In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture ...and traditions were a world apart from their own. The crusader-occupied swaths of Syria and Palestine were home to many separate Christian communities: Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, and other sects with sharp doctrinal differences. How did these disparate groups live together under Frankish rule? InThe Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed little interest in such differences. Franks intermarried with local Christians and shared shrines and churches, but they did not hesitate to use military force against Christian communities. Rough tolerance was unlike other medieval modes of dealing with religious difference, and MacEvitt illuminates the factors that led to this striking divergence. "It is commonplace to discuss the diversity of the Middle East in terms of Muslims, Jews, and Christians," MacEvitt writes, "yet even this simplifies its religious complexity." While most crusade history has focused on Christian-Muslim encounters, MacEvitt offers an often surprising account by examining the intersection of the Middle Eastern and Frankish Christian worlds during the century of the First Crusade.
Il saggio delinea l'approccio personale dell'autore al significato del martirio per l'ordine francescano. Il libro in discussione è nato partendo da ricerche precedenti sulle crociate e sulla ...presenza dei Latini nel Vicino Oriente. L'autore risponde brevemente ad alcune delle critiche avanzate dai tre lettori, spiegando perché ha privilegiato fonti narrative su martíri compiuti in terre islamiche. Conclude con l'augurio che il libro possa portare a nuove riflessioni sui nessi tra martirio, santità, ordine francescano, evangelizzazione e crociata nei secoli finali del medioevo.
A study of three hundred years of medieval Franciscan history that focuses on martyrdom While hagiographies tell of Christian martyrs who have died in an astonishing number of ways and places, slain ...by members of many different groups, martyrdom in a Franciscan context generally meant death at Muslim hands; indeed, in Franciscan discourse, "death by Saracen" came to rival or even surpass other definitions of what made a martyr. The centrality of Islam to Franciscan conceptions of martyrdom becomes even more apparent—and problematic—when we realize that many of the martyr narratives were largely invented. Franciscan authors were free to choose the antagonist they wanted, Christopher MacEvitt observes, and they almost always chose Muslims. However, martyrdom in Franciscan accounts rarely leads to conversion of the infidel, nor is it accompanied, as is so often the case in earlier hagiographical accounts, by any miraculous manifestation.If the importance of preaching to infidels was written into the official Franciscan Rule of Order, the Order did not demonstrate much interest in conversion, and the primary efforts of friars in Muslim lands were devoted to preaching not to the native populations but to the Latin Christians—mercenaries, merchants, and captives—living there. Franciscan attitudes toward conversion and martyrdom changed dramatically in the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, when accounts of the martyrdom of four Franciscans said to have died while preaching in India were written. The speed with which the accounts of their martyrdom spread had less to do with the world beyond Christendom than with ecclesiastical affairs within, MacEvitt contends. The Martyrdom of the Franciscans shows how, for Franciscans, martyrdom accounts could at once offer veiled critique of papal policies toward the Order, a substitute for the rigorous pursuit of poverty, and a symbolic way to overcome Islam by denying Muslims the solace of conversion.
A study of three hundred years of medieval Franciscan
history that focuses on martyrdom
While hagiographies tell of Christian martyrs who have died in
an astonishing number of ways and places, slain ...by members of many
different groups, martyrdom in a Franciscan context generally meant
death at Muslim hands; indeed, in Franciscan discourse, "death by
Saracen" came to rival or even surpass other definitions of what
made a martyr. The centrality of Islam to Franciscan conceptions of
martyrdom becomes even more apparent-and problematic-when we
realize that many of the martyr narratives were largely invented.
Franciscan authors were free to choose the antagonist they wanted,
Christopher MacEvitt observes, and they almost always chose
Muslims. However, martyrdom in Franciscan accounts rarely leads to
conversion of the infidel, nor is it accompanied, as is so often
the case in earlier hagiographical accounts, by any miraculous
manifestation.
If the importance of preaching to infidels was written into the
official Franciscan Rule of Order, the Order did not demonstrate
much interest in conversion, and the primary efforts of friars in
Muslim lands were devoted to preaching not to the native
populations but to the Latin Christians-mercenaries, merchants, and
captives-living there. Franciscan attitudes toward conversion and
martyrdom changed dramatically in the beginning of the fourteenth
century, however, when accounts of the martyrdom of four
Franciscans said to have died while preaching in India were
written. The speed with which the accounts of their martyrdom
spread had less to do with the world beyond Christendom than with
ecclesiastical affairs within, MacEvitt contends. The Martyrdom
of the Franciscans shows how, for Franciscans, martyrdom
accounts could at once offer veiled critique of papal policies
toward the Order, a substitute for the rigorous pursuit of poverty,
and a symbolic way to overcome Islam by denying Muslims the solace
of conversion.
Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of processions in Syria and Palestine in which both Eastern Christians and Latins participated. Processions were one ...of the many ways by which the Franks expressed their political dominance over the urban (and likely also the rural) landscape, but it was also a way that all Christian communities used to express and even construct relationships among themselves. Scholars often assume that the procession performs (in a Durkheimian sense) the work of creating or displaying unity. Yet the scattered sources of the twelfth-century Frankish Levant suggest that this is only one of the functions an inter-confessional procession can play. As common were processions that delimited, separated and hierarchised communities.
When William, the Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem wrote his chronicles in the late 12th century, a word for crusade had not yet been created. William's writings and ...sermons did much to shape the memory of Latin Christians in both the Levant and Western Europe, authoring a history of the Islamic rule in the Levant
For Christians of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the First Crusade and subsequent settlements brought confusion to the political and theological order of the world. Previously, the world existed ...as a stable balance between two divinely established forces: the divinely established empire of the Romans (the Byzantines), and the empire of the Muslims, equally established by divine providence, but intended to serve as the hammer with which God punished errant Christians. Western Christians (Franks) were peripheral to this world; at the time of the First Crusade, the Franks were commonly perceived as Byzantine mercenaries. After the Franks conquered Jerusalem, the city central to providential history, Armenians and Jacobites began to ask: who were the true Romans? The term in both Armenian and Syriac texts began to be applied to the Franks instead of the Byzantines, particularly in apocalyptic and providential schemes of history.
I Acquired the Martyrs MacEvitt, Christopher
The Martyrdom of the Franciscans,
03/2020
Book Chapter
When Francis of Assisi warned his brethren that a devotion to humility and submission to God’s will could lead to a painful death, martyrdom was already a thousand years old, and was woven into the ...fabric of Christian theology, liturgy, and piety. Martyrdom was in many ways the ultimate Christian act. In willingly offering their lives, the martyrs imitated Jesus himself, and after death were crowned with glory and were seated among the first-ranked in heaven. Martyrdom expressed in the most inescapable terms the superiority of heaven over earth, the preference for the eternal over the temporal, spirit over flesh,
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