Should we stop talking about the crusades?

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "Should We Stop Talking About the Crusades?"
Released on November 20, 2024

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Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of the History Extra Podcast, host Jack Bateman engages in a deep conversation with Professor William Purkis, a renowned Medieval History expert from the University of Birmingham. The discussion centers around the traditional understanding of the Crusades and explores whether it's time to rethink how we talk about these historical events.

Challenging the Traditional Narrative

Professor Purkis begins by questioning the conventional portrayal of the Crusades as a series of military campaigns solely focused on the Holy Land, pitting Christianity against Islam. He asserts that this narrow definition may not accurately reflect the complexity of crusading activities during the Middle Ages.

[02:40] William Purkis: "If we look at it from a different perspective, we might gain a truer insight into the medieval mindset."

Redefining the Concept of Crusades

The conversation delves into how modern historiography views the Crusades differently from the traditional narrative. Purkis highlights three key areas where the traditional narrative falls short:

1. Frequency of Crusading Activities
2. Chronology of Crusades
3. Geographical Scope of Crusading Efforts

[04:48] William Purkis: "Modern historiography is beginning to in some cases point to other directions."

Frequency of Crusading

While the traditional narrative emphasizes major crusading expeditions like the First, Second, and Third Crusades, Purkis explains that crusading was a continuous and widespread activity, not limited to these notable campaigns.

[06:41] William Purkis: "It's almost a continuum of activity rather than something that happens in isolated bursts at a large scale."

Chronology of Crusading

Purkis challenges the conventional start and end dates of the Crusades (1095-1291), arguing that crusading efforts extended well beyond this period and were not confined to specific centuries.

[07:01] William Purkis: "Crusading was not something that was limited to those periods."

Geographical Scope

The traditional focus on the Eastern Mediterranean overlooks crusading activities in other regions such as the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Europe. Purkis emphasizes that Latin Christian warriors engaged in various military endeavors across a broader geographical landscape.

[08:44] William Purkis: "There's a vast array of places across the Latin Christian world in which Latin Christian warriors are taking the cross to engage in acts of violence."

The Role of Medieval Historiography

Purkis examines how medieval historians' focus on political and cultural elites has influenced the modern understanding of the Crusades. This elite-centric view has led to the sidelining of numerous smaller crusading efforts that did not involve prominent leaders.

[12:04] William Purkis: "The expeditions that have the greatest attention paid to them were those led by major political figures across the Latin West."

Case Study: Alfonso I of Aragon

To illustrate the complexity of crusading activities, Purkis discusses Alfonso I of Aragon, a significant yet often overlooked figure. Alfonso's campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula were deeply intertwined with the crusading ethos, aiming to create routes to the Holy Land.

[19:21] William Purkis: "Alfonso is not somebody that has the same sort of box office recognition that somebody like Richard the Lionheart does, but he's seeking to put the resources of his kingdom into the crusading cause."

Rethinking Terminology and Perception

The discussion shifts to the terminology used to describe the Crusades. Purkis argues that labeling these events strictly as "Crusades" confines our understanding and fails to capture the broader spectrum of military and devotional activities undertaken by Latin Christians.

[25:14] William Purkis: "We need to think about it as a devotional practice that..."

He suggests adopting a more nuanced framework that views crusading as a multifaceted practice embedded within Western Christendom, rather than a series of isolated conflicts.

[28:51] William Purkis: "It's a movement away from thinking of it as definitive events and more as a movement, this practice which people could participate in and did participate in."

Implications for Modern Understanding

Purkis warns against the oversimplification of the Crusades as a binary clash between Christianity and Islam. He emphasizes that such narratives can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and ignore the diverse interactions between different cultures and religions during the Middle Ages.

[37:01] William Purkis: "There was this thing called the Crusades that were fought between medieval Christians and Muslims. That somehow was a defining mood music."

He advocates for a more comprehensive approach that acknowledges both violent and non-violent interactions, helping to dismantle the "clash of civilizations" narrative prevalent in contemporary discourse.

Conclusion: The Role of Historians Today

In wrapping up, Purkis underscores the importance of historians in unraveling the complexities of the past. By moving beyond traditional frameworks, historians can provide a more accurate and inclusive understanding of the Crusades and their impact on both medieval and modern societies.

[40:50] William Purkis: "The key lesson is to appreciate that complexity and not to be seduced by what appear to be very simplistic narratives that are used to service modern political ends."

