by Tomaž Mastnak
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd. London, England
© 2002 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mastnak, Tomaž.
Crusading peace : Christendom, the Muslim world, and Western political order / Tomaž Mastnak. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0-520-22635-6 (alk. paper)
1. Crusades. 2. Peace—Religious aspects— Christianity—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines— History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 4. Just war—Doctrine—History—To 1500. 5. Monarchy—Europe—History—To 1500. 6. Europe— Church history—600–1500. 7. Peace—Religious aspects—Islam. I. Title. d157 .m376 2002 909.07—dc21
2001044417
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Contents.
Acknowledgments ix
1 From Holy Peace to Holy War 1
The Peace of God and the Truce of God 2
The Peacemaking Church: From Prohibiting War to Directing the Use of Arms 10
No More Shedding of Christian Blood 34
2 The Holy Manner of Warfare 55
Just War, Holy War, the Crusade 59
Holy Wars before the Crusades 67
Transformation of the Church's Attitude toward War 74
3 Christendom and the Crusade 91
The First Western Union: A Common Front against the Pagans 93
Making the Muslim the Enemy 96
The Christian Offensive: Essalcier Sainte Crestienté 117
The Papal Monarchy and the Crusade 130
4 Monks, Philosophers, and Warrior Monks 153
Sanctification of Crime: St. Bernard of Clairvaux 154
The Infidels Are Unreasonable and Therefore Not Human: Peter the Venerable 168
Ordeal by Fire: St. Francis of Assisi 183
The Scientific Crusade: Roger Bacon 196
The Infidel's Conscience Is Inviolable but Not His Life: St. Thomas Aquinas 208
One Language, One Creed, One Faith: Ramon Lull 216
5 The Fall of the Papal Monarchy and the Rise of Territorial Power 229
Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France 233
Re-sacralization of Kingship and the Law of Necessity 241
The Universalism of Territorial Power: French Dominion of the World 253
6 Imperialists, Separatists, and Crusaders 279
Vindications of the Empire 280
Refutation of Universal Rule 312
The Crusade Spirit: Still “the Will of God” 330
Works Cited 349
Index 194
Acknowledgments
If one were to study acknowledgments in academic books, thanking wives (much more than husbands) would probably be the most interesting subject. For instance, they most often come last—even if “last but not least. ” I want to thank my wife, Julia Elyachar Mastnak, first because my first and foremost debt is to her. For long years, working on this book—with all the strain it has put on our daily life, the support it needed, and the sacrifices it required—has been our mutual undertaking. The form and the substance of what is written in these pages would have been weaker, confused, and confusing without her help. Every word in this book carries the trace of her eye, many have been changed by her pen, and the arguments they present were either formed or refined through discussion with her over many versions of this text.
Thanks of a special kind are due to four people. I am grateful to Lynne Jones for her intellectual and moral support at the beginning of this project, and for her commentary on a subsequent version of the first chapter. Throughout my work on this book Igor Kramberger was most generous with his time, his wide-ranging knowledge, and his collection of books. He also helped with formatting and printing out the final manuscript. Dorothea von Moltke's comments on a portion of a previous version encouraged me to rewrite the entire text and bring it close to its current form. My friendship with her and with Cliff Simms sustained me in many ways during the long years of work on this book. Ruth Turner read the manuscript in its different phases and forms. As valuable to me as her improvements of the text was her faith in the worth of this project.
I want to acknowledge the help and support received from other friends and colleagues. Talal Asad's generous praise of an early draft of the manuscript was an important boost. Basheer el Sibaie's belief in the project during a difficult stage was invaluable. Büsra Ersanli gave me the opportunity to present my work to the students at Marmara University in Istanbul and offered stimulating comments over time. Discussion of the project with Cemal Kafadar was very useful. John Keane commented on a version of the first chapter and invited me to talk about my work at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. He and Kathy O'Neil were wonderful hosts during expeditions to the British Library. For his assistance during my stay in Cairo, I want to thank the Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Egypt, Vladimir Kolmanic. Ervin Hladnik Milharcic and Peter Kovacic Peršin commented on early drafts of the manuscript. Laila Moustafa was a most helpful and supportive friend in Cairo and later in New York. Boris A. Novak and Mara Thomas provided journal articles I would have missed otherwise. Help of a different kind was provided by Miljana Vucicevic Salama, M. D., who restored my health during my stay in Cairo.
I am very grateful to Jonathan Riley-Smith for his helpful critique of an early draft of this work. The generous advice and encouragement of István Hont, Arthur Kleinman, María Rosa Menocal, Frank Peters, Emran Qureshi, Michael Sells, and Gabrielle Spiegel after I had completed the manuscript and had begun to explore the unfamiliar terrain of publishing in a foreign country was crucial. My thanks are also due to the anonymous readers of the University of California Press, whose comments and suggestions led to substantial changes in the manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to a number of historians, dead and alive, on whose work I relied when I ventured into areas not my own.
A postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council–MacArthur Foundation, Program in International Peace and Security, for the years 1991–93 allowed me to begin this project in the stimulating environments of the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh; and King's College of the University of Cambridge. During my stay in Baltimore I also had the privilege of participating in the seminar “Empire, Confederation, and Republic: From Atlantic Dominion to American Union” conducted by John Pocock at the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought in Washington, D. C. I want to thank all these institutions for their support and help. I am particularly grateful to John and Felicity Pocock, István Hont, Nicholas Phillipson, and Harry Dickinson for stimulating discussions, practical help, and hospitality.
In the academic year 1994–95 I was a visiting scholar at the history unit in the Department of Arabic Studies of the American University in Cairo. My thanks to members of the department and to Enid Hill and Huda Lutfi for their invitations. I also want to thank the Center for Cultural Studies at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, and its director, Stanley Aronowitz, for providing me with an institutional base in New York in fall 1998. I finalized the manuscript during my stay as a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, in winter and spring 1999. I am grateful to the Center, its director, Charles S. Maier, and associate director, Abby Collins, for the invitation and superb working conditions. Finally, I want to thank the director of the Centre for Scientific Research of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana, Oto Luthar, and the head of the Centre's Institute of Philosophy, Rado Riha, for their generosity in granting me protracted leaves during my work on this book.
I am also grateful to a number of individuals at the University of California Press. Stanley Holwitz immediately understood and supported my project in a manner few authors are lucky enough to enjoy. Suzanne Knott oversaw the project through to completion in a professional and most helpful fashion. The copyediting of Carolyn Bond was superb. Her thoughtful and challenging interventions made the final text a much better product than it would have been otherwise.
While my debts are many, the responsibility for what is written in this book is mine alone.
“… tot et tam magna mala pacem appellant. ”
(Sap 14.22)
“… they call so many and so great evils peace. ”
(Wis 14.22)
ONE
From Holy Peace to Holy War
In the beginning there was peace: At the close of the tenth century and the commencement of the eleventh, the Pax Dei, the Peace of God—a peace movement carried out in the name of God—emerged in the territories that today make up central France. The Pax Dei in turn led to the establishment of the treuga Dei— the Truce of God. Yet these peacemaking efforts together resulted in the Crusade at the end of the eleventh century. A new kind of holy war grew out of the holy peace. 1
Peace is a central issue of power, and the holy peace was no different. The eleventh century was a time of great social transformation, involving a redistribution of prerogatives between secular power and ecclesiastical authority. Striving to strengthen their position in a changing world, each party was itself undergoing deep internal change. While secular restructuring was very much visible, ecclesiastical reform germinated behind monastic walls; only gradually did it enter the Church at large and make its way into lay society. The peace movement played a very important role in that process. It was an agent of change that contributed to the articulation—as well as to the eventual resolution—of the competition between secular power and ecclesiastical authority for domination of Christian society. In their endeavors to contain and channel so-
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1 For the history of this peace movement, see especially Hoffmann 1964; Head and Landes 1992b; La Paix 1961– 62. On the historiography of the eleventh-century peace movement, see Paxton 1992. Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 7f.; Moore 1992; Bredero 1994, 111.
cial change, both tried to use the movement to their own advantage. 2 It was the Church, however, that kept the initiative in promoting peace. The development of the Pax Dei movement was the ecclesiastical hierarchy's immediate defense against the violence at the turn of the millennia; 3 but through these peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts, the Church came to direct the social transformation that helped it obtain primacy within Christian society in the long run.
THE PEACE OF GOD AND THE TRUCE OF GOD
Neither the conflict between secular power and ecclesiastical authority nor the Church's striving for peace—nor, for that matter, peace as an issue in conflicts between the two—was new. In the Middle Ages, the most influential view of the duality of power was that of the late-fifth-century Pope Gelasius I. His view was succinctly formulated in a famous letter addressed to Emperor Anastasius in 494:
Two there are, august emperor, by which this world is principally ruled: the consecrated authority of bishops and the royal power. Of these, the responsibility of the priests is more weighty insofar as they will answer for the kings of men themselves at the divine judgment. You know, most clement son, that, although you take precedence over all mankind in dignity, nevertheless you piously bow the neck to those who have charge of divine affairs and seek from them the means of your salvation, and hence you realize that, in the order of religion, in matters concerning the reception and right administration of heavenly sacraments, you ought to submit yourself rather than rule, and that in these matters you should depend on their judgment rather than seek to bend them to your will. 4
During the Middle Ages, interpretations of Gelasius's statement flourished. 5 The very plurality of interpretations testifies to the statement's importance in medieval debates on power. Thus it is not surprising that the “Gelasian doctrine” was an authoritative point of reference in the conflict between lay and ecclesiastical hierarchies in the eleventh century
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2 Head and Landes 1992a, 17.
3 Landes 1995, 28.
4 Epistola 12,2 (Thiel, Epp. Rom. Pontif., 350–51). Cf. trans. in Tierney 1988, 13– 14; Canning 1996, 35. (Throughout the notes: Where I cite an English source or a source in an English source, the translation is not my own. In cases where I cite a non-English source and an English translation, I have taken the translation from the English source and may have slightly revised it. Unless otherwise noted, all other quotations are my own translation.)
5 See Knabe 1936; Benson 1982. Cf. Cottrell 1993.
as well. And because the peace movement was both shaped by that conflict and a shaping force in it, 6 the Gelasian doctrine was at the core of the eleventh-century struggles for peace. 7 A basic requisite of peace was what the protagonists of the movement considered the right relationship between temporal power and spiritual authority. 8
The idea of a duality of powers as the symbolic framework in which secular power and ecclesiastical authority could confront each other was an established tradition by the eleventh century. 9 The vocabulary of the Peace of God movement can be traced back to the Carolingian “imperial peace”, or even further back to the sixth century, to the language of the Frankish bishops struggling for Pax Ecclesiae, “peace of the Church. ” 10 Moreover, the problems confronting the bishops who strove for peace showed a continuity from the sixth century to the eleventh century. The question central to all the debates about, and struggles for, peace was whether it was the Church or the secular authorities who had the right to determine the uses of ecclesiastical property. 11 The aim of the churchmen in all these struggles was to force powerful laymen to renounce the rights they claimed over ecclesiastical property and to reappropriate control of ecclesiastical patrimonies to themselves. 12
These continuities, however, are not my primary interest here. I want to show what was new about the eleventh-century peace movement. Whereas the early-tenth-century clergy had inveighed against the expropriation of ecclesiastical property, and the Council of Trosly (909) had broadened the concept of sacrilege to include assault upon all goods belonging to the “universal Church”, toward the end of the century the clerics began to address and oppose the “blood feud” directly. 13 They began taking practical steps to defend “more than just their own safety and that of church property” 14 and also began allying themselves with
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10 See Magnou-Nortier 1984, 34–36; 1992, 59 ff. On the Carolingian peace of the Church, cf. Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 258–78.
11 Magnou-Nortier 1992, 61.
12 Ibid., 68– 69.
13 Bloch 1977, 108.
14 Bredero 1994, 108–9. On the adoption of laws from Carolingian capitularies by the early Peace of God councils, see also Hoffmann 1964, 13–14; R. Barber 1982, 215; Lauranson-Rosaz 1992, 109–10.
6 Le Goff's general remark that it is “difficult to distinguish cause from effect in the evolution of Christian Europe, since most aspects of this process were both of these aspects at once” (Le Goff 1990, 57), applies to the peace movement as well.
7 Magnou-Nortier 1992, 69.
8 Cf. Magnou-Nortier 1984, 48.
9 For the concept of “tradition” in ecclesiastical history, see Morrison 1969.
the populace to resist the violence of lay magnates—or at least involving the ordinary people in their peace efforts. 15
It is difficult to mark the beginning of the Peace of God movement clearly, not only because decisions by what scholars regard as the first councils of the pax Dei were made on the basis of the authority of earlier Church synods, but also because the term Peace of God itself seems to have appeared after the movement had already been under way. 16 However, since the mark of the pax Dei is the clergy's engagement in opposing violence, it is thus generally accepted that the first wave of Peace of God councils took place in the last quarter of the tenth century.
One of the first meetings was the Council of Le Puy, convoked by Guy of Anjou, bishop of Le Puy, about 975. 17 A large meeting held in an open field outside the city walls, the council was convened to address the pillaging of ecclesiastical property in the diocese. The bishop threatened the pillagers with excommunication and forced the assembled warriors and peasants to take an oath to keep the peace. It was easy for the bishop to be persuasive, since his words were backed by the armed force of neighboring counts, who were his nephews. The success of the meeting—achieved “with the help of God” 18 —inspired and encouraged further action. In the following years, Guy and other bishops organized new councils, and the movement expanded. The clerics began bringing relics of saints to the gatherings in order to attract the masses, make an impression on them, and get their support. 19 The relics assured a tangible divine presence at the meetings in conformity with the religious attitude of the times, according to which the sacred participated in worldly affairs. 20
The earliest council from which canons survive is the Council of Charroux of 989. Its acts state that the legislating bishops—“as well as clerics and monks, not to mention lay people of both sexes”—had gathered to beseech “the aid of divine justice. ” The purpose of the gathering was
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15 See Lauranson-Rosaz 1992, 110.
16 Hoffmann 1964, 3– 4, pointed out that the expression pax Dei is not to be found in sources predating 1033. The conclusion has been found “excessive” by Landes 1995, 29 n. 32 (for a milder formulation cf. id. 1992, 201 n. 91), whose evidence to the contrary, however, is not overwhelming. See Landes 1995, 29 n. 32, 201 n. 20.
17 Hoffmann 1964, 13–16, discusses some earlier peace activities; he adds, however, that “[v]om Gottesfrieden hören wir zum ersten Mal aus dem … Gebiet von Le Puy. ”
18 From the account of the meeting, quoted in Lauranson-Rosaz 1992, 116–17.
19 Lauranson-Rosaz 1992, 111; Töpfer 1992; Bredero 1994, 5, cf. 122; and documents in Head and Landes 1992b, app. A.
20 Cf. Bredero 1994, 6.
to root out “the criminal activity, which we know has for some time been sprouting up through evil habit in our districts because of our long delay in calling a council”, and to implant “more lawful activity. ” This statement was followed by a declaration:
Therefore we who are specially gathered together in the name of God decree, as will be made manifestly clear in the following canons, that: (1) If anyone attacks the Holy Church, or takes anything from it by force, and the compensation is not provided, let him be anathema. (2) If anyone takes as booty sheep, oxen, asses, cows, female goats, male goats, or pigs from peasants [agricolae] or from other poor people [pauperes]—unless it is due to the fault of the victim—and if that person neglects to make reparation for everything, let him be anathema. (3) If anyone robs, or seizes, or strikes a priest, or a deacon, or any man of the clergy [ex clero] who is not bearing arms (that is, a shield, a sword, a breastplate, or a helmet), but who is simply going about his business or remaining at home, and if, after examination by his own bishop, that person is found to be guilty of any crime, then he is guilty of sacrilege, and if he furthermore does not come forward to make satisfaction, let him then be held to be excluded from the holy church of God. 21
Protection of the Church and church property; of church dignitaries, clerics, and monks; and of livestock—though not so much of the peasants and the poor to whom the livestock belonged—was the primary focus of all meetings seeking to establish the Peace of God. Innovations were few, though the emphasis sometimes varied. Protection by peace legislation was extended, for example, to nuns, widows, orphans, women who were traveling and those accompanying them, and merchants. More or less the entire unarmed population came to be protected. The unacceptable behavior was occasionally described in greater detail: Crimes against the Peace of God included not only the theft of farm animals from agricoles and pauperes but also destroying seeds and burning the harvest, damaging olive trees, assaulting and robbing people who were harvesting, attacking carts bearing wine or harvest goods, gathering grapes on someone else's soil, pillaging mills and granaries, and stealing wax or bees. 22
These concerns, demands, and prohibitions represent, if not a consistent ideology, 23 at least the basic outlook and direction of the early
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21 The acts of the Council of Charroux (989); trans. in Head and Landes 1992b, app. A, 327–28.
22 See Bloch 1977, 109; Goetz 1992, 276 ff.
23 Duby 1974, 162– 63; questioned by Remensnyder 1992, 281; and Bredero 1994, 121–23.
Peace of God movement. 24 But as the movement spread east, north, and south from Aquitaine, Berry, and Auvergne, and as the movement's first wave was followed between 1019 and 1038 by a second, it underwent important changes, resulting in the succession of the pax Dei by the treuga Dei. Historians debate this development. Some argue that the Truce of God cannot be considered a sequel to the Peace of God because the custom of observing holy days and holy seasons during hostilities, which lay at the heart of the Truce, was much older. 25 In their opinion, the Truce of God actually began with the Carolingian ban on private warfare on Sundays and was only “revived in 1027 in southern France. ” 26 The predominant view, however, seems to be that the Truce of God was first announced in the Council of Elne (or Toulouges) in 1027 and that it became the dominant form of the peace movement with the Council of Arles in 1041. 27 And even if, soon after Arles, the Peace of God and the Truce of God became intertwined, 28 the conceptual distinction between the two remains relevant.
Although truce is by all standards a weaker term than peace, the protection legislated by the Truce of God was actually greater than that of the Peace of God. Whereas the Peace forbade violence against specific social groups, with the aim of keeping their property safe at all times, the Truce banned all violence on certain days and during certain periods. 29 Initially, all acts of violence were forbidden between Saturday evening and Monday morning, so that the faithful could show due respect for the Lord's day. However, the ban on violence was soon extended to begin Thursday evening and end with sunrise on Monday, encompassing the four days associated with Christ's passion. In addition, the use of arms was prohibited on Church holidays. This absolute ban on violence, though intermittent, 30 came to cover approximately three-quarters of the year. The Council of Narbonne in 1054, for example, restricted the lawful use of arms to only 80 days a year. 31
Earlier historiography tended to see the peace movement as a response to “feudal anarchy” and so placed the emergence of the movement in a
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24 Head and Landes 1992a, 4.
25 Bredero 1994, 109–10.
26 R. Barber, 1982, 215. On the Carolingian precepts, see Bonnaud Delamare 1939, 250.
27 Head and Landes 1992a, 7.
28 Flori 1983, 152.
29 See Cowdrey 1970a, 44.
30 Hoffmann 1964, 70.
31 Flori 1983, 152.
historical landscape characterized by the “high incidence of feud and the lack of law and order. ” 32 The collapse of traditional power structures, it was argued, led to the fragmentation of land and the ascent of local lords, especially castellans. As the Carolingian legal system disintegrated and kingly authority grew weaker, castellans took the exercise of justice into their own hands, engaging in incessant private warfare, encroaching upon ecclesiastical property, and mistreating peasants and the poor. Historian Marc Bloch painted a dramatic picture of those times: People lived “in a state of permanent danger, full of pain”, and “the fate of every individual was threatened every day. ” Violence was the true sign of the age. A call for peace—that most precious of all of God's gifts and the one most difficult to attain—began to resonate in the midst of the lawlessness; and on the margins of the powerless worldly authorities there emerged, on the initiative of the Church, a spontaneous movement to establish the much-desired order and peace. 33
Recently, however, the “feudal anarchy” thesis has come into disrepute. On the one hand, scholars have developed misgivings about the concept of feudalism, 34 and on the other, they have rejected the idea of anarchy as unwarranted. The decades around the year 1000, when the pax Dei movement emerged, might have been violent and disorderly, but they were not anarchic. 35 It logically follows that the peace movement could not have originated in a desire to end anarchy or disorder. 36 This shift of perspective compels us to look differently at the reality described by historians of older generations. The tenth century, which gave birth to the peace movement, was violent: “if there is a 'century of violence,' the tenth century was it. ” 37 Contemporary sources were certainly aware of an increase in conflicts and a loss of control among the ruling elite. 38 One of those sources, for example, noted that the “condition of the realm
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32 Tellenbach 1993, 136.
33 Bloch 1983, 566– 69.
34 See Brown 1974. The author refers to Bisson's study of institutional structures of peace in southern France and Catalonia as “thoroughly enlightening” precisely because this study was freed from the “tyranny” of the concept of “feudalism. ” See Bisson 1977, presented to a conference in 1973. For the “discovery of feudalism”, see Pocock 1987, chap. 4–5, and “Conclusions”, especially 249; cf. notes in Cantor 1991, 279f.
35 G. Duby, La société aux XI e et XII e siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953), quoted in Brown 1974, 1082.
36 See especially Magnou-Nortier 1984, 34; 1992, 58–59. Cf. Reynolds 1986, 118– 19; Goetz 1992, 260.
37 Lauranson-Rosaz 1992, 106.
38 Landes 1995, 28 n. 24, polemicizing against Magnou-Nortier's thesis. Cf. Bull 1993, 23 ff.
tottered on its foundations” and spoke of the “incompetence of the king and the sins [of men]”, which confounded the laws and profaned the customs of the fathers “as well as all manner of justice. ” 39 Revisionist historians, however, tend to focus on the restructuring of power rather than on anarchy, and on the development of a new order instead of disorder.
The new order was developed against the background of the weakening of kingly authority (imbecillitas regis). This crisis of central government affected not only the king but also dukes and counts, and even viscounts. The erosion of their traditional authority, especially of their dispensation of justice, was felt on all levels of society. 40 Securing peace for the Christian people through just rule had been the king's most elementary duty and the primary source of his authority. This, more than any other function he had carried out, had made the king appear as God's deputy on earth. 41 When the castellans' districts became the loci of the effective exercise of power, the castellans became the lords of justice. Their exercise of justice, however, did not bring peace to those under their rule. Because there was no other power able to keep the peace, the Church stepped in, and the men at the top of its hierarchy became the protectors of law and order, the defenders of peace. In short, “God had deputed to anointed kings the task of maintaining peace and justice; kings were no longer capable of so doing; God therefore took back His power of command into His own hands and vested it in those of His servants, the bishops, with the support of local princes. ” 42 With the emergence of the Peace of God movement, pax Dei replaced peace made and defended by the king, pax regis.
As defender of peace the Church undoubtedly obtained a decisive say in the ordering of worldly affairs, yet it did not wish to substitute ecclesiastical power for secular power or to suspend secular laws. The legislation passed by peace councils respected secular laws and accepted secular jurisdiction. 43 The ecclesiastics sought the cooperation of powerful lay magnates to help them enforce secular laws. Such a cooperation between religious and secular lords was not surprising, given the “com-
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39 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium 3.27; trans. in Head and Landes 1992b, app. A, 335–36.
40 Landes 1995, 26.
41 Moore 1992, 309. Cf. Tellenbach 1993, 39. For the Carolingian concept of kingship, see Anton 1968; Nelson 1988, 213 ff.
42 Duby 1974, 163. Cf. Flori 1983, chap. 8.
43 See Head 1992, 219; Goetz 1992, 271. Cf. Bisson 1977, 293–94.
munity of interest” shared by secular and ecclesiastical lordship. 44 More specifically, the high clergy and the higher-ranking lay lords (optimates), both disturbed and threatened by the rising power of castellans, joined forces against these new men of power and their soldiers (milites). 45 The Church also engaged the populace in its peace activity, which allowed the peace movement to draw on customs at the communal level. Those customs involved “some hazy right of legislation. ” Among the populace, collective oath taking and some collective responsibility for law and order were taken for granted. Recourse to those customs may partly explain the movement's success. 46
The peace movement led by the Church—significantly, by the local Church 47 —was thus a stabilizing force in a changing world. Writing in the 1030s, Rodulfus Glaber linked the beginning of the peace movement to stabilization. As a punishment for the sins of men, terrible pestilence had raged “throughout the whole world for three years. ” It was believed that “the order of the seasons and the elements, which had ruled all past ages from the beginning, had fallen into perpetual chaos, and with it had come the end of mankind. ” But people raised their heart and hands unto the Lord, and in the year 1033, at the millennium of the Lord's passion, “by divine mercy and goodness the violent rainstorms ended; the happy face of the sky began to shine and to blow with gentle breezes and by gentle serenity to proclaim the magnanimity of the Creator. ” The earth blossomed again and gave an abundance of fruit, dispelling scarcity. “It was then that the bishops and abbots and other devout of Aquitaine first summoned great councils of the whole people. ” Many bodies of saints and innumerable caskets of holy relics were brought to the gatherings, which began to be held in other provinces as well. Even in the farthest corners of France “it was decreed that in fixed places the bishops and magnates of the entire country should convene councils for re-establishing peace and consolidating the holy faith. ” 48
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44 Moore 1992, 315; Bull 1993, 39 and, generally, chap. 2. Cf. Flori 1983, 137; Debord 1992; Bull 1993, 24; Bredero 1994, 121–22.
45 Flori 1983, 153, 155–56, argues that “les institutions de paix furent, à leur origine du moins, antiseigneuriales mais non antiaristocratiques. ”
46 Reynolds 1986, 34–35.
47 “In the church as in the kingdoms the idea of corporate institutions with public functions had collapsed into bundles of rights owned by individual proprietors…. the seigneurial revolution proceeded in parallel in the secular and spiritual spheres. ” Morris 1991, 27.
48 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm IV, v,13–14. Cf. ibid., III, iv,13; Morrison 1969, 388.
THE PEACEMAKING CHURCH: FROM PROHIBITING
WAR TO DIRECTING THE USE OF ARMS
Though the peace movement was a stabilizing force in a changing world, it was also an agent of change. As a medium through which the Church came to exercise—or, at the very least, to have a decisive say in exercising—a key function of secular power, the peace movement strengthened the Church's position vis-à-vis secular power. The shifting relationship between ecclesiastical authority and secular power was crucial in the overall restructuring of power within Christian society. Both the Church's authority and secular power underwent transformations that led to the shaping of new power structures and power relations in the Latin West. The resulting social transformation was radical indeed, and its consequences were long-lasting and far-reaching. It has been described as an overturning “both of ideologies and of economic and social infrastructures to a degree even greater than that which occurred during the late Roman Empire or the sixteenth century. ” 49 In what follows, I examine these momentous changes from the point of view of the transformation of ecclesiastical authority and the Church's position within Christian society.
The Church's assumption of a leading role in peacemaking and peacekeeping, which used to be elementary functions of kingly power, was crucial to its ascension to the preeminent position within Christian society. But what, exactly, did making and keeping peace mean? As canons from the peace councils document, it meant, in the first place, the banning of private wars and other acts of violence by limiting the use of arms. However, the peace councils' prohibitive regulations had a positive aspect as well. By setting rules specifying whom arms-bearers were not allowed to attack, the kinds of property they were not allowed to touch, and days of the week and seasons of the year when they were not allowed to use arms, the peace council regulations also gave the Church the authority to determine who could employ arms, for what purpose, on whose command, against whom, and when. This development suggests that the Church now regarded violence as licit under certain conditions. The circumscription of violence opened the way for the Church not only to assert its control over the use of arms but also to direct violent action.
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49 Robert Foisser, “Les mouvements populaires en Occident au XIe siècle”, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l'année 1971; quoted in Head and Landes 1992a, 9.
THE LICITNESS OF FIGHTING AND KILLING
The peace movement did not ban war altogether. Rather, it limited the sphere of the licit use of arms. Spiritual sanctions were not the only weapon of the peacemaking Church dignitaries; peace regulations could not rest on moral authority of ecclesiastical councils alone, and anathemas and excommunications were often backed by less sublime weapons—the threat, or actual use, of violence against the perpetrators of violence. The ecclesiastical peacemakers labeled the violent as peacebreakers and commanded that armed actions be taken against them. Moreover, in their devotion to peace, the clergy themselves took part in such battles on more than one occasion. Not unconditionally opposed to war, the peace movement rather declared war on war and sometimes even organized its own armies: peace militias.
Rodulfus Glaber reported that whoever broke the truce was “to pay for it with his life or be driven from his own country and the company of his fellow Christians. ” The Truce of God was to be upheld by “human sanctions” and by “divine vengeance. ” When “[v]arious madmen in their folly did not fear to break the [peace] pact”, Glaber reported, “immediately divine punishment or the avenging sword of men fell upon them. ” 50 Taking up arms against peace-breakers was not regarded as breaking the peace. Peace oaths administered by bishops would sometimes commit those who entered a “peace pact” to wage war against those who broke the Peace or the Truce, to act together “to the destruction and confusion” of the offenders. 51
The peace movement that originated in Bourges is perhaps the bestknown case in which such oaths were taken and bishops themselves led forces into the battle for peace while the clerics took the “human sword” into their own hands. 52 Acontemporary report by Andrew of Fleury tells us that in the year 1038, Aimon, the archbishop of Bourges, “wished to impose peace in his diocese through the swearing of oath. ” He summoned the bishops of his province to a meeting where he swore to God and His saints over the relics of Stephen, “the first martyr for Christ”, that “I will wholeheartedly attack those who steal ecclesiastical property, those who provoke pillage, those who oppress monks, nuns, and
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50 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm V, i,15.
51 Cf. Flori 1983, 156–57; Robinson 1990, 327; Bull 1993, 33–34.
52 There were other cases of clerics fighting peace wars in the same period. See Erdmann 1935, 39. On peace militias, see Hoffmann 1964, chap. 7, and 175; cf. Delaruelle 1980, 72 f.
clerics, and those who fight against holy mother church, until they repent. ” He promised not to deviate from this path of righteousness under any circumstances, and “to move with all my troops against those who dare in any manner to transgress the [peace] decrees and not to cease in any way until the purpose of the traitor has been overcome. ” The bishops had to follow his lead and then make all males fifteen years and over in their separate dioceses subscribe to the peace and take the same oath. Aimon thus bound the male populace “by the following law: that they would come forth with one heart as opponents of any violation of the oath they have sworn, that they would in no way withdraw secretly from the pact”, and that, “if necessity should demand it, they would go after those who had repudiated the oath with arms. ” Clerics were not excepted and “often took banners from the sanctuary of the Lord and attacked the violators of the sworn peace with the rest of the crowd of laypeople [populus]. ” 53
Once organized, this popular peace army appears to have been quite active. We learn that “they many times routed the faithless and brought their castles down to the ground” and “trampled underfoot” those they labeled rebels, “so that they forced them to return to the laws of the pact which they had ignored. ” It is also clear that “raging against the multitude of those who ignore God”, these armed faithful inspired a lot of terror. However, as Andrew of Fleury points out, they became possessed by blind ambition and fell away from God. Their major success—when they set aflame the castle of Beneciacum, whose lord was accused of violating the peace—ironically also marked the turn of their fortunes. They also killed without pity those who had not been consumed by fire, so that fourteen hundred people of both sexes—mainly the local population, who had sought protection in the castle—perished. Before the blood of the innocents had dried up, the archbishop's peace league— which “no longer had the Lord with them as their leader”—was badly defeated by another peace-breaking noble, and in one valley seven hundred clerics were slain. 54
For Andrew of Fleury, Aimon had gone too far. The archbishop of Bourges with his peace army had brought up complex questions concerning clerical participation in war and bloodshed, and the place of
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53 Miracula s. Benedicti V,2; trans. in Head and Landes 1992b, app. A, 339– 40.
54 Miracula s. Benedicti V,2– 4 (ibid., 340– 42). Cf. Erdmann 1935, 39, 57; Hoffmann 1964, 105 ff.; Head 1992.
priests and clerics, on the one hand, and armed and unarmed laymen, on the other, within a properly ordered society.
According to traditional ecclesiastical doctrine, clerics and monks were barred from participating in any military activity and were not allowed to bear arms. From early Church councils on, this interdict was “absolute”, 55 and the clerics who transgressed it were threatened with strict disciplinary measures, regardless of whether they took up arms for a just cause or even against the infidels. The rule was loosened a little when the synod of Ratisbone in 743 allowed clerics to accompany a Christian army on campaign. The synod specified the rank and number of the clergy accompanying military campaigns and determined that their task was to celebrate mass, intercede for the protection of saints, confess, and impose penance—nothing else. It did not lift the ban on clerics bearing arms. That ban remained in force during the Carolingian period. The battle among Charlemagne's sons and successors at Fontenoy in 841 gives us an interesting example. Disturbed by the fratricidal war, the Carolingian bishops convened after the battle and concluded that the soldiers of the victorious army fought “for justice and equity alone” and that, for this reason, “every one of them, he who commanded as well as he who obeyed, was to consider himself in this conflict an instrument of God, free from responsibility. ” 56 However, the clerics who took active part in the battle were punished. 57 The interdict against clerics bearing arms was reaffirmed even when Frankish lands suffered Norman attacks, 58 and it was restated by numerous peace councils held between the Council of Charroux in 989 and the Council of Clermont in 1095. 59
Though the prohibition against clerics using arms was the Church's normative stance, in practice things looked different. During the Merovingian period (end of the fifth century to the mid-eighth century), bishops took part in wars, even though such behavior was not expected from them; 60 under their Carolingian successors, such a state of affairs was in-
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55 Poggiaspalla 1959, 143. Prinz 1971, 5, wrote that “die kirchlichen Canones lassen keinen Zweifel darüber, daß der geistliche Stand mit Waffenhandwerk und Jagd unvereinbar sei. ”
56 Nithard Histories iii,1.
57 Fliche and Martin, Histoire de l' Eglise, vol. 6 (Paris, 1948), 269; quoted in Poggiaspalla 1959, 143 n. 16.
58 Magnou-Nortier 1992, 65.
59 Delaruelle 1980, 53; Morris 1991, 143; Goetz 1992, 266; Remensnyder 1992, 286– 87, 290–91.
60 See Prinz 1971, 65.
stitutionalized. 61 The episcopate became involved in the management of secular affairs, which included military service. Bishops and abbots were responsible not only for equipping but also for personally leading ecclesiastical contingents on imperial military campaigns—indeed, they were bound to take the field—and they never questioned this duty. 62 Moreover, whereas the last important Merovingian council, the Council of St. Jean de Losne in 673/75, explicitly forbade all bishops and clerics to bear arms in the manner of laymen, Carolingian councils did not specify bishops when they reiterated the general prohibition against clerics bearing arms. 63 Thus it is not surprising that in the ninth and tenth centuries bishops occasionally took the initiative to organize defense against foreign peoples invading the lands of Latin Christians. 64 But it is noteworthy that, for example, between 886 and 908, ten German bishops fell in fratricidal wars. 65
But while many bishops between the eighth and the eleventh centuries engaged in warfare, some Church dignitaries of that period expressed a strongly negative view of clerical military activity, as the following few examples illustrate. At the beginning of the Carolingian rule, St. Boniface denounced Frankish bishops who were “given to hunting and to fighting in the army like soldiers and by their own hands shedding blood. ” Replying to Boniface's letter, Pope Zacharias called those bishops “false priests” because their hands were “stained with human blood” and repeated that for priests fighting was unlawful. 66 Pope Sergius II, who called proponents of war “sons of the devil”, wrote a letter to Transalpine bishops in 844, urging them to “suffer persecution for this will make you blessed. ” 67 Atto, bishop of Vercelli, sharply criticized the clergy's involvement with war and secular affairs, maintaining that it was not appropriate to priests—it was diabolical. 68 Ratherius of Verona, another tenth-century Italian bishop, reprimanded the clergy for showing con-
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61 Contamine 1986, 431. Prinz 1971, 91, speaks of the total “'Einstaatung' der Kirche in den karolingischen Verwaltungsaufbau. ” Cf. Morrison 1969, 205– 6, 251; Prinz 1979, 312; Moore 1992, 314.
62 Prinz 1979, 307; Nelson 1983, 20.
63 Prinz 1971, 7, cf. 168 n. 80; 1979, 315 f.
64 See, for example, Blumenthal 1988, 2; Leyser 1994, 198 f.
65 Contamine 1986, 432.
66 Boniface to Pope Zacharias, a.d. 742; Zacharias to Boniface, 1 April 743; Zacharias to the Frankish clergy, Oct. 745 (Letters of Saint Boniface, 80, 84, 112).
67 Gilchrist 1988, 183. But as Gilchrist points out, Sergius was a rare exception among belligerent Popes.
68 Epistola 1 (Attonis episcopi vercellensis epistolae, PL 134: 98). Cf. Poggiaspalla 1959, 146; Prinz 1971, 27.
tempt for the canons in their hunting, whoring, and warring. 69 In the late 1020s, Bishop Fulbert of Chartres poured out his indignation at the bishops—he did not even want to call them bishops for fear of injuring the faith—who were more versed in war than lay princes and were not ashamed of disturbing the peace of the Church and shedding Christian blood. Moreover, they dared to enter their churches to celebrate the holy sacraments with bloody hands. The Church had only one sword, he reminded them, the spiritual sword, which does not kill but vivifies. 70
This and similar criticisms indicate that from the mid-eighth century to the early eleventh century there was tension and conflict between the normative canonical prohibition against clerical participation in war and the actual military duties of the high clergy. 71 Tension between norm and practice can exist only as long as the norm still stands. In the time of Aimon of Bourges, the ecclesiastical norm began to be loosened. Moreover, whereas the military service of the Carolingian episcopate may be seen as imposed on the Church by the imperial power (even though the Church dignitaries did not necessarily experience that imposition as painful), now there was no royal authority to demand that the bishops and abbots act contrary to ecclesiastical precepts regarding clerical participation in warfare. Aimon's military activity was not systemic, as that of the Carolingian and Ottonian bishops had been. He did not organize his peace army at the command of worldly power but on his own initiative, and his effort was directed against the laymen to whom the effective power had devolved. But as problematic as Aimon's military pursuits might have been from the normative point of view, they also influenced the norm, and the bellicose bishop was actually one of those who broke fresh ground on which a new ecclesiastical attitude toward peace and war began to grow.
As long as the Augustinian understanding of peace as “tranquillity of order” 72 prevailed, a cleric bearing arms could be perceived as disturbing the proper order of things. As Fulbert of Chartres warned, such order entailed that the spiritual sword—the word of God—was the only weapon of the Church. The same argument was pressed by Peter Damian in the middle of the eleventh century. The armed clerics, he maintained, represented a reversal of the proper order of things. They were
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69 De contemptu canonum I,17; II,1 (PL 136: 504, 515 f.; quoted in Morrison 1969, 255 n. 6).
70 Fulbert of Chartres to Hildegarius, Epistola 112 (Epistolae, PL 141: 255– 60).
71 Ratherins of Verona, for example, personified this conflict. See Prinz 1971, 27.
72 Augustine The City of God XIX, 13.
usurpers of the material sword that God had bestowed on secular power exclusively. The offices of kingship and priesthood were distinct. Citing an example from the Old Testament, Damian pointed out that God had struck King Azariah, who had usurped the spiritual office, with leprosy to the day of his death. 73 A notable Church reformer himself, Damian did not hesitate to disapprove of reform Pope Leo IX's armed action against the Normans, regardless of the justice of the cause. 74 Given that the idea of peace was linked to that of order, a cleric who disrupted the order was, eo ipso, violating peace. He was a perturbator pacis, a pacis violator. But Aimon of Bourges and other priests and monks took up arms precisely in the name of peace. Making peace the central purpose of military action affected the ecclesiastical outlook. Not only wars in which priests and monks took part but war in general was beginning to be seen differently.
Traditionally, the Church had been averse to the shedding of blood. Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine was a principle ever present in patristic writings and conciliar legislation. Participation in warfare was regarded as an evil; killing transgressed the Fifth Commandment; the stain of blood burdened Christian conscience. Even if a Christian stained his hands with blood in a just war, he still sinned. As Pope Nicholas I (858– 67) stated 75 —in an era when Latin Christians had to defend themselves against the inroads of those they regarded as pagans—even killing a pagan was homicide. From the fourth century to the eleventh century, the Church as a rule imposed disciplinary measures on those who killed in war, or at least recommended that they do penance. 76
In the tenth century a different view began to emerge, emanating from Cluny, a center of monastic reform that played a role in inaugurating the Peace of God (even if only for the Cluniacs' own benefit—to protect their lands from the growing perils of private warfare). 77 Odo, the sec-
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73 Peter Damian Epistolarum libri octo IV, ix (PL 144: 315). Cf. Remensnyder 1992, 291.
74 Peter Damian Epistolarum libri octo IV, ix (PL 144: 316). Cf. Erdmann 1935, 131; Poggiaspalla 1959, 146 (referring to Palazzini, Il diritto strumento di reforma ecclesiastica in S. Pier Damiani [Rome, 1956]).
75 Nicolai I. papae epistolae, ca. a.d. 861 (MGH Epp. 6: 613).
76 A brief survey in Contamine 1986, 428–30. See Leyser 1994, 196.
77 Hoffmann 1964, 47; Blumenthal 1988, 67; Tellenbach 1991, 82. The connection between Cluny and pax Dei is a controversial issue among historians. Cf. Erdmann 1935, chap. 2; Rousset 1945, 16; Cowdrey 1973; Delaruelle 1980, 69, 75 ff.; Duby 1985, 232 f.; Becker 1988, 275, 289–93; Blumenthal 1988, 67; Deanesly 1991, 98; Morris 1991, chap. 3, especially 66; Goetz 1992, 274; Mayer 1993, 16.
ond abbot of Cluny (926– 44) 78 was one of the first to argue that it was possible to conduct warfare from “proper motives”—and thus to promote a new ethics of war, that is, Christian militarism. 79 In his Vita Geraldi, Odo represented the hero, Count Gerald, as a model of the new warrior of Christ—a miles Christi who did not lay aside his arms but rather, moved by piety and charity, used arms in a way pleasing to God. His combating evil and malice was the Lord's work, opus Domini. Odo called this new kind of combat, in which piety entered the battlefield and became a fact of war, “fighting mingled with piety. ” 80 A layman carrying a sword in such a spirit was irreproachable. The Old Testament had authorized it, Odo argued, pointing out that “some of the fathers, although they had been the most holy and the most patient, nevertheless used to take up arms manfully in adversities when the cause of justice demanded. ” With Gerald as an example and the Old Testament to support the idea, the Cluniac abbot felt safe to conclude: “Truly, no one ought to be worried because a just man sometimes makes use of fighting, which seems incompatible with religion. ” 81
The idea of “fighting mingled with piety” opened the way to thinking about fighting as a special form of piety, and to the materialization of such thinking in the eleventh century. 82 The peace movement, as we have seen, not only allowed but demanded the employment of arms against the peace-breakers in the interest of peace. 83 It thus supported the notion of permissible violence and helped to establish ecclesiastical control over the use of arms and the determination of the circumstances in which laymen could licitly employ weapons and shed blood. 84 The understanding of warfare as licit was further developed by the Church reformers in the second half of the eleventh century in the idea of warfare as a service to the Church. 85 Pope Gregory VII (1073– 85)—after whom
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78 Cf. Erdmann 1935, 64; McGinn 1978, 38; Riché 1993, 310.
79 See Erdmann 1935, 62; Delaruelle 1980, 56.
80 “Novo praeliandi genere mista pietate. ” Vita Geraldi I,8 (PL 133: 647). See Rosenwein 1982, 73 ff., whom I follow here; cf. Duby 1968b, 755, 761.
81 Vita Geraldi I,8 (PL 133: 647); trans. in Rosenwein 1982, 76–77.
82 McGinn 1978, 39.
83 Delaruelle 1980, 57.
84 Remensnyder 1992, 301.
85 The connection between the peace movement and the eleventh-century Church reform has been a subject of controversy among historians. Immediate links between the two might indeed be difficult to demonstrate. Cf. Tellenbach 1993, 138; Bredero 1994, 124– 25. The peace movement, however, developed ideas and practices that fed into the Church reform and were later adopted and brought to fruition by the reformed Church.
this Church reform has been called 86 —is held responsible for the profound changes in the Christian attitude toward bearing arms that this idea implied. 87
In his uncompromising struggle for liberty and renewal of the Church, Gregory did not shrink from the use of force against those he considered opposed to the true faith and divine justice. Throughout his Pontificate he sought to recruit arms-bearers from all over western Christendom— from kings and princes to soldiers—for military service for the Papacy, which was now the supreme authority within the Christian Church. He claimed that laymen owed such service to St. Peter, whose vicar on earth was the Pope. Those who placed their arms at the disposal of the Apostolic See were thus the army of St. Peter, militia sancti Petri, and the individual who provided military service in pursuit of papal ends was his soldier, miles sancti Petri. 88 Faithful laymen were vassals to the Prince of the Apostles, fideles sancti Petri, and fighting for St. Peter was an expression of their fidelitas. 89 The notions of fideles sancti Petri and milites sancti Petri became largely synonymous. 90 Gregory's outlook has been summarized, if somewhat harshly, as follows: “The Church is the 'Christian legion,' within which the laity is the 'order of fighters': laymen have no function save that of fighting; they exist solely to suppress the enemies of the Church and all elements which tend to subvert right Christian order. The word of St. Paul, 'No man that warreth for God entangleth himself with the affairs of this world,' has been turned upside down. ” 91
War for St. Peter was considered licit. Even though Gregory VII did not formulate a “rounded reassessment of warfare”, his pontificate marked a decisive stage in the association of the Church with warfare and bearing arms. 92 The systematization and juridical justification of the new ecclesiastical attitude was the work of Gregorian bishops Anselm of Lucca
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86 The term Gregorian reform was introduced by Fliche 1924–37. Though it has been criticized for personifying the Church reform (which actually began before Gregory VII's pontificate: on this early phase of the reform, cf. Anton 1987), the term did enter general use. With these reservations it is used in this book.
