The Deeds of the Franks - Lecture notes 11, 12 PDF

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These notes are from Fact and Fiction in the Middle Ages with Stefan Vander Elst....

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The Deeds of the Franks ● ●

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A first-hand eyewitness account of the crusades Crusades ○ Now, we recognize that the 200 years of crusades was a period of terrible suffering ○ Deeds of the Franks gives us a first-row seat to all of this action ○ 1095: Pope gives a speech at the Clairmont of France ■ Five accounts of the speech written 10-12 years later, and are all very different from each other ■ Approaches to Constantinope was open to Celtic Turks ■ They needed help from the Pope; used this speech to help Alexios against the Turkish (help for fellow Christians) ● Greeks were no longer Catholic, they split from the churches, turned it into help from all Christians ■ Had own motivations for appealing to the West ● Wanted to do away with the violence that was ripping western Europe apart ■ Consequences of that speech ● Immediate response: popular response--people who took most to this author ● Groups gather together and found the religious other living among them ○ Lots of anti-semetic stuff; Jewish communities are destroyed, possessions are taken ○ Some make it to Constantinople and into Turkey, where they are completely annihilated ● 2; early popular crusades come to nothing ○ Would have been the end of it if those had been the only ones going on ○ Those people weren’t prepared and died in Asia minor ■ No kings involved, popular movement to go to the middle east ○ But the second wave of crusaders were professional military things ○ 3 years of almost continuous warfare ■ Crusades end and they establish four kingdoms Author: present at all of these battles ○ What do we know about him? ■ Not a great noble, doesn’t even write his own name ■ He is educated in Latin--wealthy ● Not a priest because he doesn’t know the Bible, doesn’t have it anywhere near--he just paraphrases it ○ What does he give you most detail of? ■ Always gives you great details of how battles are shaped up and charged ■ He was an educated knight--one who could read and write ● In who’s army was he? ○ Bohemond of Taranto ○ Goes to the middleeast in his company ○ Eventually this guy won’t go any further--anonymous author then changes allegiance ■ In some point he says “we who stayed behind,” instead of “our Christians” ■ Lived through this gruesome campaign and died shortly after How did the text get so popular in Europe? ○ Because Bohemond came back ○ Used to justify more crusades Opinions and prejudices ○ 1: turns origin of crusade upside-down

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He says there was an outpouring of outward enthusiasm that even the Pope felt it and then gave a speech ■ Crusade becomes before the speech ■ A great wave of feeling that the Pope has ■ Why does he say people went and crusaded? ● They believed that they were following in the footsteps of Christ ● Suffer for  your people; the language of suffering is immediately at the foreground ○ Crusades become suffering for the right reasons ● You must suffer for your overlords→ Roland & knighthood that develops in the Song of Roland ○ To prove yourself a good Christian, you must suffer for God ■ Keeps with ideas of real feudal overlords ■ Idea is based on suffering for Christ ■ Also, if you fight for god and get stuff, it’s yours ○ Makes one nationality that doesn’t exist ■ Puts people in footsteps of Charlemagne--as if they are reborn as him Emperor ○ Relentlessly devious guy; always wants to do the crusader wrong ■ Always leaves them without support ■ WHY? They were supposed to help Alexius to the Turks ● What does the emperor make the Christian lords do? ○ To swear fealty to him; to ensure his protection--because he was supposedly so threatened by Bohemond ■ Why does he want them to be legally subject to them? Why does he want them to swear an oath of allegiance: if he is really the leader, he gets whatever they conquer ● If they are his subjects, whatever they conquer becomes his ■ They won’t sign it because they aren’t willing to surrender their conquests, they want to keep it for themselves--don’t just want to help Eastern Christians, they want to conquer land ■ They want him to look like the bad guy so that they look like good people ○ Next campaign is against the Eastern Roman empire ■ Propaganda to make some people look worse; emperor needs to look bad so that Bohemond can continue to take over empires ■ Bohemond is constantly telling people to not rob, but then they steal people’s donkeys ● Always the wise guy who shows up in the nick of time to save everyone Starving, suffering ○ Everyone is starving--by doing that, they are doing what they are supposed to do for God ■ If they die by starvation, they are martyrs for Christ ○ Hunger leads to one of the most problematic parts of this political text ■ As they go back and forth through the path on Jerusalem, they come into North Western Syria ■ 80: the hunger that they suffered turns utterly devastating ● They ripped up the bodies of the dead and ate it; cannibalism! ● Not likely that the author was actually there--probably got this from someone else--so why would he include this detail ○ They make it so obvious that they eat the dead ○ Cannibalism is beyond the pale ○ Trauma: some things that he has seen are horrifying ■ Professional soldier for the longest time ○ It was not done just out of necessity but also as a tactic

