Download PDF | (The Middle Ages Series) Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, James M. Powell (eds.) - Crusade and Christendom_ Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291- (The Middle Ages Series), 2014.
536 Pages
Editors’ Note
In 1971 Edward Peters published Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198-1229, a modest volume of historical documents in English translation intended to make available to students a number of widely scattered source materials and a brief survey of scholarship to date, dealing with the crusade movements of a particularly important period in both crusade and wider European history. The volume drew heavily on the distinguished and pioneering series Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, originally under the aegis of Dana C. Munro, the founder of crusade history in the United States.
In the decades since the original publication, the amount of translated source materials and new scholarship has grown enormously, and perspectives on both the thirteenth-century crusades and the character of Christendom in the period have greatly changed. Two excellent and wide-ranging collections of scholarly articles that represent many aspects of the most recent scholarship are Andrew Jotischky, ed., The Crusades, vols. 3 and 4, Critical Concepts in Historical Studies (London, 2008), and Thomas F. Madden, James L. Naus, and Vincent Ryan, eds., Crusades—Medieval Worlds in Conflict (Farnham UK-Burlington VT, 2010).
In February 1991, James M. Powell, whose own 1986 study The Anatomy of a Crusade was a major part of the new scholarship, asked Peters if he planned to revise Christian Society. Peters decided that he would, since much of the more recent material is also often widely scattered and many important texts remained untranslated, but would Jim collaborate? Powell graciously agreed. In 2001 our friend Jessalynn Bird, a young American scholar of the period, completed her D.Phil. thesis at Oxford on James of Vitry and the School of Peter the Chanter, and it seemed logical to invite Bird, whose work then and since substantially complements that of Powell and others, to collaborate with us on the revision. She has done heroic work—many of the newly translated documents of the thirteenth century have been hers.
It has taken more than a decade to assemble the new version, and in the course of that decade the project became an entirely new book with much of a heavily revised older book inside it. The period has been redated to 1198-1291 (with one important item dating from 1187), from the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent II (1198-1216) to the fall of Acre (1291). The number of texts in translation and the range of topics addressed have greatly increased. It is no longer a revision or even a second edition. We have retained most of the translations in the earlier volume, but have reduced the number of texts on the Fourth Crusade by Munro and, in the case of the chronicle of the Fifth Crusade (12171221) of Oliver of Paderborn, originally translated and independently published by Joseph J. Gavigan and the University of Pennsylvania Press, have revised the text and scholarly apparatus.
Because of the scope and length of the book, we have not been able to cite scholarly literature in languages other than English, except in a very few cases. But we have attempted to indicate the locations of printed English translations of both the texts we have included and other related texts from the late twelfth to the end of the late thirteenth centuries.
INTRODUCTION Crusade and Christendom, 1187-1291
Beasts of many kinds are attempting to destroy the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth, and their onset has so far succeeded against it that over no small area thorns have sprung up instead of vines and (with grief we report it!) the vines themselves are variously infected and diseased, and instead of the grape they bring forth the wild grape [Is 6:4]. Therefore we invoke the testimony of Him, who is a faithful witness in the Heavens [Apoc 1:5], that of all the desires of our heart we long chiefly for two in this life, namely, that we may work successfully to recover the Holy Land and to reform the Universal Church, both of which call for attention so immediate as to preclude further apathy or delay unless at the risk of great and serious danger.!
