6 - Signs of the Times

Summary

Signs were another means by which God might communicate with humankind, harnessing the proclivities of Creation to arouse wonder and encourage reflection. This logic implies that God had a vested interest in matters provoking signs, a concern or investment significant enough to prompt the provision of said sign. By recognising this aspect of the implications of signs, we are able to see how they function in parallel with miracles and visions as indicators of divine approval or chastisement, or of futures good or ill. Indeed, it is the predictive capabilities of signs, their ability to indicate the spatially or temporally distant, which allowed them to embed a particular event within sacred history. For, as diverse signs had foretold the coming of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Luke, so too might other signs predict other momentous events.

It will be argued in this chapter that signs in crusade narrative can work to situate the relevant expedition alongside what contemporaries viewed as appropriately momentous events, and to flag the divine disposition regarding the events narrated. It will also be shown how the use of signs to indicate divine approbation contributes to the preponderance of positively interpreted signs in this corpus, meaning signs that are accompanied by interpretations explaining that they communicated victory, or other positive outcomes, rather than, for example, destruction or famine. The role that signs of divine approval play in First Crusade narratives will be examined first, followed by signs of divine wrath across a broader range of sources. Two case studies will then be discussed, allowing an exploration of the ways in which signs, and related ways of knowing, might be employed in a justificatory capacity, and how discussions of signs might be seen to tap into contemporaneous hopes and anxieties surrounding crusading and the Latin East.

Signs of Divine Approval

The signs of First Crusade narrative are usually astronomical in nature, and contribute to the idea that the First Crusade was divinely predestined. Much like miracles and visions, an author might incorporate such phenomena into a narrative with or without an accompanying exposition regarding its significance. Robert the Monk describes how a great fire, visible in the sky over Antioch in June 1098, fell into the Turkish camp on the night after the discovery of the relic of the Holy Lance.