Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
brill.nl/orie
he View of the Crusades from Rome and Damascus:
he Geo-Strategic and Historical Perspectives of
Pope Urban II and Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī
Paul E. Chevedden
Los Angeles
Abstract
For an integral understanding of the Crusades, this study evaluates the Crusades both “from
within” and “from without,” by examining the views of two contemporaries of the Crusades:
Pope Urban II, the so-called founding father of crusading, and Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, a Muslim jurist from Damascus. he crusading pope and the Muslim faqīh guide us to a proper comprehension of the Crusades by refusing to judge the entire movement on the basis of the most
recent expression of crusading activity, and they allow us to view the Crusades from Rome and
Damascus during the formative period of their development.
Keywords
Crusades, Mediterranean Region — Strategic aspects, Geschichtstheologie, Mission to Muslims,
Islamic Eschatology
he issue of what contemporaries understood by crusading, and above all the
sense they made of their crusading past, has as yet received little attention.
— Norman Housley
A New Approach to the Crusades
his study attempts to interpret the crusading enterprise in its own terms,
according to the goals and ideals that the movement set for itself.1 It also
1
his study was originally presented as a paper at the conference “Cultural Encounters during the Crusades,” 5-9 October 2009, held at the Danish Institute in Damascus and sponsored
by the Institute, together with he Centre for Studies in Legal Culture, Copenhagen University,
he Medieval Centre, University of Southern Denmark, and Lars Peter Visti Hansen, independent scholar. he remarks about Pope Urban II and Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī are illustrative of
their views on the Crusades and are not intended to be comprehensive. A full discussion of Pope
Urban’s conception of the Crusades was presented in a paper delivered at the 43rd International
Congress on Medieval Studies in May 2008 at Kalamazoo, Michigan, under the title, “Pope
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011
DOI: 10.1163/187783711X588132
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P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
attempts to interpret the Crusades in terms of what has been said about them
by their principal adversaries. he Crusades will be examined both “from
within” and “from without” in an attempt to provide a sympathetic reconstruction of what contemporaries understood by crusading. A “sympathetic
reconstruction” does not imply approval or endorsement, appreciation or psychic identification. Rather, it is a type of interpretive explanation that endeavors to understand the Crusades as they were understood by the people who
had a direct part in them or who had direct knowledge of them. We have
chosen Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099), the so-called founding father of crusading, to present a view of the Crusades “from within,” and Alī ibn Ṭāhir
al-Sulamī (1039-1107), a Muslim jurist from Damascus, to offer a view of the
Crusades “from without.” By selecting these two contemporaries as our guides,
we will be able to view the Crusades from Rome (Fig. 1) and Damascus (Fig.
2) during the formative period of their development.
To evaluate the crusading enterprise in its own terms, according to its own
goals and ideals, is not an exceptionally difficult task. Reliable evidence for
determining these goals and ideals is readily available, but modern scholars
have yet to make sense of the Crusade movement as indicated by its own internal rationale — the fundamental underlying reasons that contemporaries used
to explain or justify its existence. his has prompted Norman Housley to
observe that “the issue of what contemporaries understood by crusading, and
above all the sense they made of their crusading past, has as yet received little
attention.”2 he manner in which contemporaries thought about the Crusades
Urban II (1088-1099) and the heory and Ideology of the Crusade.” his paper, now expanded
and under the title “From Crusading Facts to Crusading heory: Pope Urban II’s Conceptualization of the Crusades,” is under consideration by an academic journal. I am indebted to
Noha Mohama Akkari for reading and commenting on my translations of portions of al-Sulamī’s
Kitāb al-Jihād and for providing an Arabic translation of the paper for those attending the
Damascus conference. I would also like to thank Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating the
1095 Clermont crusading decrees and Pope Urban II’s 1098 letter to Bishop Peter of Huesca.
hanks are also due to Osman Latiff for suggesting that I explore the apocalyptic vision of
al-Sulamī, to Elizabeth Lapina for answering all of my questions regarding the Cluniac chapel of
Berzé-la-Ville in Burgundy, and to Jean Flori for alerting me to his publications on the topic
of Muslim conversion.
2
Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006), 166. Scholars that have done the sort of empirical research necessary to discover what contemporaries
understood by crusading include Robert I. Burns, who began his study of the Valencian Crusade
(1225-1280) when hardly any Spanish scholars thought of it as a Crusade; José Goñi Gaztambide, who put the Spanish Crusades on a solid documentary basis; Lawrence J. McCrank, who
refused to set overly discrete boundaries for the Tarragona Crusade (1089-1177) and instead
conceptualized it in the context of “restoration and reconquest”; John Gilchrist, who warned
against “drawing too sharp a distinction between holy wars and crusades”; and Alfons Becker,
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
259
and articulated their understanding of them has too often been ignored
because of a general tendency to prop up the popular notion of the Crusades
as a movement created by Pope Urban in 1095. he 1095 Crusade hypothesis
reduces the evidence gathering ability of historians to those sources that may
be construed as supporting this theory. In addition, information from these
sources may still be ignored, misinterpreted, or misrepresented because this
evidence does not fit the 1095 theory. his theory takes as its centerpiece and
foundation the second canon of the Council of Clermont (1095), the most
authoritative piece of direct evidence for the so-called “First” Crusade. But
even this key text, which is barely two lines long, continues to be misread and
misinterpreted by scholars eager to promote the cherished notion that the
Crusades began in 1095.3
In order to understand the Crusades in their true historical reality, we
must take into consideration the manner in which contemporaries of the
Crusades thought about and expressed what was happening “in [their] time”
(nostris temporibus).4 Most books on the Crusades start off with a definition of
who explored Pope Urban II’s conception of crusading based on the direct evidence. See the
bibliography below for studies by these scholars.
3
Just as the Earth was the center of the Ptolemaic universe, Jerusalem is the center of the
1095 Crusade paradigm. he narrowness that makes Jerusalem indispensable to the onset of the
Crusades has also narrowed the purpose of the Jerusalem Crusade as enunciated in Canon 2 to
the liberation of “the Church of God in,” or “at,” “Jerusalem.” Johannes Pahlitzsch, Graeci und
Suriani im Palästina der Kreuzfahrerzeit: Beiträge und Quellen zur Geschichte des griechisch-orthordoxen Partriarchats von Jerusalem, Berliner historische Studien, vol. 33, Ordensstudien, vol. 15
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), 66; Paul E. Chevedden, “Canon 2 of the Council of
Clermont (1095) and the Goal of the Eastern Crusade: ‘To liberate Jerusalem’ or ‘To liberate the
Church of God’?” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 37, no. 1 (2005): 57-108, at 58-65, 104-8.
According to Jonathan Riley-Smith, the aim of the Jerusalem Crusade as described in Canon 2
is the liberation of “the Church of God in Jerusalem,” whether specified explicitly, or not. Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? 1st ed. (London: Macmillan, 1977), 59; idem, he
First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60; idem, “he
Idea of Crusading in the Charters of Early Crusaders, 1095-1102,” in Le Concile de Clermont
de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade: Actes du Colloque universitaire international de Clermont-Ferrand
(23-25 juin 1995) organisé et publié avec le concours du Conseil régional d’Auvergne, ed. André
Vauchez, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, vol. 236 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome,
Palais Farnèse, 1997), 155-66, at 156n7. A Jerusalem-centric perspective has also led scholars to
misinterpret the Clermont indulgence by linking it to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, rather than to
a military expedition called “to liberate the Church of God” in the East. Paul E. Chevedden,
“Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 37, no. 2 (2005): 253-322, at 315-17. More disturbing than these gross blunders of translation and interpretation is the fact that these errors have never received a refutation
by scholars in the field of Crusade studies.
4
La documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio III (965-1216), ed. Demetrio Mansilla Reoyo,
Monumenta Hispaniae vaticana, Registros, vol. 1 (Rome: Instituto Español de Estudios
260
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
“crusade,” either implied or made explicit, and proceed to read into the events
of history an interpretation of crusading that complies with a fixed and predetermined understanding.5 A type of “Whig” history is created whereby history
Eclesiásticos, 1955), 43, no. 27; Antonio Durán Gudiol, La Iglesia de Aragón durante los reinados
de Sancho Ramírez y Pedro I (1062?-1104), Publicaciones del Instituto Español de Estudios Eclesiásticos en Roma, Monografías, vol. 6 (Rome: Iglesia nacional española, 1962), 193, no. 20; Le
piú antiche carte dell’Archivo capitolare di Agrigento (1092-1282), ed. Paolo Collura (Palermo:
U. Manfredi, 1961), 22, no. 5; Papsturkunden in Spanien: Vorarbeiten zur Hispania Pontificia,
vol. 1, Katalanien, pt. 2, Urkunden und Regesten, ed. Paul Kehr, Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. 18, fasc. 2
(Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1926), 298, no. 31; Durán Gudiol, La Iglesia de Aragón,
154, Cuestión 11c; Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, “Epistolae,” in Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, vols. 3-5 (Edinburgh: T. Nelson, 1946-1951), 4:142, ep. 235. Alfons
Becker shows that Urban and others of his generation thought about the relationship between
what was happening nostris temporibus and earlier ages, believing that the events of reconquista
and restauratio that they were witnessing signaled the dawn of a new era. Alfons Becker, Papst
Urban II (1088-1099), 2 vols., Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, vol. 19, 1-2
(Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1964-1988), 2: 337-38, 342, 351, 353, 357, 358.
5
Paul Riant’s definition of “crusade” in the inaugural issue of the official journal of the very
first international body devoted to the study of the Crusades, the Société de l’Orient Latin, as “la
guerre religieuse proprement dite, provoquée par l’octroi solennel de privilèges ecclésiastiques, et entreprise pour le recouvrement direct ou indirect des Lieux Saints” (italics in original), set the stage for
a formalistic understanding of the Crusades. Paul Riant, “Inventaire critique des lettres historiques des croisades,” in Archives de l’Orient latin publiées sous le patronage de la Société de l’Orient
Latin, ed. Paul Riant, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1881-1884), 1:1-224, at 2. Definitions of “crusade” soon proliferated that isolated crusading at a particular stage or period in the course of its
development and turned this stage into an independent entity. See, for example, Lucien Paulot,
Un pape français: Urbain II (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1903), 279; William B. Stevenson,
he Crusaders in the East: A Brief History of the Wars of Islam with the Latins in Syria during the
Twelfth and hirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1907), 2; Mark Twain, Tom
Sawyer Abroad: Tom Sawyer, Detective, and Other Stories (New York: Harper, 1910), 9; Carl Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1935), vii; trans.
Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart as he Origin of the Idea of Crusade, foreword and
additional notes by Marshall W. Baldwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), xxxiii;
Régine Pernoud, he Crusaders, trans. Enid Grant (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 12-13;
Zoé Oldenbourg, he Crusades, trans. Anne Carter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), 53;
Hans Eberhard Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Urban Bücher, vol. 86 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1965), 263; trans. John Gillingham as he Crusades (London: Oxford University Press, 1972),
283; Maureen Purcell, Papal Crusading Policy: he Chief Instruments of Papal Crusading Policy
and Crusade to the Holy Land from the Final Loss of Jerusalem to the Fall of Acre, 1244-1291, Studies in the History of Christian hought, vol. 11 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 10-11; Frederick H.
Russell, he Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and hought., 3rd
ser., vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 294; Riley-Smith, What Were the
Crusades? 1st ed., 15; idem, he Crusades: A Short History, 1st ed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987), xxviii; idem, “he Crusading Movement and Historians,” in he Oxford Illustrated
History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1-12,
at 8-9; idem, “Rethinking the Crusades,” First hings 101 (March 2000): 20-23, at 20; idem,
What Were the Crusades? 4th ed., 5; Paul Rousset, Histoire d’une idéologie: la croisade (Lausanne:
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
261
is written backwards. Either a highly contingent expression in which the
Crusades manifested themselves is used as evidence of what the Crusades were,
or the present theoretical consensus of those working in the field of Crusade
history is taken as authoritative, and the past is reconstituted in accordance
with that consensus. Some scholars consider “the special status of Jerusalem
and the Holy Places”6 as the factor that turned Christian Holy War into Crusade and look upon Crusades as wars that were “aimed at acquiring or preserving Christian dominion over the Sepulchre of Our Lord in Jerusalem.”7 While
this works well for the Jerusalem Crusade, it fails to take into account the
pluralistic and protean character of the Crusade enterprise and its capacity to
respond to shifting social, economic, political, and military circumstances, as
well as to domestic and international political and strategic developments.
Other scholars consider all expeditions benefiting from the ecclesiastical apparatus equated with Urban’s Jerusalem Crusade — papal authorization, indulgence, vow, Cross, and Crusader privileges — as true Crusades.8 While this
L’Age d’homme, 1983), 9; Jean Richard, he Crusades, c. 1071-c. 1291, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ix; Jean Flori, “De Barbastro à Jérusalem: plaidoyer
pour une redéfinition de la croisade,” in Aquitaine-Espagne (VIIIe-XIIIe siècle), ed. Philippe Sénac,
Civilisation médiévale, vol. 12 (Poitiers: Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale,
2001), 129-46, at 146; idem, La guerre sainte: la formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident
chrétien (Paris: Aubier, 2001), 357; idem, “Pour une redéfinition de la croisade,” Cahiers de
civilisation médiévale 47, no. 188 (October-December 2004): 329-49, at 349; idem, La croix, la
tiare et l’épée: la croisade confisquée (Paris: Histoire Payot, 2010), 31; Christopher Tyerman, Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 30-31;
Edward Peters, “he Firanj Are Coming,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 48, no. 4 (Winter
2004): 3-17, at 4; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the hird Crusade to the
Fall of Acre, 1187-1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 513; Nikolas Jaspert,
he Crusades, trans. Phyllis G. Jestice (New York: Routledge, 2006), vii; Alain Demurger, Croisades et croisés au Moyen Âge (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), 335; Marcus Bull, “Crusade and Conquest,” in he Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 4, Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100c. 1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),
340-52, at 346. So fixed and predetermined are the Crusades that the journal Crusades, the
publishing organ of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, defines when the
Crusades began (1095) and when they ended (1798).
6
Flori, La croix, 50.
7
Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, 263; trans. Gillingham, 283.
8
Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? 4th ed., 5, emphasizes the importance of the indulgence, vow, Cross, and privileges, along with papal authorization, in his definition of “crusade,”
while omitting any mention of the purpose or intent behind crusading. Norman Housley identifies “the key elements of crusading” as the “vow, cross, and indulgence,” and maintains that “the
assumption of the cross with the intention of engaging in penitential combat, in response to a
cause that was defined as holy by the pope and preached by the Church,” is “the essential attribute of crusading,” not an accidental attribute of crusading. Norman Housley, Religious Warfare
in Europe, 1400-1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 12; idem, Contesting the Crusades, 20.
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P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
works well for Crusades that made use of such an elaborate institutional apparatus, it creates problems when we seek to understand the early period of the
Crusades when such an apparatus was either non-existent or was in the process of development.9
Modern theories of the Crusades take their bearing from the Jerusalem
Crusade launched by Pope Urban II in 1095. All Crusades are measured and
gauged against the attributes of this Crusade.10 he equation of crusading with
the Jerusalem Crusade, so that crusading is endowed by the Jerusalem Crusade
with certain characteristics that only this Crusade possesses, has led to patent
absurdities. For example, it presupposes the existence of crusading institutions
before the existence of crusading itself which alone constitutes the possibility
of establishing crusading institutions,11 and it requires that all Crusade essentials be present from the start, with only trivial modifications added later.
hus, from the beginning, the leaders and organizers of the Crusades were
popes, and the institutions of the indulgence, the vow, the Cross, and Crusader privileges were all in place.12 he local environment can modify the
original form of the Crusades to give varieties of crusading — the Crusades in
Spain, the Baltic, the Balkans, etc. — but these local varieties are seen as trivial
and unimportant modifications of the original form of crusading embodied in
the so-called “First” Crusade. Crusading was created functionally complete
from the beginning. It did not develop by historical processes but was “invented
by Pope Urban II in 1095.”13 As a result, Crusades do not have the ability to
operate outside the creator’s design. hey endlessly reproduce the same basic
9
Chevedden outlines the piecemeal development of the ecclesiastical apparatus of crusading
in his “Crusade Indulgence,” 253-54, and “ ‘A Crusade from the First’: he Norman Conquest
of Islamic Sicily, 1060-1091,” al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 22, no. 2 (August
2010): 191-225, at 213-17.
10
Riley-Smith, Crusades: Short History, 1st ed., xxix; idem, “he Crusading Movement and
Historians,” in idem, he Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, 9; Flori, La croix, 51.
11
Erdmann, Entstehung, 125; trans. Baldwin and Goffart, 138-39; Michael Mitterauer, Why
Europe?: he Medieval Origins of its Special Path, trans. Gerald Chapple (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2010), 198; Chevedden, “Crusade Indulgence,” 254, 277-86, 320; “Crusade
from the First,” 199-201, 214-17.
12
Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? 4th ed., 5: “To contemporaries . . . a crusade was an
expedition authorized by the pope on Christ’s behalf, the leading participants in which took
vows and consequently wore crosses and enjoyed the privileges of protection at home and the
indulgence, which, when the campaign was not destined for the East, was equated with that
granted to crusaders to the Holy Land.”
13
Jonathan Phillips, Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades (London: Bodley Head,
2009), 29; cf. Joshua Prawer, he Crusaders’ Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages
(New York: Praeger, 1972), 5: “It seems doubtful that any one man, institution or ideology can
be directly credited with its inception.”
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
263
form, by either having a Jerusalem focus and an ecclesiastical apparatus matching the one attached to Urban’s Jerusalem Crusade, or by having this ecclesiastical apparatus alone. Efforts to explain the Crusades have never ventured
very far from the concept of Pope Urban’s original design being endlessly replicated over the centuries.14
he Crusades, it seems, only come to be recognized when they loom up like
mighty sequoias in the forest. Certainly the Crusade of Urban II “to aid the
Church in Asia” (Asiane ecclesie)15 was the most remarkable sequoia in a forest
of Crusades, but the crusading enterprise, mirroring the development of the
sequoia, did not start off as an already formalized and papally-regulated historical phenomenon.16 If the Crusades emulate the life cycle of the sequoia,
then we should be able to find a measure of variability in crusading at any one
time and a large number of changes to crusading through time. And just as we
see the early period of the sequoia’s development as part of an organic unity,
we should also come to see the early period of the Crusades as part of a definite
historical unity. Like the mighty sequoias, the Crusades grew from small
beginnings, and these beginnings importantly set the stage for further developments to come.17
14
For an account of attempts to break away from the concept of Pope Urban’s original design
being endlessly replicated over the centuries, see Chevedden, “Crusade from the First,” 192-99.
15
Urban II to the counts of Besalú, Ampurias, Roussillon, and Cerdanya and their knights,
ca. July 1096; see note 41 below.
16
Others disagree; cf. Christopher Tyerman, “Were here Any Crusades in the Twelfth
Century?” English Historical Review 110, no. 2 (July 1995): 553-77; idem, he Invention of the
Crusades (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); idem, Fighting for Christendom; idem,
God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London: Allen Lane, 2006); homas S. Asbridge, he
First Crusade: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); idem, he Crusades: he
War for the Holy Land (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010); Jonathan Riley-Smith, he Crusades:
A History, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); idem, What Were the Crusades? 4th
ed.; Norman Housley, Fighting for the Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Phillips, Holy Warriors; Mitterauer, Why Europe?
