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The Crusades and Ireland
00:37:54
Was the 'Emerald Isle' a crusading frontier? Matt Lewis finds out
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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all history hit podcasts ad free, early access and bonus episodes. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple podcasts with just one click.
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Matt Lewis
Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. If we think of Crusades, we invariably.
- [01:28]
Think of the Holy Land.
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Crusading wasn't limited to that region though, by any means, and when we consider Crusaders, the focus is usually on the Franks, the French, and maybe Richard the Lionheart and a few others. One place that's long been overlooked in the context of crusading is Ireland. It's largely been absent from accounts of Crusades, and crusading has largely been absent from histories of Ireland. A new book from Forecourts Press entitled Ireland and the Crusades looks to further work to correct those omissions. It's a collection of studies from eminent contributors, amongst whom is my guest today, Paul Duffy, a senior archaeologist with IAC Archaeology. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Paul.
- [02:07]
Paul Duffy
Thanks Matt, very happy to be on.
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Matt Lewis
It's a pleasure to speak to you. I guess, to kick us off, can we try and get to a quick understanding, I guess, of why Ireland's connection to crusading and Crusading's connection to Ireland has been so overlooked for a long time. Is it kind of a matter of geography because Ireland is so far from the Holy Lands and some of the places that crusading was played out?
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Paul Duffy
Yeah, that's something we try to tackle and address at the outset of the book. So I think, yeah, some of the points you hit on there are pretty correct in that Ireland is at the fringe of Europe. It's hard to get further away from the Holy Land. And also, the historical sources for the period are perhaps not as good as they might be in continental Europe or in England at the time, particularly with relation to the crusading period. But perhaps it's something to do with how history has been written as well in Ireland in the past. I suppose we have been guilty, particularly in the last century, of a little bit of insularity, maybe. And then there's also the question of. You mentioned the Holy Land there. And I suppose we like to view ourselves as a bit of a Holy Land as well, in a historical context, with this concept of the Isle of Saints and Scholars. So it has been suggested that maybe in previous historiography, the view that Ireland was in some way this kind of trope of the Isle of Saints and scholars, It's a trope that was well known in the medieval period that the Irish were in some way holding the torch of Christianity in the Western Europe and reintroducing Christianity through peaceable means, through missionaries visiting Scotland and down into the western parts of England and even into the continent. It's perhaps a more noble or a more Christian way of introducing the faith. And perhaps so, perhaps in a historiographical context, previous historians weren't too keen to explore a link between Ireland and a more violent form of Christianization, let's say.
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Matt Lewis
Yeah.
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And I guess, particularly in the last century, that idea of using violence to further those kind of aims has become increasingly less attractive. And so to associate yourself with the idea of that Isle of Saints and Scholars is much more preferable to the idea of the Isle of People who went and slaughtered other people in other countries.
- [04:19]
Paul Duffy
Absolutely, yeah. It's nice to be on a high horse looking at the practices of others. But that's only obviously one part of the story. The absence of reference to crusading in the earlier sources in particular, and, you know, that geographical distance, I suppose it had led people to presuppose that maybe there wasn't a huge amount to be explored there.
- [04:37]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And one thing I wanted to ask is whether there was anything that we.
- [04:41]
Could consider a crusade within Ireland. I mean, Ireland kind of remained Christian when a lot of the British Isles slipped back to paganism before the return of Christianity then, which was largely driven by, quite often Irish monks bringing Celtic Christianity back to the British Isles. But was there ever any portion of Ireland's history in which we might see Christian crusading happening on the island of Ireland.
