Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2013 Feeling Like a Holy Warrior: Western Authors' Attributions of Emotion as Proof of Motives for Violence Among Christian Actors in Military Conflicts, enthT Through Early Twelfth Centuries Jilana Ordman Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Ordman, Jilana, "Feeling Like a Holy Warrior: Western Authors' Attributions of Emotion as Proof of Motives for Violence Among Christian Actors in Military Conflicts, enthT Through Early Twelfth Centuries" (2013). Dissertations. 679. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/679 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2013 Jilana Ordman LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO FEELING LIKE A HOLY WARRIOR: WESTERN AUTHORS’ ATTRIBUTIONS OF EMOTIONS AS PROOF OF MOTIVES FOR VIOLENCE AMONG CHRISTIAN ACTORS IN MILITARY CONFLICTS, TENTH THROUGH EARLY TWELFTH CENTURIES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN HISTORY BY JILANA ORDMAN CHICAGO, IL AUGUST 2013 Copyright by Jilana Ordman, 2013 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed and defended without the support, guidance, and pressure of my dissertation committee chair and academic advisor, Dr. Barbara Rosenwein, and the rest of my committee, Dr. Theresa Gross-Diaz and Dr. Jessalynn Bird. During the years in which I researched, wrote and defended my dissertation these professors, as well as Dr. Leslie Dossey, provided me with personal guidance in formulating, clarifying, organizing and presenting my arguments. I was also guided and assisted by advice and suggestions from scholars I reached out to on my own as well as whom I met through my participation in the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. These included Dr. Bruce Brasington, Dr. Paul E. Chevedden, Dr. Paul F. Crawford and Ardella Crawford, Dr. Conor Kostick, Dr. Alan V. Murray and Dr. William Purkis, among others. Outside of graduate school courses and dissertation research, friends inside and outside of the department, including Noshaba Bhatti, Phillip Brigham, Kirsten Devries, Andrew Donnelly, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Amanda Loos-Logan, Stephen Loos-Logan, Ian McFadden, Daniel O’Gorman, and Shayna Plaut provided intellectual, social, and emotional support, especially when it was most needed at the end of the long process. My mother, Hinda Ordman, father, Edward Ordman, and stepmother, Eunice Ordman, were also unfailing sources of emotional and material support with whom my completion of this doctoral program and dissertation would not iii have been possible. And I should also thank Dean Peters, without whose encouragement almost to the end I could not have begun and finished my program and written my dissertation. iv What can I say about intentions, which are so hidden most of the time that they can hardly be discerned? – Abbot Guibert de Nogent, Gesta dei per Francos TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii ABSTRACT x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Outline 15 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORIOGRAPHIES 20 The Interdisciplinary Study of Emotion 20 Research On Emotions in the Social Sciences 21 Research On Emotions in Historical Study 26 Crusade Studies and Medieval Military Historiography 40 Crusade Studies 42 General Medieval Military Historiography 63 The Historiography of Juridical and Penitential Though 70 Conclusion 84 CHAPTER THREE: AFFECTIVE DEFENSE 87 Warfare in the Christian Roman Empire 88 Patristic Authors on Emotions and Violence 91 Emotions in Early-Medieval Judgments of Sin and Violence 112 A New Christian Empire 126 The Need to Control Violence by Knights 138 Episcopal Efforts to Reduce Violence 143 Juridical Efforts to Control and Direct Violence 154 Papal Direction of Violence 159 Conclusion 168 CHAPTER FOUR: JUST KNIGHTS, JUST WARS 172 Narrative Accounts of Pacifism, Violence, and Motive 172 A Good Warrior: Gerald of Aurillac 176 Not all Warriors are Saints 189 William of Normandy’s Holy War 204 Conclusion 218 CHAPTER FIVE: CREATING THE CRUSADER 227 The Purpose of Christians’ Participation in Military Action 229 Ideals for Christian Knights 229 Ideals for Christian Warfare 236 vi The First Crusade as a Papal Innovation 253 Papal Recruitment at Clermont 256 Conclusion 275 CHAPTER SIX: FEELING LIKE A CRUSADER 278 Doubts about Recruits 280 Accounts of the First Crusaders 288 Anger 288 Sorrow 300 Fear 312 Courage 324 Joy 334 Conclusion 344 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION 356 Historical Evidence for Knights’ Affect 361 Possible Applications of Modern Neurobiological Research? 