seven hundred ecstatic pilgrims ran out of the church and streamed into the desert in the direction of the river Jordan, intending to bathe in its waters and thank God. The river was about twenty miles from the eastern walls of Jerusalem and the pilgrims never made it to their destination. The chronicler Albert of Aachen recorded that once they had descended from the mountains to “a place of solitude” near the river, all of a sudden “there appeared Saracens from Tyre and Ascalon [two cities still in Muslim hands], armed and very fierce.”
