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Martyrs on the Field of Battle before and during the First Crusade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Colin Morris
Colin Morris*
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Extract

The First Crusade was an important episode in the history of martyrdom. While some of the crusaders were martyrs in the old style, giving up their lives rather than renounce Christ, the expedition established in the consciousness of Western Europeans the idea of a new route to the status of martyr, which could be earned by those who fell in battle against the unbeliever, righting for Christ and for his people. From this time onwards crusading preachers regularly offered the stole of martyrdom to those who served in Palestine, Spain, and elsewhere, in the war against the Muslims. It is not surprising that recent historians, in particular Jonathan Riley-Smith, John Cowdrey, and Jean Flori, have given close attention to the establishment of this new model of martyr in the closing years of the eleventh century. It may seem that there is little more to add on the subject, but the development is so significant in the context of our present conference that it may be worth while to return to this well-trodden battlefield. What I want to do in this paper is to examine the foundation of this new style of martyrdom in the thinking of earlier centuries, and then to look once more at its impact upon the early stages of the Crusade itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies , 1993 , pp. 93 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1993

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References

1 Riley-Smith, J., ‘Death on the First Crusade’, in Loades, D., ed., The End of Strife (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 14–31 Google Scholar; Cowdrey, H.E.J., ‘Martyrdom and the First Crusade’, in Edbury, P. W., ed., Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 45–65)Google Scholar. Flori, , ‘Mort et martyre des guerriers vers 1100: l’exemple de la première croisade’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 34 (1991) [hereafter CCM], pp. 121–39 Google Scholar. Riley-Smith gives examples of ‘conventional martyrdom’ on p. 20 and n. See also Riley-Smith, J., The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), esp. pp. 114–19 and 150–5.Google Scholar

2 See Noth, A., ‘Die Anfänge des Kriegermartyriums’, in his Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum (Bonn, 1966), pp. 95–109 Google Scholar. The classic discussion of the historical basis of the cult of St Edmund is the article by Whitelock, D., ‘Fact and fiction in the legend of St Edmund’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 31 (1970), pp. 217–33 Google Scholar; see also Hahn, C., ‘ Peregrinalo et natio: the illustrated life of Edmund, king and martyr’, Gesta, 30 (1991), pp. 119–39.Google Scholar

3 Duemmler, E., ed., MGH.Ep, 4 — Karolini Aevi, II (Hanover, 1985), ep. 93, p. 137.Google Scholar

4 Text in Piper, P., ed., Die älteste deutsche Literatur (Berlin, 1884), p. 259.Google Scholar

5 Caspar, E., ed., Registrum Ioliannis VIII Papae, MGH.Ep, 7 – Karolini Aevi, (Hanover, 1912—28), ep. 150, pp. 126–7 Google Scholar. See also the statement of Leo IV in 853, which later became a text of canon law, Ep, 5 – Karolini Aevi, III (Hanover, 1898), ep. 28, p. 601.

6 For the whole controversy, with a survey of previous literature and references, see Frank, R., ‘The Ideal of Men dying with their Lord in Battle in The Battle of Maldon ’, in Wood, I. and Lund, H., eds, People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of P. H. Sawyer (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 95–106 Google Scholar. Frank notes that death for one’s lord is expressly treated as martyrdom in the French epic poem, Garin le Loherain, but in its present form this certainly should be dated after 1100.

7 France, J., ed., Rodulfi Glabri Historiaram Libri Quinqué, ii.19, pp. 84–5 Google Scholar. The preceding chapter makes it quite clear that Ralph thought that the vision referred to monks killed fighting the Moors in Spain.

8 Wibert (?), Vita Leonis Papae, ii. 11, J. M. Watterich, ed., Pontificum Romanorum Vitae (Leipzig, 1862), p. 166. This account was written well before the Crusade. The later life by Bruno of Segni, contained in his Libellus de simonaicis, vi, specifically attributes these visions to Leo himself: MGH.LL, II (Hanover, 1892), p. 551.

9 Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, ed. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Mahdia campaign of 1087’, EHR, 92 (1977). pp. 1–29, stanzas 46–8.

10 On the ambiguities of the preaching ascribed to Urban II, see Riley-Smith, ‘Death on the First Crusade’, pp. 22–3. Jean Flori, on the other hand, has argued that the idea of martyrdom by death in battle was by 1095 already sufficiently established for it to be understood that Urban was promising this reward: see his articles, ‘Guerre sainte et retributions spirituelles dans la deuxième moitié du Xle siècle’, RHE, 85 (1991), pp. 617–49; and CCM, 34 (1991), pp. 121–39. Flori understands the earlier, general promises of heavenly reward as conferring the status of martyr, and on this assumption is able to point to a strong battlefield-martyr tradition before the First Crusade; but the stress on visions would seem to indicate that contemporaries were not so sure, and required what they regarded as reliable evidence.

11 Matt. 19.29 and 16.24. The first is quoted at the beginning of Albert of Aachen’s Historia Hierosolymitana, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux (Paris, 1879), IV, pp. 265–713; the second forms the first words of the Gesta Francorum, ed. R. Hill, Cesia Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (Edinburgh, 1962) [hereafter GF].

12 Blume, C. and Dreves, G. M., eds, Analecta Hymnica Meda Aevi, 45b (Leipzig, 1904), no. 96, p. 78.Google Scholar

13 Hagenmeyer, H., ed., Epistulae el charlae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes, 1901) [hereafter Hagenmeyer], epp. VIII.11-12, pp. 145–6 Google Scholar; XV.21, p. 160; and XX.5, p. 176.

14 Hagenmeyer, ep. VI.4, p. 142. For an assessment of the story of Peter’s vision, see E. O. Blake and C. Morris, ‘A hermit goes to war: Peter and the origins of the First Crusade’, SCH, 22 (1985), pp. 79–107.

15 GF, p. 17. For the earlier martyrs, see GF, p. 4.

16 GF, pp. 64–5. With little doubt, we have here a speech composed by the anonymous author at Antioch, but he was a member of Bohemond’s circle, and it can be regarded as evidence of the Norman concern with martyrdom and the distinction which was being drawn between death in battle by misadventure.

17 Hagenmeyer, ep. XI.5, p. 153.

18 For Albert’s views on martyrdom, see C. Morris, ‘The aims and spirituality of the First Crusade as seen through the eyes of Albert of Aachen’, in Saints and Saints’ Lives: Essays in Honour of D. H. Farmer – Reading Medieval Studies, 16 (Reading, 1990), esp. pp. 107–8. The vexed question of Albert’s relationship to his original material would demand much more space than is appropriate here. In the text I have assumed that he does indeed reflect the thought of the Lorraine contingent of 1096–9, either because (as has often been argued) he was using an early ‘Lorraine chronicle’ or because (as Susan Edgington has forcefully suggested) the first six books were written immediately after the expedition itself.

19 , J. H. and Hill, L. L.. eds, Le Liber de Raymond d’Aguiters (Paris, 1969), pp. 108–9.Google Scholar