[Sca-cooks] Crusades and cannibalism

[Ana Valdés]

Intressant discussion, by the way! The thinh who struck me was not the
"accusation! but the lacking of all moral or ethic evaluation. It was described as
"inhuman" or "unpersonally" as in a handbook over mathematic equations. "We needed
food and it was plenty of children around, they were not christen, it means, there
were not humans". It makes me remember Jonathan Swift's powerful pamphlet, "A
Modestal Proposal", which deals with the killing of Irish children as cattle. When
he wrote it it was considered as subversive he was condemned to prison, today we
see it as a masterpiece in political irony.
Thanks for your input, Lainie!
Ana

"Laura C. Minnick" wrote:

> 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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