Notice Board

Monday, February 2, 2015 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Lecturer:  Prof. David Hay (History Department)
Date:  Monday, February 2, 2015
Time:  7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Location:  C-640 (University Hall)

Killing in the Name of God: The Eleventh-Century Origins of Crusading Theology

In the present day, headlines about religious wars are likely to conjure images of Muslim fundamentalists, such as al-Qaeda or ISIS, and the ideology of the jihad. In this talk, I will return to the eleventh century, when Christians began waging their own jihads, known today as crusades. I will explore the intellectual origins of the crusades and the conditions that first led Christian religious authorities to promise forgiveness of sins for undertaking military expeditions. I will show how the theology of the crusades initially emerged out of internal warfare within Latin Christendom itself, as the idea of penitential warfare was first used to encourage soldiers in the circle of the powerful noblewoman Matilda of Tuscany as she fought the Holy Roman Emperor on behalf of the papacy. Only later was this concept of penitential warfare extended to Muslim opponents in the Holy Land. I will conclude by considering the wider ramifications of this change in theology for later Christian history, including the extension of the practice of indulgences and ongoing animosities between the Christian and Muslim worlds.