Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy (c.1050-1134)

Robert Curthose:  Duke of Normandy (c.1050-1134)

William M. Aird

The Boydell Press, 2008

        This remarkably insightful biography has been touted as one of the most sympathetic and complete assessments of the life of Robert, Duke of Normandy to date, and I must agree.  Aird attempts the reconstruction of the duke’s life which admittedly is very sketchy in the primary sources, and at the same time illuminates the backdrop of Norman society and its incorporation into the kingdom of the Franks.  Aird presents a narrative account following the adventures of William the Conqueror, Robert’s birth and childhood, and advances through the major events to touch Normandy until the duke’s death in confinement at the hands of his duplicitous brother, Henry I.

        The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis serves as the primary source for Robert’s life and deeds, and Aird spends considerable time problematizing this source, demonstrating for his readers the usefulness of contemporary accounts and the pitfalls due to personal biases, hindsight, and politic expediency.  That said, Aird also typifies in his work the need for medieval historians like any scholars working with limited resources, to look at a source from every angle and to continue to ask questions that establish context and logical conclusions.  From a compositional point of view, the reader is much gratified to find well researched and annotated footnotes that establish Aird’s well-formed case for a reevaluation of the life and deeds of Robert.

        It is hard to establish Aird’s primary thesis other than in vague points that the reader can establish through the work.  First, Aird upholds Robert’s right to the kingdom of his father and the unscrupulous acts of his brothers.  Second, the argument is made that Robert’s rule of Normandy was more structured and better than has been handed down by contemporaries.  Third, personal piety and the heroic participation in the First Crusade by Robert did not establish any permanent and positive results other than his popularity.  Finally, Robert simply was not as ruthless as his brother Henry, and his somewhat naïve and trusting personality was not equipped to deal with the necessary amount of corruptness required to rule in the latter eleventh century.  These points combined paint a picture of a tragic individual, and one whose role in Norman politics and medieval relevancy needs to be reexamined.

John Lowe (J. Sharp)

The Baron’s Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequences

The Baron’s Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequences

Michael Lower

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005

What Lower has attempted in this short monograph is extraordinary for its goal and simple delivery: the utilization of a historical event and its varied responses to argue for comparative analysis versus totalizing generalities that many historians utilize for narrative and explanatory constructs.  In essence, Lower presents a case for examining closely long held ‘truisms’ that are immensely popular in modern society, and gives credit to the people actually involved in the historical events for having personality, reasons that made sense to them, and their own opinions.

Lower begins his examination of the Baron’s Crusade (1234-1241), but outlining several key factors for his history.  The first is that the long held view that all of European Christianity felt the same about the crusades, should be challenged as a generality that perceives all Christians as coming from the same mold.  The response of the barons involved in this event (Thibaut IV of Champagne, Peter of Brittany, Earl Richard of Cornwall to name a few), were predicated not only by their own agendas, but by what was beneficial in each case to them, thinking no less that they were still indeed Christian and acting on behalf of God.  Lower goes on to challenge the assumption that the papacy of Rome held sweeping control, by utilizing the failed attempt of Gregory IX to direct the crusade to the aid of Constantinople.  At the height of its power, Lower argues that the Church itself and its head bishop could not ultimately control all who pledged allegiance to her.  In addition, the examination of each baron’s native location and the response towards ‘other’ in their midst (heretics and Jews), found greater impetuous in politic and situational expediencies, rather than as sweeping policies of the Church’s hierarchy.

While Lower does not provide as much detail as the reader might like about the actual chronological events of the crusade once it got under way, the purpose of the work becomes clear if one only glances through the introduction and the conclusion.  The complexities and shifting positions of individuals are best studied in comparative light with all the equations taken into account, and the scholar is better served by giving up archetypical crutches of identity based solely on affiliation.  The modern individual demands facts and quantitative details that form the basis for a conclusion in the medical and judicial world, why not in the study of history and the questioning of historical ‘truths’?

John Lowe (J. Sharp)                                                                                  

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Destiny Disrupted:  A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Tamim Ansary

PublicAffairs Books, 2009

                It can be very difficult to find a lot of good points in a book which presents one’s personal biases and views of history into question; even more so when the work has the ring of truth about it.  Destiny Disrupted is just such a book, arguing for more than just a sympathetic or revisionist view of Islam, the religion, societal order, or cultural history.  Instead, Ansary has presented a dual history, one which finds its narrative from the east as the center of world history.  This presentation moves the scene of action from the normal Eurocentric point of view (Rome), to the seat of religious and secular leaders of Islam in the Middle World, or the Middle East.

                The arguments proposed by Ansary about exceptional men and some women of the narrative of Islam, make sense of the preceding fourteen centuries since Mohammed first began his spiritual community of disciples.  Whereas the civilizations emerging from Islamic based cultures such as the Ottomans are painted in broad and colorful strokes, it would be wise for the reader to pursue more concrete studies on Middle Eastern cultures.  This work accomplishes what Ansary is attempting; namely a broad historical story that incorporates his idea of a different way of looking at world history from the perspective of the Islamic community through the centuries.

                That being said, Ansary is quite frustrating at times in his use of western historical figures, empires, and cultural movements as the foil for his comparisons to the east.  Utilizing just one example, the Roman Empire is often picked over for examples to help explain the importance of the Islamic figures or civilizations he is trying to praise, but often cast as the lesser comparable.  Roman prowess also finds itself emasculated in this work, another example being the failure of the Romans to defeat the Parthians, but Ansary fails to mention that this conflict was maintained for nearly two centuries.  Compiled with a near absence of notations or references to his sources, the scholar is frustrated by the clear suppression of information at times that make Ansary’s points look better than they are.  These inaccurate representations of Classical and Medieval Europe at times are jarring, but one gets the sense that they are purposeful examples of western writers and their tendency to gloss over historical facts of cultures outside of the Eurocentric fold.  The near complete absence of knowledge regarding current scholarship on the Crusades is just one more major example.

                On the whole, Ansary has delivered a much need work to open western eyes again to the historical realities of the east, and has done it in a simplified but exciting narrative form that is easily accessible to most readers.  His call for a little more understanding and reflection on the current problems in the Middle East based upon the historical dramas unfolding in that area over the last millennium and a half is fully justified and timely.

John Lowe (J. Sharp)                                                             

Fighting for the Cross: Crusading in the Holy Land

Fighting for the Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land

By Norman Housley

Yale University Press, 2008

Dr. Housley’s attempt to capture the spirit of what it was like to engage in crusading in the holy land during the period of 1095-1291 from the preaching of Urban II and Clermont to the fall of Acre, is fully realized in this fairly recent study.  Though written as a text book, the prose is easily read and informative, and is highly accessible to the wider public audience without much background in medieval studies.

The approach of the work is thematic in style, addressing largely the main issues such as the preaching of the cross, public awareness of the symbiotic relationship of pilgrimage and crusading, the expense and negative material gain, the opposition in the form of Turks, Arabs, and Byzantines, and remembrance in written records.  Housley strikes a balanced position when addressing the main players of the drama, from lord to peasant, declining to take an overtly moral stance that is so tempting for many historians.  Instead the focus is on the over shadowing impact of crusading, particularly the First Crusade, that affected the medieval mind set towards many things, both spiritually as well as culturally.  Of the more profound arguments, Housley stresses the fact that though the written documents, principally clerical chronicles demonstrating a demonization of the enemy, in fact many Europeans had a very good idea about the actual culture and achievements of the Turks as well as the Fatimid culture of Egypt.  He approaches this point by sifting through the hyperbole of the writers, looking closely at what facts they use to color their accounts, and on occasion, the unexpected admiration.  As a side note, this fits together very well with the actions of Emperor Alexius Comnenus I who is known to have given the First Crusaders some advice about the enemy during their brief stay on the outskirts of Constantinople. 

