Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 275–293

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jmedhist

The defence of the Holy Land and the memory of theMaccabees

Nicholas MortonSchool of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NG11 8NS, United Kingdom

Keywords:MaccabeesCrusadesMilitary ordersBiblical exegesisKingdom of JerusalemLatin eastBalticHoly Land

E-mail addresses: mortonnic@hotmail.com; nic1 ‘Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricard

(Rolls Series 38, London, 1864), vol. 1, 212. Translatioperegrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi (Aldershot, 1997

2 See B. Bar-Kochva, Judas Maccabaeus. The Jewis

0304-4181/$ – see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltdoi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2010.06.002

a b s t r a c t

This article explores the evolving use of Maccabaean ideas insources concerning the conduct of Christian holy warfare betweenthe eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It demonstrates that thememory of the Maccabees and other Old Testament exemplarsplayed an important role in shaping the idea of crusading and itssubsequent evolution to encompass new frontiers in the Baltic andIberia, as well as structural developments in crusading, such as theestablishment of the military orders.

� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On 8 June 1191 King Richard I of England landed at Acre, joining the forces of the Third Crusade outsidethe city. His arrival was met with celebration and one writer recalled: ‘It would have been difficult tofind anybody who was not praising and rejoicing, each in their own way. Some testified to the joy intheir hearts by singing popular songs, others recited epic tales of ancient heroes’ deeds, as an incite-ment to modern people to imitate them.’1 Describing this and other campaigns, many writers drewupon legendary and biblical warriors to provide instructive paradigms for crusaders. Among the mostpopular were the Maccabees and their famous leader Judas Maccabaeus.

The Maccabaean (Hasmonaean) family led the Jews of Judaea in revolt against the persecutions ofthe Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV in the second century BC, subsequently defending Jerusalem againsta series of invasions. Their actions are recorded in the Books of the Maccabees, which in the medievalperiod were included in the Bible under the title Libri historici novissimi.2 A famous moment in these

holas.morton@ntu.ac.uki’, in: Chronicles and memorials of the reign of Richard I, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 volsn taken from H. Nicholson, The chronicle of the Third Crusade. The Itinerarium), 202.h struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge, 1989).

d. All rights reserved.

N. Morton / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 275–293276

accounts was the execution of a group of Jews in Jerusalem in the early stages of the rebellion, whorefused to reject their faith and who became known as the Maccabaean martyrs. As Bernard ofClairvaux later pointed out, they alone of the Old Testament martyrs had a feast day in the Catholiccalendar, 1 August.3

This study explores the way in which contemporaries drew upon the memory of the Maccabees torecruit, control and remember the crusades. As the crusading movement developed to take new forms,so the imagery associatedwith it evolved accordingly. The use ofMaccabaean exemplars before the FirstCrusade is discussed to indicate their influence in the emerging ideas of Christian holy warfare and alsoto explore the possibility that Armenian traditions may have contributed to the creation of a distinctivecrusader ideology. From this it will be shown how subsequent manifestations of the crusadingmovement d including the military orders, the crusades to the Baltic and Iberia, and the struggleagainst heresy d adopted these exemplars, moulding their memory to serve new purposes. Earlierstudies on the Maccabees have included work on their memory in western literary culture,4 theiremployment in eleventh century and First Crusade sources,5 and their connection to the Teutonicorder.6 Despite this, there has been little attempt to trace the developing employment of Maccabaeanallusions over time and their adaptation to face new challenges within the crusading movement.

The First Crusade and its origins

During the First Crusade there was a tremendous sense of rediscovery as participants found them-selves in the lands of the Old and New Testaments. Archas was identified as the town founded byNoah’s nephew.7 Ramleh was described (albeit inaccurately) as the site of St George’s tomb.8 Manywriters drew parallels between the crusade and the exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the PromisedLand.9 The material possessions and corporeal remains of biblical saints and martyrs were recoveredby priests and soldiers, along with items revered for their association with Christ’s life, such as piecesof the True Cross and the lance which pierced His side at the Crucifixion.10 At other points thecrusaders deliberately recreated Old Testament events in an attempt to gain God’s blessing. While thecrusaders were besieging Arqa (a town to the north-east of Tripoli), Ralph of Caen reports theconstruction of a golden image of Jesus Christ in imitation of the Israelites’ creation of the tabernacle.In doing so, it seems that the pilgrims hoped to receive God’s direction during their pilgrimage, just asthe Jews had received divine support in the desert.11 On 8 July 1099, during the siege of Jerusalem, thecrusaders processed around the city walls in a deliberate re-enactment of Joshua’s actions at the siegeof Jericho.12

3 St Bernard, Opere di San Bernardo. Lettere, ed. F. Gastaldelli, 6 vols (Milan, 1984), vol. 6:i, 469–78.4 R. McGrath, ‘The romance of the Maccabees in mediaeval art and literature’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University,

1963).5 J. Dunbabin, ‘The Maccabees as exemplars in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in: The Bible in the medieval world. Essays in

memory of Beryl Smalley (Studies in Church History, subsidia 4, Oxford, 1985), 31–41; E. Lapina, ‘Anti-Jewish rhetoric in Guibertof Nogent’s Dei gesta per Francos’, Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009), 239–53; E. Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle ofAntioch’, in: Dying for the faith, killing for the faith. Old Testament faith warriors (Maccabees 1 and 2) in cultural perspective, ed.G. Signori (forthcoming). I am indebted to E. Lapina for sending me an advance copy of her article.

6 M. Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature: the Teutonic order in the late thirteenth and early fourteenthcenturies’, in: Crusade and conversion on the Baltic frontier, 1150–1500, ed. A. Murray (Aldershot, 2001), 261–75; M. Fischer, ‘TheBooks of the Maccabees and the Teutonic order’, Crusades, 4 (2005), 59–71.

7 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), 268–9.8 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (London, 1962), 87.9 D. Green, The Millstätter Exodus. A crusading epic (Cambridge, 1966), 244; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana. History of

the journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. S.B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007), 2.10 For discussion of the Holy Lance, see T. Asbridge, ‘The Holy Lance of Antioch: power, devotion and memory on the FirstCrusade’, Reading Medieval Studies, 33 (2007), 3–36. On the finding of the spear of St George, see Albert of Aachen, Historia, 316.11 Ralph of Caen, ‘Gesta Tancredi’, in: Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols (Paris, 1844–95)[hereafter RHCHO], vol. 3, 683; Exodus 36:30–5.12 Guibert de Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Corpus Christianorum continuatio mediaevalis [hereafterCCCM] 127A, Turnhout, 1996), 276–7; Green, The Millstätter Exodus, 249; John France, Victory in the east. A military history of theFirst Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), 333, 347.

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With the circulation of such ideas, it is not surprising that several of the eyewitness accounts drewparallels between these endeavours and those of the Maccabees. Fulcher of Chartres, chaplain toBaldwin of Boulogne, in the prologue to his Historia Hierosolymitana, written c.1118–20, noted:‘Although I do not dare to compare this labour [the crusade] with that of the Israelites or Maccabees orany other chosen people whom God has blessed with many and brilliant victories, yet I have taken careto record it, since it is not to be judged greatly inferior, because often, in this labour too, God’s miraclesare evident.’13 Similarly Raymond d’Aguilers, chaplain to Raymond of Toulouse, discussing a battlefought against Ridwan of Aleppo on 9 February 1098, wrote: ‘I daresay if I were not to be judgedarrogant, I would rate this battle before the Maccabaean wars, because Maccabaeus, with 3000, struckdown 48,000 of his foes, while here 400 knights routedmore than 60,000 of the enemy. But we neitherdisparage the [courage] of the Maccabees nor boast of the bravery of our knights; however, weproclaim what was wonderful in Maccabaeus was more wonderful in our men.’14 The use of theMaccabaean exemplars in this context suggests a desire to convey the magnitude of the crusade’svictories. Given that these works were generally prepared for a clerical/monastic audience, who couldnot be expected to understand the conditions of the medieval Middle East but who would have beenfamiliar with the stories of the Old Testament, such associations would have struck home with fullforce.15 Several later commentators similarly eulogised the crusaders’ achievements. Gilo of Paris, forexample, wrote: ‘Come, Christ the King, reveal now the accustomed prowess which neither thestrength of men nor many weapons give to you. Come, O Christ, grant now that divine gift oftengranted to your Maccabaeans, that one may trounce thousands upon thousands.’16 The Books of theMaccabees were only one of a number of texts from the Old Testament used to highlight the crusaders’military successes. Deuteronomy was frequently employed, particularly the passage, ‘How could onehave routed a thousand and two put a myriad to flight?’17 This verse can be found in the accounts byRobert the Monk, Guibert of Nogent andmost significantly in Pope Paschal II’s letter to all Christendomdescribing the crusade’s success.18

Maccabaean allusions were not confined to descriptions of battle: later pilgrims demonstrated anawareness that they had visited a Maccabaean landscape.19 Some identified the site of the Maccabaeantombs as Modin in the vicinity of Lydda-Diospolis and Emmaus.20 Others recalled that Antioch was thehome of its eponymous king, Antiochus.21 The Temple of Solomon’s connection to the Maccabees washighlighted and explained.22 The Genoese chronicler Caffaro even mentions a building called ‘thepalace of Judas Maccabaeus’, which was partly dismantled and shipped overseas by the Genoese.23 Thekingdom of Jerusalem itself lay, geographically, upon the foundations of the old Maccabaean realm.Given this consciousness of the Levant’s Maccabaean history, it was perhaps inevitable that writers

13 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 116–17; The First Crusade. The chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other sourcematerial, ed. E. Peters (Philadelphia, 1981), 24.14 Le Liber de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. J.H. Hill and L.L. Hill (Paris, 1969), 53; Raymond d’Aguilers: Historia Francorum qui ceperuntIherusalem, trans. J.H. Hill and L.L. Hill (Philadelphia, PA, 1968), 35.15 J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the idea of crusading (London, 1993), 148.16 The Historia vie Hierosolimitane of Gilo of Paris and a second anonymous author, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and J. Siberry(Oxford, 1997), 160–1.17 Deut. 32:30.18 Robert the Monk, ‘Historia Iherosolimitana’, in: RHCHO, vol. 3, 787; Guibert de Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, 158, 258;H. Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1902), 178.19 S. Schein, Gateway to the heavenly city. Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic west 1099–1187 (Aldershot, 2005), 91–108.20 D. Pringle, The churches of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. A corpus, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1993–2009), vol. 2, 5–6; RorgoFretellus de Nazareth et sa Description de la Terre Sainte: Histoire et édition du texte, ed. P.C. Boeren (Amsterdam, 1980), 6; ‘De situurbis Ierusalem’, in: S. de Sandoli, Itinera Hierosolymitana crucesignatorum, 4 vols (Publications of the Studium BiblicumFranciscanum, collectio maior 24, Jerusalem, 1978–84), vol. 2, 106; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 268–9; 277–8.21 Robert the Monk, ‘Historia Iherosolimitana’, 771; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 215–6; Albert of Aachen,Historia, 196. According to some sources the Maccabaean martyrs were buried at Antioch, although this was not recalled by thecrusaders: Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 1–2.22 ‘De situ urbis Ierusalem’, 100; Theodericus, Peregrinatores tres, ed. R. Huygens and J. Pryor (CCCM 139, Turnhout, 1994), 164;Albert of Aachen, Historia, 433; ‘Anonymi Rhenani Historia et gesta ducis Gotfridi’, in: RHCHO, vol. 5, 497.23 ‘Cafari de liberatione civitatum orientis liber’, ed. G.H. Pertz (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [hereafter MGH] Scriptores[hereafter SS] 18, Hannover, 1863), 47.

