Download PDF | Michael Gervers and James M. Powell, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, Syracuse University Press, 2001.
218 Pages
Introduction
Although it may not be susceptible of proof, it is probable that more wars have been fought out of a desire to obtain justice than as a result of intolerance. Difficult as it may be for us to regard the Crusades in this light, it is important that historians recognize that the concepts of tolerance and intolerance, which are among the common coin of the modern age, are themselves fitting objects of scrutiny. They did not emerge suddenly or fully formed; they have a prehistory that has not received sufficient attention. ! Not surprisingly, and for reasons rooted in our own agonized past, historians of the recent past have put great stress on the study of tolerance and intolerance but have based their views largely on an image of its medieval roots seen, at least among the cultural elites, as a product of religious intolerance and superstition that was overthrown only by the triumph of reason in the Age of the Enlightenment. As is well known, historians of the premodern period, and especially historians of the Middle Ages, undertook a revision of this view earlier in this century.* Without spending excessive time on this much-discussed issue, we should note that contemporary trends in scholarship—often characterized as postmodernist—have also begun to take up this work of revision. The essays that follow clearly reflect medieval revisionism but also echo other current research. They do not present a single, unified view of tolerance and intolerance in the age of crusades but share many common concerns. Like all good research, they are part of an ongoing dialogue.
Various aspects of that dialogue are reflected in the divisions that group the twelve essays in this collection, which had its origins in the sessions of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East at the Eighteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, held in Montreal in late August and early September 1995. The papers presented there formed such an interesting and coherent body of material, thanks in large part to the efforts of Michael Gervers, that it seemed desirable to try to preserve as many of them as possible in a single volume of essays. The papers here are, therefore, a selection of those delivered at the conference, to which has been added one other, that by James Brodman, which is included in the first part.* Their authors are all leading experts in the field.
As a whole, the papers are quite coherent and lend themselves easily to a number of subthemes. The authors provide context and definition for aspects of the history of tolerance that have been little understood and often badly neglected. The result, we hope, demonstrates the importance of a deeper knowledge of particular circumstances and environments to a better understanding of tolerance. The papers here avoid the kind of ethnic and religious stereotyping that, in our opinion, contributes little to the discussions of these issues. Moreover, these essays deal little with the issue of victimization. It is unfortunately true that a sense of victimization is not limited to oppressed minorities and may also provide a motive for oppressors. The emphasis on actual circumstances helps us to grasp the varieties of experience that fall under this topic.
Part One is entitled “Confrontation, Captivity, and Redemption.” These four essays provide significant insights, many of them the direct product of the research of these authors, into the relationship between Muslims or Christians during military confrontations, into their attitude toward captives, and into the complex of ideas—political, religious, and economic— that motivated their activities. In the opening essay, David Hay raises questions that have long disturbed scholars and contributed to the negative side of the image of the Crusades. How did the crusaders behave in battle? What motivated their actions? What can we believe about accounts even in Western sources of widespread massacre of soldiers and civilians? Clearly, as he argues, we must learn more about how contemporary views on warfare were shaped as well as their limits, He emphasizes concerns among contemporary writers about the influence of Islam on Christians, which not only served to justify violence by crusaders but also led some authors to exaggerate that impact. Yaakov Lev also demonstrates how difficult it is to understand the specific decisions as well as the attitudes and policies that lay behind the treatment of those captured in battle, whether soldiers or civilians. Giulio Cipollone explores the religious roots of humanitarianism that led to the founding of the Trinitarian order and its mission of ransoming captives. He argues that the use of language reveals religious prejudices among both Christians and Muslims. James Brodman shows how, in the case of the Mercedarians, founded for the same purpose, the interplay of crusade ideology and politics had a considerable impact on the direction taken by the order. These essays not only directly challenge older and now largely dated views of the Crusades as manifestations of irrational intolerance, they also help us to understand better where concepts like tolerance and intolerance fit in broader political agendas pursued both by Muslims and crusaders. In no case can we draw simple lines that would establish that the treatment of captives was motivated by ideological hatred or fanatical religious motives, but in many cases we can see that religion, both Muslim and Christian, played various roles, at times fostering mercy and generous treatment of captives and at other times inspiring or, at least, influencing the severest treatment of captives, even to execution. These essays are placed first because they raise questions that we need to keep before us as we proceed to our next section, “Cooperation, Conflict, and Issues of Identity.”
What happened when Western Europeans came into direct contact with Eastern Mediterranean peoples about whom they knew very little? Although there had long been contacts with Byzantium and Islam, as well as with Jews, and Westerners had gained some information about the East from their travels as pilgrims or merchants, the Crusades represented something closer to a mass movement and brought virtually every social group in the West into contact with Easterners. James Ryan points up the changing relationships between Latins and Christian Armenians that resulted from these contacts and suggests reasons, both political and religious, for those changes. His essay traces for us the beginnings of antagonisms as well as cooperation that extend from this period to our own day and are reflected throughout the region among many Christian minorities. Paul Sidelko focuses not on religion but on the everyday dealings between Muslims and Latins. He suggests that current views regarding the continuance of Muslim administration of land and taxes under Latin rule need to be reexamined. His essay is especially interesting in light of current research on Latin settlements in the East. The empasis on cooperation between these groups, found in some authors’ work, is, in his view, more difficult to trace than previously believed.
