Between Sword and Prayer
Warfare and Medieval Clergy in Cultural Perspective
Published on 20. October 2017
Book
Hardback
564 pages
978-90-04-34730-4 (ISBN)
Description
Between Sword and Prayer is a broad-ranging anthology focused on the involvement of medieval clergy in warfare and a variety of related military activities. The essays address, on the one hand, the issue of clerical participation in combat, in organizing military campaigns, and in armed defense, and on the other, questions surrounding the political, ideological, or religious legitimization of clerical military aggression. These perspectives are further enriched by chapters dealing with the problem of the textual representation of clergy who actively participated in military affairs. The essays in this volume span Latin Christendom, encompassing geographically the four corners of medieval Europe: Western, East-Central, Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean.
Contributors are Carlos de Ayala Martinez, Genevieve Buehrer-Thierry, Chris Dennis, Pablo Dorronzoro Ramirez, Lawrence G. Duggan, Daniel Gerrard, Robert Houghton, Carsten Selch Jensen, Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, Ivan Majnaric, Monika Michalska, Michael Edward Moore, Craig M. Nakashian, John S. Ott, Katherine Allen Smith, and Anna Wasko.
Contributors are Carlos de Ayala Martinez, Genevieve Buehrer-Thierry, Chris Dennis, Pablo Dorronzoro Ramirez, Lawrence G. Duggan, Daniel Gerrard, Robert Houghton, Carsten Selch Jensen, Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, Ivan Majnaric, Monika Michalska, Michael Edward Moore, Craig M. Nakashian, John S. Ott, Katherine Allen Smith, and Anna Wasko.
Reviews / Votes
''The question of militant or arms-bearing clergy remained for many decades the preserve of scholars focused on the German kingdom and, to a lesser extent, the Carolingian Empire. The last few years, however, have seen the publication of a spate of books that have examined militant clergy in other contexts. [...] The volume under review here, which includes essays by both Nakashian and Gerrard, continues the process of broadening the historical investigation of clergy who were involved in the conduct of war. [...] This volume provides a valuable array of perspectives on the problem of clerical militancy across much of Europe over a period of many centuries.One of the prominent themes that emerges from these studies is the great complexity and diversity of Christian thought regarding whether and when it was licit for clerics to shed blood directly, or to participate in other ways in military campaignsDavid S. Bachrach, in Speculum, 94/2 (2019).
"In their edited volume, Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, and John S. Ott deserve congratulations for bringing together such a broad sample of scholarship on the subject of the involvement of medieval clerics in military affairs; those congratulations need at least be double for the authors of the chapters for taking the time to do new and important work rooted in research, rather than succumb to the pressure of doing empirically-suspect but popularly-facing trendy writing. The volume's contents are considerable and make a clear case that, whatever the legal or social impacts might be, clerics were involved in the processes of warfighting broadly across Medieval Latin Christendom; this is itself is an achievement, made all the more impressive by the detail of the individual chapters [...] Kotecki, Maciejewski, and Ott deserve considerable thanks for their work to collect so many quality scholars, and Brill deserve praise for putting these chapters together in one volume''.
Kyle Lincoln, in De Re Militari, August 2020.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
912 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-34730-4 (9789004347304)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Radoslaw Kotecki, Ph.D. (2013), Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland, is Adjunct at that university. He has published essays on medieval church and cultural history, and is co-editor of several volumes, including Ecclesia et Violentia (Cambridge Scholars, 2014).
