medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
looks like an interesting group of essays.
c
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Subject: TMR 13.02.01 Balard, La Papauté et les croisades (Gaposchkin)
Balard, Michel, ed. <i>La Papauté et les croisades/The Papacy and the
Crusades: Actes du VIIe congress de la Society for the Study of the
Crusades and the Latin East: Proceedings of the VIIth Conference of
the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East</i>.
Series: Crusades, Subsidia 3. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. xii, 301.
$124.95. ISBN-13: 9781409430070.
Reviewed by Cecilia Gaposchkin
Dartmouth College
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In August 2008, the Society for the Study of the Crusade and the Latin
East sponsored its seventh conference at the University of Avignon,
under the theme of "The Papacy and the Crusades." This volume
comprises twenty essays originally presented at the conference. The
essays are mostly written in English and French, with a single
contribution (by Cipollone) in Italian. The editor, the eminent French
crusade historian Michel Balard, introduces the volume (1-7), after
presenting the rationale for the topic, with a rapid and masterly
narrative overview of the papacy's involvement over more than four
centuries in the history of the crusades.
The volume is divided into four thematic subsections, unequal in
length: Words and Terminology, The West, The East, Northern and
Eastern Europe. The following will summarize the contributions in
each section.
Part I: Les Mots / Terminology:
1. Benjamin Weber, "Nouveau mot our novelle réalité? Le terme
<i>cruciate</i> et son utilisations dans les textes pontificaux" ("A
New Word or a New Reality? The Term <i>cruciata</i> and its Uses in
Papal Texts"). The Latin word <i>cruciata</i>, -ae (noun, f.) appears
for the first time in a papal document around 1300, but only becomes
part of the regular vocabulary of crusading in papal texts in the
second half of the fifteenth century. It has a range of different
meanings, from an act of indulgence closely tied to spiritual
recompense exchanged for fighting for the faith, to the papal
administration responsible for the finances associated with papally
sanctioned holy wars. Weber throughout engages the "nominalist"
question of whether a new word designates a new reality or rather
participates in constructing the interpretation and categorization of
an existing reality. Looking at the multivalent uses of the word in
the fifteenth century, Weber argues that the increasing use of the
term was in fact a political act used to associate the holy wars
against the Ottomans with the older and prestigious holy war to regain
Jerusalem.
2. Giulio Cipollone, "Le varie ragioni per 'assumere la croce': Il
senso di un arruolamento in più direzioni" ("The Various Reasons to
'Take Up the Cross': The Sense of Enlistment in Its Different
Meanings"). Cipollone uses papal correspondence through to Boniface
VIII to examine the question of what, over time, the popes meant by
"taking the cross." Drawing out the papacy's increasing interest in
underscoring their rolls as the vicars of Christ, he argues, the
crusade had a variety of different meanings, and was, in the end,
whatever the popes determined. Indeed, Jerusalem was wherever the
popes sent you, and thus that particular "wherever" became the gateway
to heaven.
3. Michel Balard, "The French Recent Historiography of the Holy War."
Balard reviews the contribution of French historians to the debate
over Holy War (rather than crusade specifically), summarizing the
principal contributions of Etienne Delaruelle, Thomas Deswarte,
(especially) Jean Flori, Alain Demurger, and (the perhaps not so
recent) Paul Alphandéry and Alphonse Dupront. He makes the point that
the French have contributed mostly to understanding the
Christianization of western institutions that allowed for crusade, and
the popular (read: lay, poor) element in the history of crusades.
Balard is to be commended for publishing this essay in English,
presumably to highlight French historiography to the English speaking
and reading world.
Part II: L'Occident / The West:
4. Monique Amouroux, "Louis VII, Innocent II et la Seconde Croisade"
("Louis VII, Innocent II, and the Second Crusade"). This essay looks
at the effects of the Second Crusade on Capetian-papal relations.
Amouroux begins her contribution by narrating how the early stages of
Louis VII's reign was characterized by a troubled and uneasy
relationship with the Papacy of Innocent II, including the "church-
state" conflict over the archbishopric of Bourges, and the marriage
dispute involving his seneschal Raoul of Vermandois (climaxing in the
massacre at Vitry, where 1500 faithful were burned to death in a
church where they had taken refuge). Amouroux argues that the Second
Crusade served to turn around royal-papal relations, beginning a
period of political cooperation with the papacy, and turning Louis
into a servant of the church. So much so that Louis VII then came to
"prefigure the archetype of the pious king par excellence, incarnated
in the person of his grandson, Louis IX, better known as Saint Louis"
(65).
