Dear Richard,
When you speak of 'classic apocalyptic behavior', I'm with you all the way.
Cohn, I believe, had a conservative social-historical thesis: Millenarian
movements were radical in the sense that they prefigured or actually
initiated peasant revolts; apocalyptical enthusiasts saw the world upside
down, and tried to make it so. This is what he superimposed on the material
he got via Alphandery, although he read the sources, too! For Cohn's
vulgarizers (I include some, but not all, Marxist historians) the medieval
'popular crusades' constitute nothing more nor less than the pre-history of
European social revolt.
Now who is being unfair? Just because 'essentially' to me means an
invitation to cut everything else out of historical reckoning--a lawyer's
kind offer to clear things up for a bewildered jury--and so is my
second-most-hated word in the historian's lexicon ('inevitably' the clear
winner), it doesn't follow that I go in for 'factors', tossed salads, tutti
frutti, or a little of this, a little of that. I much prefer cinemascope
historiography, the big picture, the wide screen (call it what you will:
'histoire totale', etc.). Spare me 'context'; the old-fashioned
configurative approach of gestalt psychology suits me fine.
More of this at the Utrecht conference, coming up.
Gary Dickson
University of Edinburgh
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