Hello guys, I'll be posting here a new chapter, and tomorrow I'll be answering the previous posts. I've recently moved to a new city, and the previous couple months have been busy (even more with the Covid pandemic). I've been in home office, so even staying at home, I unfortunately don't have a lot of spare time... but let's get this going on.
Alabaster sculpture (c. 1250s) depicting the arrival and welcoming of Suger in the port of Jaffa
So it came to pass that in 1141 A.D., the fifth Archbishop of Jerusalem suddenly passed away, but the office remained vacant until early 1143, when it was granted by
Pope Victor IV [Gregorio Conti de Ceccano] to
Suger, then the Abbot of Saint Denis. Coming from humble origins among the French peasantry, he was dedicated to the monastic life and rapidly ascended into the clerical hierarchy and eventually became the head and administrator of the Basilica of Saint Denis. This placed him under the eye of the King of France himself, Louis VI, and ultimately Suger entered his privy council as an esteemed advisor, and in this capacity he made for himself a reputation as a meticulous minister, and his reputation grew tenfold among the European dignitaries and eminences.
Nevertheless, Suger’s invitation by Pope Victor to become the head of the Levantine Archidiocese and the Papal legate to the Holy Land was unanticipated and startling to many, specially to those more closely associated with the Pope, as they seemed to believe that this prestigious office, second only to that of the Supreme Pontiff itself, was a prerogative granted to the Cardinals only. The fact that he was not an Italian - not even Roman, in this regard - and that he was an abbot, meaning that he had long since chosen to retire to the monastic seclusion, and never gave himself to the exalted devotion of the proper ecclesiastic hierarchy, were circumstances that seemingly conspired against his investiture.
To be fair, this nomination owed mainly to the influence and patronage of King *Phillip II of France - who, on his return from the Orient, voyaged to Rome and bestowed the Lateran with various exotic gifts -, as well as to the dedicated praise of
Bernard of Clairvaux (future Pope Stephen X), one of the most influential men of his age, and very esteemed by Pope Victor IV due to his piety, vigor and wisdom. Indeed, His Holiness was very concerned about the reports he received from the Levantine prelates, which invariably described the vices indulged by the lay lords and wealthy patricians alike, the neglect of the Church’s patrimony in the Holy Land, even by the deceased Archbishop, who lived a dissolute life, and the hardships of creating structures to govern a realm of decadent infidels, and Suger’s indication impressed the Bishop of Rome. With the King’s blessing, the Abbot of St. Denis then made a pilgrimage to Rome, accompanied by none other than Bernard himself, as well as other dignitaries of monastic extraction monks and noblemen from Île-de-France. In the former capital of the world, Suger was relieved from his former incumbency as an abbot and was invested in the Archidiocese of the Holy Land. From there onwards, the cortege continued their pilgrimage by sea, courtesy of the Pisans, and reached Jerusalem in 1143 A.D.
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Fated to become one of the most outstanding Catholic patriarchs of the Levant, Suger would prove to be an apt administrator and statesman, and second to none of his predecessors, barring Gregory I. By coalescing around his persona the support and the strength of the Armed Fraternities and of the monasteries, he would struggle for various years to contain the excesses of the nobility and of the clergy and to mediate the quarrels of the Crusader lords, as well as to restore the initial premises of a Papal establishment in the Holy Land.
As we will see, his most remarkable contributions would be seen in the architectural developments of the Outremer, in the administrative reforms of the Crusader State, and in the scholarly works that he incorporated from the learned circles of western Europe. It is worth mentioning that Suger was an avid writer of letters, and, fortunately for the historians, many of his epistles survived, and they have inestimable value to the Outremerine historiography, because he often explained in detail the ongoing events and conditions of his day. He corresponded with various of the European monarchs and lords, and bishops and abbots, and he often talked about his dream, inspired by the monastic piety of St. Jerome, of reviving the ways of the early Christians, of the age of the Apostles, in the Holy Land.
Having formerly participated in the architectural reformation of the Basilica of St. Denis in Paris - the traditional burial place for the French monarchs -, he introduced the then incipient Gothic style to the Orient, one that would leave a mark for various centuries, and even by its merger with the other styles, of Arabic and Greek extraction. He would live to see the construction of a church dedicated to his spiritual sponsor, St. Denis, in Jaffa.
