Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman 2503579965, 9782503579962

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Crusading Europe

Outremer Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East

Volume 8

General Editor Dr Alan V. Murray (University of Leeds) Editorial Board Prof. Alfred Andrea (University of Vermont) Prof. Jochen Burgtorf (California State University, Fullerton) Prof. John France (Swansea University) Prof. Nikolas Jaspert (University of Heidelberg) Prof. Kurt Villads Jensen (Stockholm University) Prof. Peter Lock (York St John University) Prof. Graham Loud (University of Leeds) Dr Christoph Maier (University of Zürich) Prof. Helen Nicholson (Cardiff University)

Crusading Europe Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman

Edited by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird

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Cover Illustration: The cover depiction of the Green Knight’s miraculous appearance during the siege of Acre (discussed in Peter Edbury’s essay in this volume) is taken from the treatise Passages faiz oultre mer par les François contre les Turcqs et autres Sarrazins et Mores oultre marins, commonly known as the Passages d’Outremer. The work survives in several copies, most famously in the deluxe illustrated manuscript now catalogued as MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 5594. The Passages d’Outremer uses the language of Old French to present a carefully constructed tradition of ‘French’ involvement in the crusade movement. Written by Sébastien Mamerot, chaplain and secretary to Louis de Laval, governor of Champagne (and close advisor to Louis  XI) circa 1472-74, the Passages d’Outremer was lavishly illustrated by Jean Colombe, a noted illuminator.  The climate of the manuscript’s production was that of anti-Turk hysteria following the fall of Constantinople to Ottoman forces in 1453 and the manuscript appears intended to goad a royal and noble audience into support for the anti-Turkish crusades. In addition to the Passage d’Outremer, MS fr. 5594 also includes an imagined discourse between Alexander the Great, Pompey, and Charlemagne, a short chronicle of the six ages of world history, a list of the kings and queens of France, and a letter written by Georges Chastellain, a noted poet employed as official chronicler for the duchy of Burgundy. A translation of the letter of Sultan Bayezid II to King Charles VIII (written in Constantinople in 1488) into French, Latin, and Italian was later copied into the initial folios of the volume. The entire manuscript provides eloquent evidence for the impact of the crusade movement on the construction of ‘French,’ monarchical, and aristocratic identity, on Old French literature, on manuscript production and illumination, and on European identity recreated in the face of the expansion of the Ottoman empire. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. © 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2019/0095/71 ISBN 978-2-503-57996-2 e-ISBN 978-2-503-57997-9 DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.115329 ISSN 2565-8794 e-ISSN 2565-988X Printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

List of Contributors Tabula Gratulatoria List of Abbreviations

vii xi xiii

G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird Introduction

1

Toby Barnard CJT: An Appreciation

9

Part I. Defining Europe Mark Whittow Pirenne, Muh.ammad, and Bohemond Before Orientalism

17

Guy Perry The Hinge of the Mediterranean H.afs.id Ifrīqiya and Louis IX’s Crusade to Tunis in 1270

51

Part II. Imagining the Crusades John France Cutting the Gordian Knot Urban II and the Impact of the Council of Clermont

73

Kevin James Lewis The Foreskins of Christ and Antichrist Latin Christian Interpretations of Circumcision during the Crusades

93

G. E. M. Lippiatt Worse than All the Infidels The Albigensian Crusade and the Continuing Call of the East

119

Part III. Implementing the Crusades Jessalynn Lea Bird How to Implement a Crusade Plan The Canonries of Saint-Victor of Paris and Saint-Jean-desVignes of Soissons and the Defence of Crusaders’ Rights

147

Helen J. Nicholson The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

181

Contents Timothy Guard Opus caritativum: Crowdfunding the Later Crusades The English Evidence

211

Part IV. Interpreting the Crusades Peter Edbury Conrad versus Saladin The Siege of Tyre, November-December 1187

237

Nicholas Vincent Corruent nobiles! Prophecy and Parody in Burton Abbey’s Flying Circus

249

Edward M. Peters Dante’s Crusading Ancestor and the Authority of a Sacred Poem, 1147–1321

291

Christopher Tyerman Bibliography

311

Index

315

vi

List of Contributors

Toby Barnard has been a fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, since 1976 (emeritus from 2012). His first book, Cromwellian Ireland, appeared in 1976, and has been followed by A New Anatomy of Ireland (2003), Making the Grand Figure: Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1641-1770 (2004), Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents  (2004),  Guide to the Sources  for the History of Material Culture in Ireland, 1500-2000  (2005),  Improving Ireland? Projectors, Prophets and Profiteers, 1641-1786 (2008), and Brought to Book: Print in Ireland, 1680-1784 (2017). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. Jessalynn L. Bird, a former doctoral student of Christopher Tyerman, is currently an Assistant Professor of Humanistic Studies at Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN). Together with Edward Peters and the late James Powell, she published a sourcebook for the crusades (University of Pennsylvania Press) and has produced several edited and co-edited volumes of essays. She has written numerous articles on the activities of members of Peter the Chanter’s circle in Paris and has a monograph on this topic forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Peter Edbury retired from his chair in the School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University in 2013. A specialist on the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and the Lusignan kingdom of Cyprus, his extensive list of publications includes re-editions of the legal treatises by John of Ibelin (Brill, 2003) and Philip of Novara (Cyprus Research Centre, 2009). In collaboration with Massimiliano Gaggero (Università degli Studi di Milano), he is currently preparing a new edition of the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre and the anonymous history known as the Chronique d’Ernoul. Timothy Guard, a former doctoral student of Christopher Tyerman, has published a book on the form and function of English crusading in the later Middle Ages, Chivalry, Kingship and the Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Boydell and Brewer, 2013). Professor John France took his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Nottingham. He was appointed to the History Department at Swansea University in 1966 and served as Charles Boal Ewing Visiting vii

List of Contributors

Chair at the United States Military Academy, West Point, in the academic year 2011–12. He is a medievalist specializing in crusading and military history. He is presently one of the editors of the Journal of Medieval Military History and acts in the same capacity for Brill in their series Warfare in History. His main published works are: Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (CUP, 1994), Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (UCL Press, 1999), The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000–1714 (Routledge, 2005), Perilous Glory: Understanding Western Warfare (BC3000–Gulf Wars) (YUP, 2011). Kevin James Lewis studied at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Crusades, followed by doctoral research in history at the University of Oxford, where he produced a thesis on aspects of the ‘crusader’ county of Tripoli during the twelfth century under the supervision of Christopher Tyerman. His book on the same topic was published by Routledge in 2017, entitled The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century: Sons of Saint-Gilles. After holding a Past & Present Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, he is now an independent researcher with diverse interests, including medieval Christian attitudes toward circumcision and other forms of permanent body modification. G. E. M. Lippiatt is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Oxford, where he was supervised by Christopher Tyerman. His research interests centre on the intersection of baronial culture and Christian reform. He has published a monograph on Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195–1218 (OUP, 2017) and is co-editing the forthcoming collection Le lion à la queue fourchée: Simon de Montfort (†  1218), sa vie et son lignage (Brepols). Currently he is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of East Anglia, pursuing a project entitled ‘The Crusading Diaspora: French Baronial Government in the Mediterranean, 1204–1287’. Helen  J. Nicholson is Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University and has published on the military religious orders, crusades, medieval warfare, women’s roles in these, and medieval ‘fictional’ literature as an historical source. She is currently researching the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ properties in England and Wales, and is writing a study of Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (d. 1190) for Routledge’s Rulers of the Latin East series. Guy Perry was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, where his studies included a doctorate under Christopher Tyerman’s direction. He viii

List of Contributors

has served as a tutor or lecturer at a wide range of universities across the UK, including Royal Holloway, London, Leeds, and St Peter’s and Merton Colleges, Oxford. Since July 2018, he has been the Principal of the Middlebury College-CMRS Oxford Humanities Program, as well as an Associate Professor at Middlebury and Fellow by Special Election of Keble College, Oxford. His research focuses on social and geographical mobility during the central Middle Ages, in particular during the epoch of the crusades. His publications include John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Latin Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237 (CUP, 2013), The Briennes: the Rise and Fall of a Champenois Dynasty in the Age of the Crusades, c.  950–1356 (CUP, 2018), and a co-edited volume, The Fifth Crusade in Context: the Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century (Routledge, 2017). Edward Peters is the Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the founding editor of The Middle Ages series at the University of Pennsylvania Press and has published several books and articles on both crusades and the work of Dante, whence the subject of his essay in the present volume. He is presently at work on a number of research projects including (with Richard Newhauser) a study of ‘Curiosity and the Limits of Inquiry in the Western Tradition’. Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy. †  Mark Whittow was taught by Christopher Tyerman while reading Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford. A fellow of St Peter’s and then Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford, he was the author of The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (Macmillan, 1996) and numerous articles on Byzantine, social, and global history. He was elected Provost of Oriel College in November 2017, but was sadly killed in a traffic accident the following month before he could take up his post.

ix

Tabula Gratulatoria

Toby Barnard, Hertford College (Oxford) Peter Biller, University of York Jessalynn L. Bird, Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN) Gust De Preter, independent scholar (Lier) Wolfram Drews, Universität Münster Peter Edbury, Cardiff University Jaroslav Folda, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Aalborg University Roy Foster, Hertford College (Oxford) Miranda Fyfield, St Paschal Library (Box Hill, Vic) John France, Swansea University Charlotte Gauthier, independent scholar Timothy Guard, Rugby School † Bernard Hamilton, University of Nottingham Michelle T. Hufschmid, Exeter College (Oxford) William Chester Jordan, Princeton University Benjamin Z. Kedar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Kevin James Lewis, independent scholar G. E. M. Lippiatt, University of East Anglia Helen J. Nicholson, Cardiff University Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Aalborg University Graham A. Loud, University of Leeds Thomas F. Madden, Saint Louis University David Parrott, New College (Oxford) Jacques Paviot, Université Paris-Est Créteil Guy Perry, Middlebury College and Keble College (Oxford) Edward Peters, University of Pennsylvania Jonathan Phillips, Royal Holloway, University of London Luigi Russo, Universita Europea di Roma Stephen Screech, independent scholar (Saint-Genis-Pouilly) Corliss K. Slack, Whitworth University Paul Slack, Linacre College (Oxford) Claire Taylor, University of Nottingham Susanna A. Throop, Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA) Kurt Villads Jensen, Stockholm University Nicholas Vincent, University of East Anglia † Mark Whittow, Corpus Christi College (Oxford)

xi

List of Abbreviations

AA SS

AM Berger BnF CCCM Eracles Ernoul MGH Epp. MGH Epp. saec. XIII MGH SS

Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, ed. Jean Bollande and Godfried Henschen, 2nd  edn, 70 vols (Bruxelles, 1863–1940). Annales monastici, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 5 vols, Rolls Series, 36, (London, 1864–69). Innocent IV et al., Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. Élie Berger, Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1, 4 vols (Paris, 1881–1920). MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Corpus christianorum: Continuatio mediaevalis ‘L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’outremer’, in Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens occidentaux, 2 (Paris, 1859), 1–481. Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1871). Monumenta Germaniae historica, epistolae, ed. Paul Ewald, Ludwig  M. Hartmann, and Ernst Dümmler, 8 vols (Berlin, 1891–1939). Monumenta Germaniae historica, epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum romanorum selectae, ed. Karl Rodenberg, 3 vols (Berlin, 1883–94). Monumenta Germaniae historica, scriptores, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz et al., 39 vols (Hannover, 1826–2009).

MGH SS rer. Germ. Monumenta Germaniae historica, scriptores rerum N.S. germanicarum, Nova series, ed. Harry Breslau et al., 24 vols (Berlin and Hannover, 1922–2009).

xiii

List of Abbreviations

MGH SS rer. merov. Monumenta Germaniae historica, scriptores rerum merovingicarum, 7 vols (Hannover and Leipzig, 1885–1951). ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004). PL Patrologiæ cursus completus: series latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–65). Potthast Regesta pontificorum romanorum inde ab anno post Christo nato 1198 ad annum 1304, ed. August Potthast, 2 vols (Graz, 1957). Pressutti Regesta Honorii papae III, ed. Pietro Pressutti, 2 vols (Rome, 1888–95). RHC HOcc. Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens ­occidentaux, 5 vols (Paris, 1844–95). RHC HOr. Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens ­orientaux, 5 vols (Paris, 1887–1906). RHGF Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet and Leopold Delisle, 2nd  edn, 24 vols (1869–1904). TNA MS Kew, National Archives

xiv

Introduction G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird

The cover of Prof.  Christopher Tyerman’s 2011 survey of crusading historiography, The Debate on the Crusades, reproduces the evocative frontispiece from Thomas Fuller’s The Historie of the Holy Warre of 1639: well-ordered ranks of kings, knights, bishops, monks, men-at-arms, and simple pilgrims set out from a Gothic church to the Holy Sepulchre, only to be slaughtered by pestilence, Turks, and famine before the small, tattered remnant returns. In the upper corners of the image runs the legend: ‘We went out full, but return empty’. Modern historians, Tyerman included, would consider Fuller’s ultimate assessment of the crusading movement as one of material and human wastage as insufficient, but the choice of the image for Tyerman’s book is appropriate, and not only as an illustration of one perspective of the historiographical treatment of the crusades. First, one might characterize Tyerman’s own work as an historian as — in his own description of Fuller’s prose — ‘marked by a cool, detached, judgemental style, studded with memorable aphorisms’.1 Second, the faults of his interpretation notwithstanding, Fuller, like Tyerman, integrates his evaluation of the crusades with their impact on the Europe that gave birth to them. The emergence in the twentieth century of a sub-discipline of ‘crusades studies’ has produced incalculable benefit for our understanding of these expeditions and the Latin East that they created, but it can also run the risk of making them exotic and alien to the wider experience of medieval Europe. A major emphasis of Tyerman’s career — recounted and celebrated here by his longtime colleague at Hertford College, Toby Barnard — has been the recognition of the crusades as a phenomenon inseparable from the mainstream of European culture and society.2 Without ever creating a ‘school’, he has nevertheless — through his teaching, publications, and conversation — impressed upon the field the importance of the fact that the history of 1 2

Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester, 2011), p. 61. See, in its most concentrated form, his ‘What the Crusades Meant to Europe’, in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London, 2001), pp. 131–45.

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 1–7 ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117312

G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird

the crusades can never be simply ‘crusades history’. This volume in his honour is a collection of essays by friends and former students demonstrating that theme. If crusading is to be returned to its place in the wider scheme of medieval European history, it is necessary to clarify what Europe is and how, in turn, it fits into the history of the crusades. As Tyerman has noted, ‘There existed no strategic interest for the knights of the West to occupy parts of Syria and Palestine … Whatever else, the justification if not explanation for the Palestinian wars from 1096 to 1291 lay in aspirations of faith. Mutatis mutandis, this applied to all Holy Wars of the Cross’.3 In the context of this justification by faith, the late Mark Whittow helps explain the anti-strategic potential of the crusades in this volume’s opening essay, a revisitation of the Pirenne Thesis concerning the impact of the rise of Islam on Mediterranean cultural and trade networks. Whittow argues that Henri Pirenne’s insights about the disruption of the unity of the ancient world by the Arabic conquests remain largely valid, but he takes the argument further, suggesting that this sense of integration survived in the West thanks to an imagination informed principally by Scripture and patristics. As a result, the crusades were conceivable precisely because the West had passed out of the immediate currents of eastern Mediterranean life. Paradoxically, the revival of direct contact with the East led to the collapse of this imagined unity, and indirectly created the persisting concept of Europe and Asia as distinct — even alien — entities.4 Nevertheless, such concepts do not transform themselves overnight. Over a century and a half after the First Crusade, the perception of the Mediterranean as a unified zone persisted in relations between France, Sicily, and North Africa. Guy Perry examines the crusade of King Louis IX of France to Tunis not, as is usual in the historiography, in the context of the machinations of his brother and king of Sicily, Charles of 3 4

2

An Eyewitness History of the Crusades, ed. Christopher Tyerman, 4 vols (London, 2004), 1: xv. Mark, an undergraduate student and later colleague of Christopher, was one of the first people with whom I discussed the idea of this Festschrift, and his enthusiasm and support had much to do with getting it off the ground. His unexpected death just before Christmas 2017 was a devastating blow personally and professionally to the Oxford, Byzantinist, historian, and academic communities. The breadth and depth of his erudition, clarity, and insight on display in his essay here demonstrate how much his loss to the profession — to say nothing of his absence from the lives of his students, colleagues, friends, and family — will be felt. (GEML)

Introduction

Anjou, but in light of the importance of the local H.afs.id dynasty and the historical axis of cultural, political, and economic connection across the Strait of Sicily. Perry claims that Louis’ failed crusade should no longer be characterised as a quixotic expedition, hopelessly out of touch with political and geographical realities. Instead, it was an attempt to aid the Holy Land and weaken Egypt by focusing on the North African polity with the closest links to a Christendom that still imagined the central Mediterranean as, if not a part of Europe proper, the centre of gravity for a wider world. Precedents, both geographical and ideological, were crucial in the establishment of crusading attitudes. One of Tyerman’s most influential articles, ‘Were There Any Crusades in the Twelfth Century?’, published in The English Historical Review in 1995 and reprinted three years later as a chapter in his The Invention of the Crusades, brilliantly argues that what became known as ‘the First Crusade’ — along with subsequent ‘crusades’ until the late twelfth century — was difficult to define as distinct from existing patterns of pilgrimage and war in defence of the Church. John France seeks to refine this argument by locating what is in fact novel about Pope Urban II’s message in 1095. While acknowledging the longstanding tension between violent and irenic strands in Christianity, France points out the scarcity of theological justifications for violence beyond Augustinian just war theory. Instead, he argues, Urban drew upon the experience of the necessity of violence in Christian society in order to make a unilateral and intellectually unqualified offer of salvation through armed service, leaving the theological ramifications to be worked out by his successors. As such, the pope did not create a new movement but a new ‘slogan’, which would of necessity gather further definition over time. Tensions surrounding the justification of the crusades also manifested themselves in depictions of the enemy. Kevin James Lewis delves into both Arabic and Latin sources to show how the ritual of circumcision framed European perceptions of Muslims and the war against them. The Bible attested to Christ’s own circumcision, but the continuing practice among both Jews and Muslims was an object of horror to Latin Christians, though for different reasons. While Jewish circumcision was a testimony to the hardheartedness of the Israelites, Muslim circumcision — as a supposedly novel practice, postdating the revelation of Christian grace through baptism — was a sign of the times, a symbol of the coming of Antichrist. Indeed, the seeming contradiction in the Christian attitude toward circumcision contained its own resolution: just as Christ had ‘sealed’ the ritual through his participation in it, so its Islamic ‘revival’ signalled the false Christs of the End of Days. 3

G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird

As a result, circumcision played an important role in the discourse surrounding the crusade, confirming western Christians in the righteousness of their cause and shaping the way they imagined those — both within and without Europe — who were outside the faith, whether Jews or Muslims. The contest over the conception of the crusades — what they were for, who they were against — also contained a geographical dimension. In the thirteenth century, the emergence of crusades within as well as without Europe was accompanied by a debate over which ought to take precedence. This debate has survived into modern historiography, with the expansion of the crusade idea often blamed for the ultimate collapse of Outremer. G. E. M. Lippiatt challenges this narrative by examining the interaction of the concurrent Albigensian and Fifth Crusades. Despite contemporary criticism of the use of the crusade mechanism against heretics — most of which originated, unsurprisingly, in the Midi — he argues for a wider pattern of mutually beneficial intercourse between the efforts to purify and expand Christendom in the early thirteenth century. While the Fifth Crusade ended in failure and the Albigensian Crusade nearly followed, a study of those crusaders known from narrative and documentary sources shows that many saw these campaigns as complementary and acted accordingly. Ultimately, Lippiatt concludes, the frustration of the Fifth Crusade resulted from the mistakes of its leaders and competition from other European conflicts, not the Albigensian Crusade. But agreement — however tenuous — on the idea and purpose of a crusade was not enough to make one a reality. Tyerman’s most recent book, How to Plan a Crusade (2015), is dedicated to the practicalities necessary for bringing a crusade to fruition, the propaganda and logistics that were as essential then as now, as considered in the crusades as in European warfare more generally. For example, the communication of the crusading message relied on monastic and mendicant communities which served as centres for publishing and preaching. However, Jessalynn Bird brings to light the even wider role played by the Augustinian canons of Saint-Victor of Paris and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes of Soissons in the early thirteenth century. Though the Victorines especially are largely remembered for their theological reputation, this did not prevent them, along with their brethren at Saint-Jean, from promoting crusading to a wider religious and lay audience as advocates of crusading ideals to knights associated with their houses, copyists of crusade sermons, consultants on questions of the practical implementation of crusade privileges, and judges delegate in cases involving crusaders’ rights. By examining these two Augustinian foundations and their wider networks, Bird 4

Introduction

demonstrates the multiplicity of crusader work that a given house might undertake, the many practical concerns that the crusade engendered, and the integrated way in which the crusade could touch on all aspects of lay as well as religious life. In addition to the ‘public relations’ of the crusades, there was the necessary business of paying for them. This is a subject to which Tyerman has devoted much attention over many books and articles; it is here taken up by Helen J. Nicholson in relation to the estates of the Order of the Temple of Solomon in England and Wales. By looking at the records of the Templars’ lands, drawn up by the crown in the wake of their confiscation in the early fourteenth century and now kept in the National Archives, she deftly constructs a remarkably detailed picture of Templar farming. Naturally, the returns from these farms were intended to support the efforts to recapture the Holy Land, but Nicholson also shows how these estates formed part of the wider agricultural community; indeed, her article sheds valuable light on contemporary farming practices in England, demonstrating once again that crusading studies are inseparable from and essential to wider European history. But landed wealth cultivated by the military orders was only one way to fund the crusade. Another was the appeal for contributions at the parish level, an approach which simultaneously promoted awareness of and support for the crusade. These fundraising campaigns in the later Middle Ages, argues Timothy Guard, were rooted in the idea of the crusade as an act of charity. Love for one’s neighbour — fellow Christians in the East — and the Augustinian concept of violent love brought home the crusade message to local communities throughout England long after the fall of Acre in 1291. Using a wide array of source materials including vernacular literature, episcopal registers, and personal wills, Guard examines the way in which caritas became attached to individual financial commitment to the crusade. From their inception, and certainly in the longue durée, the (re)conception and prosecution of the crusades not only reflected but deeply influenced the culture of Europe itself. This has been a central theme of Tyerman’s scholarship, from his early work on French royal crusading policy and first book, England and the Crusades, which argue for the continuing importance of the crusades in the European imagination through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, despite the failure to organize another major expedition to the Holy Land. This impact began even earlier, as Peter Edbury demonstrates with his examination of Latin and French sources for the 1187 siege of Tyre. Although these newsletters and continuations confirm the events of the siege as described by the Arabic accounts, their greater value may lie in their 5

G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird

illumination of European expectations for the crusading experience and the growing appetite for romantic flourish, seen, for instance, in the appearance of a Green Knight fighting the Saracens before the walls of the city. History and literature merge, not for the first nor the last time, as the role of this Green Knight grew in the telling well into the fifteenth century. The enduring allure of crusading and the osmosis between what are sometimes viewed as separate genres are powerfully demonstrated by Nicholas Vincent’s study of apocalyptic and prophetic literature. A vision allegedly witnessed in Provence, recorded in the thirteenth-century formulary of Burton Abbey in England, draws on crusade motifs, Vincent argues, for satiric effect. The volatile situation in the Mediterranean and the East in the 1250s and the popularity of Joachite prophecy as Europeans tried to make sense of the consequent uncertainty inspired the monks to parody the ‘Alleluia’ movement and contemporary mendicant credulity. But even if the letter reporting this vision were conceived as ‘fake news’, as Vincent topically classifies it, it was not received as such by later generations. The text of its prophecy thrived in symbiosis with a sustained interest in the crusades; it was copied and reworked until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 made its predictions of Church union apparently impossible. Once again, Vincent’s article stresses the importance of integrating the crusades within European affairs more widely: not only is an understanding of crusades history necessary for placing the Burton letter in its proper genre, but the long-lived appeal of its misinterpretation throughout Europe relies upon the popularity of the crusade ideal. The value of this integration is not exclusive to topics traditionally classified within the discipline of history. Just as the Green Knight invades an ‘historical’ source in Edbury’s essay, so the historical crusader Cacciaguida appears in the ‘literary’ masterpiece composed by Dante Alighieri, his own descendant. According to Edward M. Peters, Dante’s inclusion of Cacciaguida, a veteran of the Second Crusade, in the ‘Paradiso’ of his Commedia does more than simply tout his crusader pedigree. It serves an essential narrative purpose, as Cacciaguida reveals Dante’s future to him and commissions him with the purpose of his vision of the afterlife. But he has been chosen for this purpose as a result of his crusading ties; he represents a golden age when Florentine life was less cosmopolitan and more virtuous, and when crusading was dedicated to the liberation of the eastern churches rather than bound up in Italian politics. Thus Cacciaguida the crusader embodies the importance of family memory and Dante’s idealized vision of the Florentine republic. 6

Introduction

From Clermont to Tunis, from Provençal troubadours to French Austin canons, from Antichrist to the Green Knight, from Henri Pirenne to Nostradamus, from English farms and parishes to the celestial sphere of Mars, this volume roams far and wide. Though — or precisely because — these essays touch on a broad selection of topics and approaches, they collectively illustrate the importance of the crusades to the study of medieval Europe. They also testify to the wide-ranging interests and competence of the man who inspired them, Christopher Tyerman. The distinguished names and diverse contributions found here are a credit to his work as well as a goad to further study of the crusades as part of a united approach to the medieval past (and beyond). Tyerman has forcefully made the case for crusades studies as a serious but integrated dimension of European history, and we trust he will continue to do so. This volume is intended as a tribute of thanks to him for that work, and a commitment by his friends and former students to continue with him along this road of inquiry and discovery.

7

CJT: An Appreciation Toby Barnard

I first encountered Christopher on a train returning from Egham to London in either 1974 or 1975. He and Sarah had been bidden to dine with Lionel Butler, his supervisor. Butler had recently moved from a professorship at St Andrews to head Royal Holloway College. Holloway, although deep among the rhododendrons of Surrey, was a constituent part of the University of London, and I was a member of its history department. Butler, in a licensed exercise of pluralism, had resumed his fellowship at All Souls in Oxford and so was available to oversee doctorates there. Thus had he come to supervise Christopher. Good fortune in having a clever and convivial supervisor proved to be one of those hinges on which a career can turn (or fail to turn) when Butler, an asthmatic, died suddenly in 1981. It was odd that we had not met already. Christopher’s four siblings had preceded him to Oxford — all reading history — and one sister at St Hilda’s I knew well. As a result, I had heard of Christopher when he was still at school at Harrow during the 1960s and after he arrived in New College. Despite the pleasure of the encounter in stock-brokers’ Surrey, and a hint of some shared attitudes, our paths continued to run in parallel rather than to converge. For a year, he was lecturing at York, and then was elected to a research fellowship at Queen’s. Yet, even though Queen’s had been my college, such was its self-assurance that it seemed to constitute a kingdom in itself with its fellows holding aloof from the denizens of humbler colleges. At Queen’s, Christopher continued a line of medievalists which included such notables as Maurice Keen and Malcolm Vale. His election showed his already high reputation and the rarely given approbation of John Prestwich, the senior historian at Queen’s. At Hertford, medieval history papers were taught by a lecturer. Early in the 1980s, a vacancy opened and Christopher was suggested, among others, by Maurice Keen. Even so we rarely coincided. First Christopher intermitted his research fellowship for a stint tutoring at St  Hilda’s, confirming the pronouncement of the senior history tutor there, Menna Prestwich ( John’s wife), ‘Tyerman can teach anything’. Then followed migration to Exeter to fill the recently revived Murray Senior Fellowship. Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 9–14. ©F

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Christopher’s familiarity with the subtle and not so subtle distinctions in timbre between colleges was deepening. Also he was exposed to a rich variety of historians, distinctive in methods and styles. At New College, there had been Eric Christiansen, Penry Williams, and Garry Bennett, diverse in personality, but each an active, original, and publishing scholar. Elsewhere in the university, he had gravitated towards Peter Brown, Maurice Keen, and Jeremy Catto. Now at Exeter he enjoyed the intellectual companionship of John Maddicott and Paul Slack. First with a room at Exeter and then resuming life at Harrow, it was his tricycle with a child’s seat, locked to the railings outside Hertford, rather than Christopher himself, that I saw the more frequently. Interviewing in December and the annual schools’ dinner in June were the occasions when I regularly witnessed Christopher in action. During the 1980s, schools’ dinners at Hertford, celebrating the completion of the final examinations, coincided with the evenings of general elections. On the whole, the tutors were more interested in and exercised by the results than were the undergraduates. In 1983, fancy dress was decreed for the diners, and two dressed as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, complete with realistic masks. When it was revealed that the masqueraders had failed to vote, the tutors decreed that they would have no food until they had discharged their democratic duty. This they did, but were ordered by the police outside the pollingstation to remove the masks before they entered. At that time, the zest of the young was matched by the stamina of the relatively youthful tutors. Party games were played which, for a time, included charades. Predictably Christopher excelled. Mumming necessitated a good deal of physical exertion, which led — for forgotten reasons — to chairs being piled perilously on one another and then mounted by an acrobatic Christopher who had — characteristically — taken charge. These nights (dawn broke with surprising speed, usually when the revellers had slumped into ruminative and sedentary, even comatose modes) led often to the spontaneous trading of home-truths and rebukes. One of these might occasion a rift between the seniors which would endure for months. Christopher showed the greatest staying-power. It was he who would take the survivors for breakfast in Brown’s in the covered market. The passage of the years and the altered conventions of merrymaking became clear when finalists started to excuse themselves from attending the dinner and when even Christopher retired before the rising sun gilded the crockets of All Souls. Changing family responsibilities enabled Christopher to enter more fully into college life. Loyalty to Hertford was dextrously combined with that to New College, the place ‘over the wall’ as he would customarily 10

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call it, and Harrow, at both of which he was also teaching. Any potential conflicts of interest were punctiliously avoided. At Hertford it was the policy to confront undergraduates in their first year with papers covering medieval periods, in the belief that they had seldom engaged with them before. The strategy meant that they encountered Christopher early. His methods, combative and pugnacious, did not suit all, being brutally effective in exposing ignorance, sloppiness, and pretence. If this potent brew could overwhelm the weak-headed, the discerning relished the exchanges and were fascinated by the distant centuries. These conversions — numerous — attested both to the dexterity with which Christopher could settle and draw out the uncertain, and the vivid way in which he communicated the issues and events. These qualities both captivated and inspired those who studied with him the more specialized options which included the crusades. One bequest to those of his (and my) generations who undertook the rigorous history syllabus, then both wide-ranging and sharply focused, was scepticism when confronted with airy speculation. Alluring hypotheses needed to be backed by secure evidence. To the credulous — an increasingly large band — the sceptics could be condemned as too austere, unimaginative, and negative. Any such dismissal is confounded by Christopher’s example. His skill in evoking and analysing remote worlds and their values, communicated most notably in the Very Short Introduction to the crusades (2005), God’s War (2006) and How to Plan a Crusade (2015), has won a huge, indeed world-wide, readership. It was not surprising to spot a copy of the last just as it was published in the window of a Petworth bookshop; more so, perhaps, on leaving the Palazzo Doria Pamphili to see God’s War prominently displayed in Libreria Tombolini. As a historian first of the English (or British or British and Irish civil wars) and then of Ireland, I  am hardly startled that other times and places have generated controversy that can spill over from divergences in method and interpretation into personal vituperation. Even so, the ferocity with which some historians of crusading battle among themselves is disconcerting. Combat, at least in print, is not an activity from which Christopher has flinched. Venturing out boldly from his redoubt, he looked vulnerable to the mounted marauders who lurked apparently in every gulley and cistern. Moreover, he has suffered from the petty slights in which the historical profession and Oxford notoriously trade. When Christopher competed for a prize fellowship by examination at All Souls, Warden Sparrow preferred the Etonian, indeed future Provost of Eton, William Waldegrave, to the Harrovian Tyerman. The head of another Oxford college, where Christopher was interviewed after his England and the Crusades came out with Chicago University 11

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Press in 1988, asked, ‘Tell us, Dr Tyerman, did Chicago publish your book because OUP turned it down?’ The likelihood of taking a berth outside Oxford lessened as Mrs Thatcher’s policies worsened: a post at Hull, to succeed the late medievalist Richard Vaughan — also expert on medieval France — was abolished while Christopher was travelling on the train to the Humber for the interview. Later there would be irritation at being consigned to giving tutorials in an attic shoe-box, albeit with unrivalled opportunities to study the habits of rats. Fitting recognition came with his election to a fellowship at Hertford in 2006 and his established role in New College. Before that he would occasionally remind that he had won the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize when the accompanying medal was made of gold. More recently, he has been armoured against detractors with appointment to a titular professorship — of crusading studies. Previously he had subscribed to the austere but increasingly unfashionable view of traditionalists that these were pinchbeck professorships, involving neither change in duties nor increased salary. His, recognizing the distinction and abundance of his publications, is of the true alloy. Menna Prestwich’s comment that Tyerman could teach anything has been demonstrated often. Another of her obiter dicta was that most hailing from East Anglia are stupid: political correctness was unknown to her. Christopher’s long-term family links with Suffolk confute her dismissal. Ancestry, however, may help to explain the startling breadth of Christopher’s knowledge and interests. Tees-side is acknowledged as nurturing Tyermen. Christopher’s father, having read history at Oxford (Brasenose: one of the few colleges not to have featured in his son’s curriculum vitae), lectured for six years at the University College of Southampton. This he exchanged for a notable career as a journalist, culminating in the editorship of The Economist. Two of Christopher’s siblings have followed the same trade, and Christopher himself, reared in leftward-leaning Hampstead with the talk constantly of current affairs, remains alarmingly well-informed about the minutiae, gossip, and principles of contemporary as well as past politics. From this omniscience I have both benefited and suffered. Menna Prestwich’s commendation was amply justified when the tutors at Hertford, exhausted after several days of interviewing candidates for admission, would see in the early evening a few who had applied originally for other colleges. We had had no chance yet to read any of their written work. When one such candidate revealed that his or her submission related to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, my colleague and I turned instinctively to Christopher. He quizzed the aspirant not just with aplomb, but with apparently precise knowledge. Had I been mindful of 12

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the extent of this learning and mastery of arcanae I would not have been so rash as to dispute with him in the senior common room, late in the evening, of which west-country diocese the father of another member of the History Faculty was bishop. Unwisely I wagered with him: I have still to present him with the good bottle of claret. This ability to conjure up an unlikely detail — whether of the constituency represented by an MP in the 1950s or the weight of dung excreted by ship-board horses in the thirteenth century — rivals that of Mr Memory in the film of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. A colleague in another Oxford college, hopeful that Christopher would join her as a fellow and tutor, predicted that it would be fun. Indeed, without in any way compromising the commitment to exact and imaginative scholarship and rigorous teaching, he has enlivened, entertained, upbraided, abraded, subverted, and assisted. Since becoming a fellow at Hertford, he has undertaken the stewardship of the senior common room and the tutorship for graduates, as well as contributing trenchantly in the meetings of the Governing Body and its committees. Even an overfondness for stewed fennel, too frequently served at high table, is more than offset by the bonhomie, patience, and care with which as steward he deployed the guests and their hosts and calmed the staff. In a memorable tribute to Maurice Keen, he singled out attributes — notably the writing of excitingly original books and contentment with, even enjoyment of, the grind of tutorial teaching — which could fit Christopher himself.1 To each pupil, expectations and approaches are adjusted: there is no formula to fit all. As one of five, with children of his own, and suffering reverses, Christopher, while never intruding or obtruding, understood what might beset even the outwardly assured and, when appropriate, advised. With Maurice, he also shares a wry and far from uncritical attachment to institutions and their traditions and an unobtrusive dedication to family. The first of those qualities shines through the History of Harrow School (2000). In it, he steers deftly between sycophancy and sensationalism, to provide an outstanding example of a parochial history which connects the evolution and vagaries of the school with social, economic, and political developments outside its curtilege. The skill in sustaining a long (and entertaining) narrative with succinct analysis and aphorisms prefigures the volumes on the crusades. Alternations between frivolity and pugnacity could mislead, indeed alarm, those whose dealings with Christopher were brief. An argument with an eminent and combative medievalist from overseas about King 1

Christopher Tyerman, ‘Maurice Hugh Keen, 1933–2012’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 15 (2016), 68–98.

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Alfred became so heated that I feared that the moveables in my study might be broken. I urged the protagonists to continue the sparring in the dark quad (it was about two in the morning), which they did during many circuits of the lawn. In editing the Oxford Historian, he defended sturdily what he valued and resisted some of the more evanescent fads. Such pungency did not always endear him to the apparatchiks ruling the faculty. Outspokenness of this sort, evident throughout his professional career, may have slowed his advance but increased his stature among admirers. Follies and foibles tended to be noted more than virtues. ‘Solipsistic’ and ‘meretricious’ were for long adjectives favoured in describing the writings, and even the personalities, of some scholars (and pupils). Lately Christopher characterized a lecture by a visiting grandee as ‘disappointingly piffling’. So, no doubt, it was. By the same token, praise, sparingly given, is a prized accolade. The sterling worth of Christopher’s teaching and writing, attested by this volume, will endure. Locally, as someone lucky enough to have enjoyed his exhilarating fellowship over several decades, I  have valued  — and shared — his independence of historiographical faddism and imperious patrons with imperial pretensions. In resisting the dirigisme of faculties, university managers, brash and over-paid pedagogical consultants, and meddlesome governments, he has maintained an integrity that comes from the insistence on evidence before succumbing to seductive theories. He has also shown bravery. In this, as in much else, Christopher has remained true to his historical training and now, as an acknowledged master of the craft, is passing the skills and philosophy to appreciative apprentices.

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Part I

Defining Europe

Pirenne, Muh.ammad, and Bohemond Before Orientalism* Mark Whittow

Crusade history as written by Christopher Tyerman is never narrow, and the crusades are always treated as a facet of the wider medieval world that in turn reflects a powerful light on the societies they touched. This paper follows that lead, save that, where Christopher’s work has looked forward from the genesis of the crusades in the eleventh century through the Middle Ages and beyond, I shall be looking back to the early Middle Ages and Late Antiquity. It is a paper that offers a new look at the ideas of Henri Pirenne, brings together real and imagined worlds, and makes the case, to adapt Pirenne’s famous judgement, that ‘without the Crusades Europe — the Europe of the European Union — would probably never have existed’.

The Mediterranean united Pirenne’s Muhammad and Charlemagne counts as one of the seminal works of history published in the twentieth century.1 Having its origins, at least according to legend, as a set of lectures given to fellow inmates in a German POW camp during the First World War, published posthumously in 1937, and never out of print since, Pirenne’s thesis stands as a key contribution to our understanding of the post-Roman period in * This paper began as a presentation to the ‘Shifting Boundaries’ workshop organized by the Council for British Research in the Levant and its director, Professor Bill Finlayson. Another version was presented at the Medieval Research Seminar at All Souls College, Oxford. I  am very grateful to the participants at both events (including Christopher Tyerman at the second) for their insights and encouragement. 1 Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris, 1937). I  shall cite the book in its first English edition translated from the tenth French edition: Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, trans. Bernard Miall (London, 1939). Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 17–49. ©F

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western Eurasia.2 At the beginning of the twenty-first century his position as father of modern thought on this topic remains secure. Two of the more recent and authoritative contributions to the field — Michael McCormick’s Origins of the European Economy and Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages — start with Pirenne.3 Pirenne’s argument is in essence that it was the Arab conquests of the seventh century, not the Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth, which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world.45And despite nearly a century’s research, which particularly in the last thirty years has transformed our understanding of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Pirenne’s point remains valid. Even after the fall of the western empire, the last emperor of which was deposed in 476, the Mediterranean remained at the centre of a cultural and economic unity that stretched from the Levant to Spain and from North Africa to Gaul. All was not unchanged since the fourth century, let alone since the first. Peripheries, such as northern Gaul and Britain, had become more peripheral; the imperial heartlands had contracted. But the fact remains that the ties of religion, politics, ideolog y, landowning, material culture, trade, and exchange still united the Mediterranean world. The majority of the recipients of Gregory the Great’s letters written between 590 and 604 may have been Italian, but he also wrote to the emperor, the patriarch, and a series of Constantinopolitan courtiers and leading officials. He wrote to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and to bishops as far afield as Arabia, Corinth, Justiniana Prima (the emperor Justinian’s birthplace in Macedonia), Carthage, Arles, Marseille, and Seville, as well as to the abbot of St Catherine’s on Mount

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Pirenne’s ideas were the product of a lengthy period of gestation which stretched back into the 1890s: see Jacques Pirenne’s comments in the preface to Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, p. 9; Bryce Lyon, Henri Pirenne: A  Biographical and Intellectual Study (Ghent, 1974), pp.  260–61, 265–68, 375, 441; Paolo Delogu, ‘Reading Pirenne Again’, in The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand, ed. Richard Hodges and William Bowden (Leiden, 1998), pp. 15–40. Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 2; Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), p. 1. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 79–96, 147–64.

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Sinai.56Gregory had spent about seven years in Constantinople as the pope’s emissary to the imperial court and he regarded the empire as part of the divinely ordained order of things. Gregory was part of a world that saw it as quite natural that political refugees from Arian Spain should appear at Constantinople, that Greek monks should find a home in Rome, or, rather later, in the seventh century, that one of those Greek monks, born in Tarsus, should spend his life in Constantinople and then Rome, before eventually becoming archbishop of Canterbury.67 Politically this was still a united world, at least in the imagination. The emperor’s direct authority might not run in Lombard Italy or Visigothic Spain, but it had done in the recent past and might do again. When exiles fled to Constantinople they expected to find a sympathetic audience, and those they fled from were suspicious that they might return with imperial help. In 582, Gundovald, who claimed to be the son of the Merovingian king Clothar I, returned to Gaul to make a bid for the throne. He had initially fled Gaul for Italy and had been passed on by Narses, the imperial commander in Italy, to Constantinople, where he spent at least eight years. His return to Gaul was at the invitation of a party of Frankish aristocrats, 5

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Gregory  I, Registrum epistolarum, ed. Dag Norberg, 2 vols, Corpus Christianorum: Series latina, 140–40A (Turnhout, 1982), 1: 209, 296, 385, 439, 452, 490, 2: 977, 1033, 1042 (emperor), 1: 4, 22, 197, 329, 384, 446–47, 486, 2: 1045 (patriarch of Constantinople), 1: 5, 7, 36–38, 196, 211, 213–14, 248, 271, 312, 314, 328, 337–38, 382, 387, 465, 472, 474, 480–81, 483, 2: 565, 744–45, 820, 862, 902, 917, 1034, 1043, 1076 (Constantinopolitan courtiers and leading officials), 1: 22, 320, 434, 492, 500, 2: 549, 550, 840, 852, 990, 1046–47 (Alexandria); 1: 9, 22, 33, 320, 325, 478, 492, 2: 514, 685, 733 (Antioch), 2: 523, 914 ( Jerusalem), 2: 889 (Arabia), 1: 34, 183, 351, 364, 2: 714 (Corinth), 1: 151, 282, 2: 527, 982 ( Justiniana Prima), 1: 127, 268, 437, 495, 2: 554, 850, 967 (Carthage), 1: 59, 2: 780, 798, 932, 942 (Arles), 1: 59, 2: 768, 873 (Marseille), 1: 47, 348–49 (Seville), 2: 857–60 (Mount Sinai). See also Gregory I, The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R. C. Martyn, 3 vols (Toronto, 2004) for additional notes and identifications. Robert Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 10–12, 134–35, 140–42; Robert Markus, ‘Gregory the Great’s Europe’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 31 (1981), 21–36 (here 34–36); Michael Lapidge, ‘Theodore of Tarsus [St Theodore of Tarsus] (602–90)’, in ODNB, 54: 226–30; available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27170 (accessed 29 Nov. 2017). More generally on religious and cultural ties uniting East and West in the age of Gregory the Great, Peter Brown, ‘Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A  Parting of the Ways’, in The Orthodox Church and the West, ed. David Baker, Studies in Church History, 13 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 1–24 remains fundamental.

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one of whom, Guntram Boso, according to Gregory of Tours, had made the journey to Constantinople to persuade him. The fact that Gundovald arrived in Gaul with a very large treasure makes it likely that he had imperial support, and makes the accusation that this was a plot to subject a kingdom of the Franks to imperial rule less far-fetched.78In reverse, the coup that toppled the Emperor Phokas was launched from Africa; that same Emperor Phokas was honoured by a column in the Roman Forum, at a key crossroads in a central and still public space; and two seventhcentury emperors, Heraclius and Constans II, were said to have considered moving the imperial capital to the West.89The Roman empire was still a Mediterranean-wide idea, and there was no fundamental reason why the capital should not be moved elsewhere. Just as it had once been moved from Old Rome on the Tiber to New Rome on the Bosphorus, it could now be moved back to the West. It is easier to find examples of trans-Mediterranean landowning for an earlier period and for a senatorial triangle that included southern Italy, Sicily, and Africa, but this may be no more than the vagaries of our sources.190The Anicii came originally from Africa, grew to great wealth in Rome, and moved to Constantinople in 455. Anicia Juliana was born in Constantinople, and to judge from the huge and magnificent church she built in honour of St Polyeuktos, she was extremely rich. This reputation reached Gregory of Tours writing in the 580s, about half a century after her death: When stories of her great wealth reached the Emperor Justinian from many sources, he delayed not, but hurried to meet her, saying, ‘I do not think it escapes you, venerable mother, how the public treasuries are drained of gold coin, while we wish you to enjoy peace, and labour to defend our native lands, and reconcile nations to ourselves, and seek to comfort the various peoples by our generosity. Therefore, because the power of divine majesty has conferred much gold upon you, I ask that you stretch forth your hand to us, and that you provide something of your money, on the clear understanding that, when the sum of public tribute has been declared, 7

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Gregory of Tours, ‘Libri Historiarum X’, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, in MGH SS rer. merov., 1: 290, 293–94; Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (Harlow, 1994), pp. 93–98. Inscriptiones urbis Romae latinae, ed. Wilhelm Henzen, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, and Eugen Bormann, 6 vols, Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, 6 (Berlin, 1876–), 1: 251 (no. 1200); Cairoli Fulvio Giuliani and Patrizia Verduchi, L’Area centrale del Foro romano, 2 vols (Firenze, 1987), 1: 174–77; Mark Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 163. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 163–65.

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then instantly you may have some return from your gifts, and it may be publicly proclaimed in the glorious record of your life that the city of Constantinople was supported by the wealth of the lady Juliana’. But she, seeing through the emperor’s cleverness, wisely protected what she had vowed to God, saying, ‘What little income I have, as much from rents as what is hoped for from crops, is spread at the moment through my various residences. If therefore your majesty will grant me time to gather it in, it shall be presented to your inspection. And when you have gazed upon it with your own eyes, leave it or take whatever you please. Whatever your heart desires will be acceptable to me’.1101

When Justinian returns, he discovers that she has had the roof of the church of St Polyeuktos covered with pure gold. The emperor is shamed into a retreat, slightly sweetened by Juliana’s gift of a gold ring with a hugely valuable emerald. Juliana’s wealth is confirmed by the surviving ruins of the church, and the obvious explanation would seem to be that she inherited property in the West as well as the East. If you take Gregory’s story seriously, that would also be why the emperor could not simply get at her gold by confiscating her property in Constantinople. Much of her wealth was out of reach, and not just on the roof.1112 Another apparent member of the Anicii clan and, if identified correctly, granddaughter of the philosopher Boethius, was Rusticiana, like Juliana a resident of Constantinople, who it seems had moved there from Rome in the late sixth century. In her case, ownership of large estates in Italy and Sicily is attested by Gregory the Great’s letters.1123Her daughter, Eudocia, married the great Egyptian landowner, Apion IV. The Apiones were an immensely wealthy family who had risen to hold a series of high offices in the empire from the mid-fifth century. The family is well-known thanks to the Oxyrhynchus papyri which have preserved a mass of material shedding light on their estates in the territory of this Middle Egyptian 10

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Gregory of Tours, ‘Liber in gloria martyrum’ in MHG SS rer. merov., 1: 105–7; Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, trans. R. Van Dam, Translated Texts for Historians, 3 (Liverpool, 1988), pp. 124–26. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, John Martindale, and John Morris, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1971–92), 2: 635–36; Jonathan Bardill, ‘New Temple for Byzantium: Anicia Juliana, King Solomon, and the Gilded Ceiling of the Church of St  Polyeuktos in Constantinople’, in Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity, ed. William Bowden, Adam Gutteridge, and Carlos Machado, Late Antique Archaeology, 3.1 (Leiden, 2006), pp. 339–70. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3: 1101–2; Averil Cameron, ‘A Nativity Poem of the Sixth Century A.D.’, Classical Philology 74 (1979), 222–32.

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city. But they clearly owned land elsewhere in Egypt, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean too. The chronicler Malalas mentions their property in Constantinople (which implies estates around the city), and it is likely that the marriage with Eudocia brought them western estates, even if they had not owned any there before.1134 A further possibility would be the eunuch general Narses, conqueror of the Goths, and already mentioned for his role in the Gundovald affair. His was an extraordinary career. This Armenian eunuch rose under Justinian to be in effect the regime’s troubleshooter and to become extremely rich. Part of that wealth was invested in land. We know that he founded and endowed a monastery in Bithynia, possibly near the hot springs at Pythia, which suggests he had owned estates in this most convenient part of Constantinople’s hinterland.1145But since 551 he had spent most of his time in Italy, including the last five years before his death, when he lived first in Naples and then in Rome. A tenth-century source, the Chronicon of Benedict of Sant’Andrea on Monte Soracte, states that Narses founded the monastery of San Paolo ad Aquas Salvias, which lies about four kilometres outside Rome, and two beyond San Paolo fuori le Mura. Most modern commentary is suspicious, and perhaps rightly so; Narses is not an uncommon name in the sixth and seventh centuries. On the other hand, the general is very likely to have had estates near Rome, and as in Bithynia, a eunuch might reasonably have left them to a monastery. The detail that this particular monastery was occupied by Armenian monks in the seventh century is another possible link with an Armenian founder.1156The key point with all these cases is that at the beginning of the 13

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Peter Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 16–22, 86. Roberta Mazza, L’Archivio degli Apioni: Terra, lavoro e proprietà senatoria nell’Egitto tardoantico (Bari, 2001), p. 73 comes to the same conclusion (‘Il possesso di tenute extra-egiziane da parte del Apioni è comunque certo, vista la loro estrazione sociale’), but her reconstruction of the family would make the relevant Apion III, not IV. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3: 912–28; Raymond Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Paris, 1975), pp.  158–60. For a recent discussion of Narses’ career see Michael Edward Stewart, ‘The Andreios Eunuch-Commander Narses: Sign of a Decoupling of Martial Virtues and Masculinity in the Early Byzantine Empire?’, Ceræ: an Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 2 (2015), 1–25 (online at http:// openjournals.arts.uwa.edu.au/index.php/cerae/article/view/44/45 [accessed 29 November 2017]). Benedict of Sant’Andrea, Il Chronicon di Benedetto monaco di S.  Andrea del Soratte e il Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, ed. Giuseppe

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seventh century it was still possible to build up such trans-Mediterranean property empires. Pirenne’s thesis is also supported in essence by the archaeological data that has become available in steadily increasing volume over the last thirty years. His statement that ‘I think we may say that navigation was at least 7 as active as under the Empire’ goes too far, but not by much.116 Pirenne, like everyone else before the ceramic revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, did not appreciate the extent to which Mediterranean trade was shaped by the demands of the imperial fisc. Grain and oil from Africa went to feed Rome; grain from Egypt went to feed Constantinople. In the western Mediterranean it seems fairly clear that the Vandal capture of Carthage in 439 triggered a lasting decline in inter-regional trade. Judging from the distribution patterns of African red slip fine ware and African amphorae before 439, it seems that once the African shippers had discharged their fiscal obligations in Rome they carried on round the western Mediterranean, selling their wares at a series of coastal ports, before finally returning to Carthage for the next shipment. African products must have had their merits, but the degree of penetration reflected the cost advantages enjoyed by African landowners, encouraged to produce on a very large scale by a secure market, and by African shipowners, whose expenses were subsidized by the state. The Vandal capture of Carthage broke this link, and the consequent unravelling of the African trade network shows up in the ceramic record. But as Pirenne would not have been surprised to learn, this was not the end of Mediterranean trade. In the western Mediterranean, work on sixthand seventh-century sites has shown African red slip and African amphorae still being imported, though on a reduced scale and with less inland penetration.1178What is striking, however, is the emergence of competition,

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Zucchetti, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 55 (Roma, 1920), p.  32; Guy Ferrari, Early Roman Monasteries: Notes for the History of the Monasteries and Convents at Rome from the V through the X Century, Studi di antichità, 23 (Città del Vaticano, 1957), pp. 33–48; Jean-Marie Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome aux époques byzantine et carolingienne (milieu du VIe - fin du IXe s.), 2 vols (Bruxelles, 1983), 1: 14. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, p. 95. Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge, 2012), pp.  90–95; Simon Loseby, ‘The Mediterranean Economy’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick et al., 7 vols (Cambridge, 1995–2005) 1: 605–17, 632– 33; Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 711; Stefano Tortorella, ‘La ceramica africana: Un bilancio dell’ultimo decennio di ricerche’, in L’Afrique

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not just from local producers, but from the eastern Mediterranean. The Palestinian wine trade, identifiable via the distribution patterns of the distinctive Palestinian amphorae (conventionally known as LR4 and LR5: Carthage Late Roman 4 and Carthage Late Roman 5), reached Africa, Italy, southern France, and Spain throughout the fifth and sixth centuries.1189Egyptian and Aegean wares, admittedly in small quantities, turn up in Rome and Marseille.2190And vice versa: African wares turn up in the East. Late African red slip types and amphorae (mostly the small spatheia) dating from the seventh and even early eighth century have been found on sites in the Aegean, the Black Sea, Cyprus, and the Levant, and

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du Nord antique et médieval: VIe colloque international (Pau, octobre 1993-118e congrès), ed. Pol Trousset (Paris, 1995), pp.  88–101; Stefano Tortorella, ‘La sigillata africana in Italia nel VI e nel VII secolo d.C.: Problemi di cronologia e distribuzione’, in Ceramica in Italia: VI-VII secolo, ed. Lucia Saguì (Firenze, 1998), pp. 50–57. Dominique Pieri, ‘Regional and Interregional Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Early Byzantine Period: The Evidence of Amphorae’, in Trade and Markets in Byzantium, ed. Cécile Morrisson (Washington, 2012), pp. 27–49; Michael Decker, ‘Export Wine Trade to West and East’, in Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local Regional and International Exchange, Papers of the Thirty-Eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, St John’s College, University of Oxford, March 2004, ed. Maria Mundell Mango (Farnham, 2009), pp.  239–52; Sean Kingsley, ‘The Economic Impact of the Palestinian Wine Trade in Late Antiquity’, in Economy and Exchange in the East Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, ed. Sean Kingsley and Michael Decker (Oxford, 2001), pp. 44–68. For Rome, see Marta Casalini, ‘Roma e il Mediterraneo dal IV al VI secolo’, in Le forme della crisi: Produzioni ceramiche e commerci nell’Italia centrale tra Romani e Longobardi (III-VIII sec. d.C.). Atti del Convegno, Spoleto-Campello sul Clitunno, 5–7 Ottobre 2012, ed. Enrico Cirelli, Francesca Diosono, and Helen Patterson (Bologna, 2015), pp.  535–54; Dunia Filippi et  al., ‘La Casa delle Vestali: Un immondezzaio di VI secolo d.C.’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo II: Contesti tardoantichi e altomedievali, ed. Maria Stella Arena et al., 2 vols (Milano, 2001– 04), 2: 164–79 (here 175); Francesco Pacetti, ‘Celio. Basilica Hilariana: Scavi 1987–1989’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo II, pp.  435–57 (here pp.  439– 41); Germana Vatta and Tommaso Bertoldi, ‘Celio. Basilica Hilariana: Scavi 1997’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo II, pp.  458–79 (here pp.  476–79); Archer Martin, ‘La sigillata focese (Phocaean Red-Slip/Late Roman C Ware)’, in Ceramica in Italia, pp.  109–22 (here pp.  115–18). For Marseille, see Simon Loseby, ‘Marseille and the Pirenne Thesis, I: Gregory of Tours, the Merovingian Kings, and “Un grand port”’, in Sixth Century, pp. 213–14.

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it is interesting that eastern pottery production appears to emulate African forms.2201This was still a united world. If, as pilgrims did, one travelled in the sixth century from Gaul to Palestine, taking ship at Marseille, stopping in Rome and Carthage, landing at Caesarea, pressing on to Jerusalem, and then later heading east across the Jordan, one would have been conscious throughout of how much what was still the Roman world had in common. To put this in concrete terms, a traveller from Arles in the Rhône valley who reached Jerash on the Jordanian plateau would have found a great deal that was familiar. The population at Jerash spoke Greek, not Latin, but otherwise they were both walled cities, with the familiar public buildings of the high Roman past being superseded by churches. The traveller would have recognized the porticoed streets and monumental arches, the familiar clutter of ancient statues and public inscriptions, some even in Latin. The traveller from Gaul would have found an essentially familiar monetary system, eaten off familiar pottery, and recognized a community dominated by a mixture of clergy and local landowners. If the language of the liturgy was strange, what was expected of the Christian visitor was not. The relics of St Theodore at Jerash were the focus of essentially the same cult as St Genesius attracted at Arles. The so-called Fountain Court in the atrium of the cathedral at Jerash appears to have been the scene of an annual manifestation of Jesus’ first miracle at Cana in Galilee. For a visitor from sixth-century Arles neither the idea of such a miracle nor the particular example evoked could have been more natural or more familiar.2212 Sixth-century Arles might no longer obey the same ruler as Jerash, but in all other respects the two cities, 3000 kilometres apart, were part of the same world. For the inhabitants of the sixth-century Mediterranean and its hinterland the barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries — Franks, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, Goths, and so on — had no 20

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Michel Bonifray, ‘La diffusion des céramiques africaines en Méditerrannée orientale durant l’Antiquité tardive’, Travaux et Mémoires 15 (2005), 570–81; Catherine Abadie-Reynal, ‘Céramique et commerce dans le bassin Égéen du IVe au VIIe siècle’, in Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin, 2 vols (Paris, 1989–91), 1: 155–88. For Arles, see William  E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), pp.  57–63, 151–70, 173–77; Marc Heijmans, Arles durant l’antiquité tardive (Roma, 2004), pp.  43–81, 257–337. For Jerash, see Epiphanios, Epiphanius, ed. Karl Holl, 2 vols (Berlin, 1980–85), 2: 301; Jason Moralee, ‘The Stones of St  Theodore: Disfiguring the Pagan Past in Christian Gerasa’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 14 (2006), 189–92.

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more brought the end of Rome than sundry barbarian conquerors from the Xianbei in 398 to the Manchu in 1644 brought the end of China. The Roman empire that had once extended from the deserts of Arabia to Hadrian’s Wall remained a single imagined space. The Fountain Court at Jerash sums up a great deal: its buildings and rituals would not have been out of place in Gaul, Italy, or Spain; and its reference to a biblical place, Cana in Galilee, would have been familiar even as far afield as Britain or Ireland.

The Mediterranean divided Rather than the Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries, Pirenne asserted that it was the Muslim conquests of the seventh century that broke the unity of the Mediterranean and created a new world, a world where periphery became centre, and centre periphery. An empire whose peripheries had lain on the Rhine, the Danube, and the Tigris was replaced by a new superpower, the Muslim caliphate, whose centre by 800 was in Iraq, a much reduced Roman empire (that we conventionally call ‘Byzantium’) with its capital at Constantinople, and a new Frankish kingdom with its heartland in what had once been Rome’s Rhineland periphery. Pirenne famously summed up these changes: ‘Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would have probably never existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, would be inconceivable’.2223 Quite naturally, nearly a century after Pirenne gave his prison camp lectures, and over seventy years since his death, many of his specific points can be corrected or nuanced, but essentially there is little to argue with here. Maurice Lombard’s suggestion, for example, that the rise of Islam opened up the Mediterranean has been effectively discredited.2234As with Pirenne’s picture of the fifth and sixth century, archaeology, and above all ceramic studies, have been crucial in proving him right. To take two particularly good examples — again one from the West and one from Jordan — the excavations at the Crypta Balbi in the centre of Rome and at Pella in the 22

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Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. Frank D. Halsey (Princeton, 1925), p. 27; cf. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, p. 234: ‘It is therefore strictly true to say that without Mohammed Charlemagne would have been inconceivable’. Maurice Lombard, ‘Les bases monétaires d’une suprématie économique: L’Or musulman du VIIe au XIe siècle’, Annales: Economies - Sociétés - Civilisations 2 (1947), 143–60; Maurice Lombard, ‘Mahomet et Charlemagne: Le problème économique’, Annales: Economies - Sociétés - Civilisations 3 (1948), 188–99.

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Jordan valley have shown that it was not in the sixth or even early seventh that these communities turned away from the Mediterranean, but in the late seventh and eighth: in other words, as Pirenne thought, only after the Muslim conquests. The Crypta Balbi in Rome lies 500 metres north-west of the Capitol. The Crypta itself was a large porticoed courtyard next to the theatre built by Lucius Cornelius Balbus at the end of the first century BC. The derelict site was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s with a radically new concern for the post-classical levels, and apart from anything else the Crypta has produced a vast quantity of carefully studied late antique and early medieval pottery. The message of these deposits is clear: amphorae from Africa, and in smaller quantities from the Aegean, Egypt, and the Levant continued to reach Rome through to the late seventh century.2245In the eighth and ninth century deposits this material has vanished. Rome had turned away from the Mediterranean and in towards its own region.2256 Pella in Jordan was being excavated at the same period with what was then a similarly radical concern for the post-classical periods, and again meticulous work on the ceramics paid off handsomely. The evidence makes it quite clear that the city was not in any way brought to an end by the Muslim conquest; instead, it is plain that the new political order gradually ushered in a change of outlook. For the sixth and seventh century, Pella’s links to the Mediterranean coast and the West are attested by amphorae from Gaza and either Cyprus or Antioch, and by red slip fine wares from Cyprus, the Aegean, and Africa. In the late seventh and eighth centuries this changed decisively. The imported Cypriot, Aegean, and African wares disappear, and when the local wares are again supplemented by substantial quantities of imported pottery it comes from the East.2267A city that had 24

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Lucia Saguì, ‘Il deposito della Crypta Balbi: Una testimonianza imprevedibile sulla Roma de VII secolo?’, in Ceramica in Italia, pp. 305–30; Lucia Saguì and Caterina Maria Coletti, ‘Contesti tardoantichi dall’area a S-E della Crypta Balbi’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo, 2: 242–77. A brief English-language introduction to the Crypta Balbi can be found in Museo Nazionale Romano: Crypta Balbi, English edition (Milano, 2000). Diletta Romei, ‘Produzioni e circulazione dei manufatti ceramici a Roma nell’alto medioevo’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo, 2: 278–311. Pamela Watson, ‘Change in Foreign and Regional Economic Links with Pella in the Seventh Century A.D.: The Ceramic Evidence’, in La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, VIIe-VIIIe siècles: Actes du colloque international, ed. Pierre Canivet and Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais (Dimashq, 1992), pp. 233–48; Alan Walmsley, ‘The Social and Economic Regime at Fihl (Pella) between the 7th and 9th Centuries’, in Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, pp. 256–57. Indeed, judging from the African and Aegean

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once been part of a westward-looking Roman network was now finding ties within the new Dar al-Islam. The Dar al-Islam is a key concept here. The rulers of the new Muslim world, of which formerly Roman Egypt and the Levant were now a part, saw themselves as dwelling in that space, beyond which lay the Dar alH.arb — the abode of war.2278Early medieval Muslims were not uncurious about the Dar al-H.arb and its inhabitants. Indeed, one of the striking features about the high culture of the new Islamic world was the geographical literature that flourished from the late eighth century onwards. But wonderful though this literature is, the curiosity it represents comes only from a very particular perspective. Infidels come in better and worse kinds. Jews and Christians are better than pagans, but in essence the Dar al-H.arb is interesting as a place of exotic strangeness, which ultimately illustrates the superiority of Islam.2289Some of this geographical literature was based on first-hand observation. Muslim travellers could be impressively accurate observers. Ibn Fad. lan’s well-known account of the Viking Rus traders on the Volga in the tenth century is an outstanding example.3290But there is no doubt that what they describe is no longer a single Mediterranean world. Once familiar places have become alien and strange, and that of course was why one wanted to write about them. The port city of Ephesus in western Asia Minor, for example, once a familiar stopping point on the Mediterranean trunk routes, would have been of no interest at all to a Muslim audience were it not for the story of the Seven Sleepers, whose guardians regularly trimmed their charges’ hair as they slumbered away the centuries. Ephesus had left the real world and entered the exotic and fantastical.3301

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fine wares, the sixth and seventh century, rather than the third and fourth, was actually the period of Pella’s closest contact with the wider Mediterranean world. Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 359–60. André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu de XIe siècle, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Paris, 1973–88), 1: 36–37, 2: 343–45, 372–80, 387–89. Miquel, Géographie humaine du monde musulman, 1: 113–52; Ibn Fad. lan, ‘Mission to the Volga’, trans. James E. Montgomery, in Two Arabic Travel Books, ed. Philip Kennedy and Shawkat Toorawa (New York, 2014), pp. 190–259. Tabari, Kitāb Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, ed. Michael de Goeje et al., 15 vols (Leiden, 1879–1901), 1: 775–82; Tabari, The Ancient Kingdoms, trans. Moshe Perlmann (Albany, 1987), pp.  155–59; Muqaddasi, Kitāb ah.san al-taqāsīm fī ma’rifat al-aqālīm, ed. Michael de Goeje, 2nd edn, Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, 3 (Leiden, 1906), pp.  153–54; Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. Basil Collins (Reading, 1994), pp.  140–41;

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Imagining a new world that left once familiar lands on the outside was not limited to Muslims. The Christian inhabitants of the former Roman Near East were little slower in turning their backs on the world beyond the Dar al-Islam. For those Christians who rejected the Chalcedonian orthodoxy championed in Constantinople and Rome there was perhaps no reason to think about the old Mediterranean. From the mid-seventh century onwards anti-Chalcedonian Christians were effectively confined to the Dar al-Islam; but even for Chalcedonians, or Melkites, as those who followed the same creed as the emperor (al-Malik) in Constantinople are usually known, the world beyond the Dar al-Islam became steadily less relevant. This did not happen at once. In the seventh and eighth centuries there were Syrian and Palestinian monks in Rome and Constantinople, a series of Syrian popes, and there were clearly close cultural ties between Constantinople and Jerusalem in the late eighth century.3312The major Byzantine chronicle to cover this period, that of Theophanes, gets much of its information from a Greek translation made in Jerusalem of a Syriac chronicle written in Syria; and Cyril Mango has argued persuasively that its chief compiler was not Theophanes, but George the Synkellos, who, if he was not actually Palestinian by birth, had certainly spent some time there as a monk.3323But over the course of the ninth century what had become two worlds drifted apart. Greek ceased to be the language of the Melkite churches, and they ceased to share the concerns of the Church in Constantinople, let alone Rome.3334

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R.  Paret, ‘Ashab al-Kahf ’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition, ed. H.  A.  R. Gibb, 12 vols (Leiden, 1960–2009), 1: 691; Miquel, Géographie humaine du monde musulman, 2: 460–61; Clive Foss, Ephesus after Antiquity: A Late Antique, Byzantine, and Turkish City (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 192–94. Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome, pp.  213–19; Cyril Mango, ‘Greek Culture in Palestine after the Arab Conquest’, in Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio: Atti del seminario di Erice, 18–25 settembre 1988, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Giuseppe de Gregorio, and Marilena Maniaci, 2 vols (Spoleto, 1991), 1: 149–60. Theophanes the Confessor, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284–813, ed. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (Oxford, 1997), pp.  xliii-iv, lxxxii; Warren Treadgold, ‘The Life and Wider Significance of George Syncellus’, Travaux et mémoires 19 (2015), 9–30. Mango, ‘Greek Culture in Palestine after the Arab Conquest’, p. 151; Sidney H. Griffith, ‘From Aramaic to Arabic: The Languages of the Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 (1997), 24–29.

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At first sight the participation of the Melkite churches in the Oecumenical Councils of 867, 869, and 879 might appear to prove the existence of closer links. To be oecumenical a council had to include all five patriarchates, namely Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and each of these ninth-century councils did so.3345In practice, however, the Melkite presence was limited to a single vicar acting for their respective patriarchs, and those of 867 and 869 were condemned as ‘false vicars’ at the following council.3356Theodore the Stoudite had already attacked the validity of the council of 787 (Nicaea II) in 809 on the grounds that the legates were not what they seemed. According to Theodore, those from Rome ‘had been sent here for another purpose, not for a council…[and] those from the east were persuaded and induced by people here and were not sent by the patriarchs who took no notice of it either then or later because of fear of the pagans’.3367Effectively the same accusations were made about the legates who represented the eastern patriarchates at the councils of 867 and 869, and could probably have been made too about those at the council of 879. The fact that Cosmas, described as ‘a man skilled in various languages’, who represented the patriarch of Alexandria in 879, had been sent the previous year by Photios to all three eastern patriarchs announcing his restoration to the see of Constantinople, suggests that he was primarily Photios’ man and not the patriarch of Alexandria’s.3378Whether or not these charges were justified, the difficulty of proving that someone was an authorized representative of one of the eastern sees shows how limited communication with the Melkite churches actually was. Finding someone who knew Greek could also be a problem. Elias, the vicar of the patriarch of Jerusalem in 869, had to speak for the representative of Antioch because the latter did not know enough Greek to represent himself.3389The fact that some of the letters from Melkite patriarchs read out to these councils were more 34

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Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, 31 vols (Firenze and Venezia, 1758–98), 16: 18A, 24E, 143D, 17: 373A, 393C, 476A. For the legates in 867, see Jean-Marie Sansterre, ‘Les représentants des patriarchats au concile Photien d’août-septembre 867’, Byzantion 43 (1973), 195–228. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 16: 5B, 136B, 137C, 155C56A, 17: 428C, 432A-B, 437B. Theodore the Stoudite, Epistulae, ed. Georgios Fatouros, 2 vols (Berlin, 1992), 2: 110–11; Patrick Henry, ‘Initial Eastern Assessments of the Seventh Oecumenical Council’, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 25 (1974), 76–78. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 16: 427B, 429E, 448A. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 16: 25A.

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concerned to announce their sufferings and plead for financial support, rather than deal with the substantive issues that the council had been called to address, perhaps shows that they were genuine, but is also a sign that what concerned Constantinople was now rather remote to the churches in the Dar al-Islam.4390 In any case, more revealing than the formal statements of church councils, where a pretence of shared identity was required to prove the councils’ status, are the chronicles written by Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria from 933 to 940, and by Agapius, bishop of Manbij, writing in the 940s. Both of these are Arabic texts, with hijra dating, and reveal a striking ignorance of events in Constantinople.4401 The patriarch of Alexandria can go so far as to write, ‘I have not been able to track down the names of the patriarchs of Constantinople who have filled this see from the death of Theodorus [d. 679] up to the point when I finished writing this book’.4412So much for the claims of the councils. The truth was that the Melkites had become an Arabic church with its own inwardlooking agenda. At best they would validate the decisions of distant councils, but the Greek-speaking world had become a foreign country about which they knew little and cared less. When in the late tenth century Byzantine armies reconquered northern Syria, a few Melkites, such as the historian Yah.ya ibn Sa‘īd, began to show more interest in the Greek world, to the extent that he is one of the most important sources for the ill-documented reign of Basil II (976–1025).4423Even Eutychius becomes slightly better informed about events in Constantinople, possibly as a result of a message sent in 938 by the Patriarch Theophylact, asking that his name be remembered in the liturgy of the church of Alexandria — something that had not occurred, he tells us, since the days of the ’Umayyads. But what is really striking about the reconquest is that the Greek-speaking servants of the emperor were foreigners in an Arabic and Syriac world. As late as 966 — only three years before the city fell to the Byzantines  — the Melkite patriarch of Antioch, 39 40

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Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 16: 25D-27A; 17: 441C-44C. Sidney H. Griffith, ‘Euthychius of Alexandria on the Emperor Theophilus and Iconoclasm in Byzantium: A Tenth-Century Moment in Christian Apologetics in Arabic’, Byzantion 52 (1982), 154–90; Sidney H. Griffith, ‘Byzantium and the Christians in the World of Islam: Constantinople and the Church in the Holy Land in the Ninth Century’, Medieval Encounters 3 (1997), 231–65. Eutychius of Alexandria, Gli annali, trans. Bartolomeo Pirone (Il Cairo, 1987), p. 393. Catherine Holmes, Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025) (Oxford, 2005), p. 38.

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Christopher, continued to be a loyal supporter of the H.amdānid amir, Sayf al-Dawla, against the amir’s enemies in the city who wanted to come to terms with the emperor.4434‘Reconquest’ is not really the right word. These were now two cultural worlds. There were individuals who bridged them: Greek monks continued to go to Jerusalem and live in the monasteries there through the tenth and eleventh centuries, but they were the exceptions.4445The Byzantine capture of Antioch was in effect the conquest of a foreign land. The term ‘Byzantine’ is effectively a modern label. The Byzantine conquerors of Syria would have described themselves as ‘Romans’ and their empire as the ‘Roman empire’. Unlike its former Persian rival, the Roman empire of the pre-Islamic period did manage to survive the catastrophes of the seventh century, but it faced the hard task of adjusting to severely reduced circumstances. The Romans on the Bosporus responded by reinventing themselves as a New Israel, a chosen people, whose embattled circumstances were a paradoxical proof of God’s favour. Like the Jews they were punished for their sins because God cared about them.4456In the early seventh century the real Jerusalem in Palestine was still a key part of the imagined world of the Constantinopolitan Romans; its loss to the Persians in 614 a profound shock; its recovery and the restoration of the True Cross in 630 an occasion of maximum symbolic significance.4467But then it disappeared, or rather Constantinople became the new Jerusalem, Hagia Sophia the new Temple, the emperor the new Solomon.4478In the imperial palace were to be found all the central relics of Christ’s passion, including the True Cross, while the city itself became the focus for a new eschatology that made Constantinople rather than Jerusalem the principal setting for a future cosmic drama that would usher in the end of the 43

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Ibrahīm ibn Yuh.anna, ‘La vie du patriarche melkite d’Antioche Christophore (†  967) par le protospathaire Ibrahīm b.  Yuhanna: Document inédit du Xe siècle’, ed. and trans. H.abīb Zayat, Proche-Orient chrétien 2 (1952), 19, 25–27, 31, 333, 337–39, 343. Alice-Mary Talbot, ‘Byzantine Pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century’, in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 98 (Louvain, 2001), pp. 97–110. Whittow, Making of Orthodox Byzantium, pp. 96–138, 162–64. Cyril Mango, ‘The Temple Mount, AD 614–638’, in Bayt al-Maqdis: ‘Abd al-Malik’s Jerusalem, ed. Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992– 99), 1: 1–16. Gilbert Dagron, Constantinople imaginaire: Études sur le recueil des ‘Patria’ (Paris, 1984), pp. 303–9.

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world. The city would stand siege by the Antichrist, and when the earth was flooded only the tip of Constantine’s column in the forum would stand above the waters as the Virgin Mary took the righteous gathered in the city up to heaven.4489 This was not a world view that left much room for the empire’s former territories now under Muslim rule. The Life of St Andrew the Fool, which includes a lengthy exposition of these events to come, is barely interested in Jerusalem: its geographical scope is essentially that of the seventh- to tenth-century empire, confined to the Balkans and Asia Minor.5490Even more striking is the lack of interest in Jerusalem and the Holy Land shown by the historian Leo the Deacon. Leo’s History covers the reigns of Nikephoros II Phokas (963–69) and John I Tzimiskes (969–76). This was a period when Byzantine armies reappeared in the Levant for the first time in over 300 years, and one might have expected much to be made of the Christian significance of the Holy Land. Yet Leo, who was a welleducated member of the palace clergy, does not mention Jerusalem at all; Palestine only appears in passing, and then in a context which shows that Leo has mistaken its location, and believes it to lie in southern Syria, east of Mount Lebanon.5501The one text that does appear to make something of this return to the Holy Land, a letter sent by the Emperor John Tzimiskes to the Armenian King Ashot III and copied (apparently genuinely) by Matthew of Edessa, writing in the early twelfth century, in fact confirms the impression of Byzantine disinterest.5512After telling Ashot how he has removed the relics of St James from Nisibis, he goes on to describe at some length his victories in Syria and the submission of Damascus. Only then does the letter mention the Holy Land: Going forth from there [Damascus], we went to the Sea of Galilee, where our Lord Jesus Christ had performed a miracle with one hundred and fiftythree fish. We were intent on laying siege to the town of Tiberias also, but the townspeople came in submission to our imperial majesty… We left them free of enslavement and did not plunder them because the region was the 48

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Stephane Yerasimos, ‘Apocalypses Constantinopolitaines’, Critique 543–44 (1992), 609–24. The Life of St Andrew the Fool, ed. Lennart Rydén, 2 vols (Uppsala, 1995), 2: 258–93; Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (London, 1980), pp. 207–11. The History of Leo the Deacon, ed. and trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis Sullivan (Washington, 2005), p. 120 n. 86. Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the Crusades, 10th-12th Centuries: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, trans. Ara Edmond Dostourian (Lanham, NY, 1993), pp. 28–33.

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native land of the holy apostles. We felt the same way about Nazareth… We also went to Mount Tabor and climbed up to the place where Christ our God was transfigured. While we remained in the place, people came to us from Ramla and Jerusalem to beseech our imperial majesty, looking for compassion from us. They asked that a commander be appointed over them and become tributary to us, swearing to serve us; all of these things we did. We also were intent on delivering the Holy Sepulchre of Christ our God from the bondage of the Muslims.5523

After this, the emperor’s letter moves on, and Jerusalem is not mentioned again. Even in the section quoted above, Jerusalem is hardly the focus of attention, and the mention of the Holy Sepulchre reads as an afterthought. John Tzimiskes’ intention to deliver the Holy Sepulchre had no immediate consequence, but the announcement to Ashot III must indicate at least a secondary strand in imperial propaganda, which may have been intended to appeal to the Armenian king. That and the novel presence of imperial armies in the Dar al-Islam would explain why the Christian community in Jerusalem became a focus for anti-Byzantine violence in the late tenth and early eleventh century, culminating in 1009 when the Fāt.imid Caliph al-H.akim ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre. That event, rather than long-standing interest, should in turn explain Byzantine involvement in the rebuilding of the church and the emperor’s new role as a protector of the Church in Jerusalem. Much of the initial work was actually carried out on local initiative, and had been begun as early as 1012, only three years after its destruction, but negotiations between the Emperor Romanos  III Argyros and the Caliph al-Z. āhir in 1027/28 involved a Byzantine commitment to restore the Holy Sepulchre, and after the final treaty between Michael IV and the Caliph al-Mustans.ir was concluded in 1037/38, this was put into effect. Under the circumstances no treaty between Byzantium and the Fāt.imids could have failed to involve Jerusalem. At the least the emperor was bound to contribute to the rebuilding and to play a notional role as protector of Jerusalem’s Christian community, but such diplomatic manoeuvres do not demonstrate any fundamental change in attitude to the real Jerusalem.5534 When one considers how important these regions had been as recently as the early seventh century  — ideologically, economically, 52 53

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Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the Crusades, p. 30. Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Stroud, 1999), pp.  74–81; Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1993–2007), 3: 11–12; cf.  Robert Ousterhout, ‘Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 48 (1989), 66–78.

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politically  — then this disinterest is a remarkable change. Byzantium had turned in upon itself. It was no more interested in the West. To go beyond Pirenne’s specific point, the Muslim conquests had not only split the Mediterranean between the Dar al-Islam and Christendom, but they had also caused what survived of the Roman empire to withdraw into itself too. What we call Byzantium was, of course, the Roman empire, but to call this empire ‘Byzantine’ rather than ‘Roman’ serves to clarify an important distinction in outlook. ‘Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would have probably never existed’, but Byzantium too was a product of the same seismic shift. Only in the West did past perspectives survive. Saying this is not to make a point about there being more contact between the Latin West and either Islam or Byzantium in the early Middle Ages than is generally appreciated. Michael McCormick makes the case in Origins of the European Economy, and he is probably right, but in this context it makes little difference.5545If Pirenne underestimated the volume of trade and travellers between East and West in the eighth and ninth century then he did not err by much, and in any case the important point here is not about economics but rather about outlooks and perceptions. Past perspectives survived in the Latin West not through knowledge of the eastern Mediterranean, but through ignorance. Because the Latin West had so little direct experience of the eastern Mediterranean, western understanding of the East remained based primarily on the Bible and the Church Fathers, above all Jerome. The East, the Holy Land, and Jerusalem were not strange but part of a familiar imagined landscape, ingrained by Christian texts, liturgy, and images. Eastern Christians were similarly exposed, but whereas in the Dar al-Islam and Byzantium these spaces had acquired new meanings, in the West they had not. One of the most striking examples of this outlook is Adomnán’s De locis sanctis, composed on the island of Iona between 680 and 700.5556 Adomnán presents the work as a faithful record of what he had been told by a traveller who had actually been to the Holy Land: The holy bishop Arculf, a Gaul by race, expert in his knowledge of various distant regions and a truthful and completely reliable witness, stayed for nine months in the city of Jerusalem, making daily visits to the holy places. In response to my careful enquiries, he dictated to me, Adomnán, this faithful and accurate record of all his experiences which is to be set out 54 55

McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 778–98. Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. Denis Meehan (Dublin, 1983). For the date, see Thomas O’Loughlin, ‘The View from Iona: Adomnán’s Mental Maps’, Peritia 10 (1996), 98–122 (here 98).

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below. I first wrote it down on wax tablets; it will now be written down in a short text on parchment.5567

But, as the Abbé François Chatillon pointed out more than fifty years ago, and Thomas O’Loughlin has since argued in generally convincing detail, this can be no more than a literary fiction.5578Not everyone agrees, and it is true that some details in Adomnán’s account may be most easily explained as recent news from the East, but the idea of the De locis sanctis being a coherent and sustained eyewitness account, still less one dictated by an implausible passing bishop, does not stand up to scrutiny.5589De locis sanctis is a work of scriptural exegesis, inspired by Augustine’s injunction in De doctrina christiana that a knowledge of places and things was essential 56 57

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Adomnán, De locis sanctis, pp. 36–37. François Chatillon, ‘Arculfe a-t-il réellement existé?’, Revue du Moyen Âge latin 23 (1967), 134–36. O’ Loughlin has written extensively on this topic. Thomas O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007) brings all the strands together in one place, but a number of his articles add important details, and cumulatively offer a stronger case: see ‘Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining “the Most Famous City”’, Proceedings of the British Academy 175 (2012), 15–40; ‘De locis sanctis as a Liturgical Text’, in Adomnán of Iona: Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker, ed. Jonathan Wooding (Dublin, 2010), pp. 181–92; ‘Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland: Martyrium, Exegetical Key, Relic and Liturgical Space’, Ériu 54 (2004), 125–37; ‘Adomnán and Arculf: The Case of the Expert Witness’, Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1997), 127–46; ‘The View from Iona’, pp. 98–122; ‘The Exegetical Purpose of Adomnán’s De locis sanctis’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 24 (1992), 37–53. The case for the reality of ‘Arculf ’ has recently been put with varying degrees of conviction by John Tolan, ‘Le pèlerin Arculfe et le roi Mavias: La circulation des informations à propos des “Sarrasins” aux VIIe-VIIIe siècles, de Jérusalem à Iona et Yarrow’, in Passages: Déplacements des hommes, circulation des textes et identités dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Joëlle Ducos and Patrick Henriet (Toulouse, 2013), pp.  175–85; Robert Hoyland and Sarah Waidler, ‘Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the Seventh-Century Near East’, The English Historical Review 129 (2014), 793–99; and David Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the Mosque on the Temple Mount’, Ériu 66 (2016), 179–90 but these fail to convince. See too the restatement of the sceptical case by Lawrence Nees, ‘Insular Latin Sources: “Arculf ” and Early Islamic Jerusalem’, in Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Essays on Medieval Europe in Honor of Daniel  F. Callahan, ed. Michael Frassetto, Matthew Gabriele, and John Hosler (Leiden, 2014), pp.  81–100; Lawrence Nees, Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem (Leiden, 2016), pp. 33–57.

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for a proper interpretation of the Bible. It is based on Adomnán’s reading of Jerome, Eucherius, Hegesippus, Iuvencus, and Isidore of Seville, and above all on his creative and ingenious reading of Scripture. To those materials Adomnán quite likely did add pieces of information that came from recent observers, but they are only a very small part of the whole, they have been thoroughly transformed through Adomnán’s exegetical pen, and how they reached him can only be guessed at. Although it cannot ultimately be proved, it is hard to escape the conclusion that it was only Augustine’s stress on the importance of eyewitness testimony that prompted the creation of ‘Arculf ’. Adomnán’s Palestine is an imagined space of huge importance. It is the centre of the world, a proof of Christ’s resurrection, and a key to God’s purposes as set out in the Bible. It is, however, also a real place. In fact, that is essential to its significance. The Holy Land exists, and exists in real time. Adomnán is aware for example that it is now ruled by ‘the king of the Saracens called Mavias’, that Mavias is not a Christian, and that the infidel Saracens have built a new structure on the Temple Mount.6590But in all other respects this is still a Christian land. Adomnán’s Palestine exists in a curious limbo between the reality of the Bible and the reality of the present day.6601The Arab conquests have happened but nothing important has changed. For Adomnán, and more generally for the imagined world of the early Middle Ages, Pirenne’s thesis did not apply. In that sense the men and women of the West still lived in the undivided world of Late Antiquity. Adomnán’s little book spoke to a whole strand in the culture of the Latin West. He gave a copy to Aldfrith, king of Northumbria (d. 704/5), who, according to Bede, had it copied for lesser people to read. Bede (who felt the need to add some circumstantial detail about how a bishop on his way from Rome to Gaul ended up on Iona) in turn produced his own De locis sanctis, which is effectively an edited version of Adomnán’s work that further emphasises the Christianity of ’Umayyad Palestine.6612 In both versions the text spread over Latin Europe. By the ninth century Bede’s book was a standard school text of the Carolingian renaissance, 59

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Hoyland and Waidler, ‘Adomnán’s De locis sanctis’, pp.  793–99; cf.  Thomas O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest’, in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. Robert Swanson, Studies in Church History, 36 (2000), p. 81. Kathryn Blair Moore, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through Renaissance (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 7, 40. Calvin B. Kendall, ‘Bede and Islam’, in Bede and the Future, ed. Peter Darby and Faith Wallis (Farnham, 2014), pp. 93–114 (here 100–1).

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influencing and chiming with a perception of Jerusalem and the Holy Land that characterized an age.6623Its churches, filled with relics from the East, constantly reminded of these places in the daily liturgy, Latin Europe was far more familiar with Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Galilee, the Red Sea, and Nazareth, than places in Spain, Sicily, or the Balkans that are now parts of the ‘West’. In the imagination the Mediterranean remained whole; it was if Muh.ammad had never happened.

East and West in the Age of the Crusades At the end of the eleventh century the three worlds of Islam, Byzantium, and the Latin West came into new and closer contact. What has come to be known as the First Crusade was preached by Pope Urban II at Clermont in November 1095 and the Latins captured Jerusalem a little under four years later, in July 1099. In its wake four Latin states were created, three of which survived in the Levant through to the late thirteenth century.6634 The expedition was in many ways an obvious outcome of what has been described above. The Latin West knew little about the East, but imagined the Levant as a familiar world. Rather curiously, while there is a huge literature and an on-going lively debate about what motivated Latin Christians to take part in the First Crusade, historians have tended to treat the contemporary fact of French warriors heading for Spain or southern Italy as simply an unproblematic aspect of the expansion of Europe. Perhaps because these areas are now part of Europe it seems natural that Latin Christians should rule there, whereas the same process in an area that is now part of the Muslim world seems exotic and proto-colonial. In fact, the reverse was really the case. Westerners knew and thought little about Spain, Apulia, and Sicily. Their conquest was that of strange lands, whereas that of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, as the liturgy celebrated each year on the anniversary of the city’s conquest emphasised, was a deliverance, a liberation, a restoration, a homecoming.6645 Raymond of Aguilers’ near-contemporary account of the conquest of Jerusalem celebrates all these themes; so too does Fulcher of Chartres, the whole of whose Historia Hierosolymitana may be seen as celebration

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Moore, Architecture of the Holy Land, pp. 40–52. Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A  New History of the Crusades (London, 2006), pp. 58–211. Amnon Linder, ‘The Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem’, Mediaeval Studies 52 (1990), 110, 114, 128–30.

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of this homecoming.6656Histories of the conquests of Spain, Apulia, and Sicily were inevitably dealing with places unfamiliar to anything other than a local readership. Palermo, Cordoba, or Bari meant nothing to Latin Christians. Few would have recognized the names. Fulcher, on the other hand, could talk of an expedition to Arabia or Tyre, with the knowledge that his readers would experience a thrill of recognition:6667 We who were occidentals have now become orientals. He who was Roman or Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to us or not mentioned any more.6678

This famous passage turns upon the fact that Galilee and Palestine, Tyre and Antioch are places that the reader will recognize as biblical place names, and will feel are rightly part of the Christian’s birthright. For the inhabitants of the Dar al-Islam the arrival of the Latins was a complete surprise.6689Through the tenth and eleventh centuries there had been increasing numbers of pilgrims coming to the East, but there had been nothing to prepare them for Latin conquest and settlement.7690 The Seljuk Turks who overran the region in the 1060s were just as alien, but they did not come with the belief that this was their home. The only Muslim power that seems not to have been utterly surprised was the Fāt.imid regime in Egypt, and then only because Cairo misunderstood what was happening. Before the Seljuk conquest of the Levant the region had been divided between the Byzantines in the north and the Fāt.imids in the centre and south. Antioch had been the Byzantine capital; Damascus the Fāt.imid. For both powers the unexpected death of the Seljuk Sultan Malik Shāh in 1092 and the civil wars that followed appeared to offer an opportunity for a restoration of the old order. There is some evidence that the Fāt.imids and the Byzantines had been in contact, and that Cairo took the Latins to be a Byzantine army, recruited, as the emperor’s armies were, from non-Byzantine mercenaries, and sent to cooperate with the 65

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Raymond of Aguilers, Le Liber de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. John Hill and Laurita Hill (Paris, 1969), p. 151; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmayer, (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 305–6. Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, pp. 370–84, 698–705. Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, p. 748. Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), p. 69. Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West (Oxford, 2005), pp. 139–46; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, pp. 49–50.

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Fāt.imids. The Egyptian embassy that came to the crusader camp in front of Antioch early in 1098 seems to have learnt nothing to alter this impression. In July 1098 the Fāt.imids reoccupied Jerusalem, from where they had been expelled in 1071. Still thinking in terms of shared interest and cooperation, they offered the Latins easy access to the holy city as pilgrims, and assumed that this would suit the Franks as it had the Byzantines before them. It was not until May 1099, only a few weeks before the Latins began the siege of Jerusalem, that Cairo realized its mistake. By then it was far too late to send a relief army to the rescue.7701 The Komnenian regime in Constantinople, on the other hand, was anything but surprised. Indeed, its policy was based upon an appreciation that the Latins would see the East as part of a common Christian homeland. Our only detailed Greek source for these events, the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, denies Byzantine involvement in the origins of the crusade, but over recent years it has become clear that this was not true. We know that Alexios had sent an embassy to the pope at the council of Piacenza in March 1095 asking for military assistance; there is good evidence that by this date he was consciously using the lure of Jerusalem to attract Latin warriors to his service; and it is possible that Peter the Hermit was part of a Byzantine scheme to raise an army for service in the East.7712None of this is mentioned by Anna, who treats the crusade as a bolt from the blue that her father had 70

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Michael Brett, The Fatimid Empire (Edinburgh, 2017), pp.  233–37; Michael Brett, ‘The Muslim Response to the First Crusade’, in Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade, ed. Susan Edgington and Luis García-Guijarro Ramos (Turnhout, 2014), pp.  219–34; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, pp. 42–47; John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 165–66, 211, 251–53, 325–26, 357–58; Michael Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge zwischen fränkischen und islamischen Herrschern im Vorderen Orient (Berlin, 1991), pp. 1–72. Jonathan Shepard, ‘Cross-Purposes: Alexius Comnenus and the First Crusade’, in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 118–21; Jonathan Shepard, ‘Aspects of Byzantine Attitudes and Policy towards the West in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in Byzantium and the West, c. 850–c. 1200, ed. James Howard-Johnston (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 102– 17; Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 82–83; Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (London, 2012); Peter Frankopan, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081–c. 1100)’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1998); cf.  Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204, trans. J. C. Morris and Jean E. Ridings (Oxford, 1993), pp. 1–3.

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managed with dexterous political skill. Anna was writing in the 1140s, by when it had become obvious that the consequences of the expedition to Jerusalem and the creation of the crusader states posed serious problems for the empire. Her political standing turned upon the implication that she, rather than her brother and nephew, was Alexios’ real political heir.772 She therefore had an obvious motive to hide her father’s Latin policy that had created this situation; however, rather than deliberate deceit, it is more likely that Anna herself knew no better.7734How serious a mistake the crusade had been was obvious enough by 1099, and her information would simply be the story as already presented by imperial propaganda in Alexios’ lifetime.7745Anna’s account may perhaps best be read as an innocent repetition of a deception concocted much closer to the events. Alexios’ motives for looking to the West are obvious enough. The loss of Anatolia and the eastern capital of Antioch in the 1070s had been genuine disasters, but they had a silver lining for the Komnenian regime in that most of their potential rivals had had estates and clients in the East, and the effect of the Turkish conquests was to render them largely impotent. The Norman and steppe nomad threats to the Balkans had been genuine priorities in the 1080s, but even after the Pecheneg defeat at Lebounion in 1091 there was no haste to launch a reconquest of Anatolia. A successful eastern campaign might, paradoxically, do more to threaten than reinforce the regime’s domination of Byzantine politics, and could provide an aristocratic rival with exactly the sort of military opportunity that Alexios had exploited in the 1081 coup that had brought him to power. These calculations altered with the Turkish conquest of the west coast and the

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Paul Magdalino, ‘The Pen of the Aunt: Echoes of the Mid-Twelfth Century in the Alexiad’, in Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson (New York, 2000), pp. 15–43; Penelope Buckley, The Alexiad of Anna Komnene: Artistic Strategy and the Making of a Myth (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 195–214. A point that stands even if one accepts the case made by Leonora Neville, Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian (New York, 2016), pp. 141–74 that Anna was not motivated either by ambition or hatred of her brother. Peter Frankopan, ‘Perception and Projection of Prejudice: Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade’, in Gendering the Crusades, ed. Susan  B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (Caerdydd, 2001), p.  62; Jonathan Shepard, ‘“Father” or “Scorpion”? Style or Substance in Alexios’s Diplomacy’, in Alexios I Komnenos I: Papers, ed. Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe, Belfast Byzantine3 Texts and Translations, 4.1 (Belfast, 1996), pp. 70–76.

