Read Online Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman - Free Book Online
Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
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Baldwin I, and the “Babylonia” he refers to is not the ancient city on the banks of the Euphrates, but Cairo, called Babylon in his time. Saewulf knew well enough where it was, but he peoples it with “Chaldeans” out of confusion with the Biblical city, for to him modern enemies of Jerusalem were the same as the enemy that had come out of the other Babylon to attack it 1,500 years before. Similarly he identified the Christians under King Baldwin of Jerusalem with the city’s ancient proprietors, the people of Israel. One finds King Richard in the Third Crusade calling on his troops to “restore the kingdom ofIsrael.” This self-identification with the ancient though not the contemporary Jews was taken for granted by the Christian powers, who, as the heirs of Christ, regarded themselves as the rightful inheritors of the Holy Land and considered it their duty, in Mandeville’s words, to “conquer our right heritage.”
The belief that Jerusalem was the geographical center of the world, which Saewulf faithfully repeats, was another concept of his time for which the Bible was responsible.
“For thus saith the Lord, This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries that are round about.” This passage from Ezekiel and other similar ones had by now quite blanketed out the work of the classical geographers, who were not victims of any such confusion. Medieval maps presented an entirely new visualization of the known world, in which Jerusalem is placed in its exact center. Ocean surrounds the circumference of the earth, and beyond the ocean strange animals, sea monsters, and oriental designs adorn the outer rim, representing barbarian lands of which cartographers knew nothing beyond the fact that they existed.
In the same year that Saewulf was in Palestine another pilgrim, Godric, who was to become a saint, also came there. Godric was a combination pirate, shipowner, and merchant whose two journeys to Palestine may have been undertaken in search of adventure and booty rather than salvation, but later came to be remembered as pilgrimages under the influence of the legends that grew up about his name. Godric must have traveled in his own ship, for though he left no personal record a contemporary chronicler reports that “
Gudericus, pirata de regno Angliae,”
took King Baldwin to Jerusalem by sea down the coast from Arsuf to Jaffa after the King’s forces met a defeat on the plains of Ramleh and were cut off from Jaffa by land.
In 1106 he made a second journey to the Holy Land, this time on foot, and returned to England to become avenerated hermit, the subject of many saintly adventures, while the legend of his pilgrimages grew yearly, studded with a variety of affecting details. He was said to have vowed never to change clothes or shoes or eat anything but barley bread and water until he should reach Palestine. Once there he bathed in the Jordan and arose cleansed, but threw away his shoes, vowing to walk barefoot ever after in emulation of Jesus, though perhaps the condition of his footgear may have had something to do with his resolve.
Until the Protestant reformation the pilgrim movement was a constant element in the life of the Middle Ages and the pilgrim or palmer a familiar figure to all men of his time. In the two blue-robed figures of the Palmer’s Window at Ludlow chapel he has attained the immortality of stained glass. In literature the simile of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a familiar one, as in the poignant poem Sir Walter Raleigh wrote on the eve of the scaffold:
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My Staffe of Faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, Immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation:
My gowne of glory, hopes true gage
And thus Ile take my pilgrimage.
Here are the familiar articles by which everyone recognized the palmer as he trudged along. His particular emblem was the scallop shell, derived probably from the wayfarer’s use of it to scoop a drink of water from a
The belief that Jerusalem was the geographical center of the world, which Saewulf faithfully repeats, was another concept of his time for which the Bible was responsible.
“For thus saith the Lord, This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries that are round about.” This passage from Ezekiel and other similar ones had by now quite blanketed out the work of the classical geographers, who were not victims of any such confusion. Medieval maps presented an entirely new visualization of the known world, in which Jerusalem is placed in its exact center. Ocean surrounds the circumference of the earth, and beyond the ocean strange animals, sea monsters, and oriental designs adorn the outer rim, representing barbarian lands of which cartographers knew nothing beyond the fact that they existed.
In the same year that Saewulf was in Palestine another pilgrim, Godric, who was to become a saint, also came there. Godric was a combination pirate, shipowner, and merchant whose two journeys to Palestine may have been undertaken in search of adventure and booty rather than salvation, but later came to be remembered as pilgrimages under the influence of the legends that grew up about his name. Godric must have traveled in his own ship, for though he left no personal record a contemporary chronicler reports that “
Gudericus, pirata de regno Angliae,”
took King Baldwin to Jerusalem by sea down the coast from Arsuf to Jaffa after the King’s forces met a defeat on the plains of Ramleh and were cut off from Jaffa by land.
In 1106 he made a second journey to the Holy Land, this time on foot, and returned to England to become avenerated hermit, the subject of many saintly adventures, while the legend of his pilgrimages grew yearly, studded with a variety of affecting details. He was said to have vowed never to change clothes or shoes or eat anything but barley bread and water until he should reach Palestine. Once there he bathed in the Jordan and arose cleansed, but threw away his shoes, vowing to walk barefoot ever after in emulation of Jesus, though perhaps the condition of his footgear may have had something to do with his resolve.
Until the Protestant reformation the pilgrim movement was a constant element in the life of the Middle Ages and the pilgrim or palmer a familiar figure to all men of his time. In the two blue-robed figures of the Palmer’s Window at Ludlow chapel he has attained the immortality of stained glass. In literature the simile of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a familiar one, as in the poignant poem Sir Walter Raleigh wrote on the eve of the scaffold:
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My Staffe of Faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, Immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation:
My gowne of glory, hopes true gage
And thus Ile take my pilgrimage.
Here are the familiar articles by which everyone recognized the palmer as he trudged along. His particular emblem was the scallop shell, derived probably from the wayfarer’s use of it to scoop a drink of water from a
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