298 Crusades Lecture 8 Feb 19 Flashcards
Review of Just War
Right Cause
Right Authority
Right Means
How do we get to Holy War?
God
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- First Crusade
Long Term Factors:
- Western warriors anxious for their souls for generations
- Greeks asking for and receiving military aid
- campaigns against Muslims in Spain, Sicily, North Africa
- Church discipline of secular society notionally acknowledged through Peace and Truce
- Papal thinking on holy war and penance
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- Short Term Factors:
- Horror stories from the east
- Increasing contacts with the east through pilgrims, mercenaries, and high nobility
- Consolidation of Urban’s own historical and theological vision
- Coincidence of the improved position of Urban in Italy and France
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- Alexius I had several military successes, repulsing a Norman invasion in 1085 (and bringing many of those Normans into his service), defeating the Pechenegs in 1091.
Only the losses to the Seljuqs in Anatolia and northern Syria remained to be restored
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- Alexius wanted to use the westerners
- exploit the divisions among the Turks of Asia Minor and Syria
- Restore Byzantine control without risking a full commitment of his own military reserves
becomes a delicate balancing act
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- March 1095. At a council at Piacenza in Lombardy
Ambassadors from Alexius appealed for military aid against his neighbors
A few years earlier, he had asked Urban to organize help against the Pechenegs in the Balkans
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- Now, in 1095, Alexius described the enemy as “pagans” who threatened eastern Christians and were threatening Constantinople itself.
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- The council of Piacenza is an important contextual moment.
Papacy sitting in judgment on state of the church and morals of the clergy.
Debating the sins of kings and emperors
Specifically conduct of Henry IV and the adultery of Philip I (the Fat)
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- Alexius’ appeal could be incorporated into this new confident papal assertiveness
Urban on the spot exhorted many to take an oath to help Alexius against these “pagans”
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- Urban II sought to use the mobilization of the expedition as a cover to reclaim the pope’s position in Italy and demonstrate his practical leadership of Christendom, independent of secular monarchs
It emerges in part from the Investiture Controversy
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- Within the papal curia in the early 12th c., Urban’s crusade was seen explicitly as completing Gregory’s abortive project of 1074
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- According to contemporary chronicles: a series of armies left the west in the spring to autumn of 1096 in an explosive popular response to Urban’s preaching.
Their rendezvous was Constantinople, which all had reached by the end of May 1097
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- Urban planned an elaborate speaking tour, centered on France
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- Urban’s tour through France was punctuated by theatrical ceremonies, assemblies and preaching in some of the most important religious and urban centers
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- Urban avoided the territories under the direct control of Philip the Fat and those of the feuding heirs of William of Normandy
French king to be excommunicated at Clermont
Normans too successfully old-fashioned in their control of the clergy and too ambivalent in their loyalty to Urban
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- Urban had his plan largely fleshed out by the time he made his tour
A penitential journey in arms to Jerusalem to recover the Holy Sepulchre and to ‘liberate Christianity’ and the eastern Christians; earning warriors penance and remission of sin
Vow to enforce obligation and adoption of hte sign of the cross
Militia of God over Militia of the World
Militia Dei vs Militia Mundi
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- Clermont was not a spontaneous event, but well planned and organized
13 archbishops
82 bishops
countless abbots and other clerics
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- Clermont
Jerusalem decree one of more than 30 promulgating a general Peace and dealing with penance, eccls organization, simony, lay investiture, and other things
Call to arms sat squarely within this assertion of church discipline, moral reform of the clergy and laity, and papal authority
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- Urban II’s speech at Clermont the first public declaration of his new concept of holy war that we know of
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18b. Urban’s Speech
5 versions
Most reliable likely that of Fulcher of Chartres (an eyewitness) and the Gest Francorum (1100-1101) as so short and less embellished
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18c. Urban speaks in graphic detail about the attacks on Jerusalem
Avenge these injuries against: Eastern Christians, Christendom, Christ
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18c. The war would be an indulgence
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