Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

corpses from the walls, and jeered atthe Christians, with obscene gestures and horridlaughter."

"The Moor is cruel,"Belbo said.

"Like children,"Diotallevi added.

"These Templars of yourswere really crazy!" Dolores said with admiration.

"They remind me of Tomand Jerry," Belbo said.

I felt a little guilty.After all, I had been living with the Templars for two years, and Iloved them. Yet now, catering to the snobbery of my audience, I hadmade them sound like characters out of a cartoon. Maybe it wasWilliam of Tyre's fault, treacherous historiographer that he was. Icould almost see my Knights of the Temple, bearded and blazing, thebright red crosses on their snow-white cloaks, their mountswheeling in the shadow of the Beauceant, their black-and-whitebanner. They had been so dazzlingly intent on their feast of deathand daring. Perhaps the sweat Saint Bernard talked about was abronze glow that lent a sarcastic nobility to their fearsome smilesas they celebrated their farewell to life...Lions in war, Jacquesde Vitry called them, but sweet lambs in times of peace; harsh inbattle, devout in prayer; ferocious to their enemies, but full ofkindness toward their brothers. The white and the black of theirbanner were so apposite: to the friends of Christ they were pure;to His adversaries they were grim and terrible.

Pathetic champions ofthe faith, last glimmer of chivalry's twilight. Why play any oldAriosto to them when I could be their Joinville? The author of theHistoire de Saint Louis had accompanied the sainted king to theHoly Land, acting as both scribe and soldier. I recalled now whathe had written about the Templars. This was more than a hundred andeighty years after the order was founded, and it had been throughenough crusades to undermine anyone's ideals. The heroic figures ofQueen Meli-sande and Baudouin the leper-king had vanished likeghosts; factional fighting in Lebanon¡Xblood-soaked even then¡Xhaddrawn to a close; Jerusalem had already fallen once; Barbarossa haddrowned in Cilicia; Richard the Lion-Heart, defeated andhumiliated, had gone home disguised as, of all things, a Templar;Christianity had lost the battle. The Moors' view of theconfederation of autonomous potentates united in the defense oftheir civilization was very different. They had read Avicenna, andthey were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you livealongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centurieswithout succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared itto Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, andGermanic? Then, in 1244, came the final, definitive fall ofJerusalem. The war, begun a hundred and fifty years earlier, waslost. The Christians had to lay down their arms in a land nowdevoted to peace and the scent of the cedars of Lebanon. PoorTemplars. Your epic, all in vain.

Little wonder that inthe tender melancholy of their faded, aging glory they lent an earto the secret doctrines of Moslem mystics, hieratic guardians ofhidden treasures. Perhaps that was how the legend of the Knights ofthe Temple was born, the legend with which some frustrated andyearning minds are still obsessed, the myth of a boundless powerlying unused, unharnessed...

Even in Joinville's day,the saint-king Louis, at whose table Aquinas dined, persisted inhis belief in the crusade, despite two centuries of dreams ruinedby the victors' stupidity. Was it worth one more try? Yes, Louissaid. And the Templars were ready and willing; they followed himinto defeat, because that was their job. Without a crusade, howcould they justify the Temple?

Louis attacks Damiettafrom the sea. The enemy shore glitters with pikes, halberds,oriflammes, shields, and scimitars. Fine-looking men, Joinvillesays chivalrously, who carry arms of gold struck by the sun. Louiscould wait, but he decides to land at any cost. "My faithfulfollowers, we will be invincible if we are inseparable in ourcharity. If we are defeated, we will be martyrs. If we triumph, theglory of God will be the greater." The Templars don't believe it,but they have been trained to be knights of the ideal, and this isthe image of themselves they must confirm. They will follow theking in his mystical madness.

Incredibly, the landingis a success; equally incredibly, the Saracens abandon Damietta.But the king hesitates to enter the city, fearing treachery. Butthere is no treachery: the city is his for the taking, along withits treasures and its hundred mosques, which Louis immediatelyconverts into churches of the Lord. Now he has a decision to make:Should he march on Alexandria or on Cairo? The wise choice would beAlexandria, thus depriving Egypt of a vital port. But theexpedition has its evil genius, the king's brother, Robertd'Artois, a megalomaniac hungry for glory. A typical younger son.He advises Louis to head for Cairo, the heart of Egypt. TheTemplars, cautious at first, are now champing at the bit. The kingissues orders to avoid isolated skirmishes, but the marshal of theTemple takes it upon himself to violate that prohibition. Seeing asquadron of the sultan's Mamelukes, he cries out: "Now have atthem, in the name of God, for a shame like this I cannotbear!"

The Saracens dig inbeyond the river near Mansura. The French try to build a dam andcreate a ford, protecting it with their mobile towers, but theSaracens have learned the art of Greek fire from the Byzantines.Greek fire is a barrel-like container with a kind of big spear as atail. It is hurled like a lightning bolt, a flying dragon. It burnsso brightly that in the Christian camp at night one can see asclearly as if it were day.

While the camp burns, aBedouin traitor leads the king and his men to a ford in exchangefor a payment of three hundred bezants. The king decides to attack.The crossing is not easy; many are drowned and swept away by thecurrent, while three hundred mounted Saracens wait on the otherside. When the main body of the attack force finally comes ashore,the Templars, as planned, are in the vanguard, followed by theComte d'Artois. The Moslem horsemen flee, and the Templars wait forthe rest of the Christian army. But Artois and his men dash off inpursuit of the enemy.

The Templars, anxious toavoid dishonor, then join in the assault, but catch up with Artoisonly after he has penetrated the enemy camp and begun a massacre.The Moslems fall back toward Mansura, which is just what Artois