17
Hegel points out that the development of a plant at the different stages of its life is vital for
the plant as a whole, and that no single stage can epitomize the plant’s entire history. Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hermann
Glockner (Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1927), 12; trans. Arnold V. Miller as Phenomenology of
Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 2. What attention has been given to the so-called “preCrusades,” “proto-Crusades,” “prototypes of Crusades,” “premature Crusades,” “quasi-Crusades,”
“demi-Crusades,” “near Crusades,” “ersatz Crusades,” “Crusades avant la lettre,” and “Crusades
before the Crusades,” signals no interest in the early period of the Crusades. he “pre-Crusades”
ultimately give no real clues about the early stages of the Crusades because they lack the very
element (or elements) needed to produce a Crusade. According to the conventional view, “preCrusades” are degenerate offshoots from the main trunk of Crusade evolution and the only way
for them to become Crusades is by being reattached to the main trunk — something that can
only happen after 1095. he Spanish Crusades are commonly understood in this way. When the
264
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Defining the Crusades by their Purpose
he Crusades were not static, nor were they unchangeable or unvarying in
their properties. Rather, the Crusades were dynamic and adaptive to changing
circumstances, and their properties were historically and socially constructed.
he properties so often associated with crusading — a Jerusalem orientation
or the ecclesiastical apparatus associated with the Jerusalem Crusade — were
not the properties by which the Crusades first came to be known. Jerusalem
was not the stem from which all branches of crusading grew, and the panoply
of institutional mechanisms created to promote crusading was not the fixed
essence of the Crusades. No “association of war with pilgrimage” or “association of war and penance” was needed to jump-start the Crusades.18 No ideal
of a moral and religious imitatio Christi was required to generate crusading.19
Nor did “the idea of crusade,” after “[reaching] a high point of evolution in the
1060s,” go into remission and experience “an interruption of several decades”
Spanish expeditions against al-Andalus changed their habits by adopting “crusading ideas [that]
were introduced into the [Iberian] peninsula,” they became true Crusades. Joseph F. O’Callaghan,
Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003),
23; Housley, Contesting the Crusades, 100-9; Jonathan Phillips, he Second Crusade: Extending the
Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 244-68; William J. Purkis,
Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095-c. 1187 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell
Press, 2008), 120-38. Hence, the driving force of crusading evolution, according to orthodox
Crusade historians, is the adoption of new habits or alien characteristics that were not previously
in evidence. For a Mediterranean-wide view of the Crusades, see Robert I. Burns, “he Many
Crusades of Valencia’s Conquest (1225-1280): An Historiographical Labyrinth,” in On the Social
Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, ed. Donald J. Kagay and
heresa M. Vann, he Medieval Mediterranean, vol. 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 167-77.
18
Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 77-78, expresses the substance of the Crusades in the distinct
modes of “the association of war with pilgrimage” — a two-nature scheme of crusading promoted by Carl Erdmann — and “the association of war and penance” — a two-nature formulation of crusading favored by Christopher Tyerman. Erdmann, Entstehung, vii, 319; trans.
Baldwin and Goffart, xxxiii, 348; Tyerman, “Were here Any Crusades,” 568; idem, Invention,
50, 56. Riley-Smith gives to crusading a double dualistic character — “war as a pilgrimage”/“war
as a penance” — and describes Crusades as “penitential war pilgrimages.” Riley-Smith, First
Crusaders, 77; idem, “Introduction,” in he First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 1-4, at 1; idem, “Islam and the Crusades
in History and Imagination, 8 November 1898-11 September 2001,” Crusades 2 (2003): 15167, at 167; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed., 8; idem, he Crusades, Christianity, and Islam,
Bampton Lectures in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 9.
19
Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 1-11, 20-22, 26-29, 30-47, 56-58, 60-63, 72, 73-75, 79-82,
85, 87, 89-101, 114, 115, 116-19, 120-22, 125-26, 128, 129-30, 134, 137-38, 165, 171, 17375, 178, 179-84.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
265
before being brought back to life by Pope Urban in 1095.20 Still less did crusading remain in some embryonic, inchoate, and undeveloped state until it
took form “in the minds of the crusaders as they suffered in Asia.”21 “he
military operations conducted at and around Antioch in 1097-9” were the
result of crusading, not the point at which a so-called “armed pilgrimage was
transformed into something new that we now call crusading.”22
he Crusades first came to be known and defined through the properties
that stemmed from the essential nature or purpose of crusading: the very acts
of reconquest (reconquista) and restoration (restauratio). hese properties indicate that the Crusades were valued because of their intrinsic importance and
did not derive their value principally from a purpose external to the activity of
crusading itself.23 he crusading decree, which was promulgated by Pope
20
hese are the surprising conclusions of Erdmann. Erdmann, Entstehung, 102, 103, 121-23,
124-27, 140-41, 152, 199, 210, 267-70, 272, 292-96, 308-9, 319, 325; trans. Baldwin and
Goffart, 112, 114, 133-40, 155-56, 168, 216, 228, 287-90, 293, 314-19, 333-34, 348, 354;
Paul E. Chevedden, “he Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade: A New (Old) Paradigm for
Understanding the Crusades,” Der Islam 83, no. 1 (June 2006): 90-136, at 126-29. Erdmann
argues that Crusades, or campaigns “conducted entirely as a crusade” or having a “crusading
character,” were underway long before 1095. Although “the crusading idea had attained great
force in the 1060s,” this did not immediately clear the way for crusading in the true sense, which
for Erdmann requires “the unification of holy war with pilgrimage.” Rather, the Crusades underwent a Dark Age, a time of cruz(s)ata interrupta, before genuine crusading was born in 1095.
21
Jonathan Riley-Smith, he First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 30, 152; idem, Crusades: A Short History, 1st ed., 10, 88; idem,
Crusades: A History, 2nd ed., 112; idem, First Crusade, 2nd ed., 3. Riley-Smith also asserts that
“the crusade . . . only reached maturity in the thirteenth century and was in an inchoate state for
most of the period 1095 to 1198.” Jonathan Riley-Smith, “History, the Crusades and the Latin
East, 1095-1204,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 1-17, at 10.
22
Housley, Fighting for the Cross, 5.
23
Others disagree; cf. Erdmann, Entstehung, 306-7; trans. Baldwin and Goffart, 331-32, who
assumes that a kind of conceptual block stood in the way of the development of crusading. Only
when this block was removed by something external to the activity of crusading itself — the
“electrifying appeal” of “an armed pilgrimage” — did crusading go forward. Part of the reason
why the problem of crusading origins has proved so resistant to resolution is the relentless search
for a deus ex machina, an external force or agent that suddenly appears to precipitate crusading.
See, for example, Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 40-78, where this deus ex machina is an external
contrivance created by the Council of Clermont, an indulgenced grant to Crusaders offering
them “the remission of all their sins” in return for engaging in “a military enterprise,” which
provides crusading with its defining characteristic: its penitential properties. See also Flori, La
croix, 31, 188, where the defining characteristic of crusading is “the supreme sacralization” of the
enterprise, and “a primary driving force behind the sacralization of the Crusade” is the Crusade
indulgence, the same deus ex machina employed by Riley-Smith. Instead of approaching the
Crusades as events that might have been produced by historical processes, scholars have invoked
dei ex machina to explain the Crusades.
266
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Urban at the Council of Clermont in 1095 and recorded by, or on behalf
of, Bishop Lambert of Arras (d. 1115), articulates the essential nature or purpose of the Eastern Crusade as a “march” to Jerusalem “to liberate the Church
of God”:
Whoever sets out for Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God (ad liberandam
ecclesiam Dei) for the sake of devotion alone, not for the acquisition of honor or
money, let that march (iter) be imputed to him [as satisfaction] for all penance.24
Here, the essence or nature of the Crusade is not strictly defined in terms of
its Marschziel, as an iter Hierosolymitanum. Although there is mention of
the Marschziel, or destination of the enterprise, the Marschziel is not important simply for its own sake but primarily for the sake of some other desired
goal: the liberation of the “Church of God.”25 he essence or nature of the
Crusade is not strictly defined in terms of its overall objective either. he war’s
objective, or Kriegsziel, is best expressed as a campaign ad liberationem Orientalium ecclesiarum,26 or as an expeditio . . . ad Ierusalem et alias Asie ecclesias a
Sarracenorum potestate eruendas.27 What is articulated here is the essence or
nature of the Crusade in a formulation that suits the requirements of the
Crusade indulgence. To ensure that all Christian warriors participating in the
24
he Councils of Urban II, vol. 1, Decreta claromontensia, ed. Robert Somerville, Annuarium
historiae conciliorum, Supp. 1 (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972), 74: “Quicumque pro
sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem
profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni penitentia ei reputetur.” his canon is often referred to as
Canon 2 because it is the second of thirty-two canons recorded in the account of the legislation
of the Council of Clermont made by, or on behalf of, Bishop Lambert of Arras. On the meaning
of this text, see Chevedden, “Goal of the Eastern Crusade”; “Crusade Indulgence.” I thank
Prof. Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating Canon 2.
25
Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1943 “race for Berlin” did not seek merely to reach Hitler’s
capital but to liberate all of Nazi-occupied Europe, including Berlin, Urban’s 1095 “march to
Jerusalem” did not seek merely to reach Jerusalem but to liberate the Eastern Church in its
entirety, including Jerusalem. See Chevedden, “Goal of the Eastern Crusade,” 76-79.
26
Urban II to all the faithful in Flanders, December 1095; Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Epistulae
et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes: Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088-1100
(Innsbruck: Wagner’sche universitäts-buchhandlung, 1901), 136: “Cui calamitati pio contuitu
condolentes Gallicanas partes uisitauimus eiusque terrae principes et subditos ad liberationem
Orientalium ecclesiarum ex magna parte sollicitauimus et huiusmodi procinctum pro remissione
omnium peccatorum suorum in Aruernensi concilio celebriter eis iniunximus.”
27
Decreta claromontensia, ed. Somerville, 124: “Tunc etiam expeditio facta est, et constituta
est equitum et peditum ad Ierusalem et alias Asie ecclesias a Sarracenorum potestate eruendas.”
I thank Prof. Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating this text. On Erdmann’s distinction
between the Kampf- or Kriegsziel of the Crusade and the Marschziel of the Crusade, and the
misunderstanding these terms have evoked, see Chevedden, “Goal of the Eastern Crusade,”
76-79.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
267
Crusade would be eligible for the spiritual benefits attached to the enterprise,
regardless of whether they might or might not reach Jerusalem, or even if
the Marschziel of the Crusade was ever realized, the council fathers attached
the Crusade indulgence to whatever part of the Crusade’s objectives could be
completed by the participants. hey did so by using an existing expression —
“to liberate the Church of God” — to denote any and all works done to bring
about a shift from Islamic to Christian rule (translatio regni) in the region
targeted by the Crusade in the Christian East.
he crusading decree places the greatest importance on achieving the political purpose of the Crusade, not on achieving the incentive for the Crusade.28
It subordinates the incentive for the Crusade — the Crusade indulgence — to
the political ends of the Crusade by restricting this incentive only to those that
set out for Jerusalem “to liberate the Church of God.” Naturally, the incentive
had to be in harmony with, or regarded as a means to, the ultimate end of the
Crusade. his could only be done by regulating, or restricting, the incentive in
such a way that it would serve, and not defeat, the ultimate end of the Crusade.29 When non-combatants, such as monks, began thinking of the Jerusalem Crusade in terms other than its intended purpose, Urban was quick to
28
Others disagree; cf. Riley-Smith, Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, 9, 33, on Crusades as
“penitential war pilgrimages,” which were “primarily about benefiting [the individual Crusader],
since he was engaged in an act of self-sanctification,” and “only secondarily about service in arms
to God or the benefiting of the church or Christianity.” See also Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 75,
77; idem, “Introduction,” in First Crusade: Origins and Impact, 1; idem, “Rethinking the
Crusades,” 20; idem, “Islam and the Crusades in History and Imagination,” 167; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed., xxx-xxxi, 8; idem, “Christians of the Middle East under the Franks:
I. Motives for the Crusades: A European Perspective,” in Christianity: A History in the Middle
East, ed. Habib Badr et al. (Beirut: Middle East Council of Churches, Studies & Research Program, 2005), 548-58, at 555; idem, What Were the Crusades? 4th ed., 58.
29
Others disagree; cf. Gary Dickson, “Encounters in Medieval Revivalism: Monks, Friars,
and Popular Enthusiasts,” Church History 68, no. 2 (June 1999): 265-93, at 278-79; idem,
“Revivalism as a Medieval Religious Genre,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51, no. 3 (July 2000):
473-96, at 493-94; Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 20; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed., 19;
idem, Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, 2. Dickson maintains that quicumque of Quicumque pro
sola devotione of Canon 2 points to an “all-inclusiveness” in the Crusade indulgence, such that
“the religious benefits . . . were to be made available to every believer.” He concludes that “Crusade revivalism was thus populist from its inception, despite contemporary and subsequent
efforts to limit participation in the crusading host.” Riley-Smith presupposes that Crusades were
pilgrimages. From this assumption follows a whole complex of beliefs about the Crusades,
including the idea that “crusades had to be open to all, even psychopaths,” and because of this,
“there were no means available for screening recruits for suitability [for military service in the
Crusades].” Both Dickson and Riley-Smith see the Crusade indulgence as a means of defeating,
not serving, the ultimate end of the Crusade. Quicumque cannot signify “all-inclusiveness” or an
“open to all” invitation because the indefinite relative clause, quicumque pro sola devotione, non
pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit, refers to
268
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
disabuse them of this notion, telling them that the Crusade was for “soldiers
who are setting out for Jerusalem with the good intention of liberating the
community of Christians . . . for we are spurring soldiers to undertake this
expedition, because they are the ones who can repel the savagery of the Saracens by their arms and restore the Christian <Churches> to their former
freedom.”30 he performance of the work of the Crusade indulgence in the
way that the Church had established that work to be done was an essential
part of the indulgence. If one had no intention to gain the indulgence by performing the work for which the indulgence was granted, or was incapable of
performing this work, one could not receive the indulgence.
“To Liberate the Church of God”
he task “to liberate the Church of God” stood for the grand ideal of the papal
reformers of the eleventh century. hey gave the highest moral and political
value to freedom (libertas). Within Christian Europe, “the freedom of the
Church” (libertas ecclesiae) meant the complete freedom of the Church from
imperial, royal, and feudal domination.31 In the realms of Christendom that
had been conquered by Islam and subjected to Islamic rule, “the freedom of
the Church” meant the return of Christian rule and the “[restoration of ] the
former position of the Holy Church” (antiquum ecclesie sancte statum . . .
reparavit).32 Hence, the purpose of the Crusades, as initially envisioned, was
the realization of “the freedom of the Church” in the realms of conquered
a specific category of individuals defined by these actions. Hence, the Crusade indulgence was
directed only at those individuals capable of fulfilling its requirements.
30
Urban II to the monks of Vallombrosa, 7 October 1096; Papsturkunden für Kirchen im
Heiligen Lande, ed. Rudolf Hiestand, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 3rd ser., vol. 136, Vorarbeiten zum oriens pontificius,
vol. 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 88-89, no. 2: “Audiuimus quosdam uestrum cum militibus, qui Ierusalem liberandae christianitatis gratia tendunt, uelle proficisci.
Recta quidem oblatio, sed non recta diuisio; nos enim ad hanc expeditionem militum animos
instigauimus, qui armis suis Saracenorum feritatem declinare et christianorum <ecclesias> possint libertati pristinae restituere.”
31
Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: he Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 50, 51, 83, 87, 94, 103-4, 108.
32
Urban II to Bishop Gerland of Agrigento (d. 1101), 10 October 1098; Piú antiche carte,
ed. Collura, 22, no. 5; Becker, Urban II, 2:349-51; Paul E. Chevedden, “he Islamic View and
the Christian View of the Crusades: A New Synthesis,” History 93, no. 2 (April 2008): 181-200,
at 192-93. For a discussion of the meaning of libertas ecclesiae and its explicit formulation in
Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095), see Chevedden, “Goal of the Eastern Crusade,”
58-71, 86-103.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
269
Christendom. Islamic domination was regarded as a tyranny that should be
overturned because it attacks the most basic rights of Christians: the right to
autonomy, the power to create one’s own laws and act according to them, and
the right to self-determination, the capacity to control one’s destiny free of
external compulsion. he reform popes of the eleventh century (particularly
Nicholas II, Alexander II, Gregory VII, Victor III, and Urban II) prescribed
action to reverse centuries of Islamic occupation of Christian territory and
promoted a program of Christian reconquest and restoration to accomplish
this task.
he formula ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei may have been first adopted at the
Council of Clermont in 1095 to express the aim of crusading, but the de facto
use of this principle in conjunction with campaigns of reconquest and restoration occurred much earlier. By the time Pope Urban ascended the papal
throne in 1088, a passionate concern “to liberate the Church of God” had
already taken hold in the Latin West, and expeditions to achieve this purpose
had already been carried out in Sicily,33 Spain,34 and North Africa.35 Long
before the idea of Crusade was formalized in a conventional idiom and a set
formula, it was being realized in practice. he grammar of political action
arose prior to the grammar of conceptual formulations and theoretical understandings. As John Headley reminds us, “res (the substance) long precedes
verbum (the term itself ).”36 Pope Urban knew what it meant “to liberate the
Church of God” because he had witnessed successive enterprises that had
been undertaken with this purpose in mind: the Norman conquest of Sicily,
Castilian advances southward, marked by the conquest of Toledo in 1085,
and Catalan initiatives, spearheaded by attacks on Tortosa and efforts to
rebuild Tarragona. Moreover, Urban did not segment the various theaters of
war in which Christian warriors fought “to liberate the Church of God” into
discrete compartments but instead placed the struggle with Islam within a
broad strategic framework and never failed “to view the Mediterranean as a
single geostrategic unit.”37
Chevedden, “Crusade from the First.”
O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 23-33, 48-49.
35
Giuseppe Scalia, “Il carme pisano sull’impresa contro i saraceni del 1087,” in Studi di filologia romanza offerti a Silvio Pellegrini, ed. Marco Boni et al. (Padua: Liviana, 1971), 565-627;
H. E. J. Cowdrey, “he Mahdia Campaign of 1087,” English Historical Review 92, no. 1 (January
1977): 1-29; Chevedden, “Crusade Indulgence,” 294-95.
36
John M. Headley, he Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 89.
37
Dominic Fenech, “East-West to North-South in the Mediterranean,” GeoJournal 31, no. 2
(October 1993): 129-40, at 132.