Final Thoughts

This episode of the History Extra Podcast invites listeners to reconsider long-held beliefs about the Crusades, encouraging a more nuanced and comprehensive exploration of medieval history. By challenging traditional narratives, Professor William Purkis provides valuable insights that not only enhance our understanding of the past but also inform our perspectives on present-day intercultural relations.

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Produced by Jack Bateman

Transcript

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[Jack Bateman]

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. If you think about the Crusades, you're probably thinking of a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land representing a great battle between the forces of Islam and Christianity. But is this actually a helpful way to view the subject? Looking beyond these campaigns, the historian William Purkis opens the lid on historical scholarship to reveal the wide and complex reality of crusading further in the Middle Ages and considers how, if we look at it from a different perspective, we might gain a truer insight into the medieval mindset. He spoke to Emily Today we are.

[William Purkis]

Going to be completely rethinking crusading scholarship and studies. So to start us off I think it's really important to talk about first, really is what has previously defined what a Crusade is.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I think if you were to ask.

[William Purkis]

Most people, non specialists, maybe even some.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

University students as well, what they understand the Crusades to be, they would think.

[William Purkis]

About this as a sequence of wars fought in the Middle Ages for control of the Holy Land. The Crusades would be a sequence of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Campaigns numbered sequentially fought between two protects.

[William Purkis]

Of protagonists, Christians and Muslims.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

If they're perhaps more familiar with the.

[William Purkis]

Chronology, they might say that it's from the late 11th to the late 13th century.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

But crucially, this would be framed in that kind of traditional understanding as a.

[William Purkis]

Sequence of military efforts to secure the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Conquest and colonization of the Holy Land, either for Christendom or Islam.

[William Purkis]

What's modern historiography's view of this old narrative? How should we define a Crusade now?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Well, everything I've said so far, I.

[William Purkis]

Don'T think there's anybody that would argue.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That all those things were important.

[William Purkis]

So there's very few scholars that would say that the history I've described was not the Crusades.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

There is no question that there was a series of military campaigns that began in the late 11th century to secure the conquest and colonization of the Holy Land, and that the golden era, if.

[William Purkis]

You like, of those sorts of military.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Efforts was during, particularly during the 12th century and then into the 13th century, and that by the end of the 13th century the last remaining Latin Christian controlled territories in the Holy Land had.

[William Purkis]

Been reconquered for Islam. All that is sound where I think.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Modern historiography is beginning to in some cases point to other directions. But in other cases, modern historiography has been sort of pointing some differences out for quite some time, I think probably.

[William Purkis]

In three key areas.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

One would be frequency of crusading, another.

[William Purkis]

Would be the chronology of crusading, and.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

A third would be geography of crusading.

[William Purkis]

So perhaps if I talk about frequency.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

First, I mean, I think again, coming.

[William Purkis]

Back to my every man in the street, if you were to ask the every man in the street, what were the Crusades, they would probably one of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The things they might say is they talk about numbered expeditions. So the First Crusade, the Second Crusade.

[William Purkis]

The Third Crusade, they might also, in.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Talking about the Third Crusade, they might associate that with particular individuals.

[William Purkis]

So Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and so on.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Now again, there were big campaigns in the 1090s, in the 1140s and the 1180s.

[William Purkis]

But where I think modern scholarship is.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Pointing us to is that these are not the only expeditions that were fought.

[William Purkis]

In the Holy Land during this period. So from the very early part of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The 12th century, there are individuals, sometimes.

[William Purkis]

In small groups, sometimes in larger contingents, setting out from the west to the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

East to participate in expeditions that are.

[William Purkis]

Designed to assist with the reconquest or.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The continuing defense of the settlements that are established in the Holy Land by Latin Christians in the era after the First Crusade.

[William Purkis]

So I think the usefulness of the numbered expeditions needs to be called into question because they perhaps lead us into.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Thinking that crusading is something that happens in a big way on an irregular basis. And there's a number of cases in.

[William Purkis]

Point now of crusades happening or individuals taking part as crossed warriors in the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Holy Land from the early 12th century onwards. Actually, it's almost a continuum of activity.

[William Purkis]

Rather than something that happens in isolated bursts at a large scale.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So I think that's the first thing I'd say.

[William Purkis]

The second is about chronology. Once you start thinking about crusading, not.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Just being something that is associated with.

[William Purkis]

Large scale military campaigns, perhaps only organized.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And led by kings or emperors, actually the chronology of crusading activity changes because.

