THE FIRST MIRACLE
The Anonymous begins his writing in Laisse 132 of the Canso after William of Tudela's abrupt disappearance as author. A miracle is recorded by the Anonymous for the first time not long afterward in Laisse 142 (p. 72). It is after the battle of Muret and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, defeated along with his allies by Simon de Montfort, leaves Toulouse to surrender and goes to Rome to appeal to the Pope:
"Now let us return to the valiant count who went away a landless man. Harsh have been his trials both by land and sea, yet God and the Holy Spirit brought him safe by miracle to harbour. With but few companions, he and his young son arrived in Rome, where they met with much joy and told each other that God should be their guide."
Certainly the crushing defeat at Muret would be a harsh trial by land, but it is unclear what harsh trial by sea might be referred to here. The journey is not recorded in the other sources. Perhaps the voyage by ship to Rome was beset by storms. The miracle which the Anonymous points to here does not seem to have been the count's survival at Muret as it is his safe arrival "at harbour" specifically which seems to have been miraculous.
What is clearer is that count Raymond's setbacks up to this point are constructed by the Anonymous into a narrative of trial, like those of biblical figures who endure tragedy and disaster so that they may ultimately prove their righteousness and be rewarded. It is the beginning of the framing of events in a manner similar to and opposite of that of Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay.
THE SECOND MIRACLE
The next sections of the Canso concern the many deliberations at the Papal Court and the Fourth Lateran Council. The Anonymous then goes on to discuss the successful rebellion by the Raymonds of Toulouse in which Beaucaire is besieged and Simon de Montfort's efforts to relieve the siege fail and end with the surrender of the garrison and de Montfort's furious withdrawal to Toulouse. These events are described without any attribution of divine intervention by the Anonymous, although he frequently has characters on both sides expressing their opinions about God's will and favour.
In Laisse 180 (p. 119) the Anonymous has just been describing Count Simon's successes at subduing the surrounding countryside and is about to relate Count Raymond entering Toulouse with the assistance of divine intervention. He foreshadows the upcoming miracle by reminding his audience unequivocally about God's intentions:
"These were serious setbacks for the Provencals, but then God caused a kindly light to shine upon them from Toulouse, one that blazed across the world, restored vigour to paratge and splendour to worth, for their lord the count, so much endangered, so wrongly disinherited by the mighty pope and the other clergy, arrived in a fief where he found loyalty, that of Sir Roger of Comminges."
With Roger's help, count Raymond rides for Toulouse, having a minor battle with crusading forces along the way. Simon de Montfort is not yet at Toulouse but the city is held by the French (that is, by the crusaders) and Raymond must enter it without attracting notice. In Laissde 181 (p. 122):
"All that day they rode along smooth highways until darkness fell. Then the count chose good faithful messengers and briefly told them to tell his sworn friends in the town that he and the other dispossessed men had arrived outside; let them come without fail to welcome him. At sunrise when the day began to brighten and they saw the dawn, the count was anxious in case he should be seen and the news of his arrival be spread all over the country. But God worked a miracle for him -- the weather darkened and a grey mist filled the air, so that the count got safely into woodland and was soon hidden."
Count Raymond immediately subsequent to this retakes Toulouse and almost the entire rest of the Canso will be devoted to the resultant military conflict as Simon de Montfort and his crusaders attempt lay siege. This miracle, then, demonstrates how God from the beginning facilitated Raymond's righteous claim to Toulouse, after he had suffered his trials.
THE THIRD MIRACLE
As word spread throughout the Languedoc that Toulouse had been retaken by count Raymond, crusading forces began to respond. The defensive situation would be difficult as Simon de Montfort had previously torn down walls, towers and defenses and sent his sergeants to disarm the population. The first to reach Toulouse was Guy de Montfort, Simon's brother. He led an immediate assault on Toulouse's defences which was fiercely repulsed by its defenders, in the first of a series of surprising outcomes when small numbers of poorly armed defenders fought well equipped attackers. In Laisse 185 (p. 126):
"On one and the other side the strife is sharper, for pride and vainglory have been flung out of Toulouse and Count Raymond directs and sustains the town. Many long years have he and his kin been here, and clearly it is God who has given the place back to him. Unprovided, weaponless, with only a few men and a handful of foreign troops, but with steadfast hearts, Count Raymond with God's help has driven out the Normans and the French. The Lord God is merciful to sinners who show mercy, he has given the town back to Raymond whose flag now flies there -- may he look well on right and reason, on wrong and treachery, may he hear the cries of his faithful flock, defend Toulouse and guide those who love him!"
While no individual miraculous event is described, the Anonymous is clear that it is God who assigned victory to Raymond's side and who provided the help needed to achieve it. This is reinforced in Laisse 186 (p. 130) as Simon de Montfort gathers all of his troops and rides hard for Toulouse himself. He is counseled by Cardinal Bertrand, the papal legate, and Bishop Fulk of Toulouse with advice which recalls the massacre at Beziers:
"'Count,' said the cardinal, 'how glad you must be that the day of your enemies' defeat has come! You will of course take the town. As soon as you enter it, have the men hanged and the counts put to death. Take care that no one escapes.'
'My lord,' said the bishop, 'the Church must save all who are in a church within sight of the altar.'
'No,' said the cardinal. 'This was decided when sentence was passed. I abandon them to you, Count. Never fear that God will require them of you or exact repayment!' But the cardinal was wrong, for the king who rules, who sees straight and clear, who gave his precious blood as a remedy for sin, he wills to defend Toulouse."
THE FOURTH MIRACLE
Simon's attacks on Toulouse were indeed all forced back by the defenders and the siege of Toulouse turned into a protracted and expensive affair, full of frustration for the crusaders. The arrival of the Count of Soissons to join the besiegers gave a much-needed boost to their spirits, although the Anonymous depicts the Count of Soissons as a constant and blunt critic of de Montfort and his policies. Nonetheless, the troops he brought with him for their forty-day service proved a grave threat to Toulouse, alleviated only by the sudden arrival of count Raymond's son, the young Raymond VII of Tououse. In Laisse 201 (p. 162):
"There was great anxiety inside Toulouse, for so many enemies now hemmed them in and all Christendom was gathering to destroy them.
But now to comfort them the Virgin's Son sent them joy, sent them an olive branch, a bright star, a glory on the mountains, for the brave young count, daylight, inheritor, rode in through the gateway with cross and steel. And God sent him a marvel, a true sign that he would bind the murderous lion in chains, for from the highest battlement of the bridge tower first captured by the French, the banner fell, the lion tumbled down into water and sand, and this delighted everyone in the city."
Throughout the Canso, the Anonymous ignored the crusading rhetoric which informed Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay and depicted God as uniformly on the side of the crusade. When the Anonymous depicted God uniformly supporting the southerners, he was just as forceful in his rhetoric and did not see the need to present any argument against the idea that God supported the Church and the crusade on theological grounds. Instead, he railed against the unjust nature of their cause and the cruelty of their methods and asserted the traditional rights of the defenders as sufficient to merit God's favour.
THE FIFTH MIRACLE
After more fiercely contested fighting over the river towers, and a damaging sortie by the Toulousains, Simon de Montfort decided on a fresh assault on the city. To effect this, he used a "cat" -- a mobile defensive structure covered with hides and shields which could be dragged up to the walls and provided those inside with cover against missiles from the defenders as they approached. The initial assault had to be aborted when two well-placed shots from a trebuchet within Toulouse, "straight as a hawk swoops on a small bird" cause serious damage to the cat and kill many inside. The cat had to be turned around and dragged back out of the range of the defenders for repairs. As those repairs were made, it became clear to the defenders that another protected assault would follow and they resolved to improve their defensive walls, even though that work would expose them to fire from the besiegers. In Laisse 203-204 (p. 167):
"They began the outworks, the doors and hatches. Knights and citizens handled the stones, as did noble ladies and their daughters, young men, little girls and boys, everyone, great and small, and they sang songs and ballads as they worked. Thick and fast the besiegers' mangonels shot at them, archers and slingers loosed bolts and stones, knocked the bowls and pitchers off their heads, smashed handles and head-pads and pierced their legs, their hands and fingers. But so firm and strong was their courage, not one of them took fright.
Not one of them took fright, far from it. They were delighted to be building shelters to protect the ditches, and the whole community worked with great joy. But the besiegers' mangonels and bent bows poured stones and feathered bolts into the thick of them and from the side too, piercing legs, chests and arms and shattering beams, posts and timbers. But the Virgin's Son kept them safe and there was almost no damage done in the town."
After the graphic depiction of injuries to legs, hands, fingers, chest and arms, it comes as a surprise to hear that the Toulousains were kept safe during this work. Perhaps the Anonymous is referring more to the lack of structural damage to the defenses which they were building. Still, it is clear from the repeated descriptions of injuries that the divine intervention mentioned here was not immunity to injury from the besiegers' missiles and, in fact, shared credit with the courage of the people of Toulouse who persevered in the work despite the very real risk of being hurt or killed.
The defenders of Toulouse then decided to sortie to burn the cat and it was during the ensuing battle that Simon de Montfort was killed. This broke the morale of the crusading army, which lifted the siege.
THE SIXTH MIRACLE
Amary de Montfort took over his father's position but could not continue the attack on Toulouse and soon found himself on the defensive against the young Raymond of Toulouse. With the assistance of the count of Foix and others, young Raymond attacked a crusading army at Baziege. The Anonymous gave a long and graphic depiction of the young count's victory, ending in Laisse 211 (p. 186):
"Steel flashed on steel, on overthrown and beaten men; knights and sergeants struggled, and they slashed, slew and finished them. Eyes, brain-matter, hands, arms, scalps and jaw-bones, bits of limbs, livers and guts sliced up and tossed about, blood, flesh and carrion lay everywhere. Red was the battlefield and red the riverbank, heaped with dead Frenchmen. The viscount of Lautrec, however, escaped with his life. Sir Foucaud, Sir John and Sir Theobald surrendered and were kept, but the rest lay slaughtered on the battlefield.
It was a miracle of the holy Trinity that none of the count's men were hurt in this affair, except one squire who rode too far ahead. The battle won and the field stripped, the count rode back in great joy."
Accounts which emphasize the one-sidedness of a battle's results are not uncommon and a bit of exaggeration in this regard might be expected. However, it is striking that the Anonymous uses the lack of injury on the victorious side as a miraculous indication of divine favour in just the same way that Arnald Amalric and the other prelates did in their account of the battle of Muret, where they described God's victory costing their enemies tens of thousands of lives while their own forces had lost "only one of Christ's knights ... and a few sergeants".
There are no further miracles in the text. Prince Louis marched from France with a huge army and massacred the population of Marmande before marching on Toulouse. The Canso ends as the city prepares to defend itself. The final laisse is 214 (p. 191-194), which finishes by invoking divine protection in the upcoming conflict:
"Now may the Virgin's Son, full of light and glory, who gave his precious blood for mercy's victory, defend reason and law, may he cause the guilt of wrongdoing to fall on those who purpose sin! For now the son of the king of France comes in pride bringing thirty or forty counts and so many troops that no man alive can reckon up their thousands and hundreds. The cardinal from Rome too, he comes proclaiming that death and slaughter must lead the way, that in and around Toulouse there shall remain no living man, neither noble lady, girl nor pregnant woman, no created thing, no child at the breast, but all must die in fire and flames.
But the Virgin Mary will save them from this, she who puts right all that is wrong, so that innocent blood will not be shed. They will not be afraid, for St Sernin leads them, and God, justice, strength, the young count and the saints will defend Toulouse for them.
Amen."
We cannot know if the Anonymous really wrote this ending at the time it described, or if he had the benefit of hindsight in knowing that this second siege of Toulouse, although much larger than the first, would also end with the crusading forces raising the siege and leaving without success. It is certainly tempting to conclude that if the Anonymous had known of Toulouse's staunch defense and eventual victory that he would have written about it. Certainly, the level of detail which the Anonymous includes about the preparations -- right down to who commanded which section of the city -- suggests that he did not have knowledge of what was to come and that he finished his writing before the second siege of Toulouse began.
As with Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay and William of Tudela, it is now impossible to know why the Anonymous ended his story where he did or what sort of editing process occurred after the composition of the last text that we still have. Of the three authors, though, the Anonymous does seem to have the most finished ending. Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay trails off after Simon de Montfort's death with some disjointed sections. William of Tudela stops abruptly, mid-sentence. The prayer for Toulouse's defense at least provides a narrative closure to the Canso. In this way, the Anonymous completes also his framework for presenting God's will. First, God sends trials and tribulations to test the count of Toulouse, then vouchsafes his rights by showing divine favour and granting miracles, and finally God is asked to confirm his judgment by protecting Toulouse in this ultimate conflict.
Although both the Anonymous and Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay reported miracles and wanted to impress upon their audience the extent to which divine favour was clearly on their respective sides, there are crucial differences between their texts. The Anonymous, like William of Tudela, uses the term "miracle" to describe mundane events which are fortuitous but never inexplicable. A sea voyage is survived, weather darkens, a banner falls, a victory is achieved with few casualties. By contrast, Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay asks his audience to believe in columns of fire in the sky, flashing crosses floating in the streets, months-old corpses which don't decompose and smell wonderful, and fire-proof, jumping papers. He asserts that these impossible things happened, cites apparently reliable sources to confirm them, and holds up their wonder as proof of his theme of divine favour for the crusade. Neither author of the Canso has any need to cite sources or to defend the credibility of their accounts, since neither recounts "miracles" which amount to more than what we might consider happenstance. So although the Anonymous sometimes shares Peter's rhetorical requirement of proving that God is on the side he favours, this does not cause the Anonymous to relate events which we know to be false in the process.
Any proper consideration of the relative reliability of these sources must then take into consideration the obvious fact that Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay, intentionally or not, included many events which we now know to be false or wildly inaccurate. By contrasting his account with that of William of Tudela and the Anonymous we can see that this is not solely due to his religiosity or any unique belief in miracles. The other contemporary authors were also prone to cite miracles and to see divine intervention in the course of the war. However, it is only Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay's work which bolsters its narrative framework with clear inventions. Perhaps this is because of the pressures put on Peter which I previously discussed, or perhaps it is because his intent in writing, as he stated, was only to show God's works while the other authors were making a popular song about current events. Nonetheless, Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay's extreme unreliability in recounting the miraculous cannot be separated from the rest of his text. We cannot edit out the impossible and highly improbable and then assert that the remnant is reliable. Where he differs from other sources, or where only his account relates an important event, it should be remembered that he made his veracity secondary to his narrative purpose in a way which William of Tudela and the Anonymous did not.
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