Download PDF | The Battle Rhetoric Of Crusade And Holy War, C. 1099–c. 1222 Routledge ( 2022)
275 Pages
This book examines Latin narratives produced in the aftermath of the First Crusade and challenges the narrative of supposed brutality and amorality of warfare in this period—instead focusing on the moral and didactic concerns surrounding warfare and violence with which medieval authors wrestled.
The battle oration, a rousing harangue exhorting warriors to deeds of valour, has been regarded as a significant aspect of warfare since the age of Xenophon, and has continued to influence conceptions of campaigning and combat to the present day. While its cultural and chronological pervasiveness attests to the power of this trope, scholarly engagement with the literary phenomenon of the pre-battle speech has been limited. Moreover, previous work on medieval battle rhetoric has only served to reinforce the supposed brutality and amorality of warfare in this period, highlighting appeals to martial prowess, a hatred for ‘the enemy’ and promises of wealth and glory. This book, through an examination of Latin narratives produced in the aftermath of the First Crusade and the decades that followed, challenges this understanding and illuminates the moral and didactic concerns surrounding warfare and violence with which medieval authors wrestled. Furthermore, while battle orations form a clear mechanism by which the fledgling crusading movement could be explored ideologically, this comparative study reveals how non-crusading warfare in this period was also being reconceptualised in light of changing ideas about just war, authority and righteousness in Christian society.
This volume is perfect for researchers, students and scholars alike interested in medieval history and military studies.
Connor Christopher Wilson is an historian of the early and central Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the Crusades, the Crusader States, monasticism and monastic writing. His PhD thesis was completed in 2018 at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has lectured in History at Lancaster University.
Acknowledgements
During the course of writing this book, I have benefited enormously from the support of a number of individuals who deserve my thanks. Firstly, I would like to give my utmost thanks to the supervisors of my doctoral thesis, on which the present work is based. The advice, encouragement and knowledge of Professor Andrew Jotischky and Dr. Damien Kempf has been invaluable from the initiation of my research to the submission of the thesis and beyond. I would also like to thank Dr. Paul Hayward and Dr. Fiona Edmonds for their comments upon the thesis’s earliest chapters, which have benefited to the development of this work. For his excellent Latin tuition and assistance with translations, although any errors are of course my own, I would like to thank Professor John Thorley. For their welcoming support during my transferral of registration from Lancaster University to Royal Holloway, University of London, I would like to thank my advisor Professor Jonathan Harris and Ms. Jane Gawthrope. This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for which I am incredibly grateful. Thanks for financial assistance must also go to the Lancaster University History Department, Lancaster University Graduate College, Royal Holloway History Department and the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.
The support of a number of friends and family has also been tremendously Important to me while undertaking this research. Guidance in all aspects of postgraduate life was generously given by James Doherty and Philip Booth. I would also like to thank Martin Walker and Polina Ignatova of Lancaster University History Department. Thanks also go to James Kane and Adrian Cornell du Houx for allowing me to consult their own unpublished PhD theses. For their technical support I would like to thank Justin Dee and Domonic Bailey. For proofreading much or all of this work, I would like to also express sincere thanks to Rachel Westra, Philip Hitchings and Richard Hitchings.
Lastly, I want to express my deep thanks to my partner, Kathryn Elske Flasby, as well as to my parents Colin and June Wilson for their continued enthusiastic support and encouragement throughout the entirety of my time studying and beyond. This book is dedicated to them.
Introduction
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (written c. 370 BC) recounts that when Cyrus the Great was asked by his companion Chrysantas, to speak to the assembled Persian soldiers before battle against an Assyrian army, Cyrus supposedly replied: ‘There is no exhortation so noble that it will in a single day make good those who are not good when they hear it. It could not make good bowmen, unless they had previously practised with care, nor spearmen, nor knights’.' Despite the professed scepticism of the power of words to improve the quality of soldiery, Xenophon claims that the Assyrians received their own exhortation, and Cyrus himself, not long after his protest, also conformed with the custom.