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Ate the Muslim dead to show that they shouldn’t be messed with Wasn’t just a military campaign against military targets, but also as a terror tactic ■ 15: they behead Muslims and sling heads into the city to cause more terror ● Inhumane; meant to demoralize the opponent ● Idea of crusade and cannibalism becomes a literary trope ■ Muslims come out to Antioch to bury their dead, Christians dig them up and decapitate them just to show what they are capable of The first crusade is riddled with moments of absolute horror Trauma cuts both ways

Turks ○ How are they described? Does anything strike you? ○ 91?: Turks do not adhere to Christian ideals ■ Turks could be the best soldiers ever if only they were Christian; they adhere to the wrong fate ● Like the Song of Roland ■ How literature shapes people’s imaginations ■ How many kinds of Muslims are there in his opinion? ● 20: interprets one group of turks as 20 different peoples ○ 49: an immense force of pagans ● Echoes song of Roland--one Frankish people opposing Islamic armies of mostly made-up peoples ● What this guy sees and interprets is already shaped by literature ○ This is a warrior whose imagination of the other is shaped by literary sources ○ Ideal feudal relationship with his lord and God ○ Image of the Muslim here is quite strange; here Christians are invading lands ○ 33: even though the Christians are invading, the Muslims are described as people who are attacking the Christians to enslave them ■ Describes the victim as the perpetrator ■ A remarkable piece that shapes reality ■ This man chose to identify the Muslims in this way--easier for his audience to understand ● In addition to being a history, it’s a remarkable organization Class Notes 2: ● Antioch: becomes interesting in another way--gruesome details ○ Different from siege of Jerusalem--where they flung heads into the city ○ Stages ■ Siege ● They are there for 8 months--almost a third of their campaign ● Being in Syria during the winter sucks! Extremely unpleasant--they are stuck right in the middle ○ They are hungry and very cold ○ “The Armenians and Syrians, seeing that our men had come back with scarcely any supplies, took counsel together and went over the mountains by paths which they knew, making careful inquiries and buying up corn and provisions…” (33). ○ 41: they had to shoot them whether they liked it or not ■ What is his opinion of them? He doesn’t trust them at all!

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They have no support from this population--they are out to charge an extortion of food prices or even fight them ● Strange sense of isolation He is one of the only ones to talk about how they ate people ● Talks about the horrors of this war ● Can’t even get down the street without walking on people’s bodies Army ● Starting to crack psychologically ● Try to get out but they can’t ● People start telling the people in the harbor that those in Antioch are basically doomed--people take the food with them ● 62: “so terrible was the  famine that men boiled and ate the leaves of figs, vines, thistles and all kinds of tree” ● How can you tell the are psychologically cracking? ○ They are deserting--scared of the battle by the previous day ■ The French noble man flees to emperor and the emperor turns away as well ○ People have had enough--psychological breaking point ■ (61): they are running away and also refusing to fight ● Months and months of suffering, fighting, hunger, and cold--army is about to dissolve Fire; supernatural ● And then: they see a fire shoot out of the sky and hit the city ● People start seeing saints ● Stephen sees christ (59) ● 60: Peter sees visions of St. Andrew telling him to start digging ○ No there are lots of visions ○ 66: Dig up spirit ○ Theological validity becomes reiterated ■ They are all slowly poisoning themselves ● People are about to give up/to die, but then there are divine manifestations telling them that they are doing the right thing ○ Galvanizing to these near-death knights ■ Gets them to be less terrified--gets their act together ● Bohemond sets the city on fire ○ It’s hard to hide in a house when you don’t have a house ○ And when they try to take them down again, they win ○ They get out by the skin of their teeth ■ They are lucky ■ Make use of all sorts of political fractures ● They are victorious and they defeat the army of Carbooka ○ Completely made-up ○ Imagination that he grows into ○ He uses this scene to talk about the Muslims ■ What he says is in keeping with 49

