Rethinking the Crusade environment in the light of the Arab Spring

Anyone who has been paying close attention to recent Arab uprisings against corrupt governments has been getting a crash course in what is unrevealingly called "sectarianism." What this term describes, or obscures, is the fact that the Middle East, which many of us visualize as Muslim, full stop, is actually made up of various religiously-defined communities, some non-Muslim, some generally accepted as Muslim, others claiming to be Muslim but regarded with a great deal of suspicion by other Muslims.   See this article on the Syrian situation.  Without re-reading the post, I can tell you what stuck with me:  Although Syria presents itself as something of a secular state, all Syrians together, and all Arabs too, there is a great fear of other "sects" resulting in a willingness to believe the worst of them.  Many Syrians fervently want to believe that they are and can be all Syrians together, but do they dare lower their defenses?  The well-documented fear of instability is easily justified by reference to what happened in Lebanon and Iraq when a long-standing modus operandi or religious truce broke down, and various parties grabbed for power out of greed or self-righteousness or perhaps mostly insecurity.  And of course that fear of instability comes close to being a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 (And the other thing that stuck with me from recent reading about Syria is the fear and loathing that so many have for the idea of an Islamic Republic; as logically follows.)

Well, I knew about many of these internal religious divisions, but hearing people discussing it NOW, and urgently, has made a big impact on my effective understanding of the "Muslim Middle East," to wit, I now think a lot, in the front of my mind about the fact that however important Islam has been in the Middle East since the 7th century, and however sweeping the claims various Muslims have made, and whatever wishes for an Islamic society have been wished, it's always been at least this divided.  The divisions haven't always been active, but like so many fault lines in an earthquake-prone region,  they've been there.

Think about the religious history of the United States, as another instance.  So many people think it can or should be summed up in a phrase.  How wrong they are.

So what does this have to do with the Crusade era, which I will again be teaching in the fall?  I will have to think about something that Christopher Tyerman has said in a couple of places -- that the rulers and political and military actors "on both sides" were immigrants or recent descendants of such.  And if religious justifications for their actions and regimes were important (if not always appealed to), it is just wrong, wrong, wrong to attempt to explain the developments of the era merely by casting it as two religiously homogenous societies battling it out.  Even if that was the way some contemporaries, and influential ones at that, visualized reality.

It will be a challenge to strike the right balance.



Image:  The Assad family, late 20th century -- Syria's most famous Alawis, a term you should look up.

Name that country

From the Big Picture's monthly photo review of war in Whatchamacallit.

War in heaven

A Turkish Facebook friend linked to this.  I have a strong suspicion that this is how the beautiful billionaires and their beautiful acolytes actually live -- and compete.



Update: I know what this reminds me of -- the movie Blood of Heroes...not the fighting, but the Podunk aristocrats who hung around the competitors.

More from Coates

He's been reading George Fitzhugh, a pro-slavery writer of the pre-Civil War era who thought most white people (but presumably not himself) would be better off as slaves than as "free workers."  In discussing this Coates makes this striking point:
 

The value in Fitzhugh writing is, for me, first and for most its sheer beauty. The metaphor of free market capitalism as cannibalism is provocative and interesting, if not particularly convincing. His enstranged usage of voice--"we" instead of "I"--and his sampling of other primary sources make for a messy work of a literature, and one I thoroughly enjoyed.

But more than that, Fitzhugh unwittingly explains the difference between a society that tolerates slavery (New York in the 1820s, for instance) and a society where slavery is the dominant system of labor (South Carolina circa 1850. for instance.) As a country, we've yet to come to grips with the fact that Mississippi was not merely a place where black people were in slaves, but a police state where the majority of its population was enslaved. By understanding that difference we start to get how a War could be fought over slavery.

My Morning Jacket

I have seen this band twice -- they are great.  Thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates for bringing them up.

Radegund's brother

As I prepare course materials for my course on Gregory of Tours, I am blessed with a blog post that relates to him and 6th century Gaul (an earlier name for France).

Medieval History Geek asks -- did the famous 6th century queen and nun Radegund, wife of the Frankish king Clothar, actually have a brother?

