Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant: The Archaeology and History of the Latin East

by Kevin J. Lewis (Adapted by), Balázs Major (Adapted by), Micaela Sinibaldi (Adapted by), Jennifer Thompson (Adapted by)

Overview

Written to celebrate the prestigious career of Professor Denys Pringle, this collection of articles produced by many of the leading archaeologists and historians in the field of crusades studies offers a compilation of pioneering scholarship on recent studies on the Latin East. The geographical breadth of topics discussed in each chapter reflects both Pringle’s international collaborations and research interests, and the wide development of scholarly interest in the subject. With a concentration on the areas corresponding to the crusader states during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the articles also offer research into the neighbouring areas of Cyprus, Anatolia, Greece and the West, and the legacy of the crusader period there, with results from recent archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783169269
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	08/20/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
File size:	12 MB
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About the Author

Kevin J. Lewis has served as past and present postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London.
Balázs Major is lecturer in the Department of Arabic Studies and chair of the Department of Archaeology at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary.
Micaela Sinibaldi is currently serving as deputy director of the Kenyon Institute, Council for British Research, in the Levant; she has recently been the director of the Islamic Bayda Project in Petra, Jordan and a senior postdoctoral fellow at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, Germany.
Jennifer A. Thomas is an archaeologist for the Government of Saskatchewan in Canada.

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Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant

The Archaeology and History of the Latin East

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By Micaela Sinibaldi, Kevin J. Lewis, Balázs Major, Jennifer A. Thompson

University of Wales Press

Copyright © 2016 The Contributors
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78316-926-9

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CHAPTER 1

JERUSALEM'S TWO MONTES GAUDII

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BENJAMIN Z. KEDAR

Among the countless contributions Professor Denys Pringle has made to the study of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem is the observation that in addition to the Mons Gaudii at al-Nabi Samwil, about 8 km northwest of Jerusalem, there existed an 'alternative' Mons Gaudii closer to the city. It is the purpose of the present paper, first, to elucidate the medieval term Mons Gaudii; second, to examine in detail the documentation pertaining to Jerusalem's two Montes Gaudii; and, third, to offer a hypothesis on the relationship between them.

A medieval pilgrim often saw the goal of his voyage for the first time from a point that came to be known as Mons Gaudii, the Mount of Joy. Rome's Mons Gaudii – commonly identified with Monte Mario, north of Saint Peter's – is first mentioned in accounts of events said to have taken place in the mid-tenth century. In about 1080 the anonymous chronicler who described the foundation of the abbey of Brauweiler wrote that from the top of that Mons Gaudii one could see Rome in its entirety. Suger of Saint-Denis, in his description of Emperor Henry V's entry into Rome in 1111, mentions 'the place called Mons Gaudii, from which those who come [to Rome] see for the first time the thresholds of the blessed Apostles'. The linkage between the name of the place, Mount of Joy, and the emotion experienced by the pilgrims as they were drawing close to their destination, was made explicit by William of Malmesbury. Sometime after 1129 he wrote that the name Mons Gaudii was given to it by pilgrims who, glimpsing from that spot the walls of Rome toward the end of their long voyage, 'imagine beforehand the joys of felicitous hope'.

The Mons Gaudii, about 5 km east of Santiago de Compostela, known in Spanish as Monte del Gozo, is mentioned in about 1104 as the site at which Archbishop Gelmírez ordered the erection of the Church of the Holy Cross. It is from the top of Monte del Gozo that pilgrims coming from the east get their first view of Santiago. Nowadays it is apparently a rather disappointing view: as David Lodge puts it in one of his novels, 'from this distance Santiago looks like any other modern city, ringed by motorways, industrial estates and tower blocks. If you look very hard, or have very good eyes, you can just make out the spires of the Cathedral'.