33
34
270
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
he Geo-Strategic Perspective of Pope Urban
Pope Urban’s coordinated strategic vision is most evident in 1096, when, in
the wake of the Clermont crusading summons, “a vast number of people from
Italy and all of Gaul and Germany began to make for Jerusalem against the
pagans (i.e., the Muslims), so that they might liberate the Christians.”38 he
astonishing response to Pope Urban’s call to march to Jerusalem threatened
“[to pull] the whole [crusading] enterprise in this one direction,”39 that is,
toward Jerusalem, to the detriment of other crusading fronts. Urban quickly
saw that the Jerusalem campaign had the potential to relegate Spain to the
bottom of Christendom’s crusading priorities, thereby endangering Christendom by putting at risk the Churches in Spain “suffering from the incursions
of the Saracens.” He knew that if the Jerusalem Crusade became the sole way
of defining what a Crusade was, then a Crusade would have value only insofar
as it was undertaken “to liberate the Churches of the East” (ad liberationem
Orientalium ecclesiarum).40 He did not want to neglect the western Mediterranean while prosecuting a Crusade in the eastern Mediterranean, so he
devised a two-front Mediterranean strategy that pursued an ongoing Western
Crusade in Spain and an Eastern Crusade headed for Jerusalem. He saw the
two Crusades as part of the same common enterprise, and he made every
effort to promote the Spanish Crusade at a time when everyone’s attention
and energies were focused on the Jerusalem Crusade, admonishing those in
Spain with “plans to go to Asia” to stay in Spain and “help with continuous
efforts the neighboring Churches suffering from the incursions of the
Saracens.”41
38
Bernold of Constance, “Chronicon,” in Bertholds und Bernolds Chroniken [Bertholdi et Bernoldi chronica], ed. Ian Stuart Robinson; trans. Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, Ausgewählte
Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, vol. 14 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 279-433, at 418: “His temporibus maxima multitudo de Italia et omni Gallia et Germania Ierosolimam contra paganos, ut liberarent christianos, ire cepit.”
39
Hans Eberhard Mayer, he Crusades, trans. John Gillingham, rev. from the 6th German ed.
of Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 10; O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 33.
40
Urban II to all the faithful in Flanders, December 1095; see note 26 above.
41
Urban II to the counts Bernat of Besalú, Hugo of Ampurias, Guislabert of Roussilon,
and Guillem of Cerdanya and their knights, ca. July 1096; Papsturkunden in Spanien, ed. Kehr,
287-88, no. 23: “Si ergo ceterarum prouinciarum milites Asiane ecclesie subuenire unanimiter
proposuere et fratres suos ab Saracenorum tyrannide liberare, ita et uos unanimiter uicine ecclesie contra Saracenorum incursus patientius succurrere nostris exortationibus laborate. In qua
videlicet expeditione si quis pro Dei et fratrum suorum dilectione occuberit, peccatorum profecto suorum indulgentiam et eterne vite consortium inventurum se ex clementissima Dei nostri
miseratione non dubitet. Si quis ergo verstrum in Asiam ire deliberaverit, hic devotionis sue
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
271
Urban not only took it upon himself to establish strategic priorities for and
coordination of crusading initiatives, but he also sought to provide a theoretical basis for the Crusades. When he viewed what was happening “in [his]
time” (nostris temporibus), the events spoken of in the Book of Daniel —
about how God changes the times and the seasons and uses His power to
depose kings and set up kings — at once became meaningful to him. Western
Christendom had finally gained the strategic momentum in the war with
Islam and had shifted to the offensive, leading to the overthrow of Islamic rule
and the reestablishment of Christian rule in the Mediterranean. he regime
change (translatio regni) prophesied by the prophet Daniel was no longer
something remote and unfamiliar to him; the transfer from Muslim rule to
Christian rule in regions of the Mediterranean was now happening “in [his]
time.” He therefore adopted the biblical expression translatio regni (Dan. 2:21)
to describe these changes and explained the Crusades in terms of a triadic
schema of development, according to which the crusading enterprise consisted of three movements: the Sicilian Crusade, the Spanish Crusades, and
the Eastern Crusade. Furthermore, he sought to fit the Crusades into a general
schema of Christian history, but he wanted this schema to do far more than
explain crusading. He wanted this schema to explain the whole of Christian
history from apostolic times until the present in order to establish exactly what
set off the crusading era from all earlier ages.
Crusading as Part of God’s Plan for Salvation History
Urban’s schema divides Christian history into four major epochs: (1) the
epoch of Christian antiquity; (2) the epoch of Islamic ascendancy; (3) the
epoch of Christian reconquest; and (4) the epoch of Christian restoration.
he first epoch witnessed the growth and progress of early Christianity as it
desiderium studeat consummare. Neque enim virtutis est alibi a Saracenis christianos eruere,
alibi christianos Saracenorum tyrannidi oppressionique exponere”; trans. Chevedden, “Crusade
Indulgence,” 300; based on O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 33. See also Erdmann, Entstehung, 294-95; trans. Baldwin and Goffart, 317; Louise Riley-Smith and Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, he Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095-1274, Documents of Medieval History,
vol. 4 (London: E. Arnold, 1981), 40; José Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada
en España, Victoriensia, vol. 4 (Vitoria: Editorial del Seminario, 1958), 60-61; Becker, Urban II,
2:347-48; Norman Housley, “Jerusalem and the Development of the Crusade Idea, 1099-1128,”
in he Horns of Hattīn, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Israel
Exploration Society; London: Variorum, 1992), 27-40, at 32-33; Lawrence J. McCrank, “Restoration and Reconquest in Medieval Catalonia: he Church and Principality of Tarragona,
971-1177,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974, 264, 284-85n51.
272
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
grew from a small and obscure sect to become the universal religion of a world
empire and a truly world religion. he second epoch saw the triumphant
expansion of the power of Islam and the subjugation of more than half of
Christendom.42 Christians, declares Urban, were destined to undergo defeat
and disaster, not because God was “worthy of blame,” but because God had
seen fit “to punish the sins of His people.” he power of Islam was the instrument of God’s anger. In the words of the Psalmist, “He punished their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with scourges” (Ps. 88:33).43 he
triumph of Islam, however, eventually brought its own nemesis: “God, the
ruler of all things, who by His wisdom and fortitude, transfers rule when
He wishes and changes the times” (Dan. 2:21), ushered in a translatio regni, a
shift from Islamic to Christian rule, and freed His people from “the servitude
of the pagans” (i.e., the Muslims) by the victorious power of Christian princes,
thus inaugurating the third and fourth epochs of Christian history — that of
reconquest and restoration.44 hese last two epochs cover the period of the
Crusades in which reconquest and restoration are the dominant themes.45
42
Guibert de Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres texts, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus
Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 127A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 98-99 (I.4):
“Hujus nefariae institutionis obscuritas christianum tunc nomen obtexit et adhuc per Orientis
pene universi, Affricae, Egypti, Ethiopiae, Libiae et iuxta nos Hispaniae remotissimos sinus
oblitterat.”
43
Urban II to Berenguer de Lluça (d. 1099), bishop of Ausona-Vic, 1 July 1091, bestowing
on him the title archiepiscopus Tarraconensis; Documentación pontificia, ed. Mansilla, 50-51,
no. 32: “Inter primas Ispaniarum urbes, Tarraconem fuisse insignem et gentiles et christiane
pagine indiciis demonstrant. Iustus autem Dominus in viis suis et sanctus in omnibus operibus
suis, qui cum in plerisque iudiciis suis incomprehensibilis habeatur, in nullo unquam valet reprehensibilis existimari. Ipse transfert regna, et mutat tempora; ipsi visum est olim Tarraconensis
urbis gloriam exaltare; ipsi visum est in eadem urbe peccata populi sui visitare; cum enim in ea
christianorum populus habitaret, visitavit in virga iniquitates eorum et in verberibus peccata
eorum.” Becker, Urban II, 2:341-42.
44
Urban II to Bishop Roger of Syracuse, 23 November 1093; Patrologiae cursus completes:
series latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols. (Paris: Migne, 1841-1864), 151:370C-371A
(under the date 17 November 1093); Becker, Urban II, 2:343-44; Ingrid Heike Ringel, “Ipse
transfert regna et mutat tempora: Bemerkungen zur Herkunft von Dan. 2,21 bei Urban II,” in
Deus Qui Mutat Tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters; Festschrift für
Alfons Becker zu seinem fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Ernst-Dieter Hehl et al. (Sigmaringen:
J. horbecke, 1987), 137-56, at 138. he same vision of a translatio regni permeates Pope Gregory VII’s bull of 16 April 1083 to Archbishop Alcherius confirming the restoration of Palermo
to its ancient metropolitan status in Sicily. Quellen und Forschungen zum Urkunden- und Kanzleiwesen Papst Gregors VII, part 1, Quellen: Urkunden, Regesten, Facsimilia, ed. Leo Santifaller, Studi
e Testi, vol. 190 (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1957), 253, no. 212; Becker,
Urban II, 2:305; H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 436-37.
45
Becker, Urban II, 2:378.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
273
Pope Urban believed that “in our time, God has alleviated the suffering of
the Christian people and has deigned to exalt the faith.” “In our day,” he tells
Bishop Peter of Huesca,
He has conquered (debellauit) the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe with
Christian forces, and He has restored (restituit) once famous cities to the practice
of His religion by an even more immanent divine grace. Among these, He has
released (liberatam) the cathedral city of Huesca from the tyranny of the Saracens
by the vigorous effort of our beloved son, King Peter of Aragon, and has reestablished (reformauit) His Catholic Church.46
he pope saw in history the manifestation of the divine purpose, not only
for his own time and age, but also for all the ages of Christian history. he
pope regarded his own time as one in which God sought the cooperation of
Christian warriors, such as Peter I of Aragon and Navarre (r. 1094-1104), to
carry out His plan of Christian reconquest and restoration throughout the
Mediterranean.
Urban realized that he too had a part to play in God’s plan as God’s willing
“cooperator”: “herefore, we, with the help of God, wish to be fellow-laborers
(cooperatores) [with Him] in this restoration (restitutionis).”47 In this restoration effort, which the pope advanced in the central, western, and eastern Mediterranean through campaigns of reconquista and restauratio, Urban held out
the promise of a return of “the Holy Church” to “the former position” (antiquum statum) that it once had before the coming of Islam, “in accordance
with God’s will and gracious purpose.”48 he reestablishment of “the former
position” of the Church does not appear to have been an end in itself. Rather,
the pope looked upon it as a means to a greater and more important goal: the
46
Urban II to Bishop Peter of Huesca, 11 May 1098; Durán Gudiol, La Iglesia de Aragón,
193, no. 20: “ . . . nostris potissimum temporibus christiani populi pressuras releuare fidem exaltare dignatus est. Nostris siquidem diebus in Asia Turcos in Europa Mauros christianorum uiribus debellauit et urbes quondam famosas religionis sue cultui gratia propensiore restituit, inter
quas Oscam quoque pontificalis cathedre urbem sarracenorum tirannide liberatam karissimi filii
nostri Petri Aragonensis regis instantia katholice Ecclesie sue reformauit”; Becker, Urban II,
2:348-439. I thank Prof. Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating this text.
47
Urban II to Berenguer de Lluça (d. 1099), bishop of Ausona-Vic, 1 July 1091, bestowing
on him the title archiepiscopus Tarraconensis; Patrologia latina, ed. Migne, 151:332B; Documentación pontificia, ed. Mansilla, 51, no. 32: “Nos itaque qui, prestante Deo, restitutionis huius
optamus cooperatores existere”; Becker, Urban II, 2:339, 341, 342, 343, 349, 351, 353, 357,
358.
48
Urban II to Bishop Gerland of Agrigento (d. 1101), 10 October 1098; Piú antiche carte,
ed. Collura, 22, no. 5: “et antiquum Ecclesie sancte statum pro voluntatis sue beneplacito reparavit”; Becker, Urban II, 2:349-50; Ringel, “Ipse transfert regna et mutat tempora,” 138.
274
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
continuation of the mission of the Church to “make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).
he two goals — reestablishment of “the former position” of the Church
and resumption of the mission of the Church — coexisted in Urban’s mind,
but he realized that these goals could only be achieved in succession: achieving
the first goal was a condition for achieving the second goal. And both of these
goals were predicated on the success of the great task of the reconquest of the
lost lands of Christendom from the power of Islam. he Crusade of reconquest
was to lead to the Crusade of regenerating the Church; and the Crusade of
rebuilding the Church was to lead to the Crusade of missionary evangelization. If
Pope Urban gave his full attention only sporadically to the apostolic mission
of the Church, it was not because he did not consider this goal important, but
rather because the tasks of reconquest and restoration absorbed his energies.
First reconquest, then restoration, then evangelization.
Crusade and Mission
Pope Urban was profoundly conscious of the universal mission of the Church
to proclaim and to spread the Kingdom of God and of the function of the
Crusades in this undertaking. he crusading movement would provide an
unprecedented opportunity for the Church to realize its long-standing goal of
“proclaim[ing] the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). he Islamic conquest
movements of the seventh and eighth centuries had erected a barrier against
the spread of Christianity in Asia, in Africa, and in the Mediterranean. Now
that this barrier was coming down as a result of the reconquest of ancient sees
and ecclesiastical provinces, the Church would be able to resume its world
mission. his was an opportunity that Urban did not want to miss.49
49
Others disagree; cf. John H. Van Engen, “Conclusion: Christendom, c. 1100,” in Early
Medieval Christianities, c. 600-c. 1100, ed. homas F. X. Noble et al., he Cambridge History
of Christianity, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 625-43, on conversion
and Church reform being polar to one another, with “reform supplanting conversion” during
the era of Church reform. “From the mid-eleventh century,” Van Engen claims, “reform came
to serve as the signal historical marker in the western imagination, the conversionary moment
now relegated mostly to a storied past.” In the post-millennial European world, a “broad shift
from conversion to reform” took place, as “reformers, papal or Cistercian or Franciscan, aimed
to put the kingdom of Christ in order here and now by re-forming christened society itself, its
very laws and institutions and practices,” leading to a situation in which “reform preempted
conversion” and “the Eucharist came to replace baptism as paradigmatic.” Contra Van Engen, the
conversionary movement and the reform movement, both at once, rose to higher levels of intensity from the mid-eleventh century onward.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
275
During the first year of his pontificate in 1088, Urban took action both to
restore the Church to its “former position” and to fulfill its world mission to
spread the Kingdom of God. He restored the see of newly reconquered Toledo
to ecclesiastical primacy within Spain and directed its incumbent Archbishop
Bernard de Sauvetot to undertake a program of conversion: “With warm
affection we exhort you, reverend brother, that you live worthy of so high and
honored a pontificate, taking care always not to give offense to Christians or
to Muslims; strive by word and example, God helping, to convert the infidels
[i.e., the Muslims] to the faith.”50 his conversion program had been preceded
by one supported by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085) in 1074 that placed
among its accomplishments an attempt to convert the ruler of Zaragoza
Aḥmad I al-Muqtadir (441-475/1049-1082).51
Benjamin Kedar sees this conversionary effort as a counterpart “on the
intellectual plane” of the Latin military counteroffensive against Islam in
the Mediterranean.52 He finds evidence of the new missionary approach of the
Church to Islam in the preaching of “Christ Jesus” in Syria by Richard, the
abbot of St. Vanne, in 1026-1027, and in the evangelization efforts of Gregory
VII in Sicily and North Africa.53 To this evidence we can now add the prescription by ecclesiastical power of the propagation of the faith as a requirement for obtaining a Crusade indulgence. In 1076, when Pope Gregory
granted a Crusade indulgence to Count Roger d’Hauteville (1031-1101) and
50
Urban II to Bernard de Sauvetot, archbishop of Toledo, Anagni, 15 October 1088; Documentación pontificia, ed. Mansilla, 44, no. 27: “Te, reverentissime frater, affectione intima exortamus, quatenus dignum te tanti honore pontificii semper exhibeas christianis ac sarracenis sine
offensione semper esse procurans et ad fidem infideles convertere, Deo largiente, verbis studeas
et exemplis”; trans. Robert I. Burns, “Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: he hirteenth-Century Dream of Conversion,” American Historical Review 76, no. 5 (December 1971):
1386-1434, at 1389.
51
Allan Cutler argues that Abbot Hugh of Cluny organized this mission; D. M. Dunlop
provides documentation on it; and Benjamin Kedar comments on the significance of this mission. Allan Cutler, “Who Was the ‘Monk of France’; and When Did He Write? A Note on D.
M. Dunlop’s ‘A Christian Mission to Muslim Spain in the 11th Century,’ ” Al-Andalus, Revista
de las Escuelas de Estudios Árabes de Madrid y Granada 28, no. 2 (1963): 249-69; D. M. Dunlop,
“A Christian Mission to Muslim Spain in the Eleventh Century,” Al-Andalus, Revista de las
Escuelas de Estudios Árabes de Madrid y Granada 17, no. 2 (1952): 259-310; Benjamin Z. Kedar,
Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslims (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988), 54-56. Ibn al-Kardabūs speaks out against the “contemptible, shameless, and
depraved Muslims” who joined the Cid after the conquest of Valencia in 487/1094, “most” of
whom converted to Christianity. Abd al-Malik Ibn al-Kardabūs, Ta rīkh al-Andalus li-Ibn
al-Kardabūs wa-waṣfuhu li-Ibn al-Shabbāṭ, ed. Aḥmad Mukhtār al- Abbādī (Madrid: Instituto de
Estudios Islámicos, 1971), 103.
52
Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 54-56.
53
Ibid., 49-57.
276
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
to “his knights, who [were] about to fight with him against the pagans (i.e.,
the Muslims) [in Sicily],” he required that Roger and his knights receive the
Sacrament of Penance and that Roger specifically “keep himself from capital
offences and . . . seek to spread the worship of the Christian name among the
pagans” (i.e., the Muslims).54 he condition requiring Count Roger to propagate the faith among the Muslims clearly links the crusading enterprise with
the apostolic mission of the Church.
Yet Kedar strongly denies that Christian missionizing among the Muslims
sprang from the crusading enterprise. Rather, it arose from a growing emphasis within the Latin West on preaching to fellow Christians, which eventually
found an external outlet by the “mid-twelfth century” in the form of “preaching to the Muslims.”55 Kedar draws a distinctive line between Crusade and
Mission, which requires him to introduce an external social condition —
“preaching to the Christians” — to account for a “relationship between crusade and mission.”56 He posits an extended lag time between the onset of
crusading activities and “the evolution of Saracen conversion into a crusading
goal,”57 so that the supposed founding father of the Crusade movement, Pope
Urban II, cannot be credited with associating Muslim conversion with the
Crusades. he possibility that Urban did not link the two is supported in his
mind by the fact that not one of the contemporary reports of Urban’s Clermont address of 1095 “mentions Saracen conversion as an express objective.”
“Nor is Saracen conversion mentioned or alluded to in Urban’s extant letters
from the years 1095 to 1099 in which he refers to the crusade.” In addition,
“none of the extant papal summons to later crusading expeditions, which call
54
Gregory VII to Archbishop Arnald of Acerenza, 14 March 1076; Gregory VII, Das Register
Gregors VII (Gregorii VII registrum lib. I-IX), ed. Erich Caspar, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae selectae, vol. 2, fasc. 1-2 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1920-1923),
1:271-72, no. 3.11; trans. H. E. J. Cowdrey as he Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085: An
English Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 193-94, no. 3.11: “Quapropter
pastorali cura hoc laboris onus tibi imponimus, immo ex parte beati Petri imperamus, ut postposita omni torporis desidia illum [Rogerum] adeas eumque huius nostri precepti auctoritate
fultus, si nobis parere sicut pollicitus est voluerit et poenitentiam, ut oportet christianum, egerit,
ab omni peccatorum suorum vinculo tam illum quam etiam suos milites, qui cum eo contra
paganos, ita tamen ut agant poenitentiam, pugnaturi sunt, peccatis maxime absolvas. Addimus
praeterea, ut eum pia admonitione admoneas, quatenus se a capitalibus criminibus custodiat et
christiani nominis culturam inter paganos amplificare studeat, ut de eisdem hostibus victoriam
consequi mereatur”; trans. Chevedden, “Crusade Indulgence,” 292; idem, “Crusade from the
First,” 216; Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 50.
