Reading Saving Paradise: Chapter 10

Peace by the blood of the cross

Peter the Hermit, leader of the People’s Crusade

Sculpture by Gedeon de Forceville, 1854

Throughout Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, feudal lords battled their neighbors for dominance, and marauding gangs of warriors attacked farms, villages, and monasteries. As the chaos spread, church leaders moved to stop the violence – or least to limit it.  

The church’s first strategy was to protect its own monasteries and convents by fortifying them; but violence only escalated around the cloisters. So bishops called councils to announce the Pax Dei  (the peace of God), and after they negotiated days of truce with feudal lords, they demanded that soldiers make solemn vows to keep the truce. When these truces also proved ineffective, the church began to organize its own militias. 

For almost a thousand years, the church had denounced the shedding of human blood – but now it was issuing a call to arms.  How could Christian theology defend this new stance?

In the 10th century Abbot Ordo of Cluny argued that his monks could fight to defend their property.  If they were motivated by a love of God and a desire to protect themselves and others, even military actions could have God’s approval.  By the 11th century Pope Gregory VII was offering soldiers two ways to gain everlasting life: they could give up their arms, or they could use their arms in the service of the church.  Gregory argued that military service was a way of imitating Christ and loving one’s neighbors “for as he laid down his life for us, so ought we to lay down our life for our brothers.” 

In addition to trying to enforce peace, the church also cultivated a piety of fear and guilt. Life-sized images of the crucifixion began to appear in churches throughout northern Europe, reminding the faithful that Christ had died for their sins. The Carolingian Eucharist, with its focus on Christ as both victim and judge, also taught congregations to fear God’s punishment.  
 
(Not all Christians welcomed this piety of fear.  Dissenting movements would grow in the 12th century, with the rise of sects that advocated apostolic poverty, rejected violence, and advocated strict ascetic disciplines. The official church responded by emphasizing the crucifixion even more, and taught the faithful they needed to experience Christ’s suffering to be saved.)  

Art shapes faith:

At the church entrance,

the Last Judgment

  An abbey doorway 
Conques Abbey in southwest France, early 12th century

Arduous pilgrimages to Jerusalem, to see the places where Christ suffered, became popular in the 11th century.  For those who could not travel to Jerusalem, contemplation of art provided an alternative.  Detailed scenes of every aspect of Jesus’ passion began to proliferate throughout Europe.  

Art shapes faith:

Inside the church,

Jesus’ suffering 

The Deposition of Jesus  

(Parma Cathedral, Italy – late 12th  century)

From the peace of God to the war of God

Another peace council was called in 1095; this time Pope Urban II urged the gathered crowd to journey to Jerusalem to attack the Turks.  Urban may have been trying to improve tense relations with the eastern church, which had requested help in its struggle with the Turks; but his call to arms is probably best understood in terms of the religious and political needs within Europe.  He proposed that war against a common enemy could accomplish peace in Europe:  Let those who are accustomed to wantonly wage private war against the faithful march upon the infidels…   The church was seeking to keep peace in Europe by integrating violence into its own heart and sanctifying it. 

Anselm of Canterbury completed the 11th century theological developments that enabled the Crusades in his treatise Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man).  Though he would not allow his own monks to join a Crusade, Anselm’s theology and piety would provide the theological foundation for holy war.   

In Cur Deus Homo Anselm posed the question of his own anxious heart: Could anything free human beings from eternal damnation?   He believed God would punish human beings and bar them from heaven, unless they had performed sufficient penance to fulfill their debts for personal sins.  But humanity’s level of debt for sin was far greater than any human ability to repay it.Anselm proposed that only God could resolve the dilemma of human sin – by becoming human in order to die on the cross. 

With this theory of atonement, it now seemed that the sole purpose of Christ’s incarnation – the goal of his human life – was to die on the cross.  By his dying, Christ had redeemed sinful humanity; ‘the gift of death,’ not the gift of life, was the greatest gift God could give. 

What could humans offer God  in return?  They could express their thanks by imitating the sacrifice that restored God’s honor. 

Anselm drew his analogies of sin and recompense from an emerging economic system that, for many, had resulted in crushing debt.  The loyalty and obedience due to feudal lords provided the framework for his thinking. 