Jacek Maciejewski, Ph.D. (1996), is full Professor at Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland. He has published extensively on the Polish medieval episcopacy. He is the author of three monographs, including Episkopat polski doby dzielnicowej, 1180-1320 (Societas Vistulana, 2003), and Adventus episcopi (UKW, 2013)
John S. Ott, Ph.D. (1999), Stanford University, is Professor of History at Portland State University. He is co-editor of The Bishop Reformed (Ashgate, 2007), and the author of Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c.1050-1150 (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Jacek Maciejewski, Ph.D. (1996), is full Professor at Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland. He has published extensively on the Polish medieval episcopacy. He is the author of three monographs, including Episkopat polski doby dzielnicowej, 1180-1320 (Societas Vistulana, 2003), and Adventus episcopi (UKW, 2013)
John S. Ott, Ph.D. (1999), Stanford University, is Professor of History at Portland State University. He is co-editor of The Bishop Reformed (Ashgate, 2007), and the author of Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c.1050-1150 (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Content
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
List of Contributors
The Medieval Clergy and War: A Historiographical Introduction
?Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, and John S. Ott
1 Bishops as City Defenders in Early Medieval Gaul and Germany
?Genevieve Buehrer-Thierry
2 The Frankish Church and Missionary War in Central Europe
?Michael Edward Moore
3 "De clericis qui pugnaverunt, aut pugnandi gratia armati fuerunt": Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances (1048-1093) and Clerical Participation in the Battle of Hastings
?Chris Dennis
4 Why Study Fighting Clergy? Knight Service, Integrated War, and the Bounds of English Military History, c. 1000-1200
?Daniel Gerrard
5 Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon: Views of Clerical Warfare from Inside and Outside the Cloister
?Craig M. Nakashian
6 Ungirded for Battle: Knightly Conversion to Monastic Life and the Making of Weapon-Relics in the Central Middle Ages
?Katherine Allen Smith
7 The Episcopate and Reconquest in the Times of Alfonso VII of Castile and Leon
?Carlos de Ayala Martinez
8 The Aragonese Episcopate and the Military Campaigns of Alfonso I the Battler against Iberian Muslims
?Pablo Dorronzoro Ramirez
9 Italian Bishops and Warfare during the Investiture Contest: The Case of Parma
?Robert Houghton
10 Lions and Lambs, Wolves and Pastors of the Flock: Portraying Military Activity of Bishops in Twelfth-Century Poland
?Radoslaw Kotecki
11 A Bishop Defends His City, or Master Vincentius's Troubles with the Military Activity of His Superior
?Jacek Maciejewski
12 In the Service of Bellona: Images of "Militant Abbots" in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Historiography of St. Gall (continuationes II and III of Casuum Sancti Galli)
?Monika Michalska
13 Bishops and Abbots at War: Some Aspects of Clerical Involvement in Warfare in Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Livonia and Estonia
?Carsten Selch Jensen
14 Tending the Flock: Clergy and a Discourse of War in the Wider Hinterland of the Eastern Adriatic during the Late Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
?Ivan Majnaric
15 "Freedom is the greatest thing": Bishops as Fighters for Freedom in Fifteenth-Century Sweden
?Anna Wasko
16 The Evolution of Latin Canon Law on the Clergy and Armsbearing to the Thirteenth Century
?Lawrence G. Duggan
Select Bibliography
Index
List of Abbreviations
List of Contributors
The Medieval Clergy and War: A Historiographical Introduction
?Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, and John S. Ott
1 Bishops as City Defenders in Early Medieval Gaul and Germany
?Genevieve Buehrer-Thierry
2 The Frankish Church and Missionary War in Central Europe
?Michael Edward Moore
3 "De clericis qui pugnaverunt, aut pugnandi gratia armati fuerunt": Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances (1048-1093) and Clerical Participation in the Battle of Hastings
?Chris Dennis
4 Why Study Fighting Clergy? Knight Service, Integrated War, and the Bounds of English Military History, c. 1000-1200
?Daniel Gerrard
5 Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon: Views of Clerical Warfare from Inside and Outside the Cloister
?Craig M. Nakashian
6 Ungirded for Battle: Knightly Conversion to Monastic Life and the Making of Weapon-Relics in the Central Middle Ages
?Katherine Allen Smith
7 The Episcopate and Reconquest in the Times of Alfonso VII of Castile and Leon
?Carlos de Ayala Martinez
8 The Aragonese Episcopate and the Military Campaigns of Alfonso I the Battler against Iberian Muslims
?Pablo Dorronzoro Ramirez
9 Italian Bishops and Warfare during the Investiture Contest: The Case of Parma
?Robert Houghton
10 Lions and Lambs, Wolves and Pastors of the Flock: Portraying Military Activity of Bishops in Twelfth-Century Poland
?Radoslaw Kotecki
11 A Bishop Defends His City, or Master Vincentius's Troubles with the Military Activity of His Superior
?Jacek Maciejewski
12 In the Service of Bellona: Images of "Militant Abbots" in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Historiography of St. Gall (continuationes II and III of Casuum Sancti Galli)
?Monika Michalska
13 Bishops and Abbots at War: Some Aspects of Clerical Involvement in Warfare in Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Livonia and Estonia
?Carsten Selch Jensen
14 Tending the Flock: Clergy and a Discourse of War in the Wider Hinterland of the Eastern Adriatic during the Late Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
?Ivan Majnaric
15 "Freedom is the greatest thing": Bishops as Fighters for Freedom in Fifteenth-Century Sweden
?Anna Wasko
16 The Evolution of Latin Canon Law on the Clergy and Armsbearing to the Thirteenth Century
?Lawrence G. Duggan
Select Bibliography
Index