Montes Gaudii also existed close to cultic centres less prominent than Rome or Santiago. Thus for instance, in about 1000, Syrus, the earliest biographer of Abbot Maieul of Cluny, mentions a place that is called Mons Gaudii because it is from there that one sees an important church. In about 1200 the anonymous author of the Life of Robert of Molesme mentions a place in which there was a heap of stones 'that is called Mons Gaudii Dei'. The place was about 2 miles distant from the church in which Robert of Molesme was buried – and one may surmise that it was from this spot that one saw that church for the first time. There was also a Mons Gaudii near Limoges, another near Oviedo, and still another that was to have been established 5 leagues from Saint-Trophime of Arles. In short, the Mons Gaudii was quite a widespread phenomenon; and at least one contemporary commented on it in general terms. This was the Dominican theologian and biblical scholar Hugh of Saint-Cher (c. 1200–63), who in his commentary on Proverbs 26:8 wrote that Christian pilgrims use to pile a heap of stones at the spot from which they see for the first time the monastery to which they are going, 'and this [heap] is called Mons Gaudii'.

Now, what about Jerusalem? According to the customary view, which one encounters time and again in modern historical writings, Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii is situated on the most prominent peak in the city's vicinity, 885 m high, at which Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition locates the burial place of the Prophet Samuel (Shmu'el ha-Navi in Hebrew, al-Nabi Samwil in Arabic). The site was called Mons Gaudii because it was from there that the warriors of the First Crusade saw Jerusalem for the first time on 7 June 1099; their joy at seeing at long last the goal of their 3-year-long expedition gave the place its name.King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1118–31) donated the place to the Cistercians, together with a gift of 1,000 gold coins; but Bernard of Clairvaux declined to send his brothers there, as his biographer Gaufridus puts it, 'on account of pagan [that is, Muslim] incursions and the inclemency of the weather'. Instead, he gave the place and the money to the Premonstratensians, who agreed to go there. In 1156, abbot R. of Saint Samuel helped to settle a dispute between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the canons of the Mount of Olives. The possessions of the Premonstratensian church of saint samuel are listed in a charter that King Baldwin V issued in 1185; discovered and edited by Hans Eberhard Mayer in 1964 and republished by him in 2010, it records the grants the kings of Jerusalem, from Baldwin II on, made to the church. The seal of the Premonstratensian abbey was published in 1980 by Michele Piccirillo: on the obverse side the Prophet Samuel is anointing a king of Israel, and the legend reads SI[gill]UM SANCTI SAMUELIS; the reverse side depicts God's call to young Samuel at Shilo, with the legend SAMUEL SAMUEL reproducing God's words to him according to 1 Samuel 3:10. The Premonstratensians remained in their abbey until 1187, when Saladin conquered most of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the fifteenth century Samuel's purported burial place belonged to Jerusalem's Jewish community. Still later, the remains of the Premonstratensian church were turned into a mosque, which was heavily damaged during the fighting between the British and the Turks in December 1917; it was reconstructed under the British Mandate. Since the Six-Day War of 1967 the nave of the medieval church has served as a mosque, while the northern aisle and the crypt have become a Jewish place of prayer. Recent excavations have shown that in the twelfth century the Premonstratensian church was surrounded by other buildings and that the entire complex was defended by a deep moat cut in the rock. The moat's completion appears to have been prevented by the arrival of Saladin's men in 1187.

Yet both assumptions – that Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii received its name because of the joy of the warriors of the First Crusade upon their first glimpse of the Holy City, and that during the First Frankish Kingdom Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii was located at the traditional burial place of the Prophet Samuel – rest on precarious foundations. No medieval source links the name Mons Gaudii to the crusaders' joy in 1099; apparently, the first reference to such a link dates from 1670. sources dating from the days of the First Frankish Kingdom mention Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii without locating it at Samuel's burial place; and, on the other hand, they mention the church of Saint Samuel without stating that it stands on Mons Gaudii. Moreover, there are twelfth-century sources that place Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii at quite a distance from Saint Samuel. Let me present the evidence for these iconoclastic assertions, which undermine not only the accepted view but also an earlier remark of my own.

The earliest mention of Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii appears in a description that dates from either just before or just after the Crusader conquest of 1099. To Jerusalem's west, states the anonymous author, 'one gets sight of the remarkable Mons Gaudii. It is one mile from this mountain to the city'. The author does not link the Prophet Samuel to that mountain; and since a few lines down he wrongly locates the Sheep Pool as being east – instead of north – of the Lord's Temple, his positioning of Mons Gaudii to the west of Jerusalem must not be taken as factual. Several of the round, largely schematic twelfth-century plans of Jerusalem show Mons Gaudii as a rocky mountain roughly north-west of the city; on the map now in Brussels, pilgrims are standing on the mountain's top. Yet, like the anonymous description, none of these plans describes Mons Gaudii as being the burial place of the Prophet Samuel, while the positioning of the mountain west-north-west, north-west or north-north-west of Jerusalem may be about as imprecise as the location of Bethlehem, on these maps, as being west-south-west or south-west of it. The royal charters of 1115 and 1120 that confirm the donation of a piece of land situated iuxta Montem Gaudii neither link that mountain to the Prophet samuel nor provide a clue as to its location.

On the other hand, three twelfth-century references to Samuel's burial place do not describe it as located on Mons Gaudii. The Russian abbot Daniil who visited the Holy Land in about 1106 mentions that on the right-hand side of the way from Jaffa there is, near Jerusalem, a great mountain by the name of Armathem on which there is the tomb of the Prophet Samuel; he does not state that the mountain is called Mons Gaudii. Bernard of Clairvaux, in the letter by which he transerred to the Premonstratensians the donation of King Baldwin II, mentions the place merely as locum sancti Samuelis. And Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller from Iberia who probably visited the Holy Land between 1169 and 1171, mentions that about two parsa'ot (that is, about 10–14 km) from Jerusalem there is 'Saint Samuel de Shiloh, which is Shiloh'. He claims that the Edomites (that is, the Franks) found the tomb of the Prophet Samuel at Ramla, transferred it to Shiloh, 'built over it a large church (bamah) and called it Saint Samuel de Shiloh until this day'. This tallies with the foundation of the Premonstratensian house of Saint Samuel in the days of King Baldwin II, about two generations before Benjamin's visit. Yet Benjamin, who gives several place names in their Romance form, does not refer to saint samuel as Montjoie. Similarly, King Baldwin V's charter of 1185, which confirms the possessions of the Premonstratensian house of Saint Samuel, refers to it as the ecclesia Sancti Samuelis that stands on the mons Sancti Samuelis. The charter does not mention the mountain being known also as Mons Gaudii; as will be made clear below, it implies quite compellingly that Mons Gaudii was situated elsewhere.

