[Sca-cooks] Crusades and cannibalism

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 07:26 PM 12/12/02 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>>
>> Not anywhere as simple as that, and I think you know it.
>>
>> They were considered human. I would like to see the 'church decree' that
>> you refer to, becasue I have plenty others that give clear instructions to
>> attempt conversion- and you can only convert a human being. There were
>> plenty of arguments over whether or not the Saracens had sould, and the
>> conclusion was that yes, they did. They were damned, but they had them.
>
>I beleive the decree stated that anyone participating in the Crusades would
>be considered doing the work of God in freeing the Holy Land. Therefore any
>"acts" performed during such Wars would not be sins.

Not quite. But fighting under the Cross provided remission of sins- which
is sorta the same not not exactly.

It is a little like cops having free reign to break traffic laws to
apprehend a fleeing suspect. And then getting a medal for doing it.
Apprehending the suspect, that is- you see the remission of sins was a
reward for the service- not for how the service was performed.

(Now I'm confused, but)

> Now though I was being
>sarcastic,

I thought so-

>you are not really trying to tell me the Cursades were about
>converting people  to Christanity are you?

Nope. They were wars of liberation.

>  What I was trying to make point
>of was is the fact that if it was OK to rape kill plunder etc, a little
>cannablism was not to far out of the picture.  I simply have a problem with
>people who somehow make the Crusaders out to be these God fearing Righteous
>folks doing only what was necessary to "free" the Holy Land. And the concept
>that the Holy Church was looking to have all those folks converted or
>expected them to be is ridiculeous.

Like my Norman boyz say "Land? You got land? Where? A few squatters? No
problem!"

I don't think that there was by any stretch an expectation or even hope of
conversion. But that was the highest of goals, if it could be acheived. If
not, then the many tales of teh conversions of heathens would be pointless.
Why write fiction about something that is totally out of the question? Good
example is Parzifal's father, Gahmeuret (or something like that- I don't
have the book handy). He met an African Queen, saw to it that she was
converted, and married her. They had a kid, named Ferefitz, and of course
becasue the mother was black and the father white (mind you, the writers
clearly had no idea what would happen in this case) the kid was piebald-
checky, sable and argent. (we thought it was pretty funny in class too). At
any rate, the point is that it shows up time and again, that when a
non-Christian proves themselves to be a worthy opponent, they are offered
teh opportunity to convert, and in teh literature of course they do so.

Couple notes to that end-

1> they do have souls, or they couldn't convert at all,
2> there seems to be a link between their 'worthiness' and virtue, and
their desire to convert once they have been explained the gospel. The
implication is 'of course they will covert! They are honorable men!'
3> it is expected that when fighting the heathen foe, that they be
opportunity to convert.

Mind you, these are the literary examples, not historical. But you can draw
a fair amount of information and inferrence from them.

Yup, most of the crusaders were mindless rabble, intent on plunder, becasue
there wasn't much at home (makes me wonder about certain current
events...). But they did gain a good degree of comfort from being offered
absolution, remission of sins. Which also says they knew what they were
doing was wrong.

Those who converted at the point of a sword probably went back as before as
soon and the sword was out of range. And that happened on both sides. At
teh least though, if you converted a village, you could then burn it down
without the guilt of sending all of them to hell...

I don't believe in community guilt anymore than community expiation.
Individuals committed atrocities. Just ask the village of My Lai.

Now that I have far too much to think about...

'Lainie
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Sometimes Life makes drastic changes without our permission...