298 Crusades Lecture 7 Feb 14 Flashcards
NB: Syllabus typo: Should be writing prompt 2 due Friday Feb. 22nd, not the 19th.
- Christian Holy War
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- We shouldn’t assume that there was an irreconcilable paradox between holy war and the doctrines of peace and forgiveness
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4b
OT milhemet hoval (just war) and milhemet mitzvah (holy war or war of religious obligation).
Numbers 31:1-20 Morally legitimate to seek revenge: justifiable war (hoval).
I Samuel 15 milhemet mitzvah, god orders his people to exterminate the Amalikites. Not obeying loses Saul god’s favor. Sin not to obey.
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- Bible stories operated on many levels, including literal and divine truth
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4c.
NT ambiguous. Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the peacemakers; do not resist persecution. On the other hand: Matthew 10: 35-39. John 2:14-17 Jesus throwing out the moneychangers from the temple with a whip. Luke story of John the Baptist: sharing with others; to soldiers he says do not intimidate or extort (nothing about quitting the army in order to be saved)
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- Holy war perceived and maybe designed to revolve around Matthew 16:24. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
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- War, though violent, could be understood as a form of charitable love, to help victims of injustice
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- The joining of war to Christianity began under Constantine. Rome and Christianity were united, their fates linked.
The war of one was the war of the other.
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- In Byzantium, where Rome survived, the relation of church with state rendered all public war in some sense holy, in defense of religion as well as state.
Even so Byzantine warfare remained a secular activity, though divinely sanctioned. Not a penitential act.
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- In the Germanic world, there was on the one hand compromises made for political reality.
Also emergence of physical evangelical aggression in hagiography: holy men party to holy violence.
This trend reached maturity in the 10th and 11th c.
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- Identification of religion and war extended to the clergy.
A French monk, in his enthusiasm at the defence of Paris against the Vikings in 885/6, praised his abbot for his skill with a ballista.
“He was capable of piercing seven men with a single arrow; in jest he commanded some of them to be taken to the kitchen.”
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- From the 10th c., the church’s express support was extended more widely to soldiers in public wars against pagans.
Even their swords, arms and banners beginning to be blessed in formal liturgies.
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- Churchmen in the 10th and 11th c. trying to control and direct war in law and practice
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- Peace and Truce movements revived in the 1080s.
Truce begun around 1027 or 1033
Reduce fighting btwn Christians.
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- Truce of God
Terrible famine led to increase in murders No feuds btween Wednesday and Monday Peace on Thursday: ascentiom Friday: crucifixion Saturday: burial Sunday: resurrection
General law of church under Urban From Advent to epiphany Ash wednesday to end of easter week Ascention to end of pentecost Festivals and vigils
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13b.
Not just the peasant folk and churchmen uniting ideas of Christianity with war and the tensions.
Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, punctuated his very bloody career of territorial aggrandizement in the years around 1000 with 3 pilgrimages to Jerusalem “driven by fear of hell.” Founded a monastery where monks could pay for his soul.
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- The idea that an arms-bearer could be penitent while remaining a warrior, and the idea that fighting was itself a penance, was a development only of the twenty years before 1095.
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- One of the consequences of the radical reform movement was that popes chose to (or were forced to) fight with temporal weapons.
In defence of their idea of the “right order” of Christendom
Part of the claim that popes had authority over states and laymen, not just the clergy
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- Holy war thus became part of the papal program.
When Gregory VII began to recruit his army, it was as a militia sanctii Petri, a Militia of St Peter
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- Gregory VII significantly developed the theory and practice of holy war and holy warriors
Identified two forms of occupation for arms-bearers: one secular, selfish and sinful; the other penitential, justified by legitimate rights, loyalty to a lord, protection of the vulnerable or defence of the church
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- Gregory VII offered all who fought for his cause absolution of their sins and the prospect of eternal salvation.
