prior of the Templars, on the orders of Sultan Baibars.40 In 1268 Baibars captured Jaffa and with it the Franciscan convent founded by Louis IX, which was the most impressive set of buildings owned by the Order in the Kingdom.41 In the same year Baibars captured Antioch, and his army sacked the city. Among the victims were seven Franciscans.42 The Poor Clares of Antioch were also killed, and it was later said that in order to escape rape they had first disfigured themselves by cutting off their noses. Although little credence can be given to this story, which is a commonplace in the hagiography of consecrated virgins, it is evidence that the community was still in existence in 1268, otherwise there would have been no point

32 35

36 39 41 42

33 34 See p. 277. Nicholas IV, Registres no. 4467. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 211. Reinhold Röhricht, who published part of this document, transcribed the name as magister Ordinis Minorum; it seems probable that the text he used had been wrongly copied and that ‘Magister’ should have read ‘Minister’ since Magister was not a title used by the Franciscan hierarchy. See RRH no. 1226. 37 38 CGOH I, no. 2853. Pringle, Churches no. 381, IV, p. 49. Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, pp. 234, 417. 40 Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, c. ii, p. 236. Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum, III, xii, 8, p. 222. Thoreau, Lion of Egypt, 187–8. Chronicon Minoritae Ephordiensis, Continuatio I, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH (SS), XXIV (Hanover, 1879), p. 207.

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in telling this tale.43 As we shall see, exactly the same story circulated about Poor Clare communities at Tripoli and Acre.44 During the second half of the thirteenth century the popes began to appoint Franciscans to bishoprics in the patriarchate of Antioch. Augustine of Nottingham was appointed bishop of Latakia in 1254;45 Bishop Paul of Tripoli, who reigned from 1261 to 1285, was a Franciscan,46 as were Bishop William of Tortosa, appointed by Urban IV in 1263, who died between 1268 and 1272,47 and Hugh, the last Latin bishop of Gibelet (Jubail).48 Yet this proliferation of Franciscan bishops did not lead to an increase in the number of Franciscan convents. After 1268 the only Franciscan communities in the patriarchate of Antioch were the convent of Tripoli and the house of Poor Clares in that city. In 1283 a distinguished group of noblemen and clergy met in the castle of Nephin, south of Tripoli, to witness a legal accusation of treason drawn up against Guy, Lord of Gibelet, who had tried to take the city of Tripoli from Prince Bohemond VII. Among those present were Brother Matthew (Mathé), Vicar of the Franciscan Provincial Minister of Terra Sancta, and Brother James of Antioch, Custos of the Franciscan convent of Tripoli.49 This may indicate that the Franciscan bishops of Tripoli and Gibelet were concerned to involve their brethren more fully in matters of state. Tripoli was captured by the Mamluks on 26 April 1289 and, like Antioch, was sacked by them. A large number of Franks were massacred, among them the Franciscans. This is known because the Franciscan bishop Hugh of Gibelet took refuge in England, probably after 1291, where he lived under the patronage of Edward I. Some of the accounts which he gave of the loss of the last crusader strongholds in Syria and Palestine were recorded by a Franciscan annalist and were later incorporated in the Chronicle of Lanercost, a house of Austin canons in Cumberland.50 Bishop Hugh told how an English friar in the convent of Tripoli had urged the citizens to repair a breach in the wall during the siege, and had stood in the gap, holding a large cross to encourage the workmen, until he was cut down by the Muslim attackers. Hugh also related that the Poor Clares of Tripoli had been raped and murdered when the city was sacked, and told how their abbess, Luceta, had, by a stratagem, preserved her virginity, though not her life. Hugh claimed to have given her Christian burial, though he does not explain how that had been possible. The version of her martyrdom preserved in the Lanercost Chronicle has all the marks of a romantic fiction intended to edify the unworldly. An emir, who led the assault on the house of Poor Clares, had been so struck by the beauty of Abbess Luceta that he proposed marriage to her. In gratitude, she offered to teach him a charm which would preserve him from harm in battle, and offered to prove its efficacy by asking him to strike her with his sword while she was reciting it. The charm was the Hail Mary, and while she was saying it the emir cut off her head. Hugh had not been present at her death, and may have invented this explanation of why she had been 43 44

45 47 49

50

J. Quétif and J. Echard, eds., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Recensiti, 2 vols. (Paris, 1719–21), I, 423. See P. Booth, ‘Thietmar: person, place and text in thirteenth-century Holy Land pilgrimage’, unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University, 2017, 218–24, for discussion of earlier examples of this theme. 46 Innocent IV, Registres nos. 7397, 7399; Thomson, Friars in the Cathedral, 202–3. Urban IV, Registres no. 10. 48 Urban IV, Registres no. 219. Hamilton, Latin Church, 240. Bishop Hugh of Gibelet OFM is first mentioned in this document, edited by Mas Latrie in his Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 662–8. Moorman, History, 398–9.

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beheaded, a fact which he would have observed when he conducted her funeral.51 Although the chronicler says that Bishop Hugh’s own ‘see and city’ of Gibelet had been destroyed when the Mamluks overran the County of Tripoli in 1289, this was not the case. Peter of Embriaco, the Genoese lord of Gibelet, continued to hold his fief under Mamluk rule for a few years after the fall of Acre in 1291. The chronicler’s comment must have been based on inference, rather than on Hugh’s report.52 In 1286 King Henry II of Cyprus went to Tyre and was crowned king of Jerusalem. When he reached Acre he found the citadel guarded by troops in the pay of Philip IVof France, and an assembly of prelates and barons met in the house which had formerly belonged to Philip of Montfort, Lord of Tyre, to persuade Henry to accept the French presence and not provoke a civil war by demanding the surrender of the citadel. The document which set out the terms of mediation, which the king accepted, was sealed by the Franciscan bishop Matthew of Famagusta, who had accompanied Henry to the mainland. Among the mediators present were Gilbert, the ‘Custos Minorum’, and other members of his Order. He was the head of the Franciscan Custodia in the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem and had perhaps been invited to take part in this gathering by Bishop Matthew.53 Golubovich published part of a manuscript he found in the archive of the Franciscan convent of Assisi, which he dated to c. 1335; this reported that, when it became evident that Sultan Qalavun was about to besiege Acre, ‘The Guardian [of the Franciscan convent there] with many of the brethren withdrew from Acre before the siege and went to Cyprus, with many other secular clergy, religious, and laypeople. They feared that they might be frustrated by their own weakness in undergoing martyrdom at the hands of the Saracens . . . and chose rather to flee to another city, just as the Saviour had advised those who were weak among the disciples. But fourteen [Franciscan] brothers were steadfast in the faith of Christ . . . While they stayed unmoving inside their church, they were killed by the Saracens, thereby dying martyrs’ deaths and being taken up to Heaven in glory by Christ.’54 The Dominican, Riccoldo of Monte Croce, who was in Baghdad at the time Acre fell, heard reports of what had happened from survivors, which he cast in the form of a letter to his martyred Dominican brethren, who had been killed during the sack. He wrote: ‘I have been told that when the time of death was near, some of our dear Franciscan brothers, though I do not know who they were, sought refuge with you in our house and died martyrs’ deaths alongside you.’55 The Poor Clares who remained in Acre were also killed during the sack. This is recorded in later Franciscan sources, notably the Chronica XXIV Generalium, completed in c. 1369. This preserves a lurid account of how the sisters cut off their noses to preserve their virginity, a stratagem which succeeded in defending their honour, but which so horrified the Muslim troops who sacked the convent that they killed them all. Golubovich is justly sceptical about the reliability of this late source, which is recycling a topos about the 51 52

53 54 55

The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, trans. H. Maxwell (Glasgow, 1913), 64–6. R. Irwin, ‘Iqtā and the end of the Crusader States’, in P. M. Holt, ed., The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), 69. Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 671–3. Liber memorialis diversarum ystoriarum, cited in Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, 351–2. Riccoldo of Monte Croce, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, Letter II, 245.

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martyrdom of consecrated virgins, but argues that it almost certainly preserves a true tradition that the Poor Clares of Acre were killed during the sack of the city.56 Tyre surrendered to the Mamluks on 19 May. Because there had been no siege, any Franciscans who were present may have been allowed to retire to Cyprus. The Templars undertook a spirited defence of the sea castle of Sidon and held out until 14 July, but the fate of the Franciscans in that city is not known. The presence of Franciscan refugees in Cyprus from the mainland convents is substantiated by a deed of sale dated September 1292, in which Gerard of Antioch, Canon of Nicosia, sold a large house in the city to Archbishop John, himself a Franciscan, for the use of the Franciscan convent there, which, as Coureas has shown, was being expanded to house these refugee brethren.57 The Franciscans flourished in Cyprus after the fall of Acre. They already had a house at Paphos and perhaps another at Limassol, although the evidence for that is slight, but after Nicosia their most important house and church were at Famagusta, where they enjoyed the patronage of King Henry II.58 The two communities of Poor Clares in the kingdom have already been considered.59 As the Franciscan presence in the Kingdom of Acre was drawing to an end, a new sphere of activity opened to them. In c. 1280 the Order founded a house at Sivas in eastern Anatolia to work among the people of Great Armenia, the majority of whom had not accepted the union between the Latin and Armenian Churches agreed in 1198.60 In 1289 King Hethum II of Cilicia, perhaps acting under pressure from his overlord, Arghun, Il-Khan of Persia, who was seeking a Western alliance against the Mamluks, sent an embassy to Pope Nicholas IV led by John of Monte Corvino, a member of the Sivas community, to affirm his adherence to the union. The king also requested that a group of Franciscans might be attached to his court.61 The new Minister General, Raymond Gaufridi, sent a group of Spiritual Franciscans to the Cilician court, led by Angelo of Clareno. The Spirituals were a group within the Order who sought to adhere to the primitive observance and were reluctant to accept the compromises, particularly those concerning poverty, which had been introduced since their founder’s death in 1226. Raymond Gaufridi’s choice was well made, because the Spirituals conformed quite closely to the Armenian ideal of ascetic holiness. The Dominican pilgrim, Burchard of Mt Zion, stayed with the Armenian Catholicos in his castle of Hromgla in c. 1280 and wrote of his host: ‘In his diet, clothing and way of life he was so exemplary that I have not seen the like in any person, whether religious or secular; and I say for certain that in my judgement all the clothes that he wore were in no way worth five shillings sterling. Yet he had very strong castles and large rents, and possessed infinite riches.’62 Hethum II wrote to the Chapter-General of the Order, which met at Paris in 1292, commending their work, and the Chapter decided to incorporate the Kingdom of Cilicia into 56 57

58 60

61

62

Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, 350–1. Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, ed. Coureas and Schabel, no. 52, pp. 152–4; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 207. 59 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 208–9. See pp. 276, 278. J. Richard, La papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Age (XIIIe–Xve siècles), Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome (Rome, 1998), 115; Hamilton, ‘The Armenian Church and the papacy’. Nicholas IV, Registres no. 2229; CICO Fontes III, vol. V, pt, II, Acta romanorum pontificum ab Innocentio V ad Benedictum XI (1276–1304), ed. F. M. Delorme and A. L. Tautu (Vatican City, 1954), pp. 152–3, no. 85. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 91–2.

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the Provincia Terrae Sanctae which then had its headquarters in Nicosia.63 According to Golubovich, there were at that time two Franciscan communities in Cilicia, one at Tarsus and the other at Sis, which was the convent of Spirituals attached to the court.64 When Hethum II abdicated for the first time in 1292 he was professed as a Franciscan and was known as ‘frere Johan d’Erminie’.65 The Spiritual Franciscans were viewed with suspicion from the time of their arrival in Cilicia by James the Provincial Minister, who in 1289 had written to warn King Hethum against them.66 When Cilicia was placed under James’ jurisdiction in 1292 he was able to make life difficult for them, which he did to such an extent that in 1294 they returned to Italy.67 The Franciscans retained their popularity with the rulers of Cilicia in the thirteenth century. King Oshin (1308–20) requested Pope Clement V to send a group of Franciscans to be attached to his court, as did his kinsman, Hethum, Lord of Corycus.68 The importance of the Franciscan Order in the Kingdoms of Cyprus and Cilicia in the early fourteenth century contrasts strongly with its lack of consequence in the Crusader States before 1291. It is true that there were influential Franciscans in those states, though they were not members of the Provincia Terrae Sanctae, but men appointed to high office by the popes. The outstanding example of this was Lorenzo da Orte, the Franciscan penitentiary of Innocent IV, whom in 1246 the pope announced that he was sending to the Levant as ‘an angel of peace’. He had legatine powers in Armenia, Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus and Frankish Greece, as well as in the Crusader States, and was accredited to negotiate with all Greek and Syrian Orthodox, the Maronites and members of the Church of the East (Nestorians) and the Syrian Orthodox Church (Jacobites), living in the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch. No Latin Christian in those regions was allowed to claim exemption from the legate’s jurisdiction.69 Louis IX of France also considered the Franciscans of great importance, as his endowment of their convent at Jaffa and his support for the mission of William of Rubruck to the Mongols make clear.70 As the work of William of Rubruck shows, the Franciscans of the Provincia Terrae Sanctae included some men of exceptional ability. Nevertheless, the Franciscan communities at Jerusalem, Jaffa, Acre, Sidon, Tripoli and Antioch received very little attention from the Frankish ruling classes. Their services were seldom required in the public life of the Latin Kingdom, and very little is known about their activities. One possible reason for this is that the territory remaining in Frankish control was limited, and was already served by a large number of Latin Catholic regular and secular clergy when the Franciscans first established foundations there. Consequently the opportunities for exercising their ministry 63 65

66 67

68 69

70

64 Richard, La papauté et les missions, 115; Moorman, History, 194. Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, p. 355. His name in religion is given by the Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre: Cronaca del Templare di Tiro c. 314, p. 268; Golubovich, Biblioteca, II, p. 464. Hethum II resumed power in 1294–6, then abdicated a second time, and returned to power for a third time in 1299–1303. Golubovich, Biblioteca, I, pp. 327–8. Moorman, History, 194–6; D. Douie, The Nature and Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli (Manchester, 1932), 54–5; A. Jotischky, ‘The Franciscan return to the Holy Land (1333) and Mt Sion: pilgrimage and the apostolic mission’, in A. Boas, ed., The Crusader Worlds (London, 2016), 247–50. Richard, La papauté et les missions, 202. Hethum of Corycus later became an Austin canon. Innocent IV, Acta Innocentii papae IV, no. 31, p. 73; Innocent IV, Registres no. 3047; Hamilton, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 322. See p. 274.

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were limited. If, as seems likely, they worked chiefly among the urban poor, their achievements were not documented. Thus they made little outward impression on the Kingdom of Jerusalem or the principality of Antioch–Tripoli. Their most important impact was in the Kingdoms of Cyprus and Cilicia. In both realms, the majority of the population were Eastern-rite Christians, officially in communion with the Latin Church, though in practice often hostile to it or at least suspicious of it. Creating an awareness of Western spirituality among these Eastern Christian communities was a task which the Franciscans were particularly well qualified to undertake successfully.

11 The Dominican Provincia Terrae Sanctae

The Dominican province of the Holy Land was set up before 1228, for in that year it sent two diffinitores to the Chapter-General.1 Etienne de Lusignan, a Dominican who lived in Cyprus in the sixteenth century and wrote five works on its history, claimed that the first Dominican house in the province had been established near Nicosia in 1226 through the generosity of Countess Alice of Ibelin.2 This was Alice of Montbéliard, who was the wife of Philip of Ibelin (d. 1227) and the regent for the young king Henry I. Although Étienne de Lusignan had access to documents which no longer exist, the information he gives needs to be treated with caution, because he sometimes relied on inaccurate traditions, or drew unsustainable inferences from his sources. Yet although there is no independent evidence for this Cypriot foundation until 1244, when a contemporary described the Dominican and Franciscan houses of Nicosia as flanking the Cistercian convent of Beaulieu, there is no reason to suppose that the account of its origin which Étienne de Lusignan gave was not accurate.3 The Dominicans were certainly well established in Acre by the time that Frederick II went there in 1228–9. In May 1229 the patriarch, Gerold of Lausanne, wrote an open letter ‘to all the faithful of Christ’ denouncing the way in which the emperor had maltreated the Latin Church in the Holy Land during his visit. The patriarch complained that, among Frederick’s other enormities, while he was staying in Acre on Palm Sunday (8 April 1229), ‘he caused the Dominicans and also some Franciscans, who had come together to preach at certain appointed places, to be dragged from their pulpits by his henchmen and thrown to the ground, and then to be taken outside and beaten through the city as though they were brigands’.4 The Dominican convent in Acre, unlike those of most other new orders which arrived there in the thirteenth century, was situated in the old city, not in the suburb of Montmusard. It stood near the castle of the Templars, and F. M. Abel suggested that this site had probably been made available by the Knights. Although there is no direct supporting evidence, this hypothesis is plausible. As he points out, the Chapter-General of the Order in 1243 affirmed the friendship between themselves and the Templars: ‘When brethren are present at times when wills are being made, let them be careful not to hinder in any way bequests being made 1 2 4

W. A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, 1209–1500, 2 vols. (New York, 1966–73), I, 201. 3 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 211. See pp. 258–9. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, III, pp. 179–84; Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica, III, 135–40.

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to the Templars, who are true friends of our Order (or, for that matter, to other good men).’5 This friendship would explain why the Dominicans were manhandled by Frederick II’s troops in 1229, since he was openly at war with the Templars before his departure from Acre. As Denys Pringle has shown, the Dominican house in Acre stood by the sea to the north of the Templar castle.6 After Jerusalem had been restored to Latin rule by Frederick II’s treaty with al-Kamil in 1229, the Dominicans established a convent there, although they may have waited to do so until after the emperor had been reconciled with Gregory IX at the Peace of Ceprano in July 1230. The Dominican pilgrim, Riccoldo of Monte Croce, who visited Jerusalem in c. 1288, knew where the convent had stood, though his explanation is not very clear: ‘descending Mt Zion, we found the house of the Preaching Friars where there now remains a garden. This place is roughly midway between Solomon’s Temple and the Lord’s Temple.’7 Pringle has examined the evidence and has found that it does not enable him to reach a firm conclusion except that the convent ‘seems to have been outside the line of the former city walls’.8 Philip, the Dominican Provincial Prior, seems to have made the Jerusalem convent the headquarters of himself and his chapter. In 1237 Ignatius II (1222–52), Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch (often called the Jacobites), went to Jerusalem during Lent, accompanied by a group of bishops and by the monks of his household. Prior Philip discussed church unity with him, and Ignatius made a formal profession of obedience to the Holy See and submitted a written statement of Orthodox belief, drawn up in Syriac and Arabic. On Palm Sunday, 12 April, Ignatius and his entourage joined with the Latins in the procession from the Mount of Olives to the Temple, re-enacting Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.9 Philip’s account is in part corroborated by the Syrian Orthodox historian, Gregory Bar Hebraeus, who describes how, when Ignatius reached Jerusalem, he was met by the Frankish monks called Pherpherschuriae who showed him great honour and escorted him into the city, where he stayed in the Syrian Orthodox monastery of St Mary Magdalene. The term Pherpherschuriae, literally meaning ‘the Brothers of Syria’, was an attempt to describe the Friars Preacher.10 There had been a history of good relations between the Latin Church and the Syrian Orthodox in the twelfth century, and they had been particularly cordial between Patriarch Michael the Syrian (1166–99) and the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Aimery of Limoges (1140–c. 1196).11 Nevertheless, union between the two churches had not previously been achieved. The sincerity of Ignatius II’s desire for unity cannot be doubted. In c. 1238 he moved his see to a monastery which he had caused to be built on the slopes of Mt Silpius, inside the walls of Antioch, where he lived until his death in 1252.12 5

6 8 9

10 11 12

F. M. Abel, ‘Le couvent des Frères Prêcheurs à Saint-Jean d’Acre’, Revue Biblique 43 (1934), 265–84, citing B. M. Reichert, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historia, 26 (p. 276). 7 Pringle, Churches no. 380, IV, pp. 46–8. Riccoldo of Monte Croce, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, 50–1. Pringle, Churches no. 288, III, pp. 92–3. The text of Philip’s letter is published in Alberic of Trois Fontaines, Chronica, MGH (SS), XXIII, pp. 941–2. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, III, pp. 396–8, cites the text of the copy of this letter sent by Gregory IX’s Penitentiary to the Dominican priors of England. Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. J. B. Abbeloos and T. J. Lamy, 2 vols. (Louvain 1872–7), I, 654. B. Hamilton, ‘Three patriarchs at Antioch, 1165–1170’, in Balard, Kedar and Riley-Smith, eds., Dei gesta per francos, 199–207. Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, 668–70.

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Ignatius claimed to be the lawful patriarch of Antioch, and unless he had entered into union with the Holy See would not have been allowed by the Latin patriarch, Albert de Rizzato, to live permanently in the city, a privilege which had never been accorded to any of his predecessors, however cordial their relations with the Franks may have been. In his letter to Gregory IX, Prior Philip stated that he had also negotiated acts of unity, on the same terms as those agreed with Ignatius, with the Egyptian Jacobite archbishop and the eastern Nestorian archbishop of Jerusalem, each of whom had authority over members of their respective churches ‘dwelling in Syria and Phoenicia’, a phrase which seems to have been chosen to designate the coastal area under Frankish rule. In the case of the Nestorians, who should more properly be called the Church of the East, this marked the first step towards establishing closer relations with the Western Church, which continued to grow throughout the rest of the thirteenth century.13 The Egyptian Jacobite archbishop to whom Prior Philip referred was the representative of the Coptic patriarch of Egypt. The Copts were the sister church of the Syrian Orthodox; traditionally the territorial division between the jurisdictions of the two patriarchs had been at al-Arish on the northern edge of the Sinai peninsula, so that Jerusalem had been under the jurisdiction of the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch. In 1235 a new Coptic patriarch, Cyril III, had been appointed, bringing to an end a nineteen-year vacancy in that see.14 He consecrated a Coptic archbishop of Jerusalem, with authority over Copts living in Palestine and Syria. Patriarch Ignatius II objected strongly to this infringement of his authority, but could do nothing about it, because Cyril III had the support of the Ayyubid sultan, al-Kamil. Ignatius II found a more subtle way of asserting his power. During his stay in Jerusalem he was approached by an Ethiopian monk named Thomas who had come there on pilgrimage. The Church of Ethiopia was under the authority of the Coptic patriarch, who appointed its head, the Abuna, who was always an Egyptian.15 Thomas, who was a member of an aristocratic family, asked Ignatius to consecrate him as Abuna so that his people might have a head of their church who was a member of their own race. Although the Dominicans advised Ignatius to ignore this request, he took no notice and consecrated Thomas. This action had serious political implications because it infringed the rights of the Coptic patriarch, who was a subject of the Ayyubid sultan. Moreover, the Frankish occupation of Jerusalem depended entirely on the good will of Sultan al-Kamil, because the city walls had been destroyed during the Fifth Crusade. The Dominicans therefore informed the military orders – the Templars and the Hospitallers who were garrisoned in the city – about their anxiety, and an armed cohort went to the cathedral of St Mary Magdalene to remonstrate with the patriarch. He was, as they had intended, frightened by this show of force, but the diplomatic intervention of a member of the patriarch’s household succeeded in calming the situation. By claiming that the problem was the result of a linguistic misunderstanding, the official provided a means of defusing the tension. The patriarch abandoned his Ethiopian initiative, and good relations were restored between him and Prior Philip. It is not known what happened subsequently to the Ethiopian monk Thomas.16 13 14 15

B. Hamilton, The Christian World of the Middle Ages (Stroud, 2003), 191–204. V. Grümel, La chronologie, Traité d’études byzantines 1 (Paris, 1958), 445. 16 Hamilton, Christian World of the Middle Ages, 152–65. Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesisticum, 654–64.

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In his letter to Gregory IX Prior Philip reported that he had sent some of his brethren to Egypt to open negotiations about church unity with the new Coptic patriarch. This was the first occasion on which papal representatives had had direct contact with the Coptic Church. The papacy recognised the Orthodox patriarchs of Alexandria as heads of the Christian Church in Egypt, and Patriarch Nicholas I (1210–43) had sent a representative to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.17 The Egyptian Orthodox were few in number, most Egyptian Christians were members of the Coptic Church and the Coptic patriarch also had ecclesiastical authority over the independent Christian Kingdoms of Makuria and Alwa in Nubia, as well as over Ethiopia.18 There were thus important political implications as well as religious considerations involved in establishing links between the Latin Church and the Coptic Church. The Provincial Prior, Philip, was clearly a man of outstanding ability with an incisive mind. He had a firm grasp of the confessional diversity of Eastern Christianity and had thought about how best to promote relations with the different churches. In his letter to the pope he mentioned that ‘we have hastened to send four of our brethren to Armenia to learn the language, because the king and his barons have urged us to do so’. This is a reference to King Hethum I of Cilicia (1216–69), who was in communion with the Holy See. When Gregory IX received Philip’s letter, he was so impressed by it that he instructed his Penitentiary, the Dominican brother Godfrey, to send copies to all the priors of the Order in England and France. In this way the text circulated in England, where it was incorporated by Matthew Paris at St Alban’s in his Chronicle.19 Gregory IX himself wrote to Patriarch Ignatius and the Coptic and Nestorian archbishops of Jerusalem, welcoming them into full communion with Rome.20 The papacy had long been aware of the political advantages as well as the religious desirability of forming closer ties with Eastern Christian communities, and the mendicant orders provided the means of doing so in a systematic way. The Dominican Order was particularly important in this regard in its early years, because of its emphasis on learning and its willingness to ensure that some of its members received training in oriental languages. The presence of such Dominicans in the Crusader States benefited the secular establishment which lacked any group of men trained in diplomacy. In 1237 the General of the Order, Jordan of Saxony, went to the Levant to carry out a visitation of the Holy Land province. On his journey back to Europe he and his two companions were drowned when their ship was wrecked off the Syrian coast, but their bodies were recovered and taken back to Acre for burial in the Dominican convent.21 At the time of Jordan’s visitation, the Dominican convent of Tripoli may already have been founded. It was certainly established by 1241, when a court was convoked by Patriarch Albert of Antioch in the palace of the bishop of Tripoli to settle a dispute between Prince Bohemond V and the Master of the Hospital. Among those present were Brother Robert, Dominican Prior of Tripoli, and his companion.22 17 18 20

21

Innocent III, Acta Innocentii papae III (1198–1216), ed. T. Haluščynski, CICO Fontes III (II) (Vatican City, 1944), p. 481. 19 Hamilton, Christian World of the Middle Ages, 138–70. See n. 9, above. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, ed. A. L. Tautu, CICO Fontes III (Rome, 1950), no. 227, pp. 303–5; Gregory IX, Registres nos. 3789–91. 22 Jordan of Saxony, Vita Fratrum, p. 130; Abel, ‘Le couvent’, 281. CGOH I, no. 2280.

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Any Dominicans who were living in Jerusalem in 1244 when the Khwarizmians sacked the city would have been killed. The headquarters of the province after that time was the convent of Acre. News of the loss of Jerusalem was sent to the West by the prelates of the Holy Land, who chose as their envoys Bishop Galerand of Beirut and the Dominican brother Arnulf.23 They later attended the Council of Lyons, which opened on 26 June 1245; at the request of Bishop Galerand, Brother Arnulf read the letter of the bishops of the patriarchate of Jerusalem to the assembly. According to Matthew Paris’ informant, the delegates were so moved by what they heard that they burst into tears. How far this was due to Brother Arnulf’s rhetorical skills is not known, but Bishop Galerand had presumably delegated this task to him because he was known to be a good public speaker.24 When, later that year, the two envoys went to England, they were unable to move the devout Henry III to take the Cross, because he pleaded that his primary concern was the defence of his own realm.25 Pope Innocent IV was concerned to build on the work which Prior Philip had initiated in Gregory IX’s reign. In 1244 he sent an instruction to ‘the Master and Priors of the Dominican Province of the Holy Land’, granting them faculties to validate the Holy Orders and marriages of Eastern-rite Christians who had been reconciled to the Holy See, in cases where those sacraments had been conferred in ways which contravened Western canon law.26 In 1254, when a new Greek archbishop of Cyprus was being chosen, Innocent delegated the supervision of his election to the Prior Provincial of the Dominicans and the Provincial Minister of the Franciscans in Syria, because his legate, Odo of Tusculum, was unable to be present.27 The Dominicans continued to have an important diplomatic role in the Crusader Kingdom. When Louis IX of France was staying at Acre in 1252 he exchanged envoys with the Master of the Nizarite Isma’ilis in Syria. The Franks referred to him as ‘the Old Man of the Mountains’, a literal translation of his title, the Sheikh al-Jabal, and Western historians often call the Nizarite Isma’ilis the Assassins.28 The Nizarites were one of the most radical Shi’ite groups and had an esoteric understanding of their faith. They occupied a group of fortresses in the mountains to the east of Tortosa and, as an independent Islamic principality, were potentially of political importance to the Franks in organising the defence of the northern part of the County of Tripoli. Louis IX chose as his chief negotiator a Dominican, Yves le Breton, who appears to have been a member of the convent of Acre rather than of the king’s household. Brother Yves knew Arabic and was therefore able to speak to the Nizarite sheikh without an interpreter, but their religious discussions are known only in the account given by John of Joinville in his Life of St Louis. This is regrettable, because Joinville was not a trained theologian, while Brother Yves was the only Christian scholar in the time of the Crusader Kingdom who made any attempt to discover what distinguished the Nizarites from other Muslims. He found a book containing ‘Our Lord’s 23 25 26 27 28

24 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 337–45. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 431–4. Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, IV, pp. 488–9. Innocent IV, Registres no. 573; Innocent IV, Acta Innocentii papae IV, no. 8, pp. 11–12. Innocent IV, Registres no. 7332. M. G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizârî Ismâ’îlîs against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955), 105–7; B. Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect of Islam (London, 1967), 97–109.

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sayings to St Peter’ in the sheikh’s possession, and when questioned by him about this the sheikh replied: ‘I am devoted to my lord St Peter, since at the beginning of the world the soul of Abel, after his murder, passed into the body of Noah, and after Noah’s death into that of Abraham; and after Abraham’s death it passed, when God came on earth, into the body of St Peter.’29 In the light of Farhad Daftary’s exposition of Isma’ili theology, it would appear that the sheikh had been affirming his belief in a succession of speaking prophets, each of whom was succeeded by a silent spiritual legatee who interpreted the esoteric meaning of the prophet’s revelation to the initiated. Simon Peter (Shamun al-safa) was the silent interpreter of the teaching of the prophet Jesus.30 It is clear both that Joinville did not understand this doctrine and, if he has reported Brother Yves accurately, that the Dominican did not understand it either. What is significant is that Yves le Breton was concerned to discuss theology with an Isma’ili leader and that he had the linguistic capacity to do so. Another member of the Dominican convent of Acre, William of Tripoli, wrote an account of Islamic religion in 1273 in preparation for the Second Council of Lyons which Gregory X had summoned to meet in 1274 to consider the needs of the Holy Land.31 His treatise, On the State of the Saracens, shows knowledge not only of the teachings of the Qur’an, but also of the ways in which Muslims received them. As a priest, William was particularly interested in those areas of belief which Muslims shared with Christians: The Saracens believe in their hearts and confess with their lips that the words of God written in their Qur’an concerning the praise and honour of Jesus Christ, of his teaching, and of his holy Gospel, of the Blessed Virgin Mary his mother, and of those who model themselves on her by believing in him, are true; although these truths are mixed up with many lies and embroidered with romances, yet it is clear enough that these people are near to the Christian faith and to the way of salvation.32

B. Z. Kedar, in his seminal study of Christian–Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, discusses William of Tripoli’s statement that he had baptised more than a thousand Saracens. He concludes that this is not an outrageous exaggeration but ‘may well fall within the range of the normal medieval unconcern for numerical exactitude. Indeed, one might speculate . . . that if the Crusading Kingdom had continued to exist, the number of converts might steadily have mounted and the Muslim population constantly dwindled, as in the other Muslim regions that came under permanent Catholic rule.’33 It may safely be assumed that the Franciscans living in the Crusader States shared in this work of evangelising the Muslim population living under Frankish rule, but these activities are not well documented in the case of either Order. The Dominicans of the Holy Land province were also employed in diplomatic missions to the West. In 1264 the new patriarch of Jerusalem, William of Agen, and Geoffrey of 29

30

31 32

33

John of Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly (Paris, 1868), chs. 462–8, pp. 164–5, cited in the translation of R. Hague, The Life of St Louis (London, 1955), p. 141. F. Daftary, The Ismā’ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1990), 139. The Book of St Peter to which Brother Yves refers may have been the Kerygmata Petrou, which is known to us because it is embedded in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies: G. Strecker, ed., ‘The Kerygmata Petrou’, in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke and Schneemelcher, II, 102–27. It is not possible to determine in what form this text was known to the sheikh. Richard, La papauté et les missions, 48. William of Tripoli, De statu Saracenorum et de Mahomete pseudopropheta, ed. H. Prutz, in his Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1883), ch. xlvii, 595–6. William of Tripoli, De statu Saracenorum, p. 598 (for William’s claim about converts); Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 154.

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Sargines, lieutenant in the kingdom of the regent Hugh of Antioch–Lusignan, appealed to Pope Urban IV for the transmission of part of the tax of one-hundredth which the pope was levying in the West for the defence of the Holy Land, and which was urgently needed for strengthening the fortifications of Acre and Jaffa. The pope described their messenger as ‘our beloved son, Brother William of the Order of Preachers’, but did not indicate what position he held in the Order.34 There may also have been a Dominican convent at Antioch. A charter of 8 August 1264 records the settlement of a dispute about property at Antioch between the abbey of Our Lady of Josaphat and the convent of Bethany. It was heard by Archdeacon Bartholomew of Antioch, the vicar of the Latin patriarch Opizo, and was witnessed by the prior of Sta Maria Latina at Antioch, and Brothers Gilbert de Alverno and John Hispanus of the Dominican Order.35 This suggests that there was a Dominican house in the city at that time. If so, it would have been destroyed during Baibars’ sack of 1268, and any brethren found there would almost certainly have been killed. In the southern Crusader States the Dominicans continued to take an active part in public life. When in 1266 an important sale of property was made at Acre in the presence of the lieutenant of the Kingdom by the lord of Beirut to Amalric Barlais, among the witnesses was Brother Peter, Prior of the Dominicans of Acre.36 In 1276, when Hugh III of Cyprus, who had tried to enforce his claims to the throne of Jerusalem, but who was returning to Cyprus again, claiming that he found the kingdom ungovernable, sent a messenger to the West to explain his decision, he entrusted this mission to Brother Dimanche, a Dominican.37 In 1277 the Chapter-General of the Order met at Bordeaux, and a list of the houses of each province was drawn up for information. This showed that in the province of the Holy Land there were three convents only, at Acre, Tripoli and Nicosia.38 Fr François Balme discovered a group of documents relating to the province of the Holy Land in the years 1277–80 in the departmental archives of Côte d’Or. They are imperfect copies of the originals, but contain data not found elsewhere. The first describes a meeting of the provincial chapter held at Tripoli on 7 January 1277, at which Hugh of Macon, a former prior of Acre, was nominated as Prior Provincial. The second is a notice from the convent of Acre informing the Prior Provincial of the nomination on 20 February 1279 of Hugh the Fleming as their new prior. The third document, dated October 1280, relates to the nomination of a prior either for Nicosia or for Tripoli: the name of the convent has not been transcribed. Fr Balme pointed out that these three documents show that in 1277–80 there were about thirty professed Dominicans in priest’s orders in the Holy Land province, though there must have been in total more than twice that number of personnel in the three convents. Although the majority of the thirty named brethren were French in origin, there were also some men from England, Italy and the Spanish Kingdoms.39 34 37 39

35 36 Urban IV, Registres no. 869. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–19. CGOH I, no. 3213. 38 Eracles, XXXIV, 29, p. 475. Quétif and Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Recensiti, I, 10. F. Balme, ‘La province Dominicaine de Terre-Sainte de janvier 1277 à octobre 1280’, ROL 1 (1893), 526–36 (comment about numbers, 532 n. 2).

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A new Prior Provincial was in office by 18 February 1283. Prior Stephen of Barres and his companion Hugh Provençal were among the senior churchmen present in the castle of Nephin at a court convoked by Bohemond VII of Antioch–Tripoli to try Guy of Embriaco, Lord of Gibelet, for treason.40 The Dominicans were also involved in calming the crisis which developed in June 1286, when the young King Henry II of Cyprus, at the request of the High Court of Jerusalem, went to Acre to take possession of the mainland kingdom before proceeding to Tyre to be crowned. The citadel of Acre was garrisoned by troops supplied by Philip IV of France, and they refused to admit Henry to the castle. There was a real danger of fighting breaking out between the French soldiers and the Cypriot retainers of the king, but peace was mediated by the Masters of the military orders and members of the senior clergy, including Mansell, the subprior of the Dominican convent.41 Tripoli was captured and sacked by the forces of Baibars on 26 April 1289. It is doubtful whether any members of the Dominican convent who were present escaped with their lives. The patriarch of Jerusalem, Nicholas of Hanapes, who had been appointed in 1288, was a Dominican and was partly responsible for the composition of the delegation sent to Rome to ask for help when Tripoli fell: this consisted of a Templar, a Hospitaller and two Dominicans, the Prior Provincial, Brother Hugh of Macon, and his companion, Brother John.42 When Acre fell in 1291 the Dominican missionary Riccoldo of Monte Croce was in Baghdad and sought news of the fate of the Dominican community. He discovered that they had all been killed. Their deaths had been edifying, for they had just finished celebrating Mass when the Muslim troops broke into their chapel, and they were cut down while singing the Veni Creator Spiritus.43 One member of the Acre convent, the former prior, Robert the Norman, had been appointed bishop of Paphos in c. 1290, and so was fortunate enough to escape the massacre, dying in Cyprus in 1310.44 The convent of Nicosia thereafter became the headquarters of the Dominican province of the Holy Land. It already enjoyed considerable prestige, since King Hugh II of Cyprus had been buried there in 1267.45 By 1303 two new Dominican priories had been founded in the kingdom, one at Limassol, the other at Famagusta.46 The Dominicans in Cyprus were au courant with theological developments in Paris, maintaining a connection with Thomas Aquinas, who dedicated his treatise De regno to King Hugh II and who, it has been suggested, may even have been in the Nicosia convent in c. 1267.47

40 41

42

43 44

45 47

Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 662–8. Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 671–3. It is not known whether the Dominican prior was absent, or whether his office was vacant at that time. This is known from the letter of Pope Nicholas IV to Edward I of England: T. Rymer, Foedera, 20 vols. (London, 1704–35), II, 428. Riccoldo of Monte Croce, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, Letter IV, 243–9. C. Schabel, ‘The Latin bishops of Cyprus, 1255–1313, with a note on Bishop Neophytos of Solea’, Epeterida KEE 30 (2004), repr. in his Greeks, Latins and the Church in Early Frankish Cyprus (Aldershot, 2010), V, 90, 98; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 115–16. 46 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 212. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 212–13. G. Grivaud, ‘Literature’, in Nicolaou-Konnari and Schabel, eds., Cyprus, 224, 227, 247–9, for discussion of the identity of the young king to whom De regno was dedicated, and of the possibility of Aquinas’ presence in Cyprus.

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Although the number of Dominican foundations in the province of Terra Sancta was few, the contribution of the brethren to the political and religious life of the Crusader States in the thirteenth century was very considerable. An appreciation of the work of Dominicans as bishops and papal legates in the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch at that time is outside the scope of this book. I can only draw attention to the need for a full study of the impact of the Dominican Order on the Crusader States after 1225.

12 Antiochene Monasteries of Uncertain Rite

In Latin documents of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a number of monasteries situated in the principality of Antioch are recorded, about which very little is known. In 1145 the Dowager Princess, Alice of Antioch, gave to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem the payment of 30 bezants a year, which she received from ‘une abbaye située sur un coteau apellé de Rivira’. This house was in her dower of Latakia.1 In January 1168 Bohemond III granted the Hospitallers Rochefort cum abbatia, together with other properties.2 In 1178 Bohemond III gave a fief at Antioch to Joscelin III, titular count of Edessa, which was held in military tenure and included caveam et abbaciam que dicitur Granacherie.3 Then in February 1186, when Bohemond III assented to the sale by Bertrand Le Mazoir of his great fief of Margat to the Hospitallers, he listed three abbeys among the properties which made up that fief: abbatiam Montis Parlerii; abbatiam S. Gregorii que est in Montana Nigra cum casalibus, et guastinis et divisis et pertinentiis suis; and the abbatiam de S. Mariae.4 Mont Parlier was the Frankish name for Mt Cassius, situated to the south-west of Antioch on the road to Latakia. This abbey had been dedicated to St Barlaam, and in origin was therefore certainly an Eastern-rite foundation.5 The abbey of St Gregory was in the Amanus mountains, but apart from that nothing further is known about it.6 Jonathan Riley-Smith identified the abbey of St Mary with the convent of St Mary at the Iron Bridge, and this may be correct.7 Each of these little-known monasteries formed a part of Frankish lordships. Hans Mayer has suggested that some of them may have been held by the Frankish lords in charisticium.8 This was a Byzantine form of tenure, by which the temporalities of a monastery were given by the emperor to a lay patron to administer. In this way the lands of the monastery, while remaining theoretically the property of the Church, were 1 2

3 4 5

6

7

Delaville Le Roulx, ‘Inventaire’ no. 37, p. 50. CGOH I, no. 391. Rochefort may be identified with the Bourzey, on which see J. Mesqui, ‘Bourzey, une forteresse anonyme de l’Oronte’, in N. Faucherre, J. Mesqui and N. Prouteau, eds., La fortification au temps des Croisades (Rennes, 2004), 95–133. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Buck for this information. Strehlke no. 9, p. 10; R. L. Nicholson, Joscelyn III and the Fall of the Crusader States (Leiden, 1973), 75. CGOH I, no. 783. E. Rey, Les colonies franques de Syrie aux XIIme et XIIIme siècles (Paris, 1883), 348; P. Deschamps, Les châteaux des croisés en Terre-Sainte, III, La défense du comté de Tripoli et de la principauté d’Antioche: étude historique, géographique, toponymique et monumentale (Paris, 1973), 96 n. 8. Although it is listed as abbatiam S. Georgii in CGOH, which would refer to St George de Jubino, Mayer has pointed out that this is a misreading of St Gregorii, the name which is used in Pope Urban III’s confirmation of this grant of 30 June 1186: Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. Hiestand, no. 90, pp. 288–95; Mayer, Varia Antiochena, 138–9. 8 Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 393. Mayer, Varia Antiochena, 138–61.

291

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Latin Monasticism

in practice used for secular purposes. The monastic community would only receive part of the revenue of their estates; the remainder, which often formed the greater part, was diverted to secular uses by the lay patron. One of those uses was the payment of defence costs in the provinces. Emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081–1118) made considerable use of this system, for which he was greatly criticised by some churchmen, particularly John IV of Oxeia, the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch.9 This concept would therefore have been familiar to the Latin princes of Antioch; the system provided a means of strengthening the defences of the principality by harnessing the resources of the Church to boost the income of Latin fief-holders. If this hypothesis is correct, some of the monasteries discussed above must have been Orthodox communities. The appropriation of church lands for secular uses in the Western Church operated in a quite different way in the twelfth century. One other monastery mentioned in a Latin document drawn up in 1264, shortly before the fall of Antioch, would also appear to have been of Eastern (not necessarily Orthodox) rite. In the account of the settlement of a property dispute between the Benedictines of Our Lady of Josaphat and the convent of St Lazarus at Antioch, mention is made of the casale Lebebie quod est ultra flumen Ferri, quod casale est monasterii de Arsaia.10 This community is not recorded in any other Latin source. Another monastery of unknown rite, but probably Greek Orthodox, is Tilium, which is most plausibly to be located in Cilicia, on the grounds that it is listed after Tell Bashir and before Mamistra in a list of possessions of the Hospital of St John in 1127 in a charter of Bohemond II. It appears again, likewise just before Mamistra, in Bohemond III’s confirmation in 1182 of the lands of Our Lady of Josapahat in his principality: in territorio Tilii casalia quaedam nomine Nabon, Borgol, Tarpetac, Anglixen et abbatiam quandam in montanis.11 This abbey appears to be another example of a former Eastern-rite monastery sequestered for secular use.

The Convent of St Mary of the Orontes Bridge A charter of Bohemond III dated 8 January 1174 mentions a vineyard near Antioch belonging to the sanctimoniales Ferri.12 Presumably this convent was located near the Iron Bridge over the Orontes to the north-east of Antioch.13 The convent was still in existence ninety years later. A document dated 8 August 1264, relating to the settlement of a property dispute at Antioch between the convent of St Lazarus at Antioch and the monastery of Our Lady of Josaphat, mentions land bordering the gastina Suffiya quae est 9 10 11

12 13

P. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos (Cambridge, 1993), 257–73. Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–19. R. Hiestand, ‘Ein unbekanntes Privileg Fürst Bohemunds II. von Antiochia für das Hospital vom März 1127 und die Frühgeschichte der antiochenischen Fürstenkanzlei’, Archiv für Diplomatik Schriftgeschichte Siegel- und Wappenkunde 43 (1997), 27–46; ‘Urkunden der Fürsten Antiochia’, doc. 4, in Mayer, Varia Antiochena, 120. Dr Andrew Buck has pointed out to me the plausibility of a location in the Amanus mountains near the Haja Shaglun pass, given the Hospitallers’ prominence in Cilicia, and the wording of the grant in montanis. I am grateful to Dr Buck for his help with this point. See also ‘Urkunden der Fürsten Antiochia’, doc. 4, in Mayer, Varia Antiochena, 119. Rey, Recherches géographiques et historiques, 22–3. On the name Pons Ferri, see Walter the Chancellor, The Antiochene Wars, 85 n. 47. The location of the convent is shown in Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, Map 8.

Antiochene Monasteries of Uncertain Rite

293

monasterii S. Mariae de Ferro.14 The nuns did not necessarily continue to live near the Pons Ferri, which had become a frontier region after Harim was lost to Nur ad-Din in 1164, although their house must originally have stood there. They may well have withdrawn to the safety of Antioch city. There is no evidence that, wherever in the principality they may then have been living, they survived the Mamluk attack on Antioch in 1268. Indeed, the evidence about this community is so slight that it is not possible to determine whether it was a Latin or an Orthodox house.

The Monastery of St Gildas, Antioch This community must certainly have been of Latin rite, for St Gildas the Wise was a Celtic saint who was not venerated in the Eastern Churches. On 19 January 1185, Aimery of Limoges, the Latin patriarch of Antioch, adjudicated a dispute between the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Hospital of St Peter about the tenure of three jetties on the Orontes, outside the Gate of the Duke, which the Order of St John had to use in order to bring produce from their mills into the city. The jetties belonged to the Hospital of St Peter, and the Order of St John complained that the dues which they were charged to use them were excessive. The patriarch mediated a settlement whereby the Hospital of St Peter transferred the tenure of the jetties to the Hospital of St John in return for a payment of 300 bezants. The patriarch suggested that the Hospital of St Peter should invest this money in buying a vineyard or some other property which would yield revenue for the support of the poor. The settlement was accepted by the Master of the Hospital of St Peter, who described himself as Brother Peter, monk of St Gildas.15 From this it may be inferred that the brethren of St Gildas were a small Hospitaller Order, who administered the hospital attached to the cathedral of St Peter at Antioch. Their choice of a Celtic patron suggests that the founder of this Order had been a Breton nobleman.16 There is no further information about them.

14 16

15 Delaborde, ed., Chartes no. 57, pp. 117–19. CGOH I, no. 665. For Breton participation in the early Crusades, see Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 81, 91, 94, 124, 133, 141, 186.

Part II Greek Orthodox Monasticism

13 Orthodox Monasteries in the Crusader States: A Survey

Jerusalem and the Holy Land On the eve of the First Crusade, monasticism flourished as the principal form of religious life among the indigenous Christians in Palestine and Syria. Most of the monastic communities were Greek Orthodox, the confession to which the majority of the Christian population adhered. By and large, the main centres of monasticism were still those that had been established in the ‘golden age’ of Syrian and Palestinian monasticism between the fourth and seventh centuries, and which are familiar from the accounts of Cyril of Scythopolis, John Moschos and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. The two largest concentrations of monasteries lay around Antioch, particularly on the Wondrous Mountain and the Black Mountain, and to the east and south of Jerusalem, in the Judaean desert. There were also monasteries in Lebanon and the parts of southern Syria to the north and east of Damascus, and scattered in other parts of Palestine. Northern Syria, particularly the Tigris–Euphrates basin in northern Mesopotamia, was the heartland of Syrian Orthodox monasticism. Most of the monasteries, though not all, were old foundations. They were living memorials of the age of the monastic pioneers of the Near East: Theodosios, Chariton, Euthymios and Sabas in Palestine, Symeon the Stylite and Symeon the Wonderworker in Syria, Mar Gabriel and Bar Sauma in Mesopotamia, and many others. They provided an assurance of orthodoxy in doctrine, of continuing pastoral and social care for local communities and, doubtless, the hope that miracles such as those recorded of the age of the founders might still reward the faithful.1 By the second half of the eleventh century, these functions were accentuated by the uncertain external conditions in which the indigenous Christian communities had lived since the destructive Persian invasion of the early seventh century and the gradual Islamicisation of the population following the Arab conquest. Orthodox monasteries were also memorials to the loss and failure of whole communities. The total number of 1

The literature on monasticism in Palestine and Syria between the fourth and seventh centuries is extensive. The classic work by D. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford, 1966), still provides a good starting point; see also Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ; Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism; and Y. Hirschfeld, The Judaean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (New Haven, 1992). For Syria, see especially A. Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, CSCO Subsidia 17 (Louvain, 1960); S. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley, 1990); A. Palmer, Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier: The Early History of Tur ‘Abdin (Cambridge, 1991); B. Flusin, Saint Anastase le Perse et l’histoire de la Palestine au début du VIIième siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1992); and Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cyril de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983).

297

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monasteries destroyed or abandoned between the seventh and eleventh centuries will probably never be known, but the analysis undertaken by Robert Schick for Palestine indicates losses on a large scale.2 Probably around sixty monasteries attested in documentary sources or by archaeological evidence went out of existence in this period, most of them in the 150 years after the Persian conquest of 614. Not all these losses were the result of destruction or casualties of war; in many cases, such as St Theodore at Bir al-Qutt, St Lot at Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata, or the monastery at al-Kanisah, monasteries were abandoned by communities without any evidence of violence. Some, indeed, continued for some time after the Persian and Arab conquests. Khan Saliba suffered damage to its mosaics in this period, but was still in use in the eighth century.3 The monastery founded by Sabas in the ruins of the Herodian fortress of Kastellion (Khirbet el-Mird) was certainly in use in the mid-eighth century, when we know the name of the hegoumen, but seems to have been abandoned by the end of that century.4 Sometimes natural phenomena rather than deliberate destruction brought communities to an end; thus, the monastery at Kursi on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee was rebuilt in the seventh century after suffering some damage, but was abandoned after its final collapse either through fire or an earthquake in the eighth century. Another monastery to have been restored after the Persian invasion was St Anastasius, which had already been abandoned when monks from St Sabas sought refuge from the Persians in its buildings in 614, and which was subsequently rebuilt at least temporarily to allow for habitation in the 620s. There is even slight evidence of new foundations after the conquests, as in the monastery of the Nestorians at Tell Masos, where the earliest burials and inscriptions are dated to after c. 700.5 The traditional view of the Persian invasion of 614 holds that large-scale destruction of property and loss of life in the scattered monastic communities of Palestine followed, particularly in the Judaean desert region to the south of Jerusalem and between Jerusalem and the Jordan. Jerusalem itself was sacked by the Persians, and the apparently contemporary account by Strategios describes episodes such as the massacre of 4,219 people in the monastery of St John – doubtless mostly laypeople seeking refuge in the building. The convent founded in the fourth century by Melania on the Mount of Olives was probably destroyed at the same time; according to Strategios, the 400 resident nuns were raped and taken into captivity by the Persians.6 The accounts written in the aftermath of such horrors, however, give a misleading picture of the long-term effects of the invasion. Of the dozen or so monasteries in the city or on the Mount of Olives known from pre-seventh century sources but which ceased to exist before the eleventh century, not all were lost in this way. St George, for example, was in use throughout the early Islamic period; Sts Peter 2

3 4

5 6

R. Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule (Princeton, 1995); see now also D. Reynolds, ‘Monasticism in early Islamic Palestine: contours of debate’, in R. Hoyland and M. Legendre, eds., The Late Antique World of Early Islam: Muslims among Christians and Jews in the East Mediterranean (London, 2015), 339–91. J. Prignaud, ‘Une installation Manistique byzantine au Khan Saliba’, Revue Biblique 70 (1963), pp. 243–54. Vita di santo Stefano Sabaita, ed. B. Pirone (Cairo and Jerusalem, 1991), IX, XVI, XLV, LXII, LXXI, pp. 52–3, 96–7, 228–9, 302–3, 346–7. R. Arav, L. di Segni and A. Kloner, ‘An eighth-century monastery near Jerusalem’, Liber Annuus 40 (1990), 313–20. La prise de Jérusalem par les Perses en 615, ed. G. Garitte, CSCO Script. Iber. 12 (1960), VIII–X; F. C. Conybeare, ‘Antiochus Strategios’ account of the sack of Jerusalem in AD 614,’ EHR 25 (1910), 502–17.

Orthodox Monasteries in the Crusader States

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and Paul ‘in Byzantium’ was still mentioned in the early ninth century but was no longer functioning by the eleventh; even St John itself was restored by Patriarch Modestos after the Persians were expelled in 620. Moreover, the historical value of Strategios’ account as a testimony to the Persian conquest is by no means certain. There is little evidence, moreover, of destruction or violent action accompanying the Arab invasion of Palestine in 634, although a vivid glimpse of the temporary disturbance the siege caused in that year is granted by the Christmas homily given by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in which he laments the inability to hold the customary procession to Bethlehem for celebration of the feast.7 More damaging was the outbreak of war and the consequent periods of anarchy in Palestine after the succession crisis of the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Between the 790s and the mid-ninth century, sporadic acts of destruction and, probably of more lasting importance, financial exactions levied on the indigenous Christians are recorded in various sources. In 796 twenty monks of the Judaean desert laura of St Sabas were killed in a raid during the War of the Watermelon;8 in 808–9, St Sabas suffered again, along with the laura of Chariton and the coenobia of Euthymios and Theodosios. In 813 further violence against the desert monasteries, coupled with threats to the Anastasis church in Jerusalem, resulted in the large-scale flight of indigenous Christians to Cyprus.9 The main source recording these episodes, the Chronographia of Theophanes, was written by a Palestinian monk in Constantinople, George the Synkellos, who formed part of a group of refugees from Jerusalem and St Sabas that included Michael the Synkellos and the two Graptoi brothers, both of whom were Jerusalem monks. Their careers indicate not only the close links between the monasteries of Palestine and Constantinople in the early ninth century, but also the local Christians’ dependence on the imperial capital for aid. The Graptoi had been sent to Constantinople in 813 expressly to raise funds for the Christians in Jerusalem, but they appear to have remained at the Chora monastery in Constantinople, which became a centre of Palestinian monastic identity.10 Monks from Jerusalem were also sent to the court of Charlemagne and his successor Louis the Pious by the patriarchs Elias II (796–800) and Thomas (807–21) in order to raise awareness in the West of the plight of monasticism in the Holy Land.11 A further series of hostile episodes in the later tenth century culminated in the destruction of the Anastasis church by al-Hakim, the Fatimid caliph of Egypt, in 1009. Although this cannot be seen as part of a coherent policy aimed at Christians or monasticism, the savagery 7

8

9

10

11

Sophronius, On the Nativity, ed. H. Usener, ‘Weinachtspredigt des Sophronius’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 41 (1886), 506–8; P. Booth, ‘Sophronius of Jerusalem and the end of Roman history’, in P. Wood, ed., History and Antiquity in the Late Antique Near East (Oxford, 2013), 1–28. Passio SS XX martyrum S. Sabae, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, Pravoslavnii Palestinski Sbornik 57 (1907), 1–41 (Greek text); AA SS, Mar. III, 165–79 (Latin translation). Theophanes, Theophanis Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols. (Hildesheim, 1963), I, pp. 484, 499; Theophanes, The Chronographia of Theophanes, ed. and trans. C. Mango and R. Scott (Oxford, 1997), 665, 693. The term Anastasis is used to refer to the church built by Constantine in the fourth century and destroyed in 1009; subsequently it is referred to as the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Life of Michael the Synkellos, ed. and trans. M. Cunningham, BBTT 1 (Belfast, 1991), 9–13; K. Corrigan, Visual Polemics in Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge, 1992), figs. 36, 77, 98–102. See p. 18; see M. Borgolte, Der Gesandtenaustausch der Karolinger mit den Abbasiden und mit den Patriarchen von Jerusalem (Munich, 1976), 90–2, for further examples of such links.

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of the action against this and other churches, and the accompanying persecution of Christian practices in Egypt and Palestine, was seen by Melkites as simply another stage in a longer process of resistance and struggle against a hostile regime.12 Whether these episodes were symptoms or causes of the process of ‘Islamicisation’ that has been identified by some historians as a feature of the tenth and early eleventh centuries is still unclear.13 Monasticism, however, clearly suffered a gradual contraction in Palestine over the course of the period between the Persian invasion and the First Crusade. Partly because so many monasteries fell into abeyance, those that maintained an unbroken existence throughout the period stand out for particular reasons. In general, the monasteries that survived – and continued to do so throughout the crusader period – did so either because they were the custodians of important shrines or because they were influential representatives of Melkite orthodox identity. In the survey that follows, the monasteries will be treated in geographically organised groupings, beginning with Jerusalem.

Jerusalem By 1099, the only Greek Orthodox monastery known for certain still to have been functioning in Jerusalem is the Spoudaion. This monastery had its origins in the patriarchate of Elias I (494–516), who gathered together a group of ascetics who had been living in the west of the city, near the Tower of David, and built a monastery for them near the patriarchal residence.14 It features in the Life of Michael the Synkellos as the monastery to which Michael, along with two other monks of St Sabas, Theodore and Theophanes, transferred on becoming synkellos of the Church of Jerusalem.15 In the Commemoratorium de casis Dei (c. 808) the Spoudaion is referred to as the permanent monastic community attached to the Anastasis church, comprising forty-one monks in addition to the priests, deacons and canonical clergy, notaries, and household staff serving the church.16 A tenth-century Georgian liturgical calendar for Palestinian usage alludes to the church of the Spoudaion standing ‘above the Anastasis’, which means that it must have been adjacent to the church.17 We do not know, however, what happened to the monastery during the destruction in 1009, or what provision was made for the monks attached to the Anastasis during the rebuilding of the church in the eleventh century. A liturgical typikon, also dating from the tenth century though now surviving in a manuscript made in 1122 in Jerusalem, refers to monks of the Spoudaion participating in the Easter week liturgical celebrations in the Anastasis.18 12

13

14 15 17

18

On this general theme, see A. Jotischky, ‘The Christians of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre and the origins of the First Crusade’, Crusades 7 (2008), 35–57. M. Levy-Rubin, ‘New evidence relating to the process of Islamicization in Palestine in the early Muslim period: the case of Samaria’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43 (2000), 257–76; M. Rubin, ‘Arabization versus Islamization in the Palestinian Melkite community during the early Muslim period’, in A. Kofsky and G. G. Stroumsa, eds., Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First to Fifteenth Centuries (Jerusalem, 1998), 149–61. Vita Sabae, XXXI, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. E. Schwartz (Leipzig, 1939), 116. 16 Life of Michael the Synkellos, ed. and trans. Cunningham, 54–5. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 200–1. G. Garitte, Le calendrier palestino-géorgien du Sinaiticus 34 (Xe siècle), Subsidia Hagiographica 30 (Brussels, 1958), 257, 268–9, 299, 350. Jerusalem Taphou MS 43, in A. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta Ierosolymitikes Stachyologias, 5 vols. (St Petersburg, 1894, repr. Brussels, 1963), II, 1–254.

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Although this by itself is not conclusive evidence of the twelfth-century survival of the monastery, it would have been unnecessary to have copied this detail in the twelfth century had it no longer applied.19 The very fact that Greek liturgical manuscripts were produced in Jerusalem, indeed, suggests the presence of a monastic community. Moreover, the liturgical arrangements made in the twelfth-century rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre clearly allowed for the Orthodox rite to be sung, presumably by a permanent community attached to the church.20 A number of other monasteries in Jerusalem have been identified as existing before 1099, but in most cases the evidence for their continuation beyond the seventh century is sketchy, and none seems to have survived beyond the tenth, which is the last mention for the monastery of St George at Givat Ram.21 There was a convent for women at Mt Zion which was still functioning in the late eighth century, when Michael the Synkellos’ mother and sisters professed as nuns there, but it may not have been rebuilt after the burning of the church in 966.22 On the Mount of Olives, the Eleona monastery, dating from the fourth century, is still mentioned in the tenth-century Georgian calendar, but in no source after this date. In contrast, a number of Orthodox monasteries are attested in the late twelfth century whose existence is mysterious before this date. An anonymous source known as the Apodeixis peri ton Ierusolumon (De locis sanctis), written after 1187, lists an astonishing thirteen Greek monasteries in the city of Jerusalem.23 This number, though it may appear excessive to us, was clearly regarded as paltry by the author, who claimed that ‘in the days of the Greek emperors’ – in other words, before 638 – there had been 365 monasteries in Jerusalem alone. This assertion is so inherently implausible that one might be tempted to disregard this source altogether were it not for two mitigating factors: first, the precision with which the author records the names and locations of the monasteries relative to one another; and, second, the appearance of some of the names in other sources, notably the Ottoman census of 1517. We must consider, moreover, what the term monastery (mone) might have denoted to a Greek writer of this period. It is possible that some of the establishments listed as mone were in fact metochia (dependent cells) or xenodocheia (guest-houses) belonging to other monasteries. Even those that enjoyed an independent existence may scarcely have registered as monasteries when compared with the great institutions of the imperial capital such as Theotokos Evergetis, or with Benedictine or Cistercian parallels. A mone might be anything from a large monastery with several hundred monks to a single church served by a handful of monks living in derelict cells nearby. Although in most cases nothing is known of these monasteries before the Apodeixis, it is likely that most of them are in fact older foundations, perhaps of houses that were suppressed or abandoned either during the 19

20 23

See the discussion by J. Pahlitzsch, ‘The Greek Orthodox Church in the first Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in K. Hintlian, R. Hummel and U. Carmesund, eds., The Christian Heritage of the Holy Land: Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future (London, 1999), 204–5. 21 22 For full discussion, see pp. 412–19. Garitte, Calendrier, 392–3. Yahya ibn Sa‘id, Histoire, 801–2. Anonymus Graecus, De locis sanctis, PG 133: 973–90. The internal evidence indicates a date after 1187, and possibly a narrow window between 1187 and 1192, since the author refers to altars in the Holy Sepulchre as being maintained by Orthodox, Armenians, Jacobites, Indians and Nestorians, but with no mention of Latins. Although the author says there are thirteen, only twelve are listed by name.

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persecution by al-Hakim or by the Seljuqs, but which were restored during the twelfth century. Given their small size, they may simply have been financially unviable. The Jerusalem monasteries listed in the Apodeixis were all located in the north-western area of the city, known in crusader Jerusalem as the ‘patriarch’s quarter’. St Anne was immediately to the north of the north-west corner of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, more or less on the corner of St Francis Street and the Street of the Patriarchs; nothing other than the name is known of this house. Working south, the next was St Thecla, on the Street of the Patriarchs and a little south-west of the south-west side of the Anastasis rotunda. It was apparently taken over by the Georgian community under the Mamluks, but is confirmed as a Greek possession once again in the firman of Selim I in 1517.24 St Mary Hodegetria, further still to the south-west, has been identified by Denys Pringle as the Spoudaion monastery, founded 494–516.25 The Russian pilgrim Daniel, who records the monastery dedicated to the Mother of God, derived the name Spoudaion from the word spoude (‘haste’), which he assumed to refer to the ‘hastening’ of Mary to watch the crucifixion of her son from a small hill to the west of Calvary.26 The adjective spoudaios, however, also has the meaning ‘zealous’ or ‘earnest’, which might equally well refer to the original ascetics who formed the monastic community established by Elias I. In any case, at some point between 1107 and 1167, St Mary Hodegetria became a community of Orthodox nuns, and acquired land to the west of the city, outside ‘David’s gate’ (the modern Jaffa Gate).27 It was probably at this convent that another Russian pilgrim, Euphrosine, Abbess of Polotsk, stayed in 1173. According to her brief memorial life, Euphrosine fell ill while on pilgrimage and prayed to be given the privilege of dying in Jerusalem. Although she asked the archimandrite of St Sabas for permission to be buried in his monastery, he refused because she was a woman, and she was buried instead at the monastery of St Theodosios.28 Two monasteries, St Demetrios and St George ‘in the Market’, are listed in the Apodeixis as lying further to the south-west. Nothing is known for certain of St Demetrios, except that it became a Georgian house in the thirteenth century, but was certainly back in Greek hands by 1517, if not before. It may have functioned as the urban xenodochion of the laura of St Sabas.29 The same charter of 1167 that confirms the presence of Orthodox nuns at St Mary Hodegetria also mentions a monastery dedicated to St George as part of the boundary of land given by the patriarch of Jerusalem to the Hospitallers.30 This location corresponds to the reference on the Cambrai Map of c. 1150 to a church inside David’s Gate as ecclesia infunda S. Georgii, in other words the church by the wholesale grain market.31 This appears to be the church of ‘Great George’ listed in the Apodeixis between the church of St John the Baptist, on the Street of the Patriarchs, and St Demetrios.32 A church of St Theodore, to the north of St Demetrios, appears in the early (fifth- to eighth-century) Georgian lectionary as the site of the feast of the Invention of the Chalice. The sixth-century Life of Sabas confirms the existence of a martyrium on the site, and this 24 25 28

29 32

Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 981; Pringle, Churches, no. 362, III, pp. 381–3. 26 27 Pringle, Churches, no. 340, III, pp. 314–16. Daniel the Abbot, p. 130. CGOH I, no. 376, pp. 257–8. Itinéraires russes en Orient, ed. and trans. B. de Khitrowo, Publications de la Société de l’Orient Latin, ser. geog. 5 (Geneva, 1889), 34. 30 31 Pringle, Churches, no. 312, III, p. 160. See n. 28. Pringle, Churches, no. 316, III, pp. 165–6. Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 981.

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evidently survived the upheavals of the seventh century, since it is mentioned in the Commemoratorium as being served by two priests. So far, nothing in the evidence suggests a monastery. Pringle, however, speculates that this might be the ‘missing’ monastery in the Apodeixis, which although asserting the existence of thirteen, names only twelve. Moreover, the Georgians, who acquired many of the Greek Orthodox churches under the Mamluk regime from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, had a monastery dedicated to St Theodore in Jerusalem, which may have been this one. There is a Greek monastery on the site today, which archaeological examination indicates is built on a medieval basement.33 Lying immediately to the east of St Theodore was the monastery of St Nicholas. Although listed in the Apodeixis, by 1189 it had already been given to the Georgians by Saladin, and remained Georgian until the later seventeenth century. Excavations have revealed medieval building, particularly in the form of a vaulted undercroft that must have been part of the conventual complex. However, they also indicate, through the discovery of a Muslim grave dated to 985, pre-Crusade usage of the site by Muslims, and thus the probability that the monastery was founded in the twelfth century. If this is the case, it is compelling evidence for the revival and general vitality of Orthodox monasticism in the first century of the Crusader Kingdom that we shall also see elsewhere.34 The remaining six monasteries in the Apodeixis were all located to the north of the modern St Francis Street. Beginning at the west end, the first is St Basil, currently a Greek Orthodox church. A document of 1343 mentions the Dair Basil (‘monastery of Basil’) as a Georgian possession, but this is all that is known of it.35 Immediately to the south of St Basil is St John the Evangelist. This appears, like so many others, to have passed temporarily into Georgian ownership under the Mamluks, but two fourteenth-century pieces of evidence may attest to its continuing function as a Greek Orthodox monastery. The first is the pilgrimage account of the Franciscan Niccolò da Poggibonsi (1346–7), who calls it a bella chiesa. He says that it is held by Syrian monks, but that many Franks can be found there (e tengola monache Soriane, e ivi stanno molti cristiani franchi).36 The last phrase is puzzling but, given the date of his pilgrimage, he presumably means that it was visited by Frankish pilgrims. Niccolò’s belief that the monks were Soriani (Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox) appears at first sight to undermine the theory of the transfer of the monastery to the Georgians, but he may simply have been unable to distinguish between them, since the Georgians follow the Greek Orthodox rite. Of course, the monastery may also have been returned to Greek ownership before the mid-fourteenth century. A document of 1363 records the gift of Theodore, a citizen of Famagusta in Cyprus, to the monastery of St John in Jerusalem.37 Again, the implausibility of a Cypriot Greek leaving a bequest to a Georgian monastery is puzzling. However, the bequest also includes gifts to the more 33 34

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Pringle, Churches, no. 363, III, p. 384. Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 981; Pringle, Churches, no. 347, III, pp. 338–40. The archaeology suggests only pre-eleventhcentury Muslim usage, but it seems more likely that the Orthodox monastery would have been founded on a previously Muslim site after 1099 than during the eleventh century, when the city was in Muslim hands. D. Little, A Catalogue of the Islamic Documents from al-Haram as-Sharif in Jerusalem, Beiruter Texter und Studien 29 (Beirut, 1984), 277–8. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, XLIV, 33. C. Otten-Froux, ‘Un notaire vénétien à Famagouste au XIVe siècle: les actes de Siméone, prêtre de San Giacomo dell’Orio (1362–1371)’, Thesaurismata 33 (2003), no. 178, pp. 102–3.

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famous desert monasteries of St Sabas and St Theodosios, and it is in fact most likely that the identification of St John ‘in Jerusalem’ is erroneous, and that the donor intended his bequest to St John Prodromos by the Jordan, a far more important monastery that remained Greek Orthodox throughout the period. In conclusion, neither piece of evidence contradicts the record of Georgian ownership, and the lengths to which the Georgian community went under the Ottomans to have the church returned to them strengthen the case.38 The present-day monastery of St George lies opposite St Nicholas on the north side of St Francis Street. This conforms with the location given for a monastery of the same dedication in the Apodeixis between St John and St Michael. The monastery appears in a papal document of 1216–18, in which Honorius III confirms it as a metochion of the monastery of St Theodosios, in the Judaean desert.39 Similarly, the St Michael the Archangel listed in the Apodeixis appears very close to a present-day monastery of the same dedication. A church of St Michael is listed in the fifth–eighth-century Georgian lectionary, but this may not have been the same one. According to a Russian pilgrimage account of c. 1400, the monastery stood on the site where the angel of God slaughtered the army of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (2 Kings 19: 35). By 1419–20, according to the account of another Russian, Zosimos, the monastery had been acquired as a metochion by the Serbian monks who had also taken over control of St Sabas in the Judaean desert. This appears to have been done without the agreement of the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, for in the Ottoman census of 1517 St Michael the Archangel appears as a Greek possession.40 Two further small monasteries lay close to each other to the east of St Michael, and slightly to the north and north-west of St Anne, the first of the Apodeixis group. St Katherine was, at least by 1530 and conceivably long before this, a convent of nuns. It was in Georgian hands in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries, but returned to the Greeks by 1517. Rather more is known of the last of this group, St Euthymios. This house began as a xenodochion of the laura of Souka, near Jericho, but in 485 it was purchased by the coenobium of St Euthymios at Khan al-Ahmar/Ma‘ale Adumim, on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.41 Although the monastery is listed in the Apodeixis, it may have fallen into disuse during the thirteenth century, for it was refounded in 1344 by the monk Gerasimos, perhaps in fulfilment of a wish by the late Anna, the daughter of Emperor Alexios II of Trebizond. The monastery of St Euthymios at Khan al-Ahmar/Ma‘ale Adumim was overrun by Saladin in 1183 and abandoned, so, if the Jerusalem house had continued to function as its xenodochion, the Apodeixis may have been mistaken in listing it as a functioning monastery after 1187. In any case, the refoundation of 1344 makes no connection with the Judaean desert monastery. According to the founder’s typikon, which survives in a Jerusalem manuscript, Gerasimos undertook the restoration with two other monks, having himself lived as a monk there. The monastery was to remain under the control of a Trapezuntine, in honour of the fact that it was the property of the imperial dynasty of Trebizond. Gerasimos describes how he found the monastery in ruins, but was able to restore it with the assistance of his predecessor as superior, and the local Christians. Presumably in recognition of local 38 40 41

39 Pringle, Churches, no. 325, III, pp. 208–11. Honorius III, Regesta nos. 72, 1037. Itinéraires russes, ed. Khitrowo, 214; Pringle, Churches, no. 345, III, pp. 335–6. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Kyriaki, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 226.

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assistance, he ordains that the patriarch of Jerusalem should be remembered in the daily offices. An interesting sidelight is the close connection that evidently pertained between the Trapezuntines and the Georgian community, given expression in Gerasimos’ designation of the superior of the Georgian monastery of Holy Cross as administrator of his foundation.42 St Euthymios is the only one of the Jerusalem monasteries for which evidence of the numbers of monks is available. Gerasimos mentions two other monks who lived with him in the monastery before the restoration, Sophronios, another Trapezuntine, and Pambo.43 After their deaths, Gerasimos continued to live alone in the monastery, until the refoundation brought three new recruits. Thus the monastery was viable with only a few monks, and the assistance of a larger neighbour, Holy Cross. In all likelihood, the other monasteries listed in the Apodeixis were of a similar size or only slightly larger. This would account for the otherwise surprising number of monastic houses is such a confined space. Another monastic xenodochion inside the city was that owned by St Sabas, built by the founder of the desert laura himself, in the place near the Tower of David that had previously been inhabited by the ascetics for whom Patriarch Elias I founded the Spoudaion monastery.44 Various monastic buildings have been identified from the archaeological excavations in the Tower area, notably in the gardens now belonging to the Armenian patriarchate to the south of the Tower. The courtyard of the citadel has also yielded evidence of houses with mosaic floors that may have been monastic, with traces of occupation up to the eighth century.45 Peter the Iberian founded a monastery for Georgians here in the sixth century, which may correspond to these remains. However, at the beginning of the twelfth century the xenodochion of St Sabas was still functioning in the same place, as is clear from the pilgrimage account of Saewulf (1102–3). Only a few years later, Abbot Daniel stayed for sixteen months in the xenodochion while on his pilgrimage, and along with Sabaite monks from the house participated in the Easter vigil celebrations of 1107 in the Holy Sepulchre. If the xenodochion had experienced any disruption between the seventh century and the twelfth, it cannot have been long enough for the buildings to become ruinous or for the property to be transferred to different ownership, and it continued to function in the same way at least as late as the 1230s, when Savas the Serbian stayed there during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.46 Finally, the Judaean desert monastery of St Chariton may also have had a xenodochion on the north side of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. There was certainly a church dedicated to Chariton here, attested as early as a charter of 1135, and in the 1150s an Icelandic pilgrim saw the body of the saint inside it. John of Würzburg, in c. 1165, mentions not only the church but Syrian (i.e. indigenous Greek Orthodox) monks.47 As we 42

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Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, I, 255–7; English trans. and discussion in BMFD, 1404–7; Pringle, Churches, no. 314, III, pp. 164–5. Some difficulties remain with the chronology of the document, since two of the witnesses, Arsenios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Elias, Bishop of Bethlehem, are not attested in other sources; indeed, Bethlehem was not an Orthodox bishopric at this date. Judging by the name, Pambo must have been a Syrian or Palestinian. A Pambo is known to have been hegoumen of the monastery of St John Prodromos by the Jordan in 1330: Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 337. 45 Vita Sabae, XXXI, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 115–16. Pringle, Churches, no. 355, III, pp. 355–8. Domentijan, Zvoti Svetoga Save i Svetoga Simeona, ed. and trans. L. Mirkovic (Belgrade, 1938); D. Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford, 1988), 115–72. John of Würzburg’s identification of the monks as Armenian must be a confusion deriving from the proximity of the house to the Armenian cathedral of St James: John of Würzburg, pp. 132–3. An anonymous account of c. 1180 (Anon V, I, 6, in IHC III, 31) correctly identifies it as Greek and claims that the monks had relics of St John Chrysostom, St Demetrios and – oddly enough – St Martin. John of Würzburg, p. 137.

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shall see, the monastery of St Chariton continued to be active into the thirteenth century but, although thirteenth-century pilgrims continued to visit the church, there is no further mention of monks. One other church within the city walls seems to have housed Greek Orthodox monks, albeit as a temporary arrangement. The Benedictine convent of St Mary ‘the Great’, founded before 1071 by pilgrims from Amalfi, was abandoned at the fall of the city to Saladin in 1187, and an Islamic hospital founded in its place. Thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury pilgrims continued to describe the building, however, and in 1347 Niccolò da Poggibonsi maintained that it had become the residence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, who was of course Greek Orthodox. Assuming that he was correct, the patriarch, who was, following Orthodox tradition, himself a monk, must have had a small monastic household.48 There were also Greek Orthodox monastic communities outside the city walls. In the twelfth century a monastery dedicated to St Procopios, a Palestinian martyr from the Great Persecution, seems to have been established at Gihon in the valley of Hinnom. There is no evidence for a church with this dedication here before William of Tyre, who, along with an anonymous pilgrimage guide, associates the place with the site of Solomon’s coronation.49 Another pilgrimage guide of c. 1170 mentions a ‘monastery of Greeks’ at Gihon, and a charter of 1175–6 attests to its ownership of vineyards in the area.50 Pringle assumed that the monastery must have been abandoned in 1187, because it is not mentioned in the Apodeixis. A fifteenth-century source, Mujir ad-Din, says that Saladin’s son ‘Imad ad-Din gave the monastery and nearby village to one of his followers. Latin tradition in the thirteenth century and beyond associated the place with St Cyprian, because of a corruption of ‘Procopios’ into the Arabic Dair Mar Qibus, shortened to Barquibius.51 Excavations in 1914 by the Dominicans Vincent and Abel uncovered a church of the fifth– sixth century, with clear signs of new building in the twelfth century, including a marble column capital.52 A thirteenth-century icon of St Procopios survives in St Katherine’s, Mt Sinai, that may, according to Kurt Weitzmann, have been copied from an original in the church of St Procopios. If this is so, it indicates the survival of at least one icon from the monastery church into the thirteenth century, which may suggest the survival of the community as well. Another medieval foundation was the monastery of St Savas the Serbian on Mt Zion. Savas, a Serbian prince, was briefly a monk at St Sabas in the Judaean desert while on an extended pilgrimage to the Holy Land.53 He was granted the church of St John the Evangelist on Mt Zion by Nicholas, hegoumen of St Sabas and Athanasios, patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1231–2, for the purpose of founding a monastery, presumably for his fellow countrymen. The church of St John was close to the house in which John supposedly accommodated the Blessed Virgin after the Crucifixion, probably located very close to the ancient church of St Mary on Mt Zion. This had become an 48

49 50 52

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Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, XXXIX, 31: ora, venendo nella detta piazza, al ponente, vedi la chiesa di sta Maria Madalena, che ivi sta il patriarca dei Greci . . . con altare a modo dei Greci. William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 63, VIII, 4, 389; Descriptio Locorum, XXXIX, in IHC II, 102. 51 Anon II, IX, in IHC III, 14; BB no. 161, p. 313. Pringle, Churches, no. 354, III, pp. 353–4. L.-H. Vincent and F.-M. Abel, Jérusalem. Recherches de topographie, d’archéologie et d’histoire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1914), II, 866–8. J. Pahlitzsch, ‘Athanasios II, a Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem (c. 1231–1244)’, in Autour de la Première Croisade, ed. M. Balard, Byzantina Sorboniensa 14 (Paris, 1996), 465–74; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, 115–72.

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Augustinian house after 1099, but by 1212 was in Orthodox hands.54 In 1219–20 it was demolished to strengthen the defences of the city walls, and the Serbian monastery probably lay in the ruins of the Augustinian priory. Since it is not mentioned by later pilgrims, and seems not to have been active at the time of the Franciscan acquisition of the site in the 1330s, the assumption must be that it was destroyed or abandoned in 1244. The church of St Mary on the Mount of Olives must have been founded in the fourth century, for it was mentioned by Procopios in his list of churches restored by Justinian. There is some evidence, albeit ambiguous, for a monastic establishment here in the ninth century, but this may have been short-lived.55 During the twelfth century, however, there appear to have been two monastic foundations: a chapter of Augustinian canons, and a ‘monastery of the Syrians’, as described by an anonymous pilgrimage guide of c. 1170.56 Archaeological evidence, including a coin of Nur ad-Din, indicates twelfth-century occupation, and the plan of the church, featuring a triple-conch plan, recalls the Orthodox monastic churches of St Theodosios and al-Taiyiba.57 Pringle, however, has pointed out that the church is included among a list of churches whose south Italian properties were conferred instead on the church of St Mary on Mt Zion in 1179, all the rest of which are Orthodox, and suggests that this may be taken as an indication that the community was no longer functional.58 It is not mentioned in the Apodeixis of 1187–92. The Orthodox community, then, may represent an attempt to restore an ancient foundation, but one that failed, perhaps in competition with the Augustinian canons, before the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187. There were also groups of Orthodox monks living outside formally constituted monasteries in the first-century rock tombs in the valley of Jehosaphat, at the foot of the Mount of Olives outside the eastern wall of Jerusalem. From the sixth century onwards, pilgrims visited the cave chapel of St Pelagia the Harlot, and the other tombs in the valley were associated with St James the Less, Zacharias and Simeon. The Commemoratorium of 808 lists eleven Greek, four Georgian, six Syriac-speaking, two Armenian, five Latin and one Arabic-speaking hermits on the Mount of Olives, and an unspecified number in the valley of Jehosaphat. Evidently there were Orthodox hermits still on the Mount of Olives in 1099, for one is given a prominent role in Ralph of Caen’s Tancredus as a prophet of Tancred’s future greatness.59 The evidence for the continued use of the rock tombs during the twelfth century is impressively documented in a variety of sources. The geography of al-Idrisi in c. 1154, and the pilgrimage accounts of Theoderic and John of Würzburg in the 1160s–1170s, and of John Phocas in 1185–6, record the presence of hermits here.60 Moreover, the English pilgrim Godric of Finchale spent some time studying the practices of the indigenous hermits before taking up the eremitical life on his return to England.61 54 55 57 59 60

61

Pringle, Churches, no. 336, III, pp. 261–87, for summary of the church’s history. 56 Procopios, The Buildings, V, 9, 8, 358; Callahan, ‘The problem of the “filioque”’. Anon II, in IHC III, 14. 58 Pringle, Churches, no. 341, III, p. 316. PKHL no. 113, p. 286; Pringle, Churches, no. 341, III, p. 316. Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, CCCXXXIX, p. 95. Idrisi, La Géographie d’Edrisi, III, 5, 345; Theodericus, p. 145; John of Wurzburg, p. 110; John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 326–7; PG 133: 945–7. For an argument, not followed here, on the dating of Phocas’ pilgrimage and the identity of the pilgrim, see C. Messis, ‘Littérature, voyage et politique au XII siècle: “L’Ekphrasis des lieux saints” de Jean Phokas’, Byzantinoslavica 69 (2011), 146–66. Reginald of Durham, Libellus S. Godrici, 15, Surtees Society (1847), 57–8; Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 67–9. The clearest description of the nature of the tombs comes from a Jewish guide to Jerusalem surviving in a Genizah

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Mention has already been made of the role of the Georgian community in Jerusalem, especially in the thirteenth century, when the Georgians acquired many of the Greek monasteries. The main centre of Georgian monasticism in Jerusalem was the monastery of Holy Cross, about a mile to the west of the city, founded in the first half of the eleventh century. This was a period of increasing Georgian independence from Muslim rule in the Caucasus, as the militarily powerful Bagratid dynasty established itself. Holy Cross was patronised by Bagrat IV (1027–72), who claimed descent from King David, and the dynasty continued to regard it as a royal monastery, albeit one far distant from the Georgian homeland.62 As we shall see, in the eleventh century Georgian monasticism underwent a strong revival in the region of Antioch, and the new foundation of Holy Cross received donations of manuscripts from Georgian monasteries there. From the later twelfth century, however, the Georgian ruler Queen Tamar (1184–1213) established good relations with Saladin, who granted Orthodox possessions in Jerusalem to Georgians and granted Georgian pilgrims the privilege of exemption from the tolls levied on other Christians.63 A group of Mamluk documents of the 1260s that have been examined closely by Johannes Pahlitzsch show that the monastery of Holy Cross fell foul of the influence of Baibars I’s follower Hadir b. Abi Bakr al-Mihrani, who raided it and turned it into a Sufi convent. The Georgian abbot, Lucas, was killed, either during the course of the raid or subsequently in the form of a judicial execution.64 At this time, Georgia itself had come under the influence of the Mongols and fought against the Mamluks in north Syria. However, the expropriation of the monastery seems to have been a temporary aberration, overturned in 1305, and when Western pilgrims visited it in the fourteenth century they found it functioning once again.65 There was also a convent of Georgian nuns active at least from about the first decade of the twelfth century, for in the patriarchate of Gibelin of Arles the wife of King David of Georgia, who had been divorced by him, became a nun in Jerusalem. The exact location of the convent has not been identified, but the community seems to have been a new one founded in order to enable her to fulfil her vow. The nuns were evidently impoverished enough to have to sell their relics, one of which, a relic of the True Cross, was purchased in 1120–1 by one of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, Ansellus, and sent as a gift to Notre Dame in Paris.66

62

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65

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document from Cairo: J. Braslavi, ‘Le plus ancien guide juif de Jérusalem, Der älteste Jüdische Jerusalem-Führer’, in M. Küchler and C. Uehlinger, eds., Jerusalem. Texte–Bilder–Steine (Freiburg, 1987), 37–81. J. Pahlitzsch, ‘Die Bedeutung Jerusalems für Königtum und Kirche in Georgien zur Zeit der Kreuzzuge im Vergleich zu Armenien’, in L’idea di Gerusalemme nella spiritualità Cristiana del medioevo (Vatican City, 2003), 104–31; R. Janin, ‘Les Géorgiens à Jérusalem’, Echos d’Orient 16 (1913), 32–8, 211–19; G. Peradze, ‘An account of the Georgian monks and monasteries in Palestine as revealed in the writings of non-Georgian pilgrims’, Georgica 1 (1937), 181–246. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LXXX, p. 322. C. Müller and J. Pahlitzsch, ‘Sultan Baybars I and the Georgians in the light of new documents related to the monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem’, Arabica 51 (2004), 258–90. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis fratris Jacobi de Verona, in ‘Le pèlerinage du moine augustin Jacques de Vérone (1335)’, ed R. Röhricht, ROL 3 (1895), 222. The Tuscan pilgrim Giorgio Gucci (1384) mistook the Georgians for St Thomas Christians of India, but describes a rich and well-appointed monastery: B. Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine and Syria in 1384 by Frescobaldi, Gucci and Sigoli, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 6 (Jerusalem, 1948), CIII, 138. Ten years later another Italian pilgrim, Niccolò de Martoni, was misled by the Orthodox rite he saw at the monastery into assuming that the Georgians were Greeks: ROL 3 (1895), 623; B. Abu-Manneh, ‘The Georgians in Jerusalem in the Mamluk period’, in A. Cohen and G. Baer, ed., Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868–1948) (Jerusalem and New York, 1984), 102–12. Ansellus, Epistola ad ecclesiam Parisiensem, PL 162: 729–32, for details of the foundation.

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The Judaean Desert Traditionally the founder of the laura form of monasticism in Palestine, in which monks live in a community comprising individual cells grouped together, often in an all but inaccessible location, was the fourth-century monk Chariton. He founded a laura at Faran, in the wadi Fara, and the more celebrated Douka monastery on Jabal Quruntul near Jericho, before moving to the region of Tekoa in c. 345. The monastery that came to be known as St Chariton is also known in Greek sources as ‘Souka’, or sometimes simply as the ‘Old Laura’. The fate of the monastery in the seventh century is unknown, but perhaps it lay too far from any centres to be of interest to the Persian or Arab invaders. Continuing links between Souka and Jabal Quruntul in the eighth century are attested by the Life of Stephen the Sabaite, but the Old Laura suffered from Beduin raids in 797, 809 and 813, the period known as the War of the Watermelon.67 The monastery is mentioned in the Commemoratorium, and in his Chronographia (before 810) George the Synkellos mentions making the journey from Jerusalem to the Old Laura on several occasions.68 By 817–19 it must have been fully functional again, for Theodore the Studite wrote to the monks at that date.69 At the end of the ninth century, Stephen of Ramla, an important Melkite writer in Arabic, was a monk at St Chariton.70 Although the archaeological evidence for continued occupation of the site beyond this date is uncertain, pilgrims continued to visit the monastery. Abbot Daniel’s account of 1106–7 shows that he certainly went there, but his description is rather ambiguous. The encircling wall remained, and the church must have been functional, for he worshipped there but, although he describes the tombs of Chariton, Kyriakos, John and Arkadios and other desert monks, there is no mention of a community in the monastery.71 The lack of any evidence of building in the twelfth century, however, which Pringle took to indicate that there was no permanent community in the crusader period, is misleading.72 In contrast, there is evidence that manuscripts were both copied at and for the monastery in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.73 Western pilgrims of the twelfth–fourteenth centuries were aware of the monastery’s history and significance, largely on account of a tradition that Chariton’s monks all died with him because they did not want to be left without a shepherd, and that the bodies of all the monks resisted burning at the hands of the Muslims.74 By the fourteenth century, however, it is no longer possible to be sure whether pilgrims who mentioned the monastery were still actually visiting the site.

67

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69

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71 73

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Leontios, Leonzio di Damasco: Vita di San Stephano Sabaita, ed. B. Pirone, Studia Orientalia Christiana, Monographiae 4 (Cairo and Jerusalem, 1991), LXV, 316–17; Chronographia of Theophanes, ed. Mango and Scott, 165, 178. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 208–11; The Chronography of George the Synkellos, trans. W. Adler and P. Tuffin (Oxford, 2002), CXXII, 153. Theodori Studitae Epistulae, CCLXXVIII, ed. G. Fatouros, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 31 (Berlin, 1992), I, 415–18 (and II, 322–3 for German trans.); PG 99: 1167–74. S. Griffith, ‘Stephen of Ramlah and the Christian Kerygma in ninth-century Palestine’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), 23–45. 72 Daniel the Abbot, p. 149. Pringle, Churches, no. 200, II, pp. 222–3. Oxford Bodley Barocci MS 230, Sinai cod grec. 512 and Sinai cod arab. 281 all bear colophons attesting to ownership or copying activity. Descriptio locorum (1131–43), XXXIV, in IHC II, 100; Rorgo Fretellus de Nazareth, ed. Boeren, 30; John of Würzburg, pp. 139, 137; Anon VI, in IHC III, 68; Eugesippus, Tractatus de distantiis locorum Terrae Sanctae, PG 133: 996. The legend of the founder’s incorruptible body was also known by Peter de Pennis in the 1330s: ‘Libellus de Pierre de Pennis de locis ultramarinis’, ed. Ch. Kohler, ROL 9 (1902), 367.

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The most influential of all laurae, however, was that founded by the Cappadocian monk Sabas in the wadi Kidron, in the desert south-east of Jerusalem, towards the end of the fifth century. Sabas had been a monk in Jerusalem and under the coenobiarchs Theoktistos and Euthymios before settling in a cave in the wadi in 478. He attracted followers, and eventually founded the laura in the wadi, with a chapel on the opposite side, a tower and, by 486, an enclosing wall around the whole complex. Archaeological excavations have revealed many cells built into the caves of the wadi.75 Partly because of Sabas’ own personal authority as archimandrite of all monks in the Judaean desert, a position to which he was ordained in 493–4, and partly because of his support for the orthodox Chalcedonian position during the Christological debates of the early sixth century, the Great Laura, as it became known, attracted new disciples to the monastic life, one of whom, Cyril of Scythopolis, compiled a Life of Sabas and of other Sabaite monks of the early sixth century. But St Sabas’ fame also attracted Persian attention during the invasion of 614. Antiochos’ account of the sack of the monastery and massacre of many of the monks assured the laura a new importance as a martyrium for the dead monks. Despite the vicissitudes of raids at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries, the laura continued to play an important role as the centre of monastic life in the Judaean desert. Willibald, the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon pilgrim, was impressed by the number of monks he found and by their precarious habitation in the wadi.76 In 800, a monk of St Sabas accompanied Charlemagne’s emissary Zacharias from Jerusalem to Rome, and another Sabaite, Gerasios, described as a ‘recluse’, attended Louis the Pious’ council at Ingelheim in the 830s.77 As we have seen, Sabaite monks were also chosen to represent the Church of Jerusalem in Constantinople in 811. One reason for the eminence in which St Sabas was held was the high level of scribal and literary activity in the monastery. Stephen the Sabaite and John of Damascus, the last Greek-speaking representatives of the great age of Judaean desert monasticism, were succeeded by Arabic-speaking monks who, as Sidney Griffith has shown, continued a distinguished tradition of theological and hagiographical writing.78 At the end of the tenth century, doubtless following the Byzantine reconquest of Antioch, there are signs of a revival of Greek interest in St Sabas. In the 980s a monk from western Asia Minor, Lazaros, made his way to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, and while in Jerusalem was recruited to become a monk at St Sabas. Here he appears to have lived in a way that would have been quite familiar to Cyril of Scythopolis in the sixth century, until the persecution of 1009 forced him to flee to Byzantine territory.79 Although the Life of Lazaros gives the impression of despair and disruption to monastic life, there is abundant evidence of a full return to scribal and artistic activity at St Sabas in the eleventh century from surviving 75 76

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Patrich, Sabas, describes the excavations and the early history of the laura. Hodoeporicon S. Willibaldi, XXIII, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 267; M. Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travellers in the Mediterranean World, AD 300–800 (University Park, PA, 2005), 203. Annales Regni Francorum, 74; Libri Confraternitatum, ed. P. Piper (Berlin 1884), 273. S. H. Griffith, ‘Greek into Arabic: life and letters in the monasteries of Palestine in the ninth century: the example of the Summa Theologiae Arabica’, Byzantion 56 (1986), 117–38; Griffith, ‘The monks of Palestine and the growth of Christian literature in Arabic’, Muslim World 78 (1998), 1–28; Griffith, ‘Anthony David of Baghdad, scribe and monk of Mar Sabas: Arabic in the monasteries of Palestine’, Church History 58 (1989), 7–19. The Life of Lazaros of Mount Galesion: An Eleventh-Century Pillar Saint, ed. and trans. R. P. Greenfield, Byzantine Saints’ Lives in Translation 3 (Washington, DC, 2000), 94–103.