In his essay on “Edward of England and Abagha Ilkhan,” Reuven Amitai throws additional light on the effort to secure an alliance between the Latin West and the Mongols against Islam. The appearance of the Mongols, who built a great empire in the steppe lands and the Far East in the thirteenth century seemed to promise Latins a hope for victory over the Muslims. In examining the negotiations between Edward and Abagha, Amitai has probed the difficulties and misunderstandings that plagued efforts at cooperation. He demonstrates that impediments to cooperation were not merely cultural but emerged from logistical problems. His concerns are reflected in a very different manner in the following essay. Adam Knobler pursues a topic that has long held a fascination not only for historians of the Crusades but also for those studying the history of discovery. The world of the Crusades was much larger than the battle lines drawn in the western Mediterranean or even in the Levant might suggest. There was an almost invisible line between the real and the unreal, peopled by such figures as Prester John, the Mongols, or the Jewish nation in the East discussed by Knobler that David ha-Reuveni claimed to represent in the early sixteenth century. It was out of the fault line between the real and the mythical that geographical knowledge was slowly emerging. At the same time, the experience of the Crusades prepared people for this new reality. The negative image of the Crusades always had its positive side.
The next two essays, one by the late Annetta Ilieva and the other by Andrew Jotischky, examine much-debated issues involving Latins and the Greek Orthodox communities in Greece, Cyprus, and the Patriarchate of Antioch. While both Byzantine scholarship and many earlier historians of the Crusades have stressed the argument that antipathies that had developed between the Easterners and Westerners in the early Middle Ages were exacerbated by the Crusades, some recent scholars, notably Bernard Hamilton, have found that there was a greater degree of mutual respect and practical cooperation than was previously known.’ Even though the events of the Fourth Crusade were crucial in forming anti-Latin attitudes in the Byzantine Empire, the emergent picture was far from uniform.’ Attitudes on the ground were often dictated by practical concerns. Various groups reacted in different ways to the presence of Latins. Likewise, among Latins, there were considerable variations in both attitude and relationships. The lengthy presence of Latins in the eastern Mediterranean forms an important chapter in the history of that region. Anneta Ilieva devotes much of her paper to an analysis of the fourteenth century chronicle of Leontios Machairas entitled Recital concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus. This was a much-vexed period in the history of this strategic island, with its large Greek-speaking population; ruled by the Frankish house of Lusignan since the twelfth century and more recently by the Genoese, it now faced an expanding Ottoman Empire. This chronicle has much to tell us about the efforts of the various parties to maintain their positions. In his essay, Andrew Jotischky looks at the theological disputes that affected relations between Latins and Orthodox, particularly that between the Orthodox priest Sala and Bishop Gerard of Nazareth. This interesting discussion shows how difficult it was to separate major theological differences from minor issues and to what degree differences in theological and ecclesiastical views were grounded in conflicts over authority.
The final section of the book “Historical and Intellectual Perspectives,” is composed of two essays: “Tolerance and Intolerance in the Medieval Canon Lawyers” by James Muldoon and “William of Tyre, the Muslim Enemy, and the Problem of Tolerance” by Rainer Schwinges. These probing studies of intellectual attitudes provide us with some very important insights that add further dimensions to the preceding essays. They reveal that the concepts of tolerance and intolerance were not the starting points for ideas about relations among these various groups. Rather, they were a product of the effort to establish legal limits or to define the nature of coexistence. Muldoon shows that canon lawyers were not willing to deny fundamental rights, such as marriage, to Muslim and Jewish spouses who did not convert to Christianity after the conversion of the other party, and indeed tried to craft solutions to protect both parties, though certainly favoring Christianity. He rightly points out how far such thinking is from our own, yet how deeply these ideas are still enmeshed in our thinking. In his important essay Rainer Schwinges examines the thought of the greatest intellectual figure of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century: William, archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of the kingdom. Educated in Jerusalem, Paris, Orleans, and Bologna, William was fully conscious of the major intellectual currents of his time and was able, in his great history of the kingdom, to place the experience of the crusader East and the knowledge he had gained from Easterners in a context that emphasized the realities of life amid peoples of different cultures and religions. He did not start with a notion of tolerance, but Schwinges leaves us in no doubt that he contributed to it in his thought.
The present volume does not presume to be a complete study of tolerance and intolerance in the Age of Crusades. Rather it constitutes a contribution to the discussion of the way in which the broadening of knowledge and the often disturbing experiences of the Latins in the Crusade era raised issues that would not go away. The path to modern ideas of tolerance emerged from the effort to reconcile conflicts within their experience as well as from their political needs and their religious and cultural values. The modern idea of tolerance was a product of European culture because of the unique features of European experience. But it was not the result of a triumph of superior virtue. That view misses the point that is so evident in these essays. It was as much or more a result of the conflicts that occurred among Europeans themselves as a result of competing agendas that were seeking accommodation: for example, the practical concerns of politicians, feudal lords, and merchants, and the religious concerns of the papacy, the hierarchy, and ordinary clergy. It was precisely because of the internal divisions and built-in diversity of European culture that a struggle for toleration became necessary. But much of that story goes beyond the topics dealt with here and belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق