In the late autumn of 1146, disaster befell the Christians of the city of Edessa. They, or at least some of them, had been chafing under Turkish rule since the city fell to Ê¿Imad al-Din Zengi in December 1144, and an audacious plan had been launched to restore control to its erstwhile Frankish ruler, Joscelin II. While Joscelinâs initial entry into the city went smoothly, his forces were neither able to dislodge the Turkish garrison in the citadel nor to beat back the inevitable counterattack from Zengiâs son, NÅ«r ad-DÄ«n, who had succeeded to power upon Zengiâs death earlier that year. The carnage on the battlefield, as Joscelin and his allies attempted forcibly to retreat from the city, claimed the life of many soldiers including Joscelinâs compatriot and ally Baldwin, lord of the nearby towns of Kesun and Marash; the brutal sack of the city which followed claimed the lives of many more.
This second sack of Edessa was a calamity that reverberated throughout Christendom, culminated in the Second Crusade, and left its impact on virtually all of the contemporary histories.1 Yet of all these works, few give a sense of the personal dimension of loss as effectively as the oration composed by BarseÅ vardapet, Baldwinâs father confessor.
The oration (for, although it was circulated in written form, the style and cadence were well-suited for reading aloud) is arguably the centrepiece of the historical work of Grigor erÄcÊ¿, which itself was a continuation of the Chronicle of MattÊ¿Äos Uá¹hayecÊ¿i. In this article we set out a new edition of the oration based on six surviving witnesses, along with a new English translation that follows the text, occasionally contorted though it may be, as consistently and faithfully as possible. We also provide a short sketch about the author of the oration, its subject, and the historical background against which it was written.
Many years ago, the honorand of this volume mentioned in passing that he would like someday to work on this oration. We can think of no finer scholar to do so, and present this edition in the hope that he, or a scholar inspired in his honour, will give the text the literary study that it deserves.
1 The Author and His Subject
BarseÅ, the author of the oration, is identified by Grigor simply as âthe holy and blessed vardapet ⦠who was father confessor to Baldwinâ.2 Although Grigor says nothing about BarseÅâs later career, he is identified by AliÅ¡an as the same BarseÅ who, as abbot of Drazark monastery, had a âCommentary of the Katholikoiâ (possibly Chrysostom) brought from Constantinople and translated into Armenian.3 In any event, although his presence in the historical record is slight, BarseÅ was evidently a figure of significance to Grigor who, in addition to devoting so much space to the oration, writes about his death and burial at Drazark in the final entry of the Chronicle for the year 1162/3 that âthis is the end of this narration and the beginning of this era.â4
The subject of BarseÅâs letter, Baldwin, is no less shrouded in historical obscurity as to his origins and the majority of his career. Grigor was a resident of Kesun and thus under his rule, and he duly always speaks of âour princeâ in flattering terms, but tells us very little about the activities of his rule. Baldwin would have been in power by 1136 or 1137, when according to Grigor he appealed to the Byzantine emperor, IÅannes II Komnenos, for assistance against a siege of Kesun (Grigor dates this to 1136, but also writes that the emperor was in the area at the time, when most sources agree that the Cilician expedition did not take place until the following year.)5 Although this is, apart from the report of his death, the only record Grigor gives about Baldwinâs activities as lord of Marash and Kesun, our knowledge can be slightly augmented from other sources. Smbat Sparapet writes that Baldwin defeated Lewon, the prince of Cilicia, in 1136, and that the prince of Antioch (Raymond of Poitou, who is erroneously named in the text as Bohemond and who would have only just taken power) captured Lewon three months later.6 Michael the Syrian writes that Baldwin began work on the fortifications of Kesun around 1145, which ceased with his death in battle.7 There also survives a single charter issued by Baldwin, of uncertain date, confirming the donation of land to the Hospitallers of Jerusalem.8 Many Western sources remark on his death in 1146, but are otherwise curiously silent about him.
As for the relationship between Baldwin and BarseÅ, or indeed the wider relationship between Baldwin and the Armenians over whom he ruled, the only evidence comes from the oration itself and accompanying comments by Grigor. According to BarseÅ, Baldwin was fluent enough in Armenian that he could give sermons in both languages (cf. p. 122, ll. 10â12); according to Grigor, Baldwin âloved the Armenian people more than the Franksâ.9 It is an open question how this alleged preference for Armenians can be reconciled either with his campaign against Lewon of Cilicia in 1136, or with the claim made by Michael the Syrian that âil fit peser fortement le joug sur les chrétiens, au point quâil en fit même des esclavesâ in service to the renewal of Kesunâs fortifications.10
Baldwinâs family connections are likewise a mystery. BarseÅ refers in his oration to a brother of Baldwin (cf. p. 130, l. 4), whom Grigor erÄcÊ¿ subsequently names as the prince of Antioch (that is, Raymond of Poitiers), and it is worth noting, as Beech does,11 that Baldwinâs emergence in the sources as lord of Marash coincides with the arrival of Raymond in Antioch. A blood relationship certainly cannot be ruled outâRaymondâs father, William IX of Aquitaine, was not known for his fidelity12âbut there is no surviving documentary evidence to confirm Grigorâs claim and the Latin sources are entirely silent on Baldwinâs origin or familial connections. While Beech speculates that Raymond may have brought Baldwin along on his journey to take power in Antioch, one may just as well speculateâespecially given the claim of Baldwinâs fluency in the Armenian languageâthat he was already in the East, perhaps even already installed as lord of Kesun and Marash, and even that he might have had some hand in the nomination of Raymond as a suitable prince of Antioch.