5. Marco Meschini, "'Smoking sword': le meurtre du légat Pierre de
Castelnau et la première croisade albigeoise" ("'Smoking Sword': The
Murder of the Legate Peter of Castelnau and the First Albigensian
Crusade"). Meschini aims to isolate precisely the role of the murder
of Peter of Castlenau (14 January 1208) played in the beginning of the
Albigensian crusade as well as its propaganda. He sets this up by
noting that Innocent III first requested military aid in Provence from
the French king prior to this incendiary murder, in November of 1207,
indicating that the pope was planning military action against heretics
even prior to the murder; Meschini looks carefully at the rhetoric and
reasoning found in Innocent's papal correspondence. He argues that
the papal legate's murder was not the <i>casus belli</i> per se, but
rather served to refine, or "clarify" (70) the goal of the crusade
(from combatting heresy in general to a fight against the protectors
of heretics), as well as providing the ideal conditions for the war
propaganda that was now served by a legitimate canonical justification
for just war. The murder was thus neither the cause of nor the
pretext for the crusade, but rather the perfect "smoking sword" (75).
6. Karl Borchardt, "Casting Out Demons by Beelzebul: Did the Papal
Preaching against the Albigensians Ruin the Crusades?" Borchardt
seeks to refine the traditional argument that Innocent III's calling
of the Albigensian Crusade served to undermine the core crusading
mission in the long term. He argues that Innocent associated heresy in
Occitania with the failures to reclaim Jerusalem in the East, thus
associating the early argument for the Albigensian Crusade with more
traditional forms of crusade justification. The need for Occitanian
nobility--who had been crucial to the success of the First Crusade--to
participate in the Eastern crusades was one reason the Albigensian
Crusade was directed, not at the heretics themselves, but rather the
noble "protectors" of heretics, in order to win them back over to
mission in the Holy Land. The irony, however, was that the Capetian
takeover of the Southern nobility essentially "helped to destroy the
social basis for the traditional and successful crusades to the Holy
Land" (89).
7. G.A. Loud, "The papal 'Crusade' against Frederick II in 1228-1230."
In this dense and careful essay, Loud examines the earliest, least
known, conflict between Pope Gregory IX and the Emperor Frederick II,
which occurred between 1227 and 1229 and involved the a papal invasion
of the Emperor's fief, Sicily. He argues that the tensions
precipitating the crisis were more about issues of sovereignty and
authority in Sicily than over Frederick's delays in fulfilling his
crusading vow; that Gregory did not characterize the papal military
advance into Sicily against Frederick as a crusade per se; that only
in September 1229, as papal fortune was reversing, did Gregory begin
to suggest that the endeavor might have the character of a crusade,
promising, for one, spiritual rewards for fighting for the papacy; and
finally, that it collapsed in November 1229 in the face of Frederick's
challenge, and Gregory's inability to raise enough troops or enough
money to support them. This was not envisioned or enacted as a
crusade, unlike what would occur a decade later.
8. Sophia Menache, "When Ideology Met Reality: Clement V and the
Crusade." Menache examines the character and success of Clement V's
(1305–1314) crusading. Regardless of the criticism he received from
contemporaries, Clement was sincerely committed to recovery of the
Holy Land, and in 1308–1309 launched the first serious effort since
the fall of Acre in 1291. Yet, the operation was relegated to the
leadership of the Hospitallers, who were as interested in securing
their own authority in Rhodes as reestablishing the security of
Armenian Christians (the purported aim of the limited crusade), and
the larger crusading enterprise that Clement envisioned was stymied by
the competing interests of princes of Christendom. Indeed, Menache's
larger point is that by 1300 the evolving conditions and priorities of
"new states" impeded launching the traditional crusade supported by
pan-Christendom.
9. David M. Perry, "1308 and 1177: Venice and the Papacy in Real and
Imaginary Crusades." In 1177, Venice was the site for diplomatic
negotiations to settle disputes between Frederick Barbarossa and Pope
Alexander III. In the first quarter of the fourteenth century, this
historical footnote was turned into a full-blown crusade epic, in
which Venice comes to the rescue of the pope, who had traveled in
disguise to the island as a monk, and fights Barbarossa in a naval
battle which ends up saving the papacy and Italy. In this subtle
essay, Perry reads the construction of this historical myth against
the reality of the republic's complete capitulation to the papacy in
1308-1309, after Clement V had waged crusading-like actions against
Venice in a dispute over Ferrara. Turning the events of 1177 into a
crusade in which Venice fought victoriously for the papacy served to
counter the ignominy engendered by the defeats of 1308-1309.
