The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge Page B

all round, famine grew so great amongst the Christians that in the absence of bread they…even chewed pieces of leather found in homes which had hardened or putrefied for three or six years. The ordinary people were forced to devour their leather shoes because of the pressure of hunger. Some, indeed, filled their wretched bellies with roots of stinging nettles and other sorts of woodland plants, cooked and softened on the fire, so they became ill and every day their numbers were lessened by death.
     
    Immobilised by fear and starvation, with morale crumbling, the First Crusaders seemingly had no avenue of escape and little prospect of survival. In these bleakest of days, most believed that defeat was imminent. 26
    Historians have long argued that at this point the course of Antioch’s second siege, indeed the fortunes of the entire crusade, were transformed by a single dramatic event. On 14 June a small group of Franks, led by a peasant visionary named Peter Bartholomew, began digging in the Basilica of St Peter. Bartholomew claimed that an apparition of the apostle St Andrew had revealed to him the resting place of an extraordinarily powerful spiritual weapon: the spear that pierced the side of Christ on the cross. One of the men who joined the search for this ‘Holy Lance’, Raymond of Aguilers, described how:
    We had been digging until evening when some gave up hope of unearthing the Lance…But the youthful Peter Bartholomew, seeing the exhaustion of our workers, stripped his outer garments and, clad only in a shirt and barefooted, dropped into the hole. He then begged us to pray to God to return His Lance to [the crusaders] so as to bring strength and victory to His people. Finally, in His mercy, the Lord showed us His Lance and I, Raymond, the author of this book, kissed the point of the Lance as it barely protruded from the ground. What great joy and exultation then filled the city.
     
    The discovery of this small metal shard, an apparent relic of Christ’s Passion, was long believed to have had an electrifying effect upon the crusaders’ state of mind. Interpreted as an irrefutable indication of God’s renewed support, an assurance of victory, it supposedly spurred the Latins to take up arms and confront Kerbogha in open battle. Another Frankish eyewitness described the impact of this Holy Lance: ‘And so [Peter] found the lance, as he had foretold, and they all took it up with great joy and dread, and throughout all the city there was immense rejoicing. From that hour we decided on a plan of attack, and all our leaders forthwith held a council.’ 27
    In fact, the impression fostered by this account–that the Christians, their spirits suddenly rejuvenated by an ecstatic outpouring of faith, made an urgent and immediate move to engage their enemy–is profoundly misleading. Two whole weeks separated the discovery of the Lance from the battle eventually fought against Kerbogha.
    Peter Bartholomew’s ‘discovery’ certainly had some effect on crusader morale. To modern sensibilities the story of his visions might seem fantastical, his claim to have uncovered a genuine remnant of Christ’s own life fraudulent, even ludicrous. But to eleventh-century Franks, familiar with the concepts of saints, relics and miraculous intervention, Peter’s experiences rang true. Conditioned by a well-ordered system of belief, in which the saintly dead acted as God’s intercessors on Earth, channelling His power through sacred relics, most were willing to accept the authenticity of the Holy Lance. Among the leaders of the crusade only Adhémar of Le Puy seems to have harboured any doubts, and these probably stemmed from Peter’s lowly social status. But buoyed though their spirits may have been by the advent of this relic, the Latins remained paralysed by fear and uncertainty through the second half of June. The unearthing of the Lance was not the overwhelming catalyst to action, much less a focal turning point in the