In his letter Vineam Domini of April 1213, laced with familiar biblical citations and echoes of others, Pope Innocent III (b. ca. 1160, r. 1198-1216) called for a general council of the Latin Church, vividly depicting the dangers facing universal Christendom and what he perceived to be the two most pressing and closely related tasks before it. To be sure, the first fifteen years of Innocent’s pontificate had not neglected these problems, and the young pope had sent hundreds of letters concerning the threatened state of Christendom—letters that had urged, begged, cajoled, entreated, and thundered against the enemies of the church (seen as the entire Christian community), of peace, and of moral reform. In 1215 Innocent took two major steps to achieve the goals that he desired most. The Fourth Lateran Council, announced by the letter Vineam Domini, convened in Rome in November 1215. Its task was to build upon the work of earlier church councils and popes, as well as the more recent work of twelfth-century theologians and canon lawyers, toward the definition of dogma and law in the face of the need to reform the universal church, to achieve at last “‘the extirpation of vices and the
1. Translation cited from C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple, eds., Selected Letters of Pope Innocent LI Concerning England (1198-1216) (London, 1953), 144-145. The letter was circulated widely throughout western Europe. Papal letters are usually referred to by their opening Latin words and their locations in published collections, as well as date and place of issue. On the letter and the project, see Alberto Melloni, “‘ Vineam Domini—10 April 1213: Summoning Lateran IV,” in John C. Moore, ed., Pope Innocent III and His World (Brookfield VT, 1999), 63-73. The Moore volume is a superb collection of studies of Innocent II and the range of issues during his pontificate. On Innocent and the Muslim world, see 317-376. The image of heretics as foxes destroying the vineyard of the church was extensively developed by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in his Sermon 65 on the Song of Songs (Sg 2:15) in 1144. Innocent II was greatly influenced by the works of Saint Bernard. Here Innocent uses the image more broadly to characterize all the ills besetting the church.
implanting of virtues, for correcting excesses, and reforming customs, eliminating heresies and strengthening faith, for quieting discords and establishing peace, for restraining oppressions and favoring liberty, for inducing Christian princes and peoples to aid and support the Holy Land.’’? Innocent gave the recipients of Vineam Domini two years of lead time in which to prepare for the great council, an advance notice unheard of until then. And Innocent himself promised to prepare carefully and thoroughly:
Because it is not possible to convene the council for two years, we have decided in the meantime, with the help of prudent men, to investigate in the various provinces those matters that demand the attention of the apostolic supervision and to appoint suitable men as procurators of the business of the Holy Land so that, if the sacred council approves, we may personally take up the promotion of this business more effectively.’
“The business of the Holy Land,” quite literally the negotium terrae sanctae, was of course the crusade, the negotium crucis, the “business of the cross.” In Innocent’s view the crusade, the “‘business of the cross,” was inseparable from individual and collective moral reform on the part of Christian society.*
2. Vineam Domini, cited by James M. Powell, The Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213122] (Philadelphia, 1986), 16. See also Brenda Bolton, ‘“‘A Show with a Meaning: Innocent III’s Approach to the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215,” repr. in Brenda M. Bolton, Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care, Collected Studies Series 490 (Aldershot, 1995), XI.
After the council ended, Innocent, as he had promised, drafted an elaborate and detailed appeal for yet another crusade, which he completed in December 1215 and appended to the canons of the council as canon 71, Ad liberandam (below, No. 16). Innocent had now taken up his second and closely related task, the planning of the Fifth Crusade, which was to set off in 1217, thereby, he hoped, bringing to completion his other great aim, the recovery of the Holy Land.
Innocent did not simply select these two goals out of a larger agenda. He firmly believed that God worked providentially in the world, that God had placed him on the throne of Saint Peter, and that the time was appropriate for these two great enterprises.> His early years in Rome, his studies at the schools of Paris, his work in papal service, his own experience of the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, the failure of the Third Crusade in 1189, and the growing urgency of moral reform all shaped his identification of those two aims and their interdependence.°
When Innocent was elected in January 1198, the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to a string of cities and towns along the Syrian coast from Tyre to Jaffa, as well as the island of Cyprus, whose lords and clergy continued to implore military aid from their fellow Christians in western Europe. The stunning victory of the armies of Saladin over those of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin on July 4, 1187, opened the way for further Muslim conquests, including that of the city of Jerusalem on October 20. The disheartening news reached Europe slowly. Not until late October did the news of Hattin reach the papal curia, where it elicited Audita tremendi, one of the most important papal letters in crusade history, one that drew upon a number of earlier papal letters and set the stage for later thirteenth-century crusade proclamations, expeditions, and crusading theory. Many other letters sent from the East also stressed the insult to Christ, to Christendom, and to every individual Christian believer, as well as the pollution of the holy places by infidels.” Both the circumstances surrounding the issuing of Audita tremendi and its substantial impact make the document an ideal starting point for this collection.
