"Christian military history" Topic

Stephen,

To be clear, my criticism is aimed at the school of thought in which you are writing, not your paper specifically. Your paper is on a very interesting subject, and if you could only drop the "peer review" language and objectively come to grips with what you think is most important or interesting.

I learned more from you in this post..

Actually no, Saladin didn't recapture all the crusader gains. Antioch, for example remained out of reach and he bounced off Tyre twice. Indeed after the high point of 1187, he failed to win another battle and lost many of his gains to the Third Crusade. The best he could manage was a one all draw against Guy de Lusignan outside Acre on 4th October 1189.
Come on, Bottom Dollar, you can do better than that ;-)
Try googling Sultan Baibars to find a military commander that really caused the crusaders problems…

… than I did from reading your paper. Your subject has potential and is worthy, clearly you have command of it, and yet you ought to turn the tables so speak.

Regards,
Jim

Jim,

No, the Crusades weren't a soccer match, but I think you got the analogy of how individuals can have differing perspectives on the same event. If there can be intense emotionally fueled disagreements over whether a ball crossed the line or not in a 90 minute game, how much more can sources disagree over the details of a military expedition with an intense spiritual component, conducted by tens of thousands of participants undergoing physical and psychological stresses over the course of many years?

For example, I've been researching the Battle of Acre (4 Oct 1189) and the various sources directly contradict each other at certain points. If I treat all the sources as equal, unbiased, factual accounts, how will I be able to reconcile those differences? Some are hostile to certain characters, others favour them, some were present, others were not. Some of those who were not present had access to many participants from different factions, another to those of only one faction. Some accounts survive in fragmentary form, others in various manuscripts that differ from one another (so begins the research into the manuscript tradition to find which one probably closest to the original).

Moreover, most sources are in Latin and Latin is language that can often be translated in more than one way. Moreover, just are English use constantly evolves and has variations around the globe, so some medieval writers are closer to the Classical Latin ideal than others etc. And all the time my interpretation of those accounts is being influenced by my education, culture and personal experience. Of course, we all try to minimise validity issues and seek to be objective, but I am an imperfect creature ;-)

I get the point on the language though. This paper was written for a certain readership, posts here are different – as are articles written for general consumption. I only posted the link because the issue of emotions was raised and I felt that was a useful summary on the history of emotions there. Hence the 'be gentle' comment ;-)

Kind regards,

Stephen

Janner wrote: "If I treat all the sources as equal, unbiased, factual accounts, how will I be able to reconcile those differences? Some are hostile to certain characters, others favour them, some were present, others were not. Some of those who were not present had access to many participants from different factions, another to those of only one faction. Some accounts survive in fragmentary form, others in various manuscripts that differ from one another…"

Stephen,

They aren't equal and they aren't unbiased, as you already know, but that still makes them factual for events and politics and tons of other things as well.. Their biases can give you information and facts and understanding about the different Crusading factions, they are windows to comprehending the Crusading world and what made different Crusaders think or do things in different ways or what brought them all together. Why they didn't like each other … or why they did. then you perhaps get into cultural/national distinctions, etc…

Consider each, and come to some objective conclusions, then analyize what you think they thought was most important and why…

Jim

To Bottom Dollar and Janner

I see both of you are rolling around in the bog of sources getting perilously close to the post-modernist/deconstructionist quicksand. I can't help myself but I have to help. The first lifeline in this is to give you the strongtest argument against the "Pomo-deco's" which is…

"If I told you what I did yesterday, you will know what I did yesterday." At its root the danger of the Pomo-Deco is that it destroyes all claims of objectivity, AND knoledge. Of course the ultimate reasining of this is that it says that all of facts are mere opinion, and that science itself is simply a matter of opinion and there is no objective truth. But, as I said, if I tell you what I did yesterday, you will know. That simple statement, almost a tautology, resucues us. That is, things CAN be understood, things CAN be learned, and if things CAN be learned, then knowledge is rescued from oblivion.