In detailing the final defeat and death of Lucius Sergius Catilina, the first-century BC Roman senator who had sought to overthrow the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida, Sallust claims that it was only when Catilina was trapped between a Roman army and impassable mountains that he resolved to try the ‘fortune of war’. Having committed to battle, Catilina assembled and addressed his soldiers, beginning with a sentiment that echoes Cyrus, deploying the common rhetorical device of apophasis, denying something as a means of implicitly affirming it:
‘T am well aware, soldiers’, he said, ‘that mere words cannot put courage into a man: that a frightened army cannot be rendered brave, or a sluggish one transformed into a keen one, by a speech from its commander. Everyman has a certain degree of boldness, either natural or acquired by training; so much, and no more, does he generally show in battle. If a man is stirred neither by the prospect of glory nor by danger, it is a waste of time to exhort him; the fear that is in his heart makes him deaf. However, I have called you together to give you a few words of advice and to tell you the reason for my present purpose’.
Yet, raising the morale of his soldiers through a public oration before battle was joined is of course exactly what Catilina, as he is presented by Sallust, was hoping to do. Modern familiarity with this convention, whether it be in a military context or not, is no doubt in part due to the chronologically pervasive nature of the genre. Considering only western historical narratives, influential literary examples of pre-battle orations are to be found in considerable number and varied circumstance. In the Greco-Roman tradition, Book Five of the //iad presents an exhortation to the Achaeans at Troy, delivered by King Agamemnon of Mycenae: ‘Be men now, dear friends, and take up the heart of courage, and have consideration for each other in the strong encounters, since more come through alive when men consider each other, and there is no glory when they give way, nor warcraft either’.* Likewise, in the final book of his Aeneid, Virgil has Aeneas deliver a speech before the climactic Trojan assault upon the Latins, wherein perishes the titular hero’s nemesis Turnus.* Beyond the epic genre, Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum has been noted for the regularity with which it depicts battle orations, even if some were ‘long enough only to urge them [Caesar’s soldiers] to remember their long-established record for bravery, and not to lose their nerve but to resist the enemy assault with courage’.°
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, while Christ was understood to have been the foretold Prince of Peace by the prophet Isaiah,° the wars of the Old Testament were an apt setting for rhetorical exhortation, with examples being found in Deuteronomy, Joshua, | and 2 Chronicles and 1 and 2 Maccabees.’ Indeed, the ordinances and laws of warfare established by Moses in Deuteronomy 20 prescribes battle rhetoric as a duty of the Israelite leaders:
If thou go out to war against thy enemies, and see horsemen and chariots, and the numbers of the enemy’s army greater than thine, thou shalt not fear them: because the Lord thy God is with thee, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. And when the battle is now at hand, the priest shall stand before the army, and shall speak to the people in this manner: Hear, O Israel, you join battle this day against your enemies, let not your heart be dismayed, be not afraid, do not give back, fear ye them not: Because the Lord your God is in the midst of you, and will fight for you against your enemies, to deliver you from danger. And the captains shall proclaim through every band in the hearing of the army: What man is there, that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. What man is there, that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not as yet made it to be common, whereof all men may eat? let him go, and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man execute his office. What man is there, that hath espoused a wife, and not taken her? let him go, and return to his house, lest he die in the war, and another man take her. After these things are declared they shall add the rest, and shall speak to the people: What man is there that is fearful, and faint hearted? let him go, and return to his house, lest he make the hearts of his brethren to fear, as he himself is possessed with fear. And when the captains of the army shall hold their peace, and have made an end of speaking, every man shall prepare their bands to fight.*
Anne Curry has drawn attention to the scriptural influence, specifically 1 Maccabees 3:17—19, upon one of the most famous battle speeches of all time, delivered by Henry V. Supposedly taking place at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, this oration is best remembered not for its chronicle versions but its inspiring rendering by William Shakespeare.” In her examination of the varied versions of that speech, Curry has stressed that a reconstruction of Henry’s actual words, if such a speech took place, are of course impossible. However, the expansion and development of literacy, as well as of the increasingly detailed nature of military records over the past half millennium, has allowed modern scholarship closer proximity to what can reliably be considered the actual exhortation of commanders. The speech of Elizabeth I to the English soldiers at Tilbury (9 August 1588), subsequently recorded in a letter by the churchman Leonel Sharp to the Duke of Buckingham, has been argued to be a copy, perhaps twice or three times removed, of a version written by the queen herself. This is in spite of the existence of several other distinct variations.'° Moreover, in the western historical tradition, the phenomenon of battle speeches transcended the medieval and early modern battlefield, with examples of recognizably familiar battle rhetoric being crafted by serving officers during the 2003-2011 Iraq War, as well as by leaders in the ongoing (15 March 2011-—present) Syrian Civil War.’!