Anselm’s popular devotional prayers – in addition to encouraging deep emotions, especially fear – shaped a medieval piety of empathetic love. The Eucharist was at the heart of this piety: consuming the bread and drinking the cup incorporated believers into the merits of Christ’s death.  Christ’s resurrection became almost irrelevant; it is not even mentioned Anselm’s Cur Deus. 

Reflecting the new spirituality, Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher (built in the 4th century as a shrine to the resurrection) was now revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and death.   By the 11th century its liturgies had virtually reversed the traditions of Cyril’s Jerusalem; instead of mourning the crucifixion once a year and marking the resurrection daily, the resurrection slowly faded in importance and Christ’s suffering and death were remembered every day. 

Architecture shapes faith:

at the Holy Sepulcher.

Death or Resurrection? 

 Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Floor plan of the 4th century church 

A floor plan of the earliest church shows Christ’s empty tomb in the  Rotunda of the Anastasis (Resurrection).  But an 11th-century drawing shows a coffin with a body inside; and a 12th-century sketch allows viewers to look down on the body from above: Christ lies full-length in his shroud, surrounded by a circle of divine light.   

Art shapes faith:

a book of devotions

shows the way to Jerusalem 

Peter the Hermit points the way to Jerusalem

(12th century French illumination)

Lay people were told that if they followed the cross to Jerusalem, they could take on a life of poverty and obedience similar to the lives of monks and nuns.  

The First Crusade was fought by many armies, not one.  Months before the lords and their armies departed, the ‘People’s Crusade’ – a bands of poor peasants and petty nobles – set off for Jerusalem on their own.  They were led by a charismatic priest named Peter the Hermit, who inspired almost hysterical enthusiasm among his followers.  The ‘People’s Crusade’ made it through Eastern Europe to Constantinople, where most of its members were slaughtered by the Turks.  

The ‘People’s Crusade’ was also involved in violence against the Jews.  As they marched through the Rhineland, the crusaders killed around 10,000 Jews – nearly a third of the Jewish population of Europe.  Some historians have called this pogrom ‘the first holocaust.’  Only after this explosion of violence against the Jews did the crusaders finally turn east.  

When they reached Jerusalem in 1099, the crusaders laid siege to the city’s walls. When the battle was over, they believed the turning point coincided with the hour of Jesus’ crucifixion.  They saw their own acts, aligned with Jesus’ crucifixion, as shimmering with divine blessing and bringing Judgment Day to fulfillment.  

After they captured the city, Christians fought to establish their own kingdom in the Holy Land.  They began by killing most of the Muslim inhabitants of the major cities.  They tolerated Eastern Christians, but only in subordinate roles; and the surviving Muslims and Jews were relegated to the bottom of the pyramid of control.  

For 88 years – from 1099 to 1187 – the Franks ruled the Holy Land as a colony. Old churches were restored, and new churches were built, to mark the major events of Jesus’ life.  Pilgrims began to come by the thousands, and their purpose was penitential: to endure the arduous journey, to touch the holy sites, and perhaps to die in the place where Jesus died.  Through their pilgrimages, they could repay their debt to God, escape the terror of hell, and assure safe passage to paradise.

Back home in Europe, the Crusades dramatically changed the economy, which grew as pilgrims returned home with plunder.  Europe began its transformation from an agrarian trade system to a monetary economy in these centuries.  The new economy also contributed to the renovation of churches in Europe, and the great flowering of Gothic architecture in the 12th and 13th centuries.  

'Holy War’ ?

In Saving Paradise, Brock and Parker comment: 

Christians, Muslims and Jews all shared the concept of just warfare; but the Christian version of holy war that emerged during the Crusades was unique: it mixed adoration of Christ’s death on the cross with fervent expectation of God’s final judgment (especially upon the enemies of Christ).

The Crusaders’ campaigns also marked the beginning of a historical pattern of Christian pilgrimage accompanied by conquest and colonization. (This pattern would later reach in new directions with the conquest and colonization of the New World.)

'Nonviolent atonement'? 

In The Nonviolent Atonement, J. Denny Weaver writes, 

If  'in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), and if Jesus Christ did indeed reject the sword, then it follows that the God who was in Christ should be understood in nonviolent images. 


What do you think?