volume one

HISTOEY OF THE CEUSADES. 235
ttoms. He contented himself witli the modest title of
defender and baron of the Holy Sepulchre. It has been
pretended that in this he only acted in obedience to the insinuations
of the clerg)', who were afraid of seeing pride
seated upon a throne over which the spirit of Christ ought
to reign. However this may be, Godfrey richly merited by
his virtues the title of king which history has given him,
and which was far more due to him than the name of kingdom
was to the feeble states he had to govern.
As the war had the triumph of religion for its object, the
clergy employed themselves in naming bishops, consecrating
churches, and sending pastors to all the cities that had submitted
to the power of the Cliristians. Piety and disinterestedness
ought to have presided in the choice of the ministers
of Chi'ist ;
but since the death of the virtuous Adhemar, the
greater part of the Latin ecclesiastics, no longer restrained
by his example, had forgotten the humility and simplicity of
their profession. If William of T}Te may be believed, address
and intrigue openly obtained the suffrages, and the
spirit of the religion which had just given Jerusalem a good
king, could not succeed in bestowing upon it prelates respectable
either for their wisdom or their virtues. The
clergy, who had ventured to disturb the election of the king
by their intrigues, carried their pretensions as high as the
sovereignty of the city, and claimed with arrogance the
greatest part in the division of the booty won from the
infidels.* The Grreek priests, in spite of their rights, were
sacrificed to the ambition of the E-oman clergy, as they had
been in the city of Antiocli. The chaplain of the duke of
Normandy caused himself to be proposed as patriarch of
Jerusalem, in the place of Simeon, who had summoned the
warriors from the West. Simeon was stiU in the isle of
Cyprus, from whence he had continually sent provisions to
the Crusaders during the siege. He died at the moment in
which the Latm ecclesiastics were quarrelling for his spoils,
and his death came very opportunely to excuse their injustice
and ingratitude. Arnold, whose morals were more than
suspected, and whose conduct has merited the censure of
* We may see in Raoul de Caen tlie debates which arose on this subject,
and particularly the accusation directed against Tancred by Arnold
de Rohes, in the name of the Latin clergy.
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