Presented below is the entire section from Pursuit of the Millennium. It provides an interesting glimpse into the everyday life of the peasantry, especially those who took part in the Crusades, and it shows just how and in just what groups of people the Tradition would find a means of surviving through the long night of the Dark Ages.
"The self-exaltation of the poor emerges still more clearly from the curious stories, compounded of fact and legend, which were told of the people called 'Tafurs.' A large part ~~ probably by far the larger part ~~ of the People's Crusade perished on its journey across Europe; but enough survived to form in Syria and Palestine a corps of vagabonds ~~ which is what the mysterious word 'TAFUR' seems to have meant. Barefoot, shaggy, clad in ragged sackcloth, covered in sores and filth, living on roots and grass and also at times on the roasted corpses of their enemies, the Tafurs were such a ferocious band that any country they passed through was utterly devastated. Too poor to afford swords and lances, they wielded clubs weighted with lead, pointed sticks, knives, hatchets, shovels, hoes, and catapults. When they charged into battle, they gnashed their teeth as though they meant to eat their enemies alive as well as dead. The Moslems, though they faced the crusading barons fearlessly, were terrified of the Tafurs, whom they called 'no Franks, but living devils.' The Christian chroniclers themselves ~~ clerics or knights whose main interest was in the doings of the princes ~~ while admitting the effectiveness of the Tafurs in battle clearly regarded them with misgiving and embarrassment. Yet, if one turns to a vernacular epic written from the standpoint of the poor one finds the Tafurs portrayed as a Holy People and 'worth far more than the Knights.'
"The Tafurs are shown as having a King, Le Roi Tafur. He is said to have been a Norman Knight who had discarded house, arms, and armour in favor of sackcloth and a scythe. At least in the beginning he was an ascetic for whom poverty had all the mystical value which it was to possess for St. Francis and his disciples. Periodically, King Tafur would inspect his men. Any who were found to have money about them were expelled from the company and sent off to buy arms and join the professional army under the barons; while those who had with greatest conviction renounced all property were admitted to membership of the 'college' or inner circle of followers. It was precisely because of their poverty that the Tafurs believed themselves destined to take the Holy City. 'The poorest shall take it: this is a sign to show clearly that the Lord God does not care for presumptuous and faithless men.' Yet though the poor made a merit of their poverty, they were full of cupidity. Booty captured from the infidel was not felt to diminish their claims on divine favour but rather to prove how real that favour was. After a successful skirmish outside Antioch, the Provencal Poor 'gallop on horseback amongst the tents to show their companions how their poverty is at an end; others, dressed in two or three silken garments, praise God as the bestower of victory and gifts.' As King Tafur leads the final assault on Jerusalem he cries: 'Where are the poor folk who want property? Let them come with me!....for today with God's help I shall win enough to load many a mule!' And later when the Moslems carry their treasures round the walls of the captured city in an effort to lure the Christians out into the open, we are shown the Tafurs unable to hold back. 'Are we in prison?' cries the King; 'They bring treasure and we dare not take it!.... What do I care if I die, since I am doing what I want to do?' And calling on 'St. Lazarus' ~~ the Lazarus of the parable, of whom the poor in the Middle Ages made their patron saint ~~ he leads his horde out of the city to catastrophe.
"In each captured city the Tafurs looted everything they could lay hands on, raped the Moslem women and carried out indiscriminate massacres. The official leaders of the Crusade had no authority over them at all. When the Emir of Antioch protested about the cannibalism of the Tafurs, the princes could only admit apologetically: 'All of us together cannot tame King Tafur.' The barons seem in fact to have been somewhat frightened of the Tafurs and to have taken care to be well armed whenever they came near them. That no doubt was the truth of the matter; but in the stories which are told from the standpoint of the poor the great princes regard the Tafur King not so much with anxiety as with humility, even with reverence. We find King Tafur urging on the hesitant barons to attack Jerusalem: 'My lords, what are we doing? We are delaying overlong our assault on this city, and this evil race. We are behaving like false pilgrims. If it rested with me and with the poor alone, the pagans would find us the worst neighbors they ever had!' The princes are so impressed that they ask him to lead the first attack; and when, covered with wounds, he is carried from the battlefield, they gather anxiously around him. But King Tafur is shown as something more than simply the mightiest of warriors. Often he appears in close association with a PROPHETA ~~ in one version it is Peter the Hermit, in another a fictitious bishop who bears that emblem which the poor had made their own ~~ the Holy Lance. And he himself possesses a supernatural quality which sets him above all princes. When ~~ in the story as edited for the poor ~~ Godfrey of Bouillon is to become King of Jerusalem, the Barons choose King Tafur as 'the Mightiest One' to perform the coronation. He performs it by giving Godfrey a branch of thorns in memory of the Crown of Thorns: and Godfrey does homage and swears to hold Jerusalem as a fief from King Tafur and God alone. And when the barons, feeling that they have endured enough, hasten back to their wives and their domains, King Tafur will not see Jerusalem abandoned but pledges himself to stay, with his army of poor, to defend the new King and his Kingdom. In these purely imaginary incidents the beggar-king becomes the symbol of the immense, unreasoning hope which had carried the Plebs Pauperum through unspeakable hardships to the Holy City.
"The realization of that hope demanded human sacrifice on a vast scale ~~ not only the self-immolation of the crusaders but also the massacre of the infidel. Although Pope and princes might intend a campaign with limited objectives, in reality the campaign tended constantly to become what the common people wanted it to be: a war to exterminate 'the sons of whores,' 'the race of Cain,' as King Tafur called the Moslems. It was not unknown for crusaders to seize all the peasants of a certain area and offer them the choice of being either immediately converted to Christianity or immediately killed ~~ 'having achieved which, our Franks returned full of joy.' The fall of Jerusalem was followed by a great massacre; except for the governor and his bodyguard, who managed to buy their lives and were escorted from the city, every Moslem ~~ man, woman and child ~~ was killed. In and around the Temple of Solomon 'the horses waded in blood up to their knees, nay up to the bridle. It was a just and wonderful judgment of God that the same place should receive the blood of those whose blasphemies it had so long carried up to God.' As for the Jews of Jerusalem, when they took refuge in their chief synagogue the building was set on fire and they were all burnt alive. Weeping with joy and singing songs of praise the crusaders marched in procession to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 'O new day, new day and exultation, new and everlasting gladness.... That day, famed through all centuries to come, turned all our sufferings and hardships into joy and exultation; that day, the confirmation of Christianity, the annihilation of paganism, the renewal of our faith!' But a handful of the infidel still survived: they had taken refuge on the roof of the mosque of al-Aqsa. The celebrated crusader Tancred had promised them their lives in exchange for a heavy ransom and had given them his banner as a safe-conduct. But Tancred could only watch with helpless fury while common soldiers scaled the wall of the mosque and beheaded every man and woman save those who threw themselves off the roof to their death."
NOTES
On the Tafurs - Guibert (I), p. 242; CONQUÉTE DE JÉRUSALEM, passim, and esp. pp. 65 sq.; CHANSON D'ANTIOCHE, vol. II, passim, and esp. pp. 254 - 5. The original versions of both these vernacular epics were composed at the beginning of the Twelfth Century. The only extant versions are those revised by Graindor of Douai in the early Thirteenth Century; but the passages concerning the Tafurs do not give the impression of having been much edited. It has often been held that both epics were written by one Richard the Pilgrim, but it seems most improbable that the same author could have written both. The CONQUÉTE DE JÉRUSALEM portrays the crusade from the standpoint of the poor. It is valuable as a guide to the psychology rather than to the external history of the People's Crusade in the East; and what it tells of the Tafurs is their legend. The CHANSON D'ANTIOCHE gives a soberer, less flattering and no doubt factually more accurate account of the Tafurs. For a good recent account: Sumberg. On the word 'Tafur' ~~ TRUDANNES, which Guibert, p. 242, gives as an equivalent of Tafurs, is a variation of TRUTANI, 'vagrants,' 'vagabonds,' 'beggars.'
'No Franks...': CHANSON D'ANTIOCHE, p. 5. Cf. Ibid., pp. 254-5, 294-5; and CONQUÉTE DE JÉRUSALEM, p. 230. 'Worth far more...': CONQUÉTE, p. 194. In the CONQUÉTE, p. 72, the paupers of the Provencale army appear in close association with the Tafurs and are described in very similar terms. On the cult of poverty amongst the Tafurs, Guibert, p. 242. 'The poorest shall take it' ~~ CONQUÉTE, p. 163. 'The Provencale poor gallop on horseback....' : Raymond of Aquilers, p. 249. 'Where are the poor folk....': CONQUÉTE, pp. 165 - 6. Cf. Anonymi Gesta Francorum, pp. 204 - 5.
For the sortie from Jerusalem: CONQUÉTE, pp. 243 - 53. For the princes' view of the Tafurs ~~ CHANSON, pp. 6 - 7. King Tafur urges the barons: CONQUÉTE, pp. 64 - 7; 'is carried from the field': Ibid., pp. 82 - 3; Crowns Godfrey, Ibid., pp. 191 - 3; pledges himself to stay at Jerusalem: Ibid., pp. 193 - 5. For a forced conversion of the peasants ~~ ANONYMI GESTA, pp. 162 - 4.
'The horses waded in blood' ~~ Raymond, p. 300.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL EXCERPTS
1. Anonymi Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitorum. (Ed. Brehler as Histoire Anonyme de la premiere Croisade, in: Les classiques de l'histoire de France au Moyen Age, Vol. IV), Paris, 1924.
2. Chanson d'Antioche, ed. P. Paris, 2 Vols., Paris, 1848.
3. Conquéte de Jérusalem, ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1868.
4. Guibert of Nogent ~~ Gesta dei per Francos, sive Historia Hierosolymitana, in RHC, Vol. IV. (Recueil des Historiens des Croisades ~~ Historiens Occidenteaux), publ. Academie des Inscriptions et Belles~Lettres, 5 Vols., Paris, 1844-95.
5. Raymond of Aguilers: Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Jerusalem, in RHC, Vol. III.
6. Sumberg, L. A. M., 'The Tafurs and the First Crusade,' in Medieval Studies (University of Toronto), Vol. XXI, London, New York, 1959, pp. 224 - 46.
COMMENTS
It seems that the Tafurs were a band of illiterate hillbillies. But, when we analyze the groups which were responsible for the preservation of the Tradition through the Dark Ages, this is exactly what we find in Europe, until the Arab Alchemists and Qabalists (Italian, German, French, and Spanish) arrived on the scene. As far as learning in Europe, such a thing was out of the question until the Arabs and Jews had spread their influence to the less-literate Europeans.
The real infidels (so-called) were not Moslems, generally, but Turks. Both Christians and Moslems were anxious to be rid of them, because the Turks were Sunni Orthodox Moslems, not Shiah Moslems, and especially not Isma'ilis. Unfortunately, the Tafurs weren't schooled in International Relations, like the Barons must have been. They saw all outsiders (foreigners) as devils, therefore, they had to be done away with.
And, whereas the rank and file Tafurs carried their lead clubs proudly in battle, the inner college might have had specific objects in mind. Remember that the Assassins were viewed with the same amount of fear and disgust by Sunni Moslems and Christians. Like the Zealots, the Tafurs had no limitations to the atrocities they could commit. They were ideal guerilla fighters, and the guerillas of today could call them their ancestors.
It is possible that some of the brethren of the Rose-Croix infiltrated the ranks of the Tafurs, or that the Monks of Calabria and/or Orval infiltrated the ranks of these hooligans, in order to accomplish their mission undetected by Barons and clerics that might get a little bit too suspicious of the object of the Order's work.
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