87 Cowdrey 1997, 34.
88 Cf. Cowdrey 1998, 650; and, generally, Robinson 1973.
89 See Zerbi 1948, 132 ff.
90 Tellenbach 1947, 144; Laarhoven 1959– 61, 46– 47, 62– 63, 92 (for the notion of fidelitas). Cf. Gregory to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, 22 January 1075, Gregory VII Register II,49 (p. 190).
91 Robinson 1973, 190. Cf. Arquillière 1934; Fliche 1929, 281 f.; Erdmann 1935, chap. 5; Villey 1942, 46 f.; Rousset 1945, 50 ff.; Delaruelle 1980, 79 ff.; Becker 1988, 288 ff.
92 Cowdrey 1998, 658.
and Bonizo of Sutri at the end of the eleventh century. 93 A“canonist of reform”, Anselm of Lucca wrote his 'Collectio canonum' as a “book about 'principles,'” postulating “what the reformers desired for the Church and Christian society. ” 94 In this context he worked to demonstrate that under certain conditions war, as well as the spilling of blood, could be legitimate and just. 95 Citing (and slightly modifying) Augustine as his authority, Anselm stated: “Do not think that one who ministers with warlike arms is unable to please God. ” 96 One of the two questions Bonizo of Sutri addressed in his polemical work Liber ad amicum, probably written in 1085– 86, was whether “a Christian was or is permitted to fight with arms for the [true] doctrine. ” 97 The answer he provided, based on a set of historical examples, was undoubtedly affirmative. If one might fight for the worldly king, why not for the Heavenly King? If for the republic, why not for righteousness? And if against the barbarians, why not against heretics? “Thus”, he drew the lesson from history, “may the glorious soldiers of God fight for truth and righteousness and combat heresy in the truest sense. ” Indeed, every Christian must fight against “heretical novelties” in the manner corresponding to his social status. 98 In his canonical work Liber de vita christiana, composed between 1090– 95, Bonizo laid down a moral code of action for soldiers, making clear that the exercise of their profession was unobjectionable as long as they followed that code. Later in this chapter I outline this postulated military ethic as well as the conditions under which military service was pleasing to God in Anselm's opinion. First, I want to point out a grave consequence of the view that the use of arms was licit and acceptable to Christian religion.
If employment of arms was compatible with religion (in the spirit of Odo's Vita Geraldi), so were the fruits of the use of arms. Bernard of An-
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93 Cf. Erdmann 1935, 223 ff.; Laarhoven 1959– 61, 63 n. 206; Robinson 1978, 102 f.; Becker 1988, 319 ff.; Morris 1991, 109.
94 Cushing 1998, 142– 43. Cf. Pásztor 1987, 377.
95 See Stickler 1947, 245–50; Pásztor 1987; Cushing 1998, chap. 4.
96 “Noli existimare neminem Deo placere posse, qui armis bellicis ministrat. ” Collectio canonum XIII,4: “Quod militantes etiam possunt esse iusti. ” Trans. in Cushing 1998, 129–30. Cf. Cushing's abridged edition of bk. XII and XIII of the Collectio canonum, app. II, 194. Cushing pointed out that Anselm changed ministrare for Augustine's militare. Pásztor 1987, 407, in her edition of bk. XIII of the Collectio canonum, has militat. Cf. Anselm Liber contra Wibertum 523–24.
97 Liber ad amicum I (p. 571).
98 Liber ad amicum VIIII (pp. 618–19), II (p. 573). Cf. Erdmann 1935, 229 f.; Berschin 1972, 38 f.
gers, who wrote the first part of the Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis in the early eleventh century, unequivocally expressed the view that not only fighting but killing too was pleasing in the eyes of God. He went well beyond representing the death of malefactors—those who wanted to either attack the monks or steal their wine or who slandered the local saint— as due to impersonal celestial vengeance. 99 Bernard told the story of Gimon, prior of the monastery in Conques, who took divine vengeance into his own hands. 100 Although a monk, Gimon had “a cuirass, a helmet, a lance, a sword, and all kinds of instruments of war” always close at hand and was quick to use them “whenever wicked men invaded the monastery with hostile intent. ” This, Bernard knew, was “an assault on the monastic rule”; but, he suggested, if people considered Gimon's behavior “correctly”, they would ascribe it to the monk's moral excellence. 101 “No one could doubt that his bravery was pleasing in the eyes of God. ” He was an instrument of God, fighting against “men like Antichrist” who “seize the goods of the saints as plunder, laugh at the bishop's interdict, think the legal position of the monks is a pile of shit, and even rail against the army of the living God like insolent Philistines. ” Gimon's action against such men was pure: “If God's avenging omnipotence should employ the hand of any of His own servants to strike down and slaughter one of these Antichrists, no one could call it a crime. ” 102 Moreover, “that man will not be regarded as a murderer [neque iste ut homicida reputabitur] whom the Lord of Sabaoth and King of Armies and Powers destined to be the sole protection of his own monastic community, as if he were another defender-angel. ” Such a man should, rather, be rewarded, as David had been rewarded for killing Goliath. 103
Killing of “false Christians” by the virtuous and zealous servants of God was not to be regarded as homicide. Bernard of Angers singled out as false Christians those who acted violently in disrespect of the bishop's interdict (interdictum pontificalem deridentes)—the violators of peace. Peace gatherings, as we saw earlier, would call on “the avenging human sword” and unleash a “raging against the multitude of those who ignore
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100 Erdmann 1935, 69, remarked that Bernard took special pains to portray this figure.
101 “Sed si quis recte perspiciet, plus hoc ad virtutem quam ad impugnationem monastice regule poterit referre. ” Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis I,26. (I follow the translation in The Book of Sainte Foy.)
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
99 See, for example, Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis I,5,6,11.
God. ” 104 Effusion of bad Christians' blood was part of the peace package; it was sanctioned by the peacemakers.
A fateful turn in ecclesiastical thinking about licit killing occurred in the pastoral letters of Pope Alexander II. In a letter to Viscount Berenguer of Narbonne, the Pope communicated his approval of the viscount's protection of the Jews who lived under his power. “God is not pleased by the spilling of blood, nor does he rejoice in the perdition of the evil ones. ” 105 In a letter of 1063 addressed to Wifred, archbishop of Narbonne, the Pope reiterated the same traditional view: that “all laws, ecclesiastical as well as secular, forbid the shedding of human blood”, but he made two exceptions. Bloodshed was allowed as a punishment for crimes and to counter hostile aggression, as in the case of Saracens. 106 Though punishment of criminals was not war, fighting against Saracens was. Consequently, “proceeding against the Saracens”, 107 that is, war against them, could be regarded as licit warfare.
THE SOCIALIZATION OF WARRIORS AND THE
FORMULATION OF CHRISTIAN MILITARY ETHICS
The peace movement, in an attempt to bring violence under control, played a key role in defining the conditions under which fighting and killing were permissible. But controlling violence meant establishing authority over the violent. In this section I look at those who lived by the use of arms and at how the Church tried not only to restrain them but to find them a proper place in Christian society by designating a morally acceptable sphere and purpose for their actions. 108
The perpetrators of violence encountered by the peacemaking bishops and their allies from the higher ranks of lay nobility were the castellans and their military retinue, who came to be called milites, soldiers.
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104 See nn. 50, 54.
105 Alexander II Epistolae et diplomata no. 102 (PL 146: 1387). Ewald 1880, 347, suggests 1063 as the year of composition.
106 “Omnes leges tam ecclesiastice quam seculares effusionem humani sanguinis dampnant, nisi forte conmissa crimina aliquem iudicio puniant, vel forte, ut de Sarracenis, hostilis exacerbatio incumbat. ” Loewenfeld, Epp. pontif. roman., no. 83 (p. 43). A slightly different reading in Jaffé, Regesta 4533 (3487). Mansi 19: 980 —reproduced in Alexander II Epistolae et diplomata no. 103 (PL 146: 1387)—does not have “nisi forte … incumbat. ”
107 Alexander to the bishops of Spain, Epistolae et diplomata no. 101 (PL 146: 1386).
108 The discussion of these topics here can only be a simplification, for it is beyond the scope of this study to account for regionally specific and unsynchronous developments. For these differences, see Duby 1968b, 760 f.; Johrendt 1971; Cardini 1981, 314 ff.; Flori 1983 (and, for the later period, id. 1986); and literature cited in these works.
This term (and its singular, miles) came into use in this context in the middle of the second half of the tenth century, coinciding with the emergence of the peace movement. The term acquired juridical as well as social meaning, for the soldier became a legal person when he entered the peace pact, subjecting himself to the peace legislation. 109 The term was employed in varying contexts and in shifting sense throughout the eleventh century. 110 Whereas it initially referred to mounted warriors of moderate means and humble social status (unless accompanied by adjectives ascribing excellence for soldiers of higher social rank), at the end of the eleventh century the mounted nobles who carried a sword and shield also began to identify themselves as milites. Under the word milites, then, the greater nobility and their armed vassals converged as an increasingly coherent group of fighters. 111
Emerging as it did with the peace movement, the term milites had a great future laying ahead. A good century later, with the launching of crusading warfare, the soldiers began to figure as no less than milites Christi, soldiers of Christ. But the term milites had also had a long past. Milites Christi had originally referred to the Christians in general, but from late antiquity onwards the term “soldiers of Christ” became increasingly reserved for the monks—in contrast to “secular soldiers”, members of the secular army, the militia saecularis. 112 Smaragdus, a Carolingian scholar and the abbot of a monastery in Lorraine, had explained around 820: “There are secular soldiers (milites seculi) and there are soldiers of Christ (milites Christi); but secular soldiers bear feeble and perilous arms, while those of the soldiers of Christ are most powerful and excellent; the former fight against their enemies in such a way that they lead both themselves and those they kill to everlasting punishment; the latter fight against evil so that after death they may gain the reward of eternal life; the former fight in such a way that they descend to Hell, the latter fight so that they may achieve glory…. ” 113 Around 861, Pope Nicholas I had declared that soldiers of this world (milites seculi) were distinct from the soldiers of the Church (milites ecclesiae), so it was not becoming to the soldiers of the Church to fight worldly battles (saeculo
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109 See Duby 1968a, 454; Becker 1988, 281; Paxton 1992, 40.
110 See Duby 1968b, 741 f.; Johrendt 1971, 10–12, 240– 45.
111 See Duby 1968a, 455; 1968b, 742– 43; Flori 1983, 112 ff., and pt. 3; Keen 1984, 27–28.
112 See a brief survey in Flori 1983, pt. 1, especially 24–28.
113 Commentaria in regulam sancti Benedicti (PL 102: 696; quoted in Forey 1992, 10).
militare) in which blood would necessarily be spilled. Just as it was wrong for a layman to interfere with spiritual affairs, so it was ridiculous and inappropriate for a cleric to take up arms and proceed to war. 114 One of the earliest statements of this view is attributed to Martin of Tours, a fourth-century saint, who was quoted as having said: “I am a soldier of Christ, I am not allowed to fight. ” 115 As soldiers who fought with arms, the milites saeculi were undoubtedly inferior to the milites Christi. There had been nothing particularly noble about being a “soldier of the world. ” The prevailing ecclesiastical description of the “soldiers of the world” was, in the words of Burchard of Worms, “those who from greed deliberately slay. ” 116
The shift in understanding of who were milites was an element in the “revolution in Church thinking about violence” that occurred towards the end of the tenth century and through the eleventh century—described as the most creative period of the High Middle Ages with respect to changes in the concept of war. 117 With the weakening of royal authority and the devolution of effective power to the castellans and their military entourage, the arms-bearers seemed to be free of any control. In the old social order the king had been given the sword to execute justice, to maintain peace, and—as ecclesiastical authorities had never tired of repeating—to defend the Church and protect the poor and the weak. 118 Now those who carried the sword had become the disturbers of peace, violators of ecclesiastical liberty and property, and oppressors of the poor and the weak. Because of their social destructiveness, the milites could indeed be characterized as an “as-yet unsocialized class. ” 119
The peace movement played a leading role in the socialization of the milites, a process that implied circumscribing the place and role of violence in society. For what is peace if not bringing violence under order— an ordered violence? It was largely around the notion of peace that Christian society managed to restore its equilibrium 120 by creating new images of a social order in which milites had an honored place.
The image of medieval society that has been made quite popular
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114 Nicolai I. 'Papae epistolae' (MGH Epp. 6: 613).
115 Sulpicius Severus Life of Martin of Tours IV,3 (Early Christian Lives, 139).
116 Burchard of Worms Decretum IV,23; quoted in Cushing 1998, 127 n. 17. Burchard is often described as a representative of the traditional anti-war stance of the Church, a view that has been convincingly questioned by Gilchrist 1988, 178–79.
117 Housley 1985, 17; Contamine 1986, 433.
118 See Anton 1968; Flori 1983, 1986.
119 Landes 1995, 28.
120 Contamine 1986, 433, speaking of the “rééquilibrage de la société. ”
thanks to the research of some French historians is the image of society divided into three orders. Society was imagined as consisting of the order of those who pray (oratores), the order of fighters (milites, bellatores, agonistae, pugnatores), and the order of workmen (agricolae, agricoltantes, laboratores). 121 Each of them had a function to fulfill, but they were interdependent. And in order for society to be well ordered, each person or group had to remain in its own place.
The best known and probably earliest reference to the three orders of society on the continent 122 was made in response to the Peace of God movement. Bishop Adalbero of Laon described the tripartite functional division of society in a few lines of his Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, written between 1027 and 1031, if not a decade earlier. 123 “Therefore”, he wrote, “triple is the house of God, which is believed to be one. Now, some pray, others fight, and others work. These three are connected and suffer no scission: the workings of two thus stand on the office of one; each one in turn offers support to the others. This threesome is therefore single. As long as this law prevails, the world enjoys peace. ” 124 The rule of peace thus presupposed that the ministers of God, to whom the whole of humankind, the powerful included, was subordinated, taught the observance of the Christian life; that the king and emperor ruled and commanded the republic and restrained the warriors (whose head they were) so that they would “avoid the crimes” and act as protectors of the Church and the people, vulgi maiores atque minores; and that the workmen toiled, with no end to their groans and tears, to feed and clothe the lords. 125
But Adalbero saw that order collapsing, and in his Carmen he pictured the world turned upside down: a peasant crowned king, the nobles living as monks, and the bishops living as peasants. His satire was most biting when he described the monks turned soldiers. He did not hide that he was targeting Cluny. He identified Cluny as the source of the confu-
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121 See, for example, Duby 1968a; 1968b, 758; and, especially, 1985; Duby 1974, 165 f., where the tripartite division is described as social reality; Le Goff 1985. See also Carozzi 1979, cxx f. (for the origins of the image); Constable 1995, 279– 88 (with a brief critical characterization of historians' approaches to social tripartition).
122 Constable 1995, 285; the earliest articulations of the tripartite division of society into the orders of fighters, workmen, and those who pray come from ninth- and tenthcentury England (ibid., 279).
123 On the date of composition, see Carozzi 1979, cxv– cxix; Constable 1995, 283 n. 130.
124 I cite Carozzi's edition of the Carmen: Adalbero Poème (here lines 295–301).
125 Ibid., lines 227–94.
sion of orders and the ensuing disorder, and there was some substance to his criticism. The Cluniacs were involved in the Peace of God movement. Abbot Odilo of Cluny, who was criticized by Adalbero, took part in a peace council of Anse in 994, the first year of his abbacy, and his presence at another council at Le Puy some forty years later is recorded. 126 His large entourage may have had a soldierly bearing, 127 but the evidence for this is debatable. 128 Adalbero's depiction of Odilo and the sacred order of monks hurrying into battle, 129 even though a fiction, is valuable for our understanding of that historical period. In Adalbero's poem a monk whom Adalbero has sent to Cluny returns converted into a soldier. Now, the monk declares, he is a soldier (Miles nunc!) fighting for “King Odilo of Cluny” to save the kingdom of Franks from the Saracens. 130 Odilo is “the prince of militia”, whom the “warlike order of monks” salute as their lord. 131
Where one could take over another's social role, the law fell into decay, peace was lost, and morals and order were transformed. 132 Adalbero was a conservative. He wanted the king back as the guarantor of order and peace. 133 He wanted restoration of the pax regis, the king's peace. Andrew of Fleury is another who viewed the pax Dei as undermining the social order. He disapproved of Aimon of Bourges's peace militia not only because of its cruelty but also because it represented the confusion of orders: under the command of oratores, the laboratores acted as bellatores. 134 To underline the presumptuousness of this idea, Andrew showed them riding into battle on asses—to be routed by the warriors. 135
In the imagined tripartite society, the order of fighters had a clearly
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126 Hoffmann 1964, 41, 45; Rosenwein 1982, 36, 88.
127 Carozzi 1979, xc.
128 For the evidence, cf. Carozzi 1979, lxxxvii–xciii. For scepticism, Hoffmann 1964, 45 n. 2.
129 Poème lines 78–79.
130 Ibid., lines 80–128. Carozzi 1979, lxxxviii–lxxxix, interprets these Saracens as a literary artifice. Blumenthal 1988, 67, speaks of the creation of the “legend of the warlike spirit of Cluny. ”
131 Poème lines 155–56.
132 Ibid., lines 170–71, 302–3.
133 Ibid., lines 304–5. Cf. Carozzi 1983, 72; van Caenegem 1988, 180. For a more comprehensive analysis of Adalbero, Carozzi 1979; 1983, 68 ff.; Duby 1985, especially 58 ff.
134 See n. 53. Cf. Flori 1983, 143.
135 Miracula s. Benedicti V,4 (Head and Landes 1992b, app. A, 342). Adalbero mounted Odilo's soldiers on asses too: “Ascendant asinum bini, denique camelum! Si non sufficiunt, bubalum conscendite terni!” Poème lines 142– 43.
defined place. However, the three-orders scheme “remained only one of several ways of ordering society in the Middle Ages, and far from the most important. ” 136 Adalbero himself, in Carmen ad Rotbertum regem, also used a binary division of society into nobles and serfs, who were not bound by the same law. 137 In this scheme, too, warriors had a designated place—in the first division. What was important in the normative ordering of society during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the recognition of the growing number of professional and occupational groups and the “acceptance of the independence, and rise in status and prestige, of the order of bellatores or milites. ” 138
Socializing the soldiers, however, took more than fitting them into a well-ordered social scheme. The problem at the beginning of the second millennium lay not so much in defining the professional soldiers as in limiting the violence perpetrated by this group. The key was to incorporate violence into the social order through a code of socially acceptable and, ideally, beneficial behavior for the milites. This professional ethic was not so much codified by the soldiers as it was codified for them. In this the peace movement and the Church reformers played the crucial role. Through this process the Church came to recognize the military profession, and the milites rose in status and prestige.
The long-prevailing view that the eleventh century saw the formation of Christian knighthood 139 has recently been questioned. Revisionist historians maintain that knighthood—the chivalric class (or rather, caste) with its own self-sustaining value system and rites of passage— only came into existence toward the end of the twelfth century. 140 Thus the term knight is inapplicable to the eleventh century. 141 But this does not mean that the development of the Christian military ethic and the rise of Christian militarism 142 did not take place in that period. When the Church became engaged in making and keeping peace in the absence of the king, it began to place itself, step by step, into a direct relation-
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136 Constable 1995, 288.
137 Poème lines 276 ff.
138 Constable 1995, 324.
139 See, for example, Erdmann 1935, 51; Duby 1968b, 759; 1974, 166– 68; Delaruelle 1980, 55 ff.; Mayer 1993, 20.
140 The most systematic exposition of this argument is in Flori 1983, 1986; summarized in id. 1992; accepted in Bull 1993, 8. See also Cardini 1981, especially 314 ff.; 1992a, pt. 1; Keen 1984.
141 Bull 1993, 17.
142 McGinn 1978, 38–39; Morris 1991, 143 ff. Erdmann 1935 remains a reference work.
ship with the military order. 143 By prescribing social and moral obligations to all warriors 144 and assigning the right motives and goals for military activity, the Church ennobled the use of arms, pulled the military within its own ethical and religious horizons, and placed war in its own service and progressively sanctified it. 145
During the tenth and especially the eleventh centuries, Christianization of warfare advanced through liturgical innovations, such as the blessing of banners and consecration of weapons, and the period saw the growth of a warrior-saints cult. 146 But the two points of primary interest here are, first, the Church's taking in its own hands command over the use of arms and, second, its defining the mode and purpose of military action.
The Peace of God and Truce of God movements, as we have already seen, relied on the force of arms. When Bishop Guy of Le Puy convoked one of the first peace councils, the presence of the army summoned by the bishop was enough to convince those present, warriors included, to take the peace oath. 147 The Council of Poitiers (1000–1014) planned military action against recalcitrant peace-breakers. 148 Archbishop Aimon of Bourges sent his peace militia to war. 149 The peace movement created a situation in which Church dignitaries—alone or in collaboration with lay princes—either threatened to command or actually commanded the employment of arms. The type of war now coming into existence was new. First, it was a peace war. The peace movement's militiae were not just armies fighting for peace, as armies had often done; they were peace armies, the force of peace. Second, war was ordered by the Church itself. 150 Gregorian reformers justified and elaborated upon this kind of war in doctrinal statements that followed some practical steps of great consequence taken by the reform Popes.
Leo IX (1048–54) provided a precedent for “papally conducted war-
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143 Anachronistic as it is to speak of the “state” in the given context, Erdmann 1935, 53, has pointed to the crucial issue: “Die Kirche trat also ohne die Vermittlung des Staates in ein direktes Verhältnis zu den eigentlichen Vertretern des Kriegerhandwerk. ”
144 Forey 1992, 11.
145 Tellenbach 1947, 145; Laarhoven 1959– 61, 63.
146 See Erdmann 1935, chap. 1, app. 1; Flori 1983, 97 ff.; 1986, chap. 4, app. 369– 82.
147 See n. 18.
148 Hoffmann 1964, 32. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 56, citing an appeal from 1040 by the French clergy to the Italians to join the peace efforts, that celebrated the revenge against peace-breakers as blessed by God.
149 See nn. 53, 54.
150 See Erdmann 1935, 56.
fare” by personally leading the war against the Normans in southern Italy in 1053. 151 In a letter to the Byzantine emperor, Leo justified his recourse to coercive powers of authority. 152 In a turn of papal policy toward the Normans of southern Italy, Pope Nicholas II (1058– 61) succeeded in making Norman princes Robert Guiscard, and probably Richard of Capua, take an oath of fealty to the Apostolic See, subjecting the Norman army to vassalage to the Pope. 153 The Pope thus had the right to demand Norman military support. Alexander II (1061–73) renewed this relationship with Richard on the second day of his pontificate and renewed it with Robert Guiscard a year later. 154 Pope Leo IX's letter to the Byzantine emperor was probably written by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, who in the 1050s formulated some leading ideas of the Church reform. 155 Humbert postulated both a strict separation between the worldly and spiritual spheres and a relationship between priesthood and kingship in which priestly power excelled kingship just as the soul excelled the body. As a consequence, secular princes had to follow churchmen but were not allowed to interfere with ecclesiastical affairs. The function of kings and secular princes and of faithful laymen in general was to defend the Church. Princes received the sword from Christ's priests and were anointed by them, Humbert argued, in order to serve in defense of God's churches and, wherever there was need, to fight. 156
Pope Gregory VII also expected the faithful to defend the Church. Moreover, his notion of fidelitas implied the Church's right to demand that the fideles employ arms in its service. 157 Thus he required Count William of Burgundy to “bring together a military force to protect the freedom of the Roman Church” and if need be to “come hither with [his]
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151 Morris 1991, 88. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 109 ff. For Laarhoven 1959– 61, 21, Leo's war marked the emergence of the “military Papacy. ”
152 Leo to Constantine Monomachos, a.d. 1054, Epistolae et decreta pontifica no. 103 (PL 143: 778–79). Cf. Erdmann 1935, 110, 133.
153 Cowdrey 1983, 111 f. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 116 ff.; Robinson 1990, 326, 369 ff.; Morris 1991, 139f. For the reform Papacy and the Normans, see Cowdrey 1983, chap. 3; Blumenthal 1988, 79– 84.
154 Cowdrey 1983, 118.
155 For different views on Humbert's role, see Fliche 1924–37, 1: chap. 4; Knabe 1936, 121–22; Blumenthal 1988, 91; Tierney 1988, 36; Tellenbach 1991, 109; Schramm 1970, 143 ff.; 1992, 239 ff.
156 See Humbert of Silva Candida Adversus simoniacos III, v, ix, xi, xv, xxi (cols. 1147, 1153, 1157, 1163– 64, 1175). Cf. Michel 1947, 85.
157 Cf. n. 89. See Erdmann 1935, chap. 7; Cowdrey 1998, especially 650–58.
army in the service of St. Peter. ” 158 In a letter to King Sweyn of Denmark, the Pope made it clear that he expected “help with soldiers and material sword [in militibus et materiali gladio] against the impious and the enemies of God”—when the “Holy Roman Mother Church” needed it. Moreover, he suggested that the king dispatch one of his sons with a number of trusty warriors to lead a campaign against heretics, probably in Dalmatia. But the Pope left no doubt that it was he who would name Sweyn's son the “general, prince, and defender of Christendom” and that the Danish prince would “perform military service for the Papal court. ” The authority to initiate and direct military action lay in the Pope's hands. 159
Gregory rested his demand for lay princes' military service on not only his notion of fidelitas but also the idea that the Pope could claim authority over the sword (gladius). In the letter to Sweyn, Gregory counted on the king's “material sword. ” In another letter, the sword to be wielded was the Pope's. The Pope threatened Wezelin, a noble who had rebelled against King Zvonimir Demetrius of Dalmatia, “whom the apostolic authority has constituted”, saying that if he did not repent of his “rash conduct”, “we will unsheath the sword of the blessed Peter against your audacity. ” 160 The sword Gregory referred to does not seem to have been the “spiritual sword” or the “sword of excommunication”, 161 but rather, the material sword. Even if the sword was meant to be unsheathed at the Pope's command rather than literally by the Pope himself, Gregory was expressing the right to authorize armed action. 162
A third ground on which Gregory VII claimed for the Church the right to command the use of arms was the sinfulness of the military profession. For remission of their sins soldiers could only turn to the Church. But the Church could do more than award the appropriate penance; through ecclesiastical ruling, not only could the individual soldier be absolved of his sins, but the use of arms as such could be freed from sinfulness. If they hoped for eternal life, soldiers could either give up fight-
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158 Gregory to Count William of Burgundy, 2 Feb. 1074, Register I,46 (p. 70); Correspondence, 22.
159 Gregory to King Sweyn of Denmark, 25 Jan. 1075, Register II,51 (p. 194). Cf. Stickler 1948, 99–100; Cowdrey 1998, 650.
160 Gregory to Wezelin, 7 Oct. 1079, Register VII,4 (p. 464); Correspondence, 144. Gregory to Wezelin, 7 Oct. 1079, Register VII,4 (p. 464); Correspondence, 144. Gregory to Wezelin, 7 Oct. 1079, Register VII,4 (p. 464); Correspondence, 144. Gregory to Wezelin, 7 Oct. 1079, Register VII,4 (p. 464); Correspondence, 144.
161 See Stickler 1948, 94–97.
162 Cf. Stickler 1948, 99–101; Riley-Smith 1997, 51. This was not yet the theory of two swords: Hauck 1904, 30; Stickler 1948, 102; nor did Gregory “practice” the theory he had not formulated, as wittily maintained by Arquillière 1947, 508.
ing or employ their arms under the Church's direction. A canon from the Roman synod of November 1078 ranked the military among the professions that could not be exercised without incurring sin and proclaimed that the soldier “cannot perform true penance, through which he can attain eternal life, unless he lays down his arms and bears them no more except on the advice of religious bishops for the defense of righteousness. ” 163 Arms could thus be justly borne “when men were obedient to the guidance of right-minded clerical mentors. ” 164
Anselm of Lucca, Gregory VII's closest collaborator and a foremost theoretician of the ecclesiastical reform, was the first to give a systematic treatment in terms of canonical law to the Church's right to the use of arms (jus gladii). 165 In his exposition, the Church had the jurisdictional right of coercive action. It had the right to persecutio, that is, to material coercion aiming at impeding evil and compelling toward good (as distinct from vindicta, material coercion in general, which meant punishment—including capital punishment—for a crime). 166 The Church's material coercive power was independent of the coercive power of secular princes and could be exercised against them by the Church itself. Ordinarily, however, the Church, while retaining its right of coercive action, would charge a secular power with carrying out the coercion. 167 The king did not bear his sword in vain, Anselm reminded William the Conqueror, but was a servant of God (minister Dei) whose duty was to punish the evil. 168 Through the secular prince's armed action the Church could fulfill its mission, yet although he undertook this action at the Church's request, the secular prince had no right whatsoever to meddle in internal ecclesiastical affairs. 169 Secular princes had to fulfil their ap-
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163 Protocol of the Autumn Roman Synod, 1078, c. 6, in Gregory VII Register VI, 5b (p. 404). Cf. Hefele 1912–13, 5.1: 242. The canon was incorporated into Gratian's Decretum.
164 Cowdrey 1997, 24.
165 Stickler 1947, 238, 270, 274.
166 Collectio canonum XIII,14: “Quod aecclesia persecutionem possit facere”; XIII,15–17: “De eadem re. ” Pásztor 1987, 412–13; Cushing 1998, 196. Parallels between Collectio canonum XIII,14–17, and Liber contra Wibertum are documented in Pásztor 1987, 394–97. The distinction between vindicta and persecutio: Stickler 1947, 239; followed by Cushing 1998, 131.
167 Stickler 1947, 259– 64; Cushing 1998, 132–33. Cf. Collectio canonum XII,46: “De scismaticis coercendis a secularibus”; XII,54: “De hereticis per saeculares potestates coercendis”; XII,54: “Ut excommunicati cohibeantur a saecularibus. ” (Cushing 1998, 188– 89).
168 Anselm to William I of England, ca. 1085 (MGH BfdtKz 5: 17). Cf. Hauck 1904, 30.
169 Pásztor 1987, 86, 93.
pointed task—the material defense of the Church—under direct ecclesiastical tutorial guidance or supervision. 170
For Bonizo of Sutri, the enemy within—heretics and schismatics— had first to be cut down with the “evangelical scythe” and then rooted out with “all our forces and weapons. ” 171 This was a fight commanded by the Church. 172 Just like Anselm, whom he greatly admired, 173 Bonizo argued that the Church had the right to persecutio, 174 aided by secular powers, especially by the higher ranks of the lay order: kings, judges, and soldiers. If this “order of fighters” would not fight to subdue the excommunicated, the heretics, and the schismatics, it would be “superfluous” in the “Christian fellowship” (legio). 175 The judges were “given to the Church” as assistants (in adiutorium), so that by the fear they inspired they would bring back to the “unity of peace” those who rebelled against the order of the Church and did not honor bishops on grounds of ecclesiastical discipline. 176 Bonizo also outlined a comprehensive code of behavior for soldiers, and for this reason we may regard his De vita christiana as the book with which “the Church had finally arrived at a new attitude to war. ” 177
It was only logical that the Church that claimed the authority to order the use of arms would simultaneously define the right mode and purpose of military action, that is, would set out to elaborate a new ethic for Christian milites. Even though elements of this ethical code may not have been new, their synthesis was. Bonizo's codification of milites' behavior shows this well. 178 It included the only commandment known for soldiers in the early Middle Ages: 179 that they should not thirst for booty. Most of the other commandments codified by Bonizo may be seen as ecclesiastical recognition of Roman and Germanic warriors' ethics: soldiers had to be devoted to their lords, willing to risk their lives defending the life of their lords, willing to fight to the death for the well-
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170 Cushing 1998, 132.
171 Liber ad amicum I (p. 572).
172 Cf. Erdmann 1935, 234; Flori 1986, 249–50.
173 Cf. Berschin 1987, 281. On the question of whether Bonizo used Anselm's Collectio canonum as a source for his Vita christiana, cf. Erdmann 1935, 234; Stickler 1947, 271–72; Berschin 1972, 73–74.
174 Liber de vita christiana VII,17: “Quod ecclesia possit facere persecutionem”; VII,18–19: “De eadem re. ”
175 Ibid., II,43; cf. X,79. On the order of Christian society, see ibid., II,3.
176 Ibid., VII,16. Cf. Berschin 1972, 111.
177 Mayer 1993, 19.
178 De vita christiana VII,28; cf. II,43.
179 Cf. the analysis in Erdmann 1935, 235–37; Flori 1986, 250–53.
being of the republic (pro statu rei publice), not break their sworn fidelity, and not commit perjury toward their lords. Bonizo's emphasis on the soldiers' fidelity to their lords, however, may also be seen as insistence on the cardinal Christian virtue of obedience, which binds Christian society together and without which that society would collapse. 180 The specifically Christian injunction that soldiers had to defend widows, orphans, and the poor was not new in itself. As a postulated duty of the king, it was to be found in early medieval “mirrors of princes. ” The novelty, epoch-making in its importance, was in ascribing these “royal ethics” to milites. 181 Also specifically Christian, of course, was the demand that soldiers wage war against schismatics and heretics.
The fight against schismatics and heretics was an overriding concern for the Gregorian Church reformers. It was prominent with Gregory VII and Anselm of Lucca, who, however, took much more care than Bonizo to define the inner disposition of the soldiers carrying out the fight. For Gregory, fighting heretics and schismatics meant the employment of armed laymen in the service of the Church. But fighting for the Church could only win the soldiers reward in this world and the next if they rose above sinful human desires and pursued these good works from right motives. Proeliandi recta voluntas meant taking up arms for the love of one's neighbors, and thus for the love (and fear) of God. 182 Gregory was “the first to state categorically that taking part in war of a certain kind could be an act of charity to which merit was attached and to assert in the end that such an action could indeed be penitential. ” 183 The supreme act of love was self-sacrifice, dying as a martyr for Him who had died for the redemption of mankind, “for if, as some say, it is a noble thing to die for our country, it is a far nobler and a truly praiseworthy thing to give our corruptible flesh for Christ, who is life eternal. ” 184 Dying for Christ, imitating Christ usque ad mortem, was an act of love for one's neighbors, “for as he laid down his life for us, so ought we to lay down our life for our brothers. ” 185 With these ideas Gregory VII assigned a
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180 See De vita christiana II,2–3.
181 The “Übertragung der kirchlichen Königsaufgaben auf den Ritter” was pointed out in Erdmann 1935, 236, and has been developed in Flori 1983, 1986, who traced the descent of the “ethique royale” down to milites as the movement that played a key role in the formation of the knightly ethics and knighthood.
182 For a detailed treatment of this subject, see Cowdrey 1997. Cf. Gregory Register II,37 (p. 137); II,49 (p. 190).
183 Riley-Smith 1997, 49–50.
184 Gregory to Matilda of Tuscany, after 16 Dec. 1074, Epp. vagantes no. 5.
185 For this and other examples, see Cowdrey 1997, 34.
distinctive moral quality to fighting and contributed importantly to the moralization of warfare and its association with the Church. 186
For Anselm of Lucca, the aim of ecclesiastical persecutio was to compel the evil ones to turn to good—to correct rather than to kill. 187 Aided by the “force of faithful princes”, the shepherds of the Church could fulfill their duty of bringing the errant back into the Church. 188 Advancing an “active policy of incorporation”, 189 Anselm consequently emphasized the benevolent aspects of coercion. Relying heavily on St. Augustine—whose teachings on violence had left no mark on Gregory VII's views of Christian warfare 190 —as his authority, Anselm insisted that wars should be conducted with benevolence and that the punishment (vindicta) should be not out of hate but out of love, and with restraint. 191 Charity was the right inner intention, essential for carrying out a good action. 192 As the distinctive feature of just persecutio, charity brought military action into accordance with the principles of Christian life. 193 It inspired the effort to reintegrate into the Church, where one could be a member of the Body of Christ, those who had deviated from the right path. 194 The Church's preventing or punishing evil was thus an act of love, not vengeance: an action animated by fraternal desire for salvation; a just endeavor to save all souls, as desired by Christ; an act through which the enemies of the truth were constrained into accepting the truth. 195 Described in these terms of pastoral duty, 196 persecutio became an aspect of the pastoral office. Anselm's view of warfare was an aspect of his ecclesiology. Warfare was brought within the Church.
Fighting and killing began to be regarded as not only permissible but also meritorious. Clerics might still more often than not stay away from
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186 See Cowdrey 1998, 655, 658.
187 Collectio canonum XII,55: “De malis cogendis ad bonum”; XIII,12: “Ut mali non occidantur sed corrigantur”; cf. XII,60: “De schismaticis ad correctionem cogendis” (Cushing 1998, 189–90, 193; Pásztor 1987, 411).
188 Sermo de caritate, 103– 4. Cf. Pásztor 1965, 88.
189 Cushing 1998, 126. Cf. Stickler 1947, 252.
190 Cowdrey 1997, 27; Cowdrey 1998, 652.
191 Collectio canonum XIII,2: “De vindicta non odio sed facienda”; XIII,3: “Quod bella cum benivolentia sunt gerenda”; XIII,10: “Ut temperetur vindicta” (Pásztor 1987, 405– 6, 410; Cushing 1998, 193, 195).
192 Collectio canonum XIII,27 [Ambrose Libri de officiis]: “Non satis est bene velle, sed etiam bene facere. Nec satis est iterum bene facere, nisi id ex bono fonte, hoc est, bona voluntate proficiscatur. ” Pásztor 1987, 419; Cushing 1998, 199.
193 See Collectio canonum XIII,14 (Stickler 1947, 246; Pásztor 1987, 412).
194 Cf. Sermo de caritate, 100, 103; Pásztor 1965, 80.
195 Sermo de caritate, 104; Collectio canonum XII,44: “Quod aecclesia non persequitur sed diligit cum punit vel prohibet malum. ” Cf. Stickler 1947, 25; Cushing 1998, 130.
196 Sermo de caritate, 98. Cf. Pásztor 1965, 50–52.
the battlefield, yet they began to suggest to milites that battle against the enemies of the Church, enlivened by charity, was not only free from sin but capable of freeing from sin those who took up arms under ecclesiastical guidance. Such use of arms was penitential. It was commendable and deserving, a special form of piety. The Church came to embrace those who served it in arms, and to recognize their profession. And soldiers were integrated into Christian society.
NO MORE SHEDDING OF CHRISTIAN BLOOD
Gradual recognition of the military metier and finding a place for soldiers in Christian society were aspects of the acceptance of the growing number of diverse professional and occupational groups characteristic of eleventh-century thinking about social order. 197 Simultaneously with this acknowledgment of social differentiation, however, the image of a unitary Christian society developed, grounded in the ideal of the fellowship of Christians united in peace. Both the peace movement and the Church reformers contributed to the articulation of this image. The desire for unity, for example, lay at the heart of Anselm of Lucca's doctrine of coercion. 198 The connection of the image of a peaceful and unitary Christian society with the ecclesiastical rethinking of violence was of crucial importance. The ideal of peace and oneness rested on the imperative that all violence among Christians must cease. Insisting on this led to recommendation that Christian violence be diverted to the non-Christian outside world and to justification for this diversion of Christian violence. In the remainder of this chapter I outline the complex historical process through which the unification of Christian society generated a fundamental division between the Christian and non-Christian worlds, while the postulated peace among Christians led to holy war against non-Christians.
TURNING AGAINST THE WORLD OUTSIDE
The peace movement became a prominent force, bringing about Christian unification, because of the movement's religious nature. The peace that the movement strove for was not only a “social pact”, a contract between social forces; what its protagonists thought they were bringing
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197 Cf. n. 138.
198 Cushing 1998, 137.
about was a “covenant with God. ” For Rodulfus Glaber, innumerable miracles that happened at peace gatherings were “the sign” of a “perpetual covenant” between those present and God. 199 Christian society living in peace was a society united with God and in God.
The peace movement came into existence at the turn of the millennium, when the millenary of Christ's passion and eschatological, apocalyptic, and chiliastic expectations dominated the mental horizon. 200 This impacted the formation and character of the peace movement. The movement's documents abound with rhetoric either directly or indirectly invoking chiliastic notions of a new age of peace, justice, and harmony in this world below. 201 This mentality was the movement's inner driving force. Violence, famine, natural disasters, epidemics, as well as solar eclipses, comets, and other phenomena in the sky were regarded as having supernatural meaning. Calamities were perceived as the wrath of God, the heavens calling people to mend their ways. People of all social ranks gathered at peace councils and were ready “to obey the commands of the clergy no less than if they had been given by a voice from heaven speaking to men on earth. ” 202 Those who worked for peace were animated by God. For Glaber, the peace movement came into existence “by divine inspiration. ” 203 It was accepted that the initiators of pax Dei received letters from the heavens. 204
The peace movement strove to reestablish the peace originally brought to mankind by Christ. The attainment of peace of this nature required moral renovation, religious renewal, and reform and regulation of both clerical and lay behavior. Peace on earth was a visio Dei, a prefiguration of and precondition for eternal life. 205 Though peace did not represent or dictate a particular social order, it was nevertheless an order: the right order. 206 Thus the peace movement—at least in the minds of the clergy promoting it, and from the perspective of the movement's goal—stood for the clergy's total view of Christianity. “Upon the basis of the need to provide for physical peace and security was thus erected a superstruc-
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199 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm IV, v,16. Cf. Duby 1968a, 457; Cowdrey 1970a, 50; Becker 1988, 277; Landes 1992, 200.
200 See Landes 1995, chap. 2, 14–15. But see nn. 267, 268.
201 Cf. Bredero 1994, 116 f.; Landes 1995, 31.
202 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm IV, v,14.
203 Ibid., V, i,15.
204 Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 82– 83; Goetz 1992, 277; Bredero 1994, 110; generally: Callahan 1992, 170 ff.; Landes 1992, 199 ff.
205 Goetz 1992, 276.a
206 Remensnyder 1992, 282, 291.
ture of the preaching and liturgical commemoration of peace in an ideal sense as the planting upon earth of the order that God willed to prevail. ” 207 So, for example, the peace gathering at Le Puy in the year 994 declared its intention to establish peace “in the name of God, since without peace no one will see God. ” Peace was the path to salvation. It was the message of Christ, for it was peace “which Lord especially loves and orders to be loved. ” God himself was asked to give peace. At peace councils, bishops raised their croziers to the heavens, and people “all cried out in one voice to God, their hands extended: 'Peace! Peace! Peace!'” 208 Those present at gatherings, swearing to keep peace, made offerings to Almighty God. 209 And it was God who sanctified peace. This peacemaking was a religious endeavor and the establishment of peace was seen as a divine act. Consequently, whoever refused to enter the peace contract (pactus pacis) was said to follow the devil.
The peace movement acted under the banner of peace and unity, pax et unitas. To live in peace was the duty of all the faithful. Peace was a “social bond. ” Christian society meant living in peace as a unitary body, corpus christianorum, morally renewed and purified, freed from division and dissension. 210 Those who gathered at the peace council of Poitiers in the early years of the new millennium envisioned the peace that Christ had brought down to earth in order that all Christians would be “one in one body”—His body. 211 The unitary body of all Christians equaled corpus Christi, the body of Christ.
On this symbolic basis, the view of Christian society progressed towards a new, higher universality. 212 Although social differentiation (and the tensions generated by it) increased, all Christians were symbolically integrated into “one harmonious order, the pure body of Christ. ” 213 On certain days as sanctioned by treuga Dei, no one was allowed to injure his fellows—that is, his fellow Christians. That the neighbor, the protected other, was Christian was made explicit. 214 If Christian society was the body of Christ and individual Christians its members, it was only logical to see injuring a Christian as injuring Christ Himself. This
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207 Cowdrey 1970a, 50.
208 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm IV, v,16.
209 Ibid., IV, v,15. Cf. Goetz 1992, 276; Bredero 1994, 115.
210 Moore 1992, 325; Remensnyder 1992, 281– 82.
211 Remensnyder 1992, 295; cf. 296–97.
212 Head 1992, 221.
213
214 Hoffmann 1964, 84.
crystal-clear—and one might say ultimate—idea of peace was formulated at the peace council of Narbonne, 1054. The injunction of God as declared in the council's first canon was that “no Christian should kill another Christian, for whoever kills a Christian undoubtedly sheds the blood of Christ. ” 215
To understand this founding of the “spirit of peace” on the doctrine of the Mystical Body, rather than on the “natural morality that teaches respect for the human person”, 216 we should compare the first canon of Narbonne with several statements that may be regarded as foreshadowing it. In 994, Ademar of Chabannes preached that attacking the “holy men” (the clergy) meant attacking God, for “one who touches you touches the apple of my eye” (Zech 2.8). 217 The peacemakers assembled at the Council of Limoges in 1031, debating the apostolicity of St. Martial, a military saint, maintained that whoever attacks bishops' subjects, attacks bishops (to whom pauperes had been entrusted); and he who attacks bishops (Christ's representatives on earth), attacks Christ. 218 Ademar and the Council of Limoges equated harming churchmen with harming God. The 1054 Council of Narbonne extended this equation to all Christians and then to Christ Himself. The prohibition of violent acts against Christians covered any single Christian and, as such, Christian society as a whole.
Comparison of the first canon of the 1054 Narbonne council with an earlier Carolingian, pseudo-Isidorian precept reveals yet another important shift that occurred at the council. The earlier rule prohibited the shedding of human blood. 219 Drawing on Genesis 9.6: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed”, this Carolingian capitulum said a murderer should be punished “blood for blood. ” 220 With respect to its contents, this rule was certainly not a model for the canon of Narbonne. 221 The Carolingian forger spoke of
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215 “Primo ergo omnium institutionum nostrarum… monemus, & mandamus secundum praeceptum Dei, & nostrum, ut nullus Christianorum alium quemlibet Christianum occidat: quia qui Christianum occidit, sine dubio Christi sanguinem fundit. ” Concilium narbonense c. 1 (Mansi 19: 827).
216 Delaruelle 1980, 73.
217 Sermo III (Sermones tres Ademari, PL 141: 120).
218 “Nam quicumque vobis subditos conturbant, vos conturbant: qui autem vos conturbant, Christum conturbant, cuius vice episcopi legatione funguntur. ” Mansi 19: 509.
219 “Quicumque effuderit humanum sanguinem, fundetur sanguis illius. ” Benedicti capitularium collectio II,1 (PL 97: 753).