- [05:05]
Paul Duffy
Yes. Now, that is an area that has been quite deeply explored in the past in Ireland, particularly with regard to the Anglo Norman invasion of Ireland. And a lot of the conversation around that idea of crusade in Ireland centers on this document, the laudability. Now, I'm not sure how familiar listeners in other countries may be with the laudability, but it's a very important text for us. In Ireland, it was a papal bull issued by Pope Adrian, who's the only English pope ever to have held that title. It was issued early in the reign of King Henry second. And within that document, there is very strong language about justification. So it is laudable for effectively an English king to invade or to take possession of Ireland. And within that document, there's very strong language, very vitriolic language. One of the justifications is to extirpate the filth of native Irish abomination. So that's crusading talk. Now, laudability itself isn't without issue, and there's lively debate around its veracity. But I suppose that the questions around it was a forgery or was it exaggerated by courtiers or by people connected to Henry ii? And again, that's something that's touched on and discussed in full by Maeve Callan, and it's touched on in some other papers. So that question of was there a crusade in Ireland? Can we view the Anglo Norman incursion into Ireland as a crusade? That's something that's been discussed again and again. So ultimately, laudability wasn't acted upon in the early part of Henry II's reign because his attentions were elsewhere. And to what extent the adventurers who came to Ireland later on in Henry's reign, in what I suppose were called the Anglo Norman invasion, to what extent they were thinking about religious reform is quite questionable. There was all sorts of other motivations at play. But to come back to your question, has there ever been crusading on the island of Ireland? Again, the book is full of examples, so that question surrounded. Laudabiliter is really teased out and looked at. It certainly was in the mix as a justification, I suppose. In my chapter in the book, I look at the parallels between Laudabiliter and other calls to arms, particularly to do with the Albigensian crusade, which we might come to a bit later on. But in the book, there's other examples of the English in Ireland in the 13th and 14th century lobbying the Pope directly, or lobbying the English king Henry V, in one example, to seek a papal justification for crusade in Ireland. Against the Gaelic Irish. This features very strongly in the history of Ireland where the Anglo Normans, let's say the English, are viewing the Gaelic Irish Christianity, or at least they're using it as a pretext during times when what was going on around that period, interestingly, was a kind of a Gaelic revival and a reverse in fortunes of the English colony in Ireland. Catherine Herlock, in her paper in the volume, she brings it all full circle and discusses the crusading rhetoric and more than rhetoric, in some cases in the 16th century, from the later 16th century on, where during the Counter Reformation the idea of crusade is being used by insurgents and by lords who are championing the Counter Reformation and who are looking for support, military support for their uprisings in Ireland. So notably the Desmond rebellions in the later part of the 16th century that was happening in Munster. And then maybe listeners would be a bit more familiar with the big uprisings that were coming out of Ulster around the turn of that century. So the Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell uprisings culminating in this big huge military engagement in Kinsale where the Spanish have landed thousands of troops, obviously championing Catholicism. Crusade is not far from the lips of people at that time either.
- [08:57]
Matt Lewis
And I think it's always striking that laudability is really acted upon by Henry II in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Thomas Becket. So he has a political context to want to do something good for the Pope. And it's almost like he thinks, hang on. This idea of crusading in Ireland and converting them to Roman Catholicism has been around for a while. It happens to be politically convenient for me. Now I'm going to act on it. You know, there's so much going on around it, isn't there?
- [09:21]
Paul Duffy
Funny you should mention that because I'm an archaeologist by trade and just to put that out there as opposed to a historian. So I'm familiar with some of this material. But I suppose my main stock and trade is directing excavations. And for the last maybe seven or eight years I've been directing large scale excavations around Dublin city and environs. One of the most interesting sites I've been involved in has been actually at the Abbey of St. Thomas to Martyr in Dublin, which gives its name to a very important thoroughfare in Dublin, Thomas street, and it was founded in 1177 on the instruction of Henry II during that period. So it's seen as part of these reparations within the excavations. We found part of the precinct when we found a part of the cemetery which the majority of the burials that we came across, 120 odd burials, were actually straddling that period of invasion, that period of pre and post the advent of Henry ii. And the fact that he came to Ireland at all and was here for such a long time. Well, I don't want to misspeak, but it's certainly one of the longest periods an English monarch had spent in Ireland. He's very much putting himself far from the reaches of Rome whilst he kind of deliberates and figures out what to do.
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Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's a slightly vicious way of giving himself a bit of breathing space to work out what he was doing, but it's pretty clear what he was doing politically, which can only lead you to question the veracity of his religious aims when he was there. Tries to wrap it up as a crusade, but it's really about recovering his own reputation in Rome, I think.
- [10:50]
Paul Duffy
Exactly. And, well, just to be fair, if you put any particular crusade under the microscope and the justifications for such, it probably gets to a kernel of that somewhere.
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Matt Lewis
Yeah, very true. We can probably see the arrival of a crusading culture in Ireland with the arrival of the Anglo Normans, who come for whatever reason, but they end up settling, settling in a portion of Ireland. Is it then that we start to see evidence of an interest in or a connection to crusading? Do we see Anglo Normans trying to use their Irish lands to fund crusading, for example?
- [11:23]
Paul Duffy
Yes, well, I suppose the biggest thing that you see, and just before we move on to that, to say that there are some hints and a few indications that the Gaelic kings and princes would have had an interest in Crusades. It's just potentially we don't have the actual records. There's a couple of continental sources that hint at Gaelic Irish participation in the Crusades. Not really verifiable. And in some cases we're struggling with the terminology where Scots are being mentioned. And Scots at that time obviously could mean Irish or Scottish. And there's a couple of interesting hints that maybe there were connections with crusading kings or individuals, you know, with the strange records of a camel, for example, being gifted to Mert O'Brien by the Scottish king. I think that's around 1100, 1102. And there are connections via Scotland, potentially to the Holy Land. And people have also pointed to the fact that the fragment of the true cross that ends up in Connaught at the time and is enshrined in this amazing work of art, the cross of Kong, potentially has come via that route as well. And then the last thing to say about it is that, and again, this is something we touch on in the volume is that whilst we don't have the direct references to say such and such went on crusade on such and such a date, we do have a very evocative work of the Covergirl Regal, which is a sort of a propagandistic account of Brian Boru's battle against the Dublin Vikings, or the hibernate Norse, as they were. But that's very much framed in a Christian war. Brian Boru in 1014, vanquishing this pagan foe on the shores of Dublin. It's written in the early 1100s, just at a time when this crusading rhetoric, this idea of holy war, is obviously washing around Europe. And the reality of that conflict is much more complicated and nuanced, with Scandinavians and Irish on both sides. And the fact that probably the Dubliners at that point were fairly well on the way to Christianizing themselves or being Christianized, or they were definitely Christian Scandinavians in Dublin at the time. But then to come back to your question, which was, is it really the advent of the Anglo Normans that we see this crusading culture coming in? We can obviously track it and we can see it more clearly in the historical documents through the archaeology as well, to some extent, and place names, etc. And the main indicator really is the granting of lands to, you know, the military orders and the fact that in many ways the colony has a blank canvas. There's a lot of people coming into a lot of land, and the military orders are probably quite an attractive option if you're granting lands to religious orders, given that they have a military aspect. And if you're basically ending up in a frontier land with potentially hostile neighbors, you can see the attraction, as opposed supporting some pacifistic Augustinians or Cistercians under border.
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Matt Lewis
Better to have a couple of tame Templars under your wing than a couple of monks.
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Paul Duffy
Yeah, exactly. And that's the largest sort of connection to the crusading movement. And then just finally to say that you're asking, were the lands used to leverage funding for crusading enterprises? Yeah, probably were. We know that the English kings, particularly around the 12th, 13th century, weren't too keen on the idea of magnates or knights from the colony participating directly in the Crusades because they were required in Ireland, obviously, to hold the territory. So it's probably through more of a financial contribution from those lands.
- [14:51]
Matt Lewis
Do you think that explains to some.
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Extent why the military orders, the Templars and the Hospitallers were particularly successful in Ireland. What really comes out of the book is just how quickly and how well the military orders did in Ireland. And I suppose there's an element of, as you say, the Anglo Norman kings don't want to send the nobility that they're planting in Ireland away because that risks their conquest, their power there. But they do want money. So the military orders are quite a good way to siphon off money and lands without sending men.
- [15:19]
Paul Duffy
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Given those networks that were in place all across Europe through those orders. And also, again, the added benefit, we sort of discussed how maybe a particular baron might have been attracted by installing military orders, but also on a more of a administrative level, we have. And again, in the volume, Paolo Virtuani writes a very interesting chapter about how the Hospitallers were drawn into conflict, armed conflict, again, against the Gaelic Irish in these kind of expeditions into troublesome areas, most notably the Wicklow Mount, you know, just on the doorstep of Dublin, the administrative centre of the colony.
- [15:58]
Matt Lewis
And do we have.
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I mean, you did mention it a little bit earlier, but I wanted to ask whether we have any views from the Gaelic population towards Anglo Norman crusading. Do we see the Gaelic population being attracted to it at all, repulsed by it, or is there an absence of their voice on the subject?
- [16:15]
Paul Duffy
Yes, largely speaking. Although we know that a lot of these Gaelic kings and princes, they viewed themselves, and they were viewed by others also as important landholders, and by the Pope as well. Like we have examples of Papal Bulls been issued for preaching Crusades, the Archbishop of Dublin being instructed to preach Crusades, but also the Abbot of Mellifont, and that's going out into potentially Gaelic areas as well. We know that the Gaelic kings and princes, they were going on pilgrimage to Rome, they were communicating directly with the Pope. That's the kind of stage they saw themselves on. And I'm sure that they were aware of crusading movements and certainly if they're going to Rome and communicating with their contemporaries. So I suppose, yeah, we just don't know. Unfortunately, we don't have that direct voice, particularly for the earlier period.
- [17:14]
Susanna Lipscomb
I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and throughout June on not just the Tudors from history hit. I'm marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio. It would be hard to think of Shakespeare without plays like Julius Caesar, the Tempest, Anthony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, as you like it, and A Winter's Tale. But without the First Folio, none of these would have survived.
- [17:38]
Matt Lewis
This is not a book designed to be carried around. This is a book which establishes itself in the library in the study, and that physicality tells us something about how the plays are being rebranded, reframed for a new generation.
- [17:51]
Susanna Lipscomb
Throughout this month, I'm delving deep into the First Folio, how it was produced, who made it, and to what extent it has ensured Shakespeare's enduring legacy. So do join me on Not Just the Tudors from History hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:09]
Matt Lewis
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- [19:32]
Susanna Lipscomb
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Susanna Lipscomb
Huh?
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- [20:10]
Paul Duffy
What?
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Paul Duffy
I just.
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- [20:14]
Oh, the offer's great.
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- [20:22]
Susanna Lipscomb
Ah, you're right.
- [20:23]
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- [21:15]
Matt Lewis
I'm incredibly.
- [21:16]
Conscious so far that I have been pushing your arm up your back and making you talk about other people's work and things that aren't your area of expertise. So thank you very, very much for bearing with me through that. But I did want to get on to your contribution to the book, which is based around Hugh de Lacey II and his involvement in the Albigensian Crusade that we mentioned a little bit earlier. So could you tell us a little bit, first off, I guess, what is the Albigensian Crusade? For anyone who doesn't know, it's essentially.
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Paul Duffy
The crusade that was launched against the Cathars in the south of France. So it's a very complicated issue and the historiography around that is changing. And what are who the Cathars were, as I'm sure you know yourself, Matt, you'd need an episode or two to delve into that in totality. But let's say for the purposes of this talk, that they were viewed as heretics. It was a belief in the south of France and through Lombardy in different places, and it was basically a simplified Christianity, let's say, where the practitioners are really moving away from the opulence of Rome. They're moving away from the concept of needing an intermediary really to speak to God. That includes priests, churches, etc. What they actually believe in practice is up for debate, and it is again debated quite vehemently in various circles. But interestingly, one of the documents, one of the very few code essays that contains what we could possibly point to as a couple of clues and possible liturgical information, was found in Trinity College Dublin in the early 1900s amongst the collection of James Ware. So they were effectively sort of ascetic, peaceable, vegetarian to some extent. And this wasn't really, I suppose, viewed as good business for the Catholic Church at the time. It became slightly politicized in the 13th century and resulted in the Pope calling a crusade against effectively the heretics in that part of France. So it was the first crusade that was launched against Christians in Christian land, launched in 1209 huge participation initially from nobles in the north of France, in Germany, and massive numbers gathered to basically go south early in the Crusade. And you can see the attraction. I mean, the plenary indulgences were being granted by the Pope. So instead of having to traverse Europe and sort of make these seaborne voyages, the expense and the difficulty and the danger of getting to the Holy Land, you could have your scenes expunged by a quick jaunt down towards the Mediterranean. Effectively that crusade attracted huge numbers initially and then the numbers kind of faded after this 40 day service was done. That was a problem that they encountered over the coming years, manning the Crusade, particularly when it started to infringe upon crusade uptake or later crusades that were to be directed to the Holy Land. So it was a very bloody and controversial even at the time, war on a region of Europe largely controlled by the Counts of Toulouse and the Viscounts of Carcassonne.
