2
Steven Isaac
Moving past the truism that the military and religious elites of medieval Europe did not see eye to eye over how to practice a violent profession under the aegis of a pacifist theology, this essay looks at the combinations of both practices and presuppositions about eternity that enabled some medieval Christian warriors to harmonize their warfare with the promises of what awaited them after death. Those promises were, of course, both negative and positive. One thing that becomes quickly unavoidable is the immanence of the Beyond: the afterlife was not only a place/time to arrive at, but an elastic phenomenon impinging on the here-and-now. The Escher-like quality of eternity meant that martial elites not only paid ahead to reduce their purgatorial sentences, they also invested now for the souls of the already dead, and they expected that their preferred saints, as well as their relatives and friends in the afterlife, could intervene in living affairs, including battles. Far from being guilt-ridden over the violent deeds required by their profession, medieval Europe’s Christian elite viewed the afterlife as still having a beneficial (and approving) role to play in contemporary warfare. The very existence of martial saints indicated as much, besides offering another title to earn. Finally, in a further wrinkle, the history of some warriors demonstrated an earthly afterlife as their martial fame was maintained or even completely rebuilt by succeeding generations, again in a reciprocal interplay of military accomplishment and presumed heavenly reward.
Introducing the Problem
This study’s title might tease some into wondering if I plan to take a thoroughly medieval pilgrimage to see the sights and moral lessons supposedly awaiting warriors in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. While such an apocalyptic narrative, especially if its nastier travails occurred in the first person, would doubtless catch the interest of my students, it rather obviously cannot withstand the rational skepticism at the heart of historical study. And yet: even though the world beyond may be off-limits to the scientific scholar, it is not actually terra incognita; this is because the afterlife, whatever it may (or not) be, is a reflection, quite often a projection, of concerns and convictions that matter on this side of the metaphorical veil. Because this is so, we can discern something of what a medieval Christian warrior thought lay ahead: for himself as well as his family. We have no shortage of sermons, visions, and similar texts that tell us what the Church thought was in store for warriors; even the best behaved risked some form of posthumous chastisement for the violent deeds inherent to their careers. But did Christendom’s military elite see it that way themselves?
Up to a point, of course they did. The Church’s message was too pervasive and long-standing to be easily resisted or tuned out, and the bequests of every cartulary attest to the message’s success. Across the twelfth century, however, that message was changing. Two things in particular enabled a shift in tone, or at least in the mechanisms whereby military types might continue their violent profession without buying a non-refundable ticket to a hellish eternity. The first of these was the maturation of ideas about Purgatory, which opened a middle path to Heaven for the Christian who might die with un-confessed sins still attached to their spiritual ledger. With the advent of Purgatory, and the possibility it offered of posthumous penance, Christian warriors faced less pressure to abandon their military lives for a second career of penance. Secondly, Christian warriors, even before the First Crusade and certainly after its success, benefitted from a change in the Church’s attitude toward their violent profession. I will not be discussing actual crusading herein, but its role in sanctifying warfare and the practitioners thereof was key to the expectations many notable warriors had about their potential fate in the afterlife.
But my primary question remains: what did medieval Christian warriors at this key moment – when the theology of Purgatory intersected with the rise of chivalry’s own morality2 and new ideas about licit and illicit warfare – believe lay ahead of them in eternity? If I may be permitted an aggressive anachronism: did William Marshal, after a career of exceptionally lucrative violence that concluded with the laudatory approval of both religious and lay society, really envision being transformed into a pastel and fragile greeting card version of himself, harp in hand, enveloped in a fuzzy cloud and singing psalms henceforth and forever?
Marshal himself, as well as his near contemporaries, likely knew that rival religious systems offered their warriors a literal buffet of rewards. The paganism of the north was not so far vanquished that its promised afterlife had been forgotten. Valhalla was a projection into the next life of everything a martial culture tended to value or wish for: restricted entry to the truly brave and deserving, an endless supply of alcohol, a constant healing of otherwise mortal wounds, a daily round of combat (as practice for Ragnarok?), and in some versions, less violent liaisons with the attending Valkyries, all under the watchful eye of Odin, the adoptive father.3 Meanwhile, as many a Western warrior came to know in the Levant, the Dar al-Islam promised rare delights to devout Muslim men, but here all was reward without the Norse training regimen for the world’s end.4 For those who qualify as being on the right hand of God, they will enjoy gardens rich with water, shade, and various species of fruit. Further creature comforts are promised in the form of silk garments, carpets, and luxuriant couches with handsome young men everywhere as servitors; even previously forbidden alcohol comes in gilt vessels.5 And most famous of all, the promise of ever-virginal sexual partners, the categorically malleable houris.6 The sensuality of the Islamic paradise, confirmed by such orthodox theologians as al-Ghazali and the founder of the Asharite maddhab, both offended and confounded Christian apologists from the two religions’ earliest days of rivalry.7 Such carnality was not the indescribable balm of just being in the presence of God that most Christian visions of paradise offered everyone, including warriors.