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manuscripts. As will be seen in Chapter 15, these demonstrate not only the continuity of monastic liturgy, but also interests in lectio divina and in theological issues. In the middle of the century, the Byzantine monk Christodoulos repeated Lazaros’ pattern of pilgrimage and residence at St Sabas, before returning to Asia Minor. Through their foundations at Mt Galesion and Patmos, St Sabas thus came to enjoy an influence far beyond Palestine on monastic reform in the eleventh-century Orthodox world. Lazaros remained in contact with St Sabas long after leaving the monastery, as did Nikon of the Black Mountain, who, although he never went there himself, corresponded with his Sabaite ‘spiritual son’. Christodoulos, indeed, specified elements of the Sabaite liturgical tradition to be followed in his own foundation on Patmos.80 Nevertheless, the monastery must have suffered some depredations at the hands of the Seljuqs in the last years of the eleventh century. The first Western pilgrim since Willibald to describe the monastery was another Anglo-Saxon, Saewulf, in 1102–3. He does not seem to have visited it himself – indeed he was hopelessly wrong about its location – but he understood that many of the 300 monks had been killed by the Seljuqs and described the Great Laura as lying desolate.81 This is probably an exaggeration, for Daniel, who actually visited the monastery in 1106–8, says nothing about damage to the buildings, nor indeed about recent killings.82 The evidence for continued literary, artistic and scribal production at St Sabas in the crusader period is extensive, and we know the names of at least four hegoumens of St Sabas during the twelfth century, one of whom, Meletios, is named as a confrater of the Hospital of St John. The monastery owned land in the immediate vicinity and also in Cyprus. The fullest twelfth-century description of the monastery is by John Phocas, who visited it as part of his ‘tour of the desert’ in 1185.83 It is clear that the monastery still functioned as a laura, and that the monks occupied cells on both sides of the wadi, with the main church founded by Sabas occupying a ledge in the centre. The influence St Sabas enjoyed in the Orthodox monastic world continued to grow. The Serbian prince Savas Nemanjić spent a period as a monk here in the 1230s and, like Lazaros and Christodoulos in the eleventh century, called on his experiences both of life in the laura and of the architectural layout of the community in founding his own monasteries in his homeland.84 St Sabas may have escaped Saladin’s conquest of 1187 and the ravages of Baibars’ army in 1269 unscathed, although other desert monasteries, notably St Euthymios and St Chariton, suffered. In 1389 Ignatios of Smolensk reported that the monks’ cells (where apparently 40,000 monks had once lived) could still be seen, but the impression he gives is that the laura, though still active, was now reduced in numbers. Another Russian, Grethenios, found only twenty-five monks there in c. 1400.85 The laura of Choziba in the wadi Qilt, between Jerusalem and Jericho, became a coenobium dedicated to Mary at the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century. 80 83

84

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81 82 See p. 407. Saewulf, p. 71. Daniel the Abbot, p. 140. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 327; PG 133: 945–8; A. T. Jotischky, ‘Greek Orthodox and Latin Monasticism around Mar Saba under crusader rule’, in J. Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 98 (Leuven, 2001), 85–96. S. Popović, ‘Sabaite influences on the church of medieval Serbia,’ and J. Thomas, ‘The imprint of Sabaitic monasticism on Byzantine monastic typika’, both in Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage, 385–408 and 73–84. Itinéraires russe, ed. Khitrowo, 158, 173.

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Although abandoned in 614, the monastery was not destroyed, but, according to the Life of George of Choziba, the outlying cells in the wadi were abandoned because of fears about the dangers posed by wild beasts.86 The monastery continued to function in the ninth and tenth centuries but, although Abbot Daniel visited it because of the tradition linking the site with Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary, he seems to have found an empty site in 1106–8.87 By the 1180s, the monastery had been restored. John Phocas found it a place so remarkable that ‘only when one has seen it can one grasp its wonders’.88 The monks’ cells were formed from the caves of the rock-face rising above the wadi itself, but in order to reach them one had to face a precipitous climb in the heat of the sun. The restoration of the monastery in the twelfth century is attested also in inscriptions, including one in Greek and Arabic recording the workmanship of Ibrahim, son of Musa of Jifna, and in the fragmentary survival of wall paintings and a mosaic floor in the church.89 The monastery evidently survived into the thirteenth century for, although there are no other pilgrim accounts, manuscripts can be associated with it from this period.90 However, by the time James of Verona visited the wadi Qilt in 1335, it was uninhabited, apparently, James reports, because of the large number of snakes in the wadi.91 Only a short distance from Choziba, but located on the Jerusalem–Jericho road south of the wadi Qilt, lay the monastery founded by Euthymios, Sabas’ mentor, in the early fifth century. The site he chose was identified as the place where, in Jesus’ parable, the man fell among thieves. Although it seems to have survived the Persian invasion, it was destroyed in an earthquake in 660, to be rebuilt on a slightly smaller scale. The archaeological evidence indicates that the cemetery was in constant use, suggesting continued habitation at the site, and this is borne out by the documentary record for the eighth century. The monastery is mentioned by John of Damascus, in 730–40, in the Life of Stephen the Sabaite and in the account of Willibald’s pilgrimage.92 The Beduin raid of 797, and the further outbreaks of violence in 809 and 813 that also threatened St Sabas and St Chariton damaged the monastery but did not put an end to the community, for in c. 808 the Commemoratorium reports the presence of thirty monks, and Theodore the Studite knew of their continued existence in 817–19.93 The sources are largely silent for the tenth century, but at the very beginning of the eleventh century Lazaros of Mt Galesion spent some time as a monk at St Euthymios. Having entered the laura of St Sabas, he was punished for a disciplinary 86 87 88

89 90

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Antony of Choziba, Miracula beatae Mariae in Choziba, Analecta Bollandiana 7 (1888), IV, 364. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 210–11; Daniel the Abbot, p. 136. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328; PG 133: 949. See also A. T. Jotischky, ‘History and memory as factors in Greek Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land under crusader rule’, in Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History, 110–22. See Pringle, Churches, nos. 77–9, I, 184, for descriptions of the inscriptions and paintings. Jerusalem, Taphou MS 35 (the Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Greek), an eleventh-century manuscript with marginal note on f. 309r in a thirteenth-century hand claiming ownership by Choziba; Patmos cod 28, an eleventh-century MS of Basil’s Homilies and Letters acquired by Choziba in the twelfth–thirteenth century. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, IV, 209. It is curious, not to say suggestive, that James should have given exactly the same reason as that in the Life of George of Choziba for the abandonment of the site. Since it is highly unlikely that he knew the Life, he may have picked up an oral tradition that he either misunderstood or ‘telescoped’ and applied to the more recent period. John of Damascus, De hymno trisagio epistola, PG 95: 23–4, 57–8; Leontios, Vita di S. Stephano Sabaita, XX, XXI, XXII, LXXVII, 114–15, 122–3, 126–7, 378–9; Hodoeporicon sancti Willibaldi, XVII, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 97–9. Passio SS XX martyrum S. Sabae, AA SS, Mar. III, 170; Chronicle of Theophanes, ed. Mango and Scott, 484, 499; Charlemagne’s Survey, 210–11; Theodori Studitae Epistulae, p. 418; PG 99: 1173–4.

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infringement by being sent to the coenobium of St Euthymios. Exactly the same pattern recurs in the monastic career of Gabriel the Stylite in the 1180s, indicating that the Judaean desert monasteries maintained contact with each other in much the same way as had been the case in the time of Sabas himself.94 Between these episodes, however, St Euthymios had undergone a period of abandonment, either as a result of the persecution of 1009 or perhaps through Seljuq action in the second half of the eleventh century. Daniel found the monastery deserted and the buildings in a ruinous condition in 1106–8, but by 1185 the walls had been rebuilt and the monastery was clearly functioning again.95 In 1187, however, St Euthymios was overrun by a Muslim war band during Saladin’s invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the monks – including Gabriel – were carried off into captivity in Damascus.96 There is no record of the monastery in the thirteenth century, and by the fourteenth it was in ruins again. The other great survivor from the early Byzantine monasteries of the Judaean desert was St Theodosios (Deir Dosi), a coenobium around which the village of ’Ubeidiyya, east of Bethlehem, has subsequently grown up. Traditionally the site chosen by Theodosios the Coenobiarch in the fifth century was the cave in which the magi sheltered. The monastery was still thriving in the early ninth century, with a recorded seventy monks and two dependent churches, but the community suffered several deaths in the Abbasid wars of this period.97 From the ninth–tenth centuries, however, there is evidence of manuscript production and ownership, including a copy of John Chrysostom’s Homilies from this period, and a Panegyrikon of 1025.98 The twelfth-century evidence for peaceful continuity is compelling. The monastery’s wall was still intact in 1106–8, when Daniel visited it.99 It was at St Theodosios that Euphrosine, the Russian abbess who died while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1173, was eventually buried, after permission had been refused by the hegoumen of St Sabas. The hegoumen’s suggestion that her family approach St Theodosios, where the founder’s mother, along with Sabas’, had apparently been buried, is further evidence of some degree of communication between the monasteries.100 The monastery was evidently wealthy in the twelfth century and, judging from confirmations of its property by Pope Honorius III in 1216–18, remained so after 1187. Besides churches in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Jubail, it maintained hospitals in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Ascalon; ran two ships out of Jaffa; and also owned agricultural property in Cyprus and elsewhere in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1218 the monastery’s exemption from paying tithes was also confirmed.101 St Theodosios was still active in the fourteenth century. In 1347 al-’Umari, a Damascene, wrote about the welcome he received from the 94

95 96 97

98 99 100 101

The Life of Lazaros, 97–8; Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, edited by H. Delehaye, in his ‘Saints de Chypre’, Analecta Bollandiana 26 (1907), XVIII, 171. Daniel the Abbot, p. 141; John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328; PG 133: 949. Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, XIX, 172. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 208–9; Chronicle of Theophanes, ed. Mango and Scott, 165, 178. In general, see E. Weigand, ‘Das Theodosioskloster’, BZ 23 (1920), 167–216. Jerusalem Sabas MS 8 (John Chrysostom); Jerusalem Sabas MS 142 (a Panegyrikon). Daniel the Abbot, p. 139; also John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, p. 325; PG 133: 948. B. de Khitrowo, ‘Pelèrinage en Palestine de l’abbesse Euphrosine, princesse de Polotsk (1173)’, ROL 3 (1895), 34–5. Honorius III, Regesta nos. 72, 175–6, 1037, 1009.

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monks, and only a few years later Perdikas of Ephesus and an anonymous Slavic pilgrim also described it in favourable terms.102 Some disaster struck the monastery between c. 1360 and c. 1400, however, for Grethenios found it in ruins, and it was restored only in the 1880s.103 The evidence of Ignatios of Smolensk (1389), while indeterminate, suggests that he was referring to a site whose community was no longer active, so the end can be narrowed down still further.104 The last monastery to be considered in this group was, unusually, a new foundation of the twelfth century. The church of St Elias, south of Jerusalem on the road to Bethlehem, is first mentioned in anonymous pilgrimage accounts of the 1160s.105 John Phocas describes a monastery that had been demolished in an earthquake in 1157, but which was rebuilt through donations raised by the hegoumen from Emperor Manuel Komnenos. Although Phocas says that the monastery was ancient, there is no documentary or archaeological evidence for a pre-twelfth-century community on the site.106 The monastery survived no apparent disruption during Saladin’s conquest, for it is mentioned in the Apodeixis of 1187–92.107 Moreover, the hegoumen of the monastery played a minor role in the Third Crusade in 1192. According to the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, on the third day before the feast of John the Baptist (i.e. 21 June), the hegoumen, ‘heavily bearded, with white hair, reverend in appearance’, came before the king of his own accord, with the news that he had personally hidden a piece of the True Cross that had been saved after the fall of Jerusalem, and subsequently led Richard to the spot.108 The story is corroborated in its essentials by Roger of Howden, who, however, leaves the hegoumen out of the account but places it at a chapel dedicated to St Elias near Beit Nuba. If Roger’s geography is correct, this cannot have been the monastery near Bethlehem; on the other hand, he refers to the relic as crux Syriosus, which suggests that it belonged to an Orthodox community. Neither chronicler says what happened to the relic after Richard’s departure nor indeed whether he took it with him. The monastery continued in existence during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, and is attested as late as 1384.109

The Jordan From the early days of Palestinian monasticism, the stretch of the Jordan around Jericho and south to the Dead Sea was colonised by monks. The settlement of monasteries in or near sites of biblical importance went hand in hand with the development of pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the mid-fourth century onwards, and the monasteries in this region were close to the route that most pilgrims took to the Jordan to commemorate the site of Jesus’ 102

103

104 105 106 108

109

A. Marmardji, ed., Textes geographiques arabes sur la Palestine (Paris, 1951), 73; J. Martinov, ‘Récit sur les lieux saints de Jérusalem traduit d’un texte slavon du XIVe siècle’, ROL 2 (1894), 389–93. Khitrowo, ‘Le pelèrinage de l’archimadrite Grethenios du couvent de la sainte Vierge (vers 1400)’, in Itinéraires russes, ed. Khitrowo, 188. Khitrowo, ‘Le pelèrinage d’Ignace de Smolensk’ in Itinéraires russes, ed. Khitrowo, 152. Anon VII, 6, in IHC III, 80; Anon II, 8, in IHC III, 14; Anon IX, 5, in IHC III, 94; Anon V, 1, in IHC III, 32. 107 John Phocas, John in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 332; PG 133: 956. Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 989. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, V, 54, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, pp. 377–8; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, pp. 333–4. For thirteenth-century pilgrims, see Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, III, 98, 104, 170, 186, 196, 232; for the fourteenth century, see Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, 58; Peter de Pennis, ‘Libellus’, 366.

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baptism. The monastery of St John Prodromos was built with imperial patronage under Emperor Anastasias (491–518) and extended in the middle of the sixth century to cater for the volume of pilgrims. The buildings were so close to the river that the church was raised on vaults to guard against flooding; ironically, it was an earthquake, in 659, that destroyed the monastery, but it was rebuilt early enough for Arculf (c. 670) to have seen the new church.110 In the eighth century Willibald found twenty monks there, and two ninthcentury sources, the Commemoratorium and the pilgrimage account of Bernard the Monk (c. 870) confirm continued Western knowledge of the monastery.111 Abbot Daniel reports that in 1106–8 there were two churches, one of which stood on a hill on the road from Jericho to the Jordan.112 The vulnerable position of the monastery, right on the river, exposed it to danger from raids from across the Jordan against the kingdom of Jerusalem. There were still twenty monks in 1114, but Theoderic, in the 1160s, reported the deaths of six in a raid.113 The construction of a castle by the Templars doubtless helped make the monastery and pilgrims more secure from raids, but could not prevent further earthquake damage in c. 1160. It is a mark of the importance of the monastery to pilgrims – Orthodox and Latin – that Manuel Komnenos, perhaps consciously recalling the patronage of his imperial predecessors, helped in the reconstruction effort.114 Indeed, St John Prodromos is remarkable in being one of only a small handful of monasteries, including St Katherine’s on Mt Sinai, Our Lady at Saidnaya and Chariton – but, surprisingly perhaps, not St Sabas – that consistently attracted Western as well as Orthodox pilgrims. Thietmar was impressed by the magnificence of the church, and by the numbers of indigenous Christians and pilgrims who participated in the Epiphany celebrations at the monastery.115 St John is described or mentioned in all the main pilgrimage accounts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: those of Ernoul (1228–31), Riccoldo of Montecroce (1289), Philip of Savona (1260s), Burchard of Mt Zion (1280s), Anthony of Cremona (1327–30), Peter de Pennis (1330s), James of Verona (1335), the anonymous English Franciscan (1345) and Niccolò da Poggibonsi (1346–7).116 Both James of Verona and Niccolò were shown the relic of the hand of John the Baptist. In the fourteenth century the monastery acquired books from St Chariton, which suggests that when that community collapsed the remaining monks entered Prodromos.117 Despite the monastery’s continued appeal to pilgrims, by 1384 there were only a few monks in residence, and in the fifteenth century it seems finally to have been abandoned.118 The monastery of St Gerasimos, founded in c. 455 as a coenobium, probably lay a little east of ‘Ain Hajla, south of a line between Jericho and the Jordan. The Commemoratorium 110 111

112 113

114 115 116 117

118

Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. Bieler, XVI, p. 214. McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 228–9; Bernard the Monk, Itinera, XVIII, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 318. Daniel the Abbot, pp. 136–7. De situ Ierusalem, II, 7, in IHC II, 78; Theodericus, p. 177. Al-Idrisi, the Arab geographer, saw the monastery in c. 1154 and attests to the presence of Orthodox monks: Idrisi, La géographie d’Edrisi, 345. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 329; PG 133: 952–3. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, ed. J. C. M. Laurent (Hamburg, 1857), XI, 20–4, 31–2. Pringle, Churches, no. 209, II, 240–2. A. T. Jotischky, ‘The fortunes of war: an eleventh-century Greek liturgical manuscript (Sinai gr 512) and its history’, Crusades 9 (2010), 173–84. Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 78, 134.

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lists ten monks here, but the monastery made little impression on pilgrims before the twelfth century, probably because no biblical episodes could be associated with the site. Because no archaeological remains have been identified, even the precise location of the monastery is uncertain, but the two twelfth-century Orthodox pilgrims, Daniel and John Phocas, both visited it. Daniel had little to say other than to fix the location between St John Prodromos and Kalamon, the nearby monastery associated with the resting place of the Holy Family on their flight to Egypt.119 John Phocas, however, found that by 1185 the monastery had been washed away by the erosion of the river bank, leaving only the ruins of a church, two caves and a stylite’s column. Here he discovered a Georgian hermit who had, in imitation of the monastery’s founder, tamed lions whom he fed from his own meagre supplies of food. The lions apparently brought him pieces of wood from the river bank which he fashioned into crosses to sell to pilgrims.120 The fate of the monastery after this date is uncertain. Because there are no archaeological remains, it is impossible to corroborate the implication of the Apodeixis that the monastery was still functioning in 1187–92.121 There is no twelfthcentury testimony to the monastery, but two Western accounts from the 1330s suggest that it was still an active community. Peter de Pennis mistook the dedication to Gerasimos for Jerome, though it is clear from his description that he has this monastery in mind.122 Peter may not have much authority as a witness, since he almost certainly did not go to the Holy Land personally, but stitched together his account from other sources. James of Verona, however, definitely did make the journey himself in 1335. Like Peter, he mistakes the dedication for Jerome, describing this as the place where the Latin Father translated the Old and New Testament, wrote his letters and was guarded by a lion.123 Jerome’s lion, indeed, seems to derive, via James of Voragine’s Golden Legend, from the confusion with St Gerasimos. However, there is no doubt that James visited an active community, which provided hospitality on which he remarks. Likewise, Niccolò da Poggibonsi – confusingly mistaking the dedication not for Jerome but St Sabino – seems to have visited an active monastery in 1346–7.124 In 1384, however, the Tuscan pilgrim Gucci, for whom it was also the monastery of Jerome, found it uninhabited. In Orthodox tradition, naturally, the correct dedication was remembered, but the most significant feature of the monastery to Ignatios of Smolensk was that it had been the dwelling place of a lion, who was buried at the feet of the founder.125 The Russian pilgrim Daniel associated St Gerasimos with the nearby monastery of St Mary Kalamon. Although no remains have yet been identified, the literary evidence for a monastery in the location identified with the place where the Holy Family rested stretches back to the early seventh century. In 614 monks from Choziba, which lay close to the road from the east to Jerusalem, fled to Kalamon. They were apparently safer there than those monks who chose to hide instead in caves in the wadis, who were discovered and killed by the Persians. This suggests either that Kalamon had strong enough defensive walls to deter 119 120

121 123 125

Daniel the Abbot, p. 138. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 330; PG 133: 952–3; see also Jotischky, ‘Greek Orthodox pilgrimage’, 116–18. 122 Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 989, ‘it minsters to the holy’. Peter de Pennis, ‘Libellus’, XVIII, 371–2. 124 James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, IV, 211. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CXLIX, 86. ‘Le pelèrinage d’Ignace de Smolensk’, in Itinéraires russes, ed. Khitrowo, 153–4.

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the Persians, or that the monasteries near Jericho were sufficiently far from the invaders’ route to be safe.126 However, when Stephen the Sabaite, in the mid-eighth century, used the site as a spiritual retreat during Lent, it clearly no longer had an active community.127 Yet by the second half of the tenth century we have the name of a hegoumen, Hilarion, in the colophon of a manuscript, and in 1050 a monk called Sabas copied a manuscript in the monastery.128 Evidently the monastery had been reoccupied at some point between the second half of the eighth century and 962, the date of the first colophon. As we have seen, Daniel visited the community in 1106–8, and found twenty monks there.129 Further restoration work was done in the mid-twelfth century, as recorded in a bilingual inscription in Greek and Arabic naming Patriarch John and Abbot Jacob.130 Only a few scattered names survive for hegoumens, or abbots, of most Orthodox monasteries, but we have a complete list of patriarchs of Jerusalem. Since the inscription can be dated on epigraphical grounds to the twelfth century, this probably refers to Patriarch John IX (before 1157–before 1161). John is known to have attended the Council of Constantinople in 1157, since he appears on the witness list in the register of the Acts of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem were generally resident in Constantinople during the crusader administration of Jerusalem, but some of them were clearly concerned with the affairs of their patriarchate. It was also from about 1157–8 onwards that Emperor Manuel Komnenos began to take a practical interest in the shrines and monasteries of the Holy Land.131 The most likely scenario is that Manuel supported the restoration of the monastery at about the same time as St John Prodromos and St Elias, and a decade or so before his patronage of the church of the Nativity. John Phocas knew of the continued existence of the community, but he had nothing to say about it. However, graffiti from the twelfth century include a reference in Latin characters to ‘Peter the Seneschal’, who may be the seneschal of Reynald of Châtillon, Lord of Transjordan, in the 1180s.132 This, of course, suggests that the monastery was known to Franks resident in the East as a pilgrimage site, although it is not mentioned in any Western pilgrimage account. Orthodox pilgrims in the twelfth century also refer to a monastery dedicated to St John Chrysostom in the region of St Gerasimos and Kalamon, about two kilometres south-east of Jericho. Daniel located it between Kalamon and Jericho, and found it fully functioning, protected by a wall and apparently prospering.133 Phocas, seventy or so years later, is less clear about the circumstances of the monastery, saying merely that it lay about five stades from Kalamon. He is more interested in the Georgian stylite who had taken up residence on a pillar ‘a bowshot away’ from the monastery, and there is no indication of whether the monastery was still active.134 St John Chrysostom may have been a refoundation of two monasteries originally founded in c. 475. One of these became the Monastery of the Eunuchs after 528, whereas the other corresponds to the monastery of St Stephen near 126

127 129 131 132 134

Antony of Choziba, Vita sancti Georgii Chozibitae confessoris et monachi, ed. C. House, Analecta Bollandiana 7 (1888), XXXI, pp. 129–30. Yet the Persians sacked St Sabas, which lay even further from their path. 128 Leontios, Vita di S. Stephano Sabaita, XVI, 96–7. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, II, 712. 130 Daniel the Abbot, p. 138. Pringle, Churches, I, 197. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 66–76; Jotischky, ‘Manuel Comnenus and the reunion of the Churches’. 133 Pringle, Churches, I, 201. Daniel the Abbot, p. 138. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 331; PG 133: 953.

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Jericho mentioned in the Commemoratorium, by which time only one monastery appears to have been functioning on the site.135 About two kilometres north-west of Jericho, the Jabal Quruntul, traditionally the site of the Temptation of Christ after his baptism, dominates the plain and the lower Jordan valley. The laura founded here by Chariton in the fourth century was no longer in use by the mid-eighth century, when Stephen the Sabaite found it abandoned.136 Because of the importance of the Baptism in Western pilgrimage, however, the site was revived by a group of Frankish monks in the early twelfth century, who lived as dependants of the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre.137 Presumably this refoundation did not outlast Frankish control of the Jordan valley, which ended in 1187. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, however, there are signs that the laura, which was built along a narrow ledge of the sheer cliff-face, had been occupied again by monks. Riccoldo of Montecroce, the Dominican missionary Prior Provincial of the Holy Land, reported that in 1289 he and some companions had celebrated Mass and preached to ‘many Christians gathered there, and to the hermits who lived there, and we learned from them about many places and houses of Christ’.138 How many monks lived there, and whether they were in fact enclosed monks of a restored community or simply hermits living on the mountain is impossible to determine, because Riccoldo himself glosses over the question of exactly which church he meant – that of the former Latin monastery, or the chapel on the summit of Jabal Quruntul that commemorated the place where Jesus was shown the whole earth by the Devil.139 In 1320 another friar, Orderic of Foro Iulii, knew that many hermits had lived in cells here in the past, but made no mention of contemporary habitation. Similarly, Peter de Pennis’ account mentions the existence of the cells but speaks of the hermits in the distant past.140 Peter’s guide, however, is very formulaic and betrays no genuine familiarity with the places he describes. Only a few years later, in 1335, the Augustinian hermit friar James of Verona found two Greek monks (calogeri) in residence in the laura. A year later Ludolph of Sudheim confirmed this, though he thought the monks were Georgians.141 In 1346–7 Niccolò da Poggibonsi also found Orthodox monks at Jabal Quruntul, though he does not specify whether they were Greek or Georgian in nationality, and in any case, as we have seen, he is not the most reliable judge of this distinction.142 The final witness to Orthodox habitation here in the fourteenth century is Frescobaldi, who in 1384 encountered only a single Greek hermit living in a cave near the summit of the mountain – and presumably therefore not in the laura – ‘pale and very thin, and his eyes so deep set in his head that he looked like death, so great was his lividity’. The 135

136 137

138 140 141

142

McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 210; Epiphanios, Ennaratio Syriae, PG 120: XI, 121, refers to it as St Zosima the Great. Leontios, Vita di S. Stephano Sabaita, 85, 103, 129. It probably went out of use at the time of the Persian invasion. BB no. 94, pp. 211–12; Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, visited the hermits in 1172: Arnold of Lubeck, MGH (SS), XXI, I, 7, 121; see also Theodericus, p. 36. 139 Riccoldo, Pérégrination, ed. Kappler, 54–5. See Pringle, Churches, I, 254–6, for this chapel. Orderic of Foro Iulii, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 156; Peter de Pennis, ‘Libellus’, 370. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, IV, 209–10; Ludolph of Sudheim, De itinere, 355. The reference to the Georgians living there under the sultan’s protection is a convincing detail. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CLI, 87–8.

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hermit lived in such great poverty that he was grateful for the gift of hard biscuit that Frescobaldi made him, but at the same time fearful that the Muslims in the vicinity would rob him if they knew he had food.143

East of the Jordan and Sinai Although in the Byzantine era monastic communities had been founded deep into the desert on both sides of the Dead Sea, few traces of these survived into the medieval period. In the early twelfth century, Baldwin I of Jerusalem led raids across the Jordan, subduing some of the Beduin and as a result resettling some Syrian Orthodox populations within the new kingdom. In the course of the campaigns of 1100 and 1107, as the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres describes, he came across an active Greek Orthodox monastery on ‘Mt Hor’, Mar Harun. This was thought to be the place of the death of Moses’ brother Aaron, and dedicated to him.144 The monastery, which lies south-west of Petra, was included on a twelfth-century map of Florentine provenance, and as late as 1217, though the community had shrunk to only two monks, the pilgrim Thietmar found it still functioning after a fashion.145 The monastery may have enjoyed a continuous existence since the Byzantine period, for the eighth-century Life of Stephen the Sabaite describes Sabaite monks visiting Jebel Harun on their Lenten wanderings around the Dead Sea, and the tenth-century Arab writer al-Mas‘udi (955–6) said that the mountain was in the possession of the Melkites.146 Fulcher implies that the Jebel Harun community was only one among others who relied on the protection of the king of Jerusalem against the ruler of Damascus, but the exact locations of others are unclear. There may, however, have been a community at Kerak, where in 1217 Thietmar encountered a resident Greek bishop who brought him a gift of food. Only monks were eligible for election to the episcopate in the Orthodox Church, so the presence of a bishop suggests an active monastic community in the region; however, Thietmar does not say what the bishop’s diocese was.147 Next to St Sabas, the most prestigious Orthodox monastery in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was St Katherine on Mt Sinai. Like St Sabas, it had an unbroken history as an active community since its foundation, by Justinian in the sixth century. The dedication to St Katherine, however, is not attested in a Greek source before the early thirteenth century, and its foundation was linked to the site of the burning bush rather than to the place of the translation of the martyr’s body. Although al-Hakim had tried to have it destroyed, according to Yahya ibn Sa‘id the monastery was saved by a combination of its reputation and the persuasive powers of the hegoumen.148 Surviving icons and manuscripts provide firm evidence for continued artistic and literary production in service of a polyglot Orthodox community at St Katherine before 143 145

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144 Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 79. FC II, 5, s. 9, 381. R. Röhricht, ‘Karten und Pläne zur Palästinakunde aus dem 7. bis 16. Jahrhundert’, ZDPV 15 (1892), 6; Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, 38. Leontios, Vita di S. Stephano Sabaita, XVI, 96–7; al-Mas’udi, Kitab al-tanbih wa-al-ishraf, ed. M. J. de Goeje, Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum 8 (Leiden, 1894), 143–4. Schick (The Christian Communities of Palestine, 314) declares, ‘the monastery was still in existence when the crusaders arrived’, though in fact there are gaps in the evidence between Leontios and al-Mas’udi and between the latter and Fulcher. 148 Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XIV, 36. Yahya ibn Sa‘id, Histoire, 495–6.

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the crusader conquest. As we shall see, Sinai was already culturally part of the Palestinian monastic orbit. After 1099, and especially after Baldwin I’s subjugation of the Beduin of the southern desert regions, the Sinai peninsula became politically dependent on the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Orthodox episcopal lists since the sixth century had recognised the hegoumen of the monastery as an archbishop, and the Latin Church of Jerusalem continued this arrangement.149 However, the monastery seems to have attracted little attention as the site of the cult of St Katherine from either Orthodox or Western pilgrims before the second half of the twelfth century. Epiphanios, writing in the tenth century, speaks of a monastery ‘of the holy bush’ and discourses on the biblical events that took place in Sinai, as well as the burial of one of its most celebrated monks, John Klimakos, but does not mention either the dedication to St Katherine or her tomb.150 An account of c. 1130 known as the De situ Jerusalem mentions the monastery within a descriptive passage that is essentially a paraphrase of Jerome’s Letter 78. The great holiness of the monks is noted, and the extent of their landed properties throughout Egypt and ‘Persia’, but there is still no explicit association with the saint.151 This is surprising because the cult of St Katherine was already well established in the West by the early twelfth century as a result of the acquisition of relics of her finger bones by the monastery of Holy Trinity at Rouen around the middle of the eleventh century. According to an eleventh-century tradition from Holy Trinity, the monastery was founded by the Sinai monk Symeon, who had travelled to Normandy in the early eleventh century.152 In fact the author of the De situ does not appear to have based his account on personal experience of the monastery, and his characterisation of a scattered laura community on Sinai, while containing some elements of truth, is misleading. The earliest indication of any interest in the monastery for its putative connection with St Katherine comes from the 1160s. In 1169 the Templar Grand Master Philip of Nablus made the ascent to the monastery, and a relic of St Katherine is listed among those he gave to the visiting northern French noble Maurice of Craon to take home with him.153 The anonymous Greek writer of the Apodeixis (after 1187), in contrast, describes the monastery church, the roof of which was covered with lead and wood, supported on twelve nave columns. The bema was decorated with mosaic work depicting the Transfiguration, and the body of St Katherine was housed in a marble tomb.154 These details are confirmed and developed by Thietmar, the first pilgrim to leave a sufficiently detailed description to confirm his first-hand knowledge of the monastery. He also describes a lead-roofed church and an interior distinguished by the use of marble facing and for the number of lamps. The head of the community was a Greek bishop, but the monks included Greeks and 149 150

151 152

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Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LVIII, pp. 234–40. P. Donner, ed., ‘Die Palästinabeschreibung des Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolita’, Zeitschrift des Deutschen PalästinaVereins 87 (1971), VII, 7, 75. De situ Ierusalem, in IHC II, 84; cf. Work on Geography, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 188, which is very similar. Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, ed. G. Pertz, MGH (SS), VIII (Hanover, 1848), 398–9; A. Poncelet, ‘Sanctae Catherinae virginis et martyris: translatio et miracula Rotomagenia saec. XI’, Analacta Bollandiana 22 (1903), 423–38; C. Walsh, ‘The role of the Normans in the development of the cult of St Katherine’, in J. Jenkins and K. J. Lewis, eds., St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe (Turnhout, 2003), 19–36; and Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine, 69–75. 154 Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, no. 138, I, p. 100. Anonymus Graecus, De locis sanctis, PG 133: 984.

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Syrians.155 The increased popularity of the monastery with pilgrims from the thirteenth century onwards suggests enhanced prosperity and importance in this period. Joseph Nasrallah, pointing to the level of scribal activity in Syriac, has suggested that Sinai became an obvious place of refuge for monks in Syria and Palestine whose monasteries were destroyed or had to be abandoned during the period of Mongol invasions and continuing Mamluk/crusader wars in the second half of the thirteenth century.156 As we shall see, it was also at this time that the monastery entered its most artistically creative and productive period. The variety of work undertaken in the monastery’s manuscript and icon ateliers could only have developed in conditions in which different traditions borrowed from each other. The seclusion of Sinai from the political upheaval of the end of the Crusader States made it an attractive destination for pilgrims. Already by the mid-thirteenth century the cult of St Katherine was important enough in the West for the encyclopaedists Vincent of Beauvais and James of Voragine to include the story of her martyrdom and subsequent burial on Sinai through angelic agency.157 Sinai continued to be popular with Western pilgrims in the fourteenth century. James of Verona (1335), Niccolò da Poggibonsi (1346–7), Frescobaldi (1384) and Niccolò de Martoni (1394–5) all left detailed accounts of their journeys and descriptions of the conditions of the monastery.158 Besides the mother house of St Katherine, the monks also had a monastery on Sinai dedicated to the Forty Martyrs. This was much smaller, with only eight monks, but it also had a guest-house. After the collapse of the first Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, political control of the Sinai peninsula passed to the Ayyubids. At some point in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the appointment of the archbishop of Sinai, who was also hegoumen of St Katherine, became the responsibility of the patriarchs of Alexandria, subject to confirmation by the Mamluk sultan.159 Although Sinai was obviously a considerable journey from the Holy Land, Western pilgrims after 1291 were in any case obliged to secure the necessary passports to visit the Holy Places in Jerusalem from the sultan’s office in Cairo, and many seem to have taken the opportunity to travel overland from Egypt to the Holy Land via Sinai. Thus adverse political circumstances may, paradoxically, have made St Katherine better known in the West than it had been under crusader oversight.

Other Orthodox Monasteries in the Kingdom of Jerusalem Besides those in Jerusalem, there were a few other urban monastic communities, mostly in towns in which there were also important shrines. Bethlehem certainly had an active Orthodox monastic community in the twelfth century. This much is suggested by the presence of the textually rich mosaic programme installed in the nave of the church of the 155 156 157

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Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XIX, 42–4. J. Nasrallah, Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’Eglise melchite du Ve au XXe siècle, III (Louvain, 1983), 363. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, IV, xiii, 8, p. 509; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. Th. Graesse (Bratislava, 1890), CLXXVI, 805–6. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, VII, 226–38; Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCVII–CCXX VIII, 123–33; Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 52–9; Leon Le Grand, ‘Relation du pèlerinage à Jérusalem de Nicolas de Martoni, notaire italien (1394–1395)’, ROL 3 (1895), 607–8. As reported by Frescobaldi, XVII, in Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 52.

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Nativity in the 1160s, under the joint patronage of Emperor Manuel Komnenos, Amalric I of Jerusalem and Ralph, Bishop of Bethlehem.160 The theologically precise texts outlining the decrees of oecumenical and provincial councils could only have been supplied from a monastic context and, although the source need not have been Bethlehem itself, the existence of a monastery is confirmed in a manuscript of 1167. This codex, a gospel lectionary now in Sinai, contains a colophon with the name of the scribe, the notarios Basil Skenouris, and a clause dedicating the manuscript to the community of Hagia Kellia at Bethlehem.161 Nothing else is known of this community, except that of the two names preserved in the mosaic inscriptions in the church of the Nativity – the other being Ephraim – one is, like the scribe of the lectionary, Basil. In the absence of firmer knowledge, we can only surmise that Bethlehem must have had a resident monastic community to maintain the liturgy in the shrine church, and that this community continued its existence alongside the Augustinian canons after 1099. Another, albeit lesser, shrine church with a monastic presence was Lydda, where the body of St George was venerated. Lydda had been the seat of a bishopric since the fourth century, and the cathedral was enlarged and rebuilt by the Franks as the seat of the combined bishopric of Ramla/Lydda. But in addition to the Latin bishop, an Orthodox coadjutor bishop had also been established before 1187, and on his pilgrimage in 1185 Phocas spoke with Greek clergy there, who were perhaps monastic.162 The presence of an Orthodox bishop strengthens the possibility of a monastic community. Moreover, in 1211–12 the German pilgrim Wilbrand of Oldenburg saw the body of St George in what he describes as the Greek monastery ‘of the Syrians’ near Ramla.163 From 1230, probably until the destruction of the city in 1291, there was also an Orthodox monastery in Acre, located in the royal Chain quarter. This house was founded by Savas Nemanjić, a son of the Serbian king Stephen Nemanja, who, as we have already seen, also founded a monastery on Mt Zion while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 1230 and 1232. As with the house on Mt Zion, this was also dedicated to St Sabas, and also made use of existing but abandoned buildings: in this case, a Latin monastery dedicated to St George ‘of the Portico’ in the centre of the city that had become disused.164 The Latin prior of the monastery had been granted the unusual privilege of wearing the episcopal ring and mitre, and it has been suggested that this may have been because the monastery had in fact originally been an Orthodox house before 1187 whose abbot served as an episcopal coadjutor to the Latin bishop of 160

161

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L.-A. Hunt, ‘Art and colonialism: the mosaics of the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (1169) and the problem of crusader Art’, DOP 45 (1991), 69–85; Jotischky, ‘Manuel Comnenus and the reunion of the Churches’; Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1097–1187, 347–64. Sinai MS cod grec 220, f. 352v; V. Benesevic, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum Graecorum qui in monasterio sanctae Catharinae in Monte Sina asservantur, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1911, repr. Hildesheim, 1965), I, 116–17. Another gospel lectionary, Sinai MS cod grec 232, was copied by the same scribe for Bethlehem in 1174. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, V, 53, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, I, p. 376; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, p. 333; John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 335; PG 133: 960–1. Wilbrand of Oldenburg, Peregrinatio, in IHC III, 234. This may be the same monastery listed by the Anonymus Graecus as Babylos, which apparently housed the decapitated head of St George, but if so, the distance given, five stades from Jerusalem, is wrong: PG 133: 987. On the location and circumstances of the foundation, see D. Jacoby, ‘Crusader Acre in the thirteenth century: urban layout and topography’, Studi Medievali 20 (1979), 27–8; Jacoby, ‘Three notes on crusader Acre’, ZDPV 109 (1993), 83–5; Pringle, Churches, no. 407, IV, pp. 79–80.

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Acre.165 The monastery was certainly still in existence in 1259–60, and probably continued until the siege of 1291.166 Besides St Sabas, Acre also had an Orthodox nunnery dedicated to St John. The only attestation for this, however, occurs in a Latin charter dated 1273, confirming the sale of a burgage tenure in the city.167 It is not known whether this house had any connection with St John Prodromos by the Jordan, which was still flourishing in the thirteenth century. The Orthodox monastery of St Margaret on Mt Carmel also had a metochion in Acre, mentioned in a charter of 1255.168 Likewise, a metochion of St Katherine on Mt Sinai is mentioned in the papal confirmations of the monastery in 1217 and 1226 by Honorius III, but this should not be confused with a Latin hospital and convent also dedicated to St Katherine.169 The same pope also confirmed the properties of the monastery of St Theodosios, near Bethlehem, in 1216 and 1218, in a formulation that appears to suggest that the monastery had a metochion in Acre, though this is far from clear.170 A church of St Demetrius is recorded as a boundary marker in a deed of Baldwin I from 1110 granting property to the Venetians in Acre. The likelihood is that this was an Orthodox church, perhaps a small urban monastery, before the capture of Acre by the Franks in 1104, which was then abandoned or depopulated; subsequently it became a Latin parish church.171 Acre appears to have had a significant indigenous Orthodox community in the thirteenth century, probably as a result of migration from the countryside after the shrinking of the kingdom in 1187.172 The site of the Transfiguration on Mt Tabor had a monastic community from at least as early as the seventh century. The monastery is mentioned by Arculf, Willibald and the Commemoratorium, which gives a figure of eighteen monks at the beginning of the ninth century.173 In the tenth century the Muslim writer al-Shabushti praised the beauty of the monastery’s location, commenting on the natural resources, notably vineyards, in the immediate vicinity. Epiphanios, at about the same period, found only twelve monks here.174 The extensive property of the monastery was confirmed in a charter of 1101 issued by Tancred, who held the lordship of Galilee. This confirmation was breached, however, once Tancred left the Kingdom of Jerusalem to take over the regency of Antioch, for by 1104 Saewulf reported the presence of Benedictine monks there instead.175 The Orthodox community of the Transfiguration, however, simply moved to the church dedicated to St Elias, about 230 metres north-west of the actual site of the Transfiguration. Precisely when 165 166

167

168

169

170 172 173

174 175

Pringle, Churches, no. 407, IV, p. 79. D. Jacoby, ‘New Venetian evidence on crusader Acre’, in P. W. Edbury and J. P. Phillips, eds., The Experience of Crusading, vol. II, Defining the Crusader Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), 246–7. The patriarch of Jerusalem acted as procurator for the monastery, which suggests good relations with the Latin ecclesiastical authorities. M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, ‘The Teutonic Knights in Acre after the fall of Montfort (1271): some reflections’, in Kedar, Mayer and Smail, eds., Outremer, 282–3, published this document for the first time. Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1300), ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906), II, 779–81. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, III, no. 17, 35–6, no. 148, 195–7; Pringle, Churches, no. 400, IV, p. 73. 171 Honorius III, Regesta Honorii III, I, nos. 72, 13, no. 1037, 175–6. Pringle, Churches, no. 402, IV, pp. 74–6. Jacoby, ‘Crusader Acre in the thirteenth century’, and especially Jacoby, ‘Three notes on crusader Acre’, 83–8. Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. Bieler, pp. 219–20; Hodoeporicon sancti Willibaldi, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 25–6; McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 214–15. Al-Shabushti, Diyarat, ed. K. Amvad (Baghdad, 1966), 207–13; Epiphanios, Ennaratio Syriae, PG 120: 272. Saewulf, p. 74.

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this happened is unclear, but in 1183 Saladin’s troops attempted to sack the Orthodox monastery and had to be repelled by force.176 The Benedictine community abandoned the site in 1187, returned after 1229, but left again in 1244. What happened to the Orthodox community is unknown, but the whole region was devastated by Baibars in 1263, and in the 1280s Burchard of Mt Zion found it still in a ruinous condition.177 Even if the Orthodox monks left with the Benedictines, St Elias would still provide significant evidence for the new building of an Orthodox monastery during the crusader period. Another example of a post-Byzantine era Orthodox foundation is St Elias at ‘Abud (Dair al-Kaukab), which was begun before 1029–30, though not completed until 1058. The village of ‘Abud, in the Samarian plain, had a continuous Christian population from the Byzantine period to the sixteenth century, and its church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, appears to have been enlarged in the twelfth century, reflecting a larger lay population, perhaps, as Ronnie Ellenblum suggests, a mixed indigenous/Frankish one.178 A lectionary for Syro-Palestinian usage dating from 1029 to 1030 contains a colophon explaining that a monk called Elias had returned from Antioch, where he had been a member of the community of Abbot Moses, to found a monastery dedicated to Elias ‘of the star’ in his native village of ‘Abud.179 The monastery seems to have been about 1.5 km south-east of the village, where ashlar walls comprising the base of a tower survive.180 The date of this foundation indicates a degree of revival of Orthodox monasticism in rural areas of the Holy Land in the period between the persecution of al-Hakim and the arrival of the Seljuqs: in other words, roughly contemporaneous with the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre. It is significant, however, that the impetus for this foundation came not from Palestine itself but from Antioch, which lay in Byzantine territory and which, as we shall see, enjoyed a much more dramatic revival of monastic life from the early eleventh century. There was also a new, but later Orthodox foundation at al-Ba’ina, a village a few miles east of Acre. There is no reference to a Byzantine foundation here, and indeed the site has no known association with any biblical events or early Christian saints, although it came by the end of the thirteenth century to be identified as the birthplace of St George.181 The first reference to a monastery is from the thirteenth century. In c. 1230 the author of the guide known as Les sains pelerinages reported the presence of Greek monks at St George, four leagues from Acre. The closely related Old French accounts Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem and Les Chemins et les Pelerinages de la Terre Sainte refer to ‘black monks’, which is the term they use to describe Orthodox monks – who wore black – in other places.182 Confirmation that the community was Greek Orthodox comes from an Arabic source, al-Qalqashandi, who also mentions a stone bench with the miraculous properties of curing those possessed by demons.183 The surviving buildings have been examined by Pringle, who describes a church enclosed to the north, west and south-west by a fortified 176

177 178 180 182 183

William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. Huygens, XXII, 27 (26), 1052; also John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 321; PG 133: 936. Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, 101; Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinationes, ed. Laurent, 47. 179 Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 128–36. Vat Bib syr MS 19; Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 384. 181 Pringle, Churches, no. 84, I, pp. 196–7. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 38. Les sains pelerinages, v, 20, 104; Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, XX, 102; Chemins et Pelerinages, A.IV, 17, 188. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 168–9; Pringle, Churches, IV, 250.

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monastic complex built into a south-facing hillside. The conventual buildings were planned on three levels in a series of terraces making use of the slope of the hill. To the west of the church was a courtyard, which was itself enclosed on two sides by the south bays of the narthex of the church. The upper level was protected by a defensive wall with towers in its northern corners. Three cells, from a group that probably once comprised a dozen, survive in this upper courtyard. Pringle compares the building itself with twelfth-century examples, and finds comparisons with St Thecla in Jerusalem.184 Although the architectural evidence is equivocal at best, the existence of cells strongly supports the literary evidence for an Orthodox community at al-Ba’ina, but the date and circumstances of foundation remain unknown. Another monastery almost certainly founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century was St Margaret on Mt Carmel. The site, on the crest of the Carmel range overlooking the town of Haifa, was above an early place of pilgrimage, the Cave of Elijah. The mountain top was associated with Elijah’s slaughter of the priests of Baal (3 Kings 21: 17–29), but the cave seems to have been identified in the first half of the twelfth century in Latin tradition as the dwelling place of Elijah with his protégé Elisha; it had attracted the attention of the Russian pilgrim Daniel already at the beginning of the century.185 Although there had been a monastery dedicated to Elisha near a Samaritan village on the Carmel range a few miles to the south of Haifa, and a laura by the wadi al-’Ain nearby in the late sixth century, there is no evidence to suggest that these monastic settlements continued in existence into the Islamic period.186 The first mention of the monastery of St Margaret occurs in the account of Thietmar, who says that Greek and Syrian monks lived together there in a coenobium.187 Other thirteenthcentury pilgrimage accounts confirm the continued existence of the monastery until 1291, when the whole region was conquered by the Mamluks.188 There is no indication of any revival of a monastery on the site until the building of the Stella Maris Carmelite community in the nineteenth century. Suggestions that St Margaret was an earlier foundation abandoned after the Arab conquest of the seventh century have been shown to rest on dubious premises, and there is no evidence at all of any pre-thirteenth century monastery on the site.189 St Margaret’s evidently attracted pilgrims because of its relics of the martyr, and, as Pringle suggests, the foundation must be linked to the acquisition of these relics by an Orthodox community.190 Thietmar’s observation that the community comprised Greek and Syrian monks may support the idea that the relics were brought from Antioch in Pisidia, the Greek city in Asia Minor where Margaret was martyred, by monks who then settled on Mt Carmel.191 184 185

186

187 188

189 191

Pringle, Churches, I, 82–92. Work on Geography, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 207–8; Daniel the Abbot, p. 165; cf. Appendix ad itinerarium Egeriae, in Itineraria et alia geographica, II, 5, p. 99, and Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 106–10. Anon Placentinus, Itinerarium, III, p. 130; C. Kopp, Elias und Christentum auf dem Karmel (Paderborn, 1929), 87–8; Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 111. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, VIII, 15, 21. Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, 89–90, 104, 180, 189. St Margaret is also mentioned in charters of the Hospitallers: Cartulaire général, ed. Delaville Le Roulx, II, nos. 2732, 779–81, and appendix no. 26, 914. 190 Pringle, Churches, no. 211, II, p. 247. Pringle, Churches, no. 211, II, p. 245. See pp. 430–2, for migration of Greek monks from Asia Minor to the Holy Land.

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Finally, there was probably an Orthodox monastery in or near Tiberias. At the beginning of the ninth century there was a convent for women here, as well as a community of monks attached to the bishop.192 The colophon of an illuminated gospel lectionary dated 1152, now Jerusalem Anastaseos MS 9, says that it was made for the church of the Theotokos in Tiberias, by the monk and priest George, on the commission of the hieromonk and archbishop of Tiberias, Gerasimos.193 So far, nothing indicates a monastery in Tiberias; George might have been a monk anywhere, even outside Palestine. The involvement of the hieromonk, indeed, suggests this, for the bishopric of Tiberias was in Latin hands in the 1150s, and Gerasimos must therefore have been appointed in exile by the patriarch of Constantinople. (Before 1099 Tiberias had been a bishopric in the province of Scythopolis, but at some stage the Orthodox appear to have raised it to an archbishopric in its own right.) The future Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, Leontios, was in his youth the disciple of an (unnamed) bishop of Tiberias.194 This may well have been the same Gerasimos who – perhaps as a gesture of benefaction on his appointment – made the gift of the lectionary in 1152. There are firm iconographic and stylistic grounds, however, for regarding the lectionary as the product of a Palestinian or Cypriot scriptorium. The Virgin with Child on f. 150v is inscribed ‘Virgin of Tiberias’, which indicates a local cult, and thus a degree of local knowledge on the part of the artist. Annemarie Weyl Carr, pointing to decorative similarities with a firmly Palestinian manuscript, Princeton Garrett 3, suggests not only that the manuscript is Palestinian in provenance, but also that it was probably made at a scriptorium in or near Tiberias.195 Although an Orthodox church dedicated to the Mother of God is mentioned in Tiberias by a fourteenth-century pilgrim, there are no physical remains to assess the possibility of its having been a monastic church.196 There were, however, two small Orthodox monasteries in southern Galilee in the Byzantine era. At the top of the pass of Fiq, between this mountain and the Sea of Galilee, the monastery at Khirbet Dair al-Fiqya is attested as late as the tenth century by alShabushti, who understood this to be the site where Jesus had called his disciples, and repeated a local tradition that it was the first monastery to be founded in the Holy Land.197 The church at Fiqya was still active in the twelfth century, for tithes from local villages were conceded to the monastery of Mt Tabor to help maintain it; perhaps it had become a Latin possession.198 A monastery at Fiqya is mentioned in c. 1225 by the geographer Yaqut as lying between the pass and the lake; evidently it was a rock-cut coenobium, probably similar to those, like St Theoktistos, in the Judaean desert.199 Some building seems to have been done in this period, but no ruins survive today.200 About a mile south of Nazareth there was 192 193 194

195 196 198

199

200

McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 212. Jerusalem Anastaseos MS 9, ff. 233v–234r; Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, III, 207–8. The Life of Leontios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, ed. and trans. D. Tsougarakis, The Medieval Mediterranean 2 (Leiden, 1993), X, 44–5; Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 165. A. Weyl Carr, ‘A group of provincial manuscripts from the twelfth century’, DOP 40 (1982), 45, 51. 197 Pringle, Churches, no. 261, II, 359. Al-Shabushti, Diyarat, 204–6. BB nos. 24, 159, pp. 83–5, 310–11. Mt Tabor may have found it too burdensome, for in 1175 its rights in the villages and church were made over to the Holy Sepulchre. Marmardji, ed., Textes géographiques arabes sur la Palestine, 78; Pringle, Churches, no. 486, IV, pp. 240–1, who, however, thinks the monastery remained in Orthodox hands. C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine (London, 1884), II, 331, identified ruinous buildings as crusader work.

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a cave laura at Jabal al-Qafra, which is listed in the Commemoratorium as having eight monks.201 This spot was associated with the place where the people of Nazareth wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. Archaeological evidence suggests continuous use of the church throughout the Islamic period and, since the place is attested by twelfth-century pilgrims as ‘the Lord’s leap’, it was evidently still visited under Frankish occupation. Although no crusader source mentions a church, in the seventeenth century the Franciscan Quaresmius reported a local tradition that recalled the Byzantine monastery; indeed, he was shown the ruins of a mosaic floor from the church.202 The fact that no Western pilgrim of the medieval period mentions a monastery does not mean that one was not active, for they also ignore many more important monasteries; however, there is no conclusive evidence for the continuation of the Byzantine laura into the crusader period.

Antioch, Tripoli and Syria Monasticism in Syria followed a different course from Palestine during the early Islamic period. Northern Mesopotamia was frontier territory between the Byzantine Empire, the Abbasids and, from the mid-eleventh century onwards, the Seljuqs. The mostly Syrian Orthodox monasteries of this region were liable to attack because they occupied strategic positions and could double as fortresses. Southern Syria (the region around Damascus) seems to have experienced little curtailment of monastic activity. Western Syria, however, was reconquered by Byzantium in 969, and the region around Antioch underwent a revival of Byzantine influence during the eleventh century. The disruptions caused by the Abbasid wars of succession at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries do not seem to have affected Syria, and during the persecution of al-Hakim, Antioch, as a Byzantine city, became a place of refuge for Christians fleeing from Palestine.

Antioch and the Vicinity The earliest indication of monastic life in Antioch comes from the series of Homilies given by John Chrysostom to the Antiochene people in the 370s. John had only recently been ordained as a presbyter in the Church of Antioch, after having lived for a short period among the eremitical community of monks on Mt Silpios outside the city. The community he describes appears to have followed a regime based on communal observance of the liturgy, supplemented by private prayer and characterised by moderate asceticism. The buildings were probably caves or huts of an impermanent kind.203 In the sixth century, however, Antiochene monasticism received new impetus from the emergence of a new spiritual leader, the stylite Symeon the Younger. The Life of Symeon the Younger describes this way of life as something already quite familiar; indeed, Symeon began as a child in apprenticeship to an older monk already installed on his column on the Wondrous 201 202 203

McCormick, ed., Charlemagne’s Survey, 212–13. Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine, 315; Pringle, Churches, II, 45–8. John Chrysostom, Homily LV, LXVIII, PG 58: 545–7.

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Mountain, to the south-west of the city of Antioch itself.204 Almost certainly the author was seeking to provide Antioch with an exemplar of the stature of the original Symeon the Stylite, around whose column the monastery of Qal’at Siman had been founded in northern Syria in the previous century. Unlike his earlier namesake, however, Symeon the Younger gathered a community, of which he remained indisputably the superior, at the foot of his column during his own lifetime. The initial foundation, at Socheritou, near the base of the Wondrous Mountain, was superseded by Symeon’s removal of himself and his community higher up the mountain, and in c. 541 work on the new monastery, which subsequently came to be known as St Symeon, began. The description of the monastery in the Life indicates a walled complex with a bastion overlooking the Mediterranean to the west, and looking down the Orontes valley towards Antioch. The plan was octagonal, measuring 130 m east– west and 160 m north–south, with Symeon’s column in the middle, and enclosing three churches.205 The lower monastery was not abandoned, but became an infirmary for the older and sick monks.206 The history of the monastery between the Persian invasion and the Byzantine reconquest is uncertain, but there is no indication of a break in habitation, and unlike Qal’at Siman, which was destroyed in 985 by the emir of Aleppo, St Symeon seems to have been left alone by political events. The Byzantine reconquest of Antioch in 969 was obviously critical not only in affording protection for the monastery, but also in bringing the community, and the cult of St Symeon, into the orbit of the wider Orthodox world. In c. 1000, for example, the military governor of Antioch, Nikephoros Ouranos, made a metaphrasis of the seventh-century Life, and around the same time or a little earlier, Anthony, a monk of St Symeon, translated the spiritual stories of Paul of Monemvasia from Greek into Arabic.207 If the Baghdadi Christian Ibn Butlan, who became a monk in Antioch in c. 1066, is to be believed, the monastery had an annual income of 400,000 dinars.208 The Seljuq conquest of Antioch in 1084, however, resulted in the sack of St Symeon and the dispersal of the monks, at least temporarily. Nikon of the Black Mountain, who took refuge on the Wondrous Mountain after expulsion from his monastery on the Black Mountain, complained about the difficulty of maintaining contacts with other communities under Seljuq domination,209 but after 1098 the monastery was restored, and it continued to function throughout the twelfth and most of the thirteenth centuries without interruption. One sign of normality returning to the Wondrous Mountain is provided in a note at the end 204

205

206 207

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La vie ancienne de Saint Symeon Stylite le Jeune, ed. Paul van den Ven, 2 vols., Subsidia Hagiographica 32 (Brussels, 1962–70), I, XV, 13–14. J. Mécérian, ‘Rapport sur la deuxième campagne de fouilles au Mont Admirable, 1933. Une mission archéologique dans l’Antiochène’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 78 (2) (1934), 144. According to John Moschos, Pratum spirituale, ed. and trans. M.-J. Rouet de Journel, Sources Chrétiennes 12 (Paris, 1946), the distance between the Wondrous Mountain and the city was nine miles. Ralph of Caen, Tancredus, CLXVII, p. 47, describes the city as lying in a narrow plain between the Black Mountain to the north and the Wondrous Mountain to the south-west. La vie ancienne, ed. van den Ven, CLXX, p. 152. La vie ancienne, ed. van den Ven, 36–9; J.-M. Sauget, ‘Le Paterikon du MS Arabe 276 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris’, Le Muséon 82 (1969), 363–403; J. Wortley, ‘Paul of Monemvasia and his stories’, in J. Chrysostomides, ed., Kathegetria: Studies Presented to Joan Hussey (Camberley, 1988), 303–15. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 64; J. Schacht and M. Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy between Ibn Butlan and Ibn Ridwan (Cairo, 1937), 54–5. Nikon, Taktikon, PG 127: 513–16, in which Nikon compares his own situation with that of Antiochos during the seventhcentury Persian conquest of Palestine; cf. I. Doens, ‘Nicon de la Montagne Noire’, Byzantion 24 (1954), 135. The PG edition comprises extracts taken from J.-B. Cotelier, Ecclesiae graecae monumenta, III (Paris, 1686). The critical edition is Nikon, Taktikon Nikona Chernogortsa, ed. V. Benesevic (Petrograd, 1917).

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of a manuscript containing the Life of St Symeon the Younger and St Martha, recording the restoration of the book to the monastery, in the presence of metropolitan of Damascus. Evidently the manuscript had been taken for safe-keeping after the sack of 1084.210 The restoration must have amounted to a substantial rebuilding of the defensive walls of the monastery, for in 1140, after his deposition, the Latin patriarch Ralph of Domfront was imprisoned at St Symeon.211 About a hundred years after Ibn Butlan, in 1164, the anonymous chronicler of Edessa also commented on the monastery’s supposedly great wealth. This evidently made it a target for predatory Latin lords, for in 1225 Pope Honorius III wrote to the patriarch of Antioch in response to a complaint he had received from the hegoumen of St Symeon about unjust financial exactions levied by Bohemond IV.212 The monastery provided a focal point for Orthodoxy in Antioch, the majority of whose population was Greek Orthodox in affiliation, but living under the authority of a Latin episcopate. Sometimes, as for example in the 1160s and during the Antioch commune in the early thirteenth century, the presence of the Orthodox majority proved a political counterweight against the patriarch, or during a period of disputed authority.213 The monastery continued to be a centre for scribal activity as late as the 1250s, but there is no evidence later than the 1260s, and we must assume that it was destroyed in 1268 when Antioch was sacked by Baibars.214 By this date the urban monastery of St Paul, first attested in an Arabic source of the midtenth century, had probably also been abandoned.215 The monastery stood just inside the walls, by the eastern gate that provided access to the Iron Bridge, a crossing point over the Orontes. The monastery was still functioning at the time of the crusaders’ siege of the city in 1097–8, because an early twelfth-century charter of the monastery of St Paul, Cormery, recounts how a crusading knight, Peter Jordan, who became a monk there after his return from the east, had professed as a monk at the Orthodox monastery of St Paul’s, Antioch, while on what he assumed was his deathbed in 1098.216 Since the crusaders initially recognised the canonical authority of the Orthodox patriarch, John IV, over both Latin and Greek clergy, the Orthodox community at St Paul’s must have seemed safe.217 In the summer of 1100, however, John was exiled by Bohemond, the Latin ruler of Antioch, and by 1108 a Benedictine community was in possession of the site.218 Likewise, the monastery dedicated to St George in the south-west of the city, which was probably founded after the Byzantine reconquest of northern Syria after 969, was by 1115, if not before, in the hands of Latin clergy.219 Some Orthodox monks seem to have been resident in or near Antioch in 210 212

213 214

215 216

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211 Jerusalem, Sabas MS 108, f. 202r. William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. Huygens, XVII, 10, p. 698. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX no. 141, pp. 186–7. There is no need to suppose, with van den Ven (La vie, I, 220), that St Symeon had become a joint Benedictine–Orthodox community; the appeal simply shows that the hegoumen acknowledged the papacy as the court of appeal while Antioch was under Frankish domination. Hamilton, Latin Church, 175–7, 313–15, 321–3. Rome, Bib Vat arab MS 22, was copied at St Symeon by the monk Joseph, but a note in the manuscript records that he was a prisoner in Cairo in 1272, presumably having been taken captive in 1268. Al Masudi, Meadows of Gold, II, 407. Cartulaire de Cormery, ed. J.-J. Bourasse (Tours, 1861), 104; J. S. Riley-Smith, ‘Pilgrims and crusaders in Western Latin sources’, in M. Whitby, ed., Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204, Proceedings of the British Academy 132 (Oxford, 2007), 10–11. 218 AA V, 3, p. 338. See pp. 212–13. Anonymi Gesta Francorum, VIII, IX, xix, xxviii, pp. 43, 69; also mentioned in WT IV, 13, p. 251; Walter the Chancellor, The Antiochene Wars, I, 2, p. 86; Kennedy, ‘Antioch from Byzantium to Islam’, 189.

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1159, for ascetics are mentioned by the anonymous Byzantine poet Manganeios Prodromos, with the clergy and the (Orthodox) patriarch of Antioch, in the triumphal procession that greeted Emperor Manuel Komnenos on his entry to the city after the humiliation of Renaud, the Latin prince, just after Easter.220 These may have been monks from the Wondrous Mountain, since they joined Manuel on his way into the city. Ibn Butlan was clearly impressed by the general prosperity and health of monasticism around Antioch; on the Wondrous Mountain alone he found kellia and anchorites as well as cenobitic monasteries, and the sounds of the bells and the psalms being chanted at dawn made one imagine one was in Paradise.221 Evidence for the eremitical activity on the mountains around Antioch comes from both Greek and Latin sources. John Phocas reported that there were still eremitical followers of Symeon the Younger living in woodland and scrub on and near the Wondrous Mountain.222 In the middle of the twelfth century, the Latin patriarch, Aimery of Limoges, tried to subject hermits living on the Black Mountain to a Rule.223 There were also hermits inside the city. Gabriel the Stranger, who must have been Syrian, lived in an urban cell adjoining the Paraskeve church in Antioch.224 The largest concentration both of individual hermits and of enclosed monks, however, lay on the Black Mountain.225 Also known in Greek sources as Mt Mauros, the Black Mountain, or Jabal Lukkam, lies to the north-west of Antioch, at the southern end of the Amanus range. Monks had followed a solitary life here since the fourth century, but it was also home to cenobitic houses. During the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, there were Greek, Georgian, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian monasteries here as well as the Latin foundations described above. Many of these, however, are known only from incidental mentions or from the colophons of manuscripts recording ownership or scribal activity there. It is thus very difficult to give anything other than the most general of impressions; certainly no comprehensive historical survey of the monasteries on the Black Mountain is possible. The best-known Greek monasteries on the Black Mountain are the two foundations associated with Nikon in the eleventh century. Nikon, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, was one of the most important individuals within Orthodox monasticism in the eleventh century. Born in c. 1025 in Constantinople, he retired from military life under Constantine IX (1042–55) to become a monk. For reasons unknown, he chose the monastery that had been founded recently on the Black Mountain by Luke, the metropolitan of the Syrian see of Anazarbos. After an unsuccessful period as superior of this monastery after Luke’s death, he was offered the title of archimandrite of Antiochene monasteries by the patriarch, Theodosios III (1057–9). Although he refused the title, he subsequently seems to have accepted similar authority conferred by the exarchs of the patriarchate during the 220 221 222

223 224 225

E. Jeffreys and M. Jeffreys, ‘A Constantinopolitan poet views Frankish Antioch’, Crusades 14 (2015), 127 (Poem X). Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 64. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 317; PG 133: 929. His geography, however, is rather inclusive since, although he speaks specifically of followers of Symeon, the location he gives is ‘Mt Mauros’, i.e. the Black Mountain, which was quite a distinct feature from the Wondrous Mountain. Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 31–2. Rome, Bib Vat syr 21, f. 87, notes acquisition of the manuscript by Gabriel the Stranger, a recluse in the Tower of Mar Dimet. ‘Black Mountain’, in Murray, ed., Encyclopedia of the Crusades, I, 169. For Latin hermits and monks, see Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 25, 27–9.

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patriarchal interregnum of 1059–89. The exact chronology of Nikon’s monastic career is unclear, but after leaving Luke’s monastery he wrote a typikon for a foundation of his own on the Black Mountain. Although the text survives in his Taktikon, a collection of monastic precepts, the monastery seems to have enjoyed only a short existence, and Nikon then moved across to the Wondrous Mountain to join the community of St Symeon.226 After the capture of Antioch by the Seljuqs in 1085, he sought refuge in the monastery of the Mother of God tou Roidiou (‘of the pomegranate’), which lay in Armenian-controlled territory. The date of the foundation of this monastery is unknown, but Nikon wrote a short typikon for it, perhaps as part of his reforming enterprise in the interregnum. References in the document, however, indicate that it was revised after 1099, when Nikon saw the monastery as serving a crucial role in providing shelter for pilgrims to the Holy Land.227 By this stage, the monastery seems to have become highly irregular in its fulfilment of the endowment’s original intention, which was to manage a hospice alongside the cenobitic community. Cenobitism had more or less collapsed and, perhaps as a result of the political turmoil of the last years of the eleventh century, the monastery seems to have had imposed on it by the secular ruler of the region a lay superior and his entourage.228 Because the location of the monastery has not yet been identified, it is impossible to determine who this lay ruler was. From Nikon’s own testimony, it is clear that the Roidion lay in territory inhabited by Tzatoi, or Chalcedonian Armenians.229 This would appear to suggest the lands of Gabriel of Melitene or Thoros of Edessa, both of whom were Chalcedonian Orthodox allies of the Byzantine Empire. If, however, he was writing after 1097, then he may be referring to Baldwin, the first Frankish ruler of Edessa, and to the establishment of Frankish fiefs drawn from the landed resources of the Roidion monastery. Nikon died before 1110, either at Roidion or at St Symeon.230 The evidence of Nikon’s own writings indicates that he was a reformer – he may, indeed, have acted as representative in Antioch of Patriarch John V the Oxite231 – but also that his monastic policy was based both on a deep awareness of patristic and legislative texts, and on sensitivity to the history of Syrian and Palestinian monasticism. The Taktikon, which includes a variety of letters from Nikon to contemporary monastic leaders, shows that he was in contact with Jerusalem, St Sabas and other Judaean desert houses.232 Nikon was involved with four Orthodox monasteries in the environs of Antioch, two of which, his own failed foundation and Luke’s monastery, were certainly on the Black Mountain. Unfortunately, because Luke’s foundation is not mentioned by dedication or name in Nikon’s writings, it is impossible to assess whether it should be identified with one of the houses known by name, or whether it constitutes a separate monastery. Since Luke is named by Nikon as the founder, it cannot have been the same as the monastery of Theotokos at Dafruna, which is known only from colophons in surviving liturgical books, but which 226

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The Taktikon survives in three manuscripts from Mt Sinai: Vat arab 76, Sinai gr 436 and 441. For the former, see A. Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum nova collectio (Rome, 1831), 155–70. Robert Allison has made an English translation of the typikon from Benesevic’s edition of 1917, itself made from Sinai 441: Black Mountain, in BMFD, No. 20, 377–424. 228 229 Roidion, B2, 432. Roidion, A3, 430. Vat bib cod arab 76, f. 362r. For Nikon’s career, see J. Nasrallah, ‘Un auteur antiochien du XIe siècle: Nicon de la Montagne Noire (vers 1025–début du XIIe siècle)’, Proche Orient Chrétien 19 (1969), 150–61, and reprinted in Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 109–22; Doens, ‘Nicon’. 232 Thus Allison in BMFD, No. 20, 425. Vat bib cod arab 76, ff. 114v, 362v, 366v.

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was certainly in existence in the late tenth century, when a monk called Gregory was hegoumen. This must have been a community of Syriac-speakers, since the manuscripts in which the monastery is mentioned are all Syriac menologia. According to these, the Blessed Virgin worked the miracle of killing a dragon in the monastery on 21 September, though the year is not given.233 Another monastery similarly known from scribal activity is that confusingly referred to both as St Panteleeimon and as St Elias, which, like Dafruna, had at least some Syriac-speaking monks, but of Greek rather than Syrian Orthodox confession.234 Seven surviving manuscripts are known to have emanated from here between 1023 and 1141, all of them liturgical in content. Another monastery known in a similar way is Betyas, to the south of St Panteleeimon, which is attested in an Armenian manuscript of 1179 as an active Greek Orthodox community with a library.235 Georgian texts from the eleventh century indicate that there was a substantial Georgian presence around Antioch by mid-century. According to the Life of George the Athonite, there were as many as sixty Georgian monks at St Symeon; as we shall see, their presence gave rise to conflict with the Greeks.236 The origins of what became a complex relationship between Georgia and Antioch go back to the arrival of Georgian pilgrims to see Symeon the Younger on his column in the mid-sixth century. A group of Georgians arrived in c. 557; many remained behind as monks, while those who returned took a lock of the stylite’s hair back home with them, which after his death became a powerful object of devotion. The power of the cult of St Symeon in Georgia is attested by the episode in the Life of Symeon in which, during a Persian attack on Georgia, soldiers who tried to steal the relic were struck dead.237 Not surprisingly, Georgian monasticism from early on betrayed a distinctively Antiochene character, as revealed in Georgian hagiographical texts.238 By the mid-eleventh century, a Georgian account by Ep’rem Mcire (‘the Small’) attributed the conversion of Iberia to the missionary activity of Eustathios, the fourth-century bishop of Antioch.239 Both Ep’rem’s account and the Life of an important Georgian monk of the period, George the Hagiorite (or ‘Athonite‘), acknowledge increasing tensions between Georgian and Greek monks in the eleventh century. Although these took shape in ways determined by the circumstances of distinctive national groups having to rub along with each other, behind this dispute lay the issue of authority over the Georgian Church. The patriarch of Antioch claimed hierarchical authority over the catholicos in Georgia, to the point of insisting on the sole right to consecrate the catholicos in Antioch. The counter-argument made by George the Athonite was eventually to be recognised at the end of the twelfth century by the Byzantine canonist Theodore Balsamon,240 but the tensions of the eleventh century are understandable in the circumstances that prevailed only a few generations after the 233 234

235 238

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Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 306. The manuscripts are Berlin syr 315 and 320, and Oxford Bodl. Syr 10, 96 and 98. S. Brock, ‘Syriac manuscripts copied on the Black Mountain, near Antioch’, in R. Schulz and M. Gorg, eds., Lingua Restituta Orientalis. Festgabe fur Julius Assfalg, Ägypten und Altes Testament 20 (Wiesbaden, 1990), 59–67. 236 237 Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 91–2. See p. 366. La vie ancienne, ed. van den Ven, CXXX, pp. 122–3. W. Z. Djobadze, Materials for the Study of Georgian Monasteries in the Western Environs of Antioch on the Orontes, CSCO Subsidia 48 (Louvain, 1976), 68. E. Mcire, Report on the Conversion of Georgians and Books in Which This Is Mentioned, ed. T. Bregadze (Tbilisi, 1959). Nikon’s Taktikon includes a letter to an Abbot Gerasimos explaining the origins of Georgian Christianity and defending their Orthodoxy: Vat bib cod arab 76, f. 366v, summarised by Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum, 163. Theodore Balsamon, In canones sanctorum apostolorum commentaria, III, Conc. CP II, ii, PG 137: 320.

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Byzantine reconquest of Antioch, at a time when the monasteries of the region were foci of competing local and Byzantine liturgical and ecclesiological traditions. Relations were not always hostile, however, as will be seen from a closer study of Nikon’s writings in Chapter 14. In the early thirteenth century, the Western observer Oliver Scholasticus reported that the Greek and Georgian monks shared the offices in apparent harmony.241 The Georgian historian Wachtung Djobadze has listed thirteen Georgian monastic communities in the vicinity of Antioch known to be active in the eleventh century and in some cases beyond this. Some of these were originally Greek foundations that had been allowed to lapse and that were reinvigorated by the influx of Georgian monks, others were Georgian foundations, and some, notably St Symeon itself, had combined Greek and Georgian communities. Near St Symeon on the Wondrous Mountain there was a hermitage in which a recluse named George, also known from a manuscript colophon, lived in the 1040s. The bare information in the colophon appears to be corroborated by archaeological research, which has uncovered a cave complex about 1.2 km south of the monastery in a vertical cliff facing the Orontes valley to the south-west. Although the cave dwelling is almost inaccessible today, it was evidently constructed with care for an educated recluse, for the ‘superimposed compartments’ in the complex were designed to include a writing desk, with storage space for the necessary equipment.242 George, who was himself a Georgian, is the only hermit known by name to have used the hermitage. The other Georgian community near St Symeon was the monastery of St Barlaam at Mt Kasios, which we know to have been active at least from the mid-eleventh century and to have been functioning in the twelfth century.243 All the other Georgian monasteries were on the Black Mountain, to the north-west of Antioch. Only a few of these, however, can be located with precision today. An example of the difficulty is the monastery, with adjoining hermitage, in the ‘Valley of Reeds’ near the ancient town of Seleucia, which was on the coast at the western slope of the mountain. The only surviving building is the ruin of church with a projecting apse, situated to the north of the upper town (about 1 km west of present-day Kapsuyu). The monastery was built on the lower part of a plateau surrounded by heights. The surviving ruins contain inscriptions in Georgian, but the dedication is unknown.244 The thirteenth-century Cisterican monastery of St George de Jubino was also supposedly near Seleucia, and Djobadze speculated that it may have been identical to the Georgian house, in which case, he assumed, it must have been taken over by Latin monks after the First Crusade. In fact, the pre-history of the Cistercian monastery is better known, for Jubin began its Latin existence as a reforming house in the first quarter of the twelfth century, when Bernard of Blois was instrumental in leading the community.245 If Djobadze is correct in identifying the two houses in the same spot, the Georgian community must have come to an end a generation or so after the 241

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Oliver of Paderborn, Die Schriften des Kolner Domscholasters, Oliverus, ed. H. Hoogeweg, Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart 202 (Tubingen, 1894), 265. Djobadze, Materials, 89; the manuscript, Athos Iviron MS 84, is discussed on 28–32. Djobadze, Materials, 90; Vie de Saint George l’Hagiorite, ed. P. Peeters, in ‘Histoires monastiques géorgiennes’, Analecta Bollandiana 36–7 (1917), LIII, 118. 245 Djobadze, Materials, 91. Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 29–31, 59–60.

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production of the manuscript that provides its only firm evidence.246 However, this identification is far from certain. Although a thirteenth-century source identifies St George de Jubino with Seleucia, a place called ‘Jubia’ is described in a Georgian source as being ‘on the summit of the Black Mountain which Antiocheans call Jubia’, which does not conform with the coastal location of the Valley of the Reeds.247 Similarly, we know from two manuscript colophons of a monastery of Holy Romana active in the 1030s. The only clue to its location is that it was ‘on the borders of Antioch’. It is perhaps, therefore, to be identified with the Antiochene church dedicated to St Romana.248 Near Holy Romana was a monastery dedicated to the Wood of Life. A synaxarion translated from Greek into Georgian in 1042–4 by George the Athonite records in a colophon the founding of the monastery by one David Djibisdze and his nephew John, who commissioned the manuscript.249 Nothing else is known of the monastery, but the dedication suggests a connection with the Holy Cross monastery in Jerusalem, also founded by Georgians at around the same time. The most active centre of Georgian manuscript production was the monastery of the Mother of God at Kalipos. The monastery was one of the haunts of George the Athonite, who according to the contemporary Life divided his time in Antioch between this monastery and St Symeon.250 The precise location within an area of about 25 km is uncertain, but it must have lain in a triangle between the Black Mountain, Antioch itself and the Wondrous Mountain. A Life and Orations of Gregory the Theologian copied here in the reign of Constantine IX describes Kalipos as a laura.251 Other imprecisely identified Georgian monasteries are the monastery of Father Ezra, apparently on the Black Mountain but near St Symeon (which suggests that it was at the southern end of the range);252 Kastana, which was probably in the area between Antioch and its suburb of Daphne, and which is known from a colophon to have been functioning as late as 1091;253 and T’vali, known from the Life of George the Athonite as having enjoyed a relationship with the monastery of Khakhuli in southwestern Georgia, and whose name (t’vali, ‘eye’) suggests a spring, perhaps the large one at Khidirbey, on the south-western slope of the Black Mountain, where monastic ruins survive.254 The monastery of Tsakarotha, known from the colophon of a late eleventh-century hagiographical collection made here, must have been close to, if not within, the city of Antioch itself, for the scribe disarmingly excused his mistakes by explaining the distractions caused by the boys and girls who used to pass by his

246 247 248

249

250 251

252 253

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Tbilisi, Institute of Manuscripts, Ex Coll Eccl Museum 845; Djobadze, Materials, 47–9. Life of Barlaam, Athos Iviron MS 84, f. 99v. Djobadze, Materials, 96. As he suggests, close relations must have been established with a Greek monastery with a library, since George the Athonite, whose activities centred on translations of Greek texts into Georgian, spent some time here. Tbilisi, Institute of Manuscripts, Ex Coll Historical & Ethnographical Society MS 2211; Djobadze, Materials, 42–7; H. Metreveli, Description of the Manuscripts in the Georgian State Museum (Tbilisi, 1949), 100–2. Vie de Saint George l’Hagiorite, XLVI, 72–3. Leningrad Oriental Institute, Georgian MS 3; Djobadze, Materials, 5–12. The dates of other manuscripts copied here indicate that it was active at least as late as c. 1100. Djobadze, Materials, 37–40. Djobadze, Materials, 101. There were a number of early Christian churches in this area, including one with evidence of eleventh-century occupation. The name may be a corruption of Kastalia, or related to the Arabic place-name Castal. Djobadze, Materials, 108.

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window with jugs carrying water from the springs nearby.255 Djobadze argues that a Georgian monastery would not have been in the city itself, which makes a suburb outside the walls more likely.256 Finally, two more monasteries, Holy Mina and Holy Procop, are known from eleventh-century colophons only by name.257 The port town of Laodicea had a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to Christ the Saviour (Dair al-Farus). This house is known from Ibn Butlan to have been active in the eleventh century, and the colophon of a manuscript of 1142 attests to its continued existence in the crusader Principality of Antioch.258 It was a significant enough monastery to have provided a (perhaps temporary) home for Yuhanna, the bishop of Baalbek, the scribe of the manuscript. Laodicea, moreover, is known to have had an active Orthodox clerical community, which in the mid-twelfth century caused some embarrassment to the Latin bishop, Gerard of Nazareth.259

The County of Tripoli and Greater Syria The city of Tripoli had a large indigenous Christian community in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Burchard of Mt Zion remarks on the presence of Greeks, Armenians, Maronites and Nestorians as well as Franks.260 Many of them were employed in the silk industry, but there were almost certainly Greek religious houses in the city, about which no evidence has survived. The most important Orthodox monastery in the County of Tripoli, however, was probably St Sergios at Gibelet, the coastal town to the south of Tripoli itself. The history of the monastery before the 1230s is uncertain, though the dedication attests to the healthy cult of the soldier saint in the Lebanon region, a cult also found in surviving examples of visual culture, particularly wall paintings and icons.261 In 1231, however, the Latin bishop of Gibelet, Vassal, offered the monastery, with its landed property, to the Cistercian house of La Ferté. He had evidently been trying for some time to settle an abandoned monastery, for he says that he had previously failed to persuade the abbots of existing Cistercian monasteries in the East to take it off his hands. Reading between the lines of subsequent documents concerned with the settlement of French monks from La Ferté at St Sergios after 1233, it appears that the monastery must have been in a very dilapidated state, for in 1238 the Cistercian Chapter-General authorised other Cistercian houses in the Crusader States to rehouse the monks.262 Fresh endowments from Guy I Embriaco, the lord of Gibelet, seem to have saved the monastery, at least until the fall of Tripoli in 1289.263 All this suggests that the Orthodox community had either left or died out well before 1231, or that the monks had dwindled to a number too small to sustain the property adequately. 255

256 258 259 260 261

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Jerusalem, Patriarchal Library 2; R. Blake, ‘Catalogue des manuscrits géorgiens’, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 23 (1922–3), no. 2. 257 Djobadze, Materials, 104. Djobadze, Materials, 27–9, 42–5. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 207; the twelfth-century manuscript is Sinai arab 435. Jotischky, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Latin relations with the Greek Orthodox’. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 28. L.-A. Hunt, ‘A woman’s prayer to St Sergios in Latin Syria: interpreting a thirteenth-century icon at Mount Sinai’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991), 96–145. Canivez, ed., Statuta, II, no. 36, p. 192; B. Hamilton, ‘The Cistercians in the Crusader States’, in M. B. Pennington, ed., One Yet Two: Monastic Tradition East and West, Cistercian Studies 29 (Kalamazoo, 1976), 414–15. Petit, ‘Chartes’.

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Another Syrian monastery dedicated to the same saints, Sergios and Bacchos in Bosra, which never came under crusader control, is known from literary evidence to have been active in the mid-ninth century; since the architecture of the abbey church indicates remodelling in the medieval period, it may have continued to function.264 Although technically outside the remit of this study, since it never formed part of the Crusader States, the Orthodox monastery of Our Lady of Saidnaya (Sardenay) deserves mention because of its importance as a pilgrimage destination for West Europeans as well as Orthodox. Allegedly founded in 547, Saidnaya is situated high on a cliff that forms part of the south-eastern flank of the anti-Lebanon range, about 22 km north of Damascus.265 The fame of the monastery was guaranteed by an icon of the Blessed Virgin supposedly painted by St Luke. In 1175 the German imperial ambassador Burchard of Strasbourg reported that the monastery had twelve nuns and eight monks, and that it was visited by Jews and Muslims as well as Christians.266 According to an account that circulated in the West in the 1180s, the first Westerners to bring back accounts of the icon were Frankish prisoners who had been released from captivity in Damascus, and who visited the monastery on their return journey to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The icon and monastery became particularly associated with the Templars.267 According to Thietmar, the monks had a bishop as superior, but the monastery was ruled by an abbess and had a principal community of nuns, because it had been founded as a convent for women. Thietmar also claimed that, until alMu’azzam ended it, the rulers of Damascus had made an annual grant to the community.268 Thirteenth-century Western visitors included Benedict, archbishop of Marseilles, in 1240, and Philip of Savona in c. 1280, but there are also reports in several anonymous guides of the period.269 The Muslim authorities continued to permit Western pilgrims even after the fall of the Crusader States, and in the fourteenth century Anthony de Reboldis, James of Verona, Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Ludolph of Sudheim and Frescobaldi all venerated the icon.270 There were also Greek Orthodox monasteries in the town of Saidnaya itself (St Christopher, St Barbara, St John, St George and St Thomas), known principally from the evidence of manuscript colophons.271

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R. Campanati, ed., La Siria araba da Roma a Bisanzio (Ravenna, 1989), 45–92. There is quite a sizeable bibliography on Saidnaya: for a survey, see B. Hamilton, ‘Our Lady of Saidnaya: an Orthodox shrine revered by Muslims and Knights Templar at the time of the Crusades’, in Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History, 207–15; Pringle, Churches, no. 198, II, 219–21. Burchard of Strasbourg, De statu Egypti vel Babylonie, VI, in IHC II, 406. Other Western accounts are discussed by P. Peeters, ‘La legende de Saidnaia’, Analecta Bollandiana 25 (1906), 137–57; see also D. Baraz,‘The incarnated icon of Saidnaya goes west’, Le Muséon 108 (1995), 181–91, for relationships between Western and Eastern Christian traditions of Saidnaya’s icon, and below, pp. 443–5, for discussion of the miraculous tradition. See P. Devos, ‘Les premières versions occidentales de la légende de Saïdnaia’, Analecta Bollandiana 65 (1947), 245–78, for the text of Relatio Guidonis Chat de miraculo BVM in Saidnaia. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, IV, 13–17. Devos, ‘Les premières versions’, argues that this account is an interpolation into the pilgrimage of an earlier text. De constructione castri Saphed: construction et fonctions d’un château fort franc en Terre Sainte, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Afdeling Letterkunde 111 (Amsterdam, 1981), 35–6; Les Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, XXI, 103; Description rimée des Saints-Lieux, in Itinéraires, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, p. 120; James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, XIII, 294–5. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CLIV, 91–2; Frescobaldi, in Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, LIV, pp. 84–5, mistakenly thought that the monks were Syrian Orthodox, though he knew that the nuns were Greek. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 68; H. Zayat, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire du patriarcat melkite d’Antioche, Vol. III, Histoire de Saïdnaya (Beirut, 1933), 4.

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It is clear from this survey of monasteries in the mainland Crusader States that Orthodox monasticism flourished principally in two areas: Jerusalem and the Judaean desert, whose monasteries had been closely linked with the city since the fourth century; and Antioch. Moreover, one of two factors was indispensable to the prosperity of Orthodox monasticism: either a strong pilgrimage tradition that could be maintained by upholding the continuing importance of a given region in the spiritual economy of salvation; or favourable external political conditions in the form of strong Byzantine oversight of the region. As we have seen, monasteries with important pilgrimage cults could continue to flourish, albeit with interruptions to their security, under Islamic rule and in periods of warfare. On the other hand, Byzantine control of the region around Antioch from 969 to 1084 saw the revival of monasticism, even though the cult of St Symeon was a largely local one that does not seem to have exercised a great attraction on overseas pilgrims. Direct political control was not strictly necessary, for the influence of Manuel Komnenos on the monasteries of the Judaean desert was exercised in co-operation with the ruling Frankish crown. With a very few exceptions, such as Mt Tabor – which may, indeed, prove the rule – Orthodox monasteries were not taken over or suppressed by the Latin religious or secular authorities after 1099. How did this general situation compare with that in Cyprus, which was untouched by the Crusades until the conquest of the island by Richard I in 1191, after which it came under Frankish rule for almost three centuries?

Cyprus It has recently been estimated that there were about forty Greek monasteries in Cyprus at some point during the period from the late tenth century to the Latin conquest in 1191, but that this number increased to almost sixty by the 1560s.272 Many of these were very small rural houses of perhaps only a few monks, especially in the Troodos mountain region, for which information is very limited. It will not be possible here to mention all of the Orthodox houses known to have functioned in Cyprus in the period covered by this book; instead, the outlines presented below will make reference to those that feature most prominently in the sources. The general view of monasticism in Cyprus has followed the trend in the earlier literature on the Frankish period on the island in presenting a sharp break in 1191, after which Orthodox monasteries, like bishoprics, suffered oppression at the hands of the ruling Franks. Chris Schabel has recently caricatured this view as ‘Latin coercion and the heroic Greek defence of their religion’.273 There are obvious reasons why such a view has been so persuasive. Two important Orthodox monasteries, Episkopia, near Kyrenia, and Stavrovouni, near Larnaca, were taken over by the Latins to become, respectively, 272

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Schabel, ‘Religion’, 200. See now, for the most recent detailed treatment of Cypriot monasticism during the Crusades, C. Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus under the Latins, 1191–1571: Society, Spirituality and Identities (Lanham, MD, 2018). Schabel, ‘Religion’, 159. Among representatives of this view are: G. Hill, History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1940–52), III, 1041–4; H.Magoulias, ‘A study in Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church relations on the island of Cyprus between 1196 amd 1360’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 10 (1964), 75–106; J. Gill, ‘The tribulations of the Greek Church in Cyprus, 1196–c.1280’, Byzantinische Forschungen 5 (1977), 73–93; and N. Coureas, ‘The Cypriot reaction to the establishment of the Latin Church: resistance and collaboration’, in Kyprios Charakter: Quelle identité chypriote. Sources travaux historiques 43–4 (1995), 75–84.

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a Premonstratensian and a Benedictine house. Other houses, such as the Enkleistra near Paphos, lost income as a result of the impoverishment of previous benefactors. The Latin ecclesiastical authorities passed laws in the 1220s that appear to have been attempts to restrict the extent of monasticism among the indigenous population. In 1220, Greek serfs were prohibited from entering monasteries without their lord’s consent, while in 1223 prospective entrants were compelled to wait until a vacancy occurred through the death of a monk; moreover, monks could only come from landed estates where a monastery was already located.274 Official pronouncements noted the continuing dissent of Greek monks: Innocent IV complained of this in 1246, and a provincial synod some time after 1280 accused Greek monks of corrupting the people. As tends to happen under all external occupations, the subaltern people could accept or resist the new authorities, and those who chose the former path ran the risk of being accused of collaboration by the ecclesiastical authorities in Nicaea.275 More recent scholarship has questioned the effects of the Lusignan occupation on Cypriot monasticism. Invoking the recent findings of Jean Richard, Gilles Grivaud, Nicholas Coureas and Angel Nicolaou-Konnari in their research on ecclesiastical institutions, language usage and ethnic identities, Schabel has argued that the Latin authorities were largely tolerant of Greek monasteries and monasticism and that, although there was episodic persecution of Orthodoxy in general as a result of which monasticism suffered, there was no systematic attempt to suppress monasticism or to close down or transfer ownership of monasteries.276 Although the Latin ecclesiastical authorities, following directions from the papacy, sought to impose obedience to Rome on the Greek clergy, there was really no attempt at ‘Latinisation’ in a sense that included liturgy or religious practice. In this sense, the Latin policy followed logically that pursued in the mainland Crusader States. There were, however, two important differences in this respect between Lusignan Cyprus and the mainland. One was that the conquest of Cyprus, unlike that of Jerusalem and Syria in 1098–9, occurred during a period when the papacy was far more capable of adopting and enacting a coherent centralised policy over the Church of a subject people. In the thirteenth century the mechanism for ensuring that papal policy was enacted – let alone for arriving at a policy in the first place – was simply more reliable than it had been in 1099. Second, Cyprus did not have the status enjoyed by the Holy Land, quite independent of external political conditions, of being a pilgrimage destination. This meant that most Cypriot monasteries, unlike St Sabas, St Katherine, St Chariton or St John Prodromos, for example, could not attract either resources or affection from outside the island and across the Christian world, and thus could not develop the same prestige. This is not to say, however, that Cyprus was a case apart. As art historians have long known, cultural contact demonstrable through frescoes, manuscript painting and icons reveals Cyprus as part of a Syro274

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The Synodicon Nicosiense and Other Documents of the Latin Church of Cyprus, 1196–1372, ed. C. Schabel, Texts and Studies of the History of Cyprus 39 (Nicosia, 2001), 288, 295; Coureas, ‘Cypriot reaction’, 77–8. Coureas, ‘Cypriot reaction’, 83. Schabel, ‘Religion’, 157–218, passim. Among recent ‘revisionist’ views, see J. Richard, ‘A propos de la “Bulla Cypria” de 1260’, Byzantinische Forschungen 22 (1996), 19–31; Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312; A. Nicolaou-Konnari, ‘The encounter of Greeks and Franks in Cyprus in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, unpub. PhD thesis, University of Wales, 1999; G. Grivaud, ‘Grecs et Francs dans le royaume de Chypre (1191–1474): les voies de l’acculturation’, unpub. PhD dissertation, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2001.

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Palestinian orbit as early as the eleventh century.277 Moreover, monasteries provided the physical setting for the fullest expression of the polyglot visual and spiritual culture in Cyprus under the Lusignans. The earliest traditions take monasticism in Cyprus back to the fourth century. It would be surprising indeed if Cyprus, which through the activities of early bishops such as Epiphanios, and the settlement on the island of the Palestinian monk Hilarion, had not developed a monastic tradition around this time. The monastery of Agia Moni (ton hieron), on Mt Royia on the western edge of the Troodos range, was, according to tradition, the first monastery on the island, supposedly founded by St Nicholas and St Eutychios in c. 300. Whatever the truth of this tradition, it is certain that a connection was established with Mt Athos in the tenth century. Athanasios the Athonite, after founding his laura, stayed at Agia Moni for four years, and subsequently maintained financial support for the monastery. The community appears to have negotiated the dramatic change in the island’s history marked by the conquest of 1191 with little or no interruption, and for the years between 1227 and 1407 a complete list of fourteen successive hegoumens survives in a sixteenth-century manuscript.278 One of the best-recorded monasteries in Cyprus, Holy Cross at Stavrovouni, also claims a fourth-century foundation. According to its tradition, Empress Helena, in response to a dream, founded the monastery to house the relics of the pieces of the crosses on which the two thieves had been crucified, which were discovered at the same time as the True Cross and fashioned by the empress into a single relic, to which she added a nail from the True Cross itself.279 By the beginning of the twelfth century this tradition was well enough known in the Orthodox world for Abbot Daniel to have visited the monastery and seen for himself the cross, which to his astonishment hung suspended in mid-air.280 The monastery became Benedictine at some point after the Latin conquest, but this does not seem to have happened immediately. Wilbrand von Oldenburg visited it in 1211–12, but his testimony is uncertain and has been used to argue both that Benedictines were already in place by this date, and that the ‘dissimilarity’ of life he reports of the monks indicates that it was still inhabited by Greek monks. Pringle suggests that ‘black monks’ must refer to Benedictines, and that they simply followed a somewhat different set of customs from those to which Wilbrand was accustomed, whereas Schabel has argued plausibly that the transfer took place just before 1240, when the voluntary exile of a number of Greek monks from Cyprus to Armenia prompted Pope Gregory IX to instruct the Latin archbishop of Nicosia to assign monasteries that had been abandoned to Latin communities.281 As Schabel has argued, such 277

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See A. Weyl Carr, ‘Art’, in Nicolaou-Konnari and Schabel, eds., Cyprus, 286–7, for detailed examples and bibliography: she draws attention in particular to the frescoes at Koutsovendis, Trikomo and Asinou, the paintings in Athos Koutloumosusiou 61 (an Antiochene manuscript) and a group of Sinai icons; and to a group of manuscripts that link St Sabas with mid-twelfthcentury Cyprus. G. der Parthog, Medieval Cyprus: A Guide to the Byzantine and Latin Monuments, 2nd ed. (Nicosia, 2006), 81–2; Paris Bib Nat grec 1588, in C. Constantinides and R. Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus to the Year 1570 (Nicosia, 1993), 74–81. Leontios Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus, ed. and trans. R. M. Dawkins (London, 1932), VII– VIII, 7–9. Daniel the Abbot, pp. 125–6. See below, p. 450, for discussion of the miraculous properties of the cross. Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 113–14; Schabel, ‘Religion’, 188–9; Synodicon Nicosiense, X13, 297–8; Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX no. 262, 341–2. In 1246 Innocent IV repeated

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a wholesale transfer was highly unusual, even in the circumstances of Lusignan rule – probably as unusual, indeed, as in the mainland Crusader States. After the fall of Antioch, Benedictines from the monastery of St Paul in Antioch settled at Stavrovouni.282 In contrast to Stavrovouni, another early foundation, Agios Nicolas ton gaton (‘of the cats’) continued to function and prosper. The monastery’s historical traditions were described by the sixteenth-century Latin writer Stephen of Lusignan. Stephen’s account attributes the foundation to Calocaerus, who on being sent to Cyprus as governor by Constantine, found the whole region of Cape Akrotiri, near Limassol, infested with snakes. His unorthodox method of dealing with this was to settle monks in the Cape on condition that they maintain no fewer than a hundred cats to hunt the snakes. Medieval pilgrims report seeing hordes of semi-feral cats swarming towards the monastery when the bell was rung to announce their dinner, before being let loose once again in the marshland.283 The Middle Byzantine period, between the tenth and late twelfth century, saw a significant number of new monastic foundations in Cyprus. In 965 the island was retaken from Arab control by the Byzantines. By the end of the tenth century a monastery dedicated to the Theotokos ton krineon at Lithiko, near Kyrenia in the north of the island, had been established.284 The monastery of St John Lampadistis at Kakopanagiotis, in the Troodos, supposedly founded on the spot where St Paul and St Barnabas baptised the first bishop of Cyprus, Herakleides, was probably also an eleventh-century foundation, though the dedication is to a monk around whom a cult grew up in the later twelfth or thirteenth century. At any rate, the earliest mural paintings in the monastic church of Agios Herakleides, which was the heart of the monastery, date from the twelfth century, with further campaigns in the thirteenth. The island assumed a new political importance towards the end of the eleventh century when it was secured by Emperor Alexios Komnenos. In 1092 Alexios sent an army to expel the island’s corrupt governor. In the context of the geopolitical situation of the eastern Mediterranean, it is easy to see this as part of a wider strategy of bolstering the Byzantine position at a time when the ‘Great Seljuq’ empire was fragmenting. His general, Manuel Butumites, who succeeded to the governorship, was responsible for the founding of what was to become the most prominent of all Cypriot monasteries, Our Lady of Kykkos. According to the story told by the chronicler Makhairas, Butumites was healed of sciatica by a hermit living in the Troodos mountains, Isaiah, whom he sent to Constantinople to perform the same feat on the emperor’s daughter. In gratitude, Alexios gave Isaiah an icon of the Blessed Virgin purportedly painted by St Luke, together with sufficient funds and land to build a monastery to

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a similar injunction. The Benedictine community continued to prosper under the Lusignans, and James of Verona in 1335 remarks on the relic of the Cross: Liber peregrinationis, I, 179. Stavrovouni should not be confused with another monastery of the same dedication at Omodos, in the southern Troodos, which also claimed a fourth-century foundation and relics of the True Cross and of the rope that bound Christ’s hands. This monastery continued to function as an Orthodox community under the Lusignans. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 187–8; see above, p. 219. Estienne de Lusignan, Description de toute l’isle de Cypre (Paris, 1580), 18–19. Vat Barb. grec MS 528, f. 192r–v, the earliest parts of which date to 991–2, records the foundation of the monastery as having already taken place. A fourteenth-century hand records the possessions of the monastery in the twelfth century, by which time it was evidently a significant landowner across the whole island: Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 54–9.