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consequent threat to what had hitherto been secure imperial territory.7756 The picture is complicated by Anna Komnene’s confused narrative of the career of Çaka, a Turkish amir who by the early 1090s had carved out a substantial lordship in western Asia Minor. It is usually inferred from Anna that this threat had been ended by John Doukas’ campaigns in 1092 and Çaka’s murder at the hands of his Seljuk rival, Kiliç Arslan, which has been dated to the following year. But this is a selective reading; none of these dates is secure. Anna may have misdated John Doukas’ campaign and Çaka’s murder. Less likely, the Çaka of 1097 may be a different person of the same name. Less likely still, Anna’s account might be read as meaning that Çaka was only wounded in 1093. What is certain is that Anna’s narrative leaves no doubt that the Aegean mainland, and possibly Chios and Rhodes too, was still in Turkish hands when the crusaders arrived. However Çaka’s career is reconstructed, the threat he posed had evidently not ended in 1092. During the years leading up to the crusade Alexios was faced with a Turkish lordship able to deploy powerful naval forces. Crewed and constructed by the emperor’s former subjects, these warships posed a new threat to the entire Aegean world. Not even Constantinople would be safe, and Alexios had to respond.7767

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Jean-Claude Cheynet, ‘La résistance aux Turcs en Asie Mineure entre Mantzikert et la première croisade’, in Ευψυχια: Mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler, 2 vols, Byzantina Sorbonensia, 16 (Paris, 1998), 1: 134–47. Anna Komnene, Alexiad, ed. Diether Reinsch and Athanasios Kambylis, 2 vols (Berlin, 2001), 1: 222–26, 241, 258–61, 263–65, 335–36; ‘Tzachas/ Chaka, Turkish Emir’, in Prosopography of the Byzantine World, ed. Michael Jeffreys et  al. (London, 2017), http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/pbw2011/entity/ person/108497 (accessed by the editor 7 Feb. 2018); Anna Komnene, Alexiade: Règne de l’empereur Alexis I Comnène (1081–1118), ed. and trans. Bernard Leib, 3 vols (Paris, 1937–45), 2: 242–43; Shepard, ‘“Father” or “Scorpion”?’, p. 89 n. 99; Charles M. Brand, ‘The Turkish Element in Byzantium, Eleventh-Twelfth Centuries’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989), 2–3 and n. 8; Alexis Savvides, ‘O Seltzoúkos emíres tes Smyrnes Tzachás (Çaka) kai oi epidromés sta mikrasiatiká parália, ta nesiá tou anatolikoú Aigaíou kai ten Konstantinoúpole, c.  1081–c.  1106’, Chiaká Chroniká 14 (1982), 9–24; 16 (1984), 51–66; Paul Gautier, ‘Défection et soumission de la Crète sous Alexis Ier Comnène’, Revue des Études Byzantines 35 (1977), 219, 225, 227; Hélène Ahrweiler, Byzance et la mer (Paris, 1966), pp. 184–86. Any judgement will turn on an assessment of Anna Komnene, for which see Frankopan, First Crusade, pp. 9–10, 205–6; to be read with the cautionary comments in Buckley, Alexiad of Anna Komnene, pp. 23–32.

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To do so without arming potential rivals, who included even members of his own family, meant an army of foreign mercenaries, and to this end Alexios turned to the West.7778The empire’s traditional sources of foreign warriors were Armenia, the steppes, Russia, and Scandinavia, but from the 1030s Latins appear in greater numbers.7789The Norman conquest of southern Italy and their invasion of the Balkans may have advertised their qualities, and coming from a world where gold exchanged at a very good rate against silver, they may well have seemed good value for what they had to be paid in Byzantine gold coin.8790The experience of Robert Guiscard’s conquest of southern Italy where the Normans had also started off as Byzantine mercenaries, and of Bohemond’s invasion of the Balkans in the first half of the 1080s, must have taught caution, but the emperor seems to have been convinced that they could be managed. Well-rewarded they could be loyal, and he may have drawn the conclusion from the Norman invasion of the Balkans that if they were not employed by the emperor then they would be more likely to join his enemies. With the conquest of Sicily effectively complete, ambitious lords such as Bohemond were looking for new fields to conquer, and they needed to be kept busy. But there was more to the employment of Latins than simply the Normans. Alexios had become aware that Latin warriors would come to the East on their way to visit the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Some of these men seem to have defrayed the costs of their journey by spending a period in the emperor’s service. A short text from the abbey of Cormery in the Loire valley describes a Latin force doing exactly this.8801From Alexios’ perspective, however foreign the Latins might actually appear, the fact that they had preserved a late antique sense of a Christian world that included Constantinople, Anatolia, and the Levant made them a far more likely prospect for mass recruitment than any potential alternative. In the tenth century, Emperor Leo VI had observed that one of the strengths of the Muslim world was its ability to tap warriors who would 77

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Peter Frankopan, ‘Kinship and the Distribution of Power in Komnenian Byzantium’, The English Historical Review 122 (2007), 29. Jonathan Shepard, ‘The Uses of the Franks in Eleventh-Century Byzantium’, in Anglo-Norman Studies  XV, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 275–305. Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988), p. 51. Shepard, ‘Cross-Purposes’, pp.  116–22; Jonathan Shepard, ‘“How St  James the Persian’s Head was Brought to Cormery”: A  Relic Collector around the Time of the First Crusade’, in Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie: Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, ed. Lars M. Hoffmann (Wiesbaden, 2005), pp. 287–335.

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come to the frontiers of Islam to fight for the faith.8812Alexios’ contacts with Latins serving in his armies through the 1080s and early 1090s and the discovery that these westerners saw Jerusalem in some sense as their rightful homeland seems to have persuaded him that in the West lay the solution to imperial problems. Very quickly, however, Alexios’ western policy came to appear a dangerous mistake. To begin with all had seemed well. The appeal to the West produced a large response. The first arrivals, insufficiently disciplined and unlucky, were defeated by the Turks in Bithynia, barely across the Bosphorus, but the forces that followed proved more effective. With their help Alexios managed to recover the important fortified city of Nicaea, and when they had defeated the former Turkish ruler of Nicaea and his Danişmendid allies at Dorylaeum, western Anatolia was left open to a Byzantine reconquest. Meanwhile, the Latins pressed on to Antioch accompanied by a contingent of imperial troops. The siege of Antioch proved expectedly difficult. In early February, the Byzantine contingent was withdrawn, but the emperor continued to support the Latins with supplies from Cyprus, and he was clearly thinking of going to Antioch himself, presumably with a view to ensuring that, like Nicaea, the city ended up in Byzantine hands. In the event Alexios turned round at Philomelion, about 500 kilometres short of his destination. The news from the city was discouraging. Antioch had fallen to the Latins, but the citadel remained in Muslim hands. Two relief armies had already been beaten off, but a third and much larger force was approaching. The crusaders were desperately short of supplies, incapable of standing siege in the city, and now effectively trapped and faced with destruction. Rather than arriving to oversee the restoration of the pre-Seljuk duchy of Antioch, Alexios would be doing nothing more than rescuing a few survivors from a now expendable army. With that in mind he headed back to Constantinople.8823 Unfortunately for the emperor, he had turned back within days of the great Latin victory on 28 June 1098 over the Seljuk relief force commanded by Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul. By abandoning the crusade, Alexios had effectively forfeited his ability to control what followed. Bohemond set himself up as an independent prince of Antioch; Baldwin of Boulogne was already ruling the former Byzantine provincial capital of Edessa as an 81

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Leo  VI, The Taktika of Leo  VI, ed. George  T. Dennis (Washington, 2010), pp. 482–84; John Haldon, A Critical Commentary on the Taktika of Leo VI, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 44 (Washington, 2014), pp. 367–69, 375–76. Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 94–100, 106–22, 124–48; France, Victory in the East, pp. 88–296; Frankopan, First Crusade, pp. 138–72.

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independent county; Jerusalem was made an independent Latin kingdom. The emperor’s attempt to harness the Latin sense of the East as part of a common Christian inheritance had achieved the reconquest of Nicaea and the west coast of Asia Minor, but at the price of a series of new Latin lordships whose founding legends were based on tales of Greek treachery and imperial betrayal. Alexios had inherited hostile Latin neighbours in southern Italy; he had now created more in the East. No wonder that the story told at the Byzantine court when Anna was a teenager stressed that this had been a bolt from the blue in which her father had had no part. Alexios’ decision to turn back at Philomelion was apparently made after meeting a trio of senior deserters from Antioch: Stephen of Blois, Peter Aliphas, and William of Grandmesnil. Stephen (the father of the future king of England of the same name) had been elected as leader of the expedition, and even if that meant no more than presiding over a council of other more powerful lords, his desertion carried a significant message.8834But Alexios may have been more influenced by the opinions of the other two. Peter Aliphas had been part of Robert Guiscard’s invasion of the Balkans in 1081, but since then he had been in the emperor’s service, and he had gone to Antioch with the Byzantine contingent.8845William of Grandmesnil was the son of Hugh of Grandmesnil, whose presence at Hastings and subsequent loyal service to William the Conqueror made him a large fortune. In 1086 Hugh was sheriff of Leicestershire, where he held sixty-seven manors, in addition to extensive property in Nottinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Suffolk. The young William had apparently been high in the king’s favour, to the extent that he was offered the hand of the king’s niece, but he rejected the proposal and set off for Apulia. Like Peter he had taken part in the 1081 invasion, but he had returned to Italy shortly afterwards where he married Robert Guiscard’s daughter Mabel and was granted lands in Calabria. After Robert’s death, William tried to take advantage of the confused conditions to carve out a wider lordship, but in 1093 the attempt ended in defeat, and the confiscation of his lands by the new duke. At this point William and his wife went to Constantinople 83 84

France, Victory in the East, pp. 255–56. Prosopography of the Byzantine World, 2016, http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/ pbw2011/entity/person/156737; Basile Skoulatos, Les personnages byzantines de l’Alexiade: Analyse prospographique et synthèse (Louvain, 1980), pp. 266–68; cf.  Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80), 5: 67, n. 7. This Peter Aliphas presumably had not had his arm cut off in 1081: Anna Komnene, Alexias, 4.6.8, ed. Reinsch, Kambylis, p. 135.

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and entered Alexios’ service, where he did very well, returning to Italy at an unknown date with a great deal of money and a court title.8856 Alexios may also have been encouraged by the fact that Bohemond was still at Antioch. Bohemond was the son of Robert Guiscard, the conqueror of Byzantine southern Italy. In 1081 he had a taken prominent role in the Norman invasion of the Balkans and continued to wage war there until 1083. On his father’s death in 1085, the duchy of Apulia passed to Roger Borsa, Robert’s son by his second marriage to the Lombard, Sichelgaita. Bohemond was well compensated with lands in Apulia and Calabria, but at this point his prospects looked only to be those of a second-ranking political figure. In 1096 when news of the expedition to the East reached him, Bohemond was helping his brother with the siege of Amalfi. Not surprisingly he abandoned the siege and made plans to go to the East.8867Careful work by Jonathan Shepard, more recently reinforced by John Pryor and Michael Jeffreys, has made the convincing case that from this point on the emperor’s former opponent from the 1080s was acting as Alexios’ agent on the expedition, and was intended to play a key role in the restored imperial order in the East.8878It was not until after Philomelion and the victory of 28 June that the emperor discovered he had been duped.

85

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Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, 3: 166, 4: 16, 142, 168, 338; Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, ed. Ernesto Pontieri, 3 vols, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, n.e. 5 (Bologna, 1925–28), 1: 99–101; Syllabus graecarum membranarum, ed. Francesco Trinchera (Napoli, 1865), p.  108 (no. lxxxiii, September 1117: protosebastos); K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Grandmesnil, Hugh de (d. 1098)’, in ODNB, 23: 268; available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14054 (accessed 18 Jul. 2007); Evelyn Jamison, ‘Some Notes on the Anonymi Gesta Francorum, with Special Reference to the Norman Contingent from South Italy and Sicily in the First Crusade’, in Studies in French Language and Literature presented to Professor Mildred K. Pope (Manchester, 1939), pp. 183–208. ‘Bohemond of Taranto’, in Prosopography of the Byzantine World, http:// db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/pbw2011/entity/person/106858 (accessed by the editor 7 Feb. 2018). Bohemond’s career is discussed in detail in Luigi Russo, Boemondo, figlio del Guiscardo e principe di Antiochia (Avellino, 2009); and Jean Flori, Bohémond d’Antioche: Chevalier d’aventure (Paris, 2007). Jonathan Shepard, ‘When Greek Meets Greek: Alexius Comnenus and Bohemond in 1097–98’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 12 (1988), 185– 277; John Pryor and Michael Jeffreys, ‘Alexios, Bohemond, and Byzantium’s Euphrates Frontier: A Tale of Two Cretans’, Crusades 11 (2012), 31–79.

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These three men  — Peter Aliphas, William of Grandmesnil, and Bohemond — exemplify a category of crusader that tends to be overlooked or marginalized by the current consensus about what motivated Latin Christians to head for the East.8889But from Alexios’ point of view these men were typical of the sort of Latins he knew well, and around whom he had constructed his eastern plans. Urban II’s offer of the journey to Jerusalem as a full penance for any confessed sins they had committed may have been an added attraction, but it only made sense within a long-standing predisposition to imagine the East as a familiar part of the Christian world, a place where restless men such as this trio might pursue their ambitions as well as in Apulia, Sicily, Spain, or Britain. Although Alexios’ vision broke down because of his inability or unwillingness to offer the crusaders leadership through to Jerusalem, its success up to that point shows the extent to which it was based on a sound knowledge of the Latins and what motivated them. But even had Alexios pressed on, his policy of bringing East and West together contained within it the seeds of its own failure. Fulcher of Chartres, who has already been mentioned, could write in terms of ‘We who were occidentals have now become orientals’,9890but the reality, already evident by the time he was writing, was that easterners and westerners were not the same. A familiar imagined world was becoming less familiar on closer acquaintance. The brute fact was that the Latins were a small minority whose power and privileges depended upon maintaining their separate and distinct status, differentiated not only from the Muslim inhabitants of Outremer, but from the local Christians too. As the Israeli historian of the crusades, Joshua Prawer, sums up a chapter on local Christians in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem: ‘The first colonial enterprise started out with different notions, but ended by formulating the classical rule of colonialism: never mix with the natives’.9901Recent work has done something to soften this judgement, emphasising the ways in which Latins coexisted and cooperated with their Christian neighbours during the twelfth century.9912 Mixed Latin-local marriages were clearly commonplace, and not just at the level of high diplomacy where three kings of Jerusalem had Byzantine 88

89 90

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Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford, 2006), pp. 24–47 provides a useful summary. Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, p. 748. Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), p. 232. See Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement; Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, 2008); Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 212–40 and references.

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wives. The Cour de la Fonde, the market court, accepted both Latins and Syrians as witnesses, and had a jury made up of four Syrians and two Latins presided over by a Latin.9923Local Christians were employed as scribes, translators, doctors, masons, and light cavalry turcopoles. Local Christian monasteries survived and some, such as the monastery of Mar Sabas, prospered with Latin patronage.9934 The work of Denys Pringle and Ronnie Ellenblum, drawing on a mix of documents, literary sources, and archaeology, has shown that Latin settlement was both more substantial and more widespread than it has generally been portrayed, and to some extent more integrated. The Latins were not just town-dwellers: there were Latin villages too, concentrated in areas which had Christian rather than Muslim populations before 1099.9945There were also mixed villages, such as Cacho or Qāqūn, in the plain of Sharon, which included Latins, local Christians, and Muslims. But Cacho illustrates rather well why this does not alter the fact that the Latins were a separate and exclusive elite. Cacho’s relatively profuse documentation reveals the fact of local Christian inhabitants, but only names the Arabic-speaking interpreter who presence was necessary for the management of the lordship. All the other people named in the documents are Latins.9956Cacho was typical of a world where, other than the Cour de la Fonde, Latins and local Christians had separate courts, separate churches, separate social hierarchies, and in general were divided by a gulf of language and culture. Ellenblum’s conclusion is not far from Prawer’s: ‘The mutual interdependence between local Christians…and Franks…did not change the superior and contemptuous attitude of the Franks towards local Christians’.9967 What emerged in the eastern Mediterranean in the age of the crusades was not a recreation of the unity that Pirenne identified as having been broken by the rise of Islam, but a new era characterized by Latin colonialism. Occidentals did not become orientals, they remained occidentals, whose status as Roman Catholic Latins legitimized in their 92

93 94

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‘Livre des Assises des Bourgeois’, in Les livres des assises et des usages dou reaume de Jérusalem sive Leges et instituta regni hierosolymitani, ed. Heinrich von Kausler, (Stuttgart, 1839), p. 271. Pringle, Churches of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2: 260. Denys Pringle, ‘Towers in Crusader Palestine’, Chateau Gaillard 16 (1992), 335– 50; Denys Pringle, Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom: An Archaeological Gazetteer (Cambridge, 1997); Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 54–63, 119–44. Denys Pringle, The Red Tower (London, 1986), pp. 58–59. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, p.  141; Joshua Prawer, Histoire du royaume Latin de Jérusalem, 2 vols (Paris, 1975), 1: 516–18.

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own eyes their rule over schismatic Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians. The process was reinforced by experience. In the wake of the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 Latin colonial societies appeared throughout the eastern Mediterranean.9978The perception of the East as simply another part of Christendom seemed increasingly outmoded. Christendom’s real boundaries were those of Europe. The East was a different world. Pirenne correctly saw that the events of the seventh century marked a caesura in the history of western Eurasia, but he passed over the fact that in the imagination of the Latin West the unity of the Christian Roman Mediterranean continued for another 500 years. That imagined unity was only broken when the Latins came to rule the East and discovered that they were foreigners in what they had thought to be their homeland. They were westerners in the East. To paraphrase Pirenne: ‘without the Crusades Europe — the Europe of the European Union — would probably never have existed’.

97

Peter Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 266–309; Sally McKee, Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, 2000).

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The Hinge of the Mediterranean H.afs.id Ifrīqiya and Louis IX’s Crusade to Tunis in 1270

Guy Perry

On the front cover of the Peregrine paperback edition of Sir Steven Runciman’s celebrated History of the Crusades, there is a haunting image taken from the Grandes chroniques de France. It depicts the body of the French king and future saint, Louis IX, being taken aboard ship at Tunis at the end of his abortive ‘second crusade’ in 1270. It is well worth pausing to describe the scene in a little more detail. Before the walls of the city, as trumpets sound a funeral dirge, Louis’ coffin, draped in blue with gold fleur-de-lys, is slowly being carried on board, while the whole crusader host — of clergy on the left and laity on the right — looks on in hushed and awed respect.1 The picture does a great deal to encapsulate the pervasive sense of modern scholarship that this expedition is a ‘tragic aberration’ in crusading history — but, in fact, even more than that: a tragic aberration that marks the last time that a leading Western monarch would actually set out, at the head of a great army, to the rescue of the Holy Land. Hence, what we are presented with, in this image, is not just the cortege of a great king and future saint. In a sense, it is nothing less than the funeral of the crusading movement itself. Yet this particular crusade retains the capacity to baffle and infuriate in roughly equal measure. It raises a wide range of questions that still require firm answers. It has to be conceded, of course, that many of these issues have been resolved in Michael Lower’s The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History, which has recently been published.2 1

2

The image itself is derived from the Grandes chroniques de France in MS Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, 5, fol.  287r, courtesy of Snark International. The manuscript can be viewed online at http://demos. biblissima-condorcet.fr/chateauroux/demo/ (accessed 25 Jan. 2018). Michael Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2018).

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 51–69. ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117315

Guy Perry

In many ways, though, the central problem remains the most basic one: why did the expedition go to Tunis in the first place, when the obvious target was Mamlūk Egypt — that is, the power that actually controlled Jerusalem, and which Louis had targeted in his first crusade, almost exactly twenty years earlier? Of course, the simple response is that Tunis was never intended to be the ultimate goal of the campaign. It merely became so because Louis died there, of typhus or dysentery, on 25 August 1270 and, thereafter, the crusade was soon drawn to a premature close, after a mere few months of fighting under the hot North African sun.3 However, this does not explain why it was decided to divert to Tunis in particular, en route to the much bigger task that was looming in the eastern Mediterranean. Until comparatively recently, answers to this question have tended to turn on the vexed matter of how one sees the role of Louis’ brother, Charles of Anjou, also count of Provence, who had become king of Sicily five years earlier as the controversial ‘papal champion’ who had deposed and nearly exterminated the hated house of Hohenstaufen. By then, for almost exactly 150 years, the various Latin Christian rulers of Sicily had regarded that region of Africa just across the straits as part of their natural sphere of influence. In a way, this goes back to the idea that all the territories that had once fallen within the Roman Empire were ripe for ‘reconquest’ — and, in this sense, we need to revise our notions about the frontiers of Latin Europe to take us all the way to the Sahara. The truth is, of course, that no medieval Christian ruler ever got so far. The first king of Sicily, Roger II, had merely managed to create a petty maritime empire in the first half of the twelfth century.4 While this ‘Norman kingdom of Africa’ was long gone by Charles’ day, few of the strategic imperatives that had led to its creation had been substantially altered. Like so many of his predecessors, Charles was looking to construct a Mediterranean empire around his new kingdom — it certainly was not built ‘in a fit of absence of mind’. This was partly a matter of security, since he had so many opponents in the region who proved perfectly capable of rather unpalatable alliances with one another, as and when necessary, in order to bring him down. The most pertinent example is, of course, the accord between the Berbers of North Africa and the pro-Hohenstaufen ‘remnant in exile’ there, which duly gave rise to an invasion of Sicily in 1267, as we 3

4

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For Louis’ ‘martyrdom, agony, and death’, see esp. Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis, trans. Gareth Evan Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), pp. 722–24. For a recent sound guide to the Normans and their rule there in their heyday, see esp. Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 160–80.

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shall see.5 Under such circumstances, it can come as no surprise that it was essential for Charles to gain control of these narrows. This could also serve as a way of trying to stave off the threat of naval raids and piracy, which could be so detrimental to the wealth and trade routes that underpinned Sicilian predominance in the central Mediterranean. In this context, moreover, it is worth underlining the ‘tribute’ that was traditionally paid to the kings of Sicily by the rulers of Tunis and the surrounding region, which had ceased after Charles’ conquest of southern Italy in 1266. When we add into the mix the notion that Charles actually had an accord, of sorts, with the crusade’s designated target, the Egyptian Sultan Baybars, we can see why it was believed for so long that Charles was the cynical ‘evil daemon’ behind the diversion of the crusade to Tunis, perverting his brother’s sacred idealism to serve his own political ends.6 However, it is hard to credit this older view any more. Revision of it goes all the way back to the pioneering work of Richard Sternfeld in the late nineteenth century, but much more recent works have demonstrated, ever more clearly, that Charles’ plans were actually disrupted by his brother’s crusade. The new king’s goals, at the time, were very much clustered in the east — in the former Byzantine sphere — rather than in the south.7 Hence, the key question is no longer whether Charles was the evil spirit behind the diversion of the crusade. Rather, should he still be taken to task for bringing the expedition to an end so quickly — and with such an eye for his own advantage — after his brother’s death? But perhaps the biggest problem with the older view is simply that it draws too hard and fast a distinction between the saintly Louis and his grasping younger brother  — the ‘enfant terrible’ of the family, according to Jacques Le Goff.8 Louis himself was not a pasteboard saint. He was not unaware of prospects of advancement for himself and the Capetian dynasty, which he saw as a beata stirps, the providentially-blessed instruments of the Almighty.9 Moreover, Louis was particularly enthusiastic about the idea 5 6

7

8 9

For more on this, see below, p. 63. For an admirable summary of the historiography, see esp. Michael Lower, ‘Conversion and St  Louis’s Last Crusade’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 58 (2007), 211–31 (here 211–13). For this, see Michael Lower’s ‘Louis  IX, Charles of Anjou and the Tunis Crusade of 1270’, in Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, ed. Thomas  F. Madden, James  L. Naus, and Vincent Ryan (Farnham, 2011), pp.  173–93 (here pp. 175–77). Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 206. For the later development of this concept, see esp. the following principal works in English: Collette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols

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that southern Italy should be ‘made safe for the crusades’: that is, it should take on its true role, as the launchpad from which Frankish Greece and the Holy Land could be succoured.10 It was these two themes together, more than anything else, which had permitted him to overcome his deep-seated scruples about deposing monarchs, and hence had allowed Charles to claim the Sicilian throne in the early to mid-1260s.11 In short, we should not dismiss the notion of Louis wanting to help his brother to sit more securely on his throne, even if it did not fit particularly well with Charles’ own agenda at the time. The fundamental point, of course, is that we need to see the crusade from Louis’ perspective, rather than from Charles’ one. For a start, Lower has neatly dismissed the notion that Louis was deluded about the geographical closeness of Tunis to Egypt (actually well over one thousand miles). The king and his advisors — not to mention the Genoese seacaptains, whose ships they had hired — knew far too much about the Mediterranean for that. Equally, and for much the same reason, we may well doubt whether Louis believed that the Tunisian and the Egyptian courts were far more closely allied than they actually were. Hence, we should not see Louis as stopping off in Tunis to overthrow a close friend and neighbour of the Mamlūks.12 What makes much more sense is to regard Louis as seeking a morale-boosting quick victory on his way out to the eastern Mediterranean. This could perhaps be achieved by setting up a ‘coercive environment’ that, Louis hoped, would push the Tunisian ruler through the door of conversion to Christianity, following longstanding rumours, as we shall see, that he might well be inclined to do so.13 Or, if that failed, a ‘very easy’ conquest of the city and the surrounding region could follow, yielding up spoils and supplies that could then be used for

10

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of Nation in Late Medieval France, ed. Frederic L. Cheyette, trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 181–93; and M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 2008), pp. 197–239. See esp. Jean Richard, Saint Louis: Crusader King of France, ed. S. D. Lloyd, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 260–66. The classic account of Louis’ long struggle with his conscience can be found in Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 56–58, 65–69. See esp. Lower, ‘Conversion and St Louis’s Last Crusade’, pp. 218–20. The phrase comes from Lower, ‘Conversion and St  Louis’s Last Crusade’, p. 225.

The Hinge of the Mediterranean

the main campaign in Egypt.14 Although all of these ideas have recently been explored in some detail, there is another that requires more attention. That is, the initial campaign at Tunis would demonstrate that Louis himself was en route, but it would also allow time for him to co-ordinate forces: above all, with the Mongols, with whom he had long hoped to ally for a joint campaign in the East (and, indeed, he might even succeed in converting them too).15 In other words, there are a large number of potential explanations here, and the jury is still out about which, if any of them, is the key. Perhaps it would be best to conclude, then, that we should see this crusade, primarily, as an act of expiation for Louis’ earlier failure — and that it would begin with a ‘missionary endeavour’ before turning to face the main challenge.16 In some ways, though, the whole ‘Louis or Charles’ debate is an unhelpful cul-de-sac. It has prevented scholars from paying sufficient attention to the territory that, by hook or by crook, became the crusade’s effective target: that is, Tunis and the surrounding region, which contemporary Muslims would have known as H.afs.id Ifrīqiya. In the rest of this paper, I want to show that, by making a start on this, we can not only challenge the idea of the crusade as aberration, but we can also see it as part of an ongoing process which shaped the very conceptualisation and boundaries of Latin Christendom. Finally, I want to show that H.afs.id Ifrīqiya was, in many ways, the ‘hinge of the Mediterranean’ — the place on which it seemed that everything could turn.17 We may start, then, with the central point: the nature and identity of the H.afs.id state. It saw itself as the continuator or heir of the Almoh.ad ­caliphate, which, at its height, stretched from its base in Morocco to encompass most of al-Andalus, and across North Africa to Tripoli and beyond. Abū H.afs. ‘Umar (after whom the H.afs.id dynasty was named) was a Berber chieftain of the Hintāta tribal confederacy, and a protector of the fons et origo of the Almoh.ad movement, the charismatic preacher Muh.ammad ibn Tūmart, who declared himself the Mahdī (or prophesied 14

15

16 17

Adapted from Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s Vita Ludovici noni, trans. in The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, ed. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field, trans. Larry F. Field (Ithaca, NY, 2014), p. 118. A brief discussion of this idea can be found in Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 322–23, but it needs to be developed further. Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 222. Adapting the title of the classic article by Shelomo Dov Goitein, ‘Medieval Tunisia — The Hub of the Mediterranean’, in Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden, 1966), pp. 308–28.

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redeemer of Islam) in the 1120s. It is true that, after Ibn Tūmart’s death in 1130, his successor and the founder of the Almoh.ad ruling dynasty was not Abū H.afs. ‘Umar, but rather another Berber chieftain, ‘Abd al-Mu‘min, who declared himself the caliph (or ‘successor’) not just to Ibn Tūmart, but, indeed, much more broadly — and he was the first non-Arab to do so. Nevertheless, ‘Abd al-Mu‘min and his descendants were obliged to respect and honour the H.afs.ids, treating them as their chief associates. This meant that, when the Almoh.ad project began to run into trouble, it made sense to pass the distant eastern province of Ifrīqiya (‘Africa’, the area around Tunis) into trustworthy H.afs.id hands. The very beginnings of the H.afs.id state can therefore be traced to the appointment of ‘Abd al-Wāhid, the son of Abū H.afs. ‘Umar, as governor of Ifrīqiya in 1207.18 However, the real founder of the H.afs.id state was ‘Abd al-Wāhid’s son, Abū Zakarīya’ Yah.yā (r. 1228–49). At the beginning of his political career, he sided with one particular claimant to the Almoh.ad caliphate, al-Ma’mūn, in order to get himself established at Tunis. A year later, however, the new caliph, seeking to establish his authority on a much broader footing, adopted the high-risk strategy of renouncing Almoh.ad doctrine altogether (that is, above all, the notion of Ibn Tūmart as the Mahdī), massacring the sheikhs of the movement’s old guard.19 While we should not see Abū Zakarīya’ as executing some kind of Machiavellian ‘double coup’, these two events did provide him not only with a powerbase of his own, but also with a good reason to discard the very authority that had put him there. Hence, in the khut. ba (or Friday sermon) given at Tunis in 1229, the identity of the Mahdī, Ibn Tūmart, was proclaimed — followed not, as it should have been, by the name of the reigning Almoh.ad ruler, but, rather, a vague reference to the ‘orthodox caliphs’ who had been loyal to the true faith in the past. Seven or so years later, Abū Zakarīya’ finally felt confident enough to put his own name into the ritual prayer — effectively, a declaration of sovereignty.20 This, though, was merely the end of the beginning. By the mid-1250s, Abū Zakarīya’s son and heir was ready to claim leadership over the entire Almoh. ad movement 18

19

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For a short summary of these events, see Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 87–103. However, this monograph sometimes needs to be treated with caution. For these developments in more detail, see Michael Lower’s superlative article, ‘The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of Thirteenth-Century North Africa’, Speculum 89 (2014), 601–31. For this, see esp. Robert Brunschvig’s classic, La Berbérie orientale sous les H.afs.ides, des origines à la fin du XV siècle, 2 vols (Paris, 1940–47), 1: 21.

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(and hence, by extension, over all ‘true’ Islam), and so took the caliphal title and regnal name of al-Mustans.ir bi-llāh (r. 1249–77).21 It is remarkable just how much this claim to the caliphate has been downplayed and ignored — and, it has to be said, this is especially the case in modern Western scholarship. In such works, al-Mustans.ir is often described as the ‘amir of Tunis’ — sometimes, indeed, he is called the ‘king’ of the city — but rarely, if ever, is he accorded the title of caliph.22 It is only relatively recently that historians have woken up to the fact that we need to take his self-designation seriously, quite apart from the fact that it was accepted, at one time or another, over so much of the Maghrib (or ‘Muslim West’), as we shall see.23 Hence, it is certainly worth underlining the fact that when Louis IX landed at Tunis, just over fifteen years later, he was facing a figure who was claiming to be the rightful head of the entire Muslim world. Even before al-Mustans. ir proclaimed himself caliph, though, the H. afs.ids had achieved some remarkable successes in converting such theoretical self-assertion into reality. The groundwork, of course, had been laid by his father. Having overawed the most powerful chieftains just to the west of his main powerbase in Ifrīqiya, Abū Zakarīya’ was then able to use their warriors to bring about the submission of Yaghmurasan of Tlemcen, the founder (as it proved) of the ‘neighbouring’ Almoh.ad successor-state of the Ziyyānids (sometimes called the ‘Abd al-Wādids).24 As a consequence of this campaign in 1242, cities as far afield as Ceuta and Tangier on the straits of Gibraltar, and Sijilmasa across the Atlas mountains, hastened to acknowledge H.afs.id overlordship. Not long after this, the founders of what was to prove the third main Almoh.ad successor-state, that of the Marīnids in Morocco, were also professing allegiance to Abū Zakarīya’. Hence, by the time of the old amir’s death in 1249, the authority of Ifrīqiya officially extended to encompass ‘the bulk of Almohad North Africa’.25 While much of this suzerainty was comparatively weak and

21 22

23 24 25

See Brunschvig, Berbérie orientale sous les H.afs.ides, 1: 40–41. See, for example, Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, p.  141; David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms: The Struggle for Dominion, 1200–1500 (London, 1997), p. 65; Jean Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1998), p.  195; and Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 222. Below, pp. 58–59. For this, see Brunschvig, Berbérie orientale sous les H.afs.ides, 1: 30–32. Michael Brett, ‘The Maghrib’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick et al., 7 vols (Cambridge, 1995–2005), 5: 627.

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ephemeral, it is worth noting that, as late as 1258, the new Marīnid ruler still thought it advisable to reiterate his submission.26 Such developments were not just confined to north-west Africa, and this adds to the sense that neither Christians nor Muslims, in this period, saw the Mediterranean as much of a barrier: they both had ambitions on either side. Hence, over the course of the 1220s through to the 1260s, H.afs.id suzerainty was also acknowledged in much of what was left of al-Andalus, which was desperately looking to be saved from the forces of the so-called Reconquista. Abū Zakarīya’ sent what little resources he could spare in an attempt to live up to his billing as the saviour of Islam. In 1238, he dispatched a small fleet to protect Valencia but, in the event, it was unable to dock safely, and the city surrendered soon afterwards. Another H.afs.id flotilla was driven off when the great city of Seville was invested, a decade later.27 Although it could therefore be said, with justice, that they did not achieve very much in Spain, the H.afs.ids were widely recognized as one of the key powers underpinning the revolt of the mudejars in Andalusia and Murcia in 1264–66, during which the amir of Granada, Ibn al-Ah.mar, also pledged allegiance to al-Mustans.ir.28 Although much of this is well-known and can be summarized fairly quickly, it is the implications that are important. Building on the perspectives of crusaders like Louis IX himself, it is all too easy to see the latter’s crusade to Tunis in relation to the central Mediterranean and the East (that is, to Egypt and the Holy Land). But as the above brief account has shown, H.afs.id interests and concerns were far more securely anchored in the central and western Mediterranean — that is, in the Maghrib — than they were anywhere else. Indeed, they were the greatest surviving Islamic power there in the period under discussion. Of course, there was a significant eastern dimension to the H.afs.id state as well. Indeed, it is arguable that the highpoint for the dynasty came in the late 1250s, in the wake of the ‘cataclysmic upheaval’ caused by the Mongol invasion of Persia and Syria, their conquest and sack of Baghdad in 1258, and the extinction of the ‘rival’ ‘Abbāsid caliphate, after more than five hundred years.29 In the aftermath of all this, it has been proposed that no less a figure than the sharif of Mecca, and the Mamlūks 26 27

28

29

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Abun-Nasr, History of the Maghrib, p. 120. For a recent short summary of these events in English, see Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (London, 1996), pp. 270–72. For this, see esp. Joseph F. O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait (Philadelphia, 2011), pp. 35–36. The phrase is taken from Abun-Nasr, History of the Maghrib, p. 120.

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in Egypt, briefly recognized al-Mustans.ir as the rightful caliph (admittedly, in default of anyone better).30 However, David Ayalon has suggested that the Mamlūks’ use of the phrase amir al-mu’minin (‘commander of the Faithful’), should be regarded as nothing more than a diplomatic courtesy.31 Whatever the truth on this particular point, al-Mustans.ir’s ‘moment in the sun’, as the one and only caliph in the Islamic world, did not last for very long. The new Mamlūk sultan, Baybars al-Bunduqdārī, quickly installed a pet ‘Abbāsid of his own as caliph, perhaps pointedly ensuring that he, too, took the same regnal name of al-Mustans.ir. Moreover, following the logic of Egyptian power and influence over the H.ijaz, Mecca hastily followed suit and recognized this caliph as well.32 Hence, there is every reason to concur with the standard assessment that the relationship between Tunis and Cairo, in the run-up to the crusade, was not very good. But it is worth stressing that the two could certainly pull together in the face of a common threat — and this rather conflicts with the current notion that they were so far apart, geographically, that they could not have much impact upon one another. When Baybars heard that the impending crusade had stopped en route at Tunis, he wrote to al-Mustans.ir urging him to hold out and promising to send auxiliaries. Indeed, he took preliminary steps to do so, asking the local Bedouin to prepare wells for the army’s passage, and to attend to its other needs. When the danger evaporated, however, as a result of Louis’ death, relations quickly returned to the usual hostility. At the end of 1271, Baybars received an embassy from Tunis which, in his view, was lacking in due deference. In reply, he did not pull his punches, savagely criticizing alMustans.ir for his supposed ‘cowardice’ in the face of the crusaders and asserting that a man such as he was unworthy to rule over the Muslims. The contrast with Baybars himself, the victorious champion of Islam, did not need to be stressed.33 However, there is a paradox lurking here, which can bring us close to the heart of this paper. So much of the growth in the Islamic sphere was built on the profits of trade with the maritime powers of the Latin West. These powers were interested in the Maghrib for a wide range of 30 31

32

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Brett, ‘Maghrib’, p. 631. David Ayalon, ‘Studies on the Transfer of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate from Baġdād to Cairo’, in Studies on the Mamlūks of Egypt (1250–1517) (London, 1977), p. 56. See esp. Peter Thorau, The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, trans. P. M. Holt (London, 1992), pp. 110–19. Ayalon gives a different rationale for the choice of the name: ‘Transfer of the Caliphate’, pp. 56–57. See Thorau, The Lion of Egypt, pp. 203–4, 209.

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reasons, ranging from leather, wool, and ceramics to the gold dust that was transported by the caravan routes across the Sahara.34 Although it might seem inappropriate for such a hard-line Islamic power, even the Almoh.ads had grasped the necessity of making trade agreements with the Italian mercantile communes. What is more, the effective independence of H.afs.id Ifrīqiya, and its rulers’ need for ready cash, had led to the expansion of these ties. Commercial accords were made with Genoa, Pisa, and Venice in the 1230s, confirming their right to settle and trade in the principal H.afs.id ports.35 By the late thirteenth century, certainly, there was a large and vibrant Genoese community in Tunis, for example, which David Abulafia has described in his own inimitable style as comprised of: ‘merchants, soldiers, priests and fallen women, who took great pride in their tavern, filled with wine, from which even the [H.afs.id caliph] was happy to draw taxes’.36 However, there was hot competition for market share across North Africa. Moreover, rivalry could easily end in violence, such as when a Genoese fleet managed to blockade a Pisan flotilla in the harbour of Bougie and did tremendous damage in the process.37 What is more, rivals to the Italians were beginning to appear on the scene, most notably the Provençals and the Aragonese and Catalans (perhaps best described as the ‘Arago-Catalans’). While the Provençals may have had something of a slow start, they probably thought that their moment had come when their count, Charles of Anjou, became king of Sicily too. In this context, it is well worth noting a possible backdrop to Louis IX’s crusade to Tunis, suggested by the great Islamic polymath Ibn Khaldūn, writing in the late fourteenth century. Ibn Khaldūn explains that Louis decided to target Tunis because the caliph had refused to pay various debts that were owed to French (Provençal?) merchants by alMustans.ir’s tax collector, ‘Abd al-Abbās al-Luylāni, whom the caliph had

34

35

36

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See esp. Dominique Valérian, ‘Frontières et territoire dans le Maghreb de le fin du Moyen Age: Les marches occidentales du sultanat hafside’, Correspondances 73 (2002–03), 3–8. The treaties themselves can be found in Traités de paix et de commerce et documents divers concernant les relations des chrétiens avec les Arabes de l’Afrique septentrionale au moyen âge, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie, 2 vols (Paris, 1866–72), 1: 31–35, 115–18, 196–99, 2: 72–76. David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A  Human History of the Mediterranean (London, 2011), pp. 298–99. See Georges Jehel, L’Italie et la Maghreb au Moyen Age: Conflits et échanges du VIIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 2001), p. 58.

The Hinge of the Mediterranean

executed.38 However, what was by far more ominous for the future of the central Mediterranean was the emerging role of the Arago-Catalans. It is reasonable to infer that early Arago-Catalan efforts to make a treaty with Abū Zakarīya’ failed because the latter considered himself the protector of the Muslims of al-Andalus. Nevertheless, already by the 1250s, Tunis had an Arago-Catalan funduq (or trade warehouse) to go alongside its Italian ones, which swiftly proved its value to the crown of Aragon-Catalonia. In 1259, King James I, the ‘Conqueror’ of Valencia, summarily tripled the funduq’s rent, and, towards the end of his life, he sent an envoy to Tunis to find out why several years’ worth was still in arrears.39 In short, by the late 1260s, Ifrīqiya had become a locus for European commercial rivalries, and especially the growing one between the Arago-Catalans and Angevins. Again, the prime connection is to the central and western Mediterranean, rather than to the East. This commercial penetration was part of a wider process in which H.afs.id Ifrīqiya was becoming ever more bound up with the Latin West and its politics. Indeed, the caliph even received an embassy from a ruler as far-flung as the king of Norway, Magnus VI Haakonsson, in 1262–63.40 But such connections were not always to Ifrīqiya’s own advantage, as can perhaps be seen most clearly when we turn to examine the so-called ‘Sicilian tribute’. While the Sicilians may well have regarded it as such, pure and simple, the H.afs.ids presented it, to their own subjects, as the payment for a permanent exportation license, ensuring that grain could be transported to North Africa at any time.41 It would be fair to observe, though, that there has been a curiously inverse relationship between how much this tribute is discussed in modern scholarship, and the amount of serious research that has been done on it. I would like to tentatively suggest, then, that the old ‘Norman’ tribute was first reimposed on Ifrīqiya in the aftermath of the great Muslim revolt in Sicily in 1189–1223. Having suppressed the revolt by deporting most of the island’s Muslims to the colony of Lucera, the Holy Roman emperor and king of Sicily, Frederick II, 38

39

40

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Ibn Khaldūn, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique septentrionale, ed. Paul Casanova, trans. William de Slane, 4 vols (Paris, 1925– 56), 2: 359–62. For this, see esp. Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, de la bataille de Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) à l’avènement du sultan márinide Abou-l-Hazzan (1331) (Paris, 1966), pp. 133–56, 311–36. For this embassy in context, see O’Callaghan’s remarks in Gibraltar Crusade, pp. 17, 31. See the brief summary in Richard, Saint Louis, p. 321.

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then finished off the campaign by raiding the island of Djerba, just off the North African coast.42 Although it is not clear how frequently the tribute was paid thereafter, evidently it was sufficient to persuade Frederick and his Hohenstaufen successors, up to and including his illegitimate son, King Manfred, that it was better not to kill the goose that was so obligingly laying golden eggs. Relations between Tunis and Sicily therefore remained surprisingly good all the way down to Manfred’s overthrow, by Charles of Anjou, in 1266. However, the Sicilians did not have the field to themselves. Above all, they had Iberian rivals for influence in the region. Most ominous for the future, once again, was the emerging role of the Arago-Catalans, who soon came to match the Sicilians in many respects. By the 1250s, al-Mustans.ir even had a sort of ‘Praetorian guard’ of Arago-Catalan mercenaries in his service. It is worth noting that the Arago-Catalan king appointed the guard’s commander and received back a proportion of the salaries. This was said to be worth some 20,000 bezants a year — and hence, like the Sicilian export license, it could certainly be regarded as tribute.43 This, along with the influx of refugee Andalusis into al-Mustans.ir’s government, could well have played a major part in the abortive revolt against the new amir which broke out in 1250.44 Yet it is important to observe that none of the above developments can be regarded as peculiarly Ifrīqiyan. It is a telling sign of the times — and one that does a lot to mark out the Islamic West from the East — that Maghribi rulers were quite prepared to employ excess Spanish soldiery, from the ‘society organised for war’, to help settle their differences with their fellow Muslims.45 For further evidence of this, one only needs to glance at the role of Castile, which had been intermittently active in the North African sphere ever since the very beginning of the H.afs.ids’ effective independence in 1229–30. During those years, as we have seen, Abū Zakarīya’s sometime ally, the Almoh.ad claimant al-Ma’mūn, established himself at Marrakesh. However, this was achieved, at least in part, through the backing of 500 Spanish troops.46 By 42

43

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For the revolt and the Djerba campaign, see Metcalfe, Muslims of Medieval Italy, pp. 275–98. See esp. Michael Lower, ‘Tunis in 1270: A Case Study of Interfaith Relations in the Late Thirteenth Century’, International History Review 28 (2006), 504–14 (here 507–8). See the brief summary in Brunschvig, Berbérie orientale sous les H.afs.ides, 1: 39–40. The phrase comes from Elena Lourie, ‘A Society Organised for War: Medieval Spain’, Past and Present 35 (1966), 54–76. For this, see esp. Lower, ‘Papacy and Christian Mercenaries’, pp. 609–12.

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the 1260s, though, the issue was not so much Castilian ‘state’ involvement in Ifrīqiyan affairs, but, rather, the region’s burgeoning role as a haven for exiles — and, in particular, for the brothers of King Alfonso X of Castile, Henry and Frederick. Henry, certainly, had an impressive military career there. In 1261, for example, along with the caliph’s brother Abū H.afs., he led an expedition against the desert city of Miliana, roughly halfway between Tunis and the straits of Gibraltar.47 Henry and Frederick were not alone in finding that Charles of Anjou’s invasion of southern Italy (in 1265–66) dramatically altered the  rules of the political game. Initially, at least, they found themselves on opposite sides. While Frederick stayed staunchly behind his Hohenstaufen kinsmen (and, indeed, fought for them at Benevento), Henry joined forces with Charles and was rewarded with the office of  senator of Rome. However, quickly dissatisfied with this, Henry threw in his lot with ‘the last of the Hohenstaufen’, the German prince Conradin, when the latter came south in 1267 to claim his Sicilian inheritance.48 By then, al-Mustans. ir had begun to give asylum at Tunis to large numbers of political exiles. Charles’ nightmare scenario duly came to pass later that year, when the die-hard Hohenstaufen partisans Conrad Capece, Frederick of Lancia, and the infante Frederick used Tunis as their base to invade the island of Sicily, in conjunction with the onslaught on southern Italy led by Conradin and Henry of Castile. Although Conradin was defeated at Tagliacozzo and the infante Henry was swept off into captivity, the revolt in Sicily lasted until 1270. In the end, the infante Frederick and Frederick of Lancia fled to Tunis, while Conrad Capece was captured and ­beheaded.49 In other words, while Charles may not have been the driving force behind the diversion of the crusade to Tunis, he was greatly concerned by the situation there and sought to use the expedition to get matters sorted to his own satisfaction. As is well-known, the final peace treaty that he made with al-Mustans.ir, in October 1270, included the payment of a substantial indemnity of war (including 70,000 ounces of gold as Charles’ own share); the arrears 47

48

49

See esp. Norbert Kamp’s article, ‘Enrico di Castiglia’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, ed. A.  Ghisalberti et  al. (Rome, 1960–), online at: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/enrico-di-castiglia_(DizionarioBiografico) (accessed 24 Jan. 2018). See esp. Máximo Diago Hernando, ‘La monarquía castellana y los Staufer: Contactos politicos y diplomáticos en los siglos XII y XIII’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, series 3 (1995), 51–83 (here 73–79). For the classic account of all this in English, see Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, pp. 96–125.

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of the Sicilian tribute for the last five years; the doubling of the tribute for the next fifteen years; the extradition of pro-Hohenstaufen political refugees; and efforts to safeguard the commercial rights not just of the king of Sicily, but also of his allies in France and elsewhere.50 It is unsurprising, then, that soon after the crusade, al-Mustans.ir turned to the Arago-Catalans to try to counterbalance overweening Angevin influence. He not only reaffirmed the rights of Arago-Catalan merchants in Ifrīqiya, but also began, once again, to send ‘gifts’ to King James.51 Caught between the expansive forces of Aragon-Catalonia and Sicily, the H. afs. ids were able to hold their own for as long as they themselves remained united — and they started to splinter apart not long after al-Mustans. ir’s death in 1277.52 Such heavy involvement with the Christian powers of the Latin West naturally led to the loosening of some of the barriers between religious communities. In truth, there was a long backdrop of interest in the idea of rebuilding the Latin church in North Africa as a whole, calling to mind Christopher Tyerman’s dictum that ‘the willingness to believe that Muslims could be brought to Christ [acted] as a form of cultural totem, similar to the modern enthusiasm for exporting Western democracy’.53 A Latin ecclesiastical framework existed there, once again, from the mid1220s, when Honorius III hopefully appointed a bishop for Morocco.54 Later, the bishop’s remit was expanded to include all of North Africa, in a ‘mission’ that was regarded, in some ways, as rather like a crusade.55 Of course, these activities were spearheaded, not so much by the secular Church, but by the new mendicant orders. Their role had already been baptized in blood with the death of five Franciscans at Marrakesh in 1220, followed, seven years later, by that of the famous ‘martyrs of Ceuta’.56 Furthermore, we should not minimize the number of Latin émigrés — soldiers, traders, political exiles, and human flotsam and jetsam — who 50 51 52

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The text can be found in Traités de paix, 1: 93–96. See esp. Dufourcq’s summary in Espagne catalane et le Maghrib, pp. 123–24. However, it is well worth noting Lower’s wise warning that ‘we need to treat the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis as a political actor, not as a puppet’: ‘Tunis in 1270’, p. 514. Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A  New History of the Crusades (London, 2006), p. 811. For this, see esp. the summaries in Potthast, 1: nos 7537, 9207. See esp. Lower, ‘Papacy and Christian Mercenaries’, pp. 623–24. For a brief summary of these events, see esp. John V. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (Oxford, 2009), pp. 6–7, 10.

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were present in North Africa at this time. Moreover, as Lower has pointed out in a particularly perceptive article, the papacy was not above using mercenaries as a form of ‘leverage’ with Muslim rulers to get better treatment for the fledgling Latin churches in the area.57 Turning to Ifrīqiya specifically, we find that there are no outrages comparable to the martyrdoms of Marrakesh and Ceuta, despite the fact that, very early on, the region attracted the attention of Franciscan friars. Francis’ companion, Giles, visited Tunis in 1219 and, although we know very little about what he did there, he was certainly followed by various other friars.58 By 1240, there was a Dominican study centre, the schola Arabicum at Tunis, whose principal aim was to critically examine Islamic beliefs so as to refute them as effectively as possible. Of course, Louis IX’s devotion to the mendicant orders, and especially the Franciscans, is very well-known — and, in this respect, Francis’ own missionary journey to convert the Egyptian sultan during the Fifth Crusade is certainly worth mentioning.59 However, it is perhaps more to the point that, as Lower has shown, Louis was close to a large number of figures who worked in the schola, or were connected with it in other ways. Perhaps the most noteworthy example is Raymond of Penyafort, the renowned canonist, third master of the entire Dominican Order, and the guiding spirit behind the foundation of the school. Indeed, Raymond himself left behind perhaps the most explicit statement detailing the ‘grace and favour’ that the H.afs.id caliph had shown to the brothers. Raymond adds: ‘it seems appropriate to remark that, at the moment, the door appears open, as if for an inestimable harvest’.60 Another key figure, Francis Cendra, visited Louis in 1262 and kept him abreast of recent events in Tunis. In return, the king sent him a spine from the Holy Crown of Thorns. The muchtravelled missionary Andrew of Longjumeau, famous for his expedition to the Mongols, later joined the Dominican community at Tunis, and got to know al-Mustans.ir personally.61 But maybe the most significant figure is Raymond Martini (Ramón Martí), who spent more than a decade in 57 58

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Lower, ‘Papacy and Christian Mercenaries’, p. 620. Giles’ visit is briefly summarized in J.  R.  H. Moorman, A  History of the Franciscan Order, from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 228–29. This particular subject is exhaustively covered in Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan. ‘quam ad presens expediat scribere, quod ianua videtur aperta quasi ad inestimabilem fructum…’ For this quote in context, see esp. Robert I. Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Societies in Symbiosis, pp. 80–108 (here p. 85). See esp. Lower, ‘Conversion and St Louis’s Last Crusade’, p. 227.

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the school before heading north to the French court in 1269 — that is, just before the start of the crusade. As a result, it has been suggested that it was he who crystallized the idea in Louis’ mind that the Tunisian ruler was ready to convert.62 When we recall that al-Mustans.ir was caliph, and not merely an amir, this makes the idea that he would apostatize even more far-fetched, not less.63 Yet the whole notion of converting the infidel does not seem so ridiculous if we look not just towards Islamic Sicily, but to the furthest reaches of the Muslim West, where we have a number of telling examples from al-Andalus. Perhaps the most obvious is, of course, Abū Zayd, the deposed ruler of Valencia, who converted to Christianity, taking the baptismal name of Vincent.64 Moreover, there is further and surprisingly little-known evidence to suggest that members of the H.afs.id dynasty were already capable of flirting with the idea by the mid-1230s. In 1236, ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, the nephew of Abū Zakarīya’, fled to southern Italy, where he was promptly held under guard by Frederick II. It is quite believable, as Abulafia says, that all this was part of the ‘cat and mouse’ game that Frederick was playing with Abū Zakarīya’ to ensure that he kept paying tribute.65 Yet it is credible, too, that ‘Abd al-‘Azīz was using the prospect of baptism as a means of getting Christian great powers on board. Hence, the whole affair — locking up a Muslim prince who was seeking to convert — provided further ammunition for Frederick’s enemy, Pope Gregory IX, when the latter declared him excommunicated and deposed, for a second time, in 1239.66 In this context, then, we should not dismiss further ‘tales of conversion’ from Louis IX’s crusade to Tunis as mere symbolic fictions. One of only a handful of anecdotes that have survived from the campaign itself involves the Brienne brothers, Alfonso and John, the chamberlain and butler of France respectively. During that brief period, they received an 62 63 64

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For this, see Dufourcq, Espagne catalane et le Maghrib, p. 120. As Lower has pointed out in ‘Conversion and St Louis’s Last Crusade’, p. 214. See esp. Robert  I. Burns, ‘Daughter of Abū Zayd, Last Almohad Ruler of Valencia: The Family and Christian Seignory of Alda Ferrándis, 1236–1300’, Viator 24 (1993), 143–88. For more on his family and the theme of conversion, see O’Callaghan, Gibraltar Crusade, pp. 25–29. For this, see esp. David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 2002), pp.  263, 314. For various papal letters that touch on the matter, see MGH Epp. saec. XIII, 1: 591, 596–98, 599–605. For the decree of excommunication and deposition, see Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. J.-L.-A.  Huillard-Bréholles, 6 vols (Paris, 1852–61), 5: 286–87.

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unexpected visit from three Muslim lords (milites Sarraceni), who declared their intention of becoming Christians. An ailing King Louis advised caution, perhaps because it was already becoming clear to him that he had expected far too much from al-Mustans.ir. Amidst a murderously tense environment, it is not surprising that the encounter degenerated into a scuffle, in the course of which several crusaders were killed. As a result, Louis ordered that the three ‘converts’ should be sent back to rejoin their own side.67 Yet the king still had not given up hope. According to Geoffrey of Beaulieu, even as Louis lay dying, he continued to wonder whether he should send a Dominican preacher to al-Mustans.ir.68 It is not surprising, then, that amidst such a potentially promising atmosphere, the notion of conquering Tunis could be very tempting. What is remarkable, though, is just how early this idea was on the cards. In the mid-1240s, just before Louis’ first crusade — and, notably, well before his brother Charles became king of Sicily — the Aragonese were clearly very worried that this expedition would select Tunis as its initial target, and pulled out all the diplomatic stops to prevent it from doing so.69 By the early 1260s, King James was sufficiently worried by Alfonso X’s plans for an ‘African Crusade’ that he insisted that no harm should come to the H.afs.ids, with whom he had friendly relations.70 In short: when we put the evidence together, the attack on Tunis in 1270, rather like that on Constantinople in 1203–04, looks like far less of an aberration. It was by no means certain that it would take place, but it was not unlikely if circumstances dictated. Because we know that Louis’ goal was ultimately Egypt, we tend to think of his second crusade in ‘eastern’ terms. Thanks to the fact that the expedition ended prematurely in Tunis — and, of course, to the big debate surrounding the role of Charles of Anjou — it is natural enough to think of it in ‘central Mediterranean’ terms as well. But what often goes missing, without close attention to H.afs.id Ifrīqiya, is the crucial Maghribi dimension. What is more, it is possible to make a suggestion to bring much of this together. Louis IX was surely aware that, in the mid-thirteenth century, the Latin Christian world was marching from success to success in its struggle against Islam in the western Mediterranean 67

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For a further analysis of this incident in context, see my The Briennes: The Rise and Fall of a Champenois Dynasty in the Age of the Crusades, c. 950–1356 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 107-8. See Sanctity of Louis IX, pp. 120–21. For this, see esp. Berger, 1: no. 2011; and Dufourcq, Espagne catalane et le Maghrib, pp. 97–98. See esp. the summary in O’Callaghan, Gibraltar Crusade, p. 22.

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(the Reconquista), while things were steadily slipping from bad to worse in the East (that is, the world of the principal crusades, the region that mattered most). Did Louis regard Tunis, rightly or wrongly, as the key strategic point that it would be desirable to break, through his ‘missionary endeavour’ en route to Egypt — and then, who knows what might happen? The start of a great Christian advance, sweeping triumphantly from west to east? In other words, should Ifrīqiya be regarded as the real hinge of the Mediterranean? Although we should not draw too many links between the Normans and Capetians and later French domination of the North African coast, I would like to end with an image from the latter period to match the one with which we opened. In 1830, under extensive pressure, the bey of Tunisia, Hussein II, authorized the French consul-general, Mathieu de Lesseps, to construct a cathedral in St Louis’ honour. The bey’s order reads as follows: Praise to the one God, to whom all things return! We cede in perpetuity to His Majesty the King of France a location … sufficient to raise a religious monument in honour of king Louis IX, at the place where this prince died. We commit ourselves to respect, and make respected, this monument, consecrated by the king of France to the memory of one of his most illustrious ancestors. Greetings from the servant of God, Hussein Pasha Bey. May the Most High be propitious! Amen.71

The cathedral itself was not actually built until the late nineteenth century, in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of the French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881. It is worth noting that the self-proclaimed descendants of many French ‘crusader families’ paid heavily to help finance the building.72 The end result is a rather curious-looking basilica, a not entirely convincing blend of Moorish, Gothic Revival, and NeoByzantine. Perhaps its most interesting feature is the determination of 71

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‘Louange à Dieu l’Unique, auquel retournent toutes choses! Nous cédons à perpétuité à Sa Majesté le Roi de France un emplacement … suffisant pour élever un monument religieux en l’honneur du roi Louis IX, à l’endroit où ce Prince est mort. Nous nous engageons à respecter et à faire respecter ce monument consacré par le roi de France à la mémoire d’un de ses plus illustres aïeux. Salut de la part du serviteur de Dieu, Husem-Pacha-Bey. Que le Très-Haut lui soit favorable! Amen’. For more information on this topic, see A. Pons, La nouvelle Église d’Afrique, ou Le catholicisme en Algérie, en Tunisie et au Maroc depuis 1830 (Tunis, 1930). For the wider context of French ‘appropriation’ of the crusading movement in the late nineteenth century, see esp. Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester, 2011), pp. 125–54.

The Hinge of the Mediterranean

the last Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies, Francis II, to ensure that the cathedral was properly supplied with appropriate relics. In his will, he bequeathed a part of his extensive collection to Tunis. ‘Thus, Saint Louis’ entrails made their way back’, after more than six hundred years, ‘to the site of the … king’s death’.73 If this was a victory for the French, then, like the crusade itself, it was a very transitory one. It would seem that the relics were returned to France when the cathedral itself was deconsecrated and handed over to the Tunisian state, shortly after the latter gained its independence.74

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Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 237. However, the tomb itself remains in the defunct cathedral, now known as the Acropolium of Carthage. See Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 795 n. 15.

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Part II

Imagining the Crusades

Cutting the Gordian Knot Urban II and the Impact of the Council of Clermont

John France

When Urban II launched the great expedition which we call the First Crusade in November 1095, he sent a shock-wave rippling through Europe which launched something like 100,000 people eastwards from their homes, precipitating a great military campaign which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099. In doing this Urban II invented this Christian form of holy war, but modern historians have rightly assumed that he must have been drawing upon a stock of ideas and emotions which made it acceptable. In 1935 Carl Erdmann suggested that his call was made possible by a combination of evolving Christian attitudes to warfare and a growing hatred of Islam. He charted a progression in ecclesiastical thinking from a deeply engrained abhorrence of killing to an acceptance, albeit qualified, that war could be meritorious. Erdmann thought that developments in the eleventh century were very important in this process, but he projected the process backwards, though fairly briefly. He suggested that this progression from rejection to acceptance was chiefly mediated by St Augustine’s notion of the ‘just war’, with a certain emphasis on self-defence. Augustine, said Erdmann, argued that wars were just when fought on proper authority, for a good cause such as self-defence or the recovery of lost property, and in a proper spirit and always seeking righteous peace.1 This teleological view became known to the Anglophone world when it was translated from the original German in 1977. This happened just as the ideas of Jonathan Riley-Smith were making their impact. He attacked the idea that had taken root since the 1930s that the crusades were merely a cover for economic and political greed and ambition, gigantic plundering expeditions

1

Carl Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans. Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart (Princeton, 1977), only pp. 35–56 are consecrated to the early medieval period.

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 73–91. ©F

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which foreshadowed the age of imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 Starting from the 1930s the crusades had indeed been reduced in status as a phenomenon of European history. Runciman recounted them as an epic story of barbarians trampling the china-shop of Middle Eastern culture and destroying his beloved Byzantine empire.3 Smail regarded the movement as proto-imperialism.4 Undergraduates were encouraged to see them as a cover for economic and dynastic ambitions. The overall effect was to detach the crusades from the mainstream of historical interest, for them to be regarded as a bolt-on, an exotic adventure in European history. Riley-Smith insisted that the crusade was primarily a religious institution, rooted deeply in the nature of European society. Although critical of aspects of Erdmann’s ideas, Riley-Smith essentially incorporated the German’s framework into his studies. Although I am primarily interested in military history in which plundering expeditions and conquest feature prominently, I am convinced that that Riley-Smith got it right. From my standpoint it is obvious that nobody in the late eleventh century had a vested interest in conquering Jerusalem. There was plenty of lust for conquest in Europe, but it was an expensive business and so was essentially local and piecemeal. The 1066 campaign, after all, demanded a journey of only a little over 20 miles. The conquest of Wales, which is so close to England, took two centuries.5 The Norman domination in Italy at first sight seems like an exception, but it was achieved by groups who settled in Italy, allied and even intermarried with local lords, and manipulated what had become their local environment. And this Norman domination was established only over a long period of time — from 1017 to the end of the eleventh century.6 The sheer distance of the goal of the First Crusade is too often forgotten: it is 4639 kilometres (2883 miles) from Paris to Jerusalem. Its conquest posed, at the very least, incredible logistical problems. Clearly something extraordinary was at work, driving men to fight their way across an enormous distance to the Holy Land. 2

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In many ways the ‘Introduction’ to his general account of the crusades, first published in 1987, is a summary of his views: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 3rd edn (London, 2014), esp. pp. 1–12. Steven Runciman, A  History of the Crusades, 2nd  edn, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1951–54). R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097–1193, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1995). R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987). Ferdinand Chalandon, Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols (Paris, 1907); G. A. Loud, Conquerors and Churchmen in Norman Italy (Aldershot, 1999).

Cutting the Gordian Knot

Erdmann’s teleological approach has proved remarkably enduring. An important contribution to the debate came from Jean Flori who remarked on the importance of the Old Testament in thinking about warfare, in particular emphasizing how distinct it was from Augustine’s ‘just war’.7 David Bachrach’s study of religion and the conduct of war draws considerably on Erdmann. His work makes the valuable point that in the tenth century, taking communion became an important pre-battle rite in western armies.8 This article takes issue with the teleological view, because if a coherent Christian view of war had emerged before the First Crusade, it seems rather odd that in the twelfth-century canonists and theologians found Urban’s initiative rather difficult to fit into Church thinking.9 Rather, I would suggest that in Christianity there had always been an acute tension arising from contradictory and uncertain ideas about violence and salvation. In 1095, Urban II exploded this tension with a pronouncement which was essentially a novelty. The success of the appeal and of the subsequent expedition left the next generation of thinkers trying to incorporate this innovation into older Christian thinking. The New Testament is usually nowadays seen as essentially pacifist, yet in it Christ said, ‘I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword’.10 More generally the New Testament is unconcerned with violence, and Christians had to bear in mind that history of wars, the Old Testament, with its manifest inheritance of holy war: ‘And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them’.11 The early Church was anxious for its members to be regarded as good Romans. St Paul advised that ‘the powers that be are ordained of God’.12 Christians were well aware that their religion had spread within the Pax Romana. Acceptance of the state meant acceptance of state violence. Not all Christians concurred, as the Revelation of St John makes clear. But the ease with which Christians rapidly took to the exercise of power after Constantine’s liberation of the Church — and used it against their enemies — is telling. There was, 7

8

9

10

11 12

Jean Flori, La guerre sainte: La formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris, 2001), pp. 37–45. David S. Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War c. 300–c. 1215 (Woodbridge, 2003), p. 106. See especially John Gilchrist, ‘The Erdmann Thesis and the Canon Law’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. Peter Edbury (Caerdydd, 1985), pp. 37–45. Matthew 10. 34. On the Old Testament origins of Holy War see the fine statement by Flori, Guerre sainte, pp. 13–28. Ezekiel 25. 17. Romans 13. 1.

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however, a strong pacifist element — Lactantius, though an advisor to Constantine the Great (306–37), roundly condemned all killing.13 In fact, because of the general tenor of the New Testament, killing continued to be seen as a terrible sin. Even in the very early Middle Ages penance remained a once in a lifetime requirement, after which the soldier was enjoined to abandon his brutal way of life. This position was formally maintained well into the sixth century.14 But this could not be allowed to interfere with the practicalities of power. The eastern Church was devoted to the empire conceived as the Oikumene, the universal body of all believers. The kings of the West were the inheritors of the old empire and its special relationship with God. Christian military rituals developed in late Roman and early medieval armies.15 The needs of defence and the maintenance of the social order made practical acceptance imperative. Down to the sixth century, Christians clung to the notion of penance as a singular act of conversion, but gradually the notion of repeated penances for sin took hold, inevitably favouring a modification of the attitude to killing. The Penitential of Theodore of the seventh century imposes massive penances of up to ten years for killing a man, but reduces it to forty days for slaying at the command of a lord or in ‘public war’. The eighth-century Penitentiary of Bede imposed a penance of four years on those guilty of murder for gain, but only forty days for the same event in ‘public warfare’. About 906, Regino of Prüm in his Ecclesiastical Discipline imposed seven years as compared to forty days for killing in public war.16 These tariffs simply enshrined in Christian practice the ambivalence between violence and the path to salvation. Burchard of Worms (1000–25), in his collection of canon law, the Decretum, emphasised that all killing was sinful, but he carefully distinguished between doing it on the orders of a legitimate authority, which was to be punished much more lightly than if it was done in one’s own interests.17 St Augustine’s ideas, which were so important to Erdmann, were not much discussed in early medieval literature, really because there was 13

14 15

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Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, trans. Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey, Translated Texts for Historians, 40 (Liverpool, 2003) bk 6.21–23, p. 343. Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War, pp. 24–27. John Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565–1204 (London, 1999), pp. 13–33; Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War, pp. 11–24. Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A  Translation of the Principal Libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents, ed. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer (New York, 1990), pp. 224, 317. Burchard of Worms, Decretorum liber, in PL 140: 537–1090, at bk. 6.23, col. 770; Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War, pp. 81–82.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

relatively little definition of ideas and theology generally.18 Rather, the ambivalence in early Christian attitudes continued. A  key step in the teleological argument was the reign of Charlemagne. Erdmann’s treatment is limited, though this has to a degree been rectified by Bachrach.19 Charlemagne sometimes gave his wars an ideological veneer, and occasionally insisted on spiritual preparations and rituals in the army. But he never proclaimed his wars with the Spanish Muslims in any ideological way. It was against the pagans of northern Europe that he took a militant Christian stance, endorsing forced conversion. This was probably because it suited his political ends. Alcuin of York opposed this, but was easily faced down. Indeed the life of St Lebuin, an Anglo-Saxon missionary of the 770s, explicitly threatens recalcitrant Saxons if they do not convert: ‘there is ready a king in a neighbouring country who will invade your land, despoil and lay waste, will tire you out with his campaigns, scatter you in exile, dispossess or kill you’.20 The Church was deeply impressed by the success of the Carolingian conquests because they expanded the Church, and quietly accepted the brutal measures by which this was achieved. By contrast, Charlemagne went to enormous lengths to justify his destruction of the Christian Duke Tassilo of Bavaria who was forced to a voluntary capitulation in 788.21 The distinction between the use of violence against Christians and against those of other religions was a major theme in Urban’s speech in 1095 as he called for an end to war amongst Christians.22 Erdmann emphasized the pronouncements by Popes Leo IV (­ 847–55) and John  VIII (872–82) which he saw as stressing defence, in the Augustinian sense, against external forces. In 853 Leo asked the Franks for aid against Muslim attack and promised, rather vaguely, a ‘heavenly

18

19 20

21

22

Interestingly Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War finds very few authoritative pronouncements on war, though a great deal of evidence pointing to evolving attitudes. Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War, pp. 32–63. Vita Lebuini Antiqua, ed. A. Hofmeister, in MGH SS 30.2: 789–95 (here p. 794): Praeparatus est in vicina terra rex quidam, qui vestram terram ingredietur, praedabit vastabitque variis vos bellis fatigabit, in exilium adducet, exhereditabit vel occident, hereditates vestras quibus voluerit tradet: eique postea subditi eritis ac posteris eius. The life of St Lebuin is translated into English in C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (London, 1954), here pp. 231–32. Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 118–27. Most powerfully in Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 131–38.

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reward’ for anyone who died fighting them. John  VIII was asked by German bishops on the frontiers fighting pagans: Whether those who had recently fallen in the war for the defence of the holy church of God and the existence of the Christian religion and state, or those who in the future will be dead for the same cause, will gain indulgence for their sins.

He replied that ‘whoever in piety of the Catholic faith falls in war fighting strenuously against heathens or infidels will gain rest in eternal life’.23 While defence is an issue in these letters, they are also important as ­e vidence of the sense that war against non-Christians was acceptable. But the Church’s attitude to war was caught up with its general position towards violence. Christians were deeply anxious to preserve the social order which was threatened both by internal dissent and criminality as well as external attack. St Augustine himself had a robust view of the need to support, even with violence, the ‘powers that be’ which St Paul had taught Christians to obey: Surely, it is not without purpose that we have the institution of the power of kings, the death penalty of the judge, the barbed hooks of the executioner, the weapons of the soldier, the right of punishment of the overlord, even the severity of the good father... . While these are feared, the wicked are kept within bounds and the good live more peacefully among the wicked.24

And the Church was quite prepared to envisage the participation of even clergy in violence if it served to maintain peace and order: If anyone who is ignorant of the divine dispensation objects to a bishop ruling the people and facing dangers of war and argues that he is responsible

23

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Sergius  II, Leo  IV, and Benedict  III, ‘Epistolae selectae’, ed. A.  de HirschGereuth, in MGH Epp., 5: 581–614 (here p.  601): [O]mnium vestrum nosse volumus karitatem, quoniam quisquis (quod non optantes dicimus) in hoc belli certamine fideliter mortuus fuerit, regna illa celestia minime negabantur. Novit enim omnipotens, si quislibet vestrum morietur, quod pro veritate fidei et salvatione anime ac defensione patrie christianorum mortuus est, ideo ab eo pretitulatum premium consequetur. See also John  VIII, ‘Registrum’, ed. E. Kaspar, in MGH Epp., 7: 1–272 (here 126–27); quoted in Ane L. Bysted, The Crusading Indulgence: Spiritual Rewards and the Theology of the Crusades, c. 1095–1216 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 53–54. Augustine of Hippo, Letters, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, 4 vols, Fathers of the Church, 20 (New York, 1953), 3: 293.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

only for their souls, the answer is obvious: it is only by doing these things that the guardian and teacher of the faithful brings to them the rare gift of peace and saves them from the darkness in which there is no light.25

By the tenth century the Carolingian collapse in West Francia and Italy led to the emergence of a new range of people with whom the Church had to learn to live — counts, dukes, and the like, often called ‘princes’ — who had a clear view of their position in the grand scheme of things. A modern authority has rightly remarked: ‘The age of kings seemed to have passed and that of princes to be the future’.26 Princes and their armed followers, the knights, formed an elite, basing the moral case for their ascendancy on their role as the defenders of society. They could not afford any ­challenge to their role. In 859, the Annals of St Bertin recount that the Danes were ravaging West Francia and local people rallied against them, but: The Danes ravaged the places beyond the Scheldt. Some of the common people living between the Seine and the Loire formed a sworn association amongst themselves and fought bravely against the Danes on the Seine. But because their association had been made without due consideration, they were easily slain by our more powerful people.27

It was not, I think, that ‘our more powerful people’ wanted to disarm the peasantry altogether. They continued to form an element in armies, and in the German lands were liable to be called to the army down to the late eleventh century.28 In 1181 Henry II issued two Assizes of Arms for his English and continental lands which assumed access to weapons even 25

26 27

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Ruotger, Vita Sancti Brunonis, ed. Irene Ott, MGH SS rer. Germ. N.S., 10 (Weimar, 1951), ch. 23, pp.  23–24: Causantur forte aliqui divine dispensationis ignari, quare eipiscopus rem populi et pericula belli tractaverit, cum animarum tantumodo curam susceperit. Quibus res ipsa facile, si quid sanum sapiunt, satisfacit, cum tantum et tam insuetum illis presertim partibus pacis bonum per hunc tutorem et doctorem fidelis populi longe lateque propugnatum aspiciunt, ne pro hac re quasi in tenebras amplius, ubi non est presentia lucis, offendant (compare PL, 134: 957–58). Jean Flori, L’Idéologie du glaive: Préhistoire de la chevalerie (Genève, 1983), p. 168. Annales Bertiniani, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS rer. Germ., 5 (Hannover, 1883), p. 51 translated as The Annals of St Bertin, ed. Janet L. Nelson, Manchester Medieval Sources: Ninth-Century Sources, 1 (Manchester, 1991), p. 89 (ann. 859): Dani loca ultra Scaldem populantur. Vulgus promiscuum inter Sequanam et Ligerum inter se coniurans, adversus Danos in Sequana consistentes fortiter resistit. Sed quia incaute sumpta est eorum coniuratio, a potentioribus nostris facile interfeciuntur. David S. Bachrach, ‘Feudalism, Romanticism, and Source Criticism: Writing the Military History of Salian Germany’, Journal of Medieval Military History 13 (2015), 1–26.

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amongst the lowly.29 Rather, this passage must be seen in its immediate context — the humbler people had worked together without reference to those who considered themselves ‘the powers that be’. The initiation and direction of violence was a ‘top down’ activity. In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries churchmen in badly disturbed areas of Gaul attempted, in the absence of royal power, to impose moral authority as a check to violence by the ‘Peace of God’. In practice they endorsed the right to initiate violence to these new classes of power-holders.30 Saints’ lives were not really exploited by Erdmann as a source. They are frankly pretty turgid, written for the most part by unknowns and having little originality. But they represent a kind of day-to-day piety which is important. For their authors, violence is part of the pattern of life, relatively rarely commented upon. Parallels between the hardships of a soldier and those of a saint were perceived as natural. Martyred in about the year 260, Arcadius was described as a ‘warrior of Christ’ (Christi miles), and Auxentius (d. 473), himself a former soldier, is described as utilizing all the panoply of allegory — breastplate of righteousness, helmet of virtue, etc. — which we find in St Tillo (c. 700), ‘enclosed in the breastplate of faith’ (lorica fidei circumdatus), and thereafter the description becomes a cliché variously elaborated.31 A number of early martyrs were Roman soldiers who usually suffered, like St George, in the very exceptional drives to demand oaths to the emperor, a ritual apparently more commonly circumvented by the authorities.32 A rare exception was Maximilian the Conscript: at Carthage in 295 he declared that as a Christian convert he could no longer take life. The proconsul pointed out that lots of other Christians served in the Roman army, but Maximilian still refused and so was martyred.33 Many saints had been soldiers before becoming clergy. St Martin of Tours is the very archetype of these.34 Another is Mochva, who fought until he was thirty, then entered a monastery before dying in 657.35 In no case is any reproach made for these saints’ former activities or is there a sense of special penance having been performed. 29

30

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John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (London, 1999), pp. 66–67. The Peace of God: Social Violence and the Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca, 1992). AA SS, 2: 12 Jan., 4–5; 5: 14 Feb., 771–83; 1: 1 Jan., 376–80. AA SS, 12: 23 Apr., 119–24. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, Société des Bollandistes, Subsidia hagiographica, 12 (Bruxelles, 1911), p. 226, no. 5813. Bibliotheca hagiographica, p. 221, no. 5610. AA SS, 1: 1 Jan., 45–47.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

Some saints were clergy and soldiers. St Germanus of Auxerre seems to have been a former general, but it was as a bishop in either 429 or the following year that he led the Britons in the ‘Alleluia Victory’ over Saxon and Pictish raiders. St Vincent Madelgarius (c. 615–87) was probably a soldier of the Merovingian ruler King Dagobert II (650–79). Emenlandus, who died c. 725, a soldier of King Clothar IV (717–18), had most certainly fought against fellow-Christians.36 St Leudegar got on the wrong side of a feud with Queen Bathilde and was killed fighting to defend his city of Autun.37 Hainmar of Auxerre fought for Pepin III (741–68) against Eudo of Aquitaine.38 Ambrose of Autpert accompanied Charlemagne at the siege of Benevento, and only later entered a monastery.39 The Miracula Sancti Bertini report a whole sequence of Viking raids in the 860s, and it is interesting that the saint is portrayed as approving and aiding the defenders.40 Gerannus, bishop of Auxerre (910–14), rallied the citizens of his city and in full armour led them out to put the Viking attackers to flight.41 The life of Udalric of Dillingen, bishop of Augsburg (923–73), places some emphasis on his charitable activities, but he was a royal appointee who restored the fortifications of his city and fought for Otto I against the rebels of 954 before defending his city against the Magyar invaders in the siege which precipitated the battle of the Lech in 955.42 We might expect some emphasis on his fighting pagans rather than Christians, but this is not actually the case. Lay saints are not strikingly different. Much has been made of Odo of Cluny’s life of Gerald of Aurillac. In it, Odo portrays his subject charging into battle with spears reversed and using the flat of his sword.43 But Odo was really justifying the sanctification of a layman against other monks. And most lives of lay saints have no such reservations. Arnulf the Martyr, an eighth-century saint, gave his horse in battle to his lord and was killed.44 St Guibert, a noble of Lorraine who served Henry I, duke 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43

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Luc d’Achery and Jean Mabillon, Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti, 9 vols (Paris, 1668–1701), 3: 383–403. AA SS, 49: 2 Oct., 680–708. AA SS, 60: 27 Oct., 369–71. AA SS, 31: 19 Jul., 649–51. AA SS, 42: 5 Sep., 596–603. AA SS, 33: 28 Jul., 596–99. AA SS, 29: 4 Jul., 97–122; d’Achery and Mabillion, Acta sanctorum ordinis Benedicti, 5: 415–77. Odo of Cluny, ‘The Life of St Gerald of Aurillac’, in John of Salerno and Odo of Cluny, St Odo of Cluny, trans. Gerard Sitwell (London, 1958), bk 1.8, pp. 100–1. AA SS, 3: 29 Jan., 587–89.

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of Saxony (918–36) faithfully, always fought as mercifully as possible, became a monk, and founded the abbey of Gembloux.45 St Bernward of Hildesheim, who probably died about 1002, was charged with keeping the peace against pirates and other disturbers of the peace, and to achieve this constructed fortifications and recruited troops, causing much hostility. His biographer, Thangmar, emphasises his good works as well as his formidable military talents.46 Even in warfare amongst Christians the issue of aggression and self-defence is rarely touched upon. A notable exception is an incident in the life of a Scottish bishop, Gervadius (d. 934). A soldier in an invading English army asked him for absolution out of concern that he was participating in a war of aggression. After the battle black birds were observed on all the bodies except his, on which a white bird came to rest.47 Like him, St Gerald and St Bernward were both fighting against fellow Christians, and perhaps that explains the concerns of their biographers. There is really little sense in our sources of a deep-rooted concept of holy war. There is even less in these lives of any special hostility towards Islam. William of Gellone is said to have served both Pepin the Short (715–68) and Charlemagne: he is mentioned in the life of Louis the Pious by the Astronomer as having served in Aquitaine against the Moors, whom his Vita claims he defeated near Orange.48 It seems likely that his life was rewritten in the eleventh century and certainly the romances in which he figures as a champion of Christendom date from the twelfth century.49 St Bobo or Bovo of Provence lived in an area plagued by the Saracen ­settlement at La Garde-Freinet, which we know was destroyed in 973.50 The picture in his Vita of the devastation of the area is vivid and convincing. More than that, it details the building of castles against the invaders. All of this suggests that the Vita is fairly contemporary. He was well trained, we are told, with bow, quiver, and horse, and played a leading role in constructing and defending castles and was victorious in battle against the Muslims. He longed to go to Rome, and one day he had a vision of St Peter promising support and was subsequently victorious in battle. This all seems to look forward to the crusade, but after his brother was killed, he tired of war and set off to Rome, which he had always longed to visit, 45 46 47 48 49

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AA SS, 18: 23 Mai., 262–69. AA SS, 59: 26 Oct., 996–1019. AA SS, 67: 8 Nov., 855–56. AA SS, 19: 28 Mai., 801–17. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, ed. John Coulson (London, 1958), p. 448. Ralph Glaber, Histories, ed. John France (Oxford, 1989), pp. 22–23.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

only to die at Voghera, where his cult persisted until at least the fifteenth century. His was a local cult, the miracles are routine — curing mainly — and there is no sense here of the crusading spirit. There is, however quite a strong celebration of St Peter in his Vita.51 Adelelmus of Burgos, who died in 1100, was a soldier until he met Robert of Molesme under whose influence he became a monk and was called to be abbot at Burgos, where, however, he still advised King Alfonso VI (of León 1065–72, of Galicia 1071–1109, of Castile and León 1072–1109) on military matters, but there is no specific mention of the Moors.52 A few Spanish saints portray Islam in a very hostile sense. Saints Nunilo and Alodia (died c. 842/51) were children of a mixed marriage who eschewed the Islam of their father in favour of their mother’s Christianity and were martyred at Huesca.53 The early tenth-century St Pelagius of Cordoba spurned the homosexual advances of the caliph.54 St Casilda (d. 1050), a daughter of the Muslim ruler of Toledo, converted to Christianity and was martyred.55 These and a very few other cases were largely local cults. St Pelagius was another martyr, a cousin of a bishop who was captured in war by the Muslims, refused conversion, and was killed in 925.56 Sicily and southern Italy suffered much at the hands of the Saracens, but the vitae show little of this. St Joseph the Hymnographer, who died in 883, fled Sicily during the Muslim conquest and went to Byzantium. He was then sent to Rome but was captured and held in Crete, from whence he was miraculously freed. The emphasis of the life is on divine intervention. In the Miracles of St Faith, a soldier travelling to Jerusalem was captured by Moors, but subsequently liberated by the intervention of the saint, but the point of this is to glorify St Faith, and the Muslims are treated as one of the many perils of life.57 By and large even when anti-Islamic sentiments are important, they are not dwelt upon and the miracles of these saints are of a very ordinary nature. The lives of the saints written before 1000 show that violence was a frequent part of life, and in them war between Christians seems to attract no special opprobrium. 51 52 53 54

55 56 57

AA SS, 18: 22 Mai., 186–88. AA SS, 3: 30 Jan., 671–75. AA SS, 57: 22 Oct., 645–91. Mark  D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997), pp. 10–28. AA SS, 10: 9 Apr., 838–41. AA SS, 27: 26 Jun., 183–84. Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, ed. Luca Robertini (Spoleto, 1994); The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. Pamela Sheingorn (Philadelphia, 1995).

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I think here we must consider audience. It seems to me probable that writers were thinking very seriously of the elite and their followers — the very people most commonly initiating war, specifically war against their Christian neighbours. For much the same reasons war against Islam is rarely mentioned because relatively few of the mass of the Catholic population were exposed to their attacks. An intellectual like Bede might excoriate Islam, but most people in far-away Northumberland probably knew nothing of this threat. By contrast there is quite a lot about northern wars in some of the lives. They show us a society with a high degree of violence, but do little to look forward to the spirit of the crusade. They illustrate the coexistence with violence with no effort to reconcile this with other attitudes. It is hard to see any real trace of an evolution towards holy war in the sources for the early Middle Ages, and even more difficult to find evidence of a real hatred of Islam. Indeed, a recent book explores the attitudes of the first crusaders to their Islamic enemies as arising from a sense of novelty rather than a pre-existing hatred.58 Erdmann and many others placed very considerable emphasis on particular events in the eleventh century, especially some papal pronouncements. These, however, left the Christian paradox on violence intact. Pope Leo  IX (1049–54) led an army against the Normans of south Italy, but was defeated at Civitate on 15 June 1053. According to his Life, the pope regarded those who fell in his service as martyrs: Since they had been willing to suffer a pious death for the Christian faith and for the liberation of an oppressed people, divine grace demonstrated by means of manifold revelations that they rejoiced forever in the kingdom of heaven. For they appeared in various ways to the faithful of Christ, saying that they ought not to be thought of as men to be mourned with funeral rites, but rather as united in heavenly glory with the holy martyrs.59

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Nicholas Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge, 2016), esp. pp. 56–66. Wiberti, ‘Vita Leonis’, in PL, 143: 500, translated as ‘The Life of Pope Leo IX’, in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII, trans. I. S. Robinson, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester, 2004), p. 151: Et quoniam pro fide Christi afflictaeque gentis liberation devotam martem voluerunt subire, multiplicibus revelationibus monstravit eos divina gratia in coelesti regno perenniter gaudere. Nam et ipsi diversis modis sese ostenderunt Christi fidelibus, dicentes se non esse lugendos exsequiis funebribus imo in superna gloria sanctis conjunctos martyribus.

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Others, however, criticized him for breaking the traditional prohibition against clergy making war, so this was a controversial exemplar.60 Pope Alexander II (1061-73) certainly encouraged the war in Spain. Erdmann and others regarded one of his letters, which has survived in part, as an indulgence comparable to that granted at Clermont by Urban II, but modern opinion is rightly sceptical of this idea.61 The papacy’s interest in Spain sprang from an attempt to sacralize war there as a means to assert its own power: this was regarded with little enthusiasm by local rulers. Indeed, in Spain itself the Christians fought one another, often in alliance with Muslim neighbours, as the career of El Cid shows. In a distinguished article, Richard Fletcher suggests that notions of holy war only slowly took root in Spain in the twelfth century.62 But it was to the quarrel between Gregory VII (1073–85) and Henry IV of Germany (1056–1106) that Erdmann and others paid great attention, regarding it as paving the way for Urban’s appeal. Gregory publicly endorsed war against Henry IV, but he was aware that this was more than a simple military conflict. He denounced those who fought against him as enemies of the Church, but they in turn responded by accusing him of being a man of blood. The papacy had traditionally taken a pragmatic stance on waging war, but this had to change because it was now engaged in an ideological struggle. Under Gregory the papal court had to struggle with the ambivalence between the perceived Christian ethic and the needs of this world, and this culminated in the works of Anselm of Lucca and Bonizo of Sutri. Their thinking turned considerably on Augustine’s idea of correcting evil as a justification for endorsing and even blessing war.63 It is little surprise that the militant Gregory conceived of a great war to Jerusalem to save

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Erdmann, Origin of the Idea of Crusade, pp. 118–26. For a modern study of the battle, see C. D. Stanton, ‘The Battle of Civitate: A Plausible Account’, Journal of Medieval Military History 11 (2013), 25–56. Erdmann, Origin of the Idea of Crusade, pp. 137–40; Pierre Boissonade, ‘Cluny, la papauté et la première croisade internationale contre les Sarracins d’Espagne, 1064–5’, Revue des questions historiques 117 (1932), 237–301. These older views are firmly rebutted by Alberto Ferreiro, ‘The Siege of Barbastro, 1064–5: A Reassessment’, Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 129–47, who, however, makes very clear the interest of the popes in the wars in Spain. R. A. Fletcher, ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain, 1050–1150’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 37 (1987), 31–47. Erdmann, Origin of the Idea of Crusade devotes five chapters (pp. 148–305) to the great contest of empire and papacy, with pp. 241–55 on Anselm and Bonizo.

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the Christians of the East from the Turks.64 But the ideas of these theologians of violence were not well known outside the papal court, and they do not figure in the terms of Urban II’s appeal at Clermont. And many were unconvinced by Gregory’s claims to direct violence. For all Gregory’s rhetoric urging his expedition to Jerusalem, the idea never came to reality. What the great conflict between empire and papacy really achieved was to bring out into the open, at least for the religious-minded, the Christian paradox of the need for violence which was yet something to be condemned in itself. This came at a time when men and women were more deeply than ever before concerned with matters of faith. And this was made the worse by uncertainty over the unsatisfactory state of penance for killing.65 This is not to say that the European elite were all ‘good Christians’ in any simple sense. But the scale of gifts to churches and monasteries in the later tenth and eleventh centuries was astonishing. Ralph Glaber records: Just before the third year after the millennium throughout the whole world, but most especially in Italy and Gaul, men began to reconstruct churches, although for the most part the existing ones were properly built and not in the least unworthy. But it seemed as though each Christian community was aiming to surpass all others in the splendour of construction. It was as if the whole world were shaking itself free, shrugging off the burden of the past, and cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches. Almost all episcopal churches and those of monasteries dedicated to various saints, and little village chapels, were rebuilt better than before by the faithful.66

The lavish development of important sites like Santiago de Compostella, Saint-Martin of Tours, and Sainte-Foy of Conques is testimony to the scale of pilgrimage reflected in a famous passage about the year 1033 in the same chronicle: 64

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H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’s “Crusading” Plans of 1074’, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. B.  Z. Kedar, H.  E. Mayer, and R.  C. Smail ( Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 27–40. Bysted, Crusade Indulgence. Glaber, Histories, pp. 114–17: Igitur infra supradictum millesimum tercio iam fere imminente anno, contigit in universe pene terrarium orbe, precipue tamen in Italia et in Gallis, innouari ecclesiarum; basilicas, licet plereque decenter locate minime indiguissent, emulabatur tamen queque gens christicolarum adversus alteram decentiore fruit. Erat enim instar ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet, reiecta vetustate passim candidam ecclesiarum; vestem indueret. Tunc denique episcopalium sedium ecclesias; pene universas ac cetera queque diuersorum sanctorum monasteria seu minora uillarum oratoria in meliora quique permutauere fideles.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

At this time an innumerable multitude of people from the whole world, greater than any man before could have hoped to see, began to travel to the Sepulchre of the Saviour at Jerusalem. First to go were the petty people, then those of middling estate, and next the powerful, kings and counts, marquesses and bishops; finally, and this was something that had never happened before, numerous women, noble and poor, undertook the journey.67

Pilgrimage was often a penitential experience offering a route by which men and women could escape from the burden of sin and the punishment which would follow. Monasteries proclaimed the value of their prayers, both for the living and for dead ancestors. Cluny was foremost in this, and its invention of the Feast of All Souls is a testimony to its effectiveness. By the eleventh century Latin Christianity was central to the cultural experience of Europeans and particularly the elite who provided the economic base upon which churches and monasteries depended.68 We should not imagine tough magnates always going in fear and trembling. Rather they were very conscious of death and its consequences, and while in ordinary times they might fight and kill, they were aware of moments of vulnerability. The contradiction between their way of life, which depended on force of arms and Christian teaching, must have been very plain to them, especially the more pious, whose support for the reform of the Church was so evident. And the confused attitudes of the Church compounded their anxiety. Pope Alexander II had given Duke William of Normandy a banner for his conquest of England, yet a harsh penance was still imposed upon the Norman army for the killing which this process necessitated.69 This new Christian sensibility must have been deeply shocked by the radicalism revealed by Gregory VII: In short, any good Christian whatsoever might far more properly be considered as a king than might a bad prince; for the former, seeking the glory of God, strenuously governs himself, whereas the latter, seeking the

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Glaber, Histories, pp.  198–201: Per idem tempus ex universe orbe tam innumerabilis multitude cepit confluere ad sepulchrum Saluatoris Iherosolimis quantam nullus hominum prius sperare poterat. Primitus enim ordo inferioris, deinde vero mediocres, post hec permaxmimi quique reges et comites, marchioness ac presules, ad ultimum vero, quod nunquam contigerat, mulieres multe nobiles cum pauperibus illuc perrexere. Joseph H. Lynch and Philip C. Adamo, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (London, 2014), pp. 137–55. H.  E.  J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenford of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance Following the Battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20 (1969), 225–42.

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things that are his own and not the things of God, is an enemy to himself, and a tyrannical oppressor of others.70

The quarrel between empire and papacy touched upon the issue of righteous violence, exposing the contradictions in the Christian outlook. And it called into question many old certainties. Thus the Antipope Clement III (1084–1100) challenged Gregory VII: Hitherto warriors were controlled by the bonds of the oath, tolerating no injustice to their lord … and it seemed akin to sacrilege for them to undertake anything contrary to their vassalic duty. But now the knights are aroused [by Gregory] against their lords.71

And the leaders of society could hardly escape having to think about these issues. Some, especially in Italy and Germany, were caught up in the actual conflict between pope and emperor. For others there were occasions when it loomed large, as when Gregory VII demanded homage for England from William the Conqueror.72 Such moments raised acute questions of loyalty and for whom was it right to fight; one way or another Gregory challenged most of the kings of Europe. Even more consistently, the monks, who were the confessors and religious advisers of the great, were strongly predisposed to support the papal cause.73 For the militarized upper class, participation in this ideological conflict raised uncomfortable issues which in earlier centuries had been left unresolved. To some extent questions of when and how it was proper to fight must have occurred to most of the arms bearers in the Christian West. Even the 70

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Das Register Gregors VII, ed. E. Caspar, 2 vols (Berlin, 1955), 2: 557: Ad summam, quoslibet bonos christianos multo convenientius quam malos principes regi intelligi decet. Isti enim gloriam Dei querendo se ipsos strenue regunt, ut illi non que Dei sunt, sed sua querentes sibimet hostes alios opprimit. The English translation is drawn from Gregory VII, ‘Letter to Hermann of Metz’, in The Medieval World 300–1300, ed. Norman F. Cantor (New York, 1968), p. 199. Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. et XII. (Hannover, 1891), 1: 538: Hactenus milites sacramenti foedere tenebantur … et per sacrilegio videbatur, si in honorem quippiam molirentur. Nunc autem versa vice milites armantur in dominos, insurgent filii in parentes, quoted in Erdmann, Origin of the Idea of Crusade, p. 258. Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), p. 410. The influence of Cluny and its extensive network of houses in the eleventh century is analysed in H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970). For their influence in propagating Urban II’s appeal of 1095, see Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), esp. pp. 250–81.

Cutting the Gordian Knot

general assumption that non-Christians were fair game was questioned by the ferment of ideas. The ideas of the theologians of violence may well have influenced Urban II and the papal court, but they went no way to ­resolving the Christian paradox of violence, though the conflict from which they arose must have made the elite even more conscious of that paradox. If we can get anything from what contemporaries recalled of Urban II’s appeal at Clermont in 1095, it was not couched in terms of theological analysis. What Urban did in 1095 at Clermont was not to contest any ideas or to elaborate any justifications. It is at least likely that he stressed the horrors allegedly committed by the Turks upon the Christians of the East and the perceived threat to all Christendom. But his essential message was a blunt, simple assertion that those who took up arms in this holy cause would be saved: ‘Whoever for devotion only, not to gain honour or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penance’.74 There is little here that can be related to the Augustine’s ‘just war’ or any of the other ecclesiastical ideas. This was indeed cutting the Gordian knot. It was an authoritative statement drawing on western Christendom’s long experience of outside attack and offering an unequivocal assertion of the righteousness of killing in a good cause. Urban’s indulgence, even if he was uncertain as to its full significance, offered a sudden window of opportunity. The people of Europe were not to know that there would be a crusading movement that would drag on for centuries. Urban had suddenly, and in a manner unprecedented, opened the door to salvation in a great assembly whose very purpose was to publicize the idea. It was a large gathering of senior clergy and others. Urban had even arranged ‘celebrity endorsement’ of his idea by obtaining a promise from Adhémar of Le Puy that he would be the papal legate. And far in advance of the council, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse, had pledged that he would undertake the journey.75 The initial impulse of Clermont was followed up by a great papal tour through central and southern France to spread the message and to seek more participation, and this was backed up by extensive letter writing and

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The Councils of Urban II. Vol. I: Decreta claromontensia, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Amsterdam, 1972), p.  74: Quicumque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit, iter illus pro omni penitentia ei reputetur. English translation taken from Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1996), p. 29. John H. Hill and Laurita L. Hill, Raymond IV de Saint Gilles, 1041 (ou 1042)-1105 (Toulouse, 1959), pp. 23–25.

