Jeffrey Ian Ross - Religion and Violence - An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict from Antiquity to the Present
New York: Routledge, 2011. – 926 p.
ISBN 978-0-7656-2048-4 (hardcover: alk. paper)
Daily newspaper headlines, talk radio and cable television broadcasts, and Internet news Web sites continuously highlight the relationship between religion and violence. These media contain stories about such diverse incidents as suicide attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, and elsewhere, and assassinations of doctors who perform abortions by white American Christian true believers in the United States.
How does one make sense of the role of religion in violence, and of perpetrators of violence who cite religion as a motivation? Although a number of publishers have developed encyclopedias on religion or on different facets of religion, no English-language press has produced an encyclopedia specifically on the subject of religion and violence. It is with this in mind that I have assembled and edited Religion and Violence: An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict from Antiquity to the Present (hereafter Religion and Violence ). This reference work, consisting of 130 entries, is designed to answer both basic and relatively complex questions regarding the intersection of religion and violence.
In order to accomplish this goal, I have included entries focusing on well-known acts of religious violence that have occurred in different countries or regions, as well as well-known individuals and groups who have not only advocated, but committed this form of criminal and/or political violence. The entries summarize key concepts and, where appropriate, include tables and photographs illustrating these themes. The strength of this encyclopedia is its comprehensive, and concise, approach to explaining the most important individuals, concepts, groups, practices, and movements in the field of religion and violence, as well as their causes and effects. It also includes a number of in-depth case studies.
Religion and Violence has been a massive undertaking, occupying no less than four years of my professional life. I have approached the subject matter in as comprehensive a manner as possible, looking at all the possible vagaries of the topic. The encyclopedia includes a wide range of entries: biographies of key figures, historical events, religious groups, countries and regions where religion and violence have intersected, and practices, rituals, and processes of religious violence.
Editorially, the treatment of entries (depth of analysis or length) may vary depending upon a topic’s relative importance to overall coverage. The contributors are truly interdisciplinary in their training and research. They come from a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, including conflict analysis and resolution, criminology, criminal justice, geography, government, history, peace studies, political science, religious studies, and sociology. Others have backgrounds in the humanities, such as communication, education, law, and philosophy, or the sciences, such as medicine and psychiatry. Still other writers are area studies experts (e.g., Asian studies, Judaic studies).
It must be noted that a distinction exists between psychological/structural and physical violence. Psychological violence (or trauma) is often a precursor to and/or the effect of physical violence. The first affects individuals’ mental states and often leads to anger, cynicism, depression, and resistance to authority. Physical violence affects people’s bodies and eventually their minds. This encyclopedia primarily deals with the latter.
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Pope Urban II (c. 1042–1099)
Pope Urban II, born Otho of Lagery (Otto, Odo, and Eudes are other known designations), was the pope of the Roman Catholic Church from March 12, 1088, until his death on July 29, 1099. Most students of history remember Urban II as initiator of
the First Crusade (1095–1099), but he also established the modern day Roman Curia (or Papal Court), which is the central administrative system of the Roman Catholic Church, located in the Holy See (the Vatican). The Roman Curia, from the Latin term co-viria (association of men), is based upon the royal court model of the Roman period, in which the imperially appointed senate ( curia per antonomasia ) would meet to discuss affairs of state. A final major legacy of Pope Urban II was his continuation of the reforms started by his predecessor, Pope Gregory VII. Among these reforms were the central issues of investiture, simony, and clerical mar riage. As a possible successor ( papabile ) of Pope Gregory VII and a papal legate in Germany in 1084, Urban strongly supported Gregory’s reforms, but he did so with more flexibility than Gregory. The continuation of the Gregorian Reforms and the establishment of the Roman Curia were major developments under Urban’s reign as pope, but it was starting the Crusades that make this figure intriguing to historians and relevant to the topic of religious violence.
Early Life
There is not a great deal of documentation about Urban II’s early life, but we do know that he was born around 1042 in the northeastern French province of Champagne. He grew up in the village of Châtillon-sur-Marne, situated in the valley of the Marne River. His family was aristocratic, which afforded him a comfortable upbringing. The counts in the seigneurs of Châtillon have Urban listed as one of the princes of Porcien, which is a feudal title and not one of a sovereign. The seigneurs inherited many lands and titles from the count of Blois after a marriage in 1230 between Hugues de Châtillon and the Blois heiress Marie. Because of this union, the seigneurs were incorporated into the royal family of France in the fourteenth century.
