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The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (The Middle Ages Series)

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I highly recommend MacEvitt's new book, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East. Although not overly lengthy (at 179 pages of text, plus 46 pages of very detailed notes), this work will hopefully open up a new avenue for the study of the Crusades in the Latin East and cross-cultural influences of the period. MacEvitt joins such distinguished scholars as Bernard Hamilton, Andrew Jotischky, Johannes Pahlitzsch, P.M. Holt, Benjamin Kedar, Joshua Prawer and others in contributing to our knowledge of the indigenous Christians (and other minorities) in Outremer and neighboring countries.

MacEvitt's central premise is to challenge the two traditional models addressing the relationship between the Franks (aka, Crusaders or Latins) and the native Eastern Christian population. Most scholars acknowledge that the older French colonialist model of a utopia under the Latins is outdated and reflective of the Colonialist era. The second model -- much more commonly held -- is the segregationist model, in which the Franks imposed a Western European feudal society in which they formed the aristocracy while the native peoples filled the the role of serfs. MacEvitt challenges both of these assertions and posits the concept of "Rough Tolerance" as a third model. Essentially, he says that the situation was much more complex than we give it credit for and varied widely from place to place, period to period. It was less a feudal system such as was common in later medieval Western Europe that was imposed, but rather an inheritance of the Muslim Dhimmi system that was employed (adapted and obviously reversed as the Muslim populace now had to pay the jizya tax, but were otherwise largely left alone). Latins were often benevolent to the indigenous Christians, and both sides took advantage of the other. Outbreaks of hostility were such that it was made clear that the demographic as a whole was not being targeted or threatened, but rather the specific political individual or group.

There is much evidence to suggest that Christians made up the majority of the population in most, if not all of Outremer. This is certainly true in the northern principalities, and it is on these territories that MacEvitt is most focused (particularly Edessa and Antioch, but not limited to them). The Crusades are too often projected as a series of wars between "Christians" and "Muslims", but there were at least eighteen different religious groups in the area (indeed, eighteen is the number of the various religious groups recognized in Lebanon today). MacEvitt generally limits his focus to the largest three: Arabic-speaking Greek Melkites [not to be confused with the later Catholic usurpation of that name -- "loyal to the emperor"], Syrian Jacobites (or Suriyani), and Armenians. This latter group formed the only Eastern Christian demographic for whom the Latins maintained an overarching respect, as they were a political and military entity as well as a religious demographic. Indeed, following the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia would form the most powerful of the Crusader-affiliated principalities till the very end. Contrarily, the Latins were most hostile towards the Melkites, as they shared the Arabic culture and language of Muslim Arabs and their (Greek) Orthodox hierarchy were largely displaced by the Latin hierarchy (although do note that most of the bishoprics in Palestine were vacant at the time of the First Crusade due to the recent wars betwixt Seljuks and Fatimids).

As with most research on the indigenous Christians and other minorities of the Latin Kingdom of the East, MacEvitt's central chronological focus is from the period just preceding the First Crusade until Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1187. He suggests that much of the material in previous research dates from the thirteenth century but has been applied -- incorrectly -- to the twelfth century. MacEvitt asserts that everything changed after 1187. In this first era of the Latin Kingdom, Christian relations were generally devoid of a hostile intensity focused upon conversion to the Roman Catholic Church that would dominate the thirteenth century; Latins were content with ignorance of differences. However, asserts MacEvitt, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Komnenus' efforts (at a zenith in Byzantine power) to promote ecumenism and unify the Churches caused a deeper examination of the differences between the Latin, Eastern, and Oriental Churches that led to a hardening of attitudes. Secondly, the Papacy began to lay a great emphasis upon its supremacy and propriety above and against all others, exemplified in the missionary efforts of the new mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans. MacEvitt does briefly examine the early thirteenth century period in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, but largely as a means of contrasting it with the situation in the twelfth century.

Besides his overarching thesis, MacEvitt includes many fascinating tidbits of information (such as the usage of an Armenian Priest-Confessor by the Count of Tripoli, the frequency of high-ranking Latin intermarriage with Armenian nobility, or the necessity of Greek Orthodox clergy vis-a-vis Latin clergy in bringing the Holy Fire at Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance is well written and a great contribution to our understanding of the reality of interrelations in the era of the Crusades in the Latin East. I highly recommend it.

I'm aware Dr MacEvitt teaches at Dartmouth and has done impressive graduate work at Princeton, and a whole bucket of other stuff. Also, Riley-Smith signed off on this book, so I expected...better than this.

My first issue is with the flabby history. He makes several gross overstatements in his book. For one, he characterizes the twelfth century as 'an era dominated by crusade and jihad.' Massive overstatement. Jihad wasn't used to mean armed force against Christians until rather late in the twelfth century, and Riley-Smith himself has, in a powerful but slim volume, questioned what a 'crusader' would have considered a 'crusade.' He later refers to Morfia in one place as an Armenian, another as a Greek, and in another place as a reason for Melisende to endow a Jacobite church. Which is she? Is "Armenian" to mean her ethnicity instead of her religion? If so, why is every other use of "Armenian" in his book a religious and not ethnic signifier?

He also bases arguments on some more fuzzy history, or, to be more precise, on overassumptions that he does not bother to take a stand on. Even worse, he does not bother to even acknowledge the fact that he's taking an interpretive stand. In one place he seems confident that marriages in the East were celebrated *inside* the churches, when many scholars debate if they had moved at all from outside the church steps. In another, he uses a knight's leaving property to the Hospitallers as proof-positive that the knight had internalized the Western "cultural values" of the military orders. This endowment took place in 1129. I've rummaged and can't find any historian willing to concede the Hospitallers had shifted mission from the hospital to the military earlier than the mid 1130s. I'm not saying MacEvitt is *wrong*, but I sure wish he'd've given us a source for his support.

These may seem like niggling little things (and oh, there are many more I could go into), and most of them don't really touch his main thesis, which is an interesting one (he argues that the Franks deliberately avoided public acknowledgement of differences in religious practice so as to have everyone get along just fine). However, so many little tiny holes in his scholarship really seem to undermine his credibility--while I'm interested, I'm not convinced, because he's proven himself less-than-consistent in other matters. Again, I could be wrong: I don't teach at an Potted Ivy, and am only an armchair scholar at best, but when even a dilettante like myself cries out, "yes but...!" so many times when reading a book, well, it makes me wonder what Riley-Smith was reading.