It is particularly difficult to find much wanting in Housley’s work.  Utilizing historical evidence from the First through the Seventh Crusade, he sites many of the examples a student of the crusades is bound to expect, while at the same time trying to pronounce a definitive stance towards nagging topics such as the perceived personas of Saladin and Richard I, giving each his due as a positive and negative personality, though perhaps a little more so in the case of Richard.  There is also the tendency in the chapter Brave New World to introduce teaser information on such subjects as Prester John and the Mongols, both important and interesting topics that don’t get covered as fully as the reader might like considering their importance in both their relevancy towards God’s aid from foreign quarters and how this was rationalized by the medieval west. 

On the whole an excellent book that I plan to utilize in my future teaching career, comprehensive and thought provoking, I would even suggest it as the starting place for anyone embarking on a study of the events and period of the crusades through the high middle ages.

-John Lowe (J. Sharp)

Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade

Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c.970-c.1130
by Marcus Bull
Oxford University Press, 1993

As the title of his book shows, Marcus Bull takes a very specific area of southern France in which a significant amount of charter and cartulary records survive in the monastic and secular ecclesiastical communities to build a case for understanding knightly piety in this period.  In a nut shell, rather than supporting an early concept that the First Crusade had its inception in the Peace of God movement led by the church, or the more modern understanding that the Reconquista of Spain had any impact on the Christian versus Muslim world, Bull states flatly that it was at a local level in the communication between the laity and their churches that the conception of fighting for Christ was fostered.  Using the importance of benefices to the church on behalf of souls, devoting family members to the cloister including children who would pray for their kinsman, and the established idea of pilgrimage fully ingrained in the medieval mind, Bull argues that the conception of penance for sin and the fear of the interim world between earth and the Heaven or Hell awaiting, was the real force behind crusading.

While highly influential and often cited as this work may be, the weakness of the argument lie in several obvious areas that even Bull points out briefly.  First the work is in many ways reliant on a small but important part of Europe as a whole.  Motivations in one corner of Christendom can be suggested as a guide to others, but southern France holds peculiar attitudes of its own from this period, and was far more influenced by the boarder it shared with Spain than Bull wants to give credit.  Truly the records kept by the Church do not bear out the attitudes of the common or everyday man, but it seems somewhat simple to argue that the French were barely involved in the interests of their southern neighbor when it came to coming to blows with the Muslim occupancy of Andalusia.  Family connections among the lay nobility are underplayed by Bull.  The idea of an actual crusade or holy war against the Muslim communities (and Jewish) did not form until later, but it is a mistake to believe that there was no underlying influence on contemporaries just a little over the Pyrenees mountains. 

Secondly, chronicles from this period must rely to a greater and lesser extent on the nature of the writers themselves, and what they feel is important or of adequate not to compose.  Interpretation of events rests with the historian, which not all of these men were, for example Matthew of Edessa versus Fulcher of Chartres, both of whom wrote in widely divergent styles and with different analysis of events the recorded.

On the whole, Marcus Bull’s book goes a long way towards establishing a realistic view of the medieval mind set predating the First Crusade, and the influences left after the ultimately successful outcome.  His argument that the element of making a gift to God through one’s property, family or time and money, fits well with the serious commitment that crusading required if it were to get an individual on his or her way, and explains away the fallacy of a completely unexpected acclimation at the preaching of the crusade by Urban II at Clermont in November of 1095, that clerical writers tended to stress.  The inclinations were already there, and it did not take much of a spark to set a gasoline doused pile of wood on fire.