220 Hoffmann 1964, 95 n. 15, rejecting Bonnaud Delamare's view (see n. 221). Cf. Sicard 1969, 85 n. 9.
221 As believed by Bonnaud Delamare 1939, 248– 49.
the effusion of human blood; the councillors at Narbonne substituted, as it were, the word Christian for the word human.
Setting the prohibition regarding shedding Christian blood against the advancement of the ideas of the licitness of war and the recognition of the military profession creates a problem whose solution appears almost too obvious to ring true: the licit war was to be fought against nonChristians. Whereas a peaceful Christian society was united with God and was in God, peace need not—and moreover could not—be kept with the ungodly. The letter of 1063 in which Pope Alexander II stated that the laws that forbade the shedding of human blood did not protect either criminals or Saracens 222 supports this seemingly purely logical construction. Whether or not Alexander knew the canons of the 1054 Council of Narbonne, the Pope's addressing the letter to the Archbishop of Narbonne becomes meaningful. He could not have chosen a better recipient. This is, of course, an ahistorical statement. But so, in my view, is playing down the importance of Alexander II's pronouncements by interpreting them as no more than an appeal to the doctrine of just war. In this interpretation, Alexander saw warfare against Saracens only as a defense and sanctioned it as an example of just war. Consequently, he did not declare wars against Muslims ipso facto just and licit. 223 In my view, he did precisely that (even if only by implication), and I consider the application of the concept of “just war” to this case unwarranted. Observing that the term justum bellum only rarely occurred in ecclesiastical statements on war in the eleventh century, it has been suggested that the just war doctrine has become “an enormous red herring drawn across the historian's path. ” 224 For a better idea of the importance of Alexander II's pronouncements, we should look at them in a broader historical context.
In the early years of the eleventh century, religious dynamics in the Latin West turned from inclusive to exclusive. Some historians have singled out the year 1010 as marking that turn. 225 In 1009, Caliph alHakim ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This was an exceptional case of persecution of the Christians under Muslim rule by a ruler who oppressed his Muslim subjects as well
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222 See n. 106.
223 Bull 1993, 78; for the view opposite to his own (and supporting my argument here), Bull cites Pierre David, Études historiques sur la Galice et le Portugal du VIeau XIIe siècle (Lisbon, 1947), which has been unavailable to me.
224 Gilchrist 1988, 176, 178.
225 Landes 1992, 210. Cf. Bredero 1994, 124; and, generally, Moore 1987.
and whom medieval historians generally considered mad. 226 William of Tyre insinuated that “the caliph used this extreme measure to prove to the infidels that he was loyal to them. For the name of Christian was used as a reproach against him, because he was born of a Christian mother. ” 227 When news of the destruction reached the West the following year, making a deep impression upon western Christians, the Jews were made to suffer. 228 In the gathering storm of revengeful feeling they became the first scapegoats, and heretics were very soon to follow. 229 The society that was uniting itself in Christian love and peace was also fostering hatred.
The transition to religious exclusivism overlapped with another shift. The Christian world was entering an era of military expansion. The pagan and infidel inroads into the western Christian world had ended, and with them Latin Christians' defensive wars. The Latin Christians now launched military attacks. They set out to Christianize their pagan neighbors in the northern and eastern parts of the European peninsula and to reconquer the lands in Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily that they thought of as having been unjustly taken from them. 230 Coinciding as it did with the rise of religious exclusivism, Christian military expansion meant the spread of exclusivism—the military march of an exclusivist religion by means of which exclusivism itself became a religion. But this is looking too far ahead, to the time of the Crusades.
Those early military confrontations with the Muslims in the Mediterranean were partly efforts to repel Saracen pirates and partly expeditions in the hope of booty. A prominent role in that warfare was played by Pisans and Genoese, who sometimes joined forces (when they were not at war with each other). In 993, after Saracens had sacked Genoa, Genoese pursued the “sons of the devil” all the way to Sardinia and massacred them. 231 After this, the Latin Christians began to take the initiative. Reggio in Calabria, which had been in Saracen hands since 918, came under Pisan attack in 1005. In 1015 and 1016, Sardinia was set upon by joint Pisan and Genoese forces, with Pope Benedict VIII's sup-
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226 See Peters 1985, 254, 258 f.; William of Tyre History of Deeds I, iv (1: 66). AlHakim's successors allowed the reconstruction of the church, which was completed in 1048. Peters 1985, 266 f. Cf. History of Deeds I, vi.
227 History of Deeds I, iv (1: 66).
228 Gieysztor 1948–50, 6: 13. But see France 1996, 47, that the West was actually quite ignorant of that event.
229 See Landes 1995, 41 ff.; 1992, 207 ff.; Lobrichon 1992; Moore 1992, 323 f.
230 See Erdmann 1930; 1935, 87 ff., 109 ff., 267 ff.; Rousset 1963, 202; Vismara 1974, 61 ff., 72; Becker 1988, 284, 306, 352; Morris 1991, 134 ff.; Mayer 1993, 17 ff.; generally, Phillips 1988, chap. 3.
231 Balard 1997, 13.
port. In 1034, the Pisans felt strong enough to assault Bône (al-'Anaba) on the North African coast. A Christian flotilla threatened Mahdia, in what is today Tunisia, in 1057. In 1064, the Pisans attacked Palermo. The campaign against Mahdia, in which its suburb Zawila was plundered as well, took place in 1087; and joint Pisan and Genoese attacks on Valencia and Tortosa followed in the early 1090s. 232 Normans, in agreement with the Papacy, began the conquest of Sicily and Apulia at the beginning of the 1060s. On the Iberian Peninsula, Christians began to unite against Muslims on the initiative of Fernando I of Castile and León (1037– 65), who undertook a series of campaigns in the 1050s and early 1060s. Conquest of Muslim territory continued under his son Alfonso VI (1065–1109). 233
Pope Alexander II was undoubtedly aware of the campaigns of Fernando I, his contemporary. It is difficult to imagine that Alexander's statement about the licitness of shedding Saracen blood was completely unrelated to what was going on in Spain. Alexander in fact supported— moreover, explicitly advocated 234 —military campaigns against the Muslims in Spain, of which the siege of Barbastro in 1064 is perhaps the best known. More than a few Christian soldiers from north of the Pyrenees were engaged in these campaigns, which could be called defensive only by a stretch of the imagination. He assured the Christians fighting those campaigns that they had the approval of God. The Pope promised them remission of their penance and forgiveness of sins. 235 In a letter to the bishops of Spain, in which he expressed his pleasure that they were protecting Jews who lived among them from persecution by those who were “proceeding into Spain against the Saracens”, Alexander pointed out that “the cause of the Jews is indisputably different from that of the Saracens. ” The Jews had been saved by God's mercy to live in eternal penitence and subjugation, scattered all over the world; as such, they should
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232 Scalia 1971, 571, 581; Cowdrey 1977, 13–14; Hettinger 1993, chap. 5. Cf. Manselli 1965, 133 ff.
233
234 Ibid., 133.
235 See the much discussed letter to the enigmatic “clero Vulturnensi” (Loewenfeld, Epp. pontif. roman., no. 82 [p. 43]). While the letter does not seem to be connected to the Barbastro campaign (Ferreiro 1983, 134–35; Bull 1993, 73–75), there is no evidence either that it was not written for soldiers at all but for pilgrims. Riley-Smith 1997, 49, seems prone to accept this second possibility, referring to Bull, op cit., who, however, has left the question unresolved. Cf. Noth 1966, 119. The nature of Alexander's indulgence is a disputed issue among historians. Cf. Rousset 1945, 49–50; Laarhoven 1959– 61, 22; Brundage 1969, 145 f.; 1976, 119; Becker 1988, 285 ff.; Morris 1991, 95; Mayer 1993, 18, 23 f., 293–95; Riley-Smith 1993a, 5.
not be killed. Against the Saracens, however, “who persecute Christians and expel them from their towns and dwelling-places”, it was “just to fight. ” 236
The Catalan bishops and other leaders from the Iberian peninsula who gathered in a peace council in 1064 in Barcelona appear to have similarly harbored no doubts about the righteousness of war against Saracens. Proclaiming treuga et pace domini, they vowed to lay aside any animosity against one another and unite their forces to undertake a campaign. 237 They did not need to specify that the planned offensive was directed against the Muslims. But the writer of a contemporary account of the capture of Barbastro, monk Amatus of Monte Cassino, did name the enemy. Praising the unification of the Christian princes as inspired by God, Amatus described the Christians who had gone to campaign in Spain as fighting for the destruction of the “hateful folly of the Saracens. ” 238
In 1073, the year of Alexander II's death, his successor, Gregory VII, referred the case of Peter Raymundi (son of Raymond Berenger I, Count of Barcelona and a leader in the peace council of 1064), 239 who had murdered his stepmother, to “the cardinals of the Roman Church. ” One provision of the penance imposed on Peter Raymundi was that he “should on no account carry military arms, except in two contingencies: to defend himself against enemies, and to ride to battle against the Saracens. ” 240 The latter exception does not appear to have been limited to defensive wars.
I see Alexander II's statements on the licitness of fighting against and killing the Saracens as opening up a new perspective on the Christian use of arms, in that his statements laid out the coordinates for thinking about channeling permissible warfare in a specific direction. The novelty of this perspective should not be overestimated. First, the general idea of making war on non-Christians as the alternative to Christians killing each other was not unprecedented. Archbishop Agobard of Lyons, for example, reproached Emperor Louis the Pious in the early 830s for fomenting internal discord and strife instead of waging war “against
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236 Epistolae et diplomata no. 101 (PL 146: 1386– 87). Ewald 1880, 347, suggested that the letter was written in 1063; Bull 1993, 74, expressed some reservations.
237 Codex Escurialense Z. j. 4 9 (Fita 1890, 392). Cf. Ferreiro 1983, 132.
238 “Et à ce que la religion de la Foi christiane fust aëmplie, et macast detestable folie de li Sarrazin, par inspiration de Dieu, s'acorderent en una volenté li roy li conte et li prince en uno conseill. ” Historia Normannorum 5 (Smith 1988– 89, 1: 84).
239 See Fita 1890.
240 See Cowdrey 1997, 21.
foreign peoples. ” A Christian emperor should fight and subjugate barbarians “for our perpetual peace” instead of barbarizing his own subjects. 241 Pope Hadrian II (867–72) urged King Louis the German to emulate Emperor Louis II and wage war “not against the sons of holy religion”, not against faithful Christians of his own land, but against the “sons of Beliar” and “enemies of Christ's name. ” 242 Pope John VIII (872– 82) categorically prohibited wars among Christians while calling for war against the enemies of Christ. 243 Brun of Querfurt, a Church reformer and a zealous advocate of armed missions against the pagan Slavs, sharply criticized Emperor Henry II for making an alliance in 1003 with the heathen Liutics against Christian King Boleslas Chrobry, who fought for Polish independence from the Saxon emperors. There was no fellowship between light and darkness, no agreement between Christ and Beliar! Instead of fighting Christians, the emperor should make war against the pagans to compel them to embrace Christianity (compellere entrare). 244 In the last years of the tenth century another religious reformer, Abbot Abbo of Fleury, while discussing the orders of society, instructed the soldiers (agonistae) to be content with their stipend and “not fight against each other in the womb of their mother, but wisely attack the enemies of the holy Church of God. ” 245 Moreover, the importance of Alexander's view should not be overestimated because during his pontificate Saracens had not yet been instituted as the enemy against whom Christian warfare was to be directed, as was the case later with the launching of the Crusades.
On the other hand, the novelty of the perspective introduced by Alexander and his contemporaries should not be underestimated. For the writers just cited, as well as their contemporaries, the image of the enemy was far from monolithic. For Bernard of Angers, writing his part of the Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis half a century before Alexander II was elected Pope, false Christians were worse than pagans. Bernard's
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241 Libri duo pro filiis et contra Judith uxorem Ludovici pii I,3 (MGH SS 15: 275– 76; quoted in Morisi 1963, 170).
242 Hadrian to Louis of Germany, 12 Feb. 868 (MGH Epp. 6: 703); repeated in Hadrian to primores of Charles the Bald's kingdom, 5 Sept. 869 (op. cit., 717). Cf. Gilchrist 1988, 182.
243 John to counts of King Louis's realm, a.d. 876, Epistolae et decreta no. 23 (col. 674).
244 See Erdmann 1935, 65, 97; Wenskus 1956, 186 ff.; Morisi 1963, 215–23. Cf. Morrison 1969, 378–79. For the “fellowship between light and darkness”, etc., see 2 Cor 6.14–15.
245 Apologeticus ad Hugonem et Rodbertum reges francorum (PL 139: 464). Cf. Flori 1983, 127 ff.; Constable 1995, 283.
warrior monk Gimon, as we learn, sought to encourage the fearful in his “armored ranks” by telling them that “they had a much greater obligation to vanquish false Christians who had attacked Christian law and willfully abandoned God than to subdue those pagans who had never known God. ” 246 Here not only are the pagans not presented as the worst of Christians' enemies; they are referred to only generically. Alexander II, on the other hand, specified Saracens as those among the “evil ones” (mali) whom it was permissible to kill. Moreover, unlike the statements of earlier Popes and writers, his pronouncement was couched in legal, not moral, terms. With Alexander's declaration that killing the Saracens was licit, the right to kill was brought into the service of the well-being and safety of Christian society. 247 And with the singling out of a specific enemy, Christian violence began to be channeled in a precise direction.
THE BIRTH OF THE CRUSADE OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF PEACE
With the canonical declaration that “no Christian should kill another Christian, for whoever kills a Christian undoubtedly sheds the blood of Christ”, 248 the peace movement reached a critical moment of development: enjoining peace throughout Christian society. At approximately that point the peace movement was adopted by the reform Papacy. Leo IX, for example, proclaimed the Peace of God in the synod of Rheims in 1049, and Nicholas II gave a general papal sanction to the Peace and Truce of God in the Lateran synod of 1059. 249 Alexander II was also involved in peacekeeping efforts. 250
When Christian soldiers were prohibited from fighting within Christian society, an external outlet for Christian militancy was indicated in fairly specific and recognizable terms. 251 Christian milites were allowed to fight outside the body of Christ. 252 At first authorized to “rage against the multitude of those who ignore God” by refusing to enter a peace
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246 Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis I,26.
247 “La pensée religieuse de l'Occident intègre le droit de tuer comme une des libertés de son salut. ” Alphandéry 1954, 27 (commenting on Alexander II's sentence).
248 See n. 215.
249 See Hoffmann 1964, 218–19; Blumenthal 1991, especially 142– 44.
250 Blumenthal 1991, 138; for a sceptical view, see Hoffmann 1964, 119–20.
251 Cowdrey 1970a, 53.
252 Duby 1968a, 459– 60 (commenting on the council of Narbonne). Cf. Keen 1987, 96 f.; Bredero 1994, 107.
pact, 253 soldiers eventually were directed to fight those seen as ignorant of God: non-Christians—moreover, specified non-Christians—with whom no peace pact was possible. What was initially permission was to become a Christian soldier's mission.
The crusade was the consummation of the peace movement—its accomplishment and the realization of its ideals. It is true that this view, propounded by a number of historians both before and after World War II, 254 has recently been questioned. The argument that “the superficially attractive link between the Peace and the crusade is a chimera”, 255 is based on a study of the “actual experiences of the lay rank and file”, as opposed to ecclesiastics' theoretical pronouncements. 256 But basing a general, polemical conclusion on study of a particular aspect of the crusades' history runs the danger of bending the stick too far to the other side (to use a Leninist metaphor). Analysis of the lay response to the preaching of the First Crusade surely diversifies our understanding of the Crusades and may do away with superficial generalizations. Yet accepting that at “the heart of the crusade message lay an appeal to piety”, that crusaders were deeply religious, and that “the piety of nobles and knights was profoundly influenced by the church”, implies that the ideas of ecclesiastics, if not coextensive with those of lay crusaders, 257 must have influenced them at least indirectly. The intellectual work of ecclesiastics was after all often aimed at members of the lay aristocracy, and sometimes at broader audiences. 258 But the influence of ideas on social action is rarely direct. Ideas and images, rather, constitute a symbolic and imaginary framework in which historical agents can conceive of acting in certain ways to achieve certain goals, feel moved or compelled to act, and make decisions to actually act (or not to act). Criticism of a “superficial link” between the peace movement and the crusade accepts as incontestable that “on the level of practical arrangements the Peace and the crusade were associated from the beginning. ” 259 But since “practical arrangements” are never stripped of ideas, but rather are enclosed in an imaginary world and rest on specific ideas, I will try to point out not
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253 See n. 54.
254 For example, Erdmann 1935, chap. 2; Rousset 1945, 195; Duby 1968a, 460.
255 Bull 1993, 23.
256 Bull 1993, 69. Cf. Riley-Smith 1997.
257 Bull 1993, 10, 14.
258 Cf. Powell 1996, 129, 137, 140 (discussing ecclesiastical historical narratives of the First Crusade in the second half of the twelfth century and in the thirteenth century).
259 Bull 1993, 57.
only the practical links between the peace movement and the crusade but also imaginary and ideal links between them.
The crusade was embedded in an imagined world largely created by the peace movement. Some aspects of the crusade grew out of and fed on that world, from which it gained meaning and direction. If the peace movement generated imagery and fantasies that were an integral part of historical reality, 260 the crusade helped to materialize them. Of cardinal importance in this regard were the peace movement's messianism and eschatology. 261 And two images intimately connected with the millenarian expectations and apocalyptic concerns behind the pax and treuga Dei were those of Israel and Jerusalem.
In the language of messianism, the populace involved in the peace movement was identified with the children of Israel. 262 Ademar of Chabannes, for example, compared the people of Aquitaine with the children of Israel, 263 and Andrew of Fleury described the peace army from Bourges as the new people of Israel. “With the help of God they so terrified the rebels”, he wrote, “that, as the coming of the faithful was proclaimed far and wide by rumor among the populace, the rebels scattered. Leaving the gates of their towns open, they sought safety in flight, harried by divinely inspired terror. You would have seen [the faithful] raging against the multitude of those who ignore God, as if they were some other people of Israel. ” 264 In the second half of the eleventh century, a monk from Charroux described the peace council of Limoges held in 994 thus: “It was to see the sons of Israel, after leaving the servitude of Egypt and crossing the Red Sea, wishing to enter the Promised Land with Moses, without any desire to follow the carnal desires of Egypt. ” 265 The new chosen people were preparing for a new exodus, but the Promised Land remained in the old place.
Pilgrimages to that Promised Land increased considerably in number at the turn of the millennium, and the movement of pilgrims to Palestine in the eleventh century was “widespread, continuous and intensive. ” 266
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260 Cf. Duby 1985, 215.
261 Cf. Becker 1988, 277; Goetz 1992, 277; Landes 1992, 200. See also Alphandéry 1954, 1959. For reservations, cf. Bull 1993, 13.
262 Landes 1992, 199.
263 Landes 1992, 193, 200; 1995, 31, 60.
264 Miracula s. Benedicti V,2; trans. in Head and Landes 1992b, app. A, 340. Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 108; Duby 1985, 218; Goetz 1992, 277; Head 1992, 224; Landes 1992, 199.
265 Quoted in Landes 1995, 29–30.
266 Cf. Gieysztor 1948–50, 6: 24; Alphandéry 1954, 10 f.; Brundage 1969, 9; Töpfer 1992, 50; Mayer 1993, 26 f.; France 1996, 48–50; Riley-Smith 1997, chap. 1.
The symbolism of the year 1000 may be a legend created by historians, as was pointed out long ago; 267 Latin Christians may not have approached the millennium of the Incarnation “in fear and trembling and emerged thereafter relieved and reinvigorated”, as largely Romantic nineteenth-century historiography used to believe. 268 Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for undertaking the long and dangerous journey to visit Jerusalem and see the Sepulchre of Christ became a mass movement, 269 culminating in the First Crusade as “the largest of the mass pilgrimages of the eleventh century. ” 270 Jerusalem dominated the eschatological horizon. The mental picture of the Holy City was of special importance in the piety of that age, and for the people of those times, the very sound of the name must have had a “glittering and magical splendour. ” 271
The pilgrims to the Promised Land not only carried images of Jerusalem and the holy places with them; as they journeyed to the Orient they moved within the mental world those images formed. When they trod upon the way to Jerusalem they saw themselves following the “path of salvation, the road to a better future. ” Simple, uneducated people were “filled with dim, vague, and incoherent eschatological dreams, probably pictured in an entirely material fashion. ” 272 The pilgrimage was a journey through fantasy. Steps followed the imagination. It was fantasy that drew the limits of the world; the boundary between fiction and reality blurred. Just as the peace movement neither distinguished between secular and spiritual peace nor saw a contradiction between temporal and eternal peace, 273 so too, in the imagination of the movement's protagonists the heavenly and earthly Jerusalems merged. This was true for the still-unarmed pilgrims as well as for the crusaders for whom they paved the way. 274 The intimate connection between the two Jerusalems affected
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267 “Man hat hier früher mit der angeblichen Bedeutung des Jahres 1000 operirert, die inzwischen längst als Legende verworfen ist. ” Erdmann 1932, 384.
268 Landes 1995, 16–17. Much more recently, Duby 1985, 238, wrote about “[m]ankind, unified, renovated after the troubles of the millennium, reconciled again with their God, … embarking on the journey towards salvation. ”
269 Landes 1995, 154–58.
270 Riley-Smith 1997, 39.
271 Rousset 1945, 187; McGinn 1978, 40; Riley-Smith 1992, 7; Mayer 1993, 10– 11; 1997, 26. For a medieval image of Jerusalem, see Bredero 1994, chap. 3, and references in McGinn 1978, 60 n. 43. For traditional Christian background, Wilken 1992. And, generally, Peters 1985.
272 Mayer 1993, 12.
273 Goetz 1992, 277.
274 McGinn 1978, 48; Cohn 1993, 64– 65; Mayer 1993, 11; Bredero 1994, 82 ff.
ways of thinking and acting. 275 What the pilgrims to the Promised Land saw in their minds' eye was the heavenly Jerusalem, 276 the sacred city from the Book of Revelation: “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21.10).
Symbolic links were forged between the sites associated with the peace movement and Jerusalem, and the paths pilgrims journeyed knitted them together. A “new intimacy” developed between Jerusalem and the Christian West. 277 Glaber's narrative oscillated between Cluny and Jerusalem. 278 A link was forged between Limoges and Jerusalem around the cult of St. Martial. Limoges was interpreted as the New Jerusalem, as was Angoulême, another town in Aquitaine. The vision of a weeping crucifix at Orléans made the people think of this royal city as the New Jerusalem. There were still other New Jerusalems; one may speak of a phenomenon of translatio Ierosolymae, the translation of Jerusalem to the West. 279 The discovery of a head (actually, one of the heads) attributed to John the Baptist in an Aquitanian village in 1016 only strengthened this phenomenon. 280 It also added another dimension to the symbolic connection between Jerusalem and the West. From the places to which the apostles had walked westward enthusiastic pilgrims now journeyed eastward, to where the apostles had come from—to Jerusalem, the fountainhead of the Faith. The apostles and the pilgrims walked the same paths. 281 But because the boundary between fantasy and what we commonly call reality was very thin and fluid, because images tended to materialize, and because the world that imagination pictured was a fairly material one, the nets entangling Jerusalem were not merely symbolic. Before the turn of the eleventh century, Jerusalem fell to Christian forces. Those who destroyed it, the army of the new chosen people, had already built an image of the New Jerusalem in their minds' eye.
The peace movement's practical, or institutional, arrangements also enabled the Christian capture and destruction of Jerusalem—the crowning act of the First Crusade. The council of Clermont, where Pope Urban II preached the crusade in 1095, universalized the peace movement's
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275 See McGinn 1978, 41; Bredero 1994, 89 ff.
276 Mayer 1993, 11.
277 Landes 1992, 204.
278 Duby 1985, 239.
279 Landes 1992, 193, 204; 1995, 60, 164, 167, 213, 304–7.
280 Landes 1992, 193, 198–99; 1995, 47– 48; Töpfer 1992, 49.
281 Landes 1992, 204.
legislation. This could not have happened had the Gregorian Church reform not asserted papal supremacy within the Church itself as well as within Christian society—that is, had it not established an authority strong enough to universalize the peace movement's goals and provisions. To understand the importance of the peace movement's institutional arrangements for the crusade, we should thus not lose sight of the reformist Popes' peace endeavors. I have already mentioned that these Popes supported the Peace and Truce of God. None of the eleventh-century Popes, however, was a more prominent peacemaker than Urban II.
As a Frenchman and a Cluniac monk and prior, Odo of Châtillon, the future Pope Urban, must have been acquainted with the peace movement in his home country. As archdeacon of Reims, he must have learned about Pope Leo IX's promulgation of the Peace of God in that diocese in 1049. 282 As Urban II he was an active promoter of peace throughout his pontificate (1088–99). He proclaimed the treuga Dei in councils at Melfi (1089) and Troia (1093) in southern Italy, and at Clermont (1095). 283 Reporting on the Council of Clermont, Fulcher of Chartres conveyed how the Pope commanded that the Truce of God should be renewed: “I earnestly admonish each of you to strictly enforce it in your own diocese. But if anyone, smitten by greed or pride, willingly infringes this truce, let him be anathema by virtue of the authority of God and by sanction of the decrees of this council. ” 284
The Council of Clermont was a peace council. It gave new meaning and new momentum to the peace movement. 285 The treuga stipulations of this council, quite conventionally, defined the days of the week and times of year when violence had to cease and protected all the men who did not fight uuerra—the clergy, monks, pilgrims, merchants, peasants —and women, as well as animals, except horses used in fighting. Peace was to last for three years. 286 Through the canons of Clermont, treuga Dei definitively entered the papal legislation. Whereas until then the peace movement had been carried on predominantly under regional auspices and its regulations had correspondingly been local, the peace legislation was now universalized. The Truce of God proclaimed by the
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282 Becker 1964, 33–51; Hoffmann 1964, 220; Bull 1993, 62.
283 Hefele 1912–13, 5.1: 345, 367, 372; Fliche 1929, 311–12; Hoffmann 1964, 220–21; Becker 1988, 277; Cole 1991, 2; Bredero 1994, 126–27.
284 Historia Iherosolymitana I, ii,14 (p. 323); A History of the Expedition, 65. In 1094, Urban intervened in Beauvais in a case of violation of the Truce. Hoffmann 1964, 221.
285 Hoffmann 1964, 221.
286 See the canons as formulated in different editions, described and reproduced in Somerville 1972, 73–74, 94–95, 108, 113, 124, and the summary, 143.
Council of Clermont was binding on the whole of Christendom. 287 Urban II was the first Pope to proclaim a general Peace of God. 288 The Council of Clermont was thus epoch-marking, but only because it was the climax of an epoch of peacemaking. 289
The Council of Clermont, however, was also epoch-making, for it linked the peace movement with the crusade. The Peace and Truce of God arrangements became institutional elements of the holy war organized by the Church under the guidance of the Pope. The Peace promulgated at Clermont protected the crusaders' person, property, and families. 290 The duration of the Peace proclaimed at Clermont was determined by the expected length of the crusade. 291 Peace and stability in the West were crucial for the expedition to Palestine, 292 but exporting war to the East also secured peace in the West. For Latin Christians, the crusade was a kind of Truce of God. 293 And the crusade was itself a struggle for peace: the last war in bringing about the peace of God. 294
The close connection between the peace movement's endeavors and the crusade was also articulated in the document known as the encyclical of Sergius IV. Sergius was Pope between 1009 and 1012, but the document appears to have been forged in the Cluniac abbey of St. Peter in Moissac, in the vicinity of Toulouse, decades later, not long after the Council of Clermont. Pope Urban II stayed at Moissac in May 1096, during the tour of France when he preached the crusade at Clermont, and it is not impossible to imagine that he inspired the composition of this piece of crusading propaganda. 295 The encyclical demanded in the name of God Almighty and all the saints that all churches and provinces, places and people, the great and the small maintain peace among them-
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287 Hefele 1912–13, 5.1: 400; Rousset 1945, 55; Hoffmann 1964, 225; Vismara 1968, 1193; Cowdrey 1970a, 57; McGinn 1978, 44; Becker 1988, 279; Robinson 1990, 326, 331.
288 Erdmann 1935, 105.
289 Cf. MacKinney 1930, 200.
290 Somerville 1972, 108 (Codex laurentianus c. 2). Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 223; Bull 1993, 58. Aspecial aspect of legal protection of the crusader was securing peace within the crusading army: The “pax” or “treuga Dei”, or their elements, were taken over and transformed into “leges pacis in exercitu. ” These developments became prominent at the time of the Second Crusade. See Conrad 1941 (for the “leges pacis in exercitu”, 72 n. 4, 79).
291 Somerville 1972, 124 (Codex Cencii c. 10).
292 For Bull 1993, 57, here lies the “broad relevance of the Peace to the crusade. ” Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 223.
293 Rousset 1945, 10, 19, 196.
294 Dupront 1969, 45.
295 See Gieysztor 1948–50, especially 6: 20–28. For Urban's itinerary, see Becker 1988, app., 435 ff. For a recent opinion that the document is genuine, cf. Landes 1995, 41 n. 97.
selves, since without peace no one can serve God. Through the peace and prayer of all Christians, victory was to be won for the Redeemer's sepulcher, and eternal life gained. 296 The encyclical's pax Christi and the Council of Clermont's treuga Dei were “inseparably interrelated ideas. ” 297
When Urban II preached the crusade, he drew upon what the peace movement had achieved. The injunctions of the Peace of God had deflected the aggressive forces harbored by Christian society away from Christendom and suggested that against the infidel enemies of God it was not only permissible but eminently salutary to use arms. 298 Those injunctions had not been proclaimed in vain. Thanks to the new power of the Papacy, Urban II realized the peace movement's potential by universalizing its ideals and legislation and—to secure peace within Christendom—turned Christian weapons against the Saracens. 299 He made the decisive step beyond the first canon of the Council of Narbonne of 1054 (which had prohibited the shedding of Christian blood) and in the direction imaginatively opened by Pope Alexander II (who had declared that the shedding of Saracen blood was licit). Under Urban II's pontificate, the idea of diverting war among Christians to war against nonChristians materialized in an institutional form, or to be precise, in a form that was to become institutionalized. Moral condemnation of sinful fratricidal wars among Christians was complemented with representations of wars against the enemies of God as meritorious. The first were spurred by the devil; the latter were divinely ordered.
Urban's preaching of the crusade at Clermont has survived only in narratives of chroniclers, most of whom wrote after the fact, with the knowledge that the First Crusade was a success. The authenticity of the words ascribed to the Pope is therefore questionable. These renderings of Urban II's sermon, however, authentically express the spirit of the age: the spirit out of which the crusade had been born, which was, in turn, invigorated and colored by the successful crusade. 300 Significantly, all chroniclers agree that in his famous speech the Pope exhorted Christians
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296 The Encyclical of Sergius IV lines 26–27, 30 (Gieysztor 1948–50, 6: 34).
297 Gieysztor 1948–50, 6: 28; “pax Christi”: The Encyclical of Sergius IV line 28 (ibid., 34). Cf. Hoffmann 1964, 224.
298 Duby 1974, 164.
299 Cf. Hefele 1912–13, 5.1: 401; Hoffmann 1964, 223; Cowdrey 1970a, 57.
300 Cf. Morris 1983, that these texts illustrate the early history of crusade preaching, “even if they are not really reminiscences of Clermont. ”
to stop fighting iniquitous fratricidal wars and to march instead into a just battle against non-Christians. 301
Fulcher of Chartres reported that the Pope, in his “exhortation concerning a pilgrimage to Jerusalem”, declared that the military successes of the Turks against the Greeks must be stopped. “They have seized more and more of the lands of the Christians, have already defeated them in seven times as many battles, killed or captured many people, have destroyed churches, and have devastated the kingdom of God. ” God urged “men of all ranks whatsoever, mounted warriors as well as foot-soldiers, rich and poor”, to hasten to action. In the name of Christ, the Pope promised the remission of sins for those who would fight the pagans, and—according to Fulcher—he added: “Oh what a disgrace if a race so despicable, degenerate, and enslaved by demons should thus overcome a people endowed with faith in Almighty God and resplendent in the name of Christ! Oh what reproaches will be charged against you by the Lord Himself if you have not helped those who are counted like yourself of the Christian faith!” The climax of his exhortation was the idea of transforming molesters of the faithful into soldiers of Christ, milites Christi, of turning fratricidal war into a just war against the infidels. “'Let those,' he said, 'who are accustomed to wantonly wage private war against the faithful march upon the infidels in a war which should be begun now and be finished in victory. Let those who have long been robbers now be soldiers of Christ. Let those who have once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians.'” 302
The version of Urban's speech reported by Baldric of Bourgueil, Archbishop of Dol, differed from that of Fulcher of Chartres, but the ideas conveyed are very similar. According to Baldric, Urban called upon his listeners to put aside the godless warfare to which they were accustomed and to take up instead the warfare of Christ. They should become Christ's soldiers, whose ordained task had been prefigured in God's plan by the ancient sons of Israel; and like the ancient sons of Israel but now with Jesus as their commander, they should rush to defend the Holy Land and the Church from foreign intruders. 303 “Listen and understand. You have strapped on the belt of soldiery and strut around with pride in your eye. You butcher your brothers and create factions among your-
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301 Munro 1905, 239. Cf. Erdmann 1935, chap. 10; Cowdrey 1970b; Robinson 1990, 326–27; Cole 1991, chap. 1; Riley-Smith 1993a, chap. 1, 6.
302 Historia Iherosolymitana I, iii,3–7 (p. 324); A History of the Expedition,66– 67.
303 Cf. Cole 1991, 18.
selves. This, which scatters the sheepfold of the Redeemer, is not the army of Christ. The Holy Church keeps for herself an army to come to the aid of her own people, but you pervert it with knavery. ” The Pope warned the soldiers that, behaving that way, they were condemning themselves to damnation. They might hope for the rewards of brigands, but the path they were following did not lead to life. Oppression of orphans, robbing of widows, blaspheming, plundering, committing homicides—in short, shedding Christian blood— was certainly “the worst course to follow because it is utterly removed from God. ” But there was a solution at hand. Giving counsel for their souls, the Pope confronted Christian warriors with a clear choice: “[Y]ou must either cast off as quickly as possible the belt of this sort of soldiery or go forward boldly as soldiers of Christ, hurrying swiftly to defend the eastern Church. ” Urban then explained that he was saying all this so that “you may restrain your murderous hands from the destruction of your brothers, and in behalf of your relatives in the faith oppose yourself to the Gentiles. ” And, as Baldric tells us, he repeated the same thought for the third time: “You should shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is the only warfare that is righteous. ” 304
Another report in which Urban II appears as having been inspired by the Old Testament was written by Guibert of Nogent. In Guibert's Gesta Dei per Francos, the Pope (among other things) recalled the Maccabees and then called on the “Christian soldiers” to imitate them. The imitation consisted in changing meritorious “holy battles”, prealia sancta, 305 for iniquitous fratricidal wars. “If in olden times the Maccabees attained to the highest praise of piety because they fought for the ceremonies and the Temple, it is also justly granted you, Christian soldiers, to defend the liberty of your country by armed endeavour. ” The country in question was the country where Christ had left His footprints on earth, and defending its liberty meant rescuing “the Cross, the Blood, the Tomb”, visiting the Holy City, “now polluted by the concourse of the Gentiles. ” There was no reason why Christian soldiers should refuse to leave for those places. “You have thus far”, the Pope is said to have spoken to them, “waged unjust wars, at one time and another; you have brandished mad weapons to your mutual destruction, for no other reason
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304 Baldric of Dol Historia Jerosolimitana I, iv (pp. 14–15); trans. in Peters 1989, 9; Riley-Smith 1993a, 149.
305 Gesta Dei per Francos I, i (p. 124).
than covetousness and pride, as a result of which you have deserved eternal death and sure damnation. We now hold out to you wars which contain the glorious reward of martyrdom, which will retain that title of praise now and forever. ” What Urban proposed to Christian soldiers was to be “zealous in the practice of holy battles”, to repulse the might of the pagans “with the co-operation of God”, to “engage in his battles”, in short, “to be the soldiery of God. ” 306
The opening words of Urban II's crusading speech as related by Robert the Monk in his Historia Iherosolimitana are a celebration of the Franks as people chosen and beloved by God, set apart from all nations by their catholic faith and the “honor of the holy church. ” To them the Pope addressed his discourse; for them his exhortation was intended. Because God had conferred on them “remarkable glory in arms”, it was upon them to avenge the wrongs afflicted on eastern Christians by the accursed race “from the kingdom of the Persians” and “liberate” the places made illustrious by the Redeemer's life and death on earth. The argument with which Urban hoped to move these valiant people and incite their minds to “manly achievements”, was curiously materialistic. In Baldric of Dol's version of Urban II's speech as well, the Pope promised material gains to the would-be crusaders: “The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victoriously to your own. ” 307 But whereas in Baldric's report this was a subsidiary point, in Robert's chronicle it was the burden of the argument. The Pope first explained that the violence infesting the Frankish lands was due to scarcity of land and wealth. “[T]his land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. ” Then he posed the conquest of the Promised Land as the means of establishing peace at home. “Let therefore hatred depart from among you”, Urban exhorted his Franks, “let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. ” If the Franks were the chosen people, that land was rightfully theirs anyway: “That land which as the
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306 Ibid., II, iv (pp. 138–39); trans. in Peters 1989, 12–15; cf. Guibert of Nogent, Deeds of God, 43– 44.
307 Historia Jerosolimitana I, iv (p. 15); Peters 1989, 9.
Scripture says 'floweth with milk and honey,' was given by God into the possession of the children of Israel. ” 308
Robert also reported that when “Pope Urban said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, 'It is the will of God! It is the will of God!'” And when the pontiff heard all present uttering, in one voice, the same cry, he declared that Deus vult!—the crusaders' war-cry. 309 A great Enlightenment historian, Edward Gibbon, writing about this event, observed that the “cold philosophy of modern times is incapable of feeling the impression that was made on a sinful and fanatic world. At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised against their Christian brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination. ” 310 The crusade, of course, was not as alien to the Enlightenment as these remarks may suggest. Gibbon himself had doubts not about the decision to launch the First Crusade but about the “proportion” of the Christian military offensive. 311 What is important here, however, is to understand that war-cry— Deus vult! or the vernacular Deus le volt!—as an expression of the piety of the crusaders, as a manifestation of “popular theology” in which God's will was absolute. 312 Just as the peace movement was inspired by God and the peace it brought was ordered by God, so the crusade, for which the peace movement was in many ways the precursor and in which it found its fulfillment, was a war willed by God.
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308 Roberti Monachi historia Iherosolimitana I, i–ii (pp. 727–29); Peters 1989, 2– 4.
309 Roberti Monachi historia I, ii (p. 729); Peters 1989, 4.
310 The Decline and Fall, chap. 58 (3: 567).
311 Partner 1997, 282. (Unfortunately I received this highly relevant book too late to make more than a few passing references to it.)
312 “ Deus le volt! répondrait à une conception sommaire et globale de Dieu et da sa volonté, sorte de théologie populaire…. Cet absolu de la volonté divine, nous le retrouvons chez pluspart des historiens de la époque. ” Lacroix 1974, 469.
TWO
The Holy Manner of Warfare
In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Guibert of Nogent wrote: “In our own time God has instituted a holy manner of warfare [instituit nostro tempore praelia sancta Deus], so that knights [ordo equestris] and the common people who, after the ancient manner of paganism, were formerly immersed in internecine slaughter, have found a new way of winning salvation. They no longer need, as formerly they did, entirely to abandon the world by entering a monastery or by some other similar commitment. They can obtain God's grace in their accustomed manner and dress, and by their ordinary way of life. ” 1
Guibert was a well-known scholar, and his history of the crusade is said to be the work of a mature and thoughtful man. 2 In the passage just quoted he masterfully depicted in a few lines the change in the Church's attitude toward warfare—a key feature of the great social transformation of the eleventh century that has been termed an “entry into a new world. ” 3 The reformed Church had recognized the military profession and found for Christian arms-bearers an employment pleasing to God. After “the judgement of Pope Urban granted remission of sins to every Christian setting out to overcome the Gentiles”, the mind of a man no longer needed to be “torn two ways, uncertain which path to follow,
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1 Gesta Dei per Francos I, i (p. 124); The Deeds of God, 28. (I follow the translation in Cowdrey 1973, 294.)
2 Cole 1991, 27; Riley-Smith 1993a, 136.
3 Rousset 1945, 7.
that of the Gospel, or that of the world. ” 4 War became a virtue, and “armies were summoned by the trumpet blasts of the Prince of Peace. ” 5 Deplorable inter-Christian, fratricidal wars were diverted into meritorious, soul-saving combat against non-Christians.
This kind of warfare was new, according to Guibert, and he called it holy. But how right was he to claim that instituit nostro tempore praelia sancta Deus—that it was really in his own time that God instituted a holy manner of warfare? How right was he to see this holy war as a historically new phenomenon?
It is a commonplace in our own time to regard the Crusade as holy war. But commonplaces most often suspend, rather than enhance, understanding. If I may borrow Bentham's metaphor of nonsense upon stilts, truisms are stilts upon which common sense walks out of what it either cannot or does not want to grasp. I am not saying that the crusade was not holy war. To the contrary, I maintain it was holy war par excellence, or rather, that holy war was at the core of the crusade. But there are at least two problems with the common view of the crusade as holy war.
First, though bibliographies of Crusade research fill many books, holy war has not been given the attention it deserves. 6 Consequently, it is not surprising that “after nearly a millennium of interest and centuries of academic study, very few people have any clear idea of what crusade was. ” 7 In fact, it seems that the idea of crusade has never been very clear. This is especially true for the beginnings of the crusade itself. What we usually take to be the concept of crusade, or “the Crusade idea”, appears on closer study to have been something much vaguer: a mentality, a “psychology” or “spirituality of great numbers”, a “state of mind”, that is, a magma of images, beliefs, fantasies, expectations, feelings, and sentiments. 8
Of course there were ideas involved in the Crusades, even if, as always, a gulf separated the intellectual abstractions elaborated by theologians from the motives that moved ordinary men and women. 9 But the ideas—as different from that “imprecise set of attitudes and habits” 10 just mentioned—followed, rather than directed, the Crusade. The “crusade idea” was formed after the fact in the half century following the
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10 Tyerman 1988, 21.
4 Ralph of Caen Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana I; quoted in Bull 1993, 4.
5 Morris 1983, 79.
6 Riley-Smith 1977, 16; Johnson 1997, 30, 43.
7 Riley-Smith 1977, 11.
8 Cf. Rousset 1945, 10–11; Alphandéry 1954, 2, 9; Dupront 1969, 19–20.
9 Riley-Smith 1992, xxvii.
First Crusade. 11 In fact, for a long time the Crusade had no formal name: the vernacular term croiserie appeared in the second half of the thirteenth century, and crux at about the same time. 12 A name for Crusaders— crucesignati, persons signed by the Cross—first appeared in the mid-twelfth century but came under more consistent use only with the Pontificate of Innocent III at the turn of the twelfth century. 13 For a long period the Crusade was without a clear legal status, for a juridical theory of crusade was formulated only in the mid-thirteenth century. 14 Yet though the crusade idea came after the Crusade itself, certain elements, including the crucial ideas of penitential and salvatory violence, were involved in the formation of the crusade movement. If most educated clerics had not upheld these ideas, the Church would probably not have dared to encourage laymen to resort to arms. 15 These ideas on violence found clear expression in the phenomenon of holy war.
The second problem with the common understanding of the crusade as holy war is the absence of the concept of holy war among the crusaders themselves. It might be unfair to expect from those mostly illiterate men and also women who joined the armed, and unarmed, Christian bands intent on wrestling the holy places from the hands of the “unclean races” to have conceptualized what they were doing. On their journey to Jerusalem these people lived their holy war, but they did not give it a name. 16 They may have been convinced that they were fulfilling the intentions of God, that they were fighting God's war with God literally on their side; 17 but what has survived of those convictions are “startling images”, “very crudely expressed”, and “not justified in terms that would have made them acceptable to theologians. ” 18
Nor did educated men use the concept of holy war. The term is not to be found in chronicles of the First Crusade. 19 The chroniclers used, instead, descriptive terms such as bellum spirituale (spiritual—not carnal—war), bella Domini (the Lord's wars), praelia Domini(the Lord's battles), praelium Dei (God's battle), opus Domini(the Lord's work), prealium in nomine Domini Jesu-Christi (battle in the name of Lord Je-
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11 Blake 1970. Cf. chap. 3 n. 338.
12 Villey 1942, 252; Constable 1953, 237 n. 130; Riley-Smith 1977, 12.
13 Markowski 1984.
14 Villey 1942, 256– 62; Russell 1975, 206; Gilchrist 1985.
15 Riley-Smith 1992, xxvii. Cf. Alphandéry 1954, 9.
16 Dupront 1969, 32.
17 Riley-Smith 1993a, chap. 4, especially 99, 107, 118. Cf. McGinn 1978, 49 ff.
18 Riley-Smith 1993a, 119.
19 Cf. Dupront 1969, 32; Delaruelle 1980, 125.
sus Christ), and probably more often than any other term, peregrinatio (pilgrimage). 20 Moreover, the papal appeals for crusading almost never used the word war itself. 21 Gratian's Decretum, the authoritative compilation of canon law completed around 1140, only described holy war, without using the term. In his discussion of just war, Gratian supplemented the classical doctrine of just war with a significant qualification: Whereas in Isidore of Seville (to whom Gratian referred) a necessary requirement for just war was that it is proclaimed by legitimate worldly authority, 22 Gratian added (citing Augustine) that a war ordered by God is, without any doubt, also just. In such wars, he explained, the commander of the army and the people are not authors of war but servants of God. Such were the wars fought by the sons of Israel. 23 This description may be applied to crusading, though there is no mention of the crusade in the Decretum. 24 We can only speculate whether Gratian had crusading in mind when he was justifying the use of violence in the service of the Church and on its command. 25 The Decretum could be regarded as a sourcebook for later crusade propagandists, since Gratian, more than any of his predecessors, contributed to the conceptual transformation of war into an ecclesiastical institution. 26 What is telling here is the absence of the holy war concept and the silence on the crusade—characteristic of twelfth-century thought in general. 27
In view of this, Guibert of Nogent's naming the crusade a “holy manner of warfare” (praelium sanctum) in the aftermath of the First Crusade appears exceptional. Thus it can be argued that the abbot of Nogent offered the first specific definition of the crusade. 28 Compared with descriptive terms in use during and well beyond his time, such as pilgrimage, journey, and way, in combination with Jerusalem, Sepulchre, Lord, God, and Jesus Christ, 29 Guibert's definition indeed presented a concept,
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20 See Rousset 1945, 74; Constable 1953, 237.