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house the icon in Cyprus.285 The symbolic significance of this gesture is enormous, for by conferring on Cyprus from the imperial gift an icon of such spiritual power the emperor was effectively taking the island under the protection of the guardian of Orthodoxy, and in so doing creating a direct link between the imperial capital’s patron, the Virgin Mary, and the Church of Cyprus. At around the same time, in 1090, the monastery dedicated to St John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis, north of Nicosia, was founded through the patronage of another of Alexios Komnenos’ generals, Eumathios Philokeles, who also served as governor of Cyprus twice (1092–c. 1102 and c. 1110–before 1118). The dedication to a saint who, though patriarch of Constantinople, was an Antiochene, indicates intimate contact between Cyprus and the revived monastic centres of north Syria in the period just before the First Crusade. Moreover, the first hegoumen of Koutsovendis, George, was the addressee of a letter from Nikon of the Black Mountain on the interpretation of Scripture, which, since it was included in his Taktikon, must date from the first decade of the monastery’s existence.286 Koutsovendis became an important landowning institution in the twelfth century, though by 1334 its fortunes may have been in decline, and in that year it became a metochion of St Sabas in Palestine.287 The late eleventh century also saw the foundation of the monastery of Agios Nikolaos tis steges (‘of the roof’) in the Troodos village of Kakopetria. Since no remains of the monastic buildings survive, and the monastery does not feature in the written record, it is on the church and its decoration that any estimates of the date and character of the foundation must rest. An initial decorative campaign of murals in the church dates from the period of the foundation, followed in the early twelfth century and the turn of the fourteenth by further paintings.288 In Monagri, the monastery Panagia Amasgou was rebuilt and decorated in the early twelfth century.289 Probably the most celebrated of the churches of this period, because of its astonishing wall paintings, is Panagia Phorbiotissa tou Asinou, near Nikitari on the north-eastern edge of the Troodos range. Everything known about this tiny church comes from the evidence of the paintings and associated inscriptions. According to these, the monastery was founded in 1105–6 by Nikephoros, a magistros – and thus a high local official – who is probably to be identified with the son of the governor. Nikephoros was important enough to be married to a Komnena princess, and although the monastery he founded must have been small, to judge from the size of the church, the expense of the paintings must have been considerable. In contrast to the fourteenth-century paintings in the church, those original to the foundation reflect the contemporary cosmopolitan style, and were probably by an artist imported from Constantinople.290 285

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Leontios Makhairas, Recital, XXXVII, 36–8. The initial location of the monastery may have been the Panagia monastery at Trikoukkia, also in the Troodos, where a three-aisled eleventh-century church, albeit rebuilt in the eighteenth century, still stands. According to local tradition the church was built by St Luke: Der Parthog, Medieval Cyprus, 198. Sinai grec MS 436, ff. 82v–85r, edited in Benesevic, Catalogus codicum, 237–46. On the monastery’s architectural history and wall paintings, see C. Mango, ‘The monastery of St Chrysostomos at Koutsovendis (Cyprus) and its wall paintings’, DOP 44 (1990), 63–94. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, 3 vols. (St Petersburg, 1891–7), II, 717; Schabel, ‘Religion’, 189, is mistaken in thinking that St Sabas became a possession of Koutsovendis. A. Stylianou and J. A. Stylianou, The Painted Churches of Cyprus: Treasures of Byzantine Art, 2nd ed. (Nicosia, 1997), 53–75. Stylianou and Stylianou, Painted Churches, 238–44. See Stylianou and Stylianou, Painted Churches, 114–40, for full description; see also D. C. Winfield and E. J. W. Hawkins, ‘The church of Our Lady at Asinou, Cyprus: a report on the seasons of 1965 and 1966’, DOP 21 (1967), 260–6; and C. Hadjichristodoulou and D. Marionthefs, The Church of Our Lady at Asinou (Nicosia, 2002).

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Three mid-twelfth-century monastic foundations in Cyprus had eremitical origins. The least well-known, Our Lady of the Pomegranate at Chrysorroyiatissa, on a spur of Mt Royia in the west of the island, was founded in 1152 by the hermit Ignatios. The tradition of the foundation associates the monastery with the discovery by the hermit of an icon of the Virgin on the beach at Paphos. Supposedly, this icon, which was already several hundred years old, had been thrown into the sea at its place of origin in Isauria by its owner to avoid destruction at the hands of the iconoclasts; it survived intact to be washed ashore at Paphos, was buried in a cave by a fisherman, and four hundred years later was revealed to Ignatios by a heavenly fire hanging over the cave.291 The monasteries founded by Neophytos the Recluse and Neilos at around the same time, however, are well attested from the survival of their foundation typika, and offer a wealth of evidence for the circumstances and nature of monastic practices in Cyprus. Almost everything we know about Neophytos comes from his own testamentary typikon, which he composed in c. 1177 and revised just before his death in 1214. Fortunately this amounts to a great deal more than we know about most of his contemporary monastic founders: Neophytos was convinced of his own importance in the history of Orthodox monasticism.292 Since Neophytos has been the subject of considerable recent attention, a brief survey of his career in the context of the foundation of his monastery will suffice here. Neophytos was born in 1134 in Lefkara, a village in the Troodos, to a peasant family. At the age of eighteen he ran away from the prospect of an arranged marriage to enter the monastery of St John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis, where his brother was already a monk. Eventually, after some struggle, he persuaded his family to let him follow this profession. After five years, however, during which he learnt to read and write, he left the monastery after the hegoumen had prohibited him from becoming a solitary. Instead he spent six months in the Holy Land, in search, as he later put it, of a mentor in the eremitical life. On his return, Neophytos decided to try Mt Latros, in south-western Asia Minor, where a tradition of asceticism had developed since the late tenth century. Arrested in the port of Paphos as a fugitive – presumably from his monastery – he was robbed of his fare and temporarily imprisoned. On his release, destitute and still frustrated in his desire to find an eremitical master, he stumbled upon the site that was to be his home for the rest of his life, a cave a few miles north east of Paphos. The moment was so portentous that he recorded the date in his typikon – the feast of John the Baptist (24 June), 1159. For a year he worked at making the cave, which he called the Enkleistra, habitable for a reclusive life. This entailed widening and hollowing the interior by hand. Again, he recorded the date of completion of this work: the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), 1160. After ten years of solitude, he was ‘discovered’ by the new bishop of Paphos, Basil, who insisted on ordaining the recluse and required him to take a disciple. Gradually the laura developed 291 292

The tradition is related by Der Parthog, Medieval Cyprus, 84–5, without giving its source. There are two recent English translations of the typikon: Neophytos (trans. Galatariotou) in BMFD, IV, 1338–73, and Foundation Rules, 129–68. Editions are in I. P. Tskinopoullos, ed., Kupriaka Typika (Nicosia, 1969, repr. 2001), 9–12, and I. E. Stephanis, ed., Agiou Neophytou tou Enkleistou Sungrammata, 3 vols. (Paphos, 1996–9), II, 9–10, 69. Foundation Rules, 13–16, provides a history of the manuscript tradition and editions. Coureas’ translation is based on comparison of both the modern editions, while Galatariotou’s is based on Tsiknopoullos’ alone. For this reason I shall refer to Coureas’ translation in what follows. For the life and career of Neophytos, see principally C. Galatariotou, The Making of a Saint: The Life, Times and Sanctification of Neophytos the Recluse (Cambridge, 1991).

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and further cells were excavated in the cliff-face, one of which was consecrated as a church dedicated to the Holy Cross.293 In 1183 and 1200 cycles of paintings were executed in the main caves of the laura complex, and in 1214, shortly before Neophytos’ death, the number of monks was raised to twenty-five. Before this, however, in 1197, Neophytos had already relocated himself in a new cave cell that he excavated for himself higher up the cliff-face, and his direction of the laura became increasingly remote.294 Neophytos’ character, writings and approach to monastic practice and ideals are highly distinctive and will furnish material for discussion in subsequent chapters. Indeed, together with Nikon of the Black Mountain he is the outstanding individual in the history of Orthodox monasticism in the Crusader States. One of the factors that make the Enkleistra so important for an understanding of Cypriot monasticism is the coincidence of dating. Any study of Cypriot history in the Middle Ages must confront the question posed by the Latin conquest of 1191. The traditional view, as hinted above, is that Latin occupation and political hegemony entailed the large-scale dispossession of the estates of the indigenous nobility, to be given instead to the vassals of the Lusignans. At first sight, the history of the Enkleistra appears to support such a view. Neophytos was personally appalled by the conquest, as is apparent from his lament for the island and his unflattering characterisation of Richard I.295 We should not forget, however, that he was equally angered by the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 to Saladin and the occupation of the Holy City by infidels.296 In his ‘Rule’, Neophytos laments the necessity for the Enkleistra, which had previously followed his ideal of landlessness, to purchase land for farming. The context in which Neophytos explains this measure is the destitution of the Cypriot people, which both increased the numbers of monks and diminished the surpluses that could be given to the Enkleistra in alms.297 The capacity of the laura to make such a purchase, however, suggests not only that its resources were perfectly adequate, but that there were no restrictions on expansion or activity in the land market for Orthodox monasteries after the Latin conquest. Indeed, like most pre-existing Cypriot monasteries, the Enkleistra seems to have suffered minimal interruption as a result of the conquest. The foundation of the monastery of Makhairas follows a chronology and pattern remarkably similar to that of the Enkleistra; as with Neophytos’ foundation, the typikon, dating to 1210, provides most of our knowledge of the circumstances of the foundation. In the mid-twelfth century, a hermit in the Holy Land – coincidentally also called Neophytos, though not to be identified with the founder of the Enkleistra – left the region of the Jordan for Cyprus because of the dangers posed by Muslim raids, and settled on the south-eastern slopes of the Troodos range. He attracted disciples, two of whom, Ignatios and Procopios, took the leadership of the community after his death by travelling to Constantinople and acquiring from Emperor Manuel Komnenos a chrysobull granting them an annual income of 50 gold pieces and the ownership of the site where the community lived.298 This act of generosity, which compares with that of Manuel’s grandfather Alexios in founding Kykkos, 293 294 295 296 298

Neophytos, The Rule of Neophytos the Recluse, trans. N. Coureas in Foundation Rules, III–VI, 134–9. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XX, pp. 152–3. Neophytus de calamitatibus Cypri, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. W. Stubbs, clxxxiv–clxxxix. 297 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 206–7. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, X, p. 142. Neilos, The Rule of Neilos, ed. N. Coureas in Foundation Rules, VII–XI, pp. 67–8.

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also seems to fit well with Manuel’s patronage of Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land.299 At this stage the community probably comprised only a handful of ascetics living in a kind of laura, with a church dedicated to the Virgin. The first hegoumen of the monastery founded as a result of the imperial benefaction, Neilos, came to Cyprus from an unknown place of origin in 1172 and succeeded Ignatios as superior of the community in 1178. It was he who wrote the typikon some years later. Unlike Neophytos, Neilos envisioned Makhairas (literally ‘knife’) as a cenobitic community, and under his leadership the endowments of the monastery increased from local donations. The usurping ruler of Cyprus, Isaak Komnenos (1184–91), made further endowments, presumably in an attempt to emphasise the legitimacy of his rule, and even after the Latin conquest Makhairas sought confirmation of the original grant as well as further bequests from the emperors in Constantinople.300 Under the Lusignan kings Makhairas continued to prosper; indeed its relative accessibility from Nicosia made it a favourite resort of the royal family in the fourteenth century.301 The general picture of monastic stability during and after the conquest may, indeed, be modified to present an upward trajectory of foundations after 1191. An example of the trend is Panagia tou arakou at Lagoudera. The church dates from the mid-twelfth century, but most of the much-admired mural painting was done in 1192, as attested in a contemporary inscription. The initial foundation was a private chapel by Authentios, a notable local noble, but it was under his son Leontios that the church was decorated.302 The inscription does not identify the church as a monastery, yet it certainly became one soon afterwards. One suggestion is that Leontios was one of those Cypriot landowners who was dispossessed in the aftermath of the local revolt against the original owners of the island after the conquest, the Templars, and that he founded a monastery on his own estate at Lagoudera in which to retire as a monk.303 As Neophytos attests, the numbers of monastic vocations seem to have increased as a result of the conquest, as the economic hardship resulting from land appropriations made monasteries an attractive resort for those deprived of land.304 In addition, indigenous peasantry who had been made serfs in the new manorial economy that took effect after 1191 appear to have chosen monasticism as an alternative to servile status. Frankish landlords, of course, suspected that many of these vocations were simply attempts to evade new servile obligations. In 1222, indeed, Orthodox monasteries were compelled to limit their numbers in an attempt to ensure that this trend did not leave land uncultivated.305 The inference of this is surely that monasteries were, at least in the perception of the local people, sufficiently prosperous to support them. Alongside Neophytos’ evidence of economic hardship there is, of course, the notorious execution of thirteen monks of the monastery of Kantara in 1231 for refusing to retract their 299 302

303 305

300 301 See pp. 314, 317. Foundation Rules, 21–2. Leontios Makhairas, Recital, LXXIV, 68–9. Stylianou and Stylianou, Painted Churches, 158–9, and see D. C. Winfield and J. Winfield, The Church of the Panagia tou Arakos at Lagoudhera, Cyprus: The Paintings and Their Painterly Significance, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 37 (Washington, DC, 2003). 304 Der Parthog, Medieval Cyprus, 177. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IX, p. 140. Synodicon Nicosiense, X.11.9, p. 295; Schabel, ‘Religion’, 200.

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accusations of heresy against Latin doctrine.306 The details and context of this episode will be examined in a subsequent chapter, but it should be emphasised here that, as Schabel points out, a single instance of such brutality in three hundred years of Frankish occupation scarcely amounts to a policy of repression.307 For the purposes of this survey chapter, what is perhaps most significant is that the resistance to Latin doctrine was not the consequence of an attempt to suppress the monastery. Indeed, the situation arose in the first place from an attempt by the Latin authorities to find a formula according to which Orthodox monasteries could continue to function with some form of recognition of the papacy. The monastery itself was never under any threat of suppression or appropriation; indeed, very little is known of it other than this episode, and it may be the case that the community had been founded only just prior to the resistance episode.308 If this is indeed so, it might be read as evidence for the perceived urgency of resistance to Latin doctrine and – given that the monks who led the resistance, John and Konon, came to Cyprus from Mt Athos – for the appeal of this cause across the Orthodox world. On the other hand, the fact that such

Figure 7 Monastery of St Sabas, Judaean Desert 306

307

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Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 281–3; see J. Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 3 vols. (London, 1901), I, 128–9, for a markedly anti-Latin view. There is no strictly contemporary account of the case, but a report of the execution transcribed in the seventeenth century by Leo Allatius has been edited as ‘Martyrion Kyprion’, in K. Sathas, ed., Mesaionike Bibliotheke, 7 vols. (Venice, 1872–94), II, 20–39; the most recent discussion of the text is Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus under the Latins, 44–6. Schabel, ‘Religion’, 196–8. Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, 283, suggests that this outbreak of extreme violence against Orthodox monks could have occurred only in circumstances when a royal minority (under Henry I) had led to the outbreak of civil war. R. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus: A Guide to Its Towns and Villages, Monasteries and Castles (London, 1936), 254.

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Figure 8 Monastery of the Temptation, Jericho

Figure 9 Monastery at al-Ba’ina, Galilee

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a community was founded in the circumstances of Frankish rule also suggests that the ecclesiastical and secular authorities were quite content to allow Orthodox monasticism to continue. Communications between Cypriot monasteries and the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople in exile in Nicaea also continued after the conquest, as shown for example in the letter of Patriarch Germanos II to the Cypriots in 1222, in which he acknowledges receipt of the news of the flight of Archbishop Neophytos of Nicosia from the Cypriot monastery of Apsinthia.309 In summary, Cypriot monasticism, though dating back to the fourth century, began to flourish in the eleventh century, principally under the Komnenos dynasty, when the island began to assume a more prominent role in eastern Mediterranean affairs. The Latin conquest certainly affected monasticism, as it affected Cypriot society more generally. As in the mainland Crusader States, however, there was no attempt even by a more centrally managed ecclesiastical hierarchy to suppress it. In Cyprus, as in Palestine and Syria, many of the monasteries whose identity we know are otherwise obscure to us. Inevitably, it is those whose foundation history is clear, and whose founders left typika, that are best known, and it is from these documents that most of the questions to be addressed in the following chapters can be approached. The typika of the Enkleistra and Makhairas monasteries in Cyprus, of Nikon’s foundations on the Black Mountain, of St Sabas in the Judaean desert and related foundations such as St John on Patmos, coupled with observations by visitors and pilgrims, will thus form the basis of evidence for our understanding of the internal organisation of monasteries, the extent and nature of their properties, and their relations with external authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical.

309

K. P. Kyrrhis, ‘Kupriaka hagiologika kai monasteriaka meletemata. He mone tes Apsinthioutisses Panagias en Kupro’, Kupriakai Spoudai 27 (1963), 217–22.

14 Institutional Life in Greek Monasteries

The Sources Most of what we know about Orthodox monasteries as institutions comes from the founders’ typika. In some cases this information can be supplemented or confirmed by descriptions of monasteries in pilgrimage accounts. Important fragmentary insights are also found in hagiographies, particularly the lives of monastic founders such as Lazaros of Mt Galesion. None of these categories of source material, however, is entirely authoritative or without its problems. Typika and hagiographies, in different ways, offer idealised versions of the day-to-day life of monasteries. A founder’s typikon presents the intentions of the founder either at the point of highest expectation, when the monastery is still an immature institution, or near the moment of the founder’s death, when he or she looks forward to the fulfilment of hopes for the monastery under his or her successor. In some cases, such as Nikon’s typikon for the Black Mountain, the blueprint for the running of the monastery remained altogether an ideal that was never put to the test.1 In others, such as Neophytos’ typikon for the Enkleistra, or the codicil to Christodoulos’ typikon for St John on Patmos, the founder looks back as well as forward, and is able to warn and chastise from experience as well as to anticipate the future. The example of Christodoulos is particularly poignant. A comparison between the design for the monastery laid out in the original typikon and the two codicils written after the flight of the community from Patmos to Euboea, and just before the founder’s death, reveals a state of mind burdened by disappointed hopes and a sense of despair at the fate of the foundation.2 In rather different ways, hagiographical accounts also present idealised versions of monastic life. For example, most of what we know about Lazaros’ community on Mt Galesion comes from the biography written by Gregory the Cellarer after his death in the mid-eleventh century.3 Although it is obvious, reading between the lines, that relations between the founder and his monks were not always harmonious, the nature of the work means that the author presents problems in the running of the community in such a way as to cast doubt on the morality of individual monks rather than on the systems put in place by Lazaros.4 Since the purpose of hagiography, clearly, was to exemplify holiness, objective 1 3

4

2 Black Mountain, 377–424. Christodoulos, 578–94, 594–601. Life of Lazaros. The Life by Gregory was reworked into an epitome in the thirteenth century by Gregory of Cyprus, Patriarch of Constantinople (1283–9). See the remarks by Greenfield in Life of Lazaros, 27–8.

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assessments of monastic administration are subordinated to this need. Pilgrimage accounts can provide important details of how monasteries behaved as institutions. Perhaps surprisingly, the most useful in this respect are by Latin pilgrims, for example the various accounts of St Katherine, Mt Sinai, to which Western pilgrims from the thirteenth century onwards were particularly devoted, or Oliver of Paderborn’s account of St Symeon the Wonderworker.5 It is the nature of these accounts, however, that the pilgrim is only able to present snapshots from his own observation or experience at a particular moment. Even the pilgrim who observed conditions accurately at the moment of his visit was unable to judge whether they represented the norm or, instead, the face that the monastery wished to present to pilgrims. The founders’ typika of Orthodox monasteries have been the subject of extensive recent studies by Byzantinists; indeed, a book such as this would have been far more difficult to write without them. The distinction between liturgical typika, which specify the exact forms of liturgical offices to be sung in the monastery, and the founders’ typika, which are concerned largely with the running of the monastery as an institution, was first treated in a systematic way, in the context of canon law, by J. B. Pitra in the mid-nineteenth century.6 The nature of Orthodox monasticism itself meant that the publication and discussion of founders’ typika were invariably piecemeal. Unlike Latin monasticism, Orthodoxy does not have a system of monastic ‘orders’ governed by Rules composed for centralised groups of communities. This means that, although some monastic traditions and Rules (that of Basil, for example) were always influential in the founding of new communities, there could in theory be as many different ways of running a monastery as there were founders. Even the principle of associations or confraternities such as that of Cluny was unknown in the Orthodox world. This does not mean that links cannot be found between monastic practices; as we shall see, there were distinct features that characterised Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land, Syria and Cyprus. Moreover, some typika, such as that composed for the monastery of Theotokos Evergetis in Constantinople in the mid-eleventh century, proved to be enormously influential as mediators of reforming cenobitic monasticism, and later typika – that of Makhairas, for example – betray this influence. Such features, however, are difficult to analyse without the systematic study and publication of typika as a genre that have been underway in the past generation. One of the first attempts to classify typika was the collection of editions made by Paul Gautier between 1974 and 1985.7 In the 1990s the Institute of Byzantine Studies at Queen’s University Belfast began to collect, edit and translate texts associated with the Komnenian foundation of Theotokos Evergetis in Constantinople. The most ambitious project to date, however, is Dumbarton Oaks’ Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, a five-volume collection of translated typika from the seventh to fifteenth centuries. A project on such a large scale 5

6 7

Especially Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XVII–XX, 40–5; Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCVII– CCXXVIII, 123–33; Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places; Le Grand, ed., ‘Relation du pèlerinage de Nicolas de Martoni’; Oliver of Paderborn, Schriften, 265. J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense (Paris, 1858), IV, 381. P. Gautier, ed., ‘Diataxis for the Monastery of Christ Panoiktirmon’, REB 39 (1981), 17–129; Gautier, ‘Hypotyposis for the Monastery of Theotokos Evergetis’, REB 40 (1982), 15–95; Gautier, ‘Typikon for the Monastery of Theotokos Kecharitomene’, REB 43 (1985), 5–165.

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obviously demands well-thought-out principles of organisation deriving from a thorough classification of types of typika. Such a classification was first undertaken by Catia Galatariotou in 1987 in a comparison of thirty-six typika.8 Galatariotou’s analysis, while recognising the dangers in too prescriptive a use of the term typikon or its synonyms (diatheke, diataxis), is based on a fundamental division between ‘aristocratic’ and ‘nonaristocratic’ foundations.9 Not surprisingly, she finds that expectations and standards of ascetic behaviour were higher in the latter types of foundation. The Dumbarton Oaks project, with far more typika to deal with, proposes an anatomy of foundations according to a wider array of notional types. Imperial foundations are distinguished from others, but other categories are also devised to reflect the circumstances of foundation and the founding principles: traditional privately founded monasteries, monasteries following Athonite ideals, reforming monasteries from the twelfth century onwards, and ‘independent’ monasteries. The distinctions between these categories are grounded in the intentions espoused by the founders, from which the internal discipline is held to follow. For the purposes of this chapter, I will be primarily interested in analysing the monasteries of the Crusader States according to two main criteria: the nature of their relations with their external environments, including political and episcopal powers, and the ways in which internal administration and government operated. Unfortunately, the sources permit only a few of the monasteries outlined in the previous chapter to be studied in this way. Of these, founders’ typika survive for only six: in the Holy Land, St Sabas and St Euthymios in Jerusalem;10 in Syria, Nikon’s typika for the Black Mountain and Roidion;11 and, in Cyprus, the Enkleistra of Neophytos and Neilos’ typikon for Makhairas.12 We will also consider Christodoulos’ typikon for Patmos, which by his own acknowledgement was heavily influenced by his experiences as a monk at St Sabas. These surviving pieces of evidence, though rich in detail and susceptible to intriguing comparative study, cannot be said to be typical of all Orthodox monasteries functioning in the Crusader States. Nevertheless, they offer a cross-section of types of foundation. The Enkleistra and Makhairas were both new foundations deriving from anchoritic principles learnt in the Holy Land, but which chose different institutional directions. Nikon’s typika represent the reforming tendencies current in late eleventh-century Constantinople, but heavily accented with Palestinian traditions. St Euthymios exemplifies a modest urban refoundation in inimical economic and political conditions, while the typikon of St Sabas demonstrates both the longevity of early Palestinian monastic traditions and the adaptability of its monks to new conditions under crusader rule.

Founders and Patrons Although some of the monasteries in the Holy Land, such as St John Prodromos and St Katherine, were originally imperial foundations, and others both in the Holy Land and in 8 10

11

9 Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’. Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 82–3, 89. Gerasimos: Testament of Gerasimos for the Small Monastery of St Euthymios in Jerusalem, trans. G. Dennis, in BMFD, No. 50, pp. 1404–7, Sabas: Founder’s Typikon for the Sabas Monastery near Jerusalem, trans. G. Fiaccadori, in BMFD, No. 42, pp. 1311–18, from the edition by E. Kurz, BZ 3 (1894), 168–70. The typikon of St Sabas is an eleventh–twelfth-century redaction of the lost original written by Sabas himself. 12 Black Mountain, 374–424; Roidion, 429–39. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, and Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas.

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Cyprus were founded or refounded with imperial support (Choziba, St Elias and Kykkos being examples, to which we can add St John on Patmos), most were privately founded by individuals, whether of a ‘traditional’ or ‘reforming’ bent. The initiative of aristocratic patrons is evident in Cypriot foundations of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Manuel Butumites, Alexios Komnenos’ governor of the island, founded Kykkos, while another of his appointments, Eumathios Philokeles, founded St John of Koutsovendis, and Nikephoros, a son of the governor who was related by marriage to the Komnenoi, founded Asinou in 1106. This period, which corresponds to the height of Byzantine political interest in Cyprus, seems to have brought to the island a number of prominent nobles who were interested in patronising monasteries and monastic activities. An illuminated early twelfthcentury collection of commentaries on Job, for example, was copied in Cyprus on the commission of the duke of Cyprus, Leo Nikerites (1107–18).13 These patrons, however, were not the local aristocracy, and their patronage should be seen in the context of that of Alexios Komnenos himself. The example that most closely relates to the Holy Land is the foundation of St John the Theologian on Patmos. At the behest of Christodoulos and apparently through the mediation of the emperor’s mother, Anna Dalassena, herself a monastic patron, Alexios granted him the island of Patmos for the purpose of founding a monastery in 1088.14 Christodoulos was already by this time an experienced monk with first-hand knowledge of monastic practices in Palestine and Mt Latros. He had been protos, a title which appears to correspond to that of archimandrite, of a group of monasteries at Mt Latros, in south-west Asia Minor, and superior of the Stylos monastery.15 After fleeing St Sabas in the Judaean desert in the face of the Seljuq conquest, he was periodically dogged by the Seljuq advance into Asia Minor. Abandoning Stylos because of the Seljuqs, he secured the patronage of Emperor Nikephoros III (1078–81) to found a new monastery on Kos, before moving to Patmos. Under Alexios’ grandson Manuel Komnenos, imperial patronage began to focus on the monasteries of the Holy Land. Manuel’s interest in the Holy Land was shaped by the shrine churches. His lavish benefactions made possible the gilding of the cupola of the Lord’s Tomb in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the extensive mosaic cycles in the nave and apse of the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As we saw in the previous chapter, he was also responsible for the rebuilding of St John Prodromos, by the Jordan, and St Elias, after the earthquake of 1157, and of Choziba in the wadi Qilt. Our knowledge of the emperor’s patronage of St John and St Elias comes from John Phocas’ pilgrimage account. Phocas makes it clear that, in the case of St Elias, Manuel not only responded to appeals from the monastic community but also left the direction of the labour, and therefore presumably the spending of the money, to the superior.16 This situation presupposes effective communications between the indigenous monks of Palestine and Constantinople, though the 13

14

15

Vatican gr 1231, in Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus, 68–70. Leo also commissioned an illuminated Octateuch in 1103: London Lambeth Palace MS 1214. Acta et diplomata monasterium et ecclesiarum orientis, ed. F. Miklosich and J. Muller, 3 vols. (Vienna, 1890, repr. 1968), III, 44–9. The original chrysobull, dated April 1088, is still in the monastery’s library. See the remarks of P. Armstrong, ‘Alexios Komnenos, holy men and monasteries’, in M. Mullett and D. Smythe, eds., Alexios I Komnenos, BBTT 4.1 (Belfast, 1996), 219–31, especially 230–1, on the relative roles of Alexios and Anna Dalassene. 16 Christodoulos, 564. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 332; PG 133: 956.

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opportunity for such contact was provided in any case in 1157–8, when Manuel was in Antioch to receive the submission of Prince Reynald. Baldwin III of Jerusalem was also present at an occasion that was evidently stage-managed to assert the emperor’s authority not only in Antioch but also throughout the wider region.17 Provision of material patronage to shrine churches was a means of demonstrating his power, and as Phocas testifies in his description of the images of Manuel displayed at Bethehem, the point of this demonstration was to project the imperial persona throughout the Holy Land. If Manuel could not quite claim political hegemony here, he could achieve something that may have been just as valuable for his conception of the imperial office: to present himself as the guardian of Orthodoxy in the Holy Land. Of course, through his acts of material patronage to monasteries and shrines, he was also identifying himself with the original Christian benefactor, Constantine, and his successors, such as Anastasios and Justinian, who founded monasteries in the Holy Land. In contrast, the evidence for local aristocratic involvement in monastic patronage in the eastern Mediterranean is slight. It is true that Neophytos relied on local patronage for the maintenance of the Enkleistra, and complained about the drying up of local sources of patronage in the region of Paphos after 1191, but this can in any case hardly have been on a scale comparable with that outlined above.18 Moreover, there is no evidence for local aristocratic involvement in the patronage of Palestinian or Syrian monasteries, because there was simply no substantial local Orthodox aristocracy under Fatimid, Seljuq, crusader, Ayyubid or Mamluk rule. Such lay patronage as can be detected had to come from the wider Orthodox world.19 Komnenian imperial patronage has already been mentioned, but already in the middle of the eleventh century the monastery of St Chariton in the Judaean desert (Souka) appears to have received a lavishly illustrated multi-volume menologion, and imperial involvement in the second phase of the rebuilding of the Anastasis church in the 1040s may have provided an opportunity for greater acquaintance with the desert monasteries.20 Even where textual evidence is non-existent, the presence of Constantinopolitan manuscripts in monasteries probably indicates the patronage of a metropolitan aristocracy. Patronage was not confined only to the Constantinopolitan aristocracy. The typikon of St Euthymios in Jerusalem demonstrates the interest and involvement of the imperial family of Trebizond in religious life in Jerusalem in the fourteenth century. According to the typikon, the monastery was founded on the ancestral property of the Trapezuntine empress Anna Anachoutlou (1341–2), but after her murder it fell on hard times and had to be restored by the efforts of Trapezuntine monks.21 Moreover, the interest of the Russian Orthodox princely aristocracy in the monasteries of the Holy Land is evident from the pilgrimage 17 19

20 21

18 William of Tyre, Chronicon, XVIII, 23–4, pp. 844–7. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, X, pp. 141–2. For example, through the patronage of Byzantine or Byzantine-influenced queens of Jerusalem: Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 137–62, 233–45, 337–64. Sinai 512, Oxford Barocci 230; see Jotischky, ‘Fortunes of war’. Gerasimos. Dennis notes the scepticism of A. Bryer and D. Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of Pontos (Washington, DC, 1985), I, 127, as to the authenticity of the document, pointing to the implausibility of the witnesses, an Arsenios who was supposedly patriarch of Jerusalem and Elias, Bishop of Bethlehem, who are not attested in patriarchal or episcopal lists. However, at least one of the monks of St Euthymios named in the typikon, Pambo, may be the same as the kathegoumen known to have been at St John Prodromos in the 1330s: Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 337.

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account of Daniel, who burned lamps at the Easter Fire ceremony on behalf of the princes of Rus.22 The pilgrimages of the Russian princess Euphrosine to Jerusalem in 1173 and of the Serbian prince Savas in 1229–30 were further occasions for the wider Orthodox aristocracy to extend patronage to the Holy Land. The monastery of Holy Cross, to the west of Jerusalem, was founded by David II of Georgia (1089–1125), and continued to be supported by the Georgian royal dynasty, particularly in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries under Queen Tamar, who adopted a personal iconography of portraying herself as Constantine.23 For such Orthodox royal and princely dynasties outside the Byzantine Empire, the act of founding or becoming a benefactor to a monastery in the Holy Land had particular resonance. On the one hand, it showed their aspirations to a status equal or close to that of the emperor; at the same time, however, by following the example set by emperors since the sixth century, these royal dynasties were also revealing a dependence on imperial models. The relations enjoyed – or endured – by monasteries with the political and military authorities depended in large measure on the conditions that applied at the time. As we saw earlier, monasteries in the Holy Land and Syria were subject to random attacks and threats from various Muslim rulers at different times. The monasteries of Palestine, indeed, had become used to sharing the Judaean desert with nomadic tribes, some of them hostile to – but more immediate a presence than – Roman authority, even before the Arab conquest of the seventh century.24 Because the monasteries were founded in remote areas, the monks counted among their neighbours those who also wanted to live outside the reach of secular authority. Thus bands of brigands play an important role in the stories told about the monasteries. This feature of desert life was as true of the fourteenth – and even the nineteenth – century as of the sixth and seventh centuries.25 Quite apart from extraordinary actions like al-Hakim’s persecution of 1009, Christodoulos’ experiences show that the advance of the Seljuqs in the eleventh century destabilised monasticism in Asia Minor and the Dodecanese islands. To some extent, the Orthodox monasteries shared in the fate of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the period of Saladin’s conquest. Mt Tabor was attacked in 1183 and St Euthymios and St Sabas in 1187; on the latter occasion monks were taken captive and led off to Damascus.26 This suggests that as far as Saladin was concerned, Orthodox monasteries and monasticism had come to be identified with the ruling Frankish dynasty. Perhaps this was because they were nominally obedient to the Latin hierarchy. Some abbots, such as Meletios of St Sabas, tacitly accepted this situation: in his case by becoming a confrater of the Hospital of St John.27 Orthodox monks, most famously Paul of Antioch, a monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker, 22 23

24

25 26 27

Daniel the Abbot, p. 171. A. Eastmond, ‘Royal renewal in Georgia: the case of Queen Tamar’, in P. Magdalino, ed., New Constantines: The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, Fourth–Thirteenth Centuries, Papers from 26th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, St Andrews, 1992 (London, 1994), 283–94. See, for example, Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, XV, LI, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 24–5, 75; John Moschos, Pratum spirituale, XXI, XCIX, CXXXIII, CLV, CCXII, 61–2, 146, 184–5, 209–10, 287–8; Anthony of Choziba, Vita sancti Georgii Chozibitae XXVIII, p. 126. Cyril, in particular, realised that interactions with ‘Saracens’ were often about competition for scarce resources such as water. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XIX, 44; R. Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (London, 1849), 216–18. WT XXVI, p.1052; Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, XIX–XX, in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, 172–3. Cartulaire général, ed. Delaville Le Roulx, I, no. 443.

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sometimes served as coadjutor bishops alongside Latins, presumably with particular responsibility for the Orthodox flock.28 This may be why, during the Third Crusade, Orthodox abbots are recorded by Western chroniclers as having colluded with Richard I, at least in providing intelligence.29 Yet it is surely also the case that such episodes, occurring as they did during times of war, mark extreme circumstances. Arabic-speaking monks were of course able to debate with Muslims, as apparently happened in 1217 in Aleppo, when George, another monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker, took part in a debate with three ulamas in the presence of one of Saladin’s sons.30 The existence of polemic shows, to be sure, a level of mutual antagonism between religious positions. However, it also reveals a level of continuity from the ninth and tenth centuries, when accounts of such debates, real or imagined, formed a staple of Christian Arabic writing in Syria and the Holy Land.31 Paul of Antioch wrote a letter addressed to his ‘Muslim friends’ in Sidon, which, even taking into account rhetorical conventions, indicates a degree of peaceful interaction between Arabicspeaking monks and Muslims. Western pilgrims to Sinai in the fourteenth century noticed with alarm – in the case of James of Verona, a sense of outrage – the mosque and minaret maintained within the walls of the monastery of St Katherine, by command of the sultan of Egypt.32 This feature, which was in place by 1106, testifies to the importance of the site of the monastery – the place where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush – to Muslim pilgrims. As David Jacoby has observed, however, it also served as a reminder that Sinai lay within the Egyptian political orbit: in 1134 the caliph Hafiz confirmed the monastery’s earlier privileges.33 Frescobaldi and Gucci, Florentine pilgrims to Sinai, testify that the mosque was still there in 1384, and that the appointment of the superior was subject to confirmation by the sultan. Gucci also says that the monks had to provide bread for local Beduin, who would otherwise molest pilgrims.34 The obligation to maintain a mosque at St Katherine doubtless signalled the intent of the Mamluk sultanate to dominate the Sinai peninsula, but even during the lifetime of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem the monks had relied on the Ayyubid authorities in Cairo to protect them against Beduin attacks on their supply caravans.35 Although the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim had apparently attempted to destroy the monastery in the early eleventh century, there was on the whole a good relationship between St Katherine and the Muslim authority of the time. It is also worth noting that, according to the German pilgrim

28 29

30

31 32 33

34 35

On Paul, see pp. 486–8. It is interesting to note that Orthodox monasteries in Egypt began to experience difficulties at the hands of the Fatimid authorities from the mid twelfth century onwards, and that this trend continued under Ayyubid rule. It is clear from the tone of the author of the History of the Patriarchs that this represented an unexpected degeneration of what had been normal relations between the monasteries and the Muslim authorities. P. Qara’li, ed., Le Christianisme et l’Islam. Controverse attribuée au moine Georges du couvent de St-Siméon (Seleucie), soutenue devant le prince al-Mouchammar, fils de Saladin, en 1207 (Beirut, 1933). The editor gives the date as 1207, but 1217 occurs in some manuscripts. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 255, suggests that the debate may have taken place in 1207 and been written up ten years later. S. H. Griffith, Arabic Christianity in the Monasteries of Ninth-Century Palestine (London, 1992), passim. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, 230–1. D. Jacoby, ‘Christian pilgrimage to Sinai until the late fifteenth century’, in R. S. Nelson and K. M. Collins, eds., Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai (Los Angeles, 2006), 82. Frescobaldi XXIV, in Bagatti, Visit to the Holy Places, 59; Gucci, ibid., LXXVIII, 113–14. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XVIII, XX, 41, 44–5.

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Thietmar, Muslim as well as Christian pilgrims venerated the place of the burning bush on the mountain.36 It was not only from the Muslim adversaries of the Crusader States, in any case, that Orthodox monasteries came under threat. The seizure and destruction of a the house belonging to the monastery of St Sabas of Acre in the Chain neighbourhood of that city during the War of St Sabas demonstrates the fragility of monastic landed property even when there was no external threat to the kingdom. It was in Cyprus, however, that relations between the Greek monasteries and the Latin authorities were most sharply put to the test. They can best be assessed in the histories of the Enkleistra and Makhairas. The monastery of Makhairas was, if not an imperial foundation, at least heavily indebted to the benefaction of Manuel Komnenos for its transformation from a struggling hermitage to an independent monastery. Just as Alexios Komnenos had given the islands of Kos and later Patmos to Christodoulos in freehold, so the remote and inaccessible mountain in central Cyprus on which the Palestinian hermit Neophytos had settled, Mt Aoos, was given, together with an annual donation of 50 nomismata, to Neophytos’ chosen successor Prokopios.37 When the author of the typikon, Neilos, went to Makhairas in 1172, this situation still applied. However, after 1184 the imperial link with the monastery was broken, first with the seizure of the island by Isaak Komnenos and, from 1191, by the Latin conquest and occupation. Neilos’ typikon seeks to maintain contact with the ruling dynasty in Constantinople throughout these political changes: first with Isaak II Angelos (1185–95) and subsequently with his brother Alexios III (1195–1203). According to Neilos, Isaak confirmed the original donation of Manuel with the issue of chrysobulls, and added to this the grant of an orchard near Nicosia and 12 hyperpera. His brother Alexios, after deposing Isaak in 1195, reconfirmed these donations, granted exemption of taxes and twenty-four dependent peasants.38 At the time that the typikon was written (1210), Neilos was still upholding the liturgical commemoration of Alexios through the daily trisagion.39 This must all have been one-way traffic, however. It is not implausible that emperors should have confirmed the generosity of predecessors whom they had deposed, or whose dynasty they had replaced. The problem lies rather in the fact that after 1184 the emperor in Constantinople had no real authority in Cyprus. Neilos’ application to Isaak II Angelos for the confirmation of the original donation rather than to Isaak Komnenos shows a proper regard for the imperial succession, but it cannot have been very practical. After 1191, no emperor was in any position to help the monastery, and its fate depended on the new Lusignan dynasty; after 1204, there was no longer even an emperor in Constantinople. From the perspective of 1210, when Neilos was writing, this insistence on observing the imperial succession is particularly interesting. On one level, it may register Neilos’ loyalty to the Byzantine state, the recognition of the successor regime of Nicaea and the hope of an eventual return to power in Constantinople.40 Of course, it also reassures those in authority of the integrity of the monastery’s claims to its land by demonstrating their imperial pedigree. In the uncertain circumstances of 1184 and 1191, this was particularly important. 36 38 40

37 Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XVIII, 42. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, IX, 67–8. 39 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXII–XXIII, p. 73. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXIV, pp. 73–4. As suggested by Anastasius Bandy, in Machairas, 1108.

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Even the return of the emperor to Constantinople, however, would not mean the end of Frankish rule in Cyprus. By 1210, the Lusignan regime had been established for sixteen years; indeed, the minority of Hugh I (1205–18) had just been negotiated safely. Moreover, it was not until 1222 that the Orthodox Church in Cyprus began to suffer the full effects of the Latin settlement, with the expulsion of the bishops. Alongside the commemorative trisagion and the naming of the current emperor (with the name left blank) as the earthly protector of the monastery,41 the typikon also contains evidence of Neilos’ pragmatic realisation that he had to deal with the Latin authorities. Following the clause naming the emperor as trustee, Neilos inserts a passage borrowed from the eleventh-century typikon of the monastery of St Mamas guaranteeing the monastery’s protection against injustice. Here, Neilos appeals for enactment of this protection to those who at the time are distinguished by the magistracies of this island, an elliptical way of referring to the (Latin) authorities without being specific.42 This was not unusual, for Neophytos, no admirer of Latin Christianity, also designated the Lusignan king as lay administrator of the Enkleistra, with the particular responsibility for interceding on behalf of the community in the case of an injustice perpetrated by an outside agency.43 As Nicholas Coureas points out, this was simple pragmatism on the part of both Neilos and Neophytos, who, no matter how illegitimate they might have regarded Latin rule over Cyprus, had equal difficulty determining the legitimate claims of the three rival Orthodox emperors in Nicaea, Epiros and Trebizond after 1204.44 In fact, the Lusignans would eventually come to regard Makhairas with special favour, using it as a summer retreat from the heat of Nicosia.45 In point of fact, imperial chrysobulls even in the most secure of times, before 1184, did not guarantee the monastery’s prosperity. Soon after joining the community in 1172, Neilos had to go to Cilicia to procure food during a time of famine on the island.46 But it was the benefaction of local people that made it possible for the monks in these early years to build a church, refectory, cells and encircling wall.47 Makhairas thus relied on the revenues of the local landowners as much as on imperial donations; indeed, it must be questionable whether the 50 nomismata promised by Manuel ever reached the monastery after 1184. The other Cypriot monastery that we know well, Neophytos’ Enkleistra, also relied heavily on local patronage before 1191. Until after the Latin conquest, this must have taken the form of money or in-kind contributions and services, for Neophytos strictly forbad the acquisition of landed property.48 A further example must be mentioned here, albeit briefly, as representing a different model of foundation and patronage. In 1227 or thereabouts, two Greek monks from Seljuq-controlled Asia Minor refounded the monastery of the Virgin at Kantara. They appear to have been able to draw heavily for vocations not only from other monastic exiles from Asia Minor but also from Cypriots.49 This seems to confirm – at least in so far as the

41 42 43 45

46 48

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CLX, p. 121. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CLXI, p. 122. See also the reference to an ‘ephor’ of the monastery ibid., CXLVII, pp. 117–18. 44 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, VII, p. 139. Foundation Rules, 49–50. Schabel, ‘Religion’, 181, and see 182–3 for discussion of noble Latin patronage of Orthodox monasteries in Cyprus. The question of Cypriot monasticism has recently been discussed in relation to the Kantara monks by Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus, 9–12, and more broadly at 35–79. 47 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XI, pp. 68–9. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XV, p. 70. 49 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, X, pp. 141–2. Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus, 18–19.

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capacity to attract vocations is concerned – that the conditions found by Neophytos after the Latin conquest still applied. If Cypriot patrons found it difficult to support monasteries after the Latin conquest, the situation for Orthodox monasteries in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Principality of Antioch under Frankish and, after 1187 and 1244, Ayyubid and Mamluk rule must have been similar. The difficulty in assessing how these monasteries functioned in this period lies in our almost total ignorance of the financial resources of the indigenous Orthodox laity. The only Orthodox nobility consisted of the Byzantine princesses who became consorts of the ruling houses of Jerusalem and Antioch: Theodora Komnena, Baldwin III’s wife; Maria Komnena, his brother Amalric I’s second wife; and another Theodora who was a relative of the Komnenos dynasty who married Bohemond III of Antioch. We can surmise that these princesses brought with them their own priests and religious households, and that they were free to patronise Orthodox monasteries; as has been noted elsewhere, the half-Armenian Queen Melisende used patronage towards the Syrian Orthodox monastery of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem as a political tool in her struggle for supremacy with her husband Fulk.50 At a lower social level, however, there were doubtless Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians in rural villages with the wherewithal to donate, albeit on a small scale, to local monasteries, and in towns such as Acre, Tripoli and Antioch this must have been all the more true. The monastery of St Euthymios in Jerusalem, founded by the Trapezuntine empress, was rescued from collapse in 1344 by the generosity of the local Orthodox laity.51 In the case of St Sabas, the absence of any allusion to patronage in the typikon means that we can only speculate, but it is worth noting that most of the villages in the region remained Christian throughout the period. St Sabas certainly owned landed property and was able to buy and sell land.52 But the only examples of new Orthodox foundations in the Crusader States that we know were made by Orthodox princely families from outside the Holy Land. Both Makhairas and Patmos received the land on which they were established through a grant transferring ownership to them. This meant that no legal interest in ownership was retained in the grant. St Euthymios, in contrast, remained dependent on the terms of the original grant. The author of the typikon, Gerasimos, made this abundantly clear when he stipulated that none of the four monks designated as his successors and heirs should be allowed to ‘consign this small monastery to a person of any nationality other than to someone from Trebizond, since . . . it was the ancestral property of the late empress of Trebizond, Lady Anna’.53 Christodoulos clearly regarded the monastery of St John the Theologian as his property, to be disposed of as he saw fit.54 It is less clear what the situation was with regard to the properties acquired by Savas of Serbia for his foundations. The house 50

51 52

53 54

A. Palmer, ‘History of the Syrian Orthodox in Jerusalem, II: Queen Melisende and the Jacobite estates’, Oriens Christianus 76 (1992), 74–94. Gerasimos, II, 1406. See p. 371. In this general context, see the remarks by Morris, Monks and Laymen, 76, on the typical social background of founders and patrons, which she characterises as being provincial middle class. Gerasimos, IV, 1406. Christodoulos, B2, 594: ‘[I] dispose of everything that has come to me by imperial gift as follows – in fact the two islands whole and entire, viz. Patmos and Leipso, with the two estates on the island of Leros, Parthenion and Temenion, which likewise are mine in full possession by virtue of a sacred and worshipful chrysobull of donation [granted] by our most powerful and sacred emperor, the Lord Alexios Komnenos, with all tax exemptions of whatever description, [exemptions] maintained through the protection of his sacred Majesty, as the same sacred chrysobull sets forth more clearly.’

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on Mt Zion in which he founded a monastery may have been derelict when he bought it. It must have formed part of the property of the Augustinian canons of Mt Zion that was lost in 1187, though according to the Life of St Savas, which is our only documented source, it was given to him by the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem and the hegoumen of St Sabas.55 In Acre, Savas bought property that had belonged to the defunct monastery of St George, and that evidently included the ‘house of St Sabas’ in the centre of the city that was to become the bone of contention that provoked the outbreak of the War of St Sabas in 1256. The efforts made by the Genoese and Venetians to buy the house indicate that it was the monastery’s property and that the founder retained no interest in it.56 Ancient foundations, of course, could not be regarded in such a way, and even in cases such as St John Prodromos, St Elias or St Katherine, where imperial munificence had played a part in either the original founding or in a refoundation, there is no evidence that emperors sought to treat monasteries in the Crusader States as though they maintained any interest in them. This was doubtless a pragmatic attitude for the most part, since emperors were in no position to intervene in any case. Even Manuel Komnenos, who of all emperors had the most intimate relations with the Crusader States, could scarcely enforce his will on a community far enough away to ignore it safely. This question of the constitutional status of the monastery’s ownership raises the thorny issue of the charistike. This term describes a system devised in tenth-century Byzantium for the protection of monasteries that did not possess adequate resources of their own. In the words of John Thomas, it was ‘a public programme sponsored by the emperor and the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the private management of religious institutions’.57 Under this system, a monastery either appointed, or had appointed for the purpose, an influential layperson to act as charistikarios, with the obligation to oversee the property of the monastery and to underwrite the maintenance of its estates. The charistike was intended to deal with the overwhelming problem of poverty in monasteries. As Thomas has shown, this was a deep-rooted problem grounded in the nature of ancient foundations. The culture of private patronage in the late Roman Empire had encouraged many locally prominent families in the Eastern Empire to found religious communities because of the prestige that this conferred. After several generations, however, founding families might no longer be willing or able to support them, or might simply have died out. Moreover, monasteries that were at their foundation rich in property ownership might be poor in terms of realisable assets with which to maintain the community.58 By the tenth century, scores of small private foundations had simply exhausted their endowments and incomes. In theory, the charistike movement, which did not affect right of ownership but concerned only the financial management of institutions, might have resolved this problem by matching wealthy laypeople with needy monasteries for a grant of one or two generations. In this sense, it was in principle a means of restoring ruinous communities. 55 57

58

56 Domentijan, Zivoti, 272–3; Pahlitzsch, ‘Athanasios II’. Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, 115–72. J. P. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC, 1987), 157. For sources on the charisticariat, see J. Darrouzès, ‘Dossier sur le charisticariat’, in Polychronion. Festschrift Franz Dolger zum 75. Geburtstag (Heidelberg, 1966), 150–65. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 150–1.

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By the mid-eleventh century, however, it was clear that the charistike system, whatever its intentions, had itself attracted further problems. The practice of entrusting protective functions to the laity carried with it potential abuses, since it gave unscrupulous laypeople a free hand to interfere with the running of a monastery and thus to secure its assets and income. In the second half of the eleventh century, and increasing in intensity towards the end of the century and at the beginning of the twelfth, a reform movement developed with the intention of purifying monastic practices. Among the abuses singled out as in need of reform was the charistike. To some extent, the charistike suffered from being identified with other practices, such as imperial requisitioning of monastic property, with which it formally had no connection, and by 1094 all forms of lay interference in the Church were under attack, and opposition to the practice became part of the agenda of mainstream reform.59 In a novel of 1096, Alexios Komnenos upheld the ultimate authority of the patriarch over monasteries within the patriarchate of Constantinople. This meant that there was now legal backing to support the moral force by which the Church could compel charistikarioi to be held responsible for monastic property under their control. Despite its growing unpopularity, the institution was never formally abolished, and it clearly still enjoyed some respectability.60 It was still used by some founders as a means of ensuring a monastery’s temporal security.61 Christodoulos, notwithstanding his reforming principles, had recourse to this traditional safeguard of property in the codicil to his Testament for St John, Patmos. In the event of his designated successor, the monk Arsenios Skenourios, declining to take over the headship of the monastery – as, in fact, happened – Christodoulos’ spiritual son Theodosios, a patriarchal notary, was to have complete control of the community.62 Christodoulos refers to him explicitly, in his capacity as the designated charistikarios, as ‘master of the monastery and of all in it’.63 Opposition to the charistike found no more committed or eloquent champion than John V the Oxite, Patriarch of Antioch, whose treatise Against the Charistike declared the practice contrary to monastic ideals. The dating of the treatise is uncertain, but it was probably written before his elevation to patriarchal office in 1088/9. John was a Byzantine Greek monk, and there is no indication that he had direct experience of conditions in Antioch before his elevation.64 However, the period of his patriarchate (1088/9–1100) was one in which the governance of monasteries in Antioch was certainly a live issue. Nikon’s early typikon for the Black Mountain, which was written as a blueprint for a reformed community, shows little interest in relations with the laity or with external governance. At this stage, he was primarily concerned with correct liturgical observance 59 60

61

62

63 64

Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 192–200. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 274, stresses that the novel of 1096 was not an attempt to abolish the charisticariat, and Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 213, suggests that as a practice it simply ‘wither[ed] away from the view of the sources’. An example is the almshouse and monastery founded by Michael Attaliates, discussed by Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 179–85. Attaliates saw the almshouse as his personal property and left it to his heir, who was at liberty to receive a percentage of whatever revenues might accrue. Christodoulos, B5, 595: ‘But if, as we said before, the monk Arsenios does not come, let our spiritual brother Theodosios have complete rule over the monastery, receiving from me full and unconditional authority, as I, the said monk Christodoulos, received it from our most powerful and sacred emperor, with this one proviso, that he is not to introduce any of his relatives into the monastery.’ This condition shows that Christodoulos was fully aware of what abuses might take place if Theodosios treated his responsibilities lightly. Christodoulos, C5, 599. P. Gautier, ‘Réquisitoire du Patriarche Jean d’Antioche contre le charistikarioi’, REB 33 (1975), 77–8.

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and adherence to the principles of cenobitic monasticism as laid down in early ‘classical’ texts. By the time he wrote the typikon for the monastery of the Mother of God tou roidiou, however, the reform movement in Constantinople had seized on the issue of the charistike as an obstacle to correct observance. The typikon for the Roidion reflects both Nikon’s own reforming pedigree and his exposure to ideas about property ownership and monastic autonomy articulated since his earlier typikon and his unsuccessful attempts to reform Antiochene monasteries under the patriarchate of Theodosios III, notably, the Treatise against the Charistike by John V.65 This typikon is written in the form of a treatise addressed to the administrator of the monastery. Who was this figure, and in what circumstances did he gain control over the monastery? In the address itself, he is referred to as ‘the one charged by him who currently has secular authority to preside over the physical needs of the holy monastery’.66 This sounds like the description of a charistikarios. It has been argued that this figure is more likely to have been a temporary protector rather than a fully fledged charistikarios, on the grounds that Patriarch John V, the most vociferous opponent of the charistike system, must have been responsible for the appointment.67 This does not quite square with what Nikon himself says in his address, where he refers to a commission from the secular authority, not the spiritual authority that John V would have represented. Besides, it raises the question of the date of the typikon, which need not be from the patriarchate of John V. Nikon’s first encounter with the Roidion was probably in the period before 1084, when he was under commission, first from Patriarch Theodosios III and subsequently, during the patriarchal vacancy of 1059–89, from the exarchs who governed the patriarchate, to undertake the reform of north Syrian monasteries. After the Seljuq conquest of Antioch in 1085, Nikon fled to Roidion, which lay in Armenian-controlled territory. He thus had the opportunity to witness the running of the monastery on a daily basis. It is not known whether he remained there until his death, or returned after the Frankish conquest of 1098 to St Symeon the Wonderworker. The typikon in its present form probably dates from after 1098, because of the references to Frankish pilgrims, but this clause might have been added later.68 If the typikon dates from the patriarchal interregnum (i.e. before 1089), the secular authority was the Byzantine governor. If Nikon wrote it while he was himself a monk, after the Seljuq conquest, then that authority was the Armenian ruler of the territory; if in or after 1098, then it must refer to the Franks, perhaps to Bohemond I or his regent after 1100, Tancred. As we shall see, Nikon found the monastery in an unsatisfactory state, and this short typikon is mainly devoted to the restoration of cenobitic discipline and practice. Although the monks themselves were at fault for much of what was wrong at Roidion, the fundamental problem for Nikon was the lack of spiritual authority that inevitably followed from the imposition of a charistikarios. The constitutional position of a monastery such as the Enkleistra, which grew from an anchorite’s cell, is more difficult to ascertain. Unlike Makhairas, the Enkleistra was not given to Neophytos in the terms of an original grant, nor did he seek to legitimise his occupation of the cave cell by recourse to secular authority. Instead, Neophytos was 65 68

66 67 Black Mountain, 377. Roidion, 429. Roidion, 426. The date of Roidion must be after 1098, given the clause on hospitality to Frankish guests. Both typika survive as part of the Taktikon, a collection including letters. For the manuscript tradition, see pp. 477–81.

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‘adopted’ and his spiritual authority recognised by the bishop of Paphos, Basil Kinnamos (1166–90?), who persuaded the recluse to adopt a disciple. According to Neophytos himself, Basil persuaded him gradually over a period of four years to accept ordination and accept the role of spiritual mentor.69 Although Neophytos is elliptical about the process of turning his personal Enkleistra into a community, it is clear that this was done with Basil’s guidance, perhaps even at his insistence.70 It is perhaps significant that it should have been Basil, a native of Asia Minor rather than a Cypriot, who was instrumental in the transformation from private hermitage to laura. Episcopal relations with autonomous foundations ruled over by charismatic spiritual leaders could be fraught with difficulty. It had been a tenet of imperial and ecclesiastical legislation since the Council of Chalcedon that new monasteries needed the consent of bishops, who were also required to consecrate them. However, as Rosemary Morris has observed, any aspiring founder could declare a piece of private property to be a monastery without reference to episcopal authority. It is clear, indeed, that by the early eleventh century this is precisely what some pious laymen were doing, with the full support of the civic law.71 Although founders might establish good relations with the local bishop, as Neophytos clearly did with the sympathetic Basil Kinnamos, this seems to have been a matter of diplomacy dependent on the personality of both founder and bishop. Lazaros encountered hostility from the metropolitan of Ephesos from the start of his foundation on Mt Galesion; indeed, he never obtained episcopal consecration for his monastery. Lazaros’ last years, indeed, were greatly taken up with problems arising from the bishop’s aspiration to get rid of the Mt Galesion communities altogether and to send the monks to Bessai.72 Christodoulos, a generation or so later, fell out with the bishop of Latros over the question of who owned the monastery’s books.73 It is surely no coincidence that at around the same time that Basil was fostering the growth of the Enkleistra as a laura in Cyprus, the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Aimery, was gathering solitary hermits on the Black Mountain into regulated communities.74 Strong bishops may not have objected to the presence of charismatic solitaries or monastic founders in their dioceses, but they wanted to be in a position to oversee their activities. They were aided by the novel De iure patriarchae circa monasteria of 1096, which, although designed to protect monasteries from lay interference, did so by insisting on patriarchal rights of oversight.75 There is evidence, moreover, that the potential problem of unauthorised and unconsecrated foundations exercised the authorities in the patriarchate of Antioch as early as the mid-eleventh century. Nikon’s Pandekts (1059–67), which was written during his commission from the exarchs of the patriarchate of Antioch to reform monasticism in the region, stresses the importance of episcopal oversight. Founders of monasteries, Nikon insisted, must give authority to the bishop, on penalty of undergoing ecclesiastical penances. It was the bishop’s responsibility, moreover, to ensure that the founder had made necessary 69 70

71 74

Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, VI, p. 138. C. Galatariotou, ‘The bishop and the hermit: church patronage in action in twelfth-century Cyprus’, Epeteris Kentrou Epistemonikon Ereunon 18 (1991), 85–103. 72 73 Morris, Monks and Laymen, 148–9. Life of Lazaros, LIII, 139–42. Christodoulos, C6, 599. 75 Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 31–2. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 207–8.

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provision for the upkeep of the monastery, and that the monastery could not fall into secular hands.76 Nikon’s concern for episcopal authority is repeated in his Small Book, written in 1088, when he was probably also engaged in the reform of Roidion, which deals with various matters of ecclesiastical discipline.77 That Nikon should have expressed such concerns is significant, both in the light of his official activities in reforming monastic practices in Antioch, and because he was himself a Constantinopolitan who had become a monk on the Black Mountain in the 1050s. As Robert Allison has remarked, his monastic regulation is striking in its observance of ecclesiastical law and patristic tradition.78 Does he represent a metropolitan reforming tendency imported into Antioch in the period after the restoration of Byzantine hegemony in the province? We shall see in the next chapter that in the same period the Antiochene liturgy gave way to the Constantinopolitan, and that Greek reestablished itself over Arabic and Syriac as the dominant liturgical language. The twelfth century saw the rise of ‘self-governing’ monasteries, which were typically dependent on the presence of a charismatic founder, such as Neophytos in Cyprus. These did not necessarily seek independence from episcopal oversight – as Neophytos’ relationship with Basil Kinnamos shows. But there was clearly a tendency for founders to try to bypass the local episcopacy and to seek a stauropegion confirming the foundation directly from the patriarch of Constantinople. This, at least, is the inference to be drawn from the judgement of the late twelfth-century canonist Theodore Balsamon, who attacked ‘independent’ (i.e. patriarchal) stauropegia as a device designed to ensure a lighter touch in oversight than would have been the case had episcopal authority been invoked.79 Balsamon, indeed, saw exemption from episcopal control as uncanonical. Although he conceded the right of a founder to draw up a typikon, such a document must not, he insisted, run counter in any of its provisions to the canons.80 In the political context of the late twelfth century, however, it is easy to see why founders who wanted to avoid strict oversight would opt for a patriarchal stauropegion. After the overthrow of the Komnenian regime in 1185, the ability of the centre to intervene regularly in provincial affairs was severely limited, and from 1204 onwards it was confined to the small enclave of the Nicaean Empire. The situation that Balsamon deplored, however, was far from recent. Already in the late ninth century bishops had been complaining about the irregularity of foundation procedures.81 Because any founder might attach the name of a monastery to a piece of property, the legal standing of the foundation depended on the whim of the founder. Where the founder was, like Christodoulos for example, a conscientious cenobitic reformer, this underlying issue tends to be lost. Nevertheless, the process by which Christodoulos founded his monasteries on both Kos and Patmos, in which he used first a private estate, and then land exchanged for this from the imperial fisc, was exactly that later criticised by Balsamon. Another case that at first sight also looks like a case of the kind that Balsamon disliked is the Cypriot monastery of Makhairas. The typikon of Neilos makes it look as though 76

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C. de Clercq, Les textes juridiques dans les Pandectes de Nicon de la Montagne Noire (Venice, 1942), 40. Nikon cites in support the councils of Trullo (ch. 49), Nicaea II (chs. 13, 17) and the Photian synod of 861 (chs. 1, 7). The Small Book appears in the two manuscripts containing the Taktikon, Vat Bib arab 76 and Sinai gr 441. 79 Black Mountain, 379–80. Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 88. 81 Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 231–2. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 152.

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imperial patronage from Manuel Komnenos was inevitably accompanied by the grant of a stauropegion freeing the monastery from episcopal authority.82 This is all the more surprising in the circumstances of Cyprus, which was an autocephalous archbishopric supposedly independent of patriarchal authority. The agreement of the diocesan bishop, Niketas Hagiostephanites, to the diminution of his authority may simply have been the recognition on his part of the hopelessness of resisting the imperial will, since Manuel had granted exemption from episcopal control along with his original donation of land.83 However, in the case of Makhairas, as of the Enkleistra, the process at stake was the development of a private hermitage into a cenobitic monastery. Seen in this light, Bishop Niketas was in line with the policy of his contemporary, Basil Kinnamos in Paphos, and, for that matter, his Latin contemporary Aimery of Antioch on the Black Mountain. In some circumstances in the Crusader States, the process of foundation could not have been undertaken without the active role of the bishop. Such, for example, is the impression given in the Life of St Savas of Serbia. According to the Life, the Serbian prince, while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land of 1229–30, was a guest both of Patriarch Athanasios II in Jerusalem and of the monastery of St Sabas. After lavish distribution of gold to the clergy serving the shrine churches, Savas asked the advice of the hegoumen of St Sabas, Nicholas, regarding the founding of a new monastery in Jerusalem. Nicholas and Patriarch Athanasios, in concert, provided the church of St John on Mt Zion, which became the oratory of the new monastery; they also helped Savas to compose a typikon for the community.84 There is no external verification for this foundation, but given the propensity of hagiographers to emphasise the role of the saintly founder, sometimes at the expense of public authority,85 the Life of St Savas provides a valuable corrective. In fact, the hagiographical intent implicit in this section of the Life is to demonstrate the institutional and spiritual links between monasticism in the Holy Land and the Serbian monasteries founded by Savas.86 The Holy Land saw a small number of new foundations in addition to the refoundation or revival of the great Judaean desert monasteries such as Choziba, St Euthymios and St Theoktistos.87 The founding of a new monastery in territory outside Byzantine political control, and in which the Orthodox laity comprised part of a politically subaltern people, is of course not unique to the Crusader States. In Calabria and Sicily, patronage of Orthodox monasteries was one of the means employed by Norman rulers to ensure the loyalty of the Greek-speaking laity to their regime.88 In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, however, there is no evidence of the involvement of either the ecclesiastical or political authorities in the founding or patronage of Orthodox monasteries. It is true that the co-operation of local Orthodox communities was needed for the decorative programmes undertaken at shrines in 82

83 85

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Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XVI, p. 71: ‘Since according to canonical practice it was equitable for us to receive stauropegial status also during the construction and establishment of the sacred church, we indeed proceeded to do so. We were granted stauropegial status, moreover, by the most holy bishop of Tamassos, the reverend Niketas Hagiostephanites, according to the sacred and reverend command of the most worshipful emperor . . . with the bishop having mention in the eucharistic prayer and this only.’ 84 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, IX, p. 67. Domentijan, Zivoti, 273; see also Pahlitzsch, ‘Athanasios II’, 469–71. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 64–5. In this case, the hagiographer’s intent is to demonstrate the connections, both institutional and spiritual, between the saint’s Serbian foundations and monasticism in the Holy Land. 87 88 Popovic, ‘Sabaite influences’. See p. 314. White, Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily, 38–46.

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Jerusalem and Bethlehem but, although the authorities might show themselves to be complacent about the role of Orthodox monks in the execution of such projects, on the two occasions between 1099 and 1187 when an Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem made his presence felt he was swiftly dispatched.89 It is significant that the occasions on which new Orthodox monasteries were founded in the Kingdom of Jerusalem coincided with times of political uncertainty. The founding of St Elias, for example, although it cannot be pinned down to a precise date, certainly took place after the earthquake of 1157, and is probably to be linked with Manuel Komnenos’ other acts of patronage in the Holy Land, one of which, the mosaic programme in Bethlehem, can be dated to the 1160s. This was a period in which the kingdom sought to counter the growing threat of Nur ad-Din through alliance with the Byzantine Empire.90 The founding of monasteries in Jerusalem and Acre by Savas of Serbia is even more pertinent. In 1229–30 Jerusalem, though back in Frankish hands as a result of the treaty between Frederick II and al-Kamil, remained largely empty, and there was little or no attempt by Latin religious communities or by the patriarch to reoccupy it. In these circumstances the influence of the Orthodox patriarch, Athanasios II, must have been all the more telling.91 The case of the house in Acre is at first sight more surprising: Acre, after all, was the centre of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the residence of the patriarch of Jerusalem and of the Benedictine and Augustinian communities in exile from Jerusalem. Moreover, the founding of the new Orthodox monastery of St Sabas in Acre was contingent on the failure of a Latin community, St George. Jacoby has shown in numerous studies how the growth of Acre after 1187 as it absorbed villagers displaced after 1187 led to an increase in the number and influence of Orthodox people in the city.92 It is in this context that we should understand the competition for space and funds that enabled a rich patron such as Savas of Serbia to promote Orthodoxy in the city. But the new Orthodox foundation does not seem to have caused any unease in the Latin religious hierarchy; indeed, when the monastery had to fend off attempts to buy the ‘house of St Sabas’, it was the Latin patriarch who acted as procurator on its behalf. As long as the hegoumen recognised the authority of the Latin patriarch, and thus, implicitly, of Rome, the monastery was regarded as a perfectly legal institution. This model might also help us to understand better the founding of another new Orthodox house, al-Ba’ina, near Acre. Nothing is known of the circumstances of the foundation, but it was recorded in pilgrimage accounts for the first time in c. 1230, and was thus probably contemporary with Savas’ foundations. Indeed, given the closeness of al-Ba’ina to Acre, the same conditions may apply: although it is unlikely that this represents the relocation of a monastery from an area now under Ayyubid control, since most Orthodox monasteries in 89

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These two patriarchs being John of Jerusalem, who reported to a synod in Constantinople in 1107 that he had gone into exile as a result of Latin pressure (Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 101–30), and Leontios, in 1177–8 (Life of Leontios, LXXX– LXXXVIII, 126–38). Hamilton, Leper King, 64–7; B. Hamilton, ‘William of Tyre and the Byzantine Empire,’ in Porphyrogenita: Essays in the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. Ch. Dendrinos, J. Harris, E. Harvalia-Crook and J. Herrin (Aldershot, 2003), 219–33. On his residence in Jerusalem, see Pahlitzsch, ‘Athanasios II’, and Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 259–69. D. Jacoby, ‘Aspects of everyday life in Frankish Acre’, Crusades 4 (2005), 73–105; Jacoby, ‘New Venetian evidence of crusader Acre’; Jacoby, ‘Crusader Acre in the thirteenth century’; Jacoby, ‘L’évolution urbaine et la fonction meditérranéenne d’Acre à l’époque des croisades’, in Città portuali del Mediterraneo, storia e archeologia. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Genova 1985 (Genoa, 1989), 95–109.

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the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to function in those circumstances, this new foundation may have been the result of external patronage from the Orthodox world. As a coda to the issue of new Orthodox foundations and the exercise of patronage in refounding, it is worth noting that in the early Palestinian monastic tradition, a certain stigma seems to have been attached to monasteries in need of such external agency. The accounts of the ruined monastery of Juvenal by John Rufus, or Cyril of Scythopolis’ comments on the abandoned cells of Aposchist monks during the second Origenist crisis near the Old Laura at Thecua, indicate that the failure of a community might be taken as a judgement on its orthodoxy.93 A monastery that needed such help might not be worth the trouble of starting again. This sentiment, however, clearly did not apply once monasteries were in danger of external assault from non-Christians.

The National and Ethnic Composition of Monasteries The examples, alluded to above, of involvement in the monasticism of the Holy Land from the wider Orthodox oikoumene raise a related issue: the ‘national’ question in regard to monastic foundations. Monasticism in Palestine had from its origins been a polyglot affair. The great founders of the early Byzantine period were themselves pilgrims to the Holy Land: Sabas, Euthymios and Theodosios for example, were from Asia Minor. Monasticism in the Holy Land was distinctively associated with the practice of pilgrimage, and it is no coincidence that the desert monasteries were mostly within a day’s walk of Jerusalem.94 Sabas evidently expected to recruit Armenian- and Syriac-speaking monks as well as Greek-speakers, and his monastery, as well as the coenobium of Theodosios, had separate churches for the liturgy to be celebrated in different languages simultaneously. Monks in the Holy Land in this period, may, indeed, be seen as intermediaries with other religions and ethnic identities. The presence of baptisteries in many monasteries, and the important role of Euthymios in particular in converting local Beduin in 422, reveals a proselytising feature of desert monasticism in which the identity of monks as ‘marginal dwellers’ in society corresponds to that of the nomadic Beduin themselves.95 Monks and nuns were drawn to live a monastic life in the Holy Land by virtue of its special nature and the benefits that were thought to result from the spiritual charge of the Holy Places.96 Pilgrimage and monasticism obviously shared metaphorical associations for Christians, and it became a standard motif in both Eastern and Western monastic writing to conceive of monasticism as a form of permanent pilgrimage. Associations between embarking on a monastic life and making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem were also exploited by 93 94

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Vita Sabae, XXXVI, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 123. L. Perrone, ‘Monasticism as a factor of religious interaction in the Holy Land during the Byzantine period’, in A. Kofsky and G. Strousma, eds., Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First to Fifteenth Centuries (Jerusalem, 1998), 67–95. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, X, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 18–21; Perrone, ‘Monasticism’. It should be noted, however, that such pluralism did not prevent either the belittling of monks of some racial or ethnic backgrounds, or attitudes that we would today consider racist, from being expressed in the monastic discourse of the period. In a story told by Cyril of Scythopolis, for example, the devil, after being cast out by Euthymios from a monk, takes on the form of an Ethiopian, while the Ethiopian monk Moses was apparently mocked by Egyptian monks for his black skin: Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, L, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 74; Apophthegmata Patrum, Moses III, PG 65: 284. Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude, 153–74.

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hagiographers, and after the successful Byzantine military incursions into Syria in the late tenth century, it became possible once again for would-be monks from the Byzantine heartland to visit the Holy Land. Lazaros of Mt Galesion provides a good example of this hagiogaphical type; a generation later, Christodoulos followed his footsteps almost exactly.97 In the twelfth century, Neophytos saw a period of ascetic solitude in the Holy Land as a necessary stage in his monastic development, while Neilos, later hegoumen of Makhairas and bishop of Tamasia, originally went to Cyprus en route to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.98 An anecdote in the biography of Lazaros shows a group of Beduin abusing the monks of St Euthymios who had gone outside the monastery to gather chickpeas. Lazaros and the other Greek-speakers were unaffected, being unable to understand what was being said, but it is clear that many of the monks were Arabic-speakers.99 This confirms the evidence of manuscript colophons that, as late as the early eleventh century, the desert monasteries of Palestine were home to monks speaking different languages: Syriac, Greek and Arabic.100 We have already seen that the history and even the spiritual identity of one national group, the Georgians, was bound up with the foundation of Symeon the Wonderworker in Antioch.101 The Georgian Church derived its origins from the mission of the patriarch of Antioch to the Caucasus in the fourth century, and close links between Georgia and Antioch were assured by the relationship established between Georgian pilgrims and the monastery of Symeon the Wonderworker during the saint’s own lifetime.102 The revival of the Georgian presence at St Symeon in the eleventh century, so evident from the colophons that attest to the monks’ fruitful manuscript activity, and confirmed by Nikon’s references to the Georgian Church in the monastery, caused problems with the Greek-speaking monks.103 The Georgians apparently claimed ownership of some of the property inside the monastery walls, a claim that was challenged by the Greek monks. A Georgian monk subsequently outraged Greek sensibilities by climbing the column once inhabited by the saint, which had been left untouched in the middle of the monastery founded around it, and celebrating the eucharist there.104 Georgians were evidently prone to a kind of monastic separatism, which was noticeable at Mt Athos as well as in Syria.105 As with the patronage of the Byzantine aristocracy in Cyprus under Alexios Komnenos, however, the revival of Georgian monastic activity in north Syria in the eleventh century must also be understood in a political context. Under Emperor Nikephoros Phocas (963–9), Georgians had been prominent at court, and Georgian military commanders were influential in Antioch in the eleventh century.106 One of them, Grigol Bactrianos, later founded the monastery of Backovo in Georgia, which, like many Georgian monasteries of this period, adopted north Syrian customs.107 Some Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land continued to attract monks from outside their local or ‘national’ constituencies. The twelfth-century redaction of the typikon of St 97 99 102 104 106

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98 See p. 431. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IV, p. 136; Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XI, p. 68. 100 101 Life of Lazaros, XVII, 97–8. See pp. 473–4 for details. See p. 344. 103 Mcire, Report on the Conversion of Georgians. La vie ancienne, ed. van den Ven, 11–221. 105 Vie de Saint George l’Hagiorite, XLVIII, 114. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 81–2. Djobadze, Materials, 76, provides some examples: Parsmanes was installed as commander of Hieropois by Romanos Diogenes in 1068; Warazwace was prothosparios of Edessa in 1038, and the typikon of the Georgian monastery of Backovo, founded by Grigol Bactrianos (d. 1086), asserts he had been on military service in Syria, and that his brother owned estates in Antioch. Djobadze, Materials, 68.

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Sabas shows that Georgians continued to form a constituent element among the monks. They, as well as a group called ‘Syrians’, who were presumably Arabic-speakers, maintained their own churches within the Great Laura.108 The thirteenth-century Life of St Savas of Serbia mentions Russian and Georgian communities in the laura.109 The real surprise in the typikon, however, is that Franks are listed alongside Syrians and Georgians as a distinctive group within the monastery. This is quite a different matter from the appearance of Franks in Nikon’s typikon for Roidion on the Black Mountain, where it is simply a question of Frankish pilgrims being permitted to stay in the monastery for a certain period.110 At St Sabas, Franks, Georgians and Syrians were instructed to sing the canonical hours and some psalms, and to read the Gospel and lesson in their own language and in their own churches, but the full eucharistic liturgy could be celebrated only in the Great Church and in full community.111 Mention of the presence of an indigenous group of Syrians speaking their own language suggests that a large proportion of the monks were by the twelfth century Greek-speakers. Moreover, it was the Greeks who held power in the monastery. The author of the typikon was aware from experience of the problems that could be caused by the different nationalities (referred to as ‘Romans’ and ‘Syrians’) over questions of leadership. For this reason, the superior had to be elected from the Greekspeaking monks, but the Syrians provided the stewardship. The wording of this clause further indicates that the Greek-speakers were outsiders rather than indigenous monks: ‘we . . . accept that Syrians, being more efficient and practical in their native country, should be preferred for the stewardship and treasurership as well as for other ministries’.112 Similarly, tensions arose at Patmos in the twelfth century as a result of the presence of anchorites of different races and customs.113 The assumption must be that the kind of anecdotal evidence of Greeks going to the Holy Land in order to become monks provided by the examples of the Life of Lazaros of Mt Galesion and in the autobiographical typikon of Christodoulos should in fact be taken as representative of a significant trend in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The significance of this has not yet been recognised by historians of the Crusader States, nor has the fact that Frankish monks were to be found at St Sabas. The other monastery in the Crusader States with a polyglot monastic community was St Katherine on Mt Sinai. The German pilgrim Thietmar remarked in 1217 that the monks comprised Greeks and Syrians. Latin writers almost always use the term Suriani to refer to the Arabic-speaking indigenous Christians of Palestine and Syria, so Thietmar was probably observing exactly the same division between Byzantine Greeks and indigenous Christians as we found in the typikon for St Sabas. Corroboration of an Arabic-speaking 108

109 111

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The typikon was edited by E. Kurz, ‘A. Dmitrievskij, “Die kloseterregeln des hl. Sabbas’, BZ 3 (1894), 167–70; for English translations, see Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, and Patrich, Sabas, 274–5. Kurz argues that the original of this version is at least as old as the eleventh century. 110 Domentijan, Zivoti, 272–3. Roidion, B3, 432. Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, 1316. This was in fact ancient practice as far back as the fifth century, as borne out in Theodore of Petra’s Life of Theodosios, in A.-J. Fèstugiere, ed., Les moines d’Orient, III (Louvain, 1963), 127. The inclusion of the Franks makes a date after 1099 most plausible, though this clause may be an interpolation added when the situation called for it. A Sabaite monk wrote a commentary on the typikon at the beginning of the eleventh century, though this may be the liturgical rather than the ktetorikon typikon. It is of course possible that Frankish monks were to be found at St Sabas before 1099, especially given the interest in the Holy Land on the part of Benedictine monks in the eleventh century, on which see Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ, 139–45. 113 Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, IX, 1317, citing Fiaccadori’s translation. Life of Leontios, LIV, 94.

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constituency at St Katherine in the mid-fourteenth century is provided by the pilgrim Niccolò da Poggibonsi, who reported that the monks were silent, uttering only the word ‘Allah’.114 Ludolph of Sudheim mentions the presence of Ethiopian, Coptic and Syrian monks as well as Greeks.115 There were certainly Syriac-using monks at Sinai throughout the period from the eleventh century until at the least the fourteenth. This is indicated by the presence of Syriac liturgical manuscripts at the monastery, such as the gospel lectionary of 1094, Sinai syr pal 1. In all, almost 1,000 non-Greek manuscripts have been attributed to the Sinai scriptorium, of which 600 are in Arabic, at least 250 in Syriac, almost 100 in Georgian, and 40 in Slavonic.116 Although this number compares with twice that total in Greek, it is clear that such manuscripts were produced in order to be used. Some manuscripts use more than one language: Sinai cod 218, an early twelfth-century lectionary, for example, has marginal notes directed to the reader in Arabic, suggesting that, even where Greek was used as a liturgical language, monks might be familiar with Arabic.117 In fact, the number of liturgical manuscripts entirely in Syriac or Arabic was relatively small, compared to the larger number of psalters and horologia in these languages. This is probably because, as at St Sabas, the monks were expected to observe the minor daily offices in their own languages, including the singing of psalms and the reading of the Gospel, while the eucharist was celebrated in Greek.118 It has been noted that most of the Syriac manuscripts date from the thirteenth century – 193 – as opposed to only 20 for the twelfth century and 5 for the fourteenth. Joseph Nasrallah offered as an explanation an influx of Syriac-speaking monks who were fleeing from rural Syria to Sinai in the period of the Mamluk/Mongol wars in midcentury.119 There may also have been Franks living at Sinai, as at St Sabas, although for different reasons. Art historians have for a long time identified a corpus of ‘crusader icons’, painted by Western artists familiar with Byzantine and eastern Mediterranean styles and iconography. Some of these are particularly associated with Sinai; their provenance, indeed, locates them at St Katherine’s since their creation. The inference must be that Western artists had sufficient access to the monastery to study the practice of icon-painting there. The consensus, indeed, supports the notion of a small permanent body of Western artists in their own icon-painting atelier on Sinai.120 This can be confirmed by the existence of a Latin chapel, for which the presence of Latin priests must also have been necessary.121 Whether the Western painters were themselves invariably monks must remain at present an open question. By the mid-thirteenth century manuscript painting, in the West at any rate, was no longer the preserve of monasteries, and was contracted out to professional ateliers. The 114

115 116 117

118 119 120 121

Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCVIII, 123–4. A Florentine pilgrim of 1384, Gucci, thought that some of the monks were from India, but he may have meant Ethiopia: Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 114. Ludolph of Sudheim, De itinere, 346. K. W. Clark, ‘Exploring the MSS of Sinai and Jerusalem’, Biblical Archaeologist 16 (1953), 34. K. Weitzmann and G. Galavaris, The Monastery of St Catharine at Mount Sinai: The Illuminated Greek Manuscripts (Princeton, 1991), 123–4. J. Nasrallah, ‘La liturgie des Patriarcats melchites de 969 à 1300’, Oriens Christianus 71 (1987), 166. Nasrallah, ‘La liturgie’, 168. Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291, 307. J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, ‘Le monastère de Sinai, creuset de culture chrétienne (x–xiiie siècle)’, in K. Ciggaar, ed., East and West in the Middle Ages, I (Louvain, 1996), 117. The remarks of Weitzmann and Galavaris, Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, 115–16, are worth quoting here: ‘Sinai is not a normal Greek monastery but a crossing point of many cultural influences and a place which belonged to Christianity at large.’

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same appears to have been true in the Holy Land, where besides the scriptoria attached to religious communities there were also professional lay painters. Among the indigenous Christian peoples, however, painting, of both manuscripts and icons, was still done largely by monks, and monasteries would therefore presumably have found the Western practice unfamiliar. The question turns on whether a monastery such as St Katherine was prepared to permit residence by professional artists who were not monks for the purpose of establishing a workshop in the monastery.

Internal Governance Property and Labour The case of Savas of Serbia’s new foundation in Acre shows how entrenched Orthodox monasteries had become in the property market. Besides its conventual buildings, the monastery also purchased a house in the Chain neighbourhood. As Jacoby has shown, this neighbourhood, in which the main market was located, was the most desirable in the city in terms of the commercial value of property, and both the Genoese – the dominant mercantile force in Acre – and the Venetians had attempted to buy it from the monastery before the outbreak of war.122 Inevitably, activity in the property market entailed relations with the dominant powers, if not as the partner in a transaction, then as the authority needed to confirm ownership. Thus, the properties owned by St Katherine were confirmed by papal bulls in 1217, 1226 and 1227.123 These documents enable us to piece together the range and nature of the monastery’s extensive holdings. Besides some land in the Sinai peninsula, which because of the topography and climate cannot have been very profitable, St Katherine’s owned properties in Egypt, but also in territories under Latin control. These included urban property in Acre, Antioch, Latakia and Constantinople, and rural estates in Crete and Cyprus. In Crete, the monastery had extensive property in Sclave Vafe, which included arable land, vineyards and houses, and at Rucanum, where the monastery of St John Chrysostom and its properties were also owned by St Katherine; it owned two mills in other locations as well. In addition to these income-generating properties, St Katherine enjoyed exemption from tolls for transport of goods from these estates to Sinai.124 Property in Cyprus, initially more limited than in Crete, increased between 1217 and 1227 from vineyards and the farms of some market taxes to include other income-generating property, including woodland and pasture.125 The bull of 1217 also gives an indication of the types of goods being exported from these estates to Sinai: cheese, olive oil, incense and cloth for liturgical clothing.126 As Coureas has observed, the bulls reveal an increase in ownership of properties remote from Sinai after the period of Latin occupation (in the case of Cyprus, from 1191; in Crete, after 1206). This may indicate the need by the monastery to become more active in ensuring 122 124 125 126

123 Jacoby, ‘Three notes on crusader Acre’. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 35–6. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 35–6. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 195–7. N. Coureas, ‘The Orthodox monastery of Mt Sinai and papal protection of its Cretan and Cypriot properties’, in Balard, ed., Autour de la première croisade, 477.

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a supply of necessary goods in conditions which made the likelihood of donations from Greek landowning patrons less secure; the same applies to the purchase of property by the Enkleistra in Cyprus. The need to ensure that rights and property were confirmed by papal bull, however, also suggests that unless they were protected in this way, they might be subject to depredation at the hands of rival landowners, and this circumstance is explicitly referred to in the case of the Cretan properties, where the new Latin archbishop, Giacomo Madro, had allowed his retainers to destroy a metochion of St Katherine and to enforce the payment of tithes from its monks.127 Orthodox monasteries under Latin territorial control were supposed to pay tithes, but only on properties acquired since 1215, as Honorius III clarified in a letter to St Katherine in 1223.128 This issue, however, continued to plague St Katherine in respect of its Cretan properties throughout the 1220s, and Honorius had to administer censure through the Latin bishops of Arios and Mylopotamos against the chapter of Troyes, which seems to have profited at the expense of St Katherine from the appropriation of property on the island after the Fourth Crusade.129 The same ruling about tithes appears in the bull Honorius sent to Nicholas, abbot of St Theodosios the Coenobiarch, in October 1216. The pope confirms the possession of the monastery and takes it and its inhabitants under the protection of St Peter.130 Furthermore, he releases the monastery from payment of tithes on the grounds that it has not been part of Orthodox custom in the past.131 The range of properties and interests enjoyed by this monastery is more surprising than in the case of St Katherine, which was widely known throughout the Christian world. By 1216 St Theodosios had amassed properties in Jerusalem and Jaffa, including hospitals and pharmacies, ovens, mills and vineyards; and two trading ships at Jaffa. There was also property, both urban and agricultural, in Crete, Macedonia and Hungary, the latter donated by King Béla III (1172–96), and a tribute of wax from Russia. The Cretan and Cypriot properties of St Katherine and St Theodosios appear in the papal registers because, since they were in Latin territories, the trouble arising from them had to be dealt with by papal administration. Similarly, the little we know about the landed properties of St Sabas emerges only in Latin documentation. The Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre records the sale of three villages (vastinae) by St Sabas to the chapter in 1163–4, from the proceeds of which the vastina of Thora was purchased by St Sabas from the crown. The three vastinae exchanged in this transaction had been given to St Sabas initially by Queen Melisende.132 As with the properties of St Katherine and the Enkleistra, these possessions provided the monastery with regular supplies of necessary foods: oil for lamps and cooking from olive groves, fruit, legumes and grain. In common with all feudal landholding 127 128 129 130

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Coureas, ‘The Orthodox monastery’, 478. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 165, and see Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III, 643–4. Honorius III and Gregory IX, Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 193–4; Coureas, ‘The Orthodox monastery’, 480. See Claverie, ed., Honorius III et l’Orient, 290–4, for a full edition; J. Richard, ‘Un monastère grec de Palestine et son domaine chypriote. Le monachisme orthodoxe et l’établissement de la domination franque’, in Praktika tou Deuterou Diethnous Kupriologikou Synedriou, 3 vols. (Nicosia, 1985–7), II, 61–75. On the question of tithes, see L. Voisin, ‘“Comme un loup poursuivant un mouton” . . . les monastères grecs sous la domination latine (XIIIe–XVIe siècles)’, 2 vols., unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Rouen, 2014, I, 533–86. BB no. 133, 259–60. The three vastinae correspond to the villages of Kh. Kafr Rush, Bait ‘Ur al-Fauqa and – probably – Kh. Ad-Duraish.

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conditions in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, landed property included the services of villeins tied to the named villages. The term vastina, however, has a technical meaning that has been much discussed in crusader historiography. As Joshua Prawer established, a vastina was usually included within the boundaries of a casale, and appears as an appendage of it. Its function, however, could be either arable land detached from the casale, or pasture.133 The latter, of course, was an indispensable part of arable, since arable land required possession of draught animals for ploughing, which in turn needed adequate pasture. The implication of this for the transaction in question is that St Sabas owned cultivable land from which they drew a regular income either in kind or in cash, from the sale of produce, or more probably a combination of the two, and that among the monastery’s possessions were therefore livestock. The value of two villages sold by St Sabas to the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre (Capharuth = Kafr Rush and Vetus Betor = Bayt ‘Ur al-Fawqa) is given in the charter as 480 bezants. This was probably good value from the purchaser’s point of view, given that single villages could fetch as much as 400 bezants.134 The sale value gives an indication of the size and potential for income, which in turn depended in part on the location. Bayt ‘Ur al-Fawqa lies about 4 km north of the road between Jerusalem and Lydda, and about 15 km north-west of Jerusalem, on the southern Samarian plain.135 Kafr Rush was a Christian village in the same region.136 The snapshot provided by the record of this transaction, however, must represent the normative situation throughout the Crusader States. Monasteries, whether laurae or cenobitic institutions, had to maintain themselves through an assured supply of certain goods. In this respect, they operated much as did lay landowners. The pilgrim John Phocas, to whom this situation was not surprising, remarks that the Orthodox monasteries in the vicinity of the Jordan (St John Prodromos, St Gerasimos and Kalamon) owned arable land in the Jordan valley, a particularly fertile area, which they parcelled out between them for cultivation.137 As is now clear from archaeological research, monasteries and laurae in Palestine had always cultivated lands in their own immediate vicinity for food, and sometimes even produced surpluses.138 The founding of a monastery such as Christodoulos’ on Patmos entailed detailed consideration of landed properties. When he founded the monastery, he did so on the basis of an exchange of the land that the emperor had already given him on the island of Kos in exchange for the entire island of Patmos. Christodoulos was at pains to establish its complete ownership of the island. This, indeed, was the lesson of experience. On Kos he was dependent on family lands provided by a monk of private means, Arsenios Skenourios, which were supplemented by offerings from local inhabitants, and subsequently confirmed by imperial chrysobull. Here, however, his community fell foul of the entrenched interests of the locals, with the result that he decided that 133

134 136 137

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Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 162–4; cf. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 59, where a vastina appears as a ruined site in a charter of 1200. 135 Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 109 n. 16. Conder and Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine, Sheet 17. BB no. 158, 308–9; Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 55 n. 2. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328–9; PG 133: 949. The monastery of Deir Hajla, near the site of the medieval St Gerasimos, provides a present-day example of monastic cultivation, with its gardens and orchard. Patrich, Sabas, 82.

