Est locus iste sacer: The Canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the Memory of the First Crusade in the Twelfth-Century Latin East

Simon John (Swansea University)

doi: 10.11588/heidok.00037617

Peregrinationes tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg and Theodericus, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 139), Turnhout 1994, pp. 143–197, here p. 156.	Translation (Simon John)
Est locus iste sacer sacratus sanguine Christi: per nostrum sacrare sacro nichil addimus isti. Sed domus huic sacro circum superaedificata est quintadecima quintilis luce sacrata cum reliquis patribus a Fulcherio patriarcha.	This place is holy, consecrated by the blood of Christ. By our consecration we add nothing to this sanctuary. But the house built over and around this holy place was consecrated on 15 July by Patriarch Fulcher with the other fathers.

These words, from a golden inscription in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, are recorded by Theoderic, a German pilgrim who visited the Latin East around 1172. This inscription was located inside the church, on one of the arches which led into the chapel at Golgotha, the place revered as the site of Christ’s Crucifixion.[1] That chapel held the tombs of the men who had, since the time of the Holy City’s capture by the forces of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099, ruled over Latin Jerusalem.[2] Exploring the ideas embedded into the inscription, and considering the role of the figures and institutions involved in its creation, sheds light on how one religious community in the Latin East – the canons of the Holy Sepulchre – helped to preserve the memory of the First Crusade. This was part of a broader effort by the Latins to consolidate the homeland they created for themselves in the East after 1099. In their own perception, of course, the Latins were not building a new homeland, but had in fact taken back an old homeland that belonged not only to them, but to all Christians.

The golden inscription recorded by Theoderic commemorated a pivotal moment in the twelfth-century Latin East: a dedication ceremony held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on 15 July 1149, the fiftieth anniversary of the city’s capture by the First Crusaders.[3] The inscription explicitly records that the ceremony was presided over by Patriarch Fulcher, who held the office from 1146 to 1157.[4] It has been debated whether the 1149 ceremony merely dedicated the new Golgotha chapel, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a whole, which was at the time undergoing a major reconstruction.[5] Fulcher evidently instigated that project, and the work continued after 1149.[6] It was one facet of a wider programme of church renovation pursued by the Latins in the Near East after 1099, as they sought to consolidate and celebrate their possession of the sacred places of the Holy Land. That programme was, as Bernard Hamilton memorably described, shaped by the Latins’ aspiration of ‘rebuilding Zion’.[7]

The canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the political elite of Jerusalem

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the seat of the patriarch of Jerusalem. Day-to-day religious life in the church was chiefly in the hands of a community of canons established soon after 1099.[8] Albert of Aachen, a chronicler of the First Crusade and Latin East, records that one of Godfrey of Bouillon’s earliest acts as the first ruler of Latin Jerusalem was to appoint to the Holy Sepulchre ‘twenty brothers…who at every hour would sing praises and hymns to the living Lord God…piously offer up the sacrifice of Jesus Christ’s body and blood [and] undertake the daily upkeep arranged from the offering of the faithful.’[9] This chapter of canons, then, was responsible for performing Latin liturgy in the most holy place of all Christendom: Christ’s (empty) tomb. Many First Crusaders had been stimulated by the prospect of worshipping in that place, and it had been in many ways the principal goal of the expedition. In late 1102 or early 1103, the incumbent patriarch, Evremar, recorded the financial arrangements put into place to support the community.[10] In 1114, the community underwent a reform instigated by Patriarch Arnulf, during which it adopted the Augustinian rule.[11] As this all suggests, the canons remained firmly in the orbit of the patriarch. The prior of the Holy Sepulchre was a suffragan of the patriarch.[12] Several figures successively held the offices of prior and patriarch, further underlining the close relationship between the two.[13]

In turn, the patriarch acted in alignment with the monarchy of Jerusalem. It was the patriarch who inaugurated Jerusalem’s kings and queens – in the church of the Holy Sepulchre exclusively from 1118 – and ceremonially crowned them on important feastdays including Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.[14] The patriarch also played a military function, putting troops and resources at the king’s disposal, and also shared with the aristocracy the responsibility of governing the kingdom in periods in which the king was absent (such as during Baldwin I’s captivity in 1123-4).[15] It was Patriarch Warmund, who, with Baldwin II, convened the Council of Nablus in January 1120, a time of crisis following the death of most of the ruling elite of Antioch the previous June.[16] The canons of the Holy Sepulchre, then, performed their duties in line with the wishes of both the patriarch and the king of Jerusalem.