1. Pope Gregory VIII, Audita tremendi, October 29, 1187
The death of Pope Urban III on October 20, 1187, reportedly upon hearing the news of the slaughter at Hattin, resulted in the election of the elderly reformminded papal chancellor Albert of Morra as Pope Gregory VIII on October 21. Within a week, Gregory, who himself died two months later, issued the letter Audita tremendi, not only the most impassioned plea for a crusade ever issued by a pope until then, but the fullest detailed account of crusaders’ spiritual and temporal rewards and privileges to date. The letter was read aloud at the papal court—at the time in Ferrara, in northern Italy. Among those present may have been the young theology student Lotario dei Conti di Segni, later Pope Innocent III, who had just been (or was about to be) made a subdeacon by Gregory. If he was not actually present at the curia, Lotario certainly knew of the defeat very quickly. Peter of Blois, the Angevin cleric and literary figure, was certainly present and was greatly moved by the failure of the powerful and the needs and virtues of lesser folk.®
The letter circulated widely throughout Europe, inspiring the group of military expeditions that came to be known as the Third Crusade. But the impact of Audita tremendi long outlasted the Third Crusade itself. It inspired a new generation of moral theologians to consider the needs of the Holy Land and to link these to the moral regeneration of Christian Europe, one of the great themes of twelfthand thirteenth-century history. Gregory’s emphasis on the bloody circumstances of the defeat at Hattin, the loss of the True Cross, and the first cities taken by Saladin (the surrender of Jerusalem on October 2, 1187, was not yet known in the West when Audita tremendi was issued) frame his insistence that God’s anger is the result of human sin, that penance is mandatory, not optional, and that a new expedition would be an opportunity for the salvation of Christian warriors.
In Audita tremendi Gregory clearly considers the Muslims to be pagans, not Christian heretics, as other Christian versions of Islam professed, since he believed that Muslims did not share the same God as the Jews and Christians. His critique of the Muslim enemy proceeds from a religious view of the crusade, but Gregory does not attack Islam in any detail—indicating that his primary concern is with the injury to and obligations of Christianity. He uses the term ‘“‘Christians”’ in a way that apparently includes Eastern Christians. And he lays heavy blame on the sins of the Franks for the military disaster, a theme—known as peccatis exigentibus— that since the failure of the Second Crusade in 1147 had often been struck earlier in Christian history to explain military and other failures and became a cornerstone of later crusade preaching, by now virtually identifying the necessity of moral and spiritual reform with the crusade movement.?
On the identification of Christian sinfulness with crusade failure, see Christoph Maier, “Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997), 628-657; and Giles Constable, “The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries,” Traditio 9 (1953), 213-79, repr. and rev. in Giles Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Farnham UK-Burlington VT, 2008), 229-300, with an extensive discussion of the views and influence of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. The impact of Audita tremendi is extensively considered in Sylvia Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099-1187) (Aldershot UK-Burlington VT, 2005), 159-193; Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095-1270 (Cambridge MA, 1991), 63-79; and Brenda Bolton, ‘‘‘Serpent in the Dust, Sparrow on the Housetop’: Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Circle of Pope Innocent III,” in R. N. Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, Studies in Church History 36 (Woodbridge UK-Rochester NY, 2000), 154-180.
On popes and crusades before Innocent IIL, see I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), 322-366; Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989), 134-153, 263-286, 417-451, 478-488; Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The Crusades, 1095-1198,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1995-2005), vol. 4, c. 1024-c. 1198, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith, part 1, 534-563; Jonathan P. Phillips, The Crusades, 1095— 1197 (London, 2002); Peter W. Edbury, “Celestine LI, the Crusade and the Latin East,” in John Doran and Damian J. Smith, eds., Pope Celestine III (1191-1198) (Aldershot UKBurlington VT, 2009), 129-143. See also the works cited below, n. 21.
GREGORY, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all Christ’s faithful who receive this letter, greeting and apostolic benediction.
When we heard of the severity of the awesome judgment that the hand of God visited on the land of Jerusalem, we and our brothers were disturbed by such a great horror, afflicted by such sorrows, that we scarcely knew what to do or what we should do, save that the psalmist laments and says, ‘“‘O God, the gentiles have invaded your inheritance, they have sullied your holy temple, they have laid waste Jerusalem; they have left the dead bodies of your saints as meat for the beasts of the earth and food the birds of the air . . .”’ [Ps 78:1-2].