[William Purkis]

1291 is an ending of sorts. But it's by no means the last occasion on which Western Christians take the cross to set up for the Holy.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Land, with a view to securing reconquest.

[William Purkis]

With a view to fighting for the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Defense of Christendom, for the recovery of holy places and so on. In fact, that sort of activity continues.

[William Purkis]

Well into the later Middle Ages and beyond.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So that traditional narrative of 1095-1291 doesn't.

[William Purkis]

Quite work when you start looking at.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The smaller scale expeditions as well. But perhaps most significantly is the question of geography. So in that traditional narrative of 1095-1291.

[William Purkis]

It'S a story about the eastern Mediterranean.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And the Holy Land region, and it's a story that starts in 1095, ends in 1291. But to focus on that excludes a vast amount of other types of crusading activity across the Latin Christian world from the early 12th century onwards. So within a generation of the First Crusade in the 1120s, you have Crusaders fighting in the Iberian Peninsula who are.

[William Purkis]

Very explicitly connecting their activities with the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Activities of the first Crusaders. By the middle of the 12th century, Crusaders are on campaign in northern Europe.

[William Purkis]

In the Baltic region, fighting against pagans. By the turn of the 13th century.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

There are Crusades being authorized against political opponents of the papacy, against heretics in.

[William Purkis]

The south of France, and so on and so forth. So there's a vast array of places across the Latin Christian world in which Latin Christian warriors are taking the cross to engage in acts of violence on.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Behalf of the Church that has a.

[William Purkis]

Kind of connecting tissue between it because.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of the nature of the practices that.

[William Purkis]

They'Re engaged in, the sorts of rituals.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

They'Re involved with, and so on.

[William Purkis]

So the panorama of crusading activity is.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Much broader, both in terms of geography and chronology, than that sort of strict focus on 1095-1291 would allow.

[William Purkis]

Traditionally, what is the canonical Crusade numbering system and what connects these Crusades, and why have we ultimately picked these out as these are the Crusades?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

It's a really good question. I think probably the first thing I'd say in response to that is there is no canon or there is no universally agreed canon of those dates.

[William Purkis]

I think most historians of the Crusades would agree on the firstness of the First Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

There's a recognition that there was something.

[William Purkis]

Distinctive, something unprecedented that took place in the late 1090s. From there, there's probably also a degree.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of agreement among modern historians about the.

[William Purkis]

Dates for the Second Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So in the middle of the 1140s.

[William Purkis]

The Third Crusade, which followed the reconquest.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of Jerusalem in 1187, the Fourth Crusade.

[William Purkis]

In the early 13th century, which leads.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

To the Latin conquest of Constantinople and large parts of the Byzantine Empire. After that, things already get a little bit more contentious.

[William Purkis]

So the Fifth Crusade, preached by Innocent.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

III in the middle of the second decade of the 13th century, focused on Egypt.

[William Purkis]

But one of the main leaders that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Innocent III had in mind for that expedition was Frederick ii, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

[William Purkis]

Now, Frederick doesn't go on Crusade until the late 1220s in the end.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So almost more than a decade after.

[William Purkis]

Innocent III has called for that expedition.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So some historians have said, well, that's a different expedition.

[William Purkis]

Maybe we should call that the Sixth Crusade. Others have said, yeah, but he took his vow at the time of the preaching for the Fifth Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And there's one historian, James Powell, who.

[William Purkis]

Refers to the Crusade of the late 1220s as the final chapter or the last act of the Fifth Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And then because of the sort of slight quirkiness of the numbering there, things from there on out in the later 13th century slightly get more complicated. Are we talking about the seventh crusade.

[William Purkis]

And the eighth crusade, or is it the eighth crusade and the ninth crusade?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Is it the first crusade of St. Louis?

[William Purkis]

These are all sort of bamboozling, different.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Framings as to why these expeditions have.

[William Purkis]

Been of particular note.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I think the answer to that is.

[William Purkis]

That modern historians and by modern I'm.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Really talking about historians who've been writing from the 19th century onwards.

[William Purkis]

They have followed in the footsteps of their medieval predecessors by focusing on those.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Expeditions that had royal or imperial leadership.

[William Purkis]

So if you think about old traditions.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

In medieval history, about thinking about kings.

[William Purkis]

Queens, popes and so on as the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Primary areas of focus for historical research.

[William Purkis]

It'S not massively surprising that the expeditions.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That came to be of greatest interest and have the greatest attention paid to them were those that were led by major political figures across the Latin West.