- [24:22]
Matt Lewis
It always feels like a slightly dramatic, vaguely terrifying turn for crusading, that they turned it on Christians and it's not nice that they were crusading against Muslims or anybody. But for medieval Christian mind to turn crusading as a weapon against other Christians was a fairly shocking leap at the time, I think.
- [24:40]
Paul Duffy
Yes. And all that goes with it. I came across this whole story as an undergraduate. I did an Erasmus year in France many years ago. And I think looking back on it, what drew me to the story was I was seeing very clear parallels between the Albidentian Crusade and the Andro Norman invasion of Ireland. There's lots of similar language used at the outset. In two cases, as with the Irish venture, the reigning monarch, Henry II neglected to travel to Ireland. He allowed his barons free ish reign to make the crossing. Similarly, Philip Augustus did the same thing. He was too preoccupied with what was happening elsewhere and he allowed his barons to take the cross. And in both cases, when the crusade and when the Anglo Norman invasion proved to be quite successful and you can see that these very large areas of land were being won relatively quickly. It's only when all that consolidating work is more or less done that the monarchs weighed in and they're attaching these huge areas to their kingdoms, huge kind of culturally distinct areas, and replacing previous law systems and that and languages with their own. There was lots there, lots of similarities that were jumping out. There's more than that now just not coming to mind. But what's the most remarkable, I suppose, and not knowing any of this, when I started looking into it, I was doing a little Bit of research into what were the defenses of Toulouse during these huge sieges, these massive engagements of thousands and thousands of combatants on both sides. This huge, very prosperous town, you know, possibly around 10,000 people, dwarfing kind of Dublin being besieged by these huge armies. The sources are very rich, particularly the epic poem called the Chanson de la Croissade or the Tansel, written in Occitan or the Provencal language. And it discusses these huge ditches and these arrangements of palisades, towers, you know, the embrasures, all that kind of stuff. And when I was reading this poem, next of all, this name starts appearing that's charging the walls is Hugh de Lacey. And Hugh de Lacey in Ireland is a very famous individual, a very famous character that's involved very heavily, one of the major players in the Anglo Norman invasion, let's say, to take over. So this is quite shocking at the time, quite surprising. And when, as an undergraduate, I did a little bit of digging into it, lo and behold, it turned out to be the son of the Hugh de Lacey that was so famous in Ireland. And not only that, but the son who had actually become the Earl of Ulster in 1205. So the story, effectively, it was just something I suppose, I stumbled across as an undergraduate. And it's the gift that keeps giving, if I'm honest with you, because that story wasn't really known in Irish history, and the Irish side of Pudilecy's story wasn't really known in France. So it really just felt to me to put the two together. And the story itself, the arc of the story is very dramatic. So the de Lacey family come to Ireland. They carve out this huge territory of Mead. De Lacey is a favorite of Henry ii. He's installed as a kind of a counterbalance against Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, who was making very big gains in Ireland at the time. And de Lacy has shown himself he's coming from the Welsh marches. He knows very well what to do with the border. You build castles and you do all that stuff. So he's probably the most vigorous castle builder that we've seen in Ireland. And he was all over. He extended his kingdom from the Shannon to the sea. It was his big claim. And he also went around building castles for other people. So his second or third son was called Hugh also. He kind of had to find his own way. He was granted a small bit of land by his elder brother. And then somehow, in a very strange turn that's still kind of hard to explain, he, in 1205, has created an earl. I don't have the figures in front of me, but I was reading up about this recently. I think one of only a handful of earldoms created in the reign of King John, and the only earldom created in Ireland to that date and then for another 100 years or so. So this is a massively significant elevation, let's say, of somebody who's of relatively low standing, you know, a younger son. And what he does with that earldom is, of course, he builds castles, he fortifies, and very quickly it seems that he became embroiled in a sort of conspiracy with Philip Augustus to actually overthrow John. And there's some documents there again that show this quite well. There's individuals linking the two. And so that dramatic rise suddenly in 1210, five years later, sees John arrive in Ireland at the head of this massive force progressing through up the eastern seaboard of Ireland, making all of the lace's allies, his brother and everything, submit to him. And the only person who is holding out throughout this whole period is Hugh himself. So he refuses to submit to John, he retreats up into Ulster and his actions