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propaganda.76 But the appeal of the crusade extended all the away across western Christendom. We know little about the origins of the armed expeditions led by Gottschalk and Emicho, both from the Rhineland, and Folkmar from Saxony, all raised within the lands of the Emperor Henry IV. They were all far from the official rhetoric, but not beyond the reach of Urban’s simple and dramatic idea which promised a deliverance from the burden of sin.77 The success of the crusade, precisely because it was so novel a phenomenon, demanded that churchmen apply their minds to questions of clarification and definition. This was the work of the writers of the next generation — the work of Robert the Monk, Guibert of Nogent, and Baldric of Bourgueil. These writers above all sought to give the events of 1095–99 a place in Christian history and to work out its theological consequences.78 Guibert most bluntly summarized the novelty of what he was describing: God ordained holy wars in our time, so that the knightly order and the erring mob, who, like their ancient pagan models, were engaged in mutual slaughter, might find a new way of earning salvation. Thus, without having chosen (as is customary) a monastic life, without any religious commitment, they were compelled to give up this world: free to continue their customary pursuits, nevertheless they earned some measure of God’s grace by their own efforts.79

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Urban’s journey is described in detail in Alfons Becker, Papst Urban II. (1088– 1099), 3 vols (Stuttgart, 1964–2012), vol. 1, and documented in 3: 435–58. Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’, in RHC Occ., 5: 19–21 and Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007), pp. 44–63 are the best sources for these failed German expeditions. E.  O. Blake, ‘The Formation of the “Crusade Idea”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21 (1970), 11–31; Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, 3rd edn (Basingstoke, 2002); Riley-Smith, Idea of Crusading, pp. 135–52; Flori, Guerre sainte, pp.  311–43; Lean Ní Chleirigh, ‘Nova peregrinatio: The First Crusade as a Pilgrimage in Contemporary Latin Narratives’, in Writing the Early Crusade: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 63–74; Bysted, Crusade Indulgence, pp. 45–50. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos et cinq autres textes, ed. R.  B.  C. Huygens, CCCM, 127A (Turnhout, 1996), p.  87: … instituit nostro tempore prelia sancta deus, ut ordo equestris et vulgus oberrans, qui vetustae paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabantur cedes, novum repperirent salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus, electa, uti fieri assolet monastica conversatione seu religiosa qualibet professione, speculum relinquere cogerentur, sed sub consueta licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio dei aliquatenus gratiam

Cutting the Gordian Knot

No doubt Urban was fully aware of past thinking about the place of violence in Christian experience and thinking. He had an immensely broad view of the world in which he lived and there is every indication that he had carefully thought out the appeal which he made at Clermont.80 The outcome was, however, the blunt and simple ratification of salvation through slaughter, essentially little more than a slogan. This slogan, forcefully, extensively, and, above all, authoritatively delivered, broke through the doubts surrounding the place of violence in Christian society and directed the arms bearers to a new way of seeking salvation.

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consequerentur. The translation is taken from Robert Levine, The Deeds of God through the Franks (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 28. Becker, Urban II, 3: 356–68.

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The Foreskins of Christ and Antichrist Latin Christian Interpretations of Circumcision during the Crusades*

Kevin James Lewis

Introduction Much can be said of the disunity of western or Latin Christendom in the Middle Ages, a period defined in many ways by political fragmentation in western Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire and eventually the birth of modern nations. Yet there remained many concordant cultural forces that lent medieval Europe its distinctive character, worthy of study as its own entity. This paper aims to draw attention to one neglected example of a unifying cultural force in high medieval Europe: a deep-seated Christian aversion to circumcision as practised both by Jews and by Muslims.1 By doing so, the paper intends to highlight a curious aspect of how medieval European Christian writers sought to frame the crusades, a phenomenon that itself defined medieval European civilisation.

* My thanks go to the editors, Alan Murray, Hugh Reid, and the attendees of the Crusades and Latin East seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, on 13 November 2017, without whose comments this paper would have been considerably poorer. I  owe more general gratitude to Christopher Tyerman, who once advised me against verbose acknowledgements. 1 For ease of reference, this paper uses generic terms such as ‘medieval Christian’ to refer specifically to Latin-rite Christians living predominantly in western Europe, using more particular terminology only when necessary to distinguish between these and members of other Christian communities, whose beliefs and customs often differed. Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 93–117 ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117317

Kevin James Lewis

Jewish circumcision in medieval Christianity Male circumcision was and is for Jews an essential symbol of the ancient covenant between God and Abraham, as recorded in the Torah.2 Although outsiders might view the removal of the foreskin as a reduction or mutilation of flesh, medieval Jews believed that it completed or corrected the otherwise deficient male body.3 Jewish scholars debated whether an uncircumcised Jewish man was truly a Jew or even a man at all.4 A medieval Jewish belief held that some prophets — in particular Moses — had been born circumcised as a sign of being ritually clean.5 The medieval Christian perspective on circumcision differed considerably from that of Jews. Historians have written much about medieval Christian attitudes towards male circumcision as practised by Jews, usually as part of broader inquiries into antisemitism. Christianity’s renowned aversion to male circumcision was forged at a primordial point in the religion’s development when it was only just emerging as something distinct from mainstream Judaism. Andrew Jacobs has written extensively to argue that the early Christian community used the lack of circumcision as the main symbol with which to differentiate themselves from the Jews. St Paul had led the way in removing the obligation of circumcision for new Christians, seeking to eliminate a practice that was likely dissuading many Gentiles from converting.6 St Paul reasoned that circumcision was no longer necessary after Christ, writing that, ‘in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love’.7 St Paul — himself a Jew — did not view circumcision as a wicked practice, rather a useless one. This marked the genesis of the 2

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Genesis 17. 9–14; Pearl Katz and Fred E. Katz, ‘Symbols as Charters in Culture Change: The Jewish Case’, Anthropos 72 (1977), 486–96 (here 489). Micha Perry, ‘Byzantium’s Role in the Transmission of Jewish Knowledge in the Middle Ages: The Attitude toward Circumcision’, in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. G. Stroumsa, et al. (Leiden, 2012), pp. 643–58 (here pp. 648–53). Gwynn Kessler, ‘Let’s Cross that Body When We Get to It: Gender and Ethnicity in Rabbinic Literature’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73 (2005), 329–59 (here 331–32). Jacob Lassner, ‘The Covenant of the Prophets: Muslim Texts, Jewish Subtexts’, Association for Jewish Studies 15 (1990), 207–38 (here 225–26). Samuel Belkin, ‘The Problem of Paul’s Background’, Journal of Biblical Literature 54 (1935), 41–60 (here 44). Galatians 5. 6.

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Christian doctrine of ‘supersessionism’, whereby the ‘spiritual Israel’ of the Christians had superseded the ‘carnal Israel’ of the Jews.8 By the Middle Ages, Christian theology and popular sentiment had developed beyond Pauline supersessionism to become overtly hostile to Jewish circumcision. Already by the fourth century, Christian writers reasoned that because God had abolished the Mosaic Law, its continuation by contemporary Jews was not merely redundant but a form of actively sinful infidelity.9 In the fifth century, one of St  Augustine of Hippo’s innovations was ‘witness theology’, the theory that God had permitted the Jews and their archaic pre-Christian practices to persist after Christ the Messiah as contradictory witnesses to the truth of Christianity.10 Later medieval Christian writers went further, writing of Jewish circumcision as a sign of the Jews’ perceived flaws as a people. Circumcision’s intrinsic link to genitalia encouraged the view that it was somehow related to sexual immorality.11 Lurid hagiographies involving the supposed ‘blood libel’ of the Jewish people were popular amongst European Christians from the twelfth century. These stories accused Jews of kidnapping Christian children and then extracting their blood through torture and murder for use in evil rituals. A common theme to these tales was a forcible imitatio Christi, whereby the abducted child was mocked, tortured, and killed in the same way as was Christ, up to and including crucifixion.12 Some later variants on the blood libel legend included the child being forcibly circumcised prior to crucifixion, presumably drawing inspiration from the Church’s own teaching that Christ’s circumcision was effectively a blood sacrifice obliged by Mosaic law that had acted as precursor to the ultimate sacrifice that was the crucifixion.13 Most early texts of this genre lack such explicit 8

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Elliott Horowitz, ‘Circumcised Dogs from Matthew to Marlowe’, Prooftexts 27 (2007), 531–45 (here 534). Martin Albl, ‘The Image of the Jews in Ps.-Gregory of Nyssa’s Testimonies against the Jews’, Vigiliae Christianae 62 (2008), 161–86 (here 184–85). Andrew  S. Jacobs, ‘Church Fathers: Attitudes Toward Jews and Judaism’, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 105–6 (here p. 106). See, for example: Irven M. Resnick, Marks of Distinctions: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2012), esp. ch. 2, pp. 53–92; Sander L. Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York, 1991). Darren O’Brien, The Pinnacle of Hatred: The Blood Libel and the Jews ( Jerusalem, 2011). David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians (Berkeley, 2007), pp. 99–100.

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references to circumcision, although an example set in Norwich in the 1230s accused Jews of having circumcised an infant victim prior to crucifixion.14 Anna Sapir Abulafia has suggested that even when circumcision was not explicitly mentioned in the twelfth century, the blood libel myth was nevertheless linked in Christian minds to the ritual spilling of a child’s blood that did indeed occur during the circumcision ceremony.15 By the later medieval period the common claim made in the Christian-authored blood libel stories was that the Jews needed Christian blood to heal the ‘wound’ of their own circumcisions.16

Divine circumcision in medieval Christianity Latin Christian distaste for Jewish circumcision was tempered by a certain degree of ambivalence, even paradox, due to the fact that Jesus Christ himself had been a circumcised Jew. Christ’s own circumcision was recorded fleetingly but unambiguously in the Gospel of Luke, taking place eight days after birth in line with the Jewish tradition.17 As already alluded to, Christian theologians had concluded that the circumcision was a holy event at which Christ both showed himself obedient to the Law and shed blood for the first time in his life, thus initiating the process of human redemption through sacrifice that was to culminate in the crucifixion. This reasoning had already been formed in antiquity and served to ‘de-Judaize’ Christ’s circumcision, distancing it from Jewish circumcision by framing it in a distinctly Christian salvific mode. This justified still further the absence of circumcision in Pauline Christianity.18 The belief that Christ’s circumcision had been the first step in salvation was widespread throughout medieval Europe. First and foremost, the event was commemorated with its own feast day, which fell on 1 January. Numerous offices of the Circumcision survive from medieval cathedrals, often related to the raucous liturgical drama of the Feast of Fools, celebrated 14

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Abraham Gross, ‘The Blood Libel and the Blood of Circumcision: An Ashkenazic Custom That Disappeared in the Middle Ages’, The Jewish Quarterly Review n.s. 86 (1995), 171–74 (here 173). Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christian Jewish Relations 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (London, 2011), p. 176. Biale, Blood and Belief, pp. 99–100. Luke 2. 21. Andrew S. Jacobs, ‘Dialogical Differences: (De-)Judaizing Jesus’ Circumcision’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15 (2007), 291–335 (here 298–332).

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on or around the Feast of the Circumcision.19 Hagiographical compilations such as the hugely influential fourteenth-century Legenda Aurea explained in detail to a popular audience the theology behind Christ’s circumcision specifically, as well as patristic thinking on Jewish circumcision in general.20 Both the act of circumcising Christ and the appearance of his circumcised foreskin after the fact were depicted in medieval art across Christendom, pointing to the theological interpretations that underlay such works: not least the view that the circumcision was a humiliation for God’s incarnate Son.21 What is now one of the most notorious medieval relics was the Holy Foreskin, which was reasoned to have remained on earth because it was cut from Christ’s body before his Ascension.22 Many alleged Holy Foreskins circulated in medieval Europe and religious mystics meditated upon this relic.23 At least one of these items was reported to have a crusading connection, with the cathedral of Antwerp claiming that their relic was sent by Godfrey of Bouillon from Jerusalem to combat ‘paganism’; a procession commemorating this relic reportedly originated in the twelfth or thirteenth century and continued through to the fifteenth.24 By equating Christ’s circumcision with his crucifixion as similarly painful, bloody, and humiliating experiences inflicted ultimately by Jews, medieval Christian theologians — and the artists and popular writers they inspired — were able to foster a cult around this particular holy event without deviating from either the Pauline rationale that circumcision was no longer necessary after Christ, or the hostile medieval interpretation of Jewish circumcision as an inherently cruel act. 19

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Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Ithaca, NY, 2011), pp. 98–112. Jacob of Varazze, Legenda Aurea vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta, ed. T. Graesse, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1850), §13, pp. 79–87. Leo Steinberg, ‘The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion’, October 25 (1983), 1–198, 204–22 (here 46–72). Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton 2013), p. 240. Robert  P. Palazzo, ‘The Veneration of the Sacred Foreskin(s) of Baby Jesus: A  Documented Analysis’, in Multicultural Europe and Cultural Exchange in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. James  P. Helfers (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 155–76. Mark  A. Meadow, ‘“Met geschickter ordenen”: The Rhetoric of Place in Philip II’s 1549 Antwerp Blijde Incompst’, The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57 (1999), 1–11 (here 7); Palazzo, ‘The Veneration of the Sacred Foreskin(s) of Baby Jesus’, p. 166.

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Islamic circumcision Turning now to Islam, circumcision was common throughout the medieval Islamic world, performed on males and females. Medieval (male) writers within both Islam and Christianity at the time of the crusades dedicated some attention to the various practices labelled as female circumcision, or — to give the term favoured by modern policy-makers and health professionals — ‘female genital mutilation’ (FGM).25 One highly influential medieval Islamic jurist in Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), alleged that Frankish and Mongol women were more likely than Muslim women to engage in prostitution and adultery precisely because they were uncircumcised, writing that, ‘due to [female circumcision] the immorality in the women of the Tatars and Franks is not found in the women of the Muslims’.26 The near-contemporary James of Vitry (1160/70–1240), bishop of Acre in the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, wrote that Egyptian Christians — most likely the Copts, although James conflated them with the Jacobites — practised both female and male circumcision, inspired supposedly by their Muslim neighbours: But after weeds had been sown by the Enemy, and having been blinded for a long time by a lamentable and wretched error, most of them circumcise their infants of both sexes in the manner of the Saracens, not listening wisely that the grace of baptism has abrogated the circumcision of the flesh, just as the flower dies and withers with the arrival of the fruit.27 25

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Sara Johnsdotter and Birgitta Essén, ‘Genitals and Ethnicity: The Politics of Genital Modifications’, Reproductive Health Matters 18 (2010), 29–37 (here 30–31). For FGM in the medieval Middle East, which mainly lies beyond the scope of the present paper, see: Jonathan  P. Berkey, ‘Circumcision Circumscribed: Female Excision and Cultural Accommodation in the Medieval Near East’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996), 19–38; Avner Giladi, ‘Normative Islam versus Local Tradition: Some Observations on Female Circumcision with Special Reference to Egypt’, Arabica 44 (1997), 254–67. Ah.mad bin Taymiyya, Fatāwā al-nisā’, ed. Ah.mad al-Sayh. and Al-Sayd al-Jamīlī (Cairo, 1988), p. 18: li-hadhā min al-fawāh.ish fī nisā’ al-tatar wa nisā’ al-afranj mā lā yūjid fī nisā’ al-muslimīn. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations are by the author of this article. James of Vitry, Historia orientalis, ed. Jean Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), p. 306: Sed postea inimico superseminante zizania, lamentabili et miserabili errore longo tempore obtenebrati, parvulos suos in utroque sexu more Saracenorum ex magna parte circuncidentes [sic], non prudenter attendunt quod baptismi gratia superveniens carnis evacuavit circuncisionem [sic], quemadmodum fructu adveniente flores decidunt et marcescunt.

The Foreskins of Christ and Antichrist

What is significant here is James of Vitry’s assertion that there was a distinctly ‘Saracen manner’ (more Saracenorum) of circumcision, whether female or male. In truth, neither male nor female circumcision was an Islamic invention, although both were common within the regions where Islam was first established. Ancient writers reported that female circumcision was practised by peoples across North Africa and the Middle East — including perhaps Arabia itself — long before Islam.28 Similarly, male circumcision appears to have been practised in pre-Islamic Arabia, only to be encouraged all the more with the coming of Islam.29 Neighbouring Syria and Egypt also possessed ancient pre-Islamic traditions of male circumcision, which likely facilitated the local population’s transition to the Arabian faith of Islam.30 Male circumcision soon became strongly associated with Islam, reportedly being one of the first signs of Islam’s distinctiveness presented to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in the seventh century.31 Medieval Muslims were proud of this association, deliberately linking together the preIslamic Arab tradition with the Jewish, or rather Abrahamic, tradition that the young faith claimed as its own. Mainstream traditions regarding the circumcision of Muh.ammad reflect this dual Arab-Abrahamic context, holding either that the prophet had had himself circumcised in emulation of the prophet Abraham or that he had been circumcised by his grandfather according to pre-Islamic Arab tradition.32 Some shared the aforementioned Jewish belief that many of their prophets had been born already circumcised as a sign of God’s special favour, with Muslims incorporating Muh.ammad within this tradition.33 Circumcision’s ritual importance was reflected in the etymology of the related words used to refer to it in Arabic dialects: based on the root s.-h-r, implying purity.34 28

29

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31 32 33

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Sabine  R. Huebner, ‘Female Circumcision as a rite de passage in Egypt — Continuity through the Millennia?’ Journal of Egyptian History 2 (2009), 149–71 (here 149–68); Berkey, ‘Circumcision Circumscribed’, pp. 21–23. A.  J. Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition, ed. H.  A.  R. Gibb, 12 vols. (Leiden, 1960–2009), 5: 20–22 (here 20); Giladi, ‘Normative Islam versus Local Tradition’, pp. 258–59. Jack  M. Sasson, ‘Circumcision in the Ancient Near East’, Journal of Biblical Literature 85 (1966), 473–76. Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, p. 20. Giladi, ‘Normative Islam versus Local Tradition’, p. 259. Lassner, ‘The Covenant of the Prophets’, pp. 226-29; M. J. Kister, ‘“…and He Was Born Circumcised…” Some notes on circumcision in H.adīth’, Oriens 34 (1994), 10–30 (here 10–16). Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, p. 21.

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Perhaps in part due to the ethnic exclusivity of the Arabian tradition, it was circumcision’s supposed Abrahamic roots that captured the Islamic imagination the most, inviting a comparison with the older Abrahamic faith of Judaism. Medieval Muslim scholars recognised the Abrahamic pedigree of circumcision and embraced it enthusiastically, seeing it as proof that Islam was descended from — or rather a restoration of — the true and pure Abrahamic faith as given by God to the prophets. This interpretation held particular weight for Muslim apologists precisely because male circumcision was not practised within Christianity, Islam’s great Abrahamic rival and precursor.35 Thus the failure of most Christians — be they Byzantines, Latins, or members of the many eastern sects that lived under Islamic rule — to obey God’s apparently clear instruction to perform male circumcision was seen as yet another ‘innovation’ (bid‘  a) in the list of Christianity’s perceived heresies, including monasticism, belief in Christ’s crucifixion, and the elevation of Jesus himself as a divine equal with God. That the pre-Islamic Arabs had been circumcised served to confirm Muslims’ beliefs concerning Abraham’s activities in the Arabian peninsula, especially in Mecca, which in turn justified the claim that Islam had derived circumcision directly from Abraham and not indirectly via Judaism.36 One of the major differences between Islamic and Jewish circumcision was the age at which the procedure was performed. For Jews, the custom was to have boys circumcised much earlier than adolescence: preferably as infants on the eighth day after birth, as instructed in Genesis.37 For Muslims, regional customs and legal interpretations differed significantly; recommendations varied across all ages between the seventh day after birth and the fifteenth year of age.38 Jews and Muslims have perennially acknowledged this discrepancy in scheduling as one of the key symbols of difference between their faiths.39 At whatever age it was performed, the circumcision of Muslim boys became a rite of passage worthy of celebration, whilst its female equivalent was performed without festivity.40 For the rich and powerful, the circumcision of a son was an occasion of elaborate ceremony, as when the Ottoman Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–95) hosted a fifty-day festival to mark the circumcision of his sixteen-year-old 35 36 37 38 39

40

Kister, ‘“…and He Was Born Circumcised…”’, pp. 19–20. Kister, ‘“…and He Was Born Circumcised…”’, pp. 29–30. Genesis 17. 12. Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, pp. 20–22. Harvey  E. Goldberg, ‘Jewish-Muslim Religious Rivalry in Tripolitania’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980), 157–70 (here 164–65). Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, p. 20; Berkey, ‘Circumcision Circumscribed’, p. 19.

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son Prince Mehmed in 1582.41 Suitably grand buildings dedicated to the purpose of circumcision were built in palace grounds. Not long after Prince Mehmed’s circumcision, the Ottomans oversaw the construction of the Circumcision Room (Sünnet Odası), a still-extant seventeenth-century kiosk in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul.

Islamic circumcision in Christianity Despite the prominence of circumcision within the Muslim tradition, there is a curious lack of studies into the medieval Christian view of circumcision as an Islamic practice. This is particularly striking given the richness of historiography on Christian perceptions of Jewish circumcision. This is a regrettable oversight, because there is evidence to suggest that the practice served as an important symbolic point of contention between Muslims and Christians. Medieval Muslim writers thought it the height of hypocrisy — and a sign of how corrupt non-Islamic Abrahamic tradition had become — that Christians revered Christ’s circumcision so enthusiastically and at the same time rejected the practice of circumcision more broadly.42 Meanwhile Latin Christians did not write about Islamic circumcision as if merely a continuation of the Jewish or Abrahamic tradition, as did contemporary Muslim writers. Indeed, as the remainder of this paper argues, medieval Christian attitudes to Muslim circumcision drew on ideas that overlapped with but subtly differed from their views on the Jewish practice: developing a uniquely Latin Christian conception of Islamic circumcision that was linked to distinctly European strands of eschatological thought and Islamophobic crusading rhetoric. Returning briefly to James of Vitry’s aforementioned description of Egyptian circumcision, a number of conclusions are possible. One is that he clearly thought that the local Christians had been inspired by their Muslim neighbours to circumcise their children. Whatever the truth of this assertion, it should be observed that eastern Christianity had long taken a greater and more positive interest in circumcision than had European or Latin Christianity, even before the advent of Islam. The earliest reference to the survival of Christ’s severed foreskin is in the apocryphal and pre-Islamic Syriac Infancy Gospel of the sixth century, which also contains a far fuller account of the Holy Circumcision than is found in the canonical Gospel of Luke. According to this source, Christ was 41

42

Derin Terzioğlu, ‘The Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation’, Muqarnas 12 (1995), 84–100 (here 84–97). Kister, ‘“…and He Was Born Circumcised…”’, p. 20.

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circumcised in a cave in the presence of Mary, Joseph, and an anonymous ‘old Hebrew woman’, who preserved the foreskin — or alternatively the umbilical cord — in an alabaster box of spikenard oil, which was alleged to be the same perfumed oil that Mary of Bethany would later pour over the feet of the adult Christ.43 A second and related conclusion when reading James is that he himself was clearly of the opinion that both male and female circumcision were distinctly Islamic, ‘Saracen’ practices, which had in turn entered or rather corrupted Coptic Christian culture. In other words, the prevalence of circumcision amongst local Christians did not alter James’ opinion that the relevant practices were the fault of Muslims and ultimately the Devil, or rather the ‘Enemy’ (inimico).44 Interestingly at least one twelfth-century Coptic metropolitan in Damietta had earlier felt the need to defend his community’s form of circumcision as a specifically Abrahamic practice, borrowed from neither Islam nor Judaism.45 This preceded and preempted James of Vitry, but one wonders if the recent arrival of crusading Europeans in the Middle East had made this Coptic cleric and the Copts in general more sensitive to how this particular practice might be regarded within Christian culture more broadly. A third conclusion is that James chose to frame Islamic circumcision according to the traditional Pauline view that it had been rendered superfluous by Christ. In fact, he directly cited St Paul’s letter to the Galatians when criticising the Copts.46 Thus James linked Islamic circumcision to its Jewish forebear, albeit only implicitly so. As a learned churchman who had studied extensively in the great schools of Europe before moving to Acre, James was naturally predisposed to recall Pauline teaching on circumcision.47 Where the medieval James went far beyond what St Paul would have been willing to do was to attribute to circumcision a diabolical influence. This Pauline critique would suggest that James saw Islamic circumcision and Jewish circumcision as fundamentally similar, if not quite identical. In a letter to numerous educated contacts in France, James wrote again of circumcision, this time describing how some of the Jacobite Syriac Orthodox Christians in Acre circumcised their children ‘in the manner 43

44 45 46 47

The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. and trans. William Hone et al. (London, 1820), p. 39; Luke 7. 37–38. James of Vitry, Historia orientalis, p. 306. Berkey, ‘Circumcision Circumscribed’, p. 23. James of Vitry, Historia orientalis, p. 306. Cf. Galatians 5. 2–24. John F. Benton, ‘Qui étaient les parents de Jacques de Vitry?’, in Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France (London, 1991), pp. 89–98 (here pp. 89–91).

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of the Jews’ (more Iudeorum), at least until James himself delivered a strongly Pauline sermon — translated into Arabic by an interpreter — that convinced them to stop.48 Yet, as has been shown, James had also seen the practice in Egypt as having been in a distinctly ‘Saracen manner’ (more Saracenorum).49 Moreover, in the very same letter to his French colleagues in which he described Jewish circumcision amongst local Christians, James also described how some Muslims — by context the Nizārī Shī ‘a ‘Assassins’ and the Druze of Lebanon — did not circumcise themselves ‘in the manner of other Saracens’ (more aliorum Sarracenorum), which may have offered him — an optimistic Christian missionary — and his readers the hope that Islamic norms were not as entrenched as might otherwise have been assumed.50 James clearly saw a distinction between circumcision ‘in the manner of Jews’ and circumcision ‘in the manner of Saracens’, although it is unclear what exactly he thought this distinction was. To answer this, it is necessary to turn to works dating from the very outset of the crusading period and even earlier still.

Circumcision and the End Times What separated the Latin Christian view of Jewish circumcision on the one hand and Islamic circumcision on the other was the concept of progress, or rather human history as interpreted through the lens of divine providence. As already discussed, medieval thinking on the Jews was based on Augustinian witness theology, which taught that the Jews  served as embodied reminders to Christians of the world before it was saved by Christ, thus demonstrating the superiority of Christian teaching. Following this Pauline supersessionism, Christians believed that Jews were God’s original chosen people, hence why they were the main protagonists in the Old Testament, but also that they had fallen dramatically by rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God.51 Jews were a solemn lesson in obedience to God and the supremacy of Christianity, but more pertinently they were the past.

48

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James of Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), no. 2, p. 83. James of Vitry, Historia orientalis, p. 306. James of Vitry, Lettres, no. 2, p. 95. Andrew  S. Jacobs, ‘Adversus Iudaeos’, in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 1st edn, ed. Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford, 2013), pp. 111–13.

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By contrast, Islam post-dated the events of the Bible, even if Muslims themselves retrospectively declared all prophets from Adam to Jesus as muslim — literally meaning ‘one who submits to God’. This posed a problem to Christian thinkers. Whereas pagans and Jews could exist without challenging the Christian worldview, there was no real conceptual space for Muh.ammad’s post-biblical revelation, less his followers. One way that Islam was accommodated within medieval Christian thought was to conclude that this religion was the product of Antichrist and ultimately the Devil, often fusing this with the belief that Muslims were ‘sons of Ishmael’ — thereby linking them to the Old Testament.52 Medieval Christian depictions of Muh.ammad presented him as an aspect of Antichrist, a deceiver who sought to undermine Christianity: an ‘anti-Messiah’.53 For James of Vitry, the Prophet of Islam was a ‘seducer’ (seductor), ‘like one of the Antichrists’ (quasi alter antichristus) and ‘the firstborn son of Satan’ (primogenitus Satane filius).54 If Jews were the past, Muslims were the future: but not the final destination, merely an antichristian precursor to Christ’s much-anticipated and definitive return. When circumcision was practised by Jews, Christians regarded it as one of the many reminders of how the Jews remained stubbornly committed to the old Mosaic Law, which Christians believed to have been abrogated by Christ through his voluntary submission to both circumcision and crucifixion. When circumcision was practised by Muslims, however, it was a sign of how the forces of Antichrist in the present were striving actively to undo Christ’s achievements before the future end of the world. Lupton puts it well when, describing later medieval Christian thought, she writes: Islam represents a double scandal, the catastrophic bastardization of both Christian universalism — through the seductive danger of the Islamic world mission — and Jewish particularism, represented by Muslim allegiance to ritual laws and to an Abrahamic monotheism without Christ.55

In other words, Islam posed a particular threat to Christianity because it aimed both to expand itself — unlike Judaism — and to reverse one of 52

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Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Manchester, 1981), pp.  48, 159. Muslims too embraced this pan-Abrahamic belief without the negative connotations, enshrined as it is in the Qurān. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 196–97. James of Vitry, Historia orientalis, p. 106. Julia Reinhard Lupton, ‘Othello Circumcised: Shakespeare and the Pauline Discourse of Nations’, Representations 57 (1997), 73–89 (here 74).

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Christianity’s earliest doctrinal decisions by reintroducing Abrahamic circumcision. If Islam was regarded as a sign of the end times, then it is perhaps to be expected that one of the finest demonstrations of the medieval European Christian view of Islamic circumcision per se relates to the rhetoric of the First Crusade, an anti-Islamic movement with heavy eschatological significance. This apocalyptic tone was struck in large part by those Latin Christian writers who tasked themselves with creating the theology of the crusade after the fact. Arguably the most influential were the handful of French monastic authors who produced theologically elaborated accounts of the crusade, derived from some version of the sparse narrative found in the anonymous Gesta Francorum. These were Robert the Monk, Baldric of Dol, and Guibert of Nogent.56 Robert the Monk is of particular interest, for it was in his telling of Pope Urban II’s sermon launching the First Crusade at the council of Clermont in November 1095 that the pontiff allegedly declared the following, amidst a litany of other reported Muslim atrocities: ‘they overturn altars polluted by their filth, circumcise Christians, and pour the blood of circumcision over the altars or into the fonts of baptisteries’.57 Judged on its own merits, this passage appears to do little more than whip up support for the crusade with sensationalist tales of Muslim cruelty. Yet there is an intriguing broader context that has not been explored, placing Pope Urban’s words within an eschatological narrative that had been circulating amongst European Christians for centuries. This tradition was rooted in the belief that Muslims were the agents of Antichrist, who in turn could be equated with Muh.ammad himself. Centuries before Pope Urban’s sermon at Clermont and only a few decades before Muh.ammad received his first revelation in Arabia in 610, the Christian historian and hagiographer Gregory of Tours (c. 538–94) wrote his prophecies for the end times — clearly owing much to earlier works such as the so-called Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. Gregory’s derivative prophecies included the following passage detailing Antichrist, with an allusion to a biblical prophecy made by Christ himself: Concerning the end of the world … Antichrist will first undergo circumcision, claiming to be Christ. Then he will place his statue in the Temple of

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Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 135–55. Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. D.  Kempf and M.  G. Bull (Woodbridge, 2013), p.  5: altaria suis feditatibus inquinata subvertunt, Christianos circumcidunt, cruoremque circumcisionis aut super altaria fundunt, aut in vasis baptisterii inmergunt.

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Jerusalem to be worshipped, just as we read the Lord having said [Matthew 24. 15]: ‘You will see the abomination of desolation [Daniel 9. 27, 11. 31, 12. 11; 1 Maccabees 1. 54, 6. 7] standing in the holy place’.58

Apocalyptic writings remained current in Europe throughout the early Middle Ages, intensifying with pre-1000 millenarianism through the eleventh century, up until the eve of the First Crusade and beyond.59 Gregory of Tours was not the most influential apocalyptic writer, but his major contribution to eschatological thought in Europe was to infuse it with a greater sense of urgency than had come before, by taking St Augustine’s earlier prohibition on attempts to predict the end of the world to the logical conclusion that the end could come at any point.60 A later Christian author whose writings were to have a greater impact on Antichrist literature was Abbot Adso of Montier-en-Der (920–92), who wrote a treatise De Antichristo. Circumcision was just as important to Adso’s Antichrist as to Gregory’s: After the Temple that Solomon built for God is destroyed, in its place he [Antichrist] will rebuild his own, circumcise himself, and feign to be himself the son of all-powerful God.61

According to Rhoads and Lupton, Adso framed Antichrist’s anticipated mission as one that would represent ‘a negation of Paul’s negation of Jewish law’, and at the centre of this reversion to pre-Pauline Jewish ways was Antichrist’s own circumcision.62 Adso’s prediction that Antichrist would be a total inversion of Christ hinged upon the idea — best surveyed by Emmerson — that Antichrist’s life would mirror Christ’s own in regard to many superficial details in order to seduce people into following him, 58

59 60

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Gregory of Tours, ‘Historiarum Libri  X’, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, in MGH SS, 1.1: 4–5: De fine vero mundi … Antechristus vero primum circumcisionem inducit, se asserens Christum, deinde in templo Hierusolimis statuam suam collocat adorandam, sicut Dominum dixisse legimus: Videbitis abhuminationem desolationes stantem in loco sancto. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 53–56. James T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 54–57, 68–78. Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortu et tempore Antichristi necnon et tractatus qui ab eo dependunt, ed. D. Verhelst, CCCM, 45 (Turnhout, 1976), p.  24: Templum etiam destructum, quod Salomon Deo edificauit, in statum suum restaurabit et circumcidet se et filium Dei omnipotentis se esse mentietur. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Bonita Rhoads, ‘Circumcising the Antichrist: An Ethno-Historical Fantasy’, Jouvert 3.1–2 (1999) (accessed 5 October 2016).

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but it would nonetheless remain evil at its core: for example, like Christ he would be born to a human mother yet he would be corrupted in the womb.63 Christ of course was circumcised and so Antichrist would embrace this detail to make his wicked imitatio Christi all the more convincing. The circumcision became a widely recognised symbol of Antichrist, even appearing as illustrations in illuminated Bibles such as the fourteenth-century Velislav Bible.64 Adso himself clearly thought Antichrist’s behaviour would be especially effective in winning Jews over to his diabolical cause, seemingly on the basis that the Jews had not recognised the true prophesied Messiah so would eventually come to accept one who would inevitably — from a Christian perspective — be false: For, as we said above, he [Antichrist] will be born in the city of Babylon [i.e. the supposedly evil inversion of Bethlehem], will go to Jerusalem, will circumcise himself, and will say to the Jews, ‘I am the Christ promised to you, who has come for your salvation, so that I may gather and defend you who have been scattered’. Then all the Jews will flock to him, thinking to admire God but actually admiring the Devil.65

There was thus an undeniably antisemitic tone to the Antichrist myth as articulated by Adso and others, with Antichrist’s circumcision just one part of a broader pseudo-messianic strategy to demonstrate his superficial loyalty to the ‘old law’ and thereby appeal to Jews.66 Yet the myth proved elastic. Depictions of Antichrist could be and were applied to various perceived opponents of Christianity in the centuries that followed, including not only Judaism but also the newer faith of Islam — especially at times of particular crisis when Islam’s successes shook Christian confidence.67 The arrival of Islam and its rapid expansion into formerly Christian territories was incorporated — gradually at first — into European eschatological writings, which gave vengeful hope to those Christians who could never reconcile themselves to living 63 64 65

66 67

Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, p. 129. Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortu et tempore Antichristi, p.  27: Nam, sicut supra diximus, in ciuitate Babilonie natus, Hierosolimam ueniens, circumcidet se, dicens Iudeis: Ego sum Christus uobis repromissus, qui ad salute uestram ueni, ut uos, qui disperse estis, congregem et defendam. Tunc confluent ad eum omnes Iudei, estimantes Deum suscipere, sed suscipient diabolum. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 90–91, 217 and passim. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp.  67–68; Lupton and Rhoads, ‘Circumcising the Antichrist’.

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under Muslim rule in conquered regions such as Iberia and Syria or else offered reassurance to those watching with concern from the as-yetunconquered lands of Europe.68 One of the key textual influences upon medieval exegetes such as Gregory of Tours and Adso was the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, originally written in the late seventh century to explain Islam’s very recent successes, hence this text’s fixation on the Muslim ‘Ishmaelites’.69 As Emmerson notes, the seemingly pessimistic Christian beliefs in Antichrist and the apocalypse actually projected optimism, prophesying an ultimate Christian victory regardless of present and future setbacks.70 Thus, long before Urban allegedly condemned forced circumcisions at Clermont, Islam had been reinterpreted by Christians in western Europe to fit a distinctly apocalyptic narrative that served to inspire a sense of communal identity and resistance against the Muslims. All that Pope Urban — or rather Robert the Monk — did was to place this established strand of anti-Islamic eschatology at the heart of the First Crusade. Given that Gregory of Tours was one of the early medieval writers who had the greatest influence upon eleventh-century and specifically monastic concepts of Jerusalem, it should not come as a surprise that his and others’ writings of the circumcised Antichrist in the Holy City were echoed in the words of the monastic Urban and Robert.71 One of the most intriguing examples of this particular rhetoric is found in the chronicle written by the Norman Ralph of Caen, in which the crusaders reportedly encountered a giant bejewelled idol of Muh.ammad on al-H.aram al-Sharīf (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem, which they duly destroyed. The full verse narrative (translated into prose) is as follows: A statue stood on a lofty moulded throne, sculpted of silver, which six soldiers would barely be strong enough to carry and ten with difficulty to lift. Tancred [of Hauteville] looked at this: ‘Such modesty!’ he said, ‘Who wishes for himself this here statue, which stands on high? Who wishes for himself this effigy? Who these jewels? Who this gold? Who this [royal] purple?’ For the entirety of Muh.ammad was wreathed in jewels and purple, glittering and gilded. ‘Perhaps this statue is Mars or Apollo: surely it is not Christ? There is no sign of Christ: no cross, no crown of thorns, no nails, no drained side. Therefore it is not Christ; for it is indeed the original Antichrist, perverse Muh.ammad, pernicious Muh.ammad. O if only his ally 68 69 70 71

Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 110–17, 184–87. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, p. 48. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 13, 16. Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford, 2011), pp. 79–80.

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were near, he who is yet to come! Already now my foot would crush both Antichrists. Such modesty! The guest of hell reigns over the citadel of God and the servant of Pluto [the king of the underworld] becomes master of the works of Solomon [n.b. the crusaders referred to al-Aqs.ā mosque, near which this statue allegedly stood, as Solomon’s Temple]! Thus may it fall swiftly, now may it topple! Why does it still stand arrogant even though we might overwhelm it?’ Barely had the command been given when already it seemed to have been enacted, no other command having been followed by the soldiery so willingly. The statue was dragged away, hauled away, shattered, cut up. The material was a precious metal, but in a worthless shape. Thus was it remoulded from something worthless to become precious.72

A colossal statue of Muh.ammad placed in the holiest section of Muslim Jerusalem immediately appears incongruous to anybody with even an elementary knowledge of Islam, which has traditionally been staunchly opposed to idolatry. The idea that either local Sunnī Muslims or the Shī‘a Fāt. imid governors of Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade would have commissioned an actual statue of the Prophet is absurd. Recognising this, historians have instead sought to explain the presence of the statue in Ralph of Caen’s narrative as a sign of how the author was tapping into a seam of Latin Christian thought at the time, which held that Islam was not a monotheism but an idolatrous pagan polytheism.73 That the Muh.ammad idol must be a fantastical fantasy is not wrong, but it is a simple conclusion. More important is to observe that the 72

73

Ralph of Caen, ‘Gesta Tancredi’, in RHC HOcc., 3: 587–716 (here 695–96): Stabat in excelso simulacrum fusile throno,  / Scilicet argentum grave, cui vix sena ferendo  / Dextera sufficiat fortis, vix dena levando.  / Hoc ubi Tancredus prospectat: ‘Proh pudor!’ inquit,  / ‘Quid sibi vult praesens, quae stat sublimis, imago?  / Quid sibi vult haec effigies? quid gemma? quid aurum?  / Quid sibi vult ostrum?’ Nam gemmis totus et ostro / Mahummet redimitus erat, radiabat et auro.  / ‘Forsitan hoc Martis vel Apollinis est simulacrum:  / Numquid enim Christus? Non hic insignia Christi, / Non crux, non sertum, non clavi, non latus haustum. / Ergo neque hic Christus: quin pristinus Antichristus, / Mahummet pravus, Mahummet perniciosus. / O si hujus socius nunc afforet [corr. adforet]; ille futurus! / Jam meus hic ambos pes supprimat Antichristos. / Proh pudor! arce Dei potitur conviva baratri; / Vernaque Plutonis Deus est operi Salomonis! / Corruat ergo citus, jam dudum corruat iste!  / Statne superbus adhuc quasi nos quoque sorpserit ipse?’ / Vix jussum fuerat, videas jam stare peractum, / Milite nil jusso complente libentius isto. / Abripitur, trahitur, dirumpitur, obtruncatur. / Materia carum, sed forma vile metallum: / Ergo diffictus de vili sit preciosus. Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY, 2009), pp. 241–45.

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mention of the idol positions Ralph of Caen’s chronicle within the same eschatological tradition of Antichrist that stretched back centuries. Ralph of Caen is explicit that Muh.ammad is Antichrist, with his statue in Jerusalem as earlier writers had prophesied. Ralph’s claim that there were to be at least two Antichrists — Muh.ammad the ‘original Antichrist’ and a second and greater one still to come during the end times — echoed a standard contemporary Christian belief in multiple Antichrists or ‘types’ of Antichrist, derived from no less a source than Scripture.74 At this point it is crucial to recall the belief that Antichrist would both demand an idol in the holy city of Jerusalem and enforce circumcision. This was not made explicit in this part of Ralph of Caen’s narrative, although the statue alone was likely enough to remind many readers of the full Antichrist prophecy — circumcision and all. As Emmerson argues, the symbols of Antichrist — circumcision included — were so conventional and widely understood by Latin Christians that they could be slipped into art and literature without detailed explanation or explicit references to Antichrist.75 Furthermore, if Robert the Monk can be trusted, the crusaders who conquered Jerusalem in 1099 had been motivated partly by Pope Urban’s allegation of forced circumcision, which itself would have inspired thoughts of Antichrist. As Akbari notes, medieval European Christians regarded Islam as ‘an inferior copy of Christianity’, in which a confused ‘anti-Trinity’ — Muh. ammad, Tervagant, and Apollo — had replaced the Christian Trinity, whilst an extended pantheon of other pagan deities had replaced the saints.76 This view of Islam as Christianity inverted is apparent in a more specific sense when reading Pope Urban’s purported words at Clermont; the pope depicted Islamic circumcision as a barbaric and brutal inversion of Christian baptism, with blood filling the fonts of the Holy Land.77 This perceived equivalence of rituals is itself not surprising. Homilies in the eleventh century stressed that circumcisions from Abraham’s up to and including Christ’s had merely foreshadowed Christian baptism. 78 Moreover, influential Christian theologians including Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310–403), the Venerable Bede (c. 672–735), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) repeatedly 74 75 76 77 78

1 John 2. 18; Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 25–33, 35–36, 60–72. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 21–22, 145, 147. Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 200–47. Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, p. 5. Frederic Mac Donncha, ‘Imdibe Crist — An 11th-Century Homily on the Circumcision of Christ’, Collectanea Hibernica 26 (1984), 7–12 (here 8).

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insisted throughout the Middle Ages that baptism had replaced circumcision as the ritual to cleanse souls of original sin.79 The claim that Muslims were forcing Christians in the Holy Land to be circumcised highlights how the Latin Christian interpretation of male circumcision differed according to whether the Jewish or the Islamic practice was under discussion. As established above, hagiographies of the ‘blood libel’ genre — especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — generally did not include circumcision specifically in the list of tortures supposedly inflicted upon Christian children by murderous Jews. Moreover, Jewish blood libel was imagined in terms of treating the child in the same cruel way that the Jews were accused of having treated Christ; the ‘torture’ was not about forcing the children to become Jews, because the children were invariably killed. This is not to say that medieval Christians failed to make any conceptual link between Islamic and Jewish circumcision. As already mentioned, Christian authors believed that Antichrist’s circumcision would appeal to Jews, whilst Antichrist himself was, in Emmerson’s words, ‘popularly understood as the anti-Messiah of the Saracens and Jews (my emphasis)’.80 The argument here then — that there was a conceptual link between ‘Saracen’ circumcision and antichristian circumcision — must necessarily incorporate Jewish circumcision. Indeed, it is likely that crusading rhetoric, which was focused primarily against Muslims but was redirected against Jews in Europe by those unable or unwilling to travel to the Holy Land, was partly responsible for the upsurge in blood libel folklore and actual antisemitic violence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.81 Nevertheless, the majority of stories within this genre confirm the assessment that medieval Christian authors were generally of the opinion that the Jews kept circumcision to themselves — perhaps a reflection of medieval Judaism’s tendency not to be a proselytising faith in the way that Christianity and Islam were. Even in the context of the medieval Antichrist tradition, the false Messiah’s circumcision was usually something that Antichrist underwent himself in order to appeal to the already circumcised Jews. In fact, Latin Christians depicted the Jews’ allegedly exclusivist attitude to circumcision as a negative reflection on the Jewish people as a whole. For example, it was thought that Jews believed circumcision to be the only 79

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A.  B. Chambers, ‘Milton’s “Upon the Circumcision”: Backgrounds and Meanings’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17 (1975), 687–97 (here 688–89). Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 91, 196–97, 217. Gillian Bennett, ‘William of Norwich and the Expulsion of the Jews’, Folklore 116 (2005), 311–14 (here 313).

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route to Heaven and also chose not to share it with others because they wanted to deny non-Jews entry into Paradise. This belief was so strong in the thirteenth century that the inquisitor Bernard Gui alleged that even Christians who voluntarily converted to Judaism were not permitted full circumcision; they supposedly had to content themselves with a sort of ‘semicircumcision’, whereby less of the foreskin was removed than was the case for ‘true’ Jews.82 This theory that Jews selfishly guarded circumcision likely drew inspiration from an incident in the Acts of the Apostles where a group of Judaeo-Christians were condemned for teaching that, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’.83 This in turn was likely an echo of the authentic rabbinic assertion that circumcision protected Jews from Hell (Gehenna), which was articulated into the Middle Ages through the esoteric Jewish belief that circumcised Jews were guaranteed entry into Heaven.84 Ironically, devout Christians such as Bernard Gui neither wanted circumcision nor believed it to have any merit, yet nonetheless viewed the Jews as selfish in principle for refusing to share it. Just as clear is the contrast with Islamic circumcision as depicted by Pope Urban; whereas the Jews wanted circumcision only for themselves, the Muslims were too generous with it, forcing it upon the unwilling. Biale has suggested that medieval European Christians regarded Jewish circumcision as a ‘mirror image’ of the Eucharist, voicing particular disgust at the custom of the metzitzah, when the mohel — a specialist in the rite of circumcision — sucked blood from the wound during the circumcision.85 The thirteenth-century Catalan Dominican author Raymond Martini went 82

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Shaye J. D. Cohen, ‘Between Judaism and Christianity: The Semicircumcision of Christians According to Bernard Gui, His Sources and R. Eliezer of Metz’, The Harvard Theological Review 94 (2001), 285–321 (here 286–90). Acts 15. 1. Elliot  R. Wolfson, ‘Circumcision and the Divine Name: A  Study in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine’, The Jewish Quarterly Review n.s. 78 (1987), 77–112. Biale, Blood and Belief, pp.  98–99. Some historians and folklorists with a psychoanalytical leaning have suggested that the blood libel legend — with or without circumcision — also carried a connection to the Eucharist in the minds of Christians, representing a projected inversion of the subconscious guilt Christians supposedly felt at drinking the blood of Christ: Alan Dundes, ‘The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization through Projective Inversion’, in The Blood Libel Legend: A  Casebook in AntiSemitic Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison, WI, 1991), pp.  336–76 (here pp. 350–60).

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so far as to compare this unfavourably to Islamic circumcision, which he viewed as both more hygienic and less blasphemous precisely because it lacked this oral element.86 So it was that Christians like Pope Urban and his monastic interpreters saw Islamic circumcision as an inversion of the sacrament of baptism, while Christians like Raymond Martini saw Jewish circumcision as an inversion of the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is wholly in keeping with the Christian views of Jews and Muslims more broadly, with Jews regarded as an inward-facing community ever since they had rejected Christ and Muslims a worryingly active and aggressive force, seemingly pursuing Antichrist’s imminent goal of eroding Christ’s authority. It therefore made a certain amount of sense for Christians to contrast Islamic circumcision with baptism — a ritual of initiation, expanding a religious community — and to contrast Jewish circumcision with the Eucharist — a ritual for maintaining a communion. It should be noted that the Latin Christian belief that Islamic circumcision was an initiation rite was not based on a complete misunderstanding of Islamic beliefs. It is true that male circumcision was never one of the five mandatory rituals or pillars of Islam and many traditional Islamic jurists regarded male circumcision as strongly recommended but not obligatory, somewhat like its female counterpart.87 This ambiguity may be traced to the fact that — like female circumcision — the practice is not mentioned in the Qurān, being recommended only in the less, albeit still, authoritative h.adīth literature.88 Yet when it came to converts, the opinion of scholars — based on these h.adīth traditions — was that circumcision was indeed compulsory, with very few exceptions permitted even when confronted with the dangers of performing it in extreme old age and the perplexing cases of hermaphroditic or intersex individuals.89

After the Apocalypse Medieval Christian writers portrayed the First Crusade as a scene in the end times, a battle won by the followers of Christ over the followers of Antichrist. A large number of participants believed their actions would 86

87 88 89

Raymond Martini, Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Iudæos, ed. Joseph de Voisin et al. (Leipzig, 1687), p. 786. Wensinck, ‘Khitān’, p. 20. Giladi, ‘Normative Islam versus Local Tradition’, pp. 259-60. Kister, ‘“…and He Was Born Circumcised…”’, pp. 26-29.

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bring about the Apocalypse.90 The distinctly European and eschatological view of Islamic circumcision was an important part of this interpretation. Of course, the perennial problem encountered by those swept along by apocalyptic prophetic literature has always been how best to make sense of the world when it fails to end as promised. The First Crusade is a fine example of this. Contemporary propaganda depicted it as an exceptional moment in human history. Christopher Tyerman has shown how Europeans in the twelfth century generally regarded the First Crusade as an event without parallel, which certainly inspired subsequent expeditions but was itself ‘unrepeatable’.91 Problematically for the Latin Christian worldview, most of the First Crusade’s participants headed home to Europe after the expedition’s success. This left only a minority who chose to settle in the East with the difficult task of defending the newly conquered lands without adequate manpower.92 Europeans soon found it difficult to explain the military setbacks that later occurred when such strategic and structural weaknesses were never overcome. The conceptual challenge was ultimately posed by the fact that Islam was not defeated conclusively by the First Crusade or swept away before a new age ushered in by the Second Coming, as had been expected. Those who had remained in the haphazardly formed crusader states quickly discovered that survival was dependent upon making pragmatic alliances with local rulers, including Muslims as well as Christians. Such military cooperation had already occurred during the First Crusade itself, with reality challenging the binary worldview put forward by those who remained in Europe.93 The Fāt.imids had sent a delegation to the crusaders at Antioch as early as 1098, praising the Christians’ achievements in the service of ‘Jesus son of Mary’ (Ihesum Marie virginis filium).94 Although 90

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Jay Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York, 2011). Christopher Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998), pp. 8–9 and passim. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The Motives of the Earliest Crusaders and the Settlement of Latin Palestine, 1095–1100’, The English Historical Review 98 (1983), 721–36 (here 723–24); Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations Between the Latin East and the West, 1119–1187 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 1, 8, 12. Michael A. Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. Peter M. Holt and Konrad Hirschler (Leiden, 2013), pp. 7–57 and passim. Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, ed. John  H. Hill and Laurita L. Hill, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades publiés par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 9 (Paris, 1969), p. 58.

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unsurprising in light of the respect Muslims have always had for the prophet ‘Jesus son of Mary’ (‘Īsā bin Maryam), this was hardly the sort of diplomatic greeting expected from Antichrist’s diabolical legions. The hostile European view of Islam steadily grew apart from the view of Islam held by Latin Christians in the crusader states, moderated by experience and political necessity. Famously, the Second Crusade ended in 1148 with the Europeans and their Syria-based cousins bitterly divided, with the former taking an exceedingly dim view of the deal struck by the latter with the Muslims of Damascus.95 Less than a century after the First Crusade, Europeans were openly expressing their distaste for the Latins of the East by calling them pullani or poulains, which originally meant ‘colts’ but became steadily more pejorative.96 With Islam continuing to exist after the First Crusade, so too did the practice of Islamic circumcision. Most historians agree that attempts by the Latin Christians to convert Muslims in the territories they governed were lacklustre at best, with the Muslims given considerable freedom to continue practising their faith in private even if not always in public.97 In their perceived struggle to eradicate Islam, Latin Christians in Europe began to place greater emphasis upon the peaceful conversion of Muslims in the thirteenth century, albeit without abandoning the faltering military option.98 Circumcision continued to play a part in anti-Islamic rhetoric despite this rebalance of priorities. James of Vitry’s critical account of circumcised Copts helped to inform a work intended to aid or encourage missionary efforts in the early thirteenth century. Geoffrey of Donjon, grand master of the Hospitaller military order, wrote a letter to the grand prior of England c. 1201, in which he described a young sarracenus in the East who had converted to Christianity and had started preaching to his former coreligionists. The binary opposition between baptism and circumcision — evident in Pope Urban’s sermon a century before — was again invoked when Geoffrey described how this new convert had encouraged two thousand other Muslims to undergo baptism and to regret their circumcisions.99 95

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Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East, pp. 157–62. M. R. Morgan, ‘The Meanings of Old French Polain, Latin Pullanus’, Medium Aevum 48 (1979), 40–54 (here 40–53). Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (London, 1980), p.  367; Benjamin  Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), pp. 74–83. Kedar, Crusade and Mission. Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1310), ed. Joseph Delaville le Roulx, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1906), 2: 2, no. 1131.

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Given that circumcision was so closely bound to the European view of Islam as a wicked antichristian force, it is unsurprising that Christians in Europe continued to condemn Islamic circumcision. More surprising perhaps is that they now accused their own Christian cousins of undergoing the process. One in particular was Count Raymond III of Tripoli (r. 1152–87), the great-great-grandson of Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, one of the leaders of the First Crusade. Raymond III gained for himself an extremely poor posthumous reputation in Europe after he was implicated in the military defeat inflicted by Saladin upon the kingdom of Jerusalem at H.at.t.īn on 4 July 1187, which led directly to the Christians’ loss of Jerusalem mere weeks later. Within a few years of Raymond’s death, Christian authors were accusing Raymond of treachery for allying with Saladin just a few weeks before H.at.t.īn.100 Those in the Latin West were soon bold enough to claim that Raymond had not simply betrayed his fellow Christians but had actually apostatised by becoming Muslim. Authors writing in the thirteenth century told a fanciful story of how the count had planned to betray his city of Tripoli to Saladin. Supposedly, on the very morning of the day this treachery was to happen, ‘he was found to have been killed by God, and the mark of circumcision which he had recently received was noticed, because Turks and Saracens circumcise their sons according to ancestral tradition’.101 This story is patently salacious nonsense and there is no credible proof that Raymond converted to Islam, let alone in such sensational fashion.102 Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that these European authors chose to focus on circumcision as the visual symbol of conversion to Islam. Pope Urban II had launched the First Crusade with a strong condemnation of 100

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Ernoul, pp. 141, 161–62, 167–69; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyre (1184– 1197), ed. M. R. Morgan, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des Croisades publiés par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 14 (Paris, 1982), p. 46; Eracles, pp. 52–53. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, in Speculum Maius, 4 vols (Douai, 1624), 4: 1200: diuinitus extinctus inuenitur, apparuitque stigma circuncisionis [sic] quod recenter susceperat, quia Turci & Saraceni ex paterna traditione filios circuncidunt [sic]. See also: Robert of Auxerre, ‘Chronicon’, ed. O.  HolderEgger, in MGH SS, 26: 250–51; William of Nangis, Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, de 1113 à 1300, avec les continuations de cette chronique, de 1300 à 1368, ed. H. Géraud, 2 vols (Paris, 1843), 1: 87; Marino Sanudo, ‘Liber secretorum fidelium Crucis’, in Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. Jacques Bongars, 2 vols (Hannover, 1611), 2: 194. Kevin James Lewis, The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century: Sons of Saint-Gilles (London, 2017), p. 274.

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circumcision; the fact that Raymond III — a direct descendant of one who had answered the pope’s call — was now accused of having undergone this particular rite voluntarily illustrates how far his reputation, and by extension that of all pullani, had fallen in Europe. The fact that circumcision specifically was emphasised as the incontrovertible proof of Raymond’s conversion testifies to the powerful conceptual association that still existed between this corporeal symbol and the faith of Islam in the imaginations of Europeans at the time of the Crusades.

Conclusion Latin Christians in Europe at the time of the Crusades subscribed to the view that Jewish male circumcision was a symbol of the Jewish people as a whole: a lingering relic of the old Mosaic law, abrogated by Christ. It was this that allowed Christians to condemn the Jews for persisting in circumcision, whilst simultaneously praising the very specific circumcision that was Christ’s. Notably Christian theology equated circumcision — an ancient ritual at the heart of the Jewish faith — with crucifixion — a brutal form of state execution. The Jews and their circumcisions posed an imagined threat to individual Christians — particularly holy children, bled to death for profane rituals — but neither posed an existential threat to Christianity, even if Christians anticipated the day when the Jews would be deceived into following the circumcised Antichrist. Islam and Islamic circumcision, however, did pose such a threat in the European imagination. Islam was an expansive religion, directly competing with Christianity for souls. A binary worldview gave this struggle eschatological significance, with Muslims and their prophet framed as followers and co-conspirators of Antichrist. A worldview that interpreted all things in relation to Christianity was also inclined to portray Islam as an evil mirror of Christianity and to depict Islamic male circumcision specifically as a wicked inversion of the sacrament of baptism. There was thus a fundamental ambivalence in the medieval European Christian attitude to male circumcision: a practice characteristic of both Christ and Antichrist.

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Worse than All the Infidels The Albigensian Crusade and the Continuing Call of the East*

G. E. M. Lippiatt

As the Albigensian Crusade approached a crisis of military and moral support in 1213, the Cistercian historian Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay expressed his belief in the importance of the armed expedition against heresy and its defenders by insisting that the — to his mind — quasi-heretical militiamen of Toulouse were ‘omnibus infidelibus deteriores’ (worse than all the infidels). The phrase ultimately derives from St Paul’s judgement of negligent fathers; the ‘infidels’ to whom Peter refers are primarily the Muslims in the Holy Land, the traditional target of the crusades. In this, Peter follows not so much Paul as Pope Innocent III, who had claimed that heretics ‘peiores sunt illis [Sarracenis]’ (are worse than them [the Saracens]) in 1208 when calling for more faithful sons of the Church to occupy the lands of those lords who had proved insufficiently zealous in enforcing Christian orthodoxy.1 But while Peter clung to this conception of his heretical opponents, Innocent soon came to regret his formulation. In 1213, the pope cancelled the crusading indulgence for the struggle against heresy in favour of another great push to liberate Jerusalem from the very infidel domination he and Peter had marginalized. Overwhelming support for the Albigensian Crusade among the bishops at the Fourth Lateran Council would force Innocent to restore the indulgence two years later, but he was clearly concerned that continued violence in the * I am grateful to Prof. Martin Aurell and Dr Jessalynn Bird for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay as well as to the Leverhulme Trust which made much of the archival work possible. The debt it owes to Prof.  Christopher Tyerman is, I hope, apparent throughout. 1 Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria albigensis, ed. Pascal Guébin and Ernest Lyon, 3 vols (Paris, 1926–39), 2: 126; I Timothy 5. 8; Innocent III et al., Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. Othmar Hageneder et al., 13 vols (Graz, 1964–), 11: 37. Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 119–144. ©F

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Midi would distract from and weaken the expedition that would become the Fifth Crusade.2 Modern historians have largely sympathized with Innocent’s fears. Sir Steven Runciman even goes so far as to conclude that the fundamental problem of crusading in the thirteenth century was that the Albigensian and other intra-European crusades had debased the Levantine ideal: ‘the Holy War had merely become an instrument of a narrow and aggressive Papal policy; and even loyal supporters of the Papacy saw no reason for making an uncomfortable journey to the East when there were so many opportunities of gaining holy merit in less exacting campaigns’.3 This may be a partisan judgement full of assumptions — the cynical penitential thrift of the crusader seeking indulgence, for example — but it has become commonplace. Hermann Hoogeweg, Palmer A. Throop, and Thomas C. Van Cleve make the same point — albeit more soberly — about the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades specifically. James M. Powell, the great monographer of the latter expedition, claims that the continuation of the Albigensian Crusade not only drew off potential recruits from France, but also prevented nobles from the Midi, preoccupied with campaigns to recover their confiscated livelihoods, from taking the cross.4 If the Fifth Crusade died of a thousand cuts — including those inflicted by its shifting and polyglot composition, uncertain objectives, and tortured question of leadership — modern historians have judged an excess of crusading options to have been one of the first. This sounds very much like the traditional explanation for the death of the crusading movement as a whole — decline in enthusiasm and 2

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Innocent III et al., ‘Regesta, sive Epistolae’, in PL, 216: 820; ‘Concilii quarti Lateranensis constitutiones’, in Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni, 4 vols (Turnhout, 2006– 16), 2.1: 161–204 (here 167). Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1951– 54), 3: 339. Die Schriften des kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von Santa Sabina, Oliverus, ed. Hermann Hoogeweg (Tübingen, 1894), p. xx; Palmer A. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade: A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda (Amsterdam, 1940), pp. 37–38; Thomas C. Van Cleve, ‘The Fifth Crusade’, in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton, 6 vols (Madison, 1969–89), 2: 377–428 (here 378); James  M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 43–44, 78. ‘France’, in high medieval usage, signifies a loosely and variably defined region north of the Loire, most especially around Paris, while ‘the Midi’, an Old French synonym for ‘midday’ and ‘south’, refers to the lands around and between the Garonne and the Rhône.

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dissipation of energies through an oversaturation of indulgences among different theatres and means of participation — in microcosm. But Christopher Tyerman’s work on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has proven that the passion for crusading lasted until the Reformation and continued to produce practical efforts for the recovery of Jerusalem. Far from robbing the accompanying rhetoric of its power, the dispersion of crusading targets and multiplication of indulgences reflected the steadfast respect and idealism attached to the concept.5 This being the case, the effects of crusading competition in the early thirteenth century a fortiori demand reexamination.

Crisis in the Midi In some respects, the effects of the Albigensian Crusade on the Fifth are indisputable. Crusaders could not be in two places at once, and therefore those who were engaged against heretics in the Midi could not simultaneously fight Muslims in Egypt. In spring 1217, four years after Innocent summoned the Fifth Crusade, the major French contingents recruited by the preaching campaigns were still unprepared to depart, leaving the Germans and Hungarians to set forth alone. There were surely many reasons for this — English and Italian crusaders were equally unprepared — but a southern resurgence against the Albigensian Crusade at Beaucaire under the future Count Raymond VII of Saint-Gilles the previous summer could not have helped matters.6 Duke Odo  III of

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See e.g., his ‘The French and the Crusade, 1313–1336’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981); ‘Marino Sanudo Torsello and the Lost Crusade: Lobbying in the Fourteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32 (1982), 57–73; ‘Philip V of France, the Assemblies of 1319– 20 and the Crusade’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57 (1984), 15–34; ‘Sed nihil fecit? The Last Capetians and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp.  170–81; ‘Philip  VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, The English Historical Review 100 (1985), 25–52; ‘The Holy Land and the Crusades of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Caerdydd, 1985), pp. 105–12; England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), pp. 229–342. Powell, Anatomy, p. 111; Christine Woehl, Volo vincere cum meis vel occumbere cum eisdem: Studien zu Simon von Montfort und seinen nordfranzösischen Gefolgsleuten während des Albigenserkreuzzugs (1209 bis 1218) (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), p. 167; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 266–77; La chanson

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Burgundy, specifically cited by Abbot Gervase of Prémontré in a letter to the pope in 1217 as requiring a year’s delay before fulfilling his vow, had been one of the first crusaders against the Albigensians, and had stayed at Simon of Montfort’s side longer than most after the initial campaign in 1209. More recently, he had helped Simon quell his opponents east of the Rhône in late 1213. It is not impossible that he now felt an obligation to assist his old friend, though in the event he did not personally set out on either crusade before his death.7 The troubadours Tomier and Palaizi, however, suggest that Burgundians were still actively engaged in the Albigensian Crusade around the time of Gervase’s letter.8 More concretely, at least 120 knights did ride with Simon of Montfort from France to attempt the relief of Beaucaire, while a further hundred were sent by King Philip II Augustus of France in summer 1217 to support Simon for six months.9 The revolt of Simon’s comital capital of Toulouse that autumn compounded the crisis, as the crusaders began a ten-month siege of the city which again drew French crusaders south.10 Count Ralph III the Good of Soissons and Dreux of Mello, constable of France, had been among the first to take the cross for the Fifth Crusade; in August 1216, Pope Honorius III, Innocent’s successor, exhorted them, along with Odo and others, to set out for the East. Despite this and a reference to Dreux’s impending departure for Jerusalem the same year, it is unlikely that either ever undertook the journey.11 Instead, both men participated in the

7

8

9

10

11

de la croisade albiegoise, ed. and trans. Eugene Martin-Chabot, 3 vols (Paris, 1957–61), 2: 90–198; William of Puylaurens, Chronique, ed. and trans. Jean Duvernoy (Paris, 1976), pp. 94–96. Honorius III et al., ‘Delectus ex epistolarum Honorii papae III libris decem, de rebus francicis’, in RHGF, 19: 609–778 (here 619); G. E. M. Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195–1218 (Oxford, 2017), pp. 76–77; William the Breton, ‘Gesta Philippi Augusti’, in Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. H.-François Delaborde, 2 vols (Paris, 1882–85), 1: 315. István Frank, ‘Tomier et Palaizi, troubadours tarasconnais (1199–1226)’, Romania 78 (1957), 46–85 (here 73). ‘Ex chronico anonymi Laudunensis canonici’, in RHGF, 18: 702–20 (here 719); Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 292. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 293–320; Chanson, 2: 274–308, 3: 8–226; William of Puylaurens, Chronique, pp.  100–4; Woehl, Simon und seinen Gefolgsleuten, p. 174. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, in Medii aevi bibliotheca patristica, ed. C. A. Horoy, 6 vols (Paris, 1879–82), 2: 12–14; Recueil de pièces pour faire suite au cartulaire général de l’Yonne, ed. M. Quantin (Auxerre, 1873), pp. 80–81.

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second siege of Toulouse in summer 1218, with Ralph at least returning to France shortly after Simon’s death on 25 June.12 Dreux seems to have died by 1219.13 Perhaps these men were able to exchange their crusading destinations, swapping Toulouse for Jerusalem: in a 1216 letter, Gervase recommends that the pope set the penance for those who — like Ralph — had invaded England with Philip’s eldest son, Louis the Lion, as campaigning in the Midi for a term equivalent to the time spent across the Channel.14 During the same English invasion, Honorius had asked Philip to encourage his son to command the Fifth Crusade rather than continue attacking a papal protectorate. This princely leadership never materialized: by 1218, the pope was even begging Philip and the French bishops to prevent Simon’s crusader state in the Midi from foundering at the expense of the crusade to the East he was desperately trying to mobilize.15 Louis did not seem inclined to sail for Egypt anyway, perhaps put off by accounts of his father’s own miserable experience during the Third Crusade. Instead, Louis led a brief expedition — his second — to the Midi in 1219 to support Simon’s struggling heir, Amalric.16 For the pope and many in France, including the royal family, the Albigensian Crusade appears to have become a more pressing concern than the Fifth.

12

13

14

15 16

Chanson, 3: 146, 158–60, 172–74, 176, 214–16, 232–34. The negative sentiments toward the Albigensian Crusade attributed by the anonymous poet to Ralph should be disregarded. The author was in the opposite camp and could not have known the content of the crusaders’ discussions; his purpose is to propagandise the injustice of the crusade and mock Simon of Montfort by inventing dissension among the enemy ranks. Pace Gérard Gouiran, ‘Français contre Montfort? Les conseils de guerre tenus par Simon de Montfort dans la seconde partie de La chanson de la croisade albigeoise’, in ‘Furent les merveilles pruvees et les aventures truvees’: Hommage à Francis Dubost, ed. Francis Gringras et al., (Paris, 2005), pp. 281–305 (here pp. 287, 299). The Dreux of Mello, brother of William, who issued the confirmation in Cartulaire de l’Yonne, p. 97 is the constable’s son, mentioned in the act cited in note 11 above. Innocent III et al., ‘Delectus epistolarum Innocentii papae III’, in RHGF, 18: 347–605 (here 605). Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 371, 573–76. Alexander Cartellieri, Philipp II. August, König von Frankreich, 4 vols (Leipzig, 1899–1922), 2: 180–246; Chanson, 3: 284–320; William of Puylaurens, Chronique, pp. 106–8.

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Robbing Peter to pay Paul Financial resources were also limited and therefore contested. The papacy had originally envisioned crusaders to the Midi paying their own way, as the expenses involved were not nearly so steep as those of the voyage to Outremer. Indeed, Simon had offered and Innocent came to expect a portion of the profits from the conquest in the form of an annual hearth tax of 3d. benefitting the Apostolic See.17 However, the Fifth Crusade, like other transmarine expeditions, required central fundraising to help defray the immense costs of provisioning and transporting an army to the Levant. Following such precedents, Innocent and the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 levied a tax of a triennial twentieth on all clerical income in support of the venture. Some of the money was collected centrally at the Parisian Temple and sent to Outremer, where it was then to be dispersed among arriving crusaders according to their dioceses’ accounts. Other funds were gathered and distributed locally.18 However, in September 1218 Honorius, faced with the death of Simon before the walls of Toulouse, consented to grant Philip half of the French twentieth and the entire southern twentieth destined for the Fifth Crusade if he would devote them to the Albigensian Crusade. The diversion was not spread evenly: those barons — like Hervé IV of Donzy, count of Nevers — who personally set out for Egypt were entitled to the money raised in their own lands. The burden therefore must have fallen most heavily on the common fund from which impecunious French knights hoped to draw. Honorius also allowed Louis and his followers who had invaded England to direct their ecclesiastical fines, which ought to have gone to the Holy Land, to the negotium pacis et fidei in the South. These funds presumably underwrote Louis’ crusade the following year, but their diversion further compromised the ability of French crusaders to afford the eastern journey.19 However, the collection of the twentieth was notoriously hampered from Hungary to 17

18

19

Innocent  III et  al., Register, 12: 237–38, 239, 259, 13: 280; Innocent  III et  al., ‘Regesta’, 216: 690–92, 694; Simon of Montfort, ‘Littere de ordinatione et statuto terre Albigensis’, in Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. Claude de Vic and Joseph Vaissète, 2nd edn, 16 vols (Toulouse, 1872–1904), 8: 625–35 (here 627). ‘Concilii Lateranensis constitutiones’, pp.  201–2; Van Cleve, ‘Fifth Crusade’, p.  386; Thomas  W. Smith, Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius  III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 314–15. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 3: 25–26, 125–26; Smith, Curia and Crusade, p. 319; Powell, Anatomy, p. 97. For Honorius’s vacillating attitude toward the specific diversion of the twentieth in favour of Bishop William II of Châlons and the Albigensian Crusade, see Smith, Curia and Crusade, p. 321.

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Scandinavia to Spain as a result of truculence, incommutability, exemption, and peculation.20 The French were not the only ones to struggle to answer the call to Egypt. Meanwhile, the siphoned funds were insufficient to salvage the situation in the Midi. In 1221, as Amalric’s grip on his father’s conquests slipped further, Honorius instituted a new clerical subsidy. Unlike the 1218 diversion, this would not have directly appropriated funds destined for the Fifth Crusade, which was now approaching its disastrous denouement in the Nile Delta, but the further triennial twentieth eventually agreed upon by local councils in 1222 lay a heavy burden on a clergy that had only ceased to pay the last such imposition four years earlier.21 The effect on the eastern initiative was likely one not mentioned in the sources: as religious houses were an important source of ready cash for would-be crusaders, their bleeding for the Albigensian Crusade may have frustrated French knights who intended to set out in support of Emperor Frederick II’s crusade, projected for 1225.

Critical voices Innocent had not been the only one to observe the potential for conflict between his two crusading projects. Envoys from Outremer had protested in Rome that indulgences for the Albigensian struggle would deprive the Holy Land of critical reinforcements as early as 1209. In his initial appeal to Philip on Simon’s behalf in January 1218, Honorius likewise attempted to safeguard the priority of the Levantine crusade.22 More vociferous were the protests of laymen and clerks opposed to the Albigensian Crusade outright. In 1213, the Auvergnat lord Pons of Chapteuil, professing his own eagerness to fight for Christ, condemned 20

21

22

Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Honorius  III et l’Orient (1216–1227): Étude et publication de sources inédites des Archives vaticanes (Leiden, 2013), pp. 64–65, 67; Smith, Curia and Crusade, pp. 320–21. Richard Kay, ‘The Albigensian Twentieth of 1221–3: An Early Chapter in the History of Papal Taxation’, Journal of Medieval History 6 (1980), 307–15 (here 309–10). Innocent  III et  al., Register, 12: 260–61; Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 576. Honorius would continue to protect recruitment for the Fifth Crusade even in the immediate aftermath of Simon’s death, but by September 1219, he was echoing his predecessor’s early attitude in justifying the prolongation of the Albigensian Crusade ‘cum haeretici Albigenses adversus Ecclesiam deteriores insurgerent Saracenis’: ‘Epistolae’, 3: 11, 300.

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those who remained in Europe to disinherit their neighbours rather than crusade for the Holy Sepulchre, and praised King Peter  II the Catholic of Aragon, whom he probably hoped would restore peace and orthodoxy to the Midi under his own auspices by curbing Simon of Montfort. Peter was in fact killed by Simon’s crusaders at the battle of Muret later that year, dashing the hopes of Pons and other troubadours.23 They were left to hope that the French might be expelled from the Midi by other means. Indeed, the tide turned several years later. During the 1217–18 siege of Toulouse, Tomier and Palaizi, knightly troubadours from Tarascon, accused William I of Baux, prince of Orange — then languishing in an Avignonese prison for his support of Simon — of having abandoned Outremer to fight against his fellow southerners. They further claimed that the French conquest of the Midi had disrupted all the roads and ports to Syria, offending God and earning His vengeance.24 In 1226, as now King Louis VIII approached Avignon on a renewed southern expedition, the pair urged their fellow citizens on the Rhône to resist this ‘falsa croisada’. Fearing a renewed incursion into their homeland of the Argence, they accused the bishops of preferring Beaucaire to Jerusalem; the reappropriation of the cross against Christians was a sign of episcopal apostasy. Recalling the failure of the Egyptian campaign five years earlier, they insisted that Roman Frangipani, cardinal-deacon of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria and papal legate to France, would rather prey on the ‘bels ostals’ (beautiful houses) of the Midi than suffer the hardships of the true crusaders at Damietta. They also injected a political flavour to their polemic by objecting that Louis’ move on Avignon was an infringement on the rights of the city’s overlord, Emperor Frederick, who was ostensibly preparing for his own oft-deferred Levantine crusade.25 The Tolosan William Figueira seconded these sentiments around the same time, concentrating his ire in a complaint against papal interference in temporal politics. He openly championed Raymond VII of Saint-Gilles, the new count of Toulouse, against the pope and exulted in the destruction of French crusaders hoodwinked by Rome into attacking the Midi. While his most direct reference to the Albigensian Crusade concerns 23

24 25

Max von Napolski, Leben und Werke des Trobadors Ponz de Capduoill (Halle, 1879), pp. 67–68; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 153–54, 172; Chanson, 2: 28–32; William of Puylaurens, Chronique, p. 84. Frank, ‘Tomier et Palaizi’, p. 74. Frank, ‘Tomier et Palaizi’, pp.  74–76; Thomas  C. Van Cleve, ‘The Crusade of Frederick II’, in History of the Crusades, 2: 429–62 (here 438–45); Powell, Anatomy, pp. 196–97.

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the siege of Avignon in 1226, he also blamed the papacy for the failure of the earlier Fifth Crusade. He may have been thinking principally of the alleged mismanagement of Pelagius, cardinal-bishop of Albano and papal legate to the crusade. But the juxtaposition of the two crusades in successive stanzas hints that he saw them as connected, to the detriment of the eastern effort. Indeed, he challenged the formulation of Innocent III and Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, accusing Rome because ‘you have done little damage to the Saracens, but have sent carnage to Greeks and Latins’.26 The zealous insistence on the greater evil of heresy compared to Islam had, according to William, achieved little more than the deaths of Christians and the neglect of Jerusalem. The interest of these troubadours is obvious enough: they risked losing lands and patronage at the hands of the French crusaders. Throop exaggerates the novelty of the Albigensian Crusade when he claims that ‘the papacy…had brought the horrors of war to their beloved country’: violence, after all, had been endemic in the Midi for generations, and Elizabeth Siberry shows that the unity and extent of troubadour opposition to the crusade can be overstated.27 But the resentment of those affected by the fire and sword brought by the crusaders was no less deep for all that. Such songs cannot be taken for impartial evidence of a deleterious effect from the Albigensian Crusade on the Fifth. However, a number of northern poets similarly expressed their disgust at the conflation of Toulouse with Jerusalem as an objective of crusading. Moniot of Arras and the Anglo-Norman William the Clerk, the latter at least composing in 1226 or later, both repeat the claim that the war in the Midi prevents Christians from recovering the Holy Sepulchre.28 Moniot may simply be indulging in an anticlerical tradition, comparing the novel indulgence unfavourably against the widely respected ideal of the Levantine crusade, while William’s perspective may be coloured by English suspicion of the 26

27

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William Figueira, ‘D’un sirventés far en est son que m’agença’, in Anthologie des troubadours, XIIe-XIV e siècle, ed. Paul Fabre (Orléans, 2010), pp. 462–71: ‘als sarasi(n)s/faitz vos pauc de dampnatge, / Mas grècs e lati(n)s metètz e carnalatge’. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade, p. 36; Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 158–63, 167. See also, e.g. Richard Benjamin, ‘A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156–96’, Historical Research 61 (1988), 270–85 (here 270–81). Moniot of Arras, ‘Bien mostre Dieus apertement’, in Chansons satiriques et bachiques du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alfred Jeanroy and Arthur Långfors (Paris, 1921), pp. 10–11 (here p. 10); William the Clerk, Le besant de Dieu, ed. Pierre Ruelle (Brussels, 1973), pp. 131–33.

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political designs of a French king against Raymond VII, cousin of King Henry III of England.29 Huon of Saint-Quentin, a probable veteran of the Damietta campaign, has a clearer motivation for his criticism of papal crusading policy. His own attachment to John of Brienne, king-consort of Jerusalem, led to understandable bitterness at the failure of the Fifth Crusade and the frustration and humiliation of his patron, which the poet — like William Figueira — blamed on Roman interference in the person of Pelagius.30 In his polemical Rome, Jherusalem se plaint, Huon claims that the papacy’s concern for the Holy Land is hypocritical: Rome’s loaded dice have been revealed by her direction of the Albigensian Crusade to the detriment of Outremer.31

Sustained interest None of this, however, suggests that the Albigensian Crusade had undermined enthusiasm for the crusading ideal, including crusades to the Holy Land. Indeed, Gervase of Prémontré speaks of a great tide of recruits among the popular classes in response to preaching for the Fifth Crusade in France.32 To some, the Albigensian Crusade even reinforced the Fifth Crusade. The English clerk Ralph Niger had encouraged Philip Augustus before the Third Crusade not to depart for Jerusalem until he had dealt with the heretical threat in the South: What profit is it, if the terrestrial Jerusalem is established and our mother Sion is meanwhile destroyed, if Palestine is liberated from the Saracens and the evil of infidelity meanwhile runs riot at home, and whilst infidelity is conquered abroad, the purity of the faith is trampled and ridiculed at home?33

29

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31 32 33

Nicholas Vincent, ‘England and the Albigensian Crusade’ in Björn K.  U. Weiler and Ifor W. Rowlands, England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272) (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 79–80. Martin Aurell, Des chrétiens contre les croisades (Paris, 2015), p. 243; Arié Serper, Huon de Saint-Quentin, poète satirique et lyrique: Étude historique et édition des textes (Madrid, 1983), p. 89. Serper, Huon de Saint-Quentin, p. 94. Innocent III et al., ‘Delectus’, pp. 604–5. Ralph Niger, De re militari et triplici via peregrinationis ierosolimitane, ed. Ludwig Schmugge (Berlin, 1977), pp.  188, 193, 199: ‘Quis enim fructus, si Ierosolima terrestris edificetur et mater nostra Syon interim dissipetur, si Palestina a Sarracenis liberetur et malitia infidelitatis interim domi grassetur, et dum infidelitas foris

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The southern trobairitz Gormonda of Montpellier, in her point-by-point response to William Figuiera, repeats the claim of Innocent III and Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay that the heretics are ‘piègs de Sarasi(n)’, and insists that the fall of Damietta was brought on by the folly of the crusaders themselves, not by Roman interference.34 She connects the two struggles as laudable and complementary, rejecting the hermeneutic of conflict promoted by some of her fellow troubadours. Many of her crusading contemporaries saw things in the same light. The initial press of knights and clergy to take the cross around the time of Lateran IV included many who were also interested in the Albigensian Crusade. Walter of Avesnes, count of Blois, anticipated the Fifth Crusade, his vow having been registered before December 1211, well in advance of Innocent’s announcement of another general passage in April 1213 with the bull Quia maior. However, domestic squabbles with his brother, the renegade subdeacon Bouchard, prevented him from departing, and he was eventually granted an indefinite papal dispensation from the fulfilment of his pilgrimage.35 He therefore took the cross again in 1214 amidst the enthusiasm surrounding Quia major, but despite his preparations, like Odo of Burgundy, he was still not ready to set out in June 1217.36 He instead departed with the autumn passage, participated in the campaign to the Jordan, and helped the Templars rebuild Château Pèlerin at Atlit.37 He left Syria in April 1218, before the expedition to Damietta, leaving behind forty knights with a year’s wages.38 It was not until much later that he participated in Louis VIII’s crusade to the Midi, returning to France around the time of the king’s death in

34

35 36

37

38

expugnatur domi puritas fidei conculcetur et infatuetur?’; Aurell, Chrétiens contre les croisades, pp. 151–52. Gormonda of Montpellier, ‘Greu m’es a durar, car aug tal descresença’, in Anthologie des troubadours, pp. 476–85 (here pp. 477–79). Innocent III et al., ‘Regesta’, 216: 493, 817–22. ‘Ex chronico Laudunensis’, p. 718; Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14, 212–13; Honorius III et al., ‘Delectus’, p. 619; Léopold Devillers, Description analytique de cartulaires et de chartriers accompagnée du texte de documents utiles à l’histoire du Hainaut, 8 vols (Mons, 1865–78), 3: 148; BnF, lat. 10121, fol. 66r-v; BnF, lat. 17777, fols 37v-38r. Vincent of Beauvais, ‘Speculum historiale’, in Testimonia minora de quinto bello sacro, ed. Reinhold Röhricht (Genève, 1882), pp. 97–110 (here p. 98); Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, in Schriften, pp. 159–280 (here p. 169). Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 163; Eracles, p. 326.

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November 1226.39 In all likelihood, Walter’s primary interest in crusading was in the eastern campaign, his later participation in the effort against heresy as much an act of service to his king as to his God. If so, Walter appears to have been in a minority. Most of his fellow crusaders had in fact already taken the cross against the heretics before sailing east. Among the lesser knights, Garnier of Amance had vowed himself to the Midi by August 1213; by November 1217, he had taken the cross again, probably this time for the East.40 Juhel III of Mayenne had taken the cross against the Albigensians by early 1211, and witnessed the siege and capture of Lavaur that year.41 He would crusade in the Midi once again in 1219 alongside Louis of France.42 A tradition dating back at least as far as the late seventeenth century held that he died in Africa in 1220, possibly on the Fifth Crusade, but this is not confirmed by any known contemporary evidence.43 The fog surrounding Juhel’s end is thicker in the case of many pettier knights, whose very identities it is not always possible to establish with certainty across sources. Alard the Fleming, who may have been the same man as Aldric the Fleming who fought in the Albigensian Crusade in 1216 and 1218, died in the Holy Land sometime before October 1220.44 39

40

41

42

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Alphonse Wauters, Table chronologique des chartes et diplômes imprimés concernant l’histoire de la Belgique, 11 vols (Bruxelles, 1866–1971), 4: 16; Claude Emmeré, Augusta Veromanduorum vindicata et illustrata (Paris, 1643), pp. 157–58. BnF, Champagne 45, fol.  159r. In 1217, Garnier describes himself as crucesignatus without further qualification: MS Châlons-en-Champagne, Archives départementales de la Marne, 22 H 40, no. 1. Daniel Power, ‘Who Went on the Albigensian Crusade?’, The English Historical Review 128 (2013), 1047–85 is an indispensable starting point for any research into Albigensian crusaders beyond the narrative sources and was much used for what follows, as were the appendices in Powell, Anatomy, pp.  209–51 for Fifth Crusade prosopography. MS Laval, Archives départementales de la Mayenne, H 211, fol.  7r-v; Ernest Laurain, ‘Du style chronologique en usage dans le Bas-Maine au commencement du XIIIe siècle’, Bulletin historique et philologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1908), pp. 291–301 (here pp. 298–99); Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 212, 230. MS Laval, Archives départementales de la Mayenne, H 204, p.  572; Ernest Laurain, Cartulaire manceau de Marmoutier, 2 vols (Laval, 1911–45), 1: 295–96. Gilles Ménage, Histoire de Sablé, (Paris, 1683), p. 186. Chanson, 2: 202, 3: 172; Excerpta è rotulis finium in Turri Londinensi asservatis, Henrico tertio rege, A.D. 1216–1272, ed. Charles Roberts, 2 vols (London, 1835–36), 1: 54–55.

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A Robert of Beaumont was present for the second siege of Toulouse in 1217–18, whilst a knight of the same name defended Damietta against the Egyptians in summer 1220.45 Likewise, John of Bollon or Bolho fought at the second siege of Toulouse and the battle of Baziège in the summer and autumn of 1218, and a John of Bouilly stated his intention to depart for Egypt in June 1219.46 More certainly and substantially, Enguerrand of Boves played a significant role in the Albigensian Crusade from 1211 through December 1212 — even receiving part of the county of Foix in fief — and had previously joined Simon of Montfort on the Fourth Crusade in dissenting and then deserting from the main army as their objective was diverted to Constantinople.47 He took the cross for a third time in 1219, arriving in Egypt in September.48 Just as he remained in the Midi beyond the typical feudal quarantine, or forty-day service, he lingered in the East despite the departure of most of his contemporaries: he was in Tyre selling property to the Teutonic Knights in April 1222, after the collapse of the Damietta campaign.49 For Enguerrand at least, the two crusading targets were not mutually exclusive.

The great men Even if the recurrence of some of the minor names are coincidences, many leading crusaders had also spent time fighting alongside Simon of Montfort before sailing for Egypt. Bishops are perhaps the most obvious examples of avid crusading lords leading contingents toward Toulouse as well as Damietta. Robert of Bayeux had been present for the siege of Lavaur in spring 1211 and had taken the cross for the East by 45

46 47

48

49

Chanson, 3: 44, 74, 90, 96, 150; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 252. Chanson, 3: 151, 261, 277; Cartulaire de l’Yonne, p. 151. Les registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. John  W. Baldwin, (Paris, 1992), p.  398; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 26, 51; Geoffrey of Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral, 2nd  edn, 2 vols (Paris, 1961), 1: 112; Robert of Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 2004), p. 64; Alfred J. Andrea, ‘The Devastatio Constantinopolitana, A  Special Perspective on the Fourth Crusade: An Analysis, New Edition, and Translation’, Historical Reflections 19 (1993), 107–49 (here 133). Recueil des documents inédits concernant la Picardie, ed. Victor de Beauville, 5 vols (Paris, 1860–82), 3: 1–2; Eracles, p. 343. Tabulae ordinis theutonici, ed. Ernst Strehlke (Berlin, 1869), pp. 45–46.

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August 1216.50 The length of his latter crusade is unclear: he arrived in Acre in autumn 1217 — earlier than most French crusaders — and had returned to Normandy by November 1221, perhaps even as early as March 1218.51 More certainty can be obtained for the short expedition of the great crusader veteran, Archbishop Alberic of Rheims, who had participated in the siege of Moissac in August-September 1212 and saw his nephew captured, killed, and dismembered there.52 He probably took the cross for the East in 1214, but only arrived in Acre in May 1218 — still ahead of most of his countrymen — and would not finally campaign. He remained in the city on account of his age and had returned to die at Rheims by the end of the year.53 Autumn 1218 brought to Egypt the major party of French crusaders, including Archbishop William  II of Bordeaux and bishops Peter of Paris, Jordan of Lisieux, and Walter of Autun.54 Walter had been part of the initial expedition to the Midi in summer 1209, while — like Robert of Bayeux — Peter and Jordan had participated in the siege of Lavaur.55 Unlike Robert, Peter and Jordan died from plague or scurvy within 50

51

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54

55

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Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 215, 226; Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, pp. 162–63; Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 4: 27–28; Cartulaire des abbayes de Saint-Pierre de la Couture et de Saint-Pierre de Solesmes (Le Mans, 1881), p. 188. William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 266, 270–72; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 33–34, 41–42, 47. According to Oliver of Paderborn, Alberic had also participated in the Third Crusade: ‘Historia regum terre sancte’, in Schriften, pp. 80–158 (here p. 152). ‘Ex chronico Laudunensis’, p.  718; Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14, 3: 94; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 177; Guillaume Marlot, Metropolis Remensis historia (Rheims, 1679), p. 490. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 187; ‘Continuatio altera appendicis Roberti de Monte ad Sigebertum’, in RHGF, 18: 345–48 (here 348); Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, ‘Chronica’, ed. Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS, 23: 631–950 (here 908). Peter departed in late June 1218 after making a will: William the Breton, ‘Gesta Philippi Augusti’, p.  315; Gérard Dubois, Historia ecclesiae Parisiensis, 2 vols (Paris, 1690–1710), 2: 265–66. Jordan was still in France that month, and presumably left around the same time: ‘Instrumenta ecclesiae Lexoviensis’, in Gallia christiana, in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, ed. Denis de Saint-Marthe and Barthélemy Haureau, 16 vols (Paris, 1715–1865), 11: 199–218 (here 210–11). Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 81, 211, 215, 226; Roger of Comminges, ‘Accord entre Simon de Montfort et le comte (sic) de Comminges’, in Histoire de Languedoc, 8: 608–9 (here 609).

Worse than All the Infidels

months of their arrival in the East.56 Walter survived, remaining in Egypt at least until the month of Peter’s death and returning to his see by April 1221.57 Of the Fifth Crusade bishops, William of Bordeaux had unquestionably been the most committed to the Albigensian Crusade. Like Walter, he had participated in the first expedition of 1209, but in Quercy and the Agenais rather than the Biterrois and Carcassès.58 He returned to the field against heretical sympathizers at the siege of Termes in autumn 1210.59 In November 1212, he took part in the parliament at Pamiers that promulgated Simon of Montfort’s statutes for the crusader conquests, and he opposed the Aragonese policy for ending the crusade at the council of Lavaur two months later.60 Finally, William acted as mediator between King John of England and Simon of Montfort in 1214, fronting 20,000 marks of protection money on behalf of the king and the townsmen of La Réole to keep Simon on the right bank of the Garonne.61 His devotion to the eastern crusade was likewise firm: one of the initial volunteers by 1216, he was still in the East in October 1222.62 The energy expended and hardships endured in the struggle against heresy did not discourage these prelates from taking the cross again for the liberation of Jerusalem. Similar enthusiasm for both projects can be seen amongst the baronial magnates. The case of Odo of Burgundy, who was probably expected to serve as leader of the entire expedition, has already been mentioned.63 Odo’s neighbour, Hervé of Donzy, was also among the first to crusade against the Albigensians, having, like Odo, received special permission 56

57 58 59 60

61 62

63

‘Continuatio appendicis Roberti de Monte’, p. 348; James of Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), p. 116; Cartulaire de l’église de Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. Benjamin Guérard, Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, 4 vols (Paris, 1850), 4: 199; Powell, Anatomy, p. 148. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 3: 363, 777. William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 40–42. William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 134. Joseph Gardère, Histoire de la seigneurie de Condom et de l’organisation de la justice dans cette ville (Condom, 1902), pp. 270–71, 276; Simon of Montfort, ‘De statuto terre Albigensis’, c.  626; Innocent  III et  al., ‘Regesta’, 216: 834, 836–39, 840–42. Lippiatt, Simon of Montfort, p. 43. Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14; Henry of Rodez, ‘Codicillus’, in Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, dogmaticorum, moralium amplis­ sima collectio, ed. Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, 9 vols (Paris, 1724–33), 1: 1168–72 (here 1172). Powell, Anatomy, pp. 39–40; above, pp. 121–22.

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to set out from Philip Augustus in May 1208, before most other barons.64 However, according to Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, no small animosity grew up between the count and the duke, leading to the departure of the former shortly after the election of Odo’s friend, Simon of Montfort, to the captaincy of the crusade.65 In 1218, having probably taken the cross in the spring, Hervé sailed from Genoa and arrived in Egypt in October, around the same time as the bishops.66 Although he provided siege machines and was at the forefront of the action before Damietta through 1219, he failed to prevent the Egyptian relief force from entering the city late in the summer; his fellow crusaders suspected he had been bribed and banished him from the army.67 He departed in disgrace in August 1219 to pursue his claim to the county of Auxerre.68 Like Odo and Hervé, Count Milo IV of Bar-sur-Seine and Simon of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne and father of St Louis’ famous friend and biographer, participated in the first stage of the Albigensian Crusade in 1209.69 Milo also took the cross for the East around the same time as Odo and arrived in Egypt alongside Hervé in autumn 1218.70 Not having 64

65 66

67

68

69

70

William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 24; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 73–74; Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. Charles Samaran, Michel Nortier, and Jean Favier, 6 vols (Paris, 1916–), 3: 99. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 112–13, 115. Ogerio Pane, ‘Annales’, in MGH SS, 18: 115–42 (here 139); Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 832, 3: 2–3, 7–9; William the Breton, ‘Gesta Philippi Augusti’, p.  315; Hervé of Nevers and Mathilda of Courtenay, ‘Testamentum’, in Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, 5 vols (Paris, 1717), 1: 867–69; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p.  187; Robert of Auxerre, ‘Chronicon’, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, in MGH SS, 26: 219–87 (here 283); ‘Gesta obsidionis Damiate’, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, ed. Reinhold Röhricht (Genève, 1879), pp. 71–115 (here p. 79); John of Tulbia, ‘De domino Iohanne rege Ierusalem’, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, pp. 117–40 (here p. 122); ‘Liber duelli christiani in obsidione Damiate exacti’, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, pp. 141–66 (here p. 158). ‘Fragmentum de captione Damiatae’, trans. Paul Meyer, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, pp.  167–202 (here p. 178); Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 199 n. 7; Ernoul, p. 425. Robert of Auxerre, ‘Chronicon’, p.  284; John of Tulbia, ‘De Iohanne rege’, p. 131. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 82–83; MS Chamarandes-Choignes, Archives départementales de la Haute-Marne, 5 H 8. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 187; Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, ‘Chronica’, p. 908.

