Prester John

There was a strong belief in the Middle Ages of a mysterious Prester John (the prester meaning priest), a king somewhere in Africa who was a Christian.  During most of Europe's Middle Ages sub-Saharan Africa was primarily what they considered pagan (North Africa of course was Muslim from the seventh century on), so the idea of a Christian enclave was very exciting.

This idea may have had its origin in third-hand stories about Ethiopia.  That region of east Africa included a large Christian population (the kingdom of Ethiopia had made Christianity the official religion in the fourth century) and a large Jewish population.  The latter were descended, according to legend, from the Queen of Sheba, who had married King Solomon.  The Prester John of the stories was usually black (like the Ethiopians) and also Christian.

But there was more to the story of Prester John than confused travelers' tales about Ethiopia (or India or Christian Armenia).  The story gained wide currency from the (fictive) accounts in a volume called Mandeville's Travels.  Mandeville supposedly discovered two great kingdoms, side by side in Africa (or India, or possibly the Middle East, at any rate very far away), one a scary Muslim kingdom of Assassins, the other a beautiful and happy Christian kingdom ruled over by Prester John.  In some versions, John was descended from the Three Magi.  Thus tales of Prester John, who combined the functions of king and priest, could serve as a foil for all that was supposedly bad about Islam.

The kingdom of Prester John was of course opulent, full of rich jewels, as any imagined wonderful country should be.  But John and his nobles lived abstemiously, eating simple fare, having sex only a few times a year and then only for the purpose of procreation.  Prester John got to have a harem in these stories, or at least be polygamous like an Old Testament figure, but he rarely visited his wives.  Thus the stories about him could also serve as morality stories about what Europe's own monarchs were supposed to be like, as seen in the late medieval image below.  The supposed Assassin kingdom next door to Prester John's, in contrast, was full of gluttony and lechery.

It should not be a surprise that stories of Prester John first became popular in the middle of the twelfth century, during the height of the crusading movement.  A letter that he supposedly wrote, saying that he wanted to help defend Jerusalem from the Muslims and personally visit the Holy Sepulchre, gained wide circulation in the 1140s.  In the 1170s the pope wrote a letter to Prester John, suggesting they should work together, though he doesn't seem to have gotten an answer.

In the early thirteenth century, after the Muslims had taken back Jerusalem, a crusading army made some spectacularly disastrous strategic decisions based on the conviction that Prester John himself (or a son or grandson or nephew for sure) was about to show up with his armies to help them.  (As you probably guessed, he didn't.)

The story of Prester John continued to be influential during the late Middle Ages, getting extra impetus when diplomatic relations were established (sort of) with Ethiopia in the fourteenth century.  By the seventeenth century, however, Europeans had to admit that perhaps Prester John had not been real after all, and that Ethiopia was not the marvelous jeweled kingdom they'd heard about.

© C. Dale Brittain 2020

For more on crusades and legends and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available on Amazon and other e-tailers.  Also available as a paperback.

Christians and Muslims

Medieval Christians, as a group, had a very distorted view of Islam.  North of the Mediterranean, most had never seen a Muslim.  Epics like the Song of Roland depicted Muslims as essentially pagans, worshipping the Roman gods Jupiter and Apollo, and probably as gigantic monsters as well.  There was a (completely false) story that Mohammed had originally been a Christian but had turned to heresy.

But along the Mediterranean there were enough Muslims that mutual understanding was at least slightly better.  This did not mean that they were friendly--Muslim pirates were a constant concern for Christian shippers.  But the lines were not as sharply drawn.

In Spain, which in the early Middle Ages was a patchwork of Muslim and Christian principalities, the two religions had to get along at some level.  Muslim rulers often took Christian princesses as their wives, in the hopes that this would make it easier for them to govern their Christian subjects.  The semi-mythic hero El Cid fought at different times both for Christian and for Muslim princes.  The Christian conquest of the Spanish peninsula, the Reconquista, proceeded in fits and starts and was not complete until 1492.

When the first Crusade was launched in 1095, of course, it was based on the assumption that the Holy Land, "the land that Christ's feet trod" as it was characterized at the time, was polluted by being ruled by Muslims.  Christian knights enthusiastically set out to kill Muslims, believing that the warrior skills which would send them to hell if used against other Christians could in fact save their souls if used against Muslims.