In fact, because of the conflict which the malice of [Christian] men has recently brought on the land by the inspiration of the devil, Saladin approached those parts with a host of armed troops. They were confronted by the king and the bishops, the Templars and the Hospitallers, the barons and the knights, with the people of the land, and with the Lord’s cross (through which from memory and faith of the suffering of Christ, who hung there and redeemed the human race, was believed to be a sure safeguard and a desired defense against the attacks of the pagans), and after the battle was joined, our side was defeated and the Lord’s cross was captured. The bishops were slaughtered, the king captured, and almost all our men were either put to the sword or taken prisoner. Very few are believed to have escaped.
Also, the Templars and Hospitallers were beheaded in his [Saladin’s] presence. With the army defeated, we do not think our letter can explain how they next invaded and seized every place so that only a few remained outside their power. Still, though we use the words of the prophet: ‘“‘Who will give me water for my head and a font of tears for my eyes, and I will weep night and day for the death of my people”’ [Jer 9:1], we ought not despair now and decide to mistrust and believe that God is so angry with his people that in his anger with their commission of a multitude of sins he will not quickly pardon when he is pleased by their penance and, after tears and groans, will lead them to exaltation.
Indeed, whoever does not mourn at least in his heart in so great a cause for sorrow not only is ignorant of the Christian faith, which teaches us to join in all suffering, but of our very humanity. For from the magnitude of the dangers and their barbarous ferocity thirsting for the blood of Christians, and adding all their power in this cause to profane the holy and erase the name of God from that land, whoever thinks we should be silent should decide. Of course, when the prophets worked previously with total desire, later the apostles and their followers worked so that divine worship should be in that land and should spread from it to every part of the world by every means great and wonderful.
God, through whom all things were made, who wished to take on flesh through his divine wisdom and his incomprehensible mercy and desired to achieve our salvation through the weakness of our flesh, hunger, thirst, the cross, death and resurrection, according to the words ‘‘And he has worked salvation in the midst of the land” [Ps 73:12] has himself decided to work for this end. Neither can tongue speak nor the senses understand what that land has now suffered, how much it has suffered for us and for all Christians, that we read it endured under its ancient population. Moreover, we ought not believe that these things happened because of the unjust act of the judge but rather by the iniquity of an unworthy people, since we read that at the time when the people were being converted to the Lord, “‘one thousand were persecuted and two were fleeing from ten thousand” [Dt 32:30]. On the contrary, however, the army of Sennacharib was overcome by an angelic force. But “‘that land also devoured its inhabitants”’ [Nm 13:33] and was not at peace for very long, nor could it restrain those who broke the law.
Nor did it give teaching to those who would seek the heavenly Jerusalem, which they could not attain save through the exercise of good works and after many temptations. But they could long ago fear those things, when Arroasia [Edessa] and other land fell into the hands of the pagans [1144], and it was clearly foreseen if the people who remained had again done penance they would have pleased God whom they offended by their sins. For his anger is not quick, but he puts off the punishment, and gives time for repentance. But, finally, he does not lose his judgment in mercy, but exercises his protection for the punishment of sinners and for the surety of those to be saved.
We, therefore, should heed and be concerned about the sins not only of the inhabitants of that land but also of our own and those of the whole Christian people so that what is left of that land may not be lost and their power rage in other regions. For we hear from every direction of scandals and conflicts between kings and princes, among cities, so that we lament with the prophet and are able to say: ‘“There is no truth, no knowledge of God in the land: lying, murder and adultery abound, and blood pursues blood”’ [Hos 4:1-2]. For this reason, everyone must understand and act accordingly, so that by atoning for our sins, we may be converted to the Lord by penance and works of piety and we may first alter in our lives the evil that we do.
Then we can deal with the savagery and malice of our enemies. And, what they do not fear to try against God, we will not hesitate to do for God. Therefore, sons, consider how you came into this world and how all pass on, and thus you will pass on. Use the time for penitence and doing well insofar as it regards you, with thanks. Give yourselves, give after yourselves, because you, who cannot make even a gnat upon the land, have nothing of your own. We do not say, dismiss, but send us forth in the heavenly harvest which you have and deposit with him ‘‘upon whom the rust does not destroy, nor the worms, nor the thieves dig up and steal’? [Mt 6:20].