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stained his reputation, he remained with the army longer than the count of Nevers; both he and his son died in Damietta sometime before March 1220.71 Simon was a later arrival, having taken the cross for the East by August 1216 but not arriving in Egypt until around early April 1219.72 He remained with the army before Damietta until the fall of the city and probably assumed a position of leadership; in November he and other remaining French nobles issued letters to the pope reporting the fall of the city and negotiations with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil.73 These men did not assume the cross alone. In addition to their personal attention to the business of the Cross — against both heretics and Muslims — they brought with them contingents of followers that could be quite substantial, especially in the case of crusading bishops and barons like Hervé or Milo. As a result, the number of knights who were veterans of both the Albigensian and the Fifth Crusades was likely considerably larger than the limited sample represented here.

Preaching and recruitment This common participation might seem coincidental, but for the strong causal link suggested by common crusade preaching. Alberic of Rheims was ordered by Honorius in January 1218 to preach in support of Simon of Montfort, mired before the walls of Toulouse, as the old archbishop prepared for his own imminent departure for Egypt.74 In February 1213, at the request of Archbishop Arnold-Amalric of Narbonne, Gervase of Prémontré published a circular exhorting the faithful to assist Simon of Montfort in the suppression of heresy at Toulouse. Among those who responded to his call were probably much-needed reinforcements at the battle of Muret in September.75 After Lateran IV, he wrote to Innocent III 71 72 73

74 75

Honorius III et al., ‘Delectus’, p. 694. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14; Eracles, p. 331. Tolosan of Faenza, ‘Chronicon’, in Ad scriptores rerum italicarum cl. Muratorii accessiones historicae Faventinae, ed. Giovanni-Benedetto Mittarelli (Venezia, 1771), cc. 11–218 (here cc. 153–58). Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 573–75. Gervase of Prémontré, ‘Epistolae’, in Sacrae antiquitatis monumenta: Historica, dogmatica, diplomatica, ed. Charles-Louis Hugo et  al., 2 vols (Étival, 1725– 81), 1: 1–124 (here 41–43); Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 143. MarieHumbert Vicaire, ‘Les clercs de la croisade’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 4  (1969), 260–80 (here 277) claims that Gervase preached the Albigensian Crusade in Germany, but his references to the Hystoria albigensis are silent on the subject;

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and Honorius III to keep them informed about preparations in France for the Fifth Crusade and to request clarification on points of doubt. However, any understanding of the two crusades as threatening each other was lost on him: his letter to Innocent in 1216, it will be recalled, notes the reluctance of the greater magnates to take the cross for the East while recommending that those French knights excommunicated for the invasion of England be ordered to fight on the Albigensian Crusade.76 For Gervase, the efforts against heresy and Muslim domination of the Holy Land were equally necessary for the good of Christendom. Those French magnates who did embrace the Fifth Crusade were largely recruited by Robert of Courson, cardinal-priest of San Stefano al Monte Celio and former Parisian master.77 Though Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay expresses dismay at the number of crusaders Robert drew from the recruitment pool of the Albigensian Crusade in favour of the Holy Land as papal legate to France in 1213, the cardinal was also a zealous promoter of the former, reauthorizing preachers and personally touring the Midi in 1214. Whilst in the south, he condemned Waldensian heretics captured by the crusaders and confirmed Simon of Montfort in possession of his gains in the dioceses of Albi, Agen, Rodez, and Cahors.78 Robert also seems to have recruited among the indigenous aristocracy for the Fifth Crusade. But Powell’s suggestion that his successes there — however limited — probably owed to his representation of the papacy’s reluctance toward the French conquest of the Midi is unfounded, especially in light of his endorsement of Simon’s conquests.79 The opposite conclusion might be drawn: not only were many of Robert’s Fifth Crusade recruits veterans of the Albigensian campaigns, but his popularity among these men was sufficient to ensure a request in 1218 for his personal presence in Egypt as a spiritual advisor to the French contingent before the walls of Damietta.80 There, with his

76

77 78

79 80

in Gervase’s February 1213 circular, the abbot excuses himself from personal involvement on account of his ‘occupationes domesticae’, but deputises one of his monks: ‘Epistolae’, p. 43. Innocent III et al., ‘Delectus’, pp. 604–5; Honorius III et al., ‘Delectus’, p. 619; above, p. 123. Powell, Anatomy, pp. 34–35, 39–40; Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 12–14, 832. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 129–32, 185–86, 202–3, 207–8, 217; Robert of Courson, ‘Lettres en faveur de Simon de Montfort’, in Histoire de Languedoc, 8: 653–55. Powell, Anatomy, pp. 46–47; below, pp. 141–42. Honorius III, ‘Epistolae’, 2: 832. For further evidence of the intimate connection between preaching for the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades, see Jessalynn Bird’s chapter in this volume.

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nephew Alexander, Robert died the following winter, a victim of the same pestilence that carried off the bishops of Paris and Lisieux.81 Once again, the devotion of these men, dedicated to the struggles both against heresy and for Jerusalem, placed them in crusaders’ tombs. Robert’s death in Egypt was witnessed by his fellow Parisian alumnus, James of Vitry, now bishop of Acre. James had also spent his earlier years supporting the Albigensian Crusade, preaching its indulgences in 1211, 1212, and 1214. The year he did not preach against heresy, 1213, was dedicated by Robert to promoting the Fifth Crusade; James of Vitry presumably participated in this effort, but also wrote his Vita Marie de Oegnies at the request of Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, a leading — and, at the moment, exiled — figure of the Albigensian Crusade.82 After his election to the see of Acre, James preached the crusade in Genoa and Outremer and accompanied the crusading army to Egypt, where he sponsored several ill-fated ships for the crusaders’ river fleet in 1218 and witnessed the capture of Damietta in November 1219.83 It was not only knights and barons who participated in both the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades: the very preachers who recruited them advocated and — in the case of Robert and James — personally took part in both projects.84 Especially with the great magnates, preachers may have cultivated powerful relationships while advertising the Albigensian Crusade, connections that may have facilitated the second assumption of the cross for Jerusalem years later. With the exception of particular circumstances, such as the initial push to raise awareness of the new expedition to the East in 1213, these crusade promoters did not see the struggles against heretics and infidels as competitors, but as complements. Nor was the cross-pollination of crusade preaching unique to France. James of Vitry had certainly not limited himself to his homeland,

81

82

83 84

James of Vitry, Lettres, pp. 110, 116; ‘Annales prioratus de Dunstaplia’, in AM, 3: 3–408 (here 54). Hystoria, 1: 281–83, 2: 7, 202; James of Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM, 252 (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 8, 44–45. James of Vitry, Lettres, pp. 77, 114–15, 134–35; Powell, Anatomy, p. 26. Jessalynn Bird, ‘Crusade and Reform: The Sermons of Bibliothèque nationale, MS nouv. acq. lat. 999’, in The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century, ed. E. J. Mylod et al. (Abingdon, 2017), pp.  92–114 (here p.  100); Bird, ‘The Victorines, Peter the Chanter’s Circle, and the Crusade: Two Unpublished Crusading Appeals in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 14470’, Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), 5–28 (here 6–17, 24–25).

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spreading word of indulgences for the Albigensian Crusade in Germany in 1211.85 Oliver of Cologne, later bishop of Paderborn — like James a Parisian master, crusade preacher, and eyewitness historian of the Damietta campaign — may have preached against the Albigensians in 1208.86 His companion in recruiting for the Fifth Crusade, John of Xanten, had brought back Marian miracle stories from the Albigensian Crusade.87 Tomier, Palaizi, and William Figueira might appeal to imperial interests to highlight the perceived illegitimacy of French interference in the Midi, but their perspective was not shared by Rhinelanders like Oliver and John, who furthermore would probably have taken exception to the characterisation of the southern intervention as distracting from the recovery of the Holy Land. Nor were these preachers exceptional. John’s foray to the Midi was likely as part of the Rhenish army led by the reformer Engelbert of Berg — then provost of the cathedral of Cologne — in spring 1212.88 In 1215, Engelbert took the cross for Jerusalem but was prevented from leaving by his election to the archiepiscopal see; he petitioned Rome for absolution from his crusading vow but still sent a contingent of ministerials to Damietta.89 Other Rhinelanders, however, fulfilled their oaths in both the Midi and Egypt. Counts Adolf III of Berg — Engelbert’s brother — and William III of Jülich had accompanied the provost to the south in 1212.90 Adolf assumed the cross again by 1217 and took the spring 1218 passage to the East at the head of a substantial following, including his brother’s 85 86

87

88

89

90

Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 1: 282–83. However, the certainty of Hermann Hoogeweg, ‘Der kölner Domscholaster Oliver als Kreuzprediger, 1214–1217’, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 7  (1888), 235–70 (here 238); Schriften, pp.  xx-xxii; and AnnaDorothee von den Brincken, ‘Oliverus scholasticus et cardinalis (†  1227)’, Rheinische Lebensbilder 12 (1999), 47–67 (here 51) is unjustified by the thin and circumstantial nature of their evidence: Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia regum’, p. 157; Innocent III et al., Register, 10: 352–53. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Köln, 1851), 1: 70, 136, 2: 32, 333–34. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria, 2: 9, 30; Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 1: 301; Alexander Berner, Kreuzzug und regionale Herrschaft: Die älteren Grafen von Berg 1147–1225 (Köln, 2014), pp. 152, 219–33. Berner, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft, pp. 288–89, 294–95; Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 1: 154. Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, ed. Theodor Joseph Lacomblet, 4 vols (Düsseldorf, 1840–58), 2: 19; Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 1: 301; Berner, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft, pp. 219–33.

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ministerials. After serving as commander of the Rhinelanders and Frisians in the initial assaults on the Chain Tower, he died in August, among the first victims of the plague that would carry off the French bishops and Robert of Courson. William, who sailed for Egypt shortly after Adolf, also died on the Nile early the following year.91 The lower Rhineland had not provided a significant number of recruits for the German or Fourth Crusades; there are therefore grounds to suggest that the canvassing of a new generation for the Albigensian Crusade contributed to the region’s enthusiastic response to the same preachers’ promotion of the Fifth.92 Naturally, Rhenish reception of crusade preaching must also be seen in the context of Frederick’s taking the cross at Aachen in 1215, but the crucial distinction remains that these counts actually set out in 1218, whereas the emperor would not depart for almost another decade.93 The most important German participant in the crusade before the arrival of the emperor was Duke Leopold VI of Austria, who had taken the cross for the Holy Land in 1207 or 1208.94 He seems, however, to have been an eager and equal-opportunity crusader. Before sailing east, he joined Engelbert and the Rhinelanders in their 1212 expedition against the Albigensians.95 He fought with Simon of Montfort from May until 91

92

93 94

95

Urkundenbuch des Niederrheins, 2: 36, 39, 41–42, 46; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 179; ‘Gesta crucigerorum rhenanorum’, in Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, pp.  27–56 (here pp.  40–41); Berner, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft, pp. 233–60, 288–90. Berner, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft, pp. 53–60. ‘Annales Colonienses maximi’, ed. Karl Pertz, in MGH SS, 17: 723–847 (here 810) make no mention of Rhenish participation in the Fourth Crusade, which was perceived from Cologne as Flemish. It is worth noting that Engelbert’s 1212 participation in the Albigensian Crusade coincided with the departure of the Children’s Crusade, which did attract a substantial Rhenish following. Gary Dickson, The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 99–100 claims there is no corresponding spark for the latter movement in the Rhineland to the preaching of the Spanish crusade in France, but the recruitment for Engelbert’s antiheretical expedition could equally have inspired the more humble to liberate the Holy Land, given the shared nature of such preaching as discussed above. Berner, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft, p. 145; Claverie, Honorius et l’Orient, p. 36. Innocent III et al., Register, 11 (2010), pp. 1–3; ‘Continuatio Lambacensis’, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, in MGH SS, 9: 556–61 (here 557); ‘Annales Gotwicenses’, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, in MGH SS, 9: 600–4 (here 602). Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 1: 301; ‘Annales Marbacenses’, ed. Roger Wilmans, in MGH SS, 17: 142–80 (here 172).

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June, when he set out to join Peter of Aragon in the fight against the Almoh.ads in Spain. He arrived too late, however, for the decisive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.96 Within a year of his return, by December 1213, he had once again vowed himself to the liberation of Jerusalem. He arrived at Acre in autumn 1217 with a large following of Germans and fortified the defences of the kingdom while waiting for the arrival of more crusaders.97 He then participated in the invasion of Egypt in May 1218 and fiercely prosecuted the attack on the Chain Tower defending Damietta. His reputation for prowess eventually led the garrison to offer their surrender to him personally.98 He remained in the East for a year and eight months until French reinforcements in autumn 1218 assured him that he could return home with the spring passage in 1219. He left behind copious sums of money with the Teutonic Knights and the earl of Chester for fortifications and the continuing work of the crusade.99 In 1223, Honorius would depend upon him to encourage Frederick  II to make good on his recent marriage to the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem and fulfil his delayed crusading vow.100 Though Leopold did not personally witness the capture or loss of Damietta, he had proved to be one of the western magnates most dedicated to victory in the East. Prosopography cannot tell us about the relative popularity of each crusade; the evidence from individually known crusaders is subject to the accidents of historical survival. Bearing in mind, however, that many of the individuals discussed here would have brought sizeable followings with them on campaign, those selected indicate a significant population common to both crusades. It is likely that for some, the overlapping 96

97

98

99

100

‘Annales Colonienses’, p. 826; ‘Annales Gotwicenses’, p. 602; Roderic of Toledo, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, sive Historia gothica, ed. Juan Fernández Valverde, CCCM, 72 (Turnhout, 1987), p.  276; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia terre sancte’, p. 157. Regesten zur Geschichte der Markgrafen und Herzoge Oesterreichs aus dem Hause Babenberg, ed. Andreas von Meiller (Wien, 1850), pp.  112–13; ‘Continuatio Claustroneoburgensis secunda’, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, in MGH SS, 9: 613–24 (here 622); Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, pp. 162–63, 168; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Briefe’, in Schriften, pp. 285–316 (here pp. 288, 290); Eracles, pp. 322–23. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, pp. 175–76, 179–80, 184, 186; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Briefe’, pp. 292, 294; John of Tulbia, ‘De Iohanne rege’, p. 120. Eracles, p. 332; ‘Gesta obsidionis Damiate’, p. 90; John of Tulbia, ‘De Iohanne rege’, p.  127; ‘Continuatio Claustroneoburgensis secunda’, p.  622; Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatina’, p. 207. Honorius III, ‘Ex registro’, in MGH Epp. saec. XIII, 1: 1–260 (here 156–57).

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preaching and participation encouraged them to take the cross for a second time. Others, like Leopold of Austria, seem to have been avid about crusading wherever they could. But even if a direct connection did not exist in most or even many crusaders’ mind between the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades, it is clear that for a number of participants — whether preachers, crusaders, or both — neither was there considerable conflict between them. This has been obscured in modern historians’ accounts by a reliance on the analyses of medieval critics; while valuable as evidence of countervailing opinion, their words are drowned out by the actions of their contemporaries.

Common failure In truth, by the end of summer 1221, both the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades were collapsing, but not due to competition with each other. In the Midi, Amalric of Montfort feebly attempted to retake the offensive after losing effective control not only of the county of Toulouse but also of the marches of his viscounty of Carcassonne. Meagre reinforcements of short-term crusaders did not prevent him from further losing the Agenais in August.101 In Egypt, the march on Cairo foundered as the Nile rose around the crusaders, forcing them to exchange Damietta for their lives in July. The Fifth Crusade therefore ended in disaster due to the fateful mistake of advancing upriver during the annual floods.102 Of the two crises, it was the Albigensian that suffered from a lack of manpower: since Louis’ return to France in 1219, it had become difficult to attract crusaders to Amalric’s failing venture. When the majority of French crusaders departed Egypt in early 1220, it was because Damietta had been captured and their countryman, John of Brienne, had signalled the acceptability of breaking camp.103 They did not transfer their support to the Albigensian Crusade, which remained paralysed until Amalric’s final withdrawal to France in 1224. If the Albigensian Crusade cannot be shown to have materially subtracted from the French and Rhenish knights who might have gone on the Fifth, there is another region where its impact seems obvious. Powell has drawn attention to the weak showing by crusaders from the Midi in Egypt. Such lords were presumably discouraged from crusading in the East because of the threat of the Albigensian Crusade to their own

101 102 103

Michel Roquebert, L’Épopée cathare, 4 vols (Toulouse, 1970–89), 3: 199–209. Powell, Anatomy, pp. 185–91. James of Vitry, Lettres, p. 135.

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patrimonies.104 Only three great southern barons took the cross for Egypt: Count Henry I of Rodez in 1213, Viscount Raymond IV of Turenne in 1219, and Count William X of Auvergne in 1222. Henry and Raymond had collaborated with the Albigensian Crusade, while many Auvergnats had participated in 1209 and 1212. However, only Henry can be proved to have departed for Egypt, where he served for two years before dying in Acre in 1221. Though Henry clearly brought a contingent of southerners with him, it seems fair to say that the participation of those speaking the langue d’oc was not comparable to that of the French, Germans, and Italians.105 No doubt one reason for this was the impact of the Albigensian Crusade, but that sword cuts both ways. The deposed elder count of Toulouse, Raymond VI of Saint-Gilles, had been urged multiple times to go on crusade to the Holy Land but would die without having made any attempt at such a penance.106 For smaller lords anxious to protect their lands from Simon of Montfort’s troops, the crusade vow could immunize their possessions under the auspices of the very Church that directed Simon’s hand. The fact that few seem to have taken advantage of this possibility may suggest a wider lack of interest in the crusade among this generation of southerners; despite often hypocritical troubadour exhortations, evidence of substantial crusader recruitment between the Garonne and the Rhône is equally paltry for the Third and Fourth Crusades.107 104

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106 107

Powell, Anatomy, p. 78. For an anomalous exception to this picture, see Martine Cao Carmichael de Baiglie, ‘Savary de Mauléon (c.  1180–1233), chevaliertroubadour poitevin: Traîtrise et société aristocratique’, Le Moyen Âge 105 (1999), 269–305 (here 279–80, 291–92). Antoine Bonal, Comté et comtes de Rodez (Rodez, 1885), p.  173; M.-A.-F.  de Gaujal, Études historiques sur le Rouergue, 4 vols (Paris, 1858–59), 2: 94; Christofle Justel, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Turene (Paris, 1645), preuves, pp.  40–42; Honorius  III, ‘Epistolae’, 4: 67–68; Peter of Vaux-deCernay, Hystoria, 2: 7, 231; Henry of Rodez, ‘Hommage à Simon de Montfort’, in Histoire de Languedoc, 8: 655–57; Henry of Rodez, ‘Hommages rendus à Amauri de Montfort’, in Histoire de Languedoc, 8: 722–23; MS Paris, Archives nationales, JJ 30A, fols 6r-v, 13r-v; William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 21, 39, 249, 257; Henry of Rodez, ‘Testamentum’, in Spicilegium, sive collectio veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis delituerunt, ed. Luc d’Achéry, Étienne Baluze, and Edmond Martène, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Paris, 1723), 3: 593–94; Henry of Rodez, ‘Codicillus’, cc. 1168–72. William of Tudela, Chanson, 1: 150; Innocent III et al., ‘Regesta’, 216: 740, 840. Linda Paterson, Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyric Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336 (Woodbridge, 2018), pp.  55–74, 100–12; Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A  New History of the Crusades

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Concerns beyond crusading Elsewhere, contemporary events other than the Albigensian Crusade clearly competed with the eastern campaign. From 1213, Philip Augustus and the great French magnates had sought to limit the application of crusaders’ rights deemed detrimental to princely prerogatives, which delayed the initial French expedition by at least a year.108 Louis’ 1216–17 invasion of England clearly interfered with recruitment for the Fifth Crusade at a crucial moment.109 In March 1220, King Henry III of England advertised his truce putting an end to the hostilities with Philip of France inherited from his father as being for the benefit of both crusades.110 In Champagne, a violent dispute over the succession to the county paralysed the local aristocracy, which had shown itself quite receptive to crusading at the turn of the century. Erard of Ramerupt — who used the Albigensian Crusade to cover his intentions toward the succession in summer 1213 — was cousin to John of Brienne and therefore had a family interest in the prosecution of the Fifth Crusade.111 However, he preferred to press his claim to the county of Champagne, drawing a substantial part of the local nobility

108

109 110

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(London,  2006), p.  397; Jean Longnon, Les compagnons de Villehardouin: Recherches sur les croisés de la quatrième croisade (Genève, 1978), pp. 223, 226. Jessalynn Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights Revisited: The Use and Abuse of Crusader Privileges in Early Thirteenth-Century France’, in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter (Philadelphia, 2008), pp. 133–48 (here pp. 135–37). Tyerman, God’s War, p. 622. Henry III of England, ‘Litterae de treugis in quatuor annos a se cum Philippo rege Franciae initis’, in Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. Alexandre Teulet, 4 vols (Paris, 1863–1902), 1: 496–97. H.  d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, 7 vols (Paris, 1859–69), 4: 111–87. Erard claimed that he was setting out for the Albigensian Crusade — not the Holy Land — in June 1213: Cartulaire de l’Yonne, pp. 57–58. However, his vow was likely little more than an attempt to protect his goods in Champagne and mask his journey south to take ship for Outremer, where he would wed Philippa of Champagne (through whom he claimed the county). His deception seems to have been quickly discovered: he was temporarily arrested in Marseille by the agents of Blanche, the dowager countess, and the ecclesiastical processes that vainly attempted to prevent the marriage were underway by July: Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols (Paris, 1852–61), 3: 615– 16; Innocent III et al., ‘Regesta’, 216: 941, 979, 981–82. Erard therefore hardly had time to spare in the service of the Albigensian Crusade that summer.

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with him; Simon of Joinville, for instance, was still in France awaiting absolution for his excommunication — a result of his participation in the rebellion — in December 1218 before he could sail for Damietta.112 Arguably the largest distraction to the Fifth Crusade lay not in France at all, but in Sicily, where the delay of the crusader Frederick kept the leadership and policy of the crusade in suspense. Waiting for Frederick contributed, for example, to the rejection of al-Kamil’s final proposal of an exchange of Damietta for Jerusalem.113 The emperor’s absence and conflict in Italy, not a lack of French knights seduced by the Albigensian Crusade, deprived the Fifth Crusade of the decision and momentum needed to capitalize on the capture of Damietta. The claim of far-flung papal projects around the Mediterranean having a centrifugal effect on crusading ideals and realities is therefore difficult to maintain. Medieval Europe was a lively place, with plenty of violence unrelated to crusading to divert energies from the fight for Jerusalem. Moreover, multiple crusading theatres did not create a zero-sum game: a recurring cast of characters contradicts the impression of ‘crusading fatigue’ and at least complicates the argument that the recruitment base was being stretched thin. Many crusaders who returned home did not simply stay put; whether out of a desire to continue performing their piety, because they had compromised their previous indulgence through further sin, or to slake their enduring thirst for glory and adventure, barons seem to have frequently retaken the cross. The number of fresh crusaders to the Midi who sailed as veterans to Egypt suggests that the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades, so close temporally, also had a deeper, personal connection. Sharing an institutional framework and summoned by the same pope, they were also populated by many of the same men, some of whom were decisive to either venture. Innocent III, Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, and Gormonda of Montpellier may have believed that the heretics were ‘worse than Saracens’, but the Albigensian Crusade also demonstrated that violence against new, dissident targets could be harnessed and later redirected against the old benchmark of menace to Christendom, the Turk.

112

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Guy Perry, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c.  1175–1237 (Cambridge, 2013), pp.  81–88; Honorius  III et  al., ‘Delectus’, pp. 674–75. Honorius  III, ‘Ex registro’, pp.  128–29; Van Cleve, ‘Crusade of Frederick’, p. 437; Powell, Anatomy, pp. 181–85.

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Implementing the Crusades

How to Implement a Crusade Plan The Canonries of Saint-Victor of Paris and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes of Soissons and the Defence of Crusaders’ Rights*

Jessalynn Lea Bird

Crusade historiography regularly undergoes sea changes. Recently, some historians have increasingly focused on those aspects of the crusade movement which most intimately influenced or were interwoven with everyday life in Latin Christendom. How did local piety,1 peace-making initiatives,2 and calls for reform influence appeals and preparations for * I would like to thank the members of the ICMAC, Hugh Feiss, and the late John Baldwin for their perceptive comments on the initial version of this paper delivered at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo (2014) at a session organized in honour of James Brundage. Needless to say, the work of Christopher Tyerman and James Brundage on crusader rights and John Baldwin on the activities of Paris masters are foundational for my own study of these topics. 1

2

See, for example, Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997); Anne E. Lester, ‘A Shared Imitation: Cistercian Convents and Crusader Families in ThirteenthCentury Champagne’, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 353–70; Anne E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, NY, 2011). There is a vast literature on peacemaking impacting crusade preparations, although most of this is devoted to high-level initiatives intended to end wars between kings. For this period, see, for example, James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1990); Jenny Benham, Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice (Manchester, 2011); Bodo Hechelhammer, Kreuzzug und Herrschaft unter Friedrich  II.: Handlungsspielräume von Kreuzzugspolitik (1215–1230) (Ostfildern, 2004); Viola Skiba, Honorius  III.

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 147–180. ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117319

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the crusade? What kinds of planning and logistics were necessary to ensure that individuals not only took the cross, but were able to fulfil or redeem their vows?3 How was the commemoration of previous crusades incorporated into family memory and the religious observances of local houses?4 More interestingly, why did crusaders feel the need to have recourse to local regular religious as sources for hard cash, spiritual reassurance, enforcement of crusader privileges, and protection of property and households in the crusaders’ absence? Was this evidence for lingering unease concerning the theoretical all-sufficiency and the de facto enforcement of the papal protection and spiritual and legal privileges offered to crusaders and for crusaders’ desire for an alternative and local source of both spiritual sanctions upon breakers of the peace and spiritual benefits in the form of suffrages and saintly intervention?5

3

4

5

(1216–1227): Päpste und Papsttum (Stuttgart, 2016); Thomas W. Smith, Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout, 2017); Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Honorius III et l’Orient (1216–1227): Étude et publication de sources inédites des Archives vaticanes (ASV) (Leiden, 2013); and for a case involving the relics of John of Montmirail, Anne  E. Lester, ‘The Coffret of John of Montmirail: The Sacred Politics of Reuse in Thirteenth-Century Northern France’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4 (2014), 50–86. Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (London, 2015). Anne  E. Lester, ‘What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 311–28; Nicholas Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012). For a timely review of the literature on this topic and fresh contributions to the field, see Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. Megan Cassidy-Welch (New York, 2016). In this view, I differ considerably from Danielle Park, who has argued that papal protection of crusaders was not ‘as amorphous, ambiguous and unrealistic as historians such as Bird and Tyerman have previously claimed’ (p. 211). Certainly the careful and rigorous attempts of departing noble crusaders to safeguard their possessions through the declaration of regional peace, settling of disputes, (re)issuing of laws, donations to monasteries, and appointment of qualified regents might suggest some anxiety regarding the enforceability of papally proffered protection. Although Park notes the limits of excommunication as a sanction and that enforcement of protection depended on the ‘authority, tenacity and personality of individual popes and regents’, she nonetheless asserts that this variability did not undermine the attraction of crusaderspecific protection to those taking the cross (pp. 210–11). However, Park’s

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Certainly, there is considerable evidence from the pontificates of Innocent III and Honorius III regarding the logistical difficulties of organizing crusading contingents and of enabling the departure of crusaders of all stripes in multiple regions, including England, Germany, FlandersBrabant, Italy, and France. In Germany, Flanders-Brabant, and Frisia, some contingents benefitted from access to crusade preachers, papal legates, judges delegate, regular religious, and diocesan clergy familiar with local politics, trained in canon law, and with access to crusade funds and papal authorization, although even in these regions the limitations of ecclesiastical sanctions (excommunication and interdict) as tools to enforce crusader departure and crusader rights soon became glaringly apparent. Moreover, the decisions of many local teams of judges delegate were contested by prolific appeals to Rome, particularly in the high-profile case of the counts of Loos and Holland, both of whom had taken the cross.6 Given the difficulties of implementing even the best laid and most well-defined crusade plans, it would seem unlikely that the canonries of Saint-Victor in Paris and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons would become deeply involved in precisely this arena. However, Saint-Victor’s spiritual and pastoral reputation and its location in Paris, at the heart of royal government and intellectual ferment, ensured that it became embroiled in multiple facets of crusade preparations from the Fourth Crusade onwards: recruiting; the preservation of crusade sermons delivered by Paris masters; correspondence with legates and masters charged with promoting the crusade; the

6

case studies involve only individuals of the highest ranks of the nobility; we are deprived of the potentially useful comparative cases of ecclesiastics who took the cross and crusaders of lower social status. Similarly, Park isolates the protection privilege from other benefits granted to crusaders (remission of interest on loans and onerous penances imposed for arson and violence, trial in ecclesiastical courts in some instances, the ability to mortgage ecclesiastical benefices, flexibility in dispensation for consanguineous marriages, et cetera) which rather artificially narrows and neatens her argument regarding the ubiquity and generally enforced nature of crusader protection. See Danielle E. A. Park, Papal Protection and the Crusader: Flanders, Champagne and the Kingdom of France, 1095–1222 (Woodbridge, 2018), esp. pp. 134, 148, 200–3, 210–11. For the classic treatment of crusader privileges, see James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, 1969). See note 2 above and Jessalynn Bird, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council, Peace, and the Protection of Crusader Rights during the Crusades of Frederick II’, in The Fourth Lateran Council and the Crusade Movement: The Impact of the Council of 1215 on Latin Christendom and the East, ed. Jessalynn L. Bird and Damian  J. Smith (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 273–98.

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collection and distribution of crusade funds; and the protection of the legal rights of crusaders. Although there is a burgeoning literature on the Victorines as theologians and homilists, most of this work focuses on the biblical exegesis and erudite theology of the school of Saint-Victor through the mid-twelfth century.7 However, by the later twelfth through mid-thirteenth century, the Victorines shared the preoccupations of some theologians in Paris with a pastoral theology which wrestled with ambiguous moral grey areas.8 Both groups sought to disseminate the fruits of this study through sermons preached to mixed audiences (the canons of Saint-Victor served multiple parishes and staffed priories in and around Paris);9 through confessors’ manuals and fieldwork as confessors to the populace of Paris (including

7

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There is, for example, an entire series of Victorine texts in translation published by Brepols which is devoted to twelfth-century writings only. The editors of the series have published an extremely helpful bibliography, hosted at www.newcitypress.com/media/Landingpages/ victorines/AnnotatedBibliographyVictorines.pdf (accessed 28 Jan. 2018). For a broad history of the Victorine order sorely in need of an update, see Fourier Bonnard, Histoire de l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoins réguliers de SaintVictor de Paris, 2 vols (Paris, 1904–07). For legislation, see Liber ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis, ed. Luc Jocqué and Louis Milis, CCCM, 61 (Turnhout, 1984) and note 8 below. In general, see John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, 1970); Stephen Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics (Stanford, 1985); L’École de Saint-Victor de Paris: Influence et rayonnement du Moyen Âge à l’époque modern, ed. Dominique Poirel (Turnhout, 2010); Jean Longère, ‘La function pastorale de Saint-Victor à la fin du XIIe et au début du XIIIe siècle’, in L’abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au Moyen Âge, ed. Jean Longère (Turnhout, 1991), pp.  291–313; Marshall  E. Crossnoe, ‘Education and the Care of Souls: Pope Gregory  IX, the Order of St  Victor, and the University of Paris in 1237’, Mediaeval Studies 61 (1999), 137–72; and Hugh Feiss, ‘Pastoral Ministry: Preaching and Confession’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, ed. Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Leiden, 2018), pp. 147–86. For priories and parish work, see Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 187–89; BnF, lat. 14673, fols 270vb, 271va-vb.

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its temptation-prone students);10 and through commissions as judges delegate versed in the complexities of both theology and canon law.11 The Victorines combined these activities with maintaining an aura of sanctity among the vices of the Capetian capital; James of Vitry famously described Saint-Victor as an oasis of tranquility for some Paris masters. Many secular moral theologians based in Paris viewed Saint-Victor as a library-cum-scriptorium where they might deposit their intellectual legacy in writing (in the form of books deeded to the canonry and reportationes of the sermons they delivered) and consult a wide range of pastoral materials. Bishops of Paris and secular clergy from the cathedral and school at NotreDame, as well as masters and students, chose to make their confessions at Saint-Victor and to be buried and commemorated there.12 Rather than decreasing in influence as a school, Saint-Victor thus remained intimately connected to the reforming pulse which predominated among secular Parisian theologians of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. While lauding Saint-Victor, James of Vitry also praised his own pastorally-orientated canonry of Saint-Nicolas at Oignies and those of Val-des-Écoliers and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons. The latter two canonries became destinations for educated men, and many of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes’ canons collaborated with the cathedral clergy of Soissons, Paris masters, and Victorines as judges delegate in potentially problematic cases.13 Nivelon, bishop of Soissons, had participated with Garnier, bishop of Troyes, in the Fourth Crusade. Both bishops collaborated with the canonry at Saint-Victor, which could not but have been 10

11

12

13

Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1: 32–36, 47, 91–93, 139–43, 157, 2: 24 nn. 182, 189; Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, ed. F. Broomfield (Louvain, 1968); Thomas of Chobham, Sermones, ed. Franco Morenzoni, CCCM, 82A (Turnhout, 1993); Peter of Poitiers, Summa de confessione, ed. Jean Longère, CCCM, 51 (Turnout, 1980); Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. James  J. Firth (Toronto, 1971); Longère, ‘La function pastorale’, pp. 300–11. See the discussion below and Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 2: 237–40 nn. 30, 38, 45, 47, 49, 52, 56–57, 65; Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. Benjamin Guérard et al., 4 vols (Paris, 1850), 1: 72–75, no. 76 (1198) and passim. James of Vitry, Historia occidentalis, ed. John F. Hinnebusch (Fribourg, 1972), pp. 132, 138–39; Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 122, 128, 143, 176–99, 261–302, 2: 275–88; notes 8 and 11 above. In addition to the cases discussed below, see PL, 216: 260–61.

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aware of Fulk of Neuilly’s recruiting and fundraising efforts for the Fourth Crusade (including the founding of what would become the nunnery of Saint-Antoine for reformed meretrices near Paris). Saint-Victor’s abbot was soon asked to become involved in vow dispensations and the collection of monies for the Fourth Crusade. Both Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and Saint-Victor received relics brought back by the bishops of Troyes and Soissons after the Fourth Crusade, perhaps as confirmation of their efforts in crusade recruitment and funding. And both canonries would remain involved in providing protection and spiritual inspiration to those participating in or wishing to participate in the Albigensian Crusade, including Robert Mauvoisin, who specifically requested legal protection and spiritual counsel for himself and his wife. Simon of Montfort’s family, together with the Mauvoisins, would became patrons of Saint-Antoine and place female family members there, while the Victorine library would preserve sermons preached at Saint-Antoine in support of the crusade.14 Both Paris masters and the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes (and perhaps of Saint-Victor) would continue to shape the spiritual aspirations of one of Philip Augustus’ close companions, John of Montmirail.

The Canonry of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes of Soissons and John of Montmirail John of Montmirail’s career illustrates the complex networks by which noblemen were or were not recruited for the crusade and how ties to local monasteries, canonries, and cathedral clergy reinforced and guided lay spirituality. John was related by birth or marriage to many of the leading families of the Champenois region. His stepmother, Alice, was a Courtenay (a crusading family which would within her lifetime assume the Latin rulership of Constantinople), and John was also related to the counts of Champagne, who, under Henry of Champagne, had founded their own dynasty in the Holy Land. Henry’s descendants soon threatened to reclaim the county of Champagne during the regency of Blanche of Champagne for her son Theobald IV.15 At an early age, John of Montmirail 14

15

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Jessalynn Bird, ‘The Victorines, Peter the Chanter’s Circle and the Crusade: Two Unpublished Crusading Appeals in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. 14470’, Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), 5–28. AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 186–235; Alexandre-Clément Boitel, Histoire du bienheureux Jean surnommé l’Humble, seigneur de Montmirail-en-Brie, d’Oisy, de Tresmes (Paris, 1859); Marguerite  R. Mathieu, Montmirail en Brie: Sa seigneurie et son canton (Paris, 1975), 60–82; Nicholas Vincent, ‘Isabella of

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was sent to the royal court where he became a companion of the young Philip Augustus. John later married Helvide of Dampierre, sister of the constable of Champagne, and perhaps accompanied his king on the Third Crusade, as did his wife Helvide’s brother and a significant cluster of Champenois barons that included several crusaders who made donations to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. However, John chose not to join the Fourth Crusade despite strong support for it among his own relatives and other milites in the Champagne region.16 A study of the much-neglected cartulary of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes allows for some preliminary mapping of the relationships between local canonries and potential crusaders in a fashion similar to what Marcus Bull and the late Jonathan Riley-Smith did for participants of the First Crusade. The canonry received multiple donations from neighbouring nobility, milites, and at least one citizen of Soissons of tithes, lands, and houses. Saint-Jean-des-Vignes also served as a source for ready cash; there are many instances of sales and outright mortgaging of lands, in return for transportable wealth, some of which benefitted crusaders or pilgrims. Local notables also made endowments in return for commemorative Masses. The canonry claimed to possess relics gifted to them by Lambert of Noyon, the chaplain of Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople, including a liturgical reliquary cross with a fragment of the True Cross encased within it and some of the blood of Christ, relics which tied the canonry to crusade efforts both in the Holy Land and the newly established Latin kingdom of Constantinople, a project in which the bishops of Soissons and Noyon had played prominent roles.17 Saint-Jean-des-Vignes had been reformed by the house of Saint-Victor in Paris, which played a role in collecting crusade monies and vow redemptions (and probably recruiting) for the Fourth Crusade, and acquired, in return, a relic of Saint-Victor sourced from Constantinople. Moreover, we have firm evidence that clergy from the Chartrain and Paris region had joined Saint-Jean-desVignes by 1205.18 Paris masters and canons from Sainte-Geneviève and Saint-Victor routinely intervened in cases involving Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and other local monasteries or between the canonry and the cathedral clergy of

16

17 18

Angoulême: John’s Jezebel’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Stephen D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 165–219, esp. pp. 175–79. Boitel, Histoire, pp. 224–25; Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 62–64, 67; Cartulary of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, in BnF, lat. 11004, fols 41v-42r. BnF, lat. 11004, fol. 121r; PL, 216: 77. BnF, lat. 11004, fols 17r-18v, 23r, 101r-v, 111v.

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Soissons,19 and there is overwhelming evidence that the canonry pursued a pastoral mission with priories staffed by canons similar to parishes served by Sainte-Geneviève and Saint-Victor in and around Paris. Reformers associated with Peter the Chanter in Paris (including Peter himself and Hervé, bishop of Troyes) supported the staffing of the parishes under these priories by the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.20 The cartulary also provides concrete evidence of the canonry of SaintJean-des-Vignes’ relations with local crusading nobility, including the count of Soissons (BnF, lat. 11004, fols 101v-103v), who made donations to them, as did John of Beaumont, who endowed two chaplains to say Masses for his soul in 1220–21 (fols  104r-105r). The canonry’s abbot, Ralph, and the provost and an archdeacon of Soissons witnessed several deeds spanning 1200–20, including the gift of a house and vineyard to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes by Odo ‘Palmarius’ and his wife Sibilla in 1203. The date and the epithet ‘Palmer’ may indicate that Odo was a potential or returning participant of the Fourth Crusade (fol. 74v), as does the fact that the archdeacon of Soissons acted on behalf of Nivelon, bishop of Soissons (‘because he [Nivelon] was going to Jerusalem’) in multiple adjacent charters (fols 71v-72v). Certainly, the bishop of Soissons had confirmed earlier donations to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes by at least two individuals going to Jerusalem in 1191 (fols 41v-42r); the pattern of donation before departure on crusade had been set by the Third Crusade. One wonders if the pignori obligasses (pledges mortgaged) to SaintJean-des-Vignes in 1213 by Simon de Atevesue, miles (warrior), and his wife Avelina were related to these parties’ potential participation in either the Albigensian or Fifth Crusade (fol. 47r). Then there are the donations from Robert, a miles ‘from Coucy’ in 1214 and the loan contracted from the canonry by Bartholomew, miles de Borsone, in 1217 and Renard de Lastilli in 1217 (fols 50v-51r). These gifts and loans occurred within the same folio as Haimard, bishop of Soissons’ confirmation of the gift of Odo, clerk of Soissons, son of Mary and Evrard the camerarius (chamberlain). Intent 19

20

Stephen, archdeacon of Paris, Master G[autier] or Walter Cornut, canon of Paris, and the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève mediated two cases involving SaintJean-des-Vignes in 1219: BnF, lat. 11004, fols 62r-v, 97r, 110r-v. BnF, lat. 11004, fols  13r, 22v-23r, 25r-30v, 39r-40r, 61r, 103v-104r. The abbots of Sainte-Geneviève and Longpont, the dean of Soissons, and master Godfrey of Soissons were involved in several cases between Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and local houses in 1206, 1209, and 1218–19: fols 52v-53r, 86r-89r. In 1186, Stephen of Tournai, head of Sainte-Geneviève, joined with Peter the Chanter in a case over parish rights contested between the bishop of Soissons and the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and found in the canons’ favour: fols 39r-40r.

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on going to Jerusalem in July of 1216, Odo placed in the guardianship of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes his holdings in the parish of ‘Arthesia’, such that the canons would receive the yields (proventus) until his return and from the fruits received would repay his debt of ten pounds to a third party. If Odo should die on pilgrimage, one third of his property was to go to the canonry. If before Odo returned, the fruits received did not total the worth of the loaned ten pounds, the church was to continue to hold his property as pledge until the debt were repaid (fols 50v-51r). This agreement flirted decorously with the boundaries between usury and what was considered an acceptable mortgage; the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes carefully aligned their agreement according to the prevailing advice of anti-usury campaigners in Paris to exclude any notion of profit from the loan and to circumvent the moratorium on interest promised to crusaders that often prevented their access to ready cash. In addition to his financial arrangements, Odo made other simultaneous outright donations to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes of various items which were to belong permanently to the canonry whether he returned from his pilgrimage or not (fol. 51r), perhaps to secure the canonry’s spiritual intercession. Similar combinations of bequests in favour of Saint-Victor and for the crusade occur in the wills of Philip Augustus, his spurned wife Ingeborg of Denmark, and his son Louis VIII, all of whom combined support for various crusades with generous gifts to the order of Saint-Victor, suggesting that the support of canonical life (and of a suitably victoriously named saint) was allied with known or hoped-for success after the battle of Bouvines (1214) and the anti-heretical and Holy Land crusades.21 The Premonstratensian order, particularly under its head, Abbot Gervase of Prémontré, had also become associated with the promotion of the crusade in this period, such that Haimard, bishop of Soissons, and Alice, lady of Coucy, confirmed a grant of Simon of Chavigny to the abbey of Prémontré prior to his departure on the anti-heretical crusade in 1210.22 21 22

Bird, ‘Victorines’, pp. 8–10. Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent  III to the Fall of Acre, 1197–1291, ed. Jessalynn Bird, Edward  M. Peters, and James  M. Powell (Philadelphia, 2013), pp.  133–40; Jessalynn Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights Revisited: The Use and Abuse of Crusader Privileges in Early Thirteenth-Century France’, in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye and E. Ann Matter (Philadelphia, 2008), pp. 133–48 (here pp.  137–38); Daniel Power, ‘Who Went on the Albigensian Crusade?’ The English Historical Review 128 (2013), 1047–85 (here 1065 n. 76). For further evidence of Gervase’s involvement in the promotion of both the Fifth and Albigensian Crusades,  see  Jessalynn Bird, ‘Rogations, Litanies and Crusade

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The canonry of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes also possessed ties to the family of John of Montmirail and his wife Helvide, sister of Guy II of Dampierre, who had participated in the Third Crusade. The lords of Montmirail appear to have been involved in the foundation of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and requested that the priories of Saint-Étienne at Montmirail and FertéGaucher be staffed by canons from Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.23 John and his wife Helvide made donations to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in 1207 and 1214 and were commemorated in its necrology. It may have been one of its canons whose advice changed the spiritual trajectory of John of Montmirail’s life.24 John and his wife Helvide acted together as a team in familial and lordly matters during their twenty-five year marriage (1185–1210), and by 1207 the two had founded a hospice at Montmirail (1207) where they personally participated in the care of the sick, poor, and pilgrims, as had the mulieres sanctae (holy women) associated with other preachers of the crusade, including Lutgard of Aywières, Mary of Oignies, and Elizabeth of Hungary.25 The founder of the Trinitarian order (which had hospital and ransoming functions tied to the Holy Land) had had its rule shaped by consultation with the abbot of Saint-Victor, and John gave a generous donation to the Trinitarian mother-house in Cerfroid in 1212–13.26 John appears to have been swayed in his decision to enter the Cistercian house of Longpont by consultation with the masters of Paris and perhaps also with the canons of Saint-Victor.27 Certainly after John’s death, and during the cardinalate of the canon regular, Paris master, and crusade preacher James of Vitry (a close friend of John the Teuton, abbot of Saint-Victor, and one of Gregory’s closest spiritual advisors), Gregory IX wrote to the bishop

23 24

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Preaching: The Liturgical Front in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. Jessalynn Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 155–93 (here p. 191). Boitel, Histoire, pp. 123–24, 127, 144; Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 46–47. AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 190, 195, 219; for donations, see BnF, lat. 11004, fols 106r, 107r, 108r (by 1207); Boitel, Histoire, p. 75. AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 94–99; Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 68, 70; Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia, 2007), pp. 175–76, 236–38; Jessalynn Bird, ‘Heresy, Crusade and Reform in the Circle of Peter the Chanter, c. 1187– c. 1240’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2001), pp. 162–69. Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 74–75; Guido Cipollone, Studi intorno a Cerfroid: Prima casa dell’ordine trinitario (1198–1429) (Roma, 1978); Guido Cipollone, Trinità et liberazione tra cristianità e Islam (Assisi, 2000). For donations, see AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 190–91, 199. Boitel, Histoire, p. 386; Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 77, 86.

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of Paris and abbot of Saint-Victor, asking them to hold an inquest into John’s life and miracles, which the pope stressed had confounded heretical depravity and confirmed the Catholic faith. They were to send the results under seal to Rome in 1236. The canons of Saint-Victor’s experience in both the pastoral and judicial fora was considered essential for the promotion of John’s canonization.28 While in Philip Augustus’ court in Paris, John would have heard and perhaps internalized the reforming criticisms preached by the Paris masters and Victorines. His initial ­conversion to works of religion occurred, according to his hagiographer, on his victorious and prize-laden return from a tournament. John was chastised by a canon regular — perhaps a canon from Saint-Jean-des-Vignes? — who attempted to turn him away from his secular life, urged him to foster religio and discipline the Jews in his realm. In return, John called all the Jews in his lands together at harvest-time, put tools in their hands and exiled them, sending out a messenger to announce that all debts to Jews were hereby cancelled.29 The attempt to abolish interest-taking by both Jewish and Christian moneylenders was one hallmark of the preaching campaigns for the Fourth and Fifth Crusades in which the Victorines, the diocesan clergy of Soissons, and many Paris masters participated. As we will see below, reformers entrusted with preaching the crusade or with the powers of judges delegate also attempted to suppress usury through ad hoc tribunals. The reformers’ infringement on secular jurisdiction and endangerment of lucrative revenues (taxes on Jewish and Christian usurers) used, among other purposes, to potentially fund support for the crusade, earned them the ire of local magnates such as Blanche of Champagne and of Philip Augustus himself and resulted in a series of compromise agreements restricting — yet not abolishing — Jewish interest-taking in the royal realm (regnum) and county of Champagne.30 John also seems to have shared the reformers’ view of the crusade as a worthy way to perform public penance and merge the criminal and 28

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AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 213; Mathieu, Montmirail, p. 77; Jan Vandeburie, ‘“Sancte fidei omnino deiciar”: Ugolino di Conti’s Doubts and Jacques de Vitry’s Intervention,’ in Doubt in Christianity: The Church and Doubt, ed. Frances Andrew, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer, Studies in Church History, 52 (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 87-101. AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 219. Jessalynn Bird, ‘Reform or Crusade? Anti-Usury and Crusade Preaching During the Pontificate of Innocent III’, in Pope Innocent  III and His World, ed. John  C. Moore (Ashgate, 1999), pp.  165–87; Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 133–48.

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penitential fora. Just as John of Joinville would later credit Louis IX, as a just ruler and crusader, with imposing the crusader’s vow as a judicialpenitential sentence in the royal court, so too John of Montmirail’s hagiographer claimed that he intervened in a similar manner. While staying at the castle of Ferté-Gaucher, John witnessed an imprisoned thief being sentenced to blinding and amputation by Blanche of Champagne. He successfully petitioned to have the thief ’s sentence commuted to crusading in the Holy Land, ensuring that the thief received personal protection from imprisonment and bodily harm while performing appropriate satisfaction for his criminal sin.31 According to his hagiographer, John himself intended to join in the Albigensian Crusade being promoted by Paris masters and Victorines. Many of his acquaintances were already participating in the anti-heretical campaign, including his future son-in-law Enguerrand  III of Boves, lord of Coucy, the count of Soissons, and multiple leading churchmen of the region, perhaps including the abbot of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes himself.32 A similarly named and often-conflated Enguerrand of Boves had participated with Simon of Montfort in the Fourth and Albigensian Crusades before joining the Fifth Crusade. His war-like nature would be immortalized by crusade preachers recruiting for the crusade in England seeking useful contemporary examples of holy warriors (in a crusade preaching treatise known as the Brevis ordinacio). In 1219, having taken the crusader’s cross for the Midi ‘many times previously’ (iam pluries), Enguerrand nonetheless felt the need to obtain letters ensuring the papal protection of himself, his lands, possessions, and household (familia). Enguerrand III of Coucy was similarly a bit of a perpetual warrior-crusader — he survived the anti-heretical crusade (participating with Peter, bishop of Paris, and a contingent from the Île-de-France), the battle of Bouvines (1214), and the invasion of England with Louis VIII, only to die by falling from his horse onto his own sword while fording a river in 1242. Enguerrand III’s son (by John of Montmirail’s daughter Mary) would die on crusade in 1250, while their daughter Mary would wed John the younger of Brienne, son of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem.33 31

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John of Joinville, The Life of Saint Louis, trans. Margaret R. B. Shaw, in Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (London, 1963), pp. 193–94; AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 229. Power, ‘Who Went on the Albigensian Crusade?’ p. 1059 n. 47; Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), pp. 164–65, 411 nn. 54–55. See note 30 above and the chapter by G. E. M. Lippiatt in this volume; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 165; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, The History of the

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To finance the participation of himself and his entourage in the Albigensian Crusade, John attempted to sell wooded land in the province of Cambrai, a transaction for which he needed his wife’s consent. After his wife refused, John journeyed to the diocese of Liège (the stomping ground of many Paris-educated recruiters for the crusade involved in fostering the spirituality of the mulieres sanctae as an antidote to ‘Catharism’) to investigate the possibility of becoming a hermit, but was advised to consult the theology masters of Paris. Both the masters and the local hermits advised him that entering the Cistercian order would be a far safer option. After assembling his people together as if he were going on the anti-heretical crusade and giving them the kiss of peace, John dramatically proclaimed that he was seeking higher things and entered the Cistercian monastery of Longpont, a house with multiple ties to reforming masters at Paris, including Peter the Chanter, who ended his life there and donated manuscripts to its library.34 John was clearly receiving advice from multiple quarters which affected his participation in the crusade, including his spouse, his retainers, local canons from Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, religious in the diocese of Liège, and masters in theology at Paris. One of those masters may have been James of Vitry, who preached the Albigensian Crusade, fostered the mulieres sanctae in Liège (and wrote the life of Mary of Oignies as anti-Cathar propaganda for Fulk, bishop of Toulouse), and after studying theology at Paris, praised Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and Saint-Victor as ideal canonries in his History of the West, as one of the many forms of religio (including leper hospitals, the Trinitarian order, crusaders, and the mulieres sanctae involved with hospital work in the Liège region) which would reform the world after charity had grown cold. The Dominican Stephen of Bourbon also attributed an exemplum to James of Vitry which praised John of Montmirail’s work with lepers, indicating a potential link between the two individuals, as does the fact that the inquest ordered into John of Montmirail’s life, with a view to his canonization, occurred during James’ tenure as a cardinal in Rome.35

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Albigensian Crusade: Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis, trans. W. A. Sibly and M. D. Sibly (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 110, 118, 157 n 83, 166; RHGF, 19: 681–82, 690 (September 1219); Mathieu, Montmirail, pp. 84, 93; Bullaire de l’église de Maguelone, ed. Jean-Baptiste Rouquette and A. Villemagne, 2 vols (Montpellier, 1911–14), 2: nos 241–44, 246; Pressutti, 1: nos 1987, 1995, 2200; Evergates, Aristocracy, pp. 152, 237–38; Boitel, Histoire, p. 235; Guy Perry, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237 (Cambridge, 2013), 164–65. AA SS, 48: 29 Sep., 221, 226; Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1: 11. James of Vitry, Historia occidentalis, pp. 137–41, 146–51; Stephen of Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, légends et apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Étienne de

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Saint-Victor, Philip Augustus, and the Promotion of the Crusade Just as the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes performed varied functions in the diocese of Soissons, so too John the Teuton, abbot of Saint-Victor (r. 1203–c. 1228), personified the many roles played by the Victorines in this period. Perhaps the best-known portrait of him comes from Caesarius of Heisterbach, who depicts him triumphing in a legal case brought before Philip Augustus over a ‘great allod’ simply by the sanctity of his conversatio (life example), despite appearing in court accompanied by brother canons who were educated and learned in the law (literatos et iurisperitos), prepared to oppose his adversaries’ seasoned advocates.36 In their writings to fellow monks and canons, both Caesarius and John stressed the triumph of personal example over verbiage. Yet this image obscures John’s long career as a reformer, preacher, and judge delegate. For nearly three decades, he led one of the major canonries in Paris favoured by the royal family, possessed of a theological and pastoral tradition of its own, yet with ties to moral theologians from the circle of Peter the Chanter, who with secular ecclesiastics and papal legates often retired to the canonry or viewed it as a spiritual retreat.37 The canonry not only produced noted theologians, but provided confessors and pastors for students in Paris and its dependent parishes. Saint-Victor innovated in the fields of biblical exegesis and confessorial literature, and also fostered preaching. Its scribes transcribed sermons delivered by canons and abbots of the abbey but also compiled collections of sermons, both anonymous and attributed, delivered by Paris masters, either recorded by its canons or preserved in manuscripts deeded to

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Bourbon, dominicain du XIIIe siècle , ed. Albert Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, 1877), p. 133 (no. 156). Caesar of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Köln, 1851), 1: 365–66. For the cases in which John and his prior are known to have been involved, see the discussion below and Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 288–89. Bonnard’s list is not exhaustive: see also Pressutti, 1: nos 319, 543, 840, 2248, 2254, 2260, 2280, 2317, 2655, 2961, 2983–84, 3250, 2: nos 3606, 3794, 4186, 3913, 4181–82, 4186, 4981, 5002. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1: 157; Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 285; Bird, ‘Victorines’, pp. 6–16. For cases involving John and his predecessor, see Gérard, Cartulaire, 1: 57–58, 65–67, 107, 113–14, 367–68, 344. For ties to the royal family, see Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 143, 182, 190–94, 263, 272–75, 289–91, 298–302; Caesar of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 1: 75–77. For legal cases, see notes 11 and 36 above and the discussion below.

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the abbey by scholars, often for the use of its canons and poor students studying theology.38 The abbots of Saint-Victor were required to preach on the feast days of Saints Augustine and Victor and at synods and general chapters. The sermons of abbots Guérin, Absalom, and John the Teuton survive in a manuscript bound together with the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council and penitential and preaching material including sermons by Stephen Langton and two homilies delivered in exile by Eustace, bishop of Ely.39 Victorine manuscripts travelled as far as Saint Albans in England40 and are prime sources for the synodal decrees of Odo of Sully, bishop of Paris, and those issued by the papal legates Guala Bicchieri (1208) and Robert of Courson (1213), which tested out many proposals later brought before the Fourth Lateran Council. These decrees would become the basis for synodal legislation intended to disseminate the oecumenical council’s reform program in France, England, and Germany.41 Innocent III and 38

39

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41

See note 7 above; Bird, ‘Victorines’, pp. 5–21; Rainer Berndt, ‘Étienne Langton et les Victorins ou l’embarras des lacunes’, in Étienne Langton: Prédicateur, bibliste, théologien, ed. Louis-Jacques Bataillon, et al. (Brepols, 2010), pp. 125–63. The sermons are preserved in BnF, lat. 14525. Bonnard attributed the materials from fols  35vb-116vb to John the Teuton (Histoire, 1: 126–27, 181, 287). The bulk of the remaining sermons can be attributed to an Absalom often confused with the Victorine Absalom who became abbot of Springersbach. See Louis Bourgain, La chaire française au XIIe siècle d’après les manuscrits (Paris, 1879), pp. 125–28; PL, 211: 11–294; Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 268–70. Interpretation of Scripture: Theory. A  Selection of Works of Hugh, Andrew, Richard, and Godfrey of St  Victor, and of Robert of Melun, ed. Franklin  T. Harkins and Frans van Liere (Turnhout, 2013), pp.  31–60; Walter Cahn, ‘St Albans and the Channel Style in England’, in The Year 1200: A Symposium, ed. François Avril (Dublin, 1975), pp. 187–211 (here pp. 199–200). Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1: 315–43; Odette Pontal and Joseph Avril, Les statuts synodaux français du XIIIe siècle, 6 vols (Paris, 1971–), 1: 88 (nos 94–95), 96–97, 99; BnF, lat. 14443, fols  290rb-291vb. Guala was enamoured enough of Saint-Victor to become a confrater of the abbey and he later chose canons from Saint-Victor to staff his foundation of a canonry and hospital at the church of Sant’Andrea at Vercelli. Guala also granted the bishop of Paris and abbot of Saint-Victor the ability to absolve those who incurred excommunication for violating his decrees on clerical reform, issued in 1208. See Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 178, 195, 283; Gabrielle Théry, ‘Thomas Gallus: Aperçu biographique’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 12 (1939), 141–208; Mario Capellino, Tommaso di San Vittore: Abate Vercellese (Vercelli, 1978). The best study of Guala’s career is now Nicholas Vincent, The Letters

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his predecessors and successors turned to the abbots and priors of SaintVictor as agents for the reform of secular clergy and regular religious orders (including the Trinitarians, Val-des-Écoliers, the Grandmontines, and houses local to diocese of Paris) and as judges delegate in collaboration with a long list of illustrious masters from Paris (including Robert of Courson, William of Pont-de-l’Arche, archdeacon of Paris, and Walter Cornut) and the legally-trained abbots of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris and of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons (both canonries had been reformed by abbots of Saint-Victor in the twelfth century).42 At least one canon, ‘John’, from Saint Jean-des-Vignes was memorialized as a powerful preacher and clerk by none other than the Dominican Stephen of Bourbon.43 Orders such as the Trinitarians which combined hospital work at home with the ransom of captives from the infidel tied the crusade closely to local charitable interests and concern for Christians overseas: caritas at home was paired with caritas abroad, a theme stressed in contemporary anonymous and named crusade appeals delivered by Paris-trained masters

42

43

and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216–1218 (Woodbridge, 1996). PL, 214: 820, 927, 215: 659, 823, 866, 1366, 216: 318, 351; Potthast, 1: no. 1068; Pressutti, 1: nos 840, 2248, 2961, 2: nos 3606, 3794, 3913, 4181–82. The canons at Saint-Jean-des-Vignes had rebelled against their abbot with the support of Nivelon, bishop of Soissons, and the case was arbitrated by Stephen of Tournai, then abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, and the abbot of Saint-Victor (Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 176, 261). For the Trinitarians and Val-des-Écoliers and John of Montmirail’s support for both, see note 25 above; PL, 214: 444–49; Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 179, 268–71; Boitel, Histoire, p.  388 n. 2, 417–21. For SainteGeneviève, see Pierre Feret, L’Abbaye de Sainte-Geneviève et la Congrégation de France, 2 vols (Paris, 1883), 1: 89–136, 139, 142–43; Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 261–63; PL, 211: 417–19; and for specific cases in collaboration with the abbot of SaintVictor, see Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. Alexandre Teulet, 4 vols (Paris, 1863–1902), 1: 515, no. 443; Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, 7 vols (Paris, 1859–69), 5: 165, no. 1328; Potthast, 1: no. 6617 (ann. 1221). Stephen of Bourbon, Anecdotes, pp. 398–99. The individual is named simply as ‘magistro Johanne de Vineis’. Lecoy de la Marche identifies him with the prior of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons, but he could equally have been John of Montmirail, a canon at the same institution (p.  399 n. 1). Another John of Montmirail, archdeacon of Paris, later joined the Dominican order. He appears to have been a seasoned confessor and was included in the prayers of Saint-Victor after his decease, as was Peter the Chanter: Stephen of Bourbon, Anecdotes, pp. 109, 386–87; BnF, lat. 14673, fol. 277ra.

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responsible for promoting the crusade in this period.44 Not only did writers such as James of Vitry identify crusading as one of the new forms of religious life allied to the renewal of quasi-regular and regular life in all its forms, but also lay individuals who moved within the orbit of Paris-trained recruiters for the crusade, including the mulier sancta Mary of Oignies (whose attempt to participate in the Albigensian Crusade was redirected by its promoters) and John of Montmirail. Such individuals combined a passionate attachment to crusading as a form of devotion to the suffering Christ and fellow Christians with ministry to the unfortunate in other forms: prayer, almsgiving, the contemplative life, work in hospitals, and promotion of novel forms of religious life.45

Crusade Finances, Recruitment, and Reform Expertise in pastoral care, preaching, and the law ensured that the Victorines soon became involved in projects which spanned secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, including the suppression of the Amalrician heresy in 1210 and the promotion of the Fourth, Albigensian, and Fifth Crusades and the crusade of Frederick II. It was Victorine scribes who recorded anonymous crusade appeals delivered in Paris in the crucial period of the transition and overlap between the Albigensian, Constantinopolitan, and Holy Land crusades in the first decade of the thirteenth century. In addition to preserving and disseminating crusade propaganda, its abbots became involved in the collection and handling of crusade monies. Innocent III ordered Abbot Absalom to collaborate with Guy, abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay, and the bishops of Soissons and Paris, who were helping to co-ordinate recruitment for the Fourth Crusade in northern France together with the Paris-trained papal legate Peter of Capua (who became a confrater of St Victor). They were to consult prudent men, presumably the canons of Saint-Victor and Paris masters who specialized in thorny penitential cases, in commuting the 44

45

Jessalynn Bird, ‘Preaching the Fifth Crusade: The Sermons of BN nouv. acq. lat. 999’, in The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century, ed. E. J. Mylod et al. (New York, 2016), pp.  92–114 (here pp.  94–95, 104); and the chapter by Timothy Guard in this volume. Jessalynn Bird, ‘The Religious’ Role in a Post-Fourth Lateran World: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermones ad status and Historia Occidentalis’, in Medieval Monastic Preaching, ed. Carolyn A. Muessig (Leiden, 1998), pp. 209–29; Bird, ‘Rogations’, pp. 155–93; and note 3 above.

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penance of persons desiring to aid the Holy Land to alms, tailoring the donation required to each penitent’s material resources and devotion. To avoid the appearance of peddling absolution they were to force excommunicates to swear to fulfil any penance enjoined upon them before absolving them, and to deposit the fines imposed on absolved excommunicates with the receipts of the newly imposed clerical income tax they were collecting. The money was to be paid out to crusaders going to the Holy Land.46 This commission was significant for several reasons. Saint-Victor had a long and fruitful relationship with the counts of Champagne and many of the key individuals recruited for the Fourth Crusade from the Champenois.47 The Victorines’ long-standing role as penitentiers for the university community and the many parishes they served in the Île-de-France, their amicable relations with the bishops of Paris and Soissons  — the Victorines had been called in on multiple occasions to reform the canonry of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and mediate disputes between it and the bishop of Soissons48  — made them suitable for delicate missions such as the commutation of penance (in this instance that implied by the crusade vow) and the handling of crusade funds. Their involvement in reform and the handling and management of crusade funds would continue during the early thirteenth century as the Victorines supervised and reformed the diocese of the absent crusader Milo, bishop-elect of Beauvais. SaintVictor would become, as did the Templar house in Paris, a locus for the collection, deposition, and disbursement of crusade monies.49

46

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Marcel Dickson and Christine Dickson, ‘Le cardinal Robert de Courson: Sa vie’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 9  (1934), 53–142 (here 76–90); Bird, ‘Victorines’, pp. 9–10; Bird, ‘Preaching the Fifth Crusade’, pp.  100–2. Guy also collaborated in a case involving Saint-Victor in 1201: Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 272; PL, 215: cxxxii. Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 179–81, 280–81. The nobility of the Champagne region had become heavily involved in crusading from the time of the Third Crusade onwards. In general, the evidence gathered by Jubainville, Histoire has been surpassed by Theodore Evergates, Littere baronum: The Earliest Cartulary of the Counts of Champagne (Toronto, 2003); Evergates, Aristocracy; and Evergates, The Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne (Toronto, 2010). Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 176, 261. Due to space limitations, these topics cannot be fully examined here, but will be treated in a forthcoming monograph. For the handling of crusade monies under Honorius III in general, see Smith, Curia and Crusade, pp. 297–341.

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The Victorines’ involvement in the Fourth Crusade would be rewarded by John the Teuton’s acquisition, through a rather circuitous route, of a portion of the head of St Victor. John acquired it from Peter of Corbeil, archbishop of Sens, the former teacher of Innocent  III and a noted Paris master.50 The Victorines may also have used another processional cross containing a fragment of the True Cross and one of the thorns from Christ’s crown in recruiting, and also possessed another relic of the True Cross.51 The relics in Saint-Victor thus contributed to the aura of sanctity essential for crusade recruiting, and the Victorines’ involvement in recruiting and promotion of the crusade was rewarded with other relics associated not only with their namesake, but with the Holy Land and the new extension of Latin Christendom in the Latin empire of Constantinople. The Victorines also became involved, with the abbots of SainteGeneviève and Robert of Courson, in the protection of crusaders’ rights and commutation of vows as early as 1203, suggesting that in some instances papally appointed judges delegate and local abbots were seen as more willing or more effective than local bishops in wielding spiritual sanctions to enforce crusader rights. John the Teuton and the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève were entrusted with absolving the count of Eu, excommunicated for failing to fulfil his crusade vow. Saint-Victor also protected the possessions, donations, and female relatives of Robert Mauvoisin and Bouchard of Marly during the Albigensian Crusade. Robert of Courson had collaborated with the Victorines in various legal cases before his appointment as legate for the crusade, and the Victorines soon became involved in a convoluted case between the crucesignatus Hervé of Donzy, count of Nevers, and the monastery of Vézélay over his right, as lay patron, to procurations.52 It was precisely the Victorines’ reputation as experts in pastoral matters and canon law as well as their spiritual ties to specific individuals which made them desirable as spiritual advisors and legal protectors in a venture as risky as crusading.

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Liber ordinis sancti Victoris, in BnF, lat. 14673, fol. 67ra. BnF, lat. 14673, fol. 66r-v. Bonnard, Histoire, 1: 278; Potthast, 1: nos 4297, 4332, 4514, 4704, 4870; PL, 215: 184–85, 216: 127–30, 155–58, 351–53, 478–79, 481–86, 602–3, 801–3, 810, 943–44, 947; RHGF, 19: 548, 551, 576; Pressutti, 1: no. 2117; Bird ‘Victorines’, pp. 6–21; Dickson and Dickson, ‘Cardinal Robert’, pp. 76–93; Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 139–42. For the later reemergence of Hervé’s depredations, see MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 11, fols 62v-63v.

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Saint-Victor, Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, and the County of Champagne Due to Saint-Victor’s long-standing ties to the counts and countesses of Champagne, its abbots often joined those of Sainte-Geneviève, SaintJean-des-Vignes in Soissons, and multiple Paris masters in serving as judges delegate in cases pitting Blanche of Champagne against various ecclesiastical or monastic parties in the Champagne region, including the bishops of Rheims, Troyes, Sens, Auxerre, and Châlons and the monastery of Pontigny. These cases commonly involved contested jurisdictions or property rights. The trust built up by the successful conclusion of cases of this sort, which bridged conflicting jurisdictions and customary and ecclesiastical law, meant that the Victorines became involved in cases involving the interpretation of crusader’s privileges which were similarly legally liminal and often contested. It was precisely as crusade organizers and papal judges delegate that Robert of Courson and John the Teuton became involved in combatting the crucesignatus Erard of Brienne’s claim to the county of Champagne and the battle between Hervé, count of Nevers, and the monastery of Vézelay.53 53

Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 133–48; Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 56–64; Guy Perry, ‘“Scandalia … tam in oriente quam in occidente”: The Briennes in East and West, 1213–1221’, Crusades 10 (2011), 63–77; Pressutti, 1: nos 543, 2317; Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, esp. pp. 88–89, 314; Jubainville, Histoire, 5. For example, John the Teuton joined with [Philip], chancellor of Paris, and Robert, abbot of Saint-Nicolas d’Hermières (O.Prem.), as judges delegate in a case which pitted the Paris master Hervé, then bishop of Troyes, against Blanche of Champagne on the subject of rights over the fortress of Mérysur-Seine: Pressutti, 1: nos 2254, 2260, 2289 (ann. 1219); Medii ævi bibliotheca patristica, ed. C.  A. Horoy, 6 vols (Paris, 1879–82), 3: 340, 361; Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 148 (nos 1236–37), 149 (no. 1243); Layettes, 1: 491, 493, nos 1368 and 1374. John would have been trusted as a judge delegate by both parties, as Blanche’s husband had been a patron of Saint-Victor and John was also known to Hervé: Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 147–49 (nos 1235–38, 1243), 150–51 (no. 1251) in ann. 1219–20; Pressutti, 1: nos 2254, 2260, 2289. The legate Conrad of Urach, cardinal of Porto, later found the town of Troyes placed under interdict due to Blanche’s violence against Hervé’s men: Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 151 (no. 1256). For the case pitting Pontigny against Blanche of Champagne, John collaborated with Walter and Alberic Cornut, masters and canons in Paris, and later the prior of Saint-Victor, the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, and the chanter of Paris: Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 112–13 (nos 1056–57), 135 (no. 1172 bis), 151 (no. 1251) (ann. 1217–19); Pressutti, 1: no. 543 (ann. 1217). In two separate cases,

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As I have dealt with these high-profile cases in other articles, I will focus here on the lesser known work of the Victorines. During the chaotic situation regarding the enforcement of crusaders’ rights in France so grippingly depicted by Gervase of Prémontré after Robert of Courson’s recall to Rome, it appears that Gervase’s recommendations to Innocent III and Honorius III regarding the appointment of local ordinatores (officers or intermediaries) were at least partially followed. By 1221, individuals acting as protectors of crusaders’ rights or local dispensators from crusade vows sent queries to Honorius regarding crusaders in the diocese of Rheims who had obtained letters of absolution or delay of their crusade vows under false pretences. Honorius urged the appointees, who included masters John de Feritate and John of Montmirail, canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, to force the crusaders to fulfil their vows in the upcoming August passagium (literally: crossing) and granted the ordinatores the right to concede twenty days’ indulgence to those attending crusade sermons.54 The canonry of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes had been the recipient of numerous donations from the counts of Champagne,55 and together with the Victorines in Paris and the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, also became involved in the affair of Erard of Brienne. In December 1218, Honorius wrote to John of Toucy, abbot of Sainte-Geneviève (1192–1222), who may have been a former Victorine, his prior, and the chanter of Paris that if Andrew of Époisse were signed with the cross (crucesignatus) when he took up arms against Blanche of Champagne in support of Erard of Brienne, then Milo, bishop of Beauvais, could not absolve him even with the special powers delegated to him by the pope. Andrew must journey to Rome in person for absolution, which he presumably did, as he later fulfilled his crusade vow, yet the case demonstrates uncertainty about procedure in

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Walter Cornut had also served as a judge with Robert of Courson in 1211 and with the abbot and prior of St-Victor in 1212. He would later succeed Peter of Corbeil as archbishop of Sens (1223–41): PL, 216: 488–93, 549–50. Courson worked multiple times with John, abbot of Saint-Victor, his prior Giles, and master R[obert of Flamborough?], penitentier of Saint-Victor in various legal cases: Dickson and Dickson, ‘Cardinal Robert’, pp.  76–77. Abbot Ralph of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons, Conrad, abbot of Val-Secret, and Guy, dean of Soissons, also judged a case pitting Blanche against various prelates over their discord regarding certain statutes: Pressutti, 1: no. 2021 ( June 1219). Pressutti, 1: no. 2978 ( January 1221); MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 5, fol.  69. For the possible identity of this John of Montmirail, see note 42 above. See, for example, Theobald’s reconfirmation of earlier charters at the request of Abbot Ralph in 1223 and 1225: BnF, lat. 11004, fol. 16r-v.

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cases where ecclesiastical sanctions were levied against a crusader who attacked another papally-protected individual, Blanche of Champagne.56 Ralph, abbot of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, would work with Guy, dean of Soissons, Conrad, abbot of Val-Secret, and William, bishop of Châlons, to protect Blanche of Champagne against the prelates she claimed were depriving her of income by ‘abusing’ the Fourth Lateran’s statutes restricting the interest charged by Jews to crusaders.57 They also intervened in the case of Erard of Brienne’s claim to the county of Champagne. Once the claim of Erard and Philippa had been bought off, the next potential threat to the county of Champagne came from Philippa’s sister, Alice of Cyprus, whose support was essential for the Fifth Crusade then in progress. Honorius commissioned his judges delegate to uphold the excommunication laid on the supporters of Erard of Brienne in Champagne and to investigate the legitimacy of Alice’s birth should she choose to press her claim to Champagne.58 After the disastrous denouement of the Fifth Crusade, although Erard of Brienne and Philippa of Champagne renewed their pledge of peace with Theobald before Gerold of Lausanne, patriarch of Jerusalem, then recruiting for the Frederick II’s projected crusade in the West, both Honorius III and Gregory IX appear to have been worried that Alice of Cyprus would attempt to press her claim to the county of Champagne and disrupt the peace essential to crusade preparations or that her claim to the throne of Jerusalem might disrupt Frederick II’s long-delayed crusade to the East. Gregory summoned John, archdeacon of Châlons, and two co-judges to cite Alice, who had travelled to France, to appear in Rome for an inquest into her legitimacy. John had been one of the individuals recommended by Gervase of Prémontré as a potential ordinator for crusaders in France. 56

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Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 133–34 (no. 1168 from December 1218); Powell, Anatomy, pp. 211–12. Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 142–43; Bird, ‘Reform or Crusade?’, pp. 165–87. For Jewish usury, see Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 141 (no. 1202 from June 1219); RHGF, 19: 688; for Alice of Cyprus, Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 141 (no. 1203), 146–47 (nos 1228–29); PL, 216: 984–85; RHGF, 19: 688–89 and note 59 below. For the excommunication of Erard’s supporters, Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 143–44 (nos 1215–17), 148 (no. 1237bis), 152 (nos 1258, 1260), 156 (no. 1278). Ralph also collaborated in other cases involving Blanche. See, for example, Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 162 (no. 1314), 164 (no. 1321). The abbot of SainteGeneviève in Paris and William (perhaps not, as Jubainville has it, Gerard) of Bourges, canon of Paris, would later be asked by Honorius III, at Blanche’s request, to execute the sentence of excommunication laid by the bishop of Soissons and other prelates against Erard and his supporters. See Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 159–60 (no. 1297), 163 (no. 1318) (ann. 1219–20).

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As legate for the crusade, Robert of Courson had been involved in an earlier investigation into the marriage of Philippa and Alice’s parents (and hence their legitimacy and claim to the county of Champagne) in 1213. Honorius III would charge James of Vitry, bishop of Acre, and Gerold, patriarch of Jerusalem, with investigating the validity of Alice’s marriage to Bohemond IV of Antioch in 1227; both prelates had been or currently were promoting Frederick’s crusade in Europe. Alice and Bohemond’s union potentially undermined the claims of the crucesignatus Frederick to the throne of Jerusalem (through the emperor’s recent marriage to Isabella of Brienne, daughter of Alice’s half-sister Maria). By 1230, the same John of Châlons was commanded to publish Alice’s excommunication for contesting Theobald’s inheritance before her own case was decided. Soon the abbots of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and Val-Secret were embroiled in the case, which limped on until Alice renounced her rights in 1234 in return for the satisfying sum of 40,000l.59 As ruler of the kingdom of Cyprus, Alice’s support was essential for any potential eastern crusade, and yet her claims both to Champagne and to the throne of Jerusalem threatened to shatter the peace in the East and West necessary to recruit for such a crusade as well as the motivation of the much-delayed crucesignatus Frederick to claim the throne of his wife Isabella of Brienne. Cases investigating Alice’s legitimacy could call those claims into question even without a substantive ruling; similarly, the examination of her marriage could be raised as a potential threat of punishment (by annulment) and then quashed as a reward for her compliance. Although the reluctance of some bishops (particularly those of Langres, Troyes, and Auxerre) to carry out the papal sanction of excommunication against the supporters of the crucesignatus Erard of Brienne prolonged the civil war in Champagne, Abbot Ralph joined Guy, dean of Soissons, and Haimard, bishop of Soissons, in enforcing the sentences of papal excommunication declared upon the supporters 59

Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 234 (no. 1737), 243 (no. 1786), 285 (no. 2024), 323 (no. 2241), 335 (nos 2306, 2308), 336 (no. 2312), 341 (no. 2338), 342–43 (nos 2346, 2350), 351 (nos 2397–99), 428 (no. 2828), 482 (no. 3128); Peter  W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 32, 35, 43–51, 53–58, 68–69, 81–86; Bernard Hamilton, ‘Alice of Cyprus’, in The Crusader World, ed. Andrew  J. Boas (London, 2016), pp.  225–40 (here 228, 232); Gervase of Prémontré, in Sacrae antiquitatis monumenta: Historica, dogmatica, diplomatica, ed. Charles-Louis Hugo et al., 2 vols (Étival, 1725–81), 1: 8 (ep. 4). John had collaborated with Guiard of Laon, then canon of Rheims, in a case involving Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in 1218: BnF, lat. 11004, fols 85v-86r, 82r-85v, 75r-82r.

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of Erard of Brienne. There is evidence from the cartulary of Blanche of Champagne of the effectiveness of this weapon, if and when implemented, in bringing to heel at least some of Erard’s supporters, including Simon IV, lord of Clefmont, Simon of Sexfontaines, Guy and Andrew of Montréal, and the crusader Milo of Saint-Florentin.60 The enforcement of this excommunication was important for the peace needed to stabilize the region and enable those who had taken the cross in support of the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades to fulfil their vows, as well as to protect Blanche of Champagne and her son, the family of the deceased crucesignatus count of Champagne. Blanche and Theobald had been formally granted papal protection, including letters specifying that Blanche was not to be excommunicated by local prelates without prior consultation to Rome.61 However, Danielle Park has argued (contra Bird), that Blanche, as widow of the deceased crucesignatus Theobald of Champagne, was no longer under papal protection as a crusader’s wife and was thus the ‘opposite of a crusader’; she enjoyed the protection of a secular defender (Philip Augustus, whose stance Guy Perry has characterized as ‘non-committal’) with the added guardianship of the pope. However, the seasoned defender of crusaders’ rights and then crusade legate Robert of Courson had reconfirmed that Blanche, her son, and her lands were under papal protection and Innocent III had threatened the crucesignatus Erard and his supporters with ecclesiastical sanctions if they attacked Blanche as early as 1213.62 In the same year, Robert of Courson had signed a copy of Innocent III’s letter responding to Blanche’s complaint that some clerics and laypersons who had taken the cross were bringing legal actions in ecclesiastical courts against her men. The letter concurred that any case involving a fiefholder of the countess must be heard in her court alone, defining the potentially blurred lines of jurisdiction caused by the crucesignatus state of the litigants.63 Peace in Champagne was critical for the collection of crusade funds: both Blanche and Philip Augustus would contribute substantial sums to the Albigensian Crusade, Blanche partly through a heavy levy on

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See note 57 above; Guy Perry, The Briennes: The Rise and Fall of a Champenois Dynasty in the Age of the Crusades, c. 950-1356 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 60–62; Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp. 165, 227–30 (ann. 1218–20). Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 142–48; Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 75 (nos 831, 833) (ann. 1213). Park, Papal Protection, pp.  196–203, 209; Perry, The Briennes, pp.  58–59, 62; Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, p. 118. Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp. 84–85 (October 1213).

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the Jews of Champagne. Theobald of Champagne was also being wooed as a potential crucesignatus by Honorius III as late as 1223.64 Certainly, as Philip Augustus, Honorius III, and Frederick II were wellaware, the conflict between Erard of Brienne and Blanche and Theobald of Champagne over possession of the county of Champagne threatened to destabilize significant portions of France and appears to have delayed the departure of key crusaders, among them Simon of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne. A well-known supporter of the Brienne faction, Simon’s brother William, bishop of Langres, had assured Blanche that he would excommunicate his brother if Simon failed to keep his earlier promise to aid Blanche against the daughters of Henry of Champagne. Yet despite William’s failure to levy the penalty of excommunication against his brother (an open supporter of Erard), by 1218, Simon had been excommunicated by Blanche’s supporters, the bishop and dean of Soissons and the abbot of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes for precisely this.65 As surety for future good behaviour, Simon then surrendered the fief of Lafauche to Blanche and Theobald and his son Godfrey and the castle of Joinville to his brother William. Departing on crusade, perhaps as an ‘honorable exit’, Simon pledged that on his return, he would surrender the castle of Vaucouleurs as surety in return for his son and the castle at Joinville. If he should die overseas, his son would uphold the same agreement. This holding of hostages and castles as surety was to endure for as long as there was conflict between the heirs of Henry of Champagne and Blanche and Theobald of Champagne.66 Blanche was obviously concerned that, during his crusading stint overseas, Simon might be swayed to support claimants to the county of Champagne, including Alice of Cyprus. Simon’s loyalty appears to have been rewarded on his return from the Fifth Crusade. Theobald of Champagne stood pledge for the 500l. Simon owed to the count of Perche and to William, bishop of Châlons, in the summer of 1222. However, Simon remained impecunious, mortgaging revenues to the 64

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Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 166 (no. 1332), 180–81 (no. 1422), 197 (no. 1528); Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, p. 256 (May 1221). Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 142–48; Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 88, 105–9. Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp.  160–61 (August 1214), 161–63 ( June 1218), 306–7 (August 1214); Potthast, 1: no. 5947; RHGF, 19: 674–75 (December 1218). At Blanche’s request, Honorius  III ordered the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève and William of Bourges, canon of Paris, to enforce the sentence of excommunication laid by the bishop of Soissons and other prelates against Erard of Brienne: Jubainville, Histoire, 5: nos 1297, 1218, in ann. 1220.

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monks of Clairvaux for 400l.67 Other individuals including William, count of Sancerre, had vowed to go on crusade and sought to place their possessions in safe hands; with the permission of Blanche of Champagne, William entrusted his castle of Sancerre to Robert of Courtenay for four years, such that if he died while overseas, Robert would retain custody and act as guardian for William’s minor heir Louis. William obtained this permission in the winter of 1216–17, but never reached the Holy Land. Instead, he accompanied Robert’s relative, Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, to the Latin empire of Constantinople.68 In contrast, Erard of Chacenay fell under the same excommunication as Simon of Joinville, but earned absolution by swearing loyalty to Blanche and Theobald in 1218. He successfully departed on crusade only to incur a pall of suspicion upon his return, most likely due to potential opportunities for conspiring with Alice of Cyprus while on crusade. Erard was forced to swear loyalty to the house of Champagne in March of 1221, and again in 1222 to aid Blanche and Theobald ‘against all creatures’, particularly Alice of Cyprus, under pain of excommunication by Hugh, bishop of Langres, and punitive measures levied by the widow of Odo III, duke of Burgundy.69 Both Erard and Simon of Joinville belonged to a group of influential (and often rebellious) Champenois noblemen targeted specifically by Honorius III in letters which urged their departure according to the original deadline set by the Fourth Lateran Council, a group which included Godfrey, bishop of Troyes, and Ralph, count of Soissons. The two men may well have travelled together to fulfil their vow and were cosignatories of several letters addressed to Honorius III on the progress of the campaign of the Fifth Crusade in Egypt in 1219.70 As late as 1220, the bishop of Langres and his penitentier, the abbot of Auberive, were granted the ability to absolve the violent and arsonists and those who 67 68

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Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp. 131–32. Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp.  287–88, 342; Powell, Anatomy, p.  225; Reinhold Röhricht, Studien zur Geschichte des fünften Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck, 1891), pp. 124–25. Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 128 (nos 1134–35), see also 135 (no. 1174), 159–60 (no. 1297), 174 (no. 1389); RHGF, 19: 675 (December 1218); Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, pp. 297–300 (March/April 1222); Powell, Anatomy, p. 219. Potthast, 1: no. 5325; RHGF, 19: 610; Röhricht, Studien, pp. 434–36 (see also pp. 46–48, 94). Simon arrived in Damietta by the spring of 1219 and returned home by August 1222 (Röhricht, Studien, p. 105; Powell, Anatomy, p. 242) and it is likely that Erard of Chacenay travelled with him to the East, although they may have returned separately.

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had committed fraud in paying the Albigensian twentieth, provided they made fitting restitution, with the important exception of the supporters of Erard of Brienne.71 As was the case for crusade preparations in Italy, Germany, England, and the Low Countries, peace negotiations on multiple levels — local, inter-regional, and high-level — were essential for the resolution of conflicts enabling individuals to depart on crusade. In fact, departure on crusade may have been a means of temporarily uniting otherwise disparate parties in a redemptive project against a common enemy. However, such peace was often short-lived. On the return of the rebellious or warring parties, hostilities were often renewed.72

Jurisdiction, Usury, and Crusaders As archdeacon of Paris, William of Pont-de-l’Arche had earlier worked with the abbot of Saint-Victor and the chancellor of Paris, at the request of the archbishop of Rouen, to urge Philip Augustus to reign in the extortion practiced by his justiciars in Normandy and other regions. There laypersons bequeathing lands or possessions to the church or making wills to that effect were posthumously accused of the crime of usury by royal officials, who confiscated their possessions for the royal fisc, even though while alive they had repented and performed sufficient satisfaction, to the harm of ecclesiastical jurisdiction (iuris). This case and a host of contemporary anonymous sermons preserved in Victorine manuscripts indicate that the Victorines shared in the project of the denunciation and rehabilitation of usurers practised by Paris-trained moral theologians preaching the crusade and reform.73 Reformers responsible for preaching 71 72

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Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 163–64 (nos 1319–20) (ann. 1220). Powell, Anatomy, pp.  5, 19–20, 34, 40, 44, 47, 68–69, 73–84, 94, 123–24, 158–59, 197–204; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, esp. pp. 133–228; David Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 13–17, 28, 42–48; Christine Thouzellier, ‘La legation en Lombardie du Cardinal Hugolin (1221): Une épisode de la cinquième croisade’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 45 (1950), 508–42; Falco Neininger, Konrad von Urach (1227): Zähringer, Zisterzienser, Kardinallegat (Paderborn, 1994); Nicholas Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 (Cambridge, 2002); and note 2 above. PL, 216: 487–88 (1211). The case involved the abbot of Saint-Victor, [ John of Candeilles], chancellor of Paris, and W[illiam of Pont-de-l’Arche], archdeacon of Paris. The Victorines’ own ordinances demanded that priors avoid any financial practices smacking of usury: ‘nec ad terminum vendant ut propter terminum carius vendant qui enim hoc agunt et penam et culpam usurariorum

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the crusade had attacked Christian usurers vociferously and had called on them to reform and make restitution, but their attempts to rein in usurers through the judicial fora were checked by Philip Augustus and other barons such as Blanche of Champagne.74 The legal prosecution or protection of usurers and crusaders entailed the testing and clash of secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in an era where authorities both local and central, secular and religious, were interested in zealously protecting and extending their rights and jurisdictions. By 1214, Philip Augustus had forced Innocent III to agree to a composition on crusaders’ rights in France brokered by the royalist Guérin, bishop of Senlis, and Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, which had restricted the rights granted to crusaders in Quia maior (1213) to a one-year tax exemption. Royal courts retained the right to punish crucesignati found guilty of a crime meriting the death penalty or mutilation, while those involved in civil lawsuits concerning debts, mobile property, or bodily injury could choose either secular or church courts. Cases involving feudal dues, rents, and fees were reserved to secular courts, although crucesignati could appeal to their local bishop if necessary.75 The abbots of Sainte-Geneviève and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes also became embroiled in cases involving crusaders’ rights. When Hugh of Champlitte, crucesignatus, was captured while returning from the fair at Bar-sur-Aube, the archbishop of Sens, Peter of Corbeil, a former Paris master and previous crucesignatus himself, commanded Blanche of Champagne to either free Hugh or purgate herself before him that she had not been involved in his capture. Blanche replied that if a legitimate accuser appeared then she would purgate herself, but that she did not want to set the precedent of having to purgate herself every time a crime was committed in her lands. Blanche’s procurator also showed Peter letters of Innocent III prohibiting prelates from passing a sentence of excommunication or interdict on Blanche or her son without manifest and reasonable cause and due canonical warning, stating that her lands were under papal protection (as the widow of a deceased crucesignatus),

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incurrunt’ (BnF, lat. 14673, fol. 270ra). Dependent priories were also limited as to the amount of loans they could take out without prior permission from the abbot of Saint-Victor and were warned, under pain of excommunication, not to take out interest-bearing loans. These warnings concurred with the synodal legislation of Robert of Courson, legate for the crusade in France and correspondent of John the Teuton, abbot of Saint-Victor: BnF, lat. 14673, fol. 270vb; see Bird, ‘Reform or Crusade?’, pp. 165–87. Bird, ‘Reform or Crusade?’, p. 171. Bird, ‘Crusaders’ Rights’, pp. 135–36.

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and the procurator then lodged an appeal to Rome. However, Peter still cited the countess before him and received witnesses on the case. He then demanded that within three days the crusader be freed or Blanche purgate herself before him. Detained by illness, Blanche sent her cleric, Master J., with letters patent swearing that she had neither caused nor commanded the crusader to be captured nor knew who had done it, and she offered to take an oath not as a requirement but out of devotion and reverence. The archbishop refused to accept this and excommunicated Blanche and placed a travelling interdict on her. The abbots of Longpont and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and the dean of Soissons, whom Innocent had appointed as conservatores, cited the archbishop, who lodged his own appeal to Rome, but failed to pursue it within the date set and was sentenced to pay the expenses of both parties. Honorius then commanded the team of judges in Soissons to settle the case and to spare Peter paying the fine, but also to absolve the countess, provided she had in fact lodged a legitimate appeal or had taken the oath she had volunteered.76 Jubainville also cites a letter which he claims ordered John the Teuton of Saint-Victor, the abbot and prior of Sainte-Geneviève, and G[uillaume]of Bourges, canon of Paris, to publish the revocation of Blanche’s excommunication provided that she swore she was not party to Hugh of Champlitte’s imprisonment.77 This fascinating case illustrates how, shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council, legal experts on both sides were adroitly citing its canons on excommunication and legal procedure as well as the rights of crusaders outlined in Ad liberandam. The rights of Hugh as a crucesignatus to protection from bodily imprisonment had to be balanced with preserving the papal and royal protection granted to a crusader’s widow, Blanche of Champagne, who strongly resisted any attempt by the bishops in her territories to encroach on her rights and legal jurisdiction as countess of Champagne.78 It also illustrates the limitations 76

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Pressutti, 1: no. 296; Potthast, 1: no. 5546 (February 1217); Röhricht, Studien, p.  94; Powell, Anatomy, p.  225; MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 8, fols  52r-54r; Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 110 (no. 1041, dated February 1216). For Peter of Corbeil, see Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1: 18, 22, 46, 118, 343; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, p. 47. Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 110 (no. 1041, dated 1 February 1216). This is the same William of Bourges mentioned elsewhere in this article (see notes 58 and 66 above). Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Guiseppe Alberigo et  al., 3rd  edn (Bologna, 1972), pp.  251–57 (canons 35–37, 42, 44, 47, 49). Blanche had previously locked horns with the Champlitte family. William and Odo  II

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of using excommunication as a tool to enforce crusader rights. How could crusaders’ rights be enforced if the penalty of excommunication levied to enforce them was ignored by the malefactors or challenged based on their own immunity as crusaders or as the widow of a crusader currently under papal protection? Honorius’ unfavourable reaction to Peter’s excommunication of Blanche may have been coloured by Blanche’s concurrent allegations that Peter was misusing the imposition of penance and excommunication to extort money from the citizens of Provins. Despite seeking sanctuary in the church of Saint-Ayoul, a merchant of Arras had been lynched by a mob after murdering a citizen of Provins. Blanche claimed that without due canonical warning or citation, Peter had excommunicated the perpetrators and interdicted the town of Provins, which she claimed was not under his jurisdiction but hers. Moved by greed rather than righteous zeal, he had commanded the prior of Saint-Ayoul and the town’s officials to pay 54l. of Provins to him and render satisfaction to the priests of the town for the offerings and other income they forfeited because of the interdict. He had also imposed on the perpetrators the humiliating public penance of bearing the body of the lynched merchant and its gallows in procession to each cathedral church in the province of Sens. Moreover, the guilty must present themselves to Peter for chastisement at Troyes, and thereafter go on pilgrimage to Compostela or serve in the Albigensian Crusade for forty days. The provost and iurati of Provins appealed to Honorius claiming that the penance was too harsh; Peter was motivated by money, not salvation of souls. Honorius urged the archbishop to avoid all appearance of avarice, moderate the penance, and abstain from imposing similar ones. If he refused, the abbot and prior of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris and master William of Bourges, canon of Paris, were to hold an inquest and adjust the penance to the crime, ensuring that the guilty were punished but not overburdened.79 The citizens of Provins and Blanche’s legal representative cleverly utilized the criticisms of contemporary reformers regarding the

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of Champlitte had participated in the Fourth Crusade in 1202, and in 1204, Duke Odo III of Burgundy had reported that Blanche had seized the revenues which the two brothers traditionally collected from the fairs of Champagne after William had borrowed 300l. from Peter Capitulus. When Odo paid off William’s debt, the countess allowed Odo to collect up to 300l. from those revenues, but Odo then assigned that revenue to a Jew from Troyes named Valin to pay off his own debts. See Evergates, Littere Baronum, pp.  69–70; Evergates, Cartulary of Blanche of Champagne, p. 103. Pressutti, 1: no. 288 (ann. 1217); MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 8, fols 52v-53r.

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cynical misuse of the spiritual weapon of excommunication for financial gain — a common trope in legislation (including the canons of Fourth Lateran) and synodal sermons of the period — against the reformer Peter of Corbeil. The discourse of reform had been invoked against a reformer in an attempt to rein in his spiritual and temporal jurisdiction over the citizens of Provins.80 As a contemporaneous papal letter illustrates, Blanche’s legal advisors were knowledgeable regarding recent conventions curbing crusaders’ rights in France and the new decrees of the Fourth Lateran regarding the limitation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction’s encroachment on secular jurisdiction and other matters, and cited them repeatedly. Blanche’s complaints stemmed largely from the perception that the archbishop of Sens and his episcopal suffragans and their officials were using the sentences of excommunication and interdict on her land and men without manifest and reasonable cause and sometimes for trivial offences in breach of due legal procedure (iuris ordine). This had occurred even though Innocent III had issued letters to these same prelates asking them not to wield ecclesiastical censures against Blanche. She feared that, despite the composition on crusader’s rights of 1214, the bishops were seeking to extend their jurisdiction not for the salvation of souls but from greed, to the prejudice and injury of herself and her son. She claimed that if certain crucesignati were caught committing a crime, these prelates claimed jurisdiction over them as over clerics even if they had taken the cross while in prison seeking to escape secular justice. Blanche envisaged this as part of a larger problem of clerics in lesser orders pleading benefit of clergy to escape debts contracted at fairs and other lawsuits in secular courts. Some individuals were shifting back and forth between the two statuses, putting aside clerical garb and tonsure and taking wives and engaging in secular business, then resuming the markers of clerical status to avoid feudal services and debts. Moreover, the burghers of Provins, Troyes, and other towns paid the countess an annual tax, yet the archbishop and others claimed that crucesignati were exempt from this, even though Theobald III had enforced the payment of it (Philip Augustus had similarly limited crusaders’ taxexempt status to one year in the 1214 composition). Although the prelates had made concessions regarding crusaders and Jewish interest-taking to Philip Augustus (her counsel refers here to the pact of 1206), they did not want to make similar concessions in Blanche’s domain. The countess 80

Jessalynn Bird, ‘“Feed My Sheep”: Synodal Sermons as Vectors for Reform around the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)’, in Discipline and Care: Theology and the Pastoral at the Time of Lateran IV, ed. Clare Monagle and Neslihan Senoçak (Turnhout, forthcoming); and note 39 above.