[William Purkis]

They're the ones that medieval historians in the 12th and 13th centuries were writing.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Texts about because they were seeking to celebrate the deeds of Louis VII or Philip Augustus or Richard the lion art and so on and so forth. And there's a kind of connection between.

[William Purkis]

How modern historians write their histories is.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Inevitably informed by the availability of medieval histories for these things. And so I think the reason that.

[William Purkis]

The canon, such as it is, has become established is because it's symptomatic of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The attention that was paid to political and cultural elites of the Middle Ages, when the historiography of the subject was first being seriously established, and a reflection.

[William Purkis]

Of the fact that that historiography was.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Dependent on the way historians in the Middle Ages were writing about the subject.

[William Purkis]

So if we're focusing on these numbered crusades, these ones that have been preached or led by those in the nobility or in the upper classes, upper echelons of society, what impact does this have on our view of the significance of crusading in the everyday lives of the everyday man? In the Middle Ages?

I think it leads us to thinking.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That crusading was an exclusively aristocratic and.

[William Purkis]

Senior, as you say, a senior nobility.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

It was an undertaking that was attractive to that elite section of society. Now, there can be no question that.

[William Purkis]

Crusading was an expensive activity.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

It was also an activity that enabled the medieval aristocracy to demonstrate to their prowess, both in military terms but also in cultural terms. Another aspect to this is that because.

[William Purkis]

Of the nature of the medieval histories, the medieval sources that focus on elites, it leads us into sort of where there are gaps in the evidence or less substantial evidence for the interim periods between, say, the First Crusade and the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Second Crusade, there's perhaps an assumption that there's less activity going on during that period. Whereas, in fact, if you look at.

[William Purkis]

All manner of other types of evidence.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

From documentary evidence to pilgrim narratives, there are people from different points on the.

[William Purkis]

Social spectrum who are undertaking expeditions during that period.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

They may not have grand histories written about them. They may be little more than Footnotes or the equivalent of footnotes in the.

[William Purkis]

Medieval narrative histories of the period.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

But to focus on the elites who.

[William Purkis]

Participated in the numbered expeditions is to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I think, to distort the wide ranging nature of participation in crusading as a devotional practice.

[William Purkis]

Did medieval people see these campaigns as a distinct type of warfare that needed a special label or even distinct campaigns?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The question of terminology is a really interesting one.

[William Purkis]

We talk about, we have been talking about here, and scholars are familiar with talking about the idea of a crusade. But it's striking that there is no medieval term that immediately maps onto that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Label to denote a particular type of warfare.

[William Purkis]

There are various terms that are used.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

In the medieval sources for the Crusades.

[William Purkis]

But there isn't a specific noun to denote a crusade. There are crusaders.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I mean, the most common noun there is cruce signatus, which roughly translates to.

[William Purkis]

An individual who is signed with the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Cross or a cross bearer, which common use would just be crusader.

[William Purkis]

There's all manner of terminology associated with war, the Lord's war, war for the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Holy Land, the business of God.

[William Purkis]

And there's all manner of terminology associated.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

With journeying and pilgrimage. But one of the things that's striking.

[William Purkis]

About that is they're not specifically linked.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

To moments in time. And there's very slight evidence that individuals.

[William Purkis]

Were joining dots between numbered expeditions.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I mean, in the early 12th century there's a, a chronicler called Aldrich Vitalis, who, within a decade of the conquest of Jerusalem, is talking about what he.

[William Purkis]

Calls the third expedition to Jerusalem. So he's clearly seeing it as a sequence.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

He's presumably thinking about what we would.

[William Purkis]

Call the First Crusade as the first.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

He's presumably thinking about what is often.

[William Purkis]

Referred to as the third wave of the first crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So the 1101 crusade as the second expedition.

[William Purkis]

And he's talking about an expedition led.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

By Bowman, one of the leaders of.

[William Purkis]

The First Crusade, who has a repeat.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Expedition in 1107, 1108. He's talking about that as the third expedition to Jerusalem. But for the most part there isn't.

[William Purkis]

That equivalent sequencing in medieval evidence that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

There is in modern historiography. And there certainly isn't a universal term to denote crusade as a special type of violence. That's a post medieval creation.

[William Purkis]

When did the idea of the Crusades come about?

The idea of the Crusades is really a relatively recent creation.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

It's a product of historical thinking. From the 18th century onwards, we start to see histories of the Crusades and other linguistic terms with the same idea in French and German appear there are.

[William Purkis]

Historians before that who are starting to think about sequencing these activities, but they don't always use that terminology. So the earliest history of the Crusades.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

In English is written by a Cambridge clergyman in the early 17th century, Thomas Fuller.

[William Purkis]

He writes a book called A History.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of the Holy War.

[William Purkis]

So he frames it as a singular rather than a plural.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And in the course of writing that.

[William Purkis]

Hit story of the Holy War, he.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Talks about voyages and what we would call, or what is most commonly called.

[William Purkis]

The First Crusade, he calls the first voyage. And then he provides a kind of chronology at the end of his book.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

In which he sets out many voyages, which in many ways are more similar to what I've been suggesting here. We think about in terms of those smaller expeditions as being ones that we focus on or that we don't obscure or don't overlook.

[William Purkis]

So he's writing in English in the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Early 17th century about voyages, about the.

[William Purkis]

Holy War histories of the Crusades.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

As the Crusades don't really start to become a feature of the historiographical landscape until the 18th century, what seemed to.

[William Purkis]

Have been suggested as we've been talking is that if we focus solely on these number Crusades, that people fall through the gaps and we then get a partial understanding of the medieval experience of crusading. So could you expand on this and tell us about some figures or anecdotes about people who have fallen through the gaps and what they might tell us about Crusades?

One of the most important examples to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Me of early crusading enthusiasm from the early part of the 12th century is the case of Alfonso I of Aragon, so a king in the Iberian Peninsula, who.

[William Purkis]

So he's one of the elites.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

No question that he's one of the elites.

[William Purkis]

But if you were to look him.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Up in all manner of sort of.

[William Purkis]

General histories of crusades to the Holy.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Land, he might get a brief mention. But I would suspect in many cases he's not mentioned at all, because he.

[William Purkis]

Never fights in the Holy Land, he never gets that far. But it's really clear from looking at what he's doing from the early 1120s.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Onwards that he thinks of himself, he.

[William Purkis]

Thinks of the military efforts that his fellow Aragonese warriors are engaged in. He thinks of all this within the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Context of the deeds of the First Crusade. So from the early 1120s onwards, we've got evidence from the papacy, actually, that.

[William Purkis]

The same spiritual privileges that were offered to those who took part in the First Crusade in the 1090s were being.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Extended to members of the warrior aristocracy fighting against Islam in the Iberian peninsula. So from at least the early 1120s onwards, we can talk about authentic crusading in Iberia. What's really interesting about Alfonso, though, is although he's fighting in Iberia, his outlook is towards Jerusalem.

[William Purkis]

So he leads a number of military.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Campaigns in the middle and late of.

[William Purkis]

The 1120s, deep into Al Andalus, so deep into the Muslim ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And in doing so, he establishes a series of military organizations to garrison the areas that he's reconquered as he's doing so.

[William Purkis]

And from the documents that we have relating to the foundation of these garrisons, we get a sense of what his.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Strategy is, the grand strategy.

[William Purkis]

He talks about how he is seeking to open a route to the Holy.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Sepulchre, much like the first Crusaders.

[William Purkis]

So his thinking is clearly that he.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Wishes to restore Christian control to the Iberian Peninsula, open up Christian control to large parts of North Africa, perhaps attack.

[William Purkis]

Fatimid Egypt from the west, and then.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Get to Jerusalem from the south. And the effort that goes into that, to pursuing that aim is really quite striking. And he has a number of fairly significant military achievements. And chroniclers, when they're looking on note.

[William Purkis]

The activity that he's participating in, they.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Note who's helping him.

[William Purkis]

Some of the cases there are people.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Who are fight, he's fighting alongside are themselves veterans of the First Crusade, and they wear crosses. And one of the narrative sources for this campaign talks about these warriors as cruce signati. So they're people who are signed with the cross, just like the first Crusaders were. And then when he dies in 1134.

[William Purkis]

His will sets out some quite dramatic terms. He wants to leave his kingdom to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The three organizations in the Holy Land that are absolutely essential to the crusading cause. He wants to leave it to the.

[William Purkis]

Holy Sepulcher, so the devotional site that's.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The target of crusading activity.

[William Purkis]

He wants to leave it to the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Hospitallers, one of the organizations that at that point has been established to enable pilgrims to travel to the Holy Sepulcher, to the Holy Land, and to provide them with welfare and medical care when they arrive in the Holy City.

[William Purkis]

And he wants to leave the kingdom to the Templars.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So that organization of warrior Monks, established about 10, 15 years before the date of his will, who are dedicated to fighting for the defense and opening up of pilgrim roads and the holy places in the East. So Alfonso is not somebody that has that same sort of box office recognition that somebody like Richard the Lionheart does.

