Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the priests of the
church rubbed balsam-oil upon the iron chain which
held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards
set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the
fire stole down to the wick of the lamp and lighted
it; then they shouted with admiration, as if fire
from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified
their faith. Hakem ordered the instant demolition
of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it was accordingly
demolished. Another time a dead dog had been
laid at the door of a mosque; and the multitude accused
the Christians of this insult. Hakem ordered
them all to be put to death. The soldiers were
preparing to execute the order when a young Christian
said to his friends, “It were too grievous that
the whole Church should perish; it were better that
one should die for all; only promise to bless my memory
year by year.” He proclaimed himself alone
to blame for the insult, and was accordingly alone
put to death. It is from this story of the historian
William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his
Jerusalem Delivered,
has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia;
a fine example, and not the only one, of an act of
tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring a great poet
with the idea of a masterpiece. “All the
deeds of Hakem were without motive,” says the
Arab historian Makrisi, “and the dreams suggested
to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable interpretation.”
These and many other similar stories reached the West,
spread amongst the Christian people and roused them
to pity for their brethren in the East and to wrath
against the oppressors. And it was at a critical
period, in the midst of the pious alarms and desires
of atonement excited by the expectation of the end
of the world a thousand years after the coming of
the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way
opened for purchasing remission of their sins by delivering
other Christians from suffering, and by avenging the
wrongs of their creed. On all sides arose challenges
and appeals to the warlike ardor of the faithful.
The greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become
Pope Sylvester II., constituted himself interpreter
of the popular feeling. He wrote, in the name
of the Church of Jerusalem, a letter addressed to the
universal Church: “To work, then, soldier
of Christ! Be our standard-bearer and our champion!
And if with arms thou canst not do so, aid us with
thy words, thy wealth. What is it, pray, that
thou givest, and to whom, pray, dost thou give?
Of thine abundance thou givest a small matter, and
thou givest to Him who hath freely given thee all thou
possessest; but He will not accept freely that which
thou shalt give; for he will multiply thine offering
and will pay it back to thee hereafter.”
Some years after Gerbert, another great mind, the
greatest among the popes of the middle ages, Gregory
VII., proclaimed an expedition, at the head of which
he would place himself, to go and deliver Jerusalem
and the Christians of the East from the insults and
the tyranny of the infidels.
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