Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices [1 ed.] 9780754605225

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Maps and Figures
Contributors
Preface
1 Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, c. 1100–c. 1500
2 Crossing the Frontier of Ninth-Century Hispania
3 Emperors and Expansionism: From Rome to Middle Byzantium
4 Byzantium’s Eastern Frontier in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
5 Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Example of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
6 Government and the Indigenous in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
7 Latins and Greeks on Crusader Cyprus
8 Genuensis civitas in extremo Europae: Caffa from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century
9 Granting Power to Enemy Gods in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades
10 The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark in the High Middle Ages: Danes, Wends and Saxo Grammaticus
11 Hungary, ‘the Gate of Christendom’
12 Boundaries and Men in Poland from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Masovia
13 The Frontiers of Church Reform in the British Isles, 1170–1230
14 Neolithic meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands
Index

Citation preview

MEDIEVAL FRONTIERS

Medieval Frontiers Concepts and Practices

Edited by DAVID ABULAFIA AND NORA BEREND University of Cambridge

First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © David Abulafia, Nora Berend and the contributors, 2002

The authors have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data Medieval frontiers: concepts and practices 1. Civilization, Medieval 2. Europe–Boundaries 3. Europe–History–476–1492 I. Abulafia, David, 1949– II. Berend, Nora 940. 1 US Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Medieval frontiers: concepts and practices / edited by David Abulafia and Nora Berend. p. cm. Selected papers of a colloquium held Nov. 1998 at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, with several additional articles. Includes biographical references. ISBN 0–7546–0522–1 (alk. paper) 1. Europe–Historical geography–Congresses. 2. Europe–Boundaries–History– To 1500–Congresses. 3. Mediterranean Region–Historical geography– Congresses. 4. Frontier and pioneer life–Europe–Congresses. I. Abulafia, David. 2. Berend, Nora. D21.5. M44 2002 911’.4–dc21 2001041327

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0522-5 (hbk)

Contents List of Maps and Figures

vii

Contributors

viii

Preface Nora Berend

x

1

Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, c. 1100–c. 1500 David Abulafia

1

2

Crossing the Frontier of Ninth-Century Hispania Ann Christys

35

3

Emperors and Expansionism: From Rome to Middle Byzantium Jonathan Shepard

55

4

Byzantium’s Eastern Frontier in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries Catherine Holmes

83

5

Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Example of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem Ronnie Ellenblum

6

Government and the Indigenous in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem Jonathan Riley-Smith

121

7

Latins and Greeks on Crusader Cyprus Peter W. Edbury

133

8

Genuensis civitas in extremo Europae: Caffa from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century Michel Balard

9

Granting Power to Enemy Gods in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades Rasa Maûeika

10 The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark in the High Middle Ages: Danes, Wends and Saxo Grammaticus Kurt Villads Jensen

105

143 153

173

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Contents

11 Hungary, ‘the Gate of Christendom’ Nora Berend 12 Boundaries and Men in Poland from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Masovia Grzegorz Myœliwski

195

217

13 The Frontiers of Church Reform in the British Isles, 1170–1230 Brendan Smith

239

14 Neolithic meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands David Abulafia

255

Index

279

List of Maps and Figures 2.1

Medieval Spain

37

4.1

Byzantium’s eastern frontier

85

5.1

Sites mentioned by ibn Jubayr

115

9.1

The state of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

155

10.1 Denmark 10.2 Reconstruction of underwater fortifications 10.3 The distribution of place-names with Vinde- (reproduced from F. Housted, Stednavne af slavisk oprindelse på Lolland, Falster og Møn [1994], with permission from the editor) 10.4 Tåsinge and Møn (map by Inger Bjerg Poulson) 10.5 Castles in Denmark in the twelfth century (reproduced from Rikke Agnete Olsen, Borge i Danmark [1986], with permission from the author)

175 183 189 190 193

11.1 The medieval kingdom of Hungary (reproduced from N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary [2001], with permission from Cambridge University Press)

197

14.1 The Canary Islands

257

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Contributors David Abulafia is Professor of Mediterranean History, Cambridge, and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His books include Frederick II (1988), A Mediterranean Emporium (1994), The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms (1997) and, as editor, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5 (1999). Michel Balard is Professor of Medieval History, Sorbonne-University of Paris I. His books include La Romanie Génoise (2 vols, 1978), Le Moyen Age en Occident (1999) and Croisades et Orient latin (XIe–XIVe siècles) (2001). Nora Berend is University Assistant Lecturer in History, Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine’s College. Her publications include At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary (2001) and articles in the Revue Mabillon and the Medieval History Journal. Ann Christys completed her PhD at the University of Leeds. Her publications include Christians in Al-Andalus 711–1000 (2001). Peter Edbury is a professor in the School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University. His works include The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (1991), John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1997) and, jointly with J.G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (1988). Ronnie Ellenblum is Senior Lecturer in Historical Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is the author of Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1998). Catherine Holmes is Fellow and Praelector in History, University College, Oxford, and was formerly a Research Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Dr Holmes is preparing for publication a book-length study of the reign of Emperor Basil II.

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Kurt Villads Jensen is Lecturer at the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark, Odense. As well as Danish history he has worked on attitudes to Mongols, Jews and Muslims, and he has published articles in the Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum and the Bulletin of International Medieval Research. Rasa Maûeika is Director of the Lithuanian Museum Archives in Canada. Dr Maûeika’s publications include articles in the Journal of Medieval History, the Archivum Historiae Pontificiae and in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Muldoon (1997). Grzegorz Myœliwski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, Warsaw University. His publications include Czùowiek úredniowiecza wobec czasu i przestrzeni (1999) and articles in Society and Culture: Poland in Europe, edited by M. Bogucka (1995), and in Historical Reflections on Central Europe (1999). Jonathan Riley-Smith is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge, and Fellow of Emmanuel College. His books include The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310 (1967), The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (1973), The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986) and The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (1997). Jonathan Shepard was formerly University Lecturer in Russian History, Cambridge. He co-edited Byzantine Diplomacy (1992) and has written (with Simon Franklin) The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996). Brendan Smith is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Bristol. He is the author of Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland (1999) and he edited a volume on Britain and Ireland, 900–1300 (1999).

Preface Nora Berend

In recent years, ‘the medieval frontier’ has been the subject of extensive research. Many medievalists have espoused the frontier as an explanatory concept, as is shown, for example, in the volume Medieval Frontier Societies, edited by Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay and published in 1989. But there is no consensus about the meaning of the term: ‘frontier’ can stand for boundaries; areas of open expansion; zones of contact where trade, ideas or religions unite rather than divide areas; sets of attitudes about other people; and ‘frontier societies’ which are said to have had certain characteristics of their own, such as an organisation focused on war, and specific mechanisms of negotiation and mediation. Interest in ‘frontiers’ in medieval studies has been inspired by the American historian F.J. Turner and his followers; by a desire to investigate the roots of the development of modern national linear borders; and most recently by the search for ‘multicultural societies’ in the past. Frederick Jackson Turner in his ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ (1893), claimed that the frontier was both unique to the United States and closed forever.1 He conceived of the frontier as a meeting point of savagery and civilisation, where the pioneers shed all the customs they had inherited, and where social development began anew. According to him this westward movement to settle free land influenced the development of the American character (‘Americanisation’) and institutions, including democracy. Medievalists quickly appropriated this approach. J.W. Thompson applied the ‘classical’ Turnerian hypothesis to medieval German history as early as 1913.2 Archibald Lewis in his article on ‘The closing of the mediaeval frontier 1250–1350’ (1958) posited that ‘few periods can be better understood in the light of the frontier concept than western Europe between 800 and 1500 A.D’.3 He used the ‘frontier’ as an explanation of Western European expansion 1 2 3

Incorporated as the opening chapter of F.J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920; repr. New York, 1962), 1–38. J.W. Thompson, ‘Profitable Fields of Investigation in Medieval History’, American Historical Review, 28 (1913), 490–504. Speculum, 33 (1958), 475–83, see 475.

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and crisis. Since then, the frontier has been evoked in its original Turnerian meaning of man’s fight against nature with the correlated changes in the institutions and behaviour of the frontiersmen to explain agricultural expansion in the Netherlands, the development of Russia, monastic innovation between the fourth and twelfth centuries, ranching in Extremadura and Cistercian settlement on the Catalan frontier.4 As subsequent critics working on American history pointed out the weaknesses of the Turner thesis, the ‘frontier’ was transformed into a contact zone where an interchange of cultures was constantly taking place.5 The influence of this approach led to the coining of the concept of medieval frontier societies, and has especially influenced the historiography of the Iberian peninsula. Historians such as Charles Julian Bishko, Robert I. Burns and Angus MacKay have used it as a main interpretive tool for the development of medieval Iberian society. Studies of frontier societies focus on the one hand on militarisation as the main feature of the frontier, or even of the whole of society, for example the Christian frontiers with Islam in Iberia, the rise of the border lords and militarisation on both sides of the Arab–Byzantine frontier, or warfare in Ireland and Wales.6 On the other hand, they also analyse peaceful interaction, devices of arbitration, negotiation and trade. It is often claimed that the dual dynamics of war and peaceful interaction created a type of life in frontier zones that was different from that in central areas: a greater freedom, feelings of selfreliance, social fluidity, a fragmented society and multiple loyalties.7 Although this 4

5 6

7

R.E. Sullivan, ‘The Medieval Monk as Frontiersman’, in R.E. Sullivan, Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1994), essay 6; C.J. Bishko, ‘The Castilian as Plainsman: The Medieval Ranching Frontier in La Mancha and Extremadura’, in C.J. Bishko, Studies in Medieval Spanish Frontier History (London, 1980), essay 4; L.J. McCrank, ‘The Cistercians of Poblet as Medieval Frontiersmen: An Historiographic Essay and Case Study’, in Estudios en Homenaje a Don Claudio Sánchez Albórnoz en sus 90 años, ed. M. de Carmen Carlé et al. (Buenos Aires, 1983), vol. 2, 313–60. W.H. Te Brake, Medieval Frontier. Culture and Economy in Rijnland (Houston, 1985). J.L. Wieczynski, The Russian Frontier. The Impact of Borderlands upon the Course of Early Russian History (Charlottesville, 1976). For example G.H. Nobles, American Frontiers. Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest (London and New York, 1997). For example E. Lourie, ‘A society organized for war: medieval Spain’, Past and Present, 35 (1966), 54–76; M. González Jiménez, ‘Frontier and Settlement in the Kingdom of Castile’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), 49–74; R. Davies, ‘Frontier Arrangements in Fragmented Societies: Ireland and Wales’, Medieval Frontier Societies, 77–100. Lourie, ‘Society organized for war’; J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘The Arab–Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organization and society in the borderlands’, Zbornik Radova Vizantoloshkog Instituta, 19 (1980), 79–116, see 98; E. Manzano Moreno, ‘Christian–Muslim frontier in Al-Andalus: idea and reality’, in The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, ed. D.A. Agius and R. Hitchcock (Reading, 1994), 83–99, at 91–6.

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was true of some areas, in many borderlands settlers’ lives were directed by the authorities, while other frontier regions were even placed under a condominium, so that two separate authorities exercised their rule in the region.8 The historiographical tradition of medieval frontiers which places emphasis on the formation of the boundaries of political units, especially of states, is often treated separately from the discussions of frontier regions and frontier life.9 This approach has been largely inspired by a search for the antecedents of modern political frontiers. The first appearance of the word ‘frontier’ (as a border, but not necessarily a state boundary) has been traced to the twelfth century in Spain, to the thirteenth century in Italy and to 1312 in France.10 Some scholars have argued that a linear boundary first developed in thirteenth-century Spain, where a combination of three factors led to the emergence of the word and notion of the frontier (frontera) as an exact political boundary. These factors were: constant contact with a different culture in densely populated areas, a material (fortified) frontier and the ideology of expanding the borders southward.11 Work on the development of state boundaries in Central Europe has led to a detailed charting of often very mobile borders, together with an analysis of

8

9

10 11

T.F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain (Manchester, 1995), especially 166; H. Ahrweiler, ‘La frontière et les frontières de Byzance en Orient’, in H. Ahrweiler, Byzance: les pays et les territoires (London, 1976), essay 3, 215–16. A detailed analysis of the organisation of one frontier zone is now available: P. Sénac, La frontière et les hommes (VIIIe–XIIe siècle). Le peuplement musulman au nord de l’Ebre et les débuts de la reconquête aragonaise (Paris, 2000). L. Febvre, ‘La Frontière: le mot et la notion’, Revue de Synthèse Historique, 45 (1928), 31–44, and in L. Febvre, Pour une Histoire à part entière (Paris, 1962), 11–24; L. Febvre, ‘Limites et Frontières’, Annales ESC, 2 (1947), 201–7; B. Guenée, ‘Des limites féodales aux frontières politiques’, in Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. P. Nora, vol. 2, La Nation (Paris, 1986), 10–33; D. Nordman, ‘Des limites d’État aux frontières nationales’, Lieux de Mémoire, vol. 2, 35–61; P. Bonenfant, ‘A propos des limites médiévales’, Éventail de l’Histoire Vivante. Hommage à Lucien Febvre (Paris, 1953), vol. 2, 73–9; J.-F. Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales, Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de Lille, n.s., Faculté de Droit et Lettres, 24 (Lille, 1945); P. Toubert, ‘Frontière et frontières: un objet historique’, in Castrum, 4, Frontière et peuplement dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque d’EriceTrapani, 18–25 Septembre 1988 (Rome and Madrid, 1992), 9–17; also see essays on specific frontiers in the collection. Guenée, ‘Des limites’, 21; M. Pfister, ‘Grenzbezeichnungen im Italoromanischen und Galloromanischen’, in Grenzen und Grenzregionen , ed. W. Haubrichs and R. Schneider (Saarbrücken, 1994), 37–50. J. Gautier Dalché, ‘Islam et chrétienté en Espagne au XIIe s.: contribution à l’étude de la notion de frontière’, Hespéris, 46 (1959), 183–217; A. Bazzana, P. Guichard and P. Sénac, ‘La frontière dans l’Espagne médiévale’, Castrum, 4, 36–59.

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the diplomatic and military means by which these frontiers evolved.12 It is usually understood that in the Middle Ages political frontiers were not lines but zones or regions.13 Even Normandy, long celebrated as the first to possess a precise linear frontier, had in fact a more zonal type of frontier for a long time.14 From the early fourteenth century, with the development of cartography and technology, linear frontiers started to emerge, from points fortified for defence to continuous borders. The permanent maintenance of unchanging linear frontiers of entire states is a modern phenomenon. Yet, since estates often had very precise boundaries described in charters and signalled on the ground, the results of the hunt for the emergence of linear frontiers in Europe depends on the scale of the units investigated. The analysis of medieval frontiers has thus traced the first linear boundaries (of estates and other territorial units) and highlighted the non-existence of linear political borders of states, emphasising the radical difference between the medieval world and ours in this respect. This line of research has been carried forward most recently by the volume Frontiers in Question, edited by Daniel Power and Naomi Standen.15 The birth of modern multicultural societies prompted an interest in discovering pre-modern antecedents of ‘multiculturalism’. ‘Frontier interaction’ also came to mean acculturation, including religious syncretism.16 It has been interpreted by some scholars as a phenomenon that affected societies in their entirety, such as the whole of the British Isles or the crusader kingdoms in the East. Robert Bartlett interpreted the emergence of Europe as a consequence of conquest and acculturation, a result of 12

13 14 15 16

G. Rhode, Die Ostgrenze Polens. Politische Entwicklung, kulturelle Bedeutung und geistige Auswirkung, 1 (Cologne and Graz, 1955); Z. Kaczmarczyk, ‘One thousand years of the history of the Polish western frontier’, Acta Poloniae Historica, 5 (1962), 79–109; P.W. Knoll, ‘The stabilization of the Polish western frontier under Casimir the Great 1333–1370’, Polish Review, 12 (1967), 3–29; H.-J. Karp, Grenzen in Ostmitteleuropa während des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Grenzlinie aus dem Grenzsaum (Cologne and Vienna, 1972). For some formulations of this idea: P. Gautier Dalché, ‘De la liste à la carte: limite et frontière dans la géographie et la cartographie de l’Occident médiéval’, Castrum, 4, 19–31; Bazzana et al., ‘La frontière’; Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval Frontier Societies. Lemarignier, Recherches, 70–71; D.J. Power, ‘What did the frontier of Angevin Normandy comprise?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 17 (1995), 181–201. D. Power and N. Standen, eds, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700 (London, 1999). For example J.E. López de Coca-Castañer, ‘Institutions on the Castilian–Granadan Frontier, 1369–1482’, Medieval Frontier Societies, 127–50; A. MacKay, ‘Religion, culture and ideology on the late medieval Castilian–Granadan frontier’, Medieval Frontier Societies, 217–43; R. Maûeika, ‘Of cabbages and knights: trade and trade treaties with the infidel on the northern frontier, 1200–1390’, Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 63–76; D. Obolensky, ‘Byzantine frontier zones and cultural exchanges’, in Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Études Byzantines, ed. M. Berza and E. Stanescu, 3 vols (Bucharest, 1974–6), vol. 1, 302–13.

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the medieval expansion of Christendom’s frontiers.17 Medieval societies consisting of people of different languages, cultures and even religions have been described by a terminology that employs the word ‘frontier’, although this obscures the fact that interaction took place in central areas as well. It has been argued that ‘frontier’ is an inadequate, misleading or outright incorrect term to use, because all of Turner’s claims have been shown to be wrong. Many scholars who specialise in American history now argue that it was the myth of the frontier that was the most important feature of the ‘frontier’; and that the real processes of interaction should be described by other names, such as ‘Middle Ground’.18 Two additional problems affect medieval studies. First, since there were no linear state frontiers in the Middle Ages, the use of the same term for the very different realities of medieval borderlands and modern frontiers can come under criticism. Second, the concept of ‘frontier societies’ lacks clear definition, and is used for a wide variety of historical phenomena and processes. A complex critical re-evaluation of the use of the ‘frontier’ in medieval studies has become necessary. As the preface of Medieval Frontier Societies expresses it: ‘terminological or definitional debate about the nature of the frontier . . . does not feature prominently . . . Most contributors were happy to pursue empirical issues and allow the frontier element in their analysis to speak for itself’.19 Although a terminological debate is indeed rather useless, it is necessary to look at medieval concepts and ideas as well as practices in order to understand medieval frontiers. What was perceived as a frontier during the Middle Ages? What, on the contrary, was not seen as a frontier, despite the usages of modern scholarship? Such analysis must focus not only on the development of real boundaries, but also on medieval ideology; on medieval formulations of what frontiers should be and how rulers had a duty to defend and/or extend frontiers; how frontiers were defined (often in a different way in rhetorical-ideological formulations than in practice); how in certain areas frontier ideologies were created. It is necessary to analyse the emergence of both real and imagined frontiers. How did medieval people create frontiers to delimit areas, how did they understand the function of frontiers, and how did they describe these frontiers? To what extent did medieval observers see a frontier between themselves and other groups, and how did real interaction compare with ideological or narrative formulations of such interaction? 17 18

19

R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993). For example P.N. Limerick, C.A. Milner II and C.E. Rankin, eds, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, 1991); P.N. Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); W. Cronon, G. Miles and J. Gitlin, eds, Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past (New York, 1992); R. White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 1991). Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval Frontier Societies, v.

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The essays in this volume begin to answer these questions. The origin of this volume lies in a colloquium I planned and organised in Cambridge in November 1998 on ‘Frontier societies revisited: medieval concepts and practices’. This took place at St Catharine’s College, and we received generous funding from the G.M. Trevelyan Fund at Cambridge University and from the British Academy. Some of the speakers at the colloquium (Rees Davies, David Nirenberg, Evelyne Patlagean, Daniel Power and Paul Stephenson) did not wish to publish their papers, which consisted either of work in progress or of pieces already promised to journals or other volumes. The late Aleksander Gieysztor had agreed to participate at the colloquium but to our great regret fell seriously ill shortly before it took place. Therefore, and also in order to fill some lacunae, additional articles were commissioned for this volume: those by Ann Christys, Catherine Holmes, Kurt Villads Jensen and Grzegorz Myœliwski. Finally, my co-editor, David Abulafia, contributed a lengthy introduction which seeks to examine several possible approaches to the frontier and to relate them to the wider study of medieval society. The editors divided the tasks associated with the publication of a volume written by many different authors. Nora Berend collected and checked the material and corresponded with authors about possible revisions. David Abulafia prepared the final version of the texts and footnotes for the press and thus happily takes responsibility for mangling the ideas and arguments of the contributors, while sincerely hoping that no such violence has been done to any of the chapters.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, c. 1100–c. 15001 David Abulafia

Basic Ambiguities: Some Historiographical Frontiers If the essays in this volume prove anything, it is that the ‘medieval frontier’ poses difficult problems of definition; these problems are part of a wider difficulty that historians at the start of the twenty-first century are bound to have with the description of a society whose political foundations rested on different concepts of the relationship between man and man (not to mention woman) and between God and man to those that have developed in the wake of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. While modern society retains a good number of medieval institutions, such as the universities, parliaments, the English legal system, virtually none of them operates any longer within the conceptual framework which brought them into being. It is only recently that historians of either frontier societies or the ‘inner lands’ of medieval Europe have come to terms with the problems in describing a political world built on different assumptions about power relations, about the nature of territorial control, about overlordship and sovereignty. The need to work within a different conceptual framework to that supplied by the modern sovereign state is a theme which also underlies the contribution by Dr Ellenblum to this volume. Though rulers in the years around 1200, like the governments of modern states, might see an advantage in controlling contiguous territories rather than a multitude of scattered slices of land, they also saw advantages in holding those lands in different ways to suit local exigences: here as a king, there as another king’s vassal, here creating an extensive royal demesne, there granting palatine rights to responsible feudatories. This was as true of the highly centralised Sicilian 1

The title is, of course, taken from that of the famous work of literary criticism by W. Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London, 1930).

1

2

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

state as it was of Capetian France, in which royal power was much more obviously circumscribed. The move towards territorial integration, documented, for example, in Henry Cohn’s classic study of the Rheinpfalz in the years around 1400, is primarily associated with the state-building of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which other considerations, such as an incipient sense of ‘national identity’ in some areas of Europe, also helped to shape the early nation state.2 Turning to the outer edges of Christian Europe, the work of Robert Bartlett has emphasised the role of frontier expansion not merely in the drawing of a much larger map of Europe, extending far to the north and east, but also, to some degree, in describing the social impact of developments in the new territories on the societies from which the pioneer settlers hailed.3 Thus Latin Europe was ‘made’ not just in France, England and the Rhineland, but also in the peripheral areas that interacted feebly or strongly with the lands from which colonisers had originally come. Bartlett’s work shows an impressive mastery of such areas as legal practice, military techniques and forms of tenure, above all in the Celtic lands of the British Isles and on Germany’s eastern frontier; less successful, Mediterranean historians are inclined to think, is his treatment of the south of Europe, where many of his generalisations about the nature of trading contacts, cultural ties and so on between ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ territories seem not to apply. It is striking that his work to a large degree ignores Sicily and extensive areas of Spain, particularly those conquered by the Catalans and Aragonese; of course, one would no more want to build a general theory out of such distinctive societies as Catalonia-Aragon, with its curious view of royal–noble relations, or out of the Sicilian melting pot, than it is appropriate to do from the cases of Wales, Ireland, Prussia and Denmark. It stands to reason that the confrontation between Western Europeans and the inhabitants of wealthy and cultured Islamic lands in the Mediterranean took on a different character to the confrontation with pagans living a rather simpler life on the north-eastern edges of Europe. Interestingly, the same objection applies to the 1989 volume on frontier societies edited by Robert Bartlett and Angus Mackay, which laid a particularly strong emphasis on the Anglo–Celtic frontiers and the German East, without paying any real attention to Latin frontiers along the Mediterranean shores, let alone Byzantine ones.4 The exception is the Castilian–Granadan frontier, which is a particular interest of one of the editors of that volume, and which elicits three contributions; all are certainly of great merit, but the concentration on one part of Iberia is a regrettable confirmation that some see the history of the peninsula as to all intents and purposes the history of 2 3 4

H.J. Cohn, The Government of the Rhine Palatinate in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford and London, 1965). R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993). R. Bartlett and A. MacKay, eds, Medieval Frontier Societies (Oxford, 1989).

Introduction

3

Castile.5 Then there is a characteristically wide-ranging and well-informed survey of the historiography of the frontier by Robert I. Burns, going back to Frederick Turner and his interpretation of the American frontier, but also citing his own work on the extraordinarily rich documentation from Valencia and the Catalan world; yet, despite Father Burns’s best efforts, this cannot make up for the obvious imbalances in the book.6 Therefore no excuse is really needed for the fact that in what follows here a good many examples are taken from the Mediterranean area. So, too, the contents of this book are intended to provide fuller coverage of the Mediterranean world (including Byzantium) than can be found in earlier attempts to provide a survey of medieval frontier societies, while in no way neglecting other parts of Europe. Another recent book on medieval and early modern frontiers, edited by Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, has a wider chronological and geographical range than that edited by Bartlett and Mackay; and, interestingly, it pays attention to internal frontiers within areas such as France as well as to the edges of Europe and Asia; overall, its concern is mainly with military frontiers, while a rather wider view of frontier societies has been adopted in this collection than in that of Power and Standen.7 The emphasis of Power and Standen, and their authors, is on ‘frontier control’ and, while they refer more than once to the human encounters that took place and to their cultural results, they are primarily interested in a particular phenomenon: how the medieval frontier zone, whether in China or the West, was controlled, and to what extent the idea of boundary-lines is a creation of the modern nation state. Particularly welcome is their attention to Eurasia: not just imperial China, but also the vast expanses between China and Eastern Europe, which pose special problems to historians of frontiers and of nomadic societies. By contrast with Power and Standen’s book, this volume seeks to examine some of the cultural encounters that took place in frontier regions as well, whether between Lithuanian paganism and Christianity (Raza Ma¿eika), or between Frankish masters and their Muslim and eastern Christian subjects in the Latin East (Jonathan Riley-Smith) and in Cyprus (Peter Edbury), in al-Andalus, Hungary and Crimea, where many faiths co-existed (Christys, Berend, Balard), or still further afield in the eastern Atlantic (my own contribution). This is not, as the contributions by Catherine Holmes and Nora Berend well show, to ignore the problem of frontier defences. Particularly important in the approach adopted here, however, is the role of religious attitudes and institutions

5

6 7

M. González Jiménez, ‘Frontier and settlement in the kingdom of Castile (1085–1350)’, ibid., 49–74; J.E. López de Coca Castañer, ‘Institutions on the Castilian–Granadan frontier, 1369–1482’, ibid., 127–50; A. Mackay, ‘Religion, culture, and ideology on the late medieval Castilian–Granadan frontier’, ibid., 217–43. R.I. Burns, ‘The significance of the frontier in the Middle Ages’, ibid., 317–39. D. Power and N. Standen, eds, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700 (London, 1999).

4

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

on the medieval frontier, as can be judged from Brendan Smith’s valuable account of Church reform in Ireland and the other Celtic lands, or Jonathan Riley-Smith’s assessment of the quasi-dhimmi status of the indigenous inhabitants of the Latin East. This brief survey of some recent literature on the frontier cannot conclude without mentioning important contributions that have been made in France, Spain and elsewhere. Particularly valuable for their range, both geographically and chronologically, have been two volumes edited by Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier.8 Like any conference proceedings – and perhaps this volume is no exception, despite the inclusion of additional material to improve the overall balance – the Balard–Ducellier tomes have something of the character of a miscellany. But in a sense that is the point: there was an enormous variety of frontier ‘experiences’, and any attempt to reduce them to a simple formula is bound to do violence to the evidence. The open spaces of central Asia or the Sahara saw different types of encounter to those experienced along the tightly packed shores of the western Asiatic Levant, or indeed the Spanish Levante, with their numerous towns and intensive agriculture. Of course, it could be argued that the heavily urbanised societies of parts of the Mediterranean generated a different type of contact or confrontation to that found in the wide spaces of Ireland or Prussia. One criterion which might be helpful here is the degree of urbanisation that had taken place in the societies of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam at particular moments; even in Italy, around 1050, there existed no city to compare in wealth and population with the metropolises of the Muslim and Greek Mediterranean, not even partly Byzantine Venice, which was still largely constructed of wood. (Palermo was, of course, at this time a large and prosperous city within the Islamic sphere, populated by Muslims, Greeks and Jews.) The large, complex economies of the Islamic cities of the Mediterranean were characterised by wide diversification and specialisation, by intensive agriculture in those areas which were able to produce suitable crops in what was often a hostile environment short of water, and by short- to medium-distance trade in necessities such as grain and salt. The scale of these enterprises was for long much larger than in Western Europe, though it is possible to argue that by the fifteenth century the economy of Western Europe had moved in a similar direction, helped as well as hindered by the shock of plague and by relative economic decline in the East. Thus we could say that, in economic terms, the Islamic world was more ‘advanced’ than Western Europe for much of the medieval period. No one would doubt that this was true of agricultural technology around 1200.9 Equally, there can be no question that the ‘Stone Age’ 8 9

M. Balard, ed., État et colonisation au Moyen Age (Lyons, 1989); M. Balard and A. Ducellier, eds, Le partage du Monde. Échanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée médiévale (Paris, 1998). A. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge, 1983), and, for Spain, T.F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle (Manchester, 1985).

Introduction

5

societies of the Canaries and the Caribbean penetrated by Western navigators in the fifteenth century were primitive by comparison with late medieval Europe: lacking most or all metals, lacking large conurbations, mostly lacking writing systems. Terms like ‘Stone Age’ impose a set of judgements about the criteria that mark a society as primitive or advanced (thus the highly organised Inca empire lacked wheeled transport, extensive use of metals and writing), though this is not to say that one society cannot be described as more technologically or economically advanced than another. The aim here is to look at several ways in which one might approach the frontier, bearing in mind the different emphases provided by the authors of each chapter in this book. Given the diversity of approaches to the concept of the frontier, this essay will attempt to approach frontiers from very different angles, looking at such features as economic contrasts, language, religion, descriptions of alien human bodies, as well as underlying political concepts which were applicable not just on the outer edges of Greek or Latin Europe, but also to some extent within the heartlands. Such a broad series of approaches should not be taken to imply that there was no concept of the frontier in the minds of medieval observers. Thus we can certainly identify the use of language which describes the special military and ethnic character of border regions, as we see in Byzantine southern Italy after 976, in the ‘theme’ (thema) of Longobardia, or in the Marcher lands of western Britain, Hungary, eastern Germany and so forth.10 Such territories might possess a distinctive autonomy, which could last for many centuries, as can be seen from the experience of the palatine counties in northern England, or in the remarkable survival of local customs enshrined in town statutes in Spanish towns such as Teruel (Aragon) and Cuenca (Castile) long after they had ceased to be anywhere near the frontier with Islam.11 But in general we could say that the ‘medieval frontier’ was not so much an identifiable phenomenon, a hard fact, as it is a conceptual tool used by historians in a wide variety of ways to make sense of social and political developments in those areas of medieval Europe where the predominant values and assumptions of Latin Christendom encountered (or indeed collided with) the values and assumptions of other societies; and pari passu for Byzantium and its own neighbours. Even this is to underestimate the degree of interpenetration between Latin Christendom and its neighbours in areas such as Spain, Sicily or Hungary; or between high Byzantine culture and the societies of Bulgaria, Serbia and indeed Seljuq Rûm: frontiers also provided opportunities for cultural exchange, for religious conversion and for the borrowing of languages or at least of valuable vocabulary. 10 11

For southern Italy, the systematic treatment by Vera von Falkenhausen is helpful: Untersuchungen über die byzantinische Herrschaft in Süditalien vom 9. bis ins 11, Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1967). Most recently, see J.F. Powers, The Code of Cuenca (Philadelphia, PA, 2000).

6

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Where we might find genuine surprise at encountering a different intellectual and religious milieu is among that small group of travellers who went as far as Karakorum and Peking in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, or among those who ventured into Atlantic waters before and soon after 1492.12 The early history of European discovery of a larger world cannot be disconnected from the study of medieval frontiers, as Felipe Fernández-Armesto showed in his masterful study of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Before Columbus. 13 But even here, as we shall see, curiosity was as likely to concentrate on the origins of certain prized spices as it was on the customs and history of strange peoples; in addition, the influence of Mediterranean methods of colonisation on those adopted in the Atlantic remains a live issue.14 Part of the purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate that the first need is to understand the medieval frontier using the political language of the time, rather than by imposing elaborate conceptual frameworks rich in jargon (at worst, the jargon of postmodernists) which often serve to obfuscate rather than to enlighten, and are employed as much to deter those outside the charmed circle of disciples as to instruct those in search of genuine clarification.15 The word ‘liminality’ is used just this once in this introduction, to suggest that any attempt to utilise such a concept presupposes the existence of a discrete phenomenon, which in reality cannot be identified: here, once again, the emperor has no clothes. Still, this attention to contemporary ways of thought cannot always be achieved. To describe the medieval economy in the terms to hand in the twelfth or even the fifteenth century would not be terribly enlightening if we wanted to understand the relationships that developed between ‘old Europe’ and newly occupied lands in the Baltic or the Mediterranean. But the economy is a good place to begin. Core and Periphery: Some Economic Frontiers The concept of an unequal relationship between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ was articulated particularly energetically in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein on the early modern world economy.16 Wallerstein seemed to be unconsciously remoulding some 12 13 14 15 16

‘Peking’ is used because the bizarre modern tendency to use ‘Beijing’ has no more to commend it than calling Florence ‘Firenze’ or Jerusalem ‘Yerushalayim’ in a work in English. F. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London, 1987). C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of European Colonization (Ithaca, NY, 1970); F. Fernández-Armesto, The Canary Islands after the Conquest (Oxford, 1982). On postmodernist history, see Richard Evans, In Defence of History (London, 1997). I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins

Introduction

7

of his evidence to fit broad economic and sociological generalisations concerning the way dominant economies exploited subordinate ones, and it was obvious that his intellectual pedigree lay in sociology rather than in empirical studies of the past. However, similar arguments have also been applied in empirical studies of the economic relations between, say, medieval Sicily and northern Italy, or between the Hansa merchants and the lightly populated lands they exploited for furs, amber and other Baltic products. In the latter region, thinking has to some extent been moulded by Witold Kula’s analysis of economic relationships within early modern Poland.17 When I examined the economic ties between northern and southern Italy during the twelfth century, in a book first published in 1977, I tried to make it plain that in many respects it was the south of Italy that possessed real economic strength, a point I reiterated in a study of the relationship between Florence and Naples around 1300.18 Subsequently Richard Britnell argued that it would be foolhardy to jump to the conclusion that urbanised thirteenth-century Tuscany was in some sense more economically resilient than predominantly rural areas such as England, because Tuscan economic successes depended on the creation of manufacturing industries which were the only way to compensate for poor soils, cramped political boundaries and dense population.19 There was, of course, a vicious circle here: as expanding industry drew more settlers into the towns, the towns became more dependent on outside supplies of the most basic necessities, such as grain. In this sense, at any rate, the economic success of Florence (for example) as a cloth producer was built on sacks of grain from Sicily, Sardinia, Romagna and the Maremma. It would be fair to say that the most active debate about ‘colonial economies’ in the medieval Mediterranean has concerned the place of the Italian south in the

17 18

19

of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York and London, 1974); cf. R.B. Outhwaite, ‘New approaches to European agrarian history’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), 497–502. W. Kula, An Economic Theory of the Feudal System: Towards a Model of the Polich Economy, 1500–1800 (London, 1976). David Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977); the Italian edn, Le Due Italie. Relazioni economiche fra il Regno normanno di Sicilia e i comuni settentrionali (Naples, 1991) has an updated preface which deals with the issue of ‘unequal exchange’ at greater length. See also my ‘Southern Italy and the Florentine economy, 1265–1370’, Economic History Review, 2:33 (1981), 377–88 [ISM] – in citing my articles, I have added the following sigla to indicate whether they have appeared in one of my three volumes in the series of Variorum Collected Studies: ISM = Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987); CCM = Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100–1500 (Aldershot, 1993); ME = Mediterranean Encounters, Economic, Religious, Political, 1100–1550 (Aldershot, 2000). R.H. Britnell, ‘England and northern Italy in the early fourteenth century: the economic contrasts’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5:39 (1989), 167–83.

8

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

systems of exchanges linking the Italian islands and mainland southern Italy to the big cities of northern Italy and of Catalonia. We can see three approaches to the problem of how to define the economic relationship between the very different economies of north and south Italy, and, by extension, other complementary relationships in the Baltic, North Sea and elsewhere: one approach emphasises the dependence of Sicily on foreign merchants, speaking of a ‘colonial’ relationship; another emphasises the continued vitality of the internal market in ‘an island for itself’, and plays down the significance of foreign trade; and a third avoids positive or negative value judgments about the island economy while insisting that foreign demand for the island’s products had a highly stimulating effect on the north Italian economy.20 To say that there were ‘two Italies’ does not necessarily mean that one Italy actually dominated another, even if a complementary relationship between the two parts developed. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century terms, the Italian south was not a more ‘backward’ society than northern Italy; indeed, its rulers maintained the most glittering court in the Latin Christian world, though it was barely in that world, given the strength of Byzantine and Islamic cultural influences, and, of course, the luxurious splendour of Palermo had little meaning to the hard-pressed peasantry of the hilly Sicilian interior: the Norman conquest actually resulted in a decline in the production of specialised products such as cotton, henna and indigo. But what applies in Sicily does not apply nearby in Sardinia, a yet more lightly urbanised land where foreign merchants effected a political takeover; Pisa and Genoa, followed later by the Catalans, were thereby able to mould the island’s economy to meet their needs.21 This was more obviously a ‘colonial’ society than Sicily ever became before 1500, and Sardinia long retained the character of a fossil of the early medieval world in its standard of living, its social relations and much else.22 On the other hand, the island was a welcome source of grain, pastoral products and eventually silver for Italian and Catalan consumers.23 Elsewhere, as in newly conquered Andalusia, low population

20

21

22 23

H. Bresc, Un monde méditerranéen. Économie et société en Sicile, 1300–1450, 2 vols (Palermo and Rome, 1986); S.R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992); D. Abulafia, Le Due Italie, 7–32 (see also the preface to CCM, which is an English version of the same piece). Abulafia, Due Italie, 25–30; there is, of course, a large bibliography on Sardinia, dominated by the writings of Tangheroni, Day, Artizzu, Casula and others: see M. Tangheroni, ‘Sardinia and Corsica from the mid-twelfth to the early fourteenth century’, New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, c. 1198–c. 1300, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 447–57; also the bibliography for that chapter, 898–9. J. Day, La Sardegna sotto la dominazione pisano-genovese (Turin, 1986). (Also published as a lengthy article in La Sardegna medioevale e moderna, UTET Storia d’Italia, ed. G. Galasso [Turin, 1984]). M. Tangheroni, La città dell’argento. Iglesias dalle origini alla fine del Medioevo (Naples, 1985).

Introduction

9

can more likely be attributed to poor reserves of manpower in northern Spain and a consequent lack of interest in settling new lands open to enemy raids; but this also created opportunities for new initiatives in agriculture, such as wine production and the cultivation of exotic fruits.24 However, if we want to find evidence for economic dualism we should also turn to Northern Europe: the Baltic evidence does reveal the intensive exploitation for rye of not particularly fertile lands, in order to supply consumers along the coasts of the Baltic and North Seas, the area once appositely but also confusingly called ‘the Northern Mediterranean’ by Roberto Lopez.25 Lightly urbanised areas in the hinterland became important sources of grain for towns that specialised in the production of cloth or at least the provision of maritime and mercantile services. One feature of the ‘peripheral’ territories, whether or not one accepts the fullblown colonialist argument, is the lightly scattered population in many of them. Sicily, repopulated after the Norman conquest, was certainly short of settlers in the days of Frederick II and Charles I of Anjou. The Baltic rye lands were also lightly populated, though they were the target of a constant stream of German settlers moving from the European heartlands to the relatively open spaces of the East. On the other hand, the picture becomes more varied when we begin to look at a related phenomenon: the use of marginal lands within the heart of Europe, as demographic pressures forced peasants to cultivate less obviously promising terrain in order to try to meet their growing food needs. Mark Bailey has shown that in fact the population on ‘marginal lands’ could grow to very significant levels, because production was maximised by all the means at the community’s disposal, and because the inhabitants diversified into a wide range of income-producing activities, including service industries.26 (This is reminiscent of the situation that had already developed in parts of the Islamic Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages.) Lands such as the East Anglian Brecklands, an area usually regarded as far from Europe’s edges, were also economic frontiers, colonised by land-seeking peasants at the time that eastern Germany or Sicily were being colonised as well. Internal colonisation, internal frontiers, have not featured significantly in discussion of the medieval frontier, though Daniel Power has looked at internal political frontiers within France, and a certain amount of work has been completed on fiscal barriers within European

24 25 26

M. González Jiménez, ‘Pobliamento de la Baja Andalucía: de la repoblación a la crisis (1250–1350)’, Europa en los umbrales de la crisis: 1250–1350. Actas de la XXI Semana de Estudios Medievales de Estella, 18 al 22 de julio de 1.994 (Pamplona, 1995), 63–86. See R.S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1976). M. Bailey, A Marginal Economy? East Anglian Breckland in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989); M. Bailey. ‘The concept of the margin in the medieval English economy’, Economic History Review, 2:42 (1989), 1–17.

10

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

kingdoms in ancien régime Europe.27 It would obviously be valuable if the results of work on internal colonisation could be integrated more fully into debates about the medieval frontier. Put simply, our generalisations about the character of frontier societies are rapidly undermined by an acute awareness of the differences in geography, demography, political and military developments, and cultural influences; no two cases are identical: that goes without saying. Urbanisation is an important yardstick by which to judge levels of demand for specialised goods; the ability of the grain trade to reach distant markets was more obviously characteristic of lightly urbanised regions with consequently weak local demand, though there were certainly exceptions, such as Languedoc, which had plenty of towns and also exported grain. In a sense, of course, all this is a return to ancient debates about realism and nominalism. Do we wish to emphasise the particularities of individual ‘frontier experiences’, or do we seek to generalise about a wider phenomenon? and if so, whose frontier is it anyhow – that of the Byzantine Greeks or the Armenians on the other side? The Umayyads of Córdoba or the fledgling kings of León, Aragon and so on? A World without Edges: Some Political Frontiers On some frontiers, different peoples lived cheek by jowl with one another, so that German farmers were in sight of Slav farmers as each cultivated their land, often using different tools. But there were also the open areas, the home perhaps of nomads, where different concepts of territoriality prevailed. Great spaces, occupied more by sheep than men, where shepherds crossed political boundaries with impunity (as in the centre of Spain at various times, or on the Anatolian plateau between the Greek and Turkish areas of settlement), remind us of the continuing experience of desert peoples in the Sahara or the Middle East: Tuareg and Bedouin who still wander with their flocks from the territory of one state to another, moving from insular oasis to oasis across the sandy sea of the Sahara, without much interest in who claims political control. Rather than thinking of the land as physically divided by artificial lines, these groups express proprietary rights in the way that matters most to their economic survival, such as access to water-holes, grazing for sheep and camels, and surveillance over trade routes for salt and other vital necessities. (Medieval readers of the book of Genesis could experience some of this indirectly through the career of Abraham and Isaac.) These herdsmen are well adapted to the challenge of survival in the hot days and cold nights of an inhospitably dry environment. Such models may be helpful in assessing one type of frontier, the open space separating enemies: an 27

D. Power, ‘French and Norman frontiers in the central Middle Ages’, in Power and Standen, Frontiers in Question, 105–27.

Introduction

11

open space, but not necessarily an empty space, a space in which border raiders and warlords, whether Greek Akritai or Turkish ghazis, wander at will. For Ronnie Ellenblum, the spaces between the political centres of Christian Acre and Muslim Damascus consisted not of carefully defined Frankish and Muslim lands, but of peripheries full of ambiguities, even at times characterised by shared control of pastures; the borderlands were defined by strong points, castles, rather than by sharp lines on a map. In the Lithuanian and Polish lands of north-eastern Europe, illuminated in this book by the chapters of Raza Ma¿eika and Gregorsz Myœliwski, open spaces might be unoccupied and untameable swamp, icy lakes, or dense forest as yet unpenetrated by a scattered population which was not actively searching for new lands since demographic pressures were slight. So how might this be portrayed on a map? Anyone who has had experience of providing maps of medieval Europe for a historical atlas will know that it is generally impossible to provide the sharp lines and bright colours beloved of mapmakers. In part this is the result of the rapid changes in ownership of land in many parts of Europe, so that a map of, say, the Spanish Reconquista must be frozen at a very precise point to bear any relation to reality, and must allow not just for great uncertainties on the part of historians at work many centuries later, but also for contemporary uncertainties about who was in control of which parts of contested territories.28 It is difficult to imagine how the medieval situation could be portrayed on a two-dimensional map. The increasing use of digital atlases on CD and DVD will make it much easier to demonstrate changes over time, as well as three-dimensional perspectives combining physical relief with political and demographic features.29 A very helpful typology of frontier zones has been provided in diagram form by Naomi Standen in her jointly edited book on Frontiers in Question; these range from the ‘linear frontier agreed by treaty’ to ‘frontier fortifications’, ‘communication between centre and periphery’ and indeed wasteland.30 But this assumes an ability to mark on a map features which, with the obvious exception of boundary markers, might be ethereal and lacking in definition: loyalty, ethnic bonds, religious identity, rights assumed by wandering nomads, and so on. And even boundary markers might indicate aspirations rather than realities. However, this difficulty is also the result of the existence of a different political order, in which concepts of sovereignty had not yet reached the harder definitions of the age of Grotius. Indeed, a fundamental principle around 1200 was still the unity

28 29

30

Cf. J. Mestre Campí and F. Sabaté, Atlas de la Reconquista (Barcelona, 1998). A good example of the future trend is the computer-based project entitled ‘The Golden Web’, for mapping trade and travel between East and West from antiquity to early modern times, which is being edited at Cambridge thanks to subventions from the United Arab Emirates. N. Standen ‘Introduction: nine case-studies of pre-modern frontiers’, in Power and Standen, Frontiers in Question, 23.

12

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

of Christendom: Latin Christendom did constitute a political entity, but it was a single entity, despite the practical division of the land among kings, dukes, counts and city states; and the overarching authorities within this unitary society were the pope and the Roman Emperor. The kings were in this theory no more than provincial governors within a single empire. These kings were ‘mere reguli’, kinglets, as the inimitable Walter Ullmann was wont to say: as late as the reign of Henry II of England, lesser kings were still capable of expressing their respect for the higher authority of the Roman Emperor, even if they had no desire to see it expressed in practical terms, and exercised a sort of imperial (with a small ‘i’) power of their own.31 After all, some of that Roman imperial power could, and was meant to, rub off on them, as can be seen in the awareness that Henry II was the son of an empress. Some kings, notably in Sicily, might adopt the trappings of Roman and Byzantine imperial ceremonial; but they received short shrift if they attempted to claim parity with the Western or Eastern emperor. For the Caesaropapism of Byzantium also emphasised the universal authority of the emperor as vicar of Christ, and the irritating phenomenon of rival emperors and kings in West and East was eventually addressed by asserting (as Jonathan Shepard shows in his widely ranging article) that the Greek emperors were actually the one and only ‘emperors of the Romans’, so whatever courtesy title was bestowed on Germans, Bulgarians, Serbs or indeed Arabs did not, and could not, undermine the unity of Christendom under the one true Roman Emperor. Even Muslim lands were not completely outside the imperial orbit, since Byzantium relished its role as protector of Orthodox Christians in Islamic lands, and this was recognised by several caliphs in the symbolic gift of the keys to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to the emperor in Constantinople. Another area in which claims to universal authority were expressed was dominion over as yet unclaimed territories, and this certainly has relevance to the issue of medieval frontiers. We can begin with the classic study by Luis Weckmann of the origins of the theories enshrined in the Treaty of Tordesillas which, in 1494, divided the world beyond Europe into Portuguese and Castilian spheres of influence.32 Weckmann considered that the roots of Alexander VI’s policy at this time lay in a widely exercised claim by the papacy to dominion over all islands, territories which lay beyond the edges of the continental land mass, and were otherwise of doubtful political attribution. From this perspective the Americas could be seen not as two 31

32

Otto of Freising and his Continuator Rahewin, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, ed. and tr. C.C. Mierow and R. Emery (New York, 1953), 178–9; R. Folz, The Concept of Empire in Western Europe from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1969), 109–10, 196–7. L. Weckmann, Constantino el Grande y Cristobal Colón. Estudio de la supremacia papal sobre islas (1091–1494), with an introduction by Ernst Kantorowicz (2nd edn, Mexico City, 1992. The original edition was entitled Las Bulas Alejandrinas del 1493 y la teoría política del papado medieval (Mexico City, 1949).

Introduction

13

massive continents, but as two rather substantial conjoined islands, in urgent need of Christian political direction. A fundamental criticism of his work is that, in his anxiety to prove his thesis, Weckmann crammed into the argument an enormously divergent mix of territories over nearly half a millennium. These islands included Jerba on the edge of North Africa, which Boniface VIII certainly did claim in some fashion, and the Canaries, the ‘Happy Islands’ of which Clement VI was indeed happy to dispose.33 Sardinia, too, was the focus of competition between popes and emperors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and, after much tergiversation, Boniface VIII granted it to the King of Aragon along with Corsica.34 But whether, and how, this claim to insular dominion was extended to the British Isles and Scandinavia, then often seen as an island, is more complex; thus the submission of King John of England to Pope Innocent III was not apparently the result of any broad claim to insular dominion, but rather had its origins in a struggle for control of the Church which was itself part of a wider conflict between the notorious English king and his greater subjects.35 However, it is also clear that the papacy was deeply offended by the attempts of Emperor Frederick II to impose as king in Sardinia his much-loved illegitimate son Enzo; for Frederick, his authority as emperor gave him the right to create subordinate kingdoms, so that he elevated the old judgeship of Torres and Gallura into a fullyfledged kingdom.36 Similarly, his father Henry VI had sent crowns to the rulers of Cyprus and Cilician Armenia, in his capacity as universal emperor.37 The papacy, too, had a long record of creating frontier kingdoms, extending to Armenia (again), the Iberian peninsula (Portugal), Eastern Europe and the Italian islands. Indeed, the phenomenon of the creation of new kingdoms is one that has for long cried out for treatment. Among the new monarchies of the central Middle Ages, it was only apparently in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem that the rulers did not owe their crown to a gift by pope or emperor, though even there, for a time, the rulers of the kingdom became in some sense the vassals of Byzantium.38 By definition such imperial and

33

34 35 36 37 38

For Clement and the Canaries, see my article in this volume; for Boniface and Jerba, J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: The Church and the non-Christian World, 1250–1500 (Liverpool, 1979), 54, 56, 90, noting, however, that he confuses Roger de Lauria with the Doria family of Genoa. Tangheroni, ‘Sardinia and Corsica’, 457; David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion (London, 1997), 48, 62, 115–16, 124–5. W.L. Warren, King John (London, 1961) 191, 228–9. David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 1988), 311–12. P.W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991), 31–2; T.S.R. Boase, ‘The history of the kingdom’, The Ciliciam Kingdom of Armenia, ed. T.S.R. Boase (Edinburgh, 1978), 18–19. On this see R.-J. Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204 (Oxford, 1993).

14

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

papal claims to universal dominion had no hard outside edges or boundary lines, whatever practical reality might seem to suggest. And indeed papal universalism was still the clarion call of the Roman curia when Boniface VIII issued his highly conservative bull Unam Sanctam in 1302.39 This lack of sharp lines is also a reflection of the political realities of a lengthy period in which monarchs might exercise more power outside their kingdoms than in them (as for example under Henry II of England, with his lands in France, or the contemporary rulers of Aragon, with their interests in Catalonia and southern France), and in which the tenure of land from many masters was frequent, if also at times problematic. Yet it was also possible for a king (the King of Majorca) to hold all his lands either from the count-king of Aragon-Catalonia or from the King of France, though it rapidly became clear that this involved a serious compromise concerning the nature of royal authority, a situation at various times mirrored in the Eastern European kingdoms and in Scotland.40 Such ambiguous relationships are also visible in the Byzantine ‘Commonwealth’.41 When scholars such as Catherine Holmes insist with justice on the open nature of the frontier between Byzantium and Islam, or other neighbours, and on the compromises which brought a Muslim such as ibn Marwan into the Byzantine political fold, the situation being described there seems not very different from that in, say, the Pyrenees or the Alps during the thirteenth century, a good distance from the Muslim territories in Spain and the Mediterranean: the counts of Béarn and Foix showed extraordinary agility in their dealings with the five European kings who aspired to land and influence in southern France; and to all intents and purposes they ruled autonomous statelets which were only in the most nominal sense under French authority.42 Treaties such as those made at Corbeil (1258) and Paris (1259) by Louis IX of France indicate an awareness of the need to define boundaries with some care, even if in the longer term the compromises made with the English king over Gascony proved unworkable: the origins of the Hundred Years’ War, as convincingly explained by Malcolm Vale, must be traced back to the lack of sharp definition of French and English rights in border areas between Gascony and lands in which the Plantagenets 39 40

41 42

There is still no study to rival that of T.S.R. Boase, Boniface VIII (London, 1933). David Abulafia, ‘Consideraciones sobre la historia del reino de Mallorca: Mallorca entre Francia y Aragón’, El Regne de Mallorca a l’època de la dinastia privativa. XVI Jornades de Història Local, Ciutat de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca, 1998 [ME]) 37–52, especially 38–43; David Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge, 1994), 34–55, for the ‘constitutional problem’ that arose from the kingdom’s creation. D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth (London, 1971), for the concept. The five kings were the rulers of Aragon, England, France, Majorca, Navarre (which was occasionally ruled by the French king). For Foix and Navarre, see C. Bourret, Un royaume ‘transpyrénéen’? (Aspet, 1998).

Introduction

15

had no authority, while the right claimed by the French crown to intervene in criminal cases within Gascony raised important questions of principle and set off acute tensions.43 In the Mediterranean, we can find in the principality of Antioch, the county of Edessa and the county of Tripoli all the lack of definition about sovereign authority and relations with neighbouring great powers that can be observed in the Pyrenees a couple of centuries later. What were the ties linking Antioch to Byzantium? Or to Jerusalem? These were issues that caused much concern, indeed offence, in Constantinople under Alexios, John and Manuel Komnenos.44 And that is only the beginning of the problem, for any attempt to define the outer edges of the Latin states in the East flies in the face of the argument that there were no hard boundaries, but zones of influence, strong points and safe areas, of the sort that Ronnie Ellenblum describes in this volume. Of course, that is not to say hard boundaries did not exist. Boundaries were expressed not just by the stone markers that occasionally stood at roadsides, as was the case around 1300 at the exact point where Aragonese-Majorcan Roussillon joined French Languedoc. They also found an important expression in customs stations, and the right to collect taxes from merchants in transit could become a very important expression of royal authority. This can be seen, for example, in the three-cornered struggle between about 1298 and 1311, involving Catalan merchants, the King of Aragon and the King of Majorca over the taxation of Catalan businessmen trading through the port of Collioure, now almost the last port of call before Mediterranean France gives way to Catalonia, but then the major outlet of the mainland territories of the kingdom of Majorca into the Mediterranean.45 By naming ports through which licensed trade could pass, rulers of southern Italy, notably Frederick II and Charles I of Anjou, also made plain the physical boundaries of the kingdom, even if they were actually incapable of preventing smuggling and small-scale traffic out of minor harbours or off sandy beaches.46 Boundary markers, ranging from trees and streams to man-made devices, were also familiar in many localities, separating the lands of various lords and tenants; Dr Myœliwski has shown in this book how the boundarymarker evolved in Mazovia, and what it signified. Similar work could usefully examine the role of the ancient English hedges, or of dykes and embankments in the Low Countries, as markers of limits of ownership at the most local level. And, to descend into minutiae, but not trivia, even a piece of pottery marked with the name 43 44 45 46

M.G.A. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years’ War: The Angevin legacy 1250–1340 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1996; first edition simply The Angevin Legacy, 1990). Lilie, Byzantium and the crusader States. A. Riera Melis, La Corona de Aragón y el reino de Mallorca en el primer cuarto del siglo XIV, vol. 1, Las repercussiones arancelarias de la autonomía balear (1298–1311) (Barcelona, 1986). Abulafia, Frederick II, 333.

16

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

or sign of its owner contains a boundary marker of sorts; an example within the territories discussed so far might be the pottery carrying the arms of the King of Majorca unearthed in the Majorcan lordship of Montpellier, where any indication of Majorcan rights was worth insisting upon, in the face of constant French encroachment.47 Enclaves and Anomalies: Some Miniature Frontiers One way of approaching the problem of defining who exercises power in the frontier zones might be to attempt to apply the classic question, ‘Where does sovereignty lie?’ Such an approach would work quite well in an attempt to deconstruct those treaties of Louis IX with Aragon and England which have just been mentioned. But in trying to ask the question we would also be forced to confront the lack of certainty about what the answer is, in a great many settings, not just on the edges of Christendom, but also in the heartlands of Europe; this uncertainty is shared between modern historians and medieval people, who were often themselves unclear how to resolve competing claims. Thus the thirteenth-century struggles between the counts of Anjou and Provence (who were also kings of Naples) for control of the counties of Nice and Ventimiglia created a highly unstable situation along the coastline linking Provence and Liguria, in which Genoese and Angevins of Naples competed for higher authority. This was no mere local dispute; the contest brought into conflict with one another two of the great powers of the medieval Mediterranean, and it could also be exploited to remarkable effect by local seigneurs who played one power off against another: counts of Ventimiglia, Grimaldi lords of Monaco (still present), and so on.48 Instructive examples can also be found in the medieval history of another miniature state which lingers in modern Europe: Andorra provides a marvellous example of a combined jurisdiction, originating in the thirteenth century in territorial disagreements between the bishops of Urgell and the powerful counts of Foix; these seem mainly to have benefited the local inhabitants, who found themselves left to a large extent undisturbed by the political rivalries that convulsed the Pyrenees in the later Middle Ages.49 The survival of Andorra also underlines the advantages that were experienced by mountain communities, better able to defend themselves 47 48

49

R. Saint-Jean and G. Romestan, Vingt années de dons, acquisitions et restaurations, 1968–1988, dans les collections de la Société archéologique de Montpellier, novembre–décembre 1988 (Montpellier, 1988), 18–19, items 30–33, especially 31. A. Venturini, ed., Le Comté de Ventimiglia et la famille comtale. Colloque des 11 et 12 octobre 1997 (Menton, 1998). For the survival of one of these lordships, Monaco, see J. Duursma, Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States: Selfdetermination and Statehood (Cambridge, 1996). P. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, CA, 1999), 185–90.

Introduction

17

against predatory lords; though this must not be taken to extremes, since, as Horden and Purcell have observed in their ambitious survey of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean, what also mattered was a modicum of ease in gaining access to the outside world, in order to guarantee economic survival, an image which also persists in the innovative research of Chris Wickham on mountain communities in twelfthcentury Tuscany.50 Paul Freedman wisely observes that difficulty of access ‘is not the same thing as isolation’, and that it was the importance rather than remoteness of the Swiss mountain passes that gave the cantons negotiating power when confronted by the Habsburgs and others.51 And in economics, as in politics, autonomy is rarely absolute; the claims to sovereignty of the modern state, large or small, are compromised by mutual treaties, defence pacts, economic agreements and so on. Fuzzy boundaries may be less obvious in the twenty-first century; but they certainly are ever-present. The title of this section of this essay, ‘Enclaves and Anomalies’, is borrowed from the work of L.P. Harvey on later Islamic Spain.52 Harvey has discussed a number of Muslim-controlled entities that survived the advance of the Christian armies in thirteenth-century Iberia, and the collapse of the Almohad empire. Crevillente, which lingered until 1318, was a small patch of land between the Castilian and Aragonese areas of control. Pierre Guichard emphasized that the ra’is or Lord of Crevillente was treated as an independent prince when the Aragonese sent embassies southwards towards Granada.53 However, there can be little doubt that the survival of Crevillente owed a great deal to its situation on the edge of the Castilian and Aragonese spheres of influence, and that the ra’is had little freedom of manoeuvre in external affairs. By the early fourteenth century he was clearly operating within a Castilian shadow. A second example is furnished by the island of Minorca, which entered into a pact with the King of Aragon in 1231, paying tribute and acknowledging the higher authority of that king; at the same time, the Aragonese made no attempt to interfere in the island’s internal affairs (except, in theory, in the case of a contested election of the local ruler), and guaranteed the right of the inhabitants to practise Islam, and even to exclude Christian or Jewish settlers from Minorca. The reality is that its inhabitants could lead their lives with little overt change after 1231, while in its external affairs the island was entirely constrained by its agreement with King James of Aragon.54 And this 50 51 52 53 54

P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, vol. 1 Oxford, 2000); C. Wickham, The Mountains and the City: The Tuscan Apennines in the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988). Freedman, Images, 189. L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 (Chicago, 1991), 41–54. P. Guichard, Un Señor musulmán en la España cristiana. El ‘ra’is’ de Crevillente (1245–1318) (Crevillente, 1999); originally published in French in Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 9 (1973), 283–334. Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, 65–72.

18

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

phenomenon can be observed elsewhere in Spain at the same period. The historians of Valencia Robert Burns and Paul Chevedden have studied to remarkable effect two surviving bilingual surrender treaties from the 1240s. The terms which were listed in the Arabic version have a different tone to those laid out in the vernacular or Latin versions, which are not by any means literal translations: for the Muslims, the surrender treaty had the character of a slightly unequal alliance, with limited loss of face for the Muslims; while for the Christians their own version portrayed a surrender, on agreed terms, in which the Christians assumed the right to guarantee the subject population such necessities as the freedom to practise Islam.55 The phenomenon of the surrender treaties in thirteenth-century Spain reveals the ambiguities and lack of sharp lines that existed on the Christian–Muslim frontier at this period.56 Christian Spain, at least in Valencia, had no hard edges, and the Christian presence was made visible mainly by occupied strong points, such as Templar castles, which looked over lands still cultivated (in some cases until the seventeenth century) by a Moorish population. At any rate, the kingdom of Valencia in the late thirteenth century can be characterised as a series of Muslim enclaves held together within a loose political structure controlled by the Christian King of Aragon: ‘bubbles’ with an outer Christian skin, but Muslim air within. On the other hand, late medieval Granada was protected by both natural defences in the sierra and a ‘necklace’ of forts to keep the Christians at bay; there the frontier acquires sharper definition.57 We should not be deceived by the occasional payment of tribute by the Granadans to Castile; this may have suggested submission to the Christians, but clearly was no more than a convenience for the Muslims, who sought to limit raids on their territory: Harvey speaks wisely of ‘a lack of communication between two incompatible worlds’ when it came to Christian claims that Granada was in some sense a vassal of Castile. A further type of enclave that merits consideration is the merchant colony. From the end of the eleventh century, fonduks, combining warehouses, churches, bakehouses, baths and other facilities, were founded along the coasts of North Africa, and in the Holy Land and Byzantium. Although the exact arrangements varied, they were often governed by consuls appointed by the mother city from which their merchants hailed, and they could enjoy extensive rights of tax exemption, as in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, where the Italian communities also had considerable political leverage.58 The consuls would generally expect to handle non-criminal legal cases that arose between merchants of their community; and some communities, such as 55 56 57 58

R.I. Burns, P. Chevedden, M. de Epalza, Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim–Christian Spain under James the Conqueror (Leiden, 1999). Harvey, Islamic Spain, 26–7. See the articles on the Castilian–Granadan frontier in Bartlett and Mackay, Medieval Frontier Societies (n. 7 and 8). David Abulafia, ‘Gli italiani fuori d’Italia’, Storia dell’economia italiana Einaudi, ed. R. Romano (Turin, 1990 [CCM]), vol. 1, 272–5.

Introduction

19

the Pisans in the Holy Land, regularly adopted lesser communities of merchants, for instance those of the Tuscan hinterland, to increase their economic and political power, prestige and income.59 As self-governing communities, often surrounded by walls, or at least defined geographical limits, and with a distinct religious affiliation, the merchant colonies reveal striking structural similarities to the Jewish ghetto or the Muslim aljama. Similar, too, were the self-governing enclaves owned by the military orders in Acre and elsewhere. The exact legal status varied: in several of the Venetian overseas colonies it was one or another of the great churches of the republic that technically possessed the foreign dependency.60 Nor was the merchant settlement by any means an exclusively Mediterranean phenomenon. The settlements of German merchants in the Baltic and North Sea regions, from the London and Lynn ‘Steelyards’, through Visby to the Peterhof in Novgorod, show similar characteristics: a strong sense of identity expressed through language and ethnicity, and a strong sense of the need for security for their goods and cash.61 At the meeting point of the South European and North European long-distance trading networks, in Bruges, the houses of the Genoese, Florentines and ‘Easterlings’ were close by one another. It was not, however, always clear who belonged to a merchant community and who was a naturalised settler: the Byzantine sources in the twelfth century already distnguished the Venetian merchants in Constantinople from the ‘burgesses’ (bourgesioi) who had become permanent residents; and in England successful foreign denizens eventually gained influence at court, from Sir Anthony Pessagne (Pessagno) of Genoa in the early fourteenth century to Sir Orazio Pallavicino, Squire of Babraham near Cambridge, in the sixteenth.62 Such integration into the host society was far rarer among Christian merchants trading in the Muslim Mediterranean, though even there it was not completely unknown. Of course, there are many other types of enclave that might be worth examination: little republics or pirate states stuck on rocky shores (Dubrovnik), precipitous mountains (Brissago), islands and promontories (Piombino with Elba), or indeed isolated marshes, for these were environments which could provide an ideal habitat for what were in some cases relatively egalitarian communities that were able to escape from the lordship of much greater neighbours. 59

60 61 62

D. Abulafia, ‘The Levant trade of the minor cities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: strengths and weaknesses’, The Medieval Levant: Studies in memory of Eliyahu Ashtor (1914–1984), ed. B.Z. Kedar and A. Udovitch; also published in Asian and African Studies, 22 (1988), 183–202 (CCM). Abulafia, ‘Italiani fuori d’Italia, 269. A considerable part of the structure of the Steelyard still survives at King’s Lynn, though all traces above ground have vanished in London. D. Abulafia, ‘Cittadino e denizen: mercanti mediterranei a Londra e Southampton’, Sistema di rapporti ed élites economiche in Europa (secoli XII–XVII), ed. M. del Treppo (Europa Mediterranea, Quaderni, 8, Naples, 1994, [ME]), 287–90.

20

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Language and Identity: Some Cultural Frontiers The study of enclaves and anomalies is not an antiquarian pursuit, a love of the minuscule when the historian needs rather to consider the bigger picture. By understanding the exceptions we gain some idea of the political assumptions of the time. But enclaves are not simply defined in political terms. When looking at southern Italy in the late thirteenth century, we need to consider ethnic, linguistic and religious enclaves as well: Lucera, the city repopulated with Muslims by order of Frederick II; the settlements of Greeks, Armenians and Slavs (to which in the fifteenth century would be added many Albanians as well); the occasional outpost of Waldensian belief.63 Probably such micro-societies, retaining distinctive cultural traditions, languages or other markers of their identity, were much more common in high medieval society than scholars have assumed, taking as they often do the view from the windows of the royal administrative departments. Mountain societies provided redoubts in which languages and place names from past times lingered: the Val d’Aran in the Pyrenees still retains its Gascon dialect, cut off as it often was from its mother kingdom of Aragon by the winter snows.64 The survival of Basque, of which a few words are preserved in guides for medieval pilgrims travelling the Way of St James, is evidence that very ancient languages and peoples were able to resist encroachment by the dominant, Romance-speaking societies of Iberia and southern France.65 So too place-name evidence from the Danish world has been used to interesting effect by Dr Jensen in his study of Denmark’s Baltic frontier in this volume. These linguistic enclaves were especially noticeable on the edges of Latin Christendom, where migration from the European heartlands had lasting effects: in the marshes of the Upper Elbe, the communities of Flemish settlers retained their language until the early twentieth century, having arrived in the twelfth and thirteenth;66 attempts to repopulate the area around Muslim Lucera in southern Italy with Franco-Provençal settlers have resulted in the survival to modern times of Franco-Provençal dialects in a couple of small towns in the region of Capitanata.67 In 63 64 65 66 67

V. Giura, Storia delle minoranze. Ebrei, Greci, Albanesi nel Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1984); A. Rognoni and M.F. Arcioni, Altre Italie. Tradizioni e costumi dlle minoranze etniche italiane (Milan, 1991). J. Lladonosa, Invasions i intents d’integració de la Vall d’Aran a França (Barcelona, 1967); J. Reglà, Francia, la Corona e Aragón y la frontiera pirenaica. La lucha por el Valle de Arán, siglos XII–XV, 2 vols (Madrid, 1951). R. Collins, The Basques (The Peoples of Europe, Oxford, 1986). Bartlett, Making of Europe, 114–15. M. Melilli, ed., Storia e cultura dei francoprovenzali di Colle e Faeto (Manfredonia, 1978); D. Kattenbusch, Das Franko-Provenzalische in Süditalien. Studien zur synchronischen und diachronischen Dialektologie (Tübingen, 1982).

Introduction

21

Spain, pockets of Christian Arab speakers could be found surprisingly far north, raising interesting questions about their ancestry.68 Perhaps a babel of languages was more characteristic of the early Islamic world, where movement by merchants and migrants across vast distances was relatively easy, and the great cities acted as a magnet for settlers of many faiths and languages.69 But great diversity could also be observed on the north-eastern frontiers, where new towns such as Riga and Elbing became German-speaking islands in a Baltic sea of languages. Particularly interesting is the way that population movements carried languages in some instances, and failed to do so in others. Why did Berber tongues leave so little trace in Spain, place-names apart, when so many of the invading armies in and after 711 consisted of Berbers, many of whom were probably not even Muslim (and thus attracted to Arabic) but Jewish, Christian and pagan?70 Why did the Turkic Bulgars end up speaking a Slavonic language, while Slavonic invasions left little imprint on the Greek of the southern Balkans? Why did a Romance language, well mixed, it is true, with Slavonic terms, survive among Wallachians and Vlachs, until it was ready to be reinjected with plenty of French and Italian, and reborn in the nineteenth century as Rumanian?71 Sicily acquired its vernacular Italian in the twelfth and thirteenth century; even if the old population of Greek, Arab and Berber culture was not completely displaced, a new culture, religion and language acquired a strong hold on the island as northern settlers moved from Liguria, Tuscany and Provence to Messina, Palermo and the towns of the Sicilian interior.72 In Sardinia, a form of vulgar Latin persisted, though in Alghero, resettled in the fourteenth century by Catalans, Catalan remains a spoken language.73 Even more remarkable is the way in which the island dependencies of the kingdom of Sicily, Malta and Pantelleria, did not participate in the language change that enveloped the mother island of Sicily, despite some evidence for the arrival of Latin settlers in Malta during the thirteenth century, 68

69 70

71 72 73

E. Manzano Moreno, ‘The Christian–Muslim frontier in al-Andalus: idea and reality’, The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, ed. D. Agius and R. Hitchcock (Reading, 1994), 95; idem, ‘Islam and Christianity in the Iberian peninsula’, Frontiers in Question, 43–4, 53. X. de Planhol, Minorités en Islam. Géographie politique et sociale (Paris, 1997); David Abulafia, ‘Minorities in Islam: reflections on a new book by Xavier de Planhol’, European Review, 7 (1999). For an especially provocative view of these problems, see P. Wexler, The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews (New York, 1996); similar conclusions, using traditional sources, are reached by D. Nebot, Les tribus oubliées d’Israël. L’Afrique judéo-berbère des origines aux Almohades (Paris, 1999). T.J. Winnifrith, The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People (London, 1987). David Abulafia, ‘The end of Muslim Sicily’, Muslims under Latin rule, 1100–1300, ed. J.M. Powell (Princeton, NJ, 1990 [CCM]), 103–33. J. Carbonell, F. Maconi, eds, I Catalani in Sardegna (Cinisello Balsamo, 1984); also published in Catalan as Els Catalans en Sardenya (Barcelona, 1984).

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

and for the removal of the Muslim population. The language that lasted into the fifteenth century, and beyond, on Malta and Gozo was that of the Islamic era: Maltese is unquestionably a form of medieval Siculo-Arabic.74 Pantelleria, meanwhile, was from the thirteenth century a condominium of the Christian rulers of Sicily and the Muslim rulers of Tunis, and its Arabic-speaking inhabitants were sometimes employed as dragomans at the Sicilian royal court.75 Conservatism in speech may indicate a stable population, though by no means necessarily so. Blood group investigations among the Basques of north-eastern Spain and south-western France suggest that the Basque people predominantly consists of the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the Pyrenees and adjacent regions. It has even been argued that the characteristic transformation of a hard ‘k’ sound in the Italian of Florence and Siena into an aspirated ‘h’ sound (hasa for casa, hompi for campi) is a survival from Etruscan speech, in which the same sound shift occurred; here, too, genetic studies have achieved some results and promise more concerning the long-term stability, or otherwise, of the Tuscan population since the Etruscan period.76 Further studies of ethnic origins will continue, based on increasingly sophisticated use of the evidence from DNA; it is expected that the history of the Sicilian population will be examined this way, as also that of the Jews in Europe and the Islamic world.77 Another very interesting case of linguistic conservatism is that of the Mozarabic Christians in Spain: after the fall of Toledo to the Castilians in 1085 the Mozarabs were granted their own parishes in the city, and they continued to use Arabic in their charters for a couple of centuries. But there was also a Romance Mozarabic language, or languages, quite similar to Castilian, which continued to be recorded in the poetry of Jewish courtiers in Toledo up to the late thirteenth century. The Hebrew poet Todros ben Judah Abulafia, active around 1280, calls Mozarabic Romance ‘the language of the Christians’; it had almost certainly been used by Christians and Muslims in southern Spain in previous centuries, alongside or in place of Arabic.78 Clearly the Christian city of Toledo was for long polyglot, all of which

74 75 76

77 78

G. Wettinger and M. Fsadni, Peter Caxaro’s ‘Cantilena’: A Poem in Medieval Maltese (Malta, 1968). H. Bresc, ‘Pantelleria entre l’Islam et la Chrétienté’, Cahiers de Tunisie, 19 (1971), 105–27. H.J. Izzo, Tuscan and Etruscan (Toronto, 1972); Ciba Foundation Symposium on Medical Biology and Etruscan Origins, ed. G.E.W. Wolstenholme and C. O’Connor (London, 1959), though obviously this needs updating in the light of later scientific knowledge. This refers to various projects under way or planned at Cambridge University, London University and elsewhere. R. Sampson, Early Romance Texts: An Anthology (Cambridge, 1980), 26: ‘I cry out in the language of the Christians: “Vaišše [?] meu corajon de mib . . .” [“Go, my heart, from me . . .”]’; S. Stern, Les Chansons Mozarabes (2nd edn, Oxford, 1964).

Introduction

23

helped to foster its role as a centre for translation work in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. People did not simply learn the language of the conqueror and forget their own speech. Language mattered to observers in the high and late Middle Ages. The Catalan mercenary and chronicler Ramon Muntaner took enormous pride in the Catalan linguistic community, spread in his day across the Mediterranean; whether in Murcia or Catania, he was sure of finding folk who spoke ‘the best Catalan in the world’.79 A term that constantly describes those who speak distinctive languages is ‘Welsh’, w-l-s, g-l-s: all it means is ‘foreigners’, whether applied to Galicians in Iberia, Galicians in Poland, Wallachians in Romania, Vlachs in Greece, Welshmen in western Britain, foreign moneyers at the Vlašsky dvùr (Welsches Hof) at Kutna Hora in Bohemia or Walloons in Flanders; each time it is the same word, which the ‘foreigners’ then to some extent adopted to describe themselves (though not completely: Wales remains Cymru in the eyes and ears of its Celtic-speaking inhabitants).80 This partly proves the argument that peoples often have names for their neighbours but not for themselves, since to themselves they are simply ‘we’, and to adopt a name they will have to learn how others describe them. But the fundamental point is that it would be an error to underestimate the enormous linguistic and ethnic diversity of societies not just on the medieval frontiers, but even in the heart of Europe. In fact, Jews and other distinctive groups might be especially conservative in their use of language. When the thirteenth-century mystic Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia arrived in Sicily he was struck by the retention of Arabic among the Jews of the island, several decades after the Muslim population had been shunted off to Lucera and elsewhere.81 But this conservatism was also visible among the Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe (Yiddish is a form of Rhineland German, with a thick layer of Hebrew and, in the East, of Slavonic vocabulary), or among the Sephardic Jews who left Spain around 1492 (what is often called Ladino is basically fifteenth-century Castilian). Naturally, there is some debate as to the identity of Jewish versions of European languages: do they seem different because they are generally written in a different alphabet, Hebrew, which is not well adapted to Romance speech? Alphabet follows religion, but language may or may not do so.82 Judaeo-Catalan seems not to be particularly different from late medieval Catalan, and Judaeo-Maltese

79 80 81 82

Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, in F. Soldevila, ed., Les Quatre Grans Cròniques (Barcelona, 1971), and other editions. I owe these observations to discussions with Dr J. Cremona, Prof. A. Varvaro and Prof.ssa R. Sernicola in Naples in January 2001. Abulafia, ‘End of Muslim Sicily’, 118. For the concept of ‘alphabet follows religion’, see D. Diringer, Writing (Ancient Peoples and Places, London, 1962).

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

is only distinguished by the expected Hebrew technical terms, used in a religious context.83 The intention of this section is merely to pose questions of the sort that a historian might want to see answered concerning language, ethnic identity, migration and so on. There remain many uncertainties about the use and diffusion of languages on Europe’s medieval edges, and the reluctance of historians to try to interpret the insights of philologists – often, it is true, highly technical – is partly to blame. Distant Horizons: Some Mental Frontiers The most intriguing question for many historians is how the encounters between different cultures and religions altered the mental horizons of those who were involved, and of those who read reports of these encounters. The question is intriguing not merely in itself, but also because of the methodological problems it poses: it is notoriously difficult to decide what face value to place on descriptions of encounters which are only available from one side. In descriptions of illiterate societies in particular, the ‘accuracy’ of European descriptions is bound to be a major issue: as well as the case of the Canary Islanders, discussed in this volume, one could cite the earliest descriptions (by Westerners, of course) of the beliefs of the Arawak Indians in Hispaniola or of the Tupinambá cannibals encountered in Brazil in 1500.84 The interest of Western authors in such themes as the nakedness of primitive peoples (which they could interpret several ways, as a sign of their paradisiacal state of nature, or of their bestiality) clearly reflects Western obsessions, some of them quite simply the result of the acute and crude sexual hunger of the sailors after long voyages without female company. Some would argue that we have to wait for Montaigne’s essay Des Cannibales to gain a sense of proportion, an attempt to understand the values of the other side, even if they are not exactly to the Western taste.85 Another interest of Western observers was the social structure of the newly encountered

83 84

85

G. Wettinger, The Jews of Malta in the late Middle Ages (Malta, 1985), 154–73. Particularly helpful is the new American version of Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, ed. J.J. Arrom, tr. S.C. Griswold (Durham, NC, 1999); this is an authoritative version of the text contained within The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by his Son Ferdinand, ed. and tr. B. Keen (2nd edn New Brunswick, NJ, 1992). For Pero or Pedro Vaz da Caminha, the many editions and translations include, among the most recent: S. Castro, A Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha (Porto Alegre and São Paulo, 2000); A. Willemsen, De Ontdekking van Brazilië (Amsterdam, 1999); C.D. Ley, ed., Portuguese Voyages, 1498–1663 (3rd edn, London, 2000), 41–59. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. A. Micha (Paris, 1969), vol. 1, 251–63, essay 31; F. Lestringant, Cannibals (Berkeley, 1997).

Introduction

25

peoples, which was easily assumed to mirror that of Western society, with kings, nobles and lesser orders, an assumption which was also applied to encounters with the first Gypsies to reach Western Europe in the fifteenth century; Hermannus Cornerus relates of the Gypsies that ‘they also had chieftains among them, that is a duke and a count who administered justice over them’.86 Similar assumptions litter the accounts of the Canary Islanders. Looking at other peoples did not necessarily involve thinking hard about their physical attributes, but some authors were struck by physical differences. A number of descriptions of foreign slaves and their physical distinctiveness survive from the Middle Ages, which have recently been discussed in an innovative book by Steven Epstein.87 In the thirteenth century, the Mongols aroused fear as a result of their appearance, which combined distinctive facial features with habits and clothing unfamiliar to Westerners (who appear to have been revolted by the smell of clothes worn all year round, among other things);88 occasionally observers, ancient, Islamic and Western medieval, indicated that they did not appreciate the physical appearance of Black Africans, though some authors, such as Alvise da Cà da Mosto, a Venetian in Portuguese service, were clearly impressed by the physical appearance of African warriors, and (to use modern language) were very unprejudiced: ‘they seemed to us to be men who were most handsome of body, very black’. Sir Peter Russell notes that the author shows his usual ‘absence of racialist sentiments’.89 The Lübecker Cornerus described the Sinti and Roma (or ‘Gypsies’) who arrived in Swabia in 1417 as ‘very ugly in appearance and black as Tartars’, also attributing to them thievishness.90 However, opprobrious remarks about physical appearance were not a total novelty: in the twelfth century, the well-known description of Magyar customs by Bishop Otto of Freising may, for all one knows, owe a great deal to standard literary topoi that have their origins in Western reactions to much earlier waves of invaders, since it immediately follows a discussion of the Huns and Avars, ‘who eat raw and putrid meat’. In any case, writing in an aggressive tone, the bishop stresses the supposed physical differences between tall Germans and short, fierce Magyars, the latter apparently still looking a good deal like their Ostyak and Buryat cousins from

86

87 88 89 90

A. Fraser, The Gypsies (The Peoples of Europe, Oxford, 1992), 67–71; also, the chapter on the Gypsies in B. Geremek, Uomini senza padrone: poveri e marginali tra Medioevo e età moderna (Turin, 1992). This is a subject that cries out for fuller treatment, but the Gypsies, unlike the Jews, Armenians and other minorities, have tended to lack their own historians. S.A. Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca, NY, 2001), especially 103–14. J.R.S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (2nd edn, Oxford, 1998), 70–71. P.E. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A Life (New Haven, CT, 2000), 306. Fraser, Gypsies, 67.

26

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

northern Siberia, and he finds the semi-nomadic life they lead in their yurts deeply disconcerting: they are ‘I will not say men, but caricatures of men.’91 In the case of the Jews, there are very occasional references to physical appearance, though in most parts of Southern Europe Jews, at any rate, looked much like anyone else; and it is far from certain that sporadic drawings of Jews with hooked noses were intended to display a physical feature of contemporary Jews, or were simply a way of trying to make Jews look ugly. Graziano Pierleoni, a member of a powerful Roman family of Jewish descent, was described by Orderic Vitalis as physically deformed and looking like a Jew or Saracen.92 By the time of Columbus, a theory of colour was well established, which insisted that skin colour was determined by the climate (a not unreasonable argument), and so Columbus was happy to explain the similarities of skin colour between Canary Islanders and Taínos of the Caribbean from the fact that they inhabited similar latitudes. Many early descriptions of the appearance of the Caribbean peoples, as of the Brazilian Tupimambá, tend to describe the shape of the torso and limbs, without stressing distinctive facial features, skin colour, hair type and so on. The Canary Islanders impressed Western observers because they were tall and lithe, in the main, though some noted that they were fair (presumably by comparison with West Africans, but much the same in appearance as their Berber brethren): ‘in the whole world you will not find more handsome people [plus belles gens], nor better formed, who are in the islands over there, both men and women’, as the account of the Norman invasion of the islands known as Le Canarien insisted.93 When Western Christians came into contact with religious beliefs outside the Abrahamic framework, they had a number of approaches available. One, which can be identified from descriptions of the Atlantic peoples discovered at the end of the Middle Ages, sought to resolve the puzzle of the very existence of nations who had not had access to the word of Christ, which supposedly had been made available to all mankind. Therefore an answer was to try to find features of the religious life of these peoples which proved that they adhered to a fundamental natural religion, an attitude which had its roots in the idea of natural law. Their rituals would be examined in order to establish that they were in many ways very similar to those of Christianity, lacking any true understanding of course, but none the less a sort of childlike play religion that could easily be turned into the real thing. From these sets of beliefs and rituals they could be drawn more easily into Christianity (this view is apparent in Pero Vaz de

91 92 93

Otto of Freising, Deeds, 66. A. Sapir Abulafia, ‘The intellectual and spiritual quest for Christ and central medieval persecution of Jews’, Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2002), 74. Le Canarien, ed. R.H. Major (Hakluyt Society, 1672), 102–9; also ed. by A. Cioranescu and E. Serra Ràfols, 3 vols (La Laguna, 1959).

Introduction

27

Caminha’s account of the Tupinambá, for example).94 Or maybe these peoples were remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, as visitors to the Canary Islands wondered, particularly when they heard of rituals which sounded vaguely similar to those of Judaism and Christianity, such as a way of washing babies which must surely prefigure baptism.95 Maybe, too, these peoples could not fully be accorded human status, but were in fact a higher form of animal, lacking reason and thus in some sense existing outside divine grace, an attitude which perhaps owed something to the view that Jews lacked reason and were not fully human, at least so long as they resisted accepting the Christian faith.96 These notions would undergo considerable development after 1500, and yet it is essential to point out that their roots can be found in medieval canon law and theology. Looking at the Eurasian land mass, a few figures, notably Roger Bacon in thirteenth-century Paris and Oxford, sought to classify the world’s religions, taking on board the existence of shamanism and Buddhism in the Mongol lands, which Bacon read about in William of Rubruck’s travel book; but even for Bacon the main emphasis of his interest was to find ways to achieve the conversion of the Asiatic peoples to Christianity.97 No one was very interested in drawing the obvious parallels and contrasts between Buddhist and Christian ethics or rituals; so ill-informed was Vasco da Gama about Eastern religions that he famously worshipped in a Hindu temple on his arrival in India, confusing an image of a goddess, perhaps carrying a child, with a statue of the Virgin of the sort he might have seen at home.98 And Marco Polo’s widely read book of travels was much more concerned with the physical wonders of the East – strange peoples, unknown animals and plants – than it was with the exposition of the cultural and religious life of the inhabitants of the Mongol world and of the Indies. Marco Polo was seriously interested in identifying where the spices that eventually reached the Mediterranean came from, and what they looked like as they grew; in this his impact reached as far as Christopher Columbus. But he was singularly blind to the customs of many of the lands he visited, a fact which has led one critic, Frances Wood, to deny that he travelled as far as China.99 But maybe what 94 95 96 97 98

99

See above. Cf. Alonso de Espinosa, The Guanches of Tenerife, ed. and tr. C. Markham (Hakluyt Society, London, 1907). Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London, 1995). Amanda Power of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge has been preparing a major reassessment of Bacon’s world-view. Account of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, tr. E.G. Ravenstein, in Ley, Portuguese Voyages, 30; also 25. There is an excellent new version by E. Axelson: Vasco da Gama: The Diary of his Travels through African Waters, 1497–1499 (Somerset West, South Africa, 1999), but this omits the relevant section. F. Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China? (London, 1995).

28

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Dr Wood misunderstood was Marco Polo’s incurious frame of mind. It would be tempting to write ‘strangely incurious’, but, as the product of a Venetian trading family, he appears to have shared that set of attitudes which led few Italian merchants to investigate the customs, religions, languages and culture of the lands across the sea that they visited.100 Although the West learned from the East about a number of foods which were then adopted by producers in Christian parts of the Mediterranean, such as citrus fruits and rice, and although Eastern styles of architecture may have had a limited influence in Italy and elsewhere, curiosity about Eastern culture was very muted (Marco Polo did not introduce spaghetti from China). But even the incorporation of Eastern elements in Muslim architecture may not reveal an attempt to understand other civilisations, so much as a delight in the rare and exotic.101 Ramon Llull of Majorca, it is true, wrote a short booklet encouraging merchants bound for Levantine ports to engage in discussion with Muslim trading partners, in the hope of converting them to Christianity; but there is no evidence anyone took heed, let alone that he or his disciples ever converted any Muslims. The only case of this type of which anything is known is the series of discussions, to some extent based on reality, recorded in the Disputation of Majorca of 1286, in which Ingheto Gontardo, a Genoese merchant with a penchant for theology, made an attempt to convert Majorcan Jews to Christianity.102 Thus we are left with a disconcerting lack of evidence for cultural and intellectual borrowing as a result of day-to-day trade with Islam. Pagan Lithuania, examined in this volume by Raza Ma¿eika, provides further puzzles. To canon lawyers, the pagan character of Lithuania posed similar problems to those that were posed by the Canary Islands. In both cases it was possible to argue that the pagan population was entitled to live under non-Christian rule, so long as their monarchs governed according to the principles of natural law, and so long as they caused no offence to Christianity; this debate can be traced back to such eminent authorities as Pope Innocent IV and Thomas Aquinas.103 Yet of course the Lithuanians could easily enough be cast in the role of enemies of Christendom, once evidence arrived in the West that they had put to death Christian knights in grisly sacrifices, or that King Mindaugas’s widely acclaimed conversion in the midthirteenth century was insincere, and did not result in the abandonment of pagan beliefs and practices in Lithuania. Indeed, the hill in Vilnius where Mindaugas allowed a cathedral to be built soon became the site of a pagan temple instead. Even after the late fourteenth century, when the Lithuanian Grand Duke converted to the 100 101 102 103

See now J. Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven, 1999). See now Deborah Howard, Venice and the East (New Haven, 1999). O. Limor, ed., Die Disputationen zu Ceuta (1179) und Mallorca (1286) (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgechichte des Mittelalters, 15, Munich, 1994). Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels.

Introduction

29

Roman Church in order to win the hand of the heiress to the Polish kingdom (for Cracow was well worth a mass), the countryside retained pagan traditions and superstitions, which had a strong residue as late as the seventeenth century in local folk tales. What emerges from Dr Ma¿eika’s study, and from studies by Stephen Rowell, another leading expert on this fascinating kingdom, is that Christian relations with pagan Lithuania were guided by rather different criteria and principles to those that led members of the religious orders to try to convert Jews and Muslims in Reconquista Spain or in North Africa.104 This was a tough contest between the Christian God and rival gods, and it was seen that way not just by Lithuanian pagans but by members of the Teutonic Order. Of course, we can also see here the echoes of earlier contests between the Christian God and pagan ones, in the days of the Wends who struggled so hard against German incursions in the tenth to the twelfth centuries (discussed in part by Dr Jensen). Certainly, the crusades against the pagans of northeastern Europe took on the character of a missionary war, and they ill fitted the view that a holy war could be launched in order to recover the lands and rights of past Christian rulers of the territories, since to all intents and purposes there were none, and these lands had never been part of the Christian Roman Empire.105 Lithuania apart, real paganism had ceased to be a problem in Northern Europe by 1300, if not 1200. In this context, what is meant by ‘paganism’ is the supposed survival of a reasonably coherent set of religious beliefs and practices, rather than the survival within a newly victorious religion of a medley of very ancient traditions. There is no good reason to accept Jean Delumeau’s argument that Christianity had only created a light overlay over more traditional beliefs, or Carlo Ginzburg’s characteristically ingenious argument that the cult of witches in late medieval Europe traces its origins to ancient shamanism.106 Abraham’s Triple Legacy: Some Religious Frontiers In reality, the only professing non-Christians an inhabitant of, say, medieval Cambridge or Oxford could expect to meet, unless he or she travelled very far, were the Jews, whose infidelity consisted in the active rejection of the Saviour who was supposed to have come in their midst, and was thus quite unlike the infidelity of pagan or indeed Muslim infidels (not that Christians quite knew how to handle Muslim

104 105 106

S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe 1295–1345 (Cambridge, 1994), 51–2. J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (London, 1987), 131–2. J. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (London, 1977); C. Ginzburg, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (London, 1990).