Outside of a historical context, the familiarity of this convention to a modern audience is no doubt due in part to the not inconsiderable influence of its place in film and literature on contemporary culture. Hollywood cinema has produced some of the most recognizable examples of the prebattle speech in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. The 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, which shortly after its release became the second highest grossing film of all time, included the oration of a fictionalized US President who personally takes part in the following battle as a fighter pilot.'? Similarly, the final instalment of the 2001-2003 fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, featured a pre-battle speech by the titular king Aragorn, which naturally encompassed many of the story’s most prominent themes. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King continues to retain its place amongst the most successful cinema releases ever.'* Perhaps the most famous example from historically inspired cinema is the campaignlaunching oration found in Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1970 biopic Patton.'* While the phenomenon or trope of the pre-battle speech thus looms large in the contemporary imagining of warfare both ancient and modern, it is arguable that this notion would have been as familiar to a medieval audience. A multitude of contemporary, or near contemporary, narrative accounts attest to the idea that, prior or sometimes during battle, medieval soldiers received public orations that sought to raise morale and reinforce the willingness of men to fight, and if necessary, to die rather than allow their forces to suffer a rout. This significant corpus of sources, that includes both classical and medieval material, make it easy to believe that in the medieval world it was common practice for an army’s leadership to publicly address assembled soldiers, or perhaps groups of officers, following a commander’s decision to commit to battle. The address itself most often occurs before the commencement of combat, although there are a substantial number of examples where the exhortation takes place as the fighting is occurring.
This book centres on the textual phenomenon of battle rhetoric, from a largely western European perspective, over the course of a slightly elongated twelfth century. In the context of medieval historiography, it has long been recognized that the set piece, pre-battle orations found in medieval narratives are largely rhetorical inventions,'” which were nevertheless influenced by both the reality and wider expectation of pre-battle exhortations. These complex, often highly literary speeches, would not however be understood by oration authors or their audiences as ‘mere rhetoric’.'° Medieval authors often turned to classical rhetorical manuals to help them construct their histories,!’ and clearly understood that the ‘embellishment’ of words had a complex relationship to the truths that they depicted.'* The classical tradition of rhetoric had long influenced Christian preaching by the days of Pope Gregory I, and reached back through Augustine of Hippo and Tertullian, perhaps to the very first educated Romans to convert to Christianity. This tradition established for the educated clergy, who were more often than not the authors of battle orations, the idea that rhetoric was the means by which people could be persuaded to believe and act in a manner desired by the speaker.'?
These instances of direct speech at dramatic points within a wider narrative were of course opportunities for authors to enliven their work and display their literary and rhetorical talent. While they often contain nonhortatory content, such as orders from commanders to soldiers, most of the content of these speeches is hortatory, containing a variety of different motivational appeals that seek to encourage the soldiers being spoken to. These motivational appeals have been previously understood as largely interchangeable.”° However, it will be demonstrated herein that while there are clearly recognizable tropes and recurring themes of battle orations, these ideas were not deployed unthinkingly or in a rote fashion. From its origins in classical historical narratives, the battle oration was an opportunity for authors to present particular and purposeful constructions of warfare, as well as reinforce the wider themes of their narratives, through direct speech at climactic moments.
In his account of Gnaeus Julius Agricola’s conquest of Britain, Tacitus recounts a battle oration supposedly delivered by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus at the Battle of Mons Graupius. This speech, which in common classical fashion is mirrored by a speech delivered to the Romans by Agricola himself, contains a number of themes common to medieval battle orations, as well as a deeper message:
Whenever I consider the causes of the war and our desperate position, I have great confidence that today, the day on which you are of one mind, will mark the beginning of freedom for the whole of Britain. For all of you have united together, and you have not tasted servitude. There is no land beyond us and even the sea is no safe refuge when we are threatened by the Roman fleet. Thus battle and arms, which brave men honour, are the safest recourse even for cowards. Battles have been fought against the Romans before, with varying success. But our forces were the Britons’ hope and their reserve, for we, the noblest in all Britain, who dwell in her innermost sanctuary and do not look across at any subject shores, had been keeping ever our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We are the last people on earth, and the last to be free: our very remoteness in a land known only to rumour has protected us up till this day. Today the furthest bounds of Britain lie open and everything unknown is given an inflated worth. But now there is no people beyond us, nothing but tides and rocks and, more deadly than these, the Romans. It is no use trying to escape their arrogance by submission or good behaviour. They have pillaged the world: when the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea. If an enemy is rich, they are greedy, if he is poor, they crave glory. Neither East nor West can sate their appetite. They are the only people on earth to covet wealth and poverty with equal craving. They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of ‘empire’. They
make a desert and call it ‘peace’.7!