21 Schwerin 1937, 39, found bellum used only in Honorius III's and Innocent III's documents relating to the Crusades.
22 “Iustum est bellum, quod ex edicto geritur” etc. Decretum C. XXIII q.1 c.1. In Isidore of Seville: “Iustum bellum est quod ex praedicto geritur” etc. Etym. XVIII, i,2.
23 Decretum C. XXIII q.ii c.2–3.
24 Villey 1942, 256.
25 Riley-Smith 1992, 93.
26 Brundage 1976, 106; Riley-Smith 1992, 93.
27 Morris 1991, 277.
28 Cardini 1992b, 387.
29 For example, iter Hierosolimitanum, Dominicum, sepulcri Domini; via Jesu Christi, Dei, sepulcri Domini, sancta; expeditio Hierosolimitana, Dei. See Villey 1942, 248 ff.; Rousset 1945, 70; Constable 1953, 237 n. 130. Pope Alexander III spoke of those who “visited” the Lord's Sepulchre. Villey 1942, 213. For further expressions used in the papal crusading letters, see Schwerin 1937, 45.
even if not yet a clear one. 30 Strictly speaking, Guibert's praelium sanctum did not mean holy war, bellum sacrum. But the distinction between praelium (battle, struggle) and bellum (war) is of a later date, apparently formulated by Innocent IV in the context of doctrinal elaboration of the just war and in conformity with Decretalists' aim to systematically limit feudal warfare. Just war, justum bellum, was war that a prince with no superior could wage against enemies who, along with their possessions, belonged to the jurisdiction of another, inferior prince. All other military activity—even if it otherwise met the requirements of a just war— did not have the legal status of a war but fell into the category of justum praelium. 31 But let us stay in Guibert's time.
All contemporary writers recognized that the crusade was something new, 32 or at least exceptional. Robert the Monk, for example, asked rhetorically: “But apart from the mystery of the healing cross, what more marvelous deed has there been since the creation of the world than that which was done in modern times in this journey of our men of Jerusalem?” 33 Guibert, however, differed from his contemporaries in that he not only was aware of the novelty of the crusade but also conceptualized this new phenomenon, even if only vaguely. If he claimed that holy war in his own time was new, this was not because he did not know of holy wars in past times. At the very least, he would have been well versed in the holy wars of the Maccabees and Israelites. 34 Thus we can understand him as conceiving of the crusade as holy war of a new type. Taking this understanding of the crusade as my departure point, I address the questions of why the crusade was holy war, and why it was holy war of a new type.
JUST WAR, HOLY WAR, THE CRUSADE
Holy war in the broadest sense is war conceived of as a religious action or as a military action directly related to religion. 35 In slightly less abstract terms, holy war is a war waged by spiritual power or fought un-
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30 Cardini 1992b, 387.
31 See Russell 1975, 173. Cf. n. 71.
32 Daniel 1989a, 6. Cf. Riley-Smith 1993a, 139 ff.
33 Historia Iherosolimitana, preface (p. 723); trans. in Riley-Smith 1993a, 140.
34 See chap. 1 n. 306. Cf. Cole 1991, 27 f.; Riley-Smith 1993a, 141 f.
35 Erdmann 1935, 1. For a more comprehensive characterization of holy war, see Johnson 1997, 37– 42.
der the auspices of a spiritual power and for religious interests. 36 It is a war fought for the goals or ideals of the faith and waged by divine authority or on the authority of a religious leader. 37 War in the name of God is war in which God is felt as actively present and in which the warriors—instruments in divine hands—are executing God's will. It is war as divine service, pleasing to God and meritorious in His eyes, in which the deeds of the soldiers are divine work (opus Dei). 38 As such, holy war is suprahuman—and correspondingly inhuman. The very spirituality of holy war—the vengeance of God as the motive of war, the execution of divine righteousness by “soldiers of God”—commands, and materializes in, a fight without mercy. A war for the holiest cause, religion, fought under God and with His help by godly soldiers against ungodly enemies “shall be prosecuted unsparingly. ” 39 Brutality in warfare becomes the expression of religious consistency. Gaining victory means a fight to extermination, 40 and grand victory means a great massacre. 41
The drive for absolute victory in a war fought for the Absolute is exemplified by the fall of Jerusalem at the crusaders' hands. “No-one has ever seen or heard of such a slaughter of pagans”, a chronicler of the crusade noted. 42 Raymond of Aguilers wrote the following vivid account:
But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and the bridle reins.
Raymond did not miss the opportunity to add the moral: “Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgement of God, that this place should be filled
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36 Villey 1942, 21–22; Rousset 1945, 142.
37 Russell 1975, 2.
38 See Erdmann 1935, 51, 57; Rousset 1945, 148; Dupront 1969, 32; Becker 1988, 293, 352, 395.
39 Bainton 1960, 148. Cf. Fasoli 1968; Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 20.
40 Cf. Villey 1942, 30; Rousset 1945, 101, 105 ff., 149; Dupront 1969, 33, 38–39.
41 Dupront 1969, 39.
42 Gesta Francorum X, xxxix.
with the blood of unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. ” 43
Christianity cannot be credited with originating the holy war tradition; holy war in the broadest sense predates not only the crusades but Christianity as well. Holy war in the Christian tradition had its authoritative base partly in the Old Testament—in the books of Deuteronomy, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and Maccabees. It found its model in the wars of Yahweh. 44 Those wars in the service of God, carrying out the punishment of God—the collective warlike fury that, in its mystical aspects, was more terrible and impressive than the individual heroism of German and Nordic epics—had significant bearing on the medieval practice of war. 45 The other source of legitimation was the wars of the Romans, which had also had a sacral character. 46 Most inspiring was the Roman tradition and codification of wars against barbarians, robbers, and brigands. Barbari, the stereotypical “other” of the Roman imperial imagination, 47 on the one hand, and latrunculi and praedones, on the other, were of course dissimilar legal categories, but the Romans nevertheless lumped them together. All were seen as the enemies of mankind, and so were excluded from all legal protection. As an anomaly in the perfect political and juridical system of the empire, they had to be eliminated. This approach to the outcasts of humanity was to become a model for Christian hostility toward pagans, infidels, rebels, and heretics. 48
But holy war was only one current, and at least from the normative point of view not the dominant current, in the tradition of Christian attitudes toward war. When Christianity outgrew the so-called pacifism of the primitive Church (an expression of the early Christians' estrangement from the Roman world, in which war was of central importance), 49 associated itself with institutions of the late Roman Empire, and
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43 Liber, 150–51; trans. in Peters 1989, 214. Cf. Gesta francorum X, xxxviii; and the letter of Godfrey, Raymond, and Daimbert to the Pope, Sept. 1099; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, no. XVIII,10 (p. 171): “[I]n porticu Salomonis et in templo eius nostri equitabant in sanguine Saracenorum usque ad genua equorum. ” The “Temple of Solomon” was the al-Aqsa Mosque, in which there had never been Christian service. It is said that in that building alone nearly ten thousand Muslims were slaughtered. The Jews were burnt together with the synagogue in which they took refuge.
44 See Bainton 1960, chap. 3; Russell 1975, 8 ff.; Johnson 1997, 34 (summarizing G. von Rad, Holy War in Ancient Israel [Grand Rapids, Mich., 1991]).
45 Fasoli 1968, 26; Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 20.
46 Fasoli 1968, 29.
47 Brown 1996, 56.
48 Morisi 1963, 156; Russell 1975, 8.
49 Minucius Felix, a third-century apologist, for example, wrote that the Romans in their origin were “collected” by crime and grew by terror and ferocity, and that whatever they held, cultivated, and possessed was the spoil of their audacity and violence. Octavius XXV (ANF 6:188). Cf. Morris 1967, chap. 7.
began to deal seriously with the problem of war, it took over and elaborated upon the classic doctrine of just war. 50 A just war must not be a willful exercise of violence but rather should be waged by legitimate civil authority to recover lost goods (real property or incorporeal rights), that is, to redress an injury caused by the enemy. As an extraordinary legal procedure, war ought to be fought within the limits of law. The doctrine of just war thus sought to regulate warfare and restrain violence. Ever since its adoption by the Church fathers, the doctrine of just war had a decisive impact on Christian views of war. Its authoritative Christian version was worked out by Augustine, who added a few novelties to the classical doctrine. Besides the exemption of monks and priests from military activity, perhaps most important among these was the idea of the right disposition of the heart for those exercising violence.
The Christian attitude toward war was characterized by tension between just war and holy war. The code of just war tended to break down in the fervor of holy war. Whereas just war set limits on warfare and barred clerics from bearing arms, participating in wars, and shedding blood, taking up arms for the realization of God's purpose tended to override all obstacles and do away with all limitations. 51 The authority of Augustine did not help much to ease the tension, for although Augustine himself had formulated the Christian just war doctrine, in his tracts against heretics, especially the Donatists, he had provided arguments useful for later advocates of holy war. 52 Many of these arguments were plucked out of Augustine's discussion of the right inner disposition of those who resort to violence when he—writing in the context of imperial persecution of pagans and heretics—set out to “vindicate the Old Testament patriarchs” against the Donatists' calumnies. 53
Augustine argued that the New Testament precept “resist not evil” was not a call for passivity in the face of evil and consequently did not prohibit the use of arms to fight evil. The precept was given “to prevent
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50 For the classic theory of just war, see Bainton 1960, chap. 2; Russell 1975, introduction; Barnes 1988; and critical remarks in Markus 1983.
51 Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 20.
52 For analytical purposes, I discriminate between just war and holy war in Augustine's writings, though this does not do justice to the complexity of his thought. Looking at his ideas of war from the point of view of later medieval authors is also questionable; but since I am primarily concerned with this later use, I have adopted here this methodologically problematic approach. On Augustine's views on war and coercion, see especially Brown 1972; Markus 1983.
53 See Markus 1983, 5 (referring to Augustine Retractationes II, xxxiii,1).
us from taking pleasure in revenge, in which the mind is gratified by the sufferings of others, but not to make us neglect the duty of restraining men from sin. ” 54 In a similar fashion, the commandment to love one's neighbor and one's enemies did not preclude the use of force. Inflicting corporeal punishment might be dictated by charity. It might be a form of maternal correction “inflamed by love”—not “rendering evil for evil” but “applying the benefit of discipline to counteract the evil of sin, not with the hatred which seeks to harm, but with the love which seeks to heal. ” In sum, the disposition of the heart was of normative importance in judging violence, not the outward deed: “When good and bad do the same action and suffer the same afflictions, they are to be distinguished not by what they do or suffer, but by the causes of each. ” The use of force was justifiable if its motive was love, “regard to the people's welfare”, and not hatred, vengeance, or greed. 55 In accordance with this view, the evil of war lay not in its violence, in the death of some who would soon die anyway; the real evils in war were “love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power. ” 56 Malitia, evil, was to be opposed, not militia. 57
Along with Augustine, Ambrose of Milan before him and Pope Gregory I later in the sixth century may be credited with doctrinal formulations allowing—or demanding—the use of force against heretics and infidels. Ambrose, for example, eloquently defended Christian violence against the Jews and heretics, representing it as “the judgement of God. ” 58 Because the believer had nothing to do with the unbeliever, he argued, the “instances of his unbelief ought to be done away with together with the unbeliever himself. ” 59 Inspired by victories granted to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David, he wrote about the “presence of the divine assistance” in battles fought by emperors of his day. 60 They went to war against the barbarians safeguarded “under the shield of faith, and girt with the sword of the Spirit. ” The Roman army was led to battle by “Thy Name, Lord Jesus, and Thy worship”, sure of victory that was given to it by the aid of the Might Supreme as the prize for the Faith. It was “sufficiently plain” that “they, who have broken faith, cannot be
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54 Augustine to Publicola, a.d. 398, Letter XLVII,5 (The Letters, 293).
55 Augustine to Vincentius, a.d. 408, Letter XCIII, ii,6 (The Letters,384).
56 Contra Faustum Manichaeum XXII,74 (NPNF, 1st ser., 4: 301).
57 See Bainton 1960, 14, 92; Brown 1967; Morris 1967, 226; Russell 1975, 17; RileySmith 1980, 185.
58 Letter XL,8 (The Letters,441).
59 Letter XL,23 (The Letters,444). Cf. 2 Cor 6.14–15 (see chap. 3 n. 135).
60 Letters LXI,3; LXII,4 (The Letters,455, 456).
safe. ” 61 Gregory I, too, subscribed to coercion in matters of religion. He expected military commanders and civil officials to bring pagans “to the service of Christ. ” For him force was not only acceptable; it was the normal means for propagation of the faith. 62
In principle, war was permissible against heretics and pagans, for the protection of the purity of the Church within, and for the spread of the faith without. Until the eleventh century, however, the Church's normative attitude toward warfare and the military profession was dominated by the just war doctrine, even though Popes and bishops may have been involved in wars justified as the Lord's war. 63 It was only a small step from a doctrine of war as just and justifiable to representing war as an outright duty. 64 Yet even when—with the Church reform and the launching of the crusade—the idea of holy war grew in prominence and the tension between just war and holy war became acute, that small step had not been taken completely and irreversibly, and certainly not by all of those who had a say in ecclesiastical affairs. Proponents of holy war had to pay homage to the just war tradition and represent holy war as a just war in order to legitimize it in the eyes of their contemporaries. 65
Against the background of traditional Christian attitudes toward war, and with the general characteristics of holy war in mind, we can now define abstract traits of the crusade. When seen, on the one hand, in relation to traditional holy wars, the Crusades appear as a subset of holy war, as a “special group”, “special type”, or a “particular form” of holy war. 66 As a “new form of war” with its own ideology and fought by warriors of a new stamp, the Crusades were also a new form of holy war (or a new form of “Christian war”). 67 They embodied holy war in its most characteristic medieval form and were the most accomplished form of holy war; they were “the holiest of wars. ” 68
There has also been a tendency in historiography to discuss the cru-
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61 Of the Christian Faith II, xvi,136,141– 43.
62 Markus 1997, 81– 82, 85, referring to Gregory I Epistolae I,73; IV,25; XI,12.
63 Erdmann 1935, 8, 10, 27; Gilchrist 1988; 1993, 65– 69. Gilchrist is prominent among the scholars who have criticized Erdmann for overemphasizing the role of the eleventh-century reform Papacy in the Church's change of attitude toward war, while playing down the ecclesiastical militarism in the two centuries that preceded.
64 Morisi 1963, 155.
65 Cf. Vismara 1974, 62– 63.
66 Villey 1942, 9, 263; Dupront 1969, 19; Purcell 1975, 8.
67 Tyerman 1988, 9.
68 Villey 1942, 189, 227; Rousset 1945, 151, 194; Brundage 1976, 105; Leyser 1994, 193.
sade in relation to the Islamic military tradition, as analogous to Islamic “holy war. ” In this context, the Crusades appear as the western form of holy war. 69 But jihad cannot properly be defined as holy war. 70 Because Muslims' wars for religious reasons were not conducted on the “level of the state”, they were in a strict sense not “holy wars” but “holy battles. ” 71 Because the crusade is not a general doctrine of Christian holy war, while jihad is a doctrine of spiritual effort of which military action is only one possible manifestation, the crusade and jihad are, strictly speaking, not comparable. 72 Some western historians, especially earlier ones, used to represent the Crusades as a response of Latin Christians to jihad. 73 But this apologetic view has been convincingly rejected. 74
Whereas some historians have been reproached for clouding the distinction between holy war and the Crusade, 75 others tend to overlook the difference between holy war and just war. 76 Though the Crusades may thus appear to be a subset of just war, 77 this view is questionable. Some argue that the “ideal-type” distinction between just war and holy war is methodologically untenable, sharing the “disadvantage” of all ideal types: “they are not real. ” 78 Still others simply accept the crusaders' selfperception and self-justification and the crusading propagandists' claim
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69 Dupront 1969, 20; Cardini 1992b, 390–91. For Johnson 1997, 80, the First Crusade “provides the archetypal conception of holy war in Western culture. ”
70 Cardini 1992b, 390.
71 Noth 1966, especially 87, 147. For analogous reasons—the absence of the “state” in religious warfare—one cannot speak of “heilige Kriege” but only of “heilige Kämpfe” in the Christian West in the first period of crusading warfare. Ibid., 93, 139. Cf. n. 31.
72 Partner 1996, 333. Cf. Watt 1976. Johnson 1997, however, has provided a systematic comparison of the idea of holy war in Christian and Islamic culture. Cf. Partner 1997, chap. 5.
73 For example, T. A. Archer and Ch. L. Kingsford, The Crusades (New York, 1894); Nys 1894; L. Bréhier, L'Église et l'Orient au moyen âge: Les croisades (Paris, 1907); Dérumaux 1953, 74. Relevant passages from Archer and Kingsford and from Bréhier are published in Brundage 1964.
74 Erdmann 1935, 27, questioned this assumption and provided the starting point for Noth 1966. Cf. J. J. Saunders, Aspects of the Crusades (Christchurch, N. Z., 1962 [excerpts in Brundage 1964]); Brundage 1976, 103; Becker 1988, 362– 63; Daniel 1989a, 35. For a refutation of a subset of the thesis that the Crusades were a response to jihad—that the Christian military orders took as their model the Islamic institution of ribat (a fortified convent, built in a border area, whose inmates combined a religious way of life with fighting against the enemies of Islam)—see Forey 1992, 8 f.
75 Villey 1942, 15; Rousset 1945, 15 (both criticizing Erdmann 1935).
76 For example, Sicard 1969, 82; but also, occasionally, Russell 1975; Becker 1988; Daniel 1989a.
77 Brundage 1976, 117; Johnson 1997, 43.
78 Johnson 1981, xxv–xxvi (questioning the classification in Bainton 1960, 14). See also Johnson 1997, especially 42 ff.
—that the war they fought was just—as a theoretical statement. 79 But while the advocates of crusading may have felt compelled to represent the Christian military offensive as just war, it never was too difficult to cast the blame for war on the other side. By accusing the Muslims of desecrating the “Christian name” and oppressing and persecuting Christians, and by claiming that the Holy Land was the Lord's “patrimony”, which belonged rightfully to Christendom and had to be “defended” or “recovered” and “liberated”, the crusaders and their apologists easily construed the crusade as “just”, or “the most just”, war. 80
Styling a holy war as just does not, however, invalidate the conceptual distinction between just war and holy war. Categorically speaking, the crusades were not a just war. But taking into account historical intricacies of the relationship between just war and holy war, the crusade can be seen as a “strange hybrid of holy war and just war”, or as a “bastard offspring” of just war. 81 As a hybrid or a bastardization the crusade is also a just war. On the other hand, as a holy war the crusade evades the formal restrictions of the just war doctrine even when it refers to them. The crusade is a war in which the use of arms is not merely justifiable and condoned but is positively pleasing to and sanctioned by God. Where just war is morally acceptable, the crusade is blessed. Fighting merits God's special favor and is regarded as spiritually beneficial to those engaged in it. 82 Whereas just war refers to human law, holy war appeals to divine justice, “the true justice”: to what is just in the imagined eyes of God. 83 Thus, perhaps we should call the Crusades righteous wars, rather than just wars. The doctrine of just war might have sought to tame this righteousness in arms, but the capacity of justice to hold righteousness in check should not be overestimated. 84
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79 For example, Vanderpol 1911, 167 ff.; 1919, 218 ff. Cf. Regout 1934, 49, who points out that the Crusades' legitimacy was never questioned by contemporaries: “Comme causes justes sont invoquées: la défense de la Chrétienté contre l'attaque ou la menace directe du côté des Sarrazins, la protection des croyants contre une agression criminelle lors de leur visite à la Terre Sainte, la reprise des lieux saints qui avaient été injustement ravis aux Chrétiens. Donc ici aussi: defendere, repetere res, ulcisci. ”
80 Schwinges 1977, 221–30, especially 226; Mayer 1993, 15.
81 Russell 1975, 2, 38–39; Gilchrist 1985, 41.
82 Brundage 1969, 29; 1976, 100, 116; Russell 1975, 2; Cowdrey 1976, 10–11, 27; Riley-Smith 1977, 16.
83 Dérumaux 1953, 68.
84 Bainton 1960, 148, summarized the logic of the Puritan revolutionary saints: “How can the prince determine the justice of a holy war? If it is holy, it is holy no matter what prince, parliament, or people may say to the contrary. ”
HOLY WARS BEFORE THE CRUSADES
Along with the holy wars of the Old Testament, other holy wars that figured prominently in the crusading imagination were the Carolingian holy wars, associated with the mythical figure of Charlemagne. 85 The crusaders' Charlemagne myth was created at the beginnings of the reconquista, a sustained Christian military offensive in Spain that began in the middle of the eleventh century and took root at the time of the First Crusade. It was most potently expressed in the epic poem Chanson de Roland, where “Karlemagne” was made a crusader. As the head of Christendom, he waged a never-ending war against the “Sarrazins. ” 86 But it was not only recollections of Charlemagne and legends that had grown up around his name that inspired the growing enthusiasm for the new holy war; 87 in popular belief, Charlemagne had risen out of his grave and now led the crusaders to the Holy Land. 88 As Robert the Monk tells us, Urban II in his crusading sermon evoked the “glory and greatness of King Charles the Great” and urged the Frankish “valiant soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors” not to be “degenerate” but to recall the valor of their progenitors. 89 The crusaders believed that on their route to the Promised Land they were following the emperor's footsteps. 90
But it is only within the framework of the crusading Charlemagne mythology that one can safely speak of Carolingian wars as holy wars. Once emancipated from use by the crusaders, Carolingian history becomes a more nuanced reality. After all, Pippin III had established diplomatic relations with the Islamic empire. In 765, he had sent ambassadors to the “emir Amormuni of the Saracens” (al-Mansur) and three years later received a mission from him “honourably. ” 91 That his son Charlemagne, far from being a “crusader”, cultivated diplomatic relations with the Caliph of Baghdad, his Oriental counterpart, is well known. Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, recorded that the emperor's relations with Harun ar-Rashid, “King of the Persians, who ruled over almost
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85 Erdmann 1935, 276.
86 See Rousset 1945, chap. 6. Pirenne fell victim to this mythology “with a complacency alarming in a great historian. ” Hentsch 1992, 18.
87 Douglas 1969, 92.
88 Erdmann 1932, 413. Cf. Haskins 1967, 267.
89 Roberti Monachi historia Iherosolimitana I, i (p. 728); Peters 1989, 3.
90 Rousset 1945, 133.
91 Fredegarii Chronicorum Continuationes 51 (pp. 118–19). See Borgolte 1976, chap. 1.
the whole of the East, India excepted, were so friendly that this prince preferred his favor to that of all the kings and potentates of the earth, and considered that to him alone marks of honor and munificence were due. ” 92 Charlemagne also received ambassadors from Moorish Spain, bearing proposals to establish amicable and peaceful relations. 93 Historians have even speculated that had the Carolingian empire existed longer, the Christian and the Islamic cultures might have been on better terms. 94 But Charlemagne and his successors did wage wars against the pagans, and the question here is whether those wars may be seen as holy wars in a strict sense.
Carolingian wars against the pagans were represented in images associating them with the holy wars of the Hebrews. 95 Contemporary writers described the emperor as the new Moses and the new David, or even as the new Joshua. Charlemagne was a king who was just and clement but who also knew how to lead his army to victory—just like the kings of Israel. 96 In this military role, he was called the helmsman of the Christian people, rector populi christiani. 97 But this role was derived from his most exalted function, that of the defender of the Church; and it was this function, built into the foundations of the Carolingian system, that drove the Carolingian empire and the Church toward holy war. 98
The Church that the Emperor had to defend was the mystical body of Christ, imagined as embracing both the Empire and the visible, corporate Church. 99 Inhabiting the mystical Church were the “Christian people. ” 100 This populus christianus was an extensive and dynamic category that encompassed both the peoples over whom Charlemagne
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100 On populus christianus, see Rupp 1939, 28–29.
92 Einhard, The Life xvi.
93 On Carolingian relations with Muslim rulers, see Buckler 1931; Borgolte 1976. Cf. Pirenne 1937, 140; Herrin 1987, 299–300; Riché 1993, 115.
94 Kritzeck 1964, 16 (referring to Buckler 1931).
95 Morisi 1963, 164.
96 Morisi 1963, 164; Morrison 1964, 29; Fichtenau 1978, 57; Delaruelle 1980, 3– 11; Riché 1993, 303; Brown 1996, 256.
97 Erdmann 1935, 19; Rupp 1939, 29; Delaruelle 1980, 11 ff.
98 Morisi 1963, 158. For the extension of this concept to the defensio christianitatis, see Rupp 1939, 38 ff.
99 See Conc. parisiense VI I, ii–iii (MGH Conc. 2.2: 610). Cf. Mansi 14: 537–38; Jonas of Orleans Le métier du roi I (lines 5–16); Conc. aquisgranense II, praefatio (Mansi 14: 673). More sources are cited in Morrison 1964, 45f.; cf. Carlyle and Carlyle 1903– 36, 1: 190 ff.; Gierke 1913, 10, 103; Gilson 1963, 205– 6; Morrison 1964, 45 n. 30, 50; Ladner 1983, 439– 40; Robinson 1988, 288, 298; Tellenbach 1991, 63; Dubreucq 1995, 64– 65, 74, 109; Canning 1996, 50.
actually ruled and his potential subjects. 101 Defending Christian people thus involved Christianizing the heathen, which was not always a peaceful enterprise. Moreover, defense of the Church was a dynamic notion. It included both protection and propagation of the faith. In his famous letter to Pope Leo III, Charlemagne (actually, Alcuin, his learned scribe) stated: “My task, assisted by the divine piety, is everywhere to defend the Church of Christ—abroad, by arms, against pagan incursions and the devastations of such as break faith; at home, by protecting the Church in the spreading of the Catholic faith. ” 102 This statement conveys excellently the dynamism of the Carolingian imperium. The emperor had to watch over Christianization “at home. ” 103 If we assume that “home” included recently subjugated Saxony, spreading the Catholic faith at home involved bloody wars against the pagans. Defending the Church against pagan incursions “abroad” makes one think of Christian incursions into the lands where pagans had been “at home. ” The line between Christian defense and conquest here is not too precise. But whether the wars Charlemagne fought against the pagans are seen as defensive or aggressive, he fought them “assisted by the divine piety”; he was an instrument in God's hands.
The notion that the Frankish kings, defending and exalting the faith, were aided by God and acted as instruments of His justice predated Charlemagne. Clovis was baptized “like some new Constantine” after he had been convinced of the power of Christ by winning a battle through calling His name, and afterwards he fought his wars with God on his side. 104 In 755, Pope Stephen II wrote to Pippin III and his sons that the almighty God was granting victories to the Franks in their fights against the “enemies of the holy Church of God” through the hand of the blessed Peter; it was the sword of God, not a human sword, that was fighting in the Carolingians' battles. 105 The Carolingians made this notion their own, and after the Papacy declared them “protectors of the Roman church”
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101 Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 187. Cf. McKitterick 1983, 71; Nelson 1988, 230; Brown 1996, 273.
102 Charlemagne to Leo III, a.d. 796 (Alcuin Epistolae no. 93 [p. 137]; trans. in Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 186). Cf. Cantor 1963, 145– 46. See also Morisi 1963, 166– 67; Delaruelle 1980, 17–18; Nelson 1988, 221.
103 For an excellent survey of the historiographic discussion of Christianization, see Van Engen 1986.
104 Gregory of Tours The History II,30–31,37.
105 “Non enim gladius hominis, sed gladius Dei est, qui pugnat. ” MGH Epp. 3: 491. Cf. chap. 3 nn. 65– 67.
in the year 754, they “considered themselves, among kings, specially chosen by God. ” 106 Under the rule of Charlemagne's sons, this notion of the divinely appointed king was joined with the idea of the Franks as the second chosen people, the new Israelites. 107 Charlemagne himself was represented as chosen by divine providence to defend the holy Church and to fight the extraneas gentes, peoples who because they were not Christian were “outside. ” His wars, defensive by definition, though not necessarily so in fact, were willed by God. 108
But the Carolingian wars were primarily secular. They come across as such in contemporary narratives 109 as well as in the judgment of historians. Their driving force was the struggle for territory and power: they were “massive wars of conquest, a Machtkampf. 110 In contemporary moral debates, the justification for war was success in battle and the wealth and aggrandizement of lordship it brought. 111 Alcuin's references to Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons in his letters serve to illustrate this. In a letter to his religious community in York, where he apparently spoke freely, Alcuin simply stated that “the king has gone with his army to lay waste Saxony. ” 112 When he wrote to Charlemagne himself, Alcuin wanted to bring home to the king that spreading the “kingdom of Christendom” was not the same as imposing “the yoke of tithes upon a simple people who are beginners in the faith, making a full levy from every house. ” 113 He also exhorted an imperial bishop to be “a preacher of goodness, not an exactor of tithes”, and in another letter he postulated that the teachers of the faith (who were involved in Charlemagne's campaigns) should be praedicatores, non praeditores, “preachers, not predators. ” 114 The Carolingian wars against the Normans do not seem to have been any holier than the Saxon wars. The Normans appeared to be less like enemies of Christianity and more like an invading army, and one could say that the Christians themselves fought for pagan
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106 Fichtenau 1978, 63.
107 See Wallace-Hadrill 1983, chap. 13, especially 245 f.; Riché 1993, 304; Brown 1996, 256.
108 Morisi 1963, 164, 169.
109 Leyser 1994, 191, speaks of “the total secularity” of Einhard's story about the Carolingian wars against the Avars. See Einhard The Life vii–viii.
110 Erdmann 1935, 20; Morisi 1963, 170; Leyser 1994, 189.
111 Leyser 1994, 190.
112 Alcuin to the brothers of the holy community of the dearly loved church of York etc., a.d. 795, Epistolae no. 43 (p. 89); Alcuin of York, 4.
113 Alcuin to King Charles, a.d. 796, Epistolae no. 110 (pp. 157–58); Alcuin of York, 72–73.
114 Alcuin to Arno; Alcuin to Megenfrid, a.d. 796, Epistolae nos. 107, 111 (pp. 154, 161); Alcuin of York, 74–75.
ideals: pro patria, pro vita, pro libertate. 115 Those wars may indeed be seen as an extension of the Roman campaigns against the barbarians, 116 only now the western barbarians thought of themselves as the Romans. 117 In the summary beheading of 4,500 Saxon prisoners of war by the Franks one is reminded of Roman virtue rather than of Christian mercy: “Only Romans had been so self-confidently barbaric in their treatment of unreliable neighbours. ” 118
Carolingian wars were also absent of religiously based exclusivism. First of all, even though the Carolingians believed they were assisted by God in these wars, they did not fight against non-Christians exclusively. The blood shed by the Carolingians was the blood of “heathens or Christians. ” 119 Second, it was not uncommon for Christians to fight in infidel armies, for the unfaithful to serve in Christian forces, and for alliances to be made across the religious divide. In that era, just as religion was not the autonomous cause but rather an attribute of temporal power, so it was no more than an attribute of wars fought by that power. 120 Whereas most Carolingian military campaigns wore “a decisively religious aspect”, they were undertaken for “political reasons. ” 121 The duty to convert the pagans in defensive wars of conquest might have been strongly felt by the emperor, 122 but religion was a means of bringing the exterae gentes under his rule: “Charlemagne personally inspired the terrible use of Frankish religion as an instrument of suppression; but others—bishops, clergy and monks—were his willing lieutenants in the field. ” 123 The establishment of episcopal sees in the conquered territories and the nomination of bishops were “instruments of political control. ” 124 Baptisms of the vanquished pagans were not primarily affirmations of faith, but “statements of political realignment. ” 125
Taking all this into account, the Carolingian wars against the pagans can be seen as holy wars in only a limited sense. 126 In an empire that was
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115 Delaruelle 1980, 26.
116 Villey 1942, 27.
117 Cf. Wallace-Hadrill 1962, 146.
118 Brown 1996, 274.
119 Cf. Boniface to Pope Zacharias, a.d. 742 (Letters of Saint Boniface, 80).
120 Cf. Erdmann 1935, 20.
121 Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 181.
122 See Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 418. Cf. Koebner 1961, 24, 27; Folz 1969, 47; Fichtenau 1978, 62– 63; Nelson 1988, 218.
123 Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 184.
124 Morrison 1969, 378.
125 McKitterick 1983, 62.
126 Erdmann 1935, 20; Morisi 1963, 169.
not merely “political” but spiritual as well, in a system where temporal and spiritual powers overlapped and temporal power was imbued with religion, everything done by the emperor—a sacred king, an “ecclesiastical person”, God's chosen instrument for the establishment of a Christian society—had religious connotations. 127 But whereas holy war is an instrument of religion and is fought, or commanded, by a spiritual power, in the Carolingian wars religion was a means of conquest and oppression, and the initiative for war always rested with the emperor. The Pope's role was only to pray. “Your task, holy father”, Charlemagne wrote to Leo III, “is to raise your hands to God like Moses to ensure the victory of our arms. Helped thus by your prayers to God, ruler and giver of all, the populus christianus may always and everywhere have the victory over the enemies of his holy name, and the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ resound throughout the world. ” 128
Though the crusaders may have been inspired by their own image of Charlemagne, the Carolingian imperial wars against the pagans in fact do not seem to have had much in common with the crusades. Neither did the wars fought by lesser temporal powers that came to the fore with the collapse of imperial authority. 129 Were we determined, however, to identify wars that we could say presaged the Crusades, 130 we might settle upon wars that did not figure in the crusaders' imagination: those conducted by the ninth-century and tenth-century Popes. In theory, the Pope was an orator: His task was to pray. He could also exhort Christian soldiers to fight valiantly and send priests to take care of the soldiers' faith and morals. But in no case was he allowed to initiate, direct, or lead a war. 131 In practice, however, things looked rather different. From the late eighth century onward most of the Popes were involved through much of their Papacy in armed conflicts against their enemies in Italy, and not a few of them fought in person. They justified their armed struggle for
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127 For the idea of “Christian empire”, cf. Koebner 1961, chap. 2.2; Vereker 1964, 67; Morris 1967, 221 ff.; Folz 1969, chap. 2; Munz 1969, 25; Fichtenau 1978, 64– 65; Beumann 1981, 532, 566; Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 187; Nelson 1988, 211; Schramm 1992, 14 ff.; Dubreucq 1995, 64 ff. On the notion of a “theocratized ruler”, whose person was sacred ex officio, cf. Kern 1968, 44; Ullmann 1973, 271–74; Fichtenau 1978, 56. For a critique of the rex-sacerdos(Priesterkönigtum) thesis, see Morrison 1964, 27–28; 1969, app. B; Fichtenau 1978, 56– 61.
128 Charlemagne to Leo III, a.d. 796 (Alcuin Epistolae no. 93 [pp. 137–38]; translated in Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 186).
129 For these types of war, see Villey 1942, 45– 48.
130 Riché 1993, 311, wrote that Carolingian wars against the pagans “presaged the notion of holy war that fully emerged … in the eleventh century. ”
131 Villey 1942, 48– 49.
personal survival and for power and territory as the Lord's war, drawing heavily on arguments from the Old Testament. 132
Pope Leo IV, in 849, reputedly led a fleet to victory over pirates who were molesting Rome. Whether this really happened is not absolutely certain, for the event is mentioned in only one source of somewhat questionable reliability. 133 There is no doubt, however, that three years later the same Pope asserted the papal initiative and called on Christians to fight against the Saracens. He relied on his own military forces and promised heavenly rewards to those who might lose their lives in the battle for “the truth of the faith and salvation of the soul and defense of the Christian fatherland. ” 134 John VIII (872– 82), after exhorting in vain all Christians to take up arms against Norman and Muslim infidels, also took military initiative into his own papal hands, raised his own fleet, and led his troops both on land and sea against the Saracens. 135 He too gave assurance of eternal life to those who would be killed in the defense of the holy Church of God and the Christian faith and commonwealth. 136 For John VIII, as for Leo IV, war against the infidels was sanctified and sanctifying. 137 In the tenth century, John X (914–28) raised an army against Muslim pirates and took part in hand-to-hand fighting. 138 John XII (955– 63) also resorted to war and fought in person. Liudprand of Cremona, listing John's many crimes, recorded that the Pope “set houses on fire and appeared in public equipped with sword, helmet and cuirass. ” 139 Gregory V (996–99) was occupied throughout his pontificate with reconquering his lost territories. 140 And Sylvester II (999–1003), Benedict VIII (1012–24), and Gregory VI (1044–46) also knew how to deal with arms and armies. 141
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132 Gilchrist 1988, 179, 181; 1993, 65– 68.
133 Morisi 1963, 171.
134 Leo to the Frankish army, a.d. 853 (Epistola 28, MGH Epp. 5: 601). Since this became one of the texts most widely cited by the canonist of the later Church reform, the idea of struggle against the pagans as a holy work may be considered a commonplace in the Middle Ages. Cf. Villey 1942, 29; Brundage 1969, 22; Gilchrist 1988, 182 n. 43.
135 Engreen 1945, 323 n. 6; Partner 1972, 67.
136 John to the bishops in Louis's realm, a.d. 879, Epistolae et decreta no. 186 (col. 816).
137 See Erdmann 1935, 23; Rupp 1939, 37 f.; Villey 1942, 29; Rousset 1945, 44; Morisi 1963, 172; Brundage 1969, 23; Delaruelle 1980, 24– 41, especially 39; Becker 1988, 365– 68.
138 Partner 1972, 82; R. Barber 1982, 214; Gilchrist 1988, 183.
139 Liudprand of Cremona Chronicle 10 (p. 165). See Partner 1972, 86– 89.
140 Morisi 1963, 172; Gilchrist 1988, 184.
141 Erdmann 1935, 101; Cowdrey 1983, 108; Gilchrist 1988, 184.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE CHURCH'S
ATTITUDE TOWARD WAR
Given these historical precedents for divine warfare, what was the novelty in the Christian attitude toward war during the eleventh century, especially at its close, that materialized in the Crusade? To answer this question—and before we examine the Crusade itself—we need to dwell a little longer on the spiritual change that made the Crusade possible: on the transformation of the Christian attitude toward war. The discussion of this transformation in chapter 1 has to be complemented, first, with acknowledgment of the reluctance with which the crusade was received by many canonists and theologians, and second, with a look at Urban II's departure from Gregory VII's understanding of war in the service of the Church.
THE NEW HOLY WAR,
CANON LAWYERS, AND THEOLOGIANS
The profound transformation in the Christian doctrine of war that emerged between 1000 and 1300 was not free from conflicts. One aspect of this doctrinal change was the legalization of the ecclesiastical view of war; whereas war had traditionally been considered primarily a moral and theological problem, it now came to be regarded as basically a problem of law. Another aspect of this transformation—one connected with the emergence of the crusade—appeared to have a theological basis. 142 As the crusade emerged, the new ideas about holy war clashed with the legalistic tendencies in ecclesiastical thinking about war. It took about two centuries from the time of the First Crusade's launching for canon lawyers to transform the crusade into something of a legal institution. 143
In the period immediately preceding the preaching of the First Crusade, collections of canon law were hardly a source of inspiration for crusading. Canon lawyers were not very concerned with the ethics of warfare, and the crusade was primarily an ethical war. Even in the col-
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142 Brundage 1969, 29; 1976, 99–100.
143 Brundage 1976, 100. Villey 1942, 256, calls Hostiensis “le père de la théorie juridique de la croisade. ” Gilchrist 1985 consents. Russell 1975 (chap. 4) detects the beginnings of a juridical conceptualization of the crusade in the Decretists' works, especially in Huggucio, but agrees with Villey about Hostiensis (206). But cf. Constable 1953, 248 ff., especially 254, pointing out that Pope Eugenius III's crusading bulls from 1146 to 1147 can be seen as marking the emergence of the crusade “as a Christian institution rather than a mere historical event. ”
lection of Anselm of Lucca, a pioneer in elaborating on the legitimatization of war in the service of the Church, it is difficult to find “any hint of a justification for the First Crusade. ” 144 When Urban II organized the crusade, he did not follow the rationale of the canonistic treatment of war. He rather ignored the canonists. They, in turn, were not “converted to his side. ” 145 Even after the crusade came into being, it seems to have been alien to canon lawyers for quite some time—from Ivo of Chartres at the close of the eleventh century onward. 146 Bishop Ivo is said to have been unmoved by the crusade idea and reserved or even dismissive toward the crusading movement. 147 He refused to support war led by the Church in his collections of canon law (which embraced the Augustinian doctrine of just war). 148 The division between a life devoted to Christian religion and a life devoted to the worldly army was something he wanted to maintain. The Christian's glory was within, not outside. 149
The legalistic turn in the Church's attitude toward war confirmed the continued relevance of Augustine's doctrine of just war. The Crusades did not render that doctrine irrelevant. Augustine, as we have already seen, was the authority turned to by both the legalistically minded defenders of just war and the advocates of holy war. On the one hand, his teachings shaped the basic attitude of most Christian thinkers toward organized public conflict, and his just war doctrine made a decisive impact on the medieval law of war. 150 On the other hand, though he did not formulate a doctrine of holy war, holy war advocates exploited his approval of the use of force for religious exigency. In this sense, the crusaders' imagination may have been “distantly sired” by Augustine's writings against the Donatists and Manichaeans. 151 Moreover, though holy war propagandists made use of elements of Augustine's just war theory to legitimize their endeavors, they only rarely used the term bellum justum and seldom referred to Augustine. 152 The Crusade went far beyond the positions set out by the doctrine of just war and thus loosened its re-
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144 Morris 1991, 143.
145 Gilchrist 1985, 41.
146 Pacaut 1953; Gilchrist 1985, especially 39, 41; 1988, 177; Brundage 1991.
147 Sprandel 1962, 140, 141 n. 14, 161. Hehl 1980, 11–12, questions Sprandel's interpretation of the evidence but nevertheless concludes that Ivo's attitude toward the crusade was “neutral. ”
148 See Hehl 1980, 10–12.
149 “Longe est dissimilis haec militia (Christiana) mundanae militiae…. Gloria nostra intus non foris est”; quoted in Sprandel 1962, 141 n. 14.
150 Höffner 1972, 64– 65; Brundage 1976, 102.
151 Morisi 1963, 223; Russell 1975, 36; Brundage 1976, 103.
152 See Gilchrist 1988, 176–78.
strictive regulations. 153 In fact, by resting on the precepts of just war, the Crusade's propagandists distorted the doctrine so much that it was invalidated. 154
In canon law, however, just war doctrine was not shattered. As a result, a gulf came to separate canon law from the new holy war. 155 From the perspective of canon law, the crusade—in its formative phase—appeared not only extralegal; it also seemed to be a kind of anti-war: a non-war, a phenomenon beyond war. 156 But the crusade was also antiwar in another sense: it was against war, “pacifist”, if you will, in that it was a realization of the peace movement. Aimed at realizing God's peace, it was a “work of peace. ” 157 Most importantly, peace was its precondition. Peace had to be made in order to launch the crusade. In this respect, the crusade was an inversion, or perversion, of the fundamental Augustinian perspective. Augustine wrote that “peace is not sought in order that war may be aroused, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. ” 158 Urban II, however, proclaimed the Truce of God as the first step toward launching the Crusade.
The Crusade was alien not only to the legalistic approach to war; even though some historians see the Crusade as based in theology, it appears to have been repugnant to prominent theologians as well. Theology was certainly partly responsible for the emergence of the Crusade (in Pope Urban II's providential view of history, for example). But the main body of what may be called the crusading ideology was an explosive mixture in which piety mingled with eschatological images and millenarian expectations, messianic ideas, and popular beliefs and superstitions. It was shaped by a spirituality that knew no boundary between the relative and the absolute, in which the natural and supernatural merged. That spirituality was fascinated with the marvelous rather than with the divine. 159 As the materialization of such an “ideology”, the crusade could not have been easily embraced by theologians. As a case in point I cite St. Anselm of Canterbury.
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153 Brundage 1969, 29.
154 Erdmann 1935, 87 (who uses the expression hinweggesetzt); Cowdrey 1976, 29. Cf. Mayer 1993, 16.
155 Gilchrist 1985, 41.
156 Rousset 1945, 194; Morisi 1963, 170–71; Cardini 1974, 221.
157 Cardini 1974, 221.
158 Augustine to Boniface, a.d. 418, Letter CLXXXIX,6 (Select Letters,331). Cf. The City of God XIX,12; Gratian Decretum C. XXIII q.i. c.6.
159 Cf. Rousset 1945, 176; Delaruelle 1980, 122; Riley-Smith 1993a, chap. 4; Morris 1984.
In his 'Cur deus homo', Anselm mentioned “infidels” whose objections against Christian doctrine of redemption he wanted to refute. 160 This has led some scholars to believe that Anselm, writing this apologetic work, harbored missionary hopes and even thought of converting the Muslims. 161 It is much more likely, however, that Anselm did not have any actual infidels in mind. It is especially unlikely that he intended to address the Muslims. 162 In all of his writings, he referred to them unambiguously only once, and his whole work betrays “very little interest in any real non-Christians. ” His apologetics were directed, rather, against “the disbelief of those who were at least nominal Christians. ” 163 But if these arguments suggest that Anselm was not really a missionary—and much less so a “missionary to the Arabs” 164 —they do not imply that he was an advocate of the seeming opposite, the new holy war. He showed neither much understanding nor much enthusiasm for the crusade. He may have been for some years largely unaware of the labor of “Gregorian” reformers and of the decrees of the Council of Clermont. 165 But this does not explain why his attitude toward the crusade remained “distinctly lukewarm” and why he did “little or nothing” to encourage lay participation in the crusade. There is no doubt that he knew about the crusade during his exile, when he spent some time at the papal court. Anselm's biographer and confidant, Eadmer, appears to have been uninterested in the new holy war as well. 166
In contrast to the Crusaders, who on the march toward Jerusalem blurred the distinction between the heavenly and the earthly cities, Anselm's life was dedicated to the heavenly Jerusalem alone. The earthly Jerusalem, which—as he put it—“is now not the vision of peace”, had little attraction for him. The important choice was between the heavenly Jerusalem as the vision of peace and the “carnage of the earthly Jerusalem in this world, which under whatever name was nothing but a vision
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160 Cf. Cur deus homo, Dedicatory letter to Pope Urban II; preface; I, i, iii–iv, vi, viii.
161 See Schwinges 1977, 58 ff., referring to J. Gauss, “Anselm von Canterbury und die Islamfrage”, Theologische Zeitschrift 19 (1963); id., “Anselm von Canterbury: Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen”, Saeculum 17 (1966). See also “Anselm von Canterburys Weg zur Begegnung mit Judentum und Islam”, in Gauss 1967.
162 Southern 1990, 199, 201; Abulafia 1995, 43. But Southern, loc. cit., and Morris 1991, 363, believe that Anselm targeted the Jews. Cf. Cur deus homo II, xxii.
163 Abulafia 1995, 43– 44.
164 Cf. Gauss 1967, 109.
165 Southern 1990, 255, 265 f., chap. 12
166 Tyerman 1988, 18–19. But see Cowdrey 1995, 727 n. 20, that Anselm rejoiced at the establishment of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem under Baldwin, with whom he is said to have been in close contact (Gauss 1967, 109).
of destruction. ” 167 In accord with this view, Anselm was even opposed to monks pilgrimaging to Jerusalem, since monks had opted for the heavenly Jerusalem and should not leave the cloister. “It is not permitted to wander without rule and [for an abbot] to send monks to Jerusalem or to go personally”, he argued. “This leads to shame and doom. ” 168 Not only religious obligations but also political duties took priority over the Crusade. Defending one's country came before assisting Christians in other regions. 169 Compared with striving for the peace of the heavenly City, worldly peace—peace in the “political sense”—held little significance in Anselm's view of the world. “In the light of that attitude it is scarcely surprising that he largely ignored the Crusade and found little to commend in Crusading endeavors. ” 170
As a war in the service of the Church, the Crusade was a theocratic rather than a theological war. 171 In the epoch-making social transformation of the eleventh century, the Church became the leading power within Christendom and began to dominate the course of temporal affairs. As we saw in the first chapter, an essential moment in the Church's ascendancy to pre-eminence was the radical change in ecclesiastical attitudes toward war and the military profession. It was this great spiritual turning point 172 that enabled the Church to employ in its service the material force of arms. It was now deemed meritorious to use arms at the Church's command to promote what was believed to be the “right order” in human society. 173 Holy war dispenses with human laws; yet the nature of holy war is such that its protagonists inextricably link a particular temporal order with God's intentions. 174 What they take to be God's intentions they are determined to enforce, by whatever means, as laws governing human lives. In this manner, the new Christian endorsement of warfare as a means to defend or establish the “right order” found its most clear and intense expression in holy war.
Not every holy war, however, is a crusade. The emergence of holy war from the spirit of the Church reform did not simply and automatically
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167 Epistola 117 (quoted in Hehl 1980, 12); Southern 1990, 169.
168 Epistola 195; quoted in Bredero 1994, 101. For a monk of Corbie, dissuading his master from joining the Second Crusade, the “Jerusalem here below may be likened to human intercourse with animals”; quoted ibid., 102.
169 See Hehl 1980, 13.
170 Brundage 1991, 178.
171 Cf. Dupront 1969, 45.
172 “[T]he greatest—from the spiritual point of view perhaps the only—turning point in the history of Catholic Christendom. ” Tellenbach 1991, 164.
173 Cowdrey 1976, 19.
174 Riley-Smith 1977, 16–17.
mean the birth of the crusade. In substantiating this claim, I contest the widely spread view that Urban II, by organizing the First Crusade, accomplished the reform program that Gregory VII had left unfinished. I argue that the crusade was not the offspring of the Church reform as represented by Gregory VII alone, but that it was a result of the eleventhcentury peace movement as adopted and carried through to its logical conclusions by Pope Urban II, himself a Church reformer. Between Gregory VII and Urban II, a crucial shift occurred in the Church's stance toward holy war.
FROM WAR FOR A PURE CHURCH TO WAR AGAINST
THE “PAGAN DIRT”: GREGORY VII AND URBAN II
Gregory VII played a key role in breaking with the traditional stance of the Church against waging war. 175 In his view, the layman's function was to fight against the enemies of the Church and the subverters of the right Christian order. 176 Gregory interpreted the notion of fideles— stretching it from the juridical meaning of vassal to mean one of the faithful—so that it assumed the sense of true soldier of St. Peter. Militarizing thus the traditional idea of the “faithful”, 177 he has been seen as propagating a “theology of armed action. ” 178 As the creator of the army of St. Peter, as the Pope who firmly believed that he had the right—moreover, the duty—to use not only the spiritual but also the material sword if that was what “our Holy Roman Mother Church” needed; 179 this “Monk of a daring and obstinate Spirit”, as Gibbon called him, has acquired a reputation as “one of the most energetic and pugnacious men ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. ” 180 Because he, “more than anyone before him, overcame the restraints that had in times past hindered the Church from preaching war and waging war”, he stands before our eyes as a “man of war” (Kriegsmann). 181 Even in his day, hostile contemporaries—for example, imperial polemicist Wido of Ferrara—accused Gregory VII of showing, from his youth, “zeal in secular militia. ” 182
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175 For a survey of historiographical literature on Gregory VII, see Robinson 1985. Cf. Kaufman 1990, 189 ff.
176 See chap. 1 n. 91.
177 Laarhoven 1959– 61, 92; Morris 1991, 146. See chap. 1 nn. 90, 157.
178 Douglas 1969, 101.
179 See chap. 1 n. 159.
180 Gibbon, “Outlines of the History of the World” (The English Essays, 168); Mayer 1993, 19.
181 Erdmann 1935, 165, cf. 135. For a different view, see Fliche 1920, 28, 35 f., 60.
182 Robinson 1978, 98. Cf. Erdmann 1935, chap. 8.
If Gregory VII passes for a Church militarist, and if Urban II is considered his successor and follower, was Urban a war-monger Pope? 183 I suggest that there was a substantial difference between the two Popes in this respect. 184 With regard to struggles and wars within the Christian world, Urban was reserved, restrained, and reconciliatory, even pacific. But when it came to wars outside Christendom, against Muslims in particular, his reservations and restraints fell away, in fact turned into their opposite: Urban II became the organizer of the First Crusade. 185 He was not one of those eleventh-century Popes of whom it has been said that they “employed armed force against their European enemies before they directed it against the infidels elsewhere. ” 186 He marked a break with such an attitude.
Mobilizing Christendom for the new holy war, Urban could build on Gregory's Christian militarism. 187 But despite this continuity, Urban is Gregory's inverse, his mirror image. The difference between the two Popes lies not so much in their relation to war as in their relation to holy war. Whereas Gregory was an innovator with regard to the Church's official attitude toward war, regarding holy war he was quite a traditionalist. It was Urban II who, in this respect, introduced novelties.
Gregory VII's vindication of the appropriateness of military force when needed by the Church derived from his concept of the Church. All true believers were members of the Church, “the body of true Christ”, as opposed to those outside it, “the body of the Devil. ” 188 Gregory's deep belief in God's active presence on earth was centered on the mystery of the Church, 189 and from this belief sprang his sense of the urgent need for ecclesiastical reform. His greatest concern as Pope—as he put it in a late apologia pro vita sua—was that the “Holy Church, the bride of Christ, our mistress and mother, should return to her true glory and stand free, chaste and catholic. ” 190 Everything was dependent on the
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183 Becker 1988, 307 ff.; Capitani 1992, 177, disputes the legitimacy of this question.
184 In opposition to the view prevalent among historians, I am following the interpretation in Becker 1988.
185 Becker 1988, 333. On Urban's dealings with Christian powers, see id. 1964, 113–254.
186 Morris 1991, 146.
187 Brundage 1976, 105.
188 See Gregory to Bishop Hermann of Metz, 15 March 1081, Register VIII,21 (p. 557); Correspondence, 172. Cf. Laarhoven 1959– 61, 38, for further expressions of this dichotomy.
189 Laarhoven 1959– 61, 37.
190 Gregory to all the faithful, July-November 1084, Epp. Vagantes no. 54.
Church, on its soundness, on its purity and liberty; everything and everyone—that is, all the faithful, whatever their station of life and profession—had to serve her. But because the Church, the bride of Christ, had been entrusted under the Petrine commission to St. Peter as the first Roman bishop, it was the Popes, as Peter's successors in Rome, who carried the heavy burden of caring for all the faithful by caring for the Church. This was Gregory's leading idea, from which it followed that as the head of the Roman Church, which “has never erred, nor ever, by the witness of the Scripture, shall err to all eternity”, the Pope could be judged by no one. 191 By the same token, the Pope, the vicar of St. Peter, had to judge everyone.
Given the Church's ultimate importance for salvation, which was the purpose of human life on earth, the Church was something one should be willing to fight for. If fighting was deemed necessary, the Pope in his supreme position—the highest within the Church and Christian society—had the right and duty to call on laymen to serve the Church in this manner. Waging war for the Church was intended to purify the Church from within and was directed against those within Christian society who had fallen away from the true faith. For Gregory, only war against the “ungodly” was licit. It could be authorized by the Pope alone and was ultimately an internal ecclesiastical affair.
With the newly and vigorously asserted primacy of the Holy See, errant Christians were, by definition, adversaries of the Pope. For Peter Damian, for example, the Pope, the Apostolic See, and the Roman Church were synonymous. “You are the Apostolic See, you are the Roman Church”, he wrote to the newly elected Gregory VII. 192 Therefore, obedience owed the Pontiff was absolute, and Peter declared as a heretic anyone who did not agree with the Roman Church, since it is the only church founded by Christ Himself. 193 Slightly reformulated, this view became one of the principles announced in Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae: “That he should not be considered as Catholic who is not in conformity with the Roman Church. ” 194 Bernard of Constance, one of the
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191 The Dictatus papae XXII, XIX [XVIIII], Register II,55a (pp. 207, 206).
192 Peter Damian Opuscula 20 (PL 145: 443). Cf. Morrison 1969, 287; Blumenthal 1988, 72.
193 See Actus Mediolani, de privilegio Romanae ecclesiae, ad Hildebrandum (PL 145: 91); Peter Damian to Cadalus, Epistolarum I, xx (PL 144: 241): “Praeterea si eos sacri canones haereticos notant, qui cum Romana ecclesia non concordant. ” Cf. Blumenthal 1988, 72; Tellenbach 1991, 116 n. 1.
194 “Quod catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae. ” Dictatus papae XXVI, Register II,55a (p. 207).
Gregorian controversialists, declared that the prescriptions of the Holy See had to be received as if they came from the mouth of St. Peter himself, and all Christians had to consider as enemies those who opposed the Pope. 195 Indeed, Gregory—who saw himself as exercising Papal authority jointly with St. Peter—believed that St. Peter spoke through the Pope's mouth. 196 In short, for Gregory VII and his supporters, obedience to the commands of the Holy See became the test of righteousness and of Catholic belief itself. 197 The Pope had the ultimate responsibility to counter those who had been turning “the Christian religion and the true faith which the son of God who came down from heaven taught us through the fathers” into “the evil custom [prauam consuetudinem] of this world. ” 198 One aspect of that “evil custom” was war for earthly gain and glory, which Gregory strongly condemned. “And if Holy Church imposes a heavy penalty upon him who takes a single human life”, he wrote, “what shall be done to those [princes] who send many thousands to death for the glory of this world?” 199 He contrasted such secular wars and the readiness for waging them to fighting for God, for which he saw no enthusiasm among his contemporaries: “Lo! many thousands of secular men go daily to their death for their lords; but for the God of heaven and our Redeemer they not only do not go to their death but they also refuse to face the hostility of certain men. And if there are some … who for love of Christ's law are determined to stand firm to the death in the face of the ungodly, they are not only not helped … but they are also considered to be foolish and of unsound judgement as if they were out of their minds. ” 200
Like the Pope himself, the leading Gregorians were preoccupied with the fight against straying Christians, against heretics and schismatics. 201 Anselm of Lucca, arguing that the Church had the right to persecutio, mentioned war against the Gentiles only once, without ascribing much importance to it. 202 Persecutio was to be directed against the “enemies
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195 Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum 6; quoted in Arquillière 1934, 329.
196 Cf. Gregory to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, 7 May 1078, Register V,21 (p. 385); to Bishop Hermann of Metz, 25 Aug. 1076, Register IV,2 (p. 293).
197 Morris 1991, 110.
198 Gregory to all the faithful, July-November 1084, Epp. vagantes no. 54.
199 Gregory to Hermann of Metz, 15 March 1081, Register VIII,21 (p. 559); Correspondence, 173. Cf. Gregory to Henry IV, Sept. 1075, Register III,7 (p. 257); Leyser 1965, 58.
200 Gregory to all the faithful, July-November 1084, Epp. vagantes no. 54.
201 Cf. Arquillière 1934, 312 ff.
202 Collectio canonum XIII,29 (Pásztor 1987, 421). Cf. Erdmann 1935, 228; Stickler 1947, 252.
of the Church” —heretics, schismatics, and excommunicates, and more specifically, unjust and schismatic bishops. 203 According to Bonizo of Sutri, Christian soldiers had to fight heretics and schismatics as well as rebels—those irreverent toward bishops—in order to impose ecclesiastical discipline. 204 Emperor Henry IV and his supporters were especially hated by the Gregorians. Manegold of Lautenbach, it is true, accepted that it was permissible and pleasing to God to kill pagans in defense of the Church. 205 But he argued that Henricians were more detestable than pagans. Thus, he who would defend justice by killing a Henrician would incur less guilt than if he had killed a pagan, because the magnitude of the Henrician's crime would offset the stain of homicide. 206
For Gregory VII and his supporters, pagans were not necessarily the worst imaginable creatures. When Christians were “bad”, they were regarded as worse than pagans. Gregory, for example, described his Italian neighbors—Romans, Lombards, and Normans—as worse than Jews and pagans. 207 This comparison can of course be seen as rhetorical. But as dissipatores ecclesiae, 208 those who weaken the Church from within, errant Christians were the Church reformers' first and foremost target.
Though war against pagans was of marginal importance in Gregory VII's outlook and played little part in his Pontifical action, 209 in 1074 he planned a military expedition to the east. In a number of letters he claimed that the Christians of Constantinople, “oppressed by frequent attacks of Saracens” and “daily being slain like so many sheep”, were urging him “to reach out our hands to them in succor. ” Thus he made the decision to “cross the sea” and lead an army “against the enemies of God and push forward even to the sepulchre of the Lord. ” 210 Gregory's plan came to nothing. There seems to be no evidence that it made an impact on his contemporaries, and it cannot really be regarded as a Crusading plan. 211
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203 Collectio canonum XII,44– 46,53,60,68–70 (Cushing 1998, 187–90, 192). Cf. Stickler 1947, 251.
204 Liber de vita Christiana II,43; VII,16,28; X,79. See also chap. 1 nn. 98, 171.
205 Ad Geberhardum liber,381, 399. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 218.
206 Ad Geberhardum liber,381.
207 Gregory to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, 22 Jan. 1075, Register II,49 (p. 189).
208 Cf. Anselm of Lucca Collectio canonum XII,53 (Cushing 1998, 189).
209 Erdmann 1935, 155, 246; Becker 1988, 315. Cf. Villey 1942, 62– 63; Daniel 1975, 250.
210 Gregory to Count William of Burgundy, 2 Feb. 1074, Register I,46 (pp. 70–71), Correspondence, 23; to Henry IV, 7 Dec. 1074, Register II,31 (p. 166), Correspondence, 57; to Countess Matilda of Tuscany, after 16 Dec. 1074, Epp. vagantes no. 5. For a detailed treatment, see especially Cowdrey 1982. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 149 ff., 275; Delaruelle 1980, 90 f.; Becker 1988, 294 ff.
211 Riley-Smith 1977, 75.
It is true that this was the first instance of the idea of a Papally directed military expedition to the Near East. 212 But Gregory VII's “Oriental project” was actually, in the first instance, directed against Normans in southern Italy who were threatening both the Papacy and the Greek Empire. He was trying to bring together a substantial “force of fighting men” to intimidate his Norman enemies, so they would be “the more easily won over to the right side. ” And once the Normans were pacified, Gregory explained to Count William of Burgundy, “we may cross over in aid” of the eastern Christians. The “Oriental project” was only “another advantage” that might result from Gregory's confrontation with the Normans. 213 Although the project contained some elements and motives of the later Crusade, it lacked such essential Crusade characteristics as indulgences, taking the vow, and the resulting protection for Crusaders. 214 And whereas the notion of the “service of Christ” was pivotal in Urban II's Crusade, Gregory's project rested on the idea of the “service of St. Peter”, a leading idea of his Church reform. 215 In sum, the “Oriental project” of 1074 does not support the view that Gregory VII was either the originator of the crusade or Urban II's predecessor in this matter. 216
In contrast to Urban's thinking, the conflict between Christians and Muslims was not in the forefront of Gregory's thoughts. From the perspective of what was to come with the Crusades, his attitude toward Muslims may be described as entailing an “astonishing 'tolerance.'” 217 Such tolerance, to be sure, is not characteristic of all the views Gregory expressed about Muslims. Those views were “far from simple or uniform;” 218 in fact, their complexity and variety are in themselves significant, for with the launching of the Crusade, simplicity and one-dimensionality were to prevail. On the one hand, Gregory described the Muslims as 'pagani' 219 or lumped them together with pagani, 220 a term
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212 Brundage 1969, 27; Mayer 1993, 20; Riley-Smith 1993a, 8.
213 See Gregory to Count William of Burgundy, 2 Feb. 1074, Register I,46 (pp. 70– 71), Correspondence, 23; Fliche 1920, 42; Douglas 1969, 159; Cowdrey 1982, 30–31; 1983, 122 ff.
214 Riley-Smith 1977, 75; Cowdrey 1982, 40; Becker 1988, 300.
215 Mayer 1993, 20; Riley-Smith 1993a, 8.
216 Fliche 1920, 41, 46; Becker 1988, 295 n. 46.
217 Becker 1988, 293.
218 Cowdrey 1988, 489.
219 For example, Gregory to the French barons, 30 Apr. 1073, Register I,7 (p. 11); Gregory's summons to defend Constantinople, 1 March 1074, Register I,49 (p. 75); Gregory to Emperor Henry IV, 7 Dec. 1074, Register II,31 (p. 166). Cf. Hettinger 1993, 171.
220 Gregory to Countess Beatrice, 16 Oct. 1974, Register II,9 (p. 139); to all the faithful, July-November 1084, Epp. vagantes no. 54.
that was, in the Christian language, loaded with distinctively polemical connotations. 221 Occasionally he used conventional expressions like “impious Saracens. ” 222 But on the other hand, Gregory was “drawn beyond habitual limits of his thinking. ” 223 The most remarkable case in point is his letter to the Hammadite emir an-Nasir, but also relevant are Gregory's letters to North African Christians and those touching on the affairs of Sicily and Spain.
The complexities of Gregory's correspondence with North Africa are 0an intriguing subject I cannot broach here, 224 except to note the lack of anything resembling the “crusade idea. ” 225 In the letter he sent to the clergy and the Christian people of Carthage, Gregory exhorted them to patiently and fearlessly suffer persecution in imitation of Christ. Moreover, he reminded them that St. Paul had taught obedience to worldly powers—if only to impress on the Christians of Carthage that they should be so much more obedient to their bishop, whom they had denounced to the Muslim authorities. 226 In a twin letter to the bishop of Carthage, the Pope expressed his compassion for the unfortunate bishop for the suffering caused him by the “pagans” and pseudo-Christians of his church. Praising the bishop's steadfastness in his tribulations, the Pope exhorted him to maintain his witness for the faith, implying that death was the most precious confession of Christian religion. Had the Carthagian bishop died at the hands of the Saracens, his death would have demonstrated “their error. ” 227 These words can be read as indicating that Gregory VII hoped for conversion of the Saracens. 228 Be that as it may, he certainly hoped for better times for Christianity in Africa. 229
As the Pope wrote to the Christian community of Bidjaya (Bougie), had the African Christians ceased to be “false sons of the Church” 230 and ended their factional struggles, they could have induced their Saracen neighbors, by their exemplary lives, to emulate the Christian faith
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221 Schwinges 1977, 135; on pagani, 90 ff., 136. Cf. Kedar 1984, 57.
222 Gregory to Bishop Berengar of Gerona, 2 Jan. 1079, Register VI,16 (p. 421).
223 Cowdrey 1998, 494.
224 See Courtois 1945; Hettinger 1993, chap. 4.
225 Becker 1988, 293 (specifically referring to Gregory's letter to Archbishop Cyriacus of Carthage, June 1076, Register III,19 [p. 285]).
226 Gregory to the clergy and people of Carthage, 15 Sept. 1073, Register I,22 (pp. 37–38).
227
228 Kedar 1984, 56.
229 Cf. Gregory to Archbishop Cyriacus of Carthage, June 1076, Register III,19 (p. 285).
230 Gregory to Bishop Cyriacus of Carthage, 15 Sept. 1073, Register I,23 (p. 39).
rather than hold it in contempt. 231 But Gregory may also have realized that political circumstances in North Africa were favorable to Christianity—both in Africa and Sicily. An-Nasir was in conflict with the Zirids (who ruled in Mahdia), against whom the Normans, under papal auspices, fought for the reconquest of Sicily. 232 An-Nasir made overtures to the Pope, releasing a number of Christian captives, sending him gifts, and requesting that the Pope ordain a bishop in “the province of Mauretania. ” In response, Gregory sent to the emir his famous letter: “God, the creator of all, without whom we can do or even think nothing that is good, has inspired your heart; he who enlightens every man who comes into the world [ John 1.9] has enlightened your mind in this purpose”, Gregory wrote. “For Almighty God, who wills all men be saved and none to perish [cf. 1 Tim 2.4], approves nothing in us more fully than that, after his love for God, a man should love his fellow men and that what he would not have done to himself he should do to no one else [cf. Mt 7.12]. Such charity as this, we and you owe to our own more particularly than to other peoples; for we believe and confess one God, albeit in different way, and we daily praise and revere him as the creator of the ages and the governor of this world. For as the Apostle says, 'He is our peace, who makes both one' [Eph 2.14]. ” After asking an-Nasir to receive favorably an embassy from Rome, the Pope concluded the letter: “For God knows, that we love you sincerely to the honour of God, and that we desire your welfare and prosperity in the present life and in that to come; and we beseech with our heart and lips that, after long continuance in this life, God will bring you into the blessedness of the bosom of the most holy patriarch Abraham. ” 233
The question, of course, is what to make of these words. Some see the key to the letter to an-Nasir in the Mahdia campaign and portray Gregory VII as a skillful politician. 234 The letter could also be regarded as a “masterful exercise in ambiguity. ” 235 But such ambiguity would have been incompatible with the Crusade, and if we look at the Crusade as the crowning event of the eleventh century, the spirit that animates Greg-
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231 Gregory to the clergy and people of Buzea (Bougie), May [or June] 1076, Register III,20 (pp. 286– 87).
232 See Courtois 1945; Cowdrey 1977.
233 Gregory to Anazir, King of Mauretania, [1076], Register III,21 (p. 288); trans. in Cowdrey 1998, 493–94.
234 Courtois 1945, 224, 226 (speaking of Gregory's “savant opportunisme”). On the Mahdia campaign, see chap. 1 n. 232.
235 Kedar 1984, 57.
ory's letter is very strange indeed, and his expression of goodwill quite remarkable. 236 If Gregory was insincere, his insincerity was knowledgeable and respectful enough to point out the monotheism of Islam, to speak of “God” (not Christ, whom Islam does not recognize as God), and to mention Abraham, whom Muslims venerate. Favorable assessments of Gregory's letter to an-Nasir expostulate that the Pope formulated a possible meeting point between Christianity and Islam (and that he did so as clearly as was possible in the Latin Middle Ages), and represent him as having made “a conscious effort to communicate with Islam”, or even to establish peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims. 237 Even in the case of Sicily, where Gregory supported war against the “pagans”, he admonished the reconquerors to refrain from major offences (capitalibus criminibus) and, rather, to think carefully about how to make Christianity (christiani nominis culturam) appear as imposing to the “pagans. ” 238 This would suggest that Gregory wanted the two religions to “quietly coexist” and that Christians should “by their faith and works” win their faith a “good report in Muslim eyes. ” 239
With regard to Spain, Gregory was not overly enthusiastic about the Reconquista. 240 The Saracen possession of Spain, to be sure, he considered a violation of the lawful right of St. Peter—that is, the Pope—to that land. As he put it, “the kingdom of Spain has from ancient times appertained to St. Peter. ” 241 But Gregory considered the wresting of that country from “the hands of pagans” preferable to pagan occupation only if the victorious Christian barons would restore the exercise of the Papal right over Spain. For Gregory, Christian power as such was not an unqualified good. It was valuable and acceptable only if it was just, and injustice inflicted by pagans was more bearable than injustice done by Christians. Thus he made it clear to the would-be French reconquistadores that “unless you determine to attack that kingdom under a just agreement to uphold the rights of St. Peter, we would rather lay our interdict upon your attempt to go thither than that our holy and universal Mother Church should suffer the same wrongs from her own children
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236 Kedar 1984, 57.
237 Schwinges 1977, 135; Becker 1988, 294; Daniel 1993, 46– 47. Cf. Delaruelle 1980, 73–74 n. 91.
238 Gregory to Archbishop Arnald of Acerenza, 14 March 1076, Register III,11 (p. 272).
239 Cowdrey 1998, 490.
240 Becker 1988, 288.
241 Gregory to the French barons, 30 Apr. 1073, Register I,7 (p. 11); Correspondence, 6. Cf. Cowdrey 1998, 468.
as from her enemies. ” 242 Gregory VII also wrote that the Christian religion in Spain had suffered not only at the hands of the Saracens; it was brought low “after the kingdom of Spain had been long polluted by the madness of the Priscillians, degraded by the treason of the Arians and separated from the Roman ritual, through the invasion first of the Goths and then of the Saracens. ” 243
Here Gregory spoke of the Saracens as neither polluting nor mad and treasonable. Elsewhere Gregory conceded that “these men, so far as faith is given them, observe their own laws, even though in this age they are of no avail for the salvation of souls and are not given lustre and confirmation by such miracles as those by which the Eternal King frequently gives his testimony to our law. ” Again, this may be regarded as a mere rhetorical device to blacken those Christians who had turned the Christian religion into an “evil custom” and reduced it “to a laughing-stock not only of the devil but also of Jews, Saracens, and pagans. ” 244 But even such rhetoric, not to speak of Gregory's diplomatic “ambiguity”, was obliterated by his successors. With the Crusade winning the day, a different language prevailed. Gregory's political opportunism— or realism—exemplified by his dealing with an-Nasir, was succeeded by holy war. His attitude toward the Muslims was thus destined to remain “unparalleled almost until modern times. ” 245
The reality of “their own inadequate numbers” may indeed have compelled Christians in the “Crusader states”, such as William of Tyre, to adopt a “broader tolerance toward neighbouring Moslems than was understood in the West. ” 246 But in the Latin West Gregory VII's position remained exceptional. Moreover, if William of Tyre stands out as a prime example of Christian “tolerance” in the occupied Middle East, 247 Gregory's exceptionalism was not confined to the West. The idea of William's “tolerance” can only be taken with a grain of salt. In his 'History of Deeds' William was apparently doing no more than “rehashing, with some material derived at second hand from Christian Arabic sources,
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242 Gregory to the French barons, pp. 11–12.
243 Gregory to the kings of León and Castile, 19 March 1074, Register I,64 (p. 93); Correspondence, 29.
244 Gregory to all the faithful, July-November 1084, Epp. vagantes no. 54. Cf. n. 198.
245 Rousset de Pina 1952, 178; Daniel 1975, 251; 1993, 136. Gregory VII's formulation about unum Deum in his letter to an-Nasir resembles the position taken by the Second Vatican Council. Cf. Hettinger 1993, 167 n. 108.
246 Purcell 1975, 11.
247 As argued in Schwinges 1977.
the accepted western ideas. ” 248 He seems to have been better informed, rather than more “open-minded”, than his contemporaries in the Latin West. The language he used to describe his Muslim neighbors' religion does not strike us as particularly “tolerant. ” For William of Tyre, Muhammad was the “first born son of Satan” who had “falsely declared that he was a prophet sent from God. ” The “poisonous seed” Muhammad had sown had “so permeated the provinces that his successors employed sword and violence, instead of preaching and exhortation, to compel the people … to embrace the erroneous tenets of the prophet. ” 249 Such comments about the Muslims support the observation that war against the unbelievers was the one theme that ran through William of Tyre's famous History. 250 Tolerant or not, William was a representative of a world whose horizons had been drawn by Urban II, not by Gregory VII.
The Crusade was Urban's, not Gregory's, war. Urban II was a lukewarm Gregorian with regard to war inside the Church and within Christendom. 251 When, however, it came to war against external enemies, those outside the Church and Christendom, he was not a Gregorian at all. Whereas Gregory had confined holy war to Christendom and directed it against the Church's internal enemies, Urban conceived of it as war of the whole of Christendom against its external enemies. 252 Gregory was a Kriegsmann, a Christian militarist; Urban was a man of peace. Gregory could imagine war as well as peace, that is, normal relations, with the Muslims; the peacemaking Urban was driven to holy war against them.
Urban II's contribution to the invention of the crusade has been discussed elsewhere. 253 Suffice it to say here that his primary contribution was “to bring together a number of accepted and relatively popular ideas in a new form, one that had good fortune to achieve a spectacular 7and impressive success. ” 254 He organized those ideas into a theologicohistorical scheme and thus gave meaning to actual developments in the Christian world, successfully channeling their further course. 255 Of key
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248 Morris 1991, 286.
249 History of Deeds I, i (1: 60).
250 Edbury and Rowe 1990, 167.
251 Becker 1988, 324.
252 Cf. Erdmann 1935, 284; Vismara 1974, 73.
253 See especially Erdmann 1935, chap. 10; Cowdrey 1970b; Delaruelle 1980, 99 ff.; Becker 1988; Cole 1991, chap. 1; Riley-Smith 1993a, chap. 1.
254 Brundage 1976, 105.
255 Becker 1988, 273, 331, 333 ff., 351–53, 376.
importance here, it bears repeating, is that Urban II was a peacemaking Pope. 256 The new holy war is unimaginable without the peace movement. Urban II linked the two inextricably together. 257 He understood, and helped others understand, that peace was a crucial condition of the crusade and that the crusade was the realization of peace: Christian peace—peace in Christendom, by Christendom, and for Christendom.
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256 Ibid., 277 ff., 330.
257 Keen 1987, 97.
THREE
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADE
Christendom, Christianitas, was the form of Western unity that emerged in the High Middle Ages. Medieval writers spoke of Christendom when they talked about themselves and their civilization. 1 People described themselves as inhabitants of Christendom when they wished to refer to the “limits of a society larger than their village or parish, county or diocese, or kingdom. ” 2 Christendom was the most common term for the lands inhabited by Latin Christians, designating “a community of powers and nations united by their shared religion”, or simply, “Christian society. ” 3 Medieval thinkers invested the idea of Christendom with their hopes for temporal as well as spiritual unity in this world. 4
The term 'Christianitas', however, has a longer history than the self-conscious social body of Latin Christians to which it refers. 5 It was during the Pontificate of John VIII, in the second half of the ninth century, that the term began to be used more frequently and to acquire the social meaning of a “temporal Christian society animated and vivified by the spiritual Christian society. ” 6 For John VIII, however, this unitary society of Christians was fundamentally (if not merely) mystical. His con-
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1 Van Engen 1986, 539. Cf. Chabod 1991, 29.
2 Hay 1953, 1.
3 Ladner 1983, 490; Housley 1992, 454; Katzir 1992, 4; Bartlett 1993, 252.
4 See Chabod 1991, 33.
5 For the origins of the term, see Rupp 1939, chap. 1.
6 Rupp 1939, 35, 41, 47. Cf. Vismara 1974, 31, 33.
cept of Christianitas was vague; it was synonymous with the notion of the Church as the mystical body of Christ 7 and did not exceed the meaning of the unity of creed, that is, Christianity, christianismus. 8 For almost two centuries after John's death in 882, the word Christianitas was by and large in eclipse, only to reappear with the eleventh-century reform Papacy. 9 In Gregory VII's statements the use of the term increased, but the idea of Christendom was still not clearly articulated. 10 From Gregory VII onward, 'Christianitas' and related words occurred much more frequently, and it is in that period that the term began to achieve its “true significance. ” 11 The heyday of Christianitas coincided with the rise of the Papal monarchy, and the idea of Christendom finally “triumphed” 12 under the pontificate of Innocent III, perhaps the mightiest of Papal monarchs. This idea lay at the center of Innocent's political outlook and actions. 13
One finds the full articulation of the notion of christianitas in crusading chronicles, where the word was in common use. 14 This is understandable once we realize that the concept of Christendom was the first to take shape among the various preconditions of the crusading movement—as well as the last to vanish. 15 A precondition of the crusade, the concept of Christendom was realized with the Crusade. 16 The launching of the Crusade can be seen as marking the symbolic point when Christendom became “a living reality”, when it was transformed into what could be called a society. 17
“Christendom (and the idea of Christendom) found its most potent expression in the Crusade; the Crusade exalted Christendom, carried it to its highest point of fervor. ” 18 Christendom and the crusade came into existence together: They were “made together, in a reciprocal creation. ” 19
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10
11 Ladner 1983, 490.
12 Rupp 1939, 4; Laarhoven 1959– 61, 7, 9.
13
14 Laarhoven 1959– 61, 98; Morris 1991, 152.
15 Housley 1992, 454.
16 Rupp 1939, 73; Delaruelle 1980, 108.
17 Fliche 1929, 314; Rupp 1939, 91 n. 1.
18 Rousset 1963, 191. Cf. Laarhoven 1959– 61, 76.
19 Dupront 1959, 274.
7 Vismara 1974, 26 ff., especially 29. The same may be said of Jonas of Orleans who, about half a century earlier, used the term christianitas a few times as a synonym for the mystical “universal Church. ” Jonas Le métier du roi IX (lines 5, 28); XI (lines 54–55). Cf. chap. 2 n. 99.
8 Rupp 1939, 52; Delaruelle 1980, 32. For the terms christianitas and christianismus, cf. Rousset 1963, 195 ff.; Hay 1968, 22.
9 Rupp 1939, 53. For Leo IX's use of the term, cf. Morrison 1969, 283.
Christendom had now developed beyond a simple identity with the creed and liturgy of Christianity to become a dynamic social reality, a worldly force. It was a militant community of Christians whose thoughts and will were directed toward the Holy Land and consumed with the struggle against the Muslims, who were now considered the “enemies of God and holy Christendom. ” 20 Christianitas was populus Christianus, the Christian people, united under the supreme authority of the Pope. The “papal authority over the populus christianus constituted the reality we call christianitas. ” 21 The Christian people bound together as Christendom had a common worldly pursuit and a common army and were fighting for the Christian res publica, the common weal. 22 Christendom was the Christian world on a military march against paganism. 23
The creation of holy Christendom, sainte Chrestienté, through holy war and the formation of its identity in holy war should be seen from two complementary perspectives: the unification of Latin Christians and the polarization between them and the outside world. The first was a logical development of the peace movement's striving for Christian unity. The second was the product of the construction of a common enemy, the foundations for which were also laid by the eleventh-century peacemakers.
THE FIRST WESTERN UNION:
A COMMON FRONT AGAINST THE PAGANS
Latin Christians found their way to themselves as Christendom through peacemaking. The collective entity that was to become Christendom had begun to show recognizable traits in the Peace of God and, especially, the Truce of God endeavors. 24 Christendom was “an immense Pax. ” 25 As we have seen in chapter 1, the canons of the peace council of Narbonne declared that “no Christian should kill another Christian, for whoever kills a Christian undoubtedly sheds the blood of Christ. ” 26 Pope Urban II
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20 Rousset 1963, 191; “Turci inimici Dei et sanctae christianitatis”: Gesta Francorum VI, xiii.
21 Kempf 1960, 115 n. 32; cf. 119: “die Christianitas war im Grunde nicht anderes als der lebendige Bezug zwischen dem päpstlichen Führer und der christlichen Gefolgschaft. ” The language used here is probably a deliberate allusion to the Nazi movement.
22 Kempf 1960, 115 n. 32; cf. 119: “die Christianitas war im Grunde nicht anderes als der lebendige Bezug zwischen dem päpstlichen Führer und der christlichen Gefolgschaft. ” The language used here is probably a deliberate allusion to the Nazi movement.
23 Schwinges 1977, 8.
24 Cf. Bredero 1994, 124.
25 Cf. Delaruelle 1969, 59.
26 See chap. 1 n. 215.
built on the achievements of the peace movement and brought the movement to completion. He renewed the precepts of the Council of Narbonne by generalizing them. 27 But in Urban's preaching at the crusading peace council of Clermont, the image of the shedding of Christian blood, which had moved the Church dignitaries at Narbonne to prohibit canonically Christians' killing Christians, took on a broader scope.
Like his peacemaking predecessors, Urban II condemned fratricidal wars in the West. But, as reported by Baldric of Dol, he also pressed hard on the minds of his listeners the “great hurt and dire sufferings” of eastern Christians, calling them “our brothers, members of Christ's body. ” Oriental Christians were Latin Christians' “blood-brothers”, “born from the same womb as you, for you are sons of the same Christ and the same Church. ” Their suffering at the hands of the Muslims, of which the Pope spoke, was as intolerable as inter-Christian violence in the West, because in both cases Christian blood was spilled. Effunditur sanguis Christianus, Christi sanguine redemptus, the Pope said, referring to Jerusalem, Antioch, and the other cities of the East: “Christian blood, redeemed by the blood of Christ, has been shed. ” So he believed, or at least wanted his audience to believe. To further impress his audience, Urban added a vivid image: “Christian flesh, akin to Christ's flesh, is delivered up to execrable abuses and appalling servitude. ” 28 His articulation of this blood brotherhood—the founding of Christian unity in blood 29 — was itself pregnant with the spilling of blood.
The vision of suffering eastern Christians broadened what was expected from western Christians. Ending the shedding of Christian blood now required more than peace among Christians: it called for war against their enemies. Peace and war were intimately linked—not in war for peace but in a war of peace. The peace Urban II was intent to bring to Christians did not mean demilitarization (to use a term from our own times), but an escalation of militarization by redirecting military activity to the world outside. Christendom had been a fortress long before
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27 Rousset 1945, 195.
28 Baldric of Dol Historia Jerosolimitana I, iv (p. 13); trans. in Peters 1989, 6; RileySmith 1993a, 145.
29 Cf. Bartlett 1993, 251–2, speaking of “the 'ethnization' of Christianity”, that is, of the Christians' “adopting the terms of race and blood to describe their group identity. ” This tendency became prominent in the High Middle Ages and triumphed with the expulsion of the Muslims and Jews from Spain after the fall of Granada in 1492 (when “a blood racism of the modern kind” was born, as opposed to the “almost entirely cultural” medieval language of race). Ibid., 197, 241– 42.
anxiety about “fortress Europe” was voiced in our own days. 30 Christendom's peace was peace in the Christian citadel, which meant war to those outside the walls: Intus pax, foris terrores. 31 Turning the internecine wars among Christians into the new Christian holy war created, out of the internally torn Christians, the unity of Christendom. The crusading army may indeed be called “the first Western union”, and the formation of this army actually marked “a spectacular advance toward European peace and unity. ” 32 The crusade gave peace and unity to Christendom. 33
This peace and unity were of a dual nature. Interpreted negatively, they called for a kind of passivity: the renunciation of fratricidal wars. Interpreted positively and actively, they found expression in struggle against a common enemy. Peace commended the Christian brotherhood, fraternité, 34 to go to war against those who were not of the Christian family. Thus Christian society became conscious of itself through mobilization for holy war. “When Christendom becomes conscious of itself as a political-religious body, there is war. The crusade appears, thus, as Christendom's becoming conscious. ” 35 War made by “holy Christendom” could only be holy, and that holy undertaking was the common work of western Christians. In its intentions and mythic self-perception, the Crusade was an expression of the Christian unity that it was also creating. 36
Urban II's crusading propaganda was based on the idea of the “community of the whole Christendom” directed against the pagans, and the
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30 For a radical-democratic critique of “fortress Europe” in the name of a wished-for “Social or Citizens' Europe”, see Delanty 1995, 14. The idea of Christendom as a fortress was not alien to Komensky. Even the meekest of European pacifists could imagine Western unity only as “a common bastion of Christianity against every outward enemy. ” Comenius The Angel of Peace, 49.
31 Delaruelle 1969, 59, 61.
32 Strayer, “The First Western Union”, in Strayer 1971, 334. I see no irony in Strayer labeling the crusading warfare the first, peacemaking unification of the West. He admired “the courage of our ancestors and the vision of the great Popes of the late eleventh century”, who could, in a poor, backward, and disunited “Europe”, “dream of attacking the most dangerous of their adversaries, the Mahommedans. ” Gibbon had seen “the folly and Glory of the first Crusade” as a Great Event which “rouzed Europe from its long and profound Lethargy. ” “Outlines of the History of the World” (The English Essays, 170). For the contribution of the reform Papacy to the unification of the West (not “Europe”), see Tellenbach 1947.
33 Rousset 1945, 147, 196.
34 Cf. ibid., 135, 173.
35 Ibid. Cf. Arquillière 1939, 150–51.
36 “Dans son intention et son mythe, la Croisade est réalité de l'unité. ” Alphandéry 1959, 199. Cf. Rousset 1945, 171; Purcell 1975, 8.
Crusade was a massive assault, a common front against the pagans. 37 The battle cry changed. Instead of fighting for the “defense of the Church”, Christians now fought for the “liberation of Christendom”; 38 libertas was substituted for defensio. 39 Contemporary sources that discuss the new holy war abound with the words 'libertas' and 'liberatio', and 'liberatio' was the word most frequently used by Pope Urban when he preached the Crusade. 40 It encompassed the liberation of people, that is, the baptized members of the eastern Churches, as well as the liberation of territory, the holy places. Where there was blood —the blood of Christ uniting all the Christians— there also had to be soil: the soil sanctified by Christ's blood.
The Christians, equal in Christ, brothers in faith, went to war for liberty. The change of the Phrygian cap for the crown of martyrdom and the tricolore for the Cross had become a matter of histoire événementielle. Fresh ground was broken in the eleventh-century. Central to this shift was the creation of a common enemy: the construction of the Muslims as the normative enemies of Christianity and Christendom.
MAKING THE MUSLIM THE 'ENEMY'
Pagans and Barbarians had always inhabited the Christian imaginary world, and waging wars against them had been common in the centuries preceding the Crusades. When, with the Arab expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries, the Muslims reached the European peninsula, they became in the Latin Christians' eyes one among those pagan, or infidel, barbarians. Among the host of Christian enemies they were assigned no privileged place. Western Christians, then, saw neither the Muslims nor their faith as a special threat to the Christian religion. They certainly did not speak of the “military apostleship” of the Muslims, 41 nor of Islam as a religion that “unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, … unashamedly came with a sword. ” 42 Such commonplaces emerged and took root later in Western history and, as the two twentieth-century opinions I have just quoted testify, have not yet been
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37 Erdmann 1935, 306, 321; Villey 1942, 110, 181; Rousset 1945, 21, 67; Vismara 1974, 76.
38 Erdmann 1935, 306. For Pope Urban II the crusade was “a war of liberation. ” Riley-Smith 1993a, 17.
39 Cf. Vismara 1974, 64 n. 186.
40 Riley-Smith 1993a, 17–18. Cf. Erdmann 1932, 404–5; Schwinges 1977, 232 ff.
41 Pirenne 1939, 19.
42 Runciman 1991, 1: 15.
uprooted. The Latin Christians' early response to the Muslims, though not friendly, was very moderate in tone, especially in comparison with the language that was to develop with the crusade. 43
The mild Christian response is well illustrated in the most significant source of information about the Frankish kingdoms between the late sixth and the early eighth centuries, the Merovingian Chronicle of Fredegar, probably written in the mid-seventh century. 44 Here, Sarracleni, or Saraceni, are first mentioned in Biblical genealogies as descendants of Sem: as an oriental people with their own language. 45 Later in this chronicle they appear as the offspring of Ishmael, Abraham's first-born son by his Egyptian maid Hagar. From there came their name: “Ishmaelites, and then Agarens, later still Saracens. ” 46 From the times of Josephus, this was the conventional genealogy of the Arabs, most often called Saracens by their medieval contemporaries in the Latin West. 47 The convention did not die off with the waning of the Middle Ages. An anonymous author of a pamphlet published in London around 1515, for example, wrote that Machamet “was of the kynred of Ismael that was Abrahams sone & he begate hym on Arage [sic] his chamberee. And therfore the sarasyns ben called Ismahelytes and some Agaren and some of Agar. ” 48 A distant echo of that genealogy was still to be found in Voltaire, who regretted that the Saracens had not been made to be descendants of Sarah, Abraham's lawful wife, which would have made a neater etymology. 49
When Fredegar moved from sacred history to histoire événementielle, he recorded that in the time of Emperor Heraclius (610– 41) the “ Agarrini, who are also called Saracini”, 50 had grown “so numerous that at last they took up arms and threw themselves upon the provinces of the Emperor” and defeated the imperial army. Of great interest is the chron-
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43 Southern 1962, 16; Kritzeck 1964, 15–16; Daniel 1975, chap. 1; Schwinges 1977, 98; Finucane 1983, 147 f.
