On Fri, 6 Dec 1996 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear Jessalynn (if I may),
>
> It would be great to have some information on the 13thc. cult of Peter the
> Hermit; I've been collecting 13thc. references to him in connection with
> the crusades. I can't remember--although I should!--if Jacques de Vitry
> refers to Peter in his 'Historia Occidentalis', does he? People seem to
> forget that he was venerated as a 'beatus'. And don't you think that if he
> founded a house for canons-regular, he fits into the mold of the educated,
> disgruntled, reformist, hermit/wandering preacher, future monastic founder,
> so 'typical' of the late-11thc.? (The fact that he led a crusading force
> becomes almost an irrelevance!) The portrait of Peter the Hermit by
> Guibert of Nogent leaves much to be desired; is it a caricature?
>
Dear Gary (if I may?),
My whole D.Phil. thesis actually deals with how crusading and reform are
linked at a devotional level by the theologians and preachers who
recruited people for the crusade--specifically the circle of Peter the
Chanter. I was recently dealing with the question of whom they chose as
their forerunners or ideals for crusade preaching (as a future chapter), and
Peter the
Hermit and Bernard of Clairvaux came top of the list, interestingly, b/c
technically speaking, they were the exceptions when it came to crusade
preaching, not the rule (bishops, for example did heavy recruiting work
from the first crusade onwards). I found that James, in his Historia
Occidentalis, and Oliver of Paderborn, in his History of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem, chose Peter the Hermit as the ideal
crusade preacher. James follows the tradition of William of Tyre and
other historians who made Peter the actual instigator of the first
crusade, although both he and Oliver deal with the delicate question of
where Peter's authority originates from--from his credentials as a
reformer, or papal authorization? James leans towards the former, to no
surprise, as his portait of the contemporary ideal crusade preacher, Fulk
of Neuilly, also points to an authority arising from reform preaching
first. What James in particular seems to be doing is pointing to
earlier combinations of crusade and reform movements (Peter the Hermit
and the hermits and Augustinian canon reform movement, and Bernard with
the Cistercians, and Fulk of Neuilly as the type of the new reformed
secular prelate under Peter the Chanter) in order to justify his own
generation's combination of the two activities, as testified in the joint
reform and crusade platform of the Fourth Lateran.
I'll stop here, as I don't want to bore others, but would be happy to
swap Peter the Hermit references (I'm writing from the lab and will have
to go home and check). I also did a rather extensive trawl through first
crusade chronicles and those of the Fifth crusade, and found that James
and Oliver drew heavily upon earlier depictions of prelates and preachers
from first crusade chronicles, particularly Fulcher of Chartres and
William of Tyre. Have you seen Colin Morris' article on Peter the
Hermit? In it he refers to the fact that there was a thriving tradition
of Peter the Hermit as the instigator of the first crusade in Flanders
and the Rhineland--the stomping grounds of James and Oliver! as for
Bernard, there is James' and Oliver's links to the living tradition of
Cistercian houses, as well as the relatively recent memory of Bernard's
preaching tours in the very same areas. Why do the famous reformer/crusader
preachers focus on these areas, rather than Italy say?
Jessalynn Bird
Queens College, Oxford
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