55
Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 67, 133-34.
56
Ibid., ix, 134.
57
Ibid., 67.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
277
for the defense or recovery of Jerusalem and the Crusading Kingdom, presents
Saracen conversion as a goal of the crusade.”58
he question that Kedar addresses is not whether Urban considered the
Crusade of reconquest, the Crusade of rebuilding the Church, and the Crusade of
evangelization to be inextricably linked and mutually related, but “to what
extent was Muslim conversion furthered by the easternmost prong of the
Catholic European counteroffensive, the crusade?”59 Kedar equates the emergence of conversion as a crusading goal with the actual progress of Muslim
conversion in the East. In doing so, he turns away from the question of when
Muslim conversion first manifested itself as a crusading objective and focuses
on the extent to which “missionary efforts aimed at Muslims”60 actually
achieved success. he vital prerequisite for the emergence of conversion as a
crusading goal is some kind of correspondence or connection between Crusade and Mission; for if Crusade and Mission are completely distinct from one
another, they will not be able to interact or correspond with one another.
Kedar postulates such a sharp dichotomy between Crusade and Mission that
any correspondence between the two can only come about through the intervention of developments outside of crusading. A serious problem with Kedar’s
Crusade-Mission duality is that it ignores the underlying logic behind Urban’s
vision of reestablishing the Church in the first place: to realize the mission of
the Church. he reestablishment of the Church was not pursued for its own
sake, but for the end that it serves.
58
Ibid., 57, 58, 60; Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in
the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 57-58. Allan Cutler, Jean
Flori, and Svetlana Loutchitskaja challenge the notion that the Jerusalem Crusade was entirely
devoid of any idea of conversion or missionary focus. Allan Cutler, “he First Crusade and the
Idea of ‘Conversion,’ ” Muslim World 58, no. 1 (January 1968): 57-71; 58, no. 2 (April 1968):
55-164; Jean Flori, “La croix, la crosse et l’épée: La conversion des infidèles dans La Chanson de
Roland et les chroniques de croisade,” in “Plaist vos oïr bone cançon vallant?”: Mélanges de Langue
et de Littérature Médiévales offerts à François Suard, ed. Dominique Boutet et al., 2 vols., Collection UL3, Travaux & recherches (Lille: éditions du Conseil scientifique de l’Université Charlesde-Gaulle-Lille III, 1999), 1:261-72; idem, “Première croisade et conversion des ‘païens,’ ” in
Migrations et diasporas méditerranéennes: Xe-XVIe siècles: actes du colloque de Conques, octobre 1999,
ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier, Publications de la Sorbonne, Série Byzantina Sorbonensia, vol. 19 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 449-57; Svetlana Loutchitskaja, “L’idée
de conversion dans les chroniques de la première croisade,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 45,
no. 177 (January-March 2002): 39-53.
59
Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 57.
60
Ibid., x.
278
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
he Eleventh-Century Dream of Conversion
Any Christian war that aims at the reestablishment of the Church is likely to
be concerned with the apostolic mission of the Church, either residually or
fundamentally, because the mission of the Church is integral to the Church.
But the Crusade of evangelization can move to the fore only after the Crusade
of reconquest and the Crusade of rebuilding the Church have made sufficient
headway. In other words, the priority of the elements that make up the
Crusades — reconquest, restoration, and evangelization — shifts and yields
place depending on what stage of development crusading has reached. Kedar
sees evidence for “a systematic missionary effort among the Muslims” by the
year 1150,61 which seems to depend upon a new priority ordering of crusading
elements, but he sees no separation between “a systematic missionary effort
among the Muslims” and the articulation of evangelization as a crusading
goal. hat is to say, he perceives no distinction between the realm of action
and the realm of desire, or the desideratum. he presentation of an intended
objective, however, usually long precedes its realization, or even effective
efforts aimed at its realization.
Pope Urban was very conscious of the Crusades as playing a part in fulfilling the ultimate mission of the Church — to “make disciples of all nations”
(Matt. 28:19).62 One of his principal concerns was to demonstrate the
continuity of crusading with the history of the Church and God’s plan for
salvation. he Crusade of reconquest was to serve as handmaiden to the Crusade
of rebuilding the Church; and the Crusade of regenerating the Church was to
serve as handmaiden to the Crusade of evangelization. In Urban’s mind, reconquest, restoration, and evangelization are not three separate acts; rather, they are
three aspects of the same process of crusading. As aspects of crusading, reconquest, restoration, and evangelization are no longer divided into their own distinct worlds but are treated as different forms of activity of one and the same
thing — crusading. his establishes the basis for an interchange between Crusade and Mission. If Crusade and Mission are both manifestations of crusading reality, they not only interact with one another, but each is an expression
Ibid., 4, 67.
Others disagree. Reflecting the views of Riley-Smith, Christopher MacEvitt contends that
the Crusade was “not . . . concerned with the salvation of others, but only about the salvation of
the warrior himself. he infidel represented a path to salvation, not a focus of concern for the
crusader.” See Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 75; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed., xxx-xxxi;
idem, Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, 33; idem, What Were the Crusades? 4th ed., 58; Christopher MacEvitt, he Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 18.
61
62
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
279
of the other, with Mission being the fullest realization and development of
Crusade. his implies that Mission is not extrinsic to Crusade but the realization and development of its nature. here is evidence of this in 1088, when,
in the wake of the conquest of Toledo, Pope Urban charged the new archbishop of the city to endeavor “to convert the infidels to the faith.” Earlier,
Pope Gregory VII had promoted the conversion of Muslims both in Spain and
in Sicily as a crusading objective and linked the Crusade indulgence to the
propagation of the faith. hese examples seem to confirm a place for Muslim
conversion among the aims of the Crusades.
Why Urban’s concern for the mission of the Church should not figure
prominently in his few extant letters dealing with the Jerusalem Crusade is
perhaps best explained by an understandable focus on the military aspects of
the crusading enterprise. From the time he issued his crusading appeal at
Clermont in 1095 until he died in Rome on 29 July 1099, two weeks after
the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, Urban was preoccupied with military
matters related to crusading and with efforts to weld and hold together the
Latin-Byzantine coalition so vital to the war effort. News of Jerusalem’s capture on 15 July 1099 never reached him, so he never had the opportunity to
shift his energies to a task other than the Crusade of battle. Conversion in the
eastern Mediterranean would not be spoken of as a crusading objective until
1102, after the Crusade of reconquest and the Crusade of rebuilding the Church
had achieved initial success. A similar sequence of events happened in Sicily
and Spain: conversion emerged as a crusading goal only after crusading itself
had attained some durability as a political force. While direct evidence is not
to be found for Urban’s concern for missionary activity in the East, there is
direct evidence of Urban’s promotion of Muslim conversion in Spain. Since
Urban’s crusading plans envisaged extending to the eastern Mediterranean an
enterprise that had begun in Sicily and Spain,63 it is likely that his eastern plan
envisaged a Crusade of evangelization, similar to that which had been initiated
in Sicily and Spain.
63
Claude Cahen’s statement that “the plan [of Pope Urban] envisaged extending to Palestine
what had been begun in Sicily and Spain” does not acknowledge the crusading status of any pre1095 wars and limits the goal of the Jerusalem Crusade to “the liberation of the Holy Places” or
“the recovery of the Holy Land,” even while it ascribes a geo-strategic, Mediterranean-wide perspective to Urban II. Claude Cahen, “An Introduction to the First Crusade,” Past and Present 6
(November 1954): 6-30, at 25. Erdmann disagrees with Cahen and argues that Pope Urban “had
something rather more comprehensive in mind than a mere ‘crusade’ [as conventionally defined ]”
as a war for “the liberation of the Holy Places” or “the conquest of Syria,” which entailed having
“to go as far as Jerusalem, not [only] in order to conquer this particular city but, more generally,
in order to fight the Moslems wherever they were and liberate the Eastern Christians.” Erdmann,
Entstehung, 363-64, 375; trans. Baldwin and Goffart, 355-57, 368.
280
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Indirect evidence also establishes the probability that the pope saw the mission of the Church as the ultimate goal of the easternmost thrust of the Crusades. While this evidence may not be decisive or final, it does make it more
likely that Urban considered the Crusade of evangelization as being a natural
prolongation of the Crusade of reconquest and the Crusade of rebuilding the
Church. his evidence comes from two very prominent Churchmen of the
day with whom Urban had strong ties: Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury
(ca. 1033-1109) and Abbot Hugh (1024-1109) of the great monastery of
Cluny in Burgundy.64 he pope shared his views of the Crusades with these
individuals, and their reactions to the Crusades may in some measure reflect
Urban’s own opinions.65 Using language that strongly echoes Urban’s own
views of the Jerusalem Crusade, Archbishop Anselm wrote to Baldwin I in
1102 after he had been crowned the first king of Jerusalem (r. 1100-1118) and
praised God for having raised Baldwin
to the dignity of king in that country in which our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
having initiated the beginnings of Christianity, has reestablished (novam plantavit) His Church, which, because of the sins of men, had been, by the judgment
of God, long oppressed by the infidels (i.e., the Muslims) there; but which, by His
mercy, has in our time been so wonderfully raised to life again (resuscitavit), so
that it might be spread from there throughout the whole world.66
64
H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade,” History 55, no. 2 (June
1970): 177-88, at 183-85; idem, “Cluny and the First Crusade,” Revue Bénédictine 83 (1973):
285-311; Giles Constable, “Cluny and the First Crusade,” in idem, Crusaders and Crusading in
the Twelfth Century (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 183-96.
65
Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II’s Preaching,” 184, makes the same presumption, suggesting that
the manner in which Anselm presented the Jerusalem Crusade “is likely to have been determined
by Urban’s own intentions.”
66
Anselm, “Epistolae,” 4:142, ep. 235 (ca. spring 1102): “Benedictus deus in donis suis et
sanctus in omnibus operibus suis [Ps. 144:17], qui vos ad regis dignitatem sua gratia in illa terra
exaltavit, in qua ipse dominus noster Iesus Christus, per se ipsum principium Christianitatis
seminans, ecclesiam suam, ut inde per totum orbem propagaretur, novam plantavit, quam
propter peccata hominum iudicio dei ab infidelibus diu ibidem opressam, sua misericordia nostris temporibus mirabiliter resuscitavit.” H. E. J. Cowdrey discusses Anselm’s letters related to
crusading but passes over his letter to King Baldwin in his “Urban II’s Preaching,” 183-85. In his
“Cluny and the First Crusade,” 307-8, Cowdrey takes up this letter, which, he contends, “shows
gratification with the military outcome of the First Crusade.” James A. Brundage examines
Anselm’s letter to King Baldwin but maintains that Anselm “completely ignores the crusade” in
this letter. Brundage supposes that “[Anselm] largely ignored the crusade and found little to
commend in crusading endeavors.” He also states: “While both [Anselm and Ivo of Chartres]
stopped short of overt criticism of the crusade, their hesitations, reservations, and omissions
make it clear that they were at least skeptical about, if not openly hostile to the holy war.” James
A. Brundage, “St. Anselm, Ivo of Chartres and the Ideology of the First Crusade,” in Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe-XIIe siècles: études anselmiennes, IVe session, Colloques
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
281
Here, all of the stages of Urban’s schema of Christian history find expression
except reconquest, which is subsumed under the concept of rebuilding the
Church. In addition, Anselm attaches a final stage not included in Urban’s
schema: the resumption of the mission of the Church. His version of Urban’s
schema may be summarized as follows: (1) “the beginnings of Christianity” in
Palestine initiated by “our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,” then (2) “oppress[ion]
by the infidels there” of the Church “because of the sins of men,” then
(3) reestablishment of the Church there, and finally (4) the “spread [of the
Church] from there throughout the whole world.”
Anselm saw the Crusade movement as contributing to Christ’s mission
“that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all
nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). he prospect that the
Gospel could now “in our time” be spread to every corner of the earth seemed
at long last a real possibility. hanks to the Crusade of reconquest and the
Crusade of rebuilding the Church, conditions now seemed ripe for the Church
to proceed ahead with its universal mission. Abbot Hugh of Cluny was no less
encouraged by the new opportunities presented by the Crusades for the evangelization of the world. In 1087, he instructed the newly-elected Cluniac
archbishop Bernard of Toledo to “preach the word of God fearlessly and constantly to those who hitherto, owing to our sins, have not shown due honor to
internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, Le
Bec-Hellouin, 11-16 juillet 1982, ed. Jean Pouilloux and Raymonde Foreville, Spicilegium
Beccense, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1984), 175-87.
Samu Niskanen credits Anselm with “a lukewarm attitude to the Spanish reconquest” and
“opposition to the crusade.” He too finds no explicit mention of the “First” Crusade in Anselm’s
letter to King Baldwin, only a “hint that he held Jerusalem in special esteem.” Like Brundage, he
reproaches Anselm for omissions: “Anselm did not mention the circumstances under which the
Christian kingdom of Jerusalem had been created, i.e., the first crusade.” Samu Niskanen,
“St Anselm’s Views on Crusade,” in Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology, ed. Tuomas
M. S. Lehtonen and Kurt Villads Jensen, Studia Fennica, Historica, vol. 9 (Helsinki: Finnish
Literature Society, 2005), 64-70. Simply because it is Anselm’s conviction that the “Lord Jesus
Christ Himself ” returned Jerusalem and the whole kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been “long
oppressed by the infidels,” to Christian control, does not mean that he “completely ignores the
crusade.” Indeed, such a conviction is entirely consistent with crusading thought and crusading
rhetoric, evident from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. See Chevedden, “Crusade from the
First”; Hans Wolter, “Elements of Crusade Spirituality in St. Ignatius,” in Ignatius of Loyola: His
Personality and Spiritual Heritage, 1556-1956: Studies on the 400th Anniversary of His Death, ed.
Friedrich Wulf, Series II. Modern Scholarly Studies about the Jesuits, in English Translations,
vol. 2 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), 97-134. When medieval Christians formulated the crusading enterprise as a work of “the Lord Jesus Christ” and ignored all mention of the
circumstances under which the lost lands of Christendom were restored to Christian rule (see
note 76 below and text), it was not because they were “skeptical about, if not openly hostile to
the holy war.” Rather, it was because they were favorably disposed towards it.
282
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
their Creator” and to “dispense faithfully the word of God by arguing, beseeching, rebuking in all patience and learning to the learned and the unlearned, to
Christian and unbelievers.” What “will prevail more than all preaching to
arouse and convert the infidels,” Hugh tells him, is exemplary behavior and
good works.67 Suddenly and with great force the vita apostolica (“the apostolic
way of life”), which had been associated with the common life of the first
apostles and generally identified with the monastic ideal, was now linked with
the propagation of the faith. Hugh was at the forefront of the “evangelical
awakening” at its infancy during the second half of the eleventh century and
adopted the theme of dilatatio fidei as the basis for the program of mural
paintings in his chapel at Berzé-la-Ville in Burgundy (Figs. 3-12).68
he Crusade of Evangelization and the Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville
he paintings in the priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville are an emphatic endorsement of missionary activity both in the East and in the West, now made possible because of the Crusades.69 he central scene of the mural program is a
67
Abbot Hugh to Bernard de Sauvetot, archbishop of Toledo, ca. early 1087; H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Two Studies in Cluniac History, 1049-1126,” Studi Gregoriani per la storia della “libertas
ecclesiae” 11 (1978): 1-298, at 146-47: “Et quia gratia Dei utriusque testamenti pagina omnique
diuina lege fideliter eruditus estis, gentibus quae peccatis nostris usque id temporis creatori suo
debitum honorem non exhibuerant uerbum Dei incessanter intrepide predicando ad fidem catholicam et ad sanctae matris aecclesiae gremium reuocare inuigiletis. . . . Licet autem, karissime,
Dei misericordia bonis admodum polleatis moribus et qualiter secundum Apostolum uerbum
Dei arguendo, obsecrando, increpando in omni pacientia et doctrina, doctis et indoctis, christianis et incredulis fideliter dispensare debeatis ad plenum cognoscatis, admonendum tamen
nobis estis ut uitam et conuersationem uestram pietate, humilitate, compassione, largitate, immo
omnium bonorum operum executione condire et commendare memineritis”; trans. Constable,
“Cluny and the First Crusade,” 188.
68
On the “evangelical awakening,” see Marie-Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society
in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New heological Perspectives in the Latin West, trans. Jerome
Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 202-69; Giles Constable, “Renewal and Reform in Religious Life: Concepts and Realities,” in Renaissance and
Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 37-67, at 53-56; idem, he Reformation of the Twelfth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 156-59. Chenu, who coined the term “evangelical awakening,” gives Pope Gregory VII credit for providing the Awakening with its original
impetus, but he studies this movement, not in its early stages, but in its twelfth-century context.
On the decorative program in the chapel of Berzé-la-Ville being the choice of Hugh of Cluny,
see Elizabeth Lapina, “he Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville in the Context of the First Crusade
and the Reconquista,” Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005): 309-26, at 311-12.
69
he priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville has attracted a great deal of attention among those with
training in Art History. See Wilhelm Koehler, “Byzantine Art in the West,” Dumbarton Oaks
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
283
dramatic depiction of the traditio legis (“handing down of the Law”) and the
traditio clavium (“handing over of the Keys”) in the conch of the apse of
the priory chapel (Fig. 5).70 Here, Christ, the ultimate Lawgiver, hands down
the New Law to the apostles and their successors and hands over the Keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven to St. Peter (Matt. 16:18-19). With His left hand,
Christ tenders an unfurled scroll to Peter, who takes hold of it while maintaining a firm grip on the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (Fig. 6). Inscribed on
the scroll are the words: “Behold! ‘I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom’ ”(Luke 22:29). Peter is not the only one to receive
the Law from Christ. Paul holds an open scroll inscribed with the words: “For
to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil. 1:21) (Fig. 7).71 he first text
entrusts the Church with the responsibility for the care and governance of all
Papers 1 (1941): 61-87; Eric Palazzo, “L’iconographie des fresques de Berzé-la-Ville dans le contexte de la réforme grégorienne et de la liturgie clunisienne,” Les cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa
19 (July 1988), 169-86; Yves Christe, “A propos des peintures de Berzé-la-Ville,” Cahiers
archéologiques de la fin de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age 44 (1996): 77-84; Jean-Claude Bonne,
“Temporum concordia discors: Le temps dans les peintures murales romanes de Berzé-la-Ville,” in
Metamorphosen der Zeit, ed. Éric Alliez et al. (Munich: W. Fink Verlag, 1999), 145-75; Daniel
Russo, “Espace peint, espace symbolique, construction ecclésiologique: les peintures de Berzé-laVille (Chapelle-des-Moines),” Revue Mabillon: Revue internationale d’histoire et de littérature
religieuses, n.s., 11 (2000): 57-87; Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville”; Juliette RollierHanselmann, “Une image des crises et des conflits dans la chrétienté médiévale: Berzé-la-Ville,
la Chapelle-des-Moines,” Sciences Humaines Combinées 3 (2009), posted 14 January 2009,
retrieved 26 February 2010, via http://revuesshs.u-bourgogne.fr/lisit491/document.php?id=354;
idem, “Les peintures murales dans les anciens territoires de Bourgogne (XIe-XIIe siècles): De
Berzé-la-Ville à Rome et d’Auxerre à Compostelle; hèse de doctorat de l’université de Bourgogne, sous la direction de Daniel Russo, Dijon, décembre 2009,” Bulletin du centre d’études
médiévales d’Auxerre 14 (2010), posted 13 October 2010, retrieved 6 July 2011, via http://cem.
revues.org/index11622.html. Lapina’s study is the first to place the meaning of the chapel’s
murals in a Mediterranean-wide political perspective, but I cannot agree with all of her conclusions. She contends that “the paintings do not unambiguously promote missionary activity”; at
most they provide “a muted argument in favour of continuation of apostolic mission” (p. 319).
“he programme of Berzé,” she claims, “vehemently defends Cluniac values that the new ‘crusader ideology’ put to the test” (p. 320) while making “an implicit promotion of Cluniac monasticism” (p. 324). he paintings “[do] not make an unequivocally positive assessment of [the
crusading movement],” but rather “aspire to convey the message that only spiritual battles are
truly salvific” (p. 322).
70
On the traditio legis and the traditio clavium, see Cecilia Davis-Weyer, “Das Traditio-LegisBild und seine Nachfolge,” Münchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, ser. 3, 12 (1961): 7-45;
Stephen Andrew Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation,
and Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 41-87.
71
Rollier-Hanselmann, “Les peintures murals”; cf. Robert Favreau et al., Corpus des inscriptions de la France medieval, vol. 19, Jura, Nièvre, Saône-et-Loire (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1997),
72, on the reading of this text as Rom. 8:10.
284
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
mankind.72 he second text announces that the New Law consists essentially
of “hav[ing] been raised with Christ” (Col. 3:1) “so that we too might walk in
newness of life” (Rom. 6:4), with the assurance that “when Christ who is your
life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col. 3:4),
and calls to mind Paul’s imprisonment during which time he “helped to spread
the gospel,” so that “most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater
boldness and without fear” (Phil. 1:12-14).73 Some apostles shown in the foreground — Matthew and Philip, on the left (Fig. 7), and James, on the right
(Fig. 6) — hold a rolled scroll in their hands, indicating that the apostles as a
group have also received the nova lex Christi and are ready for their missions.
he teaching of this law is entrusted not only to the apostles but also to their
successors — deacons, priests, and bishops — who are represented in the
conch of the apse by two deacon-saints, Vincent and Lawrence, on Christ’s
right (Fig. 7), and two unidentified bishop-saints, on Christ’s left (Fig. 6).
Below the conch, five arches stretch across the curvature of the semicircular
apse. he three central arches are pierced with windows, while the outer arches,
on the north and the south, are filled with masonry and decorated with murals.
he mural on the north side depicts St. Blaise in prison and St. Blaise being
beheaded (Fig. 8), while the mural on the south side portrays St. Vincent
being tortured on a gridiron (Fig. 9). In the spandrels between the arches are
six half-figure female saints, bedecked and bejeweled like Byzantine empresses.
Inscriptions identify three of them: Laurentia, a virgin-martyr of Ancona,
Italy; Agatha, a virgin-martyr of Sicily; and Consorce (d. ca. 578), a virgin
venerated at Cluny, daughter of St. Eucherius of Lyons and foundress of a
convent endowed by King Chlothar I of the Franks (r. 511-561) in gratitude
for healing his daughter (Figs. 9 and 11).74
he dual appearance of St. Vincent in the apse at Berzé suggests that his
presence is highly significant. St. Vincent had been deacon at the Church
of Zaragoza before being “crowned with martyrdom hard by the city of
72
Others disagree and argue that Luke 22:29 entrusts the government of the Church to
Christ’s apostles. See Christe, “A propos des peintures de Berzé-la-Ville,” 80-81; Bonne, “Temporum concordia discors,” 157-58; Russo, “Espace peint,” 61; Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-laVille,” 325. he “kingdom” (regnum) spoken of in Luke 22:29 is not simply the community of
believers gathered within the Church, but all humanity to whom the Gospel must be preached.
73
Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville,” 323, supposes the phylactery in the hand of
St. Paul to contain the text of Rom. 8:10, not Phil. 1:21, and deduces that it is incorporated into
the program of Berzé as “an implicit critique of ‘crusader ideology’ and a promotion of monastic
values” to “[highlight] the separation, often ignored by crusaders, between the realms of the
physical and the spiritual.”
74
Favreau et al., Corpus des inscriptions, 72.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
285
Valencia”75 around the year 304. St. Lawrence, who is paired with him in the
conch of the apse (Figs. 5 and 7), was a native of Valencia who became treasurer and deacon of the Church at Rome under Pope Sixtus II (r. 257-258)
and was martyred on a gridiron. hese two Valencian saints represent the
Church of Valencia, and, in a wider sense, the Church of Spain, symbolized by
St. Vincent, Spain’s protomartyr. Valencia had been in Christian hands from
1094 to 1102 under the Cid and his wife Jimena, and the prominence given
at Berzé to the two leading saints of Valencia was another way of appropriating
the lost lands of Christendom and making a claim for the return of these lands
to Christian sovereignty. Moreover, Christians believed that through the intercession of St. Vincent these territories would be restored to Christendom.
When James I “the Conqueror,” king of Arago-Catalonia (r. 1213-1276),
conquered Mediterranean Spain from Islam during the years 1225 to 1276
and made himself the new Cid by winning Valencia in 1238, he gave due
credit to St. Vincent: “It is Our conviction that the lord Jesus Christ subjected
the city and whole kingdom of Valencia to Us, and snatched it from the power
and hands of the pagans (i.e., the Muslims), because of the special prayers of
St. Vincent.”76 King James did even more to honor St. Vincent for his role in
the conquest of Valencia; he “built and developed the hospital-monastery of
St. Vincent [in Barcelona] as a kind of national shrine.”77 St. Vincent’s presence at Berzé served to stir the religio-patriotic feelings of the Christians of the
region to undertake “the great task of the reconquest of the Mediterranean
from the power of Islam.”78 His presence conjured up the Christian past of
75
Robert I. Burns, he Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a hirteenth-Century
Frontier, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:282.
76
Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, James I, Reg. Canc. 12, fol. 79v (17 May
1263); Robert I. Burns, Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: he Registered Charters of Its Conqueror Jaume I, 1257-1276, 4 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19852007), 2:412-13, no. 472a: “et quia fides nostra talis est quod dominus Ihesus Christus ad preces
specialiter Beati Vincencii nobis civitatem et totum regnum Valencie subiugavit et eripuit de
posse et minibus paganorum.” Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 1:282. In a chapter titled “St. Vincent’s: Crown of the Ideological Reconstruction,” Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 1:282-300, discusses the importance of St. Vincent in the conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia. Palazzo,
“L’iconographie des fresques de Berzé-la-Ville,” 179, and Bonne, “Temporum concordia discors,”
166, 170, argue that the dual appearance of St. Vincent at Berzé can be explained by viticulture
in the region of Maçonnais: Berzé promoted the cult of St. Vincent because he was the patron of
vine-growers and wine-makers.
77
Robert I. Burns, “Igelesia y sociedad de Valencia, durante la generacion de la conquista,”
in En torno al 750 aniversario: antecedentes y consecuencias de a conquista de Valencia, 2 vols.,
Monografies del Consell Valencià de Cultura, vols. 4-5 (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, Consell
Valencià de Cultura, 1989), 2:97-114, at 104.
78
Christopher Dawson, he Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European
Unity (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1952), 285.
286
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Spain, and his hoped-for intercession became the ground of inspiration and
motivation to return Spain to its Christian roots.
Juxtaposing St. Vincent on the wall of the apse is St. Blaise (Fig. 8). Like
St. Vincent, his presence served to assert a claim of return to native Christian
roots, but here the claim is made, not to lands in the former realms of Western
Christendom, but to lands in the realms of Eastern Christendom that had
been conquered by the Saljuq Turks.79 St. Blaise was a prominent Eastern
saint, bishop of Sebastea in Armenia, who was martyred during the reign of
the Emperor Licinius (r. 308-324) in the early fourth century. Greek and Latin
bishops in the army of the Jerusalem Crusade regarded their military enterprise as being under the special protection of St. Blaise, as well as under that
of the warrior-saints George, heodore and Demetrius.80 he mural of
St. Blaise at Berzé shows the high regard in which this saint and his intercessory powers were held in Burgundy to aid efforts “to liberate the Churches of
the East” (ad liberationem Orientalium ecclesiarum).
But the mural of St. Blaise also addresses itself to the apostolic mission of
the Church by calling to mind the episode in the saint’s life when, at the
request of a poor widow, he talked a wolf into releasing a pig that belonged to
her. Indeed, the mural dwells on this story by showing the widow returning
the kindness of the saint by visiting him in jail, prior to his execution, and
presenting him with the fully-cooked head and hams of the very pig that the
saint had miraculously saved. Her words to the saint, which are inscribed on
the mural, remind the viewer that even the wolf is ripe for rational dialogue
and persuasion: “Take the pig that you have rescued from a wolf ’s jaws”
(Fig. 10).81 “he wolf,” as Elizabeth Lapina has shown, “was a popular metaphor of an enemy of true faith” and appears in Cluniac literature as a symbol
of the Muslim enemy.82 Blaise, who enters into dialogue with the wolf, affirms
a missionary ideal of winning over the immemorial and hated enemy through
discussion and argument. Here, the missionary ideal is not set in opposition
79
Other disagree; cf. Koehler, “Byzantine Art in the West,” 64, who maintains that St. Blaise’s
presence at Berzé “needs no explanation” other than the fact that he was “the local patron of the
village.” Palazzo, “L’iconographie des fresques de Berzé-la-Ville,” 178-79, explains St. Blaise’s
presence at Berzé by pointing to the spread of the saint’s cult throughout the Maçonnais and
beyond. “Besides,” he adds, “St. Blaise was revered as the patron of farmers.”
80
Symeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, and other bishops, to the Churches in the West, January
1098, outside Antioch; Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, 69, 147, 271-72; James B. MacGregor,
“Negotiating Knightly Piety: he Cult of the Warrior-Saints in the West, ca. 1070-ca. 1200,”
Church History 73, no. 2 (June 2004): 317-45, at 322-23.
81
Favreau et al., Corpus des inscriptions, 73; Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville,” 317.
82
Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville,” 317.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
287
to the martial phase of the Crusades. Rather, the martial triumph of the Crusades is seen as a prerequisite for a campaign of conversion.83
he unity of the Christian world and the mission of evangelization are
explicitly depicted in the dado beneath the windows of the apse. Here, nine
half-figure male saints, representing a veritable mappa mundi of the Church,84
make their appearance; from left to right, these saints are: Abdon and Sennen,
two Kurdish martyrs who died at Rome around 303 during the persecution of
Diocletian; Dorotheus and Gorgonius, two of Diocletian’s most trusted personal servants who were martyred at Nicomedia (modern İzmit in northwestern Turkey) in 304; Sebastian, an officer in the Roman army who was martyred
at Rome around 288; Serenus, a native of Greece who was martyred in Pannonia in the early fourth century; a second Sebastian; and, finally, Denys and
Quentin, two of the first evangelizers of northern Gaul who were martyred for
their faith (Figs. 4 and 12).85 he saints depicted in the murals, both male and
female, symbolize the various mission fields, or “churches,” throughout the
world where the Gospel was proclaimed or peoples to whom the Gospel was
brought. But these paintings do more than celebrate the past glories of Christian evangelization; they look forward to, and proclaim, a new evangelization.
It is especially noteworthy that at the time the murals were painted in the early
twelfth century many of the mission fields or peoples represented by the saints
at Berzé were in regions that, “because of the sins of men, had been, by the
judgment of God, long oppressed by the infidels (i.e., the Muslims)”: the former realms of Sasanian Persia, most of Anatolia, Sicily, and the greater part of
Iberia. he boldness revealed in the program of wall paintings at Berzé consists
in the setting aside of the immediate details of the actual situation of Christendom vis-à-vis Islam in the Mediterranean world in order to envision a new
Asia and a new Mediterranean arising as a result of the triumphant outcome
83
Lapina, “Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville,” 319-20, regards the Berzé murals as endorsing
“a way of dealing with the Muslims, which would be alternative, or at least complementary, to
fighting them,” and argues that it was Hugh of Cluny’s desire “that a verbal confrontation with
the Muslim should accompany, if not replace, the military one.” Hugh, however, saw no polarity
between the Crusade of the sword and the Crusade of evangelization, but instead envisioned these
two phases of the crusading enterprise as supporting and complementing one another.
84
Ibid., 316.
85
Favreau et al., Corpus des inscriptions, 73. SS. Abdon and Sennen are linked to the Abbey of
St. Mary in Arles-sur-Tech, Languedoc-Roussillon, in the eastern Pyrenees (France), where a
sealed sarcophagus containing relics of these saints produces hundreds of liters of water every
year. See Anthony Fitzherbert, A Coffin of Clear Water (Ilfracombe, UK: Stockwell, 1989); Daniel
Beysens et al., “Water Production in an Ancient Sarcophagus at Arles-sur-Tech (France),” Atmospheric Research 57 (2001): 201-212. I thank John H. A. McHugo for bringing the sarcophagus
at Arles-sur-Tech to my attention.
288
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
of the Crusades: an Asia and a Mediterranean once more thrown open to
Christianity.
At the end of the eleventh century, when the Christian counteroffensive
against Islam was at its height, hope for Islam’s conversion was at the same
moment being strongly asserted. he popular religious thought of the day was
passionately concerned with converting Muslims. his finds its literary expression in the first heroic epic poetry of Europe, the chansons de geste, which speak
of Muslims converting both en masse and individually.86 Pope Urban was no
bystander to these currents of thought but an active promoter of the “evangelical awakening.” As Urban saw it, the Crusade of reconquest was to give
way to the Crusade of rebuilding the Church, and the Crusade of regenerating
the Church was to give way to the Church’s mission to spread the Gospel.87
he Crusade of reconquest reawakened in the Church a dormant desire to
fulfill Christ’s command to proclaim the Gospel and communicate Christian
teachings all over the world so that God’s work of salvation might be completed (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:45-49; John 20:21; Acts 1:8;
1 Cor. 9:16; Gal. 2:7-9; 2 Tim. 4:2). As a new “mission” mentality grew within
the Church, it gave to the Crusade movement a millennial frame of reference
and an eschatological stimulus. he battlefield would ultimately lead to the
baptismal font, and the baptismal font “to the consummation of the world”
(Matt. 28:19-20).88
86
La chanson de Roland, ed. Joseph Bédier, 2 vols. (Paris: L’Édition d’art, H. Piazza, 19221927), lines 3671-74; trans. Glyn S. Burgess as he Song of Roland, Penguin Classics (London:
Penguin, 1990), 146:
Baptizet sunt asez plus de .C. milie
Veir chrestien, ne mais sul la reïne.
En France dulce iert menee caitive:
Ço voelt li reis par amur cunvertisset.
[More than a hundred thousand are baptized
True Christians, but not the queen:
She will be led, a captive, to sweet France:
he king wants her to convert for love.]
Kedar, Crusade and Mission, 68-70; Flori, “La croix, la crosse et l’épée.”
87
his assessment runs counter to the current trend of separating crusading from conversion.
See Michael Lower, “Conversion and St Louis’s Last Crusade,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 58,
no. 2 (April 2007): 211-31.
88
Robert I. Burns, “he Missionary Syndrome: Crusader and Pacific Northwest Religious
Expansionism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 2, (April 1988): 271-85, at
283, identifies “the great centuries of missionary expansionism” as “the thirteenth, the sixteenth,
and the nineteenth” and maintains that “all of these bear the thirteenth-century stamp.” he
central part played by the missionary expansionism of the thirteenth century should not obscure
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
289
Al-Sulamī’s View of Crusading: A hree-headed Hydra
If Pope Urban viewed the Mediterranean as a geographic and strategic whole
and looked upon the Crusades as ushering in a new aeon, the same was also
true of Muslim scholars. Just six years after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, a legal scholar and preacher at the Great Mosque of Damascus
(Fig. 2), Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī (d. 500/1107),89 expounded his account of
the crusading movement in his book Kitāb al-jihād (“he Book on Holy
War”).90 Surprisingly, he does not begin with the Jerusalem Crusade, as do so
many modern accounts of the Crusades. Instead, the Jerusalem Crusade is
the fact that the dream of missionary expansionism began with the “evangelical awakening” of
the eleventh century.
89
On al-Sulamī, see Emmanuel Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade: un traité damasquin
de début de XIIe siècle,” Journal asiatique 254 (1966): 197-224; Peter Malcolm Holt, he Age of
the Crusades: he Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (London: Longman, 1986), 27;
Nikita Elisséeff, “he Reaction of the Syrian Muslims after the Foundation of the First Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 162-72, at 163-65; Carole Hillenbrand, he Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 32, 69, 71-74, 105-9, 114, 165, 321, 561,
580; Chevedden, “Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade,” 94, 103-8, 119, 133, 135, 136; idem,
“New Synthesis,” 184-85, 198; idem, “Crusade from the First,” 201-6; Niall Christie and Deborah Gerish, “Parallel Preaching: Urban II and al-Sulamī,” al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval
Mediterranean 15, no. 2 (September 2003): 139-48; Niall Christie, “Religious Campaign or War
of Conquest?: Muslim Views of the Motives of the First Crusade,” in Noble Ideals and Bloody
Realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages, ed. Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi, History of Warfare,
vol. 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 57-72; idem, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir
Al-Sulami,” Medieval Encounters 13, no. 2 (2007): 209-21; idem, “Motivating Listeners in the
Kitab al-Jihad of Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106),” Crusades 6 (2007): 1-14; Michael Bonner,
Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006),
139-40; Suhayl Zakkār, ed., “Introduction,” in Arba at kutub fī l-jihād min aṣr al-ḥ urūb
al-ṣalībiyya (Damascus: al-Takwīn, 2007), 7-40, at 13-15.
90
Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, “Kitāb al-jihād,” in Arba at kutub fī l-jihād min aṣr al-ḥ urūb
al-ṣalībiyya, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Damascus: al-Takwīn, 2007), 41-182. he term jihād is derived
from the root j-h-d, meaning “effort” or “struggle.” No bellicose meaning was attached to this
root in pre-Islamic Arabia. It was during the career of the Prophet Muḥammad that this root
began a diachronistic semantic change from “struggle” or “striving” to “warfare against the infidels,” while still retaining its earlier meanings. Ella Landau-Tasseron, “Jihād,” in Encyclopaedia of
the Qur ān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001-2005), 3:35-43. he new
meaning was communicated more by praxis than by the preaching of concepts or the dissemination of dogma, as warfare became a way for Muslims to prove their faith, strive after virtue, and
attain divine reward (Q. 2:191, 216; 4:77, 95; 9:81-86). Long before Muslim intellectuals
sought to rationalize and account for divinely sanctioned warfare, jihād was deeply rooted in
practice — the practice of Muḥammad and that of his successors. he gathering and ordering of
the exempla of jihād by Muslim intellectuals indicates a genuine effort to come to terms with
Muslim praxis in order to explain jihād in relation to the Qur ān and the Sunna. It also reveals a
disposition to advance and promote jihād, as well as to channel and harness it.
290
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
presented as the final conclusion of a long development that started in Sicily
with the Norman conquest (1060-1091), proceeded on to Spain, and finally
reached Syria. Just like Pope Urban, al-Sulamī examines the facts of history for
their own sake, and from these facts he derives a conceptualization of the Crusades. In three successive movements of conquest, al-Sulamī explains how the
crusading enterprise unfolded:
A host [of Franks] swooped down upon the island of Sicily at a time of division
and dissention among its people, and likewise they took possession of town after
town in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus). When reports mutually confirmed the condition of this country [Syria] — namely, the disagreements of its lords, the oppressive demands of its leading men, together with its disorder and disarray — they
acted upon their decision to set out for it [Syria], and Jerusalem was the chief
object of their desires. When they arrived in Syria, they saw divided sovereignties,
conflicting opinions, and contending views, combined with hidden enmity, so
that their ambitions expanded accordingly and extended to whatever their power
could command. hey [the Franks] continued zealously in the Holy War against
the Muslims ( jihād al-muslimīn),91 while the Muslims were not inclined to wage
war against them and did not join forces to fight them — with each [Muslim
power] expecting the other one to take up their fight [for them] — until they [the
Franks] made themselves rulers of lands beyond their wildest dreams and subjected the inhabitants to destruction and degradation far beyond what they had
intended.92
91
Here, al-Sulamī identifies the Crusade as the Latin Christian equivalent of the Islamic
jihād. He uses a binomial expression — jihād al-muslimīn (“Holy War against the Muslims”) —
to describe the Crusade. A generic political phenomenon, jihād, is the genus to which the Crusade belongs, indicating that the Crusade is linked to other forms of this same genus. he species
name, al-muslimīn, defines the Crusade specifically, designating it as being separate from other
forms of jihād. Al-Sulamī also uses binomial labels to describe the two differentiated natures of
Islamic Holy War: jihād anfusikum (“struggle against your selves”) and jihād a dā ikum (“Holy
War against your enemies”). Crusading does not arouse incomprehension or bewilderment in
al-Sulamī. He assumes that Latin Christian society is the mirror image of his own society, in the
same way that the anonymous author of the Chanson de Roland portrays the Muslims as the mirror image of the Christians. If the Muslims engage in jihād, there is every reason to believe that
the Christians do as well. For al-Sulamī, the Other is not a mirror for the self, the Other is the
self. By using the term jihād to refer to the Crusade, al-Sulamī does not indicate that “what the
crusaders were doing was, in some way, legitimate,” as Niall Christie thinks, nor does he suggest
that “religion was the crusaders’ dominant motive,” as Jonathan Phillips contends. Rather, he
denotes that the Crusade was considered by its proponents to be divinely sanctioned. See Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 67; Phillips, Holy Warriors, 31; Chevedden,
“Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade,” 94.
92
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 45; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 207, 215; Holt, Age of the
Crusades, 27; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 72-73; Chevedden, “Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade,” 94; idem, “New Synthesis,” 184-85; idem, “Crusade from the First,” 202-3; Christie,
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
291
Like Pope Urban, al-Sulamī views the military thrusts by the Latin West in
Sicily, Spain, and Syria, not as self-contained discrete campaigns, but as “three
different fronts . . . in which the same fight between Christianity and Islam was
being waged.”93 his fight, al-Sulamī says, progressed in three stages that
occurred in sequence. In the first stage, the Normans descended upon the
island of Sicily. In the second stage, “town after town” in Islamic Spain fell to
Christian forces. And in the third stage, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem.
he fight that Urban describes as being against “the Turks in Asia and the
Moors in Europe,” al-Sulamī sees as a fight for the control of the Mediterranean against the alarming growth of Christian power in Sicily, Spain, and
Syria. hey both see the crusading enterprise as Mediterranean-wide in scope,
and they both point to the Norman conquest of Sicily as the onset of the
Crusades.94
he Crusades and the Meaning of History
he points of agreement between Urban and al-Sulamī are at one and the
same time the points of their disagreement. Urban and al-Sulamī agree on
how the Crusades began and developed. hey both see the actions of foreign
conquerors as the instruments of divine vengeance against the sins of the
faithful — the means by which God responds to sins and prevents the increase
of evil.95 hey both accept history as a continuous manifestation of God’s
providence, and they see God’s power manifesting itself in Sicily, in Spain, and
in Syria. For Urban, these events prove that Christians have now turned back
to God because God’s anger against His people — expressed in the power of
“Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 64; idem, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad,” 212;
idem, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad,” 7.
93
Becker, Urban II, 1:229-30.
94
Others disagree. Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad,” 7, for example,
claims that “no one in Europe” linked “the Christian expansions [in Sicily, Spain, and the eastern
Mediterranean] together” and that al-Sulamī did so, not to describe what was really happening,
but to present the Jerusalem Crusade “as part of a grander scheme of conquest” than it actually
was. “By presenting the crusades as more systematic and opportunistic than they actually were,”
argues Christie, “al-Sulami increased the magnitude of the threat, with the intention of effectively frightening his listeners into action.” Al-Sulamī acted much like George W. Bush did
before the war in Iraq, hyping the threat so that his war would find approval. As Christie sees it,
al-Sulamī claims that the sky is falling in order to rally support for jihād.
95
Conversely, Urban sees the Christian reconquest directed against Islam as fulfilling
God’s design, while al-Sulamī sees the Muslim conquest of Christian territory as embodying
God’s will.
292
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Islam — has yielded to the destruction of “God’s enemies” — the Muslims —
in Sicily, Spain, and the eastern Mediterranean. For al-Sulamī, these events
prove that Muslims have neglected their duty to engage in Holy War ( jihād )
and perform “the obligatory requirements [of their faith]”:
he discontinuation [of jihād ], coupled with the disregard by Muslims of the
obligatory requirements [of their faith], as well as the annulling of its prohibitions, has had the inevitable result that God has shattered their unity, “created
dissension in their ranks,”96 “cast enmity and hatred” (Q. 5:64) among them [the
Muslims],97 and incited their enemies to seize their territories, thus allowing their
enemies to recover from them whatever they desire.98
he fundamental problem faced by al-Sulamī was how to rehabilitate Islam in
the face of repeated defeats. He identifies the crisis as a religious and a moral
problem that can be remedied by moral reform. If the terrible losses being
inflicted on Islam are due to the discontinuation of jihād and the disregard of
religious obligations, Islamic society can be set right and the losses reversed by
inculcating the duties of jihād and the religious obligations of Islam. Al-Sulamī,
however, needs some way to inculcate these duties and obligations into the
lives of Muslims. his will be accomplished by pious and virtuous sovereigns
(salāṭīn; sing. sulṭān) who will live in accordance with God’s rules and will
facilitate the observance of the faith on the part of their “companions, followers,
96
Al-Sulamī takes a qunūt formula (du ā al-qunūt) — [Allāhumma] khālif bayna
kalimatihim — that was used to curse non-Muslim enemies and applies it is to the Muslims of
his day. On qunūt, see Farīd Muḥammad Fuwaylah, Jāmi aḥ kām ṣalāt al-watr wa-l-qunūt (Ṭant ̣ā:
Dār al-Ḍ iyā , 2006). On this particular qunūt formula, see Abd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām
al-Ḥ imyarī, al-Muṣannaf, ed. Habīburraḥmān al-A ẓamī, 2nd ed., 11 vols. (Johannesburg: alMajlis al- Ilmī, 1983), 3:110, 111, 116, nos. 4968, 4969, 4982; Fuwaylah, Jāmi aḥ kām ṣalāt
al-watr wa-l-qunūt, 260, 262, 264. Sivan, Zakkār, Hillenbrand, Christie, and Gerish fail to
recognize this formula. Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 207, 215; Sulamī, “Jihād,” 45;
Hillenbrand, Crusades, 72; Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 64-65; Christie
and Gerish, “Parallel Preaching,” 145.
97
Sivan, Zakkār, Hillenbrand, Christie, and Gerish neglect to note that al-Sulamī here is
adopting Q. 5:64 to his own purposes. Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 207, 215;
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 45; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 72; Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 64-65; Christie and Gerish, “Parallel Preaching,” 145. Al-Sulamī takes a verse from the
Qur ān that deals with how God has anathematized the Jews for having declared God’s hand to
be fettered — “and We [God ] have cast between them [the Jews] enmity and hatred, till the Day
of Resurrection” (wa-alqaynā baynahum al- adāwata wa-l-baghḍā a ilā yawm al-qiyāma) — and
applies it to the Muslims: “[God has] cast enmity and hatred among them [the Muslims]”
(wa-alqā l- adāwata wa-l-baghḍā a baynahum). Here and elsewhere, the translations from the
Qur ān are taken from Arthur J. Arberry, trans., he Koran Interpreted, 2 vols. (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1955).
98
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 45; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 207, 215.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
293
and subjects.” Al-Sulamī sees no need to win over the masses (al- āmma) to his
reform program because he expects the populace to follow their rulers, reconciled now to God and committed to the revival of Islam. With a virtuous
sovereign at the helm of state and a Muslim populous restored to the correct
practice of their religion, the road to recovery is only a matter of skillful diplomacy: gaining political support among Muslim rulers throughout Syria, the
Jazīrah (Upper Mesopotamia), Egypt, and adjacent regions for a jihād against
the Crusaders. Such diplomacy, al-Sulamī warns, must be timed just right.
When fear of the Crusaders outweighs “old hatreds and hidden resentments,”
then the sovereign must act to consolidate a coalition of Muslim powers
against the Christian threat. Al-Sulamī sketches out his scenario for Islamic
resurgence as follows:
If [the sovereign] duly considers and investigates this severe calamity (al-nāzila),
taking into consideration our remarks regarding the restoration of communion
between himself and His Creator in religious matters and faithfulness to His will,
and brings back to Him all of his companions, followers, and subjects who have
deviated from the truth, he must then apply himself zealously to his relations with
the sovereigns of this region — Syria, the Jazīrah, and Egypt — and the rest of the
lands that border it and are near to it when fear [of the Franks] is more widespread
in all of these regions than old hatreds and hidden resentments, and there is aversion to mutual envy and rivalries.99
Al-Sulamī’s Tripartite Plan for the Revival of Islam
Military action is essential to al-Sulamī’s plan, but military success is predicated on religious reform and political action.100 Since al-Sulamī believes that
the evil that has befallen the Muslims is due to their failure to perform “the
obligatory requirements [of their faith]” and their neglect of jihād, he advocates the renewal of Islam among its adherents as a precondition for waging
successful Holy War:
99
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 67; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 213. Sivan and Hillenbrand
give a different meaning to this passage by translating the conjunction idhā as “because” (car)
and “for,” instead of “when.” Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 220; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 73. Here, al-Sulamī offers an optimistic outlook for the prospect of Muslim unity. When
“old hatreds and hidden resentments” seem to offer little hope that Muslims will ever overcome
“mutual envy and rivalries” and join together against the Crusaders, al-Sulamī is confident that
the Crusaders will provide the impetus to make Muslim unity possible. “Fear [of the Franks]”
will enable the Muslims to rise above their long-standing rivalries and mutual distrust and ennoble and empower them to take concerted action against the Crusaders.
100
Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 201-2; Elisséeff, “Reaction of the Syrian Muslims,” 164.
294
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Engage in the struggle against your selves ( jihād anfusikum) before engaging in
the Holy War against your enemies ( jihād a dā ikum); for, if the [inner] selves
(al-nufūs) are a more formidable enemy for you than are your [external] enemies,
then restrain them from being disobedient to their Creator, glorious is He, and
you will succeed in your expectations of victory over them (the Franks).101 Set
things right between you and your Creator, and He will set right for you what is
corrupt in your own condition and set things right between you.102 Steadfastly
avoid sins against God, glorious is He, and follow up your renunciation [of evil
works] with good works that you will resume doing. “Perchance your Lord
will destroy your enemy, and will make you successors in the land,” that you may
see “how you shall do” (Q. 7:129).103 Consider what God, glorious is He, had
101
he jihād anfusikum, or jihād al-nafs, is the “struggle against the self,” or the “struggle
against the devil” ( jihād al-shayṭān), also referred to as the “greater jihād ” (al-jihād al-akbar).
Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader, Princeton Series on the Middle
East (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996), 1, 115-18; David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 32-48, 95, 106, 109, 165; Bonner, Jihad, 12-14, 22, 45,
51, 78-79, 137, 169-70. he jihād a dā ikum is armed struggle, or warfare against external adversaries, also referred to as the “jihād of the sword” ( jihād al-sayf ) or the “lesser jihād ” (al-jihād
al-aṣghar). Peters, Jihad, 1-8; Cook, Understanding Jihad, 32-48; Bonner, Jihad, 11, 13-14, 22,
79. Just as al-Sulamī considers the Other to be the same as the self (see note 91 above), he regards
the self as the Other, an enemy “more formidable” than all “[external] enemies” that must be
subdued by the “jihād against the self.” he jihād taxonomy of medieval Islam, particularly the
taxonomic hierarchy of “greater” and “lesser,” indicates just how problematic warfare became
in Islamic society. See Jacqueline Chabbi, “Ribāṭ,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 8, ed.
C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 493-506; Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and
Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier, American Oriental Series, vol. 81
(New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996); Roy Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid, “he
Idea of the Jihād in Islam before the Crusades,” in he Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium
and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), 23-29. Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad,” 11, understands this passage to say: “Give precedence to jihad of
yourselves [or ‘your souls’] over jihad of your enemies, for if yourselves are among your enemies
prevent them from being disobedient to their Creator, who is praised. You will succeed in your
hopes of victory over them.” Phillips, Holy Warriors, 32, also puts forward this interpretation. Yet
what al-Sulamī is recommending here is that the “struggle against your selves” go before the
“Holy War against your enemies,” not that the “jihad of yourselves” be given precedence over the
“jihad of your enemies,” such as the Crusader “Holy War against the Muslims” ( jihād
al-muslimīn). Christie compounds this error by translating fa-in al-nufūs a dā lakum minhum as
“for if yourselves are among your enemies.” Christie’s earlier effort at translating this passage
substitutes “jihad against your enemies” for “jihad of your enemies.” Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 69. See also Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 211, 219.
102
Phillips, Holy Warriors, 32, understands this passage to say: “Make right what is between
you and your Creator, and what is wrong with your [current] state of being will be made right
for you.”
103
his is a rewording of the second part of Q. 7:129: “Perchance your Lord will destroy your
enemy, and will make you successors in the land, so that He may behold how you shall do.”
hese are the words that the Qur ān puts into the mouth of Moses in response to the charge
directed against him by his people, “we have been hurt before thou camest to us, and after thou
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
295
ordered your Prophet, God bless him and grant him salvation, and his Companions to do before engaging in Holy War ( jihād ). hey took upon themselves the
seriousness of the pious deed, and the endeavor proved to be a faultless rendering
of the statement of God: “O men, bow you down and prostrate yourselves, and
serve your Lord, and do good; haply so you shall prosper” (Q. 22:77). hen He
adds: “and struggle for God as is His due (wa-jāhidū fī Allāh ḥ aqqa jihādih) [. . .]
He named you Muslims aforetime” (Q. 22:78).104
Critical to the success of the jihād al-anfus and the jihād al-a dā is a virtuous
sovereign who will promote the faith and religious practices of Islam, as well
as spearhead the Holy War. Achieving unity of effort on the part of the Muslims in Syria, the Jazīrah, Egypt, and adjacent regions is the next goal. Al-Sulamī
realizes that jihād had better not depend crucially on pious intentions or on
sentiments of pan-Muslim solidarity. he Muslims in Syria, the Jazīrah, Egypt,
and adjacent regions will not join together in jihād out of pious reasons, nor
will they do so out of Muslim solidarity. But they will join together in jihād
out of fear of the Crusaders. Even so, a united political front alone will not in
camest to us.” he Qur ānic verse clearly stipulates that God’s favor does not come without
conditions. If God destroys the enemies of “His people” and makes them “successors in the
land,” He will scrutinize “how [they] shall do.” Acting contrary to God’s command will invite
the withdrawal of God’s favor. By changing the beneficiaries of God’s favor in Q. 7:129 from the
“Children of Israel” (Banū Isrā īl ) to the Muslims of his day, and by changing yanẓura (“He may
behold”) to tubṣirū (“you may see”), al-Sulamī leaves himself open to the interpretation that
Muslims, not God, will now assess their own behavior. Sivan fails to catch these alterations, while
Zakkār fails to discern that al-Sulamī is deliberately altering a Qur ānic text. Sivan, “La genèse de
la contre-croisade,” 211, 219; Sulamī, “Jihād,” 55. Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab
al-Jihad, 11, translates this passage without noticing its Qur ānic content and renders tubṣirū as
“He may observe.”
104
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 55; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 211, 219. Q. 22:77-78,
partially quoted here, does not refer to warfare, but to the “religion of Abraham” (millat Ibrāhīm).
It proclaims that God asks nothing more of Muslims than that they observe the same religious
duties imposed by God on Abraham: “O men, bow you down and prostrate yourselves, and
serve your Lord, and do good; haply so you shall prosper; and struggle for God as is His due, for
He has chosen you, and has laid on you no impediment in your religion, being the creed of your
father Abraham; He named you Muslims aforetime and in this, that the Messenger might be a
witness against you, and that you might be witnesses against mankind. So perform the prayer,
and pay the alms, and hold you fast to God; He is your Protector — an excellent Protector, an
excellent Helper.” To validate his two-nature scheme of Holy War ( jihād al-anfus and jihād
al-a dā ), al-Sulamī extracts from Q. 22:77-78 those elements which he finds suitable for his
theory and completely transforms the meaning of these verses. Ḥ asan al-Bannā (1906-1949), the
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn), also associates Q. 22:78 with
Islamic Holy War in the title of his pamphlet Risālat al-jihād: “wa-jāhidū fī Allāh ḥ aqqa jihādih”
(“Essay on Holy War: ‘And struggle for God as is His due’ ”). Ḥ asan al-Bannā, “Risālat al-jihād:
‘wa-jāhidū fī Allāh ḥaqqa jihādih,’ ” in Majmū at al-rasā il li-l-imām Ḥ asan al-Bannā, ed.
al-Shaḥḥāt Aḥmad al-Ṭaḥḥān (al-Manṣūrah: Dār al-Kalima, 2005), 443-60.
296
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
itself guarantee success. All of society must contribute to the jihād, and the
undertaking will require much more effort than was expended on the jihād
conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries directed against Eastern and
Western Christendom:
It is the duty of everyone — subjects, peasants, and all the rest of the people — to
support and assist [the sovereigns] all that they can, by the labor of their hands
and faculties, and to take on every burden and hardship in targeting this body [of
Franks]. [Even] the one from among them who does a little bit will do his part to
render the task of attaining the material support (al-nafaqa)105 [required for the
jihād ] an easy one. In their Holy War ( jihād ), they will have to make twice the
effort of those that carried out the military expeditions (al-ghazw) to their lands
[i.e., the realms of Western Christendom] and the Byzantine Empire (al-Rūm) in
order to drive them (the Franks) out of [Muslim territory] and obliterate all traces
of them.106
Despite the enormity of the task facing the Muslims, al-Sulamī is optimistic.
He can see that the Crusaders, despite their initial successes, are fully stretched
in terms of manpower and supplies and that the Muslims can easily reinforce
their armies while the Crusaders cannot. he Muslims are in an excellent position to deliver an annihilating counterattack, if only they adhere to al-Sulamī’s
two-nature scheme of Holy War:
When the duties of fighting against the enemy are combined with [performing]
the many requirements [of the faith], the plenitude of deeds [required of the
Muslims] will seem like a small amount, and the most perilous of ventures will be
boldly embarked upon, such as the defense of the coastal regions and aid to its
inhabitants who are under siege there. Because they are presently diverting the
attention of the enemy away from this country (i.e., the Syrian hinterland) and
the lands that border it, and away from Egypt and adjacent regions, there is no
hope for a quick victory by them (the Franks), since authoritative information
confirms their weak position, their lack of cavalry and equipment, and the distance from their [bases of ] manpower (anṣārihim; lit. “their helpers”) and support.107 . . . hese circumstances, which we have recounted, do not find their like
Paul L. Heck, “Taxation,” in McAuliffe, Encyclopaedia of the Qur ān, 5:192-200.
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 68. Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 221, understands this passage to say: “Il est du devoir de tous, soldats, sujets (citadins?), paysans et tous les autres de faire
tout ce qui est en leur pouvoir pour aider [les souverains] et de supporter dans la guerre contre
ces troupes tout fardeau et toute peine; celui dont les moyens sont réduits peut se contenter
d’une contribution minime. [Il leur faut] faire dans ce gihād plusieurs fois autant et davantage
que les Musulmans n’avaient fait par le passé dans le gihād agressif, afin de chasser [les Francs] du
pays [musulman] et d’effacer leurs traces.”
107
Christie and Gerish, “Parallel Preaching,” 144, understand this passage to say: “here were
associated with the duties of fighting hard against the enemy many requirements that make light
[the burden] of the great number of deeds [involved ] and defy with them the greatness of the
105
106
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
297
in this day and age, and indeed their like will probably not be seen again before
earthly time (al-dahr) expires, so it is necessary to seize the opportunity quickly.108
he Apocalyptic Vision of al-Sulamī
he need for the Muslims to act quickly is only partially explained by
al-Sulamī’s keen strategic sense. Al-Sulamī can see that the power of the
Crusader advance will soon be diminished due to acute logistical difficulties
and manpower shortages. Now is the time for the Muslims to gain the advantage.109 he strategic argument for an immediate Muslim counterattack is
compelling enough, but al-Sulamī can see an even more compelling reason to
launch a speedy assault against an overextended and vulnerable enemy. he
Crusader incursion, he argues, is an event of providential magnitude. Just as
Jeremiah had seen the divine purpose behind the rise of the Babylonian Empire
and Pope Urban had come to recognize the divine purpose behind the Islamic
conquest movements, al-Sulamī sees the divine purpose behind the victorious
power of the Latin West. he three-headed hydra of the Crusade movement is
just as much a part of God’s plan as the Islamic conquests of the seventh and
eighth centuries. he war with the Christian West, al-Sulamī concludes, will
act as a stimulus to self-renovation within the Islamic world. his war will
ultimately serve God’s plan for salvation history by returning Muslims to the
regular practice of jihād. By participating in a purified and spiritualized jihād,
the kind that al-Sulamī recommends, the Muslims will be able to bring present realities into harmony with the events of the eschaton, the End of Days, or
End Times, before Final Judgment.
he reform of Islam and the return to jihād will lead to the ultimate triumph of the umma Muḥ ammadiyya over all of Christendom, an event reserved
for the End Times. he Crusader conquest of Jerusalem will lead to the Muslim
reconquest of the city; the reconquest of Jerusalem will lead to the conquest of
Constantinople, and afterwards to the subjugation of Rome. Al-Sulamī is not
feeding his heart on fantasies, but on Islamic eschatological expectations.110
terrors [that must be faced ]. Among them is the defense of the country of the coast and support
of its peoples [who are] besieged and fighting with great efforts because they now are keeping the
enemy distracted from these countries, what is near them, Egypt and its environs.”
108
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 68; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 214, 221-22; Elisséeff,
“Reaction of the Syrian Muslims,” 165; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 73-74.
109
Asbridge, Crusades, 115-62, vividly describes the perilous early years of the Crusader states
in Outremer.
110
On the Islamic dream of the conquest of Eastern and Western Christendom, which
focused on the capture of Constantinople and Rome, see Marius Canard, “Les expéditions arabes
contre Constantinople dans l’histoire et la legend,” Journal asiatique 208 (1926): 61-121; André
298
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Here, he holds out the prospect that those who heed his words and “make
strenuous efforts” in the jihād against the Crusaders might conceivably be the
ones who will conquer Constantinople:
We have heard a ḥ adīth going back to the Prophet saying that the Christians
(al-Rūm)111 will take possession of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) for a given period
Miquel, “Rome chez les géographes arabes,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 119, no. 2 (1975): 281-291, at 291; David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, vol. 21 (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002), 35,
53-91, 162, 167-72, 349, 361, 364-75; Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, “Byzantium through the
Islamic Prism from the Twelfth to the hirteenth Century,” in Laiou and Mottahedeh, he Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, 54-69; idem, Byzantium Viewed by
the Arabs, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, vol. 36 (Cambridge, MA: Distributed for the
Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 2004),
60-71, 199-215, 224; Bonner, Jihad, 131-32; Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam, trans. M. B.
DeBevoise (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 16, 26-27, 32-33, 39. For a fuller
discussion of al-Sulamī’s apocalyptic vision, see Christie, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad ”;
idem, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad.”
111
he term al-Rūm was used in Arabic sources to refer to the Romans, the Byzantines, Christians of all types, and, on occasion, to the ancient Greeks, as well as to the Saljuqs of Rūm (473707/1081-1307). he ḥ adīth cited by al-Sulamī uses this term to designate the Byzantines. By
applying this apocalyptic ḥ adīth to the events of his day — the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem
and hopes for its reconquest — al-Sulamī clearly intends al-Rūm to denote the Crusaders.
Accordingly, it is translated here as “Christians.” Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 218,
translates al-Rūm as “Byzantines,” as does Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?”
65; idem, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad,” 217; idem, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab alJihad,” 9. his subverts al-Sulamī’s intention to apply a prophecy about the Byzantines to the
Crusaders. Christie offers several explanations to account for al-Sulamī’s redirection of this
prophecy: (1) al-Sulamī, like “contemporary Muslim writers [who] often confused or conflated
the Byzantines and the Europeans,” sees “the prophecy as being applicable [to the Crusaders]”;
(2) “al-Sulami’s listeners” confused “[the Byzantines] with the crusaders or viewed both groups
as a single entity”; and (3) al-Sulamī’s “deep knowledge” of the Crusaders suggests that “his
apparent ignorance of the difference between Franks and Byzantines” is not due to “the Muslims
frequently mix[ing] up the Byzantines and the Franks” but to his “deliberate confusion” of Byzantines with Franks, which allows him “the opportunity to apply prophecies about the Byzantines to the Franks in order to use traditions about the former to influence their audiences’
attitudes toward the latter.” Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad,” 10; idem,
“Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 65-66; idem, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad,”
217-18. It is not necessary to predicate ignorance on the part of “al-Sulami’s listeners” or on the
part of al-Sulamī, and, if there is a “deliberate confusion” involved, both al-Sulamī and his audience freely and knowingly take part in it. he multiple meanings of al-Rūm allow al-Sulamī and
his audience to equivocate between the meaning of this term as “the Byzantines” or “the Byzantine Empire” and its meaning as “Christians,” just as medieval Christians used the equivocation
of the word “church” to marry three different meanings of the term: “a holy place surrounded by
walls and covered above, where Christians assemble to hear the service, and pray to God to
pardon their sins,” “the entire body of true Christians who are to be found in the whole world,”
and “all the prelates and clergy of any one place who are devoted to the service of God in the
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
299
of time and that the Muslims will unite against them, drive them out of this city,
and kill them all, except for a few among them. hen, they will pursue the surviving remnant all the way to Constantinople, and they will lay siege to the city and
conquer it. his [ḥ adīth] is reliably established, as it is reported by the aforementioned Abd Allāh b. Amr [b. al- Āṣ al-Sahmī, d. 65/685].112 It was said that if
this [ḥ adīth] sheds light upon that [i.e., who will conquer Constantinople], then
the Holy Warriors of this community (al-mujāhidīn li-hādhihī l-ṭā ifa), [who
will] triumph over them [the Christians] and successfully drive them out of
Jerusalem and other parts of this country, are the ones who will [also] conquer
Constantinople,113 just as is mentioned in the ḥ adīth in which the isnād is not
stated, by the grace of God, how excellent is His help! herefore, make strenuous
efforts — May God have mercy on you — in this Holy War ( fa-ijtahidū . . . fī
hādhā l-jihād ). Perhaps you will be the ones who will have the privilege of this
great conquest, having been set aside for this particular purpose.114
Al-Sulamī turns the very sign of Crusader triumph — the conquest of Jerusalem — into a sign that all Christendom is about to come to an end. he End
Time is not that far away, he suggests, if only Muslims would “seize the opportunity quickly.”
he Influence of al-Sulamī
It is impossible to know the direct effects of al-Sulamī’s Kitāb al-jihād. Because
al-Sulamī’s pious hortatory harangues produced no immediate results, Carole
Hillenbrand concludes that “al-Sulami’s words proclaimed in the mosque
from the minbar and preserved in his Book of Holy War do not seem to have
had a widespread effect on his fellow Muslims at large, nor did they strike a
Holy Church.” Alfonso X, King of Castile and Leon, Las Siete Partidas, ed. Robert I. Burns;
trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, 5 vols., he Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 1:156 (I.10.1).
112
Abd al-Ḥ ayy ibn Aḥmad Ibn al- Imād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, ed.
Abd al-Qādir Arnā ūṭ and Maḥmūd Arnā ūṭ, 10 vols. (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1986), 1:260,
290. Christie, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad,” 217, understands this passage to say: “his is
confirmation, according to what was said in the hadith . . . mentioned before . . .”
113
Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad,” 9, understands this passage to say:
“If this situation is occurring during that time, and if those who fight the jihad are from this
conquering group [the group who will fight until the Day of Judgment], among them are those
who will succeed in driving them out of Jerusalem and other parts of this country. hey are the
ones who will conquer Constantinople . . .” In another attempt to translate this passage, Christie
substitutes “who will succeed in driving the Rum out of Jerusalem” for “who will succeed in driving them out of Jerusalem,” and deletes his editorial additions in brackets. Christie, “Jerusalem
in the Kitab Al-Jihad,” 217.
114
Sulamī, “Jihād,” 54-55; Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 211, 218-19.
300
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
chord with Muslim rulers and commanders at the time of maximum Crusader
expansionism in the early twelfth century.”115 hose who look for intellectualtheological causation behind the course of Islamic jihād may be disappointed
that al-Sulamī’s words bore no immediate fruit, or they may credit his statements with remarkable prophetic vision, seeing in his treatise “the broad outline of what actually happened subsequently, in the long process we often call
the Counter-Crusade.”116 Yet the connection between al-Sulamī’s words and
the course of the Muslim counter-Crusade is not as simple as the intellectualtheological causation theorists make it out to be.
At the time of al-Sulamī’s call for jihād, the whole situation in the Islamic
world was fragmented. But the fragments were in constant ferment and evolution. his evolution assumed new scope when Imād al-Dīn Zengī (r. 521541/1127-1146), “an opportunistic and ruthless military commander,”117 rose
up to create an autonomous emirate within the western realms of the fractured
Saljuq Empire by defeating his principal Muslim rivals. Al-Sulamī might have
preferred a better standard-bearer of jihād than Zengī, but the counterCrusade would not have gone forward without him. His capture of Crusader
Edessa in 539/1144 greatly widened the political horizon of the Zengid state
and led directly to the fabled careers of such standard-bearers of jihād as
Zengī’s son, Nūr al-Dīn (r. 541-569/1146-1174), and Nūr al-Dīn’s lieutenant,
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) (r. 564-589/1169-1193). Fear of the Franks did not
occasion a united Muslim front in Syria and northern Mesopotamia against
the Crusader states, as al-Sulamī suggested it might, but the consolidation of
political power in Zengī’s hands eventually led the way to jihād and efforts to
“obliterate all traces of [the Franks].”
Al-Sulamī’s words do not appear to have been forgotten, even though they
were not immediately acted upon. His description of the Crusades as the first,
second, and third movements of a Latin Christian offensive against Islam had
a deep influence on Muslim historiography. Ibn al-Athīr (555-630/11601233) adopted and embellished this conception of the Crusades in his widely
influential world history, al-Kāmil fī l-ta rīkh, which Franz Rosenthal calls “the
high point of Muslim annalistic historiography.”118 Ibn al-Athīr’s tripartite
115
Hillenbrand, Crusades, 108. See also Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade,” 204-6;
Elisséeff, “Reaction of the Syrian Muslims,” 165; Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of
Conquest?” 66; idem, “Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad,” 210; idem, “Motivating Listeners in the
Kitab al-Jihad,” 1.
116
Bonner, Jihad, 140.
117
Hillenbrand, Crusades, 112.
118
Franz Rosenthal, “Ibn al-Athīr,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 3, ed. B. Lewis
et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 723-25, at 724.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
301
account of the Crusades is related — directly or indirectly — to al-Sulamī’s
version of events. While Niall Christie thinks it unlikely that al-Sulamī directly
influenced Ibn al-Athīr, Matti Moosa suggests that Ibn al-Athīr “may have
read al-Sulami’s treatise.”119
What makes the connection between al-Sulamī and Ibn al-Athīr so convincing is the fact that Ibn al-Athīr is not likely to have come up with a threepart view of the Crusades on his own. Annalistic historians, such as Ibn
al-Athīr, rarely explore the meaning of events that are separated over a wide
expanse of time and space. In the ancient and medieval tradition of annalistic
history, “historical facts [are] viewed as immediately given and their meaning
as immediately recognizable,” so that “the historical fact is self-evident and the
eyewitness the best historian,” making it sufficient for the chronicler “merely
to continue, in a straight line, the work of his predecessors,” with the end
result being “a continuous, unbroken chain of one historical narrative.”120 Ibn
al-Athīr hardly ever deviates from this tradition, but he does so in the case of
the Crusades.121 his breach of tradition is best explained by the habit of
annalistic historians to present accounts of events gleaned from eyewitnesses,
or at least contemporaries, to the events that they describe.
Ibn al-Athīr, in fact, offers not one but two accounts of the emergence of
the Crusades. he first is an embroidered version of al-Sulamī’s account. he
second is a tale of Fatimid intrigue that has the Shī ī rulers of Egypt calling
upon the Franks to intervene in Syria to offset the might of the Saljuq state
(al-dawla al-Saljūqiyya).122 To the second account, he appends the statement,
“God is the Most-knowing” (Allāhu a lam), a well-known qualifying expression used in Arabic to signify that “the author is unsure of the authenticity of
his or her source.”123 he first account of the Crusades, which owes its basic
structure to al-Sulamī, found a distinguished place in the Islamic historiographical tradition, as well as in the Syriac historical heritage. When the Jacobite historian Gregory Abū l-Faraj Bar Hebraeus (1226-1286) incorporated
119
Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 71; Matti Moosa, he Crusades:
Conflict between Christendom and Islam (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press; Beth Antioch Press,
2008), 175.
120
Amos Funkenstein, heology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the
Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 206-8.
121
Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968),
146-47.
122
Izz al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥ asan Alī ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-ta rīkh, ed. Carl J.
Tornberg, 13 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1965-1967), 10:272-73; Chevedden, “Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade,” 96-99; Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest?” 67-70.
123
Maher Y. Abu-Munshar, “Fāṭimids, Crusaders and the Fall of Islamic Jerusalem: Foes or
Allies?” al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 22, no. 1 (April 2010): 45-56, at 48.
302
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
this account into his Ta rīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, al-Sulamī’s trichotomous
division of the Crusades became part of the main historiographical tradition
of the Middle East.124 Ibn al-Athīr’s second account of the Crusades has a
genuine basis in fact but not in the simplified form that he presents it.125
Regardless of what Ibn al-Athīr may have thought, al-Sulamī’s threefold division of the Crusades is not incompatible with, or mutually exclusive of, a
Crusader-Fatimid anti-Saljuq alliance.
If al-Sulamī influenced the historiographical tradition of the Middle East,
is he also likely to have influenced the Muslim response to the Crusaders, the
actual movement of jihād, or what is often referred to as the counter-Crusade?
When we consider “the gradual forming of an alliance under Zangī, Nūr
al-Dīn and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, between the urban merchant class on the one hand,
and on the other, those professional military elements [of society],”126 and the
impact of this alliance on the course of the counter-Crusade, it is difficult not
to credit al-Sulamī with a role in this development. he urban merchant class,
joined by artisans, teachers, and religious scholars, were the guardians of
Islamic culture and traditions. he religious scholars in particular were the
custodians of the Qur ān and the teachings of the Prophet, and these religious
authorities nurtured the powerful spirit that was to drive the counter-Crusade
forward, the spirit of jihād.127 Al-Sulamī’s Kitāb al-jihād was the first of many
new works devoted to Holy War, designed to rally support behind a common
effort to defeat the Crusaders.128 Al-Sulamī and others emerged to provide
Islamic society with the spiritual and emotional impetus needed to undertake
the great task of dislodging the Crusaders from the Dār al-Islām.
124
Gregory Abū l-Faraj Bar Hebraeus, Ta rīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, ed. Anṭūn Ṣāliḥānī
(Beirut: Maṭba at al-Kāthūlīkiyya li-l-Ābā al-Yasū iyyīn fī Bayrūt, 1890), 341; Chevedden,
Chevedden, “Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade,” 94-102, 119-21; idem, “New Synthesis,”
184-87.
125
Abu-Munshar, “Fāṭimids, Crusaders.”
126
Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War, 156.
127
Daniella Talmon-Heller analyzes the mechanisms used by religious scholars to promote
jihād in Syria during the period 1146 to 1260 and assesses the impact this had on the elites
(al-khāṣsạ ) and masses (al- āmma) within society. Daniella Talmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and Ayyūbids (1146-1260), Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, vol. 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 87-148, 213-24, 243-51.
