Christmas Every Day

1111

Death of a crusading prince

Bohemond of Taranto, prince of Antioch (1058-1111) was one of the leaders of the First Crusade and the founder of the principality of Antioch. Bohemond’s father was the notorious Robert Guiscard, a penniless Norman adventurer, who became first a bandit in southern Italy and then fought his way to a dukedom as a sworn vassal of the papacy. Normans in the 11th century had swarmed out of their French duchy and carved out kingdoms and fiefdoms in England and the Mediterranean where they battled both Muslim armies and the Byzantine Empire. It was the dream of Guiscard that he would conquer the Eastern Roman Empire and that one day Bohemond would sit on the imperial throne in Constantinople. Initially successful in their forays into the territories of the Byzantines, the Norman forces were eventually driven out of the Balkans.

When his father died in 1085, Bohemond fought his half-brother Roger and his fierce step-mother Sichelgaita for succession to Guiscard’s duchy. He was forced to settle for a portion in southern Italy, causing him to look for more territory to conquer. When the First Crusade was preached in 1095 by Pope Urban, who urged the kings of western Europe to recapture the Holy Land, Bohemond saw his opportunity. He raised an army and led it across the Balkans to Constantinople and a rendezvous with the other crusading western nobles and their forces.

The Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus was dismayed by the presence of a massive western force outside the walls. When he appealed to the pope for help against Seljuk Turks he was hoping for bands of mercenary cavalry, not the presence of warriors led by his very recent enemy Bohemond. Alexius met the crusaders and agreed to help and supply them in the journey across Asia Minor as long as they agreed to return imperial lands now under Muslim control to him. The emperor’s daughter Anna Comnena wrote a biography of her father in which she drew a very vivid portrait of Bohemond, whom she had met and of whom she said, he

was such as, to put it briefly, had never before been seen in the land of the Romans, be he either of the barbarians or of the Greeks (for he was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and his reputation was terrifying). Let me describe the barbarian’s appearance more particularly — he was so tall in stature that he overtopped the tallest by nearly one cubit, narrow in the waist and loins, with broad shoulders and a deep chest and powerful arms. And in the whole build of the body he was neither too slender nor overweighted with flesh, but perfectly proportioned … His skin all over his body was very white, and in his face the white was tempered with red. His hair was yellowish, but did not hang down to his waist like that of the other barbarians; for the man was not inordinately vain of his hair, but had it cut short to the ears. Whether his beard was reddish, or any other colour I cannot say, for the razor had passed over it very closely and left a surface smoother than chalk… His blue eyes indicated both a high spirit and dignity; and his nose and nostrils breathed in the air freely; his chest corresponded to his nostrils and by his nostrils…the breadth of his chest. For by his nostrils nature had given free passage for the high spirit which bubbled up from his heart. A certain charm hung about this man but was partly marred by a general air of the horrible… He was so made in mind and body that both courage and passion reared their crests within him and both inclined to war.

The First Crusade fought its way across Asia Minor, defeating all the Turkish armies it met, but relations with the Byzantines were not easy. The crusaders accused the Byzantines of keeping them under-supplied, and of treacherous dealings with Muslim forces. (The Byzantines were at peace with a number of Islamic emirates whereas the westerners were less able to make such a fine distinction.) Finally, after a bloody siege at Antioch which fell in 1098, Bohemond decided to keep the city and remain there despite the emperor’s claims and the desire of other crusaders to continue on to Jerusalem. He named a Catholic clergyman as patriarch of Antioch and expelled the Orthodox incumbent. Hoping to enlarge his new principality Bohemond embarked on a daring expedition in 1100 but was captured and held for ransom until 1103.

Whatever crusading idealism that might have existed in Bohemond’s soul was not evident after this point, as for the rest of his life he battled Byzantines, Seljuk Turks and those crusading lords who supported the emperor’s claims. He returned to Europe to raise men and more money but instead of returning to the Holy Land he again invaded Byzantine Europe where he was defeated and forced to a humiliating peace, accepting Alexius’s sovereignty over Antioch. He died in Italy in 1111.

1993

The siege of the Branch Davidian compound begins

Vernon Wayne Howell (1959-93), was a charismatic ne’er-do-well who, in the late 1980s, engineered a takeover of the Branch Davidian sect, a breakaway splinter of the Shepherd’s Rod, which was itself the product of a schism in the Seventh Day Adventist movement. The sect’s previous leader had killed a man with an axe for asserting that Howell was the Messiah and this enabled Howell to achieve leadership of the group and control of its compound near Waco, Texas which they had dubbed the Mount Carmel Centre.

In 1990 Howell had his name legally changed to David Koresh — David to signify his claim to the lineage of the Old Testament King and Koresh as a nod to the Persian emperor Cyrus who had liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity and was hailed as a Messiah. His Biblical interpretation foresaw an imminent martyrdom and an apocalyptic end times in which his children by multiple wives would rule the world after the return of Christ. Rumours of polygamy and under-age sex, as well as the illegal stockpiling of weapons, prompted an ill-advised raid on the compound on this day in 1993 in which four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed. This marked the beginning of a 51-day siege in which controversial government tactics and the increasing madness of Koresh coincided in a bloody and fiery climax which took 76 lives, including 17 children.

Two years later the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing which killed 168 people cited the Waco siege as a reason for their anti-government terrorism.

Commemoration of George Herbert

On this day the Anglican Church honours George Herbert (1593-1633), politician, orator, priest and poet. Herbert was born in Wales but sent to be educated in England. At Cambridge he was so learned in Latin that he was named the University Orator with the task of delivering speeches of note in that language, such as welcoming King James I who, for a time, became his patron. He sat in Parliament as an M.P. twice but the accession of Charles I seems to have blunted his worldly ambitions. Herbert married Jane Danvers who is said to have fallen in love with him without having met, so esteemed was he by her relatives. Izaak Walton, his biographer, notes that the couple met each other only three days before the wedding “at which time a mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as a Conqueror enters into a surprized City, and made there such Laws and Resolutions, as neither party was able to resist.” He became a priest and spent the last few years of his life as rector of the small parish of Fuggleston St. Peter in Wiltshire where he made a reputation as a faithful servant of his flock.

Today he is revered as one of the greatest of the “metaphysical poets”, a group of 17th century English writers which includes John Donne, Henry Vaughan and Andrew Marvell. Here is one of his most famous works:

Prayer (I)

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

         God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

         Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

         The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

         Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

         Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

         Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

1229

The Sixth Crusade regains Jerusalem

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) was one of the most remarkable men of the Middle Ages, known in his own time as “Stupor Mundi”, the “Wonder of the World”. His attempts to dominate both Germany and Italy attracted the hostility of the papacy, an antipathy which would lead in the long run to the gutting of the Empire. He was excommunicated four times, called the “Antichrist” by a pope and showed suspicious favour to Muslims, but went on Crusade and regained Jerusalem for Christendom.

The spirit of crusading was still alive in Europe despite the disgraceful Fourth Crusade which never reached the Holy Land and ended up sacking Christian Constantinople instead. Frederick in 1220 promised to go on the Fifth Crusade launched at the Muslim stronghold in Egypt but he never appeared. The failure of that expedition was therefore laid at his feet. He promised the pope that he would lead another crusade by 1227 but when that seemed as if it would not materialize, he was excommunicated by Gregory IX.

Finally in 1229 Frederick arrived on the strip of the eastern Mediterranean coast still held by Christian forces. He discovered that he need not fight for Jerusalem and that the local Muslim leader, preoccupied by other wars, was wiling to offer Jerusalem, Bethlehem and a 10 year truce. Unfortunately the Church was not impressed by this action which had been carried out without its approval and Frederick quarrelled with local crusader barons. He left the Holy Land holding a disputed claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and still excommunicated. Jerusalem soon fell back into Muslim hands.

St Agatha’s Day

There are thousands of saints who have been venerated by Christians  over the century and depicted in art. Since most of their real features are unknown to us, how do artists portray them and how can viewers distinguish one pictured saint from another? The trick is to look for visual clues. A saint, for example, carrying a palm branch may be reliably counted on to be a martyr. Or a saint can be determined by the presence of the weapon that killed him — St Paul by a sword, St Lawrence by a griddle or St Sebastian by an arrow. Then again, since saints can be prayed to for particular ailments, they are often shown with that particular part of the body emphasized. Those suffering from skin diseases will want to turn to St Job who sat on a dunghill scratching his afflicted flesh. And so it is with St Agatha, the saint who is memorialized with images of a breast.

Agatha was a Christian virgin who was caught up in the Decian persecution of 250. She refused to renounce her religion and so was sentenced to a brothel but refused to participate and remained a virgin. Her breasts were ripped off with pincers (though the painting above shows her wounds being healed by St Peter in their prison) and she was burnt to  death on hot coals. To this day, sufferers of sore breasts ask St Agatha to help them. In Catania where she originated, they celebrate her feast day with great spectacle. One visitor has described it thus:

The nearly manic celebration begins at dawn on February 4 when Agatha’s life-sized effigy, dripping in jewels collected since the 12th century, is pulled through the streets on a 40,000-pound silver carriage by a cast of 5,000 men. The soundtrack of the procession is grunting, crying, and the grinding wheels of the carriage or fercolo pushing through molten candle wax. All the while thousands scream, “Viva Sant’ Agata.”