The second problem is that mentioned with the evaluation of sources. Who do you trust, what do you know, etc., is a serious question-- indeed-- it is THE question and the central one of Western Philosophy which is far less interested in "ontology" (what is) but far more minterested in "what CAN I know" and "what CAN BE known." This is where the problem lies. Ontology is simply a creed, a statement of belief which one accepts or rejects. The epistomological questions are much harder simply because we MUST examine predisposition and prejudices (or the apparent lack therof).

There is a pernicious tendency in historical studies to examine the various positions, arrange them along a continua with the most extreme of one on one hand the most opposite extreme on the other and Solomonlike- suggest slcing the baby somewhere in the middle and calling it that. That's a pretty poor way of doing it. One of the extremes might ACTUALLY be the correct one. For example, let's take the old saw of "Victorian phobia about sex." and "Victorian repression." If you actually dig into it you find that most of this is based upon the idea that women were essentially frigid and did not like sex, but careful analysis shows that this was in fact propounded by literally ONE doctor in the Victorian medical establishment who was in his own time roundly criticised and condemned. Indeed, the Victorians were quite frank about sex and Victorian medical manuals and texts forthrightly proclaimed how necessary a healthy sexual life was for the mind and body of both men and women and the happiness of marriage. One can read about this in "When Passion Ruled" which was a book about Victorian Sexuality" or Gertrude Himmelfarb's "The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values." Both of them provide a different and quite surprising picture.

But it is the idea of a continua that is itself the problem. The idea that there is a link, a line, a scale on which sources can be rated and graded, compared and arranged which is itself the problem and which forces us to ascribe "truth" in some way and in some manner to each of the sources. Here one must at least give the Pomo-Deco's their due. To any specific author "truth" is written by them in their own mind and even when they may willingly or knowlingly "fudge" the facts or slant the story it is in the service of some "higher" (to them) truth which it is important to advance and validate. Here, the Pomo-Deco's themself collapse for all of their assertions are little more than a tarted up and rejuvinated marxism which basically is little more than "how the b******ds screwed us, and why we should be on the public dole because of it."

The simple fact is that while there IS an objective truth, and there IS fudging and sanding and shaping, the sources are the sources and it is important to consider all of them, EVEN THE ONES THAT ARE OBVIOUSLY BIASED simply because that is what the one side or one point of view believes and it's important to understand that if we at all wish to know about the period under study for they are, in fact, a part of it.

The other problem is that we have been hammered by our education into being good Hegelians (absolutely necessary if we are to be made good marxists) which believes in such things as "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" and the whole idea that there must be one underlying truth apprehendible to us, which is good, but very bad when Hegel and Marx gets to the idea that this underlying truth is not just the literal "what happened" but a component of the organizing principle of history, that is "the keys to the car of all of the past" which will allow us to manipulate and use it in the future. It is in the search for that truth that we find the guy with the quill and parchment, horns and cloven hooves wanting us to sign away something.

That's the point of my story comparing my boss to the Duc De Choiseul, which is humorous, but not entirely as irrelevant as one might think. Individual mores, beliefs, and ideas do not just exist to be pesky gadflies to the grand view of history we wish to imagine that we see as the revelation of absolute truth. The individuals and these contradictions make off with the "laws of history" and run it into the chop shop, put it up on cinderblocks, and strip eveyrthing they can leaving nothing but the picked clean carcass which is then sold to brother Bernie on the sly for scrap.

You've both touched on the Greek roots of historical inquiry and of course Thucydides. But Thucydides himself is not always accurate. Or, more correctly- all those dialogues he lards his work with we like to think are the actual words of the persons speaking at the time, thundering down through the halls of ages to enlighten us. But in point of fact while some might be, some are mere synopsis of what the opinions of that person were, or what SOMEBODY siad, or what someone OUGHT to have said.

