Holy War- Week 4 Flashcards
Valdemar I
Was the king of Denmark between 1157-82. He defeat the Rugians in 1134-6 and he enforced their baptisms and destroyed their pagan idols at Arkona. He was a devotee of holy war against pagans.
Bernard of Clairvaux
After the defeat of the Rugians he offered to convert or exterminate pagan race in 1147.
Baptism in the context of the Baltic Crusades
Baptism was considered by pagans to be as important as right of property and taxation was considered by Saxons. Conversion of Wends consolidated conquest by offering integration: through Baptism, Slavs, Letts, Balts and Livs could become Germans.
Livonia and the Virgin Mary
Livonian missionaries at Riga took the Virgin Mary to be their patron. This was due to the fact that Albert of Buxtehude insisted that Livonia was the land of the Virgin Mary as Jerusalem was that of Christ. This was strengthened by the Teutonic Knights, who patroness she was, when they ruled both Prussia and Livonia after the 1230s
Albert of Buxtehude
Albert of Buxtehude insisted that Livonia was the land of the Virgin Mary as Jerusalem was that of Christ. He was the nephew of Archbishop Hartwig, and he began promoting German commercial interests as holy war and turning trading posts into a missionary state.
Henry of Livonia
He came from Saxony and studied at an Augustinian monastery in Holstein. He was ordained in 1208 and was assigned the missionary parish of Papendorf. He wrote an extended apologia for German invasion, conquest and military suppression of the native population, however his insistence was on the religious and canonical probity of the German occupiers confronted by the relentless perfidy and malic of the natives.
Herman of Salza
He was the master of the Teutonic Knights and was a sharp political operator and close associate of Frederick II. In 1226 he secured an imperial bull authorising the Order’s invasion of Prussia
Reisen
These were raids against Lithuania were sustained the tradition of religious war for European aristocracy increasingly embroiled in conflicts such as the Hundred Years War. They assumed features of chivalrous grand tours, decked with feasts, heraldry, souvenirs and prizes.
Song of Roland
The Song of Roland were embroidered stories of Carolingian defeat. The Song of Roland was a depiction of the massacre of a Frankish Regiment by Pyrenean Basques in 778 as an epic conquest between heroic Christian knights and demonic armies of Islam reflected in 11th C French fiction not 8th century Iberian realities
Taifa
These were party kingdoms created after the sudden collapse of the Cordoban caliphate in 1031. These competing Muslim principalities actively sought external military aid regardless of religion, so they looked to the tafias
Parias
These were annual tributes, effectively protection money, paid in gold by Muslim principalities to Christian tafias for protection. The parias gave Christian rulers of the north direct access to large quantities of gold which consolidated their power and created new opportunities
El Cid
Was a Castilian nobleman who sold his skills as a freelance warrior. He fought for the emir of Zaragoza against Catalans and Aragonese. He operated his own army from 1089, fighting Christians as well as Muslim rulers
Almoravids
Originally a radical group of Islamic fundamentalists from the margins of the Sahara. By early 1080s they had conquered Morocco, rigorously enforcing austere religious observance which was the opposite of relaxed al-Andalus.
Poem of Almeria
The contemporary poem of Almeria celebrated the 1147 conquest by the Castilian knights. It combined crusade motifs and chivalric values, it was a distillation of the distinctive flavour of the Reconquest crusades
Almohads
: Meaning Upholders of the Divine Unity, the Almohads sought to impose their version of the original purity of early Islam on the Maghreb and al-Andalus. The Almohads quickly overran the decaying power of the Almoravids in north Africa and from 1146 began to subdue the emirs of al-Andalus