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was in great need (due to the challenges posed by Erard of Brienne and his supporters), yet local prelates did not want clerics to be forced to contribute anything towards building fortifications or guarding villages for public utility and the safety of their own possessions. They extorted money for witness statements and legal letters and tried to extract fines from the countess for damages her men were said to have caused to their possessions even if she were prepared to do justice if they were convicted or confessed according to ordo iuris (proper legal procedure). Yet in the canons of the Fourth Lateran the clergy was forbidden to use the pretext of ecclesiastical liberty to extend their jurisdiction to the harm of secular justice and had been urged to be content with written constitutions and customs. In response to Blanche’s complaints, Honorius commanded the abbot and prior of Sainte-Geneviève and William of Bourges, canon of Paris, to rule on these issues after the parties had presented their case or send them to Rome by a set date to receive a sentence.81 Blanche and her hired lawyers were once again cleverly utilizing the reformers’ own diatribes against the abuses of excommunication by bishops and their officials, recently enshrined in the Fourth Lateran’s attempts to redefine the usage of excommunication as a spiritual and juridical penalty, against a reformer from Peter the Chanter’s own circle  — Peter Corbeil. These cases are important for demonstrating Blanche’s understanding of the dangers posed by the peculiarly liminal status of crusaders to her jurisdiction and her determination to limit the contexts in which crusader status could be used to extend ecclesiastical jurisdiction at her expense. While Blanche vociferously insisted that bishops levy excommunication against the supporters of Erard (even those who had taken the cross) in order to protect her own status as the spouse of a deceased crusader, she was all too aware of the potential ‘misuse’ of excommunication (and the legal status of crusaders) by local prelates to extend episcopal temporal jurisdiction to the detriment of her own rights. Blanche and her lawyers were also cognizant of the power of reforming rhetoric in sermons and conciliar canons and were prepared to point that weapon, in court and in letters to Rome, back at reformers who occupied clerical offices in order to prevent them from gaining power at the expense of local lords. The language of reform was thus not restricted to clerical circles but was shared, understood, and appropriated by their lay audiences. Cases involving contested jurisdictions ( Jews, Christian usurers, ­crusaders) clearly called for legal expertise, and the canons of SaintVictor, because of their legal training and close ties to the royal family 81

MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 8, fols 53v-54r.

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and nobility in the Champagne region, appear to have been preferred as judges delegate in such delicate matters. In 1220, John the Teuton, abbot of Saint-Victor, his prior, and Stephen, dean of Paris, would judge another case involving clerical privilege between Blanche of Champagne and the bishop of Soissons on the case of a Jew who had assaulted a cleric.82 The prior of Saint-Victor in Paris, the dean of Beauvais (in Milo of Beauvais’ absence on crusade), and the royal bishop Guérin of Senlis would be entrusted with a similar case (previously overseen by a team of judges from Cambrai) pitting the dean, provost, and chapter of Soissons against the citizens (iuratos) and commune of Soissons over issues of legal jurisdiction.83 The prior of Saint-Victor and his co-judges were also appointed to a case in Noyon where the dean of Saint-Quentin was attempting to extend his jurisdiction over people and clergy outside the choir.84 However, by the 1220s, the abbot and convent of Saint-Victor requested Honorius III to stop appointing Victorines as judges delegate for cases outside their diocese, arguing that there were many other men learned in the law in the diocese of Paris.85 This failed to stem the flow of appointments to difficult cases, particularly those involving contested jurisdictions and issues arising from the attempts of various bishops to reform their dioceses after the Fourth Lateran Council. John the Teuton would continue to collaborate with Gervase of Prémontré, then bishop of Séez, and masters Hubert and R. de Donfront of Paris in the 1220s.86 So well-known were the Victorines as papal judges delegate that the crucesignatus count of Vendôme later complained that a certain noblewoman was brandishing forged papal letters addressed to the archdeacon and subchanter of Paris and the prior of Saint-Victor excommunicating the count until he made restitution for damages done to her dowry and dower lands.87

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84 85 86

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Jubainville, Histoire, 5: 160 (no. 1299), 162 (no. 1309) ( January 1220); Gallia christiana, in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, ed. Denis de Sainte-Marthe and Barthélemy Haureau, 16 vols (Paris, 1715–1865), 9: 367. Pressutti, 2: no. 5002; MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 8, fol. 204 (17 May 1224). Pressutti, 2: nos 5454–55 (ann. 1225). MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 15, fols 63v-64r. MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 15, fols 89r-90r, 111v-112r, 127r, 128r-v, 132v-133v, 136r-v. See also Pressutti, 2: no. 5002; MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 8, fol. 204 (1224). MS Città del Vaticano, Archivio segreto, Registrum vaticanum 17, fol. 231r-v.

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In conclusion, the protection of crusaders’ persons, families and lands cannot be considered in isolation from the other spiritual and temporal privileges accorded to crusaders precisely because the enforcers of these privileges and those eager to obtain them viewed spiritual and temporal protection as mutually complementary. Ironically, the manifold warnings over over-involvement in temporal affairs and legal cases in the synodal and chapter general sermons of John the Teuton and his fellow abbots testify to their involvement in this field. Together with abbots and regular religious from the Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders, they were viewed by Innocent III and his successors as serving many of the same functions which would, in the mid- to later thirteenth century, be fulfilled by the mendicant orders: service as judges delegate, as preachers and reformers, as pastoral workers, and as promoters of the crusade. Yet the Victorines’ involvement in these areas, and in the preparation for the legal, pastoral, and monastic reforms envisaged by the Fourth Lateran Council and carried out shortly thereafter have been largely ignored in favour of a historiographical focus on the theological and mystical works emanating from Saint-Victor in the early to mid-twelfth century. The evidence, however, suggests that the Victorines and the canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes played important roles as spiritual pastors and iurisperiti in the promotion and funding of the crusades and the protection of crusaders’ rights across contested jurisdictions in the first three decades of the thirteenth century.

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The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13) Helen J. Nicholson

The Templars’ Latin Rule of 1129 implied that their primary concern should be hearing the Hours, but like Christopher Tyerman’s crusaders in How to Plan a Crusade (2015), ‘corrosive optimism in divine agency failed to distract them from paying serious attention to material practicalities’.1 Although the Templars are most famous for their military activity in the defence of Christendom, they also held extensive estates in western Europe whose purpose was to raise resources to maintain their military commitments. Partly because these estates were very extensive and the surviving records are scattered through local, regional, and national archives across Europe, scholars have been slow to construct an overall picture of how the Templars operated their western estates. However, in recent years scholarship has moved from focusing on the role of the military orders in the Holy Land and other crusading fronts to considering their impact on the whole of Latin Christendom. A recent international conference has demonstrated the potential for new research on the Templars’ economy in the West, and a fresh focus on the need to catalogue and publish some of the vast resources of documents should enable such research to be done more effectively.2 Scholars ask how efficiently the Templars operated their estates and whether they were more or less commercial than the great monastic houses such as Glastonbury Abbey, how far their exploitation of their estates followed the strategies recommended by agricultural experts such as Walter of Henley and John

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Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade (London, 2015), p. 181; Il Corpus normativo templare: Edizione dei testi romanzi con traduzione e commento in Italiano, ed. Giovanni Amatuccio (Galatina, Apulia, 2009), p. 407, section 1. Économie templière en Occident: Patrimoines, commerce, finances, ed. Arnold Baudin, Ghislain Brunel, and Nicolas Dohrmann (Langres, 2013); The Templars and Their Sources, ed. Karl Borchardt et al. (London, 2016).

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 181–209 ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117320

Helen J. Nicholson

of Brie, and (given the imperative to produce a profit to aid the Holy Land) whether they put profit before care for their workers.3 This paper sets out some of the initial findings from my own research on the unpublished records in the National Archives of the UK at Kew, which record the inventories of the Templar houses taken when the Templars were arrested early in January 1308, and the accounts produced by the royal custodians while their estates were in the king’s hands, 1308–13.4 As this research is at an early stage, the analysis and conclusions are tentative, but they indicate that the Templars’ agricultural production made a substantial contribution to local economies. It has been estimated that at the beginning of 1308 the Templars in England and Wales held around 34,400 acres of cultivable land and over 30,000 acres of woodland and permanent pasture, making them one of the largest landholders in these countries.5 Clarence Perkins calculated that the total annual value, based on receipts, was around £4720.6 The 3

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For example: Mickaël Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans au service d’une exploitation agricole templière: La commanderie de Payns au début du XIVe siècle’, in Économie templière, pp. 273–93; Philip Slavin, ‘Landed Estates of the Knights Templar in England and Wales and their Management in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013), 36–49; Margaret Murphy, ‘From Swords to Ploughshares: Evidence for Templar Agriculture in Medieval Ireland’, in Soldiers of Christ: The Knights Hospitaller and The Knights Templar in Medieval Ireland, ed. Martin Browne and Colmán Ó Clabaigh (Dublin, 2015), pp. 167–83; Joseph Michael Jefferson, ‘The Templar Lands in Lincolnshire in the Early Fourteenth Century’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2016). TNA, E 142/10–18 and /89–118 contain 129 documents in a total of 358 membranes which record inquisitions, extents, and claims for corrodies; E 358/18–21 contain 206 enrolled accounts from the estates for 1308–13; E 199 and SC 6 contain draft inquisition returns and particulars of account for these estates. Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 38. Clarence Perkins, ‘The Wealth of the Knights Templars in England and the Disposition of it after their Dissolution’, American Historical Review 15 (1910), 252–63 (here 253). This compares to the Hospitallers’ income (less the income from the former Templar lands) in 1338 of just over £2442: The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for A.D.  1338, ed. Lambert  B. Larking (London, 1857), 202 (less the profits on pp. 133–201), although this was after the Great Famine of 1315–17 and the figures in the 1338 report appear to have been understated.

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Templars held property in all but four of the English counties, although their property in Wales was limited to small estates in west Glamorgan and the south-east of modern Wales. Some of this land was directly managed as demesne, but much was leased out to tenants. Although the records in the National Archives date from the period after the Templars’ arrest, it is unlikely that the royal custodians would have changed the operation of the estates during the first few months. What follows, then, is based on the initial accounts produced by the royal custodians and relates to the operation of the estates in 1308. As such it offers a snapshot of estate management, rather than an ongoing picture. But it is a very extensive snapshot, covering England from the south to the north, west to east; and it comes from a significant moment in English economic history, just before the Great European Famine (1315–18). The records have many limitations. As the custodians were frequently changed, no set of initial accounts covers a full year. As custodians’ periods of tenure varied, it is difficult to compare accounts between counties. Some accounts are missing — for example, although the Templars held property in Chesterfield and in Normanton in Derbyshire which passed to the Hospitallers after 1313, there are no inventories, extents, or enrolled accounts for this county.7 The accounts value what was bought or sold, so (for example) hay consumed by the livestock is not given a value, and those making inventories did not always precisely identify the holy relics or small books that they found in Templar chapels. Some custodians accounted for eggs and others omitted them.8 The accounts state how many acres of land were sown or reaped, but do not give acreages of unworked land: fallow, pasture, and meadow. Analysis of the Templars’ breeding and use of livestock relies on incomplete and inconsistent inventories. Post-January 1308 inventories state that additional animals had been discovered since the arrests: for example, at Sutton in Essex an additional ninety-six ewes were found that had been overlooked at the initial inventory, presumably because they were grazing on the marsh, while at Temple Cressing in the same county the commander’s palfrey (riding horse) was left out of the January 1308 7

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Placita de quo warranto temporibus Edw. I. II. & III. in curia receptæ scaccarij Westm. asservata, ed. William Illingworth (London, 1818), pp. 132–33; Rotuli hundredorum tem. Hen. III. & Edw. I. in Turr’ Lond’ et in curia receptæ scaccarij Westm. asservati, ed. William Illingworth, 2 vols (London, 1812–18), 1: 61. For example, eggs were accounted for in Norfolk and Suffolk: TNA, E 358/18, rot. 3; E 358/20, rot. 24d; in Northumberland: E 358/18, rot. 8d; and at Balsall: Eileen Gooder, Temple Balsall: The Warwickshire Preceptory of the Templars and their Fate (Chichester, 1995), p. 53.

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inventory, as were two ‘affers’ (plough horses), five young oxen, and seven ‘hurtards’ (rams).9 Some accounts include poultry while others omit it, yet presumably every estate kept hens and geese.10 In short, we cannot know the absolute extent of the Templars’ livestock in January 1308. Nor can we define its constituents with complete confidence. It is not possible to draw firm conclusions on the proportion of horses in the plough teams of the different estates (and thus how ‘modern’ those plough teams were) because some custodians distinguished between affers and cart horses, but others did not. Hence, although Philip Slavin has suggested that estates that focused on oxen were ‘isolated and relatively under-developed’ or had ‘a regional tradition of manorial conservatism’ while those focusing on horses were ‘all practicing advanced techniques of intensive arable husbandry’, I will suggest below that plough teams varied according to soil type.11 The enrolled accounts produced at the Exchequer adjusted and omitted information from the particulars of account produced by the custodians. So, for example, at Upleadon, Herefordshire, in 1308 the particulars of account recorded by Sheriff Walter of Haklut included six quarters of oats for potage (a thick soup or porridge, sometimes mixed with peas or barley), for the farmworkers and aliorum supervenient’ — ‘other people coming over’, that is, visitors to the house. But there is no mention of potage for visitors at the corresponding point in the account recorded on the Exchequer roll. The six quarters of oats were listed as an expense, but the enrolled account states that the whole quantity was used to feed the farmworkers, not visitors.12 Presumably King Edward II’s Exchequer officials did not regard hospitality as an allowable expense, but saw no problem in reallocating these costs to workers’ wages. Again, the sheriffs and other custodians may have embezzled assets from the Templar estates, overstated expenses, and exaggerated losses. For example, at Garway in Herefordshire the sheriff took the palfrey belonging to the former Templar commander; in Northumberland jurors asked 9 10

11 12

TNA, E 358/18, rot. 22–22d. Norfolk and Suffolk included them: TNA, E 358/18, rot. 3; E 358/20, rot. 24d. Herefordshire excluded them: E 358/18, rot. 2; E 358/19, rot. 25. For discussion on omissions of poultry from inventories, see Mark Overton and B.  M.  S. Campbell, ‘Norfolk Livestock Farming, 1250–1740: A Comparative Study of Manorial Accounts and Probate Inventories’, Journal of Historical Geography 18 (1992), 377–96. Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 44. Particulars of account for Upleadon, 10 January 1308–29 September 1308: TNA, E 199/18/4v.

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to report on the outstanding debts due to the Templars complained that the sheriff had taken a substantial quantity of wool, lambs, milk, and eggs from the manor.13 Such problems occur in all medieval accounts, but as the royal Exchequer officials were anxious to obtain as much money as possible from the Templars’ estates, they probably checked the accounts carefully to minimize defalcations and cheating.14 Given that the Templars were a supranational religious order with properties throughout most of Catholic Europe except Scandinavia, it would be valuable to compare the 1308 data from their English and Welsh estates with that produced elsewhere. However, no records survive from Scotland. Inventories survive from Ireland, but no ongoing accounts.15 Inventories survive from France, some of which have been published, but only one set of accounts: for Payns in Champagne, 1308–09.16 There are also inventories from Italy and the Iberian peninsula, but it appears that the ongoing accounts have not survived.17 That said, some known documents await publication while unidentified documents may survive in archives, perhaps in unexpected locations: as the Hospitallers’ weekly accounts for Manosque in south-east France were recently found in the order’s library in Prague.18 Although the evidence is incomplete, it does present enough information for analysis. The remainder of this paper will consider what the inventories and accounts record of the Templars’ farming practices and their workers. 13 14

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TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2; E 142/119, mem. 37. For discussion of such problems see Christopher Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Harvest Workers’, Agricultural History Review 36 (1988), 21–37 (here 24). Gearóid MacNiocaill, ‘Documents Relating to the Suppression of the Templars in Ireland’, Analecta Hibernica 24 (1967), 183–226. ‘Inventaire du mobilier des Templiers du baillage de Caen’, in Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie en moyen-âge, ed. Léopold Delisle (Paris, 1903), no. xvi, pp. 721–28; Auguste Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie de la commanderie de Payns, 1307–1308’, Mémoires de la Société d’Agriculture, Sciences et Arts du département de l’Aube (1907), pp. 283–372. Joaquím Miret y Sans, ‘Inventaris de les Cases del Temple de la Corona d’Aragó en 1289’, Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 11 (1911), 61–75; María Vilar Bonet, Els béns del Temple a la Corona d’Aragó en suprimir-se l’ordre (1300–1319) (Barcelona, 2000); Hans Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Templerherrenordens (Berlin, 1888), pp. 357–64. Comptes de la commanderie de l’Hôpital de Manosque pour les anneés 1283 à 1290, ed. Karl Borchardt, Damien Carraz, and Alain Venturini (Paris, 2015).

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Crops and production Like other landowners, the Templars would have grown whichever crops would produce the best return given the climatic conditions, soil, and other environmental conditions of their estates. In England and Wales, this meant wheat.19 Described by Bruce Campbell as ‘the premier bread grain of medieval England’, wheat was the most valuable of field crops in terms of price commanded and food value.20 It was the Templars’ preferred crop, grown on virtually all of their estates in England and Wales. The Templars had no demesne land in five of the seven counties identified by Campbell as having only limited wheat production in the later Middle Ages (Devon, Cornwall, Cumberland, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire) and only limited demesne holdings in the other two (Norfolk and Suffolk).21 Where they were given lands in localities that were not suitable for wheatgrowing, they usually leased them out rather than developing the lands themselves, as they did in Cornwall, Devon, and Nottinghamshire. They clearly preferred to acquire and develop agricultural land where wheat could be grown. Slavin has calculated that over the whole of England and Wales around thirty-five per cent of the Templars’ arable land was sown with wheat, eight per cent with rye and maslin (a mixture of grain, often rye and wheat), nine per cent with legumes (peas, beans, vetches, and other pulses), seven per cent with barley, thirty-four per cent with oats, and seven per cent with dredge (a mixture of oats and barley). He points out that ‘the distribution 19

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The data which follow are derived from my sampling and analysis of the accounts from 1308 in TNA, E 358/18, rot. 25d (Bedfordshire); E 358/19, rot. 26d (Berkshire); E 358/18, rots 6, 7 (Buckinghamshire); E 358/18, rot. 10 (Cambridgeshire); E 358/18, rot. 22–22d; E 358/19, rot. 52–52d (Essex); E 358/18, rot. 5; E 358/19, rot. 53 (Gloucestershire); E 358/18, rot. 2 (Herefordshire); E 358/18, rots 23, 24d (Hertfordshire); E 358/18, rot. 8 (Kent); E 358/19, rot. 27 (Leicestershire); E 358/18, rot. 19 (Lincolnshire); E 358/18, rot. 3 (Norfolk and Suffolk); E 358/18, rot. 6d (Northumberland); E 358/19, rot. 26–26d (Oxfordshire); E 358/18, rot. 4; E 358/20, rot. 5d (Shropshire); E 358/18, rots 26, 35(1) (Somerset); E 358/20, rot. 6 (Staffordshire); E 358/20, rot. 13 (Sussex); E 358/18, rot. 42d, E 358/19, rot. 27d (Warwickshire); E 358/18, rot. 52(1); E 358/20, rot. 38 (Wiltshire); E 358/19, rot. 47d (Worcestershire); E 358/20, rots 39, 40(2), 41 (Yorkshire). B.  M.  S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 214. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, p. 218.

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of sown crops on the Templar estates closely mirrors the composition of arable on a national level’.22 In other words, the Templars grew the same crops as other landowners. It appears that they also followed the best practice in agricultural management. They used three-course rotation of crops, which (in the words of Campbell) ‘sustained a significantly higher intensity of cropping’ than two-course farming, ‘offering real output gains providing that the soil was equal to the increased demands made upon it’.23 Mike Jefferson’s detailed study of the custodians’ accounts from Lincolnshire shows that the Templars used manuring, multiple ploughing, weeding, sowing of leguminous crops, and marling to improve the quality of the soil and suppress weeds, and changed the sowing rate to obtain the best productivity. He concludes that in Lincolnshire at least ‘at the time of the arrest of the Order, the Templars had embraced what was best in early fourteenth-century agricultural practice’.24 These patterns of cultivation are similar to those revealed by the surviving records from Ireland, France, and Italy. Margaret Murphy has concluded that in Ireland the Templars concentrated on wheat, ‘the more valuable and commercialized grain’; the second largest production was of oats. A little barley was grown, which Murphy judged was probably for malting and brewing. Only one manor, Kilcloggan, grew rye. The Templars also grew some beans and peas, and at Kilsaran leeks were grown.25 The estates in the bailliage of Caen in Normandy produced similar crops to those in England: wheat, rye, barley and dredge, oats, peas, vetch, and hay. At Baugy hemp was also grown.26 At Payns in Champagne the Templars produced wheat, rye, barley, and secourjon (rye and barley), and oats; but they also grew grapes for wine and nuts which were pressed to produce oil: 120 quarts of it in 1308–09.27 The Templars’ estate at Lecce in Salento in southern Italy grew wheat and barley, but also had vineyards

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25 26

27

Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 40. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, pp. 230–1. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp.  34–36, 88–129, quotation at p. 128. Murphy, ‘From Swords to Ploughshares’, pp. 172–75. ‘Inventaire des Templiers’, pp.  721–22, 724, 725, 726; The Templars: Sources Translated and Annotated, ed. and trans. Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate (Manchester, 2002), pp. 191, 195, 197, 198. Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, p.  286; Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, pp. 337, 351–54, 355, 359–60, 366.

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and olive trees.28 Likewise, in addition to growing wheat and barley, the brothers in Capitanata, in northern Apulia, also possessed vineyards, olive groves, and saltworks. In Sicily they had large estates, where they concentrated on producing grain and rearing livestock.29 The royal custodians of the Templar estates in England and Wales sold around forty per cent of the wheat and oats produced and thirty per cent of the crop overall. As Slavin points out, the Templars would have sold a smaller proportion, as they also had to feed their corrodians — who could far outnumber the brothers in a house — as well as any guests, and they gave regular alms to the poor.30 These percentages are much lower than the proportion of the crop that Ian Rush found that the Benedictine monks of Glastonbury Abbey were selling from their non-Somerset estates in 1302–03 and 1311–12, where they sold on average over sixty per cent of the crop. However, on their Somerset estates, which would have directly supplied the monks and their household, the monks of Glastonbury sold only around twelve per cent of the crop in 1302–03 and around six per cent in 1311–12.31 On this basis, if we adopt the percentage of crop sold as an indicator of commercialisation, the Templars’ English estates were probably as commercialised as those of the monks of Glastonbury.32

Livestock Templar farms that concentrated on grain production needed animals for traction — pulling the ploughs and the carts — and to produce manure for the fields. All farms required animals to produce food for consumption, whether indirectly as milk and eggs, or directly in the form of meat.

28

29

30 31

32

Vito Ricci, ‘La precettoria di Santa Maria de Templo de Lecce: Un esempio di domus agricola. Un’analisi comparativa’, in Atti del XXIX Convegno di Ricerche Templari, Casamari (FR), 4–5 settembre 2011 (Tuscania, 2012), pp.  151–196 (here pp. 164–67). Kristjan Toomaspoeg, ‘Le grenier des templiers: Les possessions et l’économie de l’Ordre dans la Capitanate et en Sicile’, in Économie templière, pp. 93–113 (here pp. 104, 108–10). Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, pp. 42–43. Ian Rush, ‘The Impact of Commercialization in Early Fourteenth-Century England: From Evidence from the Manors of Glastonbury Abbey’, Agricultural History Review 49 (2001), 123–39 (here 128–30). For this indicator of commercialisation, see Rush, ‘Impact of Commercialization’, p. 127.

188

The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

Livestock could also provide other useful products such as wool, leather, honey, and beeswax. It has been noted above that the Templars in England and Wales used the most up-to-date methods of arable production; it seems that this was also the case in regard to the animals they used on their farms. As was usual in English agriculture by the early fourteenth century, the majority of Templar estates used horses to pull carts, while both horses and oxen pulled the ploughs.33 Horses’ role as draught animals was a relatively recent introduction on English farms. Draught horses hardly appeared in Domesday Book, but Bruce Campbell calculated that by the early fourteenth century they ‘accounted for at least 20 per cent of the animal draught force on demesnes and almost 50 per cent on peasant farms’.34 Slavin has calculated that on average on Templar demesnes in England and Wales horses made up just over thirty per cent of the working animals — in which case the Templars’ estates matched the practice of other landowners.35 The proportion of horses in the draught force varied from place to place. Jefferson has calculated that at Temple Bruer in Lincolnshire between 1308 and 1313 the plough teams comprised ‘two plough horses yoked with either four or six oxen’, but other estates differed: on shallow, light soils horses might predominate, but on heavy clay soils of the river valleys teams were made up wholly of oxen.36 Temple Balsall in Warwickshire, which has heavy clay soils, had three all-ox teams: the royal custodian later introduced affers.37 In 1308 there were more oxen than plough horses on all the Templars’ estates except Cowley (Oxfordshire), Dinsley (Hertfordshire), Sutton (Essex), and Togrynd or Togrind and Dunwich (Suffolk), suggesting that the preferred draught animal was dictated by the soil type: Cowley has sandy soil, Dinsley was on infertile upland, Togrynd and Dunwich are on heathland, while much of Sutton was salt marsh. The preference for horse traction on light, dry, or fine soil was especially characteristic of East Anglia, where horse ploughing was first introduced in England and expanded fastest.38 On the forty-six estates examined above to establish patterns of grain production, all but twelve estates possessed affers, and all but Togrynd and Haddiscoe (Norfolk) had oxen, confirming that plough-teams were 33 34 35 36 37 38

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, pp. 120–34. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, p. 123. Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, pp. 43–44. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp. 133–36 and Appendix 11. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 42d; E 358/19, rot. 27d; Gooder, Temple Balsall, p. 43. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, pp. 129–31.

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generally made up from a combination of horses and oxen.39 The data from Ireland and France show the same practice. Murphy’s calculations from the Irish inventories show that plough teams would have comprised on average six oxen to two affers. The only exception was at Cooley in County Louth where there seem to have been equal numbers of affers and oxen in the plough teams.40 The estates in Normandy again had both oxen and horses for plough work.41 At Payns in Champagne there were thirty-seven oxen and a cow drawing six ploughs, and five draught horses.42 In addition to working oxen (boves), Templar farms usually also had a bull, cows, young oxen, and calves, with a continual breeding programme to replace the oxen as they grew too old to work. The cows’ milk was also sold or used to make butter or cheese.43 The hides from dead animals were sold for use as leather or processing into parchment and vellum for writing. To judge from the number of ox carcasses in larders at the time of the Templars’ arrest, cattle were also used as a source of food for the household. Another animal which could have been kept for milk, meat, and hide is the goat, but very few houses kept them.44 The Templars’ most valuable animal product was wool, the most important export product produced in England from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century.45 As Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul Dryburgh have pointed out, the ‘English wool trade was highly localized’. The Templars held land in all the key wool-producing regions: the east Midlands (Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Northamptonshire), the Chilterns, and the uplands of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire.46 Slavin has calculated that in January 1308 ‘the Templars possessed over 30,000 sheep’. While this was far more than any individual estate owner, other religious institutions owned more: the Cistercians ‘may have collectively reared about 350,000 sheep’. Slavin calculates that the Gilbertines owned 39 40

41

42 43

44 45

46

For the data that follow, see note 19 above. Murphy, ‘From Swords to Ploughshares’, p. 175, Table 9.3 and n. 51; MacNiocaill, ‘Documents’, p. 192. ‘Inventaire des Templiers’, pp. 721, 723, 725, 726; Templars: Sources, pp. 191–92, 195, 197, 198. Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, p. 349. For the sale of cows’ milk, see, for example, the account for Sutton: TNA, E 358/19 rot. 52–52d. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 52d (Cressing); E 358/18, rot. 6d (Thornton). Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul R. Dryburgh, The English Wool Market, c. 1230–1327 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 8. Bell, Brooks, and Dryburgh, English Wool Market, pp. 58–59.

190

The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

around 77,000 sheep and the Premonstratensians owned about 60,000 — twice as many as the Templars.47 The Templars’ flocks could be very large: at Bruer in Lincolnshire in 1308 there were 1255 ‘wethers’ (neutered males), 2011 ewes, 1546 ‘hogasters’ (sheep between one and two years old), and 1543 lambs. At Garway in Herefordshire there was a total of 1126 sheep and 347 lambs that year, but there were no sheep at the other Herefordshire commandery at Upleadon, which concentrated on grain production. At Keele in Staffordshire there were 264 sheep and eighty-nine lambs were born. At Faxfleet on the river Humber in south-east Yorkshire there were 1578 sheep and 736 lambs were born in 1308; but at Cowton in north Yorkshire there were no sheep at all. Thornton in Northumberland had 174 sheep and 121 lambs. Cowley and Horspath in Oxfordshire had 833 sheep and 268 lambs, but at neighbouring Sandford there was only one sheep, kept as a pet.48 Among the sheepless estates was the Templars’ only Welsh estate, at Llanmadoc on the Gower peninsula. The Gower is one of the few regions of Wales where wheat may be grown, and clearly the Templars chose to concentrate on producing this high-value grain rather than wool. The only animals kept and bred at Llanmadoc were those required for traction: affers and oxen.49 In short, the Templars produced whatever was most profitable: wheat or wool.50 The Templars’ flocks included a substantial proportion of multones, that is, neutered male sheep or wethers. These produced a heavier fleece than the ewes, hogasters, and lambs.51 At Garway the proportion of wethers to total sheep was twenty-two and a half per cent; at Keele, twenty-eight per cent; at Faxfleet, twenty-two and a quarter per cent; at Thornton 57.6 per cent; and at Cowley and Horspath twenty-six per cent. Jefferson has calculated the proportion of wethers to the rest of the Templars’ flocks in Lincolnshire as 19.8 per cent at Bruer, 26.4 per cent at Willoughton and thirty-three per cent at Aslackby; comparing this to thirty-seven per cent

47 48

49 50

51

Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 44. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 19 (Bruer); E 358/18, rot. 2 (Garway and Upleadon); E 358/20, rot. 6 (Keele); E 358/20, rot. 40(20) (Faxfleet); E 358/30, rot. 39 (Cowton); E 358/18, rot. 6d (Thornton); E 358/19, rot. 26–26d (Cowley and Sandford). TNA, SC 6/1202/3. See the references to these estates above. For further discussion, see Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, pp. 44–45. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, p. 179.

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at Combe on the estates of the abbey of Bec.52 Although they had a lower proportion of wethers than Bec, Slavin argues that the Templars’ sheep produced ‘relatively high wool yields’, claiming that the average weight of a fleece was 1.6 lbs, ‘somewhat above the national average of 1.4 lbs per fleece’. He calculates that the Templars’ wool production contributed around half of the total income raised from livestock farming on the Templars’ estates in the years after the brothers’ arrests.53 Jefferson points out that in order to maintain the commercial production of wool at these levels the brothers must have had an organized breeding programme, and argues that in Lincolnshire the commandery of Eagle acted as a breeding station, enabling the Templars’ estates in Lincolnshire to regenerate their flocks. This was particularly important when flocks were damaged by murrain and other diseases.54 Wool was also an important product for the Templars in Ireland and northern France: sheep were the most numerous animal on the Templars’ Irish estates, on the estates in the baillage of Caen in Normandy, and at Payns in Champagne.55 Mickaël Wilmart deduces from the expenses incurred by the royal custodian of Payns in 1308–09 that the Templars generally followed the recommendations of contemporary writers in the herding and care of sheep.56 In addition to wool, ewes produced milk, which was made into cheese. This was an important source of income on some of the former Templar estates: the largest receipts at Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire in 1308–09 came from the sale of 157 cheeses and eight gallons of butter.57 The Templars also kept pigs, poultry, and doves, generally for food rather than sale. Some houses also kept bees, producing honey and wax.58 The 52

53 54

55

56

57 58

Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, p.  179, citing R.  Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (London, 1957), p. 149. Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 45. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp.  179–80, quoting J.  Bischoff, ‘“I cannot do’t without counters”: Fleece Weights and Sheep Breeds in Late Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century England’, Agricultural History 57 (1983), 143–60 (here 149). Murphy, ‘From Swords to Ploughshares’, p.  178; ‘Inventaire des Templiers’, pp. 721, 723, 725, 726; Templars: Sources, pp. 191–92, 195, 197, 198; Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, p. 278. Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, pp. 289–91; Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, pp. 332, 333, 336. TNA, E 358/18, rots 6, 7d; E 358/20, rots 12, 24. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 3 (Gislingham, Norfolk); E 359/19, rot. 26d (Sandford, Oxon.); E 358/20, rot. 40 (Newsam and Faxfleet, Yorks.); E 358/19, rot. 26d

192

The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

English estate inventories from January 1308 did not mention fish ponds nor the fish that would have been kept in them for eating on fast days; perhaps because any such fish were for consumption by the household and had no resale value. Yet they did list large numbers of preserved fish.59 In addition to these essentials, there were some more exotic and highstatus animals: peacocks and swans, although not rabbits.60 The English accounts hardly ever mention pets or even working dogs: only at Garway, where they were kept to protect the sheep from wolves and were fed bread made from mouldy grain.61 At Sandford in Oxfordshire there was a bidens domestica, a tame sheep, which the custodian sold.62 In contrast, the Templars at Payns in Champagne kept dogs and cats.63

Caring for the livestock Although the Templars’ estates produced high yields of wool, wool had high production costs. Not only was there the cost of shearing the wool but there was also a high level of wastage among the sheep. A few examples will suffice. In the custodian’s accounts for Garway from January to the end of September 1308, of 551 wethers, thirty-three died before shearing; of 585 breeding ewes, fifteen died before shearing and fifteen after; of 347 lambs, seventy-five died: an overall loss of nine per cent.64 At Lydley in Shropshire in the same period, of 124 wethers, four died before shearing;

59

60

61 62 63 64

(Merton, Oxon.); E 358/20, rot. 39 (Cowton, Yorks.); ‘Inventaire des Templiers’, p. 728; Templars: Sources, p. 201 (Louvigny, Normandy); Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, p. 349 (Payns, Champagne). For example: TNA, E 358/18, rot. 3; E 358/20, rot. 24d (Norfolk and Suffolk); E 358/18, rot. 42d; E 358/19, rot. 27d (Balsall); E 358/19, rot. 26 (Sandford); E 358/19, rot. 52d (Cressing); E 358/20, rot. 39d (Foulbridge); E 358/20, rot. 40(2) (Faxfleet: here the description seems to be pisc’ de Daggedrotie Stokfisch). Peacocks: Gooder, Temple Balsall, pp. 34, 42, 51; TNA, E 358/18, rots 24–25 (Swanton, Staughton, and Sharnbrook, Beds.); E 358/19, rot. 52d (Cressing, Essex); E 358/19, rot. 52 and E 358/18, rot. 23 (Dinsley, Herts.); E 358/18, rot. 22d (Denny, Cambs.); E 358/19, rot. 53d (Guiting , Gloucs.); E 358/20, rot. 39d (Foulbridge, Yorks.). Swans: Gooder, Temple Balsall, pp. 34, 42, 51; TNA, E 358/19, rot. 26d (Sandford, Oxon.). Mark Bailey, ‘The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy’, Agricultural History Review 36 (1988), 1–20. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2d. TNA, E 358/19, rot. 26d. Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, pp. 318, 327, 345 (dogs), 345 (cats). TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2.

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of 118 ­breeding ewes, twelve died before shearing; of thirty-eight hogasters, ten died before shearing; of eighty lambs, thirteen died before being separated from their mothers and nine after, an overall loss of thirteen per cent.65 Jefferson has calculated that in the same period 10.7 per cent of the total sheep in the former Templar flock in Lincolnshire died of the murrain.66 Wilmart notes that there was a high rate of mortality among the sheep at the commandery of Payns: of a flock of 740 which the custodian took over in 1307, ninety-four died during the following year and sixty became ill; of 280 lambs born, twenty died and another five became sick and were killed: excluding those who became sick, this is a death rate of eleven per cent.67 The disease that killed the sheep (‘murrain’) was probably ovine sheep scab, a disease that first appeared in England in the 1270s. The scab damages the fleece, weakens the sheep and, if untreated, kills it.68 Sheep also suffered from rot and liver-fluke.69 In the modern era, sheep are dipped to kill parasites and prevent disease. Before sheep dip was developed in the nineteenth century, sheep were individually anointed with salve in autumn to kill lice, ticks, and other vermin.70 The mixture used on the Templars’ English farms varied from one area to another, but included mercury, verdigris, tarpitch, iron sulphate, white grease or white fat, pork fat, and other medicaments.71 65 66 67

68

69

70

71

TNA, E 358/18, rot. 4. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, p. 187 and Appendix 18. Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, p.  292; Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, pp. 344–45. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp.  187–90, citing Trow-Smith, A  History of British Livestock Husbandry, pp.  129, 154; Campbell, English Seignorial Agriculture, p. 417 and n. 18. Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp.  190–91, citing Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, p. 417 and M. J. Stephenson, ‘Wool Yields in the Medieval Economy’, The Economic History Review n.s. 41 (1988), 368–91 (here 382). Henry Stephens, The Book of the Farm, Detailing Labours of the Farmer, Farm Steward, Ploughman, Shepherd, Hedger, Cattle-man, Field-worker and Dairymaid, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1844: repr. Cambridge, 2010), p. 1111– 1120. TNA, E 358/19, rot. 26–26d (Cowley and Horspath, Oxon., and Templeton, Berks.); E 358/18, rot. 5–5d (Guiting, Gloucs.); E 358/18, rot. 25 (Millbrook and Swanton, Beds.); E 358/18, rots 22, 24–24d (Chelsing and Lannock, Herts., and Sutton, Essex); E 358/18, rot. 22d (Temple Cressing, Essex); E 358/18, rot. 19 and E 358/19, rot. 27 (Temple Bruer, Lincs., and Rothley, Leics.); E 359/19, rot. 26 (Merton, Oxon.); E 358/18, rot. 52(1) and E 358/20, rot. 38 (Rockley, Wilts.); E 358/20, rot. 40(2) (Faxfleet, Yorks.); E 358/18, rot. 10d (Dokesworth,

194

The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

At Wilburgham in Cambridgeshire the custodian specified the quantities bought: three gallons of fat (pinguedinis), three gallons of tar-pitch and two pounds of verdigris.72 In contrast, at Payns in Champagne four pounds weight of sheep-salve was bought in Troyes ready-mixed.73 Sheep were also washed, both to clean the wool and to protect them from parasites. For the villeins on the Templars’ estate of Rockley in Wiltshire in 1185 this was women’s work.74 At Horspath in Oxfordshire the washing was assigned to the cottars as part of their labour rent, but at Swanton in Bedfordshire it was paid work.75 Sheep were not the only animals liable to infection. In 1311–12 one of the two affers or draught horses at the Templars’ commandery at Lydley in Shropshire fell ill with quodam morbo in nervis, an unidentified disease of the sinews or the nerves. The animal died despite a mareschal or farrier being called in to care for it at a cost of 2s. 11d.76 There were also other hazards for lifestock. At Denny in Cambridgeshire a young ox died in the flood waters in the marsh.77 Custodians reported losses of geese, chickens, and peacock chicks to foxes and kites.78 At Garway in the Welsh March wolves were reported as a problem.79 Theft was less common, but in the winter of 1308–09 one of the affers was stolen from the Templars’ manor at Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire.80

72 73

74

75 76 77 78

79 80

Cambs.); E 358/20, rot. 13 (Saddlescombe, Sussex); E 358/18, rot. 8 (Strood, Kent); E 358/18, rot. 10 (Denny, Cambs.); E 358/18, rot. 2 (Garway, Herefords.); E 358/20, rot. 41 (Wetherby, Yorks.). TNA, E 358/18, rot. 10d. Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, pp. 291–92; Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, p. 334. Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century: The Inquest of 1185 with Illustrative Charters and Documents, ed. Beatrice A. Lees (London, 1935), pp. cxxxi, 56–57. TNA, E 142/13, mem. 15; E 358/18, rot. 25d. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 54. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 11. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 24d (Staughton, Beds.); Gooder, Temple Balsall, p.  51; TNA, E 358/18, rot. 23 (Lannock, Herts.). TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2d. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 7d.

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The farm workers The Exchequer records show that the Templars had free tenants paying money rent, unfree tenants paying money rent and undertaking labour services in return for their holdings, and waged famuli or farmworkers, some in ongoing named roles and others taking on seasonal work such as harrowing, weeding, and harvesting. Some of the famuli received stipends of cash and a payment in grain, while some were ‘service famuli’, tenants who did the work as rent for their lands.81 Nearly all famuli also received a handout of oat potage, made on the estate by the male or female cook. In the first months of 1308 only the Templars’ estates in Wiltshire had no oats; in Norfolk and Suffolk potage was given out only at Gislingham, in Bedfordshire potage was distributed only at Sharnbrook, and in Sussex Shipley did not give the farmworkers potage although Saddlescombe did. Eileen Gooder established that at Balsall there were nineteen full-time farm labourers or famuli, of whom two, the plough-overseer and lambing shepherd, worked only seasonally. In addition two more men were taken on at harvest time, and there were other part-time seasonal workers such as the fifteen women collecting straw for four days during harvest who are mentioned in the first year of the keeper’s accounts. They were paid partly in cash and partly in food: beans and grain.82 At Bruer the estate employed a wide range of skilled and unskilled workers, some throughout the year (such as the bailiff, ploughmen, carters, and millers) and some on a seasonal basis (such as the seventeen women who milked the ewes and helped reap the harvest), while others were employed as required (such as the carpenter and smith who repaired carts and ploughs at a rate of 2d. a day). There were also workers performing servile customary labour dues and waged famuli. All famuli received potage made from oat flour and during the harvest period they were given additional food ‘at table’.83 Farmworkers with named tasks such as ploughmen, carters, miller, cooks, and shepherds were paid in both cash and mixed grain. As well as the allocations of food and paying their employees in cash, the Templars also supplied all the famuli with gloves in autumn.84 At Llanmadoc there were fifty-two acres in demesne, free tenants, tenants-at-will, and cottars, and eleven housebondi (bondsmen) who held 81 82 83

84

Rush, ‘Impact of Commercialization’, pp. 125–26. Gooder, Temple Balsall, pp. 31–33; TNA, E 358/19, mem. 40(1)r. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 19; E 358/20, rot. 15; Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp. 228–29. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 19; E 358/20, rot. 15.

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The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

sixty-three acres of arable land at the lord’s will and owed labour dues, including harrowing, collecting hay, and ‘autumn works’, for which they received food. One famulus was in charge of the carrying service (averia), for a wage of 4d. a week and a stipend of 3s.85 The wages bill at Gislingham in 1309 covered a bailiff, a ploughman, a shepherd, and a maid. In a later account (for 1311–12), we learn that the maid made the potage for the farm workers. There was also a harrower employed for part of the year.86 The workers were all paid in a mixture of grain, without any cash. An examination of the accounts for the English houses in 1308 show that the content of the grain mixture distributed to the workers varied considerably.87 This variation between regions was not peculiar to the Templars: it was the pattern for all employers.88 Table 1 sets out the composition of the grain mixture county by county, from north to south. Table 1: Proportion of different grains in the liveries to workers on Templars estates according to the first accounts produced for each estate in 1308: listed from the north to the south of England.

Wheat Maslin % %

  Northumberland

Rye %

Barley %

Peas Vetch Other % % %

 

100

 

 

Yorkshire

43

 

57

 

 

 

 

Lincolnshire (Bruer)

46

 

6

21

13

 

14

Staffordshire (Keele)

45

 

54

 

 

 

1

Leicestershire (Rothley)

12

66

 

 

22

 

 

Shropshire (Lydley)

100

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norfolk and Suffolk

4

 

27

48

11

 

10

Cambridgeshire

6

 

54

34

 

 

6

Warwickshire (Balsall)

24

 

48

 

 

 

28

85 86 87 88

 

 

 

TNA, SC 6/1202/3. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 38; E 358/20, rot. 24. For the sources of the data that follow, see note 19 above. See, for example, Rush, ‘Impact of Commercialization’, p. 126 and notes.

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Wheat Maslin % %

 

Rye %

Barley %

Peas Vetch Other % % %

Worcestershire

53

 

 

 

48

 

 

Herefordshire

75

 

 

 

25

 

 

Bedfordshire

42

 

19

 

40

 

 

Gloucestershire (Guiting)

38

 

 

49

13

 

 

Hertfordshire

63

 

26

 

7

 

4

Essex (Cressing)

88

 

 

 

 

 

12

Essex (other)

16

84

 

 

 

 

 

Buckinghamshire (Bulstrode)

28

56

 

 

16

 

 

Berkshire (Bisham)

 

100

 

 

 

 

 

Wiltshire

 

 

 

100

 

 

 

Kent (Strood)

5

33

 

62

 

 

 

Somerset (Combe)

34

38

 

 

28

1

 

Sussex (Shipley)

 

 

44

56

 

 

 

Sussex (Saddlescombe)

100 (1st rank)

 

 

100 (2nd rank)

 

 

 

Overall, in half of the twenty-two counties for which information is available, the largest component of the grain given to the workers was wheat or a wheat mix (maslin). Although in East Anglia (Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk) the emphasis was on rye and barley, elsewhere the Templars’ farmworkers received higher quality grain.89 The only county in which the Templars’ famuli did not receive any form of wheat was Wiltshire. It was also absent from the grain distributed at a few small hamlets: Togrynd in Suffolk and Haddiscoe in Norfolk, Kirkby in Lincolnshire, and Millbrook in Bedfordshire; but all other workers received it. Jefferson has pointed out that at the start of 1308 the Templars in Lincolnshire had allocated ‘a surprisingly high percentage of the wheat store’ to the famuli, in contrast to (for example) some of the manors of the

89

For the sources of the data that follow, see note 19 above.

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Benedictine abbey at Glastonbury where famuli did not receive this high value grain. He argues that there was ‘a lower degree of commercialisation on the former Templar estates’ than on the Benedictine manors, as a much higher percentage of wheat was allocated to the farm workers than was sold.90 Yet the Templars were notorious for selling their wheat for the best price.91 Perhaps the Templars in Lincolnshire gave their workers wheat because it enabled them to attract and retain good workers; perhaps they were in competition with other landowners in Lincolnshire and this ensured that their workers did not go elsewhere. Certainly at Garway the sheriff noted that the levels of payment to the workers was to ensure that they stayed on the estate: quare aliter nolebant ibidem moram facere (because otherwise they did not wish to stay there).92 The neighbouring marcher county of Shropshire was even more generous, giving its workers only wheat. In contrast Wiltshire, with a high proportion of unfree tenants, gave only barley. In the months after the Templars’ arrests rye was distributed to the farm workers in only around a third of the counties where the Templars held demesne lands. Campbell noted that by the late fourteenth century rye was disappearing from workers’ liveries, and Christopher Dyer noted that by then the famuli ‘were given a higher proportion of wheat in their liveries’, but apparently for the Templars’ farm workers rye had declined and wheat increased earlier than this.93 In 1308 barley was given to the Templars’ workers as just over a third of their grain livery in Cambridgeshire, around half in Gloucestershire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and sixty per cent in Kent. At Saddlescombe in Sussex it was the only grain given to the second rank of workers (the custodians of wethers and ewes and the oxherd, while the dairy maid and garcio or ‘lad’ — a reference to his status, not his age — received barley bread) and Wiltshire (where it was purchased specifically for the purpose and was the only grain given). In the majority of counties it was not given to the farmworkers. This is in contrast to the Norfolk estates studied by Dyer, where the farmworkers were issued with barley alone throughout the year, and the Glastonbury Abbey estates studied by Rush, where the grain given to the farm workers comprised sixty per cent barley and forty per cent curall or low-grade wheat.94 The Templars’ workers also fared 90

91

92 93 94

Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp. 119–20, citing Rush, ‘Impact of Commercialization’, p. 133. ‘Sur les états du monde’, in Anglo-Norman Political Songs, ed. and trans. Isabel S. T. Aspin (Oxford, 1953), p. 123. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, p. 219; Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet’, p. 34. Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet’, p. 32; Rush, ‘Impact of Commercialization’, pp. 130, 132.

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well in comparison to those studied by Dyer at Cuxhim (Oxfordshire), where the workers received currall, dredge and peas, and at Manydown in Hampshire where they received barley and berecorn or winter barley.95 The custodians’ accounts from 1308 show that grain mixtures varied within the year. Where the royal custodian changed during the spring of 1308, separate accounts were produced for the period covering late winter to early spring and the late spring and summer months, allowing us to see how the grain mixture given to the farmworkers changed with the seasons.96 Table 2 shows the variations for Guiting and Combe. Table 2: Variations in grain livery between winter/spring and spring/summer.

Location

 Date

Guiting 10 January (Gloucestershire) 1308–9 May 1308

Combe (Somerset)

Wheat Maslin Barley Peas % % % %

Vetch %

26

 

54

20

9 May 1308– 29 September 1308

50

 

45

 

4

9 January 1308–6 April 1308

26

24

 

49

1

9 April 1308– 29 September 1308

42

51

 

7

 

In winter there was a higher proportion of peas in the mixture, while in summer there was a higher proportion of nutritious grain required for the heavier work required of the workers during the summer months or perhaps because more grain was available. Different roles attracted different allocations of grain, and these varied from estate to estate. The standard rates of distribution were one quarter each ten weeks (for the higher status workers), one quarter each twelve weeks, and one quarter each sixteen weeks (for the lowest). As Phillipp Schofield has noted, a quarter of wheat, which would have weighed almost 400 lbs (just over 180 kilos), ‘could have provided an individual’s principal food intake for a year’; these distributions were certainly adequate to 95 96

Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet’, p. 33. TNA, E 358/19, rot. 53 and E 358/18, rot. 5 (Guiting); E 358/18 rot. 35(1) and E 358/18, rot. 26 (Combe).

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sustain an individual.97 If (following Dyer’s calculations) a medieval family of father, mother, and three children required six quarters five bushels of grain a year, then a peasant family would have needed an additional source of income over and above what the Templars paid, or would have had to grow some grain for themselves.98 Regrettably the English custodians’ accounts give no personal information about the majority of the famuli, only very occasionally naming an individual worker, so we do not know whether they had families to provide for.99 The allocations did not vary on a regional basis.100 Table 3 is based on the first accounts produced by the royal custodians of the Templars’ estates in 1308: The ‘X’ indicates the standard payment, with exceptions set out separately. Table 3: Variations in frequency of grain payments to farm workers, listed from north to south: X indicates the standard payment in each location. County (commandery)  

One quarter of grain paid each

Equal 8 weeks 10 weeks shares

11 weeks

12 weeks

14 weeks 16 weeks

Northumberland

 

 

Carters, ploughmen

 

Reeve, harvestoverseer, cook

 

Swineherd

Yorkshire (Cowton)

 

 

 

 

X

 

Swineherd

Yorkshire (Faxfleet)

 

 

 

 

X

 

 

Staffordshire (Keele)

 

 

 

 

X

 

Dairyperson

Shropshire (Lydley)

 

 

X

 

Reeve

 

Shepherds, cowherd, swineherd

Norfolk and Suffolk

 

 

 

 

X

 

Swineherd

97

98

99 100

Phillipp  R. Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval England, 1200– 1500 (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 141. Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1520, rev. edn (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 134–35. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 22; E 358/18, rot. 19; E 358/20, rot. 13. For the data that follow, see note 19 above.

201

Helen J. Nicholson County (commandery)

One quarter of grain paid each

Cambridge­ shire

X

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warwick­ shire (Balsall)

 

Bailiff

 

 

X

 

Custodians of ewes, lambs, young oxen and horses

Worcestershire

 

 

 

 

X

 

 

Bedfordshire

 

 

X

 

 

 

Some ­shepherds

Gloucester­ shire (Guiting)

 

 

X

 

 

 

 

Hertfordshire

 

Reeve

Carters, ploughmen, cook, reeve

 

Cook, shepherd

 

Swineherds

Essex (Cressing)

 

 

Smith

 

X

 

Some shepherds, kitchenperson, harvestoverseer

Essex (Sutton)

 

Bailiff

 

X

 

 

Cook

Buckingham­ shire (Bulstrode)

 

 

Carter, ploughmen, harvest overseer

 

Shepherd, potagemaker

Swineherd

 

Berkshire (Bisham)

 

 

X

 

 

 

 

Kent

X

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somerset (Combe)

 

 

 

 

X

 

Swineherd

Sussex (Shipley)

 

 

 

Shepherd

Ploughmen

 

 

Sussex (Saddlescombe)

 

 

X

 

 

 

 

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The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

These figures are incomplete, as the accounts for Bruer in Lincolnshire, Rothley in Leicestershire, Herefordshire, and Wiltshire do not state how the mixture was divided between the different workers. As custodians came and went, the accounts for different estates cover different periods and so are not necessarily comparable; some accounts are missing. Nevertheless, mapping these figures across England shows that most estates paid an average of around a quarter of mixed grain for twelve weeks’ work, but Bisham and Guiting — in the south and south-west Midlands — paid the most generously. Bailiffs received the largest allocation of grain mixture. Reeves, harvest overseers, carters, and ploughholders all received similar quantities. Plough drivers and shepherds received the same as, or slightly less than, plough-holders. Cooks, who sometimes also worked in the dairy, received the same as the shepherd or slightly less. A person with the title ancilla (maid) or garcio (lad) who made the potage received the same or less again than the cook, although she or he might also have other tasks to perform which received an additional allowance. On farms where workers received variable quantities of grain depending on role, the swineherd generally received the least grain. It was normal practice on English medieval farms to give workers additional food in autumn, and the workers who were hired for harvest work also received payments of cash: Dyer cites a standard rate in 1300 of ‘a penny a day with food’.101 The Templars’ estates followed this. At Bruer the bailiff and all the farmworkers received additional food during the harvest period, which lasted from the beginning of August until the end of September.102 At Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire and at Strood in Kent a cook was hired for the harvest period, in addition to the additional workers needed to get in the harvest, and at Haddiscoe in Norfolk a lad was hired to wait at table during harvest.103 Cheese produced at Saddlescombe in Sussex was distributed in autumn to the workers throughout the Templars’ estates in that county. 104 Sometimes the employers also paid for additional treats: at Rothley the farmworkers received food and drink at Easter 1308, while at 101

102

103 104

Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet’, p.  22. For discussion of who joined the workforce during the harvest period, see ibid., pp. 22–23. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 19; E 358/20, rot. 15; Jefferson, ‘Templar Lands in Lincolnshire’, pp. 228–29. TNA, E 358/18, rots 3, 7, 8. TNA, E 358/20, rot. 13d.

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Garway and Upleadon all the farmworkers customarily received food and drink at Christmas and Easter.105 At Temple Cressing the person working in the diary received two cheeses and the mowers received a cheese weighing a stone in cons’ Custumar’ (in customary custom).106 The regular farmworkers’ cash stipends were paid at different rates depending on their roles, but as stipends were normally listed in the enrolled accounts as lump sums to a group of workers, it is only rarely that we can see the different rates of pay for the regular workers. Table 4 summarizes the data from the three surviving accounts with this information from 1308 that I have found to date. Although precise wage rates varied, the carters and the men holding the plough received the most cash and those driving the plough animals earned slightly less. Those caring for the livestock came next, although swineherds often earned less than other herdsmen. The maid or lad who made potage generally earned the least cash, but the rate may have depended on whether this was a part-time or a full-time role. The accounts do not usually record how many days each of these employees worked; at the Shropshire houses the maid and lad may have been employed only to make potage during harvest, while the ploughmen and carters would have had work all year round. Bailiffs, the servientes (servants) or custodes (custodians) of the manor, were usually paid by the day at rates varying between 1½d. to 3d., although at Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire the bailiff was paid 3d. a week p[ro] potu suo (for his drink), at Gislingham he was paid for his robe, at Saddlescombe in Sussex the bailiff was paid half a mark (a third of a pound) a year for his footwear, while at Wetherby in Yorkshire he was paid 18d. a week.107 Workers hired for specific jobs, such as carpenters and smiths hired to make and repair ploughs and carts, were usually paid only in cash, but sometimes they also received grain, perhaps where they had joined the permanent workforce.108 Reeves generally received a customary payment 105

106 107

108

TNA, E 358/18, rot. 2d; E 358/19, rots 25, 27; E 199/1/5 — this does not specify that the expenses were for food and drink, but food and drink are the most likely reason. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 22d. TNA, E 358/18 rot. 25d (Sharnbrook); E 358/18, rot. 3 (Gislingham); E 358/20, rot. 13 (Saddlescombe); E 358/20, rot. 41 (Wetherby); E 358/19, rot. 26 (Cowley); E 358/18, rot. 24d (Lannock); E 358/18, rot. 6d (Thornton); E 358/18, rot. 52(1) and E 358/20, rot. 38 (Chiriton and Rockley). TNA, E 358/18, rot. 5 (Guiting); E 358/18, rot. 24d (Chelsing and Lannock); E 358/18, rot. 23 (Dinsley); E 358/20, rot. 40(2) (Faxfleet).

204

 

Solidi paid during period of account

Stanton Long (Shrops.) 10 Jan.–29 Sep. 1308 (37 weeks)

 

 

Carter, ploughmen

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maid

 

 

 

6

5

4.58

4.17

4

3.5

3

2.5

2

1.5

1

0.5

Harrowers

 

 

 

 

Cook making potage

 

 

Drivers of plough animals, swineherd, cowherd

 

Carter, plough-holders

 

Upleadon (Herefords.): 10 Jan.–29 Sep. 1308 (37 weeks).

Table 4: Cash payments to workers in the particulars of account.

Maid making potage

 

 

 

 

Drivers of plough animals

 

 

 

 

 

Carter, plough-holders

Temple Broughton (Worcs.):14 Jan.–25 Jul. 1309 (27 weeks).

Maid making potage

 

 

 

 

Drivers of plough animals

 

Plough holders

 

 

 

 

Hill Croome (Worcs.): 14 Jan.–25 Jul. 1309 (27 weeks).

The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

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Helen J. Nicholson

in cash.109 At Cressing and Temple Witham in Essex the cooks were paid cash stipends, an allocation of grain (one quarter each sixteen weeks of a mixed grain that at Cressing was mostly wheat and at Witham was mostly maslin), and souel seluir, a wage paid in respect of food.110 What were the grain equivalents of these payments? The value of grain varied according to location and time, as market price varied with quality and supply. At Stanton Long during the thirty-seven weeks covered by the payments set out in Table 4, 67s. 2¾d. bought fifteen quarters a bushel and a peck of wheat, three quarters five bushels of oats, and four bushels of peas.111 Regrettably the account does not give the price of a single quarter of wheat, but a quarter of that mixture would have cost 2.29s. So the carter and ploughmen, each earning 4.58s. over thirty-seven weeks, could each have bought two quarters of that mixture with their cash pay. As they also received a quarter of pure wheat each twelve weeks, their cash stipends were worth much less than their grain wages. At Upleadon during the same period, the custodian sold wheat at rates varying between 4s. and 5s. a quarter.112 The carter, ploughmen, swineherd, and cowherd could have bought around one quarter of wheat with their cash pay. The accounts do not give the rate for payment of the grain livery to the different ranks of ploughmen and the carter, only the sum totals paid: they received on average 2.3 quarters of grain each during the thirtyseven weeks of the account. The swineherd and cowherd each received a quarter for fourteen weeks’ work. All these workers’ cash stipend was worth less than their grain payment. At Temple Broughton in the period of the above payments, the custodian bought wheat at a rate of 6s. a quarter; the carter and plough-holders could have bought a quarter of wheat with their cash stipend, in addition to the quarter of grain each twelve weeks that they received. As they were paid for twenty-seven weeks’ work, their grain payment was worth more 109

110

111 112

For example, at Cowley and Horspath in Oxfordshire the reeves received 3s. 6d. as a customary payment on 25 March (TNA, E 358/19, rot. 26), at Lydley in Shropshire the reeve received 3s. 10½d., and at Keele he received 3s. 4d. (E 358/18, rot. 4; E 358/20, rots. 5d, 6). At Faxfleet the reeve received a stipend with the granger, carpenter, smith, and so on, but he also fulfilled the task of servant-custodian of the manor (E 358/20, rot. 40[2]). A wage paid either as salary or for a specific job, perhaps originally paid in lieu of or for the purpose of attaining food: The Middle English Dictionary, online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED41777 (accessed 23 May 2016). TNA, E 358/20, rot. 5d. TNA, E 199/18/4.

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The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

than their cash payment.113 No wheat was bought or sold at Hill Croome, but the custodian bought oats at 3s. a quarter, which was the same cost as at Temple Broughton. Again, their standard grain livery was one quarter for twelve weeks, and the accounts gave the payments for twenty-seven weeks’ work, so again their grain payment was worth more than their cash payment.114 Farmworkers also received other benefits. At some commanderies, gloves were bought for the workforce in autumn: Bruer, Bulstrode, Combe, Guiting in Gloucestershire, the Shropshire houses (Lydley, Stanton Long, Holt Preen), and Keele. At Hill Croome in Worcestershire only the plough-holders and animal drivers received gloves. 115 At Upleadon in Herefordshire the sheriff also paid for tallow for the farmworkers’ lamps in winter.116 Regrettably such detailed data is not available for Ireland or Normandy, but the accounts from Payns allow some comparisons. The 1308 accounts for the Templars’ commandery at Payns show the workers being employed on continuous contracts that ran from St Martin’s Day (11 November) to St John’s Day (24 June) and vice versa: they were paid four times a year, at the start and end of their contracts. Comparing the names in the surviving custodians’ accounts for Payns, Wilmart judged that there was a steady turnover of farmworkers. The key employees — granger, porter, cook, and carters — remained the same, but herdsmen and shepherds changed regularly.117 It is difficult to compare rates of pay for the Payns workers with those in England because the periods covered by payments differed, the Payns records do not give details of grain liveries, and the value of the pound of Tours fluctuated wildly against the pound sterling. However, if we follow the English government of the day in working to an estimate of £1 to 4l. tournois, we find that Vincent the carter’s pay of 30s. tournois for the period from St Martin’s Day 1307 to St John’s Day 1308 (around thirty-two weeks) was the rough equivalent of 7½s. sterling; while Jehanin the carter was paid 40s. tournois in the same period, roughly equal to 10s. sterling. The two French carters also received a pint of wine each day and

113 114 115

116 117

TNA, E 199/46/21, rot. 1. TNA, E 199/45/21, rot. 3r. TNA, E 358/18, rot. 7 (Bulstrode); E 358/18, rot. 19 (Bruer); E 358/18, rot. 26 (Combe); E 358/18, rot. 5 (Temple Guiting); E 358/18, rot. 4 and E 358/20, rot. 5 (Lydley, Stanton Long, Holt Preen, and Keele); E 358/19, rot. 50 (Hill Croome). TNA, E 199/18/5. Wilmart, ‘Salariés, journaliers et artisans’, pp. 275, 281.

207

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the workers received an allowance of grain and oat potage.118 In contrast, a carter at Upleadon was paid only 5s. sterling over nearly thirty-eight weeks, in addition to a distribution of wheat, peas, and oat potage. The Payns workers, then, were paid more generously than those in England. The costs of employing workers reveal the considerable expenses incurred in managing an estate directly, and help to explain why in some areas of England — Cornwall, Devon, Glamorgan, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Westmorland — the Templars found it cheaper and more efficient to lease out their lands and simply collect the rent.

Conclusion The Templars’ houses in western Europe served a crucial role both as agricultural producers and local religious houses. The evidence discussed above indicates that the Templars’ estates in England and Wales were organized on a commercial basis, to produce a profit which could be sent to the Holy Land and other crusading theatres. The brothers concentrated on the most profitable activity, raising wheat or wool, and leased out their land in areas which were not good for the production of either. Jefferson’s work on Lincolnshire indicates that their agricultural practices followed the best contemporary procedures, although they did adapt these to local conditions. So although the Templars preferred mixed horse/ox plough teams, on the sandy soils of Norfolk and Suffolk they used horses alone, and on the heavy soils of Temple Balsall they used only oxen. Like the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and Hospitallers, the Templars had received donations of marginal land and made it profitable, employing the most productive methods; although it is not clear how far their methods were continued after the brothers’ arrest.119 Overall, the evidence discussed 118

119

Pétel, ‘Comptes de régie’, pp. 319, 332, 360, 362. I am very grateful to Prof. Peter Spufford for his advice on the tournois/sterling exchange rate at this period. For examples of the exchange rate of £1 to 4l. tournois over the period 1297 to 1310 see, for example: Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward I, 4 vols (London, 1895), 3: 231, 232, 234, 419; Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward I, 5 vols (London, 1908), 5: 250; Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward II, 5 vols (London, 1894), 1: 216. For example: Records of the Templars, pp. clxxxi–clxxxiv; Karl Borchardt, ‘The Templars and Thirteenth-Century Colonisation in Eastern Central Europe’, in Économie templière, pp.  415–52; Alain Demurger, Les Templiers: Une chevalerie chrétienne au moyen âge (Paris, 2005), pp. 300–8; Slavin, ‘Landed Estates’, p. 49.

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The Surveys and Accounts of the Templars’ Estates in England and Wales (1308–13)

above indicates that the Templars’ estates in England and Wales could have made a substantial financial contribution to the Templars’ military commitments overseas, and could have been a significant driver in the development of agricultural economies in the West. The Templars’ agricultural production was also geared towards the welfare and sustenance of local workers and (we may assume) the brothers themselves living in the houses. The Templars employed both men and women on their estates and as household staff, and they paid their workers in high quality grain; in some areas they also paid them additional benefits, such as gloves, in addition to the usual additional food and drink at harvest. Regrettably the records from 1308 do not tell us the workers’ and tenants’ reactions to the Templars’ arrest, and whether they resented the loss of a generous employer. A satirist of the late thirteenth century had complained that in times of scarcity the Templars preferred to sell their wheat rather than give it to their dependents, suggesting that their tenants did not rate them highly, but Clarence Perkins’ research into the Templars in the British Isles revealed that their tenants and associates were only too eager to exploit their connection with this religious order, claiming their privileges for themselves.120 However, what the post-arrest accounts do not tell us is how much the Templars would have been spending on almsgiving and hospitality. The evidence of their expenses in paying corrodies to employees, retired servants, and benefactors, suggests that this was a heavy commitment for some houses. Their impact on the local economy may have been as significant as any traditional, contemplative religious order, and their arrest a sad blow to the local society and economy.

120

‘Sur les états du monde’, p. 123; Clarence Perkins, ‘The Knights Templars in the British Isles’, The English Historical Review 25 (1910), 209–30 (here 217–19).

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Opus caritativum: Crowdfunding the Later Crusades The English Evidence

Timothy Guard ‘If you have much, give abundantly: if you have little, take care even so to bestow willingly a little’.1

Central to the moral standing of the crusade was the concept of Christian charity (caritas). To venture on crusade or to commit financial resources was to encompass both filial charity (agape) towards God and fraternal love for one’s neighbour. It was a theme worked up systematically by St Bernard, Innocent III, and in the later writings of crusade preachers and reformers such as Humbert of Romans and James of Vitry.2 While the ‘ardour of charity’ was the prime animating force of the early crusaders, repeated failure to recover Jerusalem and free the holy sites after 1187 was, the reasoning ran, because ‘the charity of many has become cold’ (Innocent III).3 A deficit of caritas had deadened the swords of even the most zealous of crusaders. At heart lay St Augustine’s teaching that war was 1 2

3

Tobit, 4. 9. The classic treatment is Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an Act of Love’, History 65 (1980), 177–92; see too James Brundage, ‘Holy War and the Medieval Lawyers’, in The Holy War, ed. Thomas Murphy (Columbus, OH, 1976), pp. 99–141; Frederick Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 16–26; Thomas Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order (Berkeley, 2002), pp. 55–90; Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent  III to the Fall of Acre, 1197–1291, ed. Jessalynn Bird, Edward  M. Peters, and James  M. Powell (Philadelphia, 2013), p.  107 (Innocent  III), 143 ( James of Vitry), 327 (preaching instructions); for other crusade sermon texts Christoph Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 110–11, 130–31, 134–45, 154–55, 228–29. Crusade and Christendom, p. 107.

Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 211–233. ©F

H G

DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117321

Timothy Guard

both a consequence of sin and a remedy for it. Provided it was motivated by caritas and dispensed by legitimate authority, any violent Christian act was justified. Charity in this sense was an act of agonistic love — or, as Pegatha Taylor puts it, ‘a permanent state of embattlement’, resting on the necessity of suffering.4 Here, then, caritas was synonymous with expansion of the faith and the crusade fight, inseparable from apostolic discipline and bodily sacrifice. Nonetheless, caritas, including support for the medieval crusade, was also to operate on a local functional level, binding individuals to Christian community through inward material and moral support. Increasingly, throughout Christendom, the giving of alms and performance of other meritorious works amounted to a social doctrine with, for participants, full membership of christiana societas implied. The writings of Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas perhaps did most to establish the obligation of charity as an active duty imposed by God: for Aquinas, ‘Charity is higher than faith or hope, and consequently, than all the virtues’; ‘There can be no true virtue without charity’; ‘Charity is more excellent than faith’. Taken up widely by the moralists of the university at Paris, and cross-fertilized with messages of support for the crusade (among other things), charity as a ‘religious ideology’ would go handin-hand with a mass expansion of the system of crusade indulgences, finance, and fundraising in the 1200s.5 Alongside its legal and other theoretical formulations, caritas would supply crusading with perhaps its most defensible inner logic. Such ideas lost little of their force in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, at a time when attitudes towards charity underwent notable change, and when the crusade war continued to make far-reaching 4

5

Pegatha Taylor, ‘Moral Agency in Crusade and Colonization: Anselm of Havelberg and the Wendish Crusade of 1147’, International History Review 22 (2000), 757–84 (here 782). For Gratian, Hostiensis, and other decretalists, see Russell, Just War, pp.  60–125, 195–211; for Aquinas and charity as a religious ideology see Summa Theologica: Second Part of the Second Part, ed. A. Guyl (Ontario, 2018), pp. 97–135 (pp. 101–2 for passages cited above) and James Brodman, Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe (Washington DC, 2009), pp. 9–44; for the influence of the Paris reformers see the essays by Jessalynn Bird: ‘Innocent III, Peter the Chanter and the Crusade Indulgence: Theory, Implementation and Aftermath’, in Innocenzo III: Urbs et Orbis. Atti del Congresso Internazionale, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols (Roma, 2002), 1: 503–34; ‘Paris Masters and the Justification of the Albigensian Crusade’, Crusades 6 (2007), 117–55; ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 81–113.

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ethical and financial demands, not only on the individual penitent, but also on national churches and on the body politic. The examples of France, Burgundy, and Italy are perhaps best known, but this was no less evident in England, where, as Christopher Tyerman first established, the later crusades remained an enterprise of significant political and moral scope.6 That there was an efflorescence of crusade-related finance, with charitable giving increasingly at its core, is not surprising. For one thing, it was in keeping with devotional and organizational changes witnessed across the provincial church. But this was also the age when traditional centralized funding mechanisms such as the papal crusade tenth began to break down. The English parliament legislated against mandatory papal taxes in 1388; across Europe the needs of secular armies would go on to monopolize ever larger portions of the church’s taxable revenue.7 Yet, despite these difficulties, alternative money-raising conventions continued to flourish across various English contexts, not just in the notoriously energetic (grubby to its critics) marketing of Bishop Despenser’s so-called ‘national crusade’ to Flanders in 1383. In the parishes, crusade preaching and the collection of donations and legacies persisted. As elsewhere, crusade indulgences remained part of a rapidly expanding penitential system, albeit increasingly commercial as redemption of vows or the performance of meritorious acts gave way to simple sale and payment. Counter-currents of excitement and scepticism betrayed the usual range of attitudes and responses. In Edward II’s reign, heated exchanges in parliament centred upon the papacy’s increasingly forceful methods of crusade fundraising. At issue in 1307 was the siphoning of income from sources traditionally subject to royal courts. Clement V’s collector William Testa was roundly condemned for exploiting his commission and farming ‘great sums’ to the prejudice of the crown and the faithful at large. Similar complaints were aired by the barons in 1309. Nonetheless, such monies provided the enduring mechanism for general involvement, drawing upon key elements of popular religion: caritas, confession, and ritual purgation.8 Against this framework, the contours of late medieval 6

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Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), esp. chs 9–11. William Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1939–62), 2: 124. The last mandatory crusade tenth was collected in England in the 1330s. On the issue of criticism, see Elizabeth Siberry, ‘Criticism of Crusading in Fourteenth-Century England’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. Peter Edbury (Caerdydd, 1985), pp. 127–32; for a balanced discussion Tyerman, England and the

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crusade finance achieve greater definition. In the absence of papal taxation (the ‘ultimate fiscal weapon’), ritual acts of caritas — both as expression of symbolic communion with Christ, and as mechanical demand and giving of coin — lay at the heart of an increasingly decentralized, though no less active, culture of material response. This is the subject sketched out briefly in the pages below.9 The best of good causes, parish investment in the crusade involved finance from a range of sources: wills, redemptions, donations, indulgence fees, punitive fines, and payments made to the Holy Land for breach of contract. Like other forms of parish charity, donations depended upon local resources, shrewd advertising and peer pressure, and might exploit popular activities and community concerns. The ‘sociology’ of latemedieval fundraising helps to expand our notion of religious culture and the place of the crusade within it. As theologians warned in spiritual handbooks and as parish priests admonished during Mass, reception of God’s grace could only be gained through devotion to ‘Charite’. A heavy stress on neighbourliness and ‘good works’ as a functional corollary is evident across the sources. Its common outward expression — coin and other precious items — provided vital material and psychological substance, but for the English preacher John of Bromyard (d. c. 1352) charitas meant ‘the death of criminality’. It was the ‘palm of victory’ and the route to Christian fellowship. It was good mainly because it allowed spiritual merit to settle upon the neighbourly giver as well as upon the receiver. To those who did not provide alms, there was only eternal woe.10 The popular

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Crusades, pp. 259–301, 333–40; and more recently Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006), pp. 894–905; William Lunt, ‘William Testa and the Parliament of Carlisle’, The English Historical Review 41 (1926), 340–51; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, ed. Chris Given-Wilson et al., 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005), 6: 311–13, 327–35; ‘Annales Londoniensis’, in Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 76 (London, 1882–83), 1: 1–251 (here 1: 163). On the evolution of centralized crusade taxation, see Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan A Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (London, 2015), pp. 204–27. For a recent overview, see Adam Davis, ‘The Social and Religious Meanings of Charity in Medieval Europe’, History Compass 12 (2014), 935–50. The literature is wide but see in particular Brodman, Charity and Religion; Andrew Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1995), pp.  132–58; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987); and comments in Daniel Thiery, Polluting the Sacred: Violence, Faith and the Civilising of Parishioners in Late Medieval England (Leiden, 2009), pp. 53–54,

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sermon collection Mirk’s Festial (c. 1380) repeatedly warned that the Devil hated parishioners who lived in charity. Yet, those who dispensed alms should have no fear: ‘for ryght as water quenchyth fyre, ryght so almysdede quenchyth synne’. In a typically hard-edged sermon Bishop Thomas Brinton (d. 1389) laid the central message bare. The hand opened in charity to the poor will never perish.11 Secular writing extended parallel themes. Gower’s richly allusive Confessio Amantis and Langland’s Piers Plowman both offered meditations on the subject, coloured with earthly illustrations of the hazards of hoarding wealth. Caritas as a badge of social respectability was a common trope of contemporary chivalric literature.12 Finally, in the civic setting, a proliferation of pious guilds organized themselves largely around the principles of fraternity and exercise of public charity. Innovation and expansion here were dramatic, particularly in the latter half of the fourteenth century. In such ways were the fabric of churches maintained, the poor fed and clothed, the sick attended to, shrines enlarged, bridges repaired, and hostages of foreign wars ransomed. As Katherine French argues, the function of charity was what gave substance to the community (living and dead) of the medieval parish.13

11

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80; for methodologies see the influential Paul Servish and John Havens, ‘Social Participation and Charitable Giving’ , Voluntas 8  (1997), 235–60; John of Bromyard, (citing Julian Pomerius, De vita contemplativa) ‘Charitas est mors criminum, virtus pugnantium, palma victorum, Concordia mentium, societas electorum’, in Summa praedicantium (Venezia, 1586), pp. 104–6 (‘Charitas’), 225–37 (‘Eleemosynarum’). Mirk’s Festial: A  Collection of Homilies, ed. Theodore Erbe (London, 1905), pp. 4, 10, 70, 76, 85, 130–31, 277–78; Thomas Brinton, The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, ed. Mary Devlin, 2 vols (London, 1954), 1: 194–200. See also Middle English Sermons, ed. Woodburn O. Ross (London, 1940), p. 62. See for example Carrol Jamieson, ‘John Gower’s Shaping of the “Tale of Constance” as an Exemplum contra Envy’, in Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard Newhauser and Susan Ridyard (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 239–60. ‘Bote yf ʒe loue leelliche and lene Ϸe poure,/ Of such good as god sent goodliche parte,/ ʒe have no more merit in masse ne in houres,/ Than Malkyn of hure maidenhod’: William Langland, The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, ed. Walter  W. Skeat, 2 vols (Oxford, 1886), 1: 36–37. For chivalric literature, see salient comments in Raluca Radulescu, ‘How Christian is Chivalry?’, in Christianity and Romance in Medieval England, ed. Rosalind Field, Phillipa Hardman, and Michelle Sweeney (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 69–83. For the national picture: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of The Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 141–54, 266–98; for

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Into this varied and localized religious culture came repeated calls for aid against the enemies of the Cross. Most generations in the years 1300–1500 were familiar with the language of ‘assistance against the unfaithful’ (subsidium contra infideles). Making payment to the crusade would continue to proceed along traditional lines. The faithful were exhorted to check their consciences, to open their hearts to charity, and to pledge support to the holy cause. Licensed agents of the church moved from parish to parish, making use of pulpit and market square to prosecute the cause and make known the value of crusade indulgences. Preaching messages reinforced the principle, cautioning those who exhibited a greater love for ill-gotten gains than for salvation. Scripture demanded such charitable giving, an English crusade preacher argued in the 1380s, paraphrasing Christ’s admonition ‘offer alms and all things are clean for you’ (Luke 11. 41). For Humbert of Romans, prayerful fidelity was not enough; it was necessary to support the crusade cause with good works (c. 1265).14 Personification of oppressed Christian lands in papal letters helped underscore the point. Battered, bleeding, pauperized, and abandoned, the plight of Christendom itself was akin to that of the most needy and deserving of godly society. By design or not, such excitatoria stressed that the stricken church belonged to the category of the ‘holy poor’, those whose misfortune gave them a pre-emptive claim to charity because poverty was not their own fault in any blameworthy sense.15 Indeed, at high points of activity, the sources suggest an England bristling

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the provincial picture: Brown, Popular Piety, pp.  132–58; Katherine French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 20–23, 99–141. Fasciculi zizaniorum, ed. William Shirley, Rolls Series, 5 (London, 1858), pp. 506–11; Maier, Crusade Propaganda, pp. 154–55, 229; Humbert of Romans, De predicatione Sancte Crucis (Nürnberg, 1490), esp. ch. 13. Cf. papal bulls ‘Gustato ante’ (1307) and ‘Exurgat Deus’ (1308), in Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, diocesis Sarebiriensis archiepiscopi, 1297–1315, ed. Cyril Flower and Michael Dawes, 2 vols (Oxford, 1914–34), 2: 223–27, 303–11; ‘Ad commemorandum’ (1333), in Calendar of the Register of Simon de Montacute, Bishop of Worcester 1334–1137, ed. Roy Haines (Worcester, 1996), pp.  215– 19; ‘Magna replete’ (1345), in Registrum Hamonis Hethe, diocesis Roffensis, 1319–1352, ed. Charles Johnson, 2 vols (Oxford, 1948), 2: 771–74; for papal indulgences in aid of Hospitallers at Bodrum (1409), Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, 1406–1437, ed. Robin L. Storey, 6 vols (Durham, 1949–62), 1: 147–51; for the ‘holy poor’ and devotional expenditure, see Robert Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 466–68.

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with fundraisers urging donations to a range of crusade-related causes: if not exactly the medieval equivalent to the modern day ‘chugger’, then part sales-broker, part inquisitor, and part faith-healer. What this involved in practice is glimpsed in 1310, when, within the space of eight weeks, the dogged William Testa raised £350 from his inquisitions across three dioceses. On answering Testa’s writ in Worcester, the prior ordered each rural dean to assemble the rectors, vicars, parochial chaplains, and four laymen from each parish — dozens of men — and obtain from them evidence concerning indistinct legacies, money promised or bequeathed to the Holy Land, redemption of vows, and the names of debtors and any crusaders who had died testate or intestate. Evidence was collated from the records of public notaries and others involved in the drafting and testing of wills, or from entries in diocesan and chapter registers. The bluntest legal mechanism, the faculty of seizing the wealth of deceased who had failed to designate an heir, reveals the extent to which the crusade had evolved as a financial institution and its ready intrusion into personal affairs.16 Even without the full powers of a papal writ, the activities of fundraisers could be intense. A telling example might be the campaigning activity of the English military order of St Thomas of Acre, a diminutive crusading order with headquarters on Cyprus. The fraternity kept up a regular search for alms in England for ‘their wars against Saracens’. In 1320 their agents embarked on a national ten-year fundraising tour. On their second visit to his diocese (1326) the bishop of Bath and Wells commended the order’s representations to the faithful, noting that the knights had been ‘grievously oppressed by the foes of Christ’. But there was also reason for some caution. Foremost was the bishop’s anxiety that, against such competition, the cash-flow towards local charitable causes might come to harm. In this case the cathedral fabric collection was judged to be particularly vulnerable.17 A similar unease surfaced in reactions to the fundraising enterprises of the Knights Hospitaller, a major player in England’s indulgence trade, 16 17

Details in Lunt, ‘William Testa’, pp. 352–54. Documents nouveaux servant de preuves à l’Histoire de l’Île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1882), pp.  360–61; The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340, ed. Rosalind Hill et  al., 6 vols (Woodbridge, 1977– ), 3: 23; The Register of John Kirkby, Bishop of Carlisle, 1332–1352 and the Register of John Ross, Bishop of Carlisle, 1325–1332, ed. Robin  L. Storey, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 1993–95), 1: 9; ‘The Register of Roger de Norbury’, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, (Birmingham, 1880), p. 270; The Register of John Drokensford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1309–1329, ed. Edmund Hobhouse (London, 1887), pp. 220, 261.

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and because of their defence of Christendom against the Turks at Rhodes (until 1522), among the most prominent promoters of the crusade. Agents for the Hospitallers attracted anger for their seemingly high-handed manner. Particularly irksome to the parochial clergy was disruption to Sunday sermons and Masses, as Hospitaller questores travelled between churches seeking alms. Determined to publish their special privileges and indulgences, they reportedly intruded upon Masses and cajoled congregations into giving coin before allowing services to resume. Another allegation was that the Hospitallers outsourced their fundraising to people who were unsuitable and ‘almost illiterate’, their preacherly and moral claims sowing errors. Anger flared when the benefice holder lost his weekly income in alms.18 Against such a background it is possible to trace a rich texture of material response. Distinction needs to be made between old debts to the crusade, bequests, and sales of indulgences such as those issued for proposed Holy Land expeditions, or other papally sponsored campaigns. Takings from Clement V’s indulgences in aid of the Hospitaller campaign in the Aegean during 1308–13 exposed a very wide reach. They compared favourably with funds gathered during the grand promotional campaigns of the thirteenth century. Chroniclers were struck by the scale of remissions on offer, and a fast trade in indulgences seems to have quickly taken up.19 Approximately £8000 was collected from English parishes, though wide discrepancies in diocesan records suggest uneven levels of engagement (as much as uneven standards of accounting). Salisbury diocese yielded over £370 during the five years of collection; in neighbouring Exeter diocese, the sum collected was less than £100. By contrast, York diocese took receipts of nearly £500 for the term 1309–11.20 In general, the sums raised through English crusade indulgence sales in the years 1200–1500 adhered to this scale. The proceeds of indulgences in 1237, 1248, and 1272 remained within the margins of 18

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Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 478, 559; John Purvey, Remonstrances against Romish Corruptions in the Church, ed. J. Forshall (London, 1851), pp. 57–66, esp. p. 59; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. David Wilkins, 4 vols (London, 1737), 3: 84–85. ‘Annales Londoniensis’, p.  156; ‘Annales Paulini’, in Chronicles of Edward, 1: 253–370 (here p. 266); Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ed. John Gilbert, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 80 (London, 1884), 2: 293; Registrum Radulphi Baldock, Gilberti Segrave, Ricardi Newport et Stephani Gravesend, ed. Robert Fowler (London, 1911), p. 134. Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, 2: 544; Lunt, Financial Relations, 1: 459; The Register of William Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York, 1306–1315, ed. William Brown and A. Hamilton-Thompson, 5 vols (Durham, 1931–40), 4: 363.

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£1000–£5000. They provided useful supplements for military campaigns, certainly  — but tended to make a larger impact upon contemporary opinion and crusade propagandists than upon the fortunes of proposed expeditions.21 Yet, in taking the crusade ad populum, this was partly the point. A distinctive feature of the Hospitaller privileges was the low cost of partial indulgences. In an age when the expense of personal military service remained prohibitively high, the poor were deliberately brought within the threshold for spiritual relief, notwithstanding potential harm to overall profits. In 1308 penitents who contributed 24d. tournois received an indulgence of twenty-four years, those donating 12d. tournois twelve years, and gifts of 1d. tournois attracted an indulgence of a single year. The only surviving definition of the amount needed to obtain a full remission without personal participation put it at one quarter of the donor’s estimated yearly income.22 This was the context for the myriad bits of broken silver and other items of scrap metal delivered up by parish poor. The drain on local wealth could be impressive, nonetheless. When set against the new valuation for the clerical tenth across the northern dioceses (£2372), the sum raised in York diocese alone in 1309–11 (£491) represented a substantial part of the local economy — one, moreover, devastated by poor harvests and Scottish raids.23 Detailed accounts show strong pockets of enthusiasm elsewhere. London was a hotbed of excitement. For those turning in the heavily debased French pennies of black tournois (black because of high copper content), on the other hand, an indulgence collection might also be a good way of getting rid of unwanted foreign currency while gaining spiritual benefit. As with other monetarized areas of life, favourable rates of exchange no doubt sparked added interest.24 Promotional campaigns in the following decades carried the customary promise of plenary indulgences to all who pledged a sufficient portion 21

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For the crusade financing of Simon of Montfort, William Longspee, and the Lord Edward, see: Simon Lloyd, English Society and the Crusades 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 147–52; The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York, 1266–1279, ed. William Brown (Durham, 1904), pp. 277–86; Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade, p. 226. For the fifteenth century see Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 302–23. Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, 2: 307–8; Lunt, Financial Relations, 1: 440. Register of William Greenfield, 4: 363. For catastrophic climatic-economic disruption in the early 1300s, see Bruce Campbell, ‘Nature as Historical Protagonist: Environment and Society in Pre-Industrial England’, The Economic History Review 63 (2010), 281–314. ‘Annales Londoniensis’, p.  156; ‘Annales Paulini’, p.  266; Registrum Baldock, Segrave, Newport et Gravesend, p. 134; Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, 2: 544.

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of their goods. Money was collected following publication of Philip VI’s crusade in the 1330s, and sums harvested from indulgences were most likely transferred to the papal camera by the English Carmelites following their preaching tour in 1346–47. In both instances, indulgences were promoted with the aid of parish clergy.25 The stir caused by the ‘wonderful indulgences’ issued for Bishop Henry Despenser’s crusade to Flanders in 1383 is better attested, partly because of its prominence in political circles. Within weeks of the administrative machinery swinging into action, reports started to circulate of people donating vast quantities in the form of vow redemptions, alms, and other gifts. According to Walsingham, ‘huge sums of money, piled up from many parts of the kingdom, were put into the bishop’s hands’. If, as one churchman joked, the realm’s ‘hidden treasure’ in women’s jewels, necklaces, plate, rings, and other ornaments was suddenly put at risk, it was because preachers everywhere were instructed to direct even the poorest cottager to consider her conscience and donate a trinket or two. At least one noble lady reputedly donated £100, ‘some more, some less’.26 It is difficult to calculate the precise sum collected. Froissart estimated 25,000 francs were raised in this way. John Wycliff, a vehement opponent of the whole enterprise, put the total at several thousand pounds. In the event, most of Despenser’s war chest derived from the £37,475 7s. 6d. awarded by parliament which, despite the fact that he reneged on his agreement to supply 3000 men-at-arms and 3000 archers, he was allowed to keep.27 Nevertheless, the indulgences served as an important propaganda tool, magnifying the army’s religious claims, and drawing the abundant fire of Wycliff and other critics. The picture was not markedly different in 1386, when proctors for John of Gaunt’s crusade against Clementist Castile continued to issue papal indulgences long after his military campaign had ended in dubious stalemate. According to later reports, ‘much money’ eventually found its way into the preachers’ hands.28

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The Register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1329–1363, ed. Thomas Holmes, 2 vols (London, 1896), 1: 263, 267; Register of Simon de Montacute, pp. 223–25; Registrum Hamonis Hethe, 2: 770–75; Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 88–93. Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp.  333–40; Westminster Chronicle, ed. Leonard Hector and Barbara Harvey (Oxford, 1982), pp.  33, 36–37, 309; Thomas Walsingham, The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376–1422, ed. James Clark, trans. David Preest (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 197. Parliament Rolls, 6: 311–13, 327–35; Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 543; Issues of the Exchequer, ed. Frederick Devon (London, 1837), pp. 222–23. Calendar of Papal Letters, ed. W. H. Bliss et al., 20 vols (London, 1893– ), 4: 270; Registrum Johannis Gilbert, 1375–1389, episcopi Herefordensis, ed. Joseph

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The gendered response noted by chroniclers in 1383 seems to reflect both a concerted fundraising effort in urban areas and differences in the legal status between men and women. Married women could not by common law dispose of their own property, but they could still dispose of small household items which were likely part of their dowries. In other spheres of parish charity, women were more likely to give jewellery, domestic objects, or clothing. In urban or elite settings, where access to cash was readier, monetary donations were the norm.29 Nonetheless, the forwardness of female involvement in fundraising (‘the bishop had collected a massive amount, especially from ladies and women’) not only confirmed chroniclers’ latent suspicions of female profligacy, but also testified to the crusade’s wide ritual embrace. By tradition, married women making crusade vows possessed a degree of independence very unusual in devotional life. According to canon law, pledging crusade cash or personal participation did not require the consent of a husband. The autonomy this made temporarily available perhaps mobilized conspicuous female giving, as well as heightened levels of male anxiety.30 Another perspective is opened up in the instructions circulated to collectors in 1336. Here, the incentive to commit alms to the crusade, to demonstrate caritas, was extended with the promise of a general amnesty from other ‘pious promises’ or financial penances not completed. Giving to the crusade cancelled all other devotional debts, save the costs associated with pilgrimage. It was a commonplace principle in later periods when crusade preachers were encouraged to cite the example of alms-giving to the poor in order to show by comparison how much greater was the giving of alms in defence of the whole faith.31 Administration of crusade indulgences in 1398–1401 (in aid of the Greeks), 1409–14 (in aid of the Hospitallers), and 1428 (in aid of Cardinal Beaufort’s anti-Hussite crusade), proceeded no less smoothly, implemented across the church as mainstream devotional enterprises. Vigorous steps were taken to promote indulgences issued on behalf of the emperor of Constantinople from 1398 to 1401. Leading figures at court, including five of Richard II’s earls and nine prelates of the church, donated nearly £1500.

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Parry (London, 1915), pp.  27–30, 95–97, 99–101; Eulogium historiarum sive temporis, ed. Frank Haydon, 3 vols, Rolls Series, 9 (London, 1858–63), 3: 356. French, People of the Parish, pp. 104–5. Henry Knighton, Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. Geoffrey Martin (Oxford, 1995), p. 325; James Brundage, ‘The Crusader’s Wife: A Canonistic Quandary’, Studia Gratiana 12 (1967), 425–42. Register of Simon de Montacute, pp. 217–18; Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1580, ed. Norman Housley (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 150.

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The king himself pledged to advance £2000, a very considerable sum (against the context of spiralling household expenses). Given the crusade’s high visibility in elite circles, the totals were expected to grow rapidly: in 1399 the duke of York, the earl of Northumberland, and the archbishop of Canterbury were appointed patrons of the crusade fund, responsible for overseeing the deposit of alms at London’s traditional centre of crusade promotion, St Paul’s cathedral.32 It is tempting to think that special pressure existed among courtiers to demonstrate generosity to a project close to the king’s heart, but the indulgence sales had implications far beyond the royal verge. Alms boxes were set up in parish churches and chancery writs instructed all sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, ministers, and lieges to give every necessary aid to collectors for the duration of the indulgences. The initial signs were of a generous reception for preachers in the localities. The St Albans-based author of the Annales Ricardi spoke of ‘great sums’ being collected in the towns and countryside. At least £4000 was raised, including over £325 emptied from parish chests in fifteen towns and villages in the east Midlands.33 Similar patterns were evident in 1409–14, when funds were gathered for a new Hospitaller outpost at Bodrum, on the Anatolian coastline. A reputed fl.70,000 had already been spent (partly in purchasing the site from Turkish agents) but money was desperately needed for further building work and repair. Not only was a fresh Muslim onslaught in the air, but a growing torrent of Christian evacuees required housing and shelter, according to papal letters.34 Part-fortification, part-refugee-processing centre, Bodrum now risked being overwhelmed by the forces of paganism. On receiving assurance that donations would be put solely to this use, English subscriptions poured in. Construction of the ‘English Tower’ at Bodrum provides remarkable testament to financial commitment. Possibly copied from an armorial roll, a sequence of twenty-six English coats-of-arms set in stone over the gateway honours the chief contributors. One set of arms was that of the FitzHughs. Henry FitzHugh had sent war equipment to 32

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Receipt of the Exchequer, 1377–1485, ed. Anthony Steel (Cambridge, 1954), pp.  80–81; Royal and Historical Letters during the Reign of Henry  IV, ed. Frederick Hingeston, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 18 (London, 1860–1965), 1: 56–57; Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 549–52. Among crusade donors were Richard’s favourites the earls of Northumberland, Worcester, Gloucester, Salisbury, and Westmorland: Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 549–52, 556; Chronica et annales, regnantibus Henrico tertio, Edwardo primo, Edwardo secundo, Ricardo secundo, et Henrico quarto, ed. Henry T. Riley, Rolls Series, 28 (London, 1866), p. 231. Register of Thomas Langley, 1: 147–51.