Meanwhile, Christian warriors faced a challenge built into their faith: namely, the pacifism preached by Jesus himself. Falling short of Jesus’ standards might not have been such a moral or existential crisis had Christianity’s early success around the Mediterranean basin not coincided with the transformation of key ideas about the afterlife. In these early centuries, the shadowy Sheol of Hebrew scriptures and the Hades of pagan belief became the punitive fires of Hell, as typically and luridly described by preacher after preacher, replete with detailed and endless punishments for even the least misdeeds, let alone the violent acts of the professional warrior.8 Little wonder then that Ralph of Caen gave us the much-quoted psychological profile of the troubled, seventeen-year-old Tancred d’Hauteville. In his vigorous pursuit of glory and praise, he spared neither “his own blood or that of his enemy.” But having a “prudent soul,” he realized that his military calling ran counter to God’s commands, even directly noting that he took people’s garments rather than giving them over. His “soul was at a crossroads,”9 or as the late Terry Jones immortalized it for many of us, this “conflict of moral authority” was a recipe for the “double-bind theory of schizophrenia, and knights had no teddy bears.”10
Of course, few medievalists need Jones’s sarcasm to spur doubts as to the depths of Tancred’s spiritual crisis – which is not to say that he did not worry about going to Hell. The last thing he wanted was to end up like the eques described by the bishop of Cahors a few decades prior: this man had died while excommunicate, and the bishop himself had refused the loyal milites’ demands to undo the punishment. A determined group, these vassals nonetheless buried their man in a church cemetery. The next morning, the body was found, having been ejected nude some distance from the cemetery, where the burial site was pristine and untouched. Undaunted, the milites tried again, taking care this time to pile up “an enormous weight of earth and stone.” And again, the next morning, the body had been spat out by the cemetery, which again looked immaculate. The vassals tried three more times, always with the same result, reported the bishop, until a local crowd took the body themselves and buried it far from the church.11 But the simplest evidence that the laity believed the message coming from the clergy are the innumerable charters, formulaic though they may be, in which lay people made real gifts to the Church, often of property but even more tellingly of their own bodies.
The clergy’s success in imparting particular doctrines to the laity and shaping their values was not total, of course. The Norman knight Rodulf Pinell likely represented a not-so-rare attitude when he laughed off the reproaches of Abbot (and former knight) Herluin of Bec, saying that if ever he himself were actually sated by a life of arms or the world’s pleasures, then he would turn monk.12 Despite his mockery – insinuating that a turn to monasticism would not be all that demanding – Pinell was at least admitting that some day he could (if not would…) choose the path of spiritual contrition.13 Nor was he alone in presuming that there would be both an opportunity and a means by which he could clear his spiritual accounts. King John of England navigated numerous crises by accepting such a risk. But it was John’s most famous vassal, William Marshal, who left us the vivid moment on his deathbed when secular piety ran out of patience with the demands of the clergy. One of Marshal’s attendants, Henry fitz Gerold, solicitous of his lord’s eternal welfare, urged him to consider, after a life of seizing the goods of his rivals, to give back what was left as charity. Having already set aside a great many alms and donations, Marshal declared enough was enough: “These churchmen shave us too closely.” If the kingdom of Heaven was closed off because he had captured so many, so be it, he concluded.14 But, as is obvious throughout William Marshal’s copious pages of deathbed arrangements, he could literally afford his “cavalier” attitude. Through myriad gifts to a great many religious houses, he had surely balanced the books.
But, as proposed earlier, what kind of Heaven did William Marshal think he had adequately prepared for? How had he (and all the others) made his personal peace with the Church’s injunctions against the violence inherent to his profession? Clearly, his postponed entry into the Templar Order – itself a result of his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem to succor the afterlife of Henry the young king – was one mechanism that enabled him to soothe the potential turmoil between a martial career and the spiritual reckoning that lay ahead of him. Did he ponder the possibility of joining the company of martial saints like George, Demetrios, or Mercurios, whose repeated earthly interventions precluded the eternal career of psalmody? A generic and pervasive fear of Hell abounded, of course, and hardly needs to be belabored. But beyond avoiding eternal pain, what else did elite medieval warriors see in the afterlife that might influence their actions, especially in actual campaigning?15 In answering that question, we note that the afterlife was not only something to come, but was already a thing to touch, manage, and be touched by, here in the Now. And why not? – didn’t the afterlife of others already intrude upon the present-day concerns of medieval Christians? Didn’t William Marshal, as one example, travel to the Holy Land as much for his dead prince as for himself? Didn’t departed souls occasionally return for salutary visits to the living?
Traveling To and From the Afterlife
In the days before Purgatory became established doctrine, conversion (that is, full entry into the monastic life) was the Church’s preferred path towards the most fully guaranteed salvation. In a manner of speaking, this retirement was a foreshadowing of eternity. It was not, however, a time to relax, but rather a new career of extra vigilance. As Christopher Harper-Bill noted, clergy adopted military language for the life of spiritual retirement: Orderic Vitalis described his fellow monks as “garrisons” (castrensibus) and the monastery as “a citadel of God… where cowled champions may engage in ceaseless combat against Behemoth for your soul.”16 More pointedly, Heaven itself was described as a kingdom, often as an inheritance, and no less powerfully, as a storehouse or treasury where the riches of alms-giving awaited.17 As any medieval sophisticate knew, though, these were just metaphors and analogies.
But every so often, metaphors could become real. Visions not only made the boundary between the temporal world and the eternal instructively porous; they reified many metaphors. Necessary moral lessons could thus leak through and temporary crossovers be permitted. Boundary-jumping visions of this type were numerous and populated every century of the Middle Ages,18 but I want to mention only two as signposts or weathervanes of what medieval Christians thought could lie ahead. In fact, not so much ahead, as possibly – already – just around life’s uncertain corners.
In the mid-twelfth century, an Irish monk in Bavaria set down a three-day vision in which an Irish miles reportedly visited Hell and Heaven.19 The popularity of Tnugdal’s vision was such that we have over 150 extant Latin manuscripts, plus some thirteen vernacular translations. On the cusp of a murderous rage over an unpaid debt, Tnugdal is supposed to have fallen comatose instead and then was guided by an angel across the afterlife’s regions of punishment and reward. As usual, the torments were horrid and contrived to be specifically punitive for the sins in question. They had to be, to re-imprint the Church’s incessant lessons. But Tnugdal was treated to the positive side of things as well and here, things turned interesting. Different groups, who had earned varying rewards for their spiritual achievements, were separated by walls of rich construction: gemstones in the place of quarried stone, with gold as the mortar between them. They protected perfumed meadows, fountains, and gardens. Night never fell on these regions. Buildings were suffused with light. When Tnugdal wanted to join the worship of former monks and nuns, the angel warned him that he would not be able to handle their deep connection with the Holy Trinity and all the saints. As often happens in these visions, Tnugdal also saw people he knew: three Irish kings, whose presence on the paradise side of the afterlife surprised him. Tnugdal knew Kings Donnchad and Conchobar as cruel enemies of one another, but the angel explained that the men had truly repented and done appropriate penances before their deaths. They next came upon King Cormac, who was in a feudal paradise: richly garbed, in a house where vassals offered a steady stream of gifts, and a mass was set up to be celebrated with the richest vessels. The king’s vassals, however, were not his normal knights and courtiers, but the paupers he had given alms to back in his lifetime. In an unexpected twist, though, this scene of feudal tranquility was upset by a three-hour interlude during which the king was in a fire up to his waist (as punishment for his extramarital adventures) and forced to wear a hair shirt (as penance for disrespecting an altar to St. Patrick). His heavenly vassals prayed for him throughout the whole ordeal, which the angel explained were his last two sins to expiate. After three days spent out of this world, Tnugdal’s soul was sent back to his body just in time to avoid being buried, and – of course – to report the moral lessons he had seen.20
There are many fascinating things in Tnugdal’s vision to unpack, but I want to focus on how he reacted to the three kings as well as the ongoing divisions between clergy and laity. Tnugdal had expectations of where to find the kings along the spectrum of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and none of the three were in the destinations he had presumed for them. The first two were clearly in a state of grace that did not square with the lives (and wars) that Tnugdal knew they had led. But God’s mercy being what it is, their repentance had sufficed to blot out their sinful record. In Cormac’s case, Tnugdal asked his guide a loaded question that the angel was utterly prepared for: had Cormac suffered in expiation of any sins? The angel told him to wait a moment and he would see the punishment (already mentioned above). It seems that Tnugdal knew of Cormac’s infidelities and wanted assurance that the spiritual accounts were being rightly balanced. The other interesting element is that this man of the sword was allowed to visit heavenly places that mirror the feudal and aristocratic world he already knows; the clergy’s portion of Heaven and their worshipful link to the divine was deemed much too blessed for him to comprehend or experience – at least, in the vision and before his own actual death.
The other popular vision/cross-over event of the twelfth century and beyond (all the way down to popular music in the twentieth century) was Hellequin’s Hunt, named as such in the early telling by Orderic Vitalis. In Orderic’s account, the priest Walchelin told him how the ghostly riders came upon him not long after nightfall of New Year’s Day 1091. Grouped into companies by their stations in life and/or the sins that needed expiation, nobles, clergymen, women, and more rode by. Walchelin recognized a number of his neighbors as well as several noblemen and women; in addition, he noted the presence of horses and litters of other women he knew, but who were not yet dead. He named names, too, including a bishop of Lisieux and two abbots whom Orderic otherwise respected. Deciding that he needed some kind of proof to verify his tale, Walchelin tried to commandeer one of the riderless horses in the procession. This backfired, as he began to suffer some of the physical symptoms (a simultaneous onslaught of burning and freezing sensations) afflicting the riders. He was on the verge of being impressed into the Hunt by several dark knights when one of them, a William of Glos, saved him so he could pass messages back to the living. Walchelin, however, had changed his mind about talking about the Hunt, and did not want to play the role of messenger-boy for these condemned souls. Nearly throttled by the angry knight, he was saved by yet another rider. Despite having recognized numerous others in the Hunt, Walchelin was slow this time to recognize his own brother, Robert. In proving his identity, Robert explained how Walchelin’s priestly observances had already lightened his own punishment and even released their father from his expiatory ordeals. As Robert left to catch up with the Hunt, he admonished Walchelin to abandon some unnamed vices; he was due to be punished otherwise. Orderic said he had heard all this from Walchelin himself and even saw the scars on his neck where the one rider nearly strangled him.21
A half century later, Walter Map took the punitive, righteous angle out of the Wild Hunt, and made it instead a group caught in a fairy king’s idea of a playful curse. In an exchange of royal visits to weddings, a human king, Herla, and his retinue visited the fairy kingdom, but found two difficult after-effects: first, two hundred years had elapsed while they were in faërie; second, the fairy king had given them a dog to carry away at their leave-taking, with instructions not to dismount before the dog touched the earth. When several men did so, they turned to dust before everyone’s eyes. King Herla quickly forbade anyone else to dismount, and since the dog stayed in the arms of its bearer, the entire retinue turned into an endless cavalcade, whose coming and going terrorized the population. But King Henry II’s accession had seen the Wild Hunt fade away, possibly with a final descent into the River Wye at Hereford.22
At first glance, Map’s transformation of the tale fits in with the overall dynamic of the century, one in which heavenly displeasure with knightly behavior had been mollified, replaced by a trickster punishment rather than a policy of judgment. As historians of Purgatory,23 personal religious practice,24 and chivalry25 have all noted, Christian professional warriors had mostly found the means by the mid-twelfth century and onwards for defusing or even supplanting Church condemnation of the violent misdeeds so prevalent in their careers. But, I stress again, the afterlife for medieval knights was not just what lay ahead, but was also something to be understood in the present tense. Walter Map may have preferred a version of Hellequin’s Hunt that lacked Orderic’s moral lessons, but he famously also felt that Henry II’s court was a present-day enactment of the torments of Hell. He offered as proof the daily tribulations endured by the Plantagenet court.