Work for the recovery of that land in which for our salvation Truth has arisen from the land and did not disdain to carry the forked wood of the cross for us. Pay attention not to earthly profit and glory, but to the will of God who himself taught us to lay down our souls for our brothers. Give your riches to him, which whether willingly or unwillingly, you do not know to which greedy heirs they will be left. It is certainly not new, nor unusual, that that land is persecuted by a divine judgment that, after being beaten and corrected, it may obtain mercy. Of course, the Lord could preserve it by his will alone, but it is not for us to know why he would do this. Perhaps he wished to experience and bring to the notice of others if someone is understanding and seeking God, who having offered himself embraces the time of penance joyfully. He sacrifices himself for his brothers; though he may die young, still he accomplishes much. Heed how the Maccabees, afire with the divine zeal of the law experienced extreme dangers for the freedom of their brothers.
They taught that not only riches but their persons should be sacrificed for their brothers, exhorting and saying to each other: “‘Gird yourselves and be powerful sons because it is better for us to die in battle than to witness the desecration of our nation and our saints’? [1 Mc 3:58-59] Indeed, they were subject to one law; you by the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ have been led to the light of truth and instructed by the many examples of the saints. You should act without trepidation and do not fear to give away earthly possessions, which will last for such a short time, for those goods we are promised that ‘“‘neither eye has seen nor ear has heard nor have they entered into the heart of man’’ [1 Cor 2:9], as the Apostle says: ‘“That the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the future glory which will be revealed in us” [Rom 8:18].
We promise full remission of their sins and eternal life to those who take up the labor of this journey with a contrite heart and a humble spirit and depart in penitence of their sins and with true faith. Whether they survive or die, they should know that they, after they have made a true confession, will have the relaxation of the penance imposed, by the mercy of almighty God, by the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, and ours. Their goods, from their reception of the cross, with their families, remain under the protection of the holy Roman Church, as well as the archbishops and bishops and other prelates. They should not face any legal challenge regarding the things they possess legally when they received the cross until their return or their death is known for certain, but they should also keep legally all their goods. Also, they may not be forced to pay interest if they have a loan. They should not travel in precious clothing, and with dogs or birds, or with others that display ostentation and luxury, but in modest garb and demeanor, they should do penance rather than affect vainglory. Dated at Ferrara on the fourth Calends of November [October 29, 1187], the sixth indiction.!°
As grave as things looked, not all was lost. In August 1187, Conrad of Montferrat had commanded the successful defense of the city of Tyre, a crucial port that remained in Christian hands until 1291 and served as a bridgehead for later expeditions. Conrad was aided by the arrival of contingents from King William II of Sicily in 1188 and by fleets from Pisa and England in 1188 and 1190. Henry of Albano, Gregory VIII’s legate, wrote to both Philip II Augustus of France (r. 1180-1223) and the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1152-1190), urging them to take the cross. The patriarch of Antioch also wrote to Barbarossa and to Henry II of England (r. 1154-1189), who had been assigned a penitential pilgrimage in 1173 as penance for the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 and was long interested in the crusade but prevented by local circumstances from actually departing.) But in January 1188 Henry finally did take up the cross, although illness and political difficulties prevented his departure, and he died in July 1189. His son and successor, Richard I (r. 1189-1199) took the crusade vow in November 1187—that is, within a month of Audita tremendi. Philip Augustus of France took up the cross in January 1188, and Frederick Barbarossa in March of the same year. Within five months of the issuing of Audita tremendi, the four most powerful rulers in the West had taken the crusade vow (including William II of Sicily, who died in 1189).
The other great military forces in the Holy Land and Europe were the military orders—the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John, the Knights Templar, and the Teutonic Knights—teligious orders devoted to defending the sacred places and their Christian inhabitants. Although a number of prominent members of the orders had been killed and some deliberately executed at Hattin, many survived. These forces, often operating independently of the kingdom of Jerusalem, had extended lines of communication with their convents in western Europe and served as financial facilitators for crusaders who could draw on Templar facilities in the East for funds they had deposited in Europe when they started out. The military orders were one of the great distinguishing features, besides crusading armies themselves, of the nature of military resources in the Holy Land.'?
