298 Crusades Lecture 9 Feb 21 Flashcards
- Dry summers in 1090
Long winter in 1091-2
Too much rain 1093
1095 prolonged drought
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- Between c. 1060-1130 a substage in the cooling phase (1000-1200) of the Medieval Warm Period (c. 900-1250).
Upshot: famine, crop failure, and pestilence
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- 1090 ergotism (St. Anthony’s Fire) broke out
1093 unknown disease of some kind. Disastrous. Lasted several years. Germany and Low Countries.
Cattle pestilence
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- Famine led to usury activities
Hits high and low, but the low hurt worst due to scarcity and hoarding
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- Some communities conducted public processions and liturgical ceremonies to pray away the famine, drought, etc.
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- Also led to widespread violence
Even effected nobles (part of why Urban stayed away from Normandy)
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- In other words
Collective penance, apocalyptical expectations, religious zeal and social violence all resulted from the hardships expecerienced by the population in 1090 and were precursors to early crusading movement
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- Should look again at Urban talking about the land of “milk and honey” in this context, especially as preceeded by the line “this land which you inhabit…furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivation”
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- The popular crusading movements emerged in those regions known to have been hit hardest by the famine and pestilence.
Germany, Low Countries, France
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- Chroniclers wrote of the popular crusade as both a spontaneous exile (“ad spontaneum innumerabiles animasset exilium”)
and as a via Dei
Exodus and pilgrimage
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- Not contradictory
Disaster as divine punishment for human sins, requiring a religious response
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- Popular Crusader a hasty departure
“Panic sales” of rustics selling their goods at very low prices
Food plundering a feature of the popular crusade
Assaults on the Jews can also be read in this context
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- Peter the Hermit
Managed to amass an army months before anyone else
Accepted by the princes as a member of the crusading elite, if only in a minor role
Supposedly entrusted with a letter from heaven to rouse Christians to free Jerusalem. Also at the request of Patriarch of Jerusalem, which he conveyed to Urban
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- Peter’s armies on the road by Easter of 1096 (13 April)
At least 30,000 at the outset
Probably he began preaching before Clermont
Possible he’d been one of those appointed by Urban to preach the crusade
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- Peter the Hermit’s preaching
Apocalyptic
Populist
Visionary
Charismatic
Even those hostile to him indicate he was charismatic and popular
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- He recruited a number of significant lords, including Water, lord of Boissy Sans Avoir (Walter the Penniless)
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- Peter’s army
Mostly Frenchmen and led by lords from Chartres and Champagne
Marched through Rhineland in April
Down Danube to Hungary
Across Balkans
Constantinople on 1 August
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- Gottschalk, whom some of your reading talks about, was one of the priests Peter appears to have delegated his preaching to
Gottschalk recruited a large army in southern Germany
Massacred in late July by the Hungarian army, outraged by its violence and foraging (possibly foraging because not permitted to trade and so starving)
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- Peter may have also delegated preaching to a German named Volkmar (Folcmar);
his army dispersed by the Hungarians in late June
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20a. Gottschalk’s army destroyed in beginning of July by King Coloman of Hungary around same time as Volkmar’s force dispersed
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20b. Seems that Peter’s preaching inspired a variety of German lords, who followed the land route to Constantinople
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