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Western Christendom: The Militia of Christ or a Persecuting Society?

What were the crusades?

  • Bernard of Clairvaux / Hugh de Payens vs. R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (1987)
  • crusade < cruzada, croisade < cruciatus < cruciare < crux (cross) …a war of reconquest
  • Islam: Muhammad (570-632), Qur'an, spread of Islam, Islamic Spain
  • 638: Jerusalem fell to Caliph Omar
  • 1071: Seljuk Turks defeated Byzantine army
  • 1095: Urban II inaugurated the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont
  • 15 July 1099: Crusaders took Jerusalem
  • Crusader states
  • 1204: Fourth Crusade
  • 1291: fall of Acre
  • Reconquista in Spain
  • crusading orders:
    Knights of St. John of Jerusalem = Hospitallers
    Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon = Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem = Templars
    Knights of Santiago de Compostela

    How did Christianity view Judaism?

  • NT texts: Matthew 27: 24-25, John 8: 44, Revelation 2: 9, 3: 9
  • Legislation: Council of Elvira (4th c.), Nicaea I and Easter
  • Popes: Gregory I, Innocent III, Gregory X (1271-1276)
  • popular anti-Semitism: ritual murder, poisoning of wells, crusaders, expulsions, burning of the Talmud
  • artisitic manifestations of anti-Semitism: Ecclesia (Church) vs. Synagoga (synagogue)

    How do we account for the rise of heresy in the West?

  • 1 Corinthians 11: 19: nam et oportet hereses esse
  • apostolic poverty
  • Cathars / Albigensian heresy
  • Peter Waldo / Waldensians
  • John Wyclif (d. 1384) and the Lollards
  • Jan Hus (d. 1415) and the Hussites

    How did the assault on heresy proceed?

  • fight against heresy: Titus 3: 10: hereticum hominem…devita
  • Executions begin in the eleventh century.
  • Innocent III (1198-1216): compromise, decree of 1199, papal leages in Languedoc, Albigensian crusade (1208)
  • Gregory IX (1227-1241), papal inquisition
  • English law of 1401: De heretico comburendo
  • lessons of medieval heresy

    NB Key terms are underlined.