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'Sanctifying Violence" The First Crusade

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Komnenos View Drop Down
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  Quote Komnenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: 'Sanctifying Violence" The First Crusade
    Posted: 25-Jul-2006 at 19:29
As mentioned in another thread, I just started reading a relatively new book on the First Crusade, and in the first chapters the author, Thomas Asbridge (Queen Mary Uni, London) develops a few interesting thoughts on the genesis of the crusade and especially on the motives of the Papacy, Pope Urban II, to proclaim it.
He argues that Urban, far from being worried about the Muslim occupation of the Holy Land or the treatment of Christian pilgrims therein, and probably even less about the endangered Byzantine Empire and its slightly heretic Christians, pursued a consequent policy to strengthen the Papal power and influence that until his immediate predeccessor Gergory had hardly strechted outside the confines of Rome.
Asbridge argues further that Urban attempted to achieve this by bringing the European rulers and feudal lords into a moral dependency to the Papacy: firstly by finally concluding the process of "sanctifying violence", by authorising the employment of war and by reserving his right for such authorisation. It thus meant that a fundamentally pacifist Christianity ( see sermon on the mount) had finally changed into one that accepted violence as means and therefore could wage a "Holy War" .
Secondly by channeling the most violent forces of an inherently violent medieval society, namely the feudal lords of Europe, into an authorised and accepted outlet to release such violence, thereby offering salvation and relief from guilt that the good Christian knights of Europe had carried before when they had simply massacred each other or the peasantry.
Fighting wars, from being sinful, now offered a heavenly reward.
 
Interesting ideas on the intellectual preparations for the Crusades, nothing absolutely new, and is  Asbridge's detection of a remarkable shift in Christianity's self-understanding justified?
 
Thomas Asbridge
The First Crusade, A New History
OUP
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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 06:26
I think these ideas about papal power expansion as driving force behind the first crusade are commonly accepted... I read the same in "The Crusades" by Jonathan Riley-Smith (1990).
 
But a more difficult question is: why did the knights go when the pope told them to?
They had not been particularly obedient to the pope so far, why would they now? Some might have gone for land or money, like Baldwin of Boulogne, but what made a man like Raymond of St Gilles, Count of Toulouse go? He was, for the time, an old man, the had spend most of his life recovering his ancestral lands and was connected to the Spanish court by marriage. What was there to gain?
 
Were they really so religious they were willing to risk bankrupting themselves and their families (for crusading was an expensive enterprise) for glory and heaven? If they were so religious, why had they not heeded the pope and his peace of God movement before?


Edited by Aelfgifu - 26-Jul-2006 at 06:33

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  Quote malizai_ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 06:27
Originally posted by Komnenos

 It thus meant that a fundamentally pacifist Christianity
 
The crusades did not abruptly tear the fabric of a pacifist Christianity, because in practice there was no such thing. Even before the crusades the christian fiefdoms incorporated crosses in the strategic loations of their forts, with built in chapels. So if a rival was to hit that section than that 'heretic' had desecrated the church and conveniently deserved God's wrath and punishment through their hands.
 
Pope Urban 2 had promised rivers of milk and honey in heaven, for those fell in fighting. A jihad really, but without the virgins. I wonder if he was aware of the similar muslim tradition. I think he was the first to introduce this heresy into the faith.
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 16:55
Yes, I put much faith in this theory, but one should also consider that it doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility of the Papacy's concern for Christians in Muslim areas and the threatened state of the Byzantine Empire.

Whenever historians come up with new theories, they sometimes try to use them to disvalidate the theories of earlier works and thus give their own research more of an impact. Often, like in this case, such an approach is wholly unnecessary since the theory works even better in tandem with the earlier ones.
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 17:51
Originally posted by Aelfgifu

They had not been particularly obedient to the pope so far, why would they now? Some might have gone for land or money, like Baldwin of Boulogne, but what made a man like Raymond of St Gilles, Count of Toulouse go?


Well, don't forget Raymond had two previous marriages, & was excommunicated for them each time. Could have made him unpopular with his subjects and in court (especially considering the first excommunication was for marrying his cousin)
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  Quote Gundamor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 23:20
Originally posted by edgewaters

Originally posted by Aelfgifu

They had not been particularly obedient to the pope so far, why would they now? Some might have gone for land or money, like Baldwin of Boulogne, but what made a man like Raymond of St Gilles, Count of Toulouse go?


Well, don't forget Raymond had two previous marriages, & was excommunicated for them each time. Could have made him unpopular with his subjects and in court (especially considering the first excommunication was for marrying his cousin)


I thought Pope Urban chose Raymond of St.Gilles as the official leader which the original papal legate traveled with? I think his motives for going are the hardest for me to understand unlike people like Godfrey of Bouillon who sold and burned everything before he left. And alot of the others who were there for their own interests.

http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/first_crusade.html
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jul-2006 at 23:55
Originally posted by Gundamor

I thought Pope Urban chose Raymond of St.Gilles as the official leader which the original papal legate traveled with?


Yes ... so there's something ... why is a twice-excommunicated man being chosen by the Pope for that office? Sounds like some sort of deal was made.

Raymond gets a prestigious office which more or less erases any lingering clouds from his excommunications and Urban gets the backing of a relatively powerful lord.
    
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