So long as their motives were selfless and faith-based, soldiers could combine penance and violence
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- Gregory VII extended his rhetoric such that fighting in a just war was an imitation of Christ’s sufferings against “those who are the enemies of the cross of Christ”
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- The papal approval and rhetoric lent conflicts a sustained ideological quality Gregory deliberately fostered and publicized
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- The rhetoric of the Investiture Controversy fostered this.
It also depended on the susceptibility of western knights to a religiously framed ideology of war.
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- The highest justification for knighthood was the battle against the infidel, against Islam.
Chansons de geste of the late 11th c. display the special status of war against the infidel: absolute antithesis to the Christian world
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- From the perspective of the western church, conflict with Islam was ipso facto meritorious in a religious context
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- Those fighting wars of profit in Spain or in the Venetian defence of Bari against Muslims in 1003 were seen as inspired by faith
1015-16, Pope Benedict VIII openly approved a Pisan and Genoese raid on Muslim pirate bases in Sardinia.
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- One chronicler and monk recorded how, supposedly, Christian defenders of Narbonne, suffering an attack by Muslims c. 1018, took Communion before battle
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- Theories and practices of morally just and spiritually meritorious warfare developed unevenly in response to changing political circumstances, religious outlook and social behavior.
Many clung to older concepts of sin and spiritual war.
Some felt shock at the unapologetic and unequivocal combination of war and penance proposed by Urban II
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- Many contemporaries saw Urban II’s holy war as fulfilment of biblical prophecy or an imitation and renewal of scriptural struggles.
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- Urban would argue that the war was not only meritorious, but so was the actual fighting. It became a religious act combining penance and charity
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- From the first, those who would hear Urban’s message understood it as a call to arms, not pilgrimage.
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- For Urban, holy war and its associated remission of confessed sin needed no additional justification; he claimed the authority of God
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- Urban consciously drew from Gregory VII’s rhetoric. He never referred to the crusade as an armed pilgrimage
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- Chroniclers attempted to convince their audiences of the spiritual legitimacy of warfare in all its practical ramifications:
“Stand fast all together, trusting in God and the Holy Cross. Today, please God, you will all gain much booty.”
Battle cry of the crusaders at battle of Dorylaeum in July 1097
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- Pilgrimage and war were close parallels in the Christian west
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- Other writers modified Urban’s message to interpret through analogy the war as pilgrimage, esp. given the ultimate destination of Jerusalem
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- The idea of Holy War was a way turning the violence of the military class to a more salvific end
“Let those who are accustomed wantonly to wage private war against the faithful march upon the infidels…Let those who have long been robbers now be soldiers of Christ; let those who once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians. Let those who have been hirelings for a few pieces of silver now attain an eternal reward.”
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- Taking the cross became emblematic and defining gesture of crusading
Usually of textile, wool, occasionally silk; large enough to be noticed but small enough to be sewn on to the shoulder of a cloak or tunic
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- Much of what was proclaimed as new by the call to arms of Urban II in 1095 was really old wine in new bottles
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Warfare can be justifiable and even a spiritual good.
But how do you know that’s what you have. Need for criteria:
Just cause (save persecuted Christians and safety for pilgrims). Only if no alternative. Crusades; no alternative. Muslims constantly conquering Christian lands; cannot talk openly in Muslim lands.
Right means; specific mission and targets, limited and clearly defined. Specific recruits disciplined and controlled.
Only church can send Christians to war. Pope will have to answer to god. Expiation for your own sins. If all met then it can qualify as a Christian, holy act.
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- Unlike Christian holy war, jihad was fundamental to the Faith, sixth pillar of Islam
Spiritual as well as military; a corporate, not an individual obligation
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- Jihad had two forms
The greater jihad was the internal spiritual struggle to achieve personal purity
Lesser jihad was the military struggle against infidels
Both obligatory on able-bodied Muslims
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Potential consequences of truce on crusade?
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