During his tenure, the Crusader State would also see significant administrative and legislative reforms in its complicated and sometimes bizarre structure. We have addressed in other passages of this Chronicle how the politico-administrative formation of the Crusader State happened in an ad hoc fashion, as there was little of an institutional framework to base upon after the wars between the Seljuks and the Fatimids wrecked the whole Levant. This resulted in the formation of parallel government structures - that of the martial aristocracy, that of the clergymen, including the pontifical hierarchies and the monasteries, that of the urban communes and republics, and that of the traditional agrarian communities - all of which usually intertwined with local Palestinian and Syrian provincial power relations.
This system was, in most of cases, irrational, and it mostly catered to the interests of the lay noblemen of partitioning the land to exploit the peasantry and to secure military control over the interior provinces, but it was devoid of a consistent institutional framework. Over the course of the years, the
Eminence of St. Denis, as he was sometimes called, made a great effort to consolidate the administration of the Crusader State, and, earnest to the premise that it was a theocratic entity, governed by the Holy See, he consciously modelled it in the structure of the Roman Curia over the Patrimony of St. Peter. The terminology used for offices that he created was inspired in that one current in the Papal Court, and thus we see the creation of a Chamberlain, a Theologian, a Majordomo, a Tribune, among others - most of which were granted to his subordinate diocesans, to territorial abbots or to the abbot-princes of the military orders - in parallel to offices such as that of the Constable, the Marshal, the Justiciar and the Seneschal, which had been originally created by Bohemond to serve the Princes of Jerusalem. In this regard, he tried, too, to limit the supremacy of the temporal noblemen over the clergymen, with varying degrees of success, and to create statutes to reduce the dependence on the nobiliar goodwill.
For the remainder of his life, he maintained contact with other intellectuals of his age, such as Bernard,
William of St. Thierry,
Robert of Melun,
William of Conches, and
Richard of Coutances, as well one of his closest friends,
Saint Peter of Montboissier, the Abbot of Cluny, one that inspired him to contribute to the then unprecedented work of translating Islamic works to Latin. Indeed, Peter of Montboissier had in the early 1140s took to himself the task of overseeing the creation of a compendium of translated Islamic sources, and concluded it with the fundamental assistance of various monastic associates in Hispania, most notably in Toledo. The most remarkable of his works was the
Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete, a Latin translation of the Qu’ran, a copy of which Suger received later in the very year in which it was concluded, 1143 A.D. With it, he intended to delve more deeply into the Muslim theology and thus facilitate the Christian proselitization in the Outremer. According to one of his letters to future Pope Stephen X, Suger argued that one had to understand what they regarded as a heresy to combat it the grounds of debate and polemics, and not solely in that of war and violence. This interchange of Latin and Arabic works, sponsored by Suger and Peter of Cluny would leave a profound impact in the Latin-Levantine culture and in its relations with Muslims.
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While he was fated to leave great contributions to the formation of the Crusader State, at the time of his arrival to Jerusalem, in 1143, Suger saw himself placed amidst various conflicts and quarrels between the lay noblemen, which often resorted to arms to force their own pretenses.
The current head of state was the Bishop of Nazareth, placed as interim diocesan in the absence of a Papal legate, but he was a weak individual, who seemingly lacked any virtues needed to administer a realm, and, even worse, collected many vices.
The preceding lay prince,
Roger of Salerno, had died during the Armenian campaign, just a few weeks after the death of his own firstborn son, Richard of Tyre, who had perished in battle. Devastated by the loss, Roger retired from the campaign, and even attempted to disband the Latin-Levantine army altogether, but the vassals refused, seemingly unable to bear the dishonor of a retreat after they had vanquished the Saracens. Roger, by the time of his passing, was very old, weakened by disease, but this did not prevent some of the Norman lords - chief among them
Tancred of Tyre, Roger’s second son, and
Mauger of Nablus, titular Viceduke of Galilee - of arguing that the circumstances had been too suspicious. Conveniently, they opted to ascribe the foul act to their main political rival,
Count Raymond II of Caesarea, who was also the Constable of the Holy Army.
Count Raymond, however, was very well connected with his peers among the Franco-Oriental grandees; his wife Judith of Tortosa was the daughter of Welf II, and thus he was the brother-in-law to the incumbent
Marquis of Tortosa, Henry, while his sisters Helene and Bertha married to
Viscount William II of Acre - from the House of Montpellier - and to
Count Eustace of Tiberias - the grandson of Baldwin of Boulogne -, respectively. When confronted by Tancred, Raymond stood ground and, supported by his relatives, eventually made himself the master of the Levantine Crusader army, in the end of the Second Crusade.
Tancred, surprised by Raymond’s move, nonetheless found supporters to his own cause, namely Viceduke Mauger and Count Bohemond II of Tyre - the grandson of the famous Prince Bohemond. Together, they demanded the disbandment of the army to convene a new conclave, but Raymond, enjoying his new position of prominence, outright refused, and argued that a conclave could only be held after the end of campaign season. The situation became unsustainable, even more when the Norman
Count of Tripoli and Balbac, Alexander, son of the former Seneschal William of Monte Sant’Angelo, joined Raymond’s side.
Tancred, Mauger and Bohemond deserted the campaign, claiming that they had served their dues to the Crusade, and would not suffer attending as mere lackeys to the “tyrant of Constantinople”.
Instead of disbanding their knights, though, the Normans rode to Jerusalem dressed in armor and demanded
Everard, Bishop of Nazareth, to summon a conclave. The archmaster of the Templarians, distrustful of their intentions, threatened them with battle, until they put down their arms and disbanded their forces. Everard, of a cowardly disposition, gave in and nominated Bohemond II Prince of Jerusalem without summoning a conclave; it is likely that, by then, he was aware about Suger’s enthronement in Rome, but the lay noblemen did not. Tancred, having accepted to defer the honor to the Count of Tyre, asked, in exchange, for the title of Seneschal and for the confirmation of his position as Count of Damascus, which was conceded.
Hearing about the Normans’ defiance, Raymond and his allies hastened back to the Holy Land with their retainers, and marched against Tyre, demanding satisfaction. It was only then that they received the news that the new Archbishop of Jerusalem was coming from Italy by sea. When Suger did arrive, in Jaffa, he discovered that the Toulousains, the Lorrainers and the Bavarians were besieging Tyre, while the Normans and their Lombard associates had entrenched themselves nearby in Toupenine [
Tebnine].
Even before going to Jerusalem, Suger went to meet the leaders of each party, and obtained a compromise; they tried to maintain their pretenses, but the threat of excommunication by the Pope himself was enough to make them put down their arms and finally disband their armies.
The new Archbishop, even if baffled by the idea of having the Prince of Jerusalem elected among the noblemen - he believed, in fact, that the Prince had to be chosen by the Holy See - was convinced by the suffragan bishops and by the monastic abbots that such an arrangement was a necessary evil, and that failing to maintain the established traditions of the Crusader lords was a recipe for disaster and future conflicts. Suger even considered nominating
Atton [Atton de Bruniquel], the current
Archmaster of the Templarians, as the Prince of Jerusalem, but, eventually, he conceded with the summoning of a conclave. He deemed, however, that the nomination, after the result of the election, was an exclusive prerogative of the Archbishop, and that it had to be formally sanctioned.
Suger wrote a comprehensive report to Pope Victor IV in 1144 A.D., of which a copy survived to our days, in which he explains that, in the absence of a strong pontifical authority, the temporal nobles of the Earthly Kingdom had grown haughty and turbulent. In his words:
“(...) Verily, Holy Father, the Knights of Christ had hitherto been united by their duty and by their single purpose of protecting the Holy City and the Sepulchre from the violence and the perfidy of the Saracens. Now, we have seen that their patrimony and their opulence has grown tenfold, and every one of them has at their disposal hundreds of spears, they become weak to the sins of greed and pride, and covet the wealth of one another, as if they were the vanities of ancient King Solomon.
With the blessings of Your Holiness, the day has come for the sacrosanctity of the Earthly Kingdom of God to be restored, by the renovation of the works of the Mother Church in this land of mannah and honey.”
He described how there were previous events of violence among the noblemen, owing to disputes that they saw fit to settle by the use of arms, and cited the succession dispute of the Couty of Tiberias; the kidnapping of Isabella, princess of Sidon, by the renegade Burgundian baron Guigues of Ahamant (1129 A.D.), which provoked a declaration of war by the Viscount of Acre; and the ransacking of the Syriac monastery of Marre Sadanadia [
Maarat Saidnaya] by a band of Norman knights led by Ralph of Nablus, which elicited retaliation by the local Syrians, who rose in rebellion (1137 A.D.), among other grievances.
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The elected Prince of Jerusalem and Duke of Galilee was none other than Raymond himself. For the first time since his great-grandfather, also named Raymond, the lay prince of the Holy Land was the scion of the House of Toulouse. For Raymond II, this was but the vindication of his prestige and the acknowledgment of the prominence of his dynasty. His grandfather Bertrand had been deeply involved with Jerusalemite politics, but deferred to the nominations of the Norman princes out of the admiration that he had for Bohemond; his father Pons, on the other hand, lacked any ambitions whatsoever, and never sought to improve the condition of his dynasty in the Outremer. Raymond, of choleric temperament, avidly sought the Princely crown and desired to establish his own lineage as the ruling one in Jerusalem. Unlike his ascendants, he regarded the Normans from Tyre, Galilee and Damascus as his rivals and enemies, and feared their rapid growth in wealth and power into the Outremer, most notably after they secured the control of Damascus, a preoccupation shared by some of his colleagues and in-laws, who provided him with the majority of votes.
Count Bohemond was disconcerted and confused by the result. As it happened, the very increase in prosperity of the Norman potentates made their faction splinter. The dispute of territorial claims between the Counts of Tripoli and of Tyre left bad blood and vendettas, and, on the other hand, the Hautevilles of Tyre distanced themselves from the Salernitani after the deceased Prince Roger claimed the whole of Damascus for himself. Now, Bohemond had no grounds to dispute the result of the election, but he did try to convince the Archbishop to summon another conclave, arguing that the election had to be unanimous and not by majority. Suger was hardly convinced and, having already sanctioned it, would not unmake it.
In just a few months, a herald came from Rome to Jerusalem - shortly before the arrival of the Crusaders from Germany that would lead the doomed expedition to Egypt -, bringing a signet ring with the Papal seal, a symbol of legitimacy granted by the Pope to the new Prince of Jerusalem.
Prince Raymond II of Jerusalem and Duke of Galilee depicted in a miniature in a Provençal chansonnier. He was a dedicated patron of the troubadour poetic literature, and invited many contemporaries, such as Marcabru, Cercamon, and Jaufre Rudel, to his court in Caesarea.
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While it has been argued that the humiliating failure of the German Crusade could only be faulted to the Christians themselves, as we have seen in another passage of this Chronicle, and because the Crusaders did not see one another as allies, but rather as rivals to whom they had no love and no desire to share spoils, the military triumph in the shores of the Nile by the Fatimid army demonstrated that the Shi’ites had found a formidable champion in the person of
Ibn Maṣāl (Najm al-Din Abu'l-Fath Salim ibn Muhammad al-Lukki al-Maghribi), a Berber lieutenant who rose to become the Vizier to
Caliph al-Ḥāfiz.
Having participated in the suppression of the rebellion of the preceding Vizier, Ridwan ibn al-Walakshi - who had tried to depose the Fatimids and install himself as the ruling Caliph -, Ibn Maṣāl was rewarded with the governorship of al-Gharbyya, a province of the Nile Delta, and organized the defenses of the region, knowing that the Crusaders had easy access through the Sinai peninsula. By erecting various fortresses, most notably in the northeastern corner of the Delta, he sought to thwart the advances from the Levant. Now, despite the fact that he was a Sunni among Shi’ites, Ibn Maṣāl sought to promote union between the various Caliphal subjects by emphasizing the religious Islamic identity and cohesion against the Christians, and expelled Christians from the government, most notably Armenians and Jews.
After his tactical victory in the outskirts of Menuf, where the Bedouins and Turks in Caliphal service routed the combined Bavarian, Swabian, Franconian and Latin-Levantine forces, Ibn Maṣāl pursued the Crusader army into the Sinai. The whole north of Egypt became a graveyard for many hundreds of the armed pilgrims, reason by which Prince Raymond II quickly pleaded for a truce - even against the protest of some of the more proud German princes, such as Duke Henry of Bavaria (future Emperor *Henry V Welf) -, acknowledging that his men were thoroughly exhausted after consecutive years of campaigning. In the next few years, the Levant would suffer a grave epidemic of camp fever, and, later on, the disease would spread through northern Europe, brought by the returning Crusaders.