Orderic’s version of the Hunt’s movement between this world and the next has another element that was key to how medievals approached the afterlife: it remained a family affair. As Walchelin’s brother explained, the priest’s spiritual work had freed their father from punishment and lightened his own suffering. Just because the opening lines of so many charters were formulaic doesn’t mean the sentiments weren’t sincere: For the salvation of my soul, plus the souls of my mother and father, as well as those of my grandparents... Donations to God or his saints were not just a forward-looking strategy of risk management, but also a retroactive investment on behalf of already departed kinfolk. William Marshal, like so many others, knew that as a son and a father, he owed both his predecessors and his offspring.26 But his expectation of aid from both those camps seems likewise hard to deny.
The Warrior’s Ever-Present Need: Divine Aid
Of course, the medieval Christian warrior likely never got as focused on managing his eternal risks as he did on the cusp of battle. Peter Brown vividly evoked the shrines of early saints as places where this world and the next intersected, where the barrier between the two was often at its most permeable.27 In a manner of speaking, the Christian warrior on campaign carried this same liminality around with him, never knowing if the next moment of combat would be his last earthly experience. In this case, the basic superstitions that surround the rituals of many a soldier in every age moved – quite literally, in their minds – on to the next, higher plane. Medieval commanders did not treat this as some abstract element of human resource management; they lived it themselves and understood its value for raising morale just before battle. Thus, they strove to give their soldiers ample space in which to exercise the rituals that could calm pre-battle anxieties by settling scores with the ultimate judge of all. William the Conqueror didn’t just get papal approval for his invasion (which in 1066 was still not enough to pre-emptively clear his army’s guilt for the necessary deaths which ensued); he brought clerics and portable chapels to the battlefield.28 Without a doubt, some men made their eve-of-battle confessions from worry over any number of sins that might raise the penitential price they would have to pay in the afterlife. But for many, it was just as likely a ploy anchored in the moment: a chance to reset their spiritual account with God, and thus not give the Almighty a reason to tilt the coming battle against themselves.29 In another use of the afterlife, William at Hastings wore around his neck the very relics on which Harold was claimed to have sworn to support William’s cause.30 Carrying such artifacts of those whose afterlife was already being spent in the presence of God, William was reminding both God and the relevant saints that, really, the coming battle had to tilt against Harold.
This approach risked a spiritual blowback, though: in particular, it might stir God’s anger in ways reminiscent of Jesus’ rebuke of Satan during the wilderness temptations: “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.”31 When the contending parties in Flanders began a competition for who could implement the latest, one-step-further act of piety, Galbert of Bruges mocked the simplicity of his fellow townsmen for thinking they could thus bend God’s will to suit their own agendas.32 At the battle of the Standard in 1138, the appeal to divine intervention through relics brushed up against this same potential risk. Richard of Hexham spelled it out in case anyone missed the point: atop the ship’s mast which became the army’s rallying point, the English army installed a silver pyx with a consecrated Host, plus banners dedicated to St. Peter, John of Beverley, and Wilfred of Ripon. Their goal, wrote Richard, was to draw Jesus’ eye upon the battle via his own miraculously present body, and thereby have him intervene as their real leader.33 The potential effrontery of such a move was offset – in the English perspective, anyway – by the unrivaled sinfulness of the Scottish forces. Aelred of Rievaulx’s account of the battle attributed the key pre-battle oration to his friend Walter Espec, founder of Aelred’s own Rievaulx Abbey. Pious as he was, Espec was still a layman, but one ready to shore up the morale of the troops with fairly specific promises of aid from beyond: the archangel Michael with angels to avenge the blood spilled in churches; likewise, Peter and the Apostles to punish those who had desecrated English churches; and even more martyrs acting as shock troops, angered as they were by murderous impieties. Holy virgins would fight for them with prayers, and finally, there was the promise that Jesus himself was going to take up weapons and a shield to join the fray on their behalf. All this was sure, he concluded, because of the moral gulf between their behavior and that of the invading Scots. Heaven itself recoils from their impiety, he declared. In this instance, without admitting to an intemperate leveraging of the saints – let alone the Son of God himself – Espec put the real onus on the enemy, whose atrocities had put the whole heavenly court in a posture of readiness to aid the English.34