44 On “Fredegar” and the chronicle known by this name, see Collins 1996. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill 1960; Rotter 1986, chap. 3.
45 Fredegar Chronicarum I,6, 9.
46 Ibid., II,2.
47 Finucane 1983, 148; Rotter 1986, 1. Cf. Josephus 'Jewish Antiquities' I, x,5; I, xii,2 ff.
48 Quoted in Beckingham 1976, 608.
49 “J'aurais voulu qu'on eût fait descendre les Sarrasins de Sara, l'étymologie aurait été plus nette. ” Dictionnaire philosophique (Oeuvres compl., 17: 76).
50 Fredegarii Chronicorum IV,66. Fredegar falsely attributed this naming to Orosius's 'Historiarum adversus paganos', which has led Sénac 1983, 14, to conclude that Fredegar did not contribute to the advancement of knowledge about the Muslims, for he used “un text déjà vieux de deux siècles. ”
icler's explanation of the battle of Yarmuk, 636, which opened the way for the Saracens to take possession of Jerusalem. He reports that the night before the battle “the army of Heraclius was smitten by the sword of God [gladius Dei]. ” Gladius Dei here may indeed have been a Latin rendering for Saif Allah, the surname of one of the Arab commanders, Halid b. al-Walid, 51 but it is next to impossible that either the chronicler himself or his medieval readers would have thought of that. The Saracens, rather, won that battle with God's help as a punishment for Emperor Heraclius's sins. He had embraced a heresy and married his own niece. The emperor finished his days in agony, tormented with fever, while the Saracens continued to ravish the empire during the brief reign of his son, Constantine III. 52 During the rule of Constantine III's successor, Constans II (641– 68), the Saracens captured Jerusalem and many other cities, 53 swept over upper and lower Egypt, took and plundered Alexandria, and quickly occupied the whole of Afreca. The empire had lost vast territories, and the emperor became a tributary of the Saracens. 54
The Saracen conquests are represented by the chronicler as secular wars —no different from the many other wars he recorded— and spoken of in an objective mode. He did not vilify the Saracens and came nowhere near calling them “dogs”, as he did the Slavic Wends. 55 And the closest he came to talking about the invaders' religion was to mention circumcision. 56 His lack of curiosity about the Saracens in general, and about their religion in particular, was also characteristic of the travelogues of pilgrims, whose journeying to the Holy Land had not been prevented by the Arab conquests. Moreover, on the rare occasions when the pilgrims noted religious differences between Christians and Saracens, they did not represent them as the basis for condemning the Saracens. Rather, they left behind a picture of an apparently undisturbed Christian religious life and of coexistence of the two religions, a feature of which was that Christians and Saracens in some cases shared a church. 57 Bishop Arculf, for example, who visited the holy places around 680, reported that “the unbelieving Saracens” had built themselves a “church”
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51 Rotter 1986, 158.
52 Fredegarii Chronicorum IV,66. For an explanation of confusing geographical names appearing in this narrative, see Rotter 1986, 159–70.
53 In fact, Jerusalem had by then already been in Saracen hands.
54
55 Ibid., IV,68. Cf. n. 136.
56 “Gens circumcisa. ” Fredegarii Chronicorum IV,66.
57 See Rotter 1986, chap. 1; cf. Rotter 1979 (republished with some changes as chap. 4 in id. 1986). On sharing churches, cf. Patzelt 1978, 199.
in Damascus, the royal city of the Saracen “king”, and a “praying house” in Jerusalem. 58 He said this in about as many words, and in a neutral tone.
The manner in which early medieval chroniclers spoke of the Saracens became harsher, however, when the Arab expansion reached the Frankish lands. Having taken possession of Spain in 711, they began to make inroads into Gaul in 714. In 719, they conquered Septimania and advanced into Aquitaine and Provence. In 721, they were defeated before Toulouse but scored military successes elsewhere in southern France later in the 720s. In 733, an army led by Emir 'Abdarrahman came as far as Tours but was routed by Charles Martel near Poitiers. 59 Modern historians have constructed a myth presenting this victory as having saved Christian Europe from the Muslims. 60 Edward Gibbon, for example, called Charles Martel the savior of Christendom and the battle near Poitiers an encounter that changed the history of the world. Without Martel's victory, he wrote in a memorable phrase, “[p]erhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. ” 61 This myth has survived well into our own times. Haskins, the first professional American medievalist, mentioned that a student of his had written: “we should all be polygamous Mohammedan Turks instead of Christians worshipping the one true God” without Charles Martel's victory. 62 Even today, Poitiers is an indispensable ingredient of European ideology. 63
Contemporaries of the battle, however, did not overstate its significance. The continuators of Fredegar's chronicle, who probably wrote in the mid-eighth century, 64 pictured the battle as just one of many military encounters between Christians and Saracens—moreover, as only one in a series of wars fought by Frankish princes for booty, power, and ter-
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58 Adamnani de locis sanctis libri tres; quoted in Rotter 1986, 39. Using this source, Bede, De locis sanctis xvii, wrote that “the king of the Saracens” “established and consecrated” a “church” in Damascus. In the Nomina regionum IX,2, Bede called that building a “basilica. ”
59 The year usually given for this battle (sometimes called the Battle of Tours) is 732. I follow Roy and Deviosse 1966, 207, and Cardini 1981, 269, who accept the year 733, in agreement with M. Baudot, “Localisation et datation de la première victoire remportée par Charles Martel contre les musulmans”, Recueils des travaux offerts à M. Clovis Brunel (Paris, 1955).
60 Cf. Cardini 1981, 269.
61 Decline and Fall, chap. 52 (3: 336–38).
62 Haskins 1967, 231. On Haskins, cf. Freedman and Spiegel 1999, 560 ff.
63 Cf. Compagnon and Seebacher 1993, 1: 50–55.
64 See Collins 1996, 112–16.
ritory. Charles Martel, it is true, was described as having utterly destroyed the “unbelieving Saracens” with “Christ's help. ” 65 But that was not a specific, or exceptional, trait of the fight against the Saracens. The Franks, as the chronicle relates, enjoyed divine assistance also in their wars against the Saxons, “detestable pagans”, 66 as well as in their struggles with Christian princes. Pippin III, for example, fought Waiofar, Duke of Aquitaine, “with God's help. ” 67
One of Fredegar's continuators represented the battle at Poitiers as what it really was: an episode in the struggle between Christian princes as the Carolingians strove to bring Aquitaine under their rule. Lumping together a number of Carolingian campaigns that took place between 728 and 733, 68 Fredegar's continuator blamed Eudo, the Duke of Aquitaine, for provoking the expedition by Charles Martel that involved the battle at Poitiers. Eudo, who had not fared well in the struggle with the Carolingians, “summoned to his assistance against Prince Charles and his Franks the unbelieving Saracen people. ” 69 Eudo had defeated the Saracens at Toulouse in 721, of which the chronicle says nothing. But in the second half of the 720s, the Muslims north of the Pyrenees, seeking independence from Arab power in Spain, and the Aquitainians, fearing Carolingian supremacy, seem to have looked for a working agreement between themselves. Eudo even married his daughter to a Berber chief. 70 But there is no evidence that he ever fought together with the Saracens against the Franks. 71 The chronicle, nevertheless, presented Eudo as having brought the Saracens into the Christian lands, where they burnt down churches and slew Christians until they were destroyed by Charles Martel. The chronicler called the Saracens “perfidious”, but it was Eudo who incurred his opprobrium because he had allegedly broken the treaty with Charles. 72
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65 Chronicarum continuationes 13 (Fredegarii Chronicorum, pp. 90–91).
66 Ibid., 19 (p. 93).
67 Ibid., 44 (p. 113).
68 Collins 1996, 116.
69 Chronicarum continuationes 13 (Fredegarii Chronicorum, p. 90). Cf. Chron. Fontanellensis (in Roy and Deviosse 1966, 291): “Eudo Dux Aquitanarium cernens se superatum, et ad defendendam patriam suam contra Carolum se viribus esse destitutum, gentem perfidam Saracenorum ad auxiliandum sibi invitat. ” Similarly, the Chronicle of Saint-Denis (Roy and Deviosse 1966, 296); Ann. mettenses, 325. Cf. Buckler 1931, 6 n. 5; Roy and Deviosse 1966, 162.
70 See Rotter 1986, 219. For a broader context, cf. Buckler 1931, 4–7.
71 Chron. moissiac., 291, reported that in 732 Eudo fought against 'Abdarrahman, was defeated, and sought Charles Martel's help.
72 Chronicarum continuationes 13 (Fredegarii Chronicorum, p. 90). In fact, Charles broke the treaty when he twice ravaged Berry in 731. Roy and Deviosse 1966, 150.
In his report of Charles Martel's campaign of 737, the chronicler's hostility was again aimed at a Christian prince, Duke Maurontus of Marseilles (who had handed over Arles, Avignon, and other towns to the Muslim emir of Narbonne). “Once more the mighty race of Ishmael, who are now known by the outlandish name of Saracens, rebelled and burst across the river Rhône. With the base, craven collaboration of the heretical Maurontus and his friends, the Saracens attacked in force the city of Avignon strongly fortified on her rock; and they laid waste the countryside wherever resistance was offered. ” 73 Charles overpowered his enemies, took Avignon, burnt it to the ground, staged a bloodbath, and then “plunged into Gothic territory as far as the Narbonnaise. ” Having defeated a Muslim army coming from Spain, Charles's army then laid waste the region, razed a few towns to the ground, and looted their unfortunate fellow Christians. 74 Later on “in the course of this happy year”, a Carolingian army marched on Provence, put Maurontus to flight, and Charles “restored the whole country, down to the Mediterranean, to his rule. ” 75
It is clear from the chronicle that the Carolingian campaigns against the Saracens were no more than an element in the Carolingians' endeavors to strengthen their rule in what is today southern France. 76 Those wars were not religious wars. Of the infidelity of the “mighty race of Ishmael” we hear nothing. Even Pope Gregory III extolled Charles Martel as the defender of the Church not with mention of Charles's wars against the Saracens but because he hoped that Charles would protect him against the Lombards. 77 In the continuations of Fredegar's chronicle, the language in which the wars against the Saracens are recorded does not differ from reports of other Frankish military pursuits and continues to be as neutral and detached as Fredegar's tone was.
The same is true of the minor chronicles' reports of the Saracen inroads. None of them mentions the Arab conquest of Spain. The first reference to the Saracens, in some of them, is the entry for the year 721, noting Eudo's victory over the invaders. 78 In 725, “the Saracens came”,
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73 Chronicarum continuationes 20 (Fredegarii Chronicorum, pp. 93–94).
74 Ibid., 20 (pp. 94–95).
75 Ibid., 21 (pp. 95–96). The chronicler conflated campaigns fought in Provence in 737 and 739 into a single episode. Collins 1996, 116.
76 Cf. Burns 1947, 581– 83.
77 Gregory III to Charles Martel, a.d. 739; a.d. 740 (MGH Epp. 3: 476–79).
78 Ann. Petaviani, 7; Ann. Laureshamenses, 24; Ann. Alamannici, 24; Ann. Nazariani, 25; Ann. Sangallenses maiores, 73.
or “came for the first time. ” 79 Referring to the battle of Poitiers, the Annales Tiliani and Annales Laubacenses both simply state that in the year 732, “Charles made war against the Saracens. ” 80 The Annales Sancti Amandi add that the fight took place in the month of October, the Annales Mosellani, Annales Laureshamenses, Annales Alamanici, Annales Nazariani, and Annales Sangallenses specify that the battle was fought on a Saturday, whereas the Annales Petaviani records the day and the month. 81 The most exhaustive reports of Charles Martel's campaign of 737 are those that give Sunday as the day of the battle, 82 whereas the others say the same as they did for the battle of Poitiers (obviously unaware of any unique historical importance): “Charles made war against the Saracens. ” 83
Let me turn to Bede the Venerable, the great Northumbrian Biblical exegete of the early Middle Ages. Although contemporary with the Saracens' conquests and a very well-informed scholar reputed for his exceptional sense of history, he knew very little, maybe nothing, of the Arab attacks on southern and western Francia. 84 In his Greater Chronicle we read nothing of the Arab conquest of Spain, 85 whereas in the Ecclesiastical History he mentioned the Saracens' expansion as one of the misfortunes that had befallen a sinful Christian world. 86 Two comets appeared about the sun in the year 729, he wrote, and presaged terrible destruction to the east as well as the west: “the Saracens, like a very sore plague, wasted France with pitiful destruction, and themselves not long after were justly punished in the same country for their unbelief. ” 87 That
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79 Ann. Petav., 9; Ann. Lauresham., 24; Ann. Alaman., 24; Ann. Nazar., 25; Ann. Sangal. maiores, 73.
80 Ann. Til., 8; Ann. Laubac., 9.
81 Ann. St Amandi, 8; Ann. Mosel., 495; Ann. Lauresham., 24; Ann. Alaman., 24; Ann. Nazar., 25; Ann. Sangal. maiores, 73; Ann. Petav., 9.
82 Ann. Lauresham., 26; Ann. Alaman., 26; Ann. Nazar., 27; Ann. Sangal. maiores, 74.
83 Ann. St Amandi, 8; Ann. Til., 8; Ann. Laubac., 9; Ann. Petav., 9.
84 He “knew nothing. ” The Greater Chronicle, 418, 425 (editors' commentary).
85 Outside Spain, this conquest seems to have been first mentioned in Chron. moissiac., 290.
86 Some fifteen years later, Boniface explained the Saracen conquests as divine punishment: The “peoples of Spain and Provence and Burgundy” turned “away from God and lived in harlotry until the Almighty Judge let the penalties for such crimes fall upon them through … the coming of the Saracens. ” Boniface to King Ethelbald of Mercia, a.d. 746– 47 (Letters of Saint Boniface, 128).
87 Eccl. History V,23 (Opera hist., vol. 2). Since the work was concluded in 731, it is not entirely clear which “punishment” Bede had in mind. The anonymous continuation of Bede's chronology from 731 to 766 does not mention any battle with the Saracens. Bedae chronologia continuata, 323–25.
“unbelief” itself, however, “did not stir a flicker of interest in the most comprehensive mind of the time in Latin Europe. ” 88
What may account for Bede's indifference to the religion of Saracen invaders is the sense, which Bede shared with many contemporaries, that their presence in the northern Mediterranean was transient. 89 When Abbess Bugga, probably soon after Bede's death but before 738, planned a pilgrimage from England to Rome, she asked St. Boniface for advice. Conscientious man that he was, he made inquiries in Rome with Sister Wiethburga, who had already found at the shrine of St. Peter “the kind of quiet life she had long sought in vain” and was obviously sympathetic with Bugga's wish to come to Rome. The message Boniface sent to Bugga was that she “would do better to wait until the rebellious assaults and threats of the Saracens who have recently appeared about Rome should have subsided. ” Telling Bugga that Wiethburga was going to send her an invitation, Boniface concluded: “Make ready what you will need for the journey, wait for word from her, and then act as God's grace shall command. ” 90
When the Saracens entered his horizons, 91 Bede saw them “as unbelievers of not more than ordinary ferocity. ” 92 He was slow to see the Arab invasion as a possible threat to the Christian religion (if he ever really saw it as such), 93 though he recorded what he knew about the Arab campaigns. But like his predecessors in the Frankish lands, he wrote about them dispassionately. In the Greater Chronicle, for example, he noted under the entry for the year 4639 (according to Bede's calculation of time reckoned since the creation, Christ was born in the year 3952) that the Arabs “invaded Sicily, and returned to Alexandria with an enormous quantity of loot. ” The entry for the anno mundi 4649 states that the Byzantine emperor Justinian II “made a ten-year peace on land and
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88 Metlitzki 1977, 14.
89 Daniel 1975, 17.
90 Boniface to Abbess Bugga, before a.d. 738 (Letters of Saint Boniface, 56).
91 In his early works, the Saracens did not yet figure as a concept for Bede. Rotter 1986, 73. In the De arte metrica, probably his earliest composition, Bede mentioned Mauri, “by which he presumably meant Arabs. ” Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 64. In the De Temporibus liber (composed in 703), he wrote that “Abraham annorum C genuit Isaac. Nam primo genuit Ismael, a quo Ismaelitae. ” He spoke of Ishmaelites and did not use the term Saracens, which is not mentioned in Genesis but was employed by Jerome (whom Bede studied) and later by Isidore of Seville in what became a standard exegesis of this Biblical theme. In Jerome's words: “Abraham de ancilla genaret Ismahel, a quo Ismahelitarum genus, qui postea Agareni et ad postremum Saraceni dicti”; cited in Rotter 1986, 71; cf. Isidore, Etym. IX, ii,6.
92 Southern 1962, 16.
93 Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 64.
the sea with the Arabs, but the province of Africa that was subject to the Roman empire was assaulted by the Arabs, and Carthage itself was also captured by them and destroyed. ” But whereas the Christianization of the Frisians is described by Bede as “achieving innumerable daily losses for the devil and gains for the Christian faith”, he did not name the Arab conquest a gain for the devil. 94 Rather than religious foes, the Saracens were “barbarians” from whom the Langobard King Liudbrand saved St. Augustine's bones and transported them from Sardinia, depopulated by the Saracens, to Ticino. 95
Even if in Bede's occasional comments about the Saracens in his later writings moderation seems to have given way to denunciation, this came nowhere near “the hysterical Christian zeal that becomes common enough after 1095. ” 96 Bede explained that the Saracens, who had worshipped Venus, abandoned themselves to the cult of Lucifer. 97 But because Bede stated this in the past tense (for the pre-Islamic Saracens were believed to have worshipped Venus), and also because “Lucifer” did not self-evidently mean the devil (in Plinius, for example, whom Bede had studied, it was the morning star), that Bede wanted to say that the Saracens in his own time were the devil's followers is not necessarily true. 98 They were, for sure, pagans. Bede's Syrian contemporary, John of Damascus, represented them as praying to Aphrodite/Venus, and supposed that the sacred Black Stone in the Ka'ba in Mecca was a carved head of Aphrodite/Venus. 99 Less ambiguous was Bede's description of the Saracens as “adversaries of the Church” in his exegesis of 1 Sam 25.1: “Then David got up and went down to the wilderness of Paran. ” 100 As Bede excerpted from Jerome, the desert of Paran was where Ishmael's descendants, the Saracens, lived. 101 Because Ishmael was the bastard son of Abraham, born of his Egyptian maid Hagar, the Saracens were children of a slave. But the Scripture said: “Drive out the slave and her child;
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100 In primam partem Samuhelis IV, xxv,1.
101 “In deserto autem Faran … habitasse Ismahelem unde et Ismahelitae qui nunc Sarraceni. ” In primam partem Samuhelis, Nomina locorum, 278. Cf. Gen 21.20.
94 Bede Greater Chronicle, 334, 336; Chronicon, 198, 199–200.
95 Bede Chronicon, 204.
96 Finucane 1983, 149–50.
97 Expositio actuum apostolorum VII,43. For this and the two following quotes from Bede, cf. Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 67.
98 See Rotter 1986, 248– 49. On the planet Venus, “qui est hesperus, lucifer et vesper”, cf. Honorius Augustodunensis De imagine mundi I, lxxi (PL 172: 139). On Lucifer as “foretelling a new day”, as the “nuntius celestis aurore”, cf. Alain of Lille, “Sermo in die Epiphaniae” (Textes inédits, 242).
99 Beckingham 1976, 607.
for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman. ” 102 The free woman was Sarah, Abraham's wife and the mother of his son Isaac. And Sarah represented the Church: Sarra, id est Ecclesia, in libertatem genuit populum Christianum. 103 Bede's commentary on Samuel was written in 716. Four years later Bede again wrote of the Saracens as unsettled people from the desert who in the past had attacked all other peoples of that desert and had been set upon—and overcome 104 —by all. Now, however, their hand was against all and the hand of all was against them, 105 since they, the hated adversaries, had taken possession of the whole of Africa, a great part of Asia, and some of Europe. 106
Neither Latin nor Greek sources from that period ever spoke of the “Muslims. ” Rather than this word, meaning those who trusted in one God, these sources preferred the “ethnic terms” Saraceni or Agareni. 107 Bede was no exception. No less ignorant of Islam 108 than his contemporaries in the Latin West, Bede was interested in explaining the Saracens' origins in light of Biblical genealogies. For him the problem to be solved was why the descendants of Hagar and Ishmael were called Saracens, as if they had been Sarah's offspring. 109 But Bede offered nothing new in this respect; indeed, Jerome and Sozomen had been more ingenious, explaining that the Saracens had appropriated to themselves the “false name” after Sarah, in order to “conceal the opprobrium of their origin” because their true mother, Hagar, was a slave. 110 Bede's contribution was that he likened Sarah to the Church, recognized the Saracens as adversarios ecclesiae, and related his Scriptural exegesis to the contemporary Saracen conquests. The Biblical story of Ishmael, especially the passages used by exegetes, was not exactly flattering. The Saracens'
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102 Gal 4.30, cited by Bede, referring to Gen 21.8–10.
103 Expositio in primum librum Mosis 21 (PL 91: 242A, quoted in Rotter 1986, 254).
104 In order to convey that the Saracens were defeatable, Bede, transcribing Jerome, changed expugnantor for imugnantor.
105 Cf. Gen 16.12. Bede made use of the same Biblical reference in the In cantica canticorum (PL 91: 1088, quoted in Rotter 1986, 253).
106 Libri quatuor in principium Genesis IV, xvi,12.
107 Brown 1996, 181, 187.
108 See n. 84.
109 Cf. Isidore of Seville Etym. IX, ii,6: “Ismael filius Abraham, a quo Ismaelitae, qui nunc corrupto nomine Saraceni, quasi a Sara, et Agareni ab Agar. ” For a more detailed discussion, see Rotter 1986, 68–77. For early Islamic interpretations of this genealogy, see Fowden 1993, 145 ff. Cf. Southern 1962, 16–18; Schwinges 1977, 70, 98–99.
110 Jerome Comment. in Ezechielem VIII,25 (col. 233); Sozomen The Ecclesiastical History VI,38.
forefather was outside the Covenant: “a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him” (Gen16.12), doomed to “live at odds with all his kin. ” And so were his offspring, the Saracens, who could not be counted because they were so numerous (Gen 16.10). But the Saracens were nonetheless acknowledged as descendants of Abraham, and as an object of Biblical exegesis, they were given “a niche in Christian history”; the harsh dichotomy between Christian and Muslim worlds characteristic of later times had not yet emerged. 111
This “lack of rancor” linked with indifference, as found in Fredegar, minor chronicles, and Bede, continued in the Carolingian accounts of the Saracens. 112 The Muslims played a relatively unimportant role in portrayals of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. For Charlemagne and his contemporaries, as for their predecessors, the Saracens were no more than one group of enemies among many, and not the one that worried them the most. 113 The Carolingians waged wars against the Muslims, it is true, but they also maintained diplomatic relations with them. The popular picture of the Carolingian attitude toward the Muslims may be unbalanced because two of the Carolingians' military exploits against the Saracens became legends. I have already mentioned the mythologizing of the battle near Poitiers. The other case in point is the young Charlemagne's expedition to the south of the Pyrenees in 778, when he accepted an invitation to intervene in dynastic struggles in Muslim Spain. The expedition ended in complete disaster but was later sung about in the Chanson de Roland, in which the future emperor Charles conquered the proud land as far as the sea. 114 In fact most of the Carolingians' warlike energies were directed at wars against the Lombards, Saxons, Avars, Normans, Danes, and Slavs—these were the “foreign peoples. ” 115 Frankish, English, and Italian writers at this time did not distinguish too precisely among those who were attacking Christian lands. The Christians fought an amorphous multitude of pagani, gentiles, infi-
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111 Southern 1962, 17.
112 Southern 1962, 18–19; Metlitzki 1977, 14.
113 Hentsch 1992, 18.
114 “Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes, / Set anz tuz pleins ad estét en Espagne. / Tresqu'en la mer conquist la tere altaigne. ” The Muslim “King” of Saragosa, the only town that the Chanson's Charlemagne had not conquered, is depicted as one who did not love God but served Muhammad and worshipped Apollo: “Mahumet sert e Apollin recleimet. ” The Song of Roland 1 lines 1–3, 6– 8. On the expedition, cf. Metlitzki 1977, 117 ff.; Reilly 1993, 77; Riché 1993, 44, 115–16. Einhard The Life ix is a sober ninthcentury report.
115 Cf. Morisi 1963, 164 ff.; McKitterick 1983, chap. 3, 5, 9; Wallace-Hadrill 1983, chap. 11, 13, 411–19.
deles and barbari. 116 And they fought them without a clean-cut religious motivation.
Christian views of the Muslims began to shift in the mid-ninth century. The episode of the “martyrs of Cordova” aside (where, in the 850s, some Christian fanatics sought martyrdom by publicly insulting Islam and reviling Muhammad), 117 the impetus for this change came not from the imperial court but from Rome. 118 The transformation of Christian views of Islam was intimately linked to new formulations regarding Christian community. One such idea was articulated by Pope Leo IV when he described wars against pagans as the defense of the Christian fatherland. 119 But it was the Papal and clerical policy formulated by Pope John VIII—“a stern, able, and profoundly political figure” 120 — that really began to give shape to a new, uncompromisingly hostile attitude toward the Muslims and their religion. 121 Not surprisingly, this was the same Pope who injected some social substance into the notion of Christianitas 122 and who developed the richest vocabulary for the wars against pagans. 123 Yet even here, though the Muslims were the worst among Christians' enemies, they were still not the enemy.
Pope John, for example, styled the Normans as enemies of Christ's Cross and called on Frankish princes to refrain from shedding Christian blood in fratricidal wars and join forces to fight against the Normans for the liberty of the Church of God. 124 As inimici crucis themselves, the Saracens did not differ from the Normans in the Church's eyes. But with their military presence in southern Italy, the Saracens began to threaten Rome itself. Their incursions into Christian territory were even more threatening to the Pope because Christians, including bishops, of the southern Italian seaports made alliances with the invaders. 125 They acted so either in the hope of averting danger to their homes or for less noble
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116 Douglas 1969, 92; Delaruelle 1980, 24.
117 See Southern 1962, 20 ff.; Daniel 1975, chap. 2; Schwinges 1977, 85 ff. (with further references); Smith 1988– 89, 1: 42– 47; and Colbert 1962; Wolf 1988.
118 Schwinges 1977, 100.
119 See chap. 2 n. 134.
120 Partner 1972, 67.
121 Cf. Daniel 1975, 76.
122 See n. 6.
123 “Heidenskriegterminologie”: Becker 1988, 365.
124 See John to the bishops of King Louis's realm, a.d. 876, Epistolae et decreta no. 22 (cols. 668– 69); to the counts of King Louis's realm, a.d. 876, Epp. et decr. no. 23 (col. 673); cf. Becker 1988, 365– 66.
125 The first treaty with the Saracens was concluded by Naples in 837. Engreen 1945, 322 n. 1.
motives: the desire to preserve trade with the Saracens and share in what they had plundered in the Roman Campagna. 126 In such a situation, the Pope's invocations of Christian unity and his representation of the Christians as a unitary mystical body bound together by the mystery of redemption 127 stood in stark contrast to the actual dismemberment of that imagined body.
As mentioned earlier, Pope John organized and led his own army, 128 but he also repeatedly appealed to secular princes to come to help the Church with “tough fighters. ” 129 Help was needed for the defense of not only the Papal lands but Christendom as a whole (defensione terre sancti Petri et totius christianitatis). 130 The impious, wicked Saracens, “hateful to God”, were pictured by John VIII as a grave danger to the entire Christian faith and culture (Christianae religionis cultura) . 131 He compared them to locusts, devastating everything they could reach. 132 But his dramatic announcements and requests for military support, far from arousing religious enthusiasm, were met with indifference. 133 Even those who supported the Pope, such as the Salernitans, had their own Christian community, “the Christians of Salerno”, rather than “Christendom” before their eyes. 134 And the more unresponsive the Christians were, the more “impious” and “odious to God” the Saracens seemed to become in the Pope's pronouncements.
Diabolization of the Saracens was instrumental in disciplining Christians, and the Christians whom John VIII sought to discipline were first and foremost those who had made alliances (foedera) with the “impious Saracen people. ” It was these alliances that the Pope attacked the most
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126 Partner 1972, 70. For a general view of the problem, see Engreen 1945.
127 “[U]num corpus sumus in capite Christo, et alter alterius membra. ” John to the bishops in Emperor Charles's realm, March 877, Epp. et decr. no. 62 (col. 717). Cf. Delaruelle 1980, 30.
128 See chap. 2 n. 135.
129 John to Archbishop Frotarius, a.d. 877, Epp. et decr. no. 64 (col. 718).
130 John to Count Lambert, a.d. 877, Epp. et decr. no. 98 (col. 749).
131 See John to Emperor Charles the Bald, a.d. 876, Epp. et decr. no. 43 (cols. 696– 97). Cf. Becker 1988, 366– 67.
132 John to Count Boson, Sept. 876, Epp. et decr. no. 30 (col. 684); to Emperor Charles, a.d. 876, Epp. et decr. no. 43 (col. 696). On the devastating Saracens, cf. Epp. et decr. nos. 58, 62, 79. But Amara, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia (Catania 1933), pointed out that the Pope had only sent such messages “ad uso dei devoti di Francia e Allemagna”, whereas to those who had been acquainted with the real situation he “non si potean dir tante bugie. ” Quoted in Vismara 1974, 49, with a critical commentary; a view similar to Amara's was held by Engreen 1945, 327.
133 Delaruelle 1980, 26–27.
134 Daniel 1975, 77–78.
vigorously. In targeting them, he was not an innovator. Moral condemnation of alliances of the faithful with the unfaithful is Biblical in origin. Most famous in this regard are the words of the apostle Paul to his brethren in Corinth: “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?” (2 Cor 6.14–15). This passage had been frequently cited by Christian writers in different contexts—as when St. Jerome, for example, argued against marriages between Christians (in particular Christian women) and heathen. 135 And John VIII, as we shall see, made very specific use of it.
There were instances in Christian history when alliances with the pagans were rejected on principle. “It is impossible for Christians and servants of God to live on terms of friendship [amicicia] with dogs. ” Such was the answer King Dagobert's ambassador gave to King Samo, who at a time when the Franks were in conflict with the Wends, offered his loyalty to the Frankish ruler. 136 Up to the time of John VIII, however, the Church's attitude toward pacts with non-Christians had been markedly inconsistent. One of John VIII's predecessors, Pope Nicholas I, for instance, had regarded alliances with the infidels as beneficial to the Christian people. 137 John VIII was the first to take a firm doctrinal stance on the issue. 138 According to John's interpretation of Nolite iugum ducere cum infidelibus (2 Cor 6), the apostle Paul prohibited any social links between the faithful and the unfaithful: those who made unclean alliances with the infidels acted not only against the apostolic precept but against Christ himself. 139 According to John, treaties and alliances with the infidels went against divine law. 140 But this was not all. In John VIII's
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135 Cf. Jerome to Ageruchia, a.d. 409, Letter CXXIII,5 (Principal Works, 231); Against Jovinianus I,10 (ibid., 353).
136 Fredegar Chronicorum IV,68 (pp. 56–57). The exchange was transcribed in the Gesta Dagoberti I. Regis Francorum 27 (MGH SS rer. Merov. 2). Amicicia was a term for alliance. Vismara 1974, 16
137 Vismara 1974, 18 n. 32. Bede was not scandalized by a peace treaty the emperor made with the Arabs. See n. 94.
138 Vismara 1974, 58; Schwinges 1977, 246.
139 John to Neapolitans, Salernitans, and Amalfitans, a.d. 875, Epp. et decr. no. 9 (col. 655). Cf. Vismara 1974, 19 ff.; Delaruelle 1980, 30–31. This interdict was entered into the later collections of canons.
140 See John to Amalfitans, a.d. 879, Epp. et decr. no. 269 (col. 889). Cf. Vismara 1974, 25–26.
declarations, the once-abstract “infidel” began to assume specific traits and became the 'Saracen'.
John's prohibition against alliances with the infidel was founded on the idea of the mystical body of Christ, of which all Christians were members. Those who made alliances with Christ's enemies became strangers to his body, tearing apart its members. 141 The Pope considered any contact with the infidel as polluting the body of Christian society and any alliance with the impious as contagious. The infidels, and particularly the Saracens, were malign, vicious, and unclean people; they were “sons of fornication”, “members of the Devil”, “sons of Beliar”, the “body of the Devil”, and “subject to the diabolical law. ” 142 A pact with them would bring about the perdition of the soul as well as the destruction of Christendom; 143 the safety of the soul and the security of the Christian community (or at least Christian possessions) were interlinked. 144 An alliance between the body of Christ and the body of the devil was not only unlawful but simply unimaginable. It would be a pactum cum impiis, pax cum pessimis, foedus cum nefandissimis—in short, a pact with the enemies of Christ, Christians, and the Christian name. As such, an alliance with the infidel was an impium foedus, a polluta unitas, and was condemned as an ungodly crime: crimen, impium scelus. 145 The obvious means to protect Christian society was to excommunicate anyone making such pacts—to cut off the infested and contaminating limb.
In practice, John VIII was struggling to protect the right Christian order in the face of Christian princes in southern Italy who had either committed the “ungodly crime” of making a treaty with the Saracens or might have been tempted to do so. That those princes may have wanted to negotiate peace to protect themselves and their subjects was, to the Pope, no justification. John VIII formulated a clear imperative that left no room for doubt: To keep peace with the “most evil” was a crime. The
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141 Epp. et decr. no. 9 (col. 655). Cf. Balan 1890, 11.
142 John VIII knew how to synthesize such characterizations: “Christiani nominis viri paganorum foedera fugiant et solum in Deum, qui eos creavit, et non in diaboli membra, quae sunt filii fornicationis et vasa irae, spem suam ponere discant. ” Epp. et decr. no. 68 (col. 722). “Agareni” as “filii fornicationis”: Epp. et decr.no. 62 (col. 716); “falsi filii Sarae”: Epp. et decr. no. 60 (col. 714); “iniqui et ancillae filii”: Epp. et decr. no. 273 (col. 893). Cf. Vismara 1974, 40– 42.
143 “Pro salute animae tuae ac pro defensione totius Christianitatis”, Pope John VIII, in 879, pressured the prefect Pulcaris to break “cum paganis pactum. ” Epp. et decr. no. 253 (col. 878).
144 Cf. John to Amalfitans, a.d. 879 or 880, Epp. et decr. no. 288 (col. 901).
145 For these and many other descriptive terms, see Vismara 1974, 42– 47. Cf. Rupp 1939, 38; Daniel 1975, 77; Schwinges 1977, 246.
faithful had to desist from making peace with the enemies of God. 146 The only peace that was acceptable and commanded was peace among Christians, peace among members of the mystical body of Christ. This peace was threatened by any violation of the Biblical precept: exiens exibis de medio ipsorum et pollutum non tanges. 147
Peace treaties with the Saracens were ruinous for the Christian peace. Pope John thus worked doggedly to persuade the Christian rulers to abandon them. Where his diplomacy and bribes 148 failed, he did not hesitate much to use the ultimate means at his disposal, excommunication. A case in point was his dealing with Athanasius, the duke and bishop of Naples. Because the bishop had made alliances with the “Agareni”, the “enemies of the Christian name”, and refused to be persuaded by the Pope to renounce them, 149 John VIII declared: “We anathemize him until such time as he separates himself wholly from these same Saracens, as the enemy of the whole of Christendom. ” 150 Because the pact with the Saracens was injurious to Christians and the whole of Christendom, 151 the bishop who had made it became the enemy of the whole of Christendom (totius Christianitatis inimicum). There was no middle ground: either cut off all social ties with the sons of Ishmael—totally withdraw from “the fellowship of pagans” 152 —or suffer excommunication. If christianitas was to be whole—and a threat to Christianitas was a threat to its wholeness—it had to be wholly separated from the infi-
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146 Quoting Ps 138 [139].21–22, John VIII demonstrated “[q]uantum praetera sit Deo delectabile ab inimicorum Dei pace desistere”; and also “quanto crimine cum pessimis pax tenetur. ” Epp. et decr. no. 9 (col. 656).
147 “Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing. ” Isa 52.11.
148 See Partner 1972, 70–71.
149 John to Athanasius, March 881, Epp. et decr. no. 318 (cols. 927–28). Threatening excommunication, the Pope hoped to compel the Amalfitans, too, to renounce their treaties with the Saracens. In a letter from October 879 he ordered them—“ex auctoritate Dei et sanctorum apostolorum Petri ac Pauli”—“ut nullum cum impia Saracenorum gente pactum haberetis, habitumque omnimodo rumperetis, in tali scelere, et in consortio inimicorum Dei manere non formidatis. ” Epp. et decr. no. 269 (col. 889). Cf. Epp. et decr. nos. 253, 273, 287, 288.
150 “[E]t quosque se ab ipsis Saracenis penitus separaverit, velut totius Christianitatis inimicum anathematizamus. ” John to different bishops, Epp. et decr. no. 321 (col. 931). When the Pope later lifted the anathema, he reminded Athanasius how he had “abjecto Christi levi jugo, cum infidelibus jugum obscena cupiditate ducere”, and warned him to never again in any way make any alliance with the Saracens. John to Athanasius, a.d. 881– 82, Epp. et decr. no. 352 (cols. 945– 46). For a detailed description of John VIII's practical endeavors against “impious alliances”, see Vismara 1974, 50 ff. Cf. Balan 1890, 74 ff., 81, 103 ff.
151 “[A]d perditionem Christianorum” and “ad perditionem totius Christianitatis. ” Epp. et decr. no. 321 (cols. 930–31).
152 “[A]b eorum societate separaturum. ” Epp. et decr. no. 321 (col. 931). See also no. 288 (col. 901): “relicta nunc penitus Saracenorum societate. ” Cf. Daniel 1975, 78.
dels. This idea implied the disciplining of Christians: If they wanted to live within the Christian community, they had to keep themselves clean by suspending any contact with the infidels, the unclean ones (pollutum non tanges). Prohibition of social contacts between the faithful and the infidels generated the idea of territorial separation as well, which entailed the cleansing of Christian territory. (Pope) John VIII “demanded”, “prayed”, and “earnestly besought” that “the impious race may be driven out of our territories. ” 153 Such calls set forth conceptually the splitting of the world into two irreconcilable parts. 154
In an era long since passed, early Christians had separated themselves from the infidel world by proclaiming that their true city was “Jerusalem, the city above. ” 155 Now, according to John VIII, Christians should set out to separate the infidels from their own, Christian world. Whereas in the old times the separation was from infidel culture, 156 now a culture of separation from the infidels had apparently begun to take root. An ominous feature of these developments was that religiously motivated territorial separation became ethnically based. Those to be driven out were a gens, a race, a people of a single origin.
Here, however, we are only at the beginning of the story that was to unfold with the Crusades. Practice lagged behind the ideal world of Pope John VIII. His exhortations were not universally heeded, and his efforts to break the “impious alliances” were in vain. 157 In fact, the reality was so unfavorable to the endeavors of Pope John (who was finally poisoned and hammered to death by his fellow Christians) that he himself had to resort to bribing the Saracens. 158 The Christians in Italy and Spain continued to make pacts and alliances with the Muslims not only through the turn of the millennium 159 but into the late eleventh century, when the Norman conquest of Sicily was achieved as much by peace treaties with
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153 “[G]ens impia nostris eliminetur e finibus: hoc est quod exigimus, hoc est quod ante speciali voto deposcimus. ” John to Bishop Wigbod of Parma, April 877, Epp. et decr. no. 67 (col. 721). Cf. Daniel 1975, 78.
154 Delaruelle 1980, 29.
155 See Tertullian The Chaplet, or De corona xiii (ANF 3: 101).
156 When Jerome, for example, cited 2 Cor 6.14–15 —for “what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Beliar?”—he continued: “How can Horace go with the psalter, Virgil with the gospels, Cicero with the apostle?” Jerome to Eustochium, a.d. 384, Letter XXII,29 (Principal Works, 35). Examples could be multiplied.
157 Vismara 1974, 58.
158 See John to King Carloman, a.d. 787, Epp. et decr. no. 117 (col. 771). Cf. Engreen 1945, 322, 328; Partner 1972, 71, 74.
159 Erdmann 1935, 90, 98–99; Vismara 1974, 65 ff.; Schwinges 1977, 85 ff.; Ferreiro 1983, 130.
the Muslims as by arms. 160 The destruction of the convivencia in Spain, whatever that really was, 161 seems to have begun only with outside help. French —especially Cluniac— monks, driven by religious zeal kindled by the monastic reform at the turn of the millennium, crossed the Pyrenees in order to take possession of mosques or simply “to kill a Moor. ” 162 A notorious case of the exported Gallic religious intolerance was the seizure in 1085 of the chief mosque of Toledo, continued use of which had been guaranteed to the Muslims under terms of the town's capitulation to King Alfonso IV. When the king was away, a monk from Cluny, Bernard de Sédirac, in agreement with Alfonso's French wife, entered the mosque with the support of Christian troops “and having purged it of the filth of Muhammad [spurcitia Mahometi], set up an altar of the Christian faith, and placed bells in the main tower so that the Christians could be called to worship. ” 163 Under this new religious militancy the reconquista wars —fought initially for secular purposes— gradually assumed the character of holy war. 164 In this context, the cult of St. James, who had earlier, it seems, been venerated as a man of peace, was fully established as the cult of Santiago Matamoros, the slayer of the Moors. 165
Such hardening of religious exclusivism and militancy, however, took place only in the late eleventh century. Before we get there, we must dwell a bit longer in a world not eager to follow John VIII's lead. In chronicles from the last century before the First Crusade, which report on clashes between the Christians and the Saracens, for example, nothing distinguishes the Saracens qua Saracens from other enemies. 166 The chroniclers did rejoice in Christian victories over the Saracens, but their reports of wars and descriptions of the Muslim enemies were written in a language that was dull, flat, dry, and detached. 167 The sole exception
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160 Abulafia 1992, 26. Cf. Douglas 1969, 107, on Roger I of Sicily's treaty with the sultan of Mahdia in 1075, and on the employment of Saracen mercenaries in the Norman forces (also in the Norman army that, under Robert Guiscard, sacked Rome in 1084).
161 For a realistic view of that “coexistence”, see Nirenberg 1996.
162 Haskins 1967, 42– 43; Schwinges 1977, 97; Rosenwein 1982, 13, 22; Ferreiro 1983, 131; Becker 1988, 289–90; Le Goff 1990, 64; Bull 1993, chap. 2. For reservations, see Blumenthal 1988, 67.
163 De rebus Hispaniae VI,24 (Smith 1988– 89, 1: 88– 89). Cf. Metlitzki 1977, 11, 19.
164 On the secular character of these wars, see Daniel 1975, 79; Schwinges 1977, 9; Ferreiro 1983, 130; Reilly 1993, 90 ff. On the imposition of the crusading concept from without, see Becker 1988, 290; Phillips 1994, 57. On the twelfth-century Popes' concern for the reconquest, see Constable 1953, 258– 60.
165 Douglas 1969, 96.
166 Daniel 1975, 73.
167 France 1996, 44 (speaking of Thietmar of Merseburg and Ademar of Chabannes).
appears to be Rodulfus Glaber, whose depictions of Christian struggles with the Muslims are reminiscent of crusading appeals and chronicles. 168 But even in the case of Glaber, his clear-cut dislike of Muslims is paralleled with a “vindictive dislike” of the Jews, who were also seen as “strangers to God's revelation”, as well as animosity toward the pagan Liutics of Pomerania and Mecklenburg, and the recently converted Hungarians. 169 The Saracens were no more than an element of the “ravages of the pagans”, and not the one that attracted most of Glaber's attention. 170 Moreover, his account of the capture of Abbot Mayol by the Saracens displayed very little of that “fierce hatred of Islam” characteristic of other passages of his chronicle. Here, Glaber mentioned a Saracen “moved by compassion”, as well as other “less ferocious Saracens. ” 171
Lack of focus on the Saracens as the worst among Christians' enemies seems to have prevailed even in the middle of the eleventh century. Pope Leo IX considered the Normans more impious than the pagans. 172 For Gregory VII and his polemicists, as we have seen, the worst enemies were bad Christians—more detestable than Jews and pagans, among whom the Saracens were hardly ever named. Nor were Muslims seen as the enemy by imperial writers of the mid-eleventh century. Under the reign of Henry III and during the minority of Henry IV, the Saracens still figured as only one of numerous peoples whom imperial propagandists considered potential subjects of the Emperor. 173 In the writings of Benzo of Alba, perhaps the most articulate imperial ideologist in that period, the Saracens appear to have been almost beyond the imperial gaze. They bordered on the world of marvels, for Benzo talked about the Saracens in connection with the Amazonians. 174
It took time for the growing militant animosity toward non-Christians to become focused on the Muslims. Until the end of the eleventh century, it was diffused. The Muslims were not yet the chosen enemy people. Latin Christians were, in general, indifferent to the Muslim culture and religion, about which before 1100 even the educated among them knew
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168 France 1996, 44 (speaking of Thietmar of Merseburg and Ademar of Chabannes).
169 France 1988, 113, 115.
170 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm I, v: “De paganorum plagis. ”
171 Ibid., I, iv,9.
172 See Housley 1985, 18.
173 See Schramm 1992, 257, who cites Anselm of Besate's Rhetorimachia and the Exhortatio ad proceres regni by an anonymous imperial writer. The Exhortatio is published in Dümmler 1876 (“Sarracenos”, line 7). Cf. Robinson 1978, 73–74.
