At first the West was slow to react to the fall of Edessa. In autumn 1145 Pope Eugeni us III wrote to King Louis VII of France asking him to undertake a new crusade to the East. At Christmas Louis summoned his barons and told them that he was taking the cross and invited them to do the same, but their response was poor. Louis was young, only twenty-five; he was seen as impetuous, weak and greedy; and he had angered his barons by recently seizing land from the count of Champagne. But the barons did agree to convene again at Easter 1146 at Vezelay in Burgundy.
Meanwhile Louis arranged that Bernard of Clairvaux should speak at Vezelay. Not only was Bernard the friend of Popes and kings (Eugenius had been a monk at Clairvaux and the king’s brother had recently joined the Cistercians there), but his asceticism, conviction and eloquence combined to make him the most formidable spiritual figure of the age. At word that Bernard would speak, such a crowd of aristocrats and admirers from all over France were drawn to Vezelay that, as at Clermont when Pope Urban called for the First Crusade, the cathedral was not big enough to contain the throng and a platform was erected in the fields outside the town.
This was an age like no other, Bernard told the crowd. God had found new ways to save the faithful. The fall of Edessa was a gift from God. It was an opportunity created by God to save men’s souls. ‘Look at the skill he is using to save you. Consider the depth of his love and be astonished, sinners. This is a plan not made by man, but proceeding from the heart of divine love.’ Amid the roars of ‘Deus le volt!’, so many came fon/vard to take the cross that Bernard had to tear his own habit into strips. King Louis was the first among them, followed by his barons, many of whom were the sons and grandsons of original Crusaders. Bernard was able to write a few days later to the Pope: ‘bu ordered; I obeyed. I opened my mouth; I spoke; and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity. Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive.’
Bernard broadcast his message farther, travelling into the north of France and to Flanders, and addressing a letter to the people of England, explaining that Jesus, the Son of God, was losing the land in which he had walked among men for more than thirty years. ‘bur land’, Bernard told the English, ‘is well known to be rich in young and vigorous men. The world is full of their praises, and the renown of their courage is on the lips of all. Do not miss this opportunity. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins which you confess with a contrite heart. It does not cost you much to buy and if you wear it with humility you will find that it is the kingdom of heaven.’
News of the crusade had also reached Germany where it touched off anti-Semitic pogroms along the Rhine. Bernard hastened to Germany to condemn the atrocities on the spot. ‘The Jews’, he said, ‘are not to be persecuted, killed or even put to flight. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always what the Lord suffered.’ And then to control and give direction to the popular feeling, Bernard preached the crusade to the reluctant King Conrad III of Germany himself, finally persuading him to take the cross at Christmas 1146.
The following spring. Pope Eugeni us gave his blessing to the campaign ofAlfonso VII of Castile against the Muslim occupation of Spain, declaring it a crusade, and that autumn a Crusader fleet from northern Europe helped the Portuguese capture Lisbon from the Arabs. Largely through the energy of Bernard, the Second Crusade had rapidly become an international campaign against the forces of Islam on both the eastern and western fronts.
Vezelay was a particularly potent spot from which to launch the Second Crusade for it possessed the bones of Mary Magdalene. The claim was first made by the great abbey church at Vezelay in the 1050s, an assertion quickly supported by a Papal document dated 27 April 1058. The Muslim occupiers in the Middle East had recently been making it difficult for Europeans to undertake pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and this encouraged the development of pilgrimage sites within Europe itself. Various well-known New Testament figures were suddenly discovered to have travelled to the West and died there, their bones unearthed by enterprising churches. Glastonbury had already laid claim to Joseph of Arimathea in this way; in Paris theyannounced the discovery of the bones of Saint Denis, a convert and student of Saint Paul; while Saint James had turned up in Spain at Compostela to aid the reconquest, and Saint Mark had arrived at Venice. Unfortunately the great ninth-century Romanesque church at Vezelay had been dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and as she had bodily risen to heaven at her assumption, there was no question of finding her relics. But Vezelay lay along the profitable pilgrimage route from Germany to Compostela, and the profits to be gleaned from the passing trade, not to
Mention the prestige and the protection to be had, made the happy discovery of some suitable remains all but unavoidable, and who better than Mary Magdalene.
In the Gospels Mary Magdalene is present at the most important moments of the Jesus story-his death and his resurrection. At the crucifixion of Jesus his disciples have gone into fearful hiding, but Mary Magdalene is at both the Cross and the tomb, and it is she who carries the news to the disbelieving disciples that Jesus has arisen. Her appearances in the Gospels are brief but telling. It is as if she fulfils the role of those ancient goddesses whose lives embraced the deaths and rebirths of their men.
The shrine of Mary Magdalene at Vezelay became immensely popular, but how, the faithful wondered, had her bones come to Burgundy? A pious fiction was circulated saying that her relics had first been in Provence but were threatened by Saracen raiders, and so they were removed and brought to Vezelay for safekeeping. But how had the bones come to Provence in the first place? Another legend was invented to conveniently explain that Mary Magdalene and her companions had escaped from the Holy Land by sea and landed, some say, at Marseilles, or according to others at Los Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, from where she made her way inland and died at St-Maxi mi n-la-Ste-Baume. It was from there that a monk from Vezelay had dug up her bones and taken them back to Burgundy.
Meanwhile Mary Magdalene’s bones were performing miracles; she was associated with the liberation of prisoners, assistance with fertility and childbirth, spectacular cures and even the raising of the dead. Such wonderful stories demanded yet wider circulation, a challenge taken up in the thirteenth century bythe Dominican writer Jacobus do Voragine. To his account of Mary Magdalene in his compendium of saints’ lives called the Legenda Aurea (the Golden Legend), he added the plethora of new miracles put about by Vezelay and produced what very quickly became a medieval bestseller that was soon translated from Latin into nearly every European language, including Dutch and Czech.
However, King Charles of Anjou (1226-85) was establishing a Mediterranean empire based on Naples, Sicily and his newly acquired territory of Provence. Learning from the Legenda Aurea that Mary Magdalene’s bones had been associated with St-
Maximin-la-Ste-Baume, he went to have a look for himself. And what did he find? The bones of Mary Magdalene. Clearly the church at Vezelay had been mistaken. Charles installed the Dominican Order as caretakers of Mary’s shrine, and they in turn proudly broadcast the importance of their mission by fabricating the Book of Miracles of Saint Mary Magdalene, documenting all the miraculous intercessions and cures the saint had wrought at her Provencal sanctuary. The publication’s success was measured by the fact that Vezelay as a centre for the miraculous soon went into decline. Indeed, pilgrims still come to Los Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to see where Mary Magdalene came ashore and visit St-Maxi mi n-la-Ste-Baume to kneel before her bones.
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