Espec’s pre-battle speech, related here by one of northern England’s most respected abbots, and a future saint, is interesting not just for being the expression of how a secular warrior understood the obligations he owed to Heaven (and what he thought Heaven owed him!), but also for the fact that Aelred recorded Espec’s claims about Heaven’s inhabitants without editorializing. In the absence of any caveats or spiritualized refinements of the layman’s arguments, we have to wonder about Aelred’s real thoughts on Espec’s martial expectations of allies from beyond. Aelred had only been admitted to the Cistercian Order four years before the battle, and was still moving – as an emissary, usually – in aristocratic circles, but he set down his account of Espec’s speech seventeen years after the event. John Bliese has argued that the Relatio, in its litany of war crimes and stridency, reflects the actual fears and mentality of the English forces more than usual and need not be treated as just a rhetorical device.35 Aelred’s focus on Espec and his message is all the more telling when we recall that Aelred maintained good relations with the Scottish court both before and after the battle. Moreover, Henry of Huntingdon and John of Hexham chose to relate the pre-battle speech by the bishop of Orkney, who assured the English army that God was on their side, but avoided the kind of specific promises made by Espec in Aelred’s version.36
The Earthly Afterlife: Fama
If, as I am suggesting, Aelred’s narrative of the battle of the Standard indicates that he was still at ease with the spiritual outlook of his former comrades-in-arms, the same could not be said of his older contemporary Orderic Vitalis. Orderic was firmly in the camp that saw the monastic life as the best choice for achieving eventual sanctification and entering Heaven. But the historian-monk was also too well versed in contemporary aristocratic realities to pretend to himself or his readers that many warriors would be excited by the chance to abandon their violent careers and take on the long-suffering and self-effacing life of the monastery. In that vein, Orderic held up the example of Gerold, a chaplain in Hugh of Avranches’ household, who knew how to pitch his message to Christendom’s warriors. He ministered to an unruly crew, as Orderic described it, by drawing their attention to the exploits of God’s heroes in the Old Testament, the early days of the Church under Roman persecution, and even in recent history as Christendom flexed its muscles. Through the examples of militant saints – George, Mercurios, Demetrios, Sebastian, and several more – he sought to draw the household warriors toward a holier life. In particular, he held up the example of William of Gellone, who had turned monk after a full career as a knight. Fighting for God under the monastic rule, he provided just the kind of example that Orderic believed was most efficacious in leading knights to renounce the world’s struggles and concentrate on spiritual ones instead.37
Orderic was informed enough to warn his readers to avoid the minstrel version of William’s life, and to rely on him instead to relay the true details that he had been fortunate to glean from the genuine Vita of the saint. Ironically, however, the Vita’s author had already fallen under the spell of the jongleurs, and some of their ideas about William’s militant sanctity had thus crept into the Vita.38 In a dynamo of reciprocal influences, St. William of Gellone had been conflated with William of Orange, the Saracen-slaughtering hero of multiple chansons de geste, to the point that not only were the narratives blended, but even the monastery’s cartulary had been doctored to include figures from the songs. This interplay of fact and fiction, of things misremembered, of dots connected afterwards as they never were in real life, brings up a last angle to consider of the Christian warrior’s afterlife.
I have purposefully refrained up to this point from dealing with the cross-wearing elephant in the room: the crusades. I will mostly keep doing so for two main reasons: 1) Christian warriors knew that if they died on crusade, they qualified as martyrs for entry into Heaven, and 2) that very belief altered all other faith calculations about the afterlife. But the reason I allude now to the crusades is to pose the question: what sort of afterlife awaited those crusaders who fulfilled their vows and then returned to a secular life back in Europe? What limits – if any – did they think bounded the indulgence they had struggled to earn? We know there was a gulf of varying size between what the pope and his agents offered as spiritual reward, and what the laity thought they were getting. That is not a problem to treat here, but I mention it so as to set up my bafflement over one particular crusader’s behavior back in Europe, followed by even more bafflement over how he was remembered – or rather, like William of Gellone, misremembered – in a new round of chansons.
Thomas of Marle had a rough childhood, apparently being abused by his father, who suspected his mother’s fidelity. Although Guibert of Nogent is vague on the chronology of all of Thomas’ misdeeds, he was apparently prone to prey on his neighbors and on passing pilgrims from his earliest days.39 When the chance to gain some heavenly credit arrived in 1095, he apparently saw the value in taking the cross. He seems to have acquitted himself rather well on crusade, drawing favorable mentions from Albert of Aachen and Robert the Monk for his actions at Nicaea and Antioch. He appeared again in Albert’s account at the siege of Jerusalem, being named for his role in rescuing a group of foragers who had fallen into a Saracen ambush.40 One chronicler, however, made no mention of him at all: Guibert of Nogent. We need not be surprised by this, given Guibert’s abiding hatred of Thomas of Marle, and Guibert was honest about his authorial intentions, especially when it came to who he planned to praise and who he planned to overlook. Guibert declared that he was leaving several crusaders unnamed because of the “infamies” they perpetrated after returning to Europe.41 Thomas definitely fell into that category.