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Bodrum in 1409; Sir William, probably Henry’s son, and his wife Margery purchased Bodrum indulgences in 1414. The presence of eight escutcheons of English royal arms likely represents the eight male descendants of John of Gaunt, signalling the crusade credentials and internationalist outlook of Henry IV and his regime.35 While the military elite laid up presumably large sums for the revenue-yielding ‘donor’s wall’ at Bodrum, a general appetite for indulgences and associated Hospitaller fundraising remained strong. Amongst those queuing up for Bodrum remissions at a Hospitaller priory in Oxfordshire in 1413–14 were the humble John and Agnes Groby and their three children. In exchange for their small donation, the resident preceptor issued certificates confirming that they were each entitled to choose a personal confessor and receive plenary remission at the time of death.36 With its overwhelming focus on the health of the soul, the crusade cause naturally tapped into another significant category of charity and abiding religious obsession: dying a good death. The settling of affairs with family relations, and the disbursing of wealth to local and other good causes, was a key cultural embodiment of caritas, as well as ritual acknowledgement of mortality. While some moralists, including the noted crusade preacher James of Vitry, found charitable giving from the deathbed less meritorious than during life, it was supposed to be a regular part of religious instruction across the universal church, tied to the growing use of written testaments. Much recorded charity is contained in wills, and these are an important source for the mindset of givers.37 Bequests promising money for a man to go on crusade, 35

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37

The armorial designs require further study: identifiable royal arms include Henry  IV, Humphrey, duke of York, and John Beaufort, earl of Somerset. That ten further coats of arms can be connected to Knights of the Garter may also indicate a corporate charitable response: Anthony Luttrell, ‘English Contributions to the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum, Turkey: 1407–1437’, in Military Orders 2: Welfare and Warfare, ed. Helen Nicholson (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 167–72 (here p. 171). For FitzHugh, see Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp.  314–15; for Henry  IV and English Baltic crusading, Timothy Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and the Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 72–97, 114, 206, 214–15. Thomas Walsingham, Historia anglicana, ed. Henry T. Riley, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 28 (London, 1863–64), 2: 416–18; Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 558–60; Second Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1871), p. 93. For wills as sources see Clive Burgess, ‘Late Medieval Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered’, in Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. Michael Hicks (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 14–33; Clive Burgess

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or a sum in aid of the Holy Land, start to appear in England in large numbers at the end of the thirteenth century, winning widespread currency in the decades before the Great Schism. Nearly one hundred such examples can be recovered from published English and papal sources — a considerable sample, though their patchy survival makes it difficult to determine precise patterns of use. Large donations like that of £270 of the earl of Oxford in 1358, or the 100 marks of Elizabeth de Burgh bequeathed in 1360, as well as numerous other dues littered across the English sources, are nowhere found in the papal records, for example.38 A heavy bias in the accounts towards ecclesiastics, including the wills of bishops, archdeacons, priors, and chaplains, may strengthen the impression that the practice was mainly a clerical preoccupation. Nonetheless, preachers and confessors were instructed to persuade all the faithful, but particularly those approaching death, to commemorate the crusade in their wills. It is not surprising, therefore, that many crusade sermon stories featured the sick, invalided, and dying; preachers routinely targeted these groups. The image of the earthly Jerusalem was to fill penitents’ thoughts as they confronted their sin and prepared for death. Should it not, collectors reserved powers to seize all useful

38

and Beat Kümin, ‘Penitential Bequests and Parish Regimes in Late Medieval England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44 (1993), 610–30; Phillipa Maddern, ‘Friends of the Dead: Executors, Wills and Family Strategy in Fifteenth-Century Norfolk’, in Rulers and Ruled in Late-Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harris, ed. Simon Walker and Rowena Archer (London, 1995), pp. 155–74; and cf. Wills of the Archdeaconry of Sudbury, 1439–1474: Wills from the Register ‘Baldwyne’, ed. Peter Northeast (Cambridge, 2001), p. xxxvii. Published examples include: Testamenta vetusta, ed. N. Nicholas, 2 vols (London, 1826), 1: 52, 56–58, 62; Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, 2: 543; Clement V, Regestum Clementis papae V, 9 vols (Roma, 1885–92), 3: no. 2988; Calendar of Manuscripts of Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 19 (London, 1907–14), 2: 587; Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London, 1258–1688, ed. Reginald Sharpe et  al., 2 vols (London, 1864–1947), 1: 263, 653, 2: 2, 104–5; The Cartulary of God’s House, Southampton, ed. John Kaye (Southampton, 1976), p. 88; The Cartulary of the Priory of St Denys, Southampton, ed. E. O. Blake, 2 vols (Southampton, 1981), 1: 181; Registrum Johannis Gilbert, pp.  34–35; Register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, 1: 267; Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1876), p.  562; Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, ed. Thomas Hardy, 4 vols, Rolls Series, 62 (London, 1873–78), 4: 497; cf. Accounts Rendered by Papal Collectors in England, 1317–1378, ed. William Lunt (Philadelphia, 1968), pp. 34, 48–49, 83–84, 120, 224, 321.

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possessions from those who, at their last, neglected to designate some alternative end.39 As with many legal documents, it is often difficult to know how exactly wills represent the private sentiment of a testator, rather than the verbal prompting or formulation of notaries and confessors who helped draft them. A  study of Florentine wills shows that many leaving money to the crusade possessed the imprimatur of a single notary attached to the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce, the house appointed to preach the cross in the city. The English evidence is far less concentrated, but it is possible that trends of giving sprouted from similar institutional and religious attachments.40 Among the burgesses desiring burial in the cemetery of St Mary’s, Southampton, in the late 1340s, for instance, it was apparently convention to remember the Holy Land in their wills, as well as the upkeep of the church fabric. The smallness of sums, usually a matter of a few pence, suggests that a pro forma payment to the crusade was expected. Roger Whitetoire recommended his soul to God and his body to St Mary’s churchyard with 1d. in aid of the terre sancte. Agnes Hordir dedicated 20d. to the church of St Mary’s and 3d. to the Holy Land.41 In this pattern of giving, devotion to the crusade shared the same pietistic roots as other widely felt obligations and good works. For the high-ranking knight John Burley, for example, a bequest of nearly £300 in aid of the Knights Hospitaller defences on Rhodes (1383) was the centrepiece of a will featuring otherwise local charitable interests and good causes. Telescoping from the poor tenants of his manorial lands (£15), local mendicant houses (£20), and doles for widows and orphans (the residuum of his estate) to the armed struggle on the periphery of Christendom (£290), Burley connects the wider holy battle for Christian dominion with the practical and pious function of delivering parish aid. A social dimension seems evident, whether we read such donations as a calculated bargaining for salvation or as driven by altruism and ideals of Christian unity and charity. The crusade, as harbinger of universal peace, opened up limitless channels to God’s grace, including all ranks of the destitute and lost. In the crusade’s

39

40

41

Timothy Guard, ‘Pulpit and Cross: Preaching the Crusade in FourteenthCentury England’, The English Historical Review 129 (2014), 1319–35; Lunt, ‘William Testa’, pp. 338–39. Paolo Pirillo, ‘La Terrasanta nei testamenti fiorenti del Dugento’, in Toscana e Terrasanta nel medioevo, ed. Franco Cardini (Firenze, 1982), pp.  57–73 (here pp. 60–61). For the English context, see Burgess, ‘Late Medieval Wills’, pp. 14–33. Cartulary of God’s House, p. 88; Cartulary of St Denys, 1: 181.

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rescue and final salvation of Christendom, the most oppressed would be the first to be relieved. This is why Burley invested most of his money in it.42 The picture was not radically different in other noble households. In 1379 Sir Roger Beauchamp of Bletsoe, lord chamberlain of Edward III’s household, disposed of a long-standing family commitment to support the crusade with a legacy of £130. A similar pattern can be traced among the gentry classes: papal collectors in the 1330s gathered £5 from the will of Sir Robert Barton, payable by his executors in two instalments; Lord Robert Stanegrave’s last will yielded £6 13s. 4d.; Richard Swinefield, bishop of Hereford, bequeathed £5. A sum of nearly £40 was declared by the rector of South Newington to fulfil the testament of ‘a certain deceased nobleman’ (cuiusdam nobilis defuncte). The old principle that donations to the crusade should correspond with a testator’s wealth may have provided the formal framework though, again, how such assessments were made in practice is hard to tell. All levels of income seem to be represented. Edmund de Suffolk, a tradesman of London, furnished 10s. ‘in aid of the Holy Land’; Walter de Depenalasa ‘the druggist’ left 20d. In 1347 John of Bron, a well-to-do tanner of Beverley, estimated that after his debts were paid, the residue of his estate would support one man going on the next crusade. Higher up the social scale, the countess of Ulster put money in trust for the Holy Land if a general passagium was to embark within seven years of her death. In the non-event of a crusade the cash was to be diverted to her other Christian work, Clare Hall, Cambridge (1360). By contrast, in 1329 the children of Ralph Long of London diocese offered payment of one mark to cover their father’s reported promise to the Holy Land. Items of jewellery and silver plate were substituted where enough coin could not be found.43 Of course, for this to have material effect, an assertive bureaucracy capable of testing wills and centralizing funds was required. When the system was at its height, it was sufficiently invasive to elicit resentment among the living, as well as to mulct funds from the dead. The more lurid accounts (including distraint and physical cruelty) perhaps stretch credibility, but reports of malpractice periodically reached the curia. In 1336 relatives of the recently deceased complained of being made to travel long distances to attend hearings and of being kept before church 42

43

Registrum Johannis Gilbert, pp. 34–36. For pious bequests and investment strategy see Brodman, Charity and Religion, pp. 38–41; Teofilo Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton, 2004), pp. 47, 11, 123. Early Lincoln Wills, ed. Alfred Gibbons (Lincoln, 1888), p.  29; Accounts Rendered, pp. 34, 48–49, 83–84, 120, 224, 321; Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book, ed. Arthur Leach, 2 vols (Durham, 1898–1903), 2: 136; Testamenta vetusta, 1: 57, 263.

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inquiries under pain of censure until they paid bribes or made fine. Subcollectors were accused of tampering with transcripts of testaments and inventories, extorting money, and bringing the apostolic chamber into general disrepute. So exasperated were the natives of Bath and Wells that, in the words of the bishop, they lost all desire of donating to the crusade. Hence the cageyness of Robert de Bingham of Dorset who bequeathed 2s., ‘providing that nothing further of my goods is sold in aid of the Holy Land, for whatever reason’ (1304).44 Even so, despite the disquiet, such inquisitions also served to safeguard the penitential function of caritas at the point of death. The mechanics of purgatory turned on the notion of satisfaction. Redemption depended on payment to God — by works of mercy, by penitential practices, by fulfilment of debts — of all that was due after sin had been forgiven. For this reason, the repayment of debt was one of the primary duties of executors; for monies to remain undelivered was to jeopardize the safe passage of souls through the afterlife.45 It was the sort of neglect likely to make the dying deeply suspicious of those settling their worldly affairs. Because of this, in 1355 the dean of St Martin’s sought to safeguard his bequest of £10, demanding that his executors deliver it faithfully to collectors of ‘rents and other things’ for the crusade, and pledging them ‘on peril of their souls’ not to convert the money for any other use. Collectors faced evasion and the problem of recovering money or goods sequestered to all manner of purposes. Perhaps representative was the will of Thomas Brickelsworth of London, who in 1356 donated £20 to the future crusade of ‘kings, dukes, earls, barons, and others’, but in the meantime entrusted the money to a business partner ‘to trade withal’.46 English wills provide the source for another remarkable category of crusade caritas, albeit one focused upon the charitable objective of purchasing prayers for the Holy Land rather than upon the furnishing of monetary aid. Penny Cole has established the crusade context for the appearance of so-called Gregorian Trental Masses in the fourteenth century. Here, money was bequeathed for church Masses to liberate souls from purgatory, but (in a characteristic unique to the English variant) the liturgy featured the simultaneous objective of marshalling intercessions for the Holy Land. The Trental Mass was the supreme exposition of the ideal of charity, with its grief for Christ’s life-giving sacrifice, meditation upon reconciliation, and ritual evocations of the hostage Jerusalem. Here, to pledge good works 44

45 46

Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 477–78; Register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, 1: 267; Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Preserved at Woolaton Hall, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 69 (London, 1911), p. 84. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 350–51. Wills in the Court of Hustings, 2: 6; Manuscripts of Wells, 1: 199, 240, 246–47.

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(prayer) to the crusade was to exhibit core concern for the meta-drama of defence of the faith, but also to exhibit compassion for the souls of the dead and to enact the public virtues of caritas and humility.47 Trental Masses were purchased for a fee  — perhaps causing donations to be diverted from the papal treasury and from crusade war chests — but the trend drew heavily upon the habitual patterns of English crusade giving already seen above, including the pledge of coin in wills. The records are fullest for London, with early examples dominated by the patrician classes. The influence of guild religion may lie close to the surface: Trental Masses feature in the wills of goldsmiths, brewers, drapers, vintners, fruiterers, and wool-mongers. But high-ranking noblemen and women invested no less heavily. In 1384 the earl of Stafford purchased fifty Trental Masses to be performed within one year of his death — the countess of Salisbury (1414) and the countess of Kent (1423) followed suit. Such bequests could stipulate an intense liturgical outpouring. The archbishop of York bequeathed sufficient money for 1000 Trental Masses to be sung within, as his will dictates, the space of one month (1421). Given that each Trental was formed of a cluster of thirty Masses, what was envisioned was a near-unceasing barrage of prayer in aid of named beneficiaries, and in aid of the eastern Church against ‘enemies of the Cross’. In churches, chapels, and chantries where the Masses were to be sung it is difficult to see how this would not be the dominant ritual focal point for days and weeks on end. In such ways the faithful could visualize, and assume supporting roles in, the cosmic battle between good and evil. Although doing little to advance the cause materially on the ground, monies donated in this fashion provided an instrumental platform for advocating the crusade idea. Judging by the popularity of the Gregorian Trental Masses, they communicated self-identification with the crusade in a particularly satisfying manner.48 There was another side of course. Closely connected with the regulation of Church and lay discipline, payments to the crusade could also be a means of social control. They could be used to compel parishioners to act in specific ways. The guardians of morality in Kent punished sex crimes with fines payable to the Terra Sancta, for example. Those guilty of misdemeanour could choose between undertaking a public penance in their local parish or 47

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Penny Cole, ‘Purgatory and Crusade in St  Gregory’s Trental’, International History Review 17 (1995), 713–24. See also Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 275–352. English Trental bequests are conveniently tabulated by Linder, Raising Arms, pp.  335–37. For self-identification and charitable response see Servish and Havens, ‘Social Participation’.

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depositing indemnity money in aid of Jerusalem. Many, like Elizabeth Kirby, a widow of Dartford, may have thought a monetary fine worth it in exchange for a chance of greater anonymity (1335).49 This was partly evolved from the system of granting papal dispensations and exemptions from canon law. In 1501 crusade collectors were empowered to pardon a wide range of criminals and usurers. About payment of cash, it was also a function of Church caritas, facilitating rehabilitation, and creating meaning out of compliance.50 Yet, for critics of the enterprise, the migration of crusade finance and fundraising into a variety of new contexts was to present a root and branch problem. Thus, while admitting that crusade indulgence sales continued to seduce many, Wycliffite priests William Swinderby and Walter Brut (1392) attacked the idea that the crusade war could be an act of caritas consistent with God’s law, capable of releasing souls from purgatory. Not only did supporting wars of aggression against non-believers transgress Cristes lawe (Christ’s law) to love the enemy, it was in contravention of the law of charity. It was in God’s power alone to act with ‘charitee’, to pluck souls from purgatory, they claimed. Rejecting oft-repeated fundraising messages that the crusade was the ultimate charitable work, Swinderby and Brut protested instead that willing union in Christ’s fraternal love was true caritas — to coerce non-believers through violence meant perverting Christ’s teaching and God’s design.51 Clearly, such radical criticisms depended upon topicality for their force — and, as we have seen, the fundraising campaigns of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries helped to maintain crusading’s institutional visibility. But in addition to this, deriving energy from underlying cultural and religious standards, they also signalled possible patterns of longer-term response. Important here was a basic dependency upon the sentiment and vocabulary of caritas, even as its place within mainstream religious life underwent change. Indeed, across the categories of material touched on above, something approaching a choice vocabulary is present. This was apparent not only in the traditional emotional case for crusade giving (viz. the destitution of Christian lands and virtue of alms-giving) but also in new technical formulations in papal and other appeals. Church letters of the 1390s and early 1400s repeatedly urged crusade donors to ‘stretch out their helping hands’ (manus porrexerint adjutrices), for instance. This stressed — in a phraseology ubiquitous across a flood of fifteenth-century papal indulgences for church building and other good works  — not 49 50

51

Registrum Hamonis Hethe, 1: 606–7. William Lunt, Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (New York, 1965), 2: 477; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 315. The Register of John Trefnant, Bishop of Hereford, 1389–1404, ed. William Capes (Hereford, 1914), pp. 247–48, 272–79, 313, 363, 369, 377–79, 388–91.

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only the community-forming function of crusade caritas, with its message of shared labour and mutual reward, but also crusading’s normative (i.e. increasingly assimilated) place among a world of other competing charitable causes. Tellingly, in the later period, revenues to the crusade were explicitly, if not emotionally, tied to alternative religious works. Thus it was that from 1442, three quarters of the money raised through plenary indulgences offered to those visiting Henry VI’s foundation at Eton was to be spent on resistance against the Turks. In 1500, the papal Jubilee indulgence (with its ritual focus on Rome’s major basilicas) was the official vehicle for raising funds for Alexander VI’s proposed general crusade.52 More meditative concerns were evident in the English variant of the Gregorian Trental Mass, with its conjoined liturgical focus on the fate of the Holy Land and the health of the soul, but in all of these instances, concepts of crusade caritas blended with, and derived energy from, expanding religious tastes and evolving forms of charitable action. More research is needed (the documentary-base presented here is but a partial sampling of a far wider body of evidence), yet as attitudes towards traditional institutions of charity underwent change, the crusade-as-caritas doctrine also promised to develop greater definition.53 Perhaps relevant here was growing rigidity in lay and clerical concepts of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Given crusading’s universal religious claims on the one hand, and its concern for individual salvation on the other, supporting the crusade could be a satisfying halfway position between what emerged in usage as ‘indiscriminate’ (i.e. assistance to any needy cause) and ‘discriminate’ (i.e. assistance to a specified individual or group) charity. This, as well as what it offered to parish cohesion, provides the moral framework for our final category of crusade finance — so-called English ‘Holy Land’ contracts. Stretching the connection between crusade ideology and material response almost to breaking point, such charters allowed contracting parties to proclaim shared Christian values by pledging money to the crusade while underwriting any variety of agreements. As with legacies, 52

53

The Registers of Roger Martival, Bishop of Salisbury, 1315–1330, ed. Christopher Elrington, 4 vols (Oxford, 1959–75), 4.2: 536, 559; Wykeham’s Register, ed. T. F. Kirby, 2 vols (London, 1896–99), 2: 476, 483–84; Urban VI et al., Acta Urbani papae VI (1378–1389), Bonifacii papae IX (1389–1404), Innocentii papae. VII (1404–1406) et Gregorii papae XII (1406–1415), ed. Aloysius Tăutu (Roma, 1970), p. 171; Register of Thomas Langley, 1: 148–49, 130–31. For Eton see Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p.  315. For Alexander  VI’s Jubilee indulgence, see Documents on the Later Crusades, pp. 173–82. Diocesan registers and papal correspondence relating to France, Italy, and Germany provide a comparative basis for further study.

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the custom perhaps owed its prevalence to Church clerks (it fell under the jurisdiction of canon law), though it soon took on a bureaucratic life of its own. The practice was common enough by the early fourteenth century to be counted amongst the items disputed between parliament and William Testa.54 An exchange of neighbouring benefices near Morpeth between Lanercost Priory and the convent of Durham in 1310 was perhaps typical. The transaction of land to Durham was underwritten with the huge pledge of £400, half payable to the crusade if the prior of Lanercost failed to respect the agreed terms. It was not intended that such contracts actually profited the crusade, given that this represented a breakdown in business or other relations. Yet, inked into English charters long into the fifteenth century, the fiduciary stipulation of crusade caritas had the effect of manufacturing spiritual merit out of broken promises. To forfeit potential monetary compensation or even larger windfalls to the crusade cause, rather than to the aggrieved or another third party, was, nominally at least, to nail one’s charitable colours to the Cross. It was an impulse alive in humble as well as grand settings. Richard Whitson pledged 40s. to the crusade when leasing attic space above his shop in Bath to John Dunsterre, a tailor (1322). The money stood surety to Dunsterre’s right to unencumbered access to the room for life.55 Formally at least, such financial bindings reflected ongoing willingness to elevate charitable horizons from the particularities of parish to the totality of Christendom. General awareness of the danger facing frontier states certainly accompanied the rounds of English collectors for the ‘war against the Turks’ in the 1440s.56 Writ large in the messages of the 54

55

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E.g., Clement V, Regestum, 5: no. 5943; TNA, E 326/3141; C 1/72/97; Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1874), p. 494; Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1877), p. 486; MS Truro, Cornwall Record Office, ME/702; MS Bath, Bath and Somerset Record Office, BC 151/2/44; BC 151/2/99; A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (London, 1890–1915), 5: A10670, A12115; The Lanercost Cartulary, ed. John Todd (Gateshead, 1997), pp. 407–8; Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War, 1278–1476, ed. Michael Jones and Simon Walker (London, 1994), no. 13; Accounts Rendered, p. 48; Register of Kirkby and Ross, 1: 69–70; Registrum Hamonis Hethe, 1: 191; Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward III, 16 vols (London, 1891–1916), 3: 92. See also Lunt, ‘William Testa’, pp. 340–43. MS Bath, Bath and Somerset Record Office, BC 151/2/99 (Whitson). For a fifteenth-century petition seeking payment of the Holy Land penalty: TNA, C 1/72/97. A full study of such penalty contracts is still wanting. Lunt, Financial Relations, 2: 591–93. 231

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fifteenth-century crusade legate, Cardinal Bessarion, was the argument for crusade alms not just for reasons of faith, but also for reasons of public good and Christendom’s collected freedoms (1463). At heart lay the opportunity for identity-heightening commitment to respectable ‘civic’ society. The key lesson was found in the Book of Judges, where, Bessarion argued, ‘even gentiles’, and not just men, ‘but women too’, offered all their goods, their ‘gold, silver and ornaments’ for their ‘country’s sake’ (pro patria). For William Caxton, when printing Godeffroy de Bouillon or the Siege and Conquest of Jerusalem (1481), crusading’s first imperative was to ‘acccomplysshe werks of gloryous meryte’. The vision remained morally and financially inclusive: ‘I can thynke that everyman wyll put hand to in theyr proper persones and in theyr mevable goods’.57 In such contexts, the crusade-as-caritas doctrine was to enjoy a long future — a moral fixture that would ultimately outlast traditional esteem for other mechanisms of crusade response, including the papal penitential system. Notably, it was to the paradigm of caritas and reform that (the otherwise sceptical) Erasmus turned when validating secular leadership of crusades in 1530: ‘if they consider it holy and pious to fight against the Turks, what more acceptable alms can they offer to God (quam eleemosynam praestare valeant Deo gratiorem) … spending in piety what they take away from extravagance? By this reckoning, nobody will become poorer through expenditure [on the war], instead growing richer in virtue’.58 Inseparable from Erasmus’ otherwise excoriating attack on papal involvement in holy war and the corrupt sale of indulgences in the past, it was a return (aptly, given Erasmus’ reverence for his teachings) to Augustinian first principles. Caritas itself was the end reward; crusade indulgences were less significant. In the holy war against the Turks, as in all areas of life, charity ‘delivers all kinds of virtues’. Throughout, the goal of Christian caritas itself was Europe’s foremost inward and outward battle.59 Here, 57

58

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For Bessarion’s instruction to crusade preachers, Documents on the Later Crusades, pp.  147–54, esp. p. 150. That Caxton was also in the business of printing indulgence letters partly explains his enthusiasm. William Caxton, Geoffroy de Boloyne, ed. Mary Colvin (London, 1893), pp.  1, 5; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 304–6, 316. Documents on the Later Crusades, pp.  178–83; Erasmus, Consultatio de bello Turcis inferendo (Leiden, 1643), pp. 7, 10, 48, 73. For Erasmus and St  Augustine, see Robert  D. Sider, ‘Erasmus’, in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allen Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI, 1999), pp.  312–15; Norman Housley, ‘A Necessary Evil? Erasmus, the Crusade and the War against the Turks’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. John France and William Zajac

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despite the heavy doubt cast on ecclesiastical motivations for propagating crusades, was a doctrine which Innocent III and his circle would also have fought hard to affirm. In one way or another, the evidence for parish crusade fundraising offered commentary on this accepted truth. There would be ongoing redemption in perfect acts of charity, notwithstanding the recurrent ambitions and pitfalls of associated crusades.

(Aldershot, 1998), pp. 259–79. For a recent assessment, see Marcia L. Colish, ‘The De veritate fidei christianae of Juan Luis Vives’, in Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt, ed. Alasdair Macdonald, Zweder von Marks, and Jan Veenstra (Leiden, 2009), pp. 173–89 (here pp. 187–89); Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 131–59.

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Part IV

Interpreting the Crusades

Conrad versus Saladin The Siege of Tyre, November-December 1187*

Peter Edbury

In outline the events of 1187 in the Latin East are very well known: 4 July, the defeat at H . at.t.īn; five days later, the Muslim occupation of Acre; July-August, Saladin’s triumphal progress up the coast as far as Jubayl and back again, taking all before him except, most importantly, Tyre; 5 September, the surrender of Ascalon; and then, on 2 October, the surrender of Jerusalem. And now came the check. Starting on 12 November, the sultan began the siege of Tyre, but at the beginning of January he gave up, thwarted. Saladin was of course to have further successes in 1188 with his campaign in the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch and his occupation of the remaining inland fortresses in the kingdom of Jerusalem, but the all-important city of Tyre had eluded him, and never again would he attempt to capture it. The failure before Tyre sent a clear message to Muslims and Christians alike: Saladin was not invincible, and the total expulsion of the Christians was not going to be achieved readily. Tyre could now provide the essential base for the Christian counterattack in the course of the Third Crusade. So what went wrong? Between them the Arabic-language sources — the narratives by ‘Imād al-Dīn al-I.sfahānī, Ibn Shaddād, Abū Shāma, and Ibn al-Athīr and the letters of al-Fād.il — provide a coherent picture.1 Saladin arrived near Tyre on 12 November but only began a close investment on * I thank Marianne Ailes, Massimiliano Gaggero, Margaret Jubb, and Helen Nicholson for their help and advice in the preparation of this paper. 1 ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, · trans. Henri Massé (Paris, 1972), pp. 63–80, 85–91; Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, trans. Donald S. Richards (Aldershot, 2001), pp.  78–79; Abū Shāma, ‘Le livre des deux jardins’, in RHC HOr., 4: 341–44; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period, trans. Donald S. Richards, 3 vols (Aldershot, 2006–08), 2: 335–37; al-Fād.il, cit. Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 279–81 and nn. 1, 6, 7, 13, 15 (p. 423). Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 237–247 ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117322

Peter Edbury

25 November. Tyre is situated on a promontory approachable by a narrow strip of land, and to begin with crossfire from Frankish ships moored close by hampered the Muslim assaults. That ended when the sultan brought up his own fleet from Acre and forced the Christians to take refuge in the harbour. Although further Muslim reinforcements arrived as the siege progressed, the weather turned cold and wet, and, unable to rely on plunder any more, Muslim self-confidence waned. Added disillusionment among members of Saladin’s high command set in when an envoy who had gone to report the Muslim successes to the caliph returned with a letter expressing criticisms of his achievements and general behaviour. At the very end of December, the Christian ships attacked the Muslim fleet that was blockading them in the harbour. They captured five Muslim vessels and scattered the rest; several ran aground nearby and had to be destroyed to prevent their falling into Christian hands. A final assault on the land walls failed and resulted in a Christian counterattack. On 3 January Saladin ordered his camp to be broken up. That in summary is the story as told by the Muslim sources. Tyre, as William of Tyre, writing without the benefit of hindsight, informs us, stood out as the best defended city in the entire kingdom,2 and it appears that Conrad, who at the time was heir-presumptive to the marquisate of Montferrrat, had been able to strengthen the defences still further in anticipation of the coming siege. The morale of the Muslim troops, far from being high after the great string of successes they had enjoyed, was clearly in decline. No doubt that had come about partly because they had been on active service continuously for many months; the bad weather and general lack of progress would have played their part, and the naval defeat, redolent of poor seamanship, would have sapped their resolve still further. It is noticeable that, in describing the siege of Tyre, Malcolm Lyons and David Jackson and, more recently, Anne-Marie Eddé, Saladin’s leading modern biographers, rely almost entirely on the Arabic materials and disregard the Christian accounts, and it may be asked whether their approach is valid, or whether they are being unduly selective.3 Two newsletters survive, both of them written in 1188, and they give an outline of the events at Tyre from a Christian perspective. Neither letter is dated, but, as their accounts end with the lifting of the siege, they have usually been ascribed to January 1188. One of these letters is the second of 2

3

William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.  B.  C. Huygens, 2 vols, CCCM, 63 (Turnhout, 1986), 2: 1057. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp.  279–83; Anne-Marie Eddé, Saladin, trans. Jane M. Todd (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 227–29.

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those written from the East by the Templar Thierry (otherwise Terricus) and addressed to King Henry II of England.4 John Pryor has argued that both Thierry’s letters, which are undated, have been ‘doctored’, and that in the form in which they have been preserved they are later than the dates normally assigned to them. He believes that Thierry’s second letter was composed, or at least reached the form in which it is preserved, sometime after July 1188.5 The other letter was written by Conrad and some other leading figures from Tyre and addressed to the king of Hungary.6 Here again we may suspect that it has been ‘improved’. The two letters are similar in tone and have similar information about the siege, although there is no hint of any textual affinity between them. The message in each case is that Saladin’s advance has been stemmed, and the successful defence of Tyre is linked to the continued resistance at various inland fortresses — the letter to Hungary mentions Kerak, Montreal, Belvoir, Safad, and Beaufort, whereas Thierry lists Kerak, Montreal, Safad, . Krak des Chevaliers, Marqab, and Sāfītā . along with the land of Tripoli and Antioch. Conrad’s letter is explicitly asking the king to send aid; in Thierry’s the call for help is implicit. As for the siege, Thierry’s letter states that it began on the feast of St Martin (11 November) and ended on the feast of the Circumcision of Christ (1 January). He reports that thirteen petraries bombarded the walls day and night, and then, on the feast of St Silvester (31 December) a Christian fleet consisting of seventeen galleys and ten smaller vessels did battle with the Muslim galleys and captured eleven of them along with some senior personnel. The Muslims then burnt the rest of their ships. Conrad’s letter says the siege lasted from All Saints Day (1 November) to the Circumcision of Christ, and the Christians were besieged by land and sea with an array of siege engines operating on land. On the feast of St Silvester the Christian galleys and other vessels did battle and captured five Muslim galleys along with some senior commanders. While the naval battle was in progress, Saladin attacked the town walls. The Christian troops returning from the galleys counterattacked and killed more than one thousand men. The Muslims now burnt the remaining galleys 4

5 6

Regesta regni hierosolymitani (MXCVII-MCCXCI), ed. Reinhold Röhricht (Innsbruck, 1893), no. 669; John  H. Pryor, ‘Two excitationes for the Third Crusade: The Letters of Brother Thierry of the Temple’, Mediterranean Historical Review 25 (2010), 147–68 (here 151–52). Pryor, ‘Two excitationes’, pp. 156–58. Regesta regni hierosolymitani, no. 670; Tagenon of Passau, Tageno, Ansbert und die Historia Peregrinorum: Drei kritische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Friedrich I, ed. Anton Chroust (Graz, 1892), pp. 199–201.

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and their siege installations, leaving the Christians with a total of sixteen galleys. It is immediately apparent that there are a number of points at which these Christian accounts tally reasonably closely with the Muslim version of events. For example, the start and finish dates in Thierry’s letter are close but not identical. The sources appear to agree that the defeat of the Muslim naval blockade (after the siege had already been in progress for over six weeks) was the crucial event. Ibn Shaddād and Abū Shāma both concur with Conrad’s figure of five Muslims vessels captured. More problematic is the subsequent land battle, with Thierry making no mention of it while Conrad claims that one thousand were killed. So who do we believe? On the Muslim side there is a similar discrepancy: Ibn Shaddād has nothing and in fact claims the troops refused to fight because of the rain; Ibn al-Athīr gives the impression that the fighting was inconclusive, while both ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Is.fahānī and Abū Shāma claimed that the Christians were driven back defeated and report that the Muslims executed a captured Christian knight in the mistaken belief that he was Conrad. What is probably the earliest Christian narrative account, the first part of the Itinerarium peregrinorum (or IP1), is disappointingly lacking in detail.7 It starts by introducing the story that Saladin tried to get Conrad to surrender Tyre in return for the release of his father, Marquis William V of Montferrat, who had been captured at H.at.t.īn the previous July; Conrad, contemptuous of this offer, shot an arrow at his father. It then records the victory in a naval engagement which took place on 29 December, the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, and an assault on the landward side that was routed in a sally led by Hugh of Tiberias and his brothers. At this Saladin set fire to his siege engines and galleys and withdrew. A later writer, the author of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre, simply combined the information to be found in IP1 and Thierry’s letter to form his own account.8 Other English authors are less helpful: Roger of Howden, who later copied Thierry’s letter into his text, has no mention of the naval engagement, but instead records how the Muslim troops were enticed into the city only to be ambushed by the Christians, who routed them like ‘sheep fallen upon

7

8

Das Itinerarium Peregrinorum: Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Stuttgart, 1962), pp. 266–68; Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 40–41. Die lateinische Fortsetzung Wilhelms von Tyrus, ed. Marianne Salloch (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 78–80.

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by wolves’ and captured a son of Saladin.9 William of Newburgh is even briefer, stating simply that the naval defeat persuaded Saladin to burn his siege engines and depart.10 A fuller account, and one that would seem to be better informed, is provided by the anonymous text, entitled Historia peregrinorum, which survives in a unique manuscript in the Cistercian monastery of Salem on Lake Constance.11 This account tells of Saladin’s failed attempt to get Conrad to surrender Tyre in return for freeing his father, although without the story of Conrad shooting an arrow at him; the siege was intense and the besieged had only hazelnuts to sustain them. A night attack on the Muslim fleet was successful, but at the same time Saladin’s troops attacked the land walls, overrunning the outer defences and threatening to break through into the city. Conrad then led a counterattack and 300 Muslims were killed. The others fled and burnt their camp and siege engines. The Christians followed up this success by sending a raiding party under Hugh of Tiberias that went to Arsuf and captured the Muslim governor, a detail that finds no corroboration elsewhere. With the exception of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre, all these narratives were written within ten or fifteen years of the event. To find the most detailed account from the Christian standpoint, however, we have to turn to a significantly later source, another anonymous work, La Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier (henceforth ErnoulBernard), and the related series of narratives that comprise the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre.12 In the form in which it has been passed to posterity, Ernoul-Bernard was written in northern France, quite possibly in the Amienois, and dates from the early 1230s. According to this source, which for these incidents is closely paralleled by the Colbert9

10

11

12

Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 49 (London, 1867), 2: 25–26, cf. 40–41. William of Newburgh, ‘Historia rerum Anglicanum’ in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, 4 vols, Rolls Series, 82 (London, 1884–89), 1: 264–65. ‘Historia peregrinorum’, ed. Anton Chroust, in Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs  I., MGH SS rer. Germ. N.S., 5 (Berlin, 1928), pp.  116–72 (here pp.  121–22); Graham  A. Loud, The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts (Farnham, 2010), pp. 139–40, cf. pp. 7–8. Ernoul, pp.  236–44; Eracles, pp.  104–10; La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982), pp. 76–79; The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation, trans. Peter W. Edbury (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 67–70.

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Fontainebleau version of the Continuation — a text composed in the late 1240s in the Latin East — Saladin’s attempt to barter the surrender of Tyre in return for liberating Conrad’s father is placed in August, when, fresh from securing Sidon, Beirut, and Jubayl, he was moving south to take Caesarea, Jaffa, and Ascalon. In this account Conrad only threatens to shoot at his father. He had arrived in Tyre shortly before to find that Reynald of Sidon and the unnamed castellan of Tyre had already agreed to surrender the city to Saladin.13 When, following the surrender and evacuation of Jerusalem, Saladin began the siege of Tyre in earnest, there was a further attempt to negotiate its surrender in return for freeing Conrad’s father. According to Ernoul-Bernard, the city was blockaded by a fleet of fourteen Muslim galleys while seventeen petraries or mangonels kept up a bombardment from the landward side day and night. There is also mention of the Christians’ use of vessels called barbotes which shot at the Muslim army from the sea — apparently a corroboration of the report of Christian crossfire found in both Abū Shāma and Ibn al-Athīr, who also confirm the detail that the Muslim fleet had been brought up the coast from Acre.14 However, the additional elements in the Ernoul-Bernard account for the most part lack support from the more contemporary sources. The Christians engaged the Muslims in a regular series of sallies led by an unnamed Spanish knight attired entirely in green who had the antlers of a stag attached to his helmet. This ‘Green Knight’ was much admired by the Muslims. An attempt to send relief by sea from Tripoli failed when the flotilla was dispersed in a storm. At this point a Muslim youth, the son of an amir with whom he had quarrelled, defected to the Christian army and converted to Christianity. Conrad had him write letters to the Muslims falsely telling them that the Christians were about to abandon the city during the night by sea and that they should try to intercept them. The letters were attached to an arrow and shot into the Muslim camp where they were duly delivered to Saladin. Taken in by the large amount of noise emanating from the harbour area during the night, the Muslim galleys closed on Tyre and some entered the harbour. The chain was then raised and the five galleys thus trapped in the harbour were seized, their crews slain. The Christians put their 13

14

Ernoul, pp. 178–83. For further discussion of this incident, see Peter W. Edbury, ‘Ernoul, Eracles and the Collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in The French of Outremer: Communities and Communication in the Crusading Mediterranean, ed. Nicholas L. Paul and Laura Morreale (New York, 2018), pp. 44–67 (here p. 57). Abū Shāma, ‘Deux jardins’, p. 342; Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicle, 2: 336.

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own men in the Muslim ships and together with their own galleys (which numbered just two) and some smaller boats sailed out to engage the rest of the fleet. The Muslim ships fled; seven ran aground and two escaped. Thinking that the Christians were fully absorbed in the naval struggle, the Muslims now attacked the land walls with renewed vigour, overrunning the barbicans and setting about mining the main walls. The Christians however, alive to precisely this eventuality, sallied forth and on New Year’s Day — ‘le jour de l’an reneuf ’ — drove back the Muslim forces, killing or capturing one thousand. It is a good story, but almost all the elements that are new — the Green Knight; the renegade son of the amir; the ruse that proved so successful that the Muslim ships ended up trapped inside the chain — have all the hallmarks of romance and should be regarded as fictive embellishments. If the Christians had managed to trick the Muslim ships into entering the harbour, we might have expected that the more nearly contemporary writers would have said so rather than giving the impression that the Christian ships had left the harbour to engage the enemy. In any case the final act in this narrative does not make sense: if the Muslims really believed that the Christians were going to abandon the city by boat, why attack when within a matter of hours they would find the city defenceless? The Green Knight, however, deserves more detailed consideration. He returns a few pages later in Ernoul-Bernard’s account of Saladin’s failed siege of Tripoli in 1188. On that occasion, Saladin invited the knight to visit him under safe conduct and offered to take him into his service. He replied that ‘he had not come to this land to live with the Muslims but to harm them and bring them down; he would harm them as much as he could’.15 The two episodes in which he features give the appearance of his having stepped out of the sort of tale that might belong with the Round Table and that the author has deliberately confused history and romance by introducing an idealized and anonymous Christian hero who appears in the narrative and then disappears just as abruptly.16 Well before the time Ernoul-Bernard was being written, the Green Knight had secured a place in Arthurian romance, and the fact that the narrative designates him as the ‘vert chevalier’ and not the ‘chevalier vert’ underlines the idea that he 15 16

Ernoul, pp. 251–52. Ovidiu Cristea, ‘Le chevalier vert: Histoire et fiction dans la Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier’, in Marqueurs d’identité dans la littérature médiévale: Mettre en signe l’individu et la famille (XIIe-XVe siècles), ed. Catalina Girbea, Laurent Hablot, and Raluca  L. Radulescu (Turnhout, 2014), pp.  269–77 (here pp. 272–73).

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is an established figure and not just a knight who happens to be clothed in green.17 For example, in Chrétien’s Cligés (c.  1176), the eponymous hero appears disguised in green to challenge Lancelot; the onlookers are impressed — he is more splendid than when previously he had appeared masquerading in black — and he goes on defeat his opponent.18 Similarly, in Durmart le Galois (variously dated to the first half or the middle of the thirteenth century), the Green Knight makes an imposing entry.19 The idea that the Green Knight is a splendid figure whose presence excites the admiration of people who would be expected to support his opponent finds expression in Ernoul-Bernard as well, where the Muslims turn out to watch when he comes out to do battle. It might be noted in passing that the only medieval manuscript to include a copy of Durmart also contains Ernoul-Bernard, a reminder that historically-based texts and fictional romances appealed to the same readership and were not as unrelated to one another as is still sometimes assumed.20 How the reader is meant to understand the employment of the colour green and the antlers of a stag is open to question, although clearly a positive image is being conjured. The antlers were an assertion of virility but also, as with the treatment of the stag in bestiaries where the stag is portrayed as the enemy of the serpent, an assertion of virtue. Green, as Michel Pastoureau has shown, is ambivalent. It is the colour of the Devil, of Islam, of jealousy, and sometimes of ruin; it is also the colour of youth 17

18

19

20

For a convenient list of romances in which a Green Knight appears, see Gerard J. Brault, Early Blazons: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries with Special Reference to Arthurian Literature (Oxford, 1972), p. 32. Two closely related manuscripts of Ernoul-Bernard do in fact refer to him as ‘le chevalier vert’ on one occasion: MS Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 4797, fol. 63vb; MS Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 340, fol. 63vb. These two manuscripts also are alone in containing the extra description of the Green Knight printed in brackets in Ernoul, pp. 237–38, an interpolation that reflects the growth of the ‘Saladin legend’ by the late thirteenth century. Chrétien de Troyes, Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Mario Roques, Alexandre Micha, and Felix Lecoy, 5 vols (Paris, 1952–75), 2: 114 (lines 4715–20). Durmart le Galois: Roman arthurien du trezième siècle, ed. Joseph Gildea, 2 vols (Villanova, PA, 1965–66), 1: 261 (lines 9998–99). MS Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 113. For a description, bibliography, and digitized reproduction, see: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/description/bbb/0113/ Mittenhuber (accessed 3 Nov. 2016). This manuscript also contains substantial fragments of Perlesvaus (first quarter of the thirteenth century) in which the Green Knight again makes an appearance: Le haut livre de Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. William A. Nitze and Thomas A. Jenkins, 2 vols (Chicago, 1932–37), 1: 126–30.

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and hope, of burgeoning love and insouciance, and of freedom. In later Arthurian romance the arrival of a Green Knight signals a challenge to established order.21 The Ernoul-Bernard Green Knight is described as coming from Spain, but there is no attempt to specify which of the Iberian kingdoms was his place of origin, and this vagueness may well be a further literary device designed to give him an exotic if decidedly Christian identity. It is only in the late, c. 1250, Lyons version of the Continuation that the Green Knight is given a name — Sancho Martin — but naming him has the effect of going well towards demystifying him.22 As it happens, there is evidence for a Sancho Martin owning a house in Tyre at some point before 1222, but it is impossible to know whether this apparent identification deserves any credence.23 For what it is worth, this version of the Continuation also claims that three thousand (and not one thousand) Muslims died in the Christian counterattack at the walls.24 On the other hand, the later thirteenth-century Estoires d’Outremer et de la naissance Salehadin treats the episode in which the Green Knight appears very differently. This text in large part is a highly fictionalized re-working of Ernoul-Bernard and a significant contribution to the development of the ‘Saladin legend’ in the West in the course of the thirteenth century.25 Here all references to the Green Knight per se are excised and instead the individual is named as Raous, a knight from Santerre (Santiers) in Picardy. There is no mention of his presence at the siege of Tyre, but his role at Tripoli and encounter with Saladin are reprised. Like the Green Knight he has the antlers of a stag attached to his helmet, but his place of origin and his identity are changed. Here the author’s emphasis is on Saladin and shows his hero admiring the knightly prowess of a named Picard — a reflection of the place of origin of the text — rather than on an anonymous, exotic, and exemplary Christian knight redolent with the associations of Arthurian romance.26 The possibility remains that there was indeed a knight at the siege of Tyre with a green surcoat and shield and with a crest on his helm made of antlers, who was perhaps deliberately presenting himself as a character 21

22 23 24 25

26

Michel Pastoureau, ‘Formes et couleurs du désordre: Le jaune avec le vert’, Médiévales 4 (1983), 62–73 (here 69); Cristea, ‘Le chevalier vert’, pp. 274–75. La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, p. 77. Regesta regni hierosolymitani, no. 954. La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, p. 79. A Critical Edition of the Estoires d’Outremer et de la naissance Salehadin, ed. Margaret A. Jubb (London, 1990), pp. 293–307. Estoires d’Outremer, pp. 205–6.

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from Arthurian romance. After all, men dressed as characters from the Arthurian cycle turn up jousting in Cyprus in the mid 1220s, just a few years before Ernoul-Bernard was being composed.27 But it is hard to avoid regarding the Green Knight as one of several fictive elements in the ErnoulBernard account. That in itself may be significant. The author would have been able to see that the successful defence of Tyre marked a significant achievement but, with a knowledge of only the barest outline of events, had decided to use his imagination to supply the missing detail. That in turn would argue that the account of this episode does not come from the pen of Ernoul, the squire of Balian of Ibelin, and a contemporary of these events, but was assembled later by someone who was not well informed. Building on a view put forward by John Gillingham as far back as 1982,28 I have argued elsewhere that Ernoul had authored much of the preceding account, ending with the surrender and evacuation of Jerusalem just before the siege.29 His material is well-informed but highly partisan. The account of what follows, beginning with the siege of Tyre and continuing through the Third Crusade and beyond, contains elements which are either demonstrably wrong or which stretch our credulity, and it is only to be expected that historians have generally disregarded it. In this connection it is worth mentioning that in the Ernoul-Bernard account there is a reference to an episode that lay much in the future. Speaking of the two Muslim galleys that avoided capture or destruction, the author states that they ‘fled to Beirut where they then did great damage to the Christians as you will hear in due course’.30 This promise is fulfilled in the context of the account of the events of 1197 or 1198.31 On the other hand, there are no similar cross-references to significantly later events in those portions of the narrative that would appear to have been written by Ernoul. To return to the question posed near the beginning of this paper: if we are trying to determine what exactly happened during the siege of Tyre, it seems to me that, taken together, the Christian sources contain virtually no worthwhile factual information that cannot be gleaned from the 27

28

29

30 31

Philip of Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente (1223–1242), ed. Silvio Melani (Napoli, 1994), p. 72. John Gillingham, ‘Roger of Howden on Crusade’, repr. in John Gillingham, Richard Cœur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994), p. 147 n. 33. See Edbury, ‘Ernoul, Eracles and the Collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, pp. 46–50. Ernoul, p. 242. Ernoul, pp. 315–16.

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Arabic materials. To that extent Lyons and Jackson and Eddé are thereby vindicated. If, however, we are trying to get at the perceptions, motives, and mentalités of the Christian authors and their audiences, then there is much here that is rewarding. For the near contemporary writers, the defence of Tyre provided a much needed ray of hope for the future. For the Ernoul-Bernard author this episode could be presented as an instance in which supposedly ‘real’ history was every bit as entertaining as the prose romances which were coming into their own in the early thirteenth century. But of course that author’s embellishments do not constitute ‘real’ history; rather they are an exercise in myth-making, and, as we all know, that is often much more compelling and is precisely the sort of thing that captures the imagination of later generations. By way of an example, I want to end by drawing attention to the image chosen to grace the cover of this volume. It shows the final Christian charge against the Muslims, who had been attacking the land walls, as imagined in the 1470s. The Green Knight is well to the fore. This illustration is the work of Jean Colombe and is from a well-known manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris: Sébastien Mamerot, Les Passages d’Outremer. Mamerot’s text drew heavily on the Old French William of Tyre, and his commission to compose this work seemingly belongs to the context of a revival of interest in the crusades following the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The work is designed to celebrate French involvement, and especially the involvement of the French monarchy, in the crusading movement.32 Bearing in mind the testimony of the Muslim sources, all of which play down the significance of the charge, and, from the Christian side, the silence of the Templar Thierry (probably the most nearly contemporary of the Christian authors), it can be seen how the Christian counterattack (with the Green Knight well to the fore) has grown in the telling to become an event of epic proportions.33

32

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BnF, fr. 5594, fol.  205r. Available on the Internet at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/btv1b72000271 (accessed 11 Feb. 2016). For an English translation of Mamerot’s text with full colour reproductions of all the illustrations, see Sébastien Mamerot, A  Chronicle of the Crusades, ed. and trans. Thierry Delcourt, Danielle Quéruel, and Fabrice Masanés (Köln, 2016). The Green Knight’s encounter with Saladin at Tripoli is illustrated in a fourteenth-century manuscript of the French version of William of Tyre: MS Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.142, fol. 255r (reproduced in Richard A. Leson, ‘Chivalry and Alterity: Saladin and the Remembrance of Crusade in a Walters Histoire d’Outremer’, The Journal of the Walters Art Museum 68–69 (2010–11), 87–96 [here 89, fig. 2]).

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Corruent nobiles! Prophecy and Parody in Burton Abbey’s Flying Circus* Nicholas Vincent

We live in an era of ‘fake news’, or so we are assured by those whose assurances are themselves most likely faked. In such times of mistrust, the gullible are duped, cynics are entertained, and for the rest, the majority retreat into a scepticism bordering on despair. We have been here before. Indeed, it is a human condition that the best lack all conviction and the worst be filled with passionate intensity. If we glance back to the thirteenth century, we can trace precisely such traits. They may, indeed, supply some explanation for why ‘crusading’, that most passionate of good causes, ceased, by the late thirteenth century, to command the enthusiasm that it had stirred a century or so before. In pursuit of insights here, I wish to consider an item of news that came to the attention of a monk in Staffordshire, most likely in the mid- to late 1250s. The news itself was so extraordinary that it could not simply be set aside. But what to make of it? Was it true or false? The lack of any clear answer continues to plague our understanding of a story with no obvious beginning and no clear end. It is a story that nonetheless teaches us something of hearts and minds, both medieval and modern. So to the story itself.

Sources and Similarities There survives amongst the Peniarth manuscripts of the National Library of Wales a formulary from Burton Abbey in which are preserved several hundred letters collected towards the middle of the thirteenth century. The manuscript itself (MS Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 390, henceforth ‘PB’ for ‘Peniarth/Burton’) is made up of several distinct parts.1 One such, towards the end of the codex, has already been * For assistance with what follows, I am particularly indebted to Martin Aurell, Julie Barrau, Peter Crooks, Gary Dickson, Malcolm Gaskill, Frédérique Lachaud, Thierry Pécout, Fulvio Stacchetti, Augustine Thompson, O.P., Bjorn Weiler, and above all to Robert E. Lerner. 1 For a brief analysis, see Emil J. Polak, Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters: A Census of Manuscripts Found in Part of Western Europe, Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 249–290 ©F

H G

DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117323

Nicholas Vincent

mined for correspondence from 1209 between the Emperor Otto IV and King John of England, published in 1982.2 The parts that most concern us here, distinct from the others, occupy the first forty-five folios of the manuscript. Here, interspersed amongst extracts from various treatises on dictamen (Thomas of Capua, Bernard of Meung, Boncompagno da Signa), described collectively as an Ars dictandi, we find a formulary divided into three books.3 As book 3, part 2, letter 24 of this collection we are offered the following report, headed ‘Letters of the prophecy of Joachim’ (for the Latin text, cf. below Appendix 1): The brother of the friars preacher, servant of the militia of Jesus Christ, the son of Holy Mary, sends greetings to his dearest brothers the prior and convent of Rupp’. I consider it to the honour and glory of Jesus Christ to announce an event worthy of memory and joy, newly enacted in our presence. There is in our province a brother of our order, Peter Batholon’, at the scent of whom the blind see, cripples walk, a dozen of the dead now live, besides many others rescued from death, so that the whole land is united in spiritual jubilee. When this same brother was at Salon-de-Provence, eight miles from Marseille, in the sight of five thousand people, he (or possibly there) appeared in person in the air as a crucified man of great size, coloured green. The Blessed Virgin appeared on his shoulders, seated on a throne, holding the Son on her lap, and the Holy Spirit appeared in the spirit of a dove above him, as did the twelve apostles in the air, flying above him from the castle of Salon-de-Provence as far as Marseille; this in the sight of bishops, barons, and forty or fifty thousand people, all of whom asserted on oath that they had seen and firmly believed these things. They added moreover that nothing was of help to them at present or in future save for him that they had seen on the cross and in the lap of his mother. Afterwards the aforesaid brother repeatedly declared to the people: ‘Firmly believe in this, and should someone appear preaching the cause of another God, do not believe him, because you have already seen these things’. And

2

3

Japan and the United States of America (Leiden, 1994), pp.  259–60, noting dependence on Thomas of Capua’s Summa dictaminis (fols 8r-11v) and Bernard of Meung’s Flores dictaminum (fols 46r-100r). The sections that most concern us below (fols 38r-45v) are described by Polak merely as ‘model letter collection continued from fol. 36v’. Hans-Eberhard Hilpert, ‘Zwei Briefe Kaiser Ottos IV. an Johann Ohneland’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 38 (1982), 123–40. The running headings to PB, fols 13r-45v suggest division into three books. The table of contents, however (fols  1r-2r) divides Books 1–3 into four ‘sextarii’, the fourth here representing a second part to what in the Ms is still headed Book ‘3’. The whole is rubricated (fol. 1r) as ‘Ars dictandi secundum formam Romanorum. Alius stilus secundum quendam magistrum’.

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they replied in agreement. And moreover, [there was] a brother named Altenus, by whom God restored sight to a blind man at Bordeaux, so that the whole city was moved to praise and glory for our Lord Jesus Christ, so that during a public sermon, one of the great men of the city removed his clothes so as to encourage others to return to Christ, in accordance with the prophecy of Joachim in the first book of Concordances: in the year 1250, many princes and noblemen will fall, and Christians will die, as if for nothing, in sight of the pagans. In ’54, the Greeks will recover Constantinople and the Latins will be wickedly expelled. In ’56, there will be two popes, one at Lyons and the other at Rome, and he at Lyons will be right and just, and he at Rome wicked and unjust, and they will be excommunicated by one another. In ’60, the Church will be reduced to a state of squalor and dispute unknown since the time of Constantine who united churches. In ’65, the Greeks will be subjected to the Church of Rome, and then news will be heard of the preachers of Antichrist. Farewell.

Apocalyptic preaching, visions of the Trinity, relations between East and West, the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore: what are we to make of all this? Let us begin with the medium of preservation. To judge from their surviving manuscripts, the monks of Burton Abbey took a particular interest in epistolary forms. Besides PB, itself made up of several distinct parts, we know of at least two other Burton letter collections, closely related to one another: one surviving in Oxford, the other (in roll format) in the abbey’s archives now in the Staffordshire Record Office. Both the Oxford and the Stafford collections consist of idealised ahistoric letter forms, even though various of these letters are attributed to real people or historical situations.4 Much closer to PB, the Burton Annals, now in the British Library, recite upwards of 130 newsletters and other documents, spliced together into a narrative. Most of these items date from the 1240s and 1250s, including unique instruments from the period of baronial reform and rebellion in England, after 1258.5 The Annals are today preserved as the first eight gatherings of a composite codex from the library of Sir Robert 4

5

MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Fairfax 27 (Polak, Medieval Letter Treatises, p.  373); MS Stafford, Staffordshire Archives, D603/A/Add/1927 (not in Polak). The Bodleian MS was widely used by Martha Carlin and David Crouch in their edition of Lost Letters of Medieval Life: English Society, 1200–1250 (Philadelphia, 2013), esp. pp. 7–8. For the genre more widely, see Rosalind Hill, Ecclesiastical Letter-Books of the Thirteenth Century (London, 1936). MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E iii, fols 4r-100v, continued in a fifteenth-century hand to fol. 102r, this entire section forming a distinct series of eight gatherings, whence AM, 1: xxviii-xxxii, 183–500, with a table of contents, listing the documents recited, at p. xxxviii, and cf. Documents of

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Cotton. As preserved, they are bound up with other materials including the prophecies of Pseudo-Methodius, and a unique copy of a treatise, datable to the mid-thirteenth century, known as the ‘Invective against King John’, reporting the prophecies and persecutions of Peter of Wakefield, a hermit who in 1212 predicted the demise of England’s King John. If, as seems possible, various of these materials were at Burton in the Middle Ages, then we would have further evidence of an interest taken by the Burton monks in prophecy and eschatology.6 In general, prophecy and the writing of history marched hand in hand, not least because past events were (and remain) one of the best means of predicting the future. For present purposes, it is of even greater significance that the Burton Annals recite half a dozen forms also preserved in PB. Not only this, but for long stretches, the Annals are written in a similar, or possibly the same, hand as those parts of PB that most concern us, the Annals in double columns, PB in single column but in both cases with identical or very similar rubricated headings, the same marginal breaks in red and blue, and the same red highlighting.7 Annals and formulary seem to form two parts of a wider project, in the one case deploying letters as historical evidence, in the other as models for dictamen. The conjunctions here may, in some ways, remind us of those between the Chronica and the Additamenta of Matthew Paris. Like our letter from Provence, many of the newsletters preserved in the Burton Annals display a concern not only for English affairs but for crusades and the wider history of Christendom. Some of these letters were known either to Matthew Paris or survive as originals in the royal archives, suggesting their dissemination from the court of Henry III.8 Many of these would be entirely unknown were it not for

6

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the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion 1258–1267, ed. Reginald  F. Treharne and Ivor J. Sanders (Oxford, 1973), pp. 76–123, 148–57, nos 3–8, 12. A full description of MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E iii is forthcoming, together with an edition of the Invectivum (fols 171r-178v), by Frédérique Lachaud and Elsa Marguin-Hamon. For the Annals, apparently acquired by Sir Robert Cotton in 1621 from Christ Church, Oxford, previously used by John Selden, see Colin G.  C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library (London, 2003), p. 185. In the specific instance of the letters relating to Provence (PB, fol. 41v) compare the entries for the year 1256 in the Annals (MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E iii, fols 62r-67r). Known to Matthew Paris: letters of Robert, patriarch of Jerusalem, addressed to Innocent IV (1255) reporting the Turkish victory at Gaza (AM, 1: 257–63, addressed by patriarch to pope, also in Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols, Rolls Series, 57 [London, 1872–83], 4: 337–44, in a version

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the news-gathering network of the Burton monks. Indeed, so effective were Burton’s information networks that the Burton monks came into possession not only of semi-public correspondence but even of what seem to have been more private communications between king and pope.9 As for that part of the formulary PB (book 3, part 2, fols 32r-45v) in which our visionary letters are embedded, this opens with a copy of the Breviloquium of the Bolognese rhetorician Boncompagno of Signa.10 Boncampagno’s forms are generally ahistoric. However, whereas other medieval copies of his Breviloquium remove all or most personal names, the Peniarth/Burton version preserves at least some of these details,

9

10

addressed by the patriarch and eleven other dignitaries to the prelates of France and England); a report of the news of the Tartars brought to the Council of Lyons in 1245 by Peter, archbishop of Rus (AM, 1: 271–75, also in Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 386–89), and the will of the Emperor Frederick II (AM, 1: 289–90, also in Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 216–17). Related to documents still surviving in the royal archives, see letters of Alexander IV on the Tartars (AM, 1: 495–99, Clamat in auribus, 17 November 1260, addressed to the English Church, also known from a version addressed to the Lord Edward, still surviving as an original in TNA, SC 7/3/24, whence Jane E. Sayers, Original Papal Documents in England and Wales from the Accession of Pope Innocent III to the Death of Pope Benedict XI (1198–1304) [Oxford, 1999], p. 287, no. 635; Potthast, 2: no. 17964, noting further versions); letters relating to English involvement in Sicily (AM, 1: 339–40, to Henry III, Regale genus Anglie, here undated and attributed to Alexander IV, but in reality of Innocent IV, 15 May 1254, also surviving as an original, TNA, SC 7/21/28, whence Sayers, Original Documents, pp. 202–3, no. 452; Potthast, 2: no. 15369). For example, letters of Innocent IV to Henry III, responding to banter about the respective ages of pope and king (AM, 1: 324–25, Regiam gratitudinem digna, with abbreviated date), still surviving as an original (18 December 1253, TNA, SC 7/21/29, whence Foedera, conventiones, litterae et cujuscunque generis acta publica, ed. Thomas Rymer, A. Clarke and Frederick Holbrooke, 4 vols [London, 1816–39], 1: 294; Sayers, Original Documents, p. 198, no. 442; Potthast, 2: no. 15181). Edited (from manuscripts in Munich, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere, including PB) as Breviloquium – Mira, ed. Elena Bonomo and Luca Core (Padova, 2013). For Boncompagno, who will loom large in what follows, see Virgilio Pini, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 90 vols (Roma, 1960–), 2: 720–25; Carl Sutter, Aus Leben und Schriften des Magisters Boncompagno (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1894); Il pensiero e l’opera di Boncompagno da Signa: Atti del primo convegno nazionale (Signa 23–24 febbraio 2001), ed. Massimo Baldini (Firenze, 2002), and the notes to Terence O. Tunberg, ‘What is Boncompagno’s “Newest Rhetoric”?’, Traditio 42 (1986), 299–334, esp. p. 300 nn. 4–6.

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p­ erhaps derived from an early recension. For example, what appears in other versions as a form of address shorn of all specifics, appears in PB as a papal letter to a king replying to his petition against the archbishop of Esztergom (Strigonensis) accused of complicity in the death of the late queen of ‘A.’, presumably referring here to the assassination of Queen Gertrude of Hungary in September 1213.11 Where names can be discerned, the fifty-one numbered entries that follow the Breviloquium in book 3, part 2 of PB are historic in form, not mimetic fictions. Many of them concern Laurence of St Edward, abbot of Burton (1229–60), under whose abbacy the bulk of the historical materials in the Burton Annals was collected.12 More than thirty of these fifty-one entries can be dated, with various degrees of precision, between the late 1220s and the mid- to late 1250s. The latest are two letters of Henry III to the sheriff of Nottingham concerning the illness of Abbot Laurence (November 1256),13 and a substantial dossier of seven forms relating to the election of Roger of Meuland as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield ( January-February 1257).14 All seven of these forms for the election of 1257 are also rehearsed in the 11

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PB, fol. 37v: ‘Rex illustris et ab ecclesia Romana dilecte iuxta peticionem tue serenitatis causam que inter te ex una parte et archiepiscopum Strigonensem ex altera vertitur super eo quod in mortem illustre olim regine de A. fuisse diceris machinatus comisimus venerabili fratri nostro episcopo de N.’, and cf. Boncompagno of Signa, Breviloquium, p. 76 and textual notes, suggesting that the Peniarth forms are reported in more accurate detail than in most others of the half dozen manuscripts consulted. For the archbishop’s involvement, see Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, ‘Chronica’, ed. Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS, 23: 898. For whom, see The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, ed. David Knowles et  al., 3 vols (Cambridge, 1972–2008), 2: 25. For the documents surviving from his abbacy, see Isaac H. Jeayes, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of the Charters and Muniments Belonging to the Marquis of Anglesey’, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire edited by the … William Salt Archaeological Society (London, 1937), pp. 39–66, nos 85–184. PB, fols 42v-43r, nos 32–33 (10 and 13 November 1256), neither of them enrolled in chancery, both relating to the Nottinghamshire session of the general eyre, November-December 1256, for which see David Crook, Records of the General Eyre (London, 1982), p. 123. PB, fols 43r-44r, nos 35a-g, seven letters in all, for which cf. John Le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae anglicanae, 1066–1300, ed. Diana E. Greenway, Christopher Brooke, and Jeffrey Denton, 11 vols (London, 1968–), 11: 8, noting a form in PB also in BnF, lat. 5954, fols 50v-51r (fourteenth-century materials, otherwise unrelated to PB).

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Burton Annals in the same order, and in a remarkably similar hand, albeit with minor details reported in both copies that suggest derivation from a lost common source rather than that the formulary copied the Annals, or vice versa.15 This part of PB also preserves four papal letters of which three were known, independently, to the St Albans chroniclers Roger of Wendover and/or Matthew Paris.16 One of these, of Innocent IV (1253), relates to attempts to obtain a prebend at Lincoln for one of the pope’s nephews, and survives in PB, in the Burton Annals, and in a copy preserved by Matthew Paris. The copy in the Annals is far more heavily abbreviated than that in the formulary PB, confirming both a close correspondence between Annals and formulary and that the PB version was not simply copied from the Annals but was derived independently, from a common source.17 Besides our letter from Provence, book 3 of PB preserves at least one other news report, in this instance of events and speeches made at the king’s court in November 1244, in response to demands for a papal subsidy presented to Henry III by the papal envoy, Master Martin. This

15

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AM, 1: 377–81, from MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E iii, fols  63v-64v. Note, for example, the more extended versions of the titles of Henry  III and Archbishop Boniface in PB, as opposed to PB’s omission of various words (‘in episcopum nostrum Couentr’ et Lych’ ecclesiarum’: AM, 1: 378; ‘Henrico Dei gratia etc. Bonefacius Dei gratia Cantuariensis archiepiscopus etc.… de viro provido et discreto’: AM, 1: 380, here showing these missing words in italics) preserved in the Annals. PB, fol. 39r, no. 8 (Gregory IX, Ex commissa nobis, providing Richard Grant as archbishop of Canterbury, 19 January 1229, here without date, but as Potthast, 1: no. 8316, also recorded [undated] by Roger of Wendover and thence by Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 171–72); PB, fol. 40v, no. 18 (Innocent IV, Tua nobis fraternitas, 17 May 1253, responding to Grosseteste’s complaints over papal provision, also independently in Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 152, no. 78, whence Potthast, 2: no. 13367); PB, fol.  45r, no. 44 (Alexander  IV, Cum dilectum filium, commanding the papal chaplain Stephen to assist L., the pope’s servant and familiar, not otherwise known). PB, fol. 42r-v, no. 27 (Cum dilectus filius, 26 January 1253, not in Potthast, in an abbreviated form [not reciting the papal mandate], in AM, 1: 311–13, and also [independently, but with full recital of the mandate] in Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 389–92, 6: 229–31, no. 115, here dividing Grosseteste’s letter, recited in Matthew’s chronicle, from the papal letters, consigned by Matthew to his Additamenta. Cf. Robert Grosseteste, Epistolae, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 25 [London, 1861], pp. 432–37, no. 128).

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survives both in PB and in an abbreviated collection of forms for monastic letter writing, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.18 Elsewhere, in the remainder of that part of PB written in the same or similar hand to book 3, part 2, we find letters of Archbishop Stephen Langton (d.  1228), King Henry  III (here dated 6 October 1226), and Bishop Alexander of Coventry relating to abbatial elections, in the last case following the translation of Richard de Insula, abbot of Burton, to the position of abbot of Bury St Edmunds (1229);19 the bull for the canonization of St Edmund of Canterbury (11 January 1247) and a report on the same from R(ichard), bishop of Chichester (both of these also in Matthew Paris’ ‘Vita Sancti Edmundi’);20 letters of Bishop Roger of Coventry concerning an election at Repton Priory (1245x1247);21 letters of Pietro Capocci, cardinal-deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro (1244x1259) petitioning King Henry III for a pension of 300 marks originally granted to his grandfather, Giovanni Capocci, by King Richard I;22 three letters of Pope Honorius III (1221 and 1224–25, the earliest of these on papal provisions);23 letters of Gregory IX, including the pope’s orders for a general visitation 18

19

20

21

22 23

PB, fol.  40r, no. 14, also (selected phrases only) in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 11, fol. 96v, part of a short collection (fols 94v-96v) of polite phrases abstracted from monastic letters. PB, fols 16v-18v (bk 1, nos 47–65), 45v (bk 3, part 2, no. 49), whence (in part) English Episcopal Acta, ed. David  M. Smith et  al., 45 vols (Oxford, 1980–), 43: 82–85, nos 79–80, and for the 1229 election, Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 6 vols (London, 1901–13), 2: 253–54, 275. PB, fols 19v-20v (bk 1, nos 76–77), also in Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 120–25, 128–29, nos 67/1, 68; English Episcopal Acta, 22: 131–32, no. 165, and for the bull of canonization (Novum matris ecclesie gaudium), Potthast, 2: no. 12392. PB, fol. 21r (bk 1, no. 80), whence English Episcopal Acta, 43: 306–8, no. 251, and for further letters of Bishop Roger, cf. PB, fols 41v (bk 3, part 2, no. 25), 43r (bk 3, part 2, no. 34), 44r (bk 3, part 2, no. 36), whence English Episcopal Acta, 43: 225–27, nos 198–200. PB, fol. 21v (bk 1, no. 81). PB, fols 22v-24r (bk 2, no. 4, Auditis et intellectis, 14 May 1224, reciting letters of Stephen Langton, 29 November 1223, known from other copies as Acta Stephani Langton Cantuariensis archiepiscopi AD 1207–1228, ed. Kathleen Major [Oxford, 1950], pp. 78–83, no. 61), 24v-25r (bk 2, no. 6, Super muros Ierusalem, 29 January 1225, as Potthast, 1: nos 7349–50, but here with date 29 January 1225 and addressed to the papal envoy to England, Master Otto), 31v (bk 2, no. 34, Cum hii qui sedi, as Potthast, 1: no. 6569, 26 February 1221, printed from cartulary copies of versions directed to the archbishops of Canterbury and York, in Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating

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of monasteries in the province of Canterbury (9 June 1232, also in both the Burton Annals and Wendover/Paris);24 letters of Innocent IV to the Cistercian general chapter (1243);25 the remonstrances of the French bishops (1226) against the papal legate Romanus (also preserved both by Wendover/Paris and in a Salisbury cartulary);26 letters of Innocent IV (28 February 1244) on behalf of William Raleigh (also preserved by Matthew Paris);27 disputes between his chapter and Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (1239/40) following his assertion of visitation rights in Lincoln cathedral;28 and letters of the papal legate Otto (1237x1241) dispensing a clerk from illegitimacy, referring to ‘H. de M.’, probably the same ‘H. de Mercenton’ recorded elsewhere in the formulary.29 With the

24

25

26

27

28

29

to the English Church, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, 2 vols [Oxford, 1964], 1: 96–98). PB, fols 21v (bk 1, no. 82, Ex parte dilectorum, undated, on judges delegate), 22r (bk 2, no. 1, Egressus a facie, here dated merely at Spoleto, with fully dated versions in Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 234–35, and in AM, 1: 243–44, from MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E iii, fols 22v-23r, whence Potthast, 1: no. 8947). PB, fol. 22v (bk 2, no. 3, In precelce dignitatis, 25 July 1243, promising future support, apparently not in Potthast). PB, fol. 25r-v (bk 2, no. 7), also, at greater length, in Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 105–9 and The Register of S. Osmund, ed. W. H. Rich Jones, 2 vols (London, 1883–84), 2: 51–54. PB, fol. 26r-v (bk 2, nos 9–10, Postquam Dei benignitas, in the first version here, addressed to Henry  III, the second to Archbishop Boniface, in the version to Henry III also in Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 347–49, whence Potthast, 2: no. 11267, also in versions addressed to the king, archbishop, and the bishops of Worcester and Hereford, and the archdeacon of Canterbury, in Berger, 1: 88–89, nos 505–7). PB, fols 26v-27v (bk 2, no. 11, five forms in all including letters of Gregory IX, Cum inter venerabilem, 24 April 1240, and a judge delegacy by Walter de Cantilupe, bishop of Worcester, and the archdeacons of Worcester and Sudbury, not noticed in English Episcopal Acta, 13). The dispute itself is noticed, but with only the briefest of documentary excerpts shared with PB, by Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 528–29, and thereafter, and more generally, in Grosseteste, Epistolae, pp. 199–261, nos 71, 73, 77, 79–81; Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 154–56, 391, 497–501. See here James H. Srawley, ‘Grosseteste’s Administration of the Diocese of Lincoln’, in Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop, ed. D. A. Callus (Oxford, 1955), pp. 173–76. PB, fol. 27v (bk 2, no. 12/2), and for H. de Mercenton’, probably identifiable with Marchington in Staffordshire, see fol. 21v (bk 1, no. 84, temp. Hugh prior of Lenton, 1240x1259, cf. Heads of Religious Houses, 2: 231).

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exception of the material from Boncampagno’s Breviloquium, it should be noted that all the letters in these parts of PB date from the years between c. 1220 and 1257, and all were addressed to English correspondents or concern English affairs. It is also significant that so many of the Peniarth/Burton letters were known not only to the Burton Annals but to Wendover and Matthew Paris at St Albans. We seem to be dealing here with a common stock of historical source materials circulating within a Benedictine milieu. Besides the peculiarity of its contents, our letter concerning Provence stands out from its surroundings, first as a newsletter, second as a report of European rather than English affairs, and thirdly as something associated with the friars (in this instance with friends of the Dominicans) rather than with monks. In many ways, these features are more reminiscent of the correspondence preserved in the Burton Annals than they are of the other materials in our particular part of PB whose orbit is, for the most part, confined to the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. By contrast, the Burton Annals suggest contacts both with the royal court and with the household of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln.30 The Annals also display an interest in both European and Dominican affairs, not only reciting letters and reports of the 1250s relating to the disputes between Dominicans and seculars at the schools of Paris, but in 1255–56 criticizing the Dominicans (rather than the Franciscans, as reported by Matthew Paris) for their attempts to protect the Jews of Lincoln from persecution following the ‘martyrdom’ of Little St Hugh.31

Missing Persons: Identifications and Enigmas With all this in mind, let us return to our particular newsletter concerning Provence. The letter is addressed to the prior and convent of Rupp’. Tempting as it might be to interpret Rupp’ as a form of the word ‘stone’ and 30

31

As noticed by Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 408–11. AM, 1: 340–48, esp. pp. 346–48, cf. Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 516–19, 546, and for the reports on disputes of the 1250s, see AM, 1: 430–35: two letters, the second of these (pp.  434–35), of the Dominican prior-general, Humbert of Romans, otherwise unknown, the first (pp. 430–34) from the bishop of Paris reciting letters of Pope Alexander  IV (Cunctis processibus et ordinationibus, 17 June 1256), these papal letters also printed in C.  E. Du Boulay, Historia universitatis Parisiensis, 6 vols (Paris 1665–73), 3: 302–5, from copies in the cartularies of Notre-Dame, whence Potthast, 2: no. 16424.

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thence to suggest Stone Priory, an Augustinian dependent of Kenilworth, within the diocese of Coventry, Stone is invariably referred to in Latin (including elsewhere in our formulary) as the priory of Stane or Stanis.32 Rupp’ is no more easily identified as Cistercian Roche, in Yorkshire, headed by an abbot rather than a prior. Looking to France rather than to England, it might most easily be construed as Rupella: the former Plantagenet enclave at La Rochelle, which did indeed shelter significant communities both of Dominican and Franciscan friars.33 Certainly, the Burton Annals, although not otherwise PB, preserve a variety of letters with French addressees, suggesting that means were available for Burton to acquire materials dispatched far and wide, most plausibly as copies of letters originally gathered by the English royal court or within the households of the bishops of Lincoln and Coventry-Lichfield. These seem to have been carried to Burton perhaps by ecclesiastical dignitaries, perhaps in the course of judicial business, not least by the royal justices in eyre whose deeds are elsewhere reported in detail in the Burton Annals. Not only are the addressees of our letter, the prior and convent of Rupp’, hard to identify, but so too is their unnamed correspondent, described not as a Dominican but merely as ‘a friend’ of Dominicans and as ‘a servant of the militia of Jesus Christ, the son of Holy Mary’. There is a similarly mysterious quality to others of the letter’s personal names. Thus, there is no evidence for a Dominican friar, indeed of any friar whatsoever, named Peter Batholon’, whilst the brother Altenus, reported as preaching at Bordeaux, is not only unrecorded elsewhere but bears an inherently implausible Christian name.34 By 1233, the Franciscans were established at Salon-de-Provence, an important trading centre, closely connected to 32

33

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The Victoria County History of Staffordshire, ed. William Page et  al., 20 vols (London, 1908–), 3: 240–47. The priory’s seal matrix was discovered as recently as 2011 in a Surrey field: Virgin and child, inscription S’ ECC’ SCE MARIE ET SCI WLFADI MARTIRIS DE STANIS, for which see http:// alittlebitofstone.com/2011/09/18/bit-of-medieval-stone-found-in-surreyfield/ (accessed 21 Mar. 2018). Richard W. Emery, The Friars in Medieval France (New York, 1962), p. 44, and for the Franciscans there, as early as 1230, see Patent Rolls, 2: 393–94. Thus there is nothing in Bernard Gui’s De fundatione et prioribus conventuum provinciarum Tolosanae, ed. Paul  A. Amargier (Roma, 1961), although Bordeaux, Marseille, and Salon all lay in the friars’ province of Toulouse. Gerard de Frachet records nothing of Salon or Peter Batholon’, although he does report a miraculous sky-borne crucifix, seen as a deathbed vision by a brother at Marseille: Vitae Fratrum ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. Benedictus M. Reichert (Roma, 1897), p. 286.

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the wider mercantile worlds of Provence and northern Italy. So far as we know, however, Salon had no resident Dominican community.35 The castle at Salon, the Château-de-l’Empéri, remains an impressive structure, built into the rock of Puech dominating the plain of Crau. From the 1140s, it served as one of the principal residences of the archbishops of Arles.36 Even so, lying thirty miles from Marseille, with a population estimated between 2500 and 3500, Salon was not the mere ‘eight miles’ from Marseille (octo miliaria) that our text proclaims. Nor is it easy to imagine crowds of five thousand, let alone of forty to fifty, gathering in its vicinity.37 As for the events reported — odiferous flying preachers, green Christs, melodramatic embodiments of the Trinity, fears of the coming of Antichrist — all of this might strike us as more appropriate to the hallucinations of TV evangelism than to thirteenth-century Provence. There are problems even with the Latin. Was it the preacher, Peter Batholon’, who appeared as Christ on the cross, or Christ himself ? How precisely did the striptease at Bordeaux fulfil the prophecy attributed to Joachim? Elsewhere, there are further errors or exaggerations. A crowd of five thousand, for example, is surely a topos, intended to reflect the five thousand fed by Christ in Galilee, as witness to one of the earliest of Christian miracles (Matthew, 14. 21). The throwing-off of clothes at Bordeaux surely mirrors St Francis in the marketplace at Assisi, just as the aerobatics of the Trinity may reflect those of the seraph, who in Franciscan lore, transmitted the stigmata to Francis. The idea of the green, or ever-living, cross was a familiar one.38 A gigantic green Christ, by contrast, was altogether more bizarre. The cross itself was an ever-present symbol in medieval Christendom: a spur both 35

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38

For the Franciscans, originally established in what had once been the archbishop’s palace, see Louis Gimon, Chroniques de la ville de Salon depuis son origine jusqu’en 1792 (Aix-en-Provence, 1882), p. 44, whence Jean Blanchard, Histoire de Salon des origines à nos jours (Nîmes, 1991), pp. 20, 28–29; Emery, Friars in France, p. 40. For the château and lordship, see Robert Brun, La ville de Salon au MoyenAge (Aix-en-Provence, 1924), pp. 82–91, esp. pp. 84–6; Gimon, Chroniques de Salon, pp. 35–36, 40–43; Blanchard, Salon, pp. 18–20. Monique Wernham, La communauté juive de Salon-de-Provence (Toronto, 1987), pp.  ix-x, following the demographic study by Anna RutkowskaPłachcińska, Salon-de-Provence: Une société urbaine du bas Moyen Âge (Warszawa, 1982). John Munns, Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England (Woodbridge, 2016), pp.  116–20, citing Thomas  N. Hall, ‘The Cross as Green Tree in the “Vindicta Salvatoris” and the Green Rod of Moses in Exodus’, English Studies 72 (1991), 297–307.

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to emulate Christ’s example and to fight for the Holy Land sanctified by Christ’s ministry.39 The thirteenth century, in England as elsewhere, witnessed a vogue for sculpted crucifixions with Mary and St John in attendance, often flanked by two cherubim.40 Nor is there any doubting the devotion shown by both Franciscans and Dominicans to the cross, and specifically to painted depictions of the crucifixion.41 By contrast, a flying circus of Christ, Mary, Holy Ghost, and twelve apostles, replete with throne and dove, seems calculated to excite not awe but alarm or ridicule. We shall return to the question of whether this is parody or historical reportage. In the meantime, it is significant that the contents of our letter, flying circus and all, were transmitted, indexed, and rubricated at Burton Abbey not as a news report or vision of the cross, but specifically for what they report ‘of the prophecy of Joachim’.42

39

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42

For the central role played by the cross in the politics and terminology of crusading, see, for example, Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Peace Never Established: The Case of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 28 (1978), 87–102 (here 90–93); Christopher Tyerman, God’s War (London 2006), pp. 70–71, 259–60, 375, 384, 421, 480–81, 680, 771–72, 803. For its prominence, in both the text and illustration of the greatest of thirteenth-century English chronicles, see Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley, 1987), pp.  83–85, 230, 271–72, 297, 305–13, and figs 147, 171, 186, 190–92, 195–97. For other manifestations, see, for example, Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood (Cambridge, 2001), and Nicholas Vincent, ‘Christ and the King: Plantagenet Devotion to Jesus Christ, 1150– 1270’, in Cristo e il potere: Teologia, antropologia e politica, ed. Laura Andreani and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Firenze, 2017), pp. 115–17. Munns, Cross and Culture, esp. pp. 120–26, 137–44; Peter Brieger, ‘England’s Contribution to the Origin and Development of the Triumphal Cross’, Mediaeval Studies 4  (1942), 85–96 (here 89–93); Vincent, ‘Christ and the King’, pp. 116–17 n. 28. Albeit (as in Cimabue’s crucifix for Santa Croce) more often in the form of Christus patiens rather than Christus triumphans: Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge, 1996); Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven, 2013); Francesco e la croce dipinta, ed. Marco Pierini (Milano, 2016), and more figuratively, Christoph T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994). In the contemporary table of contents (PB, fol.  2r) and in the rubricated heading to the letter itself (fol. 41v) listed as Littera de prophetia Ioachim.

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The same years in which our letter was collected witnessed an explosion in prophecy and other pseudonymous writings attributed to Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202). Following various leads in Joachim’s own works, his followers proclaimed the 1250s as a decade that would culminate in the coming of Antichrist, assigned specifically to the year 1260. More than this, and here with an eye to the ‘Greek’ emphasis of the prophecies set out in our letter, Joachim had long been recognised as an authority on the Greek-speaking world. Our letter attributes its particular prophecies to the Liber de concordia. In reality, Joachim’s Liber contains no such closelydated predictions. It does, nonetheless, lay great emphasis upon relations between the Greek and Latin Churches, not least upon the rivalry between Latin popes and Greek patriarchs.43 This in itself is unsurprising. As a son of Calabria, closely connected to the Greek-speaking world, imposing his prophetic schemes in deliberate opposition to contemporary ‘Greek’ apocalypticism, Joachim carefully integrated the fates of the eastern and western Mediterranean into his schemes for world history.44 Indeed, it was precisely because his predictions for Greeks and Latins seemed fulfilled in the crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204, that for a while at least, Joachim’s writings achieved near-canonical status at the papal curia. Thus Joachim was quoted ecstatically, albeit over-hastily, by Pope Innocent III in papal letters announcing the outcome of the Fourth Crusade.45 This in turn may have played no small part in ensuring the fulfilment of another 43

44

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Joachim of Fiore, Liber de concordia noui ac veteris testamenti, ed. Emmett Randolph Daniel (Philadelphia, 1983), pp. 154–55, 181, 197, 292–93, 297–300, 337–38, 366–67, esp. pp.  299–300. The new edition of the Concordia, by Alexander Patschovsky, 4 vols (Wiesbaden, 2017) appeared too late for me to cite here. For Joachim’s apparently deliberate rejection of Greek models, see Paul  J. Alexander, ‘The Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the Beginnings of Joachimism’, in Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed. Ann Williams (Harlow, 1980), pp. 53–106 (here pp. 80–93). Christoph Egger, ‘Joachim von Fiore, Rainer von Ponza und die römische Kurie’, in Giocchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo  III: Atti del 5o Congresso internazionale di studi giochimiti San Giovanni in Fiore, 16–21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Roma, 2001), pp. 129–62 (here 137–50); Christoph Egger, ‘Papst Innocenz  III. als Theologie: Beiträge zur Kenntnis seines Denkens im Rahmen der Frühscholastik’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 30 (1992), 106–9; Christoph Egger, ‘A Theologian at Work: Some Remarks on Methods and Sources in Innocent III’s Writings’, in Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John C. Moore (Aldershot, 1999), p. 29.

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of Joachim’s prophecies: the coming of two new religious orders, generally identified as the Franciscans and Dominicans. As Marjorie Reeves was the first to question here, did Joachim display extraordinary foresight in predicting the coming of the friars, or was it that an awareness of Joachim’s prophecies prompted Innocent III to licence the activities of two religious groups that might otherwise have been condemned?46 As for the reception of Joachim and his teachings, Christoph Egger has demonstrated that, from the 1190s onwards, it was English chroniclers, with precocious access to Joachim’s own writings, who showed keenest interest in Joachim’s life and prophecies, no doubt spurred on by the interview conducted with the prophet by King Richard I, on the eve of Richard’s departure for the Third Crusade.47 Other European events are equally relevant, both to the letter’s reception and to an understanding of the particular vogue for Joachite and pseudo-Joachite prophecy in the 1240s and 1250s. Beginning twenty years earlier with Gregory IX’s excommunication of the Emperor Frederick II and Frederick’s self-coronation as king of Jerusalem, the contest between empire and papacy encouraged a rich harvest of apocalypticism. Either to praise Frederick or to condemn him, prophecies of the end of days and the coming of a last world emperor were widely circulated. By 1239, with the encyclical Ascendit de mari bestia, Pope Gregory was openly identifying Frederick as Antichrist.48 Thanks to versions of this encyclical addressed both to the archbishop of Canterbury and to the papal legate Otto, we know that Ascendit de mari circulated widely in England.49 The emperor’s 46

47

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Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford, 1969), pp. 135–60, esp. p. 145, as noticed by Alexander, ‘Byzantine Apocalypses’, p. 86. Christoph Egger, ‘A Pope Without Successor: Ralph of Coggeshall, Ralph Niger, Robert of Auxerre, and the Early Reception of Joachim of Fiore’s Ideas in England’, in Joachim of Fiore and the Influence of Inspiration: Essays in Memory of Marjorie E. Reeves (1905–2003), ed. Julia E. Wannenmacher (Farnham, 2013), pp. 145–79. MGH Epp. saec. XIII, 1: 645–54 (taken from the papal register, from a version addressed to the province of Reims, 1 July 1239, whence Potthast, 1: 912 sub 1 July 1239), with a further version addressed to the church of Jerusalem (7 July 1239) noted as Potthast, 1: no. 10774. In general, see Gian Luca Potestà, ‘Il drago, la bestia, l’Anticristo: Il conflitto apocalittico tra Federico II e il Papato’, in Il diavolo nel Medioevo: Atti del XLIX Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 14–17 ottobre 2012) (Spoleto, 2013), pp. 395–420. For the version addressed to Canterbury, dated 20 June 1239, whence Potthast, 1: no. 10766, see Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 590–608, at p. 608 noting a further

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arrest of the cardinals, the election of Pope Innocent IV, and the flight of the papacy from Rome to the Rhône culminated, in 1245, in the papal deposition of Frederick at the Council of Lyons. It was in the aftermath of Lyons that we observe the composition and circulation of such pseudoJoachite texts as the Expositio abbatis Joachimi super Sibillis et Merlino (?1246/47), the De oneribus prophetarum (?early 1250s), or the final recension of the supposedly ‘Greek’ prophecies known as the Vaticinium Sibyllae Erithreae (?1249).50 From much this same time, Matthew Paris, himself increasingly convinced of looming apocalypse, is the first writer to report a jingle (Cum fuerint anni transacti…) predicting that the year 1250 would witness the coming of Antichrist.51 This was regularly and repeatedly copied thereafter, reassigned from 1250 to 1260, now reattributed to Joachim and appended to his early treatise, the Epistola subsequentium figurarum.52 From much this same time, too, came Robert Grosseteste’s

50

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copy sent to King Henry  III. For that addressed to Otto, with date 26 May 1239 (sic), see MS Durham, Cathedral Library, C.IV.24, fols 106r-109v (early fourteenth-century, cf. Polak, Medieval Letter Treatises, pp. 285–86). For an introduction here, see Bernard McGinn, ‘From Joachim to PseudoJoachim and Back’, in Ioachim posuit verba ista: Gli pseudoepigrafi di Gioacchino da Fiore dei secoli XIII e XIV: Atti dell’8o Congresso internazionale di studi gioachimiti San Giovanni in Fiore, 18–20 settembre 2014, ed. Gian Luca Potestà and Marco Rainini (Roma, 2016), pp. 18–21. For specific texts, Christian Jostmann, Sibilla Erithea Babilonica: Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert (Hannover, 2006), with significant commentary by Alexander, ‘Byzantine Apocalypses’, pp.  71–79; Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp.  56–57, 521; Potestà, ‘Il Drago’, pp. 413–15. Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 80. For Matthew’s eschatological concerns, see Martin Haeusler, Das Ende der Geschichte in der mittelalterlichen Weltchronistik (Köln, 1980), pp. 57–64; Björn Weiler, ‘History, Prophecy and the Apocalypse in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris’, The English Historical Review 133 (2018), 253–83, and Daniel  K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 13–19, 66–70, and (highly speculatively) 109–27. Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp. 49–50, and for the Epistola, now generally known as the Genealogia, pp.  39, 42, 519; Robert  E. Lerner, The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment (Berkeley, 1983), p.  21, and the edition by Gian Luca Potestà, ‘Die Genealogia: Ein frühes Werk Joachims von Fiore und die Anfänge seines Geschichtsbildes’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 56 (2000), 55–101.

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assertion, presented in 1250 to the papal court, that the pope himself must choose whether to be Christ or Antichrist.53 These were also years of momentous activity in the East, where the fall of Jerusalem to the Khwarazmian Turks (August 1244) provoked the first crusade of Louis IX, which culminated in Louis’ capture (6 April 1250) following defeat at Mansurah. In response to the economic and military stranglehold obtained over Constantinople by John III Doukas Vatatzes, Greek-speaking ruler of Nicaea (d. 1254), these were also years that witnessed schemes, backed by Pope Innocent IV and brokered via the Franciscans, for a reunion between the Greek and Latin Churches.54 On 6 March (the Sunday of Letare Jerusalem) 1250, King Henry III of England took the cross.55 On 13 December 1250, the Emperor Frederick II died. These and associated events, not least the Mongol menace from the east, contributed to a sense of mounting crisis. Not surprisingly contemporaries looked to Joachim of Fiore and his interpreters to explain a clouded and potentially terrifying future. Joachim was already widely feted as a prophet and interpreter of the end of days, especially amongst the Franciscans. It was in the Franciscan convent at Pisa, between 1243 and 1247, that the young friar Salimbene first became directly acquainted with Joachite writings. From 1247 to 1249, first at Tarascon, then at Hyères in Provence, Salimbene sat at the feet of his fellow Franciscan, Hugh of Digne, imbibing a rich tradition of Joachite apocalypticism.56 So high did Joachim’s star rise that by 1254, Salimbene’s former associate from Parma, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, was openly 53

54

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Servus Gieben, ‘Robert Grosseteste at the Papal Curia, Lyons, 1250: Edition of the Documents’, Collectanea Franciscana 41 (1971), 340–93 (here 362–63 c. 26, 388 c. 3); Richard Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), pp. 276–85, esp. pp. 282–85; Joseph Goering, ‘Robert Grosseteste at the Papal Curia’, in A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle O.P., ed. Jacqueline Brown and William P. Stoneman (Notre Dame, 1997), pp. 253– 76, and more generally, for Innocent  IV as Antichrist, Potestà, ‘Il Drago’, pp. 410–11. Alexander, ‘Byzantine Apocalypses’, pp.  87–90; Nikolaos  G. Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A  Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 158–72. Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 101–2, and for the circumstances here, see Vincent, Holy Blood, pp. 14–16, 38, 186–87. Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp. 184–87; Delno C. West, ‘The Education of Fra’ Salimbene of Parma: The Joachite Influence’, in Prophecy and Millenarianism, pp. 199–201, citing Salimbene of Adam, Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Scalia, 2 vols (Bari, 1966), 1: 337, 428, 430–32, 455–56.

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asserting that the writings of Joachim, rather than the Old or New Testament, represented ‘The Eternal Evangel’, key to a new era of peace and tranquillity. This, so Gerard proclaimed, would commence in 1260 and would precede the Last Judgement. The condemnation of Gerard’s work, first at Paris and subsequently by Pope Innocent IV, was widely reported, not least in England by Matthew Paris.57 Matthew, who misdates this process to 1256 and who suggests (wrongly) that it was directed chiefly against the Dominicans rather than the Franciscans, records not only the scandal over Gerard’s ‘Eternal Evangel’ but the condemnation of various errors found in Joachim’s Liber de concordia, including the claim by ‘spiritual men’ (viri spirituales — one of our very earliest references to the ‘Spiritual’ Franciscans) that they might disobey the papacy in matters directly related to God. This, so it was suggested, was because the schism between Greek and Latin Churches was the work of the Holy Spirit, so that the Greek Church was, in some senses, of equal or potentially greater ‘spiritual’ standing than the Church of Rome.58 These disputes, from 1254 onwards, further advertised Joachim’s credentials to explain what were otherwise awesome and baffling events. Rather than condemn Joachim directly, popes Innocent IV and then Alexander IV moved against his misguided interpreters, condemning first Gerard, and ultimately both Gerard’s superior, the Franciscan minister-general, John of Parma, and his chief critic amongst the secular masters, William of Saint-Amour. Viewed in this context, the prophecies set out in our letter reflect the particular uncertainties of the 1250s. Thus in 1250 ‘many princes and noblemen’ did indeed ‘fall’, not only at Mansurah in February 1250, but with the death of Frederick II that December, at Torremaggiore in the province of Foggia, almost literally ‘in the sight of the pagans’, in this case 57

58

For brief surveys here, see Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp.  59–70, 187–90; Brett E. Whalen, ‘Antichrist and the Scandal of the Eternal Gospel’, in Ioachim posuit verba ista, pp. 105–16, following the dossier first published by Heinrich Denifle, ‘Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 1  (1885), 49–142. For English understanding, see Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 599, 6: 335–39, no. 175; whence Denifle, ‘Das Evangelium’, pp. 72–73. Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 336–37, propositions 5–7, a much simplified version of the condemnation edited by Denifle. For the ‘spirituals’ more generally, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans (Philadelphia, 2001), pp.  22–41, with discussion of the language of ‘spiritual men’, itself owing much to Joachim, at pp. 39–41. This same language in undoubtedly to be found in the more abstruse Anagni condemnation of Gerard, as in Denifle, ‘Das Evangelium’, p.  108 (‘postulabit alimenta a spiritualibus viris’).

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of the notorious Muslim colony at nearby Lucera. The prediction that in 1254 ‘the Greeks will recover Constantinople and the Latins be wickedly expelled’ can be found not only in our text, but almost certainly earlier than this, in the final interpolated version of the supposedly ‘Greek’ Vaticinium Sibyllae Erithreae. This had predicted that, as early as 1249, John Vataztes (‘the wedded he-goat’, i.e. a Greek ruler allied by marriage to the family of Frederick II) would reign once again in Constantinople.59 Unlike the Burton prognostic for 1250, that for 1254 remained unfulfilled. This in turn assists us in its dating. It is a notorious feature of such prophecies that they begin with predictions made ex eventu, reporting known events so as to add plausibility to future speculation. To anyone writing between February 1250 (the battle of Mansurah) and 1254 (the death of John Vatatzes, 3 November 1254), it would have been entirely plausible to imagine the fall of Christian princes and that the Greeks might soon be restored to Constantinople.60 Likewise, at any time after the return of Pope Innocent IV from Lyons to Genoa in April-May 1251 (a journey undertaken via Marseille), it was conceivable the pope might once again flee north of the Alps, so that, as the Burton letter predicts for 1256, a schism might emerge between rival papacies in Rome and Lyons.61 We thus have a setting for our letter, both intellectual and chronological.

Joachim, Provence, and the Great Devotion of 1233 What we have thus far appears to be an exercise in prophecy, composed at some time in the early to mid-1250s: a report of bizarre and miraculous events in southern France, intended to support a series of predictions themselves falsely attributed to Joachim of Fiore. Some of these 59

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Jostmann, Sibilla Erithea Babilonica, pp. 521–22 (‘Yrcus iugalis in Bizanziam reducetur’), with commentary by Alexander, ‘Byzantine Apocalypses’, pp. 74–79. For the date of John Vatatzes’ death, and his marriage, before 1243, to Anna, an illegitimate daughter of the Emperor Frederick II, specified as one of the crimes for which Innocent IV sought to depose Frederick in 1245, see George Akropolites, The History, ed. Ruth Macrides (Oxford, 2007), pp.  270–71, 274–75 nn. 12, 19; Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece, pp.  89, 146 n. 36; Jean-Marie Martin, ‘“O Felix Asia!” Frédéric  II, l’Empire de Nicée et le “Césaropapisme”’, Travaux et Mémoires 14 (2002), 473–83. For the papal itinerary here, see Potthast, 2: 1180–81. Innocent did not return to Rome, via Milan, Bologna, Perugia, and Assisi, until October 1253: Potthast, 2: 1247.

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predictions were founded upon contemporary realities: the defeat of Louis IX’s crusade and the death of Frederick II in 1250, negotiations for the reunification of Latin and Greek Churches, diplomatic initiatives to the Greek ruler, John Vatatzes, and the prospect of a Greek reconquest of Constantinople, predicted for 1254, the prediction here already anticipated by the Vaticinium Sibyllae Erithreae, and hence suggesting direct influence over our Peniarth/Burton letter by the better-known sibylline text. This latter is itself first definitely recorded in 1255, when part of it was quoted in a joint encyclical issued by the disgraced Franciscan ministergeneral, John of Parma, and his Dominican counterpart, Humbert of Romans.62 So far, so speculative. But are there any grounds for supposing, as the Burton monks themselves seem to have supposed, that our letter might report truths rather than falsehoods? Certainly, as we have seen, it was preserved in a formulary otherwise devoted to history rather than legend. There are two immediate reasons to pause here. The first is supplied by the letter’s reference to Salon-de-Provence, a town, as we have seen, placed directly under the authority of the archbishops of Arles. The metropolitan see of Arles was occupied between 1233 and 1258 by the troublesome Archbishop John Baussan. Caught in the crossfire between comital and urban powers, John was twice expelled from his cathedral city. In 1235, the so-called Confrérie des Bailes (confratria baiulorum), manipulated by the Porcelet family, obliged the archbishop to seek refuge at Salon. He was not officially restored to Arles until 1239, thanks to the support of Raymond-Berengar V, count of Provence. A decade later, he was once again expelled, with the Confrérie summoning the assistance of the anticlerical podestat of Avignon, Barral of Baux. The intention here was to maintain independence from the newly installed Capetian count of Provence, Charles of Anjou. John’s second exile lasted from September 1249 until April 1251, when he was once again restored to Arles, in the process being obliged to cede much of his temporal authority to Charles of Anjou.63 On this second occasion, Salon almost certainly joined in 62

63

Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp. 146–48; Alexander, ‘Byzantine Apocalypses’, p. 89; Jostmann, Sibilla Erithea Babilonica, pp. 19–20, 132–35, 266. Louis Stouff, Arles au Moyen Âge finissant (Aix-en-Provence, 2014), pp. 56–67; Thierry Pécout, L’Invention de la Provence: Raymond Bérenger V (1209–1235) (Saint-Amand-Montrond, 2004), pp.  203–4; Gimon, Chroniques de Salon, pp.  45–48. For the Confrérie, see Louis Stouff, L’Église et la vie religieuse à Arles et en Provence au Moyen Âge (Aix-en-Provence, 2001), pp. 26–28. For the role played by Salon in these events, see Brun, Salon au Moyen-Age, pp. 92–105, 291 n. 3, noting that Salon already had its own civic confraternity by 1253.

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the revolt. Commands were issued by Pope Innocent in July 1251 that the castle there be restored to the archbishop as soon as possible.64 In August, Charles of Anjou was petitioned to act as enforcer of a peace settlement between the archbishop and the commune of Salon (universitas Castri Sallonis), the castle there being placed at Charles’ disposal with the agreement of both the archbishop and the townsmen.65 These events are only sparsely chronicled. What we know of them comes to us from charters and from occasional, often obscure, references in troubadour poetry.66 Not only is there is a notorious shortage of annalistic sources from southern France, but the English chroniclers, most notably Matthew Paris, who preserved so many other details of European history, seem to have taken little interest in Provence.67 This despite the fact that, from 1236 onwards, Henry III of England had a direct stake in Provençal affairs as a result of his marriage to Eleanor, daughter of the last native count, Raymond-Berengar V. Matthew Paris records a visit to Arles by Richard of Cornwall, en route for his crusade of 1240.68 But neither the troubles of the archbishop of Arles, nor his exile to Salon, find any mention in an English chronicle. They might nonetheless supply a context in which apocalyptic preaching at Salon, by the friars or their associates, would have been peculiarly well received. At any time after 1235, and especially between 1249 and 1251, Salon-de-Provence lay at the eye of a series of political storms. Not only this, but as we have already noticed, in the 1240s, it was to Provence, and specifically to Tarascon and Hyères, that the Franciscan Salimbene gravitated in his search for Joachite enlightenment. 64

65

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Brun, Salon au Moyen-Age, p. 102 n. 4, from a papal original, MS Marseille, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, 3 G 6 (Chartrier de Salon), no. 4 (20 July 1251). An earlier period of upheaval is implied by letters of Innocent  IV, 13–14 March 1245, deputing custody of the castle of Salon to the abbot of Saint-Victor at Marseille and commanding the men of Salon to comply: MS Marseille, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, 1 H 121, no. 595 (Volentes castrum de Sallon); Berger, 1: 175, nos 1114–15. MS Marseille, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, B 345, B 346, for photographs of which I am indebted to Thierry Pécout. In the case of John Baussan, see Martin Aurell, ‘Le troubadour Bertrand de Lamanon et les luttes de son temps’, Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 41 (1987–88), 121–62, whence Stouff, Arles, pp. 61–67. Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 485, 505, 545–46, noting Henry III’s powerlessness in the face of the county’s annexation by Louis IX and Charles of Anjou. Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 44–47, including unsuccessful attempts by the archbishop of Arles to forbid Richard’s sailing from Marseille, an imperial port.

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It was at Hyères, appropriately enough, that Louis IX disembarked in July 1254, on his return from his disastrous crusade.69 Salimbene, in turn, supplies us with our second and perhaps strongest reason to invest the Peniarth/Burton letters with an element of plausibility. The entire career of Salimbene, a native of Parma, had been shaped by his childhood experience of a religious revival that in 1233 swept across northern Italy.70 This, the so-called ‘Alleluia’, was the work of both Franciscan and Dominican friars, most famously of the Dominican John of Vicenza.71 It involved a sudden and explosive upsurge of evangelism, accompanied by wonders. Its devotees reported miraculous apparitions witnessed by vast crowds: a crucifix illuminated on Brother John’s forehead, talking magpies, an eagle conjured from the skies, visions of Christ and his angels, resuscitation of the dead, levitations, prognostications.72 John and his followers were widely feted not just as miracle-workers but as ‘prophets’.73 They also spoke and wrote of the ‘Alleluia’ in language that, if not that of Joachim of Fiore, was of potentially Joachite tendency. Joachim had famously predicted a Sabbath time of refreshment. This, he had promised, would follow the coming of Antichrist and precede the Last Judgement.74 Salimbene, remembering his childhood experience of 69

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William  C. Jordan, Louis  IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (Princeton, 1979), p. 135. West, ‘Education of Salimbene’, pp. 194–95, citing Salimbene, Cronica, 1: 99 and passim. In general, see Augustine Thompson, Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Italy: The Great Devotion of 1233 (Oxford, 1992) and more briefly (and with very different emphasis) André Vauchez, ‘Une campagne de pacification en Lombardie autour de 1233’, in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 78 (1966), 503–49; Daniel  A. Brown, ‘The Alleluia: A  Thirteenth-Century Peace Movement’, Archivum franciscanum historicum 81 (1988), 3–16. John’s career was first properly surveyed by Carl Sutter, Johann von Vicenza und die italienische Friedensbewegung im Jahre 1233 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1891). Thompson, Revival Preachers, esp. pp.  57, 68, 96, 110–35, including pp.  113 (talking magpie), 120 ( John’s eagle), both of these also in Thomas of Cantimpré, Les exemples du ‘Livre des abeilles’, trans. Henri Platelle (Turnhout, 1997), pp. 99–104, nos 39–46. Thompson, Revival Preachers, pp. 122–26, at p. 122 noting that, ‘The Alleluia friars transformed their reputation for miracle-working into a charisma more useful in a social reformer than healing — that of prophecy’. Robert E. Lerner, ‘Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought’, Traditio 32 (1976), 97–144; Robert E. Lerner, ‘The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath’, in The

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the 1233 ‘Alleluia’, and writing as a Franciscan who had drunk deeply at Joachite wells, records the 1233 revival as a time of ‘tranquillity and peace … of praise and jubilation’.75 As with many such movements, the revivalist flames of 1233 guttered out almost as soon as lit. Having acquired extraordinary authority over Bologna, Parma, Verona, and many of the cities of Lombardy and the Veneto, John of Vicenza and his fellow preachers swiftly fell from power. John himself lived for at least another thirty years, shrouded in near-total obscurity.76 According to our most specific report, expelled from Parma, he made his way to ‘Cisalpine Gaul’ (i.e. to Lombardy and those parts of Italy extending from the river Po to Nice).77 Might the movement he had sponsored, having failed in Lombardy, now have crossed the Alps? Might it have spread to centres such as Marseille and Salon-de-Provence, closely linked to Italy by trade and personal associations, themselves engulfed after 1235 by the uncertainties of local rebellion and ‘foreign’, Capetian conquest? Matthew Paris testifies to the spread, north of the Alps, of the cult of the Dominican Peter of Verona, alias Peter Martyr.78 A prominent patron of lay confraternities and a close associate of the preachers of 1233, Peter was murdered by heretics outside Milan in April 1252. Within less than a year, he had been canonized by Pope Innocent IV (9 March 1253), in precisely the period when Burton was most active in collecting newsletters.79 Other Italian revivalist crazes undoubtedly crossed the Alps. This was the case, for example, with the so-called ‘Flagellants’ of 1260, beginning in Italy but thereafter spreading both to Bavaria and to

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Apocalyse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp. 53–71. Salimbene, Cronica, 1: 99: ‘tempus quietis et pacis … iocunditatis et letitie, gaudii et exultationis, laudis et iubilationis’, and cf.  Thompson, Revival Preachers, pp. 136, 152–54. Thompson, Revival Preachers, pp.  205–9; Sutter, Johann von Vicenza, pp. 149–63. Jerome of Borselli (d. 1497), as printed in Thompson, Revival Preachers, p. 220 (‘Tandem ad Galliam Cisalpinam est profectus’). Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 357–58, news said to have been carried into England by representatives of the king and the English barons. Donald Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (d.  1252) (Aldershot, 2008), p.  31; Thompson, Revival Preachers, pp.  119–22, 212, and for his confraternities, already flourishing as early as 1232, see GillesGérard Meersseman, ‘Études sur les anciennes confrèries dominicaines: II. Les confrèries de Saint-Pierre Martyr’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 21 (1951), 51–196 (here 57–59).

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Provence.80 Such had already been the destiny not only of the Franciscans and Dominicans but of the ‘other’ friars, ‘Pied’, ‘Crutched’, or ‘Sacked’ as the case might be.81 It resulted in attempts, not always successful, by other movements to expand beyond the Italian peninsula, ranging from the Penitents, an orthodox Italian brotherhood recorded in Thuringia by the late 1230s, to the once distinctly unorthodox Humiliati, denied a welcome in France despite papal lobbying on their behalf in 1258.82 In fact, what little we know of the aftermath of 1233 tells us nothing of Provence but suggests a channelling of the enthusiasms of the ‘Alleluia’ into confraternal movements, already a feature of Dominican evangelism. One of these is nonetheless of relevance to our Burton/Peniarth text, and may indeed supply significant context. Even before the death of their founder in 1221, the Dominicans had encouraged the spread of lay confraternities committed to a Christian life and resistance to heresy.83 One of these, known as the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ’, came into existence in 1233–34 in Parma, in the immediate aftermath of the ‘Alleluia’. Founded by the Dominican Bartholomew of Vicenza, and licensed by Pope Gregory IX, it was intended as a lay association of married men drawn from the urban elite, committed to the defence of Catholic orthodoxy and other good works.84 By 1261, it had merged into a new confraternity, the ‘Militia of St Mary’, known popularly, and not entirely respectfully, as the ‘Rejoicers’ (Gaudentes).85 Meanwhile, in the years between 1234 and 1261, we surely 80

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For the flagellants of 1260, see Ernst  G. Förstemann, Die christlichen Geisslergesellschaften (Halle, 1828), pp. 18–54. Frances Andrews, The Other Friars: The Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack and Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006). Gilles-Gérard Meersseman, Dossier de l’ordre de la Pénitence au XIIIe siècle (Fribourg, 1961), pp.  54–55, no. 18; Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 251, 291, nos 116–17. Meersseman, ‘Études sur les anciennes confrèries dominicaines: I. Les confréries de Saint-Dominique’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 20 (1950), 5–113. Meersseman, ‘Études sur les anciennes confrèries dominicaines: IV. Les Milices de Jésus-Christ’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 23 (1953), 275–308 (here 285–89, 294–305), distinguishing the Italian order, according to Salimbene founded in 1233, from an earlier confraternity, the ‘Militia of the Faith of Jesus-Christ’ (‘Militia ordinis fidei Ihesu Christi’) that had first appeared in Languedoc (1221-29), in association with the Albigensian Crusade. Meersseman, ‘Milices de Jésus-Christ’, pp.  303–5; Antonino de Stefano, ‘Le origini dei Frati Gaudenti’, in Riformatori ed eretici del medio evo (Palermo, 1938), pp. 201–56, relying heavily here, both for the origins of the ‘Militia’ of 1233, and for the ‘Gaudentes’ after 1261, on Salimbene, Cronica, 2: 678–79.

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discover the identity of the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ, the son of Mary’ from which the report preserved at Burton emerged. Not only this, but we find a ‘Militia’ very specifically united in friendship with the Dominicans, themselves perhaps the recipients of our letters addressed to the prior and convent of the Dominican house at Rupp’/La Rochelle. As with other potentially ‘fake’ news, where scepticism has prevailed, our identification of a context may inspire a sudden upsurge of faith. Such a conversion would be misguided. Undoubtedly, the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ’ existed. Undoubtedly, it took root amidst the miracles and wonders of 1233. Undoubtedly, there was both a hysterical and a Joachite tendency to the revivalist preaching of 1233, and undoubtedly southern France, and specifically Salon-de-Provence, offered settings in which revivalism might have flourished, not least amongst such lay confraternities as the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ’ or the Confrèrie that obliged the archbishop of Arles to seek exile at Salon-de-Provence.86 But still we must tread with caution. Let us return once again to names. We have noticed that the names ‘Peter Batholon’ and Altenus go unrecorded anywhere else in association with the friars or with Provence. There was, however, a very famous Peter Bartholomew, native to southern France, whose preaching and encounters with Christ and his saints attracted the attention of numerous chroniclers, albeit a century and a half before the great revival of the 1230s. We are dealing here, of course, with that ‘poor rustic … youth’, follower of the Provençal contingent of the First Crusade, appointed by God and St Andrew as discoverer of the ‘Holy Lance of Antioch’ and later forced to undergo an inconclusive ordeal by fire in which his claims and visions were tested. Amidst the flames, according to our principal authority, Peter was comforted by the appearance of Christ in person.87 From Petrus Bartholomeus to Petrus Batholon(eus), we are surely only one 86

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For the confraternities of Provence more generally, see Stouff, Église et la vie religieuse à Arles, pp.  23–35; Jacques Chiffoleau, ‘Entre le religieux et le politique: Les confréries du Saint-Esprit en Provence et en comtat Venaissin à la fin du Moyen Âge’, and Noël Coulet, ‘Le mouvement confraternel en Provence et dans le comtat Venaissin au Moyen Âge’, in Le mouvement confraternel au Moyen Âge: France, Italie, Suisse (Roma, 1987), pp. 9–40, 83–110. Raymond of Aguilers, Le Liber de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. John H. and Laurita L. Hill (Paris, 1969), p. 68 (‘pauper quedam rusticus’), 75 (‘iuuenus’), 121–24 (Peter speaks with Christ in the flames), 128–29, with commentary by Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 143–45, 160. To Matthew Paris (Chronica majora, 2: 84–85, 92), the finder of the Holy Lance was known merely as Peter ‘of Provence’, and it was merely as ‘Peter’ that he appears in the most popular of the later retellings of these events, the Chanson d’Antioche: An Old French Account of the First Crusade,

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or two pen-strokes short of identification. Can we leap this barrier, and report with certainty that our Burton letters represent a literary parody, combining elements of the Dominican revivalism of the 1230s with memories of one of the more celebrated Provençal devotees of the cross, himself widely reputed a fraud?

Parodying ‘Alleluia’: Boncompagno of Signa Once again, a chain of evidence carries us forwards. The 1233 ‘Alleluia’ had many devotees. It also inspired widespread parody. Matthew Paris, the only English chronicler to mention the ‘Alleluia’, was confused as to its precise circumstances. Under the year 1238, in a marginal note to his account of negotiations between Frederick II and the city of Milan, he nonetheless recorded the downfall of the leader of the ‘Alleluia’, Brother John of Vicenza. John, so Paris reports, was a Dominican, widely famed for his preaching, a maker of peace between cities, and a worker of miracles. Through God’s grace, he had waded dry through rivers. He commanded vultures to descend from the skies. Prompted by the Devil, however, he had succumbed to vanity and carnal friendships, ‘so that he deserved to forfeit God’s love together with the honour previously conferred on him by men and clergy’.88 All of this fits the wider anti-fraternal bias of Matthew Paris and other Benedictine chroniclers, like the compiler of the Burton Annals, ever ready to criticize the friars for pride, worldliness, and a spurious claim to miracles.89 It nonetheless appears tame when ranked alongside other parodies of the preaching of 1233. One such, plausibly attributed to Peter of Vinea, apologist for the Emperor Frederick II, was set down in verse c. 1242, and circulated widely. Here we find a rich stream of satire directed against John of Vicenza and his fellow friars: men who claimed that they spoke with God and commanded his angels, that they could raise the dead, cast out demons, release captives from their chains, turn water into wine, and correctly predict the future.90

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trans. Susan  B. Edgington and Carol Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2012), pp.  271–72, 327–28. Paris, Chronica majora, 3: 496–97. For Matthew Paris, see Sita Steckel, ‘Narratives of Resistance: Arguments Against the Mendicants in the Works of Matthew Paris and William of SaintAmour’, Thirteenth-Century England 15 (2015), 157–77, and more generally Guy Geltner, The Making of Medieval Antifraternalism (Oxford, 2012), p. 73. First published as part of a much longer satire (opening ‘Vehementi nimium commotus dolore’) specifically attributed to Peter of Vinea, surviving in a

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Another such parody, even more to our purpose, is recorded by Salimbene. Following the success of the ‘Alleluia’ at Bologna, according to Salimbene, a local celebrity, Boncompagno of Signa, ‘master of rhetoric’, determined to treat the friars with a dose of their own medicine. If the local population, Boncompagno declared, would turn out in sufficient numbers, he himself would take flight from a local hill-top. A crowd duly gathered. Boncompagno appeared, sporting a pair of toy wings. After a deliberately tiresome wait, the crowd dispersed. Levitation was neither achieved, nor in this telling, achievable.91 Salimbene’s version of events bears a close resemblance to another story told by Boncompagno himself, in a book undoubtedly transmitted in Benedictine circles not far distant from Burton-on-Trent. Here, in mockery, Boncompagno recalled having pretended to learn the languages of dogs and birds ‘as far as the sparrow and the goldfinch’ (usque ad passerem et cardellum). To display his occult powers, he gathered a large crowd, at noon on one of the hottest days of the year, claiming that he would publicly transform an ass first into a lion, then into a horned deer-goat (yrcocervus cornutus). This, he claimed, would sprout feathers like an eagle and fly from Bologna’s Piazza Sant’Ambrogio.92 There is no mention here of any connection to the

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late s. xiv copy in BnF, lat. 17913 fols  157v-161v, whence Alphonse HuillardBréholles, Vie et correspondence de Pierre de la Vigne (Paris, 1865), pp.  402– 17, no. 103, esp. p.  409, with commentary at pp.  148–51. A  second, briefer recension, preserved in MS Montpellier, Bibliothèque universitaire (Faculté de Médecine), 351, was published by Louis Castets, ‘Prose latine attribuée à Pierre de la Vigne’, Revue des langues romanes 32 (1888), 438–52 (here 444, verses 44–46), allowing further correction to the Paris manuscript. Listed by Hans Walther, Initia carminum ac versuum medii aevi posterioris latinorum (Göttingen, 1959), p. 1052, no. 20056, which notes (with misleading reference) a third copy, in MS Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.29.8, fols 63v-64v, itself apparently associated with Boccaccio (d. 1375), for which see Antonio Montefusco, ‘Dall’Università di Parigi a frate Alberto: Immaginario antimendicante ed ecclesiologia vernacolare in Giovanni Boccaccio’, Studi sul Boccaccio 43 (2015), 177–232 (here 231–32, verses 76–79, at 217 n. 87 noting a fourth copy in MS Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, 126). Salimbene, Cronica, 1: 109–10, and for the mocking, goliardic verses recited here that Boncompagno is said to have circulated against John of Vicenza and his fellow miracle workers, see Sutter, Johann von Vicenza, pp.  151–52; Paul Lehmann, Die Parodie im Mittelalter, 2nd  edn (Stuttgart, 1963), pp.  132–33; Tunberg, ‘What is Boncompagno’s “Newest Rhetoric”?’, p. 310 n. 54. Boncompagno of Signa, Rhetorica antiqua (publicly read at Bologna in 1215 and again at Padua in 1226), also known simply as the Boncompagnus, bk 1,

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preaching of 1233. Rather, in Boncompagno’s telling, the story is presented, long before 1233, as his revenge on the gullibility of the Bolognese. No matter. Whether Boncompagno’s stunt occurred as reported by Salimbene, or was merely a tall-story irresistible to its reporter, what we have here, surely, is precisely that combination of the miraculous and the aerobatic that we find in the Peniarth/Burton letters. Just as intriguingly, we find ourselves reintroduced to the same Italian rhetorician, Boncompagno of Signa, whose treatise on dictamen, the Breviloquium, features so prominently at the head of that section of the Peniarth/Burton formulary in which our particular letter survives. Surely, the combination of circumstances here is conclusive: Christlike crowds of five thousand and miracles of healing and levitation attributed to a Dominican or pseudo-Dominican preacher, almost identical in name to one of the more notorious frauds of the First Crusade; flying crucifixes and an over-enthusiastic throwing-off of clothes, reminiscent — for those of anti-fraternal inclination — of the conversion and stigmata of St Francis, but here linked to Joachite or pseudo-Joachite prophecies tarnished by association with the Franciscans, such as Gerard of Borgo San Donnino or John of Parma, condemned after 1254 for promoting Joachim of Fiore ahead of Holy Scripture; reference to a time of ‘spiritual jubilee’, in a context in which ‘spiritual men’ were associated both with the Joachite scandal of the ‘Eternal Evangel’ and with growing divisions within the Franciscan order; echoes of the mockery directed against the revivalist preachers of Bologna by Boncompagno of Signa, himself credited with the materials that introduce the self-same ch. 13, the chapter printed in full (from a thirteenth-century copy in MS Roma, Biblioteca Corsiniana, 2591/36 E 1) as Testi riguardanti la vita degli studenti a Bologna nel sec. XIII, ed. Virgilio Pini (Bologna, 1968), pp. 37–38, also abstracted (from a copy in BnF, lat. 8654, fol.  13v) by Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (London, 1927), pp. 140–41. More than a dozen manuscripts survive of this, the most substantial of Boncompagno’s rhetorical works, including an incomplete copy from Bury St Edmunds, in MS London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C viii, fols  91r-130v (s. xiii ex, the relevant chapter here at fols 95v-96r, formerly 92v-93r), traced via the list of MSS by Virgilio Pini, in Dizionario biografico, 2: 722. The Cotton manuscript (fols 108v, 117r, 120v, 127r, formerly fols 105v, 114r, 117v, 124r) preserves marginal forms in the names of the monks of Bury and the bishops of Norwich and Lincoln. The treatise itself remains unpublished, although there are extensive extracts (from the s. xiii MS München, Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 23499) in Ludwig Rockinger, Briefsteller und Formelbücher des eilften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (München, 1863–64), pp. 117–20, 128–74, at p. 174 reporting the public readings of 1215 and 1226.

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formulary in which our supposed newsletter appears. All of this suggests parody rather than sober reportage. It perhaps explains why our letter, so rich in detail and so close to concerns displayed elsewhere in the writing of history at Burton-on-Trent, failed to find inclusion in the Burton Annals. Unlike so many other newsletters collected by the Burton monks, our letter was never broadcast as sober fact. As such, it joins a rich line of such medieval letters conveying falsehoods. Some such resulted from simple ignorance or misinformation. Such, for example, was the ‘false’ newsletter that Matthew Paris inserts in his chronicle for 1250. Dispatched by the bishop of Marseille, this claimed to report Louis IX’s conquest of Damietta, Cairo, and Alexandria and the total rout of his Muslim enemies: the precise opposite of the crusade’s true outcome.93 This Marseille letter was known not only at St Albans but at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire, another centre of Benedictine historical writing that disseminated both truths and fictions, not least in the news reported there of the death of King Henry III of England, nearly a decade before the king’s actual demise in 1272.94 Other such newsletters had deliberately political intent. Such, for example, were the letters concerning ‘Prester John’ that circulated far and wide across Christendom in the aftermath of their creation, probably in the 1170s, in the circle of the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.95 Such were the letters supposedly written by the pope and by English bishops and barons that circulated during the civil war of 1215–17, in reality as anti-baronial propaganda deliberately forged

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Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 168–69, no. 87, and 5: 87, 118, 138, 142, 6: 167, no. 86. The Marseille letter is inserted amongst other material, including a newsletter of Queen Blanche (Paris, Chronica majora, 6: 165–67, no. 85), in association with the Tewkesbury annals, in MS London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A vii, fols 102v-104r (here fols 97v-99r). For the reports from 1263, see David Carpenter, ‘An Unknown Obituary of King Henry  III from the Year 1263’, in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W.  Mark Ormrod (Stamford, 1985), pp.  45–51, whence Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (London, 1996), pp. 253–60, one of several such items of ‘fake’ news noticed by Nicholas Vincent, ‘Conclusion: Rumeur à l’anglaise’, in La Rumeur au Moyen Age: Du mépris à la manipulation Ve-XVe siècle, ed. Maïté Billoré and Myriam Soria (Mayenne, 2011), pp. 329–47. Bernard Hamilton, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), pp. 177–91, and see most recently, Keagan Brewer, Prester John: The Legend and its Sources (Farnham, 2015), pp. 11–19.

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in the interest of the king.96 Such was the ‘false’ news of the conversion of the Tartars, said to have circulated in 1249, or the false rumour, spread in 1255, that Manfred of Sicily was close to defeat, in a deliberate effort to persuade Henry III to persevere with his ‘Sicilian business’.97 Still others fit the broader category of satire, giving rise to a rich vein of medieval parody, harbingers of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum of early sixteenth-century Germany. Such, for example, were the letters that Stephen of Rouen preserved, supposedly exchanged in the 1160s between King Henry II (d. 1189) and his long-dead predecessor, King Arthur of the Britons.98 Such was the correspondence circulated not just by Boncompagno of Signa but by a whole host of rhetoricians, in mimetic letter forms that both they and their readers knew or must have suspected to be fictitious, concocted not for political but for literary effect. In an English context, we need look no further than the letter-book of Richard of Bury, preserved like the Burton/Peniarth collection at Aberystwyth in the National Library of Wales. Here we find deliberately invented or retouched versions, composed as late as the 1320s, of letters alleged to have passed c. 1142 between the bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, and the lord of Wallingford, Brian fitz Count.99 Our letters from Salon-de-Provence belong to this or similar company, revealing not only political and literary impulses, but to some extent what supposed ‘truths’ medieval contemporaries were and were not prepared to swallow. As ever, past satire can all too easily be mistaken for a naive 96

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Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series, 66 (London, 1875), pp. 174, 176–77; Paris, Chronica majora, 2: 588, and see p. 650 for letters of Louis of France, warning the barons that other ‘false’ letters were being circulated in his name. More generally, for the ‘retouching’ of newsletters, see John Gillingham, ‘Royal Newsletters, Forgeries and English Historians: Some Links Between Court and History in the Reign of Richard I’, in La Cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204): Actes du colloque tenu à Thouars du 30 avril au 2 mai 1999, ed. Martin Aurell (Poitiers, 2000), pp. 171–86. Paris, Chronica majora, 5: 87, 529–30. John S. P. Tatlock, ‘Geoffrey and King Arthur in “Normannicus Draco”’, Modern Philology 31 (1933), 1–18, 113–25; Siân Echard, Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 85–93; The Letters and Charters of Henry II, King of England 1154–1189, ed. Nicholas Vincent (Oxford, forthcoming), nos 3021, 4376. The Liber epistolaris of Richard de Bury, ed. Noël Denholm-Young (Oxford, 1950), pp. 242–48, no. 389, from MS Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Brogyntyn II.7, with further discussion in The Collected Papers of N. DenholmYoung (Caerdydd, 1969), pp. 1–41, esp. pp. 22–24.

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faith in impossibilities. Certainly, medieval saints were credited with impossibilities so bizarre on occasion as to defy even the most inventive of satirists.100 In other instances, however, as the stories of Peter Bartholomew at Antioch, the 1233 ‘Alleluia’, or Peter Batholon’ go to prove, disbelief might never entirely be suspended even in reporting the most popular of delusions. Like Peter Bartholomew’s Holy Lance, not all relics or miracles were unquestioningly trusted. Popes and kings made claims that their subjects doubted or flatly denied. In 1247, for example, Henry III of England claimed to have come into possession of a relic of Christ’s blood shed at Calvary. This was processed, displayed, and very publicly celebrated. Yet, according to Matthew Paris (quoting Luke 24. 25), when the affair was discussed, even at court, ‘Some slow to believe still doubted’.101 Amidst such doubts, I would suggest, we find that mistrust of excessive enthusiasm, be it for miracles, relics, preaching, prophecies, or even for ‘crusading’ that in the thirteenth century came increasingly to pose problems for those determined to ‘rescue’ the Latin principalities of the East. In these circumstances, mockery was a significant pointer on the road to disengagement and hence to a defeatist acceptance of the crusaders’ ‘fate’.

From Parody to Prognostic: Corruent nobiles So much for the story of Salon and Bordeaux. Yet this is not the end of an already convoluted tale. The tale itself has at least two further twists. To trace the first of these we must return to Joachim of Fiore. Parody it may have been, but the Burton letter enjoyed an afterlife not as parody but as prognostic. We have noted already the close connections between Burton Abbey and Bury St Edmunds, established in the 1220s with the translation of Abbot Richard from Burton to Bury. Not only does the Burton formulary preserve letters relating to Bury’s affairs, but one of only two copies of any treatise by Boncompagno of Signa known to have circulated in thirteenth-century England. The only other such, a late thirteenth-century copy of Boncompagno’s more substantial Rhetorica antiqua, comes to us from the library of Bury St Edmunds. Connections between Burton and Bury may have been significant thereafter in ensuring 100

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Numerous examples cited by Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, 2013), esp. ch. 9 (‘Miracles’). Paris, Chronica majora, 4: 642–43, discussed at length by Vincent, Holy Blood, esp. pp. 79–80.

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the circulation of precisely the fake news from Burton that we have taken such trouble to unravel.102 As has long been recognized, English medieval book collectors amassed various scraps attributed to Joachim of Fiore, albeit of the brief and pseudonymous variety rather than from the main body of authentic Joachite exegesis.103 Marjorie Reeves, the first scholar to trace such materials, traced nearly a dozen copies of the prognostic that we have already reported from Peniarth/Burton. The earliest of these is preserved in a manuscript from Bury St Edmunds only slightly later than our copy, PB. Here, as in PB, but now without the report of events at Salon and Bordeaux, a prophecy said to be drawn from the Liber de concordia predicts that 1250 will see the fall of many nobles, 1254 the Greek recovery of Constantinople, 1257 a schism between popes in Lyons and Rome, 1260 the near total degradation of the Church, and 1265 the return of the ‘whole of Greece’ to Roman obedience, itself presaging news of the coming of Antichrist.104 Let us call this prophecy Corruent nobiles, after its opening words. Corruent nobiles has long been acknowledged as a minor outlier to the Joachite canon. Thanks to Reeves, several later medieval copies of it have been identified. Robert Lerner, with typical insight, suggested that the text was French in origin; a fact now confirmed by its earliest sighting in 102

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Above note 18, and for other letters relating to Bury, see PB, fols 16v-18v (bk 1, nos 48–64, election of Richard of Burton as abbot), 33r (bk 3, part 1, no. 8, a nun of Barking seeking advice from the abbot of Bury over an embassy to Rome), 45r (bk 3, part 2, no. 45, Stephen, papal chaplain, to the abbot-elect of Bury, following papal provision for Stephen’s servant), 45r-v (bk 3, part 2, nos 46, 49, affairs of Richard de Insula as abbot-elect, including English Episcopal Acta, 43: no. 79). For a survey, see Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism and its Codicological Context: A List of Joachite Manuscripts of English Origin or Provenance before 1600’, in Joachim of Fiore, pp.  183–230, used extensively below, but at p. 216 mistakenly suggesting that a copy of our prophecy can be found amongst the prognostics in MS Cambridge, University Library, Gg.iv.25, fols 61v-67v. Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp.  50–51, from MS London, British Library, Royal 8.C.iv, fol.  66r (Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p.  224), a single thirteenth-century sheet, as part of a book bound in the fifteenth century and definitely once in the Bury St Edmunds library. After the prophecy, at fol. 66r, follows a brief note: ‘Hunc librum composuit Daniel propheta in diebus Nabugodonosei reg(is) in Babilonia proponebant principes populi urbis’. The verso carries a faint pencilled copy of a charter involving a woman named Avicia, almost entirely illegible.

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the southern French newsletter preserved at Burton.105 Even so, we cannot be certain that the Burton letter marks the invention of the prophecy. At Burton, Corruent nobiles is tacked on rather inelegantly to the end of the report from Salon and Bordeaux, as something that its readers might already have been expected to know: as a prophecy by Joachim, already in circulation, here substantiated by recent events in southern France. With prophecy, there is rarely any proof of invention beyond what can be established of first circulation. Even in regard to circulation we must proceed with caution. To cite Lerner again, scholars who discover such texts are too often tempted into publishing late or variant copies, or short passages borrowed from longer or much earlier compositions: ‘Enough short prophecies had made fools of their editors to show that the student of any one of them must be prepared to engage in much patient sleuthing and cumulative research’.106 These are wise words. As befits an expert on prophecy, they are also prescient. Lerner was dealing here with the afterlife of the so-called ‘Cedar of Lebanon’ prophecy, generally dated to the years after 1237 as a reaction to the Mongol invasion of Hungary, a text traced by Lerner first to Swabia c. 1241, and thereafter to England. Central to this prophecy was the claim that ‘Within eleven years there will be one God and one monarchy; the second God has gone’.107 Lerner’s book on ‘Cedar of Lebanon’ was published in 1983. A few years later, from the chronicle of Lanercost in Cumberland, there emerged a remarkably similar prophecy, here described as circulating at Paris, as long ago as 1207, said to have been revealed to a Cistercian monk who in turn disclosed it to Master Simon Langton, brother of the more famous Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. Within nine years, Simon was informed, a new religious order would emerge (surely the Franciscans, with whom both Simon and Lanercost enjoyed close association). More than this: ‘The high cedar will fall … a single God of monarchy will arise, and the other God has died’. The nine-year interval after 1207 suggests an intended association with the invasion of England (in 1216) by Simon’s chief patron, the future Louis VIII of France.108 No matter that the Lanercost/Langton version was almost certainly prediction ex eventu, redating to Paris and 1207 a prophecy that in reality only came into circulation thirty years later. There 105

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Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, pp.  57–58 and n. 40, chiefly on the basis of its references both to the defeat of Louis IX and to the pope at Lyons. Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, pp. 3–4. Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, pp. 9–16, 199–200: ‘Infra xi. annos erit unus deus et una monarchia. Secundus deus abiit’. Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1839), p.  3: ‘In novem annos erit unus Deus monarchiae. Secundus obiit’.

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is a warning to us here. In attempting to trace the transmission even of a text as brief as Corruent nobiles, we are almost certain to have missed links in the chain, some of them significant. So far as we know, Corruent nobiles is first recorded at Burton, embedded in our newsletter from Provence. Of the newsletter we have no further trace. Detached from its surroundings, however, the prophecy survived. Perhaps via the same Burton-Bury friendship networks we have noticed, it travelled to Bury St Edmunds. It was to experience nothing like the rich posterity of Lerner’s ‘Cedar of Lebanon’ text, rewritten and embellished over several centuries. Corruent nobiles acquired few such accretions. From Burton and Bury, nonetheless, it continued to circulate, often in the company of ‘Cedar of Lebanon’.109 It is found, for example, amongst other short prophecies, copied onto a flyleaf of a late thirteenth-century English Bible, apparently with Sempringhamite provenance.110 It crossed to Ireland, perhaps within a Franciscan milieu, ironically for a prophecy that may originally have been intended as anti-Franciscan satire.111 After c. 1300, it was updated, with only minimal changes, to apply to events now predicted to occur between 1350 and 1365, as for example in a further copy from Bury St Edmunds where it is followed by a statement that ‘this prophecy was promulgated in 1288’, citing as authority ‘a certain tract on Antichrist’.112 The fourteenth-century rewriting was known at Norwich 109 110

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Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, pp. 57–58. MS Cambridge, St John’s College, N.1 ( James 239), end flyleaf, together with other prophecies including ‘Cedar of Lebanon’ (Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, pp. 31–32), here said to have been delivered in 1240, and the verses ‘Cum fuerint anni completi mille ducenti et decies seni’, elsewhere first recorded by Matthew Paris albeit there attached to 1250 rather than 1260, cf. above note 50. MS Dublin, Trinity College, 347, fols  388v-389r (Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, pp.  192, 215), here applied to events from 1250 to 1265, of late thirteenth-century Irish, potentially Franciscan, provenance. See. M. Colker, ‘America Rediscovered in the Thirteenth Century’, Speculum 54 (1979), 719– 20, and cf. Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, p. 58 n. 39, suggesting as provenance the Franciscan house at Multyfarnham (Co. Westmeath). MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 404 (Henry of Kirkstead), fol. 100r (Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, pp.  192, 210–11): ‘Ista prophetia promulgata anno domini moccolxxxviii. prout patet in quodam tractatu de Anticristo con(?iect)ione viia’. This tractatus is unidentified unless it be the tract De Antichristo scire volentes which according to a slip in Corpus, 404 (fol.  4r, by the bibliophile, John Boston of Bury, fl. 1410) was to be found at the Franciscan house at Babwell near Bury, perhaps as a copy of Adso of Montier-en-Der’s De Antichristo (c. 950), as in Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed.

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Cathedral Priory and elsewhere, for example to a Welsh compiler writing as late as c. 1445.113 It was cited, somewhat contemptuously, by the Oxford astronomer, John Ashenden, in the context of his calculation of astrological conjunctions for 1357 and 1360. Joachim, Ashenden declared, was a prophet who had depended on biblical exegesis when he would have done better to apply the more reliable science of the stars.114 Corruent nobiles was known to the entourage of the Bohun family, where attention was drawn to its predictions for 1365 as a spur to beware the coming of Antichrist, the copyist ending here with the injunction ‘Vigilate igitur!’115 Another English copy replaces all of the dates with symbols, supplying a key at the bottom of the page, followed by a list of recent memorable

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William Stubbs, 4 vols, Rolls Series, 51 (London, 1868–71), 3: 80–85 (opening ‘Ergo de Antichristo scire volentes’), and cf. Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortv et tempore Antichristi, ed. Daniel Verhelst, CCCM 45 (Turnhout, 1976). Whence the isolated excerpt in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 138, fol.  83r (p.  183) (Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p.  211), in the bottom margin, fifteenth-century hand, predicting that in 1365 Greece would be restored to Roman obedience ‘et tunc audientur noua de predicacione Antichristi. Hoc reperitur (?)servi Ioachim in maiori libro de concordanciis’. See also, of uncertain provenance, with full recital of Corruent nobiles, here applied to 1350–65, MSS Cambridge, University Library, Ii.6.25 (statutes etc., fourteenth-century hand), fol. 107v; London, British Library, Sloane 156 ( John of Rupescissa, etc.), fol.  41r-v (fifteenth-century); Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 50 (prophecies), p. 169 (c. 1445, copied by a Welsh scribe, cf. Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, pp. 201, 220, 222). MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 176 (from Merton College), fol.  38r, whence MSS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 393 (fifteenth-century copy), fol.  80v (Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p.  218); Ashmole 192 (seventeenth-century copy), pp. 101–2. For Ashenden, see Keith V. Snedegar, ‘John Ashenden and the “Scientia Astrorum Mertonensis” with an Edition of Eschenden’s “Prognosticaciones”’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1988), pp. 393–433, and Keith V. Snedegar, ‘Ashenden, John (d. in or before 1368?)’ in ODNB, 2: 642; available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/39190 (accessed 22 Mar. 2018). MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 761, fol. 184v, and cf. Chronicon Galfridi Le Baker de Swynebroke, ed. E. M. Thompson (Oxford, 1889), pp. xii-xv; Paul Meyer, ‘Notice du MS. Bodley 761 de la Bibliothèque Bodléienne (Oxford)’, Romania 37 (1908), 509–28 (here 510, 525); Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, p. 118 n. 6; Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p. 215, suggesting that the manuscript was compiled for Thomas de Walmesford, rector of Sherfield in 1328.

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events, from the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 to the beheading of Archbishop Scrope in 1405.116 Despite at least one attempt to update its predictions to the period between 1450 and 1465, Corruent nobiles was doomed to fade away thereafter, especially once the Turkish conquest of Constantinople so fatally undermined its plausibility.117 For the most part what we know of its circulation is limited to southern England. Even so, at least some copies return us to the Continent. One such, although of Anglo-Norman provenance, is today in Paris.118 Another occurs in the chronicle of Heinrich of Diessenhofen (d. 1390). Writing from within the papal court at Avignon, Diessenhofen attributes Corruent nobiles not to Joachim but to a prophet named ‘Master James, the astronomer of Paris’, supposedly prophesying in 1350.119 The third, in many ways the most exotic such continental copy, survives in the Riccardi library at Florence. According to this version, said to have been presented to the antipope Clement VII in 1382, Corruent nobiles (here rephrased as Corruent multi principes) was first drawn to the attention of Peter de Caffol, treasurer of Avignon, ‘after Christmas’ in the year 1349. Here, with dates and details significantly altered, we are informed that in 1350 ‘many princes’ would fall in sight of the pagans; in 1354, the Greeks would recover Constantinople and expel the Latins; in 1378 there would be two popes, at Rome and Lyons, the Roman pope being just, the Lyons pope unjust (with corrections in the manuscript suggesting significant doubt by reporter or copyist over whether the Roman pope was to be ‘unjust’ or ‘just’); in 1379, the Catholic Church would be reduced to misery, the whole of Greece would return to Roman obedience, and ‘then news will be heard of the time of the peace of Antichrist and his preaching’.120 This Florentine copy was clearly doctored to suit 116

117

118

119

120

MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 218, fol. 107r-v (early fifteenth-century), cf. Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p. 217. For a unique redating between 1450 and 1465, see MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E.vii, fol.  89r-v (at fol.  86r-v, pp.  45–46); Kerby-Fulton, ‘English Joachimism’, p. 217). BnF, fr. 902, fol. 96v, like several other of these references, first drawn to my attention by Robert Lerner. Cf. Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, p. 118 n. 6. Heinricus de Diessenhofen und andere Geschichtsquellen Deutschlands im späteren Mittelalter, ed. Johann F. Böhmer and Alfons Huber (Stuttgart, 1868), pp. 76–77, whence Gerd Mentgen, Astrologie und Öffentlichkeit im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 2005), p. 73. Below Appendix 2. For details on this manuscript, I am indebted to Robert Lerner and to Fulvio Stacchetti. There is only an inadequate listing of either the canons or the treasurers of Avignon in Gallia christiana novissima, ed. J. H.

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the times, rewritten in light of the conclave of 1378, the election in Rome of the Italian Urban VI, and the subsequent establishment at Avignon of Robert of Geneva as the antipope Clement VII. Its reference to the ‘peace of Antichrist’ supplies a fully Joachite interpretation of that ‘time of tranquillity and peace’ which would precede the end of days. Here we have an appropriate ending for a prophecy first generated by enthusiasm for the Italians Joachim of Fiore and Boncompagno of Signa; now returning after its wanderings through Provence and England not just to Avignon but to Italy and to the close vicinity of Signa, Boncompagno’s birthplace.

Epilogue: Prophecy, Globalism, and the Crusade I promised one further twist still to come. But before that some more general reflections. We might begin by noticing the extent to which Joachite and medieval prophecy more generally are so richly preserved in English as opposed to continental manuscripts. Why this Anglocentrism? Is it merely a functional distortion: the result of the better cataloguing and easier accessibility of English manuscripts when compared to those of Paris, Florence, or Rome? Is it a consequence of England’s vicinity to Wales and the Celtic fringe, and hence to a rich tradition of vernacular prophecy, most famously exported in the works of ‘Merlin’? My own sense is that it reflects neither of these realities. Rather, like those on the edge of any conversation or crowd, English observers had to strive harder to collect information about what was taking place at the centre, past, present, and future. By a peculiar paradox, England’s insularity guaranteed better communication and better news-gathering than was the case in places where such things were more easily obtained and therefore less valued. Even then, we answer only part of our question. It remains to establish why the English, in the mid-thirteenth century, were so obsessed with matters eschatological. Was this pure accident? Was it, again, a functional distortion: the consequence of the prominence afforded Matthew Paris, and hence to Matthew’s peculiarly apocalyptic expectations? Our evidence from Burton, as from elsewhere, suggests a rather more deeprooted concern. It was in England that Merlin flourished, that Joachim of Fiore was first properly chronicled, and that prophecies such as Corruent nobiles or ‘Cedar of Lebanon’ first circulated. It is in England, from the 1250s onwards, that we find that rich tradition of illustrated apocalypse manuscripts that remains one of the chief glories of English medieval art. Albanés and Ulysse Chevalier, 7 vols (Valence, 1895–1920), 7: 1078, noting a Peter Sicard, treasurer before 1363.

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I would suggest that a wider phenomenon is to be observed here, and perhaps one day explained. My second general point has already been stated. It nonetheless bears repeating. Medieval chroniclers were neither unthinking nor naive collectors of historical facts. Some were prepared to believe the unbelievable. Most were not. From such scepticism emerged that distinction between rumour and fact, hearsay and acceptable proof that remains essential, even today, to our faith that news is only news when ‘true’. Ontology was a concern not just of the schoolmen but of the chroniclers. The exclusion of our newsletter from chronicles in which other such news was more readily accepted surely proves a capacity to reason. The monks of thirteenthcentury Burton or St Albans who could mock apparitions of the Trinity, talking birds, or prophecies of the end of days, became conditioned if not to scepticism then to a healthy distinction between the crazed and the credibly peculiar. Applied to a venture such as the ‘crusade’, reflection of this sort could prove fatal to otherwise unquestioning or unquestionable impulses. In a sense, the moment the true merits of crusading became a topic of debate was the same moment when crusading fervour itself began to ebb. Many of us who have lived through more recent ‘Wars on Terror’ have undergone similarly dissociative experiences. Thirdly and finally, in an essay intended to honour one of the great ‘crusading’ historians of his generation, I trust once again to have proved that there is, or rather should be, no such thing as ‘crusading history’. On the contrary, to understand the news that reached Staffordshire from southern France we have to traverse a vast array of events and contingencies, from Burton to Baghdad, and from Cairo to Coventry. ‘Global’ history is merely a vogueish term to describe something that all good historians, crusader or otherwise, have been involved in since at least the days of Herodotus. Even so, we may also marvel at the extent to which each of the fields traversed here has, in recent years, undergone a process not of globalization but of enclosure and emparkment. Where as recently as the 1960s there were very few who wrote of Joachim, of the history of the cross, or even of crusading (Erdmann’s Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, after all, was published as recently as 1935), each one of these specialisms now has a growing library of monographs, its own journals and conferences, its own membership rules and no doubt its own club ties, silk or polyester as the case may be. The signs posted here, as in Piglet’s wood, now too often read ‘Trespassers W(ill be Prosecuted!)’ rather than ‘Picnickers Welcome!’. And so to our final twist. Sir Richard Southern, very much a silk tie man, commenting on the vogue for Joachim of Fiore that emerged from the late 1960s onwards, remarked the coincidence between the sudden upsurge of interest in the fantasies both of Joachim and of J. R. R. Tolkien. 286

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‘Where Tolkien comes’, Southern enquired, ‘can Joachim be far behind?’121 How delighted Southern would have been to discover that the only private individuals known to have submitted their affairs to arbitration by the crypto-Joachite preachers of the 1233 ‘Alleluia’ were the heirs of a certain ‘Gandalf ’.122 Not even eight centuries of scepticism have entirely rid us of a delight both in prophecy and in coincidence. Let us end then with various coincidences that unfolded at Salon-de-Provence, in the Château-de-l’Empéri, supposedly the venue for our miraculous aerobatics and the birthplace of the prophecy Corruent nobiles. The year 1265, so Corruent nobiles proclaimed, would mark a final reconciliation between Greek and Latin churches, with signs of the coming of Antichrist. Almost exactly three hundred years later, in 1564, a meeting took place in this same castle at Salon between a local celebrity and Catherine de’ Medici, the regent queen of France. The local man’s name was Michel, known as Michel ‘of Our Lady’: a former apothecary, grandson of a converted Jew from Avignon. In October 1564, in the castle at Salon, the queen granted Michel an interview. Amongst other things, he prophesied long life for her son, King Charles IX, and a marriage between Charles and the already aged Queen Elizabeth of England. Prophets are never entirely trusted. Yet so convincing was Michel that overtures were made to the English court, duly rebuffed on Elizabeth’s behalf by Sir William Cecil, at a meeting with the French ambassador in London on 15 February 1565.123 Thus far, Catherine de’ Medici’s visit to Salon-de-Provence is sober history, recorded in several contemporary newsletters. But there is more. In Catherine’s entourage at Salon was the thirteen-year-old Prince Henry of Béarn. Although directly descended from the crusading King Louis IX, Henry was only distantly related to the ruling Valois dynasty. Raised by his mother as a Protestant, it was just possible he might one day succeed to her throne of Navarre. Ignoring all of these disqualifications, the prophet Michel is said to have predicted that this boy would rule not just Navarre but the whole of France. Michel ‘of Our Lady’, or Michel de Nostredame to give him his proper French name, is more familiar to us

121

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Richard Southern, ‘Marjorie Reeves as Historian’, in Prophecy and Millenarianism, p. 7. Thompson, Revival Preachers, pp. 56, 145–46, 181. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1564–5 (London, 1870), p. 300, no. 989: ‘The Queen being thirty years of age, and the King only fifteen…’ .

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as ‘Nostradamus’. In 1589, his prophecy came true with the accession of Henry IV as France’s first Bourbon king.124 Or did it? Certainly, Henry IV’s succession is reported as a prophecy of Nostradamus in many books. It forms the subject of a painting by Louis Denis-Valvérane (1870–1943), today displayed in the Musée de la Crau at Salon. It duly appears as sober fact, attributed to the meeting at Salon in 1564, listed in the Nostradamus Encyclopedia, and by many online enthusiasts.125 Yet no contemporary reports it, and nothing in the otherwise detailed history of Catherine de’ Medici’s visit to Salon confirms that such a prophecy was made. In all likelihood it results from wishful thinking a century or more after Nostradamus died.126 Prophets are no more reliable than historians. Not all history is true. Many prophecies turn out not to be prophecies at all. One such, I suggest, has been preserved for us by the monks of medieval Burton. In some ways, it is a tale signifying nothing. In another, it cautions us against much still raging sound and fury.

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For a sober, historical account of Catherine’s visit to Salon, drawing on contemporary newsletters and diplomatic correspondence, see Pierre Brind’Amour, Nostradamus astrophile: Les astres et l’astrologie dans la vie et l’oeuvre de Nostradamus (Ottawa, 1993), pp. 48–54, as drawn to my attention by Malcolm Gaskill. The visit is misdated to August 1564 by Robert J. Knecht, Catherine de Medici (Harlow, 1998), pp. 105–6, 221, who nonetheless confirms that Henry of Navarre accompanied the court on its tour of the south. Peter Lemesurier, The Nostradamus Encyclopedia (London, 1998), pp. 39–40, and cf. http://nostredame.perso.infonie.fr/catsal.html (accessed 21 Nov. 2017). Ian Wilson, Nostradamus: The Evidence (London, 2002), pp. 277–79.

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Appendix 1. Letters reporting marvels at Salon-de-Provence and Bordeaux. B = MS Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 390, fol. 41v, book 3, no. 24, headed in red Littere de prophetia Ioachim, c. 1260. Karissimis fratribus priori et conuentui de Rupp’, frater fratrum predicatorum, seruus mil(itie) Ihesu Cristi filii sancte Marie quam sibi salutem. Ad honorem et gloriam Ihesu Cristi dignum duxi causam quam habemus in nouo in nostra presentia declarare gaudii et memorie. Est autem in prouincia nostra frater Petrus Batholon’, frater ordinis nostri, ad cuius odorem ceci vident, claudi ambulant1, xii. mortui reuixerunt, quamplurimis a morte resuscitatis. Ita quod tota terra in sp(irit)ualem iubilum conuersa est. Ipse itaque frater apud Salon’ Castrum, per octo miliaria distans a Marsilia, videntibus quinque milibus hominum, personaliter apparuit in aere homo crucifixus magnus, viridis coloris. Item beata virgo recte super scap(u)lis apparuit, sedens in throno et tenens filium in gremio. Item sp(iritu)s in columbe sp(iri)t(u) apparuit super eum. Item xii. apostoli apparuerunt super eum in aere et volauerunt super eum a castro dicto usque Marsiliam, videntibus episcopis, baronibus et quinquaginta vel quadraginta milibus hominum. Qui omnes sub iuramento se hoc vidisse et firmiter credere asserebant. Addebant etiam quod nullus adiuuet eos in presenti nec in futuris nisi ille quem viderant in cruce et in gremio matris. Postea dixit ille frater sepissime populo: ‘Creditis in hoc firmiter’, et frater dixit ‘Si forte venerit qui alium Deum predicet, credetis ne ei, quia adhuc videbitis tales’, et dixerant quod nullo modo. Et preterea frater nomine Altenus per quem Deus restituit visum ceco apud Burdegal’, ita quod tota ciuitas conuersa est ad laudem et gloriam domini nostri Ihesu Cristi, ita quod in publico sermone unus de maioribus ciuitatis deposuit vestimenta sua causa restituendi exemplum aliis multis conuersis ad Cristum, ad exemplum prophetie Ioachim in primo libro de Concordantiis: Anno domini moccoquinquagesimo, multi principes et nobiles corruent, et Cristiani in conspectu paganorum quasi pro nichilo morientur. In Lo quarto et Greci Constantinopolim recuperabunt et Latini turpiter eicientur. Item in Lo septimo et erunt duo pape, unus Lugdun’ et alius Rome, et qui erit Lugdun’ erit rectus et iustus, et qui erit Rome iniquis et iniustus, et mutuo se se excommunicabuntur. Item, in Lxo erit ecclesia in tanta vilitate et conculcacione in quanta non fuit a tempore Constantini qui fedauit ecclesias. Item, in Lxovo erunt Greci subditi ecclesie Romane, et tunc audientur noua de predicatoribus Anticristi. Valete. 1

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2. ‘Corruent nobiles’ as received in 1349, transmitted in 1382 to (the antipope) Clement VII. B  = MS Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 688, fol.  95v, written in an Italianite hand, the first paragraph below in red, s. xiv ex. Incipiunt dicta Joachini presentata domino Clementi pape VII. anno domini MCCCLXXXII. per dominum Petrum de Caffol tesaurarium ecclesie sancti Petri Auinionen’ qui iurauit in conscientia sua quod ista dicta fuerunt sibi presentata sub anno domini MCCCXLIX. post festum Natiuitatis Cristi. Anno domini MCCCL. corruent multi principes et generosi nobiles Cristiani et potentes in conspectu paganorum et quasi pro nichilo habebantur et multi etiam ipsorum capitiuabuntur. Item anno domini MCCCLIIII. recuperabunt Greci Constantinopolim et turpiter eicientur Latini ab eis. Item anno domini MCCCLXXVIII. erunt duo pape, unus Lugduni, alter Rome. Lugdunen’ erit inustus et apicem tenebit. Alter autem Rome iustusa, et insultabunt in se mutuo. Item anno domini MCCCLXXIX erit ecclesia Catholica et clerus in tanta vilitate et conculcatione in quanta non fuit a tempore Constantini regis qui dotauit ecclesiam tempore Siluestri pape in ciuitat(e) Roman’. Item anno domini MCCCLXXIX tota Grecia ad ecclesiam Romanam redibit ad obediendum sibi, et tunc audientur noua tempore pacis de Anticristo et eius predicatione. a

corrected from iniustus et iniquis

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Dante’s Crusading Ancestor and the Authority of a Sacred Poem, 1147–1321*

Edward M. Peters

The figures who dominate the central cantos of each cantica in Dante’s Commedia play prominent — and paternal — roles in the poem that, because of their symmetrical placement and sequence in its grand structure, transcend their particular location and circumstances. They also mark progressive stages in Dante’s own self-perception. Brunetto Latini and Marco Lombardo (in Inferno, 15 and Purgatorio, 16–18 respectively) address Dante’s deepest concerns — from Ser Brunetto about his own confused and misguided youthful values, the conditions of life in Florence during his young manhood, and a dim prophecy of his coming exile, and then from Marco Lombardo the problem of the autonomy and consequent responsibility of human will in the face of an attractive determinism derived from postlapsarian human ignorance. But both of these figures, Marco Lombardo to a lesser extent, address a Dante who remains preoccupied and still weighted with and distracted by the cares of the temporal world. The dominant figure in the central cantos of the Paradiso is the last, 1 and the most important and paternal of these. Cacciaguida, Dante’s greatgreat-grandfather, speaks to a far better instructed and more profoundly experienced Dante about Dante’s family past and Dante’s own future, of an idealized past and corrupt present in Florence and the world, of the retinue of warrior-saints in the heaven of Mars, and of Dante’s suffering in exile that will transform him in the refiner’s fire that makes his poem sacro (sacred) and himself both poeta (poet) and profeta (prophet), the former role hinted at in Inferno, 4. The Commedia is primarily a poem of moral rectitude. Its aim is to analyse, explain, and reform the present world by authoritatively projecting its * This essay is dedicated to Christopher Tyerman, who knows far better than most the wide range of European life and thought touched by crusades and crusading ideas. Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, ed. by G. E. M. Lippiatt and Jessalynn L. Bird, Outremer 8 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 291–309 ©F

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DOI 10.1484/M.OUTREMER-EB.5.117324

Edward M. Peters

evils and virtues in terms of hundreds of human stories onto a supremely vivid, memorable, and systematic cosmic plane, or, as Beatrice says, it is a poem intended ‘for the good of the world that lives badly’ (Purgatorio, 32.103–5). After a number of early hints and veiled prophecies, Dante finally receives an accurate and fearsome prophecy of his own future and begins the process of sanctifying the poem in a meeting with his greatgreat-grandfather, the crusader-martyr-saint Cacciaguida. Their meeting extends from Paradiso, 14.82 through cantos 15, 16, and 17, until 18.51, nearly four cantos, the longest single episode of the entire poem. The poem is not often considered in terms of crusade history and memory as a starting-point for Dante’s status as poeta, but crusade plays a substantial role in it, not only through Cacciaguida, but also through Dante’s concept of salvation history and the proper and divinely instituted roles of emperor and pope.1 Dante’s ideas about ‘the world that lives badly’ were shaped by an active public life that scarred him deeply and a profound intellectual life 1

The text of the Commedia cited here is Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica volgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Milano, 1967) in the English translation and commentary by Charles Singleton, The Divine Comedy, 6 vols (Princeton, 1970–79). I  have extended Singleton’s translation on a few occasions (and in square brackets) for the sake of clarity. The best introduction to Dante is John  A. Scott, Understanding Dante (Notre Dame, 2004). The most useful background to the scholarship on the subject of this study are the entries by Anthony Oldcorn, ‘Cacciaguida’, Mark Balfour, ‘Crusades’, and John Najemy, ‘Florence’, all in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing et al. (London, 2000); Charles  T. Davis, ‘Il buon tempo antico (The Good Old Time)’, in Dante’s Italy and Other Essays (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 71–93; Jeffrey T. Schnapp, The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s Paradise (Princeton, 1986); Lawrence Warner, ‘Dante’s Ulysses and the Erotics of Crusading’, Dante Studies 116 (1998), 65–93; and Lawrence Warner, ‘The Sign of the Son: Crusading Imagery in the Cacciaguida Episode’, (2002), http://www. princeton.edu/~dante/ebdsa/warner091602.html (accessed 11 Jan. 2016). Particularly helpful is Claire Honess, ‘Feminine Virtues and Florentine Vices: Citizenship and Morality in Paradiso XV-XVII’, in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse (Oxford, 1997), pp. 102–20. A useful recent lectura Dantis is Giorgio Inglese, ‘Canti XV-XVI-XVII: Cacciaguida’, in Esperimenti Danteschi, ed. Tomasso Montorfano (Milano, 2010), pp. 169–84. A very different reading of the Cacciaguida episode is that of Brenda Deen Schildgen, ‘Dante and the Crusades’, Dante Studies 116 (1998), 95–125, repr. in Brenda Deen Schildgen, Dante and the Orient (Champaign-Urbana, IL, 2002), and effectively criticized by Lawrence Warner, ‘The Sign of the Son’.

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that he created in order to explain and reform that world. Born into the lesser branch of a family of old Florentine nobility — in the family’s case, a nobility that had been established by Cacciaguida’s service on crusade and his knighting by Conrad III, and had managed largely to stay beneath the radar of Florence’s political and economic struggles in the last half of the thirteenth century — Dante earned a respected youthful reputation as a lyric poet, but he also participated actively in Florentine public life.2 He evidently trained at some time in mounted combat, since he served heroically in a picked cavalry unit in the Florentine army at the battle of Campaldino in 1289 (of which he was later said by his biographer Leonardo Bruni to have drawn up from memory an accurate battle plan) and in at least one other military engagement, and he was prominent in the late 1290s in Florentine consultations on military and diplomatic affairs. As soon as he came of legal age for entering public life at thirty in 1295, Dante regularly won elective office in Florence from that date to 1302.3 Then, his political enemies, the Black Guelfs, supported by Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) and Charles of Valois, forced him and other White Guelfs into exile under the sentence of death. He remained prominent in the councils of the Florentine exiles, becoming in 1302 Chancellor of the Universitas partis alborum and sharing their dispersion throughout northern Italy until he broke with them in July 1304. Several scholars have noted that the White Guelfs constituted a kind of alternative, exile-Florence outside the city walls.4 When Dante finally broke from them in 1304 he entered a second exile, perhaps as severe as the first, since it cut him off now from the entire political population of Florence, and from 1304 the poet underwent a material and spiritual transformation. He was now obliged to seek a position in one of the only two social roles open to a noble, literate, and virtually impoverished layman who held no wealth or land of his own and was not an academic, a cleric, or a citizen in public life: that of soldier or courtier.5 Dante was 2

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The best short account of Dante’s ancestry and posterity is John  C. Barnes, ‘Alighieri Family’, in Dante Encyclopedia, pp. 21–24. I have considered the beginning of Dante’s political career in Edward  M. Peters, ‘The Shadowy, Violent Perimeter: Dante Enters Florentine Political Life’, Dante Studies 113 (1995), 69–87, repr. in Edward  M. Peters, Limits of Thought and Power in Medieval Europe (Aldershot, 2001). Randolph Starn, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982); Inglese, ‘Canti XV-XVIXVII’, p. 181. Inglese, ‘Canti XV-XVI-XVII’, p. 181. Inglese does not include the role of soldier, but it seems to me necessary for a full calculation of Dante’s limited options in 1304.

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at the time thirty-nine years old and the husband and father of a family. The role of courtier, however distasteful it often turned out to be and considering Dante’s utter lack of material resources, was his choice and perhaps his necessity. Dante spent the rest of his life in the diplomatic and literary service of various northern Italian princes, chiefly in Verona, until his death in Ravenna following one such diplomatic mission in 1321.6 Early in his exile, partly at least to attempt to restore or at least defend his own good name, besmirched by criminal charges and the sentence of death (both of which were widely known in northern Italy), he turned to philosophical poetry and exploited it in the prose/verse Convivio, which he left unfinished as he gradually developed the Commedia. He wrote the Commedia in the bitterness and shame of exile and the unstable, volatile world of the city-republics and princely courts. He thus came to regard himself as a poet who, having seen much and thought profoundly, had a moral duty to distribute praise and blame wherever they were deserved (Paradiso, 17.106–20). It is precisely this double-edged sword of moral rectitude wielded relentlessly in a vast, densely peopled world of vivid colour, sound, and detail that makes the poem great. The Cacciaguida cantos signal a turning point in both the divine charge to the pilgrim-poet and the pilgrim-poet’s sense of his own identity, authority, and mission. The rest of this essay will consider the history of the crusade enterprise in Dante’s lifetime, its function in terms of Dante’s critique of contemporary popes and a corrupted Florence, and finally the place of Paradiso, 14–18 as a setting of the authentic divine charge to pilgrim-Dante — to cry out, name names, condemn vice, praise and encourage virtue, and urge the world to reform, regardless of any earthly consequences to himself for having done so. During Dante’s youth and adulthood the problem of crusade loomed large and consistently disappointing, primarily as a series of unremitting losses in the Holy Land and widespread discussion of crusade proposals, rising to the conciliar level at the Second Council of Lyons (1274) during the pontificate of Gregory X (1271–76). In 1244, Jerusalem, which had been retaken by Saladin in 1187 and briefly returned to a diminished Christian lordship under Frederick  II from 1229 until 1239, had been destroyed by the Khwarazmians. Between 1265 and 1271 the cities of Arsuf,

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Because it is essential, although not always easy, to distinguish the historical poet Dante Alighieri and the figure of Dante in the poem, I will refer mostly throughout this study to the figure as pilgrim-Dante and to the poet simply as Dante, except on those occasions when pilgrim-Dante is echoing sentiments clearly stated elsewhere in Dante’s writing.

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Caesarea, Jaffa, and Antioch and the castles of Safad, . Krak des Chevaliers, and Montfort were all lost to the Mamlūks of Egypt. The Second Council of Lyons, convened by Gregory X, a pope with a keen interest in the Holy Land and its needs (as Tedaldo Visconti he had been in the Holy Land when he was elected pope), generated a number of proposals to regain the Holy Land, but did not succeed in launching a major offensive.7 In 1285, when Dante was twenty, the castle of Marqab (Margat) and the port of Latakia were lost, and in 1289, the year that Dante fought at Campaldino, Tripoli fell. Then, in 1291 when Dante was twenty-six, came the fall of Acre, followed immediately in the same year by the loss of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Haifa, Tortosa, and Château Pèlerin. In 1297 Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303) canonized the crusader king of France, Louis IX, ironically in the same year that he launched a private crusade against his enemies, the Colonna family. Crusade was on Dante’s mind as a young man and later during his exile, and it was intimately related to the decayed and lawless condition of Christian society as a whole (caused at the top of society, he thought, by the corrupting intrusion of ecclesiastical power into affairs that were properly the responsibility of the emperor and resonating all the way down to the levels of the city and the family). The first mention of crusade in the Commedia occurs in Inferno, 27, part of the section of the great pit of Hell reserved for deceivers and false counsellors. Inferno, 26 had contained the condemned Ulysses, who had used rhetorical prowess deceptively to persuade his crew to sail in a perverse direction.8 In Inferno, 27 pilgrim-Dante encounters Guido da Montefeltro, a famous military and diplomatic strategist turned Franciscan friar, who had advised Boniface VIII how to overcome his enemies, the Colonna, by waging the crusade against them by means of treachery and deceit. 7

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On the topic, see Philip  B. Baldwin, Pope Gregory  X and the Crusades (Woodbridge, 2014); Sylvia Schein, Fideles crucis: The Papacy, the West, and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1274–1314 (Oxford, 1991); and Antony Leopold, How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2000). More recently, see William of Adam, How to Defeat the Saracens: Guillelmus Ade, Tractatus quomodo Saraceni sunt expugnandi, ed. and trans. Giles Constable et al. (Washington, 2012). For the later crusades generally, see Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford, 1992). On the theology of crusading and devotional aspects of knighthood, the study by Richard W. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009), esp. pp. 68–93, is invaluable. A point elaborately laid out by Warner, ‘Dante’s Ulysses and the Erotics of Crusading’. Warner regards Ulysses as an anti-crusader.

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Lamenting his own subsequent betrayal by Boniface, who had absolved him in advance of his sin’s commission, Guido snarls: ‘The prince of the new Pharisees, having war near the Lateran, and not with [distant] Saracens or with Jews, for his every enemy was Christian, and none had been to conquer Acre nor been a merchant in the Soldan’s land [. …]’9

Here, Dante opposes what he considered the wrong kind of crusade: not crusade in the Holy Land against Muslims ‘and Jews’, but a private papal vendetta (Paradiso, 27.22–27) wickedly projected onto the whole 9

Inferno, 27.85–90: ‘Lo principe d’i novi Farisei,  / avendo Guerra presso a Laterano,  / e non con Saracin né con Giudei,  / ché ciascun suo nimico era Cristiano, / e nessun era stato a vincer Acri / né mercatante in terra di Soldano [. …]’. Dante had grown up in the world of the Italian crusades, for which see Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades Against Christian Lay Rulers, 1254–1343 (Oxford, 1982). Dante blamed a series of popes for ignoring the real need of the Holy Land by not crusading against the Mamluk conquerors of Acre or those Christians who violated canon law by trading in strategic materials with Muslims  — one of the offences most strongly condemned in crusade literature, for which, see Olivia Remie Constable, ‘Clothing, Iron, and Timber: The Growth of Christian Anxiety about Islam in the Long Twelfth Century’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas Noble and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN, 2012), pp. 279–313. The reason for Guido’s inclusion of Jews here is not clear, since there were no lands held by Jews anywhere in the Mediterranean world, unless he considered, as Christians often did, Jews to be allies of Muslims — it is not clear that the sentiment about Jews is pilgrimDante’s own rather than Guido’s, perhaps another sign of Guido’s failed intelligence. Dante also includes a number of Hebrew biblical heroes in the course of the Cacciaguida cantos, notably Joshua and Judas Maccabee. Papal crusades in Dante’s lifetime were also directed against the heretical followers of Fra’ Dolcino (still living in the Commedia-year 1300, but foreseen in Hell by none other than Muhammad), for Dante another schismatic (Inferno, 28), and further local crusades against Venice in 1309 and in 1321 against several Ghibelline princes. In the thirteenth century the popes lived in the Lateran church-palace complex when they were in Rome, hence ‘waging war close to the Lateran’ in Palestrina, centre of the Colonna properties and about twentyfive miles from Rome. On papal mis-crusading in Dante’s political thought, see Ronald B. Herzman and William Stephany, ‘Dante and the Frescoes at Santi Quattro Coronati’, Speculum 87 (2012), 95–146.

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of Italy. Dante may well have known some of the proposals for crusade reform. Nor does he oppose all crusades against Christians. In Canto 9 of the Paradiso Dante encounters Fulk of Toulouse (c. 1160–1231), a Marseillais troubadour who had composed several crusade songs and then turned Cistercian monk and became bishop of Toulouse during the Albigensian Crusade (1208–29). Fulk points out one of his companions in the heaven of Venus, Rahab, the harlot of Jericho in Joshua 2, who aided Joshua (Paradiso, 9.124–26) in what Joan Ferrante shrewdly called Joshua’s victory over a city of sin and then ‘led the Jews to the Holy Land in what might be called the first crusade’.10 Fulk thus implies that the crusades reenacted ‘Joshua’s first glory in the Holy Land’. Because of her assistance, Rahab was the first soul released from Hell by Jesus and placed in the heaven of Venus, ‘Because it was well-befitting to leave her in some heaven as a trophy to that lofty victory which was achieved by one and the other palm, because she favored Joshua’s first glory in the Holy Land — which little touches the memory of the pope’.11

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Joan M. Ferrante, The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (Princeton, 1984), p. 286. Paradiso, 9.121–26: ‘Ben si convene lei lasciar per palma / in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria  / che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma,  / perch’ ella favorò la prima gloria / di Iosüè in su la Terra Santa, / che poco tocca al papa la memoria’. Dante surely knew of Fulk’s role in the Albigensian Crusade. Just after, in Paradiso, 9.133–38, Dante utters his famous condemnation of papal decretals issued by the papal shepherds who have turned into wolves: ‘For this the Gospel and the great Doctors [of the Church]  / are deserted, and only the [papal] decretals [i.e. thirteenth-century papal legal decisions that constituted, with the canons of church councils, canon law] / are studied, as may be seen from [the comments written on] their margins / Thereon the pope and cardinals are intent. / Their thoughts go not to Nazareth, / whither Gabriel spread his wings [in the Annunciation]’. (‘Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni / son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali / si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni. / A questo intende il papa e’ cardinali; / non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette, / là dove Gabrïello aperse l’ali’.) Dante had no sympathy for any form of doctrinal assertion that threatened to divide Christian society, but neither did he sympathize with the official collections of canon law, which contained mostly the chief legal points of papal decretals: the Liber Extra of Gregory IX of 1234, the Liber Sextus, issued by Boniface VIII in 1298, and perhaps even the Constitutiones Clementinae, issued by John XXII in 1317. On the broader subject, James A. Brundage, Medieval

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In Purgatorio, 3, pilgrim-Dante encounters the soul of Manfred in the circle of the late-repentant, still bearing the scars from the blows that killed him at Benevento in 1266 when he fought against the papally-designated crusade army of Charles of Anjou. Although Dante does not condemn the Italian crusades explicitly, Manfred’s description of the bishop of Cosenza, sent by Pope Clement IV ‘to hunt me down’, exhuming his body and liturgically removing it, ‘with unlighted tapers’, beyond the borders of the Papal State, is pointed enough, designating as it does a papal antipastoralism with a serious theological dimension: ‘By curse of theirs [churchmen] none is so lost that the Eternal Love cannot return, so long as hope keeps aught of green [salvation]’.12

Manfred is a deliberate and audacious choice to illustrate the doctrine that true repentance for sin, no matter how great the sin nor how late repentance comes, can overcome even the Church’s most powerful strictures, including being the personal target of a papally authorized crusade. Another crusade reference occurs in Inferno, 4.34–38, where Dante and Virgil encounter the virtuous pagans. Virgil says that he, too, must remain here forever in the company of great pagan poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, who all welcome Dante to their company, as well as a number of other figures from non-Christian earthly lives, including Saladin, ‘by himself, apart’. A century after H.at.t.īn, Saladin had begun to acquire the reputation for virtue and chivalry among European Christian writers that he has long since possessed.13 In canto 14 of the Paradiso, pilgrim-Dante becomes aware that he and Beatrice have been translated from the heaven of the Sun into the heaven of Mars, and he begins to perceive individual presences resembling motes in a sunbeam upon a great cross that flashes out the image of Christ. But he can find nothing to which he can compare this, excusing himself by saying that anyone ‘who takes up his cross and follows Christ’ (Matthew, 10.38, 16.24  — a phrase long cited in crusade recruiting sermons and theology) and sees Christ will understand and forgive pilgrim-Dante’s

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Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, 1969), and James  A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London, 1995), pp. 44–69. Purgatorio, 3.133–35: ‘Per lor maladizion sì non si perde, / che non possa tornar l’etterno amore, / mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde’. The discussion of the salvation of non-Christians is continued and settled by the great Eagle in Paradiso, 19.20–148. On Saladin’s legacy in the Arabic Middle East, Diana Abouali, ‘Saladin’s Legacy in the Middle East before the Nineteenth Century’, Crusades 10 (2011), 175–85.

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inadequacy. The planet colours its heaven red, and across it he perceives the immense cross studded with lights.14 He has arrived at the heaven of Christian warrior-saints, whose spokesman is eventually revealed to be Dante’s own ancestor, his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida, a midtwelfth-century Florentine who tells pilgrim-Dante that he died on the crusade of Conrad III in 1147.15 The lights in the cross then produce music and song, although Dante has difficulty following it, catching only a few words, ‘Rise’, and ‘Conquer’ — perhaps a triumphal hymn to Christ, but equally likely one of the many crusade hymns well known and still produced in his lifetime, several earlier by Fulk of Toulouse (Paradiso, 9), but far more glorious when heard here in their proper heaven. At the beginning of canto 15, one of the lights moves like a shooting star, with military precision toward Dante, addressing him in Latin (as Anchises had addressed Aeneas in Aeneid, 6.644–88, the model for this scene, including the Latin first words of Cacciaguida’s speech): ‘Oh you of my blood, Oh superabundant grace of God, to whomever besides you have the gates of heaven ever been opened twice?’16

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The image is discussed, with the suggestion of a new source, in Fay Martineau, ‘A Literary Source for the Cross of Mars?’, in the Princeton Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America: http://www.princeton.edu/!dante/ebdsa/ martineau020106.html (accessed 7 Feb. 2015), citing Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentary on the Office of St Victor. Although a great increase in crusade privileges occurred during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Dante seems to have invented the category of warrior-saint in the scheme of the heavens as depicted here in the Paradiso. Compare Brundage, Canon Law and the Crusader, pp. 192–93. Of course, the scheme of Paradise so far that pilgrim-Dante experiences is one designed specifically to accommodate the limitations of his human sensorium. After Paradiso, 8, pilgrim-Dante no longer sees the souls in Paradise as human figures, but rather simply as indistinguishable sources of more or less intense brightness (e.g., Paradiso, 15.79–87). His sense-perception is not transformed until Paradiso, 30.46–96. Nevertheless, a heaven of warrior-saints was a theologically risky thing to suggest outside of a poema, given the abundant criticism of crusading in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985). Paradiso, 15.28–30: ‘O sanguis meus, o superinfusa / gratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui / bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?’.

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This is the second time in the Commedia (Paradiso, 10.86–87 — the third occurs in Paradiso, 30.135) that Dante’s own future salvation is assured.17 The speaker still has not yet identified himself, and his speech is at first, after its Latin opening, virtually incomprehensible to Dante because of the depths of the thought it reveals, until he realizes that it has become Old Tuscan and then Dante’s own Tuscan. The speaker tells Dante that he has long known and joyfully anticipated Dante’s arrival, since the sainted dead see all time — past, present, and future — unlike the punitive limited past and distant future vision of the damned discussed in Inferno, 10.18 Dante then thanks the speaker for his paterna festa and asks his identity. The spirit answers: ‘O my branch [of my tree] in whom I took delight only expecting you, I was your [family] root’: [. …] ‘He from whom your family has its name and who a hundred years and more has circled the mountain [of Purgatory] on the first ledge, was my son and your grandfather’s father. Truly it is fitting that you should shorten his long toil With your good offices’.19

The speaker first identifies himself, not by name, but as the father of the man from whom the Alaghieri took their name. He instructs Dante in his duty of pious domestic remembrance to that man, a theme that runs through the Purgatorio and the earlier cantos of the Paradiso  — the 17

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After the Latin greeting echoing Anchises, the speaker’s language takes some time for the depths of thought from which it comes to be comprehensible to Dante. The speech finally resolves itself into Old Tuscan and then into Dante’s Tuscan. Dante fully understood the fluid character of language that was not fixed by a literary tradition. Here is a point at which Dante evades the risk of ecclesiastical criticism by indicating the future salvation of pilgrim-Dante. The spectacle of the great red cross, its stars, and the shooting stars reminds us of the signs, prodigies, and wonders that were often noted as preceding crusades. Compare Matthew, 24.30. The role (and its limitation to the terrestrial world only) of contingency and the vision of the sainted dead (in contrast to the limited and misleading vision of past and present in Inferno, 10) is explained by Cacciaguida in Paradiso, 17.37–48. Paradiso, 15.88–96: ‘O fronda mia in che io compiacemmi / pur aspettando, io fui la tua radice’: / cotal principio, respondendo, femmi. / Poscia mi disse: ‘Quel da cui si dice / tua cognazione e che cent’ anni e piùe / girato ha ‘l monte in la prima cornice, / mio figlio fu e tuo bisavol fue: ben si convien che la lunga fatica / tu li raccorci con l’opere tue’.

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responsibility of the living to pray for the souls of the dead, particularly those of their own ancestors, and, by implication here and elsewhere in the poem, less and less observed in Dante’s Florence.20 The soul of whose purgation the speaker reminds Dante is that of Alaghiero di Cacciaguida, the first ‘Alighieri’ in the family, taking his name from the wife of Cacciaguida, who came from the Po valley, possibly from Ferrara.21 First things having come first, the speaker, still not explicitly identifying himself by name, then shifts to another theme, Florence in the ‘good old days’.22 Cacciaguida describes the differences between Florence in ‘the good old days’ — for Dante the early to mid-twelfth century — and Dante’s contemporary Florence. Cacciaguida’s Florence was far smaller (within the Roman walls of the small city in contrast to the enormous expansion of new walls in 1173–75 and again in 1284–1333 that accommodated a vastly larger population) and poorer, and because it had not yet been socially mongrelized by outsiders and both enriched and besmirched by their corrupting commercial, sexual, and political practices, it lived in moral rectitude, ‘in peace, sober and chaste’. The simplicity and moral dignity of material life, its nobility of character rather than descent and wealth, is most strikingly expressed in terms of the changed condition of

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Dante does not feel the same about his only other relative mentioned in the poem before Paradiso, 16, his troublesome and violent cousin Geri del Bello, the son of his grandfather’s brother, identified by Virgil in Inferno, 29.22–30. Virgil tells pilgrim-Dante that Geri had made a menacing gesture toward him, and Dante assumes that the reason is the failure of Geri’s relatives, including pilgrim-Dante, to reach a satisfactory agreement with the family of Geri’s killers, a solution that was not reached until 1342. On such vendettas and their resolution, Katherine L. Jansen, ‘Pro bono pacis: Crime, Conflict, and Dispute Resolution, The Evidence of Notarial Peace Contracts in Late Medieval Florence’, Speculum 88 (2013), 427–56 (here 438–39). On the broader topic of devotional life in Dante’s Florence, the fundamental work is that of George W. Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005), esp. pp. 164–216. Dante himself seems to have spelled his name ‘Alaghieri’, and this is the name in the family down to Dante’s death in 1321. There were Aldaghieri in Ferrara from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. The spelling Alighieri was standardized by Boccaccio, among others. The bonds of family affection also occur earlier in the canto (lines 61–66) in a discussion of the desirability of the reunion of soul and body after the Last Judgement so that relatives can see each other in the resurrected flesh. See Davis, ‘Il buon tempo antico’, pp. 71–93.

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noble and non-noble Florentine women.23 Cacciaguida ends his description of the older, far better, idealized Florence with the observation: ‘One [wife] kept watch in minding the cradle, and, soothing, spoke that speech which first delights fathers and mothers. Another, as she drew the threads from the distaff, would tell her household about the Trojans, and Fiesole, and Rome’.24

We will return to those storyteller-wives in a moment. Only now does Cacciaguida identify himself: ‘To such a reposeful, to so fair a life of citizens, to such a trusty community, to so sweet an abode, Mary, called on with loud cries, gave me, and in your ancient Baptistery I became at once a Christian and Cacciaguida. Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo. My wife came to me from the valley of the Po, and thence was derived your surname. Afterward I followed the Emperor Conrad, who girt me with his knighthood, so much did I win his favor by good work. I went, in his train, against the iniquity of that law whose people, through fault of their Pastors, usurp your right. There by that foul folk was I released from the deceitful world, the love of which debases many souls, and I came from martyrdom to this peace’.25

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Paradiso, 15.99–126. See the lucid and informative discussion in Honess, ‘Feminine Virtues’ and the study and extensive literature cited in Diana  C. Silverman, ‘Marriage and Political Violence in the Chronicles of the Medieval Veneto’, Speculum 86 (2011), 652–87 (here 656 n. 17, 659–61). Paradiso, 15.121–26: ‘L’una vegghiava a studio de la culla,  / e, consolando, usava l’idïoma / che prima i padre e le madri trastulla; / l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma, / favoleggiava con la sua famiglia / d’i Troiani, di Fiesole de di Roma’. Paradiso, 15.130–48: ‘A così riposato, a così bello / viver di cittadini, a così fida / cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello, / Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida; / e ne l’antico vostro Batisteo / insieme fui cristiano e Cacciaguida. / Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo; / mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, / e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo. / Poi seguitai lo ‘mperador Currado; / ed el mi cinse de la sua milizia, /

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This brief account of a Christian life in an ideal, lost place and time may seem like a distraction on Dante’s part. After all, Cacciaguida has yet to describe and identify the milizia del ciel (militia of heaven),26 Dante’s future, and the authorisation of the poet and poem before Dante and Beatrice are translated to the heaven of the Eagle and the just rulers. But who was Cacciaguida, and why does he tell such a truncated story of ancient Florence and his own journey, knighting, and martyrdom on crusade? Once before in the Commedia Dante had been asked about his descent. In Inferno, 10, overheard by one of the damned in the circle of the heretics conversing with Virgil with his by now customary humility and polite deference, pilgrim-Dante is addressed by the proud soul of Farinata degli Uberti, one of the leaders of the Ghibelline magnates who had overthrown the primo popolo in 1260 and appears to have great scorn of Hell. Farinata, having heard pilgrim-Dante speak and realizing from his language, accent, and rhetorical manner that the visitor came from a social class in Florence with whom it might be appropriate for him to speak, asks in a thundering, basso profundo: ‘O Tosco che per la città del foco / vivo ten vai così parlando onesto, / [.…] Chi fuor li maggior tui?’, asking not exactly ‘Who were your ancestors?’, but with the word maggior asking ‘Who were your suitably noble ancestors?’27 Pilgrim-Dante, at the time knowing nothing of Cacciaguida (or his mother, brothers, and son), can have responded to Farinata probably back to the only generation that would have interested him as a Ghibelline, that of Dante’s grandfather, Bellincione di Alaghieri (d. 1269), who would have been one of the first Guelfs in Florence, and probably the earliest ancestor that pilgrim-Dante knew of at the time (and the son of that Alaghiero di Cacciaguida about whose existence and afterlife on the terrace of pride in Purgatory pilgrim-Dante learns only later). Farinata and pilgrim-Dante go on after a brief interruption to discuss several topics that do not directly concern this essay.28 So pilgrimDante cannot not be repeating through Cacciaguida in Paradiso, 15 what he had already told Farinata in Inferno, 10. He is learning some genealogy

26 27 28

tanto per bene ovrar li venni in grado. / Dietro li andai incontro a la nequizia / di quella legge il cui popolo usurpa, / per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia. / Quivi fu’ io da quella gente turpa / disviluppato dal mondo fallace, / lo cui amor molt’ anime deturpa; / e venni dal martiro a questa pace’. Paradiso, 18.124. Inferno, 10.22–23, 42. John A. Scott, ‘Farinata’, in Dante Encyclopedia, pp. 370–73; and the classic study by Erich Auerbach, ‘Farinata and Cavalcante’, in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, 1953), pp. 174–202.

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in Paradise for a reason that is integral to the place and sequence of the heavens and, I will argue, to the sharp distinction between Dante and pilgrim-Dante. Pilgrim-Dante now proclaims to Cacciaguida that ‘[…] You are my father, you give me full boldness to speak, you so uplift me that I am more than I [. …] Tell me then, dear stock from which I spring, what was your ancestry [antichi] and what were the years that were reckoned in your boyhood. Tell me of the sheepfold of St John, how large it was then, and who were the folk within it worthy of the highest seats?’29

Cacciaguida’s answer is brief and selective. He gives a (debated) date for his own birth (most scholars interpret his circumlocution as indicating 1091, others 1106) and the location of his family house within the earliest walls of the city. But to the rest of pilgrim-Dante’s question, he says: ‘Let it suffice to hear this much of my forebears [maggiori again, echoing Farinata]; / as to who they were and whence they came hither, / silence is more becoming than speech’.30 Of his own family, in addition to his two brothers and one of his sons, Cacciaguida mentions only his own mother, who is in heaven.31 As he turns to the generations of Florentines following his own, he lays out another long catalogue of Florence’s once-great families and their decline, ending the canto.32 Dante is virtually our only evidence for the existence of Cacciaguida. Robert Davidsohn noted a document of April 1131, which mentions a ‘Cacciaguida, son of Adam’.33 In a document of December 1189, two sons of a Cacciaguida (now deceased) are mentioned in a legal dispute (Alaghiero and Preitenitto).34 The second of these is the closest documentary evidence outside the Commedia that Cacciaguida ever existed. 29

30

31 32 33

34

Paradiso, 16.16–18, 22–27: Io cominciai: ‘Voi siete il padre mio; / voi mi date a parlar tutta baldezza; / voi me levate sì, ch’i’ son più ch’io. [.…] Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia, / quai fuor li vostri antichi e quae fuor li anni / che segnaro in vostra püerizia; / ditemi de l’ovil di San Giovanni / quanto era allora, e chi eran le genti / tra esso degne di più alti scanni?’ Paradiso, 16.43–45: ‘Basti d’i miei maggiori udirne questo: / chi ei si fosser e onde venner quivi, / più è tacer che ragionare onesto’. Paradiso, 16.34–36. Paradiso, 16.46–154. Robert Davidsohn, Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols (Berlin, 1896–1927), 1: 440 n. 2. Renato Piattoli, Codice diplomatico dantesco (Firenze, 1950), pp. 3–4.

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But it is very doubtful that Dante invented him, as some scholars have asserted. Behind all of Cacciaguida’s selective genealogical gravitas may very well lie the fact that this was all that Dante knew of him and the rest of his genealogy, and that he knew these things from family memory. Those women at the distaff in early twelfth-century Florence noted above had told stories of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome, that is, stories on the same themes that the earliest historiography of Florence emphasised.35 But what additional stories may women have told in Florentine households in the 1260s and 1270s? Much recent work on crusade history has focused on crusade memory, its formation and preservation, its social role, the shaping of its historiography, and especially the role of family in the panorama of social memory.36 As Nicholas Paul has clearly demonstrated in terms of crusade, not only public memory in the various forms of civic and ecclesiastical ceremonial and liturgical commemoration, but also and primarily domestic memory, including tales told of crusading ancestors, were preserved with other lore in family memory. This was almost exclusively the work of women, particularly when it may not have driven out other pieces of family history where these two forms of memory may have been somehow closely connected to the crusading subject — like a sainted mother, two brothers, a son, and the location of a family house.37 Such seems to be indeed the case with Dante’s own family memory — a martyr-crusader ancestor who had been knighted by the emperor, his mother in heaven, two of his brothers, and a son. Such data were important to remember in later thirteenth-century Florence in order to assert family and individual antiquity, identity, status, and history in an increasingly fluid and politically and socially volatile Florentine society.38

35 36

37 38

Davis, ‘Il buon tempo antico’; above, note 1. Most relevant for this essay is the work of Nicholas Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (London, 2012). There is an important review of Paul’s study by Christopher Tyerman in the Times Literary Supplement ( June 14, 2013), p. 8, and another by Anne E. Lester in Speculum 90 (2015), 285–86. Paul’s research focuses on England and northern France and does not extend to Italy, but I am here following a strong temptation to extrapolate it, allowing for different Italian and especially urban circumstances. Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps, pp. 16, 65–69, 165–70. Conrad III (b. 1093, r. 1138–52) had been crowned king of Italy in Milan in 1128, but he was never crowned emperor, although as Cacciaguida’s speech and other evidence shows, he was commonly referred to as emperor.

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It seems highly improbable that Dante would have invented this incomplete and truncated story of the past out of whole cloth. The place in the Commedia/Paradiso where it is told and the person who tells it are far too important, and the crusade imagery far too vivid, for Dante to have risked it by a fiction. Cacciaguida is, after all, not only the crusader-saint who reveals Dante’s terrible future and the charge of Heaven to him to write, but he is also the impresario of the fifth heaven, the great red cross, and the warrior-saints, all of whom have historical or literary connections to crusading and most of whom are mentioned in Humbert of Romans’ treatise for crusade preachers.39 And Cacciaguida’s crusade is clearly the ‘emperor’s’ — there is no mention of Pope Eugenius III who convoked it, nor of St Bernard who preached it, although St Bernard does of course appear later to guide pilgrim-Dante to the beatific vision. Because Cacciaguida holds a familial bond of love for Dante, pilgrimDante next raises the question of the ominous parole gravi (weighty words) that he has heard several times spoken about his future but has not clearly understood, since they had been uttered by morally deficient informants.40 Cacciaguida, ‘in clear words and with precise discourse that paternal love replied, hidden and revealed by his own smile’ begins: Dante must depart from Florence, since his exile is already, in 1300, being plotted by Boniface VIII.41 And he will suffer bitterly, since he will have ‘to leave everything loved most dearly’ (lascerai ogne cosa diletta  / più caramente) and in exile to learn how salty is the taste of another’s bread 39

40 41

Paradiso, 18.28–51; Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps, pp. 21–53. These are the notable warrior-saints, all of whom have gone on actual or literary crusades, and there are more of them in Heaven than there are popes: Joshua and Judas Maccabee from Hebrew history (who often prefigured Christian warriors against Muslim enemies); Charlemagne and Roland from literary history (their conjunction here recalling their wars with the Saracens in Iberia); William of Orange and the giant convert from Islam, Rinoardo, from epics of the twelfth century; Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade and first Latin Christian ruler of Jerusalem, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman conqueror of southern Italy from the Byzantines and Muslims. With Cacciaguida, these make nine crusader worthies, a rather specialized neuf preux, emphasising again, with the great red cross, the crusading aspect of the heaven of Mars. They are often said to represent the Church Militant, but if they do, they do so emphatically and not figuratively as crusaders. I am grateful to Jessalynn Bird for the reference to Humbert of Romans. Paradiso, 17.23. Paradiso, 17.34–36: per chiare parole e con preciso/ latin rispuose quello amor paterno, / chiuso e parvente del su o proprio riso.

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and how steep are the stairs to other men’s houses. He will first fall into the evil and senseless company of the other White Guelf exiles, who will torment pilgrim-Dante, but later suffer in their defeat at Lastra ( July 1304) for it. So that Dante will remain a party indeed, but with bitter irony a party of truth consisting only of himself.42 But will not retribution for Dante’s bitter songs take away other things besides those held most dear? His songs will sting those about whom he sings, but he is told nevertheless to ‘make manifest all that you have seen; and then let them scratch where the itch is’.43 ‘This cry of yours shall do as does the wind, which smites most upon the loftiest summits; and this shall be no little cause of honor. Therefore only the souls known of fame have been shown to you within these wheels, upon the mountain, and in the woeful valley […]’.44

Cacciaguida’s crude, rough image of scratching an itch both reflects his plainspoken life in an earlier Florence, and also implies that those who might take such offence deserve no consideration of the kind Dante has mentioned. Only then does Cacciaguida open and conduct the son et lumière of the crusading heroes,45 whom he then joins in song, participating in what Dante elsewhere calls, ‘the sweet symphony of paradise’ (La dolce sinfonia di paradiso),46 and departing from Dante, an artist of crusade memory. Dante is reassured that his experience must be made public regardless of who might illegitimately take offence or later criticize the savagery of his denunciations. This is the first of several indications in Paradise that the journey has not taken place solely for Dante’s own salvation as it had seemed in the early cantos of Inferno, but as a denunciation of the vices 42

43

44

45 46

Dante’s use of parte here is audacious, given the pejorative sense the term had then and later. See Edward M. Peters, ‘Pars, parte: Dante and an Urban Contribution to Political Thought’, in The Medieval City, ed. Harry  A. Miskimin, David Herlihy, and Abraham  L. Udovitch (New Haven, 1977), pp. 113–40, repr. in Peters, Limits of Thought and Power. Paradiso, 17.127–29: ‘Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, / tutta tua vision fa manifesta; / e lascia pur gratta dov’ è la rogna’. Paradiso, 17.133–38: ‘Questo tuo grido farà come vento, / che le più alte cime più percuote; / e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento. / Però ti son mostrate in queste rote, / nel monte e ne la valle dolorosa/ pur l’anime che son di fama note […]’ Paradiso, 18.24–51. Paradiso, 21.59.