Urban was tutored as a young man by his uncle Guy de Roucy, who was the bishop of Reims. He then studied under St. Bruno (later founder of the order of Carthusians), also in Reims. It was at Reims that Urban became canon and archdeacon. A decade or so later, he withdrew to a monastery in Cluny, where he was professed under Abbot St. Hugh. While at the monastery, Urban held the office of prior, which was an office second to that of the abbot that attended to the governance of the monastery. After the Cluniac reforms of the tenth century, which sought to restore the traditional monastic life, the office of prior displaced the Benedictine office of provost. Sometime in the early to mid-seventies of the tenth century, St. Hugh sent Urban to Rome at the request of Pope Gregory VII, in order to assist in carrying out reforms within the church. In the next ten years, Urban was a chief adviser to Gregory VII, cardinal bishop of Ostia (1078), and legate in France and Germany for the pope (1082–1085).
Several difficult events occurred in the life of Urban II during this period. In 1083, on a trip back to Rome, he was imprisoned by the German emperor Henry IV for a short period of time due to the emperor’s quarrel with Gregory. The antipope Guibert of Ravenna (put into the archiepiscopal seat of Ravenna by Henry IV) was in opposition to Gregory’s reforms, particularly those that concerned simony, which is the payment for a clerical office, and clerical concubinage. Emperor Henry convened a synod at Worms in 1076 (which was attended by Guibert) and deposed Gregory from his office. In response, Gregory excommunicated both Guibert and the emperor. Urban aided Gregory by deposing bishops who opposed the reforms and by filling vacant sees with bishops loyal to it. Then, in 1085, Urban held a synod at Quedlinburg in Saxony, where Guibert (who took the name Clement III) and those supporting him (mostly the abbots and bishops of the Transpadine antireform party) were anathematized. After the death of the next pope, Victor III, in September 1087 (he ruled for less than a year), Urban was elected pope on March 12, 1088, at Terracina.
Urban’s reign was scarcely free from political conflicts. Henry IV had taken Rome and enthroned Guibert—who returned the favor by crowning Henry IV as emperor—but the Norman duke of Apulia and Calabria, Robert Guisard, caused them to flee. Pope Gregory VII was liberated from Henry and Guibert, but he was forced out of Rome by the populace because of the excesses of Gregory’s Norman allies. Partisans loyal to the German court and to Guibert continued to install new antipopes and oppose Urban’s policies. It was not until 1098 that Guibert’s party (also known as the Wibertines) was removed from Rome by the French duke, Count Hugh of Vermandois. Despite these threats to the papacy from both within and without, Urban retained a great deal of prestige and influence, which enabled him to solidify opposition to investiture, simony, and clerical marriage. He then inspired a crusading force within medieval Europe by means of his rhetoric relating to armed pilgrimage.
The Preaching of Crusade
Before his famous sermon at Clermont, in which he exhorted the faithful to crusade, Urban II spent several years traveling to raise money to buy off the Guibert party with gold so that he could gain residence back in Rome. The Lateran Palace was not secured by Urban until 1094, when the Guibertine guardian Ferruc-cio handed over the palace and fortifications for a large sum of money, which was supplied by the abbot Geoffrey of Vendome. Interestingly, Urban preferred conceding to extortion than shedding blood within Christendom. Bernold of St. Blais, a contemporary medieval chronicler, wrote that Urban II “preferred to tolerate injustice for a while rather than to endure armed unrest among the citizens of Rome.” Such outmaneuvering was characteristic of Urban’s strategy to avoid direct confrontation in favor of persuasion and negotiation. He devoted a great deal of time during his reign to inducing other leaders of the church to accept his reforms as canon law.
The idea of a knightly crusade was not new to the reign of Urban II; Gregory VII had blessed the efforts of military engagements against the “nonbelievers.” With Gregory, the contrast between the militia Christi (military of Christ) and the militia saecularis (secular military) was blurred. Even though the ban on clerics taking up arms remained in force, it was not always enforced. Gregory VII transformed the religious metaphor “the knighthood of St. Peter” ( militia s. Petri ), coined by Gregory I, from one of clerical service to one of military support by knights. The language used by Gregory VII interchanged pious devotion and service to the pope with feudal military meanings. This support came with the promise of indulgences, as it did under the popes Leo IV (847–855), John VII (872–882), and Alexander II (1061–1073). Gregory modified the older idea of “just war”—in which a soldier dying in battle for a just cause could gain salvation—to include Christian expansion and the defense of papal interests. The central issue is that he took the concept of the militia Christi in general and narrowed it to refer to the service of the papacy through the militia s. Petri. At the end of the tenth century, the Peace of God movement (originally concerned with protection of church property and clergy) began interweaving the functions of keeping the peace in a spiritual manner with the militias of state military power. Henry III, for example, defeated the Hungarians in 1043 with a proclamation of the Peace of God and induced Pope Benedict IX to send the banner of St. Peter as a symbol of victory. After Gregory VII, the banner of St. Peter changed from acting simply as a religious symbol to representing the juridical claim of papal power and authority. All of these developments created a precedent for Urban’s armed pilgrimage, even if the precise motivations for the new holy war are not historically certain.
In March 1095, at Piacenza, Pope Urban II held his first council as supreme pontiff of the Roman Church. There were numerous issues to be addressed, such as ecclesiastical reforms, the antipope Guibert, the adultery of King Philip of France, and sending military aid to the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus. Urban’s response to the request of Alexius was to send whatever aid he could to defend the Christian faith. Bernold of St. Blais noted that Urban “inspired many to promise to go there, if this was God’s will, and to aid the emperor against the pagans faithfully and to the best of their ability.” Emperor Alexius’s daughter Anna Comnena notes in her history of her father’s reign that Alexius was expecting troops from Rome; the promise probably came from Urban himself ( Sewter 2004 ). Urban called another council, to be held in Clermont in November of that year. He also spent several months traveling in France before the council, most likely rallying support for the issues to be addressed at Clermont. Many of the issues at Piacenza were also addressed at that council, but Urban emphasized the need to revive the Peace of God and to free the Holy Land from Muslim occupation by calling for an armed pilgrimage to the East.
There are five surviving accounts of the speech at Clermont, each with different emphasis. The oldest account of the sermon is the Gesta Francorum (c. 1100–1101 c.e. ). It was written by an anonymous knight from southern Italy and does not contain much information apart from the encouragement to go to the Holy Sepulchre, take up arms, and wear the sign of the cross ( Krey 1921 ). The account of Fulcher of Chartres discusses the general liberation of the Christian East from Muslim control, the desire to keep the peace and truce of God, and the promise of the remission of sins. Urban proclaimed, “On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends” ( Bongars 1905 ). In an account by Robert the Monk, Urban emphasized the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre: “Let the holy sepulcher of the Lord our Savior, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially incite you, and the holy places which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness” ( Munro 1895/2009 ). Urban called this “holy war” against Muslim occupation “a holy pilgrimage”; he also gave instructions about who could bear arms and who needed clerical approval to crusade and take the sign of the cross. The audience responded to the plea of Urban with the future battle cry of the Crusades: “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” Urban ended his sermon with an entreaty to wear the sign of the cross: “Whoever, therefore, shall determine upon this holy pilgrimage and shall make his vow to God to that effect and shall offer himself to Him as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, shall wear the sign of the cross of the Lord on his forehead or on his breast” (Munro 1895).
Whatever Urban may actually have said in his sermon, it had the effect throughout Europe of mounting a “holy” armed crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land. Unlike Gregory, who took a more hierarchical approach to enlisting the militia Christi, Urban used the language of chivalry, spiritual duty, and the promise of the forgiveness of sins to provoke the “great stirring of the heart” ( Cowdrey 1976 ). The famous historian Edward Gibbon (1776–89/1996) described the effects of the preaching at Clermont, saying, “A nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.” Historians also debate the motivations, or intentions, of crusaders in going on armed pilgrimages. Whether motivated by greed for riches, piety in spiritual blessings, or family relations, crusading pilgrims turned out in the thousands. In addition to lay fighters, major forces were drawn from the French, German, and Italian aristocracies. In July 1099, the crusaders, with only 12,000 men, seized control of Jerusalem and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Pope Urban II did not live to hear the news of the siege; he died shortly afterward, on July 29, 1099.
