Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216

Susanna A. Throop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317156727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Europäische Geschichte des Mittelalters

Only recently have historians of the crusades begun to seriously investigate the presence of the idea of crusading as an act of vengeance, despite its frequent appearance in crusading sources. Understandably, many historians have primarily concentrated on non-ecclesiastical phenomena such as feuding, purportedly a component of "secular" culture and the interpersonal obligations inherent in medieval society. This has led scholars to several assumptions regarding the nature of medieval vengeance and the role that various cultures of vengeance played in the crusading movement. This monograph revises those assumptions and posits a new understanding of how crusading was conceived as an act of vengeance in the context of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Through textual analysis of specific medieval vocabulary it has been possible to clarify the changing course of the concept of vengeance in general as well as the more specific idea of crusading as an act of vengeance. The concept of vengeance was intimately connected with the ideas of justice and punishment. It was perceived as an expression of power, embedded in a series of commonly understood emotional responses, and also as an expression of orthodox Christian values. There was furthermore a strong link between religious zeal, righteous anger, and the vocabulary of vengeance. By looking at these concepts in detail, and in the context of current crusading methodologies, fresh vistas are revealed that allow for a better understanding of the crusading movement and those who "took the cross, " with broader implications for the study of crusading ideology and twelfth-century spirituality in general.

Chapter One
The Meanings of Vindicta Ultio and Venjance

Like other scholars, I have translated the terms vindicta, ultio, and venjance as “vengeance.” But using this modern word is a convenience and an approximation, and does not really clarify the precise concepts lying behind the medieval Latin and vernacular vocabulary. What did the medieval terms mean?

Turning to great medieval dictionaries like those constructed by Charles Du Cange, Jan Niermeyer, and Alexandre Greimas is only moderately helpful, at best. From their works, we discover that ultio and related terms bear some relation to the idea of wounds and violent punishment, while vindicta and its family of vocabulary can be translated as some variation of vengeance, feud, justice, and criminal punishment.¹ The range of meaning accorded to these terms in the dictionaries suggests that medieval usage varied broadly, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has read medieval sources at some length. The dictionary entries also suggest we are on the right track—translating these terms into “vengeance” is not capricious—but above all they emphasize that the meanings of the medieval terms were various and depended on circumstances.

In this chapter I clarify how vindicta, ultio, and venjance were used by writers to represent individual and group interactions in my sources. These anecdotal examples of “ordinary” vengeance highlight the social conventions (or lack thereof) that governed the idea of vengeance in action, illustrate how the vocabulary of vengeance was used at the time, and enable us to begin to evaluate modern theories about vengeance in human societies within the specific context of medieval western Europe.²

It is clear that the vocabulary of vengeance was very much a part of everyday life for the crusaders and those who wrote about them. Vindicta, ultio, and venjance were not presented as exceptional or esoteric. Many authors used the vocabulary of vengeance without any further comment or elaboration, implying that the meaning was commonly understood and self-explanatory. Fortunately for the historian, other authors surrounded the vocabulary of vengeance with commentary on the meaning or moral value of events, presumably in an attempt to link events with the words they chose to describe them, or to otherwise serve their own narrative purpose. Although these authors were not concerned with providing “definitions” of their chosen vocabulary, nevertheless it is in their attempts to explain events that we can begin to reason backwards and try to deduce what the terms may have meant.

At the risk of spoiling the surprise, what seems to me the best working definition of the medieval concept underlying vindicta, ultio, and venjance (and perhaps other terms as well) is:

violence (both physical and nonphysical) driven by a sense of moral authority, and in certain cases divine approbation, against those who are believed to question that authority and/or approbation.

This working definition is compatible with the associations shown below between vindicta/ultio/venjance and iustitia, caritas, auxilium, and zelus. Above all, it is compatible with the strong link that I will demonstrate existed between Christianity and vindicta/ultio/venjance in the twelfth-century texts.³

Vengeance and justice

Vengeance was always provoked by an injuria, an “injury.”⁴ This injury was a personal betrayal, a broken agreement, a physical injury or killing—as Hyams has argued based on the Norman Summa de legibus, simply “unwarranted harm” of one sort of another.⁵ The injury may have been done directly to the one seeking vengeance, or indirectly to a family member or other closely allied associate of the avenger—at the most basic level, a friend (amicus) rather than an enemy (inimicus).⁶

Because it was a reaction to a prior event (real or imagined), vengeance was always embedded in a chronological context. An act of vengeance was never the beginning of the story, it always followed upon at least one other event. To describe an act as vengeance was to suggest the question, “vengeance for what?” The answer to that question would obviously vary quite a bit, depending upon whom you asked. However, an act could not be seen as vengeance, unless the act that preceded it was seen as unwarranted and harmful by the individual describing the act. Thus there was an inherent ethical value to vengeance—vengeance could be disputed or denied, but it was never morally neutral.

In our own times, for the most part we see a very keen distinction between private vengeance and public justice, but it was not the same in the Middle Ages.⁷ Ultio and vindicta were not viewed as opposed to justice (iustitia). Instead, the meaning of the Latin terms for vengeance and justice seem to have been closely related, if not exactly identical. After all, the event that sparked vengeance was always an “injury”—an injuria, translated literally, an unjust action.

An example of the overlap between justice and vengeance, occurs in a melodramatic scene in an account of the First Crusade. A dispute between the crusader Tancred and Arnulf of Chocques was heard before the proceres who were responsible for Arnulf’s election as patriarch of Jerusalem. Arnulf felt that he had been slighted by Tancred. Since Arnulf was the “minister of God’s house” and since the Holy Land could be said to be the domus Dei, Tancred had sinned against the minister of the Lord. Thus, Arnulf argued, Tancred was ultimately injuring both God and the proceres by wronging him, their minister. Reminding the proceres of his own loyalty, Arnulf exhorted them to seek vengeance on his/ their/God’s behalf: “therefore we uphold your law, O noblest princes; we avenge your injury (injuria), [now] punish the unjust (injurius)”⁸ Otherwise, they would be ignoring the personal injury committed by Tancred to themselves and the law of God: “how could you not spurn one who spurns God?”⁹ The passage’s clever play on the words injuria (injury) and injurius (unjust man) suggests that vengeance and justice were analogous, in the rhetoric at least; both terms centered on the sense that a wrong had been committed and the right state of affairs (ius) had been breached.

The synonymity between the vocabulary of vengeance and judicial punishment was also evident in Odo of Deuil’s criticism of Constantinople during the Second Crusade: “[there] a criminal has neither fear nor shame, and crime is not avenged by law, nor does it come openly to light.”¹⁰ From Odo’s perspective, the lack of justice in Constantinople was evident in the fact that crimes were not avenged; the vocabulary of vengeance was applied to crime, an injury to society. Similarly, towards the beginning of his account of the First Crusade, Baldric of Bourgueil described the virtues of the crusading army. Among their praiseworthy attributes was their ability to discipline each other: “for if anyone was convicted of any dishonor, either having been censured he was upbraided to his face, or vengeance was gravely taken upon him, in order that fear might be excited in others.”¹¹ Crimes were not punished, but avenged—or more precisely, the line we currently perceive between “vengeance” and “judicial punishment” was not in evidence.

These examples suggest that the vocabulary of vengeance was used in the Middle Ages not only to describe feuds and other events we are likely to consider “private,” but also in much the same way as we today might use the term punishment, based upon Emile Durkheim’s conception of punishment as violence visited on an individual by the authority of the group.¹²

Medieval writers did, however, express a distinction between vengeance (that is, punishment) and the concept of war. For instance, Ralph of Caen rhetorically questioned whether the First Crusade was vengeance or war. In one battle with the Muslims on the First Crusade, many Christians were slaughtered or deserted. Nevertheless, despite all odds Tancred and his brother William fought on. Describing their determination to see the battle through, Ralph of Caen wrote “this was certainly not judged a battle by them, but punishment: nor [did it seem] a conflict against enemies, but as if [it was] vengeance taken up concerning those condemned for capital offences.”¹³ In this passage, a “conflict against enemies” (external conflict) was contrasted with “vengeance..concerning those condemned for capital offences” (internal punishment). Modern theorists such as Raymond Verdier have suggested that the difference between punishment, vengeance, and war lies in our perception of our opponent (ally, adversary or enemy).¹⁴ The passage from Ralph of Caen suggests that while medieval contemporaries of the First Crusade also saw a distinction between war against an enemy and punishment for wrongdoing within one’s jurisdiction, surprisingly, to some degree, the First Crusade was perceived as an action more akin to vengeance (punishment) than to war.

This conceptual overlap may not have been specific to the context of the First Crusade. General writers on sin and penance such as Thomas of Chobham drew explicit parallels between just vengeance (punishment) and just war: “it should be noted that just as it is necessary for princes to kill evildoers through just judgment, thus it is necessary to kill through just war.”¹⁵ Indeed, many thinkers, following Augustine of Hippo, agreed that one factor that made a war just was the avenging of injuries: “just wars ought to be defined as those which avenge injuries.”¹⁶

Justice itself, in the abstract, was perceived as retributive: as William of Tyre reported himself saying, “justice is to pay back good for good, and evil for evil.”¹⁷ Justice was to get what you deserved—literally. Anecdotes from crusading texts reveal this principle expressed in action with vivid detail. In Robert of Clari’s account of the Fourth Crusade, when Baldwin IV of Flanders, by then Latin emperor of Constantinople, was faced with his captured adversary, Emperor Alexius V, there was debate as to what fate suited his crimes.¹⁸ The Doge of Venice, Henry Dandolo, said “for a ‘high’ [haute] man..I would advise you to take high justice.”¹⁹ Consequently Alexius was taken to the top of a tall column and thrown down to his death: “[thus] vengeance was taken on Mourtzouphlos the traitor.”²⁰ The very means of execution were symbolically retributive, and were recognized to be such by those present, as evidenced by the Doge’s speech.

Similarly, in one of James of Vitry’s exempla, a traveling entertainer sought hospitality from a wealthy, but miserly, monastery, only to be given nothing but black bread, beans without salt, water, and a hard bed.²¹ On his way the next morning, the entertainer was wondering how he could take vengeance on the stingy procurator who had treated him so badly, when he fortuitously met the abbot returning to the monastery. The entertainer falsely told the abbot (who was eq...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Meanings of Vindicta, Ultio and Venjance
• 2 Early Years: Crusading as Vengeance, 1095–1137
• 3 A Growing Appeal: Crusading as Vengeance, 1138–1197
• 4 Popular—or Papal? Crusading as Vengeance, 1198–1216
• 5 Zelus: An Emotional Component of Crusading as Vengeance
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Historiographical Overview
• Appendix 2: Resume of the Sources
• Bibliography
• Index