Episcopal Power and Personality in Medieval Europe, 900-1480, eds. Peter Coss, Chris Dennis, Melissa Julian-Jones, Angelo Silvestri, Turnhout: Brepols, 2020, pp. 35–61 (Medieval Church Studies, vol. 42), 2020
This article deals with the issue of constructing personality of bishops in two historiographical... more This article deals with the issue of constructing personality of bishops in two historiographical works concerning history of Poland, 'Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum' by Gallus Anonymus (ca. 1115) and 'Chronca Polonorum' by Master Vincentius of Kraków (ca. 1205). It takes up questions, how courage of the bishop was presented in the sources, why and when bishops were portrayed as manly heroes, were there any limits of episcopal courage, why was it inappropriate for a bishop to be a coward? The discussion reveals some important differences of authorial attitudes toward episcopal courage/fearfulness in given chronicles.
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CONTENTS:
Christianity and War in Medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia: An Introduction -- RADOSŁAW KOTECKI, CARSTEN SELCH JENSEN, and STEPHEN BENNETT
PART ONE: THE CHURCH AND WAR
Chapter 1. The Role of the Dalmatian Bishops and Archbishops in Warfare During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: A Case Study on the Archbishops of Split -- JUDIT GÁL
Chapter 2. Thirteenth- Century Hungarian Prelates at War -- GÁBOR BARABÁS
Chapter 3. The Image of “Warrior- Bishops” in the Northern Tradition of the Crusades -- SINI KANGAS
Chapter 4. Memory of the “Warrior- Bishops” of Płock in the Writings of Jan Długosz -- JACEK MACIEJEWSKI
Chapter 5. Preachers of War: Dominican Friars as Promoters of the Crusades in the Baltic Region in the Thirteenth Century -- JOHNNY GRANDJEAN GØGSIG JAKOBSEN
Chapter 6. Depictions of Violence in Late Romanesque Mural Paintings in Denmark -- MARTIN WANGSGAARD JÜRGENSEN
PART TWO: RELIGION IN WAR AND ITS CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS
Chapter 7. Religious Rituals of War in Medieval Hungary Under the Árpád Dynasty -- DUŠAN ZUPKA
Chapter 8. Pious Rulers, Princely Clerics, and Angels of Light: “Imperial Holy War” Imagery in Twelfth- Century Poland and Rus’ -- RADOSŁAW KOTECKI
Chapter 9. Religion and War in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum: The Examples of Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar I -- CARSTEN SELCH JENSEN
Chapter 10. Rhetoric of War: The Imagination of War in Medieval Written Sources (Central and Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages) -- DAVID KALHOUS and LUDMILA LUŇÁKOVÁ
Chapter 11. Civil War as Holy War? Polyphonic Discourses of Warfare During the Internal Struggles in Norway in the Twelfth Century -- BJØRN BANDLIEN
Chapter 12. Martyrdom on the Field of Battle in Livonia During Thirteenth Century Holy Wars and Christianization: Popular Belief and the Image of a Catholic Frontier -- KRISTJAN KALJUSAAR
Chapter 13. Orthodox Responses to the Baltic Crusades -- ANTI SELART
Selected Bibliography
Index
Papers
Keywords: Battle of Chlumec, Monk of Sázava, pre-battle meal, religion and war, Soběslav I of Bohemia, princely feast, medieval historiography.
The article is an attempt to contextualize an institution of Piast rule, in the oldest Polish customary law called “lordly peace” or “the lord’s hand,” and in charters referred to as “the duke’s protection.” It is proposed that the description of Duke Mieszko III’s first Cracow reign included into Chronica Polonorum by Master Vincentius at the turn of 13th century should be considered an important evidence of the ducal peace in Poland. It clearly alludes to the concept of peace as a tool for preventing violence towards those enjoying ruler’s protection. Having analyzed the chronicled examples of punishing the offenders of Jews and other foreigners along with the information about punishing in exactly the same way those committing sacrilege, the author points to analogies between the Piast peace and Western institutions of king’s peace, mundeburdium regis or cyninges handgrið for instance. The inquiry clearly proves conceptual closeness between ducal peace and those phenomena manifesting in connection with the public sphere or monarch’s domain, and most evidently in the involvement of ruler’s officials as well as bishops in maintaining peaces/protections. The observed analogies allow one to conclude that ducal peace in Poland, at least at some stage, was influenced by Western patterns of royal power and justice. This in turn led the author to question the notion favoured in modern historiography, that ducal peace (or mir) as a whole was a relic of the so-called tribal organization.
The chronicle accounts suggest that both bishops comply with these tasks, perhaps in close cooperation with the ducal power. The real image of this activity, however, cannot be fully comprehend on the base of these narratives because of attempt by the chroniclers to agree portrays of Simon’s and Alexander’s activities with postulated patterns of proper episcopal action in the context of military warfare that required from the prelates to give up certain behaviors, especially personal and too far going involvement in the armed struggle. The results of acceptance of these requirements by the chroniclers - although of varying scope in both cases - are unrealistic descriptions of bishops’ role in warfare transferring their martial deeds and efforts from the military to the spiritual field, or even internally contradictory, as in the case of Master Vincentius, who called the Bishop Alexander “the lamb and the lion, the wolf and the shepherd of the flock, the bishop and the soldier, armed and religious at the same time.” The purpose of this article is to determine the intellectual milieu of the authors of the oldest Polish historiographical works and their notion on the legitimacy of episcopal military activity as well as their openness to the eleventh- and twelfth-century legal and theological debate on this issue.