are echoed by an amazing letter that survives in the acts of Philip Augustus. There's a Delacia in Ireland saying that uses castles and his friends and followers to execute the plan, which is to get rid of John, basically. So he falls back to Carrickfergus, this big stone castle, one of the few stone castles in Ireland at the time, and he's surrounded by upwards of 5,000 men. He's got a couple of hundred men inside, and he still tries to hold out until the very end. Escapes through a postern door onto a boat, onto a gallery, across the sea to Scotland, leads down the length and breadth of England and ends up in France and Normandy. So I suppose I started out the exercise way back then, trying to see if this individual Utilacea, was the same that we know in Ireland. And he appears in this. Cancel this epic poem in south of France in 1211, a couple of months after, there's a big recruitment drive for the Albigensian Crusade in Paris. And he winds up appearing in a list of names of 20 knights. I mentioned earlier on that this huge force that descended on Carcassonne and Toulouse and that dissipated pretty quickly. He winds up in a name of about 14 knights that have stayed with who had become the leader of the Crusade, the Albigentic Crusade, which he was Simon de Montfort. And his name is followed up by the individual who actually is named in that letter from the Acts of Philip Augustus, who delivered the letter. So, as you know yourself, Matt, this kind of paper trail or this kind of breadcrumb trail doesn't happen very often in medieval history.
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Matt Lewis
No, it's so much more often that you find people just vanish, or you get vague mentions that you think might be them, but you can't quite tie it up. So to have this kind of absolutely.
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Epic story of this guy rising to.
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Power, trying to overthrow the king, fleeing to France, and then turning up as one of the leaders of a big crusade in France, it's so unusual to be able to link that all to the same person.
- [31:17]
Paul Duffy
The list of knights he ends up appearing in with the Monfort is in Carcassonne. I'm sure a lot of listeners will be familiar with Carcassonne, which has become the kind of crusader capital and has become this opposition to Toulouse. You know, these two cities basically are these two strongholds. But what's happening at this exact point is that the counts of Toulouse have amassed their allies. They're marching on Carcassonne. So we know that In Carcassonne, the 14 knights, their entourage of Simon de Montfort, there's a couple of hundred combatants there. And the tally for the Count of Toulouse and his allies is in the region of 5 to 8,000. So exactly 12 months after, he's in Carrickfergus and Ulster, watching the same kind of numbers coming at him, he's kind of out of the frying pan into the fire, into the same scenario with de Montfort. And there's one more really, really amazing piece of evidence in the Cancer little croissade. The Cancer itself was written with two hands, but the first hand that wrote the first third of it was actually within the crusader camp. He was a scribe for one of the Count of Toulouse brothers who returned and was with the Crusaders in Carcassonne at that time. And the poem, unusually enough, it's describing what's happening, and then it says, and then de Montfort had a council in Carcassonne, and it kind of breaks and says, everybody was talking. And then Hugh de Lacey stood up and said. And then it gives a page of what he said verbatim. In these kind of medieval texts, they're literary devices. People have been used as characters to convey certain points of view or certain things. But in this instance, the words that de Lacey speaks in the council are so resonant of what he's experienced in Ireland. I have to view it as a very close rendering of what was actually said when he Stood up dramatically in the middle of this council. Everybody is saying, okay, we'll hold firm here in Carcassonne. We'll defend the walls. It's their strongest position. And Hugh basically says, look, if you will hear my counsel. They're the usual kind of preamble. I suggest if you stay here, you'll be surrounded and the Count of Toulouse will bring up his allies and he'll be starved out. And the words that he says is that you will be hounded and cursed to the ends of the earth. Which you can really see how he might view going from Fergus to Carthazon as being hounded to the ends of the earth. And he then says, what I'd actually advise you to do is to ride out to a weak castle he names on the edge of your territory and basically gall the Count of Toulouse into coming and attacking you and just break out with a focused sortie that would put him into disarray. So a very huge bravado and very daring, very risky, but that's what happens, and that's what they do. And again, a further sort of iron fastening on the fact that it was de Lacey who recommended or who gave this council is that we have documents, what it says in the poem, but we also have charter evidence that immediately after that he was granted the lordship of that castle where they were, and this kind of strategic midway point between Carcassonne and Toulouse.