The canons of the Holy Sepulchre and the 15 July feast

The ceremony of 15 July 1149 was one element of a wider campaign of liturgical renewal directed by Patriarch Fulcher.[17] This included a major reform to the liturgy performed by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and, concomitantly, the other religious communities in the Latin East who followed that liturgy. The post-1149 liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre is preserved in a twelfth-century ordinal from the Latin East: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barberini lat. 659.[18] That manuscript was copied between 1175 and 1187 to be used by the canons of the conventual church of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem, one of the communities which followed the rite of the Holy Sepulchre. It contains a wealth of information about religious life in the twelfth-century Latin East, including: details on how the canons of the Holy Sepulchre observed feasts of the liturgical calendar; which hymns they were to sing, which members of the community were to perform which rituals, where they should start and end ritual processions carried out on particular feastdays, and so on. Fulcher’s role as the chief instigator of the post-1149 liturgical programme is explicitly mentioned several times. The rubrics for the liturgy observed in the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday, for instance, record actions taken ‘according to the precept and will of the Lord Patriarch Fulcher’ (secundum preceptum et voluntatem domini F[ulcherii] patriarcha).[19]

Fulcher’s name also appears in the rubric of another feast, one which originated under the Latins, and which formed a key part of the liturgical calendar. This was the feast held annually on 15 July in commemoration of the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of the First Crusade on that day in 1099. It may have been celebrated for the first time in Latin Jerusalem on 15 July 1100, that is, the first anniversary of the event it commemorates. It was evidently in observance by about 1105.[20] The feast has attracted widespread interest from modern scholars.[21] It is recorded in several devotional books produced in the twelfth-century Latin East. Two sacramentaries produced in the scriptorium of the Holy Sepulchre around 1130 contain the feast in their calendars. One indicates that 15 July was ‘the feast of when Jerusalem was captured by the Christians’ (Festivitas Hierusalem quando capta fuit a Christianis).[22] The other records that this day was ‘the feast of when Jerusalem was captured by the Franci’ (Festivitas Ierusalem quando fuit capta a Francis).[23] The liturgical arrangements for 15 July harnessed the sacred landscape of Jerusalem to map the liturgical commemoration on to the culminating moments of the First Crusaders’ capture of the Holy City on that day in 1099. The feast began and ended in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but also featured processions to the Templum Domini as well as the site at the north-eastern corner of the city wall where the crusaders had broken into the city on 15 July 1099.[24] The performance of part of the liturgical office for the feast at that site – marked by a stone cross atop the city wall – signifies that the Latins reckoned it to be part of the sacred landscape.

Patriarch Fulcher’s decision to hold the rededication ceremony on 15 July 1149 was certainly a conscious one, ensuring that it would both draw from and reinforce the liturgical commemorations of the events of that day fifty years earlier. The liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, as recorded in Barberini 659, indicates that on 15 July after 1149, as well as remembering the capture of Jerusalem, ‘we [i.e. the Latins] more solemnly celebrate the dedication of the Church of the Lord’s Sepulchre according to the wish and command of our lord Patriarch Fulcher’ (Eodem die dedicatio ecclesie Dominici Sepulchri quam sollempniter celebramus iuxta voluntatem et preceptum domini Fulcherii patriarche).[25]

