I've just heard that in the cold northern land of Hibernia, in the town gaol of Perth, a man is incarcerated just because he will not wear clothes. What strange injustice is this?
I knew the torment of solitary confinement in that cell at Alamut. But at least for much of that time I was mad, raving for Blanche and revenge, and scarcely aware of my prison walls. Prisoner Stephen Gough does not have that solace; he is as sane as I am now.
Holy hermits who cast off their clothes in penance were revered and honoured in my time, not imprisoned. This man Gough is not a hermit, but something they call in modern parlance a Rambler. He believes that God made him the way he is and that so he should not be ashamed of his body. So he casts off his clothes, like Adam innocent in Eden. I may not agree with his religious beliefs, but I would not have him locked away for his nakedness.
Free the Naked Rambler! Leave him be to lead his life the way he wishes. We all have bodies and we all know what they look like. Why be ashamed? Be tolerant and smile at the eccentricities of others instead of trying to force them to conform. It is the pomposity of judges, the convention of sheriffs, and the narrow minds of bigots that we should abhor. Free the Naked Rambler! He is one of us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/23/naked-rambler-prison
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Thursday, 22 March 2012
A Confused Conversation about Democracy and The People’s Book Prize
My creator (the one who retold my story, that is, not the one in whom I long ago ceased to believe) tells me that my first volume – the one he called The Waste Land - is shortlisted for The People’s Book Prize.
I find this confusing. In my day, ‘the people’ would scarcely recognise a book if they saw one, let alone be able to read it. Όι πολοι (I remember my Greek!) have come a long way since my time.
But I know that I should be pleased.
“How is the winner chosen for the prize? How can I be chosen?” I ask.
“We,” my creator corrects me, “It’s simple. Anybody who wants can vote for their favourite book.”
This confuses me still more. How can anyone, any ordinary member of the people, have a vote?
“Anyone? Is it as if they were members of the College of Cardinals electing a Pope?” I ask.
“Similar,” he answers, and an expression of mischief crosses his face. “You remember how after their Grand Master has died the Templars choose his successor.”
He knows how I hate the Templars and their doings.
“Of course I remember. They select an electoral college, a cabal of thirteen. They scheme and they machinate, they make bargains with each other and offer promises and bribes. Is that what we have to do to win this Prize?”
“Not exactly. In these modern competitions you have to persuade the public to vote for you because you want it more than you have ever wanted anything else in the world. Then they sympathise with you and may give you their vote. Do you want it more than anything?”
I am taken aback.
“No, of course not. I wanted Blanche more. And my revenge on Black Baldwin and Hasan i-Sabbah - I wanted that more. And to find peace and understanding with my Master in the desert.” My shoulders sag.
“How badly do you want the rest of your story to be told? Do you want it to stop with The Flowers of Evil, or to go on?”
“I would like it to go on, of course.”
“Then we need to win this prize.”
So I am asking you please to vote for my story. I believe the right thing to say is please follow the link below:
http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/
A Confused Conversation about Democracy and The People’s Book Prize
My creator (the one who retold my story, that is, not the one in whom I long ago ceased to believe) tells me that my first volume – what he called The Waste Land - is shortlisted for The People’s Book Prize.
I find this confusing. In my day, ‘the people’ would scarcely recognise a book if they saw one, let alone be able to read it. Όι πολοι (remember I know Greek!) have come a long way since my time.
But I know that I should be pleased.
“How is the winner chosen for the prize? How can I be chosen?” I asked.
“Anybody who wants can vote for their favourite book,” my creator answered.
This confuses me still more. How can anyone, any ordinary member of the people, have a vote?
“Anyone? Is it as if they were members of the College of Cardinals electing a Pope?” I asked.
“Similar,” he answered, and an expression of mischief crossed his face. “You remember how after their Grand Master has died the Templars choose his successor.”
He is deliberateily needling me. He knows how I hate the Templars and their doings.
“Of course I remember. They select an electoral college, a cabal of thirteen. They scheme and they machinate, they make bargains with each other and offer promises and bribes. Is that what we have to do to win this Prize?”
“Not exactly. In these modern competitions you have to persuade the public to vote for you because you want it more than you have ever wanted anything else in the world. Then they sympathise with you and may give you their vote. Do you want it more than anything?”