But once the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1100, the conquerors had to settle down and live with a predominantly Muslim population.  Many, not surprisingly, adopted much of the local culture, including the food and clothing, if not the religion.  Some took Muslim girls as concubines, even wives.  The motif of a Muslim woman being converted to Christianity and marrying a knight was common in the epics back home in the west, even if in practice not much conversion may have taken place.  Those newly arrived from Europe were often shocked to see this "going native."

Some western theologians were genuinely interested in learning more about Islam, the real religion, not the worshippers-of-Apollo version.  Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny in the middle of the twelfth century (and thus someone with unquestionable Christian credentials), commissioned a translation of the whole Koran from Arabic into Latin.  He took as his starting assumption that it was completely wrong, but he thought the best way to refute its "errors" would be through reason and argumentation, and it would be much easier to argue against it if one knew what it actually said.

Peter is a good example of the twelfth century's happy belief that one could persuade through reason, that a good, logical argument would win the day.  In the twenty-first century we've abandoned this.  (And Peter didn't win any converts himself that way.)

Incidentally, because Christians, Muslims, and Jews all worship the same God and all trace their roots back to the patriarch Abraham, they are "infidels" to each other, not heretics.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

Richard the Lionheart

Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) is one of England's most beloved kings.  It helps that he spent less than a year, total, of his reign actually in England.

The nickname comes from a story that he was attacked by a lion.  But when the lion opened its jaws to bite him, he reached into its mouth and down its throat, grabbed its heart, and pulled it right out.  This seems wildly unlikely.

He was actually the third son (out of five) of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and not originally intended to be king.  Eleanor had been divorced by Louis VII of France for not producing sons, so the fact that she immediately started cranking them out with Henry showed it wasn't her fault.

The oldest son (William) died young, but Prince Henry, his father's favorite, was supposed to be king of England after him.  Richard, Eleanor's favorite, was supposed to become duke of Aquitaine, succeeding his mother in that office, and take over his father's French lands--Henry II held Normandy, as had all English kings since the Norman Conquest, and also had Anjou (the county next to Normandy) from his mother.  So Richard spent his youth in France, not England, and in his teens led rebellions against his father.

Young Prince Henry, the favorite, died before their father, so Richard became the heir to the throne.  Their father died, at the castle of Chinon (in France, illustrated below), just as the Third Crusade was getting underway.  Richard raced off to fight the infidel, delighted not to be burdened with anything as tedious as governing.  The fourth brother, Geoffrey, had also predeceased their father--killed accidentally in a tournament--so the fifth brother, John, was left in charge of England.

Richard had a great time on Crusade, earning the admiration of Saladin, but on the way home through the Holy Roman Empire he was captured and held for ransom.  John had to raise the money to free him, an enormous amount, a "king's ransom," which did not help his reputation with the people from whom money was extracted.  (Between the fact that Prince Geoffrey's little son Arthur mysteriously disappeared while visiting his Uncle John, and the excesses that later led to the Magna Carta, John has never had a good reputation.)

Once freed, Richard stopped by the house long enough to be the "good king" of the Robin Hood stories, but he quickly zipped off to France.  Although he'd survived Crusade, he was shot down while besieging a castle--where it's possible great treasure was hidden.  Dying, he tried to make it to the castle of Chinon, to die where his father had, but only made it into the lower town below Chinon before expiring.  He was buried at the French monastery of Fontevraud--the image from his tomb is below.

By the way, you'll sometimes see the suggestion that Richard was gay.  This is based only on an account that he and young Philip II of France became very close friends--when not at war with each other.  Medieval men, unlike modern American men, found such closeness normal, not a sign of anything queer.  In fact Richard, who was indeed married but left no heirs, seems to have been uninterested in sex with anyone--why have sex when you could be out fighting instead?

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

Tournaments

Tournaments, mock battles, first appeared at the end of the eleventh century/beginning of the twelfth.  Because by that time it was fairly well understood (at least in the abstract) that Christians should not kill Christians (as discussed in a previous post), the knights who had been trained their whole lives as warriors wanted a chance to demonstrate their skill.  Church leaders would have preferred them to go off on Crusade, but the knights did not necessarily want to go off on a long and dangerous trip, where they would likely come home broke if they came home at all.