The memory of the First Crusade

The 1149 inscription thus invokes a much broader aspect of the history of the twelfth-century Latin East: the efforts of the patriarch of Jerusalem and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre – along with the rest of the secular and ecclesiastical elite of the Latin East – to preserve the memory of the First Crusade as the origin story of the kingdom of Jerusalem and other Latin states. This was one of the ways in which the Latins created a shared group identity as they consolidated the territory captured in the wake of the First Crusade. Historians have devoted much attention to the question of how the Latins regarded themselves and their place in history.[26] As important studies have shown, a principal catalyst in their thoughts were the events of Sacred Christian history recounted in the Old and New Testaments.[27] Hence, the Latins framed the history of the First Crusade – and, concomitantly, that of the Latin East – according to the exploits of peoples described in the Bible as enjoying the status of God’s chosen ones. Fulcher of Chartres, a participant of the crusade who settled in the East and chronicled the history of the Latin East down to the 1120s, declaimed in his prologue that while he hesitated to compare the achievements of the Latins to those of the Israelites and Maccabees, the deeds of the former deserved to be ranked alongside those of the latter. To his mind, the Latins stood comparison to those groups who had enjoyed God’s favour, leading him to question – rhetorically – how the Latins differed from the Israelites and Maccabees.[28] It is no coincidence that the inscription added to Baldwin I’s tomb in the Golgotha chapel after his burial in 1118 affirmed that he was a ‘second Judas Maccabeus’ (Alter Iudas Machabeus).[29]

Let us return to the 1149 inscription in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. In declaiming the holiness of the site before asserting that with the dedication ceremony the Latins had added nothing to that holiness, the inscription encapsulates how the Latins reckoned their place in history. The site of Christ’s Crucifixion had already been sanctified by His blood, and the Latins could do nothing to make it any more holy. Yet, by juxtaposing the Crucifixion with their construction of the ‘house’ (domus) over Golgotha, the Latins were confidently placing their efforts to consolidate their hold over the Near East in alignment with the most pivotal moment in Christian history. Both events were connected chapters of the same sacred story. No more than about 30 Latin words, long then, the 1149 inscription is revealing of the role played y the patriarch and canons of Jerusalem in the Latins’ effort to create a sense of belonging in their new – or old? – homeland after 1099.

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[1] Pringle, Denys, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: a Corpus, vol. 3: The City of Jerusalem, Cambridge 2007, p. 68.

[2] At the time of Theoderic’s visit, there were five tombs: those of Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk and Baldwin III. Before Saladin’s conquest of the city in 1187, three more were added: those of Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V). On the mausoleum, see Mayer, Hans Eberhard, Die Jerusalemer Grabeskirche als Begräbnisort in der Kreuzzugszeit, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 103, 2021, pp. 5–35.

[3] On the First Crusaders’ siege of Jerusalem, see France, John, Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade Cambridge 1994, pp. 325–357; on its historiographical legacy, see Kedar, Benjamin Z., The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades, in: Crusades 3, 2004, pp. 15–75.

[4] On Fulcher’s patriarchate, see Kirstein, Klaus-Pieter, Die Lateinischen Patriarchen von Jerusalem: Von der Eroberung der Heiligen Stadt durch Die Kreuzfahrer 1099 bis zum Ende der Kreuzfahrerstaaten 1291 (Berliner Historische Studien 35), Berlin 2002, pp. 273–291.

[5] Linder, Amnon, “Like Purest Gold Resplendent”: the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Jerusalem, in: Crusades 8, 2009, pp. 31–51.

[6] On the reconstruction, see Pringle, Churches 3, pp. 19–31.

[7] Hamilton, Bernard, Rebuilding Zion: The Holy Places of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century, in: Studies in Church History 14, 1977, pp. 105–116.

[8] See in general Zöller, Wolf, Regularkanoniker im Heiligen Land. Studien zur Kirchen-, Ordens- und Frömmigkeitsgeschichte der Kreuzfahrerstaaten (Vita regularis – Ordnungen und Deutungen religiösen Lebens im Mittelalter. Abhandlungen 73), Münster 2018.

