volume one

410 HISTOEY or THE CEUSADES.
reigned as completely in the amiy as througliout the kingdom.
Many of the leaders abandoned their colours under
the most perilous circumstances, and sold their inaction or
their neutrality. Some, like the Templar Meslier and his
companions, forgetful of their vows, ravaged the Christian
provinces ; whilst others, urged on by ambition or vengeance,
allied themselves with the Saracens, and received in the ser-
vice of the infidels the reward of their disgraceful apostasy.
Heligion, which ought to have been the connecting tie
between the Christians established in the Holy Land, and
which alone could preserve among them sentiments of pati'iotism,—religion
had lost all empire over their minds. AYar
was still made in its name, but its laws were impractised and
unacknowledged. The conversion of the Maronites of Libanus,
who rejoined the Church of Eome in the reign of Baldwin
TV., was celebrated at Jerusalem as a victory gained
over heresy, but it had- not the effect of bringing back the
Christians to the spirit of the Scriptures. Pious men who
lived in a con'upted age, groaned under the depra^-ity of
manners which every day made such frightful progress.*
The respectable archbishop of Tp-e trembles as he traces the
history' of this unhappy period, and fears lest truth should
give to his recitals the colour of satire. " There is," says
he, " scarcely one chaste woman to be found in the city of
Jerusalem." The leaders of the Christian colonies, equally
vrith the heads of the Church, themselves set the example of
licentiousness. The Christians beheld a queen of Jerusalem,
the widow of Baldwin III., keep up a criminal intercourse
with Andronicus, and seek an abode among the Saracens
"uith the companion of her debaucheries.f Bohemond,
prince of Antioch, repudiated his wife Erina, to espouse a
courtesan. The patriarch, disgusted with such a scandal, excommunicated
young Bohemond, and placed an interdict
* Jacques de Vitri does not spare the Christians of the East in his
History, particularly in the chapters entitled " De corruptione prselatorum
; de regTilaribus irregtdariter viventibus ; de corruptione Terrse
Sanctae." The satires of Juvenal would appear moderate by the side of
the pages of this historian, who had been in the Holy Land in the quality
of a legate.
t This was the sanae Andronicus who afterwards ascended the throne
of Constantinople, and became notorious for his cruelties.