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the only option was to settle uninhabited land.139 The main advantage of Patmos, in Christodoulos’ eyes, was that, being uninhabited, it was ‘unburdened, exempt from all fiscal obligation, and from any servitude whatsoever’.140 Christodoulos was in effect the secular landowner as well as the spiritual authority on the island. As his monks soon discovered, land assigned on such terms was land that nobody else had thought it worth settling; in Christodoulos’ words, they considered they had ‘given gold for copper’.141 Patmos, indeed, has few natural advantages: its soil is rocky and infertile, it has little in the way of a water supply and no deep-water harbour.142 Perhaps for this reason, Christodoulos seems to have made further demands on imperial generosity, and Alexios Komnenos also provided alternative sources of income for the monastery, in the form of portions of public taxes, part in coin and part in wheat, raised from property in Crete.143 This kind of arrangement typifies the early Komnenian approach to monastic foundation, and is paralleled in its main essentials by other new foundations elsewhere in the empire in the same period.144 In itself, this marked a shift away from the more suspicious attitude towards monastic landholding that characterises the novels of Emperors Nikephoros Phocas (964) and Basil II (996). Nikephoros had accused monks of being so obsessed with property that they were indistinguishable from laymen; he allowed grants of land to monasteries only where it could be demonstrated that they had lost control of previous grants and needed new lands to ensure an income.145 According to Morris, this attitude went hand-in-hand with (and perhaps stimulated) a new focus on manual labour to be performed by monks. As the Cistercians were to find a century later in the West, however, a return to the ancient cenobitic ideal of manual labour was impossible without the accumulation of land to be worked by the monks, or by their dependent labour force.146 Thus, by the later eleventh century, large monasteries were once again effectively operating on the same terms as the lay aristocracy. The imperial policy of supporting large private and independent foundations, however, was changed by Manuel Komnenos in the mid-twelfth century. A chrysobull of 1156 prohibited monasteries in the capital, Nicomedia and Propontis, from acquiring any new property, and his own new foundation of St Michael Kataskepe can be considered as a model for a new type of foundation, which was to be sustained by a cash endowment rather than by the grant of land.147 The grant of an annuity to Makhairas is, similarly, a case in point. The case of Neophytos, however, who eventually after a generation of resisting land ownership entered 139 142 143

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140 141 Christodoulos, A6–9, 581–3. Christodoulos, A10, 583. Christodoulos, A11, 583–4. But see Morris, Monks and Laymen, 207, who argues that Christodoulos exaggerated the harshness of the environment. Life of Leontios, LXI, XXX, 102, 66–7, 178. This income had to be collected in person by Patmos monks, and evidently at some point in the twelfth century it was lost, for in 1172 Leontios, as abbot of St John Patmos, petitioned Manuel Komnenos for its return. On the topic of monastic estate management in general, see K. Smyrlis, ‘The management of monastic estates: the evidence of the typika’, DOP 56 (2002), 245–61; M. Kaplan, ‘Les moines et leurs biens fonciers à Byzance du VIIIe au Xe siècles. Acquisition, conservation et mise en valeur’, Revue Bénédictine 103 (1992), 209–23; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre à Byzance du VIe au Xie siècle. Propriété et exploitation du sol, Byzantina Sorboniensia 10 (Paris, 1992), ch. 7. For the example of how one reform monastery of the eleventh century managed estates, see M. Kaplan, ‘The Evergetis Hypotyposis and the management of monastic estates in the eleventh century’, in M. Mullett and A. Kirby, eds., The Theotokos Evergetis and EleventhCentury Monasticism (Belfast, 1994), 102–23. 146 Morris, Monks and Laymen, 167. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 181–5. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 226–7. This point of comparison should not, however, be exaggerated. Alexios I also donated cash sums, for example, to Cyril Philoetes in 1091, and to Meletios of Myoupolis for the twenty-six monasteries for which he was responsible on Mt Kitharion: La vie de Saint Cyrille le Philéote, moine byzantin, ed. E. Sargologos, Subsidia Hagiographica 39 (Brussels, 1964), 231–2; ‘The Lives of Meletios of Myoupolis’, ed. and trans. P. Armstrong, unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1996), XV.

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the property market, shows the frailty of this system in a time of political upheaval. Reliance on cash donations and bequests, or gifts in kind, worked only so long as the laity had the wherewithal to continue supporting monasteries. The concern shown by St Katherine for its landed property in Crete and Cyprus is part of the same scenario. As Christodoulos came to realise on Patmos, landed property entailed a labour force, since the land was of use only in so far as it could provide an income, which of course could be realised only by working the land. Since Patmos was uninhabited, he had to import his own peasantry. At first he tried to restrict employment to unmarried men, but this clearly did not provide enough labourers, so he founded a colony of workers with their families at the far end of the island from the monastery. The curious shape of Patmos, which narrows to a neck at the port of Skala, allowed him to enforce segregation of the labour force to a carefully defined limit between the promontories of Baios and St Nicholas Eudolos. Families were not permitted to stray beyond this boundary, while their menfolk spent the week in or near the monastery so as to be available for work.148 By 1090–2, there were 12 such families, rising to a total population of about 400 people in 1270.149 Much of this work in the early stages of the community that are reflected in Christodoulos’ typikon consisted of the construction of the massive walls and conventual buildings. Subsequently the monastery also kept livestock on a nearby uninhabited island, the animals being seasonally slaughtered for their meat, which was sold on the open market.150 As in the parallel monastic reform movement in the West, however, much of the manual labour was supposed to be done by the monks themselves. This was certainly an important point in the Athonite reform of the late tenth century, which influenced at least one reforming monk at Monte Cassino in the early years of the eleventh century. When Abbot John III of Monte Cassino undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the 990s, he naturally visited monasteries in the Holy Land; on his return journey, he also visited Mt Athos. Once back at Monte Cassino, one of the monks who had accompanied him secured permission to occupy a cell a little way from the monastery and to cultivate a piece of land through his own labour. The chronicler records the surprise with which this innovation was regarded among the other Cassinese monks.151 Doubtless the visitors had seen the manual labour, including felling of trees, grubbing out shrubs and digging the soil that was described vividly in Athanasios’ Rule and typikon for his laura on Mt Athos.152 Other examples of such enterprise in clearing and planting emerge from hagiographical sources: in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, St Luke the Younger, Lazaros of Mt Galesion, St Cyril Phileotes and St Luke of Demena all cleared patches of land in order to provide food for themselves.153 There is a distinction to be made, however, between individual eremitical labour, which, as Henry David Thoreau observed, can be done almost on whatever terms of 148 149

150 151

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Christodoulos, A13, 584–5. P. Karlin-Hayter, ‘Notes sur les archives de Patmos comme source pour la démographie et l’économie de l’île’, Byzantinische Forschungen 5 (1977), 189–215. Life of Leontios, XXXIX, 76–7. Leo Marsicanus in Chronica de monasterii Monte Cassino, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH (SS), VII (Hanover, 1846), XII, XXX, pp. 637, 647. Rule of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery, trans. G. Dennis, BMFD, No. 11, XXX–XXXI, 227–8; cf. Typikon of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery, trans G. Dennis, BMFD, No. 13, VIII, 252. NIB x2 ok All these examples are drawn from Morris, Monks and Laymen, 201–2.

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hardship one chooses, and the kind of communal enterprise required for a community. New foundations, if they did not have ready-made buildings, such as St Sabas in Acre, inherited by purchase, needed an initial outlay of hard labour. Christodoulos’ recollection of the construction of the monastery walls and buildings at Patmos finds echoes in contemporary or near-contemporary Western accounts of new reforming foundations, such as John Gualbert’s at Vallombrosa or Stephen of Obazine’s in the Limousin forest. At least in the mental world of hagiographical convention, a good deal of such labour was carried out by the monks themselves. Eleventh-century reforming monasteries in the Orthodox world differed in their attitude to manual labour and service. In the typikon of Evergetis, it has been remarked, manual labour is ‘quietly assumed’ rather than being defended on principle. It is clear, however, that there were a number of illiterate monks in the monastery, and that they served in capacities such as baking, cooking and the care of livestock, in which literacy was not required.154 The typikon of Phoberos repeated the Evergetian division between literate choir monks and those who were primarily engaged in manual labour.155 Such divisions, however, were not necessarily permanent. At St John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis in Cyprus, Neophytos, though illiterate, was accepted as a novice put to work in the vineyard until he had learned to read and write, upon which he became sacristan.156 At St Mamas, which along with Evergetis was one of the most influential models of reform cenobitic monasticism of the eleventh century, the cellarer and his assistant, the cook, gate-keeper, baker, groom, vinedresser and gardener were all drawn from among the monks. Those monks engaged in manual labour were expected to participate in the communal offices and to eat in the refectory with the non-working monks, so as to preserve the brotherhood of the community.157 In all these examples, needless to say, the monastery is assumed to be a property owner. Attitudes to monastic property and labour in the monasteries of the Crusader States differed according to the nature of the institution. Nikon, typically, took his lead from canonical precedents and cenobitic traditions, as mediated through the Life of Pachomios and the Basilian and pseudo-Basilian corpus. In legislating for the Roidion monastery, which as we have seen was in a state of institutional turmoil, Nikon recommended that no new lands should be acquired, though he refers to existing landed interests that were looked after by a steward.158 Likewise, he prohibited the keeping of any animals save cats.159 Instead of accepting or encouraging donations of land, Nikon pressed the monks to develop the hospice and to invest such gifts as they should attract to the care of the poor. This was wholly in line with Nikon’s views on property ownership and work as expressed in the 154 155

156 157

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Evergetis: Typikon of Timothy for the Monastery of the Mother of God Evergetis, trans. R. Jordan, BMFD, No. 22, XXXIII, 493. Phoberos: Rule of John for the Monastery of St John the Forerunner of Phoberos, trans. R. Jordan, BMFD, No. 30, LIX (8), 944. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IV, pp. 135–6. Mamas: Typikon of Athanasios Philanthropenos for the Monastery of St Mamas in Constantinople, trans. A. Bandy, BMFD, No. 32, XIX, 1008. Roidion, B17, 436: ‘Nor again is it necessary to acquire possession of additional lands besides those already in existence now, since they do not contribute to the benefit of souls, but rather to [their] harm, and God is not pleased’; at A3, 431, he refers to landed interests in the hands of a steward. Roidion, B16, 436.

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typikon he wrote for the Black Mountain monastery, probably several years before Roidion. Here, Nikon required the monks to work, preferably both at individual crafts and at manual field labour, if they were fit enough. Monks who did not work should not eat. ‘Working the earth’, as he expressed it, was necessary in order to provide food; the maintenance of the community was to come from the manual labour of the monks. In Nikon’s typikon, moreover, the monastery was not permitted to receive any possessions, since they were not conducive to proper cenobitic life.160 In this typikon, Nikon cites his own earlier work, the Pandekts (or Interpretations of the Commands of the Lord) as providing canonical backing for his monastic legislation. The Pandekts, which was a compendium of canonical rulings on various topics, includes a prohibition on accepting gifts for the monastery under the guise of alms, ‘lest you lead those who are crucified to the world back to danger’.161 Elsewhere, Nikon articulates this refusal to accept gifts in terms of the spiritual need to maintain absolute poverty. It is better, he explains, for a monk to be thrown into the sea on account of poverty than to remain on land for the sake of material things, because God wants monks to observe perfect renunciation of the world.162 The most recent commentator on Nikon’s typika, Robert Allison, sees Nikon’s appeal for a propertyfree reforming foundation, to be safeguarded by the Blessed Virgin, as, at least in part, a piece of pious rhetoric. Nikon’s reference to Sabas managing without receiving donations, as he argues, is a measure of his frustrated idealism in the face of the entanglements into which Roidion had become enmeshed through property ownership.163 The sense of frustration in Nikon’s typikon for Roidion is clear, but the reference to Sabas’ example is of a piece with his academic attitude to monastic legislation and management. Moreover, as the example of Neophytos was to prove in the twelfth century, it was possible for a community to exist for a considerable period without owning landed property, given settled external conditions. Nikon’s suspicion of landed property (and, in the case of the Roidion typikon, his attempt to reform a community that has amassed it) should be seen in the light of the articulation of reform principles in the second half of the eleventh century. Nikon’s superior after 1088–9, John V the Oxite, was likewise concerned with the question of property. Like Nikon, he expressed monasticism as a path of renunciation, a ‘second baptism’ in which material goods were given up along with family ties.164 His treatise against the charistike, however, argues for the inviolability and sacred quality of monastic property. Indeed, John regards the amassing of goods and property by monasteries, despite their rejection of the world, as inevitable. Property and the revenues that accrue from it are given to monasteries so that they can devote themselves to their calling, ‘to chant [Christ’s] praises day and night in the offices’.165 Monasteries commit no crime in amassing property, because it is their guarantee of renunciation. John takes a pragmatic position on the question of property: it is there to enable the community to function, but not to enrich itself. As long as revenues are spent on 160

161 162 165

Black Mountain, A82, 408, A84, 409, and, most explicitly, A85, 410: ‘We were taught that whenever possible, money or anything else offered from outsiders either directly or indirectly by chance should not be accepted, except as the divine fathers in the divine scriptures allow.’ De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, XX, 39, citing Basil, canon 14, and Trullo c. 10. 163 164 De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, XXXIV, 47. Roidion, 427–8. Gautier, ed., ‘Réquisitoire’, XI, pp. 110–15. Gautier, ed., ‘Requisitoire’, II–VI, pp. 96–105.

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the necessities of life and worship, the system works well. It breaks down, in his view, not because of the inherent evils of property ownership but because of the handing over to the laity of goods and property that have been given to God. The inference of his argument is that property is consecrated when it is given to a monastery, and once consecrated it cannot be given away to the care of laypeople, even if the intention is to protect the monastery by underwriting its estates through a charistikarios. Fundamentally, the issue at stake for both Nikon and John is the danger implicit in the institutional framework of cenobitic monasticism of the mingling of the sacred and the secular. Their solutions to this problem, however, are quite different. Whereas Nikon seeks to overcome the danger by a simple refusal to accept donations of property, John seeks to safeguard such donations and protect them from the pollution of secular usage. Despite his pragmatism about the need for property, however, John shows no interest in how the monastery should look after it or use it for the proper purpose; specifically, whether it should be worked by the monks themselves, as Nikon recommends, or as in Christodoulos’ monastery on Patmos, by secular labourers. The monastery of Makhairas was, from the moment of the initial grant by Manuel Komnenos, a substantial property owner. By the time Neilos wrote his typikon, the management of these estates required the appointment of an official from the monastic community to superintend the labour force. This official, the steward, was to be elected from the community, and therefore was to be a full monk. His responsibility, however, was first to assist the hegoumen in the visitation of dependencies and second to supervise the wageearning labourers and the payment of wages.166 These wage-labourers, who were probably hired seasonally for the harvest, are to be distinguished from the permanent paroikoi (dependent peasants), of whom there were twenty-four in Manuel Komnenos’ original grant.167 There were probably additional lay servants with special expertise, such as herdsmen to look after draught animals.168 At harvest time, however, and during the grapepressing, some monks themselves were also sent to the daughter houses. It is a common feature of all agricultural communities, of course, that harvest time requires more work of everyone, even those not normally engaged in field work, and it is clear that Neilos expected them to help in the fields.169 However, Neilos also stresses the need to have witnesses from among the monastic present at the harvest so as to confirm the report to be submitted by the steward on the quantity and quality of the fruits of the harvest.170 The agricultural operations of the daughter houses were to be under the control of mother house, even to the extent of the steward supplying tools and equipment as necessary.171 That the monks might not regard manual labour as a necessary element in their profession is suggested by Neilos’ provision forbidding monks to dodge their portion of work by employing the monastery’s lay servants.172 The relationship between the mother house, Makhairas, and its dependencies, as suggested in the typikon, is not unlike that between a Cistercian house and its granges. In other words, the dependencies appear to be farms maintained for their 166 168 170 171

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167 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXII, p. 97. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXIII, p. 73. 169 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CX, p. 107. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXV, p. 98. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXIII, p. 97. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXV, p. 98. But for an alternative reading, with the implication that the tools were under the control of the superintendent of each metochion, see Bandy’s translation, Machairas, LXXXV, BMFD, No. 34, 1148. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXVII, p. 99.

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agricultural produce, rather than daughter houses in the sense understood by the term in Western monasticism. Moreover, these dependencies, because they represented immoveable donations from the laity, might be located anywhere.173 In some circumstances, these might be exchanged for other pieces of land nearer at hand, or even sold; such, for example, as we see happening with estates given to St Sabas by Melisende in the 1160s.174 However, this was permitted only if retaining such estates as were given would result in spiritual harm to the community. ‘Spiritual harm’ may refer to estates near urban settlements, though this is far from clear from Neilos’ own elliptical wording, and an alternative reading might be simply that he regarded estates a certain distance away from the monastery as harmful to the welfare of the community. This principle may also have been observed in the sale of villages including Bayt ‘Ur al-Fawqa by St Sabas in 1163–4. In insisting on the inalienability of property once given to the monastery, Neilos was certainly relying on the Evergetis tradition.175 However, we can also see a conceptual link in the treatment of property both in the Evergetian typikon and in Neilos’ deployment of it with the view expressed by John the Oxite in his treatise against the charistike. John’s fundamental principle, that property once given to the monastery was consecrated to its use and therefore sacred and inalienable, lies behind this stipulation.176 The Enkleistra, modelled as it was on the laura tradition of the Holy Land, had no place for field labour on the part of the monks. The community was so small that, for most of Neophytos’ time as hegoumen, this would not have been possible in any case, since for the first fifty-five years of its existence the laura had no landed property. Not until after the effects of the Latin conquest began to be felt among the local landowners who appear to have been the Enkleistra’s main patrons did it became necessary to purchase property from which an income could be generated. This certainly included at least one church, but also agricultural property, as indicated by the construction of a grain store at the Enkleistra and a barn for livestock. Cattle are mentioned explicitly.177 Although they are not mentioned, the acquisition of animals either for their direct produce or for the sale of their produce must also have entailed agricultural labourers. We have already seen the peasants owned by Makhairas, and Coureas has suggested plausibly that the women alluded to in Neophytos’ Rule who were not to be permitted within the outer gate of the Enkleistra must have been dependent peasants.178 However, Neophytos would have been well within the lauritic tradition in encouraging monks to work on a more modest scale in cultivating food for immediate consumption, and we know that the Enkleistra had a garden, which was probably used for growing food, since Neophytos recommended that monks perform some form of manual labour there.179 The garden, however, was so inconveniently situated, at the bottom

173 175 176

177 178 179

174 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CIX, p. 107. See above, p. 371. Coureas, Foundation Rules, 34; Evergetis, XIX, 488–9. Whereas Evergetis, 488–9, includes moveable objects such as icons, liturgical vessels and cloths alongside immoveable property in this respect, Neilos does not do so, though there is a separate clause insisting on the inalienability of such objects (Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XCIV, pp. 101–2). Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, X, 142. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIX, p. 151; but see Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 124. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XVIII, p. 151. Coureas opts for ‘handiwork’, whereas Galatariotou, Neophytos, XVIII, 1359, prefers ‘manual labour’, which more obviously suggests garden work.

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of the ravine where it was susceptible to sudden flooding, that it may not have been intended to provide the staples of the monks’ diet. Some conclusions can be drawn about both property ownership and attitudes to property among Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States. The first point to be made is that property ownership cannot be separated from attitudes to monastic manual labour. If a founder or legislator decided that the monastic ideal, whether cenobitic or lauritic, demanded manual labour on the part of the monks, then the economy of the community was determined to some degree by the need to make provision for such labour. This, of course, had formed an intrinsic part of cenobitic monasticism since the Pachomian communities of the fourth century. Now, in an extreme situation, in which all the necessary manual labour was performed by the monks, the effects on the surrounding economy would obviously be profound, for it would result in a lack of opportunity for a dependent peasantry either to work for wages on monastic land or to rent parcels of land to work themselves. This would be tempered, however, by the size of the community, for clearly only lands that the community was able to work itself could be acquired. There is no evidence, however, that such a situation ever applied in the Crusader States. The only legislator who took such an extreme position on manual labour was Nikon. His typikon for the Black Mountain, however, either represents an unsuccessful attempt at the reform of an existing recently founded monastery (as a result of which attempt Nikon himself was forced to leave) or an unrealised blueprint for a theoretical community. In contrast, his later typikon for Roidion acknowledges that land had already – in his view, regrettably – been acquired, and seeks to put a stop to further expansion by demanding manual labour of the monks themselves. The only other legislator who took a similarly extreme view of property ownership, Neophytos, adapted his position in the face of a changing economic situation in which the monastery’s continuing existence could not be secured without property; however, he did not expect his monks to do the work themselves. In this sense, Neophytos’ modified view of 1214 is in line with the views of eleventh-century reformers such as John the Oxite, or Timothy, the author of the Evergetis typikon. Neophytos’ contemporary Neilos, likewise, sees the acquisition of landed property as a necessity for a cenobitic community. However, although Neilos incorporated a measure of manual labour into his typikon, he did not link manual labour intimately to land ownership, and it is clear that the land would have been useless to Makhairas without a dependent peasant labour force. Dependency both on landed property and a secular labour force appears to have been even more the case in the Palestinian monasteries, both cenobitic and lauritic, although here our information is incomplete; it was also the case in St John, Patmos, which was heavily influenced by St Sabas.

Personal Property The question of monks’ personal property, though related to institutional property, can be dealt with more concisely. For Byzantine reformers from the eleventh century onwards, there were in fact two aspects to this question. The first was whether monks should be permitted to retain private possessions in the monastery; here, the Evergetian reform,

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following Basilian tradition, indicated that such possessions were inappropriate. As we shall see, authors of regulations for monasteries in the Crusader States from the period c. 1050–c. 1350 were all influenced in some degree or other by such reforming principles. A related question, however, concerned the traditional entry gift offered by new monks to their community. This custom seems to have grown out of the Basilian stipulation that postulants should renounce their personal property on entry to the monastery.180 For those without families, or those who did not feel the need to provide for relatives, the solution was to donate their property to the monastery. This is attested, for example, in the late eighth century, when Michael the Synkellos, on his entry to St Sabas, sold his possessions and gave the money to the abbot for the use of the monastery.181 It is easy to see, however, how the requirement to dispose of personal property could become an expectation that the new monk would make a gift to the monastery. Despite the condemnation of the practice of requiring an entry gift by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, it was evidently expected at St Sabas in the late tenth century, when Lazaros, an indigent pilgrim, was enabled to enter the laura by the donation of the necessary 12 nomismata, ‘according to the Rule of the monastery’, by the archdeacon of the Anastasis church in Jerusalem.182 Lazaros would later adopt the same practice for his own monastery on Mt Galesion.183 By the mid-eleventh century, however, entry gifts were looked on with suspicion in Constantinople, doubtless because they raised suspicions of simony. Thus the typikon of Evergetis, while permitting voluntary gifts from new entrants, forbad any element of compulsion, on the grounds that ‘one must not traffic in the grace of God or sell it for money’.184 How influential this ruling would become is indicated by the adoption of virtually the same rule by Alexios Komnenos’ novel De iure patriarchae in 1096, which banned compulsory entry gifts to monasteries while permitting gifts offered from an individual’s free will.185 Unfortunately it is impossible, for lack of evidence, to judge whether either imperial legislation or metropolitan reforming practices had any effect in changing the custom at St Sabas after the time of Lazaros. Christodoulos was opposed to monks owning personal property or earning money from their handiwork after they had professed as monks. The inference of his ruling is that monks were required to give up all property and possessions, save for the necessities of life, on entering the monastery.186 Although Christodoulos accepted donations and gifts from the laity to alleviate the monastery’s material poverty, he has nothing to say specifically on the subject of entry gifts. Anecdotal evidence from the twelfth century suggests that the practice of entry gifts continued at Patmos, notwithstanding reforming ideals. A monk is shown in the Life of Leontios donating money, books and icons on entering the monastery.187 In contrast, Christodoulos’ contemporary Nikon had warned of the dangers of accepting monks who brought entry gifts with them in his first work, the Pandekts. He cited not only Nicaea II in support of his position, but also the Photian synod of 861, which condemned 180 182

183 185 186

181 See Thomas, in BMFD, 23, 27. Life of Michael the Synkellos, III, 48–50. Nicaea II, c. 19, in Life of Lazaros, XVI, 96. On the practice in general, see E. Herman, ‘Die Regelung der Armut in den byzantinischen Klöstern’, Orientalia christiana periodica 7 (1941), 439–50; Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 145, 183, 207–8. 184 Life of Lazaros, CXCII. Evergetis, XXXVII, 495. J. Zepos and P. Zepos, Jus graeco-romanorum, 8 vols. (Athens, 1931–6, repr. Aalen, 1962), III, 409. 187 Christodoulos, A22, 590. Life of Leontios, XLIX, 88–9.

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postulants who asked for the tonsure but showed no intent to follow the monastic life.188 This reference shows Nikon’s awareness of the broader issue at stake over entry gifts, and his concern that monasteries should not simply offer safe berths for those who were merely looking for temporary retirement from the world, and who were prepared to pay for it. Nikon was equally adamant that monks should not continue to own personal possessions once they had professed as monks. In a rather obscure chapter of the Pandekts, which ostensibly begins with a discussion about contact with the outside world, he acknowledges that a monk may sometimes be given a gift out of need by a layperson; this is acceptable as long as the gift has not been desired or sought by the monk, and as long as he prays for the giver.189 In his typikon for Roidion, Nikon dealt with the practical issue of how to dispose of the personal property of dead monks. Here he assumes that most monks will, as is proper, have only a few personal possessions of little value. These should be given to the monastery ‘for the sustenance of the needy and for the church for the redemption of the soul of the deceased’.190 Nikon thus regards such possessions as the equivalent of any lay bequests to a monastery. However, his prescription that the door of a dying monk’s cell be locked lest any of his possessions disappear before the moment of death, so that the monastery is deprived of them, clearly alludes to unsatisfactory practices at Roidion. Moreover, Nikon’s reference to monks who have excessive possessions tells its own story. Monks who have more possessions than befits their position are endangering themselves. Nevertheless, it is not for him to ‘shut the door to their salvation’, so they too are encouraged to bequeath all their possessions to the monastery. Further problems concerned monks who shared a cell with another monk. In such an arrangement, the cohabiting brother has authority over all the possessions of the dead monk, and all that Nikon can do is to appeal to his sense of obligation to the rule that such possessions should be left to the monastery.191 The uncertainty with which Nikon addresses this issue is a reminder of the unsatisfactory condition of the monastery when he wrote the typikon, and in particular of the haphazard living arrangements that had prevailed in the absence of a proper superior. His ruling also shows an attempt on his part to align his preferred practices with those of St Sabas. The latest surviving redaction of the typikon deals with the problem of a monk who leaves the laura because he is called to a bishopric or the headship of another monastery. In such a circumstance, the departing monk may not bequeath his cell – and, by implication, its contents – to another monk, even one who had shared the cell.192 The obvious inference is that there was indeed a precedent for this, to which the eleventh-century legislator was attempting to put a stop. Behind such regulations we can see something of the tensions between individuals and the understanding of a community. The tendency to regard even the cell itself as a private possession that can be given to 188

189 192

De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, IV, 24–5, citing Photian synod, c. 2. Nikon also refers to John of Damascus, Against Heresies, LXXX, PG 94: 734, against the Massalians, who will receive anyone into their monasteries, regardless of intent or circumstance. 190 191 De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, XXXVI, 48–9. Roidion, B11, 434. Roidion, B11, 434. Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, IV, 1316. The latest redaction, because of its reference to Franks, must date from the twelfth century; however, an eleventh-century version of the typikon was clearly known by Nikon, since he refers to practices at St Sabas in Roidion and Black Mountain.

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another individual is countered by the typikon’s centralising insistence on taking control of property – both moveable and immoveable – on behalf of the whole community. As in much of its legislation, on this issue the Makhairas typikon betrays Evergetian influences. Postulants were not to be forced to renounce property on behalf of the monastery. To ensure that voluntary entry gifts were properly supervised, Neilos stipulated the ceremonial form to be undergone for accepting offerings, according to which the postulant placed on the altar of the monastery church either the object – if it was appropriately portable, such as money – or, in the case of gifts of land or livestock, a charter specifying the gift.193 Neophytos’ typikon, while less obviously derivative of it, is also dependent on that of Evergetis. The prohibition on monks’ private property is brief but clear. Monks should hate the sin of covetousness and, by eschewing possessions, remain healthy. Those, indeed, who fall ill to this sin are like the living dead. The monk, who cannot acquire money, must be content with whatever God sees fit to give to the community as a whole.194 A founder’s ideals, of course, could be ignored or circumvented. Lazaros of Mt Galesion established a common fund for the profits earned from the individual craftwork carried out by the monks. This principle, which seems to owe something to the Palestinian laura tradition of individual manual labour, is also found at Theotokos Evergetis but, whereas at Evergetis the notion of the common fund was part of the mechanism by which strict cenobitism was enforced, at Mt Galesion Lazaros seems to have lost control over the fund in his later years, with the result that personal property ownership became the norm.195 In general, attitudes towards the retention of private possessions depended on the nature of the foundation. Galatariotou found that ‘aristocratic’ typika were less likely to insist on the renunciation of possessions,196 whereas all the Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States for which typika are known fall into the ‘non-aristocratic’ category. We will see in the final chapter, however, examples of monks in Cypriot, Syrian and Palestinian monasteries both owning and commissioning books. A colophon in an eleventh-century Georgian gospel book explains that the scribe had no choice but to undertake the work, though he was unworthy of it, because he was too poor to pay a copyist.197 This indicates that the book was intended for his own private devotion, and that, at least in monasteries where personal possessions and money were not prohibited, monks who had the means were able to commission books on their own initiative. We are probably justified in assuming that monasteries founded in the wake of the eleventh-century reform movement display a more rigorous attitude to personal possessions, but that in the older traditional monasteries that continued to function throughout the period, monks might continue to retain their own property. As in many other respects, however, we do not know how refounded monasteries in the Holy Land dealt with this issue. 193

194

195

196

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LVIII, p. 87. The form of the ceremony is derived, as is much of the language of the chapter in the typikon, from Evergetis, 494–5. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIII, p. 146. Coureas’ translation of ‘miserliness’ suggests something rather different from Galatariotou’s ‘covetousness’: Neophytos, XIII, 1355. Life of Lazaros, CXCI–CXCII, 281–3; Thomas, ‘Documentary evidence from the Byzantine monastic typika for the history of the Evergetine reform movement’, in Mullett and Kirby, eds., Theotokos Evergetis, 249–50. 197 Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 102. Djobadze, Materials, 47–9.

382

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The Basilian legislative corpus gave an ambivalent role to the superior of a cenobitic community. Although the superior was, in Basil’s view, the mouthpiece of God, his authority was not infallible. Scripture, and even the individual monk’s own rational judgement, should be allowed a full role. To Basil, the ability of the monk to govern his own actions was as important as the fact of submitting to the governance of another. Moreover, it was irrational to follow commands given by a superior that did not correspond to the demands of reason.198 Philip Rousseau remarked that the effect of such teachings was ‘to defend values independent of and prior to the practice of obedience’.199 Obedience, in other words, was one of the attributes of monasticism, but its practice should not be blind or unthinking. This was reinforced by Basil’s terminology, in which the superior was simply ‘he who goes first’ (ho proestos, rendered in Rufinus’ translation as is qui praest). Basil referred to the superior’s full range of responsibilities, whether moral, spiritual or practical, using the same terminology. Rousseau has argued that what mattered to Basil was less the overall structure in which the superior’s authority operated than the relationship between the individual monk and the superior. In Basilian cenobitism, the superior is, in essence, a spiritual father to all his monks. Basil’s ideals re-emerge in a slightly different form in the Studite reform of the early ninth century. Theodore the Studite recommended that the superior should form a consultative committee of the older and more experienced monks rather than exercising authority wholly by himself, and this was taken up by the influential Evergetis typikon in the eleventh century.200 At Evergetis it was the older monks’ responsibility to elect the steward, who in the normal course of events would become hegoumen on the death of the current occupant; they were also to advise the hegoumen and had to consent to any alienation of property.201 This did not render the hegoumen powerless, nor make the community in any sense democratic; indeed, it could be argued that the concern shown in the typikon to ensure that the hegoumen was worthy to become superior by making him serve as steward first is a reflection of the need to ensure that only the best-qualified monks could proceed to the highest office. Given the forcefulness of his personality that is so evident in his memoir, it is not surprising that Christodoulos envisaged a more authoritarian style of leadership at St John Patmos. He clearly saw this as the institutional consequence of the mode of foundation: ‘he [the superior] is to have all authority and [right of] dominion over it and all its possessions, as specified above, in accordance with the tenor of the sacred and worshipful chrysobull delivered to me . . . let our spiritual brother Theodosios have complete rule over the monastery, receiving from me full and unconditional authority, as I, the said monk Christodoulos, received it from our most powerful and sacred emperor’.202 The only matter in which this authority was constrained was in the stipulation that none of the superior’s relatives was to be introduced into the monastery. Patricia Karlin-Hayter, contrasting this attitude to the more conciliatory approach taken by Timothy of Evergetis, who advised 198 200

201

199 Basil, Reg brev 36 (Rufinus 63). P. Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley, 1994), 211. Theodore Studites: Testament of Theodore the Studite for the Monastery of St John Stoudios in Constantinople, trans. T. Miller, BMFD No. 3, XXIV, 79. 202 Evergetis, XIII, XIV, XVII, XIX, 483–6, 487, 488–9. Christodoulos, B5, 595.

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superiors not to pull rank, suggests that Christodoulos’ authoritarianism may have resulted in the defection of his monks.203 Another interpretation would be that his approach matched the fracturing of public authority of the times, and that strong leadership was necessary for a monastic community to establish itself and survive in the conditions posed by the Seljuq advance into Asia Minor and the Aegean. Similarly, the context in which Nikon composed both of his typika was one that demanded authoritarian rather than consensual leadership from a monastic superior. Nikon appears to have been charged with the task of the reform of cenobitic monasticism in the patriarchate of Antioch by Patriarch Theodosios III. Although this responsibility was confirmed after the patriarch’s death in 1059, Nikon found it difficult to make headway against entrenched local monastic interests. After his mentor’s death he was expelled by his fellow monks from the monastery on the Black Mountain, where he had taken vows under Luke of Anazarbos. His own attempt at founding a new community, probably now represented for us only by the survival of his first typikon, ended in failure and the dispersal of the community.204 It is far from clear that Nikon’s failures as a reformer in practice can be blamed on his attitude to abbatial headship. Nevertheless, a consistent strand in his regulation, and in the broader understanding of monasticism revealed in the Taktikon, was the combination of spiritual and practical authority in the figure of the superior. He was not much concerned with the question in his typikon for the Black Mountain, but among the letters of counsel that form the rest of the Taktikon there are significant references to abbatial authority. The context of the letters in the collection makes it clear that Nikon wrote in response to queries from other hegoumens. This suggests that his earlier authorship of the Pandekts, as well as his appointment by Patriarch Theodosios III as archimandrite of Antiochene monasteries – which he declined – had made him a figure of authority on monastic governance. Apart from the letter to Gerasimos, in which he relates his own experience of the unsuccessful attempt to reform the Black Mountain monastery founded by Luke of Anazabaros, he draws on his own experience in two other letters. The first, to Abbot Arsenios, provides guidelines for monks (and laypeople) on obedience and its practical manifestation through the sacrament of confession. A further letter, to an unnamed abbot of a monastery dedicated to St John, deals with the dangers for superiors of showing anger, a subject Nikon had also treated in the Pandekts.205 Coupled with the appointment as an ‘enforcer’ of reform, these letters suggest something of a crisis in abbatial authority in Antiochene monasticism in the second half of the eleventh century. But it is the typikon for Roidion that exposes these difficulties most sharply. The typikon is composed of two parts, the first directed to the layman who had been appointed by the secular ruler of the region in which the monastery lay to administer its physical fabric, the second to the monks.206 As Nikon acknowledges, the monastery had become ungovernable, and the position of hegoumen therefore untenable. The appointment of a lay administrator seems to have been an 203 205 206

204 Christodoulos, 573. Nikon, Taktikon, XIX, Bib Vat arab 76, f. 236. Nikon, Taktikon, V, XVII, Bib Vat arab 76, f. 203r; De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, IX, 29–30. If the typikon is to be dated after 1098, the secular ruler may have been Bohemond or Tancred; for discussion of the likely Armenian candidates for this role, Oshin and Bagrat, see C. MacEvitt, The Crusaders and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, 2008), 65–72.

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emergency action intended to ensure that at least the fabric of the monastery and its hospice, which was evidently a large and important one, remained in functional condition. The typikon, however, represents Nikon’s assertion of his authority over the community, also at the behest of the secular ruler. From his assertion that there is no need to appoint a superior, we can infer that Nikon himself was taking on that role, though from a distance. Nikon concludes that the community as a spiritual body can be directed from afar by means of the typikon and his own oversight. At one level, the Roidion typikon tells us more about the crisis at the monastery than about Nikon’s attitude to monastic leadership, since by any measure his intervention was an emergency. Nikon saw his role as to remove lay authority, in the person of the appointee of the secular ruler, from the spiritual management of the monastery, which in his view included the hospice. A picture of authoritarian leadership also emerges from hagiographical sources. Lazaros of Mt Galesion, who had been disciplined as a lauriot monk of St Sabas for disobedience to his superior, maintained constant vigilance over his monks from the top of his column. Although he appears from one point of view to have acted in a capacity as superior that was ‘more advisory than administrative’,207 the Life demonstrates in a number of incidents both his attention to administrative detail and his insistence on keeping a close eye on monastic conduct and daily practice. As Richard Greenfield has pointed out, he required all monks to report to him in person before leaving the monastery on official business, and there are numerous examples of his chastisement of refractions of discipline. Although Lazaros was criticised by some for allowing lax discipline in his communities, other critics found him overly rigid and authoritarian.208 Self-imposed confinement on a pillar may have required much of the active running of the community to have been undertaken by the oikonomos (steward), but, conversely, it also located Lazaros physically in the centre of the community and gave him a visual overview of what was going on around him. This close attention to discipline and to the correction of misdemeanours is also a feature of the Life of Leontios. As a young monk at Patmos, Leontios fell asleep during the night office, leaning his head against a pillar; the hegoumen, seeing this, banged his head against the pillar to awaken him.209 The modern translator of the Life has argued, indeed, that the text was written in order to present to its audience ‘constant examples either of absolute obedience and strict discipline or of the severe punishment of disobedient monks’.210 Whether this was, as he assumes, a reflection of the problems of internal discipline and insubordination faced by twelfth-century monasteries is a moot point. Anecdotal evidence alone can substantiate this argument, whereas both typika and Lives indicate an abstract concern for authoritarian leadership as part of a set of ideals underlying reform. The laura monasticism of the Judaean desert demanded a different kind of authority, because the monks were out of sight of the hegoumen for most of the time. Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of St Sabas provides examples of a mentoring approach to monastic leadership that may have derived from Basil. In one such example, Sabas, instead of rebuking a monk directly for wasting food, waits for an occasion when he can provide 207 210

Morris, Monks and Laymen, 42. Life of Leontios, 5.

208

Life of Lazaros, 25 n. 136, 27.

209

Life of Leontios, XIX–XXII, 54–8.

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a more uplifting example of how the monk ought to have behaved.211 The kinds of misdemeanours that required correction in the laura – at least in so far as they are recorded – centred around the question of the monk’s personal autonomy. Thus two Sabaite monks, Lazaros of Mt Galesion, in the last years of tenth century or early years of the eleventh, and the Georgian monk Gabriel, in the later twelfth century, disobeyed the hegoumen by leaving the laura in order to adopt more strictly eremitical regimes. Both were disciplined by their superiors by being forced to leave the laura for the coenobium of St Euthymios, and, in the case of Gabriel, by being required to undertake menial tasks for the community. Neophytos’ view of the superior’s role appears to fall clearly within this lauriot tradition. His successor was to be, like him, a recluse, whose direction of the community was to be accomplished through spiritual example. The Recluse-superior was to remain out of direct contact with the community for the most part. ‘Do not converse with many, and in particular with fools, maintaining circumspection and power over your thoughts.’212 Maintaining personal selfrestraint and the quiet necessary for anchoresis was more important to Neophytos than wielding authority. Even when his reclusive state meant that he was overlooked during the celebration of feasts, he preferred to keep his peace rather than correct the error.213 Neophytos’ contemporary Neilos was legislating for a very different kind of community at Makhairas. Because of its extensive property ownership, the hegoumen of Makhairas needed precisely defined office-holding structures. The hegoumen, who was to be elected by the monks, remains a rather distant figure in Neilos’ typikon. He was, ex officio, spiritual father to the whole cenobitic community; indeed, any monk who refused to accept the hegoumen as such by making his confession to him was to be expelled.214 However, save for the ruling that he had the power to inspect monks’ cells at any time,215 the hegoumen appears to have little direct supervision of the community. This is not to say that his authority was limited. Rather, it was wielded, for practical purposes, through the steward whom he alone appointed, and who could take no action without his approval.216 Indeed, any steward who overreached his authority by abusing his position through embezzlement, negligence, nepotism or insubordination to abbatial authority was to be removed by the hegoumen.217 The unspoken implication in this ruling is that experience has taught Neilos the uncertainty of relying on the better nature of anyone entrusted with power. Both recent translators of the typikon have noted Neilos’ heavy dependence on the Evergetis model, and nowhere is this more transparent than in the chapters dealing with monastic officials and administration.218 The main responsibility of the steward concerned the monastery’s estates and metochia. It was he who took responsibility for the material assets and income of the metochia, which were regularly audited by the hegoumen. He 211

212 214 216 217 218

Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XL, 130–1; see also XXXIX, 130, in which Sabas’ chastisement of the same monk is conciliatory. Chastisement for wasting food is also found in the Life of Lazaros, LVII, 145, where Lazaros upbraids a monk for throwing away fruit peel. 213 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, p. 148. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, p. 49. 215 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LIV, p. 85. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXX, p. 111. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXX–LXXXI, LXXXIV, pp. 96–7, 98. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXVIII–LXCII, pp. 99–100. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXX–CXIV, pp. 96–109; Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 130–1; Evergetis, XIII– XIV, XXI, XXV–XXVI, XXIX, XXXI, XXXIV, XLI, 483–4, 489, 490–1, 491, 492, 493, 497; Machairas, 1109–10, 1118–19, 1121.

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supervised the grape harvest and reported on both extent and quality to the hegoumen.219 Besides the steward with charge of the estates, the hegoumen was to appoint a second oikonomos with particular responsibility for the hospice, and two treasurers to keep the monastery’s financial accounts. The accounts and the monetary assets were to be examined monthly.220 The treasurers supervised the purchase of clothing and took charge of moveable assets such as tools and equipment.221 Storekeepers for the monastery and for the metochia were also specified. Although this follows the Evergetis typikon very closely, it is striking that Neilos insists, unlike Timothy in legislating for Theotokos Evergetis, on these offices being filled by monks rather than laymen. Was this, as Coureas suggests, because of a desire to avoid the worst abuses of the charistike?222 Perhaps, but the oikonomos of the Cypriot estates of the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem in the twelfth century was also a monk, and the medieval Sabaite typikon also required the laura’s oikonomos to be one of the professed community.223 In contrast to the Evergetis model adopted by Neilos for Makhairas was the Basilian model, according to which office-holding – and, indeed, menial work – within the monastery was alternated between different monks. This was clearly also the case under Sabas at the Great Laura.224 Moreover, the ‘alternating office’ tradition was also maintained at cenobitic monasteries that acknowledged Sabaite influence. At St John Patmos, Abbot Theoktistos, in the 1120s–30s, kept the custom of alternatively giving high and menial offices to the monks. Leontios, in consequence, ‘moved like some inanimate object wherever it might chance’.225 In self-conscious imitation of Basil, the Life of Pachomios and Cassian’s Institutes, Nikon recommended the same model for the Black Mountain. He departed from these models only in the detail of the length of time required for monks to serve at each task, preferring a month rather than the three weeks of Basil and the Life of Pachomios, or the weekly change required by Cassian.226 Nikon does not, however, give much detail about the nature of the offices to be filled. A monk was appointed to supervise the monks’ manual work, both agricultural and craftwork, and a precentor to read aloud during meals and to wash up afterwards.227 Nikon evidently envisaged no steward or treasurer, but it is not clear whether this was because he wished to preserve full abbatial control over finances or simply because he did not intend the typikon to deal with that level of administrative detail. When it came to the experience of rescuing the Roidion community from disarray, Nikon had of course to consider more closely the role of administrative assistants to the superior. The main administrative role was that of the steward of the hospice (xenodochos) but, in order to deal with the situation of having indefinite residents imposed on the community by the lay superior of the monastery, Nikon also appointed a steward with particular responsibility for handling income and distributing such payments as were necessary.228 There was 219 220 222 224 226

227

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXII–LXXXV, pp. 97–8. 221 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXXVI, C, pp. 98, 103. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CII–CIV, pp. 104–5. 223 Foundation Rules, 40. Life of Leontios, LXXVI, 120; Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, IX, 1317. 225 Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XL, 130. Life of Leontios, XXII, 56–8. Black Mountain, LXXVIII, 407. However, the hegoumen could leave a monk serving in a capacity to which he was particularly well suited indefinitely. 228 Black Mountain, LXXX–LXXXI, 408. Roidion, A3, 430–1.

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to be complete separation between these two offices, probably in an attempt to keep the hospice’s endowments out of the grasp of those who had claims on the monastery’s assets. Given Nikon’s resistance to the further encroachment of laypeople on monastic resources, and his indebtedness both to patristic monastic tradition and to Sabaite customs, we should also see his monasteries as departing from the Evergetian model of employing laypeople in office-holding capacities. The general practice in the Crusader States, indeed, was against the use of laity for anything other than servile work in monasteries.

Cenobitism and Anchoresis Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States included a variety of types: cenobitic communities, laurae and imitative foundations such as the Enkleistra, and hermitages. One of the most important features of the governance of the monasteries was their attitude to the balance between cenobitism and anchoresis. Early Byzantine ecclesiastical legislation clearly saw a need to regulate carefully for this relationship, and the Council of Trullo (692) ruled that solitary life could be pursued only by monks who had already lived for four years in a coenobium, and then only within the parameters of a religious community.229 This was, in fact, an acknowledgement of the practice that the Palestinian monastic founders had already developed.230 Morris has observed that the lack of precision in contemporary sources about the terms koinarion, mone, monasterion and laura make it difficult to know whether founders and patrons were trying to follow exactly the models of lauriot living known from patristic sources, or whether they consciously departed from them at will.231 The laurae of the early Byzantine period in the Holy Land were, however, still functioning as such in the eleventh–thirteenth centuries, as pilgrimage accounts testify. John Phocas’ vivid description of the cave cells of the monks of St Sabas in 1185, ‘in which they live who hated the world and its luxury for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven’, corresponds with the descriptions and archaeological reconstruction of the cells from the sixth century.232 Even in the laurae, however, tensions sometimes arose over monks who wanted to introduce an element of anchoresis into the lauriot community. Thus, Neophytos’ panegyrics contain an exemplum about a Georgian monk, Gabriel, who left the laura of St Sabas in order to live as a stylite in the desert. After experiencing the trauma of demonic assault, Gabriel was disciplined by the hegoumen by being sent to the coenobium of St Euthymios.233 The most striking element of the story may be that the relationship between laura and coenobium established between the founders, Euthymios and Sabas, was still functioning in the later twelfth century.234 That this was not Neophytos’ invention is demonstrable from comparison with the early eleventh-century example of exactly the same phenomenon in the Life of Lazaros.235 229 231 232

233 234

230 Mansi, XII, 47–56. Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, VII, 91. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 34. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 327; PG 133: 945–8; Patrich, Sabas, 57–106. This evidence appears to contradict the assertion of Mary Cunningham, The Life of Michael the Synkellos, 31, citing D. Papachryssanthou, ‘La vie manistique dans les campagnes byzantines du VIIIe au XIe siècles’, Byzantion 43 (1973), 166–73, 179, that St Sabas had become a coenobium by the eleventh century. Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, XVIII, 171. 235 Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XLI, 131. Life of Lazaros, XVII, 97.

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That provision for solitaries was always part of Palestinian lauriotic monasticism is evident from early sources. In the ninth century, Michael the Synkellos lived as a solitary while a monk at St Sabas.236 The question of authority, of course, was particularly pertinent in such cases. The practice of leaving the laura or coenobium for a given period of anchoresis was well established in the hagiography of desert monasticism – Sabas himself, Euthymios, Theodosios and Chariton had all set the example of withdrawing far into the desert, often during Lent, in solitude or with a chosen companion. Lazaros’ attempt to follow exactly this custom was forbidden by the superior of St Sabas, and it was his defiance of the prohibition that resulted in his temporary exile to St Euthymios. It is not clear, however, whether Gabriel’s fault was withdrawal to a stylitic life, or his failure to keep the demons away from his column: in other words, whether his was a disciplinary or a spiritual failure. Presumably the degree of autonomy of the solitary was a matter of spiritual reputation. Michael the Synkellos was permitted not only to live as a solitary but even to train his own disciples, the Graptoi brothers. Fluidity between the states of anchoresis and cenobitism or laura-dwelling is typical of Orthodox monasticism as viewed through the lens of hagiography. Lazaros of Mt Galesion, Christodoulos, Leontios and Neophytos all spent periods as solitaries and as cenobitic monks and, although in the case of Neophytos there was a clear progression from the training provided by cenobitism to anchoresis, this was not invariably the case in monastic careers. During his early years at Patmos, Leontios was instructed to live in solitude, and to keep away from the rest of the community.237 This followed a progression from cenobitism in a monastery on the outskirts of Constantinople to the solitary but public life of a ‘holy fool’ in the city, before he arrived at Patmos.238 Doubtless because of the potential for tension, founders sought to legislate on this question with some care. Christodoulos permitted up to twelve monks at Patmos to withdraw to secluded parts of the island in order to pursue anchoresis. The superior was to permit this only for monks who had already demonstrated that they had mastered the cenobitic life, but the rationale for accommodating anchoresis was that ‘a father does not grudge his sons the spiritual ascent they feel a rational urge to pursue’.239 The intention to provide precisely this facility for fluidity of monastic profession between cenobitic and anchoritic may have lain behind Christodoulos’ choice of the uninhabited island of Patmos in the first place. Karlin-Hayter has suggested that Christodoulos must have seen the mixed cenobitic– anchoritic model at work on Mt Latros, but of course he may equally have experienced it in a lauritic context at St Sabas, where he had been a monk before going to Mt Latros – and Mt Latros had in any case been founded by refugee Palestinian monks. Whatever his model, Christodoulos insisted that the solitary should remain under the superior’s authority. Indeed, ‘he shall take no initiative, whether small or great, whether harmful or beneficial . . . without the will and approval of the superior’.240 He was to settle somewhere far from the monastery, in a cave or purpose-built cell, perhaps in a cliff-side (and certainly not in the part of the island where the lay workers lived) and, guided by the superior, to follow a course 236 239

240

237 238 Life of Michael the Synkellos, IV, 50–2. Life of Leontios, XVIII, 52–3. Life of Leontios, VII, 38–40. Christodoulos, A23, 590–1. Compare the distrust of individual spiritual achievement evident in the Life of Cyril Philoteles (c. 1050), cited in Morris, Monks and Laymen, 54–7. Christodoulos, A24, 591.

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of prayer and spiritual exercise. He was to engage in handicrafts as a guard against accidie, and produce what he had finished for inspection.241 He was to eat raw food five days a week, making a meal once a day from supplies provided by the monastery. On Saturdays he was to attend the liturgy in the monastery and eat with the community; he stayed there to participate in the vigil and the solemn Sunday liturgy, and to eat in the refectory, before leaving once again for his cell with a week’s supply of food and handiwork.242 While at the monastery he was not to speak to any monk other than the superior, and, while in his cell, only to those sent by the superior. The spiritual penalties for transgressing the rule were severe, to correspond with the spiritual heights that might be reached through such a regime. Persistent transgressors were to return to the community as novices, but if they were unwilling to submit to authority they could be expelled altogether.243 Galatariotou, ordering monastic typika according to their attitude to solitary forms of monasticism, suggested that the permissibility of solitaries was a mark of the ‘nonaristocratic’ typikon. It might just as plausibly be said, however, that it was a feature of Palestinian-influenced monasteries and founders. Besides the former Sabaite Christodoulos, the two Cypriot typika, for Makhairas and the Enkleistra, also allow the possibility of solitaries – the Enkleistra, most obviously, in the person of the superior, ‘the Recluse’. Neophytos, of course, had spent six months in the Holy Land before founding the Enkleistra.244 Although the author of the Rule of Makhairas, Neilos, was not himself from the Holy Land, the original founder of the hermitage that became the monastery of Makhairas, Neophytos, had fled to Cyprus from ‘the deserts located by the River Jordan’.245 The Rule of Neilos is a highly derivative document, but the chapter regarding solitaries appears to be original, and does not correspond to similar rulings in either of its two main influences, the typika for Mamas and Evergetis.246 Monks wishing to become solitaries were directed to build cells in a remote location, and to keep to them for five days of the week, returning to the monastery on Saturday to participate in the offices and to eat in the refectory. As at Patmos, they took back to their cells on Sunday evening enough food – bread, fruit, pulses soaked in water – for the next week.247 The similarity to Christodoulos’ Rule is reinforced by the prescription that they should also work at handiwork (specifically, rope-making) to combat accidie. The closeness between Christodoulos’ and Neilos’ practical measures in arranging for anchoresis within the parameters of the cenobitic community strongly indicates a common source, which, if Neilos came originally from western Asia Minor, was probably Mt Latros. Solitaries within the community were also a feature of the Georgian monasteries in northern Syria and Cyprus. Some of the scribes known to us from colophons of surviving manuscripts identify themselves as solitaries: Georgi the Recluse, for example, who lived in the hermitage a kilometre south of St Symeon on the Wondrous Mountain, copied a Life of Sts Martha and Barlaam in the 1040s, and perhaps also a separate Life of Martha; a twelfth-century Parakliton was written by the hermit Iovane 241 244 245

246

242 243 Christodoulos, A23, 591. Christodoulos, A24, 591. Christodoulos, A24, 591–2. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IV, p. 136. On the superior as recluse, see XIV–XV, 146–9. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, VII, p. 67. Neilos was on his way to the Holy Land on pilgrimage when he encountered the hermitage at Makhairas, so although we do not know his place of origin it cannot have been the Holy Land. 247 Machairas, 1121. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CLII, pp. 119–20.

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from the monastery of St Barlaam; a synaxarion was copied by Iovane Djibisdze ‘in my isolated and lonely refuge’.248

Physical Layout and Topography The best-known monastery from the point of view of its physical layout is St Katherine on Mt Sinai. The earliest detailed account, by Thietmar (1217), describes the lead roofing of the church, and comments on the interior furnishings, with particular attention to the quantity of oil lamps and the marble wall facings.249 The Anonymus Graecus (post 1187) also mentions the lead roof, which was supported by the twelve columns of the church. The bema was decorated with mosaic work representing the Transfiguration.250 James of Verona, who visited in 1335, counted three hundred lamps, as well as painted panels, crucifixes and icons. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, a decade or so later, found the church, which he also describes in detail, the most inspiring of devotion that he saw on his pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Evidently less patient than the Augustinian friar, he says that the number of lamps was too great to be counted, but that he was told by the monks there were more than 1,500; another Italian pilgrim, Niccolò de Martoni, who visited in 1394–5, said simply that there were more hanging lamps than he had ever seen in a church before.251 In Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s description, the church had three aisles, with five marble columns to each aisle. There were eight chapels inside the church, and an iconostasis. Both narthex and church were fully decorated with mosaics. The tomb of the saint was located in a side chapel off the main church, and occupied a niche under an arch. The head and some bones were displayed in such a way as to give ready access to the oily liquid emanating from the skull, which all Western pilgrims mention as having miraculous properties. Niccolò da Poggibonsi describes the golden bowl and spoon placed next to the skull to receive the liquid.252 All three pilgrims also discuss the layout of the monastery: the surrounding wall with its iron gates, the garden with its vines, olive groves and fruit orchard. Niccolò da Poggibonsi counted twenty-five chapels inside the monastery, and fifteen other churches on Mt Sinai. The pilgrims’ hostel, obviously an increasingly important feature given the growth in pilgrimage in the fourteenth century, was located just inside the main gate. A stone staircase gave on to a terrace, from which access could be gained to the rooms. By the mid-fourteenth century, the small monastery of the Forty Martyrs, where eight St Katherine’s monks lived lower down the mountain, also had a pilgrims’ hostel, though the accommodation was fairly rough.253 The monks lived in blocks subdivided into cells, an older monk next to a younger one, so that the younger could benefit from spiritual advice from the more experienced, but also help those who were failing physically. Although each cell was equipped with an altar, the monks worshipped together in the church. Frescobaldi and Gucci, Florentine pilgrims 248

249 251

252 253

Athos Iviron MSS 84 and 45, Tbilisi, Institute of Manuscripts, Ex Coll Historical & Ethnographical Society MS 2211; Djobadze, Materials, 28–32, 33–7, 42–7. 250 Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari Peregrinatio, XIX, 42–4. Anonymus Graecus, PG 133: 984. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, VII, 230; Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare; Le Grand, ed., ‘Relation du pèlerinage à Jérusalem de Nicolas de Martoni’, 607–8. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCIX–CCXIII, 124–6. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCXXXV, CCXXVIII, 132–3.

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who visited in 1384, put the number of monks at 150 in the monastery of St Katherine and another 50 in the other churches on Sinai. The superior, who had the dignity of an archiepiscopate, lived in a separate dwelling at the foot of the mountain.254 Because of its special status in both Orthodox and Western devotion as an important shrine monastery, St Katherine was hardly typical in its physical layout of Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States. Nevertheless, other monasteries shared some important features with St Katherine. Surrounding walls were characteristic of monastic foundations in the Holy Land and Syria from the earliest period of the settlement of the desert, and they are mentioned both in contemporary hagiographical literature and in pilgrimage accounts at laurae and coenobia.255 Clearly they provided a defensive function, both in the early period (fourth–seventh centuries) and in the period of the Crusades. The walls were probably sufficient to deter marauding tribesmen and brigands, but without a manned defence they could not by themselves resist assault by a determined enemy, as the monks of Mt Tabor found in 1183 and of St Euthymios in 1187.256 Walls also demarcated areas of the desert that were considered to have been ‘colonised’ for God. Sabas’ acts of founding, indeed, have been discussed as analogies to the founding of cities in the late Roman Empire.257 Similarly, although the towers that were equally a feature of Sabas’ foundations functioned for defence, as vantage points and as useful storage spaces, they might also be seen as spiritual markers of the monastic settlement of the desert. Monasteries founded in less remote regions, where the opportunities for interaction with the outside world were greater, needed walls to ensure that the secular could not commingle with the sacred. Founders exploited the difficult physical environment of the Judaean desert by settling on or near cliff edges, placing monasteries on ledges overlooking ravines or colonising caves in cliff-faces. Some, like the coenobium of Theoktistos, were virtually inaccessible. John Phocas, visiting desert monasteries in 1185, exclaims that Choziba is ‘a place about which no account will be believed, and only when it is seen will its marvels be understood . . . It is a dangerous climb to the monastery because the site is so steep, and because of the fierce sun.’258 Sites such as Choziba, or the Enkleistra in Cyprus, determined to a large degree the layout of the buildings. Neophytos’ typikon describes the process of the construction of his monastery. For the first eleven years, the Enkleistra consisted simply of the cave he had hollowed out of the cliff-side, divided into an oratory and living cell; then he walled in the site and built a gate; benches were added on the ledge of the cliff, but removed because he found that they encouraged idleness among the monks; then a bakery, kitchen and doublestoreyed storeroom, and a stable, barn and room for the steward, above which was a fivearched colonnade that served as an open-air refectory. Finally, a narthex was added to the oratory with a sacristy over it. By now Neophytos clearly felt crowded and withdrew further up the cliff-face, necessitating the construction of the New Zion.259 In his typikon for 254

255 256

257 258 259

Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 59, 113–14. Niccolò de Martoni, in 1394, counted 240 in all, but this included servants and lay workers: Le Grand, ed., ‘Pèlerinage à Jérusalem de Nicolas de Martoni’, 607–8. Daniel the Abbot, pp. 138 (Kalamon), 140 (Sabas), 141 (Euthymios, destroyed), 149 (Choziba). William of Tyre, Chronicon, XXVI, 1052; Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, XIX–XX, 172–3. Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ, 164–5. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328; PG 133: 949. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XX, pp. 152–3.

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Makhairas, Neilos describes the process of turning the hermitage of the original monks into a coenobium. The essential features of the monastery were the church (which also required appropriate decoration), the surrounding walls, the refectory and cells. These last two emphasise the balance between individual and communal life that is so characteristic of Orthodox, as opposed to Benedictine cenobitism. Unlike Benedictines, Orthodox monks occupied their own cells, where they slept, said private offices, read and worked at handicrafts. In the case of al-Ba’ina, near Acre, it is the presence of cells that confirms an otherwise unidentifiable monastery as Orthodox rather than Latin. Given the allowance for private space built into Orthodox cenobitism, the refectory became all the more important to reinforce the notion of the community. All cenobitic monasteries had refectories, even if, as at the Enkleistra, they were simply terraced open-air spaces. At Patmos, the refectory was also used as a shelter for domestic animals, and, given that birds apparently flew in and out, it may originally have had arches rather than windows.260 As well as these buildings, all monasteries had bakeries. The first buildings to be constructed at Euthymios’ laura, besides the church, were the bakery and the cistern – the guarantors of food and water – and the same process can be seen at Sabas’ Great Laura and New Laura.261 That the presence of the bakery, which housed the monastery’s oven, was fundamental to the maintenance of the community can be seen from the number of anecdotes and regulations in the literature of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism centring on the bakery and the production of bread.262 In the Pachomian monasteries, for instance, the conduct of monks while kneading (which, because of the size of the community, was virtually an industrial operation) was regulated intensively. The bakery was provided with huge kneading troughs where several monks could work together at the same time. Monks were to work in silence, even to the point of asking for more water for kneading the dough by beating on the side of the trough, rather than by speaking.263 The bakery was evidently a place associated with rowdiness in Egyptian tradition unless carefully regulated, for in one episode in the Bohairic Life of Pachomios, a new recruit to the monastery who had been a baker in secular life warns Pachomios’ deputy Theodore: ‘If you go to the bakery to make bread and you see one of the brothers joking or playing around, do not be scandalised because it is inevitable that you will find all sorts of people in such a group.’264 Fears that the bakery might provide a distraction for monks seem to have been perennial, for in the late twelfth century Neilos drew particular attention to the need for good conduct there, admonishing monks not to avoid the offices or to gossip in the bakery.265 The bakery not only provided the monks with bread, but also enabled 260

261 262

263

264

Life of Leontios, XXV, 62. The refectory was rebuilt during Leontios’ time as abbot and can still be seen, with its frescoes, today. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, XV, 24;Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XXXII, XXXVI, 117, 123. Patrich, Sabas, 185–6, on the administration of the bakery at the Great Laura. Bakeries seem to have been rarer in Egypt. Whereas every laura or coenobium in Palestine had one of its own, in Nitria, the 5,000 monks were served by only 7 bakeries. Pachomian Koinonia II: The Regulations of Horsiesios, ed. and trans. A. Veilleux, in Rules of Pachomios, Cistercian Studies 46 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1981), XXXIX–LIII, 210–16; Pachomian Koinonia I: Bohairic Life of Pachomios, trans A. Veilleux, Cistercian Studies 45 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1980), LXXVII, 100–1. Examples of kneading troughs can still be seen at St Sabas and at St John on Patmos. 265 Bohairic Life, CXXXVIII, 194–5. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXII, pp. 107–8.

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the monastery to fulfil its functions of hospitality and the provision of alms to the wider community through the public distribution of bread.266

Food, Fasting and Diet In his spiritual guide for the edification of monks, John Klimakos observed that, along with instability, the most difficult challenge for cenobitic monks was the struggle against gluttony.267 Perhaps because of this perpetual problem, both the hagiographical literature of Orthodox monasticism and the typika reveal intimate concerns with dietary practices. The history of early monastic practices, as mediated by hagiographical sources, gave the monks of the eleventh–fourteenth centuries a template for ascetic behaviour through their attitude to food. Some hagiographical tales were not meant to be imitated, but stood as examples of the heights of heroic asceticism that could be achieved – the story of the anchorite Onuphrios, who was discovered in the Egyptian desert having survived for many years on dates alone;268 that of the Egyptian Abba Isaiah, who declared that simply seeing the fire cooking a pot of lentils was sufficient nourishment for him;269 or Abba Heron of Kellia, who survived on wild lettuce and the eucharist for three months at a stretch.270 Hilarion, to cite a better-known example, supposedly lived off raw soaked lentils, bread and salt between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven, wild herbs and roots for a further three years, then barley bread and lightly cooked vegetables for the next fifty years, while in the last fifteen years of his life, doubtless having harmed his digestion in the extreme asceticism of youth, he resorted to a broth of meal and herbs.271 However, in an anecdote in which Hilarion first scolds his host, the bishop of Cyprus, for serving him chicken, then admits his fault in not accepting what was placed before him as a guest, Jerome appears to acknowledge the spiritual limitations of such asceticism. The message emanating from the literature of the desert fathers was, in fact, more nuanced on the subject of food. Although Theodosios the Coenobiarch chastised a disciple who wanted to take a pot and pan with him into the desert, and Abba Isaiah of Skete was himself criticised for adding water and salt to his bread, the ideal was a moderate asceticism rather than extremes of self-denial. Thus Abba Poemen taught, ‘The Fathers . . . found it preferable to eat every day, but just a small amount. They have left us this royal way, which is light.’272 Ever aware of the patristic tradition, Nikon recommended to his monks such fasting as was legitimised by ancient custom in cenobitic monasteries, but reminded them that ascetic practices should not be undertaken for their own sake.273 In fact, monasteries in the Levant, both in the patristic period and in the Middle Ages, were able to call upon a wide variety of foods. The Rule of Pachomios, for example, 266 268

269 270

271 273

267 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXVIII, p. 110. John Klimakos, Scala Paradisi, IV, PG: 88, 725. Vita sancti Onuphrii eremitae, X, PL 73: 216. Although natural caution inclines us to reject this story as hagiographical rhetoric, it is worth noting that the date palm is said to have 800 distinct uses for food and shelter: A. Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, 1999), 243. The Paradise of the Holy Fathers, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1907), II, 65, p. 16. Palladius, History Lausiaca, ed. C. Butler, Cambridge Texts and Studies VI.1 and 2 (Cambridge, 1898–1904), XXVI, 1–4, 81–2. 272 Jerome, Vita Hilarionis, XI, PL 23: 32. Apophthegmata Patrum, PG 65, Poemen XXXI: 329. Black Mountain, 72.

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mentions a vegetable garden, an orchard with fruit trees and palms, a vineyard and wheat fields; in addition, drovers and shepherds were employed by the monasteries to keep animals both for ploughing and for providing dairy products.274 Gardens and orchards can be identified even in the least promising environments. The Qilt and Kidron wadis allowed enough irrigation during winter and spring for the monks of Choziba and St Sabas to grow fruit. The Life of Leontios mentions ‘garden honey’ as part of the diet at Patmos, which suggests that the monastery kept beehives.275 The Jordan valley is notably fertile, and the extensive gardens that can still be seen today at St Gerasimos are probably little different from those described by John Phocas in 1185 and Frescobaldi in 1384, when sugar cane and dates, amongst other fruits, were cultivated there.276 Burchard of Mt Zion lists sugar cane, oranges, lemons, prickly pears, bananas, olives, figs, honey, vines, peppers and cucumbers as products of the Holy Land, in addition to the edible herbs (wild fennel, salvia, rue and – apparently – roses) that could be gathered without the labour of cultivation.277 The natural abundance of edible plants, among which asphodel and the locust bean merit particular mention, made the ideal of ‘grazing’ – that is, collecting what lay to hand rather than investing in the growing and production of food – as recorded in patristic literature, a potential source of nutrition for Levantine monasteries. Jacques de Vitry was told by the monks of St John the Baptist that the dish of herbs at their refectory table was the locust bean – the plant eaten by the Baptist himself, according to local tradition.278 Pilgrims remarked on the large garden at St Katherine on Mt Sinai, in which vines, olives, dates, almonds and pomegranates grew.279 Despite this apparent abundance, Western pilgrims in the later fourteenth century still characterised the daily life of monks at St Katherine as difficult because of lack of food: Frescobaldi was advised to take food with him for the monks on Sinai in 1384 to ensure that he secured better treatment from them. Some of the monks – thirteen, according to Ernoul; an indeterminate number in Thietmar’s account – chose an ascetic regime of bread and water three days a week, supplemented on other days with bitter herbs that grew in the wild.280 Gucci, a companion of Frescobaldi, confirms this regime when he reports that twice a week they ate vegetables dressed with oil and salt fish, but only bread and water on the other weekdays. The bread, moreover, was of mixed wheat and barley, and only half-baked, because although the monastery had an oven, there was little wood available for fuel.281 This contrast may indicate that the ascetic self-denying monk was part of a motif in pilgrimage accounts of Orthodox monasteries, and that the 274

275 276

277

278

279 280 281

Palladius, History Lausiaca, XXXII, 9, 12; P. Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, 1985), 82–3. For a survey of food consumption in Orthodox monasteries, see M. Dembinska, ‘Diet: a comparison of food consumption between some Eastern and Western monasteries in the fourth to twelfth centuries’, Byzantion 55 (1985), 431–62. Life of Leontios, XXII, 58. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328–9; PG 133: 949; Frescobaldi, in Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, XLVI, 79. Burchard of Mt Zion, in Peregrinatores, ed. Laurent, 86–7. Was Burchard thinking of rose-hips, which are very high in vitamin C content? Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LXXXVI, pp. 342–8, also discusses the fruits indigenous to the Holy Land. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LIII, pp. 220–2. There are eleven separate references to the practice of ‘grazing’ in John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow, on which see J. Wortley, ‘“Grazers” (boskoi) in the Judaean desert’, in Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage, 37–49. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCVIII, 123–4. Ernoul, Chronique, 69; Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XVIII, 42. Gucci, in Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, LXXVIII, 113.

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monks of St Katherine were, to a degree, expected by pilgrims to conform to a type of the ascetic. Monastic diet, as exemplified in the typika of Levantine monasteries, was simple, even meagre, but probably differed little from the basic diet of most of the local population, save for the total absence of meat. The staples were bread, lentils, beans, vegetables such as leeks, garlic, onions and indigenous wild herbs, olive oil, cheese and eggs when permitted, fish, and local fruit, particularly figs, apples and grapes. Of the monasteries with which we are directly concerned, two – Makhairas and Black Mountain – were intensively regulated with regard to food and diet. Nikon’s regulations are typically precise, down to the amounts to be consumed by each monk. The daily entitlement comprised a single measure (i.e. a wine cup) of rice, and one of boiled lentils, beans or chickpeas, but if this were to be cooked in a soup or stew, only half the measure. In addition each monk was to receive one heaped measure of olives, one of raisins, a portion of figs and six nuts.282 The menus were also strictly controlled. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a single dish of vegetables, cooked without oil, and a single dish of dry food, was to be served. On Tuesday and Thursday, the menu was more extensive, and consisted of soup, boiled vegetables without oil, and cheese, eggs and fish when available. On Sundays two dishes were served, both with oil, with provision for a third dish if a patron had made a special gift of food to the community. No special food was to be prepared for feast-days, on the grounds that it was a Jewish custom. In Lent, however, no cooked food at all was to be eaten from the second week onwards during the week, but only raw vegetables, fruit and olives – presumably with bread.283 We have no direct evidence of the diet at the laura monasteries of the Holy Land in the crusader period, but it probably differed little from the time of Cyril of Scythopolis, which is well documented. Pulses were used extensively. One of the cycle of anecdotes that Cyril relates about Sabas to explain his style of mentoring young monks in the laura concerns a dish of beans. James, the monk in question, had charge of the guest-house. Sabas saw him throwing leftover beans after a meal into the ravine as waste. Without saying anything, he gathered them up and dried them in the sun, then, when it came to his turn in the guesthouse, he invited James to eat with him, and served the same leftovers, recooked. Only after James praised the food did Sabas reveal where it had come from.284 Monks who went off by themselves into the desert for periods of solitude usually gathered wild food: for example, Kyriakos developed a facility for eating squills (the bitter leaves of the asphodel plant), while Euthymios and Theoktistos, when they first settled in the desert, lived off the plants that grew in the wadis, and John the Hesychast lived off melagria root in the desert.285 These, however, were desperate measures. Two episodes from Cyril’s collection indicate that, while wild-growing plants may have been an important standby for monks who ran 282 284 285

283 Black Mountain, XLIV, 398. Black Mountain, XLVII–L, LV–LXVIII, 399, 401–4. Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XL, 130–1. Vita Kyriaki, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, VIII, 227; Vita Euthymii, ibid., VIII, 15; Vita Johanni Hesychasti, ibid., XI, 209. Melagria, in the word form meli agrion, may in fact have given rise to the mistranslation ‘wild honey’ in the Vulgate, from which the tradition grew that John the Baptist had eaten locusts and wild honey, whereas in fact he ate two distinct wild herbs, locust-bean and melagria. There are also references to monks gathering and preparing the leaves of maloa, a shrubby plant commonly found by riverbanks and roadsides in the region.

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short of food, they were not expected to form the main part of their diet. John the Hesychast, when reduced to only melagria one Easter, received a surprise gift of white bread, oil, cheese, eggs, honey and wine; similarly, in a time of famine, Sabas sent to Jerusalem for supplies of bread, grain, oil, cheese and wine for the Great Laura.286 In the last years of the tenth century and the first years of the eleventh, Lazaros apparently abstained from wine, oil and cheese throughout his time at St Sabas and St Euthymios, which, although it may have been a common practice, suggests that these foods were available.287 Lazaros’ dietary regime at Mt Galesion, as described by his biographer, may owe as much to patristic hagiography as to actuality; however, in the main it is not dissimilar to the practices at reforming cenobitic communities of the eleventh century such as the Black Mountain or Evergetis. In his first community, St Marina, he ate only raw vegetables and beans; at St Saviour and Theotokos, the columns to which he subsequently withdrew, he reduced his reliance on raw food to Wednesdays and Fridays, while at the Resurrection, towards the end of his life, he ate cooked food but without oil.288 Two of Nikon’s prescriptions merit particular mention. The insistence on fasting on Mondays as well as Wednesdays and Fridays was apparently a particularly Palestinian practice, which Nikon borrowed from Sabaite custom. Moreover, Nikon introduced, with special emphasis, the practice of eating cheese in ‘Cheese Week’ (i.e., the antepenultimate week before Lent), which he asserts in deliberate contrast to the Armenian custom of refraining from dairy products throughout the whole of Lent.289 The first of these prescriptions underscores the close relationship that Nikon saw between Antiochene monasticism and Palestinian, particularly Sabaite, precedent. Taken together with his liturgical prescriptions, in which the practices of the Church in Jerusalem are privileged, and the connections that he established with monks of Palestinian monasteries, this can be interpreted as a conscious attempt to locate his community on the Black Mountain within the mainstream of Palestinian tradition. The insistence on eating cheese shows Nikon delineating the position of his community in contrast to the Armenians who were prevalent in northern Syria. As some elements of the Taktikon show, Nikon was highly conscious of the need to distinguish for a wider Orthodox audience the distinctions between Orthodox and Monophysite communities.290 He chooses to do so in this respect through a contrast in practice: food, in this case, becomes the signifier of doctrinal difference. Neilos’ rules on diet for Makhairas – not surprisingly, given the Palestinian origins of the monastery – show clearly the influence of the traditions of the Holy Land. The fast is to be extended to Mondays as well as Wednesdays and Fridays. In detailing periods of fasting, Neilos refers to ‘the Rule we have received from Palestine’ and ‘the fathers in Palestine’ as the fundamental guide.291 However, he also repeats Nikon’s prescription on eating cheese during Cheese Week in order, as he says, to ‘set ourselves apart from this heresy’, which may reveal Antiochene influence.292 In most respects, however, Neilos appears to follow 286 287 290 292

Vita Johanni Hesychasti, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XII, 210–11; Vita Sabae, LVIII, ibid., 158–60. 288 289 Life of Lazaros, XVII, 97–100. Life of Lazaros, XXXV, LXXXI, 169–70. Black Mountain, LV, 401. 291 Bib Vat arab 76, f. 362r. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXV, LXXVII, pp. 94, 95. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXVIII, p. 96. ‘In the week prior to the second week preceding the start of Lent . . . we, so as to set ourselves apart from their [the followers of Artziburius] heresy, partake of cheese and eggs without misgivings throughout this week.’

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standard Byzantine procedure, as mediated through the typikon of Evergetis. In the first week of Lent, the fast was total on Monday; during the rest of week, monks chose dishes from among pulses soaked in water, raw vegetables and fruit, and drank warm water seasoned with cumin. On Friday the monks ate two cooked dishes prepared with sesame oil, and drank up to 6 ounces of wine. Throughout Lent three cooked dishes cooked with sesame oil were served at weekends.293 On Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout Lent boiled beans and fruit formed the staple diet, but Neilos – departing here from Evergetis – allowed weaker monks to take this with olive or sesame oil, and to drink wine. As at the Black Mountain, only raw food was to be eaten on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.294 Unlike Nikon, Neilos made provision for special foods for feast-days: three meals rather than the usual two, all dressed with olive oil, and wine to be drunk, whenever the feast of the Invention of the Baptist’s Head or the Forty Martyrs fell in Lent; Palm Sunday and the feast of the Annunciation to be celebrated by consuming fish and wine – as long as the latter feast did not fall in Lent.295 All legislators were adamant that eating was to be done together in the refectory, and to this end Neilos specified the procedure for gathering at the dinner hour, conduct at the dinner table and the order of seating, while Neophytos and Nikon forbad eating in private in the monks’ cells. (Neophytos says nothing about the nature of the food at the Enkleistra, except that the monks were not to complain about it.)296 Neilos followed the Evergetis typikon in requiring monks to gather in the narthex of the church after the daily eucharist to wait for the gong to summon them to the refectory. At dinner, the monks listened in silence to a reading.297 The concern for specifying the precise details of the food and measures to be eaten, and the days of feasting and fasting, may appear unnecessarily fussy. We should see rules about eating and the refectory, however, as practical steps taken to ensure the cenobitic integrity of the community. Given that monks said private offices and engaged in private reading and work in their cells, the kind of idiorrhythmic life that Nikon found, and abhorred, at Roidion was potentially only a small step away. The governance of the refectory was vital for communal life, and rules ensuring that all monks partook of the same food at the same time lay at the heart of the revival of cenobitism from the eleventh century onwards. In this respect, the traditions represented by Nikon and Neilos in particular may be seen as analogous to the concerns over simplicity and uniformity of food in the Cistercian legislative

293

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296 297

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXVII, p. 92; cf. Evergetis, X, 480–1, and Mamas, XVIII, 1006–8. At Evergetis the cuminflavoured drink proved so unpopular with the monks that it was withdrawn in a codicil to the typikon. Compare the Lenten drink specified by Theodore the Studite, an infusion of aniseed, caraway and pepper in warm water. Attitudes to wine were ambivalent in patristic tradition. Apophthegmata Patrum, Poemen II, 80, declared that wine was of no use to monks, but the Syriac The Paradise of the Fathers, II, 79, tells a story about a monk who was so desperate to avoid drinking wine that he climbed to the roof of the monastery to escape it, only for the roof to give way beneath him. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXIX, pp. 92–3. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXI, p. 93. Compare the laura of Athanasios on Mt Athos, Rule of Athanasios, in BMFD, No. 11, XXII, 226: from Easter to All Saints, two cooked dishes a day, comprising vegetables and beans with oil, but on holy days an extra dish of the same, plus fish, cheese and eggs if available; no prepared meal in the evening, but bread and leftovers to be available to those who wanted them; also the ‘aristocratic’ Pantokrator: Typikon of Emperor John II Komnenos for the Monastery of Christ Pantokrator, trans. R. Jordan, BMFD, No. 28, XII, pp. 746–7, dating from 1136, which specified oysters and shellfish as well as vegetables with oil and beans on Monday and Wednesday, with salted or fresh fish, cheese, eggs and beans on the other days except Friday. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXII–LXVI, pp. 89–91; Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIII (canon 12), p. 160. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXI, LXIII, pp. 89, 90, and cf. Evergetis, IX, 478–80.

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and hagiographical literature of the twelfth century in the West, which were part of the attempt to return to the putative origins of monastic life.

External Relations Monks, whether cenobitic or anchoritic, wished to establish a space in which the outside world could not encroach. One of the dangers most feared by legislators was the presence of women. Neophytos legislated explicitly to prevent even the enclosure around the Enkleistra from being accessible to women. Any woman who was able to slip through the gate was to suffer the penance of a diet of bread and water for forty days – which, as Coureas remarks, is the most severe penalty in the Rule.298 It may be that the women Neophytos had in mind were tenants of the Enkleistra, for it is not easy to see otherwise where the degree of control necessary to impose the penance might have originated.299 But the following sentence in the Rule implies that the women Neophytos most feared were relatives of the monks – mothers, sisters and so on – who might have been driven to intrude on monastic privacy out of needs arising from family or village communities.300 Concerns about keeping monks separate from family ties are evident as early as the influential Studite Rule of the early ninth century, in which Theodore forbad the superior to use monastic resources for the upkeep of his biological family, and utterly excluded dealings with women.301 Nikon, similarly, forbad women from entering not only the monastery itself but even any property belonging to the monastery; nor were women to be employed as servants by the monastery.302 Neophytos, like Nikon, even forbad the presence of female animals in the monastery.303 Neilos, unsurprisingly, repeats the injunction against the entry of women, even for the sake of attending the offices. This, indeed, is one area of conduct in which both Cypriot houses were stricter than the Evergetis typikon, which, although forbidding women in general, did permit aristocratic women to attend the offices.304 In rural Cyprus, the potential for such an eventuality must have appeared small to Neilos; however, as we have seen, the monastery of Makhairas came in the fourteenth century to be much patronised by the Lusignan court, including queens and their households.305 In his Rule, Neilos coupled the prohibition on women with one on accepting boys for schooling, a practice that was also forbidden by Neophytos.306 Although it had evidently become a common enough custom for the wealthy laity to send boys to be educated in monasteries, the prohibition on boys, or ‘beardless youths’ had been established in the laurae of the Holy Land since the time of Euthymios in the fifth century, and was repeated in the first clause of the twelfth-century redaction of the

298 299 300

301 303

304 306

Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIX, p. 151, and n. 62. See the observation by Galatariotou in her Neophytos, 1346. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIX, p. 151: ‘We have decreed thus not because we loathe kinship, but have written these things mindful of the good order of the locality, for it is not fitting for the helmsman to allow causes of scandal and shipwreck to enter the harbour. For being set apart and solitary, the locality of the hermitage should preserve the likeness of a salutary harbour as well.’ 302 Theodore Studites, 77–8. Black Mountain, LXXXVI, 410. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIX, p. 152; Black Mountain, LXXXVI, 410; see Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 121, 123, for other examples of this ruling. 305 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXV, p. 109; Evergetis, XXXIX, 496. See pp. 343–4. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXV, p. 109; Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IX, p. 141.

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Rule of St Sabas.307 As we will see in a later chapter, the suspicion of accepting boys for education was clearly linked to the fear of sexual misconduct within the monastery. Monasteries had a duty of hospitality, and nowhere was this more deeply ingrained in the monastic tradition than in the Holy Land. The Judaean desert monasteries, even when they were not established close to a site with biblical associations, provided guest-houses for pilgrims travelling between sites or for visiting monks.308 The number of pilgrims and visitors must have been far smaller in the crusader period, but there is adequate evidence from pilgrimage accounts and typika for the maintenance of guest-houses. We have already seen the provision made for pilgrims to Sinai and, from pilgrimage accounts in which pilgrims mention staying at monasteries, we can infer that guest-houses were also maintained at St John the Baptist by the Jordan, St Sabas, St Symeon at Antioch and Saidnaya.309 It was not only travellers from afar who relied on the hospitality of the desert monasteries. In the twelfth century, St Sabas provided for crowds of poor people daily – presumably local villagers – and because of this obligation could not extend hospitality to local pilgrims and worshippers from Jerusalem or the surrounding areas for longer than three days.310 The same formula is found in Nikon’s typikon for Roidion and in Neilos’ for Makhairas, and given their connections with Palestinian monasticism they may have been directly following the example of St Sabas.311 The three-day norm was also followed by Lazaros of Mt Galesion, who had been a monk at St Sabas at the beginning of the eleventh century.312 Roidion, however, shows a fuller development of the principle. As is clear from the discussion of the constitutional position of the monastery, the hospice was fundamental to the foundation. That part of the typikon addressed to the monks begins with regulations for the hospice. First, Nikon appeals to patristic tradition, reminding the monks that according to the example of ‘the holy fathers’, foreign pilgrims, whether monks or laypeople, were to be offered hospitality for three days, or longer if ill.313 Such visitors were to take daily meals with the head of the hospice. Nikon was obviously more suspicious of Franks, who were given only one day’s hospitality by right, though they might appeal for the full three days if necessary. Guests, unless they were ‘from among the dignitaries of the world’, were given bread on departure; the more important were to be cosseted with whatever was appropriate to their dignity.314 Nikon wrote the typikon for Roidion as a response to immediate circumstances. In his earlier Pandekts, however, he had already theorised on the question of almsgiving from patristic sources. First, alms were to be reserved for pilgrims and travellers, beggars and the sick, but the resources of the monastery were not to be used for relatives. Second, there was no canonical precedent for giving alms to poor monks, for unless they were blind or lame, they ought to be able to 307 308

309

310

311 313 314

Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, I, 1316. E.g. Vita Euthymii, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XLVIII, 59; and see Patrich, Sabas, 76–7, 165, for the guesthouse at the Great Laura and other examples. Daniel the Abbot, p. 121: Daniel stayed as a guest of St Sabas for sixteen months, using the guest-house on Jerusalem as a base for his travels. Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, VIII, 1317. An exception was made for guests who wished to join the laura, who might stay for seven days. 312 Roidion, A2–3, 430–1; Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXVI–CXVIII, p. 110. Life of Lazaros, CL, 237–8. Roidion, B2, 432. The specific mention of people on their way to Jerusalem clearly locates the foundation on a pilgrimage route. Roidion, B3, B7, 432.

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sustain themselves through the work of their hands.315 Almsgiving, moreover, should originate from surpluses earned through the manual labour of the monks themselves. In giving alms, the community should make no distinction as to the relative worth of those seeking them, but to give to anyone in need.316 The question of practical charity also features in Nikon’s pastoral letters, which formed part of the Taktikon, the collection that included his typika for the Black Mountain and Roidion.317 At Makhairas, visiting monks were to be given automatic hospitality; if they were pilgrims en route for the Holy Land, they were to eat in the refectory with the community for up to three days. Lay lords, however, when they visited the monastery, were to be offered the hospitality of the abbot’s table.318 In addition to this, there was also a separate guesthouse outside the monastery walls, where the poor and regular visitors could be fed. This charity, however, was extended only to men: women, because of their pernicious influence, were not to be fed even at the gates of the monastery.319 The case of Patmos is rather different. In his typikon, Christodoulos expresses his concern at his inability to specify how much material charity should be laid aside by the community for the poor, on account of the monastery’s own hardship and the uncertainty of its future at the time of writing. Clearly, however, he regards regular charity to the poor and the provision of hospitality for travellers, particularly victims of shipwreck or refugees, as a crucial element of the monastery’s function in the world.320 Given Christodoulos’ own bitter memory of flight from the Seljuqs, and the hospitality he had previously enjoyed at St Sabas, it is not hard to see in this the fruits of experience. Notwithstanding canonical norms and precedents, in the end monastic communities had to respond to those who presented themselves at the monastery gates. At Mt Galesion, Lazaros’ monks wanted a firm ruling on how long guests should be allowed to stay, because of the problem of vagrant monks who evidently took advantage of institutional hospitality by travelling from one monastery to another to eat and sleep. Lazaros insisted that all visiting monks, even those suspected of vagrancy, should eat in the refectory with the community rather than in the guest-house with laymen.321 Monasteries engaged in relationships with outside patrons in various contexts. Neilos (following Timothy of Evergetis) foresaw circumstances in which patrons might offer gifts of food and, as we shall see in the following chapter, laypeople and secular clergy were among those who commissioned manuscripts from monasteries.322 Some manuscripts offer striking examples of the interaction between monastic communities and secular society in marginal notes. Paris Bib Nat grec 1588, a Cypriot manuscript of c. 1112, contains about 400 names, many of whom were laypeople, including Latins, from the period 1203–1570.323 Latin domination in both the Holy Land and Cyprus doubtless introduced a new set of relationships with non-monastic, indeed non-Orthodox society; however, most 315 317 318 319

320 322 323

316 De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, XX, 39–40. De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, XXI, 40. Taktikon, VIII, XX, summarised in Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum, 155–6. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXVI–CXVII, p. 110. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXVIII–CXIX, pp. 110–11. As Coureas remarks (Foundation Rules, 111 n. 151), the Evergetis typikon on which this section in Rule is based is more generous to women, allowing the poor to be fed at least on the feast of the Assumption. 321 Christodoulos, A25, 592. Life of Lazaros, CL, 237–8. Jerusalem Sabas MS 259, to take a single example: Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 63–8. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 74–81.

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monasteries probably, like Neophytos’ Enkleistra, took changing political and social conditions in their stride. The harsh treatment of the Kantara monks executed for failing to subscribe to Latin eucharistic practices is, of course, an obvious exception. Some historians have seen the episode as an example of the lengths to which the Latin authorities were prepared to go in their insistence on conformity by Greek monks, but a compelling case has also been made not to see it as in any way typical, but rather as the anomalous outcome of a combination of political circumstances that included the minority of King Henry I, resistance to Emperor Frederick II and the involvement of a Dominican at a time when the Order was particularly concerned with the identification of heresy in the West.324 Does this case stand alone because the unusually punitive treatment of Greek monks served as adequate deterrent to others, or because it represented an excess to which the Latin authorities had not really intended to go in the first place? Whatever the answer, the judicial killing of the monks provided martyrs who, as is now clear, were memorialised and commemorated in Cyprus in such a way as to keep alive the principle of silent resistance to Latin theological conformity.325 Perhaps the most instructive conclusion to be drawn in

Figure 10 Bread-making trough, St John Patmos 324

325

For opposing views, see A. Papadakis and J. Meyendorff, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church, AD 1071–1453 (Crestwood, NY, 1994), 207; Schabel, ‘Religion’, 196–7; and now Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus, 9–12. Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus, 44–6.

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the context of the present discussion is that the case clearly revealed differences of approach to the problem of conformity and resistance in the wider Orthodox Church. After the exile of Archbishop Neophytos of Nicosia (c. 1221–50) from Cyprus by the Latins, the patriarch of Constantinople, Germanos II (1223–40), initially advised a policy of co-operation with the Latin authorities, but the execution of the Kantara monks seems to have changed his mind, and he complained that Neophytos had not done enough to defend Orthodox practices. This drew the telling response from Neophytos that the monks themselves had provoked the Latins into martyring them through their refusal to accept the inevitability, in current circumstances, of submission to the Roman Church.326 There is some evidence of serious disruption to the activities or internal organisation of monasteries as a result of external pressures. Roidion, which seems to have all but collapsed as a result of the Seljuq invasion of north Syria, is the most prominent example, St Euthymios in Jerusalem being another. We can only guess at the measures needed to maintain stability in the Judaean desert monasteries in the period of Seljuq conquest in the second half of the eleventh century. However, both the physical reconstruction of the fabric of buildings and the resumption or continuation of activities such as manuscript copying in the twelfth century indicate that life continued, on the whole, much as before.

326

C. Schabel, ‘Martyrs and heretics, intolerance of intolerance: the execution of thirteen monks in Cyprus in 1231’, in his Greeks, Latins, and the Church, 1–33.

15 Aspects of Spiritual Life in Greek Monasteries

Liturgy and Private Contemplation The origins of monastic life, according to John the Oxite, Patriarch of Antioch, lay in the recognition by members of the early Church that in order to worship God properly, and to love him more than one’s own family, it was necessary for groups of the faithful to live ascetic lives in community.1 The primary purpose of a monastery, as founders and legislators remarked, was the observance of the liturgical offices. Christodoulos explicitly referred to ‘the doxology of praise to God’ as ‘our true employment, which has priority over all others’. Worship of God ‘with uninterrupted hymn-singing’, indeed, was the real reason for human existence, and it was in this manner that monks could pursue the life most like that of the angels.2 The main principle of the monastic life, in Christodoulos’ view, was that monks should follow literally the injunctions of Psalm 33: 1 and 1 Thessalonians 5: 17, and that praise and prayer should be constant and unceasing. This could best be observed, moreover, in a cenobitic community, in which regular offices could be interspersed with regulated private prayer and contemplation. As Neilos explained in his Rule for Makhairas, the first act once the monastery had been built was the articulation of ‘a precise canon of the ecclesiastical ceremony’ – even though in fact the liturgical aspects of his typikon appear to have been derived from Evergetis and St Mamas.3 The founder’s typikon, however, was not usually the place where observance of the canonical offices was laid out. Most founders also wrote separate liturgical typika to govern this aspect of monastic life. In the case of St Sabas, and perhaps other monasteries in the Holy Land for which no typikon evidence at all survives, the liturgical typikon was a much longer and more detailed document than the diatheke dealing with administrative matters and the regulation of daily life. Some founders, however, included rules on the observance of the offices in their administrative typika. Thus Neilos reminds his monks, in the context of regulation of daily life, that the communal liturgies at the third and sixth hours were the holiest of the day. The sixth hour was the time of the 1

2 3

Gautier, ed., ‘Réquisitoire’, 97–9. The following discussion cannot provide more than an outline sketch of liturgy as it applies to the main themes of this book. Readers are directed, for the most recent treatment of liturgical principles and practices, to D. Galadza, Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem (Oxford, 2018). Christodoulos, A17, 586. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXX, p. 75. Neilos evidently wrote a separate liturgical typikon, which has not survived, but the founder’s typikon includes some instructions for liturgical observances.

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daily eucharist, but there was also a sung office after the daily meal at the ninth hour, in addition to compline directly after the short evening meal, and a midnight office.4 Daily celebration of the liturgical offices is also enjoined on the monks of the Enkleistra, though Neophytos assumed the regular usage of a liturgical typikon, and contents himself in his own typikon with warning the monks neither to take lightly the recitation of the psalms nor to neglect proper reading of the lectionary.5 At daily matins and vespers the monks were to include the prayers for the emperor, magistrates and bishops – and, Neophytos adds, if it is not too burdensome, to remember him as well. The liturgical cursus in cenobitic monasteries in the Holy Land probably followed the traditions established in the fourth and fifth centuries, which were first described by John Cassian in the 420s. At the monastery in Bethlehem where he had lived between 382/3 and 385/6, six daily liturgical hours were observed: cockcrow, dawn, the third, sixth and ninth hours and, at the eleventh hour, vespers. The offices at the third, sixth and ninth hours were apparently celebrated universally in Palestine and Syria, but Cassian seems to have regarded the sunrise office as a new development pioneered at Bethlehem, with the purpose of keeping the monks active after the cockcrow office so that they did not go back to bed and miss the office of the third hour.6 The Palestinian cursus described by Cassian marked a further stage of development from the Pachomian cenobitic tradition in Egypt, in which there were only two daily synaxes. Syrian liturgical traditions developed with some variations: although at Antioch six daily offices seem to have been the norm, some monasteries further to the east evidently observed seven offices, while others refer to only four.7 By the end of the sixth century, a norm of seven is attested for coenobia in the Judaean desert.8 Knowing with any degree of confidence what the liturgical offices consisted of in this period is, however, rather more difficult. Most of the evidence is hagiographical and rather vague about the content of the offices. We know that a feature of vespers was the lighting of the lamps during the prayers, and that the night office consisted largely of the singing of psalms. Homilies were already an important part of the liturgy in Jerusalem, as they remained. The homiletic tradition of Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634–8), comprising highly rhetorical pieces of varying length, found its way into eleventhcentury cenobitic liturgy; his homily on the Holy Cross was listed among others in the eleventh-century liturgical typikon of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Evergetis Theotokos to be read on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September).9 In another, the homily on the Annunication, Sophronios himself acknowledges its 4 6

7

8 9

5 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXXVI, p. 77. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XII, p. 144. John Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 17 (Vienna, 1888), III, 4.3; Patrich, Sabas, 231; R. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN, 1986), 78; see also Palladius, History Lausiaca, XLIII, 130. The Canons Ascribed to Maruta of Maipherqat and Related Sources, ed. and trans. A. Vööbus, CSCO 191 (Louvain, 1982), XCVIII, 20–3; Palmer, Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier, 82; Voobus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, II, 157–8. Theodorus Petraeus, Vita sancti Theodosii, ed. H. Usener (Leipzig, 1890), XVIII, 45. The Synaxarion of the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis. Texts and Translation: September to February, ed. and trans. R. H. Jordan, BBTT 6.5 (Belfast, 2000), IX.14, 56–7.The homily is BHG 444, but the synaxarion stipulates that only part of it was to be read, joined together as one with another, by Pantoleon the Deacon (BHG 430).