30

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

reverence for Jesus and Mary). This rejection of Jesus by Jews was countered, in the longer term, by the rejection of Jews as full humans, as Anna Sapir Abulafia has demonstrated.107 The Augustinian formula permitted Jews to live in Christian society, in a depressed condition, bearing for their new masters the books that in fact witnessed, it was argued, to the truth of Christianity; and this conditional toleration held reasonably firm in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, despite massacres at the time of crusades; but a more aggressive attitude to the presence of Judaism is identifiable from the early thirteenth century, to some extent at the hands of the friars.108 The idea, present in Spain, Germany, Sicily and elsewhere of the Jew as the servant of the king’s chamber or fisc (servus regie camere) may originally have been seen as a way of protecting and even according a certain positive status to the Jews; but increasingly it became a negative attribute, tied to the Jewish servitude expounded by the theologians.109 Another feature of Jewish existence in the later Middle Ages was migration following expulsion, and expulsions were especially frequent at the end of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, if the Jews were not actually expelled, they could very well be forced into a sort of internal exile, confined within walled ghettoes, as happened in Majorca City around 1300, by royal decree, and more gradually in many other major centres of Jewish settlement.110 This created a very interesting frontier, that between an all-Christian society and an all-Jewish one, where the Jewish enclaves were regulated primarily according to Jewish law, and a number of economic activities in which Jews and Christians had been jointly involved, such as the meat trade, were strictly divided between the two groups. But of course even before then Jews, in their internal affairs, had been governed largely by Jewish law, though they might have recourse to Christian courts when it seemed advantageous to so so (and obviously they did so in any case that concerned a dispute with or crime involving a Christian). In that sense a legal frontier between Jews and Christians already existed, at a time when Jews and Christians normally occupied the same

107 108 109

110

Anna Abulafia, Christians and Jews. J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY, 1982), but he overstates the case. David Abulafia, ‘The servitude of Jews and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean: origins and diffusion’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (moyen âge-temps modernes)¸ 112 (2000); idem, ‘Nam iudei servi regis sunt, et semper fisco regio deputati: los judíos en el fuero municipal de Teruel (1176–7)’, XVII Congrès d’Història de la Corona d’Aragó. El Mon Urbà, Barcelona-Lleidà, set. 2.000 (Barcelona, forthcoming). David Abulafia, ‘From Privilege to Persecution: Crown, Church and Synagogue in the City of Majorca, 1229–1343’, Church and City, 1000–1500: Studies in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. D. Abulafia, M. Rubin and M. Franklin (Cambridge, 1992), 111–26.

Introduction

31

physical space: in Erice (Sicily) around 1300 they still lived cheek by jowl around the same courtyards.111 What is especially interesting is to see the further development of the concept of Jewish servitude so that it embraced Muslims too: the Saracens of Lucera in southern Italy, and the mudéjares of Aragon and Valencia. The Christian monarchies in the western Mediterranean discovered that the most practical way to handle the existence of Muslim communities, which were increasingly coming under the rule of Catholic kings, was to treat them in the same way as the other non-Christian element in the population which had been present in Europe since Roman times: the Jews. For there were no biblical texts which assigned to the Muslims a particular place in human history (a few references to Arabs apart); after all, Islam had only emerged long after the time of the apostles. This interaction between attitudes to Jews and to Muslims is of some importance in explaining the evolution of the minority communities in late medieval Spain. But the experience of the two groups was not identical: Ferdinand of Aragon expelled his Jewish subjects in 1492, and indeed the decree he issued in Aragon for the expulsion of the Jews contained far harsher language than that applied to the Jews in the Castilian decrees issued jointly with Queen Isabella.112 But in Aragon he did not suppress Islam, as he and his wife did in Castile after the revolt of the Alpujarras of 1499, having a great enough need for Muslim manpower in Valencia and elsewhere to make any plans for expulsion highly impractical.113 The argument here is, then, that there was a fundamental difference between the status of the subject Muslims in Spain or southern Italy and that of Jews in the same areas; there was also a fundamental difference to the status of Jews and Christians in Islamic lands. Jews under Christian rule and Jews and Christians under Islam had the comfort of several fundamental guarantees, derived in the first case from the Christian reading of biblical and patristic sources, and in the second from the Muslim reading of the Koran and subsequent early Islamic documents, such as the so-called Pact of Umar, which conferred a ‘second-class citizen’ status on Jews, Muslims and possibly members of some other faiths.114 Thus in the Islamic world the existence of nonMuslims or dhimmis was taken for granted, and in many areas they long formed a substantial majority. The members of the subject religions might be mocked as ‘apes’ and ‘pigs’, but mockery rarely turned into outright persecution. Although the situation of the Western European Jews did worsen considerably in the late Middle 111 112 113 114

David Abulafia, ‘Una communità ebraica della Sicilia occidentale: Erice 1298–1304’, Archivio storico per la Sicilia orientale, 80 (1984) [CCM], 157–90. Rafael Conde y Delgado de Molina, La Expulsión de los Judíos de la Corona de Aragón. Documentos para su estudio (Zaragoza, 1991), doc. §1, 41–4. M. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990); also Harvey, Islamic Spain, 314–37. B. Lewis, The Jews of Islam (London, 1984), 62, where he notes that ‘second-class citizenship, though second-class, is a type of citizenship’.

32

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Ages, they retained certain rights in the lands where they were still allowed to live, notably the right to follow Jewish rituals. This often conferred on Jewish prisoners the right to leave prison on parole on Saturdays so they could worship with other Jews, and the right not to be summoned to court on the Sabbath day.115 Muslims too tended to enjoy similar rights, limited in similar ways: there was a reluctance to allow the Jews to make too much noise in synagogue services, and equally it was thought inappropriate for Christians to be disturbed by the Muslim call to prayer in those areas, such as Valencia, where Christian and Muslim lived side by side. The difficulty was that the rights conferred on the Muslims were pragmatic concessions, easily retracted, with no real foundation in Christian law, though some canon lawyers did give attention to such problems, for example Oldradus de Ponte.116 Still, the Muslim in Spain was not exactly a dhimmi in reverse. Dhimmis under Islam could not normally perform military duties, but Muslims under Christian rule in late medieval Navarre or Lucera were particularly valued for their military skills.117 It is interesting to see in Jonathan Riley-Smith’s account of the minorities in the Latin East, printed in this volume, that the Muslims did manage to acquire something similar to dhimmi status. Clearly much depended on local factors: the Latin East was also characterised by the presence of very many Eastern Christians of a great variety of sects, some linked to Rome, others not; and this created a different climate to that in Spain, where the only other exception to the Latin Christian element was the Jews. There Jews were only rarely active as soldiers, though the phenomenon of the Jewish soldier was not completely unknown.118 Striking is the lack of powerful interest among Western observers in the beliefs of the Muslims, for even when Peter the Venerable commissioned a translation of the Koran he had no doubt that he was exposing to view the errors of a religion that he and his contemporaries found it hard to classify – so like Judaism in some respects, such as its emphatically unitarian theology, its dietary rules, its rejection of images, its legal system; and a little like Christianity in its reverence for Jesus and Mary. Was it a gross heresy, or was it a different religion?119 Or indeed is that a question that could have been asked at this time? It is noticeable that the term lex, ‘law’, tended to be used to describe both Judaism and Islam in areas such as Spain, Sicily and the Holy Land where they co-existed with Christianity: partly this reflected the fact that Christians expected Jews and Muslims to swear their oaths in court on their own law-book, the 115 116 117 118 119

Powers, Code of Cuenca, 160–65; Abulafia, ‘Nam iudei’. N. Zacour, Jews and Saracens in the ‘Consilia’ of Oldradus de Ponte (Toronto, 1990). Harvey, Islamic Spain, 138–50, for Navarre; Abulafia, ‘Monarchs and minorities’, for Lucera. E. Lourie, ‘A Jewish mercenary in the service of the king of Aragon’, Revue des études juives, 137 (1978), 367–73. J. Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, NJ, 1964); T. Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

Introduction

33

Torah or the Koran; but it was also a reflection of the law-based nature of these religions which, even after the age of Gratian and the great development of the canon law codes, distinguished Judaism and Islam from medieval Christianity. In Judaism, and to a lesser degree in Islam, every act was endowed with a religious significance, from putting on one’s shoes to eating a piece of bread. The boundaries between what we might now call the secular and the spiritual domains were not always easy to identify in the Latin West, but in a sense there was no such internal boundary in the other two Abrahamic religions. Particularly striking is the hardening of the external boundaries between the three religions in later medieval Europe. This can be seen as part of the wider process of state-building that has been discussed earlier in this chapter. In the early Middle Ages, within the Iberian peninsula, the lines dividing the three faiths were very blurred: Christians were absorbed into Islam by a process of osmosis, as Mozarabs in ninth-century Córdoba adopted Muslim practices in diet, and even the ritual of circumcision, in attempts to conform which, over a couple of generations, eroded Christian identity and boosted Muslim numbers.120 Although the Jews of Muslim Spain maintained a sharper sense of their distinctiveness, they too were heavily influenced by Islam, so that early Sephardic Judaism became an arabised, even in some respects Islamised, Judaism which imitated Arabic norms in poetry, philosophy and perhaps also theology.121 Not for nothing was Oliver Leaman’s study of the Córdoban Jew Maimonides published in a series on great Arabic thinkers.122 Certain religions were politically or numerically dominant in certain parts of Iberia, but the fact that three religions were present was generally accepted as part of day-to-day reality, an attitude which lingered in some areas until the thirteenth century or even later. However, by the fourteenth century, the Iberian peninsula was largely dominated by other attitudes: even the Muslim kingdom of Granada was no longer a last redoubt of the co-existence of the three faiths, but had become staunchly Islamic in identity;123 meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms increasingly legislated to separate their Jewish and Muslim subjects from the rest of civil society, even if the new laws were often honoured in the breach. In any case, the religious frontiers had changed character: the fuzzy and foggy lines of earlier times had been replaced by mental barricades, which sometimes were translated into real, physical walls, dividing the judería or morería from Christian society and from the nation state of which they could not be members.

120 121 122 123

K.B. Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain (Cambridge, 1988); Jessica Coope, The Martyrs of Córdoba (Lincoln, NE, 1995). A good introduction is J. Gerber, The Jews of Spain (New York, 1992). O. Leaman, Moses Maimonides (Arabic thought and culture series, London, 1990). Harvey, Islamic Spain, 31–44.

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Ambiguous Conclusions: Some Frontiers of Frontier History The tendency in this introductory essay has been to think of the frontier not simply as a place but as a set of attitudes, conditions and relationships: neighbouring societies which retained differences in customs, language and ethnic identity, sometimes interacting closely with one another, sometimes failing to do so, for reasons which are often hard to explain. The frontier can also be understood as a place where the exclusive presence of Christianity was challenged, and in that sense it reached deep within Europe, to the walls of the Jewish communities which were increasingly isolated from mainstream society in the later Middle Ages; but in particular it embraced those areas where different religions co-existed, sometimes uneasily as in twelfth-century Sicily (with its anti-Muslim pogroms), sometimes very easily indeed (as is suggested by the statutes of Teruel and Cuenca in twelfth-century Spain). The frontier can also be examined in the light of now well-established arguments about the nature of economic exchanges between core, or indeed ‘proto-industrial’, areas and regions that specialised in the production of raw materials and foodstuffs, an argument obviously influenced by modern debates on colonialism and neocolonialism. In this setting, it is no less important to bear in mind the presence of ‘peripheries’ in the heart of old Europe, as well as those lands on the edge, whether wheat-rich Sicily or rye-producing Poland, for Languedoc and Provence, both regions with a fair scattering of important towns, were also major sources of grain and salt in the late Middle Ages.124 Then there is the set of power relationships which help us to describe the frontier in political terms, though here it has been argued that these relationships are not strikingly different from those to be found in the heart of Europe as well. Perhaps one useful description of the outer frontier of Latin Europe as a physical entity would be to use the term for those lands where the traditional universals, imperial and papal authority (and later the authority of regional kings), appeared to be compromised by alien, competing powers – Muslim, pagan or schismatic – so that old certainties were challenged and new definitions of social and political relationships were required. It would be worth considering whether this generalisation has any force in a Byzantine setting as well. But in the final analysis we need to think of the frontier as a state of mind, as a place within the medieval mind where old norms and traditional certainties were challenged by different conditions and relationships, sometimes evoking a creative response and sometimes little response at all. 124

M. del Treppo, I mercanti catalani e l’espansione della Corona d’Aragona nel XV secolo (2nd edn, Naples, 1972), 383, 395–7; David Abulafia, ‘L’economia mercantile nel Mediterraneo occidentale (1390ca.–1460ca.): commercio locale e a lunga distanza nell’età di Alfonso il Magnanimo’, Schola Salernitana, 2 (1997), 30 (ME; also in: XVI Congresso di Storia della Corona d’Aragona, Napoli, 1997 [Naples, 2000]).

Chapter 2

Crossing the Frontier of Ninth-Century Hispania Ann Christys

The history of Hispania in the Middle Ages is encapsulated in a series of maps showing the movement of the frontier between Christendom and Islam which give the impression of an inexorable process of Christian Reconquest of the peninsula. Although modern historians are increasingly reluctant to commit themselves to lines drawn on maps, the idea persists that the conquest of 711 created an absolute division between the Christian and Islamic realms. On one side, according to this stereotype, was al-Andalus, her glories epitomised by the great mosque in Cordoba, where the Arabic language and Islam extinguished the faith and cultural inheritance of the indigenous Christians. In the beleaguered north, the rulers of the tiny Asturian kingdom clung to the idea that they were the heirs of the Visigoths and would eventually expel the ‘Saracens’, as they usually called them, from the peninsula (see Map 2.1). In an earlier paper I explored modern historiography of the Christian–Muslim frontier in Hispania in the early medieval period and developed some objections to it.1 The separation of medieval Hispanists into two camps – the Arabists and those studying the Latin sources – has fortified the notion that the Christian–Muslim frontier, both political and religious, is the key to this period, although some scholars, in particular Manzano,2 have attempted to surmount this barrier. My intention in this chapter is to reconsider the story of Mahmud ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar of Mérida (d. c. 845) one of a small handful of individuals whose crossing of this frontier was recorded. Mahmud is particularly unusual in that both Latin and Arabic historians told stories about him. Analysis of their different versions of

1 2

A. Christys, ‘Christian–Muslim frontiers in early medieval Spain’, Bulletin of International Medieval Research, 5 (1999), 1–19. E. Manzano Moreno, La Frontera de Al-Andalus en Epoca de los Omeyas (Madrid, 1991); idem, ‘Christian–Muslim frontier in Al-Andalus: idea and reality’, in The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, ed. D. Agius and R. Hitchcock (Reading, 1994), 83–99.

35

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Mahmud’s journey will bring us a little nearer to understanding its ninth-century meaning. First, however, it will be necessary to disentangle these stories from modern retellings of them. Mahmud of Mérida’s cameo role in modern historiography of the peninsula was created by Dozy in 1881, when he devoted two pages of his Recherches to Mahmud.3 Although he was so industrious in bringing to light the Arabic histories of al-Andalus, Dozy had few details with which to create his portrait. He cited two fourteenth-century authors, al-Nuwayri and Ibn Khaldun, and a charter from Lugo in which Mahmud is mentioned, while casting doubts on its authenticity.4 Using the additional sources available by the middle of the twentieth century, Lévi-Provençal elaborated the story in what is still the standard history of al-Andalus in the Umayyad period.5 I will introduce Mahmud by summarising Lévi-Provençal’s account. In 828 a revolt broke out in Mérida against the Emir of Cordoba ‘Abd al-Rahman II. The leaders were a Berber, Mahmud ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar, and Sulayman ibn Martin, described as a muwallad, a Muslim of native origin who was a client (mawla) or dependent of the Umayyads or a prominent Muslim family.6 Sulayman’s patronymic – the son of Martin – suggests that either he or his father was a Christian convert to Islam. Mahmud and Sulayman assassinated the governor of Mérida, Marwan alJilliqi (the Galician), whose son was to lead a later revolt against Cordoba. In the following year, ‘Abd al-Rahman besieged Mérida but failed to take the city. In 830 he was more successful, forcing the inhabitants to release their hostages and accept a new governor. Peace was short-lived, and ‘Abd al-Rahman had to send several more military expeditions against Mérida before the city was finally controlled. The subjugation of Mérida was consolidated by the building of a fortress by the river, the Alcazaba, commemorated in a surviving inscription dated 835.7 The two rebels escaped and went their separate ways. Sulayman ibn Martin was defeated and killed at Santa Cruz de la Sierra near Trujillo. Mahmud was gradually driven south through the valley of the Guadiana. He took refuge in the castle of Monte Sacro near Faro, from which he was driven out in 838. He then appealed for help in a letter to Alfonso II, the ruler of the Asturias, who accepted his allegiance and gave him a castle in Galicia. After serving Alfonso for several years, however, Mahmud was overcome by remorse at his defection and applied to ‘Abd al-Rahman for pardon. When Alfonso 3 4 5 6 7

R. Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature des arabes d’Espagne pendant le Moyen Age, 2 vols (Leiden, 1881), vol. 1, 139–40. Dated 1 January 841: A.C. Floriano, Diplomática Española del Período Astur, 2 vols (Oviedo, 1949), 204–10; also, see below. É. Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane, 3 vols (Paris and Leiden, 1950–53), 208–9. On this, see below. É. Lévi-Provençal, Inscriptions Arabes d’Espagne (Leiden, 1931), 50–53, nos 39 and 40.

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FRANCIA

• Pam.ploDa

Map 2.1

Medieval Spain

heard of Mahmud’s change of heart, he attacked Mahmud in his castle. Making a sortie from the castle, Mahmud fell off his horse and died ignominiously. His family, however, remained in Galicia. His sister converted to Christianity and married a Galician lord and her son became Bishop of Santiago de Compostela. Lévi-Provençal gave Dozy as one of his sources for this remarkable story, supplemented by two Andalusian historians, Ibn al-Qutiya and Ibn Hayyan, as well as Ibn Sa‘id the Maghrebi, Ibn al-Athir and the Chronicles of Alfonso III and Albelda. Lévi-Provençal did not divulge how his account was constituted. This is a common problem in the historiography of al-Andalus. The historian has a comparatively large body of Arabic chronicles of this period to work with, but, as is well known, most of them were written long after the events they recount and the earliest surviving manuscripts are often later still. Although later chroniclers often (but by no means invariably) cited earlier authors, comparisons between two or more citations of the same author show that they are rarely without omissions and interpolations. The result is a series of contradictory accounts enlivened by anecdotes which seem to have

38

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

been added by later authors. Indeed, the seventeenth-century Moroccan historian alMakkari, who collected many of the stories of al-Andalus, sometimes copied them in more than one version, saying that he was incapable of deciding which version was true.8 These problems are obscured if, as Lévi-Provençal did, the historian reworks the material into a new compilation without acknowledging how the selection process has influenced the result.9 Working from Lévi-Provençal’s sources and in the context of an acrimonious relationship with the French Arabist, Sánchez-Albornoz resumed Mahmud’s story, concentrating on trying to derive a more secure dating from the variant versions.10 Such a fruitless exercise will not be undertaken here. Both LéviProvençal and Sánchez-Albornoz saw the revolt in Mérida as an eruption of frontier tensions, in particular the frontier between Christian and Muslim. Lévi-Provençal assumed that the proximity of Mérida to enemy territory led to significant compromises with the Asturians and rebellion against Cordoba.11 A glance at a map of the peninsula shows that this idea is nonsense. Simonet, in his History of the Mozarabs, published in 1903, had maintained that ‘the city of Mérida fought no less heroically than that of Toledo for the national cause’.12 All these authors glossed over the fact that Mahmud is never described as a Christian. Their conclusions, apart from reflecting the religious and nationalist convictions of their authors, were based on exiguous evidence. They also involved a great deal of circularity, as attitudes adopted by the writers of later sources were read back into the ninth century. There is little doubt that the people of Mérida were in rebellion against Cordoba during the 820s and 830s. The Arabic chroniclers report almost annual revolts in the region.13 Most of these revolts were instigated by muwallads, who are distinguished in the sources from the ‘ajam – the Christians who kept their faith. Indeed, the term muwallad was first used in connection with a revolt in Mérida in 821, and was at first used almost exclusively for rebels based in Mérida and the adjacent regions.14 It is less certain that any of the revolts against Cordoba were instigated or sustained by the Christian population of Mérida. Indeed the evidence for the Christians of Mérida is

8 9

10 11 12 13 14

Al-Makkari, ed. R. Dozy, Analectes sur l’histoire et la littérature des arabes d’Espagne, 2 vols (Leiden and London, 1855–61); trans. and rearranged by P. de Gayangos, The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain, 2 vols (1840–3). See for example M.J. Viguera Molins, ‘El establecimiento de los musulmanes en Spania al-Andalus’, V Semana de estudios medievales (Nájera, 1995), 35–50, trans. M. Kennedy, ‘The Muslim settlement of Spania/al-Andalus’, in The Formation of alAndalus, 2 vols (Aldershot, 1998), vol. 1, History and Society, ed. M. Marín, 13–38. C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Origenes de la nación española. Estudios críticos sobre la historia del reino de Asturias, 3 vols (Oviedo, 1969), vol. 2, 697–711. Lévi-Provençal, Histoire, 208. F.X. Simonet, Historia de los Mozárabes de España, 2 vols (Madrid, 1903), 313–14. Manzano, La Frontera de Al-Andalus, 328. M.I. Fierro, ‘Cuatro preguntas en torno a Ibn Hafsun’, Al-Qantara, 16 (1995), 236–7.

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slight. Later Arabic traditions recorded that, after Musa ibn Nusayr conquered the city in c. 713, he took the property of the Church and of those Christians who had been killed or who had fled, but protected the Christians who remained.15 They seem to vanish from history after the conquest. The chief piece of information for the Christians of Mérida cited by Lévi-Provençal, Sánchez-Albornoz and Simonet, and the earliest piece of evidence to be considered in this paper, is a letter from Louis the Pious to the people of Mérida which was preserved in the sole surviving manuscript of a collection of the letters of Einhard.16 The date of the letter is unclear. Einhard’s letter collection is incomplete and disorganised, and the date 830 seems to have been added by Hampe, who edited the collection for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH), rearranging the letters in what he considered to be chronological order. Louis’s letter has been interpreted as a call for help from the Méridans: We have heard of your troubles and the various difficulties you are enduring because of the savagery of King Abd ar-Rahman, who has oppressed you constantly and violently with his greedy desire for your possessions. We know that his father Abolaz [Al-Hakam I] did the same, forcing you through the imposition of unfair charges to pay taxes to him though you were not indebted to him . . .

Louis and his court should have been well informed about the situation in alAndalus by embassies from Cordoba, such as the embassies to Aachen mentioned in the Annales Regnum Francorum for 816 and 817,17 which would have included Christians as interpreters. Yet, although the letter to the Méridans offers encouragement and the promise of aid, it is remarkably vague: ‘For we want, with almighty God’s help, to send our army next summer to our march . . . we shall, in order to assist you, send this army against the common enemies living in our march, so that if Abd ar-Rahman or his army wants to proceed against you, they will be stopped by our army’. In the Frankish sources the term ‘Spanish March’ appears some twenty times between 821 and 850 without any clear territorial or geographical precision.18 The presence of armies on the border of Francia might have helped the Méridans by diverting the emir from any planned campaign against the city. In 827, Louis had dispatched an army led by the counts Hugh and Matfrid to the March to join up with Pippin of Aquitaine and Count Bernhard of Barcelona in an expedition against the 15 16 17 18

For example Ajbar Machmua (Colección de tradiciones), ed. and trans. E. Lafuente y Alcántara (Madrid, 1867), 16–18. Einhard, Epistolae, ed. K. Hampe, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Selectae, vol. 5 (Hanover, 1898–9), 105–45, no. 3; trans. P.E. Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courtier. The Complete Einhard (Peterborough, Ontario, 1998), 148–9. Annales Regnum Francorum, ed. G.H. Pertz and F. Kurze, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum (Hannover, 1895), 816–17. E. Mitre Fernández, ‘La cristiandad medieval y las formulaciones fronterizas’, in Fronteras y fronterizos en la Historia (Valladolid, 1997), 9–62.

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‘Saracens’.19 As punishment for their failure to arrive in time, Hugh and Matfrid were stripped of their lands, and in 830 they sought revenge by rebelling against Louis in the Spanish March. Perhaps the letter to Mérida was written in connection with this or another rebellion and was intended as a message to Louis’s immediate circle that he was still in charge in the March, equally capable of taking action against his own rebels or against the Saracens. The letter does not express any condemnation of the Saracens’ religion. It is noteworthy that Louis’ letter is addressed to ‘all the leading men and the entire population of Mérida’, and there is no reference to their faith. After 835, Mérida appears very little in the Arabic sources, and the centre of revolts against Cordoba in this region moved to Badajoz. Yet the downfall of Mérida has been exaggerated. In the tenth century, Ibn Hawqal could still describe the city as ‘among the biggest and best fortified cities of al-Andalus’, although it is not clear that he actually visited Mérida.20 Recent excavations of the ‘Moorish quarter’, an area of more than 2,000 square metres on the perimeter of the ancient city, near to the right bank of the Guadiana, the Roman bridge and the Alcazaba, provide evidence for continued habitation into the eleventh century.21 The bishopric of Mérida may have survived until it was transferred to Santiago in 1120.22 Mérida seems to have weathered the Umayyad period as a city with a mixed Muslim and Christian population, although the historical spotlight no longer shone on it. It cannot be seen as a persisting pocket of opposition, much less as a centre of Christian resistance to Islam. Thus the status of Mahmud of Mérida as the spearhead of a rebellion of the native population against Cordoban domination is not as clear-cut as it appeared in earlier studies. In order to reassess his importance, it is necessary to re-examine the pieces of evidence for his revolt one by one. The earliest reference to Mahmud is a brief account in the Chronicle of Albelda, a universal history to 883, probably written before 890 and copied in the Asturian monastery of Albelda in 976: He [Alfonso II (791–842)] gained several victories over the armies of the Ishmaelites and vanquished the Gaetuli in combat, once in the territory of the Asturias near Lutis/Lodos, the second time in the province of Galicia, near Anceo. During his time, a certain person from Spain, called Mahamut, fleeing from the king of Cordoba, was received with all his people in the Asturias. Later, perversely conducting a rebellion in the castle of Santa Cristina in Galicia, the king killed him in combat there and seized the castle and all his goods.23

19 20 21 22 23

Annales Regnum Francorum, 827. Ibn Hawqal, Configuración del Mundo (fragmentos alusivos al Magreb y España), trans. M.J. Romani Suay (Valencia, 1971), 63. M. Alba Calzado and A. Navareño Mateos, ‘Morería (Mérida): 2.000 años de actividad constructiva’, in Vivir las cuidades históricas (Mérida, 1997), 55–70. B. Reilly, The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031–1157 (Oxford, 1992), 147. Chronicle of Albelda, 44.2, ed. and trans. Y. Bonnaz, Chroniques Asturiènnes (fin IX siècle) (Paris, 1987).

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The memory of this episode was preserved in a charter recording donations which Alfonso II made to the diocese of Lugo in 841. The gifts included the ‘ancient castle called Santa Cristina which was taken back from the Saracens’.24 Like most of the surviving charters from this period, this charter was almost certainly forged,25 either in the eleventh or in the thirteenth century (the date of the surviving manuscript), when a list of the numerous properties acquired by Lugo from the eighth to the eleventh centuries was assembled to be used as ammunition in a dispute between Braga and Lugo. It is impossible to say whether the forger was recalling a genuine donation or making use of his knowledge of one of the chronicles. The Chronicle of Alfonso III has a more detailed account of Mahmud’s career. The Chronicle was compiled slightly later than the Chronicle of Albelda, but ends with the death of Ordoño II in 866. It survives in two versions. The version of the chronicle in the tenth-century Codex of Roda is the longer: And in the thirtieth year of Alfonso’s reign two armies of Chaldeans entered Galicia, led by two brothers of the Quraysh named al-Abbas and Malik, who were prefects. But they were annihilated at the same time, one in a place called Narón, the other on the river Anceo. At the same time, a certain man called Mahamuth of the city of Mérida, natione mollitus, revolted against his king Abderrahman, fought many battles against him and put his armies to flight. And because he did not have the power to inhabit that country, he went to that king Adefonsus and the king received him with dignity. Then he lived with all his followers in the province of Galicia for seven years. And it was there that, carried away by an insolent pride, he vainly fomented a plot against the king and country. Discovering this, the king gathered an army and hurried to Galicia where the aforementioned Mahamuth, when he heard of the king’s coming, went to a certain castle strongly defended by his supporters. The king pursued him and encircled the castle with his army. What more can we say? In a single day, combat was engaged and the aforementioned Mahamuth was killed, decapitated, and his head presented to the king. The royal troops immediately broke the battle lines and massacred more than 50,000 Saracens who had come with the rebel from the provinces of Spain. The king returned to Oviedo in great triumph.26

The historical accuracy of the passage cannot be relied upon. The attacks on Galicia by al-Abbas and Malik, which are here dated to the same year, are separated by some twenty-five years in the Arabic chronicles, although these sources may also 24

25

26

Floriano, Diplomática, 204–10; the charter refers to Santa Cristina in ‘territorio Lemabus [Lemos] et Sarriae sub urbe Lucensi’; in 1700, Pallarés located the former castle near Lugo, in the valley of the Mao, between the present-day villages of Viso and Goo: Sánchez-Albornoz, Orígenes, 705. For the most critical view of the Asturian charters see L. Barrau-Dihigo, ‘Etudes sur les actes des rois Asturiens (718–90)’, Revue Hispanique, 46 (1919), 1–192 and idem, ‘Recherches sur l’histoire politique du royaume Asturien (718–910)’, Revue Hispanique, 52 (1921), 1–360. Chronicle of Alfonso III, 14.2.

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be misleading. The vocabulary used by the chronicler is, however, interesting. The term natione mollitus is obscure, Mollitus and mollitem appear in later charters from León and have been assumed, following Dozy, to be transliterations of muwallad, i.e. native Muslim.27 There is no suggestion that Mahmud or his supporters were, or became, Christians. The shorter version of the Chronicle of Alfonso III usually known as the Sebastianum describes Mahamuth merely as a ‘citizen of Mérida’ and his supporters as ‘Saracens’: ‘In the eighth year he gathered a band of Saracens and set to pillaging the neighbouring regions, and in order to secure his defence, he took refuge in a castle called Santa Cristina ... 50,000 Saracens, who had flocked to his aid from Hispania’ were killed.28 Both the Chronicle of Albelda and the Chronicle of Alfonso III were written as propaganda for the Asturian kings and as such the exploits of these kings against the enemy to the south had to be played up. Thus the Chronicle of Albelda lamented the overthrow of the peninsula by the Saracens but claimed that the Asturians were tireless in their attempts to expel the invaders: ‘The Saracens took over the kingdom of the Goths, which even nowadays they still possess in part. And the Christians have battles with them day and night, and are in daily conflict, but they cannot take the whole of Spain from them’.29 The author of the Prophetic Chronicle, composed in 883, adopted the prophecies of Ezekiel concerning the Ishmaelites to predict that the Ishmaelites sent to Spain as punishment for the sins of the Goths were imminently to be expelled by Alfonso III. The chroniclers listed many victories of Ordoño II (850–66) against the Saracens.30 Yet it is quite anachronistic to see this as in any way a holy war against the representatives of an alien religion. This is not the way it was portrayed in the Asturian chronicles. As we also shall see in the Arabic accounts of this period, Christian–Muslim polemic was a product of the crusade period. The Christian hostility to Islam described by Southern in his famous study31 had not yet developed in the ninth and tenth centuries. In fact, there is little sign of a Christian–Muslim frontier in the early medieval period. The vocabulary of frontier is used only once in the Chronicle of Alfonso III, in an account of Ordoño II’s campaign of 881 ‘as far as the frontiers of Mérida’.32 The Asturian chroniclers were aware of ethnic differences between the indigenous population of the Asturias and their southern neighbours. The Chronicle of Alfonso III called the inhabitants of al-Andalus either ‘Saracens’ or ‘Chaldeans’, less often 27 28 29 30 31 32

Bonnaz, Chroniques Asturiènnes, 197; the chronicler also refers to a ‘mollitem nomine Alporz cum filio suo Azez’ who was defeated by Musa ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi; see below. Chronicle of Alfonso III, 14.2 . Bonnaz, Chroniques Asturiènnes, 21. Chronicle of Albelda, 46 and 47.2–4; Chronicle of Alfonso, 16.1. R. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1962). ‘autem ad Emeritane fines’: Chronicle of Albelda, 47.4.

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‘Ishmaelites’ or ‘Arabs’. The author was partly dependent for his terminology on the Etymologies of Isidore, but may have taken the term ‘Chaldeans’ from the writings of Eulogius and Alvarus on the ninth-century Cordoban martyrs.33 Yet the chronicler’s main classification is that of friend or foe. He refers only rarely to the religious affiliations of his protagonists, and then only as a general term of abuse. Pelayo’s opponents at Covadonga are described as ‘most cruel pagans’, but so are the Vikings who raided Galicia and there is no sense of pleasure at the news that the Vikings went on to attack al-Andalus and ravage Seville.34 Ordoño’s predecessor Ramiro fought many civil wars, but only two battles against the Arabs are mentioned. The Asturian kings were happy to make peace with the ‘Saracens’ when it suited them,35 particularly if it left them free to pursue their other enemies, the Basques and rebels in Galicia. Thus Fruela killed 40,000 ‘Chaldeans’ but also defeated the Basques and Galicians,36 and Silo made peace with Ishmaelites but not with the Galicians.37 The Chronicle of Albelda ends its account with a poem in praise of Alfonso II’s victories over the Basques which is juxtaposed with Dulcidius’s peace embassy to Cordoba of 883. It is clear from the two chroniclers’ accounts of the relationship between the kings of the Asturias and Musa ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi, the family who controlled the Ebro valley for most of the eighth century, that religious differences did not determine political alliances. The Banu Qasi were the descendants of a certain Count Cassius who according to his genealogy, recorded by Ibn Hazm in the eleventh century, had converted to Islam at the time of the conquest. The Asturian chroniclers classified Islam as a heretical sect, the ‘ritu mamentiano’ by which Musa and his people had been deceived.38 Yet this did not stop the Asturians from allying themselves with Musa. After Musa switched his allegiance to Cordoba, he was described by the Chronicle of Albelda as ‘our former friend’;39 the chronicler made it clear how much worse off was Musa in an alliance with Cordoba than with the Asturians. After Musa’s defeat, his son Lupe returned to an alliance with the Asturians, and joined them in battle against the ‘Chaldeans’ and his son educated the future Ordoño II. Clearly, Musa’s sin was his pride and his defection from the Asturian alliance, not his apostasy to Islam. There is little sense here that the conflict with Cordoba was across a frontier between the Asturias and Cordoba which was different from the one which separated the Asturians from their Basque and Galician enemies.

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

J. Wreglesworth, ‘The treatment of Muslims in the chronicle of Alfonso III’, forthcoming. ‘gens pagana et nimis crudelissima’: Chronicle of Alfonso III, 15.1. For example Chronicle of Albelda, 41, Chronicle of Alfonso III, 11. Chronicle of Alfonso III, 9. Chronicle of Alfonso III, 11. Chronicle of Alfonso III, 16.2. Chronicle of Albelda, 47.7.

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The sense of a Christian–Muslim frontier becomes more acute in a later account of the revolt of Mahmud, in the Chronicle of Sampiro. There are three extant versions of the Chronicle of Sampiro. The first is the version incorporated into the anonymous Historia Silense, composed at the beginning of the twelfth century.40 This may be the most reliable, although where the Historia Silense overlaps with the Chronicle of Alfonso III the details do not always concur. Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo (1101–30) interpolated the Chronicle of Sampiro into a work called the Chronicle from the Beginning of the World to 1170 AD, where he seems to be attributing it to Bishop Sampiro of Astorga (fl. c. 1035–40).41 Another Sampiro was a royal notary in León in the late tenth or early eleventh century. Fragments of the Chronicle of Sampiro were also copied into a chronicle from Nájera. The account of Mahmud’s rebellion in the Historia Silense is as follows: In the thirtieth year of his reign, when the fame of his so great goodness was spread abroad among the Christians and barbarians of all the lands, a certain Moor, a citizen of Mérida, called Mahumith, came to him, who, taking up arms against his king in the region ruled by the tyrant frequently attacked the same Abderrahmen the greatest king of the Moors and dared to put his army to flight. And since now through so many evil deeds he was unable to inhabit that land, he petitioned our king Adefonsus with humble entreaties, and the lord king generously, being of great piety, receiving him, ordered him to live with all his followers on the borders of Galicia. Where after seven years the Moor, raised up in pride, presumed to conspire against his king and regnum and having gathered together a most powerful troop of Moors, caused the whole provincia to be laid waste. Receiving news of this, king Adefonsus, gravely disturbed, gathered an army and approached Galicia. But the barbarian, although confident in many respects in the numerical strength of his warriors, nevertheless retired to a certain castle with his men, in dread of the attack of the king’s army. Next, the king pressing him from the rear, surrounded the castle with many soldiers, who, entering the walls, struck down Mahumith at the first attack, and carried his severed head into the presence of the king. And among the other rebels they made on the same day a great slaughter of the Ishmaelites, in which war fifty thousand barbarians were put to the sword. Then the king, with a great number of captives and booty, returned to Oviedo.42

This account is clearly derived from that of the Chronicle of Albelda and the Chronicle of Alfonso III, but the author takes a more hagiographical approach to Alfonso II and there is a significant change in vocabulary, which make the distance 40 41 42

R. Fletcher, ‘A twelfth-century view of the Spanish past’ in The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. J.R. Maddicott and D.M. Palliser (London and Rio Grande, 2000), 147–62. J. Wreglesworth, ‘The Chronicle of Alfonso III and its significance for the historiography of the Asturian kingdom 718–910 AD’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1995), 106–21. Historia Silense, ed. J. Pérez de Urbel and A. González Ruiz-Zorilla, (Madrid, 1959), 140–41.

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between the Asturians and Mahmud and his followers, now called barbaros, much greater than in the original account, and Mahmud’s situation ‘on the frontiers of Galicia’ much more liminal. The description of Muslims as barbarians was part of the rhetoric of crusade. The people of al-Andalus are further disparaged by being called Moors.43 Although Mahmud may have been a Berber, it is unlikely that all his supporters were also Berbers. Earlier writers, such as the eighth-century author of the so-called Mozarabic Chronicle or the Chronicle of 75444 knew the Mauri (or Berbers, although the chronicler did not use this term) as the inhabitants of North Africa who had come to Hispania with Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711, and distinguished them from Arabs or Saracens. The use of the term Mauri in the Chronicle of Sampiro could reflect contemporary Arab prejudice against the Berbers, expressed in Arabic genealogies and histories from the eleventh century onwards, and reflecting the role which the Berbers had played in the fall of the caliphate of Cordoba. By the twelfth century, if not before, Latin historians were reading versions of these Arabic sources. We should read Sampiro’s account of Mahmud as an eleventh- or twelfth-century retelling of a story which, since the advances achieved by the Christians, and especially the reconquest of Toledo in 1085, had become more polarised. It was this polarisation which prompted the Latin authors to use the language of frontier. This was not the only way to tell the story. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, incorporated a similar version to that of Sampiro, although much shortened, into his Historia de rebus Hispaniae written in 1243.45 Yet the archbishop, who also wrote a Historia Arabum from Arabic sources, eschewed the terms ‘barbarians’ and ‘Saracens’ in favour of ‘Arabs’. Pelayo of Oviedo made use of the story in an account of a council dated 821 which he incorporated in the Liber Testamentorum, a collection of privileges relating to the church of Oviedo.46 The ‘ancient privilege’ instituting Oviedo as a metropolitan see which Alfonso was said to have granted in 821 was almost certainly forged by Pelayo in a climate of disputes over the founding and reorganising of episcopates in the twelfth century. Pelayo claimed that, just as Rome was the heir of Babylon, destroyed because of her sins, so Oviedo emerged as the heir to Toledo, destroyed in 711 for the sins of the Goths. For Pelayo, the chief merit of the Asturias in the period when Oviedo had been her capital lay in its lack of dissension, in contrast to the civil strife of Pelayo’s own times. One instance which Pelayo gave of Alfonso’s success in unifying his realm was the destruction of false Christians whom

43 44 45 46

But see below. Chronica Muzarabica, ed. J. Gil Fernández, Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, 2 vols (Madrid, 1973), vol. 1, 15–54 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. J. Fernández Valverde, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, vol. 72 (Turnholt, 1987), 131. S.A. García Larragueta, Colección de Documentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1962), 12–19, no. 4; I am grateful to John Wreglesworth for his help with this passage.

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Pelayo said had been subject to Mahmud during the reign of the usurper Mauregatus, Alfonso’s predecessor: Foreigners and many false Christians rose up with the dux Mahamut, the minister of the devil and the son of perdition; now at the time when Mauregatus, the usurper of the kingdom of Alfonso the Chaste, ruled over the Christians of the Asturias, they invaded the frontiers of the Asturias. The catholic king hastened to meet them in the aforementioned place, to engage in battle. And so slaughter on both sides having occurred as we have already said, victory was however conceded to the Christians by the infinite clemency of our saviour Jesus Christ whom our fatherland serves with devout mind. The enemies therefore turning away, part were put to the sword and part, like the Egyptians, were drowned at the bottom of the river Miño . . .

The historical plausibility of this version of Mahmud’s story is negligible, since Pelayo set these events in the 780s. The false Christians of Pelayo’s new version, which is the first suggestion that Mahmud formed an alliance with the Christians of Galicia, have more connection with Pelayo’s own opponents than with ninth-century reality. Pelayo’s reference to Mahmud shows to what uses an old story read in the chronicles could be put. A similar process of reinterpretation may be at work in the Arabic accounts of Mahmud. The earliest of these is probably that of Ibn al-Qutiya,47 who died in 977. The single surviving manuscript of his History of the Conquest of al-Andalus, now in Paris, dates from the fourteenth century. It is in fact a history from the conquest to the reign of ‘Abd Allah (888–912), and was probably written after the death of ‘Abd al-Rahman III in 961. Ibn al-Qutiya’s name, ‘son of the Gothic woman’, betrays his Christian ancestry and he was unusual among historians writing in Arabic in including a favourable account of the role which the Christians had played in the conquest.48 His history, however, takes the orthodox pro-Umayyad line. It includes condemnation of a number of rebellions against Cordoba, among them the following story: Towards the end of the reign of Emir al-Hakam [I 796–822] (God be merciful with him) there had rebelled in the district of Morón a man called Qa’nab after whom the insurrection was named. He sowed discord between the Arabs and their clients on the one hand and the tribes of al-Butr and al-Barani [the main subdivision of the Berbers according to Arabic historians of the Maghreb] on the other until a civil war broke out, which God extinguished at the beginning of the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Hakam. Qa’nab fled to the region of 47 48

Ibn al-Qutiya, Historia de la conquista de España de Abenalcotía de Córdoba, ed. P. de Gayangos, E. Saavedra and F. Codera (Madrid, 1868); repr. with trans. J. Ribera y Tarragó (Madrid, 1926). A. Christys, ‘How the royal house of Witiza survived the Islamic conquest of Spain’, forthcoming in Integration und Herrschaft, ed. W. Pohl and H. Reimitz (Vienna).

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Mérida and its environs. There, also, he provoked civil war between Berbers and muwallads in which God made Qa’nab perish. Linked to that was the uprising of Mahmud and a sister of his named Jamla near the Tagus River to the north of Mérida and its environs. War raged between the two because Jamla was in favour of submission to central authority while her brother Mahmud favoured opposition and rebellion. God put an end to it with the death of Mahmud.49

Ibn al-Qutiyya was aware of the frontier between Christian and muwallad, which he defined in the story of the revolt of ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Marwan al-Jilliqi, the son of the governor of Mérida whom Mahmud had murdered:50 In the final years of his [‘Abd al-Rahman II] reign there were revolts. The first which took place against him began with the exit of the muwallad ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Marwan, called the Galician, from Cordoba, where he was serving with the emir’s troops, towards the west of Spain whence he came. In this region there was another muwallad called Sadun alShurumbaki, whom the rebels adored and said he was their only consolation. Ibn Marwan, who was a sharp and perspicacious man in war, in which no-one could get the better of him, made an agreement with al-Shurumbaki and both together inflicted grave damages on Islam, which it would take too long to describe. The two maintained themselves in the desert which exists between the regions of the Christians and the Muslims.51

In Ibn al-Qutiya’s account of Mahmud’s revolt, it is the resistance to the power of the emirs and internal divisions within al-Andalus which are significant. If he omitted to mention the Christian–Muslim frontier in connection with Mahmud’s dealings with the Asturian Christians, it was because they were irrelevant to the story Ibn al-Qutiya was telling. With the possible exception of Ibn al-Qutiya’s account, all the stories of Mahmud of Mérida in the Arabic sources date from no earlier than the eleventh century. Like the Chronicle of Sampiro, they were written at a time of increasing animosity between the Christians and Muslims following the losses of Coimbra, Barbastro (later recaptured), Coria and Toledo to the Christians between 1063 and 1085. It is not surprising to find that Arabic writers became increasingly hostile to Christians and more likely portray al-Andalus as a theatre of holy war. The vocabulary of holy war was familiar to Andalusi scholars. Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Zamanin (d. 1008) wrote a treatise on the subject.52 The biographers of several scholars active 49 50 51 52

Ibn al-Qutiya, trans. J.M. Nichol, ‘Ibn al-Qutiyya, The History of the Conquest of AlAndalus’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of North Carolina, 1975), 147. Unless this was added by a later copyist. Ibn al-Qutiya, Historia, ed. Ribera, 88–9, trans., 79. Kitab qidwat al-gazi, ed. ‘A. al-Sulaymani (Beirut, 1989); cited by M.I. Fierro in Los reinos de taifas, ed. M.J. Viguera Molins, Historia de España Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1994), vol. 8, pt 1, 405.

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in the eleventh century mentioned that their subjects practised holy war. Abu-l-Sinan came from Kufa to al-Andalus especially for this purpose.53 According to the anonymous author of the compilation known as the Akhbar Majmu‘a, parts of which may date from the ninth century, although the surviving manuscript is no earlier than the eleventh century, ‘Uqba, one of the governors of North Africa was allowed to choose between remaining in North Africa and going to al-Andalus. He chose the latter, saying: ‘I like holy war and this is found in al-Andalus’.54 Legal scholars throughout the Islamic world made a distinction between the land of the Muslims and the ‘house of war’ beyond. This vocabulary came to al-Andalus from the East, where it had first been used in the histories of the relations between Islam and Byzantium. In the later ninth and early tenth centuries the geographers al-Ya‘qubi, al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal mentioned only one frontier (thaghr) in connection with the peninsula, the frontier between al-Andalus and the Christians. Some geographers represented this frontier as a range of mountains.55 In the thirteenth century, in a geographical encyclopaedia which mixed antiquarian with contemporary data, Yaqut would give the term ‘frontier’ its full weight in the vocabulary of holy war, defining thaghr as ‘a place near to the enemy territory as it is derived from thughra which is a gap in a wall’.56 As Manzano has shown, the terminology of frontier in the sources for al-Andalus became more precise.57 At the end of the tenth century, Ibn al-Qutiya distinguished between a nearer and a further frontier.58 In these accounts, the Asturias and Galicia, which was not always under Asturian control, were often lumped together as ‘Jilliqiya’. Al-Bakri (d. 1094) was the earliest author to refer to the various regions of the Christian north and define where their internal frontiers lay.59 It was also at this period that the frontiers between al-Andalus and the north were redefined and Mérida was assigned to the ‘middle frontier’. The vocabulary used to describe the Christians became harsher60 and the Christian 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60

Ibn Bashkuwal, Al-Sila fi ta’rikh a’immat al-Andalus, ed. F. Codera (Madrid: Biblioteca Arábico-Hispana, 1882) no. 1226; Ibn al-Abbar, Al-Takmila, ed. F. Codera (Madrid: Biblioteca Arábico-Hispana, 1887–90) no. 36. Ajbar Machmua, 28. However, Lewis argues that some Arab historians regarded the question of the definition of the frontiers as meaningless, since Islamic scholars did not divide the world into states, and Arab lands were without names until the old ones were revived in the nineteenth century: B. Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London, 1982), 60. Yaqut, Mu‘jam al-buldan, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866–72), vol. 3, 16. Manzano, La Frontera de al-Andalus, 44–50. Ibn al-Qutiya, Historia, ed. Ribera, 99, trans., 84. Al-Bakri, The Geography of al-Andalus and Europe from the Book ‘Al-masalik wa-lmamalik’, ed. A.A. el-Hajji (Beirut, 1968), 51–3. R. Barkaï, Cristianos y musulmanes en la España medieval (El enemigo en el espejo) (Madrid, 1984), 72–98; H. Kassis, ‘Roots of conflict: aspects of Christian–Muslim confrontation in eleventh-century Spain’, in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous

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kingdoms began to take over from internal revolts as the main perceived threat to alAndalus. There were complaints against alliances with Christians, although Christian troops were employed in Muslim armies. Lapiedra made a careful study of the terms used for Christians in eighteen of the Arabic sources for al-Andalus, spread over seven centuries.61 The Christians of al-Andalus are rarely identified, and then only with neutral terms such as nasrani (Christian) or ‘ajam (non-Muslim). Nearly all the derogatory references are to Christians outside al-Andalus. In the works of two of the earliest authors, ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Habib (d. 853) and Ibn al-Qutiya, the Christians of the north are called merely the ‘adu (enemy). Only later are they characterised as ‘adu Allah (enemy of God), or as kafirun (infidels).62 The term kafir (infidel), which has Koranic overtones, can equally be used of non-Christian groups such as the Vikings, muwallad rebels and Berbers, as can mushrik (polytheist) taghia (tyrant), and ilj (uncivilised).63 A sharp change in vocabulary is found in the work of the Cordoban Ibn Hayyan, whose history of al-Andalus was probably written in the 1050s or 1060s.64 Its title Muqtabas means ‘handed over, transmitted’, and Ibn Hayyan gave as his main sources Ahmad al-Razi (877–955) and his son ‘Isa (d. 989), neither of whose works survive except as quotations in much later works. Much of Ibn Hayyan’s work was in turn lost and the quotations from it by later authors do not always concur. Ibn Hayyan introduced many terms for ‘frontier’, but relating only to the period after the declaration of the caliphate of Cordoba in 929. Yet even Ibn Hayyan was more interested in internal rebellions, particularly the long-running revolt of Ibn Hafsun against ‘Abd al-Rahman III, than in the threat posed by the Asturians.65 Ibn Hafsun’s stronghold, near Ronda, was much nearer to Cordoba than was Oviedo. In her study of the way in which the Arabic historians described their Christian enemies, Münzel contrasted Ibn Hayyan’s lengthy condemnation of Ibn Hafsun’s son Ja‘far,66 who continued his father’s struggle against the Umayyads, with the ‘telegraphese’ of Ibn Hayyan’s report of the death of Ordoño II: ‘In this year [311 AH] the tyrant Ordoño,

61 62 63 64 65

66

Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. M. Gervers and R.J. Bikhazi (Toronto, 1990), 151–60. E. Lapiedra Gutiérrez, Como los musulmanes llamaban a los cristianos hispánicos (Alicante, 1997). Ibid., 67. Ibid., 143, 158, 176 and 189. M.A. Avila, ‘La fecha de la redación del Muqtabis’, Al-Qantara, 5 (1984), 93–108; C. López Angel, ‘Sobre la cronología del Muqtabis’, Al-Qantara, 7 (1986), 475–8. B. Münzel, Feinde, Nachbarn, Bündnispartner: ‘Themen und Formen’ der Darstellung christlich-Muslimischer Begegnungen in ausgewählten historiograpischen Quellen des islamischen Spanien, Spanische Forschungen des Görresgesellschaft, 2nd series, vol. 32 (Münster, 1994), 166–7. Ibn Hayyan, Al-Muqtabas V, ed. P. Chalmeta Gendrón, F. Corriente, and M. Subh (Madrid, 1979), 139.

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the son of Alfonso, king of the Leonese, died. Then ruled in his place his brother Fruela, son of Alfonso, God curse him’.67 Like the Asturian chroniclers, the Arabic historians gave priority to the enemies who were the greatest physical threat to political stability, rather than to ideological considerations. For most of this period, Cordoba’s internal enemies warranted more attention than the Asturian kingdom. Ibn Hayyan’s treatment of Ordoño II in the Muqtabas is surprisingly mild, praising his warlike qualities and tactical skill. Similar sentiments appear in descriptions of later Christian warriors, particularly Alfonso VI and the Cid – although almost always in the context that the Muslims were eventually successful.68 Ibn Hayyan could even describe Ordoño as fighting a holy war (jihad) against the Muslims,69 showing how this vocabulary could become secularised.70 Even when a general change in vocabulary can be demonstrated, one should be very careful not to read changes in rhetoric as exact reflections of frontier tensions. Unfortunately for historians of al-Andalus, the section of the Muqtabas which covered the reigns of al-Hakam I and ‘Abd al-Rahman II – a manuscript from alQayrawan – which Lévi-Provençal used in his story of Mahmud, has not been accessible for many years. The earliest published Arabic account of Mahmud’s journey to the north is that compiled by the Eastern historian Ibn al-Athir, who died in 1233: In the same year [828], the people of Mérida killed their governor. They fomented civil war and ‘Abd al-Rahman set out with an army against them. He besieged them and destroyed their crops and their trees. They returned to obedience and hostages were taken from them and the army returned [to Cordoba] after they had destroyed the walls of the city. Then ‘Abd al-Rahman sent an order [to the Méridans] to take the stones of the wall to the river but the people did not like this order and when they saw it they returned to disobedience and they sent the governor away and repaired the walls. In the year 829, ‘Abd al-Rahman, ruler of al-Andalus, went out with an army to Mérida and with him were the hostages of her people and when he fought her [Mérida] he sent a message to her people that the hostages would be killed by the governor whom they had imprisoned [during the earlier rebellion]71 and he besieged them and destroyed their country and he advanced towards them. Then he set out with an army in the year 832 and they besieged [the city] . . . In the year 833, an army went out against them and [‘Abd al-Rahman] conquered [Mérida] and her people abandoned their evil and ruin. Among her people was a man called 70 68 69 70 71

Ibid., 188. C. Granda Gallego, ‘Otra imagen del guerrero cristiano (su valoración positiva en testimonios del Islam)’, in En la España Medieval, 5. (Estudios en memoria del Profesor D. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, pt 1), (1986), 471–80. Ibn Hayyan, Muqtabas V, 123. Münzel, Feinde, Nachbarn, 177, citing A. Noth, Heiliger Krieg und Heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum. Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Bonn, 1966), 22. Ibn al-Athir implied that the death of the governor had already occurred.

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Mahmud ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar of Mérida; ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Hakam besieged him with a large army and much slaughter resulted. They destroyed [Mérida] and killed many of [Mahmud’s] people and [his] horsemen followed him into the mountain and so avoided death, imprisonment and exile. Mahmud ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar of Mérida departed, and some of his people in peace with him, to Mont Salut and ‘Abd al-Rahman sent out an army against him in the year 835. Two deserters from [Mahmud’s] party went to H.q.l.b. in [the month of] Rabi‘ al-akhir of this year and [the Cordobans] sent a company at the request [of the deserters] and Mahmud killed them and captured those who were with them . . . [Mahmud] travelled until he came to the city of Mina72 which he attacked and captured. He took all the riding animals and food supplies that were in [Mina] and he departed and arrived in the country of the polytheists [Christians] and ruled over one of their castles for five years and three months. Adefunsh [Alfonso] the king of the Franks besieged them and took the castle and killed Mahmud and those who were with him.73

Ibn al-Athir’s account was the source for al-Nuwayri (1279–1332). Both these authors stated that Mahmud had seized the Galician castle. He had not, as in the Christian account, become a dependent of Alfonso.74 Ibn Khaldun condensed the same story and changed its vocabulary: In the year 828 the people of Mérida rebelled against ‘Abd al-Rahman and killed their governor. Then ‘Abd al-Rahman sent his troops to attack them, who took the city, reimposed obedience, took hostages from among the rebels, destroyed the walls and withdrew. ‘Abd al-Rahman had ordered that the stones of the walls be carried away to the river, but the Méridans again rebelled, imprisoned the governor and repaired [the wall]. Faced with this attitude, ‘Abd al-Rahman set out to attack them in the year 829 and besieged them, but they resisted successfully. He returned to besiege them in the year 832 and they still resisted; but on encircling them for a third time in the year 833, he managed to overcome the city. The remnants of the rebels who remained at liberty took refuge with Mahmud ibn ‘Abd alJabbar in Monte Salud, where they dug themselves in; this happened in the year already mentioned. ‘Abd al-Rahman sent his forces to besiege them, but Mahmud interned himself in the land of the enemy [dar al-harb], seized a castle and lived there for five years, until Adfunsh, the king of the Galicians, took the castle and killed Mahmud and his followers. This happened in the year 840.75

Ibn Sa‘id the Maghrebi (d. 1286) recounted the death of Mahmud, without telling the earlier parts of the story:

72 73 74 75

Perhaps on the river Miño. Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kamil, 12 vols (Beirut, 1967), vol. 6, 410–11. Al-Nuwayri, Nihayat al-‘Arab, cited in Sánchez-Albornoz, Origenes, 700. Ibn Khaldun, ‘Ibar (Cairo, 1867), vol. 4, trans. O. Machado, ‘Historia de los Arabes de España por Ibn Jaldun’, Cuadernos de Historia de España, 8 (1945), 149, who does not give page references.

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices In the year 840 the famous traitor Mahmud ibn al-Jabbar the Berber of Mérida perished, whose war against the nobles of ‘Abd al-Rahman had lasted a long time and whose deeds were famous. It came to Adefunsh that [Mahmud] wished to return to the rule [of the emir]. He was in a castle in Jilliqiya and Adefunsh attacked him. His horse bolted in the battle and he was thrown against a tree and he remained motionless on the ground, dead. The Christian horsemen remained on a hill; they were afraid to approach him for fear that it was one of his tricks.76

Mahmud was not the only man to die such an ignominious death. A similar fate befell the second Méridan rebel Sulayman ibn Martin, as recorded in a history of the Maghreb and al-Andalus to 1269 by Ibn ‘Idhari, written in Marrakesh in 1312. Sulayman was tricked into throwing himself from the walls of the castle in which ‘Abd al-Rahman was besieging him.77 It was also reported of Sancho II Garcés of Pamplona (905–25) that he died as a result of a fall from his horse. It was a fitting end for an enemy of the Umayyads. In the absence of Lévi-Provençal’s manuscript of the Muqtabas of Ibn Hayyan, there are a few loose ends in the story of Mahmud which cannot be tied up. One of these is the fate of his sister Jamla, mentioned by Ibn al-Qutiya as a restraining influence on her brother. There is no evidence for the conversion and marriage of Mahmud’s sister apart from Lévi-Provençal’s account. The most that can be said is that, unlike the other elements in the story, which appear in too many different sources to be entirely untrue, it is unlikely that the nephew of Mahmud ever became Bishop of Santiago. The see of Iria was transferred to Santiago de Compostela sometime after the discovery of the bones of St James at the end of the ninth century. According to the Chronicle of Albelda the Bishop of Iria from c. 880 to 920 was Sisnando, who was probably the first Bishop of Compostela, since he was instrumental with Alfonso III in establishing the cult of Santiago.78 Sisnando’s predecessor as Bishop of Iria was his uncle Adualfo. The family came from the Asturias and seems to have depended on royal support.79 Adualfo and Sisnando were unpopular with the local Galician nobility, but there is no suggestion that either bishop was the nephew of a rebel from the south. It is important not to let ill-founded generalisations dictate the way the history of Hispania in the early medieval period is retold in modern times. Lévi-Provençal’s portmanteau Mahmud could be made to hold at least some of the assumptions he 76 77 78 79

Ibn Sa‘id, Al-mughrib fi hula al-maghrib, ed. S. Daif, 2 vols (2nd edn, Cairo, 1964), vol. 1, 48. Ibn ‘Idhari, Al-Bayan al-mughrib, vol. 2, ed. G.S. Colin and É. Lévi-Provençal (Beirut, 1948), 83–4. Chronicle of Albelda, 47, 6. R.A. Fletcher, St James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984), 67–76.

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made about Mérida’s resistance to Cordoban, more specifically Islamic rule in the eighth century, but his synthesis was anachronistic. Barkaï has pointed out that there is no concept on either side in the early Middle Ages of the strength of Christian or Muslim unity which might have served as a prelude to the Reconquest. Until the advances made by the northern kingdoms in the eleventh century, enemies were categorised from a short-term political perspective in which differences of religion played little or no part. The opposition which both the Latin and the Arabic chroniclers perceived between groups within their own immediate spheres were greater than those between Muslim and Christian.80 Nor were the actions on a scale large enough to imply frontiers stretching across the peninsula. In the first half of the ninth century, the Asturian kingdom was one of several minor players in the peninsula, only recently established in a new capital in Oviedo. Cordoba was beset with opposition from many quarters which only the later authors could dignify as ‘frontiers’. In these circumstances, a man like Mahmud of Mérida, whose ethnicity remains unclear, could wage war on either kingdom, and was just as likely to establish himself in a northern ‘Christian’ as a southern ‘Muslim’ stronghold. Although the propagandists both of Cordoba and Oviedo tried to portray him as a client or vassal of their respective rulers, for most if not all his career he seems to have been no more a dependent than they were, if ultimately less successful. Until the rhetoric of crusade began to colour the vocabulary used to describe Mahmud’s journey in both the Latin and the Arabic chronicles, he remained the enemy equally of Cordoba and of Oviedo, and did not notice the frontier he was later said to have crossed.81

80 81

Barkaï, Cristianos y musulmanes, 97–8. I am very grateful, as always, to Ian Wood, for improving this paper and for his help with the translations from Latin.

Chapter 3

Emperors and Expansionism: From Rome to Middle Byzantium Jonathan Shepard

A decade ago Benjamin Isaac raised the question of whether there was such a thing as a ‘Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire’, in the sense of a consistent policy towards the East formulated by the high command in the light of such rational considerations as deterrence, the security of the inhabitants of the provinces and supposedly ‘natural’ frontiers. Isaac cast doubt on the idea that the Romans had primarily defensive aims, such as withstanding incursions from the Persians or the Saracens.1 Instead, he suggested, a variety of considerations, changing over time, led Roman emperors to intervene in the Caucasus and Mesopotamia and then to maintain a presence there. Among these was the need to consolidate their hold over existing provinces; the need to fund the occupation by means of occasional forays in quest of plunder from enemy territory; and, not least, the yearning for ‘glory’ which Roman historians themselves quite often ascribe to emperors. For example, Dio Cassius writes of Trajan that ‘he campaigned against the Armenians and Parthians on the pretext that the Armenian king had received his diadem not at his hands but from the Parthian king; but the real reason was a desire for fame’, in the footsteps of Alexander.2 Isaac concluded that ‘Roman expansion may have been far less systematic than is often claimed. It was an aim in itself and therefore opportunistic’.3 Such bold claims have not received universal assent.4 But they accord with the 1 2 3 4

B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (rev. edn, Oxford, 1992), 50–53, 265–8, 419. Dio Cassius, Roman History 68.17, trans. E. Cary and H.B. Foster, 9 vols (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1914–27), vol. 8, 392–3; cf. Dio Cassius, 68.29–30, trans. Cary and Foster, 416–17; Isaac, Limits, 26, 51, 121, n. 92. Isaac, Limits, 416. See, for example, D. Potter, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1 (1990), 33–42; Y. Le Bohec, in Latomus, 51 (1992), 672–4; S.T. Parker, ‘Two books on the eastern Roman frontier: nomads and other security threats’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 5 (1992),

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observations of A.R. Birley formulated twenty years earlier. Birley raised the question of ‘why it was that only a few of the first twenty or so emperors were able to resist the romantic urge to create an imperium sine fine’, that is, to seize opportunities to extend their dominions one way or another.5 Birley presented evidence to suggest that even emperors who have previously been credited with a sense of ‘realism’ and moderation may be associated with expansionist demarches and epithets. For example, Marcus Aurelius features as a propagator imperii on a medallion, while his coin legends offer only a partial toning-down of the customary refrain of imperial victories.6 Noting the expansionist rhetoric of the poets Virgil, Horace and Ovid, Birley suggested that it may not have been as out of key with imperial decisionmakers’ sentiments as has generally been supposed. Modern historians may have been rather too hasty to take as indicative of restraint from expansionism statements such as that of Appian: ‘possessing the best part of the earth and sea they are wholly committed to preserving their empire through the exercise of prudence, rather than extending their sway indefinitely over poverty-stricken and profitless tribes of barbarians’.7 Neither Appian nor Dio were opposed to expansionism as such.8 And the very fact that Appian and other writers of the later second century saw fit to expound and praise a policy of restraint from indiscriminate expansion implies that the latter still seemed desirable to some of their contemporaries. A kind of ‘discourse’ on the extension of empire was under way, the one constant being the widespread assumption that the conspicuous loss of spheres of influence or dependency or the overt withdrawal of military garrisons was ignoble. The theses of Birley, Isaac and other writers have shown how miscellaneous assumptions and rhetoric about the frontiers and the nature of imperial dominion interacted with one another and with external realities during the early empire.9 The

5 6

7 8 9

467–72; W.E. Kaegi, in Classical Philology, 88 (1993), 183–5. A full critique issued forth from E.L. Wheeler, ‘Methodological limits and the mirage of Roman strategy: I–II’, Journal of Military History, 57 (1993), 7–41, 215–40, while prior caveats had been voiced by R. Syme, ‘Military geography at Rome’, Classical Quarterly, 7 (1988), 227–51 at 243–50. A.R. Birley, ‘Roman frontiers and Roman frontier policy: some reflections on Roman imperialism’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, n.s. 3 (1974), 13–25, at 24. Birley, ‘Frontiers’, 21; W. Szaivert, Die Münzprägung der Kaiser Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus und Commodus (161–192), Moneta Imperii Romani 18; Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, Denkschriften, 187 (Vienna, 1986), 26, 54–60, 196–202, 205–10. Appian, Roman History, Preface 7, trans. H. White, 4 vols (London and New York, 1912–13), vol. 1, pp. 10–11; Birley, ‘Frontiers’, 13–14, 19; Isaac, Limits, 396. Isaac, Limits, 24–8. Notably, C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore and London, 1997), 23–30, 33–8, 51–97.

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question arises whether there may not have been a similar interplay in Byzantium. At first sight this appears une question mal posée, for the situation of a beleaguered Christian empire seems too different from the Principate’s to bear much meaningful comparison. It is clear that the empire underwent drastic change during the seventh century, in its demographic and other economic resources, territorial holdings and prestige. The wealthiest, most urbanised provinces – Egypt, Palestine and Syria – were subjugated by Arab war-bands, acting jointly in the name of their own one true God. To the west the Slav immigration into the Balkans, already under way by the mid-sixth century, intensified and extended south to the mountainous hinterland of the Peloponnese.10 The Slavs and other immigrants were not, for the most part, organised into permanently tight-knit politico-military structures, but they were adept at guerilla warfare, acclimatised to rough terrain and very numerous. Their selfsufficiency, elusiveness and mobility made them intractable and required the Byzantine forces to adopt similarly flexible tactics.11 And although under imperial tutelage, their chiefs were occasionally confident and ambitious enough to make attempts upon the bastion of Byzantine power in northern Greece, Thessalonika. A two-year blockade and then a siege was mounted after the exposure of a Slav chief’s plot to seize the city in the later 670s, at a time when a huge Arab force was blockading Constantinople itself.12 Neither this nor any other attempt on Thessalonika was successful, but these manoeuvres eroded the resources at the disposal of the Byzantine state and, no less importantly, they dented its prestige. Around the time of the Slavs’ two-year blockade of Thessalonika and the Arab assault on Constantinople, a compact host of nomads from the former conglomerate that had dominated the Black Sea steppes a generation earlier presumed to ignore the imperial watch-posts and units stationed in the vicinity of the Lower Danube. These nomads, the Bulgars, crossed the river and pastured their flocks and herds in the plains stretching south to the Haemus mountain range. They were organised into highly effective military formations which played a key part in restoring the deposed Emperor Justinian II to his throne in 705–6 10

11 12

On the question of the density of Slav settlement in the Peloponnese and further north in Greece, see J. Koder, ‘Zur Frage der slavischen Siedlungsgebiete im mittelalterlichen Griechenland’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 71 (1978), 315–31; idem, Der Lebensraum der Byzantiner. Historisch-geographisches Abriss ihres mittelalterlichen Staates im östlichen Mittelmeerraum (Graz, Vienna and Cologne, 1984), 142–3; Abbildung 22, p. 144 (map); M. Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (London, 1996), 267–70. Extensive further bibliography in A.G.C. Savvides, ‘Peloponnesus Mediaevalis: a review essay à propos of a new collective manual on the medieval Morea’, Byzantion, 70 (2000), 309–30 at 311–16. Maurice, Strategikon, XI.4; XII B 20, ed. G.T. Dennis and E. Gamillscheg (Vienna, 1981), 371–89; 459–67. P. Lemerle (ed.), Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius et la pénétration des Slaves dans les Balkans, 2 vols (Paris, 1979–81), vol. 1, 198–221 (text and French trans.); vol. 2, 111–36 (commentary).

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and also, it seems, in helping the Byzantines rebuff the Arab assault on Constantinople in 717–18.13 The making of formal ‘treaties’ (pakta) between the Bulgars’ leader, Tervel, and Justinian and his provision of military aid to the emperor are recorded in one of the Greek inscriptions adorning the relief of the ruler-huntsman at Madara, high on a cliff-face to the south of the Bulgar encampment at Pliska.14 Tervel sported on his lead seals the title of ‘Caesar’ (Kaiser) which he had received from a grateful emperor.15 He is depicted on the seals’ obverse wearing a helmet and facing the beholder in a pose reminiscent of that of recent emperors on their seals and coins. The structure that Tervel headed persisted as a de facto autonomous military power more or less continuously for over 300 years, extending its sway over many of the Balkan Slavs and occasionally mounting shows of force outside the walls of Constantinople itself. For almost as lengthy a period, until the earlier tenth century, the Muslims launched raids, often several in a year, from a variety of bases. At some, such as Tarsus, the whole economy and society seems to have been dedicated to incessant raiding.16 Byzantium’s geo-political position was essentially beleaguered so long as the Bulgars and the Muslims had the capacity to threaten significant military action, and the Muslims’ raids by land and sea became a standing irritant and handicap of provincial life. As late as the 950s, when a Byzantine envoy attempted to negotiate ‘a perpetual truce’ with the Fatimid Caliph of North Africa, he was rebuffed and reminded that only temporary truces with infidels were permitted by the Koran.17 The culture and values that emerged in Byzantine society in these unpredictable, often violent circumstances differed in many ways from what had earlier been the norm, and the changes of the seventh century have been aptly characterised as ‘the transformation of a culture’.18 One facet of the change is the lack of protracted literary 13 14 15 16

17 18

For the Bulgars’ somewhat ambivalent role in 717–18, see P. Yannopulos, ‘Le rôle des Bulgares dans la guerre arabo-byzantine de 717/718’, Byzantion, 67 (1997), 483–516. V. Beshevliev, P’rvob’lgarski nadpisi (2nd expanded edn Sofia, 1992) no. 1 (c), 99 (text), 105–9 (commentary). G. Zacos and A. Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2 vols (Basel–Berne, 1972–84), vol. 1.3, no. 2672, p. 1441; Beshevliev, P’rvob’lgarski nadpisi, no. 81, 246–7. C.E. Bosworth, ‘The city of Tarsus and the Arab–Byzantine frontiers in early and middle Abbasid times’, Oriens, 33 (1992), 268–86 at 276–7, 281–6, repr. in his The Arabs, Byzantium and Iran: Studies in Early Islamic History and Culture (Aldershot, 1996), no. 14; idem, ‘Abu ‘Amr ‘Uthman al-Tarsusi’s Siyar al-thugur and the last years of Arab rule in Tarsus (fourth/tenth century)’, Graeco-Arabica, 5 (1993), 183–95, repr. in his Arabs, Byzantium and Iran, no. 15; J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘The Arab–Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands’, Zbornik Radova Vizantoloshkog Instituta, 19 (1980), 79–116 at 107–11. A.A. Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes, 3 vols (Brussels, 1935–68), vol. 2.1, 375; S.M. Stern, ‘An embassy of the Byzantine emperor to the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu’izz’, Byzantion, 20 (1950), 239–58 at 245–6. J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture (Cambridge, 1990), 355–75, 436–43.

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attention to, or substantive discussion of, ‘frontiers’ as physical barriers or limits or as dividing lines between polities in Byzantine writings from the mid-seventh century onwards. An abiding claim of classical rhetoric had been that the wonders of nature, such as mighty rivers, mountains or the ocean, symbolised and alone determined the extent of the emperor’s sway. At the same time public buildings, walls and watchposts demonstrated his far-flung hegemony as well as his vigilance and hold over subjects living closer to hand. Such themes were still being played out in the midsixth century and Justinian’s building programme ranged from the Caucasian passes and the Euphrates to the Straits of Gibraltar. Procopius both praised Justinian for expanding the empire’s territory, allegedly ‘more than doubling’ it, and devoted a whole book to the enumeration of the buildings as being ‘the works of one man’.19 He concluded that Justinian ‘has strengthened the empire, not with fortresses alone, but also by means of garrisons of soldiers from the bounds of the East to the very setting of the sun, these being the limits of the Roman dominion’.20 Procopius is, in effect, celebrating the virtual limitlessness of the emperor’s sway across much of the inhabited world, staked out in brick and stone, at the same time as praising the emperor’s objective of defending his subjects from external attackers. The celebration of the imperial presence in peripheral regions and commemoration of these feats of construction and subjugation of nature is associated with the drastic expansion of the empire to which Procopius refers repeatedly. In other words, in this period as in earlier phases of the empire, the ‘limits of the Roman dominion’ are described in essentially triumphalist terms, as testimony of the emperor’s proven range and capacity for still further extension rather than in acknowledgement of an ultimate cut-off point. If there is innovation, it is in the strong sense conveyed by Procopius that the emperor’s works – churches, granaries and cisterns among them – comprised a network of bases that would provide for periodic inundations by waves of ‘barbarians for ever making war’ in the Balkans.21 This was implicitly to acknowledge that the empire’s borders were now porous. Such willingness to contemplate a ‘soft frontier’ in, for example, the Lower Danube zone,22 was accompanied by, and to some extent enshrouded in, the forementioned triumphalism. These considerations offer part of the answer, if not the key, to the question of why very little discussion, discursive description or attempted definition of the Byzantine ‘frontier’ features in extant Byzantine writings of subsequent centuries: essentially there was very little for encomiasts or chroniclers to celebrate. It seems only to have 19 20 21 22

Procopius, Buildings, 1.1.16–17, trans. H.B. Dewing and G. Downey (Cambridge, MA and London, 1940), 8. Procopius, Buildings, 6.7.17, trans. Dewing and Downey, 392. Procopius, Buildings, 4.1.6, trans. Dewing and Downey, 220. See S. Patoura, ‘Une nouvelle considération sur la politique de Justinien envers les peuples du Danube’, Byzantinoslavica, 58 (1997), 78–86.

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been in the mid-tenth century that an attempt was made briefly to define the ‘frontier’ as an outer limit in need of forts and defenders and, significantly, the encyclopaedist’s point of reference is an edict from the time of Emperor Diocletian.23 This dearth of descriptions or theoretical definitions is, of course, also a reflection of the profoundly different nature of literary source materials from the mid-seventh century. Narrative history of the ‘classicising’ genre fell into abeyance; earthly horizons contracted and matters to do with religion, morality and means of access to the divine became the dominant subject matter of the writings that have survived.24 But there were also some quite specific reasons why ‘frontiers’ and frontier affairs received rather thin coverage in Byzantine literary works. Firstly it was demeaning, almost to the point of subversion, to draw attention to the diminution of the regions that were directly beneath the emperor’s control. For the effect would be to underline the difference between his present position and that of his distant predecessors, thereby bringing into question his credentials as the continuer and upholder of the old Roman order. And the claim to exercise sole rights as heirs and perpetuators to that legitimate order underpinned Byzantine imperial ideology. It underlay the Byzantines’ claim to exercise legitimate hegemony over other people and to be able to confer authority and privileges or to confirm legal possession of places to neighbouring elites and potentates who were de facto autonomous. The Eastern emperor’s exclusive rights to the authenticating label of ‘Roman’ must therefore not be diluted in any way. When, in 812, Byzantium formally recognised the imperial status of Charlemagne and envoys acclaimed him as ‘emperor and basileus’ in his church at Aachen, care was taken to demonstrate that there remained only one truly legitimate Roman emperor living on the Bosphorus. From that time forth, the Eastern emperor is styled as ‘Emperor of the Romans’ rather than plain ‘Emperor’ on his coins. This more specific title had already been commonly used on imperial seals from the early eighth century and it also featured occasionally in imperial signatures. But the fact that it first appeared on coins in the reign of Michael I and continued to feature on coin legends thereafter cannot be accidental. Being essential lubricants of Byzantine diplomacy, 23

24

Suidae Lexicon, ed. A. Adler, 5 vols (repr. Stuttgart, 1971), vol. 2, s.v. eschatia, p. 432; P. Stephenson, ‘The Byzantine frontier at the Lower Danube in the late tenth and eleventh centuries’, in Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands 700–1700, ed. D. Power and N. Standen (London, 1999), 80–104, at 81. C. Mango, ‘The tradition of Byzantine chronography’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 12–13 (1988–89), 360–72 at 360–65; Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century, 425–35; M. Whitby, ‘Greek historical writing after Procopius: variety and vitality’, in A. Cameron and L.I. Conrad, eds, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, I: Problems in the Literary Source Material, 3 vols (Princeton, 1992–95), vol. 1, 25–80 at 66–74; A. Cameron, ‘New themes and styles in Greek literature: seventh-eighth centuries’, in Cameron and Conrad, eds, Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 1, 81–105 at 88–102.

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the coins needed to convey a message of Roman legitimacy as clear and constant as the fineness of the gold pieces themselves.25 The Byzantines insisted during their diplomatic dealings that Constantine the Great had moved the imperial seat together with the Roman senate and army to Constantinople, but the fact that so many former Roman possessions had slipped from the emperor’s grasp, including ‘Old Rome’ itself, was hard to deny. This, in turn, made it less than politic to describe in detail the current bounds of the emperor’s effective control, for this would highlight how little they had in common with those of imperial Rome at its peak. In a work probably not intended for widespread circulation, Constantine VII noted that ‘now the Roman empire has been diminished to the east and the west and mutilated’ and ‘the ancestral Roman language’, Latin, had been abandoned.26 His disquisition was an attempt to correlate the place-names used by antique writers with those in use at the present time, when the old unity of the Roman imperial ‘drag-net’ had broken up and ‘both names and realities have been transformed’.27 Significantly, Constantine’s essay does not attempt to delineate the borders of the current, ‘decomposed’ empire, although other works penned or commissioned by him for practical purposes pay careful attention to boundaries that have been agreed with external potentates.28 To formally acknowledge that extensive tracts of former imperial territory came beneath other powers might have demeaned the emperor’s claim to be truly ‘Roman’, and thus well-publicised delineations of the current borders were still out of vogue in the tenth century. Instead, by taking it for granted that ‘Old Rome’ and Ravenna lay rightfully within his purlieu, the emperor could bolster his claims to unimpeachable Romanitas and treat such towns as bargaining chips. This is what was done in the course of negotiations with Otto I’s envoy, Liudprand of Cremona, in 968.29 Whereas the location and condition of the borderlands was not a fit subject for fulsome rhetoric and propaganda, the court at Constantinople was a showcase for long-standing rites, symbols, costumes and customs, some of which really did hark back to the heyday of imperial Rome. It was through presiding over unrelenting rounds of ceremonial involving the chanting of acclamations – some still in Latin 25

26 27 28 29

For the addition to the earlier coin-legends, see P. Grierson and A. Bellinger, Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, 3 vols (Washington, DC, 1966–73), vol. 3.1, 64, 178, 364–7, Plate 17; G. Rösch, Onoma Basileias. Studien zum offiziellen Gebrauch der Kaisertitel in spätantiken und frühbyzantinischen Zeit (Vienna, 1978), 111–16. Constantine VII, De thematibus, ed. A. Pertusi, Studi e Testi 160 (Rome, 1952), 60. Constantine VII, De thematibus, ed. Pertusi, 84. Constantine VII, De administrando imperio, 45, ed. and trans. G. Moravcsik and R.J.H. Jenkins (Washington, DC, 1967), 212–15. Liudprand, Legatio, 15, in Opera omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 156 (Turnhout, 1998), 194.

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even in the tenth century – and the parading of holders of such titles as patrikios, Caesar and hypatos (consul) that the emperor could project most compellingly his ‘Roman’ credentials, both to his own subjects and to foreign guests. Constantine VII implies as much when he insists, albeit for particular and self-serving reasons, that an emperor needs to have ‘followed Roman customs’ from birth, having been raised in the palace and learnt there ‘the virtues’, ‘the becoming and the good’.30 The moral dimensions of these qualities were attributed to Constantine the Great and Church teachings, but there is also emphasis on the antiquity of ‘the ordinances handed down by our forefathers’, while the preface to Constantine’s Book of Ceremonies treats the codification and due performance of court ceremonies as a key distinguishing characteristic of ‘the imperial polity’.31 It is the clear hierarchy and continuity symbolised by and projected from the court that brings together the body politic’s diverse limbs. These would otherwise appear to be and, it is implied, would actually be ‘in utter chaos’. The prestige and validating quality of the titles bestowed by the emperor owed much to a sense that the court encapsulated the ancient Roman empire in a refined, well-ordered and, of course, Christian form and that membership of the court connected one with that famed empire.32 So long as the panoply of titles, court costumes, ornaments and stipends exerted magnetism across a wide assortment of external elites and leaders, the ‘Roman’ emperor’s sway carried at least some conviction over an extensive area, and the reduction in his actual territorial holdings since antiquity could be finessed. The attachment and nominal subordination of prominent individuals on and beyond peripheral regions by means of court titles and other solemn affiliations thus became an incomparable means of safeguarding and perpetuating the empire. The decision of a ‘barbarian’ potentate to align himself with the emperor and accept a title or other symbol of association with the Byzantine empire rested, of course, mainly on the sense of a convergence between his own interests and those of the emperor. His commitment was seldom unconditional, even though the Byzantines referred to it as ‘submission’ and it could readily be overturned, by the honorand’s local rivals or overlord, if not by the individual himself as his circumstances changed. Thus the decision of Arichis, the Lombard Duke of Benevento, to seek the title of patricius (i.e. patrikios) ‘together with the duchy of Naples’ represented an attempt to dissolve Charlemagne’s newly-imposed regime and, in effect, to form an alliance with the Eastern emperor.33 But his offer ‘to avail 30 31 32 33

Constantine VII, De administrando imperio, 13, ed. Moravcsik and Jenkins, 72–5. Constantine VII, Le livre des cérémonies, preface, ed. and French trans. A. Vogt, 2 vols (Paris, 1935–39), vol. 1, 1. See J. Shepard, ‘Courts in east and west’, in P. Linehan and J. Nelson, eds, The Medieval World (London, 2001), 14–36, at 20–26. MGH, Epp. III (Berlin, 1892), 617. Arichis’s démarche is known to us only from a letter of Pope Hadrian, addressed to Charlemagne, but its contents are not inherently implausible.

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himself of [perfrui] the manners of the Greeks both in hair-style and in dress, under the authority [dicione] of the ... emperor’ illustrates how a sumptuous court culture, boasting exclusive antiquity and legitimacy, provided a well-known format whereby leaders and other figures from distant elites might voluntarily associate themselves with ‘the noble polity’ and thereby bolster the credibility of the emperor’s claims to world rule. Reportedly, Byzantine officials, equipped with the appropriate costumes, sword of honour, combs and clippers, were sent to confer the title of patricius upon Arichis and bring him within the emperor’s ambit. Some twenty years after this episode the Carolingians were confirming the right of the local worthies on the Istrian peninsula to continue to take Holy Communion in the ranking order of their Byzantine court dignities.34 As M. McCormick has observed, ‘over a thousand kilometers and a month of travel away [from Constantinople], local grandees had assimilated the very essence of the social structure of the metropolitan elite; and the metropolis retained the master key which made it work’.35 Affectations of court orders of precedence such as this were self-imposed and insofar as they were collective and en masse they were driven largely by the competitive dynamics of local families. Yet these forms of affiliation held continually aloft the notion of imperial ascendancy – if not actual imperial banners – in far-flung places and they could on occasion be translated into the provision of tangible military assistance for the empire. It was partly out of a desire to display imperial endorsement for his headship over other members of the Bulgar political elite that Tervel issued seals bearing his title of Caesar and depicting him in quasi-imperial mode. In practice he was self-governing and the Bulgars’ political structure proved sturdy even though it owed nothing to past Roman administrative arrangements or contemporary imperial direction. But this durability was neither foreseeable nor inevitable during the first three-quarters of the eighth century. At that time the acceptance by Tervel (and, probably, other Bulgar notables) of imperial titles and other trappings probably appeared to Byzantine statesmen a first step in the gradual entanglement of the nomad chiefs and their clans and dependents within the Roman ‘drag-net’. Personal ties and dignities such as these radiating out to barbarian elites from the imperial court were, for all their tenuousness and fragility, far worthier of celebration and literary mention than were lines of forts or other symbols of the Roman limes, past or present. The kaleidoscopic quality and limited territorial application of these connexions served to make the very notion of a clearly delineated, fixed, frontier redundant if not unwelcome. 34

35

Plea of Riûana, ed. A. Petranoviæ and A. Margetiæ, ‘Il placito del Risano’, Atti, Centro di ricerche storiche, Rovigno, 14 (1983–84), 55–75, at 62; M. McCormick, ‘The imperial edge: Italo-Byzantine identity, movement and integration, AD 650–950’, in H. Ahrweiler and A.E. Laiou, eds, Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC, 1998), 17–52 at 47–51. McCormick, ‘Imperial edge’, 51.

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A further reason for the apparent lack of appetite for definitions or descriptions of the frontier from the seventh century onwards was the fact that so very many parts of the emperor’s virtual archipelago of possessions abutted onto external ‘barbarian’ peoples or, in the case of Greece, populations that were still largely unassimilated.36 Many were exposed to constant raiding and the strategy of ‘soft frontiers’ against Muslim incursions in Asia Minor allowed for the raiders to range freely and thereby encumber themselves with captives and loot. This made them the more vulnerable to ambushes upon their withdrawal through mountain passes.37 Not even the capital went unmolested and although the number of incursions by barbarians or rebel Byzantine armies right up to the walls of Constantinople was fairly modest, the cult of the Virgin’s special protection for ‘her’ city and of its consequent impregnability developed rapidly during the early seventh century. At that time the city faced permutations of Avar, Slav and Persian threats or downright assaults.38 The fact that barbarians might advance unmolested as far as the city walls, only there to be thwarted, became occasion for relief, gratitude to supernatural defenders and liturgical celebration rather than remorse or shame at the failure of the empire’s outer defences to hold firm. The term ‘God-protected’ came to be used regularly of the city in much the same way as the emperor was called ‘crowned by God’.39 There was conviction or best hope that the empire would endure so long as the city was preserved inviolate and the emperor and churchmen residing there kept the faith, honoured its saintly presences and made regular intercessions to the divine. In any case, even the very worst eventuality, the fall of the city and the reign of Antichrist, would herald the Second Coming and the ultimate triumph of Christ’s kingdom.40 The walls of Constantinople themselves became objects of admiration and pride and provided settings for ritual. When the walls suffered serious damage from an earthquake in 740, their restoration was celebrated with panache. Acclamations were chanted by one of the City factions: ‘Leo [III] and Constantine [V] have triumphed in power!’ An extensive series of inscriptions commemorated these emperors’ works in similarly uplifting terms as, for example: ‘The fortune (tychç) of Leo and Constantine our God36 37 38 39 40

Koder, Lebensraum der Byzantiner, 142. Leo VI, Tactica, XVIII, 127, 134, 143, PG 107, cols 976, 978, 981, 984; Haldon and Kennedy, ‘Arab–Byzantine frontier’, 95–106; J. Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565–1204 (London, 1999), 78–9, 177–80, 209–10. A. Cameron, ‘The Theotokos in sixth-century Constantinople’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 29 (1978), 79–108; eadem, ‘The Virgin’s Robe: an episode in the history of early seventh-century Constantinople’, Byzantion, 49 (1979), 42–56 at 42–8. E. Fenster, Laudes Constantinopolitanae, Miscellanea Byzantina Monacensia 9 (Munich, 1968), 103–4 and n. 2 on 104, 108–16. P.J. Alexander, ‘The strength of empire and capital as seen through Byzantine eyes’, Speculum, 37 (1962), 339–57 at 343–7, 355–6, repr. in his Religious and Political History and Thought in the Byzantine Empire (London, 1978), no. 3.

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protected masters and of Irene, our most pious Augusta, has triumphed’.41 From a natural, yet ultimately heaven-sent, disaster great works were springing forth. This setting in stone of triumphalist rhetoric should not be dismissed as vainglory or empty bluster. The ruling elite and the citizenry of Constantinople were unified by belief in their city as a kind of Ark of the Covenant whose special relationship with the divine could actually be reaffirmed by periodic trials at the hands of impious outsiders. And the sense of external perils girding them all persisted for hundreds of years. One might take as an example the hymns and verses attributed to the mid-ninth-century writer Joseph the Hymnographer and his contemporaries. Imprecations for the Virgin’s protection against ‘barbarian’ assaults are a recurring theme and the Virgin together with her miraculous Robe are hailed as a kind of ‘wall’, guarding the inhabitants of Constantinople.42 One might perhaps regard the preoccupation with the city’s security shown by imperial ceremonial and by churchmen’s sermons as being contrivances to rally the citizens behind emperor and patriarch as intercessors with the Virgin, were it not for the testimony of Muslim and Latin writers that Constantinople still seemed at risk from foreign assaults in the tenth century. A former Muslim captive recalled the elaborately guarded palace gates, while Masudi noted a fortress at the northern mouth of the Bosphorus which kept guard against the Rus’ ships.43 A contemporary of Masudi, Liudprand of Cremona, described the palace as a formidable ‘fortress’, while the city of Constantinople was confronted by ‘most ferocious peoples’, for example, ‘Hungarians, Pechenegs, Khazars, Rus . . . and all too closely neighbouring it, the Bulgars’.44 Such descriptions, together with practical measures such as posting numerous ships to guard the capital while the rest of the fleet sailed for Crete in 949,45 41

42

43

44 45

A. Cameron and J. Herrin, eds and trans., Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, 3 (Leiden, 1984), 58–9, 170 (commentary). See also textual observations and citation of the inscriptions in O. Kresten, ‘Leon III. und die Landmauern von Konstantinopel. Zur Datierung von c.3 der Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 36 (1994), 21–52 at 36–46. Joseph the Hymnographer, Mariale, PG 105, 1005, 1008, 1009–13, 1025; A. Kazhdan, ‘Joseph the Hymnographer and the first Russian attack on Constantinople’, in From Byzantium to Iran: In Honour of Nina G. Garsoïan, ed. R. Thomson and J.-P. Mahé (Atlanta, GA, 1997), 187–96 at 189–92. See also Fenster, Laudes Constantinopolitanae, 100–110; J. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton, 1987), 192–4, 198–200, 307–11, 314–20. A.A. Vasiliev, ‘Harun Ibn Yahya and his description of Constantinople’, Seminarium Kondakovianum, 5 (1932), 149–63, at 155–6; A. Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du XIe siècle (Paris, 1975), 418–19, 423–5; Masudi, Le livre de l’avertissement et de la révision, trans. B. Carra de Vaux (Paris, 1896), 194. Liudprand, Antapodosis, 5.21, 1.11, in Opera omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 156 (Turnhout, 1998), 135, 10. Constantine VII, De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, 2.45, ed. J.J. Reiske, 2 vols (Bonn, 1829), vol. 1, 664.

