> Call it the people's, peasant's, popular crusade, what you will. But it was
> the first response to an official crusade; it was never repudiated by the
> papacy; and there were knights on board--not many, it is true, but some.
> The best recent treatment is J. Riley-Smith, 'The First Crusade and the
> Persecution of the Jews', in W.J. Sheils (ed.) Persecution and Toleration
> (Studies in Church History, 21) (Oxford, 1984), pp. 51-72. This should be
> supplemented with Idem., The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading
> (London, 1986).
have seen, have read; not, as will become evident below, satisfied.
> On popular crusades in general, see: F. Cardini,"Per una ricerca...crociate
> popolari," Quaderni Med., 30 (1990), 156-67. Cardini, however, is far too
> dominated by Norman Cohn's utterly and irretrievably lost, Paradigm Lost.
why do you call it that? Cohn is almost entirely derivative from
Alphandery and Dupront on the First Crusade. what's so utterly
irretrievable about that thesis. having looked at the primary sources,
i'm quite convinced that the "popular crusade" *at the least* was
dominated by apocalyptic expectations.
> As for your second query, 'what is the best refutation of the alphandery
> and dupront argument that the crusades was essentially an apocalyptic
> millenarian movement', that depends upon whether or not anything as
> important as this was 'essentially' about one thing and only one thing.
> There was certainly a prophetic element about it; but there were other
> motifs as well. (Why can't ordinary people be credited with some of the
> complexity always lavished on intellectuals? It just ain't fair; it just
> ain't democratic.)
that's, as you know, unfair to the argument and special pleading all at
once. the case is made that people who dropped everything and expected
the sea to split for them (Ekkehard has a great allusion to debates with
them over this: "when you ask them how... they tell you God will
provide") did so under the impression that they were engaged in the
final, cosmic battle for the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem. you of all
people know how overwhelming such beliefs are. they are not "a little bit
of apocalypticism, a little bit of sighseeing, a little bit of plunder
and rapine, a little bit of a walk in the footsteps of..."
this is not to say that these people were incapable of complex thought and
complex responses to difficulties... but that kicks in when their dream
scenario begins to go awry. at that point we see how resourceful, agile
and resilient they are. the issue is not, were they completely drowned in
apocalypticism and hence self-destructive (some clearly were), but what
got them going and going where. i think that when whole groups follow a
goose or a vision of Karolus redivivus, we are dealing with people who are
avidly reading divine significance into the smallest details of the
physical world around them. this is classic apocalyptic behavior.
otherwise we end up calling them eccentrics, or nuts. now that's not fair.
richard
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