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“Esteemed brothers, comrades of mine…”: Constructing the Piety and Pugnacity of the Military Orders through Battle RhetoricFootnote

Connor C. WilsonLancaster [email protected]
Pages 65-81 | Published online: 17 Feb 2023

  • For the influence of classical rhetoric upon medieval historiography see Richard W. Southern, “Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: I. The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 20 (1970): 173–96. John O. Ward, “Classical Rhetoric and the Writing of History in Medieval and Renaissance Culture,” in European History and Its Historians, ed. Frank McGregor and Neil Wright (Adelaide, 1977), 1–10. John O. Ward, “Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography in the Twelfth Century,” in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. E. Breisach, Studies in Medieval Culture 19 (Kalamazoo, 1985), 103–66; L. D. Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 98–112, 332–34.
  • John Bliese, “The Courage of the Normans – A Comparative Study of Battle Rhetoric,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 35 (1991): 2 n. 7–9. Cf. William of Poitiers, Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, ed. and trans. Raymond Foreville (Paris, 1952), pp. xxxix, 184 n. 1. Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974), 20.
  • Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), 7. Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), 350–427. David S. Bachrach, “Conforming with the Rhetorical Tradition of Plausibility: Clerical Representation of Battlefield Orations against Muslims, 1080–1170,” The International History Review 26/1 (2004): 2–3.
  • John Bliese, “Aelred of Rievaulx’s Rhetoric and Morale at the Battle of the Standard, 1138,” Albion, 20/4 (1988): 546.
  • A detailed study of battle orations in the context of the twelfth-century crusading movement is the subject of Connor Wilson, The Battle Rhetoric of Crusade and Holy War, c. 1099–c. 1222 (Abingdon, forthcoming).
  • John F. Benton, “‘Nostre Franceis n’unt talent de fuir’: The Song of Roland and the Enculturation of a Warrior Class,” Olifant 6 (1979): 237–58. John Bliese “When Knightly Courage May Fail: Battle Orations in Medieval Europe,” The Historian 53/3 (1991): 503.
  • FC, pp. 411–12.
  • AA, 4.41, pp. 312–14.
  • Charles W. David, ed., The Conquest of Lisbon: De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi (New York, 2001), 104.
  • Henry Brown, trans., Seventeen Short Treatises of S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (Oxford, 1847), 447–50; Kempshall, Rhetoric, 383–88.
  • Marcus G. Bull, “The Historiographical Construction of a Northern French First Crusade,” in The Haskins Society Journal 25: 2013 Studies in Medieval History, ed. Laura L. Gathagan and William North (Woodbridge, 2015), 37–38. Richard W. Southern, History and Historians: Selected Papers of R. W. Southern, ed. Robert J. Bartlett (Oxford, 2004), 11–85.
  • GN, pp. 112–13 (my translation).
  • Nicholas E. Morton, “The Defence of the Holy Land and the Memory of the Maccabees,” Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010): 283.
  • Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises III, Cistercian Fathers Series: Number Nineteen, trans. Daniel O’Donovan, (Kalamazoo MI, 1977), 132–34.
  • Helen Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights: Images of the Military Orders, 1128- 1291 (London, 1993), 35–40. According to the vernacular poet turned Cluniac monk Guiot de Provins, while by no means without their flaws, the Templars were seen to be a wall against the Turks, renowned for never fleeing in battle: Guiot of Provins, “La Bible,” in Les oeuvres de Guiot de Provins, poète lyrique et satirique, ed. John Orr (Manchester, 1915), lines 1709–88.
  • Richard de Templo, The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols,, RS 38 (London, 1864–65), 1:264 [hereafter Itinerarium]. Translations from: Helen Nicholson, trans., The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Richardi (Aldershot, 1997).
  • Text and translations from Keagan Brewer and James H. Kane, eds., The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Anonymous Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum (Abingdon, 2019) [hereafter Libellus].
  • For the most recent at length discussion of the authorship, manuscripts and previous editions of Libellus, see Brewer and Kane, The Conquest of the Holy Land, 9–105.
  • Nicholson, Chronicle, 6–14.
  • Hans E. Mayer, Das Itinerarium Peregrinorum. Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt (Stuttgart, 1962), 1–44.
  • Nicholson, Chronicle, 9–10.