I am taken aback.
“No, of course not. I wanted Blanche more. And my revenge on Black Baldwin and Hasan i-Sabbah - I wanted that more.”
“How badly do you want the rest of your story to be told? Do you want it to stop with The Flowers of Evil, or to go on?”
“I would like it to go on, of course.”
“Then we need to win this prize.”
So I am asking you please to vote for my story. The correct request, I believe, is to follow the link below : http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/
Friday, 11 November 2011
The Dangers of Division
If there is one lesson to learn from my experiences on the Crusade, it is that armies win when they stick together with their allies, and they lose when they fragment.
I remember so well the concern of Emperor Alexios to prevent those of us under Godfrey’s banner from uniting with the Provencals of Raymond of Toulouse and the Normans under Bohemond of Taranto. After all, I, not Bagrat, overheard his words in the Emperor’s fine Ionian columned throne room overlooking the Bosphorus. Had it not been for Baldwin’s impetuous pride in provoking the Emperor’s wrath, the Byzantines might not have been able to shepherd us over that narrow neck of water before the Provencals and Normans arrived. Who knows, perhaps the proud Eastern Empire would have been toppled there and then.
A few months later the lesson was forgotten. For it was the squabble between black Baldwin and red Tancred over Tarsus and Mamistra that perhaps prevented the foundation of a Crusader fiefdom in Cilicia. I remember how dismayed I was at the time by the violence of Christian on Christian. How naive I was then.
But Antioch illustrated the lesson most clearly. I saw the dangerous variety in Kerbogha’s vast host on my journey there before they encircled the city and reported this vulnerability. Bohemond and Raymond’s bitter rivalry had sparked into life by then, it is true, but we were all united by desperation and by the fanaticism fuelled by the Holy Lance. And with Raymond confined to his sickbed by illness or fear, Bohemond was our undisputed leader. So like a mailed fisted striking a heap of sand, our bedraggled force was able to scatter the disunited Saracens, though they outnumbered us at least three to one and were well-fed while we were starving.
And if the Seljuks and the Fatimids had combined to defend Jerusalem itself the outcome of that extraordinary siege might have been very different. Indeed, we might never have made it to those famous walls. Instead, the Fatimids weakened themselves by throwing out the Seljuks barely six months before.
What a shame our unity was in such an unworthy cause.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Why does intolerance always win?
Fuelled by my own fanaticism and Pope Urban II's rhetoric, I set off to Outremer in a mood of religious fervour. I ignored my mentor Abbot Hugh's concerns about the validity of this 'holy crusade' and took refuge in Saint Augustine's twisted arguments justifying religious war as an act of love.
Was the Holy Father's offer to us of eternal salvation one of spiritual sincerity or practical politics? Did he hope to secure a place in Heaven for himself by starting the campaign that won back the Holy Places, or was it more a place in history that he sought? Did he want most to regain political power over the Eastern Church by sending us to Emperor Alexios's aid, and to solve the problems in his French homeland caused by restless barons and knights with nothing to do except fight each other? How can I really tell? I only saw him briefly in that autumn of 1095.
Our leaders I observed for longer. Their brutal actions speak louder than their pious words. After all, Black Baldwin broke off long before reaching Jerusalem, and found himself a fiefdom for the taking from the poor Armenians - Christian Armenians - around Edessa. How ironic that the throne of Jerusalem was offered to him of all people after the death of his brother, my poor master Godfrey.
Bohemond of Taranto chose to make himself a Prince by remaining in Antioch after he won the struggle for what had once been the second city of Byzantium - the struggle against the Moslem host of Kerbogha, yes, but also against his Christian comrade Raymond of Toulouse. Maybe he had never intended to go to Jerusalem. Raymond continued on to the Holy City, it is true, but he had little choice if he was to redeem his reputation after the cannibalistic outrages of his Provencal followers in Marrat al-Numan. As soon as Jerusalem fell he was back off North to try to seize Tripoli - after all I met him nearby just after his 300 knights had routed an Arab force twenty times larger. If Tancred had been able to build a fiefdom in Cilicia - if his co-religionist Baldwin had not tricked him out of Tarsus - he would have surely stayed instead of travelling to Jerusalem. And Godfrey, who won the Holy City for us? He was no saint. If any man knew him well enough to judge, I am that man.