[9] ut in templo dominici sepulchri uiginti fratres in Christo diuini officii cultores constituerentur, qui assiduis horis Domino Deo uiuenti in laudibus et ymnis psallerent, hostiam corporis et sanguinis Iesu Christi deuote immolarent, dehinc cottidianam sustentationem de oblatione fidelium constitutam susciperent. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. and trans. Susan Edgington, Oxford 2007, pp. 444–445.

[10] Le cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier (Documents relatifs l’histoire des croisades 15), Paris 1984, pp. 72–74 (no. 19).

[11] Le cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, pp. 74–77 (no. 20).

[12] Pringle, Churches 3, p. 18.

[13] William of Messines, for instance, was prior 1127 to 1130, and patriarch from 1130 to 1145 (his death): Kirstein, Die Lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 238–244. He had been a canon before his appointment as prior.

[14] John, Simon, Liturgical culture and royal inauguration in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1187, in: Journal of Medieval History 43, 2017, pp. 485–504.

[15] Kirstein, Die Lateinischen Patriarchen, pp. 458–462.

[16] Kedar, Benjamin Z., On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120, in: Speculum 74, 1999, pp. 310–335.

[17] Salvadó, Sebastián, Rewriting the Latin Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre: Text, Ritual and Devotion for 1149, in: Journal of Medieval History 43, 2017, pp. 403–420.

[18] Salvadó, Sebastián, The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre and the Templar Rite: Edition and Analysis of the Jerusalem Ordinal (Rome, Bib. Vat., Barb. Lat. 659) with a Comparative Study of the Acre Breviary (Paris, Bib. Nat., MS Latin 10478), Ph.D. diss. Stanford 2011. For a digitisation, see: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.lat.659 On devotional manuscripts from the Latin East more generally, see Dondi, Cristina, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Bibliotheca Victorina 16), Turnhout 2004.

[19] Barberini 659, fol. 74v; Salvadó, The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, p. 587.

[20] John, Simon, The “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem”: Remembering and Reconstructing the First Crusade in the Holy City, 1099–1187, in: Journal of Medieval History 41, 2015, pp. 409–431.

[21] Linder, Amnon, The Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem, in: Mediaeval Studies 52, 1990, pp. 110–131; Gaposchkin, Marianne Cecilia, The Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem in British Library Additional MS 8927 Reconsidered, in: Mediaeval Studies 77, 2015, pp. 127–181.

[22] Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 477, f. 4v. For a digitization see https://musmed.eu/visualiseur-iiif?manifest=https%3A%2F%2Fiiif.diamm.net%2Fmanifests%2FI-Ra-Ms-477%2Fmanifest.json

[23] Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 12056, f. 5v. For a digitization see https://portail.biblissima.fr/ark:/43093/mdatad823d61ffa912a45f46750ed5a9bc5eac06af4d0

[24] John, The “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem”.

[25] Barberini 659, fol. 102r; Salvadó, The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, p. 631.

[26] E.g.: Epp, Verena, Die Entstehung eines “Nationalbewußtseins” in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten, in: Deutsches Archiv 45, 1989, pp. 596–604; Hiestand, Rudolf, “Nam qui fuimus Occidentales, nunc facti sumus Orientales”: Siedlung und Siedleridentität in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten, in: Siedler-Identität. Neun Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Christof Dipper – Rudolf Hiestand, Frankfurt 1995, pp. 61–80; Murray, Alan V., Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States: The Frankish Race and the Settlement of Outremer, in: Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Forde et al. (Leeds Texts and Monographs: New Series 14), Leeds 1995, pp. 59–73; Kirschberger, Timo,Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese. In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse im Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (Nova Mediaevalia – Quellen und Studien zum europäischen Mittelalter 13), Göttingen 2015; Yolles, Julian,Making the East Latin: The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades, Washington DC 2022; Kedar, Benjamin Z., Cultures of the Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem: Frontier Inventiveness in the Age of the Crusades, Ithaca 2025.

[27] E.g.: Smith, Katherine Allen, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century, Woodbridge 2020.

[28] Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Heidelberg 1913, p. 117.

[29] Theodericus, in: Peregrinationes tres, ed. Huygens, p. 123; Mayer, Die Jerusalemer Grabeskirche, p. 15.