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indicate that Constantinople was in effect (if not in public image or ideology) a kind of frontier city, containing a peculiar kind of frontier society. One mark of the preoccupation with the security of Constantinople is the prayer prescribed for emperors to intone on the point of departure for expeditions to the East in the midtenth century: ‘Christ, my God, I place in your hands this your city. Defend it from all enemies and misfortunes which approach it, from civil strife and from the assaults of the nations. Keep it impregnable and unassailable.’46 This may seem to confirm the impression that medieval Byzantium is exceptionally unpromising as an object of comparison with attitudes and rhetoric about expansionism during the principate. Yet at the very time when the above-cited prayer for the City’s security was being prescribed, strategy towards the empire’s eastern approaches was switching to a ‘forwards’ policy, involving the permanent annexation of substantial tracts of territory. This change prompted a rhetoric of expansion which made a positive virtue of conquest and enlargement in terms which would have been recognizable to – and were most probably partly borrowed from – the orators, poets and historians of the principate and Justinian’s time. The conquests of the third quarter of the tenth century followed approximately a hundred years of military initiatives which had sometimes been audacious, but which had only exceptionally involved lasting occupation of Muslim-held strongholds or territory. Lack of space precludes discussion of a number of pertinent issues, such as the fact that the launching of more venturesome military initiatives from the mid-ninth century onwards coincides with more vigorous and explicit religious mission work. We shall only touch upon the questions of how far the initiatives were seen or represented as a reconquista, regaining rightful possessions from illicit occupants in the manner of Justinian’s campaigns, or in what sense campaigns avowedly waged ‘on behalf of God, for love of Him and on behalf of the whole nation’ were considered especially meritorious. Leo VI describes their participants as earning ‘rewards stored up by God Himself and ... Our Majesty’.47 The aim here is to draw a number of comparisons between Middle Byzantium and the principate – both in terms of similarities and substantive differences – in the light of Benjamin Isaac’s work. First, it is worth drawing attention to a negative, to the lack of a sense of territoriality or mention of ‘frontiers’ or enlargement of empire in most of the ceremonial and public pronouncements to do with emperors for the period from the mid-ninth to the

46 47

Constantine VII, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed. and trans. J.F. Haldon (Vienna, 1990), 114–15. Leo VI, Tactica, 12.72, 18.19, PG 107, 828, 949. See N. Oikonomides, ‘The concept of “Holy War” and two tenth-century Byzantine ivories’, Peace and War in Byzantium: Essays in Honor of George T. Dennis, S.J., ed. T. Miller and J. Nesbitt (Washington, DC, 1995), 62–86 at 62–8; T.B. Kolbaba, ‘Fighting for Christianity: holy war in the Byzantine empire’, Byzantion, 68 (1998), 194–221, at 205–11.

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mid-tenth century. The triumphs which Theophilos and Basil I staged in celebration of their expeditions to the East involved parades of prisoners of war and large amounts of booty,48 but there was not at that time, so far as I can see, much conception of the ‘conquest’ of places, or of deliberate reconquista. The funeral oration which Leo VI composed for his father, Basil, praised him for revitalising his soldiers and ‘curing’ them of cowardice, but it referred only in very general terms to actual territorial gains in southern Italy: ‘who could recount his victories won over them [the Muslims] to the east and the west?’49 A poem written in praise of Basil during his lifetime and perhaps attributable to Patriarch Photios is equally devoid of any ‘territorial’ sense, even though it concludes with a prayer for the campaign about to be launched against the Paulicians.50 The avowed aims are the general ones of ‘victory’ and making all the peoples of the barbarians ‘submissive’ at the feet of the emperor, a vivid but ultimately vague image.51 A comparable tone is struck in the orations which Arethas delivered in praise of Leo VI at the turn of the ninth century. One of them dilates on an actual victory, but it enthuses most about the triumph celebrated at Constantinople, the abundance of spoils and the things done to the Saracens ‘far more piteous than those which they have inflicted upon us’.52 Arethas recounts the offensive to the Euphrates in fairly general, justificatory terms, maintaining that the attacks were on ‘those formerly subject to the Romans’ yoke’, ‘as if one were laying claim to one’s ancestral inheritance’.53 His intimations of reconquista are tentative and his aspirations for the ‘revival of whole cities and churches of God to the praise of his glory’ lack territorial definition.54 There is no mention of frontiers or their extension, save that Leo VI’s successes are compared favourably with Alexander the Great’s, which sprang from ‘greed and ambition’.55 It is characteristic that Arethas devotes an oration to the translation of St Lazarus’s relics to Constantinople from Cyprus, an island which had a kind of neutral status between Byzantium and the Muslims, without any hint of ambitions for reconquering the island from the

48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

M. McCormick, Eternal Victory (Cambridge, 1986), 146–57. A. Vogt and I. Hausherr, ‘L’oraison funèbre de Léon, Empereur par le Christ, Empereur éternel’, Orientalia Christiana, 26.1 (1932), 5–72, at 56–7, lines 22–3. Subsequent references are to Basil ‘stretching his hand’ over other peoples, but without mention of occupation or territory: Vogt and Hausherr, ‘Oraison’, 58–61. A. Markopoulos, ‘An anonymous laudatory poem in honor of Basil I’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46 (1992), 225–32 at 231, lines 212–17. Markopoulos, ‘Laudatory poem’, 227–9; 231, lines 214–15. See also Photius, Carmina, PG, 102, 583–4. Arethas, Scripta minora, ed. L.G. Westerink, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1972), vol. 2, 31, lines 16–17. Allusions are made to campaigns in other orations: ibid., 27–8, 38. Arethas, Scripta minora, vol. 2, 33, lines 15–16. Arethas, Scripta minora, vol. 2, 34, lines 1–3. Arethas, Scripta minora, vol. 2, 32–3.

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Muslims. The accent is, rather, on the benefits which the emperor is conferring on Constantinople by bringing in such valuable relics, ‘raising this [city] to such a height with these holy objects of pride’.56 The rhetoric and the mentalité in these writings of the beginning of the tenth century has far more in common with early seventh-century texts about the Virgin’s Robe than it does with the prevailing rhetoric of the time of Justinian or the earlier empire Seeing that Byzantium’s stance early in the tenth century was still essentially defensive, it is perhaps unsurprising that the court rhetoric remained couched in general terms of ‘victory’ and spoils. Equally, one might consider it unremarkable that ‘official’ rhetoric grew more bellicose and more consistently expansionist once imperial offensives against the Muslims were stepped up towards the mid-tenth century. What is striking is that works penned within and, apparently, outside court circles subsequently became still more stridently expansionist and also ‘territorial’, naming lands which were to be occupied and calling for further expansion. A fundamental reason for this was the build-up of a large standing army, trained for offensives on the lines of tactics recommended by classical manuals, in the mid-tenth century.57 For this body of men, frequent incursions into enemy territory and opportunistic seizures of valuable strongholds were a material means of gaining a living, rather than merely a subject for rhetorical exaggeration and ceremonial at the emperor’s court. Such a resurgence of an expansionist posture together with outright annexation of entire territories offers real analogies with the situation which Isaac pointed out in the early principate. What complicated matters was that emperors still had to provide for the security and other interests of the citizens of Constantinople. The shifting of the borders further away from the capital in the eleventh century might seem to have satisfied that need. Yet, paradoxically, the very remoteness of hostile barbarians seems to have increased the pressure on emperors to prove their worth to the citizens in other, material, ways such as lavish grants of offices and titles and expensive buildingprojects and charitable foundations, adding to the demands on the treasury which the army was already making.58 At the same time the mounting security and prosperity of the capital fostered a sense of affinity with the early Roman empire on the part of prominent members of the metropolitan elite. The concept of distant ‘frontiers’ having associations with landmarks celebrated in classical antiquity, notably rivers 56 57 58

Arethas, Scripta minora, vol. 2, 16, lines 8–9. E. McGeer, Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century (Washington, DC, 1995), 178–89, 200–202, 226–9, 257–62. H.-G. Beck, ‘Konstantinopel. Zur Socialgeschichte einer frühmittelalterlichen Hauptstadt’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 58 (1965), 11–45, at 44–5; C. Mango, ‘Les monuments de l’architecture du XI siècle et leur signification historique et sociale’, Travaux et Mémoires, 6 (1976), 351–65; M. Angold, ‘The Byzantine state on the eve of the battle of Manzikert’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 16 (1991), 9–34, at 21–3.

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such as the Euphrates and the Danube, loomed large in this triumphalist rhetoric,59 and so did the recovery of regions heavily charged with classical associations such as Sicily. It is in this period, from the mid-tenth century onwards, that the conceit of calling the Byzantines ‘Ausonians’, a lofty term with strong overtones of imperial rule and destiny, was revived after an interval of 400 years or so.60 It had, significantly, first been given these connotations by Virgil. Such a rhetoric of empire did not necessarily commit emperors to the maintenance of ‘hard’ frontiers or fullscale occupation of peripheral regions. But it made wholesale abandonment of outlying regions or manifest failure to deal with barbarian incursions the more demeaning, fuelling criticism both from military advocates of a forwards policy and from opportunists within the metropolitan elite itself. It was, I suggest, only partly a matter of vested interests such as military men: the problem was also one of the rhetorical ‘tail’ of a newly expansion-oriented political culture wagging the ‘dog’ of imperial policy. Without attempting fully to chart this shift in attitudes, one may usefully consider the outline a little further. Firstly, it may be noted that court rhetoric and ceremonial were attuned quite closely to imperial strategy, registering its increasing boldness and selective expansionism in the East towards the middle of the tenth century. The extension of dominion was then held to be an imperial attribute, but it was generally presented in vague terms, amounting to more than triumphs and other evocations of ‘victory’, but to less than lasting gains of territory. This notion of expansionism was propounded most articulately under the auspices of Constantine VII, although it was most probably in vogue already before he became senior emperor in 945. The encomiastic Life of Basil I which Constantine commissioned, attributes to Basil the desire ‘by his own efforts, courage and nobility to extend the boundaries of the empire, and to drive further off and expel the enemy’.61 The latter phrase lets slip the still essentially defensive character of Byzantine campaigning, even while crediting Basil with greater concern to ‘extend the boundaries’ than contemporary encomia of Basil appear to have done. Under the broad label of such extension a variety of demarches falling short of outright annexation of lands and full-scale military occupation could be fitted, much as in the political culture of the principate which 59

60

61

Above, p. 59. See Whittaker, Frontiers, 53–5, 73–4; S.A. Ivanov, ‘Vospriiatie predelov imperii: ot Rima k Vizantii’, Slaviane i ikh sosedi, 8 (1998), 4–11; Stephenson, ‘The Byzantine frontier at the Lower Danube’, 81–3, 88; idem, ‘Byzantine conceptions of Otherness after the annexation of Bulgaria (1018)’, in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider, ed. D.C. Smythe (Aldershot, 2000), 245–57, at 254–5. Naumachica, ed. A. Dain (Paris, 1943), 61; John Geometres, Carmina varia, PG, 106, 902, 903, 934, 980; Suidae Lexicon, ed. Adler, vol. 1, 417; Michael Attaleiates, Historia, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1853), 31, 214; Michael Psellos, Poemata, ed. L.G. Westerink (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1992), 257, 258. Vita Basilii, in Theophanes Continuatus, 5.36, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 265.

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Isaac diagnosed: the depopulation of regions, transplantation of populations to other parts of the empire, personal defection or submission of a border potentate or the imposition of tribute upon a town or towns. Constantine’s Book of Ceremonies prescribes acclamations which hailed the ‘increase’ of the empire of the Romans, but without indicating precisely what this might amount to.62 That it could encompass simply the submission or humiliation of foreign leaders is suggested by the fact that these were among the acclamations chanted at the ritual trampling of an Arab emir performed by Constantine in 956.63 A similarly broad construction of expansion occurs in a chronicle’s account of the exploits of Domestic of the Schools John Kourkouas during the 920s and 930s. He, too, ‘extended the borders of the Romans as far as the Euphrates and the Tigris’. He is said to have ‘set in order and added to Romania some thousand towns and more’, feats which might seem to warrant the chronicle’s comparison of Kourkouas with Trajan and Belisarius.64 But this chronicle, Theophanes Continuatus, does not envisage the establishment of a linear frontier. Its amplification of Kourkouas’s achievements implies variegated, sometimes qualified forms of dominion, both the revival in central Asia Minor of towns and settlements that had been exposed to the Saracens’ depredations and the extraction of tribute and military manpower from populations which had formerly been subject to them.65 It is significant that Theophanes Continuatus specifies that the amount of tribute was large and paid ‘yearly’, and that so much play is made of what are grandiosely called ‘towns’ and ‘castles’. It is relating, in terms evoking the supposed conquests of earlier Roman generals, a process which could involve the capture of an enemy fort or outpost and installation of a ‘Roman’ garrison, but which could merely require the fort’s commander to engage in joint operations with imperial forces and pay some form of tribute. Such were the terms initially agreed with the emir of Melitene in the late 920s, and a not wholly dissimilar deal was struck with the inhabitants of Edessa on the Euphrates in return for their surrender of an especially revered relic, the mandylion of Christ, in 943–4.66 That expansion was still, in the mid-tenth century, conceived of in terms of the formal submission of cities and peoples rather than as outright conquest and full-scale occupation is suggested most clearly by a poem addressed to Constantine VII’s son, Romanos, in 950 by a certain ‘Eustathios’, who seems to have been a familiar of the imperial court. The poet tells the boy Romanos to help his father, who is already 62 63 64 65 66

Constantine VII, De cerimoniis, 2.19, 43, ed. Reiske, vol. 1, 612, 651; McCormick, Eternal Victory, 163 and n.123. McCormick, Eternal Victory, 162–3. Theophanes Cont., 6.41, ed. Bekker, 427. Theophanes Cont., 6.41, ed. Bekker, 427. Theophanes Cont., 6.24, 48, ed. Bekker, 416, 432; Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes, vol. 2, pt 1, 296–300; J. Shepard, ‘Constantine VII and the road to Aleppo’, in Eastern Approaches to Byzantium, ed. A. Eastmond (Aldershot, 2001), 19–40, at 29–30.

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growing weary from writing down the names of those ‘subjected’ to him. Of the cities listed, Theodosioupolis had just been captured and occupied, but others such as Adana and Germanikeia had merely been sacked.67 The poet cites together with the cities the spoils taken from Saif ad-Daula and ends up by claiming that ‘every people and city of the enemy has now been written down by your fingers, bending their neck before your power’.68 Expansion is thus seen primarily as a matter of subjecting or sacking cities, and breaking the power of troublesome border emirs. The campaigning could be projected as defence of, and vengeance for, one’s fellow-Christians and also for ‘Christ Himself ... who is wickedly denied by them [the Saracens]’. This notion occurs in one of the speeches which Constantine composed for delivery to his troops.69 But the principal stated aims of the two surviving speeches are, besides victory over Saif ad-Daula, the gaining of glory and trophies, objectives which did not commit the emperor to specific or substantial acquisitions of territory.70 In fact, so far as lasting gains were concerned, Constantine seems still to have been thinking mainly in terms of relics to be brought to Constantinople, adding to its reserves of supernatural protectors and to his own stock as the city’s guardian. Thus in 956 he presided over the recovery of a relic from ‘barbarian hands’, the hand of St John the Baptist from Muslim-held Antioch. It was, according to a festal sermon, placed by Constantine ‘in the middle of the palace church’, ‘so that all might believe that the Baptist himself was present ... and that he was sanctifying with his right hand the waters proffered [to him]’.71 I suggest, then, that up to the 950s decisions as to strategy and the rhetorical and ceremonial explication of what was, or was not, being achieved were largely at the emperor’s discretion. He seems to have enjoyed considerable latitude, being able to present in sweeping terms of ‘extension of empire’ what were usually only transient or partial gains: victories could be claimed and the ‘frontiers’ said to have been ‘extended’ without many material new commitments having been taken on; in fact, some border districts might even become remunerative, if former enemy towns could

67 68 69 70

71

P. Odorico, ‘Il calamo d’argento’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, 37 (1987), 65–93, at 78–9 (commentary); 91, lines 62–7. Odorico, ‘Calamo d’argento’, 92, lines 85–7. H. Ahrweiler, ‘Un discours inédit de Constantin Porphyrogénète’, Travaux et Mémoires, 2 (1967), 393–404, at 398, lines 31–2. A recurring theme is the prospect of the soldiers’ return to the emperor after their victories, without word of lasting conquests: Ahrweiler, ‘Discours’, 399, lines 85–7; R. Vári, ‘Zum historischen Exzerptenwerke des Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 17 (1908), 75–85, at 82, line 15 to 83, line 1; 84, lines 1–3; C.M. Mazzucchi, ‘Dagli anni di Basilio Parakimomenos (Cod. Ambr. B 119 Sup.)’, Aevum, 52 (1978), 267–316, at 298–303; Theodore Daphnopates, Oratio in translationem manus s. praecursoris, PG, 111, 613, 620.

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be made to keep up their tribute payments. This state of affairs altered from the late 950s onwards, as a result of the military build-up which Constantine VII instigated in order to deal a mortal blow to Saif ad-Daula. There ensued for almost twenty years a series of campaigns and annexations which amounted (by any definition) to ‘expansion’. What seem to be novel themes appear in imperial pronouncements about victories, notably the letter which Emperor John Tzimiskes sent to the Armenian ‘King of Kings’, Ashot III, after his Syrian campaign of 975. Side by side with familiar claims of devastation, booty and tribute exacted, there are also claims to have ‘freed from the bondage of the Muslims ... all Phoenicia, Palestine and Syria’ and of thwarted intentions to ‘deliver the holy sepulchre’ from the same ‘bondage’; as it is, ‘the rule of the holy cross of Christ has been expanded, the name of God being praised and glorified throughout these places [which we conquered]’.72 Imperial triumphalism was now laying claim to the care of the Holy Places rather than merely recovering relics, although the latter still featured in the propaganda. John Tzimiskes claimed to have acquired ‘the holy sandals of Christ’ and hair from John the Baptist’s head.73 Yet even as emperors’ claims became overweening, expansionism ceased to be an exclusively imperial attribute, a fairly flexible instrument of imperial propaganda serving to magnify routine incursions or mask defeats. The notion of further conquests by feats of arms became engrained not only in military thinking but also in civilian discourse and pamphleteering. Allusions to recent conquests and a call for victories feature in the acclamations with which the citizens of Constantinople greeted Nikephoros Phokas, the conqueror of Crete, as he arrived for his coronation in 963.74 Lists of cities, islands and – a significant innovation – whole territories newly won from the Saracens or candidates for subjugation occur in such works of the 960s and 970s as the anonymous Philopatris and the poems of John Geometres. These were not, or not for the most part, commissioned by the imperial government and they suggest that expectations of extension of frontiers ‘to the Euphrates and Tigris’ and conquest ‘of all the land of Arabia’ were now rife among the literary elite in Constantinople.75 Of course such enthusiasm could be mercurial, or subject to manipulation by the ‘spin-doctors’ of the imperial court, decking out defeat as triumph. There are, however, signs that civilian decision-makers might themselves take advantage of the trend for their own ends, career enhancement and glory. One such was the imperial 72 73 74 75

Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle: Armenia and the Crusades, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries, 1. 20, 19, trans. A.E. Dostourian (Lanham, 1993), 32, 30, 33. Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle, 1.20, trans. Dostourian, 32. Constantine VII, De cerimoniis, 1.96, ed. Reiske, vol. 1, 438–9; McCormick, Eternal Victory, 169. Philopatris, in Lucian, Works, trans. A.M. Harmon and M.D. Macleod, 8 vols (London and Cambridge, MA, 1913–67), vol. 8, 462–5; John Geometres, Carmina varia, 902, 903–4, 927, 932.

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chamberlain, Basil Lekapenos, who commissioned a work on naval warfare in 959. Its prefaces praise the eunuch’s past exploits as a field commander but insist that naval warfare was far nobler and look forward to assaults on Crete and the North Africans.76 Here, I suggest, are signs of a ‘discourse’ concerning expansionism comparable to that discernible in the principate of the first and second centuries. More ominously, full-time military commanders now publicly urged the need for continuous campaigning and this was most likely to be offensive, seeing that the Muslims were now in disarray. These operations were sometimes presented, and justified, expressly in terms of the acquisition of tracts of territory. The treatise on Skirmishing, from the milieu albeit not the pen of Nikephoros Phokas, envisages future expansion carried out by a highly-motivated army: ‘if the army . . . should attain its ancient condition and can rid itself of those elements dragging its men into poverty, they will be full of enthusiasm, happiness and good cheer . . . When this comes to pass, our holy emperors will not only defend their own lands but will subjugate very many other lands of the enemy’.77 Towards the end of the tenth century a treatise written by another military commander warned: ‘For soldiers to stay at home and do nothing, to get no exercise, not to go on campaign each year at the proper time, this is to reduce them to the ranks of merchants and common farmers’. He held up as a model ‘those who dwell on the borders of the Roman dominion and have our enemies as neighbours. There the unceasing, perpetual warfare continues to keep them vigorous and brave’, and also well trained and ready to go out on ‘expeditions’.78 Without specifically recommending the annexation of territory, the anonymous author enjoins the checking of muster rolls ‘before marching into enemy territory’.79 He presupposes offensives as being invaluable for keeping troops – and not merely those stationed in the borderlands – in peak condition. Such a priority opened the way to adventurist bids to gain spoils and seize new vantage-points, as it had during the earlier empire.80 Pressures making for a high level of military capability and also for offensives were, then, mounting from the mid-tenth century onwards and although they were most clearly articulated by military men such as the authors of the above-cited treatises, they were not confined to military circles. They were, essentially, a corollary of a sizable standing army and they posed for the central government on the one hand an array of financial, fiscal and administrative problems and, on the other, opportunities for fame and individual advancement.81 These opportunities could be 76 77 78 79 80 81

Naumachica, ed. Dain, 62, 61; Mazzucchi, ‘Basilio Parakimomenos’, 292–5, 303–5. Skirmishing, 19, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. and trans. G.T. Dennis (Washington, DC, 1985), 216–17. Campaign Organization and Tactics, 28, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. and trans. G.T. Dennis (Washington, DC, 1985), 318–21. Campaign Organization, 29, ed. Dennis, 320–21. Isaac, Limits, 378–83, 391–2, 399–401. Methods of funding and maintaining soldiers are a prime concern of the legislation of

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grasped by a variety of persons, most obviously by ambitious military commanders but also by the emperor himself and his entourage. The conduct of Basil II can, in my view, best be understood in the light of these pressures, which had erupted in the form of major revolts by generals in the opening stages of his reign. The militaristic style of Basil’s regime was in part an ad hoc reaction to these revolts and to the Bulgarian rising which they unleashed, but it also contained a large measure of political calculation, being an attempt to retain direction of the war-machine which his predecessors had assembled. The stance which Basil struck most memorably was that of vigilant warrior-guardian of his people, and this is registered in his epitaph.82 The epitaph does not make explicit mention of expansionism as an objective, but the glorification of military prowess was not easily sustained without periodic feats of arms or plundering. And opportunistic forays could open the door to expansion when lucrative districts offered little resistance, as has been observed of the early principate.83 In the event, the defiance and military skills of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria provided Basil with ready opportunities for protracted campaigning. Launching repeated offensives against Samuel and his successors constituted his most conspicuous pursuit for a generation.84 These may not have had the annexation of territory as their principal objective. But when Basil’s unremitting incursions and a stroke of fortune (the killing of Tsar John Vladislav) eventually offered him the chance to move in, he speedily came to terms with John’s widow and leading Bulgarian warlords and installed garrisons at key points.85 And, not long after his victory in 1018, he represented enlargement of the empire as of particular concern to him: ‘Among the many and great benefits which merciful God has lavished upon our Majesty ... this is preferable beyond all things, that there should be increase (prosthçkç) to the Roman

82 83 84 85

mid- and later tenth-century emperors: J. Haldon, ‘Military service, military lands and the status of soldiers: current problems and interpretations’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45 (1993), 1–67, at 37–41, 48–50, 65–6. S.G. Mercati, ‘Sull’ epitafio di Basilio II Bulgaroctonos’, repr. in S.G. Mercati, Collectanea byzantina, 2 vols (Bari, 1970), vol. 1, 226–31, at 230. Isaac, Limits, 28–33, 50–53, 377–94, 416–18. Angold, ‘Byzantine state’, 15; J. Shepard, ‘Byzantium expanding’, in New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. T. Reuter, vol. 3, c. 900–c. 1024 (Cambridge, 1999), 586–604, and specifically 597–9. John Scylitzes, Synopsis Historiarum, ed. I. Thurn, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Berolinensis 5 (Berlin and New York, 1973), 357–9; Shepard, ‘Byzantium expanding’, 600–601. Garrisoning of strongholds and fortified populationcentres was a key means of combining cost-effective border defence with occupation: H. Ahrweiler, ‘Recherches sur l’administration de l’empire byzantin aux IX–XI siècles’, Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique, 84 (1960), 1–109, at 46–51, 59–61, repr. in H. Ahrweiler, Études sur les structures administratives et sociales de Byzance (London, 1971), no. 8; N. Oikonomides, Les listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris, 1972), 345–6, 354–63; Stephenson, ‘Byzantine frontier’, 86–9.

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empire’.86 Basil or the draftsman composing this decree seems deliberately to have been evoking the edicts of the great Justinian. Basil’s expansionist rhetoric was borne out by his subsequent deeds in that, once uncontested overlord of the Balkans, he turned his attention to gaining territories and securing rights of dominion in Caucasia. He was still on the warpath in December 1025 when, on the point of joining the expeditionary force marshalled to invade Sicily, he fell ill and died.87 More might be said about the reasons for Basil II’s stance as soldier-emperor and one may well question the sense in which his prime aims really were ‘expansionist’.88 But instead we shall glance at another aspect of the build-up of the military establishment and the territorial gains made before and during Basil’s reign: a habit or ethos of expansionism. Modern historians have tended to regard Byzantine expansionism in the eleventh century as finishing with the death of Basil or very soon afterwards. The amount of territory actually acquired by Basil’s successors was indeed fairly modest. But this should not obscure the fact that attempts at expansion, whether the seizure of key strongholds or occupation of regions or islands, continued for a generation after 1025, alternating with incursions to deliver shattering blows to truculent border potentates. It is worth outlining these ventures, which seldom received much detailed attention from the Byzantine chronicles. In 1030 Romanos III led an army within about 50 kilometres of Aleppo, which he intended to capture. This expedition was a spectacular failure but a couple of years later Romanos led another expedition towards Syria, albeit without seeing it through.89 The early 1030s also saw the installation of Byzantine governors in the strategically important towns of Edessa and Perkri (near Lake Van), while a Byzantine garrison moved into a Georgian royal fortress on the Black Sea coast, Anacopia (Novyi Afon).90 Anacopia held the key to surveillance of the main kingdom of Georgia and facilitated intervention, such as the expedition led by the Domestic of the Schools in the later 1030s.91 In that same period an 86 87 88 89 90 91

Ius graecoromanum, ed. I. and P. Zepos, 8 vols (Athens, 1931), vol. 1, 272; H. Hunger, Prooimion. Elemente der byzantinischen Kaiseridee in den Arengen der Urkunden, Wiener Byzantinische Studien 1 (Vienna, 1964), 72, 70. Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 368; Shepard, ‘Byzantium expanding’, 602. See P. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204 (Cambridge, 2000), 62–3, 66–77; C. Holmes, Basil II and the Government of Empire (976–1025) (unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis) (Oxford, 1999). W. Felix, Byzanz und die islamische Welt im früheren 11. Jahrhundert , Byzantina Vindobonensia 14 (Vienna, 1981), 82–8, 99–100. Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 387, 388–9; Felix, Byzanz, 143–7; Matiane Kartlisa, Russian trans. M.D. Lordkipanidze (Tbilisi, 1976), 47; Das Leben Kartlis. Eine Chronik aus Georgien 300–1200, German trans. G. Pätsch (Leipzig, 1985), 368. Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 402; M. Lordkipanidze, ‘Georgia in the XIth and XIIth centuries’, in M. Lordkipanidze, Essays on Georgian History (Tbilisi, 1994), 47–188, at 90–91.

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expeditionary force was despatched to reconquer Sicily, and much of the eastern part of the island was regained, albeit only for a few years.92 Then, through the first half of the 1040s, Byzantine forces strove to seize Ani, the residence of the Armenian ‘king of kings’, while also intervening in Georgia. Finally gaining possession in 1045, Constantine IX Monomachos proceeded to direct his eastern army against Dvin, the base of Emir Abu’l Aswar, who had helped the Byzantines take possession of Ani.93 It appears, then, that Byzantium was still, in the 1040s, fielding sizable expeditionary forces and that its strategy was still geared to forms of expansionism rather than wholly to the maintenance of the status quo. One may briefly consider what was the nature of these armies and why the habit of expansionism persisted. The precise composition of the grand armies cannot be determined from existing evidence, but they were clearly a mixture of full-time soldiers receiving a money-wage, part-time soldiers likewise mostly reliant on wages, foreign-born mercenaries and levies raised not far from the campaign theatre. The armies were large and lavishly equipped. Around 20,000 men are estimated to have gone on Romanos III’s expedition to Aleppo in 1030. Many of them were foreigners under their own commanders – Bulgars, Rus, Abasgians, Georgians and Pechenegs among them – and when the emperor’s baggage-train was captured by the Muslims, seventy or more camels were needed to carry off the spoils.94 The sheer scale of the Byzantine armed forces was also emphasised by Amatus of Monte Cassino in his account of Byzantine operations on Sicily: ‘the plain was entirely covered by the multitude of the emperor’s army’.95 The empire’s military might was evident to foreigners, and dynasts throughout the border regions were inclined to seek Byzantine help in their bids to seize or uphold local dominance. Such initiatives triggered off several of the annexations made in the decades following Basil II’s death. The example of constant campaigning which Basil II set added a more concrete definition to the notion of expansionism. He left, literally, a legacy of expansionism in the case of the kingdom of Ani. He had pressed the ‘king of kings’, Yovhannes92 93

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Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 403, 405–7, 416; J. Shepard, ‘Byzantium’s last Sicilian expedition: Scylitzes’ testimony’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici, n.s. 14–16 (1977–79), 145–59, at 146–7, 159; Felix, Byzanz, 207–15. Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 435–9; J. Shepard, ‘Scylitzes on Armenia in the 1040s, and the role of Catacalon Cecaumenos’, Revue des études arméniennes, n.s. 11 (1975– 76), 269–311, at 283–306; Felix, Byzanz, 154–60; K.N. Iuzbashian, ‘Skilitza o zakhvate Aniyskogo tsarstva v 1045 g.’, Vizantiyskiy Vremennik, 40 (1979), 76–91. Felix, Byzanz, 84, n.125, 88. On the eleventh-century army see Haldon, ‘Military service’, 60–63; J.-C. Cheynet, ‘La politique militaire byzantine de Basile II à Alexis Comnène’, Zbornik Radova Vizantoloshkog Instituta, 30 (1991), 61–74, at 65–8; idem, ‘Les effectifs de l’armée byzantine aux X–XII siècles’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 38 (1995), 319–35, at 323–8, 330–33. Amatus of Monte Cassino, 1.22, Storia de’ Normanni, ed. V. de Bartholomaeis (Rome, 1935), 29.

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Smbat, to bequeath his realm to Byzantium after his death. Twenty years later, after Yovhannes-Smbat’s death, the testament was produced from the imperial archives in Constantinople and troops were sent to try and take over.96 Basil’s successors were thus legally bound to follow up the title to Yovhannes-Smbat’s estate. But they were also committed to making at least gestures towards expansionism by Basil’s example, the embodiment of the strenuous war-leader. Paradoxically, it may well have been precisely because they lacked military backgrounds and connexions, as well as unimpeachably legitimate, Porphyrogenitan, birth, that Basil’s successors were prone to carry on with expansionism. They needed the prestige which conquest might bestow on them. One may believe Michael Psellos’s satirical portrait of Romanos III as yearning for ‘glory from victories’ and being set on rivalling the feats of ‘the Trajans and the Hadrians ... and before them of Alexander, son of Philip’. He is said to have decided on Aleppo as his target because campaigning against Eastern foes would make him look majestic and very grand, notwithstanding his generals’ objections to the expedition.97 ‘A desire for fame’ had been Dio Cassius’s explanation for Trajan’s own expedition to the east and Romanos’s priorities seem to echo those of Trajan and other rulers during periods when Rome held most of the strategic cards.98 In support of Psellos’s caricature is the fact that Aleppo was of little, if any, strategic value to Byzantium, and soldier-emperors such as Nikephoros II Phokas and John Tzimiskes had sacked it or reduced it to tributary status rather than attempting direct occupation. In a similar vein is what, according to Psellos, Michael IV often used to say: it would be ‘terrible ... if his reign not merely saw no enlargement of the Roman empire but part of it were actually lost’.99 It is, in my view, probable that Romanos III and subsequent non-military emperors were impelled to lead or authorise offensive expeditions by a further consideration, the desire for action on the part of many officers and men, a phenomenon implied in the later tenth-century military treatises cited earlier and not infrequently found in the history of the principate.100 Through active service, preferably on enemy soil, they could gain wealth as well as reputation. A Muslim envoy to Constantinople in the early 980s noted the predilection of Byzantine commanders for military operations and linked it with the higher ‘stipends’ which they received in wartime.101 It is very likely that offensives offered chances of self-enrichment to lower ranks, too, most obviously from plundering and taking prisoners for sale as slaves or ransoming. One 96 97 98 99 100 101

Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 435; Shepard, ‘Scylitzes’, 285–6; Felix, Byzanz, 141, 154. Michael Psellos, Chronographia, ed. E. Renauld, 2 vols (Paris, 1926–28), vol. 1, 35–7. Above, p. 55. Psellos, Chronographia, ed. Renauld, vol. 1, 78. Above, p. 73; Birley, ‘Frontiers’, 16–17, 22; Isaac, Limits, 24–5, 380–83. H.F. Amedroz, ‘An embassy from Baghdad to the Emperor Basil II’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1914), 915–42, at 925.

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gains a glimpse of the political risks which underemployed soldiers could pose from Leo Tornikios’s rebellion in the autumn of 1047. The generals in the key fortress of Adrianople were ‘overlooked and at a loose end’, and Tornikios also rallied to his cause ‘those soldiers who had nothing to do and those who delighted in plundering and spoils’.102 Equally significantly, Tornikios’s supporters proclaimed that he was a ‘soldier emperor’, who would ‘expand the Roman empire through wars and victories over the barbarians’.103 Tornikios seems to have been appealing to the soldiers’ selfinterest by holding out the prospect of aggressive rather than wholly defensive campaigning – even though an assault on Dvin was then under way in the east. In other words, not even the operations in the Caucasus were sufficient to bring full mobilisation and the chance of supplementary pay and spoils to soldiers based in the western half of the empire, in Thrace. The prospect of active service was most probably one of the reasons why so many of the western-based regiments of full-time soldiers (tagmata) rallied behind Tornikios and marched on Constantinople.104 This episode suggests how difficult it was for emperors to stay the pressures for further expansion. Given that a large standing army had been formed to conquer and hold (or hold down) lands south-east of the Taurus mountains, in the Balkans, the Caucasus and then, in the 1040s, the realm of Ani, the government faced major problems in the financing and maintenance of its soldiery. These problems were not unfamiliar to rulers in the early principate: for both sets of regimes, there was a temptation to seek a ‘quick fix’ through countenancing further offensives. These could take the form of a foray at local level, meeting the aspirations of a regional commander, or a full-blown invasion led by the emperor himself or a trusted ‘supreme commander’ (strategos autokratôr).105 It was a temptation to which the non-military 102

103

104

105

Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 439. See also Iohannis Euchaitorum Metropolitae quae in Codice Vaticano Graeco 676 supersunt, ed. P. de Lagarde, Abhandlungen der Hist.Phil. Classe der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 28 (1882; repr. Amsterdam, 1979), 179. Psellos, Chronographia, ed. Renauld, vol. 2, 18, 21. The rebels’ belief that such proclamations would win over the citizens of Constantinople proved false, but their very resort to expansionism as a rallying cry implies that the notion still had widespread resonance. Tornikios’s prior assignment to an eastern border command was, ironically but significantly, dubbed ‘glorious exile’ by Psellos: Chronographia, ed. Renauld, vol. 2, 15. See also Cheynet, ‘Politique militaire’, 64–5. The authorities’ forbearance from full-scale combat against invading Pechenegs early in 1047 and subsequent dismissal of some soldiers may well have swollen the rebels’ ranks. See J. Lefort, ‘Rhétorique et politique: trois discours de Jean Mauropous en 1047’, Travaux et Mémoires, 6 (1976), 265–303, at 276–80, 283–4, 293; J.-C. Cheynet, Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963–1210) (Paris, 1990), 59–60; Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, 90–91. Isaac, Limits, 379, 383–4, 389–90, 425; P. Karlin-Hayter, ‘L’Hétériarque’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, 23 (1974), 101–43, at 121 and n. 77.

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successors of Basil II, fearful of rebellions by generals and their men ‘at a loose end’, were susceptible. This state of affairs underlies the quite substantial number of offensives and bids for annexation in the 1030s and 1040s, during the reigns of emperors who lacked a military background. There was, undoubtedly, a powerful current of opinion that expansionism should come to a halt, notably among the learned counsellors and orators at the court of Constantine IX. Their views found expression in a decree of spring 1047: ‘Thanks to the Lord of Heaven ... external wars and rebellions have been brought to an end; enemies are at peace and our subjects reconciled. The affairs of the Romans now enjoy the greatest tranquillity’.106 This decree composed for the emperor by John Mauropous was, however, laying down markers for future policy rather than describing an established consensus which all members of the ruling elite accepted. Mauropous was over-optimistic, seeing that only a few months later Leo Tornikios rallied much of the western army to his cause. As we have seen, Tornikios’s rebellion showed up the dangers posed by under- or unemployed soldiers and commanders.107 The Pecheneg rising from 1049 onwards offered plenty of opportunities for action, but the assumption persisted in some military circles, at least, that further acquisitions should be made. Modern historians often cite Psellos’s praise of Emperor Isaac Komnenos (1057–59) for refraining from further expansion: Isaac realised that ‘addition becomes reduction’ for those without ‘plenty of money and a fine military capability’.108 However, as if in exculpation, Psellos makes a point of specifying that Isaac was not opposed to ‘expanding the frontiers of [the empire]’ as such: he simply did not think that current resources warranted it, and therefore declined foreign potentates’ proffered possessions.109 The assumption that initiatives involving force of arms and shading into expansion belonged to the natural order of things coloured military thinking. A senior commander writing a practical handbook on military life and everyday ethics supposed that border commanders would be looking out for opportunities to overpower potentates across the border, and also that the emperor would be drawing the latter into his orbit and making them his ‘subjects’.110 The 106 107

108 109 110

Ius graecoromanum, ed. Zepos, vol. 1, 621; Angold, ‘Byzantine state’, 18. Mauropous answered the rebels’ call for more military action in an oration delivered just after Tornikios’s rebellion was quashed, in December 1047. He argued that a pious emperor, resorting to diverse means of persuasion and receiving help from God, could deal with the barbarians more efficaciously than could force of arms alone: Iohannis Euchaitorum Metropolitae, ed. de Lagarde, 178–95; Lefort, ‘Rhétorique’, 289–93; Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, 111. Psellos, Chronographia, vol. 2, 114. Psellos, Chronographia, vol. 2, 114. Such invitations to intervene had triggered acts of imperial expansion earlier in the eleventh century: see above, p. 76. Commanders are warned against inflicting unprovoked ‘harm’ upon such potentates, and the story is told of a commander who sought ‘to make a name for himself’ (stçsai

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writer, Kekaumenos, regarded expansion as habitual, due largely to the allure which the palace and its diplomacy exerted on foreigners, but sustained by armed forces whose battle-order ‘is mightier and more secure than all the others’.111 He envisaged well-equipped, full-time soldiers who were capable of fighting on enemy territory and whose battle-order and camps took into account, albeit not uncritically, the precepts of ‘the ancients’. The examples of Scipio Africanus and Belisarius are considered admirable and relevant.112 Kekaumenos, writing in the mid-1070s, appears to offer the experiences and opinions of an essentially conventional commander. It seems to me that the esprit de corps expressed by Kekaumenos belonged to an army which believed itself to be fundamentally sound – and still capable of pitched battles and offensives, if only the decision-makers in the palace and dispensers of state funds would authorise such initiatives and allocate sufficient resources. Such an outlook was neither uniform among all soldiers nor invariably anathema to non-military circles and the citizens of Constantinople. Michael Psellos, sometime apologist for the doctrine that, in effect, ‘more means worse’, deemed it politic to pay lip-service to expansionism on occasion. In a sermon drafted on behalf of an emperor, God is praised for having ‘extended the borders in both parts and made subject the most warlike of peoples’.113 If, as is quite possible, that emperor was Constantine X Doukas (1059–67),114 the claim is all the more noteworthy, in that Doukas’s actual policy was usually one of caution and aversion to major military actions. He was a former general and his caution presumably stemmed from military experience as well as political and financial constraints.115 At any rate, the public statements of Psellos, Mauropous and other mid-eleventh-century writers offer hints of a ‘discourse’ as to

111 112 113 114

115

tropaion) through abducting a Slav ‘toparch’: Kekaumenos, Strategikon (Sovety i rasskazy Kekavmena. Sochinenie vizantiyskogo polkovodtsa XI veka), ed. G.G. Litavrin (Moscow, 1972), 166, 172. Kekaumenos warns toparchs themselves to beware of succumbing to the blandishments of the emperor’s court and ‘giving up your district and losing your authority’; through too-frequent visits, one will become his ‘subject and not [his] friend’: Kekaumenos, Strategikon, ed. Litavrin, 298, 302. Kekaumenos, Strategikon, ed. Litavrin, 136, lines 25–6; n. 146 on 356. Kekaumenos, Strategikon, ed. Litavrin, 134–8, 148, 158–62. Michael Psellos, Oratoria minora, ed. A.R. Littlewood (Leipzig, 1985), 14, lines 138–9. A case can be made for Constantine IX, since the emperor is styled as reformer of the polity in tones reminiscent of Mauropous’s orations of 1047, while the references to nomads now turned into farmers and auxiliary forces could match the Pechenegs’ condition then: Psellos, Oratoria, ed. Littlewood, 14, lines 115–23, 142–6. However, as the editor indicates, the theme of heaven-sent victory over barbarians and imagery of Moses and Pharaoh also feature in an oration indubitably addressed to Constantine X after he had dealt with the Uzes in 1064. The nomads of the sermon could thus be the Uzes who were, like the Pechenegs, overcome largely by non-violent means: Psellos, Oratoria, ed. Littlewood, 10, 15. Scylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Thurn, 483, lines 8–9; Cheynet, Pouvoir, 70–71; 193 and nn. 17, 20.

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the future direction of the empire which had emerged around the time of the first sustained offensives. It is not a ‘discourse’ with clear-cut positions, nor does it fit neat labels such as ‘soldier’ and ‘civilian’, although the most determined proponents of a forwards policy tended to have a military background, for example Leo Tornikios and the generals in Adrianople. It may well be that the oblique and often coded statements of Byzantine sources for this period can better be understood through comparison with the more explicit interplay between rhetoric, ambitions and realities during the principate. Sound strategic and political considerations underlay Mauropous’s advocacy of a stable, peace-loving, Christian empire. However, a potent mix of interest groups, the heroic precedent of Basil II and classicising martial rhetoric stood in the way of this policy.116 The desirability of maintaining massive military might carried conviction with – and rewards for – many through the middle years of the eleventh century. With this went a lingering propensity for offensives and armed interventions in the affairs of neighbouring polities. The rhetoric of expansionism was now embedded in the concrete form of an elaborate military organisation. The differences between Middle Byzantium’s situation and that of the principate are obvious enough and real. There developed through the protracted state of emergency from the seventh to ninth centuries a kind of ‘survivalist imperialism’, heavily imbued with Christian teleology and rites of intercession. The ability of emperor and capital repeatedly to hold out against the earthly odds became cause for wonder, praise and faith that attached to both the idea of empire and the divine protectors who repelled all assailants of Constantinople. To a remarkable extent, this served to shift attention from the emperor’s inability to provide full security for many of his outlying possessions. Enjoying a pivotal place in God’s plan for mankind and His unique sanction for the exercise of authority made up for the modesty of visible material means of support. Monumental and rhetorical commemoration of the frontiers no longer played a key role in the liturgy of empire and insofar as any physical barrier was deemed worthy of celebration, it was the complex of fortifications guarding Constantinople itself. Yet the claim to be perpetuating the empire of the Romans continued to be made, and the titles and supposedly ancient ceremonial usages were of great importance in forging links with potentates and notables in farflung areas such as Istria, Central Italy and Armenia. Such links comprised a looser kind of hegemony from that embodied in heavily fortified frontiers, but they provided some backing for the empire’s claims to be universal. Those claims could always be dusted off and reasserted in more tangible form, if circumstances grew more favourable, and this is in fact what happened in the course of the ninth and tenth 116

That there was a range of views on policy is also suggested by the likelihood that sections of a speech of Mauropous praising the emperor’s non-violent resolution of the Pecheneg problem were edited out before its delivery to a cross-section of the ruling elite in April 1047: Lefort, ‘Rhétorique’, 277–8, 285–7, 301–2.

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centuries. Once the pressure from the jihad eased, imperial decision-makers began to exploit opportunities to secure long-lost strongholds and towns to the east and to reimpose tribute and other marks of submission on populations long under Muslim rule. The actual ‘expansion’ was highly selective at first, and it was conceived of partly in terms of nominal protectorates and the collection of tribute. However, from the mid-tenth century the strategy changed to one of more sweeping and full-scale conquests and permanent military occupation of territories on the empire’s former eastern approaches. The rhetoric issuing forth from court writers both registered and accelerated the raising of the empire’s sights. The period of actual extension of the borders eastwards was fairly brief and it is questionable whether acquisition of further territory really was the prime objective of Basil II’s constant campaigning in Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the concept of territorial expansion as being a desirable end of empire entered the vocabulary of political discourse and it was periodically invoked by a number of writers, not all of them spokesmen for the emperor or military men. At the same time, the greatly enlarged armed forces harboured officers who saw positive benefits in frequent military operations, whether or not they were under attack from the barbarians. Such an attitude found justification in the subjugation of ‘very many other lands of the enemy’.117 Decision-making remained largely the prerogative of the imperial government whose control of the purse-strings of the salaried standing army was a constraint on large-scale adventurism. Few, if any, acts of annexation can incontestably be attributed to military commanders lacking authorisation from the central government. None the less, in the generation after Basil II’s reign emperors without a military background were impelled to give their approval to offensive campaigning and occasionally even to lead expeditions in person. They were inspired, or at least consciously overshadowed, by the heroic precedent set by Basil but they were also responding to keen awareness among the ruling elite of the still more illustrious feats of such early emperors as Trajan and Hadrian. And in their quest for ‘glory from victories’ and attempts to engage their armies’ loyalty through opportunistic ventures, the eleventh-century emperors were going through many of the motions familiar to the earlier rulers of the principate.

117

Skirmishing, 19, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. and trans. Dennis, 216–17. See above, p. 73.

Chapter 4

Byzantium’s Eastern Frontier in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries* Catherine Holmes

Byzantium Expanding It is widely accepted that in the tenth and eleventh centuries the political frontiers of the Byzantine empire expanded considerably. Whereas imperial authority during the early seventh to early tenth centuries had been limited to the Anatolian plateau and the islands and coasts of the Aegean and southern Italy, the deployment of a mixture of force and diplomacy from c. 850 onwards led to the annexation of the Balkan land mass, the northern reaches of the Fertile Crescent, western Armenia, and the islands of Crete and Cyprus.1 In the same period Byzantium’s cultural and religious influence spread even more widely, as missionaries, artists and architects bore the spiritual message and physical accoutrements of Orthodox Christianity deep into Russia and the Caucasus mountains.2 Political and cultural expansion brought the Byzantines into contact with many new peoples of different languages and faiths. Some of those *

1 2

During the course of this chapter reference will be made to the chronicle of Yahya ibn Sa’id. This text has been translated into French in three separate locations. The section relating to the period 937–969 is published as: ‘Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Antaki, Histoire’, ed. and trans. I. Kratchkovsky and A. Vasiliev, Patrologia Orientalis, 18 (1924), 699–832; that relating to 969–1013 by the same editors and translators in PO, 23 (1932), 347–520; the section covering 1013–1034 appears as ‘Histoire de Yahya ibn Sa’id d’Antioche’, ed. I. Kratochkovsky, trans. F. Michaeu and G. Troupeau, PO, 47 (1997), 373–559. References in this paper to Yahya’s text will appear as Yahya, PO, 18 (1924) and so on. For a narrative outline of this period see G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (Oxford, 1968), 210–98; W. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford, CA, 1997), 446–583. For the cultural and religious expansion of Byzantium see, for example, D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453 (London, 1971); H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom, The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era 843–1261 (New York, 1997).

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peoples lived beyond the empire’s territorial borders; some lived within the annexed areas; some migrated from beyond the frontiers to regions deep inside the empire itself. Byzantine expansion precipitated the adaptation of old practices and the introduction of new both in military tactics and administration. It also introduced the empire to alien geographical, climatic, economic, and commercial environments. At first glance ‘Byzantium expanding’ seems to be an ideal test case for discussion of current debates about medieval frontiers. The Byzantine experience appears to provide many instances compatible with the various ‘frontier’ models examined at the November 1998 conference. The Byzantine historian can point to examples of linear borders drawn up between the empire and neighbouring states in treaties and in the erection of boundary stones; to buffer areas produced through the creation and preservation of deserted no-man’s-land areas, or through the development of diplomatic ties with much smaller powers; and to frontier regions where different religious and linguistic groups lived together forming heterodox communities, a phenomenon which historians have sometimes labelled the ‘frontier society’.3 Yet systematic analysis of Byzantine frontiers in this period of expansion lags behind the study of frontiers elsewhere in medieval Europe. There are few general analyses.4 Discussion of the social, ideological, religious, commercial and cultural dimensions of the subject is rare, and has usually been limited to the eastern borderlands in a slightly earlier period, the long and exhausting decades of attritional warfare between Byzantines and Arabs in the eighth and ninth centuries.5 Instead, Byzantine frontiers in the period of expansion have usually been identified, studied and interpreted in 3

4

5

For further discussion of frontier societies see Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989). For analysis of uncritical uses of the term ‘frontier society’ see N. Berend, ‘Medievalists and the notion of the frontier’, Medieval History Journal, 2 (1999), 54–72. Most general analyses are quite old: D. Obolensky, ‘Byzantine frontier zones and cultural exchanges’, Acts of the 14th International Congress 1971, 3 vols (Bucharest, 1974), vol. 1, 303–13; J.-P. Arrignou and J.-F. Duneau, ‘La frontière chez deux auteurs byzantins: Procope de Césarée et Constantin VII Porphyrogénète’, in Geographica byzantina, ed. H. Ahrweiler (Paris, 1981), 17–30. J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘The Arab–Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands’, Zbornik radova Vizantoloshkog Instituta, 19 (1980), 79–116; M. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War. Studies in the Jihad and the Arab–Byzantine Frontier (New Haven, 1996); C.E. Bosworth, ‘The city of Tarsus and Arab–Byzantine frontiers in early and middle ‘Abbasid times’, Oriens, 33 (1992), 268–86, repr. in: C.E. Bosworth, The Arabs, Byzantium and Iran: Studies in Early Islamic History and Culture (Aldershot, 1996), essay 14. The only substantial discussions of the eastern frontier in the period of expansion remain: G. Dagron, ‘Minorités ethniques et religieuses dans l’Orient byzantin à la fin du Xe et au XIe siècles: l’immigration syrienne’, Travaux et Mémoires, 6 (1976), 177–216; H. Ahrweiler, ‘La frontière et les frontières de Byzance en Orient’, Acts of the 14th International Congress 1971, 3 vols (Bucharest, 1974), vol. 1, 209–29.

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Black Sea

N

},. 0

4) I

Map 4.1

30 120 160 200 km I

I

Byzantium’s eastern frontier

political, military and administrative terms, with research focusing on the location of fortresses and the organisation of military hierarchies and garrisons within particular borderland areas.6 While much work remains to be undertaken on all aspects of Byzantine frontiers, my interest in this chapter does not lie with the social, cultural and religious dimensions of this topic. Instead, I will be chiefly concerned with those more traditional 6

As far Byzantium’s eastern frontier is concerned see various articles within Armies and Frontiers in Anatolia, ed. S. Mitchell (Oxford, 1983); Defence of the Roman and Byzantine Frontiers, ed. S. Freeman and H. Kennedy (Oxford, 1986); The Eastern Frontier of the Roman Empire, ed. D.H. French and C.S. Lightfoot (Oxford, 1989). More specifically on Armenia see K.N. Yuzbashian, ‘L’administration byzantine en Arménie aux Xe et XIe siècles’, Révue des Études Arméniennes, 10 (1973–74), 139–83; F. Janssens, ‘Le lac de Van et la stratégie byzantine’, Byzantion, 42 (1972), 388–404; V.A. Arutjunova-Fidanjan, ‘Some aspects of military administrative districts in Armenia during the eleventh century’, Révue des Études Arméniennes, 20 (1986–87), 309–20; idem, ‘The new socio-administrative structures in the east of Byzantium’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 19 (1993), 79–86.

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areas of research: politics, the military and administration. However, my task will be to identify a political frontier that makes sense in contemporary Byzantine terms rather than reflecting the certainties of modern historians. I will begin by deconstructing the highly militarised model to which much scholarship has been devoted, suggesting that a misreading of a tenth-century list of administrative officials has led some historians to overemphasise both the rigidity and the martial nature of the frontier. I will go on to suggest that once this list is set against other contemporary source materials, it becomes apparent that Byzantium’s political frontiers in the later tenth and eleventh centuries were characterised as much by diplomatic settlements between local notables, central government in Constantinople, and neighbouring powers, as by uniform precepts and practices of military administration. My examination will focus primarily on the eastern periphery of the empire in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries; however, where appropriate, I will compare my findings with Paul Stephenson’s recent appraisal of the empire’s political frontier in the Balkans during the same period.7 In the latter stages of the paper I will test my principal deductions in the light of two treaties drawn up between the Byzantines and neighbouring Muslim powers towards the end of the tenth century. I will conclude by offering a new context for understanding the tenth-century administrative list with which the chapter begins (see Map 4.1). Strategic Background to Byzantium’s Eastern Frontier In the second quarter of the seventh century Muslim Arab invasions had shorn the Byzantine empire of provinces in Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia. As a result the eastern half of the empire was reduced to little more than western and central Asia Minor. Although Arab armies made few permanent territorial gains in the east during the next three centuries, seasonal raids into Asia Minor were common. However, with the collapse of the authority of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad at the beginning of the tenth century, Arab incursions became less frequent. As the Arab threat receded, Byzantine armies moved onto the offensive, and although the scale of this aggressive shift has sometimes been exaggerated, substantial territories to the east of the Taurus and Anti Taurus mountains were annexed during the next fifty years.8 Melitene, a key Arab forward attack base located in the Anti Taurus mountains, fell in 934. Kalikala (known as Theodosioupolis in Greek), a frontier 7 8

P. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier (Cambridge, 2000), especially chapters 2–4. J. Shepard, ‘Constantine VII, Caucasian openings and the road to Aleppo’, in Eastern Approaches to Byzantium, ed. A. Eastmond (Aldershot, 2001), 19–40 argues for a conservative rate of territorial expansion.

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emirate in western Caucasia, was reduced in 949. By 965 the great cities of the Cilician plain, including Tarsos, had been annexed. In the autumn of 969 the northern Syrian city of Antioch, part of the Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo, fell to armed attack. In 975 the emperor John Tzimiskes raided as far south as Damascus.9 To some extent this offensive momentum slowed towards the end of the tenth century. By the 980s Byzantine armed engagement with Muslim neighbours in northern Mesopotamia had ceased. Meanwhile in northern Syria the Byzantines found themselves embroiled in a war of attrition with the Fatimids, a Shi’a dynasty which had seized control of Egypt in 969. None the less, by 1000–1001 the two powers brokered a truce that was rarely transgressed in the early decades of the eleventh century. This agreement allowed the emperor of the time, Basil II, to turn his attention to the Balkans. Only when Basil conquered Bulgaria in 1018 was eastern expansion once again contemplated. Yet with the exception of their absorption of the emirate of Edessa in northern Mesopotamia, in the eleventh century the Byzantines tended to annex Christian principalities in western Caucasia rather than Muslim princedoms. In 1022 Basil II consolidated Byzantine power in Tao, a region of southern Georgia called Outer Iberia by contemporaries. The southern Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan was ceded c. 1019; the northern kingdom of Ani in 1040–42, and the princedom of Kars in 1065.10 It has sometimes been assumed that these changes in Byzantium’s relations with its eastern neighbours in the tenth and eleventh centuries were matched by a transformation in the nature of the empire’s eastern frontier from a zone of deep defence to a more linear formation. The principles behind the frontier of deep defence can be swiftly summarised. Most historians would agree that during the Arab attacks of the seventh to ninth centuries the Byzantines developed a frontier system which exploited the empire’s natural landscape and maximised its relatively limited financial and military resources. Thus, the Taurus and Anti Taurus mountains provided an initial natural barrier. Passes through these mountains were occupied by small garrisons whose principal responsibilities were to warn of impending invasions and to ambush enemy armies as they journeyed through the defiles. Behind these mountains with their military stations lay the inner themes (or provinces) which were defended by part-time armies, drawn mainly from local farmers who could be mustered during emergencies. Beyond the Anatolian theme armies lay the third frontier element, fortifications erected on the western fringes of the plateau to protect the fertile coasts

9

10

See A.A. Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes, 2 vols (Brussels, 1950–1968), vol. 2/1, 268–306, 341–65; E. Honigmann, Die Ostgrenze des byzantinischen Reiches von 363 bis 1071 nach griechischen, arabischen, syrischen und armenischen Quellen (Brussels, 1935), 72–103. For a more detailed chronology of Byzantium’s relations with the East in the eleventh century see W. Felix, Byzanz und die islamische Welt im früheren 11. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1981).

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of western Asia Minor and the Asian hinterland of Constantinople. Yet, it is argued that as Arab raids waned in the tenth century, there was little need for this multiplelayered frontier. While never withering away completely, theme armies were demobilised and replaced by a mobile professional field army, which was based either at Constantinople or on the frontier. Rather than comprising a zone of deep defence, the eastern frontier was now typified by a chain of small border themes each centred on an individual castle, manned by a small garrison, and controlled by a governor (strategos). These themes were subordinate to regional units called ducates or katepanates, which themselves came under the command of a senior field army officer known as either doux or katepano. This senior officer was located with a large garrison at a key fortress in the frontier region. He was also responsible for civil affairs.11 Along the eastern frontier there were three such ducates or katepanates by the late 960s: Chaldia in the north-east, Mesopotamia to the east of the Anti Taurus, and Antioch in the south-east. With the annexation of further Eastern territories in the first half of the eleventh century additional ducates were created: those of Iberia, Vaspurakan and Ani in western Caucasia and Edessa in northern Mesopotamia.12 As this outline sketch indicates, this model of changing frontiers springs from historians’ understanding of broader structural changes within Byzantine military organisation in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. And at this point I would stress that there are many elements of this overall picture of military transformation with which I would not wish to argue. Contemporary historians, archive documents and archaeological evidence from Anatolia all suggest that thematic forces contracted during the tenth century and were replaced by a more centralised army.13 The 11

12

13

W. Treadgold, Byzantium and its Army 284–1081 (Stanford, CA, 1995), 98–117; M. Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium (Oxford, 1996), 113–26, 165–93, 311–27; J.-C. Cheynet, ‘La conception militaire de la frontière orientale (IXe–XIIIe siècles),’ in Eastern Approaches to Byzantium, ed. A. Eastmond (Aldershot, 2001), 57–72; H.J. Kühn, Die byzantinische Armee im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert. Studien zur Organisation der Tagmata (Vienna, 1991), 60–66, 158–217. J. Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565–1204 (London, 1999), 71–85, oscillates in his interpretation. Sometimes he interprets the new tenth-century frontier in the east as a line, sometimes as a buffer zone. Kühn, Die byzantinische Armee, 187–204. There were also doukes in the west of the empire at Thessalonika and Adrianople as well as katepanes of Italy and Mesopotamia (the latter usually assumed to refer to an area to the south of the Danube): Kühn, Die byzantinische Armee, 206–34 and V. von Falkenhausen, Untersuchungen über die byzantinische Herrschaft in Süditalien (Wiesbaden, 1967), 45–50. J.D. Howard-Johnston, ‘Studies in the organisation of the Byzantine army in the tenth and eleventh centuries’ (unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis, 1971); C.J. Holmes, ‘Basil II and the government of empire’ (unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis, 1999), 233; C. Foss, ‘The defenses of Asia Minor against the Turks’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 27 (1982), 149–204; idem, ‘Byzantine Malagina and the lower Sangarius’, Anatolian Studies, 40 (1991), 161–83; M. Balance, ‘Phrygian forts and cities survey’, Anatolian

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medieval historiographical record and lead seals confirm the appointment of doukes and strategoi in areas newly conquered by the Byzantines. Yet, while contemporary evidence substantiates all these changes in military structures, I am less certain whether the same sources indicate that the eastern frontier itself was as rigid, linear and, indeed, martial as some modern historians have suggested. To explain why this is so, we need first to understand how historians have interpreted the principal source upon which their model of the later tenth and eleventhcentury military frontier is based, a document known as the Escorial Taktikon. This is a list of precedence drawn up in Constantinople in the early 970s, which enumerates different military and civil officers within imperial government.14 Its importance for the history of the Byzantine frontier was signalled by its editor Nicholas Oikonomidès in the early 1970s. Having compared the Escorial Taktikon with earlier lists of precedence, he noted that it contained a large number of new military officials with responsibility for those territories annexed by Byzantine armies in the tenth century, both in the east of the empire and in the Balkans. These new officials included seniorranking commanders known as doukes or katepanes and lesser ranking strategoi (or military governors). And it was from these observations that Oikonomidès suggested both that the administration of the frontier and that the nature of the Byzantine frontier itself changed radically in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries.15 Yet there are strong grounds for arguing that the Escorial Taktikon is an inadequate source on which to predicate a complex model of fundamental changes in the administration and conception of the Byzantine frontier in this period. At the very simplest level such taktika are not detailed handbooks explaining the mechanics and principles of Byzantine administration. Instead, they are seating plans drawn up by imperial officials who organised banquets within the Great Palace in Constantinople. As such they constitute occasional and approximate outline sketches of the hierarchy of all the principal office-holders within the Byzantine empire. They reflect neither the quotidian functioning of administration nor expedient bureaucratic compromises

14 15

Studies, 45 (1995), 17; M. Whittow and H. Barnes, ‘Survey of medieval castles of Anatolia: Çardak Kalesesi’, Anatolian Archaeological Reports, 1 (1995), 23–5. N. Oikonomidès, Les Listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris, 1972), 258–61, 344–6, 354–63. N. Oikonomidès, ‘L’évolution de l’organisation administrative de l’empire byzantin au XIe siècle’, Travaux et Mémoires, 6 (1976), 148–52, at 148; idem, ‘L’organisation de la frontière orientale de Byzance aux Xe–XIe siècles et le taktikon de l’Escorial’, Acts of the 14th International Congress 1971, 3 vols (Bucharest, 1974), vol. 1, 285–302. Some of Oikonomidès’s conclusions were anticipated by H. Ahrweiler’s much earlier analysis of military administration which drew principally on references in the accounts of Byzantine historians (H. Ahrweiler, ‘Recherches sur l’administration de l’empire byzantin aux IXè–XIè siècles’, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 84 (1960), 1–109, at 46–63). The terms doux and katepano appear to have been synonyms.

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that could prevail in moments of rapid political change. Indeed, since such lists often continue to register offices that had fallen into temporary abeyance or even desuetude, they can obscure fundamentally any incidence of real change.16 As far as Byzantine frontiers are concerned, the Escorial Taktikon can prove that room was made at the imperial banqueting table for new military officials who might hold office in recently conquered areas. But read in isolation it cannot prove how or whether the nature of the Byzantine frontier itself changed. Instead, I would argue that in order to understand changes and continuities in the nature of Byzantine frontiers in the tenth and eleventh centuries more clearly, we need to analyse the Escorial Taktikon in the light of other contemporary written and material sources. In this endeavour local narratives, often written in languages other than Greek by historians living on the empire’s periphery, are of particular importance. In the case of the Byzantine East in the tenth and early eleventh centuries the most significant narratives are the world chronicle of the Armenian historian Stephen of Taron, the various component narratives of the ‘Georgian Royal Annals’, and most important of all, the history of Yahya ibn Sa’id, an Arabic-speaking Christian who migrated from Egypt to Antioch c. 1014.17 Another key source is sigillographical material, lead seals produced by members of the Byzantine bureaucracy which convey their owners’ names, titles and offices, as well as the geographical location over which those owners exercised jurisdiction. Lead seals allow us not only to trace military history, but also to analyse how heterogeneous frontier populations, many of which were non-Greek-speaking, non-Orthodox Christian, and sometimes non-Christian, related to, or were involved with, the exercise of official power. Our understanding of the heterodox populations of the Byzantine East has been significantly enhanced by the publication in recent years of a large number of lead seals, especially from Cilicia and northern Syria. It is important to note that many of these publications post-date Oikonomidès’ analysis of the Escorial Taktikon.18

16 17

18

This reflection on the nature of taktika was made by F. Winkelmann with respect to lists of precedence from the ninth century: Byzantinischen Rang- und Ämterstruktur im 8. Und 9. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1985), 28. Des Stephanos von Taron armenische Geschichte, trans. H. Gelzer and A. Burckhardt (Leipzig, 1909). R. Thomson, Rewriting Caucasian History: The Georgian Chronicles (Oxford, 1996). For Yahya see note at the beginning of this chapter; for more on Yahya’s biography and his contribution to Arabic historiography see J.H. Forsyth, ‘The chronicle of Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Antaki’ (Unpublished University of Michigan PhD thesis, 1977). J.C. Cheynet, C. Morrisson and W. Seibt, Sceaux byzantins de la collection Henri Seyrig (Paris, 1991); J.C. Cheynet, ‘Sceaux byzantins des musées d’Antioche et de Tarse’, Travaux et Mémoires, 12 (1994), 391–479; idem, ‘Sceaux de plomb du musée d’Hatay’, Revue des Études Byzantines, 54 (1996), 249–70.

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Eastern Frontier Command In the first part of this chapter I have suggested that historians’ reading of the Escorial Taktikon has encouraged them to see the Byzantine frontier in the later tenth and eleventh centuries as a carefully administered fortified line. This interpretation is based primarily on the significance that historians have attached to the appearance of the new doukes and strategoi within the Escorial Taktikon. In the next section of the paper I will demonstrate that when the new offices that appear within the Escorial Taktikon are examined in the light of other medieval sources, the belief that they were elements integral to a permanent, military and linear frontier becomes less convincing. Let us take the office of doux first, where synthesis of written and material sources from the Byzantine East contradicts the suggestion that these officials formed part of a stable form of frontier administration. Instead, at a general level it is clear that most doukes were appointed on an ad hoc basis in response to a variety of constantly changing internal and external political and military pressures. Thus many doukes, particularly in the later tenth century, were not permanent frontier governors at all, but instead, temporary commanders placed in charge of the Byzantine field army during campaigns against the empire’s eastern neighbours. Their commands were often swiftly rescinded if conditions within or outside the empire changed. If campaigning ceased they were often not replaced. Thus, in Chaldia the earliest doux to be mentioned in the historical record is Bardas Phokas, who held office in the late 960s.19 His appointment appears to be linked to a conspicuous, but temporary, growth in the intensity of Byzantine diplomatic and military relations with western Armenia. In 966 the princes of Taron ceded their patrimony in return for titles and estates within the Byzantine empire; two years later Phokas led raids through the region of Taron against a series of Muslim emirates located on the shores of Lake Van in southern Armenia.20 Yet, when Phokas was dismissed from office in 970 as part of a purge of rival commanders by the new Emperor John Tzimiskes, the position of doux of Chaldia appears to have lapsed for at least forty years.21 Military high command in 19 20 21

Ioannis Skylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. I. Thurn (Berlin and New York, 1973), 284, 293–4, 326; Leonis Diaconi Caloënsis Historiae Libri Decem, ed. C.B. Hase (Bonn, 1828), 96; Oikonomidès, Listes, 354; Kühn, Die byzantinische Armee, 184–5. Skylitzes, 279; Yahya, PO, 18 (1924), 825; M. Canard, ‘La date des expéditions mésopotamiennes de Jean Tzimiscès’, Mélanges Henri Grégoire, Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientale et Slave, 10 (1950), 99–108, at 100. It only recurs in the historical record in 1021–22 (N.M. Panagiotakes, ‘Fragments of a lost eleventh-century Byzantine historical work’, in Philhellen. Studies in Honour of Robert Browning, ed. E. Jeffreys (London, 1996), 321–57, at 356; Aristakes Lastivert, Récit des malheurs de la nation arménienne, trans. M. Canard and H. Berbérian according to the edition and Russian translation by K. Yuzbashian (Brussels, 1973), 12).

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Mesopotamia during the later tenth century appears to have been just as short-lived, shaped by the need to wage military campaigns against the empire’s neighbours and the incidence of domestic political strife within Byzantium itself. The first doux of Mesopotamia mentioned in the historical record is Bardas Skleros, appointed at the beginning of the reign of Basil II and charged with the responsibility of continuing an armed offensive against the Hamdanids of Mosul.22 Yet when Skleros chose to revolt against the emperor in the spring of 976, Byzantine hostilities with its Muslim neighbours in northern Mesopotamia and Iraq were suspended permanently. There is no further record of a Byzantine doux in this region until the middle decades of the eleventh century. It is likely that a doux only reappeared at this point in the context of renewed Byzantine expansion in this region: against Edessa in northern Mesopotamia and the Christian principalities of Vaspurakan and Ani.23 In Antioch the position of the senior Byzantine military commander came to be rather more permanent than in either Chaldia or Mesopotamia. However, until at least the early eleventh century, the responsibilities of this official fluctuated wildly in accordance with wider external and domestic circumstances. Initially there appears to have been no doux at all in Antioch. The first military commander resident in the city was Eustathios Maleinos, who was strategos of Antioch and Lykandos (a theme in eastern Anatolia), a hybrid role which smacks of expediency at a time of military conquest.24 Instead, it was only at the beginning of the reign of Basil II in 976, seven years after the city had fallen to Byzantine armies, with the appointment of Michael Bourtzes that the first recorded instance of the term doux occurs in an Antiochene context.25 However, as at Chaldia and Mesopotamia, this appointment appears to have

22 23

24

25

See p. 14 for the context to the reference of 1021–22. I have found only two lead seals datable to either the later tenth or early eleventh century belonging to other doukes of Chaldia, K.M. Konstantopoulos, Byzantiaka molybdoboulla tou en Athçnais Ethnikou Nomismatikou Mouseiou (Athens, 1917) number 158a; unpublished seal from the Dumbarton Oaks collection. Skylitzes, 314–15; W. Seibt, Die Skleroi (Vienna, 1976), 36; Forsyth, ‘Chronicle’, 375. Canard, ‘La date des expéditions’, 99–108. For example, Gregory Pahlawuni became katepano of Mesopotamia and the former southern Armenian princedoms of Taron and Vaspurakan in the later 1040s (Yuzbashian, ‘L’administration’, 147). Seals provide most of the other eleventh-century references to doukes in this region: W. Seibt, Die byzantinischen Bleisiegel in Österreich (Vienna, 1978), 260; D. Theodoridis, ‘Theognostos Melissenos, Katepan von Mesopotamia’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 78 (1985), 363–4; unpublished seals from the Dumbarton Oaks collection. W.B.R. Saunders, ‘The Aachen reliquary of Eustathius Maleinus 969–70’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 36 (1982), 211–19. It is sometimes erroneously assumed that when Antioch fell to the Byzantines a doux or katepano was immediately appointed (Oikonomidès, Listes, 354 and Kühn, Die byzantinische Armee, 170–71). Skylitzes, 315.

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been made in the light of a particular strategic ambition: the need to lead a counteroffensive against the coastal positions of the Fatimids in northern Syria.26 Short-term strategic needs continued to dictate the appointment of doukes in Antioch and the nature of their responsibilities for many years. In 986 Leo Melissenos was created doux in order to retake the coastal town of Balanias from the Fatimids.27 Yet, it is striking that in the cases of both Bourtzes and Melissenos a conjunction of more pressing military conditions elsewhere in the empire made the tenure of office and residence in Antioch brief. Michael Bourtzes had to abandon Antioch in the spring of 976 to fight the Skleros rebels. Leo Melissenos was recalled to Constantinople after the fall of Balanias, partly because he incurred the distrust of the emperor, and partly because his military expertise was required for a forthcoming campaign against Bulgaria.28 While Bourtzes and Melissenos were primarily military commanders expected to fulfil specific martial objectives against the empire’s neighbours, other senior commanders in Antioch were vested with rather more substantial powers. When Leo Melissenos left Antioch for Bulgaria in 986, Bardas Phokas was appointed ‘doux of the east and governor of Antioch and the provinces of the east’.29 This description of Phokas’s appointment suggests that his new duties were much broader than his predecessor’s, akin to those of an imperial plenipotentiary, a position which makes perfect sense in the context of the broader military position of the empire at this time. With a campaign against Bulgaria planned, the Emperor Basil needed an experienced military commander like Phokas to supervise the eastern half of the empire while he himself was occupied in the Balkans. Yet, even Phokas’s appointment proved to be an ad hoc appointment shaped by domestic and foreign pressures. Following a disastrous defeat for Basil’s armies in Bulgaria and a further outbreak of armed revolt in the east, Phokas was put in charge of the field army once again. However, he himself then immediately rebelled.30 It was only with the appointment of Nikephoros Ouranos as doux of Antioch in 26

27 28

29 30

Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 372; Armenia and the Crusades in the Tenth to Twelfth centuries: the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, trans. A.E. Dostorian (Lanham, 1993), 31–2; P.E. Walker, ‘The “crusade” of John Tzimisces in the light of new Arabic evidence’, Byzantion, 47 (1977), 301–27; M. Canard, ‘Les sources arabes de l’histoire byzantine aux confins des Xe et XIe siècles’, Révue des Études Byzantines, 19 (1961), 284–314, at 293–5. Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 416–17. Ibid., 417; Skylitzes, 330. V. Laurent, ‘La chronologie des gouverneurs d’Antioche sous la seconde domination byzantine’, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, 38 (1962), 221–54, at 232; I. Jordanov, ‘Molybdobulles de domestiques des scholes du dernier quart du Xe siècle trouvés dans la stratégie de Preslav’, in Studies in Byzantine Sigillography, ed. N. Oikonomidès, 4 vols (Washington DC, 1990–96), vol. 2, 203–11, at 208–9. Yahya, PO, 23 (1932) 417. Skylitzes, 330–34; Leo the Deacon, 171–5; Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 418–21; Stephen of Taron, 186–90.

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1000–1001 that a rather more stable administrative situation came to bear in northern Syria. Ouranos remained in command at Antioch for nearly a decade, much longer than previous appointees. In some respects his appointment bore many similarities to that of Phokas in 986. Like Phokas his military responsibilities extended far beyond Antioch. In 1001–2 he fought against the Georgian princedom of Tao, and in 1006/7 against bedouin insurrectionists in the Diyar Mudar.31 The breadth of his command is reflected in the legend borne by his lead seals: ‘Nikephoros Ouranos, Magistros and Kraton [Ruler] of the East’.32 The best explanation for the all-encompassing nature of his office is once again to be found in the contemporary strategic position of the empire. When Basil II brokered a truce with the Fatimids in 1000–1001, he turned his attentions fully to Bulgaria.33 Just as he had appointed Phokas as his eastern plenipotentiary during the Bulgarian campaign of 986, he now used Ouranos in the same role while he was occupied in the Balkans. Yet, it is likely that Ouranos was appointed as much for his ability to maintain the recently agreed peace with the Fatimids as for his ability to prosecute war. Certainly Ouranos was an experienced diplomat as well as soldier. Before beginning a military career during the second half of the reign of Basil II, he had worked in both central civil administration and eastern diplomacy, first as keeper of the imperial inkstand at the Great Palace in Constantinople, and later as an envoy to Baghdad.34 Yet, while commanders like Phokas and Ouranos could enjoy sweeping powers in Byzantium’s eastern territories, on other occasions circumstance forced the Byzantines to concede supreme military command to more local powers. Thus, during the revolt of Bardas Skleros, Antioch was controlled not by a Byzantine doux but by two local civil officials known as basilikoi. The first was Kulayb, a Christian Arab who had previously served the Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo. In 975 he had surrendered to the Byzantines and been rewarded with the title of patrikios and the office of basilikos of Antioch. When the doux Michael Bourtzes and his garrison withdrew from Antioch in 976 to deal with the Skleros rebellion, Kulayb was left in sole control of the city. Shortly afterwards Kulayb was transferred to the position of basilikos in Melitene. He was replaced at Antioch by Ubayd Allah, another Arab 31 32

33 34

Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 460, 466–7; Stephen of Taron, 212; E. McGeer, ‘Tradition and reality in the Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45 (1991), 129–40, at 131. ‘Nikeephorô magistrô tô kratounti tçs Anatolçs tô Ouranou’ (Catalogue of Byzantine seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art), ed. J. Nesbitt and N. Oikonomidès, 3 vols (Washington DC, 1996), vol. 3, seal number 99. 11; also published in McGeer, ‘Tradition and reality in the Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos’, 139–40. Skylitzes, 343–6; Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 461. V. Laurent, Le Corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin, 5 vols (Paris, 1963–81), vol. 2, no. 102; Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate, ed. and trans. H. Amedroz and D. Margoliouth, 6 vols (Oxford, 1920–21), vol. 6, 25–34; Skylitzes, 327; Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 400–402.

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Christian. At Antioch Ubayd Allah controlled not only civil affairs but also a detachment of troops. Although Ubayd Allah was displaced at Antioch by a Byzantine doux after the Skleros revolt was crushed, Kulayb remained in sole control at Melitene until at least 987. His grip on power was assured by his ability to secure annual tribute payments from the neighbouring emirate of Aleppo in northern Syria.35 Local control over Byzantium’s eastern periphery was even more marked to the north of Antioch, where far from appointing Byzantine officers as permanent military governors on the frontier, imperial authorities often conceded control over Chaldia and Mesopotamia to a variety of neighbouring potentates. One of these potentates was the Christian Prince David of Tao, who in 978 dispatched troops from his princedom in southern Georgia to help Basil II quell the revolt of Bardas Skleros. In return David was granted control over several key towns and fortresses in the northeast of Byzantium which had been annexed earlier in the tenth century, including the former emirate of Kalikala (or Theodosioupolis).36 These regions were only returned to Byzantium when David of Tao died in 1000, and Basil II led an imperial field army to the region in the same year.37 Yet, despite Basil’s campaign and a follow-up expedition led by Nikephoros Ouranos, the Byzantines did little to consolidate their position permanently. Instead it is likely that in the period between 1000 and 1021, supreme military tutelage over Chaldia, Mesopotamia and western Armenia was devolved to another neighbouring power, the Marwanid emirs of Diyarbakr, the region to the south of the Anti Taurus. In 1000 Basil II granted Hasan Ibn Marwan the title of magistros and the office of doux of the East.38 The bestowal of such 35

36

37 38

Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 369, 373, 420; Eclipse, vol. 6, 23–4; Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’Antioche (1169–99), ed. and trans. J.B. Chabot (Paris 1905–10), 125–6; J.-C. Cheynet, ‘L’apport arabe à l’aristocratie byzantine des Xe–XIe siècles’, Byzantinoslavica, 61 (1995), 134–46, at 141–2; Dagron, ‘Minorités ethniques’, 192, 197. Skylitzes, 326; B. Martin-Hisard, ‘La Vie de Jean et Euthyme: le statut du monastère des Ibères sur l’Athos’, Revue des Études Byzantines, 49 (1991), 67–142, at 89–91; Stephen of Taron, 141–2, lists those regions ceded to David; some, such as Theodosioupolis, appear to have been under direct Byzantine control in 979, others, such as Harkh and Apahunikh’, near Lake Van, were subject to Byzantine claims of overlordship, but were controlled by local Muslim emirs (N. Adontz, ‘Tornik le moine’, Byzantion, 13 (1938), 143–64, at 150–51). David in turn appears to have appointed a leading local Iberian noble called Bagrat (who also held the Byzantine titles of patrikios and magistros) as his lieutenant on the ground in Chaldia: Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 424, 429; Panagiotakes, ‘Fragments’, 348. Contemporary Armenian historians suggest that Bagrat was the brother of Tornik, a famous Iberian military commander, whose family were local landowners in Taron and Derxene to the west of Theodosioupolis (Stephen of Taron, 190; Adontz, ‘Tornik’, 143–64). Skylitzes, 339; Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 460; Stephen of Taron, 211–12; Thomson, The Georgian Chronicles, 374. Stephen of Taron, 210; La chronographie de Mar Elie bar Sinaya, Métropolitain de Nisibe, ed. and trans. L.J. Delaporte (Paris, 1910), 138; Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 460.

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honours on a Muslim is a measure which historians have struggled to explain. Yet Ibn Marwan’s appointment makes sense if he is seen as a replacement for David of Tao, becoming at one and the same time a client of the empire and its representative in the East. Certainly, we know that Ibn Marwan campaigned on behalf of the empire. In 1010 he provided troops for an expedition to Aleppo to reinstall another Byzantine client family as emirs.39 Indeed, I would argue that it was only in 1018, the year when Basil finally annexed Bulgaria, that the imposition of central military control from Constantinople in the northern and central regions of the Byzantine East was contemplated once again. In this year the fortifications of Kalikala (Theodosioupolis) were repaired.40 In 1021 a centrally-appointed doux of Chaldia is mentioned once again in the historical record. Both these developments seem to have been part of the preparations for a new campaign by Basil to the north-east of the empire, an expedition that took place in 1021–22 and resulted in the final annexation of Tao.41 This brief sketch of the early history of the doukes of Chaldia, Mesopotamia and Antioch demonstrates the degree to which positions of supreme command in the Byzantine East were ad hoc appointments shaped by changing circumstances elsewhere in the empire and by military conditions in the east. Some doukes were heads of campaign armies; others were regional plenipotentiaries. Sometimes supreme military and diplomatic control over ‘conquered’ territories was granted to local potentates. While responsibility for the military security of the territories of Chaldia and Mesopotamia appears to have been conceded for long periods to neighbouring powers, Byzantine military authority was always probably somewhat stronger in Antioch. Yet, even in Antioch, the career of Nikephoros Ouranos indicates that diplomacy was as important to the exercise of Byzantine power as a strong military presence. Two important conclusions of relevance to frontiers emerge from this discussion of the office of doux. On the one hand, it is true that the reduced threat from the empire’s eastern neighbours in the tenth and eleventh centuries made redundant the need for a defensive frontier extending all the way from the Taurus and Anti Taurus mountains to the western edges of the Anatolian plateau. Yet the history of fragmented and uncertain martial command in Chaldia, Mesopotamia and Antioch militates against the idea of a permanent and static line under direct and continuous Byzantine military governance. Instead the frontier in the east resembles a zone where the imposition of Byzantine military authority was inconsistent and intermittent, and where diplomatic relationships were of greater importance. It is striking that the experience of the lesser strategoi, those minor commanders whose appearance in the Escorial Taktikon underpins many modern conceptions of the frontier, also countermands the idea of Byzantium’s eastern frontier as a strongly 39 40 41

Yahya, PO, 47 (1997), 392–3. Aristakes Lastivert, 11. See p. 87.

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garrisoned permanent line. Close analysis of these officials as they appear in other contemporary sources indicates that both the strategoi and the themes of which they were the commanders were often quite temporary phenomena. Strategoi were appointed during military campaigns and granted detachments of troops. But in times of peace the strategoi themselves were often demobilised, their castles demilitarised and their garrisons withdrawn. Administrative responsibility for the regions under their control passed into the hands of civil officials. A good example of this process in action is Hafdjidj, a theme located close to the upper Araxes river in the north-eastern reaches of the Byzantine empire. When Byzantine armies attacked the emirate of Kalikala (Theodosioupolis) in the 930s and 940s, they fortified and garrisoned Hafdjidj as a forward attack base. Kalikala eventually fell in 949. Yet in the postconquest phase Hafdjidj appears to have had no martial purpose.42 Although Escorial Taktikon compiled in the early 970s lists a strategos of Chauzizion, the Greek name for Hafdjidj, it is likely that this office had already been suppressed.43 When Basil II led a lightning expedition to the region in 1000, the fortress of Hafdjidj had to be reoccupied by Byzantine forces, indicating that under normal circumstances it was not garrisoned.44 Sigillographical evidence suggests that by the eleventh century the region of Hafdjidj was usually commanded by a civil tax official, known as an episkeptites or a kourator. Indeed, other lead seals indicate that many of the small eastern themes mentioned in the Escorial Taktikon were often governed by civil officials during the more peaceful conditions of the eleventh century.45 A similar story could be told of the theme of Mauron Oros, which was established in the Amanos mountains in northern Syria during the siege of Antioch in the autumn of 968. Michael Bourtzes was appointed strategos of Mauron Oros in charge of a garrison based at the castle of Baghras.46 He was commanded to raid the Antiochene hinterland during the winter to force the city to surrender to the main Byzantine army when it returned the following year.47 Yet once Mauron Oros had fulfilled its task and Antioch fell, the theme itself appears to have disappeared as an administrative unit. 42

43 44 45 46 47

De Administrando Imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik and trans. R.J.H. Jenkins (Washington DC, 1967), 206–14; Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes, vol. 2/1, 284; vol. 2/2, 122. The fortress has yet to be located by modern historians although it is assumed to lie north of the Bingöl Daðý, near the source of the Araxes river (J.D. Howard-Johnston, ‘Procopius, Roman defences north of the Taurus and the new fortress of Citharizon’, in The Eastern Frontier of the Roman Empire, ed. D.H. French and C.S. Lightfoot (Oxford, 1989), 203–29, at 207. Oikonomidès, Les Listes, 266–7. Stephen of Taron, 210; Aristakes Lastivert, 4. J.D. Howard-Johnston ‘Crown lands and the defence of imperial authority in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 21 (1995), 76–99, at 89–90. Yahya, PO, 18 (1924), 816; Skylitzes, 271–2; Ahrweiler, ‘Recherches’, 46. Skylitzes wrongly locates the theme in the Taurus rather than the Amanos range. Leo the Deacon, 73–4.

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When Bourtzes returned to Constantinople he was not replaced as strategos.48 It is likely that the principal fortifications of Mauron Oros including the castle of Baghras were deserted. Such was certainly the fate of other fortifications in northern Syria linked to the campaign to reduce Antioch, such as the monastery of St Symeon Stylites at Qalat Siman.49 Parallels for the demobilisation of such themes are to be found elsewhere in the Byzantine East. At rather larger themes, such as Melitene in the Anti Taurus, where administration oscillated between (or was shared by) a strategos and civil officials, little effort was made to maintain the city’s fortifications. Destroyed by the Byzantines during their conquest of 934, the city’s circuit walls were not rebuilt until the later eleventh century, when the notables of the city lobbied for their repair in the context of raids by Turkish nomads and local Armenian brigands.50 Read in conjunction with the material relating to the position of doux, the evidence for the eastern strategoi suggests that when Byzantium was at war with its eastern adversaries, large field army garrisons operated from centres such as Antioch with the support of additional forces stationed in subsidiary fortifications. At such times the military presence in frontier regions could be large: 1,000 men were garrisoned initially at Mauron Oros; when Basil II annexed Vaspurakan in southern Armenia c. 1019, he stationed troops in more than forty forts.51 Yet, in times of peace, this Byzantine military presence reduced sharply, limited either to the major garrison at Antioch and a small number of troops to guard key routes, or conceded entirely to the supervision of neighbouring powers. Interesting confirmation of the degree to which Byzantium’s eastern territories could be demilitarised in times of peace comes from a contemporary travel report. In 1048 Ibn Butlan, a Christian Arab doctor from Baghdad, visited northern Syria during a period of regional calm. At Antioch he saw a garrison of 4,000 professional soldiers sent on a one-year secondment from the imperial field army.52 However, aside from 48 49

50 51

52

Skylitzes, 271–3; Yahya, PO, 18 (1924), 825; Leo the Deacon, 81–2. The likelihood that Qalat Siman was demilitarised rests on the fact that when the monastery was attacked by Muslim armies in 985 and 1017 it was able to put up very little resistance. Its only inhabitants appear to have been monks and local peasants seeking a place of refuge: Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 416; W.B.R. Saunders, ‘Qalat Siman: a frontier fort of the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in Defence of the Roman and Byzantine frontiers, ed. S. Freeman and H. Kennedy (Oxford, 1986), 291–305. Michel le Syrien, 122–3, 165–6; F. Tinnefeld, ‘Die Stadt Melitene in ihrer späteren byzantinischen Epoche (934–1101)’, Acts of the 14th International Congress 1971, 3 vols (Bucharest, 1974), vol. 2, 435–43, at 436–8. For Mauron Oros see Yahya, PO, 18 (1924), 816; Skylitzes, 271–2, mentions a figure of 300 men; however, this is likely to represent the size of garrison at one individual fortification rather than the total number of troops stationed in the theme as a whole; for Vaspurakan see Yahya, PO, 47 (1997), 463. The Medico-Philosophical Controversy between Ibn Butlan of Baghdad and Ibn Ridwan of Cairo, ed. and trans. J. Schlacht and M. Meyerhof (Cairo, 1937), 55.

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this reference, Ibn Butlan has nothing more to say about the military complexion of this area. Instead, his account dwells on the region’s agricultural and commercial well-being and its heterodox population. In a detailed description of Laodikeia, a port town which had been at the forefront of raiding activity against the Fatimids in the final quarter of the tenth century, he makes no mention of the city’s fortifications nor of a military garrison. Instead, his interest is drawn to the city’s harbour, its ancient monuments, a former temple which had served the town both as a mosque and more recently as a church, its other surviving mosques, its market-places and market inspectors, and its merchants. The principal responsibility of the town’s governor in this period of peace appears to have been the regulation of the town’s prostitutes.53 Ibn Butlan also implies that the rural districts of northern Syria were demilitarised zones of local prosperity. During his visit to the village of Imm he enumerates a host of intriguing features, including churches, a mosque, prostitutes, pigs, fish in local rivers, and mills. He comments at length on the prosperity of the local countryside.54 Notably absent from his report is any mention of a garrison, despite the fact that Imm had been an important fortified site within the theme of Artah (listed in the Escorial Taktikon) during Byzantium’s wars with the Fatimids in the late tenth century.55 Wider Contexts: Byzantino-Arab Treaties It is striking that many of the observations about the Byzantine East in this chapter accord with Paul Stephenson’s conclusions about Byzantium’s frontier in the Balkans during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Using similar sources of evidence, including seals and local medieval histories, Stephenson argues against interpreting the frontier in purely military or linear terms. While Byzantine garrisons were concentrated at key centres, subsidiary castles were selectively occupied, abandoned, reoccupied and destroyed according to circumstance. Meanwhile, senior commanders were required to be diplomats as much as martial leaders. Even during periods of intense military action, such as the Bulgarian campaigns of Basil II, the frontier was typified by a patchwork of constantly shifting relationships between the emperor in Constantinople and powerful local notables. In this fractured political world, strategies of cajolement, including the granting of titles, salaries and offices, were as important as the imposition of military force or rigid administrative structures. Stephenson concludes that it is impossible to conceive of Byzantium’s Balkan frontier as a static 53 54 55

Ibid., 57. Ibid., 54. Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 438; Oikonomidès, Les Listes, 268–9; The Chronography of Gregory Abu’l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician, commonly Known as Bar Hebreus, ed. and trans. E.A. Wallis Budge (London, 1932), 218.