As I learned the Moslem faith, and came to understand Jesus' real meaning, the inexcusable evil of our Crusade became clear. Jesus and Mohammed preached near identical messages. One said 'turn the other cheek'; the other said 'fight only in self-defence if you have no alternative'. Both urged tolerance of others' beliefs, and both practised forgiveness of their enemies. Some of their followers heard this message. I well remember the Christian cathedral and the Moslem mosque side by side in Ridwan's Aleppo, and the mosque cheek by jowl with the church in the Monastery of St Katherine at Sinai. Saint Basil taught the Byzantines that even for a soldier to kill in battle was a sin, to be washed away by the sacrament of confession. Perhaps that was one reason why the Byzantines were more civilised than us, and scorned for it by the Baldwins and Bohemonds. In Damascus, in the great Umayyad Mosque, there was room for Sunni and Shi'a to worship.
But the fanatics, like my enemies Hassan-i Sabbah and his Nizari Assassins, always seem to poison the others' minds and conquer tolerance. We founded the Templars to protect pilgrims against intolerance, and look what became of them. Why are the disciples always more fanatical than those that they follow? Why does their belief have to be more certain than their teachers'? Why do they not understand that what is right for one may not be right for another? Why should one man's right be another's wrong? If all the prophets had known what would be wrought by their followers, would they have taught them as they did?
Was the Holy Father's offer to us of eternal salvation one of spiritual sincerity or practical politics? Did he hope to secure a place in Heaven for himself by starting the campaign that won back the Holy Places, or was it more a place in history that he sought? Did he want most to regain political power over the Eastern Church by sending us to Emperor Alexios's aid, and to solve the problems in his French homeland caused by restless barons and knights with nothing to do except fight each other? How can I really tell? I only saw him briefly in that autumn of 1095.
Our leaders I observed for longer. Their brutal actions speak louder than their pious words. After all, Black Baldwin broke off long before reaching Jerusalem, and found himself a fiefdom for the taking from the poor Armenians - Christian Armenians - around Edessa. How ironic that the throne of Jerusalem was offered to him of all people after the death of his brother, my poor master Godfrey.
Bohemond of Taranto chose to make himself a Prince by remaining in Antioch after he won the struggle for what had once been the second city of Byzantium - the struggle against the Moslem host of Kerbogha, yes, but also against his Christian comrade Raymond of Toulouse. Maybe he had never intended to go to Jerusalem. Raymond continued on to the Holy City, it is true, but he had little choice if he was to redeem his reputation after the cannibalistic outrages of his Provencal followers in Marrat al-Numan. As soon as Jerusalem fell he was back off North to try to seize Tripoli - after all I met him nearby just after his 300 knights had routed an Arab force twenty times larger. If Tancred had been able to build a fiefdom in Cilicia - if his co-religionist Baldwin had not tricked him out of Tarsus - he would have surely stayed instead of travelling to Jerusalem. And Godfrey, who won the Holy City for us? He was no saint. If any man knew him well enough to judge, I am that man.
As I learned the Moslem faith, and came to understand Jesus' real meaning, the inexcusable evil of our Crusade became clear. Jesus and Mohammed preached near identical messages. One said 'turn the other cheek'; the other said 'fight only in self-defence if you have no alternative'. Both urged tolerance of others' beliefs, and both practised forgiveness of their enemies. Some of their followers heard this message. I well remember the Christian cathedral and the Moslem mosque side by side in Ridwan's Aleppo, and the mosque cheek by jowl with the church in the Monastery of St Katherine at Sinai. Saint Basil taught the Byzantines that even for a soldier to kill in battle was a sin, to be washed away by the sacrament of confession. Perhaps that was one reason why the Byzantines were more civilised than us, and scorned for it by the Baldwins and Bohemonds. In Damascus, in the great Umayyad Mosque, there was room for Sunni and Shi'a to worship.
