The Crusades and the Christian World of the East

by Macevitt, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780812220834
• ISBN10: 0812220838
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-10
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture and traditions were a world apart from their own. The crusader-occupied swaths of Syria and Palestine were home to many separate Christian communities: Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, and other sects with sharp doctrinal differences. How did these disparate groups live together under Frankish rule? InThe Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed little interest in such differences. Franks intermarried with local Christians and shared shrines and churches, but they did not hesitate to use military force against Christian communities. Rough tolerance was unlike other medieval modes of dealing with religious difference, and MacEvitt illuminates the factors that led to this striking divergence. "It is commonplace to discuss the diversity of the Middle East in terms of Muslims, Jews, and Christians," MacEvitt writes, "yet even this simplifies its religious complexity." While most crusade history has focused on Christian-Muslim encounters, MacEvitt offers an often surprising account by examining the intersection of the Middle Eastern and Frankish Christian worlds during the century of the First Crusade.

Author Biography

Christopher MacEvitt teaches religion at Dartmouth College.

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration and Names	p. vii
Map	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
The Twelfth-Century Middle East	p. 3
Historiography of the Crusades	p. 13
Rough Tolerance: A New Model of Religious Interaction	p. 21
Satan Unleashed: The Christian Levant in the Eleventh Century	p. 27
A Brief History of the Christian East	p. 29
Contact and Knowledges Between Eastern and Western Christians	p. 43
Close Encounters of the Ambiguous Kind: When Crusaders and Locals Meet	p. 50
Responses to the First Crusade	p. 54
The Franks in Edessa	p. 65
Armenian Resistance	p. 71
Images of Authority in Edessa, 1100-1150	p. 74
Frankish Authority	p. 75
Armenian Authority: A Response to the Franks	p. 81
Edessa Under Joscelin I	p. 92
Edessa and the Frankish East	p. 97
Rough Tolerance and Ecclesiastical Ignorance	p. 100
Local Christians from a Latin Perspective	p. 102
Local Priests and Patriarchs in the Frankish Levant	p. 106
Architecture and Liturgy	p. 126
Pilgrimage	p. 132
The Legal and Social Status of Local Inhabitants in the Frankish Levant	p. 136
Historiography	p. 136
The Peasantry	p. 142
Local Rural Landowners and Administrators	p. 149
The Price of Unity: Ecumenical Negotiations and the End of Rough Tolerance	p. 157
Manuel I Komnenos and the Mediterranean World	p. 158
Ecumenical Dialogue with the Armenian Church	p. 161
Jacobite Patriarch Michael and the Quest for Legitimacy	p. 167
Cultural Consequences of Ecumenical Negotiation	p. 171
Conclusion	p. 177
Notes	p. 181
Bibliography	p. 229
Index	p. 253
Acknowledgments	p. 271
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