Calgacus’s oration is not just an exhortation to raise the morale of his Caledonian soldiers, but an implicit criticism of the Roman state which serves to reinforce Tacitus’s wider criticisms of the tyranny of the empire and specifically the despotism of the Emperor Domitian.”
While it is difficult to underestimate the influence of classical models of battle orations, especially from popular works such as Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum, it is important to note that medieval oration authors did not simply copy from the classics, as has occasionally been suggested.*? In the introduction to Raymonde Foreville’s edition of William of Poitiers, Foreville argued that William copied the harangue at the Battle of Hastings from Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae.°* However, a comparison between these two speeches displays little direct borrowing.”° Foreville focuses on the parallel claim that the soldiers cannot flee, but this topos is common to both classical and medieval orations.*° Moreover, as Chapter One will demonstrate, by the twelfth century, classical examples of battle rhetoric were but one of myriad literary influences drawn upon by oration authors.
The Debate on Battle Orations
Despite the frequency with which battle orations are drawn upon by modern historians, the previous scholarship on medieval battle rhetoric has been limited. Most notable on the topic is the work of Bliese, who surveyed widely battle rhetoric in western European narratives written between 1000 and 1250.7’ His analysis focused on the ‘specific appeals and persuasive strategies’ of the examined orations, and argued that compiling these results allowed the construction of a ‘vocabulary of motives in war’,”® which highlighted 17 identifiable appeals that reoccurred with some frequency.”? Centrally, Bliese argued that his typology of ‘motivational appeals’ could be used in order to provide an insight into the psychology of warfare in the medieval period.*? While he accepted that battle orations were not verbatim reports of actual speeches, but rhetorical inventions, Bliese argued that oration authors would have employed the appeals that they believed should have been used, and were the most effective at convincing men to fight.*!
This methodology has several issues. Broadly, the analysis fails to contextualize examined orations within the wider narratives in which they are found. More specifically to a crusading context, the narrow typology fails to identify elements of battle orations that set such speeches apart from many similar ‘non-crusading’ speeches, such as liturgical elements, scriptural references and notions of pilgrimage and penance. This book contends that these elements are crucial to understanding the message of such speeches, as well as the wider narratives in which they appear. Bliese characterized most battle orations as ‘generic and largely interchangeable’ and as seldom specific to individual speakers.*” While myriad examples herein defy this understanding of battle rhetoric, an illustrative example of the issues of a limited typology is valuable here.
Bliese described the appeal to ‘the tradition of victory’, the eighth most common appeal of his survey, as the recognition of past military successes attained not only by the audience but also their ancestors.**? While understanding why such an appeal would be effective seems obvious, there is much that is ill defined about this categorization. An examination of instances where appeals to ‘the tradition of victory’ occur reveals how the meaning or significance of such an idea within the narrative in which is it found can vary drastically depending on its form, details and circumstance. Gerald of Wales, in what can be considered a more typical example of this appeal from his Expugnatio Hibernica, has the Cambro-Norman leader FitzStephen addressing his soldiers:
My comrades in other battles, picked fighting men, who have endured with me so many perils and have always displayed a spirit lofty and unconquered: if we consider carefully who we are, under what leader we serve, and with what a steady record of success we are entering upon this decisive struggle, we will win the day with our usual valour, and our good fortune in battle, with the favour she has shown of old, will not desert us.**
This oration goes on to attribute this tradition of victory at least in part to the lineal descent of the soldiers from Gallic and Trojan ancestors, whose martial virtues they have inherited by the laws of nature. Given the prominence of Gerald’s own family in the Norman invasion of Ireland, this praise of the virtue and ancestry of the Cambro-Normans is unsurprising.