But the fanatics, like my enemies Hassan-i Sabbah and his Nizari Assassins, always seem to poison the others' minds and conquer tolerance. We founded the Templars to protect pilgrims against intolerance, and look what became of them. Why are the disciples always more fanatical than those that they follow? Why does their belief have to be more certain than their teachers'? Why do they not understand that what is right for one may not be right for another? Why should one man's right be another's wrong? If all the prophets had known what would be wrought by their followers, would they have taught them as they did?
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Attrition
It's never easy to estimate the numbers in an army. But when they started, Bohemond of Taranto must have had 20,000, and Raymond of Toulouse 50,000. With us, there were another 50,000 directly under my friend Godfrey de Bouillon, of that I can be pretty sure, and another 30,000 reporting to the other nobles from France and the lands on the edge of the Holy Roman Empire. 150,000 in all, I'd guess, and that is ignoring the poor rabble that went first under Peter the Hermit and were massacred to the last man outside Nicaea before we'd even crossed the Hellespont.
Three years later there were just 15,000 of us left outside Jerusalem, exhausted, famished and ferocious. 15,000 left from 150,000. Nine out of every ten had fallen by the wayside. All right, I will allow that some went with black Baldwin to grab an easy billet in Edessa, and that many of the Normans from Apulia stuck with Bohemond in Antioch. A few just could not stomach it and trickled home with their tails between their legs - like that coward Stephen of Blois. Much good it did him, for his wife Adela bullied him until he returned to Outremer. She really did nag him to death, for he perished in 1102 against the Egyptians outside Ramlah.
Let's say 30,000 peeled off before completing the journey. That's still seven out of ten that died - a 70% casualty rate, as I think you'd put it today. Would any of your modern armies take that?
Where did they all fall? Our first encounter with the Saracens, at Dorylaeum, maybe accounted for 10,000. Perhaps the same number did not even make it that far. But it was that journey south across the Turkish desert that took our numbers down below 100,000 for the first time. What a time the vultures had!
And then Antioch, I suppose. I missed the siege, and although I certainly did not think so at the time, maybe I was better off where I was. By the time I reached what was once Byzantium's second city, there were only 45,000, maybe 50,000 left to face Kerbogha's hordes. They had died fighting off the Saracen relief army, or from famine and disease through that long winter of 1097/8. Kerbogha's divided host accounted for a few thousand more, and then the plague did its worst, taking 25,000 or 30,000 souls.
Not that they were too bothered of course - for those souls had been promised their places in the Kingdom of Heaven whether they made it to Jerusalem or perished on the way. Pope Urban made them an offer that they could not refuse - poor foolish believers. I know the truth of it, and now the irony is that I am the only one left.
Three years later there were just 15,000 of us left outside Jerusalem, exhausted, famished and ferocious. 15,000 left from 150,000. Nine out of every ten had fallen by the wayside. All right, I will allow that some went with black Baldwin to grab an easy billet in Edessa, and that many of the Normans from Apulia stuck with Bohemond in Antioch. A few just could not stomach it and trickled home with their tails between their legs - like that coward Stephen of Blois. Much good it did him, for his wife Adela bullied him until he returned to Outremer. She really did nag him to death, for he perished in 1102 against the Egyptians outside Ramlah.
Let's say 30,000 peeled off before completing the journey. That's still seven out of ten that died - a 70% casualty rate, as I think you'd put it today. Would any of your modern armies take that?
Where did they all fall? Our first encounter with the Saracens, at Dorylaeum, maybe accounted for 10,000. Perhaps the same number did not even make it that far. But it was that journey south across the Turkish desert that took our numbers down below 100,000 for the first time. What a time the vultures had!
And then Antioch, I suppose. I missed the siege, and although I certainly did not think so at the time, maybe I was better off where I was. By the time I reached what was once Byzantium's second city, there were only 45,000, maybe 50,000 left to face Kerbogha's hordes. They had died fighting off the Saracen relief army, or from famine and disease through that long winter of 1097/8. Kerbogha's divided host accounted for a few thousand more, and then the plague did its worst, taking 25,000 or 30,000 souls.
Not that they were too bothered of course - for those souls had been promised their places in the Kingdom of Heaven whether they made it to Jerusalem or perished on the way. Pope Urban made them an offer that they could not refuse - poor foolish believers. I know the truth of it, and now the irony is that I am the only one left.
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