There are however some things that never change. In Heroditus he lays out all the various reasons for the Persians to attack the Greeks, which go from the realpolitik of statecraft, spheres of influence, trade, the conspiracy of the Greeks in the Ionian Revolt, the insults to Persian Honor and so forth. He also give one reason, which he disparages a bit, but says that the Persian Queen looked out one day and saw that she had slaves from all the nations and peoples of the world except Sparta and that she wanted some Spartan women as slaves.

THAT is the reason that Xerxes marched against Greece. You can take all the rest of it and toss it into the dust bin, but when a man's wife fastens on something, she'll make his life miserable, a holy hell till she gets it. So I can see poor ole henpecked Xerxes bedeviled by his wife for years till he bestirred himself and got out of the palace to go down to the corner and pick up a passle of Spartan Slaves.

Such my children are the forces of history.

Another favorite. You guys remember Louis XIV? The Sun King, "I am the state, the state is me?" Well one day he, his wife the queen, and his mistress Madame de Montespan are on their way to some gala function. They're all riding in the same coach (oh what must the conversation have been like!) . They are just starting to get into the carriage when Louis turns to his Mistress, Montespan and says
"Madame! You are wearing scent! You know I despise scent!" Montespan comes back with "I wear sent because you stink! If you washed more you would not stink and I would not have to wear scent." Louis slaps Montespan, whereupon Montespan hauls off and gives him a punch in the nose. Down they both go striking and wrestling with each other in the mud and the horse crap like common peasants. There's Ol' "Le etat cest moi…" wrasslin with his doxie in the mud…

People do not think logically--ever.

Hi Jim,

Exactly, that has been my point all along, but what you call 'facts' I call 'information'.

This is because in science a fact as something that cannot be disputed – a true fact – rather than a hypothesis or theory. Not that I want to open a whole new debate on whether history can be a science or not, but 'fact' is avoided by many historians because of its baggage.

I quite happy as to how to deal with conflicting sources, but used the example of the Battle of Acre to illustrate why we have to treat sources (both primary and secondary) critically rather than as a list of unbiased facts. Chroniclers often come through the process very well, proving more reliable than some historians on occasion ;-)

Regards,

Stephen

OS,

I conduct research to try and understand what happened and why. I treat sources critically – no more, no less.

It seems that you're reading into my posts something that is not there – maybe you're not being objective enough ;-)

All the best,

Sorry guys, I'm going to have to bow out for a while as I'm on the road until Sunday. Have a great week.

People do not think logically--ever.

What an interesting summation! And it is false. Anytime you assert a superlative upon humanity it is nearly always false.

There is no reason, no evidence, rather, to assume that ancmed persons were any more or less logical in their thinking than moderns. Homo sapiens have been thinking sapiently for probably less than 100K years; and with any sort of surviving record for far less time than that.

Our species is a curious blend of the logical/objective and illogical/subjective. It has not changed since before recorded "time".

Emotions don't change during "our" existence, ever. But their display does change.

What to a modern man (as Stephen illustrates) would be looked upon as an "unmanly" display of emotion would be to a medieval knight a most seemly show of manly emotion. It is not important to determine if medieval warriors wept more openly and frequently than moderns do: how does that change anything, vis-a-vis understanding the "facts" given to us in the documents? Medieval men wept openly as they grieved: modern men seldom give into their grief and weep openly: this difference in cultural expectation changes nothing: we understand that medieval men felt grief for the same reasons/causes that we do. We can understand the written texts. They are not alien, even though their cultural background is different from our own.

The whole objection that I have -- and which I am motivated to respond here because of -- is the assertion that there is some hidden, mysterious difference behind the written texts of the past: i.e. that we cannot ever truly know what the writers meant to convey, because we have lost all inarguable contact with them and their time. If we believe this to be the case, then we have lost contact with our own history, and reduced all of it to a debate on what actually occurred and why. If there can never be a consensus on "factual" history, then it is essentially worthless as a guide: either on cause and effect or on the quest of the human heart. If the people of the past are unreachable/unreadable, then their lives/histories are worthless beyond mere entertainment….

