[Sca-cooks] Crusades and cannibalism

[Laura C. Minnick]

Ana,

I can't reply to the 19th c text you cite, and why or why not parts were in
it that weren't in later editions. All I can say about the overall is this:

Both sides accused the other of cannibalism. Were either telling the truth?
I don't know. Can we really know given the slim resources we have? I doubt it.

Yes. There were significant problems with foodstuffs to support the armies.
And more crusaders died of hunger and the attendant disease than ever died
in battle.

There were some cannibals reported by both sides- madmen, who had lost
their wits due to sun and heat and the chaos of battle. They ran about
naked or with rags draped on their bodies. Apparently their skin was so
badly burnt by the sun they no longer looked human. The crusader armies
called them 'Tafurs' (no clue why) and they were considered fair game if
you could kill one- and fair game because they would eat the dead after a
battle, and some not yet dead. They were held to have given up their
humanity by eating human flesh. The Saracen armies killed them on sight also.

As to the usual accusations of cannibalism- I don't know. I smells too much
of propaganda to me, and it is not limited to this instance. In so many
accounts of war or even of exploration, the worst of our fears are ascribed
to the Other. We fear cannibals, so we claim our enemies are cannibals. On
similar lines, heretics were pretty universally accused of sexual
aberrations, of witchcraft, of baby-killing, etc. We see it in politcal
rhetoric today, with visuals of an apron-clad mother clutching her children
to her, afraid of what 'They' will do.

Did the crusaders ever eat human corpses? Individuals might have, in very
limited cases. But I doubt it was on a wide scale and certainly not under
any sort of 'permission' to do so. And since most of them were there on the
'One Trip To Heaven' Plan, I don't see them endangering their points with
God for a meal, starving as they were.

Just my two pence, as it were...

'Lainie
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