Women ○ Franks are morally upright and avoid women--the women basically just brought them water one time ○ The Muslims are morally lax, rich, and they interact with women in a sexual way Karbuqa’s Mother ○ Why is she apart of this? ■ She starts saying things that the Franks want to hear

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Become Witchy--she has just a divine vision--witchy ○ She becomes a rhetorical device--the anonymous puts his truths into her mouth ■ She says that they are going to lose ■ She doesn’t just say that the Christians are better--a Muslim tells a Muslim man that their land belongs to the Christians ● If they are the heirs of Christ, they should get the inheritance of Christ--the Middle East ○ Odd figure there to ridicule ■ She turns Bohemond into almost a mythological figure ■ At this point in time, the ownership of land is an issue that is extensively discussed. Land possession ○ We have a move away from a campaign on spiritual salvation and a campaign to conquer land ■ Karbuqa is now a trespasser on Christian land ■ They are dividing the Middle East up Who does he serve? ○ Raymond Remainder of chronicle is very strange ○ Cannibalism comes before the peace treaty part ○ They gave themselves the image of monsters--better to not fight monsters ■ Enemy becomes a different kind of peoples; from Muslims to Arabs--historically accurate ■ When they conquered Jerusalem, they are actually fighting the enemy of the Turks ■ These were ambassadors from these Egyptians--wanted to strike some deal with them Siege and chapter on Jerusalem is minimal: ○ Four horrors associated with it than any war of the glory ○ Culmination of the crusade--spends more time describing the horrors being perpetrated than the fact that they liberate the true cross He writes a first-hand account about the first crusade but he foregrounds the things that are close to him ○ Intriguing to see a gay say so much about himself and say so little about himself ○ Trying to be a well-rounded chronicle, but who he glorifies and who he resents gives you an idea of what kind of person he is ○ After they besiege Jerusalem, everything is great ■ No psychological death in Jerusalem ■ A deeply personal history of a person we do not know ■ Sets in motion events that rapidly spiral out of control ● Crusades against Christians

Extra Credit: For a story that deals with the conquest of the holy places, it spends little time at these places. The entire siege and conquest of Jerusalem is one book, while the siege of Antioch is nearly 50 pages. What does that tell us about the author as such? How does the brutality affect the perpetrator; like how the author thinks about cannibalism when he isn’t even there. This lengthy rendition concerning the siege of Antioch works through the brutality of the Frank’s fighting. The author spends time reviewing the unending piles of corpses that litter the ground, and goes onto describe the consumption of these dead bodies. He reasons that the men could not “satisfy their needs,” so they “ripped up the bodies of the dead [... and] cut the dead flesh into slices and cooked it to eat” (30). This gruesome scene reveals the trauma that the Crusades inflicted upon both sides of its war as the author relives the brutality his side conducted. However, he reduces the “pagans,” as he refers to non-Christian peoples, into an other category, distancing himself from their humanity. He describes these human bodies as “Saracen corpses,” which neglects the living forms they once were (80). In his denial of humanity, the author reduces the Saracens into a

non-human category, allowing the Christians to consume their flesh. Perhaps his lengthy descriptions of Antioch imply a doubt of this logic, challenging his notions of an other category, which has placed Saracens into a sub-human realm. ○ ○

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“No corner of the city was clear of Saracen corpses, and one could scarcely go about the city streets except by treading on the dead bodies of the Saracens” (80). “While we were there some of our men could not satisfy their needs, either because of the long stay or because they were so hungry, for there was no plunder to be had outside the walls. So they ripped up the bodies of the dead, because they used to find bezants hidden in their entrails, and others cut the dead flesh into slices and cooked it to eat” (80). Almost recalls eating the body of Christ; they are literally eating flesh in this moment They are tearing flesh as they would tear bread “So great were the slaughter of pagans and the bloodshed that even the stream which flowed into the city ran red and stained the water in the citizens’ tanks, for which reason they were full of grief and lamentation, and so frightened that none of them dared to go outside the city gate” (85).

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Notes on reading Book I ● “For even the pope set out across the Alps as soon as he could, with his archbishops, bishops, abbots and priests, and he began to deliver eloquent sermons and to preach” (1). ○ So people got excited about Christianizing others and then the pope is like oh yeah you should do that ● 5: the Turks are the perpetrators as they attack the Christians in their sleep ● “‘You scoundrels, why do you kill Christ’s people and mine? I have no quarrel with your emperor!’ They answered, ‘We cannot do anything else. We are the emperor’s command, and whatever he orders, that we must do’” (9). ○ Bohemond just lets them go ● A very brief book Book II ● Bohemond is a good leader; he tells his men to return the stolen animals ● Outside emperors are bad “Then the emperor, who was troubled in mind and fairly seething with rage, was planning how to entrap these Christian knights by fraud and cunning, but by God’s grace neither he nor his men found place or time to harm them” (11). ● Bohemond and others refuse to take the oath ● They use god to justify taking over towns ● Again, another brief summary Book III ● Technical language of war ● Talks about women (19) bringing soldiers water--first mention of them really ○ “‘If any of you wants to fight today, let him come and play the man’” (19). ● Book IV Book V Book VI Book VII Book VIII Book IX: ● Karbuqa’s response to the weak swords he is presented with

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Tells his men to make more babies to fight the Christians “All men shall give themselves up to wantonness and lust, and take their pleasure in getting many sons who shall fight bravely against the Christians and defeat them” (52). ■ He wants to take back Antioch, Syria, Rum, Bulgaria and Apulia ○ His mother tells him not to go to war: “‘O sweetest son,’ replied his mother, ‘the Christians alone cannot fight with you--indeed I know that they are unworthy to meet you in battle--but their god fights for them every day, and keeps them day and night under his protection, and watches over them as a shepherd watches over his flock, and suffers no people to hurt or vex them, and if anyone wishes to fight them, this same god of theirs will smite them, as he says by the mouth of David the prophet’” (53-54). ■ So she is afraid of their religion ■ She thinks that this god will impose his wrath upon her son ■ Now she says that the Koran claimed that the Christians would come and defeat them ● She consulted the stars and found that the Christians would defeat them Turkish brutality: “ At that moment the Turks arrived and killed everyone whom they could catch. They burned those ships which were still in the mouth of the river and took their cargoes” (57). ○ The Franks had to eat their horses because they were so hungry There is a great fire that nearly destroys all of the churches--St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s (61) Shut the Franks into the city of Antioch ○ “These blasphemous enemies of God kept us so closely shut up in the city of Antioch that many of us died of hunger” (62). ■ They ate horses, donkeys, fig lives, thistles, and trees ○ Stephen told them he would get help, but he never did (63) They ask the Turks “were killing and bullying the servants of Christ” (66). ○ The Persians want the Christians out ○ The Franks pray to God to help them, and believe that they are “protected by the Sign of the Cross” (68). ○ “Then we called upon the true and living God and rode against them, joining battle in the name of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Sepulchre, and by God’s help we defeated them” (70).

Book X ● Celebrate their victory and go the castle Tell-Mannas ○ “They captured all the peasants of the district and killed those who would not be christened, but those who preferred to acknowledge Christ they spared” (73). ● Some priest dies ● Raymond, count of St Gilles, takes over al-Bara and kills a bunch of people--including children!--and brings the town back to Christianity ○ He would not give al-Bara to Bohemond because he didn’t want to break his oath to the emperor ● They take over Saracen ○ “No corner of the city was clear of Saracen corpses, and one could scarcely go about the city streets except by treading on the dead bodies of the Saracens” (80). ○ “While we were there some of our men could not satisfy their needs, either because of the long stay or because they were so hungry, for there was no plunder to be had outside the walls. So they ripped up the bodies of the dead, because they used to find bezants hidden in their entrails, and others cut the dead flesh into slices and cooked it to eat” (80). ■ Almost recalls eating the body of Christ; they are literally eating flesh in this moment ■ They are tearing flesh as they would tear bread ○ And then he spends a long time talking about the food they stole from the peasants ■ Lots of food and emptiness because they people have left ● Ride against Tripoli ○ “So great were the slaughter of pagans and the bloodshed that even the stream which flowed into the city ran red and stained the water in the citizens’ tanks, for which reason they were full

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of grief and lamentation, and so frightened that none of them dared to go outside the city gate” (85). Lots of sieges where they run out of food Also, the way that they call onto Christ when they attack is interesting ○ “When the pagans saw the Christian knights they split up into two bands...