Of course, one could be killed in a tournament, even though that was not the purpose.  The swords did not have edges, but they still made fine blunt instruments.  And falling from a galloping horse is an excellent way to break one's neck.  Because the church believed that a tournament brought out all of the worst vices--pride and anger as well as potentially manslaughter--whole tournaments might be put under excommunication.  Someone killed in a tournament was not supposed to be buried in the churchyard but rather at the crossroads with a stake through his heart, the same as a suicide.

Twelfth-century knights were not deterred nor inspired to go on Crusade instead.  If one went on Crusade, one was either trying to find salvation or else to join in the general excitement when a duke announced he was off to Jerusalem.

It was possible for an excellent tournament fighter to make his living on the circuit.  William Marshall, who was companion to one of the sons of Henry II of England and later regent of England after the death of King John, got his start fighting in tournaments.  Losers forfeited their horse and armor to the winner, who generally allowed the loser to buy them back.

Although the modern view of tournaments is two knights with long lances galloping at each other in a ritualistic way, in practice twelfth-century tournaments could be a lot more chaotic.  As well as jousts, the face-offs between two knights, there was the mêlée, a free-for-all that could take off cross-country and go on all day.  At one point the knights from Flanders were late for a tournament and announced that they would just sit and watch.  However, as the mêlée was winding down, and all the other knights were exhausted, the Flemish knights donned their armor, mounted up, and quickly captured everyone in sight.  This was universally agreed to be a fine trick.

At many big tournaments, there would be a sort of pre-tournament the night before, to weed out the weaker fighters.  This "bohort" was typically fought in regular clothes, not armor, and involved poking more than striking.  It was a sign of ostentatious wealth to wear very fine clothing to the bohort and have them ripped to shreds.

Women did not participate directly in tournaments.  But they certainly were spectators, cheering on their favorites, often determining who was the winner, the one who had fought the best.  The knights of course wanted to impress the ladies (adding lust to the list of vices a tournament could excite).

With the invention of gunpowder, the fighting skills honed in tournaments no longer played much of a role in real battles.  Nonetheless, tournaments continued to be popular.  They could become extremely elaborate, requiring knights to prove noble ancestry several generations back in order to take part.  As armor became heavier and heavier and the warhorses thus larger, the knights had to be winched up into the saddle and strapped in place.  The late medieval church decided there was no problem with tournaments, even though people were still killed in them--including the heir to the French throne in the sixteenth century.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

Crusades

To a modern American, the Crusades were something very long ago and far away.  For those in the Middle East today, they are an ongoing issue.

With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, effectively ending the Roman Empire, the Middle East, north Africa, and the Spanish peninsula, all of which had been under Rome, became controlled by Muslim emirs and caliphs.  A century or two later, Christians in Spain slowly began trying to conquer the peninsula, working from the north to the south, a process not completed until 1492.  In the meantime, Christians and Muslims got along fairly well in Spain when they weren't fighting each other.

But it seemed disturbing to Europeans north of the Pyrenees (who didn't really worry about Spain) that the Holy Land was not under Christian control, as it had been until the seventh century.  Pilgrims had always been able to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but by the eleventh century this didn't seem like enough.

The First Crusade was launched in 1095.  Originally the pope who called for the expedition to the Middle East was just responding to a request from the Byzantines, the Greek Orthodox Christians in what is now Turkey, for mercenaries to fight the Turks.  But in urging knights, uneasy about how killing people might imperil their souls, to go fight Muslims, he gave them a way to save their souls by using their fighting skills in the Middle East.

To everyone's surprise, including theirs, the First Crusade was a success, capturing Jerusalem and establishing the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.  It lasted until 1187, when Turks under Saladin conquered it.  The Third Crusade was launched in 1189 as a failed effort to get it back.

King Richard the Lionheart of England was on that Crusade and loved every minute of it.  The image above is of his castle of Château-Gailliard in Normandy, the construction of which (after he got home) was inspired in part by castles in the Middle East.

Today, to modern Americans, the word "Crusade" means a moral struggle.  But to Muslims in the modern Middle East, it means Christians invading Muslim territories.  In the aftermath of 9/11, President George Bush announced a "Crusade" against terrorism, which made perfect sense to Americans, it meant we were going to stand up to terror.  But to Muslims, it meant Christians planning to kill Muslims.  (A former graduate student of mine is working for the National Security Agency.  She got to President Bush just too late.  He never used the term again, but the damage was done.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

For more on Crusades and so much more, see my ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.