- [34:17]
Matt Lewis
Do we know what happens to Hugh in the end?
- [34:19]
Paul Duffy
Oh, yeah. Like, this is only about halfway through his career. So somebody from within Toulouse, funnily enough, starts to finish the council. We don't know what happens to the original scribe, but it swaps. And Hugh still appears maybe 10 times throughout the remainder. But it's very clear that he's being used as a literary device. And I'd say because he was presented, you know, as someone giving counsel in the first part of the poem. In the second part of the poem, he's used as a sort of counterpoint. He was always doing down de Montfort when he says something, so he's always giving out. So, you know, he becomes this literary figure effectively. But there are documents where we know that he's granting lands to Dominic de Guzman, who becomes St. Dominic. You know, he's setting up his Dominican order at that point. He also grants land to the Hospitallers, so he's a crusader lord in the lands of the Cathars until that whole enterprise is overturned. Now, it proves to be a brief lull. Ultimately, as we know, the whole area gets attached to the French crown. But in that sort of interlude after the death of the Montfort and everything, he disappears from the sources of France. So obviously I just had to pick up the thread at the far end where, yeah, you're looking at the sources and oh, Hugh de Lacey appears back in England and he's looking for his lands back in Ireland because obviously John had died so he's making representations to the minority government. He's last mentioned in a pitched battle where his town is taken back by the Count of Toulouse the Younger 1223. A year later he shows up in Dublin and he besieges Dublin because basically they're not giving him his lands back quickly enough and causes a nuisance around until he's given his Ireland back.
- [36:01]
Matt Lewis
Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all history hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple podcasts with just one click.
- [36:17]
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- [36:50]
Paul Duffy
And he goes on. He's involved in other campaigns and one of the last things I say very interestingly is there's a campaign in the Connacht in the 1240s and he is present when for the first time in their recorded use in Ireland we hear of all these siege engines being used against a fortress on Lot Cay. So these Perriers, the Mangonels and things, these exact siege engines that he'd spent 10 years in very close proximity to. And all these sieges around the south of France. He had a storied life, I suppose you could say.
- [37:22]
Matt Lewis
It sounds absolutely fascinating. Why do we not know more about Hugh de Lacy ii? I think everyone needs to know about him. It sounds amazing.
- [37:28]
Paul Duffy
That's my mission.
- [37:31]
Matt Lewis
I mean you've certainly whet everybody's appetite and given us loads of detail there. He sounds like an absolutely incredible figure who lived an absolutely incredible life. I'm going to go and start looking him up. So the book kind of builds on some previous work that has been done around crusading an island. It's sort of an emerging area of study that's getting more and more attention Just to end on what do you think we might be able to learn as this is explored a bit further? Do you think there are deeper connections that we might be able to find?
