The Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius 813 conflict, forcing him basely to flee. Hence we marvel not a little why the oft. mentioned emperor has been always so venomous in spirit toward our men, and not feared to return evil for good.""—The argument ends; the letter begins: To Robert, lord and glorious count of the Flemings, and to all the princes in the entire realm," lovers of the Christian faith, laymen as well as clerics, the Con- stantinopolitan emperor [extends] greeting and peace in our same Lord Jesus Christ and His Father and the Holy Spirit. © most illustrious count and especial comforter of the Christian faith! I wish to make known to your prudence how the most sacred empire of the Greek Chris. tians is being sorely distressed by the Patzinaks and the Turks, who daily ravage it and unintermittently seize [its territory]; and there is promiscuous slaughter and indescribable killing and derision of the Christians. But since the evil things they do are many and, as we have said, indescribable, we will mention but a few of the many, which nevertheless are horrible to hear and disturb even the air itself. For they circumcise the boys and youths of the Christians over the Christian baptismal fonts, and in contempt of Christ they pour the blood from the circumcision into the said baptismal fonts and compel them to void urine thereon; and thereafter they violently drag them around in the church, compelling them to blaspheme the name of the Holy Trinity and the belief therein. But those who refuse to do these things they punish in diverse ways and ultimately they kill them. Noble matrons and their daughters whom they have robbed [of their possessions] they, one after another like animals, defile in adultery. Some, indced, in their corrupting shame- lessly place virgins before the faces of their mothers and compel them to sing wicked and obscene songs, until they have finished their own wicked acts. Thus, we read, it was done also against God’s people in antiquity, to whom the impious Babylonians, after making sport of them in diverse ways, said: “Sing us one of the found in all the manuscripts except the oldest manuscript (B), which has “liber ille.” Since the Episteda existed as a separate piece shortly after the beginning of the twelfth century when manuscripts a and 2 were prepared, it seems well to reckon with the twofold possibility that (1) the argumentum referred originally to a book to which the Epistula was not appended, and that (2) this book was not necessarily Robert of Rheims’s Historia Iherosolimitana. For these reasons I have rendered the reading “liber ille.” 11 The Latin of this sentence runs as follows (H Ep., p. 130): “unde non parum miramur, cur sacpedictus imperator tam uenenosum animum contra nostros semper habuerit ct reddere mala [see n, 80, below] pro bonis non formidauerit.” According to Hagenmeyer (H Ep., p. 186, fn, 13), it must be inferred from the words “semper habuerit” and “non formidauerit” that the argumentum was not written until after the death of Emperor Alexius in 1118. It seems to me that this view is untenable. The perfect tense of “habuerit” and “formidauerit” indicates that, in the opinion of the writer of the argumentum, Alexius up to the time these words were wsitten had been always venomous in spirit, etc.; but it yields no clue as to whether Alexius was dead or alive at that time, for in either case the tense of the two verbs would be the same. Hagen- meyer believed his opinion in this matter was confirmed by the dates (1112-18) which Georg Marquardt (Die Historia Hierosolymitana des Robertus Monachus; Konigsberg, 1892) had as- signed to the composition of Robert of Rheims’s Historia, Those dates, however, are now held to be several years too fate; and, as we have seen, it is by no means certain that the argumentum referred originally to the work by Robert of Rheims (cf. n. 10, above). On the correct date of Robert's work (ca. 1106-1107), see Auguste Molinier, Les sources de Vhistoire de France, Wt (Paris, 1902), 282, No. 2118; A. C. Krey, “A Neglected Passage in the Gesta and Its Bearing on the Literature of the First Crusade,” in The Crusades and Other Historical Essays Presented to Dana C. Munro, ed. by Louis J. Paetow (New York, 1928), p. 74 and n, 42. 22 According to Hagenmeyer (H Ep., p. 190, n, 15), the word “regni” in the phrase “omnibus totius regni principibus” (ibid., p. 130) must refer to Flanders—“welche Deutung sick won selbst ergibt.” I am inclined to agree with Riant when he says that the terms in this phrase are “si vagues qu'on se demande quel est ce regum, la France ou Vempire germanique?” (Riant Ep., p. xv). 814 Einar Joranson songs of Zion.”"* Likewise, at the dishonoring of their daughters, the mothers are in turn compelled to sing wicked songs, [though] their voices sound forth not a song but rather, we believe, a plaint, as it is written concerning the death of the Innocents: “A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she would not be comforted, because they are not.""* However, even if the mothers of the Innocents, who are figured by Rachel, could not be comforted for the death of their children, yet they could derive com- rort from the salvation of their souls; but these [mothers] are in worse plight, for they cannot be comforted at all, because they perish in both body and soul. But what further? Let us come to matters of greater depravity. Men of every age and order—ice., boys, adolescents, youths, old men, nobles, serfs, and, what is worse and more shameless, clergymen and monks, and, alas and alack, what from the beginning has never been said or heard, bishops!