At the same time, popes and crusade preachers, inspired by the vibrant pastoral concerns of the moral theologians at Paris and proponents of moral reform elsewhere established new penitential liturgies, including fasts and public prayers, insertions of appropriate sections of the Psalms into the text of the Mass, and they searched out Scripture for crusade-appropriate examples.
The Third Crusade, the first major response to Audita tremendi, began with high hopes and great enthusiasm and was led by powerful kings with considerable resources. But it ended in internal conflict and very limited success.!* Its leaders had either died or returned to more pressing affairs at home. Frederick I Barbarossa, the emperor of the Romans and the leader of the largest army ever fielded in Europe until then, drowned in northern Syria in 1189, leaving the imperial throne to his son Henry VI. His leaderless army broke up, and its disorganized contingents returned to Germany and Italy. Richard I Lionheart, king of England, both an excellent strategist and a courageous battle leader, captured the island of Cyprus, and later left the Holy Land after securing the key coastal cities of Jaffa and Acre in July, 1191 and agreeing to a three-year truce with Saladin in October 1192. The fiction of Richard as a courageous but slow-witted leader is the product of romantic novelists (for example, Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman) and modern moviemakers.
But Richard was captured by his personal enemy the duke of Austria while en route home and held from December 1192 until February 1194—in complete violation of his status as a crusader as laid out in Audita tremendi—for an enormous ransom. King Philip IT Augustus of France, having quarreled with Richard of England and fallen seriously ill, left the Holy Land in July 1191 and exploited Richard’s captivity by encroaching upon the English king’s possessions in France, continuing a conflict that had begun half a century earlier and lasted much later.
The enormous costs in men and matériel, as well as peoples’ fear of God’s immanent wrath, did not, however, dampen Christendom’s crusading ardor. The Holy Land and the Christians in it remained in dire peril, and their fellow Christians remained obliged to help them. The two popes who reigned between Gregory VIII and Innocent II—Clement II (1187-1191) and Celestine HI (1191-1198)—were both old men, but, like Gregory VIII, they too were devout reformers, had long been involved in crusade movements, and they continued the reforms laid out in Audita tremendi. Clement III had worked closely with Frederick Barbarossa on the preparations for the Third Crusade, and Celestine’s bull Misericors et miserator of July 1195, among other letters, issued crusading calls and privileges that elaborated on and fine-tuned the spiritual rewards—and responsibilities—of taking the cross.’ But Celestine HI had little time and few resources to call on or organize a large new crusade so soon after the bitter experience of the Third Crusade and the ongoing conflict between Richard I and Philip II Augustus.
It was in this context of pastoral, political, and crusade history that the thirtyseven-year-old Lotario dei Conti di Segni was elected pope to succeed Celestine III on January 9, 1198. Lotario had been made a deacon by his relative Clement II] in 1190 and was already the cardinal deacon of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, but he was not yet a priest when elected pope. He acquired the jurisdictional power of the pope upon election, but not the sacramental authority until he was ordained priest on February 21, 1198, and bishop the following day.
What had crusade come to mean in the course of Lotario/Innocent’s lifetime? Not only popes and their emissaries, but also itinerant preachers, chroniclers, letter-writers, poets, and crusade propagandists and laypeople continued to lament the distress of the Christians in Outremer, “‘the lands beyond the sea,” and to remember the heroic achievements of the first crusaders. By the end of the twelfth century a number of chronicle accounts of earlier expeditions to the East, particularly the First Crusade, circulated, as did the general history by William of Tyre with continuations.'® There existed also a body of poetic literature in both Latin and several European vernacular languages circulated throughout Europe, both commemorating crusading achievements—historical and mythical—and sharply criticizing a number of aspects of crusade. Sometimes this literature accentuated individual themes in crusade history, one of them vengeance for offenses to Christ and Christianity.1° Such works as The Vengeance of Our Savior, The Song of Antioch, The History of Charlemagne and Roland, and the crusade cycles, as well as several dozen French crusade songs, German lyrics, and thirty-five poems in Occitan known as sirventes—satirical political verses—surely contributed to a general heightened awareness of the crusade idea, in however imaginative a form they used.!7
The new and various crusades also incited new criticism, some of it harsh in the extreme, and verse often proved an effective vehicle for indignation. The Provengal poet Guillem Figueira savagely denounced both the Fourth and the Albigensian Crusades...
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق