Over the last few weeks I've been studying
the works of medievalists who have looked at the comparative violence of
religious warfare. There aren't, to my knowledge, many works on the subject. We
have a few on the First Crusade. Jay Rubenstein proposed in Armies of
Heaven that the First Crusade constituted a 'new form of warfare'
since it exhibited a level of brutality unseen in other wars. And in a
brilliant article on the sack of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders on 15 July
1099, Benjamin Kedar argued cogently that the atrocities which took place were
extreme even by medieval standards. In addition, we have a two articles on the
Albigensian Crusade, the war against the Cathars in Southern France in the
early thirteenth century. The first is by Malcolm Barber, who argues that the
war was exceptionally brutal. And the second is by Lawrence Marvin, who
contends that the sack of Béziers on 12 July 1209 - one of the worst atrocities
of the conflict - was not abnormally violent.
Below I've written a review of the works
of Barber and Marvin. I share some thoughts on their methodological approaches
and put forward a case for whose is more convincing.
For the uninitiated, the main sources for
the Albigensian Crusade are:
- William of
Tudela - Author of the first half of the "Song of the Albigensian
Crusade" and a partisan of the crusaders
- The Anonymous
continuer of the "Song of the Albigensian Crusade" - he wrote
the second half of the "Song" and was a fervent supporter of the
southern cause against the northern "French" crusaders.
- William of
Puylaurens - A fairly impartial, Catholic chronicler of the Albigensian
Crusade and Languedoc in the thirteenth century.
----------
Was the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1218) an
unusually violent conflict? Before the twenty first century, this question was
not much elaborated upon: most attempts at an answer comprised but a few
paragraphs. Still, the historians who put forward arguments in this limited
form can roughly be divided into two categories. First, there are those who
argued that the Albigensian Crusade was extraordinarily violent. Second, there
are those who argued that the crusade was brutal, but no more brutal than many
other contemporary conflicts. Examples of the former are few, and they are far
from explicit. In 1969 Austin P. Evans implied that the downfall of Lavaur on 3
May 1211 was more violent than other conflicts. He described Simon de
Montfort’s treatment of the people of Lavaur as ‘harsh’ and referred to the
‘severity’ of their punishment – to judge the
severity of a punishment one must assess its divergence from normal practice.
In 1972 Walter L. Wakefield similarly implied that he thought the crusade was
unusually violent when he subscribed to a grand declaration made by the
nineteenth century historian Henry Charles Lea: ‘[the Albigensian Crusade
suggests] all that man can inflict and man can suffer for the glory of God.’ Wakefield based his subscription on a cursory listing
of massacres: ‘one hundred and forty [perfects] were burned at Minerve... three
or four hundred after the fall of Lavaur, [etc]’. For the latter categorization the examples are more explicit
and numerous. In 1942 Pierre Belperron argued that the Albigensian
crusade was no more brutal or bitter than any other conquests of the kings of
France and that it had been sentimentalised by certain persons for their own
purposes. In 1969 Yves Dossat suggested that
‘perhaps [the brutality] was less striking to the men of the thirteenth century
than to ourselves.’ More recently, Michael Costen
has written that ‘the opening act of hostility in the Crusade [the sack of
Béziers on 22 July 1209] signalled the brutality with which it was to be
pursued… [but] massacres of civilians were not uncommon’.
To different extents, three problems
pervade all these arguments. First, conclusions are sometimes based chiefly
upon a few lapidary clichés, seemingly too good to resist: the murder of the
dame of Lavaur, the blinding of two hundred people at Bram, the massacre
at Béziers, etc. For example, Wakefield relies quite heavily on the
Lavaur massacre to substantiate his argument. The
result is that a few instances of violence seem to largely colour the
impression of a protracted conflict. Second, on whichever side of the argument
a scholar falls, there is never a detailed discussion on what contemporaries
thought of these brutal acts. Each historian merely asserts or suggests that
contemporaries either thought them extraordinary or normal acts of warfare:
evidence is almost never given and when it is given it too problematic to be
useful. Third, comparative controls are never employed and we therefore
have nothing to measure, say, the numbers massacred at Béziers against.
In 2001 Malcolm Barber addressed the first
two of these problems in his article The Albigensian Crusades: Wars
Like Any Other? He argued against the bulk of previous scholarship:
‘the Albigensian crusades went far beyond the normal conventions of early
thirteenth-century warfare’. This argument is
essentially twofold. First, it is argued that ‘atrocities’ – for example, the
mutilation of prisoners – were a frequent occurrence. Second, it is contended
that contemporaries had a set of martial norms and that the atrocities
transcended such norms. Both arguments are, for the most part, convincing.
This primarily results from Barber’s methodology. Unlike the historians above,
Barber buttresses his argument with close readings of, and careful comparisons
between, the four chief primary sources concerned with the Albigensian Crusade:
Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis; the Chanson,
penned by William of Tudela and an anonymous continuer; and William of
Puylauren’s Chronica. Thus, in support of the first sub-argument we
are informed that Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay ‘incorporates fifteen incidents
in his narrative which might be described as “atrocities”’. These
claims are then compared with accounts in the other narratives and it is
demonstrated that they ‘confirm the general circumstances described by Peter of
les Vaux-de-Cernay.’ Of course, all this is quite
monotonous, but it is integral to the overarching argument; as Barber rightly
states: ‘this litany of violence has not been presented gratuitously. It is
necessary to provide perspective upon Belperron’s attempt to desentimentalize
[sic] the conflict’. In other words, we are made
to realise just how much violence Belperron was desentimentalizing.
The second sub-argument is largely
convincing too. Barber anchors his discussion in relevant contemporary
scholarship; namely, the research of John Gillingham and Matthew Strickland. Both historians essentially argue thus: in the
martial world of the Anglo-Norman and French aristocracies certain constraints
operated – an emphasis on honour, the compassionate treatment of defeated high
status opponents, etc – which had the effect of mitigating extremes of brutality. Working within this context, Barber provides ample
evidence demonstrating that contemporaries believed in these constraints and
felt unease about atrocities because they transgressed them. There is a rider
here: evidence is only cited from Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay and William of
Tudela; the anonymous continuer and William of Puylaurens are ignored. But the
argument remains persuasive. A typical example of Barber’s cogency is his
discussion on how Peter documented the mutilation of the garrison at Bram in
March 1210. It is pointed out that ‘the very fact that Peter... felt it
necessary to follow his account of the mutilation… with a peroration on
Montfort’s qualities is indicative, since he clearly did not think that this
was “normal” behaviour’. One can not help but agree. Here is Peter’s account:
The count had this punishment carried out,
not because such mutilation gave him any pleasure but because his opponents had
been the first to indulge in such atrocities… The count never took delight in
the cruelty or in the torture of his enemies. He was the kindest of men...
This is followed by a list of seven
similarly latent, indicative exhibitions of unease within the Historia. However, Barber rightly opines that the accounts of
violence provided by William of Tudela are of greater use to the historian:
‘[William] has a concept of honourable behaviour in which he clearly expects to
carry resonance with his intended audience’ - thus we assume his potential
noble audience shared his views. This is a reasonable assumption: Michael
Routledge has highlighted how songs both informed and reflected baronial
opinion. Barber then lists several instances of
William bemoaning the transgression of martial norms. The latter’s account of
the execution of Aimery of Montréal is typical: ‘“Never so far as I know has so
great a lord been hanged in all Christendom, nor with so many knights at his
side.”’ Taking into account our sources’ attestations of violence
and their reactions, Barber fairly persuasively concludes thus: ‘it can be seen
that the Albigensian crusades went beyond the normal conventions of early
thirteenth-century warfare’.
However, the paper is not perfect and the
conclusion needs qualifying. First and foremost, the geographical scope of the
article is limited. Barber only considers Albigensian violence relative to
martial norms in England and northern and southern France; that is, largely
within the geographical area delimited and studied by Gillingham and
Strickland. Comparative controls from other Western European conflicts are not
implemented. This is a significant fault. Previous arguments against Barber’s
position, such as that espoused by Costen, were predicated on the idea that
similar acts of brutality were committed frequently throughout Western Europe.
An adequate rejoinder to these contentions is not offered. Indeed, rather the
opposite: it is openly admitted that even within France and England conventions
were ‘in no way… invariably applied’. What is more, recent scholarship has strongly argued that
some of Barber’s martial norms were often transgressed in other parts of Western
Europe. For example, it has be shown that during sieges the Hohenstaufen
Emperors often committed acts of brutality similar to what happened at, say,
Bram and Béziers. Put simply, Barber does not show
that Albigensian violence ‘went beyond the normal conventions of early
thirteenth-century warfare’; rather, he shows that it transcended conventions
practiced in England and France. Second, little, if any, credence is given to
the possibility that our sources exaggerated violence. William of Tudela’s
assertion that at Lavaur ‘there was so great a killing that… it will be talked
of until the end of the world’, for example, is taken prima facie as
evidence of unusual violence. Yet recent
historiography indicates that such fulminations were probably hyperbolic. In
2003 Daniel Baraz argued that what happened during the crusade itself was not
necessarily worse that what occurred in other eras or places; rather, people
had grown more sensitive to atrocity and described events hyperbolically. And in 2009 Lawrence W. Marvin suggested that Occitan
commentators portrayed the conflict as extraordinary because such a war was
unprecedented in the recent history of Occitania. All
in all, it may well be these shortcomings which led Marvin to recently assert
against Barber’s conclusion: ‘on a medieval scale of brutality the Occitan War
does not stand out as particularly barbarous compared to warfare elsewhere in
Western Europe of the time’.
Indeed, it was Marvin who in 2006 moved
the debate on violence forward in an article entitled The Massacre at Béziers
July 22, 1209: A Revisionist Look. He argued the following: ‘what happened
at Béziers did not stand out beyond the pale for proper behavior [sic] in war
in the Middle Ages… war without quarter happened all the time.’ This proposition is diametrically opposed to the views of
Barber on the massacre, who takes the accounts of William of Tudela and Peter
of les Vaux-de-Cernay as evidence attesting the abnormal nature of the
slaughter. But Marvin’s argument is more persuasive.
The reason for this is twofold. First, comparative controls are drawn from
across Western Europe. Marvin rightly states that ‘examples of [similar acts of
violence] from… the rest of Europe are rife’ and numerous examples are given,
notably several from within northern France. The
following is somewhat representative: it is pointed out that ‘Aragonese and
Navarese routiers’, in actions akin to routiers in
early thirteenth-century Languedoc, committed brutal acts against ‘churches,
monasteries, and non-combatants’. The effect of
the employment of these comparisons is that Marvin emancipates his argument a
restricted geographical outlook and bases his discussion within a
geographically and chronologically varied backdrop. The result? He convincingly
demonstrates that the massacre at Béziers was not exceptionally violent within
a Western European context.
Second, Marvin unearths discrepancies
between commentators’ accounts of the massacre and what really happened.
Indeed, he does this brilliantly. The methodology is apposite: an expansive
series of comparative controls which circumvent the distortive accounts provided
by our sources. The main comparative control is the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This
is reliable. As Marvin correctly notes, ‘Rwanda stands out as a particularly
low-tech genocide… the manner of killing was often no more sophisticated than
what happened at Béziers in 1209’. The comparative process is well exhibited by
the discussion on Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s claim that 7,000 died in the
church of La Madeleine:
[According to the Human Rights Watch,] in
Rwanda… The assailants physically could not kill more than a few hundred people
a day with non-gunpowder weapons... this suggests is that in Béziers… the
physical ability of the crusaders who participated was not high enough to kill
as many people as the legates or chroniclers have stated.
This comparative control is further
buttressed by simple but persuasive mathematics. Marvin states that, if this
many people were to be murdered in one afternoon, ‘there would have to be 291
killed an hour; or about five every minute, or one every 12 seconds, for
24 hours straight.’ Marvin also tentatively
rejects the argument that fire may have raised the death toll drastically. It
is noted how many of the largest conflagrations in history have killed
surprisingly few people; to give but one example: ‘in the 1666 London fire,
which happened in a city of 500-600,000, perhaps 100 lost their lives.’ The conclusions that result from this methodology
are startling. ‘Perhaps 700 instead of 7,000 people died in La Madeleine… The
body count reported by the legates may have been more like 2,000 instead of
20,000’. Thus there is a significant discrepancy
between what our sources claim and the likely reality. Our sources make the
massacre appear far worse than it actually was, lending further support to
Marvin’s conclusion that the massacre was not extraordinary.
Where does this leave us? Marvin has
convincingly dispelled a minor part of Barber’s argument; namely, the latter’s
claim that the massacre at Béziers was exceptionally violent. And this was
achieved through comparing the massacre with other violence in Western Europe
and demonstrating that our sources are hyperbolic – the two major shortcomings
of Barber’s article. But, of course, this does not invalidate Barber’s whole
argument; simply because the massacre at Béziers was unexceptional
does not mean the conflict as a whole was unexceptional. Yet Marvin’s paper
does point the way forward. Indeed, it raises the following corollary
questions. First, were other massacres and acts of brutality committed
throughout the crusade, when placed within a wider western European context, as
unexceptional as the Béziers massacre? Second, to what extent is the
discrepancy between commentators’ accounts of the massacre at Béziers and
actual proceedings to be found in their accounts of other events? Until a study
is written which attempts to answer such questions, historians will no doubt
continue to echo Barber’s conclusions; as, for example, Norman Housley recently
did in Fighting for the Cross:
The Albigensian Crusade… was waged with
great savagery… Some of the worst massacres in crusading history were committed
in southern France.
No comments:
Post a Comment