If Baldwin was indeed the brother of Raymond, this seems eventually to have put him in an awkward position; while there remains some question over the precise nature of the feudal relationships between Antioch, Marash, and Edessa, it is possible that Baldwin owed fealty to Joscelin II of Edessa and family loyalty to Raymond, even as these two had fallen (according to William of Tyre13) into âopen hatredâ. Whatever the circumstances of the relationship between the three men, Baldwin died in the attempt to recapture Edessa for Joscelin, while Raymond was unwilling or unable to intervene.
2 The Text
Of the more than 35 manuscripts carrying the text of the Chronicle of Uá¹hayecÊ¿i, only eight are known to include the oration of BarseÅ. Six of these are included in the present edition. The seventh (Matenadaran MS [M] 3380) is a descriptor of our manuscript E, and the eighth is available at present only through the intermediary of the Jerusalem edition of 1869. That edition was based primarily on two manuscripts, numbers 1051 and 1107 now held in the library of the Armenian patriarchate in Jerusalem. The editors have unfortunately not recorded which of the two manuscripts contained the oration, and the manuscripts have not, to date, been available for consultation. Under these circumstances we considered it unsafe to incorporate the Jerusalem text into the edition without direct access to the manuscript.
The work of establishing a complete stemma of the manuscripts of the Chronicle remains ongoing, but a partial stemma of the six manuscripts used in this edition can nevertheless be drawn, as seen on page 109 below. They can be divided quite clearly into two groups
The manuscripts that were consulted for this edition, in approximate chronological order of production, are the following:
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Yerevan, Matenadaran MS (M) 1731 (= F), copied in 1617 by a scribe who identifies himself as âZatik, son of PoÅtnâ, probably in Lviv. Zatik also made another copy of the Chronicle in the same year, Matenadaran MS (M) 5587, which used a different exemplar and contains the text only up to the year 1097/8. It is from a colophon in this second manuscript that the location where Zatik workedâand thus the location where our manuscript F was copiedâcan be established. The text of the Chronicle has a large lacuna, extending from the entry for 1065/6 up to the point where MSÂ 5587 ends.
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Yerevan, Matenadaran MS (M) 1767 (= B), copied in 1623 in Aleppo, by a scribe called Avetik at the school of Israyel vardapet Hamtʿecʿi. This was witness
Ô² in the 1898 VaÅarÅ¡apat edition. The first several pages, which were meant to contain the beginning of the Chronicle, are blank; the scribe also left blank pages for lacunae in the text of the Chronicle that are common to all texts apart from Matenadaran MS 1896. The Chronicle is the only text carried in the manuscript.
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Venice, Mekhitarist Library MS (V) 901 (= X), copied in 1669 in Isfahan by two scribes; the scribe responsible for the text of the Chronicle was Sargis erÄcÊ¿. This manuscript was the sole basis for Dulaurierâs edition and translation of the oration, published in 1869 along with several other Armenian documents relating to the Crusader era.15 In almost all respects X appears to be a descriptor manuscript of F; it contains the same large gap in the text, and the texts usually match very closely. However, as we will shortly see, this manuscript has some curious affinities with manuscript A. Due to this complication of the stemma, and given its status as the text from which Dulaurierâs edition and translation was made, X has been retained for this edition.
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Matenadaran MS (M) 1896 (= A), copied in 1689 in Amrdolu monastery in Bitlis by Yakob erÄcÊ¿, at the behest of Vardan BaÅiÅ¡ecÊ¿i, who was the librarian of the monastery. The manuscript begins with a short history of the Armenian katholikoi up to 1441, followed by the text of the Chronicle, the tenth-century history of YovhannÄs DrasxanakertcÊ¿i, and a pair of poems by SimÄon AparancÊ¿i, who lived at the turn of the seventeenth century.
This is the base text of the 1898 VaÅarÅ¡apat edition, whose editors believed it to have been copied from a very early (now lost) exemplar, largely on the basis that it preserves two passages of text missing from all other witnesses. From closer examination, however, it is clear that the exemplar for A was also missing these passages; space was left for them when the copy was initially made, to be filled in later, and in one case the new text was physically pasted over an abbreviated text carried in all other manuscripts. It is also clear from a comparison of the texts, especially between A and its close cousin B, that Yakob erÄcÊ¿ was actively seeking to improve the readings he had to work from.
