[lit-ideas] Going to the defense of the Byzantines
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:53:14 -0800
Jonathan Riley-Smith is right up there near the top if not at the top in
regard to scholarship on the Crusades. His The Crusades, A Short History is
on Norman Cantor’s list of recommended books. Here is what Riley-Smith
writes in his Chapter 1, “The Birth of the Crusading Movement: The Preaching
of the First Crusade.”
p. 1: “In the first week of March 1095 Pope Urban II presided over the
church council at Piacenza in northern Italy. There was present an embassy
sent by the Byzantine emperor Alexius to ask for help against the Turks,
whose advance across Asia Minor had brought them within striking distance of
Constantinople (Istanbul). This appeal set off the chain of events that led
to the First Crusade and provided it with a casus belli.”
p. 2: “The papacy had for some time been worried by the disintegration of
Christendom’s eastern frontier. News of the Turkish advances had led Pope
Gregory VII in 1074 to make an extraordinary proposal to lead personally a
force of as many as 50,000 volunteers to ‘liberate’ their Christian brothers
in the East; he stated that with this army he might even push on to the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Pope Urban II, who had been in touch with the
Byzantine emperor from the beginning of his pontificate, with that aim of
improving relations between the Latin and Greek churches, may have
considered calling for French volunteers to lend military aid to the Greeks
as early as 1089. It is, therefore, highly improbable that his behavior
after the Council of Piacenza was a spontaneous response to the appeal just
made by the Greeks. It is far more likely to have been one that he had long
premeditated. “
We see a similarity to what Strauss wrote about Agamemnon. Yes, the
abduction of Helen by Paris was the casus belli, but he had long wanted to
attack Troy. Does Agamemnon’s desire to conquer Troy render Helen’s
abduction irrelevant? Certainly not. Perhaps a better comparison is
Roosevelt’s desire to come to the aid of the Allies in World War II. He
wanted to do it, but he knew he wouldn’t have sufficient support as things
stood in the U.S. Neither the congress nor the American people would
approve of out and out military support of Britain. The Pearl Harbor attack
provided the casus belli to enable Roosevelt to enter World War II in
support of the allies. Why not just against the Japanese, someone might
ask? It was widely believed that the Germans were behind the Japanese
attack. Pearl Harbor was an adequate casus belli.
One might argue with justification that the Byzantines had been stirring
things up against the Turks by trying to get back some of the territory the
Turks had taken from them. When is it okay to try to try and take back land
stolen from you? Were the Byzantines to blame for not leaving well enough
alone? Was Mohammad guilty for conquering Jerusalem? Were the Jews guilty
in wanting it back? And once they got it back were the Arabs guilty for
wanting back the land Mohammad had originally conquered?
Mike implies that once the Muslims got their quota of territory they weren’t
going to war no more. They were going to settle down and be content. If
they ever seemed as though they were doing that, it was a misconception. It
went against their religion. On page 9, Von Grunebaum in Medieval Islam
(1946, revised 1953) writes, “Islam divides the world into religions under
its control, the dar al-Islam, and regions not subjected as yet, the dar
al-harb. Between this ‘area of warfare’ and the Muslim-dominated part of
the world there can be no peace. Practical considerations may induce the
Muslim leaders to conclude an armistice, but the obligation to conquer and,
if possible, convert never lapses. Nor can territory once under Muslim rule
be lawfully yielded to the unbeliever. Legal theory has gone so far as to
define as dar al-Islam any area where at least one Muslim custom is still
observed.
“Thanks to this concept, the waging of war acquires religious merit. The
Muslim community is under an obligation to combat the infidel. The believer
who loses his life in this struggle enters Paradise as a martyr of the
faith. A voluminous literature has developed to formalize the rules
pertaining to the jihad, the Holy War. The faithful is told that the sword
is the key to heaven and hell. One drop of blood spilled on the
battlefield, one night spent under arms, will count for more than two months
of fasting or prayer.”
