WOJTEK JEZIERSKI Feelings during Sieges Fear, Trust, and Emotional Bonding on the Missionary and Crusader Baltic Rim, 12th – 13th Centuries* He regarded God and his neighbour with constant fear and righteous love. Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, book VI, ch. 75 1 Crusading Emotions, Conflicts, and Emotional Bonding, S. 255. – Missionary and Crusader Experience: Wagria and Livonia, S. 259. – Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Community under Siege, S. 263. – Pagani: From Political Enemies to Enemies of the Faith, S. 266. – Fear and Terror as Political and Public Emotions, S. 271. – Conclusions, S. 279. This article addresses a seemingly simple question: which emotions did the medieval siege experience incite? Or, to be more exact: what kind of social ties did these emotions and experiences generate within and outside of besieged fortresses in an age and region of intense missioning and crusading such as the high medieval Baltic Rim? Although there is little doubt that medieval sieges, much like their contemporary counterparts, must have been a nerve-wracking game, their emotional as well as socio-political aspects have attracted much less interest than their well-explored military and technical characteristics 2. And yet the fact that protracted sieges, sometimes lasting for weeks, led to the development of new social and emotional bonds and * The author would like to express his gratitude to Cordelia Heß ( Universität Greifswald ) and Tim Geel- 1 2 haar ( Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main ) for their generous help in developing the arguments of this article. The research was funded by the Swedish Research Council grant no. 2014-673 and by the Polish National Science Centre as part of grant no. 2015/17/B/HS3/00502. Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronicon/Chronik, ed. and transl. Werner Trillmich ( Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters. FSGA 9 ), Darmstadt 1957, book VI, ch. 75, pp. 322–323: In timore continuo et amore iusto Deum agnovit et proximum; translation from: Ottonian Germany. The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, transl. David A. Warner, Manchester – New York 2001, p. 287. For notable exceptions to a more pluralistic approach to medieval siege warfare see: John France, Siege Conventions in Western Europe and the Latin East, in: Philip de Souza – John France ( eds. ), War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History ( Medieval Review ), Cambridge 2008, pp. 158–172; Leif Inge Ree Petersen, Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States ( 400–800 AD ). Byzantium, the West and Islam ( History of Warfare 91 ), Leiden 2013, pp. 316–359; Kurt Villads Jensen, Bigger and Better. Arms Race and Change in War Technology in the Baltic in the Early Thirteenth Century, in: Marek Tamm et al. ( eds. ), Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier. A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, Farnham 2011, pp. 245–264. https://doi.org/10.1515/fmst-2018-011 Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 254 Wojtek Jezierski a re-evaluation of pre-existing political, ethnic, or religious divisions should hardly be surprising. Furthermore, it is important to stress that the emotional sociability of sieges affected not only relations within each of the two opposing camps, beleaguered vs. beleaguering, but also the relationship between these two hostile groups 3. The sheer protraction of such events and the physical proximity of the fighting parties led to the development of some basic institutions like go-betweens, negotiators, ceasefires etc., all of which hinged on mutual ( dis )trust. It is no coincidence that sieges, next to the ritualized ordeal and trial by combat, were among the first forms of medieval warfare which were systematized by conventions and laws 4. Hence, sieges can be interpreted as experiments in trust, emotions, and religious violence conducted under conditions of collapsing social distance 5. The main purpose of this article is therefore to explore the ephemeral, but emotionally intense communities which emerged during sieges in the missionary and crusader Baltic Rim in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Which emotions dominated among the collectives entrapped in beleaguered forts or among the beleaguering troops? In which ways were participants’ feelings actively shaped and exploited as a means of emotional bonding during this type of protracted military conflict: as a motivational force, as a means of warfare and a source of drama in the crusader theatre of war, or as a way to stress religious differences? By focusing on the communal and processual aspects of emotions and their active navigation during medieval sieges, this article introduces the concept of e mo t io n a l b o n din g to address the issues of affective insecurity, utter distrust, and both associative and aversive forms of emotional socialization. The questions mentioned above will be answered by the analysis of sieges described in the works of two authors operating in different crusader contexts on the Baltic Rim: first, Helmold of Bosau, who wrote his ‘Chronica Slavorum’ ca. 1168– 1172 in Northern Germany during the so-called Wendish Crusade; second, Henry of Livonia, who composed his ‘Chronicon Livoniae’ in the mid-1220s, in the age of the Baltic Crusades. Thus, this article provides new insight into the way missionary authors saw the problems of trust and emotions as vehicles of community-formation on the Baltic Rim, which partially ameliorates the lack of studies on crusader emotions and 3 4 5 Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms ( The Heritage of Sociology ), ed. Donald N. Levine, Chicago 1971, pp. 80–83. France, Siege Conventions ( as note 2 ), passim; Randall Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century ( Oxford Historical Monographs Series ), Oxford 1992; Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege, Woodbridge 1992, pp. 296–334; Charles L. H. Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society. Fortresses in England, France, and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages, Oxford 2003, passim; Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), passim. See for example: France, Siege Conventions ( as note 2 ), pp. 160–163; Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society ( as note 4 ), pp. 179–188; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege ( as note 4 ), p. 125; Wolfgang Sofsky, Zeiten des Schreckens. Amok, Terror, Krieg, Frankfurt/M. 2002, pp. 113–122; Ivana Maćek, Sarajevo under Siege. Anthropology in Wartime ( The Ethnography of Political Violence ), Philadelphia 2009, pp. 105–119. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 255 the role warfare was supposed to play as a tool of conversion in regions other than the Mediterranean. Furthermore, whereas previous studies have mainly focused on vengeance, love, anger, or hatred as emotions associated with crusader warfare, this article also reappraises the role of fear and its many different forms as an important catalyst of crusading. The descriptions of sieges provided by Helmold and Henry, two missionary priests in the midst of two Baltic crusades, separated by one sea and half a century, amply demonstrate both the protean socio-political and religious potential of emotions and their practical role in medieval warfare. To investigate these problems, this study fuses three fields of medievalist research: 1. emotional discourses of crusading in the high Middle Ages, 2. emotional bonding in conflict and dispute settlement, 3. missionary frontier societies on the Baltic Rim. CRUSADING EMOTIONS, CONFLICTS, AND EMOTIONAL BONDING It seems that the study of emotions, their experience, and socio-political functions, has now been included among the mainstream research interests of medievalists 6, in particular those dealing with Christianization and crusader contexts. The use of fear and the threat of bringing divine wrath upon the heads of the infidels – and conversion as a way into a sphere of safety – has been proposed as a means of conversion employed by individual missionaries in Southern Europe in the early Middle Ages as well as on the Baltic Rim in the period studied here 7. Jonathan Riley-Smith’s seminal article taught scholars to consider the medieval authors’ emotional discourses in the Holy Land as an act of love, which crusaders were to affectionately show to their brothers in arms, and aggressively to their enemies 8. More recently, emotions of hatred, anger, and vengeance have supplemented love in the rhetoric as equally important motivations for crusader actions 9. Using a large 6 7 8 9 For useful research overviews see: Rüdiger Schnell, Historische Emotionsforschung. Eine mediävistische Standortbestimmung, in: Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38, 2004, pp. 173–276; Id., Erzähler – Protagonist – Rezipient im Mittelalter, oder: Was ist der Gegenstand der literaturwissenschaftlichen Emotionsforschung?, in: Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 33, 2009, pp. 1–51; Jan Plamper, Geschichte und Gefühl. Grundlagen der Emotionsgeschichte, Munich 2012; Barbara H. Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling. A History of Emotions, 600–1700, Cambridge 2016, pp. 1–15; Johannes F. Lehmann, Geschichte der Gefühle. Wissensgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, Diskursgeschichte, in: Martin von Koppenfels – Cornelia Zumbusch ( eds. ), Handbuch Literatur & Emotionen ( Handbücher zur kulturwissenschaftlichen Philologie 4 ), Berlin 2016, pp. 140–157. Elizabeth McLuhan, Evangelico mucrone. With an Evangelical Sword. Fear as Weapon in the Early Evangelization of Gaul, in: Anne Scott – Cynthia Kosso ( eds. ), Fear and its Representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance ( Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 6 ), Turnhout 2002, pp. 107–124; Robert Bartlett, The Conversion of a Pagan Society in the Middle Ages, in: History 70, 1985, pp. 185–201; Stephen Bennett, Fear and Its Representation in the First Crusade, in: Ex Historia 4, 2012, pp. 29–54. Jonathan Riley­Smith, Crusading as an Act of Love, in: History 65, 1980, pp. 177–192. Sophia Menache, Love of God or Hatred of Your Enemy? The Emotional Voices of the Crusades, in: Mirabilia 10, 2010, pp. 1–20; Susanna A. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, Farnham 2011; Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 256 Wojtek Jezierski sample of twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries texts, Susanna A. Throop demonstrated that the way Christians were to confront the infidels – Muslims, heretics, apostates, Jews, and in the Baltic context, the Orthodox Russians 10 – was increasingly conceptualized in terms of injury, righteous anger, and retribution directed against the enemies of christianitas. Throop, who built her analysis on William Reddy’s notion of emotional regimes – the normative orders of emotions conceptualizing Christian suffering and enabling specific emotional outlets 11 – argued that this new, emotionally aversive tone was not some casual rhetoric. It was the very essence and reason behind the efficacy of the crusading discourse. The emotional elements framing religious enmity functioned as a motivating force, buttressed by the Christian self-identification with the offended and thus increasingly vengeful God, and exculpated crusaders from potential abuses of religious violence 12. The emotional discourses of crusading radiated to Northern Europe and the Baltic Rim, particularly in the wake of the Wendish crusade of 1147 13. Marek Tamm, 10 11 12 13 Ead., Zeal, Anger and Vengeance. The Emotional Rhetoric of Crusading, in: Ead. – Paul R. Hyams ( eds. ), Vengeance in the Middle Ages. Emotion, Religion and Feud, Farnham 2010, pp. 177–201. John H. Lind, Scandinavian Nemtsy and Repaganized Russians. The Expansion of the Latin West during the Baltic Crusades and its Confessional Repercussions, in: Zsolt Hunyadi – József Laszlovszky ( eds. ), The Crusades and the Military Orders. Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, Budapest 2001, pp. 481–497; Torben K. Nielsen, Sterile Monsters? Russians and the Orthodox Church in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, in: Alan V. Murray ( ed. ), The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, Farnham 2009, pp. 227–252; Bjørn Bandlien, Norway, Sweden, and Novgorod. Scandinavian Perceptions of the Russians, Late Twelfth–Early Fourteenth Centuries, in: Wojtek Jezierski – Lars Hermanson ( eds. ), Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim, from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries ( Crossing Boundaries. Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies 4 ), Amsterdam 2016, pp. 331–352. William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions, New York 2001, pp. 124–126; Fabian Bernhardt, Was ist Rache? Versuch einer systematischen Bestimmung, in: Martin Baisch et al. ( eds. ), Rache – Zorn – Neid. Zur Faszination negativer Emotionen in der Kultur und Literatur des Mittelalters ( Aventiuren 8 ), Göttingen 2013, pp. 49–71. Importantly, these responses were scripted as sequences of emotions. By responding to the attacks against the Christian faith, “those who were zealous were depicted seeking to enact the vengeance of God through righteous anger, but at times the desire to emulate God led some to express self-sacrifice”; Throop, Zeal, Anger and Vengeance ( as note 9 ), p. 199; for more on the new emotional tone in which enmity towards enemies of Christianity was framed in this period, see e. g.: Gerd Althoff, “Selig sind, die Verfolgung ausüben.” Päpste und Gewalt im Hochmittelalter ( WBG Historische Bibliothek ), Darmstadt 2013, pp. 121–146, 165–188. Throop, Zeal, Anger and Vengeance ( as note 9 ), passim; Friedrich Lotter, The Crusading Idea and the Conquest of the Region East of the Elbe, in: Robert Bartlett – Angus MacKay ( eds. ), Medieval Frontier Societies, Oxford 1989, pp. 267–306, here pp. 285–294; Kurt Villads Jensen, The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark in the High Middle Ages. Danes, Wends and Saxo Grammaticus, in: David Abulafia – Nora Berend ( eds. ), Medieval Frontiers. Concepts and Practices, Farnham 2002, pp. 173–193; Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147–1254 ( Northern World 26 ), Leiden 2007, pp. 37–43; Barbara Bombi, Innocent III and the praedicatio to the Heathens in Livonia ( 1198–1204 ), in: Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen – Kurt Villads Jensen ( eds. ), Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology ( Studia Fennica. Historica 9 ), Helsinki 2005, pp. 232–241; Eric Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 257 who studied contemporary papal letters as well as Baltic historiography ( particularly Henry of Livonia’s ‘Chronicon’ ), presented the way in which the argument for the crusade in the Livonian region was crafted during this period. Although Tamm did not directly address the issue of crusader emotions, behind the pillars of the argument he examined – defence of the Christians, forcing the apostates back into the fold, and conversion of the pagans – was the love of the Virgin Mary, fraternal love among the crusaders, admonitions to self-sacrifice, and Henry’s justifications of Christian violence 14. Most recently, Linda Kaljundi added to these findings through an analysis of rituals and public displays of emotion in Henry’s ‘Chronicon’. She argued that acquiring the ability to experience certain emotions, such as the ability to join Christians in grief and joy, constituted an entry point for the Livonian neophytes into the Christian community and was actively used as means of conversion 15. With the exception of Kaljundi’s work, the common feature in the aforementioned studies is that their focus rests on the medieval historiographers’ theoretically embellished rhetoric and normative discourses in the form of papal letters, sermons, and theological teachings. By concentrating on the emotions used to legitimise the crusades, these studies offer little insight into the role this rhetoric and emotion played as a means of bonding or warfare in actual conflicts. This is not to claim that medieval authors operated on a disjunction between the missionary and crusading ideologies and their military practice. But as Gerd Althoff and Philippe Buc have recently argued, it should be demonstrated rather than tacitly assumed that it was emotions foregrounded in those general discourses developed during the Gregorian reform which directly influenced crusaders’ concrete actions and the use of religious violence, and not other emotions which dominated such confrontations 16. For instance, the salient features 14 15 16 Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, London 1997, pp. 48–57; Mihai Dragnea, Divine Vengeance and Human Justice in the Wendish Crusade of 1147, in: Collegium Medievale 29, 2016, pp. 49–82. Jilana Ordman, Crusading without Affect or Effect. Emotion in Helmold of Bosau’s Chronica Slavorum, in: Maureen C. Miller – Edward Wheatley ( eds. ), Emotions, Communities, and Difference in Medieval Europe. Essays in Honor of Barbara H. Rosenwein, London 2017, pp. 77–103; this last study was brought to my attention by ever reliable Barbara H. Rosenwein, for which I am very grateful. Marek Tamm, How to Justify a Crusade? Conquest of Livonia and the New Crusade Rhetoric in the Early Thirteenth Century, in: Journal of Medieval History 39, 2013, pp. 431–455, here pp. 437–444; Id., Martyrs and Miracles. Depicting Death in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, in: Tamm et al. ( eds. ), Crusading and Chronicle Writing ( as note 2 ), pp. 135–156; see also: Christopher Tyerman, Henry of Livonia and the Ideology of Crusading, ibid., pp. 23–44; Iben Fonnesberg­Schmidt, Pope Alexander III ( 1159–1181 ) and the Baltic Crusades, in: Lehtonen – Jensen ( eds. ), Medieval History Writing ( as note 13 ), pp. 242–256. Linda Kaljundi, Expanding Communities. Henry of Livonia on the Making of a Christian Colony, Early 13th c., in: Jezierski – Hermanson ( eds. ), Imagined Communities ( as note 10 ), pp. 191–221; Ead., The Baltic Crusades and the Culture of Memory. Studies on Historical Representation, Rituals, and Recollection of the Past ( PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Helsinki University 2016 ). Althoff, “Selig sind” ( as note 12 ), pp. 176–180; Philippe Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror. Christianity, Violence, and the West, ca. 70 C. E. to the Iraq War ( Haney Foundation Series ), Philadelphia 2015, pp. 89–105; Id., Religions and Warfare. Prolegomena to a Comparative Study, in: Quaestiones Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 258 Wojtek Jezierski of the siege descriptions analysed here are many different forms of distrust, fear, and terror felt by missionaries, crusaders, and pagans – a set of emotions neglected in the dominant focus on crusader vengeance, hatred, or anger. In terms of method, this article takes its cue from conflict and dispute settlement studies which offer ways of examining the extreme social events represented by sieges 17. By way of an example: as demonstrated by Hans Jacob Orning, in examples of discussions between kings and their retainers during military expeditions in high medieval Norway, there existed conflicting normative vs. practical conceptions of kingship. The ideals of kings’ absolute power were influenced by the rex iustus ideology promulgated in contemporary law codes. Orning qualified these views by investigating how kings and their followers practically negotiated their relations as they are depicted in the kings’ sagas. Although fictitious, these emotionally heated discussions which took place during military campaigns represented the contextual outlook on what loyalty to the king practically consisted of 18. Following this line, this article also focuses on emotions expressed in descriptions of sieges as well as in discussions between their participants, considering both their practical use and normative implications. The emotional, conflictual, and social levels of analysis are combined in the concept of e m o t i o n a l b o n d i n g that I would like to employ in the analysis of medieval sieges. The concept adapts Barbara H. Rosenwein’s notion of e m o t io n a l c o m mu n i t i e s. According to her, medieval communities ( e. g. monasteries, courts, armies etc. ) recognized and encouraged certain emotions as more viable among their members than others, which needed to be discouraged or suppressed. Besides, emotional communities were defined by the unique sets of emotions that separated them from other emotional communities and regimes. These sets of emotions evolved over 17 18 Medii Aevi Novae 21, 2016, pp. 9–26; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege ( as note 4 ), pp. 93–103; France, Siege Conventions ( as note 2 ), pp. 164–167, 171–172. The literature on medieval conflict and dispute strategies has now expanded beyond any comprehensible oversight. The core texts used for this article were: Warren C. Brown – Piotr Górecki, What Conflict Means. The Making of Medieval Conflict Studies in the United States, 1970–2000, in: Id. – Id. ( eds. ), Conflict in Medieval Europe. Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture, Aldershot 2003, pp. 1–35, here pp. 1–3; Kim Esmark – Hans Jacob Orning, General Introduction, in: Kim Esmark et al. ( eds. ), Disputing Strategies in Medieval Scandinavia ( Medieval Law and its Practice 16 ), Leiden 2013, pp. 1–28, here pp. 4–9; Hans Jacob Orning et al., Det rettsantropologiske perspektivet innenfor europeisk middelalderhistorie, in: Id. et al. ( eds. ), Gaver, ritualer, konflikter. Et rettsantropologisk perspektiv på nordisk middelalderhistorie, Oslo 2010, pp. 5–38, here pp. 11–30. Hans Jacob Orning, Unpredictability and Presence. Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages, transl. Alan Crozier ( Northern World 38 ), Leiden 2008, pp. 1–10, 34–40; Id., Conflict and Social ( Dis )Order in Norway, c. 1030–1160, in: Esmark et al. ( eds. ), Disputing Strategies ( as note 17 ), pp. 45–82, here pp. 47–48; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking. Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Island, Chicago 1990, p. 46: “Fictionalizing dialogue, fictionalizing events, inventing characters and their psychologies might unnerve the political historian, but they need not upset the social historian at all. Even these fictions are constrained by the range of the possible in the culture and hence have useful social information to reveal.” Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 259 time. Sensibilities favoured in one generation became marginalized in the next, with other emotions taking their place at the heart of a community 19. Medieval sieges were emotionally and socially conducive, too, though in a radically different manner. While Rosenwein’s concept focuses on predominantly voluntary participation in emotional communities and their relative stability – emotional transformation occurring over the course of decades – my derivative term emotional b o n d i n g points instead to very loose, porous, and motley communities which undergo rapid and intense emotional shifts and often involve involuntary participation. The concept of emotional communities suggests a social institution and mainly associative affects. The notion of emotional bonding, on the other hand, focuses on the social process, giving equal weight to association and dissociation and the conflicting emotional connections between enemies, or perpetrators of violence and their victims 20. Simply put, the social composition of communities developed during medieval blockades was determined by the pure chance of who happened to be trapped in a siege or recruited into a beleaguering army, whereas their temporal horizon was decided by how long a siege was to take. In such accidental circumstances, emotional bondings effected by sieges verged on emotional bondage 21. MISSIONARY AND CRUSADER EXPERIENCE: WAGRIA AND LIVONIA In order to flesh out the historical and local circumstances of the emotional sociodynamics pertinent to medieval sieges, two missionary chronicles composed on the Baltic Rim have been selected for analysis. The first of these texts is the ‘Chronica’ written by Helmold in Bosau, a minor missionary outpost in Wagria ( in the North-Eastern part of Holstein, in the present day German state of Schleswig-Holstein ), where he had served as a priest since 1156. His peripheral position allowed Helmold to immerse 19 20 21 Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca ( NY ) 2006, pp. 23–27; Ead., Generations of Feeling ( as note 6 ), pp. 3–4; Plamper, Geschichte und Gefühl ( as note 6 ), pp. 80–84. This stressing of the process rather than the institution further relates to dispute and settlement studies in which conflicts are seen as “an essential part of the social fabric [ … ], more structures than events”: Patrick J. Geary, Living with Conflicts in Stateless France. A Typology of Conflict Management Mechanisms, 1050–1200, in: Id., Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, Ithaca ( NY ) – London 1994, pp. 125–160, here p. 139; Hans G. Kippenberg, Violence as Worship. Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization, transl. Brian McNeil, Stanford 2011, pp. 30–35. As convincingly pointed out in a recent study of the Chinese military manuals and tractates from the Warring States period ( fifth–third centuries BC ), an army, too, can be considered as an emotional community. It is thus all the more important in the context of military history to make a conceptual distinction between the more long-lasting, regular forms of emotional communality, the sharing of values between leaders and soldiers, and the tactical employment of feelings as a means of warfare created by the army experience and the very unpredictable, ambiguous, and volatile emotional sociability of medieval sieges: Mark Edward Lewis, The Army as Emotional Community in Warring States China, in: Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 21, 2016, pp. 27–62. I would like to thank Ian Wood ( University of Leeds ) for bringing this study to my attention. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 260 Wojtek Jezierski himself in the daily practice of Christianization which he described in vast detail. His institutional addressees were the episcopal chapters of Lübeck and Oldenburg, but his point of view was also very personal. His ‘Chronica’ ( composed ca. 1168–1172 ), which built on Adam of Bremen’s ‘Gesta ecclesiae Hammaburgensis pontificum’ ( written in the 1070s ), was guided by a desire to contribute a thorough description of the heathen Slavs as the object of his evangelical concern and to describe the harsh reality of missioning. Helmold wrote during the transition period when the mission was still driven by individual missionaries like himself, but large-scale military operation in the Christianization process was becoming its main tenet, especially after the 1147 crusade against the Wends 22. Henry of Livonia composed his ‘Chronicon’ in the age of crusades to Livonia and Estonia ( present day Latvia and Estonia ), an era dominated by a more militant mode of Christianization personified by the order of the Sword Brethren ( established in Livonia in 1202 ). Henry’s work, composed in the mid-1220s, covered the period 1181–1227, that is, the time following the establishment of the first Christian colony in the region. The ‘Chronicon’s’ primary addressee was the papal legate, Bishop William of Modena ( 1222–1251 ), at the time on tour in Livonia, to whom Henry offered an exhaustive account of the evangelization of the region 23. Henry came to Livonia as an adolescent in 1205, where he immediately became a member of Bishop Albert of Buxhövden’s ( 1199–1229 ) household in Riga 24. In 1208, he was ordained as a priest and left Riga for his newly established parish at Papendorf ( Latvian: Rubene ) on the Latvian-Estonian border. Even though Henry wrote and operated from his peripheral 22 23 24 Volker Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde. Identität und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lübeck ( Orbis mediaevalis – Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 4 ), Berlin 2002, pp. 138–146, 186–191; David Fraesdorff, Der barbarische Norden. Vorstellungen und Fremdheitskategorien bei Rimbert, Thietmar von Merseburg, Adam von Bremen und Helmold von Bosau ( Orbis mediaevalis – Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 5 ), Berlin 2005, pp. 348– 355; Stefan Pajung – Lone Liljefalk, Helmolds Slaverkrønike som kilde til Danmarks, Vendens og Nordtysklands historie, in: Historisk tidskrift [ D ] 113, 2013, pp. 1–37; see also: Linda Kaljundi, Medieval Conceptualizations of the Baltic Sea Region. Performing the Frontier in Helmold of Bosau’s ‘Chronicle of the Slavs’, in: Imbi Sooman – Stefan Donecker ( eds. ), The ‘Baltic Frontier’ Revisited. Power Structures and Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Baltic Sea Region, Vienna 2009, pp. 25–40; Wojtek Jezierski, Convivium in terra horroris. Helmold of Bosau’s Rituals of Hostipitality, in: Id. et al. ( eds. ), Rituals, Performatives, and Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350 ( Ritus et artes 7 ), Turnhout 2015, pp. 139–173. James A. Brundage, Introduction to the 2003 Edition, in: Henricus Lettus, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, transl. Id., New York 2003, pp. xi–xxxiv, here pp. xxv–xxviii; Id., Introduction. Henry of Livonia, the Writer and his Chronicle, in: Tamm et al. ( eds. ), Crusading and Chronicle Writing ( as note 2 ), pp. 1–20; Paul Johansen, Die Chronik als Biographie. Heinrich von Lettlands Lebensgang und Weltanschauung, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 1, 1953, pp. 1–24. Brundage, Introduction. Henry of Livonia ( as note 23 ), pp. 2–5; Enno Bünz, Zwischen Kanonikerreform und Reformation. Anfänge, Blütezeit und Untergang der Augustiner-Chorherrenstifte Neumünster-Bordesholm und Segeberg ( 12. bis 16. Jahrhundert ) ( Schriftreihe der Akademie der Augustiner-Chorherren von Wildesheim 7 ), Paring 2002, pp. 35–40. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 261 parish for most of his life, and not from central Riga, he did participate in large-scale armed operations and witnessed an unprecedented potential for mobilization of the military orders 25. Despite their distance in both space and time, Helmold and Henry had a surprising amount in common beyond their membership in medieval frontier societies operating on the North-Eastern outskirts of medieval Europe 26. For instance, before Henry arrived in Riga in 1205, he had spent two-and-a-half years in the episcopal milieu being educated in the Augustinian monastery of Segeberg in Northern Germany. By the early 1200s, Segeberg had an established tradition of providing the Livonian mission with fervent spirits and bishops. The monastery was founded in 1134 by the priest Vicelin ( later bishop of Oldenburg ); one of its very first students was Helmold himself, who attended it in 1134–1138. For both Helmold and Henry the periods they spent in Segeberg, in the vicinity of their bishops and mentors in Faldera ( Neumünster in Holstein ), Oldenburg/Lübeck ( Helmold ), and Riga ( Henry ), were pivotal for their sense of identity and understanding of the past. Yet this early worldview engendered in the missionary centres, in Henry’s case demonstrably shaped by the reminiscences of his companions 27, was counterbalanced by their later individual and peripheral perspectives shaped by the periods in which these two authors composed their chronicles 28. Helmold and Henry’s exposed positions on the missionary frontier are discernible from their accounts and cannot be reduced by the claim that these chronicles merely represented acquired institutional knowledge or served as mouthpieces for other missionaries or companions. These texts also drew upon the authors’ personal experiences of “threats of death”, the “constant dangers of everyday life”, and having to flee from or fight with the pagans, as Helmold did in 1138, and Henry in 1219 29. As suggested by Paul Johansen, some of Henry’s most vivid descriptions of 25 26 27 28 29 Brundage, Introduction. Henry of Livonia ( as note 23 ), pp. 1–20; Johansen, Die Chronik als Biographie ( as note 23 ), pp. 1–24; William L. Urban, Victims of the Baltic Crusade, in: Journal of Baltic Studies 29, 1998, pp. 195–212. Bartlett – MacKay ( eds. ), Medieval Frontier Societies ( as note 13 ); Abulafia – Berend ( eds. ), Medieval Frontiers ( as note 13 ); Alan V. Murray ( ed. ), Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500, Farnham 2001; Id. ( ed. ), The Clash of Cultures ( as note 10 ); Nora Berend, Frontiers, in: Helen J. Nicholson ( ed. ), Palgrave Advances in the Crusades, Houndmills 2005, pp. 148–171; France, Siege Conventions ( as note 2 ), pp. 158–162, 171–172. Heinrich von Lettland, Chronicon Livoniae/Livländische Chronik, ed. and transl. Albert Bauer ( Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters. FSGA 24 ), Darmstadt 1959, ch. XXIX.9, pp. 326–327. Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde ( as note 22 ), pp. 138–158; Linda Kaljundi, Young Church in God’s New Vineyard. The Motifs of Growth and Fertility in Henry’s Chronicle of Livonia, in: Ennen ja nyt 4, 2004: http://www.ennenjanyt.net/4-04/referee/kaljundi.pdf ( last accessed 26 January 2017 ); Wojtek Jezierski, Risk Societies on the Frontier. Missionary Emotional Communities in the Southern Baltic, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries, in: Jezierski – Hermanson ( eds. ), Imagined Communities ( as note 10 ), pp. 155–190; Id., Convivium in terra horroris ( as note 22 ), passim. Helmold von Bosau, Chronica Slavorum/Slawenchronik, ed. and transl. Heinz Stoob ( Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters. FSGA 19 ), Darmstadt 1990, ch. 55, pp. 204–205: Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 262 Wojtek Jezierski military campaigns bear witness to his active participation, which implies a great deal of socio-political intuition and empathy 30. The fact that the two chronicles considered here contain so many siege descriptions, coinciding with the historic expansion of this form of warfare in the region, makes these accounts all the more valuable for studying emotions connected to the siege experience 31. In this article, ‘Chronica Slavorum’ and ‘Chronicon Livoniae’ are hence treated as projections of their authors’ specific missionary interests and mind-sets ( concomitantly central and peripheral ) as well as the effects of their individual personal histories 32. It took both good informants as well as experience in actual engagements to develop the emotional sensitivity which was decisive for the way Helmold and Henry framed their siege descriptions. It has been convincingly argued, using the examples of siege descriptions in medieval historiography and literature, that the stark division between focusing on either the rhetoric and ideology of these texts or the sense of practice they conveyed is misguided. The way medieval historiography and literature represented sieges or evoked emotions was not disconnected from their audiences’ sense of veracity and empathy 33. It is therefore clear that while these two chronicles 30 31 32 33 Ibi oratorium novum et monasterii recens structura igne consunpta sunt. Volkerus, frater magne simplicititatis, ictu gladii percussus est. Ceteri fratrum, qui evaserant, ad Falderensem portum refugerunt. [ … ] tempore difficili et pleno formidine mortis. Preter egestatem enim et cottidiana vitae pericula cogebantur aspicere vincula et varia tormentorum genera Christicolis illata, [ … ].; all translations from Helmold’s ‘Chronicon’ are mine; Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXIII.7, pp. 240–241: Dumque iam eum in sacro linire deberemus oleo, factus est clamor magnus et concursus exercitus nostri per omnes plateas, et currebant omnes ad arma, clamantes magnam paganorum malewam contra nos venientem; Henricus Lettus, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, transl. James A. Brundage, New York 2003, p. 179 ( abbreviated hereafter as: Brundage 2003 ). Johansen, Die Chronik als Biographie ( as note 23 ), passim; Wojtek Jezierski, Fears, Sights and Slaughter. Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography ( 11th–13th Centuries ), in: Per Förnegård et al. ( eds. ), Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages ( Konferenser [ Kungl. Vitterhets, historie och antikvitets akademien ] 92 ), Stockholm 2017, pp. 109–137. Although The Hundred Years’ War has traditionally been considered the apex of the use of medieval siege tactics, this form of warfare – used continuously since Antiquity – was on the rise in the wake of the early crusades and made considerable inroads into the Baltic: Bradbury, The Medieval Siege ( as note 4 ), pp. 93–127; Ain Mäesalu, Mechanical Artillery and Warfare in the Chronicle of Livonia, in: Tamm et al. ( eds. ), Crusading and Chronicle Writing ( as note 2 ), pp. 265–290; Ane L. Bysted et al., Jerusalem in the North. Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, transl. Sarah Pedersen – Fredrik Peder­ sen ( Outremer. Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East 1 ), Turnhout 2012, pp. 94–103. Jezierski, Fears, Sights ( as note 30 ), passim; Id., Risk Societies ( as note 28 ), passim. Jensen, Bigger and Better ( as note 2 ), pp. 258–260, 262–264; Malcolm Hebron, The Medieval Siege. Theme and Image in Middle English Romance ( Oxford English Monographs ), Oxford 1997; Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 10–14, 357–359; for more examples on the complex interplay between the literary and historiographical descriptions of sieges, see essays by Michael Harney, Heather Arden, and Winthrop Wetherbee, in: Ivy A. Corfis – Michael Wolfe ( eds. ), The Medieval City Under Siege, Woodbridge 1995; more generally: Stephen D. White, The Feelings in the Feud. The Emotional Turn in the Study of Medieval Vengeance, in: Esmark et al. ( eds. ), Disputing Strategies ( as note 17 ), pp. 281–311; Gerd Althoff, Spielen die Dichter mit den Spielregeln der Gesellschaft?, in: Nigel. F. Palmer – Hans-Jochen Schiwer ( eds. ), Mittelalterliche Literatur und Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 263 were consciously shaped by their authors’ goals and everyday lives, it is undeniable that they also had first-hand experience of the types of events they described, which makes their works particularly valuable for this study. BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: COMMUNITY UNDER SIEGE A siege, medieval or otherwise, constitutes the ultimate litmus test for social trust and allegiance among the besieged, even more so in the volatile context of the missionary frontier of the Baltic. All of a sudden, people became involuntary neighbours and were forced to rely on one another; this enforced intimacy collapsed the customary distances maintained between members of a given society. However, the issues of reliance, trust, and allegiance functioned in a complicated dialectical relationship between the inside of a beleaguered stronghold and its hostile exterior. The following lengthy account of the siege of Plön ( ca. 1075 ) is particularly instructive for understanding the sophistication of this inside-outside dialectic and the paramount problem of trust. As it was, Budivoj ( Buthue ), a Christian Obodritian duke, crossed the Elbe and came into Wagria, reaching Plön with 600 men. To his great surprise, the fortress was empty except for a small group of women, one of whom warned them that the local Slavs had left the city open as a trap and intended to return and close them in with a blockade. Ignoring this warning, Budivoj’s troops decided to stay overnight in Plön only to discover in the morning that they were indeed surrounded by the pagan Slavs. A protracted siege began and the beleaguered soon suffered from great hunger. At the same time, Budivoj’s allies – the Holsteinians, Sturmarii, and the people of Dithmarschen – started to gather to liberate the troops trapped in Plön. Hidden fairly far away from the fort, they sent a mediator ahead to negotiate with the besieging Slavs. However, when confronted with the leader of the besiegers, Duke Kruto, the mediator was immediately bribed to change sides rather than scout for Budivoj’s allies. The mediator betrayed to Kruto that Duke Magnus Billung, of whom Kruto was so afraid 34, was still on the far side of the Elbe and that he would be able to persuade him to retreat. The mediator immediately went over the bridge to the gate of the stronghold, falsely announcing to Budivoj that the Saxons, on whose arrival Budivoj counted, would not come because of some alleged internal discord: Deeply upset, he [ Budivoj ] answered: Oh, miserable me! Why was I deserted by [ my ] friends? Is this the reward the best Saxons give to their ally: deserting him with no help in such tribulation? I have 34 Kunst im Spannungsfeld von Hof und Kloster, Tübingen 1999, pp. 53–71; Rosenwein, Emotional Communities ( as note 19 ), pp. 27–29; Mary Garrison, The Study of Emotions in Early Medieval History. Some Starting Points, in: Early Medieval Europe 10, 2001, pp. 243–250, here pp. 245–246; Schnell, Erzähler – Protagonist – Rezipient ( as note 6 ), pp. 24–30, 35–44. Helmold, Chronica ( as note 29 ), ch. 25, pp. 116–117: Dux iste, quem tu formidas, necdum transivit ripas Albiae detentus gravibus impedimentis. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 264 Wojtek Jezierski been sorely fooled, always keeping my allegiance with the Saxons only to be left alone in the outmost necessity 35. Leaving Budivoj in utter despair, the mediator returned to his original troops and successfully fooled the Saxons by claiming that he had reached the fortress without any trouble, stating: Thank God, there is no danger or fear of a siege. Quite the contrary, I saw Budivoj and his men in good condition, not afraid of any trouble 36. Abandoned, Budivoj and his troops attempted to negotiate their way out of the blockade, but Kruto would not accept any payment. Instead the commander of the Slavs demanded an unconditional surrender of weapons in return for granting the besieged free passage. Pressed between the prospect of starving to death or being slaughtered by the besiegers, Budivoj, who did not trust the “notoriously unreliable Slavs”, proposed that they should remain inside Plön and await a miraculous liberation. One of his closest followers opposed this judgment, arguing: Admittedly, these conditions which have been offered to us by the enemy are ambiguous and truly terrifying [ … ] What use is there in a delay when there is no one to release us from this siege? It is more terrible to die from hunger than death by the sword, and it is better to end one’s life than to endure these torments 37. Cutting the remainder of this story short, it seems that both Budivoj and his adviser were right. As soon as Budivoj’s troops left the fortress, Kruto ordered everyone killed, goaded by a powerful woman who had spent the siege inside Plön and saw what Budivoj’s men had done to the wives of the Slavs. As we see, the basic social wager created by a siege was that the stakes of mutual reliance among the insiders rose immediately after a fortress or town was surrounded and kept on rising the longer a siege held. In fact, the Plön siege marks three relationships of ( mis )trust, each punctuated in Helmold’s text by invoking fear and uncertainty about mutual dependency. First was the fear among the besieged that any discord on the inside could lead to some of them striking a deal with the outsiders and letting them in. The unforeseeable manner in which besieged communities were created is clearly visible here – they were locked in, and the uncertainty of whether they could depend on each other obviously contributed to the sensation of insecurity. Second was the trust the defenders put in their allies, who would ( or would not ) come to help. The situation with the faithless go-between shows that such high hopes among the besieged might have been quite futile and easy to take advantage of. Obvi35 36 37 Ibid.: Heu me miserum, quare deseror ab amicis? Siccine Saxones optimi supplicem sui et auxilii indigum in tribulatione deserent? Male delusus, qui Saxonibus bona semper fiducia innitens nunc in extrema necessitate pessundatus sum. Ibid.: [ … ] et nullum Dei gratia ibi periculum est nec ullus obsidionis timor. Quin pocius vidi Buthue et eos qui cum ipso sunt letos et nil habentes turbulentiae. Ibid., pp. 118–119: Condicionem quidem, quae nobis ab hostibus offertur, ambiguam plenamque formidinis esse fatemur. [ … ] Quid enim dilacio iuvat, ubi nemo est, qui obsidionem solvat? Atrociorem autem mortem fames quam gladius affert, meliusque est compendio vitam finire quam diu torqueri. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 265 ously, Kruto’s anxious questions regarding the whereabouts of Duke Magnus Billung’s troops showed that the besiegers had to depend on the reverse coming true; that the help would not come. Finally, the third type of ( mis )trust – the biggest wager of them all – concerned the question of whether any deals struck between enemies would actually be kept. As the exchange between Budivoj and his follower suggested, in such extreme cases, what turned out to be decisive was the willingness to obey the rather implicit codes of conduct in sieges, the disparity between the remaining forces on each side, as well as the opponents’ usual trustworthiness 38. The Plön case also exemplifies the consequences of the non-elective and unforeseeable social composition of sieges. As no other form of medieval combat, siege warfare typically brought together combatants and civilians, involuntary participants of both sexes and from all social backgrounds, which left room for emotional manoeuvring in many unpredictable directions 39. In this particular case, although Helmold does not state it specifically, it seems that the women who stayed behind in the fortress were intentionally used by Kruto’s troops as bait. The rapes which presumably occurred inside Plön during the siege might have been the unexpected spoils of war Budivoj could offer to his warriors in exchange for their loyalty, or it could simply have been his men having their way. But when the tables turned and the besieged fort fell, the very same women became allies of the besiegers. The emotional bonding between these rape victims and their persecutors could now be used as an argument for Kruto’s men to take revenge on Budivoj’s desperate troops 40. Feelings of oppression and desperation resulting from hunger and unrelenting enemies as well as slowly dying hopes of victory were not unknown to Henry of Livonia, either. However, he usually saw them from the besiegers’ perspective, which becomes evident in the siege of the apostate Estonians defending themselves from the joined forces of the Livonians, Letts, and the Sword Brethren in the fort of Fellin ( Estonian: Viljandi ) in August 1223. The memory of this event must still have been fresh given that Henry began writing no more than two years later. The siege did not cease for more than two weeks and eventually the hot Baltic summer took a disastrous toll on the defenders: 38 39 40 Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 327–336; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege ( as note 4 ), pp. 56–57, 83–84, 295–334; Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare ( as note 4 ), p. 151; France, Siege Conventions ( as note 2 ), passim; more generally: Bo Rothstein, Sociala fällor och tillitens problem, Stockholm 2003, pp. 21–23, 234–245, 286–293. Bernard S. Bachrach – David S. Bachrach, Warfare in Medieval Europe 400–1453, New York 2016, pp. 145–148, 150, 154–155, 161, 171–172, 333–338. Ibid., pp. 402–403; James F. Powers – Lorraine C. Attreed, Women in the Context of Romanesque Combat Scenes in Spain and France. Virtue, Judgment and Rape, in: Gregory I. Halfond ( ed. ), The Medieval Way of War. Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach, Farnham 2015, pp. 223–250, here pp. 245–248; Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 318–319, 350–355. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 266 Wojtek Jezierski Since the heat was, indeed, exceedingly great and there was a multitude of beasts and men in the fort, and they were perishing from hunger and thirst, there was a great pestilence because of the excessively great stench of those who had died in the fort and the men began to get sick and die 41. Totally exhausted and unable to defend themselves, the Estonians gave up the fort and sought peace with the Christians, who agreed on the condition that the Estonians would accept the yoke of Christian discipline again. The Russians who assisted the Estonians in their apostasy and defence of Fellin were captured “and hanged outside the castle. [ … ] This was done to the terror of other Russians.” 42 Such terrorizing demonstrations had an impact on other groups as well, for example the Estonians dwelling in the fort at Nawwast ( Estonian: Pala ) where the Christian troops advanced next. The Estonians feared that their fort would be taken and that they would suffer pestilence and deaths, such as had occurred in the earlier fort, and similar hardships. They gave themselves up as quickly as possible into the hands of the Christians and begged only for their lives and freedom 43. As we shall see in greater detail below, this publicizing and utterly performative character of fear and terror is quite typical of Henry’s ‘Chronicon’ and presumably of the crusader context he acted in. Above all, the Fellin case confirms the impression from the Plön example that the inside-outside dialectic of sieges was not restricted to the immediate vicinity of a stronghold and did not constitute a world within itself. The outside context could be quite far-reaching and include the circulation of rumours and the purposeful spreading of terror and outright propaganda, which in turn deeply affected the feelings and hopes of both the besiegers and the besieged. In other words, as a socio-political or military phenomenon, a siege was never self-contained. PAGANI: FROM POLITICAL ENEMIES TO ENEMIES OF THE FAITH Although it may seem that for Helmold and Henry the invocation of fear was nothing more than an easy way to flesh out the motives behind people’s actions, one should pay greater attention to the productive and motivational aspects and uses of emotions, especially in terms of shaping collective identities. In his description of the 1147 attack on Süssel, where 400 Frisian settlers defended a small fort against the 3000-strong Slavic force, Helmold included a lengthy speech Priest Gerlach delivered to his co-defenders. Gerlach had to resort to strong arguments because the Slavs, seeing that they 41 42 43 Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXVII.2, pp. 294–295: Cum enim esset calor nimius et multitudo hominum et pecorum fuisset in castro et iam fame et siti deficerent, facta est pestilencia magna pre fetore nimio interfectorum in castro, et ceperunt homines egrotare et mori [ … ].; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 215. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXVII.2, pp. 296–297: Ruthenos vero, qui fuerant in castro, qui venerunt in auxilium apostatis, post expugnationem castri suspendit exercitus omnes ante castrum, ad terrorem aliorum Ruthenorum.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 215. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXVII.2, pp. 296–297: At illi timentes expugnationem castri sui pestilencias et mortes, quales in priori castro fuerant, et similia mala, tradiderunt se quantocius in manus christianorum, de vita sola et libertate supplicantes [ … ].; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 216. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 267 would not be able to take the fort without a bloody battle, offered to spare the lives of the defenders if these surrendered the stronghold and gave up their weapons. In effect, “some of the insiders began to consider a capitulation.” 44 To hold them back, Gerlach had to emphasize the chasm between insiders and outsiders, making it virtually unbridgeable: What is it, he said, that you want to do, men? Do you believe that the barbarians’ promise to save your lives can be trusted? [ … ] Do you not know that of all the foreign people [ settlers ] the Frisians are the most hated by the Slavs? Truly, our odor is abhorrent to them! [ … ] I swear to you by God the creator of the world, who does not find it difficult to save the few, that you must now try to uphold your strength a little longer and fight the enemy. As long as we are surrounded by these ramparts we have power over our hands and our armor, and it is in these that the hope for our lives lies; but unarmed there is only a shameful death left 45. After a few more heartening words, the priest commanded the gates to be opened; utilising a now fierce and united army, he made a sortie, eventually forcing the Slavs to flee. It is hardly a coincidence that Helmold noted or invented so many speeches delivered by military and religious figures during sieges. As has been observed, the wholehearted exhortation of a charismatic siege commander was the most basic method of inspiring the besieged to persevere 46. What remains understudied, however, is the emotional element of these speeches. Interpreting the aforementioned encouragements in Reddy’s terms, a charismatic military or religious leader’s task was to navig ate the feelings of his subordinates by carefully emphasizing certain emotions and downplaying others: to assuage the defenders’ fe a rs and set their c o u ra g e ablaze, to motivate them to fight in order to avoid disg race, to deepen their distr ust of the enemies and emphasize their h a t e using it as an argument to strengthen the defenders’ spirits 47. In a similar manner, just before the Rugians lay siege to Lübeck in ca. 1101, Duke Henry of Alt-Lübeck, the Christian Obodritian leader ( older halfbrother of the aforementioned Budivoj from their father’s first marriage ) addressed the leader of his troops, urging him to gather and strengthen all the men he could find, to be courageous and endure for the next four days so that Henry could gather the Holsteinians and come to the rescue 48. 44 45 46 47 48 Helmold, Chronica ( as note 29 ), ch. 64, pp. 226–227: Ceperunt ergo quidam ex obsessis appetere dedicionem ob spem vitae. Ibid.: Quid est, inquit, o viri, quod agere vultis? Putatis vos dedicione vitam redimere aut barbaris fidem inesse? [ … ] An nescitis, quia in omni advenarum genere apud Slavos nulla gens detestabilior Fresis? Sane fetet eis odor noster. [ … ] Contestor vos per Dominum, factorem orbis, cui non est difficile salvare in paucis, ut adhuc paululum experiamini vires vestras et conseratis manus cum hostibus. Quam diu enim vallo hoc circundamur, sumus manuum nostrarum et armaturae compotes, vita nobis in spe sita est; inermibus vero preter ignominiosam mortem reliquum nichil est. Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 316–317; Hebron, The Medieval Siege ( as note 33 ), pp. 34–36; Lewis, The Army as Emotional Community ( as note 21 ), pp. 36–48. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling ( as note 11 ), pp. 114, 118–122. Helmold, Chronica ( as note 29 ), ch. 36, pp. 148–149: Consulendum est saluti nostrae et virorum, qui nobiscum sunt et necessarium michi videtur, ut exeam ad contrahenda auxilia, si forte possim urbem obisidione liberare. Esto igitur Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 268 Wojtek Jezierski Despite the somewhat panegyric and heroic tone of the Süssel account – not all that uncommon for Helmold 49 – which brushes over any possible disagreements between the frightened defenders, the most noticeable element in Gerlach’s speech is the explicitly religious manner in which the priest pitted the defenders against the besiegers. However, considered against the contemporary standards of crusader rhetoric as seen in examples from the Mediterranean studied by David S. Bachrach, Gerlach’s oration as well as other speeches recounted by Helmold, are more reminiscent of a secular military leader’s harangues than the sermons of educated clerics 50. They hardly employed any Biblical quotations, exempla, or advanced figures of speech, but limited themselves to invocations of heavenly aid and appeals to bravery and military prowess. What counted in the siege, however, was not necessarily high-flying rhetorical ornamentation but the immediate motivational and emotional effect a speech could have on the fighting troops. In this sense, Gerlach’s harangue served its purpose. The pagan-Christian enmity effected by his oration was underpinned by physical disgust involving bodily odours, stressing an almost biological distance between the combatant parties. Two remarks should thus be made here, one, more general, regarding the way political deployment of emotions effectively contributed to identity-formation in sieges, and the other, more historical, regarding the role that creed played in these formations during the period considered here. First, as Ernesto Laclau insisted, collective identities are conceived thanks to the constitutive outsides, that is, through references, relations, and placing oneself in opposition to other communities 51. Even if Laclau’s idea is purely figurative, the sieges presented in this article plainly show that in such situations the relationship with the enemies outside literally constituted the social fabric and provisional identities on the inside. Furthermore, in the siege situations analysed here, the efficacy of such religious identity-formation hinged precisely on the explicit navigation of feelings and resultant emotional bonding 52. The second, more historical, point to make here considers the vehemently religious manner of pitting defenders against their opponents which is discernible in the Süssel case. Whose voice is actually audible in this fragment: Gerlach’s, whom Helmold might have known in person? Helmold’s, who used Gerlach as a mouthpiece for his own opinion? Or is Helmold’s attribution of such religious antagonism to 49 50 51 52 vir fortis et conforta bellatores, qui in urbe hac sunt, et servate michi urbem usque in diem quartum. Ibid., chs. 36–37, pp. 149–153. David S. Bachrach, Conforming with the Rhetorical Tradition of Plausibility. Clerical Representation of Battlefield Orations against Muslims, 1080–1170, in: International History Review 26, 2004, pp. 1–19. Ernesto Laclau, Subject of Politics, Politics of the Subject, in: Differences. A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 7, 1995, pp. 146–164, here p. 147: “The reference to the other is very much present as constitutive of my own identity. There is no way that a particular group living in a wider community can live a monadic existence – on the contrary, part of the definition of its own identity is the construction of a complex and elaborated system of relations with other groups.”; Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, transl. George Collins, London 1997, pp. 152–153, 162–163. Kippenberg, Violence as Worship ( as note 20 ), pp. 197–204. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 269 Gerlach purely due to the latter’s priestly profession, something Helmold did not do in other cases which did not involve spiritual leaders? Whichever option one favours, this kind of deliberate Christian violence is conspicuously absent from Helmold’s historically earlier examples of sieges, which nevertheless involved opponents of different creeds. This may simply be due to the fact that Helmold largely imported these episodes from Adam of Bremen’s ‘Gesta’. In any case, it must be noted that the hundred years dividing these two authors was the period in which the emphasis on religious antagonism between Christians and pagans came to the fore. The ‘Chronica Slavorum’, although written in one concentrated period, may therefore inadvertently reflect an actual historical development. According to Henrik Janson, the relationship between Christiani and pagani on the tenth- and eleventh-century Baltic Rim and the latter’s occasional relapses into apostasy were interpreted in terms of keeping or breaking political allegiances rather than incompatibility of creed. Even for contemporary missionary authors like Thietmar of Merseburg, fides had a mainly political connotation – an idea which dated back to the Ottonian conceptions of the Empire, which purposefully conflated the postulation of an imperium christianum with that of an imperium romanum. Even for Adam of Bremen in the 1070s, the default political submission to the hegemony of the German Empire was synonymous with the institutional submission to the archiepiscopal primacy of Hamburg-Bremen, both in Northern Saxony and in Scandinavia. Put briefly, what made pagans enemies on the Baltic Rim at that time was politics, not dogma 53. In the aftermath of the first crusade and even more so in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, however, this ideological landscape underwent a substantial transformation. As discussed in the introduction on the margin of Throop’s findings, during this period religious acquiescence gained the upper hand over strictly political submission in the way Christians dealt with infidels 54. With Bernard of Clairvaux’s ignition of the zeal for the Wendish crusade in 1147 – the very same crusade the siege of Süssel and Gerlach’s speech were elements of – the Gregorian preconditions for a new, much harsher e mo t io n a l re g ime, as Reddy would say, over the pagans on the 53 54 Henrik Janson, Making Enemies. Aspects of the Formation of Conflicting Identities in the Southern Baltics around the Year 1000, in: Lehtonen – Jensen ( eds. ), Medieval History Writing ( as note 13 ), pp. 141–54; Id., Pagani and Christiani. Cultural Identity and Exclusion Around the Baltic in the Early Middle Ages, in: Jörn Staecker ( ed. ), The Reception of Medieval Europe in the Baltic Sea Region ( Acta Visbyensia 12 ), Visby 2009, pp. 171–191; Id., What Made Pagans Pagans?, in: Tsvetelin Stepanov – Georgi Kazakov ( eds. ), Medieval Christianitas. Different Regions, ‘Faces’, Approaches ( Mediaevalia Christiana 3 ), Sofia 2010, pp. 13–31; Lotter, The Crusading Idea ( as note 13 ), pp. 267–283, Laurence Leleu, Nobiles utraeque ripae Albiae. On both Sides of the Elbe. Saxon Élites Facing Slavs in the Ottonian Age, in: Aleksander Paroń et al. ( eds. ), Potestas et communitas. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Wesen und Darstellung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen im Mittelalter östlich der Elbe, Wrocław 2010, pp. 305–338. Throop, Zeal, Anger and Vengeance ( as note 9 ), pp. 177–201; Rory Cox, Asymmetric Warfare and Military Conduct in the Middle Ages, in: Journal of Medieval History 38, 2016, pp. 100–125; for more on this new emotional tone in which enmity towards enemies of Christianity was framed in this period, see e. g.: Althoff, “Selig sind” ( as note 12 ), pp. 121–146, 165–188. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 270 Wojtek Jezierski Baltic Rim were being put into place. As shown by scholars, this new discourse is also vividly represented in the papal letters reaching Saxony and Riga in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. These scriptures called for and sanctioned the Baltic crusades as a means of defending the Christians, forcing apostates back into the fold, pushing back the Orthodox Russians, and de facto compulsorily converting the pagans 55. It is also true that priestly and crusader beliefs in Wagria may not always have coincided with those of local secular lords and knights when it came to how relentless an attitude one should adopt towards enemies of the faith ( but also one’s neighbours and source of taxes ), as one could observe during the siege of Dobin in 1147 56. Similarly, Gerlach’s speech quoted above may not represent Helmold’s attitude either, as this author did not personally subscribe to rhetoric of vengeance as motivation for the crusade, but, as recently shown by Mihai Dragnea, this rhetoric was effectively justifying the military efforts in the Wendish crusade writ large 57. It is thus difficult to disregard this new emotional tone evident in his ‘Chronica’ vis-à-vis the preceding discourses he inherited from Adam of Bremen. As we have seen so far, with the exception of the Süssel siege where hatred, disgust, and courageous zeal were given precedence, the most visible – and seemingly basic and involuntary – emotions dominating sieges were fear and lack of trust, usually related to a lack of social cohesion. But, as will be shown in more detail below, emotions like mistrust, fear, and terror emerging in missionary and crusader sieges on the Baltic Rim were seldom unambiguous or unilateral. These emotions could also encompass and communicate other, very different forms of bonding and commonality, in the same way that they were remarkably susceptible to histrionic use and strategic deployment in siege warfare. 55 56 57 Throop, Zeal, Anger and Vengeance ( as note 9 ), pp. 182, 186, 195; for later papal sanctions and other contemporary examples of this discourse see: Tamm, How to Justify a Crusade? ( as note 14 ), pp. 437–444; Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Pope Alexander III ( as note 14 ), pp. 242–256; Ead., The Popes and the Baltic Crusades ( as note 13 ), pp. 37–43; Lotter, The Crusading Idea ( as note 13 ), pp. 285–294; Jensen, The Blue Baltic Border ( as note 13 ), pp. 173–193; Bombi, Innocent III and the praedicatio ( as note 13 ), pp. 232–241; Carsten Selch Jensen, Gods War. War and Christianisation on the Baltic Frontier in the Early 13th Century, in: Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 16, 2011, pp. 123–147; Kurt Vil­ lads Jensen, Holy War – Holy Wrath! Baltic Wars Between Regulated Warfare and Total Annihilation around 1200, in: Kirsi Salonen – Sari Katajala­Peltomaa ( eds. ), Church and Belief in the Middle Ages. Popes, Saints, and Crusaders ( Crossing Boundaries. Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies 3 ), Amsterdam 2016, pp. 227–250; Ordman, Crusading without Affect ( as note 13 ), pp. 79–85. In the course of the same crusade, the Slavs were besieged in Dobin. But the ruthless attitude towards the pagans displayed by some of the imported crusaders worried the local Saxon knights and lords, who preferred to mitigate the violence and loosen the siege: “Is not the land we are devastating our land, and the people we are fighting our people? Why are we, then, found to be our own enemies and the destroyers of our own incomes?” ( Nonne terra, quae devastamus, terra nostra est, et populus, quem expugnamus, populus noster est? Quare igitur invenimur hostes nostrimet dissipatores vectigalium nostrorum? ), Helmold, Chronica ( as note 29 ), ch. 65, pp. 228–229; Christiansen, The Northern Crusades ( as note 13 ), pp. 52–53. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance ( as note 9 ), p. 85; Dragnea, Divine Vengeance ( as note 13 ), passim; Ordman, Crusading without Affect ( as note 13 ), passim. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 271 FEAR AND TERROR AS POLITICAL AND PUBLIC EMOTIONS In order to demonstrate just how ubiquitous the emotions of fear and terror were in the context of sieges and how closely they were related to forts, strongholds, and castles in Livonia, we can conveniently resort to the tools of historical semantics – e-Humanities Desktop and the analysis tool of the Historical Semantics Corpus Management platform at Goethe University in Frankfurt 58. The platform, which includes a text database and a search engine, was employed here for the analysis of Henry of Livonia’s ‘Chronicon’ 59 ( Helmold’s ‘Chronica’ was unfortunately unavailable for this type of analysis ). For the sake of this study, a simple co-occurrence analysis of the emotion word timor and its family ( timeo, -ere, pertimesco, pertimefactus etc. ) has been conducted in order to determine which words dominate the semantic field of this emotion term 60. Timor and its various forms appear 60 times in the ‘Chronicon’ 61, and the words for castle or fort and its flections and derivatives ( castrum, castrensis, etc. ) co-occur in the same sentences to a remarkably high degree, in 50% of cases ( 30 times in absolute numbers ). Castrum is hence the noun which appears most often in the broadly conceived semantic field of timor, superseding even such common pronouns as suus or qui that usually dominate lists of co-occurrences and are routinely disregarded in the results. Such high co-occurrence can be explained by the fact that in Henry’s typically long sentences the word castrum and its derivatives sometimes appear more than once, which means that one word can potentially co-occur with another to a degree exceeding 100%. The word terror, including its flections and derivatives such as ex-, per-, conterreo, terribilis etc., appears 15 times in the ‘Chronicon’, a number so low that it hardly calls for a statistical inquiry. Still, the co-occurrence analysis repeats the above pattern. Terror’s relation to castrum is extremely close, co-occurring in 100% of cases, which simply means that castles appear 15 times in the sentences containing terror; thus, castle is again the word most often appearing in the context of terror. For the sake of reliability, a reversed co-occurrence analysis has been conducted, studying how substantial a role the words timor and terror play in the semantic field of castrum. Castrum, castrensis, and their flections and derivatives appear 353 times in the 58 59 60 61 https://hudesktop.hucompute.org ( last accessed 15 March 2018 ); see also: Roberta Cimino et al., Digital Approaches to Historical Semantics. New Research Directions at Frankfurt University, in: Storicamente 11, 2015: storicamente.org/historical_semantics ( last accessed 21 February 2018 ); more generally on this approach see: Bernhard Jussen, Der Name der Witwe. Erkundungen zur Semantik der mittelalterlichen Bußkultur ( Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 158 ), Göttingen 2000, pp. 24–27. Henry of Livonia’s text in the HSCM database is based on: Heinrich von Lettland, Livländische Chronik, ed. Leonid Arbusow – Albert Bauer ( MGH SS rer. Germ. 31 ), Hanover 1955. For the purposes of this analysis, the context of co-occurrences was limited to one sentence, and the level of granularity set at lemma: cf. Silke Schwandt, Virtus. Zur Semantik eines politischen Konzepts im Mittelalter ( Historische Politikforschung 22 ), Frankfurt/M. 2014, pp. 28–29. Jezierski, Risk Societies ( as note 28 ), pp. 172–175. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 272 Wojtek Jezierski text of the chronicle with typical ( and thus redundant ) pronouns and adjectives like suus, qui, or omnis topping the list of the most often co-occurring words. The most frequent co-occurring nouns of castrum are, quite expectedly, exercitus ( 15%, 70 times ), theouthonicus ( 13%, 61 times ), and episcopus ( 13%, 60 times ). When it comes to the two emotion words studied here, timor, timeo, -ere etc. appear in just 4% ( 18 times ) and terror, terribilis etc. in 1.7% ( 8 times ) of cases. This shows that these emotional terms’ relation to castles and forts is not reciprocal but strictly unidirectional. Whereas the perceptions of castles and forts rests on a broad and diversified field of associations for Henry of Livonia ( and presumably for the broader social context he belonged to ), the semantic field behind the emotion terms for fear and terror was uniquely dominated by the image of castles and associated siege warfare 62. It is important to observe, however, that such co-occurrence analyses can only determine the significance of a word or a set of words for the semantic field of a term, in this case clearly suggesting that castles and sieges were strongly emotionally conducive. A co-occurrence analysis does not reveal anything about particular usage or the plurality of senses in which, in this case, timor and terror functioned in concrete situations, which need to be pursued in close detail. A particularly compelling case demonstrating many different senses of timor as well as the ambivalent socializing potential which the emotion of fear could have is the siege of the Sword Brethren’s fort Holme ( Latvian: Mārtiņsala ), which was beleaguered by the troops of Prince Vladimir of Polotsk ( 1186–1215 ) in 1206. The Russian army took the Livonians living around the fort by surprise, some of whom fled to the adjacent woods, while others hid themselves inside with the Germans. The siege went on for several days and the Russian forces were joined by the pagans from Treiden ( Latvian: Turaida ) who, once Holme had been taken, hoped to join the Russians in an expedition against the city of Riga. Behind the fort’s high and extensive ramparts 63, an emotional storm was passing through: Indeed, since there were few Germans, scarcely even twenty, and since they feared betrayal by the Livonians, many of whom were in the fort with them, they sat armed night and day high on the ramparts, guarding the fort both from friends within and enemies without 64. As it turned out, the Germans’ anxiety was quite well-founded – every day the Livonians secretly conferred with the leaders of the Russian army about surrendering the fort and betraying its defenders. It became clear to everyone that as soon as Holme fell, Riga’s destiny would be decided, too. Simultaneously, 62 63 64 Cf. Marcin R. Pauk, Castrensis Satane servit. Castles as a Factor of Social Change in Bohemian Narrative Sources at the Turn of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, in: Veronika Čapská ( ed. ), Processes of Cultural Exchange in Central Europe, 1200–1800, Opava 2014, pp. 315–328. Kersti Markus, Die Christianisierung Livlands aus der Perspektive visueller Quellen, in: Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 64, 2015, pp. 477–497, here pp. 484–488. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. X.12, pp. 60–61: Theutonici vero cum pauci essent, utpote viginti tantum, timentes tradi a Lyvonibus, qui multi erant cum eis in castro, nocte ac die armati in munitione desuper sederunt, custodientes arcem tam de amicis infra quam extra de inimicis.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 63. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 273 in Riga they feared both for themselves, because the city had not yet been securely built, and for those of their people who were being besieged in Holme 65. A defeat seemed inevitable, but in the meantime the Livonian scouts reported to the Russian duke that the roads leading to Riga had been mined with caltrops, “little threepronged iron bolts”, as Henry puts it, which cut both hoofs of horses and feet of men. Rumours were also spread that some ships had arrived in the bay of Riga carrying German reinforcements. Fearing this, the terrified king [ prince of Polotsk – W. J. ] did not descend to Riga with his army. [ … ] And since he had gained nothing after besieging the fort for eleven days but rather had lost through the deaths of his men, and since he feared the arrival of the Germans, he rose up with his army and [ … ] sailed back to his own country 66. The different types and vectors of fear revealed in this episode show that this emotion was more than just an automatic reaction to risk and peril. First, the fear felt by the Germans in Holme marked a threshold within the besieged community despite the fact that the Livonians who sought refuge in the fort were not ordinary heathen peasants who happened to live nearby, but recently converted neophytes. They were in fact one of the main reasons for the Germans’ presence in the region and formally they should have been regarded as Christians. Nonetheless, their presence in the fort, once its gates were barricaded, posed both a possible threat and an actual dilemma for the German defenders: how well could they be trusted? Should the Sword Brethren be afraid of or fear for the Livonians? Who was the real enemy here? Put bluntly, the fear and mistrust that kept the Germans sleepless during the siege made them painfully aware of both the limits of their own community and their responsibility to protect the converts 67. At the same time, the feeling of fear experienced by their co-patriots in Riga was evidently a positive emotion, a form of affectionate, brotherly sympathy and care for their fellow patriots besieged in Holme. They clearly feared f o r them, and the German connection between Holme and Riga seems to have been stronger than the short-lived, intense, but ambiguous emotional bonding between the Sword Brethren and the converts in the besieged fortress. This affectionate fear strongly recalls the twelfth-century Parisian theologian Peter Lombard’s notion of timor amicalis ( fear for friendship ), which he deduced from St Augustine’s idea of timor castus ( chaste fear ). For both Augustine and Lombard, chaste fear was the highest and most acceptable 65 66 67 Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. X.12, pp. 60–61: Nam in Riga erant timores intus propter civitatem nondum firmiter edificatam et timores extra propter suorum in Holme obsessionem.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 63. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. X.12, pp. 60–61: Quo timore rex perterritus Rigam cum exercitu suo non descendit [ … ] [ a ]t ille, cum post undecim dierum castri inpugnationem nichil proficeret, sed magis per suorum interfectionem deficeret, simul et adventum Theuthonicorum timeret cum omni exercitu suo [ … ] et reversus est navigio in terram suam.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 64. Cornel Zwierlein – Rüdiger Graf, The Production of ‘Human Security’ in Premodern and Contemporary History, in: Historical Social Research 35, 2010, pp. 9–23; Steffen Patzold, Human Security, fragile Staatlichkeit und Governance im Frühmittelalter. Zur Fragwürdigkeit der Scheidung von Vormoderne und Moderne, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38, 2012, pp. 406–422, here pp. 409–410. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 274 Wojtek Jezierski form of this emotion. It stemmed from love and was motivated by love alone and involved the fear of exclusion from association with God. What Peter Lombard did was to add a solid socio-political potential to this emotion; for him timor amicalis also comprised the charitable fear of being left without one’s friends 68. During the siege of Holme, the religiously informed relationship of brotherly love and fear for friendship attributed to the Germans clashed with the accidental relation of neighbourhood with the local Livonian converts, despite the obvious military interest the besieged Sword Brethren shared with the converts at that moment 69. It therefore appears that these collectively experienced fears were much more than involuntary responses in Henry’s Livonia, even if the author, let alone his protagonists, probably remained unaware of their exact theological foundations. These emotions expressed different forms of socio-political relationships: enmity, sympathy, and love, or, as in the borderline Livonian case, an affective ambiguity. Putting this in Schmittian terms, there was something essentially political about such a fear as a moment of choosing one’s friends and enemies 70. What briefly appeared in Holme and during other sieges considered here was thus a political relationship which simultaneously suspended the limits of one’s community and called for a decision to re-establish or redefine them. The sheer intensity of fear and isolation experienced in Holme in 1206 affectively transformed this momentary emotional bonding into a political choice regarding the degree of association or disassociation with the newly converted, but nevertheless mistrusted Livonians 71. Understanding the siege of Holme’s political dimension in Schmittian terms relates to a wider problem of the public vis-à-vis the non-public dimension of enmities and the means of declaring them in the high Middle Ages in general, and on the Livo68 69 70 71 Petrus Lombardus, Libri sententiarum 3.34.4 §1, ed. Ignatius Brady, vols. 4–5, Grottaferrata 1947– 1981; translation in: Peter Lombard, The Sentences, book 3: On the Incarnation of the World, 3.XIV.4, transl. Giulio Silano, Toronto 2010, pp. 138–139; Marcia L. Coolish, Peter Lombard, Leiden 1994, vol. 1, pp. 177–178; Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror ( as note 16 ), pp. 226–228; Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas’s Hopeful Transformation of Peter Lombard’s Four Fears, in: Speculum 92, 2017, pp. 963–975; more generally: Riley-Smith, Crusading as an Act of Love ( as note 8 ), pp. 182–185. Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth – Claus Wittich, Berkeley 1978, vol. 1, pp. 360–363, 580–583; Kippenberg, Violence as Worship ( as note 20 ), pp. 35–38; Ivana Maćek, Sarajevo under Siege ( as note 5 ), pp. 62–70, 79–119. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Munich 1932; Jon Wittrock – Hjalmar Falk, Vän eller fiende? Carl Schmitt och det politiska, in: Id. – Id. ( eds. ), Vän eller fiende? En antologi om Carl Schmitts politiska tänkande, Gothenburg 2012, pp. 9–29. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II. The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, transl. Michael Hoelzl – Graham Ward, Cambridge 2008, p. 45: “[ T ]oday one can no longer define the political from the state; what we take to be the state must, on the contrary, be defined and understood from the political. But the criterion for the political today can no longer be a new substance, or a new ‘subject matter’, or a new problematic in its own right. The only scientifically arguable criterion today is the degree of intensity of an association and dissociation; that is, the distinction between friend and enemy”; see also: Gustav Strandberg, Carl Schmitt och det politiskas intensitet, in: Wittrock – Falk ( eds. ), Vän eller fiende? ( as note 70 ), pp. 31–47; Derrida, The Politics of Friendship ( as note 51 ), p. 139. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 275 nian frontier in particular. According to Robert Bartlett, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, mortal enmity or enmity in general was considered a legal category as much as a social institution, “that is, it was a generally recognized relationship hedged by ritual, expectation and sanction.” Bartlett’s contention, based on examples of procedures and prescriptions from Western and Central Europe, shows that the way enmities were to be practically pursued established some sense of fairness and authority to adjudicate. Above all, for mortal enmity to be recognized as a social relationship, it had to be manifest and openly known: “its emphasis was not on the subjective feelings of the parties or on sporadic violence, but on an objective and public relationship” – a characteristic also pertinent to the emerging codes of Western siege warfare 72. As a result, medievalists customarily perceive the high medieval political process and the emotions publicly expressing it – such as enmity or friendship, both mentioned in the Holme episode – in terms of symbolic communication, Spielregeln, and public rituals 73. These public procedures and prescriptions for expressing enmity, slowly introduced in frontier zones like Wagria and Livonia during the Baltic crusades, were definitely not unknown to Helmold and Henry. They were also generally recognized among the combatants and there was no doubt about the enmity between the Germans and the army outside of Holme. But inside this fortress the practice did not seem to conform to this norm. Inside the fort, friendship and enmity remained hidden and unstated, yet both remained constant possibilities, making the subjective feelings of the participants politically critical 74. In other words, from the Sword Brethren’s point of view the behaviour of the neophytes was an absolutely unpredictable factor, all the more confusing and ambiguous because it defied the public nature of friendship and enmity 75. In the crusaders’ eyes, the converts constantly ran the risk of apostasy. Occupying the grey zone between paganism and full inclusion into the Christian community, the charges of treacherousness and perfidy – raised as the main argument for 72 73 74 75 Robert Bartlett, ‘Mortal Enmities’. The Legal Aspect of Hostility in the Middle Ages, in: Belle S. Tuten – Tracey L. Billado ( eds. ), Feud, Violence and Practice. Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D. White, Farnham 2010, pp. 197–212, here p. 198; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege ( as note 4 ), pp. 41–42, 295–334. Gerd Althoff, Aufgeführte Gefühle. Die Rolle der Emotionen in den öffentlichen Ritualen des Mittelalters, in: Passions in Context. Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions 1, 2010, http:// www.passionsincontext.de/index.php?id=546 ( last accessed 21 February 2018 ); Id., Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter. Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde, Darmstadt 1997; Lars Hermanson, Bärande band. Vänskap, kärlek och brödraskap i det medeltida Nordeuropa, ca 1000–1200, Lund 2009, pp. 25–111. Francis T. McAndrew – Sara S. Koehnke, On the Nature of Creepiness, in: New Ideas in Psychology 43, 2016, pp. 10–15, here pp. 11–12, 14. Carl Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen. Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen, Berlin 1963, pp. 72–75, 87–94; Derrida, Politics of Friendship ( as note 51 ), pp. 8–10; on the weaknesses of such ambiguous signs and gestures in medieval political culture cf.: Gerd Althoff, Symbolic Communication and Medieval Order. Strengths and Weaknesses of Ambiguous Signs, in: Jezierski et al. ( eds. ), Rituals, Performatives ( as note 22 ), pp. 63–75. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 276 Wojtek Jezierski crusading in the region and justifying forced conversion of the apostates – potentially applied to neophytes, too 76. As a result, distrust of the converts and their emotional displays was a common predicament for the German missionaries and crusaders operating in Livonia 77. In a similar situation, during the raid of the heathen Öselians upstream of the Aa River in 1211, the displaced neophyte Livonians from the ravaged parish of Cubbesele ( Latvian: Krimulda ) sought refuge in Riga: The Rigans, however, were keeping careful watch over the city and feared that they would be betrayed by some treacherous people, so they awaited the arrival of the bishop and the pilgrims 78. As we have seen, although the public dimensions of friendship or enmity may have been lost in a heterogeneous emotional bonding developed on the inside of a besieged fort due to distrust and mutual suspicion between crusaders, converts, and other accidental combatants, the profoundly public and performative character of sieges was nevertheless preserved through the performance of emotions employed as a means and purpose of siege warfare itself. The final point to be made here therefore concerns the endgame of the Holme siege in which Prince Vladimir of Polotsk anxiously withdrew from the fort after hearing rumours about possible reinforcements approaching Riga and Holme. This confirms the insight from the previously discussed siege of Plön: blockades like these were often decided through the management of ( mis )information and sowing terror, fear, and insecurity among the opponents in and around a besieged fort. Vice versa, for the besiegers to bloodily resolve a siege was not just a military and strategic victory, but also a propagandistic success. As the Fellin and Nawwast sieges have shown, a successfully publicized siege would pre-empt the necessity for other sieges. It was as much an accomplishment as a potentiality – it was a threat 79. The most convincing threat was to present a bloody and frightening example to the pagan and apostate enemies, which, as observed by Buc, hinged on the most rudimentary fear on St Augustine’s scale of fears: timor poenae ( fear of punishment ) 80. 76 77 78 79 80 Tamm, How To Justify a Crusade? ( as note 14 ), pp. 440–441; more generally: Reinhart Koselleck, The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymetric Counterconcepts, in: Id., Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York 2004, pp. 155–190. Kaljundi, Expanding Communities ( as note 15 ), passim; The Livonian predicament was the rule rather than the exception given that Helmold substantiated similar claims in Wagria: Helmold, Chronica ( as note 29 ), ch. 14, pp. 76–77: Slavorum animi naturaliter sint infidi et ad malum proni ideoque cavendi.; Scior, Das Eigene und das Fremde ( as note 22 ), pp. 214–215. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XIV.12, pp. 128–129: Rigenses autem civitatem diligenti custodia servants et traditionem quorundam perfidorum timentes, adventum episcopi et peregrinorum exspectabant.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 108. Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 206–207, 258, 311, 317–318; Bachrach – Bachrach, Warfare in Medieval Europe ( as note 39 ), pp. 397–399; William Ian Miller, Threat, in: Tuten – Billado ( eds. ), Feud, Violence and Practice ( as note 72 ), pp. 9–27. Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror ( as note 16 ), pp. 226–227, 235, 238; Peter Brown, St Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion, in: Journal of Roman Studies 54, 1964, pp. 107–116; RileySmith, Crusading as an Act of Love ( as note 8 ), pp. 185–189. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 277 The Baltic crusaders who consciously weaponized this sort of fear in their treatment of their pagan opponents were effectively subscribing to a coercive model of conversion, which at that time co-existed side by side with the formal prohibition of violent conversion in the region 81. This was expressed by Duke Fredehelm, Bishop Albert’s stepbrother, during a discussion among the leaders of the large army – composed of bishop’s forces, the Sword Brethren, the Letts and Livonians, as well as the Rigan merchants and pilgrims – that besieged the Russians and Livonian apostates in Dorpat ( Estonian: Tartu ) in 1224 82: We ought to storm this fort violently by going over the walls and to take revenge upon the evildoers to the terror of the others. For in all the forts hitherto taken by the Livonians, the enemy have always kept their lives and freedom, and the rest therefore, have not been made afraid thereby. Now, therefore, we should glorify with great honours whoever of our men will first enter the fort by scaling the wall and we should give him the horses and the best captive there is in the fort, except for the king, whom we shall raise above all others by hanging him from the highest limb 83. Here the histrionic, theatrical aspect of sieges on the Baltic Rim is exceptionally vivid. To apply the language pertinent to the study of religious violence embedded in modern terrorism, the conclusion of a medieval siege, apart from being a military and strategic achievement in itself, offered an occasion for p e rfo r ma t ive vio le n c e ; a symbolic and histrionic statement infused with terror 84. After all, when a siege finished, the public were already gathered, and the social roles of the military adversaries easily translated into the struggle between good and evil, with the attendant moral implications – a stage for drama was set 85. 81 82 83 84 85 Torben Nielsen, Mission and Submission. Societal Change in the Baltic in the Thirteenth Century, in: Murray ( ed. ), Crusade and Conversion ( as note 26 ), pp. 216–231; Shami Ghosh, Conquest, Conversion, and Heathen Customs in Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae and the Livländische Reimchronik, in: Crusades 11, 2012, pp. 87–108, here pp. 90–100; Jensen, Holy War – Holy Wrath! ( as note 55 ), pp. 232–238; Id., Med ord och ikke med slag. Teologi og historieskrivning i Henrik af Letlands krønike ( ca. 1227 ), Copenhagen 2017, pp. 257–387; Id., Gods War. War and Christianisation on the Baltic Frontier in the Early 13th Century, in: Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 16, 2011, pp. 123–147 passim. Anti Selart, Livland und die Rus’ im 13. Jahrhundert ( Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte 21 ), Cologne 2007, pp. 121–122. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXVIII.5, pp. 308–309: Oportet, inquit, castrum istud violenter ascendendo comprehendi et vidictam de malefactoribus ad terrorem aliorum vindicari. In omnibus enim castris a Lyvonensibus hactenus expugnatis vitam et libertatem semper optinuerunt, et ideo ceteri nullos timores inde conceperunt. Nunc ergo, quicunque de nostris castum scandendo primus intraverit, magnis eum honoribus exaltabimus et equos et captivum meliorem, qui fuerit in castro, illi dabimus, preter regem, quem in supremo ramo suspensum super omnes elevabimus.; transl. Brundage 2003, pp. 224–225. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence ( Comparative Studies in Religion and Society 13 ), Berkeley 2003, pp. 124–128. Following Mark Seymour’s suggestion, one could designate this crusader theatre of terror as an e m ot io n a l a ren a : Mark Seymour, Emotional Arenas. From Provincial Circus to National Courtroom in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy, in: Rethinking History. The Journal of Theory and Practice. Emotional Styles – Concepts and Challenges 16, 2012, pp. 177–197; Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God ( as note 84 ), pp. 128–135. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 278 Wojtek Jezierski Such siege spectacles were further enhanced by eerie, bloodcurdling special effects targeting a particular emotional response. As persuasively demonstrated by Kurt Villads Jensen using the example of Henry’s ‘Chronicon’, crusader warfare in Livonia was often enhanced by audio-visual means. For instance, the sound of pipes, drums, and war bells was deliberately used to unite the Christians and to scare and distress their opponents by playing them throughout the night, thus keeping the besieged army sleepless – a tactic employed during the same siege of Dorpat 86. On other occasions, intrepid priests and crusaders joyfully sung in unison, playing instruments as they readied themselves for battle or as they scaled the ramparts of besieged fortresses, like they did during the siege of Beverin ( Latvian: Beverīna ) in 1208 87. The soundscape, war machinery, and excessive violence were to a certain extent intended as part of the show in the crusader theatre of war and terror 88. It is important to remember that this new theatre of war, intended to incite extreme emotions, was accompanied by the introduction of entirely novel means of conversion in Livonia, among them the missionary theatre based on the Old and New Testament that was put up in Riga in 1205, and which featured particularly fervent battle scenes of Biblical military leaders: David, Gideon, and Herod 89. The emotional reaction of the heathen and newly converted spectators of this play was exactly the same as their response to the performative violence dominating the sieges: panic, fear, and flight 90. Finally, following Duke Fredhelm’s words uttered outside Dorpat, apart from terrorizing the enemy, a victorious siege also offered an emotional outlet for the embittered Christian besiegers whose faith and honour had been offended by the apostates 86 87 88 89 90 Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. XXVIII.5, pp. 308–309. Ibid., ch. XII.6, pp. 92–93. Ibid., chs. XXIII.8, pp. 242–243, XXVIII.5, pp. 308–309; Jensen, Bigger and Better ( as note 2 ), pp. 259– 263; Alan V. Murray, Music and Cultural Conflict in the Christianization of Livonia, 1190–1290, in: Murray ( ed. ), The Clash of Cultures ( as note 10 ), pp. 293–305; Mäesalu, Mechanical Artillery ( as note 31 ), passim; see also: Petersen, Siege Warfare ( as note 2 ), pp. 319–320; Sarit Cofman-Simhon, Missionary Theatre on the Baltic Frontier. Negotiating the Imagined Jew in the Riga Ludus Prophetarum, in: Jonathan Adams – Cordelia Hess ( eds. ), Fear and Loathing in the North. Jews and Muslims in Medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, Berlin 2015, pp. 270–283, here pp. 271–275, 281–282; Norman M. Klein, The Vatican to Vegas. A History of Special Effects, New York 2004, pp. 36, 51–53. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. IX.14, pp. 44–45: Eadem hyeme factus est ludus prophetarum ordinatissimus in media Riga, ut fidei christiane rudimenta gentilitas fide disceret oculata [ … ] Iste autem ludus quasi preludium et presagium erat futurorum. Nam in eodem ludo erant bella, utpote David, Gedeonis, Herodis; erat et doctrina Veteris et Novi Testamenti, quia nimirum per bella plurima que sequuntur convertenda erat gentilitas, et per doctrinam Veteris et Novi Testamenti erat instruenda, qualiter ad verum pacificum et ad vitam perveniat eternam.; transl. Brundage, p. 53; Nils Holger Petersen, The Notion of a Missionary Theatre. The ‘ludus magnus’ of Henry of Livonia’s Chronicle, in: Tamm et al. ( eds. ), Crusading and Chronicle Writing ( as note 2 ), pp. 229–243; Cofman-Simhon, Missionary Theatre ( as note 88 ), passim. Heinrich, Chronicon ( as note 27 ), ch. IX.14, pp. 44–45: Cuius ludi materia tam neophitis quam paganis, qui aderant, per interpretem diligentissime exponebatur. Ubi autem armati Gedeonis cum Phylisteis pugnabant, pagani timentes occidi fugere ceperunt, sed caute sunt revocati. Sic ergo ad modicum tempus siluit ecclesia in pace quiescendo.; transl. Brundage 2003, p. 53. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 279 and infidels. Relating to Throop’s findings, the conclusion of a siege seemed to activate an emotional sequence or script according to which the crusaders could publicly recover their self-respect and take retribution on their enemies. It was an emotionally redemptive moment in which individual motives, such as the fear-induced desire for the excitement and glory of the champion entering the fortress, were subsumed under the collective exhaustion from distress, blended with feelings of self-sacrifice, followed by victorious pride and a thirst for revenge 91. CONCLUSIONS The image of siege warfare in the Baltic crusades discussed in this article and the growing degree to which it was dominated by fierceness, hatred, and religiously informed violence, seem to corroborate the general picture of the crusader movement’s advances in the Wendish and Livonian frontier zones in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The results of this study build on a set of sources and examples too limited to conclusively reappraise the extent to which the emotional sequences and scripts of anger, hatred, and vengeance identified by Throop and Dragnea directly translated into descriptions of Baltic sieges, even if traces of these emotions are discernible, particularly in Henry’s ‘Chronicon’. Notwithstanding these broader crusading discourses, the findings of this article point mainly to fear, anxiety, lack of trust, and terror as equally important, if not prevalent, clusters of emotions evident in sieges. To simply conclude that fear and its derivative phenomena dominated siege combat would be stating the obvious 92. But contrary to the intuitive perception of fear and terror as aversive and involuntary emotional responses connected to the siege experience, which medievalists often tacitly assume rather than explicitly investigate, the Baltic evidence suggests a wide palette of fears, anxieties, and terrors both experienced and purposefully employed in siege warfare. As stressed by Reddy, fear seems to be a particularly valent emotion. As also shown here, the different forms of fear 91 92 Throop, Zeal, Anger and Vengeance ( as note 9 ), passim; Tamm, Martyrs and Miracles ( as note 14 ), passim; Arnved Nedkvitne, Why Did Medieval Norsemen Go on Crusades?, in: Lehtonen – Jensen ( eds. ), Medieval History Writing ( as note 13 ), pp. 37–50, here pp. 39–45; Jean Flori, Ideology and Motivations in the First Crusade, in: Nicholson ( ed. ), Palgrave Advances in the Crusades ( as note 26 ), pp. 15–36; Bysted et al., Jerusalem in the North ( as note 31 ), pp. 129–137; Jensen, Holy War – Holy Wrath! ( as note 55 ), pp. 238–246; Lewis, The Army as Emotional Community ( as note 21 ), pp. 58–61; more generally: Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling ( as note 11 ), p. 23; Simon Cottee – Keith Hayward, Terrorist ( E )motives. The Existential Attractions of Terrorism, in: Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 34, 2001, pp. 963–986, here pp. 966–978; although Cottee’s and Hayward’s broadly conceived notion of ( e ) m o t ive, which relates to terrorists’ general emotional motivations, is different from Reddy’s more specific notion of e m otive, which designates an emotionally self-referential speech-act ( Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling [ as note 11 ], pp. 104–105, 128 ), they are nonetheless clearly akin to one another. Joanna Bourke, Fear. A Cultural History, London 2005, pp. 197–221; Sofsky, Zeiten des Schreckens ( as note 5 ), pp. 118–183. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM 280 Wojtek Jezierski included seemingly visceral yet politically exploitable instincts to flee or fight, affective rewards enjoyed by risk-seekers, strategically deployed dramatic terror, utter panic, and the numbing angst of both absolute strangers as well as permanent or accidental neighbours 93. Inasmuch as fear and its offshoots could be actively navigated, assuaged, enhanced, channelled, and transformed into other emotions, they could be emotionally bonding, too. Thus, similarly to Kaljundi’s findings regarding the common experience of grief and public rejoicing in Livonia as a means of including the neophytes and expanding the Christian colony, the evidence presented here shows the perhaps more paradoxical socializing potential of fear. Depending on the circumstances, it could be associative or dissociative. Fear served as a means of emotional interaction between clerics, crusaders, converts, and pagans, as well as apostates and Orthodox Russians. Particularly evident in the Holme episode are at least two forms of fear which clashed with one another – affectious care or even brotherly love and utter mistrust. Such emotionally ambiguous and undecidable moments, as in Plön in 1075 or in Süssel in 1147, in which the options of depending on or mistrusting one’s accidental neighbours or customary enemies seemed equally viable, revealed both the admittedly shallow social potential of fear and its great capacity as a political and religious motivational force. Therefore, it could be concluded that although there was a considerable overlap between the emotional ideology and practices of missioning and crusading on the Baltic Rim, concrete situations such as sieges also revealed social dynamics of their own. These dynamics were driven by and navigated through remarkably protean mistrust, fear, and terror – usually repellent and aversive, but occasionally socially cohesive. From the point of view of medieval siege studies, this study calls for greater attention to be paid to emotions, their active navigation, and very elusive forms of communality which emerged during medieval blockades. The embryonic siege conventions aside, through closer study of the socio-political use of emotions in medieval blockades, medievalists may learn more about the social dynamics behind the theatre of war and arms race. These extreme, prolonged social events worked like a magnifying glass, exposing many different types of trust and distrust within both the in-group and its relation to the out-group, which need to be further considered in association with local historical, religious, and ethnic contexts of loyalty. In other words, sieges were socially and politically productive in the sense that they shaped and tested many different types of relationships between friends, enemies, and accidental as well as more permanent neighbours. As social occasions, sieges therefore served as provisional and very intense catalysts of religiously motivated identity generated visà-vis others. Occasionally, however, sieges on the missionary and crusader Baltic Rim 93 Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling ( as note 11 ), pp. 23–25; William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, Cambridge ( MA ) 1997, pp. 25–28; Bourke, Fear ( as note 92 ), pp. 1–19; McAndrew – Koehnke, On the Nature of Creepiness ( as note 74 ), passim; see also several contributions in: Jan Plamper – Benjamin Lazier ( eds. ), Fear. Across the Disciplines, Pittsburgh 2012. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM Feelings during Sieges 281 provided emotional platforms for sympathy and solidarity, which defied pre-existing divisions in a manner not always easy to predict. Finally, from a conceptual point of view, this article offers an extension of Rosenwein’s notion of emotional communities, which has mainly been applied to stable, voluntary, and delineable social formations. Emotional bonding as a tool for analysing sieges, as proposed here, also refers to the communality produced through shared emotions. However, by focusing more on the processual rather than the institutionalized types of socialization, this concept can better analytically account for evanescent and involuntary types of communality with very intense and rapidly changing affections, often accommodating relationships of mistrust, hostility, and victimhood. Hence, in order to extend the conceptual as well as the empirical contribution of this article beyond mere medieval siege research, its results dovetail with and add to studies of emotional forms of bonding embedded particularly in high and late medieval protests, mass unrests, collective experiences of terror, and short-lasting communities of violence 94. 94 Cf. Paul Freedman, Peasant Anger in the Late Middle Ages, in: Barbara H. Rosenwein ( ed. ), Anger’s Past. The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages ( Cornell Paperbacks ), Ithaca ( NY ) 1998, pp. 171–188; Margaretha Nordquist, Envisioning a Political Community. Peasants and Swedish Men in Vernacular Rhyme Chronicles, Late Fifteenth Century, in: Jezierski – Hermanson ( eds. ), Imagined Communities ( as note 10 ), pp. 89–119; Cordelia Hess, Urban Community and Social Unrest. Semantics of Urban Conflict in Fourteenth-Century Lübeck, ibid., pp. 307–327; more generally: David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence. Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton 2015. Brought to you by | Göteborg University - University of Gothenburg Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/18 3:47 PM