128
Emmanuel Sivan, L’Islam et la Croisade, idéologie et propagande dans les réactions musulmanes aux Croisades (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1968), 29-34, 44-49, 62-73, 1068; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 108-11, 161-67, 175-85, 241-43; Cook, Understanding Jihad, 49-66;
Suleiman A. Mourad and James E. Lindsay, “Rescuing Syria from the Infidels: he Contribution
of Ibn Asakir of Damascus to the Jihad Campaign of Sultan Nur al-Din,” Crusades 6 (2007):
37-55.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
303
he Strategic hinking of Pope Urban and al-Sulamī
Although both Pope Urban and al-Sulamī viewed the Mediterranean as a
geographic and strategic whole, only Urban had to deal directly with a battlefield on two fronts, at both ends of the Mediterranean. his situation forced
him to contend with the problems of a two-front war and to establish goals
and devise a strategy for achieving them. He determined that success in this
two-front war required that there be simultaneous military offensives at both
ends of the Mediterranean. Many scholars, unaware of the historical and strategic context of the Crusades, have confused Urban’s strategy of offense with a
war of aggression.129 Our understanding of Urban requires a long-term perspective, not unlike the perspective found in Urban’s letters, and an appreciation of the single political vision that structured his thinking about the
Crusades: a vision of a Christian world restored to the unity that had marked
it prior to the Islamic conquest movements. he pursuit of this vision accounts
for the urge to regard the Mediterranean as a unified theater of operations, one
that encompasses Sicily, Spain, and the Middle East.
Unlike Urban, al-Sulamī was never faced directly with the challenge of
translating a strategic vision into a strategic plan of action. Although he clearly
sees the advances by the Latin West in Sicily, Spain, and Syria as a new contest
for the control of the Mediterranean, he does not develop a Mediterranean
strategy to deal with this problem in its totality. His plan of action is strictly
local — limited to “this region” (hādhihī al-bilād ), namely “Syria, the Jazīrah,
Egypt, and the rest of the lands that border it and are near to it.” He understands the magnitude of the threat posed by the growing might of Western
Christendom and the vulnerabilities of Islam to this threat, but he is in no
position to effect political action.
129
Erdmann, Entstehung, 1, 8, 106; trans. Baldwin and Goffart, 3, 10, 117; Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 12 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1934-1961), 9:100; Steven
Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19511954), 2:48, 3:469-80; Geoffrey Barraclough, “Deus le volt?” New York Review of Books, 21 May
1970, 12-16; John Gilchrist, “he Papacy and War against the ‘Saracens,’ 795-1216,” International History Review 10, no. 2 (May 1988): 174-97, at 196; John L. Esposito, Islam: he Straight
Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 60; Aristeides Papadakis, he Christian East
and the Rise of the Papacy: he Church 1071-1453 A.D., in collaboration with John Meyendorff
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994), 69; Robert Bartlett, he Making of
Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 19-20; Peter Partner, God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xxvi-xxvii, 80-81, 276; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 250,
589; Tomaž Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political
Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 118-19; Asbridge, First Crusade, 2, 16-42,
334-39; idem, Crusades, 658, 671; Tyerman, God’s War, xiii, 72, 656, 922.
304
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
Al-Sulamī’s Dream of Conquest and the Course of Islamic Jihād
In the eastern Mediterranean, al-Sulamī’s dream of a resurgent Islam took on
strength by the middle of the twelfth century and reached fulfillment in 1291
when Acre, the last of the Latin holdings in Palestine, fell to Mamluk forces.
In the western Mediterranean, a Christian dream of reconquest and restoration was realized, as the Normans conquered Islamic Sicily between the years
1060 and 1091, and as the Crusader kings of Castile-León and of AragonCatalonia conquered the heartlands of Spanish Islam (al-Andalus) during the
thirteenth century. But the great rollback of the Islamic world and the reconquest of the Mediterranean from the power of Islam that was expected by Pope
Urban in the eleventh century, and still anticipated by many well into the
thirteenth century, did not happen.
Instead, an Islamic conquest movement that was no less remarkable than
the earlier Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries got underway.
he Ottoman jihād conquests against Christendom met with far greater success than did the Crusades of the Latin West against Islam. he Ottomans
completely destroyed the Byzantine Empire and the Christian kingdoms of
Serbia and Bulgaria. hey transformed the second Rome — Constantinople —
into their capital and occupied vast territories in southeast Europe for centuries. In 1658, the Ottomans invaded Hungary. In 1672, they marched into
Poland. By 1678, they had defeated the Russian Empire and invaded the
Ukraine. In 1683, the Ottomans besieged Habsburg Vienna for the second
time. he limited successes of the Crusades must be weighed against the
extraordinary successes of the Islamic jihād conquests and their remarkable
degree of permanence. Yet the Crusades, far from being “the most signal
and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any
age or nation,”130 reaped enormous strategic dividends for the Latin West.
hey played a decisive role in the great struggle of Western Civilization to
survive by curbing the militant advance of Islam. By the turn of the eighteenth
century, the Islamic threat to Europe was finally contained. With the 1699
Treaty of Karlowitz and the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz, a new phase in relations between Western Europe and the Islamic world began in which a major
Islamic state, the Ottoman Empire, entered the realm of inter-European political struggles.131
130
David Hume, he History of England, From the Invasion of Julius Ceasar to the Revolution
in 1688, with the author’s last corrections and improvements, 6 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund, 1983), 1:234.
131
Kenneth Meyer Setton, Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century, Memoirs
of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 192 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,
1991), 389-461.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
305
Seeing the Crusades as Contemporaries Saw hem
In the pendulum of war between Cross and Crescent, triumph fosters its own
illusions. he early experience of Islam had the effect that worldly success was
always expected and was seen as something intrinsic to the faith. Western
Christendom had been shattered and shaken by the Islamic conquests, leaving
Muslims to expect that the Latin West would never react, readjust, and
rebound from repeated defeats. When it did, the reaction was both incredulity
and outrage, as al-Sulamī clearly expresses. So too, when Western Christendom was flush with triumph and saw Islam reeling and on the defensive, it too
put aside all thoughts that Muslim society would react, readjust, and rebound
from repeated defeats.
If Muslims and Christians shared illusions, they also shared a common perspective on the Mediterranean, viewing it as a geographic and strategic whole.
his perspective allowed them to see the Crusades, not as “the brief and localized outbursts which tend to monopolize the term,”132 but as a Mediterraneanwide movement that unfolded in three stages: Sicily, Spain, and Syria. A
crusading pope and a Muslim jurist would give vastly different meanings to
these events, yet they would be in full agreement about where and when the
Crusades began and how they developed. he crusading pontiff would tie the
Crusades to the restoration of the Church and the resumption of the evangelical mission of the Church, while the Muslim lawyer would link the Crusades to the eschaton, the End of Days before Final Judgment. Because the
pope and the lawyer regarded history as unfolding according to a divine plan,
they saw the Crusades as part of this plan. An important by-product of accepting that God directs history was the adoption of a genuinely historical approach
to the Crusades: the presentation of events as they really happened, not as they
might have happened or could have happened or should have happened.
Seeing the Crusades as Pope Urban II and Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī saw them
will not be an easy task. According to Hilaire Belloc, “the most difficult thing
in the world in connection with history, and the rarest of achievement, is the
seeing of events as contemporaries saw them, instead of seeing them through
the distorting medium of our later knowledge.”133 he distorting medium of
later knowledge has produced the conventional view that the Crusades began
in 1095.134 Numerous histories of the Crusades have been written from this
132
Robert I. Burns, Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the hirteenth-Century
Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), xiii.
133
Hilaire Belloc, he Great Heresies (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1938), 190-91.
134
Because of the distorting medium of later knowledge, Erdmann contends that “the sources
written after 1100, and especially after 1105, can be used only with extreme caution in reconstructing the history of how the crusade began.” Erdmann, Entstehung, 366; trans. Baldwin and
306
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
perspective.135 What is lacking is the awareness that Urban and al-Sulamī both
bring to an understanding of the Crusades. Urban and al-Sulamī guide us to
a proper comprehension of the Crusades by refusing to judge the entire movement on the basis of the most recent expression of crusading activity. hey
both see the latest crusading venture in the Mediterranean as part of a multipronged movement. hey trace the origins of this movement back to the Norman conquest of Sicily, and they link together the various strands of this
movement so that it is possible to see the Norman actions in Sicily, the Castilian and Catalan advances in Iberia, and the expedition to Jerusalem as forming a single enterprise.
his interpretation of the Crusades provides a needed counterpoint to a
modern tendency, manifested in the works of John Cowdrey, Jonathan RileyGoffart, 359. Whalen, Dominion of God, 51, also warns of the problem of retrospective history
in “First” Crusade narrative accounts.
135
For comprehensive general works on the Crusades, see René Grousset, Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume Franc de Jérusalem, 3 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1934-1936); Runciman, History of the
Crusades; Adolf Waas, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1956); Paul Rousset,
Histoire des croisades, Bibliothèque historique (Paris: Payot, 1957); Mayer, Geschichte der
Kreuzzüge; trans. Gillingham; Oldenbourg, Crusades; Francesco Cognasso, Storia delle cruciate
(Milan: Dall’Oglio, 1967); Kenneth Meyer Setton, ed. A History of the Crusades, 2nd ed., 6 vols.
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969-1989); Cécile Morrisson, Les Croisades, 2nd ed.
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1973); Walter Zöllner, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, 5th ed.
(Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1987); Riley-Smith, Crusades: Short History,
1st ed.; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed.; Michel Balard, Les croisades (Paris: MA éditions,
1988); Henri Platelle, Les croisades, Bibliothèque d’histoire du christianisme, vol. 33 (Paris:
Desclée, 1994); Richard, Crusades; Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow,
UK: Pearson/Longman, 2004); Demurger, Croisades et croisés; Tyerman, God’s War; homas F.
Madden, he New Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006);
Jaspert, Crusades; Housley, Fighting for the Cross; Jill N. Claster, Sacred Violence: he European
Crusades to the Middle East, 1095-1396 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Phillips,
Holy Warriors; Asbridge, Crusades. For accounts of the so-called “First” Crusade, which purportedly began the crusading enterprise, see Heinrich von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs,
2nd ed. (Leipzig: F. Fleischer, 1881); trans. Lady Duff Gordon as he History and Literature of
the Crusades (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861); Reinhold Röhricht, Geschichte des Ersten
Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1901); Ferdinand Chalandon, Histoire de la première croisade
jusqu’à l’élection de Godefroi de Bouillon (Paris: A. Picard, 1925); Paul Rousset, Les Origines et les
caracteres de la premiere croisade (Neuchâtel: Éd. de la Baconnière, 1945); Riley-Smith, First
Crusade; idem, First Crusaders; Jean Flori, La Première Croisade: L’Occident chrétien contre l’Islam
(aux origines des idéologies occidentales) (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1992); idem, Pierre l’Ermite
et la première croisade (Paris, Fayard: 1999); John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of
the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jacques Heers, Libérer Jérusalem: La Première Croisade, 1095-1107 (Paris: Perrin, 1995); Gerhard Armanski, Es begann in
Clermont: Der erste Kreuzzug und die Genese der Gewalt in Europa (Pfaffenweiler: CentaurusVerlagsgesellschaft, 1995); Guy Lobrichon, 1099, Jérusalem conquise (Paris: Seuil, 1998); Jörg
Dendl, Wallfahrt in Waffen: Der Erste Kreuzzug ins Heilige Land 1095-1099 (Munich: Langen
Müller, 1999); Asbridge, First Crusade.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
307
Smith, Christopher Tyerman, Marcus Bull, Norman Housley, and others, to
affirm an absolute causal dependence of the political aspects of crusading on
the spiritual components of crusading, and to identify the spiritual characteristics of crusading with crusading itself.136 he flaw in this “devotional” or
“religious” interpretation of crusading does not consist in the view that the
political aspects of crusading are conditioned by its spiritual or penitential elements, but in the assertion that the political facets of crusading causally depend
on the spiritual components, and in the false identification of the spiritual
features of crusading with crusading itself. Scholars have been asking themselves, “What devotional religious climate or religious innovation caused the
emergence of the Crusades?” when they should have been asking, “What
ongoing conflict intensified to the point where it received the highest and
most expansive religious warrant, was rewarded with a growing array of
religious benefits and secular privileges, and was validated by a historicaltheological schema?” his is not merely a matter of emphasis in relating the
136
Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II’s Preaching”; idem, “he Genesis of the Crusade: he Springs of
Western Ideas of Holy War,” in he Holy War: Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
Columbus, Ohio in 1974, sponsored by the Ohio State University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. homas Patrick Murphy (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1976),
9-32; idem, “he Origin of the Idea of Crusade,” review of he Origin of the Idea of Crusade, by
Carl Erdmann, International History Review, 1, no. 1 (January 1979): 121-25; idem, “Pope
Urban II and the Idea of Crusade,” Studi Medievali, ser. 3, 36, no. 2 (1995): 721-42; idem, “he
Reform Papacy and the Origin of the Crusades,” in Vauchez, Le Concile de Clermont, 65-83;
Riley-Smith, First Crusade; idem, Crusades: Short History, 1st ed.; idem, “he State of Mind of
Crusaders to the East, 1095-1300,” in idem, he Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, 66-90;
idem, First Crusaders; idem, “he Idea of Crusading in the Charters of Early Crusaders, 10951102,” in Vauchez, Le Concile de Clermont, 155-66; idem, Crusades: A History, 2nd ed.; idem,
Crusades, Christianity, and Islam; idem, What Were the Crusades? 4th ed.; Marcus Bull, Knightly
Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: he Limousin and Gascony, c. 970-c. 1130 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993); Housley, Contesting the Crusades; idem, Fighting for the Cross; Mayer,
Geschichte der Kreuzzüge; trans. Gillingham; Malcolm Barber, he Two Cities: Medieval Europe,
1050-1320 (London: Routledge, 1992); Ernst-Dieter Hehl, “Was ist eigentlich ein Kreuzzug?”
Historische Zeitschrift 259, no. 2 (October 1994): 297-336; Tyerman, Invention; idem, “What
the Crusades Meant to Europe,” in he Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson
(London: Routledge, 2001), 131-45; idem, God’s War; Mastnak, Crusading Peace; Asbridge, First
Crusade; idem, Crusades; Purkis, Crusading Spirituality; Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader
States; idem, “he Christians of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre and the Origins of the First Crusade,” Crusades 7 (2008): 35-57; Michael C. Horowitz, “Long Time Going: Religion and the
Duration of Crusading,” International Security 34, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 162-93. he “devotional”
or “religious” interpretation of crusading can be called the “religious dependence,” or the “religious causation,” thesis. Ever since the Crusades became the subject of serious scholarly attention
two centuries ago some form of this thesis has been advanced. he great pioneer of Crusade
studies, Heinrich von Sybel, rejected this thesis, while Carl Erdmann embraced it in his controversial proposal that crusading “depended on the unification of holy war with pilgrimage.” Sybel,
Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs, 145; trans. Gordon, 2; Erdmann, Entstehung, 319; trans. Baldwin
and Goffart, 348.
308
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
political realm to the religious realm: it suggests that the prolonged struggle
between Islam and Christianity in the Mediterranean world, rather than the
religion of the Latin West, is the central issue and must be the real focus of
inquiry. And it makes the Christian religion one of the many forces of crusading, rather than the root cause or reason for the Crusades.
Scholars have been lured into believing that because spiritual motivation
explains some crusading phenomena, it is supposed to explain all crusading
phenomena. As a consequence, the material, social, economic, and political
aspects of crusading are reduced to secondary importance. Yet the material,
social, economic, and political realities of crusading refuse to take a back seat
to the religious features of crusading. A genuinely scholarly understanding of
the Crusades must reject all simplifications of crusading reality that play down
or obscure essential elements, such as political factors, socio-economic conditions, and material interests. Crusading can no more be reduced to its extrinsic
religious elements than religion can be reduced to psychology, sociology, economics, or a system of ethics. Each has an autonomous and independent character. Riley-Smith and others who aim to incorporate crusading into the
domain of religious life are unwilling to admit that crusading has an autonomous character. Crusading, however, is not a mere function of its extraneous
religious components. It has its own end and purpose that transcends its religious framework, and it can be studied as an autonomous activity.
Both Urban and al-Sulamī recognize crusading as an autonomous activity
that manifests itself in specific deeds and events. Modern assumptions and
biases cloud our view of these deeds and events, but no magic key is required
to unlock the door to understanding the Crusades. he door is open and a
fairly broad range of sources exists to chart the emergence and the development of crusading. To have some idea of what the Crusades were, we would
do well to begin with “what contemporaries understood by crusading” and to
consider what Pope Urban II and Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī have to say about
crusading.
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Figure 1. Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691/92-1765), View of Rome from the
northwest, 1749. Center, the Castel Sant’Angelo. Right, the Vatican with Saint
Peter’s Basilica. Oil on canvas. Charlottenburg Castle, Stiftung Preussische
Schlösser & Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, Germany. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.
Figure 2. Anonymous Venetian, he Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors in
Damascus, showing the Great Mosque of Damascus in the distance (left of
center), 1511. Oil on canvas; 46 1/2 × 80 in. (118 × 203 cm). Musée du Louvre, Paris; Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.
320
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Figure 3. he priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville (Saône-et-Loire), France. Copyright Académie de
Mâcon.
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Figure 4. he priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville: General view of the wall
paintings decorating the apse. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
322
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Figure 5. he traditio legis et clavum in the conch of the apse of the priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville, showing the Hand of God
above Christ, who is seated on a throne in an oval mandorla and flanked by twelve apostles. Also included in the scene are SS.
Vincent and Lawrence (left) and two unidentified bishop-saints (right). Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
P. E. Chevedden / Oriens 39 (2011) 257-329
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Figure 6. he traditio legis et clavum in the conch of the apse of the priory
chapel of Berzé-la-Ville, showing St. Peter, at the head of a group six apostles,
receiving the open scroll of the Law from Christ with cloaked hands, as he
holds the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Next to Peter, in the foreground,
stand John and James. Below left, two unidentified bishop-saints. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
324
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Figure 7. he traditio legis in the conch of the apse of the priory chapel of
Berzé-la-Ville, showing St. Paul, at the head of a group six apostles, acclaiming
Christ with his right hand, as do others in the group, while he holds in his
veiled left hand the open scroll of the Law received from Christ. Next to Paul,
in the foreground, stand Philip and Matthew. Below right, SS. Vincent and
Lawrence. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
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Figure 8. he mural on the north side of the apse of the priory chapel of
Berzé-la-Ville, showing St. Blaise in prison (top) and St. Blaise being beheaded
(bottom). Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
326
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Figure 9. he mural on the south side of the apse of the priory chapel of
Berzé-la-Ville, showing St. Vincent being tortured on a gridiron. Above left,
St. Agatha; above right, St. Consorce. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag,
Munich.
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Figure 10. he mural on the north side of the apse of the priory chapel of
Berzé-la-Ville, showing St. Blaise in prison receiving from a poor widow the
fully-cooked head and hams of her pig that the saint had previously rescued
from the jaws of a wolf. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
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Figure 11. St. Consorce (Lat. Consortia) on the south corner spandrel of the
apse of the priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville. Copyright Académie de Mâcon.
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Figure 12. he priory chapel of Berzé-la-Ville: General view of the mural
paintings decorating the apse. Copyright Académie de Mâcon.