Crusade chroniclers framed Islamic rulers as issuing the standard pagan temptation offer to martyrs.

Evidence

After Rainaldus’s admonition to the crusaders from atop the walls of Antioch, the “Amiralius” of the city bids him: “Renounce your god whom you worship and in whom you believe, and believe in Malphumet and our other gods. If you do this, we will give you anything you ask: gold and silver, horses and mules, and many other trappings which you might desire. And we shall give you wives and land, and much honor.” This of course is the standard choice given to potential martyrs (as seen in the passions discussed in chapter 3): power, wealth, and sex on one hand, the crown of martyrdom on the other. Rainaldus of course makes the right choice, responding only by praying fervently to God. The angry Turkish admiral has his head cut off, and angels take the martyr’s soul up to heaven. Still furious, the admiral has all the pilgrims (i.e., crusader captives) in the city rounded up, stripped naked, and burned in a mass martyrdom. The Crusade, for Tudebodus, makes historical, theological, and moral sense as part of a continuing struggle against paganism; the response of the good Christian—in the eleventh or twelfth century as in the third or fourth—is to resist the temptations of this world and steadfastly to face martyrdom. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 630

Categorization

• XREF: This templated temptation scene (wealth, sex, honor vs. martyrdom) is the same antithesis used in the passions from chapter 3, showing the crusade chronciles reusing pagan martyr narrative machinery for Muslims.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ — the martyr’s crown as a form of self-sacrifice that stabilizes communal identity, here weaponized by chroniclers against Islam.