Intriguingly, there are a few substantial textual similarities between manuscripts A and X; for example, in the passage immediately preceding the oration, the sentence â
Ô» Õ½Õ¸ÕµÕ¶ ÕªÕ¡Õ´Õ¡Õ¶Õ¡Õ¯Õ½ Õ« Õ¹Õ¸ÖÕ½ Õ¢Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¶Õ¥ÖÕ¡Ö Õ¯Õ¡Õ©Õ¸ÖÕ²Õ«Õ¯Õ¸Õ½Õ¸ÖÕ©Õ«ÖÕ¶Õ¶ .ÕÕ§Ö ÕÕ¡Õ°ÖÕ¡Õ´Õ¶ Õ¥Ö ÕÕ§Ö Ô³ÖÕ«Õ£Õ¸Ö ÕµÔµÕ£Õ«ÕºÕ¿Õ¸Õ½ ,ÕÕ§Ö Ô²Õ¡ÖÕ½Õ¥Õ²Õ¶ ÕµÔ±Õ¶Õ« ,ÕÕ§Ö ÕÖ Õ²Õ¸Õ½ Õ°Õ¡ÕµÖÕ¶ ÕÕ¡ÖÕ¡Õ£Õ¡Õµ Õ« ÕÕ¡ÖÕ¡Õ· ,ÕÕ§Ö Ô¹Õ¸ÖÕ¸Õ½Õ¶ Õ« ÕÕ¥Õ¶Õ« .Õ¡Õ©Õ¸Õ¼Õ¶ Õ½ÖÕ¢Õ¸ÕµÕ¶ Ô³ÖÕ«Õ£Õ¸ÖÕ« Õ« ÕµÔ±Õ¶Õ« Õ« Õ¹Õ¸ÖÕ½ Õ¢Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¶Õ¥ÖÕ¡Ö .â [âIn this period the katholikosate was divided into four: Lord Vahram and Lord Grigor in Egypt, Lord BarseÅ in Ani, Lord PÅÅos the abbot of Varag in Marash, Lord TÊ¿oros in Honi. The throne of the holy Grigor in Ani was divided into four.â] has been inserted in both of these manuscripts and no others, repeating information found in the Chronicleâs entry for 1085/86 and erroneously equating BarseÅ vardapet here with the katholikos BarseÅ of Ani, who died in 1113. It is impossible to do more than speculate on the exact nature of the relationship between these manuscripts, separated by 20 years of time and different branches of the tradition and specifically attributed to different scribes, yet linked by a common idea of what the text âshould have beenâ at certain points. -
Yerevan, Matenadaran MS (M) 3520 (= E), a manuscript of unknown provenance dated to the seventeenth century. This was witness
Ôµ in the 1898 VaÅarÅ¡apat edition. The manuscript opens with the tenth-century Life of NersÄs the Great by Mesrop of VayocÊ¿ Jor followed by the Chronicle; these are followed by a text entitled âQuestions of Athanasius and Answers of Cyril of Jerusalemâ and a âPassing history of the time of the election of Kirakos katÊ¿oÅikosâ. It contains only a single colophon, written in a later hand and bearing the date 1785, which does not shed any light on the origin of the manuscript. -
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS (OXL) Arm e.32 (= O), copied in or before 1703 in multiple hands, rotating intermittently throughout the text, without any attribution. The place of this manuscript in the larger stemma is complex, as it may have had up to three different exemplars, but for the majority of Book 3 of the Chronicle and the continuation of Grigor, including the oration of BarseÅ, the readings of O align it quite clearly with group
β .
Although the editors of the 1898 VaÅarÅ¡apat edition believed that A was the best copy on the basis of its preservation of two passages of text missing from all other witnesses, it became clear upon examination of the manuscript itself that the exemplar of A was also missing these passages, which were filled in later from another source. Collation of the text has also made clear the extent to which the scribe of A, Yakob erÄcÊ¿, engaged in recension of the exemplar in order to, in his view, improve the readings. Although manuscript B predates A, the omission of the first nine pages of text mean that it could not have been the exemplar. As mentioned, manuscript O bears the traces of several scribes working simultaneously, and the exemplar was changed at least once, presumably because the text of the first exemplar ended shortly after the prophecies of Kozeá¹n. For the portion of the text thereafter, there is no sign of any further change of exemplar; the text from this point is similar in most respects to that of AB.
As for the group EFX, the witnesses F and X share a large lacuna in the main body of the Chronicle, spanning from near the end of the entry for 1065/6 up to the point, within the entry for 1097/8, where many of the other witnesses to the Chronicle end. Here we have something of a textual mystery that remains to be solved satisfactorily: while X could almost be excluded as a descriptor of F on the basis of its strong textual affinity, there are a few substantial readingsâusually additions of a phrase or a sentenceâshared solely with manuscript A. For this reason, as well as the status of X as the basis of Dulaurierâs edition, we have chosen to retain it here.
3 Working Methods
The preparation of this edition is part of an ongoing project to produce a digital critical edition of the full text of the Chronicle and its continuation. The work was funded in its initial stages by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project #159433) and has been further supported by the University of Vienna. One of the aims of the project is to produce a fully digital workflow, automated wherever possible but with the necessary scope for the editor to make the decisions and judgments necessary to produce the critical text.
The initial part of the work is handled using a âcontinuous integration pipelineâ workflow system, borrowed from the world of commercial software engineering.16 Transcriptions of all available manuscripts have been made using the online tool T-PEN;17 the pipeline process runs every day to download changes to these transcriptions, assemble them automatically into TEI-XML format, and validate them as such. The transcription files are then collated, section by section, with the CollateX software and the resulting collation is uploaded to the text repository Stemmarest.18 Once the data is in the Stemmarest system, the editors can review each collated section, modifying the collation where necessary, categorising the variants appropriately, and choosing a lemma reading or providing an emendation where necessary. The data model also allows for arbitrary annotations; these can include identification of persons and places, translations of passages, and identification of references to other works such as the Bible.
An initial version of the typeset text and critical apparatus presented here was produced automatically from the data stored in Stemmarest. At this point we had a problem of abundance: whereas, usually, editors making a critical edition must choose which variants to include, the automatically produced apparatus can include virtually every detail of divergence among the selected text and, in this case, was almost longer than the text itself. Moreover, while the automatically-produced apparatus entries are technically accurate, in some cases there was scope for reorganising them to make them more straightforward to understand. The apparatus presented here is thus a curated version of the automatically-produced one in which some entries have been consolidated (or separated) for readability, and certain entriesâthose where the variation is trivial (e.g. presence or absence of
The almost perfect balance of our working stemma, along with the certain knowledge that some of the scribes (especially Yakob erÄcÊ¿) did attempt to improve the text, means that its establishment was most often a question of judgment. We have adopted a fairly conservative approach to reconstruction of the text, in that we have tended to select the readings that seem from the evidence more likely to be archetypal, even if the readings proposed by other witnesses (especially A) might arguably produce a more fluid text. Several emendations made by Dulaurier, who was working from only one manuscript, have found confirmation in the witnesses that were unavailable to him; a few others, noted in the apparatus, have been retained even when no witness provided outright confirmation.