Von Grunebaum goes on to add “In the same spirit Nicephorus Phocas (963-69)
asked the Greek clergy to honor as martyrs the Christian soldiers killed in
the war against the Muslims. Both sides are convinced that they are
fulfilling a mission; both sides feel that they are fighting their enemies
for their ultimate good.” It is true that for a time the Muslims,
Byzantines and Westerners settled down to uneasy truces, border clashes,
minor battles and mutual hostility, but that is not the issue addressed
here. The issue is whether the West can be blamed for engaging in an
unprovoked attack against the Turks. A lot depends on whether we consider
it legitimate to go to the aid of an ally. Roosevelt felt that we should
aid the allies, especially Britain in World War II. Was he wrong?Suppose
Hitler had won and stopped after conquering all of Europe and Russia to lick
Germany’s wounds and consolidate his gains. Could we afford to breathe a
sigh of relief and conclude that there was no further threat coming from
that part of the world? Given the Nazi ideology, that would have been naïve
in the extreme. The same thing can be said about the ideology of Islam and
especially the Turks.
Geary writes that by 732 the age of Islamic conquest was over. That is not
the opinion of Alan Palmer in The Decline & Fall of the Ottoman Empire,
1992. On page 32 he writes, “. . . . By 1700 the age of Islamic conquest
in Europe was over; frontiers had contracted after lost or indecisive
campaigns; and peripheral provinces, acquired somewhat haphazardly in North
Africa and the Yemen, would soon be slipping into virtual independence.”
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 12:56 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Medieval Studies & the Crusades
LH:
>> I made a general statement about the Crusades in an earlier note and
apparently surprised Geary who didn’t know that the Crusades were initiated
in response to Islamic aggression and not the reverse. The crusades would
not have been initiated had not Islamic peoples been bent upon taking over
as much as Europe as possible.<<
I was surprised that you -- even you -- would let your gung-ho ethnocentrism
lead you to defending the Crusades, bending them to your own devices. The
first Crusade was in 1100, the Arabs had been defeated at Tours in 732 and
never again tried to invade Europe. I seriously doubt that Pope Urban ll
was worried about Islamists storming the Bastille, as it were. I doubt
that Urban gave a tinker's damn about the Muslims, or the "Holy Land", he
was more distressed by the activities of the good Christian knights of
Europe who seemed more hell-bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of
Holy Mother the Church than was good for Mother, and, of course, Urban saw
Constantinople's distress as an opportunity to gain a controlling hand over
the coffers of the Eastern branch of the Church. Read the man's words:
"What are we saying? Listen and learn! You, girt about with the badge of
knighthood, are arrogant with great pride; you rage against your brothers
and cut each other in pieces. This is not the soldiery of Christ, which
rends asunder the sheep-fold of the Redeemer. The Holy Church has reserved a
soldiery for herself to help her people, but you debase her wickedly to her
hurt. Let us confess the truth, whose heralds we ought to be; truly, you are
not holding to the way which leads to life. You, the oppressors of children,
plunderers of widows; you, guilty of homicide, of sacrilege, robbers of
another's rights; you who await the pay of thieves for the shedding of
Christian blood; as vultures smell fetid corpses, so do you sense battles
from afar and rush to them eagerly. verily, this is the worst way, for it is
utterly removed from God! If, forsooth, you wish to be mindful of your
souls, either lay down the girdle of such knighthood, or advance boldly, as
knights of Christ, and rush as quickly as you can to the defense of the
Eastern Church. For she it is from whom the joy of your whole salvation have
come forth, who poured into your mouths the milk of divine wisdom, who set
before you the holy teachings of the Gospels. We say this, brethren, that
you may restrain your murderous hands from the destruction of your brothers,
and in behalf of your relatives in faith oppose yourself to the Gentiles.
Under Jesus Christ, our Leader, may you struggle for your Jerusalem. . . .
But if it befall you to die this side of it, be sure that to have died on
the way is of equal value, if Christ shall find you in His army. God pays
with the same coin, whether at the first or the eleventh hour. You should
shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against
Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is
the only warfare that is righteous, for it is charity to risk your life for
your brothers."
Killed by a Saracen for Christ?
Go straight to Paradise.
Great recruitment poster. No mention of 70 virgins, though. The history of
the four Crusades (six if you count the two Children's Crusades) reads as if
it were a Monty Python script. To your credit, in this post you do
acknowledge that History's waters were more than a little muddied by the
motives of the Church and the Crusaders. Motives that were truly a tangle
of vipers. Murder, rape and pillage were carried out against the Muslims
and Jews by the Crusaders, not in defense of Europe as you wish it were, but
in quest of wealth and power and glory. Ain't no ethno difference there, a
murderer's a murderer for a' that.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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