[William Purkis]

But arguably he is seeking to put the resources of his kingdom, to plow.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The resources of his kingdom, to dedicate his effort into the crusading cause in.

[William Purkis]

Very much the same way that Richard.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Would later do 50 years or so later. And because he's in Iberia, because he doesn't actually ever get anywhere close to Jerusalem, I think there's a sort of omission of his contribution in ways that.

[William Purkis]

I think distorts the history of the period.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

If we're looking to number expeditions to leave Alfonso out of that seems to like we're overlooking a major part of how the idea of crusading was developing in the early 12th century.

[William Purkis]

So this seems to almost get to the crux of it, really. If what we associate as the Crusades is this 200 years war or a clash between Islam and Christianity, talking specifically about the Holy Land, should we stop talking about it as the Crusades in inverted commas? That is?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Yeah, I mean, this is something I've wondered quite a lot about.

[William Purkis]

I think if we continue with using.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The idea of the Crusades, we're re.

[William Purkis]

Inscribing that idea, which I think most serious historians of the subject would now.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

See as more limiting than helpful, that this is a story of 200 years of conquest between Christianity and Islam in the near east and Eastern Mediterranean. In the Holy Land, of course, histories.

[William Purkis]

Of the Crusades could well be expanded.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

To include the other parts of the Latin Christian medieval world that I've spoken about.

[William Purkis]

They could be expanded chronologically. Whether that would be enough of a.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Shift to get people to think differently about the subject or to think our way out of the First Crusade, the Second Crusade, the Third Crusade and so on, I'm not sure. I mean, one of the things that I think is useful when approaching the subject of what I would certainly prefer we called crusading is to think of it as a devotional practice, a military devotional practice that was established and matured within Western Christendom, within Latin Christian Europe. It's a product of the center of.

[William Purkis]

The heartlands of Christendom. It's not a product of the periphery.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Crusading doesn't originate as a practice in the Holy Land. It originates in response to circumstances in the Holy Land and perceptions of circumstances in the Holy Land. But it's a product of Europe. And I think we need to think about it as a devotional practice that.

[William Purkis]

When contemporaries, in the early 12th century.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

When Latin Christian writers were trying to.

[William Purkis]

Work out what it was they were writing about, work out their subject, as we've already said, they didn't have a word Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So what did they talk about?

[William Purkis]

Well, they talked about a new pilgrimage.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That was one of the things that featured. They compared it with the practice of pilgrimage. In some cases, they compared the undertaking of the crusader to a bit like being a monk. So the most common parallels in terms of devotional practice were with pilgrimage and monasticism.

[William Purkis]

And I've wondered, as a thought experiment.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

What it would be like if we.

[William Purkis]

Sort of followed in that line and.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Were to think about writing histories of medieval monasticism, say, by numbering monasteries or numbering monastic foundations or religious orders and so on. I think we quickly think that was illogical. A book, a history of monasticism called the Monasteries would just seem more limiting than helpful. So if we think about crusading as a practice that originates in the late 11th century, that is undertaken on a large scale, so those expeditions of the 1090s, the 1140s, the 1180s, and so on and so forth, but that also is not a practice that is limited to those periods.

[William Purkis]

But actually, from a very early stage, people from across Western Europe could make the decision to take the cross.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And they might go to the Holy Land, they might go to the Iberian Peninsula, they might go to northern Europe.

[William Purkis]

They might choose to fight against heretics in southern France.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

But the unifying act that brings all.

[William Purkis]

Those things together is the act of cross taking.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And the willingness, I suppose, to engage.

[William Purkis]

In acts of violence for spiritually motivated causes. The willingness to subject the body to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Suffering, the willingness to even the prospect of death, that's a unifying theme. If you look at the texts for preaching and so on from the 12th and 13th centuries.

[William Purkis]

It's the risk, the danger of crusading.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That comes across so commonly. And it's something that can be done.

[William Purkis]

In lots of different places at lots of different times.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

It is not time limited or place limited in a way that histories of.

[William Purkis]

The Crusades would seem to suggest.

So it's this movement away from thinking of it as definitive events and more as a movement. This practice which people could participate in and did participate in.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Yeah, exactly. And I think there are other ways.

[William Purkis]

In which people could demonstrate their support for crusading and the ideals of the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Crusading movement by undertaking acts of prayer.