4 The Oration of BarseÅ Vardapet: Critical Text and Translation
4.1 Index Siglorum
| A |
Yerevan, Matenadaran MSÂ 1896 (1689), transcribed by Tara Andrews |
| B |
Yerevan, Matenadaran MSÂ 1767 (1623), transcribed by Anahit Safaryan |
| E |
Yerevan, Matenadaran MSÂ 3520 (17th c.), transcribed by Tatev Atayan |
| F |
Yerevan, Matenadaran MSÂ 1731 (1617), transcribed by Anahit Safaryan and Tatev Atayan |
| O |
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arm e.32 (17thâ18th c.), transcribed by Tatev Atayan |
| X |
Venice, Mekhitarist Library MSÂ 1485/901, transcribed by Razmik Kazaryan |
4.2 Stemma Codicum
Figure 5.1
Stemma of the witnesses to the oration of BarseÅ vardapet
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I BarseÅ, humble servant of God, write with plaintive lamentation, deep sighs, and tears to all the faithful in Christ, especially those nearby to us in Kesun, Behesni, Raban, Germanike, and the villages and towns around them, and monastic communities of all nations and languages, about the invaluable loss and the forlorn death of the prince Baldwin. The all-powerful creator God of all the universe has made him into a spectacle and object lesson, especially for the impenitent, imperious and iniquitous princes of the Roman armies, by making plain to everyone that the elements and all creatures wait ready to signify the will of the Creator. However one looks, the entire universe does not contain him. For the sea cries out âHe is not hereâ, and the earth calls âHe is not buried underground in my depths.â The air and water along with the fireâs part bear witness, âWe have not been emboldened to raise or reveal what God has hidden to anyone, lest we be punishedâ. Death and the tomb appeal, âWe have not taken him, we have not seen him descending to the ranks of the deadâ. And he does not appear anywhere among the living. And so my dear prince, that unfortunate youth, bold in warfare, victorious and stout-hearted in combat against the barbarians, all-powerful champion and soldier of Christ manifestly armed from head to foot, my beloved Baldwin by name: what hands have closed around the hands of the strong one, judging their solid strength? or what weak arm brought down the invincible arm of the renowned hero? or what lamb among the soldiers of the circumcised produced the strength to crush, to fell that strong-limbed one, the one with powerful bones, the tall body with the strength of a giant, to the ground? What enraged beastly heart was not moved to compassion by his beauty, and did not blush with shame before him, did not |
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pity his beauty, and did not have mercy for the splendour of his youthful age, sparing him in his tender years? And why did he not call out to him to ask âwho might you be or from where?â Perhaps the fury of savagery would have been softened and calmed through his temperate, judicious, and wise answer infallibly spoken in the Armenian language, and he would have been recognised from the profusion of wisdom, for his strength and stature, for his appearance and for his martial success, and for all the attributes of this transitory life by which greatness is remembered in praise of princes. I think I am prolonging this discourse too much, lest we be accused by fault-finding enemies of his. But alas I speak of his unhappy loss and unfavourable path, for we warned him many times not to follow that irrevocable path, and he did not listen to our attempts at persuasion. For we devoted ourselves to saying nothing to him except what was useful to his soul, and that which concerned salvation and compassion for the misfortunes of the Christians, to which he turned a deaf ear in this year alone. Thus we indeed predicted his destruction to his face many times, although it was painful to us and it was difficult to tell him what no one else dared. Yet we endeavoured to do it; perhaps he would tremble from fright and would change from those habits to the humility of mercy and to the benevolence of sweetness. For he is not ignorant of the fact that merciless judgment shall come from the Righteous Judge, God of all merciless hearts here and in the other life. And it is not any man among men or the angels of heaven who stand against the haughty, but God Himself who is Lord of angels |
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and men. For while these sins of the flesh naturally condemn men as sinners and lead them into judgment on their account, some receive mercy many times from the Lord, who loves sinners and for sinnersâ sake has bowed the heavens and come in search of the lost image, the sheep gone astray, to return the sinner to penitence. Now insolent stiff hardness of the heart together with the pride of arrogance, and mercilessness together with injustice are satanic transgressions and they make demons of those men whom they entrap from this earthly place. And these men shall receive judgment together with Satan and his demons on the terrible day of the impartial and righteous judgment of God. But the Righteous Judge God does not pardon such hardened ones from here, especially those who are worthy of the remedy, whoâin part, for some reason, for a short while, and with repentanceâmight take upon themselves these satanic evil deeds. They are disgusted here and shame themselves with confession and hence strive to be freed at the proper time from demonic sins. But if they do not hasten and do not diligently hurl sin far away, but rather add more sins to these day after day, and pass from hour to hour and from minute to minute in delay, imagining that they can cheat the uncheatable God, the Creator does not pardon this. Rather, He first admonishes with chastisements by striking once, twice, and perhaps for some many times. And then those who further harden their hearts against admonishment, He destroys them entirely and removes them from this life, so that the evil does not grow and multiply into |