While some sources mention Mons Gaudii without identifying it with Saint Samuel, and others mention Saint Samuel without locating it on Mons Gaudii, two twelfth-century authors indicate quite clearly that Saint Samuel and Mons Gaudii were two different sites. First, the German pilgrim Theoderich, who visited the Holy Land in 1169 (or 1172), reports that Mount shiloh (Sylo), situated 2 miles from Jerusalem, is the burial place of the Prophet Samuel; the place is now known as Ad Sanctum Samuelem and is inhabited by a monastic community of Grisi (that is, the greys). He does not mention that the place is known also as Mons Gaudii. Yet elsewhere in his account he mentions a Mons Gaudii, which he locates near the beginning of the Valley of Josaphat, that is, at a spot far closer to the city of Jerusalem; that passage is discussed below in detail. Second, the anonymous author of the account of the fall of the first Frankish kingdom in 1187 relates that Saladin's men hastened to the holy mountain of Shiloh, 'where there is built now a cloister of Premonstratensian canons in honour of Saint Samuel'. Later, describing the siege of Jerusalem in September/October 1187, he relates that after a first attempt to take the city, Saladin moved his forces to face the northern wall. He ordered, writes the anonymous chronicler, that they 'pitch tents in the Valley of Josaphat and all over the Mount of Olives and all over Mons Gaudii and all over all the mountainous areas in that direction'. Here Mons Gaudii is lumped together with the Valley of Josaphat and the Mount of Olives that is, with places in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that this Mons Gaudii, too, was located close to the city. Indeed, to position besieging troops as far as at Saint Samuel, about 8 km northwest of the city, would make no military sense, because by that time almost the entire kingdom was in Saladin's hands and the Franks of Jerusalem could not expect reinforcements from the outside. This chronicler, in addition, makes a statement that clarifies beyond any doubt that, for him, Saint Samuel and Mons Gaudii were two different places. The statement occurs in a passage dealing with the advance of Saladin's brother Saphadin (that is, al-Malik al-Adil) from Egypt to Palestine's coastal plain. Saphadin, so relates the chronicler, besieged the castle of Mirabel, and, when the defenders capitulated, he gave them an escort of 400 Turks who were instructed to accompany them safely 'up to the cloister of Saint Samuel, which is on Mount Shiloh, two miles from Jerusalem'. And the chronicler goes on to report: 'They accompanied them however up to Jerusalem's Mons Gaudii, and were then put to flight and slain by the Knights Templar and the men of Jerusalem.' It is noteworthy that, like Benjamin and Theoderich, our anonymous chronicler identifies Saint Samuel as located at Shiloh; like Theoderich, he gives the distance from Jerusalem to Saint Samuel as 2 miles. But the main conclusion arising from this passage is that the Mons Gaudii in question could by no means have been identical with Saint Samuel, and that it must have been closer to Jerusalem than Saint Samuel. Thus we may safely conclude that, in the twelfth century, Jerusalem had a Mons Gaudii that was not situated at Saint Samuel.

