Bull, Marcus
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1998 (reprint of 1993 edition).
cloth, dj., 342 pp.
Book Number 20405
Concentrating on the aristocracies of three areas in south-western France - the Limousin, Bordelais and Bazedais, and southern Gascony - this study examines the religious ideas of nobles and knights, with particular reference to why men went on the First Crusade. Bull argues that the Crusaders were inspired by religious ideology, and that the piety of nobles and knights was profoundly influenced by the church, but he rejects the view that there was a parallelism between lay religious beliefs and the clerical intellectual position as articulated by Urban II. He begins by examining in depth two issues that are cited as evidence for such a parallelism: the 11th century Peace of God movement and contemporary vernacular literature. He then describes the close contact between nobility and the local monastic communities as the source of the French nobles religious ideas, and adds the notion of penance, and the perception of the crusade as a from of pilgrimage to their motives for joining the First Crusade.