The form and true significance of this clear appeal to the ‘tradition of victory’ contrasts sharply with an example from the early thirteenth-century account of the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum. In this instance, the Master of the Military Order of the Knights Templar addresses both Templar and Hospitaller combatants prior to a disastrous defeat:
My dearest brothers and fellow soldiers, you have always withstood these deceitful and fallen ones; you have exacted vengeance on them; you have always had victory over them. Therefore, gird yourselves, and stand firm in the Lord’s battle, and remember your fathers, the Maccabees, whose duty of fighting for the Church, for the Law, [and] for the inheritance of the Crucified One you have now taken upon yourselves for a long time. But know that your fathers were victors everywhere not so much by numbers or in arms, as through faith, and justice, and observance of God’s commands, since it is not difficult to triumph either with many [men] or few when victory is from heaven.*°
The idea of the ‘tradition of victory’, instead of being understood as relying upon direct descent and innate qualities, is here employed by the author of the Libellus to very different ends. Rather than literal ancestors, the fathers (patres) of the Templars and Hospitallers are identified as the biblical Maccabees, who were victorious over their enemies by the power of God. This specific identification provides insight into the textual influences which likely impacted the author of the Libellus. The association of the Military Orders, specifically the Templars, with the Maccabees, features in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, amongst other prominent contemporary or near contemporary churchmen.*° Moreover, this formulation of the motivational appeal to a tradition of victory relates to some of the central concerns of the narrative of the Libellus as a whole, specifically spiritual righteousness and the place of the divine in directing the course of historical events. Such a juxtaposition highlights the variety and versatility of even the most commonly recurring motivational appeals. This serves to display the need to contextualize these speeches properly in order to discern their meaning and significance within the wider narratives in which they are found. Furthermore, this approach can go a significant way towards reconciling what may appear to be divergent notions within battle rhetoric, such as appeals to fighting for Christ being found alongside promises of worldly wealth. This approach rejects an understanding of battle rhetoric as a form of medieval writing wherein the concerns and priorities of oration authors, usually clerics or monastics, were often suspended in order to display a ‘pragmatic’ representation of warfare.*’ Bliese also argued for the limited amount of ethopoeia, or character delineation, in battle rhetoric from the period 1000-1250, while this book will argue for the importance of contextualization regarding the presentation of individual speakers and specific audiences, not simply as a rhetorical tool but as essential to oration writing.**
Though recognizing the aforementioned typology, the major themes of speeches examined in this book are conceived more broadly in order to allow for analysis of the hortatory content in a more holistic fashion, rather than merely as set motivational appeals. Moreover, it challenges the understanding that battle orations consist of largely interchangeable motivational appeals or appeals that were simply believed to be most effective at encouraging soldiers to fight. Instead, it argues that the motivational appeals of battle rhetoric were more often than not selected in order to reinforce the wider themes and didactic messages of the narratives in which they are found.
David Bachrach has, in an examination of Christian battle speeches, made before encounters with Muslim enemies written between 1080 and 1170, highlighted the classical emphasis on utilizing material suitable (aptum) for one’s rhetorical purposes. This principle necessitated that oration authors would be careful to fill their battle speeches with appropriate motivations to fight. That such material was recognizable to an audience familiar with warfare even at the expense of accurate detail was, supposedly, paramount.*? According to Bachrach, this desire to write plausibly meant that while army commanders, as well as clerics, could deliver rousing speeches that included themes of divine power and aid, as well as faithfulness to God, oration authors changed their rhetorical strategies to suit the speech giver. Speeches given by secular commanders needed to be free from comparison, distinction and exempla, which were common tools of preaching, being presented as simple and to the point.*? Chapter One explores the influence of classical rhetoric upon crusading battle rhetoric in detail and develops Bachrach’s formulation of this notion.
Outside of the recurring rhetorical form of battle rhetoric, this book seeks to address in part the broader lacuna of scholarship that deals with direct speech in medieval historical writing. No doubt this omission in modern scholarship is due in part to the broad and diverse nature of the topic.
Where studies have been attempted, they have focused either on a single work, such as Alan Murray’s examination of orality in the chronicle of Galbert of Bruges, or on a group of texts focused on similar subject matter.*’ However, forms, functions and content of direct speech, even in single texts are often greatly divergent and, as Murray has noted, the accuracy and purposes of different kinds of discourse varies considerably.* Hence, the work is restricted to a single, albeit widespread and broadly conceived, form of direct speech, through which it will seek to provide some insight into the phenomenon more widely.
In seeking to examine battle orations as inseparable elements of wider narratives, this study also builds upon a recent trend in medieval historiography, namely the move away from static conceptions of texts as data, in order to consider their dynamic function as literary works.*7 A comprehensive analysis of battle orations demands an appreciation of the influence, readership and shifting legacies of the narratives within which they are found, as opposed to approaching them simply as repositories of ‘facts’. This is particularly appropriate in the case of the narrative accounts of the early crusading movement, which contributed significantly to the development of crusading ideals in western Europe, that were to hold a long and significant resonance.
This work is, therefore, an empirical study of contextualized language, centred on the hortatory content that is the mainstay of battlefield orations. While much of the content of battle orations, I will argue, resists Bliese’s narrow typology of rhetorical topoi, there are prominent preoccupations that recur through battle rhetoric in twelfth-century narratives.*° This is unsurprising in part because of the very nature of battle rhetoric. As Elizabeth Keitel has argued and as David Bachrach has also discussed, only so many arguments would be plausible and compelling when ordering soldiers into battle.*°
Centrally the study asks: what is the character and nature of battle rhetoric in twelfth-century crusade narratives? How does the hortatory content compare with speeches in contemporary non-crusading accounts? How do the themes and preoccupations of battle orations develop over the course of the twelfth and early thirteenth century? More specifically to the study of crusading it asks what does textual comparison reveal about how chroniclers understood crusading in relation to ‘secular’ warfare? What do orations tell us of the place of spiritual reward in crusading and ‘secular’ warfare? To what extent do the emotive appeals employed by oration authors reflect the concerns of the clergy that preached crusading? What do these texts reveal about contemporary perceptions of courage and loyalty in war? Moreover, this work explores how battlefield orations developed as a distinct form of medieval writing in this period and seeks to better explain the interest in this form from writing from both clergy and the literate laity.
Defining Crusade Battle Rhetoric
This book is centrally concerned with the battle rhetoric found in the contemporary or near contemporary narrative sources which detail the military campaigns commonly identified as the First Crusade (1095-1099), the Second Crusade (1147-1149) and Third Crusade (1189-1192). More specifically, the foundational texts of this research are Latin prose narratives. Investigation of Latin poetic narratives concerned with these topics has been limited, in part due to the scope required for an extensive treatment of both prose and poetry, but also because the vocabulary of poetry is naturally subordinated to metre in a way that the vocabulary of prose is not.*’ While the central texts to this study will be discussed at greater length in subsequent chapters, this section will outline briefly the corpus which has been examined.**®
Of the numerous Latin prose narratives produced in the first half of the twelfth century that detailed the First Crusade, ten contain battle orations. These are: the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, the Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere of Peter Tudebode, the Historia Belli Sacri, the Montecassino Chronicle, the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres, Baldric of Bourgueil’s Historia Iherosolimitana,” Guibert of Nogent’s Dei Gesta per Francos, Robert the Monk’s Historia Therosolimitana, Ralph of Caen’s Gesta Tancredi de Expeditione Jerosolimitana and Albert of Aachen Historia Iherosolimitana. In addition to these narratives, the chroniclers Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon also employ rhetorical orations before battle in the sections of their works which detail the events of the First Crusade.
The failure of the Second Crusade in part accounts for the comparative lack of interest it received by western authors of historical narratives and thus prefigures a nadir in the production of crusading battle rhetoric. Odo of Deuil’s De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, for example, contains no such material. This is despite the fact that Odo does make use of direct speech that shares some common elements of battle rhetoric, such as the discussion of virtue. The account also includes descriptions of Louis’s personal heroics at the Battle of Mount Cadmus (1148).°° However, valuable material for this study is to be found in the epistolary narrative De expugnatione Lyxbonensi. This text details a combined Anglo-Norman, Flemish and German expedition to the Holy Land that was diverted from its objective in order to take part in the Portuguese campaign that ultimately captured Lisbon in 1147. Although writing around several decades after the events of the Second Crusade and the authorship of the De expugnatione, Helmold of Bosau’s Chronica Sclavorum also contains battle rhetoric which supposedly took place during the military campaigns against Polabian Slavs in modern eastern Germany, in 1147. In the second half of the twelfth century, the great chronicler of the Latin East, William of Tyre, included an account of the First Crusade in his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum. This account, as well descriptions of battle elsewhere in the text, employs battle orations, although usually through indirect speech (oratio obliqua).