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would come to style the Latin conquest and settlement as a continuation of Old Testament wars. In thewords of Fulcher of Chartres, ‘These [Franks] are not to be distinguished from those first soldiers, eitherthe Israelites or the Maccabees, whom indeed we often saw in our presence in their lands, or heardabout from distant places, whom for the love of Christ were dismembered, crucified, flayed alive, shotwith arrows, slashed and killed by various forms of martyrdom.’24 This passage encapsulates this idea,and also creates a link between the suffering of the crusaders and the Maccabaean martyrs. Caffaro’schronicle similarly reflects this theme during an account of a battlewhich took place during the siege ofAntioch 1098:

24 Ful25 ‘De26 Forc.1095–Edburywarriorleast, ecrusadecrusadeas both27 Ope28 J. Mof Medi29 St A30 NinMaccab31 ‘Vit

But having been surrounded and shot at by certain warriors of the Turks, those Genoese whoremained armed in the camp and who resisted so great a multitude of soldiers with swords andlances, at length all fell in this camp either wounded or dead; whom the angels placed asmartyrsof God in the celestial seat as companions of the Maccabees, before those who had begun theroad to the Sepulchre and previously received the crown of martyrdom.25

For contemporaries, the death and suffering of a crusader working in God’s service was an act ofmartyrdom.26 Citing the Maccabees as a precedent in these circumstances was apt, given their repu-tation as both Levantine warriors and Old Testament martyrs.27 Thus, allusions to the Maccabees, likethe descriptions of the warrior saints who aided the crusaders at Antioch, located the crusade withina long-term tradition of Judaeo-Christian military martyrdom.28

Earlier use of Maccabaean imagery

When the First Crusaders departed from their homes and set out for Syria, they were simultaneouslyleaving and setting out for regions which contained strong literary traditions of Maccabaean exegesis.This section discusses the possible influence of the Latin and Armenian traditions upon the earlycrusading chroniclers.

Western Christendom

For many in western Christendom, there was some debate whether Old Testament exemplars could beused as valid precedents for Christianmilitary conflict. The question of Christianity’s compatibility withwarfare is an age-old issue and the legitimacy of the Maccabaean wars formed part of this debate. Onone hand, St Augustine’s treatise De civitate dei validates their struggle to hold Jerusalem.29 Likewise,many early medieval chronicles evidently viewed theMaccabaeanwars as an appropriate paradigm forChristian conflict because they eulogised their ownwarriors by comparing them to Judas Maccabaeus.A nobleman named Robert earned this accolade for his service to Charles the Bald in 867.30 During theOttonian period one Count Adalbert received the same compliment for assistance rendered to thebishop of Augsburg and the Ecclesia dei.31

cher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 117.liberatione civitatum orientis liber’, 41.discussion of martyrdom during the First Crusade, see W. Purkis, Crusading spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia,1137 (Woodbridge, 2008), 42–7; H. Cowdrey, ‘Martyrdom and the First Crusade’ in:, Crusade and settlement, ed. P.W.(Cardiff, 1985), 46–56. Lapina argues that these authors sought to connect the crusaders to both the Maccabaeans and martyrs to show how the crusaders ‘surpassed the military exploits of the Maccabaean warriors and, at the veryqualled the spiritual victories of the Maccabaean martyrs’, as an attempt ‘to undermine the connection between thers and Maccabees’. Nevertheless, the Maccabees are portrayed positively on both occasions and the comparisons to thers are explicit and contain no suggestion of criticism. It seems more likely that these authors simply saw the crusaderswarriors and martyrs, and considered both connections fitting. Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 4–6.re di San Bernardo. Lettere, ed. Gastaldelli, vol. 6:i, 469.acGregor, ‘The ministry of Gerold d’Avranches: warrior-saints and knightly piety on the eve of the First Crusade’, Journaleval History, 29 (2003), 219–37.ugustine, De civitate dei contra paganos libri XXII, ed. J. Welldon, 2 vols (London 1924), vol. 2, 379.th-century histories, vol. 2. The annals of Fulda, trans. T. Reuter (Manchester Medieval Sources 2, Manchester, 1992), 57. Foraean imagery before 1095, see McGrath, Romance of the Maccabees, 2–4; Dunbabin, ‘The Maccabees as exemplars’, 31–41.a Sancti Udalrici’, in: Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64) [hereafter PL], vol. 142, 1194.

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On the other hand, there were those whowere less certain that the memory of the Maccabees couldbeused to sanctionwarfare. Around the turnof theeleventh century, anEnglishmonk, Aelfric, later abbotof Eynsham, wrote a summary of the Books of the Maccabees inwhich he argued: ‘In those days [of theMaccabees] he [Judas] was permitted to defeat his enemies and especially the heathen [.] but Christ athis coming, taught us another thing andbade us hold peace and truthfulness ever; andweought to striveagainst the cruel enemies, that is, the invisible ones and the deceitful devils that wish to slay our soulswith vices.’32 Clearly Aelfric believed that the Maccabaean struggle on behalf of God had evolved awayfromworldly warfare into a spiritual conflict against evil. Similar sentiments were voiced in a charter of930 of Count Arnoul of Flanders, who claimed to have been inspired by theMaccabees tofight spirituallyto uphold theprecepts ofGod.33Williamof Poitiersmade a similar point in theGestaGuillelmi, describingthe Christian struggle for salvation as a Maccabaean endeavour.34 In a charter of Emperor Frederick II of1222 there is a reference, among the witnesses, to a frater Machabeus: perhaps he too fought a Macca-baean campaign through prayer.35 For these figures, both secular and ecclesiastical, the significance ofthe Maccabees lay in their spiritual relationship with God, rather than their martial ardour.

Despite this disparity, advocates of papal reform in the eleventh century harnessed the Maccabees’military reputation to provide exemplars for their conflict with the German Emperors. In 1085/6 BishopBonizo of Sutri compared Herlembald (a leader of the Milanese Pataria and a close friend of GregoryVII) to Judas Maccabaeus for his deeds in battle against the agents of the Emperor Henry IV.36 Similarly,the Vita Anselmi Lucensis episcopi auctore Rangerio depicts Anselm of Lucca inciting Countess Matilda ofTuscany’s soldiers to fight against imperial forces by likening them to Judas.37 The biographer of Wazoof Liège, another exponent of both papal reform and religious warfare in the eleventh century, statedthat his subject ‘resembled Gregory the Great as a bishop and Judas Maccabaeus in his militaryexploits’.38

The choice of Judas as an exemplar must have been driven in part by the Maccabees’ warlikecredentials, but later reformers also saw him as a precedent in the ecclesiastical struggle againsttemporal power. The Maccabaean rebellion started precisely because Mattathias (father of Judas)refused to accept King Antiochus’ persecution of the Jewish faith, a theme which, by the eleventhcentury, was viewed as a paradigm for the defence of the church against rulers such as Emperor HenryIV. Thus Bertold of St Blaisen, a monk at All Saints, Schaffhausen, and a ‘pro-papal polemicist’, writing atthe end of the eleventh century, presented the anti-king Rudulph of Swabia (elected in March 1077) asanother Maccabaeus for his service to St Peter against Henry IV’s supporters.39 The Annales Gotwi-censes, writtenmany years later, use and extend the same simile by comparing Henry IV to Antiochus.40

Comparable characterisations were made frequently in later years and other papal enemies, such asFrederick II, were branded as the new Antiochus (in this case, by Salimbene of Adam).41 In the late

32 Aelfric’s lives of Saints, ed. W.W. Skeat, 2 vols (Early English Text Society, original series 76, 82; London, 1881–1900), vol. 2,113. For discussion, see C. Tyerman, England and the crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), 12–13; MacGregor, ‘The ministry ofGerold d’Avranches’, 227; Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 3–4.33 Diplomata Belgica ante annum millesimum centesimum scripta, ed. M. Gysseling and A. Koch, 2 vols (Brussels, 1950), vol. 1,144–5; Dunbabin, ‘The Maccabees as exemplars’, 36–7.34 Dunbabin, ‘The Maccabees as exemplars’, 38; William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and trans. R.H.C. Davis and M. Chibnall(Oxford, 1998), 90.35 Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi, ed. J. Huillard-Bréholles, 6 vols (Paris, 1852–61), vol. 2, 266–9.36 ‘Bonizonis episcopi Sutrini liber ad amicum’, ed. E. Dümmler (MGH Libelli de lite 1, Hannover, 1891), 599; I. Robinson, Thepapal reform movement of the eleventh century (Manchester, 2004), 44.37 ‘Vita metrica s. Anselmi Lucensis episcopi auctore Rangerio’, ed. E. Sakur, G. Schwartz and B. Schmeidler (MGH SS 30:ii,Hannover, 1903), 1234.38 C. Erdmann, The origin of the idea of crusade, trans. M. Baldwin (Princeton, 1977), 74; ‘Gesta episcoporum Tungrensium,Traiectensium et Leodiensium’, ed. G.H. Pertz (MGH SS 7, Hannover, 1846), 223. Erdmann has also drawn attention to the workof Manegold of Lautenbach who similarly used Maccabaean imagery for the war against Emperor Henry IV: Erdmann, Origin ofthe idea of crusade, 236; ‘Manegoldi ad Gebehardum liber’, ed. K. Francke (MGH Libelli de lite 1, Hannover, 1891), 399.39 I.S. Robinson, Eleventh-century Germany. The Swabian chronicles (Manchester, 2008), 41–3; Bernold of St Blaisen, ‘DieChronikon Bertholds von Reichnau und Bernolds von Konstanz’, ed. I.S. Robinson (MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum[hereafter SRG], new series 14 (Hannover, 2003), 426.40 ‘Annales Gotwicenses’, ed. D. Wattenbach (MGH SS 9, Hannover, 1851), 601.41 Salimbene of Adam, Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Scalia, 2 vols (Bari, 1966), vol. 1, 60.