—they defile with the sin of sodomy and now they are also trumpeting abroad that one bishop has succumbed to this abominable sin. The holy places they desecrate and destroy in numberless ways, and they threaten them with worse treatment. And who does not lament over these things? Who has not compassion? Who is not horrified? Who does not pray? For almost the entire land from Jerusalem to Greece, and the whole of Greece with its upper regions, which are Cappadocia Minor, Cappadocia Major, Phrygia, Bithynia, Lesser Phrygia (i, the Toad), Pontus, Galatia, Lydia, Pamphylia, Isauria, Lycia, and the principal islands Chios and Mytilene, and many other regions and islands which we cannot even enumerate, as far as Thrace, have already been invaded by them, and now almost nothing remains except Constantinople, which they are threatening to snatch away from us very soon, unless the aid of God and the faithful Latin Christians should reach us speedily. For even the Propontis, which is also called the Avidus* and which flows out of the Pontus near Constantinople into the Great Sea,"* they have invaded with two hundred ships, which Greeks robbed by them had built; and they are launching them with their rowers, willy-nilly, and they are threatening, as we have said, speedily to capture Constantinople by land as well as by way of the Propontis. These few among the innumerable evil things which this most impious people is doing we have mentioned and written to you, count of the Flemings, lover of the Christian faith! The rest, indeed, let us omit, in order not to disgust the readers. Accordingly, for love of God and out of sympathy for all Christian Greeks, we beg that you lead hither to my aid and that of the Christian Greeks whatever faithful warriors of Christ you may be able to enlist in your land—those of major as well as those of minor and middle condition; and as they in the past year liberated Galicia and other kingdoms of the Westerners somewhat from the yoke of the pagans,” so also may they now, for the salvation of their souls, endeavor to liberate the kingdom of the Greeks; since I, albeit I am emperor, can find no remedy or suitable counsel, but am always fleeing from the face of the Turks and the Patzinaks; and I remain in a particular city only until I perceive that their arrival is imminent. And I think it is better to be subjected to your Latins than to 33 Ps. 137: 3. M Matt. 2: 16-185 of, Jer. 31: 15. 38 For comment on this name, sce H Ep., p. 107, n. 55. 36 “Mare Magnum" probably designates the Mediterranean in its entirety and not merely the Aegean Sea, since the latter could hardly be called great when compared with the Black Sea (“Pontus”). But cf. H Ep., p. 198, n. 57. The reference here may be to the expedition which the Burgundi duke Odo 1, Borel, with his brothers Robert and Henry and his cousin Raymond, led to Spain in 1089. See Ver- linden (n, 2, above), pp. 18-20, The Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius 815 the abominations of the pagans. Therefore, before Constantinople is captured by them, you most certainly ought to fight with all your strength so that you may joyfully receive in heaven a glorious and ineffable reward. For it is better that you should have Constantinople than the pagans, because in that [city] are the most precious relics of the Lord, to wit: the pillar to which he was bound; the lash with which he was scourged; the scarlet robe in which he was arrayed; the crown of thorns with which he was crowned; the reed he held in his hands, in place of a scepter; the garments of which he was despoiled before the cross; the larger part of the wood of the cross on which he was crucified; the nails with which he was affixed; the linen cloths found in the sepulcher after his resurrection; the twelve baskets of remnants from the five loaves and the two fishes; the entire head of St. John the Baptist with the hair and the beard; the relics or bodies of many of the Innocents, of certain prophets and apostles, of martyrs and, especially, of the protomartyr St. Stephen, and of confessors and virgins, these latter being of such great number that we have omitted writing about each of them individually.** Yet, all the aforesaid the Christians rather than the pagans ought to possess; and it will be a great muniment for all Christians if they retain possession of all these, but it will be to their detriment and doom if they should lose them. However, if they should be unwilling to fight for the sake of these relics, and if their love of gold is greater, they will find more of it there than in all the world; for the treas- ure-vaults of the churches of Constantinople abound in silver, gold, gems and precious stones, and silken garments, ie., vestments, which could suffice for all the churches in the world; but the inestimable treasure of the mother church, namely St. Sophia, ie., the Wisdom of God, surpasses the treasures of all other churches and, without doubt, equals the treasures of the temple of Solomon. ‘Again, what shall I say of the infinite treasures of the nobles, when no one can estimate the treasure of the common merchants? What is contained in the treasures of the former emperors? I say for certain that no tongue can tell it; because not only the treasure of the Constantinopolitan emperors is there contained, but the treasure of all the ancient Roman emperors has been brought thither and hidden in the palaces. What more shall I say? Certainly, what is exposed to men’s eyes is as nothing compared with that which lies hidden. Hasten, therefore, with your entire people and fight with all your strength, lest such treasure fall into the hands of the Turks and the Patzinaks; because, while they are infinite, just now sixty thousand are daily expected, and I fear that by means of this treasure they gradually will seduce our covetous soldiers, as did formerly Julius Caesar who by reason of avarice invaded the kingdom of the Franks,’* and as Antichrist will do at the end of the world after he has captured the whole earth. Therefore, lest you should lose the kingdom of the Christians and, what is greater, the Lord’s Sepulcher,2° act while you still have time; and then you will have not doom, but a reward in heaven, Amen. The letter ends. 38For testimony relative to the presence in Constantinople of these various relies, see H Ep., pp. 200-205, nn, 713-87. . 19 According to Hagenmeyer (idid., p. 208, n. 103), the reference to Julius Caesar's avarice is evidence of the author's familiarity with Suetonius’ biography of Julius Caesar. Hagenmeyer failed to explain how a reader of Suctonius could have erred to the extent of making Caesar invade the kingdom of the Franks. 20 Hagenmeyer insisted (ibid., p. 209, n, 106) that the possible loss here visualized is not that of the Holy Sepulcher itself, but of the access thereto; and this view, it must be conceded, has logic in its favor, since the document speaks of Jerusalem as being in the possession of the “pagans.”