In response to Dr. Landes' query if christians of the apostolic
variety would have had trouble with crusading, the answer is, it
depends. . .
Lambert le Begue, and other reformers such as Peter of Blois and Adam
of Perseigne criticized bishops and parish priests for galavanting off
on crusade and neglecting the more pressing matters of pastoral care
and reform at home.
However, other 'apostolic' movements such as the beguines were
overseen by spiritual rectors who saw no problem in also preaching the
crusade and in fact presented the two options as equivalent
'quasi-regular' avenues for the laity (that is becoming a beguine or
becoming a crusader). James of Vitry's life of Mary of Oignies is a
good example of this. Denied itinerant mendicancy and going on
crusade, Mary is forced instead to adopt another version of the vita
apostolica by becoming a recluse.
Then there is the hotly debated episode of Francis preaching to the
Sultan of Egypt in the crusaders' camp before Damietta and the
question of Dominic's role in the Albigensian crusade. While some
histories have tried to separate out these 'apostolic' men's
activities from the crusade, the fact is that Dominic was chums with
Simon de Montfort and Fulk of Toulouse, and both the Franciscans and
Dominicans soon became involved in preaching the crusades (See
Christoph Maier's work on this, also Kedar's Crusade and Mission).
Many others, such as the Cistercian abbots and Paris masters preaching
the crusades to the Albigeoisie and the East felt little cognitive
dissonance in attempting to convert heretics/Saracens while
simultaneously preaching a crusade against them.
In fact, the links between the 'apostolic' life and the crusade come
partly in the imitatio Christi which each espoused. Peter the Hermit
after all, returned from the first crusade to found one of the
neo-hermit type monasteries--a house of Augustinian regulars, while
Robert of Arbrissel's biographers saw nothing incongruous in hinting
that the famous reformer and founder of 'apostolic' houses might have
preached the crusade (though there have been convincing arguments that
he never, in fact, did preach it).
These are all conclusions from a D.Phil thesis I am desperately
attempting to finish at the moment, so I should get back to it.
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