Michael Peverett: formed up on the northern bank

Thursday, April 23, 2020

formed up on the northern bank

Bodiam Castle, 29th October 2018

Marching out to battle from Antioch in 1098:

At length the moon set, and boys came round with wine-skins and baskets containing small fragments of biscuit. Each man had a swallow and a mouthful; a few, exceptionally lucky, fell out to relieve themselves in the gutter, but the majority were still constipated from lack of food and irregular hours. Then grooms were to be seen tightening the girths of the bony warhorses, and Roger got an obliging crossbowman to run over the fastenings of his mail shirt and hauberk. As the light grew the chaplains appeared at every street corner and muttered through a short Mass; then, as the sun rose, the great Bridge Gate was thrown wide open with a loud creaking of hinges and the army began to march down the street.
Roger limped along on his inflamed and aching feet, hoping that exercise and excitement would soon make them more active; he found that if he carried his shield correctly on his left arm the point of it banged irritatingly against his scabbard, and threatened to trip him; so he slung it on his back until he should arrive within range of the enemy's arrows. It was the first time he had marched on foot, fully armed, in the midst of a dense column, and even though he was in the right-hand file he found it awkward and enraging; those in front were always too fast or too slow, and he could not see the rough places in the street in time to avoid them. But very soon he was through the Gate and on the Bridge; here a breeze was blowing, and though it brought the stench from all the refuse of the long-occupied pilgrim camp it was reviving after the foetid and stagnant air of the city. He was in the centre of the Norman column, and if they had got so far the French of the Ile-de-France must be already across and formed up on the northern bank. They all moved more briskly as they crossed the Bridge, and the breeze blew away their early morning headaches and sleepiness; one or two men began to sing marching-songs, and everyone laughed when a donkey ridden by a lame knight behind them brayed fiercely. Perhaps they would go into battle in better spirits than had seemed possible during the long night in the stuffy town. (pp. 198-199)

I wrote about Alfred Duggan before, but I thought Knight with Armour (1950) deserved its own post. Duggan lived at Bodiam Manor with his now comparatively impoverished mother from 1943 (she had married Lord Curzon and inherited all his wealth after his death, but contrived to throw it away in six years). Here, I suppose, Duggan conceived his first novel, tracking the First Crusade through the eyes of a younger son of the manor that was then called "Bodeham".

Roger is an earnest but undistinguished knight. He is killed just as the invaders enter the walls of Jerusalem in 1099. The novel thus omits an account of the Jerusalem massacres that immediately followed, but there had been massacres before, and Roger had not paid them much attention. "On the 30th the ravaging continued, with little bloodshed save of the very old and very young who could not get out of the way in time; the pilgrims wanted food, not conquest" (p. 123). In fact the pilgrims (i.e. the crusaders) have hardly any contact with the inhabitants of the lands they pass through. There is no shared language or faith, nor the slightest interest in getting to know the people.

(It's all very different from how Scott imagined the Third Crusade in The Talisman: there, the cultural encounter of West and East was one of the principal themes.)

The novel is such a flexible form that it can grade into being an educational textbook; and that's maybe the best way to see Duggan's historical novels; and also Galdos' Episodios Nacionales. I have a lot of admiration for the hard work and unpretentiousness in such evidently useful enterprises.

Duggan had a lot of information. He had inspected most of the novel's sites at first hand, he knew the archaeology and the technological history of e.g. warfare, armour, horses, feudalism, he also knew the contemporary accounts of the campaign. Besides, Duggan had seen active service in Norway during WW2. Bringing all these together allows us to share the journey of the crusade as a history book could hardly do, to make us feel materially present at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, Acre, Jerusalem...

The doubt, which can never be finally answered, is whether we can know how the historical participants thought and felt about it. Contemporary texts rarely talk about such quotidian human experience. Was the daily experience of 11th-century people fundamentally different from ours, or do the writings of the time simply filter it differently? (Doubtless the answer is both, but this answers nothing if the differences can't be described.) It's surely relevant that even knights like Roger couldn't write and could read only with difficulty if at all.

What made the Christian inhabitants of Europe at this particular moment take up the idea of "liberating" Jerusalem with such mass enthusiasm? There's no satisfactory single answer, beyond Tolstoy's unaccountable movement of peoples.

Roger inquired eagerly as he wolfed his biscuit, and soon heard the full story; how a Provençal priest, Father Peter Bartholomew, had seen a vision of Saint Andrew the Apostle, who had told him that the head of the very lance which had pierced Our Saviour as He hung on the Cross had been hidden under the altar of Saint Peter's Church, to save it from profanation by the infidels; how that now Antioch was again in Christian hands the time had come for the Lance-head to be revealed by the agency of Peter Bartholomew, and that it would infallibly lead the pilgrim army to victory over all unbelievers. This was very good news indeed. Roger had never thought of Antioch as being part of the Holy Land, and Our Redeemer had never been in the city in His earthly life, but it reminded him that they were already in the cradle of Christianity, in fact in the place where that name was first given to the followers of Christ. Obviously the first step for any God-fearing man was to go and reverence the relic, with all adoration short of Latria. . .
. . . After High Mass the Count of Toulouse ascended the altar-steps, dressed in a gorgeous silk mantle over his mail shirt and mail breeches, and holding a small silk-wrapped object. The whole congregation sang Te Deum Laudamus, then knelt as the Holy Lance was unwrapped and displayed, much in the same manner as the Sacred Host at Benediction. This was a Relic indeed, at least as holy as the True Cross that the Greek Emperor guarded so carefully at Constantinople, and it had been revealed, by the direct miraculous intervention of the Blessed Apostle Saint Andrew, to help the pilgrim army in its utmost need. Roger knelt and prayed in ecstacy, as he had not prayed since the day he took his pilgrim's vows in the Abbey Church at Battle, so many lifetimes ago. (pp. 186-187)

Antioch is now ruins, near to the modern city of Antakya in Turkey.

Latria: in Roman Catholic theology, adoration; a reverence directed only to the Holy Trinity.

The Antioch Lance:

Some have wondered if the lance-head only captured the crusaders' imagination in the hindsight of the improbable victory that came on 28th June 1098. But later, many voiced doubts about its authenticity; the doubts were political in nature. The question was not resolved by Peter Bartholomew's survival of voluntary ordeal by fire outside Acre in April 1099. Peter died of his injuries two weeks later. Were the injuries bad burns -- the story Duggan adopts in Knight with Armour -- or were they injuries sustained by the congratulations of a huge and hysterical crowd, as Raymond d'Aguilers claimed?

We don't know what happened to the Antioch lance-head. There is a contemporary record that Raymond of Toulouse presented it to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, where they already had a Holy Lance, the one mentioned by Cassiodorus (late 5th century) as being worshipped in Jerusalem. A lance-head was among the Byzantine relics presented to Innocent VIII in 1492 and this is still preserved in St Peter's: it's usually said to be the Jerusalem one, but it has never been exhibited or examined, and the Vatican make no claims about it.

[Information in the above two paragraphs comes from an excellent thesis by Marius Kjørmo (2009).]

Bodiam Castle, 29th October 2018

I've decorated this post with photos from a family visit to Bodiam Castle, but the castle was built in 1385, nearly three centuries after the period depicted in Knight with Armour.