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of the world. Pilgrim-Dante then goes on to higher circles of Paradise, once again guided by Beatrice, and learning more and more about the significance of the work he has yet to do. In canto 23, Dante confronts the impossibility of describing the transformed beauty of Beatrice by saying: […] and so, depicting Paradise, the sacred poem [sacrato poema] must needs make a leap, even as one who finds his way cut off. But whoso thinks of the ponderous theme And of the mortal shoulder which is laden therewith, will not blame it if it tremble beneath the load. It is no voyage for a little bark, this which my daring prow cleaves as it goes, nor for a pilot who would spare himself.47

Dante here recalls the imagery of human inadequacy and daring voyage that had opened the first two cantos of the Paradiso as well as the terrible alternative varco folle of Ulysses in Inferno, 26. By the beginning of canto 25, Dante has become far more confident in the importance of his mission than he had been while questioning Cacciaguida about his future. If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem [poema sacro] to which heaven and earth have so set hand that it has made me lean for many years should overcome the cruelty which bars me from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb, an enemy to the wolves which war on it, with changed voice now and with changed fleece a poet [poeta] will I return, and at the font of my baptism will I take the crown; because there I entered into the Faith that makes souls known to God; and afterward Peter, for its sake, has encircled my brow.48 47

48

Paradiso, 23.61–69: ‘[…] e così, figurando il paradiso, / convien saltar lo sacrato poema, / come chi trova suo cammin riciso. / Ma chi pensasse il ponderosa tema / e l’omero mortal che se ne carca,  / nol biasmerebbe se sott’ esso trema:  / non è pareggio da picciola barca / quell che fendendo va l’ardita prora, / né da nocchier ch’a sé medesmo parca’. Paradiso, 25.1–12: ‘Se mai continga ch ‘l poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, / sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, / vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra / del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello, / nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; / con altra voce omai, con altro vello / ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte / del mio battesmo prenderò la cappello; / però che ne la fede, che fa conte/ l’anime a Dio, quivi intra; io, e poi / Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte’.

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Dante’s encounters with spirits and apostles, especially Peter, after his meeting with Cacciaguida have greatly strengthened his resolve, and when he finally utters these words about the sacrality of his poem and the burdens he has suffered in making it, he speaks once again of a hoped-for return to Florence, transformed and laureated in the baptistry of St John.49 Dante has used Cacciaguida with great economy and with important functions. His source for the figure, I have suggested, is his family memory that allowed him to have his ancestor describe vividly and authoritatively an earlier, smaller, simpler, and morally superior Florence, uncorrupted by new wealth and political volatility, when just men went on crusades. Cacciaguida has also revealed Dante’s terrible future, but he has also revealed the great task that has brought him living into Paradise: his duty to bring back into the world the moral truth of all the wasted, penitent, and blessed lives of everyone whom he has seen.

49

Dante had been excluded from a general amnesty to the Whites in the face of a military crisis in 1311 (an amnesty was offered several later years from which the poet and his sons were also excluded), and he had refused a proposed oblatio, probably sometime later. The oblatio was a shaming ceremony of reconciliation to the city, which Dante declined eloquently to accept (Ep. 12).

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Christopher Tyerman Bibliography ‘The French and the Crusade, 1313–1336’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981).

‘Marino Sanudo Torsello and the Lost Crusade: Lobbying in the Fourteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32 (1982), 57–73. ‘Philip V of France, the Assemblies of 1319–20 and the Crusade’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57 (1984), 15–34. ‘Sed nihil fecit? The Last Capetians and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 170–81. ‘Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, The English Historical Review 100 (1985), 25–52. ‘The Holy Land and the Crusades of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. P. W. Edbury (Caerdydd, 1985), pp. 105–12. ‘Some English Evidence of Attitudes to Crusading in the Thirteenth Century’, Thirteenth-Century England 1 (1986), 168–74. England and the Crusades (Chicago, 1988). ‘Byron’s Harrow’, Journal of the Byron Society 17 (1989), 17–39. ‘The Crusades’ and ‘How European Nations Emerged’, in Chronicle of the World, ed. Jacques Legrand and Jerome Burne (London, 1989), pp. 362–63, 420–21. Contributor to The Atlas of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (London, 1991). ‘Who Went on Crusades to the Holy Land?’, in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B. Z. Kedar (London, 1992), pp. 13–26. ‘Harrow Drama’, in Inauguration of the Harrow School Theatre (Harrow, 1994). ‘Were There Any Crusades in the Twelfth Century?’, The English Historical Review 110 (1995), 553–77; repr. in The Crusades: The Essential Readings, ed. T. F. Madden (Oxford, 2002), pp. 100–25. Who’s Who in Early Medieval England (1066–1272) (London, 1996). ‘Crusades’, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols (London, 1996), 8: 218–20. The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998). ‘Holy War, Roman Popes, and Christian Soldiers: Some Early Modern Views on Medieval Christendom’, in The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life: Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, ed. Peter Biller and Barrie Dobson (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 293–307.

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Bibliography A History of Harrow School, 1324–1991 (Oxford, 2000). ‘What the Crusades Meant to Europe’, in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London, 2001), pp. 131–45. ‘William of Wykeham, 1324–1404’, New College Record (2003), pp. 49–60. Ed. and trans., An Eyewitness History of the Crusades, 4 vols (London, 2004); vol. 1 republished as Chronicles of the First Crusade (London, 2011). ‘Richard (fl. 1216–22), Augustinian Canon and Historian’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), 46: 701–2; available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/23519 (accessed 15 Feb. 2018). Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford, 2004); republished as The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction (2005). God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006). ‘Crusade of the Lord Edward’, ‘Crusades against Christians’, ‘Historiography, Modern’, and ‘Sanudo, Marino (d. 1343)’, in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray, 4 vols (Oxford, 2006), 1: 317–18, 325–29, 2: 582–88, 4: 1073–74. ‘Principes et populus: Civil Society and the First Crusade’, in Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher, ed. Simon Barton and Peter Linehan (Leiden, 2008), pp. 127–51. ‘The History Tutorial: You Have Taught Yourself this Term’, in The Oxford Tutorial: ‘Thanks, You Taught Me How to Think’, ed. David Palfreyman (Oxford, 2008), pp. 82–84. And Peter Coss, ed., Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2009). ‘Court, Crusade and City: The Cultural Milieu of Louis I Duke of Bourbon’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, ed. Peter Coss and Christopher Tyerman (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 49–63. Ed., New College (London, 2010) as well as chs ‘The Founder’, ‘The Foundation and the Medieval College’, ‘Sport’, and ‘Public Figures – State’, pp. 26–37, 108–13, 166–75. ‘Henry of Livonia and the Ideology of Crusading’, in Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Linda Kaljundi, Marek Tamm, and Carsten Selch Jensen (Farnham, 2011), pp. 23–44. The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester, 2011). ‘“New Wine in Old Skins?”: Crusade Literature and Crusading in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Later Middle Ages’, in Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150, ed. Jonathan Harris, Catherine Homes, and Eugenia Russell (Oxford, 2012), pp. 265–89.

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Bibliography ‘Paid Crusaders. Pro honoris vel pecunie; stipendiarii contra paganos: Money and Incentives on Crusade’, in The Practices of Crusading: Image and Action from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries (Farnham, 2013), pp. 1–40. ‘Peter Edbury as an Historian’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Miltary Orders Presented to Peter Edbury, ed. Susan B. Edgington and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2014), pp. 221–28. How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (London, 2015). ‘Violence and Holy War in Western Christendom’, in Routledge History of Medieval Christianity, 1050–1500, ed. R. N. Swanson (London, 2015), pp. 185–96. ‘Maurice Hugh Keen, 1933–2012’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 15 (2016), 68–98. ‘Keen, Maurice Hugh (1933–2012), Historian’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, ed. David Cannadine (7 Jan. 2016), https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/105559 (accessed 15 Feb. 2018). The World of the Crusades: An Illustrated Guide (New Haven, 2019). ‘Crusading, 1400–1600’, in The Cambridge History of Crusading, ed. Jonathan Phillips, 2 vols (Cambridge, forthcoming).

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Index

Affiliations to religious orders are given as follows: OCist = Cistercian Order; OFM = Franciscan Order; OP = Dominican Order; OPrem = Premonstratensian Order; OSB = Benedictine Order Aachen, Germany Frederick II in, 139 abbots 165, 179-80 of Auberive (OCist) 172 of Burgos (OSB) 83 of Burton (OSB) 254, 256, 279 of Bury St Edmunds (OSB) 256, 279, 280n of St Catherine on Mount Sinai 18-19 of Iona 35-37 of Longpont (OCist) 154n, 175 of Montier-en-Der (OSB) 106-7 of Prémontré (OPrem) 122, 135-36n, 155 of Sainte-Geneviève (dioc. Paris) 154n, 162, 165-67, 168n, 171n, 174-76, 178 of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes (dioc. Soissons) 154, 158, 166-69, 171, 174-75 of Saint-Nicolas d’Hermières (OPrem) 166n of Saint-Victor (Marseille) 269n of Saint-Victor (dioc. Paris) 152, 156-57, 160-63, 165-67, 173, 174n, 175, 179-80 of Springersbach (dioc. Treves) 161n of Val-Secret (OCist) 167n, 168-69 of Vaux-de-Cernay (OCist) 163; see also individual names ‘Abbāsids 58-59; see also individual named rulers ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, nephew of Abū Zakarīya’ 66

‘Abd al-Abbās al-Luylāni, tax collector 60-61 ‘Abd al-Mu‘min, Almoh.ad caliph 56 ‘Abd al-Wādids, Almoh.ad successor state 57; see also Ziyyānids ‘Abd al-Wāhid, governor of Ifrīqiya 56 Abraham, Old Testament patriarch 94, 99-102, 104-5, 110 Absalom, abbot of Saint-Victor (dioc. Paris) 161, 163 Abū H.afs. ‘Umar, Berber chieftain 55-56; see also H.afs.ids Abū Shāma, Shāfi‘ī scholar  Le livre des deux jardins 237, 240, 242 Abū Zakarīya’ Yah.yā, founder of H.afs.id dynasty 56-58, 61-62, 66; see also H.afs.ids Abū Zayd, ruler of Valencia 66; see also Vincent accounts diocesan 124, 218-19, 224 Templar estates 181-209 Acre (mod. ‘Ako, Israel) bishops 98-103, 132, 137, 169; see also James of Vitry city 102, 132, 140, 142, 237, 242, 296, 296n fall (1291) 5, 142n, 211n, 295 siege (1189-91) iv, 237-38, 242 Acropolium (Carthage) 69n Adam 104 St Adelelmus of Burgos (OSB) 83 Adhémar, bishop of Le Puy 89

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Index

Ad liberandam (1215) 175; see also Lateran Council IV Adolf III, count of Berg 138-39 Adomnán, abbot of Iona De locis sanctis 35-37 Adso, abbot of Montier-en-Der De Antichristo 106-8, 282n, 283n Aegean, region 24, 27, 42, 218 Aeneas, 299 Aeneid see Virgil affers 184, 189-91, 195 Africa North 2, 3, 18, 20, 23-25, 27, 52, 55-68, 99, 130; see also Alexandria; Almoh.ads; Berbers; Cairo; Damietta; H.afs.ids; Ifrīqiya Agapius, bishop of Manbij 31 Agen, diocese of 136 Agenais, region 133, 141 Agnes Groby, wife of John 223 Agnes Hordir, donor 225 Alaghieri, family 300, 301n, 303; see also Dante Alighieri see Alaghieri; Dante al-Andalus, region of 55, 58, 61-62, 66 al-Aqs.ā mosque see Jerusalem Alard (Aldric) the Fleming, crusader 134 Alberic, archbishop of Rheims 132, 135 Alberic Cornut, Paris master 166n Albi, diocese of 136 Albigensians crusade against 4, 119-44, 152-55, 158-59, 163, 165, 170, 173, 176, 272n, 297; see also heresy; heretics; Midi Alcuin of York, English scholar 77 Aldfrith, king of Northumbria 37 Alexander of Courson, nephew of Robert of Courson 137 Alexander Stavensby, bishop of Coventry 256 Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia iv Alexander II, pope 85, 87

316

Alexander IV, pope 253n, 255n, 258n, 266 Alexander VI, pope 230 Alexandria, Egypt city 277 patriarchs 18, 19n, 30-31 Alexios I Komnenos, Byzantine emperor 40-47 Alfonso of Brienne, chamberlain of Louis IX 66 Alfonso VI, king of León, Castile, and Galicia 83 Alfonso X, king of Castile 63, 67 Alice, lady of Coucy 155 Alice of Courtenay, lady of Montmirail 152 Alice, queen of Cyprus 168-69, 171-72 Alleluia, Great (1233), religious movement 6, 270-77, 279, 287 All Souls College 9-11 feast 87 alms, almsgiving 163-4, 188, 209, 211-33 Almoh.ads 57-58, 140 St Alodia 83 Altenus (OP), friar 251, 259, 273, 289 Amalfi 46 Amalric of Montfort, crusader 123-25, 141 Amalricians 163 amirs 32, 42, 57-9, 62, 66, 242-43 amir al-mu’minin 59 St Ambrose of Autpert 81 amphorae 23-27 Anatolia 41, 43-44, 222 ancestors 68, 87, 291-309 Anchises 299, 300n ancilla see maid Andalusia, Andalusis see al-Andalus St Andrew 273 Andrew of Époisse, knight 166 Andrew of Montréal, knight 170 Angevin dynasty 61, 64, 88n, 296n Anicia Juliana, Roman noblewoman 20-21 Anicii family 20-21

Index

Annales Ricardi 222 Annals of St Bertin 79 Anna, daughter of Emperor Frederick II 267n Anna Komnene, Byzantine princess Alexiad 40-2, 45 Andrew of Longjumeau (OP), missionary 65 Anselm of Lucca, bishop 85 Antichrist 3, 7, 33, 104-11, 113, 115, 117, 251, 260, 262-66, 270, 280, 282-85, 287 Antioch city 27, 32, 39-40, 41, 44-46, 114, 279, 295 Holy Lance 273, 279 patriarch 18, 19n, 30, 31-32 principality 169, 237, 239 antisemitism 94, 107, 111 Antwerp cathedral 97 Apiones, family 21-22 Apion IV 21, 22n Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius 105, 108, 252 apocalypticism 6, 33n, 93-117, 249-90; see also Antichrist; eschatology; millenarianism; prophecy Apollo, Greco-Roman god 108, 110 Apostolic See 124; see also popes; Rome Apulia, Italy 38-39, 45-47, 188 Aquitaine, France 81-82 Arabia, 18, 19n, 26, 39, 99-100, 105 Arabic church 31 conquest 2 culture 31 interpreter 48, 103 school at Tunis 65 sources 3, 5, 28n, 31, 237-38, 247, 298n; see also individual authors Arago-Catalans 60-64, 67; see also Aragon, Aragonese Aragon, Aragonese 60-64, 67, 126, 133, 140; see also Arago-Catalans St Arcadius 80

archdeacons 154, 162, 168, 173, 179, 224, 257n archers 220 Arculf, Frankish bishop 35, 36n, 37 Arians 19; see also heresy, heretics Arles archbishops 18, 19n, 260, 268, 269n, 273 city 25, 269 Armenia, Armenians 22-23, 33-34, 43, 49 Arnold-Amalric, archbishop of Narbonne 135 St Arnulf the Martyr 81 Arras city 127, 176 merchants from 176; see also Moniot of Arras Ars dictandi 250 Arsuf, Israel 241, 294 Arthur, king of the Britons 278 Arthurian romance 243-46 Ascalon, Israel 237, 242 Ashot III, king of Armenia 33-34 Asia Minor 28, 33, 42, 45 Aslackby (Lincolnshire), Templar estate 191 asses 275 Assassins 103 Assizes of Arms 79-80 Atlit, Israel 129 Auberive (OCist), monastery 172 St Augustine of Hippo apocalypticism 106 De doctrina christiana 36-37 on caritas 5, 232 feastday 161 on Jews 95, 103 on war 3, 5, 73-78, 85, 89, 211-12 Augustinian canons 4-5; see also Gilbertines; Premonstratensians; Prémontré; Saint-Jean-des Vignes; Saint-Victor; Sainte Geneviève; Val-des-Écoliers; Victorines

317

Index

Autun, France bishops 132 city 81 St Auxentius 80 Auxerre, France bishops 166, 169 county 134, 172 Avelina, wife of Simon de Atevesue 154 Avignon, France city 126-27, 268, 287 papal court 269, 284-85 siege (1226) 126-27 Babylon, city 107 Baghdad, Iraq city 286 sack of (1258) 58 Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, Muslim jurist and scholar The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin 237, 240 Balian, lord of Ibelin 246 baptism 3, 64, 66, 98, 105, 110-13, 115, 117, 302, 308-9 Bayezid II, Ottoman sultan iv bailiffs 187, 192, 196-97, 202-4, 222, 268 Baldric of Bourgueil, French chronicler 90, 105 Baldric of Dol see Baldric of Bourgueil Baldwin I of Boulogne, count of Edessa and king of Jerusalem 44-45 Baldwin I, Latin emperor of Constantinople 153 Balkans 33, 38, 41, 43, 45-46 barbarians 25-26, 74 barbotes 242 Bari, Italy 39 barley 184, 186-88, 197-200 Barral of Baux, podestà of Avignon 268 Bartholomew, miles de Borsone 154 Bartholomew of Vicenza (OP), Italian friar 272 Basil II, Byzantine emperor 31 Bathilde, Merovingian queen 81 Baugy, Templar estate 187 Bavaria 77, 271

318

Baybars al-Bunduqdārī, Mamlūk sultan of Egypt 53, 59 Baziège, battle of (1218) 131 beans 186-87, 196 beata stirps 53 Beatrice Portinari 292, 298, 303, 308 Beaucaire, castle 121-22, 126 Beaufort, castle (Lebanon) 239 Bec, abbey of 192 beeswax 189, 192 Bede, English historian and theologian 84, 110 De locis sanctis 37-38 Bedfordshire, county of 186n, 190, 195-96, 198, 202, 204 Bedouin 59 Beirut, Lebanon 242, 246, 295 Bellincione di Alaghieri, father of Dante 303 Belvoir, castle (Israel) 239 Benedict of Sant’Andrea on Monte Soracte Chronicon 22 Benedictines 188, 199, 249-90 Benevento, battle of (1266) 298 bequests 155, 218, 223-24, 226, 228; see also legacies; wills Berbers 52, 55-56, 57n, 61n, 62n Berkshire, county of 186n, 190, 198, 202 Bernard Gui (OP), inquisitor 112, 259n St Bernard of Clairvaux (OCist) 211, 299n, 306 Bernard of Meung, French canon Flores dictaminum 250, 250n St Bernward of Hildesheim 82 Bessarion, cardinal 232 bestiaries 244 Bethlehem, West Bank 38, 107 Bible 3, 35, 37, 104, 107, 282; see also New Testament; Old Testament; scriptures; Torah birds 82, 275, 286 Bisham (Berkshire), Templar estate 198, 202-3

Index

bishops 1, 13, 18-19, 31, 35-37, 64, 78, 81-83, 87, 98, 119, 123, 124n, 12627, 131-39, 151-79, 213, 215, 217-30, 250, 253n, 254-60, 263, 268-69, 273, 276-78, 281, 284, 297-98; see also individual bishops Blanche, countess of Champagne 143n, 152, 157-58, 164n, 166-79 blood libel 95-96, 111-12 St Bobo (Bovo) of Provence 82 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Italian writer 275n, 301n Bodrum, Turkey, Hospitaller fortification 216n, 222-23 Boethius, philosopher 21 Bohemond I, prince of Taranto and Antioch 43-47 Bohemond IV, count of Antioch 169 Bohun, family 283 Bologna, Italy 267n, 271, 275-76 bondsmen 88, 196 Boniface VIII, pope 293, 295-96, 297n, 306 Bonizo, bishop of Sutri 85 Bordeaux, France archbishop 132-33 city 251, 259, 259n, 260, 279-81, 289 Bosphorus, strait 20, 44 Bouchard of Avesnes, subdeacon 169 Bouchard of Marly, knight 165 Bougie, Algeria 60 Bouvines, battle of (1214) 155, 158 Brevis ordinacio 158 brewers, brewing 187, 228 Brian fitz Count, lord of Wallingford 278 bridges 215 Britain, Britons 18, 26, 47, 81, 278 Brunetto Latini, Italian statesman 291 Buckinghamshire, county 186n, 190, 192, 195, 198, 202-3 bulls 190 bulls, papal 129, 216n, 256n Bulstrode (Buckinghamshire), Templar estate 192, 195, 198, 202-3

Boncompagno da Signa, Bolognese rhetorician 250, 253-54, 265, 274-79, 285 Breviloquium 253-54, 258, 265, 276 Rhetorica antiqua 275-76n, 278-79 Burchard, bishop of Worms Decretum 76 Burgos (OSB), monastery 83 Burgundy, Burgundians iv, 122, 213 see also Charles the Bold; Georges Chastellain; Odo of Burgundy; Odo III of Burgundy Burton abbey (Staffordshire) 6, 249-90 Annals 251-59, 277 formularies 249-59, 261, 276, 280 letter collections 249-59, 261, 276, 280 Bury St Edmunds, monastery, 256, 276n, 279-80, 280n, 282 butter 190, 192 Byzantine empire 26, 29, 31-35, 38-49, 53, 68, 74, 83, 99, 100, 306n Cacciaguida, Italian crusader 6, 291-94, 296n, 299-309 Cacho (mod. Qāqūn, Israel) 48 Caen, France, bailliage 187, 192 Caesarea, Israel 25, 242, 295 Caesarius of Heisterbach (OCist), monk, 160 Dialogus miraculorum 138n, 139n, 160 Cahors, France, diocese 136 Cairo, Egypt, city 39-40, 59, 141, 277, 286 Çaka, Turkish amir 42 Calabria, Italy 45-46, 262 caliph, caliphate 26, 34, 55-61, 63, 65-66, 83, 238 calves 190 Cambrai, France, diocese 159, 179 Cambridge, England, university Clare Hall 226 Campaldino, battle of (1289) 293, 295 Cana (Galilee), wedding at 25-26 canon law 76, 149, 151, 165, 221, 229, 231, 296n, 297n, 299n

319

Index

Constitutiones Clementinae (1317) 297n decretals 212n, 297n dispensations from 129, 149n, 152, 167, 229, 257 judges delegate 4, 149, 151, 157, 160, 162, 165-68, 175, 179-80, 257n Liber extra (1234) 297n Liber Sextus (1298) 297n; see also individual named authors canonries see Premonstratensians; Prémontré; Saint-Victor; SaintJean-des-Vignes; Sainte Geneviève; Victorines canons see Augustinian canons; Premonstratensians; Victorines Canterbury, archbishops of 19, 222, 240, 255n, 256, 256n, 257, 263, 281 Capetian dynasty 68, 151, 268, 271; see also Charles of Anjou; Louis IX; Philip II Augustus Capitanata (Apulia), Templar estate 188 captives 162, 274; see also hostages; prisons caravan routes 60 Carcassonne, France, viscounty 133, 141 cardinals 126-27, 136, 156, 159, 166n, 221, 232, 256, 264, 297n; see also individual named cardinals caritas 5, 162, 211-33; see also charity Carmelites 220 Carolingian dynasty, 37, 77, 79 carpenters 196, 204, 206n Carthage, Tunisia 18, 19n, 23-25, 69n, 80 carters 196, 201-8 St Casilda 83 Castile, kingdom of 62-63, 83, 220 Catalonia, Catalans 61, 64; see also Arago-Catalans Cathars 159; see also heresy Catherine de’ Medici, queen of France 287-88 St Catherine’s on Mount Sinai 18-19 cats 193 Cedar of Lebanon prophecy 281-82, 285

320

ceramics 23-27, 60; see also amphorae; pottery Cerfroid, Trinitarian house 156 Ceuta, North Africa 57, 64-65 Chalcedonian Christians 29; see also Melkites Champagne, France constable of 153 county 143-44, 152-53, 157-58, 164, 166-79 fairs 176n, 177 Jews in 157, 168, 171, 176n, 177-79 seneschal 134, 171; see also Blanche of Champagne; Henry of Champagne; Philippa of Champagne chaplains iv, 153, 154, 217, 224, 255n, 280n charity 5, 159, 211-33; see also caritas Charlemagne, king of the Franks iv, 17, 26, 26n, 77, 81, 82, 306n Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily 52, 60, 62-63, 67, 268-69, 298 Charles III, count of Valois 293 Charles VIII, king of France iv Charles IX, king of France 287 charters 94n, 154, 162n, 167n, 195n, 230, 231, 254n, 269, 278n, 280n Chartres, France 39, 153 Château-de-l’Empéri, castle 260, 287 Château Pèlerin castle, 129, 295 cheese 190, 192, 203-4 Chesterfield (Derbyshire) 183 chickens 195 children 13, 83, 95, 101-2, 111, 117, 139n, 201, 223, 226 China 26 Chios, island 42 Chrétien of Troyes, French author Cligés 244 Christ see Jesus Christ Christmas 203-4 Christopher, Melkite patriarch of Antioch 31-32 Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier 241-47

Index

Cimabue, Italian painter 261n circumcision Abraham and 94, 99-105, 110 adolescent 100-101 Christian views of 93-117 Copts and 98, 102, 115 feast of the 96-97, 239 female 98-100, 102, 113 infant 96, 98, 100 Islam and 3-4, 98-117 Jacobites and 98, 102-3 Jesus Christ and 3, 94-97, 101-2, 104-7, 117 Jews and 3-4, 94-97, 100-7, 111-3, 117 male 94, 98-102, 111, 113, 117 Cistercians 119, 147n, 159, 180, 190, 208, 241, 257, 259, 281, 297; see also Arnold-Amalric; Auberive; St Bernard of Clairvaux; Caesarius of Heisterbach; Clairvaux; Conrad of Urach; Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay; Joachim of Fiore; Longpont; Lutgard of Awyières; Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay; Pontigny; Robert of Molesme; Roche; Saint-Antoine; Salem; Vaux-deCernay Civitate, Italy 84, 85n Clairvaux (OCist), monastery 172 Clare Hall (Cambridge) see Cambridge Clement III, anti-pope 88 Clement IV, pope 298 Clement V, pope 213, 218, 220, 224n, 231n Clement VII, pope 284-85, 290; see also Robert of Geneva Clermont, France 7, 38, 85-86, 89, 91, 105, 108, 110 Clothar I, Merovingian king 19 Clothar IV, Merovingian king 81 colonialism 47-48 Colonna, family 295, 296n

Combe (Somerset), Templar estate 192, 198, 200, 202, 207 Commedia 6, 291-309 Cacciaguida 6, 291-94, 296n, 299-309 crusade in 6, 291-309 Inferno 291, 295-96, 298, 300-1, 303, 307-8 Paradiso 6, 291-92, 294, 296-304, 306-8 Purgatorio 291-92, 298, 300 commemoration see memory Compostela, Spain 176 Confessio Amantis see Gower confession 47, 150-51, 213, 215 confessors 88, 150-51, 160, 162n, 223-5 legal 178 manuals 150-51, 160 wills and 224-25 confraternities 268n, 271-73 Confrérie des Bailes 268 Militia of the Faith of Jesus-Christ 272n Militia of Jesus Christ 272-73 Militia of Saint Mary 272 Rejoicers (Gaudentes) 272-73 Confrérie des Bailes 268 Conrad, abbot of Val-Secret (OPrem) 167n, 168-69 Conrad Capece, Hohenstaufen supporter 63 Conrad, marquis of Montferrat 238-42 Conrad of Urach, cardinal of Porto 166n Conrad III, king of Germany 293, 299, 302, 305n Conradin, German prince 63 Constans II, Roman emperor 20 Constantine the Great, Roman emperor 33, 75, 76, 251 Constantinople (mod. Istanbul, Turkey) city iv, 19-23, 26, 29, 31-32, 40, 42-45, 49, 131, 221, 251, 265, 267-68, 280, 284 conquest of (1204) 49, 67, 262 fall of (1453) iv, 6, 131, 247, 284

321

Index

Hagia Sophia 32 Latin empire of 49, 67, 152-53, 165, 172 patriarchs 19n, 29-31 Constitutiones Clementinae (1317) 297n conversion 53n, 54, 65-8, 76-7, 80, 83, 94, 112-3, 115-7, 157, 242, 273, 276, 278, 287, 306n; see also missions Convivio see Dante cooks 196, 201-3, 205-7 Cooley (Louth), Templar estate 190 Copts 98, 102, 115 Cordoba, Spain 39, 83 Corinth, Greece 18, 19n Cormery, abbey of (France) 43 Cornwall, county 186, 208, 231n corrodians 182n, 188, 209 Corruent nobiles prophecy 249-90 Cosenza (Italy), bishop of 298 Cosmas, Byzantine legate 30 cottars 195-96 Cour de la Fonde 48 courtiers 18, 19n, 222, 293-94 Cowley (Oxfordshire), Templar estate 189, 191, 194n, 204n, 206n cowherds 201, 205-6 cows 190; see also bulls, calves, oxen Cowton (Yorkshire), Templar estate 191, 193n, 201 Cressing (Essex), Templar estate 183, 190n, 193n, 194n, 198, 202, 204, 206 Crete, island of 42n, 49n, 83 criminals 78, 157-58, 214, 229, 294 crops barley 184, 186-88, 197-200 beans 186-87, 196 dredge 186-87, 200 grapes 187 hemp 187 leeks 187 legumes 186; see also beans, peas, pulses, vetch maslin 186, 197-98, 200, 206 nuts 187, 241

322

oats 184, 186-88, 196, 206-7 olives 188 peas 184, 186-87, 197-200, 206, 208 pulses 186 rotation of 187 rye 186-87, 197-99 vetch 186-87, 197-98, 200 wheat 186-88, 191, 197-200, 206-9 crosses crusaders’ 158, 167, 170, 177-78, 231, 265 devotion to 260-61, 274 enemies of 216, 228 preaching about 225, 298 processional 153, 165 visions of 250, 260, 298-300, 306; see also True Cross Crown of Thorns, relic 65, 108, 165 crucesignatus(i) 130n, 165-67, 169-71, 174-75, 177, 179 crucifixion 95-97, 100, 104, 117, 250, 259n, 261, 270, 276, 289 crusaders departure of 121-22, 128-44, 14849, 154-55, 171-73, 241, 263 funding of 5, 119-80, 211-36 indulgences for 78, 85-86, 89-90, 119-21, 125, 137-8, 144, 167, 212-14, 216-23, 229-30, 232 Jubilee for 230, 276 protection of 147-80 vows of 122, 129-30, 138, 140, 142, 143n, 148, 152-53, 158, 164-65, 167, 170, 172, 213, 217, 220-21 crusades Albigensian 4, 119-44, 152-55, 158-59, 163, 165, 170, 173, 176, 272n, 297 anti-Turk iv, 1, 42-47, 86, 89, 144, 218, 222, 230-32, 247, 265, 284 as charity 211-36 contributions to 211-36 criticism of 4, 85, 120n, 125-28, 14142, 213, 220, 229, 299n, 307 Despenser’s 213, 220 Fifth 4, 65, 119-80

Index

financing of 124-25, 149-50, 152-53, 157, 163-4, 170, 180, 211-36 First 2-3, 38-47, 73-91, 105-6, 108-9, 113-16, 153, 273-74, 276, 306n Fourth 131, 139, 142, 148n, 149, 15154, 157-58, 163-65, 176n, 262 Frederick II and 125-26, 139, 140, 144, 149n, 163, 168-71, 263, 294 historiography 1-4, 53n, 101, 147, 305, 312 indulgences 78, 85-86, 89-90, 119-21, 125, 137-38, 144, 167, 212-14, 216-23, 229-30, 232 Italian 6, 63, 277-78, 296-98 Louis IX and 51-69, 158, 265, 268, 269n, 270, 277, 287, 295 Philip VI and 220, 311 political see Italian Second 6, 115, 293, 299, 302 taxes 124-25, 157, 164, 173-74, 177, 213-14, 219 Third 123, 128, 132n, 142, 153-54, 156, 164n, 237-47, 263 Tunis and 2, 7, 51-72 vows 122, 129-30, 138, 140, 142, 143n, 148, 152-53, 158, 164-65, 167, 170, 172, 213, 217, 220-21 Crypta Balbi (Rome) 26-27 Cumberland, county 186, 281 Cum fuerint anni transacti prophecy 264, 282n custodians, royal 182-84, 187-89, 192-95, 200-1, 203-4, 206-7 Cyprus island 24, 27, 44, 217, 246 kingdom of 168-69, 171-72 Dagobert II, Merovingian king 81 Damascus, Syria 33, 39, 98, 115 Damietta, Egypt chain tower 139, 140 city 102, 126, 128-29, 131, 134-38, 140-41, 144, 172n, 277 Dante Alighieri 6, 291-309 as poet (poeta) 291-94, 303, 308 as prophet 291

Beatrice and 292, 298, 303, 308 Cacciaguida and 6, 291-94, 296n, 299-309 Commedia 6, 291-309 Convivio 294 crusade and 6, 291-309 exile and 291, 293-95, 306-7 Florence and 291, 292n, 293-94, 301-7, 309 Virgil and 298, 301n, 303 Danes, Denmark 79 Danube, river 26 Dar al-H.arb 28 Dar al-Islam 28-29, 31, 34-35, 39 dead 64, 69, 78, 87, 162n, 170, 174, 178, 215, 217, 223-24, 226-28, 250, 270, 274, 278, 300-4; see also alms; ancestors; bequests; caritas; charity; indulgences; martyrs; Masses; memory; purgatory; wills debts 60, 149n, 154-55, 157, 164, 174n, 176n, 177, 185, 217, 218, 221, 226-27 decretals 212n, 297n; see also canon law demesnes 183, 186, 189, 196, 199 Denny (Cambridgeshire), Templar estate 193n, 195, 195n Derbyshire, county 183 Devil 102, 104, 107, 215, 244, 274 Devon, county 186, 208 Dictamen 276, 250, 252 Divina Commedia see Commedia Djerba, island 62 Dinsley (Hertfordshire), Templar estate 189, 193n, 204n diplomats 34, 41n, 47, 59, 67, 114n, 115, 268, 293-95 diseases 1, 52, 137, 192, 194-95 dysentery 52 murrain 192, 194 scab, ovine sheep 194 scurvey 137 typhus 52 dispensations, from vows 129, 152, 167, 229, 257; see also redemptions; vows

323

Index

doctors 48, 297n dogs 95n, 193, 275 Dolcino, friar 296n Domesday book 189 Dominicans 65-67, 112, 159, 162, 162n, 258-61, 263, 266, 268-74, 276; see also Bartholomew of Vicenza; Francis Cendra; Humbert of Romans; John of Montmirail; John of Vicenza; Raymond Martini; Stephen of Bourbon; Thomas Aquinas donations 148n, 153-56, 159, 164-65, 167, 208, 213-14, 217, 219-28; see also alms; bequests; caritas; charity; indulgences; Masses; memory; wills Dorylaeum (mod. Dorylaion, Turkey) 44 doves 192, 250, 261, 297n dredge 186-87, 200 Dreux of Mello, constable of France 122-23 Druze 103 Dunwich (Suffolk), Templar estate 189 Durham (England), convent 231 Durmart le Galois, Arthurian romance 244 dying 67-68, 78, 80-83, 123, 130, 132, 135, 137, 139, 142, 155, 158, 171-72, 217, 223-24, 227, 245, 251, 265, 281, 299; see also alms; bequests; caritas; charity; dead; indulgences; martyrs; Masses; memory; purgatory; wills dysentery 52 eagles 270, 275, 298n, 303 Eagle, Templar commandery 192 Easter 203-4 East Midlands, England 190, 222 Edessa (mod. Urfa, Turkey) 44; see also Matthew of Edessa Edmund de Suffolk, tradesman 226 St Edmund of Canterbury 256

324

Edward II, king of England 184, 213 Edward III, king of England 226 eggs 62, 183, 185, 188 Egypt 3, 295 circumcision in 98-103 Fifth Crusade in 121, 123-26, 131-44, 172 Louis IX and 51-72 Roman Empire and 21-24, 27-28, 39-40 see also Alexandria; Cairo; Copts; Damietta; H.afs.ids; Mamlūks El Cid, epic hero 85 Eleanor of Provence, queen of England 269 Elias, vicar of the patriarch of Jerusalem 30 Elizabeth de Burgh 224 Elizabeth de Clare, countess of Ulster 226 Elizabeth Kirby, widow of Dartford 229 St Elizabeth of Hungary 156 Elizabeth I, queen of England 287 St Emenlandus 81 Emicho, count of Flonheim 90 Engelbert of Berg, archbishop of Cologne 138-39 England, English 5-7, 11, 45, 74, 79, 82, 87-88, 115, 121, 123-24, 127-28, 133, 136, 143, 149, 158, 161, 173, 181-233, 239, 249-90 Enguerrand of Boves 131, 158 Enguerrand III of Boves, lord of Coucy 158 Ephesus, Turkey 28, 29n Epiphanius of Salamis, bishop 110-11 Erard of Brienne, knight 143, 166-71, 173, 178 Erard of Chacenay, knight 172 Erard of Ramerupt see Erard of Brienne Erasmus, humanist scholar 232 Erdmann, Carl, German scholar 73-77, 80, 84-85, 88n, 286 Ernoul, squire of Balian of Ibelin 246-47

Index

Ernoul-Bernard see Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier eschatology 32, 101, 105-14, 117, 249-90; see also Antichrist; apocalypticism; millenarianism; prophecy estates 5, 21-22, 41, 225-26 Templar 181-210; see also manors Estoires d’Outremer et de la naissance Salehadin 245 Eternal Evangel prophecy 266, 276 Eton College 11 Eucharist 112-13; see also Mass St Eucherius, bishop of Lyons 37 Eudocia, wife of Apion IV 21 Eudo, duke of Aquitaine 81 Eugenius III, pope 306 eunuchs 22 European Union 17, 49 Eustace, bishop of Ely 161 Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria 31 Evrard the chamberlain 154 ewes 183, 191-94, 196, 199, 202; see also sheep Exchequer, English 184-85, 194 excommunication 66, 136, 144, 148n, 149, 161n, 164-65, 168-79, 251, 263, 289, 298 executors 224n, 226-27; see also alms; bequests; dead; dying; legacies; wills exegesis 36, 150, 160, 280, 283; see also Bible Exeter, diocese 218 exile 19, 52, 63-64, 77, 137, 157, 161, 268-69, 273, 291-95, 306-7 Fād.il, al-, minister to Saladin 237 fake news 6, 273, 277n, 280 St Faith, martyr 83 family see ancestors Famine, Great European (1315-18) 182n, 183 famuli see farmworkers Farinata degli Uberti, Italian Ghibelline 303-4

farmworkers 182, 196-209 Fāt. imids 34, 39-40; see also al-H.akim, al-Mustans.ir, al-Z. āhir Faxfleet (Yorkshire), Templar estate 191, 192n, 193n, 194n, 201, 206 feastdays 96, 161, 207, 239, 243, 265; see also Christmas; Easter; Fools, feast of; Circumcision, feast of Ferrara, Italy 301 Ferté-Gaucher, France castle 168 priory 156 Fiesole, Italy 302, 305 fines 124, 164, 175, 178, 214, 227-29 fish 33, 193 Flagellants 271-72 Flanders-Brabant 149, 213, 220 Florence, Italy city 284, 285, 291-309 Santa Croce (OFM), friary 225 Foix (France), county 131 Folkmar, crusader 90 Fools, feast of 96-97 formularies 6, 249-57, 259, 268, 276-77, 279 France, French iv, 5, 7, 38, 51-92, 103, 105, 119-80, 185, 187, 190, 192, 207, 213, 219, 230n, 237-48, 253n, 257, 259, 267, 269, 272-73, 280-81, 286-88, 295, 305n Francia 79 Francis Cendra (OP), prior of St Catherine’s (Barcelona) 65 St Francis of Assisi 65, 260, 276 Francis II, king of the Two Sicilies 69 Franciscans 64-65, 225, 258-71, 276, 281-82; see also Dolcino; Francis of Assisi; Gerard of Borgo San Donnino; Giles; Guido da Montefeltro; Hugh of Digne; John of Parma; Salimbene degli Adami; Santa Croce (Florence) Franks, Frankish 19-20, 25-26, 35, 39-48, 49n, 54, 77, 98, 108n, 114n, 238, 265n, 267n

325

Index

Frederick, brother of Alfonso X of Castile 63 Frederick of Lancia, Hohenstaufen supporter 63 Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman emperor 241n, 277 Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor 61-63, 66, 125-26, 139-40, 144, 163, 168-71, 253n, 263-68, 274, 294 friars 4, 6, 64-65, 180, 225, 250, 258-57, 295; see also Carmelites; Dominicans; Franciscans Frisia, Frisians 139, 149 Fulcher of Chartres, French chronicler Historia Hierosolymitana 38-39, 47, 77n Fuller, Thomas, English historian The Historie of the Holy Warre 1 Fulk, bishop of Toulouse 137, 159, 297, 299 Fulk of Neuilly, preacher 152 fundraising 5, 119-80 see also almsgiving; donations; fines; indulgences; redemptions; taxes; vows; wills funduq 61 Gabriel, angel 297n Galilee, Israel region 25-26, 38-39, 260 sea 33 Gandalf 287 garcio (lad) 199, 203-4 Garnier, bishop of Troyes 151-52 Garnier of Amance, knight 130 Garonne (France), river 120n, 133, 142 Garter, order of 223n Garway (Herefordshire), Templar estate 184, 191, 193, 195, 199, 204 Gaul, Roman province 18-20, 26, 35, 37, 80, 86, 271 Gaza, city of 27, 252n Guala Bicchieri, cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Portico Octaviae 161 geese 184, 195

326

Gembloux (OSB), abbey (Belgium) 82 general chapters 161, 257 St Genesius of Arles 25 Genoa, Genoese (Italy) 54, 60, 134, 137, 267 gentiles 94, 232 Geoffrey of Beaulieu (OP), French friar Vita Ludovici noni 55n, 67 Geoffrey of Donjon, grand master of the Hospitaller order 115 St George 80 George the Synkellos, Byzantine chronicler 29 Georges Chastellain, Burgundian chronicler and poet iv St Gerald of Aurillac 81 Gerard de Frachet (OP), chronicler 259n Gerard of Borgo San Donnino (OFM), Italian friar 265-66, 276 Germans, Germany 18-19, 26, 63, 73-74, 78-79, 85, 88, 90n, 121, 135n, 138-42, 149, 161, 173, 230n, 277-78; see also Rhineland St Germanus of Auxerre 81 Gerannus, bishop of Auxerre 81 Gerold of Lausanne, patriarch of Jerusalem 168-69 Gertrude, queen of Hungary 254 St Gervadius, hermit 82 Gervase, abbot of Prémontré 122-23, 128, 135-36, 155, 167-68, 179 Gesta Francorum 105 Ghibellines 296n, 303 Gibraltar, straits 57, 63 Gilbertines 190 Giles (OFM), friar 65 Giles, prior of Saint-Victor 167n Giovanni Capocci, grandfather of Pietro Capocci 256 Gislingham (Suffolk), Templar estate 192n, 196-97, 204 Glamorgan, county 183, 208 Glastonbury Abbey (OSB), England 181, 188, 199 gloves 196, 207, 209

Index

goats 190, 267, 275 Godeffroy de Bouillon or the Siege and Conquest of Jerusalem 232 Godfrey, bishop of Troyes 169, 172 Godfrey of Bouillon, ruler of Jerusalem 97, 306n Godfrey of Joinville, son of Simon of Joinville 171 Godfrey of Soissons, master 154n Gormonda of Montpellier, trobairitz 129, 144 Goths 19, 22, 25 Gottschalk, knight 90 Gower, John, English poet Confessio Amantis 215 grain as crop 186-96 trade in 23, 61, 186-209 as wages (livery) 196-209 Granada, amir of 58 Grandes chroniques de France 51 Grandmontines 162 Greek language 25, 29-31, 262 Greeks 19-49, 127, 221, 251, 262, 264-8, 280, 284, 287 Green Knight iv, 6-7, 242-47 Gregory of Tours, chronicler 20-21, 24n, 105-6, 108 Gregory I the Great, pope letters 18-19, 21 Gregory VII, pope 84n, 85-88 Gregory IX, pope 66, 156-57, 168, 255-56, 263, 272, 297n Ascendit de mari bestia (1239) 263 Cum inter venerabilem (1240) 257n Ex commissa nobis (1229) 255n Liber extra (1234) 297n Gregory X, pope Holy Land and 294-95 Lyons II, and 294-95 see also Tedaldo Visconti Guelfs 303 Black 293 White 293-94, 307 Guérin, abbot of Saint-Victor 161 Guérin, bishop of Senlis 174, 179

Guiard of Laon, canon of Rheims 169n St Guibert of Lorraine 81-82 Guibert of Nogent (OSB), chronicler 90-91, 105 Guido da Montefeltro (OFM), friar 295-96 guilds 215, 228 Guillaume of Bourges see William of Bourges Guiting (Gloucestershire), Templar estate 193n, 194n, 198, 200, 202-3, 204n, 207 Gundovald, ‘son’ of Clothar I 19-20, 22 Guntram Boso, Frankish aristocrat 20 Guy, abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay 163, 164n Guy, dean of Soissons 154n, 167n, 168-69, 171, 175, 179 Guy II, lord of Dampierre 156 Guy of Montréal, knight 170 Haddiscoe (Norfolk), Templar estate 189, 198, 203 Hadrian’s Wall, England 26 H.afs.ids 51-72; see also Abū Zakarīya’ Yah.yā; Al-Mustans.ir bi-llāh Hagia Sophia (Istanbul) see Constantinople Haifa, Israel 295 Haimard, bishop of Soissons 154-55, 169 St Hainmar of Auxerre 81 H.akim, al-, Fāt. imid caliph 34 harrowers, harrowing 196-97, 205 harvest, harvesters 65, 157, 196, 201-4, 209, 219 Hastings, battle of (1066) 45, 87n H.at. t. īn, battle of (1187) 116, 211, 237 hay 183, 187, 197 Heaven 33, 77, 84, 112, 291, 297-99, 303-8 Hegesippus, Christian chronicler 37 Heinrich of Diessenhofen, chronicler 284 Hell 109, 112, 295-97, 303; see also Inferno Helvide of Dampierre, lady of Montmirail 153, 156, 159

327

Index

Henry, count of Champagne 152, 171 Henry Beaufort, cardinal and bishop of Winchester 221 Henry FitzHugh, English royal administrator 222-23 Henry le Despenser, bishop of Norwich 213, 220 Henry of Béarn see Henry IV of France Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester 278 Henry of Castile, brother of Alfonso X of Castile 63 Henry I, count of Rodez 142 Henry I, duke of Saxony 81-82 Henry II, king of England 79, 239, 278 Henry III, king of England 63, 128, 143, 252-56, 257n, 264n, 265, 269, 277-79 Henry IV, Holy Roman emperor 85, 90 Henry IV, king of England 223 Henry IV, king of France 287-88 Henry VI, king of England 230 hens 184; see also chickens Heraclius, Byzantine emperor 20, 99 heresy 4, 119, 121, 127, 128-30, 133, 135-37, 139n, 144, 155, 157-59, 163, 271-72, 296n, 303; see also Amalricians; Albigensian Crusade; Cathars; Waldensians heretics see heresy hermaphrodite 113; see also intersex Hervé, bishop of Troyes 135, 154, 166n Hervé IV of Donzy, count of Nevers 124, 133-34, 155-56 H.ijaz 59 Hill Croome (Worcestershire), Templar estate 205, 207 Hintāta, tribal confederacy 55 Historia peregrinorum 240-41 hogasters 191, 194; see also sheep Hohenstaufen, dynasty 52, 62-64 Holy Foreskin, relic 97 Holy Land 3, 5, 33, 35, 37-38, 51, 54, 58, 74, 110-11, 119, 124-25, 128 , 130, 136, 138-39, 142, 152-53, 15556, 158, 163-65, 172, 181-82, 208,

328

214, 217-18, 224-30, 261, 294-97; see also Jerusalem Holy Spirit 250, 266 honey 189, 192 Honorius III pope, 64, 122-25, 129n, 132n-134n, 135-26, 140, 142n, 144n, 147n-148n, 149, 164, 167-72, 175-79, 256 horses 13, 81-82, 158, 183-84, 189-90, 202, 208; see also palfreys Horspath (Oxfordshire), Templar estate 191, 194n, 195, 206n hospices see hospitals Hospitallers, military order of 115, 182n, 183, 185, 203, 216n, 21719, 222-23, 225; see also military orders hospitals 156, 159, 161n, 162-63; see also pilgrims; poor; sick hostages 171, 215, 227; see also prisoners; ransoming Huesca, Spain 83 Hugh, bishop of Langres 169, 172 Hugh of Champlitte, knight 174-75 Hugh of Digne (OFM), friar 265 Hugh of Grandmesnil, sheriff of Leicestershire 45 St Hugh of Lincoln 258 Hugh, lord of Tiberias 240-41 Humbert of Romans (OP), Dominican minister-general 211, 216, 258n, 268 Humiliati 292 Humphrey, duke of York 223n Hungarians, Hungary 121, 124, 156, 239, 254, 281 Huon of Saint-Quentin, poet Rome, Jherusalem se plaint 128 hurtards 184; see also rams Hussein II, bey of Tunisia 68 Hussites, crusades against 221 Hyères, France 269-70 Iberian peninsula 62, 108, 185, 245, 306n Ibn al-Ah.mar, amir of Granada 58

Index

Ibn al-Athīr, Muslim chronicler 237, 240, 242 Ibn Fad.lan, Arab Muslim travellor 28 Ibn Khaldūn, Muslim historian 60 Ibn Shaddād see Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād Ibn Taymiyya, Muslim jurist 98 Ibn Tūmart, Almoh.ad caliph 55-56 idols 108-10 Ifrīqiya 51-72 ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Is.fahānī, Persian historian Conquête de la Syrie 237-40 imitatio Christi 95, 107 imperialism 74; see also colonialism indulgences 78, 85-86, 89-90, 119-21, 125, 127, 137-8, 144, 167, 21223, 229-32; see also penance; redemptions; remissions infidels 28, 37, 66, 78, 95, 119, 128, 137, 162, 216; see also Moors; Muslims; Saracens Ingeborg of Denmark, queen of France 155 Innocent III, pope Ad liberandam (1215) 175 Albigensian Crusade and 119-25, 127, 129, 133, 135, 144, 149 Blanche of Champagne and 170-77 charity and 211-12, 233 Fifth Crusade and 119-25, 127, 129, 133, 135, 144, 149, 167 Fourth Crusade and 262-63 Lateran IV and 119, 120n, 124, 129, 135, 149n, 161, 168, 172, 175, 177-80 Quia maior (1213) 129, 174 Victorines and 161-80 Innocent IV, pope 252n, 153n, 255, 257, 264-67, 269, 271 inquisitions 182n, 217, 227 inquisitors 112, 217 interdicts 149, 166n, 174-77; see also excommunication interest, on loans see usury

intersex 113 Invective Against King John, prophecy 252 Iona, island 35 Ishmael, Ishmaelites 104, 108 Islam 2-3, 26-44, 48, 55-68, 73, 82-4, 98-117, 127, 244, 296n, 306; see also infidels; Ishmaelites; Moors; Muslims; Qurān; Turks Israel, Israelites 3, 32, 47, 95 Istanbul, Turkey see Constantinople Iraq 26 Ireland, Irish 11, 26, 36n, 185, 187, 190, 192, 197, 207, 282 Isabella of Brienne, queen of Jerusalem 169 Isidore of Seville, Spanish archbishop 37 Italian crusades 296n Italy, Italians 19-26, 38, 43, 45-46, 52-54, 60-63, 66, 74, 79, 83-86, 88, 121, 144, 149, 173, 185, 187, 213, 230n, 260, 261n, 270-76, 285, 291-309; see also Florence; Genoa; Lombardy; Pisa; Sicily; Venice; and other individually named cities Itinerarium peregrinorum 240-41 Jacobites 98, 102-3 Jaffa, Israel 242, 295 St James 33 James of Vitry, bishop of Acre 98 Alice of Cyprus and 169 as cardinal 156, 159 and caritas 211, 212n, 223 and the crusade 137-38, 159, 163 Historia occidentalis 151, 159, 163 Historia orientalis 98-99, 101-4, 115 letters 103n, 133n, 137n, 141n Vita Marie de Oegnies 137, 159, 163 James I the Conqueror, king of Aragon 61, 64, 67 Jean Colombe, illuminator iv, 247 Jehanin, carter 207

329

Index

Jerash, Jordan 25-26 Jericho, West Bank 297 St Jerome 35, 37 Jerusalem al-Aqs.ā mosque 37, 109 capture of (1099) 38, 73, 110 capture of (1187) 116, 237, 242, 246 city of 26, 29, 32-45, 47, 74, 83, 85-86, 89, 97, 106-8, 110, 119, 121-23, 126-28, 133, 137-38, 140, 144, 154-55, 211, 224, 227, 229 Frederick II and 168-69, 263 Holy Sepulchre, church of 1, 34, 43, 87, 126-27 Latin kingdom of 45, 47-48, 98, 116, 168-69, 237, 306n Mamlūk control of 52 Mount Tabor 34 patriarchs 18, 19n, 30, 168-69, 252n sack of (1244) 265, 294 Temple Mount 108-9 Jesus Christ 25, 33, 94, 96, 100, 103-4, 114-15, 250-51, 259, 297 Jews, Jewish 3-4, 28, 32, 93-117, 157, 168, 171, 176n, 177-79, 258, 287, 296-97 Joachim of Fiore (OCist), monk and exegete 250-51, 260-67, 270, 276, 279-80, 281, 283-87 Epistola subsequentium figurarum 264 Liber de Concordia 251, 262, 266, 280 see also Joachite texts; PseudoJoachite texts Joachite texts 6, 263-65, 269-73, 276, 280, 285, 287; see also PseudoJoachite texts St John, apostle 75, 261, 304, 309 John, archdeacon of Châlons 168-69 John Ashenden, Oxford astronomer 283 John Baussan, archbishop of Arles 268 John Beaufort, earl of Somerset 223n John Burley, knight 225 John de Feritate, canon of Saint-Jeandes-Vignes 167

330

John Doukas, Byzantine commander 42 John Drokensford, bishop of Bath and Wells 217 John Dunsterre, tailor 231 John Groby 223 John Lackland, king of England 133, 250, 252 John Malalas, Byzantine chronicler 22 John Mirk, English Augustinian canon Festial 215 John of Beaumont, knight 154 John of Bollon or Bolho, crusader 131 John of Bouilly, crusader 131 John of Brie, agricultural expert 181-82 John of Brienne, king-consort of Jerusalem 128, 141, 143, 155, 158 John of Brienne, royal butler 66 John the younger of Brienne, son of John of Brienne 158 John of Bromyard (OP), English preacher Summa praedicantium 214 John of Bron, tanner 226 John of Candeilles, chancellor of Paris 173n John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster 220, 223 John of Joinville, French chronicler 134, 158 John of Montmirail, archdeacon of Paris 162n, 167n John of Montmirail, canon of SaintJean-des-Vignes 162n, 167, 167n St John of Montmirail, lord and monk 148n, 152-53, 156-59, 162n, 163 John of Parma (OFM), ministergeneral 266, 268, 276 John of Rupescissa, prophet 283n John of Toucy, abbot of SainteGeneviève 167 John of Vicenza (OP), friar 270-71, 273-74, 275n John of Xanten, dean of Aachen 138

Index

John the Teuton, abbot of SaintVictor 156, 160-61, 165-66, 166n, 167, 174n, 175, 179-80 John I Tzimiskes, Byzantine emperor 33-34 John III Doukas Vatatzes, ruler of Nicaea 265, 267-68 John VIII, pope 77-78 John XXII, pope 297n Joinville, castle of 171 Jordan, bishop of Lisieux 132-33 Jordan region 25-27, 129 river 25 St Joseph, husband of Mary 102 St Joseph the Hymnographer 83 Joshua, biblical warrior 296n, 297, 306n Jubayl (mod. Al Jubayl, Saudi Arabia) 237, 242 Judaism see Jews, Jewish Judas Maccabee, biblical warrior 296n, 306n; see also Maccabees judges delegate 4, 149-51, 157, 160, 162, 165-80, 257n Juhel III of Mayenne, crusader 130 Justinian, Roman emperor 18, 20-22 Justiniana Prima, Macedonia 18, 19n Kāmil, al-, sultan of Egypt 135, 144 Keele (Staffordshire), Templar estate 191, 197, 201, 206n, 207 Kerak, castle 239 Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul 44 khut.ba 56 Khwarazmians 265, 294 Kilcloggan, Templar estate 187 Kiliç Arslan, Seljuk amir 42 killing 67, 73, 76-77, 81-83, 86-87, 89, 95, 111, 116, 126, 132, 239-43, 298; see also murder; vendetta; violence; war Kilsaran, Templar estate 187 Kirkby (Lincolnshire), Templar estate 198

knights iv, 1-2, 4, 7, 79, 88, 90, 122, 124-6, 129-36, 140-41, 144, 217, 223n, 225, 240, 242-47, 293, 295n, 302-3, 305; see also Green Knight; milites; soldiers; warriors Krak des Chevaliers, castle 239, 295 Lactantius, advisor to Constantine 76 Lambert of Noyon, chaplain 153 lambs 185, 191, 193-94, 196, 202, 308; see also sheep Lancashire, county 186 Lance, Holy, relic 273, 279 Lancelot, knight 244 Lanercost, priory (Cumberland) 231, 281 Last Judgement 266, 270, 301n Lastra, battle of (1304) 307 Latakia, Syria 295 Lateran Council IV (1215) 119-20, 124, 129, 135, 149n, 161, 168, 172, 175, 177-80 Latin Church 64-65, 87, 93-117, 262, 265, 268, 287 Latin language iv, 3, 5, 25, 48, 240-41, 250, 259-60, 299-300 Latins 35, 37-49, 52, 55, 59, 61, 64-65, 67, 93-117, 127, 251, 262, 267, 284, 289-90 Laurence of St Edward, abbot of Burton 254 Lavaur council of (1212) 133 siege of (1211) 130-32 leather 60, 189-90 Lebanon, mount 33 Lebounion, mount 41 St Lebuin, Anglo-Saxon missionary 77 Lecce, Templar estate 187 Lech, battle of (955) 81 leeks 187 Leicestershire, county 45, 186n, 190, 197, 203n

331

Index

legacies 213, 217, 226, 230; see also bequests; wills legates, papal 89, 126-27, 136, 149, 160-63, 165, 166n, 169-70, 174n, 232, 257, 263 Legenda Aurea 97 legumes 186; see also beans; peas; pulses; vetch Leonardo Bruni, Italian humanist 293 Leopold VI, duke of Austria 139-41 Leo the Deacon, imperial cleric History 33 Leo IV, pope 77-78 Leo VI, Byzantine emperor 43-44 Leo IX, pope 84 lepers 159 Letare Jerusalem Sunday 265 St Leudegar 81 Levant 18, 24, 27, 28, 33, 38-9, 43, 120, 124-27; see also Holy Land Liber extra (1234) 297n Liber sextus (1298) 297n Liège, diocese of 159 Life of St Andrew the Fool 33 Lincoln, England bishop, 257, 258-29, 276n chapter 255 city 258 Lincolnshire, county 186n, 187, 18992, 194, 197-99, 203, 208 liturgy 25, 31, 35, 38, 96, 153, 227-28, 230, 298, 305 livestock see affers; cows; ewes; goats; hogasters; horses; lambs; oxen; pigs; sheep; rams; wethers Llanmadoc (Glamorgan), Templar estate 191, 196 Loire, river 43, 79, 120n Lombards, Lombardy 19, 46, 271 London, England 219, 222, 226-28, 287 St Paul’s church 222 Longpont (OCist), monastery 154n, 156, 159, 175 Louis de Laval, governor of Champagne iv

332

Louis Denis-Valvérane, French painter 288 Louis the Lion see Louis VIII Louis VIII, king of France 123-24, 126, 129-30, 141, 143, 155, 158, 281 Louis IX, king of France 2-3, 51-72, 134, 158, 265, 268, 269n, 270, 277, 278n, 281n, 287, 295 Louis XI, king of France iv Louis the Pious, king of the Franks 82 Lucera, Italy 61, 267 Lucius Cornelius Balbus, Roman consul 27 Luke, gospel 96, 101, 102n, 216, 279 Lutgard of Aywières (OCist), nun 156 Lydley (Shropshire), Templar estate 193, 195, 197, 201, 206n, 207 Lyons, France 251, 267, 280, 281n, 284 Lyons I, church council (1245) 253n, 264 Lyons II, church council (1274) 294-95 Mabel, daughter of Robert Guiscard 45 Maccabees 296n, 306n; see also Judas Maccabee Macedonia, Greece 18 Maghrib 56n, 57-59, 60n, 61n, 64n, 66n, 67n Magnus VI Haakonsson, king of Norway 61 magpies, talking 270 Magyars 81 Mahdī 55-56 maids 197, 199, 203, 204-5 Malik Shāh, Seljuk sultan 39 Mamlūks 52, 54, 58-59, 295, 296n; see also Baybars Ma’mūn, al-, Almoh.ad caliph 56, 62 Manchu, Manchuria 26 Manfred, king of Sicily 62, 278, 298 mangonels 242 manors 45, 184-85, 187, 195, 198-99, 204, 206n, 225; see also estates Manosque, France 185 Mansurah, battle of (1250) 265-67 manuring 187-88

Index

Marco Lombardo, Venetian nobleman 291 Margery FitzHugh, English noblewoman 223 Maria of Brienne, Latin empress 169 Marīnids 57-58, 61n marling 187 Marqab (Margat), castle 295 Marrakesh, Morocco 62, 64-65 Mar Sabas, monastery 48 Mars Greco-Roman god 108 heaven of 7, 291, 298, 306n Marseille, France 18, 19n, 24-25, 143n, 250, 259n, 260, 267, 269n, 271, 277 St Martin, bishop of Tours 80 Martin, papal envoy 255 martyrs 52n, 64-65, 80-81, 83-84, 97n, 258, 271, 279n, 292, 302-3, 305; see also individual named saints Mary, daughter of John of Montmirail 158 Mary, mother of Odo 154 Mary of Bethany 102 Mary of Oignies, recluse 156, 159, 163 Mary, Virgin 33, 102, 114-15, 250, 259, 261, 273, 302 St. Mary’s, Southampton 225 maslin 186, 197-98, 200, 206 Masses 153-54, 214, 218, 227-28, 230 Mathieu de Lesseps, French consul general 68 Matthew of Edessa, Armenian chronicler 33-34 Matthew Paris (OSB), English chronicler 252, 255-58, 261n, 264, 266, 269, 271, 273-74, 277, 279, 282n, 285 Additamenta 252 Chronica 252, 273, 277 Vita Sancti Edmundi 256 Mavias, king of the Saracens 37 St Maximilian the Conscript, martyr 80 Mecca, Saudi Arabia 58-59, 100

Mediterranean culture 2-3, 17-69 sea 6, 17-69, 144, 262, 296n trade 2-3, 17-69 Mehmed, Ottoman prince 101 Melkites 29-31 memory 6, 68, 96-97, 148, 151, 153, 224, 250, 292-309 men-at-arms 1, 220; see also soldiers; warriors mendicants 4, 6, 64-65, 180, 225; see Carmelites; Dominicans; Franciscans; friars mercenaries 39, 43, 62, 65; see also soldiers; warriors meretrices see prostitutes Merlin, prophet 264, 285 Merovingians 19, 20n, 24n, 81; see also individual named kinds Messiah 95, 103-4, 107, 111 Michael IV, Byzantine emperor 34 Michel of Our Lady, Jewish apothecary 287-88 Midi, France 4, 120-44, 158 Milan, Italy 267n, 271, 274, 305n miles see milites Miliana, city 63 military orders 115, 181-209, 217, 223n; see also Hospitallers; St Thomas of Acre; Templars; Teutonic order; Trinitarians milites 67, 80, 88n, 153-54; see also knights, soldiers, warriors Militia of the Faith of Jesus-Christ 272n Militia of Jesus Christ 272-73 Militia of Saint Mary 272 Millbrook (Bedfordshire), Templar estate 194n, 198 millenarianism 106, 165n, 287n; see also apocalypticism; eschatology; Joachim of Fiore; prophecy millers 196 milk 185, 188, 190, 192, 196 Milo, bishop-elect of Beauvais 164, 167, 179

333

Index

Milo of Saint-Florentin, crusader 170 Milo IV, count of Bar-sur-Seine 134-35 miracles 25, 33, 83, 138, 157, 260, 270, 273-74, 275n, 276, 279 Miracles of Saint Faith 83 Miracula Sancti Bertini 81 Mirk see John Mirk missions 55, 65-68, 77, 103, 115; see also conversion St Mochva 80 Moissac, siege of (1212) 132 monasteries; see individual named monasteries Mongols 55, 58, 65, 98, 253n, 265, 278, 281 Moniot of Arras, monk and troubadour 127 monks see Augustinian canons; Benedictines; Cistercians; Gilbertines; Trinitarians Montfort, castle 295 Montmirail, hospice at 156 Montréal, castle 239 Moors 82-83; see also infidels; Muslims; Saracens moralists see Paris masters Morocco bishop 64 kingdom 55, 57, 64 missions 64-66 mortgages 149n, 153-55, 171 Moses, prophet 94, 112, 260n mowers 204; see also hay mudejars 58 Muh.ammad, prophet 17, 99, 296 Muh.ammad ibn Tūmart see Ibn Tūmart, Almoh.ad caliph mulieres sanctae 156; see also Lutgard of Aywières; Mary of Oignies Murad III, Ottoman sultan 100-1 Murcia, kingdom of 58 murder 42, 76, 95, 111, 112n, 176, 271; see also killing; violence; war Muret, battle of (1213) 126, 135 murrain 192, 194; see also scab

334

Muslims 3-4, 28-29, 34, 48, 52n, 55, 58-65, 71, 82-83, 93, 98-117, 119, 121, 135, 237, 239-45, 247, 296, 296n, 306n; see also infidels; Islam; Moors; Saracens Mustans.ir, al-, Fāt.imid caliph 34 Mustans.ir bi-llāh, al-, H.afs.id caliph, amir of Tunis 57-67 Naples, kingdom of 22 Narses, imperial commander 19, 22 Navas de Tolosa, battle of Las (1212) 140 Nazareth, Israel 34, 38, 297n negotium pacis et fidei 124 newsletters 5, 172, 229, 238-39, 242, 249-52, 271, 277, 278n, 287, 288n New Testament 75-76, 266; see also Bible; Scriptures Nicaea, Turkey 30, 44-45, 265 Nice, France 271 Nikephoros II Phokas, Byzantine emperor 20, 33 Nile, river 125, 139, 141 Nisibis, Turkey 33 Nivelon, bishop of Soissons 151, 154, 162n Norfolk, Templar estates in 183, 184n, 186, 189, 192n, 193n, 196-203, 208 Normandy France 87, 132, 173 Templar estates in 187, 190, 192, 193n, 207 Normans 41, 43, 46, 52, 61, 74, 68, 84, 87, 108, 127, 306n Northamptonshire, county 45, 190, 208 Northumberland, county 84, 183n, 184, 186n, 191, 197, 201 Norway, Norwegians 61 Norwich, England 96, 276n, 282 Nostradamus see Michel ‘of Our Lady’ notaries 217, 225 Nottinghamshire, county 45, 186, 208, 254n St Nunilo 83 nuts 187, 241

Index

oats 184, 186-8, 196, 206-7 oblatio, ceremony 309n Odo, clerk of Soissons 154-55 Odo of Champlitte, vassal of Blanche of Champagne 175-76n St Odo of Cluny (OSB) abbot Life of Gerald of Aurillac 81 Odo of Sully, bishop of Paris 161 Odo III, duke of Burgundy 121-22, 129, 133-34, 172, 176n Odo ‘Palmarius’, citizen of Soissons 154 Oecumenical councils 30 Oikumene 76 oil 23, 102, 187 Old French iv, 5, 115n, 120n, 128, 142n, 240-42, 247, 247n, 273n, 280-81; see also troubadours; Provençal; vernacular literature Old Testament 75, 103-4, 106, 232, 296n, 297; see also Bible; scriptures; Torah Oliver of Cologne, cardinal of St Sabina, 138 Historia Damiatina 129n, 131n, 132n, 134n, 139n, 140n Historia regum Terre Sancte 132n, 138n, 140n letters 140n olives 188 ordinatores 167-68 Orange, France 82, 126, 306n ordo iuris 178 Orientalism 17 Otto, papal legate 257, 263, 264n Otto IV, emperor of Germany 250 Ottoman Turks iv, 100-1 oxen 184, 189-90, 191, 199, 202, 208 Oxfordshire, county 186n, 189-91, 193, 195, 200, 206n, 223 Oxyrhynchus papyri 21 Palaizi, troubadour 122, 126, 138 Palermo, Sicily 39 palfreys 183-84 Palestine 2, 25, 32-33, 37, 39, 128 Pamiers, statutes of (1212) 133

papacy 52, 65, 84-86, 88-89, 120, 123-24, 126-29, 144, 148-80, 21332, 254-57, 262-72, 280n, 284, 296-98; see also Apostolic See; individual named popes Paradise 112, 299n, 304, 307-9 parchment 36, 190 Paris, France 4, 74, 120n, 124, 132, 137, 147-80, 212, 258, 266, 281, 284-85 Paris masters 4, 136-8, 147-80, 212, 258, 266, 281; see also individual named masters parishes 5, 150n, 154n, 155, 214-33 Parliament, in England 213, 220, 231 Parma, Italy 265-66, 268, 270-72, 276 Passages d’Outremer 4, 247 Passages faiz oultre mer par les François contre les Turcqs et autres Sarrazins et Mores oultre marins see Les Passages d’Outremer pastoralia, see pastoral materials pastoral materials 150-51, 154, 157, 160, 163, 165, 180; see also confessors; sermons pastures 182-83 St Paul, apostle 75 Pax Romana 75 Payns (Champagne), Templar estate 185, 187, 190, 192-95, 207-8 peace 20, 63, 73, 75, 78-80, 82, 126, 147, 147n, 148, 149n, 159, 168-70, 173, 225, 266, 269-71, 274, 284-85, 301-2; see also truces; treaties Peace of God 80 peacocks 193, 195 peas 197-98, 200, 206, 208 peasants 79, 189, 201 Peasants’ Revolt (1381) 284 Pechenegs 41 Pelagius, cardinal-bishop of Albano 127-28 St Pelagius of Cordoba 83 Pella, Jordan 26-28 penance 47, 76, 80, 86-87, 89-90, 120, 123, 130, 142, 149n, 157-58, 161, 163-64, 176, 193, 213

335

Index

221, 227-28, 232; see also confessors; excommunication; fines; indulgences; penitents; remissions Peniarth manuscripts 249-61, 268, 270, 272, 276, 278, 280, 283n, 289-90 Penitential of Theodore 76 Penitentiary of Bede 76 penitents see penance Pepin the Short see Pepin III Pepin III, king of the Franks 81-82 Persia, Persians 32, 58 Perugia, Italy 267n Peter Aliphas, Byzantine governor 45, 47 St Peter, apostle 82-83, 308-9 Peter, archbishop of Rus 253n Peter Bartholomew, Provençal pilgrim 273, 279 Peter Batholon’ 250, 259, 259n, 260, 273, 279 Peter Capitulus, moneylender 176n Peter de Caffol, treasurer of Avignon 284 Peter Martyr see Peter of Verona Peter of Capua, cardinal-priest of San Marcello 163 Peter of Corbeil, archbishop of Sens 165, 167n, 174-78 Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre 172 Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris 132-33, 158, 174 Peter of Wakefield, English hermit 252 Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay (OCist), chronicler Hystoria Albigensis 119, 121n, 122, 126n, 127, 129, 130n, 131n, 132n, 134, 135n, 136, 138n, 142n, 144, 158n, 175n Peter of Verona (OP), friar 271 Peter of Vinea, Italian diplomat 274 Peter Sicard, papal treasurer 285n Peter the Chanter, Paris master 137n, 150n, 152n, 154, 156n, 159-60, 162, 178, 212n

336

Peter the Hermit, preacher 40 Peter II, king of Aragon 126, 140 petraries 239, 242 pets 193 Philip, chancellor of Paris 166n Philip II Augustus, king of France 122-25, 128, 134, 143, 152-53, 155, 157, 160, 170-71, 173-74, 177 Philip VI, king of France 220 Philippa of Champagne 143n, 168-69 Philomelion (mod. Akşehir, Turkey) 44-46 Phokas, Byzantine emperor 20 Photios, patriarch of Constantinople 30 Piacenza, council of 40 Picts, Pictish 81 Piers Plowman see William Langland Pietro Capocci, cardinal-deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro 256 pigs 192 pilgrimage see pilgrims pilgrims 1, 3, 25, 39-40, 86-7, 129, 153, 155-56, 176, 212n, 221, 294-309 pirates 82 Pirenne, Henri, Belgian historian 2, 7, 17-18, 23, 26-27, 35, 37, 48-49 Pisa, Pisans 60, 265 ploughing, ploughmen 184, 187-90, 196-97, 201-8 Pluto, Roman god 109 poetry see troubadours Political crusades see Italian crusades St Polyeuktos, church (Constantinople) 20-21 Pompey, Roman general iv Pons of Chapteuil, troubadour 125-26 Pontigny (OCist), monastery 166 poor 87, 156, 161, 188, 215-16, 219-21, 225, 230, 232, 273, 301; see also almsgiving; charity popes see individual named popes Porcelet, family 268 potage 184, 196-97, 202-5, 208

Index

poultry 184, 192; see also chickens; doves; geese; hens; peacocks; swans Prague, Czech Republic 185 prayers 56, 87, 162n, 163, 216, 227-28 preaching 4, 38, 55-56, 67, 103, 105, 110, 115, 121, 128, 135-41, 149-52, 16061, 163, 167, 173, 177-78, 180, 211, 213-25, 232n, 250-51, 260, 269-74, 276, 279, 284, 287, 289, 298, 306 Premonstratensians 155, 180, 191, 208; see also Conrad, abbot of Val-Secret; Saint-Nicolas d’Hermières; Prémontré; Val-Secret Prémontré (OPrem) abbot of, see Gervase of Prémontré canonry 155 Prester John, mythical king 277 priests, parish 60, 150n, 154, 176, 214, 229 priories 150, 154, 156, 174, 223, 231, 256, 259, 280 priors 115, 160n, 162, 166n, 167, 173, 175-6, 178-9, 217, 224, 231, 250, 257n, 258-59, 273, 289 prisons 26, 126, 158, 175, 177 prisoners see captives; hostages privileges, crusading see protection of crusaders prophecy 6, 55, 94, 99-100, 104-10, 114-15, 117, 249-92; see also apocalypticism; Antichrist; eschatology; Joachim of Fiore; Joachite texts; millenarianism; Pseudo-Joachite texts; Pseudo-Methodius prostitutes 60, 98, 152 protection of crusaders 148-80 Provençal, language 7, 274 Provençals 7, 274 Provence counts of 52, 267; see also Charles of Anjou region of 6, 82, 250, 252, 255, 258-60, 265-73, 278, 282, 285, 287, 289 Provins, France 176-77

Pseudo-Joachite texts 263-64, 276 De oneribus prophetarum 264 Expositio abbatis Joachimi super Sibillis et Merlino 264 Vaticinium Sibyllae Erithreae 264 Pseudo-Methodius, prophecy 105, 108, 252 pullani 115, 117 pulses 186 purgatory 227, 229, 291-92, 298, 300, 303 Qāqūn, village of see Cacho quarantine (forty-days service) 131 Quercy, France 133 questores 218; see also fundraising; preaching Quia maior (1213) 129, 174 Qurān 104n, 113 rabbinic literature 112 rabbits 193 Rahab, Old Testament heroine 297 Ramón Martí see Raymond Martini Ralph, abbot of Saint-Jean-desVignes (OPrem, dioc. Soissons) 154, 167-69 Ralph Glaber, French monk and chronicler 86 Ralph Long, donor 226 Ralph Niger, English clerk 128 Ralph of Caen, Norman chaplain 108-10 Ralph III, count of Soissons 122-23, 172 Ramla 34 rams 184 ransoming 156, 162, 215 Ranulf, earl of Chester 140 Raous, knight from Santerre 245 Ravenna, Italy 294 Raymond-Berengar V, count of Provence 268-69 Raymond Martini (OP), Catalan friar 65, 112-13 Raymond of Aguilers, chaplain and author 38, 39n, 114n, 273n

337

Index

Raymond of Penyafort (OP), canon lawyer and theologian 65 Raymond III, count of Tripoli 116-17 Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse 89, 116 Raymond VI of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse 142 Raymond VII of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse 121, 126, 128 Raymond IV, viscount of Turenne 142 Reconquista 58, 68 redemptions, of crusade vows 125, 148, 153, 158, 163-65, 214, 220; see also dispensations Red Sea 38 red slip fine ware 23-24, 27 reeves 201-4, 206n reform 87, 138, 147, 152-54, 157, 15980, 211, 212n, 232, 251, 270n, 291, 293-94, 297 Regino of Prüm (OSB), abbot Ecclesiastical Discipline 76 Rejoicers (Gaudentes) 272-73 relics 25, 32-33, 38, 69, 97, 148n, 152-53, 165, 183, 279; see also Crown of Thorns; Holy Foreskin; Holy Lance; reliquaries; True Cross reliquaries 153; see also crosses; Crown of Thorns; Holy Foreskin; Holy Lance; relics; True Cross remissions, of penance 218-19, 223; see also indulgences Renard de Lastilli 154 Réole, France 133 Repton, priory 256 Reynald, lord of Sidon 242 Rheims archbishop 132, 135, 166-67 city 39, 132 Rhine, river 26 Rhineland, Rhinelanders 26, 90, 138-39 Rhodes, island 42, 218, 225 Rhône, river 25, 120n, 122, 126, 142, 264 Richard, bishop of Chichester 256

338

Richard de Insula, abbot of Burton and Bury St Edmunds 256, 278-79 Richard le Scrope, archbishop of York 228 Richard of Cornwall, English earl 269 Richard Swinefield, bishop of Hereford 226 Richard I, king of England 263 Richard II, king of England 221, 256, 263 Richard Whitson, businessman 234 Rinoardo, epic character 306n Robert, abbot of Saint-Nicolas d’Hermières (O.Prem.) 166n Robert Barton, donor 226 Robert, bishop of Bayeux 131-33 Robert Cotton, book collector 251-52 Robert de Bingham of Dorset, donor 227 Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 255n, 257-58, 264-65 Robert Guiscard, count and duke of Apulia 43, 45-46, 306n Robert Mauvoisin, crusader 152, 165 Robert of Beaumont, crusader 131 Robert of Coucy, knight 154 Robert of Courson, cardinal-priest of San Stefano al Monte Celio 136-37, 139, 161-62, 165-67, 169-70, 174n Robert of Courtenay, knight 172 Robert of Flamborough, Paris master 167n Robert of Geneva see Clement VII St Robert of Molesme (OCist) 83 Robert, patriarch of Jerusalem 252n Robert Stanegrave, donor 226 Robert the Monk, French chronicler 90, 105, 108, 110 Roche (OCist), monastery (Yorkshire) 259 Rockley (Wiltshire), Templar estate 194n, 195, 204n Rodez, diocese 136 Roger Beauchamp of Bletsoe, Lord Chamberlain 226

Index

Roger Borsa, duke of Apulia 46 Roger of Howden, English chronicler Gesta regis Henrici 240, 241n, 246n, 282n Roger of Meuland, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 254, 256 Roger of Wendover, chronicler of St Albans 255 Roger II, king of Sicily 52 Roland, epic hero 306n Roman empire 17-52, 75-76, 80, 93 Roman(us) Frangipani, cardinaldeacon of Sant’Angelo 126, 257 Rome city 19-27, 29, 37, 82-83, 125, 230, 251, 285, 289-90, 296n, 302, 305 papal curia 30, 126-29, 138, 149, 157, 159, 167-68, 170, 175, 178, 251, 264, 267, 280, 284, 289-90, 296 see also Roman empire romances 82, 243 Arthurian 243, 245-47 Green Knight in 243-47 Romanos III Argyros, Byzantine emperor 34 Rouen, archbishop of 73 Rus, Russia 28, 43, 81; see also Vikings Rusticiana, granddaughter of Boethius 21 rye 186-87, 197-99 Saddlescombe (Sussex), Templar estate, 195n, 196, 198-99, 202-4 S.afad, castle 239, 295 S.āfītā, Syria 239 Sahara desert 52, 60 saints 110, 148, 152, 155, 157, 159, 161, 239, 273, 279 lives of 80-84, 86 warrior 51, 53, 69, 80-84, 86, 152, 291-92, 299-300, 306 see also individual saints by name; martyrs St Albans (OSB), monastery of 161, 255, 258, 277, 286

Annales Ricardi 222 see also Roger of Wendover; Matthew Paris Saint-Antoine (OCist, dioc. Paris), nunnery 152 Saint-Ayoul, church 176 Saint-Étienne, priory 156 Sainte-Foy (Conques), church 86 Sainte-Geneviève (Paris), canonry 153-54, 162, 165-68, 171n, 174-78 Saint-Jean-des-Vignes (Soissons), canonry 4, 147, 149, 151-80; see also Ralph; John de Feritate; John of Montmirail Saint-Martin of Tours, monastery 86 St Mary’s (Southampton), church 225 Saint-Nicolas (Oignies), canonry 151 Saint-Victor canonry (Marseille) 269n canonry (Paris) 4, 149-80 office of 299n relics of 153, 165 see also Giles; Guérin; John the Teuton Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria 116, 237-47, 294, 298 Salem (OCist), monastery 241 Salimbene of Adam (OFM), chronicler 265-66, 269-76 Salisbury, diocese Salon-de-Provence, France 250, 259-60, 268-69, 271, 273, 278-82, 287-90 salve, sheep 194-95 Sancho Martin 245 Sandford (Oxfordshire), Templar estate 191, 192n, 193 San Paolo ad Aquas Salvias (Rome), monastery 22 San Paolo fuori le Mura (Rome), basilica 22 Santa Croce (OFM, dioc. Florence), friary 225, 261n Sant’Andrea at Vercelli, canonry 161n Sant’Andrea on Monte Soracte (OSB), monastery 22

339

Index

Santiago de Compostela, cathedral 176 Saracens, 6, 37, 82-83, 98-99, 102-3, 111, 116, 119, 127-28, 144, 217, 296, 306n; see also infidels; Moors; Muslims Satan see Devil Sayf al-Dawla, H.amdānid amir 32 Saxons, Saxony 77, 81-82, 90 scab, ovine 194; see also murrain Scandinavia 43, 125, 185 Scharnbrook (Bedfordshire), Templar estate 193n, 196, 204 schism 49, 266, 267, 280, 296n Schism, Great 224 Scotland, Scots 82, 185, 219 scriptures 2, 36-37, 110, 216, 276; see also Bible; Qurān; New Testament; Old Testament; Torah Sébastien Mamerot, French chaplain Les Passages d’Outremer iv, 247 Seine, river 79 Seljuk Turks see Turks Sempringhamites 282 sermons see preaching serpents 244 servants 204-9 Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 28 Seville, Spain 18, 19n, 37, 58 sheep 190-95, 240, 304, 308; see also ewes, hogasters, lambs, rams, wethers shepherds 196-97, 201-3, 207, 297 sheriffs, royal 45, 1885, 199, 207, 222, 254 Shipley (Sussex), Templar estate 196, 198, 202 ships, 23, 25, 51, 54, 137, 238-40, 242-43, 246 Sibilla, wife of Odo ‘Palmarius’ 154 Sichelgaita, wife of Roger Borsa 46 Sicily island 20-21, 38-39, 47, 63, 66, 83, 188 kingdom of 2-3, 43, 52-53, 60-64, 67, 144, 253n, 278

340

sick 156, 215, 224; see also diseases; hospitals; lepers Sidon (mod. Sayda, Lebanon) 242, 295 Sijilmasa, Morocco 57 Simon de Atevesue, miles 154 Simon Langton, master 281 Simon of Chavigny, 155 Simon of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, 144, 171-72 Simon, of Montfort, 122-26, 131-36, 139, 142, 154, 158 Simon of Sexfontaines, knight 170 Simon IV, lord of Clefmont, 170 Sinai, Mount 19 smiths 196, 202, 204, 206n Soissons bishops 151-55, 162n, 163-64, 16869, 171, 179 count 122, 154, 158, 172 cathedral clergy 151, 153-55, 157, 167n, 168-69, 171, 175, 179 citizens 153, 179 diocese 160 see also Saint-Jean-des-Vignes soldiers 60, 62, 64, 76, 78, 80-83, 108-9, 293; see also knights; men-at-arms; milites; warriors Solomon, king 32, 106, 109 Spain, 18-19, 24, 26, 38-39, 47, 58, 85, 125, 140, 245 stags 242, 244-45 Stanton Long (Shropshire), Templar estate 205-7 statues 25, 105, 108-10; see also idols Stephen, archdeacon of Paris 154n Stephen, count of Blois 45 Stephen, dean of Paris 179 Stephen, papal chaplain 255n, 280n Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury 161, 256, 281 Stephen of Bourbon (OP), inquisitor 159, 162 Stephen of Rouen (OSB), monk and chronicler at Bec, 278

Index

Stephen of Tournai, abbot of SainteGeneviève 154n, 162n stipends see wages Stone Priory (Coventry) 259 Strood (Kent), Templar estate 195n, 198, 203 Suevi 25 Suffolk, county 12, 45, 183n, 184n, 186n, 189, 193n, 196-99, 201, 208 supersessionism, doctrine of 95, 103 Sutton (Essex), Templar estate 183, 189, 190n, 194n, 202 synods, diocesan decrees 161, 174n, 256n sermons 161, 177, 180 Syria, Syrians 2, 29, 31-32, 33, 48-49, 58, 99, 102, 108, 115, 126, 129 Syriac, language 29, 31, 101-2 Syriac Infancy Gospel 101-2 Swabia, 281 swans 193 Swanton (Bedfordshire), Templar estate 193n, 194, 195 swineherds 201-6 Tabor, Mount 34 Tagliacozzo, battle of 63 Tancred of Hauteville, prince of Galilee 108-9 Tangier, Morocco 57 Tarascon, France 126, 265, 269 Tarsus, Turkey 19 Tartars see Mongols Tassilo, duke of Bavaria 77 taxes 124-25, 157, 164, 173-74, 177, 213-14, 219 Tedaldo Visconti 295; see also Gregory X Templars accounts and surveys 5, 181-209 castles 129 commanders 184 confiscation of property 5, 182-209 estates 5, 181-209 farming 5, 181-209

see also military orders Temple, in Paris 124, 164 order of see Templars of Solomon 32, 37, 105-6, 108-9 see also Templars Temple Balsall (Warwickshire), Templar estate 183n, 189, 193n, 195n, 196n, 208 Temple Broughton, Templar estate 205-7 Temple Bruer (Lincolnshire), Templar estate 189, 191, 194n, 196-97, 203, 207 Temple Witham (Essex), Templar estate 206 tenants 183, 196, 199, 209, 225 Termes, siege of (1210) 133 Tervagant, god 110 Teutonic order 131, 140; see also military orders Tewkesbury Abbey (OSB, Gloucestershire), 277 Thangmar, German chronicler 82 Thierry (Terricus), Templar commander 239, 247 Theobald III, count of Champagne 170, 177 Theobald V, count of Champagne 152, 167n, 168-72 Theodore the Stoudite, Byzantine monk and abbot 30 St Theodore ( Jerash), church 25 Theodorus, patriarch of Constantinople 31 Theophanes, Byzantine chronicler 29 Theophylact, patriarch of Constantinople 31 St Thomas Aquinas (OP), theologian 110 St Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury 240 Thomas de Walmesford, rector of Sherfield 283n

341

Index

Thomas Brickelsworth, citizen of London 227 Thomas Brinton, bishop of Rochester 215 St Thomas of Acre, military order 217 Thomas of Capua, dictaminal writer Summa dictaminis 250 Thornton (Northumberland), Templar estate 190-91, 204n Thuringia 272 Tiberias, Israel 33, 240-41 Tigris, river 26 St Tillo, soldier 80 Tlemcen, Algeria 57 Togrynd (Suffolk), Templar estate 189, 198 Toledo, Spain 83, 140n Tolkien, J. R. R. 286-87 Tomier, troubadour 122, 126, 138 Topkapı Palace (Istanbul) 101 Torah 94; see also Old Testament Torremaggiore, Italy 266 Tortosa, Syria 295 Toulouse bishop 137, 159, 297, 299 city 122-24, 127, 131, 135 counts of 89, 126, 141-42 militia 119 siege of (1217-18) 123-24, 126, 131 tournament 157, 246 trade English 190, 226-27 indulgence 217-18 Mediterranean 2, 18, 23-28, 35, 53, 59-61, 64, 271 translators 48 treaties 34, 60n, 61, 63, 114n; see also peace; truces Trental Masses see Masses Trinitarians 156, 159, 162; see also Cerfroid, military orders Trinity 110, 251, 260, 286 Tripoli city 55, 116, 295, 243, 245, 247n county 116, 237, 239, 242

342

troubadours (trouvères) 7, 122, 126-29, 142, 269, 297 see also Gormonda of Montpellier; Moniot of Arras; Palaizi; Pons of Chapteuil; Tomier; William Figueira; William the Clerk Troyes bishop 151-52, 154, 166, 169, 172 city 166n, 176, 177, 195 truces 143; see also peace, treaties True Cross, relic 32, 153, 165 Tunis, Tunisia 2, 7, 51-69 turcopoles 48 Turks iv, 1, 39, 41-47, 86, 89, 116, 144, 218, 222, 230-32, 247, 252n, 265, 284; see also Ottoman Turks; individual named rulers typhus 52 Tyre (Lebanon) city 5, 39, 131, 237-48, 295 siege of (1187-88) 237-48 Udalric of Dillingen, bishop of Augsburg 81 Ulysses, Greco-Roman epic hero 295, 308 Upleadon (Herefordshire), Templar estate 184, 191, 204-8 Urban II, pope 3, 38, 47, 73-92, 105, 116 Urban VI, pope 285 ’Umayyads 31, 37 usury 149n, 155, 157, 168, 173-4, 177-8, 229 Val-des-Écoliers, Augustinian canonry 151, 162 Val-Secret (OPrem) 167n, 168-69 Valencia, Spain 58, 61, 66, Valin, Jewish moneylender 176n Vandals 23, 25 Vaticinium Sibyllae Erithreae, prophecy 264, 267-68 Vaucouleurs, castle of 171

Index

Vaux-de-Cernay (OCist), monastery see Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay vendetta 296, 301n Veneto, Italy 271 vengeance 75, 107, 126, 276 Venice, Italy 60, 296n Venus, Roman goddess 297 Verona, Italy 271, 294 vetch 186-87, 197-98, 200 Vézélay, monastery of 165-66 Victorines 4-5, 137, 147-80; see also Sant’Andrea at Vercelli; Saint-Victor Vikings 28, 81 villeins 195 Vincent 66; see also Abū Zayd St Vincent Madelgarius 81 Vincent the carter 207 vineyards 154, 187-88; see also grapes; wine violence 3, 5, 34, 60, 75-91, 111, 119, 127, 143-44, 149n, 166n, 172, 212, 229, 301n; see also killing; murder; war Virgil Aeneid 299 in Commedia 298, 301n, 303 Visigoths 19 visions 6, 251, 253, 259n, 261, 270, 273, 300, 306, 307n; see also apocalypticism; millennialism; prophecy Voghera, Italy 83 Volga, river 28 vows 122, 129-30, 138, 140, 142, 143n, 148, 152-53, 158, 164-65, 167, 170, 172, 213, 217, 220-21; see also dispensations; redemptions wages 129, 184, 196-209 Waldensians 136; see also heresy, heretics Wales, Welsh 5, 74, 182-86, 188-91, 195, 208-9, 249, 278, 283, 285, 289 Walter, bishop of Autun 132-33 Walter Brut, Wycliffite priest 229

Walter Cornut, Paris master 154n, 162, 166n, 167n Walter de Cantilupe, bishop of Worcester 257n Walter de Depenalasa, druggist 226 Walter Henley, agricultural expert 181 Walter of Avesnes, count of Blois 129-30 Walter of Haklut, sheriff 184 war holy 1, 2, 73, 75, 82, 84-85, 90, 120, 158, 232 just 3, 73, 75, 89, 211n, 212n warriors 38, 40, 43, 57, 80, 88, 152, 158, 291, 299, 306, 306n; see also knights; men-at-arms; milites; soldiers Warwickshire, county 45, 183n, 186n, 189, 190, 197, 202 weeding 187, 196 Westmorland, county 208 wethers 191-93, 199 wheat 186-8, 191, 197-200, 206-9 Wilburgham (Cambridgeshire), Templar estate 195 William, archbishop of Tyre Chronicon 238 Ernoul-Bernard 241-47 Latin Continuation 240-41 Old French Continuations 241-47 see also Ernoul William, bishop of Châlons 124n, 168, 171 William, bishop of Langres 171 William Caxton, printer Godeffroy de Bouillon or the Siege and Conquest of Jerusalem 232 William Cecil, ambassador 287 William, count of Sancerre 172 William Figueira, Toulousan troubadour 126-29, 138 William FitzHugh 223 William Langland, English poet Piers Plowman 215 William of Bourges, canon of Paris 168n, 171n, 175, 176, 178

343

Index

William of Champlitte 175n, 176n St William of Gellone, duke of Toulouse 82 William of Grandmesnil, adventurer 45-47 William of Newburgh, Augustinian canon Historia rerum Anglicanum 241 William of Pont-de-l’Arche, archdeacon of Paris 162, 173 William of Saint-Amour, Paris master 266 William Raleigh, bishop of Winchester 257 William Swinderby, Wycliffite priest 229 William Testa, papal tax collector 213, 217, 231 William the Clerk, Anglo-Norman troubadour 127-28 William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, king of England 87-88 William I of Baux, prince of Orange 126, 306n William II, archbishop of Bordeaux 132-33 William III, count of Jülich 139 William V, marquis of Montferrat 240 William X, count of Auvergne 142 Willoughton (Lincolnshire), Templar estate 191 wills 155, 173, 214, 217, 223-28, 253n; see also bequests; legacies Wiltshire, county 186n, 195-96, 198-99, 203 wine 24, 60, 187, 207, 274

344

wives 45, 152-56, 159, 169, 170, 221n, 223, 301-2 wolves 193, 195, 241, 297n, 308 women circumcision and 98-100, 102, 113 as cooks 196, 201-3, 205-7 crusade vow and 153, 164-5, 167, 147-80 as farmworkers 182, 196-209 fundraising and 159, 211-36 as maids 197, 199, 203, 204-5 and memory 302, 305 mulieres sanctae 156 as prostitutes 60, 98, 152 sex crimes and 95, 98, 228, 301 as troubadours 129, 144 as widows 170, 172, 174-76, 225, 229 as wives 45, 152-56, 159, 169, 170, 221n, 223, 301-2; see also individual named women wood, Piglet’s 286 wool 60, 185, 189-93, 195, 208, 228 workers see farmworkers Worcester, diocese 217, 257n Worcestershire, county 186n, 198, 202, 207 Wycliff, John, English reformer 220 Yaghmurasan of Tlemcen 57 Yah.ya ibn Sa‘īd, Melkite historian 31 York, archdiocese 218-19, 228 Yorkshire, county 186n, 190, 191, 192n, 193n, 194n, 195n, 197, 201, 204, 259 Z. āhir, al-, Fāt.imid caliph 34 Ziyyānids 57; see also ‘Abd al-Wādids