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twelfth century, Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was even more explicit when he drewa direct parallel between Antiochus’ threat to the Holy of Holies and the secular challenge to themedieval church: ‘Ancient civil and domestic mischief of the Maccabaean period is also throwing ourchurch into disorder today.’42 For contemporaries, allusions to the Maccabees spliced connotations ofmilitary virtue with the imperative to defend the rights of the Church, a powerful image for both thereform movement and emerging ideas of Christian holy war.

Shortly before the First Crusade this image was applied to the struggle against Islam. The Carmen invictoriam Pisanorum recalls the recruitment speech of Bishop Benedict of Modena for an attack on theAfrican city of Mahdia in 1087, which drew upon Judas Maccabaeus as an exemplar of the righteouswarrior.43 The Mahdia campaign (and its description in the Carmen) was significant both because, asCowdrey demonstrates, it ‘had its place in the formation of the crusading idea’ and also because theexpeditionwas conducted in close co-operationwith the same key exponents of papal reformwho hadformerly used Maccabaean imagery to describe the struggle between papacy and empire.44 BishopBenedict of Modena, for example, received his see in 1085 through the intervention of Matilda ofTuscany, a crucial ally of Gregory VII. More importantly, he was connected to Anselm of Lucca and waspresent at his death. Church reformers began to view those warriors who fought against Islam, likethose who had protected the Church from the emperor, as elements in a wider Maccabaean defence ofthe papacy and, by extension, Christendom.

Reviewing the ways inwhich Maccabaean ideas had been employed before 1095, it can be seen thattheir subsequent use in the chronicles of the First Crusade was a rough and rather one-sided amal-gamation of previous thought on this subject. Such writers required images that would evoke ideas ofspiritual warfare, the defence of the Holy Land and the leadership of the Church. The stories containedin the Books of the Maccabees (nuanced through their eleventh century applications) could serve eachof these imperatives.45 Nevertheless, this interpretation twisted away from arguments, like thoseoutlined by Aelfric, which stressed that Maccabaean conflict should be confined solely to the personaland spiritual war against evil. Seemingly, the papacy’s changing attitude towards holy war hadencouraged a shift in attitudes towards the interpretation of the Old Testament.

Armenia

When Fulcher of Chartres came to write the first part of his chronicle in Jerusalem c.1100, he hadalready spent a considerable amount of time serving his master, Baldwin of Boulogne, in the Frankish-held territories around Edessa. During this time, Fulcher would have been exposed to many localArmenian religious and cultural influences; he was subsequently to highlight the level of integrationwhich took place between the Franks and the Armenian Christians.46

As Epp has shown, in later versions of his work Fulcher used Maccabaean exemplars at a number ofimportant moments.47 Describing the Antiochene victory at Tel Danith on 14 September 1115, hecompared the Christians’ achievements to those of the Maccabees as well as to other classical exem-plars.48 As shown above, he made even stronger connections in the prologue to his work (writtenc.1118–20).49 Whilst Fulcher does not explain his inspiration for these allusions, it is at least possiblethat he, and perhaps other First Crusade chroniclers, was influenced by Armenian traditions of OldTestament exegesis.50 Significantly, Armenian writers also identified parallels between the crusades

42 Translation and text from The correspondence of Thomas Becket, 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. Duggan, 2 vols (Oxford, 2000),vol. 1, 111.43 H.E.J. Cowdrey, ‘The Mahdia campaign of 1087’, English Historical Review, 92 (1977), 25–6. He believes that it emergedshortly after the expedition, Cowdrey, ‘The Mahdia Campaign of 1087’, 3.44 Cowdrey, ‘The Mahdia Campaign of 1087’, 23.45 Green, The Millstätter Exodus, 387.46 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 468.47 V. Epp, Fulcher von Chartres. Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des ersten Kreuzzuges (Düsseldorf, 1990), 154–5.48 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 589.49 Epp, Fulcher von Chartres, 154–5.50 For discussion of the Maccabees in Armenian historiography, see R.W. Thomson, ‘The Maccabees in early Armenianhistoriography’, Journal of Theological Studies, 26 (1975), 329–41.

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and the Old Testament wars. Matthew of Edessa, for example, drew repeated comparisonsbetween King David’s battles and those of the First Crusade.51 The later writer, Ners�es �Snorhali, inhis Lament on Edessa, which describes the fall of the city to Islam in 1144, compared the Christiandefenders to the Maccabees and the Turkish ruler Zengi to King Antiochus.52 These examples arestriking because they parallel so closely the references found in the Frankish accounts of thecrusade. It is not the purpose of this section to suggest with any certainty that any of the crusadechroniclers was influenced by these Armenian ideas (or vice-versa), merely to indicate thepossibility that some of their exegetical ideas may have originated outside the Catholic tradition.In Fulcher’s case, this is an important consideration, given that many of the subsequent writerswho connected the crusaders to the Maccabees d including William of Malmesbury, OrdericVitalis and William of Tyre d are known either to have read or drawn upon these later versions ofhis work.53

The crusading movement 1099–1165

The achievements of the First Crusade provoked a powerful reaction in western Christendom andwriters sought subsequently to ‘theologically refine’ the eyewitness accounts of the campaign.54 Onesuch writer was Guibert of Nogent, abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, who wrote his chronicle between1104 and 1111. Like other chroniclers, he deployed Maccabaean allusions to emphasise the crusaders’virtues, but, unlike Fulcher, he presented the Maccabees as a poor comparison,55 for example, in hisaccount of the battle of Antioch he wrote: ‘And if as it is written celestial help clearly appeared longago to the Maccabees fighting for circumcision and the meat of swine, how much more did those whohaving poured out their blood for Christ by purifying the churches and by propagating the faithdeserve to bring down slavery.’56 Lapina has shown that Guibert’s less positive presentation of theMaccabees is symptomatic of a wider hostility towards Judaism found in his other works, particularlyContra iudaizantem.57 She suggests that Guibert was ‘alarmed’ by the comparisons drawn betweenthe crusaders and the Maccabees and that he sought to demonstrate the crusaders’ superiority bydrawing a series of unfavourable contrasts between intentions and actions.58 He was not alone: theanonymous chronicler of Monte Cassino drew similar parallels, highlighting the superiority of thecrusaders’ intentions over those of the Maccabees.59 A slightly different manifestation of this sameconcern may be found in the Millstätter Exodus, an epic poem written c.1120, retelling the story of theBook of Exodus. Green demonstrates that the author introduced terms which had unmistakablecrusading connotations, for example, ‘gotes r�ıtere’, transforming the biblical narrative intoa ‘crusading epic’. Presumably the writer’s intention was to highlight similarities between the jour-neys of the crusaders and the Israelites to the Promised Land. Significantly, however, many of Exodus’distinctively Semitic features, including names and speeches, were edited out.60 In this way, while theauthor clearly wished to highlight crusading/Old Testament parallels, he was anxious to remodelExodus away from its Judaic context and into a form more acceptable as a precedent for Christiancrusading. This was not untypical of contemporary attitudes towards the Old Testament: Otto of

51 Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the crusades. Tenth to twelfth century, trans. A.E. Dostaurian (Lanham, 1993), 3, 4, 164.52 T. Van Lint, ‘Seeking meaning in catastrophe: Ners�es �Snorhali’s Lament on Edessa’, in: East and west in the crusader states.Context, contacts, confrontations, ed. K. Ciggaar and H. Teule, 3 vols (Leuven, 1996–2003), vol. 2, 67, 77, 94.53 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The history of the English kings, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomsonand M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–99), vol. 2, 299–300; Orderic Vitalis, The ecclesiastical history, ed. and trans.M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80), vol. 6, xiv, 7; P.W. Edbury and J.G. Rowe, William of Tyre. Historian of the Latin east(Cambridge, 1988), 32–43.54 Riley-Smith, Idea of crusading, 135.55 Riley-Smith, Idea of crusading, 136, 141.56 Guibert de Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, 240; The deeds of God through the Franks: a translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gestadei per Francos, trans. R. Levine (Woodbridge, 1997), 110.57 Lapina, ‘Anti-Jewish rhetoric’, 242.58 Lapina, ‘Anti-Jewish rhetoric’, 241, 246.59 Lapina, ‘Anti-Jewish rhetoric’, 247–8.60 Green, The Millstätter Exodus, title quotation, 33, 37, 273, 277.

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Freising later described the Maccabees as ‘citizens of Christ’, positioning them explicitly as proto-Christians.61

There were even some writers who were prepared to position the Maccabees as enemies.62 In LaChanson d’Antioche, Judas is named as a commander in Kerbogha’s army; and Peter Tudebode, whoparticipated in the First Crusade, includes him in a list of former rulers of Antioch, among them Herodand Satan.63 Contrasting these examples with the many positive allusions to the Maccabees, it is likelythat this disparity in attitudes reflects the complexities and tensions surrounding contemporaryChristian views towards Judaism and its relationship with the Old Testament. The brutality showntowards the Jews in the early stages of the First Crusade would have brought this issue into the open.Even so, although the Maccabees continued to be styled as proto-Christians throughout this period,examples of outright hostility or deprecating superiority, are rare and confined to thefirst decades of thetwelfth century.64 Indeed, it is possible that this enmity was only ever an early reaction against thewidespreadpopularity ofMaccabaeanexemplars. Notably, Guibert ofNogent claimed that PopeUrban II,in his sermon at Clermont on 27 November 1095, promised his audience greater fame than theMaccabees.65 Guibert himself was not present at this event and no eyewitness account mentions theMaccabees (even those that refer to them in other contexts). It is possible that the connection betweenthe Maccabees and the crusaders had become so well-known that Guibert felt that it must have origi-nated at Clermont. Certainly, if crusading had provoked a widespread admiration for these paradigms,then it would explain why both he and other writers d as Lapina argues d were so worried.