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fortified line on a map, but rather as a kaleidoscope of diplomatic relationships which constantly fluctuated in response to changing pressures within Byzantium itself and in its dealings with neighbouring powers.56 Yet while certain parallels can be drawn between the eastern and western Byzantine experiences, is this new model of the frontier, as a zone typified by diplomatic strategies and indirect governance, as much of an artificial construct as the more linear militarised model suggested by previous generations of historians? Is it possible that as the eternal verities of the nation state, including the notion of strong borders, are questioned and dismantled at the beginning of the twenty-first century, historians are now too eager to detect the fragmented and the zonal, where once they were keen to observe the well-regulated and the linear? Although the model I have proposed draws upon contemporary evidence, is that model still predicated upon a modern, or indeed postmodern, reading of the evidence? One way of determining the viability of this more fluid frontier model is to ask whether this is a political arrangement that contemporaries would have recognised as a frontier. To seek answers to this question I want now to look briefly at two Byzantino-Arab treaties: the Treaty of Safar drawn up in 969 by the empire and the emirate of Aleppo, and a political alliance struck between the rebel general Bardas Skleros and the Buyid emirs of Baghdad in the late 980s. Both are preserved only in their Arabic versions. The first is to be found in a thirteenth-century local history of Aleppo; the second in a fourteenth-century Mamluk diplomatic handbook.57 For anyone wishing to characterise the Byzantine political frontier as a hazy territorial zone typified by a series of ad hoc diplomatic agreements, initial inspection of the two Byzantino-Arab treaties seems unpromising. Rather than imprecision and compromise, both treaties contain a series of exceptionally precise provisions, which can, on first reading, suggest that contemporaries conceived of the political frontier as a clearly demarcated line between two neighbouring powers. For example, the Treaty of Safar appears to establish a linear border between the emirate of Aleppo and the people of Rum (Byzantium) by listing a series of locations close to the right bank of the River Orontes.58 Meanwhile, Skleros’s treaty with the Buyids gives precise details about seven castles close to the Upper Tigris and its tributary the Batman Su, which the rebel general undertakes to hand over to his Muslim allies in return for their military and diplomatic support.59 And, indeed, historians usually have interpreted 56 57

58 59

Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, especially chapter 4. W. Farag, The Truce of Safar A. H. 359, paper circulated at the Eleventh Spring Symposium held at Birmingham University (Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, 1977). Professor John Haldon kindly gave me a copy of this brief monograph; M. Canard, ‘Deux documents arabes sur Bardas Sklèros’, Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 5 (1939), 55–69. Farag, The Truce of Safar, 2. Canard, ‘Deux documents’, 66.

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the locations named in these treaties as the key links in a fortified linear frontier between Byzantium and its eastern Muslim neighbours at the end of the tenth century. Yet, once the precise provisions of both treaties are read in wider textual and political contexts, the notion of a linear and martial frontier begins to dissolve.60 First it is clear that the frontier never amounted to a neat linear and fortified division between just two different parties. Although Bardas Skleros agreed to surrender seven castles to the Buyids, the historical record indicates that neither Skleros, nor Basil II, the emperor he fought to depose, actually controlled any of these fortifications. Instead, as a result of the wars between Basil and Skleros, they had fallen into the hands of the Marwanids, the Kurdish nomad family who were the forebears of Emir Ibn Marwan, the key Byzantine ally in 1000.61 Before Skleros could contemplate handing these castles to the Buyids, he would first need to negotiate a settlement with the Marwanids.62 Nor were the Marwanids the only regional party with whom Skleros would have to deal. As Évelyne Patlagean pointed out in her paper to the November 1998 conference, both Basil II and Skleros were constantly obliged to negotiate with regional powers, both Muslim and Christian, during their civil wars in the 970s and 980s. And, indeed, it is clear that those who drew up the treaty between Skleros and the Buyids saw this kaleidoscope of regional alliances as typical of the frontier world with which they both had to deal. Both parties to the treaty, for example, agreed that they would prevent the other from being attacked by their respective Georgian and Armenian allies.63 Turning to the Safar agreement, then we find here too that many of the treaty’s provisions indicate that the frontier was a zone of negotiated settlements and diplomatic influence rather than a line of separation. At this point it is important to recognise that this treaty is not the documentary statement of a relationship between two equals, but instead the official record of the moment when Aleppo became an imperial client state. Thus, although the treaty appears to establish a line between those territories belonging to the emirate and to the empire, it is clear that Byzantine political influence in the Aleppin heartland and the emirate’s obligations to the empire transcended that line. Thus, the Byzantines claimed the right to appoint future emirs in Aleppo. They demanded annual tribute payments. They required protection for Christian populations within the emirate. And, most important of all, they subjected the emirate to a position of military servitude. In times of war against the empire’s 60 61

62 63

Forsyth, ‘Chronicle’, 426. Eclipse, vol. 6, 32, 84–9, 150–51; Stephen of Taron, p. 141; A.D.H. Bivar, ‘Bardas Skleros, the Buwayids and the Marwanids at Hisn Ziyad in the light of an unnoticed Arab inscription’, in Defence of the Roman and Byzantine Frontiers, ed. S. Freeman and H. Kennedy (Oxford, 1986), 9–21; see above p. 95 for Hasan ibn Marwan. This was what Skleros tried to do shortly after making his agreement with the Buyids (Stephen of Taron, 187). Canard, ‘Deux documents’, 66.

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neighbours, the emirate was expected to act as a forward attack base: the emir was to guide Byzantine armies through the emirate when they were on campaign; he was also to offer provisions to imperial forces. However, if a Muslim power planned to invade the empire, the emir was required to deny the hostile army passage, and to warn the emperor of its approach. The only concession granted to the emir was that he was not expected to fight armies of his own religion.64 Whether adopting an offensive or defensive position on behalf of Byzantium, the role of the emirate, as it appears in this treaty, was to act as a buffer between the empire and more powerful states to the east. Yet, at the same time, it would be wrong to suggest that as a result of this treaty Aleppo became an irrevocable element of a rigid Byzantine frontier system. Instead, the historical record indicates that during the next fifty years, Byzantine–Aleppin relations fluctuated considerably according to the internal position of the empire and the strengths and weaknesses of its other eastern neighbours. On some occasions Byzantium was unable to exact tribute at all, and even became the victim of Aleppin raids.65 On others, large Byzantine armies appeared at the gates of the city to force payment.66 At other times local notables within imperial service, such as Kulayb the basilikos of Melitene, were used as intermediaries to extract the annual due.67 In this sense Aleppo’s position within Byzantium’s eastern frontier was constantly renegotiated and redefined as circumstances changed. Indeed, it is as part of the process of constant renegotiation that the incidence of precise linear borders within these treaties is best explained. As we noted above, each treaty appears to describe territorial borders between Byzantium and its Muslim neighbours by enumerating precise geographical locations. Yet, if we look more closely at how those who drafted these treaties interpreted these locations, then they seem to have regarded these sites not so much as castles along a permanent and strictly defined linear frontier, but instead as territorial units with important fiscal revenues that customarily oscillated between neighbouring powers. It is, of course, not surprising that modern historians have usually interpreted the locations in question in a strategic rather than a financial light, since they have tended to ignore the fiscal element to these treaties. But, detailed examination of both texts indicates the importance of the financial context. The naming of locations in the Treaty of Safar is explicitly connected to the provision that it is precisely these regions whose inhabitants are expected to pay a poll tax to the Byzantines and to contribute to 64 65 66 67

Farag, The Truce of Safar, 2–4. Yahya, PO, 23 (1932), 416 (in 985). Ibid., 407 (in 981); 414 (in 983); 442 (in 995). On the final occasion Basil II appeared at the gates of Aleppo, but then chose to waive the payment of tribute as a special concession to his allies inside the city. See p. 95.

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the emirate’s annual tribute payment.68 Equally, when the Buyids name the seven fortresses they wish to see handed over by Skleros, they add an extensive proviso that the local populations of the surrounding countryside, their beasts, their goods and houses, their harvests and their tools, should also be surrendered. Moreover, these inhabitants are no longer to give the Byzantines contributions in either cash or kind.69 Further confirmation that the locations cited in both treaties were considered primarily as revenue producers rather than as elements of a permanent linear military frontier, is the lack of references in either treaty to their military role. In these circumstances one suspects that rather like some of the fortifications cited earlier in this paper, such as Hafdjidj, Imm and Mauron Oros, the fortified towns and castles mentioned by these two treaties were only fully garrisoned during periods of all-out war.70 In more peaceful conditions, such as those anticipated in these treaties, such locations were liable to be demilitarised. Conclusion: Rereading the Escorial Taktikon This chapter has illustrated the perpetual ebb and flow of Byzantine political authority in the East during the later tenth and early eleventh centuries. The mutability of the multifarious political arrangements between Byzantium and its neighbours makes redundant the notion of a permanent, linear, martial frontier of the type that historians have assumed on the basis of their interpretation of the Escorial Taktikon. However, I would like to end this chapter with a striking paradox: that while Byzantium’s frontier in the east was neither permanent nor linear, it none the less always retained a military connotation for contemporaries, even in times of profound calm. In this context it is important to understand that while the Byzantines were often content to countenance a demilitarised frontier, sometimes even surrendering direct control to local notables, they remained convinced that in emergency conditions their authority in a military guise could, and would, be reimposed. Such an attitude seems, for example, to explain a short clause in the Treaty of Safar forbidding the Muslims of Aleppo to build new fortresses, but enjoining them to keep up repairs on old forts. In the course of this chapter we have seen that at a purely practical level such repairs were rarely carried out. Yet, the notion that that frontier fortifications could be repaired, garrisons could be reinstalled, strategoi could be reappointed in 68 69 70

Farag, The Truce of Safar, 2. Canard, ‘Deux documents’, 66–7. The importance to contemporaries of fiscal revenues from fortified locations in Byzantium’s eastern periphery questions John Haldon’s thesis that such sites served ‘chiefly as strategic centres and military bases, rather than centres of local population’ (Haldon, Warfare, State and Society, 251).

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crisis periods, was not necessarily empty rhetoric. Instead there is strong evidence from the end of the eleventh century, when the empire’s strategic situation worsened, that such remobilisation was attempted both in the east and west. In the east themes such as Mauron Oros and Artah were regarrisoned to fend off attacks by the Turks.71 Paul Stephenson has noted a similar phenomenon in the western Balkans when Byzantium was invaded by the Normans.72 More interesting, however, is the fact that it is in this context of re-employing mothballed institutions that the Escorial Taktikon finally proves to have some worth as a source for the history of the tenth- and eleventh-century frontier. For while the Escorial Taktikon’s habit of listing offices which have fallen into desuetude makes it an inadequate snapshot of how the frontier worked in practice, its penchant for retaining anachronistic offices very clearly reflects the Byzantine notion that defunct military institutions could be reused when circumstances changed. In this very limited sense, then, while Byzantium’s frontier in the east was often peaceful, it remained a military construct within the long-term institutional memory of the empire’s administrators in Constantinople. More important, it was a military construct that contemporaries were willing to revivify when occasion demanded.

71

72

The seal of a later eleventh-century strategos at Mauron Oros survives (Cheynet, Morrisson and Seibt, Sceaux byzantins, no. 183). The theme is also mentioned in the Treaty of Devol drawn up in 1108 between Bohemond of Antioch and Alexios Komnenos (Honigman, Ostgrenze, 127; Anne Comnène, Alexiade, ed. B. Leib, 3 vols (Paris, 1967), vol. 3, 133–6). For Artah (including Imm) see Bar Hebreus, 218. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, 181.

Chapter 5

Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Example of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem Ronnie Ellenblum

Are the terms ‘border’ and ‘border-line’ synonymous? Is the linear model the only possible way to define a boundary? Is there any other way, besides the demarcation of a single boundary line, of depicting the confines of suzerainty and territorial lordship? Is it possible that a political entity, even a medieval one, could exist without defined borderlines? Many of the scholars who dealt with the history of the Frankish kingdom assumed, as a matter of fact, that the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had external political boundary-lines, that the terms ‘border’ and ‘borderline’ were synonymous and that there was an association between borderlines and castles.1 Now, it is true that

1

See for example: E.G. Rey, Étude sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire des Croisés en Syrie et dans l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1871), 4; H. Prutz, Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1883), 195–6; T.E. Lawrence, Crusader Castles, ed. D. Pringle (Oxford, 1988), 120; P. Deschamps, Les châteaux des croisés en Terre Sainte, pt 1. Le Crac des Chevaliers, 2 vols, Bibliothèque archéologique et historique, vol. 19 (Paris, 1934), vol. 1, 16–42; R. Grousset, Histoire des croisades et du royaume franc de Jérusalem, 3 vols (Paris, 1936), vol. 3, xxi; R.C. Smail, ‘Crusaders’ castles in the twelfth century’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1951), 138; R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare (1097–1193): A Contribution to Medieval Military History (Cambridge, 1956), 207; J. Prawer, ‘Ascalon and the Ascalon Strip in crusader politics’, Eretz-Israel, 4 (1956), 238 (in Hebrew); idem, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), 44–5; J. Prawer and M. Benvenisti, ‘Crusader Palestine: map and index’, Atlas of Israel (2nd edn, Jerusalem, 1970), sheet 9.10; R. Fedden and J. Thomson, Crusader Castles (London, 1957), 34–5; M. Benvenisti, Crusader Castles, (Jerusalem, 1965), 13; idem, The Crusaders in the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1970), 11–15; W. Müller-Wiener, Castles of the Crusades (London, 1966), 13. For a slightly different approach see: M. Barber, ‘Frontier warfare in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: the campaign of Jacob’s Ford, 1178–9’, in J. France and W.G.

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such rhetorical questions would seem ridiculous when posed by someone like myself who lives in the modern nation state of Israel, which has existed for half a century without agreed or defined borders. But it is still true that most of us would find it difficult to imagine a state without a defined boundary-line and would be inclined to assume that such a border did in fact exist in the Middle Ages as well. Consequently, the very existence of external political boundary-lines is usually not disputed and the political borders are conceived of as psychological and practical necessities. Many extensive ancient artificial structures, such as Hadrian’s Wall or Offa’s Dyke, are interpreted as being ‘political borders’ separating political entities,2 and the argument makes sense because borderlines are mentioned in the Bible and were definitely a major geographical factor in the Roman period as well. Recent studies, however, dispute the common interpretation of well-known frontier organizations, such as the Roman limes. Benjamin Isaac claimed that ‘the political boundary of the Empire was irrelevant as a concept, and the [Roman] military boundary was never organized as a “line of defence” ’. ‘The limits of the empire,’ he wrote, ‘if at all defined, were expressed in terms of power and military action. The only clearly demarcated boundaries were those of the provinces.’3 According to him, the fact that a certain Roman province was defended during a certain period of time by a wall is not proof of the existence of a borderline. It might simply indicate that during a certain period there was a threat which necessitated the building of a wall, or that there was a certain need to display imperial power in a certain space; but it does not mean that the wall thus built marked the limits of the empire. On the contrary, on many occasions, especially in the eastern limes, Roman power was manifested tens and even hundreds of miles beyond the limes, even when the limes was being constructed. In many other cases there were dependent tribes, both inside and outside the alleged Roman borderlines. How should we define the borderline in such cases? In fact, it is the modern traveller and scholar who imbues the limes with all the meanings of a modern boundary-line. The Roman sources themselves are mute concerning the existence of borderlines and it was modern scholarship which assumed, according to Isaac, that ‘the Romans were capable of realizing in practice what they could not define verbally’.4

2 3 4

Zajac, eds, The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot, 1998), 9–22. For a recent work interpreting Offa’s Dyke as a medieval borderline see M.W. Rabuck, ‘The imagined boundary: borders and frontiers in Anglo-Saxon England’ (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1996). B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, 1990), 3. For a discussion of his ideas see his chapter 9, ‘Frontier policy – grand strategy?’, 372–418. Isaac, Limits of Empire, 374–5.

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A very similar idea was raised by Ralph Brauer, the translator of al-Idrisi’s Book of Roger, who claims that ‘apart from sea frontiers, sharply defined boundary lines within the Islamic Empire were either non-existent or of little practical importance; a conclusion that is well in accord with the geographers’ texts and cartography’.5 I would like to follow Isaac and Brauer and to claim that the idea of political borders was very rare in the Middle Ages; and even if such lines did actually exist they were of very little importance. Although the majority of scholars believe that a linear demarcation of medieval political entities did in fact exist,6 many students of medieval political geography already doubted the relevance of such linear borders to medieval life.7 However, many of those who rejected the very idea of medieval 5

6

7

R.W. Brauer, ‘Boundaries and frontiers in medieval Muslim geography’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 85:6 (1995), 1–73. For this quotation see 36. He follows Spuler who wrote already in 1970 that ‘trading activities were often not even stopped when there was a state of war between parts of the Islamic world’, ‘caravans often having a free way through the rows of opposed armies’; B. Spuler, ‘Trade in the Eastern Islamic countries in the early centuries’, in D.S. Richards, Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford, 1970), 11–20, at 11. See among many other works R. Dion, Les Frontières de la France (Paris, 1947); J. Richard, ‘Le “counduit” des routes et la fixation des limits entre mouvances féodales’, Annales des Bourgogne, 24 (1952), 85–101; J. Hubert, ‘La frontière occidentale du comté de Champagne du XIe au XIIe siècle’, Recueil de travaux offerts à M. Clovis Brunel (Paris, 1955), vol. 2, 14–30; B. Demotz, ‘La frontière au Moyen Age d’après l’exemple du comté de Savoie (début XIIIe–début XVe siècle)’, Les Principautés au Moyen Age. Actes du Congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public. Communications du Congrès de Bordeaux en 1973 (Bordeaux, 1979), 95–116; B. Guenée, ‘Des limites féodales aux frontières politiques’, in Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire. La Nation (Paris, 1986), vol. 2, 11–33; D. Nordman, ‘Des limites d’État aux frontières nationales’, in Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 2, 35–61; L. Musset, ‘Considérations sur la gènese et le tracé des frontières de la Normandie’, Media in Francia. Recueil de mélanges offert à Karl Ferdinand Werner à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire par ses amis et collègues français (Maulévrier, 1989), 309–18; P. Sahlins, ‘Natural frontiers revisited: France’s boundaries since the seventeenth century’, American Historical Review, 95 (1990), 1423–51. For example: G. Zeller, ‘La monarchie d’ancien régime et les frontières naturelles’, Revue d’histoire moderne, 8 (1933), 305–33; idem, ‘Histoire d’une idée fausse’, Revue de Synthèse, 11 (1936), 115–31; L. Febvre, ‘Frontière’, Revue de synthèse historique, 1928, 31–4; idem, ‘La diversité des frontières de la France’, Annales, 2 (1947), 205–7; idem, ‘Frontière: le mot et la notion’, Pour une histoire à part entière (Paris, 1962), 11–24; G. Dupont-Ferrier, ‘L’incertitude des limites territoriales en France du XIIIe au XVIe siècle’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres, 1942, 62–77. The idea was current after the Second World War: P. Bonenfant, ‘A propos des limites médiévales’, Hommage à Lucien Febvre (Paris, 1954), 73–9; N. Pounds, ‘The origin of the idea of natural frontiers in France’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 61 (1951), 146–57; L. Génicot, ‘Ligne et zone: la frontière des principautés médiévales’, Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et

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borders on theoretical grounds did not try to conceptualise their ideas and to produce a different concept of the limits of medieval suzerainty.8 The common solution was to change the scale of the medieval borderline from an infinitely narrow width into a wider zone of several miles. In my opinion, however, the question of whether there were borders in the Middle Ages is not a technical one which can be answered by means of a better definition of the term ‘border’ or by merely widening the line, for behind the very assumption that medieval states had fixed borders, there are hidden assumptions of concepts of sovereignty, of responsibility for the fate of subjects, and of geographical or even cartographical knowledge on the part of the rulers. In other words, in my opinion, the development of well-demarcated borderlines is closely related to the development of modern states. The modern state, unlike medieval political entities, is defined by its border and modern borders outline a range of attributes which are characteristic of the modern state alone. Crossing an imaginary line, which often is not even on the actual border, but could be a line drawn in the middle of the arrivals hall of an international airport, brings the modern traveller to a different world, full of political and nationalistic symbols: a different language, different monetary and fiscal systems, a different flag and uniforms, different customs regulations, a different criminal law, and different traffic laws. A modern state is defined by the geographical space in which all these characteristics are found. The application of a modern border implies a certain knowledge of cartography and definitely, too, an intimate perception of geography. One should certainly be very cautious in assuming that the more-or-less linear model is the only possible way to define a political boundary and that it existed in the Middle Ages as well. Medieval political communities, on the other hand, are more easily characterised by their centres or by their common association with a ruler than by their physical space. Likewise, kings were more often identified not through the lands which they ruled, but through the people who owed them loyalty. In chronicles and legal documents, the nomenclature of political identity is established by reference to the ruled people, usually referring to their ethnic identity. The king of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, for example, is usually referred to as the King of the Latins in Jerusalem. Thus the kingdom is defined by an ethnic identity and geographical centre:

8

politiques, Académie Royale de Belgique, 56 (1970), 29–42; N. Girard d’Albissin, ‘Propos sur la frontière’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 47 (1969), 390–407; N. Schlesser, ‘Frontiers in medieval French history’, International History Review, 6:2 (1984), 159–73. Rabuck, for example, who dedicates the first half of his dissertation to a convincing discussion of the irrelevance of early medieval English borderlines, supports in the second part of the same dissertation the idea of Offa’s Dyke being a borderline separating Mercia and Powys, although, even according to him, such a border was not documented and is virtually invisible in any documentary record.

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Latins and Jerusalem.9 Thus also, the difference between Rex Anglorum and Rex Angliae or between Rex Francorum and Rex Francie is significant.10 Margret Lügge showed, for example, that at least until the end of the twelfth century the word Francia did not refer to all the territory which was under the jurisdiction of the King of France.11 Consequently, medieval borders were more complex because the concept of statehood had not yet crystallised, and because the future modern attributes of sovereignty were still conceived as separable. There was no essential overlap between the limits of suzerainty and political power on one side and the legal, fiscal or ethnic borders on the other. Shared sovereign rights were the rule. One could live according to the customs of a province without coming under the jurisdiction of its prince. Every person knew what the border of his property was and what belonged to his neighbour. But such a property could have been divided between two or more rulers. The owner of the property knew to whom he was obliged to pay taxes and offer gifts on religious holidays, who would try him if he committed a heinous offence and who would try him if he committed a lesser offence. In the event of war, he usually knew where danger lay and on whose side he should be in order to fulfil his auxilium duties. But all these spheres did not necessarily overlap. When we speak today of borders we think of modern multifunctional borders. But when we speak of the suzerainty of a medieval ruler we cannot speak of a comprehensive boundary or comprehensive sovereignty. We can speak of where the ruler minted his coins, where the castles which were loyal to him were, where castles could not be built without his authorisation, in what areas and times castles were built despite his strong objection, and where his personal domain, from which he received his personal income, was, and so on. Each attribute will have a boundary, but the lines will be different and uncertain. In short, we cannot speak of a well-defined zone 9

10

11

‘Ego Balduinus, dei gratia rex Ierusalem Latinorum primus’, Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. Robert B.C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 63–63a (Turnhout, 1986), 11, 12, 514 (hereafter cited as: William of Tyre). For the first appearance of Rex Anglie and the use of Rex Anglorum in 1175 see L. Delisle, Les formules Rex Anglorum et Dei Gratia Rex Anglorum. Lettre à M.J. Horace Round (Chantilly, 1907). For the use of Rex Anglorum in the eleventh and twelfth centuries see D. Bates, ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum. The Acta of William I (1066–1087) (Oxford, 1998), passim. It should be noticed that the expression Philippus Rex Francie appears regularly in the opening protocol of French royal letters only from 1204 onwards: A.F. Teulet, Layettes du Trésor des Chartes (Paris, 1863), vol. 1, 159a, 187b, 254b, 291b, and so on. M. Lügge, ‘Gallia’ und ‘Francia’ im Mittelalter. Untersuchungen über den Zusammenhang zwischen geographisch-historischer Terminologie und politischem Denken vom 6.–15. Jahrhundert, Bonner historische Forschungen, 15 (Bonn, 1960), 173.

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surrounded by boundaries, but about spheres of various degrees of influence. We find it hard to accept a multiplicity of political spheres but medieval and even Roman people did accept this. They did not find it hard to conceive that rival rulers could own property on both sides of the so-called border, and that they could collect taxes from their property. We hear of no objections to donations made by the King of Jerusalem of property in the alien Fatimid territory of Ascalon, or in the allegedly inaccessible Golan and Hauran.12 That, of course, does not exclude the existence of any type of medieval borderlines. Boundaries of fields, of dioceses and of villages are indispensable and usually linear and well demarcated, even in the twelfth century. That does not even exclude the existence of certain political interstate borders.13 There were instances when different friendly or hostile political entities created separations which could be described as borderlines. There is no doubt also that there were certain rivers or mountain summits which were admitted de facto as natural borders.14 But the ‘psychological and practical’ need for field or village boundaries does not necessarily imply the existence of boundaries of an higher political order. The fact that boundaries are indispensable on a certain level and not on another is illustrated in the absence of any explicit reference to external boundary-lines in the chronicle of William of Tyre. William, who wrote most of his chronicle while occupying the see of Tyre, had a profound interest in the history and politics of boundary-lines because he was personally engaged in a debate concerning the boundaries between the patriarchies of Antioch and Jerusalem, which he claimed to be wrongly demarcated.15 However, William’s

12 13

14

15

Thus the Priory of Bethlehem became the Cathedral of Ascalon and received the villages of Zeophir and Carcapha, while Ascalon itself and both villages were still under Muslim rule: William of Tyre, 11, 12, 513. See for example Le Cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem , ed. G. Bresc-Bautier (Paris, 1984), no. 57 (1162), 149 (hereafter cited as: Saint-Sépulcre); Charles Kohler, ed., ‘Chartes de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de la vallée de Josaphat en Terre Sainte (1108–1291). Analyse et extraits’, Revue de l’Orient Latin, 7 (1889), no. 46 (1185), 155; Saint-Sépulcre, no. 121 (1158–59), 247; Saint-Sépulcre, no. 62 (1132), 156; E.G.W. Strehlke, ed., Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici (Berlin, 1869), no. 112 (1257), 91–4. Compare also: R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998), 57–63; 145–56; R. Frankel, ‘Three crusader boundary stones from Kibbutz Shomrat’, Israel Exploration Journal, 30 (1980), 199–201. Such as, for example, the River Sava near Belgrade: William of Tyre, 1, 18, 141: ‘usque ad fluvium Maroe, qui eiusdem regni ab oriente limes esse dinoscitur’. Or the Danube: William of Tyre 1, 29, 156. William of Tyre also writes that since ancient times it was agreed that everything which grew on one side of the River Euphrates belonged to the city of Edessa, and everything which grew on the other side belonged to the citizens of Harran. William of Tyre, 10, 28 (29), 488–9. William of Tyre, 11, 17, 521; 11, 28, 537; Saint-Sépulcre, 1, 33–4; 13, 2, 587–8; 13, 23, 615–18; 14, 13, 646–9; 14, 14, 649–51.

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only allusion to Frankish political borders is a short paragraph which refers to the inner boundaries between the Frankish principalities. And even there, William refers only to the several points which were situated along the maritime coastal road. He does not mention any of the eastern borders, which were supposed to be more important because they faced the Muslim enemy.16 Thus the idea of a welldemarcated international boundary-line which is borrowed from the vocabulary of modern geography, was irrelevant to William as it was irrelevant to most medieval political entities. Where do we stand today? We can follow the nineteenth-century way of thinking and create a complicated theory of medieval borderlines, by laying down conditions as to when and where we can describe a certain line as a border. We would have to fix rules: would one treaty or one obscure text be enough to establish a medieval borderline or would a continuity of political deeds be needed in order to establish one? We would have to determine, in cases of the existence of dependent political entities or tribes, whether the actual borderline was closer to the core or to the periphery of the dependent political entity or tribe. We would have to decide what should be done in cases where the income of a certain territory, such as the Golan in the north of the Latin Kingdom, was divided between two alien powers.17 In this case, should we consider the territory to be within the border of one or of both? Or maybe we should rather set it arbitrarily in the middle? Is the very need for a certificate of safe conduct indicative of the existence of a boundary-line? Or do we need other hints as well? We might continue ad nauseam with such questions; but the real question, and in my opinion also answers, lie elsewhere. I wish to suggest a different approach in which centres will replace the border as points of reference. The centre is usually defined by the ruler or one of his agents. Around the ruler, an entity which in the Middle Ages was usually unambiguous, there was a space in which many of the characteristics of sovereignty were manifested, even though the very idea of modern political sovereignty was not yet fully

16

17

‘The possessions of the Latins in the East were divided into four principalities. The first to the south was the kingdom of Jerusalem, which began at the brook between Jubail and Beirut, maritime city of the province of Phoenicia, and ended at the desert which is beyond Daron. The second toward the north was the county of Tripoli, which began at the rivulet just mentioned and extended to another stream between Maraclea and Valenia, likewise maritime cities. The third was the principality of Antioch. This began at the last-named rivulet and extended toward the west to Tarsus in Cilicia. The county of Edessa, the fourth division, began at the forest called Marrim and extended out toward the east beyond the Euphrates’: William of Tyre 16, 29, 756. According to Muslim sources the agreement which was signed for the first time in 1108 continued to operate until the battle of Hattin. See ‘Imad al-Din as quoted by Abu Shama, Le Livre des deux jardins, trans. B. de Meynard, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Historiens orientaux (Paris, 1906), vol. 5, 277.

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developed. The diminishing attributes of sovereignty were dependent on the distance from the centre, but not only on the distance. It was never obvious where a certain right ceased to be recognized, because the orientation was not linear but concentric, and it was definitely not homogenous in space. People did not always know who their rulers were, nor did they always care. In one of the first references to interstate borders near Verdun, at the end of the thirteenth century, two royal committees were appointed by the King of France and Rudolf of Bavaria respectively, in order to find out if a certain burgus belonged to France or to Germany. After long deliberations which included the interrogation of many witnesses, the two commissions reached two opposite conclusions: the French committee claimed that the area under discussion belonged to France whereas the Germans claimed it belonged to them. The two claims were probably well supported by legal charters and reliable testimonies. In any case, another committee was appointed by the government of France 250 years later in order to deal with the same question. It seems, that even in regions of dense settlement and population it was difficult to tell where exactly lay the alleged international border.18 Another concept which could be relevant to this discussion, and exemplifies its difficulties, is the existence of castles as symbols of boundaries. Certain castles or fortified cities, it is true, were the most obvious symbols of boundaries in the later periods, at least from the seventeenth century onwards. But is it correct to regard them as clearly indicative of the existence of medieval or earlier boundaries? Is it possible to assume that there was a linear and functional connection between the castles? The very idea of a line of castles is based on the assumption that the space behind the castle is safe, and that danger is expected from a specific direction. But so far as any medieval châtelain was concerned attacks could have come from any direction at any time, and were most certainly not confined to a specific zone requiring protection. How did the Franks in the East relate to the construction of castles? What can we gather from their descriptions of borderlines and of their own perception of their own geographical landscape? The first large castle whose construction was described in comparative detail was that at Toron, in northern Galilee: ‘when the city of Tyre was still held by the infidels ... Hugh of St Omer made frequent surprise attacks upon Tyre, harassing [the land] as far as a distance of thirty miles between the two cities of Tyre and Tiberias permitted’. And then, says the chronicler, while ‘going back and forth between the two places the soldiers were frequently exposed to danger, because there was no fortress or fortified place of any kind between the two cities to which they might retreat when followed by the enemy. To ease this difficulty [Hugh of St

18

J. Havet, ‘La Frontière d’Empire dans l’Argonne, enquête faite par l’ordre de Rodolphe de Habsbourg à Verdun, en Mai 1288’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 42 (1881), 383–428.

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Omer] ... resolved to build a stronghold on the top of the mountains overlooking Tyre, about ten miles distant from that city’, that is, one-third of the way from Tyre to Tiberias.19 The aim in building the castle was to create a new centre between the two existing alien centres of Tiberias and Tyre. The border of Frankish occupation is not even mentioned. The reference is only to the centres themselves. A comparable description applies to the castle of Shawbak in Transjordan. In this case boundaries are explicitly mentioned but it seems that boundaries and boundarylines are not synonymous. ‘At this time’, says the chronicler, ‘the Christians had no fortress in the country beyond the River Jordan. Accordingly, the king, desiring to extend the boundaries of the realm in these parts [cupiens rex in partibus illis regni fines dilatare], proposed with the help of God to build a fortress in Arabia Tertia . . . The inhabitants of this place would be able to protect the fields lying below it, which were tributary to the kingdom, from the inroads of the enemy.’ Therefore, the king called the forces of his kingdom to arms, built a strongly defended fortress there, and called it Montréal. The place eventually became an agricultural centre for the whole area: ‘the spot has the advantage of fertile soil, which produces abundant supplies of grain, wine, and oil. Moreover, it is especially noted for its healthy and delightful location. This fortress dominated the entire district adjacent to it.’20 Thus, the term fines regni seems not to refer to the outer shell but rather to the whole region defined by the new centre. Another example can be adduced from a description of the construction of a thirteenth-century castle. Oliver of Paderborn, the chronicler of the Fifth Crusade, describes in great detail the process of construction of the castle of Castellum Peregrinorum in Atlit, and the reasons for its construction.21 When the castle of Atlit was built, it was undoubtedly the biggest castle in the Western world. Oliver brings forward several reasons for the construction of such a castle. First he says: ‘the main advantage of the castle is that it enables the Knight Templars to leave Acre in a body, far from the crime and dirt there, so that they would remain there until the repairs of the walls of Jerusalem’. Secondly, he describes the castle as having been built in the middle of a rich agricultural area, with fishponds, salt pools, forests, meadows, cultivated fields, gardens and vineyards. But when talking about the strategic, and not only agricultural and moral advantages of the site, he assigns two reasons for the importance of the newly built castle. Firstly, between Acre and Jerusalem there were no castles held by the Saracens, and therefore the Franks were assailed and forced to

19 20 21

William of Tyre, 11, 5, 502–3 [anno 1106]. William of Tyre, 11, 26, 535 [ anno 1115]. The following citations are based on H. Hoogeweg, ed., Oliverus, Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinalsbischofs von S. Sabina, Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 202 (Tübingen, 1894), 169–72.

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flee and abandon their ploughed fields; and secondly, Atlit was only six hours away from the Muslim castle of Mt Tabor, and the construction of the Frankish castle was apparently the reason for the destruction of the Muslim one. It was impossible, says Oliver, ‘for the Muslim men, to cultivate, plough or harvest in peace in the plain between the two castles because of the fear of our men’. No borderline is mentioned. There are only isolated alien centres in a heterogeneous space. The creation of a new centre changes the balance between the centres and minimises the sphere of influence of one of them. The creation of a large centre was considered to be sufficient reason for the destruction of an existing, alien centre, since each centre needed some space around it. The itinerary of the Andalusian traveler ibn Jubayr, who went from Spain to Mecca and back via Baghdad, Damascus, Acre and Tyre at the height of the Franco-Muslim wars in the 1180s, serves as another example of the nonlinear or multi-linear nature of borders which emanates from the ambiguity of the political situation (see map 5.1). Ibn Jubayr is amazed by the co-existence of war and peace between the Franks and the Muslims. ‘The fires of discord’ he writes, ‘burn between them and they are even engaged in constant battle, and yet Muslim and Christian travellers will come and go ... without interference ... The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. Agreement exists between them, and there is equal treatment in all cases. The soldiers engage themselves in their war, while the people are at peace.’ What happened, then, when a traveller passed from one realm to the other? The answer is provided by ibn Jubayr who described his own route from Damascus to Acre. After he left Damascus with a caravan of merchants on his way to the Frankish maritime city of Acre, he encountered a train of Frankish prisoners who had been captured by the Muslims and were led into Damascus. Halfway between the village of Bayt Jann and the city of Banyas, which was a Muslim centre, he ‘came across a huge oak tree ... known as the “tree of equity” (shajarat al-mizan), which was the boundary between safety and danger [literally ‘confidence and fear’] on this route ... The Frankish freebooters . . . murder and cut the throats of whoever they catch beyond this [tree] on the Muslim side, be it by the length of the arms or a span; but he whom they seize on the Frankish side at a like distance, they release. This is a pact they faithfully observe and is one of the most pleasing and singular conventions of the Franks.’22 Obviously ibn Jubayr refers here to the agreement which was mentioned above. But do we really have here, for the first time, an allusion to a linear border? The answer is in the negative. The tree is clearly inside the so-called ‘Muslim territory’, far beyond the Muslim city of Banyas, and on the main road to Damascus.

22

Ibn Jubayr, Rihla (Beirut, 1984), 273.

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Map 5.1

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Sites mentioned by ibn Jubayr

After crossing the point of no security, and after leaving the city of Banyas which he describes as thughur, the term for a frontier, ibn Jubayr was to cross yet another boundary-line situated in the centre of the Jordan Valley: ‘the cultivation of the valley itself is [also] divided between the Franks and the Muslims, and there is a boundary known as “the Boundary of Dividing”. They apportion the crops equally, and their animals are mingled together, yet no wrong takes place between them because of it.’ And still ibn Jubayr had not reached Frankish territory. The border was not to be crossed in the neighbouring Frankish castle of Hunin, either; there he did not even bother to stop. The caravan made its way to the castle of Turon (Tibnin), and only there, halfway between Banyas and Acre, did those who came from the Maghrib pay their duties and taxes. The rest of the caravan paid the taxes and duties in the port of Acre, the capital of the Frankish Kingdom. There is no doubt that ibn Jubayr had crossed, while going between Damascus and Acre, something that in the modern world would have been labeled ‘an international border’. But it is impossible to tell when and where he crossed it. Moreover, it is doubtful if such a border is indeed

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necessary to describe his journey. In his own description there were several centres, the most important ones being the city of Damascus, the centre of Muslim suzerainty, and the city of Acre, the centre of Frankish suzerainty. There is a point on the way which signifies the limits of Damascene power. Beyond it Damascus was not able to impose order and protect its own subjects. But the Muslim authorities were strong enough to occupy the frontier city or thughur of Banyas, which is situated many miles to the west of the limit of Damascene power, on the present-day Golan Heights disputed between Israel and Syria; and they were even strong enough to secure the revenues of half of the northern Jordan Valley. This situation exemplifies the real meaning of the term thaghr, thughur, which does not refer to a castle situated along a frontier-line as usually translated, but to a centre of a region which faces an enemy. The thughur is usually not strong enough to impose safety and order, and the rules which apply in such a region are different than in the centre. The frontier on which such a thughur was built is the equivalent of a march or even to Roman limes. Fifteen years earlier, the Frankish leaders applied to the West for help, the immediate reason for their appeal being the fall of the city of Banyas four years earlier. The letter refers to Banyas as ‘the key and entrance and refuge for the whole country’.23 Here, too, the city itself is the key, and no borderline is mentioned. It is curious to note that the leaders of the Frankish country used the word porta to describe the frontier city of Banyas, as the Arabic word thughur is probably derived from the same root 9-3-: which in Hebrew means ‘gate’. The transfer of a certain centre from one realm to another entitles the transfer of its sphere of influence. Thus, while the city of Banyas was still considered during the 1160s, the clavis et porta et defensaculum tocius terre Jherosolimitane, it became, ten years later, part of a Muslim thughur. All the sites which were dependent on Banyas were considered to be part of the newly created Muslim territory. In 1179, for example, when the Franks were building a new castle in Jacob’s Ford (Vadum Iacob) to the west of the Jordan River, it was considered part of Muslim territory. ‘The Templars of the land of Jerusalem’, says the Frankish chronicler Ernoul, ‘came to the king and told him that they would build a castle in Muslim territory.’24 23

24

‘Clavis et porta et defensaculum tocius terre Jherosolimitane esse solebat’, Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de St.-Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1310) , ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1906), vol. 1, no. 404, 1169, 279–80. Matthew Paris refers to the castle of Dover at about the same time with the words, ‘clavis enim Angliae est’: H.R. Luard, ed., Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 7 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1872–1884), vol. 3, 28. ‘Vinrent li Templier en le tiere de Jherusalem au roi, et disent qu’il voloient fermer .I. castiel en tiere de Sarrasins, en .I. liu c’on apiele le ‘Wés Jacob’, près d’une eve’: L. de Mas Latrie, ed., La Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier (Paris, 1871), 52; compare Abu Shama, who says that the castle was built in the ‘Muslim Thughur’. Abu Shama, Shihab ad-Din Abu Muhammad Abd ar-RaÊman b. Isma’il, ar-Rawdatayni fi

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Another example which refers to the same border further develops this argument: the anonymous description of the visit of Benoît of Alignian, Bishop of Marseilles, to the Holy Land, in which the reconstruction of the castle of Safed [Tzefat] between 1240 and 1265 is described, contains a report of Benoît’s visit to Damascus during his pilgrimage to St Mary of Saidnaya. While staying in the Syrian capital, the bishop was repeatedly asked by the Muslim inhabitants of Damascus, ‘if Safed was to be rebuilt’. The reason for this recurring interrogation is also furnished: ‘they answered that with the building of the castle of Safed, the gates of Damascus would be closed’. Again, no border is mentioned between the two centres of Damascus and Acre. The creation of a third centre, that of Safed between them, was conceived as a direct threat to the Muslim centre and not to any of the alleged border settlements or to the border itself. The narration of the visit continues in the same vein and tells us that when the bishop reached the ruins of twelfth-century Safed ‘he had inquired carefully about the surroundings and district of the castle, and why the Saracens were so fearful of its being built’. He found that if the castle were constructed, it would be ‘a defence and security and like a shield for the Christians against the Saracens as far as Acre. It would be a strong and formidable base for attack and provide facilities and opportunities for making sallies and raids into the land of the Saracens as far as Damascus.’ One should read the next paragraph carefully in order to comprehend the role played by this medieval castle: ‘because of the building of this castle, the sultan would lose large sums of money, massive subsidies and the service of the men and property of those who would otherwise be [attached to] the castle, and would also lose in his own land villages and agriculture and pasture and other income, since they would not dare to farm the land for fear of the castle. As a result his land would turn to desert and waste.’ The final example I wish to present here is the last treaty (hudna) which was concluded between the Sultan al-Mansur (Qalawun) and his son al-Salih ‘Ali and the representatives of the Franks. The Frankish entity is described as the ‘Kingdom of Acre, Sidon and Atlit’, a reference which was considered as scornful by some of the modern students of the crusades, as it mentions specifically the very limited dimensions of the Frankish state.25 However, as has been seen, the Frankish rulers

25

Akhbar ad-Dawlatayni (an-Nuriyya was-sallahiyya), 2 vols (Cairo, A.H. 1287–8), vol. 2, 8. The most complete version of the treaty which was signed in Cairo on 3 June 1283 (A.H. 682) was preserved in al-Qalqashandi, Subj al-a’sha, Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif al-ayyam wa’l-’usur fi sirat al-Malik al-Mansur (Cairo, 1961), 34–43. See É.M. Quatremère, Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de l’Egypte, vol. 3, pt 3 (Paris, 1842), 179–85, 224–35; See also P.M. Holt, ‘Qalawun’s Treaty with Acre in 1283’, English Historical Review, 91 (1976), 802–12; D. Barag, ‘A New Source Concerning the Ultimate Borders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Israel Exploration Journal, 29 (1979), 197–217.

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referred to themselves as the Kings of the Latins in Jerusalem, even during the apogee of their rule. The treaty provides us with a definitive list of the localities which were in the possession of the Franks and of some of the localities which were in the possession of the sultan, but it never bothered with any definition of the border between them. Modern scholars who dealt with this treaty referred to it as if, to cite one article, it were ‘a source concerning the ultimate borders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’; yet it is evident that many of the localities were divided between the Franks and the Muslims, and there were Muslim localities among the Frankish ones. To sum up: the idea of the medieval world being divided into political entities which had geographically defined borders was created during the nineteenth century, in a world influenced by nation states and nationalistically-oriented historians. The very perception of borders became possible due to the completion of ‘the cartographic revolution’. Specialists in historical cartography do not agree about the exact period at which linear borders were first introduced into European international treaties, but none of them dates it to a period earlier than the sixteenth century. Clark maintains that ‘I have not been able to discover a case of a frontier fixed literally on the map until the year 1718’.26 Konvitz maintains that the first time when an imaginary line, aligning the Alpine mountaintops, was introduced as the border between France and Savoy was in 1697,27 and Buissert dates the first surveyed borderline to the reign of Henry IV, at the end of the sixteenth century.28 Whatever may be the date of the introduction of borders into Western politics, since then the map has triumphed. We cannot visit a foreign country or even an unknown city, let alone read an historical narrative, without referring to maps. Traditional maps are not merely twodimensional simplifications of a three-dimensional reality. They condition our daily life. But traditional maps have one great disadvantage: one cannot depict ambiguous reality, nor introduce footnotes or too many question marks in them.29 Cartographic reality fitted nineteenth-century nationalistic thinking, but it does not fit the way we now understand the complicated medieval world. When historical atlases were published in the nineteenth century, they were introduced into a world which was occupied by borders and maps. No one argues, or could have argued then, that the use 26 27 28

29

G.N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century (2nd edn, Oxford, 1947), 144. J.W. Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660–1848: Science, Engineering and Statecraft (Chicago, 1987), 32–3. D. Buissert, ‘The cartographic definition of France’s eastern boundary in the early seventeenth century’, Imago Mundi, 36 (1984), 72–80. According to Clark, however, maps were used already in 1546; see J. Black, Maps and Politics (London, 1997), 122. See also for the boundaries of France, P. Sahlins’s excellent Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkely, 1989). However, as David Abulafia points out in the introduction to this volume, the traditional map is now being replaced by versions on CD which do permit three-dimensional and other perspectives.

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of this tool for depicting the medieval or Roman world was not possible. But maybe now, when some idealists aspire to the abolition of national borders in Europe, it is time to reassess the linear cartographic nature of medieval borders.

Chapter 6

Government and the Indigenous in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem Jonathan Riley-Smith

A recurring theme in frontier history is that of acculturation. The extent to which the dominant minority in a border settlement adapted its culture to that of the subordinated majority depended, of course, on factors which varied a good deal from place to place. Every frontier society was different in makeup and few were culturally homogeneous. Pluriformity was a feature of Palestine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Leaving aside an unknown number of converts to Catholicism1 (including from the 1180s onwards whole uniate communities, the Maronite and a section of the Armenian), the indigenous peoples in the kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of various Christian groups (Orthodox Greeks who were generally Arabic-speaking, Nestorians and Monophysites of different kinds, particularly Jacobites, Armenians and Copts); Muslims (Sunni and Shi’i of various types, including Druses); Jews of several schools and Samaritans; and a few Zoroastrians. Religion is not everything, but it was very important to the indigenous peoples themselves and led to differences in social behaviour. It is not surprising that the search for a satisfactory method of governing the subject peoples in a settlement established by force, and exposed to the threat of reconquest, involved a process which was by its nature experimental and stressful for all sides. The nature of colonial society in the Latin East and the extent to which there was assimilation is once again under discussion.2 The view, held for almost a century, that there had developed in Palestine and Syria a ‘Franco-Syrian society’, in which semiOrientalized Westerners mingled with the indigenous peoples to produce something culturally unique, was ferociously attacked in the 1950s and 1960s by Otto Smail and Joshua Prawer. Smail came down on the side of the view that the Franks ‘remained a ruling class, separated from their Syrian subjects by language and religion, with force 1 2

J.S.C. Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (London, 1973), 10. For the debate, see R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998), 3–5.

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as the ultimate sanction of their domination’.3 Prawer went further, using the word ‘apartheid’ to describe the way the Franks, gathered for the most part in urban communities, were segregated from the population in the countryside.4 In an exciting new book, however, Ronnie Ellenblum argues that we have made too much of the picture of Western settlers as town-dwellers, that Islamisation proceeded far more slowly in Palestine than anyone has supposed, that whereas regions close to Acre and around Nablus were largely Muslim, those around Jerusalem and Sebaste and in south-eastern Transjordan and western and lower Galilee had remained predominantly Christian, that the colonists tended to settle in districts already populated by a native Christian majority, and that there developed in these enclaves a mixed Franco-Eastern Christian society. Providing evidence for churches shared with indigenous Christians and for Frankish buildings in local Christian villages, he calls it ‘a frontier society which could be labeled “Christian under Frankish hegemony”’.5 His belief that there was cultural assimilation only with the Christians provides him with an explanation of a peculiarity referred to by other historians. Although contemporary writers were very conscious of external threats, they seem hardly to have noticed the presence within their borders of a significant Muslim population.6 In this paper I intend to question Ellenblum’s thesis which, I must stress, is only one of many in an important book, on the grounds that there is evidence for some assimilation on the part of the Franks with groups other than the Christians, and I will try to provide a reason for the ‘silence’ of the indigenous peoples. The evidence Ellenblum provides for the assimilation of Latins with Eastern Christians in the countryside is mostly archaeological, although he draws attention to a well-known description of a church near Tiberias shared by Latin and Syrian Christians.7 If, however, one turns to the accounts of Muslim and Jewish travellers in the period, one finds much more material, although this time for the association of Latins with non-Christians in the veneration of local shrines. Muslim visitors were struck by the way these still flourished. Writing about the Nablus region ‘Imad ad-Din commented that the Franks ‘changed not a single law or cult practice’ of the Muslim inhabitants,8 a phrase echoed by the geographer Yaqut, who wrote with reference to a 3 4 5 6

7 8

R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097–1193 (Cambridge, 1956), 40–63. J. Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), 524, and see 60, 504–33. R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 119–44, 285, and passim. H.E. Mayer, ‘Latins, Muslims and Greeks in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, History, 63 (1978), 175–92, at 175–81; B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’, in Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100–1300, ed. J.M. Powell (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 135–74, at 135–9. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 119–20. D.S. Richards, ‘A text of ‘Imad al-Din on 12th-century Frankish–Muslim relations’, Arabica, 25 (1978), 202–4, at 203.

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mosque in Bethlehem that ‘the Franks changed nothing when they took the country’,9 and by the traveller Ibn Jubair when describing a shrine at ‘Ain al-Baqar in Acre: ‘in the hands of the Christians its venerable nature is maintained and God has preserved it as a place of prayer for the Muslims’.10 Non-Christians were technically forbidden to live in the city of Jerusalem,11 but they certainly visited it as pilgrims and an extraordinary text, describing the Christian hospital for pilgrims of the Order of St John in the 1180s, must refer to them: Further, men of the pagan faith [Muslims] find mercy in this holy house [of the Hospital]. So do Jews if they hasten to it. It knows that the Lord, who calls all to salvation, does not want anyone to perish, because the Lord prayed for those afflicting him, saying: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’. In this blessed house is powerfully fulfilled the heavenly doctrine: ‘Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you’; and elsewhere: ‘Friends should be loved in God and enemies on account of God’.12

In the Temple Compound Muslims went to the Dome of the Rock, now an Augustinian church, and the al-Aqsa mosque, now the headquarters of the Templars.13 The news of the discovery at Hebron in 1119 by the recently established Augustinian canons of what were supposed to be the tombs of the patriarchs, under the Herodian enclosure, was a sensation, and Jews and Muslims could gain entry to the tombs after the Christian pilgrims had left on payment of a douceur to the custodian.14 The same sort of arrangement was to be found at Sebaste, where the clergy benefited from gifts made by Muslims wanting to pray in the crypt of St John the Baptist there.15 In Acre the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, which was built on the site of a mosque, had an area inside it set aside for Muslim prayer,16 and just within the walls of the city at ‘Ain al-Baqar (the Ox spring) there was a mosque-church with a Frankish eastern apse, 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (London, 1890), 300. Ibn Jubair, The Travels, trans. R.J.C. Broadhurst (London, 1952), 318. According to Jewish travellers, a tiny group of Jews were resident, running a dyeing house. See Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary, ed. and trans. M.N. Adler (London, 1907), 22 and n. 2, which corrects the figure of 200 to 4. B.Z. Kedar, ‘A Twelfth-Century Description of the Jerusalem Hospital’, in The Military Orders, vol. 2, Welfare and Warfare, ed. H. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1998), 3–26, at 18. ‘Ali al-Harawi, Guide des lieux de pèlerinage, trans. J. Sourdel-Thomine (Damascus, 1957), 62–4; Le Strange, Palestine, 101–2, 108–9, 131–3, 194, 208. Benjamin of Tudela, 25; Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, ‘Travels’, trans. E.N. Adler, Jewish Travellers (London, 1930), 89–90; ‘Ali al-Harawi, 72–4. For the Hebrew itineraries, see J. Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1988), 169–250. Kedar, ‘The Subjected Muslims’, 162. See James of Vitry, Lettres, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), 94, where the sacredness of the cathedral at Tartus to both Christians and Muslims is described. Ibn Jubair, 318.

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incorporating the mashhad (oratory) of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (the prophet’s son-in-law), used by Muslims, Jews and Christians, who believed that this was the spot where God had created cattle for Adam’s use: ‘Muslim and infidel assemble there, the one turning to his place of worship, the other to his’.17 The traveller ‘Ali al-Harawi put this down to a ghostly appearance by ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, which had terrified the Franks.18 A shared edifice of this sort was not unique in the Near East, because a feature of the period following the Muslims’ conquest had been their partial occupation of some major churches, which left the Christians with the remainder. At Homs in the eleventh century the largest church was still divided between Christians and Muslims. One consequence of the crusades was that Christians were driven out of these shared places of worship.19 In Jerusalem the Templars allowed Muslims to pray in one of their churches close to the al-Aqsa mosque. The account by Usamah ibn-Munqidh of his experience there is very well known: Whenever I visited Jerusalem I always entered the Aqsa mosque, beside which stood a small mosque which the Franks had converted into a church . . . The Templars, who were my friends, would evacuate the little adjoining mosque so that I might pray in it. One day I entered this mosque . . . and stood up in the act of praying, upon which one of the Franks rushed on me, got hold of me and turned my face eastward saying, ‘This is the way thou shouldst pray’. A group of Templars hastened to him, seized him and repelled him from me. I resumed my prayer [whereupon the Frank rushed in at him again] . . . The Templars . . . expelled him. They apologized to me, saying, ‘This is a stranger who has only recently arrived from the land of the Franks and he has never before seen anyone praying except eastward’.20

Less well known is a similar incident, described by the Jewish traveller Jacob ben Nathaniel, at Rav Kahana’s tomb near Tiberias, a healing shrine which attracted Christian as well as Jewish pilgrims: When a knight from Provence came and saw that the uncircumcised (the Christians) lit many lights upon the grave he asked ‘Who is this one?’ and they answered, ‘It is a righteous Jew, who heals the sick and helps the barren’. He said to them, ‘Why do you behave like this in honour of a Jew?’ and took a stone and threw it on the ground and raised his hand to throw

17 18 19 20

Ibn Jubair, 318–19. ‘Ali al-Harawi, 57. See also Le Strange, Palestine, 330–31. For the mosque-church’s situation, see B.Z. Kedar, ‘The outer walls of Frankish Acre’, ‘Atiqot, 31 (1997), 157–80, at 173–4. A. Fattal, Le statut légal des non-Musulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut, 1958), 179–80, 184. Usamah ibn Munqidh, Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman at the time of the Crusades, trans. P.K. Hitti (New York, 1927), 163–4.

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another stone. He was on horseback but fell and died. Immediately the captains and monks [acc. to Prawer’s trans., the clergy and bishops] gathered and said that he (the Provençal knight) was not punished because of the Jew, but because he wounded the honour of the teacher of Jesus, and Jesus was wrath with him and killed him; and they said all this before the country folk.21

This is a typical miraculum, of course, but the report of the anxiety of the clergy to head off trouble by giving a Christian twist to the death of the apoplectic knight confirms that this shrine was the centre of a syncretic cult. So shared places of worship and shrines were features of popular religion in Palestine and Syria and were tolerated by the Latin clergy. Some were deep in the countryside, but others were in, or were close to, the towns. Few historians nowadays would distinguish the religion of the masses too sharply from that of the elite – we are all more inclined to imagine a spectrum of beliefs extending without a break from the peasantry to the intellectuals, with many attitudes shared in common – and although the tastes and predilections of the leading settlers remained fundamentally Western in many ways, it is probably the case that some cultural assimilation had taken place before the settlements were swept away in 1291. Jaroslav Folda has argued for a fusion of Latin, Greek and local Syrian styles in art, leading to an eclectic form that he has called ‘crusader art’.22 It had a long history, since it outlasted the loss of the mainland and went on developing in Latin Greece, where the ‘Greek’ Catholic churches in Cyprus and the ‘Gothic’ Greek Orthodox churches in Famagusta and Rhodes can still be seen. The Westerners may have been ‘silent’ about the Muslims within their borders, but they cannot have been indifferent to them. The Muslims provided revenue, and anyway the indigenous must have comprised more in the settlers’ eyes than those subject to them in Palestine. Along the borders of the kingdom there were condominiums shared with Muslim lords.23 Twice a year, as the fleets arrived from the West on the spring and autumn passages, caravans would enter the kingdom from interior cities like Damascus and make for the ports,24 where the agents of merchant companies in 21 22

23

24

Rabbi Jacob ben R. Nathaniel ha Cohen, ‘Account’, trans. Adler, Jewish Travellers, 96; Prawer, History of the Jews, 187–8. J. Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge, 1995), passim; J. Folda, ‘Crusader art in the kingdom of Cyprus, c. 1275–1291: reflections on the state of the questions’, in Cyprus and the Crusades, ed. N. Coureas and J. Riley-Smith (Nicosia, 1995), 209–37. Ibn Jubair, 315; P.M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290). Treaties of Baybars and Qalawun with Christian Rulers (Leiden, 1995), 34–8, 40, 49–56, 63–5, 75–6, 81, 111–15. See J. Richard, ‘Vassaux, tributaires ou alliés? Les chefferies montagnardes et les Ismaîliens dans l’orbite des Etats des Croisés’, in Die Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft, ed. H.E. Mayer (Munich, 1997), 141–52. See the account in Ibn Jubair, 313–19.

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the Muslim hinterland were resident.25 Nomadic Bedouins, then as now, drifted in and out of the region, providing income for the crown and for the lords.26 Visitors, even poor ones, could have powerful protectors outside. A casus belli for Saladin in 1187 was the Frankish Lord of Oultrejourdain’s attack upon a caravan passing through his territory27 and for al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291 the massacre by some disorderly Italian crusaders of Muslim peasants who had brought produce into Acre to sell in its markets.28 It is certainly the case, however, that the material at our disposal is comparatively silent when it comes to all the indigenous peoples – not just the Muslims – who flit in and out of it so fleetingly that it is hard to reach firm conclusions about them. This is partly because the surviving documents come mostly from the archives of ecclesiastical institutions and merchant communities with centres in the West to which they could be sent before the last beachheads in Palestine fell in 1291. The records of the day-to-day business of residents, in the course of which references to the locals might have been found, have been lost. But I also believe that after an early period, marked by a policy of ethnic cleansing, according to which all non-Christians were terrorized into flight from any place of religious or strategic significance to the crusaders,29 the Latin government took relatively effective measures to cope with them, involving an adaptation of the Muslim dhimma, which was of course already in situ.30

25

26

27 28 29 30

‘Documents et mémoires servant de preuves à l’histoire de l’île de Chypre sous les Lusignans’, ed. L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1852–61), vol. 2, 74–9; ‘Actes passés en 1271, 1274, et 1279 à l’Aïas (Petite Arménie) et à Beyrouth par devant des notaires génois’, ed. C. Desimoni, Archives de l’Orient latin, 1 (1881), 434–534, at 441–2; D.H. von Soden, ‘Bericht über die in der Kubbet in Damaskus gefundenen Handschriftenfragmente’, Sitzungsberichte der königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1903), 825–30, at 827. Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de St Jean de Jérusalem , ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1906), (hereafter Cart. Hosp.) vol. 1, 216, 362–3, 372–3, 378, 395–6 (nos 296, 530, 550, 558, 582); John of Jaffa, ‘Livre des Assises de la Haute Cour’, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Lois. Les Assises de Jérusalem (hereafter RHC. Lois), ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2 vols (Paris, 1841–43), vol. 1, 424. ‘L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la Terre d’Outremer’, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Historiens occidentaux, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 5 vols (Paris, 1844–95), vol. 2, 34. Cronaca del Templare di Tiro (1243–1314), ed. L. Minervini (Naples, 2000); Les Gestes des Chiprois, 200; al-Maqrizi, Kitab as-suluk li-ma’rifat duwal al-muluk, extracts, trans. M.E. Quatremère, 4 pts in 2 vols (Paris, 1837–45), vol. 2, 109. J.S.C. Riley-Smith, ‘The Latin clergy and the settlement in Palestine and Syria, 1098–1100’, Catholic Historical Review, 74 (1988), 539–57, at 546–9. Some confirmation of this is the survival under Latin rule of a local oddity, a tax on pork

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Strictly speaking, the status of a dhimmi was in Muslim law open only to an individual who could be classed among the ‘people of scripture’, that is to say Jews, Christians and Sabaeans (interpreted to cover Zoroastrians). Each adult, male, free, sane dhimmi had to pay a poll tax, the jizya. His real estate could, but did not necessarily, pass to the whole community of Islam, but he could have the use of it and anyway he had to pay on it and its crops a land tax (the kharaj), while he was liable for other levies for the maintenance of the Muslim armies. He had to distinguish himself from believers in dress. He was not permitted to ride a horse or carry weapons. He suffered legal disabilities with respect to testimony in the law courts, protection under criminal law and marriage. He and his family were not citizens of the Muslim state, but members of a quasi-self-governing community, under its own responsible head, such as a rabbi or bishop, although all serious cases, and those involving the members of different faiths, had to be dealt with by the Muslim courts. On the other hand, dhimmis were guaranteed security and protection in the exercise of their religion, although they should not cause public offence by it: they might repair and even rebuild existing places of worship, but could not erect new ones.31 In the kingdom of Jerusalem we find that kharaj (Latinised as carragium) was levied on lands, although given its ubiquity in Islam and the fact that the Latins maintained their predecessors’ system of revenue collection this may not mean much;32 that Jews and Muslims, but not Christians, paid a poll tax;33 that they were supposed to wear different clothes;34 that they suffered certain legal disabilities, being unable to witness in cases involving Latins, except to prove a Latin’s age or descent, or provide evidence on estate boundaries;35 and that they could practice their own

31 32

33 34 35

butchers in Tyre which was called tuazo, a word that looks like a transliteration of an Arabic term for ritual ablutions. Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 84. Fattal, Statut légal, passim; S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols (Berkeley, 1967–93), vol. 2, 273–407. Cart. Hosp., 1.107, 596; 2.529 (nos 129, 941, 2199); ‘Fragment d’un cartulaire de l’ordre de Saint-Lazare, en Terre Sainte’, ed. A. de Marsy, Archives de l’Orient latin, 2 (1884), 121–57, at 129–30, no. 9; Tabulae ordinis Theutonici, ed. E. Strehlke (Berlin, 1869), 93, no. 112; Ibn Jubair, 316; Marsilio Zorzi, ‘De possessionibus Venetorum Tyri’, Der Bericht des Marsilio Zorzi, ed. O. Berggötz (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1991), 152–6. See H. Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt A.H. 564–741/ A.D. 1169–1341 (London, 1972), 73–9. Marsilio Zorzi, 140; Ibn Jubair, 316; Gregory IX, Registre, ed. L. Auvray, 3 vols and tables (Paris, 1896–1955), vol. 2, 841, 1149. Canon 16 of the Council of Nablus, now ed. B.Z. Kedar, ‘On the origins of the earliest laws of Frankish Jerusalem: the Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120’, Speculum, 74 (1999), 310–35, at 334. John of Jaffa, 1.114; Philip of Novara, ‘Livre de forme de plait’, RHC Lois, 1.501–2; Geoffrey Le Tor, ‘Livre’, RHC Lois, 1.443; James of Ibelin, ‘Livre’, RHC Lois, 1.466. See Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 88.

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religion. Mosques at Tyre were mentioned by the traveller Ibn Jubair.36 Hanbali Muslim peasants had gathered for Friday prayers with the khutba, invoking the name of the ‘Abbasid caliph, in the village of Jamma‘il near Nablus, before some of them migrated in 1156. They left because of extortionate taxation and because their Friday prayers were under threat; their Latin lord was apparently telling them they should be working. So this is a case of discrimination, but one should note that it stemmed from the behaviour of one landlord – and incidentally the drawing power of a Muslim teacher who was attracting many people from the district – and that up to that time religious practice had been undisturbed.37 A new synagogue was constructed by the Samaritan Jews at Nablus in the 1130s38 and the magnificence of the synagogues at Meiron near Safad was commented on by a Jewish traveller in c. 1240.39 The Western Wall of the Temple and the tombs of the kings on Mt Sion were visited by Jews, although the latter had been sealed,40 and local shrines venerated by both Muslims and Jews included the tombs of Jonah at Kar Kannah41 and of Hanona b. Horkenos in Safad.42 Rabbinical tribunals and Jewish academies flourished in Acre and Tyre,43 and although no record survives of a qadi (a Muslim judge) in post in the kingdom, there was one at Jabala in the principality of Antioch in the 1180s. Benjamin Kedar has pointed out that the absence of any reference to qadis in Palestine should not surprise us, since we would have known nothing about the rabbinical tribunals had they not been so prestigious that their responsa were circulated and preserved.44 On the other hand, the community courts must, like the dhimmi ones in Muslim states, have had a limited competence, because major cases had to be remitted to the Latin burgess courts.45 The settlers clearly maintained the system of dhimma with respect to Jews and imposed it on Muslims. 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45

Ibn Jubair, 321. J. Drory, ‘Hanbalis of the Nablus region in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, Asian and African Studies, 22 (1988), 93–112. D. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, 2 vols to date (Cambridge, 1993–), vol. 2, 114. Rabbi Jacob, ‘Itinerary’, trans. Adler, Jewish Travellers, 122. Benjamin of Tudela, 23–5; Prawer, History of the Jews, 180. Le Strange, Palestine, 469; Prawer, History of the Jews, 211. Prawer, History of the Jews, 220. For other shrines venerated by Muslims see ‘Ali alHarawi, 48–78; Le Strange, Palestine, passim, esp. 339, 447, 451, 457–8, 465–6, 468, 470, 482–3, 492–3, 512, 527, 534, 545, 553; and for Jews, Prawer, History of the Jews, 169–250. Prawer, History of the Jews, 97. Kedar, ‘The subjected Muslims’, 142. Professor Mayer’s doubts whether Muslims could practice their religion (‘Latins, Muslims and Greeks’, 186), have been comprehensively dealt with by Professor Kedar (‘The subjected Muslims’, 139–43). For the limited competence of the community courts in Egypt, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, vol. 2, 311.

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They innovated, however, in two ways. The first of their modifications concerned non-Latin Christians, from whom the restraints of dhimma seem to have been only partially lifted. There is no evidence that any Christian was subject to the capitation tax – non-Latins did not even have to pay tithes – but their legal disabilities were not removed entirely; their testimony as witnesses was graded and was never treated as being as authentic as that of Latins.46 They also seem to have had some community status, with their own bishops continuing to enjoy a role as leaders. At different times there are references to Orthodox bishops in residence at Gaza, Acre, Sidon and Lydda, to Jacobite bishops in Jerusalem and Acre, and to Armenian bishops in Jerusalem. These seem to have been treated by the Latin bishops as coadjutors, which meant that they were effectively left in control of their own flocks, but a description by a Latin bishop of Acre, James of Vitry, of what he found on his arrival in 1216 suggests that they also played a more general leadership role. James wrote that he had been able to address the Greeks and Jacobites because their bishops were in residence; indeed the Greeks gathered to hear him ‘at the orders of their bishop’. But ‘I have not yet been able to assemble the Nestorians, Georgians and Armenians, because they have no bishop or other head [caput] [in the city]’.47 The Orthodox Suriani seem to have been the most numerous of the indigenous Christians48 and in their treatment of them the Latin settlers went further. Special courts, called cours des Syriens, were established for them throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem. It was believed in the thirteenth century that during the early decades of the settlement: The Syrians came before the king . . . and begged and required of him that he would see that they were judged according to the customs of the Syrians and that there should be for them a chieftain and jurors of a court and that by this court cases that arose among them should be judged according to their customs. And he authorized the said court.

These, like any dhimma courts, had no rights of high justice or jurisdiction over what were known as burgess properties.49 In thirteenth-century Acre, and in some other towns, the cour de la Fonde, a market court to which I will turn later, had absorbed the local cour des Syriens,50 but evidence survives for other cours des Syriens in Jerusalem, Nablus, Tyre and Bethlehem, all of which, except possibly Nablus, had

46 47 48 49 50

John of Jaffa, 1.395; Philip of Novara, 1.533; ‘Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois’, RHC Lois, vol. 2, 53–6, 171–5. James of Vitry, Lettres, 83–5. See Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 26–7. John of Jaffa, 1.26; and possibly Marsilio Zorzi, 139. See Prawer, History of the Jews, 97. John of Jaffa, 1.26.

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substantial Orthodox populations.51 It looks as though Orthodox Arab-speaking Christians had been given their own minor courts. Whether or not they had really asked for them, it is noteworthy that these must have dealt with those ‘secular’ cases which under Muslim rule would have been heard by their bishops. It may be that Western reform ideas on the separation of temporal powers from the spiritual were being imposed by the Latins on an indigenous Christian community. The establishment in many places of cours de la Fonde was the second innovation. The Franks seem to have taken the existing offices responsible for collecting market taxes, and to have added to their functions the judgement of minor commercial cases involving members of all the indigenous communities. In Acre the bailli, two Latin and four indigenous jurors of the cour de la Fonde heard cases concerning debt, pledge or leases, or anything else a Syrian or Jew or Muslim or Samaritan or Nestorian or Greek or Jacobite or Armenian has done. Know well that right judges and commands us to judge that none of the aforesaid peoples ought to plead in any court concerning any [small] claim they make among themselves save in the cour de la Fonde.

Jewish claimants could take oaths on the Torah (la Tore de sa lei), Samaritans on their version of ‘the five books of Moses (les cinq livres de Moyses que il tient)’, Muslims on the Koran, Jacobites and Greeks on an image of the Cross and gospel books written in their own script. Cases ‘of blood’, including murder, treason and theft, had to be heard in a higher Latin court.52 The creation of special small-claims courts, existing alongside the higher courts of the kingdom, the rabbinical and episcopal tribunals and the courts of the qadis, was a departure from dhimma legislation, because in a Muslim state all intercommunal cases, and not only the major ones, had to go before a qadi. It has been argued with respect to the Jews that so reluctant would they have been to allow hearings outside their own community that resort to the governmental courts would have occurred only when adherents of different religions were involved,53 but it has also been demonstrated that although the Christian and Jewish community leaders in Egypt profoundly disapproved of cases passing outside their own arbitration, individuals who thought they might gain did appeal to Muslim courts,54 and anyway there is evidence for commercial partnerships in the Latin East involving men of different

51 52 53 54

Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 90. ‘Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois’, 2.171–2; John of Jaffa 1.26. The false distinction between the Torah and the Pentateuch is odd. It may be that the jurist was keen to stress that the only scripture recognised by the Samaritans was the Pentateuch. Prawer, History of the Jews, 98–100. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, vol. 2, 311–12, 398–402.

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communities.55 A prime reason for the establishment of the cours de la Fonde must have been to resolve inter-communal disputes. I have yet to find precedents for these adaptations elsewhere. In Spain and Sicily, Latin conquerors were beginning to rule over Muslims and Jews and Muslims and Greeks respectively, and the experimental way they approached the issues that were being raised has often been described. But nowhere in Europe was there the variety of different religious communities to be found in Syria and Palestine, and the only parallel I know, which is to be found in Catalonia, relates to a somewhat different matter, the obligation to free non-Christian slaves when they opted for baptism, an obligation which settlers in the Latin East were often reluctant to observe.56 At any rate we find in Palestine a dhimma system in operation, modified so that it would be imposed on Muslims and partially lifted from Eastern Christians, with special secular lower courts for Orthodox Christians and small-claims courts for intercommunal disputes. The silence of the sources with respect to the indigenous resident in the East under Latin rule could be partly explained by the settlers’ adaptation of dhimma in ways which allowed the native communities to carry on their business in a relatively peaceful manner.

55 56

For the Latin East, see Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 78–80. For Egypt, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, vol. 2, 294–8. B.Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslims (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 76–83, 212–15. For Catalonia, see C. Verlinden, L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, 2 vols (Bruges and Ghent, 1955–77), vol. 1, 291–2; R.I. Burns, ‘Muslims in the thirteenth-century realms of Aragon: interaction and reaction’, in Muslims under Latin Rule, ed. Powell, 57–102, at 78–9.

Chapter 7

Latins and Greeks on Crusader Cyprus Peter W. Edbury

Lord, your holiness must know that our fathers did not leave their homes and their kinsmen and their heritages to go to dwell on a rock in the midst of the sea until they had made agreements and assizes for their support and comfort.1

These are words put into the mouth of a Cypriot knight named Raymond Babin by the Cypriot Greek historian, Leontios Makhairas. It was 1360, and Raymond was at the court of Pope Innocent VI arguing for the legitimacy of the accession of the new king, Peter I, against the challenge of his nephew, the son of Peter’s deceased elder brother. By 1360, and indeed for the previous seventy years, Cyprus was the most easterly outpost of Latin Christendom in the Mediterranean. Except for the crumbling kingdom of Cilician Armenia to the north in what is now part of southern Turkey, all the mainland areas of Anatolia, Syria and North Africa were under Muslim rule. So, though an island defended by the sea, Cyprus lay on an exposed frontier of Christendom. In 1191, during the Third Crusade, King Richard the Lionheart had conquered the island from its Byzantine ruler and established Western rule there. Henceforth Cyprus was regarded as a springboard for campaigns against the Muslims in the Levant. For substantial periods in the thirteenth century the king of Cyprus was also ruling in what was left of the kingdom of Jerusalem and made use of the resources of the island to support the dwindling Christian territories along the Levantine coast. Despite the lengthy periods of peace, there was no doubting the latent hostility of the Cypriot regime towards the Muslims of Egypt, Syria and southern Turkey, and in 1365 this hostility was to erupt in the famous Cypriot-led campaign that sacked Alexandria, thereby initiating a war with the Mamluk sultanate that lasted until 1370. The end of Christian rule in Syria and Palestine in the course of the latter part of the thirteenth century meant that Cyprus was more vulnerable to Muslim naval attack than previously, and from time to time there were genuine, if 1

Leontios Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled ‘Chronicle’, ed. R.M. Dawkins (Oxford, 1932), §106.

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unfulfilled, scares that the Mamluks were preparing an invasion fleet. In fact no largescale Muslim assault on the island occurred until the 1420s, but fears of the possibility of an invasion would have lain constantly in the minds of the leading figures in the island.2 But if Cyprus lay at the periphery of Christendom, there was also another sense in which it can be considered a frontier society. Since the end of the twelfth century the island had been ruled by an elite made up of men of Western European extraction who dominated the far larger population of indigenous Greeks. Language, religious observance and social custom served as a barrier, separating the new rulers from their subjects. But this barrier was not impenetrable, nor did it remain unchanging during the centuries of Western rule. How Latins and Greeks, Catholic and Orthodox, rulers and ruled interacted, and whether the development of their relationships reflected the external threat, are big questions, and it is on these issues rather than on the subject of how Cyprus faced its Muslim neighbours that I want to concentrate attention. Raymond Babin’s statement that the Cypriots ‘dwelt on a rock in the midst of the sea’, with its unspoken rider that they were surrounded by enemies, was undoubtedly true. On at least one occasion in the fourteenth century Cypriot envoys had used this same argument to justify a petition to the pope for a dispensation to allow a marriage within the prohibited degrees.3 The self-image that the Latin rulers wanted to project was of a society that was dedicated to the defence of Christendom and was imbued with a thoroughly Western, chivalric outlook. We can see this when, in the thirteenth century, at a time when the Christians still held substantial sections of the coastlands of the Levant, the Cypriot knights could claim – controversially – that they had often seen military service in the Holy Land ‘in the service of God’ rather than because their king had commanded them to go and fight there.4 In the fourteenth century the kings appear on their coins wearing characteristic Western attire and holding a sceptre or a drawn sword, while on the reverse is the Cross of Jerusalem. At the same period the stylized portraits of knights and their ladies on the engraved tomb slabs, as illustrated at the end of the nineteenth century by Major Tankerville J. Chamberlayne, or which can be seen today in the museum in the castle at Limassol, again emphasise the European image that they present.5 We know that the Cypriot nobles were obsessed 2 3 4 5

For that topic, see P.W. Edbury, The Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus and its Muslim Neighbours, Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation Ninth Annual Lecture on History and Archaeology (Nicosia, 1993). W.H. Rudt de Collenberg, ‘Les dispenses matrimoniales accordées à l’Orient latin d’Honorius III à Clément VII (1223–1385)’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (moyen âge, temps modernes), 89 (1977), 10–93, no. 111 (79); cf. no. 59 (on 69). ‘Document relatif au service militaire’, R[ecueil des] h[istoriens des] c[roisades]. Lois, vol. 2, 430, 432, 434. D.M. Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford (2nd edn, London, 1995), 199–224 and plates 26–33; T.J. Chamberlayne,

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with hunting and falconry,6 that they enjoyed the romances of the Round Table and of William of Orange and the like. Indeed, according to Maurice Keen, the earliest known instance of knights dressing up as characters from the Arthurian cycle occurred in Cyprus in the mid-1220s at the jousts held as part of the celebrations surrounding the knighting of the sons of the Lord of Beirut.7 That these people sought to conform to Western chivalric ideals is beyond doubt. Joinville, whose opinion cannot be ignored, tells us that Guy of Ibelin, the Constable of Cyprus in the midthirteenth century, was ‘one of the most accomplished knights that I have ever seen’.8 Moreover, Lusignan Cyprus made its own contribution to Western knightly culture. There is good reason to suppose that Robert de Boron, the author of the Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal, spent some time in Cyprus in the early years of the thirteenth century and that he introduced ideas current in Eastern Christian traditions into his narrative, while Philip of Novara’s treatise on knightly mores, Les Quatre Ages de l’Homme, would seem, if the number of surviving manuscripts is a guide, to have circulated in the West to a far greater extent than any of his other writings.9 How did the Latins – in particular the Latin laity – view their Cypriot Greek subjects? In fact Frankish writers living in the East have little to say on this matter. The various versions of the French continuation of William of Tyre are shrill in their denunciation of Greek perfidy when describing the circumstances of Richard the Lionheart’s conquest of the island in 1191, but it has to be remembered that they were determined to leave their readers in no doubt that the conquest was thoroughly justified: the Greeks treated the shipwrecked mariners ‘most cruelly’; Isaac, the last Byzantine ruler of the island, commanded ‘his evil Greeks’ to execute the pilgrims, ‘For the Greeks regard the Franks as heretics and reckon killing a Latin to be very

6

7

8 9

Lacrimae Nicossienses. Recueil d’inscriptions funéraires la plupart françaises existant encore dans l’île de Chypre (Paris, 1894). J. Richard, ‘La Fauconnerie de Jean de Francières et ses sources’, Le Moyen Age, 69 (1963), 893–902, at 898–9; D. Jacoby, ‘Knightly values and class consciousness in the crusader states of the eastern Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 1 (1986), 158–86, at 164. Philip of Novara (Filippo da Novara), Guerra di Federico II in Oriente (1223–1242), ed. S. Melani (Naples, 1994), 72, 150; ‘Les Gestes des Chiprois’, RHC. Documents arméniens, vol. 2, 672, 702, 793; M.H. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London, 1984), 93; Jacoby, ‘Knightly values’, 163, 166–7. John of Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly (Paris, 1868), ch. 66. K.N. Ciggaar, ‘Robert de Boron en Outremer? le culte de Joseph d’Arimathie dans le monde byzantin et en Outremer’, in Polyphonia Byzantina: Studies in Honour of Willem J. Aerts, ed. H. Hokwera et al. (Gröningen, 1993), 145–59; eadem, ‘Le royaume des Lusignan: terre de littérature et de traductions. Échanges littéraires et culturels’, in Les Lusignans et l’Outre Mer (Poitiers, 1995), 89–98, at 91–2; Philip of Novara, Les Quatre Ages de l’Homme, ed. M. de Fréville (Paris, 1888), xiv–xvii. Cf S. Painter, French Chivalry (Baltimore, 1940), 31, 33, 36, 137 (where the author did not think it necessary to point out that Philip was not French and was not writing in France).

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pleasing in the sight of God.’ One mid-thirteenth-century recension of this text portrays the conquest as a divinely-inspired act ‘to establish the Holy Church and Roman Christianity on the aforesaid isle and eradicate the evil root of the wicked Greeks’.10 In his account of the civil wars on Cyprus in the late 1220s and early 1230s, Philip of Novara allows the Greek population of the island to remain totally invisible. It is the Frankish knights who are regularly described as chiprois. Perhaps significantly, the only mention of a Greek comes in one of Philip’s poems. It is a passing reference to a Greek falconer and, far from carrying any pejorative connotation, would seem, if anything, to mark Frankish respect for Greek expertise in this field.11 More revealing, however, are Philip’s remarks about Greeks to be found in his legal treatise which dates from around the middle of the thirteenth century and which was written explicitly with Cyprus in mind. Philip and his audience took it as axiomatic that society on the island was hierarchic, with class, race and religion all having a bearing on legal status and privilege. At the top of the scale were the Frankish vassal-knights and, so Philip informs us, a knight could not be appealed against in a case which could end in trial by battle by a sergeant or by a burgess, or indeed by anyone who was not a knight.12 So while the vassals were not above the law, it would be hard for anyone else to gain redress from one of their number in the courts. This advantageous legal position was reinforced by a rule that said that no one could testify as a bearer of warranty against a Frank in the High Court (and so be liable to fight a judicial battle) if he were not a Catholic (‘of the law of Rome’). That of course immediately ruled out the Greek majority in the population. Moreover, no one could testify against a Frank if his testimony was suspect on the grounds that he had lost a lawsuit in the past, or was a perjurer or guilty of breach of faith. Also barred were defeated champions, apostates and men who had served the Muslims in arms against the Christians for more than a year and a day. Philip adds that he is uncertain whether men who had served the Greeks – presumably he means the Byzantines – in arms against the Franks fell under the same exclusion. He then lists bastards, serfs of whatever religion and clergy who had renounced their orders as also disqualified from bearing testimony.13 But if the 10 11 12 13

‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer’, RHC Historiens occidentaux, vol. 2, 159–69; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M.R. Morgan (Paris, 1982), 112–21 (quotation at 119). Philip of Novara, Guerra di Federico II, 142, line 179. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre de Philippe de Navarre’, RHC. Lois, vol. 1, 486. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 501–2; cf. John of Ibelin, ‘Livre de Jean d’Ibelin’, RHC Lois, vol. 1, 114, where the parallel passage in John’s treatise is ambiguous, but could possibly be construed as meaning that men who had served the Byzantines against the Franks were barred from testifying. For Franks serving in Muslim and Byzantine armies, see J. Richard, ‘An account of the Battle of Hattin referring to the Frankish mercenaries in Oriental Muslim states’, Speculum, 27 (1952), 168–77, at 171–5.

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law made it hard for people of other confessions to proceed successfully against a Frank, there was still plenty of scope for litigation between members of the ruling elite, and it is with how disputes among the feudatories were to be conducted that Philip’s work is primarily concerned. The Cypriot vassals formed a close-knit caste, and their exclusivity is underlined by Philip in the passage that follows the one I have just described: If the lord has given a fief14 to a serf or someone disqualified for one of the reasons mentioned above and wants to have him sit in his court saying that he is his liege man, and if the court or one of the parties to a dispute wants to bar him, he may well say to the lord, ‘Sire, you have the right to enfranchise him since that is your wish, and if he is your vassal you will keep faith with him as you ought, but you are not keeping faith with us. With due respect, neither can you nor should you enfranchise him, nor can you make him our peer.’15

Philip makes it clear that lower down the social scale there was a legal pecking-order determined by religion. If a party to a legal dispute had an essoin, he should report the matter to the court using a Latin Christian as his messenger whenever possible. But if that were not possible, he could use a non-Latin Christian and, failing that, a Muslim.16 In cases of assault, compensation of 100 sous was due to the victim if he were a Frank and another 100 bezants to his lord, but if he were a Syrian, a Greek or a serf, the compensation was only 50 sous to the victim though 50 bezants were still payable to the lord.17 The fullest expression of this social stratification comes in Philip’s chapter describing the procedure for establishing property boundaries in cases where it would be necessary to rely on local knowledge taken on oath. If possible the group to whom the enquiry had been delegated would take evidence from a Latin Christian. If no one could be found who could testify, they could take evidence from a Syrian; failing that from a Greek, then a Christian of another Eastern confession and finally a Muslim. The reference to Syrians – Arabic-speaking Christians – is noteworthy. It means that Philip is describing a procedure that had come to Cyprus from the mainland of Latin Syria, as he says at the beginning of the chapter. However, there would have been communities of Syrian Christians in the towns on the island at the time he was writing, and, if indeed this passage means that in Cyprus the testimony of a Syrian was to be preferred to that of a Greek, then it can serve as a forceful illustration of the low esteem in which the ruling class viewed the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population.18 Not that Philip had a particularly 14 15 16 17 18

Following the variant reading at 502 and n. 9. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 502. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 499; cf. John of Ibelin 98–9. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 546–7; cf. John of Ibelin 186–7. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 532–4; this chapter is included in the later recensions of John of Ibelin’s treatise (394–5).

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high opinion of Syrians either. Elsewhere in his treatise he lambasts them for being more credulous than any other people when it came to believing in astrology.19 So the Greeks of Cyprus appear but rarely in Philip’s treatise. Apart from the instances to which I have just alluded, there are a few scattered references to ‘vilains’. It is clear that Philip uses this word to denote the unfree rural population, the paroikoi of the Byzantine texts. They were regarded as a type of chattel. ‘Vilains on the land or other things that pertain to a fief’ can be the subject of litigation, and the lord may demand from his vassal ‘land, vilains, a sum of money or anything else that the vassal holds’.20 ‘Vilains’ who abscond from the land should be returned, although they too can give rise to disputes between landowners, and the ‘vilain’ who strikes a knight will loose his right hand.21 If a ‘vilain’ dies without heirs, the lord will take two-thirds of his effects, leaving the remainder for his widow. If she is unable to continue to pay the levies on the land the lord will take her plough and her donkey.22 What little Philip does tell us suggests that the Lusignan regime pressed heavily on the indigenous population. Whether the mass of the peasantry was any worse off under the Franks than it had been under the Byzantines is difficult to know. I suspect that for the individual paroikos the change of masters had made little difference. But for those higher up the social ladder the Frankish conquest may have had far-reaching consequences. Speaking of those vassals whose fiefs consisted of scattered parcels of land, Philip lets slip the information that some of them at least had been endowed with the sequestered lands of churches or abbeys or with the holdings of former Greek archontes, a class which otherwise seems to have disappeared totally from the sources for thirteenth-century Cyprus.23 The problem is that the situation was never so simple. The Franks needed the Greeks. Whether as administrators, merchants, artisans or peasants, their presence and their labour was essential for the continued existence of the Lusignan regime, and 19 20 21 22

23

Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 567. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 496, 519 (following variant B at n. 5). Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 535–6, 547. Information from a hitherto unpublished chapter from Philip’s work found only in Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Codex Gallus 771, f.162r–v. P.W. Edbury, ‘Philip of Novara and the Livre de forme de plait’, Praktika tou tritou diethnous Kuprologikou sunedriou, vol. 2, ed. A. Papageorgiou (Nicosia, 2001), 555–69, at 566. On agrarian conditions on Cyprus, see J. Richard, ‘Agriculture in the kingdom of Cyprus’, in A History of the Crusades, ed. K.M. Setton (Philadelphia and Madison, 1955–89), vol. 5, 267–84; P.W. Edbury, ‘La classe des propriétaires terriens franco-chypriotes et l’exploitation des ressources rurales de l’île de Chypre’, in État et colonisation au Moyen Age, ed. M. Balard (Lyon, 1989), 145–52; idem, ‘Le régime des Lusignan en Chypre et la population locale’, in Coloniser au Moyen Age, ed. M. Balard and A. Ducellier (Paris, 1995), 354–8, 364–5. Philip of Novara, ‘Livre’, 536 (‘artondes’ is evidently a bad reading for ‘arcondes’ = archontes); cf. Edbury, ‘Le régime des Lusignan en Chypre’, 355–7.

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it is clear that the sharp lines of division indicated by Philip of Novara broke down over the course of time and that by the fifteenth century acculturation was proceeding apace. The Frankish landowning class was reinforced both by refugees from the Frankish principalities in Syria during the thirteenth century and by newcomers from the West, but it was not generally possible for members of the indigenous population to join this elite. It is only in the late fourteenth century that we begin to find Cypriot Greeks or Syrians becoming knights, and the earliest examples known to me – Thomas Barech and Thibault Belfarage – were both converts to Catholicism.24 In the fifteenth century, however, many members of the ruling class were coming to prefer the Greek language and Greek religious observance in their daily lives, while members of the indigenous burgess community – the Audeth family being perhaps the best-known example – were able to obtain landed estates and Latin ecclesiastical benefices.25 But even in the thirteenth century when it would seem that the Franks formed a rigidly closed caste from which Greeks were systematically excluded, Greeks were nevertheless employed in positions of responsibility and individual Greeks could and did prosper. It is clear that Greeks were regularly used as estate officials and comprised the staff of the secrète, the royal finance office whose very name betrays its Byzantine antecedents. By the late fourteenth century, when the sources allow us to see something of the personnel at the secrète, we find that it was staffed by members of a close-knit group of ‘civil-service families’ which included relatives of the historian, Leontios Makhairas.26 In 1191 Richard’s conquest had been swift and decisive. His campaign had lasted just one month, and there is no reason to suppose that it was particularly destructive. The sources tell of two popular outbreaks in the course of 1191–92 – one against Richard’s officers, the other against the Templars who for a brief period had had charge of the island in 1191–9227 – but after that there is no evidence for the local populace engaging in armed insurrection. True we hear of riots in the 1310s and the 1360s against Latin attempts to force the Greeks into religious conformity, but these entailed no significant loss of control by the authorities and seem to have been

24 25

26 27

Leontios Makhairas, §§568, 579, 599. J. Richard, ‘Une famille de “Vénitiens blancs” dans le royaume de Chypre au milieu du XVème siècle: les Audeth et la seigneurie du Marethasse’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Slavi, 1 (1981), 89–129; idem, ‘Culture franque et culture grecque: le royaume de Chypre au XVème siècle’, Byzantinische Forchungen, 11 (1987), 399–415; W.H. Rudt de Collenberg, ‘Le déclin de la société franque de Chypre entre 1350 et 1450’, Kypriakai Spoudai, 46 (1982), 71–83. See P.W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991), 191–2 For references, Edbury, Kingdom of Cyprus, 7–8.

