IMC 2023: Sessions

In the period c.1100- 1300, many understood and presented the crusades as a kind of war that could only be justified if initiated and fought according to the criteria of just war, which insisted that war be used as a last recourse and only for the purposes of defence, and, when unavoidable, that violence be moderated, escalation avoided, and that it only be waged against other combatants (not against, e.g., women and children). In the same period, others argued that crusading could be justified by strong emotions, zeal for God, and in order to take revenge on those who had affronted or blasphemed against Christ. They all deserved to be killed, and crusading was in principle aimed at the total annihilation of the enemy. How did these two attitudes to crusading coexist in practise?

Paper -a: Throughout the 13th century, the shape of the coming paradise was a hot topic among theologians, poets, and chroniclers in the Iberian peninsula. Questions of what the coming earthly paradise would look like, as well as its imagined social, racial, and economic life, took on a particularly political tone in texts that cast Christian conquest in apocalyptic terms. In this paper, I will explore discussions of the heavenly city in the works of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Mauricio of Burgos, and Gonzalo de Berceo. Beyond the scope of theological debate, I will suggest, these writers took paradise as a loaded political paradigm, sacralising the conquest of Iberia while opening ideas for a range of civic reforms.

Paper -b: The crusade which culminated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (July 16, 12120, was marked by divergent and perhaps contradictory approaches to violence and killing. There were, at turns, apparent tensions between the ultramontano crusaders (from outside the Iberian Peninsula), who believed that no mercy or negotiation with the Muslims of al-Andalus should be entertained, and the Iberian leaders of the crusade, who were willing spare the lives of enemy forces who surrendered, especially the defenders of strategically important castles. Yet at other moments, those same leaders seemed to condone the slaughter and mass enslavement of non-combatants. All of this unfolded against a recruitment and propaganda effort that framed the crusade as a defense parry against an Almohad invasion of the Kingdom of Castile. In general, it could be argued that the crusade leaders were influenced by the concept if just war, and were following the rules, such as they were, in the early 13th century, but perhaps to the disappointment of the expectations of some of the crusaders. My paper will explore these rules, and the divergent crusading expectations, and thus attitudes towards violence, between the ultramontanos and the native Iberian crusaders.

Paper -c: Throughout the 13th century, the shape of the coming paradise was a hot topic among theologians, poets, and chroniclers in the Iberian peninsula. Questions of what the coming earthly paradise would look like, as well as its imagined social, racial, and economic life, took on a particularly political tone in texts that cast Christian conquest in apocalyptic terms. In this paper, I will explore discussions of the heavenly city in the works of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Mauricio of Burgos, and Gonzalo de Berceo. Beyond the scope of theological debate, I will suggest, these writers took paradise as a loaded political paradigm, sacralising the conquest of Iberia while opening ideas for a range of civic reforms.