Later twelfth-century authors ceased to display this concern and instead drew upon Maccabaeanexemplars toprovidepositive role-models for crusadingand thedefenceof the Latineast. Some, includingWilliamofMalmesbury (writing in themid-twelfth century) andOrdericVitalis (writing in thefirst half ofthe twelfth century), may have been influenced by reading Fulcher of Chartres, although it is equallypossible they drew their inspiration fromother sources.66 InOrderic’s history, Judas ismentioned twice inaccounts of pre-battle soliloquies given by Baldwin I of Jerusalem before the battle of Jaffa in 1102 and byPatriarch Bernard of Antioch before the battle of the Field of Blood in 1119.67 In both cases, Judas’ actionsare recalled to inform specific battlefield decisions and, in the former, he is listed among ‘memorablechampions of your [Christian] people’. Orderic sawnoproblem inpresenting Judas as a positive exemplarfor crusading, although the reference to ‘your people’ may suggest that he wished to present Judasspecifically as a proto-Christian.68 Other twelfth-centurywriters to useMaccabaean role-models includeHenryofHuntingdonandWilliamofNewburgh (whodrewheavilyonHenryofHuntingdon).69Anumberof further chansons also made straightforward connections of this kind.70 These sources reflect thediffusion of these ideas among writers in western Christendom, in the wake of the crusade.

61 Otto of Freising, ‘Chronica sive historia de duabus civitatibus’, ed. A. Hofmeister, (MGH SRG 45, Hanover, 1912), 99. For someearlier examples of this trend: Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 1–4.62 Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 7–8.63 Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. J.H. Hill and L.L. Hill (Paris, 1977), 120; La Chanson d’Antioche, ed.J. Nelson (The Old French Crusade Cycle 4, Tuscaloosa, 2003), 189; Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 7–8.64 Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 10, although it should be pointed out that it is not known at what point inthe twelfth century La Chanson d’Antioche was composed.65 Guibert de Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, 112–13.66 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, vol. 1, 638.67 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical history, vol. 5, 348; vol. 6, 10668 Lapina takes the view that ‘for Orderic, a comparison between Maccabees and crusaders was acceptable, but only as long asit did not involve the transcendental.’ Nevertheless, as appears in the discussion of Mattathias below, the Maccabees werediscussed in more spiritual contexts at other points in his work. Lapina, ‘The Maccabees and the battle of Antioch’, 8–9.69 William of Newburgh, The history of English affairs, book 1, ed. and trans. P.G. Walsh, M.J. Kennedy (Warminster, 1988), 96;Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The history of the English people, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), 434.70 Chansons written after the First Crusade or in later years, which make these comparisons include: Les Chétifs, ed. G. Myers(The Old French Crusade Cycle 5, Alabama, 1981), 189; Godefroi de Buillon, ed. J.B. Roberts (The Old French Crusade Cycle 10,Tuscaloosa, 1996), 43; see also the comments above on La Chanson d’Antioche. This theme was captured in art of the period and,in the early years of the twelfth century, the church of Columbanus in Bobbio commissioned mosaics which portrayed the FirstCrusaders as Maccabees: G. Ligato, ‘Riflessi della prima Crociata nei mosaici Bobiensi’, in: La fondazione di Bobbio nello sviluppodelle comunicazioni tra Langobardia e Toscana nel medioevo. Atti del Convego Internazionale, 1–2 ottobre 1999, ed. F.G. Nuvolone(Bobbio, 2000), 233–42.

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Given the many positive associations drawn between the Maccabees and the first crusaders, it ishardly surprising that these paradigms were subsequently re-employed to drive new policies. In the1130s Bernard of Clairvaux wrote his famous treatise De laude novae militiae to eulogise the vocationand lifestyle of the Templars. This work included several key Old Testament passages and images usedto commemorate the First Crusade, including the passage from Deuteronomy 32.71 In a similar vein,Bernard reminded his audience that Judas Maccabaeus had promised that, with God’s help, a handfulcould overcome a multitude, sentiments expressed by many crusaders.72 Bernard’s decision to employexisting crusading exemplars in this way suggests a desire to position this order, still largely unproved,so that it might benefit from the reflected glory of the crusade. Such Old Testament allusions wouldonly have benefited Bernard’s eulogy if their crusading connotations were already well establishedamong his intended audience.

In 1144, Pope Celestine II (1143–44) adopted this theme when he described the Templars as the‘new Maccabees’.73 This marks the first occasion on which a pontiff linked an aspect of the crusadingmovement to a Maccabaean precedent. The phrase ‘newMaccabees’was to become a common epithetapplied to crusaders, the personnel of the military orders and the defenders of the Latin east. The firstwriter known to employ it was Fretellus, archdeacon of Nazareth, writing on the defence of the Latineast c.1130.74 This was an influential work and later pilgrims, including John of Würzburg and Theo-doric, drew heavily upon it in their accounts. Both John and Theodoric highlighted the Maccabaeanheritage of Levantine landmarks, and John included a passage from Fretellus’ narrative describing thetown of Modin.75 Perhaps Celestine (or those who wrote on his behalf) had read this work; moreprobably this appellation was well known among travellers returning from the Latin east.

Maccabaean imagery became a regular feature of later papal documents relating to the crusades. On1 December 1145, Pope Eugenius III launched the Second Crusade with the encyclical Quantum pre-decessores (hereafter QP). As Phillips has shown, this piece of recruitment propaganda was specificallydesigned to challenge the warriors of Christendom to imitate their First Crusade predecessors. To rein-force his message, Eugenius reminded his audience of Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus, who senthis sons into battle to preserve the laws of his people.76 This referencewould immediately have recalledthememory of the First Crusade and highlighted the responsibility of the knightly class to continue theirforefathers’ labours: the parallel was exact. QP was reissued four months later and transmitted acrosswestern Christendom. Through this process, the link between the Maccabees and the crusades wouldhave been continually reiterated by preachers, embedding the idea in the minds of contemporaries.77

Although the Maccabees were a common motif in crusading sources, QP is the first instance whereMattathias himself was used as a crusading exemplar. It is striking that the model had not been usedpreviously in any correspondence surviving in the papal registers for the eleventh and twelfthcenturies, in any context. Nevertheless, Mattathias does appear in the works of near contemporariesand in very similar circumstances. In Orderic Vitalis’ account of the disorders in Normandy, caused bythe struggle between Henry I of England and Robert of Normandy, he included a sermon given byBishop Serlo of Sées on Easter Day 1105 to a congregation that included Henry.78 Apparently, Serlocalled upon Henry to end the civil disorder which was damaging the Church and he demanded that,like Mattathias, Henry should ‘rise up boldly and rescue your ancestral land and the people of God fromthe hands of reprobates’.79 The use of Mattathias in this way, as an instrument of securing assistance in

71 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae’, in: Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. J. Leclercq and H.M.Rochais, 8 vols (Rome, 1957–77), vol. 3, 213–39.72 Le Liber de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. Hill and Hill, 53.73 Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. R. Hiestand (Göttingen, 1972), no. 8.74 Rorgo Fretellus de Nazareth et sa Description de la Terre Sainte, ed. Boeren, 6.75 John of Würzburg, Peregrinatories tres, ed. R. Huygens and J. Pryor (CCCM 139, Turnhout, 1994), 108; Theodericus, Pere-grinatores tres, 164. For the influence of Fretellus’ work, see Peregrinatores tres, 18–20 and passim.76 Eugenius III, ‘Epistolae et privilegia’, in: PL, vol. 180, 1064–6; P. Cole, The preaching of the crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 42; J. Phillips, The Second Crusade. Extending the frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, 2007), 56.77 Phillips, Second Crusade, 60–79.78 M. Chibnall, The world of Orderic Vitalis. Norman monks and Norman knights (Woodbridge, 1996), 28.79 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical history, vol. 6, 62.

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defence of the righteous against the attacks of the ungodly, suggests obvious parallels to QP. William ofMalmesbury alluded to Mattathias for a similar purpose in his account of an address given by PopeGregory VI.80 In a letter written to Innocent II c.1133, Bernard of Clairvaux described the actions thatshould be taken against the murderer of Thomas, prior of St Victor: if the killer asked for a fair hearing,rather than immediate penance, he should be executed, just as Mattathias had killed the man whoagreed to make a sacrifice to idols (1 Maccabees 2:23–4).81 The use of Mattathias in this last examplematches QP less well, but it remains significant because Bernard was so closely connected toEugenius III, who had been a Cistercian abbot. Establishing the source of Eugenius’ inspiration (or thatof the authors who wrote in his name) is not possible, but these connections are suggestive. Eugeniusmay have been influenced by Bernard either directly or indirectly while a Cistercian monk; moreprobably the reference to Mattathias had become a common allusion among monastic authors for thedefence of the Church against its enemiesd Christian or notdwhich, like somany of these references,was pressed into service as an instrument of crusading propaganda.

In later years Mattathias was used repeatedly as a paradigm, most notably in the wake of theAntiochene and Tripolitarian defeat at Harim in 1164. Reporting on this disaster the Templar envoy,Geoffrey Fulcher, travelled to Louis VII of France seeking aid. In his letter he described the readiness ofthe Levantine nobility to engage in this battle, by comparing their zeal to that of Mattathias.82 Giventhat Mattathias had been cited in QP, which had also been written for Louis VII, and that Geoffrey hadbeen serving as a Templar in the west at the time of Second Crusade, it is hard to believe that this wascoincidence.83 Fulchermay have hoped to remind Louis of his duty to the east. It may also be significantthat shortly afterwards, in 1165, Pope Alexander III, in France under Louis’ protection, re-issuedmuch ofQP, reinforcing the connection.84 Perhaps these men hoped that the repeated use of this allusionwouldhelp to ‘catch the conscience of a king’. Certainly, a number of emotive devices were employed at thistime to rouse Louis into action: in 1169 he was presented with the keys to Jerusalem, just as Charle-magne had been at his coronation in 800.85 Nevertheless, Louis remained in France and no majorcampaign for the Holy Land was undertaken.

A further development on Eugenius’ encyclical can be found in the chronicle of ArchbishopWilliamof Tyre. William’s history, written in the 1180s, contains a full account of Pope Urban’s sermon atClermont in 1095 and curiously, this includes a reference to Mattathias and his defence of Jerusalem.86

This is significant because, as we have seen, no eyewitness to Clermont reported any allusion either toMattathias or the Maccabees. Guibert of Nogent had alluded to the Maccabees in his later account, buthe did not mention Mattathias. Eugenius III, of course, referred to him in a very similar context, as didthe popes who re-issued versions of QP. It is possible that, on this theme at least, William used hisknowledge of Eugenius’ encyclical to inform his recreation of Urban’s sermon: it may be that Williamperceived Eugenius’ bull to be a key template for crusading propaganda.