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inordinate length and the demands that it made on its congregation, as he draws to a close by referring to the weariness of his audience.10 Eucharistic celebration was diverse in practice throughout the eastern Mediterranean, but in fourth-century Jerusalem the eucharist was a feature of daily offices only on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.11 In the desert monasteries, practice seems to have depended on the customs of individual hegoumens: Theoktistos, for example, celebrated only on Sundays, and this seems also to have been the practice at Choziba, but at St Gerasimos there were probably eucharistic celebrations on Saturdays as well as Sundays.12 For present purposes, the question is the extent to which the monastic liturgy as followed in the monasteries of Palestine, Syria and Cyprus in the crusader period remained substantially that of the period described by Cassian and other witnesses. Recent research has shown that poetic refrains and responses derived from liturgies for the Anastasis church in Jerusalem became influential in monastic liturgy. This probably entailed some adaptation of the chants, since monasteries did not invariably have ordained clergy with the necessary musical training.13 Hymnography also developed in some monasteries because of the talents and interests of particular monks, a prominent example being Stephen the Sabaite at St Sabas.14 The major development after the seventh century was the increasing influence of the Byzantine liturgy centred on the cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, from the beginning of the eighth century.15 It is generally agreed that between the Arab conquest of the seventh century and the twelfth, the liturgy of Jerusalem became ‘Byzantinised’, but when this occurred is far from clear.16 One consequence of the iconoclastic crisis in the eighth and early ninth centuries in Constantinople was a further period of creative liturgical development in the monasteries in and around the capital, characterised by the reforms of Theodore the Studite (d. 826). Recent research has clarified some of the putative connections between liturgical developments in Constantinople and those in Jerusalem, and the traditional view that Jerusalem’s liturgy became ‘Byzantinised’ as a consequence of the destruction of the Anastasis in 1009 has recently been reassessed.17 In fact, the Church in Jerusalem and the Holy Land does seem to have become increasingly realigned with 10 11

12

13

14

15 16 17

Sophronius, Sancti Sophronii Hierosolymitani Orationes, PG 87: 3288. R. Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems of Liturgical Understanding (Washington, DC, 1984), 61–5; Egeria, Itinerarium Egeriae, ed. E. Franceschini and R. Weber, in Itineraria et alia geographica, XXIV, 1–XXV, 67–71; E. Dekkers, ‘Les anciens moins cultivaient-ils la liturgie?’, La Maison-Dieu 51 (1957), 41, suggests that the eucharist was celebrated less often in monasteries than by laity in parishes; Paula’s nuns at Bethlehem, for example, appear to have partaken of the eucharist only on Sundays, since of course they had to go to a church where an ordained priest was celebrating: Jerome, Saint Jérôme: Lettres, ed. J. Labourt, 8 vols. (Paris, 1949–63), vol. V, CVIII, 20, pp. 165–6. Patrich, Sabas, 246–9, and, in general, Taft, Liturgy of the Hours, 57–92. Taft describes the Palestinian monastic cursus as a ‘mixed tradition’: ibid., 79. S. Frøyshov, ‘The early development of the liturgical eight-mode system in Jerusalem’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51 (2–3) (2007), 139–78. C. Hannick, ‘Hymnographie et hymnographes sabaites,’ in Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage, 217–28; M.-F. Auzépy, ‘De la Palestine à Constantinople (VIIIe–IXe siècles): Étienne le Sabaïte et Jean Damascène’, Travaux et Mémoires 12 (1994), 183–218. R. Taft, ‘How liturgies grow: the evolution of the Byzantine divine liturgy’, OCP 43 (1977), 355–78. See discussion in Galadza, Liturgy and Byzantinization, 60–6. S. Parenti, ‘The cathedral rite of Constantinople: evolution of a local tradition,’ Orientalia Christiana Periodica 77 (2011), 449–69; Alexander Lingas, ‘How Musical was the Sung Office? Some Observations on the Ethos of the Byzantine Cathedral Rite’, www.academia.edu/3643011/, accessed 6/5/16. D. Galadza, ‘Sources for the study of liturgy in post-Byzantine Jerusalem (638–1187 CE)’, DOP 67 (2013), challenges the arguments of Miguel Arranz, SJ, ‘Les grandes étapes de la liturgie byzantine: Palestine–Byzance–Russie. Essai d’aperçu historique,’ in Liturgie de l’Eglise particulière et liturgie de l’église universelle,

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Constantinople during the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially after the Byzantine reconquest of north Syria in the 960s. Whether this was because of a ‘hybrid liturgy’, in which a basic structure deriving from Palestinian monastic practice was amplified with new hymns and responses, as was once argued, is questionable.18 The extent to which hymnody had already become a constituent part of the Sabaite liturgy by the eleventh century can be seen, for example, in Christodoulos’ insistence that the monks of Patmos engage in uninterrupted hymn-singing.19 The liturgical observances in monasteries in the Crusader States, therefore, reflect the framework of the ancient monastic liturgy of the Holy Land monasteries, with sung additions influenced by metropolitan usages. Neilos emphasised the spiritual necessity of the eucharist for the monk: ‘for continuous partaking of the holy sacraments constitutes continual participation in life itself’. This could not, however, be treated lightly. Since the eucharist was to be reserved for the pure of heart, weekly communion was normative, but for those monks tempted by evil thoughts, twice a month should suffice. This is a less frequent observance than at Evergetis, where the pure were to partake of the eucharist three times a week.20 Reforming founders were evidently concerned that monks should partake of the eucharist only in the proper spiritual condition; Neophytos cited a canon of pseudo-Basil requiring monks to have settled all outstanding quarrels before going to communion, on pain of excommunication.21 Christodoulos, indeed, ruled that monks had to secure the permission of the abbot in order to take communion, which suggests that he did not see it as a more frequent occurrence than the weekly Sunday eucharist.22 For the celebration of the offices, responsibility for correct canonical observance in the Church was delegated to a monk who at St John on Patmos was known as the katarchos, and who seems to have had charge of the liturgical vestments and objects as well as of the chanting during offices.23 In addition, the responsibility for leading the offices evidently rotated among the ordained monks.24 The most complex liturgical observances are provided by Nikon of the Black Mountain. As the recent translator of his typikon has remarked, the inclusion of such detailed specifications for the offices is unique in founders’ typika.25 Nikon required his monks to sing the canonical hours complete with their mesoria. Each hour had to be sung individually, rather than recited. Even those monks temporarily outside the monastery for whatever reason had to sing the offices wherever they happened to be.26 A striking feature of Nikon’s liturgical practice was the consistent application of the norms observed at St Sabas. Chants were to be observed as in the liturgical typikon of St Sabas, rather than those familiar from the Studite typikon, though the latter was also

18 20 21

22 24

25

Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae Subsidia 7 (Rome, 1976), 43–72, who largely followed the work of Aleksei Dmitrievskii at the beginning of the twentieth century. 19 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours, 276–7. Christodoulos, A17, 586. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXXVII–XXXVIII, p. 78; Evergetis, V, pp. 474–5. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XX, p. 165. This appears in the text as Canon 8 of the twelve taken from Ps-Basil, Poenae in monachos deliquentes, PG 31: 1306–13. 23 Christodoulos, A24, 591. Life of Leontios, XXI, 56–7, 174. Life of Leontios, XXXIII, 70–1. Leontios, already oikonomos of Patmos, ‘did not . . . neglect the usual officiation, namely the celebration of mass at the common gathering when his turn came’: Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXXV, p. 77, specifying a priest, deacon and monk with daily responsibility for lighting the lamps in church. 26 Black Mountain, p. 381. Black Mountain, IX–X, p. 386.

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to be at hand for consultation in the monastery.27 Moreover, in a letter to the monastery of the Saviour at Laodicea, Nikon recommended the use of the typikon of the laura of St Sabas, which had originally been sent to Laodicea by the hegoumen, Nikodemos, and thence taken up by monastery of St Symeon the Wonderworker.28 This is the more surprising when one considers not only that Nikon was himself a Constantinopolitan, for whom Studite practices would presumably have been more familiar, but that his monastic legislation can be seen as part of the process of ‘re-Byzantinising’ north Syria after the reconquest of the late tenth century.29 In another clause of the typikon, dealing with personal property, Nikon inserts an aside that contributes further to this tension in his general attitude. Here, he urges his monks to follow the teachings of St Symeon the Wonderworker, Antioch’s local monastic saint but also ‘the great illuminator of the whole world’, on the grounds that, as Syrians, the monks ought to hold his memory and injunctions above the traditions of any other country.30 Here, then, he seems to privilege local usage over universal principles. As Robert Allison has suggested, this apparent inconsistency may be resolved by distinguishing between particular rules for monastic conduct, where Nikon prefers to be guided by local traditions, and ‘comprehensive’ rules on matters of principle, into which category the correct observance of the canonical hours would fall. Nikon was not the only founder to privilege Sabaite liturgical example over others. Christodoulos likewise ruled that all psalmody and the prayers used in the office ‘should be conducted according to the typikon of the laura at Jerusalem of our holy father Sabas, the great desert teacher’, on all major feasts of the Lord, on Sundays in Lent and in the daily evening office.31 Christodoulos was of course drawing on his own experience as a Sabaite monk, but it is nevertheless significant that his preference for a liturgy developed for a laura overrode even his own insistence that St John at Patmos was to function as a coenobium. The wording of the typikon suggests that no separate liturgical typikon had been written during Christodoulos’ own lifetime, perhaps because he was able to rely on his own memory of the Sabaite liturgy, but he directed his successor to draw up such a document which would provide in detail the exact order of psalm-singing and prayers celebrated throughout the year by the said Hierosolymitai or Hagiosabitai.32 The question of which liturgical form was followed at the Enkleistra is uncertain. It has been suggested that Neophytos’ general reference to ‘the typikon of the church’ to be used by the monks was to the Sabaite typikon, but although Neophytos spent some time after having taken monastic vows in the Holy Land, and may have known the Judaean desert monasteries, he never specifically mentions direct knowledge of St Sabas.33 In contrast, Makhairas, though founded by a Palestinian monk, seems to owe more to the liturgical offices of the Constantinopolitan monasteries of Evergetis and Mamas rather than those of St Sabas. Although Neilos does refer to a liturgical typikon, he does not specify its origin, but his general stipulations about observance are reliant on these previous typika. Moreover, although he mentions ‘the rule we received from Palestine’ 27 30 33

28 29 Black Mountain, XXIII, p. 391. Bib Vat cod grec 76, f. 114. See pp. 330–1. 31 32 Black Mountain, LXXXIV, p. 409. Christodoulos, A17, 587. Christodoulos, A17, 587. Coureas, in Foundation Rules, 144, n. 43, and Thomas, ‘The imprint’, 80–1, both suggest that the Sabaite typikon was intended.

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in one clause of the typikon, he does so only in reference to dietary customs in the Easter season, rather than to the liturgy.34 Was this because of the imperial munificence that had made the development of the original hermitage into a coenobium possible? Besides the singing of the offices in church, monks said private offices in their cells. At Makhairas, for example, the monks were enjoined to perform all the offices not said in church; indeed, when in their cells, monks were expected to be constantly at prayer. The seriousness of the injunction is reinforced by the specific reminder that private prayer was to be accompanied by the usual genuflections.35 In addition to the canonical offices to be said in cells, monks might also spend large portions of the day and night in private prayer. While a monk on Patmos, Leontios customarily spent all night in prayer and ascetic selfmortification, as a result of which he received divine enlightenment in understanding orthodox doctrine.36 Naturally, the balance between private offices and communal worship was quite different in the laura monasteries, where the monks met together in the church only at weekends. Our knowledge of the daily schedule of offices in the laurae depends largely on the hagiographical sources from the late Roman and early Byzantine periods, especially the works of Cyril of Scythopolis, John Cassian and the Vita Charitonis. As in cenobitic monasteries in both East and West, the foundation of the office in the laura was the psalter. Sabas himself expected his monks to know the order of prayer based on the psalms by the time they came to the laura, which of course could not be until after they had served an apprenticeship at a coenobium.37 Laura monks said the offices in their cells; at night this was after they had been wakened by the knocking of the sounding-board (semantron) by a precentor. In addition there is some evidence for the practice of vigils of prayer lasting the whole of Saturday night, when the laura monks returned to the coenobium in preparation for the eucharistic celebration on Sunday.38 These liturgical practices remained at the core of the Sabaite liturgy in the medieval period, and given the growing influence of the Great Laura over other laurae in Palestine even before the Persian invasion, and its pre-eminent position by the twelfth century, we can safely assume that other monasteries in the Holy Land where lauritism was practised followed the same norms.39 There is evidence, moreover, for the early influence of Sabas’ liturgical norms on Constantinopolitan observances. Theodore the Studite asked Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem to send monks to the capital to teach the chants used at St Sabas in his monastery, and the Studite liturgical typikon was subsequently to influence most Byzantine monastic liturgical observances.40 By the late Byzantine period, the liturgist Symeon of Thessalonika (d. 1429) thought that a direct chain of liturgical transmission could be traced back from his own day to the pioneer of the laura form, Chariton, and subsequently to Euthymios and Sabas.41 34

35 37 39

40 41

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LXXV, p. 94. Both Machairas, 1111, and Foundation Rules, 94, n. 101, argue that this reference meant a general reliance on Sabaite liturgical customs, yet the chapters dealing with the liturgy in the Rule are taken from Evergetis and Mamas: Machairas, 1121. 36 Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, XXXIII, p. 76. Life of Leontios, XXII–XXV, 56–60. 38 Vita Sabae, XXVIII, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 113. Patrich, Sabas, 234–8. Thomas, ‘The imprint’, 74, n. 2, following Patrich, Sabas, 273, n. 86, points out that surviving manuscripts of the liturgical typikon of St Sabas from the thirteenth century onwards carry titles that indicate their use by monasteries in Jerusalem in general; on liturgical typika in general, see Arranz, ‘Les grandes étapes’. Theodore the Studite, Epistolae II, 15, PG 99: 1160–4, 1164–8; Thomas, ‘The imprint’, 75. Symeon of Thessalonika, De sacra precatione, PG 155: 556.

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To speak of ‘the Sabaite liturgy’, as for example Nikon does in referring to the typikon that was sent from St Sabas to Laodicea and St Symeon the Wonderworker, is to raise two important questions: what form of the typikon of St Sabas became widespread in the region, and what was the relationship between lauritic and cenobitic practices in the monasteries that employed the typikon? Although Sabas’ original regulations for liturgical observances do not survive, Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life is clear that he composed a set of rules (paradoseis) which he transmitted to his named successor, Melitas.42 The transmission of this typikon is known from manuscript evidence in which Sabas’ name continues to be used in the title for later redactions. Thus, five manuscripts of the typikon are known from the twelfth–thirteenth centuries, one of which (Sinai gr 1096) contains both the liturgical typikon and the briefer regulations that correspond to a founder’s typikon or diatheke in the Byzantine tradition. In addition, there are more than 130 manuscripts from the period from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth. This large number, coupled with the identification of different regional redactions, indicates the wide spread of the Sabaite liturgical tradition throughout the Orthodox world from the crusader period onwards.43 It may be, as Symeon of Thessalonika suggested, that the observances known in the eighth century and later were in fact reformulations of the lost Sabaitic originals by Patriarch Sophronios in the 630s and by John of Damascus in the following century.44 In the seventh century, however, references to the kanon followed by monks of St Sabas are obviously to private chanting of the psalms and the recitation of prayers at the canonical hours by monks in their cells.45 How did cenobitic monasteries receive and adapt these norms? Nikon admits that it was difficult, in his day, to think in terms of ‘the typikon’ of St Sabas, since ‘I found by chance and collected together several different typika of Stoudios and of Jerusalem, but they did not agree with each other: neither one Studite with another, nor those of Jerusalem with others of Jerusalem.’46 After consulting monks of St Sabas on the matter, Nikon decided to compose his own typikon with the aim of collating the different textual traditions. One such tradition, represented by Sinai gr 1096, suggests that by the twelfth century St Sabas had taken on many of the features of a coenobium, though it still preserved elements of lauritic practice, and it was evidently still possible for monks who so chose to pursue the traditional way of life of the laura, living in an individual cell during the week and saying daily offices alone.47 This process may be connected with the apparent adoption by St Sabas of elements of the Studite typikon, which had become dominant in 42 43

44 46 47

Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, LXXVI, 182. Thomas, ‘The imprint’, 74; N. Egender, ‘La formation et l’influence du typikon liturgique de Saint-Sabas’, in Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage, 209–16. Note that the term typikon itself does not appear before Nikon’s Taktikon, and even after the eleventh century the term kanon is more often found. 45 Thomas, ‘The imprint’, 74–5; Patrich, Sabas, 273, n. 86. Egender, ‘La formation’, 211. Cited by R. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, MN, 1992), 97. Patrich, Sabas, 257, suggests that at some point between the Arab conquest and the twelfth century St Sabas replaced the original regulations designed for the laura with the rules he devised for the coenobia that he founded, the Constitutio Sabae et Theodosiii de vita monachorum coenobitarum et celliotarum, preserved in the fourteenth-century Paris Coislin MS 295, originally copied at Mt Athos. This is eminently plausible, though it should be noted that the mid-eleventh-century Life of Lazaros seems to reflect a lauritic life, and that Christodoulos’ foundation at Latros, which followed his flight from Palestine, was also lauritic. I would therefore place the shift to a cenobitic way of life either in the second half of the eleventh century, perhaps as a result of the Seljuq conquest, or in the twelfth century under some speculative crusader influence, though it should be noted that there is no evidence for either. Moreover, Neophytos’ Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi shows that individual monasticism could still be pursued at St Sabas in the later twelfth centuiry.

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much of the Orthodox world by the eleventh century, producing what one liturgical scholar has termed a ‘neo-Sabaitic rite’.48 This Constantinopolitan influence appears to be confirmed by the usages in menaia produced in Palestinian monasteries of this period; for example, the twelfth-century Jerusalem Sabas 63/208, whose calendar follows the Evergetis type, or the earlier (tenth–eleventh century) Jerusalem Taphou 11, both of which were owned by St Sabas. Evidence for contemplative practices is, by its nature, almost impossible to assess. Besides the hagiographical accounts such as the Life of Leontios, there is little descriptive evidence of how monks engaged in private contemplation. One small fragment occurs in the colophon of an eleventh-century manuscript of the Life of St Symeon from the monastery of St Symeon the Wonderworker. A colophon records the vision experienced by Symeon, ‘first of the priests of the monastery’ in 1032–3.49 This suggests a spirituality directed towards the person of the founding figure of the monastery and the practices he introduced. The manuscript itself is small (24.7 x 18 cm), and, with the exception of a headpiece marking the start of the text, has no illuminations. It was undoubtedly made for private reading and study rather than for liturgical use. A brief study of some other manuscripts produced in Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land corroborates such evidence. As we will see in the next chapter, textual choices show that scriptoria were active in copying such contemplative works. Moreover, the relatively high incidence of nonliturgical books among the illuminated manuscripts associated with Orthodox monasteries in the eastern Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth centuries also suggests private contemplative usage. An illuminated gospel book or a single saint’s life that was not designed for liturgical usage could only have been used for private reading and study. The high proportion of such books with the psalms appended to the Gospels further supports such an inference, since the psalms formed the basis of the monks’ private offices. The narrative and decorative richness of some decorative cycles, moreover, points to imaginative and affective devotional use by individual monks. In this context iconographical innovations in certain cycles are of particular interest. A pertinent example is the highly individual Benaki Psalter.50 Although few manuscripts provide such clear evidence of individual choice or taste in contemplative reading, details of narrative and iconographic forms in others are also worth noting. An early eleventh-century gospel book from St Sabas, for example, while restricted in its illuminations to rather simple evangelist portraits, also has marginal illustrations that are unusually naturalistic in execution. A hare eats a leaf, a bird struts at the foot of a page, while fanciful beasts occupy initials on others.51 Are these intended as diversions from contemplative reading, or, as has been established for Western manuscripts, are they markers designed as aids to memory?52 Representations of the Nativity in some manuscripts suggest a close interest in naturalism of representation. A late twelfth-century illuminated menaion shows the Nativity on the 48

49 51 52

R. Taft, ‘Sabaitic typika’, in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. P. Kazhdan, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1991), III, 1823; see also, on the Studite typikon, D. Krausmuller, ‘The monastic communities of Stoudios and St Mamas in the second half of the tenth century’, in Mullett and Kirby, eds., Theotokos Evegetis, 67–85. 50 Jerusalem Sabas 108, ff. 200v–202r. See below, pp. 491–2, 495–6. Jerusalem Sabas 82, ff. 38r, 52v, 72 r for evangelist portraits, and ff. 7v, 8v, 15v, 16r for marginal images and initials. M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), 221–9.

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entry for 25 December: the Virgin reclines in a rocky landscape in front of a group of angels, while in a different scene the Christ child is bathed by the Virgin with Joseph in attendance.53 A naturalistic detail also occurs in a Nativity scene in a twelfth-century gospel book from Jerusalem. Here the Virgin reclines on a couch gesturing to the Christ child lying on a wooden crib of curious and rather individual construction. The image, framed in a quatrefoil medallion, takes the place of the normal evangelist portrait at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel; to the right, the prophet Isaiah is shown in his own frame pointing to the Nativity that he had foretold.54 Gospel books of this period have been characterised as displaying a new interest in narrative. Whereas in lectionaries for liturgical usage, images tended to be placed as markers at the beginnings of readings, in a non-liturgical gospel book both the choice of images and their placing could be less restrictive. Kurt Weitzmann has argued that choice of images can help to determine the locality and place of origin of a manuscript; thus, a lectionary depicting the Anastasis, Nativity and Koimesis can be associated with the laura of Athanasios on Mt Athos on account of the special significance of those feasts in the typikon of the monastery.55 According to this logic, the selection of the feast of the Nativity to replace the more usual evangelist portrait indicates a particular affinity for the feast in monasteries in the Holy Land. From the 1180s, the narrative element in illuminated gospel books produced in the eastern Mediterranean appears to have given way to a preference for separately framed miniatures that resemble the design of lectionary cycles. A lavishly illustrated gospel book of the late twelfth century with full-page miniatures provides a good example. BL Harley 1810 has, in addition to the evangelist portraits, miniatures depicting episodes in the gospel narrative: the Nativity, Transfiguration, Last Supper, Baptism, Beheading of John the Baptist, Ascension, Annunciation, Koimesis, Crucifixion, Raising of Lazaros and Entry into Jerusalem.56 They are not depicted, however, in any narrative sequence – the Koimesis, indeed, does not conform to any part of the gospel narrative. It has been suggested that the inspiration for this cycle is a devotional one and that the images represent festal icons rather than narrative episodes.57 In this case, the purpose of the manuscript appears quite clearly to be devotional; probably, given the lavish quality of the illumination and the inclusion of the unusual Beheading of the Baptist, at the commission of a particular patron. Nevertheless, stylistically, iconographically and palaeographically, Harley 1810 is clearly part of a group of monastic manuscripts of the same period, all except one of which are gospel books.58 Another gospel book in this group, BL Add 39595, has a definite provenance in the Holy Land, being one of 53

54

55

56 57 58

Jerusalem Sabas 63/208, f. 131r; A. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination 1150–1250: The Study of a Provincial Tradition (Chicago, 1987), no. 50. Princeton Garrett MS 3, f. 5r; G. Viken, ed., Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections (Princeton, 1973), 140–1. K. Weitzmann, ‘Narrative and liturgical Gospel illuminations’, in his Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination (Chicago, 1971), 252, 268–9. London BL Harley 1810, ff. 26r, 61r, 83r, 95r, 107v, 135v, 142r, 174r, 204r, 239r, 243r. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 58–9. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 50–1. The same scribal hand is detectable in all seven in the group, the others of which are Athos Laura A.9, Athos Laura B.24 (a psalter), Kiev Bibl. of Academy of Sciences 25, Leningrad Pub Lib Gr 644, Leiden Univ Lib gron 137 and London Add MS 39595.

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the ‘Parham’ collection of books bought by Robert Curzon from the monastery of St Sabas in 1834.59 Another group of illuminated manuscripts associated with Cyprus in the 1190s and early 1200s shows a further development linking narrative and iconography. Thus a gospel book of the period now in Berlin, which is palaeographically close to the books produced for Neophytos at the Enkleistra in the early years of the thirteenth century, depicts not only iconic festal scenes in the manner of Harley 1810, but also nine scenes from Jesus’ preaching ministry and thirteen Passion scenes.60 Annemarie Weyl Carr has observed that the choice of images not only illustrates episodes in the gospel narrative but also points to the theological connection between the narrative and liturgical celebrations; thus, the image of Jesus reading in the synagogue corresponds to the liturgical readings for 1 September. In this respect the gospel book is more akin to a lectionary than a volume for private devotion, but there are also illuminations of non-liturgical scenes, such as the unusual representation of Zacharias and the young John the Baptist, which suggest a contemplative as well as narrative approach.61 Some scenes also indicate a knowledge of very early Byzantine representations; for example, the dicing soldiers in the Crucifixion scene, or the fighting children in the Entry into Jerusalem.62 Clearly this bespeaks a thoughtful and well-informed artist who had seen early Christian manuscripts; equally, however, it may not be too farfetched to see such allusions as pictorial cues to the monastic reader to patristic commentaries of the same period. The success of such strategies depended, of course, on the usage of a book like this in the hands of monks prepared to take advantage of such contemplative resources.

Monastic Liturgy in Jerusalem The sources permit glimpses into the regular participation of monks in liturgical and extraliturgical drama in Jerusalem. Egeria’s pilgrimage account provides clear evidence for the participation of monks at the daily liturgy at the Anastasis as early as the 380s. Monks and nuns said the first daily liturgy of the day before the celebration of matins at daybreak, while on Sundays they continued to sing hymns and pray in the Anastasis after the conclusion of the bishop’s ‘cockcrow’ liturgy.63 At great feasts they also had defined roles. At Epiphany, there was a night-time procession from Bethlehem to the Anastasis in which monks from Bethlehem joined the bishop and clergy; the monks then remained in the Anastasis to recite hymns until daybreak, and presumably participated in the full round of Epiphany liturgies at the Anastasis, at the Eleona church on the Mount of Olives, at Bethany and at Mt Zion, before returning to Bethlehem. On the Saturday before Palm Sunday monks at the Lazarium in Bethany received the bishop for the beginning of the Passion cycle of liturgical 59

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BL Add MS 39595, f. iii; Curzon, Visits to the Monasteries, 225. In all, Curzon purchased ten manuscripts from the monastery. A flyleaf note in Harley 1810 links the book to a monastery of Mar Elias, but whether this is the one near Bethlehem or another in a different part of the Byzantine world cannot be proven. 61 Berlin Staatsbibl. Gr quarto 66; Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 95–6. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 95–7. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 97. A. Grabar, ‘Sur les sources des peintures byzantins des XIIIe et XIVe siècles’, Cahiers Archéologiques 12 (1962), 358–63, suggests that the depiction of people with dark as well as light skin refers to the contemporary struggle for Jerusalem between crusaders and Muslims. Egeria, Itinerarium, XXIV, 8–12, pp. 69–70; Galadza, Liturgy and Byzantinization, 29–72.

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observances. At Pentecost, monks presumably accompanied the clergy and laity in the procession to the Eleona church and thence, via the Anastasis, to Mt Zion. For the feasts of the dedication of the Martyrium and Anastasis churches, monks from various provinces, as far afield as Egypt and Mesopotamia, went to celebrate in Jerusalem. Except for the Epiphany liturgy and the dedication feasts, it is not clear whether Egeria means that only monks from Jerusalem took part in the liturgies she outlines, or whether we should also assume the participation of the communities that were already in her day becoming a presence in the Judaean desert. Presumably the daily liturgy in the Anastasis was attended only by Jerusalem monks, since laura monks did not participate in daily liturgies and coenobia had their own. However, the presence of monks was clearly crucial, since they maintained a sung vigil throughout the night hours at the tomb. This means that there must have been a permanent community of monks in the city by the 380s whose role included nightly liturgical service at the Anastasis. Egeria’s testimony, indeed, along with the slightly earlier Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem, assures us not only of the existence of a settled monastic community in Jerusalem by the middle of the fourth century, but also the extent of its integration into the liturgical and devotional life of the Church. It is likely that it was this community that came to be known as the Spoudaioi in Byzantine sources.64 Their roles, moreover, were distinct from, if complementary to, that of the clergy. As E. D. Hunt observed, it was monks and virgins who took the main responsibility for maintaining the liturgy at night-time and in leading the processions on feast-days.65 The liturgical typikon for the Anastasis dating from 1122, which is known to be a copy of a tenth-century original, shows that the Spoudaion monks developed a fuller role in the Easter liturgy over the course of time. In the Good Friday liturgy at the Anastasis, for example, the Spoudaion monks led the psalm-singing between the gospel readings and the office, as the faithful gathered around the tomb. During the vigil itself, they surrounded the tomb in silence and began the hymn-singing, then processed out of the Anastasis and into the Martyrium, to Golgotha.66 At the vigil of Easter, the Spoudaion monks were joined in the Anastasis by monks from St Sabas and other desert monasteries. The visiting monks hung oil lamps around the tomb to await the miraculous descent of the Holy Fire. The clearest description of the ritual of which the typikon of 1122 provides an outline is in the pilgrimage account of Abbot Daniel. Once the lamps had been hung, filled with oil but unlit, at the sixth hour on the Saturday before Easter, crowds of people from all over the Orthodox world gathered outside the Anastasis holding unlit candles. The patriarch and clergy were already inside, having begun the stichera for vespers. When the doors opened to admit the laity, the crush of people filled the church and left many still outside. The clergy, having 64

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A. Baumstark, ‘Die Heiligtümer des byzantinischen Jerusalem nach einer übersehenen Urkunde’, Oriens Christianus 5 (1905), 227–89, discusses some of the problems inherent in determining the exact location of the Spoudaion monastery. Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. Bieler, I, 4, 190, located the monastery to the south-east of the Anastasis, and this appears to be followed by Saewulf, p. 67, who says that Sta Maria Latina was built on the site of the Spoudaion community. If this is correct, then the monks must have moved elsewhere by the later eleventh century, since the community was certainly still active at this time. E. D. Hunt, ‘The Itinerary of Egeria: reliving the Bible in fourth-century Palestine’, in Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History, 44–5. Hunt points out that, in contrast to the Jerusalem community, the well-known monastery on the Mount of Olives played little or no role in worship in the city. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, II, 116–62, ed. from Jerusalem Taphou 43.

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processed around the Anastasis, began the Kyrie Eleison, which was taken up by the people. In Daniel’s account this is a highly charged moment of great emotion, as each person waits for the climactic moment of the descent of the Fire, secretly fearful that his or her sins will prevent the miracle from taking place that year.67 According to Daniel, Baldwin I personally requested the presence of the abbot and monks of St Sabas at the tomb, and asked them to join him in the procession of the royal retinue from the royal palace to the Anastasis, while abbots and monks of other monasteries processed in front of the royal party. Once in the Anastasis, Baldwin ordered the abbot of St Sabas and his monks to stand so that they overlooked the tomb. From Daniel’s description, this appears to have been a spot opposite the high altar that commanded a view through the gates of the tomb, so that the St Sabas monks would have a privileged view of the interior once the sealed doors were opened. However, it also seems to have been a place higher than the tomb, which suggests either that the tomb was lower than ground level, which is not supported by any other evidence, or that the monks were occupying the gallery of the Rotunda.68 Meanwhile, the Latin canons of the Holy Sepulchre stood on the high altar. At the eighth hour, the Orthodox monks and clergy began chanting vespers ‘while the Latins on the great altar began mumbling after their own fashion’.69 As vespers continued, the Latin patriarch checked inside the tomb to see whether the light had yet descended.70 After the ninth hour, a small cloud passed over and rain fell lightly on the tomb and on those standing around it. At this moment, the light suddenly flashed out within the tomb, and the patriarch entered the tomb and lit King Baldwin’s candle from the Holy Fire; from this candle those of all the people were then lit in turn. The descent of the Holy Light marked the end of vespers, at least for the laity, who took their lighted candles home. According to Daniel, the clergy of the Holy Sepulchre remained to sing the remainder of the liturgy, as specified in the typikon of 1122, while he and the St Sabas monks returned to the metochion of the monastery to finish the liturgy there.71 It is not absolutely clear from Daniel’s account whether he is referring to permanent Orthodox clergy of the Anastasis or to the Latin canons; however, since he refers to an Orthodox liturgy, we can assume that he meant the former. In the 1122 typikon, the clergy process from the Anastasis itself into the ‘church of Constantine’ (i.e. the Martyrium) to complete vespers there. On Easter morning, the abbot and monks of St Sabas, joined again by Daniel, went to the Anastasis once more, carrying a cross, this time to enter the tomb itself. This practice corresponds to the singing of the Easter morning liturgy in the 1122 typikon, which began in the Anastasis with a solemn entry into the tomb, the announcement of Christ’s Resurrection 67

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Daniel the Abbot, pp. 167–8. The translator renders this sentence with reference only to men, but from the rest of the passage, as indeed from other accounts of the ritual, it is obvious that the crowds of laity included both sexes. The latter is proposed by MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, 120–1; in this case, however, it is difficult to understand how they could have been soaked by rain, as Daniel asserts. Daniel the Abbot, p. 168. The liturgy of 1122 specifies that vespers began at the ninth hour: Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, II, 162–89. Elsewhere Daniel describes the tomb as ‘like a little cave cut into the rock, with small doors so that men can enter stooping on their knees for it is low and round, four cubits in length and breadth’. One did not need to enter the tomb to see the shelf on which the body of Jesus had lain, for this was accessible to view from three windows cut into the tomb wall: Daniel the Abbot, pp. 128–9. Daniel uses the term bishop rather than patriarch. The Latin patriarch, Evremar of Chocques, may indeed have been in Rome at Easter 1108 (Hamilton, Latin Church, 56–7), but in any case Daniel would have recognised the title of the Orthodox incumbent rather than a Latin prelate. Daniel the Abbot, p. 170.

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by the patriarch and the singing of the canon and reading of the Gospel around the tomb, before the liturgy of the eucharist took place at the high altar. The main difficulty to be faced in trying to find correspondences between these texts – the account of Egeria, the typikon of 1122 and Daniel’s account – is the changing form of the architecture in which the liturgies took place. Egeria describes the Constantinian complex in which the Anastasis and Martyrium were separate churches linked by a courtyard. The typikon was composed in the tenth century, when essentially the same situation applied. Although the edicule over the tomb probably suffered damage in 614 and during the rioting of 966, there is no evidence that the tomb itself needed repair or rebuilding at any point between the fourth century and the destruction of 1009.72 By time Daniel participated in the Easter liturgy in 1106, however – and, for that matter, in 1122, when the typikon was copied – both the Constantinian Anastasis and Martyrium had been destroyed by al-Hakim and rebuilt in a different form, in a process that probably began in the 1020s and was completed by 1049. The first witness to the church in the period after the rebuilding, the Persian Nasir-I Khusraw (1047), shows that the Constantinian Martyrium was not rebuilt, but was replaced instead by a single church incorporating the Anastasis and a bema projecting into what had been the courtyard between the Martyrium and Anastasis. On the east side of the courtyard, where the east end of the Constantinian church had been, three new chapels were added. To the north there was another chapel, and three more on the south side, one of which functioned as a baptistery.73 Daniel and Saewulf (1104) both refer to the Martyrium, but in terms that emphasise that it was no longer extant.74 The Byzantine rebuilding of the eleventh century had retained the courtyard of the Constantinian complex, as is clear from the directions in the typikon to go out of the Anastasis and into the chapel of Golgotha. The crusader remodelling of the eleventh-century church was completed in 1149, but the bulk of the work probably began in c. 1140, if not in the decade before this.75 However, renovations had already been necessary as early as 1114, when the Latin canons of the Holy Sepulchre were organised into a regular community following the Rule of Augustine, and thus required a cloister and conventual buildings. This work was probably related to the construction of a new chapel on the site of Helena’s Invention of the Cross, but should be distinguished from the project designed to unite and enclose the various shrines into a single church, which entailed the replacement of the eleventh-century Byzantine bema and which must have come into fulfilment only later.76 Moreover, in 1106 the Anastasis appears to have lacked any roof, since Daniel describes the soaking that he and the other participants in the Holy Fire ritual received from the rain cloud that burst at the time of the descent of the fire, but the rotunda was covered during the crusader rebuilding.77

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73 74 Biddle, Tomb of Christ, 70–1. Pringle, Churches, no. 283, III, 13. Daniel the Abbot, p. 131. Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 178, 203. Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, 202, 204. Folda argues that the alignment of the new church is with the rotunda of the Anastasis, and thus with the eleventh-century Byzantine church, rather than with the work on the canons’ cloister in c. 1114–20. Daniel the Abbot, p. 169. Biddle, Tomb of Christ, 77, suggests that the rotunda was reroofed in the 1020s, but the account by Richard of Saint-Vannes leaves no doubt that the Holy Light ritual took place in the open air: Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, II, 21, 394–6.

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The Easter liturgy emerged and continued to develop in a context in which pilgrimage to Jerusalem at Easter played a vital role. At some point the Holy Fire ritual emerged as a central feature of the observance of vespers on the Saturday before Easter. The use of light as a liturgical medium to convey the presence of God was very ancient in the Church of Jerusalem. Jerome, as early as c. 378, explained that the use of lights to accompany the gospel reading betokened joy at the coming of the good news.78 The first evidence for the Holy Fire dates, however, only from 870.79 By the tenth century it had become a locus for the development of Palestinian Orthodox identity, and it may indeed have first arisen as a means of asserting the special qualities of the Anastasis at a time when indigenous Christians in Jerusalem were increasingly isolated from Constantinople and could no longer count on regular contact with the West. In both Greek and Arabic texts, the ritual is deployed as the safeguard of the Orthodox community against the possible threat of Muslim persecution.80 The ritual itself presupposed, as indeed it has continued to do, the involvement of pilgrims. Mention of the ritual in Western pilgrimage accounts in the eleventh century indicates that it had become the distinctive feature of the celebration of Easter in Jerusalem.81 Daniel’s account of Easter in 1106 amplifies that of Matthew of Edessa, who reported that in 1101 the presence of the Orthodox clergy was found to be essential for the smooth running of the Easter liturgy.82 Daniel gives the impression of a particularly close relationship between Baldwin I and the St Sabas community, to the extent that the monks were given particular prominence in the celebration of vespers. It may be, however, that this prominence had already developed before 1099 and that Baldwin was simply observing the status quo by giving due honour to the Sabaite monks. One would like to know more about how this situation emerged. Did St Sabas come to play an important role in Jerusalem in the eleventh century, when, notwithstanding the rebuilding of the Anastasis, the situation for Christians in Jerusalem seems to have worsened, especially after the Seljuq conquest? In any case, the relationship between the Sabaite monks and the Spoudaion monks, who may have constituted the bulk of the clergy attached to the Anastasis, remains unclear. Unless the Spoudaion community had suffered disruption in the years just before the crusader conquest of Jerusalem, and had yet to be fully reconstituted by 1108, it is difficult to know why Sabaite monks played such a prominent role in the Holy Light ritual. The liturgical typikon preserved in Jerusalem Taphou 43 must give some pause for thought. When it was composed, in the tenth century, the liturgy was obviously designed for the Constantinian architecture of the Anastasis and Martyrium. When it was copied in 1122, however, the situation had changed. Were the new architectural realities reflected in altered liturgical directions, or did the copyist in 1122 simply preserve the original form regardless of these changes? Mention of the ‘church of Constantine’ in the typikon would appear to suggest that the original directions were simply retained, but this is far from certain, since 78

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Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium, VII, ed. J.-L. Feiertag, CCSL 79C (Turnhout, 1982), 16–17. The practice of carrying candles to accompany the gospel book to the ambo, however, is first mentioned by Isidore of Seville in the seventh century: Etymologiae, VII, xii, 29, PL 82: 29. Itinerarium Bernardi monachi Franci, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 314–15. 81 Jotischky, ‘The Christians of Jerusalem’, 43–4. E.g. Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, II, 21, 394–6. Matthew of Edessa, Chronique, RHC Arm I, 54–5; Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle, 138–9.

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the wording could still refer to the place where the church had been – in 1122, the Latin conventual buildings – rather than to what took its place. The spatial movements from Anastasis to Golgotha would still have been possible in the sense in which they are given – in other words, assuming movement out of one building and into another – even in 1122, because the extension of the Anastasis to incorporate a nave and apse had not yet removed the open courtyard of the original Constantinian plan. A further question is why it was necessary to make a new copy in 1122, given that the liturgy had already been celebrated in its altered setting for about a century? The simple answer may, of course, be that a new copy was needed because the old one had become damaged or worn out; on the other hand, it may also be that the new cloister and conventual buildings had necessitated alterations to the observance by reducing the space available for the original processions between shrines. That Orthodox monks continued to celebrate not only Easter and other feasts but also the daily liturgy at the Anastasis is evidenced by the provision for dedicated altars in the rebuilding of the church by the Franks, as reported in subsequent pilgrimage accounts.83 There is also evidence that the narrative of the Passion cycle generated extra-liturgical enactments based on the practices of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Holy Fire ritual was itself the culmination of a cycle of re-enactment that began with the procession from Bethany down the Mount of Olives. The cycle was spread over the week of the Passion in the gospel narrative, beginning with the raising of Lazarus at Bethany and the subsequent entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and incorporating the Last Supper, betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemani, the separate judgements of Jesus before the High Priests and Pilate, and the Crucifixion and burial. The spatial physicality of the narrative was underwritten by the series of processions to the places featured in the gospel accounts, at which the liturgical elements of the re-enactment took place. The procession to Mt Zion on Maundy Thursday, for example, was a consistent feature of the Passion liturgy from the fourth century onwards, and is recorded in both Greek and Latin accounts from the early Middle Ages.84 The typikon of 1122 shows that in the tenth century the procession to Gethsemani, and thence to the Probatica and the Constantinian Martyrium on Palm Sunday, was still being observed; likewise, to the Mount of Olives on the Wednesday of Holy Week, and to Mt Zion to observe the liturgy of the Washing of Feet on Maundy Thursday.85 There is no reason to suppose that these observances did not continue after the Latin conquest, although none of the available evidence can confirm whether the Orthodox maintained an altar at Mt Zion between 1099 and 1187. There is further evidence, indeed, of the continued involvement of St Sabas monks in the liturgical life of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. Two manuscripts, a twelfthcentury ordinal now surviving in two separate books, and the Barletta Breviary, a Latin liturgical book which was in complete form by 1202–28, but much of which may date from before 1173, testify to the celebration of the feast of St Sabas (6 December) by the Latin 83

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Theodericus, p. 152. Was the kind of large-scale procession that incorporated the Mount of Olives and Mt Zion as well as shrines around the Anastasis impossible under Muslim rule? Probably not, for the Fatimids made no sustained difficulty about permitting processions on Christian feasts before 1009; even the evidence for intimidation against pilgrims engaging in such rituals provided by, for example, Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, II, 21, 394–6, implies that the processions did take place. F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford, 1896), 54; Theodosios, De situ terrae sanctae, VII, ed. P. Geyer, in Itineraria et alia geographica, 118; Anon Placentinus, Itinerarium, XXII, 140–1; Hodoeporicon sancti Willibaldi, XIX, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 264. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Analekta, 1–28, 52–66, 108–16.

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canons of the Holy Sepulchre. After the readings from his Life, the canons processed to the church of St Sabas infra muros civitatis, which must refer to the metochion of St Sabas by the Tower of David, for the celebration of Mass.86 This fascinating glimpse into interconfessional ritual practice recalls the implied presence of Franks at the monastery of St Sabas in the twelfth-century redaction of the Rule.87 Traditional liturgical observances seem to have continued in Jerusalem after 1187. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre returned to the guardianship of the Orthodox clergy. The situation in the aftermath of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in October 1187 and before his treaty with Richard I in September 1192 was doubtless confused and fluid, which explains why contemporary accounts, both Western and Arabic, contradict one another.88 Nevertheless, two points stand out. First, by 1192, Emperor Isaak Angelos was negotiating for the return of the True Cross to Constantinople and of the Holy Sepulchre to clergy nominated by him.89 Second, the Arab chronicler Abu Shama clearly thought that the clergy who worshipped in the Holy Sepulchre after the expulsion of the Latins in October 1187 were Orthodox, although he says nothing about their nationality.90 Although Abu Shama reports a debate among Saladin’s advisers about the possible merits of destroying the Holy Sepulchre, as al-Hakim had done, there is no evidence that such an option was seriously considered.91 Moreover, Saladin’s policy towards the Orthodox Church in territories under his control appears to have been one of tolerance. According to the Life of Leontios, he even offered the patriarch of Jerusalem, who was trying to establish himself in the Holy City against Latin opposition in the 1170s, a seat in exile in Damascus.92 Certainly he used opportunities to dislodge the Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox from any loyalty to the Franks. The Egyptian chronicler of The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria reported a rumour that Saladin employed a Melkite, Joseph Batit, to try to persuade the Arabicspeaking Greek Orthodox in Jerusalem to revolt against the Frankish defenders during the siege of Jerusalem in October 1187.93 The treaty between Saladin and Richard I, however, permitted limited Latin liturgical observance at the Holy Sepulchre, and the pilgrimage evidence from between 1192 and 1291 provides anecdotal evidence that this continued throughout the period.94 During the 1230s Orthodox control over the Holy Sepulchre was further bolstered by the residence of Patriarch Athanasios II in Jerusalem.95 We have already seen how this period saw the founding of a new Orthodox community on Mt Zion by the Serbian St Savas.96 86

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Kohler, ‘Un rituel’, 431; Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, 61–2 (Rome Bibl. Aug MS 427), 77–9 (Barletta Archivio della chiesa del Santo Sepolcro, MS s.n.). See above, p. 367. For a summary of the situation, see A. T. Jotischky, ‘The fate of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem at the end of the twelfth century’, in T. Hummel, K. Hintlian and U. Carmesund, eds., Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future: The Christian Heritage of the Holy Land (London, 1999), 179–94. R.-J. Lilie, Byzanz und der Kreuzfahrerstaaten (Berlin, 1981), 237, says that Saladin handed over churches in conquered territories to the Greeks, but it is not clear whether he means the local Greek Orthodox Church or the Byzantine emperor. This is confirmed both by Arabic and Latin sources: Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, CXLVII, 334–5; Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs, II, 52; Ralph de Diceto, Ymagines Historiarum, II, 58–9. 91 Abu Shama, Book of the Two Gardens, pp. 321–2. Abu Shama, Book of the Two Gardens, p. 340. 93 Life of Leontios, LXXXVII, 136–7. E. Blochet, ‘Histoire d’Egypte de Makrisi’, ROL 9 (1902), 29–30. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, VI, 30–4, in Chronicles and Memorials, ed. Stubbs, pp. 431–6; in Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. Nicholson, pp. 373–9; Wilbrand of Oldenburg, Peregrinatio, II, vi, 7–34, in IHC III, 236–8; Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, IX, 5, 26. 96 Pahlitzsch, ‘Athanasios II’. See above, pp. 306–7.

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Moreover, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate probably benefited from the discomfiture of the Georgians in Jerusalem. Although some Greek monasteries appear to have been granted to the Georgians by Saladin after 1187, the alliance of the Georgian crown with the Mongols against the Mamluks resulted in the temporary closure of the Holy Cross monastery in the 1260s.97 By 1308, Georgian monks were apparently installed in the chapel of Golgotha, but there is no clear evidence to indicate that they had any special rights over the Holy Sepulchre.98 In any case, since the Georgians were Chalcedonian, the liturgy that they celebrated would have been an Orthodox one, albeit in their own language. The installation of the Franciscan ‘Custody’ in Jerusalem in the 1330s recreated to some extent the liturgical diversity present at the Anastasis between 1101 and 1291. It has been said that the Franciscans not only restored Latin rites but also resumed early liturgical practices in Jerusalem, such as pilgrimage re-enactments.99 From an exclusively Latin perspective this is doubtless true, but there is no reason to suppose that these practices had not been continued by the Spoudaion community throughout the period. The Western pilgrimage evidence from the mid-fourteenth century shows not only that major feasts were celebrated in Jerusalem and Bethlehem – as in the early Church – by clergy and pilgrims of different traditions and languages, but also that the Franciscans, as representatives of the Latin Church, had only limited rights in the Holy Sepulchre itself.100

Liturgical Drama A Cypriot manuscript from c. 1317 to 1320, Rome Vat Pal gr 367, contains among varied other material a complete ‘Passion play’. The manuscript belonged to a Greek-speaking bureaucrat working for the Lusignan court, and it has been suggested that it constituted a kind of commonplace book, though since there are three identifiable hands, it was not necessarily all compiled at the same time or while in his possession. The material includes passages from John of Damascus, Andrew of Crete, Anastasius the Sinaite, the Physiologus and Euthymios Zigabenos’ Against the Saracens, but also the minutes of a meeting of the sekreton of the kingdom of Cyprus, a set of model letters to various members of the higher clergy, some historical notes and so on.101 The Passion play was evidently transcribed by Constantine himself, but – although there is no earlier evidence for its existence – this is not necessarily proof of his authorship.102 Constantine identifies himself as chief notary of Cyprus, a position that corresponded with 97 99

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98 See above, p. 308. Janin, ‘Les Géorgiens à Jérusalem’, 34. K. Elm, ‘La custodia di Terra Santa. Franziskanisches Ordensleben in der Tradition der Lateinischen Kirche Palästinas’, in I Francescani nel Trecento. Atti del convegno internazionale Assisi 1986 (Assisi, 1988), 127–66, esp. 144–51. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, II, 186, attests to the permanent presence of Greek monks at the tomb of Christ; see II, 190–2, for Nubian, Indian, Georgian and Armenian monks in the Holy Sepulchre; and V, 217–19, for account of celebration of the feast of the Assumption by different Christian traditions at Bethlehem; also Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, XXXIV–XXXVI, LXXXV, 27–9, 85. For full description, see Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 153–65. Vat pal gr 367, f. 169. The play was edited by A. Vogt, ‘Etudes sur le théâtre byzantin’, Byzantion 6 (1931), 49–63, and translated into English, with an introduction, by A. C. Mahr, The Cyprus Passion Cycle (Notre Dame, 1947). On the manuscript itself, see A. Beihammer, ed. and trans., Griechische Briefe und Urkunden aus dem Zypern der Kreuzfahrerzeit. Die Formularsammlung eines königlichen Sekretärs im Vaticanus Palatinus graecus 367, Cyprus Research Centre Text and Studies in the History of Cyprus 57 (Nicosia, 2007), although he does not deal with the literary works in the manuscript.

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the sixth rank of Orthodox clergy; he may also have been a monk.103 His interest in monastic liturgy is evidenced in the inclusion in the manuscript of a list of sacred objects in an unspecified Cypriot monastery, and a brief explanation of the liturgy.104 Moreover, the Prologue indicates a preoccupation with contemplation that fits well with a monastic origin for the play itself.105 The term apatheia, used here to denote a state of inner peace that is to be attained through contemplation of the sufferings of Christ, suggests both in usage and context a monastic reading of the narrative of the Passion. The narrative content corresponds to the gospel story from Jesus’ visit to Bethany to his appearance to Thomas after the Resurrection. The main episodes within this cycle are the raising of Lazarus, the entry into Jerusalem, the supper in the house of Simon, the secret betrayal of Jesus to the High Priest by Judas, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemani, Jesus’ trial at the hands of Pilate, his questioning by Herod, the Crucifixion and burial, the discovery of the empty tomb, and finally the appearance to Thomas. As August Mahr observed, these main elements correspond to the liturgical cycle for Holy Week known from the fourth century to have been re-enacted through a combination of liturgy and procession in Jerusalem.106 The textual content is derived largely from the gospel lectionary for Easter, rather than being taken from a particular gospel narrative; however, there is also material from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and Gospel of Peter, notably the episode of the supper at Simon’s house, with the long intervention by the Harlot, the purchase of the spices, the dramatisation of the dealings between Judas and Caiaphas, and the detail of the stone in front of the tomb rolling away by itself. The use of liturgical content, rather than simply dramatising the gospel narrative, strongly suggests that the play originally developed for the use of monastic communities. This is reinforced by the singing of the Trisagion by the actors during the scene of the burial of Christ, which corresponds to the Good Friday liturgy. Liturgical content, however, becomes fused with doctrine in the Resurrection scene, in which Jesus enters holding Adam by the hand. This, as Mahr observed, comes from Ephesians 5: 14 rather than from any gospel narrative; however, it is also the standard iconography for the Harrowing of Hell in Byzantine art, and may thus have been drawn from known images in manuscripts, mosaic or wall paintings rather than from the scriptural reference. Equally, the detail in the Resurrection scene of the angels on top of the tomb, which does not appear in any Gospel or apocryphal source, may have been taken from iconographical examples. The geographical origin of the play is impossible to confirm. Given the close links already established between Orthodox monasteries in Cyprus and the Holy Land, it is quite plausible that the play developed in Cypriot monasteries as a means of connecting these communities to the liturgical drama being played out for pilgrims in Jerusalem. Similar liturgical dramas, however, are also known both in the Byzantine world and in the West, so there is nothing specific to Cyprus in this.107 Mahr argued that the character of the smith 103 104 107

Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 4, draws attention to his use of the epithet euteles (= worthless) in describing himself. 105 106 Vat pal gr 367, ff. 18–22. Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 13. Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 20–1. Liutprand of Cremona alludes, disparagingly, to a liturgical drama about Elijah that he saw in Constantinople: Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. J. Becker, MGH, sep. ed. (Hanover, 1915), XXI, 191–2.

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who is employed to forge the nails for the Cross, and who subsequently takes Jesus down from the Cross, is a distinctively Cypriot element in the play.108 Later Western Passion plays also featured the character of the smith, however, without necessarily demonstrating any other dependence on the Cypriot version.109 A clue to a specifically Cypriot feature is the smith’s use of a word for ‘nail’ that corresponds to Romany rather than to Byzantine Greek, supported by the evidence of a pilgrimage account of the 1320s of the presence of gypsies in the eastern Mediterranean at the time.110 Apart from this detail, and the circumstance of the play surviving in a Cypriot manuscript, there is nothing to link it with Cyprus or Cypriot monasteries. It is clear that the play was intended to be staged, rather than simply read as a meditation on the Passion. The Prologue addresses a putative producer and recommends care in casting and direction, so as not to provoke levity in the actors.111 Yet where it was to be staged, by whom, and in what context remain unclear. The full staging according to the directions given in the text would have required the presence of animals, which surely precluded performance in a church as an integral part of the liturgy. A further argument against the play being a piece of actual liturgical drama is the absence of the Last Supper from the narrative, which may have been because the words of Jesus would have been too close to the consecration of the eucharist. The stage directions give little help in actually directing the action, but some of them appear to act as a prompt for use by the director in ensuring that the right characters are at hand.112 They may have been written down for use in rehearsal. Even the directions, however, are mostly quotations from the Gospels: Lazarus, for example, is described as ‘he that was dead’, as in John 11: 44. This might support the argument that the play was intended for private reading rather than actual enactment, but it is not unknown in manuscript versions of later Western mystery plays for which there is also evidence of actual performance.113 The likelihood is that the play represents an extraliturgical drama, but one based on liturgical texts and prepared by a monk for performance by lay actors. The occasion of such a performance was surely Holy Week, but whether it was expected to take place in a village setting or within a monastery precinct remains unknown.

Death, Commemoration and Mortification Monastic typika sometimes give clues as to the founder’s perception of the spiritual purpose of the legislative document itself. The extent to which they do so depends, in the nature of Orthodox foundations, on the person of the founder and on the circumstances of the issuing of the typikon. Mention has already been made of the misleadingly static quality of the foundation typikon as a document for understanding the workings of a monastic community.114 Founders tended to issue typika or diatheke either as programmatic 108 110

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109 Mahr, Cypriot Passion Cycle, 61–3. I am grateful to Professor Meg Twycross for this information. Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 63; Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis Hiberniae ad Terram Sanctam, ed. M. Esposito, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 4 (Dublin, 1960), XXII, 44–5, referring to Romany in Crete. Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 124, for parallel Greek/English text of Prologue. For example, Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, 137: ‘Have also in readiness a few Lame and Blind sitting in the way’; 141: ‘Prepare the supper table’; 151: ‘Keep in readiness stools, a basin, and a towel.’ 114 Private communication from Professor Meg Twycross. See pp. 349–50.

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statements of intent – as, for example, in the case of Nikon’s typikon for the Black Mountain – or as testaments to what they had accomplished. In other cases, such as that of St Sabas, the typikon might simply be a revised or summary version of a set of rules long observed by tradition in the community. Or, as in the case of Nikon’s typikon for Roidion, or Gerasimos’ testament for St Euthymios in Jerusalem, the document might serve an immediate practical need for the regulation of a community under threat of collapse. Some typika, such as that for the refoundation of St Euthymios in Jerusalem in 1344, are concise and brief, and, because they deal largely with establishing the authority of the founder to legislate, they are very little help in reconstructing the monks’ spiritual lives or pursuits, or in providing a spiritual or theological dimension to their daily practices.115 This is not to say, in this instance, that spiritual guidance of the monks was unimportant to the author of the typikon, Gerasimos: simply, rather, that it was not the perceived concern of the document (which is in effect a testamentary disposal of his affairs) to dwell on, still less regulate, such matters. Indeed, such measure of insight into Gerasimos’ understanding of the spirituality of his community as this cursory document affords confirms the importance of good order as a precondition for a flourishing spiritual life. Gerasimos begins with a reference to John Klimakos on the need for the true philosopher to meditate on death.116 One might expect him to develop the theme to reflect on monastic life as a form of death to the world, but in fact Gerasimos’ eyes are firmly on the material concerns of his property. As he feels that death may take him at any time, he wishes to take the opportunity to record the disposition of his affairs. He goes on to explain how he came to have the charge of the small community in Jerusalem dedicated to Euthymios, and its Trapezuntine history and character. He then demands that the relationship between the handful of monks in this tiny community be ‘marked by love, pure and harmonious peace, unity of desire and will’. Anyone who disrupts this harmony should be expelled immediately; indeed, the four named monks are to be ‘as one’.117 The monastery of Euthymios had undergone considerable struggle and uncertainty, and Gerasimos’ primary concern was, as he saw it, to fulfil the bequest of the empress Anna in founding the community.118 The spiritual relationship between the monks was grounded in this history. The survival of a small monastery with no living patron in Mamluk Jerusalem depended on absolute harmony between the monks. The spiritual tone of the community was thus set by its vulnerability in the world. Even in such a pragmatic and cursory document as this, however, Gerasimos observes the conventions of the form. His opening gambit on the ever-present likelihood of death, complete with its metaphor of the corn getting close to harvest,119 is found in different forms in other typika written by founders at similar stages of their lives or of the life of their foundation. Thus, Christodoulos prefaced his typikon with an observation on the prospect of his imminent death and the consequent need to set down his rules in writing. Just as Gerasimos would later attempt to quote Basil, so Christodoulos quotes Gregory of 115 116

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Gerasimos, 1404–7. John Klimakos, Scala Paradisi, VI, PG 88: 797. As George Dennis observes, Gerasimos, 1407 n. 1, Gerasimos seems to think this was a tenet of Basil. 118 119 Gerasimos, III, 1406. For the history of the monastery, see pp. 304–5. Gerasimos, I, 1405–6.

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Nazianzus in making the conventional point about looking forward only to death. He also inserts a guarantee of his theological orthodoxy with a reference to the ‘life-giving and allholy Trinity, three persons of one nature’.120 Similarly, Neilos’ opening phrases refer to the transitory nature of human life, comparing each generation to hay that is harvested. The response of the wise man to this truth must be to find the ideal way to live a holy life, which can best be achieved by following monastic regulations.121 Neophytos, likewise, appeals to the remembrance of death as the main impulse behind the composition of his typikon, twenty-eight years after he began living as a recluse, and its revision a further twenty-seven years after that, in 1214.122 Neophytos was evidently much preoccupied with death and mortality at the time when he wrote the final version of his typikon. The final chapter, which concerns his own death, takes its tone from his observation that even the most powerful of men ends by enjoying dominion over no more than the six feet of earth in which he is buried. An obsession with the importance of his own death, notwithstanding his generic reflections on human mortality, had previously been signalled in his sermon On the Divine Sign, in which he described at immoderate length the painful experience he suffered when a rock-fall pinned his fingers to the cliff as he was digging out the latrine for the New Zion, an experience that offered him opportunities to meditate on mortality. He was to go further than this, however. In the typikon, Neophytos gave instructions to his monks for his own burial in the tomb that he had already many years earlier hacked out of the rock of the cliff-face when he constructed his cell, and in the presence of which he had therefore lived for much of his life. Inside the tomb was a coffin made of pine, cypress and cedar wood and dressed in grave clothes that Neophytos had woven himself. The dramatic reminder of death presented by the empty tomb not only underscored his own mortality but also associated him with Christ, and with the empty tomb of the Holy Sepulchre.123 The monks, however, were to live not with an empty tomb but with the constant presence of their deceased founder, for Neophytos required them to bury him in situ and to seal up the door of the cell. The Recluse’s original cell thus became his tomb chamber, ‘just as this body when alive embraced solitude as a gift of God, so likewise on expiring it would choose to maintain this state until the universal resurrection’.124 It has been suggested that in his unparalleled concern with his burial Neophytos was imitating aristocratic founders who specified their own burial within monasteries they had founded.125 For Neophytos, however, the tomb cell was not only a memorial, but the focal point of a cult, and as such it enjoyed ‘the nature of a sacred house of prayer’.126 Personal ascetic practices might also be linked to the constant remembrance of death. His biographer relates that Leontios, while a monk on Patmos, ‘in order to keep the memory of

120 122 123

124 125

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121 Christodoulos, A1, 578, citing Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio II, 47, PG 35: 456. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, I, p. 65. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, I, p. 133, and n. 7 on Coureas’ emended dating, reading ‘twenty-eight’ for ‘eight’. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIV, p. 167; see also the remarks of Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 107–8, on the symbolic significance of the types of wood. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIV, p. 168. Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika’, 117, and see her Making of a Saint, 138, and C. Mango and E. Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos and its wall paintings’, DOP 20 (1966), 129–30. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIV, p. 168.

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death his constant companion’, used to frequent the monastery’s cemetery. Leaving his cell at dawn, he would strip naked and lie down ‘as a voluntary corpse’ in a coffin on the bones of a dead monk – ‘using a heap of dead bodies in their coffins for a mattress’.127 Leontios would apparently spend the whole day here, mortifying his living flesh with the enforced reminder of what it would one day become. Examples of individual asceticism such as this will always be more evident from hagiographical sources than from narrative or regulatory texts. Leontios is also shown whipping himself with a strap through which several nails had been driven.128 Both this practice and the frequenting of the tomb are explicitly said to have been done in secret, so that other monks were unaware of how the young Leontios was mortifying his body. While this secrecy is an established motif in hagiography designed to mark out the ascetic monk from his less gifted peers, it is also the case that the individualised and formulaic nature of hagiography makes it difficult to know how widespread such practices may have been in cenobitic monasteries. The long periods of private offices and study certainly made it possible without the need for regulation. There is in fact little general evidence for specific ascetic practices in the monasteries of the Crusader States. Western visitors to Sinai were impressed by the austerity of the monks they saw, remarking on the poverty of the diet and clothing, and the prayerfulness of the monastic life, but the typika have little to say about ascetic practices beyond general exhortations to holiness and prohibitions against loose behaviour. In general, the historical traditions of lauritic and cenobitic monasticism in the Holy Land tended towards moderation in such matters.129

Work, Discipline and Demonic Possession ‘What is a monk?’ the Egyptian desert father John Kolobos was once asked. ‘A monk is work. The monk works at everything he does. That is what a monk is.’130 The anecdotal evidence of early monastic literature bears out John’s assertion of a close relationship between labour and the practice of monasticism. John Kolobos himself, like most of the monks of Lower Egypt, wove baskets and ropes from the reeds gathered from the river banks in the Nile delta.131 This type of individual craftwork practised by monks alone in their cells forms the classic picture of the desert monk of the early monasticism of the eastern Mediterranean. In the Judaean desert, Sabas would typically weave fifty palm-leaf baskets during the five days he spent alone in his cave cell every week, while Pachomios’ monks in Upper Egypt were required to weave ropes and baskets even during the daily synaxis.132 As we have already seen, these traditions were maintained or revived in the typika of Palestinian, Syrian and Cypriot monasteries from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.133 127

128 129

130 132

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Life of Leontios, XX, 54–7. The modern editor, Dimitris Tsougarakis, suggests that the cemetery was not an outdoor enclosure but rather a mortuary chapel in which bones were kept, such as is known to have been the case at St Sabas and at some monastic churches on the Greek mainland (174). Life of Leontios, XIX, 55–6. Patrich, Sabas, 206–28. There is little evidence, certainly, for the kind of excesses common in early Syrian monasticism, for which see Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, II, 28–32, 95–100, 256–306; Palmer, Monk and Mason, 81–8. 131 Apophthegmata Patrum, XXXVII, PG 65: 216. Apophthegmata Patrum, XI, PG 65: 208. Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, X, p. 94; Sancti Pachomii vita graeca, ed. F. Halkin, Subsidia Hagiographica 19 (Brussels, 1932), 15. See pp. 349–50.

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Many of the anecdotes concerning labour in early monastic literature – for example, in the Apophthegmata Patrum, in Palladius’ Lausiac History, in John Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes, in Cyril of Scythopolis’ Lives of Palestinian monks, and other similar sources – see craftwork as a function of spiritual progress. As Cassian explained, the monks of Nitria ‘practise their incessant manual labour for the sake of spiritual meditation’.134 Monks needed to work, as St Paul had done, for pragmatic reasons of selfsufficiency, but also because those who refused work were likely to find their leisure troubled by temptation.135 One of Cassian’s examples in the Institutes, Abba Paul, wove a fixed number of palm leaves every day as a form of self-discipline, even though he had no need to sell baskets for food, because his palm grove and garden provided for his needs. The form of the work itself was less important than the establishment of a rhythm of life – what Michel Foucault would call the ‘regulation of cycles of repetition’. It was this that enabled him to control his thoughts, and thus to master acedia, or spiritual torpor.136 Indeed, Cassian sees constant work as the only remedy for this listlessness, for, as he observed, a working monk was tempted only by a single demon, while an idle one was prey to innumerable demons.137 In the Basilian tradition, manual labour had a moral function in maintaining the community. Part of this function was the removal of social distinctions within the community. Heavy work was to be assigned to novices coming from a high rank in society so as to judge the extent of their humility.138 Moreover, Basil warned against the dangers to the community of a refusal by any monk to undertake the work specifically assigned to him. Such a monk destroyed the principle of obedience, which in turn threatened the existence of the community. Underlying this ruling was the assumption that work should be assigned on an individual basis to each monk in consideration of his spiritual as well as his physical state; furthermore, that the individual monk should not be in the position of making such a choice himself, lest he choose the ‘wrong’ kind of work. For example, a monk may naturally be inclined to choose work of a kind with which he is already familiar and therefore finds easy, but this will be of less benefit to him than harder and unfamiliar work.139 Nikon of the Black Mountain, while following Basil – as in so many things – on the need for monks to engage in work, warned that the work must not obstruct the singing of the offices or regular prayer.140 Both the lack of autonomy and the concern for humility as the bedrock of community found expression in the Basilian ruling that the various tasks should be undertaken by rotation among the monks. This ruling was followed by monastic reformers of the eleventh 134 136

137 138 139 140

135 Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, II, 14. Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, X, 7. Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, X, 24: in tantum probans sine opere manuum nec in loco posse monachum perdurare nec ad perfectionis culmen aliquando conscendere, ut, cum hoc fieri nequaquam necessitas victus exigeret, pro sola purgatione cordis et cogitationum soliditate ac perseverantia cellae vel acediae ipsius victoria et ecpugnatione perficeret. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (Harmondsworth, 1977), 150, describes monasteries as ‘great technicians of rhythm and regular activities’. Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, X, 23. Basil, Longer Responses 41.1, trans. A. M. Silwas, in Basil, The Asketikon of St Basil the Great (Oxford, 2005), 251–2. Basil, Shorter Responses, 117–21, trans. Silwas, in Basil, The Asketikon, 337–40. De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, 53 (XLII), citing Basil, Greater Rules, XXXVIII and Pseudo-Basil, Monastic Constitutions, V, PG 31: 1360.

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century, notably Nikon in his typikon for the Black Mountain, but also at Constantinople in the Evergetis and Mamas typika and, doubtless through them, at Makhairas.141 Aside from a nod to the Basilian principle that monks should provide their own food from the work of their hands, however, the monastic regulations show little interest in exploring the spiritual or moral values underpinning labour. For a study of the place of manual labour in the spirituality of Palestinian monasticism, however, we can turn to one of Neophytos’ panegyrics, written for the monks of the Enkleistra. As we saw in the previous chapter, Neophytos wrote three Books of Panegyrics. The first and fullest of these, comprising thirty individual panegyrics, survives in a single manuscript.142 Unlike most of his panegyrics, which are in essence hagiographical studies, this concerns the travails of a monk of St Sabas who must have been a contemporary of Neophytos. The monk in question, Gabriel, was a Georgian who entered St Sabas at an unspecified date before 1187. In imitation of the early stylites, Gabriel withdrew from the laura to occupy a pillar in the desert, at an unspecified distance from it but, as is evident from the narrative, close enough to be within shouting distance of other solitaries. On his pillar he was assaulted by demons, who, as monastic writers often warned could happen, persuaded him that they were in fact angels, and lodged in his ears and stomach. Most of Neophytos’ panegyric is a spiritual discourse for his own monks on the dangers that attend the monk who assumes greater spiritual challenges than he is able to sustain – who, in Neophytos’ phrase, spread his wings in order to fly but found he had no feathers.143 The crisis for Gabriel came when he assaulted another solitary monk, David, who, hearing Gabriel’s awful cries of agony, had realised what had happened to him and offered his help. David overpowered him and led him back to the laura, where the superior expelled Gabriel and sent him to the coenobium of St Euthymios; there he was set to work at a regime of manual labour. In the coenobium, Gabriel is assigned by the superior the job of carrying wood for the monastery bakery and kitchen. Each load, says Neophytos, was like the cargo borne by a camel on its back: ‘You could see this man every day bringing a load of wood on his shoulders hardly less than a camel’s load . . . he was in subjection, slaving away zealously in the monastery.’144 The purpose of this was clearly to rid Gabriel of the demons. In Neophytos’ view, Gabriel had transgressed the boundary of monastic discernment by failing to recognise the demons for what they were, and thus to combat them effectively. The disciplinary treatment of Gabriel appears to fit the Basilian pattern, according to which extreme spiritual need called for extreme forms of labour, and in which individual regimes of labour were to be designed for individual monks.145 Collecting and carrying wood, particularly in the Judaean desert, was physically demanding as well as being, doubtless, tedious and humiliating. However, it reinforced community hierarchy by emphasising the individual’s dependence on the command of the superior. Refusal on the part of Gabriel to co-operate with the wood-carrying regime assigned to him would, in the Basilian 141 142

143 144 145

See p. 374 Paris Bib Nat gr 1189. The panegyric in question is at ff. 15r–24v. Although a complete edition of the Book has never been made, this panegyric was edited by Delehaye, in his ‘Saints de Chypre’, and see 279–97 for remarks on the Book as a whole. Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, I–XVI, 162–70. Neophytos, Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi, in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, XVI–XVIII, 171–3. Basil, Shorter Responses, 117, trans. Silwas, in Basil, The Asketikon, 337.

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view, have threatened the spiritual health of the laura. The discipline assigned to Gabriel, moreover, emphasised his demotion from self-willed solitary to coenobium monk. Within the coenobium, arbitrary patterns of labour were a means of reminding the monk of the loss of his individuality; thus, at Patmos, Abbot Theoktistos gave monks high responsibility followed by menial duties.146 There were established connections in the patristic tradition between monastic discipline, humility and kitchen work. Pachomios, according to the First Sahidic Life, took on himself the job of general kitchen servant and cook for the first community that he founded. These connections are echoed in the early Palestinian tradition, with which Neophytos was almost certainly familiar. According to Cyril of Scythopolis, John the Hesychast, wishing to hide his real identity as a bishop when he entered the laura of St Sabas, welcomed the job of kitchen servant. Similarly Kyriacos, when turned away from St Euthymios because of his youth, proved himself as a monk by chopping wood and carrying water for the kitchen. In these cases, volunteering for low-status manual labour associated with the kitchen was a means of proving oneself in the coenobium. The story of Gabriel, however, links manual labour explicitly to the problem of demonic possession. I have already mentioned the dictum of Cassian that work lessened the opportunities for demons to break down a monk’s defences.147 The remedy devised for Gabriel was based on the principle that the possessed monk could be cured by being set to work at a task that required negligible mental activity, but that was sufficiently physically demanding to exhaust the body, thus deadening the mind to dangerous thoughts while at the same time reducing the pull of acedia. In the early Egyptian monastic tradition, a further connection tied manual labour concerned with kitchen and bakery to demonic possession. In Palladius’ Lausiac History, a nun at Tabennisi pretends to be possessed by demons so that she can be assigned the most menial of kitchen work – serving the food and clearing plates afterwards. The nun is continually maltreated and mocked by the others for her apparent affliction and for her willingness to carry out humble work. An anchorite, told about the nun in a vision, visits the convent and tells the nuns that she whom they think is the lowest of them all is in fact their spiritual mother (ammas). As in Gabriel’s story, a menial form of manual labour becomes a path to spiritual growth.148 Neophytos wrote his account of the would-be stylite Gabriel for his own monks. The panegyrics were written as homilies for the celebration of liturgical feasts, and most of them therefore conform quite readily to saints’ feasts or the consecration of churches. The account of Gabriel stands apart in this respect, since the monk is used by Neophytos as an anti-model of the anchoritic monk. Gabriel’s difficulty arises because of his inability, due to 146 147

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Life of Leontios, XX–XXI, 56–9. See p. 425. But the Egyptian tradition was divided on this point: as against Cassian’s insistence that monks practise incessant manual labour for the sake of spiritual meditation, we must set the complaint of Theodore of Pheme, Apophthegmata Patrum, PG 65: 189: ‘When I was in Scete, the work of our soul was our real job and our craftwork we regarded as a sideline. But now the work of the soul has become the sideline and the craftwork has become the real job’, and the anecdote told by John Moschos, Pratum spirituale, LV, 3, of the devil appearing to a group of monks carrying hoes and baskets, to serve as a distraction to make them careless in glorifying God. Palladius, History Lausiaca, XXXIV. The closest parallel to Neophytos’ story, however, occurs in a Latin source, Gerard of Nazareth’s De conversatione servorum Dei. Here Ursus, a solitary on the Black Mountain, enters the convent at Jubin when he is unable to continue battling the demons who have been troubling him; at Jubin, he embarks on manual labour for the kitchen and bakery before eventually becoming sacristan. The surviving fragments of Gerard’s De conversatione, preserved only in vol. 6 of M. Illyricus Flacius, Ecclesiastica historia (Centuria) were edited by Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, esp. 71–7.

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spiritual unreadiness, to discern demons from angels. The distinction between true and false also provided Neophytos with material for another panegyric on a stylite and demonic possession, in his account of the life of St Alypios. Whereas the case of Alypios, which shows a monastic founder achieving the overthrow of demons because of his varied experience of anchoritism, points to Neophytos himself as an exemplar, that of Gabriel carries warnings for the monks of the Enkleistra to observe the discipline of their hegoumen. Although Neophytos himself appears to have had no direct experience of demons – and we can be sure that he would have told us if he had – the effect of the two panegyrics, when considered together, or read within the same liturgical season, is clearly one of contrast between authority and obedience.149 Authority over monks is also linked to authority over demons in the Life of Leontios. The hagiographer, Theodosios Goudelis, presents his subject as a figure of sometimes awful aspect, especially in regard to the disciplining of wayward or recalcitrant monks. Theodosios uses an episode in which an uninhabited island owned by the monastery and used to pasture its livestock is occupied by demonic spirits to illustrate the punishment of two different monks by the same means. A monk who had been complaining to Leontios about the lack of provision for new sandals at the monastery was sent to the island for the annual task of slaughtering the beasts for meat. Arriving by boat, he found himself attacked by a vicious hailstorm, even though the day was fine, and was forced to retreat with the job left undone. Clearly demonic spirits were at work on the island. Another monk volunteered to take his place, trusting boldly in the protection offered by the psalter that he carried. He too found it impossible to deal with the demonic spirits. As Theodosios explained, the first monk had been punished for rebelliousness against the hegoumen, the second for pride in thinking he could succeed where the first had failed.150 The humiliation of the rebellious monk, however, indicates that Leontios, as hegoumen, had some kind of authority over the demonic spirits that he presumably knew occupied the island. On one occasion Leontios sought to underplay his own discipline. The monk who appears to have been his spiritual son, Antonios, was puzzled to see Leontios rebuke some monks for a fault and then immediately afterwards sing the canon of the liturgy as though the incident had not disturbed his equilibrium at all; when he asked him how he could participate in the office while anger was still in his heart, the abbot told him that while the rebuke was genuine, the anger was feigned to make the point more forcefully.151 As patriarch of Jerusalem, however, Leontios’ rebukes of immoral monks had far greater consequences. Monks of the patriarchal metochion in Cyprus who openly refused to give up their mistresses on the grounds that ‘custom prevails over both law and the canons’ suffered blindness or death; on the other hand, a monk who acknowledged his fault and agreed to live a celibate life was ‘cured’ of his spiritual malaise.152 Leontios’ capacity for discernment, which is seen at its most spectacular in the rooting out of demons, acts as the basis for his spiritual fatherhood of the community. The authority 149

150 152

Neophytos’ Panegyric XXII on Alypios was edited by Hippolyte Delehaye, Les saints stylites, Subsidia Hagiographica 14 (Brussels, 1923), 188–94. Book I of the panegyrics was designed to be read on feast-days in the four-month period between September and December: Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, 279–80. 151 Life of Leontios, XL–XLIII, 76–83. Life of Leontios, LIV–LV, 94–5. Life of Leontios, LXXI, LXXIV–LXXV, 114–15, 118–21.

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that enables the hegoumen to discern, and even to deploy demonic spirits, also enables him to discern and treat the sinfulness of penitent monks. Theodosios Goudelis draws here on the model provided by Symeon the New Theologian. The imagery of sin as a curable disease, deployed by Theodosios in order to demonstrate his subject’s spiritual authority, was expressed by Symeon in the context of the practice of confession: ‘Let us run to the spiritual physician, and by means of confession vomit out the poison of sin, spitting out its venom. As an antidote let us eagerly accept from him the penances given in response to our repentance.’153 This imagery proved influential among eleventh-century monastic reformers. The typikon of St Mamas, which obliged all monks to confess to their superior, explained that foul inner thoughts and sinful inclinations, while still unconfessed, infected the whole community, but that, once confessed to a superior, they could be healed just as a hidden wound once shown could be healed by the touch of a physician.154 Confession could only be made to the abbot, who alone had authority to act as healer. This conviction that the spiritual health of the community was the responsibility of the abbot was shared by Neophytos, who ruled that monks’ confessions should be made only to the Recluse, or to someone appointed by him.155 The Evergetis typikon similarly uses the imagery of sickness and health in insisting that the spiritual health of the community depends on that of the ‘doctor’, in other words the confessor. Timothy, the author of the Evergetis typikon, also introduces the image of the safe harbour in connection with confession.156 In the typika of the monasteries in the Crusader States, this is articulated most clearly in Neilos’ typikon for Makhairas. The monk, Neilos explains, should seek confession and the resultant penance as a safe haven from the storms of life. Neilos, however, also deploys the metaphor of spiritual health, calling monks who neglect to confess their sins the rotten limbs of the tree. Just as a sick man who hides from a doctor will not recover, so the monk who refuses to confess cannot acquire spiritual health.157

Coenobium, Laura and Anchoresis The story of Gabriel the Stylite touches on another critical issue for Neophytos: the relationship between different forms of monastic life. Most contemporary readings of the demons that troubled Gabriel would see them as psychological phenomena. If we follow the link that Cassian established between labour and demonic possession, we might see the phenomenon in the context of his acedia, which can be translated as spiritual torpor. In Institute X, Cassian sees acedia as a spiritual malady, the effect of which is to persuade the monk to leave the coenobium for a solitary life, in the expectation that leaving one’s fellow monks will relieve one’s listlessness. But anchoresis only makes the malady worse, and the monk – like Gabriel on his pillar – is unable to remain in his cell. Eventually, he runs the risk of becoming entangled, ‘as though bound in the coils of a serpent’, in secular life. The only 153

154 157

I. Hausherr, ed., Un grand mystique byzantin. Vie de Syméon le Nouveau Théologien, Orientalia Christiana XII (Rome, 1928), 52–7. On Symeon, see H. Turner, Symeon the New Theologian and Spiritual Fatherhood (Leiden, 1990). For an examination of the origins of medical imagery in the context of sin, see R. J. Barringer, ‘Ecclesiastical Penance in the Church of Constantinople: A Study of the Hagiographical Evidence to 983 AD’, unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis, 1979. 155 156 Mamas, XXIX, 1014. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXI, pp. 153–4. Evergetis, VII, 477–8. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LI–LII, pp. 83–4.

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way to guard against this, Cassian argues, is to remain in the communal life and work with one’s hands.158 Naturally, this argument rests on the rhetorical point that Cassian wants to make about the virtues of cenobitism. As we have seen, the Palestinian laura tradition, which differed from both Egyptian cenobitism and from the type of ‘communal anchoritism’ at Skete and Nitria, rested on the symbiosis between solitary life and community. Solitude, however, was regarded as the highest prize, to which monks aspired. In the litany of Palestinian desert monks, all the founders of whom biographies were written – Chariton, Euthymios, Theoktistos, Sabas, Theodosios, Kyriakos, John the Hesychast, Abraamios – achieved anchoresis. Solitude, moreover, continued to be particularly associated with the practice of monasticism in Palestine in the period covered by this study. Greek Orthodox pilgrims visited laurae where the practice of solitude was still cultivated. Phocas, for example, speaks admiringly of ‘sanctified men, one of whom was a standard-bearer who spoke directly with God’ at the laura of Choziba in the wadi Qilt.159 Phocas, who visited the Holy Land at the time when Neophytos’ Gabriel was active at St Sabas, also sought out stylites and anchorites. One of these, a Georgian, occupied a site near the monastery of St John Chrysostom by the Jordan, having migrated there from the region of Antioch; another Georgian lived in the ruins of the monastery of St Gerasimos, also by the Jordan.160 Stylitism, however, was a tradition ‘native’ to north Syria and Asia Minor rather than the Holy Land. It is significant that most of the stylites mentioned in pilgrimage accounts, as well as Neophytos’ Gabriel, were Georgians. The connection between Georgian monasticism and the practice of stylitism can be traced to the example of Symeon the Wonderworker, who attracted crowds of pilgrims from Georgia in c. 557. It may have been the revival of the Georgian presence in the region of Antioch in the eleventh century that also brought about a revival of the practice of stylitism in the region. Georgian monks at the monastery of St Symeon the Wonderworker attempted to re-use the pillar of Symeon, which was the physical centre of the monastery, in the eleventh century, to the outrage of the Greek-speaking monks. The Life of George the Athonite suggests that the outrage was directed against the impropriety of ascending the column of the saint.161 However, Leontios of Patmos’ biographer reported, apparently without thinking it remarkable, that the abbot, trying to escape the burdens of office, was seriously considering re-using the column of Daniel the Stylite near Constantinople, which had similarly become the centrepiece of a monastery.162 It may therefore be that the Greek suspicion of Georgian practices at St Symeon was a reflection of the desuetude into which stylitism had fallen in Antioch since Symeon’s own day. The trope of the ‘foreigner’ who went to the Holy Land specifically to profess solitary monasticism is a further sign of the revival of early monastic traditions. Most of the Judaean desert founders – Chariton, Euthymios, Sabas, Theodosios – as well as a significant number 158 160

161

159 Cassian, De Institutis coenobiorum, X, 2. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 328; PG 133: 949. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 331; PG 133: 952–3. The possibility surely exists that either of these anonymous Georgians may be identified with Neophytos’ Gabriel, though if this were the case either he must have subsequently moved further south from the location by the Jordan to enter St Sabas and set up as a stylite near the Kidron valley, or Neophytos’ account took liberties with geography. Given the prevalence of stylitism in the Georgian monastic tradition, it is more probable that these were different monks. 162 Vie de George l’Hagiorite. Life of Leontios, XXXVII, 74–5.

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of the monks themselves, were from Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia or the West. Although statistically the number of such exiles among the practising monks in the crusader period was probably small, the trope has left its mark in the source material. One of the earliest signs of this revival occurs in the Life of Lazaros of Mt Galesion. Lazaros, brought up in his uncle’s monastery, was inspired by the example of Abraham to leave his homeland for the Holy Land, where he first pursued anchoresis.163 The rhetoric of pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to pursue solitude comes, in the eleventh century, to be couched in terms of flight.164 Christodoulos makes explicit use of the motif in the autobiographical section at the beginning of his typikon for Patmos: ‘Desire for a more complete isolation possessed me and drove me from place to place. To Palestine I went, desiring to venerate the holy steps of our Lord, but most of all “to flee like a sparrow”, choosing, like those of old, “to lodge in the wilderness”’.165 Neophytos’ experience, though expressed in less violently emotional terms than Christodoulos’, was similar: ‘a tranquil desire came to trouble me by night and day . . . I made my way to the holy places of Jerusalem, in part for the sake of pilgrimage and also lest within these deserts I might chance upon a solitary and eremitical man and might then follow him.’166 As Catia Galatariotou has observed, Neophytos’ flight to the Holy Land was only one stage in the development of a monastic identity characterised by flight from the world. Moreover, the monastic saints about whom Neophytos wrote panegyrics – Sabas, Nicholas, Gennadios, Andronikos and Athanasia – all went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.167 Leontios of Patmos, whose desire to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was frustrated in his youth, eventually accomplished the goal as patriarch in 1177–8.168 The hagiographical motif of flight as a developmental stage in monasticism carries with it an assumption that the monk could by his own initiative infuse a degree of fluidity into a monastic career. Thus Neophytos abandons his hard-won place in the coenobium of St John Koutsovendis in favour of the eremitical life in the Holy Land; subsequently, frustrated in his desire to join the laura at Mt Latros, he founds the Enkleistra. Both Lazaros and Christodoulos left the laura of St Sabas to found their own very different communities – although, of course, these departures are presented by Gregory the Cellarer and Christodoulos himself as involuntary acts of flight due to Muslim threats to monasticism in the Holy Land. In comparison with his contemporary Leontios, however, Neophytos was a model of stability. An initial profession in a monastery on the outskirts of Constantinople was abandoned in favour of the life of a solitary as a ‘holy fool’ in the city; then, having attached himself for a while to a monastic master, the former bishop of Tiberias, Leontios re-entered cenobitic life as a monk at St John on Patmos. When confronted with the possibility that he might become hegoumen, Leontios’ first thought was to flee the coenobium and become a stylite in Constantinople.169 Although, as it happened, he was to stay at Patmos as 163 164 165

166 168 169

Life of Lazaros, IV, 80. E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993), 93–5, on this motif in hagiography more generally. Christodoulos, A3, 579. On the same theme in Western monasticism of the twelfth century, see Jotischky, Perfection of Solitude. 167 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IV, p. 136. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 102–3. Life of Leontios, XVII, LXXX–LXXXVIII, 53, 127–39. Life of Leontios, VII–IX, X, XVII–XVIII, XXXVII, 38–43, 44–5, 50–3, 74–5.

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hegoumen from 1157 until his elevation to the patriarchal throne of Jerusalem in 1176, the early stages of his career are characterised by abrupt and apparently wilful changes of mind. Such unpredictability and instability might, in the Western Benedictine tradition, have incurred the charge of being a ‘gyrovague’. Even in the Orthodox milieu not all monastic thinkers would have approved. Nikon of the Black Mountain, most of whose monastic career was dedicated to the maintenance of cenobitic life in the region of Antioch, thought that a monk once professed was justified in leaving his community only if the communal life there was scandalous; any other reason was a mark of his own instability.170 Although Leontios was acting within the norms of Orthodox monasticism, at least as represented in hagiographical discourse, such wilfulness was clearly not always regarded in a positive light. Leontios’ biographer, while recounting his subject’s changes of monastic state, paradoxically holds up as a model of rebellious behaviour the monk Athanasios, who had left Patmos in order to pursue anchoresis in Crete.171 Both Neophytos and Phocas explicitly saw the Holy Land not only as a monastic sanctuary but also as a place where the aspirant could be trained in the solitary life. Neophytos was apparently disappointed in his expectations, despite having searched in the right places: first, the wildernesses of the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and Mt Tabor, then, after visiting Jerusalem, the desert of Souka (the location of the monastery of St Chariton), the Kidron valley, the wadi Qilt and the flat desert by the Jordan. As we shall see, there are good grounds for believing that he knew the cave monastery of St Theoktistos in the Judaean desert.172 Phocas, on the other hand, struck lucky with the lion-taming Georgian monk whom he met at St Gerasimos by the Jordan, and whom he singles out for praise for having helped him spiritually.173 The motif of paideia – ‘training’ – was also an essential feature of early Palestinian monasticism. Younger, less experienced monks learned from those who had already been tested in the solitary life. Discipleship often took the form of joining the more experienced monks for periods of solitude in the desert; thus, Euthymios, ‘an excellent trainer’, took Sabas and Domitian with him to the desert south of the Dead Sea, while Sabas himself later took his disciple Agapetos on his journey north along the Jordan, and Kyriakos took a disciple into the desert in his old age.174 This ideal evidently continued after the period of Arab invasions: in the early ninth century Michael the Synkellos, as a monk of St Sabas, was asked to take on as disciples the Graptoi brothers.175 Such measures were taken to prevent exactly what was to happen to Gabriel. Sabas would only accept into his laura in the first place monks who had proven themselves in the cenobitic life; he himself had served his apprenticeship for ten years under Theoktistos in the coenobium before progressing to laura monasticism.176 The demotion from laura to coenobium suffered by Gabriel was itself a reflection of the relationship that had existed 170

171

172 174 175 176

De Clercq, Les textes juridiques, ch. 6. Nikon cites c. 41 of the Council of Trullo, which permitted monks who had spent three years in a coenobium to live in a hermitage instead, but on condition that they remain there. Life of Leontios, XLIX, 88–9; P. Magdalino, ‘The Byzantine holy man in the twelfth century’, in S. Hackel, ed., The Byzantine Saint: University of Birmingham 14th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (London, 1981), 51–66. 173 See p. 500. John Phocas, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 330–1; PG 133: 952–3. Vita Sabae, XI, XXIV, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 94–5, 107–8, Vita Kyriaki, X, ibid., 228. Life of Michael the Synkellos, 53–5. Vita Sabae, VII, X, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 90–1, 93; Vita Kyriaki, VIII–X, ibid., 227–8.

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between the monasteries in the fifth century. A similar expulsion story occurs in Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of Sabas, when a monk who castrates himself to avoid temptation by the demon of lust is sent back to the coenobium.177 This early relationship between laura and coenobium, in which the function of the coenobium is not only to prepare monks for the solitary life, but also to receive back those who had failed or encountered a crisis in the laura, was therefore either still in place or had been revived by the twelfth century. In fact, we can place the revival, if revival it was, rather earlier. In the Life of Lazaros of Mt Galesion, describing events at the beginning of the eleventh century, Lazaros was disciplined by demotion from the laura of St Sabas to the coenobium of St Euthymios for disobeying his superior by insisting on spending Lent fasting in solitude in the desert. This Lenten practice was of course a conscious imitation of the custom adopted by Euthymios and followed by Sabas.178 As the leader of his own communities, Lazaros exercised discernment in permitting monks whom he regarded as ready for such a step to imitate his own solitude. As his most recent historian, Richard Greenfield, has observed, Lazaros attempted to create a monastic environment in which the principle of maintaining ‘the core ideals of cenobitic monasticism’ did not remove from monks the possibility of pursuing an individual spiritual experience of the monastic life.179 Other historians have seen this fluidity between the states of cenobitism and solitude as characteristic of the reforming period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Byzantine monasticism.180 Of course, it was not universal: Nikon ruled against the ‘kelliotic’ practices that had evidently taken root among the monks at Roidion at the end of the eleventh century.181 Moreover, where it was permitted, such fluidity was observed on certain terms. Lazaros might permit stylitism, but only to those to whom he gave permission – just as, in the Basilian tradition, discipline was individual to the monk, so also was the degree of latitude in style of living. Lazaros directed how solitaries under his supervision were to live. When the monk Kerykos was allowed to live on his own pillar some distance from the coenobium, he was assigned an ascetic regime; the pillar was to have no shelter; he was to wear neither hat nor shoes; his diet excluded wine, oil, cheese, eggs and fish.182 Moreover, the possibility of solitude for some monks did not, in theory, dilute the quality of cenobitism for the others. Thus private acts of worship, private eating and ownership of private property were all prohibited. A monk who kept a folding table in his cell for private study was chastised; the use of lamps in cells for reading at night was discouraged; even private veneration of icons in cells was prohibited.183 Another former Sabaite monk, the younger contemporary of Lazaros, Christodoulos, applied similar lessons from the laura to his own foundations. Having experimented with the export of lauritic monasticism to Asia Minor at Mt Latros, however, Christodoulos adopted a sharper distinction between cenobitic and solitary at Patmos. At Mt Latros, there was a conscious attempt to recreate Palestinian laura monasticism: ‘Elsewhere, a considerable body could be seen, at once separate and together, maintaining, I may say, a laura, in the ancient tradition of the fathers: together each Sunday, to perform the liturgy 177 179 180

181

178 Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XLI, 131. Life of Lazaros, XVII, 97. Greenfield in Life of Lazaros, 24. See for example Morris, Monks and Laymen, 40–2; A. Kazhdan and A. W. Epstein, Change in Byzantine Society in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley, 1985), 87–8. 182 183 Roidion, A1, 430. Life of Lazaros, CLX, 251. Life of Lazaros, CXLVIII, CXXXVIII, 234, 224–5.

