PROPHECY, ESCHATOLOGY, GLOBAL NETWORKS, AND THE CRUSADES, FROM HATTIN TO FREDERICK II

Abstract

Although interest in the influence of prophecy and eschatology on the crusade movement and on cross-cultural conceptions of righteous conflict has recently revived, to date there has been little consideration of the reception, transmission, and reinterpretation of multifarious prophecies by networks of individuals involved in the promotion of various crusades from roughly 1187 to 1240. This study tracks the circulation, adaptation, and impact of influential prophecies publicized by papal legates, by crusade recruiters trained in Paris, and by their colleagues in the Victorine, Praemonstratensian, and Cistercian orders, culminating in the crusades of Frederick II (1213–1229). Royal, imperial, noble, episcopal, and papal courts, as well as visionaries, regular religious, secular clergy, preachers, and prelates, played key roles in validating and publicizing predictions. The preservation and reinterpretation of prophecies by scholars, clerics, scribes, and historians working across Latin Christendom (and in the wider Mediterranean region and Central Asia) testifies to the cross-cultural transmission and reception of specific prognostications adapted to speak to local needs and concerns and changing circumstances. This article identifies manuscripts of prophecies which circulated both independently and in association with the crusading histories of Jacques de Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn, written during and used for the promotion of Frederick II's crusades. It concludes that prophecies and their promoters played essential roles in facilitating cross-cultural diplomatic negotiations, religious debates and conversion attempts, and in the fostering, contextualization, and commemoration of the act of pious warfare. Functioning as a common language, prophetic and eschatological expectations enabled Muslims, Eastern Christians, Jewish communities, and Latin Christians to justify their theoretical or actual roles on the orbis terrarum and to define and negotiate with other cultures. Moreover, they could be endlessly adapted both to fit and to shape existing past, present, or future circumstances. Prophecy and eschatology were not fringe phenomena or praxes, but presented holistic methods of making sense of and adapting to events and negotiating between one's own and other cultures, methods that both competed with and complemented historical and theological interpretations of the world (and texts) and rational, scientific, and philosophical modes of thought.