  • Mayer, Das Itinerarium, 89–106. Itinerarium, pp. xl–lxix.
  • Brewer and Kane, The Conquest of the Holy Land, 236.
  • Hannes Möhring, “Eine Chronik aus der Zeit des Dritten Kreuzzugs: das sogenannte Itinerarium peregrinorum 1,” Innsbrucker historische Studien 5 (1982): 149–62. Nicholson, The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 7–8, 164–65.
  • Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber, trans. Marianne Ailes, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 2003), 2:2.
  • Mayer, Das Itinerarium, 105–6. The most recent and detailed examination of the origins of IP1 has been undertaken by Helen J. Nicholson, “The Construction of a Primary Source: The Creation of Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1,” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes / Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies 37 (2019): 143–65. I would like to thank Professor Nicholson for allowing me to consult the article prior to its publication.
  • The other editions of the text are Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, eds., Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio, 9 vols. (Paris, 1724–33) 5:547–82; Hans Prutz, ed., Quellenbeiträge zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Danzig, 1876), 2:1–103.
  • Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon anglicanum, De expugnatione Terrae Sanctae libellus; Thomas Agnellus De morte et sepultura Henrici regis Angliae junioris; Gesta Fulconis filii Warini; Excerpta ex Otiis imperialibus Gervasii Tilebutiensis, ed. Joseph Stephenson, RS 66 (London, 1875).
  • Guy N. Hartcher, “Coggeshall Abbey: The First Hundred Years,” Journal of Religious History 12 (1982): 125–39. Itinerarium, p. lv. D. N. Bell, An Index of Authors and Works in Cistercian Libraries in Great Britain (Kalamazoo, MI, 1991), 119.
  • James Willoughby, “A Templar Chronicle of the Third Crusade: Origin and Transmission,” Medium Aevum 81 (2012): 126–34.
  • Brewer and Kane identify three distinct sections, with the third part being comprised of two independently circulating letters: Brewer and Kane , The Conquest of the Holy Land, 2.
  • British Library, Cotton MS Cleopatra B.I.
  • Itinerarium, p. lvi. Willoughby, “A Templar Chronicle,” 127.
  • James H. Kane, “Wolf’s Hair, Exposed Digits, and Muslim Holy Men: the Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum and the Conte of Ernoul,” Viator 47/2 (2016): 97. Willoughby, “A Templar Chronicle,” 126–27, 131.
  • Song of Songs 1:5. John Dobree Dalgairns, Lives of the English Saints: St. Aelred, Abbot of Rievaux (London, 1845), 144. Libellus, 120. Kane, “Wolf’s Hair,” 107–8. On the Song of Songs and Cistercian monasticism see Jean Leclercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France: Psycho-Historical Essays (Oxford, 1979).
  • Michael Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford, 2017), 25.
  • Aelred of Rievaulx, The “Relatio de Standardo” of St. Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. 3, ed. Richard Howlett, RS 82 (London, 1886), 185–99. Aelred of Rievaulx, Genealogia regum Anglorum, PL 195:721. Pascal Guébin and Ernest Lyon, eds., Petri Vallium Sarnaii monachi Historia Albigensis, 3 vols. (Paris, 1926–39), 1:268, 2:152.
  • A. Chroust, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I (Berlin, 1928), 116–72.
  • Ibid., lxxxvi; Graham A. Loud, trans., The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts (Farnham, 2010), 21–22; Jacques Basnage, ed., Thesaurus monumentorum ecclesiasticorum et historicorum, sive Henrici Canisii lectiones antiquae, vol. 3/2 (Antwerp, 1725), 498.
  • Cf. Chroust, Quellen, 84–85, 168–69.
  • The relic of the True Cross is called vivifice crucis lignum salutare: WT 11.32, p. 498.
  • Nicholas of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae in persona S. Bernardi’, PL 182:672, no. 467.
  • Eugenius III, ‘Epistolae’, PL 166:1203.
  • William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia (Woodbridge, 2008), 92–93.
  • For details on one such “robber knight,” and his status as conversus in the Cistercian Order, see Constance Berman, “The Life of Pons de Léras: Knights and Conversion to Religious Life in the Twelfth Century,” Church History and Religious Culture 88/2 (2008): 119–37.
  • Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80), 3:204–7, 6:349–51.
  • Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Monastic Culture (Woodbridge, 2001), 57, 166–76.
  • Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermon 23, PL, 195:340–41: “Behold, today our king, that captain of ours, is coming to see us with his entire army. Let us contemplate, to the best of our ability, all those in his battle line, how beautiful they are, and how well-ordered; let us long for their fellowship, but first let us not flee from the toil that was theirs. The fight is indeed a desperate one, but the thought of eternal reward should make us rejoice. We do not lack support in this battle. All around us are the angels and archangels. Let us look at that captain of ours, standing in the vanguard of his troops, and hear how he exhorts his knights. ‘In this world,’ he says, ‘you shall face persecution.’ (John 16:33).” Translation from Theodore Berkeley and M. Basil Pennington, Aelred of Rievaulx: The Liturgical Sermons: The First Clairvaux Collection (Kalamazoo, MI, 2001), 356.
  • Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180 (Stanford, CA, 1996), 24–25.
  • Nicholson, Chronicle, 11–12.
  • Itinerarium, 69, 104, 207, 268, 274, 407, 416–17.
  • Libellus, 114–15 (where also the translation): “Fratres dilectissimi et commilitones mei, uos semper istis uanis et caducis restitistis, uindictam ex eis exegistis, de ipsis semper uictoriam habuistis. Accingite ergo uos et state in prelio domini et memores estote patrum uestrorum Machabeorum quorum uicem bellandi pro ecclesia, pro lege, pro hereditate crucifixi iam dudum subistis. Scitote uero patres uestros non tam multitudine, apparatu armato, quam fide et iusticia, et obseruatione mandatorum dei, uictores ubique fuisse, quia non est difficile uel in multis uel in paucis uincere, quando uictoria e celo est.”
  • 1 Peter 2:9.
  • Libellus, 114–17 (where also the translation): “Fratres karissimi et semper amici ne terreamini ab hiis canibus rugientibus qui hodie florent, cras quoque in stagnum ignis et sulphuris mittentur. Vos autem estis genus electum, gens sancta, populus adquisitionis; uos estis eterni quia cum eterno regnaturi. Ergo ne timeatis neque paueatis, sed mementote Abraham, qui cum .CCC. uernaculis quatuor reges persecutus est atque percussit et predam excussit, cui reuertenti a cede .IIII. regum occurrit rex Salem Melchisedech offerens panem et uinum atque benedictionem dedit. Ecce et uobis .IIII. uiciis capitalibus in uirtute trinitatis superatis occurret rex Salem id est rex iusticie uerus sacerdos Iesus Christus offerens panem satietatis eterne, et uinum redemptionis perpetue, insuper et benedictionem infundet, ut amodo uoluptatibus carnis non seruiatis.”
  • Willoughby, “A Templar Chronicle,” 126.
  • Bliese, “Courage of the Normans,” 3–4.
  • Susanna Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216 (Farnham, 2011), 4, 49, 112–13.
  • The latter issue no doubt a continual concern for those fighting in the Latin East.
  • Aelred, Relatio, 186.
  • Libellus, 112; Baldric of Bourgueil, The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge, 2014), 109. See also Steven Biddlecombe, “Baldric of Bourgueil and the Familia Christi,” in Writing the Early Crusades, Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull (Woodbridge, 2014), 9–23.
  • Libellus, 112–13: “patrem illorum scilicet diabolum imitantes, qui quos in stratu carnis repperit quiescentes, et in peccatis suis dormientes, iugulat, et secum in foueam dampnationis trahit.”
  • Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 50.
  • Libellus, 113. Matthew 12.25. Mark 3.25.
  • Walter the Chancellor, Bella Antiochena, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1896), 92–93.
  • Libellus, 122–23: “Proh dolor, patrem orphanorum, susceptorem et uisitatorem infirmorum, elemosinarum largitorem, sue carnis et uiciorum uictorem, precursoris domini dispensatorem, dei et sanctorum amicum occiderunt.”
  • Rudolf Hiestand, Vorarbeiten zum Oriens Pontificus I. Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter. Archivberichte und Texte (Göttingen, 1972), 215, no. 8; RHGF, 15:681–82. Miriam Rita Tessera, “The Use of the Bible in Twelfth-Century Papal Letters to Outremer,” in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. Elizabeth Lapina and Nicholas Morton (Leiden, 2017), 197–99.
  • Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 86–119.
  • Libellus, 116.
  • Libellus, 114–15: “Nos quidem prompti et parati sumus pro Christo mortem subire qui morte sua preciosa nos redemit, hoc scientes siue uiuimus siue morimur in nomine Iesu semper esse victores.”
  • Romans 14: 8–10: “sive enim vivimus Domino vivimus sive morimur Domino morimur sive ergo vivimus sive morimur Domini sumus in hoc enim Christus et mortuus est et revixit ut et mortuorum et vivorum dominetur tu autem quid iudicas fratrem tuum aut tu quare spernis fratrem tuum omnes enim stabimus ante tribunal Dei…”.
  • Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 106–8.
  • Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae, in S. Bernardi opera, vol. 3: Tractatus et opuscula, ed. Jean Leclercq and H. M. Rochais (Rome, 1963), 214–15: “Securi igitur procedite milites, et intrepido animo inimicos crucis Christi propellite, certi quia neque mors, neque vita poterunt vos separare a caritate Dei, quæ est in Christo Jesu, illud sane vobiscum in omni periculo replicantes: sive vivimus, sive morimur Domini sumus.” Translation from Nicholson, “Depictions of the Military Orders,” 102–3.
  • Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae, 221. Libellus, 212.
  • Brewer and Kane discuss this Cistercian connection at greater length: Brewer and Kane, Conquest of the Holy Land, 47–50.
  • Helen Nicholson, “‘Martyrum collegio sociandus haberet’: Depictions of the Military Orders’ Martyrs in the Holy Land, 1187–1291,” in Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages: Realities and Representations. Essays in Honour of John France, ed. Simon John and Nicholas Morton (Farnham, 2014), 108–9.
  • Itinerarium, 268. Translation from Nicholson, Chronicle, 252.
  • Nicholson, Images of the Military Orders, 102–4.
  • Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, 1:3024.
  • A comparison of battle orations from Latin chronicles and the Song of Roland has highlighted how the avoidance of shame is a far more prominent theme of the latter. John Bliese, “Fighting Spirit and Literary Genre: A Comparison of Battle Exhortations in the ‘Song of Roland’ and in the Chronicles of the Central Middle Ages,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 94/4 (1995): 422–23.
  • Itinerarium, 268–69.
  • Ibid.
  • See, for example, FC, pp. 443–441, 562.
  • Itinerarium, 69. Translation from Nicholson, Chronicle, 78.
  • Nicholson, “The Construction of a Primary Source.”
  • Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, 1:6395–6402.
  • Aelred, Relatio, 185.
  • Aelred, Relatio, 190: “Nobis certe sunt latera ferra, pectus aereum, mens timoris vacua, quorum nec pedes fugam, nec umquam vulnus terga sensere. Quid Gallis apud Cliderhau profuere loricae? Nunquid, non inermes isti, ut dicunt, illos et loricas proicere et negligere galeas et scuta relinquere coegerunt? Videat igitur prudentia vestra, o rex, quale sit in his habere fiduciam, que in necessitate magis sunt oneri quam consolationi. Nos apud Cliderhou de loricatis victoriam reportavimus: nos hodie et istos animi virtute pro scuto utentes, lanceis prosternemus.”
  • William Aird, “Sweet Civility and Barbarous Rudeness: A View from the Frontier. Abbot Ailred of Rievaulx and the Scots,” in Imagining Frontiers, Contesting Identities, ed. Steven G. Ellis and Lud’a Klusáková (Pisa, 2007), 64.
  • FC, p. 562. Translation from Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095– 1127, ed. Harold S. Fink, trans. Frances Rita Ryan (Knoxville, TN, 1969), 204.
  • “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked, he covereth the face of the judges thereof: and if it be not he, who is it then?”
  • British Library, Royal 10 AXVI, f.49v: “Inimici sunt necessarii, quia qui inimicos non habet victoria caret.”
  • Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 367, 395, 399.
  • Ibid., 187.
  • Willoughby, “A Templar Chronicle,” 130–31. Brewer and Kane, The Conquest of the Holy Land, 24–50.

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