174 Schramm 1992, 260 n. 3.
virtually nothing. 175 They regarded the Muslims as “only one of a large number of enemies threatening Christendom from every direction, and they had no interest in distinguishing the primitive idolatries of Northmen, Slavs, and Magyars from the monotheism of Islam, or the Manichaean heresy from that of Mahomet. ” Moreover, there appears to be no evidence that, before the launching of the First Crusade, “anyone in northern Europe had even heard the name of Mahomet. ” 176
The success of (Pope) Urban II's propaganda for the Crusade may partly (but only partly) be explained by his contemporaries' lack of knowledge about the people they were called on to fight. 177 In practical life, ignorance is often a powerful argument. The fact that Latin Christians knew nothing (or next to nothing) about Islam did not prevent them from making Muslims the enemy of Christianity and Christendom. The ambiguities characteristic of Gregory VII's attitude toward the Muslims (discussed in chapter 2) had been eliminated. Urban II raised to new heights the hostility toward the Muslims that had hitherto been dormant in the Latin West. 178 Without the elaboration of this enemy image, the new holy war, the crusade, was unimaginable. Whereas from the Carolingian times onward, holy wars had been fought against infidels in general, the crusade was at its inception the war of Christendom against the Muslims, 179 animated by a “generalized hatred of Islam. ” 180 Whereas the enemy is by definition the “other”, in the Crusade and through the Crusade a concrete, particular “other” was instituted as the universal— “normative” 181 —enemy. The Christian attitude toward the Muslims came to differ from the Christian attitudes toward other known peoples, other eastern peoples included, due to its fundamentally antagonistic nature. 182 The crusade was of a different quality than the sporadic pre-
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175 Cf. Munro 1931; Southern 1962; Kritzeck 1964; d'Alverny 1965a; Davis 1973, 71; Daniel 1975, 73; 1993; Metlitzki 1977; Schwinges 1977, 95–98; Prawer 1986, 34; Becker 1988, 334, 361; Morris 1991, 153, 286; Pavlovic 1992, 96. An overly optimistic view: Rodinson 1991, 12 f., 23 f.; followed by Hentsch 1992, chap. 2.
176 Southern 1962, 14–15, 28 (mentioning Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm I, iv,9 as the only exception). In southern Europe, outside of Spain, Muhammad was mentioned in the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum 32 (Agareni invocant Machumata), 52. For a brief discussion of Latin accounts of the origin of Islam from the twelfth century to the fifteenth century, see Vandecasteele 1996.
177 Cf. Menache 1990, 107.
178 France 1996, 56.
179 See Rousset 1945, 17, 20–21, 151, 175.
180 France 1996, 44.
181 Purcell 1975, 14–15.
182 Phillips 1994, 54–55.
Crusade wars against the Muslims in Spain and Sicily, 183 it was based on a different “conceptual panorama” than holy wars contra Christianos, 184 and it stood apart from more or less simultaneous wars against the pagans on the northern and eastern borders of Latin Christendom. There, the enemy image was hazy; 185 here, it was sharply defined and fixed.
We may get an impression of the degree to which the Muslims were made the enemy of Christendom if we consider that 'Saracen' gradually became the generic term for Christians' enemies altogether. 186 In the second half of the eleventh century, the Normans were often called Agareni. 187 If this naming policy was the Papacy's attempt to deproblematize its struggle against Christians by relating it to warfare against pagans, 188 this only proves my point. With the twelfth century, 'Saracen' came to be used more frequently in this manner. In the mid-twelfth century, for example, about the time when St. Bernard of Clairvaux was preaching the Crusade against the Slavs, Vincent of Prague used the term Saracens for undefined enemies of Christianity in Eastern Europe. 189 Pope Eugenius III, too, called the East-European Slavs 'Saracens'. 190 A monk writing in twelfth-century England had the Saxons worshipping “maumets. ” 191 The Sarazins in the King Horn (a very early, mid-thirteenth-century Middle English romance) may, after all, not be Vikings, as has been generally assumed. 192 But in some other, not much older, English sources the Danes (together with Scots and Irishmen) and Saxons are named 'Sarrazins' or 'Saracens'. 193 In the chansons de geste, Vandals, Vikings, Arabs,
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183 “[M]ieux que les guerres des Normands en Sicilie et les guerres de la reconquista elle [la croisade] opposa de manière durable chrétiens et musulmans en un lieu sacré pour l'une et l'autre religion. ” Rousset 1983, 39.
184 Cardini 1992b, 396; cf. Höfner 1972, 62.
185 “Die Verschärfung des Feindbildes für einen Heiligen Krieg war hier unpopulär. ” Schwinges 1977, 10. During the Wendish Crusade, for example, the Saxon knights objected to the more enthusiastic crusaders who wanted to lay the countryside waste to force a surrender: “Is not the land we are devastating our land, and the people we are fighting our people?” Christiansen 1980, 52.
186 A “general name for heathen of any sort. ” King Horn, 96 (n. to line 38).
187 Erdmann 1932, 407; 1935, 110.
188 Housley 1985, 19.
189 Vincentii Pragensis Annales (MGH SS 17: 664; quoted in Purcell 1975, 15– 16 n. 19).
190 “L. dux Poloniae, collecta Saracenorum multitudine, quod nostris temporibus inauditum et inhumanum est, terram Christianorum invasit”, etc. Eugenius to Moravian Bishop Henry, 3 March 1149, Epistolae et privilegia no. 351 (PL 180: 1385).
191 Metlitzki 1977, 119.
192 See Speed 1990, 565 for older views, 595 for her own conclusions.
193 The Gloucester Chronicle and Of Arthour and Merlin; quoted, along with some other references, in King Horn, 96–97, n. to line 38; cf. Speed 1990, 566– 67.
and other “unbelievers” appear under the generic heading of Saracens, 194 and in the French romances, Saracens are associated with places where the historical Saracens had never set foot. 195
Earlier in this chapter I argued that the launching of the First Crusade was the historical moment in which the respublica christiana became conscious of its unity. An essential moment in the articulation of the selfawareness of the Christian commonwealth was the construction of the Muslim enemy. The antagonistic difference between themselves and the Muslims was a constitutive element of the Latin Christians' collective identity. The work of this collective identity or, rather, this collective identity at work was the new holy war against this fundamental enemy; for the Muslims represented infidelity as such. 196 They were regarded as precisely the fundamental enemy of Christendom: the personification of the very religion of the Antichrist. 197 The Muslim world became no less than “the antithetical system, the social Antichrist. ” This determined the nature of Christian war against the Muslims, which was harsher and more ferocious than wars against any other adversary. 198
THE CHRISTIAN OFFENSIVE:
ESSALCIER SAINTE CRESTIENTÉ
In the eleventh century, Latin Christians entered a military offensive that kicked off a state of permanent warfare against the Muslims in the Mediterranean. 199 This warfare enjoyed the Church's support, as is well illustrated by the Norman conquest of Apulia and Sicily in the second half of the century. The Normans' campaign to wrest southern Italy from Muslim hands cannot be called holy war (and was represented as such only in forged charters of later date), but it was an extension of the frontiers of Latin Christendom under Papal encouragement. Some contemporary sources suggest that the wars of conquest were fought on God's behalf and that Roger I, for example, saw himself as a “conqueror with a Christian mission. ” 200 Seen and represented as a struggle against the
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194 Bennett 1986, 102; see 118 n. 25 (for further references).
195 Metlitzki 1977, 126.
196 Manselli 1965, 136.
197 Cf. Cardini 1992b, 396.
198 Vismara 1974, 13.
199 Morris 1991, 147. Cf. Abulafia 1992, 24. See chap. 1 n. 232 ff.
200 Haskins 1967, 265; Morris 1991, 142; Abulafia 1992, 24.
enemies of the Roman Church, the Christian military offensive went “beyond a simple response to the exigencies of the situation. ” 201
With the shift from military defensive to military offensive, the nature of holy war began to change. 202 The change culminated with the launching of the First Crusade. But there are substantial differences between the crusade and the eleventh-century Christian wars against the Muslims that preceded them. It is true that Urban II, at the close of the eleventh century, holding a holistic view of the Christian military confrontation with the Muslims, had linked the crusade with the reconquista. As he saw it, in his own lifetime through Christian forces God had battled down the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe. 203 But the wars on these two fronts can be seen as connected only insofar as the reconquista was assimilated into and subordinated to the crusade. Spain had not been the “breeding-ground for a holy war ethos which only needed fine tuning to became crusade enthusiasm. ” 204 On the contrary, the wars of reconquest were to borrow from crusading ideas and images to define their meaning, and from crusading institutional provisions to improve their own organization. The reconquista came to be seen as a second march to Jerusalem, and in 1125 archbishop Diego Gelmírez had a vision of the defeat of Christ's “wicked enemies the Muslims” in the Iberian peninsula opening the way to the Sepulchre of the Lord “through Spain, which is shorter and much less laborious. ” 205
As opposed to the earlier reconquista, the Crusade was not a war against the enemies of the Church on the frontiers of western Christendom; it was a war against enemies of Christendom who neither bordered on the territories populated by Latin Christians 206 nor threatened Christian possessions, and who gave no pretext for war. Not only did Muslims, at least in the later eleventh century, not attack Christians in the West; there is also no evidence that the Christians in the East were actually oppressed by their Muslim rulers, whatever Urban II may have said at Clermont. They continued to live as a subject minority population, protected by Islamic law, paying taxes, and having a measure of
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201 Morris 1991, 145.
202 Cf. Vismara 1974, 62.
203 Urban to Bishop Peter of Huesca, 11 May 1098 (PL 151: 504). Cf. Becker 1988, 348– 49.
204 Bull 1993, 12, chap. 2.
205 Villey 1942, 193 ff.; Riley-Smith 1992, 92. Cf. Vismara 1974, 78. See also Constable 1953, 222, on crusading in Portugal in the 1140s as a stop on the way to the Lord's Sepulchre.
206 Villey 1942, 82.
freedom of worship. Apart from the persecution under al-Hakim, “there is no evidence of anti-Christian pogroms in the eleventh century. ” 207 The launching of the First Crusade had little to do with the circumstances in the Near East, or more specifically, with anything happening in Jerusalem, and was sought neither by the local Christians nor by the Latin visitors to the city. 208 There was “no real identity of interest” between the oriental Christians and Latin Christians, and the eastern Christians had never appealed for help to their western “blood-brothers” (as the latter conveniently began to call themselves). 209 The oriental Christians did not necessarily experience the Crusade as a deliverance from the so-called Turkish yoke, and may well be counted among the victims of the Crusade. 210
The specific “crime” of the Muslims against whom the First Crusade was directed consisted solely in their “unlawful possession” of the holy places (which were, of course, holy not only to the Christians). 211 The Crusade was an unprovoked military offensive far beyond western Christian borders. It was Christendom's war for the Holy Land. 212 But the “Holy Land” itself was a crusading invention. It was with the Crusade that Palestine had ceased to be the Promised Land (terra repromissionis) of the Old Testament and became the Holy Land, terra sancta. 213 It was called holy because Jesus Christ had sanctified it with his physical presence (loca sancta quae salvator noster corporali praesentia illustravit), with his birth (loca in quibus redemptor humani generis pro nobis nasci
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207 Mayer 1993, 5– 6. On al-Hakim, see chap. 1 nn. 226–27.
208 Peters 1985, 251, 253.
209 Morris 1991, 282– 83; Mayer 1993, 6.
210 See Runciman 1986, 22. But Runciman's phrasing (“it was the Christians of the East who were the most unwilling and most unhappy victims” of the Crusades) may be read as implying that the Muslims were the “willing” or “happy” victims, or were not “victims” at all. Moreover, only the Fourth Crusade—called the “betrayal of Christendom”, because the Christian army sacked Christian Constantinople—is considered by this author to be a “crime against humanity. ” Runciman 1991, 3: 130.
211 Purcell 1975, 14.
212 E.g., Villey 1942, 190, 195; Rousset 1945, 194; Becker 1988, 404, 407. These authors may be called “traditional” crusade historians, defining the crusades by their destination and seeing the recovery of the Holy Land as their defining characteristic—an approach that has been questioned as “ simpliste” (Purcell 1975, 7) by the “pluralist” crusade historians. The latter define the crusades by their origin and stress the papal auctoritas principalis as the distinctive feature of crusading warfare, making it a more inclusive concept and a longer-lasting historical phenomenon. Cf. Housley 1992, introduction; Riley-Smith 1993b, 9–10. In my view, the crusade as papal war was initially a holy war to the Holy Land; an idea that had a lasting impact on the crusade idea and imagination, and also influenced military operations that were not directed toward Palestine. For a recent discussion, see Tyerman 1998.
213 Erdmann 1935, 279; Schwerin 1937, 51; Schein 1996, 126.
voluit), with his life among men (terra in qua pedes Christi steterunt), and with his death and resurrection (terra aspersione vivificae sanguinis consecrata). As such, it was styled patria Christi and haereditas Domini. 214 It followed logically that the Muslims living in Palestine were not only guilty of sacrilege but also invaders and usurpers. By the same token, the crusaders were pious Christian patriots, liberating their own fatherland (the “heritage” of God the Father), recovering their lawful possession. 215 The Holy Land was the condensation of what today we may call the crusading “ideology. ” Endeavors to attain the object of that ideology unfolded as a long march through the ruins of the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly City—through the ruins that were the result of the march. But terra sancta was a sublime object of this war. As such it was unattainable. Winning even the entirety of this world could not have quenched the holy desire that animated the crusade. The crusade, once launched, was destined to become permanent. The crusading ideal was indeed a “state of permanent war against the heathen. ” 216
The Carolingian holy war, in contrast to the Crusade, was never directed toward the Orient. Charlemagne may have thought about the Holy Land, but he never planned a military expedition there. He held his power firmly within the horizon of the Latin West. 217 Emperor Otto III only thought of going to Jerusalem in the last year of his reign (1001), after his project of the “renovation of the Roman Empire” had collapsed. But he would travel to Palestine to become a monk. 218 The idea of Palestine as the aim of [Latin] Christian military expedition first appeared in Gregory VII's plan of 1074. Some ten years later, Bishop Benzo of Alba thought of a military march to the Holy Sepulchre. 219 Urban II finally made the idea materialize by sending a united Christian army to the Middle East. 220 This Pope's attention, as we have seen, was focused on the conflict between Christendom and the Muslim world, and he placed the confrontation between them on the broadest basis thus far. 221 The march to Jerusalem was not solely a “liberation” of the capital of the
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214 See Schwerin 1937, 52–53.
215 Cf. Purcell 1975, 4. For the concept of “recovery”, recuperatio, see Regout 1934, 31, 99, 140 ff.
216 Cf. R. Barber 1982, 222.
217 Delaruelle 1980, 23.
218 Schramm 1992, 180.
219 Erdmann 1932, 405.
220 Rousset 1945, 17.
221 Schwinges 1977, 97; Becker 1988, 294.
Christian world; 222 it was also a conscious attack on the enemies of Christ, a “thrust into the heart of the Mohammedan world. ” 223 This war was not fought for the Church, as Gregory VII's wars had been; it was fought for Christendom and by Christendom, by the “community of the whole Christendom against the pagans. ” 224 It was a war willed by God, Christ's war, fought by an elect, that is, godly and holy, people in arms against the nefarious, foreign pagan nations, blasphemous persecutors of the faith, the enemies of Christ's cross, sons of the slave (Hagar), and instruments of the devil. It was a totalizing religious war, a “horrifying totality of religious struggle. ” 225
The Christian offensive, however, was not simply a military operation but a broad social movement as well. The new holy war was more than reconquista; it was an expansion of Christendom. Being a recent creation, there was nothing for Christendom to reconquer; what lay open to it was conquest. But this was a specific kind of conquest, determined by the nature of Christendom. As a religiously based collective entity, Christendom was conquering not simply territory but Scriptural landscapes. Those were to be reclaimed for the Eternal King. But because the foundation of Christendom was a universal religion, what was to be conquered was the whole world (which was, it is true, much smaller than the world we know today). 226 The crusade was a drive into the outside world— Drang nach außen, as Erdmann wrote in the 1930s, in the shadow of the Drang nach Osten, the “eastward expansion”, of his own time. 227 It was an expansionist holy war waged by a formless society 228 that was unified within, exclusivist without, and—perceiving itself as universal—knew no borders or limits.
The drive to expansion was a corollary to the ideal of Christian unity, and both were the constitutive elements of the notion of Christendom. 229
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222 Rousset 1945, 73, 136; on the place of Jerusalem in Urban's preaching of the crusade, see Cowdrey 1970b; 1995; Becker 1988, 383, 388, 397. But see Schein 1996 (arguing that the goal of the First Crusade was the Holy Sepulchre rather than the city of Jerusalem). Cf. Beasley 1897–1906, 2: 556 n. 3, noting that Jerusalem was fixed as the center of the earth only on the maps from the crusading period.
223 Erdmann 1935, 295.
224 Erdmann 1935, 306; Becker 1988, 354.
225 Schwinges 1977, 11.
226 See Wright 1925. Cf. Phillips 1994.
227 Erdmann 1935, 249. Cantor 1991, 402–3, considers Erdmann's Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens a coded critique of Nazism. (There are a few unnecessary inaccuracies in his portrait of Erdmann.)
228 See Dupront 1969, 44.
229 Rousset 1963, 203.
Christendom was a closed society. Its unification was predicated, first of all, on cleansing the Christian social body from within. As already mentioned, the wars among Christians that were polluting and lacerating Christendom were regarded as sinful, and those engaged in them were described as serving the devil. All Christians everywhere had to live in peace, “since without peace no one can serve God. ” 230 Peace meant unity of the right order. The other aspect of the unification of Christians in [Latin] Christendom was exclusion of the non-Christian. Through constructing a radical difference between themselves and others, and through separating themselves from foreign peoples on a principled basis, Christians placed themselves in opposition to the outer world. The unity of Christendom rested upon and at the same time generated a fundamental (and fundamentalist) division in the world. 231 That division could easily assume apocalyptic traits, as with Hugh of St. Victor, who divided mankind into the damned, bearing the sign of the Beast on their forehead, and the just, marked by the cross of Christ; or St. Bernard, for whom the world was split into the uncompromisingly exclusive kingdoms of light and darkness, and who identified the Saracens with Satan. 232
Serving God (for which unity was required) was easily envisioned as Christian vassals fulfilling the duty they owed to their Lord God by avenging injuries inflicted on Him by the infidels. Serving God was thus going to war for Him. 233 The most offensive among those imagined injuries was the infidels' possession of the Holy Land, which was the Lord's land. Serving God with arms entailed driving out non-Christians from the land the Christians called their own and holy.
The expansion of [Latin] Christendom was not the spreading of Christianity. Papal crusading documents did not discuss conversion of the Muslims. Since at least as far back as the time of Rodulfus Glaber, the Muslims had been deemed inconvertible. 234 The very logic of the crusade made the Popes call for the expulsion of the enemy from the terra sancta and not for conversion. 235 If the expansion of Christendom was the opening of Christendom to the outer world, it was a strange kind of opening in-
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230 See chap. 1 n. 296.
231 See Rousset 1945, 187; Dupront 1969, 29.
232 See Dérumaux 1953, 68– 69, 73.
233 This imagery—and conceiving the crusade in terms of “vindicare iniuriam crucifixi, ulcisci iniuriam crucis”—was elaborated especially by Innocent III. See Schwerin 1937, 43; Roscher 1969, 281 ff. For the same images employed by Bishop Henry of Strassburg when preaching the crusade at Frederick I's court in 1187, see Munz 1969, 385– 86.
234 Rodulfus Glaber Historiarvm I, v,24.
235 Schwerin 1937, 41.
deed. Christendom, a closed society, could open only by confronting and fighting—and only in order to confront and combat—its enemies, 236 that is, those whom the Christians had made their enemies and nothing but their enemies. The opening of Christendom was an extension of its closedness; it remained a closed society, but on a larger scale than before.
The Crusades were God's wars for the expansion of Christendom (bella Domini … ad dilatationem Christianitatis), wars intended to essalcier sainte crestienté. 237 The ultimate praise of a Christian hero in holy war poetry of that period was that he had extended Christendom: Moult essaucia sainte Crestienté; eshalcier sainte crestiënté. 238 But the expansion of Christendom cannot be understood as a simple redrawing of frontiers. At that time, frontiers were hardly drawn at all; they meant little and were certainly not what the term denotes in our day. 239 Christendom was actually frontierless. It was a mobile, moving space. 240 A consideration of medieval maps is telling. They rank among the “most expressive and ideological of all cultural objects” and as such represent “cultural conflicts” of the medieval world. 241 On these maps, Christendom was apparently never indicated. The word Christianitas did not appear on maps of the world, and the frontiers of Christian territory were nowhere drawn. 242 It is true that Gregory VII, for example, used the term “boundaries of Christendom” (fines Christianitatis). 243 But it would be wrong to imagine that this stood for an elaborated territorial notion of Christendom. Rather, Christendom was wherever the Roman Church was obeyed, and the limits of Christendom lay where kings had fewer persons to instruct them in the Christian religion and a lesser share in religious services. 244
This geographical indeterminacy was accidental. But because Christianity was universalist, Christendom by nature knew no frontier and so extended potentially over the whole earth. 245 Christendom was allembracing not in geographical reality but “virtually”—in relation to an
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236 See Rousset 1963, 203.
237 See Rousset 1945, 100–1; 1963, 199.
238 See Rousset 1945, 126–27.
239 Cf. Haskins 1967, 21.
240 Sénac 1983, 9.
241 Friedman 1994, 65.
242 Hay 1968, 55.
243 Gregory to Archbishop Udo of Trier, 30 Sept. 1077, Register V,7 (p. 358); to King Olaf of Norway, 15 Dec. 1078, Register VI,13 (p. 417).
244 Gregory to King Olaf of Norway, 15 Dec. 1078, Register VI,13 (p. 416). King Olaf was placed “in extremo orbe terrarum. ”
245 Hay 1968, 27 ff., 55.
“ideal of unity and expansion. ” 246 [The] Crusaders were consistent in wanting to expand Christendom “from sea to sea. ” The crusading leaders Godfrey, Raymond, and Daimbert, in a letter they wrote to the Pope in September 1099, described how the Crusaders, upon their knees, invoked the aid of the Lord, “that He who in our other adversities had strengthened the Christian faith, might in the present battle break the strength of the Saracens and of the devil and extend the kingdom of the Church of Christ from sea to sea, over the whole world. ” 247 These holy warriors wanted to reach the outer limits of the earth, the Biblical “ends of the world. ” 248 They were true cosmopolitans.
However, a frontier for Christendom did exist: the infidels. The Christian frontiers were where Christians met non-Christians and clashed with them; more precisely, they were where the Cross had been brought. Expansion of the frontiers of Christendom—especially to the east and south, where peoples lived who were regarded as inconvertible—meant driving out (or exterminating) the infidels. 249 It seems as if the infidels existed only to make Christendom feel its own expansionist vitality. 250 Like Hegelians avant la lettre, Latin Christians knew that the frontier (Grenze) existed only to be crossed—moreover, it existed only if crossed over. Because that frontier was the infidels, the Middle Ages were a long struggle between Christendom and the Muslim world. 251 In its ideal formulation, Christendom was an endless holy war. If the frontiers of Christendom were marked with the cross, 252 it was only logical that the inevitable expansion of Christendom's frontiers meant taking the Cross and carrying it to the infidel world; that is, it meant the Crusade.
But the arm of the Cross pointing toward Heaven is the shortest. The crosspiece of the Cross symbolizes the horizontal expansion, and the longest arm points downward. The extension of [Latin] Christian territorial conquests appears to be less significant than the depth to which the Christians' holy war against the Muslims cut into the world. For the Christians, there was only one right, one faith, and one law (un droit, une foi, une loi). Needless to say, it was the Christians who were right, and in the right, as declared, for example, by “Charlemagne” of the
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246 Rousset 1963, 198.
247 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, no. XVIII,12 (pp. 171–72); trans. in Peters 1989, 236.
248 Rousset 1945, 149. Cf. Ps 18.5 [19.4]; Rom 10.18.
249 Rousset 1945, 150.
250 Cf. Dupront 1969, 40.
251 Rousset 1945, 172.
252 Delaruelle 1969, 61.
Chanson de Roland: “You well know that I am in the right against the pagans. ” Roland himself asserted: “We are right, but these wretches are wrong”; or “The pagans are wrong and the Christians are right. ” 253 The Crusaders' world was simple and brutal. The infidels were regarded as outside the law and without rights because they did not have faith (that is, because they were not of the Christian [Catholic?] faith). 254 Because Christians were prohibited from making contracts with infidels, it was also impossible to make truce or peace with them. 255 Unable to make peace, the infidels were finally denied the right to wage war. This logical step was taken a century after the First Crusade, when Alanus Anglicus formulated the legal principle that the right to make war pertained only to the Christians. 256 A great historian of the Crusades suggested that the 1099 massacre in Jerusalem occurred because the crusaders were enraged that the inhabitants had defended themselves. 257
The Muslims, the infidels, did not have freedom of choice; they could not choose between conversion and death because (as already mentioned) they were seen as inconvertible. 258 Mission, if it was thought of at all, would only have been possible after the “preaching with iron tongues”, that is, after war. 259 But the war was a war of extermination. 260 The extermination (excidium) of the “pagans” was preached by the Popes 261 and also by St. Bernard. This holy man showed more than a good sense of word-formation when he declared that to kill an infidel was not homicide but “malicide”, annihilation of evil, and that a pagan's death was a Christian's glory because, in it, Christ was glorified. 262
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253 The Song of Roland 252 line 3413; 93 line 1212; 79 line 1015. In the original: “Ja savez vos cuntre paiens ai dreit”; “Nos avum dreit, mais cist glutun unt tort”; “Paien unt tort e chrestïens unt dreit. ” For the same idea as expressed by the crusading chroniclers, see Schwinges 1977, 220, 224.
254 Villey 1942, 30–32; Rousset 1945, 175. Before the Crusades “standen die Ungläbigen keineswegs außerhalb der Rechts- und Weltordnung. ” Schwinges 1977, 228–29.
255 See Villey 1942, 204–5; Rousset 1945, 172; Delaruelle 1980, 73. Fraternities of knights for waging war against the Moors, created by Alfonso I of Aragon, were explicitly committed “never to make peace with the pagans. ” Barber 1995, 26–27.
256 See Russell 1975, 198.
257 Michaud 1838, 1: 442. Cf. Cowdrey 1985, 52; Partner 1997, 81.
258 Villey 1942, 230; Rousset 1945, 150; Dérumaux 1953, 73; Delaruelle 1980, 73.
259 Becker 1988, 359.
260 Cf. Schwinges 1977, 247.
261 Cf. Schwerin 1937, 41.
262 “Sane cum occidit malefactorem, non homicida, sed, ut ita dixerim, malicida, et plane Christi vindex in his qui male agunt, et defensor Christianorum reputator…. In morte pagani christianus gloriatur, quia Christus glorificatur…. ” Bernard Éloge III,4. Cf. Erdmann 1935, 218; Villey 1942, 32; Rousset 1945, 161; Delaruelle 1980, 69, 94; Becker 1988, 286– 87. I discuss St. Bernard in chap. 4.
Augustine had taught that charity was the right inward motive justifying the use of force. 263 That view was now obliterated. 264 Augustinian love for one's enemies might have tempered the violence. But in its place came the “one-dimensional notion of fraternal love for fellow Christians. ” 265 The declaration of fraternal love for the eastern Christians was a pretext for launching the First Crusade; Urban II had laid much emphasis on this love when he preached the Crusade at Clermont. 266 The substance of that brotherhood was blood, consanguinity in faith. 267 And once faith was filled with blood, it was just a short step to the letting of blood of the unfaithful. Or rather, if faith was in blood, with the shedding of unfaithful blood, unbelief was drained. Crusaders responded to Urban II's preaching of the crusade “fired with the ardour of love. ” 268 But ironically, the Crusaders' 'love' was neither asked for nor gladly accepted by the eastern Christians. And no love was shown, nor was it required to be shown, to non-Christians. The new exclusivity of Christian love —love that inspired the use of violence— opened the gate for the Crusaders' shocking brutality toward the Muslims. Canon law was not a factor in the treatment of the infidels, neither in battle nor in the settled areas. 269 A disciplinary force within the Christian family, love turned into the annihilation of those outside the family. The power of that love was expressed in the fullness of hatred. That hatred was taught by those who, in the opening decades of the Twelfth Century, formulated new ideas about love, like Bernard of Clairvaux. 270 But this hatred was not the exclusive possession of an educated elite. It was democratic: the Crusading spirit most deeply affected the lowest classes, and “blind, uncomprehending hatred of the infidel” was rampant in illiterate lay society. 271
When God was used for military purposes, victory could only be absolute. The destruction of paganism, the eradication of infidel peoples, 272 became logical and necessary. Ideally, Christian (Catholic?) holy war was genocidal,
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263 See chap. 2 n. 54 ff.
264 Cf. Schwerin 1937, 42.
265 Riley-Smith 1980, 189; Gilchrist 1985, 39.
266 On the prominence of charity and fraternity in the crusading “ideology”, see Erdmann 1935, 295; Villey 1942, 117; Rousset 1945, 52, 56, 59– 61, 135, 173; Delaruelle 1980, 31, 77, 83, 95; Riley-Smith 1980; 1993, especially chap. 4 and 6; Becker 1988, 405.
267 Cf. Rupp 1939, 76; n. 28.
268 Pope Eugenius III's crusading bull Quantum praedecessores (Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 57).
269 See Gilchrist 1985, 39.
270 See Morris 1991, 368 ff.
271 Riley-Smith 1980, 190; Le Goff 1990, 69.
272 See chap. 4 nn. 108–9.
the ultimate victory in that war was genocide, and the peace achieved was the peace of the cemetery: perpetual peace (pax perpetua)—“for the dead do not fight any longer. ” 273 Integration of the infidel into Christian society, which perceived itself as a manifestation of the absolute, was inconceivable: “In Christendom, there is no place for non-Christians. ” 274 In the Latin West, where non-Christians were minorities, legislation aimed at isolating Muslims and Jews from the Christian community, as a preparatory step to expulsion. 275 In the occupied Middle Eastern lands, however, where the “colonizers” were a tiny minority among the local population, Crusaders established two societies in the frame of their rule, a system reminiscent of apartheid. 276
The eleventh-century Church reform that had created the basis for the formation of Christendom and Christendom's holy war had been driven by the idea of purity. Its goal was to purify the whole of Christian society. This purification was understood as a moral and religious reformation: since with the ordering of clerical and lay life in accordance with the precepts and rules of the Christian doctrine, the peace announced by Christ would finally begin to reign among Christians. With the launching of the First Crusade, this perspective shifted. Whereas the initiators of Church reform had focused on the purity of the Church, Urban II, while preaching the crusade, pointed toward the Holy Land. Pollution was now seen as existing outside the Church, and outside Christendom.
Now it was the pagans who became the “dirt. ” The Holy Sepulchre had fallen into their dirty hands and was “polluted by the concourse of the Gentiles”; the Holy Land had been occupied by “unclean races”; the holy places were “polluted with their filthiness” and defiled with “their uncleanness”; Holy Jerusalem had been “reduced to the pollution of paganism. ” 277 The conclusion was obvious: the places of Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection had to be cleansed. The Crusade was fashioned as a big cleansing operation, 278 and cleansing the holy places was posited as the Christians' point d'honneur. According to Guibert of No-
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273 Cf. Leibniz to Grimarset (Political Writings, 183); Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden.
274 Rousset 1945, 150.
275 See Erdmann 1935, 88; Dupront 1969, 42; Prawer 1986; Powell 1990.
276 Prawer 1986, 27, 34.
277 Robert the Monk Historia Iherosolimitana I, i (p. 727–28); Baldric of Dol Historia Jerosolimitana I, iv (p. 13); Guibert of Nogent Gesta Dei per Francos II, iv (p. 138), Deeds, 43; Fulcher of Chartres Historia Iherosolymitana I, iii,3–7 (p. 324). For a detailed treatment of this theme, see Cole 1993.
278 Cf. Cole 1991, 24–25; 1993; Riley-Smith 1993a, 108, 147.
gent, Pope Urban urged his armed brethren—with God leading them, with God fighting on their behalf—to strive with “utmost efforts to cleanse the Holy City and the glory of the Sepulchre” and to “apply a new cleansing to this place. ” 279 An example of how the cleansing was understood is given by Fulcher of Chartres. He praised Urban II for his “vigorous effort to drive out the pagans from the lands of the Christians [terris Christianorum]”, while in his report of the Pope's crusading speech at Clermont he wrote that Urban had exhorted Christian knights and footmen “to hasten to exterminate this vile race from our lands. ” 280 In Baldric of Dol's view, God himself had decreed that the polluters be “eliminated. ” 281
The idea of cleansing was not limited to the First Crusade, as a few examples demonstrate. 282 In his bull Quantum preadecessores, with which he initiated the Second Crusade, Pope Eugenius III described the First Crusade as freeing “from the filth of the pagans that city in which it was Our Saviour's will to suffer for us and where he left us his glorious Sepulchre as a memorial of his passion. ” 283 Mobilizing for the same crusade in 1147, Peter the Venerable preached about Christ's Sepulchre and highly praised the protagonists of the First Crusade as men who had “with pious swords … cleansed this place and habitation of heavenly purity from the defilements of the impious. ” 284 Bernard of Clairvaux, arousing the Germans for the crusade, also glorified “the swords of our fathers” by which “the filthiness of the heathen was eradicated. ” 285 Images of the Holy Land as suffering at the dirty hands of the infidels persisted in the calls to the crusades by Urban II's successors. This imagery logically supported the imperative that pagan dirt had to be eliminated from the Holy Land (a Terra Sancta eliminare spurcitias paganorum). 286 Similarly, in the Spanish Reconquista, the Christians looked down at the Moors as “pagan dirt. ” One of the chronicles reported that a town to the south of León had been cleansed of all the spurcitia pagano-
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279 Gesta Dei per Francos II, iv (p. 138); Deeds, 43.
280 “[I]d genus nequam de regionibus nostrorum exterminandum. ” Historia Iherosolymitana I, iv,6; I, iii,4 (pp. 324–5); A History, 68, 66.
281 Historia Jerosolimitana I, ii (p. 12).
282 For a more comprehensive treatment, see Cole 1993, 86– 88, 100 ff.
283 Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 57.
284 Sermo … de laude Domini sepulchri, 247. I discuss Peter the Venerable in chap. 4.
285 “[P]atrum gladiis eliminata est spurcitia paganorum!” Bernard, Briefe no. 363,2 (p. 652).
286 See Schwerin 1937, 40– 41, 55.
rum: mosques—“Satan's synagogues”—were destroyed, the Qur'an was burnt, and the Muslim “priests” were killed. 287
Before the eleventh century drew to its close, the Church that at the beginning of the ecclesiastical reform had been working so hard for its own purity became obsessed with the cleansing of Christendom, and it was that cleansed Christendom that set out to cleanse the Holy Land of “pagan dirt. ” The Church that, not so long before, had considered bloodshed as a source of pollution now encouraged the shedding of blood— non-Christian blood—as a means to purification. When the reformed Church established its domination over Christendom, Christendom launched a military offensive to establish its domination over the world. The Church that had preached peace of the Gospel became an institution of conquest. 288 Christian conquest—the extension of Christendom— was holy war. And by commanding this holy war, the Church effectively established and secured its supreme position within Christian society.
The First Crusade was a war invented, willed, and organized by the Pope. It was his own work, his war: bellum, quod tuum proprium est, as the Crusaders wrote to the Pope after the capture of Antioch, inviting him to join them on the march to Jerusalem, the Christian capital. 289 It was a march of the Christian people itself, without their secular princes, unfettered by what we would today call political ties; 290 this was its essential characteristic. 291 Their leader (dux) was Jesus; 292 the march was led by God Himself: Sine domino, sine principe, solo videlicet Deo impulsore. 293 Indeed, as long as an emperor was regarded as the one to fight God's wars, there could be no proper crusade. 294 Whatever divine leadership might be attributed to the military expedition of the Christian people to Jerusalem, it was the call of the Pope that prompted these people to take up arms. Through organizing the Crusade the Pope established a direct relation with and primatial power over the Christian people. 295 In this most important, most holy, effort for Christendom, the Papally led Church pushed aside the prominent secular rulers and took
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287 See Schwinges 1977, 95. On “spurcitia Mahometi”, cf. n. 163.
288 Delaruelle 1980, 109.
289 Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, no. 16 (p. 164).
290 Cf. Barber 1993, 14.
291 Erdmann 1932, 413; 1935, 309–10; Rousset 1945, 135, 145, 173; Dupront 1969, 44; Becker 1988, 407– 8.
292 Cf. Becker 1988, 403, 407– 8.
293 Guibert of Nogent Gesta Dei per Francos I, i (pp. 123–24); Deeds, 28.
294 Christiansen 1980, 48.
295 Kempf 1960, 116, 119.
affairs into its own hands. With the holy war, the Pope effectively became the supreme leader of Christendom. Christendom was the Papal monarchy.
THE PAPAL MONARCHY AND THE CRUSADE
Papal monarchy could be described as a universal Christian society under the supreme rule of the Papacy. The Papacy attained supremacy within Christian society through successfully carrying out the eleventhcentury Church reform. That reform revolved around restoring purity to the Church. One of its primary targets was the practice of simony: the purchase or sale of ecclesiastical offices, estates, and sacraments, even if money changed hands disguised as fees or gifts; the acquisition of ecclesiastical goods through service or favors or intercession. 296 The other primary target was nicolaitism: priests' nonobservance of the rule of celibacy through concubinage or marriage. Both evils represented lay influence within the Church, and the struggle to uproot them meant excluding that influence. 297 Obvious targets of Church reform, then, were clerics who had succumbed to such vices. Peter Damian, for one, attacked bishops who “hotter than the breath of Etna in their pursuit of ecclesiastical honors, give themselves over to the service of the rulers [in clientelam potentium] with disgusting subservience like captive slaves. ” In their greed for churches, he charged, they deserted “the things of the church. ” 298 But not only clerics were party to the vices the Church reformers were unwilling to tolerate; also guilty were those who gave clerics churches and conferred on them other benefices: lay princes performing investiture.
Purification of the Church meant liberating it from the lay dominance that had been progressively established through the successive rule of the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian emperors. 299 Inevitably, the Church
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296 Blumenthal 1988, 75. Cf. Tellenbach 1991, 128.
297 Cf. Blumenthal 1988, 87.
298 “Ecclesiastica quippe deserunt, dum Ecclesias concupiscunt. ” Peter Damian Contra clericos aulicos, ut ad dignitates provehantur (PL 145: 463); partly trans. in Tierney 1988, 37.
299 On the king's (or emperor's) involvement in church affairs, cf. Morrison 1964, 30–34; Fichtenau 1978, 58–59; Wallace-Hadrill 1983, chap. 14; Blumenthal 1988, 34; Luscombe 1988, 166; Robinson 1988, 294 ff.; Lynch 1992, 119. On the mobilization of ecclesiastical personnel and resources in the running of the kingdom, cf. Morrison 1964, 16–17, 29–30; Leyser 1965, 43; Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 258 ff.; Nelson 1988, 220; Robinson 1988, 291; Lynch 1992, 71; Riché 1993, 290. On Eigenkirchentum, cf. Blumenthal 1988, 4–7, with further references; Tellenbach 1991, 70, 90 ff. On imperial nomination of bishops and Popes, and control over the Church, cf. Morrison 1969, 382– 87; Carozzi 1983, 75; Blumenthal 1988, 35, 43 ff., 55 ff.; Luscombe 1988, 166– 67; Robinson 1988, 296–97; Leyser 1989, 79; Tellenbach 1991, 59, 87f., 97 ff., 169 ff.; Schramm 1992, 90, 115, 229, 236; Riché 1993, 271; Canning 1996, 75.
reform led to a bitter conflict between the ecclesiastical reformers and lay rulers, culminating in the so-called investiture contest about who had the right, the Pope or the lay ruler, to invest bishops with their office. 300 The main protagonists of that conflict were Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV.
The investiture struggle ended early in the twelfth century with a practical compromise. Nevertheless, a newly empowered Papacy began to assert a firm boundary around the sacred as its own sphere, from which temporal power was barred. This involved desacralization of temporal power and clericalization of the Church. 301 What did this mean? As opposed to the Church—which was of divine origin, having been founded by God and commissioned by Christ to St. Peter and his successors, the Popes—temporal power was a human invention. “Who does not know”, Gregory VII wrote, “that kings and princes derive their origin from men ignorant of God who raised themselves above their fellows by pride, plunder, treachery, murder—in short, by every kind of crime—at the instigation of the Devil, the prince of this world, men blind with greed and intolerable in their audacity?” 302 As such—allowed but not willed by God, as Cardinal Deusdedit put it at the close of the eleventh century 303 — temporal power was strictly forbidden to interfere with “ecclesiastical business. ” 304 This “ecclesiastical business” could only be administered by a separate social order, the clerical order (ordo clericalis), to whom God had entrusted the sacra and sacramenta as its exclusive possession. Through the clerical order, set apart from the lay populace by the mys-
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300 The contest over the investiture of bishops was preceded by the establishment of “canonical election” of the Pope, free of imperial interference. See the decree on Papal election, published in the Lateran synod of April, 1059, in Mirbt and Aland, Quellen, no. 540; trans. in Tierney 1988, 42– 43. Cf. the encyclical 'Vigilantia universalis' 1, announcing the decisions of the Lateran synod of 1059 (Mirbt and Aland, Quellen, no. 541). For Gregory VII's assertion that the Pope had to be recognized as the only authority that could create, depose, transfer, or reinstate bishops, see Dictatus papae III, XIII, XXV (Register II,55a [pp. 202, 204, 207]). For recent research on the investiture struggle, see Schieffer 1981; Engelberger 1996.
301 See, especially, Ladner, “The Concepts of 'ecclesia' and 'christianitas' and their Relation to the Idea of Papal 'plenitudo potestatis' from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII” (in Ladner 1983); Carozzi 1983. Cf. Heer 1949, 1: 93; Leyser 1965, 60; Munz 1969, 26; Morrall 1971, 39– 40; Blumenthal 1988, 124; Tellenbach 1991, 125; Canning 1996, 104.
302 Gregory to Bishop Hermann of Metz, 15 March 1081, Register VIII,21 (p. 552). On Gregory's view of the origin of worldly power, see Stürner 1991. For the opposite, imperial view, cf. Wenrich of Trier Epistola 4 (p. 86).
303 Libellus contra invasores; quoted in Carlyle and Carlyle 1903–36, 3: 99; cf. Leyser 1965, 57, 64.
304 Cf. Humbert of Silva Candida Adversus simoniacos III, ix (col. 1153).
tery of ordination, worked the divine grace that brings salvation to men. 305 The creation of clerics—the distribution of “ecclesiastical sacraments and episcopal or pastoral grace” 306 —passed exclusively into the hands of the clerics. The Church became essentially a clerical corporation, hierarchically constituted, in which clerics were subordinated to Rome and to the Pope; and lay Christians, whatever their station of life, were subordinated to the Church—as its “subjects rather than members. ” 307
The clericalization of the Church and desacralization of kingship was an achievement with far-reaching consequences. On the one hand, the Papacy began to exercise the fullness of jurisdictional power within the Church. On the other hand, the internally consolidated Church was able to claim for itself jurisdictional authority in Christian society at large (in foro exteriori). Under vigorously asserted papal leadership, the Church ascended to the position of the supreme power in Christendom. The Pope alone now possessed the fullness of power in Christendom and with this power began to exercise his right to supervise the secular princes, who had to rule the Christian people in the service of the Church. 308
THE THRONE OF PEACE
The Christian prince's primary duty, as we have seen, was to make and keep peace. The ability to maintain peace, in today's terms, was central to the legitimation of power. He who could make peace was entitled to rule. Any struggle for power therefore necessarily involved a struggle over who had the authority to make peace. This struggle was an important aspect of the conflict between the Gregorian reformers and lay rulers in the second half of the eleventh century. Two conceptions of peace—and two powers claiming the authority to make peace—clashed.
Conflict over the authority to make peace was couched in the prevailing understanding of power. One of the basic principles of power
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305 Tellenbach 1991, 134. Cf. Southern 1967, 127, that between clergy and laity there was “a great gulf fixed. ”
306 See Humbert of Silva Candida Adversus simoniacos III, vi (col. 1149); trans. in Tierney 1988, 40.
307 Ladner 1983, 444– 45, 491–92. For the “clerical concept” of the Church, see ibid., 444, 491; Lewis 1954, 2: 515–16; Roscher 1969, 21; Carozzi 1981, 83; Southern 1990, 232–33.
308 Cf. Morris 1991, 2; Oakley 1991, 52.
was that of monarchical rule. Rule by one (monarchia) was considered the best form of government, since it was best suited to bring about and maintain “unity, or peace” (unitas sive pax)—or “the unity of peace” (pacis unitatem)—which was the very purpose of government. This is a thirteenth-century authoritative formulation by Aquinas, 309 but the idea was familiar long before. The supreme peacemaker had to be a monarch. Because there could not be two monarchs—for a body with two heads was a monster—the struggle over who was going to be the supreme peacemaker was the most intense between the two supreme powers within Christian society: the Papacy and the (German) empire. It is extraordinary to realize that the term Papacy(papatus) did not even exist before 1047, 310 for within a few decades, the Pope had become the virtual monarch of the Church. As head of the monarchia ecclesiae, he could now claim for himself universal rule over Christian society, over and above the emperor, head of the monarchia imperii. 311
Another principle of power shared by emperors and Popes alike was the Gelasian doctrine of the dualism of powers. 312 This doctrine had to be reconciled with the idea of monarchical rule as the guarantee of unity. 313 Dualism of powers was interpreted in a way that rendered one power supreme. Representing spiritual and temporal power as autonomous and coequal was simply not a viable solution. Adherence to the principle of monarchical rule, rather, dictated a unitary interpretation of the two powers, spiritual and temporal. 314 In this spirit, the Church reformers argued for supremacy of the Papacy over any existing temporal power. This argument is well exemplified in Gregory VII's letter to Hermann of Metz, in which the Pope cited the doctrine of the dualism of powers only to raise—and answer—the question of which of the two powers was
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309 Summa theologica I, Q.103, Art.3; cf. De regno I,2. For the basic definition of monarchy, cf. Isidore of Seville Etym. IX, iii,23.