366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 369 VITA 411 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AHR American Historical Review Die Bussbucher Die Bussbucher und das kanonische Bussverfahren, Vol. 1. Edited by H. J. Schmitz. Mainz: K. Kirchheim, 1883. CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953-) CCSM Corpus Christianorum Series Mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971-) Die Kreuzzugsbriefe Epistolae et chartae ad historiam primibelli sacri spectantes quae supersunt aevo aequales ac genvinae. Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088-1100 (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1901; Bibliolife, 2009). IHR International History Review Mansi Sacrorum Conciliorum, nova et amplissima collection (7: Paris: Bibliopola, 1901; 19: Graz: Akademische Druck–U. Verlagsanstalt, 1960). MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica, inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimium (Hanover-Berlin: MGH, 1824-). CAM Concilia Aevi Merovingici. Edited by Friedrich Maassen. MGH. Hannover: Hahn, 1893. PL Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique; Garnier, 1844- 55) viii RHC Oc. 3 Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux. Vol. 3. Paris: Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres, 1866. RHC Oc. 4 Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux. Vol. 4. Paris: Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres, 1879. ix ABSTRACT This dissertation explores two areas of human experience that have been criticized as potentially dangerous and uncontrollable almost consistently since Late Antiquity: violence and those who engage in it, and emotions. However, it will be seen that in the Western Mediterranean and Southern and Central Western Europe, from Late Antiquity through the early-Twelfth Century, these areas were carefully controlled and directed by complex philosophical and religious systems. Polytheist Roman, and later patristic Christian, authors who wrote within classical and late antique philosophical and religious systems created the accepted norms for the undertaking of organized violence – that which was fought under recognized leadership and undertaken for an acceptable moral or ethical goal. These authors also constructed norms for acceptable experiences and expressions of emotions such as anger, fear, courage, joy, sorrow and religious devotion. This project demonstrates that attitudes toward both violence and emotion changed slowly over time as the Christian faith rose to dominance in the Roman Empire; the western Roman Empire dissolved into Christian successor kingdoms; Christian institutions in the west grew in number and complexity as well as territorial and cultural influence; and territorial conflicts inside Europe and conflicts on and beyond its borders classified by contemporaneous and later historians as holy wars and crusades brought Christians face to face with new forces they perceived as enemies who threatened the faith. x This dissertation examines a large number of clerically authored and influenced juridical, prescriptive, narrative, and epistolary texts composed from Late Antiquity through the Early Twelfth Century, for evidence of attitudes toward and definitions of emotions, and attitudes toward organized violence. Changes over time in attitudes concerning organized violence and methods for judging those who shed blood will be seen in juridical texts by popes and other ecclesiastical or monastic leaders. Christians came to be seen as able to consciously direct their emotions for the benefit of their religious devotion, in order to avoid or gain forgiveness for sin and to help them move closer to God. Changes in emotion will be seen in clerically authored and influenced textual accounts of organized violence, and in the emotions attributed to Christian participants, from the tenth through twelfth centuries. These authors will be seen to have described emotions to provide evidence of actors motives for violence, that which seperated those who sinned by shedding blood out of greed from those who used violence out of love to correct enemies for their own good and to protect fellow Christians. As will be briefly discussed in the conclusion to this project, modern scientific research on emotions suggests that these systems also influenced historical actors internal neurobiological experiences. But as I argue from a culturalist historical perspective throughout this project, changes in their experiences were equally the products of texts by western clerical