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his own destruction and that of many others. And testimonies abound about these things in all the divine scripture, in the Old and the New Testaments. The example of the repented and the entirely destroyed is evident for whomever might wish to learn, and we have reckoned unsuitable and superfluous to commit it to writing. For it is about that undisciplined spirit of mine, about the forlorn dead one, about the unattainable and irredeemable captive, about the unfindable lost elegant youth, about the victorious and powerful hero, about the ingenious, wise and sensible prince whose life was short, about the excellent and handsome and so-named Sir Baldwin and his destruction that I wish to speak, and make it known far and wide with a confession of sin, not in order to shame him, but so that he may entirely receive remission from God, knowing that as much as we conceal and cover our transgressions and our shameful secrets out of shame here from men, these very things will be made public and exposed there before angels and men, righteous and sinners who, having arisen from Adam until today, stand in terrific fear and with frightened faces, heads bowed down, trembling before the frightful and terrible bench and assembly of the magistrateâbefore the Father of all things, His Only-created Word, and the Holy Spirit, the Regenerator of creation. Here no word, no deed, not one flicker of thought can be concealed or hidden from the all-seeing knowledge of our Creator. It has forever been lamentable and worthy of tears and an incurable shame, that when the terrible and frightful judgment is delineated, the souls of |
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the sinners, seized with that shame, exist and remain in shameful opprobrium for an interminable and unbounded and infinite eternity, according to the word of the great archangel who, when he spoke to Daniel the prophet, manifested in order to say this to him: âSome arise into life and some into eternal shame.â Now insofar as we make here a declaration, unmasking ourselves in confession without concealment in shame and hypocrisy and without remedy of shame through excuses, which is a true and complete confession and worthy of the holy font, He grants us remission of sins. And should we repent in a worthy way, all transgressions, entirely annihilated, disappear from us there and then; they are purged, cleansed and are not found anywhere at all, because the benevolent and merciful God makes them invisible, and pardons and remits everything. Those who are wise willingly confess their sins in this world according to this example. Now as I consider all this, knowing the weakness of the beloved prince, I declare his failings for all to hear and I inscribe them in this letter by taking them upon my own self. For those who would not show love for their dear ones in this way, who would forget them after death or conceal their sins or the benefit of love, they are living in irrationality and are only friends of the flesh. Now since we were maintaining our affection by keeping spiritual watch over his soulâand if he had heeded us a little in this, he would be alive now in spirit and in body; since he was obstinate at heart, he has been unfindably lost in bothâI therefore call out plaintively with a tragic voice: Listen, people and generations and all nations, especially kings, princes and all judges of the earth, and you who have been caught up in grandeur and in superintendence or in |
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some illusion of command of worldly affairs; listen and understand the sinful failings of the beloved and glorious prince, which we, in his aspect and as if with his mouth, thus fall forward in tears to proclaim. âFirst to God who knows my sins, and then to all of you, O princes and my princely companions and brothers, soldiers with all the cavalry and of the infantry, whom I have failed with great injustice; and all the common people, who in contrast were fallen in submission, bowed down with the sins of my unworthy hands, a loss which deserves many laments and tears. For I never considered the divine words, which constantly made resounding appeal in these deaf ears of mine closed by sin, saying this to me: Never cause a person to curse you in your life, and other commandments besides, which are about duplicity and about not coveting the affairs and things of oneâs neighboursâtheir villages, their fields and bordersâand about all sorts of extortions, and about submission from the heart to princes more eminent than us, faithfulness like to God and not like to men, and about not sinning against anyone, not despoiling orphans or widows or travellers; about not growing rich from injustice, extortion, rebellion, or by building grand buildings and erecting city walls out of the lamentation of others, from the tearful groans of orphans, widows and tributary peasants, and about not boasting about oneâs own power in greatness and in wisdom, and about not judging the smaller mote (that is, sin) of strangers and |
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neglecting oneâs own great beam, and about not despising the law of the Creator and the holy men and the elders of the church, and our not having been roguishly seated as judge of judges by God, and about not being seized mentally by the pangs of desire and not to be stained with voluptuousness or contamination of sin, and about bearing in mind the day of my eternal destiny and to endeavour to ascend from the world here, and about fulfilling the oath I made to God many times. I have heard these words of admonition against all these faults, which are written in the holy scripture, so frequently from some preachers that having learned it all by heart I was seated lecturing to others in two languages, always using an unmutilated, sure, and suitable idiom. And indeed I speak in turn about the sagacity of my mind in solemn confession before God and before you, so that you too will know that God was justly and intolerably provoked by me. I knew that he who mercilessly kills someone, either in the act of war or in the appeasement of soldiers, cannot resist the all-consuming thirst for still more killing, and such men act deceitfully toward their comrades and soldiers and speak with deceptive language or commit iniquities. I was told by the Creator that âHe who sheds the blood of a man, in exchange for his blood his [own] blood will be shed,â and âbloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days,â and âthe Lord reckons bloodthirsty and deceptive men as foul and destroys them.â I knew that it is written, âDo not covet the things of your neighbour and do not enrich yourself from wickedness, lest you leave |