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no more than short-lived spontaneous outbursts of anger over a specific issue.28 By contrast, it would seem that at the time of the Genoese war of 1373–74 the Cypriot Greeks took the side of their Frankish masters, supporting them in their struggle against the invaders. It was only with the breakdown of normal governmental control during the Mamluk invasion of 1426 and the captivity of King Janus in Egypt that we find the subject population trying to take power for itself.29 In other words, the Lusignan regime was effectively established and was not confronted by the sort of endemic resistance that was to dog the Venetians for long periods after their occupation of Crete early in the thirteenth century. Other evidence supports this view: there was no network of fortifications in Cyprus designed to overawe the indigenous population; we do not hear of Frankish landlords being killed or held to ransom by the islanders; the feudatories had rural residences,30 but they did not have to fortify them against their own peasants. All this implies an acceptance – a reluctant acceptance perhaps, but an acceptance nevertheless – of Frankish rule. I can suggest three possible explanations for why this might be: the Greeks lacked the sort of people who could lead an opposition movement; the Latins had settled in the island in sufficient numbers to give them a firm control and make their regime viable; and, thirdly, the Lusignans were clever enough to avoid provoking too much hostility.31 But there is a further dimension. It would seem that the Latin and Greek populations on Cyprus went beyond simply reaching a measure of accommodation. There were, at least by the close of the Frankish period, signs of the emergence of what Gilles Grivaud in a recent paper has termed ‘la nation chyproise’.32 Eventually Frankish society went into decline: the nobility suffered from recurrent periods of plague – Grivaud has counted nine outbreaks between 1347 and 1471 – and from the political upheavals attendant on the Genoese invasion of 1373–74 and the civil war of the 1460s; the Latin Church hierarchy, always recruited heavily from Western Europe, never fully recovered from the corrosive effects of the papal schism of 1378.33 The elite, now as much Italian or Catalan as French, and increasingly

28

29 30 31 32 33

1310s: Acta Ioannis XXII (1317–1334), ed. A.L. Taßtu (Vatican City, 1952), no. 36; ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, in Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, ed. R. de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1891–93), vol. 1, 395–6. 1360s: Philippe de Mézières, The Life of St Peter Thomas, ed. J. Smet (Rome, 1954), 92–3; Leontios Makhairas, §101. 1370s: Leontios Makhairas, §§395, 398–9, 433–4, 436, 440–41 and passim; but see §§445, 448, 468. 1426: Leontios Makhairas, §§696–7. For example, ‘Les Gestes des Chiprois’, 692. For a discussion of these three points, Edbury, ‘Le régime des Lusignan en Chypre’, 355–8. G. Grivaud, ‘Éveil de la nation chyproise (XIIIe–XVIe siècles)’, in Kyprios Character: Quelle identité chypriote?, ed. P. Gontier (Paris, 1995), 105–16. Grivaud, ‘Éveil de la nation chyproise’, 109; W.H. Rudt de Collenberg, ‘Le royaume et l’église de Chypre face au Grand Schisme (1378–1417) d’après les registres des

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assimilated into Greek society through intermarriage, allowed their older exclusiveness to break down. For example, even as early as the late thirteenth century we find examples of Latins commissioning Greek artists to paint altarpieces using a Byzantine style and technique, albeit adopting certain Western characteristics.34 In all likelihood the legal advantages that Philip of Novara had described the Latins enjoying lost their vigour. In the fourteenth century the growth of the chancery court and the court of the auditor – what in England would be labelled prerogative courts – probably put the Greeks, or at least the wealthier Greeks, on a more even footing with the Franks, and it may be significant that in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the legal treatise by Philip of Novara’s contemporary, John of Ibelin, that is known to have been kept in Cyprus the word ‘Grex’ has been heavily crossed out from the list of categories of people who may not bear warranty in the high court against a Frank.35 For their part the Greeks were prepared to borrow from the Latins. Thus in the fourteenth century the new Orthodox cathedral in Famagusta was built not in the traditional Byzantine style but following Italianate Gothic forms complete with flying buttresses. Grivaud makes the important point that those historians who seek to construct the history of the Greeks of Cyprus simply in terms of their struggle to preserve their identity in the face of successive oppressors – Crusaders, Venetians, Turks, British – are, despite the validity and attractiveness of their approach, in danger of losing sight of the nuances. Something of the assimilation that was taking place is exemplified by Leontios Makhairas, the author quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Leontios, writing towards the middle of the fifteenth century, believed in the Byzantine world order in which the legitimate ruler was the emperor, but at the same time he respected his Frankish masters. As an articulate and educated Greek from a prominent family, he also recognised that the Greek language had changed under the influence of the French-speaking ruling class, and the loan words and Gallicisms in his own writings abundantly bear out what he says. To quote a well-known passage: And because there are two natural rulers in the world, the one lay and the other spiritual, so in this little island there were the emperor of Constantinople and the patriarch of Antioch the Great until the Latins took the land. For this reason we were obliged to know good Greek, for sending letters to the emperor, and to be perfect in the Syrian language . . . And when the

34 35

archives du Vatican’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (moyen âge, temps modernes), 94 (1982), 621–701. J. Folda, ‘Crusader Art In The Kingdom of Cyprus, c. 1275–1291: reflections on the state of the questions’, in Cyprus and the Crusades, ed. N. Coureas and J. Riley-Smith (Nicosia, 1995), 209–37, at 216–21. Edbury, Kingdom of Cyprus, 190, 192–3. For the deletion of the word ‘Grex’, see Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Vat. Lat. 4789 f. 53v (cf. John of Ibelin, 114 at n. 18.)

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Latin period began men began to learn French, and their Greek became barbarous in such a way that no one in the world can now say what our language is.36

Elsewhere Leontios could put into the mouth of King Peter II (1369–82) the idea that the island rightly belonged to the Byzantine emperor and the Franks had only gained control by default.37 On religious matters Leontios was markedly restrained. He was clearly proud of the Orthodox traditions and the Orthodox saints of Cyprus, but apropos of Thibault Belfarage, a convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, he has this to say: I am not condemning the Latins, but what is the need for a Greek to become a Latin? For should a good Christian despise the one faith and betake himself to the other? And do you, my reader, despise the former faith? . . . The Latins derive from the Apostle [i.e. Saint Peter]; the Greeks are a catholic [that is, true/universal] church.38

Leontios, though he wrote in Greek, was evidently conscious that he would have members of the Frankish community among his readers.39 But would the assimilation and the mutual respect that Leontios’s history reveals have developed to the same degree had Cyprus not been exposed to the ever-present threat of Muslim invasion?

36 37 38 39

Leontios Makhairas, §158. Leontios Makhairas, §527 (at 521). See C. Kyrris, ‘Cypriot identity, Byzantium and the Latins, 1192–1489’, History of European Ideas, 19 (1994), 563–73, at 563. Leontios Makhairas, §579. See C. Kyrris, ‘Some aspects of Leontios Makhairas’ ethnoreligious ideology, cultural identity and historiographic method’, Stasinos, 10 (1989–93), 167–281, at 183 n. 42. Kyrris, ‘Some aspects’, 205 and n. 90.

Chapter 8

Genuensis civitas in extremo Europae: Caffa from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century1 Michel Balard

Between the Western and Byzantine worlds on the one hand, and the inorganic world of the Mongol steppes on the other hand, the Genoese colony of Caffa, founded in the early 1270s, became one of the main points of contact between Europe and Asia over a period of two centuries, a major boundary city, characterised by its ethnic cosmopolitanism and by its strong trading influence all over the Pontic area. But one may ask whether the Genoese Gazaria was an actual frontier defined by natural limits, or by an awareness of linguistic or cultural discrepancies. It is not necessary to examine here the concept of frontier, to which many historians, among them Frederick Jackson Turner and Friedrich Ratzel, paid attention, looking at the history of the modern world.2 But, starting from a recent essay by Pierre Toubert, we need to ask what the idea of the boundary means for the medieval Crimea: is it a line traced on a map, or a blurred zone to which both Westerners and Tatars laid claim? What might be the social consequences of any boundary definition?3 Depending on the attitude of the external powers, the Tatar khanates and, in the fifteenth century the Ottomans, the structure of the frontier differed during the two centuries examined here. The geographical position of the Genoese colony predisposed it to be a real boundary city. Situated on the fringe of the eastern Crimean coast, on an open bay, just 1

2 3

‘Genuensis civitas in extremo Europae’: these words, used by a chancellor of the Banco di San Giorgio in the fifteenth century, show how sharp was the feeling of the boundary between Western civilisation and Christendom, represented by the Italian colonies of the Black Sea region, and the outer world of barbarous people continually threatening the Christian outposts. F.J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920); F. Ratzel, Politische Geographie oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges (Munich and Berlin, 1903). P. Toubert, ‘Frontière et frontières: un objet historique’, Castrum, 3 (1992), 9–17.

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protected from the northern winds, Caffa stood at the end of the mountain chain which gave the Riviera good protection against the continental weather and reasonable protection against the flow of invasions from the steppes. But close examination reveals that Caffa was the first human settlement that looked towards the eastern and northern plains of the Crimea, so that the city bore the full weight of the Tatar onslaught in the early and mid-thirteenth century. Caffa served as a glacis for the whole of Genoese Gazaria, as well as a peripheral outlet for the trade of the Genoese commune. But a second feature characterises the frontier at Caffa: the fact that the Tatar enemy had settled not only in the countryside, outside the city, but in the city itself, where the number of Tatars was undoubtedly higher than the number of Westerners. The statute of Caffa (1449) hints at the anger they generated. The text prohibits the burgenses of the city – among whom the Tatars were predominant – from receiving gifts from the khan, from giving hospitality to a subject of the khanate in their houses, from talking with a Tatar ambassador and from keeping weapons at home.4 Nobody could go out of the city after the closing of its gates in the evening. It is clear that the fear of betrayal dictated such a regulation. The physical line of the frontier lay along the strong walls which protected the city, not from the beginning of its existence, when a ditch and a wooden palisade could only offer a weak resistance to the Tatars in 1308, but from the time of its reconstruction by the Officium Gazarie of Genoa. According to a regulation of 1316, the city was divided into two parts: the castrum or citadel, which corresponded to the ancient colony of the thirteenth century, and the city, encompassed by embankments and wooden palisades, which were eventually replaced by a stone wall. This defensive line, completed by Consul Gotifredo di Zoagli in 1352, is contemporary with the Tatar onslaughts of 1344 and 1346. Since the city was able to resist his armies, it is clear that the wall of the citadel was complete when the land forces of Khan Janibek arrived in 1344.5 Beyond the citadel, some suburbs were created during the fourteenth century. The Genoese looked after their defence, building a new wall, at the very moment that their relations with the Lord of Solgat were worsening. Armenian documents as well as Genoese inscriptions attribute the building to the years between 1382 and 1385, that is to say just before the beginning of the war against Solgat. The wall stretched as far as 5.5 kilometres and drew a bow circle around the inner wall, with which it was connected by the coastal enceinte. According to Evliya Celebi, 117 bulwarks 4 5

A. Vigna, ‘Codice diplomatico delle colonie tauro-liguri durante la signoria dell’Ufficio di San Giorgio (MCCCCLIII–MCCCCLXXV)’, Atti della Società ligure di Storia patria, 7, pt 2 (1881), 636, 779. M. Balard, La Romanie génoise (XIIe–début du XVe siècle), 2 vols, (Rome and Genoa, 1978), vol. 1, 202–12.

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strengthened the walls, surrounded by dry ditches, 13.5 metres deep and 33.5 metres wide.6 And finally a third concentric line, called the ‘land fortress’ by the Ottoman sources, but actually a mere embankment, protected the suburbs, which expanded at the end of the period of Genoese domination. When in 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, the government of the Genoese colonies in the Pontic area passed under the administration of the Banco di San Giorgio. Its protectores were obliged to look after the defence of the city, which had been neglected in the previous years. They dealt with restoration works, carried out with the help of the inhabitants and finished, according to the chronicler Andrew of Eudocia, at the end of the year 1467.7 But the level of investment, which threatened to interfere with the private interests of the shareholders of the Bank, was too limited to repair all the walls of Caffa and make them able to resist the Ottoman army in 1475.8 From that point of view, the condition of the frontier line is a clear indicator of the condition of the state, and of its capacity or incapacity to maintain a glacis of protection. The same weakness of the commune is proved by the numerical evolution of the garrison, enlisted for the defence of the city. Indeed, the boundary-line was also constituted by men-at-arms, with a large foreign element, and in part recruited by the consul, when taking charge of his office. The western inhabitants of Caffa were so few and so little able to bear arms that the Genoese authorities were obliged to levy mercenaries in Genoa or in Italy, because they had little confidence towards the natives whose loyalty seemed doubtful. But, for financial reasons, the Caffa garrison looked very much like a skeleton regiment: 65 men at arms in 1374–75, 236 during the war of Solgat in 1386–87, 180 in 1410, 175 in 1456, 203 in 1457 and only 154 in 1459.9 These numbers seem ridiculously small to protect a city which may have had around 20,000 inhabitants at the end of the Genoese domination, and to guard a 6 km long wall. The authorities of the commune, having at their disposal very limited resources, considered that the troops were always too expensive, particularly in view of the cost of their wages and maintenance. Even after 1453, when the Pontic colonies passed under the control of the Banco di San Giorgio, the financial outlay was 6 7

8 9

Book of Voyages of Evliya Celebi (in Turkish), ed. Z. Danisman (Istanbul, 1971), 11. 237–8. M. Balard and G. Veinstein, ‘Continuité ou changement d’un paysage urbain? Caffa génoise et ottomane’, Le paysage urbain au Moyen Age. Actes du XIe Congrès de la Société des Historiens médiévistes de l’Enseignement supérieur public (Lyon 1980), (Lyons, 1981), 79–131. The books of the Caffa Massaria give the amount of expenses devoted to the repairs of walls and moats: 1,410,965 aspers in 1465, and only 713,518 aspers in 1470. State Archives of Genoa (=ASG), San Giorgio, Caffa Massaria, lists of soldiers. See M. André, ‘Le recrutement des mercenaires à Caffa au XVe siècle’, mémoire de maîtrise (University of Paris I, 1996).

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restricted by the shareholders, who looked after their own interests and not after the safety of the remote Pontic colonies. The protection of the boundary line in the Crimea was so much the more difficult as recruiting dried up in the fifteenth century. The number of those who resigned, who fled from Caffa, or were discharged by the authorities was so high that less than a half of the garrison remained in arms during the sixteen months of the consular office of 1410. The commune was compelled to enlist a higher proportion of native soldiers. Whereas 85.6 per cent of the mercenaries belonged to the Western group in 1410, mostly Italians, the proportion of Westerners in the Caffa garrison fell to 73.2 per cent in 1463, and to only 49 per cent for those of Italian origin. Recruitment lost its national character; the Ligurians seemed more and more reticent about taking up duties overseas, the wages for which were declining throughout the fifteenth century. Through the lot of the mercenaries we can see how difficult the situation in Caffa had become during the last ten years of the Genoese administration: under threat and abandoned by its metropolis, which was unable to support it, this remote colony could not survive.10 The city hosted a multi-ethnic society, ever since the beginning of the Genoese presence. At the end of the thirteenth century, the names of the inhabitants, revealed in Lamberto di Sambuceto’s notarial acts, indicate a considerable preponderance of immigrants from Liguria: 74 per cent of the people identified came from Genoa and the towns and villages of its two rivieras. The last ten years of the century represent the golden age of Genoa, an exuberant stage of territorial and trading expansion, with a flow of departures overseas which involved the whole of Liguria: the emigration had a truly national character. At the end of the fourteenth century, the register of the Caffa Massaria notifies us of 1,516 people, among them 1,025 Westerners, with a clear predominance of Ligurians and Genoese (85 per cent).11 But these Westerners were always a minority compared to the natives. And, with the passing of time, this minority maintained ever looser relations with its home country, which did not take care of its needs. As in the other Eastern colonies of Genoa, the elite tended to orientalise. According to Lamberto di Sambuceto’s deeds, the Greeks represented the strongest quota among the Orientals from the end of the thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth. When the Officium Gazarie decided to organise the reconstruction of Caffa in 1316, its ordo de Caffa mentioned the Greeks first, before the Armenians, the Russians and the other Oriental Christians.12 The text stipulates the preservation of the lands occupied by their churches, the houses of their priests and their 10 11 12

Ibid. Balard, Romanie génoise, vol. 1, 250–52. ‘Imposicio Officii Gazarie’, Monumenta Historiae Patriae, Leges Municipales (Turin, 1838), vol. 1, col. 377–82.

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hermitages. It is clear that colonisation can have no success without the goodwill of the spiritual leaders of the native population. Moreover, the lands in the suburbs of Caffa would be let to its Greek, Armenian and other Eastern Christian natives, while a large space, along the road leading to Solgat, would be free from any building. All this means that the authorities wanted to control the settlement by the natives, and to relieve the north-western approaches of the town, to make its defence against the Tatars easier. These ethnic divisions within the urban space of Caffa did not last long. During the fourteenth century, some Latins settled in the suburbs near the Orientals and some of these chose the castrum for their residence. But one of the main features is the growth of the Armenian group, which in the fifteenth century became the most numerous, surpassing the Greek community. This change comes from a rapid influx of an Armenian population at the end of the fourteenth century, whose reasons remain quite unknown. Were they Armenians who left Cilicia, when this kingdom fell to the power of the Mamluks? Were they inhabitants of Saraï, the capital of the Golden Horde, who left their home when Khan Özbek decided to favour the Islamisation of his state? Or were they Armenians from Ani, as confirmed by a colophon from an Armenian synaxaire from Caffa?13 Were they Armenian refugees coming from the lands conquered by Timur-Leng to whom the Genoese authorities in the Crimea offered generous hospitality? The surviving sources do not give a clear explanation for this important change in the ethnic composition of the city. Nevertheless, in 1455 the Genoese consul wrote to the protectores of the Banco di San Giorgio, telling them that his country was chiefly inhabited by Armenians, who were faithful towards the authorities and very good merchants.14 The same year, in order to be able to pay tribute to Mehmet II and to the Crimean Khan Haggi Giray, the commune raised a loan from the different communities of the city; the Armenians paid the largest part of it, after the Latins, but ahead of the Greeks.15 The Turks and Tatars constituted the third Oriental community in Caffa. They paid a special tax of 5 per cent, called tolta or commerchium Canluchorum, from which one-seventh was collected for the profit of the Lord of Solgat. This lord appointed a special officer, called the tudun, to judge the khan’s subjects in Caffa.16 The ethnic changes within the population of the city, and the settlement inside of it of foreigners, suspected of loyalty to the khans, demonstrated that the frontier in the Crimea was not a fixed bulwark, but rather marked the successive stages of a growing city, an 13 14 15 16

M. Cazacu and K. Kevonian, ‘La chute de Caffa en 1475 à la lumière de nouveaux documents’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 17 (1976), 515–18. A. Vigna, ‘Codice diplomatico’, Atti della Società ligure di Storia patria, vol. 6, pt 1, (1869), 365. ASG, Caffa Massaria n° 590/1237, ff. 332r–350v. Vigna, ‘Codice diplomatico’, vol. 7, pt 2, 650.

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Entwicklungstuffe, to follow Friedrich Ratzel. From the demographic point of view, the Crimean frontier must be considered a privileged space of barter and contacts. Among the inhabitants, there were some marriages between people of different ethnic origins. For instance, a document of 1381 mentions the wages paid to the wives of the sailors on board the galley of the commune: of seventy-eight couples, eleven, that is to say 14 per cent, are contracted between a Latin man and an Oriental woman, Armenian, Greek or Tatar.17 But it is obvious that there existed many cases of cohabitation, owing to the high rate of male immigration. However, we have no examples of weddings between a Western woman and an Oriental man. Far from being a barrier, the Crimean frontier, under Byzantine dominion and afterwards under Genoa’s, played the part of a living membrane, of a ‘trading frontier’ during the two centuries of its colonisation by the Genoese. It was the main warehouse in the trading network of Genoa within the Pontic zone. But, from this point of view, two different periods must be considered. During the first, which stretched from the end of the thirteenth century till the middle of the fourteenth, the papal prohibition of Western trade with the Saracens, and the pax mongolica along the intercontinental routes from Europe to the Far East, gave a degree of predominance in the Levant trade to the Pontic lands. The spice routes led the merchants from central Asia to Trebizond and to Tana. From there, the Asian products came to Caffa to be redistributed to Constantinople and the West. It explains why the benefits from trading taxes in Caffa and Pera reached their pinnacle in the early 1340s, and slowed down after the middle of the century, which corresponds with the trade revival in Alexandria and Beirut. Silk and spices, jewels and precious stones were carried to the maritime outlets of the Crimea and from there brought to the West. From 1350 to the end of the period of Western domination in the Black Sea, Caffa played two roles. On the one hand, there was the market provided by the Russian princedoms, from which came important raw materials and foodstuffs. It has been often stressed that Caffa was a main wheat market for the West. From the opening of the Black Sea to Western trade after the treaty of Nymphaion (1261), to the last Venetian efforts to gain export licences from the Turks, the trade of wheat from Gazaria, mostly from Caffa itself, was the nodal point of the commercial policies of the Italian maritime republics in this region, for they urgently needed the grain resources of the Black Sea regions. For instance, it can be observed that in 1390 and 1391 Caffa provided 14 per cent and 10 per cent of Genoese grain supplies, and Romania 16 per cent and 18 per cent.18 Besides grain, the raw materials of the Russian forests had a great importance: Caffa became the place of concentration for Russian and Tatar furs, which came all the way from the Novgorod fairs. But Western merchants went also to Solgat and 17 18

ASG, Caffa Massaria 1381, ff. 88v–89r. Balard, Romanie génoise, vol. 2, 762.

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Sarai to take delivery of squirrel furs, the main Pontic category of fur, exported in carabie or packs to the West. Cow hides, wax and honey, salt and fish from the Sea of Tana, all passed through Caffa warehouses before being re-exported to Italy or to other Pontic cities. As a matter of fact, Caffa also played a third role in the economic system at the end of the Middle Ages: as an intermediary between the Pontic cities themselves. Carried along the salt lakes of Kiatskoe and Staroe, or on the bay of Touzlah, near the Kertch peninsula, Crimean salt filled up the vessels of traders bound for Trebizond and often for Genoa too. In the fish trade, the Western merchants also played the role of go-between. They carried sturgeon and other fish from the Don river to Trebizond, Simisso and Constantinople where the consumption of fish could not be satisfied by local resources. While the flow of Asian products dried up after Timur Leng’s conquests, Caffa, until the end of Genoese domination in the Crimea, remained a trading frontier for the outside world and also for its own needs. In fact, the local statute of 1449 enhanced the regular back and forth movement of the carts which brought to the city the main agricultural products of the country around it: fruits and vegetables for the needs of the inhabitants, and for crews who wanted to take on board fresh products before setting out on their sea journey.19 Among the many excise duties charged in Caffa, the cabella ihegatarie herbarum established a tax of 1 asper for each cart of vegetables, and of 6 aspers for each cart of grain, millet or barley on its entrance into the city.20 The low rate of these duties shows how much the city depended upon fresh supplies from its countryside, which was not a farming frontier for the Western settlers, but was one for the natives whose revenues depended upon the Crimean consumption market. We can speak of a social and ethnic division of labour, the natives being busy in local trade, the Westerners in international trade. A frontier city, Caffa represented a ‘living membrane’ from other points of view. As we pointed it out, the ordo de Caffa of 1316 mentioned the churches of the different Christian communities.21 The Greeks held two of them at the beginning of the fourteenth century, but about ten at the end of the century, while the Armenians had to content themselves with the three churches of St Sarchis, the Holy Trinity and St Gregorius. Those which remain today in Feodosya show a great similarity to the little parish churches of the Roman Catholics which are still preserved. It seems therefore that, though each community could have at its disposal its proper places of public worship, these were built according to quite a similar design, except for the sculpture surrounding the entrance, which does bear the influence of Oriental patterns. 19 20 21

Vigna, ‘Codice diplomatico’, vol. 7, pt 2, 648–9. M. Balard, ‘Notes sur la fiscalité génoise à Caffa au XVe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (1993), 231–3. Balard and Veinstein, ‘Continuité ou changement’, 88–9.

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The cultural exchanges also need to be stressed. It is quite obvious, for instance, that the famous Codex cumanicus, attributed to a Genoese interpreter by its last editor, was written for the use of merchants in the frontier society of Caffa, where different races and religions mingled, and where the commercial imperatives obliged the various ethnic groups to maintain constant relations.22 These cultural exchanges are proved by the high number of Armenian manuscripts, about 200 from the Crimea, whose colophons give much information about the Armenian community and from time to time about its relations with the other communities. For instance, two manuscripts were copied in the monastery of St Nicholas in Caffa, which was the seat of the Uniate Armenians; and in 1368 a precious Bible, written in Bologna, was bought in Solgat, by special command of Bishop Ter Yovhannes. The production of these manuscripts in Caffa is linked to the ups and downs of the Latin colonisation in the Crimea, and attests to the influence of the Italian scriptoria on Armenian manuscripts.23 From these examples, it becomes obvious that Caffa was not a frontier town, as it could appear from an external point of view: the walls and the garrison were only a symbolic boundary, steady in themselves, but porous to every influence. We may rather speak of a frontier zone, where the linguistic and cultural contrasts are blurred by the permanent demographic, economic and social exchanges. Does that create a peculiar manner of life? Pierre Toubert cited the fact that the frontier in the West often gave rise to a style of life characterised by social violence, by contempt for the rules and mechanisms that were in force in the rest of society.24 The world of the frontier would become the world of the outlaw, which made its own rules, different from those issued from the centre. As regards the law, it does not seem that Caffa developed its own rules. Law and the civil proceedings follow the Genoese model. The statutes of 1449 came from Genoa, but were perhaps written following consultation with the local elite. Caffa, it is true, was a privileged zone and a social melting pot. The poor immigrants from the West often found in the Crimea many occasions to climb the social ladder, while their departure from the West cleared their home country of disruptive people. In the same way, the prosperity of the frontier town drew towards it the marginal native people of the Tatar lands. The frontier played an important part in attracting and assimilating the minorities of the Other, in this case of the opposing Tatar state. But this assimilation depended mostly on the attitude of the external powers. The Genoese of Caffa were conscious that they represented the vanguard of Christendom in the face of the Tatars and then of the Ottomans. They were sustained in this feeling 22 23 24

K. Grønbech, Monumenta linguarum Asiae Minoris, vol. 1, Codex cumanicus, (Copenhagen, 1936). I. Rapti, ‘Les Arméniens en Crimée génoise: le témoignage des colophons’, forthcoming. Toubert, ‘Frontière et frontières’, 17.

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by Pope Clement VI who called Caffa a refugium singulare for the Oriental Christians and sent money for the building of a tower which bears the pope’s name to this day.25 Threatened by the sieges of the city in 1344 and 1346, and remembering the dead corpses of the plague victims which were hurled over their walls, they always mounted guard in the same way as the soldiers in Dino Buzzati’s famous novel, The Tatars’ Desert, trying to distinguish in the blurred horizons of the steppes the front lines of the enemy. They called on their motherland for help, more money for the restoration of the walls, more soldiers to keep them safe. But Genoa did not, or could not, answer according to their aspirations. And the fatal blow came not from the steppes – Timur-Leng stopped before arriving in the Crimea – but from the sea, when in 1475 Mehmet II finally decided to put an end to foreign settlement on Pontic shores. During two centuries, Caffa remained a Genuensis civitas in extremo Europae. But its situation on the border of the Tatar khanates, its position at the eastern limit of Genoese Gazaria, gave the city the principal characteristics of a frontier zone. Behind its actual walls and garrisons, we can observe a multi-ethnic society, engaged in constant exchanges, involving the full growth of the Armenian community and the decline of the Ligurian one, the stability of the Greek elements and infiltrations by the Tatars. From all points of view, the frontier was a living membrane, which rendered easier ethnic, economic, cultural and religious exchanges. But the success of this constant osmosis implies a stable equilibrium between the conquerors and the conquered, or at least an equal profit from colonisation for all communities. The breaking of this equilibrium in the second half of the fifteenth century, the loosening of relations between the colony and its homeland, bribery of the local authorities, and the decline in financial resources show the failure of this osmosis and explain how easy the Ottoman conquest of 1475 was, at the expense of a declining and demoralised population.

25

E. Skrzinska, ‘Inscriptions latines des colonies génoises de Crimée (Théodosie, Soudak, Balaklava), Atti della Società ligure di Storia patria, 56 (1928), 35–9. The inscription which commemorated the building of the tower bears the following lines: ANNIS MILLE DEI – TRECENTIS OTTO QUADRENI MENSSE (m)AII FUIT – OCTAVA LUCE PATENTE MAGNI PONTIFICIS CLEMENTIS GRACIA (d)ATA CR(u)CIS – IN AUGMENTUM – HEC TURRIS HEDIFICATA INNICIUN SUMPS(i)T – FUNDATA PRESTITE – YHESU EMULIS IN STR(a)GEN . . . [etc.]

Chapter 9

Granting Power to Enemy Gods in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades* Rasa Maûeika

Home to fierce pagan tribes, the lands east of the Baltic Sea – present-day Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Kaliningrad oblast (Prussia) – were up to the end of the fourteenth century physical frontiers of Christendom, ‘in paganorum frontaria’ (see Map 9.1).1 In a letter to King Valdemar II of Denmark which resulted in an expedition *

1

I would like to thank Mary Stevens, Vida Mockus and the rest of the librarians of Robarts Library at the University of Toronto who made this article possible by building such a comprehensive collection relating to East European history. The following abbreviations have been used in the notes: Dusburg = Petrus de Dusburg, ‘Cronica Terre Prussie’ in Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1861; reprinted Frankfurt am Main, 1965), 1–219. GL = Gedimino Laiškai (Letters of Gediminas), ed. V. Pašuta (V. Pashuto) and I. Štal (Vilnius, 1966). LUB = Liv-, Esth- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch, Abteilung 1, 6 vols (Reval and Riga 1853–73; repr. Aalen, 1967–74). MGH SRG = Heinrici chronicon Livoniae, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis (Hannover, 1955). PL = Patrologia Latina, ed. J.P. Migne. PrUB vol. 1, bk. 1 = Preußisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 1, book 1, ed. [R.] Philippi (Königsberg, 1882; repr. Aalen, 1961) Rh. Chron. = Livländische Reimchronik, ed. Leo Meyer (Padeborn, 1876; repr. Hildersheim, 1963). SRP = Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, ed. F. Hirsch, M. Töppen and E. Strehlke, 5 vols (Leipzig, 1861–74; repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1965). Archbishop Frederick of Riga, in a complaint to the pope against the Teutonic Order in 1305, writes of the fortresses near Riga ‘in paganorum frontaria constitutum’ which when ceded to the pagans ‘a frontaria recesserunt’: A. Seraphim, Das Zeugenverhör des Franciscus de Moliano (1312) (Königsberg, 1912), 164. In English on the Baltic frontier, see O. Halecki, Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe (New York, 1952), 79–83, 110–14; cf. R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993), 15–18 on ‘the last stronghold of native European paganism’, and 312 on Lithuania: ‘it is

153

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to Prussia, Pope Innocent III urged the king onwards to ‘the expansion of the boundaries of the Christian faith’, ‘terminos christiane fidei dilatandos’.2 These boundary-lands became in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the site of papally sanctioned crusades conducted by the military orders of the Sword-Brethren and the Teutonic Order,3 crusades justified as defensive warfare, as protection of missionaries who laboured ‘to multiply the numbers of faithful’.4 Peter Dusburg, a

2

3

4

sometimes overlooked that by the mid-fourteenth century this state, ruled by pagans, was the largest in Europe’. ‘Nos igitur tuum propositum in Domino commendantes, devotionem regiam monemus attentius et hortamur et . . . injungimus, quatinus amore illius, qui captivitatem nostram sua duxit virtute captivam, ad extirpandum paganitatis errorem et terminos christiane fidei dilatandos viriliter te accingas’. Bull ‘Suggestor scelerum’, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Vat. 7A, f.120, ep. 103; Bullarium Danicum 1198–1316, ed. A. Karurup (Copenhagen, 1932), 72, no. 73; PL, vol. 216, col. 116. On Valdemar’s expedition, P. Rebane, ‘Denmark, the papacy and the christianization of Estonia’, in Gli inizi del cristianesimo in Livonia-Lettonia (Vatican, 1989), 171–201, here 190. In English: A. Murray, ed., Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500 (Aldershot, 2001); E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier (London, 1980); N. Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580 (Oxford,1992), 322–75; J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (London, 1987), 161–5, 212–15. For those who argue that the expeditions in the Baltic were not a crusade, the best reply is Christopher Tyerman’s: ‘to ignore those writing, thinking and acting in ways they themselves deliberately associated with Holy Wars fought beneath the sign of the Cross and enjoying privileges first granted warrior-pilgrims to the Holy Land, would seem unduly prim’: The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998), 4. On Lithuania, S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe 1295–1345 (Cambridge, 1994); cf. R. Maþeika, ‘The Grand Duchy rejoins Europe: post-Soviet developments in the historiography of pagan Lithuania’, Journal of Medieval History, 21 (1995), 289–303. Innocent III, ‘Suggestor scelerum’ (as in note 2 above); ‘idolorum cultibus inherentes christiani nominis professores aborrent eosque, qui sibi predicant verbum Dei, tamquam maleficos persecuntur’. Cf. Innocent III, ‘Etsi verba’, PL, vol. 215, col. 429: ‘barbaris infestantibus ibi novellam plantationem fidei Christianae resistant’; cf. Innocent III, ‘Sicut ecclesiastice’, Die Register Innocenz III, vol. 2, ed. O. Hageneder, W. Maleczek and A.A. Strnad (Rome and Vienna, 1979) no. 182; Honorius III, ‘Compatientes angustiis’, PrUB vol. 1, bk. 1, no. 15, p. 11; cf. no. 22: ‘eos, qui iam per baptismum induerunt eundem defendere satagunt ab incursibus paganorum’. The chronicler Peter Dusburg stressed defense and sacrifice as the raison d’être of the Teutonic Knights, invited to the Baltic area ‘ad defensionem sue terre, fidei et fidelium’ (Dusb. II [5], SRP vol. 1, 36) and ‘pro defensionem fidei corpora sua tradere in mortem non formidant’ (Dusb. prologue, SRP vol. 1, 21–2). Henry of Livonia presents missionaries in the Baltic area as following German merchants, making converts, and then calling for crusaders to defend the ‘Livonian church’. The order of Sword Brothers is founded ‘ad conservandam in gentibus ecclesiam’ and ‘ad multiplicandum numerum fidelium’ (Chronicon Livoniae, VI [4], MGH SRG, 18). The Rhymed Chronicle of Livonia

Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades

155

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The state of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

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priest of the Teutonic Order, probably echoing Pope Innocent’s terminology, wrote many times that crusaders in the Baltic area fought to expand the boundaries of Christendom, ‘ad Cristianorum terminos dilatandos’, ‘in ampliando fines Cristianorum et dilatando’.5 Thus the Baltic area was seen in Christian sources as the site of a military and religious frontier which was expanding for reasons of defence, and which was supposed to disappear with the anticipated extermination of paganism or of the pagans.6 In this picture of unrelenting warfare there seems to be little room for the interchanges and accommodations which characterise most frontier societies.7 Yet pagans of the Baltic area and crusaders made treaties, developed rules of conduct, even struck up friendships.8 It is even possible that some religious beliefs crossed over the boundary between Christian and pagan. While such an effect of frontier proximities has become quite accepted for other areas of Europe, for example on the Castilian–Granadan frontier between Christian and Muslim, or the German frontier with the pagan Wends, it is new to Baltic historiography.9 This chapter will present some revealing episodes in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades.

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6 7 8

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presents the first crusades in Livonia as defensive (Rh. Chron, line 324: the pagans ‘tun der cristenheit vil schaden’), but is more blunt about the salvation, riches and honour to be won in the conflict: Bishop Albert promises the crusaders (Rh. Chron. lines 608–13) daz sie mit im wolden varn und ir sele wol bewarn in deme selbe lande: sie mochten ane schande irwerben ere und gut. Dusburg, SRP vol. 1, 59, 61, 66, 192 sections III (13), (18), (31), (360). There is another edition of Dusburg using the SRP text along with a German translation and some editorial comments plus additional identification of biblical references: K. Scholz and D. Wojtecki, Chronik des Preußenlandes. Chronica terre Prussie, Peter von Dusburg (Darmstadt, 1984). This provides the section numbers I have quoted. Dusburg prologue, SRP vol. 1, 23: ‘per fratres predictos omnes gentes, que inhabitabant terram Prussie . . . exterminate sunt’. H. Donnan and T.M. Wilson write of the ‘extremely dynamic dialectical relationships’ in border areas: Border Approaches (Lanham and New York, 1994), 2. On pagan–Christian trade and treaties, see R. Maþeika, ‘Of cabbages and knights: trade and trade treaties with the infidel on the northern frontier’, Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 63–76; S.C. Rowell, ‘A pagan’s word: Lithuanian diplomatic procedure 1200–1385’, Journal of Medieval History, 18 (1992), 145–60. On chivalrous conduct and friendships, R. Maþeika, ‘Amicable enmity: mutual respect between pagan Lithuanians and crusaders in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades’, forthcoming. A. MacKay, ‘Religion, culture and ideology on the late medieval Castilian–Granadan frontier’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), 217–43 (here 221–2); F. Lotter, ‘The crusading idea and the conquest of the region east of the Elbe’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, 267–306 (here 279) citing J. Petersohn and

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For the chroniclers and probably for most of the combatants, a battle raged of gods as well as men: pagans vanquished in a battle would be forced to affirm, as they submitted to servitude, ‘we know your God to be greater than our gods’,10 while defeated Christians might become a burnt offering to pagan gods.11 We would expect undefeated combatants to deny the validity of their enemy’s religion. Yet even the sparse documentary record shows that both Christians and pagans in the Baltic area were willing to grant the enemy’s religion at least enough official status to accept its rituals as the sanction of a peace treaty.12 Here we will discuss only the evidence of the chronicles of the Baltic crusades which hint at occasional tendencies on both sides to accept certain beliefs of their enemies, and to view their enemy’s religion as having powers quite independent of the enemy host. For Christians, this is evident when chroniclers or the crusaders they describe actualise pagan gods, in other words, when they seem to believe in their power and to accept the efficacy of pagan divination of the future. For the beliefs of Old Prussian, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian pagans, we have only Christian sources, apart from some scattered archaeological evidence; thus any reconstruction of mentalities is very difficult. However, if we can accept that the Baltic crusade chronicles (often eyewitness accounts) may sometimes truly describe pagan actions at least on the battlefield, within sight of the Christian forces, we can catch glimpses of pagans not content to link Christ’s power solely with the course of battle. Perhaps affected by the crusaders’ constant assertion that Christ is victorious even in defeat, pagans try to kill, exorcise or sometimes propitiate Jesus

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R. Bartlett on Wendish pagan priests who ‘allowed the people to worship the German God side by side with the heathen idols’. Cf. R. Bartlett, ‘The conversion of a pagan society in the Middle Ages’, History, 70 (1985), 185–201, here 190. ‘Cognoscimus Deum vestrum maiorem diis nostris’, Henry of Livonia XIV (11). For this chronicle there are two standard editions: Albert Bauer, ed. and trans. Heinrich von Lettland, Livländische Chronik (Würzburg, 1959), and MGH SRG (see my list of abbreviations) which I use in this chapter (p. 85 for this reference). Dusburg III (91) and III (338), SRP vol. 1, 101, 185; Wigand of Marburg, SRP vol. 2, 638 (this last pointed out by Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 124). Cf. A. Damarackaitë, ‘Karo belaisviø aukojimo paprotys baltø kraštuose XIII–XIV amûiuje’, Darbai ir Dienos, 21 (2000), 17–38. The most striking example is a limited peace treaty concluded by the Lithuanians and the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order in 1338. To seal their oath, the Christians kissed a cross, while the pagans, according to the text of the treaty (presumably drawn up by Christian scribes) ‘also did their holy rites concerning this’ [‘oc ere hilligh hir up hebben ghe dan’], Russisch-Livländische Urkunden, Russko-Livonskie Akty, ed. K.E. Napiersky (St Petersburg, 1868) no. 83, p. 69 and GL, 195. Other examples, Rowell, ‘A pagan’s word’ (as in note 8 above). Compare French missionary use of the Indian calumet or ‘peace pipe’ in dealings with North American natives: R. White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 1991), 21.

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even when they are the victors. On both sides, this is not yet acculturation, still less is it tolerance, but rather a sort of ‘going native’, an often sullen suspicion that the enemy can call on strange powers which are mysterious and effective. Again, it must be stressed that this chapter deals with exceptions to the usual pattern. Generally, there was not much shared between Christian and pagan on the warfront of the Baltic crusade, and a state of almost constant warfare persisted for nearly 200 years. And yet, especially in the wars with the Lithuanians who were able so successfully to resist the crusaders (partly by adopting their weaponry and methods of fighting),13 there are traces of a growing respect, an awareness of customs, sometimes even real friendship between Christian and pagan – this despite St Paul’s reproach, ‘and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?’ (2 Corinthians 6:15), which seems to be the source of a remark by the chronicler Henry of Livonia.14 Nevertheless, Peter Dusburg, an educated priest-chronicler of the Teutonic Order’s crusade against the Prussians and Lithuanians, could present paganism not as the work of the Devil but rather as the product of simple ignorance.15 Such a view is reminiscent of those nineteenthcentury colonisers who equated Christianity with scientific progress, although Dusburg harshly condemns pagans who will not convert once they are exposed to Christianity.16 The Prussians, he writes, when the Germans first encountered them

13

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Lithuania’s ‘gods were old, but its guns were new’, in the apt phrase of R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 312. Cf. A. Nikþentaitis, ‘XIII–XV a. lietuviø kariuomenës bruoþai (organizacija, taktika, paproèiai)’ and E. Gudavièius, ‘Lietuviø paðauktinës kariuomenës organizacijos bruoþai’, both in Karo Archyvas, 13 (1992), 3–33 and 43–118. 2 Corinthians 6.15: ‘quae autem conventio Christi ad Belial aut quae pars fideli cum infidele’, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart, 1975) vol. 2, 1794; Henry of Livonia XXX (1), MGH SRG, 216: ‘non sit coniuncto conveniens Christi cum Belial’. Friendship between Christian and pagan: R. Maþeika, ‘Amicable enmity’ as in note 8 above. On Peter Dusburg, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. H. Patze (Sigmaringen, 1987), 449–54; M. Pollakówna, Kronika Piotra z Dusburga (Wrocùaw, 1968); Z. Ivinskis, Rinktiniai Raðtai, II (Rome, 1986) 74–6; H. Bauer, Peter von Dusburg und die Geschictsschreibung des Deutschen Ordens im 14. Jahrhundert in Preußen (Berlin, 1935; repr. Vaduz, 1965); K. Scholz and D. Wojtecki, eds, Peter von Dusburg, Chronik des Preußenlandes (Darmstadt, 1984) 324–6. Compare Dusburg’s view of the Prussians with this passage by John L. Nicholas, a settler who accompanied missionaries to the Maori of New Zealand: ‘though the savage does possess all the passions of nature, pure and unadulturated, and though he may in many instances feel stronger and more acutely than the man of civilized habits, still he is inferior to him in every other respect . . . the former stands enveloped in the dark clouds of ignorance, the latter goes forth in the bright sunshine of knowledge; the former views the works of his Creator through the medium of a blind superstition, the latter

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had no knowledge of God, because they were too ‘simple’ to understand Him by natural reason and too illiterate to read holy writings.17 Because of this ignorance and simplicity, the Baltic pagans ‘in error worshipped all created things as if they were God’, from the sun and moon down to four-footed beasts and toads.18 This view may be patronising, but by medieval standards it is kind, for an error is not a sin, the simple-minded are not culpable. Still, ignorance is not bliss, it is an illusion fostered by the Devil, ‘illusio dyaboli’.19 Prussians of his own day, on the other hand, are excoriated by Dusburg as ‘Filii Belial, filia Belial’: they cannot be excused by ignorance, having been exposed to Christianity for a century.20 All this makes pagan gods unreal, a mistake or delusion, perhaps utilised by the Devil for his own purposes. Yet even in Peter Dusburg’s chronicle, the Devil is so active in his support of pagan beliefs that the pagans begin to seem not simple-minded but rather misled by actual events. Dusburg relates as a miracle a story about Theodoric, a high official of the Teutonic Order, seeking to cure a certain Prussian of the ‘error’, as Dusburg calls it, of believing that white horses were bad luck. Brother Theodoric bought three white horses in a row for the Prussian, and they were all suffocated by the Devil, dyabolo. Theodoric bought a fourth horse, asserting that he would continue to buy horses until the pagan had seen his error. This fourth horse remained alive and the Prussian became a zealous Christian.21

17 18 19

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through the light of reason and of truth; the one beholds Nature and is bewildered, the other clearly “Looks through nature up to Nature’s God”’. The Letters and Journals of Marsden, ed. J. Elder (Dunedin, 1932), 86–7, cited in Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values, ed. A.P. Cohen (London, 2000), 47. Dusburg III (5), SRP vol. 1, 53: ‘Prutheni noticiam dei non habuerunt. Quia simplices fuerunt, eum ratione comprehendere non potuerunt, et quia literas non habuerunt, ymmo in scripturis ipsum speculari non poterant.’ Ibid., ‘quia sic deum non cognoverunt . . . errando omnem creaturam pro deo coluerunt, scilicet solem, lunam et stellas, tonitrua, volatilia, quadrupedia eciam, usque ad bufonem’. Ibid., 54. Cf. old place names in Prussia such as ‘Teufelsberg’ and ‘Teufelswerder’ which Reinhard Wenskus considers to be possible sites of former pagan holy places: Wenskus, ‘Beobachtungen eines Historikers zum Verhältnis von Burgwall, Heiligtum und Siedlung in Gebiet der Prussen’ in Ausgewählte Aufsätze zum frühen und preußischen Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1986), 301–11, here 308. Dusburg, III (95) and III (130), SRP vol. 1, 102, 115. Once pagans were in contact with Christians, they were no longer to be excused from converting on the grounds of ignorance. Throughout Christendom, there was no official toleration of conquered pagans continuing to practice their religion, as conquered Muslims were allowed to do: Bartlett, Making of Europe, 296. Also, J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels (Liverpool, 1979), and the comments on the inhabitants of the Canary Islands in David Abulafia’s chapter in this volume. Dusburg, III (6), SRP vol. 1, 55. Cf. contemporary German translation of Dusburg’s

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The medieval reader of this story might be forgiven for supposing that the pagan’s views were not in fact erroneous, and that white horses in his stables were indeed unlucky. The Prussian’s error seems to lie in not adopting Christianity right away to combat the supernatural forces working to reinforce pagan belief. In some ways, this is a typical and orthodox medieval miracle story, but it contrasts oddly with Dusburg’s view that paganism is simply ignorance and illiteracy, in which pagans may persist through a pride inspired by Satan. Here Dusburg at the very least incorporates another source in which paganism is not simply a lack, but an active evil promoted by the Devil, and missionary work is not only persuasion but an active fight against demons.22 Thus is power granted to enemy gods, though not as independent deities but as demons, which in Christian theology are fallen angels created by God and subject to Him. The stage had been set by the Septuaginta emendata version of the Psalms, which became enshrined in the Vulgate. Here Psalm 95:5 proclaims, ‘quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia’, ‘for all the gods of the pagans are but demons’, although the original Hebrew speaks not of demons but of ‘things good for nothing, vanities, idols’ (hence the King James Bible’s rendering of this verse: ‘for all the gods of the nations are idols’).23 Medieval writers, of course, depended on the Vulgate and on the interpretation of this passage by St Augustine of Hippo in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, where pagan gods are demons.24 However, we should note

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chronicle by Nicolaus von Jeroschin, SRP vol. 1, 351–2. The Prussian converts to Christianity from the pagan faith ‘which he served for the Devil’s glory’: lines 4300–4302. Cf. Vera Matuzova’s observation, that for Dusburg the Christian life is a war, ‘Ideologiczna podstwa agresji krzy¿ackiej na Prusy’, in Ekspansja niemieckich zakonów rycerskich w strefie baùtyku od XIII do poùowy XVI wieku, ed. M. Biskup (Toruñ, 1990), 15–23, here 21, although this episode demonstrates that it is not an absolute rule that Dusburg’s chronicle ‘has no talk of missionary activity by the Teutonic Order’ (ibid., 20). Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, vol. 1, 890. Cf. ibid., 891 ‘omnes enim dii populorum sculptilia’ of the Liber psalmorum iuxta Hebraicum translatus; also see J. Strong, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville, 1979), 506 of Concordance and p. 13, no. 457 of Hebrew dictionary. D.F. Johnson, ‘Euhemerisation versus demonisation, the pagan gods and Aelfric’s De falsis diis’ in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L.A.J.R. Houwen and A.A. MacDonald (Groningen, 1995), 38. The excerpt given in Johnson’s n. 7, supposedly from Enarrationes in psalmos (a work very difficult to find unabridged) is in fact a paraphrase, not a translation, has whole sentences not in St Augustine, and betrays the preoccupations of the mid-nineteeth-century editor rather than those which might be attributed to St Augustine. See ‘Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Operum, Enarrationes in psalmos’, in Collectio selecta SS. Ecclesiae Patrum complectens exquisitissima opera tum dogmatica et moralia, tum apologetica et oratoria, vol. 117, ed. A.B. Caillau and M.N.S. Guillon (Paris, 1837), 433–6.

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that Augustine stressed the weakness of the demons in face of God’s power.25 The chroniclers of the Baltic crusade, as we shall see, sometimes actually stress the power of the ‘demon gods’. Pope Innocent III specifically equated the deities of the Baltic tribes with demons, as when he wrote that these pagans give to ‘unclean spirits’, spiritibus inmundis, the honour due to God.26 The thirteenth-century chroniclers Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Thomas of Cantimpré describe the religion of the pagan Baltic tribes as worship of demons.27 For Henry of Livonia, chronicler of the crusade in Livonia led by the Order of Sword-Brethren,28 a pagan’s vision of a warning god was an ‘illusionem demonis’.29 In the Rhymed Chronicle of Livonia, the pagans of Prussia burn weapons in a funeral pyre to satisfy ‘the devil in the other world’.30 Chroniclers nevertheless can actualise pagan gods without labelling them as demons: Henry of Livonia describes Christian priests ejecting ‘Tharaphita, who was the god of the Osilians’ from a fort on the Estonian island of Saaremaa [Ösel].31 A story in Peter Dusburg’s chronicle implies that pagans have mysterious powers, which are not overtly blamed on demons. It tells of a pagan hill fort in Skalva, in northern Prussia, which supposedly withstood siege for nine years because, unbeknownst to the besiegers, it had a large fish pond within its walls. This makes an entertaining anecdote, perhaps taken by Dusburg from oral tradition, but then he adds: ‘indeed, it is a marvel; then it abounded in fish, when the Skalovians were pagans, now, however, when they are

25

26 27

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29 30 31

Augustine, ‘Enarrationes’ in Caillau, Collectio, vol. 117, 435: ‘cum enim dixisset, “Terribilis super omnes deos”, subjunxit, “Quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia”. Non est magnum, esse super daemonia, et tu, si volueris, eris sed si in illum [Christ’s redemption] crederis.’ Innocent III, ‘Sicut ecclesiasticae’, Die Register Innocenz III, vol. 2 (as in note 4 above) no. 182, p. 348, and LUB vol. 1, 14; Innocent III or Honorius III, ‘Si universa, que habes’, PrUB vol. I, bk. 1, no. 12, p. 9. On ‘spiritibus inmundis’ cf. Mt. 10:2, etc. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De rerum proprietatibus, section 88, ‘De Livonia’, in Bartholomaei Anglici, de genuinis rerum coelestium, terrestrium et inferarum proprietatibus, libri XVIII (Frankfurt, 1650; repr. Frankfurt, 1964), 670; Thomas Cantipratanus, Bonum universale de apibus, ‘De Dusiis daemonibus’, extract in W. Mannhardt, Letto-Preußische Götterlehre (Riga, 1936), 48, both reprinted by N. Vëlius, ed. Baltø religijos ir mitologijos ðaltiniai (Vilnius, 1996), 232 and 249. On Henry of Livonia, A. Bauer, Heinrich von Lettland, Livländische Chronik (Würzburg, 1959), ix–xxxiv; P. Johansen, ‘Die Chronik als Biographie, Heinrich von Lettlands Lebensgang und Weltanschauung’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas n.s. 1 (1953), 1–24; J.A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (Madison, 1961). Henry of Livonia, X (14), MGH SRG , 45. Liv. Rh. Chron., lines 3888–9, ‘dar mite solden sie stillen / den tuvel in jener werlde dort’. Cf. lines 2660–62. Henry of Livonia, XXX (5), MGH SRG, 220, ‘ut Tharaphitam, qui deus fuit Osilianorum, eiciant’.

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Christians, it breeds frogs; nor has the said fish pond enough water to suffice to maintain fish. Why this should be, I do not know; God knows, whose judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out [Romans 1:33].’32 Even if the present state of the fish pond in Skalva were a well-known fact (which is unlikely), Dusburg could easily have omitted it while preserving the entertaining tale of the besieged fooling the besiegers; or he could have blamed the state of the pond on Skalovian non-cooperation. Perhaps Dusburg, always didactic, is here seeking to counter with scriptural quotations a rumour among his intended audience of Teutonic Order Knights that pagans had mysterious powers, lost when paganism was abandoned. Dusburg also reports two instances in which pagan Lithuanians cast lots in order to divine the future correctly.33 In one account, the Teutonic Knights lie in wait for the Lithuanians, see them coming, and then one pagan, ‘having cast lots according to the pagan rite, cries out in a loud voice, “Let’s go back at once, there’s a German trap here!” ’.34 Since this battle took place only three years before Peter Dusburg wrote his chronicle, this may well be an eyewitness account of a real occurrence; and it certainly would not require miraculous powers for one individual among all the pagans to be especially attuned to hidden dangers. Still, Dusburg clearly implies that awareness of the trap results from the pagan rite of casting lots. Peter Dusburg was a priest and a learned man who wrote his chronicle for the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and those members of the order educated enough to understand Latin.35 A much more popular work is the German-language ‘Rhymed Chronicle of Livonia’ (Livländische Rheimchronik), whose anonymous author wrote for the entertainment of the fighting knights.36 In this work, the power of pagan deities

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Dusburg III(181), SRP vol. 1, p.133: ‘ecce mira res, tunc habundabat piscibus, cum essent Scalowite infideles; nunc autem fovet ranas, cum sunt Cristiani; nec habet dicta piscina tantum de aqua, que sufficeret piscibus ad manendum. Cur hoc sit, nescio; deus scit, cujus incomprehensibilia sunt judicia et investigabiles vie.’ Cf. Jeroschin, SRP vol. 1, 489, lines 16067–16078. Dusburg III(347) SRP vol. 1, 189 ; cf. Dusburg III(241), SRP vol. 1, 153. Dusburg III (347), SRP vol. 1, 189: ‘sed Lethowini sequentes dum venirent ad locum, ubi fratres posuerant insidias, unus missa sorte secundum ritum gentilitatis clamavit alta voce, cito revertamur, insidie Theutonicorum sunt hic’. Cf. Jeroschin, SRP vol. 1, 602–3, lines 25, 940–46. Dusburg identifies himself as a priest at the beginning of his chronicle, SRP vol. 1, 21. On his sources and learning, see works cited in note 15 above. On the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, N. Angermann, ‘Die mittelalterliche Chronistik’, in Geschichte der Deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung, ed. G. von Rauch (Cologne, 1986), 9–10; K. Helm and W. Ziesemer, Die Literatur des Deutschen Rittenordens (Gießen, 1951), 147–9; A. Murray, ‘The Structure, Genre and Intended Audience of the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle’, in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, 235–51. Cf. J.C. Smith and W.L. Urban, The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, Translated with an Historical Introduction (Bloomington, IN, 1977), xxi–xxii.

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is more overt. The Rhymed Chronicle actually states that Perkûnas, worshipped by the Lithuanians, makes the Baltic Sea freeze so that a Lithuanian army can cross easily: als es Perkune ir apgot gap das nimmer so hart gevros.37

Although Perkûnas is called not God but an ‘apgot’ (false god), he is here portrayed as real, with real power.38 In two passages in the Rhymed Chronicle pagan divination of the future is shown as correct. In one, a captured Lithuanian noble, Lengvenis, is sitting at table with the Teutonic Knights, when he suddenly reads of his brother’s death in the bones on his plate. Immediately afterwards, messengers arrive bearing this news.39 In the second episode, a pagan ‘blutkarl’ casts lots, bleeds an animal, and 37 38

39

Rh. Chron., lines 1435–7. My thanks to Dr Kurt V. Jensen of the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, for pointing out a parallel in Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, book 10, where the pagan King Haakon of Norway, in a battle against the Danes, sacrifices two of his sons to the gods. Saxo condemns this as ‘infamous’ and ‘stupid’, not because it will not work but because loss of children is too dear a price to pay for a victory in battle. Saxo records that in fact Haakon won because a storm blew up which wrecked Danish ships and blinded the Danes with hail, Saxonis Grammatici, Gesta Danorum, ed. A. Holder (Strassburg, 1886), 327. Rh. Chron., lines 3019–45: Lengewin an eime tische saz mit den brudern da man az. an ein schulderbein er sach, des quam sin hertze in ungemach. er sprach, ‘die Littowen liden not, min bruder ist geslagen tot. ein her im mime hove lac sint gestern biz and diesen tac.’ daz bein hat manchem sint gelogen. Lengewin was doch unbetrogen, als er da vor hatte gesehen nach sinem gelouben iz was geschehen, die reise was im umbekant. vil schiere ein bote quam gerant, do horte er wol die mere wie ez irgangen were zu Littowen in dem lande. der sprach, ‘wir han zu pfande wib unde kinder . . . ouch ist der manne vil geslagen. . . . Lengewines bruder wolde jagen die afterhute uf daz her, sie satzten sich kein im zu wer mit menlichem mute.

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correctly predicts victory in a forthcoming battle for the Samogitians (Þemaièiai), a people residing in present-day western Lithuania (Þemaitija). After the battle, the Samogitians ‘say thanks to their gods / that in this strife they had success’; there is no indication that this is a mistaken belief.40 In both these passages, the anonymous author may simply be factually describing events: Lengvenis may have been seized with a foreboding of his brother’s death in front of Teutonic Knights, a pagan priest may have predicted victory at a feast described by pagan captives (after all, there is a 50:50 chance of being right in predicting victory or defeat). Still, the Christian author does not simply mention these episodes as facts; he devotes much space to a speech supposedly made by the pagan sacrificer, and says of Lengvenis’s scapularmancy, ‘the bone has lied to many, yet Lengvenis was not deceived. As he had foreseen . . . it had happened; he had not known [beforehand] about the raid [in which his brother was killed].’41 The Christian poet emphasises the power of pagan rituals. Even more interesting is the Rhymed Chronicle’s description of Teutonic Knights, accompanied by native Kur allies, riding happily to battle because ‘their chips fell oft full well for them’.42 The reference here, as is made clear by Jerry Smith and William Urban (who translate the passage as ‘their oracle sticks fell propitiously’),43 is to woodchips or sticks cast on the ground as a form of divination by the Kurs. Even if this soothsaying had been done by the native allies, the passage clearly implies that the Teutonic Knights in the party were made happy by the pagan prediction, which was in fact correct: the Teutonic Knights did take their enemies unaware.44 This seemed so odd to one modern translator that she

40

41 42

43 44

do wart von der hute Lengewines bruder irslagen Rh. Chron., lines 4680–89, 4873–6: ir blutekirl der warf zu hant, sin loz nach ir alden site, zu hant er blutete allez mite ein quek, als er wol wiste. . . . [after the battle], die Sameiten teilten do pferde und waren vollen vro und saiten iren goten danc daz an deme strite in gelanc. Rh. Chron., lines 3027–31, quoted in note 39 above. Rh. Chron., line 7229–34: sie waren algemeine vro und ir mut der stunt also, daz ez in solde wol ergan. in viel vil dicke wol ir span, ir vogel in vil wol sanc, so pruveten sie, daz in gelanc. Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, 89. Rh. Chron., lines 7245–80.

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altered this sentence to reflect a more familiar superstition, rendering the passage, ‘their dice fell luckily’.45 But the original clearly has the word ‘spân’ (chip, shaving) which is used in another passage of the Rhymed Chronicle to describe a pagan divination ritual performed by the Kurs.46 In this chronicle, the crusader knights have ‘gone native’ to the extent of depending on native divination rituals as much as on prayer to cheer them for battle. This had already been noticed by Wilhelm Mannhardt, the pioneering scholar of Baltic religion,47 who pointed out that the Teutonic Knights were several times accused by the bishop of Riga of practicing divination in the manner of pagans, and were ordered not to do this by papal legates.48 Although these accusations come from the order’s enemies and the Teutonic Knights denied all such claims, we should note that accusations of divination sometimes appear in the same documents as assertions that the Teutonic Knights when in enemy territory cremated their dead in pagan fashion.49 Cremation was also vigorously denied by the order; but it is substantiated 45 46 47 48

49

A. Jaunzemis, Livlandische Reimchronik, The Rhyme Chronicle of Livonia (Echo Publishers, 1978), section 7209. Rh. Chron., line 2485, ‘in was der span gevallen wol’. W. Mannhardt, Letto-Preußische Götterlehre (Riga, 1936), 78–9; pointed out by G. Beresnevièius, ‘Dis iuvantibus – Apie lietuviø religinæ savimonæ XIII–XIV a.’ Naujasis Þidinys-Aidai (2000, no. 3), 81–88, at 85. Mannhardt, Letto-Preußische, 78–9; A. Seraphim, Das Zeugenverhör des Franciscus de Moliano (1312) (Königsberg, 1912), 205 (reply of the procurator of the Teutonic Order): ‘[286] item quod predicti preceptor et fratres non didicerunt observare et cedere auguriis et divinacionibus ac ipsas divinaciones colere vel visitare. [287] Item quod predicti preceptor et fratres prohibent et prohibuerunt, ne aliqui credant divinacionibus et auguriis ac ipsas divinaciones et auguria observent, sicut credunt et observant pagani dictarum parcium’; Engelbert, Bishop of Dorbat (Tartu), ‘executor seu iudex ad infrascripta a sede apostolica deputatus’, in 1336 orders the master and brothers of the Teutonic Order in Livonia ‘quod auguria et sortilegia seu divinationes non exerceatis, sed haec per statuta, in vestris capitulis facienda, fieri prohibeatis’, LUB vol. 2, no. 778, col. 303 (Mannhardt’s reference for this has a typographical error for the page number). LUB vol. 2, no. 778, col. 303; Zeugenverhor, 205. I have not included cremation among my examples of actualisation of enemy gods because there would be such a strong practical incentive for it during short-term raids into enemy territory, especially in winter, when the ground was too hard for burial. The custom could have begun during wars with the Prus, who may have had the custom of severing arms and heads from enemy bodies (cf. body of Agememnon in the Oresteia), and may have tried to sell the heads to the friends of the dead. (Johannes Canaparius, Vita s. Adalberti episcopi and Bruno von Querfurt, Passio sancti Adelberti, in SRP vol. 1, 230 and 234). Therefore cremation may have been viewed by the Teutonic Knights as a necessary evil, a sin committed out of necessity, and something which involved no thought of pagan gods. Nevertheless, cremation was known to be part of the religious rituals of the pagans of the Baltic area (rebellious Estonians dug up their dead from Christian cemeteries and ‘more

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by the order’s own chronicler, Herman of Wartberg.50 Therefore I see reason to believe Rigan accusations rather than the Teutonic Order’s denials. Did the pagans, in their turn, start to believe in the power of the Christian religion of their enemies? Especially in the first century of the Baltic crusades, the Baltic pagans probably tended to view Jesus as an adjunct of the Germans, to be submitted to in defeat, and to be cast off with impunity when the situation changed. The Latvian, Estonian and Prussian tribes in these chronicles are constantly accepting baptism after defeat, and then rejecting Christianity as soon as they grow stronger.51 But when losing to Christians, the pagans might cry out that they were ‘being eaten up and consumed by the God of the Christians’, as in an eyewitness account of a Liv attack upon Riga.52 This ‘God of the Christians’ could also be seen as a helper by the pagan allies of the Germans, as in an eyewitness account by the chronicler Henry of Livonia concerning some women of the Jerwa region captured by Osilians (inhabitants of Saaremaa) and then rescued by a party of German knights which included the chronicler. He reports that the Jerwa women ‘beat with sticks the Osilians who had fallen, saying, “the God of the Christians strikes you down!” ’53 The region of Jerwa in Estonia, according to the same passage in Henry of Livonia, at that time ‘was ready’ to pay tribute to the Sword Brethren of Livonia and to adopt Christianity; thus these women were probably not yet Christians.54 Some episodes in the chronicles reveal pagan conceptualisation of the Christian deity as a physical presence: Henry of Livonia writes that apostatising Livs declared they were washing off their baptism in the Daugava River and ‘sending [it] back to the land of the Germans’;55 also that Estonians washed and swept out their homes and

50 51 52 53 54 55

paganorum pristino cremaverunt’, Henry of Livonia XXVI [8]), and was officially condemned by the Teutonic Order as pagan custom which the order forced Prus converts to abjure: see the treaty of Christburg, PrUB vol. 1, bk. 1, no. 218, p. 161. Denials, Zeugenverhör, 205, item 285. Herman of Wartberg on a battle lost to the Lithuanians in 1375: ‘at daybreak the land marshal found the nude, despoiled bodies of the fallen, which they burned’ (SRP vol. 2, 109). Dusburg III (31), III (89), III (189); Henry of Livonia XIV (5) and passim; Rh. Chron., lines 5243, 6457–60; Henry of Livonia IX (11) acknowledges that conversions are not to be trusted: the Livs, ‘licet baptizati, tamen adhuc rebelles erant et increduli’. Henry of Livonia, XIV (5), MGH SRG, 76, ‘Et cum audirent sonitum campane magne, dicebant se ab illo Deo christianorum commedi atque consumi’. Henry of Livonia, XXIII (9), MGH SRG, 166, ‘percusserunt eciam ipse cum fustibus Osilienses iam ante percussos, dicentes, “Te percutiat Deus christianorum!” ’ Henry of Livonia, XXIII (9), MGH SRG, 165, ‘Fuerunt autem Gerwanenses ab ecclesia Lyvonensi iam sepius expugnati, et erant filii eorum obsides in Lyvonia et tam censum suum annuatim solvere, quam baptismum recipere fuerant parati.’ Henry of Livonia, I (9), MGH SRG, 4, ‘baptismum, quem in aqua susceperant, in Duna se lavando removere putant, remittendo in Theuthoniam’. Cf. Henry of Livonia, II (8), 11.

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fort, thinking to clean out Christianity when they reverted to paganism,56 just as Christians in Spain might seek to ‘throw out the filth of Muhammad’ by spraying holy water around captured mosques.57 Also in Henry’s chronicle, a Liv soothsayer tries to decide from his observation of which leg a horse extends first whether to grant life or death to Bishop Theodoric, whom the Livs have taken prisoner. When the horse portends life, the soothsayer decides that the Christian God is riding on the back of the horse, and orders him wiped off it.58 All these are stories in which the chronicler seeks to show the ignorance of the Estonian pagans, and they are probably meant to amuse the Christian audience. Yet this does not make them unbelievable per se. There are no similar episodes in later chronicles, but these deal with different peoples and with a period in which the pagans knew more about the dogmas of their Christian enemy. In the absence of other evidence, a modern historian can only waver, bemused, between over-credulity and a dismissiveness which would eliminate most chronicles as historical sources because they have some literary traits. Other interpretation problems are raised by Peter Dusburg’s story that, after losing a battle some time around 1260, Prussian captives said, ‘that they had seen in the thick of battle a most beautiful maiden in the air leading the banner of the brethren [of the Teutonic Order]’. The Prussians became so afraid of this vision that ‘their hearts withered’ and they could not put up a defence.59 Now, this may seem like a miracle story about the Virgin Mary inserted by the chronicler; yet (as I have shown elsewhere) it is very uncharacteristic of Dusburg’s chronicle.60 Perhaps the pagans did believe they had seen Mary, sacred to the Christians, amongst the German banners which may have borne her likeness.61 Old Prussians seem to have believed that the noble dead rode across the sky in shining armour,62 so it would not have been a great leap to place the Virgin above the battleground. On the other hand, perhaps the proud 56 57 58 59

60 61

62

Henry of Livonia, XXVI (8), MGH SRG, 191. MacKay, ‘Religion, culture and ideology’ (as in note 9 above), 229. Henry of Livonia, I (10) MGH SRG, 4. Dusburg III (141), SRP vol. 1, 120, ‘Captivi autem, qui ligati ducebantur a fratribus, dixerunt, quod vidissent in actu bellandi unam pulcherrimam virginem vexillum fratrum in aere ducentem, de qua visione tam meticulosi facti fuerunt, et emarcuit cor eorum, quod nullus ad defensionem ponere se audebat.’ R. Maþeika, ‘ “Nowhere was the fragility of their sex apparent”: Women warriors in the Baltic crusade chronicles’, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500, ed. A.V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), 229–48 (here 244). The Teutonic Order had a Marian banner, but the earliest mention of it is in Wigand of Marburg’s chronicle, written in the late fourteenth century, SRP vol. 2, 454: S. Ekdahl, Die ‘Banderia Prutenorum’ des Jan D³ugosz – eine Quelle zur Schlacht bei Tannenberg 1410 (Göttingen, 1976), 25–6. In the treaty of Christburg in 1249, Prussians promised not to believe pagan seers who ‘mendaciter asserunt, se videre presentem defunctum per medium celi volantem in equo, armis fulgentibus decoratum’, PrUB vol. 1, bk. 1, no. 218, p. 161.

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Prussians are only giving an excuse for their defeat, but still in terms that show some knowledge of the enemy religion.63 Actualisation of Christ through physical attack may be indicated in the fourteenthcentury chronicles (Peter Dusburg, Herman of Wartberg and Wigand of Marburg) when they include tales of pagan Prussians and Lithuanians breaking rather than looting crucifixes and statues as well as trampling the communion host in churches they are plundering.64 These may be mythical atrocity stories, yet we should note that the most emotive image for medieval Christians, trampling the communion host, is described only twice in the chronicles we are discussing, once by Peter Dusburg and once by Wigand of Marburg.65 If our chroniclers were in the habit of manufacturing atrocity stories, this topos would surely be more frequent. Of the two instances we can find, Dusburg’s account may well be propagandistic, since it recounts Prussian raids into Poland which provided the excuse for the Teutonic Order, originally founded in the Holy Land, to concentrate its operations in the Baltic area. The second account, in Wigand of Marburg’s chronicle, states that ‘King Vytenis’ of Lithuania (ruled c. 1296–1315) after a battle in Prussia had the Christian captives led up to him, and forced them to bring him a communion host. Throwing this down and trampling it, the Lithuanian ruler mocked the captives, saying that their God was powerless. Soon a large force of crusaders attacked him and he barely escaped with his life.66 This may be an invented story to exhort Christians to battle (although in a purely invented story the mocker of the sacrament would surely be killed). On the other hand it may be an example of the ‘empowerment’ of a Christian religious symbol by the pagan leader. If the story is simply invented, one would expect Vytenis to be demonised by the chronicler. In fact, attacking the central aspect of the crusaders’ religion does not make him into an incomprehensible alien ‘other’ in Wigand’s chronicle. Here the story of the trampled host is followed by an account of Vytenis and the Teutonic Knight who almost slew him joking together after the battle, while a peace treaty is

63

64 65 66

Of course, knowledge of the enemy’s religion did not necessarily mean acceptance; Herkus Mantus, the leader of the great Prus revolt and apostasy of 1260, whom we know to have been brought up as a hostage by the Teutonic Knights, may have been sent to school in Magdeburg so as to become a priest: M.-L. Favreau-Lilie, ‘Die Bedeutung der geistlichen Ritterorden für die Mission im ostlichen Mitteleuropa’, in Auf den Spuren der Freiheit. Einheit Europas, was ist das? (Berlin, 1997), 56–69, here 62. Dusburg II (2), SRP vol. 1, 34 and Dusb. III (148), SRP vol. 1, 123; chronicler Herman of Wartberg SRP vol. 2, 149–50; chronicler Wigand of Marburg SRP vol. 2, 456. Dusburg II (2), SRP vol 1, 34; Wigand SRP vol. 2, 456. Wigand of Marburg, SRP vol. 2, 456. Cf. Dusburg III(310) SRP vol. 1, 176 on the same episode, where there is more emphasis on Vytenis’s words (Dusburg makes him speak in the words of the biblical enemies of the Israelites) and no specific account of trampling the host, but a general complaint, ‘ecclesiis, vestibus sacris et vasis, ministris et ecclesie sacramentis verecundiam magnam fecit’.

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signed. The pagan Vytenis asks to meet the Teutonic Order knight who wounded him and says to him, ‘You with your sharp sword almost killed me.’ The knight replies, ‘So I would have done, if you had waited for me!’67 Interestingly, Vytenis is the first Lithuanian pagan ruler attested as building a Christian church, for Franciscan friars whom he invited to his land.68 Could it be possible that Vytenis, ruler of a Lithuanian pagan state with increasing Christian contacts, did perceive Jesus as a more concrete entity, to be trampled and fought physically and, when that did not succeed, propitiated?69 On the other hand, propitiation may have come first, and failure by the Christian God to produce desired results may have been the reason for Vytenis’s special fury. In fact, some early examples of pagan propitiation are in Peter Dusburg’s chronicle: Sambians in Prussia throttle a Teutonic Order priest whom they have taken prisoner because they dare not shed the blood that belongs to viris sanctis,70 and the pagan Sudovian noble ‘Scumandus’ rescues a statue of the Virgin Mary from damage by his troops.71 By the fourteenth century, of all the once-pagan Baltic tribes, only the Lithuanians were left unconquered and unconverted, and the pagan Lithuanian rulers Vytenis, Gediminas (ruled c. 1316–45) and Algirdas (ruled 1345–77) learned to make use of the avowed aims of Christian expansionism, facilitating truce negotiations by diplomatic promises of conversion while continuing to fight Christian crusaders.72 Two chroniclers of this conflict, Wigand of Marburg and Herman of Wartberg, concentrate on military history and diplomacy to the surprisingly complete exclusion of religious matters, so we have no chronicle evidence for the actualisation of enemy 67

68 69 70 71 72

Wigand, SRP vol. 2, 456–7: ‘post breve intervallum facte sunt treuge, et rex ait preceptoribus, unus e vobis, cuius caput ferreum fuit, molestavit me, quem libens adhuc viderem. Magister quoque destinavit ei eum Tusemer dictum, cui rex, tuo actuo gladio me quasi interfecisses; et ait, sic factum fuisset, si mei expectassetis.’ Theodor Hirsch, the editor of Wigand’s chronicle, thinks this ‘Tusemer’ was probably Heinrich Dusemer, later Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, SRP vol. 2, 457 n. 21. According to his brother and heir Gediminas, letter to Pope John XXII: LUB vol. 2, no. 687, col. 140; GL, 25. Vytenis had close ties with Riga, and in fact Lithuanian troops helped to defend Riga against the Teutonic Order, LUB vol. 1, no. 570, col. 714; Dusburg, III (269), SRP vol. 1, 163. Dusburg III (90) SRP vol. 1, 100. Dusburg III (224) SRP vol. 1, 147; cf. Dusburg III (207) SRP vol. 1, 141. R. Maþeika, ‘Bargaining for baptism, Lithuanian negotiations for conversion, 1250–1358’, in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Muldoon (Gainesville, 1997), 131–45, and ‘The relations of Grand Prince Algirdas with Eastern and Western Christians’ in La Cristianizzazione della Lituania, ed. P. Rabikauskas (Vatican City, 1989), 63–84; a different perspective and analysis of the sources, is offered by S.C. Rowell, ‘The letters of Gediminas, “Gemachte Lüge”? Notes on a controversy’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 41 (1993), 321–60, and in his Lithuania Ascending.

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gods for the later fourteenth century.73 Other sources tell us that Grand Dukes Vytenis and Gediminas founded Christian churches,74 while Gediminas and Grand Duke Algirdas had Christian clergy at their courts;75 yet they still inflicted horrible martyrdom on missionaries who preached outside prescribed limits.76 Since the wider context of granting power to enemy gods on the Baltic frontier has not been much discussed by historians, the common opinion is that for the Lithuanians, Christ was simply another deity to add to their pagan pantheon.77 Yet Grand Duke Gediminas stated to envoys of papal legates that ‘he lets Christians worship God according to their custom [mores], the [Greek Orthodox] Russians according to their rite, the [Catholic] Poles according to their custom, and we worship God according to our rites, and we all have the one God’.78 (The reduction of heresy and paganism to tolerable ethnic customs would surely have been a shocking assertion for medieval Catholics, and is thus unlikely to have been invented by the envoys). Here a firm boundary of custom and ritual is asserted between Christian and pagan: the pagan Lithuanian religion for Gediminas does not incorporate Christian rituals, which are labelled as the customs of other ethnic groups.79 Yet the pagan ruler, seeking help and respect from the pope, asserts that pagan and Christian ritual are both means to approach the divine. This statement becomes less surprising in the light of the chronicle evidence we have presented. Gediminas attempts to place Lithuania 73 74 75

76

77 78

79

R. Maþeika, ‘Amicable enmity’ (see note 8 above). Letters of Gediminas to Pope John XXII and to Hansa cities, LUB vol. 2, no. 687 and Napiersky, Russisch-Livländische Urkunden, 32, no. 54 ; GL 25, 45. A new edition of these letters is being prepared by Stephen C. Rowell (Klaipëda, forthcoming). Franciscan friars as advisors and scribes of Gediminas, report of the envoys of the papal legates, GL no. 14 and Napiersky, Russisch-Livländische Urkunden, no. 67, 45; priest Nestor at the court of Algirdas, Vita of the Orthodox Vilnius martyrs, M.N. Speranskii, ‘Serbskoe zhitie litovskikh muchenikov’, Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiskikh (Moscow, 1909), 26. R. Maþeika and S.C. Rowell, ‘Zelatores maximi, Pope John XXII, Archbishop Frederick of Riga and the Baltic Mission 1305–1340’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 31 (1993), 33–68; R. Maþeika, ‘The relations of Grand Prince Algirdas’, 77–84. Alvydas Nikþentaitis argues cogently that all the missionaries killed in Lithuania could have been executed for political reasons, Nuo Daumanto iki Gedimino. Ikikrikšèioniškos Lietuvos visuomenës bruoþai (Klaipëda, 1996), 34–35; cf. D. Baronas, Trys Vilniaus Kankiniai (Vilnius, 2000). Nikþentaitis, Nuo Daumanto, 31. GL no. 14; Napiersky, Russisch-Livländische Urkunden, no. 67, 46: ‘affirmabat . . . christianos facere deum suum colere secundum morem suum, ruthenos secundum ritum suum, polonos secundum morem suum, et nos colimus deum secundum ritum nostrum, et omnes habemus unum deum’. As this was going to press, I became aware of the article by S.C. Rowell, ‘Custom, rites and power in mediaeval and early modern Lithuanian society’, in Kultûrø Sankirtos, ed. D. Kaukënas (Vilnius, 2000), 46–64.

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within Western European culture without abandoning old beliefs, and so grants reality and power not only to pagan but to Christian religion. We have seen that in the chronicles of the Baltic crusades Baltic pagans sometimes treat Christian religion as a formality to be accepted or cast off as convenient; yet the pagans sometimes grant power to Jesus as a physical, powerful enemy. More surprisingly, crusaders fighting the Baltic pagans are portrayed as granting power to pagan deities and acknowledging the efficacy of pagan rites. Undoubtedly, even after centuries of contact, most of the pagans of the Baltic area and the Teutonic crusaders who fought them remained loyal to their own religion and were ready to kill its enemies. It is a demonstration of the complexity of human nature and human history that occasionally, according to the chroniclers, warriors on both sides also granted power to enemy gods.

Chapter 10

The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark in the High Middle Ages: Danes, Wends and Saxo Grammaticus Kurt Villads Jensen

And old Denmark shall last, As long as the beech tree mirrors its top In the blue wave.

So ends the Danish national anthem, written in 1819 during the emergence of a national-romantic historical tradition that drew heavily upon medieval themes. Danish self-understanding and Danish identity have been and still are connected to the sea, by which is normally meant the Baltic Sea; in some western parts of Denmark the sea is synonymous with the North Sea.1 This predilection for the sea is surprising because Denmark has for centuries been almost exclusively dependent upon agriculture. The majority of Danes worked on farms, as late as the second industrialisation in the 1960s. The high importance of the sea is founded neither in its economic importance nor in its being part of people’s daily life. It might, however, reflect a historical past when Danish identity was formed by contrasting Danes with peoples over the sea, Germans and the Slavic Wends. It reflects a time when an attempt was made to turn a Baltic frontier region characterised by cultural and economic interchange into a frozen borderline, by creating a new image of the enemy. It is the claim of this chapter that this change happened during the twelfth century and was promoted by the Danish historian Saxo, who wrote around 1200 and who has had a remarkable success in the sense that his analysis of the relations between Danes and Wends has been accepted with almost no criticism for 800 years. It is, further, the aim of this chapter to suggest that the picture presented by Saxo is probably an artificial

1

See the chapter ‘Havet’, in Den Nordiske Verden, 2 vols, ed. K. Hastrup (Copenhagen, 1992), vol. 2, 11–76.

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construction and offers only one of many possible interpretations of the relations between Danes and the other peoples around the Baltic Sea.2 Denmark: A Delta? The Baltic Sea is the outlet of rivers draining eastern Scandinavia and most of the Western European plateau between the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Ural mountains. Much more fresh water spills into the Baltic Sea than evaporates in the cold climate – in contrast to the Mediterranean – and water therefore slowly flows from the Baltic out into the North Sea. The frontier between the two seas is formed by the lands of present-day Denmark and the peninsula of Scania in present-day Sweden. Although it might be a debatable designation in geological terms, Denmark has the position and the characteristics of a delta.3 It is flat. The third-highest point in Denmark is the Mountain of Heaven, rising an impressive 147 metres or almost 500 feet above sea level.4 This flatness of the land means that it has been easy for any ruler to move men from one part of the country to another, and it also means that Danes were orientated towards both East and West. There was no natural division between an eastern and a western part of the land as was arguably the case in the Iberian Peninsula, or as is the 2

3 4

Literature on Danish medieval history is scarce in languages other than Danish. A good introduction is B. Sawyer and P. Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation circa 800–1500 (Minneapolis, 1993); covering a more limited time-period is T. Riis, Les institutions politiques centrales du Danemark 1100– 1332 (Odense, 1977); T. Nyberg, ‘The Scandinavians and their national and religious identity’, in Vita religiosa e identità politiche. Universalità e particolarismi nell’Europa del tardo medioevo, ed. S. Gensini (Pisa, 1998), 117–30, is a very interesting attempt to detect signs of a medieval regionalism in Scandinavia. For the thirteenth century, see S. Bagge, ‘The Scandinavian kingdoms’, in the New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, c. 1198–c. 1300, ed. D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 720–42. Important for any discussion of Danish–Wendish relations is E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100–1525 (London, 1980). A good work for reference is Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. P. Pulsiano (New York,1993). For Saxo, see I. Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Saxo, historian of the patria’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 54–77; Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author Between Norse and Latin Culture, ed. K. Friis-Jensen (Copenhagen, 1981); B. Sawyer, ‘Valdemar, Absalon and Saxo: historiography and politics in medieval Denmark’, Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire, 63 (1985), 685–705; for the use of Saxo by Danish historians and for further references, see N.H. Holmqvist-Larsen, ‘Saxo Grammaticus in Danish historical writing and literature’, in The Birth of Identities: Denmark and Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. B.P. McGuire (Copenhagen, 1996), 161–88. Thanks to Hans Folke and Åge Myrhøj Vestergård, of the Danish National Encyclopaedia, for geological advice and discussions. The highest points are Ejer Bavnehøj and Yding Skovhøj, c. 170 metres.

The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark

NORWAY

175

SWEDEN

NORTH SEA.

l:J' BALTIC SEA.

SO

Map 10.1

Denmark

IOOkm

IBP

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case with the Scandinavian Peninsula, divided by huge forests into Norway and Sweden (see Map 10.1). Denmark is also a typical delta area in the sense that it is divided by water into a great number of small islands lying between the two peninsulas of Scania and Jutland. The latter is so narrow in the south that an overland transit trade between the Baltic and the North Sea is fairly easy, and is attested in the early Viking Age. The many islands have functioned as easily definable units, the basis on which magnates established themselves relatively autonomously. Southern Jutland, Funen, Sealand and Scania have probably each had their own ruler, and only late in the tenth century was Denmark united under one king through the erection of royally controlled fortifications, the Trelleborgs which have been dated dendrochronologically to 980/81. During the first half of the twelfth century, Denmark again became divided between several competing kings with power bases on different islands. The many islands separated by water also necessitated the development of a seabased military organisation, dependent upon fast-moving warships. The many river outlets and fjords and the great number of very small islands to hide behind often made raiding on ships a much more profitable and rational way of conducting war than employing large-scale land-based troops. The shallow waters and narrow fjords had the same function in Denmark as the mountain passes had elsewhere in Europe, but the soldiers and the raiders travelled on ship decks, not on horseback. The jumble of inlets, islands and open sea also meant that there could be no fixed border. The level of communication and interaction between inhabitants along the shores must have been high, and people and goods could move easily between Danish lands and adjacent regions. Turning East From the eighth century, the Baltic sea became the centre for an intensive transit trade between East and West, between the Arab caliphate and Western Europe. The result was not only the accumulation of wealth in Scandinavia, as shown by finds of hoards of Muslim gold coins, but also a technological development and refinement of ships as a means of transportation and warfare.5 From the early ninth century, Vikings were strong enough to raid, trade and settle especially in England, but also in Normandy, and in the East in Russia; and trading between Denmark and the lands along the southern shores of the Baltic is archaeologically well attested from an early period.

5

The literature on Viking Age Scandinavia is vast. An introduction is E. Roesdahl, The Vikings (Harmondsworth, 1991), and The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. P. Sawyer (Oxford, 1997).

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But this double orientation – East and West – changed. The last expedition against England was prepared in 1085 and came to nothing when the Danish King Canute IV was murdered in 1086. After that, Danish military activity concentrated upon the Baltic area. A border became fixed between Denmark and England. It is difficult to understand solely in political terms. England after the conquest in 1066 became a strong, centralised state, but it was not so in the early twelfth century – at times during Henry I’s reign, and especially under King Stephen – when Danish kings expanded militarily elsewhere, but seem to have given up England. This shift in orientation is contemporary with and might perhaps best be explained by the initiation of the crusading movement. The conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and the common Christian fight against infidels must have made it more difficult for Danes to wage war against Christian England when they actually lived next to heathen Wends in the Baltic. Whatever the explanation is, the picture is clear: from 1100 Denmark was oriented only towards the East. Denmark: A Frontier Zone? The land of Denmark was, for necessary geographical reasons, a frontier zone with no natural, fixed borders. It is only in retrospect that it is possible to talk about a Danish kingdom covering roughly the same area as the modern nation state. This retrospective approach to history must then rely on much literary and intellectual effort to discuss and explain how substantial parts of Danish land at different times were lost to outsiders and then regained by a succession of kings, or how a civil war in the twelfth century weakened Denmark’s military potential and left it exposed to attacks from Germans and pirates. But if there was no clearly defined land with natural borders, it becomes hard to define a civil war. It might be more fruitful to see Denmark in the early and high Middle Ages as an area disputed by different claimants to a single throne and as an area of authority with no agreed limits. In addition, Denmark was Christianised during the tenth and eleventh centuries, late in European terms but still earlier than other Scandinavian countries and much earlier than the lands along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. This made Denmark a frontier zone not only geographically but also religiously. Denmark became the object of intertwined missionary and political initiatives from Christian neighbours, but such initiatives also became fundamental for the Danish kings in their attempts to secure a solid base for their rule. The area thus became a multi-oriented frontier society. In the eyes of German emperors, Denmark was marchland over which control was sought through the sending of missionaries, or by installing rulers favourable to German policy. The first Danish king to be baptised was Harald Klak; this happened in 826 in Mainz and Emperor Louis acted as Harald’s godfather, and upon being

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granted his kingdom, Harald swore him allegiance after the baptism.6 A lasting conversion did not, however, come about until Harald Bluetooth (d. 986/87), who was baptised before 965. In 965, and again in 988, Emperor Otto I granted privileges to bishoprics in Denmark and thus demonstrated his influence over the new Church organisation which was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. In the eleventh century, especially under the strong Danish– English double monarchy of King Canute the Great (1019–35), the Danish Church was strongly influenced by the English, as is attested linguistically (Danish abbed from English ‘abbot’, not German Abt, and so on), and also architecturally and historically. The Benedictine monastery in Odense founded c. 1100 for the cult of the first Danish royal saint, King Canute the Holy, consisted of monks from Evesham in England, with which the monastery kept contact for a very long time. In 1103, Scandinavia and the Northern Islands were separated from Hamburg-Bremen and united in one Church province under the new archbishop of Lund in Denmark, Asser, who was warmly congratulated upon his new dignity by Anselm of Canterbury.7 This did not mean, however, that German influence waned. Hamburg-Bremen attempted in the twelfth century to reclaim the north as its missionary frontier, and had some success for a limited period. German rulers also intervened and were consulted in Danish political conflicts on a number of occasions. Princes from Denmark sought refuge at German courts in the twelfth century and received direct military support for their claims in Denmark from such figure as the duke of Saxony. In 1152, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa acted as arbiter and distributed different Danish lands to three claimants to the throne, among whom one was married into the influential German family of the dukes of Meissen.8 Danish kings swore loyalty to the emperor and held Denmark as a fief from him until the reign of King Canute VI (1182–1202). Denmark was a frontier zone also in the sense that even when most of the lands were united under one king, a substantial part of the realm consisted of relatively autonomous fiefs along the borders. The greatest were the duchies of Halland next to Norway and Sweden, and Schleswig or Southern Jutland between Denmark and Germany. A number of islands in Southern Denmark were also enfeoffed to princes who, through alliances to other rulers, often in practice could claim independence from the Danish king. Schleswig was used in the early twelfth century as the basis for Duke Canute Lavard to expand into Wendish areas east of the River Elbe, where he 6 7 8

P. Sawyer, Da Danmark blev Danmark. Fra ca. År 700 til ca. 1050 (Copenhagen, 1988) (Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie, vol. 3), 113ff. Diplomatarium Danicum (henceforth: DD), ed. Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab (Copenhagen, 1938–), 1:2:29 from 1103–05. References are to series, volume and letter no. DD 1:2:110, 117; cf. 1:2:83 and 103.

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was installed by the German King Lothar as ruler over the Abodrites. He thus became a ruler in his own right, but was also the vassal of both the Danish and the German kings. The great duchies were used by the king as apanages for royal princes and could then, if the political situation altered, be the basis for a dynastic change. The son of Duke Canute Lavard actually became king of Denmark in 1157 after a long struggle. And in 1192, a member of another royal line, the bishop-prince Valdemar of Schleswig, raised a German and Norwegian army, invaded Jutland and claimed the crown of Denmark. Had he succeeded, he would have been a rare example of a medieval Melchisedek, uniting in one person ecclesiastical and royal power, but he was defeated by the king and was imprisoned for thirteen years. Also, later in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Dukes of Schleswig often fought against Danish kings.9 The Wendish areas between the rivers Elbe and Oder functioned as a buffer zone between Danish and German rulers, both before and after they were Christianised. When Canute VI ascended the throne of Denmark in 1182, he refused to swear loyalty to Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and to hold Denmark as a fief from him. The response of the emperor was to contact Bugislav of Pomerania, who had had to make a fragile peace with the former Danish king and was now persuaded that it was more advantageous to himself to hold his land as a fief from the emperor under the new and young king. Bugislav became a German count, and he began a war against another Wendish area under Danish control, Rügen. The response of the Danish king was a devastating counter-war in which cities, villages and harvest were systematically burned down for years, until Bugislav had to surrender and acknowledge the Danish king as his liege lord.10 In the late 1180s, King Canute VI took the title of King of the Slavs, rex sclavorum, in an attempt to claim suzerainty over the Wendish land as far south as the River Elbe. This claim was followed by an expansionist policy under Canute and his brother and successor, Valdemar II (1202–41), which became intermingled with the policy of the German empire; and in 1214, Emperor Frederick II acknowledged Danish possession of this area north of the Elbe. But this expansion created new Danish border areas that balanced between Denmark and the empire. In 1223, Count Henry of Schwerin 9

10

In another perspective, the whole of Scandinavia in the Middle Ages can be considered a frontier zone where a limited number of royal and ducal families divided power through war and marriage alliances. As the main focus of this article is Denmark and the Baltic, Norway and Sweden have been left out of this context. Saxonis Gesta Danorum (henceforth: Saxo), ed. J. Olrik and H. Ræder, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 1931–57), 16, IVff (references are to book and chapter in vol. 1); Saxo Grammaticus: Danorum Regum Heroumque Historia. Books X–XVI. The Text of the First Edition with Translation and Commentary by E. Christiansen (henceforth: EC), 3 vols (Oxford, 1980–81), 608ff.