[William Purkis]

Making donations, participating in ritual processions, the veneration of relics.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Crusading develops this whole kind of range of different types of devotional practice that.

[William Purkis]

Was designed to support the military activity.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of those who were fighting further afield.

[William Purkis]

Whether we would call those people crusaders.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Or not is obviously open to debate and interpretation.

[William Purkis]

I think they would have seen themselves as Supporters of a cause, of a.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Devotional cause to restore Latin Christian control, maintain Latin Christian control over holy places and things, be that in the near east, be that in the Iberian Peninsula, and so on and so forth.

[William Purkis]

So this new definition, if we were to call it, encapsulates all forms of devotional practice surrounding crusading, then. But what about the experiences of Muslims and Jews? Where do they fit into this picture?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That's a very good question.

[William Purkis]

So one of the features of the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Narrative of the Crusades is that it's.

[William Purkis]

Wars that are fought between two sets of rival combatants.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I suppose the analogy might be something like the Hundred Years War between England and France or lots of other modern conflicts. One of the benefits of trying to.

[William Purkis]

Think differently about crusading versus the Crusades is to situate crusading as a product.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of Latin Christian devotional ways of thinking, ways of acting. If we focus on crusading as a product of Latin Christianity, we can then actually look at the Islamic traditions as.

[William Purkis]

A distinctive thing as well.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

A distinctive feature of Islamic devotional practice, devotional activity, a shorthand that's sometimes used.

[William Purkis]

Is counter crusade, that the people like.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Nur Al Din and Saladin and so.

[William Purkis]

On are the leaders of the counter Crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

My concern about that is that the risk of it flattening the distinctiveness of the Islamic experience and almost assuming that.

[William Purkis]

Approaches ideas of holy war in one.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Religious, medieval religious tradition, Christianity immediately map neatly onto ideas of holy war in another. And I think if we were to.

[William Purkis]

Isolate crusading as a practice undertaken by.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Latin Christians and then do a kind of proper comparative study of different approaches to religious violence in the Islamic tradition.

[William Purkis]

That might show more nuance than the flattening of Crusades and counter crusades.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Sometimes a shorthand you might hear is.

[William Purkis]

The Muslim fighters in the Crusades. Well, not really.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I mean, Muslims aren't crusaders. They're not counter crusaders. They don't buy into any of that kind of discourse. They're defending territories that from their perception.

[William Purkis]

Have been invaded by Westerners. But again, there's no medieval Arabic term for crusade.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

In much the same way, there are invasions, there are invasions of Westerners that.

[William Purkis]

Need to be repelled and fought back against.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So I think I'd want to try.

[William Purkis]

To assert the distinctiveness of crusading as a Latin Christian practice that clearly has.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Significant impacts on Jewish communities within the Latin west and that has significant impacts on people from other faith communities within and beyond Western Europe. It creates an opportunity to study Islamic approaches to religious violence on its own terms as well.

[William Purkis]

This is Clearly a really difficult, controversial debate to have. Now, one thing I was really interested about, what you said earlier was about the reinsertion of crusading as a practice into medieval discourse as a whole. In that way, would you rather see crusading scholarship almost fit into medieval scholarship? Should we be retiring all words related to crusading altogether?

So one of the curiosities about the subject more generally is the way that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The Crusades is often seen to sit apart from the concerns of specialists in Western medieval history.

[William Purkis]

Crusades is something that some people did.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

But it happened over there. And it's something that is of concern to specialists of the histories of Crusades, but not to, I don't know, histories of religious culture, histories of Western political thought.

[William Purkis]

Yet actually, the practice of crusading was.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Totally embedded in so many aspects of Latin Christian political, religious, social culture, social history, that I think carving them out distinguish, differentiating them in that way is just unhelpful, because crusaders were products of the society that they came from, and that society was principally Latin Christianity in the West.

[William Purkis]

And my preference would always be to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

See crusading as a product of the society that generated it.

[William Purkis]

And enthusiasm for crusading, enthusiasm for the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Defense of the Holy Land, for the acquisition of sacred objects, relics from the Holy Land could be found across Western Europe from the late 11th century onwards. It's not something that can be easily carved out without misrepresenting the history of crusading as a practice, or without misrepresenting the history of Western Christendom more generally.

[William Purkis]

As for the question about whether we.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Retire terminology associated with the Crusades, you know, there are various cases in which historians have tried to change the way in which we think about big things from the past, to change the terminology we use to describe certain aspects of.

