Reuertimini ergo quantocius, et dicite uestris senioribus, quia si per omnia cupiunt effici Turci, et deum uestrum quem uos inclini colitis abnegare uolunt et leges uestras spernere, nos illis hanc et satis plus dabimus de terra, et ciuitates et castella adhuc autem quod nemo uestrorum remanebit pedes, sed erunt omnes milites sicut et nos sumus; et habebimus semper eos in summa amicitia.
[GF 67: Do you want to know our answer? Then go back as fast as you can, and tell your leaders that if they will all become Turks, and renounce the god whom you worship on bended knee, and cast off your laws, we will give them this land and more besides, with cities and castles, so that none of you shall remain a foot-soldier, but you shall all be knights as we are: and tell them that we will count them always among our dearest friends.]32
The pagans’ apparent generosity, promising to turn every poor foot soldier rich, is rooted in an assumption of Eastern affluence. Throughout the Gesta, the armies of the enemy are said to travel with a wealth of provisions that become the Christians’ through conquest. As Hill has pointed out, there is something strongly formulaic in the description of the plunder the Crusaders find after every battle. After the Battle of Antioch, for instance, “Illi uero dimiserunt ibi papiliones suos, et aurum, et argentum, multaque ornamenta; oues quoque et boues, equos et mulos, camelos et asinos, frumentum et uinum, farinam et alia multa quae nobis erant necessaria” [GF 70: “The enemy left his pavilions, with gold and silver and many furnishings, as well as sheep, oxen, horses, mules, camels and asses, corn, wine, flour and many other things of which we were badly in need”]. Similarly, after the Battle of Ascalon, “Reuersi sunt nostri ad tentoria eorum, acceperuntque innumera spolia auri, argenti, omniumque bonorum; omniumque animalium genera, ac omnium armorum instrumenta” [GF 97: “Our men went back to the enemy camp and found innumerable spoils of gold and silver, piles of riches, and all kinds of animals, weapons and tools”]. What here echoes the chansons, however, is not just the repetitive wording, the structuring of the spoils from precious metals to valuables to animals and necessary goods, but also the emphasis on the Easterner as opulent. Everywhere the value of the Muslims’ trappings is shown, such as Yaghi-Siyan’s (“Balteum quoque eius et uaginam appretiauerunt sexaginta bizanteis” [GF 48: “His belt and scabbard were worth sixty bezants”]) and the Egyptian emir’s (“Ensem uero emit quidam sexaginta bisanteis” [GF 97: “The amir’s sword was bought for sixty bezants”]); even the dead are buried with “pallia, bisanteos aureos, arcus, sagittas, et alia plurima instrumenta, quae nominare nequimus” [GF 42: “cloaks, gold bezants, bows and arrows, and other tools the names of which we do not know”].
Furthermore, Muslims in the Gesta are not just religiously misguided and opulent, they are also morally decadent: luxurious, promiscuous, and at the same time to a certain extent emasculated. These characteristics are introduced into the Gesta by and through Kerbogha, the best-described Muslim in the work. Shortly after arriving at Antioch with an enormous army, he finds the Franks in dreadful shape. Buoyed by this, the Anonymous says, he sends a letter to his coreligionists in Khorasan. In this wholly imaginary missive the atabeg of Mosul elevates entertainment and lust almost to patriotic duty:
Caliphae nostro apostolico, ac nostri regi domino Soldano militi fortissimo, atque omnibus prudentissimis Corrozanae militibus, salus et immensus honor. Satis sint leti et gauisi iocunda concordia, et satisfaciant uentribus, imperent et sermocinent per uniuersam regionem illam, ut omnino dent sese ad petulantiam et luxuriam, multosque filios patrare congaudeant, qui contra Christianos fortiter pugnare preualeant.