Dear Just visiting

What I meant when I said that "people do not think logically-- ever" is that logic is all very well and good most of the time to talk about what one might or might not, would or would not, could or could not, should or should not do, in any given situation.

One can think logically when it is safely removed at a distance from us in time and or space. Then the voice of sweet reason can sing its song quite freely (most of the time, unless we're trotting out a stalking horse).

But once it touches us or our own, then logic flies out the window. Emotion and situation ALWAYS gets into the mix and that is that. This does not at all mean that we cannot know the people of the past or what they thought and did, or that their emotions are a closed book for us. Far from it, we can know those emotions and study the cultural milieu which is the backdrop of their actions. But unless we ARE going to study their culture and know it, read their literature and know it, and even be able to think like them then the past will always remain closed to us. This means learning their language, studying their sources, and going back to their own thoughts.

You can see this quite clearly. Go and read Shakespeare's plays -- the histories from Richard II to Richard III and you will be in a different world. But it is not the world of Agincourt and Towton, it's that of the late Elizabethan. On the other hand, if you think that all is an open book then watch the faces of any High-School Seniors English Class when you foist "The Tempest" or "As You Like it" on them. Understanding and knowing the past is not that easy.

"Knowing the past" is impossible. That's the rub: History is indeed closed to us. All we have is what someone wrote. We can read all that everyone extant wrote. The contradiction doesn't just creep in; it is woven into the accounts without fail; often the single account does not remain internally consistent; then we see evidence of the bias and emotional dichotomy of the writer: then we "historians" must decipher where that bias and emotional connection of the writer forced him into a false accounting of the "facts". We cross-check where we can; attempt to toss out the unreliable (read, biased) assertions of the writers, and arrive at the "truth". Then we present our conclusions. If we publish, the outcome is always disagreement woven with qualified agreement. And thus we have the subject of this thread: a "Christian history", which will appeal only to those Christians of a like mind. So again, how is a study of history at all useful in avoiding the mistakes of the past, when we cannot even agree on what causes led to which mistakes? The aphorism "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it", is therefore inescapable doom: as no consensus of the population will derive from said-study….

(edit to add: It appears that I have two objects before me at the same time: the assertion of some that we cannot ever know the past, because of the "alien" quality of that past, coupled with the inevitable dissembling with the truth of the writers; and my lasting disappointment that those same writers, even if understood, wrote with agendas, disagreeing even as they wrote, with the writers of their past, and their contemporaries: coupled with the also inevitable loss of the main mass of records the further back we go. The end result is a "manufactured" understanding of history: and this creation has its own agenda, which colors the dissemination of the history to fit into that agenda. This thread points to a blatantly, fundamentalist Christian view of history. There are countless other versions of the very same stories, each drawing its own conclusions, and therefore each version only "valuable" to the immediate, specific audience that said-historical paradigm is intended to first convince, then convert, to a world view. This is the fractured state of "history". "Histories", is more accurate. We have so many of them….)

Dear just vitising.

You say

"The contradiction doesn't just creep in; it is woven into the accounts without fail; often the single account does not remain internally consistent; then we see evidence of the bias and emotional dichotomy of the writer: then we "historians" must decipher where that bias and emotional connection of the writer forced him into a false accounting of the "facts". We cross-check where we can; attempt to toss out the unreliable (read, biased) assertions of the writers, and arrive at the "truth". Then we present our conclusions."

And this is true, this is what we all hope to do and strive for, but at the same time we are no more nor less human than the historians we are cross checking, nor the other humans that these historians right about and we are always open to the "privleging" of certain sources. That's the criticism that the Historical Profession has come under (largely a self-inflicted wound from within its own ecclesia), But indeed, at each step of the way it is possible to slip and not be objective.

