Tutorial Discussion Post
By: Bede, Rafael, Martin, James and Caitlin
Bede's thoughts,
Love does not seem to be something you would associate with the slaughter and invasion of the crusades. However, Jonathan Riley-Smith presents an argument that crusading was viewed as a way of demonstrating love for Christ as well as a fraternal love for fellow Christians. There was a lot of propoganda permeated throughout the West that urged people to take up the cross as a duty to Christ and impose guilt upon those who did not. It was the least you could do to repay the agony he had gone through on the cross. Crusaders were expected to love God above even their own families and to die honourably for him in the fight against pagans and heretics if need be. Due to the feudal system being particularly dominant during the 12th and 13th centuries, advocates of courtly love referred to Christ as King or Lord to give lay people a sense of obligation to crusade.
What was ironic about Crusader propoganda was that it conflicted with Christian values such as 'love thy neighbour'. While Christians were encouraged to harbour a love for their fellow Christians, they were made to hate their enemies. St Augustine avoided this hypocrisy by arguing that killing pagans and heretics was ridding them of their sinful lives and actually a form of merciful love. He compared it to parents punishing their children out of love for them. Augustine also asserted that, by allowing the sins of their neighbours to be committed, Christians were in fact sinning themselves. The hatred of the enemy was apparently outweighed by the service done to Christ by dispatching them and by a need to protect fellow Christians from the evils of heresy and paganism.
Although love of God and fellow Christians spurred crusaders on, there appears to have been a xenophobic hatred of the enemy that was promoted by the clergy.
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| Crusaders arriving at Constantinople |
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Hi everyone,
I just wanted to take a moment with this week's blog post and highlight a couple of links you all may find interesting.
Firstly, you may wish to check out the online access to an exhibit currently being held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is entitled 'The Romance of the Middle Ages' and I think may be interesting to check out especially as this week in lecture we will be learning all about courtly love and culture during the Middle Ages. Part of my own work involves the study of courtly love so I couldn't resist telling you all about this!
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Exhibition Poster
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Secondly, here is a link to the medieval and renaissance courses Monash offers in November-December of every year in Prato, Italy. Clare mentioned them in our last lecture and I've posted the link here for anyone who wishes to find out more information. Who doesn't love Italy right?
All the best,
Diana
Hey Bede,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post :)
I think that it would be really interesting to compare the propaganda of the crusades to the propaganda of the first and second world wars.... and if the techniques used had changed much over time. I do also think that it is sad that the church felt the need to exploit the faith of their followers to persuade them to fight.
Thanks Ambs
Great post, Bede.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting to consider how religion might have twisted, or changed to suit those in power during not only the crusades, but the entirety of the middle ages.
The concept of 'merciful love' you discussed i found fascinating, it is definitely not something I've ever heard or considered.
Also, i couldn't help consider how the christians sort of self righteous, nearly arrogant attempt to 'reclaim' the holy lands from people they thought needed to be converted to christianity to avoid eternal damnation might have permeated quite a deal of history. Surely the Muslims and Jews didn't forget these crusades easily, and maybe it had a bearing on later wars, even very recent ones?
Anyway, great post.
Blair
Hello all, it's Martin here. And yes, my name is up there and so to should be something - anything - I have written about this week's topic. Alas, I forgot completely, so i'll write something now. Also, fantastic post Bede, it really does codify those ideas splendidly.
ReplyDeleteThe second reading, on the fate of Byzantium during the crusades, was the one I found the most fascinating. Byzantium always felt like a footnote in the Crusades, but reading Steven Runciman's account gives a completely different picture. If anything he seems to suggest that a connection between Urban II and Alexius Comnenus gave the most impetus to launch the Crusade. However it does read in a biased manner, Byzantines (until the 4th Crusade) are pained quite forgivingly, and lunatic idiocy of some of the Latin Crusaders is quite funny.
Alexius' desires as an emperor and Urban's goals as a pope did differ significantly. Alexius wanted the Turks out of Anatolia, and his mercenary support from his usual sources was waning (they would not fight Turks, or, rather, could not be trusted to fight when, you know, they were asked nicely). Imperial troops were simply not enough to fully protect his borders; and courtesy of the Kommenian Restoration of Byzantium, he was quite confident in his ability to support major forces against the Turks. Runciman makes it quite clear that this was a major catyalyst in mounting the Crusades, even if by the time the Latin Crusaders had reached the walls of Constantinople, things started to sharply split between the Eastern and Western Europeans. The Crusaders couldn't have understood Byzantine sympathy to the Muslims; diplomacy was as powerful a weapon to Alexius as his military might. And the Byzantines simply had no interest in Jerusalem - the Fatamids were on good terms with them, and they were in Control of the city. As long as the other Muslim princes were split, Byzantine was at least partially safe - and Alexius worried that a Christian army on the warpath to Jerusalem could unite them. The Byzantines were more interested in Antioch, which, thanks to a miscommunitcation (where an Imperial army was turned away from a 'hopeless' seige) - were denied control of it when the city fell to the Crusaders. Although the First Crusade was somewhat of a sucess for the Byzantines, in that the Crusader Kingdoms distracted the Turks, it was a long term failure. The splits between Orthodoxy and Christianity were constantly excacerbated by hardline clerics, and although smart politicians could see the value of a strong alliance between Constantinople and the West, its weakening over the next hundred years led to its sacking by the beleaguered Fourth Crusade; a regrettable product of Alexius' desire to protect his Kingdom.
Anyway, just some of the impressions I got from that particular reading, which I did assert earlier felt quite pro-Greek; although after reading some of the specific stories about the nutcase Crusaders, it would be hard not to be sympathetic.
Martin
Good job Bede
ReplyDeleteI did post about two hours ago but it hasn't come through for me at least.
I found it interesting how the christians sort to instigate control even against their own philosophies even tho they would have no doubt had a reasoning system at the time. I also found it funny how it was basically the same thought process for those in the muslim nations at the time except against the christians. As such I found it interesting thinking about the groups that haven't developed past this in the modern world, from small sects to large sections of major religions.
Lachlan
I was really interested by the idea of crusaders going on crusades out of love of God and their neighbour. The point of view was an interesting one given that love and war are two terms that generally aren't associated. At the same time however i can see how that would be a marketing campaign considering that the US army uses love of state and freedom as one of their major propaganda tools. This said the reading made me wonder how many people believed what was being said at the time. In a way it's similar to the reading on Charlemagne, people could have really believed all the virtuous things being said or perhaps they saw the blatant propaganda like we do.
ReplyDeleteI thought the author had a really insightful take on what he was writing about and that it was well presented.