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and exchange edifying conversation, thereafter returning to their cells, to devote the six days of the week to solitary contemplation with psalm-singing and handiwork.’184 Yet this evocation of the ‘ancient tradition of the fathers’ is characterised by Christodoulos as a ‘[triumph] of cenobitic discipline . . . all was dignity, freedom from worldly cares, poverty, virtue, saintliness and the crowning virtue of all, humility’.185 For Christodoulos, then, not only the type of monasticism but also the language he uses to describe it reveal a blurring of the distinctions between cenobitism in the traditional Basilian sense and lauritic monasticism. On Patmos, however, his ideas about the relationship between cenobitism and solitude sharpened. There was now no provision for a lauritic life; instead, those who wanted solitude and who were judged worthy by the abbot were to live in individual cells in a cave or cliff.186 It is difficult to know what to make of this change of attitude. Landscape probably played a part, for, although, as Christodoulos observed, the island of Patmos offered plenty of scope for solitary cave-dwelling in the cliffs, it was less suitable for a laura. However, the reluctance to establish a laura on Patmos also betrays Christodoulos’ desire to maintain absolute control of monastic life on the island. This was easy enough to accomplish when supervising solitaries, but the presence of a laura would have established a different set of relationships between monks. The language that Christodoulos uses in describing the laurainspired foundation on Mt Latros is one of community and equality among the lauradwellers, whereas on Patmos Christodoulos was, by imperial grant, the sole authority on the island. On this point, comparison with Sabas is instructive. As hegoumen of the Great Laura, Sabas had to restrain one of his monks, James of Jerusalem, from founding his own laura in the same desert. Sabas’ critical advice to James might be read as jealousy of his position and refusal to permit the foundation of another laura that might come to rival his own. Sabas’ biographer Cyril of Scythopolis, naturally, has a different interpretation, namely that James’ desire to found a new laura was motivated by vanity and pride, by the human wish to create and become master of one’s own lived environment. Such a desire ran contrary to monasticism, and signified that the monk was not ready for leadership.187 How did one know when a monk was ready for such a step? Experience of anchoresis seems to have been one such test in the Palestinian tradition. Thus, the Palestinian solitary Neophytos, after settling in Cyprus, gathers disciples, and a cenobitic community emerges. His namesake, the Cypriot Neophytos the Recluse, was prevailed upon to take on a disciple only after he had spent eleven years in anchoresis in his cave cell.188 Neophytos’ relationship with his monks, although similar in some points to that of Lazaros at Mt Galesion, offers a particularly complex example of the tensions between cenobitic and anchoritic states in Orthodox monasticism. In the first place, Neophytos is at pains to emphasise his extreme reluctance to be ordained and take a disciple; then, after that has been conceded, to enlarge the community to twenty-five, as had evidently been proposed by some of his monks and notable laymen in the diocese. The maximum number 184 186

187 188

185 Christodoulos, A4, 580. Christodoulos, A4, 580. Christodoulos, A23, 591. Note the similarity here with the Rule of Neilos for Makhairas, where solitaries were permitted, but only outside the physical environment of the monastery itself: Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CLII, pp. 119–20. Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, XXXIX, 129–30. As suggested above, pp. 342–3, this tendency may reflect the cenobitism of Cypriot bishops of the second half of the twelfth century.

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to which he eventually agreed, eighteen, was a compromise. Second, it is clear that Neophytos, having experienced cenobitism in his youth, regarded it with ambivalence. Although he acknowledged cenobitic communities as constituting a valid path to salvation, he also saw them as potentially destructive of contemplation: ‘[the] cohabitation of the many, the uncultivated, the envious, the insubordinate and the grumblers begets many commotions and scandals’.189 Neophytos’ removal to the New Zion, the cell higher up the cliff, emphasises his desire to maintain physical separation as the community increased in size. He discouraged access to the New Zion by the monks: ‘not everyone so wishing should ascend unhindered to the Upper Hermitage, so that tumult and confusion might not take place within it as it does within the Lower Hermitage’.190 This relationship, moreover, was consciously constructed by Neophytos as a model for the community to follow in posterity. The Enkleistra was grounded spiritually in the person of ‘the Recluse’ who directed the community from the cave cell. Although, as far as we know, Neophytos himself was the only head of the Enkleistra to occupy the role of Recluse, his typikon leaves no doubt that he intended his successors to follow the model he had established. Although he nominates his immediate successor, subsequent Recluses are to be elected from and by the community of the Enkleistra. The Recluse should simply be someone who has not intrigued to secure the position, but who is judged worthy of the office. The Recluse is explicitly marked out as an imitator of the prophets John the Baptist and Elijah, and of the Egyptian and Palestinian exemplars Anthony, Euthymios and Onuphrios. Neophytos also mentions as exemplars, though without naming them individually, ‘[the] holy men shining forth on the pillars’.191 He appears thus to identify, and indeed equate, his position of Recluse with the practice of stylitism. As we have seen, Neophytos had ample opportunity to see stylites in the Holy Land, and the practice is well attested in Constantinople during his lifetime.192 Moreover, the evidence of Phocas, who describes as a stylite an anchorite who does not appear to have lived on a pillar at all, but in the ruins of St Gerasimos, suggests that the language of monastic discourse was loose enough to incorporate into the general spiritual category of ‘stylites’ monks who were simply recluses.193 Solitude was a prize to be won, but it had to be burnished. The task of the recluse was to prepare himself for death through contemplation and detachment. Only thus could he attain the authority needed to act as spiritual father to the monks. He was to occupy himself with reciting the psalms, with prayer and reading; only the essential craftwork should be done. Moreover, he was to cultivate detachment not only by physical removal from the community, but also by accepting, even inviting, oblivion. Neophytos recalls, for example, how his presence was often forgotten by the community during feast-days.194 Especially after his 189 191 192

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190 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IX, p. 140. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, p. 149. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XIV, p. 147. The chroniclers of the Fourth Crusade, Robert of Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, XCII, ed. P. Lauer (Paris, 1924), 89, and Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, XXI, PL 212: 249, describe stylites in the capital, and Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. J.-L. van Dieten (Berlin, 1974), I, 1, describes the emperor gathering ‘barefoot monks, those who sleep on the ground and those elevated high above the ground on columns’ to pray for the empire. Note the observation of Morris, Monks and Laymen, 212–13, to the effect that the category of stylite might be symbolic as well as real, and that many forms of reclusiveness might be considered stylitism. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 104, tentatively suggests that Neophytos saw himself as a stylite equivalent, but there are grounds for going further than she does in her analysis. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, pp. 148–9.

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removal higher up the cliff to the New Zion, it must have been much more difficult in practical terms for Neophytos to direct the running of the Enkleistra from his cave cell than it had been for Lazaros from his pillar. Yet his insistence – fruitless, as it turned out – that the monastery be governed after his death by another Recluse demonstrates that he intended anchoresis to remain not only at the heart of the community, but its guarantee of monastic integrity. Even his original cell behind the church, abandoned in 1197 when Neophytos withdrew to New Zion, was to reinforce this function, by serving as the founder’s burial place. Evidently, by the time he came to revise the Rule in 1214, attempts had already been made by other monks to occupy this cell. Neophytos took their failure to establish themselves there as proof of the holy character of this cell: ‘through the holy and august icons depicted within it [it] maintains in due measure the nature of a sacred house of prayer’. Any ‘brazen fellow’ who wanted to occupy the cell after Neophytos’ burial there would be doing something ‘unholy and repulsive’.195

Textual and Visual Models of Monastic Spirituality Neophytos’ preoccupation with anchoresis as the directive principle of the monastic life can also be seen in his writing. As we shall see, the importance of Neophytos for the study of Orthodox monasticism in the Crusader States lies in large measure in his role as an original composer of hagiography and pastoral advice.196 There are close correspondences between the ways in which Neophytos described the monastic experiences of his biographical subjects and the discourse he adopted in his autobiographical writing. Nowhere is this more striking than in his Lives of two anchoritic monks, Alypios and Hilarion. Whereas other biographical subjects, notably Sabas, resonate with Neophytos’ own experiences because of the obvious connections with the Holy Land, Alypios’ monastic career was spent in the environs of Constantinople. Nevertheless, Alypios, as a stylite, provided Neophytos with a narrative of anchoritic perfection. Having tried in vain to occupy a mountain site near Adrianople, only to be frustrated by the machinations of the bishop, he lived in a cell for two years, before fleeing the crowds who pursued him, on account of his fame as an anchorite, in order to occupy a column. Moreover, his anchoresis continued to be dynamic and developmental: although he initially lived in a cage on top of the column, he demolished this as a challenge to the demons against whom he continually battled.197 Like Neophytos – and, indeed, Lazaros of Mt Galesion – Alypios was also a monastic founder, who continued to direct his cenobitic community even while pursuing his own anchoresis. Moreover, Alypios’ relationship with his mother, who pleaded with her son to modify his ascetic practices, might be read in reference to Neophytos’ own rejection of his family and in pursuit of monastic perfection in his youth: indeed, of the horror of the social networks that were inseparable from lay life expressed in his typikon.198 The career of Hilarion likewise provided Neophytos with aspirational parallels to his own experience. Hilarion’s 195 197 198

196 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIV, p. 168. See pp. 481–4, 489–91. Sancti Alypii stylitae, XIV, edited by Delehaye in his Les saints stylites, 158–9. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, V, 134–5. Note, however, that Neophytos’ Life of Alypios, in departing from both the oldest and Metaphrastean Lives, does not deploy all possible such resources: Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 27–8.

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flight from the Holy Land to escape the crowds generated by his reputation as an ascetic and miracle-worker provided the kind of model that Neophytos himself deployed in his description of his own development as a recluse. Hilarion was pestered by ‘the whole of Palestine’, and was subsequently forced to move from one location to another to escape the crowds, before eventually settling, like Neophytos himself, on a mountain near Paphos. Moreover, just as Hilarion’s own monks in Palestine were among his worst persecutors, trying to force him to remain with them by barricading the monastery so that he could not escape, so Neophytos complained about the distractions and tumult caused by his monks.199 The artistic as well as the literary evidence of hagiographical subjects indicates that a preoccupation with and admiration for anchoresis lay at the heart of Orthodox monasticism in the Crusader States. Surviving wall paintings in monastic churches in the Holy Land, for example, emphasise and complement textual hagiographies. At Bethlehem, where there was an Orthodox monastic community in the twelfth century, the column paintings in the nave of the church of the Nativity include images of Onuphrios, Sabas, Euthymios, Makarios and Anthony, as well as the prototypes of the anchoritic life, Elijah and John the Baptist. At the cave monastery of St Theoktistos, the twelfth-century paintings in the oratory include images of Jesus with the Judaean desert founders Sabas and Gerasimos, while the Sabaite monk John of Damascus and Euthymios appear in painted medallions or niches.200 Although there do not seem to have been pillar-dwellers in Cyprus in the twelfth century, stylites were well represented in the monastic art of the island. Symeon the Stylite was depicted in the frescoes painted at the monastery of Koutsovendis (1110–18), where Neophytos had first professed; he was also shown at the monasteries of Asinou, St Nicholas in Kakopetria, Lagoudera, Kalogrea and St John Lampadistes in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries: at Lagoudera paired with Symeon the Wonderworker, at Kalogrea with Daniel the Stylite and at Kakopetria with Alypios. The Judaean desert monks Kyriakos, Sabas and Chariton were depicted together with Hilarion at Lagoudera (1192), while Onuphrios appears just below Symeon the Stylite on a nave column at Asinou, and in the same tiny church the images of Theodosios the Coenobiarch, Zosimos and Mary the Egyptian, Arsenios, Ephraim the Syrian, Hilarion, Andronikos, Kyriakos, Anthony, Euthymios and Sabas are also part of the initial decoration of 1105–6.201 The presence of the Judaean desert monks alongside Egyptian monks further supports the connection already established from manuscript evidence between this early twelfth-century Cypriot foundation and the Holy Land. At the monastery of St John on Patmos, a new decorative programme in the refectory dating probably to c. 1176–80 included a cycle featuring desert fathers. Hilarion, Chariton, Euthymios and a fourth (now unknown) founder are shown on the west wall.202 This cycle takes its place alongside narrative cycles illustrating the eucharist, the Passion, and church councils. In the thirteenth century, additional narrative 199 200

201 202

Jerome, Vita Hilarionis, XXX, PL 23: 44–5; Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, pp. 148–9. G. Kühnel, Wall Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Berlin, 1988), 186; G.Kühnel, ‘Wiederentdeckte monastische Malereien der Kreuzfahrerzeit in der Judaischen Wuste’, RQ 79 (1984), 163–88. The image of John of Damascus compares closely with that in Jerusalem Taphou 14, f. 92. Stylianou and Stylianou, Painted Churches, 114–41. E. Kollias, ‘Wall paintings’, in A. Kominis, ed., Patmos, Treasures of the Monastery (Athens, 2005), 65, figs. 28, 29.

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scenes were added in the drums of a blind apse in the west wall to complement the figures of the monks. These demonstrate familiarity not only with the desert fathers as exemplary figures in the liturgical calendar, but also with textually transmitted episodes from their lives and even with legendary material. Euthymios, for example, is shown experiencing visions of the a dying righteous man and a dying sinner. In the former, which can still be clearly read, the saint sits on the left side of the composition, gesturing towards the reclining man, who, on his deathbed, is supported by angels and a nimbed figure holding a lyre and bow – presumably King David.203 The scene of the dying sinner, unfortunately, is too heavily damaged to be read. These episodes are not recorded in Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of Euthymios. Are they perhaps a misreading of the story of the Saracen Terebon, who has a vision in which Euthymios appears to him and promises that he can heal him of leprosy?204 Illuminated manuscripts from Palestinian and Cypriot monasteries show a similar interest in the desert fathers. A menologion of 1055/6 belonging to the monastery of Chariton, now surviving in six volumes, portrays Symeon on his pillar behind a grille in the same iconographical tradition that would be followed in the Cypriot paintings.205 Likewise, a late twelfth-century menaion, Jerusalem Sabas 63/208, shows Symeon the Stylite with forty holy women, as the illumination for the month of September. Given that most menologia and menaia offered images of at most only a few saints for each month, the choice of saint to represent is indicative of emphasis aimed at by artists and patrons. Barocci 230 also portrays the Palestinian monk Kyriakos in his cell. In this curious image, Kyriakos, a monk of Chariton and an anchorite, appears in a rectangular box-like structure with an opening to reveal his head and shoulders. In the same menologion a different strategy is adopted for the representation of saints for January. Here, the saints for the first half of the month are all shown on a single full-page miniature in three rows. Among the ten feasts for this halfmonth, five are monastic saints. Thus Paul, the mythical anchorite of the Thebaid, is shown conversing with Anthony, while Theodosios the Coenobiarch and John ‘the Hut Dweller’ are also shown in monastic costume. The feast of the holy fathers of Raithou is depicted by three monks being beheaded by soldiers.206 Although the production of the menologion has been attributed to Constantinople on stylistic grounds, there are reasons to suppose that it may have been made for the monastery of Chariton.207 The choice of saints represented in the illumination, and indeed the strategy of representing all the saints for a given month in this fashion, emphasises not only the monastic milieu of the manuscript but also a particular interest in Palestinian and Egyptian monastic exemplars. This is further emphasised by the inclusion of Neilos’ homily on the martyrs of Raithou on their feast-day. Weitzmann’s observation on the figure style, which in his view ‘assert[ed] the ascetic spirit of monasticism’, confirms the general impression. Icons of desert monks and stylites were also 203 204

205 207

Kollias, ‘Wall paintings’, fig. 39. Vita Euthymii, X, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, 18–21; Symeon Metaphrastes, Vita Euthymii, XXI, PG 114: 612–16. An illuminated menologion is listed in the catalogue of 1200 at Patmos: D. Mouriki and N. Sevcenko, ‘Illustrated manuscripts’, in Kominis, ed., Patmos, 277–8. 206 Oxford Barocci MS 230, f. 4v. Sinai gr 512, f. 2v. See Weitzmann and Galavaris, Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, 70–3, for discussion of layout and provenance; and Jotischky, ‘Fortunes of war’, for arguments on ownership.

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produced for and in monasteries. A fourteenth-century icon of Onuphrios can still be seen in the museum at St John in Patmos. An thirteenth-century icon of the Annunciation made at Sinai, probably in the ‘Frankish’ atelier, has a row of six stylites on their columns.208 Other Sinai icons from the same genre show St Barbara with Symeon the Stylite; Zosimos feeding Mary the Egyptian; Makarios, Kyriakos and a third monastic saint; and Symeon the Stylite on his column.209 Monastic influences can also be seen in the choices made in representational certain types. Thus, for example, in one of the images of David in the Benaki Psalter, the psalmist is accompanied by a group of figures dressed in dark brown garments resembling monastic robes, whose features and physiognomies resemble images of desert fathers in contemporary wall paintings.210 The interdependence of texts and images in Byzantine aesthetic sensibilities and practices is well known.211 Images themselves were provided by Scripture, but also by the liturgy. In the monumental painting that survives in Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land, narrative compositions demonstrably relied on liturgical books. Gustav Kühnel has shown, for example, how the use of illuminated manuscripts of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzen provided models for the composition of the wall paintings in the monastic shrine church of John the Baptist at Sebaste. Thus the scene of the martyrs’ offering to God is taken from the Homily to Julian the Tax Collector, as found in Sinai gr 339, f. 73v, while the scene showing Basil brought before Emperor Valens comes from the Homily on St Basil as illuminated in Athos Pateleimon MS 6.212 About twenty illuminated manuscripts of the Homilies are known from c. 1050 to c. 1200, and several manuscripts with such homiletic material are known to be of Palestinian, Syrian or Cypriot provenance from this period.213 Besides the original compositions of Neophytos, the works copied and read in Greek by monks in Palestinian, Syrian and Cypriot monasteries show a strong interest in the solitary life. The Lausiac History of Palladius, one of the standard works on early Egyptian desert monasticism, was copied in the eleventh or twelfth century at Sinai, in a manuscript that also includes a vita of the Egyptian abbot Arsenios, some of the Letters of Jerome, in a Greek version, including Letter XXII to Eustochium, with its reflections on the ascetic life, and Nilos the monk’s Letter to Dabourios on the anchoritic life (Sinai gr 432). A manuscript made at St Sabas in the twelfth or thirteenth century, Sabas 366, shows similar interests. Alongside the same letter of Nilos on anchoritism we find a treatise by Mark the Monk on metanoia (repentance). Two manuscripts, Jerusalem Sabas 108 and Paris Bib Nat 1588, a Cypriot manuscript, have vitae of Symeon the Wonderworker and his mother Martha. Sabas 108 was copied in the eleventh century, probably at the Wondrous Mountain, but taken to St John Prodromos near the Jordan for safe-keeping before being returned when

208 209 210 211

212 213

Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291, 531, fig. 353. Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291, figs. 379, 388. Athens Benaki MS 34.3, f. 152r; illumination for Psalm 127. For recent discussion, see J. Lowden, ‘The transmission of “visual knowledge” in Byzantium through illuminated manuscripts: approaches and conjectures’, in C. Holmes and J. Waring, eds., Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond, The Medieval Mediterranean 42 (Leiden, 2002), 59–80. Kühnel, Wall Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 198–9. Jerusalem Sabas 60, 103, 697; Paris BN grec 574; Vat gr 1231; Nicosia Abp 21.

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times were easier.214 Thus the practice of stylitism can be seen to have travelled to the Holy Land and Cyprus textually as well as through the example of individual practitioners. These works must be considered alongside others that suggest concerns not only with anchoritism but either with purely cenobitic monasticism, as for example in the eleventhcentury manuscript of Basil’s Longer and Shorter Rules from Jerusalem (Jerusalem Taphou 30), or with the relationship between solitary and cenobitic forms. The Homilies of John Chrysostom on Matthew, which were delivered to the Antiochenes soon after John’s election as a presbyter of the city, were copied in Jerusalem Sabas 108. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the second book of which is devoted to the life and miracles of St Benedict, was copied in the eleventh century at the laura of Choziba (Jerusalem Taphou 35). What did such works tell the monks who copied them, and how do the messages they may have drawn from them relate to their understanding of their own monastic lives? John Chrysostom’s discussion of the monks of Antioch established a binary divide between those who lived in the world and those outside it. Monks are characterised as those who have fled ‘market places, cities, and the confusion between people’, and who in contrast have chosen mountain sites to lead a life that has nothing in common with ‘worldly griefs, cares, dangers, plots, envy, jealousy, forbidden lust, or anything like that’.215 The physical locations settled by monks – mountains, wooded groves fed by springs – contributed to the moral dimension of their withdrawal. Monks, John argues, were recreating the Paradise of Adam before the Fall, ‘when he was clothed in glory, and held converse freely with God, and lived in that place filled with blessedness’.216 Monks also talked to God with clear consciences and, like Adam, free of worldly care. The picture that John paints of the arcadian idyll necessary for the contemplative life recalls Neophytos’ determination to seclude himself physically from crowds, just as John’s evocation of a life without worldly cares recalls Neophytos’ horror when he thinks of the mundane cycle of marriage, children, old age and death that he escaped when he became a monk. Chrysostom goes on to reconstruct the daily lives of Antiochene monks. They rise before dawn to sing hymns and to pray, then engage in private study of the Scriptures, like bees collecting the nectar which they inwardly digest to make their honey. This pure life is contrasted with its opposite, the music and drama of the theatre and the brothel, and the rich food and wine enjoyed by those enslaved to such pleasures.217 The monastic day was interspersed with further singing of psalms and prayers of thanksgiving, which carried on so long that ‘they turned the nights into days’.218 Elsewhere Chrysostom alluded to the contrast between the ‘masculine’ dress of the monks, simple garments of camel or goat hair like those worn by the monastic precursors Elijah, Elisha and John the Baptist, and the ‘trailing effeminate gowns’ of city-dwellers.219 In the period in which he was writing, obviously, distinctions between coenobium and solitude were not as meaningful as they would later become. Chrysostom’s description of monastic life in Antioch is at the very cusp of the development of rules in Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt. Although his monks appear to have followed some systematic formula to govern 214 216 218

215 A marginal note in Jerusalem Sabas 108, f. 202r, records the transfer. John Chrysostom, Homily LV, PG 58: 547–8. 217 John Chrysostom, Homily LV, PG 58: 547–8. John Chrysostom, Homily LXVIII, PG 58: 654–6. 219 John Chrysostom, Homily LV, PG 58: 655. John Chrysostom, Homily LXVIII, PG 58: 654.

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the observance of liturgy and private devotions, as well as conduct, he does not allude to any specific set of rules. This meant that Chrysostom’s monastic pioneers could be deployed by their successors in the medieval period to support a number of configurations of the monastic life. Although his description appears to reify cenobitic or lauritic forms, anchorites could also point to his concern for physical seclusion from society and his identification of the monk with solitary prophets in support of their way of life. It is perhaps surprising at first sight to find an interest in Latin patristic writing among the works copied in Orthodox monasteries in the eastern Mediterranean. Jerome’s Letter XXII, however, was particularly pertinent. Jerome wrote the letter – in effect, a short treatise – in 384, during a period of residence in Rome when he acted as spiritual adviser to a number of noblewomen who were interested in the ascetic life, one of whom was the Eustochium addressed as the recipient of the letter.220 Jerome drew on his own experiences of solitary monasticism in Chalcis and Antioch, as well as his knowledge of the broader traditions of Egyptian monasticism. His evocation of his own ascetic life is rendered especially vivid by literal reference to the desert landscape of Palestine. ‘How often, when I was living in the desert and in that vast solitude which is burnt black by the heat of the sun and which provides a wild dwelling place for monks, did I imagine myself back in the delights of Rome . . . Angry and nervous, I would go alone into the desert. Whenever I saw a deep valley, a rugged mountain or steep cliffs, I made them my place of prayer and punishment for my sinful body.’221 His account of temptations suffered during contemplation, and of the fear of his cell at moments of crisis, must have struck a chord with many laura-dwellers. They find textual parallels in episodes such as Gabriel’s temptation by the demons in the Judaean desert, as recounted by Neophytos, or in the fear expressed by Leontios’ disciple Antonios at being left alone in his cell when possessed by a spirit of blasphemy.222 Jerome’s letter also contains an account of the types of monks to be found in Egypt, whom he classifies as cenobites, anchorites and remnuoth, or those who live in twos or threes, in autochthonous and unregulated small groups in towns. The last of these three categories Jerome dismisses as living a flawed kind of communal life, because it is unregulated and governed by the desire to give outward effect rather than to live a genuinely austere life. Cenobites, in contrast, live a highly regulated life, divided in military fashion into tens and hundreds, each tenth having charge of the other nine. The groups of ten eat together, subsisting on bread, beans and vegetables, but occupy individual cells in which they keep private vigils in addition to the common daily and Sunday offices.223 Anchorites, in contrast, go into the desert, taking nothing with them but bread and salt, and imitating the examples of Paul of Thebes, Anthony and, ultimately, John the Baptist.224 This set of categorisations was, of course, also familiar to Latin readers from Cassian’s Conferences, whence it reached the Rule of Benedict. Although there is evidence for some interest on the part of eleventh-century Benedictine monks in 220 221 223

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J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (London, 1975), 99–103. 222 Jerome, Lettres, vol. I, XXII, 7, 117–18. On Gabriel, see pp. 426–7; Life of Leontios, LI–LIII, 90–4. Jerome, Lettres, vol. I, XXII, 34, pp. 149–50. Jerome draws on his knowledge of Philo, Quod omnis probus liber sit, XII, and Josephus to compare the way of life of the Egyptian cenobites with that of the Essenes. Jerome, Lettres, vol. I, XXII, 34, p. 149.

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Orthodox monastic practices, and although there were certainly locales where close mutual observation of such practices was possible, Benedictine influence on Orthodox monasticism is much more difficult to detect.225 This makes the copying of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great at Choziba in an eleventh-century manuscript all the more significant. Gregory’s purpose in composing the Dialogues was to convince his Latin audience that holy men could be found locally as well as in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. His Life of Benedict, therefore, reproduces in Italy situations already known to his readers from an assumed familiarity with earlier monastic literature such as Latin versions of Palladius’ Lausiac History, the Apophthegmata Patrum and the Life of Pachomios. Moreover, Gregory’s conception of the origins of monasticism in his account of Benedict’s life shows an obvious debt to Athanasios’ Life of Anthony, notably in the set-piece descriptions of the withdrawal from society to ‘desert’, the formation of Benedict’s vocation through struggling against demons, which enables him to withdraw still further into a deeper solitude, followed by the eventual foundation of a community.226 Similarly, other examples of Italian solitaries recall eremitical practices found in the literature of desert monasticism.227 To this degree, Orthodox monks reading the Dialogues would simply have recognised their own historical traditions, albeit in an unfamiliar setting. One can go further, however, in mapping early monastic spirituality in Gregory’s Dialogues. In a study of the cultural influences on Gregory’s writing, Joan Peterson identified three spiritual concepts that link him to earlier writing on monasticism: compunction, prophecy and spirit discernment, and sexuality. In the latter case, Gregory’s primary interest in the Dialogues appears to have been in promoting chastity among the Roman clergy, and his anecdotal treatment of the theme dwells especially on the ideal of chastity within marriage.228 In contrast, the treatment of sexuality in monastic writing and copying in the Crusader States deals largely with the concern for absolute separation of the sexes, and for removing the possibility of sexual temptation.229 Monastic treatment of the theme of compunction, and the inner sorrow that results from knowledge of one’s sinfulness, stems from the Cappadocians Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom and, in its most sophisticated form, Evagrius Ponticus.230 We have already seen the importance of discernment of spirits in two of the central texts on monastic spirituality from the Crusader States in the twelfth century: the Life of Leontios and Neophytos’ Narratio de monacho Palaestiniensi. To this we might add Nikon’s chapter XXXIX of the Taktikon on dreams and diabolical illusions, and divine revelations and miracles, and how to protect oneself from demons.231 In the latter, the capacity to judge between good and evil spirits was the first step towards mastery over the demonic world; in the former, Leontios’ ability to exorcise spirits confirms the gifts he has developed through long 225

226

227 229

See Leo Marsicanus, in Chronica de Monte Cassino, XXII, 642, for the pilgrimage of Abbot John III of Monte Cassino to Jerusalem and Mt Athos in the 990s; A. Pertusi, ‘Monasteri e monachi italiani all’Athos nell’alto medioevo’, in Le millénaire de Mont Athos 963–1963, I, 217–51; G. Loud, ‘Varieties of monastic discipline in southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, Studies in Church History 43 (Woodbridge, 2007), 144–58. Gregory the Great, Dialogues II, i, 2–3, ed. A. de Vogüé and P. Antin, Sources Chrétiennes 260 (Paris, 1979), 128–31; J. Peterson, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto, 1984), 157. 228 Gregory, Dialogues, III, 16, 17, 18, 26, pp. 326–30, 336–40, 344, 366–8. Peterson, The Dialogues, 168–9. 230 231 See p. 478. Peterson, The Dialogues, 162–4. Bib Vat cod arab 76, f. 378r.

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exercise of monastic discipline. As Peterson observes, the ‘literature of the desert’, and especially the Apophthegmata patrum, shows considerable interest in the gift of discernment and its role in monastic spirituality.232 Such literature, however, seems rather strikingly absent from the libraries of Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States, in so far as we can judge from copying activities in the eleventh–fourteenth centuries. With the exception of the Lausiac History copied at Sinai (Sinai gr 432), and the various manuscripts of the menologion, there seems to have been little interest in reading monastic history as part of what was known in the Benedictine tradition as lectio divina. It may be, then, that Gregory’s Dialogues, while confirming tendencies within Orthodox monastic spirituality, also provided for the monks of Choziba examples of such spirituality in practice to which they did not otherwise have access. It would, of course, be fascinating to know how the Dialogues reached the laura of Choziba: whether they were copied from an existing Greek translation at the laura, and whether the monks had any prior knowledge of St Benedict and his monastic career. The fact that the manuscript (Jerusalem Taphou 35) dates from the eleventh century precludes any thought that the Dialogues were acquired as the result of contact between the laura of Choziba and a Benedictine community established after the First Crusade; on the other hand, it reinforces the likelihood of such contacts before the Crusade, when Benedictine pilgrimage to the Holy Land was at its height.

Miracles and the Miraculous Some Orthodox monasteries became particularly celebrated for miracles associated with shrines or relics under their charge. Surprisingly, perhaps, most of the evidence for the miraculous at Orthodox monasteries in the Crusader States comes from Latin pilgrimage accounts or other narratives. This naturally gives rise to the thought that the traditions themselves are in fact Western rather than Orthodox developments, and, as we shall see, in at least one such monastery, St Katherine, this does appear to be the case. However, the cult of Our Lady of Saidnaya was popular not only with Franks but also with local Muslims, and although the cult of the icon for which this monastery was celebrated first appears in Western sources in the twelfth century, the close correspondence between the miraculous elements in the story and local traditions in Arabic and Ethiopian accounts have prompted recent suggestions that it is in the East rather than the West that its origins should be sought.233 The earliest Western description of the miraculous icon of the Blessed Virgin, in the report made on conditions in the east to Frederick I by his ambassador Burchard of Strasbourg (c. 1175), asserts that the icon has ‘become incarnate’, in such a way that sweetsmelling oil flows constantly from the wooden panel on which it was painted. It is this oil that grants healing to all supplicants, whether Christian, Jew or Muslim. The healing cult was based on the celebration of two of the Virgin’s feasts, the Assumption (15 August) and

232 233

Peterson, The Dialogues, 166–7. Baraz, ‘Incarnated icon’; Devos, ‘Les premières versions’; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Convergences of Oriental Christian, Muslim, and Frankish worshippers: the case of Saydnaya’, in Hen, ed., De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem, 59–69.

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her birth (8 September). The pilgrimage account of Thietmar (1217) includes – in at least one manuscript, at any rate – a full account of the icon’s history. Whereas Burchard had thought that the icon was made in Constantinople and given to the abbess of Saidnaya while she was on pilgrimage in the capital, Thietmar retells a much more involved story in which the city of Jerusalem is given a central role. In this version, a Constantinopolitan monk, while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visits Saidnaya and is asked by the abbess to bring him an icon from the Holy City. The monk duly acquires an icon of the Blessed Virgin in Jerusalem and sets off home. The icon, however, begins to demonstrate miraculous powers of deliverance on the journey to Syria. First a man-eating lion approaches the monk but, sensing the icon’s power, humbly licks his feet instead of attacking him; then a band of robbers is prevented from murdering him. The monk, realising that the icon is something out of the ordinary, decides to take it straight home to Constantinople rather than giving it to the convent, but this time its power is used against him, and the ship on which he has sailed is forced by a storm to return to port. Even at the convent the monk tries to remove it from its place in the church by stealth, only to find it returned there miraculously. He confesses his fault and ends his days attached to the convent so that he can venerate the icon as it deserves. Eventually the icon begins to emit healing oil, but this has to be collected with due propriety from a vase placed beneath the image. A priest who presumes to touch the icon itself falls ill and dies; a pilgrim who tries to conceal some of the oil in a vessel with a false chamber finds that it has turned to blood.234 Later pilgrimage accounts, such as Frescobaldi’s (1384) invoke a wider range of powers on behalf of the icon, such as the ability to calm storms, but the healing seems to have become specific to dermatological problems.235 The main features of the cult as Thietmar’s account reports it are of particular interest in the context of Orthodox monasticism. It should be noted at the outset that the earliest Western reports of the cult – initially Burchard’s, then in the 1180s, the Relatio Guidonis Chat de miraculo beate virgine Mariae in Sardena – are later than the first firm evidence of the cult of the icon in the East. Earlier accounts in Arabic, Syriac and Ethiopian demonstrate the breadth of the cult throughout Eastern Christian communities before its dissemination in the West.236 In particular, an Arabic manuscript of 1183 from Sinai demonstrates that the incarnate icon was well known in the Melkite world; moreover, the Coptic writer Abu al-Makarim, whose Ta’rikh al kana’is wal-adyirah dates from the early thirteenth century, includes material from as early as 1171 relating to the cult of the icon.237 Burchard’s report probably had less influence in disseminating the cult in the west than the Relatio, which records how while in Jerusalem in 1185 two Western pilgrims, Aimery le Brun and Guido Chat, learnt of the icon from a Templar who had been released from prison on Damascus, and who had not only visited Saidnaya but also brought back a vial of the oil. Some of the oil was taken back to the West by Aimery, who gave it to the abbey of Altevaux 234 235

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Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, IV, 13–18. Frescobaldi, in Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, LIV, 84–5. Frescobaldi’s companion, Gucci, ibid., CVIII, 141–2, tells essentially the same story. Other Western pilgrims and narratives mention the icon of Saidnaya, e.g. the Continuation of William of Tyre, in Itinéraires à Jérusalem, ed. Michelant and Raynaud, 173–4. Was the association with skin problems perhaps because of the insistence in both Eastern and Western versions of the tradition that the icon was ‘incarnated’? Baraz, ‘Incarnated icon’; Devos, ‘Les premières versions’, 246–7 and n. 4. Baraz, ‘Incarnated icon’; U. Zanetti, ‘Abu l-Makarim et Abu Salih’, Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie copte (34) 1995, 85–138.

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that he founded in Haute-Vienne.238 Burchard and Thietmar seem to have known two different traditions about the origins of the icon. It is possible that the tradition of a Jerusalem provenance for the icon was a later development, but since Thietmar’s account is only a generation or so after Burchard’s – and perhaps earlier even than that – it is more likely that two different origin stories were circulating. Thietmar’s, which is more complex, probably represents a local Orthodox tradition or set of traditions. In any case, the whole Saidnaya episode in Thietmar’s account now appears to be an interpolation in one manuscript of an earlier description.239 Some features of the story, such as the lion, recall notable elements in Greek hagiography: one thinks especially of the well-known stories of the Judaean desert monks Zosimos and Gerasimos.240 Moreover, the fact that Jerusalem is the place of the icon’s origin in this version is also highly significant. Whereas in Burchard’s version, the icon comes from Constantinople, and displays no miraculous powers until it is in the monastery’s ownership, in Thietmar’s version the icon begins to perform miracles of deliverance from danger even before arriving at the monastery. Its power thus rests in itself, and in its Jerusalemite origin, rather than in the properties of the monastery of Saidnaya. Indeed, the icon’s refusal to be led astray by the monk indicates, within the terms of the narrative, its desire to confer its properties on Saidnaya, rather than Constantinople. In this respect, Thietmar’s story has much in common with miracle stories in Arabic Christian literature, such as the Life of Theodore of Edessa, which turn on the salvific properties of the Holy Sepulchre, and which has been characterised by Sidney Griffith as representing the Jerusalem-centred spirituality of the Melkites.241 As we shall see, other miraculous elements relating to Orthodox monasteries in Thietmar’s pilgrimage account likewise suggest that he is transmitting local traditions. In the case of Saidnaya, whether the source of the tradition was the monastery itself or an Orthodox community in Jerusalem, Thietmar upholds a monastic spirituality in which spiritual authority emanates from the Holy City.242 The argument that Thietmar, or the original author of the Saidnaya episode in his pilgrimage account, was informed by a local Orthodox tradition, is strengthened when we consider another monastery with a miraculous tradition, St Chariton, or Souka, in the Judaean desert. More than a dozen Latin pilgrimage accounts between the middle of the twelfth century and the fourteenth mention the monastery, though there is no evidence that any of them, unlike the Orthodox pilgrim Daniel in 1106–7, actually visited it. Beginning with Fretellus in the 1130s, and continuing with the accounts of Thietmar in 1217 and Peter de Pennis in the 1330s, Latin pilgrimage accounts mention Chariton in connection with a tradition about the deaths of the founder and his monks. According to this tradition, 238

239

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Relatio Guidonis Chat de miraculo beate virgine Mariae in Sardena, in Devos, ‘Les premières versions’, 272–3; see also Hamilton, ‘Our Lady of Saidnaya’, 210–11. Devos, ‘Les premières versions’, 247–52. Only one of the manuscripts used by Laurent in establishing his edition, the fourteenth-century Hamburg MS 143b, includes the episode. Moreover, the story appears in a twelfth-century Latin gospel book, Vat lat 44, f. 73, and in Brussels cod II.1146, ff. 99–100. For examples, see John Moschos, Pratum spirituale, CVII; Anthony of Choziba, Vita sancti Georgii Chozibitae, II, p. 106, in which George chases a lion out of his cell at the laura of Kalamon by quoting Psalm 57.7 at him; in general, see J. Wortley, ‘Two unpublished psychophelitic tales’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 37 (1996), 281–300. S. H. Griffith, ‘The Life of Theodore of Edessa: history, hagiography and religious apologetics in Mar Saba monastery in early Abbasid times’, in Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage, 149–55. As Hamilton, ‘Our Lady of Saidnaya’, 209, observes, most Western accounts emphasise the incarnate nature of the icon: besides emitting oil, it was actually clothed in flesh. This appears to be a feature of only one Orthodox account of the icon, a sermon surviving in Arabic from 1183 in a collection of homiletic literature in a Sinai manuscript, Sinai Ar. 585, f. 50r.

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Chariton gathered his monks to announce his impending death, upon which they unanimously declared that they were unable to live without him, and successfully petitioned God to be allowed to die with him. After this collective death, the monastery, presumably now abandoned, was raided by Saracens some time later; finding the mass burial, they tried to burn the bodies, but found that, miraculously, they would not burn. The story is told briefly and elliptically; in its fullest form, in Thietmar, it takes up only a paragraph; Peter de Pennis expends no more than a sentence on it.243 In all cases, this appears to be the only thing that the pilgrims know about St Chariton or its founder. Despite its brevity, the construction of the tradition is rather complex. The motif of the body that resists burning is found in early Christian martyrologies; indeed, in the version of the Life of St Katherine recorded in the Golden Legend, the bodies of the pagan philosophers whom she has converted to Christianity also fail to burn.244 What is of interest, in the context of the transmission of knowledge and motifs from Orthodox to Latin hagiography, is how the story found its way in this form into Latin writing, especially given that Chariton does not appear to have been well known in the West. More puzzling, however, is the absence of the story of the monks and the attempted burning from any of the Greek hagiographical collections. The sixth-century Life of Chariton and its tenth-century abbreviation in Symeon Metaphrastes’ Menologion portray the saint gathering his monks around him to announce his impending death and to deliver his final teaching, but say nothing about the monks following him to the grave or about subsequent desecrations of the bodies.245 However, an eleventh-century illustrated menologion owned by the monastery of Chariton depicts Chariton bearing a martyr’s palm, which suggests that Arab raids of the late eighth century had been imaginatively redeployed to portray Chariton, as representative of his monastery, as having suffered in the same way as the early Christian martyrs.246 The clearest description of Chariton in the crusader period comes from the Russian abbot Daniel, whose pilgrimage to the Holy Land took place in 1106–7. He located the monastery near the Dead Sea, on the edge of a ravine, in what he describes as ‘a terrible waterless place’. The monastery, which was encircled by a wall, had two churches, the larger of which contained the tomb of Chariton. Outside the wall was a large and ornate tomb containing the bodies of more than 500 monks, ‘as if they were still alive’. Daniel lists among these Kyriakos, one of the monks celebrated in Cyril of Scythopolis’ sixth-century collection of the Lives of Palestinian monks, whose body was preserved uncorrupted and from which a sweet smell emanated.247 Here, perhaps, we see the origin of the Latin tradition of the unburnable bodies of the Chariton monks. The difficulty lies in the transmission of the tradition from Daniel, whose account was not known in the West, to Latin pilgrimage accounts beginning about thirty years later. The earliest Latin accounts, the Descriptio locorum (1131–43) and Fretellus (1137), mention the mass voluntary deaths of Chariton’s monks, but say nothing about Arabs or the burning of bodies. It is only Thietmar’s account, 243 244 245

246

Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari Peregrinatio, X, 29. For twelfth-century guides mentioning St Chariton, see Chapter 13, n. 74. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, CLXXII, ed. Th. Graesse (Bratislava, 1890), 789–97. G. Garitte, ‘La vie premetaphrastique de S. Chariton’, Bulletin de l’institut belge de Rome 21 (1941), 5–49, with edition at 16–46; Vita et conversatio et certamen sancti Charitonis, PG 115: 899–918. 247 Oxford Barocci 230, f. 229r. Daniel the Abbot, p. 149.

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in 1217, that provides the fully fledged story linking the two episodes of the mass death and the Arab desecration of bodies. One clue to the fusing of these two separate episodes may be the story told about Chariton in John Cassian’s Conferences, where Cassian introduces a discussion of spiritual preparedness for death by referring to an apparently real incident, probably in the early fifth century, in which a large body of monks of St Chariton had been killed by Arab bandits. Their bodies, rather than being burnt by the Arabs, were instead fought over as relics by the bishops of the nearest towns.248 Thietmar (particularly if the author of this section was not the same as the pilgrim by that name) may thus have conflated the episode in Cassian with the story of the voluntary deaths of the monks, which had already been known for at least eighty years in Latin sources. However, when Thietmar, writing in 1217, speaks of Saracens wanting to throw the bodies into the fire, ‘out of envy’, it obviously carries quite a different message from that in Cassian’s original version, which predates the rise and spread of Islam. Whether consciously or not, the thirteenth-century version adds polemic value to this element of the tradition. Whether or not the brief Chariton episode stems from an actual visit to the monastery, Thietmar’s account of St Chariton is indicative of a wider interest in Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land that is corroborated by references to other Orthodox monasteries that he certainly did visit. Fretellus, moreover, was a canon of Nazareth, and therefore resident in the Holy Land. It is more likely in both cases that information about St Chariton, however spurious, came from oral sources than from written. Likewise, Western pilgrim accounts of St Katherine on Mt Sinai suggest oral modes of transmission about the miraculous. The cult of St Katherine is first traced in the West as early as the ninth century, but it became well established only in the mid-eleventh century. A passio from the monastery of Montecassino more or less coincides with the founding of Holy Trinity, Rouen, with relics from the saint’s hand; from Normandy the cult spread to England and is well documented in literary, liturgical and archaeological form throughout the Middle Ages.249 Thietmar’s pilgrimage account, however, is the first source to describe the invention of the relics. According to Thietmar, a hermit on Mt Sinai saw a strange light shining both night and day over a high place not far from his hermitage; when he investigated, he found the body, which was taken in solemnity back to the monastery, and eventually identified by a monk from Alexandria as that of St Katherine.250 This account adds to the Life of St Katherine known to Greek readers from Symeon Metaphrastes’ Menologion. It is surely more likely that Thietmar developed his version from an oral account heard at the monastery than that he knew it from the Menologion – and, indeed, he says that he heard it from his guide. Furthermore, it is striking that Thietmar’s story was neither taken up by the Golden Legend nor apparently known to other Latin pilgrims.251

248 249 251

John Cassian, Conlationes, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 13 (Vienna, 1886), VI.1. 250 Walsh, ‘The role of the Normans’, 24–5. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XIX, 43–4. Neither Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, IV, xiii, 8, p. 509, nor Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, CLXXII, 789–97, mentions it. Prior to Thietmar’s account, Latin pilgrimage sources had largely paraphrased Jerome, Letter LXXVIII regarding Sinai: thus De situ Ierusalem (1130), in IHC II, 184; Work on Geography, in Wilkinson, ed., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 188.

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Further examples of oral traditions associated with the cult of St Katherine occur in Western pilgrimage accounts. Thietmar tells a story of how a monk of St Katherine, leading a shipment of oil for the convent through the desert, fell into the hands of Beduin robbers, who stole one of the camels with its load. The robbers were astonished to find when they opened the saddle bags that the oil had turned into blood, whereupon they returned the camel to the monk, begging him to let them have a small portion of this miraculous oil. But when the monk opened up the bag, it became pure oil again, and the robbers withdrew in confusion.252 As at Saidnaya, the cult of St Katherine came to be centred on the healing properties of oil. In the case of St Katherine, this oil emanated from the saint’s skull, which was displayed in a reliquary in a niche in the church. As at Saidnaya, the oil was collected by pilgrims to be applied directly to the body. In Thietmar’s miracle story, however, it is commercial oil – presumably for cooking or light – that becomes the agency of the miraculous. Indeed, it is questionable whether the cult of the saint’s oil had yet emerged at the time of Thietmar’s account. At some point before 1335, another miracle associated with St Katherine gained popularity among Western pilgrims, and is found, in versions that differ only very slightly, in James of Verona, Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Frescobaldi and Gucci (1384).253 The miracle concerns an early and troubled period in the monastery’s history, though the exact time is left vague. The monks were apparently on the point of leaving Sinai altogether because of the difficulty of life there (because of both the aridity of the landscape and the dangers from Beduin raiders), but as they descended the mountain they were confronted by a woman who upbraided them for abandoning the saint, and assured them that supplies of food were already on their way to them. In some versions of the story, a camel train arrives; when the monks ask the camel drivers where it came from, they reply that it was sent by Moses. The woman reveals herself as the Blessed Virgin, and on the spot of the miracle the monks built the church known in pilgrimage accounts as St Mary of the Promise. Since this episode does not appear in any of the versions of the Life of St Katherine, it must surely be an oral tradition deriving originally from the monastery.254 It is significant that both miracles are responses to the problem of the survival of the community in a difficult and dangerous environment – to which Thietmar had already drawn attention in his description of the location of the monastery.255 It is easy to read both as designed to elicit material support from Western patrons, and Frescobaldi‘s companion Gucci, in telling the story, acknowledges that such appeals were commonly made.256 The cult of St Katherine was known in the Orthodox world from the tenth century, when she featured in the Metaphrastean 252

253

254 255

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Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XIX, 44. Note the occurrence once more of the motif of oil turning to blood, which also appears in Thietmar’s account of the cult of Saidnaya. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, VII, 232–3; Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, CCXX, 129–30; Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 60–1, 114–16. Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XVIII, 41: Notandum autem, quod plurima sunt pericula illius deserti: leones frequentes, quorum vestigia recencia vidi, et vermes nocentes et serpentes. Pluvia quoque, quia, dum pluit, aqua collecta per montes replet desertum tanta inundatione, et nullus hoc periculum possit declinare. Calor eciam, cuius nimietas cogit homines transeuntes ad defectum. Et aque penuria, que non habetur nisi de quinto die in quintum, vel de sexto in sextum. Latrunculi quoque, Arabes agrestes et Boidewini, quorum latrocinia timentur. Estivo tempore nullus hoc desertum transire potest. Pauce eciam aves sunt in eo. Gucci speaks of alms sent by the nobility of Germany, France, England and Flanders, and singles out Queen Joanna of Naples (1344–81) as a particular benefactress: Bagatti, ed., Visit to the Holy Places, 113–14.

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menologion, but although this vita deals with the translation of the body from Alexandria, the place of the saint’s martyrdom to Sinai, it does not give as full a version of the discovery and translation of the body as Thietmar.257 The earliest-known icon of St Katherine from Sinai has been dated to the early thirteenth century. Significantly, this shows scenes from the saint’s Passion, but none of the translation of the body to the monastery, and the most recent commentator on the icon has argued that the iconographical influences may come from images of Queen Tamar in Georgian manuscripts, which suggests no pre-existing, more local models.258 Moreover, neither the feast of the Martyrdom nor that of the Translation featured in Orthodox liturgical calendars – either the Constantinopolitan Evergetis calendar or the earlier Melkite examples of Palestinian or Syrian origin. Indeed, the first appearance of a liturgical feast of the saint at the monastery itself appears to date from the early thirteenth century. This occurs in the liturgical typikon of the monastery made by the hegoumen Symeon in 1214 – only three years before Thietmar’s pilgrimage.259 By this date, indeed by the 1160s, relics of the saint were already being displayed to pilgrims. Pilgrimage to Sinai from the Kingdom of Jerusalem would have been difficult in the first quarter of the twelfth century, when the Fatimid regime was still a threat to the kingdom. In the reign of King Fulk, however, control of Aqaba placed at least the southern half of the Sinai peninsula temporarily in the kingdom’s political orbit, and indeed it came to form part of the lordship of Montréal. The lord of this fief in the 1160s, Philip of Nablus, visited the monastery and testified that he had been given a relic of the saint by the monks. However, if the tradition of collecting oil from the skull had already been established, he does not mention it.260 This episode, indeed, is the earliest mention of the cult of St Katherine at Sinai.261 It appears, therefore, that the cult, already securely located in the West, was brought to Sinai by Western pilgrims in the twelfth century, and that the monks responded to Western devotion to the saint by making the relics available and by adopting her into their own liturgy. The traditions recorded by Thietmar, including both the invention of the body and the miracles, surely developed very shortly before his pilgrimage, and around the time of the new typikon. The monks, recognising the growing enthusiasm for St Katherine, appear to have responded in various ways, among which was the circulation of miraculous traditions that could be disseminated to pilgrims. Even the Western enthusiasm for the cult provided an opportunity for the dissemination of a miracle. Thietmar was evidently told while at St Katherine that, when Philip of Nablus made his pilgrimage, he tried to take the body of the saint back with him – noting, perhaps, how poorly developed the cult still was at that time at Sinai. He was prevented from realising his plan, however, by an earthquake so great that the mountains shook, ‘dragging the author of that crime into danger and ruin’, but preserving him so that he could be properly penitent to the saint and make restitution to the community.262

257 259

260

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258 PG 116: 276–301. H. C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557) (New Haven, 2004), no. 201, p. 343. K. Weitzmann, ‘Loca sancta and the representational arts of Palestine’, in K. Weitzmann, Studies in the Arts at Sinai (Princeton, 1982), 40; K. Weitzmann, ‘Icon painting in the Crusader Kingdom’, DOP 20 (1966), 49–83. Bertrand de Broussillon, La maison de Craon, no. 138, I, p. 101. Philip subsequently donated the relic to the monastery of Craon, along with a relic of the True Cross given to him by Emperor Manuel Komnenos. 262 As observed by Jacoby, ‘Christian pilgrimage’, 83. Thietmar, Magistri Thietmari peregrinatio, XX, 44–5.

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The further development of this process can be seen in an anonymous thirteenth-century account of the founding of Holy Trinity, Rouen, which as we have seen was associated with the cult of St Katherine. The Descriptio translationis reliquiarum et miraculorum found in Rouen MS 22, in explicitly linking St Katherine to Holy Trinity through the supposed agency of the Sinai monk Symeon of Trier, assumes that at the time of the founding of Holy Trinity, 1030, the cult of the saint was already established at Sinai.263 According to the Translatio, the body of St Katherine was venerated in a separate tomb on top of the mountain at the foot of which lay the monastery, and a group of monks, of whom Symeon was one, was responsible for perpetual veneration at the tomb. When the monastery fell into financial difficulties, Symeon and three other monks were sent to appeal for subsidies from Richard, Duke of Normandy, whose fame had reached even Egypt. As guests in Rouen of a Norman noble, Goscelin, they persuaded their host to found a monastery dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to which they donated relics of St Katherine that they had brought with them. One of the monks, Stephen, was instrumental in the establishment of the monastery and the recruitment of monks who lived under his direction.264 As we have seen, at the time of the founding of Holy Trinity, although the cult of St Katherine was known, it had not yet been associated with Sinai, and there is no evidence of a connection between the journey of Symeon to Normandy, which is attested in eleventh-century sources, and the cult of St Katherine; nor indeed, between Symeon and the founding of Holy Trinity.265 The Translatio is clearly an attempt to account for the possession by the monastery of relics of the saint’s fingers. A further point of interest in the Translatio is that there appears to be no difficulty in the formation of a monastic community, in Normandy and made up of local monks, by an Orthodox monk from Sinai. Even if we characterise the foundation legend as a pious fiction, it is worth remarking on the apparent plausibility of such a construct in a thirteenth-century source. Thietmar was not the only Western pilgrim to be impressed by miraculous relics at an Orthodox monastery. The monastery of Holy Cross at Stavrovouni, high on a plateau overlooking the Cypriot plain near Larnaca, was reputed to have been founded by Empress Helena as a repository for the cross of the ‘good thief’ crucified alongside Jesus.266 The tradition that the cross, displayed in the church, was miraculously suspended in mid-air, was clearly known as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, when Daniel reported having seen it.267 Soon after the Latin conquest of Cyprus, Western pilgrims began to take notice of the miracle. In 1211–12 Wilbrand of Oldenburg visited the cross and reported the local version of the miracle, though he seems to have given more credence to a tradition about the monastery’s foundation, according to which Helena had established the community in order to put a stop to an outbreak of diabolical body-snatching in the region.268 Subsequently – certainly by the 1240s, though probably by 1212, when Wilbrand visited – Benedictines replaced the Orthodox community, after the Greek monks had withdrawn to Armenia, doubtless as a reaction to the pressures imposed by the 263 265 268

264 Poncelet, ‘Sanctae Catharinae’. Poncelet, ‘Sanctae Catharinae’, 426–30. 266 Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine, 50–1. Leontios Makhairas, Recital, VII, 7–9. Wilbrand, Itinerarium, XXX, in IHC III, 230.

267

Daniel the Abbot, pp. 125–6.

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Synodicon Nicosiense.269 James of Verona in 1335 reported the presence of the cross, but mentions no miraculous tradition associated with it.270 According to the fifteenth-century Cypriot historian Leontios Makhairas, however, by 1318 some Latins were disparaging the local miracle stories associated with the cross and claiming that they were merely examples of Greek trickery. A Latin priest, John Santamarin, stole the portion of Helena’s cross in the church at Togni and tried to remove it from the island. When a storm blew up suddenly, the sailors put back to land, and John, stripping the jewels from the relic to take them with him, tossed the wood of the cross itself into a carob tree, where it was miraculously discovered by a shepherd boy in 1340; subsequently it continued to work miracles of healing.271 The same story is told in the Chronicle of Amadi, which like Leontios in its current form dates from the fifteenth century, but which may derive from earlier material. In Amadi, the tone is distinctly less polemical; indeed, John Santamarin’s desire to take the cross out of Cyprus appears to imply his acceptance of its miraculous properties, and the subsequent test performed on the relic by the bishop of Famagusta, in which it survived being burned by fire, convinced Queen Alice of its veracity.272 With the exception of the cult of St Katherine, which demonstrates the capacity of Orthodox monks to generate new forms of devotion in response to existing demand, the miracles associated with monasteries in the Crusader States all revolve in some way around Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Miracles are possible either through possession of a Passion relic, or, as in the case of Saidnaya, an icon created in the Holy City; or they are underwritten by the holiness of the desert monks. To those already discussed can be added a further miracle reported by Neophytos in his panegyric of c. 1200/5 on the eucharist. Among the three incidents that he reports of the actual transformation of the elements into flesh and blood, one supposedly took place at the monastery of St Euthymios in Jerusalem.273 It is striking that these traditions of ‘locus-centred’ miracles developed in a period when, in Orthodox hagiographical discourse more generally, the miraculous as performed by individuals has been thought to have suffered something of a decline.274

Sexual Morality and Purity Many typika, as well as hagiographical literature, betray concerns with sexuality and moral conduct. As we saw in a previous chapter, women were strictly prohibited from entering monasteries or monastic buildings, and dealings with women, even conversation with 269 270 271

272

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Wilbrand of Oldenburg’s Journey: A New Edition, ed. Pringle, 114; Schabel, ‘Religion’, 175, 188–9. James of Verona, Liber peregrinationis, I, 179. Leontios Makhairas, Recital, LXVII–LXXIV, 61–9. The relic appears to have been transferred by royal command to the monastery of Makhairas, which according to Leontios served to defy Latin disbelief, but which was probably so that a closer watch could be kept over it. Chroniques d’Amadi, I, 406–7; The Chronicle of Amadi, trans. N. Coureas and P. Edbury, Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus LXXIV (Nicosia, 2015), DCCCIV, 371. Neophytos, Panegyric XXV, 8.13–9.5, Paris Bib Nat 1189, ff. 199v–200r; M. Jugie, ed., ‘Un opuscule inédit de Néophyte le Reclus sur l’incorruptibilité du corps du Christ dans l’eucharistie’, REB 7 (1949), 1–11. The mention of the monastery of St Euthymios confirms the evidence of the Apodeixis for the existence of this metochion of the coenobium of St Euthymios at Khan al-Ahmar at the turn of the thirteenth century; see p. 304. E. Patlagean, ‘Saintété et pouvoir’, in Hackel, ed., The Byzantine Saint, 88–105; Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 86–7.

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female members of monks’ families, were forbidden; monks were not to have contact with nuns; even female animals were not to be kept within monastery precincts.275 It was, however, accepted not only that monks, like anyone else, would experience sexual desires, but also, by some legislators, that these did not necessarily constitute grave faults. This, at least, appears to be the implication of the ruling in Neilos’ typikon that monks should not bring ‘bodily requirements’ before their confessors, ‘for any time is suited for them’. Confession was to be reserved for revealing ‘every impulse of your mind and remembrance harmful to the soul’, but in Neilos’ eyes these were primarily concerned with the harmony of the community, and thus with resolving disputes or conflicting opinions rather than purely physical desires.276 As in so much of his typikon, Neilos derived this principle from the Evergetis typikon, which also discouraged use of the confessional bond to discuss bodily needs.277 Was this prohibition on confessing sexual desires designed to protect the confessor or spiritual father (who in the Evergetis tradition was typically the abbot) from corruption or disgust through the constant repetition of monks’ sexual frustration? Or were such matters simply regarded as so normal that it was unnecessary to confess them? The sexual temptation of monks was, of course, a standard feature of hagiography, and had been so since Athanasios’ Life of Anthony realised it through the agency of the demons who appeared to the hermit.278 However, to be tempted, or even tormented, was not the same as committing the sin of fornication. Neophytos made it clear that sins of the flesh were to be confessed and penances assigned for them; a monk who neglected to confess such sins was to be expelled ‘so as not to spread the contagion to the remainder, for the transmission of evil is easier than the receipt of goodness’.279 The typikon rulings on sexual conduct appear implicitly to distinguish between the thought, which is regarded as normative, and the act itself, against which every precaution is taken lest it lead to a general loosening of sexual morality in the community. It was presumably easy enough to keep women from the monastery,280 but the potential for same-sex relations was a more serious matter. Special care was taken to restrict contact between monks and male youths by setting age limits on entry to monasteries. In Cyril of Scythopolis’ hagiographies, the prohibition on boys in the laura appears to have been out of concern for their spiritual inexperience: novices had to prove themselves in the coenobium before they could be accepted as solitaries.281 However, by the twelfth century a sexual element seems to be part of the prohibition. The twelfth-century redaction of the typikon of St Sabas begins with a prohibition on accepting eunuchs or beardless youths into the laura, and it is clear that the thinking behind this is related to sexual morality from the following sentences, which proceed to ban women from entering the precinct even for the purposes of prayer, and Sabaite monks from entering women’s convents, even to cut the nuns’ hair.282 Leontios, when he first went to Patmos, was segregated from the community because of his youth. Although he had already lived as both a cenobitic monk and a solitary, Abbot 275 277 278 280

281

276 See p. 398. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, LI, p. 83. Evergetis VII, pp. 476–8. See also Mamas, XXX, p. 1015, which repeats the wording of Evergetis. 279 Athanasios, Vita Antonii, V, PG 26: 845–8. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIII, 7, p. 158. Unless they were queens: Alice, wife of Hugh IV, defied the ban on women entering the monastery church, and was apparently cured of her dumbness when she saw the miraculous cross of St Helena. See Leontios Makhairas, Recital, LXXIV, 68–9. 282 Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, VII, 90–1. Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, I, p. 1316.

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Theoktistos instructed him not to mix with the community ‘because of the snares that are produced for many by the evil one on account of smoothly cheeked youths’.283 Fears of inappropriate sexual contact between the monks are reflected in Neophytos’ typikon for the Enkleistra. A series of penitential canons includes a prohibition on physical games among the monks and on public bathing, which could lead to lasciviousness, and a specific injunction taken from the pseudo-Basilian Poenae in monachos deliquentes that any monk found to have spent the night with anyone else was to be excommunicated. Neophytos appears particularly concerned that what might begin as harmless physical exercise might lead to something more dangerous: ‘The moral lapse of two monks playfully joined together, and above all of younger ones, is unseen and unattested, as I have heard from those who have suffered this.’284 The refusal by both Neophytos and Neilos to take boys or adolescents for schooling should also be considered as part of such concerns. Neophytos calls the teaching of the children of seculars ‘indecent’ and in any case contrary to patristic tradition.285 Neilos is even more explicit in connecting education to potential sexual corruption. In the same chapter of his typikon in which he bars all women from entering Makhairas, he goes on to prohibit entry to any except ‘beardless men, or perhaps those who have acquired stubble sprouting at the sides of their faces’. Moreover, novices were to be kept apart from the professed monks, even to the extent of prohibiting the practice of asking them to run errands that might bring them into contact with the rest of the community.286 The placing of this clause among others concerned with the community’s external relations shows that Neilos saw the chief danger to sexual morality coming from outside rather than from within. Not all such dangers were obvious, and a community could not be too careful. At St Sabas even apparently innocent correspondence with a woman as part of a spiritual relationship was banned.287 Nikon wrote to the abbot of a monastery of St John recommending that he desist from hearing the confessions of women, and prohibit monks from entering women’s convents for the same purpose.288 Equally important, given the concern about ‘beardless youths’, was to exercise vigilance in the selection of candidates for the novitiate. Lazaros of Mt Galesion had to defend himself from his own community against the charge of being too careless about accepting monks into the monastery without investigating their past lives. Lazaros’ response to criticism was that the only men who wanted to enter the monastery were those who were experiencing a crisis of some kind; if he did not take them in, they would go back to the world. He compared himself to a gardener who planted many plants, and saw some die but others bear fruit.289

283 284

285 287 289

Life of Leontios, XVIII, 54–6. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XXIII, 6, XXIII, 20.4, pp. 158, 165. On spending the night with others, cf. Nikon, Pandekts, XII, citing Ps-Athanasius, Syntagma PG 28: 844, on the recommendation that monks engaged in business outside the monastery should sleep in churches so as to avoid any danger of temptation or corruption. 286 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, IX, p. 141. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXV, p. 109. 288 Sabas: Founder’s Typikon, I, p. 1316. Bib Vat cod grec 76, f. 203r. Life of Lazaros, CCXXXI–CCXXXII, 329–30.

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I have already remarked on the liturgical importance of St Sabas and, more broadly, the Church of Jerusalem, in Nikon’s blueprint for cenobitism in Antioch, in Patmos and in Cyprus. A variety of extra-liturgical evidence allows us to draw together different threads linking the Holy Land to Orthodox monasticism throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and thus to observe the central role played by the Holy Land in the formulation of monastic spirituality in the region. The centrality of the Holy Land to the spirituality of Orthodox monasticism in the wider region of the eastern Mediterranean spans the whole period of the present study. The attraction of Jerusalem and the Judaean desert monasteries to ‘foreign’ monks was, of course, an important feature of the monastic life of the early Byzantine period.290 Moreover, both before and after the Persian invasion and Arab conquests of the seventh century, monastic writers from the Holy Land sought to emphasise the role played by the Holy Land’s monasteries in upholding and protecting Orthodoxy. It has been observed, indeed, that Jerusalem and the Judaean desert monasteries constituted ‘the most active centre of Greek culture in the eight century’.291 Up to the ninth century, a productive cultural interaction between Palestine and Constantinople is readily observable in the sources. Palestinian monasticism, indeed, can plausibly be seen as the pillar sustaining Orthodoxy. Just as Sabas had guaranteed Jerusalem’s Orthodoxy in the theological crises of the early sixth century, so in the early ninth century Jerusalem monks – the Graptoi brothers – upheld the veneration of icons in the face of the persecution of the iconoclasts in the imperial capital.292 Once again, when Orthodoxy was under threat, it was Jerusalem that came to the rescue. The late eighth and ninth centuries also saw a period of increasing political instability, which may have given rise to and increased Islamicisation.293 In this context, the martyrdom of Sabaite monks in 796, and the raids in 808–9 in which St Sabas, St Chariton, St Euthymios and St Theodosios suffered partial destruction, could be seen as having conferred a measure of authenticity on monasticism in the Holy Land as the guarantor of Orthodoxy even in the face of such threats to its continuing existence.294 Although there is no evidence of a sustained policy by the Abbasid caliphate or those who held power in Palestine to eradicate monasticism or the Church in Jerusalem, Palestinian Christian literature of the ninth and tenth centuries reflects a concern to establish a distinctive identity in the face of perceived increasing pressure.295 Such literature includes apologetics and hagiographies such as the Life of Theodore of Edessa, a text surviving in Greek and Arabic versions, the latter of which emphasises the miraculous qualities of the Holy Sepulchre itself. The main characteristic of this literature, 290 291

292 294 295

Perrone, ‘Monasticism as a factor’. C. Mango, ‘Greek culture in Palestine after the Arab conquest’, in G. Cavallo et al., eds., Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bizancio. Atti del seminario de Erice (18–25 settembre, 1988), 2 vols. (Spoleto, 1991), I, 149–50. 293 Symeon Metaphrastes, Vita S. Theodori grapti, XIII, PG 116: 664–84. Rubin, ‘Arabization versus Islamicization’. Passio SS XX martyrum S. Sabae, AA SS, Mar. III, 165–79. S. H. Griffith, ‘The church of Jerusalem and the Melkites: the making of an “Arab Orthodox” Christian identity in the world of Islam’, in O. Limor and G. Stroumsa, eds., Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 5 (Turnhout, 2006), 175–204; and, in general, Griffith, Arabic Christianity; Jotischky, ‘The Christians of Jerusalem’.

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according to Griffith, is the role played by Jerusalem as a ‘constant point of spiritual and intellectual reference’.296 Besides the salvific qualities of the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre, the Life of Theodore stresses the authority of the twin pillars of Palestinian Christianity: the authority of the patriarchate of Jerusalem and the monastery of St Sabas. This was an alliance that went back to the life of Sabas himself and was reinforced in Greek as well as Arabic texts. In the Life of Michael the Synkellos, for example, the Sabaite monk Michael is asked by the patriarch to act as mentor for the Graptoi, who are monks of the Stoudion.297 It was a relationship that endured into the eleventh century, moreover. In the Life of Lazaros of Mt Galesion, the pilgrim Lazaros is approached while in the Anastasis Church by the archdeacon of the church, who guides him to the laura of St Sabas and even helps pay the entrance money.298 The continuing presence of the Holy Sepulchre confirms the durability of the Christian community in the face of a dominant Islamic hegemony, as the Life of Theodore of Edessa explains: ‘Many miracles appeared at that time at the Holy Sepulchre, the giver of life. They baffled the assembly of infidels and silenced their mouths.’299 It is in this context that we must see the development of the miracle of the Holy Light, the liturgical celebration of which was discussed earlier. Although the earliest reference to the ritual appears to be from a Latin pilgrimage source, by the tenth century Greek accounts purport to use it as a marker for Palestinian Christian resistance to Muslim persecution.300 In a supposed letter from an imperial clerk, Niketas, to Emperor Constantine VII (911–59), the miracle of the Holy Light confounds the scepticism of an emir from Baghdad, who had claimed that the Christians used mechanical artifices to fake the whole affair. Moreover, the emir himself and many other Muslims witnessed the spontaneous lighting not only of the lamp inside the tomb, but also of all the other lamps in the Anastasis.301 Despite the rupture caused by the events of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, of which al-Hakim’s destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 is the most obvious example, the career of Christodoulos of Patmos shows that the patterns of attraction to the Judaean desert monasteries, and in particular to St Sabas, were once again functioning by the middle of the eleventh century. Examining for the moment the evidence of formal connections across the region, we should note for example the possession of a synaxarion dating from 1062–3, and probably made in Palestine, at the monastery of Asinou in Cyprus before 1115, in which the death of the first hegoumen, Nicholas, is recorded in a marginal note.302 The probable Palestinian provenance of the manuscript – assigned on grounds of comparison 296

297 298

299 300

301

302

S. H. Griffith, ‘What has Constantinople to do with Jerusalem? Palestine in the ninth century: Byzantine Orthodoxy in the world of Islam’, in L. Brubaker, ed., Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? (Aldershot, 1998), 185. Life of Michael the Synkellos, 9–13. Life of Lazaros, XVI, 94–5. Greenfield (ibid., 94 n.74) thinks Lazaros’ interest in the monasteries as well as the shrines was unusual. Griffith, ‘The Life of Theodore’, 161. Itinerarium Bernardi monachi Franchi, in Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. Tobler and Molinier, I, 314–15; P. Karlin-Hayter, ‘Arethas’ Letter to the Emir at Damascus’, Byzantion 29–30 (1959–60), 281–302, with an edition of the letter at 293–302. Jerusalem Taphou MS 73, ff. 307–12, ed. P. Riant, AOL 1 (1881), 375–82; see also M. Canard, ‘La destruction de l’église de la Résurrection par le calife Hakim et l’histoire de la déscente du feu sacré’, Byzantion 35 (1965), 30–3. Paris Bib Nat grec 1590, f. 81v; Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 49–54; J. Darrouzès, ‘Notes pour servir à l’histoire de Chypre’, Kypriakoi Spoudai 20 (1954), 85–6, 92–5.

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with other synaxaria – suggests a connection between the Holy Land and the foundation of the monastery. Likewise, a twelfth-century gospel book made at St Sabas records in the scribal colophon the completion of the manuscript during the reign of Emperor John II and the governorship of Constantine Kamytzes in Cyprus.303 Not only the knowledge of who held the governorship, but the fact that the scribe, who describes himself as xenodochos and oikonomos, recorded it in a manuscript made for Palestinian usage, indicates an enduring connection between the Holy Land and Cyprus. As we have already seen, Palestinian monasteries had metochia and other landed properties in Cyprus.304 Political events partly determined connections between Syria and Cyprus at around the same time as Asinou’s founding in the early years of the twelfth century. The founding and dedication to an Antiochene saint of St John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis by Eumathios Philokles, appointed as dux of Cyprus by Emperor Alexios Komnenos, suggest interrelationships between north Syria and Cyprus.305 The First Crusade was probably a contributory factor in such relationships, though not the initial one. When Symeon II, the patriarch of Jerusalem, was exiled by the Fatimids who conquered that city in 1098, it was to Cyprus that he went.306 Links were maintained between the Holy Land and Cyprus throughout the twelfth century. Pilgrims, both Western and Orthodox, sometimes combined visits to shrines and churches in Cyprus with the practical need to stop on the island before or after visiting the Holy Land. Cyprus was a place of exile or refuge for Orthodox monks from the Holy Land even before the settlement of Latin refugee communities from Jerusalem after 1191. The monastery of Makhairas was founded by a Palestinian hermit, and the inspiration for Neophytos the Recluse’s foundation of the Enkleistra came from his six-month stay in the Holy Land. Neophytos the Recluse maintained a sense of rootedness in the spirituality of the Holy Land even after the founding of the Enkleistra. Although, as has plausibly been suggested, his monastic experience in the Holy Land may have been in the cave monastery of St Theoktistos in the Judaean desert,307 he showed more explicit interest in the Holy Places of Jerusalem. He dedicated the cave that he hollowed out to form the Enkleistra to the Holy Cross, having recorded that it was on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross that the work had been completed. Five years after settling in the cave, he conducted a search for a relic of the True Cross, and experienced a vision in which he was bodily lifted to his native village of Lefkara, whose church was likewise dedicated to the True Cross.308 Neophytos’ choice of subject matter in his sermons and reflections for his own and other monastic communities in Cyprus shows the same preoccupations. Besides the panegyric for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), he also wrote one for the feast of the consecration of the Anastasis in Jerusalem.309 After the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, his thoughts turned to monasticism in the Judaean desert in his panegyric on St Sabas – an echo perhaps of the unwitting role of the previous Muslim aggressors in 303 304

305 307 309

Princeton Garrett MS 3, f. 260v. Coureas, ‘The Orthodox monastery’. The Life of Leontios, LXXIII–LXXVI, 116–22, refers to Cypriot property belonging to the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem. 306 See p. 341. Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 79–83. 308 Kühnel, Wall Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 185. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, VI, pp. 137–8. Paris Bib Nat gr 1189, ff. 24v–29r, 29v–38v.

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spreading Sabaite monastic ideas, as seen in the examples of Lazaros of Mt Galesion and Christodoulos.310 Moreover, the decorative scheme in the Enkleistra draws the viewer’s attention to the relic of the True Cross which he had sought so long, and which occupied a niche in the cave church, guarded by the images of Constantine and Helena. Neophytos’ panegyric on Gabriel, the Georgian monk in Palestine, indicates direct contact with sources in the Holy Land up to the beginning of the thirteenth century.311 This suggests that he maintained contact with communities in the Holy Land, or perhaps that he was given information by refugees or migrants after 1187. Certainly his writings were known in Judaean desert monasteries in the fourteenth century.312 Similarly, the Life of Lazaros of Mt Galesion bespeaks a network at which Jerusalem or, more generally, the Holy Land lay as a point of central reference. As Greenfield observed, ‘pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a constant thread in the vita of Lazaros’.313 Lazaros’ early profession as a monk was dominated by his desire to go to the Holy Land. After he is established in the series of monasteries founded around his pillars on Mt Galesion, Lazaros finds himself linked inextricably to the same momentum in the careers of other monks. In one episode, a monk was assigned a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a penance by Lazaros; in another, he chided a monk for his pride in having made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt; a heretic ends up, after being taken in hand by Lazaros, as a monk at St Sabas.314 Lazaros’ own credentials as a Sabaite monk are attested by the presence in the narrative of Jeremiah, a Georgian who had also been a monk in Palestine and is thus able to testify to Lazaros’ ascetic heroism to the bishop.315 To the audience of the biography, however, none of this should come as a surprise, since Lazaros’ future connection with the East had been signalled while he was still a baby in his cradle, when he surprised his nurse one day by craning his neck so that he could look at the heavenly light shining from the east, and raising his arms to make the shape of a cross.316 The stock hagiographical motif of a saintly child pointing out his future glory also appeals to an established tradition in Byzantine monastic literature – the centrality of the Holy Land as the source of inspiration of Orthodox monasticism. The construction of the vita of Leontios also makes Jerusalem a centre of gravity towards which the saint is gradually drawn. His first mentor, the exiled bishop of Tiberias, acts semiotically as a promise of Leontios’ elevation to the patriarchate of Jerusalem, even after the narrative appears to deny the young monk the opportunity to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land for which he longed.317 Instead Leontios must serve his time, as it were in apprenticeship for his eventual elevation, as monk and hegoumen of St John on Patmos, the monastery founded by Christodoulos in order to implement a cenobitic version of the laura monasticism of St Sabas. Even when he is first offered other archiepiscopal seats by the emperor – Kiev and Cyprus – Leontios refuses them in the knowledge that his destiny is tied to Jerusalem.318 This, of course, is hagiography; nevertheless, it was probably in the abbacy 310 311

312 313

314 316

Paris Bib Nat gr 1189, ff. 173r–180. The narrative itself refers to Saladin’s invasion of 1187, but a marginal note/colophon in the manuscript gives the date of Gabriel’s latest anchoritic activities as 1214. Neophytos’ commentary on the psalms was copied at St Sabas in 1321: Jerusalem Sabas MS 551. R. Greenfield, ‘Drawn to the blazing beacon: visitors and pilgrims to the living holy man and the case of Lazaros of Mount Galesion’, DOP 56 (2002), 213–41. 315 Life of Lazaros, LXIII, LXXXIV, CXV, 150–1, 173–5, 205. Life of Lazaros, CXIV, 203–5. 317 318 Life of Lazaros, II, 78. Life of Leontios, X, XVII, 44–5, 50–2. Life of Leontios, LXIV–LXV, 106–8.

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of either Leontios or his successor and protégé Antonios that the parakleision of the church in the monastery at Patmos was decorated with a series of portraits of the patriarchs of Jerusalem, and from the time of his entry into the monastery at Patmos Leontios had been chanting the liturgy in usage at St Sabas.319 The Holy Land drew monks from wider afield in the Orthodox oikoumene than Cyprus and Asia Minor. The pilgrimages of Daniel, Euphrosine and Ignatios of Smolensk from Russian-speaking territories indicates the attraction of the Holy Land among Slavs after the tenth century; significantly, all three of these pilgrims showed particular interest in Judaean desert monasteries as well as in the shrines of Jerusalem. In the 1220s, Savas Nemanjic of Serbia’s extended pilgrimage to the Holy Land inspired his own subsequent foundations in Serbia.320 The salient characteristics of monasticism in the Holy Land to which monks who drew inspiration from it were drawn were twofold. First, the liturgy developed at St Sabas between the sixth and eleventh centuries proved to be both sufficiently adaptable and detailed to use either as the basis for new foundations, or as a reference point for an authoritative tradition of monastic observance that led directly back to the earliest forms of the fourth century. Second, the geography and topography of the Judaean desert, which

Figure 11 Monastery of Saidnaya, Syria

319

Kollias, ‘Wall paintings’, 60, and plates 24–7.

320

Popovic, ‘Sabaite influences’.

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characteristically allowed for both laura and coenobium types of foundation, proved inspirational to founders who sought to import essential qualities of the desert monasteries into their own landscapes. Besides Neophytos’ Enkleistra we can also consider Savas Nemanjic’s hesychatrion and other laurae in the Studenica region of Serbia. In such cases, however, the examples provided by the Judaean desert monasteries went beyond the imitation of geography. In copying the architecture and physical organisation of the laura of St Sabas in his Serbian foundations, for example, Savas Nemanjic showed how a whole monastic culture and history could be replanted in new territories.321 As John Phocas’ ekphrasis of the desert monasteries demonstrates, the quality of monasticism in the Holy Land was ensured by the continuing vitality of the monastic life itself in the places where it had been first planted. Thus, it was the repetition of patterns of behaviour such as that demonstrated by the Georgian monk who occupied the ruins of St Gerasimos by the Jordan and who, like him, tamed a lion, that assured monks from elsewhere in the oikoumene of the virtues of the desert. In this example, indeed, we see monasticism viewed through a double lens: that of the imitative Georgian, and that of Phocas himself, a Cretan whose pilgrimage was designed to encompass not only the geography of holiness but also the reiteration of monastic history in the same place. The importing of models such as those attempted by Christodoulos, Neophytos and Savas Nemanjic was an appropriation of the continuity of monastic experience in the Holy Land.

321

Popovic, ‘Sabaite influences’, 390–407.

16 Reading, Writing and Representation

Reading, Copying and Translating Just as the monastic typika provide some mileage in helping us to approach the spiritual practices of Orthodox monasteries, so they can also occasionally be of value in helping us to understand literary and textual production. Specifically, they touch on the questions of what books the monasteries should own, both for the conduct of the liturgy and for private reading and contemplation: what in the West was known as lectio divina. It goes without saying, of course, that a sufficient supply of office books was required not only for complex demands of liturgical observances in the church, but also for the monks to say their offices privately in their cells. This does not necessarily mean that each monk needed an office book for his permanent use, since from daily repetition much of the offices would have become fixed in the memory, but a certain number must have been needed. In Christodoulos’ monastery of St John on Patmos, these books, along with the title deeds of the monastery (meaning, presumably, the imperial chrysobull of Alexios I), were the special responsibility of an ecclesiarch appointed by the hegoumen.1 Whether monasteries actually had libraries, however, is a more difficult question. Christodoulos refers in his Testament to his personal collection of books, which he had inventoried and left to the monastery.2 Some founders, and therefore some monasteries, were more ‘bookish’ than others. Neophytos recommended reading alongside recitation of the psalms and prayer as the sure path for the Recluse who was to head the Enkleistra after his own death.3 Indeed, he made considerable efforts to acquire books for the monastery. Around thirty manuscripts from the library that Neophytos built up at the Enkleistra have survived. These include selections from John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Gospels, Gregory of Nazianzen’s Homilies, Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Ephraim the Syrian, some of the seventh-century Sabaite monk Antiochos’ Ascetic Chapters, and extracts from other patristic commentaries, such as Theodoret of Cyrrhus on the psalms. He may also have owned homilies by John of Damascus and the Apophthegmata of the Egyptian monks. From references in his own writing, it can be inferred that he knew Josephus and Eusebios, and his own panegyric on St 1 2

3

Christodoulos, A21, 589. Christodoulos, B7, 596. The extent and nature of Christodoulos’ library are discussed by Mouriki and Sevcenko, ‘Illustrated manuscripts’, who suggest that, while most of the monastery’s books in his own day were functional texts without illuminations, Christodoulos envisaged the creation of a scriptorium in the monastery. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XV, p. 148.

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Sabas reveals familiarity with Cyril of Scythopolis.4 An emphasis on the ascetic tradition of Syria and the Holy Land is obvious. The Enkleistra may not be typical of Orthodox monasteries in the second half of the twelfth century, but this list gives an indication of the kinds of books Neophytos thought were needed. Nikon of the Black Mountain is perhaps at the extreme end of the scale. Unusually – uniquely, indeed, for the period up to the twelfth century – Nikon required his monks to know certain books that he specified: ‘It is necessary to have the entire Life of our holy father Pachomios in writing, as also the Constitutions of Cenobitic Monasteries by Saint Cassian the Roman, as well as the Ascetical Treatises of our holy father Basil, since they contain canons and rules for regulation of cenobitic monasteries.’5 Nikon insisted that the monastery should own copies not only of these, but also of ‘all the rest of the Christian traditions, both of monks and clerics, likewise of laity and generally every Christian body, from the traditions of the holy and inspired fathers’.6 This meant, in Nikon’s view, not only pastoral works and monastic rules, but also conciliar decrees, orthodox theology and polemical works exposing erroneous doctrines. This concern for specific legislation of the monks’ reading and for the reference material necessary for a cenobitic community may indeed, as Robert Allison has argued,7 make Nikon stand out among monastic founders, but it should not therefore be assumed that the Black Mountain was unique among monasteries in the region in enjoying such a wealth of the type of reading matter that he prescribed. Some monasteries clearly did have their own copies of Basil’s Rules: the Rule and Asketikon were copied at St Sabas in the late tenth or eleventh century (Jerusalem Taphou 30, ff. 25v–92v, 99v–210v), and the Asketikon also survives in a Cypriot manuscript of c. 1320 (Patmos, Monastery of St John 304, ff. 1v–161v) and in a manuscript copied at an unknown Syrian monastery in the twelfth or thirteenth century (Jerusalem Taphou 39, ff. 119v–139v). John Chrysostom’s Homilies to the Antiochenes, in which he expounds on the nature of the ascetic life lived by the monks on the hills outside Antioch, were copied in 1072 in a luxury manuscript made at the wealthy monastery of Theotokos ton Krineon near Kyrenia in northern Cyprus (Vat Barb 528).8 The letters of St Nilos to the monk Dabourias on the ascetic life were copied in Jerusalem Sabas 366, a twelfth- or thirteenth-century hagiographical and theological anthology, and Sinai gr. 432, ff. 164v–172v, a manuscript of 1334 made by a Sabaite monk, Gabriel, while resident in a metochion belonging to the monastery in Cyprus, and therefore presumably for the monks of the metochion.9 Other founders acknowledged the influences of earlier monastic legislators, particularly Basil, but evidently could not necessarily count on copies of earlier Rules or ascetic treatises being available for their monks. Hence Neophytos included a dozen canons that he supposed to be by Basil, though they are in fact the anonymous Poenae in monachos deliquentes commonly attributed to him, in his typikon.10 Neilos, composing the typikon for Makhairas, had ‘some of the canons of St Basil’ written down along with his own regulations.11 The very act of writing the Rule 4 7 9 10

5 6 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 22–3. Black Mountain, XXIX, p. 392. Black Mountain, XXIX, p.393. 8 Black Mountain, 379. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 54–9. On Sinai gr 432, see Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 189–91. 11 Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, pp. 164–5, and n. 98. Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXXXVII, p. 114.

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down, Neilos explained, was so that the monks could, at least in theory, have the opportunity of ‘viewing it daily like a canon in primary form’.12 He presumably does not mean that he expected the monks to read the Rule daily, but rather that its presence as a physical object in the monastery should serve as a powerful reminder to the monks of their obligations to their vow.13 This kind of sentiment has led Nicholas Coureas to paint a picture of Neilos as a pragmatic reformer whose primary interest lay in the business of making the community function smoothly, in contrast with the scholar Nikon, whose spirituality was governed by a deep immersion in patristic monastic theology.14 In any case, even Nikon was probably, at the time of composing his typikon, thinking in ideal rather than practical terms. Few monasteries could have been as well provided with the full range of patristic and canonical material as he demanded, at least not in the form of a set of discrete books. For one thing, books were not so easy to acquire. In the prologue to his Pandekts, he refers to the difficulty of lending or borrowing books in the troubled times caused by the Seljuq advances in north Syria in the reign of Constantine Dukas (1059–67). It was for this reason, indeed, that he collected his own digest of the necessary patristic works for the use of monks: working like a bee, as he expressed it, to gather the honey of patristic commentary, lest the monasteries, through ignorance of such texts, fall into error.15 Similarly, at around the same time, the Georgian monk Giorgi Hucsi, while a recluse on the Wondrous Mountain near Antioch, copied the Life of Martha and Life of Barlaam for the Georgian monastery of Iviron, having heard that they were unavailable on Athos.16 Nikon’s Taktikon, written in the early years of the twelfth century, is known from two manuscripts, one in Greek (Sinai gr 436), the other in Arabic (Vat Bib cod arab 76), both of which derive from the monastery of St Katherine on Mt Sinai. Both manuscripts contain, besides the typikon for his own foundation on the Black Mountain (and, in the case of Sinai 436, the typikon for his subsequent foundation of the Theotokos tou roidiou as well), a selection of his letters to monks and hegoumens in a variety of monasteries in the Holy Land, Syria and Cyprus, all of which deal with issues of monastic conduct and practice or canonical procedure.17 Monastic fasting, confession in monasteries, how to deal with women, and the sanctity of monastic buildings rub shoulders with issues such as episcopal relations with monasteries, the proper commemoration due to metropolitans, and the canons on marriage. In addition, Nikon deals with ecclesiological questions such as the Latin and Armenian rites and the status of the Georgians within the Orthodox communion. A few of the topics deal with pastoral concerns, such as preaching and the recognition and treatment of diabolical illusions. In summary, the Taktikon is a handbook assembled for the general use of monks, but one that clearly draws on specific questions on which he had been asked to pronounce by other monastic communities. In contrast, his earlier work, the Pandekts, while intended in the same way as a practical handbook for monastic usage, is drawn directly from

12 13 14 16 17

Rule of Neilos, trans. Coureas, CXXXIX, p. 114. See the remarks of Coureas in Foundation Rules, 27, on Neilos’ character as a legislator and writer. 15 Foundation Rules, 27. The Prologue is reprinted in PG 127: 513–16. Athos Iviron MS 84: Djobadze, Materials, 28–32. Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum, 155–70, for a summary of the contents of Vat arab 76; Benesevic, Catalogus codicum, I, 237–46, for Sinai 436. Jerusalem Sabas 365 is a thirteenth-century copy of the Sinai Greek manuscript.

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canonical sources rather than filtering patristic and canonical knowledge through the lens of his own reading and experience, as in the Taktikon.18 To judge from surviving books, such anthologies or digests were, in fact, quite common in Levantine monasteries. Indeed, most Orthodox monks in the eleventh–thirteenth centuries probably gained what familiarity they had with patristic, legislative and canonical works from such digests. As a first example, let us take Jerusalem Taphou 39, a smallish twelfth- or thirteenth-century book that probably comes from a monastery in the patriachate of Antioch. The major work in the manuscript is the Nomocanons of Alexios Aristenos (ff. 9v–101r), but in addition the scribe has copied various rulings by Greek fathers (the fourth-century bishops of Alexandria, Cyril, Timothy and Theophilos, and Gregory the Wonderworker); Basil’s Asketikon; the Apostolic Canons; a list of the canons of the seven oecumenical councils; the polemical letter of Peter, patriarch of Antioch against the Latins; letters of Leontios, archbishop of Ochrid, also on Latin errors; and the Notitia Antiochena. Despite the presence of the polemical material, the purpose of the collection seems to be legislative and canonical. The small size of the book and relatively cluttered, if clear, script throughout, coupled with the paucity of decoration, surely indicate that this was intended for private study rather than for public reading. A more complicated collection is found in the thirteenth-century manuscript, Jerusalem Sabas 366. This compendium of seventy texts, comprising 254 folios, is in two hands. The selection is broad, but the emphasis is on brief extracts of larger works or opuscula written to answer specific questions. Thus, for example, the book includes canons on marriage and bigamy; synodical rulings on the liturgy, together with Patriarch Germanos II’s exegesis on the liturgy; a treatise on bodily suffering; a short treatise by John of Jerusalem on azymes, written against the Latins;19 another by Nilos Doxopatris on the five patriarchal thrones; various opuscula by Mark the Monk; several letters of St Nilos; various Apophthegmata; homiles by Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria; a spurious exchange of letters between Athanasius of Alexandria and Pope Liberius on the Incarnation; hagiographical works, including the Life of Constantine and Helena; and Nikephoras of Constantinople’s treatise on the discovery of the Holy Cross; as well as many others.20 Was this eclectic selection purely the whim of the scribes, who may have been copying some years apart? This looks very much like a piecemeal selection of texts copied as and when they became available, doubtless depending on their availability from other monasteries. Although on palaeographical grounds the book fits within the general pattern on Palestino-Cypriot manuscripts of the period, the selection is obviously monastic in its interests (for example: on fasting; headings for the Sayings of St Anthony; letters of St Nilos to monks and anchorites).

18

19

20

The Pandekts remain unedited, but extracts, with commentary and a full list of Nikon’s sources, were published by de Clercq, Les textes juridiques. This is the bishop of Tyre who, after the crusader occupation of Jerusalem, was – according to the account he gave to a council in Constantinople in 1107 – acclaimed as patriarch of Jerusalem by the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land; although he never exercised this office in Jerusalem, his election was ratified in Constantinople. See V. Grümel, ed., Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. I, fasc. 3, Les regestes de 1043 à 1206 (Paris, 1947), No. 986. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, II, 485–500. On Mark, see H. Chadwick, ‘The identity and date of Mark the Monk’, Eastern Churches Review 4 (1972), 125–30; for the Holy Cross, see C. de Boor, ed., Nicephori Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani opuscula historica (Leipzig, 1880), XXII, 15–16; the spurious letter exchange is in PG 28: 1441–4, etc.

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Moreover, despite the inclusion of southern Italian material, an origin in the Holy Land is suggested by the interest in the Holy Cross.21 A similar interest in compilation is shown by the Antiochene writer Anthony, who was a monk at St Symeon the Wonderworker in the last decade of the tenth century. Anthony’s translation of a series of ‘spiritual stories’ or exempla by the tenth-century Greek bishop Paul of Monemvasia into Arabic not only indicates something of the reading habits of Syrian monks, but also suggests the early influx of Greek material into Antioch after the reconquest of 969.22 Anthony’s translation is in fact the earliest surviving version of Paul’s collection, and may include some stories that he added himself. The genre represented by Paul’s collection is that of stories told for spiritual benefit; its roots lie in Egyptian eremitical monasticism and can be recognised in, for example, the Apophthegmata Patrum or the Lausiac History of Palladius. The genre, however, fell into desuetude in the seventh century after John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow. Its revival in the tenth century has been linked to Paul’s origins as a monk at Mt Latros, in western Asia Minor, before he became bishop of Monemvasia.23 The ascetic community at Mt Latros had its roots in Palestinian refugee monks, and it has been argued that the conservatism of Paul’s original stories, which rely on simple ascetic virtues, owes something to Palestinian monastic spirituality.24 This argument may be supported by the fact that Anthony had been a monk at St Sabas before settling at St Symeon, and it may indeed be here that he had come across the variants of some of Paul’s original stories found in Paris Bib Nat arab 276, the eleventh-century manuscript preserving his translation.25 This manuscript also contains other translations made by Anthony. Most intriguing is his Arabic version of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, made not from the original Latin but from the Greek translation commissioned by Pope Zacharias in 741–52. He also translated selections of the Cappadocian Fathers, John Chrysostom and Ephrem the Syrian, as well as several anonymous fragments and a treatise on monastic contemplation.26 These examples are, in fact, more typical of surviving manuscripts from Levantine monasteries than Nikon’s own collections, in which his distinctive authorial voice remains central to the selection. Nikon’s Taktikon demonstrates his grasp of the history of monasticism in the east as well as of the principles underlying its practices.27 An awareness of monastic history is, to some extent, inalienable from the pursuit of those principles, and as we shall see, the desert monasteries showed an understanding of the place they occupied in 21

22 23

24 25

26

27

Links between Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land and southern Italy can be found in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, for example in the Life of Sabas the Younger by Orestes, patriarch of Jerusalem (986–1006), who encountered Sabas and other Calabrian monks in Italy in 980–5: Vita S. Sabae Iunioris, ed. C. Cozza-Luzi, Studi e documenti di storia e diretto 12 (Rome, 1891). Sauget, ‘Le Paterikon du MS Arabe 276’. Wortley, ‘Paul of Monemvasia’. Wortley estimates that 7,000–8,000 such stories are known from the late fourth to the midseventh centuries. Wortley, ‘Paul of Monemvasia’, 311 n. 22. P. Peeters, ‘Une invention des SS Valère, Vincent et Eulalie dans le Péleponèse,’ Analecta Bollandiana 30 (1911), 296–306. Other variants include the story of a miracle worked by an icon of Mar Cyr the Wonderworker, and one about Theophilos the Oikonomos. For the latter, see J.-C. Guy, ‘Un entretien monastique sur la contemplation’, Recherches des Sciences Religieuses 50 (1962), 230–41. Anthony’s translation activities are also known from other manuscripts: for example his translation of the Homilies of John Chrysostom was copied in 1053 by Agapetos, a monk of St Elias, Sinai arab 285. For other examples, see Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 274–6. For example, in chs. 36–7, Vat Bib cod arab 76, ff. 362, 366; Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum, 166, on the historical presence of Armenians at Sabas’ monasteries in Palestine, and on the origins of the Georgian Church.