Here's an excerpt:

As I've read accounts of Radegund, one item has begun to trouble me. Radegund left Clothar because he murdered her brother. 1 I’ve read a theory that he was a threat because he was last of a royal Thuringian line and that he may have been active in a revolt against Clothar.

Here’s my problem with the brother. He has no name. Gregory and Fortunatus both mention him, but he’s an anonymous figure. A substantial poem, "The Thuringian War," was written either by Radegund or by Fortunatus with Radegund's input. A large portion of this poem, written from Radegund's point of view, laments her dead brother, yet he remains nameless. 2 As I've read more books on the Merovingians, Radegund is consistently mentioned and each time I've read, "left Chlothar after he murdered her brother," I asked myself, "And who was this brother, exactly?" For some time I've been wondering; Did he really exist?

I have two reasons for questioning this. First and what really stands out for me is the simple fact of his namelessness. Gregory and Fortunatus wrote after Radegund’s death, roughly 40 years after she left Clothar. They were both well acquainted with Radegund. Gregory was bishop of Tours, just down the road from The Convent of the Holy Cross and conducted her funeral, even though he wasn't her bishop. Fortunatus corresponded with her regularly and wrote poems for her. In the decades the two of them knew her, with this being the trigger; the single key, life-altering incident by which she entered into a religious life, she never mentioned him by name to either of them? If her brother's murder bothered her enough to drive her from her husband, you'd think he would be important enough to be named.

...

It puzzles me that I’ve not run across this argument before. If someone knows of anyone discussing this, please let me know. 9 The historicity of Radegund's brother seems to be unquestioned by modern historians.

Image:  Radegund entering her convent, despite the pleas of many.

Another $100 book

To be honest, I doubt I will be buying this book, but I think some readers of this blog will be interested in this review from The Medieval Review:

Bryant, Nigel, trans.  Perceforest: The Prehistory of King Arthur's
Britain.  Series: Arthurian Studies, 77.  Cambridge: D.S. Brewer,
2011.  Pp. xxiii, 791.  $99.00.   ISBN: 9781843842620.

 Reviewed by Dorsey Armstrong
      Purdue University
      darmstrong@purdue.edu


Although it has started to receive greater critical notice of late,
the 14th-century text known as the Perceforest has received an
amount of scholarly attention that seems inversely related to its
significance.  In other words, for a text that is so important on so
many different levels--narrative progression, social commentary,
synthesis and adaption of sources, expressions of social and courtly
ideals, religion, depiction of the magical and fantastic--the text has
not been examined with nearly the critical scrutiny it deserves, nor
has it become a part of the pedagogical "canon" of medieval romance
texts in the way its contents would suggest is appropriate.  The
reason for this is clear: it is a massive work, filled with a series
of narrative adventures that are both thrilling (here, we have for
instance, the first known written account of the "Sleeping Beauty"
fairy tale) and overwhelming in their sheer number and repetition of
key themes and ideas.  A critical edition in the original French is
currently being completed by Gilles Roussineau; this work began in
1987 and, so far, only four of the six sections have been completed--a
fact that speaks to the astonishing length and difficulty of this text.
The manuscript has rightly been referred to by at least one scholar as
"a veritable encyclopaedia of 14th-century chivalry" [1] and it is
truly encyclopedic in both its content and its sheer bulk.  While its
comprehensive nature is one of the most fascinating things about the
Perceforest, it is also precisely this fact that has kept the
text out of the mainstream of academic investigation or from being a
subject for study in courses on medieval literature.

Thus, scholars and students owe Nigel Bryant a debt of gratitude, for
his new English translation (part of the Arthurian Studies series from
D.S. Brewer, of which Norris Lacy serves as general editor) makes the
Perceforest truly accessible for the first time to those
wishing to engage with its marvelous episodes.  To be sure, the size
and weight of this edition is still a matter of some difficulty when
it comes to portability (the tome is a sturdy hardback, clocking in at
just over 800 pages) but Bryant has managed to squeeze into those many
pages all that is significant and important about the
Perceforest, its narrative threads, and its characters.  To do
this, however, he has had to compress and abridge in some places; as
he himself says in the introduction to the volume: "In an ideal world,
this would be a complete translation, line by line, of the
extraordinary prehistory of Arthurian Britain that is
Perceforest...

