Welcome back to Day 15 of the "Road from the West" Virtual Book Tour. Today, author Rosanne E. Lortz is sharing a very interesting guest post plus she has generously offered to give one lucky reader a paperback copy of her new book! This is open to everyone - US/Canada/International (see below to enter)
THE CRUSADES AND THE
SILVER SCREEN
The Crusades are a piece of history of which everyone has
heard and on which everyone has an opinion. Some people's thoughts are formed
from half-recollected smatterings of high school history, others are informed
by nonfiction books on the subject—but in most cases, people's opinions of the
Crusades are inspired by the popular films that inundate our culture. And as
all serious history-lovers know, it is a risky business to trust in Hollywood
for historical accuracy.
One assumption that nearly every Crusade movie seems to make
is that the religious rationale behind the movement was just a façade that many
of the Crusaders “saw through”. In today’s America, religion is, to a great
degree, marginalized and pushed into the private sector. This makes it difficult
to understand the religiously saturated culture in which the Crusades were
conducted. For us, it is hard to swallow the fact that the line "Deus vult! God wills it!" was not
just a line—it was what the Crusaders actually believed. They believed that God
wanted them to free Jerusalem from Muslim domination, and they took the cross
despite great monetary expense and at great personal risk to earn the favor of
God and to merit the forgiveness of sins. While some of them might have become
disillusioned with the way the Crusades were carried out, few—if any—of them
doubted that the endeavor was a worthy one to pursue.
Recently, I read an article titled "Pop
Culture Reshapes Role of Crusades" on the Medieval News blog that
delves into this very subject. The article quotes Christopher Hill, a professor
of history at Hamilton College, who talks about "an increasing pattern of
secularization within Crusades movies." In films created after World War
II, "the characters often ended up either disillusioned with the fighting,
faced with an existential crisis, or suddenly enlightened regarding the
intrinsically evil nature of religion. Often it was a mixture of all three."
Professor Hill's observation jives well with my own
experience of the Crusades on the silver screen. Offhand, I can think of
several movies of the kind he describes: Robin
Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kingdom of
Heaven, Robin Hood (2010, with Russell Crowe), and just recently Nicholas
Cage's movie Season of the Witch. All
of these movies show the protagonist's disillusionment with the goals of the
Crusades. Instead of typifying the culture of the Middle Ages, the protagonist
becomes a mouthpiece for our own culture which sees true piety and warfare
(especially warfare for the purposes of conquest) as diametrically opposed to
each other.
For a historical fiction author, as well as for a
screenwriter, the temptation exists to create the protagonist in our own image
instead of in an image appropriate to the era. That is one temptation that I
have striven to resist as I tell the story of Tancred, a young Norman nobleman
who takes the cross, in my new novel Road
from the West. All the primary sources documenting Tancred's life depict a
skilled warrior with enough testosterone to make any action hero proud. But
Tancred has a religious side as well, and—strange as it may seem to our
sensibilities—his sense of piety has no objections to skewering as many
Saracens as he runs across.
Ralph of Caen, a contemporary historian, gives a vivid
account of the stirrings of conscience that prompted Tancred to go on Crusade:
Over time…his prudent soul raised
concerns that caused him anxiety. It seemed that his military life contradicted
the Lord's command [to turn the other cheek when struck]…. But when Pope
Urban’s decision granted a remission of all sins to all of the Christians
setting forth to fight against the pagans, then finally it was as if…his eyes
were opened and his boldness set in motion.”
The guilt that Tancred feels for his past military life is
not guilt for causing bloodshed per se. Rather, it is guilt for an improper use
of the sword, for turning it against his fellow Christians. Pope Urban's
Crusade offers a way for him to atone for his past, and at the same time use
his experience in arms properly, in fighting against "the pagans."
Later on in Ralph of Caen's account, we see that Tancred has
no desire to "turn the other cheek" when in battle with the Muslims.
After his troop ambushes and kills seven hundred Saracens outside of Antioch,
Tancred cuts off seventy heads and sends them to Bishop Adhemar as a
"tithe" of his labor. And Bishop Adhemar, far from being appalled by
this tribute, thanks the giver by sending him seventy gold pieces in return. A
grisly scene, to be sure, but one that these men could easily justify after
seeing the thousands upon thousands of bleached bones of the men, women, and
children—members of the People's Crusade—that the Muslims slaughtered just
north of Nicaea. Tancred’s conscience suffers not a whit from his bloody
exploits on the Crusade. He takes it as a matter of course that his deeds
should be done in the name of God and for the sake of religion.
The Crusades were fought in a world far different than ours,
a world where it was normal for religion to inform public policy and incite
warfare. It was the Crusaders’ doubts about their own holiness that persuaded
them to join the Crusade in the first place, but the cause of the Crusade
itself gave them no cause for doubt. Twenty-first century Americans dressed up
in chainmail may see these battles as an excuse for an existential crisis.
Twelfth century Europeans saw them as a means to please God and advance the
dominion of Christendom.
I love a good period film as much as anyone, but I find it
wiser to let history—not Hollywood—inform my opinions about the way people
“really” were back then. The closing paragraph of “Pop Culture Reshapes Role of
Crusades” expresses a caution that all moviegoers would do well to keep in
mind: "When one watches a movie ostensibly about the Crusades, they're not
watching a movie that's actually about the Crusades. Rather, they're watching
an interpretation of current Western attitudes that happens to be dressed up in
medieval clothing."