Within a year or two of returning to France, his depredations were bad enough that his father joined other local magnates to besiege Thomas at his castle at Montaigu. Thomas managed to slip away, though, and persuaded Louis VI to intervene on his behalf. He returned to the spotlight in 1112 during the chaos of the Laon commune’s revolt, carefully seeming to respect Louis’ authority over the royal town while offering the townsmen a form of support. His maneuvers brought down ecclesiastical condemnation in late 1114 when a synod at Beauvais excommunicated him. Suger reports in his biography of King Louis VI that the papal legate even went so far as to strip Thomas ceremonially of the belt of knighthood. His end came in 1130, during another round of ecclesiastical depredations which drew King Louis back into the region. As the king moved against Coucy from one side, Ralph of Vermandois came from another and managed to surprise Thomas. Ralph delivered a blow to Thomas’ head which everyone recognized as mortal, although Thomas lingered on for a day. Imprisoned at Laon, this “most accursed” man was so reluctant to accept extreme unction, according to Suger, that he died of a broken neck rather than accept the Host being proffered to him.42
In this case, however, the chroniclers did not get the last word; instead, it belonged to the jongleurs, who reveal the other afterlife of the Christian warrior. While Guibert tried to expunge Thomas’ very participation in the First Crusade from recorded memory, the chanson authors instead promoted him. Early in the Chanson d’Antioche, his fortitude was set in contrast to Stephen of Blois. He was on guard at the start of the Antioch siege, credited with repelling a night-time surprise attack and rescuing a number of German captives. He was singled out by the leaders for inclusion in the first assaults on the city. “Loyal-hearted” Thomas set up his siege position directly opposite a prominent gate. He was listed as the eighth man up the ladder for the entry into Antioch. His very viciousness became a virtue as it was unleashed to avenge Gerard of Melun’s death.43 All that was a mere warm-up, possibly restrained by the memories of what was still recent history, to Thomas’ rise to stardom in the next century’s Chanson de Jérusalem. There, in a scene that Hollywood will surely wish that it had invented, Thomas became the first to mount the city’s walls when thirty of his men launched him skyward with their bent spears.44
Ever since first reading the Chanson de Jérusalem, I have wondered why – among all the crusaders available to reward with heroic roles – the author lit upon Thomas of Marle. Why pick someone with such a troublesome, defiantly un-Christian career after the crusade as a hero versus the enemies of the faith? Thankfully, the paradox also bothered the lords of Ardres, or we might have been left with no medieval answer. In his history of the counts, Lambert of Ardres complained that Count Arnold II had performed great deeds at Antioch and was recognized all around as one of the stalwarts of the First Crusade. But, since the count had fought truly for God and not for earthly glory, he had not bothered to bolster his reputation. In fact, Lambert claimed, he had refused to pay the author of the Chanson d’Antioche the going rate (apparently two scarlet stockings) for inclusion in the poem’s list of heroes.45 Given Thomas of Marle’s standout performance in the Chanson d’Antioche, not to mention its sequel at Jerusalem, we have to presume that either Thomas himself or, as I think most likely, some of his family invested what was needed to see that his martial contributions to God’s cause got sufficient attention to occlude his unrepentant last hours. As noted above, management of the afterlife was a family affair.
Few warriors’ posthumous careers could demonstrate this as well as that of Geoffrey de Mandeville. Having turned rebel after his arrest in 1143 by King Stephen, the earl of Essex used Ely and Ramsey Abbey as bases of operations. His seizure and occupation of the abbey headed the list of outrages for which he was excommunicated. More months of depredations followed until, in later summer 1144, he was besieging Burwell; there, while in an exposed position, he removed his helmet. A watchful archer saw the opportunity and took it, mortally wounding the outlaw earl. It took Geoffrey some time to succumb to his injury, and at first he blew off the seriousness of the wound. But he left the siege at Burwell and withdrew to Mildenhall where, it seems, he finally decided to cover all the bases. He ordered his heir to return Ramsey Abbey to its rightful monastic inhabitants; as he expired, several Templars passing by made him a covering of their own cloth and insignia, effectively welcoming him into the order, although it is unclear if the dying man was aware of this.46
Nonetheless, he still died excommunicate and unshriven. But dead was not forgotten. The Templars, in a maneuver of grand politico-spiritual theater, claimed the corpse and brought it to London. Since Geoffrey could not be buried in consecrated ground, an alternate disposition had to be found. Two stories describe different solutions, both sad and miserable, which are not mutually exclusive. In the first, Geoffrey’s lead-lined coffin was hoisted up into a tree, described as torva (savage, gloomy) which appears to have been situated on the Old Temple’s boundary line. Perhaps it eventually fell from there. The second story claims the casket was dumped in a hollow just beyond the cemetery. Either way, his corpse was carefully kept from Christian burial for nineteen years and was the butt of much scorn from Londoners passing by. Again, family intervened – this time in the persons of the abbot at Geoffrey’s foundation at Walden and the earl’s younger son and namesake. By a combination of petitions, restitution of damages to Ramsey Abbey, and, eventually, absolution via the Roman pontiff, Geoffrey’s soul regained a foothold in paradise. His body, however, was kept by the Templars and buried at their New Temple in London, as clear a signal as any that the Order would take care of its “own.”47
Conclusion