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captured King Valdemar and his son during a hunt on one of the islands south of Funen; and only after two years with intense papal diplomatic activity was the king set free, but the Danish engagement in northern Germany was halted. The island of Rügen had, after generations of regular military attacks from the Danes, eventually been conquered in 1168 and was placed ecclesiastically under the bishop of Roskilde on Sealand. Politically, however, this important strategic stronghold on the Baltic coast was enfeoffed to members of one of the local princely houses. In the thirteenth century one of these, Prince Jarimar of Rügen, married into the ducal house of Schleswig, thus creating a powerful alliance with another frontier magnate against the Danish king. In 1259, a serious crisis between king and Church broke out when King Christopher I (1252–59) imprisoned the archbishop. The suffragan bishop of Roskilde fled to Rügen, the remotest part of his diocese, whence he, together with Prince Jarimar, launched a regular war against the Danish king, devastating the city of Copenhagen, and later in the summer of 1259 led a successful attack upon a royal army outside Naestved on southern Sealand; 1,500 of the king’s men fell and were buried in pits with no further ecclesiastical ceremonies. This war is known from royal sources in which it is branded as a rebellion, but as the king was de facto a heretic at that time, and as his men were buried as heretics, the war was probably seen as a crusade by the bishop.11 At the same time, the duke of Schleswig attacked from the west and defeated the king and held him in prison for some time. A peace was negotiated; but the great frontier duchies continued to balance politically between Germany on one side and Denmark and the other Scandinavian kingdoms on the other; and they continued to be the focal point of threats against ruling Danish kings until the middle of the fourteenth century. Frontier Warfare Against the background of this geographically and politically fluid situation, warfare was developed and refined into an art whose brave heroes were praised in epics and histories; but this art differed from that of most western European warfare by being sea-based. How this actually functioned is described vividly and with great sympathy by Saxo in his Gesta Danorum, written around 1200. One basic element in sea warfare was access to stones in great quantity and of proper size. On one of his expeditions, Bishop Absalon called at the cliff of Stevns on eastern Sealand to let his men collect stones here.12 The pebbles on this shore are a little smaller than a fist and

11 12

The best source for this is Acta Processus Litium inter regem danorum et archi episcopum lundensem, ed. A. Krarup and W. Norvin (Copenhagen, 1932). Saxo 14, XLIX; EC 544.

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were hurled by means of a sling. When the army engaged in war at sea, enemy ships were initially showered by stones, while arrows according to Saxo seem to have been used for much shorter distances or only on land; they were probably too expensive to risk losing them in the sea. During sieges on land, stones were hurled from fortifications against attackers, often with a good chance of hitting someone, because siege warfare gave young warriors an opportunity to show their bravery and gain reputation by getting as close to the gate as possible, to scorn the enemy or set fire to the wooden defences. During one of the attacks on the fort of Arkona on Rügen, the noble knight Niels got close enough to throw his spear through a hole in the gate and kill one of the enemies, and he succeeded in returning unharmed. Thorbern and the royal Prince Buris were immediately inspired to imitate his deed; but both were seriously wounded by the stones of the defenders. Blood streamed from their heads and they recovered only after a long time.13 Ships were used to transport warhorses. According to Saxo this happened for the first time in 1135/36.14 Horses figure prominently in the narrative of Saxo, but the actual number that could be brought with an army must have been very small. For larger expeditions, a part of the army may have ridden from Jutland and through Schleswig as far as the Wendish areas and there combined with the naval contingents; or a Danish naval army would fight alongside a local army of allies or a mounted Saxon army. The combination of ships and horses increased mobility in areas with swamps and many rivers. The boats could be used to ferry the army across, or sometimes they were even bound together to form a bridge for the horses. Warfare at sea faced the same difficulties as on land when it came to collecting information – the sending out of small and fast scout ships in advance of the main army – and the identification of those fighting to distinguish ally from enemy. In foggy weather, groups of ships could come very close to the adversaries before being detected as enemies. Ships could gather in a creek, sneak away in the dark of night and return next morning to give the impression of being part of a steady flow of reinforcement.15 In the many stretches of water in Denmark with forests extending right down to the seashore, small ships could also be camouflaged under green leaves and be used to spy, or suddenly attack. This kind of warfare also gave ample opportunities for heroic deeds, be it the brave scouts that during the night silently rowed into the middle of the army, boarded the ship of the Danish king, kidnapped him and escaped without being noticed;16 be it the Wendish giant Mirok who boarded a Danish warship alone and fought so bravely that his life was spared when he was 13 14 15 16

Saxo 14, XXXII; EC 478–9. Saxo 14, I; EC 352. This information of Saxo is very unlikely to be correct since the Normans already in 1066 had horses transported on ships over the Channel to England. For example Saxo 14, III; EC 364–5. Saxo 10, IX; EC 16.

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eventually overpowered.17 The ultimate act of a brave warrior facing certain defeat would be to jump into the sea with his weapons, either with the intention of drowning, or to swim to another ship. During the famous and decisive battle at Fotevik in 1134 between two Danish kings, so many Danes fled to the ship of their fellow soldiers that their weight would have sunk the ship, and it was necessary for those on board to cut off the hands of those grasping the rail.18 As on land, it could be difficult to keep the army together. Hard weather could separate ships from each other, but could also be used by the less courageous as an excuse for deserting. When battle began, ships were sometimes bound together by ropes to increase the force of the attack and to prevent flight. The frightened Scanians who cut the ropes to escape the Wends were heavily scorned by Saxo.19 In a few especially critical instances, the leader landed the army and had the ships burned so that there was no alternative but to fight.20 The use of ships made the army dependent upon weather conditions. With a good wind it could move very fast, but with an adverse wind or storms, it could be impossible for days to cross from one Danish island to another, and it could be very slow to circumnavigate even small peninsulas and forelands. In many places it was therefore more effective to empty the ships and drag them overland; a number of such sites have been identified from place-names (for example Dragsholm).21 In other places, channels of up to hundreds of metres were dug through small islands or from a fjord to the open sea, for example on the island of Falster.22 In spite of their mobility, ships would sometimes have to land in enemy territory to collect food and water, or for other important needs which could not be met at sea. The Norwegian Earl Erling was attacked by the Danes on his way back to Norway, when he stopped at the northern end of Sealand to attend mass in the local church, as he used to.23 When such an unfortunate event had happened, later leaders would avoid such a place. According to Saxo, Danish kings would ‘because of silly superstition’ never land at Landore in spite of it being a natural harbour for collecting the fleet together before an expedition against the Wends.24 The heavy dependence upon ships because of the nature of the Danish landscape meant that communication to and from an island was sometimes controlled by sinking all ships. This happened on Sealand in 1157 after the killing of one competing king to prevent another, Valdemar, from escaping; but it is also characteristic that Valdemar 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Saxo 14, XLIX; EC 546. Saxo 13, XI; EC 142. Saxo 11, V; EC 56. Saxo 10, V; EC 9–10. For place-names, see K. Hald, Vore Stednavne (Copenhagen, 1965); B. Jørgensen, Dansk Stednavne Leksikon, 3 vols (Copenhagen, 1980–83). Cf. S. Thorsen, ‘Grøftestykkerne’, Skalk, 3 (1999), 6–11. Saxo 14, XXXIV; EC 484. Saxo 14, XXII; EC 422–3.

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Figure 10.2

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Reconstruction of underwater fortifications

managed to find a small boat to transport him away from the island.25 It was impossible to close a border consisting of the sea. The characteristics of the landscape also meant that rivers and harbours had to be fortified by big stones or poles driven into the sea bottom to prevent ships from entering (see Figure 10.2). This is well attested by Saxo who reports how Danish expeditions often laboriously had to clear harbours in Wendish lands to get close to a city. In 1184, the Danes after such a clearance decided to set fire to a ship and let it drift into the harbour to burn down the wooden city wall; but the ship got stuck on one pole that had been overlooked, and it was consumed to no avail, but to the great joy of the defenders.26 Remnants of such underwater fortifications have been excavated in recent decades; the best known is one in Roskilde Fjord made by sunken ships, which now forms the collection of the marine archaeological museum in Roskilde.27 To fortify waterways in a region with as much political instability as Denmark was a precaution against a number of

25 26 27

Saxo 14, XVIII–XIX; EC 409. Saxo 16, VI; EC 616. Which is also the location of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology under the Danish National Museum, cf. http://www.natmus.min.dk/nmf/indexGB.htm

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potential aggressors; but modern archaeologists often tend to explain them all as defence works against Wendish pirates. According to Saxo, the Wends were pirates who pillaged Danish shores and in the twelfth century had become an incessant and ubiquitous threat, to such an extent that large areas in Denmark became desolate. Inhabitants fled for fear of the Wends; the whole of eastern Jutland lay bare without being cultivated.28 Saxo praised kings and nobles according to their willingness and ability to fight back the Wends. King Erik the Lamb (1137–46) did not fight with determination against Slavs, who could therefore mock him for his useless efforts, Saxo reports; and King Erik was no hero because of his ‘lethargy and inefficiency’.29 There are very few indications in other sources to support Saxo’s picture of the imminent danger from the Wends, and it might well be an imaginative construction, as indicated below, but this idea of a menacing Wendish danger clearly justified to Saxo the use of violence and cruelty. The war was a hard one. When the island of Funen was cleared of Wends, the men of King Sven (1146–57) fought so hard and for so long, that the skin of their palms was rubbed off and they wielded their swords with their bleeding raw flesh.30 When King Erik Ejegod (1095–1103), who according to Saxo ‘was alien to cruelty’, caught some Wendish pirates, he had them bound to poles and they were slowly disembowelled till they drew their last breath. ‘It was a miserable sight but it had an exceedingly useful effect upon the Danes’, Saxo commented.31 The bishop of Roskilde, Absalon, had his newly founded harbour city of Copenhagen protected in the 1170s by special naval forces, and heads of captured pirates were set on poles on the shore close to the city to deter others from attacking.32 If we are to believe Saxo, Wendish pirates became so scared of Absalon that they would flee immediately at the sight of his ships; and they would rather jump into the sea and drown than being caught by the bishop and face certain and cruel death. Some would throw arms and treasures and even horses into the sea to ease the ship and get away; one hanged himself from the mast to avoid falling into Danish hands.33 The slaying of Wends was believed to be pleasing to God; Eskil followed a Wendish warrior into a muddy swamp and cut his head off and returned with clean, unsoiled feet – a true miracle.34 When Bishop Absalon during a campaign had to interrupt his divine service to resume fighting, he did so willingly because ‘no sacrifice can be more pleasing to the Almighty than the killing of the wicked’.35 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Saxo 14, XV; EC 392. Saxo 14, II; EC 360. Saxo 14, VI; EC 374. Saxo 12, IV; EC 98. Saxo 14, XLIX; EC 544–5. Saxo 16, V; EC 611f. Saxo 14, XXXIII; EC 480. Saxo 16, V; EC 611.

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Many of the atrocities were common in the warfare of the time and were not specifically directed against Wends. Enemies of all kind were drowned, hanged, stoned to death or had their noses cut off. Royal envoys and unwanted princes were blinded and mutilated.36 The taste for blood and war was given concentrated expression in the figure of King Valdemar the Great (1157–82) who was ‘determined to spill blood’37 and who was immensely pleased by all news of victories because ‘war is more usable than peace’.38 An important issue in Saxo’s description of all these wars was clearly to extol Danes and contrast them to all other nations who, indiscriminately, he described as weak, effeminate and untrustworthy.39 From the Germans, he said, come ‘only self-indulgence and sausages’.40 The war against Wends had, however, a special position in being a total war, in a fuller sense than other Danish wars. In several instances, Saxo related that back in mythical times the Danes had attacked areas along the Baltic Sea, annihilated the whole male population and married the women. But this also happened in Saxo’s own time. In a joint expedition of King Valdemar and Bishop Absalon, all Wendish men were put to the sword.41 And when Wendish pirates took a ship bearing presents to King Valdemar from his father-in-law, the revenge was a devastation of their land so total that the swallows began to nest in the rigging of the Danish ships because there were no roofs left for miles around. Every house had been burned down.42 This warfare was not only excusable but even laudable, according to Saxo, because the Danes had a just cause. The confrontations between Danes and Wends were even more important than the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians. During a fight against a group of Christian Wends, Saxo relates, the Wends sought refuge in a church. They were despoiled, but were spared and let go alive. Saxo, however, emphasises that the Danes could have entered the church and killed the Wends inside it, had they wanted to, because the Danes had a just cause against the Wends.43 In another instance, Saxo writes about Count Henry of Schwartzburg who protected a group of Wends who were his vassals, but had been attacked by Danes. Saxo claims that it would have been unjust had the German prince fought against the Danes, who attacked the Wendish ‘slaves and robbers’ only because of ‘burning love for peace and burning love for their fatherland’, their patria. Saxo concluded that the Danes were innocent, and that anyone attacking Danes ought to burn in hell forever.44 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Saxo 14, III; EC 366. Saxo 14, XXXIX; EC 494. Saxo 15, I; EC 579. Saxo 8. Not translated by EC. Saxo 6, VIII. Not translated by EC. Saxo 14, XLVII; EC 544. Saxo 14, LVII; EC 574. Saxo 14, XLV; EC 537–8. Saxo 14, XLVI; EC 540.

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Around 1200, Saxo thus described the relations between Danes and Wends as one of centuries-old, sharp antagonism. Wends were depicted as heathen pirates, incessantly attacking innocent Danes and pillaging upon Danish shores. The border between Danes and Wends was presented as a fixed one by Saxo, and Wendish transgression of this border justified unlimited warfare. There are, however, many indications of the Baltic being a much more fluid frontier zone between Danes and Wends, and of a substantial immigration of Wends into Denmark in the preceding period. Danish and Wendish convivencia During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there were a number of dynastic and political links between the Danish royal family and Wendish princely houses, actually stretching back in time to at least the tenth century, when King Harald Bluetooth was married to an Abodrite princess. The Wends who married into Danish royal houses were Christianised; and they often seem to have used the Danish connection as a means to support their claim to rulership over Wendish areas in northern Germany against other members of their families. One such claimant was the Wendic Prince Henry, who through his mother was a grandson of the Danish King Svend Estridsen (1047–74/76). His father, Godskalk (1044–66),45 had been killed in a riot and Henry, while probably still an infant, found refuge in Denmark where he was brought up. Around 1090, Henry began with the help of Danish ships to raid the coast of the land of his father: he rebuilt and fortified a castle in Old Lübeck in the years 1089–93,46 and he succeeded in re-establishing the Wendish kingdom of his father between the rivers Elbe and Oder. Henry later had to fight for this land against another grandson of Svend Estridsen, his cousin Canute Lavard, who succeeded Henry as ruler over the area.47 Another Wendish prince was the heathen Niklot, who during the wars between different Danish pretenders to the throne in 1156/57 sided with King Svend, and

45 46

47

Saxo 10, XVII; EC 35–6. Old Lübeck lay about 5 kilometres down the River Trave compared to new Lübeck. The different building phases of the fortress of Old Lübeck have been dated dendrochronologically in the late 1980s: H. Hellmuth Andersen, ‘Udgravningerne i Gammel Lybæk og abodriterkongen Henrik. Træk af en politisk biografi i arkæologisk belysning’, KUML. Årbog for jysk arkæologisk selskab (1987), 7–21, with further references. H.-O. Gaethke, Herzog Heinrich der Löwe und die Slawen nordöstlich der unteren Elbe, Kieler Werkstücke. Reihe A: Beiträge zur schleswig-holsteinischen und skandinavischen Geschichte; 24 (Frankfurt am Main, 1999).

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together with the Saxons helped Svend back to Denmark.48 The son of Niklot, Prislav, was baptised and then driven into exile by his father. He sought refuge with another pretender, Valdemar, whose sister he had married. During a combined Danish–Saxon raid in 1160 into Wendish lands, Niklot was caught, and his head was cut off and brought back to the German camp. When his son Prislav in the Danish camp heard about this while sitting at the meal, he put his head in his hands, and said that it was a proper way to end for one showing contempt for God; and ‘he called back his soul from contemplation and continued his meal with a hilarious laugh’.49 Prislav did not regain his Wendish possessions, but became enfeoffed with the Danish island of Lolland. Archaeological evidences also attests the intensive contacts between Danes and Wends in the high Middle Ages; the most important being the pottery finds. From the middle of the tenth century, Danish pottery – especially on the southern islands – belongs to the so-called Baltic or Wendic style, which is uniform throughout the Baltic region and impossible to distinguish from pottery elsewhere in the area. It is found in such great quantities in Denmark that the presence of this type would be difficult to explain as imported goods. It might be an indication of large settlements of Wends in Denmark, or at least a reflection of a Danish practice of settling or enslaving Wendic men or women to produce this specific kind of pottery. The Wendic-style pottery disappeared in the decades after 1200 and was replaced by a Western, local Danish style.50 Among important archaeological evidence a wharf on northern Falster dating from between 1050 and 1055 should also be mentioned which, according to the excavators, built and repaired ships that were distinctively Wendish, not Danish, one of the distinguishing marks being that wooden nails were used rather than iron ones.51 The existence of such a wharf is difficult to explain without presuming the existence of a Wendish population or a Wendish colony on Falster. Place-names constitute the third group of evidence for Wendish migration into southern Denmark. It is difficult source material to use for several reasons, although a few cases are simple enough. Some towns on the southern Danish islands of Lolland and Falster have names with a Slavic ending, -itce, (Da. -itse) such as Korselitse, 48 49 50 51

Saxo 14, XVII, EC 400; Saxo mentioned only Slavs, the name of Niklot is given in Helmoldi Presbyteri, Chronica Slavorum, ed. B. Schmeidler and H. Stoob (Darmstadt, 1963), 300. Saxo 14, XXV, EC 442. N.-K. Liebgott, ‘Pottery’, in Pulsiano, Medieval Scandinavia, 513–14 with references to literature. J. Skamby Madsen, ‘Et skibsværft fra vikingetid/tidlig middelalder ved Fribrødre å på Falster’, Hikuin, 10 (1984), 261–74; cf. T. Damgaard-Sørensen, ‘Danes and Wends: a study of the Danish attitude towards the Wends’, in People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, ed. I. Wood and N. Lund (Woodbridge, 1991), 171–86.

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Kramnitse and others. It is more difficult to explain place-names beginning with Vinde- such as Vindeby, Vindbyholt, Vinderup, because Vinde can be explained etymologically as Wendisch, as ‘winding’ or curving, or as ‘windy’. Some placename scholars have argued that it is difficult to imagine a Danish village combined with a Wendish settlement, and in such cases Vinde- must mean ‘windy’ or ‘winding’.52 This argument is very debatable and could be modified by looking at the actual location of such settlements (see Map 10.3). The oldest Danish place-names are those ending in -inge, -lev, -løse, -um, and the very short forms (for example Høm). In the Viking Age and early Middle Ages, a number of new settlements came into being with names ending in -by. From 1000 until after 1200, an intensive clearance of new land in Denmark, as in the rest of Europe, led to the establishing of new villages with names ending in -torp (-rup, -drup, -strup), -rød, -bølle.53 A closer look at the positioning of Vinde-villages reveals that they often lie on the periphery of the area of an old village, and often close to the sea. Their position indicates that they were established late, and they might be understood as a part of the expansion of the tilled land that occurred in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. On the south-eastern Danish island of Møn, for example, the village of Store Damme is the old, pre-medieval settlement (see Map 10.4). It was later expanded by the establishment of Askeby which must then, because of the nameending, date to the Viking Age or early medieval times. Sometime after 1000 more land was cleared, and it was then that the new settlements of Vollerup and Hårbølle were formed. And at the outermost periphery of this clearing and almost on the shore lies Vindebæk (bæk meaning ‘little stream’). Another example is from the small island of Tåsinge, south of Funen. The old settlement is Bregninge to which were later added the villages of Knudsbølle and first Gammel Nyby (Old Newby) and later Ny Nyby (New Newby); further away and almost on the shore of the fjord of Svendborg lies Vindeby. More examples could be referred to of this distribution of Vinde-settlements at the periphery of the cleared area and often near water. They indicate strongly that agricultural expansion in Denmark between 1000 and 1200 was connected to a significant immigration of Wends into the southern part of the area. This conclusion can be substantiated by the investigation by F.W. Housted, published in 1994. She has used not only names of villages and settlements, but was also the first to collect a large body of field names known from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century registers. The etymology of names is very often difficult to ascertain; many names might or might 52 53

F.W. Housted, Stednavne af slavisk oprindelse på Lolland, Falster og Møn (Copenhagen, 1994), 29–30. For changes in cultivated land, see E. Porsmose, ‘Middelalder o. 1000–1536’, in Det danske landbrugs historie, 4 vols, ed. C. Bjørn et al. (Copenhagen, 1988), vol. 1, 205–417.

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Map 10.3

The distribution of place-names with Vinde-

189

Map 10.4

Tåsinge and Møn

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not be of Slavic origin. There is, however, a close geographical correspondence between possible Slavic settlement names and possible Slavic field names which confirms that they actually are Slavic. A number of field names contain the ending -kamp or -krang, which might be explained both as Slavic and as Old Nordic, but on eastern Møn and Falster these fields are found in the same areas as settlements with Slavic names. The conclusion of F.W. Housted is that there are still enough Slavic names left today to presume the existence of a substantial Slavic presence in the Middle Ages. Slavic names are, on the other hand, distributed among undisputedly Danish names, so there are with one or perhaps two exceptions no indications in the place-name material of purely Slavic enclaves in southern Denmark.54 Most of the Slavs seem to have settled among the Danish-speaking population. In the eastern part of Møn is found a stone called Svantestone – Svante is the Slavic name for ‘holy’ (as in the name of the pagan god on Rügen, Svantevit).55 It would be tempting to regard this Svantestone as an indication of the existence of a pagan cult or place of worship in south-eastern Denmark. Such a dramatic conclusion cannot, of course, be drawn from one single source, but it is mentioned here to emphasise that nothing is known in detail about those Wendic settlers in southern Denmark who cleared new land. They might have been politically independent and so numerous that they could continue their own cult in spite of the official Danish royal policy of Christianisation. They might have been free Christians. Or they might have been unfree slaves working for Danish landowners. We do not know, but we do know that they were numerous enough to leave their mark upon the place-name material – and we also know that Saxo, writing around 1200, totally omitted them from his narrative. Saxo did not mention very many peasants at all; he was clearly more interested in kings and nobles. Still, it is remarkable that the Saxo who took such great interest in the Danish wars against Wends did not make even a brief comment about Wendish villages in southern Denmark. The explanation is probably that he omitted them intentionally. The great project of Saxo was to create a picture of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of Danes living in Denmark and Wends living in the Wendish lands in northern Germany. Saxo wanted to create a sharp border between Danes and Wends in spite of the fact that Danes and Wends moved easily across the Baltic Sea.

54

55

Housted, Stednavne, 86–9. Housted thus confirms – but on a larger base of source material – the conclusion reached by J. Prinz, ‘Zur Frage slavischer Orts- und Personennamen auf süddänischen Inseln’, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie, 33 (1966–7), 79–131. M. Lidegaard, Danske sten fra sagn og overtro (Copenhagen, 1994), 112.

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Frontiers and Castles Saxo’s depiction of a border was in consonance with the actual policy of Danish kings during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As a part of the crusading movement, and as a means to strengthen their own power against rivals from other royal lines, Danish kings expanded into Wendish lands and into the Baltic area.56 Closely connected to this expansion was the erection of a great number of castles in Denmark along the coastline, especially in the south.57 They have often been interpreted as works of defence against Wendish pirates; but must also, and perhaps to an even greater extent, be understood as necessary bases for military expansion, as is the case with similar castle-building or encastellamento in other areas of Europe in the Middle Ages. These castles were aggressive more than defensive (see Map 10.5). The Danish expansion in the twelfth century had political but also economic motives: tributes were exacted, cattle was stolen and slaves were brought back to Denmark in such numbers that Danish provincial laws in the twelfth century had to include a number of regulations pertaining to slaves. The expansion also had a religious motivation: the wars were fought as crusades and with the unequivocal support of the Danish church. But in the narrative of Saxo, all these notions were woven together and subordinated to the much more general notion of defending the patria against the eternal and unchanging menace of pirates. The border between the Danes and the Wends was now fixed and impossible to cross, according to Saxo. But what has been argued in this chapter is that this border was only an ideological construct. Migrations of Wends into Denmark had been common, probably even encouraged because of the need for manpower to clear new land; and controlling migrations and setting up borders was, given the physical nature of Danish lands, an impossibility, and continued to be so until very recent times.

56 57

Cf. also K. Villads Jensen, ‘Denmark and the Second Crusade: the formation of a crusader state?’, in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, ed. J. Phillips and M. Hoch (London, 2001), 164–79. The classical work on Danish castles is V. La Cour, Danske Borganlæg, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 1972). Results from recent excavations are often referred to in Castella maris Baltici 1993–, and in Chateau Gaillard 1964–. Cf. N. Engberg, ‘The Danish castle before 1250: status symbol or necessary defence?’, Castella Maris Baltici, 1 (1993), 51–60; J. Skaarup, ‘Fifty years’ excavations of the medieval castles and earthworks on the islands south of Funen, Denmark’, Castella Maris Baltici, 2 (1996), 185–200. The incastellamento along the Baltic coast is not exclusively a specific Danish development, but is also found in Sweden in the same period: see E. Roesdahl, ‘Fortification’, in Pulsiano, Medieval Scandinavia, 209–16.

_ _ _ ··_

The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark

.. __ .,_ ·- .. _ ··-.....-. ,._ .......... -_. ···....... ,_,

193

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Castles in Denmark in the twelfth century

Note: The number of castles could probably be augmented by another c. 20, which have been found by excavations especially in the southern part of Denmark, but no updated registration of all castles exists.

Chapter 11

Hungary, ‘the Gate of Christendom’ Nora Berend

King Béla IV (1235–70) in one of his letters called the kingdom of Hungary the ‘gate of Christendom’.1 This text provides us with an explicit medieval representation of what was considered to be a frontier and how the characteristics of a kingdom on the frontier were described (see Map 11.1). This document, a consciously elaborated statement at the royal court, serves as a starting point for an investigation of what ‘frontier’ meant in medieval Hungary. Medieval formulations in themselves may not be more precise or more helpful tools for historians than the modern terminology of ‘frontier societies’. They do, however, help to understand self-perception in medieval society. By exploring medieval views and concepts concerning frontiers, it is possible to analyse rhetoric and ideology, and situate them in the context of the period. By first focusing on medieval notions rather than imposing modern terminology that may be anachronistic, we can also refine our analytical concepts. In order to explain King Béla’s letter and its context, I shall consider Hungary’s position in the medieval world, which was the basis for the idea of Hungary as the gate of Christendom; the meaning of this imagery; and its function in royal politics. I shall concentrate on four aspects of thirteenth-century Hungarian frontiers: first, whether we can speak of ‘frontiers’ around the kingdom of Hungary; second, the terminology used to describe frontiers; third, the processes at the eastern frontier of Hungary itself, that is, at the meeting point with the nomads; and finally the frontier ideology developed at the royal court in the mid-thirteenth century on the basis of Hungary’s position in Latin Christendom. Real interaction, as well as the perceptions of what a frontier was, contributed to the creation of a frontier ideology; King Béla’s letter represents a conscious use of frontier rhetoric in the service of building royal power.

1

Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Archivium Arcis Armaria (henceforth ASV AA Arm.) I-XVIII-605; facsimile: A. Martini, I sigilli d’oro dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Milan, 1984), plate 9E; A. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Historica Hungariam Sacram Illustrantia (Rome, 1859), vol. 1, 230–32.

195

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

The Royal Letter In the aftermath of the Mongol invasion of 1241–2, King Béla expressed bitterness over the lack of support from other Christian kings and the papacy at the time of the invasion, in letters addressed to the popes. The longest of his letters, the so-called ‘Tatar letter’ from around 1250 (the exact dating has been debated) is the most revealing.2 Béla maintained that the Mongols were intent on returning and conquering the whole of the Christian world. The Hungarians, knowing from experience that resistance would be futile, would no longer put up a fight. Hungary would serve as an ideal site for the Mongols for their conquest of the West, since they could establish their camps in the country and could find ample pasture for their horses. In Béla’s ‘Tatar letter’, Hungary appeared as the gate of Christendom, ‘hostium ad alias fidei catholice regiones’. The kingdom’s eastern border was a place of entrance into Christendom, a Christendom already defined in territorial terms. Hungary was thus depicted as occupying a key position. It was the gate that was to keep enemies out, but that, once opened, could serve as a point of entry to a defenceless Christendom. The Borders of the Kingdom of Hungary The imagery of a gate could lead the reader to believe in the existence of a rigid frontier defence system; yet numerous studies concerning the medieval period show that linear frontiers around states did not exist. Can we speak of ‘borders’ around the kingdom at all? And was rulership defined in terms of a territory with borders around it, or as power over people without necessarily setting out territorial limits? The answer comprises several components: the development and organisation of the territorial extent of the power of Hungarian kings, the institutions in the borderlands around the kingdom, the title of Hungary’s kings as well as the depiction of the nature of their authority, and the medieval vocabulary used to describe borders. The kingdom of Hungary emerged at the intersection of three civilisations: Latin Christian, Byzantine and nomadic. Conversion to Latin Christianity, initiated by the ruler Géza in the late tenth century and continued by his son István (Stephen, 1000/1–38) in the eleventh, was interrelated with the formation of the kingdom. By relying on Christian institutions, and on immigrant clerics and nobles, one branch of 2

The letter is only dated by day and month, not by year; proposed dates are between 1247 and 1254. Tentative dating to 1250 with convincing argument and analysis of previous attempts at dating: I. Szentpétery and I. Borsa, Regesta regum stirpis Arpadianae critico-diplomatica, 3 vols (Budapest, 1923–87), no. 933a. The most recent thorough discussion on its dating is T. Senga, ‘IV. Béla külpolitikája és IV. Ince pápához intézett “tatár-levele” ’, Századok, 121 (1987), 584–612. He puts the date at 1247.

-

The medieval kingdom of Hungary

battle site

Uongollnvulon, 1241-42

late XIII• Century

Map 11.1

)t

-+--

-

The Kingdom ol Hungary _ early XI"' Century

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

the dynasty could strengthen its power at the expense of other members of the same family. The ruthless extermination of rival claimants of power by István was part of this consolidation. He united various areas under his own rule. Yet did this mean that a kingdom with specific borders was created as well? In medieval Europe, lordship was often defined as holding power or rights, even intermingled with the rights of others, over people or lands without defining an exact territory together with its limits.3 Was this the case in medieval Hungary? Owing to a lack of sources, the early stages of organisation are subject to debate; King István I created ecclesiastical dioceses and royal counties, though their number and area is open to speculation, and there is very limited information on how precisely the territorial extent of the kingdom was defined.4 By the thirteenth century, more information clarifies the picture. Analyses of county formation provide information on county boundaries as well, through a study of the delimitation of estates and dioceses.5 There was no frontier around the kingdom in the modern sense of the word, no precise, unchanging, fixed borders that were defended by military means; in this, Hungary resembled other medieval kingdoms. The extent of Hungarian royal power also changed over the course of the Middle Ages, as new territories were added and others were lost. Moreover, the effective power of Hungary’s kings varied in practice even over the territory that in a given period was considered to be part of the kingdom of Hungary. Although in principle they were rulers over the entire kingdom, in fact their authority was minimal or non-existent in some areas, which came under the power of a brother or a son. Yet rulership and the kingdom were also defined in territorial terms. The royal title in charters and laws was rex Hungarie (with the additional names of Dalmatia, Croatia, Serbia and so on added); Hungarian rulers were designated as kings of territories rather than of groups of people.6 In addition, thirteenth-century laws and royal decrees clearly distinguish between the kingdom and territories outside it: the difference between participating in wars outside the kingdom (extra regnum) and the defence of the land (defensio patrie) is emphasised when defining the obligations of nobles.7 The centre (medium regni) is contrasted with the border zone (confinium) of the kingdom.8 3 4 5 6

7 8

For example B. Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge, 1991), 114–15. For map see F. Glatz, ed., Virágkor és pusztulás: A kezdetektõl 1606-ig, História Könyvtár Atlaszok Magyarország történetéhez, vol. 1 (Budapest, 1995), 21. Gy. Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása Magyarországon (Budapest, 1988); Gy. Györffy, Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza, 4 vols to date (Budapest, 1963–98). For example, J.M. Bak, Gy. Bónis, J.R. Sweeney, eds and trans, The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary 1. 1000–1301 (Bakersfield, CA, 1989), 34, 38, 42, 44; G. Wenzel, ed., Codex diplomaticus Arpadianus continuatus, 12 vols (Pest, 1860–74), vol. 4, 39. Bak, et al., Laws, 39. See also 36. Bak, et al., Laws, 36.

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Finally, by the end of the thirteenth century, the idea that the kingdom has its constituent ‘parts’ that should not be detached is explicitly stated. If there is any attempt of secession, ‘si ... aliqua pars vel provincia regni ab obedientia regis vel potentia regni se abstraxerit aut alienare aliquo modo voluerit’, the nobles are to fight against this together with the king; and the king himself cannot alienate any part of the kingdom, because the integrity of the realm has to be conserved: ‘si aliqua pars regni ... per ... regum alienata extitisset, teneatur revocare idem domnus rex ad ius regium, ut regnum Hungarie quasi quoddam ius totum suarum possit partium integritate gaudere’.9 When we turn to descriptions of the kingdom’s frontier in medieval Hungarian sources, there is no uniformity. Different sources emphasize different aspects of the organization, institutions and functions of the frontier, depending on the objective of the source and also reflecting change over time. In an institutional sense, the frontier of medieval Hungary was zonal, similarly to the general pattern of pre-modern frontier formation.10 Early medieval Hungary had wide areas of borderland, the indagines regni or clausura regni (vernacular gyepû), although the exact location of these and whether they surrounded the entire kingdom is debated.11 Beginning in the eleventh century, artificial obstacles were also erected to hinder entry.12 Beyond the gyepû (ultra indagines, vernacular gyepûelve), there stretched an uninhabited territory. The border zone was initially organized into border counties (comitatus 9 10

11

12

Bak, et al., Laws, 45, and 50–51, respectively. For example O. Lattimore, ‘Origins of the Great Wall of China: a frontier concept in theory and practice’, in O. Lattimore, Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers 1928–1958 (London, 1962), 97–118; H. Ahrweiler, ‘La frontière et les frontières de Byzance en Orient’, in H. Ahrweiler, Byzance. Les pays et les territoires (London, 1976), essay 3; P. Gautier Dalché, ‘De la liste à la carte: limite et frontière dans la géographie et la cartographie de l’Occident médiéval’, Castrum, 4, Frontière et peuplement dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen Âge (Rome and Madrid, 1992), 19–31; A. Bazzana, P. Guichard, Ph. Sénac, ‘La frontière dans l’Espagne médiévale’, ibid., 36–59; D. Power, ‘What did the frontier of Angevin Normandy comprise?’, in Anglo-Norman Studies, ed. C. Harper-Bill, 17 (1995), 181–205; D. Power and N. Standen, eds, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands 700–1700 (London, 1999). For example ‘compellantur ire ad incidendas indagines vulgo gepu’: Gy. Fejér, Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis, 11 vols (Buda, 1829–44), vol. 3, pt 2, 69 (1225). There is insufficient information to determine the exact location of the gyepû and whether it surrounded the entire kingdom: Gy. Kristó, ed., Korai Magyar Történeti Lexikon (9.–14. sz) (Budapest, 1994), s.v. ‘gyepû’; Gy. Kristó, F. Makk and L. Szegfû, ‘Szempontok és adatok a korai magyar határvédelem kérdéséhez’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények, n.s. 20, no. 4 (1973), 639–59. On obstacles (claustra) protecting the country: Gy. Székely, ‘Településtörténet és nyelvtörténet. A XII. századi nyelvhatár kérdéséhez’, in Mályusz Elemér Emlékkönyv, ed. É.H. Balázs, E. Fügedi and F. Maksay (Budapest, 1984), 311–39, see 314; Kristó et al., ‘Szempontok és adatok’, 639–41.

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

confinii’; their exact locations are debated) with a juridically separate status; they were under royal power, with an appointed royal official (marchio, or comes confinii; határispán) overseeing their defence.13 Gradually, villages settled beyond the gyepû and from the twelfth century onwards these territories merged into the county system.14 Settlements of guards (‘custodes confiniorum, vulgo ewrii’), often from immigrant eastern groups such as Pechenegs and Muslims, ensured the patrolling of border regions.15 These frontier guards had a messenger service to send news concerning threats or dangers to the king.16 Entry and exit points through the gyepû were designated as gates, portae.17 On the eastern borders these points were the passes that led through the Carpathian mountains into the kingdom. Castles started to play an important role in the defence of borders only in the thirteenth century; after the Mongol invasion of 1241–42, the king, relinquishing royal monopoly, encouraged nobles to construct stone castles.18 According to the research of Gyula Kristó, the western borders were consolidated earlier than the eastern ones, where wide borderlands remained in existence in the thirteenth century. He has pointed out that almost no charters refer to the borders of the kingdom towards Rus’, the Cumans and the Bulgars (in the north-east, east and south-east); here, the borders of the kingdom were fixed only at a very late stage, the system of gyepû, gates, gyepûelve, survived much longer.19 It is significant to note the link between frontiers and royal power: it was the king’s responsibility to ensure the defence of the borders, and many of the border institutions were juridically directly under royal power at least for part of the medieval period.

13

14 15 16 17

18 19

It was called marchio during the reign of St Stephen, a term adopted from charters issued in the German empire; by the time of Ladislas’s second law book, it was replaced by comes confinii: Bak et al., Laws, 15; Kristó, Vármegyék, 61; Kristó, Korai Magyar, s.v. ‘határispán’, ‘határispánság’. See Györffy, Árpád-kori Magyarország, under the relevant counties. Székely, ‘Településtörténet’, 315; H. Göckenjan, Hilfsvölker und Grenzwächter im Mittelalterlichen Ungarn, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Östlischen Europa, 5 (Wiesbaden, 1972), 12–22. For quotation: Bak et al., Laws, 15. Székely, ‘Településtörténet’, 313; Bak et al., Laws, 28. The vernacular name, baranya, developed from the slavic brana. Göckenjan, Hilfsvölker, 5–11; Kristó, Vármegyék, 112; Gy. Pauler, ‘Néhány szó hadi viszonyainkról a XI–XIII. században’, Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 1, no. 4 (1888), 501–26, see 504. On porta also Kristó et al., ‘Szempontok és adatok’, 648–50 (the word was also used for entry to valleys, plots of land, and other areas; ‘gates’ were not only points of entry through the gyepû). E. Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–1437) (Budapest, 1986), 50–62. Kristó, Vármegyék, 114.

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Hungary’s Frontier: Medieval Perceptions and Terminology It has often been argued that linear frontiers of states did not exist in the medieval period.20 Yet, as linear boundaries did develop on a smaller scale, around estates for example, the experience of precise boundaries was not alien to medieval people. Moreover, the Hungarian example shows that the concepts and terminology used to write and think about local boundaries could be carried over to the frontiers of the kingdom. On a conceptual level, even if not in a practical institutional sense, the frontiers of the kingdom could be, and in some contexts were, conceived of as linear in the Middle Ages. Medieval descriptions indicate several functions of the kingdom’s borders; these can be divided as pertaining to issues of exit on the one hand and entry on the other. The frontiers of the kingdom appear in Hungarian laws, concerning the buying or selling of horses at the frontier, and the control of entry and exit points. The laws of King László I (Ladislas, 1077–95) regulated the sale of horses and oxen along the frontiers of the land (‘in aliquo huius terre confinio’). If someone without the king’s licence brought horses to the frontier zone (in confinium) to sell them, he was to be punished; the comites confiniorum themselves were to be deprived of their office if they allowed such a sale of horses and oxen beyond the frontiers of the country (‘ultra fines huius patrie’). Foreigners coming to the borderlands of the kingdom to trade (‘ex aliis regionibus in confinium .. . venerint’) also needed the king’s permission.21 Legislation during the reign of King Kálmán (Coloman, 1095–1116) stipulated that those who wished to leave Hungary (‘egressuri de Hungaria’) needed a seal from the toll-collectors of the king as well as those of the ispán who guarded the border crossings (‘qui exitus tenent’).22 Thus the frontier in these sources appears as consisting of specific points of interaction to be controlled; and this control is very much linked to royal power, as according to these texts, royal permission had to be sought prior to transactions and border crossings. It is clear that the defensive function of the frontier is far from the only one emphasised in the medieval sources. The military, defensive organisational structure of the border set out in laws (the system of guards and messenger service) is more suitable for hindering the progress and alerting to the presence of the enemy, than stopping attacks. In this, its function resembled that 20

21 22

L. Febvre, ‘La frontière: le mot et la notion’, in L. Febvre, Pour une histoire à part entière (Paris, 1962), 11–24; L. Febvre, ‘Limites et frontières’, Annales ESC, 2 (1947), 201–7; Power ‘What did the frontiers of Normandy comprise?’; D. Nordman, ‘Des limites d’état aux frontières nationales’, in Les lieux de mémoire, ed. P. Nora, pt 2, La Nation (Paris, 1986) vol. 2, 35–61; D. Nordman, Frontières de France. De l’espace au territoire (XVIe–XIXe siècles) (Paris, 1998); Gautier Dalché, ‘De la liste à la carte’; R. Bartlett and A. MacKay, eds, Medieval Frontier Societies (Oxford, 1989, 2nd edn 1996). Bak et al., Laws, 15–16. Bak et al., Laws, 32.

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Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

of pre-modern frontier defence systems elsewhere.23 This conclusion is confirmed by narrative accounts of attacks, according to which the royal army encounters the invaders within the kingdom rather than at the border.24 In addition, although defence is sometimes called defence of the border (‘confiniorum regni nostri’), often it is simply the defence of the land (patrie) or of the kingdom (regni); no special emphasis is placed on the defensive function of borders. Frontier functions as well as the terminology used to describe the kingdom’s frontiers can be analysed not only based on the laws quoted above, but also through thirteenth-century charters and chronicles. Out of the many references to the borders, I can only quote some examples. Otakar II, King of Bohemia, entered the ‘fines regni Hungarie’;25 in another text, this attack is described from the king’s point of view as Otakar entering the ‘fines regni nostri’ to devastate the kingdom.26 A man who deserved a reward for his role in the defence of the frontier was praised for the service he had rendered ‘confiniorum regni nostri deffensionibus’.27 The castle of Sopron, a city on the frontier, was to be carefully maintained: ‘castrum nostrum sit in confinio, et continuis vigiliis et custodiis debeat conseruari’.28 A man of the king was sent on a diplomatic mission beyond the border, ‘ultra terminos regni nostri’.29 King András (Andrew) II gave land to the Teutonic Order in 1211 to protect Hungary against the Cumans; they were placed in the border zone, in confinio.30 Similarly, the Hospitallers were settled ‘in frontibus paganorum, in paganorum confiniis’ to defend Hungary and spread Christianity among the pagans who attacked it.31 The border between Hungary and neighbouring kingdoms also appears in the context of describing the location of certain places: a castle is built ‘in confinio regni Sclavonie’, and an estate is ‘circa confinia polonie’.32 King László IV (Ladislas, 1272–90) led an army to force 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

For example, J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands’, Zbornik Radova Vizantoloshkog Insituta, 19 (1980), 79–116; B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire. The Roman Army in the East (2nd edn, Oxford, 1992). See note 43, as well as the examples of enemies breaking through the gyepû, such as I. Szentpétery, ed., Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, 2 vols (Budapest, 1937–8), vol. 1, 331; vol. 2, 520. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 25. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 40. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 253. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 254. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 310. Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, pt 1, 117; also in a papal letter: F. Zimmermann and C. Werner, eds, Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, 3 vols (Hermannstadt, 1892–1902), vol. 1, 23 (the Knights, ‘in regni confinio positi’, defend the kingdom against pagan attacks). Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 3, pt 1, 238. Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 5, pt 2, 125 (1273); I. Nagy, F. Deák and Gy. Nagy, eds, Hazai Oklevéltár 1234–1536 (Budapest, 1879), 71 (1274) respectively.

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the Cumans, who escaped Hungary, to return from the borders of the Mongols: ‘de finibus et terminis Tartarorum’.33 There are many other examples; I shall cite just one more, a charter from 1244, describing the borders of two estates. It is a particularly interesting document, as it refers both to the borders of a piece of land, and to the frontier of the kingdom. In Hungary as elsewhere in medieval Europe, the borders of estates and villages, the divisions between landholdings, were precisely demarcated and, following the perambulation of territory (határjárás), meticulously described in charters recording transactions such as donations or sale. Borders of villages were indicated already in the earliest surviving charters: a village ‘cum suis terminis’ in 1055 in the foundation charter of Tihany, and another in 1075 in the foundation charter of Garamszentbenedek.34 Border-markers included ditches, stones, trees and so on. Latin meta designated the border-markers and the borders themselves.35 In the charter from 1244, the king confers two estates, describing their location. One is at the borderland of Poland, ‘terram in confinio Poloniae existentem’; the other is ‘terram in terminis Berem’. The charter then records the delimitation of the estates, mentioning the various border-markers: the prima meta is at a river, then the border goes to a tree ‘sub qua est meta terrea’, further on there are ‘duae metae terreae’, and so on. Finally the estate stretches to the borderlands of Poland: ‘ad confinia Polonorum et ibi metis terminatur’. The other estate adjoins the borderlands of Moravia: ‘prima meta procedit in confinio Morauiae’ and then the text again lists the metae to describe the location of the borders of the estate.36 In the examples mentioned so far, the terminology used to designate frontiers fluctuates to some extent, but within one text there is a clear differentiation of terms for the delimitation of estates and for the borderlands of the kingdom. Moreover, the border of an estate can be said to coincide with the frontier of the kingdom. There existed, therefore, the concept of a boundary between kingdoms. This is explicitly developed in the chronicle of the Hungarian Anonymous (from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century), in a chapter on the establishment of the kingdom of Hungary prior to Christianisation. The chronicler describes the ruler establishing the borders of the kingdom much as he would demarcate those of an estate: ‘Dux . . . Zulta . . . fixit metas regni Hungarie ex parte Grecorum usque ad portam Wacil et usque ad terram Racy’.37 In the borderlands (in . . . confinio) Zulta placed Pechenegs to protect

33 34 35 36 37

Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 5, pt 3, 410. I. Szabó, A középkori magyar falu (Budapest, 1969), 107. Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, 87. Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, pt 1, 345–6. E. Jakubovich, ed., ‘Anonymi (P. Magistri) Gesta Hungarorum’, in Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 1, 33–117, see 113–14. ‘Duke Zulta fixed the borders of the kingdom of Hungary from the region of the Greeks to the gate [pass] of “Wacil” and to the land of the

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the kingdom and prevent German attacks against the borders of Hungary (‘fines Hungarorum devastare’).38 The Anonymous uses several different words – I would suggest, on purpose – in this description: confinium and fines designate a frontier zone that protects the kingdom; the metae of the kingdom constitute a sort of linear boundary, just like the boundaries of estates. The chronicle account resembles charters describing the results of perambulation by which the borders of estates were ascertained, indicating each border-marker. The chronicler therefore conceptualised a linear frontier around the kingdom, although this did not mirror the establishment of Hungary’s frontiers in reality. He projected a custom recorded in Latin charters composed by ecclesiastics into the pre-Christian past and on a scale (drawing the borders around the kingdom) that never existed prior to or during his lifetime. The terminology used for the frontier of the kingdom was diverse: a number of different words existed to designate ‘border’ and one word sometimes had different meanings, such as meta. Conceptually, there was both a linear and a zonal frontier around the kingdom. One striking feature unites the descriptions in various sources: both in normative and narrative sources, and even in the imagination of the anonymous chronicler, the kingdom’s frontiers and royal power were closely linked. Therefore already prior to King Béla’s letter, the theme of the kingdom’s frontiers as particularly related to royal power emerges; by the mid-thirteenth century, there was a long tradition to draw on in this respect. Interaction at the Eastern Frontier From the beginning of the kingdom’s existence, the eastern part of Hungary was at the meeting point of Latin Christendom and the nomadic world of the steppe. We need to examine the processes at this eastern frontier in more detail as part of the background to the birth of royal ideology. These processes fall into the pattern of nomad– sedentary interaction in areas where the two worlds met, such as China or Central Asia, analysed by Anatoly Khazanov and others.39 The two main elements of this interaction in the Hungarian case were incursions and settlement from the steppe. Hungarian chronicles often mention incursions by nomads. Analyses of life on the steppe prior to the establishment of the Mongol empire show that the mobility

38 39

rác.’ On ‘Wacil’ see Gy. Pauler, A magyar nemzet története az Árpádok korában, 2 vols (2nd edn, Budapest, 1899, repr. Szeged, 1984), vol. 1, 361. Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 1, 113–14. For example A. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (2nd edn, Madison, WI, 1994); P.B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden, 1992).

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of nomads, nomad economic structures and the fluid nature of political structures provided the backdrop to these attacks.40 On the one hand, raiding for booty was an integral part of the nomad economy. On the other hand, the movements of tribes and the rise of tribal alliances necessitated recurrent population migrations; some of these ended up in the territory of neighbouring sedentary states. The Hungarian tribal alliance itself moved to Hungary in this way, and after the establishment of the kingdom other nomads continued to arrive in Hungary. Waves of raids by Pecheneg, Oghuz, Cuman, and finally and most importantly, Mongol warriors appear in the chronicle accounts. They are described as causing destruction and fear. The gyepû could not stop large armies from attacking. As one account indicates, the enemy broke through the gyepû (‘a superiori parte porte Meses ruptis indaginis’) and entered the kingdom and devastated Hungary.41 At most, the gyepû hindered small raids, and gave additional time for the royal army to be alerted and to arrive on the scene.42 Numerous accounts mention the pursuit of nomad raiders as they were returning from Hungary with their loot; royal armies sometimes freed some of the prisoners.43 A variety of nomad tribes succeeded each other in the territories east of the kingdom. Their points of entry into Hungary were in Transylvania. Despite the real destruction caused by recurring raids, which resulted in pillage, the taking of goods and of captives, it was only in the thirteenth century that experiments with new measures concerning frontier defence started. In 1211, King András II installed the Teutonic Knights in order to defend the Barcaság (Burzenland). This was perhaps due to an increase in raids after the Cumans took possession of the area immediately adjacent to this part of Hungary. The Teutonic Knights were given permission to build first wooden, and then stone castles and were charged with fighting against and converting the Cumans. However, the king was unwilling to give up land in return for protection from the Cumans. When the Teutonic Knights attempted to gain independence by direct subordination to the apostolic see, the king did not hesitate to expel them in 1225. Despite insistent papal demands for a decade, the monarch never allowed them back.44 Before the mid-thirteenth century, the pressure of territorial defence does not seem to have been significant enough to lead to a restructuring of the frontier. In the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols invaded Hungary (1241–42). They overran the kingdom, and after his defeat, the king fled to Austria and then to the 40 41 42 43 44

Relevant chapters arranged according to the various nomad groupings: Golden, Introduction; D. Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge, 1990). Incorporated into a fourteenth-century chronicle: Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 1, 366. Pauler, ‘Néhány szó’, 505. For example, Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 1, 366, 371; also the iconography of the legend of St László, in Gy. László, A Szent László-legenda középkori falképei (Budapest, 1993). Zimmermann and Werner, Urkundenbuch, 35–60.

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Dalmatian sea-shore. During the winter of 1242, the Mongols crossed the Danube, made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the king, and finally turned back and left the country. Scholars still disagree about the impact of the invasion. Contemporary medieval sources paint a picture of complete desolation and destruction.45 Two schools of historiography have emerged on the basis of these sources. One accepts uncritically the image formulated by medieval authors, portraying the invasion as a major catastrophe that left the country crippled and devastated, with 50 per cent of the population dead.46 The other, pointing to the several successful wars against Austria and Bohemia and rapid economic development and castle-building soon after the invasion, estimates a population loss of 15–20 per cent.47 Some scholars have even denied that the invasion left lasting effects, claiming that the chilling medieval

45

46

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L. Juhász, ed., Rogerii Carmen Miserabile, in Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 2, 543–88. Thomas of Spalato (who knew Rogerius personally): F. Ra…ki, ed., Historia Salonitanorum Pontificum atque Spalatensium, in Monumenta Spectantia Historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, vol. 26 (Zagreb, 1894), 132–80. L. Juhász, ed., Planctus Destructionis Regni Hungariae per Tartaros, in Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 2, 589–98. ‘A. 1241. Hoc anno regnum Ungarie, quod 350 annis duravit, a Tartarorum gente destruitur’: Ph. Jaffé, ed., Hermanni Althanensis annales, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, vol. 17, 381–407, see 394. Gy. Györffy, ‘Magyarország népessége a honfoglalástól a XIV. század közepéig’, in Magyarország történeti demográfiája, ed. J. Kovacsics (Budapest, 1963), 45–62, see 53–4; Györffy, ‘Introduction’, in T. Katona, A tatárjárás emlékezete (Budapest, 1987), 29–33; Györffy, ‘A honfoglalók száma és az Árpád-kor népessége’, in Magyarország történeti demográfiája I. A Honfoglalás és az Árpád-kor népessége, ed. J. Kovacsics (Budapest, 1995), 37–41. Györffy draws conclusions about population loss based on mentions of ‘empty villages’ in charters following the Mongol invasion. Critics have pointed out methodological shortcomings: the ‘empty villages’ do not all reflect population loss, but also the relocation of villages, the establishment of new villages, the number of people moving into towns, and so on. Moreover, not all the villages are documented; nothing is known of their population losses. Between 147 and 172 new castles were built in the years 1242–1300: Fügedi, Castle and Society, 53–4. Twenty-two towns with full privileges were established during the thirty years following the Mongol invasion: J. Szûcs, Az utolsó Árpádok (Budapest, 1993), 53–4; E. Fügedi, ‘Középkori magyar városprivilégiumok’, Tanulmányok Budapest múltjából, 14 (Budapest, 1961), 17–107, especially 19–26, 56–73. On 15–20 per cent population loss: P. Engel, Beilleszkedés Európába a kezdetektõl 1440-ig (Budapest, 1990), 226; Szûcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, 5–6. Both follow I. Szabó, A falurendszer kialakulása Magyarországon (X–XV. század) (Budapest, 1966), 95, 175–9. Gy. Kristó, ‘Magyarország lélekszáma az Árpád-korban’, in Kovacsics, ed., Magyarország történeti demográfiája I. A Honfoglalás, 42–95, see 81–4: 10–15 per cent population loss. See also I. Bertényi, ‘Magyarország nemzetközi helyzete a tatárjárás után’, in Unger Mátyás Emlékkönyv, ed. P. Kovács, J. Kalmár, L.V. Molnár (Budapest, 1991), 15–22; Cs. Csorba, ‘A tatárjárás és a kunok betelepedése’, Emlékkönyv a Túrkevei Múzeum fennállásának harmincadik évfordulójára (Túrkeve, 1981), 33–68, see 64–5.

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accounts were generated not by the weight of the devastation but by the appearance of a little-known and even less understood, therefore mythified, enemy.48 Medieval accounts described the Mongols as invincible monsters, sometimes even attributing eschatological significance to them. This perception of difference had some grounding in the different methods of fighting, discipline and dress of the Mongols, as well as their calculated use of terror as a technique to break resistance. The other main type of interaction on the eastern frontier was the immigration and settlement of nomads in Hungary. Groups from the tribal associations that had raided Hungary also settled there: Oghuz, Pecheneg and most importantly Cumans. This pattern also resembles the raids and settlements by Vikings in Europe. It was the settlement of the Cumans in the mid-thirteenth century that is the most important for the understanding of the ‘gate of Christendom’ concept.49 Both the nomad and the Christian sides had reasons to agree to such settlement. Fleeing from the Mongols after numerous defeats, a group of the Cumans asked for admission to the kingdom, as an alternative to acknowledging Mongol rule. Both the king and the ecclesiastics welcomed the Cumans. Béla’s decision fitted into a traditional policy of strengthening royal power by the admittance of various groups; the loyalty, military service and revenue gained from a variety of immigrants had long been seen as a buttress of royal power.50 In addition, King Béla wanted to use Cuman military power against both internal noble factionalism and external military threat by the Mongols. The ecclesiastical policy of gaining new souls for Christendom through the baptism of pagans, and a recurrent notion that pagans, wandering in darkness, were open to conversion, made the admission of the Cumans not only acceptable but desirable for clerics. The conversion of the immigrant Cumans was seen as a continuation of the early thirteenth-century Dominican missions to Cumania (the area east of Hungary).51 At the time of the Mongol invasion, the Cumans were seen by the local population 48 49 50

51

L. Zichy, A tatárjárás Magyarországon (Pécs, 1934), 5, 69–86, 109–10; Csorba, ‘A tatárjárás’, 63–5. For a detailed analysis of the history of the Cumans in Hungary, see N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary (Cambridge, 2001). The most famous explicit medieval text concerning royal favour to immigrants is the one attributed to St Stephen (in fact written by a Bavarian or Venetian cleric): J. Balogh, ed., Libellus de institutione morum, in Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 2, 611–27, see 625. On this text see J. Szûcs, ‘Szent István Intelmei: az elsõ magyarországi államelméleti mû’, in Szent István és kora, ed. F. Glatz and J. Kardos (Budapest, 1988), 32–53. Hagiography also emphasised royal generosity to foreigners: for example Szentpétery, Scriptores, vol. 2, 378–9, 387, 518. L. Makkai, A milkói (kún) püspökség és népei (Debrecen, 1936); N. Berend, ‘The Mendicant Orders and the conversion of pagans in Hungary’, Alle frontiere della Cristianità: I frati mendicanti e l’evangelizzazione tra ‘200 e ‘300, Atti del XXVIII Convegno Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Spoleto, forthcoming).

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as spies for the Mongols; the chieftain and his family were massacred, and the Cumans left Hungary. They were recalled by King Béla after the Mongol invasion and, although neither rapidly nor smoothly, they finally integrated into the local population. At the time King Béla sent his letter to the pope, the Cumans were freshly settled in the kingdom. The Gate of Christendom: The Birth of a Frontier Ideology Hungary’s eastern frontier was a predominantly defensive one; attempts at expansion towards the East were short-lived and ended in failure, whereas repeated nomad raids and the Mongol invasion penetrated the kingdom’s borders. This contributed to the shaping of an identity; one can contrast Hungary for example with Iberia, where Christian triumphs influenced the ideology of Reconquest. An explicit Hungarian frontier identity emerged in the mid-thirteenth century, formulated at the royal court; in the late medieval period, during the Ottoman wars, this was reinforced and subsequently it became an integral part of national identity. The birth of the idea that Hungary was the gate of Christendom, and the use this idea was put to, was based on the position of the kingdom on Christendom’s eastern frontier, on the processes that characterised this frontier, and most immediately on the Mongol invasion and the fear of future Mongol conquest. It was not, however, simply a statement of fact; King Béla IV exploited the possibilities provided by real events to construct an ideology in the service of royal power. Who it was who contributed to drawing up the argument of the letter is unknown: a cleric of the royal chancery, or perhaps a Dominican.52 Clearly, however, the ideology that was formulated served the king’s interest. In the ‘Tatar letter’, Béla maintained that the Mongols were determined to return and conquer Hungary, so as then to overrun the whole of Christendom. The king referred to a precedent in order to lend additional force to his argument: he recalled the example of Attila the Hun, who ‘came from the East to conquer the West’, and made his headquarters in Hungary. Béla complained that during the invasion, he had asked for help in vain from Christian powers, including the papacy. If no help from the pope was forthcoming, Béla would enter into an alliance with the Mongols in order to escape military subjugation. In other letters, he mentioned that the Mongol ruler 52

On the one hand, the personnel of the chancery could have contributed. Royal letters were written in the chancery, and its staff consisted of clerics. On the other hand, Dominicans in this period were closely connected to the royal court. Possible connections between Dominican sources and the royal letter include the criticism of the crusade by Humbert of Romans (minister-general of the order): E. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985), 208.

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proposed a marriage alliance.53 The threat of a marriage alliance with the Mongols sounded plausible as a marriage alliance with the Cumans was already in place; Béla’s son and heir István married the daughter of a Cuman chieftain. The Cumans were, just like the Mongols, nomads and pagans (although István’s bride, and later her parents, were baptised). The king complained of the marriage alliances with the Cumans and other ‘unsuitable’ partners, such as Rus’ian princes, presenting them as policies to ensure the safety of Hungary, forced upon him by the indifference of the Roman Christian world. Hungary, the gate of Christendom, was thus to be the protector of Christendom, but the king emphasised the weakness, fragility and precarious position of the kingdom, at the same time indicating its potential for resistance to the Mongols – if the pope granted the king’s requests. The ideas expressed in this letter drew on many pre-existing themes. Real frontier terminology and real events are mirrored in Béla’s letter. Early medieval frontier structures persisted in the eastern part of Hungary; many places of entry into the kingdom were still called gates (porta, kapu) during Béla’s reign, even though by then settlements often existed outside the traditional ‘gates’.54 In the letter, Béla used the word hostium, not porta, but the notions are clearly linked. This ideological construction of Hungary on Christendom’s frontier also drew on the imaginary notion that a precise borderline containing exit and entry points existed. Yet whereas the Hungarian Anonymous projected the real process of estate delimitation onto the imaginary drawing of borders around the kingdom, the ‘Tatar letter’ posited the argument that Hungary itself was an entry point on the frontier of Christendom. The king highlighted the role the River Danube played as ‘the water of resistance’ in helping to stop the enemy. Using the imagery of a ‘gate’ to indicate defence also had wider associations. The first Council of Lyons in 1245 addressed the problem of the Mongol danger, and exhorted kings to fortify the points where the Mongols could gain entry: ‘viam et aditus, unde in terram vestram gens ipsa posset ingredi . . . fossatis vel et muris ... promunire curetis’.55 Ideas of defence had appeared in Hungary itself, expressed in a terminology of fortifications and walls: the Teutonic Order was described in the early thirteenth century as the propugnaculum of the kingdom of Hungary against Cumans.56 The terms ‘wall’ and antemurale (bulwark, rampart) in descriptions of the defence of Christendom against non-Christians had a long history: Urban II already applied them to Tarragona in the struggle against the

53

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C. Bourel de la Roncière, J. de Loye, P. de Cenival and A. Coulon, eds, Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, 3 vols (Paris, 1895–1959), no. 2963; J. Guiraud, Les Registres d’Urbain IV, 4 vols (Paris, 1892–1958), no. 1242 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 240 and 264–5). Kristó, Vármegyék, 112. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 198. Zimmermann and Werner, Urkundenbuch, 14, 20, 23.

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Muslims.57 This imagery seems to have had two roots: the physical defence-system used in warfare;58 and biblical exegesis where the ‘wall and rampart’ of Isaiah 26:1 was often interpreted as a reference to faith.59 The two traditions came together in the imagery of the protection of Christendom against non-Christian attackers. In comparison, the imagery of the gate is significant for two reasons. It reinforced the idea that Hungary was central in the defence against the Mongols, as the entry point to Christendom: Hungary, ‘if it is possessed by the Tartars, will be an open gate for them to other regions of the Catholic faith’ (‘si possideretur a Thartharis, esset pro ipsis apertum hostium alias fidei catholice regiones’). At the same time the use of ‘gate’ instead of ‘wall’or ‘rampart’ conveyed fragility. This was a conscious choice; the other terminology was known to Béla, and he had used it earlier when soliciting help against the Mongols in 1242. He asked for knights who ‘velint ac possint se murum pro domo Domini opponere’ against the attackers.60 Béla also made use in his letter of existing stereotypes: papal pronouncements had already emphasised the territorial nature of Christendom, Christian frontiers, and the necessity for defence that was a common Christian cause. ‘Pro defensione Christianitatis’ was a stock phrase when talking about defence or conquest in the Holy Land or Iberia.61 It was now extended to defence against the Mongols. In the end, although there were incursions into the kingdom (and into Poland) after 1241–42, 57

58 59 60 61

Patrologia Latina, vol. 151 col. 303; D. Mansilla, La documentación pontifícia hasta Inocencio III (965–1216) (Rome, 1955), 47. See J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), 19. See also L. Auvray, ed., Les Registres de Grégoire IX, 4 vols (Paris, 1890–1955), no. 1960: ‘se ipsos murum defensionis opponentes in Rusciae’ (1234). For example Patrologia Latina, vol. 166, col. 497; vol. 174, col. 1615; vol. 179, col. 548. For example Patrologia Latina, vol. 76, col. 169; vol. 91, col. 1215; vol. 98, col. 902; vol. 119, col. 952. J.L.A. Huillard-Bréholles, Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, vol. 6, pt 2 (Paris, 1861), 904. The use of porta to describe a key point in the defence system is not without parallels: see the article of R. Ellenblum in this volume. For Iberia, for example Mansilla, Documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio III, 502 (1212); D. Mansilla, La documentación pontifícia de Honorio III (1216–1227) (Rome, 1965), 431. Examples of such rhetoric from papal letters to Hungary: Gregory IX wrote to King Béla himself in 1238 to proceed against heretics in Bulgaria, so that the Christian faith would be propagated, the liberty of the Church protected, and Christian religion defended through him: Auvray, Les Registres de Grégoire IX, no. 4056 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 159); and to go on crusade to help the Latin empire because all Christians would suffer if it fell: Auvray, Les Registres de Grégoire IX, no. 4155 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 162). The indulgence given to those taking the cross against the Mongols was the same as that given to those fighting for the Holy Land by Gregory IX in 1241: Auvray, Les Registres de Grégoire IX, no. 6058; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 183. Pope Innocent IV on the Hospitallers defending Christendom (1248): F. Knauz, ed., Monumenta Ecclesiae Strigoniensis, 3 vols (Esztergom, 1874– 1924), vol. 1, 378, no. 487.

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there was no repetition of a large-scale invasion of Hungary. The Mongol question, however, occupied contemporaries. Ambassadors to the Mongols such as Giovanni del Plano Carpini brought back alarming news about preparations for conquest.62 Mongol ultimatums themselves contained references to the aim of conquering the world.63 The idea that the Mongols wished to conquer Christendom was widespread at the time; examples of the expression of this fear can be found in a variety of sources, and papal letters emphasised that the defence of Hungary itself was a common Christian cause.64 Therefore, substantial reasons existed for taking defensive measures; and, especially from the pontificate of Innocent IV, discussions and proposals to resist future attacks were on the agenda.65 The ‘Tatar letter’, along with several others similar in tone, has often been interpreted as a cry for help, the desperate attempt of King Béla to save his kingdom from impending disaster by appealing for outside support. Instead, this letter is an example of shrewd royal diplomacy.66 Béla was in fact trying to place pressure on the 62

63

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John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus, chapters 8–9, in Sinica Franciscana, ed. A. van den Wyngaert (Quaracchi, 1929), vol. 1, 27–130, and also in Giovanni di Pian Carpine: Storia dei Mongoli, ed. P. Daffinà, C. Leonardi, M.C. Lungarotti, E. Menestò and L. Petech (Spoleto, 1989). Among the many analyses, see J. Richard, La papauté et les missions d’orient au Moyen Âge (XIIIe–XVe siècles), Collection de l’École Française de Rome, 33 (Rome, 1977), 63–86 (comparison with other envoys); D. Sinor ‘John of Plano Carpini’s return from the Mongols: new light from a Luxemburg manuscript’, in Sinor, Inner Asia and its Contacts with Medieval Europe (London, 1977), essay 12. E. Voegelin, ‘The Mongol orders of submission to European powers, 1245–1255’, Byzantion, 15 (1940–41), 378–413; P. Jackson, ‘The crisis in the Holy Land in 1260’, English Historical Review, 95 (1980), 481–513, see 484. D. Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986, repr. 1996) on conquests and policies of government. Two letters of Pope Gregory IX in 1241: ‘a dictis Tartaris totius populi christiani perditio queritur’, ASV Reg. Vat. 20 f. 82v; Auvray, Les Registres de Grégoire IX, no. 6059; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 184; and ‘totam christianorum terram desertam ponere molliuntur’, Reg. Vat. 20 f. 82r–v, Auvray, Les Registres de Grégoire IX, no. 6060; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 184. Pope Innocent IV in a letter in 1247: ‘non est proprium, sed commune ac tangit quemlibet christianum’, E. Berger, ed., Les Registres d’Innocent IV, 4 vols (Paris, 1884–1921), no. 2957; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 203–4. See also Berger, Les Registres d’Innocent IV, no. 4000; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 206. J. Richard, ‘The Mongols and the Franks’, Journal of Asian History, 3 (1969), 45–57 lists texts expressing the fear that the Mongols plan to subjugate Christendom, for example at the time of the Mongol invasion of Hungary, and in 1251 and in 1261. For an early attempt at defence: P. Jackson, ‘The crusade against the Mongols (1241)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42 (1991), 1–18. Innocent IV and his successors: Richard, La papauté, 68–165; A. Melloni, Innocenzo IV: la concezione e l’esperienza della cristianità come regimen unius personae (Genoa, 1990), 177–87 on Innocent and infidels; 1274: Année charnière. Mutations et continuités (Paris, 1977), 31–72, 85–96. Already indicated by Senga, ‘IV. Béla külpolitikája’. See J. Szûcs, ‘A kereszténység

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pope in order to gain concessions. Even the physical form of the letter which survives in the Vatican Archives shows that it was not a desperate appeal for help. It is a carefully drafted document, sealed by a golden seal, which was used only on the most important royal correspondence.67 I would argue that it also represented something different from straightforward realpolitik, that is, applying for help against a possible future Mongol attack. Obviously, the Mongol invasion itself was a very real shock, caused real destruction and remained alive in the popular memory for a long time. The fear of the eventual return of the Mongols was no less real, especially because they withdrew voluntarily rather than after a defeat. Despite the reality of the building blocks, turning Hungary into the gate of Christendom was an ideological construct. First, King Béla exaggerated the danger associated with Hungary’s frontier position. The king stoked Western fears of a conscious Mongol plan to eradicate Christendom, and maintained that the whole of Europe was endangered.68 He kept the fears alive by repeated letters over decades, mentioning imminent Mongol attacks.69 He also obscured the fact that he was taking advantage of the kingdom’s position on the frontier. He presented the admission of the Cumans into Hungary as a reluctant concession to stark necessity in order to protect Hungary and Christendom from the Mongols: ‘for shame we defend our kingdom today by means of pagans, and we tread the enemies of the church underfoot with the aid of pagans’ (‘prohdolor per Paganos hodie regnum nostrum defendimus, et per Paganos infideles ecclesie conculcamus’). In fact he eagerly welcomed the Cuman presence and used the Cumans as a power base against neighbouring Christian political enemies, and within the kingdom against his own nobility who increasingly sought independent power. Second, he claimed a special place for Hungary as the protector of Christendom. His arguments turned Hungary into a unique location, whereas in reality it was not the only point of entry for the Mongols to Christendom. Béla criticized the papal policy of encouraging

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belsõ politikuma a XIII. század derekán: IV. Béla király és az egyház’, Történelmi Szemle, 21 (1978), 158–81 on Béla’s diplomatic skills towards the papacy. ASV AA Arm. I–XVIII–605; Martini, I sigilli d’Oro, plate 9E. See P. Sella, Le Bolle d’Oro dell’Archivio Vaticano (Vatican City, 1934), 4–5. Royal letters from the time of the invasion on emphasised the Mongol danger to all of Christendom, and in some of these letters ‘Europa’ also appears. From a letter in 1241: ‘non solum nostra, verum etiam totius populi Christiani spes’, Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 2, 126–7 (Szentpétery and Borsa, Regesta, no. 707). From a letter from probably 1250: ‘pro imminentibus necessitatibus regni nostri, nec non Christianorum omnium habitantium in Europa’, Fejér, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 4, part 1, 289; Szentpétery and Borsa, Regesta, no. 933b. References to Béla’s letters for example Bourel de la Roncière et al., Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, no. 2963 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 239–41) (1259); E. Jordan, ed., Les Registres de Clément IV (Paris, 1893–1945), no. 113 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 280) (1265).

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crusades to the Holy Land and the Latin empire of Constantinople, saying that the loss of these areas would not affect Christian Europe as much as the fall of Hungary would: Admiratur inquam et admirari non desinit, eo quod apostolica clemencia multis provideat, sicut Constantinopolitano imperio et ultramarinis partibus, que si ammitterentur, quod absit, non tamen nocerent Europe habitatoribus, quantum si regnum nostrum solum a Thartharis contingeret possideri.70

Criticism of papal crusading policies surfaced elsewhere, too, fuelled by local interests (including criticism of crusading against Frederick II on the part of those who felt that the defence of the Holy Land was more important).71 The king also stressed the fragility of Hungary’s position, and the danger this would mean for Christendom as a whole. In fact, the kingdom of Hungary experienced recurrent nomad raids for centuries; and despite real losses, little effort was made to protect the frontiers better. The kings of Hungary were unwilling to cede power in exchange for security from raids, as the example of the Teutonic Knights demonstrates. Even after the Mongol invasion, which was undoubtedly more serious than the usual raids, whatever its real toll was, a remarkably rapid reconstruction followed, characterised by economic development and military successes. Third, Béla used the position he had thus outlined as grounds for special rights and privileges. He tried to have his way concerning many issues where kings and popes traditionally opposed each other. These included questions that had nothing to do with the defence of the frontier. Béla made good use of the fears haunting Christendom since the news of the Mongol invasion. He kept bombarding the popes with a variety of demands. He asked for permission to use ecclesiastical tithes and to employ Jews in public offices; he pressed the pope to accept a royal nominee to the archbishopric.72 All these demands were supported by the claim that these measures were necessary for the functioning of the kingdom, and were thus in the interest of Christendom as a whole, which was protected by Hungary. The Iberian kings employed similar tactics, fostering papal

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ASV AA Arm. I–XVIII–605; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, 232. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 184–6; but on the overall popularity of the crusade in the mid-thirteenth century: 196–7. Pseudo-Joachim, Super Hieremiam Prophetam, composed between 1243–8, provides a direct parallel to the argument in Béla’s letter: prelates, ‘by sending Christians to the barbarous nations . . . weakened the barrier which protected Christendom from the heathen’ (Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 206). Knauz, Monumenta Ecclesiae Strigoniensis, vol. 1, 487–8, no. 629; ASV AA Arm. I–XVIII–608 (Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 232–3); ASV Reg. Vat. 25, f. 224v (Bourel de la Roncière et al., Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, no. 2963; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 241), mostly references surviving in papal letters.

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anxiety with a spectre of disaster to the Christian cause at the hands of the Muslims, in order to gain benefits from the papacy.73 In the short run, the popes did not always bend to King Béla’s wishes. Though sufficiently alarmed to conduct a voluminous correspondence with the king as well as with many Hungarian prelates, in order to deter the king from an alliance with the Mongols, Popes Alexander IV and Urban IV did not grant all that Béla requested.74 Indeed their reaction showed that rather than being prompted to help a king in need, they started to fear Béla himself as a potential threat to Christianity. Popes reacted sharply against those who submitted to the Mongols for their own safety rather than trying to create an alliance with them either to convert them or to defeat the Muslims. Whereas plans for alliances with the Mongols in order to conquer the Holy Land were entertained in medieval Europe (for example by Louis IX), Bohemond VI of AntiochTripoli, who submitted to the Mongols without any struggle and accepted client status in 1260, was excommunicated; the popes opposed his policy, just as they did Béla’s threat of a marriage alliance with the Mongols.75 On the plane of ideas, however, the notion of Hungary as protector of Christendom became a great success. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the period of the wars against the Ottomans, the image of Hungary as a shield or bulwark of Christendom was fully elaborated.76 The same terminology developed in Poland (indeed the two kingdoms were in a personal union for part of the time when this idea flourished), a fact carefully ignored by Hungarian nationalists who later made use of the image of Hungary as a protector of Christendom, always betrayed and left on its own while it defended Europe against a variety of ‘barbarians’.77 Kings were similarly active in

73 74 75 76

77

P. Linehan, ‘Religion, nationalism and national identity in medieval Spain and Portugal’, in P. Linehan, Spanish Church and Society 1150–1300 (London, 1983), essay 1, 189. ASV Reg. Vat. 25, f. 224r (Bourel de la Roncière et al., Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, no. 2963; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 240); ASV, Reg. Vat. 29 f. 99v–100r (Guiraud, Les Registres d’Urbain IV, no. 1242; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, vol. 1, 264, 265). Jackson, ‘The crisis in the Holy Land in 1260’. On Hungary as the ‘bulwark of Christendom’ in the later Middle Ages: S. Õze, ‘ “A kereszténység védõpajzsa” vagy az ‘üllõ és verõ közé szorult ország”: a nemzettudat átformálódása a 16. század közepén a dél-dunántúli végvári katonaságnál’, in Magyarok Kelet és Nyugat közt, ed. T. Hofer (Budapest, 1996), 99–107; L. Terbe, ‘Egy európai szállóige életrajza (Magyarország a kereszténység védõbástyája)’, Egyetemes Philológiai Közlöny, 60 (1936), 297–351; S. Csernus, ‘Lancelot király és Magyarország mint a Kereszténység védõbástyája’, in La civiltà Ungherese e il Cristianesimo, ed. J. Jankovics, J. Nyerges, I. Monok and P. Sárközi, 3 vols, Atti del IV. Congresso Internazionale di Studi Ungheresi (Rome and Naples, 1996), vol. 2, 580–96. On Poland: P.W. Knoll, ‘Poland as antemurale Christianitatis in the late Middle Ages’, Catholic Historical Review, 60 (1974), 381–401; J. Tazbir, Polskie Przedmurze Chrzeœcijañskiej Europy: mity a rzeczywistoœæ historyczna (Warsaw, 1987).

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the creation of frontier ideologies in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Poland and Hungary, as in the thirteenth century.78 Hungary as a ‘frontier society’ is not simply a modern historian’s construct, but the medieval meaning of this concept was rather different from its uses in modern historiography. The formulation of the image of Hungary on the frontier of Christendom originated as part of thirteenth-century royal diplomacy, in the service of strengthening royal power. The medieval image of Hungary as a gate of Christendom conjures up different associations from that of a bulwark formulated and diffused later. The possibility of opening or closing, liminality, the danger of known as well as unknown enemies overpowering Christendom, was more emphatic in this image than in the late medieval idea of a solid division conveyed by the image of fortifications and walls. This fluidity corresponds in a way to what many scholars have argued about the nature of medieval frontier zones.79 It was, however, also a conscious creation in this case, emphasising that frontier existence meant being under attack, and that this could even be ultimately fatal to Christendom. The ‘gate of Christendom’, therefore, was a construct that reflected realities only partially and in a distorted manner. The concept of linear boundaries and the realities of sedentary–nomad interaction together led to a royal formulation of frontier ideology that in its turn had repercussions for the evolution of Hungarian identity. American historians recently turned Turner on his head and asserted that it was not the frontier that created the centre, but the centre (national political power) that created the frontier.80 This type of dynamics between centre and frontier is relevant for medieval societies as well. King Béla endeavoured to build royal power both through the opportunities provided by the proximity of the nomad world (the settlement of the Cumans) and through a frontier rhetoric. The concept of linear frontiers separating large political units was born before the development of modern nation states. Already in the thirteenth century frontier ideology was being used for political purposes, and the central power played a crucial role in the invention of frontiers. This happened on the conceptual level before a stable ‘national’ frontier was maintained in practice.

78 79 80

For example King Casimir the Great, King Sigismund, King Vladislav: Knoll, ‘Poland as antemurale Christianitatis’; Terbe, ‘Egy európai szállóige életrajza’; Csernus, ‘Lancelot király és Magyarország mint a Kereszténység védõbástyája’. Examples abound in Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval Frontier Societies. R. White, ‘It’s your misfortune and none of my own’: A History of the American West (Norman and London, 1991); P. Nelson Limerick, ‘The adventures of the frontier in the twentieth century’, in The Frontier in American Culture, ed. J.R. Grossman (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994), 67–102.

Chapter 12

Boundaries and Men in Poland from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Masovia Grzegorz Myœliwski

Local boundaries, although not such a frequent topic of historical research as the delimitations of states and the development of frontiers, are also an attractive object of investigation. Previous studies have focused on a variety of issues connected with local boundaries. These include their origins, the evolution of their form and of their markers,1 as well as the precise procedure by which they were delimited, and their socio-juridical context.2 Together with anthropologists, historians have also turned their attention to the numerous cultural consequences of boundary delimitation.3 All these approaches fall within the scope of this study. 1

2

3

T. Manteuffel, ‘Metody oznaczania granic w geografii historycznej’ (The method of boundary marking in historical geography), Ksiêga pami¹tkowa dla prof. M. Handelsmana (Studies offered to Professor M. Handelsman), (Warsaw, 1929), 221–8; R. Kiersnowski, ‘Znaki graniczne w Polsce œredniowiecznej’ (Boundary-markers in medieval Poland), Archeologia Polski, 5 (1960), 257–89; Z. Podwiñska, Zmiany form osadnictwa wiejskiego na ziemiach polskich we wczeœniejszym œredniowieczu. (reb, wieœ, opole (The structural changes of rural settlement in earlier medieval Poland: household, village, neighbourhood community), (Wroc³aw, 1971), 86, 118, 202–22; H.J. Karp, Grenzen in Mitteleuropa während des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Grenzlinie aus dem Grenzsaum (Cologne and Vienna, 1972). S. £aguna, O prawie granicznem polskiem (On Polish boundary law), (Warsaw, 1875); J.S. Matuszewski, Vicinia id est. Poszukiwania alternatywnej koncepcji staropolskiego opola (A search for an alternative theory on medieval neighbourhood community), (£ódŸ, 1991), 22–55, 196–225; G. Myœliwski, Cz³owiek œredniowiecza wobec czasu i przestrzeni (Mazowsze od XII do po³. XVI w.) (Medieval man towards time and space: the Masovia region from the twelfth till the mid-sixteenth centuries), (Warsaw 1999), 149–58. S. Czarnowski, ‘Le morcellement de l’étendue et sa limitation dans la religion et la magie’, Actes du IV Congrès International d’Histoire des Religions (Paris, 1925),

217

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By a local boundary we mean an area which may be of varying shapes and sizes that divides at least two different territories that are smaller than states. Based on various criteria, it is possible to distinguish several types of boundaries in the region and the period under study. According to the size of the delineated territory, we can differentiate between boundaries of single households (sors, Ÿreb);4 of villages; of towns; of areas inhabited by neighbourhood communities called opole;5 of administrative units; and of whole states. The application of a property criterion enables us to distinguish private, ecclesiastical and public boundaries. However, two other distinctive features are more important if we are to understand how medieval and early modern man assumed control over nature: the course of boundaries was governed partly by the natural environment, while the boundary’s precision depended partly on how broad it was. As far as the first feature is concerned, a distinction between natural and artificial boundaries has often been made. We can replace these classical categories by utilising the helpful typology of Ryszard Kiersnowski, who distinguishes ‘elements determining’ the course of a borderline and ‘elements determined’ by its course, taking account of human intervention.6 Such a typology emphasises human activity in the placement of boundaries better than the classical one that is somewhat too formalistic.7 We need to distinguish two main types of boundary.8 The first one is a zone whose range is between several and several dozen metres, depending upon local conditions; the second, more precise one is the linear

4 5

6 7 8

339–58; J. Banaszkiewicz, ‘Fabularyzacja przestrzeni. Œredniowieczny przyk³ad granic’ (Mythifying space. The medieval example of boundaries), Kwartalnik Historyczny, 86 (1979), 987–99; B. Geremek, ‘Poczucie przestrzeni i œwiadomoœæ historyczna’ (The perception of space and historical consciousness), Kultura Polski œredniowiecznej XIV–XV w. (The history of Polish culture in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries), ed. B. Geremek (Warsaw, 1997), 637–42; J. Banaszkiewicz, Polskie dzieje bajeczne mistrza Wincentego Kad³ubka (Fabulous history of Poland after Master Vincent nicknamed Kad³ubek), (Wroc³aw, 1998), 349–453; G. Myœliwski, ‘Boundary delimitation in Medieval Poland’, Historical Reflections on Central Europe, ed. S. Kirschbaum (London and New York 1999), 27–36. See T. Lalik, ‘Sors et aratrum. Contribution à l’histoire sociale de la grande propriété domaniale en Pologne et en Bohème au Moyen Age’, Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej, 17 (1970), 3–22, at 9–10. For the debate up to 1991, see Matuszewski, Vicinia, passim; see also K. Modzelewski, ‘L’organisation de l’opole (vicinia) dans la Pologne des Piasts, Acta Poloniae Historica, 57 (1988), 43–76; O. Kossmann, ‘Vom altpolnischen Opole, schlesichen Weichbild und Powiat des Adels’, Zeitschrift für Ostforschung, 42 (1993), 161–94; P. Górecki, ‘Community, memory and law in medieval Poland’, Historical Reflections, 15–26. Kiersnowski, ‘Znaki graniczne’, 272. For instance if the trees had been planted deliberately on the borderline as its markers, they would have been classified as natural boundaries even though their placement had been established exclusively by man. Manteuffel, ‘Metoda’, 223.

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boundary. Both classifications seem to be the best starting point for the history of local boundaries in Masovia between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. Historically, the region is a Polish province that lies in the basin of the middle Vistula River. In the medieval period Masovia bordered in the north areas inhabited by pagans (Prussian and JadŸwing tribes subjugated by the Teutonic Order in the middle of the thirteenth century); in the north-west and east it bordered territories of the Lithuanian and Russian dukedoms; in the south Little Poland (Ma³opolska), and, finally, to the south-west and west £êczyca, Great Poland (Wielkopolska) and Cuiavia provinces.9 Masovia is a particularly interesting field of research concerning local boundaries because of two characteristics of its history in comparison with other Polish regions: a long period of political independence (1138–1526), as well as socioeconomic stagnation after the middle of the thirteenth century. Moreover, Masovian sources have not been well explored by scholars investigating the history of local boundaries. The first question is what form the oldest local boundaries took. It is obvious that nature itself has always limited the areas of human activity by swamps, rivers with swampy banks, primeval forests, hills, mountains and waste areas.10 In addition, as has often been observed in previous studies concerning the origins of boundaries, they resulted mainly from settlement movements; having come into the possession of new areas the various groups of settlers came into conflict with each other competing for land. Therefore marking out the boundaries seems to have been the only peaceful solution to their disputes.11 However, this explanation tends to characterise the oldest borderlines, whereas borders were continuing to emerge throughout the entire Middle Ages, often in areas that had been inhabited for a long time. Therefore it is essential to emphasise other factors stimulating the rise of artificial boundaries: demographic growth, the development of cultivation techniques, the emergence of ecclesiastical and private estates,12 and as in late medieval Masovia, the growing trade in land, and the proliferating break-up of family demesnes.13 The rise of ecclesiastical and private estates in Poland between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries contributed to the creation of many local boundaries, although some of them must have been marked out especially early. In order to locate the oldest Masovian boundaries we should take into consideration two charters from the eleventh and twelfth centuries: a deed concerning 9 10 11 12 13

Dzieje Mazowsza do 1526 roku (A history of Masovia to 1526), ed. A. Gieysztor, H. Samsonowicz (Warsaw, 1994), passim. J. Natanson-Leski, Zarys granic i podzia³ów Polski najstarszej (The course of borders and divisions in early medieval Poland), (Wroc³aw 1953), 43. Manteuffel, ‘Metoda’, 222. Podwiñska, Zmiany, 203. S. Russocki, Formy w³adania ziemi¹ w prawie ziemskim Mazowsza. Koniec XIV – po³owa XVI w. (Forms of lordship over land in Masovian county law: from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth centuries), (Warsaw, 1961), 38.

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the Benedictine abbey in Mogilno (c. 1065 – surviving in an interpolated version from the second half of the twelfth century)14 as well as a later charter with grants of land for the abbey of regular canons in Czerwiñsk (1161).15 Both documents recorded such settlement units as single households and villages with their adjacent lands (cum appendiciis) as well as a cluster of fortified towns that made up the network of ducal administration. To begin with the boundaries of the castellanies that encircled the towns and that are enumerated in the charters, the emergence of the boundaries of administrative units resulted mainly from two factors. First of all, there are the numerous social functions performed by these towns. They were juridical, fiscal, military and religious centres that acted as social magnets.16 Local peasants often went there for a variety of reasons; they were also under obligation to repair fortifications every winter.17 Consequently, through their links to towns, many people became connected not only with their local neighbourhood, but also with a wider community, a whole district. Moreover, during ducal tours around the state they were also to provide the dux ambulans and his retinue with food, accommodation and sometimes with private horses and personal guides.18 As the twelfth-century chronicle by Gallus Anonymus testifies, when the duke was moving from one castellany to another, he relied on the services of peasants from the respective districts: ‘when he passed from one town to another, he disbanded the peasants [from that district] on the border [in confinio] and employed others’.19 I share Karol Modzelewski’s view, interpreting confinium as the boundary of a castellany.20 The question arises what the form of such a boundary was. It seems to me that the terms with the prefix con- do not reflect any precise line of demarcation but a wider frontier between castellanies.21 Hence, it would be a zone. 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21

Zbiór spominków i przywilejów mazowieckich (The collection of Masovian charters and excerpts; hereafter ZSPM ), ed. J. Korwin-Kochanowski (Warsaw, 1919), n. 22, 13–15. ZSPM, n. 87, 81–2. K. Modzelewski, ‘The system of the Ius Ducale and the idea of feudalism (Comments on the earliest class society in medieval Poland)’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi, 1 (1977), 71–99, at 75–8. K. Modzelewski, Organizacja gospodarcza pañstwa piastowskiego, X–XIII wiek (The economic organisation of the Piast state from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries), (Wroc³aw, 1975), 196. A. G¹siorowski, ‘Rex Ambulans’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi, 1 (1977), 139–62. ‘Et quotiens de civitate stationem in aliam transferebat, aliis in confinio dismissis, alios . . . villicos commutabat’. Galli Anonymi Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum polonorum, Monumenta Poloniae Historica: Series Nova, vol. 2, ed. K. Maleczyñski (Cracow, 1952), 32. Modzelewski, Organizacja, 92. The cluster of terms as confinales, confinalis, confineus, confinia, confinis, confinitimum, confinitimus, confinium, conterminium, conterminalis used to mean more often something like ‘neighbourhood’, ‘neighbouring’, ‘frontier’, ‘something near’, ‘something close to [the boundary]’, but not the very precise boundary whose idea was

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On the local micro-level, boundaries of districts must have been shaped in practice by a distribution of the population that was under the jurisdiction of the respective castellan, as well as by micro-zones of economic influences also limited by natural factors. The social activity of peasants on a micro scale also contributed to the development of boundaries. One can consider the problem of the boundaries of Ÿreb and village collectively because the Polish villages of that time were composed of several dispersed, single households.22 The above-mentioned charter for regular canons in Czerwiñsk contains no reference to any linear, man-made boundary, neither around a single Ÿreb or a village, nor around the whole ecclesiastical estate. However, it mentioned appendicia, and these seem to provide an answer to what the boundaries around villages and hamlets consisted of. Appendicia meant the areas stretching around local centres. These appurtenances also served as boundary zones distinguishing villages from each other. The extent of such zones was shaped not by the placement of artificial markers but by the economic activity of the local inhabitants. The boundaries of this area were embodied in the confines of the peasants’ arable fields. In sparsely populated regions like most of Masovia, the size of such adjacent units depended only upon the physical capability of a single peasant family to cultivate an area. However, the donor meant by the appendicia not only arable fields but also common meadows and pastures, exploited by all the neighbours within an ecclesiastical or private demesne. Moreover, we should also consider the point of view of a single peasant family that was subordinated to ecclesiastical overlordship. Apart from the cultivation of arable lands, the activity of peasants also extended to neighbouring ducal forests where farmers were grazing their livestock and kept bees, and from where firewood and timber were brought to their homes. Thus, to some extent, the exploited outskirts of ducal forests seem to have been perceived by neighbouring dwellers of the single farmsteads as similar to their own areas. They would be an unofficial, second circle of the recorded appurtenances. However, in the case of two abutting arable fields they were demarcated by an unploughed ridge of land, a baulk.23 This is one of the two oldest types of man-made linear boundaries within Polish areas. The other is the demarcation of two gardens bordering on one another by wooden fences.24

22 23 24

expressed rather by means of such terms as finis, finalis, terminus, terminalis. See J. Sondel, S³ownik ³aciñski dla prawników i historyków (Latin dictionary for lawyers and historians), (Cracow, 1997), 199, 216, 384, 937–8. For a characterisation of the natural and socio-economic factors that determined the organisation and perception of local space, and support the above philological reasoning, see below. Podwiñska, Zmiany, 143. K. Modzelewski, Ch³opi w monarchii wczesnopiastowskiej (Peasants in the monarchy of the Piasts), (Wroc³aw, 1987), 30–31. Podwiñska, Zmiany, 89.