A greater number of accounts detailing the Third Crusade utilize battle rhetoric. Many of these narratives have been established to be, or are suspected to be, English in origin. These include Richard of Devizes Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Roger of Hoveden’s Chronica, the Libellus de Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi and Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum. However, there are two contemporary German narratives which contain battle rhetoric that supposedly took place in the crusader attack on Iconium in 1190. These are commonly known as the Historia de expeditione Friderici I imperatoris, traditionally attributed to one ‘Ansbert’, as well as the Historia Peregrinorum.
In terms of their battle orations, these narratives will be analyzed systematically both against each other and alongside a wide body of noncrusading texts, or texts where orations occur outside of the circumstances of crusading, which contain battle rhetoric, written from the mid-eleventh to early thirteenth centuries. This corpus incorporates work originating in the British Isles, northern and southern France, southern Italy, Germany as well as the Crusader States.
This book is structured into five chapters. Chapter One seeks to establish and properly contextualize the phenomenon of battle rhetoric within the western tradition of narrative history writing, with particular reference to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In exploring the place of ‘rhetoric’ within pre-battle orations, this chapter considers a number of different influences upon the crafting of persuasive speech in medieval historical writing. Such influences notably include the classical ars rhetorica, a tradition which, as well as imparting lessons on the suitable forms of rhetoric which were to be deployed for particular purposes, also emphasized the need for rhetoricians to consider what rhetorical material would be most appropriate for their audiences, as well as demanding, that invented material possess qualities of plausibility and verisimilitude. This classical influence was both direct, being transmitted to medieval authors often through popular rhetorical manuals, particularly those of Cicero, Quintilian and the Rhetorica ad Herennium, as well as being indirectly filtered through the writings of the Church Fathers and early Christian writers. Also considered is the impact of the education of oration authors, particularly in regard to the words of Scripture. Lastly, in attempting to address the proliferation of battle rhetoric in the twelfth century, this chapter considers what in a broad sense the audience and purpose of battle orations could be, emphasizing in particular their moral and didactic messages and evident deployment as exempla.
Chapters Two and Three focus on the battle rhetoric of the contemporary or near contemporary accounts of the campaigns of the First Crusade, which would have a clear influence upon the writing of battle rhetoric throughout the remainder of the twelfth century. Chapter Two is centred on a single text, the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, examining how battle rhetoric is employed in that text in comparison with orations from a small number of eleventh-century historical narratives. It will establish the more prominent themes and motivational appeals of the Gesta and contextualize them within the framework of the early crusading movement. Chapter Three expands upon the findings of Chapter Two, in examining battle rhetoric from other narratives of the First Crusade. It will demonstrate how the themes and motivational appeals found in the Gesta were developed in the battle rhetoric of these later authors, as well as the influence of ecclesiastical ideas concerning proper behaviour in warfare, arguing that battle rhetoric formed part of a broader explanatory framework that was acutely concerned with the spiritual status and behaviour of combatants. In conjunction with Chapter Two, this chapter will also argue that far from being merely rhetorical ornamentation, battle rhetoric was a popular and versatile rhetorical tool that allowed oration authors to reinforce or present important themes or ideas in their wider narratives in a forceful way through direct speech at climactic moments.
Chapters Four and Five then move on to consider the phenomenon of battle rhetoric throughout the remainder of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth century. Retaining a focus on crusading and holy war, both chapters take a single rhetorically rich narrative as a starting point, from which they explore the variance of battle rhetoric, the development of particular themes or motivational appeals as well as the impact of circumstance, character delineation and audience upon battle orations. Chapter Four focuses upon the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, in comparison with crusading and non-crusading orations written between 1145 and 1187, in order to display how the text seeks to justify the expedition and model a form of holy war centred on unity and right intention. Moreover, this chapter highlights the increase in importance of appeals concerned with authority and the justice of a conflict in an era when warfare became the subject of work by canon lawyers. Chapter Five, centred on the /tinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Richardi, argues that due to the influence of the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, as well as the ongoing lack of success in the Holy Land in the early thirteenth century, a shift in the conception of holy war is perceptible through contemporary battle rhetoric. Notably, [tinerarium’s use of appeals to martial virtues, as well as its presentation of divine aid, serves to set this work apart markedly from earlier orations and frame crusading as being performed not centrally as penitential devotion but as heroic, if ultimately unsuccessful, military service to Christ.
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