CONTENTS:
Christianity and War in Medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia: An Introduction -- RADOSŁAW KOTECKI, CARSTEN SELCH JENSEN, and STEPHEN BENNETT
PART ONE: THE CHURCH AND WAR
Chapter 1. The Role of the Dalmatian Bishops and Archbishops in Warfare During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: A Case Study on the Archbishops of Split -- JUDIT GÁL
Chapter 2. Thirteenth- Century Hungarian Prelates at War -- GÁBOR BARABÁS
Chapter 3. The Image of “Warrior- Bishops” in the Northern Tradition of the Crusades -- SINI KANGAS
Chapter 4. Memory of the “Warrior- Bishops” of Płock in the Writings of Jan Długosz -- JACEK MACIEJEWSKI
Chapter 5. Preachers of War: Dominican Friars as Promoters of the Crusades in the Baltic Region in the Thirteenth Century -- JOHNNY GRANDJEAN GØGSIG JAKOBSEN
Chapter 6. Depictions of Violence in Late Romanesque Mural Paintings in Denmark -- MARTIN WANGSGAARD JÜRGENSEN
PART TWO: RELIGION IN WAR AND ITS CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS
Chapter 7. Religious Rituals of War in Medieval Hungary Under the Árpád Dynasty -- DUŠAN ZUPKA
Chapter 8. Pious Rulers, Princely Clerics, and Angels of Light: “Imperial Holy War” Imagery in Twelfth- Century Poland and Rus’ -- RADOSŁAW KOTECKI
Chapter 9. Religion and War in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum: The Examples of Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar I -- CARSTEN SELCH JENSEN
Chapter 10. Rhetoric of War: The Imagination of War in Medieval Written Sources (Central and Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages) -- DAVID KALHOUS and LUDMILA LUŇÁKOVÁ
Chapter 11. Civil War as Holy War? Polyphonic Discourses of Warfare During the Internal Struggles in Norway in the Twelfth Century -- BJØRN BANDLIEN
Chapter 12. Martyrdom on the Field of Battle in Livonia During Thirteenth Century Holy Wars and Christianization: Popular Belief and the Image of a Catholic Frontier -- KRISTJAN KALJUSAAR
Chapter 13. Orthodox Responses to the Baltic Crusades -- ANTI SELART
Selected Bibliography
Index
Keywords: Battle of Chlumec, Monk of Sázava, pre-battle meal, religion and war, Soběslav I of Bohemia, princely feast, medieval historiography.
The article is an attempt to contextualize an institution of Piast rule, in the oldest Polish customary law called “lordly peace” or “the lord’s hand,” and in charters referred to as “the duke’s protection.” It is proposed that the description of Duke Mieszko III’s first Cracow reign included into Chronica Polonorum by Master Vincentius at the turn of 13th century should be considered an important evidence of the ducal peace in Poland. It clearly alludes to the concept of peace as a tool for preventing violence towards those enjoying ruler’s protection. Having analyzed the chronicled examples of punishing the offenders of Jews and other foreigners along with the information about punishing in exactly the same way those committing sacrilege, the author points to analogies between the Piast peace and Western institutions of king’s peace, mundeburdium regis or cyninges handgrið for instance. The inquiry clearly proves conceptual closeness between ducal peace and those phenomena manifesting in connection with the public sphere or monarch’s domain, and most evidently in the involvement of ruler’s officials as well as bishops in maintaining peaces/protections. The observed analogies allow one to conclude that ducal peace in Poland, at least at some stage, was influenced by Western patterns of royal power and justice. This in turn led the author to question the notion favoured in modern historiography, that ducal peace (or mir) as a whole was a relic of the so-called tribal organization.
The chronicle accounts suggest that both bishops comply with these tasks, perhaps in close cooperation with the ducal power. The real image of this activity, however, cannot be fully comprehend on the base of these narratives because of attempt by the chroniclers to agree portrays of Simon’s and Alexander’s activities with postulated patterns of proper episcopal action in the context of military warfare that required from the prelates to give up certain behaviors, especially personal and too far going involvement in the armed struggle. The results of acceptance of these requirements by the chroniclers - although of varying scope in both cases - are unrealistic descriptions of bishops’ role in warfare transferring their martial deeds and efforts from the military to the spiritual field, or even internally contradictory, as in the case of Master Vincentius, who called the Bishop Alexander “the lamb and the lion, the wolf and the shepherd of the flock, the bishop and the soldier, armed and religious at the same time.” The purpose of this article is to determine the intellectual milieu of the authors of the oldest Polish historiographical works and their notion on the legitimacy of episcopal military activity as well as their openness to the eleventh- and twelfth-century legal and theological debate on this issue.
An analysis of this narrative conducted on a comparative background shows that the chronicle account essentially proves the chronicler’s attachment to a concrete image of the bishop who would not take part in an armed conflict personally or taint his pastoral mission with a direct contact with secular weapons and warriors, but would stand by his flock fighting the enemy as a miles Christi – with the spiritual weapon appropriate to his clerical order: tears and prayers. Although Gallus does draw in his description on earlier literary traditions of bishops defenders of their episcopal capitals referring back to the early Middle Ages, he builds his vision basing upon contemporary reformatory ideals of religious purity and clerical gentleness, i.e. a vision that adheres to the requirements of the canon law, including a little bit later Decretum Gratiani. Observing the close relationship between the image presented in the account and the late 11th- or early 12th-century reformatory tract De episcopis ad bella procedentibus, it can be concluded that Gallus supported the most radical voices raised against direct engagement of bishops in war, reserving for bishops only the role of the shephards of their flock.
The conducted analysis leads to a conclusion claiming that putting murderers in monastery was the result of a carefully planned decision of the Polish ruler, taking into consideration a number of the factors, including legal requirements. Comparative survey made it possible to find many significant West European analogies to the penance imposed on murderers of Five Martyred Brethern both in normative sources (capitularies, penitentials, canon law colletions, synodal statutes) and those referring to the penitentiary practice of the early Middle Ages. Their confrontation with the account by Bruno of Querfurt demonstrates that the solution accepted by Bolesław the Brave took into consideration regulations known from penitential or canonical tradition condemning the killers of clergymen to life-long penance in a monastery known from the seventh century as servitium Dei. Following their contents, the duke resigned from his original intention to incarcerate the felons in ducal prison or to sentence them to death in favour of chastisement corresponding to standards that should be respected by a Christian ruler. The penalty did not deprive the perpetrators of the perspective of salvation.
The proposed analysis casts a new light not only on the issue of penitential practice during the Early Piast era but also on the wider problem of the application of regulations borrowed from Western culture in the domain ruled by Bolesław the Brave. The article expands heretofore knowledge about the part performed by Duke Bolesław in binding his state with the circle of post-Carolingian Latin civilisation through a conscious acculturation of Christian customs and norms.
The author of the Treatise attempted to achieve this goal by broadening the subject and nature of sacrilege as widely as possible and by intensifying penal sanctions. The first task was realised by referring to Late Carolingian canon tradition represented by the collections of Benedictus Levita and Pseudo-Isidore, which discussed sacrilege extensively and, at odds with tradition, as deeds aimed against material goods belonging to the Church and injuries suffered by members of the clerical estate. The author of the Treatise developed this theory, arguing that arbitrary objects (goods) offered to the Church and not necessarily consecrated should be regarded as sacred and that their violation constituted sacrilege. He placed particular emphasis on securing Church tithes, which he recognised as the most sacred of all property entrusted to the Church, and considered arbitrary embezzlement to cause grave sacrilege. In order to intensify the principle of Church inviolability the author also introduced new terminology for describing sacrilege, which affected the very comprehension of this crime. Instead of a definition concurrent with ancient and early mediaeval tradition, bringing sacrilegium down to the theft of sacred things, he decided to apply the much wider term violatio, which offered a basis for treating almost every deed aimed against the welfare of the Church as the misdemeanour of sacrilege.
The author partially rejected old traditional penalties. According to him, sanctions should be much harsher and correspond better to the socio-political reality in which he lived. It was probably precisely those factors that proved decisive for the popularity of the text for almost the next two centuries.
Those interested in contributing to this project are asked to submit an abstract for a chapter proposal (up to 400 words) along with a short biographical note to the editors of the respective volumes. Proposals are due on 20 April 2023.
PLANNED VOLUMES
• Writing Divine Assistance in War
edited by Tomasz Pełech (University of Warsaw) [email protected]
• Holy Men at War: Latin West, the Mediterranean, and the Near East
edited by Javier Albarrán (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) [email protected]
• Saints at War: Slavic Lands and South Eastern Europe
edited by Boris Stojkovski (University of Novi Sad) [email protected]
• Saints at War: Northern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltic
edited by Francesco D'Angelo (Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma) [email protected]
Volumes will be published within a series “Religion and War in the Middle Ages”, Trivent Publishing
https://trivent-publishing.eu/84-religion-and-war
The series challenges the application of the concepts of cores and peripheries, and both-side transmission of organizational patterns, social customs and religious-ideological concepts. It is intended as a platform to show how the relationship between religion and war has shaped and changed in the process of long duration in a vast territory of medieval world, and how and why it has weakened and faded in some places and gained prominence in others. To date, studies of the relationship between religion and war have been viewed primarily through the paradigms of holy war and crusade, which have proven ideological chameleons difficult to grasp. Rather than applying these largely artificial notions, the works published in this series will show through the lens of sources how, in the historical process, religion, ritual, eschatology and biblical thought have shaped the imaginary and practice of war, and, conversely, how war has determined religious customs, imaginary and rhetoric.
The series welcomes submissions (monographs and edited volumes) on Western Europe and Byzantine world, but is also particularly keen to regions less well studied within the themes of the series, situated in between those great centers of medieval Christianity.