[William Purkis]

The medieval experience or.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Or earlier histories, later histories. I think what I would want to do is to encourages us to be critical about the terminology we use and.

[William Purkis]

Know what we mean when we say.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

And think carefully about how. If we use a certain set of.

[William Purkis]

Terminology of the Crusades, what is the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Baggage that goes with that or the word magic? So what does that conjure up for our audiences when we use those phrases?

[William Purkis]

How can we encourage our audiences to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Think differently by thinking about different types.

[William Purkis]

Of terminology, different framings for the subject.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

To encourage a fresh approach to the history of the period?

[William Purkis]

With that in mind, why do you think it's so important that we rethink the Crusades? What are the potential consequences of following the traditional outlook of crusading? I gather it has some quite toxic implications.

First thing to say by way of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Response is that traditional framing is one that is out of step with modern historiography, for all the reasons we've discussed. It's a framing that borrows from older reference points, from older approaches to a subject that focuses on political elites. It's one that focuses on the Holy Land rather than other parts of the medieval world.

[William Purkis]

So I think at a base level, a broader approach to the subject ensures.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That we are actually doing the subject justice in terms of understanding the practice of the phenomenon that we're describing.

[William Purkis]

The broader concern I have about that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Framing in our contemporary moment is the.

[William Purkis]

Presumption that there was this thing called the Crusades that were fought between medieval Christians and Muslims. That somehow was a defining mood music.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

For the period more generally, that risk.

[William Purkis]

Leading us to think that all contacts between Christians and Muslims in this period.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Were governed by confrontation, were determined by acts of religious violence. Now, of course, so much of what.

[William Purkis]

I've said has been focusing on acts.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Of violence, but that doesn't mean that all contacts between Christians and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean world were hostile.

[William Purkis]

The bigger risk is, too, is that.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

There'S a sort of determinism about it, that it leads us to thinking that contacts between Islam and the west have.

[William Purkis]

Always been, and perhaps must always be characterized by hostility and violence. So we can see from social media, from the news, the ways in which the crusading past is so frequently weaponized to tell a story about the supposed.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Inevitability of conflict between Islam and the West. A kind of clash of civilizations narrative, to put it crudely.

[William Purkis]

The perception that it's always been this.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Way, so it always must be this way. I think, for one thing, a broader approach to understanding crusading as practice shows.

[William Purkis]

That crusading was not something that was.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Defined by confrontation with Islam. Muslims were certainly among those that Latin.

[William Purkis]

Christian Crusaders fought in the Middle Ages. But crusading was not defined by the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Idea of Christian warfare with Islam specifically.

[William Purkis]

It was a product of a militaristic devotional culture through which individuals sought to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Demonstrate their prowess, their devotion, by engaging in acts of violence and being willing.

[William Purkis]

To subject themselves to acts of violence.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

So in some respects, the nature of the enemy which Crusaders are fighting is.

[William Purkis]

Less significant than the act of violence.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

That the Crusader is willing to undertake and be subjected to. Approaching the Crusades as a clash of civilizations, as a conflict between Christianity and.

[William Purkis]

Islam is therefore an outdated approach to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The subject that risks being used and abused by those who would seek to.

[William Purkis]

Use the past to make arguments about.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

The present that are specious and ill informed.

[William Purkis]

Taking all that into consideration, do you think, therefore, that medieval historians have a really valuable, vital role to play in helping us understand the past and also navigating really complicated situations today?

[Mint Mobile Representative]

I think complexity is the key word there.

[William Purkis]

Reducing the history of the crusades to.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

A 200 year conflict between Christianity and Islam in the Holy Land is to reduce complexity almost beyond belief. It's a much more complicated subject than that. Medieval historians can help us to navigate that complexity, both in terms of showing why sort of the old approach to the subject, whilst having a validity, is part of a much bigger and more complicated story, but also by showing that.

[William Purkis]

Violence, whilst it was one means of.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Intercultural contact in the Middle Ages, was.

[William Purkis]

By no means the only circumstances in.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Which Christians and Muslims and Christians and other faith communities came into contact with one another in the Middle Ages. And I think perhaps insofar as there.

[William Purkis]

Are lessons from the past for the.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Present, I think the key lesson is to appreciate that complexity and not to.

[William Purkis]

Be seduced by what appear to be.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Very simplistic narratives that are used to service modern political ends.

[Jack Bateman]

That was William Purkis, professor of Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. If you want to find out more about William's research, be sure to head over to the university's YouTube page where you can watch his inaugural lecture on the subject. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.