Armenia and the Crusades: Tenth to Twelfth Century, The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa

Armenia and the Crusades: Tenth to Twelfth Centuries
The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa
Translated by Ara Edmond Dostourian
University of America, 1993

This eastern based chronicle, being written by a resident of the important city of Edessa in the early period of the twelfth century, gives modern scholars a look into the political and military life of the northern Syria during an extremely hostile time.  Covering a history primarily centered on the Kingdom of Armenia and its highs and lows from 952 -1136, Matthew of Edessa is eventually succeeded in his chronicle writing by a certain Gregory the Priest who then carries the narrative forward until the year 1162.

This chronicle by Matthew is very important for many reasons, but of particular note is the fact that he reveals through prose that is somewhat exaggerated and unscrutinized by it's composer, a world that is wrought with strife and violence that is not even comparable to feudal Europe.  Between Seljuk Turks, Arabs from Damascus and Cairo, and the Byzantine and Armenian Kingdoms, the scale of violence and backstabbing is remarkable in the Middle East, even before the arrival of the crusaders in 1096-97.  Unfortunately, a western biased view of the northern Syria is popularly viewed as the battle ground of the crusaders, when in fact they were the new kids in a fray that was older than their pretensions. 

On the other hand Matthew of Edessa gives scholars a picture that can best be compared with feudal Europe, depicting the back and forth power play between opposed factions, who on occasion find usefulness in allying themselves with each other in order to not allow one power too much of a gain versus the others.  This chronicle is completely devoid of cultural or intellectual developments, other than theological disputes between the emperor of the Byzantines and the Armenian doctors.  In each case, the Armenian theologians win all debates.

Matthew of Edessa is ardently a supporter of the Armenian heritage he feels he belongs too, and is more than explicit when he feels the wrath of God is justly falling on the heads of those deserving it.  However, he has provided us with a window into the period before and after the First Crusade that is valuable for understanding the scenario that the crusaders marched in upon.  Matthew provides a counter point to the idea of the benevolent rule of the crusader's once successfully in command of the important strongholds of the holy land, but at the same time ridicules the idea that there were any "good guys" among the warring factions of the east.  Far from civil, Matthew of Edessa demonstrates in black and white the good and bad sides of the Greeks, Turks, and Arabs of his period in history.

The Debate on the Crusades

The Debate on the Crusades
by Christopher Tyerman 
Manchester University Press, 2011.


This recent work by Christopher Tyerman is unassuming in its purpose, that of writing a short crusade historiography that is accessible to both a scholarly and popular audience.  The focus on writers and philosophers from 1099 onward to the present, outlines extensively the changing views towards the crusades from contemporaries of the First Crusade to the modern world in ways that demonstrate multiple shifting attitudes.  This work is a real gem for the crusade historian who seeks an overview of all the important names in the field along with their perspectives, and is thus a must read.  Making several stops from the medieval period into the Reformation and Enlightenment, Tyerman jumps through the final centuries to the present noting each major work that moves forward the debate on how the crusades are defined.

Tyerman's warning as it were throughout the book and neatly summed up in the epilogue, is the danger of attempting to contextualize the crusade past in modern perspective which correlates to current events.  This was true for Voltaire and David Hume as much as it is true today in a post-9/11 society.  Instead of constantly asking what lessons can be learned, we must allow the facts to remain just so; facts of events that occurred in an era somewhat alien from ours some nine hundred years ago.  However, in taking this position Tyerman almost seems to exclude the possibility of using history as an instructional form at all.  His real issue addressed in the work, is the perceived moral applications that heighten tense relations between Christians and Muslims today, if not between Protestants and Catholics, and Representative versus Totalitarian government.

The Debate on the Crusades is a history about history and opens up questions about other fields of historical inquiry, demonstrating that even if Napoleon was right and "history is a myth that men agree upon", that myth is always in danger of changing because of the very human tendency to want it to conform to perceived reality.  As an intellectual history this work challenges the reader to come to grips with his own perceived notions and sometimes strongly held beliefs about the nature of history, this should be a work that is suggested reading in any class on historiography or the study of western civilization. 

-John Lowe (J. Sharp)