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them in half the days.â And moreover, I knew that the magnificent palaces, the beautiful buildings and the city, which I began to build out of wickedness and injustice and from the lamentation and tears of others, no longer have inhabitants in them. I also knew the sayings of Paul about those who are insubordinate to their princes or oppose their will, that they fly in the face of the command not of man but of God, and as a result they must receive intolerable judgment from the Lord God, here and in the hereafter. I knew that it is not right to blame, judge or speak ill of others, nor to glory in oneâs one greatness or wisdom according to what the Lord said, âDo not judge, lest you be judgedâ and âHypocrite, first pull the beam from your own eye,â and such words along these lines. And I could enumerate and sum up all of the reprimands for sin that are written in the holy scripture, all of which I knew, and in doctrine and in law I am a sinner before God. âBecause of this I fall down before God and confess all my sins, above all those to do with pride, cruelty, and mercilessness together with injustice. Youth, nobility and the frivolous illusion of this life deceived me; they were not treating my faults with despair or causing my mind to remain unrepentant about them. Rather, I intended to abandon and leave aside all the illusion of the trickery of worldly affairs, but up to the fleeting end I did not hurry to receive this admonishment from the Lord, because I did not take the previous mild advice as a remedy. And now I myself shall denounce my guilty person and I exculpate the Creator, for although I had been admonished through minor things which He has brought upon meâblows of bodily wounds and the premature removal from life to death of my wife with her children, and bodily chastisement of oth- |
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ers similar to thisâI was not managing to translate unpardonable evils into something good; rather, I was scourged and not chastised, I was beaten and not cured, in that the insolent hardness of the haughtiness of my heart was made obstinate, ignorant of the fact that the mildness of God was calling me to penitence through His mercy, pardoning my wickedness. I did not remember, I did not consider the matter until the mildness of the Creatorâs mercy turned to wrathful indignation against my person. âAnd now I know this unfortunate fact, that I shall not be remembered in death like the dead, and I shall not appear in life like the living. Just as the Lord of death and life is provoked by me, so also the angels in heaven have turned their faces from me in removal from me of the support and mercy of the Creator. And all of mankind entirely despises me; my father and mother as well as the children of my flesh have abandoned me through death; wife, comrades and soldiers are all mercilessly against me. Near ones and dear ones and childhood acquaintances and sons have rejected me, estranged themselves from my love, and not one of them remembers me. Everyone abhorred me and withdrew from me as though from a stranger, and they deserted and abandoned me like a forgotten, dead and irredeemable captive amid strangers, and I was forgotten as if dead from everyoneâs heart, and sinking, I was dashed to pieces, destroyed like a clay vessel. âAnd now where is my hope? or else what is the redemption for the intolerable tribulation here? And is there no one who might take pity on this immiserated wretch, so that I may appear among the living or be remembered among the dead by men? And there was no one; everyone despised me completely, because, behold, I confessed the wounds of my soul to all my brothers and to the universe with a public spectacle and with immodest sincerity and I was not cured, I was not freed. Because of this I turn my words full of supplicating confession back to my Lord and Creator, to the benevolent Father of all, God. I |
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call out in the manner of a dissolute tipsy youth fallen down before the merciful benevolent one, saying, Heavenly Father, I have sinned toward heaven and before You. I am not worthy of Your ring, Your boot or Your ineffable garment. But do not separate and excommunicate me alone of all terrestrial beings to destruction. If I am alive make it clear, pull me from destruction, for the depths of the abyss are apparent before You and You, Lord, are able to resurrect from the dead, so that as I go I might repent up until the end of the sinful breath of my life. For now I have truly understood and perceived the intolerable indignation of the wrath of the Creator, for it is a great fright to fall into the hands of the living God. âIf indeed I am dead in sin and I have finished my corporeal life, let it be enough, O benevolent God, for my sinning soul to remain in trouble and torment, forgotten and unconsecrated, for this span of days. May You reveal me in mercy, perhaps let there be remembrance or mercy for this miserable wretch, and do not torment me with extraordinary torments amid the dead and the living. For You are the lord of death and life, and death and life wait ready for the indication of Your command to reveal or to bury me. I know, Lord, that I have exasperated You immensely and intolerably with my sins toward divine beings and toward human beings, intentionally and unintentionally, in thought and word, and in act, spirit, breath, body and mind. Closed in by all my senses, I was tied in the bonds of sin all the days of my life. Therefore I fall before You again, O merciful, benevolent and philanthropic God, pity me, forlorn and dead, and spare this creature from Your hand. Do not commit Your lost servant to the mercy of men, for love for me has withered from every heart, and compassion |
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for me has been extinguished from every mind. My name has been removed from men, and my memory has been lost from the land of the living. Since You have been provoked against me, no one else pities me, for all creatures wait ready for You, the truly merciful and forgiving philanthrope. To whom can I entrust myself? My father and my mother abandoned me, my brother forgot the tenderness of my love which I showed to him, forgot about our authentic brotherhood, and he was bound up and occupied with the madness of the world and worldly cares, following my example, my free, imprudent and inconstant way. He doesnât have the time he wants to take care of or be mindful of his own self, let alone this invaluable captive and precious lost one. âNow do not reject me entirely, do not neglect me, do not leave me in perdition, God, my God, and do not turn Your face from me. Do not admonish me indignantly and do not reprimand me angrily. Do not enter into judgment against this condemned servant and do not leave me as an example to the universe with invisible punishment. I testify with witness of heaven and earth, angels and men, that I will no longer walk the dissolute and perishable path and no longer violate Your commandments, so that this time You might take pity and tolerate the immeasurable iniquity of this second prodigal one, if it happens that I come to be once more among the living. But if I am truly condemned to the dead, then it is right for You, the philanthropic and eternally merciful God, to take pity, for in Hell no one acknowledges You and the dead will not glorify You. Show me to the righteous and reveal this unworthy spirit to Your worthy servants, through whose prayers I might find mercy. For I know, that up to now no one at all remembers this forgotten one benevolently; since You, Lord, are grieved at me and have turned Your face away in anger, the heavens and the earth, angels and men raged against me, and all creatures looked askance and with stern countenance at me, for death fled from me and life with- |
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drew. The earth, astonished by Your frightful commands, did not receive me into its bosom and did not give me a place in a tomb, so that they might say the name of this lost one over a grave somewhere. Now if the insensible and dumb elements thus abhorred, rejected and cast me far away from creation here, who else is there among men who will have pity on me? âNow turn, Lord, from anger and turn Your face from my sins, look at me with kindly eyes and mildness. Yes Lord, yes Lord holy Father, yes redeemer of the world, yes merciful and benevolent holy spirit, have mercy on me, this wretched one. O holy Trinity, with intercession of you the holy Mother of God and with the prayers of the apostles and martyrs and all the saints, who were pleasing to You from the beginning of the world, take pity on me and reveal this lost one elevated, living or dead, God of the dead and the living, and glory to You forever, Amen.â Now we have fashioned and written these words of supplicating confession and entreaty in the manner of the forlorn captive, the forgotten dead one, the beloved prince, Sir Baldwin. And we do not cease to appeal with his voice, calling out to God and to His saints until, moved to compassion, He might have mercy and might cure our afflicted mind, which has been struck with punishment because of his sins and ours. As for you who hear all these words of imputation, which I wrote in his place and for his sake with a publicly displayed, immodest and solemn confession, as is allowed from true penitents according to the commandments of the Creator, thus to harshly expose transgressions with confession before the One who knows the thoughts and deeds of all men until, relenting, He forgives everything: nevertheless do not be in denial or indifferent, all you princes, rulers and soldiers, to whether the sleepless eye of God the judge might grant you pardon. Now that you have observed the punish- |
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ment of the lost one, consider the threat of divine wrath. The cypress, it is said, shall wail, for the cedar has fallen. Hear also words from the Lord similar to these, which Israel cried out to the undisciplined and to the deaf to say: âDo you believe that those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices were sinners above all the Galileans? Or those eighteen whom the tower killed, do you believe that they were debtors above all men who lived in Jerusalem? No, I say to you that if you donât repent, every one of you will perish like that.â And now, knowing all this, look after yourselves, O tyrants and princes, since for tyrants a violent and austere judgment shall be fulfilled here and in the hereafter against you who do not wish to heed the scripture and thus do not disclose your transgressions in confession. Since this speech was written for his [Baldwinâs] glory and remedy and as an example of admonition and reprimand for the living, all those sins have been forgiven and he has been cured through constant confession and afterward through blood in the midst of battle. His haughtiness and falseness was cured on that day with infinite and excessive humility, by which he yielded to everyone, speaking very sweet and agreeable and mild words to the cavalry and infantry troops. He was calling them all sons of God and true brothers, he was calling princes and lords and heroes |
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by name. He was training, exhorting, inspiring all the soldiers; as the victorious champion and brave hero circulating among the troops he was emboldening them, fortifying all the soldiers with a vehement and frightful voice. He was calling out to everyone by name in the name of courage: âCourage O heroes, take courage in fortune and this day of grace, for if you lead the charge a little here then we shall be victorious. Do not be afraid of them; behold a day of reckoning and a glorious death, to die for Christ on behalf of the Christians.â And like this he was strengthening the resolve of the outer flanks of the camp, then he was going back in among the soldiers. He was drawing forward those who, disheartened with fear, had previously fled and hidden and he was praising the brave-hearted ones; he was seizing and snatching, casting away the weapons from the timid men or those who had twisted and withered hands and putting them into the hands of the courageous ones; he was giving to some, taking from others, and then with lionlike bravado he was arriving at another place. The whole night and all the day the area of the camp was filled with fearful clamours and a shrill cry, for no ear was at rest to hear anyone elseâs voice of courage, nor any eye to witness a swift flight equal and like to Sir Baldwin; until, failing, he was cut off from his voice and from the strength of his natural power together with his horse, and the bridle cover of his armour was rusted with the redness of the vapours of his heart coming from his mouth, as was said by some people. Now in this way the harshness of his arrogance was purged and purified. Indeed the mercilessness of his heart up to that day was afflicted with mercy, afflicted with grief over the loss of the miserable ones; and because of this he himself, having been frequently in company with them, became lost. As for the sins of extortion by which he was depriving everyone without mercy, he found |
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himself deprived of all his auxiliaries on that day there in battle, inasmuch as [his] companion princes and all his soldiers had abandoned him in the middle of the great battle and left the field, and no one had compassion enough to return to find out where the leading prince and our great soldier might be. And it is clear thence that no one else from his army was lost or captured with him and no one at all saw him. And this I have to sayâthat it was not because the soldiers were idle or that they wanted his loss, but that it was necessary thus for the long-ago injustice and iniquity to find a cure on that day through the injustice and iniquity which the soldiers committed toward him, as I said above. Indeed the blood of many that flowed in his days upon the coming to this land of the wicked and lying deceiver Vasil with the blood of himself alone, which he willingly let flow on behalf of the Christians, who left and were liberated from battle there. The escapees themselves also all clearly acknowledge that they firstly had grace from God, and their freedom secondly from Sir Baldwin. And now if he was crowned with death in battle there, he received remission from the Lord for all his sins, and shall be crowned by God on the dreadful day of judgment and restitution to all the righteous, together with the pious princes and the brave champions. suffered by a Christian from the sword of the |
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impious. And if he were alive and if the reputation of his bravery were made public, it would have spread and continue to spread day after day through all creation, up to the end of the world. And now as for all these long-winded words that I wrote about him, let none of his naysayers or plunder-loving envious ones accuse us by claiming that this is foolish and toadying. That would be true of him who would speak or write such words to the living, but not of him who would speak about the lordless dead one and unfindable lost one. For as long as he was alive he never heard a word of mildness or praise from us, but of chastisement, admonition with which God daily caused pain to his mind. If it had been fit that he would arise from death or emerge living, he would not have seen this letter, and what I wrote about the war and the day of his loss. We heard these things not from ten nor from twenty people, but from everyone in like manner, especially from his enemies and indeed from his own Roman soldiers. But the clear occasion for our lengthy speech is thisâwe loved him with a spiritual love, as is appropriate for a servant of God, just as he loved us. And after his death it was necessary for us, in exchange for his immeasurable love, to repay love to the one lost from life here, His dominion stretched from the city of Antioch up to the borders of Melitene. yet no place anywhere offered itself for his tomb; so great a lord of troops and territory and an eminently renowned prince, and now he is not remembered among the dead nor apparent among the living. Not a bell tolled for him, nor was his name remembered in a church anywhere, and no mass or service was dedicated to mercy for his memory here on earth; not a kid-goat, |
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not a penny reaches even the poorest. There is no one who remembers him, and no one who pities him. In his life he never relaxed or enjoyed himself, but beginning from his earliest days he passed the time of his youth in anguish, in madness and in tribulation brought about by demons, by enemies and by intractable worldly masters and treacherous comrades among the princes. And now at the end of his life he has been lost unremembered; his name and affection for him has been effaced and removed from the entire world and from the hearts of both intimates and strangers. When I see all this bitter and terrible loss that has overtaken him, I am suffocated and melt in tears, and I donât know what I shall do or how I shall help, stretching out my hand to my sunken beloved one. Seeing no one else commiserating with me in this, I have confided and put my trust in God, who alone is benevolent and philanthropic, who does not wish for the death of a sinner and does not rejoice at the loss of anyone. And we have written this letter of confession and supplication on his behalf and ours, and we do not stop ceaselessly calling out thus to every place before the merciful and powerful one, who was angry at him and at us, until He is pacified with His mercy and reveals him dead or alive. And now I beseech you, every one of you men who hear these tragic words. Do not give up, grow weary and disgusted, renounce and disregard our entreaty concerning him, either out of idleness or aversion to him, but pardon him with all your heart. And do not continue to bear a grudge against the lost one, but pray to God, the judge and creator of everyone alike, that He may have mercy on him and pardon all his sins, whether he sinned against God or against men. And the all-powerful creator God, with intercession of the holy Virgin and with the prayers of all the saints, shall forgive him and grant pardon for all his sins great and small. And He shall bless you in soul and in body and make you worthy of the kingdom of heaven with all the saints in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom glory forever, Amen. |
ME, 374â375, MS, 270â275, WT, 157â161, al-AthÄ«r, 8.
ME, 375:
Ališan 1885, 516.
ME, 428:
ME, 368â369.
SS, 160.
MS, III, p. 269.
Beech 1996, 48.
ME, 374:
MS, 269.
Beech 1996, 46.
For issues concerning Williamâs marital life and references to relevant primary sources, see Harvey 1993.
WT, 141.
Andrews 2016, 165â7.
Dulaurier 1869, 203â22.
Andrews, Safaryan, and Atayan 2019.
Ginther 2012.
Andrews 2019.
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AliÅ¡an, Å. 1885. Sisuan: hamagrutÊ¿iwn haykakan KilikiocÊ¿ ew Lewon Mecagorc [Sisuan: a composition on Armenian Cilicia and Lewon theGreat]. Venetik: S. Åazar.
Andrews, T.L. âCritical Edition as Process: A Digital Modelâ. 16th Annual Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, 27â29 November 2019, Málaga. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6308657.
Andrews, T.L. 2016. MattÊ¿Äos Uá¹hayecÊ¿i and His Chronicle: History as Apocalypse in a Crossroads of Cultures (Bilingual ed.), LeidenâBoston: Brill (Medieval Mediterranean 108).
Andrews, T.L., Safaryan, A., Atayan, T. 2019. âContinuous Integration Systems for Critical Edition: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessaâ. Digital Humanities 2019, 23â26 July 2019, Utrecht. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6308795.
Beech, G.T. 1996. âThe Crusader Lordship of Marash in Armenian Cilicia, 1104â1149â. Viator 27, 35â52. DOI: 10.1484/j.viator.2.301121.
Dulaurier, E. 1869. Recueil des historiens des Croisades: documents arméniens, tomepremier. Paris: Imprimerie impériale.
Ginther, J. 2012. âT-penâtranscription for paleographical and editorial notationâ. 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, 4â12 January 2012, Chicago.
Harvey, R. 1993. âThe wives of the âfirst troubadourâ, Duke William IX of Aquitaineâ. Journal of Medieval History 19(4), 307â325.
ME = MÄlikÊ¿-AdameanâM. TÄr-MikÊ¿ayÄlean, N. (eds) 1898. MattÊ¿Äos Uá¹hayecÊ¿i, ŽamanakagrutÊ¿iwn [Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle]. VaÅarÅ¡apat: Tparan Mayr Atʽoá¹oy Srboy ÄÇ°miacni.
MS = Chabot, J.-B. (ed.) 1905. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, patriarche jacobite dâAntioche (1166â1199), tome III. Paris: Leroux.
SS = Agelean, S. (ed.) 1956. Smbatay Sparapeti taregirkÊ¿ [Chronicle of Smbat Sparapet]. Venetik: S. Åazar.
WT = Babcock, E.A.âKrey, A.C. (eds) 1976. William of Tyre. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. New York: Octagon Books.