So where was it situated? To answer this question, let us focus on three passages in Theoderich's account. In the first he relates that two roads lead from Acre to Jerusalem: the via superior leads from Acre to Nazareth and then runs south to Samaria and Nablus and, eventually, to Jerusalem; the via maritima runs from Acre via the coastal plain to Caesarea Maritima and Lydda, and thence to Jerusalem. In a second passage Theoderich provides a detailed, and accurate, description of the brook Kidron and the Valley of Josaphat – the deep gorge below Jerusalem's eastern wall – and states that this valley starts from Mons Gaudii, whence one enters the city from the north. Now, an examination of a detailed map of Jerusalem's surroundings reveals that the uppermost reaches of the Valley of Josaphat begin below a ridge about 820 m high, extending from north-west to southeast. The road leading from the north to Jerusalem – The – oderich's via superior – crosses this ridge at a point situated about 2.2 km north of Jerusalem's northern wall. Since it is from this spot that travellers arriving from the north suddenly see historic Jerusalem, one should seek Theoderich's Mons Gaudii here. Indeed, in a third passage in which Theoderich describes the localities along the road leading from Jerusalem northward to Mahumeria (the present-day alBira east of Ramallah), Nablus and Samaria – that is, along the via superior – he notes that 2 miles north of Jerusalem is a small church, where the pilgrims, filled with great joy (magno gaudio) at their first sight of the holy city, lay down their crosses and take off their shoes. The distance of 2 miles is inexact, and the name Mons Gaudii is not spelled out; but the insistence that this is the place from which people coming from the north first see Jerusalem leaves no doubt that the little church stood where the via superior crossed the ridge above the upper reaches of the Valley of Josaphat – at the place to which I shall henceforth refer as Theoderich's Mons Gaudii.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant by Micaela Sinibaldi, Kevin J. Lewis, Balázs Major, Jennifer A. Thompson. Copyright © 2016 The Contributors. Excerpted by permission of University of Wales Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements, ix,
Introduction, xi,
List of Figures, xv,
List of Tables, xxv,
Note on Transcriptions, xxvii,
Notes on contributors, xxix,
I. LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY OF SETTLEMENT, 1,
1. Benjamin Z. Kedar Jerusalem's Two Montes Gaudii, 3,
2. Adrian J. Boas The Streets of Frankish Acre, 21,
3. Rabei G. Khamisy The Mount Tabor Territory under frankish control, 39,
4. Herve Barbe Safed castle and its Territory: Frankish Settlement and Colonisation in Eastern Upper Galilee During the Crusader Period, 55,
5. Micaela Sinibaldi Settlement in the Petra Region During the Crusader Period: A Summary of the Historical and Archaeological Evidence, 81,
6. Kevin James Lewis Shifting Borders in the Latin East: The Case of the County of Tripoli, 103,
7. Balazs Major Where Was the Town of Valenia Located in the Thirteenth Century?, 117,
8. Anthony Luttrell The Developments of Rhodes Town After 1306, 131,
II. WARFARE AND FORTIFICATIONS, 143,
9. John France Egypt, the Jazira and Jerusalem: Middle-Eastern Tensions and the Latin States in the Twelfth Century, 145,
10. Susan B. Edgington Espionage and Counter-Espionage: An Episode in the Reign of Baldwin I of Jerusalem, 157,
11. Frank R. Trombley Three sieges of Nikaia in Bithynia (A.D. 727, 1097 and 1331): An Archaelogical Perspective, 169,
12. Andrew Petersen Medieval Towers in Syria and Palestine, 187,
13. Jean Mesqui The Use of Posterns in the Frankish Fortifications of the Middle East, 207,
14. Cristina Tonghini An Ayyubid Square-planned Tower at the Citadel of Damascus: Tower 8, 223,
15. James Petre Commonality in Crusader Castle Construction in Armenian Cilicia and Cyprus: The case for Kantara and the Catalyst of Korykos, 241,
III. ECONOMY, ARTS AND SOCIETY, 261,
16. David Jacoby Frankish Beirut: A Minor Economic Centre, 263,
17. Nicholas Coureas Commercial Relations Between Lusignan Cyprus and the Kingdom of Naples in the late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth centuries, 277,
18. Vardit Shotten-Hallel and Robert Kool What Does It Take and exactly How Much? Building a Church in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Twelfth century, 289,
19. Richard Fawcett From Preceptory to Parish Church: The Church of the Knights Hospitallers at Torphichen, 305,
20. Jaroslav Folda The Berlin Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels and the Art of Chrysography, 323,
21. Jennifer A. Thompson A Study of the Decorated Slab Tombstones of the Crusader Cemetery at 'Atlit, Israel, 339,
22. Piers D. Mitchell Paleopathology of the Crusades, 349,
23. Chris Schabel Ab hac hora in antea: Oaths to the Roman Church in Frankish Cyprus (and Greece), 361,
IV. NARRATIVE AND DOCUMENTARY SOURCES, 373,
24. Elena Bellomo A Neglected Source for the History of the Hospital: Master Josbert's Letter to the Consuls and Commune of Savona (1171 – 7), 375,
25. Helen J. Nicholson 'La Damoisele del chastel': Women's Role in the Defence and Functioning of Castles in Medieval Writing from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries, 387,
26. Peter W. Edbury Making Sense of the Annales de Terre Sainte: Thirteenth-century Vernacular Narratives from the Latin East, 403,
27. Bernard Hamilton An Anglican Account of the Holy land in 1697: Henry Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, 415,
Bibliography, 427,
List of Publications by Denys Pringle, 473,
Index, 491,

Editorial Reviews

“This is a splendid, balanced collection, bringing together a pleasing blend of young and established scholars in papers that appropriately embrace the wide combination of archaeological, documentary, and topographical interests that have characterised Denys Pringle’s own scholarship: a fine and fitting tribute.”

Christopher Tyerman