My point is NOT that truth cannot be known. That's the last thing that I would assert, but then there's truth and then there's TRUTH! Let me again give you an extreme example. "Mein Kampf" has never gone out of print and in the category of the most numerous books in the world, I believe I read somewhere, that it is second only to the Bible. It may not be, but it certainly up there and the question is that NO ONE who is at all posessed of any discernment would credit any of the contentions within it. Yet-- it resonates with some people. Certainly A Hitlers historiography would be considered by almost anyone as flawed, but there were a lot of people who believed it, and amny still do, just as some people believe that all modern invnetions, the philosophy of the Greeks, the basis of all knowledge etc., came out of Africa, Likewiwse there are a vast number of people today who believe that there is no need for causality beyond "Allah wishes it." If "Allah wishes it" then all of knowledge collapses into phenominalism and specific events may follow each other with absolutely no need for a consistent causality or order.

This does not, I assert again mean that there is no truth or that truth is unkowable. Some truth may be indeed knowable, verifiable, and self evident such as "In May of 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue." But beyond that, when we get to the why and wherefore things may be more tentative, conditionl, and --- multifaceted.

I'm prepared to work with that as I suspect it's as good as we are going to get. That means that I am prepared to accept motivaing causality as to what the person says he believes or the reason he did things. I'm not prepared to accept for example that one can explain the earliest societies as motivated by forces they had no comprehension of.

Stephen,

I said "information and facts and understanding" : )

The Chroniclers gave historical facts or they wouldn't be considered Chroniclers. I always try and remember a lot of people vetted those writers over the centuries before they were ranked "Chronicler" and someone way back in yonder Middle Ages made it a point to preserve their work. Some of their information points to facts which aren't directly stated, but implied which leaves the inference up to you. Which is to say I entirely agree with your last statement and agree that the Chroniclers have weathered the centuries for good reason.

Jim

as someone armed with a history degree, who also did hundreds (thousands?) of criminal investigations, there's very little aside from some forensic analysis that isn't largely based upon perspective.

I'd consider history from the Christian Perspective no more ridiculous than the marxist dribble being peddled in 2nd-rate institutions like Harvard, and for that matter you can throw in the "scientific" reserach of anything that ends in '-ology'.

But no, I won't be advocating this be taught in grade schools across the US.

And for those throwing around philosphers…there's no such thing as objective – everything is perceived from a human perspective and share as such. That's what makes it _good_, when it is good. People who pretend they are "objective" are dangerous, and good example of why the citizenry need access to weapons.

I think the debate hinges on whether one is, or is discussing; Capital C Christians, or small c christians!

" the marxist dribble being peddled"

I share your concern about the dangers of excessive salivation, although I doubt Marx suffered from that problem, as it would have been evident on his beard.

"2nd-rate institutions like Harvard"

This will no doubt come as a surprise to the free market, given the prices people have been willing to pay to send their kids there. Would you at least do them all the service of revealing to everyone what the "1st-Rate Institutions" are?

"for that matter you can throw in the "scientific" reserach of anything that ends in '-ology'."

Ah, a clue! The first-rate institutions apparently have no Biology departments. Nor Criminology programs. Wouldn't that make your task in investigative forensics a bit difficult?

Or did you employ faith-based investigative procedures, like in 17th century Salem or contemporary Iran?

"People who pretend they are "objective" are dangerous, and good example of why the citizenry need access to weapons."

I confess that this argument is new to me: People need weapons to defend themselves against those who are trying to be Objective.

Have you considered whether or not that fits on a bumper sticker? I anticipate some difficulties.

*

(And I'm still a little worried about all those pre-med students at the 1st-rate institutions who don't get any physiology or pathology courses…. How are they going to be able to treat patients who have problems like chronic marxist dribble?)

In the USA false History is going strong There is a whole group who believe that Many Black Slaves fought for the South. A few Free blacks did support the South, but the VAST number did not. A recent History book said that thosands of Blacks fought with Jackson. They dismis that about 180K of former slaves enlisted in the Union Army