HEROINES OF CRUSADES.
HEROINES
OF
THE CRUSADES.
BY C. A. BLOSS.
AUTHOR OF “BLOSS’S ANCIENT HISTORY,” ETC.
“Old historic rolls I opened.”
AUBURN:
ALDEN, BEARDSLEY & CO.
ROCHESTER:
WANZER, BEARDSLEY & CO.
1853.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1853,
BY ALDEN, BEARDSLEY & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Northern District of New York.
TO MY PUPILS,
The “Heroines of the Crusades”
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
To those whom it has been my privilege and pleasure to lead through thedevious and darkened paths of the Past, to all who cordially receive thedoctrine that actions and not faint desires for Excellence form thecharacter, I address a few words by way of explanation and Preface.
Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, whether glorious in the beauty of herfirst temple, and the excellent wisdom of her philosopher king, or veiledin the darkness of that fatal eclipse in which the solemn scenes ofCalvary consummated her glory and shame, has occupied a position in thegreat drama of human events, more interesting and important than any othercity on the globe.
But Jerusalem, in the gloom of that moral night which gathered over thenations after the fall of the Western Empire of the Romans, exerted agreater influence upon the minds of men than at any former period. Theinsulting Moslem felt a degree of veneration for the splendid ruins overwhich he walked with all a conqueror’s pride—the African anchorite lefthis solitary hermitage to weep upon Mount Olivet—the European adventurerwreathed his staff with the branching palm from her holy hills—thedespairing Jew sat in sackcloth at her fallen gates, and even the mingledbarbarians of the East united with the Christian to revere the spot whereart achieved its proudest monument, and poetry found the theme of itssublimest song.
This natural reverence, exalted into piety by the decrees of the[Pg viii] church,resulted necessarily in the practice of pilgrimage. Anxious, restlessguilt, fled from the scene of its enormities to the sweet valleys wherethe Saviour whispered peace to his disciples; poetry sought inspiringvisions on the Mount of Transfiguration; penitence lingered in the gardenof Passion, and remorse expiated its crimes in weary vigils at the HolySepulchre.
At the dawn of the eleventh century, one sublime idea pervadedChristendom. The thousand years of the Apocalypse were supposed to beaccomplished, and a general belief prevailed that on the Mount of Olives,whence the Son of God ascended in his chariot of cloud to heaven, he wouldreappear in all the pomp of his Second Advent. From every quarter of theLatin world the affrighted Christians, deserting their homes and kindred,crowded to the Holy Land—terror quickened devotion, curiosity stimulatedenthusiasm. But insult and outrage awaited the pilgrims in Palestine, andin Jerusalem itself they encountered the scoffing taunts of idola