> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 11:33:37 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Richard Landes <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: crusading love
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
> > There is also a very interesting article by J. Riley-Smith entitled
> > "Crusading as an act of love." (I do not remember where this appeared but
> > it was published sometime in the mid-1970s). It shows how closely
> > interlinked high expressions of spiritually were with violence, and
> > demonstrates how for people in the middle ages there was not present our
> > distinction between peace and love on one hand and violence and evil on
> > the other.
>
> cd you cite the reference please.
>
> without having read the article, let me respond not to its argument, but
> the summary proposed above.
>
> i mentioned as an aside in another post that this struck me as false
> anti-anachronism. it reminds me of Augustine's argument *coge intrare* all
> those schismatics and heretics "for love's sake". i don't think any of
> the objects of that "love" had any illusions about just what affections lay
> behind
> it, no matter how much those clerics who dominate our sources may have
> convinced themselves that they were, indeed motivated by loving piety.
> the diffference, then, between medieval and modern approaches to
> "crusading love" is not that "medievals" did not make the kinds of
> distinctions btw love and violence that we do (i personally don't think
> we'd have either Judaism or Christianity if people back then were
> incapable of distinguishing -- "love the stranger in your midst as
> yourself for you know the heart of a stranger"), but that in the middle
> ages there were important people, ones who had a powerful impact on what
> was written and preserved, who were capable of convincing themselves that
> there was no difference. to assume that everyone else, including the
> objects of their affections, did not know is a conjectural step i am not
> willing to take.
>
> rlandes
>
> The full reference to the article is as follows:
J.Riley-Smith, `Crusading as an act of love' HISTORY 65 (1980)
John France, University of Wales Swansea
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