[GF 52: To the khalif our pope and the lord sultan our king, that most valiant warrior, and to all the most gallant knights of Khorasan, greeting and boundless honour! Enjoy yourselves, rejoicing with one accord, and fill your bellies, and let commands and injunctions be sent throughout the whole country that all men shall give themselves up to wantonness and lust, and take their pleasure in getting many sons who shall fight bravely against the Christians and defeat them.]
What better way to oppose the isolated, starving Franks than to eat, drink, and rampantly procreate? Interestingly, this passage, which shows Kerbogha at his most ebullient, confidently urging the Muslims on to debauchery, is followed immediately by another that shows him in a very different light. The passage in which Kerbogha’s mother approaches her son and advises him not to fight the Franks has garnered some critical attention; while some have discussed the veracity of the episode and its possible origin as “camp gossip,” others, notably Natasha Hodgson, have focused on the remarkable qualities ascribed to Kerbogha’s mother and on the implications of her words, which suggest the superiority of the Christian religion.33 However, even though the episode presents Kerbogha’s mother as caring and learned, the Anonymous’s intent is not so much to describe Muslim women as it is to cast a shadow over Kerbogha. Although he is depicted as the apex of Turkish power in the text, the one to whom the unfortunate Sensadolus cannot but subject himself and who confidently urges his coreligionists on to enjoy themselves in the expectation of victory, the passage shows Kerbogha struggling to get out from under his mother’s wings. It presents him as not only debauched but also immature and perhaps weak—an unheroic foil to the Franks, whose women are mostly limited to serving refreshments to the men on the battlefield.34
KNIGHTS OF CHRIST
The Muslim opponents as we find them in the Gesta therefore closely resemble the Saracens in the chansons de geste. They are ethnically diverse, wealthy, and polytheist, which makes them less worthy as knights than the Christians. As suggested by the depictions of Kerbogha, the best-described Muslim in the work, we also find them to be both morally dissolute and unduly influenced by women. Confronting the Muslims on the battlefield are the Christians, who are very much the opposite: united, morally just, and of course relentlessly poor and miserable. The Anonymous’s description of the Christian army, too, is deeply rooted in the chansons: he relies on them to define the Crusaders’ reasons for taking the cross and their relation to the divine, their military qualities and accomplishments, as well as their ethnic makeup. Furthermore, as he bases his definition of Crusade and what it entails to a large extent on his portrayal of the motivations and achievements of the Christians, this also markedly affects his Crusade ideology.
At the very beginning of his work the Anonymous outlines what led so many Christians, among whom he includes himself, to take up arms and set out for the East:
Cum iam appropinquasset ille terminus quem dominus Iesus cotidie suis demonstrat fidelibus, specialiter in euangelio dicens: “Si quis uult post me uenire, abneget semetipsum et tollat crucem suam et sequatur me,” facta est igitur motio ualida per uniuersas Galliarum regiones, ut si aliquis Deum studiose puroque corde et mente sequi desideraret, atque post ipsum crucem fideliter baiulare uellet, non pigritaretur Sancti Sepulchri uiam celerius arripere.
[GF 1: When that time had already come, of which the Lord Jesus warns his faithful people every day, especially in the Gospel where he says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me,” there was a great stirring of heart throughout all the Frankish lands, so that if any man, with all his heart and all his mind, really wanted to follow God and faithfully to bear the cross after him, he could make no delay in taking the road to the Holy Sepulchre as quickly as possible.]
The above, with its heavy reliance on Matthew 16:24, has led Kenneth Baxter Wolf to argue that the Anonymous considered and consequently described the Crusade as nothing more than a pilgrimage: “The language is exclusively that of a pilgrimage, where the whole point is to walk in Christ’s footsteps and to experience the sufferings of his passion … it is the pilgrimage aspect of the crusade, not the conquests per se, that dominate the account.”35 This, however, is only half of the explanation offered in the early pages of the Gesta of why Christians set out, and were obligated to set out, for Jerusalem. Immediately after the Anonymous speaks of the need for the faithful to take up their crosses, he adds the following:
Ait namque domnus apostolicus “Fratres, uos oportet