- [37:56]
Paul Duffy
I suppose there's huge potential in the fields of archaeology. We don't have any excavations of any of the Military Order sites. So, for example, there's a very large septuagint of the Hospitallers in Ireland just on the outskirts of Dublin. Well, it's in Dublin now, but at the time, and it's within the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art, formerly commanding hospital. So there's large green spaces there. I don't think it'll be too long before we see some kind of research excavations being proposed there, which would be amazing to actually try to put some flesh on the bones. Again, Typo Keefe in the volume and Paolo Bertuani have tried to reconstruct through documentary evidence what this ensemble of buildings would look like. So there's that archaeological potential is there in the volume as well. Kieran MacDonald, he follows a similar story involving the Genville family in Ireland. There's all these Crusaded connections, more involving the Holy Land and again, going back generations. So these kind of individual stories, I'm sure there are more of them out there lurking in the documentary evidence to be found. But then there's other ways of thinking about this. One of the things that I'm quite proud about in the volume that we've put together is that we've represented different approaches and different ways of looking at existing information. So, for example, Cathy Swift has a paper in the volume which is looking at the term Palmer. Now, the term Palmer, okay, we know it in a medieval context. It means pilgrim, someone who's wearing a palm. They've been to the Holy Land. But we have a remarkable guild merchant role in Dublin. Hundreds and hundreds of names from the very early period of the colony. And it's just lists of names and names and names, people. And you can define where they're coming from. In a lot of cases, you can define what their trade was because they're entering into this guild, put it very unusually. And it's not something that anybody had ever considered, I don't think in detail before, but Cathy had noticed that in the first part of the role in the reign of King John, well, up until the 1220s, really by far the most dominant occupation is Palmer. This is a mercantile document. So how is a pilgrim an occupation? And Katy illustrates now by using lots of different sources, one of them being one of the Norse sagas, she illustrates that merchants in this environment, in this kind of burgeoning and nascent frontier trading community would have definitely needed strongmen to protect them on their journeys. And she's suggesting that Palmer is actually a designation for someone who's been to the holy land of the Crusade and who knows their way around a tight spot, let's say, who have military backgrounds. And potentially that's describing a whole occupation by slightly changing the angle of view. Something like that just comes out of the existing documentation that fraud me that suggestion. So I think anything's possible, really.
- [40:44]
Matt Lewis
I love that.
- [40:44]
So it's not always that we need to find new documentation. It's sometimes that we need to look at what we've already got with slightly different eyes in a slightly new light from a slightly different angle. And it can tell us a whole new story.
- [40:53]
Paul Duffy
Yeah, precisely. So I do think we'll be seeing a lot more of that coming down the track, in addition to the archaeological potential that's there as well, which is huge. I hope you don't mind, Matt, if I say again, just to point to the volume that we've put out there and to thank the publisher, Forecourt's Press, who are such a standard bearer for medieval studies in Ireland and historical studies in general, and if it's not a step too far to I suppose, make listeners aware that I have written a novel beginning the tale of Hugh de Lacey. So that that story, I think it just the drama, I suppose, begs to be told. So, yeah, I've written a novel, historical fiction, and it's entitled Run with the Hare, Hunt with the Hound, which is available for sale now. Probably best option to get it online.
- [41:38]
Matt Lewis
Excellent work. I mean, I was going to plug your book, so I have no issue with you doing it. Instead, I'm sure listeners would rather hear it from you than from me. Thank you so much for joining us, Paul, and sharing some of that fascinating insight into crusading connections with Ireland and Irish history and how some of this has been really overlooked. And also for bringing us Hugh de Lacey ii. Thank you very much.
- [41:57]
Paul Duffy
Thank you for the opportunity, Matt. It's been great.
- [41:59]
Matt Lewis
It's been an absolute pleasure. So, as Paul mentioned, he has a novel out there that you can go and find now. And the book from Four Courts Press is entitled island and the Crusades and is a collection of works that looks at several of these animals aspects of Ireland's connections to crusading. Go out and buy both of them right now. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new audiences to find us out. If you're a enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter by clicking on the link in the Show Notes below. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.
- [43:04]
Paul Duffy
To get.
- [43:04]
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Matt Lewis
Forever.
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