The Latin east

The Latin east was seen increasingly as a Maccabaean frontier. After the establishment of the kingdomof Jerusalem, the dedication of the Holy Sepulchre took place on the anniversary of the conquest of thecity. This event was commemorated annually, following ‘the example of the Maccabees and the Jewishpeople for whom Hanukah annually commemorates the purification of the Temple’.87 As Hiestand has

80 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, vol. 1, 374.81 Opere di San Bernardo. Lettere, ed. Gastaldelli, vol. 6:i, 686.82 Louis VII, ‘Epistolae’, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, 24 vols (Paris, 1738–1904), vol. 16, 60.83 Geoffrey is known to have been at Girona in 1146: Cartulaire general de l’ordre du Temple, 1119?–50, ed. A. d’Albon (Paris,1913), 246.84 Alexander III, ‘Epistolae et privilegia’, in: PL, vol. 200, 384–5; J. Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, (Oxford, 1996), 149–50.85 Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 191.86 William of Tyre, Chronique, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols (CCCM 63–63a, Turnhout, 1986), vol. 1, 132.87 Y. Katzir, ‘The conquests of Jerusalem, 1099 and 1187: historical memory and religious typology’,’ in: The meeting of twoworlds. Cultural exchange between east and west during the period of the crusades, ed. V. Goss (Studies in Medieval Culture 21,Kalamazoo, 1986), 105.

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shown, Abbot Geoffrey, the man responsible for the transformation of the Dome of the Rock intoa Christian church, wrote a paraphrased version of the First Book of the Maccabees in the mid-twelfthcentury.88 Westernwriters propagated such ideas and chroniclers like Orderic Vitalis and the author ofthe Annales Pisani drew parallels between the Maccabees and the wars of the Levant.89

More significantly, the rulers of the Levant came to be identified as the successors of JudasMaccabaeus.90 King Baldwin I of Jerusalem (1100–18) was described on his tomb as a second JudasMaccabaeus.91 Other leaders were compared to Judas, among them Raymond of Antioch (prince ofAntioch, 1136–49),92 Baldwin III (king of Jerusalem, 1143–63),93 John of Brienne (king of Jerusalem,1210–25)94 and, by implication, Frederick II (king of Jerusalem, 1225–8).95 The last example is para-doxical because, among Frederick’s detractors, he was compared to Antiochus.96 Of course, JudasMaccabaeus, like King David, had long been viewed as an exemplar for medieval kings; presumably asMaccabaean paradigms gained connotations of crusading virtue, the desirability of such connectionswould have increased. Church offices were also styled in this way andWilliam of Malmesbury includedone ‘Machabeus’ in a detailed, although fictional, list of all the incumbents of the patriarchal seat ofJerusalem prior to the capture of the city in 1099.97 By imbuing these royal and ecclesiastical positionswith illustrious forebears, these authors sought to portray the Latin east as a continuation of the Judaicrealms of the Old Testament.

Nevertheless it is striking that, after the death of the first generation of settlers, only a few Latinwriters living in the Levant continued to make any reference to the Maccabees and the vast bulk of theevidence originates fromwestern sources.William of Tyre referred to them occasionally (although onlyin connection to the First Crusade), but they do not appear in the works of Walter the Chancellor,Ernoul, Phillip of Novare, Eracles and the so-called ‘Templar of Tyre’. There are occasional references toKing David, the Israelites and similar figures, but the Maccabees found little expression in theseaccounts. To explain this disparity, it must be emphasised that Old Testament exegesis representedonly one aspect of the spirituality of the Latin east which, in most other areas, was focused upon theevents of the New Testament. Pilgrims and crusaders generally visited Jerusalem because of itssignificance to the life of Christ, not because it had once been defended by Judas Maccabaeus.Admittedly Modin was identified by a number of pilgrims as the city of the Maccabees, but this onlyever received a brief reference. Furthermore, although the First Crusaders compared themselves to theMaccabees, they also styled themselves as nos Hierosolymitani Iesu Christi.98 These references serve asa reminder that the crusade drew upon the traditions of both the Old and New Testament and, of thetwo, the overriding ambition was to conduct the expedition as an imitatio Christi.99

Although the battles of the First Crusade suggested obvious parallels to those described in theBooks of the Maccabees, the vehemently militaristic prose found in these works would have becomeincreasingly unsuited for a Christian ruling class which needed to find a modus vivendi with theIslamic world. For settlers seeking to maintain their position in the Levant, there were permanent

88 R. Hiestand, ‘Gaufridus abbas templi domini: an underestimated figure in the early history of the kingdom of Jerusalem’, in:The experience of crusading, ed. P. Edbury and J. Phillips, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2003), vol. 2, 49.89 Orderic Vitalis, The ecclesiastical history, vol. 6, 106; Gli Annales Pisani ed. M.Gentile (Raccolta degli Storici Italiani 6.2,Bologna, 1930–6), 65.90 Schein, Gateway to the heavenly city, 96–7.91 John of Ibelin, Le Livre des assises, ed. P. Edbury (The Medieval Mediterranean 50, Boston, 2003), 683.92 William of Newburgh, The history of English affairs, 96.93 ‘Alberti Milioli notarii Regini Liber de temporibus et aetatibus et cronica imperatorum’, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH SS 31,Hannover, 1903), 640.94 Salimbene of Adam, Cronica, vol. 1, 60.95 Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 8 vols (Rolls Series 57, London, 1876), vol. 3, 160; Hans E. Mayer, Thecrusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1990), 235.96 Salimbene of Adam, Cronica, vol. 1, 504.97 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, vol. 1, 645. It may also be relevant that Conradin, grandson of Frederick IIand titular king of Jerusalem (1254–68), possessed a Bible adorned with an illumination of Judas Maccabeus: The Book of Kings.Art, war and the Morgan Library’s medieval picture bible, ed. William Noel and Daniel Weiss (London, 2002), 179.98 C. Morris, The sepulchre of Christ and the medieval west. From the beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005), 177.99 Purkis, Crusading spirituality, 22–9.

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needs to encourage their Muslim subjects to continue to farm the land, to make treaties withneighbouring Muslim rulers and to form alliances with those who wished to resist their Turkishoverlords.100 These policies necessitated a degree of tolerance and cultural acclimatisation. Fulcherof Chartres encapsulated this idea in the phrase ‘we who were occidentals have now becomeorientals.’101 Us�amah Ibn-Munqidh outlines an incident which took place while he was praying ina mosque adjoining the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. A Christian, newly-arrived from the west, sawUs�amah at prayer and violently insisted that he should face east. The Templars, however, seeing thisexchange, removed the man and apologised to Us�amah.102 Reflecting upon this event, Us�amahnoted ‘everyone who is a fresh emigrant from the Frankish lands is ruder in character than thosewho have been acclimatised.’103 Us�amah’s account plausibly describes two very different Frankishmentalities, one shaped by the realities of the Levant and the other seemingly by the zealousrhetoric of western Christendom. While the language of the Books of the Maccabees may haveremained appropriate in the west for launching or remembering crusading campaigns, it wouldhave been increasingly out of place for those Franks who needed to confront the daily realpolitik ofthe Levant.104

One aspect of the crusading movement which continually attracted Maccabaean comparisons wasthe military orders. In the years after Bernard of Clairvaux’s De laude novae militiae, both the Templarsand Hospitallers were closely identified with Old Testament military precursors. John of Salisbury, inhis Policraticus, completed in 1159, recorded that the Templars followed in the footsteps of theMaccabees.105 The author of the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, describing thebattle of Cresson on 1May 1187, attributed a speech to the Templar master, Gerard of Ridefort, inwhichhe exhorted his knights to ‘remember your fathers the Maccabees’.106 Whether Gerard actually madethis reference is unknown; even if he did not, this account still reflects the author’s perception thatsuch a connectionwould have been appropriate.107 Following the example set by Pope Celestine, manylater pontiffs, including Pope Adrian IV (1154–9), Innocent III (1198–1216), Honorius III (1216–27) andClement IV (1265–8), continued to style the military orders in this way.108 Significantly, a keywordsearch of the Patrologia Latina has shown that between the pontificates or Urban II and Innocent III, thepapacy used Maccabaean exemplars almost exclusively in connection to the military orders orcrusading, suggesting that such allusions were reserved for this purpose.109

100 For the treatment of Muslims under Frankish rule, see B.Z. Kedar, ‘Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’, in: Muslimsunder Latin rule, 1100–1300, ed. J. Powell (Princeton, 1990), 135–74; The travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R.J.C. Broadhurst (London,2004), 316–19.101 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 468; Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the expedition to Jerusalem 1095–1127, ed.H.S. Fink, trans. F.R. Ryan (Knoxville, TN, 1969), 271.102 Us�amah Ibn-Munqidh, An Arab-Syrian gentleman and warrior in the period of the crusades, trans. P.K. Hitti (New York, 1929),163–4.103 Us�amah Ibn-Munqidh, An Arab-Syrian gentleman and warrior, 163. For comparable sentiments, see B.Z. Kedar, ‘Some newsources on Palestinian Muslims before and during the crusades’, in: Die Kreuzfahrersstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft:Einwanderer und Minderheiten im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Mayer and others (Munich, 1997), 136.104 J. Riley-Smith has noted a similar pattern in his survey of letters written to the west by members of the military orders:J. Riley-Smith, ‘The military orders and the east, 1149–1291’, in: Knighthoods of Christ, ed. N. Housley (Aldershot, 2007), 146–9.105 John of Salisbury, The statesman’s book of John of Salisbury, trans. J.Dickinson (New York, 1927), 313.106 Radulphi de Coggeshall, De expugnatione Terrae Sanctae libellus, ed. J. Stevenson (Rolls Series 66, London, 1875), 212.107 For discussion, see A. Murray, ‘Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum expeditione’, in: The crusades. Anencyclopedia, ed. A. Murray, 4 vols (Santa Barbara, 2006), vol. 3, 725; B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Battle of Hatt�ın revisited’, in: The Horns ofHattin. Proceedings of the second conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East ed. B.Z. Kedar (Jerusalem,1992), 190–207.108 (Adrian IV) Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio, ed. E. Martèneand U. Durand, 9 vols (Paris, 1724–33), vol. 2, 647; Innocent III, ‘Opera omnia’, in: PL, vol. 216, 306; (Honorius III) Veteramonumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner, 2 vols (Rome, 1859–60), vol. 1, no. 24; (Clement IV) LesRegistres de Clément IV, 1265–1268, ed. É. Jordan (Bibliothéque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd series 11, Paris,1893–1945), no. 1659. On the links between the Maccabees and the military orders, see H. Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers andTeutonic Knights. Images of the military orders 1128–1291 (Leicester, 1993), 15.109 There were a few occasions when passages from the Books of the Maccabees were used in other correspondence, but eventhis was comparatively rare. It is not so easy to search papal correspondence for later years because only the papal registershave been published.

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The military orders themselves encouraged these associations and when they wrote pre-histo-ries for themselves, they generally identified a Maccabaean origin. According to Hospitaller tradi-tion, which emerged in the late twelfth century, their initial hospital had been created during theMaccabaean wars to cater for the Jewish wounded. This institution was said to have been supportedfinancially by Judas Maccabaeus himself.110 Nicholson has raised the possibility that the Templarsmay have claimed Judas as an early master.111 The Order of St Lazarus also argued that it had beenestablished by Judas.112 This desire to identify the Maccabees with the origins or early stages of theorders parallels the endowment of the patriarchs and rulers of Jerusalem with Maccabaeanforebears.113

The Third Crusade and beyond

The loss of Jerusalem in 1187 came as an immense shock to western Christendom and necessitateda rapid redirection of resources towards this frontier. According to the continuation of the Catalogusarchiepiscoporum Coloniensium, a monastery was founded in 1192 to preserve many of the relics thathad been carried by refugees to the west. This institution was named the ‘monastery ofthe Maccabees’.114 The papacy, aware of its need to respond to this crisis, launched a new crusadewith the encyclical Audita tremendi.115 This document, like QP, invoked the memory of the Maccabeesand demanded that warriors should follow their example. The encyclical was then transmitted to theextremities of Christendom to gather the armies that would attempt to retake Jerusalem. It ispossible that its influence may be seen in a sermon for the recovery of the Holy Land, preached inDenmark by Esbern Snare, who employed passages from the Books of the Maccabees to motivatelisteners.116 After such a launch and, later, in the wake of a number of Christian victories (althoughnot the recapture of Jerusalem), many chroniclers stressed that their masters and countrymen hadfulfilled this Maccabaean challenge. Richard the Lionheart, Philip of Flanders and Frederick Barbar-ossa were all compared either to Judas or the Maccabees.117 These references reflect the papacy’songoing awareness of the power of these paradigms and the willingness of Christian warriors torespond to them.

During the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the Maccabees remained vital exemplars forthe crusades to the Holy Land and for the military orders. In many cases the frame of referenceremained much the same as it had in the twelfth century. During the Fourth Crusade, for example,although the Maccabees were not mentioned in Innocent III’s encyclical Post miserabile of August 1198,a bull issued on 4 January 1200 to promote recruitment informed its audience that this was ‘a new timeof the Maccabees’.118 For crusading monarchs the Maccabees also remained important: Edward I ofEngland is said to have commissioned a series of paintings for his palace in Westminster which

110 The Hospitallers’ riwle, ed. K.V. Sinclair (London, 1984), 4–5; ‘Primordium et origo sacri xenodochii atque ordinis militiaesancti Jonanis Baptistae hospitalariorum Hierosolimitani’, in: RHCHO, vol. 5, 430–1; A. Luttrell, ‘The earliest Hospitallers’, in:Montjoie. Studies in crusade history in honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. B.Z. Kedar (Aldershot, 1997), 37–54; J. Riley-Smith, TheTemplars and Hospitallers as professed religious in the Holy Land (Notre Dame, 2010), 47.111 Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, 114–15.112 D. Marcombe, Leper knights. The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, c.1150–1544 (Woodbridge, 2003), 7.113 The military orders were not alone in this practice, see Jotischky’s comments on the Carmelite order: A. Jotischky, Theperfection of solitude. Hermits and monks in the crusader states (Pennsylvania, 1995), p. 105.114 Caesarius of Heisterbach, ‘Caesarii catalogus archiepiscoporum Coloniensium: continuatio II’, ed. H. Cardauns (MGH SS 24,Hannover, 1879), 345. See also the work of Peter of Blois, whose description of the collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalemcontains many allusions to the Books of the Maccabees: ‘Passio Raginaldi’, Petri Blesensis. Tractatus duo, ed. R.B.C. Huygens(CCCM 194, Turnhout, 2002), 35, 60, 65, 71; ‘Conquestio de dilatione vie Ierosolimitane’, in: Petri Blesensis: tractatus duo, ed.Huygens, 83, 93, 94.115 Gregory VIII, ‘Epistolae et privilegia’, in: PL, vol. 202, 1542A.116 ‘De profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam’, in: Scriptores minores historiae Danicae medii aevi, ed. M.C. Gertz, 2 vols(Copenhagen, 1918–20), vol. 2, 467.117 ‘Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi’, ed. Stubbs, 251, 422; ‘Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris’, in:Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I, ed. A. Chroust, (MGH SRG, new series 5, Berlin, 1928), 86; ‘Genealogiaecomitum Flandriae’, in: PL, vol. 209, 976.118 Die Register Innocenz’ III, ed. O. Hageneder and others, 8 vols (Graz and Cologne, 1964–2004), vol. 2, 497–501.

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depicted many stories from the Old Testament, including the history of the Maccabees. Edward himselfhad taken part in a crusade before his accession to the throne.119 Two friars, who visited the PaintedChamber at Westminster in 1323 were evidently so struck by the decoration that, in the same passageas their description of the chamber, they dubbed Edward ‘Machabeissimi.’120 Another tantalisingreference can be found in 1233 when one group of soldiers witnessed a charter in Acre using the titleMaccabaeus milites.121 Whether this group was an embryonic military order, a lay confraternity ora band of pilgrims is uncertain, but they sought a Maccabaean identity and were sufficiently wellknown for their group’s name to be acceptable as a witness to a legal document.

While Maccabaean allusions continued to serve many of the purposes that they had in previousdecades, therewere some significant developments in usage during this period. Crusades to the easternMediterranean in the thirteenth century often proved either unsuccessful or difficult to control. TheFourth Crusade particularly underlined Innocent III’s inability to steer the venture. In letters andnarratives concerning this and other campaigns, Maccabaean imagery was employed, but for newpurposes: to coerce and explain failure. During the events leading up to the capture of Constantinople,Innocent wrote to the crusade leadership, demanding that they return to their original objectives. On20 June 1203 he reinforced this argument by reminding them of a battle between Judas Maccabaeusand Gorgias, where many Jews were killed because they worshipped false idols122 d highlighting theconsequences of straying from God’s service in pursuit of ignoble goals. A similar pattern can be foundduring the Fifth Crusade. In its early stages (1219) Pope Honorius III, like Innocent in 1200, stated againthat a newMaccabaean age had arrived.123 Nevertheless, in the wake of the army’s defeat on the banksof the Nile Delta, the participant Oliver of Paderborn described two instances of failure which heascribed to a general inability to achieve the standard set by the Maccabees.124 Oliver was not the lastchronicler to use Maccabaean imagery to explain such reverses and c.1306 Pierre Dubois used a similaranalogy to help explain the collapse of the Latin east.125 Maccabaean exemplars remained tools ofpraise and eulogy, but they could also be used negatively, highlighting dangers and exposing thosewhofell short of their ideals.

Over time, as crusade preaching became a regular feature of life in western Christendom, a numberof churchmen included model crusade sermons in their ad status sermon collections. These authors,many of whom were involved in the pastoral reform movement, created these works to provide‘preaching aids’ for churchmen across Christendom.126 Maier has conducted a study of the crusadesermons produced by five such churchmen: James of Vitry, Eudes of Châteauroux, Gilbert of Tournai,Humbert of Romans and Bertrand de la Tour. Of these, four drew upon Maccabaean imagery (Bertrandbeing the exception), in most cases extensively.127 In one of Eudes’ sermons the Maccabees were thecentral theme and the piece opened with an invitation from 2 Maccabees to ‘take the holy sword as

119 M. Reeve, ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Edward I and the crusade’, Viator, 37 (2006), 191; P. Binski, The PaintedChamber at Westminster (London, 1986), 72.120 Admittedly, the motives behind Edward’s choice of these particular murals are unclear. It has been suggested by M. Reevethat they should be seen in the ‘context of the court’s political and spiritual aspirations to return on crusade’: this connectionhas been made previously by Binski, although Binski places far greater emphasis upon these murals as exemplars of good and,in other areas of the room, tyrannical kingship. Nevertheless, it has been shown that the thirteenth-century ideal of JudasMaccabaeus could reflect a fusion of ideas about kingship and the crusade and it is possible that they were used in this contextwith both applications in mind. Binski, The Painted Chamber of Westminster, 96–103; Reeve, ‘The Painted Chamber’, 97–98, 189;Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis ab Hybernia ad Terram Sanctam, ed. Mario Esposito (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 4, Dublin, 1960),26. After Edward’s death the sermons given to commemorate his life contained many references and comparisons to theMaccabees: M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1997), 558.121 Regesta regni Hierosolymitani 1097–1291, ed. R. Röhricht, 2 vols (Innsbruck, 1893–1904), vol. 1, no. 1046.122 Die Register Innocenz’ III, vol. 6, 165–8.123 Peter of Blois, ‘Epistolae’, in: PL, vol. 207, 479D–481D.124 ‘Oliveri scholastici Historia Damiatina’, in: Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn undKardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, ed. H. Hoogeweg (Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart 202, Tübingen, 1894), 186,212. Quotation from 1 Macc. 5:62.125 Pierre Dubois, De recuperatione Terre Sancte, ed. C.V. Langlois (Paris, 1891), 93.126 This paragraph has drawn extensively upon C. Maier, Crusade propaganda and ideology. Model sermons for the preaching ofthe cross (Cambridge, 2006), 3–19.127 Maier, Crusade propaganda, 6.

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a gift fromGod, with which youwill defeat the opponents of Israel’.128 The proliferation of Maccabaeanreferences in works that were specifically designed for widespread dissemination indicates that thesepreachers considered the Maccabees to be among the most likely exemplars, in fact a standard topos,for evoking a positive response to crusade preaching.