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On the basis of these considerations, we can conclude that the prevalent form of local boundary in Masovia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the zone, an amorphous space of various widths. Its extent depended mostly on the economic activity of the local peasantry that was subordinated to the local centres. For this reason, the dependencies of the remoter households and villages also played the role of outer limits to the castellanies. The only exceptions to this rule were the settlement units in densely populated regions of Masovia, where baulks and fences were used. The contemporary perception of space was determined by primeval forests and a sparse population distribution. It is no wonder that space was perceived by donors as a heavily forested terrain whose homogeneity was varied only by rivers and dispersed gatherings of population. The relative long-term stability of natural features in the landscape meant that these were often chosen to mark a boundary. It was also supported by traditional ways of understanding and creating political space. The most important element of these traditions was a central point either sanctified by political tradition or created by a political winner who drove a pole into the chosen ground as a sign of his domination.25 When the territory around such a centre was not confined by linear features in the landscape (such as rivers), its confines were zonal and directly contiguous with another zone belonging to another appurtenance around another political centre point. Despite such a long standing traditional approach to space, the oldest, even if rare, references to artificial local boundaries in Poland appear in written documents as early as the twelfth century (from Silesia, Little Poland).26 Moreover, a quotation concerning the village of Czarnotyl in the charter for Benedictines in Mogilno27 seems to testify to the existence of a single man-made boundary in Great Poland by the end of the eleventh century (Charnothyl per medium).28 Contrary to the claim hitherto expressed by Hans Jürgen Karp and Zofia Podwiñska,29 the first linear 25

26

27 28

29

J. Banaszkiewicz, ‘Jednoœæ porz¹dku przestrzennego, spo³ecznego i tradycji pocz¹tków ludu: uwagi o urz¹dzeniu wspólnoty plemienno-pañstwowej u S³owian’ (The unity of spatial and social order and the tradition of the origins of the nation: some remarks on the arrangement of tribal and state community among the Slavs), Przegl¹d Historyczny, 77 (1986), 445–66, at 458, 464. K. Tymieniecki, Majêtnoœæ ksi¹¿êca w Zagoœciu i pierwotne uposa¿enie klasztoru Joannitów na tle osadnictwa dorzecza dolnej Nidy (The ducal estate in Zagoœæ and the original endowment of the house of the Hospitallers of St John in the context of the settlement in the lower Nida river basin), (Cracow, 1912), 83; Podwiñska, Zmiany, 205–12. ZSPM, n. 22, 14. This seems to have been among the first to have been granted to the Benedictines of Mogilno; see: B. Kürbis, ‘Najstarsze dokumenty opactwa benedyktynów w Mogilnie (XI–XII w.)’, (The oldest charters of the Benedictine abbey in Mogilno, the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Studia (ród³oznawcze, 13 (1968), 27–61, at 42. Karp, Grenzen, 125; Podwiñska, Zmiany, 217;

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man-made boundaries appeared in Masovia not in the thirteenth century, but a couple of decades earlier. In 1185 ¯yro, a Masovian palatine lord, confirmed the possessions granted by his ancestors to the Church of the Holy Virgin in the suburb of the capital P³ock: ‘these are the place-names of the villages that were granted by predecessors to the said church: Ozsec, with a lake and all adjacencies, a market in Rochne with a tavern, Opinegote with its boundaries [cum terminis suis] ... Ostrawantz with its church, Siroczi, Murine’.30 We are dealing here with a typical list of villages, either including some institutions that distinguished the given settlement (a church, a tavern) or without any additional data. Opinogóra was mentioned with its own terminis. It must have been a rare and important phenomenon recognised as a distinctive feature of this village. Zonal boundaries were common in Masovia and were always designated as pertinencia, attinencia, appendicia; hence termini must have denoted something different. There is no doubt that termini meant man-made linear parts of the boundary. The plural of the term may reflect a series of artificial markers that constituted the border line. However, termini might have referred to single boundary sections that quite precisely separated Opinogóra from the manors of other landlords. Considering the circumstances of the establishment of the oldest known linear man-made boundary in Masovia, it is proper to pay attention to the situation of Opinogóra. It was one of the possessions of the nuns of the Church of the Holy Virgin, but was far removed from all the other possessions of the church, situated about 80 kilometres in a straight line from the closest possession of the nuns. Such a long distance jeopardised the integrity of the Opinogóra estate; it was vulnerable to neighbouring landlords and their subjects. The delimitation of this remote village was meant to separate and protect its territory. It is impossible to determine the exact date of the delimitation because we do not know the time of the village’s donation. However, we do know that the Church of the Holy Virgin was founded around 1130, and the last of the donors, Janusz, died before 1150.31 Thus, the period from 1130 to 1150 may be recognised as the time of the first recorded establishment of a linear and artificial boundary in Masovia. The next examples of delimitation in the region come from the first half of the thirteenth century only. Linear boundaries were marked out for a couple of reasons and under various circumstances. They resulted from alienation of land; borders were marked out to delimit the territory to be alienated, so that the value of the land was 30

31

‘Hec itaque sunt nomina villarum, quibus a prioribus prefata ecclesia dotata est: Ozsec cum lacu et omnibus appendiciis, forum de Rochne cum taberna, Opinegote cum terminis suis . . . Ostrawantz cum ecclesia, Siroczi, Murine.’ ZSPM n. 117, 112. See also the new edition of this charter in Zbiór dokumentów i listów miasta P³ocka, vol. 1 (1065–1495) (The collection of documents and letters of P³ock; hereafter: ZDmP³.-1), ed. S.M. Szacherska (Warsaw 1975), n. 3, 6–7. K. Pacuski, ‘Ýyra’, S³ownik staro¿ytnoœci s³owiañskich (The dictionary of Slavic antiquities), vol. 7 (Wroc³aw, 1982), 274.

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proportionate to the sum of money (1227).32 The growing settlement movement also necessitated the placement of boundaries, when the need arose to separate a plot of town area to settle immigrants granting them the status of knights (P³ock 1237).33 Paradoxically, the disastrous pagan raids against Masovia that were one of the causes of a long-lasting socio-economic backwardness of the region from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards,34 could have contributed indirectly to the process of delimitation there; the destruction and depopulation of many villages and single households paved the way for landowners to appropriate the deserted terrain. Such a situation occured in Silesia after the Mongol invasion in 1241. The author of The Book of Henryków noted that ‘in those days ... each of the knights appropriated what and how much he wanted to’.35 Thus Cistercian monks made efforts to recover their former possessions and to support their property rights in areas they regained by marking out artificial boundaries. There is no doubt that analogous events must have taken place also in the partly desolated Masovia in the thirteenth century. However, recurrent pagan raids also brought chaos. Hence, boundaries marked out under such disadvantageous circumstances could not have survived intact for long; a subsequent pagan attack could cause the desolation of the whole delineated area, including the boundary markers. It must be admitted that few references to man-made boundaries, meeting-points of linear boundaries or perambulations can be found in the thirteenth-century Masovian documents.36 Their small number contrasts with the large number of charters issued by Masovian chanceries. This is especially remarkable because most charters concerned the alienation of land in the form of donation, sale or commutation. Instead of describing boundaries, numerous charters concerning the transfer of whole villages included the terminology cum pertinenciis, cum appendiciis or cum attinenciis. Although disputes about land, even accompanied by bloodshed, occurred as early as the twelfth century, litigants focused their attention on entire villages and not on 32 33 34

35

36

ZSPM, n. 244, 258. ZDmP³.-1, n. 9, 15–17. H. Samsonowicz, ‘Piastowskie Mazowsze a Królestwo Polskie XIII–XV w.’ (Masovia under the Piast dynasty and the Kingdom of Poland), Piastowie w dziejach Polski (The Piast dynasty in the history of Poland), ed. R. Heck (Wroc³aw, 1975), 118; E. Suchodolska, ‘Dzieje polityczne (po³owa XIII–po³owa XIV)’ (Political History from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century), Dzieje Mazowsza, 187–90. ‘illo in tempore . . . unusquique militum rapuit, quod voluit et quantum voluit’. R. Grodecki, ed., Ksiêga Henrykowska (Poznañ 1949), 297. On this record see P. Górecki, Parishes, Tithes, and Society in Earlier Medieval Poland, ca. 1100–1250, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 83, part 2 (Philadelphia, 1993), 18–19. ZSPM, n. 278 (1230), 302; n. 301 (ca.1230), 345; Nowy Kodeks Dyplomatyczny Mazowsza (The new collection of Masovian charters), (hereafter NKDM), ed. I. Su³kowska-Kuraœ, S. Kuraœ (Warsaw, 1989), n. 31 (1257), 31; n. 34 (1256/1257), 37.

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their borders.37 The first certain piece of evidence for a boundary dispute comes only from 1281. It happened on the frontier between Masovia and the province of £êczyca, due to the delimitation ordered by the bishop of W³oc³awek without consulting his neighbours, two Masovian private landowners.38 Although, of course, not all man-made boundaries were recorded during the thirteenth century, there were fewer linear boundaries in Masovia than in other Polish regions. Despite this, some changes took place in Masovia in line with those in other Polish regions, where we can observe phenomena such as the creation of the first artificial boundary, and the founding of settlements under a new legal code; however, the scale of the Masovian examples remained much smaller than their counterparts in Silesia, Little Poland and Great Poland. Not many settlers were attracted to the region under study, partly because of the above-mentioned socio-economic and political crisis and partly because of its infertile soil. Thus, for a long time Masovia was heavily wooded and sparsely populated, especially in its eastern part. Due to this demographic factor, most landowners were not compelled to place boundaries around their estates. The oldest local boundaries in Masovia were either notional lines stretching between distinctive points, or were embodied in various features of the terrain. These include elements of the natural environment such as rivers and streams, lakes, swamps, hills, single trees or huge stones, which constituted the first group of borders. Despite the growing importance of artificial boundary-markers in the next centuries, natural peculiarities of the terrain were regularly used as border points for several reasons. Most of them limited and conditioned the space of human activity, and were therefore recognised as borders. Hence, all inhabitants of a vicinity must have known their placement and, consequently, the way such natural boundaries demarcated given manors. Moreover, it is worth emphasizing the durability of such barriers in contradistinction to man-made boundary markers. In politically stable periods it was almost impossible to change their place, with only two exceptions to that rule (cutting down a border tree or redirecting a border stream into a new bed). Moreover, parts of the cultural landscape have been employed for convenience as well as because of their important part in local socio-economic and cultural life. Roads, bridges, bulwarks, mills, wells, churches, chapels and pagan tombs were among the most important points of reference in any local territory. As for the last three of these types of border marker, their significance was supported by contemporary beliefs that assigned a 37

38

For instance, the dispute concerning the village of Szarsko between the castellan of Wizna, Bolesta and the Bishop of P³ock, Werner. The bishop was killed by Bolesta’s brother at the request of Bolesta. He was sentenced to death and executed; see S. Trawkowski, ‘KaŸñ kasztelana Bolesty (1170) w tradycji p³ockiej’ (The martyrdom of the castellan Bolesta according to the records of P³ock), Studia (ród³oznawcze, 14 (1969), 53–61. See also Pope Celestine III’s bull concerning the demesne of P³ock’s bishops, n. 139 (1196), 130. NKDM, n. 64, 62. See also Modzelewski, Ch³opi, 169.

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sacred function, whether Christian or pagan, to such sites. They were believed to protect the place and, consequently, to assure the inviolability of the whole boundary section. In his recent study, Jacek Banaszkiewicz provides further evidence for the way in which mythical beliefs guarded the boundary: these were the places named Ýmigród or Ýmijewo noted in primary sources throughout the Polish regions between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.39 All such place-names derive from the noun ýmij, denoting the mythical Slavonic dragon without wings, a creeping monster.40 Translated literally, they signify the castle (or a place) of a dragon. Two villages named Ýmijewo existed on the Masovian frontier with Prussia in the fourteenth century at the latest; and, in all likelihood, they had been established much earlier.41 In referring by such names to the villages in the northern border region, medieval Masovians believed they were magically discouraging their enemies, and effectively protecting the boundaries of their state, and the hinterland of their province. The conviction of close links between boundaries and various supernatural forces lasted in Polish rural societies for a long time.42 As mentioned above, artificial markers whose location was chosen only by man occurred only rarely in the thirteenth century in the region under study. To sum up, the form of linear boundaries in Masovia did not differ significantly from their counterparts in other regions of Poland, with the exception of artificial markers that were seldom used in Masovia in contrast to Silesia or Little Poland. However, the use of such man-made boundaries became necessary on a large scale in the first half of the fourteenth century for three main reasons: the end of the economic crisis, the beginning of political stabilisation in this part of Europe and colonisation under German law. The economic revival originated from the outside. Masovia fell within the scope of the economic influence of the Hanseatic League in the first quarter of the fourteenth century.43 A little later, colonisation in neighbouring Teutonic Prussia (1310–70) affected the simultaneous processes in Masovia.44 Friendly bilateral terms between those neighbours at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries enabled them to ameliorate relations between the bishopric of P³ock and its foreign neighbours. We can observe a series of large-scale delimitations between the main Masovian diocese and its neighbours: the bishopric of Che³mno (1291,45 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Banaszkiewicz, Polskie dzieje, 439–53. J. and R. Tomiccy, Drzewo ýycia. Ludowa wizja swiata i cz³owieka (Tree of Life. Folk views on man and the world), (Warsaw, 1975), 38, 43–4, 48. Banaszkiewicz, Polskie dzieje, 451–2. L. Stomma, Campagnes insolites. Paysannerie polonaise et mythes européens (Paris, 1986), 90–95. Samsonowicz, ‘Piastowskie Mazowsze’, 118. M. Biskup, G. Labuda, Dzieje Zakonu Krzy¿ackiego w Prusach (The history of the Teutonic Order in Prussia), (Gdañsk, 1988), 288–92. NKDM, n. 85, 83–4.

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although the complete demarcation did not take place before 1378),46 the Ordenstaat itself (1317)47 as well as the see of W³oc³awek situated in the kingdom of Poland (1321).48 Another important factor was the conclusion of the Peace of Kalisz between the Polish state and the Teutonic Order in 1343. Consequently, delegates of the order and of two Masovian dukedoms in the same year signed the boundary treaty whose provisions began to be put into effect from 1344.49 However, the policy of appeasement towards the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, until then an enemy, in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, turned out to be more important for Masovia. In 1358 with the help of, among others, ‘elders and aged persons, well-informed and qualified, because they were cautious and sensible’, the border was finally marked out.50 The above-mentioned changes facilitated colonisation under German law. At the beginning this was confined to the estates of the archbishop of Gniezno (Great Poland) in western Masovia, where Janis³aw and his successor, Jaros³aw Bogoria of Skotniki, established fifty-six new villages and towns under German law by 1374;51 some of them were planted in cruda radice. The last quarter of that century was a time when the Masovian Duke Janusz I the Elder (1379–1429) and his brother Duke Siemowit IV (1379–1425/26) undertook a serious, large-scale transformation of the region under study, by establishing a large number of towns and villages under German law. The process, stimulated by Masovian bishops as well as by the local nobility, extended to the whole region. The spatial layout of the respective village or town was arranged in a variety of ways. If a given village or town had existed for a long time, its old zonal boundaries could be replaced by a series of man-made boundary markers.52 In some cases, hamlets in the vicinity were integrated into the new settlement unit with partly or completely new boundaries. However, many towns and villages emerged for the first time. The organisation of their space was to be preceded by the seizure of the chosen area as well as by a precise land survey, and 46 47 48 49

50

51 52

Kodeks dyplomatyczny ksiêstwa mazowieckiego (The collection of documents from the Masovian Dukedom), ed. J.T. Lubomirski (Warsaw, 1863) n. 97, 89–91. NKDM, n. 159, 155–7. NKDM, n. 144, 145. E. Kowalczyk, ‘Topografia granicy mazowiecko-krzy¿ackiej w œwietle ugody granicznej z listopada 1343 roku’ (The topography of the boundary between Masovia and the Teutonic Order in the light of the boundary treaty of November 1343), Kwartalnik Historyczny, 99 (1992), 33–58, at 33–4. ‘assumptis . . . senibus et antiquis personis scientificis et idoneis propter cautelam et maiorem tutelam . . .’, Iura Masoviae Terrestria vol. 1 (hereafter IMT-I), ed. J. Sawicki (Warsaw, 1972) n. 16, 19–20; see also G. Rhode, Die Ostgrenze Polens. Politische Entwicklung, kulturelle Bedeutung und geistige Auswirkung (Cologne and Graz, 1955), 211–19. J. Warê¿ak, Osadnictwo kasztelanii ³owickiej (1136–1847) (Settlement in the castellany of £owicz), (£ódŸ, 1952), 162, 171–3. NKDM, n. 210 (1334), 210.

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was completed by delimitation. The close link between the two latter activities was expressed explicitly in the location deed for £upia village in 1340: ‘We mark out the boundaries insofar as the surveyed mansi make it possible.’53 A new abstract measure, the Flemish mansus (in Polish: w³óka, c. 17 hectares) came into use there.54 The accurate land survey referred not only to the outer boundaries but also to the inner space of the given village where the whole area was parcelled out among settlers. Their plots of land may have been separated by linear boundaries, even if no location charters include such express information.55 However, despite ambitious plans by archbishops and dukes, other independent processes followed by numerous delimitations were taking place. First of all, older forms of land alienation such as grants, sales and commutations of land were on the rise in the fourteenth century. Moreover, the new processes affected the spatial layout of Masovian towns and villages. One can mention here the break-up of family demesnes and a growing practice of pawning land in exchange for money. Although the first references to these practices date from 1377, in the first Masovian written statute, they had both been common for a long time previously.56 Disintegration of family demesnes resulted mainly from a growing number of surviving offspring within noble families and from an increasing feeling of individualism among their members. They divided their family estates into single households whose owners hoped to engage in independent economic activity. If such divisions were to be accepted and made relatively durable, it was necessary to place artificial boundaries around them. Delineation also had to be carried out if the land was pawned. The size of the area was defined in terms of the amount of money borrowed. Any temporary transfer of the respective area needed to be preceded by a marking out of the provisional borderline, which was to exist until the repayment of the loan and the return of the landholding to its owner. In contrast to the charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries some deeds including the description of land alienation in the fourteenth century embraced such clauses like: ‘as [the village] exists and is situated in its boundaries’;57 ‘as the marked out boundaries demarcate that village’;58 ‘as [the village] is now distinguished within 53 54 55

56 57 58

‘Quam villam limitamus, quantum se mansi extendere poterunt in longitudine et latitudine in mensuram.’ NKDM, n. 290 (1340), 294. On Flemish mansi and other abstract measures employed in the course of colonisation within Slavic countries see R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change (950–1350) (London, 1993), 139–44. However, there are many later references that confirm the above view. See for example the very accurate description of the village Popieñ, Acta capitulorum necnon iudiciorum ecclesiasticorum selecta, vol. 2, ed. B. Ulanowski (Cracow, 1902), n. 924 (1477), 450–51. IMT-I, n. 22, 30 (§§ 5,6). ‘prout consistit et est in suis terminis situata’, NKDM, n. 144 (1316), 141. ‘prout ipsam villam . . . termini sui distincti praefigurant’, NKDM , n. 172 (1324), 171.

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its boundaries and landmarks all around’;59 ‘according to how it is separated by its boundaries, landmarks and adjacent lands’.60 This does not mean that man-made boundaries were already a common element of everyday life in the whole region under study in the fourteenth century. First of all, this transformation encompassed mostly western and central Masovia. Besides, litigation about land was often not followed by the placing of artificial boundaries. ‘If two men start to litigate about arable fields or uncultivated land or other terrain, the man who states that he is their usufructuary shall be expected to prove it by the testimony of the local community called ossada or of the elders, that is the starczy.’61 Only one manuscript includes a reference to man-made boundaries: ‘anyone who did not start to object about linear boundaries (pro graniciis), and held his peace for three years, ought to hold his peace thereafter’.62 As has been shown, the document quoted relates to western and central parts of Masovia that were more advanced socio-economically.63 This is highly significant, as other manuscripts of the statute from the economically backward regions of Masovia contained no references to boundaries; the radical transformation of the sparsely populated and heavily forested eastern part of Masovia only began under the prosperous rule of the duke of central and eastern Masovia, Janusz I the Elder (1379–1429). Thus the same phenomena that appeared earlier in more advanced parts of Masovia proliferated there to a higher degree: colonisation under German law, an increase in the turnover of land (despite the ban on the granting of ducal land imposed at the request of the nobility in 1482),64 as well as the disintegration of landed property among the nobility. The same processes, stimulated simultaneously by the Masovian Duke Siemowit IV and bishops as well as by the local nobility, embraced the whole region. They resulted in changes that continued up to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Masovia finally caught up with other Polish regions in socio-economic development. This is also true for the degree of urbanisation of the region under study. We can now examine the subject of boundaries in the main centres of Masovia. The

59 60 61 62 63 64

‘prout nunc inter suis terminis et limitibus circumferencialiter est distincta’, NKDM , n. 173 (1325), 172. ‘quod est in suis metis, limitibus et circumferentiis distincta’, NKDM n. 211 (1333/ 1334), 211. ‘Item cum duo homines inter se moverint querimonias pro agris, campis et usibus ceteris, extunc ille, qui asserit suos usus illos esse, debet approbare cum vicinia, que dicitur ossada, vel cum senioribus alias starczy.’ IMT-I, n. 22 (1377), 33 (§ 16). ‘Quis etiam pro graniciis ad tres annos non impediret, et tacere voluerit, in perpetuum tacebit.’ IMT-I, n. 22 (1377), 33, (§ 16), footnote l. S. Russocki, ‘Z badañ nad statutami ksi¹¿¹t mazowieckich z XIV i XV wieku’ (Research on Masovian statutes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 8 (1956), 227–52, at 233. K. Dunin, Dawne mazowieckie prawo (The Masovian Old Law), (Warsaw, 1880), 53.

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arrangement and perception of space in medieval towns is a complex problem,65 so I am going to point out only a few of its aspects. One of the distinctive features of town space was its outer boundaries, consisting of walls, more regular in character than the boundaries in the countryside.66 Even so, in Masovia, even the capital P³ock was surrounded by fortifications of wood and earth in the thirteenth century,67 and later on, only three towns became walled, P³ock and Warsaw in the fourteenth century68 and the episcopal town of Pu³tusk, probably in the fifteenth69 or, according to other researchers, at the beginning of the sixteenth century.70 The territory of smaller towns and boroughs was separated also by means of embankments, moats and stockades.71 Consequently, hard-and-fast boundaries were erected between the town space and its rural surroundings. For this reason, the lay-out of town walls and other boundaries affected the consciousness of townspeople, and shaped their view of space, which was structured by the dichotomy of ‘within and outside town walls’ (intra-extra muros).72 The final incorporation of Masovia into the kingdom of Poland (1526) contributed to an intensification in the marking out of artificial boundaries in the local environment. The ducal demesne was taken over lawfully by the Polish King Sigismund the Old. However, its border areas were appropriated by noble neighbours during the transition period. As early as December 1526, the Polish monarch sent a letter concerning that problem to his official in the £om¿a district in the north-western part of Masovia and wrote: ‘we were informed about many offences in our demesne and the violations of its boundaries perpetrated by noble neighbours’.73 Similar situations seem to have occurred in other parts of the royal demesne in the region under study. Hence the necessity arose to regain lost areas and to mark out new boundaries 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73

H. Samsonowicz, ‘La conception de l’espace dans la cité médiévale’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi, 1 (1977), 163–72. Samsonowicz, ‘La conception’, 165. ZDmP³-I, n. 12 (1247), 19. A. Wolff, Studia nad urzêdnikami mazowieckimi 1370–1526 (Studies on Masovian officials), (Wroc³aw, 1962), 37. Wolff, Studia, 37. I. Galicka, H. Sygietyñska, ‘Sztuka gotycka (XIV–pocz¹tek XVI w.)’ (Gothic Art), in Dzieje Mazowsza, 401–46, at 413–14. Galicka, Sygietyñska, ‘Sztuka’, 410. Przywileje miasta królewskiego Starej Warszawy (1376–1772) (The charters of the royal town of Old Warsaw), ed. T. Wierzbowski (Warsaw, 1913), n. 6 (1388), 7; n. 8 (1413), 103; n. 19 (1479), 23; as regards P³ock see for example ZDmP³-I n. 39 (1363), 64; n. 17 (1426), 167; Ksiêga ³awnicza miasta P³ocka (1489–1517), ed. D. Poppe (The book of the lower town court of P³ock), (Warsaw, 1995), n. 290 (1510), 149. ‘edocti sumus multas iniurias in bonis nostris et eorum limitibus nobis inferri per nobiles eisdem bonis vicinos’, Iura Masovia Terrestria, vol. 3 (hereafter IMT-III), ed. J. Sawicki (Warsaw, 1974) n. 266, 11.

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between them and the manors of the greedy nobility. It coincided with the attempts undertaken by the same ruler in his kingdom to recover some parts of his demesne and to restore order in it.74 On the other hand, the nobility itself already demanded the demarcation of royal demesnes from private estates in 1422 during the campaign waged against the Teutonic Order75 and repeated its demands in 1454 and 1496.76 In response to these requests special commissarial courts were established during a session of the Polish parliament in Piotrków (1496).77 The question was taken up several times in the sixteenth century (1511, 1523, 1538).78 The nobility of the kingdom justified its demands by positing the necessity to preserve its estates against royal tenants who appropriated border areas of noblemen’s manors.79 Similarly, the Masovian nobility put forward a demand to carry out the same operations in 1527: the king came under the obligation to delegate commissaries to Masovia every time a domestic landowner requested it.80 There is no doubt that noblemen counted on the legal confirmation of their possession of illicitly owned lands. However, the sizeable delimitations turned out be to the profit of the Polish king. They were preceded by a precise survey of the field in question and by a comparison of its total area with the number of mansi granted by the duke and mentioned in the charter of donation. Sometimes the private estates were twice as large as they ought to have been.81 Consequently, a part of illegally annexed areas (excrescentiae, residuitates) could be bought by their usurpers, but most of the surveyed areas were rejoined to the royal demesne and delimited. Linear, artificial boundaries seem to have been traced in many places for the first time. It is noteworthy that the problem of appropriated fields affected not only the royal demesne at the outset of the second quarter of the sixteenth century, but occurred also in other estates. One can refer to examples of such a phenomenon already in the second and third quarter of the fifteenth century in north-west Masovia,82 on the estate of the archbishop of Gniezno in £owicz castellany at the 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82

See A. Sucheni-Grabowska, Odbudowa domeny królewskiej w Polsce (1504–48) (The restoration of the royal demesne), (Wroc³aw, 1967), passim. Volumina Legum, vol. 1 (hereafter VL-I), ed. J. Ohryzko (St Petersburg, 1859), 37. Volumina Constitutionum, vol. 1, part 1(1493–1526) (hereafter VCon.-I), ed. S. Grodziski, I. Dwornicka, W. Uruszczak (Warsaw, 1996), 63 (§ 9). VCon.-I , 80–81 (§ 80). VCon.-I, 247 (§ 22), 391 (§ 6), VL-I, 260. VCon.-I. 308 (§ 7). IMT-III, n. 272, 16. For example G³êbocz village; see, in Warsaw, the Archiwum G³ówne Akt Dawnych, zbiór Ignacy Kapicy-Milewskiego (Central Archive of the Old Records in Warsaw; the collection by I. Kapica-Milewski) (hereafter Kap.), records of £om¿a district, box n. 57, 372–3 (1535). J. Wiœniewski, ‘Dzieje osadnictwa w powiecie grajewskim do po³owy XVI wieku’ (The history of the settlement in the Grajewo district up to the middle of the sixteenth century), Studia i materia³y do dziejów powiatu grajewskiego, vol. 1 (Studies and

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beginning of the sixteenth century83, as well as on the manor of the canons of St John’s Collegiate Church in Warsaw somewhat later.84 Thus, the problem of annexed lands seems to have been a common one in late medieval Masovia. Royal commissaries inspected not only those estates of the nobility that bordered on the demesne of Sigismund the Old, but also others. This evoked protests from the nobility who pressed the king to modify his plans. During the session of the Polish parliament in Piotrków in 1538, a vote was carried by which the manors whose border-markers had been described in royal charters or at least approved by royal commissaries earlier were exempted from the duty of resurveying and delimitation.85 This also related to the estates that adjoined the royal demesne. The king was successful only in maintaining the duty to verify the size and boundaries of all remaining manors. Therefore, one may conclude that the final incorporation of Masovia into the kingdom of Poland was followed by local delimitations on a large scale. Their proliferation indicates more than competition between monarch, nobility and clergy. These delimitations reflected the general trend in the policy of early modern rulers in Europe to organise space in their kingdoms. Such undertakings as the restoration of royal demesnes,86 the promotion of the reorganisation of spatial order in the countryside,87 as well as attempts to unify land measures,88 prove this tendency. The proliferation of delimitation in late medieval and early modern Masovia had many consequences. First of all, artificial boundaries started to play a new role. In addition to such traditional functions as separating and protecting a given plot of land from others, they also enabled landowners to avoid customary burdens. According to the agreement of £¹koszyn (1424/1426) made by the nobility, the lands of nobles designated by linear boundaries ceased to be accessible for the cattle of others that had been grazing there in autumn and winter by virtue of earlier customs.89 Moreover, the lack of man-made boundaries around a village allowed peasants to justify their arrears

83 84 85 86 87 88 89

records concerning the history of Grajewo district), (Warsaw, 1973), 9–253, at 132–3, 149–50. H. Wajs, Powinnoœci feudalne ch³opów na Mazowszu od XIV do pocz¹tku XVI wieku (The feudal burdens of peasants in Masovia from the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries), (Wroc³aw, 1986), 64–5. Acta Ecclesie Collegiatae Varsoviensis (hereafter AECVars), Archiwum Komisji Prawniczej (The Archive of the Juridical Committee), vol. 6, ed. B. Ulanowski (Cracow, 1926), n. 61 (1528), 63. IMT-III, n. 354 (1538), 122. Sucheni-Grabowska, Odbudowa, passim; A. M¹czak, Rz¹dz¹cy i rz¹dzeni. W³adza i spo³eczeñstwo w Europie nowo¿ytnej (Rulers and the ruled: power and society in early modern Europe), (Warsaw, 1986), 77–81. J. Ochmañski, ‘La grande réforme agraire en Lithuanie et en Ruthénie Blanche au XVIe siècle’ Ergon, 2 (1960), 329–42. W. Kula, Miary i ludzie (Measures and men), (Warsaw, 1970), 209–10. IMT-I, n. 70, 125 (§ 32)

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in payments: ‘inhabitants ... requested that the tax concession start from the moment of delimitation, having experienced the lack of security that made it impossible for them to cultivate any land and take care of their houses [earlier]’.90 Artificial boundaries defined the material base and social standing of the individual landowner and his family. Besides, he perceived his manor as a personal space which he inherited from his father, and which served as a material link with his ancestors. Sometimes a boundary dispute obliged litigants to recall their family tradition and, consequently, contributed to the formation of their identity: in consequence of the land division, our ancestors, that is our late great-grandfather DadŸbog and late grandfather Pakosz took into their possession and kept Chlebowo manor within the present boundaries for more than sixty years; afterwards our fathers [ancestors] that is Michael, the father of Paul, Stanislaw and Alex, together with his brothers and sisters owned this manor for more than three years; and we after our predecessors have possessed it for more than three years up to the first citation concerning this estate.91

So stated a Masovian litigant in 1525. The land was a material bond with the time of one’s ancestors. This link was also reflected in the vocabulary concerning the inherited ground that was called hereditas/dziedzina (‘the land of grandfather’) or more seldom patrimonium/oyczyszna (‘the land of father’, in modern Polish: ‘a homeland’). In this context, a case where the coat of arms of the landowner was engraved on the border-stones in 1509 is significant.92 It proves that medieval Masovians did not think about their own estates exclusively in terms of money. They perceived the inherited manor as something like a private micro-world stretching around the most important point in the private space: the house.93 It is no wonder that border areas often became the spot where outbursts of aggression and quarrels took place. The threatened landowners were ready to defend their estates at all costs. For 90 91

92 93

‘incolae . . . petierunt, ut eis libertas iret a tempore limitum, attento quod propter insecuritatem nihil potuerunt extirpare ac aedificii intendere’, AECVars., n. 46 (1527), 56. ‘Jako przothkowe naschy tho yest przedzyath nasch Nyegdy daczbog y dzyath nyegdy pakosch poszyedly y dzerszely ymyenye Chlebowo po Rasdzyale yakj (!) dzedzyczy wlaszny yako tho ymyenye sza wszwych granyczach ma viszy szesczy dzyesath lath a pothem oyczovye naschi tho yesth Mikolay oczecz pawlow y stanyslawow (!) oczecz alexego sbracza yego y syostramy viszy trzech lath y my po oyczach swych yestesmy wposeszy do wydanya pyrwszego poszw o tho ymyenye.’ Zapiski i roty polskie XV–XVI z ksi¹g s¹dowych ziemi warszawskiej (Records and oaths from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries written in Polish from the court’s books of the Warsaw district), (hereafter ZiR), ed. A. Wolff, W. Kuraszkiewicz (Kraków, 1950), n. 2317, 230. Acta capitulorum necnon iudiciorum ecclesiasticorum selecta, vol. 3, part 1 (hereafter ACIE-III), ed. B. Ulanowski (Cracow, 1908), n. 209 (1509), 135. On the legal position of a private house in the Masovian legal system see Myœliwski, Cz³owiek, 142–7, 151–8.

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instance, the delimitation of arable fields in 1485 resulted in the reeve loosing a part of his land. Subsequently, he desperately tried to defend the former status quo. ‘If he gives my cleared land to anybody I will kill this person before he encroaches on it and ploughs it; and this ground will run with blood’,94 warned Bart³omiej, the local reeve. In this case no harm was done and Bart³omiej was summoned for trial. At other times the conflict did not stop at words. If the testimony of the elders was disadvantageous to a landowner, he was still able to scare them off and cause them to flee.95 According to one of the paragraphs of The Second Masovian Code of Law called Goryñski’s Code (1540), delimitations caused more drastic behaviour when, in their anger, landowners resorted to fisticuffs against their neighbours, the witnesses and the elders.96 By comparison with these cases, violence against boundary-markers in the demesne owned by the chapter of P³ock, and the appropriation of an area on the border there by custodians, seems to have been a trivial instance.97 Attached as the late medieval man was to his own estate, he experienced a land hunger that prompted him to extend it. This general trend was reflected in the frequency of cases of destruction of border-markers, and in efforts to change the course of boundary-lines to the detriment of neighbours. Baulks were ploughed up,98 mounds of earth were levelled99 or annexed to the neighbouring estate,100 specially marked trees were set on fire101 or cut down,102 as were hedges,103 sometimes marks on the trees were obliterated by singeing the bark,104 even border streams were redirected into new beds dug especially to annex a part of the neighbouring land.105

94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105

‘si alicui ager cesserit meus extirpatus, illum ego, quamprimum transibit arare, eum interficiam et iste ager perfundetur sanguine’, ACIE-III, n. 144 (1485), 54. Ksiêga ziemi p³oñskiej (1400–1417) (The book of the noble court in P³oñsk), (hereafter KZP), ed. M. Handelsman (Warsaw, 1920), n. 729 (1407), 52–3. Zwód Goryñskiego (Goryñski’s Code) (hereafter ZG) in: IMT-III, 211 (§ 219). Acta capituli Plocensis (1514–1577) (hereafter ACPloc.), Archiwum Komisji Historycznej (The Archive of Historical Committee), vol. 10, ed. B. Ulanowski (Cracow, 1916), n. 289 (1565), 250. For example, Kap., records of Zambrów district, box n. 68, 68 (1509). For example, IMT-I, n. 99 (1452), 178 ( § 4). For example, KZP, n. 1987-1413, 141; Ksiêga ziemi czerskiej (The book of the noble court in Czersk district), (hereafter KZC), ed. J.T. Lubomirski (Warsaw, 1879), n. 184 (1410), 30; ZiR, n. 1862 (1501), 167. Kap., records of Zambrów district, box 68, 89 (1512). For example KZP, n. 2276 (1414), 162; KZC, n. 184 (1410), 30; Ksiêga ziemska zakroczymska druga (1434–1437) (The second book of the noble court in Zakroczym), (hereafter KZZ-II), ed. K. Tymieniecki (Warsaw, 1920), n. 973 (1425), 82; ZiR, n. 1862 (1501), 167. KZZ-II, n. 757 (1434), 70. Kap., the records of Zambrów district, box 68, 149–50 (1523). Metryka ksiêstwa mazowieckiego, vol. 1 (1417–1429) (The Register of diplomas of the

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All such incidents resulted in boundary disputes that could only be settled by marking out new borderlines. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this usually occurred before a local court, and in exceptional cases the duke himself intervened, as happened in P³ock in 1435.106 However, allowing for several exceptions to the rule, even in such an important centre as P³ock we lack references to sizeable boundary disputes within the town itself. We may suppose that this resulted from the compact layout of the bigger towns, a few of which were surrounded by walls, like P³ock, Warsaw and Pu³tusk: their space was divided not only by streets and rows of houses, but also by low walls placed on the private boundaries. ‘This low wall is to be built on the boundary, alias na miedze’, it was noted in the town book of Warsaw in 1458.107 Consequently, the space within town walls was tightly arranged; hence, there was no need to mark out boundaries in the same way as in the countryside. However, this was true only for the three towns mentioned. Most Masovian towns and boroughs had no outer walls, but their layout resembled that of compact villages under German law.108 Hence, one can treat agrarian towns and rural settlement units in Masovia jointly. We may assume that these urban boundaries were similar to rural ones and disputes over them took place in these towns in the same way they did in villages. The large amount of litigation about boundaries and delimitations followed a cultural process of individualising perceptions of space. The attitude of Masovians toward space became much more active than it had been in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the late medieval and early modern period Masovians succeeded in taking control over horizontal space by means of artificial landmarks as well as abstract units of land-measurement. Thanks to both these means they managed to a great extent to order local space according to their needs and will, and not according to the peculiarities of the terrain. Masovian landowners started to be called granicznicy (‘boundary men’) in the sixteenth century.109 The great significance of linear, man-made boundaries also affected their form. Certainly, features of the natural environment and of the cultural landscape still functioned as boundary-markers (for example one border point chosen in 1439 was a stork’s nest),110 and so did traditional

106 107 108 109 110

Masovian Dukedom), (hereafter MKM-I), ed. A. W³odarski, (Warsaw, 1918), n. 427 (1427), 65. ZDmP³.-I, n. 121, 183. ‘Qui murus debet esse muratus in granicie alias na medze.’ Ksiêga radziecka miasta Starej Warszawy (1447–1527) (The book of the town council of Old Warsaw), ed. A. Wolff (Wroc³aw, 1953), n. 36, 16. H. Samsonowicz, ‘Gospodarka i spo³eczeñstwo (XIII–pocz¹tek XVI)’ (Economy and society from the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries), Dzieje Mazowsza (note 9 above), 249–93, at 273–4. Lustracja województwa mazowieckiego 1565, vol. 1 (The description of the inspection of the Masovian province), ed. I. Gieysztorowa, A. ¯aboklicka (Warsaw, 1967), 59. J.T. Lubomirski, Wstêp (An introduction) to KZC, 8, n. 2 (1439).

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baulks and hedges. However, the growing value of land in economic, not to mention psychological terms, as well as the proliferation of precise land surveys, compelled Masovians to invent new means of land divisions. The elements determining the course of borderlines according to human will satisfied those needs. Two basic forms were in common use. The first consisted of mounds of earth or stones (scopuli, Polish: kopce), sometimes double or threefold (Polish: kopce uszate, literally: ‘mounds with ears’).111 The X-shaped sign incised on tree trunks (Polish: ciosno) was the second essential landmark in Masovia between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were not, of course, fully independent of natural conditions, but thanks to them one could mark out linear boundaries in any terrain. Other markers included the above-mentioned example of engraving the owner’s coat of arms on the border-stone as well as driving a wooden Christian cross into the ground on the border.112 Also, special ditches were dug113 and sometimes were paved with stones,114 to mark out the borderline on land. We can add the examples of high outer walls, fortifications of wood and earth and also stockades, as well as low inner walls between estates in towns. In the case of borders crossing water, neighbours most often made an agreement drawing a notional line that divided in half their border river or lake;115 however, sometimes a wooden pale driven into the bottom served as a border point.116 Late medieval and early modern boundaries in Masovia consisted of a larger variety of elements than in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The difference was also reflected in the terminology of border-markers, whose names were also written down in Polish in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Apart from Latin and vernacular terminology, individually-named border-markers existed as well. For example border trees were called ‘the oak called the “Burnt one” ’117 and ‘the ducal ash tree’.118 Social memory preserved in this way two important events: a local conflagration and the presence of a duke in the vicinity as well as his taking an active part in delimitation. Thus, one can say that local boundaries and their components also played a role of material reminders of past events, important for local communities. 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

Inwentarz starostwa p³ockiego 1572 (The inventory of the royal demesne around P³ock) in Lustracje województwa p³ockiego 1565–1789 (The description of the inspections of P³ock province), ed. A. Sucheni-Grabowska, S.M. Szacherska (Warsaw, 1965), 191. KZC, n. 800 (1416), 51. NKDM, n. 216 (1334/1336), 220. IMT-I, n. 83 (1435), 147. MKM-I, n. 765 (1429), 120. ACIE-III, n. 290 (1509), 135. ‘a quercu dicto Pogorzali’, KZZ-II, n. 319 (1434), 33. ‘usque arborum (!) dictum Kanssyyessen’, Metryka ksiêstwa mazowieckiego, vol. 2 (1429–33) (The Register of Diplomas of the Masovian Dukedom), ed. A. W³odarski (Warsaw, 1930), n. 60 (1429), 12.

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Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries Masovia underwent a crucial transformation. The population doubled in the late medieval and early modern period;119 massive settlement, the cultivation and reclamation of vast areas as well as the proliferation of man-made boundaries affected the perception and description of space, which is reflected in the charters. Instead of treating space as a network of distinctive points, centres surrounded by amorphous appurtenances, the description of territories started to become much more accurate. Contemporary charters contain numerous references to ‘towns, boroughs and villages’, supplemented by the enumeration of all possible dependencies as well as features of the natural landscape. The charters also demonstrate the significance of man-made boundaries in separate clauses, for instance, ‘those towns and villages have been demarcated, and delineated along their length and breadth, and all around by boundaries and border-markers’.120 The quotation may be recognised as a pertinent summary of the transformation that took place in the arrangement as well as perception of space in Masovia between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Unlike local boundaries, the outer borders of the region under study were of a natural character up to 1437 when the first man-made marker (an oak pale surrounded by a mound of stones) was erected on the Teutonic–Masovian frontier.121 Artificial boundaries on the state border were rare during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whereas in the localities man-made markers were common, except for the few places ‘where there were no border-markers, but only use and possession’.122 This difference confirms the opinion of Hans Jürgen Karp that artificial boundaries appeared for the first time on small estates.123 Therefore, one can interpret their appearance as an indication of specific socio-economic and cultural processes. As we can see, a local boundary is not only a local question. The history of artificial, linear boundaries in Masovia was shaped by various factors, internal and external, natural, demographic, economic, social, political and cultural. The local boundary is not only an interesting research topic for its own sake, but also one of the concepts of culture through which a fully rounded view of the past can be achieved.

119 120 121 122 123

I. Gieysztorowa, ‘Demografia mazowieckiego tysi¹clecia’(A demography of Masovian history), 1962 – Rok Ziemi Mazowieckiej (1962 – Year of the Masovian region), (P³ock, 1962), 151–65, at 158. ‘ipse civitates et ville in latum et longum in sua divisione, graniciis, gadibus et signis sunt distincte et circumquaque limitate’, IMT-I, n. 98 (1451), 175. Kowalczyk, ‘Topografia’, 53. ‘ubi ante nulla signa granicialia fuerunt, solum ursus et possessio’, ZG, 169 (§ 90). Karp, Grenzen, 118.

Chapter 13

The Frontiers of Church Reform in the British Isles, 1170–1230 Brendan Smith

The purpose of this chapter is to examine, through the writings and actions of contemporaries, how the universal mission of the Church served to affect, and was in turn affected by, the changing political and cultural frontiers which pertained in the British Isles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. How were such frontiers perceived by churchmen, and how did these clerics negotiate them? No better starting point for an investigation of such issues suggests itself than the works of that most marginal of men, Gerald of Wales.1 Examples of self-deprecation in Gerald’s writings are elusive, but a rare instance is to be found in his History and Topography of Ireland, first written in 1188, wherein Gerald relates an exchange which occurred after he had criticized the Irish clergy for not preaching to their flock: When once upon a time I was making these complaints and others like them to Tatheus, the archbishop of Cashel, a learned and discreet man, in the presence of Gerald, a cleric of the church of Rome, who was then on some mission or other in those parts, and was blaming the prelates especially for the terrible enormities of the country, using the very strong argument that no one had ever in that kingdom won the crown of martyrdom in defence of the church of God, the archbishop gave a reply which cleverly got home – although it did not rebut my point: ‘It is true’ he said, ‘that although our people are very barbarous, uncivilized, and savage, nevertheless they have always paid great honour and reverence to churchmen, and they have never put out their hands against the saints of God. But now a people has come to the kingdom which knows how, and is accustomed, to make martyrs. From now on Ireland will have its martyrs, just as other countries.’2 1

2

R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales (Oxford, 1982). For a recent discussion of Gerald’s character, Y. Wada, ‘Gerald on Gerald: self-presentation by Giraldus Cambrensis’, in AngloNorman Studies, 20, Proceedings of the Battle Conference in Dublin, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1998), 223–46. Giraldus Cambrensis Opera, ed. J.S. Brewer, J.F. Dimmock and G.F. Warner, 8 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1861–91), vol. 5, 178–9; Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales),

239

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As it transpired, it took the English 500 years to provide Ireland with its only canonised martyr, and then their choice fell on the impeccably colonial Oliver Plunkett (archbishop of Armagh, 1669–81).3 While the prophetic powers of Muirges (Tatheus) Ua hÉnna, archbishop of Cashel (1185–1206) may have been limited, Gerald’s anecdote suggests that his grasp of contemporary affairs was more assured. His allusion to the murder of Thomas Becket struck a chord with Gerald and illustrates the extent to which the shadow of the martyred archbishop of Canterbury hung over the earliest days of English royal intervention in Ireland. Gervase of Canterbury believed that the timing of Henry II’s visit to his new lordship in October 1171 had much to do with his desire to place some distance between himself and the papal legate sent to extract penance from him for Thomas’s murder, and the king’s decision to found the Augustinian house of St Thomas the Martyr in Dublin in 1177 may have been taken in part to assuage the sort of hostility to his Irish adventure from sections of the English clergy to be seen in several of the Becket miracle stories.4 Henry II did not seek to conquer Ireland because he had murdered Thomas Becket, but conflict between Church and crown in late twelfth-century England clearly had repercussions beyond that country’s borders. The Becket affair is no longer seen by English historians as a late and unnecessary revival of a dispute which had been laid to rest half a century before, and is now viewed as a particularly serious episode in a much longer period of tension and competition between the English monarchy and the papacy.5 It must also be

3 4

5

The History and Topography of Ireland, ed. J.J. O’Meara (Mountrath and Harmondsworth, 1982), 115–16. P.J. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey (Dublin, 1985), 115–21; R. Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), 392–4, 406–7. Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1879–80), vol. 1, 234–5; M.T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1989), 168–70; L. Hayes and E.D. James, ‘Policy on the run: Henry II and Irish Sea diplomacy’, Journal of British Studies, 29 (1990), 293–316. My colleague Dr Marcus Bull is currently preparing a paper for publication on the references to Ireland in William of Canterbury’s ‘Miracula gloriosi martyris Thomae, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi’ contained in volume 2 of Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J.C. Robertson, Rolls Series (London, 1875–85). His work on the miracle stories written at Rocamadour in southwest France in 1172–73 has also yielded critical allusions to Henry’s conquest of Ireland. M. Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour (Woodbridge, 1999), 59, 92, 130. See also, J. Gillingham, ‘Conquering kings: some twelfth-century reflections on Henry II and Richard I’, in J. Gillingham, Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994), 105–18, esp. 114. For the house of St Thomas in Dublin see A. Gwynn and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (London, 1970), 172–3. For Warren Becket was ‘a theological dinosaur’ who ‘behaved as if the “Investiture

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remembered that Canterbury’s claims to authority in the late twelfth century extended beyond England to encompass the British Isles as a whole, and Gerald’s anecdote encourages an examination of the murder and its aftermath in a context which is not narrowly English. Looked at from a British Isles perspective, Becket’s demise is seen to open a period spanning just over five decades in which three prelates, one each in England, Ireland and Scotland, died violent deaths. Not until the early fourteenth century was lethal force again used against a bishop in the region and with this in mind the question of why the British Isles in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries proved so dangerous for senior churchmen seems worth asking.6 Is it plausible to view these dead ecclesiastics as casualties in the battle between the reforming Church and its enemies launched by Gregory VII in the 1070s?7 It could be argued, for instance, that in 1170 Becket paid the ultimate price for defying his king on a range of issues concerned with the freedom of the Church.8 In 1209 David, bishop of Waterford, was murdered by ‘followers of Satan’ in a part of Europe regarded by Bernard of Clairvaux as home to a people who were ‘Christians in name, yet pagans at heart’.9 The murder in 1222 of Adam, bishop of Caithness, with the connivance of the local earl, resulted in part from that nobleman’s reluctance to allow the collection of tithes to the Church from his estates.10 It is difficult, nevertheless, to see the bishops murdered in the British Isles at this time primarily as victims of secular opponents of Church reform. Henry II’s misjudgement in promulgating the

6

7 8 9

10

Contest” had never been settled.’ W.L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), 399–517, quotes at 514. For more recent interpretations see F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986), 272–5; R. Mortimer, Angevin England, 1154–1258 (Oxford, 1994), 105–24; H. Leyser, ‘Piety, religion, and the Church’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, ed. N. Saul (Oxford, 1997), 174–206, at 187–9. The murder by the London mob of Walter Stapledon, bishop of Exeter, in 1326 represented the first lethal action against an English prelate since Becket’s death. The attack on the cardinals in the north of England by the Middleton family in 1317, and Arnold le Poer’s assault on Richard Ledrede, bishop of Ossory (1317–60) in Ireland in 1320, perhaps served as warnings of what lay ahead. M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307–1399 (Oxford, 1959), 40–41, 84–5; K. Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), 259–61. The most recent assessment of Gregory’s legacy is H.E.J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1998). See especially 683–97. B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Oxford, 1973), 109–37, 235–41; A. Duggan, ‘John of Salisbury and Thomas Becket’, in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks (Oxford, 1994), 427–38. Pontificia Hibernica: Medieval Papal Chancery Documents Concerning Ireland, 640– 1261, ed. M. Sheehy, 2 vols, (Dublin, 1962–5), vol. 1, 153; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Life and Death of Saint Malachy the Irishman, trans. R.T. Meyer (Kalamazoo, 1978), 33. Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: A.D. 500 to 1286, ed. A.O. Anderson (Stamford, 1991), 336–7 (Annals of Dunstable).

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Constitutions of Clarendon and his subsequent attempts to intimidate Becket must be weighed against his more usual policy of co-operation with the papacy and the English Church.11 The English, pace Archbishop Ua hÉnna, were not ‘a people ... accustomed to make martyrs’.12 It must be remembered that when Henry went to Ireland in 1171 it was with the enthusiastic support of Pope Alexander III, who saw in him the person to bring the Irish Church into line with the rest of Europe.13 In Ireland the notion that Bishop David was the victim of a conflict between religion and its darkest enemies finds no support in the realities of twelfth-century Munster. This region had been to the forefront of the reform movement which had gathered speed in Ireland around 1100, and maintained close contacts with reformed religious houses in England and Germany.14 At the end of the century it was producing churchmen of the calibre of the ‘learned and discreet’ Cistercian Muirges Ua hÉnna, archbishop of Cashel (1185–1206), and papal legate between 1192 and 1198, who had bantered to such effect with Gerald.15 Bishop David’s death in 1209 occurred in the context of long-running territorial disputes within the Irish Church, and as such involved something less momentous than a pagan assault on Christianity in the land of saints and scholars. Turning finally to Scotland, while Bishop Adam’s former companions at Melrose Abbey may have wished to portray his death as martyrdom it is worth remembering that the earls of Caithness had been instrumental in instituting the collection of Peter’s Pence in their domains, and Adam’s demise is most 11

12

13 14

15

On Henry’s piety see D. Knowles, Thomas Becket (London, 1970), 156–9, and K.J. Leyser, ‘The Angevin kings and the Holy Man’, in St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. H. MayrHarting (Oxford, 1987), 49–74. For his relations with the papacy, H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Henry II and the papacy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 16 (1965), 39–53. Contemporary rumour notwithstanding, it is unlikely that the death of William Fitz Herbert, archbishop of York, in 1154 was brought about by poison. F. Barlow, The English Church 1066–1154 (London, 1979), 98–103; D. Knowles, ‘The case of William of York’, in his The Historian and Character (Oxford, 1963), 76–97. Dom Knowles’s suggestion (93) that the failure of the ecclesiastical courts to deal effectively with the accusations of foul play surrounding Archbishop William’s death may have encouraged King Henry’s demands at Clarendon is attractive. Flanagan, Irish society, 276–9; M.T. Flanagan, ‘Henry II, the council of Cashel and the Irish bishops’, Peritia, 10 (1996), 184–211; J.A. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970), 38–51. D. Bethel, ‘English monks and Irish reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in Historical Studies, 8, ed. T.D. Williams (Dublin, 1971), 111–35; D. Ó Corráin, ‘Foreign connections and domestic politics: Killaloe and the Uí Briain in twelfth-century hagiography’, in Ireland in early medieval Europe, ed. D. Whitelock, R. McKitterick and D. Dumville (Cambridge, 1982), 213–31; M.T. Flanagan, ‘The context and uses of the Latin charter in twelfth-century Ireland’, in Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies, ed. H. Pryce (Cambridge, 1998), 113–32. A. Gwynn, The Irish Church in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, ed. G. O’Brien (Dublin, 1992), 143–54.

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appropriately regarded as part of a backlash against the willingness of the bishops of Caithness to act as the agents of the kings of Scotland in their efforts to extend royal power into the far north of the kingdom.16 If such considerations serve to dispel notions of the British Isles around 1200 as the latest battle-ground in the Christianisation of Christendom, they do not in themselves explain away the level of violence directed towards senior churchmen in the area at this time.17 To the list of murders already mentioned could be added the attack on the bishop of Louth in Ireland by Peter Pipard in 1193, the mutilation of John, bishop of Caithness, by the earl of Caithness in 1201, the imprisonment and torture of Malachias, bishop of Lismore, by successive bishops of Waterford in 1202 and 1211, and the spate of assaults on Cistercian abbots and on the Cistercian Visitor, Stephen of Lexington, during the latter’s sojourn in Ireland in 1228.18 It is worth remembering that one direct consequence of the movement for reform from the middle of the eleventh century onwards was an increased militarisation of the Church – Odo of Bayeux stands as an early representative of the phenomenon in the post-1066 English context – and even senior clerics of a pacific disposition were not immune from violent attack.19 Nor, it should also be borne in mind, was the murder rate of bishops in the British Isles in the period under review exceptionally high by mainland European standards. Four bishops were slain in Germany between 1160 and 1225, and two in Italy between 1173 and 1183. ‘Dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest’, André Vauchez has remarked, ‘le “modèle Becket” trouva un large écho’.20 16

17 18

19 20

Early Sources of Scottish History. A.D. 500 to 1286, ed. A.O. Anderson, 2 vols (Stamford, 1990), vol. 2, 449–50 (Chronicle of Melrose); J. Gillingham, ‘Killing and mutilating political enemies in the British Isles from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century: A comparative study’, in Britain and Ireland, 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. B. Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 114–34, at 121; B. Crawford, ‘Peter’s Pence in Scotland’, in The Scottish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Ronald Gordon Cant, ed. G.W.S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1974), 14–22; B. Crawford, ‘Norse earls and Scottish bishops in Caithness’, in The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic, ed. C.E. Batey, J. Jesch and C.D. Morris (Edinburgh, 1991), 129–47. I am grateful to Dr Crawford for her assistance on this point. G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 296–328. For the Irish incidents see B. Smith, Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland: The English in Louth, 1170–1330 (Cambridge, 1999), 53–73. For Scotland see B. Crawford, ‘The earldom of Caithness and the kingdom of Scotland, 1150–1266’, in Essays on the Nobility of medieval Scotland, ed. K.J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1985), 25–43. D.R. Bates, ‘The character and career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (1049/50–1097)’, Speculum, 50 (1975), 1–20. A. Vauchez, La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge (Rome, 1998), 197–203, quote at 198; T. Reuter, ‘Episcopi cum sua militia: the prelate as warrior in the early Stuafer era’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), 79–94. I am grateful to Professor Timothy Reuter and Professor Robert Bartlett for discussing this matter with

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Clearly the violent political upheavals which occurred in the British Isles in these decades impinged upon the Church, but to assign to that institution the role of passive recipient of transitory secular fashions is surely to underestimate its power to shape attitudes and command action. Church reform was new in no part of the British Isles by the last quarter of the twelfth century, but the maturation of aspects of the reform programme and their interplay with political developments of varying antiquity reached a crucial stage in the same half-century in different parts of the region to produce an unusually violent climate. It was on the frontiers between different secular powers, between secular and religious authorities, between and within ecclesiastical institutions, and between peoples or races, that physical confrontations occurred. How the Church negotiated these frontiers in these decades in many ways determined its role in the British Isles for the next 300 years and beyond. The papal banner carried to England by William, duke of Normandy, in 1066 symbolised an alliance between Church reformers and sympathetic princes which was to persist in the British Isles throughout the twelfth century and beyond.21 In 1171 the second conquest of a Christian kingdom by a neighbouring Christian power in the region occurred with papal support in Ireland, reinforcing the message that within Christendom secular borders did not take precedence over the need to reform the Church. The supposed bull of Pope Adrian IV authorising Henry II to conquer Ireland, Laudabiliter, published by Gerald of Wales in his Expugnatio Hibernica around 1189, states that Henry’s ambition was ‘to enlage the boundaries of the Church’ (ad dilatandos ecclesie terminos).22 In the twelfth century, however, it was not just kings who could draw on the support of reformers; less exalted lords might also seek to benefit from association with them.23 In north Wales the enthusiasm

21

22

23

me. Focus on violence against senior churchmen allows for only passing mention of incidents such as the castration of three priests at Warkworth in Northumberland by Scottish invaders in 1173. Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. R.C. Johnston (Oxford, 1981), 127, ll. 1700–1704. F.M. Stenton, William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Normans (London, 1925), 161–3. For the relationship between the papacy and the secular power in general see C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989), 226–36. Laudabiliter, supposedly dating from 1155, and Pope Alexander III’s letters congratulating Henry II and urging the Irish bishops and nobles to support him, which probably date from 1172, are collected in English Historical Documents, vol. 2, 1042–1189, ed. D.C. Douglas and G.W. Greenaway (London, 1981), 830–33. For the Latin of Laudabiliter, Giraldus Cambrensis, Expugnatio Hibernica. The Conquest of Ireland, ed. A.B. Scott and F.X. Martin (Dublin, 1978), 144. For Martin’s comment on the authenticity of the bull see therein 323, note 233. J. Van Engen, ‘Sacred sanctions for lordship’, in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. T.N. Bisson (Philadelphia, 1995), 203–30; I.S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), 295–321.

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shown by Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137) and Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170) for the foundation of the diocese of Bangor had much to do with their perception that its survival would help slow English advance in the area, while the grants of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (d. 1240) to the Cistercian house of Aberconwy in 1199 reflected the same concern.24 In Ireland Máel Máedoc Ua Morgair (St Malachy, d. 1148) sought to bolster the temporal position of Cormac Mac Carthaig (d. 1138) and Donnchad Ua Cearbaill (d. 1168) against more powerful neighbours because of their support for his programme of reform.25 Diarmait Mac Murchada (d. 1171) enjoyed the support of an even more prestigious figure in his quest for power in the form of Bernard of Clairvaux, who addressed him as ‘sublime and glorious king of Ireland’ in a letter he sent sometime after 1148 to thank the Irish prince for having founded the Cistercian house of Baltinglass.26 In Scotland, in similar fashion, Fergus of Galloway (d. 1161) welcomed the revival of the see of Whithorn by Archbishop Thurstan of York in the 1120s and its subordination to that English archdiocese as a way of escaping Scottish political and ecclesiastical encroachment.27 An important feature of reform in Scotland in the first half of the twelfth century was the support which influential churchmen from beyond the kingdom’s borders, such as Ailred of Rievaulx (d. 1166) and Máel Máedoc, were prepared to give in equal measure to reforming kings such as David I (1124–53) and reforming semiindependent magnates such as Fergus of Galloway, regardless of their divergent political aspirations.28 Such a situation was more typical of the twelfth century than the thirteenth, and by the 1220s lords throughout the British Isles who engaged in trials of strength with kings found that the support which the Church had once provided to their kind was either no longer forthcoming, or of little practical value. In 1220–21 Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht (d. 1224), fearful of continued English encroachment on his lands, obtained papal protection for himself,

24 25 26 27 28

H. Pryce, ‘Church and society in Wales, 1150–1250: an Irish perspective’, in The British Isles, 1100–1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, ed. R.R. Davies (Edinburgh, 1988), 27–47. B.T. Hudson, ‘Gaelic princes and Gregorian reform’, in Crossed Paths: Methodological Approaches to the Celtic Aspect of the European Middle Ages, ed. B.T. Hudson and V. Ziegler (Lanham, New York and London, 1991), 61–82. Flanagan, ‘Context and uses of the Latin charter’, 117–25; D. Ó Corráin, ‘Diarmait MacMurrough (1126–1171) and the coming of the Anglo-French’, in Worsted in the Game: Losers in Irish History, ed. C. Brady (Dublin, 1989), 21–36. R.D. Oram, ‘A family business? Colonisation and settlement in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Galloway’, Scottish Historical Review, 72 (1993), 111–45. R.A. McDonald, ‘Scoto-Norse kings and the reformed religious orders: patterns of monastic patronage in twelfth-century Galloway and Argyll’, Albion, 27 (1995), 187–219; R.A. McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, c. 1100–c. 1336 (East Linton, 1997), 200–233; Hudson, ‘Gaelic princes’, 70–72.

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his son Áed, and his kingdom.29 The obituary for Cathal in the Annals of Connacht in 1224 portrays him as a classic secular reformer; as ‘the king who built most monasteries and houses for religious communities’, the man in whose time ‘tithes were first levied for God in Ireland’, one who ‘died in the robe of a Grey Monk [Cistercian], after a victory over the world and the devil, in the monastery of Knockmoy, which with the land belonging to it he had himself offered to God and the monks’.30 Shortly after his death Connacht was declared forfeit to the English crown and in 1236 King Henry III ordered a full-scale invasion of the kingdom.31 In Scotland at the same time the king sought to use the Church to extend his control over the peripheral areas of his kingdom. In Galloway and Argyll progress was limited, but in the far north he had more success.32 The bishops of Caithness had acted as agents of royal policy since the end of the twelfth century, and the earls of Caithness found themselves in the dangerous position of opposing both the religious and the secular power. In 1201 Bishop John of Caithness was maimed by having his tongue and eyes removed on the orders of Earl Harald (d. 1206), who was forced to pay a heavy fine to King William (1165–1214) as a result. In 1222 the murder of Bishop Adam, for which Earl John Haraldson (d. 1231) was blamed, resulted in King Alexander II (1214–49) invading the earldom and temporarily taking half of it into his own hands. Adam was not so much a martyr for the Church as a casualty of its increasing association with the wishes of kings throughout the British Isles in the early thirteenth century.33 The dangers faced by the Church in too close a relationship with secular powers had to be balanced against the undoubted successes which such alliances brought. In institutional terms the most spectacular manifestation of the Church’s vitality in the British Isles in the century after 1050 was the creation of new dioceses throughout the region.34 These new sees were created with contemporary political realities to the 29 30 31 32

33 34

H. Perros, ‘Crossing the Shannon frontier: Connacht and the Anglo-Normans, 1170– 1224’, in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to James Lydon, ed. T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms (London, 1995), 117–38. Annála Connacht: The Annals of Connacht (A.D. 1224–1544), ed. A. Martin Freeman (Dublin, 1983), 2–5. J.F. Lydon, ‘Lordship and crown: Llywelyn of Wales and O’Connor of Connacht’, in The British Isles 1100–1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, ed. R.R. Davies (Edinburgh, 1988), 48–63. A.A.M. Duncan, Scotland, the Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 275–80; McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 211–14; D.E.R. Watt, ‘The provincial council of the Scottish Church 1215–1472’ in Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community. Essays presented to G.W.S. Barrow, ed. A. Grant and K.J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1993), 140–55. Morris, Papal Monarchy, 550–59. B. Hudson, ‘The changing economy of the Irish Sea province’, in Britain and Ireland, 900–1300. Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. B. Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 39–66, esp. 53–4. For a wider European context see R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993), 5–23.

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fore, as can be seen most clearly in the diocesan structure agreed for Ireland in 1111, and modified in 1152.35 Changing political circumstances, however, worked against stable diocesan boundaries, and important lay rulers were happy to encourage hegemonic tendencies among the greatest bishoprics. In this way Armagh attempted to have Dublin acknowledge its superiority from the early years of the twelfth century, York sought recognition of its authority in Scotland, while the ambitions of Canterbury within the British Isles knew no territorial bounds.36 Not all boundary disputes within the Church involved questions of primacy; some of the most bitter conflicts were played out at a lower level. In Wales, thanks to the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales, the attention of historians has tended to focus on the efforts to create a Welsh ecclesiastical province free from the control of Canterbury. For most of the twelfth century, however, the energies of churchmen in the country, and of hagiographers in particular, were more likely to be expended in the territorial disputes between Llandaff and St Davids, and St Asaph and Bangor.37 In Ireland there were numerous disputes about diocesan boundaries, some of which degenerated into violence.38 At the synod of Kells in 1152 Donnchad Ua Cearbaill, king of Airgialla (d. 1168), came to blows with Gilla Meic Liac, archbishop of Armagh (1137–74) about the boundaries between the dioceses of Armagh and Clogher/Louth, and was in consequence temporarily expelled from his kingdom.39 Worse was to happen in the ecclesiastical province of Cashel half a century later. There the urban diocese of Waterford, founded in the late eleventh century, attempted to absorb the older and richer diocese of Lismore, which lay to the west. Highlights 35 36

37

38 39

Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 14–31; Gwynn, Irish Church, 190–92. Cowdrey, Gregory VII, 459–68; R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990), 4–5, 57–8; M. Philpott, ‘Some interactions between the English and Irish churches’, in AngloNorman Studies XX: Proceedings of the Battle Conference in Dublin, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1998), 187–204. For the brawl between the archbishops of Canterbury and York and their supporters at the council of London in 1176 see William of Newburgh’s account in Book III, chapter I of his Historia Rerum Anglicarum, published in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1884–9), vol. 1, (1884). For translation see Douglas and Greenaway (eds), English Historical Documents II, 386–7. C.N.L. Brooke, ‘The archbishops of St Davids, Llandaff and Caerleon-on-Usk’, in C.N.L. Brooke, The Church and the Welsh Border in the Central Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1986), 16–49; D. Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge, 1990), 67–80; R.R. Davies, Conqest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 182–6. See the excellent survey by Francis John Byrne in A New History of Ireland, vol. 2, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987), 1–42. Gwynn, Irish Church, 234–70; Smith, Colonisation and Conquest, 19–20. Perhaps this incident had slipped the mind of Archbishop Muirges Ua hÉnna of Cashel when he told Gerald of Wales that the Irish had never ‘put out their hands against the saints of God’. See above, p. 239.

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in a decade-long story of violence and intrigue included the capture in 1202 by Robert, bishop of Waterford (?1195–1204), of Malachias, bishop-elect of Lismore (1202–16), who had previously been the abbot of the Cistercian house of Suir. In the bishop of Waterford’s prison Malachias was fettered and whipped. In 1209 Robert’s successor, David ‘the Welshman’, a cousin of Gerald of Wales and of the justiciar of Ireland, Meyler Fitz Henry, was murdered by Ua Fáeláin, king of the Déisi. Two years later Bishop Malachias was besieged in his cathedral by the seneschal of the new bishop of Waterford, Robert II (1210–23). On being taken captive Malachias was stripped of his episcopal robes and imprisoned in Dungarvan castle. There he was tortured by Bishop Robert who, in the words of Pope Innocent III, ‘laying aside the dignity of a bishop and taking on the cruelty of an executioner’, with his own hands helped a smith attach fetters to the feet of Malachias. Having suffered hunger and cold for seven weeks the bishop finally escaped, but his troubles were not yet at an end. An attempt was soon after made on his life in the graveyard of Limerick cathedral by Bishop Robert’s clerk who, in his efforts to remove Malachias’s head, delivered a blow with his sword ‘which smashed against the [cathedral] door to leave marks there which will ever endure’.40 It is unclear why Bishop David of Waterford was murdered in 1209, but the ancient interests of the Déisi in Lismore suggest that it is in the context of the diocesan dispute raging in this part of Munster at the time that the incident should be considered. An important aspect of the Armagh–Clogher and Waterford–Lismore conflicts was the prominent role played in them by local Cistercian monasteries. The cathedral chapters of the dioceses under attack, Clogher and Lismore, at critical moments chose the abbot or prior of a nearby Cistercian house to lead their resistance against incorporation by their neighbours. Rich monasteries had traditionally played a leading role in the Irish Church, and the introduction to the country in the 1140s of the most prestigious of the new continental religious orders, the Cistercians, may have drained vital resources away from the multitude of poorly endowed dioceses which had so recently been established.41 It is no surprise that so many Cistercians should have been elected as bishops in Ireland in the century after their arrival in 1142, and 40

41

Sheehy, ed., Pontificia Hibernica, vol. 1, 125–6, 152–7; P.J. Dunning, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Waterford–Lismore controversy 1198–1216’, Irish Theological Quarterly 28 (1961), 215–32; Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 62–5; Gwynn, Irish Church, 284–9. For the Uí Fháeláin see C. Parker, ‘The internal frontier: The Irish in county Waterford in the later Middle Ages’, in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland. Essays Presented to James Lydon, ed. T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms (London, 1995), 139–54; Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland, 31–2. R. Sharpe, ‘Some problems concerning the organization of the church in early medieval Ireland’, Peritia 3 (1984), 230–70; K. Simms, ‘Frontiers in the Irish church: Regional and cultural’, in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland. Essays Presented to James Lydon, ed. T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms (London, 1995), 177–200.

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their early and sustained involvement in the diocesan structure of the country in turn helps to explain the extreme violence and bitterness which surrounded the so-called ‘Mellifont conspiracy’ of the 1220s.42 The Visitor appointed to root out corruption in the order in 1227–28, Stephen of Lexington, faced some of his most perilous moments in the houses of Mellifont in the diocese of Armagh, and Suir in the diocese of Lismore, which had become embroiled in the long-running local diocesan feuds discussed above.43 Stephen clearly saw how closely connected the issues of monastic reform and diocesan competition were, and used his influence not only to institute internal reform in Cistercian houses, but also to suggest solutions to conflicts between neighbouring bishoprics.44 Disputes within monasteries, between different monasteries, between bishops and local religious houses, and between neighbouring dioceses were common throughout Europe in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.45 A particularly violent edge was added to these frontier clashes within the Church in Ireland by the context of incomplete conquest and hostility between native and newcomer in which they occurred. Ua Fáeláin’s murder of the bishop of Waterford in 1209 may in part have been inspired by dislike of the latter’s foreign origin and close connections with the commander of the conquerors in Ireland. An element of hatred of foreigners seems apparent in the actions of the Prior of Suir Abbey who, on the approach of Stephen of Lexington in August 1228, threatened not only to stab with his lance any of his monks who sided with the Visitor, but also to thrash Stephen for having disturbed all the monasteries in Ireland. For his part, Stephen relied on the military power of the English in Ireland to help subdue opposition from Irish Cistercian houses and made his decisions about reform of the monasteries and about diocesan affairs with issues of national origin to the fore.46 Against his protestation to the abbot and community of the monastery of Tracton in Cork that in Ireland he wished to exclude no one from the Order on the basis of national origin, must be set his declaration to the abbot of Furness that his reason for not expelling the Irish immediately from Cistercian houses in the country was that it was more politic to eradicate them little by little.47 In similar 42 43 44 45

46 47

A New History of Ireland, vol. 9, Maps, Genealogies, Lists, ed. T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (Oxford, 1984), 268–332. B.W. O’Dwyer, The Conspiracy of Mellifont, 1216–1231 (Dublin, 1970), 21–7. Stephen of Lexington, Letters from Ireland, 1228–1229, ed. B. O’Dwyer, (Kalamazoo, 1982), 113, 157–71, 210–12. Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 112–17, 209–56. At the conference Professor Brooke raised the issue of disputes between monks and lay brothers in the Cistercian Order. For an example from Wales in the early thirteenth century see D.H. Williams, The Welsh Cistercians, 2 vols (Tenby, 1984), vol. 1, 23–5. Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland, 154–5. Stephen of Lexington, Letters from Ireland, 34–6, 68–9, 91–2, 137–8. Tracton was a daughter-house of Whitland Abbey and was staffed at the time by Welsh-speaking

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vein his motive for supporting the continuation of the diocese of Clogher, and for advocating that the Irish prior of Mellifont, Nehemias Ua Brácáin, be accepted as its bishop was that for the most part the diocese was situated among ‘mere Irish’ (puros Hibernicos).48 National origin was an issue in the Church in the British Isles not least because the process of conquest usually entailed encroachment on the Church lands of the vanquished. This had been the experience in England and Wales after 1066, and in Ireland a century later English lords showed scant respect for native churchmen who attempted to prevent them turning ecclesiastical property to secular use.49 In Louth in 1193 the local lord, Peter Pipard, with his own hands dragged the bishop of Louth out of a trench in which he had lain in his episcopal robes in order to prevent the construction of a castle on Church estates.50 That embodiment of chivalry, William Marshal, engaged in a long struggle with Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid, bishop of Ferns (c. 1186–1223), formerly abbot of the Cistercian house of Baltinglass, about two of the bishop’s manors he had taken near Ferns, and died in 1219 under sentence of excommunication by Ailbe and with his Irish lands under interdict.51 Among churchmen themselves the most serious disputes along lines of national origin were likely to occur in the monasteries. In England in the decades after 1066 there were disturbances at Malmesbury, Christ Church and St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and most notoriously at Glastonbury, where in 1083 the Norman abbot, Thurstan, ordered his knights to attack the English choir monks, leaving three dead and eighteen wounded.52 In Wales and Ireland in the early thirteenth century attempts to impose

48 49

50 51 52

monks. R. Stalley, The Cistercian Monasteries of Ireland (London, 1987), 19; Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 145. Stephen of Lexington, Letters from Ireland, 113; Smith, Colonisation and Conquest, 70–73. For England see J. Le Patourel, The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), 34–45. For recent reappraisals see E. Cownie, ‘The Normans as patrons of English religious houses, 1066–1135’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 18, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1995, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1996), 47–62, and A. Williams, ‘The spoilation of Worcester’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 19, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1996, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1997), 383–408. For Wales see F.G. Cowley, The Monastic Orders in South Wales 1066–1349 (Cardiff, 1977), 9–17. ‘The register of Cloger’, ed. K. Nicholls, Clogher Record, 7 (1971–2), 361–431, esp. 389. S. Painter, William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England (Baltimore, 1933), 267–9; D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147–1219 (London, 1990), 105–7; Gwynn, Irish Church, 274–83. J. Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), 21–9; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 133–6; R. Emms, ‘The historical traditions of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), 159–68.

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foreign abbots on native Cistercian communities caused uproar, and such houses were in turn accused by the English king of harbouring his enemies.53 While divisions along lines of national origin were evident in the Church in the British Isles in the twelfth century, and became more so in the thirteenth, they did not completely determine its fortunes in this era of reform. Passion for the reform ideal could force individual churchmen to stand apart from their fellow countrymen, and even side with their enemies. St Malachy (Máel Máedoc) faced strong opposition from conservative clerics in Ireland and was nearly assassinated while holding the see of Armagh between 1132 and 1136.54 The opinion of Muirges Ua hÉnna, archbishop of Cashel, as expressed to Gerald of Wales, that his compatriots were ‘very barbarous, uncivilized, and savage’ was one shared by many native reformers, and helps explain their ready acceptance of Henry II as Lord of Ireland in 1171.55 In England Becket paid a unique price for putting his religious duties ahead of loyalty to his king, but in his experience of exile he followed the path already trodden by Anselm, and anticipated the sacrifice which lay before Stephen Langton.56 Reform transcended frontiers of national identity, and those who suffered in its name found succour from like-minded clerics of other nations. After the end of his second exile in 1107 Anselm received a letter from the leading Irish reformer Gilla Espaic (Gilbert), bishop of Limerick (c. 1106–40), hailing him as the instrument whereby ‘the unconquered minds of the Normans have been subjected to the decretal rules of the holy fathers’.57 Twelfth-century English hagiographers promoted the cults of Irish saints in their own country while Gerald of Wales found the Irish clergy praiseworthy in many ways, and bitterly criticised his own people for not endowing the Church in Ireland with more land.58 Bishop Ailbe of Ferns may have incurred the enmity of William Marshal, but 53 54 55

56 57 58

Cowley, Monastic Order in South Wales, 210–16; F.R. Lewis, ‘Racial sympathies of Welsh Cistercians’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1938), 103–18; Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 85–107. Bernard of Clairvaux, Life of Malachy, 37–47. Flanagan, ‘Henry II, the council of Cashel and the Irish bishops’, 184–211. For a casestudy of co-operation between native reformers and English conquerors in Ireland see M.T. Flanagan, ‘John de Courcy, the first Ulster plantation and Irish church men’, in Britain and Ireland, 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. B. Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 154–78. R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), 228–307; F.M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford, 1928), 75–101; R.V. Turner, King John (London, 1994), 155–74. Philpott, ‘Some interactions between the English and Irish churches’, 198–204, quote at 200; Gwynn, Irish Church, 99–115. Giraldus, History and Topography of Ireland, ed. O’Meara, 112; Giraldus, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. Scott and Martin, 243; R. Bartlett, ‘Cults of Irish, Scottish and Welsh saints in twelfth-century England’, in Britain and Ireland, 900–1300. Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. B. Smith (Cambridge, 1999), 67–86.

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he provoked no complaints from the people of Winchester, whose suffragan bishop he was in 1201 and 1214.59 In the same vein, while the English bishops appointed in Ireland by Henry II and his sons may have been civil servants rather than saints, they were not devoid of concern for the interests of the Irish Church. John Cumin, archbishop of Dublin (1181–1212), who had remained loyal to Henry II during his dispute with Becket and been excommunicated by the latter as a result, was himself exiled from Ireland between 1197 and 1206 for protesting at the encroachments on the liberties and possessions of the archdiocese of Dublin perpetrated by the justiciar, Hamo de Valognes.60 Cumin’s successor as archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London (1212– 28), had supported King John during the period of interdict in England between 1208 and 1212 and served as justiciar of Ireland between 1213 and 1215, and 1221 and 1224. This did not prevent him from siding with Bishop Ailbe of Ferns in his dispute with William Marshal, or from renewing the efforts of his predecessor to maintain the rights of the Church in his province against the lay power.61 Henry also helped bring about the canonization of Lorcán Ua Tuathail, archbishop of Dublin (1162–80), in 1226 by supplying to the canons of Eu, in whose house Ua Tuathail had died, the information to further his cause which they presented to the pope.62 Ua Tuathail had been papal legate to Ireland at the time of his death, and the same post was held by Henry from 1217 to 1220. The circumstances of the latter’s dismissal from that position suggest that attempts to downplay the seriousness of the divisions along lines of national origin within the Church in Ireland at this time may be unwise. In 1217 the minority government of Henry III, with William Marshal to the fore, instituted a policy of preventing the promotion of Irishmen to bishoprics in their own country. Henry of London prosecuted this programme with vigour, and was probably instrumental in its initial promulgation.63 In 1220 the Irish archbishop of Cashel, Donnchad Ua Lonngargáin II (1216–23), travelled to Rome to complain about the situation, and Pope Honorius III acted decisively, dismissing Henry as legate in July 1220 and informing his successor, the papal chaplain Master James, that: 59 60 61 62 63

Gwynn, Irish Church, 274–83; Handbook of British Chronology, ed. F.M. Powicke and E.B. Fryde (2nd edn, London, 1961), 270. M. Murphy, ‘Balancing the concerns of church and state: the archbishops of Dublin, 1181–1228’, in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland. Essays Presented to James Lydon, ed. T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms, (London, 1995), 41–56, esp. 43–8. R.V. Turner, Men Raised from the Dust: Administrative Service and Upward Mobility in Angevin England (Philadelphia, 1988), 91–106; Murphy, ‘Balancing the concerns of church and state’, 48–56. R. Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ lives. An Introduction to ‘vitae sanctorum Hiberniae’ (Oxford, 1991), 27–9. Turner, Men Raised from the Dust, 103–4.

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It has come to our knowledge that certain Englishmen have, with unheard-of audacity, decreed that no Irish cleric, no matter how educated or reputable, is to be admitted to any ecclesiastical dignity. We are not prepared to allow so temerarious and wicked an abuse to pass in silence, and we command you by authority of this letter to denounce the decree as null and void, forbidding the said Englishmen from enforcing it or attempting anything of the kind in future. You are to make known that Irish clerics, whose merits are attested by their lives and learning, are to be freely admitted to ecclesiastical dignities, provided they have been canonically elected to these posts.64

In the British Isles in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the papacy was prepared to work with the grain of secular ambition, but it refused to allow the needs of the Church to be identified with one particular ruler or people. The Scottish Church retained its independence from York and Canterbury, and if it was accepted after the synod of Cashel in 1171–2 that the Irish Church should follow the practices of the Church in England in every way, there was no question of Canterbury being allowed to realise its ambitions to primacy in the neighbouring island.65 By identifying itself with reform, and by maintaining the distinction between reform and mere politics, the papacy succeeded in having its authority recognised in parts of the British Isles where the power of even the greatest kings was barely acknowledged.66 The years between 1170 and 1230 were crucial not only in the establishment of new secular frontiers in the British Isles but also in the consolidation of papal authority throughout the region. The latter was achieved by the insistence of reformers that termini ecclesie were the boundaries with which all Christians should be most concerned. The thread of violence against churchmen which unites English, Scottish and Irish history in the six decades between 1170 and 1230 illustrates the problems posed by such an assertion in this region, and draws attention to the contending priorities which clamoured to be heard.

64 65 66

Sheehy, ed., Pontificia Hibernica, vol. 1, 225; Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland, 153–4. Duncan, Scotland, the Making of the Kingdom, 257–80; Flanagan, Irish Society, 7–55, Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 36–51, 217–25. Morris, Papal Monarchy, 579–82. For later papal condemnation of English discrimination against the Irish at law and in the Church see Documents on the Affairs of Ireland Before the King’s Council , ed. G.O. Sayles (Dublin, 1979), 3; Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 184–9.

Chapter 14

Neolithic meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands David Abulafia

I The Canary Islands (see Map 14.1) might appear to be a subject very much on the fringes of the history of medieval Europe. This would be to forget that the late fifteenth-century Catalan writers Joannot Martorell and Joan Martí de Galba recorded how Abraham, ‘the King of Canary, a hardy youth whose virile and restless soul was stirred by dreams of conquest’, invaded England via Southampton, attacked London and Canterbury, and even captured Kenilworth Castle.1 In attributing the Muslim faith to the Canarians the spirited authors of the prose romance Tirant lo Blanc further revealed that lively inventiveness which was to inspire Cervantes. But this is only one of a good many late medieval references to the Canary islands, including, as will be seen, a number of Italian sources in which the pagan identity of the islanders was better understood. For the discovery, penetration, conquest and colonisation of these smallish islands off the Atlantic coast of Africa tells us much about attitudes to non-Christian peoples in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, peoples (in this case) who had never heard the name of Christ and, unlike their fellow Berbers of the Sahara, had never been overwhelmed by Islam.2 Even the most energetic Muslim armies seem to have found the inhabitants of the islands too fierce for comfort, and they were left alone by both Almoravids and Almohads in their triumphant re-Islamisation of north-west Africa.3 1 2 3

J. Martorell and J. Martí de Galba, Tirant lo Blanc, trans. D.H. Rosenthal (London, 1984), 8. Cf. M. Brett, E. Fentress, The Berbers (Oxford, 1996). On the situation in North Africa, see now C. Picard, L’Océan atlantique musulman de la conquête arabe à l’époque almohade. Navigation et mise en valeur des côtes d’alAndalus et du Maghreb occidental (Portugal-Espagne-Maroc) (Paris, 1997); relevant older works include V. Magahlães Godinho, O ‘Mediterrâneo’ Saariano e as Caravanas

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Thus from the early or mid-fourteenth century an ‘uncontaminated’ group of peoples lay open to inspection by European missionaries, mercenaries and merchants, as Genoese, Majorcans and Portuguese, among others, made their way into Atlantic waters in the 150 years before Columbus’s first voyage to the Caribbean.4 Many historians have remarked on the parallels between the treatment of the Canary Islanders and that of the population of the Caribbean after 1492, although, as in the Caribbean, relations between conquerors and conquered varied from island to island.5 Indeed, one of Columbus’s first observations about the Arawaks of Guanahaní (San Salvador, Watling Island) in the Bahamas was that the colour of their skin reminded him of the Canarians, an observation which made all the more sense since his last stopping point in the eastern Atlantic before he headed west in September 1492 was the recently conquered island of La Gomera in the Canaries: ‘they are not at all black, but the colour of Canary Islanders, as could be expected, since this is in the same latitude as the island of Hierro in the Canaries’.6 The novelty of Columbus’s first encounter with the Arawaks was thus mitigated by his existing knowledge of other ‘primitive’ peoples, and by his conventional assumption that latitude determined physiognomy. II There are several possible approaches to the problem of the discovery and settlement of the Canaries, and it makes sense to indicate at once which areas have already been closely addressed in research by Spanish scholars such as Eduardo Aznar Vallejo, and British ones such as Felipe Fernández-Armesto.7 Those two have made a special

4 5

6 7

do Ouro. Geografia econômica e social do Sáara Ocidental e Central do XI ao XV século (São Paulo, 1956). For the opening of the Atlantic to Mediterranean navigation, see the pioneering survey of F. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London, 1987). Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. S. Schwartz (Cambridge, 1994), contains two particularly relevant articles, among many others of value: E. Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary islands’, 134–56; and Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction: European ethnography and the Caribbean’, 157–97, the latter of which takes into account Canarian parallels and precedents. The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed. and trans. J.M. Cohen (London, 1969), 56 (among countless other editions). E. Aznar Vallejo, La integración de las Islas Canarias en la Corona de Castilla (1478–1526) (La Laguna-Seville, 1983); E. Aznar, La organización económica de la Islas Canarias después de la Conquista (1478–1527), Coll. Guagua (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1979); F. Fernández-Armesto, The Canary Islands after the Conquest

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I

1._1~

Map 14.1

I~

The Canary Islands

-I

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contribution to our understanding of the settler societies that were created on the islands at the end of the fifteenth century. Their work bears in mind, though critically, the ideas of Charles Verlinden about the role of the Atlantic islands as precursors of the Spanish colonisation of the Americas;8 they also analyse the trade links between the Canaries and Europe, showing how modest were Canary exports towards Iberia. Fernández-Armesto and Verlinden have been active, too, in the exploitation of cartographic evidence to demonstrate at what point Western shipping first explored the islands.9 Another dimension to the early history of Canary settlement that has attracted attention is the role of the early Majorcan missions. Antonio Rumeu de Armas, a historian of Balearic origin who settled in Tenerife, was quite appropriately one of the first to document the voyages, commercial and missionary, from Majorca to the Canaries in the 1340s and the creation of a bishopric at Telde that lasted several decades thereafter.10 The Majorcan historian of trade, F. Sevillano Colom, was able to reveal the limited but very eloquent documentation that existed in Majorcan archives concerned with fourteenth-century expeditions to the Canaries.11 In particular, interest in the societies that existed on the islands before the arrival of Iberian conquerors has grown in strength. It is important to say something about the indigenous islanders here, before analysing the image presented of them in some early European sources; by looking at the results of excavations in the Canaries we can gain some idea of their material culture and compare what we find with the observations of our written sources. This will enable us to avoid the common mistake of taking evidence indiscriminately from European written sources of all dates and from the archaeological record, in order to create what may be a deceptively coherent

8

9

10 11

(Oxford, 1982). More generally, there is a lively overall account of Conquista y colonización by J.J. Suárez Acosta, F. Rodríguez Lorenzo and C.L. Quintero Padrón (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1988), and the new edition of Agustín Millares Torres’s classic Historia de la Gran Canaria, vol. 1 (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1997). C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (Ithaca, NY, 1970), is a collection in English of the key studies by Verlinden. Mention should also be made of the attention paid to the Canaries by A.W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986), 71–103. C. Verlinden, ‘De Ontdekking der Kanarische Eilanden in de XIVe eeuw volgens de geschreven Bronnen en de Kartographie’, Medelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Wetenschappen, 20 (1958), fasc. 6; F. Fernández-Armesto, ‘Atlantic exploration before Columbus: the evidence of maps’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 30, 1986, 12–34, repr. in The European Opportunity, ed. F. Fernández-Armesto, An Expanding World, vol. 2 (Aldershot, 1995), 278–300. A. Rumeu de Armas, El Obispado de Telde. Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico (Madrid, 1960). F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Mallorca y Canarias’, Hispania. Revista Española de Historia, 120 (1972), 123–48; F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Los viajes medievales desde Mallorca a Canarias’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, 23 (1978), 27–57.

