Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo EXPLAINING DIVINE PROVIDENCE
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Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo EXPLAINING DIVINE PROVIDENCE: VIRTUES, VICES, AND THE BIBLE IN THE NARRATIVES OF THE SECOND CRUSADE MA Thesis in Medieval Studies Central European University Budapest CEU eTD Collection May 2018 EXPLAINING DIVINE PROVIDENCE: VIRTUES, VICES AND THE BIBLE IN THE NARRATIVES OF THE SECOND CRUSADE by Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo (Colombia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2018 EXPLAINING DIVINE PROVIDENCE: VIRTUES, VICES AND THE BIBLE IN THE NARRATIVES OF THE SECOND CRUSADE by Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo (Colombia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Reader CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2018 EXPLAINING DIVINE PROVIDENCE: VIRTUES, VICES AND THE BIBLE IN THE NARRATIVES OF THE SECOND CRUSADE by Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo (Colombia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2018 I, the undersigned, JUAN MANUEL RUBIO ARÉVALO, candidate for the MA degree in Medieval Studies, declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 17 May 2018 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection Abstract Medieval historiography aimed at communicating moral lessons and proving the hand of God behind human events. Crusader narratives, as any other piece of medieval history writing, have the same goal. The analysis of the crusades have mostly focused on explaining the different dynamics that gave origin to these expeditions and its transformations, while a historiographical analysis of the narratives have attracted relatively little attention from scholars; most studies concerned with the characteristics of the narratives of the crusades have focused on the First Crusade (1095-1099). This study offers a historiographical insight into the two contemporary accounts of the Second Crusade (1146-1148): Odo of Deuil’s De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem and the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi. The goal of the thesis is to analyse the explanatory tools of these narratives in order to explain the failure of the crusade to the Holy Land and the success of the siege of Lisbon. I focus on three elements of medieval historiography: the representation of virtues and vices, the uses of the Bible and the role attributed to God in the events. The study is based in a dialectical approach between the sources and the context that produced them, keeping into account the transformation of the crusader movement from 1099 to 1148, the nature of history writing in the Middle Ages and the theological framework developed to justify the crusades during this period. CEU eTD Collection i Acknowledgements I would like thank first and foremost my mother and siblings. Without their undying support, I would not have been able to come to CEU where I have been able to develop my potential as an academic. Secondly, I would like to thank my two supervisors, professors Marianne Saghy and Matthias Riedl. Their constant support, feedback and patient have proved invaluable in the successful completion of this research and my studies here in Budapest. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my friends back in Colombia and all the wonderful new friendships that I have acquired in Hungary. I will always hold dear all the moments, experiences and memories that I have gathered during this academic year. Gracias totales! CEU eTD Collection ii Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The Second Crusade as a Moral Tale ............................................................... 11 1.1 A just war: The portrayal of enemies ........................................................................... 11 1.1.1 The cruel Muslim.................................................................................................... 11 1.1.2 The perfidious Greek .............................................................................................. 17 1.2 The fault within ............................................................................................................. 22 1.2.1 Greed ....................................................................................................................... 22 1.2.2 When the Christians overcome sin ....................................................................... 25 Chapter 2: The Bible and the Second Crusade ................................................................... 28 2.1 The Bible and medieval historiography ........................................................................ 28 2.2 Scripture and the Second Crusade ............................................................................... 30 2.3 Crusader narratives through the prism of the Bible .................................................... 36 2.3.1 Allegory and the portrayal of virtues and vices ..................................................... 36 2.3.2 Typology and the interpretation of the narrative .................................................. 40 Chapter 3: The Second Crusade and Divine Intervention ................................................. 45 CEU eTD Collection 3.1 History, the Bible and the crusades .............................................................................. 45 3.2 God’s presence in the Second Crusade ........................................................................ 47 3.2.1 Miracles as approval of the crusade ...................................................................... 47 3.2.2 Miracles and help ................................................................................................... 51 iii 3.2.3 Divine punishment .................................................................................................. 53 3.2.4 God and victory: The case of Lisbon ..................................................................... 55 3.3 What just happened? The theological explanation of failure ..................................... 57 3.3.1 Theology and the preaching of the Second Crusade ............................................ 57 3.3.2 The explanations in the narratives ........................................................................ 60 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 65 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 68 Appendices .............................................................................................................................. 77 Appendix A: Scriptural references in the narratives ......................................................... 77 Appendix B: Supernatural interventions in the narratives ............................................... 84 CEU eTD Collection iv CEU eTD Collection v Introduction A. The Research Question This thesis offers a comparative analysis the two narratives that were produced in the years of the Second Crusade (1145-1149): Odo of Deuil’s De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem and Raol’s De expugnatione Lyxbonensi. William Purkis has compared the development of the crusader movement in the Holy Land and Iberia from 1095 to 1187. However, his study focusses mainly in the religious dynamics behind these crusades without comparing the narratives directly1. I will address the question about the explanatory strategies of these two accounts about two campaigns against the Muslims in Asia Minor and Lisbon. My focus is on the theological explanation of the expeditions, the use of the Bible, and the “virtues and vices” criteria of medieval historiography. The thesis adopts the predominant viewpoint in crusader scholarship by taking seriously the religious motivations that fueled the enthusiasm and the energy of thousands of Christians to participate in the Crusades, instead of treating these as a cover for material reasons and sheer greed2. The Second Crusade did not generate much historical output among twelfth-century eyewitnesses and chroniclers. In a famous passage, Otto of Freising, one of the commanders of the German