But to the fighting noble of the day, whatever means he may already have taken to obtain the pardon of the Church, the call to arms by Pope Urban for the defence of the Holy Land, proclaimed, as it was, with all the authority of the Head of Christendom, endowed with all the plenitude of Papal indulgence, necessarily possessed a special attraction, for it promised him not only remission of his sins, but also the hope that the remission would be gained by exercising those very same deeds of violence and rapine, the commission of which in his daily life had probably brought him to believe that eternal punishment was his just doom. Small wonder, therefore, that knights and nobles in large numbers endeavoured thus to gain everlasting advantages. Among the French nobility who passed over to La Terre Sainte, Jocelyn II. de Courtenay is numbered. The principality of Edessa, a province so situated as not only to be divided by the Euphrates, but by its position specially exposed to enemies who surrounded it on all sides, was then held by Baldwin de Bruges, a renowned knight, cousin to Godfrey de Bouillon. Baldwin’s mother and the wife of Jocelyn, son of Athos, were sisters, their children consequently being cousins. According to the Archbishop of Tyre, the elder warrior gladly welcomed his young kinsman, yielding to his charge those territories which lay farthest from the enemy, but retaining under his personal supervision the frontier, on which largely depended the safety of the Christian dominions. Blessed with all the advantages a good administration can bestow, and protected from an unwearying enemy, to a certain extent, by the river, the country ruled by Jocelyn de Courtenay acquired such prosperity and opulence as to excite the envy of the neighbouring Christian Princes. Indeed, as all chroniclers show, when the overpowering personality of Godfrey de Bouillon was withdrawn, the promiscuous host which he led, rent by great diversity of interests, composed of many nations, lost the little cohesion it had once possessed, and rapidly fell apart. Baldwin succeeding to the throne of Jerusalem, his cousin held undivided sway over the whole province. For thirty years did the gallant Frenchman defend his domains against the ever-returning infidel hordes, with varying success—at times a conqueror, at times a captive, dying in a manner befitting his life, for in his old age, weak with sickness, broken with wounds, he caused himself to be carried before his troops as he led them to succour their fellow-countrymen besieged by the Sultan of Iconium. On his advance, the terror his prowess inspired sufficed to force the enemy to retire, news of which reaching the ears of the dying warrior, he gave thanks to God that the last moments of his life should be illumined with victory, and then immediately expired. He was succeeded by Jocelyn, third of the name, the only son of his first wife, a sister of Levon, an Armenian notable.