I began by wondering if William Marshal really looked forward to an eternity of singing psalms. From what I see of the warrior’s milieu in a long twelfth century, I suspect he was hopeful that he might garner an assignment in the afterlife that would better suit his earthly skill set. Although Hell itself was a worry that was never fully assuaged, he had little reason to fear that destination. He had covered his own bases, and the Church had already adjusted its parameters to admit that some violent deeds were, in the larger picture, permissible and necessary. Bad military behavior was still open to penitential purgation, but as a number of otherworldly visions indicated, Heaven understood – in its very geography and habits – the hard role that warriors had to play in balancing God’s mercy with the harshness of meting out justice. The attention paid to militant saints surely left numerous warriors with a hope that they might qualify to step into such roles. Such a thing could not be expressed aloud, of course, or the necessity of humility would be transgressed. But in the interplay of this world with that one thought to be lying beyond, the bonds of kinship (established by blood, by spiritual ties, or even by sharing the military profession) permitted family to promote one of their own. Thus, Thomas of Marle’s afterlife saw a rebound from unrepentant villain to crusade hero while Geoffrey de Mandeville’s heirs saw that he regained eventual access to paradise. We should recall that William Marshal’s complaints about grasping priests and his entry into Heaven were effectively made from beyond. When John of Earley remembered the Marshal’s comments and passed them along to the troubadour commissioned to produce the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, William Marshal was already five years dead.48 His heirs and close allies, who sponsored the Histoire, and therefore had the responsibility of safeguarding his earthly fame, were part of that chivalric milieu so ably mapped by Richard Kaeuper which was beginning to bolster its own moral code with enough clout to rival the strictures of the Church.49
In the end, those who kept the company of princes and exercised authority on earth expected an option to do the same in eternity, subject of course to God’s sovereignty and paying for the sins not yet purged by penance on earth. They had the reported examples of saints like Demetrios and Mercurios to vindicate this perception. Something like Hellequin’s Hunt might even indicate for middle-ranking warriors – despite the punishment in the Hunt’s ongoing pains – that martial activities were not fully to be denied them in eternity. Below that level, as is so often the case, we are left to wonder how more ordinary soldiers thought of their eventual soul’s destination. Perhaps Geoffrey de Mandeville knew his son would come through for him; Walchelin’s brother Robert expressed relief that the priest’s spiritual service was steadily decreasing his purgatorial pains. In the wake of the 1217 battle of Lincoln, where the Marshal had his last great splash of military renown, Roger of Wendover ended his battle narrative by noting the death of a serviens, unknown to all, in the baronial army. This poor soul – and yes, the trite words have extra punch here – was then buried “outside the city, in the midst of a four-way intersection, in the manner of an excommunicate.”50 What prayers did he say before the battle? What little rites might he have performed? Which saints did he invoke? What family members did he hope would be watching over him from the afterlife? Who made the choice to condemn him to burial in unconsecrated ground, and on what grounds? Did his family ever learn sufficient of his fate to step up, either to manage his earthly fama or to ease his spiritual passage, those posthumous benefits that we have seen the more famous exemplars enjoyed? These were questions implicit in the spiritual habits of medieval Christian warriors, as exemplified by the standardized piety of William Marshal, and even by the shocking impiety of Thomas of Marle. For this nameless warrior at Lincoln, presumably of lower social standing, however, he may have had the same expectations and fears about eternity but not the earthly resources to tilt the outcome.
1 This article began as De Re Militari’s JMMH Lecture at the 2021 International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. I am grateful to Stephen Morillo for his critique of the positives and pitfalls that lurk in my argument and to De Re Militari for the invitation to speak. »
2 The key works on this development remain those of Richard Kaueper, especially Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), followed by Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009). »
3 Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (Philadelphia, 1999), p. 80; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (Oxford, 2001), pp. 308–09. »
4 Despite the association in the modern world between martyrdom and the promised rewards of Islam’s paradise, the Qur’an says this Heaven is for all good Muslims (“of the Right Hand”). Naturally enough, as with Christianity, martyrdom was considered the guarantee of a righteous standing with God, but unlike the Norse paradigm, this was not a reward limited to men who died in combat. »
5 Al-Qur’an, surahs 55: 46–78; 56:12–40; 76: 12–22. »
6 By this phrase, I am noting how translations of the Qur’an stretch the various meanings, such that we sometimes read of demure maidens, other times of more wifely partners, either “well-matched” or “equal in age.” »
7 For a rich survey of centuries of Christian critique, see Christian Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge, UK, 2015), pp. 18–20. »
8 For one thread in this development, see Dimitris J. Kyrtatas, “The Origin of Christian Hell,” Numen 56 (2009), 282–97. For the parallel intensification of the devil’s role in punishing sinners, Elain Pagels, The Origins of Satan (New York, 1995). »
9 Ralph of Caen, The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen, ed. and trans. Bernard Bachrach and David Bachrach (Abingdon, 2016), p. 22. »
10 Terry Jones, Alan Ereira, and David Wallace, The Crusades DVD (Lionsgate, 2002). »
11 Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c.970–c.1130 (Oxford, 1993), p. 49. J. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. 19 (Venice, 1774), p. 541. The council he was addressing at Limoges confirmed the obvious (for them) conclusion: that even in death the violators of the Peace of God were to be kept separate from the faithful. »
12 Gilbert Crispin, The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, eds. Anna Sapir Abulafia and G. R. Evans (London, 1986), p. 194. »
13 A point drawn out explicitly by Bull, Knightly Piety, p. 154. »
14 History of William Marshal, ed. A. J. Holden, trans. S. Gregory, vol. 2. (London, 2004), ll. 18468–98. »
15 This question lies at the heart of David Bachrach’s Religion and the Conduct of War (Woodbridge, 2002). »
16 Christopher Harper-Bill, “The Piety of the Anglo-Norman Knightly Class,” Proceedings of the Battle Abbey Conference 1979, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1980), p. 75; Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 144–46. »
17 Bull, Knightly Piety, pp. 186–87. »