Realistically, a complete translation is not a
publishable proposition, or at least not a purchasable one" (1).
Bryant notes that he considered but then discarded the idea of simply
translating and publishing those episodes that have been deemed "key"
by those scholars working on the text, but points out (rightly) that
to do so would obscure and flatten much of what makes this text so
engaging: the narrative threads that cross and re-cross, the
appearance of fascinating characters who may only appear briefly, the
development of themes and ideas over a very long narrative progression.
So Bryant has opted for a more satisfactory if still less-than-ideal
solution: he gives us the whole text without omitting a single
character or episode, but some of these are compressed or summarized.
In order to distinguish between moments that are abbreviated from the
source text, Bryant explains that he has opted to use single quotation
marks "to indicate phrases and passages which are translated verbatim"
(31 n.1).  This strategy is a clever way to make sure that the reader
is always clear as to which portions are summaries and which attempt
to render faithfully the source text.

The translation itself is accurate and lively, making it easy to
become absorbed in the narrative whether or not one has a background
in Old French or even medieval romance.  Indeed, it is a work that
invites both casual perusal--an episode here, an adventure there--and
a careful sequential reading in order to yield all its treasures.  As
Jane H.M. Taylor has observed of the Perceforest: "It is a
measure of the writer's remarkable success that the reader's
sympathies engage with the heroes and heroines, and that we arrive at
the end of the sixth book breathless perhaps, but neither lost nor
bored." [2]

The text is made easy to navigate by a comprehensive table of contents
that breaks the work down by books and chapters with detailed
descriptive titles conveying the main action of the narrative episodes.
Even more useful is Bryant's Introduction, the general style of which
is chatty and draws parallels between the events depicted in the
Perceforest and the kind of story-telling that seems appealing
to a 21st-century audience.  Besides its very accessible tone, the
Introduction also demonstrates the translator's deep understanding of
the text: Bryant discusses such thematic elements of the text as
"Action and Entertainment"; "Chivalry"; "Women"; "Fragility, Fortune
and the Creator"; "Love"; "The 'New Law,' Morality, Secularism and
Magic"; and "Blood and Conflict."  Each of these sections of the
Introduction functions as a kind of "mini-essay"-- complete with
footnotes and analysis of key passages--thus providing a vue
d'ensemble of the text as a whole from a variety of positions or
interests.  The result is that before even beginning to tackle the
text proper, the reader has a clear sense of what the major themes and
ideals are, where in time the text begins and how it moves forward.
One even has a sense of the style and interests of the medieval author,
as much as that can be conveyed in a translation and short discussion.
What the Introduction does best is to provide the reader with a series
of "orientation points" as (s)he begins the journey through the
narrative--Bryant does an admirable job helping to keep us from
getting lost in the Perceforest's "forests of adventure" by
offering a series of "hooks" that can help one focus and avoid
becoming overwhelmed by the sheer number of narrative threads,
characters, and themes.  Bryant offers us a place to start, and
readers then have a helpful foundation from which to begin their own
investigations of the Perceforest.  The critical apparatus is
rounded out with a short list of important scholarly works on the text
and it identifies the medieval manuscripts in which it is to be found.

Nigel Bryant's translation of the Perceforest is engaging for
the student, helpful for the scholar, and promises to make this very
important work accessible to a much larger population than has
heretofore been the case.  This can only be to the good, as with more
interest in and appreciation of this very important text, our
understanding of the fourteenth century and matters of class, culture,
literary genre, and social ideals is greatly enhanced and deepened.
One can also imagine the possibility of using this text--or large
sections of it--in the classroom, something previously difficult or
impossible.  Nigel Bryant deserves our thanks, appreciation, and
admiration.
--------
Notes:
1. Jacques Barchilon, "L’histoire de la Belle au bois dormant
dans le Perceforest," Fabula 31.1-2 (1990): 17-23.
2. Jane H.M. Taylor, "Perceforest," in The New Arthurian
Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York and London: Garland
Publishing, 1996), 355-356.