10. Alan Forey, "Papal Claims to Authority over Lands Gained from the
Infidel in the Iberian Peninsula and Beyond the Straits of Gibraltar."
From the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, kings and princes
from the Iberian peninsula might seek assistance or approval for
planned or achieved conquests of territories in Muslim hands. At other
times, the papacy might even initiate communication about the status
of a conquered territory. There was no uniform policy, and papal
responses varied throughout the period. Initially, however, the
papacy did seem to claim temporal authority, or lordship, over
conquered lands, a claim from which they increasingly desisted,
particularly in the fifteenth century.
11. Luis Adao De Fonseca, Maria Cristina Pimenta, and Paula Pinto
Costa, "The Papacy and the Crusade in XVth Century Portugal."
Focusing on the later medieval period, this essay looks at how the
ideology of crusade with respect to the territorial (and expansionary)
interests of the Portuguese monarchy helped shaped later medieval and
early modern concepts of Portuguese history. Crucial in this
development was, in the first half of the fourteenth century, the
extension of crusading credentials to conflicts at sea, and thus
piracy. Thus defined, and bolstered by what the author describe as
increasing "crusade messianism," the crusading ethic underlied
strategic and expansionary efforts of the Portuguese army into the
sixteenth century.
Part III: L'Orient / The East:
12. Aphrodite Papyianni, "The Papacy and the Fourth Crusade in the
Correspondence of the Nicaean Emperors with the Popes." The essays
explores the representation of the 1204 siege and sack of
Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in the correspondence of two
of the Greek Emperors in exile in Nicea and two popes: Correspondence
in 1208 between Innocent III and Theodore I Lascaris, and
correspondence in 1237 between Iohannes III Vatatzes and Gregory IX.
The correspondence dealt with the relationship between the Greek
Empire in exile and the Latin Empire. Nicean emperors "did not
associate the pope directly with the diversion of the Fourth Crusade
or with the atrocities committed by the crusaders in the Byzatine
capital" (163).
13. James M. Powell (†), "A Vacuum of Leadership: 1291 Revisited."
The late Jim Powell takes a synthetic approach borne of a life-time of
work on the crusades in this essay, which considers the specific and
structural factors that led to the lack of response to the fall of
Acre. In a "transitional" age in which crusades were driven more by
secular leaders than the popes, individual popes such as Nicholas IV
and Boniface VIII did try to mobilize some energy for a new crusade,
but these faltered in the face of local impediments and European
politics. At the same time, particularly after the move to Avignon,
the papacy's agenda was increasingly to rehabilitate papal authority
in Europe. In context, because of "internal developments that were
sweeping cross the West" (171), 1291 was in effect a "minor affair,"
which did not, in the end, merit a new crusade.
14. Francesco Dall'Aglio, "Crusading in a Nearer East: The Balkan
Politics of Honorius III and Gregory IX (1221-1241)." This strong
essay broadly reviews the politics in and interrelations between the
Balkan kingdoms (Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Serbia), and their relations
with Hungary, the Latin Empire in Constantinople and the Greek Empire
in exile in Nicea, with a particular view to papal policy towards
these states and events between the years 1221 and 1241. Honorius III
and Gregorgy IX nurtured relations that either helped directly or
indirectly the Latin Empire or promoted catholic orthodoxy and
allegiance to Rome in the Balkans. At times, this included giving the
indulgence and granting crusade status to internal military
initiatives, such a crusade into Bosnia and Slavonia in 1238 (against
heretics). The papacy also asked for "crusading" help for the Latin
Empire.
15. Isabelle Ortega, "La politique de soutien pontifical aux lignanges
nobiliaires moréotes aux XIIIe et XIVe siècle" ("The Politics of Papal
Support for the Noble Lineages of the Morea in the Thirteenth and
Fifteenth Century"). In this highly documented essay, Ortega examines
the ways in which the papacy favored and advantaged the Latin nobility
established in the Morea following the Greek acquisitions of the
Fourth Crusade. Among a variety of strategies, the papacy allowed
marriages otherwise forbidden by canon law that favored the local
Latin nobility, did not oppose unions with Greek orthodox partners for
the same reason, and turned a blind eye to illegitimate conquests, all
in the interest of strengthening the ruling elite. This strategy was
used both during the Catalan threat in the thirteenth century as
against the Turkish thread of the fifteenth.