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that history. It is therefore surprising that more versions of this history do not survive among the manuscripts produced in or for the monasteries. An exception is the manuscript of Palladius’ Lausiac History made in 1334, Sinai gr 432, which also contains part of the letter collection of St Jerome, brief biographies of some Egyptian monks, and a treatise on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614.28 The scribe was a monk of St Sabas, Gabriel, who copied the book while at a Cypriot metochion of the monastery. Was he supplying texts unknown to the monks of the metochion, brought with him from Palestine – or making use of his residence in Cyprus to copy texts that were unavailable at St Sabas? The only other manuscript from the region in the crusader period that betrays a conscious interest in history is another Cypriot book, Vat Bib gr 1455, dating from 1299. This anomalous manuscript is characterised by an unusual interest in Armenian history and affairs. Amongst the theological and canonical works that comprise the bulk of its content, the manuscript begins with the Narratio de rebus Armeniae, an anonymous text, perhaps from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, relating the history of the Armenian church leading up to and after the Council of Chalcedon in 451.29 The other texts in the manuscript include a letter purportedly sent by Thomas, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the early ninth century, to the Armenians. This was in fact originally an Arabic treatise by Theodore Abu Qurrah, which had been translated into Greek by Michael the Synkellos.30 In addition, there are three letters between the patriarch of Constantinople and the Armenians on the question of the reunion of the Greek and Armenian Churches: from Germanos II to the Armenian catholicos Constantine, in 1239–40, Constantine’s reply in 1240–1, and from Germanos’ successor Manuel II to the catholicos and King Hethum I, in 1247–8.31 Other notes in the manuscript leave little doubt that it originated in Cyprus, but whether, as has been suggested, from an Armenian monastery on the island, remains uncertain. Given the polemical implications in Theodore Abu Qurrah’s treatise, as in the later letters, it could just as easily be the work of an Orthodox monk, or community, engaged in debate or dispute with Armenians in Cyprus.32 Surprisingly, perhaps, there are no manuscripts of the ‘classic’ texts of monastic history – the Life of Pachomios, as demanded by Nikon, the History of the Monks of Egypt, John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow – even the Works of Athanasios in British Library Harley 5579 omit his Life of Anthony. Cyril of Scythopolis, although known in a Greek manuscript as early as the ninth century, was not copied in full form, though, as we shall see, the monks of St Sabas certainly knew versions of the Lives of Sabas and Euthymios. In a slightly different vein, the story of Barlaam and Joseph (or Josaphat) appears to have been widely copied in Near Eastern monasteries in this period. Originally a Buddhist tale, 28 29

30 31

32

For full contents and description, see Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 189–91. La narratio de rebus Armeniaé, edition critique et commentaire, ed. G. Garitte, CSCO 132, Subsidia IV (Louvain, 1952). Vat gr 1455 is one of the four manuscripts on which the edition is based. In the other manuscripts, though not in this one, the Narratio is accompanied by the tracts of the Armenian catholicos Isaac I against the Monophysite tradition, and this led J.-P. Migne to ascribe the authorship to Isaac (PG 132: 1213–78). However, in a separate edition, Migne also repeated the attribution made by the Biblioteca Patrum, XIV (1781), 266–76, to Philippus Solitarius. PG 97: 1504–21. Vat Bib gr 1455, ff. 25r–32r; V. Laurent, ed., Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. I, fasc. 4, Les regestes de 1208 à 1309 (Paris, 1971), I, iv, no. 1290. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 123–7. On Armenian communities in Cyprus, see Schabel, ‘Religion’, 166–8; N. Coureas, ‘Lusignan Cyprus and Lesser Armenia, 1195–1375’, EKEE 21 (1995), 33–71.

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the earliest version of which may have been in Persian, this story has many variants, known in a variety of Eastern languages. The Greek manuscript tradition alone is extensive, but the oldest, Paris Bib Nat gr 903 and Jerusalem Taphou 42, are both from the eleventh century.33 The oldest Greek manuscripts name the author as John, identified as a monk of St Sabas. A natural association of names has led some to identify this John with John of Damascus,34 but – although it is not implausible that John should have known the story – there is no reason to suppose that he was the author of the Greek version. Similar confusion prevails in the Arabic manuscripts, where authorship is variously attributed to Yuhanna, monk of St Sabas, John of Damascus or Yuhanna of Mar Musa. The current orthodoxy is that the earliest written version was by the Georgian monk Euthymios, a monk of the Iviron monastery on Mt Athos in the early eleventh century.35 Euthymios is also known as a translator from Greek into Georgian, for example of a manuscript of Gregory the Theologian made at St Symeon the Wonderworker in 1040 and given to the Holy Cross.36 However, another Georgian manuscript of about the same period, Athos Iviron 84, contains a Life of Barlaam, which the scribe explains in a colophon he copied for Iviron because he had heard that the book was not known on Mt Athos at all.37 This would seem to indicate that, even if the original were in Georgian rather than Greek, it did not come from Mt Athos. Nikon of the Black Mountain’s prescription for monks to be familiar with patristic theology was also met by compendia. Although some complete works by the important Fathers survive, most were scattered throughout different books. For example, the three patristic writers whose work was most commonly copied in Greek in Orthodox monasteries from the Levant between the early eleventh and early fourteenth centuries were Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen and John Chrysostom. Of these, Basil’s and Chrysostom’s writings are found in at least ten manuscripts, and Gregory’s in at least six. Of these books, all contain the work of at least one of the three. There is space here to provide only a few examples. Jerusalem Sabas 60, a twelfth-century manuscript that was owned by the monastery of St Gerasimos by 1322,38 contains, inter alia, a homily by Andrew of Crete, on the birth of the Blessed Virgin, an opusculum by Epiphanios on the life of the Blessed Virgin, a work by the same author on the Tomb of Christ, a commentary on the Gospel of John, a letter of John Chrysostom to a newly elected bishop, homilies by Gregory of Nazianzen ‘On the theophany of Our Lord’, taken from a menaion entry for December, on baptism, and on Pentecost, another on baptism by Basil, a homily on the Blessed Virgin by Amphilocios of Iconium, a homily on fasting by Basil, and one by Athanasios on the Incarnation. Most of the works are short – fewer than ten folios – and although there is some logic both to the selection (note the particular interest in the Blessed Virgin) and to the authors whose works are chosen, the order in which they are copied does not necessarily follow this logic. Another twelfth-century manuscript, Jerusalem Sabas 103, probably came 33 34

35 37 38

F. Dölger, Der griechische Barlaam-Roman (Nördlingen, 1953), 4–11, lists 140 Greek manuscripts. For example, the English version by G. R. Woodward and H. Mattingly, St John Damascene: Barlaam and Ioasaph (Cambridge MA, 1914). Some later manuscripts identify the author as John the Sinaite. 36 Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 178–86. Leningrad Oriental Institute, Georgian MS 3: Djobadze, Materials, 5–12. Djobadze, Materials, 28–32. Jerusalem Sabas MS 60, f. 4v, has a note in Arabic claiming ownership by St Gerasimos, dated 1322. See PapadopoulosKerameos, ed., Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, II, 105–9.

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from a different scriptorium, and was owned by St John Prodromos in the thirteenth century. There are no elaborate headpieces and the initials with which each separate piece begins are restrained in ornamentation. The relatively small size of the book and its plainness, as well as the contents, indicate that it was intended for private reading. It contains, like Sabas 60, pieces by Gregory of Nazianzen (on the Nativity and on the Holy Light), Basil (also on the Nativity, and on Baptism) and Chrysostom (on the Holy Theophany of Jesus Christ, on the Resurrection and on fornication). In addition, there are homilies by Amphilocios of Iconium on the Blessed Virgin, Hesychios of Jerusalem, Andrew of Crete, Epiphanios and an encomium on St Stephen by Florentios, bishop of Photika. Aside from the predictable dominance of the Cappadocians and Chrysostom, local interests are served by the inclusion of Hesychios and Andrew of Crete, who is described in Sabas 60 as ‘the Jerusalemite’.39 A more obviously comprehensible compendium is the Cypriot manuscript now in Paris, Bib Nat 1215, an anthology of homilies on the Blessed Virgin dating from 1080. This contains works by Andrew of Crete, John Chrysostom, George of Nicomedia and John of Damascus, besides the Protoevangelium of St James and Symeon Metaphrastes’ Life of the Blessed Virgin.40 As is also the case with Sabas 60, this compendium includes liturgical material – for example, the Metaphrastean Life of the Virgin – with non-liturgical reading for private study or reference. It is not surprising that no complete manuscripts of Gregory of Nazianzen’s Homilies survive, for after the tenth century few of these were made; instead, the sixteen most often used were assembled in editions designed for liturgical use. However, the manuscripts from the Crusader States containing Gregory’s Homilies do not seem to conform precisely to this type. Such compendia continued to be compiled in Cyprus in the early fourteenth century. A good example is Oxford, Barocci 27, probably from c. 1320. This is a miscellany of, inter alia, Maximos the Confessor, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Philoponos, Gregory of Nyssa, and short extracts from John Chrysostom. Many of these are short extracts of only a page or so, though the main interest is clearly in the work of Maximos.41 In a Georgian hagiographical collection – a translation of Symeon Metaphrastes made on the Black Mountain near Antioch – the texts have been added as required over a long period from the mid-eleventh through the twelfth century. According to the colophon, the Life of Mina was translated at request of Basil the hegoumen, who needed it for the monastery of St Mina, while the Life of Gregory the Wonderworker was translated by the monk Ephrem at request of a different hegoumen, Sabas.42 Books containing the work of only a single author are rare among those surviving from the Levant. Perhaps the finest example is Sinai gr 418, a twelfth-century deluxe illuminated copy of John Klimakos’ Heavenly Ladder.43 Similarities in decoration to other books with 39 40

41

42 43

Jerusalem Sabas 60, f. 12r. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 59–63. There has been some debate over the origin of this manuscript, which A. Ehrhard, ‘Das griechische Kloster in Palästina. Seine Geschichte und seine Denkmäler’, RQ 7 (1893), 62) thought might be south Italian, but it was certainly in Cyprus by the fourteenth century and there are grounds for supposing that it was copied there. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 173–6. The scribe is thought to have been Romanos Anagnostes, who made several other manuscripts for monastic use at around the same time. Djobadze, Materials, 22–5. The manuscript is Tbilisi Institute of MSS 384. Weitzmann and Galavaris, Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, 153–62.

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known Palestinian provenance suggest that this manuscript was made either at Sinai or in an atelier in which a common stock of decorative motifs typical of the Palestino-Cypriot orbit was well known. Another exception is British Library Harley 5579, a Cypriot book of c. 1320–1 made by the scribe Romanos Anagnostes, containing some of the works of Athanasios of Alexandria (though not, curiously, the Life of Anthony). This may, however, be the exception that proves the rule, since there is no obvious connection to a monastery, and it is equally likely that a professional scribe such as Romanos undertook such commissions for wealthy individual patrons as for monastic communities.44 There is some evidence of an interest in polemical works. Jerusalem Sabas 697, a twelfth- or thirteenth-century book which may originate from north Syria or Asia Minor, preserves, alongside some orations and Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzen, John of Damascus’ treatise against Jews and Muslims.45 Jerusalem Taphou 39, a large compendium of canonical and patristic works, contains the letters of Peter, Patriarch of Antioch, and Leontios of Ochrid against the Latins.46 I have already noted Jerusalem Sabas 366, which includes the treatise against Latin eucharistic practices by John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, an early twelfth-century work. A Cypriot manuscript from c. 1317 to 1320, Vat Pal gr 367, contains the treatise Against the Saracens by Euthymios Zigabenos (ff. 61r–63r), but this book belonged to one of the chief members of the Greek-speaking bureaucratic establishment at the time and, although it has a lot of monastic material, it is far from certain that the selection of material is any reflection of monastic activity.47 A gospel lectionary of 1060–1 made in a Palestinian scriptorium and owned by the monastery of St Gerasimos in the thirteenth century has an unusual representation of the evangelists standing under arches that is apparently taken from a passage in Irenaeus’ Five Books Testing and Refuting Spurious Knowledge.48 This would appear to suggest close familiarity with the text on the part of the artist or the patron of the manuscript. We shall also see further examples of polemical interests when we consider original writing by Orthodox monks in the Crusader States. With the exception of the treatise by John of Damascus in Sabas 697, such polemical material as appears in Greek is either contemporary or near-contemporary; in other words, it dates from the period of the Seljuq conquest in the mid-eleventh century or later. This suggests that, in so far as monks were interested in developing and recording arguments against non-Orthodox religious practices, they were doing so in the context of current debates against Latins, Muslims and Monophysites. The vast majority of surviving manuscripts from Orthodox monasteries in Palestine, Syria and Cyprus are either biblical or hagiographical. However, none of the biblical manuscripts are complete Bibles as we know them today; they tend instead to be groupings 44

45

46 47 48

Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 177–80; A. Turyn, Dated Greek Manuscripts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in the Libraries of Great Britain (Washington, DC, 1980), 88–9. Pahlitzsch, Graeci und Suriani, 118, suggests an Asia Minor provenance on the basis of the report, on f. 116v, of the battle of Manzikert and another Byzantine/Muslim encounter in 1191–2, but this may equally well simply reflect the subject matter of the selection from John of Damascus. Jerusalem Taphou 39, ff. 115r–119v. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 153–65; Beihammer, ed. and trans., Griechische Briefe. Jerusalem Megale Panagia 1, f. 2v, P. Vocotopoulos, Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, trans. D. M. Whitehouse (Athens and Jerusalem, 2002), fig. 2; G. Galavaris, The Illustrations of the Prefaces in Byzantine Gospels (Vienna, 1979), 131, illustrating Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, III, 8, PG 7: 885 (‘Just as there are four regions in the world, and four principal spirits, so the Church is spread over all the world, and the pillar supporting the Church is the Gospel’).

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of certain books, usually the Gospels, sometimes with the psalms; in addition there are a few complete Old and New Testaments. The hagiographical manuscripts are of three main types. Rarest are complete saints’ lives, which I will examine separately. Far more common are the panegyrika – compendia of brief lives or encomia of individual saints – and the menologia or synaxaria, which are saints’ lives organised according to the ecclesiastical calendar. A better way of distinguishing them, therefore, may be between liturgical and nonliturgical books. Although, as noted, most of the biblical manuscripts are gospel books, relatively few are actually for liturgical usage: in other words, lectionaries with the gospel readings organised calendrically and marked for the liturgy.49 Most of them are Tetraevangelia – the four Gospels collected together, sometimes with prayers or odes, often illuminated. Most of the illuminated books linked to monasteries in the Holy Land, Syria or Cyprus have been identified by art historians as members of a reconstructed genre or type known as the ‘Decorative Style’, and based around a small group of twelfth-century books whose provenance is eastern Mediterranean.50 As Annemarie Weyl Carr has observed, this group is notable for its non-liturgical character, with a preponderance of Tetraevangelia rather than lectionaries. In her revised catalogue of Decorative Style manuscripts, she noted sixty Tetraevangelia, compared to ten psalters, five New Testaments and ten books containing both psalter and New Testament. Moreover, the apparatus associated with such books, the canon tables that preface the Gospels, are sometimes arranged in a haphazard fashion, which suggests that they had no practical liturgical use.51 Many of the hagiographical collections are panegyrika, which gather together selections of encomia and homilies on the saints by various writers. Typical of this large genre is Jerusalem Sabas 259, a manuscript of 1089–90. The scribe, Gerasimos, originally copied the book for a monastery whose name was erased and replaced at a later date by that of St Nicholas in Akrotiri, which must have acquired the manuscript.52 The origin of the manuscript must be Cypriot, since the patron was Basil, the kouboukleisios of a village near Kyrenia, but there may also be an Antiochene connection.53 In this collection, patristic works of exegesis, such as Athanasios’ homily on the prophet Daniel, are mixed with hagiographical works, notably the Life of St Spiridion by Theodore of Paphos (this latter work provides a further indication of the Cypriot origin of the book). Robert Browning has observed that the selections conform to liturgical readings for given feasts in the calendar; however, they are not arranged according to any calendar so, even if they were intended for liturgical use, the book could not have taken the place of a standard synaxarion or menologion. 49

50

51 52 53

Examples are Athens EB 163, Sinai gr 220 and 232, and Sinai gr 218, all twelfth-century books. In lectionaries, the Gospels are rearranged to conform to the order of the readings for the church calendar; moreover, only those passages that are used in the liturgy are included. Lectionaries begin with the reading from the beginning of John’s Gospel for Easter Sunday, and continue with the readings for all the moveable feasts, then continue with the fixed feasts from the beginning of the liturgical year, which was 1 September. Weyl Carr, ‘A group’; Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination. The principal manuscript in the group is Chicago University Library MS 965 (the Rockefeller McCormick New Testament). Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 1–2. Jerusalem Sabas 259, f. 317r. For full discussion, see Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 63–8. G. Mercati, ‘Origine Antiochena di due codici greci dei secoli XI’, Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950), 213 n. 3.

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Another characteristic example is Jerusalem Sabas 140, a large volume dating from the second half of the twelfth century.54 The script, in a very black ink, conforms to the ‘e’ style identified by Paul Canart as typical of Palestino-Cypriot books of this period.55 Aside from the later note of ownership by St Sabas there is an earlier one for the monastery of St George in Lydda, but this is no earlier than the fifteenth century, and it is impossible to be certain which monastery in the region owned the manuscript before this. Up to f. 254v, the book comprises entries for martyrs, including Aketinas, Joseph and Aeitholos, Galaktionos and Epistemes, Jerome of Melitene, and saints, such as Paul the Homologete, St Theoktistos of Lesbos, Menas the Egyptian, John the Almsgiver, patriarch of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom. These appear to have been taken from a standard menologion. From f. 255r to f. 276r, a different hand, though in a similar style, has copied a paraphrase of some episodes of Old Testament history. As with Sabas 259, these selections conform to liturgical usages, but they do not correspond to a systematic calendar arranged by months and days. The life and martyrdom of Menas, for example, appear in this manuscript out of the sequence in which it occurs in the menologia for December in Jerusalem Taphou 7 and Sabas 18. Similarly, Jerusalem Sabas 142, an eleventh-century book owned by the monastery of St Theodosios, begins with the life of the founder of the monastery, Theodosios the Coenobiarch – which is also given a disproportionate amount of space compared to other entries – before going on to other saints who do not appear in this relationship in standard menologia. However, the large size of these books and the marginal guides for readers in Sabas 140 appear to indicate that they were adapted from such menologia. The marginal guides are a little puzzling, for if the books were not for liturgical usage they would presumably not require these notations. Probably this is an example of a book copied for private reading but adapted for liturgical usage. The same thing can be found in Neophytos cod 11, a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century gospel book from Cyprus; in both cases the hand that marked the lectionary readings is different from that of the main text.56 The menologia themselves conform for the most part to the standard norm known from other Byzantine examples. In the form in which it is known from manuscripts from the eleventh–fourteenth centuries, the menologion derives from the compilation of saints’ lives for liturgical usage made by Symeon Metaphrastes for Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos (912–59). In origin this was a twelve-volume compendium, organised monthly with each volume representing a month of the liturgical calendar. For each entry the canonical odes to be sung at orthros (vespers) provide the frame for the historical notice of the saint to be commemorated on that day, which falls between the sixth and seventh odes in the canon for the day. Many menologia in the form in which they have survived, however, consist simply of the historical notices, without the odes. There is still uncertainty, moreover, about how much of Symeon’s collection comprises original material of his own, and how much simply his compilation and editing of existing Lives. He was clearly not the author of all of it, since 54 55

56

Papadopoulos-Kerameos, ed., Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, II, 220–3. P. Canart, ‘Les écritures livresques chypriotes du milieu du XIe siècle au milieu du XIIIe et le style Palestino-Chypriote “epsilon”’, Scrittura e civiltà 5 (1981), 17–76. A. Weyl Carr, ‘Two illuminated manuscripts of the monastery of St Neophytos: issues of their Cypriot attribution’, in A. Bryer and G. Georghallides, eds., The Sweet Land of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1993), 288.

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some saints’ lives in the collection still preserve the names of original authors even in his own compendium.57 Some Lives were also known in Latin versions in the West before Symeon’s compilation; Athanasios’ Life of Anthony and the Life of Pachomios are the bestknown examples, to which we can add the Life of Sabas. Of course, Symeon’s full compilation was more extensive a resource than most religious houses wanted or could manage to use, so abbreviated or edited versions were created. The most influential from the mid-eleventh century onwards was the synaxarion of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Theotokos Evergetis, which has been extensively studied as part of a large-scale analysis of the institutional and spiritual life of the monastery.58 If we compare this synaxarion with that in the manuscript containing the Arabic version of Nikon’s Taktikon, Vat Bib cod arab 76, which lists the feasts celebrated in the church of Antioch, we can see immediately the extent of Byzantine liturgical influence in north Syria since the reconquest of 969.59 The Evergetis calendar is fuller, but in essence there is scarcely any variation, and little that might be attributed to local Syrian influences. How far the liturgical calendar had been influenced by cosmopolitan usage can be seen from a comparison with a tenth-century Georgian calendar made for Palestinian usage. Taking as a basis for comparison the months from September to December, we find only two correspondences with the Melkite Antiochene calendar. Significantly, these are both for Palestinian desert monks, Chariton (28 September) and Sabas (5 December).60 Other ‘local’ commemorations in the Palestinian calendar, such as the desert monks Kyriakos (29 September) and Euthymios (23 November) do not appear in the Antiochene calendar.61 Admittedly there are a few more exact matches with the Evergetis synaxarion, but for the four months in question these still amount to only five: Sabas, Chariton and Kyriakos, the birth of the Blessed Virgin (8 September, but celebrated in the Georgian calendar as a forefeast on the 7th), the martyr Sozon (7 September) and Spiridon (12 December). By the thirteenth century, a menologion made in 1055–6, probably in Constantinople, was in use at the monastery of Chariton, and later, after the abandonment of the monastery, passed to St John Prodromos. The calendar for September in this menologion, the whole of which is now divided between five manuscripts, corresponds exactly, as one would expect, with the Evergetis synaxarion.62 Although this is a Constantinopolitan book, it may have been made specially for Chariton: the note of ownership gives a terminus post quem, but not necessarily a terminus ante. If this is the case, it would suggest that Byzantine liturgical influence had spread to the Holy Land by the mid-eleventh century. It would be fascinating to know what the process was by which the book arrived at Chariton; perhaps the completion of the rebuilt Anastasis church, which is usually dated to 1049, provided an occasion for 57

58 60 62

H. Delehaye, ‘Les ménologues grecs’, Analecta Bollandiana 16 (1899), 311–29. These include Athanasios’ Life of Anthony (17 January), Sophronios’ Life of Mary of Egypt (1 April) and John Moschos’ Life of John the Almsgiver (12 November). 59 Synaxarion; see in general Mullett and Kirby, eds., Theotokos Evergetis. Mai, ed., Scriptorum veterum, 169–70. 61 Garitte, Calendrier, 93, 108. Garitte, Calendrier, 93, 105. September is in Oxford Barocci 230, for which see I. Hutter, Corpus der byzantinischen Miniatur handschriften, I (Stuttgart, 1977), 49–51. The other portions of the menologion are in Vienna Hist gr 6, Paris Bib Nat gr 580, Paris Bib Nat gr 1499 and Sinai gr 512. The dating is given in a colophon in Paris Bib Nat gr 1499, f. 421r, and the ownership in Oxford Barocci 230 f. 4r. See now Jotischky, ‘Fortunes of war’.

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increased contact between the desert monasteries and the imperial capital.63 Special interest is shown in the manuscript in the Syrian and Palestinian monks commemorated in September: Symeon the Stylite (1 September), Chariton (28 September) and Kyriakos (29 September) are given miniatures, and comparatively longer treatment compared to the other saints, and the life of Kyriakos appears very close to the text in Cyril of Scythopolis.64 That such a manuscript should have been donated to St Chariton, or commissioned by the monastery, from Constantinople is clear indication of the length of the capital’s arm in influencing liturgical usage in the Holy Land. A similar story is conveyed by Jerusalem Taphou 7, an eleventh-century menologion for December and January probably made at St Sabas and owned later by its metochion in Jerusalem. The comparison with the Evergetis synaxarion for December is close, though the Jerusalem manuscript omits some of the Old Testament prophets and some of the more obscure martyrs. St Ambrose is also omitted, which perhaps shows the distance between the desert monasteries and Rome. On the other hand, one might have expected the feast of the Conception of St Anne to have been included, given the importance of the site of St Anne’s house in Jerusalem, where the shrine church and monastery of the Probatica had stood since the seventh century. Another menologion, datable on stylistic grounds to the second half of the twelfth century, tells a similar story. The calendar for September in Athens E.B 840 is virtually identical to the Evergetis synaxarion and to Oxford Barocci 230. No particular attention is given to monastic saints from the Holy Land, nor does Euthymios appear, as he had in the Palestino-Georgian calendar, for November. These clear indications that Constantinopolitan usage was becoming standard in Palestinian monasteries from the eleventh century onwards, however, should not be taken to mean that the monasteries of the Holy Land and Cyprus simply imported or copied the Evergetis synaxarion. Scribes still made choices about which versions of a saint’s life to include in a menologion. As Hippolyte Delehaye has shown, the formulaic quality of the abbreviated form of a Life in a liturgical menologion means that it is not always easy to determine the exact origin of a text.65 In Jerusalem Taphou 7, an editorial decision has been made about the relative treatment of ‘local’ Palestinian saints. Thus Sabas (ff. 6v–69v) merits much greater length – and a more elaborate decorative initial – than, for example, St Nicholas (ff. 69v–99v) or Daniel the Stylite (ff. 120v–147v). This full version of Sabas’ Life is surely too long, at sixty-three folios, to have been used in the liturgy on his feast day, and must presumably have been copied at this length for the purposes of devotional reading and contemplation. Whereas the Lives of Daniel the Stylite and Nicholas, respectively a Constantinopolitan and a ‘universal’ saint, follow exactly the text of Symeon Metaphrastes, that of Sabas conforms to the text of Cyril of Scythopolis.66 As we have seen from surviving examples, the Byzantine reconquest of northern Syria at the end of the tenth century effected changes in liturgical observances that are reflected in 63

64 66

For discussion of the probable date of the rebuilding of the Anastasis and the history of the dating of 1049, see Biddle, Tomb of Christ, 74–81; Ousterhout, ‘Rebuilding the temple’. 65 Oxford Barocci 230, ff. 4r, 229v, 254v. Delehaye, ‘Les ménologes grecs’, 326–7. PG 116: 317–56, 969–1038, for the Lives of Nicholas and Daniel.

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manuscript production in the monasteries of the entire Levantine region. The adoption of the Constantinopolitan menologion is a symptom of a wider change. The fact that a large number of Greek liturgical manuscripts make an appearance from the early eleventh century onwards is itself a signal of a cultural shift in monasticism in the region. As is now clear, Arabic had replaced Greek as the standard language for liturgical as well as original works at some point probably in the ninth century.67 The evidence of surviving manuscripts shows that Greek, though it never displaced Arabic, began to return as the normative liturgical language in the late tenth century and made increasing inroads in the eleventh. In the first quarter of thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry, the Latin bishop of Acre, assumed a clear division in language use among the Suriani (by which he meant indigenous Greek Orthodox) in his diocese. Their customary written language was Arabic, but they used Greek for the liturgy and read the Scriptures in Greek.68 The transition was evidently not without difficulties. A Greek liturgical manuscript of the twelfth century, Vat Bib gr 2282, contains translations into Arabic of some of the Greek passages that were presumably unfamiliar to readers.69 Another language that continued in use alongside Greek was Georgian. Not only in the Georgian monasteries on the Black Mountain, which were probably for the most part very small, but also in the great monastery of St Symeon on the Wondrous Mountain, a Georgian community continued to coexist alongside the Greek (and Syriac)-speaking monks. According to the eleventh-century Life of George the Athonite, there were around sixty Georgian monks at St Symeon in his day. In the first quarter of the thirteenth century the Georgian community at the monastery was still significant, though it surely constituted a minority. Oliver of Paderborn, who visited the monastery during the Fifth Crusade (1217–21), correctly described the Greeks and Georgians as sharing the same liturgical offices, though the Georgians used their own language. He also examined their gospel books, and found that the structure and form corresponded closely to Latin customs.70 The increasingly widespread use of Greek as a liturgical language, however, did not necessarily mean the exclusive use of the Byzantine liturgy. The liturgy of St James, which was the traditional usage of Jerusalem and Antioch, is found in Greek manuscripts – for example, Vat Bib gr 2282 – until the end of the twelfth century. The extent of the continued use of Syriac and Arabic as opposed to Greek is a matter of contention among liturgical scholars. Not surprisingly, it is a debate which arouses sensitivities in so far as it reflects the religious heritage of the indigenous Greek Orthodox Church. Thus Charon’s contention that Syriac continued to be the normative liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria has met with a hostile reception from an Orthodox community and Orthodox scholars who consider Syriac to be the language of the Monophysite Syrian Orthodox Church. Charon’s argument was based on 190 surviving liturgical manuscripts in Syriac that are 67 68 69 70

See the various articles by Sidney Griffith, ‘The monks of Palestine’, ‘Anthony David of Baghdad’ and ‘Greek into Arabic’. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LXXV, p. 296. C. Cannuyer, ‘Langues usuelles et liturgiques des Melkites au XIIIe siècle’, Oriens Christianus 70 (1986), 114. Oliver of Paderborn, Historia Damiatana, in Schriften, ed. Hoogeweg, 265: Georgiani et Greci per omnia concordant in officiis divinis, sed Georgiani literam habent propriam; quorum codices in monte sancti Symeonis in columpna, ubi propriam habent ecclesiam, diligenter inspecientes, per interpretem intelleximus, eos eundem ordinem evangeliorum habere, quem habent Latini. Canones etiam evangelioum per columpnellas arcuatas, sicut et nos. Epistolarum Pauli idem prorsus apud eos est ordo cum nostro omnibus aliis epistolam Pauli ad Romanos premitunt.

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clearly Melkite rather than Jacobite (i.e. Greek rather than Syrian Orthodox).71 As Joseph Nasrallah has shown, however, the surviving manuscripts do not make for statistically trustworthy data. Only 50 predate the fourteenth century, and many are modern; moreover, only 19 of the 190 are of known provenance, and 8 of those come from a single monastery, Qalamun.72 Although this makes it difficult to generalise usefully about the spread of Syriac as a liturgical language in the region from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, it does at least indicate that the position is not clear-cut, and that in Greek Orthodox monasteries three languages – Greek, Arabic and Syriac – were in use at the same time. A Syriac manuscript that can best be described as a liturgical miscellany, Oxford Bod syr 45, dating from 1166, reminds us that language is in itself not the sole determinant of rite or identity, for here we find a mixture of Byzantine and Antiochene rites in the same manuscript. In the patriarchate of Jerusalem the influence of Syriac, which was largely the language of rural communities in Syria, had never been so extensive. Arabic largely replaced local spoken languages and became the dominant language even of theological discourse in the mid-ninth century, after political and cultural links with Constantinople had been severed.73 There are signs, however, that a Judaeo-Aramaic dialect of Syriac, which had probably survived in pockets as a spoken language, made a return to Palestine in the eleventh century, alongside Greek. The evidence for this comes from the anomalous Vat bib syr 19, a gospel lectionary of 1030 in this language made for the newly founded monastery of St Elias at ‘Abud.74 In general, however, the adoption of the Byzantine liturgy in the patriarchate of Jerusalem in the eleventh century appears clearer than in Antioch.75 Translation activities from Arabic or Syriac into Greek are clearly part of this general cultural context. A Greek manuscript of the eleventh century now in Milan (Ambrosiana X 198 Sup) contains a homily on fasting and prayer attributed to a monk of Chariton, Michael, which is a Greek translation of an apparently Arabic original. The Arabic version survives in a manuscript of 1142, where the homily is more fully ascribed to ‘a blessed brother of the monastery of St Chariton’ and addressed to ‘the religious who assume the Great Schema’.76 The Arabic original may be considerably earlier, and it is indeed possible that it is the work of Stephen of Ramla, who was a monk there in the ninth century, writing exclusively in Arabic.77 The Greek translation, however, is more likely to date from the period of the revival of Greek, and thus from the eleventh century.78 Not all translations, however, were into Greek. At the end of the tenth century, Gregory, hegoumen of the monastery of Theotokos of Dafruna, on the Black Mountain, was translating from Syriac into Arabic a treatise purporting to represent replies given by the Syrian ascetic Mar Ishaq to a young Symeon the Stylite.79 He also translated a homily on the Visitation by Severianus, 71

72 73

74

75

76 79

C. Charon, Histoire des patriarcats Melkites depuis le schisme monophysite du sixième siècle jusqu’au nos jours, 3 vols. (Rome, 1910–11), III, 142–3. His conclusions are largely supported by Cannuyer, ‘Langues usuelles’. Nasrallah, ‘La liturgie’. Griffith, ‘What has Constantinople to do with Jerusalem?’; see also the remarks on the situation before this date by Mango, ‘Greek culture in Palestine’, 149–50. Nasrallah, ‘La liturgie’, 160, nn. 21–2; J. T. Milik, ‘Inscription araméene christo-palestinienne de “Abud”’, Liber Annuus 10 (1968), 197–204. Nasrallah, ‘La liturgie’, 160, points, however, to exceptional survivals of the liturgy of St James for certain feasts, as for example in Vat Bib gr 1970, a thirteenth-century copy of an eleventh-century original. 77 78 Sinai gr 435, ff. 205v–220v. Griffith, ‘Stephen of Ramlah’. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 332. Sinai arab 405; Patrum nova bibliotheca, ed. A. Mai and G. Cozza-Luzzi, 10 vols. (Rome, 1852–1905), VIII.3, 157–87.

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Bishop of Jabala (post 408).80 Moreover, there was still a demand for new manuscripts of material translated from Greek into Arabic in the thirteenth century. This is clear from the career of the thirteenth-century Damascene monk known as Pimin. Pimin became a monk at St Sabas, but he appears to have done most of his copying work in Damascus, where he occupied a position in the clerical hierarchy in the 1220s and 1230s. In 1223 he copied an Arabic translation of John of Damascus and in 1236 an illuminated Arabic Bible. He was also the scribe of a collection of homilies (London BL arab 25) and an Arabic synaxarion (Sinai arab 418), both dating from 1237.81

Original Writing Although the number of monastic manuscripts with a Palestinian, Cypriot or Syrian provenance from the eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries is substantial, relatively little of what they contain is original composition. Most of the original works are found in Arabic manuscripts, whereas in contrast the few Syriac and the much greater number of Greek manuscripts contain largely liturgical or patristic works, with a smattering of canon law and some doctrinal and polemical material. While the original compositions obviously give a clear indication of the nature and quality of monastic study, even the manuscripts of quite standard works, such as the Letters of St Basil, or the Homilies of St John Chrysostom, have a good deal to tell us about the direction of lectio divina in the monasteries. Moreover, many of the manuscripts have in addition colophons or marginal notes with important clues about the circumstances of transmission and composition, as well as the institutional connections between monks and between monasteries.82 Near the beginning of the eleventh century, an anonymous monk of Mar Sabas wrote a commentary on the typikon of Sabas in ninety-five chapters.83 The original typikon of Sabas has not survived, though it is known that Sabas wrote Rules both for the Great Laura and for cenobitic monasteries in the Judaean desert.84 In the form it which it has survived, the typikon is concerned with the liturgy to be observed at the monastery, and as such has little to say about institutional life except in so far as it is organised around the central focus of the liturgy. The earliest manuscript of the typikon, Sinai gr 1096, dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, but its original composition has been dated to the eleventh.85 The eleventh-century commentary is normally found appended to later recensions of the typikon, such as the fifteenth-century Sinai gr 531. Fragmentary liturgical commentaries also survive elsewhere. Sinai arab 238, for example, a thirteenth-century book, preserves an

80

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82 83 84 85

C. Moss, ‘Homily on the Nativity of Our Lord by Severian, bishop of Gabala’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12 (1947–8), 555–66. J.-M. Sauget, Premières recherches sur l’origine et les caractéristiques des synaxaires melkites, XIe-XIIe siècles, Subsidia Hagiographica 45 (Brussels, 1969), 55–9. The colophons to these manuscripts also contain otherwise unknown details of the career of Symeon II, patriarch of Antioch (before 1206–35): J. Nasrallah, ‘Simeon II, ibn ali Chaiba, patriarche melchite d’Antioche, excommunié par Rome, rejeté par Constantinople’, Proche-Orient Chrétien 24 (1974), 36. In the discussion that follows, I have relied extensively on Nasrallah, Histoire, III. S. Vailhé, ‘Les écrivains de Mar-Sabas’, Echos d’Orient 2 (1898), 44. Vita Sabae, in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, LXV, p. 166; Patrich, Sabas, 255–6. Kurz, ‘A. Dmitriesvskij, “Die klosterregeln des hl. Sabbas”’, summarises the collection of monastic regulations on ff. 145–6 of Sinai gr 1096.

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ordinance by Makarios on the subject of standing as opposed to kneeling in the observance of certain feasts, as well as a ‘response to a believer’ on various points of theology and canon law, including the teachings of the Armenians.86 Before 1224, a monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker wrote two risala or treatises in the form of letters, in Arabic, one on the monasteries of Antioch, the other more specifically on St Symeon. Their content is little known and is unlikely to be recovered unless references to them are discovered in later works, for they were never edited, and the manuscripts, which were in private ownership, have been lost.87 Nevertheless, they indicate an awareness of and interest in the history of the most important monastic community in the region of Antioch. The increasing dominance of Greek in liturgical observance meant that communities whose spoken language was Arabic needed help in understanding the liturgy. Hence the appearance in the eleventh century of a number of pastoral works in Arabic explaining the liturgy to the laity. The most important author and translator in this genre, the Antiochene ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, was not a monk but probably held the rank of deacon in the Church of Antioch.88 Born in the early eleventh century, ‘Abdallah grew up in an environment in which Greek was once again the dominant influence. By the end of his life, however, the Seljuq domination of the Near East had made Antioch something of an island, and his interest in the patristic heritage, seen for example in his translations of Basil, John of Damascus, Andrew of Crete, Maximos the Confessor, Sophronios and Philoxenos of Mabbug from Greek and Syriac into Arabic may also be seen as an attempt to preserve what he could at a time when Christianity seemed to be in retreat in the face of the Seljuqs. Besides his own biblical commentaries, he also translated the biblical homilies of John Chrysostom and Basil into Arabic. His interest in the ascetic life is evidenced by his translations of Isaac of Nineveh’s collection of ascetic treatises and of Philoxenos of Mabbug’s treatise on the stages of the religious life in Jerusalem Taphou 24.89 ‘Abdallah also composed some theological works of his own, from which both the influences on him and his own interests in pastoral and moral teaching are clear. The Kitab al-Manfa’a (Book of Usefulness), written after 1043, covers philosophical questions concerning the nature of God, the human soul, the creation of the world and so on, before moving on to a discussion of divergent Christian teachings.90 His Kitab ar-Rawda (Book of the Flower-Garden) deals with moral virtue, passions, vices and customs. Although it survives only in Arabic manuscripts, he originally composed it in Greek, then translated it himself.91 Although ‘Abdallah cannot himself be taken as a representative of the monastic culture of Antioch in the mideleventh century, the survival of much of his translation work, and indeed of his Book of the Flower-Garden, in manuscripts made at Sinai as early as the thirteenth century demonstrates his importance in the monastic milieu. A manuscript of his translation of John 86

87 88 89 90

91

According to Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 315, this is probably the Makarios who was bishop of Sinai in the mid-thirteenth century (1248–53) rather than the Bishop Makarios commemorated on 15 December in Sinai arab 412, a twelfth-century manuscript. P. Sbath, Al-Fihris (Catalogue des manuscrits arabes), 3 vols. (Cairo, 1938–40), nos. 492–3. See Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 192–256, for discussion of his life and catalogue of surviving works. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 211–12. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 223–5. Some sections were translated into German by G. Graf, ‘Psychologische Definitionen aus dem “Grossen Buche des Nutzens” von ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl (11 Jahr)’, in Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie. Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag Clemens Baeumker (Munster, 1913), 55–77. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 225–6.

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Chrysostom’s Homilies was copied at the monastery of Chariton in c. 1225.92 The fact that a minor member of the clergy could produce such a varied and extensive output, grounded in secure knowledge of patristic theology, also shows something of the relationship between monastic scholarship and the clergy in eleventh-century Antioch. The main focus of ‘Abdallah’s writing was liturgical and theological. It is surely from an interest in liturgy and the performance of liturgy that a unique piece of original writing in Greek from Cyprus derives. A Cypriot manuscript of the fourteenth century, Vat Bib Pal gr 367, preserves a Passion play dating from the third quarter of the thirteenth century.93 The manuscript, which also contains extracts from a variety of patristic authors as well as notes on canonical matters and copies of letters, belonged to an important bureaucrat employed by the Lusignan government, previously identified as the chief notary of the island, Constantine Anagnostes.94 The language of the play locates it securely to Cyprus and, whether Constantine was its author in the form in which it has survived, or merely copied it, the play probably originated in a monastic reconstruction of the gospel narrative of Holy Week.95 Constantine was probably a monk himself, to judge from the epithet he gives himself, Euteles (‘worthless’).

Nikon of the Black Mountain As an author, ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl fits into the category of encyclopaedist and compiler so characteristic of medieval Arabic literature. His younger contemporary, Nikon of the Black Mountain, has also been seen in the same light.96 Nikon was a witness to the Seljuq invasion of Antioch in 1084, and to its capture by the armies of the First Crusade fourteen years later. If ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl saw the approach of the storm clouds over Antioch, Nikon felt the cloudburst over the monasteries of the Black Mountain. In the Prologue to his Pandekts, written during the reign of Constantine X Dukas, he recalled how the seventh-century monk of St Sabas, Antiochos, had feared for the future of Christian learning in the wake of the Persian invasion, which made the exchange of books impossible, and had therefore prepared his own compendium of patristic and canonical wisdom, on which Nikon was now basing his own work.97 This identification with the monasticism of seventh-century Palestine suggests not only that Nikon saw the Seljuqs in the same apocalyptic light as the Persians had been seen by subsequent generations who commemorated the monks martyred during the invasion of 614, but also that he understood the monastic life on the Black Mountain in his own day to be a continuation of the desert monasticism exemplified by St Sabas. Nikon’s Pandekts is intended as a distillation of canonical texts. Whereas Antiochos’ work is an original conception, in which the argument is supported by hundreds of biblical citations, Nikon’s ambitions were more restricted. He made no pretence at developing an 92 94 95

96 97

93 Sinai arab 281. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 153–63. On the correction of this identification, see Beihammer, ed. and trans., Griechische Briefe, 40. Mahr, Cyprus Passion Cycle, esp. 12–14, 76–94, with text of play at 124–216. Mahr assumes a thirteenth-century date, though the last date in the manuscript is 1320. Nasrallah, ‘Un auteur’. PG 127: 513–16, reprinted from B. de Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana (Paris, 1715), 189–90.

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argument or providing an original commentary. Instead, he assembled texts for a series of sixty-three problems or questions from a variety of scriptural, patristic and canonical authorities, and provided a concise resume of his own for each question.98 The problems with which Nikon was concerned indicate the largely monastic milieu for which he assembled the book, but the brief he set himself was wider than simply the regulation of monasteries. Many of the problems he raised can have been only tangentially relevant to enclosed communities, and seem to indicate an expectation on his part of involvement with the laity. After some general questions of authority and following God’s will, he turned to the practical and moral issues of renunciation of the world, specifically the need for monastic communities to be vigilant in accepting as monks only those in a position to enter without family commitments, and the question of whether slaves could become monks. He then turned to the problem of monks who change their minds and wish to leave their community, before embarking on a discussion of various moral issues arising from communal life: the regulation of speech, how to deal with anger, reconciliation, patience in suffering; and then issues of sexual propriety, specifically fornication and adultery. There are also rulings on obedience and the ability to distinguish between licit and illicit desires. Some issues apply to individual morality, while others, such as almsgiving, charity and philanthropy, deal with the administration of communities. Nikon is also concerned with the relationship between anchorites and monks, and what offices are proper to each; clearly he envisages both as potentially members of the same community. There is further practical advice for monastic living – on clothes, poverty, behaviour and deportment on occasions when monks have to leave the monastery on the community’s business, appropriate manual labour and what might be done with the products or profits of such labour – and rulings on confession in monasteries, the correct times for fasting and how to fast, and the recommended diet for anchorites. The Pandekts demonstrate a profound knowledge of canon and civil law, and of patristic texts on asceticism and monastic life.99 The legalistic approach that he takes to monastic organisation fits well with what is known of his career. At the time that he was compiling the Pandekts, Nikon was attempting to reform monasticism in northern Syria, at the behest of Patriarch Theodosios III. The imposition of such a wide range of patristic authorities can therefore be read as part of the process of Byzantinisation that we have also seen in the increased use of Greek and in the choice of liturgical materials for copying. Nikon himself was, despite his long sojourn in the region of Antioch, not an Antiochene but a Constantinopolitan from a noble family. This aspect of his writing is all the more evident 98

99

Doens, ‘Nicon de la Montagne Noire’, 136. Nikon’s Pandekts have never been edited fully, but a list of the chapter headings was reprinted in PG 106: 1360–81, and a full analysis of Nikon’s sources is provided in de Clercq, Les textes juridiques. For an edition and translation of ch. 1, see C. de Clercq, ‘Les Pandectes de Nicon de la Montagne Noire’, Archives d’histoire du droit oriental 4 (1949), 187–203. Besides the decrees of oecumenical and provincial councils, the patristic authorities Nikon cites are as follows: Anastasius the Sinaite, Ignatios of Antioch, Dionysius, Ps-Clement, Gregory the Great, John Cassian, Athanasios, Diadokos of Photike, Epiphanios of Cyprus, Euesbios of Caearea, Evagrios of Antioch, Gregory of Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Philo of Carpasia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ammonius, Ephrem the Syrian, John of Damascus, Maximos the Confessor, Timothy of Constantinople, Dorotheos, Isaac of Nineveh, Isidore of Pelusia, John Klimakos, Makarios, Mark the Hermit, Nilos and Theodore the Studite.

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when we consider the intensive canonical direction of Nikon’s project. Decrees not only of the oecumenical councils but also of the councils of Trullo, Carthage, Laodicea, Ancyra and Gangres are cited on disciplinary matters. The most heavily cited authority is Basil’s Rules. If Nikon’s intention was to re-introduce a full range of canonical rulings to monasteries that had lost touch with them, however, then the repetition not only of this approach but also of much of the specific content in his later work, the Taktikon, suggests a degree of failure on his part. As Allison has remarked, the typikon for the monastery that Nikon tried to found on the Black Mountain reads like an attempt to mould the institution to fit precedent; in other words, Nikon took a blank canvas and filled it with an ideal version of monastic theory and practice.100 The Taktikon, in the form in which it has come down to us in both Arabic and Greek versions (Vat bib arab 76 and Sinai 436), contains his two typika – the detailed one for his proposed monastery on the Black Mountain and the more concise one for the monastery of the Virgin tou roidiou as well as his letter collection on monastic topics. This letter collection gives a better idea of monastic practice than the typikon for the Black Mountain, since it reflects the kinds of problems encountered by monasteries across the eastern Mediterranean and Nikon’s responses to them. Clearly Nikon was regarded as an expert by contemporaries, doubtless because of his experiences of instituting reform from 1059 until the end of the patriarchal vacancy at Antioch in 1089. In contrast, the typikon for the Black Mountain, at least, may never actually have been used in the form in which its author envisaged, since the community he attempted to base on it was never realised. The letters in the Taktikon, like the Pandekts and the typika, rely on Nikon’s profound knowledge of the canonical foundations of monasticism as an institution. There is advice on Sunday fasting, on the typika of the Studite monasteries, on the need to keep monks and nuns apart and the dangers of monks hearing nuns’ confessions, on charity and the obligation of a monastic superior to curb his anger, and other topics that are familiar from the Pandekts. Nikon’s didactic method can also be seen to full effect in these letters. Writing to Abbot Luke (probably not the metropolitan of Anazarbos and founder of the monastery that Nikon himself entered in 1055) on the subject of fasting, for example, Nikon not only explains the canonical statutes on Sunday fasts, but also develops his theme by giving his correspondent a potted biography of John the Faster.101 To one of his correspondents, an Abbot Gerasimos, Nikon gave details of his own career: having discussed the ideal manner of life of monks, he explains how he first became a monk at the Black Mountain under Abbot Luke, how this monastery was destroyed by the Muslims, after which he settled at monastery of Symeon the Wonderworker.102 The letter collection also gives us invaluable insights into the concerns of monastic superiors in Syria, Palestine and Cyprus in the second half of the eleventh century.103 Besides questions about fasting, discipline and internal governance, they also raise ecclesiological issues relating to non-Greeks. In letters to Gerasimos, Nikon explains why Armenian monks who had accepted Chalcedonian doctrine were permitted to become 100 103

101 102 Black Mountain, 379. Taktikon, IV, Vat bib arab 76, f. 97r. Taktikon, XIX, Vat bib arab 76, f. 236r. Although most of his correspondents are addressed simply as ‘Abbot X’, two (Taktikon, XXXII–XXXIII) are to monks from Jerusalem, and one (IX, Sinai gr 436, f. 82v) is to the abbot of Koutsovendis in Cyprus.

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members of Orthodox monasteries in Antioch and Jerusalem, defends their liturgical practices and reminds him of the long history of Armenians in desert monasteries in the Holy Land,104 and recounts the history of the Georgian Church and their monastic presence in Antioch.105 We have already seen how contentious the Georgian question had became at the monastery of St Symeon the Wonderworker in the period just before Nikon took refuge there. Nikon was also a witness to the Frankish conquest of Antioch and the imposition of a Latin patriarch after 1098.106 How he viewed this reversal of fortunes in the patriarchate he had served for so long is unclear, but he was characteristically well informed and lucid on the question of Latin observances and doctrine. A letter to a monk of St Symeon lists the twenty-two alleged errors of the Latins, on matters of theology (the filioque), sacramental practice (the use of azymes), monastic liturgy (additions to the Gloria) and custom (shaving, clothing, diet), as well as ecclesiology (the wearing of rings by bishops to symbolise marriage to their sees).107 Because this letter was a response to a query from the monk, it is tempting to assume that it postdates 1098 and thus reflects something of the interaction between Latins and Greeks in Antioch after the First Crusade, in what must have been a period of initial confusion among both communities. Although there is no ostensible reason why Orthodox monks would be exposed to Latin practices, the context in which it appears to have happened is clear from Nikon’s typikon for the Roidion monastery. Here he stipulated that Frankish pilgrims, unless ill and in need of medical treatment, should be given only a single day’s hospitality, in contrast to other foreigners, who were permitted to stay for three days.108 We must be careful before jumping to conclusions about a supposed hostility to Latins on such grounds, however. The response to the monk of St Symeon may predate the First Crusade, and simply reflect current Orthodox discourse, as for example in the treatise of Peter of Antioch against the Latins. One surprising feature of the letter collection is the range of questions it reflects that appear to have little to do with monasticism or the needs of enclosed communities. There is advice on the transfer of bishops from one see to another (ch. 21); on how to put up with suffering violence while in captivity (ch. 26, to a priest in Laodicea; perhaps a reminder of the dangers to which clergy were exposed during the period of the Seljuq domination of the region); on catechumens in church (ch. 30); on illegitimate birth (ch. 34); on third and fourth marriages, and on the duty of bishops to preach (ch. 40). Should we read this as a mark of the esteem in which Nikon was held on account of his canonical knowledge? Some questions seem expressly theological or pastoral, such as those on demons and diabolical illusions (ch. 39), on the pieces of silver earned by Judas (ch. 39) and on the misinterpretation of Scripture (ch. 9). Another approach might be to regard Nikon’s wide range of correspondence as a reflection of the relationships between monasteries and lay Orthodox society. Particularly in regions in which political conditions meant that there could be no close cooperation between the episcopacy and government, or where bishops were not even able to 104 106

Taktikon, XXXVI, Vat bib arab 76, f. 362. Taktikon, XXXVIII, Vat bib arab 76, f. 372.

105

Taktikon, XXXVII, Vat bib arab 76, f. 366. Taktikon, XXXVIII, Vat bib arab 76, f. 373.

107

108

Roidion, B2-3, 432.

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reside in their sees, it was to hegoumens of monasteries that leadership of Orthodox society devolved. Nikon, a learned member of an aristocratic cosmopolitan family with previous experience of military leadership before assuming the habit, was an obvious asset to the Church in Antioch in a period of political turmoil; further, his correspondence demonstrates how closely the Orthodox communities in Syria and Palestine remained in touch with one another in the second half of the eleventh century.

Neophytos Neophytos defended his own compositions from criticism of his presumption in adding to the Fathers by explaining that the shortage of books and difficulty of obtaining copies had forced him to take up the pen himself.109 Most of his work consists not of biblical commentary or theological doctrine, but of instruction and hagiography.110 Like Nikon he was something of a compiler, though in a different tradition and of different material. Besides the typikon for the Enkleistra, he wrote letters of pastoral instruction, a collection that he called Ascetic Chapters, a Book of Catechesis, a book of devotional poetry, commentaries on the Song of Songs, and Psalms, a Hexaemeron, and the Interpretation of the Canons, on the twelve major feasts of the calendar. All these he lists in the final version of his typikon, made in 1214, along with a work he calls the Log-book of the Recluse, which by his own account dealt with questions of natural philosophy amongst other topics, and the enigmatically titled Last Book.111 Neither of the last two named survive. The bulk of his work was panegyrical writing for saints’ feast-days. In all, he wrote three books of panegyrics, only the first of which, containing thirty individual works, survives.112 This suggests that the kinds of books he wanted but could not obtain for the monastery were compendia of saints’ lives such as those discussed above, and that they were primarily for liturgical use. Not all were saints’ lives; there are also panegyrics for particular feast-days (No. 7, for 14 September, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross), for the commemoration of events (No. 16, on earthquakes), and on Scripture (No. 9, on the Apocalypse). As Catia Galatariotou has remarked, most of these were short enough to suggest that they were composed to be read to an audience.113 Neophytos was particularly interested in Cypriot saints, or those who had connections to Cyprus, and his reliance on local traditions contributes to a picture of a monastic superior invoking places and themes that would have resonance for a particular audience. This audience – not only for the panegyrics, but also for his other works – comprised, besides his own monks, other communities in Cyprus; we know, for example, that he wrote panegyrics on request for a parish priest, and amongst 109

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111 112

113

Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 159, citing the fourth homily (Logos Apologoetikos) of Neophytos’ Interpretation of the Commandments, Paris Bib Nat Coislin 287, f. 22v. A full catalogue of Neophytos’ works, with editions where available, is provided in Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 261–81. This discussion is based substantially on her study, which is the fullest treatment of the subject. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, XII, p. 145. Paris Bib Nat gr 1189. Some of these have been edited in total or in part, notably in Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’ and I. Tsiknopoulos, ‘Hagioi tes Kyprou’, Kupriakai Spoudai 30 (1966), 132–61. Some of the panegyrics that had been included in Books II and III survive as material recycled in other forms, in Paris Bib Nat gr 395 and Andros 13: Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 266–7. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 26.

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his spiritual correspondents was his brother John, who was hegoumen of St John Chrysostom Koutsovendis, and for whose community he wrote catechetical homilies.114 Some of Neophytos’ panegyrics were abridgements of existing Lives. His panegyric of Hilarion, for instance, appears to be his own abridgement of the Metaphrastean Life, which of course was itself an abbreviated version of Jerome’s original Life of Hilarion.115 Similarly, his version of the Life of Sabas, though recognisably derived from Cyril of Scythopolis, departs from it in its organisation in such a way that makes it impossible to tell whether it was Neophytos’ own work or whether an intermediary Life lay in between, while in his Life of Gennadios, he used a number of different pre-existing texts.116 On the other hand, as his account makes clear, his Life of Diomedes the Young was an original work, perhaps based on local oral traditions.117 Local Cypriot traditions also lay behind his panegyrics for St Polychronios, which departs on several points from the synaxarion, and Sts Arkadios and Theosebios, for whom no written source survives.118 What he omitted is sometimes revealing. In his panegyric of John the Almsgiver, for instance, he omits all reference both to the Persian invasion of the Holy Land in the early seventh century and to John’s struggles with heretics in Alexandria. It looks, indeed, as though he wished to avoid anything that might reflect badly on the practices of the Orthodox Church.119 Why this should have been so has yet to be resolved. Neophytos himself explained simply that he did not want to repeat anything ‘capable of causing great harm to those who may encounter them’.120 This reads like a conventionally pious expression which, although doubtless true as far as it goes, may not quite reveal the full extent of his thinking. Neophytos’ purpose in writing his own panegyrics was certainly to instruct the monks of the Enkleistra, and perhaps, besides having difficulty in obtaining materials, he decided to write his own editions from existing Lives because he feared the effect that some of the less morally salubrious passages would have on his audience.121 But he may also have had a more positivist intention. The omission of discussions of unorthodox or heretical beliefs, in the context of saints such as John the Almsgiver, results in a version of the development of Orthodoxy that is quite free from controversy or dissent. Perhaps Neophytos’ intention was to present precisely such a smooth and untroubled, if selective, account of Orthodox sacred history to his audience. Particularly after the Latin conquest and the end of Orthodox ecclesiastical hegemony on Cyprus, such a view would have been especially poignant. Neophytos’ spirituality was imaginative and doubtless sincere, but he was not a systematic theologian and, as we have seen, his education was limited. The Orthodoxy he presented in the panegyrics was thus a simple one, shorn of doubts and speculations. This does not mean that he steered clear altogether of theology, however. On the contrary, the only surviving panegyric from his third book was on the seven oecumenical councils and 114

115 117 119 121

Panegyric 17, edited by Delehaye in his ‘Saints de Chypre’, 217–18; Letter I, 152.31, in I. Chatziioannou, ed., Historia kai erga Neophytou Presbyterou, monachou kai enkleistou (Alexandria, 1914), 150–2. 116 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 26. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 30. 118 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 35–6. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 38, 36. 120 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 30–4. Panegyric V, 170.18–20, cited by Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 34. This is Galatariotou’s interpretation: Making of a Saint, 34. But Neophytos was not averse to including material that might be spiritually challenging, in the cause of instruction. Thus his panegyric on Gabriel, the Palestinian stylite (Panegyric V: Peri tinos monachou en te Palestine), warns against the dangers of solitary life through the recounting in graphic detail of demonic assaults on the stylite: Delehaye, ed., ‘Saints de Chypre’, 162–75.

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the schism between Rome and Constantinople, or, as he himself expresses it, ‘why and when the first Rome and the new Rome were distanced from one another’.122 The main thrust of the work concerns the question of the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist by the Latin Church, a subject that he says he researched by investigating the decrees of the councils. Although logic might suggest that this work was written after 1191, when the issue obviously became directly relevant in Cyprus, Galatariotou has argued that its comparatively mild attitude to Latin practices, in contrast to the more polemical position he adopted after 1191, makes a date before the Latin conquest more likely.123 Given the prevalence of the question of azymes in Orthodox polemical writing well before the 1190s, this is certainly not implausible. Of Neophytos’ letters, only five survive: one to his brother John, another to Euthymios, a monk at his brother’s monastery of Koutsovendis who wished to become a solitary, a circular letter to the people of Paphos complaining about their failure to observe the Lenten fast correctly, another with no specific addressee on the misfortunes of Cyprus in the 1180s and 1190s, and one to an unknown abbot.124 The letter on the condition of Cyprus, which has been dated to 1196, shows the bitterness that Neophytos felt about the social conditions prevailing on the island, not just as a result of the Latin conquest, but going back to the illegitimate rule of Isaak Komnenos from 1184 to 1191. Neophytos regarded the conquest as the inevitable consequence of the sinfulness of the Cypriot people and its rulers, in much the same way as in his panegyric on St Sabas he interpreted the conquest of the Holy Land by Saladin as a judgement on the moral failings of its people.125 As has been argued, the Enkleistra did not itself suffer materially as a result of the conquest, and the full consequences of the conquest for the Orthodox Church had not yet been felt by 1196. If this letter shows Neophytos taking on the role of an Old Testament prophet articulating the misfortunes of his people, in the letter to the people of Paphos he assumes the responsibility that would normally belong to the bishop, at a time when the see was vacant (either in the 1190s or in the years on either side of 1209). A sixteenth-century manuscript now in Athens preserves Neophytos’ commentary on the Song of Songs in addition to his Fifty Chapters on various subjects. Some of these are exegetical in nature, such as those on Job and the Creation; others, such as the chapter on the nature of Paradise, are more speculative and philosophical.126 Although a reference in the text provides a date for the completion of the work of 1179, the piecemeal and varied nature of the work is such that it is more plausible to see it as a collection compiled over a number of years. At any rate, it is a work of Neophytos’ earlier years as a superior of a monastic community, and it would be interesting to know whether its composition arose from the practical experience of mentoring the monks of the Enkleistra, or simply reflects the variety of his interests. A similar but shorter collection, the Interpretations of the Commandments, which 122 124

125 126

123 I. Tsiknopoulos, ‘Ta elassona tou Neophytou’, Byzantion 39 (1969), 352–7. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 267–8. Editions are respectively: Chatziioannou, Historia, 150–2; S. Eustratiades, ‘Kypriakoi kodikes en te Ethnike bibliotheke Parision’, Apostolos Barnabas 4 (1934), 215–18; Tsiknopoulos, ‘Ta elassona’, 404–7; Neophytus de calamitatibus Cypri; Eustratiades, ‘Kypriakoi kodikes’, 215 (partial). Neophytus de calamitatibus Cypri, II, clxxxvii; Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 29–30, 75–94. A full list of headings is given by Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 270–2.

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survives in a manuscript from Neophytos’ own lifetime, dates from 1176.127 This consists of ten homilies: some straightforwardly theological, such as that on the Baptism of Christ, but others on unexpectedly philosophical or moral questions, such as that on the five senses, the two on judging and judgements, or one on the eye as the candle of the body. How seriously Neophytos took his role as an instructor in the faith can be seen from the two books of Catechetics surviving in a manuscript which he himself corrected. This was intended not for the monks of the Enkleistra, but for his brother’s monastery at Koutsovendis, where he had himself served his novitiate in the 1150s.128 The first book consists of catechetical homilies for the great feasts of the year, while the second provides homilies for Sundays. A further manuscript from the monastery of Leimonos on Lesbos contains nine of Neophytos’ homilies that do not appear to conform to the titles he provided for his works in his typikon. Three of them reflect a special interest in the Blessed Virgin; besides these, there is one on the birth of John the Baptist, one on the Apostles and one on the Incarnation.129

Hagiography Much of the original material by Orthodox monks is hagiographical writing. Most of what survives is in Arabic rather than Greek. The Life of Onuphrios written by Nicholas, a hieromonk of Sinai, is, as an original hagiographical composition in Greek from the Holy Land, something of a rarity. Although we know nothing of this author beyond his name, both of the manuscripts in which the work survives can be ascribed to the eleventh century, and given the predominance of Arabic in the monasteries of Palestine before then, this date seems the most probable.130 Another Greek author was John VIII, Patriarch of Jerusalem (c. 1098–1106/7), who supposedly wrote a Life of John of Damascus based on an original Arabic version (now lost).131 John was metropolitan of Tyre at the time of the First Crusade, but according to his own account he went to Jerusalem in 1099, and, since Patriarch Symeon II had gone into exile, he was acclaimed as patriarch by the people in his place. He seems to have exercised this ministry until 1106–7, when he went to Constantinople to secure recognition of his office. Although this was granted, he did not return to Jerusalem, presumably because the Latin patriarch was in any case unwilling to extend the same recognition.132 As a prelate, John must have been a monk, but there is no 127

128

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130

131 132

Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 274–5. Eight out of the ten homilies survive in full in Paris Bib Nat gr 287. The scribe was probably the same Basil of Paphos who copied Paris Bib Nat gr 1189, and the manuscript also contains the letters to Euthymios and the unnamed abbot. Paris Bib Nat gr 1317 (c. 1200), in Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 96–9; see Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 275–7, for list of headings. The manuscript is Lesbos Leimonos Cod 2. The Marian homilies were edited by E. Toniolo, ‘Omilie e catechesi mariane inediti di Neofito il recluso’, Marianum 36 (1974), 184–315. The manuscripts are Athens Nat Lib 2560 and Athos Vatopedi 637. The work has not been edited, but appears from my brief examination of the Athens manuscript to be very close to the standard life of Paphnutios: BHG 1378. PG 94: 429–90; BHG 884. Grümel, ed., Regestes, fasc. 3, no. 986, suggests that John may have fled Tyre in 1097–8, but Hamilton, Latin Church, 179, points out that in 1097–8 there was no need to flee Tyre, since it was a Fatimid possession, and the Fatimids did not tend to cause trouble for Christian prelates.

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information about where he professed, or even whether it was in the East. An eleventhcentury monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker, Michael, also wrote a Life of John of Damascus, in Arabic, which was to become the basis of a Georgian Life in the early thirteenth century. The Life, written before 1085, survives in a number of manuscripts.133 The fact that the earliest of these has a provenance from Homs suggests that there were strong contacts between Melkites in Byzantine-controlled Antioch and Seljuq-controlled towns of north Syria. Evidence of new composition is also indicated by variant versions of some Lives in Arabic menologia. The story of Jerome the Anchorite that appears in four Sinai manuscripts may derive from an Egyptian original, and there are also stories associated with Alexis, Basil, Marina, Pelagia, Thecla and Demetrios that are unknown from Greek menologia.134 The appearance of many of these in Sinai manuscripts not only indicates the continuing use of Arabic among Sinai monks but also suggests a particular regional derivation for the stories. Although most hagiographical composition memorialised established martyrs who had long been part of Orthodox veneration, the thirteenth century also produced new martyrs in Cyprus, in the form of the thirteen monks of Kantara who were executed by the Latin Church in 1231. The specific issue over which the monks resisted conformity with the Roman liturgy to the point of death was the use of leavened bread in the eucharist. The monks insisted not only that they should be permitted to use leavened bread, but that the Latin use of unleavened bread was uncanonical. The monks composed a Confession of Faith that was read at their trial, and after their deaths hagiographical accounts of the martyrdom made use of these to portray them as defenders of the ‘Great Habit’, as monks devoted to contemplation, the integrity of whose profession was violently disrupted by their arrest, trial and execution.135

Polemic Three of the Melkite authors of new work in the crusader period were primarily concerned with polemical writing against Islam. The earliest of these, Bartholomew of Edessa, wrote in Greek. In his Refutation of an Agarene, he refers to himself as a Syrian monk of Edessa, but does not say of which monastery. The work itself is a dialogue obviously set in a locale in which Muslim imams and Christian monks could be found in close proximity; whether it reflects an historical encounter, as Bartholomew claims, or a fictitious episode, it fits clearly into the genre of adversarial debates that was common in Melkite hagiographical writing of the eighth and ninth centuries.136 The arguments themselves suggests a knowledge of John of Damascus, but also exposure to actual debates, or at least familiarity with the antiTrinitarian arguments used by Muslim polemicists.137 A less shadowy figure is George, 133 134

135 136 137

G. Jugie, ‘Une nouvelle Vie et un nouvel écrit de Saint Jean Damascène’, Echos d’Orient, 28 (1929), 35–6. The Jerome story appears in Sinai arab 410 (1103), Sinai arab 418 (1237), Sinai arab 413 (1286) and Sinai arab 420 (1287), and the Pelagia story in Sinai arab 513, a tenth-century manuscript. See also G. Dagron, ‘L’auteur des Actes de Thecla’, Analecta Bollandiana 92 (1974), 5–11. For full discussion and a new edition of the Confession, see Kyriacou, Orthodox Cyprus, 100–4, 380–5. See for example Griffith, ‘The Life of Theodore of Edessa’. PG 104: 1447–58. There is uncertainty over the date of the work. Although G. Bardy, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 31 vols. (Turnhout, 1912–2005), 1001–2, proposed the eighth century, he missed a reference to

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a monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker who wrote an Apologia of Christianity in Arabic based on a debate held probably in the early thirteenth century between an imam and a monk, in the presence of one of Saladin’s sons, al-Musammar, brother of Al-Zahir Gazi, the ruler of Aleppo.138 The dating is contentious, but given the evident historical veracity of the encounter – clear from the text – the date of 1107 or 1117 in some manuscripts is obviously erroneous, and the alternative of 1217 seems more likely. There is a large number of manuscripts, but only one, Sinai arab 556, is as early as the thirteenth century.139 George was clearly familiar enough with the Qur’an to attempt to use it against his antagonists The third polemicist, and the most celebrated, is altogether a more substantial figure as a writer. Paul of Sidon was an Antiochene monk, perhaps from the monastery of St Symeon the Wonderworker, who became coadjutor bishop of Sidon under the Latins. He was the author of a number of works: a Letter to Muslim friends in Sidon, and another to Cyprus; a treatise on Christian doctrine, another on the various Christian confessions, one on reason, and two polemical treatises, one against Jews and Muslims, the other against heresies.140 The dating of Paul’s career and writing is contentious. The earliest manuscript containing his letters to Sidon is dated 1221, but since this manuscript represents a collection of writings that were originally sent separately, he must have written the letters long enough before this date for archetypes to have been collected, perhaps even after his death. Moreover, Paul Khoury has argued, on the grounds that Paul describes the Maronites as Monotheletes, that he must have been writing before the Maronite communion with Rome in 1180.141 The letter to the Muslims of Sidon describes a journey that Paul undertook through Byzantine territory to Constantinople, thence to Amalfi and Rome, on episcopal business. There is nothing inherently implausible about any of this, nor indeed about the appointment of a Melkite as coadjutor bishop to a Latin see,142 but such a journey as Paul describes could only have been undertaken either before 1187, when Sidon was in Latin hands, or at a time of truce between the Latin kingdom and the Ayyubids. One intriguing possibility, though it can only remain speculative, is that, like other bishops from the patriarchate of Jerusalem, he travelled to Rome to attend the Third Lateran Council of 1179. Paul’s writing is notable not only for the depth of his learning, but also for his rational approach to argument. Most of his writing was concerned with the need to articulate and defend orthodoxy against a variety of threatening alternative positions. Although he saw Islam as a distinct religion rather than, in the tradition of John of Damascus, a Christian

138 139

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Patriarch Photios that must make it at least as late as the ninth century. K. E. Gueterbrock, Der Islam im Lichte der byzantinischen Polemik (Berlin, 1912), 22–3, suggested instead an eleventh–thirteenth-century date. I prefer Nasrallah’s proposal of an eleventh-century date (Histoire, III, 125) for two reasons: first, this was the period of greatest political tension between Seljuqs and Byzantium and, second, if it had postdated the capture and sack of Edessa in 1144 and 1146, I would expect to find reference to these traumatic events. Qara’li, ed., Le Christianisme et l’Islam. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 255–6, argues for a twelfth-century date for the event itself, on the grounds that George calls himself an old man at the time of writing it down. See also G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 2 vols. (Vatican City, 1944–53), II, 79–81. The letter to Muslims in Sidon was edited by L. Buffat, ‘Lettre de Paul, évêque de Saida, moine d’Antioche, à un Musulman des ses amis démeurant à Sidon’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 8 (1903), 388–425, and the major treatise on Christian doctrine by P. Khoury, Paul d’Antioche, évêque de Sidon (Beirut, 1965). On Paul’s writing to and against Muslims, see M. H. Siddiqi, ‘Muslim and Byzantine Christian relations: letter of Paul of Antioch and Ibn Taymiyah’s response’, in N. M. Vaporis, ed., Orthodox Christians and Muslims (Brookline, MA, 1986), 33–45. 142 Khoury, Paul d’Antioche, 10–12. Hamilton, Latin Church, 183.

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heresy, both the content of his work and his approach to the subject indicate a concern to safeguard Orthodox doctrine against the errors of other religious groups with whom his flock regularly came into contact. Thus he deals, in his treatise on Christian sects, with the fundamental theological differences between Chalcedonian and Monophysite Orthodoxy, and between Orthodoxy and Nestorianism. The fault lines dividing Christian confessions are, for Paul, primarily theological. This means that there is no place for discussion of Latin doctrine, which, in terms of Christological and Trinitarian theology, was indistinguishable from Greek. Paul’s appointment as coadjutor bishop was, indeed, possible because the Latin and Greek Churches were, despite differences over custom and interpretation, in communion with each other, but not with the Monophysite Churches or the Nestorians. In his approach to Islam, Paul is measured and irenic. He argues that Islam should not be viewed as an universal religion applicable to all, but as a special call by Muhammad to a pagan people. Even the Qur’an, he says, citing Suras 62.2, 28.46 and 36.6, recognised that Muhammad was sent to those who had not previously received a revelation from God. Moreover, Paul’s approach to theology is distinctive for his unwillingness to rely solely on patristic authority. He quotes sparingly from the Fathers, in recognition of the futility of an appeal to authority in a debate with those who did not subscribe to the same notion of authority. Instead, his language is suffused with the philosophical categories of argument common to educated Christians, Muslims and Jews from the classical tradition. Paul’s choice of language is also significant. His use of Arabic is, of course, entirely natural in writing to his chosen audiences, for Arabic was the common language of philosophical discourse, besides being the spoken language of Melkites as well as of Muslims and Jews. The use of Arabic did not of itself necessarily entail a shift away from the patristic tradition or from employing the arguments used by a Christian Neo-Platonist Father writing in Greek, for as we have seen translations of the Greek Fathers into Arabic were available. Writing in Arabic, however, meant using a distinctive vocabulary. As Khoury has pointed out, Orthodox writers who used Arabic were not tied into a cultural and philosophical vocabulary that derived from the very particular tradition of classical Greek philosophy.143 They thus had to create a culturally specific vocabulary in their own spoken language, Arabic, which at the same time was inextricably identified with Islam. The use of Arabic for nonand even anti-Islamic writing was of course not new in the twelfth century: Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Nestorian monks had been using Arabic for centuries.144 Paul is remarkable, however, for the combination of his philosophically rational approach, his Greek Orthodox theology and his position in the hierarchy of the Latin Church in the Crusader States. In many ways Paul of Sidon was the heir of the ninth-century Arabic-speaking Christian theologian Theodore Abu Qurrah.145 The same questions that had characterised his work continued to preoccupy Christian writers: the defence of the Trinity as compatible with monotheism, the necessity of the Incarnation for salvation, and the completeness of the 143 144 145

Khoury, Paul d’Antioche, 6–7. Graf, Geschichte, II, 196–202, for some Nestorian writers, and 263–7 for Syrian Orthodox examples. S. Griffith, ‘Muslims and church councils: the Apology of Theodore Abu Qurrah’, in E. A. Livingstone, ed., Studia Patristica 25 (Leuven, 1993), 270–99.

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Christian Scriptures. Whether writing in an overtly hagiographical or theological genre, these, rather than questions about the single or double nature of Christ, were the obvious concerns faced by monks engaged in polemical writing. It is in this context that we should see the ‘mugaddah’ genre of set debates between Christians and Muslims. Sometimes these might be embedded within larger narratives, or take the form of letter exchanges; at other times they are presented, as by Bartholomew of Edessa and George of St Symeon, as factual accounts of real debates.146 Whether they represent real or imagined encounters is beside the point. They reflect the direction and trajectory of Arabic Christian writing over a period of several centuries, and thus of a people – the indigenous Christians of Syria and Palestine – who occupied a marginal position between the dominant regional powers.147

Manuscript Production and Patronage Almost every aspect of the production of books was part of a monastic enterprise.148 Book production was labour-intensive, time-consuming and costly in consumption of materials. It also required a trained workforce of copyists and artists, as well as the supporting industry of paper or parchment manufacture. Such a combination could only be sustained, outside a monastery, in a prosperous urban economy in which these crafts existed in a relationship of mutual dependence. Although some aspects of manuscript production may have been subcontracted, it was probably only commercial centres such as Antioch, Tyre, Acre or Nicosia that could support bookmaking crafts on such a basis. Copying, if not illuminating, was also seen as a legitimate form of labour by monastic regulators. Christodoulos, for example, envisaged copying as one of the activities in which monks would be engaged during periods of manual labour in their cells.149 The evidence for monastic production of most pre-fourteenth-century manuscripts is in any case abundant from colophons. Many of the manuscripts, both liturgical and non-liturgical, but more particularly the illuminated books, provide clues as to provenance and ownership through scribal notes and colophons. For example, the gospel lectionary Sinai gr 220 was copied in 1167 by a scribe called Basil Skenouris on the commission of the hegoumen of the monastery of Hagia Kellia in Bethlehem, and the same scribe also copied another lectionary for the same community in 1174, Sinai gr 232.150 Manuel Boukellaros Hagiostephanites was the scribe for a number of midtwelfth-century illuminated manuscripts with a Cypriot provenance: for example, a luxury gospel book of 1153, Vatican Library Barberiniani grec 449 and the 146

147

148

149 150

S. Griffith, ‘The monk in the emir’s majlis: reflections on a popular genre of Christian literary apologetics in Arabic in the early Islamic period’, in H. L. Yafeh et al., eds., The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, Studies in Arabic Language and Literature 4 (Wiesbaden, 1998), 13–65. Paul of Sidon’s Letter to Muslims provoked a response from Ibn Taymiyah in the fourteenth century: Siddiqi, ‘Muslim and Byzantine Christian relations’. Nasrallah, Histoire, III, 232–3, argues that, even where they are presented in an obviously ‘retouched’ form, they should not be regarded as entirely fictitious. A. Jotischky, ‘Ethnographic attitudes in the Crusader States: Jacques de Vitry and the indigenous Christians of the East’, in K. Ciggaar and H. Teule, eds., East and West in the Crusader States: Context, Contact, Confrontations, III (Leuven, 2003), 1–19. In Cyprus, by the early fourteenth century – perhaps earlier – some scribes seem to have been non-monastic clergy, e.g. see Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 140–6. Christodoulos, A22, 590. Benesevic, Catalogus codicum, 116–17; Weitzmann and Galavaris, Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, 174–6.

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New York Kraus gospel book of 1156.151 Sometimes colophons include personal reflections by scribes on the nature and value of their work, or the reasons for undertaking it. This phenomenon appears to be especially common in Georgian scribal activity. The scribes of a manuscript of the Life and Homilies of Gregory the Theologian made at the monastery of Kalipos near Antioch in 1040 observed that their labour was a penance for their unworthy lives.152 This sentiment, in the same or only slightly different words, is commonly found in Georgian manuscripts. The colophon could become an assertion of self-negation and humiliation, as for example in a gospel book of 1054 (Tbilisi Institute of MSS 484), in which the patron refers to himself as ‘[a] priest but in reality a maggot and a dirt-eater’.153 The scribe of another Georgian manuscript of the 1050s says that he completed his work, a translation of a Greek Parakliton, as an act of prayer on behalf of the Georgian people. Yet another Georgian, a monk called Iona, wrote a colophon to the hagiographical collection he copied at a monastery near Antioch at the end of the eleventh century to apologise, rather disarmingly, for any mistakes in the text: ‘fathers, if there are mistakes do not reproach me. My house in Antioch was above the springs where many boys and girls came with jugs on their shoulders and my mind was distracted by them.’154 It is clear from these examples, which must stand as exemplification for many others, that scribal activities were contained within close relationships between monastic communities. These allowed for the commissioning of manuscripts by one community from another, evidently where a noted scribe was active. Scribal activities might also be family preserves, if, for example, the John Tarsites who copied Vat Bib gr 231, a collection of commentaries on Job from 1107, was related to the Constantine Tarsites who made a manuscript of Basil of Ancyra and other theological texts (now Vienna Theol gr 89) in Crete in 1129.155 These relationships were maintained even at a distance, as is apparent from the commissioning of copying work from Cypriot scribes for Bethlehem. The other inference to be drawn, of course, is that not every monastery had the facilities for adequate copying of books for its own use, or, indeed, sufficiently competent scribes to do the work. The consequence of this was the development of what Weyl Carr has characterised as an entrepreneurial culture of scribal activity, in which, presumably, monks known for their scribal competence were approached as individuals by other monasteries or patrons.156 What we do not know is how such arrangements were conducted, how and to whom remuneration was made or, in most cases, how such work was regarded more widely by hegoumens or founders. Christodoulos may have encouraged copying as an appropriate form of manual labour at Patmos, but did he anticipate the expansion of the activity to the extent of undertaking commissions for other monasteries or for lay patrons? A window on to this network of manuscript production is provided by the books commissioned by Neophytos for the Enkleistra. Neophytos commissioned Basil, the 151 152 154 155

156

Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 81–90; Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 42, 76–7. 153 Djobadze, Materials, 5–12. Djobadze, Materials, 12–20. Jerusalem Taphou Georgian 2, in Djobadze, Materials, 49; see Blake, ‘Catalogue des manuscrits géorgiens’, no. 2. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 68–70. Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 159 n. 17, notes, however, that Constantine describes himself as coming from Athens. Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 144.

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taboullarios (notary) of the diocese of Paphos, to copy various of his own compositions: a collection of his homilies and letters of c. 1200 (Paris Coislin 287), his collection of saints’ lives of 1204–5 (Paris Bib Nat gr 1189) and the book of his own Testamentary Rule in 1214 (Edinburgh Univ Lib 224).157 Basil was also employed by Neophytos to copy a manuscript of catechetical teachings that he presented to his brother’s monastery, St John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis.158 He also, however, seems to have copied manuscripts for other monasteries, such as Paris Bib Nat gr 633, a volume of John Chrysostom of 1186 which was owned by Kykkos in the sixteenth century. Costas Constantinides and Robert Browning have drawn attention to the significance of Neophytos’ commissioning books from an ecclesiastical official of the diocese rather than employing one of his own monks. Did this mean that none of his own monks was sufficiently skilled for the task? This might be a reasonable conclusion to draw from the employment of Basil for the Testamentary Rule, which was not illuminated. Paris Bib Nat 1189, however, is a lavishly illuminated book with icon portraits of Symeon the Stylite, Mamas, the Archangel Michael, and Polychronios, as well as red initials and a degree of ornamentation throughout. Moreover, this was clearly the work of a scriptorium rather than of Basil alone, since no fewer than six hands have been identified. Two other books now in the library of the monastery of St Neophytos, one a non-liturgical gospel book, the other a lectionary for liturgical usage, provide evidence of Neophytos’ patronage of scribes for his own, probably private, usage.159 Another scribe working near Paphos, the priest George of Rhodes, was responsible for a fulsomely illuminated gospel lectionary, Paris Bib Nat gr 301.160 The musical notations testify to this having been a liturgical book, which also contained a menologion. The book was made in 1204 for an anchorite named Euthymios who lived in or near the parish of St Epiphanios, near Neophytos’ own monastery of the Enkleistra. Although no other surviving manuscripts are attributable to George, the existence of this book suggests that the taboullarios Basil was not the only scribe working in the area of Paphos, and perhaps also that Neophytos’ activities gave an impetus to other monastic developments in the diocese. The existence of a scriptorium at or near Paphos in c. 1200 leads to two conclusions. First, either the Enkleistra, a small monastery, lacked adequate resources to copy books even for its own use, or Neophytos – a particularly prescriptive and strong-willed founder – did not encourage or permit his own monks to undertake such work.161 Second, the diocese of Paphos, even after the Latin conquest that supposedly impoverished the upper echelons of Cypriot society, could still support a scriptorium capable of producing high-quality illumination as well as copying. Neophytos himself retaliated against critics of his presumption in writing his own Panegyrikon that he was compelled to do so by the scarcity of books available to him in the Enkleistra. Galatariotou has pointed out that the lack of books was a consistent complaint made by Neophytos from 1176 until c. 1214.162 How many books the 157

158 159 161

162

Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 99–103, 106–13, 115–19. On legislation regarding the position of notary in Cyprus, see A. Nicolaou-Konnari, ‘Greeks’, in Nicolaou-Konnari and Schabel, eds., Cyprus, 55–7. Paris Bib Nat supp gr 1317, in Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 96–9. 160 Weyl Carr, ‘Two illuminated manuscripts’. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 103–6. Rule of Neophytos, trans. Coureas, canon 13, citing Basil’s Rule (XLI, PG 31: 1021) condemns the practice of undertaking handiwork for private profit, which would appear to indicate that entrepreneurship of the kind envisaged by Weyl Carr was not a feature of the monastery: Foundation Rules, 160. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 159.

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Enkleistra had is uncertain, and estimates range from the 50 proposed by Cyril Mango and Ernest Hawkins to the more optimistic figure of 100 suggested by I. R. Tsiknopoulos, while Galatariotou herself inclines towards the lower figure.163 Although he says next to nothing about a library in his Rule, it was clearly important to Neophytos that the Enkleistra owned books and, as we have already seen, his collection included standard biblical commentaries and ascetic treatises. Moreover, although Mango has argued that Cyprus was a provincial society with a poor level of culture, the range and quality of manuscript production in Cyprus suggest otherwise.164 The answer is probably that Neophytos’ day saw the beginning of a shift towards a more literate and cultured society in Cyprus in the thirteenth century and beyond. To examine the surviving Cypriot manuscripts dating from about a hundred years after Neophytos, in the early fourteenth century, is to see how wide-ranging were the interests of patrons of books, how readily available the models for scribes had become, and how high was the quality of work that Cypriot scribes could produce. The lexicon to the Old Testament in Paris Bib Nat gr 2673 could only have been made for a biblical scholar, while the two manuscripts of Nicholas Blemmydes’ Epitome Physica, and the manuscript containing Michael Psellos’ De omnifaria doctrina and pseudoAristotle, De mundo, are indicative of an interest in natural philosophy in Lusignan Cyprus.165 The manuscripts made by Manuel Hagiostephanites Boukellarios and the two made for Bethlehem in the 1150s and 1160s are part of a closely related group bearing obvious stylistic and palaeographical similarities. It is significant how many of these are gospel books. Another in the same group is Jerusalem Anastaseos 9, a gospel book made in 1152 for the church of the Theotokos in Tiberias, and yet another example is Sinai gr 180, made by the monk George Anagnostes in 1186, either in Palestine or Cyprus.166 The preponderance of the Tetraevangelia among biblical books calls for further consideration. It is clear in many individual cases that a particular book could not have been used for the collective monastic liturgy, simply because it was too small for such usage. Liturgical books needed to be sufficiently large for monks to be able to see while chanting – sometimes in conditions of poor light. Most of the Decorative Style books, however, are of medium or small size, appropriate for private reading in a monk’s cell rather than public liturgy. Some, such as the Benaki Psalter (Athens Benaki 34.3), which is lavishly illustrated, or another twelfthcentury psalter, Athens EB 47, are very small – about six inches in height. If these books 163

164

165

166

Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 128; I. R. Tsiknopoulos, ‘Kinetra kai pegai tou sungraphikou ergou tou Hagiou Neophytou. He Hagia Bibliothke’ Kupriakai Spoudai 18 (1954), 71–2; Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 159–60. It was not only in Cyprus that monasteries had difficulties acquiring books. The colophon of a Georgian translation of the Life of Martha and Life of Barlaam made near St Symeon the Wonderworker in the 1040s explains that the scribe has heard that these texts were not available on the Holy Mountain (Mt Athos), even though God had ‘illuminated from his holy place all the East through these divine books’; he had therefore taken it on himself to provide them for monastery of the Mother of God at Athos: Djobadze, Materials, 28–32. C. Mango, ‘Chypre, carrefour du monde byzantine’, XVe Congrès international d’études byzantines. Rapports et co-rapports. 5: Chypre dans le monde byzantin, (Athens, 1976), 3–13. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 132–4, 142–4, 165–7, 185–7. Although there is little evidence of an interest in classical learning in Orthodox monasticism in the Crusader States, such an interest had been part of the heritage of the monasteries and was still upheld as late as the early ninth century, when Michael the Synkellos taught the Graptoi brothers grammar, philosophy and poetry so that they could attain ‘the full extent of wisdom’. See Life of Michael the Synkellos, V, 52. Weitzmann and Galavaris, Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, 192–3.

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were not designed for public liturgy but for individual use, their production surely indicates a desire for private reading and contemplation, aided no doubt by the illuminated cycles. We cannot assume, however, that all such books were made for monasteries. The production of the Decorative Style group, so far as can be judged, followed the entrepreneurial pattern characterised by Weyl Carr, in which books were commissioned as individual objects and executed according to the means and wishes of patrons. Such patrons may in some cases have been monasteries – or, more likely, the superior of a monastery. In the case of the Benaki Psalter, scribe, artist, patron and reader were the same individual, the monk Barnabas, who was oikonomos of the estates belonging to the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem in Cyprus.167 The manuscripts made for Bethlehem in 1167 and 1174 were made by the commission of the superior, as was Paris Bib Nat 1531, a menaion of 1112 for a metochion of the monastery of Kykkos. A Cypriot manuscript from 1089 to 1090, Jerusalem Sabas 259, was made on the commission of Basil, kouboukleisios of the village of Vavla, near Kyrenia, though apparently for a monastic community. Another Cypriot manuscript, the gospel lectionary Krakow, Biblioteka Jagiellońska 2898, of 1193, was made at the monastery of St John the Almsgiver, near Nicosia, almost certainly for the village of Sevouris, since two priests of the village, Leo and Olympites, together with a group of lay villagers, are named as patrons.168 This small cross-section illustrates the variety of relationships between patrons and scribes, and thus also the variety of usages. The Krakow lectionary, for example, shows us a monastic scribe – named as Thomas, prosmonarios of his monastery – undertaking work on behalf of a parish church, in a village presumably wealthy enough to make such a commission. Sabas 259, on the other hand, shows us a lay patron providing a book for a monastery, whereas Sinai 220 and 232 seem to have been undertaken at the behest of the hegoumen of the monastery. Whether the non-liturgical books were made for monasteries, individual monks or lay patrons, the trend represented by the production of Decorative Style and related manuscripts seems clear. First, as Weyl Carr has argued, these books should be seen as integrated objects, in which the balance between text and image reflects the particular wishes of the patron. Although most of the gospel books followed the same design, as well as calling on related stylistic models, there was scope for individuality of expression in the rendering of the illustration. Second, the stylistic connections between the manuscripts in the group argue for close relationships between painters, scribes and patrons. Given that most if not all of the manuscripts were demonstrably made for monasteries, we may draw the conclusion that, even where a particular book was not made for a monastic patron, or copied by a scribe who was himself a monk, the cultural landscape occupied by such a book was pre-eminently monastic. This becomes clearer when we examine known relationships between patrons and scribes in the case of some Cypriot manuscripts. In 1153 Manuel Hagiostephanites copied a gospel book, Vat Bib gr 449, which was illuminated with full-page miniatures of the Evangelists. The destination of the manuscript is unknown, but the painting as well 167

168

Athens Benaki 34.3, ff. 174v–175r; A. Cutler and A. Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki 34.3: an unpublished illuminated manuscript from the Family 2400’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 34 (1976), 281–323. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 63–8, 71–4, 94–6.

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as the copying were probably done in Cyprus, since the style of the miniatures has been linked to that of the wall paintings at Monagri.169 Manuel was also the scribe of an illuminated gospel book made in 1156 (the New York Kraus Gospels), which we know from the colophon that he made for John the Cretan, the archbishop of Cyprus.170 Manuel’s script is very similar to that in a volume of Chrysostom’s Homilies made in 1186 (Paris Bib Nat gr 633) which was owned by the monastery of Kykkos in the sixteenth century, and which is itself linked palaeographically to the manuscripts of Neophytos’ works copied for the Enkleistra by Basil the taboullarios of Paphos.171 The manuscript of the typikon of Makhairas which is still in the monastery, copied in 1201 and 1210, mentions as scribe a monk by the name of Niketas Hagiostephanites. The name seems to indicate that he was a monk not at Makhairas but at the monastery of St Stephen, where John the Cretan – the sponsor of the Kraus Gospels, one of Manuel Hagiostephanites’ manuscripts, also professed as a monk.172 Presumably if this is true of Niketas, it also the case for Manuel in the 1150s. This tightly woven network of manuscript production in Cyprus was centred on monasteries. However, as Weyl Carr and Canart have amply shown, the evidence of script, stylistic parallels and colophons expands this network further to include the monasteries of Syria and the Holy Land. We have already come across two examples of this connection: Jerusalem Sabas 259 and the Benaki Psalter. In the case of the latter, the connection could hardly be more transparent. A long and rather extravagantly phrased dedicatory poem celebrates the achievement of the scribe and artist of the manuscript, Barnabas, who is described in the poem as monk and megistos oikonomos of the property of the patriarchate of Jerusalem in Cyprus.173 Although the name itself is common enough in Cyprus, it is worth noting that John the Cretan’s successor as archbishop of the island was called Barnabas (1170/91).174 The estates of the patriarchate in Cyprus are known to have become run down by 1177, when the patriarch of Jerusalem, Leontios, visited them en route for the Holy Land,175 but even so the monk who had charge of them would have been a considerable enough figure in the Cypriot Church for such a promotion to have been plausible. Other manuscripts reveal connections between the Holy Land and Cyprus in less obvious ways. A synaxarion of 1062–3, Paris Bib Nat gr 1590, has been identified as Palestinian in origin on the grounds of local peculiarities in the calendar, but it was certainly in Cyprus by 1115, when a series of notes recording events at the monastery of Asinou begins.176 The Decorative Style group encompasses manuscripts from a wide geographical area. Manuel Hagiostephanites’ characteristic Cypriot script is found in the gospel lectionary made for Tiberias in 1152 (Jerusalem Anastaseos 9) and the two gospel books for 169 170

171

172 173 174

175

Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 81–4; Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 80–1. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 84–7; Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 76–7; J. Darrouzès, ‘Autres manuscrits originaires de Chypre’, REB 14 (1957), 135. Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 90–4; the manuscripts are Paris Bib Nat gr 1189 and Edinburgh Univ Lib 224. Canart, ‘Les écritures livresques’, 32 n. 45. See Cutler and Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki’, 313–14, for an edition and English translation of the poem. V. Laurent, ‘La succession épiscopale des derniers archévêques grecs de Chypre, de Jean le Crétois (1152) à Germain Pesimandros (1260)’, REB 7 (1949), 35. 176 Life of Leontios, LXX, LXXII–LXXIII, 112–14, 116. Darrouzès, ‘Notes’, 85–6, 92–5.

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Bethlehem in 1167 and 1174 (Sinai gr 220 and 232), as well as another Cypriot gospel book of 1193 (Berlin Staatsbibliothek gr 51) and the gospel lectionary made for the Cypriot recluse Euthymios, whose scribe was George of Rhodes (Paris Bib Nat gr 301).177 Rhodian scribes, indeed, seem to have adopted the same palaographical style as is found in the Palestino-Cypriot manuscripts.178 Links have also been identified between wall-painting and illumination in Cyprus and the Peloponnese, prompting Weyl Carr to propose ‘a . . . community in their own right’ between these regions.179 Moreover, artists were mobile: besides George, who was active in the diocese of Paphos in western Cyprus, we know of at least two manuscripts that were made in Patmos by Rhodian scribes.180 Let us not forget that the monastery of St John in Patmos was founded at the end of the eleventh century by Christodoulos – formerly a Sabaite monk, whose typikon consciously recalls that of St Sabas. For the historian of monasticism in the eastern Mediterranean, the conclusions reached by art historians from palaeographical and stylistic comparisons raise very important questions. The supposition of a group of manuscripts linked by techniques in script and styles of painting obviously, given the monastic provenance and ownership of many of them, suggests some kind of connection between the monasteries themselves. Books circulated, and naturally, because they could do so only if they were carried, so too did monks. Now, as far as connections between monks and monastic foundations in Cyprus and the Holy Land are concerned, such evidence merely confirms the textual record of manuscript colophons and the personal testimonies of individual monks such as Neophytos and Neilos, who had both lived in the Holy Land, in their respective typika. As the Decorative Style group expands, however, so it loses its initial focus, and as an increasing number of manuscripts are drawn into it, so also the geographical region in question widens.181 Can we admit as evidence objects connected to the Holy Land only indirectly through the methodological construction of palaeographical and stylistic analysis? Should, in other words, manuscripts produced in, say, Patmos, by Rhodian scribes be taken as evidence of a network of inter-relations between monasteries extending to the Greek islands? This will depend largely on how other questions are resolved. Most critically, we need to know more about the mechanics of production, not only of manuscripts but also of icons and monumental painting. Did monastic scribes travel in order to become familiar with iconographic models? How independent was artistic production of the ideals of monastic founders and hegoumens? How closely related were aspects of form and function in painting, whether in manuscript illumination, icon painting or fresco? These questions can best be approached through an examination of some themes and methods of representation in what we might loosely term ‘monastic art’ in the Orthodox East. 177 178

179 181

Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 45; Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 103–6. Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 46 and n. 31, identifies seven surviving Rhodian MSS of the twelfth–thirteenth centuries, all of which display the same characteristics. 180 Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 25. Patmos 175 and 743 (both of 1180). Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 40, shows how attributions to the group rose from a few in the 1960s to eighty manuscripts in 1982. Her Byzantine Illumination, of 1987, lists more than one hundred manuscripts.