Realizing that the Crusaders, with a struggling economy, consumed manpower and diminished morale, needed a respite from war, Archbishop Suger, with Papal blessing, prohibited all of the armed men of the Kingdom from against practicing warfare for the next three consecutive Easters, unless the realm itself fell under attack by the infidels. Needless to say, the interdict greatly displeased the equestrian aristocracy, to whom war was a way of life and a profession, as well as a means of collecting wealth from plunder. Some of them presented a formal complaint, but were met with a stern resolution by the Archbishop, who had, nonetheless, obtained in his favor a letter from the Lateran Palace with the Papal signature that authorized this measure.
Raymond at first opposed it, but then, he had no intention of making the Archbishop, much less the Pope, their enemies. In fact, he performed his role well, and demonstrated fidelity and obedience to the Eminence of St. Denis, and actively enforced the new determination. In time, his loyalty would pay off.
Resolved to know the Earthly Kingdom of God as if he was born in and lived in there, the Archbishop set out, in 1145 A.D., followed by a cortege of dignitaries, secretaries, bureaucrats, monks, nobles and patricians, to survey the land, its cities and settlements, as well its fortresses. He was accompanied by Prince Raymond of Caesarea and other high-born magnates, including Bohemond and Tancred, as well as by dignitaries such as
Cardinal Guy of Pisa [Guido Pisano], a pontifical chancellor, and
Saint Peter Abelard, a prominent scholastic theologian whose writings and thought caused wide controversy among the learned circles of France. Denounced as a heretic by Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter submitted and made a pilgrimage to Rome as penance, and, from there, he followed Cardinal Guy’s retinue to the Orient, seeking to live his final years in meditation and contemplation in the Holy Land. And this he did, and eventually retired to the service of the Monastery of the Cenaculum. Centuries later, he would be canonized as a saint.
The travels lasted for various months, as Suger voyaged northwards along the road to Antioch. His declared intention, indeed, was to become familiar with the pilgrimage route coming from Asia Minor, and he sponsored the construction of new hospices and also of postal stations to facilitate communication and even commerce, a proposition applauded by the citadine burghers. By actively enforcing the usage of Latin language in the writing of formal correspondence and official government documents, the Archbishop expected to promote a better exchange of information, as well as a greater cohesion between the multilingual populations of the Earthly Kingdom.
His committee journeyed along the ancient
Via Maris all the way to Tortosa, and from there they penetrated inland, following the road to Homs. From there, they went by the inland Syrian roads until they arrived in Damascus, and their coming was reckoned to happen on Palm Sunday. Indeed, they spent Easter week in the former capital of Syria, and in the holy Sunday, the Archbishop presided over a mass in the recently consecrated Cathedral of Saint Paul. Afterwards, he led the various Crusaders, pilgrims and Christian inhabitants of the metropolis in a solemn procession going from the city’s interior to beyond the gates, following the same path that they believed had been followed by Saint Paul himself, and in where he, according to the tradition, had been blinded by an apparition of Christ.
As it seemed, the Archbishop had succeeded in reaffirming the spiritual and temporal authority of the Holy See over the Latin Principality.
Notes and comments: Gregorio Conti really existed, but was only an antipope against Innocent II, and only for a short period. ITTL, considering that Anacletus II was undisputed as a legitimate Pope, it seemed senseful for his real-life successor to achieve the Papal throne too.
Abbot Suger and (OTL Saint) Bernard of Clairvaux are historical characters, and particularly relevant, in the 12th C., so you can expect they will play a significant role in-TL.
Raymond II is based on the historical Raymond II of Tripoli, but he is all in all a fictional character. The other ones mentioned are all fictional. As you see, this is the first generation of characters born after the initial divergences. Bohemond II, for example, is unrelated to Bohemond II of Antioch, because, as you might remember, ITTL Bohemond had no male son, and instead this second Bohemond is the son of his daughter Alberada - meaning that he is not a Hauteville, but rather from another Norman patrilineal lineage (undefined, as of this chapter).
Ibn Masal, the Fatimid vizier, is also historical, but I slightly anticipated the years of his appearance in-TL, and tried to make him more relevant in general. 