310 Morris 1991, 107; Canning 1996, 85.
311 Cf. Bosbach 1988, 19.
312 For the degree to which the dualism of powers was common doctrinal ground for advocates and opponents of papal monarchy alike, cf. Emperor Henry IV's statement that “the pious ordinance of God, which especially commanded these two [powers]— namely, the kingship and the priesthood—should remain, not as one entity, but as two” (Henry to the German bishops, a.d. 1076, Briefe Heinrichs no. 13 [p. 19]; trans. in Tierney 1988, 62); and Pope Boniface VIII's assertion that “we know very well that there are two powers ordained by God” (Address to the ambassadors of the French Estates, June 1302; Tierney 1988, 187).
313 Unity, in turn, was understood as the constitutive principle of the universe and of social order. Cf. Gierke 1913, 9.
314 Cf. Watt 1988, 368.
preeminent. Having cited Gelasius I's statement on the “sacred authority of priesthood and the power of kings”, Gregory then referred to Ambrose of Milan. The Pope construed “that blessed Ambrose” as an important predecessor of the view he himself promoted. Ambrose, Gregory wrote, had not only excommunicated the emperor but also demonstrated that “the priestly office is as much superior to royal power as gold is more precious than lead. ” 315 Gregory VII's assertion of the superiority of priestly authority over royal power was cited in Gratian's Decretum and became established opinion among canonists and theologians. 316
Imperial propagandists, needless to say, did not accept the view that royal power had to be subordinated to priestly authority as the supreme power. They wanted to see regnum and sacerdotium bound together with ties of peace and concord, 317 and they promoted the ideal of an “intimate co-operation of regnum and sacerdotium”, in which “in charity the province of one extends into the other. ” 318 But when it came to making peace in a universal Christian society, the apologists of the empire maintained the emperor's exclusive right to the title of peacemaker.
Throughout the investiture struggle, imperialist propagandists portrayed the emperor as the divinely ordained defender of peace, concord, and unity in both Church and regnum. 319 The emperor's mission as the “lord of peace” was to “pacify the regnum and equally bring back the Church of Christ to unity. ” 320 If the emperor was the ideal “prince of peace” and his power the only guarantee of peace and concord, the Pope logically enough became the “enemy of peace. ” 321 Imperialists accused the Pope of “shattering the holy Church of God and the peace of the whole world. ” 322 Emperor Henry IV made the following charge: “By the sword you have come to the throne of peace, and from the throne
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315 Gregory to Hermann of Metz, 15 March 1081, Register VIII,21 (p. 554); Correspondence, 170. Cf. Register IV,2; IX,37 (pp. 294, 631). On Ambrose's dealings with Emperor Theodosius, see McLynn 1994, chap. 7.
316 Decretum D. XCVI c.10. Cf. Watt 1965, 12 ff.; Blumenthal 1988, 118; Pennington 1993a, 3. For a famous medieval treatment of this theme, see Hugh of St. Victor De sacramentis christianae fidei II, ii,4 (PL 176: 417).
317 Wido of Osnabrück De controversia, 242.
318 Henry IV to the German bishops, a.d. 1076, Briefe Heinrichs no. 13 (p. 19); trans. in Tierney 1988, 62. Cf. Robinson 1978, 92.
319 See Robinson 1978, 89, 92.
320 De unitate ecclesiae I,6 (p. 298).
321 Petrus Crassus Defensio Heinrici 6 (p. 210).
322 Ibid., 3 (p. 184). In an imperial document from June 1083 (MGH Diplomata regum et imperatorum germaniae 6.2: 464), Gregory VII was called the perturbator orbis.
of peace you have destroyed the peace. ” 323 Usurper of the “throne of peace”, the Pope had allegedly dissolved “the bond of the one catholic peace. ” 324
The Church reformers actually upheld the same ideals of peace, concord, and unity as the imperial propagandists. But in their view, those ideals could only be realized in the right Christian order, which was, of course, the one they fought for. Gregory VII's idea of peace was traditional: peace coincided with order. 325 This idea, backed by Augustine's authority, 326 could hardly be contested, but exactly what constituted “order” was a contested issue. Though Gregory's understanding of peace was conventional, his idea of order—the right order of Christian society—ran contrary to the order established during centuries of imperial domination over the Church. Gregory wanted to have the “peace which is in Christ” with not only the emperor but with “all men” as well. He wanted to “give every one his right. ” 327 But he would not allow the emperor to make peace and order, even though God had placed the emperor “at the summit of human affairs. ” 328 The establishment and maintenance of the right order required that the Pope retain for himself the right to give every one his right. Right order was the papal monarchy.
The Papal Monarchy implied the obliteration of the king's peace, pax regis. As I argued in chapter 1, the eleventh-century peace movement substituted pax Dei for pax regis. But imperial apologists naturally clung to the pax regis, insisting that the emperor was the “protector of peace. ” 329 They even wanted to appropriate pax Dei for the emperor. Ironic as it might appear, in 1085, the Council of Mainz, an imperialist gathering engineered by Henry IV, declared the “peace of God. ” 330 The council was an assertion of the emperor's power. Its aim was to “recuperate peace for the Church and for the commonwealth. ” And because it dealt with such important matters as “the catholic faith, peace, and unity of the Church”, the imperial apologists argued, the council's decisions had
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323 Henry IV to Gregory VII, A. D. 1076, Briefe Heinrichs no. 12 (p. 16); trans. in Tierney 1988, 60.
324 Henry IV to the German bishops, a.d. 1076, Briefe Heinrichs no. 13 (pp. 18– 19); trans. in Tierney 1988, 61.
325 Cf. Tellenbach 1991, 138 n. 1.
326 Cf. chap. 1 n. 72.
327 Gregory to Henry IV, Sept. 1075, Register III,7 (p. 257); Correspondence, 83.
328 Ibid.
329 Petrus Crassus Defensio Heinrici 3 (p. 182).
330 Robinson 1978, 91.
to be given authority by the emperor: “for nothing can be secure and permanent in such matters, unless the royal authority defends and approves it by virtue of supreme power of the empire. ” 331 After all, this imperial “peace of God” was actually the king's peace. But it was precisely this kind of peace that was unacceptable to the reform Papacy, for whom the king's peace was an expression of a perverse order characterized by lay domination over the Church. As an aspect of the pax regis, the Frankish pax ecclesiae had been a peace made by the king for the visible Church within the mystical universal Church. 332 Now things were to be radically different. By asserting itself as the peacemaker through the eleventh-century peace movement and ecclesiastical reform, the Church began to make peace in the world outside its clerical—and increasingly clericalized—body.
It was largely by establishing themselves as peacemakers and defenders of peace that the Popes had acquired supremacy in the Christian world. 333 But the decisive factor in the papal ascendancy as supreme peacemaker within Christian society was not—or not solely—the merits of the Papal conception of peace, but the Papal leadership of the new holy war. The Papacy ascended to the throne of peace essentially by launching the Crusade: peacemaker is he who is master of war. Commanding both peace and war, the Church effectively became the supreme power in Christian society, leading it in spiritual matters and directing it in temporal affairs.
THE POWER OF THE CRUSADE
Having played a crucial role in the creation of Christendom, the crusade was later linked to attempts to reform Christendom and the Church. From the Third Crusade onward, Christians were called on to amend their ways at the same time as they were called on to join a crusade. The convocation of general councils to reform Christendom coincided with proclamation of crusades. 334 The aim of the Fourth Lateran Council
____________________ 331 De unitate ecclesiae II,19 (pp. 446, 448); II,22 (p. 456); trans. in Robinson 1978,92.
332 The apologists of the empire actually insisted on the Carolingian idea of the unitary Church as the body of Christ. Cf., for example, De unitate ecclesiae I,1 (p. 272). Wido of Osnabrück spoke of sacerdotium and regnum as the “two heads of the Church. ” De controversia, 268.
333 Cf. Landry 1929, 6.
334 Riley-Smith 1992, 110.
(1215), for example, was not only the bodily journey to recover Jerusalem, but also the spiritual journey from corruption to reform that would lead to the eternal journey from earth to heaven. Summoning the council, Pope Innocent III wrote: “Two things are especially near our heart: the deliverance of the Holy Land and reform of the Church. ” The council was to “extirpate vices and make virtues flourish, redress wrongs and reform customs, annihilate heresies and strengthen faith, put an end to discords and establish peace, restrain oppressions and protect liberty, gain Christian princes and peoples for the cause of the Holy Land and, finally, lay wise regulations for the high and low clergy. ” 335 The Second Council of Lyons (1274–76) likewise aimed at reforming Christendom and promoting the crusade, as did the Council of Vienne in 1311–12. 336
As Innocent III's words make clear in the sentences just cited, the reform of Christendom bore on important issues of power. So did the crusade. As a vehicle for achieving Christendom's ideal aims, it had a formative impact on the development of public authority in the West, 337 and played an important role as well in the formation of relations among public authorities—that is, in shaping Western political order. I have already argued that the crusade played a key role in the constitution of the Papal monarchy. Through launching the crusade, the Papacy effectively established control over peace and war in Christendom, thus winning the monarchy of the world. Not surprisingly, the two centuries following the “Gregorian reform”, the great age of the papal monarchy, was also the heyday of crusading. But we should keep in mind that the Papal monarchy and the crusade were coming of age together. They were mutually dependent and reinforced each other; the elaboration of the very idea of papal monarchy was intimately linked to the formation of the crusade idea. By the time of the Second Crusade (launched by Pope Eugenius III in 1145), a historical image of the First Crusade was “beginning to take shape”, and by the time of the Second Crusade's failure (in 1149), a “coherently-formed 'Crusade idea'” had emerged that was to have, from that point onward, a “continuous life. ” 338 The idea of papal
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335 Hefele 1912–13, 5.2: 1316–17.
336 See Roscher 1969, 261; Setton 1976, 112; Morris 1991, 285, 433, 447; Housley 1992, 28.
337 Of great interest in this regard are Jordan 1979; Tyerman 1988. Cf. Munz 1969 on how the crusade, as the ultimate end of his rule, determined Frederick I's approach to the business of government.
338 Blake 1970, 28; Powell 1996, 131. Cf. Delaruelle 1953, 53, 55 (who called the digesting of the experience of the First Crusade un travail des esprits); Tyerman 1988, 30; Riley-Smith 1993a, chap. 6 (who spoke of the theological refinement of the experience of the First Crusade). But see Constable 1953, 238 n. 130, that at the time of the Second Crusade there was as yet little consciousness of it being a successor to the first.
monarchy was advanced at the same time, and some of those who played a key role in organizing the Second Crusade were also central to the formulation of the idea of papal monarchy.
Bernard of Clairvaux, spiritual counselor to Eugenius III, is a good example. He argued that the Pope, as the sole supreme Shepherd of a single flock, was called to the fullness of power and had received “the whole world” to govern—for whereas the “power of the others is bound by definite limits”, the Pope's power “extends even over those who have received power over others. ” 339 To bring home this argument Bernard applied the allegory of two swords. 340 Both swords, the spiritual and the material, belonged to the Church; “however, the latter is to be drawn for the Church and the former by the Church. The spiritual sword should be drawn by the hand of the priest, the material by the hand of the knight, but clearly at the bidding of the priest and at the command of the emperor. ” 341 Bernard first formulated this view of the supremacy of papal power in a letter addressed to Pope Eugenius in 1150, when the Second Crusade had already failed but influential men in the Latin West still harbored the hope that a new military offensive would be possible. 342 He urged the Pope to send crusaders to the Holy Land: “The time has now come when the swords spoken of in the Lord's passion must be drawn, for Christ is suffering anew where he suffered formerly. But by whom, if not by you? Both swords are Peter's: one is unsheathed at his sign, the other by his own hand, as often is necessary. Peter was told concerning the sword which seemed less his: 'Put up thy sword into the scabbard' [ Jn 18.11]. Thus that sword was undoubtedly his, but it was not to be drawn by him. ” 343
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339 On Consideration II, viii,15–16. On Bernard's use of the term plenitudo potestatis, see Bredero 1996, 153 ff.
340 The allegory had been used before Bernard. See Lecler 1931. Moreover, “ce ne sont pas les théologiens pontificaux qui ont commencé à raffiner le symbolisme des deux glaives. ” Ibid., 307. See, for example, Henry IV to the German bishops, a.d. 1076 (Briefe Heinrichs no. 13 [p. 19]; trans. in Tierney 1988, 62), written by imperial chaplain Gottschalk of Aachen. What was believed to have been an earlier use, in Peter Damian's Sermo 69 (cf. Mirbt and Aland, Quellen, no. 546), is now accepted as a twelfth-century work, written perhaps by Bernard's secretary Nicholas of Clairvaux (Canning 1996, 99). Among Bernard's contemporaries, the allegory of the sword was used by Peter the Venerable (Peter to Pope Eugenius III, Letters no. 174, p. 415; cf. Kritzeck 1964, 22).
341 On Consideration IV, iii,7.
342 See Constable 1997. Cf. Bredero 1996, 149–50.
343 Epistolae no. 256 (PL 182: 463– 64); trans. in Watt 1988, 372–73.
Bernard's articulation of papal supremacy was not limited to the two swords allegory. He “could find no language too exalted to describe the Pope's eminent dignity. ” 344 The point important for the argument here is that Bernard “expressly applied his two swords doctrine to the crusade”, 345 thus conceptually linking the two together and building the power of the crusade into the supreme papal power. The material crusading sword was to be drawn “at the bidding” of the Pope. It was to be wielded by the hand of the knight at the command of the emperor, it is true, but even the emperor himself had to listen to the Pope. The chain of command was clearly defined. As commander of the crusade, the papal monarch was in position to animate, and to an important degree determine, the life of Christian society.
Within Christian society of the high and late Middle Ages, the crusade played a central role in what today we would call political life. It was “deliberately refracted into areas of the greatest political sensitivity and importance. ” 346 Popes used the crusade as an “occasion, and justification, for wide-ranging papal intervention in temporal matters”, 347 and secular rulers deliberately brought it into play in the pursuit of their own interests. Crusading involved “internal political ordering and military preparations, the external peace-making and search for allies. ” 348 Claims of promoting—and charges of obstructing—a crusade were weighty arguments in diplomatic relations among the Papacy, the empire, and various kingdoms. The standing of a prince at home and abroad depended largely on his participation or nonparticipation in the crusade. 349 Preparations for the crusades involved huge flows of money within Latin West that brought massive financial gains to the crusade's promoters and contributed to the rise and fall of commercial centers in the northern Mediterranean. 350 Last but not least, the formation of a regular taxation system in the West was closely linked with papal efforts to efficiently collect funds for crusading warfare. 351
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344 Tierney 1988, 88. Cf. Watt 1988, 373–74; Bernard, Briefe, 3: 1118. See, e.g., On Consideration II, viii,15–16; Briefe no. 131,2; 238,6.
345 Roscher 1969, 33. Cf. Katzir 1992, 6–7.
346 Tyerman 1984, 171.
347 Housley 1992, 12
348 Ibid., 421.
349 Cf. Tyerman 1984, 173; Housley 1992, 449.
350 See Tyerman 1984; Le Goff 1990, 66; Housley 1992, 30.
351 Cf. Jordan 1979, chap. 4; Tyerman 1984; Siberry 1985, chap. 4; Schein 1991; Sayers 1994, 73–74, 188. Cf. chap. 5 nn. 31, 32.
CONTROLLING THE CRUSADE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POWER
As the Pope's own war, 352 the crusade was the Pope's instrument of power: the greatest at the disposal of the Papal monarch. 353 But just because the crusade was by definition a war organized, or at any rate authorized, by the Papacy, the Pope did not automatically control it. The importance of the crusade was such that the struggle for command of it was a constant feature of crusading history.
Before the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when territorial powers, or “national kingdoms”, entered the struggle for control over the crusade, it was the two universal powers of the Latin Middle Ages, the Papacy and the Empire, 354 who were prominently engaged in that contest. In retrospect, the conflict between the Papacy and the Empire can be seen as “tragic”, because the two parties pushed for extreme and mutually exclusive solutions that ultimately undermined them both. Yet the two parties shared a desire for unity and peace. It was seemingly their common “sense of the need of unity” of the Christian commonwealth, rather than ill will or diplomatic inflexibility, that pushed the Papacy and the Empire into conflict. 355 Each of them strove for supremacy within Christendom because monarchical rule was the best conceivable foundation for unity.
Because the crusade was linked with the ideals of peace and unity, both the Pope and the emperor were desirous of crusading: To decide who had the right to make peace in unitary Christendom, Christian monarchs were ready to go to war. They struggled with each other, as well, for control over the crusade as a war that would bring peace and unity. To the leader of the crusade belonged leadership in Christendom; 356 he who controlled the crusade was Christendom's head, the lord of peace and war.
The failure of the Second Crusade led to depression and pessimism among western Christians. This mood was overcome by the intense crusading activity in the Latin West in response to the military disaster of Christians at Hattin and Saladin's liberation of Jerusalem forty years
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352 See n. 289.
353 Riley-Smith 1992, 145.
354 In terms of “Realpolitik”, the empire was becoming a territorially defined dominion, but in theory it retained the aura of universal rule. Holtzmann 1939, 251; Folz 1969, 145, 171 ff.; Appelt 1983, 37. Cf. Munz 1969, 373.
355 Figgis 1922, chap. 3, especially 45, 49; Ladner 1983, 478–79.
356 Cf. Mayer 1993, 217.
later, in 1187. The Third Crusade (1187–92), called the Emperor's Crusade, was led by Emperor Frederick I. After his army had been on the march for a year and had reached Christian territory beyond Turkish Asia Minor, the emperor drowned and most of his soldiers returned home. Frederick began a second life, as it were, in legend in the sixteenth century, and his legend in turn became a source of historical knowledge. 357 The Emperor's Crusade itself has also not remained legend-free. Two sixteenth-century German writers believed that Frederick I had been the greatest of all emperors after Charlemagne because of his crusade. 358 Modern historians, influenced by Frederick's story, have tended to see the crusade as issuing from the fullness of Frederick's power, as the “crowning glory to a successful political career. ” It seems, however, that Frederick did not go on the Crusade because he was a successful emperor, but rather because he had “allowed feudalism to grow and flourish so that he would be freed from attending to his daily tasks as a ruler and administrator. ” The emperor's decision to undertake the crusade thus appears as the “antithesis to a political career” and a consequence of the “ultimately transcendental direction” of his reign. The crusade had been the telos of Frederick I's rule from the beginning: the task “for the sake of which he had become emperor and for the sake of which he had undertaken all his political experiments. ” 359
Imperial and crusading “ideologies” blended. Frederick was miles Christi—soldier of Christ and head of Christian knighthood—and the protector of the Church. And he who had the right and ability to protect, it was believed, was the master or lord. Imperial propaganda drew on the belief that the emperor's entitlement and power to protect the Church raised him to an office of excellency over which the Pope had no say: the emperor was the Pope's master. Logically enough, the “protector of the successor of Peter perceived himself as the lord of the world and of the eternal city”, Rome. As the defender of the Church and the faith, the emperor was the head of the whole of Christendom. 360 When Frederick I appeared as a crusading leader, these ideas seemed to materialize. In this light, the crusade was the emperor's apogee, and he was “indeed recognized in the West as the supreme lord of Christendom. ” 361 But even in this idealist perspective, it was at the moment of his greatest
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357 See Munz 1969, chap. 1.
358 Ibid., 17 n. 3.
359 Ibid., 21, 372, 385.
360 Appelt 1983, 31, 37.
361 Mayer 1993, 137.
strength that Frederick I disclosed his weakness. In preparation for the Crusade, for Pentecost 1188, he summoned a diet known as the Curia Christi, or Curia Iesu Christi. But meaning to display his power, the emperor decided that not he, but Christ, was to preside over the event. 362 As a democrat before his time, he left the place of supreme power empty. 363
Research has shown that Frederick I's preparations for the crusade marked the nadir, not the peak, of his power as emperor. Pope Clement III, it seems, was de facto the supreme authority in the West at the time and the organizer of the crusade, which further strengthened his power. 364 And yet, contemporaries saw the Third Crusade as the “Emperor's Crusade. ” The Papacy had to reclaim the crusade for itself—and through regaining control over the crusade assert its superiority over the empire. That task was successfully accomplished by Innocent III. A great Papal monarch, 365 he was perhaps the “greatest apostle” of the crusading movement. 366 He preached “more crusades than any other Pope and contributed more to the crusading movement than anyone since Pope Urban II. ” 367 He introduced a number of technical innovations in organizing the crusades—particularly regarding raising funds, preaching the cross, and exploiting redemptions—and “extended the use of crusading within a traditional framework of thought which few expressed as lucidly and beautifully as he, or his draftsmen, did. ” 368 Since the First Crusade, “there had been no Pope who had fought more keenly to make the crusade an ecclesiastical and specifically a Papal enterprise. ” 369 Innocent III's crusading bulls “emphatically reclaimed the direction of the crusade for the Papacy. ” 370 The Pope assumed control over all aspects of the Crusade. Under Innocent, the Church for the first time led the crusade movement in “all its breadth. ” 371
Innocent III's crusading activity can best be understood as the duty of a papal monarch. His “high sense of moral and historical purpose” and
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362 For the Curia (Iesu) Christi, also called Concilium Christianitatis, see Historia de expeditione 12, 14. Cf. Zerbi 1955, 34–35; Munz 1969, 386; Roscher 1969, 45– 46, 282; Riley-Smith 1992, 111.
363 For the democratic concept of power as an empty space, see Lefort 1981, 1986.
364 See Zerbi 1955, 42–50; Munz 1969.
365 Cf. Watt 1965, 34 f.; 1988, 381; Roscher 1969, 261; Morris 1991, 205–7, 431 ff.; Pennington 1993a; Sayers 1994.
366 Cole 1991, 141.
367 Sayers 1994, 166.
368 Riley-Smith 1992, 145.
369 Mayer 1993, 217.
370 Robinson 1990, 523.
371 Roscher 1969, 262.
feeling of responsibility for the maintenance of good government (rather than personal ambition, as older historiography used to argue) 372 led him to build up the papal monarchy. Innocent and his supporters regarded the papal monarchy as the best form of government for shaping worldly affairs in such a fashion that “the ordered peace of a universal society would reflect the immanent harmony and justice of God's universe. ” 373 In this sense, the special duty of the Pope—of which Innocent often wrote in his correspondence—was to defend and make peace. 374 Innocent wrote, for example, to the French king: “We who are, however unworthily, the vicar of Christ on earth, following his example and imitating the custom of our predecessors' wish and are obliged to attend the restoration of true peace and concord between those who are in dispute. ” 375
Maintenance of peace implies judgment in temporal affairs. The Pope claimed the right to judge in cases concerning sin (ratione peccati). 376 And because peace and war—as either the maintenance or the disruption of the stability and harmony of Christian order—were moral issues par excellence, this eminently applied to them. Innocent was explicit that Papal intervention in temporal affairs was especially urgent when it was peace that was being sinned against. As a Pope, Innocent felt “empowered” to “rebuke any Christian for any mortal sin and to coerce him with ecclesiastical penalties if he spurns our correction. ” He had to “proceed in this fashion against any criminal sin in order to recall the sinner from error to truth and from vice to virtue”, but “this is especially so when it is a sin against peace, peace which is the bond of love. ” 377
Disparate within Christian society, peace and war were linked together when the faithful faced those with whom they were not united in “the bond of love. ” When Innocent tied peacemaking to crusading, he was very much a man of his age. Peace as the necessary precondition for a crusade was “a leading political concept of the twelfth century. ” 378 More specifically, he “stood firmly in the tradition of ecclesiastical activity since the Peace of God movement”, 379 and followed the steps of his predecessors on the Papal throne for whom peacemaking was an im-
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372 Tierney 1988, 127–28; Morris 1991, 426; Pennington 1993a, 25.
373 Tierney 1988, 131. Cf. Arquillière 1934, 522–23.
374 Morris 1991, 423.
375 Innocent to Philip Augustus, a.d. 1198 (quoted in Morris 1991, 426–27).
376 For the Pope's right to judge ratione peccati, see Innocent's decretal Novit (1204), in Tierney 1988, 135.
377 Ibid.
378 Munz 1969, 384 n. 2.
379 Morris 1991, 427.
portant part of preparations for the crusades. 380 The Fourth Lateran Council, summoned by Innocent III in 1215, for example, published a crusading decree stating that it was “of the greatest necessity” for the fulfillment of the crusade that “the princes of Christian people keep peace with one another. ” Therefore the Pope, in the name of the council, decreed “that peace should be generally observed throughout the whole Christian world for at least four years. ” The prelates of the Church were ordered to resolve discords “into unbroken peace or into the inviolable observance of steadfast truces”, and to “most firmly” compel those who might “treat this order with scorn” to acquiesce by the “excommunication of their persons and the laying of interdicts on their lands. ” 381
If Innocent was “haunted by the crusading idea”, 382 it was because the crusade was a manifestation of peace and a moral imperative. Peace in Christendom sums up Innocent's vision of what Christendom needed, and he devoted his life's work to fulfilling that need. It was the common denominator of the three programmatic goals of his pontificate: the crusade, the reform of the Church, and the “correction” of heresy. The crusade, peace, and Christendom converged in Innocent's thinking. Because peace was at the heart of the Pope's idea of the right order in Christendom, and because the crusade idea was firmly embedded in his very notion of Christendom, 383 the crusade expressed and helped to bring about sound Christian order, peace, and unity.
The notion of Christendom lay at the foundation of Innocent III's doctrine of papal power and was the “key to his view of the world and his political concepts. ” 384 He conceived of the crusade as the work of the whole of Christendom, united under the leadership of the supreme pontiff. 385 This conception was not new. Pope Alexander III, for example, had envisaged the crusade as an enterprise of Christendom; Clement III's negotiations with the Armenians about Western military help had expressed a clear consciousness of Christendom; and at the time of the Third
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380 See Alphandéry 1959, 162– 63; Roscher 1969, 24, 84 f., 148 f., 167, 275; Morris 1991, 426; Sayers 1994, 86. Specifically on the crusading peacemaking of Innocent's predecessors and successors (Alexander III, Gregory VIII, Clement III, Gregory IX, and Honorius III), see Roscher 1969, 37, 43; Morris 1991, 563.
381 Ad liberandam (Hefele 1912–13, 5.2: 1394; trans. in Riley-Smith and RileySmith 1981, 128–29). The relationship between Innocent III's peace program and the crusade is traced in Powell 1986.
382 Sayers 1994, 166.
383 See Roscher 1969.
384 Ibid., 23–24.
385 The crusade concerned “die ganze Christenheit” (ibid., 27; cf. 262, 266, 295 f.); it was “l'oeuvre essentiel de la Chrétienté une” (Alphandéry 1959, 149).
Crusade, the crusade had been spoken of as servitium christianitatis and negotium christianum. 386 Innocent's “great genius was as an innovative executor of a broadly conceived vision of the crusade. ” 387 In particular, he built on the growing prominence of the notion of Christendom to articulate the idea of the crusade as service to Christendom, and as Christendom's struggle against all foreign, unfaithful peoples. What was new was the consistency with which he linked Christendom and the crusade.
Innocent III was not led astray by the “democratic” deviations that had led Frederick I to leave the place of highest power empty. He believed in the Pope's fullness of power and presided uncompromisingly over his own Church councils. As the Vicar of Christ, 388 he sat in Christ's place over the whole of Christendom. But the consistency with which he linked Christendom and the Crusade brought about a populist shift in the meaning of Christendom and introduced a “democratic” element into Innocent's crusade. This is especially true of his preparations for the Fifth Crusade.
Because the execution of the Fourth Crusade (in 1204) had slipped out of Innocent's hands, ecclesiastical leadership of the crusade had to be reasserted. 389 The Fifth Crusade (the preparation for which started in 1213) was to be the first “truly pontifical” crusade. 390 No previous Pope had marshaled the resources of his office and of the whole Church as vigorously on behalf of the crusade as did Innocent. 391 While preaching the Fifth Crusade, he repeatedly addressed himself to the “Christian people. ” He referred to the difficult situation of the whole Christian people (necessitas totius populi christiani) and called on princes and Christian people (principes et populus christianus) to bring help to the Holy Land. The term populus christianus became, “to a degree unknown before, a notion interchangeable with 'christianitas.'” 392 More clearly and consis-
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386 See Zerbi 1955, 30 f., 44, 152 f.; Roscher 1969, 36–37, 43– 44; Rowe 1993, 128.
387 Powell 1986, 4.
388 The title vicarius Christi was first applied to the Pope by Peter Damian. But it was Bernard of Clairvaux who first applied it to the Pope alone, thus breaking with an ancient tradition by which the title was used for other bishops as well, and even for lay princes. Paraviana-Bagliani 2000, 58. See Bernard of Clairvaux 'On Consideration' II, viii,16; IV, vii,23. Innocent III was the first Pope who publicly called himself the vicar of Christ. Sayers 1994, 16. Compared with vicar of St. Peter, as the Gregorian reformers called the Pope, the term vicar of Christ introduced a new theological perspective. See Maccarrone 1974, especially 115; Katzir 1992, 5.
389 Libertini 1996, 291.
390 Alphandéry 1959, 199.
391 Powell 1986, 4.
392 Roscher 1969, 24, 265.
tently than ever before, the crusade was now an enterprise of the entirety of Christendom, while Christendom meant the whole of the Christian people, for whom crusading was a moral obligation and a quasi-feudal service to God. 393 It followed logically that any Christian should be allowed to take the Cross. Innocent drew exactly this conclusion and “democratized” recruitment for the Crusade.
We may see Innocent's approach to recruitment for the Crusade against the background of the “early poverty movement” and the widely spread belief that the poor were the “true chosen ones” who would achieve victory in the Crusade through divine favor (as Fulk of Neuilly, a Parisian parish priest and the most famous preacher of that crusade, put it). 394 As the so-called Children's Crusade of 1212 had shown, 395 the potential for a mass response was great. Innocent obviously knew how to read the signs of the time and took the initiative. He fused the “ideology of the crusade” with the beliefs animating the movements of lay piety into an impressive “theology of the crusade”, embedding the crusade in the religious currents of the age. 396
Innocent initiated preparations for the Fifth Crusade with the publication of his bull Quia maior in April, 1213. He addressed all the people of Christendom and clearly stated that “anyone who wishes, except persons bound by religious profession, may take the cross in such a way that this vow may be commuted, redeemed or deferred by apostolic mandate when urgent or evident expediency demands it. ” 397 Before this call, the crusading vow had normally been taken only by men able to fight and to finance their journey to the east. All others had been considered a burden and an impediment to the military efficiency of the
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393 See Innocent III Quia maior (Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 120). Cf. Powell 1986, 17; Riley-Smith 1992, 143; Gilchrist 1993, 73–74. On the influence of feudal imagery of vassalage on the crusade idea, see Roscher 1969, 281 ff., especially 284: “Solange die Kreuznahme in Analogie zum Mönchgelübde gesehen wurde, war sie ein freiwilliger Akt. Wenn die Kreuznahme dagegen eine rechtlich faßbare Vasallenpflicht jedes Christen gegen seinen Herrn war, war es prinzipiell möglich, die gesamte Christenheit zum Kreuzzug aufzubieten. ”
394 Powell 1986, 7.
395 For a brief traditional account, see Mayer 1993, 215 f. Revisionist interpretations have questioned the assumption that most of the participants were children, arguing that the term pueri referred to the class of dependents rather than children and that the crusade was linked to the apostolic poverty movement. Powell 1986, 8 (referring to G. Miccoli, “La crociata dei fanciulli”, Studi medievali, 3rd. ser, 2 [1961]; Raedts, “The Children's Crusade of 1212”, Journal of Medieval History 3 [1971]).
396 Powell 1986, 16–17. On Innocent III's profoundly theological understanding of the crusade, see Gilchrist 1993, 68 ff.
397 Quia maior (Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 122).
Crusading army. The change introduced by Innocent III was theologically based but did not ignore military considerations. Innocent retained the right for the Church to “commute, redeem, or defer” the vow. Regulations concerning commutation, redemption, and deferring of crusading vows have often been seen as a device for extracting money from fickle would-be crusaders. But Innocent's vow-taking policy was much more than a new source of money. The Pope's ruling that “anyone, except a religious, may take the sign of the cross at will”, 398 gave all Christians the chance to express their will. Recruitment for the crusade became a popular vote. Democratic elections, of course, do not give voters a share in the exercise of power. Nor did this crusading vote qualify all electors to become effective crusaders. But the electors could nonetheless feel elect: they were the elect people. Even the poorest and weakest was now given a chance to enjoy the spiritual benefits of the Crusade and to play a part in the “war against Islam. ” 399 The Crusade was open to all Christians. The whole of the people of God now became the Lord's army. 400 More than a test of faith “for all men”, 401 the Crusade was the very practice of faith. Following Christ, Innocent explained, meant following Him “to the battle. ” 402
Anna Comnena, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I, in her account of her father's reign, left a vivid picture of Latin Christians who had followed Christ “to the battle” in the First Crusade. She noted a marked difference between Latin and Greek customs “with regard to priests. ” She was struck to see that a “Latin barbarian will at the same time handle sacred objects, fasten a shield to his left arm and grasp a spear in his right. He will communicate the Body and Blood of the Deity and meanwhile gaze on bloodshed and become himself 'a man of blood.'” This led her to conclude that the Latins were “no less devoted to religion than to war. ” 403 From another perspective, by launching the First Crusade, Pope Urban II had brought together religion and war. 404
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398 Innocent to Conrad, Dean of Speyer, 9 Sept. 1213 (Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 131).
399 Powell 1986, 20; Mayer 1993, 217.
400 “The militia dei thus received its final, revolutionary meaning. ” Gilchrist 1993, 79.
401 Qiua maior (Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith 1981, 119). Innocent, however, did not exclude half of the human race from crusading. When he stated that “anyone may take the sign of the Cross”, he was also thinking of women. Innocent to Conrad, Dean of Speyer, 9 Sept. 1213 (ibid., 131).
402 See Qiua maior (ibid., 119).
403 The Alexiad X, viii (p. 317).
404 Cf. Libertini 1996, 281.
But it was only under Innocent III's reign that the historical process of removing all barriers between religion and war was completed. “Religion as war and war as religion were now one. ” 405
The struggle between Papacy and Empire for control over the Crusade is highlighted when we look at the conflict that broke out about Emperor Frederick II's crusading. The origins of this conflict reach back to the coronation of Frederick (who, as a minor, had been under Innocent III's wardship) as the king of the Romans, in 1215. Frederick II was deeply influenced by the myth of Charlemagne as a model crusader and was proud of his family's crusading record. The crusade was one of his central concerns. He took the cross as soon as he was crowned king. But that was on his own initiative, without papal approval, and, as such, was an infringement on papal control over the crusading movement. 406 By the time Frederick's imperial coronation was staged in Rome in 1220, the curia had become fully reconciled to Frederick's self-imposed crusading mission and saw the crusade as Frederick's first major act as emperor. 407 In response to the disastrous end of the Fifth Crusade at Damietta in 1221, Frederick and Pope Honorius III began to plan a new crusade. 408 But Frederick had been postponing the fulfillment of his crusading vow, and did so for so long that Pope Gregory IX used Frederick's failure to leave for the crusade by the negotiated deadline as a pretext for excommunicating him. Fearing the amassing of power in Frederick II's hands and hoping to weaken his position, the Pope wanted Frederick's crusade to fail. 409 But excommunication did not dampen Frederick's crusading zeal. He finally parted for the Holy Land in 1228, as an excommunicate. Instead of giving up on the crusade, he made it an imperial enterprise. Confrontation between the Emperor and the Pope became sharp. A crusade unblessed by the Pope was a “threat to the political standing of the Papacy, as organizer of holy war and mediator, through the offer of remission of sins, between God and man. ” 410 Moreover, Frederick II threatened to corrupt the very principle of Christendom's holy war when he translated his crusade into diplomatic action. In the course of his expedition, the Emperor eventually negotiated a peace treaty with the Egyptian sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, signed at Jaffa in February, 1229. Ac-
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405 Gilchrist 1993, 83.
406 See Abulafia 1992, 120–22.
407 Ibid., 138; Powell 1986, 180 f.
408 Abulafia 1992, 148 ff.
409 Ibid., 164–70. Cf. Powell 1986, 198–99.
410 Abulafia 1992, 170.
cording to the terms of the treaty, the sultan restored Jerusalem and a number of other places to Christian rule. 411 But far from being greeted favorably by ecclesiastical authorities, this pacis concordia, as Frederick called the treaty, was thoroughly condemned.
The disapproval of Frederick II's mode of regaining Jerusalem was not without a preface. Misgivings had been expressed about his way of life in the Christian West long before he fulfilled his crusading vow. He was called a “disciple of Muhammad”, a “baptized Sultan of Sicily”, and an Antichrist. 412 The key factor in the reaction to Frederick's recovery of Jerusalem, however, was that he had been excommunicated even before he and his army had set sail for the East. An impenitent, excommunicated crusader, from the Pope's point of view, was a contradiction in terms. Frederick's crusade was a false holy war. 413 Moreover, even though the Church held making alliances or treaties with the infidels illicit, Frederick had signed a treaty with the “Sultan of Babylon. ” From the ecclesiastical perspective, this treaty was impious, an impium foedus. 414 The first to condemn it was the patriarch of Jerusalem, Gerold, “a fanatical Saracen-hater. ” 415 In his eyes, the treaty was fraudulent and malicious, an insane crime lacking any foundation in truth. It was to the great detriment of the cause of Jesus Christ and did great injury to the Christian faith and the Holy See's rights in the Holy Land. Moreover, Sultan al-Kamil, Gerold pointed out, was in no position to negotiate the fate of Jerusalem, since the legitimate lord over that territory was his uncle, the Damascene sultan Dawud. The treaty was consequently invalid. Moreover, and equally egregious, Frederick had recognized the right of the infidels to retain possession of the “Temple of Solomon”, which they had transformed into a mosque, 416 and to con-
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411 For the background of Frederick's negotiations with al-Kamil, see Abulafia 1992, 170 ff. For a detailed analysis of the negotiations and their success, see Vismara 1974, 96 ff.; cf. Abulafia 1992, 182 ff. For al-Kamil's interest in concluding a treaty with Frederick, see Powell 1986, 199–200; Aziz 1996, especially 375 f. See also Frederick's own report in his letter to Henry III of England, a.d. 1229 (Peters 1991, 163 f.).
412 Metlitzki 1977, 7– 8; Pavlovic 1992, 123; Abulafia 1992, 171. When the conflict between the emperor and the Papacy lingered on, in 1245 Pope Innocent IV still found it expedient to accuse Frederick II of practicing the Muslim rite and having a harem. Vismara 1974, 134.
413 Abulafia 1992, 173, 174.
414 Cf. n. 145; Gatto 1959, 67. Innocent III kept secret his attempt to negotiate a settlement with the “Sultan of Damascus and Babylon. ” See Potthast, Regesta, no. 4719 (26 Apr. 1213); cf. Powell 1986, 28, 32 n. 54.
415 Mayer 1993, 236
416 See chap. 2 n. 43.
tinue to profane that holy site. Echoing 2 Corinthians 6.14–15, 417 Gerold declared the treaty impious: hec est conventio Christi ad Belial. 418
Gregory IX followed Gerold's lead. The Papacy “made more fuss about the disadvantages of Frederick's treaty with al-Kamil than about the obvious fact that the holiest city of Christendom had been recovered by Frederick II. ” 419 In a letter to the archbishop of Milan, the Pope expressed his outrage over the treaty agreed to by this “spurious emperor” (dictus imperator). The treaty was legally null and void because its terms obstructed the “cause of Christ and his people. ” 420 Gregory sent a circular letter to Duke Leopold of Austria and to princes and bishops of Christendom a month later, in July 1229, that contained accusations against Frederick II on four grounds. 421 First, the emperor had misused the crusade. As a crusading leader, he should have used his sword against the enemies of the faith. But instead, refusing to fight the infidels, he made an abominable pact with them, thus abusing his imperial power and dignity as well. Second, he had abandoned the “Temple of Solomon” to the infidels, as a result of which Muslim law was being proclaimed where the truth of the Gospel should be heard. 422 Third, because he had not included them in the treaty, Frederick had exposed Christian dominions in Syria (including Tripoli and Antioch) to the danger of occupation by the enemies of the faith. Even worse, the terms of the treaty forbade the Emperor from assisting the Christian dominions in case of necessity, and even committed him to preventing others from delivering help. Fourth, because of his contractual obligation to protect the sultan against any eventual Christian attack—in case the Christian army wanted to avenge the injuries suffered by the Redeemer and to cleanse the Temple of God and the Holy Land from pagan dirt (spurcitias paganorum)—the Emperor's treaty with the pagans was in fact directed against the entire Christian people (contra totum populum Christianum).
Frederick was found guilty because he had liberated Jerusalem via a treaty with the heathen, rather than via a Crusade. 423 He had not fought
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417 See n. 135.
418 See Vismara 1974, 120–21; Peters 1991, 166– 67 (a selection from Gerold's letter to all the faithful).
419 Abulafia 1992, 194.
420 Cf. Vismara 1974, 121 n. 335.
421 For the following summary, see ibid., 123–25.
422 The accusation was also made in Gregory's letter to the archbishop of Milan. See ibid., 124 n. 352.
423 Roscher 1969, 287. In contrast to this, King Louis IX of France was later praised because, unlike Frederick II, he departed for the East “pour combattre, et non pour traiter. ” Berger 1893, 317. Rebellious German peasants in the early sixteenth century, however, believed that the emperor had laid siege to Jerusalem and that the first over the walls of the city, after a ten-day assault, had been the son of a Bavarian miller carrying the flag of the Bundschuh (the banner of German peasant revolts). Munz 1969, 10.
the enemies of the faith with his sword (cum executionem gladii contra hostes fidei) 424 and had thus abused the crusade. His expedition was an “anti-crusade. ” 425 An emperor who concluded an alliance with the infidel was a traitor to the respublica Christiana. 426 To “celebrate” Frederick II's recovery of Jerusalem from Muslim rule, the patriarch of Jerusalem placed the city under interdict. 427 The Pope confirmed Frederick's excommunication and absolved the emperor's subjects from their oath of fidelity, 428 while the Papal army invaded Frederick II's Sicilian kingdom.
Meanwhile, in the Holy City, the emperor visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and performed the ceremonial act of crown-wearing to celebrate the accomplishment of his holy work and devoted service to Jesus Christ. After worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, as Frederick himself wrote to the English king, “we, as being a catholic emperor, … wore the crown, which Almighty God provided for us from the throne of His majesty, when of His especial grace, He exalted us on high amongst the princes of the world. ” 429 The grand master of the Teutonic Knights delivered a speech on the emperor's behalf to mark the occasion. In this imperial manifesto, addressed to all the peoples of the world, Frederick II was represented as God's vicar on earth. As the Christ-king, Frederick stood “between God and mankind”, chosen to rule over the earth from end to end. 430 No longer was it only the Pope who was to be “lower than God but higher than man” (as Innocent III had put it). 431 The crownwearing ceremony was a jubilation of the emperor's immediate relationship with God. 432 Under attack by the Roman curia, Frederick II struck back. Willing to compromise no longer, he stated outright that his imperial monarchy had been bestowed upon him directly by God. 433 “He
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424 Gregory IX to the Duke of Austria; quoted in Vismara 1974, 123.
425 Purcell 1975, 20; Abulafia 1992, 170.
426 Vismara 1974, 125.
427 Gerold to all the faithful (Peters 1991, 169).
428 Vismara 1974, 126.
429 Frederick to Henry III (Peters 1991, 162, 164). Cf. Abulafia 1992, 186– 87.
430 Abulafia 1992, 197–98; Mayer 1993, 237.
431 In Innocent III's words, the Pope was set “between God and man, lower than God but higher than man, who judges all and is judged by no one. ” Sermon on the Consecration of a Pope (Tierney 1988, 132).
432 Kantorowicz 1993, 182– 88, who describes the episode with much pathos, speaks of “Gottunmittelbarkeit”, pointing out that Frederick achieved this triumph (in which he became “united with God”) “ohne Mittler der Kirche”: not through the Church but alongside and outside the Church. Cf. Abulafia 1977, especially 198.
433 Cf. Abulafia 1992, 188.
is great, greater, and greatest: great since he is king of Sicily, greater since he is king of Jerusalem, greatest since he is Roman emperor”, an eulogist wrote. “He it is whom the Lord crowned with glory and honor, and set over the work of his hands. ” 434 In Jerusalem, however, it was the patriarch's propaganda that held sway. When Frederick, the “new David” appointed to bring deliverance to his people, hurried from the Holy Land to deliver his Sicilian kingdom from the armed forces of the supreme spiritual power of Christendom, the butchers of Acre pelted him with entrails. 435
The story of Frederick II's crusade is as telling as it is curious. It shows how little the Latin Christians, the Pope included, actually cared about Jerusalem and Palestine—except for the Holy City and the Holy Land they had constructed in their own heads. The “liberation” of the earthly Jerusalem, this story seems to say, was less important to them than armed struggle against the infidels. By the end of the twelfth century, crusading had ceased to be a movement for the “liberation of the Holy Land” and had become instead a movement for the extermination of the infidels 436 — for the “elimination of pagan dirt. ” 437 The story of Frederick II also illustrates the extent to which the Crusade was actually an internal affair of western Christendom: what really mattered were the effects that crusading produced within Christendom. I would venture to add that the story also shows how genuinely western Christians cared about peace. Because the Crusade had begun—and had to begin—in peace, every new crusade brought more “peacemaking. ” If the Crusade had in fact ended in peace, the whole project would have failed. Frederick II mistakenly thought that with his treaty of peace with al-Kamil “that business has been brought to a conclusion. ” 438 But perpetual peace required a perpetual Crusade. For there was nothing more precious than peace.
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434 Nicholas of Bari Eulogy of Frederick II (Cantor 1963, 295).
435 Philip of Novara History (Peters 1991, 160). Cf. Riley-Smith 1992, 151; Abulafia 1992, 191.
436 “[L]a Croissade dépasse la libération de le Terre Sainte pour devenir, au sens plein, extermination de l'Infidèle. ” Alphandéry 1954, 220.
437 “[E]liminare spurcitias paganorum. ” Gregory IX to the Duke of Austria (quoted in Vismara 1974, 125).
438 Frederick to Henry III (Peters 1991, 162).
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