18 For a quick survey, see the work of Eileen Gardiner, either her translated anthology, Visions of Heaven & Hell before Dante (New York, 1989), or her bibliographic survey, with its attention to the many manuscript sources, Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook (New York, 1993). »
19 He is called a “knight” in English, which may be appropriate or not. He is labeled a miles and described as a vir nobilis in the Latin text, and he – or the Marcus who “merely” recorded the vision – were politically connected enough to include several Irish kings by name in the later parts of the vision. Visio Tnugdali: Lateinisch und Altdeutsch, ed. Albrecht Wagner (Erlangen, 1882), pp. 5–6; The Vision of Tnugdal, trans. J.-M. Picard and Y. de Pontfarcy (Dublin, 1989). »
20 The Vision of Tnugdal, pp. 142–50. »
21 Orderic Vitalis, 4: 236–50. »
22 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, eds. M. R. James, C. N. L. Brooke, and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), pp. 26–31. »
23 Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1984), p. 135, and chap. 7, “The Logic of Purgatory.” »
24 Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct of War, p. 105, notes how Ivo of Chartres had come to an understanding quite different from theologians or preceding thinkers over the inherent sinfulness of killing amid a necessary/justifiable war. Or, directly to the point, p. 106: “By the middle of the twelfth century, the problem of sinfulness for killing in the course of a just war had become a moot point.” »
25 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, pp. 80–81; Holy Warriors, pp. 18–24, 36, 54–56. Kaeuper’s emphasis leans to the fourteenth century in both books, but in this he is looking more at the fruition of these ideas as expressed in chivalric literature, developments that had been put in motion back in the twelfth century. »
26 “Pro salute anime mee et Ysabel uxoris mee et omnium antecessorum et successorum meorum,” The Acts and Letters of the Marshal Family, ed. David Crouch (London, 2015), no. 17, pp. 72–73. Likewise, charters nos. 21, 23, 32, 33, 43, 66, 73, 76, 77, 83, 95, 100, for much the same language and purpose. »
27 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981), passim. »
28 Wace, Le roman de Rou, ed. Auguste Le Prévoste (Rouen, 1827), p. 186, ll. 12506–9; The History of the Norman People, trans. Glyn S. Burgess (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 173. »
29 As one striking case of such pre-emptive rituals, the archers who were the first to secure William’s beachhead in England were described as “shaven and tonsured” (rez è tuit tondu). So widespread was the practice that scouts reported back to the English leaders that William had brought more priests than soldiers. Wace, Le roman de Rou, p. 148, l. 11630. »
30 Orderic Vitalis, 2:171. »
31 Matt. 4:7. »
32 Galbert of Bruges, The Murder, Betrayal, and Slaughter of the Glorious Charles, Count of Flanders, trans. Jeff Rider (New Haven, 2013), p. 173. »
33 Richard of Hexham, De gestis regis Stephani, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 3, ed. Richard Howlett (London, 1886), pp. 162–63. »
34 Aelred of Rievaulx, Relatio de standardo, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 3, ed. Richard Howlett (London, 1886), pp. 188–89. »
35 John Bliese, “The Battle Rhetoric of Aelred of Rievaulx,” The Haskins Society Journal 1 (1989), 99–107. Also, William Aird, “‘Sweet Civility and Barbarous Rudeness,’ A View from the Frontier, Abbot Ailred of Rievaulx and the Scots,” in Imagining Frontiers, Contesting Identities, eds. Steven G. Ellis et al. (Pisa, 2007). »
36 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), pp. 714–16; John of Hexham, Historia regum… continuata, in Symeonis Monachi opera omnia, ed. Thomas Wright, Rolls Series, vol. 75, part 2 (London: 1885), pp. 293–95. »
37 Orderic Vitalis, 3:216–18. There are further problems lurking here, including the fact that Orderic has Gerold focused, in 1066, on several Greek saints who became popular in the West after the First Crusade. In addition, as was the case for Demetrios, these saints’ histories were transformed as veneration of them spread westward, taking on a military slant not initially present. See Elizabeth Lapina, “Demetrius of Thessaloniki: Patron Saint of Crusaders,” Viator 40 (2009), 93–112. »
38 Even though published over a century ago, the key survey of this interplay remains Joseph Bédier, “Recherches sur les légendes du cycle de Guillaume d’Orange,” Annales du Midi 19 (1907), 5–39. »
39 Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie / De Vita Sua, ed. Edmund-René Labande (Paris, 1981), pp. 362–64. »
40 Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, vol. 4 (Paris, 1879), 293–95, 315, 332; Robert the Monk, The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, eds. Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull (Woodbridge, 2013), p. 77. »
41 Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, vol. 4 (Paris, 1879), p. 227. This deliberate slighting also extended to our potential “Exhibit B,” Raimbold Croton, one of the first men to enter Jerusalem and hold on so that more crusaders could gain entry and thereby sack the city. His fame was offset back in Christendom by increasingly violent squabbles with Bonneval Abbey, culminating in Raimbold’s castration of one of the monks. This led to the imposition of a fourteen-year penance, which included a ban on carrying any weapons. Bishop Ivo of Chartres eventually wrote the pope on Raimbald’s behalf, who had been importuning him relentlessly to get the weapons ban lifted. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 155–56; Ivo of Chartres, “Epistola cxxxv,” in Patrologia Latina 162:144–45. »
42 Suger, Vie de Louis le Gros, ed. and trans. H. Waquet (Paris, 1964), pp. 14, 172–78, 250–54. »
43 La chanson d’Antioche, ed. Janet Nelson, The Old French Crusade Cycle, vol. 4 (Tuscaloosa, 2003), pp. 91, 105, 140–41, 146, 151. »
44 La chanson de Jérusalem, ed. Nigel Thorp, The Old French Crusade Cycle, vol. 6 (Tuscaloosa, 1992), pp. 140–44. »
45 Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guines and the Lords of Ardres, trans. Leah Shopkow (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 165; “Historia comitum Ghisnensium,” MGH SS 20: 626–27. »
46 J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892), pp. 218–24. Round’s text has the further advantage of bringing together in the ample notes the relevant texts of virtually all the relevant chronicles, monastic and courtly. »
47 Ibid., pp. 224–26. »
48 David Crouch, William Marshal, 3rd ed. (London, 2016), pp. 2–3. »
49 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, passim. »
50 Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 2–3. »