Several important developments resulted from Urban II’s preaching for the First Crusade and from his papal reign in general. The first of these developments was a transition in thought about just war that went beyond the Augustinian tradition. Previously, war had been deemed just if it was waged in self-defense or for the protection of another human being. In this case, the stress was on pardon for committing homicide. After the First Crusade, a just war was no longer one that was simply overlooked by God but was rather seen as a beneficial act of sacrifice and martyrdom to God. Fighting for militia Christi and the militia s. Petri in the Holy Land was a virtuous deed that received the promise of absolution of sin. By Urban’s reign, Western Christian culture accepted the idea of “holy war” and viewed fighting for Christ as being a “positive value in the Christian life” ( Brundage 1976 ). A second major development to result from this shift in ideas about holy war was a change in the understanding of Christian knighthood. It has already been noted that Gregory VII began mixing the metaphors of the militia Christi and the militia saecularis, but it is under Urban— although he was not militaristic and sought peaceful means when he could—that knights and military were called into the service of holy war. French knights aided the Spanish in their battles against the Saracens during the eleventh century, but the establishment of orders of knights such as the Templars and Hospitallers, with a commission to holy war and the defense of Christendom, represented a radical shift in Christian values. A final major result of Urban’s call to crusade was to transform the Christian practice of pilgrimage into one in which military pursuits and objectives mingled with spiritual benefits. Going on a pilgrimage for penance or indulgence was commonplace by this time in the medieval period, but Urban’s novelty consisted in giving “practical utility to the idea of pilgrimage and to transform it into an instrument of Christian expansion” ( Erdmann 1977 ). Before this period, a Christian peregrinatio (pilgrimage) could be spiritually beneficial only if it was unarmed, but now pilgrims could claim spiritual benefits of going armed to the Holy Land.
By the end of the First Crusade, the crusader vow would also be in place to solidify the spiritual and legal obligations the crusader had to fight for Christ and Christendom. There is no evidence of canonical law for a crusading vow before 1095, but there is a letter by Pope Paschal II (successor to Urban II) to the prelates of France stating that crusaders who did not fulfill their vows should be deemed “infamous” or should be excommunicated if they retreated from battle. Thus, we see the transposition of a religious vow from a monastic and clerical setting to the battlefield.
Pope Urban II is one of the most significant pontiffs in medieval history. Despite being less militaristic than his predecessor, Pope Gregory VII, Urban greatly transformed the ethos of the Holy Roman Empire with regard to holy war and pilgrimage. In addition to launching the First Crusade, Pope Urban II continued the Gregorian reforms, which he pursued until his death. Finally, he established the Roman Curia, which has survived until the present day; it still controls the administration of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Urban was beatified in 1881; his feast day falls on July 29.
Daniel Haynes
See also: Christian Crusades; Roman Catholicism.
Further Reading
- Bongars, J. Gesta Dei per Francos, vol. 1, p. 382 f. Trans. in A Source Book for Medieval History , ed. O.Thatcher and E.McNeal, pp. 513–517. New York: Scribners, 1905.
- Brundage, J. “Holy War and the Medieval Lawyers.” In Holy Wa r , ed. T.Murphy, pp. 99–140. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976.
- Brundage, J.. “Urban II, Pope.” In Key Figures in Medieval Europe , ed. S.Emmerson and C.Emmerson. pp. 640–642. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2006.
- Comnena, A. The Alexiad , trans. E.R.A.Sewter. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.
- Cowdrey, H.E.J. “The Genesis of the Crusades: The Springs of Western Ideas of Holy War.” In Holy War , ed. T.Murphy, pp. 9–32. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976.
- Cowdrey, H.E.J.. “The Peace and the Truce of God in the Eleventh Century.” Past and Present 46:1 (1970): 42–67.
- Erdmann, C. The Origin of the Idea of Crusade , trans. M.Baldwin and W.Goffart. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
- Fulcher of Chartres. “Gesta Francorum Jerusalem Expug-nantium.” In A Source Book for Medieval History , ed. O.Thatcher and E.McNeal, pp. 513–517. New York: Scribners, 1905.
- Gibbon, E.A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , vols. 1–6. London: Penguin Classics, 1996.
- Henderson, E., ed. and trans. “Decree of 1059: On Papal Elections.” In Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages , ed. E.Henderson, pp. 351–360. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965.
- Henderson, E.. “Dictatus Papae, 1075.” In Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages , ed. E.Henderson, pp. 366–367. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965.
- Krey, A.The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1921.
- Munro, D. Urban and the Crusaders . Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009. First published 1895.
- Riley-Smith, J. The Crusades: A History , 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
- Riley-Smith, J.. The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
- Runciman, S. A History of the Crusades: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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