The earliest of these writers was James of Vitry (bishop of Acre, 1216–28; cardinal-bishop ofTusculum, 1229–40). His sermons were only one element in a portfolio of material concerningcrusading and the Latin east. What is striking about his works are the connections he makes toMaccabaean imagery. In his Historia orientalis, he compared the defenders of the Latin east to theMaccabees.129 In his sermons, as well as in his letters about the Fifth Crusade,130 he used the sameexemplars to eulogise crusaders and the military orders.131 For him, all three d crusaders, militaryorders and the defenders of the Latin east d warranted these comparisons. This builds a conceptualimage of all threeworking together in a general Maccabaean defence of the easternMediterranean. Therelevance of this consideration lies in the current historiographical debates concerning the definition of‘crusading’. For decades, historians have debated the applicability of the term ‘crusader’ to the differentgroups engaged in the defence of Christendom,132 that is, the three groups noted above as well ascrusaders to other frontiers. While this article does not focus primarily on this matter, it is relevant topoint out that many of the contemporary works described thus far applied Maccabaean rhetoric to atleast one of these forms of soldiery, and James of Vitry applied this distinction to three of them. In thisway, however modern commentators may apply such terms, for contemporaries these groups were,conceptually, all very closely linked. Furthermore, the sermon by Eudes, which employed theMaccabees as a central theme, was written for use against the Mongols d demonstrating that Mac-cabaean ideas could be employed in a defence of other frontiers.133

New frontiers

As the crusading movement evolved to incorporate the wars of other regions, the imagery associatedwith it was re-moulded. Maccabaean paradigms were no exception. In 1150 Peter the Venerable, abbotof Cluny, wrote to King Roger of Sicily to convince him to make war on Emperor Manuel Comnenus,whom he believed had betrayed the Second Crusade. He wrote: ‘Stand up in assistance of the people ofGod, be zealous like the Maccabees for the law of God, avenge so many slights, so many injuries, somany deaths and so great a vile effusion of the blood of the army of God.’134 Admittedly, this letter doesnot ask Roger to fight a crusade, but rather to take revenge upon a man who was believed to havebetrayed one.135 Nevertheless, it is interesting that he chose to employ rhetoric typically associatedwith crusading to fit his anti-Byzantine politics. Crucially, this passage also reflects the use of Mac-cabaean imagery to promotewarfare against fellow Christians.136 This was not the last time it was usedfor this purpose: in the early thirteenth century Gregory IX denounced heretics with this imagery.137

Likewise, in the fourteenth century, similar ideas can be found in a sermon that was written tojustify a French religious war against the Flemings.138

The warriors of the Baltic likewise sought to establish conceptual connections between their owncampaigns and the Old Testament defence of Jerusalem. In this region, princes, bishops and military

128 2 Macc. 15; C. Maier, Crusade propaganda, 145.129 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale, ed. and trans. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), 182.130 Maier, Crusade propaganda, 95; Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), 100, 116.131 Analecta novissima. Spicilegii Solesmensis altera continuatio, ed. J.B. Pitra, 2 vols (Paris, 1885–8), vol. 2, 408.132 For discussion, see N. Housley, Contesting the crusades (Malden, 2006), 1–23.133 Although this sermon was written explicitly for use against the Mongols, Maier suspects that was intended to be easilyadapted for preaching against any enemy: Maier, Crusade propaganda, 25.134 The letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1967), vol. 1, no. 162.135 Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 117; T. Reuter, ‘The “non-crusade” of 1149–1150’, in: The Second Crusade. Scope andconsequences, ed. J. Phillips and M. Hoch (Manchester, 2002), 150–63.136 It may also have been remembered that the Maccabees themselves fought against Greek Hellenic kings.137 ‘Ex Gregorii IX registro’, ed. G.H. Pertz and C. Rodenberg (MGH Epistolae saeculi XIII 1, Berlin, 1883), 434.138 J. Leclercq, ‘Un sermon prononcé pendant le Guerre de Flandre sous Philippe le Bel’, Revue du Moyen Âge Latin, 1 (1945),170–1.

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orders were locked in conflict against neighbouring pagan tribes. Describing these wars, contempo-raries frequently drew upon references from the Old Testament to provide context and justification fortheir campaigns. In addition to their military applications, however, Old Testament stories were alsoemployed as a tool for the conversion of pagans. God for the pagans had to be amilitant deity, a bringerof victory. As the Old Testament could produce narratives that would present God in this manner,a religious faith could be offered that would be comprehensible in their terms.139 Henry of Livonia’schronicle, for example, describes a play staged for the pagans in Riga to demonstrate the ‘rudiments ofthe Christian faith’.140 One of the scenes representing these ‘rudiments’was a re-enactment of a battlefought by Gideon against the Philistines. Unfortunately for the organisers, the pagans all fled in terrorfrom this battle re-enactment. Even so, this event reveals an awareness of the potential efficacy of suchimages.

In thewake of the First Crusade, Maccabaean imagery swiftly entered the rhetoric of the Baltic wars.In 1108, when a group of Saxon nobles and prelates requested assistance against the pagans for a holywar, which was explicitly intended to imitate the ‘Gaulish’ capture of Jerusalem, two passages from theBooks of the Maccabees were invoked to emphasise their message.141 Subsequent references can befound in the Gesta principum Polonorum (written in the 1110s), which described in Maccabaean termsthe battlefield victories of King Boles1ow.142 Helmold of Bosau, writing in 1167–8, compared a priestnamed Gerlav to Judas Maccabaeus for his defence of the fortress of Süssel against the Slavs during theSecond Crusade’s Baltic campaign.143 Henry of Livonia’s chronicle, in particular, written in 1225–6, isrich in passages drawn from the Books of the Maccabees, which supplement numerous descriptions ofwar against pagan enemies.144 Whether these Maccabaean associations were introduced because oftheir First Crusade connotations or because of theway Old Testament imagery was employed generallyin the Baltic is unclear. They reflect, however, the belief of their authors that the Baltic region hadbecome a new Maccabaean frontier.

The arrival of the Teutonic order continued this trend. The Teutonic Knights had been associatedwith the Maccabees long before they intervened in the Baltic. In 1212, while serving in the Holy Land,the king of Armenia described them as ‘successors of the Maccabees’, a view repeated subsequently byPope Honorius III in 1221 and, in slightly different terms, by Gregory IX in 1230.145 The prologue to theorder’s rule outlines the importance of Old Testament warriors, including King David and theMaccabees, as models for the order.146 Despite this, it is notable that brethren did not attempt to casttheir history back to the Maccabaean period like the Templars and Hospitallers. It is probable that thiswas the result of the Hospitallers’ ongoing contention that the Teutonic Knights had evolved from anearlier German hospital which, in 1143, had been placed under their authority.147 The Teutonic Knightsvehemently denied this connection and stressed that they had been founded decades later in 1190. Itwould not have been in the institution’s interests to generate any epic past which might lend credenceto the Hospitallers’ claim.

With the rapid development of the Teutonic Knights’ power in the Baltic in the 1230s, the Mac-cabaean rhetoric surrounding their ventures was considerably enhanced.148 Looking back on this

139 Green, The Millstätter Exodus, 194.140 Henry of Livonia, ‘Chronicon’, ed. L. Arbusow and A. Bauer (MGH SRG 31, Hannover, 1955), 32.141 Urkunden und erzählende Quellen zur deutschen Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter, ed. H. Helbig and L. Weinrich (Darmstadt, 1968),97–102 (98, 100); Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature’, 270.142 Gesta principum Polonorum. The deeds of the Princes of the Poles, trans. P. Knoll and F. Schaer (Central European MedievalTexts 3, Budapest, 2003), 181.143 Helmold of Bosau, ‘Cronica Slavorum’, ed. B. Schmeidler (MGH SRG 32, Hannover, 1937), 121.144 The following is a sample from the first twelve chapters, Henry of Livonia, ‘Chronicon’, 7, 20, 24, 27–8, 30, 32, 34–7, 39–40,42, 44, 47, 49–50, 52–4, 56.145 Tabulae ordinis Theutonici. Ex tabularii regii Berolinensis codice potissimum, ed. E. Strehlke (Toronto, 1975), nos 46, 72,321, 389.146 Die Statuten des deutschen Ordens nach ältesten Handschriften, ed. M. Perlbach (Hildesheim, 1975), 25.147 Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310, ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1901), vol. 1, nos 154–5. For discussion, see M.L. Favreau, Studien zur Frühgeschichte des deutschen Ordens (Stuttgart, 1974),passim.148 Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature’, 269.

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period from c.1326, Peter von Dusburg wrote an account of the colonisation of Prussia that containssome 26Maccabaean references.149 At one point he called upon his readers to ‘hear inwhatmanner thebrothers [of the Teutonic Order] like Judas Maccabaeus have cleansed the holy places of the land ofPrussia, which previously the heathen polluted through idolatry’.150 These ideas were disseminated toawider audience shortly afterwards when the order’s master, Luder von Braunschweig, asked Nicolausvon Jeroschin to translate Peter’s work into the vernacular.151 It was also in this period that the brethrenbegan to build up a collection of translations of books from the Bible, including the Second Book ofMaccabees.152

During the thirteenth century, as the Baltic began to develop in importance as a crusading centre, itsexponents started to style it as a newHoly Land. Mary, mother of Jesus, was adopted as the patron saintof many of the newly conquered Baltic dominions and Livonia was styled as the dowry of the Mary.153

In the 1230s, as the Teutonic Knights began to colonise the region, towns and fortresses were foundedwith Levantine names. Toron, in modern-day Poland, was named after the eponymous fortress in theHoly Land (now Tebnine, Lebanon).154 In 1271 Montfort, the order’s major fortress in the kingdom ofJerusalem, fell to the Mamluks. Two years later the order gave the same name to a newly-built Prussiancastle.155 The local pagans were occasionally referred to as ‘Saracens’.156 The papacy seems to haveendorsed the development of this ideology and Nicolaus von Jeroschin attributes passages from theBooks of the Maccabees to a sermon given by Gregory IX (1227–41), endorsing the Teutonic Knights’Baltic crusade.157 Fischer has cast doubt on the authenticity of this sermon, arguing that it ‘may wellhave beenwritten by the order to fill a need felt for a document initiating and sanctioning their wars inPrussia’.158 Perhaps in the same way that Guibert of Nogent considered that Urban II would have usedMaccabaean imagery at Clermont, so Nicolaus felt Gregory IX’s would have employed it in his advocacyof the Teutonic order. A clearer example can be found in 1258 when Alexander IV (1254–61) issueda letter encouraging the Dominicans and Franciscans to preach the cross in Germany, Poland, Bohemiaand Moravia.159 In this letter, Alexander explicitly used Judas Maccabaeus as an exemplar for theprospective campaign. As the Baltic region came to function as a new crusading frontier, it was pre-sented as a new Holy Land with all its attendant imagery.160

