volume one

14
HISTOET OF THE CKUSADES.
and opposed to him a canon of St. Basil, the text of which
recommended to him who had killed an enemy to abstain
during three years from a participation in the lioly mys-
teries. Deprived of the powerful sthnulus of fanaticism,
Kicephorus found among the Greeks more paneg\Tists than
soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against the
Saracens, to whom, even in their declijie, religion prescribed
resistance and promised victory. Hia triumphs, which were
celebrated at Constantinople with enthusiasm, were confined
to the taking of Antioch, and only served to create a persecution
against the Christians of Palestine. The patriarch of
Jerusalem, accused of keeping up an understanding with the
Greeks, expired at the stake, and several churches of the
holy city were consigned to the flames.
A Greek army, under the command of Temelicus, had
advanced to the gates of Amida, a city situated on the banks
of the Tigris. This army was attacked, in the midst of a
hurricane, by the Saracens, who routed it, and made a great
number of prisoners. The Christian soldiers who fell into
the hands of the infidels, heard, in the prisons of Bagdad,
of the death of iNicephorus ; and as Zimisces, his successor,
gave no attention to their deliverance, their chief -wTote to
him in these terms :— " You who leave us to perish in an
accursed land, and who do not deem us worthy to be buried,
according to Christian usages, in the tombs of our fathers,
we cannot recognize you as the legitimate chief of the holy
Greek empire. If you do not avenge those who fell before
Amida, and those who now sigh in foreign lands, God will
demand a strict accoimt of them of you, at the terrible day
of judgment." AVhen Zimisces received this letter at Constantinople,
says an Armenian historian,* he was penetrated
with grief, and resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon
religion and the empire. On all sides preparations were set
* We owe a great portion of thf^se details to an ancient Armenian
manuscript, composed in the twelfth century by Matthew of Edessa,
several fragments of which have been translated into French by Messrs.
ISIartin and Chahan de Cirbier. These fragments were printed under the
title, " Historical Details of the First Expedition of the Christians into
Palestine, under the Emperor Zimisces." In the Appendix of thb»
history is an interesting letter from Zimisces to the king of Armenia.