16. Pierre Bonneaud, "La Papauté et les Hospitaliers de Rhodes aux
lendemains de la chute de Constantinople (1453-1467)" ("The Papacy and
the Hosptiallers of Rhodes in the Aftermath of the Fall of
Constantinople (1453-1467)"). Bonneaud traces the relationship
between the Hospitallers and the papacy during a period of increasing
threats and challenges to both institutions, to see whether "the
situation provoked a tightening of the ties or a change of register in
the relations between the two" (202). The Hospitallers aided in
military operations in new crusades called in the aftermath of 1453.
Yet, a papacy distracted by Italian events did little help to the
Hospitallers, who resorted to forms of piracy in the Eastern
Mediterranean in efforts to safeguard their own territories against
the Turks, causing problems in relations with Genoa and Venice.
Meanwhile, the papacy continued to be engaged with the Hospitallers in
internal matters, such as appointments and reform.
17. Isabelle Augé, "Papauté, Latins d'orient et Croisés sous le regard
de l'archevêque de Tarse, Nersês Lambronatsi" ("Papacy, the Latins of
the East, and Crusades in the Eyes of Nersês Lambronatsi, the
Archbishop of Tarsus"). Drawing from his numerous writings, Augé
examines the views of Nerses of Lambron--as a representative of
Eastern Christians, even if an exceptional one--on the papacy and,
especially, of Latin Christians. Indeed, he held Latin Christians
(particularly monks) in high regard, particularly for their liturgy,
their monastic regulation, and their asceticism.
18. Marie-Anna Chevalier, "Le rôle de la Papauté dans la politique
arménienne de Hospitaliers au XIVe siècle" ("The Role of the Papacy in
the Armenian Politics of the Hospitallers in the 14th century"). By
the fourteenth century, Rhodes and Armenia were two of the remaining
Christian outposts in the East. In this detailed contribution,
Chevalier chronicles the ways in which the papacy deployed the
Hospitallers of Rhodes diplomatically and militarily to effect
Christian interests in the East, particularly in safeguarding the
Christian power of Armenia. Despite concerns over the "doctrinal
error" of the Armenian church, this included the reintroduction in the
1320s of the Hospitallers into Cicilia, and their defense of the
region in the second half of the fourteenth century.
Part IV: L'Europe du Nord et de L'Est / Northern and Eastern Europe:
19. Darius von Güttner Sporzynski, "Poland and the Papacy Before the
Second Crusade."
Although the christianization of Poland had occurred in the century
before the First Crusade, links between the papacy and the Polish
court of Boleslaw III were tightened in the early years of the twelfth
century in ways that suggest the importance of crusading ideas and
ideology at the Polish court and Polish wars against the (pagan)
Pomeranians. Von Guttner draws attention to two papal delegations to
Poland (in 1103, and then in 1123) as mechanisms by which crusading
ideas were introduced at the court; and looks at the discourse of just
war in the critical source, the <i> Gesta Principum Polonorum</i> to
show how the ideology of crusade had been appropriated by Boleslaw and
incorporated into the identity of Poland as a Christian kingdom that
participated in the larger aims of Christendom.
20. Janus Møller Jensen, "Politics and Crusade: Scandinavia, the
Avignon Papacy and the Crusade in the XIVth Century." Jensen takes
seriously the idea of crusade in the political, financial, and
ideological history of Scandinavia in the middle years of the
fourteenth century, rather than it being merely an "ideological smoke-
screen for an ambition to expand" (271). Concentrating on the
political and territorial ambitions of Magnus II Eriksson of Sweden
(1319-1374) and his rival Valdemar IV Atterdag of Denmark (1340-1375),
Jensen examines how crusade (as well, as crusade tithes and financing,
vows, and incentives, along with papal alliance and protection)
factored in the political and military history of the region, in
Magnus' crusade against the Russians (and the pagans among them) and
Valdemar's efforts to regain control over Denmark. Although these
accomplished comparatively little, Jensen argues it is a mistake to
underestimate the role that the ideology, propaganda, and financing of
crusade played in the political developments of the fourteenth
century.
Final (minor) thoughts:
This volume comprises a series of localized studies which, to a
greater or lesser degree, examines the role of the papacy in the
crusades, with a marked (though, I expect, undesigned) concentration
on the later, post 1291, period, thus underscoring the continued
interest, if also the compromised vigor, of the papacy in the later
crusades. Some of the essays may have benefited from somewhat more
rigorous editing interventions, in particular some of the English-
language essays that were written by non-native speakers. I,
personally, would have appreciated the inclusions a few well designed
maps to aid in my understanding and appreciation of some of the essays
dealing with regions I am not so familiar. The volume lacks an index,
which would also have increased its usefulness. That said, scholars
will no doubt read essays that pertain to their own research
interests, and will find much of use.
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