Like the Baltic, the reconquest of Iberia attracted Maccabaean comparisons. To take one example,the Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, ‘a panegyric in prose and verse devoted to the deeds of Alfonso VII ofLeón-Castile (1126–57)’, portrayed its subject as a ‘latter day Israelite king’.161 The author himself isunknown, but Barton believes he was a cleric associated with the court of León.162 This account of theIberian wars drew frequently upon Old Testament rhetoric and Maccabaean references were deployedin relation to the struggles of the king of León-Castile against both Christian and non-Christianenemies. In 1131, the siege of an Aragonese-held fortress, Castrojeriz, was ‘compared to Simon

149 Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature’, 270.150 Peter von Dusburg, Chronik des Preussenlandes, ed. K. Scholz and D. Wojtecki (Darmstadt, 1984), 23.151 Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature’, 268; Fischer, ‘The Books of the Maccabees and the Teutonic Order’, 60;Nicolaus von Jeroschin, ‘Di Kronike von Pruzinlant’, Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum. Des Geschichtsquellen der preussischen Vorzeit,ed. T. Hirsch, M. Töppen and E. Strehlke, 5 vols (Leipzig, 1861–64), vol. 1.152 Fischer, ‘Biblical heroes and the uses of literature’, 266; McGrath, Romance of the Maccabees, 38.153 I. Fonnesberg-Schmidt, The popes and the Baltic crusades,1147–1254 (The Northern World 26, Leiden, 2007), 84.154 W. Hubatsch, ‘Der deutsche Orden und die Reichslehnschaft über Cypern’, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften inGöttingen. Phil.-hist. Klasse, 8 (Göttingen, 1955), 245–306 (275).155 Peter von Dusburg, Chronik des Preussenlandes, 270.156 Preussisches Urkundenbuch, ed. A. Seraphim and others, 5 vols (Königsberg, 1882–1909; repr. Aalen, 1958–69),vol. 1:i, no. 78.157 Nicolaus von Jeroschin, ‘Di Kronike von Pruzinlant’, 325–7.158 Fischer, ‘The Books of the Maccabees and the Teutonic order’, 64.159 Preussisches Urkundenbuch, ed. Seraphim and others, vol. 1.2, no. 59.160 Given that the Teutonic Knights drew strength from their association with the Maccabees, it is perhaps ironic that imagerydrawn from these same books should be deployed against them in the denunciation at the Council of Constance in the OpinioHostiensis of 1415. This document challenged the very continuation of the institution. Paulus Vladimiri and his doctrine con-cerning international law and politics, ed. S. Belch, 2 vols (London, 1965), vol. 2, 882–3.161 S. Barton and R. Fletcher, The world of El Cid. Chronicles of the Spanish reconquest (Manchester, 2000), 148, 152.162 Barton and Fletcher, World of El Cid, 156.

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Maccabaeus’ campaign against Jerusalem’.163 This expedition, although against a Christian stronghold,was said to have had an immediate and decisive effect upon King Alfonso’s relations with the localMuslim ruler Zafadola.164 Furthermore, within an account of a series of skirmishes fought in 1132between the former crusader Count Rodrigo González and the Muslim rulers Ab�u Hafs ‘Umar and KingT�ashufin, passages from the Books of the Maccabees were injected with considerable frequency.165

Taken cumulatively, these references demonstrate that the author, like many crusading chroniclers,drew his inspiration from the Old Testament to style his master’s wars as righteous endeavours againstthe ungodly.166

Nevertheless Maccabaean allusions occur with less frequency in Iberian sources. They are absentfrom many of the major chronicles and the local military orders, unlike the Templars and Hospitallers,do not seem to have used the Maccabees as exemplars. The papacy did not employ Maccabaeanrhetoric either when offering a crusade indulgence or in any other form. After all, the wars of thisfrontier had their own mythology and Visigothic heritage, and the writers who reported upon theseconflicts had other areas fromwhich to draw their inspiration. Even so, there are two further exampleswhich are of high interest because they connect the ideology of the crusading era to the earlier Visi-gothic defence of Iberia. The first can be found in the Liber Sancti Jacobi, a work written in the mid-twelfth century describing the wars of Charlemagne in Spain. It has been has argued that it wasintended ‘as a means not only of promoting pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but also ofdeveloping the idea that the Iberian Peninsula should be regarded as another frontier of crusadingwarfare’.167 Given this objective, it is significant that, within an account of the discovery of the body ofRoland (of Roncesvalles fame) by Charlemagne, the emperor is said to have called out that Roland,marked by the sign of the cross, embodied the virtue of Judas Maccabaeus. This tale is interesting asa synthesis of ideas. The crusading virtues embodied by the Maccabees have been projected back toRoland, a solider whowas often cast as a proto-crusader.168 In this way, this source may reflect an earlyexample of the adaptation of Maccabaean imagery, firmly linked to crusading in the wake of the FirstCrusade, to warfare on the Iberian frontier. A furtherd albeit laterd example of this same process canbe seen in the Rebus Hispanie, written in the 1240s by Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. In this chronicle thereis a passage which compares the deeds of the Visigoths, in their struggle against the invading forces ofIslam in the eighth century, to those of the Maccabees, on the grounds that both parties were said tohave been motivated to defend the faith.169 Although these chroniclers were divided bymany decades,the fact that both cast these earlier defenders of Iberia in a Maccabaean mould suggests that theywished their audience to recognise such ventures were waged with the same spirit as the crusade tothe Holy Land. As the idea of the crusade evolved to encompass different frontiers, so too did theimagery associated with it. There were regional variations, however: whereas Maccabaean rhetoricwas popular in the Baltic, its presence in Iberia is less evident.

Conclusion

In the mid-fourteenth century, Geoffroi de Charny, a veteran of the crusade of Humbert II of Viennoisagainst Smyrna, wrote a famous treatise on chivalry to assist King Jean II of France in the creation of the

163 Barton and Fletcher, The world of El Cid, 175; ‘Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris’, in: Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, ed. E.A.M.Sánchez, 2 vols (CCCM 71–71a, Turnhout, 1990), vol. 1, 161–2.164 ‘Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris’, ed. Sánchez, vol. 1, 162.165 ‘Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris’, ed. Sánchez, vol. 1, 206–8.166 A later reference occurs in the ‘Chronica Latina regum Castellae’, written in the early thirteenth century, which comparesSimon de Montfort to Judas Maccabaeus for his deeds during the battle of Muret in 1213. This encounter took place between theforces under Simon’s command and the combined armies of Pedro II of Aragon and Raymond VI of Toulouse. It was presumablySimon’s crusading credentials, earned against the Albigensians, as well as his reputation as a soldier, which inspired such anappellation: ‘Chronica latina regum Castellae’, in: Chronica Hispana saeculi XIII, ed. L. Charlo Brea and others (CCCM 73,Turnhout, 1997), 67.167 Purkis, Crusading spirituality, 142.168 Liber Sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. W. Whitehill, 3 vols (Santiago de Compostela, 1944), vol. 1 Texto, 335.169 Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie sive historia Gothica, ed. J. Fernández Valverde (CCCM 72, Turnhout,1987), 120.

N. Morton / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 275–293 293

Order of the Star. He specifically highlighted Judas Maccabaeus as a knightly exemplar. For him, Judas’life was unequivocal proof that a knight could win salvation by arms.170 This sentiment captures theessence of contemporary views of Judas and his connection to crusading. For many, his life provideda precedent for the justification and conduct of Christian religious war; to participate in these conflictswas chivalry in its most advanced form.171 Likewise, the inclusion of Judas among the Nine Worthiesand among the military paradigms in Dante’s Divine Comedy stressed this connection.172

These examples remind us that crusading and its attendant paradigms both helped shape, and wereshaped by, contemporary society. Crusading itself was a constantly evolving concept, reacting rapidlyto the internal and external pressures on Christendom. It proved highly adaptable, was applied toa range of enemies, and its manifestations employed a range of structural forms, including, forexample, the military orders. Like any popular idea, it had its imitators and even those whose militaryexpeditions were not authorised as crusades saw value in embroidering their own conflicts with thisrhetoric.

Locating the origins, dissemination, and development of crusading ideas naturally poses manymethodological challenges. This article has taken a topos that was inextricably linked to crusading andmapped its formation, popularisation and subsequently its diffusion into many permutations of thecrusading movement. Initially, both Armenian and Catholic exegetical traditions may have influencedwriters to link the First Crusade to the Maccabees. Particularly in western Christendom, Maccabaeanexemplars in the eleventh century had been moulded into a form that made them obvious and idealexemplars for crusading. The subsequent use of Maccabaean ideas by First Crusade chroniclers seemsto have posed problems for some contemporaries who appear to have been concerned about theirSemitic connotations; however, these did not persist. In later years authors and preachers in WesternEurope continually used this topos to remember and promote crusading. Even so, the nature and toneof their comparisons began to change as the desire to celebrate crusading victories turned into the needto explain their defeats. In the Latin East, however, after the passing of the first generation, allusions tothe Maccabees occur less frequently, probably in response to the need for dialogue with Islam.

In a similar vein, the willingness with which different frontier communities embraced Maccabaeanexemplars d popularised by the First Crusade d provides a valuable insight into the adoption of theideology of the Jerusalem crusade by crusading cultures on Christendom’s other borders. Consideringthe widespread adoption of Maccabaean topoi and their constant repetition across Christendomthroughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is hardly surprising that these exemplars came tohave a wider impact on models of knightly behaviour.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Phillips for his help in creating and inspiring this article. Iwould also like to thank Dr Matthew Reeve for his support and advice.

Nicholas Morton is a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University where he teaches on the crusades and medieval Europe. He hasrecently published on the military orders and German crusading in a number of articles and his monograph, The Teutonic Knightsin the Holy Land, 1190–1291 (Woodbridge, 2009).

170 Geoffroi de Charny, A knight’s own book of chivalry, trans. E. Kennedy (Philadelphia, 2005), 12, 88–9.171 M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984), 121.172 Dante, La divina commedia, ed. N. Sapegno (Milan, 1957), 1004–5.