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Visual Culture and Representation The visual culture of monasticism comprises manuscripts, icons, mosaics and wall paintings produced either by monks or for monastic houses. Naturally, the objects that we characterise as examples of such ‘art’ were not understood in this way by contemporaries. Manuscripts, as we have seen, had liturgical or devotional purposes. Icons, too, were an intrinsic part of the Orthodox liturgy as well as enabling both private and collective devotions in the form of processions and public intercessions. Similarly, paintings and mosaics, while not playing such an inherent role in the performance of liturgy, represented and explained the liturgical process to viewers. Decorative programmes in monastic churches had meanings that reflect the ways in which monastic communities chose to represent their spirituality, in analogous ways to their choices of, for example, saints in their synaxaria. Monastic art, in other words, should not be seen as a separate or adjunct category of monastic activity, but as part of the web of interconnected images that served the performance of the liturgy and the needs of contemplation. Some objects lead us more directly into the mindsets of monks than others. The Benaki Psalter, as the personal creation and possession of Barnabas, represents his spiritual voice: first, through his choice of the psalms as the biblical book to which he was particularly attached, and, second, through the character and organisation of the illustrations to the texts. In the poem inserted at the end of the psalms, Barnabas is spoken of as having ‘succumbed to an overwhelming affection for the Davidic words’. Moreover, the act of writing and illustrating the psalter ‘purified his soul and gave wings to his wit’, with the result that he ‘attained the heights of the psalmist’.182 Lectio divina – contemplative reading of the text – became an act of creation that in itself conferred a higher understanding on the monk. The Benaki Psalter is a very small book, and one that could only have been used for private devotion, but the large number of folios makes it nonetheless a fairly bulky object. It is also in many ways an idiosyncratic manuscript. Although such a book must have been expensive in terms of time and materials, many of the miniatures themselves are rendered quite simply. There are no elaborate borders, only a plain narrow red band, and most of the compositions comprise only one or two figures, with no complex iconography. Moreover, the colour palette is quite limited and there is a good deal of repetition in the execution of images. Anthony Cutler and Annemarie Weyl Carr remark on Barnabas’ unique vision in attempting to illustrate every psalm; in addition to these prefatory miniatures, however, Barnabas also provided individual large-scale narrative illustrations for five of the psalms.183 These show a striking originality in conception and design. The illustration for Psalm 136, for example, shows Israelite captives by the waters of Babylon. Unlike in other known treatments of this theme, however, there is no attempt to show the captors; moreover, the artist has endowed the scene with details that differ from the text, so that instead of harps we see small drums hanging from the willow trees. Cutler and Weyl Carr’s observation that 182

183

Cutler and Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki’, 313–14. They argue that Barnabas was also the author of the verses praising him in such extravagant terms. Cutler and Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki’, 281–2. The psalms with their own separate cycles are 50, 77, 118, 151 and 136. For a full catalogue of all the illustrations, see Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 67–9.

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the psalter does not fit into any known example of psalter decoration leads them to conclude that the artist created the visual imagery from the text rather than from available models.184 The Psalm 136 imagery, however, suggests that he also departed from the text at will. Notwithstanding the originality of composition and iconography, the artist’s figure style and use of architectural settings reveal a reliance on certain models. These, Cutler and Weyl Carr argue persuasively, must derive from the same source that provided models for other Decorative Style manuscripts.185 So far, then, we can infer a monk who knew other manuscripts sufficiently well to be able to derive his own style from the models they offered, but who chose to produce for his own personal contemplation a book quite unlike any other, and on which he was prepared to devote considerable time. We also know that the artist was a prominent figure in the Cypriot monastic community, but with official ties to the patriarchate of Jerusalem. We might go so far as to say that both monk and book were parts of a network of monastic praxis; although they reveal striking individualities, they are also products of inter-relations: between Cyprus and Jerusalem, between monastic stability and the circulation of books, between reading and contemplation, between contemplation and artistic creation. Further details of the imagery help to localise the place that Barnabas occupies within this network. In the illustration for Psalm 63 (f. 69v), David is shown gesturing towards a man dressed in animal skins. The cap worn by this figure recalls the hat traditionally worn by St Spiridion in a number of examples in Cyprus and more widely across the Mediterranean.186 The figures behind and to the left of David in Psalm 127 (f. 152r), which praises those who follow in God’s paths, resemble in their clothing monastic saints such as Euthymios and Sabas, or the generic monks of the twelfth-century Sinai manuscript of John Klimakos.187 While there is nothing out of the ordinary about the appropriation of one iconographic model to depict a quite different moment in history (for example, in the curved Arab sword wielded by Goliath on f. 174r), the presence of the monks and of Spiridion’s hat locates the artist in a particular framework. Whether consciously or not, the artist takes his iconographic influences from the cultural vocabulary most familiar to him. The same applies to decorative techniques. Not only do the figure style and modes of rendering buildings and trees recall Decorative Style manuscripts, the headpieces invoke similarities with other manuscripts made in the same monastic orbit.188 The Benaki Psalter presents a distinctive individual monastic sensibility, set within a recognisable vocabulary of image and expression. The same combination can be found, to an even higher degree, in the decoration of the Enkleistra undertaken in two campaigns, in 184

185

186

187 188

Cutler and Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki’, 291–2. They suggest, however (ibid., 299–300), that the Psalter as a whole might indicate a connection to a much older, pre-iconoclastic cycle since lost, and point to comparisons with Sinai gr 48. Cutler and Weyl Carr, ‘The Psalter Benaki’, 306–8, with specific reference to Paris Bib Nat gr 85, Oxford Christ Church Wake 31, Athos Laura B.26, London BL Add 40753 and Istanbul Topkapi 8. ‘The Benaki Psalter can only have been made in close association with this group itself’ (ibid., 308) E.g. in the frescoes at St Nicholas tis stegis, Kakopetria, Asinou, in the eleventh-century fresco in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Athens, and a fourteenth-century icon in the Byzantine Museum, Athens. Sinai gr 418, f. 231v, shows David with monks. E.g. the headpiece on f. 90r compares with the canon table head in a twelfth-century gospel book probably made at St Sabas, Princeton Garrett 3, ff. 2–3. Likewise, the frontal headpiece on f. 1r, with a bust of Christ in an elaborate frame with a carpet square background, is similar to that in Princeton Garrett 3, ff. 1r and 127r, and more distantly recalls that in Athens Nat Lib 840, f. 165v.

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1183 by an artist named in an inscription as Theodore Apseudes, and in 1196–7. At the time of the first campaign, Neophytos had already been living in the Enkleistra as a solitary for twenty-four years, and as superior of the laura for thirteen. The main ecclesiastical buildings of the laura comprise a barrel-vaulted narthex from which one enters the church of the Holy Cross, which is itself divided into a nave and a bema by an iconostasis; behind the bema is Neophytos’ cell. After founding the laura in 1170, Neophytos also built a refectory further along the terrace of the cliff-side. There were also rooms above the narthex (a sacristy) and the church (Neophytos’ private room from which he could follow the liturgy). Above this cell was the New Zion, the further refuge that Neophytos constructed in 1197 so as to safeguard his solitude.189 Although there were other buildings in the complex, only these are relevant to a discussion of the decoration. The narthex now retains only its post-Byzantine decoration, but the frescoes in the church and bema and in Neophytos’ own cell not only date from his own lifetime but also bear the unmistakable stamp of his monastic individuality.190 The decorative scheme in the nave of the church comprises, on the south wall, a scene of Abraham’s hospitality to the angels, which is matched by the first scene from the Passion cycle, namely the Last Supper. This cycle is continued on the west wall by the Washing of Feet, and on the north wall by the Crucifixion, with the Anastasis and later appearance of disciples on the east wall and the Ascension on the ceiling. This scheme thus links Old and New Testaments typologically in presenting a narrative of salvation interpreted through the eucharist. A niche in which a wooden cross reliquary stood was painted with the archangels, as guardians, and Sts John Chrysostom, Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen, the pre-eminent interpreters of the eucharist, with Constantine and Helena, who were responsible for the discovery of the True Cross. Most of this scheme dates from the second campaign of 1196–7. On the west wall, below the scenes from the Passion cycle, stands a row of twelve monastic saints.191 The bema contains a single scene that takes up the whole of the upper half of the west wall, in which Neophytos himself is carried by the two archangels, one on either side. On the east wall, the Virgin appears crammed into the same register as Sts John Chrysostom, Basil, Epiphanios and Nicholas, who represent the performance of the liturgy. Another Ascension appears on the ceiling, and an Annunciation scene on both sides of the north door. Finally, there is a group of seven monastic saints: Ephrem the Syrian, Kyriakos, Gerasimos, Theodore the Sanctified, Pachomios, Hilarion and Euthymios. Neophytos’ cell, behind the bema, was decorated with a series of prophets near the domed ceiling, a group of military saints by the door, St Andrew, a Crucifixion and Anastasis with Virgin and Child, and a large Deesis on the north wall. Galatariotou has discussed the paintings in relation to Neophytos’ own writings, with which, she argues, they are inter-related. ‘They represent two different but interlocked 189 190

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The buildings are described by Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 132–5. The fullest description of the paintings is in Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 140–90. See also the discussion by R. Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (London, 1985), ch. 6, and Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 128–47. Cormack’s main concern is to locate Neophytos and his decorative project within the wider artistic context, whereas Galatariotou analyses the paintings as evidence for Neophytos’ personal psychology. From left to right: Anthony, Arsenios, Euthymios, Amoun of Nitria, Andronikos, Daniel of Skete, Theodosios the Coenobiarch, John Klimakos, Onufrios, Makarios, Paisios and Stephen the Younger.

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expressions of steps taken within one and the same process, that of the Recluse’s selfsanctification.’192 She argues, indeed, that although Neophytos did not paint the frescoes himself he should be seen as their creator – presumably, in the same way that we can view Barnabas as the creator of the Benaki Psalter. The logic behind the argument is that the peculiarities of the decorative scheme can be explained only in reference to Neophytos’ own sense of his identity as a saint. Examples of these idiosyncrasies are readily found in the Enkleistra paintings. Neophytos had himself appear several times as part of the decorative scheme: not only in the extraordinary scene in the bema where he is carried heavenward by the archangels, but also in the Deesis, where he is shown kneeling at Christ’s feet, and probably also in the 1196–7 paintings in the naos, where he appears as the founder of the monastery. These attributions are clear from inscriptions and, in the last case, from an exact comparison of the facial characteristics of the saint with the other two.193 It has further been suggested, however, that we can find Neophytos in the narrative cycles in the church, appearing as an apostle in the Last Supper, Washing of Feet and Agony in the Garden, as Simon of Cyrene carrying Christ’s cross, and as Joseph of Arimathea in the Descent from the Cross, and finally as Adam in the Anastasis.194 Galatariotou remarks that this strategy of self-representation proved self-fulfilling, since icons of Neophytos continue to be based on this series of portraits.195 Indeed, the portraits reflect his determination to be taken seriously as a model for a particular kind of sanctity: monastic anchoritism. Hence, in the lower register on the west wall of the nave, Neophytos has inserted himself among the monastic saints, next to Onufrios, the Egyptian hermit. Another image of Neophytos, where he appears with the archangels in the bema, has even greater visual impact. The composition of the scene is such that Neophytos is shown, with eyes closed and hands folded across his chest in death, as if the archangels’ wings were in fact sprouting from his back; as though, in other words, he is one with the angels in his own death. The nave painting of the Ascension in the dome offers a different but equally striking example. Galatariotou has rightly emphasised the significance of the shaft opening from the church ceiling into Neophytos’ personal cell above the church. Neophytos used this space to view the liturgy from above while remaining in seclusion. As the Ascension is painted around the inner walls of the dome, the effect must have been to project Neophytos’ own face, when he chose to appear in the shaft, into the space next to Christ in the mandorla.196 But Neophytos also wanted to identify himself with the narrative of the 192 194

195 196

193 Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 128–9. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 130–3. Der Parthog, Medieval Cyprus, 92, following I. Tsiknopoulos, The Encleistra and Saint Neophytos (Nicosia, 1965), 101. This notion is ridiculed by A. Stylianou and J. Stylianou, ‘Some problems concerning the “Enkleistra” of St Neophytos and its wallpaintings’, Anatyposis ek ton Kypriakon Spoudon 26 (1962), 135, on the grounds that these further examples date from the repainting of 1503, and thus cannot be taken as part of the Recluse’s intentional self-representation. Although Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 140, concur that the 1503 restoration applied to the paintings in the naos that include the first two scenes of the Passion cycle (the Last Supper and Washing of Feet), the other scenes from this cycle where Neophytos’ ‘self-portrait’ has been identified are clearly part of the original late twelfth-century campaign. This in itself does not prove the other identifications, which rest on stylistic similarities in depicting facial features. Although the Stylianous dismiss these similarities as coincidental, the distinctive realism with which Neophytos had his portrait painted in the three scenes where he can definitely be identified by an inscription indicates a degree of self-consciousness in representation that makes their objection unsustainable. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 133. Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 137; Cormack, Writing in Gold, 248–9; Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 141–2, 200–1.

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Passion. Appearing at the Last Supper, he shares in the commission given by Christ to his Apostles, but he is also present on the last journey to the Crucifixion, even carrying the cross for Christ and thus fulfilling the command to take up his cross and follow; as Joseph of Arimathea, he also takes charge of the burial, and thus, figuratively, responsibility for the memorialisation of Christ’s death as a salvific act. Galatariotou seeks explanation for Neophytos’ intentions in representing himself thus in Freudian theories of the unconscious. These may indeed help us to understand Neophytos’ state of mind in designing the decorative scheme and the architecture of the church, and it is tempting to be drawn into explanations centred on Neophytos’ supposed solipsism or narcissism.197 We must consider, however, that what may appear as morbid selfobsession to post-Freudian generations cannot necessarily be so easily dismissed in the fuller context of twelfth-century monastic praxis. Neophytos’ profession was solitary monasticism, and the purpose and fulfilment of anchoritism constituted self-reflection to the point at which the monk’s personality becomes fully absorbed in that of the object of his contemplation. Since the task of the recluse was contemplation, it would be surprising if his representation did not reflect the fruit of his labour. Now, what on one level looks like selfobsession or self-importance – arranging for one’s own head to appear next to Christ’s, appearing as an apostle, and so on – might on another level be read as an imaginative identification of the self with the narrative of the Passion and the economy of salvation. The more often Neophytos appears in the decorative scheme, indeed, the more plausible such a reading becomes. Contemplation has resulted in the denial of the Recluse’s personality and its re-identification in the historical persons of the Gospels. In this light we must also consider whom Neophytos had in mind as the viewers of his decorative scheme. The only people who would see the paintings – would, indeed, be confronted daily with them during the liturgy – were the monks. This is the case even for the paintings in the private cell, since it was at the time of the second decorative campaign, in 1196–7, that Neophytos himself withdrew to the New Zion higher up the cliff. Neophytos’ appearances in the guise of actors in the drama of salvation were intended as visual symbols for the benefit of his monks. As his typikon makes clear, his role as hegoumen of the laura – and that of his successor – was to combine the profession of recluse with that of spiritual head of the community. This presented obvious practical difficulties, especially after he had withdrawn to the New Zion, for the monks were, according to his stipulations, to be governed by an unseen head. For Neophytos, the Recluse was at heart of the laura: without him, the community would have no purpose. Moreover, the spiritual work of governing the laura could only be done, Neophytos thought, by a recluse, for this work depended on uninterrupted contemplation. The decorative scheme in the church, bema and cell should not be seen simply as visual illustrations of the Gospels and the Church Fathers, in which Neophytos portrays himself as a sign of vanity, but rather as the realisation of the work 197

Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 138–46. Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 128, take a more straightforward approach: ‘he was also a man of quite remarkable vanity . . . Only a very vain and simple-minded man would have composed a homily on the subject of an accident he had had while excavating a lavatory, and decreed furthermore that this piece of tittle-tattle should be solemnly read in church once a year.’

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of the Recluse, who through true askesis and solitude is able to inhabit the narrative of salvation. The Enkleistra paintings, individualistic though they undoubtedly are, conform to iconographic models found in similar decorative schemes. Monastic saints are found, with some variations, in other painted churches in Cyprus, for example, Lagoudera (Andronikos, Kyriakos, Chariton, Hilarion, Symeon the Stylite and Symeon the Wonderworker) and St Nicholas tis stegis, Kakopetria (Alypios and Symeon the Stylite, Spiridion). Even more obvious is the almost exact comparison with the monastic fathers at Asinou (Onufrios, Symeon the Stylite, Spiridion, Theodosios the Coenobiarch, Arsenios, Ephrem the Syrian, Hilarion, Andronikos, Kyriakos, Anthony, Euthymios and Sabas). The omission of the stylites from the Enkleistra, given their evident popularity in Cyprus, is curious, but might be explained by Neophytos’ desire to emphasise lauritic and cenobitic monasticism rather than stylitism. Anchorite Neophytos may have been, but, since 1170, within the context of communal monasticism.198 Representations of monastic saints are also found in twelfth-century churches in the Holy Land. The most celebrated are probably the column paintings dating from the mid-twelfth century in the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which Neophytos may have seen in 1158, and which include iconic images of Onufrios, Sabas and Euthymios.199 More pertinent to the Enkleistra, however, is the cave laura of St Theoktistos in the Judaean desert. In his typikon, Neophytos is rather vague about his six-month sojourn in the Holy Land, presumably because he failed to find the mentor he had travelled there to find. In search of such a guide to the monastic life, however, he must have visited known laura monasteries, most of which were in the Judaean desert. The monastery founded by Theoktistos and Euthymios in 411, destroyed probably in the early eleventh century, was revived again in the twelfth, as attested by a cycle of wall paintings in the cave church that includes an iconic image of Jesus with the archangels and Sts Sabas and Euthymios, a niche painting of John of Damascus as a monk, and another of Euthymios.200 On stylistic grounds these have been compared with similar cave paintings at Goreme (Cappadocia) and with the Enkleistra scheme, and dated to the third quarter of the twelfth century. Given such a link, the trajectory of Neophytos’ career makes the influence of these paintings on the Enkleistra highly likely. Although the Enkleistra cycle was more extensive, and Neophytos’ design more sophisticated in its iconography and meaning, he surely derived the concept of a painted cave church from his experiences in the Holy Land. Indeed, although he presents his discovery of the cave near Paphos in 1158 as chance, it is more likely that his travels in the Holy Land had inspired him to found his own cave church. He had gone to seek a living guide to the solitary monastic life, but returned instead with a model for how to import Palestinian anchoritism to Cyprus. Furthermore, the artist of the St Theoktistos paintings can be tied into the monastic network of the Holy Land by comparison of the John of Damascus image with that in a contemporary manuscript of his writings, Jerusalem Taphou 198

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More puzzling is the omission of Sabas, given the obvious connections with the Holy Land emphasised both in his writings and in the decorative scheme, and the possibility that Neophytos himself had spent some time at the laura of St Sabas in 1158. Kühnel, Wall Painting, 83–6, 88–92, but see also Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land 1098–1187, 364–71, for a different view of the overall design of the paintings. Kühnel, Wall Painting, 183–91.

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14 (f. 92r). In the same way, representations of the stylites in the paintings at Asinou, Lagoudera and Kakopetria recall in their use of iconographic details the rendering of Symeon the Stylite in menologia, for example in Oxford Barocci 230, f. 4r.201 The spread and multiple repetition of certain motifs in the monastic art of the eastern Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries bear out the notion of an inter-related network of monastic praxis and self-representation. Kurt Weitzmann remarked that eleventh-century Byzantine illumination saw an increasing tendency in both style and iconographical outlook to be influenced by ideals of monastic asceticism. This could be seen, he suggested, in the rise of a new style of figure painting in which the incorporeal or dematerialised essence of the person was emphasised.202 This was particularly the case in Lectionary decorative schemes, which were themselves derived from menologion cycles of the lives of the saints.203 I might add that the large number of non-liturgical gospel books in the Decorative Style group further supports this view. Since their purpose was to meet the need for monastic contemplation, they would appear to indicate a concentration in the regions of their provenance on forms of cenobitic monasticism in which individual reading and contemplation in the monk’s cell were given high priority. Weitzmann believed that the impetus for this scheme originally came from the organisation of menologia. Although menologia were typically arranged with a miniature at the beginning of each saint’s life, in the eleventh century a variant scheme developed in which individual miniatures were collected on a single page and arranged in rows. This type seems to have emerged in, or to have been deployed in, manuscripts associated with the monasteries of the Holy Land: for example, Oxford Barocci 230 and Sinai gr 512, in which three rows of saints face the viewer at the beginning of each month. The reader can not only see at a glance which saints’ feasts are celebrated over the course of the month, but also gain a sense of the heavenly community who are present in the liturgical observances. As Weitzmann points out, this scheme of collective representation echoes, and probably derived from, icons.204 Oxford Barocci 230 and Sinai 512, however, were originally part of the same menologion, made in Constantinople in the 1050s for use in the Palestinian monastery of St Chariton. I have already discussed the significance of this place of origin in the context of the liturgical influences spreading from Constantinople. Weitzmann found further evidence for such artistic connections in the wide distribution of a particular iconographic image, the appearance of the Anastasis, in manuscripts of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzen, which were newly organised for liturgical use in the eleventh century.205 Does this mean that artistic influences also travelled in the same direction, from the centre to the periphery of the Byzantine world? This would be one explanation for the movement of artistic models and of artists themselves within the monastic network of the Near East. There are examples 201

202 203 204 205

Symeon is shown as a head and shoulder bust behind a metal grille atop the column. In the same manuscript, Chariton (f. 229r) is depicted, also as a bust, in a kind of booth with a pointed roof, rather like a fairground show, and wearing the cap normally worn uniquely by Spiridion. K. Weitzmann, ‘Byzantine miniature and icon painting’, in Weitzmann, Studies, 280. K. Weitzmann, ‘Narrative and liturgical gospel illustrations’, in Weitzmann, Studies, 258. Weitzmann, ‘Byzantine miniature and icon painting’, 284–5. Weitzmann, ‘Byzantine miniature and icon painting’, 291, citing the example of Jerusalem Taphou 14; see also P. Galavaris, The Illustrations of the Liturgical Homilies of Gregory Nazianzenus, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 6 (Princeton, 1969).

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of precisely this occurrence. A Georgian gospel book of 1054 copied at Kalipos, on the Black Mountain, records that the scribe travelled to Syria from Constantinople, bringing with him an icon of St George and an illuminated Gospel. We know of the donation of books by Emperor Manuel Komnenos to Choziba, and there is plentiful evidence of Manuel’s patronage of rebuilding and decoration in Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land.206 These examples apparently conform to the renewed influence of Greek as a revived liturgical language and of the Constantinopolitan liturgy in the Near Eastern monasteries from the eleventh century onwards. At the same time, however, there is also abundant evidence for the emergence of a visual culture that was strikingly different from Constantinople. Whether we term this ‘provincial’ will surely depend on the perspective from which we view the monasticism of this region. Counter-examples to those cited above can be advanced in support of a different view, in which local styles and forms were moulded by indigenous artists into a distinctive visual culture that owed little to the centre. Such a view, indeed, underlies the Decorative Style model of manuscript illumination established by Weyl Carr. As for the influence of Komnenian imperial munificence, this is not entirely clear-cut. The initiative for Manuel’s restoration of St Elias, for example, came not from the centre but from the local clergy and monks. Moreover, the artists of the Bethlehem mosaics were in all probability local monks, whose deployment of ancient motifs indigenous to the Near East has already been noted.207 Weyl Carr, indeed, uses the metropolitan artists of the frescoes at Abu Ghosh as an exception that proves the rule. The Hospitaller patrons of this pilgrimage church, she argues, imported metropolitan artists because ‘the Byzantine art that interested the crusaders was Constantinopolitan. It was not local.’208 The Franks, for whom ‘Byzantine style’ was an aesthetic aspiration, went to great lengths to acquire a metropolitan imprimatur, whereas Manuel Komnenos was content to patronise local artists. Tellingly, the best examples of a distinctive eastern Mediterranean visual culture are not confined to any particular medium but can be found in illumination, icons and monumental painting. One way to demonstrate this is to highlight the appearance and spread of certain ways of representing biblical scenes or images. As an example, let us take the representation of the Annunciation. A new iconography emerges in the twelfth century in which the Holy Spirit is shown as an integral part of the composition, represented by a dove, sometimes with rays of light directed towards the Blessed Virgin. This can be seen in two Cypriot churches painted between 1160 and 1180, Panagia Theotokos in Trikomo, and Holy Apostles in Perakoria (1160–80). A generation later, in 1192, it is also found in the frescoes at the Syrian Orthodox monastery of Mar Musa at Nebek, north-east of Damascus.209 The Annunciation at Mar Musa shows Mary sitting outside by a well engaged in spinning, a scene which, as Erica Cruikshank Dodd has shown, not only conforms to the narrative in the 206 208

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207 See pp. 314–15, 317. Hunt, ‘Art and colonialism’. A. Weyl Carr, ‘The mural paintings of Abu Ghosh and the patronage of Manuel Comnenus in the Holy Land’, in Folda, ed., Crusader Art in the Twelfth Century, 222. E. C. Dodd, The Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi: A Study of Medieval Painting in Syria, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 139 (Toronto, 2001), 34–8.

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Protoevangelium of St James, but is also found in Cappadocian and Cypriot churches – Trikomo and Perakoria, but also Moutoullas (1260–80).210 Other motifs link also Mar Musa with eastern Mediterranean monastic churches. The Emmanuel in a medallion above the triumphal arch at Mar Musa can be compared to a similar treatments at Lagoudera in Cyprus (1192), with Mavriotissa and Hagios Stephanos, at Kastoria (twelfth–thirteenth centuries) and with the cave painting at Carikli Kilise, Goreme, also from the late twelfth century. The depiction of the enthroned Christ with Peter and Paul is unusual, but paralleled at Perachorio in Cyprus. The red cloak of the Blessed Virgin in the semidome has been compared to Sinai icons of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the image of Christ in a medallion painted on the Virgin’s breast, which alludes to the Virgin Platytera tradition, in the bema, recalls the use of this motif at Asinou and Trikomo in Cyprus, but also in the mosaics in the apse at Bethlehem (1160s) and, most significant of all, at St Theoktistos in the Judaean desert.211 There are further connections to the Holy Land at Mar Musa. As Dodd points out, the iconography of the Virgin Platytera derives from the Basilian liturgy of Jerusalem, and the now lost Annunciation mosaic in the Calvary chapel in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which dates back to the eleventh-century rebuilding of the church, may have been the model from which other Near Eastern examples derived.212 Mar Musa as an institution also reveals connections with Egypt, Abyssinia and the Sinai peninsula, not least in the probable exodus of monks from the monastery to St Katherine’s in the thirteenth century during the Mamluk/Mongol wars. Jerusalem lay at the centre of what Dodd has called a ‘confluence of different iconographic traditions’ in the Near East. Many of these motifs, however, including the dove in the Annunciation, also appear in Sicily in the twelfth century.213 Otto Demus saw in the twelfth century a trend for ‘oriental’ motifs to dominate twelfth-century Byzantine art.214 As indicated earlier, some such traits can be found across different media. The strikingly realistic crib in the Nativity miniature in the twelfth-century St Sabas gospel book, Princeton Garrett 3, is also found in the Nativity scenes in other Decorative Style manuscripts with links to Cyprus, namely the Kraus Gospels and Chicago University Library MS 965; it is also comparable with the scene in the mural painting at Lagoudera (1192). Weyl Carr adduces such traits as confirmation of a particular interest in what might be called ‘Christological art’ in Decorated Style manuscripts, or at any rate a concern in art with origins in or close links to the Holy Land for a degree of realism in representing details of Christ’s life.215 The Lagoudera paintings, with their imposing architectural details in the narrative Passion cycle, may also have influenced the spectacular 210

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Extracts from the Protoevangelium, including the narrative of the Annunciation, were in at least one manuscript in Cyprus, Paris Bib Nat gr 1215: Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 59–63. Dodd, Frescoes of Mar Musa, 38, 43. See also the thirteenth-century Sinai icon of the Virgin with Moses, Elijah and Gregory of Nazianzen (the ‘Burning Bush Mary’), which Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 329, proposes as an example of a Western artist working from models at Sinai. Dodd, Frescoes of Mar Musa, 19–25, 37, 125–7; Dodd, ibid., 40, says of the triumphal arch painting at Mar Musa, ‘It is evident that those who planned it were aware of important developments in Byzantine thought, perhaps through Jerusalem.’ From early in the eleventh century, the liturgy of St Basil was used only at certain fixed occasions in the year, for example on Sundays in Lent. 214 E.g. the Martorano (1146–51) and Palatine Chapel (1143) in Palermo. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily, 265. Weyl Carr, ‘A group’, 20–8, 48, 60. Note also the significance of the identification of the ‘cradle of Christ’ in pilgrimage accounts of Bethlehem from the mid-twelfth century, as observed by Weyl Carr: ibid., 48 n. 45.

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‘architectural fantasy’ in an early thirteenth-century liturgical roll from the monastery of St John at Patmos (Patmos MS 707).216 A distinctive hagiology is also noticeable in ‘Crusader States art’. There is a preference for representing particular saints whose cults have Near Eastern provenances. St George appears in manuscripts, wall paintings and icons from Syria, the Holy Land, Sinai and Cyprus. In some representations, a particular regional influence is detectable; for example, the appearance of the emperor Diocletian instead of a dragon as George’s victim in the paintings at Moutoullas suggests knowledge of the Georgian version of the legend. Equestrian saints are common throughout the region, from the Sts George and Theodore at Mar Musa to the St Sergios icon from the 1260s that has been attributed to a ‘Workshop of Soldier Saints’.217 St Marina, whose cult was popular in Lebanon and Syria, appears in wall paintings and icons with Syrian and Cypriot provenances, notably at Mar Marina, Qalmoun (Lebanon), and in an icon now in Houston, Texas, painted in the Syrian style and related to painted churches in Lebanon; she is also found twice in the Bethlehem column paintings.218 Andronikos, who appears as one of the twelve monastic saints in the church of the Enkleistra – and about whom Neophytos wrote a panegyric – is also found at Moutoullas. Even these few examples demonstrate the distinctive iconographic character of the art of the Crusader States. The cross-fertilisation of iconographic themes that is evident from monuments and objects does not appear to depend on a gravitational force operating from Constantinople, but results instead from the transfer of ideas across the Levant as a region. The modalities of transfer were centred on monks and monastic activities. Monks, as we have seen, were icon painters, scribes and illuminators; they commissioned and directed monumental paintings and mosaic programmes. Monks carried books and icons from one centre to another. Some such transfers, to be sure, did take place between Constantinople and the monasteries of the Crusader States, and in some cases it is possible to explain these in terms of the conscious importing of artists or ideas from the centre to the periphery. Equally, however, the assumption of such a model has itself created assumptions about the origins of artists that cannot be proven; not every accomplished artist was by definition imported, and not every imported artist came from Constantinople.219 Indeed, the dominance of some essential stylistic elements in the Decorative Style manuscripts may give rise to the theory that provincial painters influenced those working in the metropolis. As Weyl Carr’s study of the provincial tradition of manuscript painting has shown, contacts and influences operated in 216 217

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Mouriki and Sevcenko, ‘Illustrated manuscripts’. J. Folda, ‘The figural arts in crusader Syria and Palestine, 1187–1291: some new realities’, DOP 58 (2004), 318, coining the title ‘Workshop of Soldier Saints’; see Evans, ed., Byzantium, nos. 229, 230, 231, 232 for this and other examples; see also M. Immerzeel, ‘Divine cavalry: mounted saints in Middle Eastern Christian art’, in Ciggaar and Teule, eds., East and West in the Crusader States, 265–86. J. Sader, Painted Churches and Rock-Cut Chapels of Lebanon (Beirut, 1997), 146–64, figs. 116–23; Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291, fig. 192. Thus Mango and Hawkins, ‘The hermitage of St Neophytos’, 205–6, suggest that Theodore Apseudes was brought from Constantinople to Cyprus to paint the Enkleistra in 1183. They are followed in this assumption by A. Papageorghiou, Icons of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1992), 14, who declares that ‘exposure to the art of the metropolis is the only explanation for the high quality of wall paintings and icons of some of the churches of Cyprus’. As Galatariotou, Making of a Saint, 172 n. 27, points out, there is no evidence for his metropolitan origin. See also the assumption by A. Megaw, ‘Byzantine architecture and decoration in Cyprus: metropolitan or provincial’, DOP 28 (1974), 88, that the painter of the architectural backgrounds in the Lagoudera murals must have been from Constantinople, and the counter-arguments by Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 48–9.

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more than one register, and depended on the conditions that determined methods of production.220 Canart observed that, while eleventh-century Cypriot script was scarcely distinguishable from those of Constantinople in the same period, in the twelfth century Cypriot manuscripts developed distinctive traits that were separate from metropolitan palaeographical currents.221 In Sinai, and, in the thirteenth century, Acre and Nicosia, the Crusader States had centres of icon production that not only equalled Constantinople in technical accomplishment but also reflected local spiritualities. In the past two decades, considerable strides have been made by art historians following the pioneering work of Hans Buchthal and Kurt Weitzmann in establishing a large corpus of objects in the media of manuscript, monumental and icon painting that form a recognisable field of ‘crusader art’.222 Although the parameters and meanings of this field are still subject to debate, it is broadly agreed that it is characterised by a ‘hybrid’ visual culture to which artists of different religious traditions and ethnic identities contributed: Frankish, Greek, Syrian, Copt and Armenian.223 Objects falling within this field have been identified in the Holy Land, Cyprus, Egypt and ‘Greater’ Syria. Moreover, stylistic links have been identified not only between objects in the same media, but also across the different media; thus, for example, in one of the earliest examples in the debate, an illuminated Latin missal made in Acre in the 1250s by a French scribe was compared to an icon of the Crucifixion and to an iconostasis beam, both from Sinai.224 Icons made at the Sinai workshop have continued to be at the centre of discussions of crusader art that have taken into view icons and wall paintings in Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus and the Holy Land as well as Greek and Latin manuscripts.225 Naturally, the assumption of such a visual culture raises important questions about the nationalities and identities of the artists working within the genre, and thus about the nature of crusader society, for, after all, much of the art under discussion was produced in territory under the political control or influence of the Franks and through Frankish patronage. Such wider questions, though vital for a proper understanding of crusader society in general, must be left aside here. In the context of the foregoing discussion of art as representative of the expression of a ‘Levantine monastic identity’, however, some examples stand out. Let us return to the problem posed by the icon of St Sergios with a kneeling female donor, first discussed by Weitzmann and dated to the period c. 1250–80.226 Attributions of the painter’s identity have varied. Weitzmann, though sure of the icon’s provenance as Sinai, tentatively proposed that the artist was an Apulian 220 222

223

224 225

226

221 Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination, 50–8, for example. Canart, ‘Les écritures livresques’, 31–67. The term ‘crusader art’ was coined by Weitzmann, ‘Thirteenth-century crusader icons on Mount Sinai’, Art Bulletin 45 (1963), 182. See especially the summary discussion by Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 511–27; K. Weitzmann, ‘Crusader icons and Maniera Graeca’, in I. Hutter and H. Hunger, Byzanz und der Westen. Studien zur Kunst des europäischen Mittelalters (Vienna, 1984), 143–70; and B. Kühnel, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century (Berlin, 1994). On Cyprus specifically, see Weyl Carr, ‘Art’. An Islamic perspective has recently been introduced into the debate by M. Georgopolou, ‘Orientalism and crusader art: constructing a new canon’, Medieval Encounters 5 (1999), 289–321. Weitzmann, ‘Thirteenth-century crusader icons’, responding to Buchthal, Miniature Painting. Examples of this literature are: E. C. Dodd, ‘Christian Arab painters under the Mamluks’, Aram 9–10 (1997–8), 257–88; Dodd, ‘The three patriarchs of Mar Musa al-Habashi: Syrian painting and its relationship with the West’, Al Masaq 12 (2000), 99–139; D. Mouriki, ‘The wall paintings of the church of the Panagia at Moutoullas, Cyprus’, in Hutter and Hunger, eds., Byzanz und der Westen, 171–213; L.-A. Hunt, ‘Christian art in Greater Syria and Egypt: a triptych of the Ascension with military saints reattributed’, Al Masaq 12 (2000), 1–36; R. S. Nelson, ‘An icon at Mount Sinai and Christian painting in Muslim Egypt during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Art Bulletin 65 (1983), 201–18. Weitzmann, ‘Icon painting in the Crusader Kingdom’.

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working in the Latin workshop at St Katherine’s. Doula Mouriki, however, seeing parallels in this and a similar icon of Sts Sergios and Bacchos with the St George at Moutoullas, and recalling the interest in equestrian saints in Syrian churches, suggested instead a Cypriot artist of Syrian background working on Sinai.227 Most recently, however, Lucy-Anne Hunt has insisted on the primacy of the Syrian influences, comparing them to the wall paintings at Qara, and proposing a Syrian Orthodox artist working in the County of Tripoli before 1271.228 Hunt’s contribution to the debate also raises questions about the patronage of the icon, which she attributed to a Frankish woman. Weitzmann had already argued that ‘crusader’ icons were made by Western artists trained in Byzantine techniques for Western patrons. The implications of this for Orthodox monasteries are significant, for it must lead to the conclusion that monasteries where icons were made hosted Western artists who came to study the techniques and styles of icon painting. In the case of Sinai, this fits with what is known of the structure of the monastery of St Katherine in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with its Latin chapel and plurality of languages and traditions. ‘Crusader art’ posits a network of ideals, styles and religious practices in which monks and monasteries played a mediating role in transmitting techniques and iconographies across the whole Levant. The representational arts, then, contribute to an understanding of a monastic culture in the region that thrived independent of Constantinople. This should scarcely be surprising after 1204, when the metropolis itself ceased to symbolise leadership in the Orthodox world. As early as the eleventh century, however, reading, copying and painting as a whole indicate a cultural zone with a distinct spirituality.

227

D. Mouriki, ‘Thirteenth-century icon painting in Cyprus’, Griffon 1–2 (1985–6), 9–112.

228

Hunt, ‘A woman’s prayer’.

Conclusion

The first Christian monasteries in the Holy Land had probably already been established around the time that Emperor Constantine began building shrine churches in the Holy Land in the 320s. Some monasteries were closely linked to the shrines, especially those of Jerusalem. Monks were intimately tied to the growing practice of pilgrimage, as we know from the archaeological evidence of guest-houses for pilgrims in early monasteries.1 Monks participated in liturgical celebrations in Jerusalem and at shrines elsewhere in the Holy Land as early as the fourth century.2 Although monasteries were established on the coastal plain, for example at Gaza,3 most were founded in the region of semi-desert to the south and east of Jerusalem: a region that included the Jordan valley, the western shores of the Dead Sea and the sparsely settled arid massif between Jerusalem and Hebron. Some biblical episodes, such as the Temptation of Christ, were associated with these locations, but on the whole monks settled in these remote and unforgiving sites in order to separate themselves from human society. The harshness of the environment was part of the appeal of the way of life, and in this respect monasticism in the Holy Land had much in common with Egypt and Syria. Unlike the Egyptian desert, however, the semi-desert regions of Judaea, and still more the coastal plain of the Holy Land, were still relatively close to centres of population. It was quite possible for monks in many of the monasteries founded in the Judaean desert to walk to Jerusalem in order to participate in the liturgical life of the Holy City, and archaeological surveys have revealed evidence of pathways connecting monasteries in a web of interlinked communications.4 Literary evidence, likewise, confirms the extent to which the monasteries were interdependent with each other and connected to theological and liturgical currents in Jerusalem and farther beyond.5 The remoteness of monastic life in the Holy Land, therefore, was in one sense highly stylised, and the separation it entailed from human society to some extent symbolic. Monks chose difficult environments not so much in order to create physical separation from humanity, but rather to emphasise the differences between the kind of life they lived and that of the rest of human society.

1 3 4 5

2 Hirschfeld, Judaean Desert Monasteries, 196–200. Hunt, ‘The Itinerary of Egeria’. B. Bitton-Ashkelony and A. Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 76 (Leiden, 2006). Hirschfeld, Judaean Desert Monasteries, 205–12. Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. Schwartz, passim; English translation in Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans by R. M. Price, with an introduction and notes by J. Binns, Cistercian Studies Series 114 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1991).

507

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Conclusion

The vulnerability of monastic life in the region was amply demonstrated by the external conditions of the seventh century. The Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 and the subsequent Arab conquest of the region in the 630s did not by themselves bring the desert monasteries to an end, but they were symptomatic of the unsettled conditions that attended the dislocation of Roman power in the eastern Mediterranean.6 By the Seljuq invasion of the mid-eleventh century, the Christian population of the Holy Land, though still significant, had given ground through conversion to Islam, and in some periods, such as the wave of persecution during the reign of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, the outlook must have seemed bleak for the Church in the Holy Land.7 We know little for certain about parochial life or conditions for the lay Christian communities in the East on the eve of the crusade. It is clear from the reorganisation undertaken by the Latin hierarchy in the twelfth century, however, that episcopal leadership in the patriarchate of Jerusalem and those portions of the patriarchate of Antioch that had long lain outside Byzantine control had suffered, and that in some areas, particularly in the countryside, it was lacking altogether. Moreover, the strong links between the desert monasteries and the Church’s liturgical life in the period before the seventh century had already given an influential role to monastic communities, and this role was strengthened by external political conditions. Monasteries provided theological and moral underpinning for a population that was, if only periodically under physical threat from the Islamic authorities, generally in a subordinate position and lacking the means of defence against the arbitrary actions of rulers and against general lawlessness. The Holy Land was a contested region at the edges of the Abbasid sphere of control and, after the formation of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt and the Byzantine reconquest of northern Syria in the 960s, it was effectively a frontier zone. Leadership of the Christian population came from the monasteries, in the form of trained theologians, hymnographers, historians and hagiographers who could interpret and disseminate the Church’s teaching, maintain its traditions and provide mediation with the authorities when necessary. The liberation of the Holy Places was a central objective of the First Crusade. This aim was implemented by the Western settlers after 1099 and, although Urban II appears to have intended that the Holy Places should be restored to the Orthodox and facilities provided for the celebration of the Latin rite, this policy was disregarded after the death of the papal legate, Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, and the consequent policy of Latinisation of the Church in the Holy Land was sanctioned by all subsequent popes. In fact because of the destruction of churches in 1009 and the failure to rebuild many of them, the number of shrines administered by the Orthodox which were taken over by the Latins was comparatively few. The Franks were concerned that the Holy Places should be served with full liturgical honour, and this entailed the foundation of regular Latin communities that could recite the night office as well as the day hours. The main shrine churches were served either by canons following the Rule of Augustine or by Benedictine monks or nuns. The crusade and Western settlement of the Holy Land occurred at a time when the Rule of Augustine, which had 6

7

Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine; see now D. Reynolds, ‘Monasticism and Christian pilgrimage in early Islamic Palestine, c. 614–c. 950’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. Rubin, ‘Arabization versus Islamization’.

Conclusion

509

recently been codified from surviving letters of St Augustine of Hippo, was becoming increasingly widespread for a number of foundations in the West.8 The Canons Regular, who were strongly associated with the papal reform of the later eleventh century, were particularly well suited to administer important pilgrimage centres because of their capacity to carry out the work of public ministry. In the West, most cathedrals were already staffed by Augustinian canons, as well as private collegiate foundations and many hospitals and other similar institutions. Besides this, some new orders such as the Premonstratensians also adopted the Rule of Augustine. It was natural, therefore, that Canons Regular should feature prominently in the new Latin dispensation for regulated life in the lands settled by Westerners after 1099. Those shrines that either already had cathedral status in the Orthodox hierarchy, or that the Latin Church raised to such status, such as Bethlehem, were served by Augustinian canons. In addition, a number of other important shrines that had been served by Orthodox monks in the Byzantine period but that had for one reason or another lost such religious communities were re-endowed and received Augustinian canons. These included Mt Zion in Jerusalem and the church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Not all such communities were attached to shrines. The Holy Sepulchre, which became the seat of the Latin patriarch, had a community of canons, who were in 1114 reformed and followed the Augustinian Rule. Before the First Crusade there were already Benedictine houses in the Holy Land, some of which dated back to the reign of Charlemagne (768–814), who was probably responsible for endowing and maintaining them. Others were founded in the eleventh century; for example, the monastery known as Sta Maria Latina near the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was founded by a group of Amalfitans in the last quarter of the century, and the monastery of Our Lady of Josaphat, which was located in the Kidron valley just outside the east wall of Jerusalem. Other Benedictine foundations were made by the Western settlers, all of which are discussed in detail in the first half of this book. Most of these were either in towns or at prominent shrines, and this broadly speaking follows the pattern for Benedictine monasteries in the West, which tended to be founded around the shrines of saints, or alternatively in important towns. The latter half of the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth centuries saw proliferation in religious life in Christendom on a huge scale. Contemporaries remarked on the sometimes bewildering variety of religious foundations and professions that had sprung up in the Western world, many of which were rooted in eremitical ideals.9 Of course, most of those following a monastic life were still to be found in traditional communities, and we should not equate the attention that ‘new monks’ attracted in the sources with numbers. Nevertheless, the effects of new professions and styles of monasticism were widespread, and the Crusader States offered attractive possibilities for those who were drawn not only to a religious life but also to one lived in the shadow of the shrines of the Holy Places. New foundations sprang up here just as in the West: as the thirteenth-century bishop of Acre Jacques de Vitry remarked, pilgrims ‘from all peoples and tongues, and from every people 8 9

For guidance in the literature, see M. Heale, Regular Canons, Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies (Oxford, 2013). Among a huge literature, see G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1999); Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism; G. Melville, Die Welt der mittelalterlichen Klöster. Geschichte und Lebensformen (Munich, 2012).

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under heaven . . . rushed to the Holy Land, drawn by the sweet odour of the Holy Places’.10 Jacques saw the physical reconstruction of the Holy Land, especially the repair of shrines and churches, as one of the most important consequences of the First Crusade and the new wave of Western pilgrimage that followed in its wake. Some of these new foundations were houses of new orders, such as the Premonstratensians and the Cistercians; others were ‘unofficial’ or unregulated communities, or foundations that came to be absorbed into existing religious congregations. In fact, the Crusader States, while fertile territory for those enthusiastic about reform, were also potentially dangerous for hermits and others who were drawn to unregulated lives, because of the constant threat of raids or invasion from neighbouring Muslim lands. One consequence of this was that there was an increasing tendency for ecclesiastical authorities to attempt to regulate such unsupervised lives by ensuring that all religious lived in communities. Many of the Latin monasteries lay in territory that was conquered by Saladin in 1187, with the result that the communities were obliged to resettle elsewhere. Even in those lands that were subsequently reconquered, there does not seem to have been much attempt to replant foundations abandoned in 1187. Many monastic communities resettled in the coastal towns, particularly Acre, which doubled in size in the thirteenth century. After 1191, some of these also went to Cyprus, which had been conquered by Richard I during the Third Crusade and became a Latin kingdom. The larger and more prestigious foundations, such as the Holy Sepulchre, Our Lady of Josaphat and the church of the Nativity, also owned sizeable estates in the West, as a result of bequests and gifts, so even after the loss of Cyprus to the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century, religious communities whose original members had served shrines in the Holy Land continued to exist in France, Sicily and elsewhere. Medieval states were organised around co-operation between spiritual and secular authorities, and the higher clergy shared in the responsibilities of government. Moreover, as property-owning institutions, monasteries were part of the political framework of the Crusader States. The abbots of the major monasteries, therefore, were often to be found in the entourage of the rulers, as counsellors or witnesses of justice, and sometimes even accompanying armies on campaign. They owed knight service for their landed estates in the same way as secular landlords, and their stance on questions of policy might be critical. Latin monasteries were also an indispensable part of the economy of the Crusader States. The landed estates owned by monasteries accounted for a significant proportion of the agricultural economy, since it included villages and rural estates whose inhabitants worked the land. Some monastic communities were active colonisers of the rural landscape, establishing new villages and encouraging immigration from the West. As was the case in the West, property ownership also meant that monasteries were entwined with the parochial structure of the Church. Parish churches might form part of the property owned by a monastery, and where this was the case it entailed appointing vicars and collecting tithes and other fees. Sometimes, as in the West, this brought monasteries into conflict with bishops. Competition for income in rural areas was especially intense because the number 10

Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. Donnadieu, LII, 218–20.

Conclusion

511

of rural Latin parishes was relatively small. After 1187, many monasteries that had lost large parts of their landed property were driven into poverty. The Latin Church in the thirteenth-century Crusader States was stimulated by the arrival of the mendicant Franciscans and Dominicans in the 1220s. The largely urban Frankish society provided the perfect environment for the friars, whose public ministry was centred on preaching and example. By 1291, the friars had become as firmly established in the major cities such as Acre and Tripoli as in the West; likewise, some of their activities cut across parochial ministries. In the Crusader States, moreover, there was also scope for conversion, and much of the activity of both mendicant orders centred on attempts to proselytise both to Muslims and non-Latin Christians. One new order also emerged in the thirteenth century that by 1291 was providing competition for the Dominicans and Franciscans. The Carmelites, the only genuinely monastic order to have been founded in the Crusader States, developed out of an eremitical monastic community founded in imitation of the prophet Elijah at the start of the thirteenth century. By the middle of the thirteenth century, however, they had been forced by the danger of Muslim raiding to move from their original site on Mt Carmel to safer places, and this began a shift towards a mendicant profession. The attitude of the Frankish crusaders towards the Orthodox Church was largely pragmatic.11 The initial priority was to maintain liturgical services at the shrines, and to minister to the Christian population. The modus vivendi that developed during the course of the twelfth century between the Latin hierarchy and the Orthodox Church not only enabled Orthodox monasteries to continue in existence, but in some cases also fostered their revival. The measure of stability brought by the Frankish creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader States brought pilgrims from the Orthodox world as well as from Western Christendom, and from the mid-twelfth century substantial acts of patronage towards Orthodox monasteries were made by Emperor Manuel Komnenos. Orthodox monasteries continued to function in some cases as they had for centuries. Alongside the evidence of continuity in laura monasteries such as St Sabas and St Chariton in Tekoa, monasteries where communities had lapsed, such as at St George Choziba, were revived. By the end of the twelfth century a large number of small communities described in Greek sources as monasteries were in existence in Jerusalem. In addition, some new monasteries were founded as late as the thirteenth century in acts of benefaction that parallel those of Emperor Manuel Komnenos in the twelfth century. One impetus for the revival of Orthodox monastic life was the revival of ascetic spirituality. Whereas in the early and mid eleventh century Orthodox monks had fled Palestine in the wake of real and perceived threats from hostile Muslim regimes, during the twelfth century the Holy Land was once again, as it had in the early Byzantine period, attracting monks from other parts of the Orthodox world: Asia Minor, Greece, Georgia and Cyprus. While some appear to have stayed in the Holy Land, others exported what they had experienced or learned in Holy Land monasteries back to their places of origin. In this way, Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land, and particularly in the heartland of the Judaean desert, formed a node in a network of 11

Hamilton, Latin Church, 159–87.

512

Conclusion

monastic traditions across the Orthodox world.12 The revival of Orthodox monasticism in the Holy Land was enabled by the presence of a largely conducive regime, but it cannot be explained only by the existence of the Crusader States. As is well known, both eremitical and cenobitic forms of monastic life underwent a revival in the Orthodox world from the late tenth century onwards.13 One feature of this revival was the establishment of lauritic and cenobitic communities of ascetics on Mt Athos, and the spread of Athonite ideals more broadly; another was the establishment of new monasteries in Constantinople with imperial or noble patronage based on the strict observance of cenobitic ideals. One region where metropolitan monastic practices caught on was Cyprus, which provided a meeting point for Constantinopolitan and Palestinian monastic traditions through the development of a hermitage founded by a Palestinian hermit into the cenobitic monastery of Makhairas. At the same time, the monasticism of the Judaean desert provided inspiration for another Cypriot foundation, the hermitage of Neophytos near Paphos. Neophytos’ own writings show how close were the links between the ideals of the traditional monasticism of the Judaean desert and the revived asceticism of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. They also show just how firmly rooted in its own traditions and practices was the revived monasticism of the Crusader States. That these traditions were susceptible to revival, despite ruptures in Orthodox monastic life between the seventh and twelfth centuries as a result of political upheavals and periods of Islamicisation, attests not only to the general resilience of the monasteries but also to the importance of the literary activities carried out by monks. During the ninth century Greek came to be largely replaced by Arabic as the working language of the monasteries of the Holy Land.14 Arabic continued to be used by Orthodox monks throughout the Crusader period, but there was also a revival of Greek, probably initially as a result of the tenthcentury Byzantine reconquest of Syria. The surviving Greek manuscripts copied in monasteries in the Crusader States reveal interests and concerns that were, broadly speaking, conservative in nature. Hagiographical and liturgical material dominates, though there is also a strong streak of theology and some canon law. There is little evidence of original writing, and only rarely does the literary activity tell us much about contemporary concerns. The crusaders themselves, for example, make very little impression in most of this literature. While we cannot infer from this that the Frankish conquest and settlement, and the imposition of a Latin ecclesiastical hierarchy, were unimportant in the daily lives of Orthodox communities, their absence from the record indicates that the terms in which Orthodox monks thought about their existence lay outside those spheres of life. What was important to them was rather the continued knowledge and maintenance of liturgical and hagiographical traditions. The identity of Orthodox monasticism was bound up with survival and continuity. 12

13

14

A. Jotischky, ‘St Sabas and the Palestinian monastic network under crusader rule’, in J. Gregory and H. McCleod, eds., International Religious Networks (Woodbridge, 2012), 9–19. Morris, Monks and Laymen, 9–30; Thomas, Private Religious Foundations; M. Mullett, ed., Founders and Refounders of Byzantine Monasteries, BBTT 6.3 (Belfast, 2007). Griffith, ‘The monks of Palestine’.

Conclusion

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The fates of Greek monasteries after the fall of the mainland Crusader States in 1291 were variable. By the sixteenth century, most seem to have been in a decline caused or exacerbated by extreme poverty. The political upheaval across the Byzantine world after the fall of Constantinople left Orthodox monasteries in a worse position than in the Abbasid period in the ninth and tenth centuries. Although they were cut off from the centre, there was at least consciousness of a centre where ecclesiastical and imperial authority functioned together, however distant. After 1453 the symbiotic balance of the Orthodox world was destroyed. Some, such as Chariton, had probably already collapsed before the end of the thirteenth century. St Sabas and St Katherine, both of which possessed landed resources outside the Holy Land, continued to function, but they cannot be said to have thrived. The Orthodox monasteries entered a long period of neglect, from which they began to emerge only in the later nineteenth century. The Greek Orthodox monasteries of the Holy Land have always, since their foundation, been vulnerable to the forces that have sought territorial control of the region. This is as true today as it has ever been; yet, just as in previous centuries, the monasteries of the Holy Land continue, through their functions of liturgical observances, contemplation, and hospitality to pilgrims, to provide spiritual leadership and to maintain ancient traditions.

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Index

Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, 476 Abu Shama, 418 Abud, monastery of St Elias, 324 acedia, 429 Achard, dean of Holy Sepulchre, 26 Achard, prior of Templum Domini, 69–71 Acre, canons of, 53 Adalelmus, prior of Nazareth, 116 Adam, abbot of Mount Sion, 67 Adam, prior of Hebron, 135 Adelaide of Sicily, 177 Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, 13, 14 al-Adil, sultan, 74, 202 Adomnán, abbot of Iona, 17, 172 Agia Moni, Cyprus, 339 Agios Nicolas ton gaton, monastery, 340 Agios Nikolaos tis stegis, 341 Ahuhisa of Palmaria, 209 Aicard, prior of Templum Domini, 58 Aimery of Limoges, patriarch of Antioch, 195, 216, 293, 330 Aimery, prior of Mt of Olives, 86, 87 Ain Karim, 74, 252, 253 Alberic, canon of Bethlehem, 96 Alberic, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, 71 Albert of Aachen, 69 Albert of Rizzato, patriarch of Antioch, 274, 284 Albert of Vercelli, patriarch of Jerusalem, 44, 264 Rule of, 265, 266 Albert, archbishop of Nazareth, Albert, bishop of Bethlehem, 102, 125 Albert, prior of St Maria Latina, 170 Alexander III, pope, 31, 32, 33, 121, 179, 209 Alexander IV, pope, 129, 187, 204, 205, 237, 238, 239, 259, 274 Alexios Komnenos, emperor, 340, 351, 359 Alice of Montbéliard, 282 Alla as-Sufla, monastic ruins, 251 Alp Arslan, Seljuq sultan, 16 Altmann of Passau, 16 Amalfi, 20 Amalric I, king of Jerusalem, 32, 151, 207, 229, 251

Amalric, abbot of Sts Joseph and Habakkuk, 153 Amalric of Nesle, patriarch of Jerusalem, 29, 31, 32, 98, 102, 118, 209 Amatus, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 183, 184, 185 Amitius, abbot of ST Maria Latina, 164 Anastasis, 14, 20. See also Holy Sepulchre, church of Anastasius IV, pope, 161 anchoresis, 388–90, 430, 436 Andrew, abbot of Mt Tabor, 203 Anna Anachoutlou, Empress of Trebizond, 352 Anna Dalassena, 351 Annunciation representation of, 502 site of, 115 Annunciation, Church of, 114, 115, 124 rebuilding, 121, 122 Anschetinus, 94 Ansellus, bishop of Bethlehem, 26, 39, 95, 100 Ansellus, canon, 94 Anthony, Antiochene monk, 464 Antioch early monasticism at, 327 unknown monasteries in, 291 Apodeixis peri ton Ierusolumon, 301–5 Apulia properties of Nazareth in, 120 al-Aqsa, mosque, 68 Arab conquest, 11, 15 Arda, 226, 227 Armenian Church, 37 Arnald, prior of Mt Sion, 58, 59 Arnold, prior of Holy Sepulchre, 31 Arnulf, bishop of Martirano, 93 Arnulf of Chocques, 24, 25, 26, 27, 39, 58, 69, 84, 231 Ascalon, diocese of, 94, 97 Ascension, church of, 88, 90 Ascension, site, 84 Aschetinus, 95 Asinou, monastery, 341, 455, 500 as-Salih Ayyub, Sultan, 203 Athanasios II, Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, 363, 418 Athanasios the Athonite, 339

543

544 Augustine of Nottingham, bishop of Latakia, 277 authority in Orthodox monasteries, 382–7 al-Ba’ina, monastery, 324, 364 bakeries, 392 Baldwin, archbishop of Caesarea, 173 Baldwin, bishop of Sebaste, 140 Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, 58, 93, 174, 414 and Bethlehem, 94 Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, 95, 151, 177 Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem, 73, 151 Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem, 35, 41, 211 Baldwin V, king of Jerusalem, 41, 151, 155 Balian of Ibelin, 143 Balsamon, Theodore, 362 Bar Hebraeus, Gregory, 283 Baradaeus, Jacob, 11 Barlaam and Joseph, 465 Barletta Breviary, 417 Barnabas, oikonomos, 492, 493 Bartholomew, bishop of Hebron, 137 Bartholomew of Edessa, 485 Bartolf of Nangis, 56 Basil of Caesarea, 425 Basil II, Emperor, 15 Basil Skenouris, scribe, 488 Baybars I, Sultan, 54 Beaulieu, monastery, 258–9, 275 Bede, Venerable, 17, 84, 132 Bellapais, Premonstratensian abbey, 158–9 Belmont, Cistercian abbey, 247–51, 260 Benaki Psalter, 439, 491, 493, 495–6 Benedict IV, pope, 19 Benedict XI, pope, 171 Benedict of Arezzo, 273 Benjamin of Tudela, 136 Bernard, abbot of Mt Tabor, 198, 199 Bernard, bishop of Bethlehem, 115 Bernard, bishop of Lydda, 34 Bernard, bishop of Nazareth, 114 Bernard, prior of Mt of Olives, 87 Bernard of Blois, 242, 243, 244 Bernard of Clairvaux, 150, 247 Premonstratensians, 153 Bernard of Valence, patriarch of Antioch, 213 Bernard the Monk, 19 Bethany, convent, 228, 231–9 daughter-house, 238 liturgy, 235 property, 236 property in Acre, 237 rebuilding, 233–4 Bethesda, 225. See also St Anne’s Jerusalem, convent Bethgibelin, 96 Bethlehem church of the Nativity, 14, 99–100, 105, 107, 322 fortifications, 97 Orthodox monastery at, 322

Index relics at, 100, 109 Bethlehem, Brethren of, 112–13 Bethlehem, canons, 92–112 property, 94, 103 Bethlehem, diocese knight service, 104 property in Acre, 105 Bethsan. See Scythopolis Black Mountain, 242, 330–1 Boniface of Montferrat, 184 Breve Commemoratorii, 18 Burchard of Mt Sion, 67, 92, 111, 131, 145, 279, 394 Burchard of Strasbourg, 336, 443 Calixtus II, pope, 27, 160 Calvary, 22, 37 Cana, 129 Carmelite Order, 263–71 Cecilia of Tarsus, 177 Celestine II, pope, 232 Celestine III, pope, 43 Cenaculum, 62, 65. See also Mt Sion charistike, 291, 358–60 Chariton (monastic founder), 309 Chariton, monastery, 352 synaxarion, 471 Charlemagne, 18–19 Cheese Week, 396 Chemins et Pelerinages, 324 Christodoulos of Patmos, 5, 311, 348, 351, 357, 359, 361, 371, 372, 379, 382, 388, 431, 433, 455, 488, 494 and anchoresis, 388 and hospitality, 400 and leadership, 383 and liturgy, 403, 407 typikon, 422 Chronica XXIV Generalium, 278 Chronicle of Amadi, 240 Chronicle of Lanercost, 277 Chronographia of Theophanes, 299 Chrysorroyiatissa, monastery, 342 Cistercian nuns, 259–62 Cistercians, 247–59 Chapter-General, 249, 250, 254, 257, 258, 260 La citez de Iherusalem, 182 Clamécy, 101, 112 Clement IV, pope, 188 Commemoratorium de casis Dei, 307, 312, 315 confession, in Orthodox monasteries, 429 Conrad of Montferrat, 237 Constance of France, 175 Constantine I, emperor, 22 contemplation in Orthodox monasteries, 410 Convertites, 260 Council of Nablus, 26, 58 Council of Trullo, 387

Index

545

Cyprus, 4, 5 Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures, 413 Cyril III, Coptic patriarch, 284 Cyril of Scythopolis, 310, 384, 395, 433, 434, 452

Eumathios Philokeles, 341, 351 Euphrosine, abbess of Polotsk, 302, 313 Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, 15 Onomasticon, 154 Evremar, patriarch of Jerusalem, 39

Dafruna, 331 Daibert of Pisa, 24 Daniel, Russian abbot, 25, 57, 85, 89, 114, 115, 133, 139, 152, 155, 179, 191, 194, 196, 231, 252, 263, 302, 305, 309, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 325, 339, 414, 415 and St Chariton, 446 holy fire, 416 David II, king of Georgia, 353 De locis sanctis. See Bede, Venerable death, in Orthodox typika, 422, 423 Decorative Style, 469, 491, 492, 493, 502 demonic possession, 427, 428 depictions of saints in fresco, 437 in manuscripts, 438 Descriptio Locorum circa Jerusalem adjacentium, 100, 154 diet in Orthodox monasteries, 393–8 for solitaries, 389 Dome of the Chain, 78 Dome of the Rock, 68, 77, 83 Dominic, abbot of Mt Sion, 56 Dominicans, 282–90 Chapter-General, 282, 288 and Coptic Church, 284

Fabri, Felix, 88, 92 Facundinus, abbot of St Maria Latina, 168, 169, 175 Falco, abbot of St. Paul’s, Antioch, 216 fasting, 265 figure style in manuscript painting, 501 Filioque, 12, 18, 100 Fontevrault, 235 Fortanie, Cyprus, 268 Forty Martyrs of Sinai, 321 Fourth Lateran Council, 45 Francis of Assisi, St, 272 Franciscans, 272–81 Custody of Jerusalem, 419 Spiritual Franciscans, 279 Fratres Heremitae Sancti Joannis Baptistae, 269 Frederick, archbishop of Tyre, 73 Frederick II, Emperor, 45, 47, 50 Frescobaldi, pilgrim, 318, 394 Fulcher, patriarch of Jerusalem, 35 Fulcher, prior of Mt of Olives, 85 Fulcher of Chartres, 68, 319 Fulk, king of Jerusalem, 73 and Premonstratensians, 151

Egeria, pilgrim, 17, 412 Eleona, church, 14, 301 Elias III, patriarch of Jersualem, 19 Elias of Narbonne, 206–7, 208–9 Elijah, prophet, 263, 270, 325 Enguerrand, prior of Mt Sion, 59 Enkleistra, monastery, 338, 342, 360, 361, 435 buildings, 391 frescoes, 496–500 library, 490, 491 liturgy, 404, 407 manuscript production, 489–90 and property ownership, 378 entry gifts, to monasteries, 379 Ep’rem Mcire, 332 Epiphanios, 320 Episkopia, monastery, 337 Erard of Brienne, 45 Eschiva of Montbéliard, 274 Estoire d’Eracles, 35 Ethiopian Church, 284 Etienne de Lusignan, 282, 340 eucharist, in Orthodox typika, 406 Eugenius III, pope, 29, 98, 178

Gabriel, stylite, 313, 385, 387, 426–7 Gaillard d’Ossau, bishop of Bethlehem, 110 Galerand of Beirut, 203 gardens, monastic, 394 Garin, abbot of Mt Tabor, 198 Geoffrey, abbot of Templum Domini, 72, 73 Geoffrey, bishop of Hebron, 139 Geoffrey of Beaulieu, 71, 204 George, monk of St Symeon the Wonderworker, 485 George the Athonite/Hagiorite, 332, 334 George the Synkellos, 299, 309 Georgians on Black Mountain, 332–5 and conflict with Greeks, 366 in Jerusalem, 303, 419 Gerald, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 186 Gerald, archbishop of Mt Tabor, 192 Gerald, bishop of Bethlehem, 97 Gerald, Master of the Hospital, 162 Gerard, abbot of Mt Sion, 65 Gerard of Nazareth, 123, 195, 206, 242, 243, 244, 245 Germanos II, Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, 402 Gerold of Lausanne, patriarch of Jerusalem, 46, 47, 48, 108, 282 Gervase, abbot of Mt of Olives, 90 Gervase, abbot of Prémontré, 155, 156

546 Gethsemani, garden, 180 Gibelin of Arles, patriarch of Jerusalem, 26, 194 Gilduin, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 176 Godfrey de Prefectis, bishop of Bethlehem, 108 Godfrey of Bouillon, 25, 56, 68, 162 Golden Legend, 316 Gormund, abbot of Palmaria, 207 Graptoi brothers, 299 Gregory IX, pope, 148, 149, 185, 212, 254, 255, 266, 273, 274, 285 Gregory X, pope, 188 Gregory the Great, pope, 17 Dialogues, 442, 443, 464 Guarinus, abbot of Cuxa, 20 Gucci, pilgrim, 316, 354, 394, 448 Guibert of Nogent, 226 Guido, abbot of St Maria Latina, 166 Guido, prior of Hebron, 134 Guido Chat, 444 Guiscard, prior of Holy Sepulchre, 51 Gunther, prior of Mt Sion, 59–60 Gunther of Pairis, 264 Guy, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 178, 189 Guy, archbishop of Nazareth, 131 Guy of Blond, 222 Habakkuk, prophet, 154 hagiographical manuscripts, 469–72 hagiography in Orthodox monastic writing, 484–5 al-Hakim, caliph, 5, 20, 23, 56, 299 al-Harawi, 182 Hattin, battle, 41 Hebron diocese, 32 discovery of crypt, 133–4 Hebron, canons of, 132–9 knight service, 136 property, 135, 137, 138 Helena, Empress, 339 Henry, archbishop of Nazareth, 127, 128, 129, 130 Henry I, count of Champagne, 180 Henry VI, emperor, 168, 169 Henry II, king of Cyprus, 84 Henry, prior of Mount of Olives, 85, 86 Henry Sdyck, bishop of Olmütz, 153 Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne, 42, 142 Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 40, 41, 42, 102 Herbert, abbot of SS Joseph and Habakkuk, 154 Hethum I, Armenian king, 159, 285 Hethum II, Armenian king, 159, 279 Hethum of Corycus, 159, 240 Hisham, caliph, 11 Historia Orientalis. See Jacques de Vitry History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, 418 Hodegitria Icon, in Constantinople, 106 Hodierna of Tripoli, 247 Holy Cross, Cyprus. See Stavrovouni

Index Holy Cross, Georgian monastery, 353 Holy Cross, monastery, 308 Holy Fire ritual, in Jerusalem, 25, 38, 49, 413, 414, 416, 417 Holy Sepulchre church of, 22 endowments, 28–9, 33, 44, 45 knight service, 34 loss of property, 43, 54 monastic community at, 4 prior, 34 rebuilding, 22–56 Holy Sepulchre, canon reform of 1114, 26–7 Holy Sepulchre, canons of, 27–8 Honorius III, pope, 46, 64, 81, 113, 203, 258 Hospital of St John, 20 and Bethany, convent, 237 dispute with Templars, 83 and Hebron, 138 and Mt Tabor, 1067.1 205 hospitality, in Orthodox monasteries, 399–400 Hubert Walter, 125 Hugh, abbot of Mt Sion, 65 Hugh, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 173, 176 Hugh, abbot of Templum Domini, 73, 75, 82, 83 Hugh, archbishop of Nazareth, 126, 127 Hugh, archbishop of Nicosia, 259 Hugh, bishop of Bethlehem, 111, 112, 113 Hugh, bishop of Gibelet, 277 Hugh III, king of Cyprus, 111, 288 Hugh de Nissun, 144 Hugh of Fagiano, archbishop of Nicosia, 159 Hugh of Ibelin, 31 Hugh of Le Puiset, count of Jaffa, 176 Humbert, Cardinal, 12 hymnography, 405 Ibn Butlan, 328, 330 icon of Saidnaya. See Saidnaya, monastery of Our Lady icon, painted by St Luke, 340 al-Idrisi, 72 Ignatios of Smolensk, 311, 314, 316 Ignatius II, Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, 283, 284 Ignea sagitta, Carmelite poem, 268 illuminated manuscripts in Orthodox monasteries, 410–12 Innocent II, pope, 28, 140, 150 Innocent III, pope, 90 Innocent IV, pope, 50, 51, 92, 113, 146, 255, 259, 266, 275, 286 Isaac Komnenos, 344 Isaak Angelos, Emperor, 418 Isabel I, queen of Jerusalem, 184

Index Islam, in Orthodox writing, 487 Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, 42, 314 Jabal al-Qafra, 327 Jacobites. See Syrian Orthodox Church Jacob’s Well, 236 Jacques de Vitry, 46, 49, 63, 222, 227, 272, 394, 473 James of Verona, 312, 316, 318, 390, 451 James Pantaleon, patriarch of Jerusalem, 51, 52, 238, 250 James, abbot of Mt Sion, 66 Jehosaphat, Valley of, 171 hermits, 307 John III, abbot of Monte Cassino, 373 John, abbot of Mt Tabor, 200 John, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 182 John, abbot of St Samuel Acre, 157, 158 John, bishop of Banias, 101 John VIII, Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, 484 John IX, Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, 317 John of Brienne, 47 John of Damascus, 310 John of Ibelin, 47, 87, 147, 155 John of Lucca, 195, 245 John of Monte Corvino, 279 John IV of Oxeia, patriarch of Antioch, 13, 292, 359, 375, 403 John of Würzburg, 35, 77, 78, 180, 206, 222, 228, 305 John Cassian, 404, 425 Conferences, 447 John Klimakos, 320, 393 Heavenly Ladder, 467 John Kolobos, 424 John II Komnenos, emperor, 73, 96, 246 John Phokas, 100, 121, 122, 136, 143, 194, 200, 229, 263, 311, 312, 314, 316, 317, 322, 330, 351, 371, 387, 391, 432, 459 John the Baptist, relics, 140 John the Hesychast, 396, 427 John the Roman, bishop-elect of Bethlehem, 108, 109 John I Tzimisces, emperor, 191 Joinville, Jean de, 286 Jordan of Saxony, Dominican general, 285 Josaphat, Notre-Dame, abbey of, 4, 118 Kantara, monastery, 344, 401, 485 Karmi, Cyprus, 268 Kastellion, 298 Khirbet Dair al-Fiqya, 326 Koutsovendis, monastery of St John Chrysostom, 341, 374 Kykkos, monastery of Our Lady, 340 La Ferté, Cistercian monastery, 253, 255, 257 Lagoudera, monastery, 344, 500 languages, in Orthodox monasteries, 366 Latinisation in Cyprus, 338

547 laura, monastic type, 2, 433 Lawrence, prior of Mt of Olives, 85 Lazaros of Mt Galesion, 310, 312, 348, 361, 366, 379, 384, 388, 396, 431, 433, 453, 455, 457 and hospitality, 400 Lazarus tomb, 231 Le Mazoir, Antiochene family, 216 lectio divina in Orthodox monasteries, 475 Leontios of Patmos, 326, 384, 386, 388, 408, 423, 428, 431, 452, 457, 458 and stylitism, 430 Letard I, archbishop of Nazareth, 117–18, 198 Letard II, archbishop of Nazareth, 118, 119, 123, 125 Libellus de Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, 41, 89, 124, 143, 237 Liber Locorum, 16 libraries, in Orthodox monasteries, 460 Life of Chariton, 446 Life of Constantine and Helena, 463 Life of George of Choziba, 312 Life of George the Athonite, 332 Life of Lazaros. See Lazaros of Mt Galesion Life of Leontios, 326, 384, 386, 388, 408, 423, 428, 431, 452, 457, 458. See Leontios of Patmos Life of Sabas, 302 Life of St Symeon, 410 Life of Stephen the Sabaite, 309, 319 Life of Symeon the Younger, 327 Life of Theodore of Edessa, 445, 454, 455 Ligio church of, 118 tithes, 188, 198 Lignages d’Outremer, 261 lions, 316, 444 Lithostrotos, 63 liturgy in Acre, 63 Cypriot passion play, 419–21 in Jerusalem, 38, 39, 62, 63 in Orthodox monasteries, 403–10, 412–19 typikon of 1122, 300, 413, 414, 416 at Templum Domini, 77 Lorenzo da Orte, 280 Louis VII, king of France, 59 Louis IX, king of France, 51 and Bethlehem, 109 and Franciscans, 274 at Nazareth, 127 Luceta, abbess of Poor Clares, 277 Ludolph of Sudheim, 268, 318 Machanath, monastery, 245 Magna Mahumeria, 31 Makhairas, monastery, 343–4, 355, 362, 381 anchoresis at, 389 authority in, 385

548 Makhairas, monastery (cont.) dietary rules, 396–7 hospitality at, 400 liturgy, 407 patronage, 356 property ownership, 376–7 typikon, 355, 356, 452 Mamre, 133, 136 Mandeville, Sir John, Travels, 148 Manganeios Prodromos, 330 manual labour, 265 in Orthodox monasteries, 373–5, 424–7 Manuel Boukellaros Hagiostephanites, scribe, 488, 491, 492 Manuel Butumites, 340, 351 Manuel Komnenos, Emperor, 314, 315, 317, 351 manuscript production, 488–94 Mar Musa, monastery, 502, 503 Margaret, regent of Sicily, 167 Margaret of Lusignan, 225 Maria, abbess of St Mary Magdalene Acre, 259 Mary Magdalene and Bethany, 233 Mary, Blessed Virgin shrine, 172, 173 tomb, 190 Matilda, abbess of Bethany, 232 Matthew, canon and preceptor of the Holy Sepulchre, 51 Matthew of Edessa, 416 Matthew Paris, 113, 285, 286 Maurice of Craon, 76, 101, 136, 320 Maurus, abbot of Templum Domini, 82 melagria, 395 Melchizedek, cave of, 194 Meletios, hegoumen of St Sabas, 311, 353 Melisende, abbess of Bethany, 236 Melisende, queen of Jerusalem, 74, 220, 228, 232, 357 burial at Notre Dame de Josaphat, 179 Premonstratensians, 151 Melkites, 11 menologia. See hagiographical collections Michael IV, emperor, 23 Michael the Synkellos, 299, 379, 388, 455 Michael the Syrian, Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, 283 Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, 12 Miles of Plancy, 76 miracles, 443–51 Monachus, patriarch of Jerusalem, 43 Monreale, 100 Morphia, queen of Jerusalem, 177 Mt Carmel, monastery of St Margaret, 325 Mt Hor, 319 Mt Latros, 464 Mount of Olives, abbey of, 298 abbot as patriarchal vicar, 91 dispute with Holy Sepulchre, 86

Index dispute with Notre Dame de Josaphat, 85 elevation to abbey, 87 knight service, 87 Latin monastery, 18 seal of abbot, 90 Mt Pilgrim, 40 Mt Quarantana, monastery, 28, 39, 318–19 Mt Sinai, monastery, 211, 319–21 icons from, 368 linguistic groups at, 367, 368 manuscripts from, 368 metochion in Acre, 323 mosque at, 354 orchard, 394 physical layout, 390–1 property, 369–70 Mt Tabor, abbey, 2, 130, 190–206, 323, 353 assault by Saladin, 200 and Cluny, 193 and Fifth Crusade, 202 income, 202 library, 193 liquidation of abbey, 204 property, 193, 196–7, 199 property in Acre, 201 and St Paul’s Antioch, 200 Mt Zion/Sion, basilica, 60 Mt Zion/Sion, monastery, 56–67 forged bull, 56–7 seal of, 67 Mountjoie, 156. See St Samuel Montjoie Moutoullas, 504 al-Muazzam, 48 al-Muqadassi, 172 Nablus, 74 Narratio de rebus Armeniae, 465 Nasir-i Khusraw, 79, 415 Nazareth, archdiocese, 116 knight service, 117, 120 Nazareth, canons of, 114–32 church in Acre, 129 income, 121, 130 library, 123 property, 120, 130 Rule, 127–8 Nazareth capitals, 122 Nazareth, Church of, property in Champagne, 123 Nazareth, Council of, 121 Nazareth, shrines in, 131 Neilos, of Makhairas, 344, 406, 461 Nemanjic, Savas. See St Savas of Serbia Neophytos the Recluse, 342–3, 360, 361, 426, 431, 432, 434, 435 as author, 481 books, 460 Catechetics, 484 and conquest of Cyprus, 483

Index founder of Makhairas, 343 frescoes. See Enkleistra, monastery, frescoes and Freud, 499 as hagiographer, 436 and Holy Land, 456 and leadership, 385 panegyrics, 427, 481–2 self-representation, 498, 499 sexuality, 452, 453 succession, 435 typikon, 423 and women, 398 Netter, Thomas, 271 Niccolò da Poggibonsi, 234, 303, 306, 316, 318, 390 Niccolò de Martoni, 390 Nicene Creed, 12 Nicholas I, Melkite patriarch of Alexandria, 285 Nicholas III, patriarch of Constantinople, 13 Nicholas IV, pope, 131, 276 Nicholas of Hanape, patriarch of Jerusalem, 55, 289 Nicholas of Thvera, 140 Nikephoros Phokas, Emperor, 372 Nikon of the Black Mountain, 311, 328, 332, 359, 360, 361, 376, 386, 393, 453 books, 461, 462 dietary rules, 395, 396 and hospitality, 399 and labour, 425 leadership, 383, 384 and liturgy, 406–8, 409 Pandekts, 361, 375, 380, 477–9 personal possessions of monks, 379, 380 property owning, 374 Taktikon, 383, 462, 479–81 North Ferriby, 75 Notre Dame de Josaphat, monastery, 171–90 crypt shrine, 179–80 knight service, 181 liturgy, 181 pilgrim hospice, 175 property, 174–5, 184 tithes, 177 Sicilian property, 189 pilgrim hospice, 176 Odo of Châteauroux, papal legate, 258 Old Laura. See St Chariton, monastery Old Man of the Mountains, 286 Oliver of Paderborn, 473 Onuphrios, 393 Opizo dei Fieschi, patriarch of Antioch, 51, 146, 147, 255, 256 Orderic of Foro Iulii, 318 Oshin, Armenian king, 280 Our Lady of Carraria, monastery, 245–6 Pachomius, 427 Palladius, Lausiac History, 439, 465

549 Palmaria, abbey, 206–11 Pardouns de Acre, 105, 132 Paschal II, pope, 58, 162, 174, 192 passion play. See liturgy, Cypriot Passion Play Pater Noster church of, 89 patriarchs, shrine of, 132 patristic theology in Orthodox monasteries, 466–8 patronage of monasteries aristocratic, 352 imperial, 351 Paul, bishop of Tripoli, 277 Paul II, pope, 259 Paul of Antioch, bishop of Sidon, 353, 354, 486–7 Paul of Monemvasia, 464 Paul of Thebes, 438 Pelagius, papal legate, 64 Pelerinages por aler en Iherusalem, Les, 48, 202, 266 Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre, 156, 171, 261, 276 Peregrine, abbot of Sta Maria Latina, 170 Persian invasion, 297, 298 Peter, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 186, 187, 188 Peter, abbot of St Sergius Gibelet, 257 Peter, abbot of Templum Domini, 81 Peter, archbishop of Nazareth, 132 Peter, bishop of Bethlehem, 105 Peter, bishop of Hebron, 138 Peter III, patriarch of Antioch, 12 Peter, prior of St Katherine Montgisard, 212 Peter, prior of the Holy Sepulchre, 28, 46, 146 Peter de Pennis, 316, 318 Peter of Barcelona, 29 Peter II of Ivrea, patriarch of Antioch, 244, 253 Peter l’Aleman, abbot of Belmont, 250 Peter the Hermit, 14, 84 Peter the Iberian, 305 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, 192 Peter Thomas, papal legate, 271 Petra, archdiocese, 32, 75 Philip, Dominican Provincial Prior, 283, 285 Philip of Nablus, 320, 449 Philip of Savona, 336 pilgrimage, 14–17 German pilgrims in 1065, 16 pilgrims to Jerusalem, 38 Poemen, Egyptian Father, 393 polemical debate, 354 polemics compendia, 468 in Orthodox monastic writing, 485–8 Poor Clares, 275, 277, 278 Porphyry, prior of Machanath, 245 poverty, of Orthodox monasteries, 358 praetorium, 63 Prémontré, 150

550 property monastic, 375 renunciation of, 265 Protoevangelium of St James, 225 Pyrgos, 258 Qubbat al-Mi’rāj, 78 Radulph, prior of Sebaste, bishop of Sebaste, 141, 142, 144 Rainald, abbot of St Maria Latina, 166 Rainier, bishop of Sebaste, 140, 141 Rainier, Prior of Hebron, 133 Rainier, prior of St. Abraham, 132 Ralph, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 185 Ralph I, bishop of Bethlehem, 98, 101 Ralph II, bishop of Bethlehem, 103, 104 Ralph Glaber, 19 Ralph of Merencourt, patriarch of Jerusalem, 45, 46 Ramla, monastery of the Syrians, 322 Raymond, abbot of Mt Tabor, 196 Raymond, abbot of Templum Domini, 75, 76 Raymond IV, count of Toulouse, 40, 93, 160 Raymond, prince of Antioch, 214 Raynald, abbot of Mt Sion, 60, 61 refectory, 392, 397 Reynald, bishop of Hebron, 136 Reynald of Châtillon, 136, 181 Reynier, bishop of Bethlehem, 106, 107, 108, 113 Ribot, Philip, 268 Riccardiani Psalter, 229 Riccoldo of Monte Croce, 190, 273, 278, 283, 289, 318 Richard, abbot of St Maria Latina, 163, 166 Richard, archbishop of Messina, 168 Richard the Seneschal, 196 Richer, abbot of Salvatio, 251 Ritual of the Holy Sepulchre, 62. See liturgy, in Jerusalem Robert, abbot of Our Lady of Carraria, 246 Robert, abbot of St. Paul’s Antioch, 215 Robert, Abbot of Sta Maria Latina, 83 Robert, archbishop of Nazareth, 117, 125 Robert I, count of Flanders, 16 Robert I, duke of Normandy, 16 Robert of Nantes, patriarch of Jerusalem, 50 Roger, abbot of Templum Domini, 76 Roger, prince of Antioch, 174 Roger, prior of Hebron, 135 Roger of Corbeil, 146 Roger of Howden, 314 Roger Borsa, duke of Apulia, 175 Rohard of Jaffa, 76 Roidion, monastery, 331, 360, 399, 402 Rule of Augustine, 3, 26 Rule of Benedict, 3 Rule of Pachomios, 393

Index Saewulf, pilgrim, 79, 85, 97, 114, 133, 173, 191, 220, 226, 231, 311, 415 Saffuriya, 129 Saidnaya, monastery of Our Lady, 336, 443, 444, 445 Les sains pelerinages que l’on doit requerre en la Terre Sainte, 202, 324 St Abraham. See Hebron St. Anne, church in Acre, 229 St. Anne, feast of, 227 St Anne’s Jerusalem, convent, 225–30 decoration, 228 St Barlaam, monastery, 333 St Basil of Caesarea, 382 St Chariton, monastery, 305, 309, 445, 446, 447 St Crux de Carpita, convent, 239–41 St Egidio, Rome, 32 St Elias, monastery, 304, 314, 364 St Elias, Orthodox church on Mt Tabor, 192, 200 St Elias of Mt Carmel, monastery, 263 St Euthymios, 365, 432 St Euthymios, monastery, 304, 312–13, 353 St Euthymios, monastery in Jerusalem, 352, 357 typikon, 422 St. Gabriel, church, 114 St George cult of, 145, 146, 242 St George Antioch canons, 145–7 St George Choziba, monastery, 311–12, 391 St George de Jubino, Cistercian monastery, 242–4, 253–6, 333 property, 254 St Gerasimos, monastery, 315–16 St Gildas, monastery at Antioch, 293 St Gregory, monastery of, 291 St Habakkuk, monastery. See St Samuel Montjoie St Hilarion, 393, 436 St Jerome, 441 St John Chrysostom, 327, 440 Homilies on Matthew, 440 St John Chrysostom, monastery, 317–18 St John in nemore, Cistercian monastery, 252–3 St John Lampadistis, monastery, 340 St John Patmos, monastery, 373, 494. See also Christodoulos of Patmos St John Prodromos, monastery, 5, 304, 315 St John the Baptist, shrine, 139, 145 St. Joseph of Arimathea, 154 St Katherine, 319, 320 cult and miracles, 211, 447–50 tomb, 320, 390 St Katherine, monastery. See Sinai, monastery St Katherine Montgisard, abbey, 211–12 St Kyriakos, 438 St Mamas, monastery, 429 St Marie la Grande, 162 St Margaret, monastery, 266

Index St Mary and All Saints, Acre, 147–9 property, 148 St Mary de Parcheio, convent, 260 St Mary Hodegetria, convent, 302. See also Spoudaion St Mary Kalamon, monastery, 316–17 St Mary Magdalene Acre, convent, 248, 259–61 St Mary Magdalene Nicosia, convent, 261 St Mary Magdalene Tripoli, convent, 261 St Mary of Bethlehem, in Constantinople, 105 St Mary on Orontes, convent, 292 St Mary the Great, convent, 220–5 in Cyprus, 224, 225 relics, 222 St Mary the Great, convent, in Tyre, 223 St Nicholas tis stegis, 500 St Onuphrios Life of Onuphrios, 484 St Panteleeimon, monastery, 332 St Paul’s Antioch, abbey, 212–19 and Notre Dame de Josaphat, 217 in Cyprus, 219, 329 property, 215 St Pelagia, church of, 88 St Procopios, monastery, 306 St Romuald, 243 St Ruf Avignon, canons, 160–1 St Sabas, 2, 5, 298, 310, 353, 357, 367, 384, 395, 418, 424, 432, 434 St Sabas, laura, 299, 310–11, 399, 409, 416, 417 books, 461 liturgy, 403, 409 property, 370, 371 typikon, 409, 475 St Sabas, metochion in Jerusalem, 305 St Samuel Acre, monastery, 155–8 abbot, 157 St Samuel Montjoie abbey church, 152 canons, 150–3 property, 151 site of monastery, 151 St Savas of Serbia, 306, 311, 322, 458 St Sergius, cult of, 257 St Sergius Gibelet, monastery, 256–8, 335 property, 257 St Symeon, monastery at Antioch, 328–9 St Theodore of Nicosia, convent, 262 St Theodosius, monastery, 313–14 property, 370 St Theoktistos, monastery, 437, 500 St Trinitas de Rephech, monastery, 248 St Willibald, 310, 315 Sts Joseph and Habakkuk, canons, 153–5 Sts Joseph and Habakkuk, monastery, 156 Saladin, 42, 48 and Greek Orthodox Church, 418 restores Islamic worship at Temple Mount, 80 Salvatio, Cistercian monastery, 251–2

551 Sta Maria Latina, monastery, 20, 21, 162–71 dispute with Holy Sepulchre, 166 dispute with Hospital of St John, 166, 170 in pilgrim guide, 165 knight service, 165 property, 163, 164 rebuilding, 165 relics, 166 rights in Sicily 1194, 168, 169 tithe, 165 Saphet, castle, 276 Savas of Serbia, 305, 357, 358, 363 schism, of 1054, 13 Scythopolis, diocese, 114 Sebaste church of St John the Baptist, 439 crypt chapel, 143 Sebaste, canons, 139–45 knight service, 142 property, 142 Sebaste, cathedral, 142–3 Second Guide, 136 semantron, 408 Sergius, abbot of St Paul’s Antioch, 215 Sergius III, pope, 12 Sergius IV, pope, 12 sexuality, 451–3 Sheep-Pool, church of, 229 Shiloh, 152 Sibyl, abbess of St Anne’s, 229 Sibyl, countess of Flanders, 233 Sibyl, queen of Jerusalem, 61 silence, 265 Sisters of Tyre. See also St Mary the Great, convent Soffredus, patriarch of Jerusalem, 44 Soibrand, abbot of Sta Maria Latina, 163 soldier-saints, cult, 504 Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 299, 404 Souka. See Mt Quarantana Spoudaion, monastery, 300 Stavrovouni, monastery of Holy Cross, 219, 337, 339, 450 Stephania, abbess of St Mary the Great, 221 Stephen abbot of Cluny, 209 Stephen I, king of Hungary, 20 Stephen III, patriarch of Antioch, 11 Stephen of La Perche, 75, 167 Stephen of Ramla, 309, 474 Stephen the Sabaite, 310, 317 Strategios, 298, 299 stylites, 430 Symeon II, Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, 14, 24, 456 Symeon of Thessalonika, 408 Symeon of Trier, 19, 320, 450 Symeon the Just, house of, 79, 80 Symeon the New Theologian, 429 Symeon the Stylite, 437, 438

552 Symeon the Wonderworker, 430 Symeon the Younger, 328 Symon, abbot of Templum Domini, 84 Syriac, as liturgical language, 473 Syrian Orthodox Church, 11, 37 Taktikon, 331. See also Nikon of the Black Mountain Tamar, queen of Georgia, 308 Tancred, 68, 92, 93, 114, 191, 192 Templar of Tyre, 67, 230 Templars, 40 Temple. See Templum Domini Templum Domini coronation ceremony, 78 in Acre, 81 knight service, 75 priory of, 68–84 property, 73–4, 81–2 rebuilding, 71–2, 77 Terricus, of Mt Sion, 66 Tetraevangelia, 469, 491 Thecua, 94 Theobald of Navarre crusade, 83 Theobald of Vermandois, 209 Theoderic, pilgrim, 35, 36, 37, 39, 60, 63, 72, 77, 78, 79, 88, 89, 121, 122, 143, 152, 155, 222, 228, 234, 236, 315 Theodore Abu Qurrah, 487 Theodore the Studite, 309, 312, 382, 408 Theodosios the Coenobiarch, 313, 393 Theoktistos, abbot of Patmos, 386, 427 Theotokos Evergetis, typikon, 379 synaxarion, 471 Theotokos Evergetis, monastery, 349, 382 Thietmar, pilgrim, 105, 126, 315, 319, 320, 325, 336, 355, 367 and Saidnaya, 444 and St Chariton, 447 and St Katherine, 447, 448 Third Crusade, 105 Third Lateran Council, 41, 102 Thomas, Ethiopian abuna, 284 Thomas of Bethlehem, 53 Thomas of Lentino, 52, 55, 109, 110, 111 Thomas Aquinas, 289 Thomas Becket, 79, 101 Thomas Morosini, Latin patriarch of Constantinople, 106 Tiberias, diocese, 127 Tiberias, Orthodox monastery, 326 Tilium, monastery near Antioch, 292 tomb of Christ, 23 Tortosa, 240 Tractatus de inventione sanctorum patriarcharum, 134

Index Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane, 167 Transfiguration liturgy, 206 site of, 190 shrine, 197 translation from Arabic to Greek, 474, 476 Trium Umbrarum. See St Mary and All Saints, Acre typika, founders’, 6, 348, 349–50 Urban II, pope, 13, 14 Urban III, pope, 161 Urban IV, pope, 130, 257, 259. See also James Pantaleon Usamah Ibn Munqidh, 140 Vassal, bishop of Gibelet, 256, 257, 335 visual culture in Orthodox monasteries, 505–6 walls, around monasteries, 391 Walter the Chancellor, 146, 213 War of St. Sabas, 187 Warmund, patriarch of Jerusalem, 27, 74 Warner count of Grez, 140, 177 Wilbrand of Oldenburg, 63, 91, 183, 322, 339, 450 William, abbot of Notre Dame de Josaphat, 189, 190 William, archbishop of Nazareth, 116, 117 William, bishop of Acre, 209 William, bishop of Tortosa, 277 William IV, count of Nevers, 101 William II, king of Sicily, 183 William I, patriarch of Jerusalem, 28, 57, 59, 71 William, prior of the Holy Sepulchre, 45, 46 William of Aversa, 213 William of Burès, prince of Galilee, 177 William of Coventry, 268, 269, 270 William of Poitou, 54 William of Rubruck, 275 William of St. Pathus, 274 William of Tripoli, 287 William of Tyre, 20, 68, 72, 102, 119, 232 and Nazareth, 117 and St Mary Latina, 162 Willibald, 190 women and Orthodox monasteries, 398–9, 451 Wondrous Mountain, 328, 330 Woodbridge, 75 xenodochos, role in monastery, 386 Yves le Breton, Dominican, 286, 287 Yveta, abbess of Bethany, 228, 232, 233, 235 Yvo, abbot of Mt Sion, 64