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picture. However, serious interest in the social structure of the island communities has taken time to develop. Archaeological investigations before the Second World War were dominated by attempts to prove the racial origin of the Canary populations. Some of those who measured skulls and argued learnedly or otherwise about brachycephalic and dolichocephalic head measurements were fascinated by the race theories then in vogue, and wanted to identify the original ‘racial type’ of Cro-Magnon man.12 The result is that the Canary Museum in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria still contains rather gruesome rooms full of human skulls. Nowadays, no one really doubts that the islands were inhabited by Berber-speakers who themselves were not physically uniform, which is hardly surprising when one looks at the shifting ethnographic sands of the early Sahara.13 The tendency to call all the Canary Islanders ‘Guanches’, found in some of the modern literature, is unhelpful in this regard, implying a cultural uniformity that did not exist.14 This term applies to the population of one of the two biggest islands, Tenerife, but not to the others, while the term ‘Canarians’ is generally used only for the natives of Gran Canaria. Indeed, in the late Middle Ages the islands in the archipelago were known collectively as the Insulae Fortunatae, or ‘Happy Islands’, following classical tradition, and the name Canaria was reserved for Gran Canaria.15 In several classical sources, these ‘Happy Islands’ were supposedly the abode of peace, a transit point on the way to the Elysian Fields, a theme picked up by, among others, Isidore of Seville.16 It should thus be stressed that the ancient and medieval literature on the islands frequently refers to an imaginary place that bears only tangential relationship to the real physical location. However, all is not lost if we use the term ‘Canary Islanders’ to describe all the different native groups. This was the route adopted in the one recent account of the islanders in English, by John Mercer; but even he unsatisfactorily tends to mingle together the evidence from different islands.17 The differences between island 12

13 14

15

16 17

For these approaches, ultimately inspired by racial theories, see J. Mercer, Canary Islanders: Their Prehistory, Conquest and Survival (London, 1980), 27–59, summarising (without any political overtones) the work of I. Schwidetsky, including her La población prehispánica de las Islas Canarias (La Laguna, 1963) and Investigaciones antropológicas en las Islas Canarias (La Laguna, 1975). J.J. Jiménez González, Los Canarios (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1990), 37–50. Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary islands’, 136–7, on ethnic and cultural diversity. It is better not to become involved in debates about the legacy of the Guanches to modern Tenerife: J.L. Concepción, The Guanches, Survivors and their Descendants (La Laguna, Tenerife, 1984). V. Manfredi, Le Isole Fortunate (Rome, 1996); T. Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate. Appunti di storia letteraria italiana (Rome, 1995), companion volumes that look at the ancient and medieval reputation of the ‘Happy Islands’ from a literary and geographical perspective. Cachey, Isole Fortunate, 31. Mercer, Canary Islanders, 63–152.

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societies were compounded in the fifteenth century by the different policies adopted by conquering Europeans, so that the Gomerans, for example, were long allowed a greater degree of autonomy; some of the narrative sources may be affected by these relatively recent differences. Culturally there were clear distinctions between the Guanches of Tenerife,18 the Canarians of Gran Canaria,19 the Auaritas of La Palma,20 the Majos of Lanzarote,21 the Gomeros of La Gomera,22 the Bimbachos of El Hierro,23 and the Majoreros of Fuerteventura24 – the natives of the seven inhabited Canary Islands (out of the twelve identified by medieval mapmakers and writers). Some showed a knowledge of writing systems close to those of the Sahara, others did not; pictographic or alphabetic writing was found on Tenerife and Gomera. Some consumed certain foods that others did not. The Canarians had better knowledge of building skills and made less use of cave dwellings than the inhabitants of other islands, though it would probably be going too far to suggest that this was the result of influences from Majorca in the fourteenth century.25 On several islands conglomerations emerged which might be described as towns, such as Telde on Gran Canaria, the eventual seat of the Majorcan bishop in the late fourteenth century. In Lanzarote the main chieftain was based in a town, with dependent chiefs throughout the island. The languages of the seven islands were no doubt quite closely related, all of Berber origin, but Canarians travelling in the boats of early explorers could not readily be understood on the other islands. Most of the islands had little or no contact with one another by the late Middle Ages, having apparently lost the art of navigation, by which means the islanders originally reached their homes; when they first arrived is a moot point which fortunately does not concern us, though it is often thought to be 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

A. Tejera Gaspar, Tenerife y los Guanches (La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 1, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1992), the first volume in a seven-volume set issued under the auspices of the Centro de Cultura Popular Canaria and of the various island authorities; the other parts are listed in the footnotes that follow. J.J. Jiménez González, Gran Canaria y los Canarios, La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 2 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1992). E. Martín Rodríguez, La Palma y los Auaritas, La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 3 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1992). J.C. Cabrera Pérez, Lanzarote y los Majos, La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 4 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1992). J.F. Navarro Mederos, La Gomera y los Gomeros, La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 5 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1993). M. de la Cruz Jiménez Gómez, El Hierro y los Bimbachos, La Prehistoria de Canarias, vol. 6 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1993). J.C. Cabrera Pérez, Fuerteventura y los Majoreros, La Prehistoria de Canarias , vol. 7 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1993). Rumeu de Armas, Obispado de Telde; J.J. Jiménez González, Los Canarios. Etnohistoria y Arqueología (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1990); Rafael González Antón and Antón Gaspar Tejera, Los Aborígines Canarios. Gran Canaria y Tenerife (La Laguna, 1981; new edn, Madrid, 1990).

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some time within the last 2,000 years. Another art they did not possess was that of metalworking. In the traditional vocabulary of the history of technology, this was a Stone Age population, more ‘primitive’ (if that word is genuinely useful here) than the Arawaks and Caribs whom Columbus was to meet in the Caribbean, peoples who did not, Columbus notes, know iron but did know some other metals, notably gold.26 The Canary Islanders fit the image of Neolithic populations in showing knowledge of animal husbandry, throughout the archipelago, and of agriculture, on Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, El Hierro and to some extent on Gomera. In fact, several islands, such as Fuerteventura, were ill-suited to agriculture. Analysis of the internal organs of Guanche mummies in Tenerife reveals that barley was the staple cereal there, probably consumed in a toasted form similar to the gofio which still forms a significant part of the islanders’ diet. Gran Canaria, ever the most complex in its technology, was the one island on which attempts were made to cultivate the soil using irrigation.27 Though styles of ceramics were distinctive to each island, they were often skilled potters, with Grand Canary showing most sophistication here, and the ancient techniques seem to have been perpetuated since the conquest.28 However, they had no knowledge of textile weaving, and they relied on sewn animal skins for clothing (when they wore any clothes at all, that is).29 The Canary Museum has wellpreserved examples of jackets, boots and utensils made of goat and sheep leather; much can be learned about the clothing of the elite from the mummified bodies which, particularly on Tenerife, have been found in some numbers. Wickerwork too was found on many archaeological sites in the islands. III Much that one would like to say about the islanders is derived from written sources, the accounts of the conquerors, as well as from archaeological investigation. Thus we have a good idea of the hierarchical power structure of Tenerife under its petty kings or menceys; there existed nine tribes on Tenerife.30 Indeed, a central question is how far the conquerors’ accounts have set the agenda for the study of the native peoples of the Canaries, so that elaborate accounts of the social structure of the islands written by the conquerors and settlers have provided a framework for archaeological 26 27 28 29 30

The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 55: ‘When I showed them swords, they took them by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron’. For agriculture on Grand Canary, see Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 55–79. Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 161–5; M. Eddy, Crafts and Traditions of the Canary Islands, Shire Ethnography (Aylesbury, 1989). Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 183. Torriani, Descrição, 140 [see note 40 for details of the manuscript and editions]; for Gran Canaria, see Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 171–9.

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investigations. A case in point is the manuscript of Le Canarien preserved in the British Library, with its account of the attempt by Jean de Béthencourt to establish rule over the Canaries in 1402 and after, and its description of social life in the easternmost Canary islands.31 On the other hand, these sources do make it possible to observe a Neolithic society in remarkable detail. Or, to be precise, they enable us to see how Western observers judged a Neolithic society, something quite unlike their encounters with any other peoples they had known. However, we must not assume that this population remained uncontaminated by Europeans throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Whether or not figs and wheat were introduced to the islands by Majorcan colonists in the fourteenth century, suggestions which seem to me provably mistaken, Christianity had acquired a small place on the islands by 1400, even though the adherents were mostly European missionaries and colonisers rather than native islanders.32 By the fifteenth century the inhabitants of Gran Canaria had seen and perhaps imitated the simple stone structures that the Majorcan missionaries erected around their see in the north-east of the island. On Tenerife, the discovery, or rediscovery, of a Christian image of the Virgin, probably brought to the island some decades before, provided a focus for a local cult of the Virgin of Candelaria among the Guanches. A sixteenth-century chronicle by Alonso de Espinosa (1590), dedicated to the story of this miraculous image, provides a detailed account of the history of the final conquest of Tenerife by Alonso de Lugo in the 1490s, and of Guanche society, but it also forms part of a romanticising tradition that laid emphasis on the heroism and indeed chivalry of the Guanche warriors, constructing an image of a society that was actually recast in a Western European mould.33 Espinosa’s work thus needs to be placed alongside ethnographic works produced in praise or defence of the American Indian populations, sharing their fascination with the language, political structures and cuisine of the conquered peoples at a time when they were in steep decline numerically.34 31

32 33 34

British Libray MS Egerton 2709; for editions of the text, which has a complex history, see Le Canarien, ed. A. Cioranescu and E. Serra Ràfols, 3 vols (La Laguna, 1959); The Canarian, trans. R.H. Major, Hakluyt Society (London, 1872). For the Béthencourt expedition, see J. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration, 1298–1630 (Woodbridge, 1998), 104–33; M. Keen, ‘Gadifer de la Salle: a late medieval knight errant’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood: Papers from the First and Second Strawberry Hill Conferences, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1986), 121–34; J. Moniz de Bettencourt, Os Bettencourt, da origines normandas a expansão atlántica (Lisbon, 1993); Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary islands’, 144–8; Millares Torres, Historia de la Gran Canaria, 63–72. Rumeu de Armas, El Obispado de Telde; cf. Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary Islands’, 141–2, though he refers mainly to post-1400 attempts at evangelisation. A. de Espinosa, The Guanches of Tenerife: The Holy Image of Our Lady of Candelaria, and the Spanish Conquest and Settlement, Hakluyt Society (London, 1907). The work of Eyda Merediz of the University of Maryland stresses also the importance of

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Similar problems arise with the important Historia de la conquista de las Canarias by Fray Juan de Abreu Galindo, who was born around 1535, in other words soon enough after the conquests were completed for him to appear very reliable, indeed all too reliable:35 two modern scholars have written of ‘la gran fiabilidad que nos merece su texto’.36 On the other hand, he was anxious to place the history of the Canaries in a classical and biblical setting, discussing at some length, for instance, the argument that the Canary Islanders were a remnant of the ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and looking for Jewish origins in the rites of the islanders. This gave them some of the credentials of civilised folk. He even denied the presence of idols among the Canary Islanders, apparently so that they would not run the risk of being investigated as idolaters by the Inquisition. He argued that the Majorcan missionaries were at first much loved by the Canarians and that they taught the islanders useful skills in the fine arts and even in the art of government: ‘dándoles orden y manera de regirse y gobernarse con mucho primor y policía’, ‘the means to govern with great skill and propriety’.37 Aznar Vallejo, writing in the 1990s, has given some support to this view, though the main evidence seems to consist in the trade in fish-hooks and old tools for figs and the dyestuff known as dragon’s blood.38 One is reminded of pictures of modern Amazon tribesmen who have access to metal and plastic goods, and even to Western clothing, but for whom these items are still extraneous intrusions into a society that preserves its own institutions essentially intact. In describing the religious beliefs of the islanders, Abreu and other early reports attribute to them (with some justice, but also a wish to reveal similarities to European religion) a belief in a single supreme God, accompanied, however, by a cult of the ancestors of the various tribes and by a belief in the spirits of wood and forest. Similar ideas of a Supreme Being existed on both Gran Canaria and Tenerife; on the latter island, Abreu tells us, their God was known as Achguayerxeran Achoron Achaman, ‘he who sustains the sky and the earth’; on Gran Canaria he was known as Alcorán.39 Needless to say, similar problems arise with the third major text describing Canary Island society, that of the Italian observer

35 36 37 38 39

narratives of the conquest of the Americas for our understanding of the sixteenthcentury accounts of the Canary Islands: ‘Refracted images: the Canary Islands through a New World lens’ (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1998), to appear in book form as Refracted Images, Arizona State University Press, 2002. J. Abreu Galindo, Historia de la Conquista de los siete islas de Canarias, ed. A. Cioranescu (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1977). This is the view of González and Tejera in Los Aborigines Canarios, 38–40. Abreu Galindo, 41; cf. (for borrowings from the Majorcans) Mercer, Canary Islanders, who is fond of the idea that the Majorcans helped transform late prehistoric Canatrian culture, introducing new styles of painting and so on. E. Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary Islands’, 140–41. A. Tejera Gaspar, La religión de los Guanches (ritos, mitos y leyendas) (La Laguna, 1987); Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 235–54; F. Pérez Saavedra, La mujer en la sociedad indigena de Canarias (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1982).

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Leonardo Torriani, well known for the richly illuminated copy of his work in the University Library at Coimbra.40 It is interesting to see how even the major authorities on the prehistory of the islands, such as González Anton and Tejera Gaspar, have felt themselves forced to rely on the narrative sources supplied by the conquerors to supplement the archaeological evidence. This immediately raises the question whether the idealisation of primitive Canary society found in those sources has provided the basic framework for their understanding of social relations in the islands. The most eloquent sources portray a chivalric society with heroic values not far removed from those of sixteenthcentury Castile. So it is essential to ask: what sort of agenda did observers have? The aim here is to avoid entanglement with sources as tardy as Espinosa, Abreu Galindo and Torriani, and to draw closer to some of the very earliest accounts of the Canary Islanders. At the very least this will help us understand how the European image of the noble Canarian savage came into being. For example, there is a startling contrast between the attitude of Abreu Galindo and Espinosa and that of King Duarte of Portugal, writing in 1436 to the pope in the hope of persuading him that Portuguese interests in the Atlantic were determined by the wish to convert the inhabitants; Duarte insists that there is no material gain to be had in ruling these poor and desolate islands.41 He, like Espinosa, had an agenda, which was in his case to demonstrate the pitiable state of Canary Island society; and so he marvels at the lack of awareness of writing, metal or money, and emphasises, unlike later sources, the variety of religious beliefs. For Duarte the islanders are ‘nearly wild men’; they lack a common religion, ‘nor are they bound by the chains of law; they are lacking normal social intercourse, living in the country like animals’.42 In other words, the claim that they lived according to natural law, and were therefore permitted to go about their business unimpeded, was decisively rejected. The effect of these arguments was the creation of quite a vigorous debate during the pontificate of Eugenius IV about the rights of infidels.43 About forty years later another pope wrote of the efforts of Alonso de Bolaños to bring civilisation to the Guanches of Tenerife, who lacked any real knowledge of ‘human industry’.44 We can thus identify an early, and fundamentally negative, image 40

41 42 43 44

Cod. 314 of the Secção de Reservados, Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal; L. Torriani, Descrição e História do Reino das Ilhas Canarias antes ditas Afortunadas, com o paracer das suas fortificações, Italian text ed. with parallel Portuguese trans. by J.M. Azevedo e Silva (Lisbon, 1999); L. Torriani, Descripción de las Islas Canarias (1590), ed. A. Cioranescu (La Laguna, 1959). J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1500 (Liverpool, 1979), 121; cf. Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction’, 187. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, 121. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, 121–31. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 238–40; D. Abulafia, Spain and 1492: Unity and Uniformity under Ferdinand and Isabella (Bangor, 1992), 59–60.

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of the Canary Islanders which was eventually overlaid by the ‘noble savage’ imagery of Abreu, Espinosa and others. Justification of conquest on the grounds of the primitive nature of the society to be invaded was of course not novel, and similar themes emerge in the conquest of both Ireland and Sardinia, even though those were at least nominally Christian societies.45 IV We could take two paths from here. One is to follow James Muldoon in his analysis of canon law and of papal letters concerning the Canary Islanders, especially those produced around the middle of the fourteenth century; here Vatican Register 62 of several popes from Clement V to Clement VI has been identified as a particularly valuable source for material on papal attitudes to non-Christian peoples.46 The issue here is essentially the status of a population that had never heard the name of Christ. Might they be said to have legitimate political institutions? To what extent can Christians claim authority over them? Similar practical questions arose concerning the pagan Lithuanians. The theoretical position had already been discussed by Sinibaldo de’ Fieschi, better known as Pope Innocent IV, who had argued that it was not permissible to deprive pagans of dominion simply because they were pagans; and Thomas Aquinas had also addressed the issue. The debate would run and run. But if pagan peoples were unreceptive to missions, could they be declared the legitimate object of a crusade? The issue of the balance between mission and crusade, already discussed by Benjamin Kedar for the period before 1300, remained a live one thereafter in Majorca, the main source of the Franciscan missionaries who founded the bishopric of Telde on Gran Canaria; their activities serve as a reminder of the influence of Ramon Llull as a source of missionary ideals in his native Majorca, long after the collapse of his foundation at Miramar during the chaos of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, and long after his burial in the Franciscan church in Palma in 1316.47 45 46

47

Sardinia: D. Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500 (London, 1997), 126; Ireland: R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London, 1993), 239–40. J. Muldoon, ‘The Avignon papacy and the frontiers of Christendom: the evidence of Vatican Register 62’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 17 (1979), 125–95, repr. in J. Muldoon, Canon Law, the Expansion of Europe, and World Order (Aldershot, 1998), essay 5. B.Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, NJ, 1984); for Llull’s missionary interests, see for example Selected Works of Ramon Llull, ed. and trans. A. Bonner, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1985); also Rumeu de Armas, El Obispado de Telde.

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The 1340s certainly marked a high point in the exploration of the Canaries, with several known Majorcan expeditions, sent out with the licence of King James III of Majorca at a time when his extravagant mind might have been better occupied in the resolution of his many differences with his cousin Peter IV of Aragon.48 But even after Peter conquered the kingdom of Majorca in 1343–44 expeditions to the Canaries continued, and Aragonese claims to the islands were substituted for Majorcan ones.49 This policy was guided as much by concerns in North Africa as by interest in the Canaries, though there also was a policy of maintaining contact with the isolated Majorcan bishopric that subsisted for several decades at Telde on Gran Canaria.50 Limited trade contacts seem to have been kept alive, but there was nothing much to buy, and merchant ships seem to have been driven there by curiosity as much as by the search for profit. On the other hand, the Catalans, like the Portuguese, sought to establish that the Maghrib and Atlantic Morocco lay within their sphere of interest, while the Genoese and Catalans were the first Christian Europeans to trade regularly with the ocean coast of Morocco, going at least as far as Safi in the early fourteenth century.51 The Genoese might also be contenders for this title: the famous expedition of the Vivaldi brothers in 1291 set out for India via Majorca, Gibraltar and, most probably, the coast of West Africa, and must have passed through Canary waters

48

49

50

51

D. Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge, 1994); David Abulafia, ‘Consideraciones sobre la historia del reino de Mallorca: Mallorca entre Francia y Aragón’, El Regne de Mallorca a l’època de la dinastia privativa. XVI Jornades de Història Local, Ciutat de Mallorca, 1997 (Palma de Mallorca: Institut d’Estudis Balearics, 1998), 35–72 Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 159–66; Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, 208–14; these summarise older literature, which includes: E. Serra Ràfols, El descubrimiento y los viajes medievals de los catalanes a las islas Afortunadas (La Laguna, 1926/7); E. Serra Ràfols, ‘Els catalans de Mallorca a les illes Canaries’, Homenaje a Rubió i Lluch (Barcelona, 1936), vol. 3, 207–28; E. Serra Ràfols, ‘Los Mallorquines en Canarias’, Revista de Historia (1941), 195–209, 281–7; and ‘Más sobre los viajes catalano-mallorquines a Canarias’, Revista de Historia (1943), 280–92; A. Rumeu de Armas, ‘Mallorquines en el Atlántico’, Homenaje a E. Serra Ràfols, vol. 3, 265–76; F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Mallorca y Canarias’, Hispania. Revista Española de Historia, 120 (1972), 123–48; F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Los viajes medievales desde Mallorca a Canarias’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, 23 (1978), 27–57; M.A. Ladero Quesada, Los primeros Europeos en Canarias (siglos XIV y XV), Coll. Guagua (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1979). Rumeu de Armas, Obispado de Telde, and the same author’s ‘La expedición mallorquina de 1366 a las islas Canarias’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, 27 (1981), 27 (1981); also M. Mitjà, ‘Abandó des Illes Canaries per Joan d’Aragó’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, 8 (1962). R. Mauny, Les navigations médiévales sur les côtes sahariennes (Lisbon, 1960); Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, 208.

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before disappearing from history.52 A later Genoese visitor, Lançalotto Malocello, is traditionally believed to have given his name to the island of Lanzarote some time in the early fourteenth century; it seems most likely that he was one of several Genoese captains in Portuguese service under Admiral Manuel Pessagno, and thus a precursor of the 1341 expedition to which closer attention will shortly be paid.53 By the end of that century Andalucian shipping under the Castilian flag also occasionally visited the waters around the Canaries. The first Castilian prince to aspire to rule over the Canaries was not the king but the high-born adventurer Luis de la Cerda, who was pressing his claims at the same moment as James III of Majorca’s flotillas were heading towards the islands; his claims also irritated the Portuguese, now becoming active in these waters. In 1344 Pope Clement VI licensed Luis de la Cerda to establish rule over both the ‘Fortunate Isles’ and the small Tunisian island of Jalita (Goleta), places many hundreds of miles apart, but in both cases situated on the very edge of the Muslim Maghrib.54 The pope may well have assumed, Muldoon remarks, that the Canaries were much closer to Western Europe and much better placed for an assault on African Islam than was in fact the case.55 But the pope also assumed that he had a right to dispose of the islands, which were to be held from him as a feudum perpetuum, in recognition of papal authority over unconquered islands. Luis de la Cerda declared to Pope Clement VI that his motive in claiming rule over the Canaries was ‘to eliminate their wicked pagan error so that the glory of the divine name may be praised there and the glory of the Catholic faith might flourish’, and the pope remarked that Luis de la Cerda came from an illustrious family well known for its role in spreading the faith.56 Equally, it is important to recall the wider strategy of European theorists who saw the acquisition of 52 53 54

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Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, 208–9; G. Moore, ‘La spedizione dei fratelli Vivaldi e nuovi documenti d’archivio’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, n.s., 12 (1972), 387–400. C. Verlinden, ‘Lanzarotto Malocello et la découverte portugaise des Canaries’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 36 (1958), 1173–1209; Verlinden, Beginnings, 204–6; Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 155. L. Weckmann, Constantino el Grande y Cristobal Colón. Estudio de la supremacía papal sobre islas, 1091–1493 (Mexico City, 1992; new edn of Las bulas alejandrinas de 1493, 1949), 186–94; G. Daumet, ‘Luis de la Cerda ou d’Espagne’, Bulletin hispanique, 15 (1913), 38–67; E. Serra Ràfols and M.G. Martínez, ‘Sermón de Clemente VI Papa acerca de la otorgación del Reino de Canarias a Luis de España, 1344’, Revista de historia canaria, 29 (1964/4); Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 171–3; G. Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio e la scoperta della Canarie’, Italia medioevale e umanistica, 7 (1964), 263–77, repr. with additional material in G. Padoan, Il Boccaccio, le Muse, il Parnasso e l’Arno (Florence, 1978), 277–91 (references here are to the 1978 edition). Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, 89. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, 88–9, from Vatican Register 62.

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access to the famed River of Gold and to the lands of Mansa Musa, King of Mali, as a decisive blow against Islam in the west; such motives seem to lie behind the long remembered expedition of the Catalan Captain Jaume Ferrer in 1346, who apparently searched beyond the Canaries for the river mouth; his travels were still being recorded a century later, for example on the Catalan map preserved in Modena, while Mansa Musa features on the same map too.57 In this scenario the Canaries were a base for much grander operations which would in fact be concentrated on the west coast of Africa; such ideas, whether or not they were mediated through cartographers such as Jaume of Majorca, were to have powerful force in the early fifteenth century, in the counsels of Prince Henry the Navigator.58 In a recent study of Chivalry and Exploration, Jennifer Goodman has emphasized that the expedition of Béthencourt and de la Salle in 1402 was led by people with experience of crusading in the Maghrib, going back to the crusade of 1390 launched against al-Mahdiyyah in Tunisia by Louis de Bourbon and the Genoese; and Maurice Keen has also emphasised the chivalriccrusading credentials of Béthencourt.59 Even if not Muslim territory, the Canaries could be seen as a back door leading into the Islamic world. V Another small group of sources from the mid-fourteenth century sheds different light on the Canary islanders. The islands and their inhabitants appear in a text preserved by Boccaccio, consisting of a letter describing the voyage in Portuguese service in 1341 of the Genoese Captain Niccolò or Niccoloso de Recco, De Canaria et insulis reliquis ultra Ispaniam in Oceano noviter repertis.60 Alongside this, we have a brief 57

58

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C. de la Roncière, La découverte de l’Afrique au Moyen Âge, Mémoires de la Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte, 5 (Cairo, 1924), plate 10; The Catalan World-Map of the R. Biblioteca Estense at Modena, Royal Geographical Society (London, 1934), sheet 4. On the problems associated with Henry and his legendary ‘School of Sagres’ see P. Russell’s studies, including: Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A Life (New Haven, 2000); his O infante D. Henrique e as Ilhas Canárias: una dimensão mal compreendida da biografia henriquina (Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Instituto de Altos Estudios, n.s., fasc. 5, Lisbon, 1979); and Prince Henry the Navigator: The Rise and Fall of a Culture Hero (Oxford, 1984), reprinted in P. Russell, Portugal, Spain and the African Atlantic, 1343–1490 (Aldershot, 1995); also C. Varela, Ingleses en España y Portugal, 1480–1515 (Lisbon, 1999), 32–4. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration, 105–12; Keen, ‘Gadifer de la Salle’, 121–34. I have used the authoritative edition attached to the article of M. Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il De Canaria boccaccesco e un “locus deperditus” nel De Insulis di Domenico Silvestri’, Rinascimento, 10 (1959), 153–6, (references to the text appear hereafter as: De Canaria) on the grounds of its exceptional authority. Other editions include that in the Monumenta

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but pertinent reference to the Canaries in the De Vita Solitaria of Boccaccio’s great friend Petrarch.61 Both these sources go beyond the familiar legend of the ‘Happy Islands’ to report on the condition of the native inhabitants of the islands, though in very different ways.62 Boccaccio in his De Canaria provides us with a copy of a letter describing the Portuguese expedition to the Canaries in 1341; as has been seen, the surviving text purports to record the statements of a Genoese participant, Niccolò or Niccoloso da Recco, whose presence serves as a reminder of the important role played by the Genoese in Portuguese and Andalucian expansion into the Atlantic throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There were two main ships on the voyage, and he was captain of one of them; they were accompanied by a smaller but well-armed navicula.63 There is no reason to doubt the captain’s role in the creation of the core document on which Boccaccio’s text is based; but there are grounds for suspecting that Boccaccio’s version of the letter may have been enhanced in some respects and curtailed in others. It is very probable that the original was in Italian volgare and that Boccaccio was himself responsible for creating a Latin version, and it has been argued that the lost Italian original also influenced a later work by Domenico Silvestri that treats of this or a similar voyage.64 The letter tells us that among other participants in the expedition were Castilians, Catalans and, interestingly, Florentines, who may well be the source from which Boccaccio obtained the letter. The text begins by saying that it was sent to Florence by members of the Florentine business community in Seville, apparently by employees of the Company of the Bardi, which was the employer also of the young Boccaccio during his apprenticeship in Naples from 1328.65 Personal contacts between Boccaccio and the Florentine community in Seville thus appear to have been instrumental in the transmission of the original text to Boccaccio. There is some doubt about the date at which Boccaccio came to grips with the text, but the

61 62 63 64 65

Henricina (Lisbon, 1960), vol 1, 202–6; see also http://www.geocities.com/Athens/ Forum/3257/Boccaccio.htm. Francesco Petrarca, De Vita Solitaria, ed. A. Altamura (Naples, 1963), 125–6; Petrarch, The Life of Solitude, trans. J. Zeitlin (Chicago, 1924), 267. Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio e la scoperta delle Canarie’, 277–91. De Canaria, 153; for the navicula, see Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio’, 282, 285. Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il De Canaria’, 146–53. De Canaria, 153. For Boccaccio’s career and works, see V. Branca, Bocccaccio: The Man and his Works (Hassocks, 1976), which combines earlier studies by Branca published in Italian, and looks closely at his career in Naples and Tuscany; also David Abulafia, ‘The reputation of a Norman king in Angevin Naples’, Journal of Medieval History, 5 (1979), 135–47; Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio’, 281; L. Gasparini, Echi e reminiscenze di vita e storia napoletana nel Decamerone (Naples, 1975); for the literary side, see also T. Bergin, Boccaccio (New York, 1981); but neither has anything to say about the work being discussed here.

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early 1340s find most favour, though 1350 and even the 1360s cannot be excluded as the date at which the present, Latin, version was compiled.66 Boccaccio was, in accord with his humanist outlook, a keen collector of texts, giving increasing priority to the classical; the presence of this letter in a scrapbook full of historical and geographical information is not hard to explain, for it describes a society quite unlike anything with which he was familiar from everyday experience, yet one which might appear to have points of contact with idyllic pastoral societies portrayed in classical texts; we shall be looking at a particular classical text in a moment. We should thus read the De Canaria as raw material, revised by Boccaccio, for the understanding of a primitive, idyllic society. In his hands the letter was transformed from a description of strange wonders at the edge of the world into an ethnography of primitive peoples who were otherwise only familiar from his reading of classical texts. This is not necessarily to go as far as Kenneth Hyde, who was convinced that we have here a text written in the distinctive Latin style of Boccaccio, going some way beyond the bare text of the reports sent from Seville.67 Boccaccio was not unusual among contemporaries in giving his classical texts priority even over contemporary observation. Given the existence of long-standing traditions concerning the existence of a group of ‘Happy Islands’ on the edge of the known world, Boccaccio faced the problem of reconciling the Florentine report with received knowledge. Here a particular nod must be made in the direction of the Elder Pliny’s Natural History, which reports the discovery of the Canaries by the Moroccan King Juba around the year dot.68 Six islands are mentioned, just as the Boccaccio letter talks of six inhabited islands; Pliny and the De Canaria share references to such features as the palm trees on Canaria or Gran Canaria and the clouds on what is now known as Mount Teide, the great peak that dominates Tenerife. In Pliny’s account, the only inhabitants appeared to be goats, lizards and dogs (hence the name Canaria), but there were signs that the islands had been inhabited in earlier times. Cary and Warmington in their study of ancient exploration stress that there can be no doubt about the ancient discovery of the ‘Fortunate Isles’, though, as has been seen, the term came to be applied in classical and some medieval sources to a fantastic realm of harmony and peace which was halfway to heaven.69 The similarities at some points between the Boccaccio letter and Pliny (who, like Boccaccio, goes back to an earlier 66 67 68 69

Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction’, 181; Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il De Canaria’, 145–6; Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 115–16. J.K. Hyde, ‘Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 65 (1982), 125–47; J.K. Hyde, Literacy and its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy, ed. D. Waley (Manchester, 1993), 199–202. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, ed. and trans. H. Rackham et al., 10 vols (Loeb Classical Library, London, 1938–80), vol. 2, book vi, §202. M. Cary and E.H. Warmington, The Ancient Explorers (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1963), 69, 125, 245; and see now Manfredi, Le Isole Fortunate.

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source, written by Juba himself) are striking. Has Boccaccio revised his text in the light of Pliny? Has Niccolò da Recco, or a Florentine intermediary, been influenced by a knowledge of Pliny, which may have been mediated through the cartographers of Italy and Majorca? Has Boccaccio intruded Pliny’s information while translating the presumed Italian original of da Recco’s letter, producing a falsification of the original? At the furthest extreme, is the whole letter a fantasy of Boccaccio, inventing an expedition in fantastic parallel to real ones launched by the Majorcans in the same decade? Almost certainly not: the Portuguese seemed in later decades quite convinced that they had been exploring these waters for some time, and the expedition of Lançalotto Malocello of about 1336 may be an example of Portuguese-inspired navigation in the Canary islands.70 But it is certainly possible that the version we have is somewhat later than the expedition.71 It has already been seen that a later text by Domenico Silvestri describing the islands may be based on a common source. Moreover, as will become plain, many of the details of Canary Island society are comfortably close to what we know from the archaeological record, quite apart from the more problematic sixteenth-century sources already alluded to. Some scholars do in fact see the letter as a summary of a longer document, whether or not it is also a translation; certainly several passages seem to stand out of context; this may simply reflect a rather random organisation within the original vernacular letter. All the same, in expounding the text an occasional liberty will be taken in transferring information that better belongs elsewhere from its correct place in the narrative of the expedition. In fact, the letter may have been rather longer than what survives, which ends rather suddenly with an account of numbers in Canarian, from one to sixteen; it is far from clear that Boccaccio had finished work on the text, and the manuscript in Florence has marginal notes that suggest he thought there was more work to be done on it. Among scholars who have looked at this text mention should be made of J.K. Hyde and, most recently, Theodore Cachey.72 However, they have been most interested in the letter as a description of a fantastic world. Cachey analyses with great skill the handling of the theme of the Insulae Fortunatae in medieval and Renaissance sources, and the impact of classical assumptions about an abode of peace beyond the Hesperides on humanist scholars; his concern is not really the relationship between the texts by Boccaccio and Petrarch and the societies that existed on the islands in the fourteenth century. In fact he identifies a good many occasions, including minor references in other works by Boccaccio and Petrarch, and even a reference in Dante’s De Monarchia, when the islands were mentioned as the limit of the known world;73 70 71 72 73

Verlinden, ‘Lanzarotto Malocello’, 1173–1209; Verlinden, Beginnings, 204–6. Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il De Canaria’, 145–6, though, as has been seen, opinions vary greatly. Hyde, Literacy and its Uses, 199–202; Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 83–121. For Dante: Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 17–81. Dante’s holy geography is also addressed in A. Morgan, Dante and the Medieval Other World (Cambridge, 1990).

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and several Italian works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries return briefly to the image of the Fortunate Isles as a place half way to Elysium.74 By contrast, J.K. Hyde is more concerned with the evolution of Western ethnography, and once again he is not particularly concerned with the relationship between his texts and Canary Island society. For Hyde, the De Canaria operates at two levels, because it is a reworking by Boccaccio from a series of letters (in the plural) sent by the Florentine merchant community in Seville.75 He thus hears the voice of Boccaccio quite plainly; the De Canaria marks a stage in the evolution of his classicism, and bears comparison with the idealisation of the gods and spirits of ancient Greece and Rome in his charming work The Nymphs of Fiesole: ‘he was seeking exotic settings in which to locate his imaginative fictions’.76 Taking a different path, I shall try to make some connections between that imaginary world and the real one represented by the islanders’ own society. VI Assuming for the moment Boccaccio’s primarily academic interest in Canary Island society, the members of the expedition appear to have been guided by baser mercenary motives. Cachey tries to link the two aspects by noting that Boccaccio is the author who formulated, most notably in the Decameron, the theme of the ‘mercantile epic’, a literary production matching the interests of a business-oriented, or as Branca would say a bourgeois, society in Trecento Florence.77 The interest of the explorers in Canarian numbers reflects, it is argued, a mercantile mentality.78 In any case, the explorers in De Canaria are presented as traders no less than as conquerors, though any hope of profit was largely disappointed: ‘tamen apparet eas non dites insulas, nam et naute vix expensas viatici exportandi resumpsere’; however, some simple products such as goat skins, tallow and dyestuffs were acquired during the voyage.79 But there were grander aims as well. The explorers even took horses and heavy armaments on the assumption that they would be waging war against well defended towns and fortresses.80 Thus they knew of the islands’ existence from previous reports, now lost, but they evidently had no knowledge at all of the sort of societies to be found there. Hence indeed their surprise when they encountered their 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 89–93. Hyde, Literacy and its Uses, 199. For the nymphs, see Giovanni Boccaccio, The Nymphs of Fiesole, ed. and trans. J. Tusiani (Rutherford, NJ, 1971). Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 104–5; Branca, Boccaccio, 276–97. De Canaria, 156; Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 106. De Canaria, 155. De Canaria, 153.

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first native islanders, which bears comparison with the reaction of Columbus’s crew to the first encounter with the Arawaks. On the first island they reached, one of the smaller ones, they found rocks and forests inhabited by naked men and women and by animals; the people they saw were ‘asperis cultu et ritu’.81 The De Canaria goes on to describe a mass gathering on a second, rather larger, island of men and women, mostly naked, though some were clad in goat leather dyed red and yellow, and bound together by delicate stitching made of animal gut.82 It is apparent from later remarks in the same letter, and from the rather later letter of King Duarte of Portugal to Eugenius IV already mentioned, that such clothing as the Canary Islanders wore indicated status.83 The explorers also discovered at some point that they were familiar with the institution of marriage; married women wore a loincloth much in the same way as men, but unmarried girls went completely naked, going about their business without any sense of shame.84 Here the inhabitants showed reverence to a leader: ‘videbatur hos habere principem’, perhaps a sign that these people were less ‘rude’ than those on the first island.85 The islanders wanted to make contact with the sailors, who were discouraged by their failure to make themselves understood. Not to be put off, some of the islanders swam out to the ships instead. This island, which was certainly Gran Canaria, was more intensively cultivated in the north than in the south, and had many houses; it possessed fig trees, palm trees and gardens (the letter later states that Canaria was also the most densely populated island).86 Twenty-five armed sailors went to shore, encountering about thirty natives in their birthday suits, who were terrified and ran away. The sailors broke into some houses, finding dried figs and grain of various types, including a species of wheat longer and broader than what was found in Europe; these comments appear to disprove the idea that both products were introduced by the Majorcans, whose first expedition in fact occurred a year after the one recorded by Boccaccio.87 The explorers discovered that the inhabitants did not make bread but ate their grain in the form of seed (‘like birds’) or flour, which must be the ancestor of the gofio already mentioned. They drank water, not wine. One of the buildings they entered proved to be a temple, which contained little more than a statue of a naked man, his private parts covered by a fig leaf; and 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

De Canaria, 153. De Canaria, 154. De Canaria, 153–4,156; cf. Jiménez Gonzélez, Los Canarios, 183. Compare the observation of Columbus that girls remained naked until the age of eighteen in the Caribbean islands he reached in 1492: The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 66; see also Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 229. De Canaria, 154. De Canaria, 154, 155. De Canaria, 154; though Aznar Vallejo, ‘The conquests of the Canary islands’, 141, keeps an open mind.

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this they took away with them back to Lisbon. Hyde sees here an echo of Boccaccio’s growing interest in classical imagery of the gods, though this may be far-fetched.88 The expedition established that six out of thirteen islands were inhabited (seven out of twelve seems to be more accurate), though the density of population varied from place to place.89 The languages of the islands differed and there was no knowledge of navigation, so that the only way they could travel from island to island was by swimming. And the visitors were able to take a much closer look at the islanders when they took back with them from Gran Canaria four young men, bare-footed, beardless, uncircumcised, long-haired, wearing kilts made of goat skins or palm fronds that only revealed their private parts when the wind blew strongly. They were as tall as Europeans and strong; probably they were very intelligent, but it was hard to say because they spoke no known language. So communication had to be by sign language. They were friendly and trusting towards one another, and had the habit of sharing their food equally; but there was one, who wore a loin cloth made of palm leaves, who was more honoured than the others; these others wore loin cloths of goat skin, coloured yellow and red.90 They sang and danced well and were sweettempered, in fact more so than a good many Spaniards, a rather xenophobic remark which probably indicates the Florentine authorship of the vernacular original on which the De Canaria may be based.91 Once on board, the native Canarians were interested in bread, which was a novelty to them, but they refused wine and continued to drink water. They were also very familiar with cheese and the meat of sheep and goats.92 But they had no knowledge of camels (a modern import into the islands, largely for the tourist industry); cattle and donkeys were also unknown to them. And of course when they were shown gold and silver coins, gold necklaces, vases and swords, or invited to take a whiff of perfume, these were all complete novelties.93 This act of showing them gold and silver objects prefigures very closely attempts by Columbus, Cortes and others to discover sources of gold by dangling such trinkets in front of native Americans.94 However, Hyde exaggerates when he sees this as an attempt at a systematic scientific experiment ‘designed to test their knowledge and understanding’.95 Baser motives seem more credible. For it has been seen that there were persistent rumours of a River of Gold debouching on the West African coast no great distance from the Canaries; and so we 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

De Canaria, 154; Hyde, Literacy and its Uses, 200. De Canaria, 155. De Canaria, 155. Cf. Hyde, ‘Real and imaginary journeys’, 134–9. De Canaria, 156; for the diet of contemporary Canarians, compare Jiménez González, Los Canarios, 55–79. De Canaria, 156. See for example The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 55. Hyde, Literacy and its Uses, 200; Hyde, ‘Real and imaginary journeys’, 134–9.

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can confidently conclude that they were shown gold in the hope that they would direct the sailors to new sources of the yellow metal.96 VII We can contrast this description of the Canarians and their neighbours with that provided, much more briefly, by Petrarch in his De Vita Solitaria.97 Here Petrarch seems to have some difficulty fitting the inhabitants of the islands into a description of the advantages of the solitary life, for the solitude of the Canary Islanders is of a different order to that of a hermit; Petrarch identifies their solitude as that of solitary places rather than solitary lives.98 ‘Its people’, he says, ‘enjoy solitude beyond nearly all men, but are without refinement in their habits and so little unlike brute beasts that their action is more the outcome of natural instinct than of rational choice, and you might say they did not so much lead the solitary life as roam about in solitudes either with wild beasts or with their flocks.’ Petrarch knew of the investiture of Luis de la Cerda as ruler of the ‘Fortunate Isles’ by Pope Clement VI in 1344; ironically he compared the heavy rainfall that had fallen on the day of the investiture, and the name ‘Fortunate Isles’, with the harsher realities of Canarian society. He said he knew of past Genoese exploration of the islands, and it is quite possible that he was also aware of the letter in Boccaccio’s collection. Peter Hulme takes this ironic contrast between ideal and reality in Petrarch’s description further, arguing that ‘the Canarians stand as an anti-type’; Petrarch defends the solitary life as a rational choice, but the Canarians have followed it by natural instinct, and they can barely be distinguished from their herds of animals.99 Thus the animal quality of the Canarians seems to prevail. They do not appear to know cities (contrast the references to their towns in later accounts, and in the archaeological record), for they are not social creatures, an exception to the Aristotelian rule that man is a zôon politikon. Thus Fernández-Armesto is 96

97

98 99

Account should also be taken of the strategic interests of the King of Portugal, to judge from a letter addressed by Afonso IV to Pope Clement VI (12 February 1345) and printed in Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio’, 283–5. Padoan shows that this letter reports an expedition which must be that described by Boccaccio. Francesco Petrarca, De Vita Solitaria, ed. A. Altamura (Naples, 1943), 125–6; F. Petrarca, Prose, ed. G. Martellotti (Milan and Naples, 1955), 522–3; Petrarch, The Life of Solitude, trans. J. Zeitlin (Chicago, 1924), 267; the relevant passage is cited by Hulme (‘Tales of Distinction’, 182), Padoan (‘Petrarca, Boccaccio’, 286), and so on as well. For other passing references to the ‘Fortunate Isles’, see Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 96–7, n. 21. To follow Peter Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction’, 184; cf. his comments on 182–3. See also M. O’Loughlin, The Garlands of Repose: The Literary Celebration of Civic and Retired Leisure (Chicago, 1978). Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction’, 182–3.

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certainly wrong to assume that Petrarch is arguing for the moral superiority of these savages over civilised man.100 Even if Petrarch knew Boccaccio’s letter, it is plain that Boccaccio’s view of the Canarians was of quite a different order; their naked simplicity indicated that they were ripe for civilisation. It is Hulme, again, who emphasises how Boccaccio’s description of their nakedness belongs in the tradition of the virtuous pagan, for the whenever detail is provided, we are told that the Canarians none the less cover their genitals, whether in real life or in the interesting case of the idol discovered in a Canarian temple.101 We are thus provided with two contrasting images of Canary Island society as early as the fourteenth century. There is one image in which the inhabitants are the subject of wonder, expressed in admiration for their social skills such as the sharing of food and their deference to their leader; even their nakedness can be seen as a sign of innocence. They are intelligent and physically powerful. Their buildings are well constructed out of dressed stone. They have fine gardens and cultivate wheat of remarkable properties. Their ignorance of gold, though surely a great disappointment to the Portuguese visitors, is also a sign of their lack of materialism. In this, there are the makings of a rustic idyll, whose origins must be sought not just in the descriptions of Niccoloso da Recco and his friends, but in the tradition that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there lay a collection of ‘Happy Isles’. Against this, Boccaccio’s friend Petrarch finds a more gloomy message. These are wild men of the forest, leading a bestial existence. The grounds for identifying them as near-animals are not that they are heathens, but that they lack all signs of sociability, an odd complaint in a work devoted to the virtues of the Vita Solitaria. But, as we have seen, theirs is not the type of solitude that Petrarch is seeking. Whether or not both sources influenced the thinking of fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury writers on the Canaries seems very doubtful. Boccaccio’s manuscript of De Canaria was preserved in a sort of commonplace book left by Boccaccio. Even in recent times, it has rarely been included in collections of his works. Petrarch’s mention of the Canaries constitutes only a short passage in a much longer work about other forms of the solitary life. Two slightly later humanists writing in and around Florence, Domenico Silvestri and Domenico Bandini, may have been influenced by the De Canaria and by the passage in Petrarch, but once again in works of limited diffusion.102 Yet it is astonishing to compare the description of the first contact between the islanders and the Europeans in De Canaria with Columbus’s log 100 101 102

Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, 230. Hulme, ‘Tales of distinction’, 184–6, and also 163–4; see also Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London, 1986), for valuable insights into the way Europeans saw newly discovered Atlantic societies. Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il De Canaria’, 146–53; for Silvestri and Bandini, see also Hyde, Literacy and its Uses, 202.

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book, as presented to us by Bartolomé de las Casas. Though 150 years separated the two encounters, Columbus’s arrival in the Bahamas produced remarkably similar behaviour both by the Europeans and by the native Americans.103 As in the Canaries, the natives would innocently swim out to the explorers’ boats, unafraid of any danger; as in the Canaries, the explorers then interviewed them about the obsessive subject of gold.104 As in the Canaries, Columbus was struck by the nakedness of the inhabitants, which he apparently read as a sign of innocence, seeing the Lucayan Arawaks as a tabula rasa, intelligent and in many ways beautiful human beings who could surely be brought easily to Christianity. Columbus, at least at this point in his career, belongs in the tradition represented by the Boccaccio letter and not by Petrarch’s remarks, without, it must be repeated, any sign that he knew either source.105 VIII The comments of Boccaccio and of Petrarch are of great interest because they point towards two trends in fifteenth-century thinking about primitive peoples, the importance of which, in the context of the discovery of the American peoples, does not need to be underlined. Set against the noble savage we have the wild man of the forests. Set against the dignity of those living in a state of nature we have the need to bring civilisation to those who lack the basic skills of social relations, so much so perhaps that they can only be brought into society as slaves, for they have many of the properties of animals. And this trend towards denigration of the native population can be traced through the correspondence of King Duarte of Portugal with the pope in the early fifteenth century. We are thus in the prehistory of the slave trade. We are also, as has been seen, observing the prehistory of the Canary Islanders through European eyes. And here the Boccaccio letter really does seem to accord at a good many points with the findings of archaeology. Certain assumptions, such as the introduction of 103

104 105

Cachey, Le Isole Fortunate, 105, note 29: Cachey cites (without a reference) the view of J.B. Thacher that the De Canaria is in fact ‘quite Columbian’! This view was based on the use of the term ‘newly discovered’, noviter repertis, in the full title of Boccaccio’s pamphlet. But one could add other ‘Columbian’ features too in De Canaria. The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 55–67. Columbus was not of course consistent in his outlook; see F. Fernández-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford, 1991). There is a vast literature on the Columbian encounter; one could begin with the following, in alphabetical order: P. Boucher, Cannibal Encounters. Europe and the Island Caribs, 1492–1763 (Baltimore, MD, 1992); S. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford and New York, 1991); P. Hulme, Colonial encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London, 1986); A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven, CT, 1993); T. Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York, 1992); E. Zerubavel, Terra Cognita (New Brunswick, 1992).

278

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

wheat and figs to the islands by the Majorcan colonists of 1342 onwards, seem to be contradicted. The description of clothing is accurate, and the reference to gofio-type flour matches archaeological evidence just as much as it fits with the culinary traditions of the Canaries. The reference to well-built houses perhaps overstates local building skills, but it matches adequately practices on Gran Canaria. Boccaccio’s De Canaria thus opens up to view aspects of a real society, quite accurately observed, and at the same time it presents us with an idealised view of man in a state of nature. It is a work to be read on several levels. Even if Boccaccio was reworking an existing text, that text presents views and values that he apparently shared: Neolithic society meets the Renaissance humanists, but the two giants of early humanism see very different things.

Index Compiled by Laura Napran Aachen, 39, 60 Abasgians, 76 ‘Abd Allah, 46 ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Habib, author, 49 ‘Abd al-Rahman II, emir of Cordoba, 36, 39, 44, 46–7, 50–52 ‘Abd al-Rahman III, emir of Cordoba, 49 Abodrites, 178, 186 Abolaz al-Hakam I, emir of Cordoba, 39, 46, 50–51 Abraham, king of Canary Islands, 255 Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, mystic, 23 Abreu Galindo, Fray Juan de, author, 263–5 Absalon, bishop of Roskilde, 180, 184–5 Abulafia, Anna Sapir, 30 Abu’l Aswar, emir, 76 Abu-l-Sinan, 48 Acre, 11, 19, 114, 117, 122–3, 126, 128–9 Adam, bishop of Caithness, 241–2, 246 Adana, 71 Adrian IV, pope, 244 Adrianople, 78, 81 Adualfo, bishop of Iria, 52 Áed, son of King Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair, 246 Africa, 25 North, 18, 29, 45, 48, 58, 73, 133, 266 Western, 26, 255, 268, 274 agriculture, 4, 149, 173, 261 in frontier zones, 9–10, 14–15, 117, 219, 221 Ahmad al-Razi, author, 49 Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid, bishop of Ferns, 250–52 Ailred of Rievaulx, 245 Ain al-Baqar, 123 Akhbar Majmu‘a, 48

279

al-Abbas, 41 al-Andalus, 3, 35–53 al-Ashraf Khalil, 126 al-Bakri, 48 Albanians, 20 Alcazaba, 36, 40 Aleppo, 75–6, 87, 95–6, 100–103 Alexander II, king of Scotland, 246 Alexander III, pope, 242 Alexander IV, pope, 214 Alexander VI, pope, 12 Alexander the Great, 55, 67, 77 Alexandria, 133, 148 Alexios, emperor of Byzantium, 15 Alfonso II, king of Asturias-León, 36–7, 40–41, 43–6, 51–2 Alfonso III, king of Asturias-León, 42, 52 Alfonso VI, king of Asturias-León, 50 Algirdas, grand duke of Lithuania, 169 al-Idrisi, author, 107 al-Istakhri, geographer, 48 al-Mahdiyyah, 268 al-Makkari, 38 al-Mansur (Qalawun), sultan, 117 al-Salih, son of Sultan al-Mansur, 117 al-Nuwayri, 36, 51 Ali al-Harawi, traveller, 124 Ali ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of the Prophet, 124 Alonso de Bolaños, 264 Alonso de Lugo, 262 Alpujarras, 31 al-Qayrawan, 50 Alvarus, 43 Alvise da Cà da Mosto, author, 25 al-Ya‘qubi, geographer, 48 Amanos mountains, 97

280

INDEX

Amatus of Monte Cassino, author, 76 America, x–xi, xiv, 3, 12–13, 258, 274, 277 Anacopia (Novyi Afon), 75 Anatolia, 10, 83, 87–8, 133 Andalusia, 8 Andorra, 16 András (Andrew) II, king of Hungary, 202, 205 Ani, 76, 78, 87–8, 92, 147 Anjou, 16 Annales Regnum Francorum, 39 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 178, 251 Antioch, 15, 87–8, 90, 92–8, 110, 141 Anton, González, 264 appendicia, 221, 224 Appian, 56 Arabia, 72 Aragon, 2, 3, 5, 10, 13–18, 31, 266 Arawak Indians, 24, 256, 261 Araxes river, 97 Arethas, author, 67 Argyll, 246 Arichis, duke of Benevento, 62–3 Arkona, 181 Armagh, 247–9, 251 Armenia, 10, 20, 83, 98, 144, 148, 150–51 and Christianity, 121, 129–30, 146–7, 149 and Muslims, 91, 95, 101 and Roman Empire, 55, 81 Cilician Armenia, 13, 133 Artah, 99, 104 Ascalon, 110 Ashot III, king of Armenia, 71 Asia, 3, 4, 64, 70, 86, 88, 143, 148, 204 Askeby, 188 Asser, archbishop of Lund, 178 Asturias, 35–53 Atlit, 113, 117 Attila the Hun, 208 Augustine, bishop of Hippo, saint, 160–62 Austria, 205–6 Avars, 25, 64 Aznar Vallejo, Eduardo, 256 Babraham, 19 Badajoz, 40 Baghdad, 86, 94, 98, 100, 114 Baghras, 97–8 Bahamas, 256, 277 Balanias, 93 Bailey, Mark, 9

Balard, Michel, 4 baulk, 221, 234, 236 Balkans, 57, 59 and Byzantine campaigns, 75, 78, 83, 86–7, 94, 99, 104 Baltic region, 6–9, 19, 21, 153–93 Banyas, 114–15, 116 Baltinglass, Cistercian abbey, 245, 250 Banaszkiewicz, Jacek, 226 Bandini, Domenico, 276 Bangor, 245, 247 Banu Qasi, 43 Barbastro, 47 Barcaság (Burzenland), 205 Bardas Phokas, doux of Chaldia, and of Antioch, 91, 93–4 Bardas Skleros, doux of Mesopotomia, 92, 94–5, 100–101, 103 Barkaï, Ron 53 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, chronicler, 161 Bartlett, Robert, x, xiii, 2, 3 Bart³omiej, Masovian reeve, 234 Batman Su river, 100 Basil I, emperor of Byzantium, 67, 69 Basil II, emperor of Byzantium, 74–7, 79, 81–2, 87, 92–9, 101 Basil Lekapenos, chamberlain of Byzantium, 72 basilikos, 94, 102 Basques, 20, 22, 43 Bayt Jann, 114 Béarn, 14 Becket, see Thomas Becket Beirut, 135, 148 Béla IV, king of Hungary, 195–6, 204, 207–15 Belisarius, 70, 80 Benoît of Alignian, bishop of Marseilles, 117 Berbers, 21, 26, 36, 45–7, 49, 52, 255, 259–60 Bernhard, count of Barcelona, 39 Bernard of Clairvaux, 241, 245 Bethlehem, 122, 129 Birley, Anthony R., 56 Black Sea, 57, 75, 148 Boccaccio, author, 268–78 Bohemia, 23, 206 Bohemond VI, prince of Antioch-Tripoli, 214 Bologna, 150 Boniface VIII, pope, 13, 14

INDEX Book of Henryków, 224 Book of Roger, 107 borders linear, x, xii–xiii, 3, 11, 59, 70, 74–5, 89, 91, 99–103, 105–13, 115–16, 118–19, 144, 146, 201, 204, 215, 218–19, 221–5, 231–2, 235–6 markers, 15–16, 84, 113–15, 203, 217, 221, 225–37 Bosphorus, 60, 65 Braga, 41 Branca, Vittore, 272 Brauer, Ralph, 107 Brazil, 24, 26 Bregninge, 188 Brissago, 19 British Isles, xiii, 2, 5, 13, 23, 141, 239–53 Britnell, Richard, 7 Bruges, 19 Bugislav of Pomerania, 179 Buissert, David, 118 Bulgaria and Byzantium, 5, 12, 57–8, 63, 65, 76, 82, 87, 93–5, 99 and Germans, 21 and Hungary, 200, 210 n. 61 Buris, prince, 181 Burns, Robert I., 3, 18 Buryats, 25 Buzzati, Dino, 151 Byzantium, 2–5, 8, 10, 12–15, 18–19, 34, 48, 55–104 Cachey, Theodore, 271–2 Caffa, 143–51 Cambridge, 19, 29 Canary Islands, 5, 13, 24–8, 255–78 Canterbury, 241, 247, 250, 253, 255 Canute the Great, king of Denmark, 178 Canute IV, king of Denmark, saint, 177–8 Canute VI, king of Denmark, 178–9 Canute Lavard, duke, 178, 179, 186 Capitanata, 20 Caribbean, 5, 26, 255, 261 cartography, xiii, 11, 107, 108, 118–19, 268 Cary, Max, 270 Casas, Bartolomé de la, 277 Cashel, 247, 253 Cassius, count, 43 Castellum Peregrinorum, 113 Castile, 3, 5, 17, 18, 22, 31, 264, 267, 269

281

Catalonia, 2, 3, 8, 12, 14, 15, 23, 131, 140, 255, 266, 268–9 Catania, 23 Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair, king of Connacht, 245–6 Caucasus (Caucasia), 55, 59, 73, 78, 83, 87–8 Cerda, Luis de la, 267, 275 Cervantes, author, 255 Chaldia, 88, 91, 92, 95–6 Chamberlayne, Major Tankerville J., 134 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, emperor, 60, 62 Charles I, count of Anjou and Provence, king of Sicily, 9, 15 Che³mno, bishopric, 226 Chevedden, Paul, 18 China, 3, 27, 28, 204 Chronicle of Albelda, 37, 40, 42–3, 52 Chronicle of Alfonso III, 37, 41–3, 44 Chronicle from the Beginning of the World to 1170 AD, 44 Chronicle of Sampiro, 44–5, 47 Cid, the (Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar), 50 Cilicia, 87, 90, 147 Clarendon, Constitutions of, 242 Clark, George N., 118 Clement V, pope, 265 Clement VI, pope, 13, 151, 265, 267, 275 Clogher, 247–8, 250 Codex of Roda, 41 Cohn, Henry, 2 Coimbra, 47, 264 Collioure, 15 Columbus, Christopher, 26, 27, 256, 261, 273–4, 276–7 comitatus confinii, 199–200 Constantine V, emperor of Byzantium, 64 Constantine VII, emperor of Byzantium, 61–2, 69, 70–72 Constantine IX Monomachos, emperor of Byzantium, 76, 79 Constantine X Doukas, emperor of Byzantium, 80 Constantine the Great, emperor of Rome, 61, 62 Constantinople, 15, 63, 72, 77–8, 88–9, 96, 98, 141, 145, 213 and trade, 19, 148–9 as frontier city, 57–8, 64–8, 81 government of, 61, 86, 94, 99, 104

282

INDEX

Copenhagen, 180, 184 Copts, 121 Corbeil, 14 Cordoba, 10, 33, 35–6, 38, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50, 53 Coria, 47 Cork, 249 Cormac Mac Carthaig, 245 Cornerus, 25 Corsica, 13 Covadonga, 43 Cracow, 29 Crete, 65, 72, 73, 83 Crevillente, 17 Crimea, 3, 143–4, 146–50 Croatia, 198 Cuenca, 5, 34 Cuiavia, 219 Cumans, 200, 202–3, 205, 207–9, 212, 215 Cyprus, 3, 13, 67, 83, 124, 133–42 Czarnotyl, 222 Czerwiñsk, 220–21 Dalmatia, 198, 206 Damascus, 11, 87, 114–17, 125 Dante, author, 271 Danube river, 57, 59, 69, 206, 209 Daugava river, 166 David, bishop of Waterford, 241–2 David I, king of Scotland, 245 David, prince of Tao, 95–6 David ‘the Welshman’, bishop of Waterford, 248 Decameron, 272 delimitation, 14, 61, 105, 110, 198, 217–37 Delumeau, Jean, 29 Denmark, 2, 20, 173–93 dhimmi, 31–2, 126–9, 130–31 Diarmait Mac Murchada, 245 Dio Cassius, Roman historian, 55, 56, 77 Diocletian, emperor of Rome, 60 Diyarbakr, 95 Diyar Mudar, 94 Donnchad Ua Cearbaill, king of Airgialla, 245, 247 Donnchad Ua Lonngargáin II, archbishop of Cashel, 252 doux (katepano), 88, 89, 91–6, 98 Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne, 36, 37, 42 Dragsholm, 182 Duarte, king of Portugal, 264, 277

Dublin, 240, 247 Dubrovnik, 19 Ducellier, Alain, 4 Dulcidius, 43 Dungarvan castle, 248 Dvin, 76, 78 Ebro valley, 43 Edessa, 15, 70, 75, 87, 88, 92 Egypt, 57, 86, 90, 130, 133 and Fatimids, 87 Einhard, author, 39 Elbe river, 20, 179, 186 Elbing, 21 El Hierro, 260–61 Ellenblum, Ronnie, 1, 122 Enarrationes in Psalmos, 160 England, 2, 5, 7, 9, 15–16, 19, 177–8, 250, 253, 255 Enzo, son of Frederick II, 13 Epstein, Steven, 25 Erice, 31 Erik Ejegod, king of Denmark, 184 Erik the Lamb, king of Denmark, 184 Erling, Norwegian earl, 182 Ernoul, Frankish chronicler, 116 Escorial Taktikon, 89–91, 96–7, 99, 104 Espinosa, Alonso de, chronicler, 262, 264–5 Eskil, Danish knight, 184 Estonia, 153, 157, 161, 166 Etruscans, 22 Eugenius IV, pope, 264, 273 Eulogius, author, 43 Euphrates river, 59, 67, 69, 70, 72 Eurasia, 3 Eustathios, author, 70–71 Eustathios Maleinos, strategos of Antioch and Lykandos, 92 Evesham, 178 Evliya Celebi, 144 Falster island, 182, 187, 191 Famagusta, 125, 141 Faro, 36 Feodosya, 149 Ferdinand II, king of Aragon, 31 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, 6, 256–7, 275 Fergus of Galloway, 245 Ferns, 250 Ferrer, Jaume, captain, 268 Flanders, 20, 23

INDEX Florence, 7, 19, 22, 269–72, 274, 276 Foix, 14, 16 France, xii, 2–4, 9, 14–15, 20, 118, 180 Frederick Barbarossa, king of the Romans, emperor, 178–9 Frederick II, king of the Romans, emperor, 9, 13, 15, 20, 179, 213 Freedman, Paul, 17 frontier ideology, x–xv, 2–3, 5–6, 12–13, 34, 59–61, 88–91, 99–104, 106–13, 118–19, 121–2, 195, 208, 215, 217–19 rhetoric, xii, xiv, 6, 42, 45, 48, 56, 61, 66, 195, 201–4 role of rulers, 1–2, 12–17, 34, 60–61, 69–80, 95–6, 109–10, 112–13, 117–18, 200, 208–15 zones, xi, xiii, 3, 11, 16, 18, 88, 100, 108, 113, 143, 151, 177–80, 198–9, 201, 203–4, 215, 218, 220–22, 227 see also baulk, borders, delimitation, granicznicy, gyepû, határjárás, limes, meta, terminus, thaghr Fruela I, king of Asturias-León, 43, 50 Fuerteventura, 261 Funen, 176, 184, 188 Furness, 249 Galicia, 23, 36–7, 40, 43–5, 46, 48 Galilee, 112 Gallus Anonymus, 220 Galloway, 246 Gammel Nyby (Old Newby), 188 Gascony, 14–15, 20 Gaspar, Tejera, 264 Gaza, 129 Gediminas, grand duke of Lithuania, 169–70 Genoa, 8, 16, 19, 140, 143–6, 148–50, 256, 266–9, 275 Genoese Gazaria, 143–4, 148, 151 Geoffrey of Monmouth, historian, 247 Georgia, 75–6, 87, 90, 94–5, 101, 129 Gerald of Wales, author, 239–42, 244, 247, 248, 251 Germanikeia, 71 Germany, 2, 5, 9, 12, 19, 25, 242–3 and Baltic Crusade, 156, 158–62, 166 and Denmark, 173, 177–80, 185, 187 and France, 112 and Hungary, 204 and Jews, 30

283

and law, 227, 229, 235 see also Teutonic Order Gervase of Canterbury, historian, 240 Gesta Danorum, 180–86 Géza, ruler of Hungary, 196 Gibraltar, 59, 266 Gilla Espaic (Gilbert), bishop of Limerick, 251 Gilla Meic Liac, archbishop of Armagh, 247 Ginzburg, Carlo, 29 Giovanni del Plano Carpini, 211 Glastonbury, 250 Gniezno, 227, 231 Godskalk, godfather of Svend Estridsen, 186 Golan, 110, 111, 116 Gomera, 260–61 Goodman, Jennifer, 268 Goryñski’s Code, 234 Gotifredo di Zoagli, consul of Caffa, 144 Golden Horde, 147 Gozo, 22 Gran Canaria, 260–61, 263, 265–6, 270, 273–4, 278 Granada, 17, 18, 33 granicznicy, 235 Gratian, canonist, 33 Graziano Pierleoni, 26 Greece (Greeks), 4, 10, 20, 23, 57, 64, 121, 129, 130, 133–42, 272 Gregory VII, pope, 241 Gregory IX, pope, 161, 211 n. 64 Grivaud, Gilles, 140 Gruffudd ap Cynan, 245 Guanches, 260–62, 264 Guadiana, 36, 40 Guichard, Pierre, 17 Guy of Ibelin, constable of Cyprus, 135 gyepû, 199–200, 205 Gypsies, 25 Hadrian, emperor of Rome, 77, 82 Hadrian’s Wall, 106 Hafdjidj (Chauzizion), 97, 103 Haggi Giray, Khan, 147 Halland, duchy, 178 Hamburg-Bremen, 178 Hamo de Valognes, justiciar, 252 Hampe, Karl, 39 Hanona b. Horkenos, 128 Hanseatic League, 7, 226 Harald, earl, 246

284

INDEX

Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, 178, 186 Harald Klak, king of Denmark, 177 Hårbølle, 188 Harvey, Leonard Patrick, 17, 18 Hasan Ibn Marwan, 95–6 határjárás, 203 Hauran, 110 Hebron, 123 Henry, count of Schwartzburg, 185 Henry VI, king of the Romans, emperor, 13 Henry I, king of England, 177 Henry II, king of England, 12, 14, 240–42, 244, 251–2 Henry III, king of England, 246, 252 Henry IV, king of France, 118 Henry of Livonia, chronicler, 161, 166–7 Henry of London, archbishop of Dublin, 252 Henry of Schwerin, count, 179–80 Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, 268 Henry, Wendish prince, 186 Herman of Wartburg, chronicler of Teutonic Order, 166, 168–9 Homs, 124 Hispania, see Iberia Hispaniola, 24 Historia Arabum, 45 Historia de la conquista de las Canarias, 263 Historia de rebus Hispaniae, 45 Historia Silense, 44 History and Topography of Ireland, 239 History of the Conquest of al-Andalus, 46 Holy Land, see Jerusalem, Latin East, Palestine Honorius III, pope, 252 Horace, Roman author, 56 Horden, Peregrine, 17 Housted, Friederike W., 188, 191 Hugh, count, 39–40 Hugh of St Omer, 112–13 Hume, Peter, 275–6 Humbert of Romans, 208 n. 52 Hundred Years’ War, 14 Hungarian Anonymous, 203, 209 Hungary, 3, 5, 65, 195–215 Hunin, 115 Huns, 25, 208 Hyde, Kenneth, 270–72, 274 Iberia (Hispania), xi, 2, 13, 23, 35–53, 210, 258

and Basques, 20, and Muslims, 17, 33, 35–53, 208, 213 see also Aragon, Castile, Granada, Portugal, Spain Ibn al-Athir, historian, 37, 50–51 Ibn al-Qutiya, author, 37, 46–9, 52 Ibn Butlan, Christian Arab doctor, 98–9 Ibn Hafsun, 49 Ibn Hawqal, geographer, 40, 48 Ibn Hayyan, author, 37, 49–50, 52 Ibn Hazm, 43 Ibn ‘Idhari, historian, 52 Ibn Jubayr (Jubair), Andalusian traveller, 114–16, 123, 128 Ibn Khaldun, 36, 51 Ibn Marwan, emir, 14, 101 Ibn Sa‘id the Maghrebi, 37, 51 Imad ad-Din, author, 122 Imm, 99, 103 Inca empire, 5 India, 27 Ingheto Gontardo, Genoese merchant, 28 Innocent III, pope, 13, 154, 156, 161, 248 Innocent IV, pope, 28, 133, 210 n. 61, 211, 265 interaction Byzantines–Armenians, 10 Byzantines–Muslims, 14, 48 Christians–Jews, 29–33, 124–5 Christians–Muslims, xi, 2, 3, 10–11, 14, 18, 32–4, 35, 38–53, 123–31, 156 Danes–Germans, 177–80 Danes–Wends, 173, 177, 179, 184–92 English–Irish, 240, 252–3 English–Scottish, 245–7, 253 Europeans–Arawaks, 256, 274, 277 Europeans–Canary Islanders, 255–78 French–English, 14 Genoese–Armenians, 147–51 Germans–Slavs, 10 Germans–Wends, 156, 187 Greeks–Turks, 10, 11 Hungarians–Cumans, 202–3, 205, 207–9 Latins–Greeks, 133–42 Teutonic Knights–Lithuanians, 3, 29 Teutonic Knights–Masovians, 237 Teutonic Knights–Prussians, 158–9, 167, 169, 219 Iraq, 92 Ireland, xi, 2, 4, 239–45, 247–53, 265 Irene, empress of Byzantium, 65

INDEX Iria, 52 ‘Isa, author, 49 Isaac, Benjamin, 55, 56, 66, 68, 106–7 Isaac Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, 79 Isabella, queen of Aragon, 31 Isidore of Seville, 43, 259 Etymologies, 43 Israel, 116, 263 Istria, 81 István I (Stephen), king of Hungary, 196, 198, 209 Italy, xii, 7, 8, 13, 15, 18, 28, 81, 140, 145, 243, 272 and Muslims, 20, 31 Byzantine, 5, 83 see also Florence, Genoa, Naples, Sicily, Venice Jabala, 128 Jacob ben Nathaniel, Jewish traveller, 124 Jacobites, 121, 129, 130 JadŸwing tribe, 219 Ja‘far, son of Ibn Hafsun, 49 Jalita (Goleta) island, 267 James I, king of Aragon, 17 James III, king of Majorca, 266–7 James, Master, papal chaplain, 252 James of Vitry, bishop of Acre, 129 James, apostle, saint, 52 Jamla, sister of Mahmud, 47, 52 Jamma’il, 128 Janibek, Khan, 144 Janis³aw, archbishop of Gniezno, 227 Janus, king of Cyprus, 140 Janusz I the Elder, duke of Central and Eastern Masovia, 227, 229 Janusz, donor to Church of Holy Virgin, 223 Jarimir, prince, 180 Jaros³aw Bogoria of Skotniki, archbishop of Gniezno, 227 Jaume of Majorca, cartographer, 268 Jean de Béthencourt, 262 Jerba island, 13 Jerusalem, 12–13, 15, 18, 105, 108, 122–31, 129, 134, 177 Jewra region, 166 Jews, 19, 26, 34, 213, 263 as non-Christians, 27–33, 122, 127 in Eastern Europe, 23 in Iberia, 17, 21, 28–9 in Italy/Sicily, 4, 22–3

285

in Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 121–2, 124–5, 127–8, 130–31 Jilliqiya, 48 Joan Martí de Galba, Catalan author, 255 Joannot Martorell, Catalan author, 255 John the Baptist, saint, 71–2, 123 John, bishop of Caithness, 243, 246 John, Cumin, archbishop of Dublin, 252 John Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, 15 John Geometres, poet, 72 John Haraldson, earl, 246 John of Ibelin, author, 141 John (Jean) of Joinville, 135 John, king of England, 13, 252 John Kourkouas, 70 John Mauropous, 79 John I Tzimiskes, emperor of Byzantium, 71, 77, 87, 91 John Vladislav, tsar of Bulgaria, 74 Jordan valley, 113, 115–16 Joseph the Hymnographer, 65 Juba, king of Morocco, 270–71 Justinian II, emperor of Byzantium, 57–8, 59, 66, 68, 75 Jutland, 176, 178, 181 Kalikala, see Theodosioupolis Kaliningrad, 153 Karakorum, 6 Kar Kannah, 128 Karp, Hans Jürgen, 222, 237 Kars, 87 katepano, see doux Kedar, Benjamin, 128, 265 Keen, Maurice, 135, 268 Kekaumenos, writer, 80 Kells, synod of, 247 Kenilworth castle, 255 Kertch peninsula, 149 Khazanov, Anatoly, 204 Khazars, 65 Kiatskoe, 149 Kiersnowski, Ryszand, 218 Knockmoy, monastery, 246 Knudsbølle, 188 Konvitz, Joseph W., 118 Korselitse, 187 Kramnitse, 188 Kristó, Gyula, 200 Kufa, 48 Kula, Witold, 7

286

INDEX

Kulayb, basilikos of Antioch, 94, 102 Kurds, 101 Kurs (Couronians), 164–5 Kutna Hora, 23 Lamberto di Sambuceto, notary, 146 Lake Van, 75 £¹koszyn, 232 Landore, 182 Languedoc, 10, 15, 34 Lanzarote, 260–61, 267 Laodikeia, 99 Lapiedra Gutiérrez, E., 49 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 259 László (Ladislas) I, king of Hungary, 201 László (Ladislas) IV, king of Hungary, 202 Latin East, xiii, 3, 4, 18–19, 28, 32, 105–31, 210, 213 see also Jerusalem Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, see Latin East, Jerusalem Latvia, 153, 157, 166 Lazarus, saint, 67 Leaman, Oliver, 33 £êczyca, 219, 225 Lengvenis, Lithuanian noble, 163–4 Leo III, emperor of Byzantium, 64 Leo VI, emperor of Byzantium, 66, 67 Leo Melissenos, doux of Antioch, 93 Leo Tornikios, 78, 79, 81 León, 10, 42, 44 Leontios Makhairas, historian, 133, 139, 141–2 Levant, 133, 148 Lévi-Provençal, Évariste, 36–9, 50, 52 Lewis, Archibald, x Liguria, 16, 21, 146, 151 Limassol, 134 Limerick, 248 limes, 106, 116 Lisbon, 274 Lismore, 247–9 Lithuania, 3, 11, 28–9, 153, 157–9, 162–4, 168–70, 219, 227, 265 Liudprand of Cremona, 61, 65 Livonia, 161, 166–7 Llandaff, 247 Lolland island, 187 £omza district, 230 London, 19, 255 Longobardia, 5

Lopez, Robert S., 9 Lorcán Ua Tuathail, saint, archbishop of Dublin, 252 Lothar III, king of the Romans, emperor, 179 Louis the Pious, king of the Franks, emperor, 39–40, 177 Louis IX, saint, king of France, 14, 16, 214 Louis de Bourbon, 268 £owicz, 231 Lübeck, 186 Lucera, 20, 31, 32 Lugo, 36, 40–41 Lund, 178 Lupe, son of Musa ibn Musa, 43 £upia, 228 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, 245 Lydda, 129 Lykandos, 92 Lynn (King’s Lynn), 19 Lyons, Council of, 209 MacKay, Angus, x, 2, 3 Madara, 58 Máel Máedoc Ua Morgair (St Malachy), 245, 251 Maghreb (Maghrib), 52, 115, 266–7 Magyars, 25 Mahmud ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar of Mérida, 35–8, 40–41, 44–7, 50–53 Maimonides, 33 Mainz, 177 Majorca, 14–16, 28, 30, 255–6, 262–3, 265–8, 271, 273, 278 Malachias, bishop of Lismore, 243, 248 Malik, 41 Malmesbury, 250 Malocello, Lançalotto, 267, 271 Malta, 21–2, 23 Mannhardt, Wilhelm, 165 Mansa Musa, king of Mali, 268 Manuel I Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, 15 Manzano Moreno, Eduardo, 35, 48 Marco Polo, 27–8 Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, 56 Maremma, 7 Marrakesh, 52 Marwan al-Jilliqi, governor of Mérida, 36 Marwanids, 95, 101 Masovia, 15, 217–37

INDEX Masudi, author, 65 Matfrid, count, 39–40 Mauregatus, king of Asturias-León, 46 Mauron Oros, 97–8, 103–4 McCormick, Michael, 63 Mecca, 114 Mehmet II, 147, 151 Meiron, 128 Meissen, 178 Melitene, 70, 86, 94–5, 98, 102 Melrose Abbey, 242 Mercer, John, 259 Mérida, 35–53 Mesopotamia, 55, 86–8, 92, 95–6 Messina, 21 meta, 203, 204 Meyler Fitz Henry, justiciar of Ireland, 248 Michael I, emperor of Byzantium, 60 Michael IV, emperor of Byzantium, 77 Michael Bourtzes, doux of Antioch, strategos of Mauron Oros, 92–4, 97–8 Michael Psellos, author, 77, 79, 80 Mindaugas, king of Lithuania, 28 Minorca, 17 Miramar, 265 Modena, 268 Modzelewski, Karol, 220 Mogilno, 220, 222 Møn island, 188, 191 Monaco, 16 Mongols, 25, 27, 143, 196, 200, 203, 204–14, 224 Monophysites, 121 Montaigne, Michel de, 24 Monte Sacro (Monte Salud), 36–7, 51 Montpellier, 16 Montréal, 113 Moravia, 203 Morocco, 266, 270 Morón, 46 Mosul, 92 Mt Sion, 128 Mt Tabor, 114 Mozarabic Chronicle, 45 Mozarabs, 33 Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Abi Zamanin, scholar, 47 Muirges (Tatheus) Ua hÉnna, archbishop of Cashel, 240, 242, 251 Muldoon, James, 265, 267 Munster, 242, 248

287

Münzel, Bettina, 49 Muqtabas, 49–50, 52 Murcia, 23 Musa ibn Musa, 43 Musa ibn Nusayr, 39 Muslims (Arabs, Saracens), 19, 55, 91, 95, 107, 150, 176 Abbasid caliphate, 86 Almohads, 17, 255 Almoravids, 255 and Byzantium, 12, 57–8, 64–8, 70–77, 82, 86–8, 91, 95, 102, 104 and Canary Islands, 255, 267–8 and Cyprus, 67, 137 and Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 11, 111, 114–18, 121–31, Buyids, 100–101, 103 Fatimids, 58, 87, 93–4, 99, 110 Hamdanid emirate, 87, 92 in Hungary, 200 in Iberia, 17–18, 21, 28–9, 31–4, 35–53, 156, 210, 214 in Italy/Sicily, 4, 20, 23, 31–2, 34 Mamluks, 100, 133–4, 140, 147 Umayyads, 10, 36, 40, 46, 49, 52 muwallad, 36, 38, 41, 47, 49 Nablus, 122, 128, 129 Naestved, 180 Nájera, 44 Naples, 7, 16, 62, 269 Navarre, 32 Nehemias Ua Brácáin, prior of Mellifont, 250 Nestorians, 121, 129, 130 Nice, 16 Niels, knight, 181 Nikephoros Ouranos, doux of Antioch, 93–6 Nikephoros II Phokas, emperor of Byzantium, 72, 73, 77 Niklot, Wendish prince, 186–7 Normandy, xiii, 176 Norway, 176, 178, 182 Novgorod, 19, 148 Ny Nyby (New Newby), 188 Nymphaion, treaty of, 148 Oder river, 179, 186 Odo of Bayeux, 243 Offa’s Dyke, 106 Oghuz, 205, 207

288

INDEX

Oikonomidès, Nicholas, 89, 90 Oldradus de Ponte, canon lawyer, 32 Oliver of Paderborn, chronicler, 113 Opinegote, 223 Orderic Vitalis, chronicler, 26 Ordoño II, king of Asturias-León, 41–3, 49–50 Orontes river, 100 Osilians, 166 Ostrawantz, 223 Ostyaks, 25 Otakar II, king of Bohemia, 202 Otto I, king of the eastern Franks, emperor, 61, 178 Otto of Freising, bishop, 25 Ottomans, 143, 145, 150, 208, 214 Outer Iberia, 87–8 Ovid, Roman author, 56 Oviedo, 44, 45, 49, 53 Owain Gwynedd, 245 Oxford, 27, 29 Ozsec, 223 Özbek, Khan, 147 Palermo, 8, 21 Palestine, 57, 72, 86, 121–2, 124, 126, 131 Palma, 265 Pallavicino, Sir Orazio, squire of Babraham, 19 Pantelleria, 21–2 Paris, 14, 27, 46 Parthians, 55 Patlagean, Évelyne, 101 Pechenegs, 65, 76, 79, 200, 203, 205, 207 Peking, 6 Pelayo, bishop of Oviedo, 43–6 Liber Testamentorum, 45 Peloponnese, 57 Pera, 148 Perkri, 75 Pero Vaz de Caminha, 26 Persians, 55, 64 Pessagne (Pessagno), Sir Anthony, 19 Pessagno, Manuel, admiral, 267 Peter IV, king of Aragon, 266 Peter I, king of Cyprus, 133 Peter II, king of Cyprus, 142 Peter Dusburg, Teutonic Order priest, 154–6, 158–62, 167–9 Peter Pipard, lord of Louth, 243, 250 Peter the Venerable, abbot, 32

Peterhof, 19 Petrarch, author, 269, 271, 275–7 Philip, father of Alexander the Great, 77 Philip of Novara, author, 135–9, 141 Quatre Ages de l’Homme, 135 Philopatris, 72 Phoenicia, 72 Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, 67 Piambino, 19 Piotrkow, 231–2 Pippin of Aquitaine, 39 Pisa, 8, 19 Plano Carpini, see Giovanni del Plano Carpini Pliny the Elder, Roman author, 270–71 Pliska, 58 P³ock, 223–4, 230, 234–5 Plunkett, Oliver, archbishop of Armagh, 240 Podwiñska, Zofia, 222 Poland, 7, 11, 23, 29, 34, 170, 203, 210, 214, 217–37 Portugal, 12–13, 255, 266–9, 271, 273, 276 Power, Daniel, xiii, 3, 9 Prawer, Joshua, 121–2, 124 Prislav, son of Prince Niklot, 187 Procopius, author, 59 Provence, 16, 20, 21, 34, 124 Prussia, 2, 4, 153–4, 157–61, 166–9, 219, 226 Purcell, Nicholas, 17 Pu³tusk, 230, 235 Qalat Simon, 98 Qa’nab, 46–7 Ramiro, king of Asturias-León, 43 Ramon Llull, 28, 265 Ramon Muntaner, Catalan mercenary and chronicler, 23 Ratzel, Friedrich, 143, 148 Ravenna, 61 Rav Kahana, 124 Raymond Babin, 133–4 Recco, Niccolò (Niccoloso) de, Genoese captain, 268–9, 271, 276 Rheinpfalz, 2 Rhineland, 2 Rhodes, 125 Rhymed Chronicle of Livonia, 161, 162–5 Richard I the Lionheart, king of England, 133, 135, 139

INDEX Riga, 21, 166 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, 32 Robert I, bishop of Waterford, 248 Robert II, bishop of Waterford, 248 Robert de Boron, 135 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, 45 Roger Bacon, 27 Roma, the (‘Gypsies’), 25 Romagna, 7 Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal, 135 Romania, 23, 70, 148 Rome, 61, 272 Romanos I, emperor of Byzantium, 70–71 Romanos III, emperor of Byzantium, 75–6, 77 Ronda, 49 Roskilde Fjord, 183 Rowell, Stephen C., 29 Rudolf of Bavaria, 112 Rügen, 179–80, 181, 191 Rum, 100 Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, 258 Rus’, 65, 76, 200, 209 Russia, 83, 146, 148, 170, 176, 219 Russell, Sir Peter, 25 Saaremaa, 166 Sabaeans, 127 Sadun al-Shurumbaki, 47 Safar, Treaty of, 100–103 Safed, Treaty of, 117, 128 Safi, 266 Sahara, 4, 10, 255, 259–60 Saif ad-Daula, 71–2 St Asaph, 247 St Davids, 247 St Mary of Saidnaya, 117 St Symeon Stylites, monastery, 98 St John, Order of, 123 Saladin, 126 Samaritans, 121, 128, 130 Sambians, 169 Samogitians (Zemaitiai), 164 Sampiro, bishop of Astorga, 44 Sampiro, royal notary in León, 44 Samuel, tsar of Bulgaria, 74 Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio, 38, 39 Sancho II Garcés of Pamplona, 52 Santa Cristina, 40–41 Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 36

289

Santiago de Compostela, 37, 40, 52 Saraï, 147, 149 Sardinia, 7, 8, 13, 265 Savoy, 118 Saxo Grammaticus, Danish historian, 173, 180–86 Scandinavia, 13, 174–8, 180 Scania, 174, 176, 182 Schleswig, 178–80, 181 Scipio Africanus, 80 Scotland, 14, 241–2, 245–7, 253 Scumandus, Sudovian noble, 169 Sealand, 176, 180, 182 Sebaste, 122–3 Second Masovian Code of Law, 234 Seljuq Rûm, 5 Serbia, 5, 12, 198 Sevillano Colom, Francisco, 258 Seville, 43, 269–70, 272 Shawbak, 113 Siberia, 26 Sicily, 1, 2, 5, 7–9, 12, 21–3, 30–32, 34, 75–6, 131 Sidon, 117, 129 Siemowit IV, Masovian duke, 227, 229 Siena, 22 Sigismond the Old, king of Poland, 230, 232 Silesia, 222, 224–5, 226 Silo, king of Asturias-León, 43 Silvestri, Domenico, author, 269, 271, 276 Simisso, 149 Simonet, Francisco Xavier, 38, 39 Sinti, 25 Sisnando, bishop of Iria, and of Compostela, 52 Skalva, 161–2 Skirmishing, Byzantine treatise, 73 Slavs, 20–21, 57–8, 64 Smail, Otto, 121 Smith, Jerry, 164 Solgat, 144–5, 147–8, 150 Sopron, castle of, 202 Southampton, 255 Southern, Richard William, 42 Spain, xii, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 114, 274 and Christians, 18, 21–2, 29, 167 and Jews, 30–34, 131 and Muslims, 14, 17–18, 29, 31–3, 39–40, 47, 131, 167 see also Iberia Standen, Naomi, xiii, 3, 11

290

INDEX

Staroe, 149 Stephen, king of England, 177 Stephen Langton, 251 Stephen of Lexington, Cistercian Visitor, 243, 249 Stephen of Taron, Armenian historian, 90 Stephenson, Paul, 86, 99, 104 Stevns, 180 Store Damme, 188 strategos, 88–9, 91, 96–8, 103 Suir, Cistercian abbey, 248–9 Sulayman ibn Martin, 36, 52 Suriani, 129 Sven, king of Denmark, 184 Svendborg fjord, 188 Svend Estridsen, king of Denmark, 186–7 Swabia, 25 Sweden, 174, 176, 178 Sword-Brethren, Order of, 154, 161, 166 Syria, 90, 95, 97, 116, 121–2, 125, 129, 131, 137–9, 141 and Fatimids, 93–4 Byzantine campaigns in, 72, 75, 87, 97–8 Muslim conquest of, 57, 86, 133 Taínas, 26 Tana, 148–9 Tao, 87, 94, 96 Taron, 91 Tarragona, 209 Tarsus (Tarsos), 58, 87 Tåsinge, 188 Tatars, 25, 143–4, 147–8, 150–51, 196, 203, 208, 210, 211 Taurus and Anti Taurus mountains, 86–8, 95–6, 98 Telde, 258, 260, 265–6 Templars, Order of, 18, 113, 116, 123–4, 139 Tenerife, 258–64, 270 terminus, 223 Teruel, 5, 34 Tervel, ruler of Bulgaria, 58, 63 Ter Yovhannes, bishop, 150 Teutonic Order of Knights and Hungary, 202, 205, 209, 213 and Lithuania, 29, 154, 156, 158, 162–9 Ordenstaat, 227 and Poland, 219, 227, 231 thaghr (thughur), 48, 115–16 Theodoric, bishop, 167

Theodoric, official of Teutonic Order, 159 Theodosioupolis, 71, 86, 95–7 Theophilos, emperor of Byzantium, 67 Thessalonika, 57 Thibault Belfarage, knight, 139, 142 Thomas Aquinas, saint, 28, 265 Thomas Barech, knight, 139 Thomas Becket, saint, archbishop of Canterbury, 240, 242–3, 251–2 Thomas of Cantimpré, 161 Thompson, James Westfall, x Thorbern, 181 Thrace, 78 Thurstan, archbishop of York, 245 Thurstan, abbot of Glastonbury, 250 Tiberias, 113, 122, 124 Tigris, 72, 100 Timur-Leng, 147, 149, 151 Todros ben Judah Abulafia, Hebrew poet, 22 Toledo, 22, 38, 45, 47 Tordesillas, Treaty of, 12 Toron, 112 Torres and Gallura, 13 Torriani, Leonardo, author, 264 Toubert, Pierre, 143, 150 Touzlah, 149 Tracton monastery, 249 trade (merchants), xi, 7–8, 15, 18–19, 28, 126, 148, 258 Trajan, emperor of Rome, 55, 70, 77, 82 Transjordan, 113, 122 Transylvania, 205 Trebizond, 148–9 Trelleborgs, 176 Tripoli, 15 Trujillo, 36 Tuareg, 10 Tunis, 22 Tupinambá, 24, 26, 27 Turkey, 98, 104, 133, 141, 147–8 Turner, Frederick Jackson, x, xiv, 3, 143, 215 Turon (Tibnin), 115 Tuscany, 7, 17, 19, 21, 22 Tyre, 112–13, 128–9 Ua Faeláin, king of the Déisi, 248–9 Ubayd Allah, basilikos of Antioch, 94–5 Ullmann, Walter, 12 ‘Uqba, 48 Urban II, pope, 209

INDEX Urban IV, pope, 214 Urban, William, 164 Urgell, 16 Usamah ibn-Munqidh, author, 124 Val d’Aran, 20 Valdemar, Danish pretender, 182, 187 Valdemar the Great, king of Denmark, 185 Valdemar II, king of Denmark, 153, 179 Valdemar of Schleswig, 179 Vale, Malcolm, 14 Valencia, 3, 18, 31, 32 Vasco de Gama, 27 Vaspurakan, 87, 88, 92, 98 Vauchez, André, 243 Venice, 19, 141, 148 Ventimiglia, 16 Verdun, 112 Verlinden, Charles, 258 Vikings, 43, 49, 176, 188, 207 Vilnius, 28 Vindbyholt, 188 Vindebaek, 188 Vindeby, 188 Vinderup, 188 Virgil, Roman poet, 56, 69 Visby, 19 Visigoths, 35 Vistula river, 219 Vlachs, 21, 23 Vlašsky dvùr (Welsches Hof), 23 Vollerup, 188 Vytenis, grand duke of Lithuania, 168–70

Waldensians, 20 Wales (Cymru), xi, 2, 23, 244–5, 250 Wallachians, 21, 23 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 6–7 Walloons, 23 Warmington, Eric H., 270 Way of St James, 20 Warsaw, 230, 232, 235 Waterford, 247–9 Weckmann, Luis, 12–13 Wends, 156, 173, 177–9, 181–7 Whithorn, 245 Wickham, Chris, 17 Wigand of Marburg, chronicler, 168–9 William, king of Scotland, 246 William Marshal, 250, 251, 252 William of Orange, 135 William of Rubruck, 27 William of Tyre, chronicler, 110–11, 135 William the Conqueror, king of England, duke of Normandy, 244 Winchester, 252 W³oc³awek, 225, 227 Wood, Frances, 27–8 Yahya ibn Sa’id, historian, 90 Yaqut, geographer, 48, 122 Yovhannes-Smbat, king of Ani, 76–7 York, 247, 253 Zoroastrians, 121, 127 Zulta, ruler of Hungary, 203 Zyro, Masovian lord, 223

291