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Bibliography

Sources

Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. and trans. Susan Edgington, Oxford 2007.

Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Heidelberg 1913.

Le cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier (Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 15), Paris 1984.

Theodericus, in: Peregrinationes tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg and Theodericus, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 139), Turnhout 1994, pp. 143–197.

Literature

Dondi, Cristina, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Bibliotheca Victorina 16), Turnhout 2004.

Epp, Verena, Die Entstehung eines “Nationalbewußtseins” in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten, in: Deutsches Archiv 45, 1989, pp. 596–604.

France, John, Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge 1994.

Gaposchkin, Marianne Cecilia, The Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem in British Library Additional MS 8927 Reconsidered, in: Mediaeval Studies 77, 2015, pp. 127–181.

Hamilton, Bernard, Rebuilding Zion: The Holy Places of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century, in: Studies in Church History 14, 1977, pp. 105–116.

Hiestand, Rudolf, “Nam qui fuimus Occidentales, nunc facti sumus Orientales”: Siedlung und Siedleridentität in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten, in: Siedler-Identität. Neun Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Christof Dipper – Rudolf Hiestand, Frankfurt 1995, pp. 61–80.

John, Simon, Liturgical culture and royal inauguration in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1187, in: Journal of Medieval History 43, 2017, pp. 485–504.

John, Simon, The “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem”: Remembering and Reconstructing the First Crusade in the Holy City, 1099–1187, in: Journal of Medieval History 41, 2015, pp. 409–431.

Kedar, Benjamin Z., On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120, in: Speculum 74, 1999, pp. 310–335.

Kedar, Benjamin Z., The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades, in: Crusades 3, 2004, pp. 15–75.

Kedar, Benjamin Z., Cultures of the Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem: Frontier Inventiveness in the Age of the Crusades, Ithaca 2025.

Kirschberger, Timo, Erster Kreuzzug und Ethnogenese. In novam formam commutatus – Ethnogenetische Prozesse im Fürstentum Antiochia und im Königreich Jerusalem (Nova Mediaevalia 13), Göttingen 2015.

Kirstein, Klaus-Peter, Die Lateinischen Patriarchen von Jerusalem: Von der Eroberung der Heiligen Stadt durch die Kreuzfahrer 1099 bis zum Ende der Kreuzfahrerstaaten 1291 (Berliner Historische Studien 35), Berlin 2002.

Linder, Amnon, The Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem, in: Mediaeval Studies 52, 1990, pp. 110–131.

Linder, Amnon, “Like Purest Gold Resplendent”: the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Jerusalem, in: Crusades 8, 2009, pp. 31–51.

Mayer, Hans Eberhard, Die Jerusalemer Grabeskirche als Begräbnisort in der Kreuzzugszeit, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 103, 2021, pp. 5–35.

Murray, Alan V., Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States: The Frankish Race and the Settlement of Outremer, in: Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Forde et al. (Leeds Texts and Monographs, New Series 14), Leeds 1995, pp. 59–73.

Pringle, Denys, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: a Corpus, vol. 3: The City of Jerusalem, Cambridge 2007.

Salvadó, Sebastián, Rewriting the Latin Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre: Text, Ritual and Devotion for 1149, in: Journal of Medieval History 43, 2017, pp. 403–420.

Salvadó, Sebastián, The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre and the Templar Rite: Edition and Analysis of the Jerusalem Ordinal (Rome, Bib. Vat., Barb. Lat. 659) with a Comparative Study of the Acre Breviary (Paris, Bib. Nat., MS Latin 10478), Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2011.

Smith, Katherine Allen, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century, Woodbridge 2020.

Yolles, Julian, Making the East Latin: The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades, Washington DC 2022.

Zöller, Wolf, Regularkanoniker im Heiligen Land. Studien zur Kirchen-, Ordens- und Frömmigkeitsgeschichte der Kreuzfahrerstaaten (Vita regularis 73), Münster 2018.

Image: Courtesy British Library, 762.h.2.

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